Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about the nineteen eighty four
Speaker 3: ABC made for TV horror movie Invitation to Hell, directed
Speaker 3: by none other than Wes Craven. Did you know he
Speaker 3: made for TV movies?
Speaker 2: Was this multiple?
Speaker 3: Was this before Nightmare on Elm Street or after?
Speaker 2: We'll get into this in a bit, but I believe
Speaker 2: this came out right before and or in the same
Speaker 2: year as Nightmare, So okay, we had a couple of
Speaker 2: different things happening at the same time. Here.
Speaker 3: Wow, So Invitation to Hell starring Robert Urich, Joanna Cassidy,
Speaker 3: and Susan Lucci. Of apparently, I didn't know this when
Speaker 3: I first watched this movie, but apparently of like soap
Speaker 3: opera Royalty, Urreat fame.
Speaker 2: Superstar in the soap opera world.
Speaker 3: But this movie is about an expensive and exclusive West
Speaker 3: Coast country club that is in fact run by Satan.
Speaker 2: It's true. So this one originally aired on Thursday May
Speaker 2: twenty fourth, nineteen eighty four in the eight to ten
Speaker 2: PM slot Eastern Time. I was looking this up on
Speaker 2: tv tango dot com. I think it was the highest
Speaker 2: rated network offering that night, beat out Simon and Simon
Speaker 2: Memory if my memory is correct. There it is not
Speaker 2: to be confused with a nineteen eighty two British horror
Speaker 2: film of the same name, directed by Michael J. Murphy.
Speaker 2: So there are two invitations to hell out there. You
Speaker 2: can accept them both, but just don't confuse the two.
Speaker 3: Both seem to involve people being invited to like swanky,
Speaker 3: fancy parties in order to be killed or exploited in
Speaker 3: some way. Yeah, so earlier this week, the reason I
Speaker 3: picked this movie is that I found myself craving that
Speaker 3: that sweet, unique flavor of made for TV horror. Oh.
Speaker 3: We've covered at least two other made for TV horror
Speaker 3: movies on Weird House Cinema. One was the nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: eight CBS film Death Moon starring Robert Foxworth. That was
Speaker 3: the work beast of the work, based about a guy
Speaker 3: who he's getting too stressed out at work, so he
Speaker 3: goes on vacation to Hawaii, but uh oh, turns into
Speaker 3: a were wolf.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Love that movie. I finally had to buy a
Speaker 2: bootleg of it, because if you look around, if you
Speaker 2: grow attached to some of these seventies and eighties TV movies,
Speaker 2: there's not always a physical media choice out there, not
Speaker 2: always a legitimate one. So sometimes you have to be
Speaker 2: a little creative if you want to give it a
Speaker 2: forever home in your house.
Speaker 3: The other one that we've done already is the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two CBS horror fantasy Gargoyles. That was the one
Speaker 3: with Cornell Wild, Bernie k C, Jennifer Salt, and Scott
Speaker 3: Glenn as a motorcycle hooligan. That one was about subterranean
Speaker 3: demons living in the American Southwest, which are called gargoyles
Speaker 3: for some unspecified reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also an excellent film, excellent weird film.
Speaker 3: Have we done another one that I'm forgetting? I think
Speaker 3: those are the only two made for TV.
Speaker 2: Now, Shedy, I don't think we've actually done any other
Speaker 2: weird House episodes on other TV films. Of note that
Speaker 2: we have scouted a few others. I know we've talked
Speaker 2: about nineteen seventy three's The Horror at thirty seven thousand feet.
Speaker 3: Is that the one that's like an adaptation of the
Speaker 3: Twilight Zone thing with Shatner with the Grimlin on the
Speaker 3: airplane wing or is that a different one. Oh no,
Speaker 3: this is the one with druid magic. Yeah, druid magic
Speaker 3: on the airplane.
Speaker 2: Yes, some sort of druid magic or extorcism. So a
Speaker 2: number of different elements, including the shat going on at
Speaker 2: thirty seven thousand feet.
Speaker 3: That must have been the association.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Yeah. We've also kind of batted around the
Speaker 2: idea of doing nineteen seventy three's of the night Stalker
Speaker 2: the kickstart of the TV series as well as of course,
Speaker 2: there are various Frameskenstein, Dracula and other horror adaptations for
Speaker 2: the small screen, though sometimes in those cases you get
Speaker 2: kind of out of because one of the things we're
Speaker 2: kind of talking about here are these weird one shot
Speaker 2: TV movies that are not a part of any other franchise,
Speaker 2: and they're not like a prestige picture like some of
Speaker 2: these Frankenstein Dracula pictures are kind of like the big
Speaker 2: mini series of the day, Like you wouldn't compare this
Speaker 2: film to say any get like you wouldn't compare it
Speaker 2: to the old Showgun TV mini series. Like obviously that
Speaker 2: was a real prestige project. This is something a little
Speaker 2: different somewhere, kind of stuck between a prestige TV mini
Speaker 2: series or a prestige TV movie and your standard episodic offerings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say this movie is in its business
Speaker 3: life more of a quick and dirty cash in, but
Speaker 3: I you know, I want to sing for its virtues
Speaker 3: in this episode. So another reason that I was thinking
Speaker 3: about made for TV movies is that just recently, like
Speaker 3: in the past week, Rachel and I watched another one
Speaker 3: from also from nineteen seventy eight, the same year as
Speaker 3: Death Moon, which was an ABC made for TV horror
Speaker 3: called The Initiation of Sarah. Have you seen this, rob
Speaker 3: I have not. Seems heavily based on Stephen King's Carrie.
Speaker 3: The movie version of Carrie with Sissy's Basic came out
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy six, so this would have been, you know,
Speaker 3: in the wake of that a couple of years after.
Speaker 3: This movie was about a It's about a troubled young
Speaker 3: woman with telekinetic powers who goes to college, gets bullied
Speaker 3: by a bunch of mean sorority girls led by Morgan Fairchild,
Speaker 3: and you can guess where it goes based on the
Speaker 3: Carry model, a similar kind of arc. There's you know,
Speaker 3: there's no pig's blood, but there's a similar there's like
Speaker 3: she sort of casts a spell that turns Morgan fairchild
Speaker 3: like like, evil looking and ugly, though this one has
Speaker 3: a variant Unlike Carrie, where the telekinetic girl is sort
Speaker 3: of coached in the dark side of the force by
Speaker 3: a mentor, an evil mentor, in this movie it's Shelley
Speaker 3: Winter is wearing a druid robe and a huge wig.
Speaker 3: So that one was pretty fun. But anyway, that brought
Speaker 3: me to Invitation to Hell, which I think is even
Speaker 3: more of a winner. There is something I find delightful
Speaker 3: and even intoxicating about the particular combination of spiciness and
Speaker 3: blandness that you get with American made for TV horror
Speaker 3: from these decades, from the seventies and eighties. Often these
Speaker 3: movies do have a really weird and disturbing premise and
Speaker 3: some wild ideas inside them, kind of trapped inside, but
Speaker 3: the imagination at work feels muted, muffled, of course censored
Speaker 3: for content because it was on TV, but also contorted
Speaker 3: into a particular shape. I think we talked about this
Speaker 3: When we did the episode on Gargoyles, you know that
Speaker 3: you got to accommodate ad breaks and hit predictable plot
Speaker 3: beats on the tea timeline, So it creates this weird effect,
Speaker 3: especially when it's a horror story where I wanted to
Speaker 3: compare it to seeing the outline of a dread outer god,
Speaker 3: but only through translucent glass bricks. Like occasionally, something weird
Speaker 3: and wild kind of gets loose in the story and
Speaker 3: for a moment it breaks through the confines of the format,
Speaker 3: before everything kind of settles back down and the being
Speaker 3: goes back behind the wall, and it ends up being
Speaker 3: kind of quaint and cozy at the same time. I
Speaker 3: really like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, We were talking a little bit about this
Speaker 2: off Mike before we started recording. We were talking about
Speaker 2: other West Craven pictures, and I pointed out that I
Speaker 2: was trying to figure out how to express how I
Speaker 2: felt about this, because I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: go out there and say this is the best West
Speaker 2: Craven film at and it's also far from the worst.
Speaker 2: But I might have liked it in ways that I
Speaker 2: have never liked of West Craven film, and I think
Speaker 2: it comes down to comfy. This film felt comfy in
Speaker 2: a way that even I think objectively better West Craven
Speaker 2: films and certainly more influential West Craven films, are not.
Speaker 2: Like that might be part of what you're talking about here,
Speaker 2: Like the TV format is kind of this this way,
Speaker 2: this way of grounding the storytelling and in a way
Speaker 2: that makes you feel a little safer, Like this is
Speaker 2: network television in the seventies or eighties. It can only
Speaker 2: go so hard on me, you know. It's it has
Speaker 2: kid gloves on, perhaps to a certain extent because they
Speaker 2: got to wrap this up by ten pm.
Speaker 3: But it also provides a funny and comfortable contrast with
Speaker 3: the weirder and wilder elements of the horror themes. I
Speaker 3: just like the hot and cold showers element of it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and this one's got some This one really
Speaker 2: goes all over the place.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Now you were saying, in a way, you
Speaker 3: might think of this as kind of a favorite of
Speaker 3: Wes craven experiences. Some reviewers online regard this as Wes
Speaker 3: Craven's war movie. I don't think that's right. I'll give
Speaker 3: it that it is. He certainly has movies that I
Speaker 3: think are more artistically ambitious and more interesting and certainly scarier.
Speaker 3: This movie, I think is not very scary, but it
Speaker 3: is highly watchable and very entertaining and a lot of fun,
Speaker 3: I would say, much more so than some of Craven's
Speaker 3: lesser theatrical releases. And you know, even it has a
Speaker 3: kind of made for TV hokiness, but has some ideas.
Speaker 3: It's like it's having some fun. It's it's playing around.
Speaker 2: It's having some fun. It has things to say about
Speaker 2: ambition in the American dream. Yeah. So yeah, it's there's
Speaker 2: a fair amount going on here in this picture. And
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss too, it is perhaps a cut above
Speaker 2: some of the other made for TV films that were
Speaker 2: popping out around this time. Yeah, and to be clear,
Speaker 2: it is I think it is very easy to dismiss
Speaker 2: made for TV movies, particularly from this era, is lower
Speaker 2: budget productions produced to adhere to network standards, you know,
Speaker 2: thinking of them as sort of bland sandboxes for bland
Speaker 2: filmmakers and bland actors. But of course there's still plenty
Speaker 2: of room for talent to shine through even in those constraints,
Speaker 2: and I think part of it may be as well,
Speaker 2: that a lot of us have gotten away from watching
Speaker 2: films on broadcast television in general, but TV absolutely was,
Speaker 2: and you know, I guess, to a large distance still
Speaker 2: is a medium for film watching. In fact, TV is
Speaker 2: where some films really cemented their following. And I'm not
Speaker 2: just talking about like the cult films that you know,
Speaker 2: you and I may have grown up watching on TV
Speaker 2: and listeners may have grown up watching on TV like
Speaker 2: Beast Master and Clash of the Titans and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: You can say that about films like The Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 2: I was recently rewatching this film with my kid and
Speaker 2: it had the Turner Classic Movies intro by Ben Menkwitz,
Speaker 2: and he pointed out in this intro that when this
Speaker 2: film was released in thirty nine and then re released
Speaker 2: in forty nine and fifty five, you know, it's a
Speaker 2: critical success, but really only a modest financial success. It
Speaker 2: might sound crazy, but it was on TV that The
Speaker 2: Wizard of Oz apparently really caused viewers to fall in
Speaker 2: love with it. This is where it really began to
Speaker 2: take on the legendary status that it has today, which
Speaker 2: was that was a real eye opener for me.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's the case with a lot of
Speaker 3: classic films. I'm just speculating, so I don't know in
Speaker 3: this case, but like I would strongly suspect that there
Speaker 3: are may be a lot of holiday films that are
Speaker 3: like that, that are like big because of reruns on TV.
Speaker 3: Like I wonder if that's the case with It's a
Speaker 3: Wonderful Life. Comparing the original release of that to like
Speaker 3: how much love it got in the years, you know,
Speaker 3: as I played in the holidays and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I would not be surprised at all. Yeah, if that
Speaker 2: were the case, and even into fairly recent years, I
Speaker 2: think it's been surprising at how you can be surprised
Speaker 2: at at like what films can really like. Spike Rate
Speaker 2: a friend of mine who at the time worked for
Speaker 2: Cartoon Network and pointed out that like whenever they would
Speaker 2: play The Mask Too, the sequel to Jim Carrey's The Mask,
Speaker 2: ratings would just go through the like it was it
Speaker 2: was it was I'm not gonna say we'd go through
Speaker 2: the roof, but I think the idea was like if
Speaker 2: they needed to like sort of juice the ratings a
Speaker 2: little bit, this was always a film they could they
Speaker 2: could call upon this is always a lever they could pull.
Speaker 3: Is that just like ninety minutes of a cartoon faced
Speaker 3: dog biting crotches?
