Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind and this
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and we
Speaker 1: are bringing you an episode of Weird House Cinema that
Speaker 1: aired last October. October in fact, and this was one
Speaker 1: of our one of our all time favorites. This is
Speaker 1: on Halloween three, a a cherished Jim in the in
Speaker 1: the I'm running out of metaphors here, but it's a
Speaker 1: movie we love. Yeah, this is This is a great,
Speaker 1: we've been great, great flick and I think of fun episode.
Speaker 1: So if you didn't listen to it last year, dive
Speaker 1: in for the first time. If you listen to it
Speaker 1: last year, well, hey it's been a year. Time to
Speaker 1: listen to it again. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Rob or Since we started doing Weird How Cinema,
Speaker 1: I think I knew that one day would be the
Speaker 1: day we did Halloween three. I've always known it was coming.
Speaker 1: It was like destiny. I could see over the mountain
Speaker 1: ranges of time and I knew this would be waiting
Speaker 1: for us. It was inevitable. You know. A few years back.
Speaker 1: I think it was when we were doing a guest
Speaker 1: spot on movie Crush with Chuck Bryant. Uh, it may
Speaker 1: have been somewhere else, I don't know. You and I
Speaker 1: were having a conversation on Mike somewhere that we were
Speaker 1: talking about John Carpenter's Halloween, which which I of course
Speaker 1: cherished as a as a wonderful horror movie, a near
Speaker 1: perfect horror classic movie that has been copycatted so much
Speaker 1: and and yet somehow is still never lost its uh
Speaker 1: it's uniqueness and it and it's thrilling, scary power. And
Speaker 1: somebody asked it might have been Chuck asking if it
Speaker 1: was my favorite John Carpenter movie. And I still remember
Speaker 1: at the time being surprised by my own response, though
Speaker 1: I can't deny that I spoke my feelings. Not only
Speaker 1: is the original Halloween not my favorite John Carpenter movie,
Speaker 1: It's not even my favorite Halloween movie because they're in
Speaker 1: the back of my mind always is Halloween three, Season
Speaker 1: of the Witch? I mean, was I joking? Was I
Speaker 1: joking and saying that I like Halloween three better than
Speaker 1: the original Halloween? Kind of but not really. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the Halloween sequels are largely just dismal, depressing, trash. I
Speaker 1: dare you to watch Halloween five all the way to
Speaker 1: the end. It's like, if you can do it, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's such a miserable experience that fills you with pain.
Speaker 1: It's like being dared to drink like a you know,
Speaker 1: a swimming pool full of stagnant water with mosquito eggs
Speaker 1: in it. Um So, so, how could it be the
Speaker 1: case that there's this Halloween sequel that I like at
Speaker 1: least as much as I like the original Halloween movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that's what we're going to try
Speaker 1: to figure out today. I mean, I think you're right
Speaker 1: to single this out as a favorite John Carpenter film
Speaker 1: because no matter where the credits end up following, John
Speaker 1: Carpenter's fingerprints are all over this baby. Well, that's funny.
Speaker 1: So I said it was my favorite Halloween movie, I
Speaker 1: would I don't know if i'd say it's my favorite
Speaker 1: John Carpenter movie, especially since it was, as you're saying,
Speaker 1: not directed by or written by John Carpenter. Um well,
Speaker 1: not officially, but I think on IMDb he gets an
Speaker 1: uncredited rider credit. Uh so, I mean, I guess it
Speaker 1: depends on how exactly you shake it out. But officially, no,
Speaker 1: it was. It certainly was not directed by him, and
Speaker 1: it was not officially written by him in any capacity.
Speaker 1: I think he and Debor Hill at least both get
Speaker 1: story credits on it, which may be just a thing
Speaker 1: that's carried over from them, like creating the franchise itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: created because John Carpenter wrote the original Halloween and together
Speaker 1: with Debra Hill, they wrote the first movie and created
Speaker 1: the characters. Though actually the characters don't recur in this movie.
Speaker 1: That's one of the weirdest things about it. So warning
Speaker 1: that this discussion today, this is a forty year old movie,
Speaker 1: but we will pretty much be revealing all of the
Speaker 1: spoilers and plot twists and everything like that in the movie.
Speaker 1: So don't listen yet if you haven't seen it and
Speaker 1: you want to be surprised by everything. And this this
Speaker 1: bonkers cinematic god mode excursion. Um. But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the weird things about Halloween three, I
Speaker 1: guess that we're just trying to allude to is so
Speaker 1: this is a movie that was not directed by John
Speaker 1: Carpenter was at least not totally written by John Carpenter.
Speaker 1: He gets some kind of unofficial writing credit. You're saying
Speaker 1: he may have done a pass on the script or
Speaker 1: something like that. And it does not feature any recurring
Speaker 1: characters or plot elements from Carpenter's original movie at all. Nothing.
Speaker 1: Uh unless, apparently I think you you your your love
Speaker 1: of novelizations of strange films at some point led you
Speaker 1: to the Alan Dean Foster novelization of Season of the Witch,
Speaker 1: which had something connecting them. Yeah, apparently there's some sort
Speaker 1: of a tangential connection made between the masks in this
Speaker 1: film him in the mass worn by Michael Myers. But
Speaker 1: I have not actually read the novelization yet. I own
Speaker 1: a copy of it, but it's on my desk. It
Speaker 1: works so Alan Dean Foster fan poser. I can't even
Speaker 1: remember it was Allendine Foster. Oh, surely it was. We
Speaker 1: got to look this up confirm. I mean, there's there's
Speaker 1: it stands a chance. There's always a seventy chance that
Speaker 1: Allen Deane Foster wrote the novelization. But I don't recall
Speaker 1: who wrote this one. No, we were totally wrong. It's
Speaker 1: not it's by somebody named Jack Martin. Okay, well there
Speaker 1: we go. Are you familiar with the works of Jack Martin?
Speaker 1: I think I looked him up when I was excited
Speaker 1: about buying this paperback, and uh, I think it's a
Speaker 1: it's a pseudonym used by another author, but I was
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with that other authors, so I can't
Speaker 1: really speak to that. Okay, we'll start this off with
Speaker 1: a big whiff. I was completely wrong about that being Allendine.
Speaker 1: You had a chance of being correct, though. That's like
Speaker 1: some Scott Steiner math um. Okay, no, no, no, but okay,
Speaker 1: so we said. Not directed by John Carpenter, not written
Speaker 1: by John Carpenter, and does not feature any recurring characters
Speaker 1: or plot elements from the original movie. And yet to me,
Speaker 1: Halloween three feels it doesn't just feel at home in
Speaker 1: the John Carpenter Halloween cinematic universe. It feels like dead
Speaker 1: center of that universe. It is the bulls eye of
Speaker 1: of the target that I think about when when I
Speaker 1: think about the John Carpenter cinematic style. Uh, this movie
Speaker 1: is the Carpaween Nexus. It looks like Carpaween, it sounds
Speaker 1: like Carpaween. It feels like carpa weeen and it feels good. Now,
Speaker 1: all that aside, Uh, this movie is largely hated. Uh,
Speaker 1: it has started to gain a sort of cult following.
Speaker 1: I think in recent years, I think it's not just us.
Speaker 1: Other people have started to pick up on and enjoy
Speaker 1: this film. But when it was first released, it was
Speaker 1: totally mocked and derided by critics. It was everybody was
Speaker 1: just like, where's Michael Myers? What is this? So? What
Speaker 1: did they miss that we're picking up on? I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure, but yeah, I don't know. Maybe we just
Speaker 1: have a heightened affinity for the this genus of the
Speaker 1: lowbrow absurd, or maybe this is one of those movies
Speaker 1: and there are others like that just kind of needed
Speaker 1: to age for a while, needed to age in the
Speaker 1: oak barrels of time before it could be appreciated for
Speaker 1: the succulently ludicrous concoction that it is. I think it
Speaker 1: was in talking about this movie that I first articulated
Speaker 1: the concept of a of a rub the fur movie
Speaker 1: when we were talking about it with Chuck Bryant on
Speaker 1: on Movie Crush. There are there are movies where the
Speaker 1: primary pleasure is not located in story elements that can
Speaker 1: easily be described in words or you know, like plot
Speaker 1: or character. There are just these movies that are about
Speaker 1: audio visual texture. They there to be experienced in the
Speaker 1: same way that you would experience the soft fur of
Speaker 1: a chinchilla, like you just kind of have to put
Speaker 1: your executive function into low power mode and rubbed the fur. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know, I'd have some definite thoughts on this this
Speaker 1: question though about first of all, the people who are
Speaker 1: saying where's Michael Myers. Um, I mean, on one level,
Speaker 1: there is an answer to that. Michael Myers is in
Speaker 1: the film because you see the Halloween, the first Halloween
Speaker 1: movie playing uh in a bar. I think a couple
Speaker 1: of different times TVs are on and the original Halloween
Speaker 1: movie is playing. Yeah, there's a great a scene where
Speaker 1: our protagonists played by Tom Atkins, who is a surgeon
Speaker 1: I think, is on his lunch break and he's getting
Speaker 1: drunk in a bar and and Halloween comes on TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's um uh so, so he's there if you
Speaker 1: really need him to be there. But I think more
Speaker 1: more to the point, like the reason this this this
Speaker 1: film Halloween three discards Michael Myers is that we already
Speaker 1: had Halloween one, which is a I mean, what was
Speaker 1: a real trend center is an essential slasher film. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not one of my favorite films. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's it's like a lot of Trailblade. There's other films
Speaker 1: came after it, and I'm not saying they necessarily did
Speaker 1: it better, but maybe they did it bigger, and they
Speaker 1: did it in ways that maybe sort of shocked the
Speaker 1: zeitgeist a little bit more, you know. Um, but without
Speaker 1: Michael Myers and the first Halloween movie and John Carpenter's
Speaker 1: vision for that film, we wouldn't have had all these
Speaker 1: other things. Um. But then we had a Halloween two
Speaker 1: and that was the That was the bigger second scoop
Speaker 1: of that franchise. And I'm not sure who really wanted
Speaker 1: or needed a third helping after that. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: they kept doing it. I mean, and they're still doing
Speaker 1: more as we record this. I just found out they're
Speaker 1: doing another one of the sequel to the recent Halloween
Speaker 1: movie that came out a couple of years ago. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you notice how in the Halloween franchise, like they
Speaker 1: keep trying to do a movie where it's like Okay,
Speaker 1: this is definitely the last one. You could not have
Speaker 1: another one off after this because we chopped off Michael
Speaker 1: Myer's head, or because Laurie Strode is now dead, or
Speaker 1: because I don't know, a million different we set him
Speaker 1: on fire and we watched him become a pile of ashes.
Speaker 1: Um that they've done that a million different ways, and
Speaker 1: every time a couple of years roll by and somebody,
Speaker 1: I guess somebody's bank account is starting to look a
Speaker 1: little light and they're like, we need another one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I guess that it comes out of the idea
Speaker 1: like the name itself is going to be enough to
Speaker 1: get people in theaters. And that was kind of the
Speaker 1: idea with Halloween three, right. I mean, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got the name. Why do we have to do
Speaker 1: this whole Michael Myers thing again. Let's turn it into
Speaker 1: an anthology um um series. Let's just have each Halloween
Speaker 1: season we're gonna put out a Halloween film. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be Michael Meyer. It can be something
Speaker 1: entirely different. It can be a weird kind of pagan
Speaker 1: sci fi um adventure. Uh, and we'll have some of
Speaker 1: the same touches there, we'll have that that you know,
Speaker 1: the Carpenter fingerprints will be there, but it will be
Speaker 1: its own thing. Yes, And so that was the idea
Speaker 1: behind the movie that became Halloween three, Season of the Witch.
Speaker 1: I believe it was by stick On the script of
Speaker 1: that was just called Season of the Witch, or at
Speaker 1: some point in the development it was, which was already
Speaker 1: the name of another movie that had come out years
Speaker 1: before that had different themes. So I think I don't
Speaker 1: know that that that whole thing is kind of weird,
Speaker 1: but but it's very similar to something we've seen. Another
Speaker 1: franchise is including the Tales from the Crypt franchise with
Speaker 1: Demon Night, which we I think we just reran that
Speaker 1: episode where that was a pre existing script and then
Speaker 1: someone said, hey, let's make this our first Tales from
Speaker 1: the Crypt movie, and so they tweaked it a bit
Speaker 1: and it was good to go. I think they did
Speaker 1: that a little bit like the hell Raiser franchise as well.
Speaker 1: I got this script looks good, Let's throw some cinembytes
Speaker 1: in there and green light this sucker, right right, So
Speaker 1: they were saying, Okay, here's just a totally unrelated horror
Speaker 1: horror script um and we're going to say this is
Speaker 1: the next in the Halloween movie anthology. Yeah, and every
Speaker 1: year there's gonna be a Halloween movie that will have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the Halloween movies that came out before,
Speaker 1: except that maybe it would be I don't know, produced
Speaker 1: by the same people. They might all be produced by
Speaker 1: John carr Openter and associates, and maybe directed by people
Speaker 1: who were part of John Carpenter circle, like Halloween three
Speaker 1: is wonderfully directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, who was who
Speaker 1: had worked with John Carpenter on the previous Halloween movies
Speaker 1: and would go on to do other things, like, you know,
Speaker 1: he directed the TV version of it and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But um, but so I got I got the feeling
Speaker 1: that that was kind of the idea, that it would
Speaker 1: become sort of a thing where the Carpenter Club would
Speaker 1: let somebody do a new Halloween series horror movie every year. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I guess I always just assumed I forget when
Speaker 1: I watched this for the first time, but I've loved
Speaker 1: it for a while, and I always just thought it
Speaker 1: was one of these cases where the idea was maybe
Speaker 1: a little ahead of its time the mainstream. I guess
Speaker 1: still wanted Michael Myers and some of us found things
Speaker 1: to love about this film, and maybe we just did
Speaker 1: it too late. I think I aw I'd read before.
