Weirdhouse Cinema: The Boogens

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1981 mining monster film “The Boogens,” directed by James L. Conway and starring Rebecca Balding and Fred McCarren.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we're going to be talking about the nineteen eighty one
American horror movie The Bugins, directed by James L. Conway,
starring Rebecca Balding and Fred McCarran.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Rob.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
I think it's a bit of serendipity that you got
to watch this movie on an airplane on the way
back from actually being in some caverns like seen in
the movie The Buggins.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, yeah, as featured in The Buggins. Yes, actual caves,
which may come back to in some upcoming episodes of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind. But yeah, fresh off of
some adventures in some actual caves, I got to experience
these adventures in probably not actual caves. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
I read somewhere that the cave sets here or the
mine whatever, you know, the underground cavern sets were built
in a grocery store, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Okay, but a look pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, But so you were on an airplane, maybe with
a head cold, watching The Buggins. That sounds like a
that's a mind space.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
And clearly as the as the filmmakers intended, with me
occasionally having to like lean forward if there's like a
little bit of nudity in the film to keep the
people in the seats behind me from seeing it and
wondering what I'm watching, but not that there's a lot
of nudity in this one.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, So before you ask, yes, this is a movie,
I picked about eighty percent on the basis of the
title I came across. I'd never seen The Buggins before. Uh,
And I got to the title and I watched the trailer,
and the trailer is great because there's no narration for
most of it. It's just scenes from the movie, a

(01:55):
lot of screaming, you know, creature cam kind of looking
up from the floor, chasing people around. And then it
gets to the very end of the trailer and suddenly
a deep voice comes on. I don't know if it's
Don Lafontaine or whoever, but somebody comes on and says,
there is no escape the Buggins. That's all. It's like, okay,
well you got to watch this.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah. It's almost like he didn't really know exactly how
to land the Boogins. How he felt about that. I
don't know how I feel about the Buggins. It makes
me think of Boogers. It makes me think of Boogieman
and boogey Men. And I think when you first brought
this movie up, I had a moment where it's like,
is I confused this film with the Willies and maybe

(02:37):
to a certain extent, creepyzoids, Like there are a.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Few critters, a little bit of that critters.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, a lot of silly monster named films, but the
one i'd seen before, Munchies.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah, is okay, very important question by your criteria. Is
the Buggins a Gromlin's film? No, No, okay.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, these are just I don't want to spoil too
much about the creatures, though. I guess at this point
we'll go ahead and just remind you if you want to,
if you want to experience the Buggins without any additional knowledge,
now's a good time to jump off and go watch
the Boogins. But otherwise we're going to spoil stuff. I
will say that the creatures and the Boogins, the titular Boogins,

(03:20):
are not They're not clowning around. They are predatory monsters.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
There's no mischief, there's no Grimlins quality they're they're not
making jokes. There are a lot of jokes in the film,
and there is mischief, but it's by the human characters. Yeah.
So The Buggins is a low budget I would have
to be honest and say slightly annoying, but in other

(03:46):
ways cozy and sort of adorable tunnel underground themed monster
movie set in the Colorado Rockies.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, I think that's a good read. I wasn't annoyed
by it. I guess my tolerance for annoyance and B
movies is pretty high at this point.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
I mean, I'm not saying it's a bad time, Like
I really enjoyed The Buggins, but Roger I found moderately
too severely grading.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Okay, I'll go with moderately, But maybe I was just
I was just really chilled out on the plane for
this one. But I do agree with the coziness. I
felt like this movie had a really strong seventies sitcom
sort of vibe, a little bit like sex comedy sitcom,
like basically Three's Company, except without a laugh track. I
think you could have dropped a laugh track in here

(04:37):
and a nineteen seventies early eighties audience would have known
how to react. And you also have no like don
knots or anything. Instead of don knots, you have killer
rubber monsters. But yeah, in its own way, this made
it kind of charming. He felt kind of safe with
these characters, even though these characters, as we will learn,
are not safe.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah. So, the premise of The Buggins is a a
couple of young mine workers guys in their twenties named
Mark and Roger rent a cabin. While they're not like
experienced mine workers, they're doing a summer contract or something
to clean up an abandoned silver mine in the mountains
of Colorado, and they invite up to join them at

(05:19):
the cabin, a couple of lady friends and also a
very cute, very doomed, and very talented dog. We'll have
more to say about the dog as we go on,
But while they're there in the cabin and working in
the mines, the characters discover a bloodthirsty evil has been
unleashed from the caverns below. So we mentioned the cozy

(05:42):
vibe of the movie, and one way I would put
this is that, and several other critics have written this
I wasn't the first to notice it, but I agree
with this assessment. The Buggins blends two familiar horror movie aesthetics,
and those two aesthetics are on one and the wiggly
nineteen fifties creature feature moves like the crawling Eye or

(06:05):
Earth versus the Spider, think, a kind of goofy rubber
monster and a g whiz sensibility. It blends that on
the one hand, and then on the other hand, the
nineteen eighties teen slasher movie like Friday the Thirteenth or
prom Night. And I would say that the way these
pieces come together is that the movie has the structure

(06:27):
and setting of the post Halloween slasher film, but it
has the soul, the rubber soul, and the cozy quaintness
of the drive in monster movie. Do you get what
I'm saying there?

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Absolutely? Yeah, Like it doesn't really have any of the
mild to severe sleeves of like an early eighties slasher picture.
And yeah, the characters have more of that like nineteen
fifties nineteen sixties heart to them. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Well, and the weird thing is there is a character
who is I think explicitly supposed to have a sleazy connotation,
but it's kind of a Scooby Doo version.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah, it's very overt and silly.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah yeah. You get the impression that he's maybe I'll talk. Yeah,
there's a lot. He talks a lot about how much
he wants to make the sex, but I don't think
it ever gets around to it. In this picture.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
He does does well well. They're interrupted by the police
in the one scene where I don't know how far
they got.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, I don't know how much sexing actually occurred. It
seems like there was a definite cutoff plane and I'm
not sure they ever got it back around to picking
up where they left off.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
So I looked into the reception history of The Boogins.
Did critics like the movie? Opinions seem mixed, But in
the July nineteen eighty two edition of the Twilight Zone magazine,
this movie got a humming endorsement from author Stephen King.
So Stephen King had stepped in to do guest film reviews.