Speaker 2: I guess so. But you know, it's it's what, it's
Speaker 2: what works now. But to come back to this film
Speaker 2: and some of the others we've talked about, I am
Speaker 2: just continually impressed by just how weird and daring some
Speaker 2: of these TV movies of the Week were in the
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties, you know, rolling out strange scripts, bringing
Speaker 2: them to life, often with with modest budget casts and
Speaker 2: production values, and sometimes with up and coming or future
Speaker 2: big name actors attached, you know, the likes of John
Speaker 2: Carpenter and Steven Spielberg and of course Wes Craven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, was Steven Spielberg's duel made for TV
Speaker 3: movie also, I believe it was. Yeah, also had early
Speaker 3: made for TV stuff. So yeah, it is not just
Speaker 3: a play place for hacks. I mean, you know, some
Speaker 3: of the best and most revered directors in Hollywood did
Speaker 3: a lot of work here. Another thing that I think
Speaker 3: is interesting about Invitation to Hell is that it reminds
Speaker 3: me of a favorite that we have covered on Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema, before, and that is the unloved but excellent
Speaker 3: Halloween sequel Halloween three, Season of the Witch. These are
Speaker 3: examples of the rare horror movie in which a sort
Speaker 3: of that have as their main feature a kind of
Speaker 3: economic or class critique, and that have a business as
Speaker 3: the main demonic villain. I thought that was kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: You would think there'd be more movies like that, But
Speaker 3: I struggle to come up with many examples. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's the case here. I mean, the closest thing you
Speaker 3: get is stuff it's more on the border of like
Speaker 3: horror and sci fi where you get it's like a
Speaker 3: weird creature that is made by some experiment or something
Speaker 3: like that. And even then like the monster is just
Speaker 3: made by corporate malfeasance, you know, and ignoring safety protocols
Speaker 3: and so forth. Now, this, this movie we're talking about
Speaker 3: today has well. Actually, this would be kind of difficult
Speaker 3: thing to disentangle. Do you think in Invitation to Hell
Speaker 3: that the country club or the corporation is actually the
Speaker 3: main evil institution, which is the main servant of Hell,
Speaker 3: and which one is more in service of the other.
Speaker 2: I guess it's the country Club. I don't want to
Speaker 2: spoil too much at this point, but I guess it's
Speaker 2: the country club, even though like with the country club exists,
Speaker 2: if the company wasn't there, I don't know. They are
Speaker 2: kind of intermingled, and it seems like there's a lot
Speaker 2: of influence going back both ways.
Speaker 3: It seems like almost like the corporation exists. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're making aerospace technology, but it just exists to funnel
Speaker 3: people into the country club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the head of the country club can
Speaker 2: just come over and tour your top secret projects at
Speaker 2: any moment. So that's right. It's a weird setup.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe we should say here, as always on Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema, we are going to discuss the plot in
Speaker 3: a lot of details. So if you would like to
Speaker 3: see Invitation to Hell without any additional spoilers, go watch
Speaker 3: it yourself. It's widely available. You can watch it streaming
Speaker 3: pause here. Go watch it and come back and listen
Speaker 3: to the rest. But if you think you're probably not
Speaker 3: going to watch it, or if you just don't care
Speaker 3: if we spoil the plot for you, you may proceed.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and listen to a little
Speaker 2: trailer audio. This time I was able to grab a
Speaker 2: little bit of the ABC movie promo. I like the
Speaker 2: network television promo for this film off of YouTube, so
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and listen to a little bit of that.
Speaker 3: It's a good one.
Speaker 2: They were the perfect family finding a new life and
Speaker 2: a new home, but.
Speaker 3: An invitation and the hottest spot in town.
Speaker 2: Became an invitation to Hell.
Speaker 3: One week from to Night at eight seven, said.
Speaker 2: I model, see, don't you want to stay up late?
Speaker 2: I'm not really late. Don't you want to stay up
Speaker 2: to ten pm? Watching this movie?
Speaker 3: Now I'm tuning in. I'm going to turn down any
Speaker 3: party invitations and any invitations to something other than Hell,
Speaker 3: because I already have an invitation to Hell on that's
Speaker 3: your TV screen, and.
Speaker 2: You can still watch sixty minutes or twenty twenty afterwards.
Speaker 2: I think it's twenty twenty that air okay?
Speaker 3: Nice?
Speaker 2: All right? As Joe mentioned earlier, Yeah, you can definitely
Speaker 2: go and stream this pretty much anywhere you want. I
Speaker 2: watched it on Prime. I believe it's It's come out
Speaker 2: on both DVD and VHS before, but I don't think
Speaker 2: it's received much attention on the physical media front, more
Speaker 2: than other made for TV films to be sure, but yeah,
Speaker 2: you're not going to find an exquisite blu ray of
Speaker 2: Invitation to Hell.
Speaker 3: Can I tell you my ideal way to own this.
Speaker 3: It would be like those tapes of the Star Wars
Speaker 3: Holiday Special where commercials are hardbaked in. If somebody out
Speaker 3: there has that, If you have a rip of Invitation
Speaker 3: to Hell with commercials in it, please please send it
Speaker 3: our way. I desperately want this.
Speaker 2: All right, let's jump into the connections here the people
Speaker 2: who made this film, starting at the top with Wes Craven,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty nine through twenty fifteen. This is
Speaker 2: somehow our first Wes Craven movie.
Speaker 3: We've talked about doing other ones. We've definitely talked about
Speaker 3: doing Swamp Thing and a number of other movies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Wes Craven's got a lot of great films. But here, finally,
Speaker 3: at last, we have made it to the crave.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Legendary American horror director. He was an academic
Speaker 2: and Humanity's professor in the mid sixties. His masters was
Speaker 2: in philosophy and writing, but then The Sirens Song of
Speaker 2: Cinema lured him away, initially into some low level editing
Speaker 2: position UNEs as well as some work in the adult
Speaker 2: film industry during the early in the mid seventies, including
Speaker 2: writing and directing under the moniker Abe Snake Abe Snake,
Speaker 2: which I love that name because it sounds as ridiculously
Speaker 2: made up and on brand for an adult film director
Speaker 2: as Wes Craven does for horror. So Wes Craven was
Speaker 2: of his actual name, so good now. It was not
Speaker 2: uncommon for filmmakers at various points in their career to
Speaker 2: do this, of course, especially during the adult film industry's
Speaker 2: golden age. But of course, his first breakout directorial effort
Speaker 2: was the notorious nineteen seventy two revenge film The Last
Speaker 2: House on the Left, followed by nineteen seventy seven's The
Speaker 2: Hills Have Eyes and the seventy eight TV movie Summer
Speaker 2: of Fear starring Linda Blair.
Speaker 3: Never Seen that one.
Speaker 2: Oh, and then also nineteen eighty one's Deadly Blessing This
Speaker 2: is another TV movie starring Ernest Borgnine. After this came
Speaker 2: his take DC Swamp Thing in eighty two, which show
Speaker 2: which you just mentioned. This one, of course starred Louis Jordaan,
Speaker 2: Adrian Barbou and Ray Wise. Ray Wise played the Swamp
Speaker 2: Thing and then in nineteen eighty four. This was a
Speaker 2: very interesting year for Craven because on one hand, we
Speaker 2: get this film, along with The Hills Have Eyes Part two,
Speaker 2: often considered one of, if not his worst film, and
Speaker 2: I think in part because I've also read it might
Speaker 2: not have actually been completed. It's supposedly a mess. And
Speaker 2: it's also a film where, if memory serves, everybody including
Speaker 2: a dog, has a flashback to the first.
Speaker 3: Film where they get to Reeve's footage. Yeah, pad that
Speaker 3: thing out, baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But this was also the year that he wrote
Speaker 2: and directed the excellent A Nightmare on Elm Street, a
Speaker 2: film that really did change horror cinema forever. You just
Speaker 2: can't understate how important A Nightmare of That on Elm
Speaker 2: Street was the creation of Freddy Krueger.
Speaker 3: So around the same time as in Vita to Hell.
Speaker 3: He's sort of there's somewhat overlapping projects night Mare on
Speaker 3: Elm Street and Invitation to Hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't have the exact timeline on things, but yeah,
Speaker 2: like a number of different things were coming to Fruition,
Speaker 2: including the big one or the first of a few
Speaker 2: different big ones for Wes Craven. You know, he was
Speaker 2: far from a one hit wonder.
Speaker 3: Though his success with Elm Street Weirdly Enough would not
Speaker 3: stop him from doing additional made for TV movies.
Speaker 2: No, no, yeah, because the weird thing. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not really weird. But we've seen so many cases where
Speaker 2: a director, you know, strikes strikes gold, and they're going
Speaker 2: to come back and do that sequel, at least the
Speaker 2: first sequel, because that's going to help fund the next thing.
Speaker 2: But he did not immediately return to the Elm Street
Speaker 2: director's chair. He kept mostly to the horror genre, but
Speaker 2: explored some sci fi horror in the nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: TV movie Chiller. I haven't seen that one, but that's
Speaker 2: like a cryogenics picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got a guy who gets cryogenically preserved and
Speaker 3: then comes back to life and then I think goes
Speaker 3: around stabbing people or something as pauls Orvino as a
Speaker 3: priest in it.
Speaker 2: Also, nineteen eighty six is Deadly Friend, which is I
Speaker 2: think a robotics movie. I almost rented it thinking it
Speaker 2: was invitation to help, Like, I picked it up off
Speaker 2: the shelf and I'm like, oh, this is the one
Speaker 2: Joe was talking about, and then I realized, oh wait,
Speaker 2: this is actually not.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean we shouldn't watch it though, No.
Speaker 2: No. During this time he also directed an episode of
Speaker 2: the Magical World of Disney, an episode titled Casebusters starring
Speaker 2: Noah Hathaway. Of course we know as a Treyu from
Speaker 2: the never Ending Story.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, not the only never ending story tieing in
Speaker 3: this episode correct.
Speaker 2: He also directed five episodes of the nineteen eighties Twilight
Speaker 2: Zone revival, and then came the infamous nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 2: production of The Serpent in the Rainbow. I don't know
Speaker 2: if infamous is really the right way to describe it,
Speaker 2: but I know this one had a very troubled production story.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of complications this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a movie, but voodoo.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Nineteen eighty nine Shocker came next that. That's when
Speaker 2: I know you have a fair amount of enthusiasm for Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's a bullseye in my category of not
Speaker 3: good but a good time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then nineteen ninety one's The People under the Stairs,
Speaker 2: a movie that I have seen, but it's weird. My
Speaker 2: memory of seeing it is still overshadowed by my childhood
Speaker 2: idea of what this movie might be if that makes sense,
Speaker 2: like seeing the posters, seeing the VHS box art, Like
Speaker 2: I remember my anticipation of this movie far more than
Speaker 2: I remember actually seeing it. I remember you and I
Speaker 2: have talked about this before.
Speaker 3: How you would I think we would sort of do
Speaker 3: the same thing, like wander around the video store when
Speaker 3: we were young and look at the horror box covers
Speaker 3: and just imagine what the movie is without actually seeing it.
Speaker 3: So sometimes when you actually when you're older and you
Speaker 3: can see these movies, or maybe you're still too young
Speaker 3: to be watching them, but you see them anyway, it
Speaker 3: just doesn't match the movie you already imagined, and so
Speaker 3: you end up with a blended memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's true. So it wasn't until nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: four that he returned to the Elm Street franchise with
Speaker 2: the meta horror film New Nightmare, in which he, like
Speaker 2: many members of the original cast, plays himself as well
Speaker 2: in addition to directing it.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of positive feelings about New Nightmare,
Speaker 3: but my memory I haven't seen it in a long time,
Speaker 3: But my memory is it almost is more exciting as
Speaker 3: a premise than effective as a completed film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think what also, I saw the year it
Speaker 2: came out, but it was I think one of the
Speaker 2: factors that I have to take into account is this
Speaker 2: was the same year, nineteen ninety four that John Carpenter's
Speaker 2: In the Mouth of Madness came out. Both films that
Speaker 2: play with the sort of meta idea of horror fiction
Speaker 2: and reality blending and the membrane between the two worlds growing.
Speaker 2: And I think they're both effective in their own way.
Speaker 2: But In the Mouth of Madness really resonated with me
Speaker 2: at the time and stands out more in my own
Speaker 2: memory as a film that I love.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a more exciting film overall. But
Speaker 3: the premise of New Nightmare is really cool for people
Speaker 3: who aren't familiar. The idea is that it's about real people.
Speaker 3: It's about Wes Craven as Wes Craven, I mean, he's
Speaker 3: not the main character. The main character is Heather Langenkamp,
Speaker 3: the actress who played the main character in the first
Speaker 3: Nightmare movie as herself, and other fictionalized versions of like
Speaker 3: the actors and you know, Robert England and people involved
Speaker 3: in these movies. And the premise is that there is
Speaker 3: a sort of ancient entity which attaches itself to characters
Speaker 3: in like scary stories that are told around the campfire
Speaker 3: over the years, and it attaches itself to the idea
Speaker 3: of Freddy Krueger. So for these people in the real world,
Speaker 3: the fictional character Freddy Krueger becomes real.
Speaker 2: It is a really daring idea. I feel like it's
Speaker 2: exactly what the franchise needed at that point. I feel
Speaker 2: like we can look at the timeline of Freddy Krueger
Speaker 2: movies and can realize that it was getting long in
Speaker 2: the tooth and it needed to be shaken up one
Speaker 2: way or another, and this was like, this was a
Speaker 2: pretty artful and imaginative way to shake things up, and
Speaker 2: clearly like the way that brought Wes Craven back to
Speaker 2: the picture. Yeah, totally now. He followed that up with
Speaker 2: the nineteen ninety five Eddie Murphy horror comedy Vampire in Brooklyn,
Speaker 2: which was widely panned at the time and there were
Speaker 2: a lot of jokes about it. But I believe it's
Speaker 2: been reassessed in recent years and there's some different ideas
Speaker 2: about how we should look at Vampire in Brooklyn. I
Speaker 2: don't think I ever saw it myself, though, but the
Speaker 2: following year Craven hit it out of the park once
Speaker 2: more with a hugely successful Scream, which would spawn an
Speaker 2: entire franchise, obviously, with Craven directing the first four films,
Speaker 2: this time with twenty eleven Scream four standing as his
Speaker 2: final directorial credit before his death in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: You know, after the first Scream, I think you could
Speaker 3: very legitimately make the charge that the Scream movie are
Speaker 3: no longer innovating. They're just kind of varying the same formula.
