Weirdhouse Cinema: TerrorVision

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe tune their satellite dish to 1986 and discuss the outrageous sci-fi horror camp-fest that is Ted Nicolaou’s “TerrorVision,” starring Gerrit Graham and Mary Woronov. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe mcformack. And
today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
looking at the nineteen eighty six science fiction horror comedy
Terror Vision. I would call this movie a festival of
bad taste.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yes, Terror Vision nineteen eighty six is a campy, cheesy,
over the top send up of TV trash culture. And
I think one of the reasons that I love it
so much I didn't see this one back in the day.
I only saw this in the last ten years or
so for the first time. But I think it perfectly
captures for me the feeling of watching tons of late

(00:55):
night television in the nineteen nineties, especially the kind of
stuff you'd encounter on USA Up All Night, which ran
nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety eight, and other examples
of late night programming. You never knew what sort of camp, sweeze,
outrighte horror or just sheer weirdness you might encounter, and
for better or worse, likely worse, you also used all

(01:15):
of this content to sort of try and figure out
how the world works.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Oh no, that's a terrible way to figure out how
the world works.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I mean this it was it was the nineties. TV
helped raise us, and you know, we trusted that it
knew what it was doing. And I think that kind
of energy is also spoofed somewhat.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
And in this picture, when I say it's a festival
of bad taste, I mean that deliberately in that it
seems like every element of the film was sort of
intentionally selected to turn up the gain on tastelessness in
whatever way it could, so like the monsters in it
are intentionally gross. It does get into melt movie territory.

(01:58):
There's just a lot of like ooh, is in kind
of like barf inducing texture. In fact, even one of
the characters looks at the monster and just says, he's
so barfy. But then on top of that, the film
is just full like a lot of the satire in
it is visual satire. It like doesn't it's not even
in the script. It's just like the way characters are

(02:21):
dressed and the interior sets and everything are structured in
such a way as to be maximally offensive to the eye,
to your sense of like color coordination and generally to
your sense of like cultural aesthetics or taste, like everything
is gaudy and over the top, and in a way
I think is meant to be a kind of I
don't know exactly what this movie is going for. I

(02:43):
don't know if it is a satire of American culture
in the nineteen eighties or a satire of the way
American culture is typically depicted on TV in the nineteen eighties.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, And I think it can kind of be both
when you get into this idea of here's the way
things are depicted and then in media, and then that
media is consumed, and then via consumption of that media,
is it then reproduced in culture?

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Okay, well, yeah, and this movie is in many ways
about media consumption. The primary thing people do in this
movie is watch television and then in various ways become
affected by what's on the television, sometimes literally, because what's
on the television is a monster that comes out of
the screen and then eats and replicates the body of Brampa.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yes, yes, yeah, it's it's a really fun send up,
I believe, if if I remember correctly from some of
the extras, Director Ted Nicolau said that he thinks of
the set and visual feel of Terror Vision as an
operatic Italian exaggeration of American culture, because, as we'll discuss,

(03:51):
this was filmed in Rome, and so a lot of
a lot of the crew members were Italian filmmakers.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Oh that's interesting because I feel like I quite often
able to detect even subdermal Italian influences in film, and
I wouldn't have been able to tell you that about
this one.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, I wouldn't say it has a particular Italian feel
to it, but yeah, this one's a fun one. It's
I think it's also what you might classify as a
satellite TV panic movie. Movies are stories that use fantasy
to explore the suddenly expansive reach of cable and satellite television,
as well as the feeling of perhaps overchoice that may

(04:29):
set in. I think the only other prime example of
this subgenre, or perhaps sub subgenre is Stay Tuned from
nineteen ninety two that's directed by Peter Hyams of Time
Coop Fame, starring John Ritter and Eugene Levy. And it's
interesting that that movie's working title was also Terror Vision,
and that one involved a family literally sucked into the

(04:50):
world of TV programming. Been a long time since I've
seen that one, but I think the family is perhaps
more likable in that one. One thing that Ted Nicolau
has said about the Family and Terror Vision is that, yes,
they're all over the top stereotypes, and they're not supposed
to be particularly likable because you want to feel okay
when they all inevitably are eaten by the monster. Now

(05:12):
in this movie, we're also going back to band camp
because this is an Empire International picture, so it was
produced by Charles Band and it was definitely developed title
and poster first, and yeah, it was a shot back
to back in Rome alongside nineteen eighty six is trove Man.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
When those Charles Band production tags with the flame textured
lettering come on at the beginning of the movie, they
are so evocative they make me feel like I am
nineteen years old. I'm sitting on the carpeted floor in
somebody's apartment living room. The fibers of the carpet are
just sequinned with little yellow bits of popcorn, both fresh

(05:51):
and fossilized. It's like one thirty five am. It's a Tuesday,
and the movie is just starting.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
There you go, yeahs and by the light of the
TV screen. My elevator pitch for this one, I think
is satellite TV is bridging the gap between the dysfunctional
American family and dysfunctional alien civilizations.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
Is the alien civilization dysfunctional? I feel like the most
sympathetic character in the movie is actually the reptilian creature
who comes through the television screen to try to help
deal with the mess, but then it's murdered by a
TV horror host.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yes, he is in a way the most likable character,
the most noble character, but also he's trying to clean
up his own whoopsie. You know, like, this is a
culture that raises monstrous pets, and then when they get
too big and two monsterus, they just like zap them
across the universe and don't worry about them. So yeah,
I might I might be applying reading too much dysfunction

(06:49):
into their ways, but they kind of created this whole mess. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
There may be some unethical elements in how the machinery
of this alien civilization works, but the one alien we
meet it does seem moderately well intentioned within the range
of his freedom of action.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, yeah, we'll see if he can pull pull it off.
Let's go ahead and listen to part of the trailer. Yeah,
I think JJ on this one. Let's just let's just
have a little bit of it. This trailer feels a
little long and definitely contains spoilers and visual spoilers. So
if you're interested in watching this more or less spoiler free,
I mean, we've already spoiled a few things, and it's

(07:25):
it's the kind of film where you can go into
it with spoilers and you're not going to really ruin
your experience. But let's just get a part of this
the trailer audio here.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
Intellectuals are Kyans, just a typical American family. The only
thing they're missing is a pen. But have we got
a surprise for that. You see, Stanley Putterman's new satellite
TV has just gone on the bleak, and it's drawn
in a creature from out of space. Like all new pets,

(08:02):
this one's causing a little trouble around the house and
he's eating the pottermans out of house and home in
val It seems like this creature will eat anything little,
just about anything.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
You would wrote amost SuDS and coolouse. This suns In
to Metal. All Right, now, if you want to watch
this movie in full before continuing the rest of the episode.
This is a film that was streaming years back. I
think I saw it for the first time on Prime,
back when they had a vast selection of strange films