(07:55):
I think the regular film critic was away for some reason,
and so he has a column in this issue of
Twilight Zone magazine called Digging the Buggins, in which he
called it quote a wildly energetic monster movie. Now, I
liked The Buggins, but I don't know if that's how
I would describe it.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, I think energetic is a stretch. It's pretty laid
back and relaxed for the most part. Yeah, so some
great scenes with tension to them, but yeah, even by
nineteen eighty one standards, I wouldn't say it's particularly energetic.
I mean, this is the same year that we got
the first Evil Dead film and Joe Dante's The Howling,
So yeah, those are.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Both much more energetic. Yeah, but there's a sort of
King's take, and haven't I wasn't able to find the
full text of this article. I don't think it's been
digitized online anywhere, but I found a blog post where
somebody was summarizing it, and they said that in this
film review, Stephen King scolds audiences for only wanting mad

(08:58):
slasher movies and for thinking themselves above a rubber monster.
You know, he's sort of making the case that a
classic nineteen fifty style rubber monster is a beautiful thing.
And there I would agree.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, I would agree with that. I love Stephen King.
I'm never going to stop loving Stephen King, but I
will add that he has never been shy about going
all in on something that he loves if it's like it.
Certainly if it's a new adaptation of his own work
that he digs. But yeah, he can be very enthusiastic

(09:32):
about the things that he likes.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Now, one thing I thought would be worth discussing about
The Buggins before we get into talking about the cast
and crew is the production company that put it out.
So let's do a sidebar on Taft International Pictures.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, this is very fascinating. As I'll get into it,
I read I was reading a little bit about this
via Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Film Guides.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
Okay, so my main source on this was an AV
Club review of The Boogins by Keith Phipps, which went
a bit into the history of this company. It wasn't
originally Taft International Pictures. It was previously known as Sun
Classic Pictures, but Son with two ends like the guitar
amplifier brand.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Mm hmm, yeah, because I believe if you only had
one in, it's an adult publisher. So they had They're like,
I put another in on there and then then they'll
know it's for family content.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
So Phipps referred to Sun Classic Pictures as quote one
of the most profitably disreputable film distributors in cinematic history,
despite not being an adult content thing. Instead, they were
disreputable due to their track record of putting out factually

(10:46):
decrepit documentaries and running shameless advertising and putting together like
TV and radio promo spots for the movies that would
promise way too much, way more than these movies we're
going to deliver. You know, you'd get some kind of
low budget, dubious documentary and it would be sold as
like the most amazing revelation in film history and that

(11:10):
sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. So this is a Sun
Classics was a Utah based company dealt mostly in documentaries,
but again not classy documentaries, sensational nineteen seventies docs that
we'd rightfully identify as conspiracy theory and cryptic cryptic flicks
today really sort of the forerunners, the mind poisoning forerunners

(11:34):
of later day conspiracy thought, I would.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Say, yeah, the media arm of that. So some examples
that they did religiously themed documentaries and also conspiracy ones,
historical conspiracy things. So one, for example is a famous
one called In Search of Noah's Arc from nineteen seventy six,
a movie that famously claimed to have found the final

(11:59):
resting place of Noah's Ark on a mountain in Turkey.
There's another one they put out called Beyond and Back
from nineteen seventy eight, which is a movie about near
death experiences and it's talking about people who went to
the afterlife and then said they came back. Another one
is called In Search of Historic Jesus from nineteen seventy nine,
where in his review Phipps includes a quote from the

(12:22):
TV spots promoting this film. The quote is, there are
eighteen years of Jesus's life. The Bible doesn't account for
where did he spend those missing years. You'll find new
answers in this startling motion picture. Obviously you won't. But anyway, yes,
they were putting out documentary content of that sort, but

(12:44):
they also you mentioned family friendly programming. In the seventies,
Sun Classic made a lot of money putting out stuff
like the Life and Times of Grizzly Adams starring Dan Haggerty,
both the movie from nineteen seventy four and its TV spinoff,
and these were big hits.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah. Yeah, they also did these sort of like you
almost get the sense of these were adaptations of classics
for like students to watch. They did a seventy nine
adaptation of the follow The House of Usher, and then
also and I think that one had Martin Landau in it,
and then a TV adaptation of Sleepy Hollow starring Jeff Goldbloom.
We'll come back to that one. That one actually won

(13:23):
some awards for them.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
I wonder if it's similar to the Roger Korman thinking
and adapting Poe Like, well, if you're adapting classic literature,
you get the benefit of both. It's out of copyright protection,
so it's public domain. And then also this is something
that people might watch in schools, so you get some
automatic uptake because it is quote classic literature, you but

(13:47):
it's also horror, you know, so you can kind of
lean into the more exploitation elements if you want to.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
So a lot of so definitely some family friendly content. Yeah,
some dubious documentary work that is at times promoting things
like ancient aliens and also attempting to use scientific information
to prop up Christian theology. So an interesting company here.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
But apart from the content Phipps pointed out how in
the seventies, Sun prospered through very particular marketing and distribution tactics.
So Sun used a distribution tactic known as four walling,
where instead of the normal method you would use when
you release a film of splitting box office sales with

(14:36):
the venue that's showing the film instead the distributor. In
four walling, the distributor would pay movie theaters a flat
fee to rent them out for a particular time, and
then the distributor would keep one hundred percent of the
ticket sales. And so Sun would do this, but instead

(14:56):
of releasing everywhere at once, they would target specific market.
So they might go to a you know, a small
town or rural local media market, rent out the local
theaters to show their movie, keep one hundred percent of
the ticket sales, and then just flood the local TV
and radio waves with an advertising campaign. And then they

(15:18):
would keep one hundred percent of the ticket sales, you know,
by funneling everybody in town into the theater to see
this Bible movie.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, and everyone has to know about the historic Jesus
because it's all we're hearing about.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
And apparently they made pretty good money this way now.
For some reason, I wasn't sure about what caused this shift.
Maybe you had some information on this. But by about
nineteen seventy nine or eighty, something shifted and Sun which
had at this point adopted the new name of Taft
International Pictures, I think were they maybe acquired by another company.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
It's my understanding that they were acquired at this point
by Taft Broadcasting, which it actually ties back to Published,
a public company that was owned by the brother of
Howard Taff, So it has some roots to it, Okay,