Speaker 3: So you know, that may be fair. But I've been
Speaker 3: entertained by all of them. I haven't been bored by
Speaker 3: a Scream movie yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I haven't gotten to the point where
Speaker 2: I have wanted to go back and reassess the Scream movies.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed them. I enjoyed them at the time, and
Speaker 2: I guess on one level, it kind of makes me
Speaker 2: feel old to realize that ghost Face is a horror
Speaker 2: icon now, like he's shown up in the Mortal Kombat
Speaker 2: franchise as a DLC character at this point, alongside the
Speaker 2: likes of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees and the Xeno
Speaker 2: Morph and Predator.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, if he's in Mortal does he like
Speaker 3: call lu Kang on the phone?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't played. This is the latest
Speaker 2: one that my poor system can't play this one. Someone
Speaker 2: else will have to write in and tell us how
Speaker 2: this plays out.
Speaker 3: I mean, the phone calls are crucial. That's what scream is.
Speaker 2: I would hope so Johnny Kaye has the phone, maybe
Speaker 2: he can get phone calls from ghost Face. Well anyway.
Speaker 2: Wes Craven's scream era also included some notable deviations, most
Speaker 2: notably the nineteen ninety nine drama Music of the Heart,
Speaker 2: which starred Meryl Streep. She was nominated for Best Actress
Speaker 2: Academy Award for that role. He also directed a segment
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six is Paris just him? This
Speaker 2: is French so and may be butchering alongside the likes
Speaker 2: of the Cohen Brothers and others. I saw this one
Speaker 2: in the cinema. I think I only remember the Coen
Speaker 2: Brothers segment though, okay, I think it had steep yuseim
Speaker 2: me in it. But Craven also directed the two thousand
Speaker 2: and five werewolf movie Cursed starring Christina Ricci, and the
Speaker 2: air Travel thriller Red Eye, starring Rachel McAdams, Killian Murphy,
Speaker 2: and of course the legendary Brian Cox.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't know Brian Cox was in that. Now
Speaker 3: I kind of want to see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't seen it. I often avoid the air
Speaker 2: travel thrillers. But I mean that's a good cast. There's
Speaker 2: no doubt about it. Love all three of them.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well that's fair. I realist. That's probably the
Speaker 3: reason we have not yet covered go Co body Snatcher
Speaker 3: from Hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now's the time, though, I'm in between flights, so
Speaker 2: you don't have any trips coming up, not for a
Speaker 2: couple of months.
Speaker 3: So yeah, okay, well maybe we should do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, now that we've done Wes Craven, hopefully
Speaker 2: due diligence there at least a brief overview, we'll move
Speaker 2: on to the writer. The screenwriter of this TV movie.
Speaker 2: It's Richard Rothstein, who lived nineteen forty three through twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen American screenwriter and producer, whose first produced script was
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy eight western shoot The Sundown, co starring
Speaker 2: very young Christopher Walken. His credits include various other films
Speaker 2: and TV movies, but most Notable are eighty two episodes
Speaker 2: of TV's The Hitchhiker, which ran eighty four through ninety seven,
Speaker 2: and of course nineteen ninety two's Universal Soldier starring Jean
Speaker 2: Claude van Dam.
Speaker 3: Oh. Okay, yeah, he was.
Speaker 2: Just involved with the first one, but you'll see him
Speaker 2: as he gets a character credit on all subsequent Universal
Speaker 2: Soldier movies.
Speaker 3: That also of Doulph Lundgren.
Speaker 2: Yep, he's definitely in the first one and eventually pops
Speaker 2: back up in the latter ones as well. All right,
Speaker 2: getting into the cast here, top billing goes to Robert Urick,
Speaker 2: who plays Matt Winslow. Urick lived nineteen forty six through
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, American leading man actor, best remembered
Speaker 2: for his work in the seventies and eighties, which included
Speaker 2: a lot of TV, including the title role in Spencer
Speaker 2: for Hire and the role of Jake Spoon in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine mini series Lonesome Dove. Oh yeah, that
Speaker 2: that of course had a terrific cast.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it, but I started reading the novel
Speaker 3: last year and really liked it, but then just didn't
Speaker 3: finish it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a great novel, as well, there's another
Speaker 2: one in that series that I read, Comanche Moon, that
Speaker 2: I really liked. But yeah, the mini series was definitely
Speaker 2: a prestige project, had Robert Duvall and it also had
Speaker 2: Sonny Carl Davis in it, a bunch of people. But yeah,
Speaker 2: Robert Urick is in that and plays a plays a
Speaker 2: character that kind of it's easy to look at his
Speaker 2: role in this picture and sort of identify the sort
Speaker 2: of leading man type roles that he played. He plays
Speaker 2: a flawed character in Lonesome Dove, a character that ends
Speaker 2: up having not a great trajectory. Other films of his
Speaker 2: include seventy three's Magnum Force. Oh, and then the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two Alan Rudolph cattle mutilation conspiracy thriller Endangered Species.
Speaker 2: That's another one where he gets to play a more
Speaker 2: morally complicated character as you might expect from an Alan
Speaker 2: Rudolph picture.
Speaker 3: Once again, that was not the cattle mutilation movie we
Speaker 3: talked about, that was the other one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, this is one where this one leans more
Speaker 2: conspiracy thriller as opposed to aliens doing things to cows.
Speaker 2: But it's also it's pretty great. It's like it's Alan Rudolph,
Speaker 2: you know, going for a mainstream thriller vibe, but it's
Speaker 2: quite effective. It's one that I've toyed around with the
Speaker 2: idea of covering. I definitely want to some Alan Rudolph
Speaker 2: film at one point or another. Is just a matter
Speaker 2: of picking the right one.
Speaker 3: I've got one on my list. We can talk about
Speaker 3: after this episode.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, But anyway, I like Robert Urick, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, very much seventies eighties leading man stock but
Speaker 2: I feel like he always gets the job done. And
Speaker 2: you know, obviously he's an actor we would have liked
Speaker 2: to have seen more from. We didn't get to see
Speaker 2: a lot of late career character work from him, as
Speaker 2: he passed from cancer at the age of fifty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the main character in this movie I actually found
Speaker 3: quite likable, So Matt Winslow. This character, he's sort of
Speaker 3: a classic like solid family man, like a loving father
Speaker 3: and a good husband and an emblem of rectitude, so
Speaker 3: you might expect, well, he's kind of an uncomplicated character,
Speaker 3: so there's not much to get into here. But I
Speaker 3: don't know, I really enjoyed this character. Actually, he's a
Speaker 3: good guy by trade. In the movie he's an engineer
Speaker 3: who works in this era space technology industry, and they
Speaker 3: have him designing cutting edge suits for astronauts to wear,
Speaker 3: like in the next phase of Solar System exploration. And
Speaker 3: he has this ludicrous sci fi dialogue to deliver where
Speaker 3: he's like having them point this spacesuit helmet at things
Speaker 3: and it identifies whether it is human or not, or
Speaker 3: a non human terrestrial or non terrestrial.
Speaker 2: Being, yes, or if you are benign or malignant, is
Speaker 2: it malignant or malicious?
Speaker 3: Yeah, benign or malignant beings of whether or not they're
Speaker 3: from Earth, and it just the helmet knows.
Speaker 2: It's remarkable tech that he developed here.
Speaker 3: So he's but he delivers that with a kind of
Speaker 3: illan that's admirable. Also, this character, Matt and by extension, Urik,
Speaker 3: is a megahunk, and the movie is not shy about
Speaker 3: like letting you get a good idea of what his
Speaker 3: butt looks like in some nice fitting khakis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. He's at least shirtless in one scene.
Speaker 3: But this is a kind of leading man, good guy
Speaker 3: roll that I think we could potentially underappreciate. It takes
Speaker 3: a little more skill than you might think when when
Speaker 3: you first watched this movie because of all the different
Speaker 3: stuff he has to do and that he has to
Speaker 3: navigate the performance of like fighting off demonic versions of
Speaker 3: his own children that are attacking him, and you know
Speaker 3: he does well with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has to do kind of like
Speaker 2: the grounded, believable stuff and then like really lean into
Speaker 2: the into the into the role when it gets super
Speaker 2: weird towards the end. Yeah, all right, So that is
Speaker 2: Matt Winslow playing his wife. Pat Winslow is Joanna Cassidy
Speaker 2: born nineteen forty five. Two time Emmy nominated actress for
Speaker 2: Elite Actress role on eighty four's Buffalo Bill and then
Speaker 2: a guest role in the TV series Six Feet Under.
Speaker 2: Best remembered by many of you, though as the snake
Speaker 2: handling replicant Zora in Really Scott's Blade Runner.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I didn't make that connection, all right.
Speaker 2: She's the one who she's wearing like, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like a shower curtain trench coat and she gets gunned
Speaker 2: down in the street by our hero.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, totally. She's working at the club and she
Speaker 3: has the snake. Yeah, yeah, I remember her.
Speaker 2: She also played the character Dolores in nineteen eighty eights
Speaker 2: who framed Roger Rabbit, and she had a role in
Speaker 2: seventy three as the Laughing Policeman.
Speaker 3: She's also good here playing a conflicted character, someone who's
Speaker 3: torn between wanting to be like a loyal and kind
Speaker 3: wife and mother to her family, but she's also feeling
Speaker 3: the pull of like ostentatious wealth and the desire to
Speaker 3: be included in this rich new jet set that the
Speaker 3: family has moved in with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's all that's ultimately the meat, like the
Speaker 2: social commentary that this film dabbles in as ambition and
Speaker 2: what do you want to be versus what you are?
Speaker 2: What are you know? What are your values? What are
Speaker 2: your ambitions? What is the American dream that either you
Speaker 2: have for yourself or is being inflicted upon you? And
Speaker 2: who is doing the inflicting? Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh, let's talk about Jessica Jones. Yes, that is the
Speaker 3: character's name.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's such a Yeah, it feels like such an
Speaker 2: everyday name for this character. And I guess part of
Speaker 2: it is like I grew up with somebody named Jessica Jones,
Speaker 2: so it like it just feels like it's like literally
Speaker 2: the girl next Door's name. And the character that Susan
Speaker 2: Lucci is playing here is anything.
Speaker 3: But isn't Jessica Jones also a superhero? There was a
Speaker 3: show of wasn't there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Jessica Jones. The it's a Marvel character. But
Speaker 2: I think they I'm not an expert on that character,
Speaker 2: but I think they chose the name Jessica Jones right,
Speaker 2: or at least they they focused in on it because
Speaker 2: it sounds so normal for a superhero, and it's about
Speaker 2: her being like an ex costume superhero now living a
Speaker 2: more like you know, film noir, kind of like gritty
Speaker 2: realistic existence.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Well I didn't know anything about it. I
Speaker 3: just knew if the character existed. But yeah, anyway, so
Speaker 3: this is Jessica Jones in Invitation to Hell. Is the
Speaker 3: character played by Susan Lucci, the daytime TV soap opera
Speaker 3: Royalty who we were talking about earlier. And Lucci seems
Speaker 3: to be having the time of her life in this movie,
Speaker 3: playing the Satanic impress of the golf course. I love this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's really getting in there and having a good
Speaker 2: time with this. Yeah. She was born in nineteen forty six,
Speaker 2: still active, best known for her long running, ANY winning
Speaker 2: role as Erica Kine on the soap opera All My Children.
Speaker 2: I believe if I'MDB is correct here, and they usually
Speaker 2: are oney seven hundred and forty two episodes of that series.
Speaker 3: How is that possible?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just they crank them out and then they run forever,
Speaker 2: or they ran forever. She also co starred with Robert
Speaker 2: Urick in the nineteen ninety two thriller Double Edge. Undoubtedly
Speaker 2: a TV legend here, and I've read that this whole
Speaker 2: film exist because her nineteen eighty three contract to keep
Speaker 2: acting on All My Children specified that she would get
Speaker 2: to do some sort of a like a TV movie
Speaker 2: of the week, and so they had this script written
Speaker 2: with her in mind. They were like, we've got to
Speaker 2: make we need to make a sci fi drama for
Speaker 2: Susan Lucci. See what you can put together, and so
Speaker 2: we end up with her playing Jessica Jones. Here.
Speaker 3: This Wes Craven movie is actually a Susan Lucci vehicle.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I think crave. I've read that Craven came
Speaker 2: in kind of kind of laid on it, like there's
Speaker 2: still pre production, but a lot of the elements were
Speaker 2: already in place. But then he hit the ground running,
Speaker 2: you know, finishing putting everything together and figuring out how
Speaker 2: to make a few things work. But yeah, really fun
Speaker 2: role here. I think this and the nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 2: TV movie Haunted by Her Past maybe the only projects
Speaker 2: she's done that have a true speculative element to them.
Speaker 2: So you can imagine somebody who's like cranking out soap
Speaker 2: opera after soap opera episode, you know, having a great
Speaker 2: time getting to play the devil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she should have done it more.
Speaker 2: Also, of note, she was in a nineteen ninety five
Speaker 2: TV movie called Ebbie, in which she plays a female
Speaker 2: version of Ebenezer Scrooge. I haven't seen that one either,
Speaker 2: but that also sounds that sounds like that was also
Speaker 2: a fun alternative to what she usually did.
Speaker 3: Do you know if on All My Children did she
Speaker 3: play a good character or a bad character?
Speaker 2: I think maybe more bad. It seems like all the
Speaker 2: memorable soap opera characters are baddies, right, Like those are
Speaker 2: the characters you love to hate? Right? Maybe you know
Speaker 2: you remember names, like you know, and I'm betraying my
Speaker 2: you know how little I know about soap operas, But
Speaker 2: you're gonna remember Barnabas Collins because he's a vampire. You're
Speaker 2: gonna remember presumably Erica Kane because she's also a baddie.
Speaker 3: Does sound like a bad character name?