(08:44):
that you could just comb through. There's not a great
streaming option for it as of this recording, but it
is widely available on Blu Ray. You can actually get
it as a DVD Blu Ray combo with the video
Dead nineteen eighty seven, which otherwise has nothing to do
with this film. But it's a nice, nice Blu Ray edition,
good quality and has a nice thirty minute behind the

(09:06):
scenes featurette. This worth watching as well. We rented it
from Video Trump. All right, let's get into the connections here.
The people who made this film. The writer and director
is Ted Nicolau born nineteen forty nine, writer and director,
probably best known for his work with Charles Band's Empire
in Full Moon Pictures. He graduated from the University of

(09:27):
Texas Film Program and worked as a sound recordist on
nineteen seventy four's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Joe for You,
I included a picture that I saw on Nicolao's Instagram
account that shows him on the set of Texas Chainsaw
Massacre with some recording equipment.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
See just chilling in the Sawyer family's living room here.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
I guess that's the porch. Looks like the porch. He's
out chilling on the porch with the recording equipment. Well,
I guess everyone's inside just sweating it out.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
He looks like Frank Zappa.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yet, well you know that Zappa will come up again
in this episode. But yeah, really, yeah, yeah, he's got
that cool mustache going on here. After this, he worked
as an editor on such films as seventy nine's Tourist Trap,
eighty one's Butcher Baker, nightmare Maker, Goolies and Trancers in
eighty four, Robot Jocks in eighty nine, and Trancers two

(10:19):
in ninety one. So at least a couple of films
that we've watched.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Have you ever seen Tourist Trap? That one is weird?

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Is this the one where people were buried up to
their necks in the dirt or is this a different one?

Speaker 3 (10:31):
Maybe though I don't remember that element. It's a movie
where it's sort of a Texas Chainsaw style movie where
you know, some city kids come to the rural estate
of a creepy guy in Texas. But the creepy guy
is Chuck Connors, like he plays like a country music
guy in The Blues Brothers.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Okay, you know, now that I look at it, I
think I haven't seen Tourist Trap. I think I watched
a riff track version of this years back. I'm thinking
about some other film with the buried up to your
neck situation. I'm thinking of Motel Hell by the Way
from nineteen eighty, which has Rory Calhoun in it. But
that's one that I've never watched. But I remember my

(11:15):
aunt explaining the plot to me when I was a
very young child, and I was like horrified that such
a film existed. So I think maybe that's kept me
from seeing it, even though it is I think supposed
to be a satire of things like the Texas chainsaw massacre.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
I just looked it up and Chuck Connors is not
in The Blues Brothers, So I don't know why I
said that earlier.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Well, it's an extensive cast. Easy to get lost in
the cast of that film.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
His wiki says that Chuck Connors did meet with leand
Brezhnev at some point.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Okay, well anyway, Ted Nikolau. His first writing and directing
credit is nineteen eighty four as the Dungeon Master, followed
by the Linda Blair movie Savage Island in eighty five.
As we mentioned, he was brought in to bring Charles
bands post and title idea to life with Terror Vision,
and he pushed, but he got to create its direction
from there, and so he pushed hard to take the

(12:08):
concept into comedic and camp territory, and that's where we
end up landing post Terror Vision, which was not a success.
Upon release, he went on to direct Subspecies two and three.
I've heard that Subspecies two is the best one, by
the way, as well as Subspecies four and five. He
also directed ninety two s Bad Channels, which touches on

(12:28):
similar themes as TerrorVision, but with radio and music video.
He also directed two thousand and four's Puppet Master Versus
Demonic Toys.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
If he did another TV satire movie, I'd be kind
of interested to see that one back to back the
Bad Channels one there, because Terror Vision seems to simultaneously
skewer American TV consumption and TV programming, but also skewers
the critique of such like the characters who are going

(12:57):
on about how bad television is are also made the
subject of fun.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah. So I hope everyone understands the concept here that
it's not a film that comes off as really judge
or anything like. It's not so serious in its satire perhaps,
and it is ultimately, you know, played for laughs and fun.
Not at all.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
No, it is wacky and again a festival of bad taste.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Well, let's talk about the family in this, a family
that consists of a husband, a wife, a daughter, a son,
and a grandfather that in this case lives with them.
Kind of a structure that's very similar to that of
the Simpsons.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Ah okay, yes, except if Grandpa Simpson lived in a
fallout shelter under the Simpsons house exactly.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
So let's start with the daughter, Susie Putterman played by
Dianne Franklin born nineteen sixty two, iconic eighties teen actor
who appeared in The The Last American Virgin and Amityville
two in nineteen eighty two. She was in Better Off
Dead and in nineteen eighty five, and also Bill and
Ted's Excellent Adventure in eighty nine. She also did a

(14:05):
fair amount of TV and has remained active to this
day in various productions. Susie Petterman is an MTV eighties
kid with I don't know, how would you how would
you describe the fashions of Susie Putterman.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Well, she's sort of a cross between I think what
was considered, you know, pop music fashionable at the time,
So the kind of dress of like Pat Benatar or
Cindy Lauper, but then crossed with an actual Barbie doll,
so very over the top, neon pink kind of clothing
and stuff like that. And she also has really really
big hair. Her hair extends I'd say at least ten

(14:40):
inches off of her scalp.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah. Her her entire identity seems to be based on
watching MTV, which again is perfect fits the theme perfectly.
And Franklin is absolutely great in the role. Just the
right amount of campyus it's over the top and also
just a little bit green in all the right ways
for a movie like this.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, I think she understood what was going on all right.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Then we have the younger son, Sherman Putterman, played by
Chad Allen born nineteen seventy four eighties child actor who
also did a lot of TV. Voiced Charlie Brown on
Happy New Year Charlie Brown in eighty six prior to
this film, and his TV credits include such shows as
Webster Tales from the Dark Side, Highway to Heaven, Punky Brewster,
Star Trek, The Next Generation, and The Wonder Years. Sherman

(15:26):
is essentially kind of a kid Rambo. He idolizes Grandpa
and is into whatever Grandpa's into, because I guess part
of it is that his actual parents are kind of
completely checked out and chasing their own interests. Right.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
They are hedonistic, materialist eighties yuppies.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
All right, Well let's talk about them. The dad, Stan Putterman,
is played by the excellent they always excellent Garrett Graham
born nineteen forty nine. We've discussed Garrett Graham before, as
he had a small but fun role in another great
nineteen eighty six horror comedy, Chop Mallugh.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
Was he just like a security guard in that?