Speaker 1: You know, the carpenter was fond of the film, and
Speaker 1: you know, he didn't have any problems with it. He
Speaker 1: didn't think it was a turkey or anything. But it
Speaker 1: just things didn't line up for it to be the
Speaker 1: financial success that the studio needed it to be. Um.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't really sure all that much how it
Speaker 1: was received during the day. Uh. But then in the past,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years I picked up the
Speaker 1: Michael Weldon books, the Psychotronic Film Guides, including the Psychotronic
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Film and I have to say, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: the first thing I did was look up some of
Speaker 1: my favorite films that were covered in that book and
Speaker 1: see what what Weldon had to say about them. And
Speaker 1: so I of course looked up Halloween three, and there's
Speaker 1: there is a listing for it. But one of the
Speaker 1: super interesting things about it is that this book came
Speaker 1: out in three and Halloween three came out the year before,
Speaker 1: in two, So at the time of publication, this was
Speaker 1: the most recent Halloween movie. Um, this so it it
Speaker 1: seemed like this was the course. Michael Myers had not
Speaker 1: come back. Um, now, Weldon, I'm not going to read
Speaker 1: Weldon's hole right up for it, but he he of
Speaker 1: course digs it, but he ends his review with annual
Speaker 1: Halloween features with unrelated plots are planned. So so it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of an interesting time capsule to go back
Speaker 1: and think like this was, this was the course, and
Speaker 1: the idea was like, of course we're gonna get more
Speaker 1: Halloween movies with weird, walky, non Michael Myers things going on.
Speaker 1: And I wish that had happened too. I think maybe
Speaker 1: I love the original Halloween more than than you seem to.
Speaker 1: But even then, I you know, I I don't thirst
Speaker 1: for additional Michael Myers movies after after that first one.
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of enjoy a few of the sequels,
Speaker 1: maybe a few, I don't know, Like Halloween h two
Speaker 1: is cheesy, but it's kind of fun. Um most of
Speaker 1: them are just direct and so I didn't need more
Speaker 1: after the first one. And and if it had turned
Speaker 1: into this, if this had come true, I would be
Speaker 1: I would be so happy. Yeah, imagine the film, what
Speaker 1: kind of films would we have received in the future.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that alternate reality is is tempting though. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, at the end of the first hallowe movie,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a it's a pretty perfect slasher film.
Speaker 1: You know. Donald Pleasant's character shoots him dad and he's like,
Speaker 1: I got him. The nightmares over and then Halloween two
Speaker 1: kicks off with actually I missed him. We're going to
Speaker 1: need another picture for me to finish the job. Well, no,
Speaker 1: you forget the stinger at the end of Halloween one
Speaker 1: as they go out and they look and the body
Speaker 1: is missing. But I don't think that invites a sequel.
Speaker 1: I mean to me, that's like Halloween one that should
Speaker 1: have should have been done there. I think it should
Speaker 1: have gone Halloween one. Then they should have made Season
Speaker 1: of the Witch and then kept doing anthology stuff forever.
Speaker 1: But here we are, so let's go ahead and have uh,
Speaker 1: let's have the Elevator pitch for this puppy, just just
Speaker 1: to get the official plot points down. Well, okay, here
Speaker 1: you go. It's actually pretty straightforward. Tom Atkins plays Dan Challis,
Speaker 1: a beer chugging surgeon who joins forces with Stacy Nelkin
Speaker 1: to investigate the mysterious assassination of her father, a humble
Speaker 1: toy and novelty salesman, and their sleuthing leads them to
Speaker 1: a strange company town in northern California called Santa Mira,
Speaker 1: in which all life and culture seems to revolve around
Speaker 1: the local Halloween mask factory. Now, that would be the
Speaker 1: more straightforward pitch that doesn't do any spoiling. But but
Speaker 1: let me give you the spoiler pitch, because I think
Speaker 1: that that might get our listeners more interested. And it's
Speaker 1: that Dan o'hearla. He plays an ancient druid warlock who
Speaker 1: commands an army of magical androids filled with frozen orange juice.
Speaker 1: And the Warlock hates children and hatches a plot to
Speaker 1: massacre the children of America by manufacturing booby trapped Halloween
Speaker 1: masks which contain microchips made out of pieces of the
Speaker 1: stone Hinge magic Rock, which, when triggered by an embedded
Speaker 1: signal in a TV commercial that will air on Halloween night,
Speaker 1: shoot lasers that transform the heads of these children into
Speaker 1: crickets and snakes. You know, I was in in an
Speaker 1: effort to try and understand how this film was received.
Speaker 1: When it came, I looked up Roger Ebert's review. Uh.
Speaker 1: Ebert said that he did not understand what the villain
Speaker 1: was trying to accomplish, and subsequently gave it one and
Speaker 1: a half stars. Boom, Come on, Ebert, I love you,
Speaker 1: but you missed the mark on this one. Um Man,
Speaker 1: you should have you should you should have gone into
Speaker 1: rub the fur mode and then I think you would
Speaker 1: have understood he was it was certainly capable of rubbing
Speaker 1: the fur. I mean, that's the weird thing about ebert reviews.
Speaker 1: It's like it's half the time it feels like I'm
Speaker 1: either with him or I'm just completely opposed to everything
Speaker 1: he's laying down about the film. But yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: so I as somebody who adores the this this bizarre movie, UM,
Speaker 1: I get a mixed reaction when I when I show
Speaker 1: it to people. I mean some people I've recommended it
Speaker 1: to love it and and they're right there on the
Speaker 1: Halloween three train with me, and some people are like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I watched that. What a piece of trash,
Speaker 1: And they're like mad about it. And you know, normally
Speaker 1: I don't try to argue with people about some jective
Speaker 1: responses to art and entertainment. I just don't. I don't care.
Speaker 1: You know, if if you don't like something I like,
Speaker 1: that's fine, vice versa. For this is like one exception.
Speaker 1: This is one in which I'm like, oh, okay, you
Speaker 1: didn't like it. I guess you don't know how to
Speaker 1: have fun. Huh, all right? The line is drawn in
Speaker 1: the sand. Regarding Halloween three. Um, there was a thing
Speaker 1: I came across. I don't remember where I read this.
Speaker 1: It might have been somewhere online, but I found a
Speaker 1: quote where Vincent can Be the movie critic was talking
Speaker 1: about this movie and he described it as quote anti children,
Speaker 1: anti capitalism, anti television, and anti Irish all at the
Speaker 1: same time. Oh, I don't know that if it's really
Speaker 1: anti all of those things. It's anti at least one
Speaker 1: of those things. But but I don't think it's particularly
Speaker 1: anti children. No, I don't think the movies AIN'TI well,
Speaker 1: some of the children in it are truly obnoxious, and
Speaker 1: I think they're supposed to be. But the villain is
Speaker 1: anti children. Oh well, well, yeah, I guess he Obviously
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean the movie is anti children. Usually the
Speaker 1: things that your villain hates doesn't mean that the filmmakers
Speaker 1: hate them. Now, I just to come back to Michael Weldon,
Speaker 1: I will read one more quote from his his write up.
Speaker 1: He said, just to to to weigh against the anti
Speaker 1: children uh criticism. Quote, not another Slasher sequel, but a
Speaker 1: fun you've far fetched new Halloween story with a cheap title.
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that far fetched? Um? I mean
Speaker 1: maybe not. I mean there are aspects of this film
Speaker 1: that are not that far fetched, and I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that that it speaks like it's
Speaker 1: not it's there's a lot of weird, wonky stuff going
Speaker 1: on in this film, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the idea of a a large corporation doing things that
Speaker 1: at the very least do not have your children's best
Speaker 1: interest at heart, that you know, I mean, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: turn on the news, that's that's that's the world we
Speaker 1: live in today, and that's the world we're were we've
Speaker 1: constantly been in. Uh So, I think this film, this
Speaker 1: film does have an intelligent core at the part of it.
Speaker 1: To whatever extent that core is able to shine through
Speaker 1: the other elements of the film, I guess you could
Speaker 1: have a discussion there. Yeah, it's funny. So I watched
Speaker 1: this movie with the commentary track by the director Tommy
Speaker 1: Lee Wallace, and he talks in this about how he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I was going out to make a horror movie
Speaker 1: and and I thought about what am I really afraid of?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, you know, the thing that scares
Speaker 1: me more than anything is is like surveillance and and
Speaker 1: corporate control of things like uh, big big government and
Speaker 1: corporations and people who want to spy on you and
Speaker 1: control your life. And those are the things that really
Speaker 1: scare him and uh. And he wanted that to come
Speaker 1: through in the movie. And I say, you know what
Speaker 1: it it's a kind of a weird fit to try
Speaker 1: to jam that into some kind of druid magic storyline,
Speaker 1: But that is the film you made that you succeeded.
Speaker 1: So they're commenting about technology in the early eighties and
Speaker 1: and trying to think about where we're going in a
Speaker 1: weird way, like how I mean, what we have today
Speaker 1: is kind of like this weird magical man shop of
Speaker 1: you know, of of technology and uh and and and
Speaker 1: and pagan sorcery. So I don't think it's far off
Speaker 1: the mark, like if you were to explain what we
Speaker 1: have today to uh to two ancient civilizations, they'd be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's witchcraft. I know what that is. There are indeed
Speaker 1: hob goblins in your content recommendation algorithm. Yeah yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: you could really go down the rabbit hole, like making
Speaker 1: a case for what this picture is saying about the
Speaker 1: world today. You had a funny note somewhere about the
Speaker 1: about the catchphrase for the movie or the tagline and
Speaker 1: the teaser trailer. There are a couple different trailers for
Speaker 1: this film, and I think we're gonna have some trailer
Speaker 1: audio here in just a second. But there's a teaser
Speaker 1: trailer that came out that I that I love, where
Speaker 1: it's just a tarantula crawling out of a Halloween mask,
Speaker 1: followed by a big, just silver logo, like a logo
Speaker 1: that looks like it would it would be hidden in
Speaker 1: your children's candy to cut their tongues, with the catchphrase
Speaker 1: the night no one comes home. This is like many
Speaker 1: movie marketing taglines, directly contradicted by the plot in which
Speaker 1: Rob if you'll follow along with me, the children who
Speaker 1: would be massacred by the android druid plot in this
Speaker 1: film would generally be at home when the massacreing happens
Speaker 1: because they have to be wearing their evil Halloween masks
Speaker 1: and watching TV at the same time. So unless they're
Speaker 1: out somewhere watching TV outside the home, they will come home.
Speaker 1: They'll just they will just be killed by booby trapped
Speaker 1: masks in the home. Yeah, I mean, because I guess
Speaker 1: the message of the film is you should be afraid
Speaker 1: about what's happening to your child in the home. That's
Speaker 1: where the media is reaching them. Um. But instead the
Speaker 1: marketers are like, well, let's just lean into the idea.
Speaker 1: The kids are out of the house. I hope nobody's
Speaker 1: hurting them that sort of thing. I hope the monsters
Speaker 1: aren't getting them on the street. But even Michael Myers
Speaker 1: in the first film, Michael Myers comes into your house.
Speaker 1: That's the problem. Am I wrong on that? Doesn't he
Speaker 1: come into the house? No? No, no, no, he does
Speaker 1: I mean something? Yeah, you know he gets you in
Speaker 1: the houses places where you should be safe. Is uh yeah.
Speaker 1: This is something that I've often said about the the
Speaker 1: distinction between the original Halloween and a lot of the
Speaker 1: slasher movies that followed. I think that a big difference
Speaker 1: is in their sort of moral outlook, whereas in a
Speaker 1: lot of the slasher movies that followed, I think that
Speaker 1: there is often a kind of hastily thrown together vulgar
Speaker 1: moralism in them. I mean, this is you know, this
Speaker 1: has been observed and everything from Screamed. You know, it
Speaker 1: is when the when the teenagers do something that is
Speaker 1: perceived as sinful, they are then punished by the killer
Speaker 1: for straying outside the bounds of the straight and narrow life.
Speaker 1: But the original Halloween, I don't think ever, really has
Speaker 1: that sense of vulgar punishment for sin going on. And
Speaker 1: it instead there's there's something much more frightening and uh
Speaker 1: and irrational about it. Is just this threat coming in
Speaker 1: from out of nowhere and for no reason. And I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the things that made it especially
Speaker 1: scary compared to the the the less scary and more
Speaker 1: vulgar slasher movies that would copy it over the years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, Michael Myers is not cackling as he does anything, uh,
Speaker 1: in a in a weird way that that is very
Speaker 1: much in the same spirit our villain here is not cackling.
Speaker 1: He's maybe smiling a bit like he enjoys his work,
Speaker 1: but he's not. Ultimately, his whole grand scheme is not
Speaker 1: like I gotta make these demons happy. It's about like,
Speaker 1: this is what the planets require, and this is what
Speaker 1: must happen, uh, just cosmically for our planet, and therefore
Speaker 1: I am doing it and it's going to happen um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's there's not really any celebration beyond that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean what I was thinking about the most recent
Speaker 1: viewing of this movie, I realized that the villain of
Speaker 1: this movie is he's sort of a corporate technological put
Speaker 1: Christ back in Christmas kind of guy, except instead of Christmas,
Speaker 1: it's like put the demons back in Halloween. Like he's
Speaker 1: mad that Halloween has been turned into this, uh, this
Speaker 1: cheap commercialism where kids just go out and have fun,
Speaker 1: when really the hills should be running red with blood. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: he's like, time was we just sacrificed all the children
Speaker 1: on Halloween and now it's just about plastic masks. We're
Speaker 1: taking Halloween back. Then he's disgusted by how profane our
Speaker 1: culture has become. Yes, all right, well, on that note,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and have a taste of that trailer.
Speaker 1: You don't really know much about Halloween. Halloween the body
Speaker 1: should be done between the red and the un and
Speaker 1: the dead might be looking in the last great One
Speaker 1: took place three thousand years ago and the hills ran red.