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of names, I guess it would have been
Speaker 2: two on the nose if they call or Lucci for
Speaker 2: in this you know, so they probably like just colleg
Speaker 2: Jaska jots. All right. Up next, we have Joe Rogato
Speaker 2: playing Tom Peterson born nineteen forty nine, probably best known
Speaker 2: to many of you out there. This is the main
Speaker 2: connection I had to his work because he played the
Speaker 2: character Frank on TV's Murphy Brown, which I remember watching
Speaker 2: a lot as a kid for some reason. I think
Speaker 2: because it was it was on television, and that's it
Speaker 2: was something the family was watching. But he he was
Speaker 2: nominated for an Emmy for that performance. He was also
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighty six movie Raw Deal, which we
Speaker 2: were just talking about last week.
Speaker 3: Why were we talking about Raw Deal last time?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah? Why were it was somebody? Somebody one of
Speaker 2: the actors or up. I just looked it up.
Speaker 3: It was Sam Wanamaker.
Speaker 2: There you go, Yeah, who.
Speaker 3: Directed Sindbad in the Eye of the Tiger.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah. So Rogato also did I did
Speaker 2: a lot of TV work, but also directed quite a
Speaker 2: bit of television, including many episodes of Murphy Brown. Here
Speaker 2: he's good.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: I don't have a I have to say about this performance,
Speaker 2: but he's good. He is the coworker, I guess, former
Speaker 2: acquaintance of our lead character saying hey, you're working for
Speaker 2: the big evil corporation.
Speaker 3: Great. Yeah, Well he's I think he's the friend who
Speaker 3: tempted Matt and his family to come into this. He's like,
Speaker 3: I have gone to take a job at a big
Speaker 3: evil corporation. Why don't you come work at the big
Speaker 3: evil corporation. You'll make lots of money. Yeah, And so
Speaker 3: he plays like an ingratiating, nervous corporate grimlin.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good performance. All right.
Speaker 2: We also have Kevin McCarthy showing up, at least for
Speaker 2: a little bit. He's not in this much, plays mister Thompson.
Speaker 2: McCarthy lived nineteen fourteen through twenty ten. American actor, nominated
Speaker 2: for an Oscar for his performance in the nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: two adaptation of Death of a Salesman, but probably best
Speaker 2: known to many out there for his maniacal paranoid performance
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty six's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He
Speaker 2: also pops up in various genre films to follow multiple
Speaker 2: Joe Dante films. If I remember correctly, previously mentioned him
Speaker 2: on the show, because the episode I recorded with David
Speaker 2: Streepy on Joe Dante's Innerspace, of course, features Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 3: Kevin McCarthy has powerful, malicious boss energy, and that, in
Speaker 3: fact is exactly the role he plays in this movie.
Speaker 3: But I imagine he was just getting cast over and
Speaker 3: over again as the guy who calls the main character
Speaker 3: into his office to tell him he's fired.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's the generally he played like certainly later
Speaker 2: in his career, tended to play nasty old men, and
Speaker 2: he was excellent at it.
Speaker 3: Oh and speaking of old men, we also in this
Speaker 3: movie have Bill Irwin, the perpetual old man of the movies.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, playing Walt Henderson. Yeah. Irwin lived nineteen fourteen
Speaker 2: through twenty ten. American character actor appeared in more than
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty television and film roles, including the
Speaker 2: one that earned him an Emmy nomination in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: He played retiree Sid Fields on SIGND and we previously
Speaker 2: discussed him in our episode on the nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: short film Quest.
Speaker 3: He's got a brief sympathetic role in this movie. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a nice contrast to the other things I've seen
Speaker 3: him in, which are mainly comedies where he needs to
Speaker 3: pop up as like a curmudgeon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, here he is a little bit more to do.
Speaker 2: He has a nice scene and the last we see
Speaker 2: of him it's it's actually really sad. Yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: We also have a sheriff character that shows up. I
Speaker 2: don't think he has a name. Maybe he has a name,
Speaker 2: but it played by Nicholas Worth who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: seven through two thousand and seven. Instantly recognizable rotun typically
Speaker 2: bald or balding American character actor, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: like built like a like a pit bull. Probably best
Speaker 2: known to many of you out there for his role
Speaker 2: as the Hinchman Polly in nineteen nineties Dark Man.
Speaker 3: He body slams Robert Urick. In this movie.
Speaker 2: He does, he does, he gets the fulsome wrestling moves.
Speaker 3: They have a wrestling scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So obviously this guy plays a lot of heavies.
Speaker 2: His credits include seventy three Screen Blackula Scream, seventy four
Speaker 2: is The Terminal Man, seventy eights Coma, seventy nine's The Glove,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties Don't Answer the Phone. I believe he was
Speaker 2: the main villain in that. He pops up an eighty
Speaker 2: two Swamp Thing, eighty six is Heartbreak, Ridge, eighty eight's
Speaker 2: Hell Comes to Frogtown, and Action Jackson and the Naked Gun. Wow.
Speaker 2: He also plays a demon in ninety four's Dark Angel
Speaker 2: The Ascent. He's in ninety six's Barbed Wire. Did a
Speaker 2: lot of TV pops up on The X Files and
Speaker 2: a couple of different Star Trek shows.
Speaker 3: No, I don't remember what he did in the X Files,
Speaker 3: but yeah, he's good. I don't even remember if he
Speaker 3: has any lines in this movie, but he does stand
Speaker 3: there and menace people, and then yeah, has a pretty
Speaker 3: sweet fight scene.
Speaker 2: Oh and we need to talk about the Winslow children.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, the Winslow family. We have two children.
Speaker 2: There's a boy and a girl, both famous in their
Speaker 2: own right. That's right, but let's start with the girl.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the daughter. It is the character Chrissy,
Speaker 2: played by Soleigh Moon. Fry born nineteen seventy six. It's
Speaker 2: TV's Punky Brewster. That's who it is.
Speaker 3: I've never seen Punky Brewster, but the name is burned
Speaker 3: in my brain from when I was a kid people
Speaker 3: talked about Punky Brewster. I imagine her as just like
Speaker 3: a girl Dennis the Menace. Is that sort of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I only have vague memories of watching this show, but
Speaker 2: I remember it like Punky Brewster, like she was to
Speaker 2: be celebrated. Okay, she was a lot of fun. She
Speaker 2: was a handful obviously, child actor here turned grown person actor.
Speaker 2: She's also known for her work in ninety three's Pumpkinhead
Speaker 2: two Blood Wings. She's also she was a cast member
Speaker 2: on TV Sabrina and the Teenage Witch. This is the
Speaker 2: version that ran two thousand and through two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: She's also done a little bit of directing.
Speaker 3: So this movie does ask a decent amount of the
Speaker 3: children characters she has to play not only like a
Speaker 3: little girl who's kind of upset about her family having
Speaker 3: to move to a new city and like she misses
Speaker 3: their old house, but she also gets to play a
Speaker 3: demo possessed child who's like, there's only bad Chrissy.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, yeah, yeah, so you just have some fun
Speaker 2: with this role for sure, and then playing her brother,
Speaker 2: Robbie Winslow is Barrett Oliver born nineteen seventy three, a
Speaker 2: child actor that we previously talked about on the show
Speaker 2: because he of course played Dastian Balthazar Bucks in a
Speaker 2: much bigger film from the same year than Never Ending.
Speaker 3: Story, both in the same year.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, his other credit.
Speaker 3: It's like Peter Mayhew being in Star Wars and Sindbad
Speaker 3: and The Eye of the Tiger the same year.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you keep working and some things take
Speaker 2: off and some things don't, right, But yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: a quite a I mean quite a cast here, and
Speaker 2: the family itself is pretty interesting. So like, after I'd
Speaker 2: watched the film, I had to show the first ninety
Speaker 2: seconds of it to my wife. We'll talk about why
Speaker 2: in just a few minutes here, but then I also like,
Speaker 2: stick around. I've got to point out some things about
Speaker 2: this family, all right, moving behind the scene. The cinematographer
Speaker 2: on this is Dean Condy.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we've talked about him on the show before.
Speaker 3: He was a cinematographer and I believe the very first
Speaker 3: movie we ever featured on Weird House Cinema right Without Warning?
Speaker 2: Correct, yes, nineteen eighties without Warning. More famous probably for
Speaker 2: his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which he won
Speaker 2: an oscar for ninety three's Jurassic Park ninety six is
Speaker 2: Apollo thirteen and many others. He's worked, of course, extensively
Speaker 2: with John Carpenter, Robert Zemeckis, Yeah, and great on Clark.
Speaker 3: So I love Dean Coundy's work. Was he also a
Speaker 3: cinematographer on Halloween three season of The Witch?
Speaker 2: But I believe he was. Yeah. I believe that's one
Speaker 2: one of the other ways that Dean Coundy has come
Speaker 2: up before.
Speaker 3: Interesting but also connection in that these movies share these
Speaker 3: kind of unusual horror themes. Invitation to Hell is not
Speaker 3: beautiful to look at by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 3: The things it has to show you are mostly not
Speaker 3: all that exciting, and yet I think Condy's cinematography is
Speaker 3: one of the reasons the movie is so eminently watchable,
Speaker 3: even when he really when all he has to show
Speaker 3: you are fairly drab sets and locations. Kundy just has
Speaker 3: a very strong sense for visual storytelling, and his camera
Speaker 3: naturally adds momentum to the story. So I don't think
Speaker 3: it's the only thing that makes Invitation to Hell a
Speaker 3: very fun and watchable movie despite being somewhat low budget.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's something going on with the cinematography, despite
Speaker 3: the fact that the movie is not much to write
Speaker 3: home about in terms of visual spectacle. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Though on that note, it is worth pointing out that, Okay,
Speaker 2: many of these TV movies were apparently produced if in
Speaker 2: this era, were produced way too fast and at a
Speaker 2: lower budget, so they couldn't really benefit from storyboarding. But apparently,
Speaker 2: since this was a Susan Lucci vehicle in all, the
Speaker 2: studio went the extra mile and they hired storyboard board
Speaker 2: artist Petco d Kodiev, who is apparently known to some
Speaker 2: extent as the count behind the scenes, to sketch everything
Speaker 2: out in pre production. He'd previously worked on the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three feature film Blue Thunder, which is the Helicopter Movie,
Speaker 2: and went on to work on such films as eighty
Speaker 2: six As King Kong Lives and eighty seven Is The
Speaker 2: Running Man.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so the storyboarding may also have helped give
Speaker 3: this movie more visual coherence than it might have had
Speaker 3: otherwise it was just sort of a over the shoulder
Speaker 3: point and shoot, like a lot of TV movies would be.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then finally, the composer here is Sylvester Levy,
Speaker 2: who lived still around as far as I know. Born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, Hungarian composer who also scored nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: six's Cobra, nineteen nineties Navy Seals, and various TV projects,
Speaker 2: including the TV series Werewolf.
Speaker 3: Is this brother of Anton no No, but.
Speaker 2: He's also partially responsible for the Elton John song Victim
Speaker 2: of Love from nineteen seventy nine, one of the writers
Speaker 2: on that, and he won a Grammy in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: five for the song fly Robin Fluoh, performed by the
Speaker 2: German disco group Silver Convention, a group that he helped put together.
Speaker 3: Rob I thought you might like the score on this movie.
Speaker 3: It's very synth heavy, and it has it's Moody's. Those
Speaker 3: are things I think that attract you to a film score.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I liked it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, I liked it too. A lot of parts
Speaker 3: reminded me actually of the synth themes in The Terminator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And yeah, I thought
Speaker 2: it worked well for the picture, because especially we get
Speaker 2: a pretty rocking opening scene, but then we get a
Speaker 2: lot of scenes in which it's like a family getting
Speaker 2: situated in this nice looking neighborhood, this nice little slice
Speaker 2: of the American corporate dream, and yet the music is
Speaker 2: here to remind us that things are maybe not what
Speaker 2: they seem.
Speaker 3: All Right, you want to talk about the plot, let's
Speaker 3: jump into it. So if you don't decide to watch
Speaker 3: Invitation to Hell in full, let me at least convince
Speaker 3: you to watch the first ninety seconds or so. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it has a strong, cold opening, pulling you in after.
Speaker 3: Do you know what aired right before this?
Speaker 2: I was trying to find out that I couldn't get
Speaker 2: a firm answer, So I'm thinking maybe it was just
Speaker 2: like your regional nightly Neves or maybe the national nightly news,
Speaker 2: because it would have been seven to I mean it
Speaker 2: would been eight to ten Eastern, So I'm guessing yeah,
Speaker 2: you would have just been after the news, watched the movie,
Speaker 2: and then watch twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's fighting the Frizzies at eleven and then
Speaker 3: cuts to this. So we open the We open on
Speaker 3: the exterior of a country club. It is a bright
Speaker 3: sunny day birds are singing, rich people doing fancy country
Speaker 3: club stuff. You see golf carts zipping around. There are
Speaker 3: a couple of ladies walking through the valet a lot
Speaker 3: carrying tennis rackets with covers on them. This actually got
Speaker 3: me wondering why did tennis rackets ever need covers? I
Speaker 3: never had a cover for any tennis racket I ever had,
Speaker 3: But like, what does the cover do?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess if it's If it's nice,
Speaker 2: you need to put a cover on it.
Speaker 3: The music selection here is eerie synthesizer chords with reverb heartbeats.
Speaker 3: And we pan over and see the see some of
Speaker 3: the people coming to the club. There's like a guy
Speaker 3: leaning against a no parking sign and a polo shirt
Speaker 3: with what do you call it when you got a
Speaker 3: sweatshirt with the arms tied around your neck? It's a
Speaker 3: it's a real yacht club look, yeah. Yeah. And then
Speaker 3: in the background we see a green golf course and
Speaker 3: beyond that typical arid mountains that you would see in
Speaker 3: coastal southern California. So a station wagon with some really
Speaker 3: sick wood paneling hauls up to the gate and we
Speaker 3: see a sign telling us where this is. It is
Speaker 3: the Steaming Springs Country Club.