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, a doomed security guard. I think he was doomed.
I don't remember. He was very distracted.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
I don't think I've seen a movie Garrett Graham was
in where he survived.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, he plays a lot of like mid or early
horror film death characters. I think but Yeah. Is was
an American stage, television and film actor with a knack
for camp. He appeared in four different Brian to Palm
of films, most notably nineteen seventy four is Phantom of
the Paradise, in which he plays Beef. Graham's other credits

(16:37):
include nineteen seventy seven's Demon Seed, eighty six is Rat Boy,
eighty seven's It's a Live three Island of the Alive
Police Academy six in nineteen eighty nine, and he plays
the titular Bud in Chud two Bud the Chud, also
from nineteen eighty nine. He's in Child's Play two from
nineteen ninety and he did. He has numerous TV credits
as well, including I Mean All Sorts of Stuff, multiple Tracks, Shit, Weird, Science,

(17:01):
Law and Order, and one Tales from the Crypt episode
The Man Who Is Death. His last credit was in
twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
This character Stan is egocentric, hedonistic, seeking of pleasure and adulation,
and he wants to be respected for his skills at
assembling do it yourself home electronics installations, especially the new
satellite Dish.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Now playing his wife. The mom. Raquel Putterman is Mary
Warrenoff born nineteen forty three, another camp and genre legend
that we also mentioned in Chopping Mom because she has
a very small part in that. She started out as
a Warhol superstar what back in the sixties, I believe,
and acted in a ton of B movies, especially Corman films.

(17:48):
She also did a lot of TV and stage work.
I always smile when she shows up in a film
because she's generally an absolute delight. She often appeared in
films alongside friend and fellow actor Paul Martel, her director
and co star in nineteen eighty two's Eating Raoul. Her
other credits include seventy five's Death Race two thousand, which
is a very fun, kind of wacky Corman race movie

(18:11):
like Racing Across the Desert, nineteen seventy nine's Rock and
Roll High School, and nineteen eighty four's Night of the Comet.
She did one episode of The Monster's Horror Anthology TV show,
and she still occasionally acts. She was in two thousand
and nine's House of the.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Devil, Mary Warnow's great I always love to see her.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, in this she's an aerobics enthusiast and general self
absorbed mom. Apparently she was called in to read for
the role of Medusa, who will get to in a bit,
but then campaigned for the role of the mother instead
and she got it, and yeah, I think she's great
in this role, all right. And then we have Grandpa
Putterman played by Bert Remsen, who have nineteen twenty five

(18:52):
through nineteen ninety nine American character actor with a lot
of credits, a lot of TV credits, a lot of
them like war in Westerns going back to the early
nineteen fifties. He pops up in such films as fifty
nine's Port Chop Hill, fifty nine's Destination Space, He's in
nineteen seventy five's Nashville, he's in nineteen ninety's Dick Tracy,
he's in The Bodyguard from ninety two, and he's in

(19:15):
Maverick from ninety four. Like I say, his TV credits
are just really extensive and include things like the original
Outer Limits but also the Andy Griffith Show. Grandpa in
this film is a kooky conspiracy nuts survivalist who again
lives in the family's fallout shelter beneath the house, and
he's a he's an enthusiastic advocate of regenerated lizard tail jerky.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
You know, I thought it was interesting that this is
a character who I would not be surprised to see
in a wacky satirical film of today. But I don't know,
he seems kind of ahead of his time. I guess
there were like apocalypse preppers in the eighties too, but
I don't know that it seems like a less volent

(20:00):
trope from that time.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, all right, now we mentioned Susie Petterman. Well, Susie
has a boyfriend. Her boyfriend is O D, which is
not an Irish name. As the character this chuck about
this in the film, but it's the initials O D
played by John Grys born nineteen fifty seven. Many of
you probably know John Gry's best as Uncle Rico in

(20:24):
two thousand and four as Napoleon Dynamite. He's great in that,
but he's been a fun, weird presence in TV and
film for a long time. Prior to Terror Vision, he
did various teen movies, including Real Genius in eighty five.
Other credits include Running Scared in eighty six. He pops
up in Monster Squad in eighty seven, Fright Night two
in eighty eight, The Grifters in nineteen ninety, Men in

(20:44):
Black in ninety seven, Taken Three in twenty fourteen, and
his TV credits include such shows as The nineties Outer Limits,
Sons of Anarchy, Lost, Creep Corp. LC, and The White Lotus.
So he's all over the place.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
He is in The White Lotus, he's he's the wolf
Man in Monster Squad, he's okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And
you know what, great respect to him in Terror Vision
because much like Diane Franklin, like he gets what's going on,
and in his case, he does not hold back at all.
He just like goes into this role teeth first.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah. On the extras on the disk they interview him
and he's like, yeah, I would. We were just all in.
But at a time or two I'd come up to
Ted Nicolau and it be like, Ted, am I am
I doing too much?

Speaker 4 (21:31):
Here?

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Am I going? Is it this too over the top?
And Nikola would be like, no, No, it's perfect, it's perfect.
Keep doing what you're doing.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
More.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
Spittle should be flying out of your mouth every line
you deliver.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
All right, now we're getting into just a we're gonna try.
I'm gonna try and grow a little shorter on these.
But we have some other bit characters here. There's a
character named Spiro who shows up with his girlfriend Cherry.
Spiro is played by Alejandro Ray, who lived nineteen thirty
through nineteen eighty seven. Argentinian born actor and occasional TV director,
active back into the nineteen fifties. Did a lot of
TV in Westerns, did seventy eight episodes of The Flying Nun,

(22:07):
an episode of Night Gallery pops up in nineteen eighties,
the Ninth Figuration, and you better know he did an
episode of The Love Book.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
He's doing an episode of The Love Boat in this movie.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
He is. Yeah, I guess he's supposed to be an insensitive,
over the top Euroster stereotype, specifically like a Greek stereotype.
I guess. I suppose there's the fact that Nicolau I
assume of Greek descent. I don't know, but yeah, Spiro
and his girlfriend Cherry are adventurous lovers who have been
invited to the Spiderman Home. Cherry is played by Randy

(22:41):
Brooks born nineteen fifty four. She did a lot of
action and crime oriented TV work. She was in nineteen
eighty three's The Man with Two Brains and nineteen eighty
six is Hamburger the Motion Picture. She also has a
bit part in the Michael Crichton written and directed film
Looker from nineteen eighty one. Oh.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
I don't know if I ever even heard of that.
But what is Hamburger the Motion Picture? Is that like
a McDonald's tie in thing.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
It's not what I'm familiar with. It looks like one
of these like over the top comedy films of the
time that either didn't resonate then and certainly hasn't continued
to resonate now. Like you never hear, I never hear
anything about it. Maybe it's great, but I've never seen it.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Oh, I just looked it up. Okay, it says it
is one of the nineteen eighties teen sex comedy movies.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
All Right, there you go.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
Not a not a wonderful genre that people love revisiting
this and the poster is just repulsive. It's just like
a bunch of people inside a Hamburger bun.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
It it was acceptable in the eighties. But anyway, we
mentioned there was going to be a Medusa in this.
We do have a character named Medusa played by Jennifer
Richards born nineteen forty eight Pleasure. Essentially, this is a
late night horror host in the vein of Elvira. She
in this film. She also seems to have a nine