Speaker 1: Do you happen to know anything about this? Cochrane? All
Speaker 1: I can tell you, Mr watch Out, he's watching you, friend.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you that. Hey, Mr Cochrane, just what is
Speaker 1: the fun little process bell? I'll just dang it. I
Speaker 1: had asked you do I haven't asked just when I
Speaker 1: hadn't mind view little buddy? Why cocks? Do I need
Speaker 1: a reason? I don't love a good joke? And this
Speaker 1: is the best ever a joke of the children. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you'll be able to watch it. You've got to
Speaker 1: believe me. At quick kills all start. The world's going
Speaker 1: to change to night. Doctor Happy Halloween Halloween three, season
Speaker 1: of The Witch of the Night, No One Comes Home. Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess it's time to talk about some people. All right,
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned, uh, the director Tommy Lee Wallace, but
Speaker 1: I guess to to briefly describe a bit more about
Speaker 1: his career. He's the writer director of of this movie,
Speaker 1: and he had previously worked on other John Carpenter joints. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was his first directing credit, but it ultimately kick
Speaker 1: started a long list of the films, including Fright Night Too. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think you already mentioned the original and in many
Speaker 1: ways quite excellent TV adaptation of Stephen King's It I
Speaker 1: mean maybe not everything on that one was was was
Speaker 1: absolutely marvelous, but it had some wonderful and frightful elements
Speaker 1: to it. I mean, among many other things. Um, Tim
Speaker 1: Curry's fabulous performance as Pennywise the Clown. Loved Tim Curry.
Speaker 1: Let's see. He also directed, uh one of He directed
Speaker 1: a sequel to John Carpenter's Vampires Vampire Los Mortos in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, which I didn't see one. So
Speaker 1: I did see Vampires, but but but not the sequel.
Speaker 1: Uh um, let's see. He also wrote the screenplay to
Speaker 1: Fright Night Too, and of course he was on the
Speaker 1: screenplay for Halloween three. He also wrote the the screenplay
Speaker 1: for Amityville to the Possession, which was also in two.
Speaker 1: So he was really firing on all cylinders in the
Speaker 1: early eighties. And like you said, he was a longtime
Speaker 1: member of the Carpenter crew having a provided art direction
Speaker 1: on seventy six is assault on precinct thirteen. Now that
Speaker 1: we were debating earlier to what extent John Carpenter was
Speaker 1: creatively involved in the story content of Halloween three, I
Speaker 1: guess we weren't sure if maybe he had done some
Speaker 1: some kind of uncredited writing, any uncredited work on the script.
Speaker 1: Maybe he certainly didn't direct the movie. But he was
Speaker 1: a producer on Halloween three. And most importantly, John Carpenter
Speaker 1: did the music on Halloween three. And how have we
Speaker 1: not mentioned the music yet? I would say, if there's
Speaker 1: one thing to mention about Halloween three, it's the music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the music on this film is absolutely incredible. Now, to
Speaker 1: be clear, it's it's not just Carpenter on the music here, Um,
Speaker 1: It's it's John Carpenter and Alan Howorth, both born um. Now.
Speaker 1: Carpenter alone was a game changer and electronic film scores
Speaker 1: and basically helped usher in an entire musical genre. Alan
Speaker 1: Howorth collaborated with him on scores for Escape from New York,
Speaker 1: Halloween to Halloween three. Of course, Christine Big Trouble in
Speaker 1: Little China, Prince of Darkness and they Live um, and
Speaker 1: he um, Howarth also worked on some solo scores, and
Speaker 1: he's done a lot of work in special effects sound design.
Speaker 1: For instance. You can pull up various sci fi sound
Speaker 1: databases like clip databases. Uh, they're used in various audio
Speaker 1: and audio video video productions, and you'll find stuff by him.
Speaker 1: Um And uh yeah, this score, oh man, this This
Speaker 1: is not an extreme position to take in the slightest,
Speaker 1: but I'd rank Halloween three as either the best or
Speaker 1: one of the best scores from these two gentlemen. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm torn on that because I also really really
Speaker 1: love Big Trouble and Little China's score. These are both
Speaker 1: scores that I frequently listened to on their own. I've
Speaker 1: listened to the scores to these films more than I've
Speaker 1: seen the movies. I I listened to the score for
Speaker 1: Halloween three all the time. In fact, I just have
Speaker 1: a big John Carpenter music playlist Carpenter music scores that
Speaker 1: I listened to, especially around October, but all throughout the year.
Speaker 1: Actually sometimes it's good productivity or mood music for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just cannot overstate how much I love
Speaker 1: this score. It is just lead heavy and light as
Speaker 1: a feather. At the same time, it's got these wonderful
Speaker 1: swelling bass synthesizers. Uh that that set the tone for
Speaker 1: a lot of scenes. But then um, there's a real
Speaker 1: kind of prickling lightness of of the high pitch synthesizer
Speaker 1: leads throughout it, especially in UH in Chariot's Pumpkins, which
Speaker 1: probably my favorite track from UH from the soundtrack. But
Speaker 1: You're just absolutely wonderful. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a tremendous score.
Speaker 1: I will say when I do listen to it, I
Speaker 1: use a playlist version of it where I've taken out
Speaker 1: the silver shamrock jingle, which is vitally important to the plot.
Speaker 1: But but it is not great listening on it because
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be a commercial jingle. Um, we'll have
Speaker 1: to describe that more in the plot breakdown. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the tremendous score, And I think that the science fiction
Speaker 1: elements of the plot. It's I suspect that if Halloween
Speaker 1: three had been a Michael's Myers movie I'm getting I
Speaker 1: think it probably wouldn't have been as great of a score,
Speaker 1: because I feel like the science fiction elements in this
Speaker 1: film gave them permission to lean more heavily on the scynth,
Speaker 1: you know, to make it more of an electronic score. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're right about that, and uh and I think that
Speaker 1: comes through in visual elements of the movie as well.
Speaker 1: There are it is inflected with a bit of a
Speaker 1: science fiction flavor that's not there in the other visual
Speaker 1: influences on it, like the earlier Carpenter movies. Um. But actually,
Speaker 1: in the Tommy Lee Wallace commentary, I think there's one
Speaker 1: part where he says that the the log line for
Speaker 1: the movie was witchcraft in the computer age. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would have summed it up
Speaker 1: that way, but after hearing it, I'm like, yep, that
Speaker 1: that's exactly what this movie is. It's like pixels and potions. Yes. Now,
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned already that the script that Tommy
Speaker 1: Lee Wallace wrote for this was I think it wasn't
Speaker 1: a totally original work. It was based on an original script. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Nigel Neil Uh was an uncredited writer on this. He
Speaker 1: lived through two thousand and six. Um last names felled
Speaker 1: K N E A L E. So I'm not totally
Speaker 1: sure I'm saying that correctly, but um, but he wrote
Speaker 1: the screenplay to the incredible nineteen sixty seven sci fi
Speaker 1: film Quartermass and the Pit a k a. Five Million
Speaker 1: Years to Earth, which is a is a film we
Speaker 1: might cover on Weird House eventually because it's it's one
Speaker 1: of these films that that has, I guess, for the
Speaker 1: time pretty pretty cool effects, but effects that don't necessarily
Speaker 1: hold up as well to modern viewers, I guess. But
Speaker 1: in spite of those effects, in any shortcomings that might
Speaker 1: be there, the film is incredible and has some wonderful
Speaker 1: ideas and is legitimately creepy, and I know influenced a
Speaker 1: number of of of director of future directors, including John Carpenter.
Speaker 1: He includes nods to it in films such as In
Speaker 1: the Mouth of Madness, which is another another one of
Speaker 1: his films that I adore. Can I tell you that
Speaker 1: I've actually never seen In the Mouth of Madness and
Speaker 1: full I don't know how I made it this far,
Speaker 1: but I'm planning on watching that this very night tonight.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, well, it's oh. I love it. I have
Speaker 1: nothing but but great things to say about it. Spoil nothing.
Speaker 1: I will spoil nothing but David Warners in it. I
Speaker 1: will say that it's great, perfect, all right. Speaking of perfect,
Speaker 1: it's time to talk about our star, Tom Atkins. Tom
Speaker 1: Atkins plays the lead of this film. He dr Daniel Challis,
Speaker 1: who I have before. I think this was on movie
Speaker 1: Crush referred to tom Atkins as Strawberry. Burt Reynolds. Um,
Speaker 1: he's he's this got this hilarious kind of masculinity. Um
Speaker 1: that is put to wonderful effect in this ludicrous movie.
Speaker 1: And I don't know who came up with the idea
Speaker 1: for his character to be the way it is, or
Speaker 1: if it was sort of a an evolving collaborative thing.
Speaker 1: But this is a protagonist who's just everything is wrong
Speaker 1: with him and he never stops drinking. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: hard drinking, hard living um kind of a character. He's.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it makes sense when you
Speaker 1: realize that tom Atkins veteran character actor, born still with
Speaker 1: us as of this recording. Um, you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: been in a ton of films over the years, some
Speaker 1: very good films, but he's he's often typecast as a cop,
Speaker 1: and so he kind of plays that cliche, you know,
Speaker 1: hard living, hard drinking um, you know, you know, tough
Speaker 1: guy cop character in this But he's not a cop.
Speaker 1: He's a doctor. So it's kind of like Cop as
Speaker 1: doctor tom Atkins as Cop as doctor um, And it
Speaker 1: makes it a little weird, but it works, you know,
Speaker 1: because this is a type of role that Atkins excelled at. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's it's it's it's hard to describe how
Speaker 1: funny this main character is not. And he doesn't tell jokes.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's just conceptually hilarious. Like almost every scene
Speaker 1: when he comes into the frame and starts talking or
Speaker 1: doing something, I start laughing. So if you if you're
Speaker 1: having trouble picturing Tom Atkins, he's easily recognized by his
Speaker 1: hardy mustache and his roused our esque machismo. Um. He
Speaker 1: shows up in a couple of Key Carpenter films, including
Speaker 1: Es the Fog, and he has a role in nineteen
Speaker 1: on Escape from New York, did a lot of TV work,
Speaker 1: and it appears in some other notable weird movies, including
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties The Ninth Configuration, which is is quite a
Speaker 1: fascinating film. Nine two Creep Show nineteen eight six Night
Speaker 1: of the Creeps, which is great. In that Night of
Speaker 1: the Creeps, I think that is his real that's like
Speaker 1: the tom Atkins movie to see if you want to
Speaker 1: see him absolutely in his element and and and working
Speaker 1: to the max. Yeah, he's also in nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 1: Maniac Cop. Um. You know, I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: actually watched a Maniac cop of from beginning to end,
Speaker 1: but I suspect tom Atkins plays a cop in that film.
Speaker 1: Not from Maniac Cop because that's that's our man um zadar,
Speaker 1: but um, but I assume he plays a cop. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing I want to make clear, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that I absolutely stand by his his ambient, hilarious nous
Speaker 1: in Halloween three and some other movies, I don't mean
Speaker 1: that tom Atkins is a bad actor. He absolutely is not.
Speaker 1: Like tom Atkins is wonderful. He just has this undeniable
Speaker 1: comedic aura in Halloween three and and it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to get under it. To describe exactly how it works,
Speaker 1: you just have to see it. Yeah, his character is
Speaker 1: is quite a mess. Seems to have multiple relationships going on.
Speaker 1: Um you know as uh you know, has is divorced
Speaker 1: and also has some very questionable workplace behavior. Oh yet
Speaker 1: that absolutely inappropriate semi romantic relationships implied with multiple other
Speaker 1: characters Um, but character that's Daniel chellis not Tomas Now.
Speaker 1: One of these women that he has a relationship with, though,
Speaker 1: is our our female lead. Uh, and that is the
Speaker 1: character Ellie grim Bridge played by Stacy Nelkin. This, this
Speaker 1: is also one of the weirdest things about this movie.
Speaker 1: There is an absolutely baffling and inappropriate romance that goes
Speaker 1: on between our main two characters, makes comes out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: makes absolutely no sense. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine who looked at the you know, the the dailies
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, this works great, let's keep it as
Speaker 1: a real chemistry. Melkin was born in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1: She was also in Graham Chapman's Yellow Beard. The following year,
Speaker 1: she was in Bullets Over Broadway. She was in Tony
Speaker 1: Danza eight Movie Going eight, and she did a lot
Speaker 1: of TV work, including Star Trek, The Next Generation and
Speaker 1: a role on the soap opera Generations. Uh, this is funny.
Speaker 1: To go back to um Roger Ebert's review, he wrote,
Speaker 1: the one saving grace in Halloween three is Stacy Nelkin,
Speaker 1: who plays the heroine. She has one of those rich
Speaker 1: voices that makes you wish she had more to say,
Speaker 1: and in a better role. But watch her too in
Speaker 1: the reaction shots when she's not talking, she's listening. She
Speaker 1: has a kind of wrapped yet humorous attention that I
Speaker 1: thought was really fetching. I mean, no offense to Stacy Nelkin,
Speaker 1: like she's she's fun in this, but I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I quite understand what he's talking about in the reaction shots. However,
Speaker 1: one thing I really do want to give Stacy Nelkin
Speaker 1: immense credit for in this movie is how she handles
Speaker 1: the final twist in in the movie, which should we
Speaker 1: spoil it, I'll go ahead. Whatever, Okay, so you know,
Speaker 1: the whole movie no indication of this whatsoever. I mean,
Speaker 1: not even the slightest clue that this might be coming. Uh.
Speaker 1: Turns out of the very end our our second lead
Speaker 1: character is a robot. She's just an android, and it
Speaker 1: attacks tom Atkins in a car and tries to kill him.
Speaker 1: And like, she gets her head twisted off and gets
Speaker 1: torn to pieces and stuff and is still acting and
Speaker 1: trying squirting out orange juice and and trying to kill
Speaker 1: tom Atkins. And uh, and I mean, yeah, thumbs up,
Speaker 1: thumbs up for this this android killer performance. Now, did
Speaker 1: you take it to me that she had been in
Speaker 1: Robot the entire time, because I could findagent that she
Speaker 1: had been replaced at some point. I didn't know either. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I've seen this movie tons of times and I
Speaker 1: have never figured that out. Is she an android the
Speaker 1: entire movie or does she become an android at some point?