Speaker 2: I love this. Every time they mentioned steaming Steaming Springs,
Speaker 2: it just made me think of like steaming polo crap
Speaker 2: or something. I don't know, just and I feel like
Speaker 2: that had to ha been intentional on the part of
Speaker 2: the filmmaker's screenwriter.
Speaker 3: Here, there's a lot that on my first watch I
Speaker 3: thought maybe unintentional, and then when I came back to it,
Speaker 3: I was like, no, they did that on purpose.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3: The station wagon is being driven by a uniformed chauffeur
Speaker 3: with a fancy little hat. And then we finally get
Speaker 3: our first good look at Susan Lucci in costume. In character.
Speaker 3: This is the character that will later be introduced as
Speaker 3: Jessica Jones. She's sort of the queen wasp of the
Speaker 3: club and her look is amazing.
Speaker 2: It is a.
Speaker 3: Cherry red, full body outfit. I was gonna say pant suit,
Speaker 3: but it's not really a pant suit. It's like because
Speaker 3: it's not like a jacket over something. It's more like
Speaker 3: a shirt and pants going down to the ankles up
Speaker 3: to the neck, all cherry red, with long sleeves, some
Speaker 3: kind of silver metal half belt object at her waist
Speaker 3: and big, big hair, like it's all up in this
Speaker 3: volumina black curly perm She's also wearing a white patch
Speaker 3: on her chest with a design that I couldn't decipher
Speaker 3: at first, but eventually you get a close up and
Speaker 3: I realized it is the Steaming Springs logo, which is
Speaker 3: three wispy lines that I guess signifies steam rising. And
Speaker 3: then maybe steaming springs would be like two s's, but
Speaker 3: then there's another S there, there's three lines. I believe
Speaker 3: it is not an accident that this superficially reminds us
Speaker 3: of the SS insignia.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like maybe they originally were just going to
Speaker 2: have two of them on there, and they're like that's
Speaker 2: a little too much. We should just go back and
Speaker 2: just have the three of these things on there. But yeah,
Speaker 2: this is quite a look. Huge hair, a jumpsuit that
Speaker 2: makes her look like she works at Gismonics Institute instead
Speaker 2: of the golf club the country club. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: our luetio fur and it's striking right from the beginning.
Speaker 3: So Jessica Jones is walking across the driveway as the
Speaker 3: chauffeur of the Woo Woody wagon drives up to the
Speaker 3: clubhouse entrance. Unfortunately, our chauffeur here gets distracted because he's
Speaker 3: ogling a couple of ladies in teal and purple bikinis,
Speaker 3: and he's on a collision course with Jessica Jones, who,
Speaker 3: by the way, does not even try to get out
Speaker 3: of the way. She just stands there staring head on
Speaker 3: at the car barreling toward her. The driver does a
Speaker 3: double take, tire screech, crash. Jessica goes under the car,
Speaker 3: driver stops, looks out through the rear windshield, and then
Speaker 3: Jessica rises up from the ground like a lever. Yes,
Speaker 3: totally stiff, hands on hips. She just pops up into
Speaker 3: the window.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, she totally pulls a low pan on this guy.
Speaker 2: Or I guess you make trouble a little China low
Speaker 2: pan pulls to Jessica Jones. Though, I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 2: and assume that neither Craven nor Carpenter were the first
Speaker 2: to pull this exact sequence this. I'm curious. I have
Speaker 2: no answer here, but I feel like this must have
Speaker 2: come from somewhere. This must have been established somewhere else,
Speaker 2: otherwise it was created here. I don't know, well, it's.
Speaker 3: Like, no, sparautu again, Yeah, I get you're right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So she then points a finger, like I curse you.
Speaker 3: She just points a finger and the rear windshield shatters.
Speaker 3: The driver starts screaming, and then there is smoke fuming
Speaker 3: out of his clothes.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, yeah, I showed this scene to my
Speaker 2: wife because I like, you gotta watch you gotta watch
Speaker 2: this first in the first ninety seconds of this film,
Speaker 2: And she commented this whole sequence with Susan Luci plays
Speaker 2: out like a demonic nineteen eighties hair commercial. You know,
Speaker 2: look at how confident she is.
Speaker 3: That's so right. Yeah, maybe she's born with it. Maybe
Speaker 3: it's a gift from the Prince of darkness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's turning heads, she's snatching souls, she's microwaving dudes
Speaker 2: in their cars.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah. So the driver melts pretty solid melt right, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean they don't show you too much goop. It
Speaker 3: is made for TV, but I did a freeze frame
Speaker 3: here and in mid melt he looks like Lawn Cheney
Speaker 3: as the Phantom of the Opera, but with huge teeth,
Speaker 3: hollow eyes, and sweaty wax for skin. I like this model.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Yeah, this looked I thought it looked
Speaker 2: really good, especially again since this is like, you know what,
Speaker 2: eight o five pm on a Thursday, it's hitting pretty hard.
Speaker 3: But I also like that they're giving you Susan Lucci
Speaker 3: before they give you any of the good guys. She's
Speaker 3: just out here at the golf course melting drivers.
Speaker 2: And I guess it's part of the whole vibe. Is Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want to get the viewer hooked right and give
Speaker 2: them a taste of how weird this is going to be.
Speaker 2: Let them see Susan Lucci, they know who Susan Lucci is,
Speaker 2: and then they'll be inclined to stick around for the
Speaker 2: rest of the picture.
Speaker 3: As you said, she microwaves him he's good and melted,
Speaker 3: and then she just looks very pleased with her work
Speaker 3: and walks away from the car. She like tosses her
Speaker 3: hair and walks away beaming. And I was thinking, who
Speaker 3: has to clean this up? Do they have staff there
Speaker 3: who just mop up melted chauffeurs? And also this is
Speaker 3: a company car. It says steaming springs on the side
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And the screenshot you included in the outline.
Speaker 2: You can see that this dude that she just melts.
Speaker 2: It has the silver Spring, Silver Springs, the Steaming Springs
Speaker 2: logo on his outfit as well. So, yeah, she just
Speaker 2: totally melted an employee.
Speaker 3: Did I say silver springs earlier? I know, I was
Speaker 3: hearing this in Stevie Nick's voice a lot.
Speaker 2: It will happen again.
Speaker 3: You can be my melted driver, let's see. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: so that's the cold open. After that we go on
Speaker 3: to meet our main family, the main characters. This is
Speaker 3: the Winslow family. So you got the father Matt Winslow
Speaker 3: played by Robert Urick, the mother, Patricia Winslow played by
Speaker 3: Joanna Cassidy, the daughter Chrissy played by Seleih Moonfry, and
Speaker 3: the son Robbie played by Barrett Oliver. And also we
Speaker 3: don't see him until later, but the family has a
Speaker 3: very cute dog named Albert.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, he'll be important later on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do check in with the does the dog die crowd?
Speaker 3: I'll say the answer is no, but the dog is
Speaker 3: conceptually threatened.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So the family they're on a car trip when we
Speaker 3: first see them. There crew in down the highway and
Speaker 3: another gorgeous American made station wagon of the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this one has wood panels, but
Speaker 3: we get the title and the credits, playing and terminator
Speaker 3: font over aerial shots of the highway and like recently
Speaker 3: developed valley subdivisions in southern California, and of course more
Speaker 3: golf courses, and then in the car our first impression
Speaker 3: of the family is of Robbie the Sun, and we
Speaker 3: get the idea that he's the kind of kid who's
Speaker 3: really interested in getting the high score. He's into points,
Speaker 3: so he's like, there's a dog five points, and I
Speaker 3: just saw two flags fifteen points, four hundred and seventy,
Speaker 3: four hundred and eighty, and he's just saying numbers. It
Speaker 3: reminds me that Tim and Eric sketch where it's an
Speaker 3: ad and they're just saying numbers. Anyway, Chrissy is tired
Speaker 3: of playing Robbie's game, and she is especially annoyed that
Speaker 3: he counted those flags he just saw because they're on
Speaker 3: a golf course and golf course flags do not count
Speaker 3: as flags. But she also wants to quit the game
Speaker 3: because there are no more animals to see, just dumb buildings.
Speaker 3: I think that's a metaphor. So the family is moving
Speaker 3: from their home in the Midwest to their new house
Speaker 3: in southern California because Matt, who is an engineer, got
Speaker 3: a new job at a company called Micro Digitech. And
Speaker 3: for a second I was like, surely they can't be
Speaker 3: playing on a real company, because Digitech is the real
Speaker 3: is the name of a real brand. They're the makers of,
Speaker 3: like the beloved Digitech whammy pedal for guitars.
Speaker 2: Well, what sound is the whammy pedal responsible for?
Speaker 3: Well, it's like a it's like an octave shifting pedal
Speaker 3: or tone shifting pedal, So you can play one note
Speaker 3: on your guitar and then with a whammy pedal you
Speaker 3: can make it an octave below or an octave above
Speaker 3: that actual tone. So it's like what you hear Jack
Speaker 3: White playing the guitar, but it sounds like a bass guitar.
Speaker 3: He's making that bass guitar sound with a whammy pedal
Speaker 3: to kick it an octave down. Oh okay, I see,
Speaker 3: But I think this is just a coincidence. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's kind of an obvious name for a company I
Speaker 3: guess that makes digital technology Digitech, But this is Micro
Speaker 3: Digitech anyway. So the family's driving into town and Robbie,
Speaker 3: the son, he's a computer boy, and he's reading off
Speaker 3: the names of various company headquarters. He's like, oh, the
Speaker 3: TRX Corporation, Microchip International, Boy, it sounds like computer heaven.
Speaker 3: And then Chrissy, his sister, says, computers don't go to heaven. Well,
Speaker 3: we'll see about that. So on the drive, Matt and
Speaker 3: Patricia have a conversation, making it clear that this is
Speaker 3: a big step up for them, this move, but one
Speaker 3: that Matt is a little bit uncertain about. Previously, they
Speaker 3: were scraping by on Matt's meager income from whatever he
Speaker 3: was doing before. I guess he was either an independent
Speaker 3: engineer and inventor or he was like working at a
Speaker 3: university or something. They say this is his first time
Speaker 3: working for a big corporation, so it's a huge increase
Speaker 3: in pay and prestige, and Tricia is very excited for him,
Speaker 3: but he's like, I don't know, I've never worked for
Speaker 3: a big corporation. I'm just not sure about it. And
Speaker 3: the kids also seem divided on the move. Robbie is
Speaker 3: very excited for a taste of the good life, but
Speaker 3: Chrissy says she misses the snow back home, and she
Speaker 3: also says she doesn't like the building that her dad
Speaker 3: is going to be working in. They showed this building.
Speaker 3: It's like a high rise office building, much taller than
Speaker 3: any of the other structures around it, with these mirrored
Speaker 3: windows top to bottom reflecting the sun. And Matt asks
Speaker 3: Chrissy why she doesn't like the building. She says, because
Speaker 3: you can't see the people inside.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, I like that moment.
Speaker 3: They don't play it like it's all that ponderous though.
Speaker 3: She just kind of says it and they move on.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, it's stuck and stuck in here
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a subtle effect. And in general, I love
Speaker 2: the banter with the family. Yeah, I felt like the
Speaker 2: banter felt very realistic. It felt like a realistic amount
Speaker 2: of squabbling between the children, but also laid out in
Speaker 2: a way that helped establish some of the overall themes
Speaker 2: and establishing like what's going on in this family's life. Right.
Speaker 3: So they arrive at their new home. It's a big,
Speaker 3: beautiful house and a beautiful subdivision. Think of the Simpsons episode.
Speaker 3: If you've seen it, you only move twice. In fact,
Speaker 3: this movie as a whole has serious overlap with you
Speaker 3: Only moved twice. Yeah, but it's more like like an
Speaker 3: eighties West Coast version of the house on Maple Systems Drive,
Speaker 3: or at least that's what it's supposed to be, because
Speaker 3: the house is indeed huge and spacious and nice looking
Speaker 3: from the outside. A lot of the interior sets look
Speaker 3: like they were hastily built on a sound stage. So
Speaker 3: the kitchen is huge, with the cabinets and stuff kind
Speaker 3: of remind me of my college dorm room. So anyway,
Speaker 3: everybody's happy to move in. They're laughing, exploring. Matt picks
Speaker 3: up Patricia and carries her over the threshold, and while
Speaker 3: the movers are bringing things in, Patricia and Matt they
Speaker 3: have a mild argument. Matt's unpacking some kind of high
Speaker 3: tech gizmo from padded steel carrying case, and Patricia's like
Speaker 3: hold it. She tells him that she wants him to
Speaker 3: take all his computer things and inventions into the lab
Speaker 3: at work, because she wants this to be a home,
Speaker 3: not a laboratory. And you never see it, but you
Speaker 3: get the idea that maybe their house in the Midwest
Speaker 3: was kind of like doctor Forrester's Burrow in Deep thirteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think it's important to note that
Speaker 2: Patty's Patty's not being unreasonable here. And he also, you know,
Speaker 2: sees the logic and what she's saying and quickly agrees.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, yeah, I'll put this in the garage.
Speaker 2: You know. She's like, this is a chance for us
Speaker 2: to live a little differently. And at this point in
Speaker 2: the film, it doesn't feel like that ambition is getting
Speaker 2: out of control at all. It seems reasonable totally.
Speaker 3: You do not get the idea at all in the
Speaker 3: beginning that there's anything wrong with what Patricia wants. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that comes in more with like the influence of the
Speaker 3: Queen Wasp at the club and stuff. Also, there's a
Speaker 3: very he's seen with Robbie the Son antagonizing the moving men.
Speaker 3: He's on this computer in his new room, and the
Speaker 3: moving man's like, what you got on their games? And
Speaker 3: he's like, no, I have a computerized inventory of all
Speaker 3: my things, so i'll know if you lose any of it.