(16:10):
presidential roots, if you will.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
So this company around the year nineteen eighty shifted from
making family entertainment like Grizzly Adams and religious documentaries and
conspiracy stuff too, science fiction and R rated horror. So
in the year nineteen eighty they released the sci fi
thriller Hangar eighteen with Darren McGavin of Oh I'm blanking

(16:35):
on the name of the show Culchak.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, The Nightstalker.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
And also had Robert Vaughan from Battle Beyond the Stars
and the movies we've talked about. I think Hangar eighteen
was featured on a very early episode of Mystery Science
Theater three thousand. I don't know if you've seen this one.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
I don't think I've seen that one, but that sounds right.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
So that's nineteen eighty and then in nineteen eighty one
we get there are rated horror extravaganza The Buggins.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah. One of the things that Michael Weldon points out
is that this was a lot raunchier than previous fare
from some classics. But I have to stress, like only
mildly ron raunchy compared to family films and rather tame documentaries.
I guess because it's like, yeah, there's a butt at
one point, what more can you say? Some talk of

(17:23):
sex and some amount of blood, a little bit of gore,
but nothing crazy, certainly by today's standards.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Though I did want to say I think the part
of the movie where we see a butt is one
of the funniest moments in the film because of a
cinematography choice where the camera does almost a crash zoom
on the butt, like it's the shining and there's a
bloody haget, except it's just somebody's butt.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
I do not remember this particular zoom all that well.
I think this is probably a part of in my
viewing where I was kind of like hunching over to
make sure that the people behind me weren't questioning my viewing.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Habits scandalizing the family.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah. Yeah, So technically this was not their first horror venture,
because you know I mentioned follow the House of Usher,
but it certainly would not be their last either. They
would go on to have a hand in the production
of nineteen eighty three's Kujo, nineteen eighty seven's The Monster Squad,
as well as nineteen eighty sevens The Running Man, which
of course was another loose Stephen King adaptation.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Okay, that is interesting. All three of these movies have
their fans. I think, you know, these are not totally
disregarded in horror history.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah. I mean, I have to admit I've never seen
Kujo or read Kujo, so I don't have a lot
to say about that. Grew up with The Running Man,
you know, it's pretty wild. The Monster Squad recently rewatched.
I have mixed thoughts about it, but yeah, does have
great monsters in it.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Yeah. Now, one thing I think we need to address
in the beginning here is the title The Boogins. We
have been assuming, and I think we'll continue to assume
in the episode that the buggins is the name of
the type of creature that attacks that we have to
that's just an inference on our part, because the movie

(19:10):
doesn't say that. I think the word buggins is said
one time in the film, and it is said by
John Lormer's character as he is like collapsing to die
in a cave, and he just says buogin and it's
not clear exactly what he means, but it's while these
monsters are attacking, So I think it's got And there's

(19:31):
an s at the end of the word, so it's
like plural. So it's like, I think this has got
to be the name of the monsters. But I was
trying to get some clarity on where this word comes from,
what it means. I can't source this to anything really solid,
but at least in the IMDb trivia page, they say
that the buggins is not actually a term from the
mining world. It's not a monster of folklore or anything.

(19:55):
It is a word that was, as far as he knows,
invented by the screen writer David O'Malley quote using the
word boogieman as its root. His original title for the movie,
though it had already been used.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Okay, so can't call it a boogeyman called Buggins instead, Yeah,
which I don't know. Again, kind of a silly name.
It does, at least, you know, for us modern viewers,
it makes us think of things like gremlins. It sounds
a little war full of whimsy than it actually is, because, again,
as we'll find out, these are just predatory monsters from

(20:30):
the deep.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
A few other things that different reviewers have noted about
the film that I also found notable inexplicable relationship with
the one dog in the movie. So, the characters in
the film have an extremely cute dog named Tiger, and
all they ever do is complain about how they don't
like Tiger and what a burden he is. I've never

(21:01):
heard people be this hard on a dog before, and
it's especially weird because the dog is very lovable and
a really good dog. Actor like, this dog is hitting
his marks, he pulls reaction shots for the camera. Tiger
is amazing.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Tiger is great. Yeah, Unfortunately, we have no idea the
name of this actual dog. Maybe the dog's name is
Tiger as well, but it's not one of these K
nine actors that is credited but it's an amazing performance, Yeah,
hitting his mark, reaction shots, a lot of screen time. Really,
we get like lots of scenes in which Tiger is
exploring the old house and then is having encounters with

(21:40):
the monster before we really get to see it. So
I would say, arguably the best the best performance in
the picture. And that's not and I'm not even doing
saying that to try and like shame the the human
actors here, Like Tiger is just that good.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
Another thing that basically every reviewer makes a note of
is the weirdness of the character. Roger and I agree.
I think this has to be the single horniest character
ever written. Almost every single line of dialogue this character
speaks is about how he is ready for sex.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Like while he's at work, while he's doing anything, that's
what he's talking about.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah. The the actor playing him, who will get to
in a bed, has this kind of kind of a
Dana Carvey vibe to him, Like it's a little bit
like Dana Carvey and it has that that like how
like how sleazy can a Dana Carvey character be that
sort of thing? So he ends up feeling, you know, fairly,
you know, he's fairly likable, Like, even though he keeps

(22:40):
talking about how he wants to have sex and he's
gonna have sex, like, he doesn't come off particularly gross
or threatening about it. It's just like he's a happy,
go lucky guy and he's excited to see his girlfriend again.
He hasn't seen her in you know, however long it's been.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
He is a weirdly like a preopadic Garth's just strange
type of character portrayal. And the other thing I think
we have to mention is the unusual design of the Buggins.
I don't know whether to criticize or commend to the
movie for the Buggins design. I still have been thinking

(23:16):
about it for days and still haven't made up my
mind about it. Credit I think to the movie for
the Buggins reveal being quite an unusual type of monster.
I can't think of anything exactly like it, so it
feels kind of original. But also when you see it,
you're like, really, that's the thing. I don't know. It's

(23:38):
something about the size of it, and the anatomy is underwhelming,
but also different enough to be maybe kind of worthy.
I don't know what are your thoughts here.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
I guess in general, I would say they were ambitious
enough to go for something other than just a man
in a monster suit. Yeah, but I think maybe they
should have gone with a man in a monster suit.
Like it's a mix. Like they they went for it,
and in some shots, like the final creature looks good
and at least is very interesting and original, but I
don't know that I love it, Like I wasn't even