(24:02):
hundred number you can call, which also is like spot
on for memories of watching late night television, you know,
particularly in the nineties or I guess the late eighties.
Richard's credits include a fair amount of TV, including Night Court,
Mama's Family, and Star Trek The Next Generation.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Another teeth first performance. She's just like chomping the scenery.
She's doing great.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Speaking of teeth, we also have funny Carl Davis in this.
He plays his character Norton, who's the satellite dish guy.
I think most people know him from his most culturally
important role, and that is playing Rabbit in Transfers too.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
You know, I was thinking where would more people know
him from, and it would probably be he's like the
guy who complains about his food at the Judge Reinhold's
restaurant in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And I guess
he's also in Filma and Louise. Don't remember what he
is in that he but he Yeah. When I was like,
I recognize this guy. What do I recognize him from?

(25:03):
It was transfers To. He's the what like, he's a
hospital orderly who helps one of Jack Death's reincarnated time
travel wives escape from an institution controlled by the bad guys.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
I believe that's it. I believe you nailed it, Joe. Okay, Yeah,
I would say Sonny Carl Davis is probably recognized for
films like Filma and Luise and Fast Times at Richmond High,
but he is known for playing Rabbit, specifically in transfers To.
But this character also came back in multiple Evil Bong movies,
so you know there's a whole He has an expanded

(25:41):
role within the Charles Band expanded cinematic universe. Right now,
going behind the scenes, we have to mention that John
Carl Beechler worked on this this film Born. He lived
nineteen fifty two through twenty nineteen. A practical special effects
and makeup legend.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
John Carl Beckler to make slime. He liked to make
like makeup effects and creature models and stuff that were
covered in some sort of mucus.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, and there's a lot of mucus to go around
in this film. He's come up on the show before
because he did special effects on nineteen eighty six The Eliminators,
which I guess wasn't particularly mucusy, But he also worked
on nineteen eighty nine's Arena, which definitely had its sheriff mucus.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
The Eliminators was the Bayou Betty movie, and the Arena
was the one where the guy fights people. He fights aliens.
He like has boxing matches with giant crickets.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
That's right. Beekler worked on a number of cult classic
horror films, including eighty five's Reanimator eighty six Is From Beyond,
both very drippy movies. Just yeah, a master of flesh
and blood in films like this. He also had a
great career as a director, filming eighty six's trollll So
at the time of this movie, he was editing Troll

(26:59):
at night because they had just wrapped and he was
shooting this during the day, working on special effects on
this during the day. All in Rome, let's see. He
also directed eighty seven Cellar Dweller. He directed Friday the
Thirteenth and New Blood, and also nineteen nineties Goolies Go
to College, just to name a few. What are the
Goolies major in toilet studies?

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Sure, he did the Friday the Thirteenth movie with the
psychic girl in it. It's the one that's Jason versus
the girl who has Telekinesis.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
That one's great? I love that one. It's one of
the best. Yeah, and Jason looks at his best in that.
It's just amazing.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Look, agreed, that's the first Kane Hodder movie and has
one of the best Jason costume designs.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, absolutely well. In this he designed and built the
Hungry Beast, which we'll explain in the pit, based on
some ideas from Ted Nicolau. Apparently they wanted a monster
that looked horrifying and stupid at the same time. I
think they nailed it all right. Quick note on the
music here, So the score is by Richard Band. This

(28:05):
is Charles Band's brother born nineteen fifty three, who has
just worked extensively on Empire and Full Moon Pictures. So
just you know, if you can name a Full Moon picture,
he probably scored it. The score here is aggressively campy
and kooky, but effective. Apparently Nicolau was originally in talks

(28:25):
with both the Cramps and Frank Zappa about possibly scoring
the film, but and they didn't approach band at first
because they weren't sure he was going to be able
to really ratchet up the camp, but he accepted the challenge,
and I think it works pretty well.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Wow, I could see the Cramps or Frank Zappa being
perfect for this that. Yeah, both make sense.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
But then they were able to bring in on the
soundtrack the American art rock band The Fibonaccis, who wrote
and recorded five tracks for the film, including off the
excellent theme song. They came out of the Los Angeles
art punk scene and were from eighty one through eighty eight,
and then I think they came back together in ninety two. Briefly.
Their songs pop up on another of a number of

(29:08):
sort of indie films, on eighty two's Android eighty seven
slam Dance and lead to vocalist Maggie Song also acted
in another eighties weird camp art horror film of note,
nineteen eighty nine's Doctor Caligari has nothing to do with
the cabinet Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, and I'm not sure
it's right for weird House, but it is a trip

(29:30):
if you were interested in that sort of film. Let's
hear just a taste of the theme song terror Vision
by the Fibonaccis. Give us a legal limit on this one.
JJ I love it. I'm not sure if we got

(29:50):
to hear much of the lyrics there, but they're pretty
great and they're like they're really on message. Here, cold
October night, Mom and Dad asleep, creeping as their bedroom door.
I hear the cries of sheep. I dance by the
light of the TV screen all night long. I watched
the Medusa's eyes turn green. But my own reflection I've
never seen love it.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Oh Okay, maybe I'm reading too deep into this, but
the cries of sheep is that so on one hand,
you could say that is like it's just a spooky
horror image sheep are being led to the slaughter, but
also it's like, ah, we are all sheep watching the
TV and just you know, doing whatever, reproducing whatever activities
we see on the screen. But also the line about

(30:32):
Medusa's eyes turned green. But my own reflection I've never
seen again. Am I reading too much into it that
this is saying like the because we are able to
just sort of like hypnotize ourselves with constant media, we
like never have time to self reflect.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, yeah, I think I think it's fair. I think
it's okay, a fair analysis. If you happen to be
a vinyl collector, you can get the original soundtrack and
score on vinyl from a company I'm not familiar with,
wr WTFWW Records, but it includes both the Richard Bands
score and those five tracks by the zibanachis all right, Joe, Well,

(31:20):
shall we go ahead and bang on the satellite dish
and tune into the plot? Right?

Speaker 3 (31:26):
So, I don't think it would make sense to cover
every scene in the plot like we do with some
movies here, because this is more of a wacky satirical film,
So I don't know, it feels weird to do a
full scene by scene recap, but I think we will
zoom in pretty close on like the opening.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
So after those flame textured Charles Band production tags go away,
the movie opens on a miniature model planet surface set
and there is a dark blue alien sky, a red
gas giant looming over the horizon, and a bunch of
towers and monuments and various structures cover and greebles. And
I always love this kind of thing, love a model

(32:04):
planet surface.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah you can. You can definitely spot a piece of
USS Enterprise model kit in there upside down. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
I think there are also some vacuum cleaner attachment parts
that have and spray painted silver.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah. Nice.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
And then we get a little key at the bottom.
It says Planet Pluton Sanitation Department, and then there's a pause,
and then the third line appears. It says mutant creature
disposal unit. That got to laugh out of me. I
don't know that that was good. That's just like very specific.