Speaker 3: And indeed his computer starts flashing and reveals that he
Speaker 3: is missing a candy bar. He must have inventoried that,
Speaker 3: And then we see the mover like surreptitiously put a
Speaker 3: candy bar, like pull it out of his pocket and
Speaker 3: put it on the kid's bed. But like, how would
Speaker 3: the computer know the candy bar was missing unless it
Speaker 3: had been inventoried in by a human. This is just
Speaker 3: a good prelude to the way the movie generally treats computers,
Speaker 3: which is that they are omniscient. They are somehow fully
Speaker 3: aware of their physical surroundings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great example of late seventies early eighties
Speaker 2: computers and films. In a way, this matches up very
Speaker 2: closely with what Mother does in Alien. Yeah, of course
Speaker 2: Alien takes place in the future. It is a at
Speaker 2: least by our own, from our own vantage point, a
Speaker 2: retro futuristic view of computer technology. But also in films
Speaker 2: like that, it's just this is just what computers do, right.
Speaker 2: You just talk to him conversationally, kind of like what
Speaker 2: we're doing now with these different chat bots, but at
Speaker 2: the time, you know, completely beyond what they were capable
Speaker 2: of doing totally.
Speaker 3: There's a scene where Matt later just goes starts typing
Speaker 3: in open ended questions on like a doss prompt, and
Speaker 3: like it's like he's using chat GPT, but it's the
Speaker 3: green letters on the black screen. So later that night,
Speaker 3: the Winslows get a visit from some family friends who
Speaker 3: already live here and already work for this corporation. This
Speaker 3: is Mary and Tom Peterson and their kids, old family friends.
Speaker 3: We already talked about this, I think, But Tom is
Speaker 3: the who already took a job at this company, and
Speaker 3: he invited Matt to come join him. And first there's
Speaker 3: kind of a jump scare where they're hearing rattling outside
Speaker 3: the windows, and Robbie the Sun is like, it's zombies. Definitely,
Speaker 3: they do stuff like that, but they go, you know,
Speaker 3: we get a boot scare, and then the friends come in. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's actually just our friends. They brought a bucket of
Speaker 3: chicken with them.
Speaker 2: What time is it supposed to be, but it.
Speaker 3: Looks like late late at night? Is pitch black outside?
Speaker 3: Did they show up with a bucket of KFC? And
Speaker 3: then the kids just each reach in and grab a
Speaker 3: fried chicken piece and run away. I mean, I remember
Speaker 3: no plates here.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can I remember these buckets of chicken
Speaker 2: well from my own childhood. I can only imagine in
Speaker 2: this case, there's some cold chicken in there, not that
Speaker 2: it matters. In fact, I feel like KFC buckets. We're
Speaker 2: consumed like at least half the time, like just completely
Speaker 2: room temperature, if not fridge temperature.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the kids run off and play and the
Speaker 3: adults gather around a piano and Patricia starts playing music.
Speaker 3: She's playing when the Saints go marching in. I think
Speaker 3: they're trying to do a sing along. There were comments
Speaker 3: earlier about her once being a struggling music major, and
Speaker 3: in this scene you really get some of the class
Speaker 3: anxiety themes coming out. Tom and Mary both make kind
Speaker 3: of awkward comments. Mary is like, oh, yeah, remember when
Speaker 3: we used to do this in the dorm room, gathered
Speaker 3: around that horrible, old, upright piano. But then they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: is this still the same piano you have? And Tom says,
Speaker 3: no worries. The days of out of tune pianos and
Speaker 3: beat up old furniture they're all behind you. Now you're
Speaker 3: in the big leagues. And Tom tries to make them
Speaker 3: toast to success, and once again it's like that that
Speaker 3: hammer horror toast to satan.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The piano here made me think of the of
Speaker 2: the TV show The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. At one point,
Speaker 2: they pick up a stand up piano that is like
Speaker 2: left on the curb, that has the word bed bugs
Speaker 2: spray painted on it, and they end up bringing it
Speaker 2: into the apartment. So I can only imagine a similar
Speaker 2: situation here.
Speaker 3: Sure, you just don't sleep on the piano, You'll be fine.
Speaker 3: So later there's a scene where Matt is tucking the
Speaker 3: kids into bed and Robbie is up in his bed
Speaker 3: playing a handheld kind of beat boop game where he's
Speaker 3: blasting spaceships to save the galaxy, and he says, you know,
Speaker 3: how come I can save the whole galaxy, but I
Speaker 3: can't go to the Halloween party? What Halloween party? It's
Speaker 3: the one Tom and Mary's kids are going to. It's
Speaker 3: at the club and it's for members only. Don't you
Speaker 3: want to fit in?
Speaker 2: Matt? I kept wondering about this handheld device that Robbie's
Speaker 2: playing on here. Is this supposed to be an actual
Speaker 2: device or is this can we never see the screen?
Speaker 2: I never saw the screen clearly, so I'm wondering if
Speaker 2: this is this tab that he's playing on, which, you know,
Speaker 2: we looks just like some sort of an iPad something
Speaker 2: here today if this was actually some sort of video
Speaker 2: gaming device of the time, or they're just getting a
Speaker 2: little futuristic care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what were handheld gaming devices like in nineteen eighty four?
Speaker 3: That seems I don't think there was a game boy yet,
Speaker 3: was there?
Speaker 2: No? No, And by the early nineties he still had
Speaker 2: some very like I don't know, he's a crude little
Speaker 2: video game. I'm not even sure. I forget the terminology
Speaker 2: for them, but they were barely video games. You know,
Speaker 2: you're moving a few pixels around. They were not on
Speaker 2: the level of like a game boy or anything.
Speaker 3: They're more like a digital watch where you press buttons. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: well anyway, so that's what he's playing. He's you know, blasting.
Speaker 3: I think they call it Astrobomber is the name of
Speaker 3: the game. But so the next day we're going to
Speaker 3: get some work stuff. We get carpooling to Matt's new
Speaker 3: job where he's riding to work with Tom. When he
Speaker 3: gets into Tom's car, Tom basically has Clarence Bodiker in
Speaker 3: the backseat and it's his boss. It's this character named
Speaker 3: Larry Ferress. Yes, and Tom is embarrassed that he has
Speaker 3: to give his boss a ride to work in his car,
Speaker 3: which he calls a junker. But I'm gonna say, I
Speaker 3: cannot tell the difference between these supposedly good cars and
Speaker 3: the allegedly bad cars in this movie. They all just
Speaker 3: look the same. They look like huge American made sedans
Speaker 3: from the eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I have similar problems today figuring
Speaker 2: out what is a nice car what's not. But I
Speaker 2: do want to point out, like this was definitely I'm
Speaker 2: so used to watching a weird house film and as
Speaker 2: certainly if there's some sort of an evil corporation going on.
Speaker 2: When the boss is introduced, I take note. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I need to look this guy up. See this actor
Speaker 2: is But it really doesn't matter. With Larry Ferris. They
Speaker 2: really don't come back around to him, not much.
Speaker 3: I mean, later at the Halloween party he shows up
Speaker 3: in a very tasteless costume, but that's about it.
Speaker 2: Like otherwise, Yeah, he's not much of a character.
Speaker 3: But we do find out that Larry is Tom's sponsor
Speaker 3: at the club. So at the office we meet first
Speaker 3: of all Matt's secretary Grace, who is the first time
Speaker 3: we meet her. She's sneaking around with some secret binders
Speaker 3: hiding things and drawers and stuff. But we also meet
Speaker 3: Matt's project, which is the EVA Suit for the Astronauts
Speaker 3: of the future, and this is why Matt was hired
Speaker 3: to design computer components for this suit that Tom explains
Speaker 3: astronauts are going to wear for an upcoming manned mission
Speaker 3: to the surface of Venus. Hilarious concept.
Speaker 2: And at this point I have to also the suit
Speaker 2: is hanging from the ceiling, almost as if it is
Speaker 2: an object of worship. Yeah, And I feel like at
Speaker 2: this point, if you weren't already hooked in and strapped
Speaker 2: in for this movie, you strap in at this point
Speaker 2: because Okay, we started with the Lucifer blat, melting dudes
Speaker 2: and cars, and now we have introduced a clearly important
Speaker 2: spacesuit and we're about to get more rad details about it.
Speaker 2: Like already this movie's going a little bonkers on us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but to be clear, like for a mission that
Speaker 3: will never happen, there is no reason to take human
Speaker 3: crew to the surface of Venus, and that that is
Speaker 3: not really doable.
Speaker 2: Well, we don't know in this reality. Perhaps there's something
Speaker 2: else that has occurred. I don't know. We can we
Speaker 2: can dream about it.
Speaker 3: The other thing that's funny is so Tom, he explained,
Speaker 3: Tom is in the marketing department. He's going to be
Speaker 3: responsible for selling this suit. And I was thinking, is
Speaker 3: there a marketing department for technology that you're only gonna
Speaker 3: ever make a handful of for a single buyer, Like,
Speaker 3: wouldn't it instead be you would make a bid and
Speaker 3: get a government contract to make a select number of them.
Speaker 3: Here it seems like they're kind of making this spacesuit
Speaker 3: on spec and the marketing department will have to sell
Speaker 3: it to NASA. Yeah, so anyway, Yeah, let's take a
Speaker 3: look at the suit, whatever it's features. Well, we learn
Speaker 3: that it can withstand heat up to a bazillion degrees.
Speaker 3: They demonstrate by blasting it with a flame thrower and
Speaker 3: there's no damage. It is armed with a laser pistol
Speaker 3: that shoots out of the like shoots out on a
Speaker 3: slide mechanism from the wrist, like Travis Bickle's gun and
Speaker 3: taxi driver. It is this concealed shootout into the hand
Speaker 3: a laser pistol. What is this for?
Speaker 2: I mean, one can guess blasting Venusians, blasting rival astronauts.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's really more of a utility laser and they're
Speaker 2: just you know, firing it off. But then why would
Speaker 2: you need a quick draw on it. I don't know,
Speaker 2: in a dangerous environment on Venus or in orbit above
Speaker 2: Venus or in the clouds above Venus. But either way,
Speaker 2: I do love this thing. And you can already tell
Speaker 2: this is going to be important.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's also armed with a flame thrower of its own.
Speaker 3: We just saw it getting blasted with one, but it
Speaker 3: has one that comes out of the arm. This also
Speaker 3: will clearly be very useful on Venus. And then I
Speaker 3: think this is Matt's main contribution. It's got a computerized
Speaker 3: visor that is going to tell you the temperature of
Speaker 3: whatever you're looking at, and then also whether the thing
Speaker 3: you're looking at is human or non human, terrestrial or
Speaker 3: non terrestrial, and malignant or benign. How does it know
Speaker 3: those things? Never explained at this point.
Speaker 2: I feel like maybe we do want just a little
Speaker 2: additional hint that I guess there are aliens on Venus
Speaker 2: and we don't know how they feel about humans, and
Speaker 2: maybe they're difficult to tell from humans. That's the only
Speaker 2: way this technology makes sense.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even think about that. Yeah, this would
Speaker 3: only be necessary if the thing you were looking at
Speaker 3: is indistinguishable from human anyway. Yeah, because if they just
Speaker 3: encounter a being on Venus and it's coming towards them,
Speaker 3: would they be like, is this from Earth? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I want to stress again that this script was apparently
Speaker 2: written for Susan Lucci, so one can imagine like this
Speaker 2: script was plopped on her agent's desk and then on
Speaker 2: her desk, and she looked through it and she was like, yes,
Speaker 2: let's do this.
Speaker 3: Give me that, give me more of that. So back
Speaker 3: home there is a conflict about furniture. Patricia wants new
Speaker 3: stuff befitting of their upgraded social status. First, Matt kind
Speaker 3: of scoffs at this, but then like some boys from
Speaker 3: the neighborhood come by to play Astrobomber the video game.
Speaker 3: And this includes not just the not just Tom and
Speaker 3: Mary's kid, but the kid of Larry Ferris, the Clarence
Speaker 3: Bodiker guy, the Boss, and Billy Ferris. The kid. He
Speaker 3: first of all, he is a poor sport. He gets
Speaker 3: mad and smashes Robbie's game when he loses, and also
Speaker 3: when he walks into the house he insults the Winslow's furniture.
Speaker 3: He's like, why do you all have such old furniture?
Speaker 3: But like, have you ever heard a kid I'll say something.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they observe that anyway. So the
Speaker 3: Winslow's all head out to the furniture store. That's the
Speaker 3: last straw we got to get new furniture. On the way,
Speaker 3: they nearly get run off the road by a chauffeured
Speaker 3: car that is like doing a doing tokyo drifting into
Speaker 3: the club, but the steaming springs entrance and Matt is
Speaker 3: he gets out. He's very angry. He gets out of
Speaker 3: the car to trade insurance info. But the passenger of
Speaker 3: this car gets out and it is Jessica Jones played
Speaker 3: by Susan Lucci. She introduces herself as the club's directors.
Speaker 3: She's like, I know all about you, she knows all
Speaker 3: of the family names and everything. She says, no need
Speaker 3: to trade insurance info. Allow me to have my goons
Speaker 3: intimidate you instead. So she just gets back in the
Speaker 3: car and here we get this. Who's the actor of
Speaker 3: the sheriff worth Yeah, yeah, the sheriff guy. He says, here,
Speaker 3: we're a small, tight knit community. We do things a
Speaker 3: little differently, and I think that includes like not trading
Speaker 3: insurance info when it's this car. Maybe she's just going
Speaker 3: to send you some suspect to get instead. So next
Speaker 3: we see an initiation at the club. So we see
Speaker 3: Tom and Mary's family undergoing their final initiation into steaming Springs,
Speaker 3: and we have the Honorable Jessica Jones presiding. So the family,
Speaker 3: they're all standing there in these terry cloth robes in
Speaker 3: front of this door that is like, you know, has
Speaker 3: steam pouring out of it in white light, and Jessica
Speaker 3: Jones says, you are now accepted into the inner Circle,
Speaker 3: and by the symbolic entrance into our ancient spring, you
Speaker 3: forever forsake the mundane world and merge yourself into the protective,
Speaker 3: exclusive shield of the Club. And so they're standing there
Speaker 3: and the doors open, the steam pours out the white light,
Speaker 3: and Jones says, do you forsake all for the club?