(24:12):
it didn't leave me that curious even to go look
up like pictures of the full creature so much. I'm
just kind of like, well, I guess that's fine. But
they also seem to maybe realize well, probably a combination
of realizing what they had and also knowing that there's
a lot to be gained in not showing us the
full monster. So there's a lot of build up to

(24:34):
any reveals that we get. These monsters seem to have
some sort of like a tentacle attack, and so a
lot of good use is made of that, like characters
being grabbed and pulled off screen or downstairs or underneath things.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
There are a couple of I think genuinely effective horror
images or set pieces in the movie. Not so much
once you finally get the Buggins reveal. But before we'll
get to this later. I I thought one scene that
actually looks pretty scary and was memorable was the scene
where it attacks through the intake grate on the floor,

(25:07):
you know, and the great bends down and it becomes
a pit.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Like.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
I thought that was good, pretty scary looking, an unusual image,
almost in kind of a Jallo way, striking in the
way that it manipulates or uses strangely a familiar object
that we all have around us in our houses, you know.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would agree with that, And
I'd say also, they do a great job of making
sure that the Buggins is completely lethal. It is a
deadly adversary, and they treat it very seriously, and and
that rubs off on the viewer.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, Rob, you had an elevator pitch for this.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, it's basically the Minds of Maria, except Buggins instead
of Ballrock. The Buggins are our ball Rock.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
I did not think about the minds of Maria, But
you're so right. They were warned not to go in,
the entrance was sealed. They had decided to go in anyway,
and they dug too deep and unleashed something.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah. Yeah, this is a familiar trope in various various
horror movies, horror stories, even some Stephen King stories as well,
where you have some sort of a creature that is
either it's in some sort of like deep environment that
has been opened up, you know, a real environment or

(26:25):
a magical environment that has been accessed via human mining
and then is covered up again but then unlocked once more.
Now we could ask a lot of questions about how
this creature actually lives deep underground. What kind of triglafauna
is this, But you know, don't ask too many questions.
But I guess it eats something down there, but it's

(26:47):
more excited about eating humans and or dogs.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Well, actually I have some other thoughts about that.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Oh yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Think it does not eat humans because we never see
it humans. It attacks humans, but the human corpses that
we find in the movie are completely They've got all
their flesh intact. I mean they're wounded and they.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Just kind of wounds the face and all.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Yeah, but it doesn't eat the flesh of the humans,
and that makes me think that something else is going on.
It's not attacking because it is a hungry predator. I'm
wondering if it's territorial or is it attacking to protect
its nest or whatever. You know, We just there's so
much we don't know about the ethology of the Bogins.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
We need some sort of shady documentary to do a
jump in on this and give us some ideas.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Yeah, yeah, the Bugin's mine.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah all right. Well at this point you're like, Okay,
I actually do need to go watch The Boogins. Well,
it's widely available for digital purchase in rental. Again, I
watched it on my phone on a flight, but you
can also get it on Blu Ray from Keno Lorber.
They put out a twenty twenty four release of the
film and it has a number of fun sounding extras
on it, so it seems to have despite being maybe

(27:59):
a obscure pick, it has a really solid physical release.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
Should we talk about the connections.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, let's get into it here. And a lot of
these connections are going to tie directly into Sun Classics.
A lot of the people involved were Sun Classics folks
who at least started out with Sun.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
Classics Sun Veterans.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yeah, yeah, two ins two right. Yeah. So the director
here is James L. Conway born nineteen fifty American writer, director,
and producer who got his start with Sun Classics, beginning
with the seventy six documentary In Search of Noah's Art,
which we already mentioned, and then four episodes of the
TV spinoff of Son's Grizzly Adams film in seventy seven.

(28:41):
Subsequent Sun projects included The Lincoln Conspiracy and Last of
the Mohicans, as well as Incredible Rocky Mountain Race in
seventy seven, Beyond and Back and Donner Pass, The Road
to Survival in seventy eight, eight episodes of Greatest Heroes
of the Bible and The Fall of the House of
Usher in seventy nine, Hangar eighteen in nineteen eighty, and

(29:02):
Earthbound in eighty one, and this was of course followed
by The Buggins all right After The Buggins, he sticks
with Son a while longer on some more conspiracy docs
in the early eighties before turning increasingly back to TV directing,
and he goes on to have quite a career in television.
Among his credits, he directed the Seat of multiple Star

(29:24):
Trek episodes, so three episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation,
four episodes of Voyager seven, episodes of Deep Space, nine
five episodes of Enterprise, and then episodes of such shows
as Smallville, Supernatural, the Orville, and eight episodes of the Magicians,
a rather fun series based on the books of lev Grossman.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
I've never seen it, but I saw that he had
I think he was involved in directing episodes of Charmed
the show.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yeah, no, it Charmed as well. Yeah, there'll be a
connection here to his wife as well. That's that was
an Aaron Spelling Witches show, I believe.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
I don't really know. I just saw Armed was like
often the first thing that would come up when you
google this guy.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, so, you know, very successful in television, and he
was nominated for a nineteen eighty one Primetime Emmy for
the Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the category of Outstanding
Children's Program.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Is this the one that had Jeff Goldblum in it?

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Is?