(32:41):
So then we cut inside straight to an extreme close
up of this disgusting face. It's sort of like a
sentient slice of burned pizza, some gross, wet red wall
of skinless flesh with a single eyeball and a mouth
with barracu to teeth, and it is gargling at us.

(33:03):
Then we pull back and revealed that this face is
behind some kind of glass shield, and then there is
a humanoid alien with a scaly reptilian head banging on
the glass, and the humanoid alien moves over to a
control panel and yanks a lever which apparently incinerates the
wall of pizza monster behind the glass. You know, some

(33:24):
kind of energy fills the room. I guess like they
tried to do in the Green Slime to you know,
incinerate the the green slime that was clinging to the
suits that the astronauts brought back with them from the asteroid.
But much like in the Green Slime, it doesn't work.
Instead of the creature being incinerated, we see a tower
kind of shoot out a little bullet of electricity into

(33:47):
space and it flies around and then bounces between planets
like a pinball in a pinball cabinet, you know, hitting
the bumpers, and then it finally comes straight at the
screen and I think this means that the Pea entity
is coming to Earth.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, that seems like what's going to happen. And you know,
this is one of those films where they they showed
us the monster immediately, which I think works in two
ways for this film. For starters, the monster looks great,
Bee cler hit it out of the park here with
the Hungry Beast. But also the sort of movie this is.
This is not a movie that is built around the

(34:22):
suspense of what will the monster look like?

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Well, yeah, because this is this is not a horror movie.
This is a comedy movie using the conventions of horror,
and you know, keeping the keeping the monsters form more
secret I think works better for the purpose of suspense.
There's something that is funnier about showing the monster right
at the beginning. Then we go to Earth and we

(34:47):
meet our core family. We already talked about these characters,
but briefly, there is Stan the father. That's Garrett Graham.
When you first meet him, he is fiddling with the
install it yourself satellite TV antenna that he just bought.
I think this is picking up on You know, this
movie is not alone in this that there is a
common trope in eighties movies of the suburban dad who

(35:10):
loves to takes great pride in installing expensive electronics himself,
you know, in his new sound system or in setting
up the new television and so forth.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, he's at once overconfident in his own abilities to
tinker with this stuff, but also has no patience for it.
And that is also very demanding of the expertise that's
called in to actually fix it.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
Oh right, which is why we've got Sunny Carl Davis
just like standing there nearby. At first, I thought like, Okay,
is this guy supposed to be like a friend or
a neighbor of Garrett Graham's. But no, he is the
television antenna repair guy and he's standing there drinking drinking
beers out of Garrett Graham's fridge.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
Oh not just any beers there, Heine's. They're Heinekens. This
this movie seems to have been sponsored by Heineken.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
They say the word heinee of at least ten times times.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah. I mean, if it's funny once, just keep doing it.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
It'll be funny the seventh time you talk about guzzling
a heini Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
We also have to note like at this point, we're
outside the house. We'll get to talk about the interior
of the house in a minute, but just outside, it's
clear that this was an interior set that was created
to look like, you know, the outside of this house
probably somewhere in suburban California. But it has this just
wonderful look because on one hand, it doesn't feel one

(36:30):
hundred percent fake. You know, it doesn't feel completely phony.
It feels accurate, but it also feels artificial enough that
we really get into this this wonderful zone that you know,
I would compare it to some of the films of
say Tim Burton artificial satirical America.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah, yeah, I would not have thought of that comparison,
but yeah, the Tim Burton thing, it has a kind
of Edward Scissorhands quality to the satirical picture painted of
subourban America, except it is a little less precious, not
a little, a lot less precious and more wacky and disgusting.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Now inside the house we meet Raquel, that's the mother
played by Mary Warrenov and she's trying to do her aerobics.
This is another thing that I feel like there are
a million movies that have the you know, the wealthy
suburban mom from the eighties who's constantly wearing an aerobics
outfit and doing aerobics along with like a TV program.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yeah, absolutely, absolute stereotype.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Here stereotypes continue with the daughter Suzig and she's dressed.
You know, it's a Pat Benatar kind of thing. There's spandex,
a pink sweater, you know, like thirty different necklaces and
beads and bracelets, multicolored hairdo that comes way up off
the top of her head, big big hair. The son Sherman.
He likes to play army. You know, that's his whole personality. Basically,

(37:57):
he likes to run around with toy guns, and then
later in the movie, it turns out his grandfather has
turned has trained him how to use like grenades and
real machine guns.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah yeah, and I guess Gramps has done most of
the raising of the child, as Dad is too interested
in his own pursuits.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Yes, when we first meet Gramps, he comes through the
front door muttering about some conspiracy involving U two spy planes,
and he's carrying a sign about eating lizards to survive
the apocalypse. And we understand that Gramps's day job is
that he stands on a street corner downtown with this
sign and yells at people and hands out pamphlets about

(38:35):
the end of the world.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah. Yeah, he's wearing this ridiculous outfit. There's like a
military uniform with plastic lizards glued to it and stuff.
It's so over the top, it's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
Now, well, Garrett Graham is working on the satellite dish.
Suddenly there was a giant bolt of lightning from space
and it comes down into the satellite dish. Somehow it
fixes the satellite dish and now the TV's working all right.
And so there's a scene where all the men they're
like holding this remote control for the TV, which is,
you know, the size is bigger than a laptop would be.

(39:06):
Now it's got all these dials and controls on it,
and they're flipping around to enjoy their own favorite channels.
So for a bit they watch like a martial arts movie,
and then they tune into just footage of like troops
marching around from some historical thing, and the Gramps is like, oh,
the troop movements. We've got to watch this. For some reason,

(39:29):
they just as a whole family stand there and watch
pornography for a minute. And then oh, and then they
turned that the daughter's requests. They put it on MTV
and it's some Nigel Toughnell type heavy metal singer going
like eh, And of course Susie is really into it,
but also Mary Warnov she's like, this is wrong. He's

(39:50):
so nasty, but clearly she is into heavy metal also secretly.
Now Grams does not like MTV. He says it is
brain rot, it is the intellectual conspiracy, and he you know,
changes the channel, which ends up being turned to what
is the MEDUSA program. It's called Medusa's midnight horror thon, which,

(40:12):
as you said earlier, Rob is an Elvira style comedically
seductive horror host.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark being the character portrayed
by Cassandra Peterson. That's a campy, over the top, voluptuous
kind of like Queen of the Night. You could compare
this character Elvira to Vampira of decades prior, who, of course,
pops up in the excellent Edwood movie Plan nine from