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's some questions about the programming no
Speaker 1: matter which way it falls, though. Yeah. I should also
Speaker 1: point out that Ebert also singled her out is the
Speaker 1: only good thing about yellow Beard and quote a fetching performance.
Speaker 1: So he was a big fan. Well he said fetching twice,
Speaker 1: well in two different reviews. Yes, okay, Roger Robert has
Speaker 1: been fetched. Alright, let's talk again about our villain, our
Speaker 1: fabulous villain, A villain who really when you start talking
Speaker 1: about about villains and horror films and ones that become
Speaker 1: franchising in and of themselves, like this is this is
Speaker 1: one that they would have worked? Uh if they really
Speaker 1: wanted to milk this, If this had been a financial success,
Speaker 1: and they're like, yes, more season of the Witch, Season
Speaker 1: of the Witch to please, Uh, then you might have
Speaker 1: had to bring him back one way or another. Oh yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if we chopped his head off off
Speaker 1: and he burned him into a pile of ashes. He's
Speaker 1: got to come back, like like Michael Myers. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is again Dan o'harla hey playing Connal Cochrane. Um o'erlay
Speaker 1: was born nineteen nineteen died in two thousand and five. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Old Man himself an Irish actor and eventual naturalized
Speaker 1: US citizen who worked on the on the stage and
Speaker 1: then on the screen. One of his first big roles
Speaker 1: was playing McDuff and orson Wells NT eight adaptation of Macbeth.
Speaker 1: I've seen that one has been a long time, but
Speaker 1: um yeah, Wells himself played Macbeth and the cast also
Speaker 1: features Roddy McDowell and Alan Napier. Interesting, I've never seen
Speaker 1: that one. It's good and black and white, very very atmospheric.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I think I took a Shakespeare course in
Speaker 1: college and we ended up watching a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: McBeth adaptations and that was one of them. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the main thing I know Dan o'herla he from is RoboCop,
Speaker 1: in which he plays the Old Man. The I don't
Speaker 1: know the president or the CEO of OCP, the Evil
Speaker 1: Corporations trying to buy up Detroit in uh in RoboCop
Speaker 1: and he's the guy in the board meeting where he
Speaker 1: says Detroit has a cancer and the CANSO is crime. Yeah. He,
Speaker 1: I mean he, especially as an older actor, he really
Speaker 1: did a great job playing the kind of suit villain
Speaker 1: and in this he's essentially a corporate suit but with
Speaker 1: this warlock twist to him. So it's, uh, it stands
Speaker 1: a little bit apart from these other roles that he
Speaker 1: was in. But uh, but there's still a bit of
Speaker 1: the old man there as well. You know, Halloween three
Speaker 1: kind of shares a little bit of thematic DNA with RoboCop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're emerging from uh, you know, the same
Speaker 1: time period basically, so it makes sense. Um now both
Speaker 1: commenting to some degree on some of the same themes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like technology and corporate control or the villains though in
Speaker 1: weird abstracted sci fire or supernatural ways. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: Hey did a wide variety of films in his career,
Speaker 1: touching on so many different genres. You started looking through
Speaker 1: it like this man did Western sci fi. He did
Speaker 1: true swashbucklers back in the day when like swashbucklers were
Speaker 1: a dependable thing. He was in war films, and of
Speaker 1: course he was in red scare movies as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was an Invasion USA from ninety two, which it
Speaker 1: was actually feature on the NST three K And I
Speaker 1: know I've seen it, but I don't remember much about it.
Speaker 1: I think if I went back and watch it again,
Speaker 1: I would have to. Uh, I would have to. I
Speaker 1: would have to. I feel like I want to see
Speaker 1: it again just to see him in it. Um. Wait,
Speaker 1: is Invasion USA not also the title of a like
Speaker 1: Chuck Norris movie where a bunch of communists invade the
Speaker 1: United States and had scenes shot at that mall in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Could be I'm not that I'm not really familiar with
Speaker 1: that picture. This one is fifty two film that has
Speaker 1: I think a lot of stock footage in it, like
Speaker 1: an alarming amount of stock footage. Oh yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: was right. The Invasion USA. I guess it was either
Speaker 1: either got a remake or there was Another movie of
Speaker 1: the same name starring Chuck Norris, came out in nineteen five,
Speaker 1: directed by Joseph Zo also starring Richard Lynch and uh
Speaker 1: and Billy Drago and I'm sure some other. I bet
Speaker 1: Billy Drago plays a communist, but yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: common written invasion plays a patriot. Ms No, he plays
Speaker 1: somebody named Mikhail Rostov. Of course he does. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: I've it's been a long time since I've seen that one.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever seen the fifties version.
Speaker 1: Dan Oh the Hey played a number of different characters,
Speaker 1: and note I mean he was. He was the lead
Speaker 1: in a nineteen four adaptation of Robinson Crusoe. He played
Speaker 1: Dr klagar A in a nineteen sixty two adaptation by
Speaker 1: Roger Ka. He played the good guy Alien Grig in
Speaker 1: Four is the Last Starfighter. He was on PEKS. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I remember I watched a taped version of The Last
Speaker 1: Starfighter a lot when I was a kid tough TV.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, that was him, wasn't it. Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found a hilarious photo online of him and in
Speaker 1: full like monster Alien uh costume, but also standing in
Speaker 1: front of a bookshelfs holding a pipe in his hand.
Speaker 1: I could It's been a long time. It might actually
Speaker 1: be a still from the movie and I just don't
Speaker 1: remember it, but uh, it looks pretty hilarious. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's in the movie. I don't think Grigg ever
Speaker 1: comes to Earth that I recall, is it not. It's
Speaker 1: been so long, Like if you told me, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like an hour's worth of footage where Grigg sneaks
Speaker 1: around then the kid's hometown and they like buy fast
Speaker 1: food and go on an adventure at an arcade. I
Speaker 1: would be like, Okay, that sounds like something you could
Speaker 1: see at the time. The basic Forever, the kid, the kid,
Speaker 1: the main kid in it. He's like good at the
Speaker 1: arcade video game and it turns out it's a the
Speaker 1: arcade cabinet there has been placed by an armada of
Speaker 1: space fleets that are that are like looking for talent
Speaker 1: throughout the galaxies for pilots. And he gets kidnapped into
Speaker 1: space by the guy who plays the music man, and
Speaker 1: uh then he has to go in space and and
Speaker 1: uh Grig is his co pilot and they fly around
Speaker 1: and fight something called the code in armada. I remember
Speaker 1: having a lot of really cool at the time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: really cool evil aliens in it. Oh yeah, totally. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he has a ton of credit, so we could just
Speaker 1: go on and on. He worked a lot his Uh
Speaker 1: he had I think he had a number of children,
Speaker 1: including a son by the name of Gavin o'harla hey,
Speaker 1: who appeared in such films as Willow. So if you
Speaker 1: if you happen to rewatch Willow anytime soon. This is
Speaker 1: the guy with the blonde beard, the strawberry beard guy. Um.
Speaker 1: That that is um sort of a minor second level
Speaker 1: hero in it. Uh yeah, that's that's that's the old
Speaker 1: man's son. I had no idea. So, I mean those
Speaker 1: are the main cast members, but we have there have
Speaker 1: a few other just to roll through here. Jonathan Carey,
Speaker 1: who plays Starker, is in this. Uh. This is a
Speaker 1: guy that just popped up. He played at the Colonel
Speaker 1: in in both Return of the Living Dead and its sequel. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's Al Berry who plays the character Harry grim Bridge.
Speaker 1: This is our our heroine's uh father. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: the doom and Papa who dies trying to save the
Speaker 1: world from Halloween mass pagan gods and robots. He was
Speaker 1: also in Night five Reanimator and appeared alongside Daniel harla
Speaker 1: hey in The Less Starfighter. Now there's almost kind of
Speaker 1: a cameo performance in this movie by by Nancy Kai
Speaker 1: is also known as Nancy Loomis. You might remember her
Speaker 1: from the original Halloween, in which she plays Any Brackett
Speaker 1: as she I think she's billed as Nancy Loomis in
Speaker 1: that one. She was born ninety nine. I love her
Speaker 1: in Halloween, and I always wished she had been in
Speaker 1: more movies because I don't know she She's just got
Speaker 1: like a real fun, kind of cool, acerbic attitude. And
Speaker 1: she only did about a half dozen movies or so,
Speaker 1: and more than half of those are Carpenter movies or
Speaker 1: Carpenter Associate aided movies. So she was in Halloween The
Speaker 1: Fog Assault on Precinct thirteen, and in this movie she
Speaker 1: makes a brief appearance at the beginning as tom atkins
Speaker 1: abrasive ex wife, and she she's funny in the little
Speaker 1: bit of screen time that she has, very much like
Speaker 1: you know, oh brother, She's just not very impressed by
Speaker 1: tom Atkins um. But the actress Nancy kais. After she
Speaker 1: mostly got out of film, I looked up her her
Speaker 1: post Hollywood career, and among other things, I found out
Speaker 1: she is a sculpture artist, and so I found a
Speaker 1: gallery of sculpture that she did all in the medium
Speaker 1: of garbage. So these are sculptures. Images were hosted on
Speaker 1: the Pomona College Museum website and I think this is
Speaker 1: from the year nineteen and so you can look up these,
Speaker 1: uh if you do a Google search for them, and
Speaker 1: I think they look pretty cool. There's like one that
Speaker 1: is a bunch of garbage making what looks like it's
Speaker 1: some kind of giant leg. It's like a thigh with
Speaker 1: a calf and a and a big and a big
Speaker 1: robody kind of foot. And then this this beetle board
Speaker 1: looking thing. I don't know how really to describe it.
Speaker 1: It is this uh, I don't know, robot type thing
Speaker 1: with like an insect carapist body, but it's all made
Speaker 1: out of trash. Yeah, I had not seen these before,
Speaker 1: but these are these are great. I love this genre
Speaker 1: of sculpture. They're like taking um refuse and our garbage,
Speaker 1: recycled materials and then recreating something artistically out of it.
Speaker 1: I was actually at a museum this morning and there
Speaker 1: was an exhibit where an artist was utilizing things of
Speaker 1: this nature um in this case, uh, like oil drums,
Speaker 1: ammunition canisters, barbed wire, and they were you know, created,
Speaker 1: I think they created this huge snake in this piece
Speaker 1: called not a Snake where anyway, you know, similar technique
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. Uh. So, so I love this
Speaker 1: kind of work. If I if I had the chance
Speaker 1: to see this particular artist work in person, I would
Speaker 1: jump at the chance. Yeah, Sidney Pound snake. Alright, Uh,
Speaker 1: Dick Warlock is in this, so we have to mention him.
Speaker 1: Dick Warlock. Dick Warlock is the man. He plays an
Speaker 1: android assassin, a pretty big role for Dick Warlock. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's a note one of the more notable android assassins
Speaker 1: in the picture. There's a really good scene where Tom
Speaker 1: Atkins punches him in the stomach and then pulls out
Speaker 1: his robot, guts a bunch of wires and stuff, and
Speaker 1: he spits frozen orange juice all over the place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The androids are great in this because they're they're basically indestructible,
Speaker 1: but also entirely they're way too fragile as well, so
Speaker 1: they're they're hard to kill. They're super strong, but the
Speaker 1: least little thing can can actually undo them. Alright. Another
Speaker 1: actor of note, Patty Edwards, plays a secretary and then
Speaker 1: she did a lot of TV work and also some
Speaker 1: very notable voice acting roles later in her in her career,
Speaker 1: she's the voice of the eels, Flotsam and Jetsam in
Speaker 1: Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid, and she also plays the
Speaker 1: fate Atropos in Disney's Hercules Les. Interestingly enough, she also
Speaker 1: played Bull Shannon's mom on Night Court. So she played
Speaker 1: Richard Mole's mom. Oh interesting, taking a specter? What was that? Uh?
Speaker 1: What was that movie called that he was in as
Speaker 1: a destruction of of Jared Jared's in Yes, yeah, metal
Speaker 1: Storm the Oh. Now we mentioned how Michael Myers is
Speaker 1: technically in the movie, Well, Jamie Lee Curtis is also
Speaker 1: technically in the movie. She has a fun cameo as
Speaker 1: both a curfew announcer in the creepy heat company town
Speaker 1: but also as a telephone operator. Oh yeah, so just
Speaker 1: a voice cameo. Yeah, in the same way that Michael
Speaker 1: Myers only appears on TV. Oh. You know another thing
Speaker 1: worth noting about this film is the cinematographer. It's Dean Cundy.
Speaker 1: Of course. Now we don't have to go in great
Speaker 1: detail on Dean Cundy because we've gushed about Dean Cundy before.
Speaker 1: I think we probably spent half of the episode we
Speaker 1: did on without Warning talking about Dean Cundy. Um the
Speaker 1: The Dean Cundy is a wonderful cinematographer, and I think
Speaker 1: he is to a great extent responsible. He's partially or
Speaker 1: maybe even mostly, the answer to the question of how
Speaker 1: come even though this movie wasn't directed by John Carpenter,
Speaker 1: it feels like it feels like the bull's eye for
Speaker 1: that that John Carpenter feeling, And it's because of the
Speaker 1: Dean Cundy. Look. Yeah, Candy, um, yeah, you'll remember us
Speaker 1: praising him on nineteen eighties without Warning, But yeah, he
Speaker 1: worked on such films later on as Jurassic Park, Apollo thirteen,
Speaker 1: So he was a big deal. Yeah, not just horror
Speaker 1: and John Carpenter stuff. Like he went on to to
Speaker 1: do some do a lot of mainstream Hollywood work, but
Speaker 1: always Yeah, he's just got great distinctive visual style. I've
Speaker 1: got some more thoughts about his influence on on how
Speaker 1: this movie feels in a bit here. I was kind
Speaker 1: of surprised to see that Ralph Baksh has a credit
Speaker 1: on this. This is the in the quote unquote animation
Speaker 1: department of this film. Um Box. She of course is
Speaker 1: a legendary American animator who gave us Fritz, the Cat Wizards,
Speaker 1: and The Lord of the Rings and Fire and Ice
Speaker 1: as well. But I'm not totally sure on this, but
Speaker 1: apparently one of the cartoons that's playing on the TV
Speaker 1: in the bar again along with like a trailer for
Speaker 1: Halloween one or something. Um, that apparently is one of
Speaker 1: his cartoons playing, And so maybe that's all he did
Speaker 1: on this film. That's I can't imagine where else his
Speaker 1: fingerprints would be. Yeah, I remember, what does it? It's
Speaker 1: like there's a plant dancing around and making blink blink
Speaker 1: sound effects. Yeah, okay, there you go. Now, this is
Speaker 1: generally the point in the connections where we talk about
Speaker 1: the score, but we've already talked about the score and
Speaker 1: the people responsible for it, So instead of talking about
Speaker 1: it even more, let's just go ahead and hear a
Speaker 1: little bit from it. This is a taste of of
Speaker 1: the Chariots of Pumpkins? Is that a take on Chariots
Speaker 1: of Fire Chariots? I believe it is. Yes, Okay, not
Speaker 1: that in particularly sounds like it, but I guess that
Speaker 1: was the that was the inspiration. They were inspired by evangelists. Well,
Speaker 1: I think they've surpassed their their inspiration. Vangelis is great.