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (30:17):
As Akabad Krane. I haven't seen it, but that's what
I've heard about for years and was excited to see
it tied in here.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
Now, there was one name in the credits here I
was briefly confused about because the IMDb lists the screenwriters
as David O'Malley and Jim Kof, But in the movie
itself the script was credited to O'Malley and Bob Hunt.
But I think Bob Hunt is a pen name.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Right, Yeah, that's the pen name that Jim Coof uses here.
Born nineteen fifty one, writer and producer. This was his
first credited produced screenplay, but he'd go on to become
a pretty well known screenwriter. A lot of folks may
recognize his name from nineteen eighty one's A Hidden, ninety
eight Rush Hour, two thousand and four's National Treasure, twenty

(31:04):
sixteen's Money Monster, and a whole bunch of episodes of
TV's Grim which he also created and produced.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
Okay, for a while, I've had The Hidden on the
list of movies to check out, potentially for Weird House.
I'm interested in that.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, Yeah, I haven't seen it, but it looks pretty fascinating.
I want to also point out that this screenwriter is
also tied into questionable nineteen seventies documentary work, because he
was apparently a researcher on the Leonard Nimoy hosted Insart
Shops series back in nineteen seventy eight. Wow, you get
the impression all these guys you know they were destined

(31:41):
for other things, but they were initially stuck in this
world of grimy, questionable documentaries in.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
The Bermuda Triangle zone.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, they just had to escape it. That's our screenwriter.
But then we also have our one of our main screenwriter,
but we also have a story credit to Thomas C. Chapman,
who nineteen forty six through twenty eleven a SUN writer
and producer, whose first writing credit was seventy three's Deadly Fathoms.
That was a SUN a diving documentary film narrated by

(32:11):
Rod Serling and then David O'Malley story screenwriter. O'Malley got
his start on Deadly Fathoms, with subsequent work including various
SUN projects, but also seventy eight It's the House of
the Dead, two episodes of seventy nine's More Can Mindy,
and ninety three's Fatal Instinct, directed by Carl Reiner that
was I do vaguely remember trailers for this. This was

(32:35):
a Basic Instinct Instinct spoof that starred Armanda Sante, and
O'Malley has also worked as a director Away.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Based on the title, I guess that would be a
spoof of the nineties erotic thriller, generally like Fatal Instinct,
Fatal Attractions.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Yeah, I guess they kind of slammed two of them
together there. Yeah. I may have even seen part of
it on TV. I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
I've never seen this one.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
All right, let's get into our cast here, starting with
our heroin, Trish played by Rebecca Balding.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Fundamentally likable heroine. Yes, absolutely, yeah. Rebecca Balding is a
very nice presence in this film, whatever else is going on,
she just seems like, you know, Trisha's got her head
on straight, and Rebecca Balding just does a very likable energy.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Absolutely yeah. So she lived nineteen forty eight through twenty
twenty two, Arkansas born. She'd been working in TV since
seventy six at this point, appearing on episodes of shows
like The Bionic Woman, Supertrain nineteen episodes of Soap That
was probably her biggest role at the time. She'd also
already done one other horror film, seventy nine Silent Scream,

(33:45):
which was produced and written by the Wheat Brothers who
had gone to give us Pitch Black, among other things,
and co starring Barbara Steele and Cameron Mitchell. So I'm
curious about that one. She'd continued to work in TV
through most of her career and had a recurring character
on TV's Charmed in the late nineties. Too early to

(34:08):
mid two thousands.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
I have read anecdotes about Rebecca Balding and James L. Conway.
The version of the story I read is that they
met for The Bogins, like, she showed up for casting
and the moment they met, James L. Conway was like, Wow,
I think I'm in love with her. And then the
story goes that like two weeks into filming, she proposed

(34:32):
marriage to him and they got married.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Oh wow. So yeah, well yeah, and would remain married
until she passed away in twenty twenty two. But yeah,
and then would work together again obviously on Charmed. Yeah.
I agree, she's she's got great girl next door charm
in this film. You know, it's just really good.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
The Bogins is a love story.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yeah. Ultimately, I don't want any of the characters in
this film to be killed by slimy monsters from the
Silver Mine, but especially not Trish.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Okay, but so in the movie, Trish has a love interest,
and that is the character Mark played by Fred McCarran.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Right, right, and she does her characters does not know
Mark previously.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
This is this is one of the weird things about
the setup of the film. We'll talk more about this later.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
So Mark is played by Fred McCarran, who have nineteen
fifty one through two thousand and six American actor who's
credited TV in film work goes back to I think
around seventy seven. He shows up in a bit background
part in nineteen seventy sevens The Goodbye Girl, and before
this film, he also had a supporting role in nineteen
eighties Zana Dude. That's the roller skating movie that starred

(35:44):
Olivia Newton John. Subsequent to credits included eighty three's The
Star Chamber and various TV credits as well. So, yeah,
I really liked the character Mark here. Just a very
likable seventies, you know, late seventies, early eighties sitcom romantic
lead type. You know.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
Well, yeah, he's a good compliment to Trisha. So Rebecca
Balding has girl next Door energy, Fred mccerrn has boy
next door energy. He's just a kind of nice, strapping
young lad who is He spends a lot of the
movie just humoring This guy will get to in a
minute Roger, Like they have this this dynamic where Roger

(36:24):
is just monologue, doing horny monologues and Fred Mccaherrn's just like,
you're crazy, man, But yeah he's sweet.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
All right. So that's that's our main couple. But then
we also have this other couple. Jessica is Trisha's friend.
Trish and Jessica have come up together to visit the mountains.
Jessica is played by Anne Marie Martin born nineteen fifty seven.
Martin's acting credits go back to seventy six and include

(37:03):
various TV shows and such films as seventy nine as
The Shape of Things to Come and the nineteen eighty
slasher film prom Night, starting Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
Even without knowing that's the rest of her resume, I
somehow feel like Anne Marie Martin brings the slasher movie
energy with her into this film. Does that make any sense?

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah? Absolutely, Like once I saw she was in prom Night,
I'm like, I think I saw Prom Night ages ago.
I don't remember much about it, but I'm absolutely certain
her character dies in it. You can tell, like, where
are you build in the credits for a slasher film,
it's like, oh, yeah, you're in the victims zone for sure.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Yeah, that's a good point. I've never thought about it
like that, but basically, yeah, if you are neither top billing,
if you're like not top billed, and you're above like
seven or eighth build, you are definitely going down.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah. So. Her subsequent films include ude eighty one's Halloween,
two eighty four's Runaway, and two hundred and ninety eight
episodes of Days of Our Lives from eighty two through
eighty five. Now that that Runaway credit is important to
mention here because she was married to popular novelist Michael

(38:16):
Crichton from eighty seven through two thousand and two, and
actually co wrote the nineteen ninety six film Twister with him.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Mm hmm, okay, yeah, I rewatched Twister a few years
back and that was a I remember it being a
pretty fun time.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Actually, yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yeah, it's a very it's kind of a silly movie
and that the sometimes you feel like the tornado really
has a mind, like it's chasing you know. But yeah,
it was a fun ride.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
And Runaway I would I would be interested in coming
back to that one. Runaway. Oh, it's a It is
a silly movie with very very dangerous, very unconvincing robots, okay,
and some unique casting. All right, So that's Jessica. Jessica's
boyfriend is Roger, who we've been talking about a lot already.