(40:40):
Outer Space.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
At one point, I think Vampira tried to sue Elvira
for stealing her act, but I don't know how that
court case worked out.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
We love them both, We're not going to choose sides now.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Of course, Gramps turns into the cartoon wolf when Medusa
comes on TV. You know, his eye as are shooting
six feet out of his head, and he comes up
with a way of rationalizing why it's okay to keep
watching this even though you know the MTV was brain rot.
He says, war stories and horror movies are educational. You know,
they're survival oriented. And I loved this because it reminds

(41:17):
me of one of my favorite bits of real world
video ever, which if you've never seen this before, you
should look it up. It is a nineteen seventy nine
reported segment by a local news station in Fort Worth,
Texas about the release of Ridley Scott's Alien, where they've
got a reporter on the ground interviewing people coming out
of the movie theater who have just watched Daien, including

(41:40):
people who brought their small children with them, and so
they're like asking, kids, you know, did you like was
the movie scary? Did you like it? So they talked
to this one boy and he's like, uh, yeah, it
was scary. Yeah, I'm glad I saw it. But then
they go up to this father who is there with
his wife and an elementary school age son, and the
reporter goes, are you sorry, sir you brought your son

(42:00):
along to see Alien? And the father is like, no, ma'am,
I think he needs to know that things like this
could happen in life. No, ma'am, I think you should
have seen it.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
There's something that he needs to know that things could
like that could happen in life. You know.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
I mean, on one hand, this is true. I mean,
Alien is a story that you can learn something from,
you know.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
To be fair to Yeah, okay, I don't know about
things like this could happen depends on how loose you
are with things like this, But yeah, there are good
lessons in Alien, like, for example, if they had just
listened to Ripley and followed quarantine, none of this would
have ever happened.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, just follow protocol. An Alien is essentially a shake
hands with danger in space like this is what happens
when you don't follow protocol. Xenomorph run loud but.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Anyway, Gramp's seems to take the same attitude. In Terror
Vision MTV may be degeneracy, but lusty horror movies are educational.
The events of Terror Vision are contingencies that.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Should be prepared for absolutely.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
At some point here there is a scene where the
parents meet Ode, who is Susie's boyfriend. And again this
is Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite and he is in
full heavy metal gear. You know, he's got all the
leather and the studs, and he's got long hair, and
he is very bill and ted in personality.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Dude, Yeah, he's got chains. He's got a band shirt.
I think it says wasp like wasp on it. I'm
is this a real band? I really am not sure.
I don't know. Maybe it's his band, because we also
learned that he is a genius musician.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Oh yeah, we hear a bit of his band later,
not really enough to make an impression because they start
playing it for the monster later and the monster just
destroys the speakers. But anyway, they first see okay, their
daughter's got a heavy metal boyfriend, and they're all horrified.
But then it seems like they're trying to impress him,
which makes sense because Od is cool. You know. While
while waiting for Susie to get ready, he starts doing

(44:04):
air guitar by himself to no music except the squealing
of a lizard battle on the TV. So, like Gramps
and Sherman are watching Robot Monster. It's robot and it's
that scene where the lizards fight. But I wonder if
you noticed this, rob they're watching Robot Monster, but not

(44:24):
with original audio. It looks like it's a version of
the movie that has been redubbed. I don't know if
that was a rights thing or what.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, I don't know, but I did notice that that
they they clearly redubbed it for use here could have
been audio quality.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
Yeah, So at one point, while they're in the living
room there. Odie looks at Gramps and he goes, hey,
oh dude, what you eaten? And yeah, he says, lizard
tale jerky want to stick And he says, no, thanks,
I just pigged out. But anyway, here we get an
opportunity for Gramps to describe his theory, handing od one

(45:00):
of his pamphlets. His theory is that lizard tails are
the perfect regenerating food source, because he says, you eat
the tail, the lizard don't give a hoot. He just
grows a new one. Then you eat that too.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
Yeah, I'm not sure this actually works in real life,
but no, you know. But then again, one gets the
impression that that grandpa here has signed up for a
number of ideas that don't actually work in real life.
He's again clearly into a lot of conspiracy thinking.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Meanwhile, Garrett Graham and Mary warrenov are having a conversation
about the daughter's boyfriend and they're like, why do kids
dress like that? You know, Ode doesn't he know how
ridiculous he looks? And this is while Garrett Graham is
putting on his like swinger seduction outfit, which is a
shirt with a huge collar opened down to like the
his stomach and wearing a bunch of gold chains.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Oh yeah, the costuming is always on point. Earlier, when
he's working on the satellite dish, he has an ascot. Yes,
it's great.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
There's also somewhere in here on the TV there's a
TV commercial for a TV called the Super TV, the
Super Television, which is shown rotating on a TV screen
on the TV screen, so the TV is showing a
TV that is showing a TV and they're all the
same TV.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Just a blissful holy moment.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
The plot really gets going when Gramps tries to change
the channel again. He wants to look at like the
troop movements again so called. I think this looks like
these are just like old fascist newsreels or something. I
don't know what they are. But he ends up tuning
into the wrong thing. He's tuning into a monster. There's
just like a claw and belching sounds and an eyeball

(46:43):
on the TV screen. And they watched that for a while,
but it seems to be kind of boring because like
nothing's happening. It's just a monster there.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Yeah, this is, of course the hungry base that has
been zapped here from across the galaxy, and it's just
sort of hanging out somehow on the other side of
the TV screen.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Now before it actually emerges from the TV. At some
point they end up watching part of another real movie,
so they were doing Robot Monster earlier. Later they're watching
The Giant Claw, which is a sort of American kaiju
movie from nineteen fifty seven about a large bird from
outer space that attacks airplanes.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
That's right, that's a Sam Katzman production, same producer of
a Creature with the Adam Brain. Oh okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
But anyway, I guess even the Giant Claw cannot hold
their attention. So Gram's and Sherman fall asleep watching TV,
and then while they're asleep, a slime covered tentacle monster
slithers out of the screen of the TV, just like
the girl in the Ring and is now in three
dimensional reality.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Oh yes, and the Hungry Beast here is just amazing,
absolutely fantastic practical effects monster. It's a morphous and thang
like as in John Carpenter's The Thing, but at the
same time has just a completely bonker's look to it,
like there's some perhaps some rat think qualities. There also
qualities of just a big, happy dog, which will become

(48:12):
more apparent later on in the picture. Key appendages, if
we can call them, that seem to be an eyeball tentacle,
a claw tentacle, and a tongue like a big, fleshy
tongue that is rather amorphous, but also can kind of
form a secondary face and mouth for biting people.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Now, Gramps and Sherman have some encounters with this monster.
They get scared by it. Grams is convinced that it
was not a monster but a burglar, because he says,
quote sometimes them burglars wear halle Ween masks, and they
go to Grandpa's fallout shelter to arm themselves. Meanwhile, Norton,
the satellite dish repair man, comes back. This is Sunny