Speaker 1: He just put out a new album of space music.
Speaker 1: By the way, I've been listening to it. It's super great.
Speaker 1: Not knocking on Vangelists, I'm just saying, like, for me,
Speaker 1: Halloween three cannot be beat. Yeah, I don't think Vangelis
Speaker 1: ever did a horror score though. That's the real kicker.
Speaker 1: So I guess we Yeah, we should do a sort
Speaker 1: of full plot breakdown. I think we'll. We'll probably do
Speaker 1: a little more tightly zoomed in towards the beginning of
Speaker 1: the movie than than towards the end. But I wanted
Speaker 1: just to describe the very opening because it cements so
Speaker 1: much the feel of the movie. So the very first
Speaker 1: thing you get is pixels. The first concept suggested by
Speaker 1: this movie is weirdly computers, which is again not what
Speaker 1: you would expect given Halloween or the themes of the
Speaker 1: season or witchcraft or whatever. But the opening credits are
Speaker 1: sort of filled with pixelated lines of orange on a
Speaker 1: black void, and it is uh sort of suggestive of
Speaker 1: the opening of the first movie, which, if you remember,
Speaker 1: it's it's just this sort of zooming shot of a
Speaker 1: jack o lantern. But then you eventually zoom in so
Speaker 1: far you're like, what are these orange colors I'm looking at?
Speaker 1: In this case, it starts zoomed very far in, but
Speaker 1: eventually pulls out to reveal a pixel pumpkin, in fact,
Speaker 1: a pixelated jack O lantern, which is great because it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm so close to the technology, I cannot see its
Speaker 1: true form, it's true intent, and it's only in time
Speaker 1: that you realize, oh no, this is what the technology
Speaker 1: wants and is doing. And it's also so close to
Speaker 1: the screen the pixels themselves, you can see them almost
Speaker 1: sort of decomposing into their individual little colors that form
Speaker 1: the the full pixels. You know, you can see like
Speaker 1: the little uh, I don't know what you call them,
Speaker 1: little bits behind him. But the very next thing we
Speaker 1: see is an empty setting. There's a dark asphalt road
Speaker 1: illuminated only by distant street lamps, and this is under
Speaker 1: a roof of a freeway overpass like a like a
Speaker 1: concrete cathedral. And you get swelling synth bass, and then
Speaker 1: titles start filling us in about what we're looking at.
Speaker 1: We see northern California, then October, then Saturday, they and
Speaker 1: for several seconds as the titles fade in and out
Speaker 1: there there's nobody in the shot until a figure emerges
Speaker 1: from deep in the distance and he's running toward us,
Speaker 1: and you get the needle pricks of the synthesizer score
Speaker 1: fading in and he runs closer and closer to the
Speaker 1: camera and you see it. It's an old man and
Speaker 1: he's terrified, like he's running away from someone. And I
Speaker 1: love this opening. I love the opening shot and the
Speaker 1: music that accompanies it, and I think it's a perfect
Speaker 1: example of that beautiful John Carpenter Dean Cundy texture that
Speaker 1: their movies are full of. Again, even the Carpenter didn't
Speaker 1: direct this one, the Carpenter Cundy Wallace texture that these
Speaker 1: movies are full of, uh And and I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a very characteristic frame of this cinematography style. The
Speaker 1: kind of frame I'm talking about is you might remember
Speaker 1: these from without warning as well, but especially other movies
Speaker 1: like the original Halloween, there will be a wide shot
Speaker 1: of an empty, desolate setting which we see in full
Speaker 1: without a subject before the subject enters it. And I'm
Speaker 1: just such a sucker for that. I don't know quite
Speaker 1: so why. It just makes my horse's Winny and I
Speaker 1: love it. Um and actually in the in the director's commentary,
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Wallace says that he often stole these shots
Speaker 1: of the empty sets from the tales of existing shots,
Speaker 1: so after they slated, but before a character walked into frame,
Speaker 1: he would just sort of like use that, even though
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't originally meant to be used. And uh
Speaker 1: and also along with this, from the very first scene
Speaker 1: in the musical score is just a ten just love love,
Speaker 1: love it. But anyway, so on the screen we see
Speaker 1: the old man turned back around, look behind him, and
Speaker 1: he sees what he's afraid of. It's car headlights cresting
Speaker 1: over the horizon in the dark, and he panics and
Speaker 1: he keeps on running. Um. One note I made while
Speaker 1: I was rewatching this was, uh, what year I was thinking,
Speaker 1: what year was Marathon Man? I think it was sometime
Speaker 1: in the seventies. But the opening here reminds me very
Speaker 1: much of the scenes where Dustin Hoffman is getting chased
Speaker 1: by the Nazis in New York, like running under the
Speaker 1: freeway overpass, running on foot with the car chasing him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was I that was I think mid seventies, so
Speaker 1: you know, it definitely would have come before. Well anyway,
Speaker 1: so in this movie, we see the old in running
Speaker 1: into I think it's a junkyard or like a used
Speaker 1: car lot. I don't know. There's cars, but then there's
Speaker 1: also car parts and he's banging on this office trailer
Speaker 1: door for help, but there's nobody there. He's all alone
Speaker 1: out here, and the headlights are closing in. And then
Speaker 1: we noticed that the old man has something brightly colored
Speaker 1: hanging out of his pocket. It looks like a big
Speaker 1: floppy piece of orange fabric. What could this be? Well,
Speaker 1: suddenly he's trying to hide because the car is closing
Speaker 1: in on him. And as he's trying to hide in
Speaker 1: this lot, he bumps into one of his pursuers. He
Speaker 1: is surprised by a torpy looking guy in a gray
Speaker 1: business suit and black gloves. Uh. Trying to give you
Speaker 1: a mental picture. Uh picture a young Adam Scott with
Speaker 1: slicked down hair. If you worked at Lloyd's of London
Speaker 1: in the eighties, so you know, very very great gray
Speaker 1: business suit, black gloves, formal looking, but also uh, that guy.
Speaker 1: And the old man tries to fight back, but the
Speaker 1: business tworp is incredibly strong. He grabs him and he
Speaker 1: forces him to the ground and he pins him to
Speaker 1: the concrete under a car's rear fender. And so is
Speaker 1: this the end of the unnamed old Man? Well, no,
Speaker 1: because he reaches out and he manages to take hold
Speaker 1: of a chain that's fastened to a wedge block that's
Speaker 1: under the tire of a nearby car, is keeping it
Speaker 1: from rolling down toward them, and he yanks the chain.
Speaker 1: The car rolls in and it pins this bespoke attacker
Speaker 1: between the two bumpers, between two cars, and the business
Speaker 1: Tworp reacts to this in a strange way, like he
Speaker 1: doesn't cry out in pain. Instead, he sort of slumps
Speaker 1: over as if he is a machine that somehow just
Speaker 1: lost power. So the old Man squirms out from under
Speaker 1: the vehicles and then he he escapes off into the
Speaker 1: night with this bright orange object in his hand. Then
Speaker 1: we cut to another location, a service station in the rain,
Speaker 1: another moody, unoccupied establishing shot again of it uh and
Speaker 1: a few overhead lamps or just sort of like burning
Speaker 1: against the blue night, and rain is pouring down, and
Speaker 1: we see the title one hour later, and here's where
Speaker 1: things for So, like everything up to this point has
Speaker 1: been has been like, Oh wow, is moody interesting? I
Speaker 1: love the music, love the photography. What's going on? This
Speaker 1: is the first part where I noticed things start getting funny.
Speaker 1: So the attendant at the service service station is watching
Speaker 1: a TV and it's a British news feature about how
Speaker 1: part of Stonehinge mysteriously vanished nine months ago. Uh So,
Speaker 1: first of all, like, isn't this Northern California? Did they
Speaker 1: get like the BBC News broadcast in nineteen two? Well,
Speaker 1: this is the Carpenter universe, so we have to remember.
Speaker 1: In the Carpenter universe, Donald Pleasants eventually becomes President of
Speaker 1: the United States. So uh, very anglophilic. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't know it works for me, I guess. So okay,
Speaker 1: they were so in this world they rebroadcast BBC News
Speaker 1: in Northern California, Okay, um and yeah. At one point
Speaker 1: the announcer is like, it weighs more than five tons,
Speaker 1: making its disappearance a mystery indeed. And then on the
Speaker 1: TV after that that broadcast, we get our very first
Speaker 1: silver shamrock commercial. We will be subjected to this many
Speaker 1: many more times throughout the movie, and it is so
Speaker 1: intensely annoying that it goes full circle and becomes a
Speaker 1: gorgeous work of art that induces full body bliss. Uh.
Speaker 1: I feel like we should describe it in detail, Like
Speaker 1: Rob what what would you say to describe the Silver
Speaker 1: Shamrock commercial? I would say, Yeah, First of all, the
Speaker 1: music is intensely and intentionally annoying. It is it is
Speaker 1: jingle mania, it is supposed to annoy you, and and
Speaker 1: it's calibrated to a child's wants and needs. But then
Speaker 1: we also have a voice over narration in it that
Speaker 1: is also ingenious because it is creepy man voice trying
Speaker 1: to sound like kid appropriate cartoon voye, you know, like
Speaker 1: like a children's commercial, but it's clearly a creepy guy
Speaker 1: voice doing it, which gives it this unsettling flare. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's to the tune of London Bridge is falling down,
Speaker 1: presumably because that's public domain. But the lyrics are they
Speaker 1: keep counting down the days to Halloween, so like whatever
Speaker 1: day in the in the plot you're watching it, it'll
Speaker 1: be saying eight more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween and
Speaker 1: does the whole tune, and then it ends with silver
Speaker 1: Shamrock and so so while you're hearing this annoying UH
Speaker 1: tune repeat over and over again, you watch this green
Speaker 1: clover logo zoom at the screen, and then there's this
Speaker 1: demented childhead tilting back and forth. I think the child
Speaker 1: in that commercial might be Tommy Lee Wallace's son um
Speaker 1: and uh. And then you see the three Halloween math
Speaker 1: asks and these are the three iconic silver shamrock Halloween masks.
Speaker 1: You get the skeleton, the jack o lantern, and the Witch.
Speaker 1: And then a voice comes on. I believe also the
Speaker 1: voice is the voice of the director Tommy Lee Wallace,
Speaker 1: and he says, yes, kids YouTube can own one of
Speaker 1: the big Halloween three, three horrific masks to choose from
Speaker 1: their fun They're frightening and they glow in the dark.
Speaker 1: And then Robert, I wonder if you noticed this. So
Speaker 1: right after the commercial plays the in the scene, the
Speaker 1: TV loses power and it goes dark. So this is
Speaker 1: just as like thunder is rolling ahead. I guess the
Speaker 1: idea is, you know, lightning strikes and the power goes out.
Speaker 1: But right before that, the last thing we see on
Speaker 1: the TV, it looks to me for a few seconds
Speaker 1: like the exact same silver shamrock commercial is starting over
Speaker 1: from the top. Uh. So I don't know if they're
Speaker 1: they're looping commercial, they're like paying to play them back
Speaker 1: to back. But that would be ingenious if that had
Speaker 1: happened in the movie. You know, one of the great things.
Speaker 1: I didn't really think about this, but the silver shamrock
Speaker 1: um tune here is set to London bridges falling down
Speaker 1: and there there. This is of course a very old tune,
Speaker 1: a very old nursery rhyme kind of jangle. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there are various theories regarding its origin, and at least
Speaker 1: one of them involves child sacrifice. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a perfect, perfect inclusion in this film. Oh, I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's intentional. I bet it is. I I bet
Speaker 1: it is. The thing that feels just silly and you know,
Speaker 1: and totally the domain of the child's care free world
Speaker 1: is rooted in blood. We'll have to look that up
Speaker 1: after this, Okay. So anyway, the power goes out, gas
Speaker 1: station attendant, he starts looking around. He thinks he hears
Speaker 1: something and he peers out into the storm and it's
Speaker 1: wonderful atmosphere. You've got a tower of pins, oil cans
Speaker 1: inside but then outside it's just rain and dark and distance.
Speaker 1: And then the gas station worker is surprised by the
Speaker 1: old man from before who is running from suits and
Speaker 1: he's frantic. He says, they're coming, they're coming, And in
Speaker 1: his hand he's still clutching that orange thing you saw earlier,
Speaker 1: and oh, we realize it is the Jack O lantern
Speaker 1: mask from the TV commercial. So already the gears are
Speaker 1: grinding in your head. Uh and then they hit you
Speaker 1: with something else. Immediately a new scene. Here comes Tom Atkins.
Speaker 1: He's also coming in out of the rain, but he's
Speaker 1: coming into a domestic foyer wearing a khaki jacket tucked
Speaker 1: up over his head and a red shirt and he
Speaker 1: is showing up at his ex wife's house to surprise
Speaker 1: the kids. Uh. So again tom Atkins character and this
Speaker 1: has played. His character is named Dan Challis and his
Speaker 1: ex wife, as we mentioned, is played by Nancy Kais
Speaker 1: or Nancy Loomis, who played Annie in the original Halloween.