(39:07):
Roger is our horn dog.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
Whereas he calls himself hormone man.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
Hormone man. Yes, that's right, he calls himself that. Nobody
else calls him that. Yeah, I really.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
He has a whole hormone man act like he does
a bit.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
He lays it on so thick. I am suspicious whether
Roger has actually had sex before. I think he's a
little little two out there with all of this stuff.
I think we're building up to his first time.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
It conveys an insecurity and a nervousness.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yeah yeah. And then again, he has this likable quality
to him where he doesn't He talks about sex all
the time, but doesn't come off as particularly sleazy.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
So I think he crosses the line in a couple
of points, but most of the time he just comes
off as dorky.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah yeah, yeah, more of a dork. I would agree
with that. So he's played here by Jeff harr I
couldn't find any dates on Jeff Harland, but he's still
around and I think still working. He'd worked in TV
for a few years prior to this film, popping up
on the likes of Morgan Mindy and Buck Rogers in
the twenty fifth century, and has remained active over the decades.

(40:17):
He pops up in an episode of Parks and Recreation,
and also he was he plays like a doctor in
one episode of the relaunch of the Roseanne series.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Oh interesting, I wonder, Well, I'm trying to think who
this guy could have been in Parks and rec.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
He shows up in a single episode, and my family
is actually doing a big rewatch of Parks and rec
right now, and I think we're in the next to
the last series, and I don't think we've gotten to
his part yet. Oh but now I'm on the lookout.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
If I just had to guess, I'd say he stands
up in a meeting to make it inane comment.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I saw a screenshot, and I think that would be
a good guess. But I saw a screenshot and I
think maybe he's a local business or politician type that
they're going to encounter later on. But I could be
wrong on that. It's also like that I've seen him
already and just was not looking to recognize anyone.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
So the characters we just talked about are our main four,
some of twenty somethings in the movie, but there are
also a couple of other major characters who are the
older mind guys, like the boss at the Mind Brian.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, and we're gonna have less details on these guys,
but Brian is played by John Crawford who lived nineteen
twenty through twenty ten, and his credits include seventy twos,
The Poseidon Adventure. In seventy six is the Enforcer and
then his second in command if you will, is this
guy Dan played by Med Flory who lived twenty six
through twenty fourteen, and his credits include a supporting role

(41:39):
in sixty threes, The Nutty Professor.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Oh, and this movie also has a crazy Ralph character.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah, it's got John Lormer, who many people will remember
from creep Show. I Want My Cake.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
That's the Yeah, the probably my least watched segment from
creep Show. I think I've sometimes skipped over that one.
But yeah, that's where a lot of people are going
to recognize him from but this is guy. Yeah. John
Lormer lived nineteen oh six through nineteen eighty six and
has a very long history with television. His TV credits

(42:16):
go back to I think the late nineteen forties, and
his credits include I can't even begin the list all
of them here, but include. It includes four episodes of
the original Twilight Zone, he pops up on The Andy
Griffith Show, the old sixties Batman series, the original Star Trek,
and much more. His film credits include nineteen seventy five's
Rooster Cogburn. He's also one of these guys that I

(42:37):
think pretty much always played an old man, one of
those actors.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Oh, who are the other ones who came up like that? Lately?
It's the guy plays the old man in home alone,
the old man at the airport who was in something
we saw.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know if we've talked about him directly,
but William Hickey is one of the actors I always
think of in this category, Like it seems like he
just always played an old man, even when he wasn't
that old of a a right, Yeah, all right, just
a few more credits behind the scenes here before we
get into the plot. We mentioned the Bogins. We've got
we have to we have to give credit to the

(43:09):
creators of the Bogins. Design and construction colon Boogin goes
to two individuals, Ken Horn and William Munns, and both
of these guys worked in a number of cool effects
pictures from the seventies and the eighties. So Horn his
credits include seventy sevens The Hills Have Eyes, seventy nine's
Tourist Trap, Hangar eighty eight, nineteen eighties, Battle Beyond the Stars,

(43:34):
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow nineteen eighties, The Return which
we've talked about, eighty one's Demonoid swamp Thing, eighty two's
Conan the Barbarian, and eighty seven's Creepyzoids Wow. And then
William Muns his credits include swamp Thing eighty two on that,
eighty two's The Beast Master, eighty five is The Return
of the Living Dead, and nineteen eighty eight's The Monsters Today. So,

(43:58):
you know, I think these guys definitely knew what they
were doing, and you know, given the you know, the
obvious constraints here, I feel like, again, I feel like
the Buggins looks pretty good. I just at the end
of the day, I'm like, maybe they should have gone
with a monstous suit Hindsight's twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, can I come? I'd say this maybe an example
of execution is more solid than the design, which is questionable.
Does that make sense? Like? Yeah, real is like, once
you've got your mission, here's what the Buggins is going
to look like. I feel like they executed that about
as well as it could have been done.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah. Yeah, though they do have design and construction credits.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
Yess that's true.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, they they would they would benefit from our praise
and our criticism here. Yeah, I don't know. I guess
one of my things is like, what is the buggin
supposed to be? Like what kind of triglafauna is it?
Is it like a cave cricket? Is it a turtle?
Is it an octopus? Like I thought it was going
to be a cave octopus before we actually found out
what it is. A reminder there's no such thing as

(45:02):
like a freshwater cave octopus.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
But yeah, it's it's a spider turtle, rat octopus.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah, it's okay. It's a weird hybrid concept, and I
guess given the design elements here, they did a pretty
good job. All right. Finally, the music here is by
Bob Summers. I have to say, pretty solid late seventies
early eighties kind of slasher theme music here. You know,
when we get into the tense moments, it does a

(45:31):
fine job.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
Definitely works pretty well in the trailer.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah, Summers. We've talked about Summers in passing before because
he did the score for The Eliminators, the mostly boat
based action adventure sci fi film that we watched a
few years back.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Scientist, Mercenary, Mandroid Ninja together they become the Eliminator.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah. Yeah, So he'd worked on that. He worked on
a film called The Night, and he worked in the
music department on a number of films such as Sideways,
Night of the Comet and metal Storm. Also worked on
various Sun Classics projects.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Oh, metal Storm, the Destruction of Jared Sen exactly. Yeah,
there you go. All right, Well, are you ready to
talk about the plot?