Speaker 3: And the family all say they say, I do. Then
Speaker 3: enter into the spring and taste its power. So they
Speaker 3: go inside and the doors close behind them, and then
Speaker 3: the sheer just stands outside the door, our arms folded.
Speaker 3: So at first it looks like I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: they're going into just a really steamy sauna.
Speaker 2: Yeah. At first you would assume, okay, this is the
Speaker 2: actual spring, this is the steaming spring. Yeah. But there's
Speaker 2: more details emerge. It becomes clear this is no ordinary spring.
Speaker 2: This is something infernal.
Speaker 3: Right. So, back at the office, Matt catches Grace sneaking
Speaker 3: around in the records room where she doesn't have clearance,
Speaker 3: and she nervously hands him a file that she wants
Speaker 3: him to look into. They get interrupted by Harry Thompson,
Speaker 3: the president of the company. Matt does not rat out
Speaker 3: Grace here, he covers for her, and the president of
Speaker 3: the company, Thompson, is like, here's a very important person
Speaker 3: I want you to meet, Matt. It's TV Susan Lucci.
Speaker 2: This is Kevin McCarthy playing mister Thompson here.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, the boss guy. And this guy suggests
Speaker 3: that Matt. First of all, he's like, hey, did you
Speaker 3: know she has a club? You should join her club.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of scenes like that. It does kind
Speaker 3: of get repetitive somewhat. There's so much insisting that people
Speaker 3: join the club. But the boss also says that he
Speaker 3: needs to give her a tour of all his highly
Speaker 3: classified research. And Matt's like, but isn't that stuff classified?
Speaker 3: And he says, Matt, miss Jones is family. So he's
Speaker 3: trying to show off the suit's capabilities, and Jessica is like, ooh, Matt,
Speaker 3: did you play a sport in college? I like your muscles.
Speaker 3: And she says, at the club we have lots of
Speaker 3: exercise equipment, lots of pleasurable things. And Matt is like, well,
Speaker 3: I guess I'm not much of a joiner and she says,
Speaker 3: you know, you should think about it. It can do
Speaker 3: a lot more for you than you would think. And
Speaker 3: then ooh, we get a stinger here. So as Jessica
Speaker 3: is walking out of the room, we see from inside
Speaker 3: the space helmet and when she walks across its field
Speaker 3: of view, it renders a judgment on her. The screen
Speaker 3: says non human malignant.
Speaker 2: That's just for us the viewer at this point.
Speaker 3: All right, Matt doesn't get to see it. Okay, So
Speaker 3: next we have let's see, oh, we have a scene
Speaker 3: where we find out that since being initiated into the club,
Speaker 3: Tom has gotten a promotion. Now he has a big,
Speaker 3: fancy office. It's got like six computers in it does
Speaker 3: doesn't Tom work in marketing? Does he need all those computers?
Speaker 3: It looks like a multiperson workspace. But they're just saying,
Speaker 3: is this is his office now?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Tom again insists that Matt should join the club. He says,
Speaker 3: you join the club, you start rubbing shoulders with top
Speaker 3: top people. It's like the end of Indiana Jones and
Speaker 3: the Top Men. But Matt is resistant. He's got bad
Speaker 3: feelings about it, and he leaves with Tom still insisting. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Mary arrives at their house and is showing off to
Speaker 3: Patricia her new car. Patricia is very jealous, and Patricia
Speaker 3: she's telling Matt she she thinks they should join the club.
Speaker 3: She's like, it's our turn, Matt, It's our turn to
Speaker 3: have a little piece of success. And this is the
Speaker 3: part of the movie where there's like it's the middle
Speaker 3: of the night and Matt gets up. The kids are
Speaker 3: having a slumber party, and that creepy kid, Billy Ferris
Speaker 3: is there, and Matt goes into the kitchen and Billy
Speaker 3: Ferris is like up at midnight staring at a TV
Speaker 3: that's just showing old footage of riots and violence in
Speaker 3: the streets.
Speaker 2: This is a local channel I'm the.
Speaker 3: Semi Yeah, so let's see. There's a some more plot stuff.
Speaker 3: Matt finds out at work that Grace has been fired
Speaker 3: by Thompson, the big Boss, and he goes to confront
Speaker 3: Thompson about this. He says he wants him to hire
Speaker 3: her back, and Thompson kind of implies, well, he might
Speaker 3: consider it if Matt and his family join the club. Geez, okay,
Speaker 3: you're making your point. So finally, Matt, Patricia, and the
Speaker 3: family get a tour of the club. Tom and Mary
Speaker 3: are sponsoring them, and they walk around seeing all of
Speaker 3: the wonderful facilities. You got tennis courts, a pool, golf course,
Speaker 3: Jim with a big weight room full of beautiful athletic
Speaker 3: people sculpting their body, and Jessica Jones tells them that
Speaker 3: they could be initiated in as little as three or
Speaker 3: four weeks. And Matt wanders off from the tour into
Speaker 3: an off limits corridor down to the door. The door
Speaker 3: we saw earlier from the initiation. This is the door
Speaker 3: to the spring, and he's sort of getting ready to
Speaker 3: try to look inside, but Jessica Jones finds him and
Speaker 3: stops him. He explains that he thought he heard someone
Speaker 3: crying out for help on the other side of the door,
Speaker 3: and Jessica's like, oh, it was probably someone crying out
Speaker 3: in ecstasy. Pleasure can make you feel that good, you know,
Speaker 3: did you know? Pleasure can make you feel good? Jessica
Speaker 3: Jones tells him that she can carry. She can tell
Speaker 3: he doesn't care about money, but she thinks he does
Speaker 3: care about pleasure, and she will make sure that his
Speaker 3: membership is as pleasurable as possible. Now, this is a
Speaker 3: theme they're kind of developing the movie, But I think
Speaker 3: this one doesn't necessarily work right because you never get
Speaker 3: the feeling that Matt is all that tempted or like
Speaker 3: he's about to give in or anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like we would need a couple of
Speaker 2: scenes sprinkled here there that show that he is to
Speaker 2: some degree sexually frustrated or you know, or particularly hedonistic
Speaker 2: in one way or another. As it stands, it's kind
Speaker 2: of like Jessica Jones is just saying, you're a human,
Speaker 2: you're all hot to trot, so let me just push
Speaker 2: those buttons. Yeah, it feels a little desperate on her part,
Speaker 2: and it makes him feel a little more immune to
Speaker 2: her various powers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I think it would have worked a
Speaker 3: little better if they'd shown him being slightly more vulnerable
Speaker 3: to the seduction. And it's just like bullets bouncing off
Speaker 3: of Superman. He doesn't really seem I mean, he seems
Speaker 3: like bothered by it.
Speaker 2: He's bothered. He's bothered by this temptation. He's bothered by
Speaker 2: the door to perhaps hell, and he's also bothered by
Speaker 2: the fact that there's no basketball court here. He does
Speaker 2: point back, He's like, where the where's where's the bee ball?
Speaker 2: And they're just all that like, oh, it's a great place,
Speaker 2: Like they were like, oh, we forgot the basketball court.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: If only that would be the final victory for Satan, if.
Speaker 2: She should have led with that, she'd be like, we
Speaker 2: will add a basketball court. Man, two of them full
Speaker 2: sid have done it.
Speaker 3: Yea recruited. Now he gets to become spawn because they
Speaker 3: made a basketball court. But so he gets freaked out
Speaker 3: and leaves after this, and he has a fight with
Speaker 3: Patricia in the parking lot. She wants to join the club,
Speaker 3: Matt does not, and they're at an impasse. This is
Speaker 3: one of those movie conflicts that I think could be
Speaker 3: alleviated simply by one character telling the other what happened,
Speaker 3: but for some reason he doesn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Patricia is upset because there is a club rule
Speaker 3: that says families have to join as a unit, but
Speaker 3: Matt won't join, so so she's like, oh, no, I
Speaker 3: want to join, but we can't. But then Patricia has
Speaker 3: a meeting with Jessica Jones, and Jessica says, you know,
Speaker 3: we don't have to be rigidly religious about our rules.
Speaker 3: So we cut straight to the initiation once again, steamy door,
Speaker 3: the terry cloth robes, and the liturgy about you know,
Speaker 3: we're gonna forsake all others merge with the protective shield
Speaker 3: of the club, and it is Patricia, Robbie, and Chrissy
Speaker 3: joining without Matt. When we see them walk into the
Speaker 3: steamy doorway, Chrissy gets scared tries to run away, but
Speaker 3: the creepy sheriff stops her, makes her go in, and
Speaker 3: then we get what's clearly an ad break. At this point,
Speaker 3: Matt's family has been replaced by replicants, a kind of
Speaker 3: Stepford Satan family that is simultaneously perfect and evil. They
Speaker 3: are very docile and elegant and well behaved, but also
Speaker 3: obsessed with the club and cruel and getting barked and
Speaker 3: growled at by their dog. And there's a whole subplot
Speaker 3: with the dog, by the way. So Matt later gets
Speaker 3: a call at work from Bill Irwin, playing a veteran
Speaker 3: Uh this is just by coincidence, the husband of Grace,
Speaker 3: Matt's former secretary and the you know. He asks him
Speaker 3: to come out to his kennel and he explains that
Speaker 3: Patricia brought their dog. Albert said it was vicious from
Speaker 3: day one, probably some kind of brain tumor, and it
Speaker 3: had attacked their children and needed to be put down.
Speaker 3: So the vet lied to her and said he would
Speaker 3: do it after she left. Fortunately, the dog's still okay, folks,
Speaker 3: and we see it runs out and Matt pet's the
Speaker 3: dog and everybody's happy.
Speaker 2: But not only did she say that she wanted the
Speaker 2: dog put down, She's like, I want to watch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was good. That was a nice detail. That was it.
Speaker 3: He said, we don't do things that way. So Matt
Speaker 3: goes home to confront Patricia about this, and when he arrives,
Speaker 3: she has had the house goth renod while he was
Speaker 3: at work, so now it's all dark blue walls. Moody
Speaker 3: abstract art.
Speaker 2: It's like the House and Beele Juice at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and later see Jessica Jones has sent Patricia a
Speaker 3: new grand piano. So he comes in, uh, and she's
Speaker 3: in the kitchen with a knife in a black cocktail dress.
Speaker 3: He confronts her about the dog and she just sort
Speaker 3: of deflects and manipulates him with the knife in her hand.
Speaker 3: And she wants him to join the club. So things
Speaker 3: are not right with his family.
Speaker 2: You know, this is the point where Joanna Cassidy, I think,
Speaker 2: really gets to shine as well, because she's great earlier
Speaker 2: in the picture playing the normal pat but now she
Speaker 2: gets to play the sinister, ambitious, the sort of possessed
Speaker 2: Stepford pat And yeah, it has it's a nice performance.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: You know, you expect her to start going on a
Speaker 2: replicant rampage at any moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then also there's a funny seat. Later that night,
Speaker 3: Patricia is all like sexually aggressive with him. She's like
Speaker 3: she's jumping him and she she's there's one part where
Speaker 3: she's just repeating, I'm just making love to you, darling.
Speaker 3: But it looks like who he's been making love to
Speaker 3: is Freddy Krueger, because you see the scratches on his back.
Speaker 3: He's like looking in the mirror and they're like deep gouges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she goes zool on him.
Speaker 3: For sure does not look like fingernails, cause this looks
Speaker 3: like knives. Yeah, let's see. So the next day, Matt
Speaker 3: finds out that Grace, his old secretary, was unfortunately killed
Speaker 3: in a terrible car accident with someone trying to shut
Speaker 3: her up. And Matt goes and finds the files that
Speaker 3: Grace had tried to get him to read earlier. I
Speaker 3: guess he forgot about it till now. And then this
Speaker 3: is the scene where he's just typing questions into a
Speaker 3: computer to get information. What he finds out here is
Speaker 3: that all of the senior management at micro Digitech were
Speaker 3: promoted after becoming members of the Steaming Springs Country Club.
Speaker 3: So Matt now he has to learn more. He sneaks
Speaker 3: into the country club to investigate. He goes down into
Speaker 3: the basement to the door. He first uses some kind
Speaker 3: of gadget to hack the key code to access the door.
Speaker 3: The key includes the number six sixty six, and then
Speaker 3: he uses a thermometer probe from the spacesuit to test
Speaker 3: the temperature inside the door when he gets at a
Speaker 3: crack open and he says, eight hundred degrees. No human
Speaker 3: could withstand it. And while he's sitting there, you know,
Speaker 3: getting the temperature, there's an ambush. He is attacked by
Speaker 3: the sheriff and they have a big fight scene. This
Speaker 3: is the scene with the wrestling moves where Matt gets
Speaker 3: like body slammed into the floor. So how's he going
Speaker 3: to defeat this this demonic sheriff. Well, he electrocutes him
Speaker 3: on a chain link fence with a lamp. After this,
Speaker 3: Matt comes home. This is the Oh. Then we get
Speaker 3: the scene where the children are you know, fully evilfied.