Speaker 1: And she's immediately very unimpressed by his appearance. She's like, oh, brother,
Speaker 1: here's this idiot. But he shows up with presents for
Speaker 1: the kids. They've got two kids there at her house,
Speaker 1: and he has brought them Halloween masks. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I love about this is when when we
Speaker 1: when we see Atkins character Dr Challis visiting his kids.
Speaker 1: The kids are not excited about these older hard plastic
Speaker 1: um you know, plastic Halloween mass where they have the
Speaker 1: plastic front and a little elastic string that straps into
Speaker 1: your face. Um. They're excited about the prospect of these
Speaker 1: soft latex masks, in this case, the silver shamrock masks.
Speaker 1: And I remember feeling this way as a kid. You
Speaker 1: have those old, cheaper plastic masks, and they felt like
Speaker 1: kind of like kids stuff. You know, you why why
Speaker 1: would you wear that when you could take this latex
Speaker 1: mask of pure synthetic flesh and just put it over
Speaker 1: your entire head. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: They're incredibly ungrateful. Like he gives them the masks. He will,
Speaker 1: by the way to say, he brings the masks in
Speaker 1: in brown paper bags as if they were liquor bottles,
Speaker 1: which is appropriate for his character. But then he gives
Speaker 1: them the masks and they're just like, go to hell, dad,
Speaker 1: you know. Then they just don't want them at all.
Speaker 1: It's like the e a lent of the kid being
Speaker 1: sertainly because you know, he got a police station five
Speaker 1: from a confused grandparent. You know, this is this is
Speaker 1: not what you think it is. This is not cool.
Speaker 1: And in retrospect, those other plastic masks they were with
Speaker 1: cool mask. We should have been grateful. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and these these plastic masks. If they had warned the
Speaker 1: crappy masks that that their dad brought them, they would
Speaker 1: not be killed by the TV commercial. I guess we
Speaker 1: we know, we don't know their fate at the end
Speaker 1: of the movie. But no, they say, well, mom got
Speaker 1: a silver shamrock masks and and those are the good ones,
Speaker 1: and so that you know they're they're just like, wow,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, dad. But then tom Atkins his beeper
Speaker 1: goes off. He's he's he's a doctor and he is
Speaker 1: on call, and so he's like, I gotta go to
Speaker 1: the hospital and uh and his ex wife says drinking
Speaker 1: and doctor in great combination, and she is she is
Speaker 1: correct in pointing that out. But that won't stop him
Speaker 1: because I think in almost every scene tom Atkins is
Speaker 1: either drink king or has been implied to be drinking
Speaker 1: before the scene. Oh but but right before he leaves
Speaker 1: the house, they're like, hey, you know, are the viewers
Speaker 1: not annoyed enough yet? Maybe we should hit them with
Speaker 1: another silver shamrock commercials. So we watch another one while
Speaker 1: the kids watch it with their their faces approximately five
Speaker 1: inches from the TV screen, wearing their silver shamrock masks.
Speaker 1: They are just gunning for Halloween. Uh and and so
Speaker 1: I don't know if you noticed this too, Maybe there
Speaker 1: was something I missed about it, but it seems that
Speaker 1: in the universe of Halloween, three TV commercials are somehow
Speaker 1: publicly scheduled like TV shows, so that kids are able
Speaker 1: to deliberately tune in for silver shamrock commercials, which they
Speaker 1: watch repeatedly and on purpose, even though they already have
Speaker 1: the masks. Well, this is of what they call now
Speaker 1: appointment television, right, the idea that you know, back back
Speaker 1: in these days, like that you knew what was coming
Speaker 1: on TV and you watched it. You just watched TV
Speaker 1: in general. Uh So, I don't know this felt this
Speaker 1: felt appropriate? Okay? Well anyway, so, uh so Tom Atkins
Speaker 1: we find out that the call in his beeper is
Speaker 1: about the old man who is being chased. Earlier, the
Speaker 1: the gas station attendant who found him has brought him
Speaker 1: into the hospital. And at the hospital you see the
Speaker 1: old man. He's on a gurney and he starts freaking
Speaker 1: out because he sees a silver sham Rock commercial play
Speaker 1: on a hospital room TV. So I think this is
Speaker 1: the third time we're seeing it. And he starts saying,
Speaker 1: they're going to kill us, all of us. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so what to do? What to do about him saying that, Well,
Speaker 1: obviously Tom Atkins says a hundred milligrams thorisin. So they
Speaker 1: heavily sedate him. Uh. And then while he's lying there
Speaker 1: heavily sedated in a hospital room, oh, the suits have arrived.
Speaker 1: The guys in the gray business suits show up with
Speaker 1: their with their black gloves, and one of them is
Speaker 1: here at the hospital to finish the job. Uh. And
Speaker 1: but but by the way, before that happens, I just
Speaker 1: want to point out how funny it is that when
Speaker 1: they show the old man like drugged up in his
Speaker 1: hospital bed under hospital sheets in his hospital room, he's
Speaker 1: still clutching the silver Shamrock pumpkin mask. Uh, just there
Speaker 1: in his in his room. Well, that's his proof. There's
Speaker 1: also a funny bit here where tom Atkins. I think
Speaker 1: because he's drunk. He goes back to his office to
Speaker 1: sleep on the couch. Yes, yes, and he he briefly
Speaker 1: opens the refrigerator in his office, and I was trying
Speaker 1: to look in there and see what it was. It
Speaker 1: looks like he's got a bunch of cokes and he's
Speaker 1: got milk, and then huge cans of tomato juice and
Speaker 1: then champagne glasses on top of the fridge. And I
Speaker 1: think maybe a bunch of pieces of chicken. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean a champagne and tomato juice like that. That was
Speaker 1: his signature cocktail, right, The doctor challis special. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to imagine that. It din sound good. It's like,
Speaker 1: h yeah, it's it's it's it's a it's a twist
Speaker 1: on the mimosa and the bloody Mary. Maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's called a bloody tom Yeah, bloody chellis. Now I
Speaker 1: have to say, are our witness here, Harry Grimbridge clutching
Speaker 1: the mask that the androids do get to him and
Speaker 1: they just they murder the hell out of him. And
Speaker 1: this film has some some ultimately some great kills in
Speaker 1: it because the androids seem to be like that. It's
Speaker 1: almost like there's a neural network at play trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to murder humans, because they do so
Speaker 1: in ways that that totally work but are slightly illogical.
Speaker 1: So they don't just necessarily like stab somebody or choke them.
Speaker 1: It's stuff like pinching their eyeballs and crunching their skull
Speaker 1: or or twisting their head off, you know, things that
Speaker 1: just seem uncanny, uh, in a very very effective manner. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so the the android here kills the old man with
Speaker 1: like an eye gouging pinch kind of thing. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then and then immediately gets rid of the evidence by
Speaker 1: dousing himself and gasoline in his car and and self immolating,
Speaker 1: which ultimately ends up becoming a great plot point because
Speaker 1: they're they're analyzing the remnants of the burn, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: well the body, we didn't get the body, it's just
Speaker 1: parts in here. What happened to the body is somebody
Speaker 1: messed up, when in reality it's because Will that was
Speaker 1: an android and you you just don't recognize it. But
Speaker 1: before he does that, he starts some people start screaming,
Speaker 1: and this rouses Tom Atkins from his his nap on
Speaker 1: the couch. Um, And so he gives chase. And then
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, well, does this hospital not have security? Why
Speaker 1: is it up to the resident physician to chase down murderers? Um,
Speaker 1: But anyway, he chases the android outside, which again we
Speaker 1: don't know is an android at this point, but you know,
Speaker 1: if you've seen in the movie enough times, it's hard
Speaker 1: not to refer to them that way. He chases the
Speaker 1: guy in the gray suit outside but the guy, yeah,
Speaker 1: he burns himself up and his car explodes. I remember
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Wallace in the director's commentary saying, when in doubt,
Speaker 1: blow it up, blow it up big. We don't know
Speaker 1: what's power We don't know what's powering that android. That
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, I don't think any of the other
Speaker 1: ones blow up, but uh, you know, still fair enough.
Speaker 1: He's gotta he's got an onboard nuclear nuclear vision reactor
Speaker 1: or something. Um. Anyway, anyway, next thing we see, Tom
Speaker 1: Atkins is on the phone with his wife, his ex wife, sorry,
Speaker 1: and um he is. He's like, yeah, I won't be
Speaker 1: able to pick the kids up, and she starts yelling
Speaker 1: at him. You can hear through the phone, and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you just relax for a minute. Two men died here tonight.
Speaker 1: But he gets no respect and uh. And so Tom
Speaker 1: Atkins picks up the silver shamrock pumpkin mask left behind
Speaker 1: by the dead guy and he's looking at it and
Speaker 1: he's like, what's up with this? And there's good ominous
Speaker 1: music and and then you get that one of those
Speaker 1: you know, Daniel plan Lisa needs braces, but it's they're
Speaker 1: going to kill us. It's the old man saying that
Speaker 1: over and over in his head. Uh. Then we get
Speaker 1: another update on the day, so it cuts to Sunday,
Speaker 1: and here we meet Stacy Nelkin for the first time.
Speaker 1: She shows up at the hospital and it's revealed that
Speaker 1: the dead man, Harry grim Bridge, is her father. Her
Speaker 1: character's name is Ellie grim Bridge. Uh. So she comes
Speaker 1: in to speak to the police and she says, yes,
Speaker 1: that's my father. What happened? And then the sheriff is uh,
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what if I seen the sheriff
Speaker 1: in before, I'm not sure, but he seemed familiar, but
Speaker 1: he's just kind of gruff, and he goes, uh. She
Speaker 1: says what happened to him? And he's like, ah, I'm
Speaker 1: crazy man killed himself in the parking lot right after
Speaker 1: drugs probably, yeah, drugs probably. Uh. And so she's upset
Speaker 1: and uh and Tom Atkins sees her, and you think
Speaker 1: he's gonna go ask her what this is about, but
Speaker 1: instead he just walks away. And then you get another thing.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday. You see Tom Atkins goes to visit a
Speaker 1: friend of his who works in one of the labs.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is at the hospital or
Speaker 1: somewhere else, but uh. Tom goes to visit his friend
Speaker 1: to say, hey, what was up with this assassin? And uh.
Speaker 1: She says, well, we don't know yet. He's just a
Speaker 1: pile of ashes. Sheriff says he was on drugs, and
Speaker 1: Tom says, he goes, that doesn't make sense. I've seen
Speaker 1: people on drugs. This man was in complete control. He
Speaker 1: looked like a bit this man. So I guess the
Speaker 1: logic is he looked like a business Did you see
Speaker 1: a suit. He couldn't have been on drugs. That was
Speaker 1: no hippie. Yeah. Um, and she says she says he
Speaker 1: had to be one strong businessman. You don't just pull
Speaker 1: someone's skull apart with a without a little lower arm strength.
Speaker 1: And know what I mean, And I went off, this
Speaker 1: is subtle commentary to the idea if you're dressed like
Speaker 1: a businessman in this, in this at this time, and
Speaker 1: you can you can go walk into a hospital and
Speaker 1: just murder somebody and people would just be like, I
Speaker 1: don't know nothing he can do. Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: I think that would sort of fit in with what
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Wallace was saying about his attitude when he
Speaker 1: was making a movie. So I guess that checks out. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, But anyway, so tom Atkins is like, hey,
Speaker 1: do me a favorite check this out yourself. I was
Speaker 1: having a hard time thinking exactly what he's asking for.
Speaker 1: I think he's asking her to do lab work on
Speaker 1: the burned remains of the killer to find out what
Speaker 1: kind of drugs he may have been on. Do you
Speaker 1: do you think that's what it's supposed to be. I
Speaker 1: think so. And this is a case where we kind
Speaker 1: of come back to the idea that it's tom Atkins
Speaker 1: as cop as doctor. So his doctor character ultimately ends
Speaker 1: up doing a lot of things that are more in
Speaker 1: keeping with what a TV cop would do. Um, And
Speaker 1: you ultimately just kind of roll with it because these
Speaker 1: are things the protagonist does, so you just followed along. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make a lot of sense. Also that he
Speaker 1: and his his friend at the lab kiss as he's departing.
Speaker 1: So yet again, Tom appears to have multiple inappropriate, semi
Speaker 1: romantic relationships with numerous co workers and other characters. And
Speaker 1: we we don't seem we're not asked to have thoughts
Speaker 1: about this one where Yeah, it's just they just presented
Speaker 1: it happens, okay, And then okay, so we get a
Speaker 1: new update on the date, so it's Friday the twenty nine,
Speaker 1: and then we see Tom Atkins at a bar. And
Speaker 1: I love this bar because it has this complex mural
Speaker 1: on the on the wall behind him. It looks like
Speaker 1: the it's like the hieronymous Bosh bar. Uh. You never
Speaker 1: get a really close look at it, so I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what all is in the mural, but it's very busy,
Speaker 1: busy decorations. Yeah, it's a very gloomy looking bar. This
Speaker 1: is not it's it's more in keeping with the bar
Speaker 1: on The Simpsons. Most like a nice comfy bar where
Speaker 1: you know, where everybody knows your name. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is the place where he's watching the cartoon on TV.
Speaker 1: That may have been animated by Ralph Bakshe and then
Speaker 1: a Silver Shamrock commercial comes on. No wait, no, that
Speaker 1: this hasn't happened yet. First he says, hey, Charlie, can
Speaker 1: we have another station? I guess talking to the bartender,
Speaker 1: and he's like, you got it? So they changed the channel,
Speaker 1: and then it's Halloween. Uh the John Carpenter original, and
Speaker 1: I think the TV announcer says the Immortal Classic, followed
Speaker 1: by the big giveaway at nine brought to you by
Speaker 1: and then the Silver Shamrock commercial plays again. So I
Speaker 1: think this might be the fifth time we hear it
Speaker 1: in the movie so far. But now it's two more
Speaker 1: days to Halloween, and when Tom Atkins expresses dislike of
Speaker 1: the Silver Shamrock commercial, the bartender kind of gets offended.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, man, don't you have any Halloween spirit?