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Let's jump in.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
We begin with a Taft International Pictures logo. Looks very classy,
copper text, gleaming. What do you think?

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah? I liked it. I got a little excited. You know,
it's kind of neat when you see a different film
production logo that you haven't seen before. You're like, oh,
feels a little different. I don't know exactly what to expect.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Some things like I didn't know this movie was made
by a bank kind of looks like it, yeah, yeah.
And then we get a red out and the title
is scribbled in a kind of cursive font in red
on a black background. And after this we moved to
a very Ken Burns style pan and zoom sequence over

(46:56):
some cpa toned old newspapers and photographs, old timey harmonica
music plays, and all these newspaper clippings are from the
eighteen eighties. At first, they're from a newspaper called the
Silver City Gazette, with headlines like silver strike in high country,
mother loads struck in rockies, hundreds pour into the mountains,

(47:18):
richest vein in history. And then you get photos that
show men standing proudly beside mine entrances or chipping away
at veins of oar with little picks. And then we
start getting different kinds of headlines. These are from the
nineteen tens. They say things like two more cave ins,
safety inspector do twenty seven trapped in mine miners feared

(47:40):
dead and then miners report attacks in mine, and finally
mine closed.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
I'm assuming that the general vibe of this intro is
maybe in keeping with the documentaries that had come out
previously from Sun.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
Classics Documentary Tactics. I didn't even make that connection, but yeah,
the kinburns, pan and zoom, and they had previously been
making all of these documentary films. That makes a lot
of sense.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yeah, start with what you know.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
So the action begins with a scene at the reopening
of an abandoned silver mine in the mountains, just outside
of a Colorado town called Silver City. So all around
the entrance snow is piled high and we can see
evergreen trees in the distance, a high altitude mountain environment.
And here we meet four characters. You've got the two

(48:28):
bosses in charge of the operation. You've got Brian played
by John Crawford, who has a likable enough demeanor, but
he's also a tough, no nonsense kind of guy. You know,
he's there to get work done. He's wearing a very
tight jean jacket. I feel like man wardrobe department. I
feel like they should have gotten him a better jacket.
And then you've got Dan played by Med Flory. So

(48:50):
both just kind of medium grizzled, older guys. They've got
some mining experience. Yeah, and then you've got the two
younger employees, these guys in their twenties played by Fred
McCarron and Roger are played by Jeff Harlan. Mark is
a strapping young lad. He is friendly, he's mild mannered.
And Roger, as we've been saying, is a nervous, sort

(49:11):
of obnoxious horn dog who has Dana Carvey energy.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
And it's worth noting like none of these guys are
are bad at all, Like even our I think in
a picture from certainly from later on in the nineteen
eighties and certainly into the nineties, at least one of
the bosses here would have been a hard ass or
would have been a villain of some sort.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
Yeah, yeah, but they're none of these are villains.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yea. Yeah, they're pretty good bosses. They're very understanding, you know.
So I again that comfy vibe here. We're at least
when we're in the human realm, we're among friends. It's
the buggins we have to worry about.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
That's a good point. Yeah, this is about human camaraderie
in the face of an overwhelming evil that is from below. Yeah,
So the boss is the chains off the gate and
they open up the tunnel and the younger guys haul
up a generator, and all of Roger's dialogue at this
point is stuff about He's like listing the number of
hours and minutes it's been since it was last six

(50:12):
o'clock and Mark and Roger are They also talk about
how they're new to mine work, so the older guys
have to show them the ropes. So the first phase
of reopening the mine seems to be setting up lights
and checking the old structural timbers and the mine shaft.
So Dan knocks on one of these old wooden props
with a hammer, and this big shower of dust falls
and he says that one's okay, which I thought was funny, like,

(50:36):
doesn't seem okay. But then while they're doing this, the
younger guys ask Dan why the mine was closed in
the first place, and he says, oh, they kept having
cave ins, And so we get to not quite look
at the camera and shrug, but almost that kind of
thing where where Roger is like, we're not getting paid
enough for this. So while the guys are busy wiring

(50:58):
up lights. They start talking about their sos and the
situation is they are going to be renting a cabin
while they're in town for this job, and Roger has
for the upcoming weekend, has invited his girlfriend Jessica to
come up from Denver and visit to stay over at
the cabin. Jessica is bringing with her her single friend Trish,

(51:22):
with whom she went to college. They went to journalism
school together, and Trish and Mark are supposed to be
each other's blind dates for the weekend. I feel like
I want to insert a buzzer sound here. The first
time I was watching this, that kind of went over
my head, But when I went back on it, I
was like, wait a minute, what it's a blind date,

(51:44):
a destination multi day blind date where you're staying in
the same house. I don't folks, do not do this
to your single friends a blind date. It's debatable whether
that's a good idea at all, But if you're going
to do a blind date, I feel like it has
to be short and easy to leave.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, on one hand, maybe this is
acceptable in the eighties, but also it just it feels
like that sitcom energy you know where it's like, oh,
these two don't know each other, they're gonna make a
love connection. You know. It works well enough for the picture,
but doesn't hold up the close scrutiny.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Yeah, so Mark is skeptical about this multi day destination
blind date, but Roger is offering him assurances laced with
horny weirdness, like he's like, I saw Trish naked in
a hot tub, You're gonna like her.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Yeah, And they seem to have no plan for the weekend,
like there's no talk of I mean, obviously Roger has planned.
Roger has plans, but it's I'm not hearing anything about
the hikes they're planning to go on. It seems like
there's a vague plan to make spaghetti. But then it's
like the guys end up working most of the time anyway,
So yeah, it wasn't really well constructed this weekend.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
When they never talk about skiing. But when we see
the ladies driving up in their car, they have skis
on the Vestroy car, so it's like maybe they had
plans to ski. But so once the older guys start
blasting the mine with dynamite to clear out some of
the old cavens, we cut away to Creeper Cam. There's
this old guy played by John Lormer, the guy from

(53:17):
Creep Show, standing on a snowy hill overlooking the mine entrance.
And when we first see him, he's in a plaid
coat with this big fleece collar and he's got it
flipped up like Dracula. He looks like Rocky Mountain Dracula
and Mountain Tracula.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
He is.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Yeah, And for the first three quarters of the movie
there are going to be a lot of scenes of
this old guy lurking around outside wherever.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
The characters are. And we know from the get go
what this guy's here for. This is the old dude
who's gonna warn us about the evil Like there's no
doubt about it. That's the old Doom.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
He's that guy. Anyway, at the end of the workday,
Mark and Roger head out talking about how they have
to pack up so they can move into the cabin
the next day. Next we get to I think a
scene where the filmmakers realized, hold on, we can't make
the audience wait another hour before somebody gets killed by
the bugins, so we need to pull out a random

(54:14):
character to get to you know, become boogins meet here
at the beginning, So enter the character of did you
understand her as the land lady, like the owner of
the cabin?