Speaker 3: Now he comes home and he finds Chrissy mutilating her
Speaker 3: stuffed bunny with a crowbar and he's like, hey, let's
Speaker 3: be nice, and she says, we do not like nice,
Speaker 3: and she's whacking with the crowbar. He says, you're not
Speaker 3: my daughter, and then with a pazuzu voice, she says,
Speaker 3: but I am your daughter. And he's like, is she
Speaker 3: down there in the springs and she says, she explains
Speaker 3: that the mechanics here. She says, good, Chrissy is down
Speaker 3: there in the springs. But you've just got bad Chrissy
Speaker 3: now bad, bad, bad Chrissy. And so Matt is attacked
Speaker 3: by evil children, by bad Chrissy and bad Robbie, and
Speaker 3: he has to lock both of them inside a closet.
Speaker 3: Why does that closet lock from the outside. That's not
Speaker 3: a yeah, you shouldn't have closets locked from the outside.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it was part of these new renovations
Speaker 2: that all sorts of sinister changes to the house.
Speaker 3: Then bad Patricia attacks him with a golf club. He escapes,
Speaker 3: He escapes the house, and then he goes to the lab,
Speaker 3: the lab at work, where he dons the suit.
Speaker 2: I think it was coming at this point. You knew
Speaker 2: it was coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all coming together now. So while he's all
Speaker 3: getting suited up in the spacesuit, he is confronted by
Speaker 3: Tom with a gun and Tom, this is bad Tom,
Speaker 3: I guess also, and bad Tom says, you're not one
Speaker 3: of us, Matt, You're a loser. We're the winners and
Speaker 3: we have to get rid of the losers. And he's
Speaker 3: going to shoot him, but it's like a duel. It's
Speaker 3: a quick draw. There's a blast, and what you realize
Speaker 3: happened is that Matt has blasted Tom with the sleeve
Speaker 3: laser guy on the suit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you knew it was going to be important and
Speaker 2: there was.
Speaker 3: So Matt puts on the suit helmet, which has a
Speaker 3: dark visor, and then uses it to sneak into the
Speaker 3: club during the Halloween party we've heard so much about.
Speaker 3: This party has a number of guests, including Larry Ferris,
Speaker 3: the Boss, dressed as Nazi officers. Not a great Halloween costume.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, you know, some things were acceptable in
Speaker 2: the eighties. Maybe this was a little more acceptable at
Speaker 2: the time. But I don't know. He's really He's really
Speaker 2: into it here, So I think we are meant to
Speaker 2: see this as somewhat sucks.
Speaker 3: Should we also mention Jessica Jones's costume? This is one
Speaker 3: of the main you will see of this movie. Is
Speaker 3: Susan Lucci in this Halloween costume. I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: what she's supposed to be. She's kind of a big hair,
Speaker 3: ziggy stardust devil, like a red suit, sparkles, hair, volume,
Speaker 3: all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2: But either are a lot of great costumes. There's generally,
Speaker 2: it just looks like a fun party. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: it's being held by awful half demon people, but it
Speaker 2: looks pretty good. It looks like I got some cool snacks,
Speaker 2: cool decorations, and you know, I assume there's maybe a
Speaker 2: DJ spinning. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I would sell my soul to go
Speaker 3: to this party. But if I could go like Matt,
Speaker 3: if I could sneak in without selling my soul, I'd
Speaker 3: like to check this party out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, selling your soul. You're not selling your soul just
Speaker 2: for this party. There are a whole number of benefits,
Speaker 2: and this is just one, that's right.
Speaker 3: So Matt goes there, and then he sneaks away from
Speaker 3: the party with the suit on and enters the code
Speaker 3: to the secret door. And then finally he goes into
Speaker 3: the steaming spring. Yes, and along the way, he's followed
Speaker 3: by Jessica Jones. He sees her coming after him, and
Speaker 3: he tries to stop her with the flamethrower, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to work on her just walks through the flames.
Speaker 3: And so now Matt descends into what is beyond the door.
Speaker 3: It's hell baby, It's hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And again. You can see all this coming together.
Speaker 2: You see it, saw it coming together when all the
Speaker 2: pieces were on the table. But at this point, Matt,
Speaker 2: clad in a spacesuit of his own design, powered by AI,
Speaker 2: armed with a laser and a flamethrower, is descending into Hell,
Speaker 2: literally harrowing Hell, in an attempt to save his family
Speaker 2: from the depths of damnation. And he's doing this by
Speaker 2: venturing through an occult gateway to Hell that happens to
Speaker 2: be in the basement of his local country club. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's bonkers. I love it. This is again. This is
Speaker 2: all happening before ten pm on a Thursday network television.
Speaker 2: This is amazing. This film should be more celebrated for
Speaker 2: its weirdness. It's so good. Okay, so yeah.
Speaker 3: Hell is a craggy, red cave full of these deep
Speaker 3: pits from which are coming these screams for help Somewhere
Speaker 3: down below. Matt does hear his family calling for help,
Speaker 3: so he goes up to the edge and Jessica's in
Speaker 3: there also, still talking to him. It's like, it's hopeless.
Speaker 3: You can't save them, you know, you got to stop.
Speaker 3: But he makes a leap of faith into the pit
Speaker 3: and then he wakes up at the bottom in a
Speaker 3: kind of mirror world version of his neighborhood where he
Speaker 3: goes into his home and he finds his family imprisoned
Speaker 3: behind these animated barriers. Patricia's tortured soul is playing piano
Speaker 3: in Anguish and Jessica shows up once again and tells
Speaker 3: him that he can never rescue his family. He says,
Speaker 3: they all came here willingly, they made the choice, and
Speaker 3: then she also says that the Patricia down here is
Speaker 3: the week Patricia. You don't even want her bag. This
Speaker 3: is the one that has no no, no will, no
Speaker 3: power to you know, survive. This is just the weak
Speaker 3: part of her that has been purged. And Matt's like, no,
Speaker 3: that's the good Patricia, and he says, that's what you've done,
Speaker 3: isn't it. You've taken all the love, all the good
Speaker 3: in people who joined the club and put them down here.
Speaker 3: And you know, so this movie is it's the way
Speaker 3: it attacks its themes. I think you could argue is
Speaker 3: somewhat simplistic. But I was thinking about this, and you know,
Speaker 3: that's kind of interesting. The idea that in order to
Speaker 3: receive some kinds of luxury, people might trade in good
Speaker 3: parts of themselves, like put the good parts of themselves
Speaker 3: in storage so that a broken, diminished part of themselves
Speaker 3: can enjoy the fabulous amenities.
Speaker 2: I think, by some measurements, this would be a theological
Speaker 2: misuse of Hell, taking the good parts out of someone
Speaker 2: and keeping them there and letting the worst of them
Speaker 2: thrive on earth. Not to go on a tangent here
Speaker 2: about what hell is theologically and the role it plays
Speaker 2: in the human psyche, but yeah, it does give us
Speaker 2: some food for thought here, and I want to add
Speaker 2: that the effects here I think are quite good all
Speaker 2: things considered. I mean, you can feel this TV movie
Speaker 2: of the week's budget straining at the seams, but we
Speaker 2: have a solid, rocky set. We have that in this
Speaker 2: weird precipice over this gulf that contains at the very
Speaker 2: bottom a replica of his neighborhood, Like this is this
Speaker 2: is trippy and weird, and there's a palpable feeling at
Speaker 2: that point when he's standing on the edge of the
Speaker 2: cliff and he's being mocked and or tempted by Jessica
Speaker 2: Jones that you know, like we've traveled well beyond the
Speaker 2: point of no return, and again it's not even ten
Speaker 2: pm Eastern Time on ABC Television on a Thursday, but
Speaker 2: it feels like we've gone past midnight. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: it's the sort of thing I think it would feel
Speaker 2: right at home, and you're weirder contemporary television dramas or
Speaker 2: the films that have a particular psychotronic bent to them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, again, I feel like this film should be
Speaker 2: more celebrated for its weirdness. It should not be at
Speaker 2: the bottom of the West Craven Heap. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would say, in fact, if you don't give this
Speaker 3: a five out of five on letterbox, you should go
Speaker 3: to hell. You can go straight into the steaming.
Speaker 2: Sportings at least the weak part of you that wasn't
Speaker 2: strong enough to give this film five stars. So let's see.
Speaker 3: Oh, we get another part here where Jessica tries to
Speaker 3: tempt Matt with like, you know you don't want Patricia,
Speaker 3: you want me once again. It doesn't really work because
Speaker 3: of how they've characterized Matt. You never feel like you
Speaker 3: seriously tempted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she should have should have been be ball again.
Speaker 2: She'd been like, how about how about basketball? I can
Speaker 2: offer you all the basketball in the world, and then
Speaker 2: he and then he might be tempted.
Speaker 3: She like pulls out a copy of Space Jam and
Speaker 3: she's on VHS. She's like, this is from the future, Matt,
Speaker 3: your future.
Speaker 2: A Space Jam showdown right here at the end would
Speaker 2: have would have just capped it.
Speaker 3: Yes, so Matt. At this point, he decides to take
Speaker 3: off his spacesuit to save his family. I don't remember
Speaker 3: how he figures out he's got to do this, but
Speaker 3: this also seems thematically loaded. He has to change out
Speaker 3: of the protective EVA suit the technology that he has
Speaker 3: been working on back into khakis and a polo shirt
Speaker 3: to save the good parts of his family.
Speaker 2: Yeah. More, I guess this is more symbolic than sensible.
Speaker 2: But oh and I wanted to mention too, like the
Speaker 2: the like laser lights that his family's souls are trapped in.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like the laser lights from the egg
Speaker 2: chamber above aboard the space ship at the beginning of Alien,
Speaker 2: except blue instead of green.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is like that. So the power of love
Speaker 3: saves the whole family. They you know, they embrace, and
Speaker 3: they all awake together back in their house, seemingly in
Speaker 3: the real world. They hear sirens outside. What's that noise,
Speaker 3: and so they go outside to look and there are
Speaker 3: people running around saying there is a big fire down
Speaker 3: in the club. It's been burning all night and okay,
Speaker 3: I guess that's it for the club. And then Chrissy
Speaker 3: says that her bunny is hungry. The bunny is intact
Speaker 3: once again, so we get kind of we're getting kind
Speaker 3: of a redo on reality. I guess things that we
Speaker 3: saw destroyed are actually now intact once again. And Patricia's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I guess we better feed bunny. Okay, And it looks
Speaker 3: like everything's cool now. Yeah, all good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a surprisingly upbeat ending because I was again when
Speaker 2: he was standing on the edge of that cliff, I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, he's not coming back from this. This
Speaker 2: is going to have a bleak ending. But they pulled
Speaker 2: back on it and they landed us in a nice
Speaker 2: spot so that we can lead into twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: I want to revisit the question I asked earlier, now
Speaker 3: that we've talked about the whole plot, what is the
Speaker 3: core evil institution? Is it the country club or the corporation?
Speaker 3: I think it's Steaming Springs. It's like that micro digitech
Speaker 3: it is suggested exists it's only to provide employment to
Speaker 3: people who can be recruited into the service of our
Speaker 3: dark lord at Steaming Springs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good read on it.
Speaker 2: I guess you know. Thematically, the main threat is just
Speaker 2: the spirit of wealth and ambition that permeates society, both
Speaker 2: at work and at home and you know, in your
Speaker 2: social circle. But yeah, I was thinking, okay, the gateway
Speaker 2: to Hell is definitely at the country club, so that
Speaker 2: is in many ways the focal point. But then Jessica
Speaker 2: Jones has complete access to all the high tech, presumably
Speaker 2: top secret experiments going on at Digitech, so the two
Speaker 2: were linked at this point anyway. And who knows, maybe
Speaker 2: some member of the club back before it became possessed
Speaker 2: had some role in opening or widening that hell mouth
Speaker 2: so that everything can get out of whack. There's like
Speaker 2: a whole prequel you could explore right there. I'd watch
Speaker 2: that pre Invitation to Hell arriving early. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, well that was Invitation to Hell nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: As we've said, thumbs up from me. Check it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one was great. This is one I really
Speaker 2: wasn't even aware of. I was I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: it's part of that attitude that we can sometimes have
Speaker 2: about made for TV films that even though I've certainly
Speaker 2: poured through Wes Craven's filmography on IMDb many times, I've
Speaker 2: just kind of skipped over these made for TV films
Speaker 2: and I've paid more attention to his more well known films.
Speaker 2: But yeah, this one was a real treat.
Speaker 3: Well, let's let's look at the other one and see
Speaker 3: how they are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if they're as good as if they're
Speaker 2: even close to as good as this one, they're they're
Speaker 2: worth checking out for sure. All Right, Well, we're gonna
Speaker 2: gohead and close up this episode of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: What we'd love to hear from everyone out there? Do
Speaker 2: you have thoughts on Invitation to Hell? Did you if
Speaker 2: anyone out there solid on network television in eighty four,
Speaker 2: I definitely want to hear about that. Or if you've
Speaker 2: watched it with commercials intact, do write in and tell
Speaker 2: us all about it, Or if you've watched it recently
Speaker 2: and you have some thoughts about how it fits into
Speaker 2: the filmography of this legendary director. Yeah, right in and
Speaker 2: we'll we'll have a little conversation we'll share potentially share
Speaker 2: your email on a future listener mail episode of Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind. Just a reminder that Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episode
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film here on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. Look us up on a letterbox where
Speaker 2: we are weird House. You can follow a list of
Speaker 2: all the films we've covered over the years, and sometimes
Speaker 2: there's a peek ahead at what's coming up next. And
Speaker 2: next week is cat Week, by the way, we haven't
Speaker 2: really broadcast that fact jet on the show, but if
Speaker 2: you like cats or don't like cats, it's perfect week
Speaker 2: to tune in. We're experimenting with some thematic weeks spread
Speaker 2: throughout the year, and yes we will come back around
Speaker 2: and do a Dog Week as well, once we pinpoint
Speaker 2: the appropriate time of a year for that to happen.
Speaker 3: As the dog star rises, there you go. Huge thanks
Speaker 3: as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other. To suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.