Speaker 1: But then so while he's at this bar having a drink,
Speaker 1: he gets approached by Stacy Nelkin. She comes in and
Speaker 1: she introduces herself. She says, Hi, my name is Ellie
Speaker 1: grim Bridge. One of the nurses told me I could
Speaker 1: find you here, which was funny. Okay, so yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: He'll be at the bar and she asked, did my
Speaker 1: father say anything to you the night he died? And
Speaker 1: so first he tries to lie to her and says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he told me. Tell Ellie I love her, and she
Speaker 1: doesn't buy that. She's like, no, you know you're not
Speaker 1: good at lying U. So instead Tom Atkins fills his guts.
Speaker 1: He says, I don't know. He came in scared. He
Speaker 1: was clutching a Halloween mask, and what he said was
Speaker 1: they're gonna kill us all. And then uh oh. And
Speaker 1: then after that he says, and in a little while
Speaker 1: he was dead, and I don't know what the hell
Speaker 1: is going on. Uh So I guess at this point
Speaker 1: you can just tell they're gonna team up and find out.
Speaker 1: And that's what the rest of the movie is going
Speaker 1: to be. You know. The thing is that Grimbridge he
Speaker 1: didn't have the complete truth here. They weren't planning to
Speaker 1: kill us all. They were only planning to kill most
Speaker 1: of the children, all the children who watched tv UM
Speaker 1: in America at least. They actually even more than that.
Speaker 1: They weren't going to kill all the children. They were
Speaker 1: going to kill all the like the cool kids, the
Speaker 1: kids whose parents bought them the expensive upscale Halloween masks. Uh,
Speaker 1: not not like the kids who were stuck with the
Speaker 1: hard plastic masks that tom Atkins tried to give his kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying those are acceptable numbers either, but but
Speaker 1: just saying that that technically what he was saying was
Speaker 1: not true. So the next thing they do, they go
Speaker 1: to Harry Grimbridge's closed novelty store and they do some
Speaker 1: detective work, or I guess Stacy Nelkin has done the
Speaker 1: detective work. Tom Atkins doesn't actually do a lot of
Speaker 1: figuring things out in this movie, mostly like she does.
Speaker 1: And then he's like, okay, And so she she has
Speaker 1: done detective work by looking down events from her father's
Speaker 1: diary and she realizes that that he did everything in
Speaker 1: his schedule up until he was supposed to go up
Speaker 1: to a too restock Halloween masks from the Silver Shamrock Factory,
Speaker 1: which is in a nearby small town called Santa Meira,
Speaker 1: and that's the last thing from his diary that he
Speaker 1: actually did. So they decide they're going to go to
Speaker 1: Santamira to investigate. Uh. And then I gotta say when
Speaker 1: they're when they're about to head out of town, there
Speaker 1: is a really funny scene which always every time I've
Speaker 1: showed this movie Two People, this is one of the
Speaker 1: scenes that makes people laugh the most is where Tom
Speaker 1: Atkins is on the pay phone talking to his ex wife.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, yeah, I gotta be out of town.
Speaker 1: I'll be back soon, look see you later, and then
Speaker 1: he hangs up the phone. And when he and like,
Speaker 1: as he hangs up the phone, somehow he moves and
Speaker 1: the camera moves to reveal a six pack of Miller.
Speaker 1: It's been there the whole time, but it was obscured
Speaker 1: until the until he moves out of frame, and then
Speaker 1: he grabs the six pack and runs straight to the car. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I think we see at this point a
Speaker 1: TV display in a storefront playing the Silver Shamrock commercials.
Speaker 1: So at this point we're definitely like six or seven
Speaker 1: times of seeing it. Yeah, yeah, And I think we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be sick of it. Yeah, we're supposed to
Speaker 1: be sick of hearing the jingle too. But it's also
Speaker 1: growing more and more ominous because we're we're getting in
Speaker 1: increasing info, increasing intelligence on on what exactly this is
Speaker 1: all about. Yeah. So here we have basically the set
Speaker 1: up to the plot. You know, this is the end
Speaker 1: of act one. They're going off to Santa Mira to
Speaker 1: find out what's going on, and we get some narration
Speaker 1: while they're traveling at Tom Atkins or one of them
Speaker 1: is reading about this place. They say it was They
Speaker 1: say Santimira was founded in eighteen eighty seven, grew up
Speaker 1: around a large dairy. Around World War two. A wealthy irishman,
Speaker 1: conal Cochrane converted it into a toy factory silver Shamrock Novelties,
Speaker 1: now given over to the manufacturer and sale of Halloween masks.
Speaker 1: Proud community predominantly Irish. I don't know where they're reading,
Speaker 1: that is, if that's in like the road Atlas or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But as they're driving up there, I gotta comment on
Speaker 1: the landscape so green, so green. Maybe that's just how
Speaker 1: northern California is, but it was beautiful. Yeah yeah. And
Speaker 1: then ultimately we get you know, the entry into the
Speaker 1: creepy town, the town where things are not quite right,
Speaker 1: which is the staple so many horror tales. Uh, and
Speaker 1: it is they pulled off effectively here as well. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're driving I love these parts too. They're driving
Speaker 1: around and everybody's just peeping out at them, peeping out
Speaker 1: through windows and looking around corners as they drive in.
Speaker 1: And Stacy Nelkins says, wow, I feel like a goldfish.
Speaker 1: And and Tom Atkins says, yeah, it's a company town.
Speaker 1: And we see their security cameras everywhere. This is a
Speaker 1: town under strict surveillance. And there's just technology and and
Speaker 1: and it's and it's a panopticon here. And of course,
Speaker 1: as with a with a with a natural panopticon, uh,
Speaker 1: the boss, the oversight can show up at any moment.
Speaker 1: And that's that's one of the things we see here
Speaker 1: is that there's the there's the limb, that's Conald Cochrane
Speaker 1: in there. Oh yeah, after this, so they check into
Speaker 1: a hotel. Yeah, and the the hotel proprietor or motel.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a place that's got these little like
Speaker 1: uh rooms that are side by side at one level
Speaker 1: that are this garish combination of pink and white. Um.
Speaker 1: And the proprietor as this this limo cruises down the street,
Speaker 1: he says, ah, here's Mr Cochrane. Now, he says, he's
Speaker 1: a great man, Conald Cochrane, a true genius. And and
Speaker 1: and it is We We get more information on this later,
Speaker 1: but he was a maker of toys but also a
Speaker 1: collector and ultimately a master of automatons because uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the lines are drawn between you know, old clockwork novelties
Speaker 1: and these modern android servants that he's created to carry
Speaker 1: out his uh, his strange plan. Yeah. Now, so far
Speaker 1: this movie is a little light on characters for a
Speaker 1: horror movie, because you know, a horror movie, especially a
Speaker 1: more vulgar one, it's always got to have some characters
Speaker 1: who must suffer an ill fate that can't be you know,
Speaker 1: can't be visited it upon your main characters, at least
Speaker 1: not until the end. Um. So some other people show up.
Speaker 1: That's right. We have this family in an RV and
Speaker 1: uh and and there're a lot there, Yes, they're a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're in a Winnebago. I think they're they're blasting loud music. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have the most the world's most disgusting redheaded child.
Speaker 1: Dad's name is Buddy Cup for he's from San Diego,
Speaker 1: and he's like a big halloween store guy, I think,
Speaker 1: or costume store or something. He he buys a lot
Speaker 1: of silver sham rock masks and uh. And then they
Speaker 1: reveal their child, Buddy Jr. And as Buddy Jr. Is
Speaker 1: like riding off on his bicycle, he gives his mom
Speaker 1: the finger. So very very ill behaved child. And I
Speaker 1: think I recall from the Tommy Lee Wallace commentary track
Speaker 1: him saying that the kid who plays the obnoxious child
Speaker 1: grew up to become like a priest or a rabbi
Speaker 1: or something. So, yeah, they're in town. Apparently people come
Speaker 1: to the company town to to buy wholesale masks and
Speaker 1: other products so that they can sell them at they're
Speaker 1: like their mom and pop shop or in Wayne, or
Speaker 1: or a chain they happen to run. How that seems
Speaker 1: to be the situation here. Yeah, but it's already like
Speaker 1: two days till Halloween. It seems a little late for
Speaker 1: them to be like scoping out sources for Halloween masks.
Speaker 1: Yeah you think, I mean, it's it seems to be
Speaker 1: the case at least now like they stopped they start
Speaker 1: clearing out the Halloween stuff that close to the date,
Speaker 1: it's time to start selling all that Christmas stuff. Yeah
Speaker 1: uh oh, but another buyer arrives at the motel. This
Speaker 1: is like an angry lady who's The character is named
Speaker 1: Marge Gutman. She's played by Garden Stevens, who at some
Speaker 1: point Tom Atkins was her husband. Uh so in real life.
Speaker 1: But anyway, on the detective front, you get Tom Atkins.
Speaker 1: He reveals that, oh, Harry grim Bridge was here. He
Speaker 1: stayed at the motel right before he disappeared. So so
Speaker 1: he goes and he tells Stacy Nelkin that and she's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: let's go right to the factory and learn more. And
Speaker 1: Tom goes, woe, slow down, I need to drink first. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then here also we get some of the development
Speaker 1: of the absolutely the just the baffling and totally inappropriate
Speaker 1: love story. Uh that that makes no sense, makes no sense.
Speaker 1: And then she's a robot. Yeah, yeah, totally unearned love story.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are plenty of of, you know, solid
Speaker 1: tales you can turn to where people in in in
Speaker 1: situations of great stress are brought together romantically. You know,
Speaker 1: it can be earned, but here it is absolutely not learned.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just as as if someone said, and
Speaker 1: then we have a love story here, right to sell
Speaker 1: some more tickets, and they're like, okay, we'll make it happen.
Speaker 1: Then yeah. Anyway, So so there's like a very WTF
Speaker 1: kiss and then and then we cut to like more
Speaker 1: about the town. So we see the curfew going into
Speaker 1: effect and uh, and so we we learned that Santamira
Speaker 1: has a curfew, curfew beginning in the evenings, which is
Speaker 1: announced over these mounted loud speakers town wide. I think
Speaker 1: this must be the part that was, um, what's Jamie
Speaker 1: Lee Curtis doing? Then ouncer voice Jamie Lee curfew if
Speaker 1: you will, right, And then we get lots of great
Speaker 1: empty shots of the town. Again it's that it's that
Speaker 1: wonderful Dean Cundy magic, you know, just the the the
Speaker 1: empty settings. Uh, that that he knows how to pick
Speaker 1: out in frame so well. And then a great scene
Speaker 1: between Tom Atkins and the town drunk. So tom Atkins
Speaker 1: is out breaking curfew for some reason. I guess he
Speaker 1: was going to a liquor store because he is somehow
Speaker 1: acquired liquor at the beginning of the scene. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a good This is a great sequence though, because
Speaker 1: this is another staple. You come to the weird town
Speaker 1: where something's not up. What do you do, Well, you
Speaker 1: get some you find the town drunk, and you get
Speaker 1: him some liquor and then he'll spill the beans. He'll
Speaker 1: tell you about all the dark, horrible secrets going on here.
Speaker 1: But this was like incidental, Like tom Atkins clearly he
Speaker 1: bought the liquor for himself, and then when he meets
Speaker 1: the town drunk, he's like, yeah, okay, you can have some,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah. In other tales, it's very intentional, like
Speaker 1: here's the guy. I need to milk this source to
Speaker 1: find out what's going on. Here's just a happy accident.
Speaker 1: But the the guy tells him. He he informs tom Atkins,
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, here's the deal. Conald Cochrane. Uh, he
Speaker 1: brought all of his factory workers in from the outside.
Speaker 1: He won't hire any locals like me, so I I
Speaker 1: hate him. And he's he's heard strange rumors about uh
Speaker 1: unsavory of doings at the factory, and he says he's
Speaker 1: going to make a bunch of Molotov cocktails and burn
Speaker 1: the place down. Bad move, because of course, uh, the
Speaker 1: ears of the corporation are everywhere, so that the androids
Speaker 1: come from him and they rip his head off. Dick
Speaker 1: Warlock appears and literally pulls the town Drunk's head off,
Speaker 1: just pulls it off with his hands. And now somewhere
Speaker 1: around here we find out that Tom Atkins. He calls
Speaker 1: his friend back in the lab and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's the deal with that? Uh with the with the remains,
Speaker 1: And she's like, somebody got this all screwed up. We
Speaker 1: were running tests on parts of the car. Nothing here
Speaker 1: but metal and plastic. Uh now what was the next
Speaker 1: I think? After this, it just goes to Marge Gutman,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the toy store Halloween Store
Speaker 1: our owners, who starts messing around ill advisedly with her
Speaker 1: silver shamrock mask. Yeah, the badge comes off and it
Speaker 1: ends up being triggered. Uh yeah, she messes with the
Speaker 1: silver shamrock tech and then it gets shocked directly in
Speaker 1: the teeth with horrifying results like it like glass. Her
Speaker 1: face open, and then these big crickets start wandering out
Speaker 1: of her mouth. And Uh. I had to look this
Speaker 1: up because I for the first time I was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: those are not really crickets I'm used to seeing. It
Speaker 1: turns out their Jerusalem crickets native to the Western United States. Um,
Speaker 1: they actually have nothing to do with Jerusalem. But um,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen those crickets before, Well that's why.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, well there there are some cool looking bugs
Speaker 1: in this, but I didn't bug wrangling on the film.
Speaker 1: And she's reading a weird looking book right before she
Speaker 1: blasts her teeth off. Oh yeah, I had to look
Speaker 1: at Up to the Eagles Gift by Carlos Costaaneta um
Speaker 1: quote A challenging foray into the Heart of Sorcery creates
Speaker 1: a landscape full of terrors, mysterious forces and sites, and
Speaker 1: landscape of the sorcerer's realm of brilliant visions, lonely task
Speaker 1: and human warmth and comradeship. That's the just the Amazon
Speaker 1: description for that book. I've never heard of it before.