(48:56):
Carl Davis again. He's rooting around trying to fix the
satellite dish. He finds that the electronics box connected to
the base of the dish has overflowed with a sort
of coal slaw of alien slime and guts.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
So he starts cleaning that out and you know what's
going to happen.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
That's right, poor rabbit is doomed here. He gets I
think he is the first person eaten by the alien.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
As it should be, as God wills it, And.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
So here we're into a kind of general rampage. Middle
third of the movie. We do see the monster eat
Gramps at some point. What exactly is the process here?
It's sort of complicated. First, it puts the clamps on Gramps,
so it has a claw that's sort of a clamp
style claw, squeezes Grandpa's head and then folds his head
in half, and there is blood squirting everywhere, but I

(49:55):
don't know if it's supposed to be blood. It's not red.
It is a green liquid leaking out of a Grandpa's head.
So I guess the monster somehow turns his blood green
or is the green liquid coming from the monster?

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of like a trolled
toification perhaps.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
Yeah. Then Graham's disintegrates. He melts into a green puddle
on the floor, So melt movie status confirmed. And then
the monster starts vacuuming up the green slime and Grandpa's clothes,
but then spits out his dog tags and then Sherman
runs into the room just in time to see the
monster before it shockwarps into the television.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
I have to add this whole death scene is all
the more shocking because it was done on wall to
wall carpeting, you know, like that just makes it all
the more worse. How are you gonna ever get that
slime up out of there?

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Well, that is the thing. There are scenes of the
movie where I just kept recently noticing anew the work
that must have gone into making this house set the
gaudiest house in history. So there is like a combination
of neon and pastel color schemes like neon and pastel
upholstery on the furniture, just gold stuff everywhere, erotic artworks

(51:09):
on every wall, not good artworks, like tasteless erotic paintings
all over the place. It is kind of a Vegas
strip Easter egg themed marl Lago. And they keep calling
it the Pleasure Dome.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah, that that sums it up. But yeah, to your point,
you keep seeing new details, new bits of art, new
curios on the shelf, and so forth. Yeah, a lot
of love and attention went into creating this monstrosity of
a house.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
So some other things go on in here. Sherman calls
the cops, but they do not want to come and help.
At this point, At some point later in the movie,
a cop does come to the house, just to get
eaten by the monster. Of course, as as is canon
in all films of this sort, At some point also
Stan and Raquel come home with their dates and their
their whole thing is they are into swinging, so they

(52:02):
bring a couple home to swing with, and then there
are there are some funny elements to this whole romantic
farce subplot, like Stan trying to be as attractive as
he can is. Garrett Graham is quite funny in that
there are also some painfully unfunny things that haven't aged well,
that are just like a misunderstanding about Spiro, the guy

(52:24):
they bring home, being bisexual and interested in Stan, which
they did not understand, and that's like, that's pretty cringey.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Yeah, though, I guess if I'm being generous, most of
the a good portion of the cringe seems to be
placed on Garrett Graham's character for getting riled up over
the whole situation.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
That's true, Like, I think a lot of other films
of this time would have made Spiro the target of
all the jokes in this thing, But actually more Garret
Graham is that the target of the jokes, I think.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Yeah, and I will add the erotic jacuzzi room also
starts paying off when the monster gets in to the
pool and starts eating people whilst pretending to be some
of the people that it is eaten.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
That's right, So it eats both of the guest swingers
in the jacuzzi room and then also eats the two
main parents in the jacuzzi room. So all adults eaten, now.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Yeah, yeah, which it's kind of fit. It's like the
kids were kind of on their own anyway, without a
lot of guidance from the parental units and Grandpa, and
now they truly are on their own. The parents have
been completely consumed by the stuff that came out of
the television. Mmmm.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Ah, yeah, it's a metaphor. I see, Yeah, it's deep.
This movie real's deep. So at some point Sherman tries
to explain this is before the parents get eaten. When
Mary Warrenov comes home and finds him up and running around,
she's like, get you know, get in bed, but he's
trying to explain, No, a monster came out of the
TV and it ate Grandpa, and she's not interested in that,

(53:52):
but she is mad about the puddle of slime on
the living room floor, and there was a line that
really made me laugh because of I guess how it
was phrased, as Sherman says something like that's what Grandpa
turned into. Another funny scene from before All the Adults
Get Eaten is when Garrett Graham is showing off his

(54:13):
erotic jacuzzi room to the new friends and he's like
bragging about his sound system he installed in the room
and the supposedly Roman artworks on the walls, and there
is a Meanwhile, there's a reptile alien silently making imploring
gestures on the TV screen behind them, and then finally

(54:35):
the sound comes on on the TV and the guy's
going like, people of Earth, you must destroy your satellite
receivers and keep your televisions deactivated for two hundred years,
and going on with all this stuff, and then the
swingers who have come to the house are basically like,
what is this movie? It is making me feel very erotic.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
I love that the alien is telling them to turn
the TVs off for two centuries, like it would have
been you know, it would have still been satirical if
they were like people of Earth, you can be saved
if you just turn your TVs off for twenty four hours,
because obviously we're not going to do that. I won't
do it, but to make it two hundred years, that's perfect.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
Now, there are some funny bits in here. One thing
is that the Hungry Beast that comes out of the
TV after it eats people, it can sort of replicate them,
so it's like the thing in a way, and so
at some point replicates Grandpa. And there's a part where
Mary Warrenov is like yelling down into the bunker to

(55:38):
find Grandpa, and the monster recreates Grandpa's face and pokes
it out from behind a wall and it's just dripping
with ooze, and Mary Warrenov doesn't notice.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah, I guess the joke here is that, yes, the
Hungry Beast is not a great impersonator, but everyone in
the world of this film is so self absorbed that
no one really noticed. They're just like, oh, I guess
that is Grandpa. I guess that is a mom, dad
and their friends. You know, nobody questions it. Now at
this point, again, adults are out the out of the picture.

(56:11):
It's just the youth who are left to stand up
to the monster. And you might expect the film to
take the sort of predictable, you know, battle direction here
where Okay, now the kids, the youth have to band
together to fight the monster. It seems like it's going
to maybe go that way or the movie's gonna end
prematurely one or the other. But we end up going

(56:32):
in a different direction. We end up going in an
et direction.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
That's right, because what are the youth going to do
when when a monstrous entity comes from the television? They're
going to make an unholy alliance with it?

Speaker 2 (56:43):
That's right, it's about to eat O D O D
puts his arms up, you know, like ah, and as
he does so, the monster stops for a second. The
monster pauses. The monster's looking at those like studs and chains,
and we get the monsters flashback to its alien master
in some distant part of the universe being nice to it,

(57:06):
raising it, giving it treats, and suddenly he's pacified. The
hungry beast is pacified.

Speaker 3 (57:12):
Right, So the Beast's humanoid alien friend had gloves that
were like heavy metal leather studs. Yes, perfect, I mean
it is sweet actually.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Because again, they designed this creature so well that he
is monstrous and horrific, but also kind of looks like
a big, stupid, happy dog too.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
Yeah. Od he says he looked at my studs and
cooled out. This dude's into metal. This is also the
part where Susie is like, he's so barfie.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
He is very Barfye.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
But they go about teaching the Barfee monster the ways
of Earth. So they're feeding him food, and I thought
it was funny that all of the food they feed
him is like hyper processed food that comes in plastic
boxes or cardboard boxes.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Yeah, and I think I could have missed something, but
I think the joke too is that he doesn't the
hungry beast doesn't actually want to eat the food. He
just wants to eat the packaging, like he just he
wants to eat garbage.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
Yeah. They also teach him about music. They play Od's
music for him, but he like kicks, like stabs a
tentacle into one of the speakers and all that. They
teach the monster about TV, of course, the most important
invention on Earth.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Yeah, and so for a little bit it seems like they're,
you know, they're pacifying the monster, they're making friends with
the monster. But as it turns out, like this is
not going to work. They can only pacify the beast
for so long. The beast is is unpredictable, and we
eventually learned that this is why he was disposed of.
This is why he was essentially loaded into a teleporter

(58:51):
and beamed across the universe. And this is where Pluthar
shows up to save the day. This is, I believe,
the same alien we see at the beginning of the
picture disposing of the mutant. This is the same alien
that has been visible on the TV transmission saying people
of Earth, you must turn off your televisions for two centuries.
But now he has appeared in person, beamed through the

(59:14):
television into the living room, and he's wearing like a
spacesuit so that he can withstand Earth's atmosphere. And you know,
he spent the whole picture trying to warn them about
this monster and about the thread and how dangerous this
organism is. And now he's here and he's like, I
am here to help you. Let me help you. And

(59:36):
he even offers to resurrect the dead family members. Though
I thought this was this hilarious, he does add that
they will have to live in special aquariums. They are
genetically resurrected.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
Yeah, but here we get the intersection with another plot
thread that's been developing. Wait did we even mention the
thing about Medusa yet? I don't think we did.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Oh you know, so they called the cops. The cops
showed up and the cop was killed by the monster. Yeah,
so they need someone. They were like, well, let's call Medusa.
She's into this stuff and she's a part of our
lives because she's on television. Let's call her. They want
to make money. I think, oh, that's right. This is
when they have seemingly befriended the creature and they're like, yeah,
let's make some money. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
So Susie calls up Medusa on the you know, the
TV horror host, the Alvira type lady, and says, I've
got something really scary for you that would be great
for your show. You know, give us some money and
and and you can have it, trying to sell the
monster to her, and Medusa is initially not interested. She
says she has several parties to go to, but they're like, well,

(01:00:36):
here's our address. You know, you can come by our
party later if you want to check out what we've
got to show.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
You.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
So you don't think Medusa is going to actually come
to their house, but I guess she does. Maybe those
other parties she went to were really lame.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Yeah, we don't know for sure, but she shows up.
She leaves her producer I think, in the vehicle, and
she comes in and she sees Pluthar talking to the children,
to the youths here, and he has like some sort
of a ray gun in his hand. So she decides
to save the day. Like her noble act is to
come up behind Pluthar and uh and and bash in

(01:01:11):
his dome that that like acrylic or glass dome that
is around his head. Bashes that in and then we
get this great scene where Pluthar's helmet depressurizes and his
head explodes inside it. So he here we go, this
was the one guy who could have saved everyone. Uh,
and now he's dead. He's sorta in the He's kind

(01:01:33):
of the Milton Arbogast of this picture.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
The detective from Psycho. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
And Medusa's like, hey, yeah, you're welcome. I just saved you.
But of course she has not saved anyone. The monster
proceeds to eat absolutely everybody, and so the ending of
the picture we get. For the ending of the picture,
we get this classic The nightmare continues slash spreads. Ending
the hungry beast has eaten everyone in the house and

(01:02:00):
some it's taken on the form of Medusa sort of. Again,
it's not that the creature's not that good at mimicking
human beings, and it's mimicking of Medusa is just really awful.
It's only about half there. But again, people in this
world are completely self absorbed and not very attentive. So
she climbs in the back of her producer's vehicle and

(01:02:20):
she's like, let's go back to the TV station, and
so that's where they're headed, inevitably to spread more terror
vision across the earth. Cure the music, yep, tervision, and yeah,
it's played for Kookie laughs, and I love it despite
the fact that all of our characters died and perished
in the belly of a monster.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
Well, it's a kind of perfect bogeyman figure in that regard.
So it's like, you know, kids, if you don't turn
off the TV in time, you will know what it
is to roast in the depths of a slore this day.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
All right, So that is terror vision again. I think
a pretty pretty fabulous and fun bit of weird cinema
from the mid nineteen eighties didn't make much of a splash,
I think when it came out, but has developed a
cult following overtime.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
I'm trying to think if this basic plot element were
used today, what it would be. A monster gets beamed
through TikTok.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
I guess yeah, they would probably it would probably be
some sort of a social media thing, right, that would
be the main commentary. That's the TV is less of
the idiot box and now the idiot box is the
thing in our hands.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
I mean they're both still idiot boxing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Yes, there's still lots of idiots stay to go around
in media. But yeah, I guess we'd have to take
a slightly different form and satellite it's not really the
satellite now, it would be the Internet. So it would
be the hungry beast crawling through the Internet, and each
character would be like a different stereotype of how obsessed
we are with different corners of the Internet. But it

(01:03:47):
wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be the same terror vision.
All right, well, we're going to go ahead and close
it out there, but just to remind you Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core
episodes on Tuesday and Thursdays. On Mondays we do a
listener mail. On Wednesday's we do a short form Monster
Factor Artifact episode, but on Fridays we set aside most
serious concerns to just watch a weird movie on Weird

(01:04:09):
House Cinema. And if you want a list of all
the movies we've covered over the year as well, you
can look in a couple of places. I blog about
these at simmutemusic dot com. But also if you go
to letterbox dot com, it's l E T T E
R B o x D dot com. You'll find our
username there. We are Weird House, and we have a
list there of all the movies we've covered so far,
and sometimes there's a glimpse ahead of what's coming up next.

(01:04:32):
We're we're in reruns next week, but the week after
that we do have a film picked out and you'll
see a hint of that on the letterboxed list.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact Stuff to Blow Your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.