Speaker 1: But a pan maybe he was, you know, a flash
Speaker 1: in the pan back in the day. Yeah, I've definitely
Speaker 1: heard of the author, but I don't know that book.
Speaker 1: Ye contains sorceress. So there you go, there you go.
Speaker 1: But of course, white lab coats and a white van
Speaker 1: arrived to remove the body. Um, and they're like, she's
Speaker 1: going to get medical care, and so they're they're taking
Speaker 1: her out. Uh, and and Tom Atkins and and Stacy
Speaker 1: Nell can come out. And they're like what's going on?
Speaker 1: And uh, Conald Cochrane arrives. I think this is the
Speaker 1: first time we actually see Dan or hardly. He he
Speaker 1: arrives in person to reassure them. He's like, don't worry,
Speaker 1: we will be getting the very the very best cared
Speaker 1: off factory. We have a wonderful facility. Yes, yes, he's
Speaker 1: he's very hands on. Uh, it's it's excellent. So the
Speaker 1: next day they go to the Silver Shamrock factory for
Speaker 1: a tour along with the Buddy Cup for family, and
Speaker 1: the tour is given by Connal Cochrane himself. I should
Speaker 1: say that I know from the commentary that the exterior
Speaker 1: of the factory was actually filmed at a dairy works
Speaker 1: that manufactured like powdered milk products. And this is in
Speaker 1: a town in California. I think that was called Little Lada.
Speaker 1: And uh, the interior shop floor where you see them
Speaker 1: making the masks was actually the legendary Don Post Studios
Speaker 1: in l A, which is a famous mask making studio.
Speaker 1: Of course, this was the studio that made the William
Speaker 1: Shatner mask that was spray painted white to create the
Speaker 1: Michael Myers mask in the original Halloween. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: nnate No that this this sequence is also fun because
Speaker 1: you know, nothing's good is going to come of any
Speaker 1: of this. But the two the the tour of the factory. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was slightly reminiscent of Willy Wonka's Tour of the factory,
Speaker 1: you know where he's like, you know, this is where
Speaker 1: the magic happened. And don't don't worry about what goes
Speaker 1: on back there behind those doors. It's quality control. You
Speaker 1: don't need to worry about it. Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not qualite. Uh final processing, final processing, yes, right, they
Speaker 1: get curious about they see these doors labeled final processing,
Speaker 1: and uh you know, oh one of the Buddy Jr.
Speaker 1: He tries to grab a mask. He's like, I want
Speaker 1: this mask, and Conald Cochrane's like, hasn't been through final processing.
Speaker 1: They are no good until they go through final processing. Uh.
Speaker 1: So he gets in a finally processed mask instead, which
Speaker 1: I think that means the ones that have not been
Speaker 1: through final processing are not yet lethal. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: have that stone hinge microchip that will fry your head
Speaker 1: and turn your brains into creepy Crawley's. There's there's another
Speaker 1: great part at this factory. Tour where um, the factory
Speaker 1: also includes like a museum of Conald Cochrane's other creations.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a bunch of automata and uh and
Speaker 1: other kind of toys and things. But also Buddy cut
Speaker 1: for explains to Tom Atkins, He's like, don't you know
Speaker 1: about Conald Cochrane? He says he invented sticky toilet paper,
Speaker 1: So he's some kind of famous novelty genius who invented
Speaker 1: like a million iconic toys and practical jokes. He's like
Speaker 1: the Nicola Tesla of fake vomit. Yeah, but but also
Speaker 1: get created killer androids and has orchestrated this massive like
Speaker 1: international plot like you know, like Interpol would be interested
Speaker 1: in what he's doing here, uh too, in order to
Speaker 1: bring about like the mass sacrifice of of countless children,
Speaker 1: so as to we're not exactly sure. And that's the
Speaker 1: and and that's the beauty of it. Like we we
Speaker 1: as normal humans, should not fully understand what a powerful
Speaker 1: warlock is trying to do, Like is he is he
Speaker 1: trying to maintain cosmic balance? Is he accumulating um, you know,
Speaker 1: divine powers for himself? I don't know that's warlock business.
Speaker 1: That's not human business. The less we understand, the more
Speaker 1: darkly magical it is. We do get bit of a
Speaker 1: Bond villain explanation later, but it doesn't seem to explain
Speaker 1: everything like he gives. He gives the Blowfeld speech, but
Speaker 1: it only goes like a quarter of the way to
Speaker 1: really explaining what's going on. I think he even says
Speaker 1: something to the effect that a Tom Atkins character. He's like, like,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll have to figure out the rest for yourself.
Speaker 1: A magician never reveals his that a magician never reveals
Speaker 1: his secrets. Yeah, I love that. Uh But so anyway,
Speaker 1: later that night, Ellie disappears, and Chalice discovers that she's gone,
Speaker 1: and he's ambushed by a bunch of the gray suited
Speaker 1: creeps and he and you get since that he's starting
Speaker 1: to figure out what's wrong with these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: could they be not human in some way? So he
Speaker 1: goes he escapes into the night, and eventually he breaks
Speaker 1: into the factory to see if he can find Ellie there.
Speaker 1: So a bunch of stuff happens there. He comes across
Speaker 1: this creepy knitting automaton, which I love, and he accidentally
Speaker 1: knocks its head off, and then he gets into a
Speaker 1: fight with an android played by Dick Warlock, and uh, well,
Speaker 1: one thing I like about Dick Warlock in this movie
Speaker 1: is that he is repeatedly shot from the neck down,
Speaker 1: just like Michael Myers in the original Halloween. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: but anyway, so he fights him and eventually tom Atkins
Speaker 1: overpowers this this powerful androids, so you know, good on him.
Speaker 1: He makes the orange juice goop come out of his mouth.
Speaker 1: But then he gets captured and uh, Conald Cochrane comes
Speaker 1: out with more androids and they grab him and then
Speaker 1: uh so he's their prisoner now, and then finally goes
Speaker 1: to the last day. It's Sunday, October thirty one. Uh
Speaker 1: and I guess I might skip lightly over the very
Speaker 1: last things to happen in the movie. But but of
Speaker 1: course we're now at the Finnish line, We're at Halloween,
Speaker 1: and uh and you get to see the whole plot revealed.
Speaker 1: So there's a great scene where Tom Atkins has led
Speaker 1: through this big warehouse. I guess this is final processing,
Speaker 1: and you see the huge slab of stone that is
Speaker 1: supposedly a stolen piece of stone hinge. Uh. Conald Cochrane says,
Speaker 1: it is a power in it, a force every even
Speaker 1: a particle of it. And he reveals the plot, the
Speaker 1: one we described earlier, which is that he is using
Speaker 1: pieces of a magic rock from Stonehenge to put those
Speaker 1: pieces in microchips that are embedded in each badge that
Speaker 1: is on each Silver Shamrock mask. And then he shows
Speaker 1: via a demonstration on the on Buddy Jr. Of the
Speaker 1: Cup First Child, that when it is triggered by watching
Speaker 1: the Silver Shamrock commercial with the special signal embedded, it
Speaker 1: makes the microchip like shoot out a laser that turns
Speaker 1: your head into animals, into like snakes and bugs that
Speaker 1: run all over the place. Yeah, And we see this
Speaker 1: go down and like the the in the test room
Speaker 1: and this this the steel plated kind of bunker version,
Speaker 1: like a replica of the the American living Room, and
Speaker 1: it's a horrific scene. Like you know, the boy he
Speaker 1: studies melting inside that mask and bugs are coming out.
Speaker 1: He's in this rest. The mother faints, the fathers screaming.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a rough sequence and we see Tom
Speaker 1: Atkins reacting to it as well. He does a very
Speaker 1: shot and aresque performance of anguish. He is like holding
Speaker 1: clinched fists up by his face. It's uh, but but
Speaker 1: the implication is clear, right, So it's that as children
Speaker 1: all over the country watched the commercial Tonight at nine
Speaker 1: while wearing their masks, their heads will suffer the same
Speaker 1: fate as Buddy Junior's head. And then we get a
Speaker 1: great montage of like the commercial music playing, and we
Speaker 1: see scenes labeled as happening in cities all over the
Speaker 1: USA with kids in their silver sham rock masks throughout
Speaker 1: trick or treating. Uh. I think it's the kids from
Speaker 1: Phoenix in the sequence that are used on the posters
Speaker 1: for the movie. Yeah, yeah, I think we've seen you
Speaker 1: see New Orleans in there. Um, I don't think we
Speaker 1: saw Atlanta. I feel like I would have remembered that more. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's implied that this is about to go
Speaker 1: down and just across the United States. Okay, Well, eventually
Speaker 1: we get to the part where Tom Atkins is like
Speaker 1: tied to a chair and Connald cochrane explains his whole plot.
Speaker 1: So he does the Bond villain speech and uh, and
Speaker 1: I wrote this down because this is good. So he
Speaker 1: partially explains that he says, I do love a good joke,
Speaker 1: and this is the best of all, a joke on
Speaker 1: the children. But there's a better reason. You don't really
Speaker 1: know much about Halloween. You've thought no further than the
Speaker 1: strange custom of having your children wear masks and go
Speaker 1: out begging for candy. It was the start of our
Speaker 1: year in our old Celtic lands, and we'd be waiting
Speaker 1: in our houses of wattles and clay. The barriers would
Speaker 1: be down, you see, between the real and the unreal,
Speaker 1: and the dead might be lurking in to sit by
Speaker 1: our fires of turf. Halloween, the festival of Sawin, the
Speaker 1: last great One, took place three thousand years ago, and
Speaker 1: the hills ran red with the blood of animals and children.
Speaker 1: And Tom Atkins says, sacrifices, and he says, part of
Speaker 1: our world, part of our craft. Witchcraft to us, it
Speaker 1: was a way of controlling our environment. Not so different
Speaker 1: now it's time again. In the end, we don't decide
Speaker 1: these things, you know, the planets do. They're in alignment,
Speaker 1: and it's time again. The world's going to change tonight. Doctor.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you'll be able to watch it. And Happy Helloween. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a wonderful villain monologue and maybe one
Speaker 1: maybe one of the best. I'm a little biased, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty great because he doesn't reveal everything, but he
Speaker 1: he he tips his his his hand a bit and
Speaker 1: uh and and relishes it. You know, he's this is
Speaker 1: a man who enjoys his job and and does just
Speaker 1: paint this the this wonderfully dark and bloody picture, you know,
Speaker 1: like bringing to mind the idea of the of of
Speaker 1: the you know, of the fires of turf, you know,
Speaker 1: and the old festivals and the hills running with blood. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the idea that we've invited this thing into our
Speaker 1: lives without really understanding the deep truth of it, which uh,
Speaker 1: you know works on several level. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the the the you know, certainly the scary movie thing
Speaker 1: is like you didn't really think Halloween was was harmless.
Speaker 1: It's actually harmful. But also the technological side of it.
Speaker 1: You let this technology into your lives, you gave it
Speaker 1: to your children, and you didn't think that there would
Speaker 1: be ramifications for that. Well tonight there are ramifications. Right.
Speaker 1: You thought this was just fun, but actually there are
Speaker 1: real demons in it and your your child's head will
Speaker 1: be reduced to crickets. Yeah, and uh, I mean it
Speaker 1: gives me kind of chills to think about it, especially
Speaker 1: when you think about about the technology today and uh
Speaker 1: and uh and and the degree to which we've handed
Speaker 1: this technology to our children and and in many cases
Speaker 1: thought nothing of it or thought not enough of it.
Speaker 1: Really drives it is one of the dozens of ways
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, you can't decide like, is
Speaker 1: this movie great because it's ridiculous and hilarious or is
Speaker 1: it actually just great? It's it's kind of both. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree, uh and and uh and you again,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna get into the ultimate spot others here,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it maintains this level of quality throughout.
Speaker 1: It doesn't, you know, totally sell it out in the end.
Speaker 1: In fact, it has has a pretty great ending. I think, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we did already mentioned that the big twist with with
Speaker 1: Ellie turning out to be an android at the end,
Speaker 1: so they escape. He escapes the sort of bond execution
Speaker 1: trap where Conal cochrane leaves him with a mask on
Speaker 1: and he's like, you're gonna watch the commercial and it
Speaker 1: will melt your head, but he somehow gets out of that,
Speaker 1: he finds a way out, he escapes the factory with Ellie.
Speaker 1: But then yeah, she turns on him and starts, I think,
Speaker 1: trying to choke him while he's driving a car. And
Speaker 1: uh and yeah, that whole sequence is just if you
Speaker 1: watch this with friends, people who don't know what's coming,
Speaker 1: they will be screaming, all right, well, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and end it there then, But I have a
Speaker 1: feeling we're gonna be discussing this one a good bit
Speaker 1: more on listener mail in the future. So if you
Speaker 1: have thoughts about the deep truth of Halloween three, right
Speaker 1: in and talk to us about it. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. We'd love to discussed this more. Really,
Speaker 1: any any excuse to talk more about Halloween three, we
Speaker 1: are down. Um, if you haven't seen Halloween three and
Speaker 1: uh and you would like to see it, well, luckily
Speaker 1: for you, it is widely available as a digital purchase
Speaker 1: or rental, and there have also been some really nice
Speaker 1: blue ray disks that have come out over the years.
Speaker 1: And who knows, I don't know. As we get closer
Speaker 1: to Halloween itself, perhaps it will be streaming on some
Speaker 1: service or another. Who knows, maybe like the Silver Shamrock jingle,
Speaker 1: it'll just it'll just suddenly appear on your television and
Speaker 1: it will be in your life. I wanted to have
Speaker 1: some pithy Conald Cochrane style saying here, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: think of one. Al Right. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: listen to more Weird House Cinema publishes every Friday, and
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Corp Science
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday's Artifact on Wednesday's listener Mail
Speaker 1: on Mondays in a rerun over the weekend. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can e mail us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.