Speaker 2 (54:24):
I guess, so, I guess she's the landlady. Maybe she's
also a real litter as well.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
Maybe. Yeah, So she's taking care of the cabin for
some reason, heading up to the cabin that Roger and
Mark have already rented, and she's getting it ready for
them to arrive the next day. I think she said
she has to get the heat going. So when we
first meet her, she's driving alone up the snowy mountain
road in a wood paneled station wagon, and then a
deer wanders into the middle of the road in front

(54:51):
of her, and she somewhat comically exclaims, oh my god
and swerves off the road. And then, without a whole
lot of ado, she's like, well enough of that, and
gets out of her wrecked car, leaves it in the ditch,
and walks the rest of the way to the cabin.
And then as soon as I saw the cabin, I
was like, oh, the one that explodes in the trailer. Okay,

(55:12):
they got to give that away.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Now, is this character Martha?

Speaker 3 (55:17):
I don't remember if we ever learned her name. Yeah,
why were you looking up who the actress is? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (55:23):
I was looking. There is a character named Martha played
by Marcia Dangerfield, so possibly her. She was also in
Footloose in eighty four. Oh, okay, in bats in ninety nine.
But yeah, I'm like you, I don't remember her ever
actually being named.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Well, anyway, the cops might say her name later, but
I don't remember what it is. Anyway. She arrives and
she walks around in the house in the dark with
a flashlight, cursing at things. She eventually gets the power
on and she makes a phone call to somebody, explaining
what happened and explaining that she will need to stay
the night because her car is wrecked. Meanwhile, outside, John
Lormer pulls up and starts sneaking around in the snow,

(56:04):
peeping in windows and stuff, looking very pained. Then the
landlord goes into the basement to light the furnace. The
basement is a major location in this film. Many times
characters have to go down into the basement. It's pretty
standard in terms of layout. They didn't go out of

(56:25):
their way to make it super creepy. It's just like
a furnace water heater, stacks of cardboard boxes and old
junk and wooden stairs descending from the kitchen. While she's
down there, the landlady thinks she hears a sound there's
something rustling behind the boxes, but then the sound goes
away and she heads up to bed. Later we see
her in bed with a book, and down below we

(56:47):
get our first Boggin's point of view shot. It's kind
of wobbling around on the basement floor and then slowly
ooching up the stairs like an inch worm. You can
kind of get the camera motion of it creeping. So
the landlady something. She gets out of bed, goes to
the kitchen cautiously and draws a knife from the block,
but the knife is going to do her no good
against the Bugin's menace. Suddenly, she sees something that we

(57:11):
can't see approaching her. She screams, and then, in an
attack that will be repeated several times in the movie,
something seems to grab her by the ankle from below
and yank her off her feet, and then it drags her, screaming,
across the floor and down into the basement. Here I

(57:33):
thought it might be good to do a sidebar on
the characteristics of the Buggins attacks.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Yeah, because this is something we'll see multiple times throughout
the picture.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
It's kind of interesting. I think the movie is not
totally unique in this regard. There are similar, you know,
tricks employed in movies that have small monsters that attack
from the ground level. But it is kind of interesting
that the movie has a lot of shots from the
ground lingering on people's feet and legs, a kind of
predatory watching of people's feet and legs. And I think

(58:09):
this is in part trying to take advantage of that
fear that people have about things reaching out from under
something and grabbing them by the feet. You know, there
are different versions of this. I remember a more innocent version,
like when I was a kid, I had a fear
and understood it as a common fear among other children

(58:29):
that something could reach out from under my bed and
get my feet. So this would lead to, you know,
if you're getting back in bed at night and it's
dark and you're scared, you kind of like run and
leap onto the bed, so you're never too close to
the bed with your feet on the ground, so something
couldn't reach out and get you. But I was also
thinking about this in a more sinister fashion. The adult

(58:50):
version is an urban legend that's actually very common. It
is the parking lot slasher who hides under women's cars
and slashes the victims achilles tendon while she's opening the
car door, making it impossible for her to run away.
I assume you've heard this before.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
You know. I don't think I heard this one before.
It sounds very impractical, like, yes, you're going to hide
out under a car like that's pretty cramped unless you're
hanging out under big old trucks. And then once you've
slashed the victim, you're going to crawl out and then
attack them again. It seems like you're just gonna They're
going to put the boots to you before you even
craw out from underneath the car.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
So, yeah, I looked this up, and this is for
the most part, not something that actually happened, at least
I think there now. I'm not sure about the details.
I think there may have been a case much later,
like long after this was already an urban legend of
something like this happening, But at least in the early times,
when stories about this were spreading like wildfire, this was

(59:50):
not happening. There are you know, no records at the
time of anybody ever doing this. So it's just a
thing that I think captured people's imagination because it just
like taps into natural fears. We have fears about kind
of you know, places people could be hiding. You're like
not examining the practicality of how much space is there

(01:00:11):
really under the car, how much. It's just like it's creepy,
I think, in the same for the same reason that
it's creepy to imagine a monster reaching out from under
your bed.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Yeah. I mean it probably comes down to like our
natural tendency to be on the lookout for things like
you know, serpents in the grass, or or the potential
that that some sort of a naturally occurring like small
cave or overhang might have some sort of a creature
held up in it and if you get too close

(01:00:40):
then they might you know, attack and self defense.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Yeah, so I think the movie is trying to take
advantage of that kind of fear. They're reaching out from
under something and getting you by the feet fear, and
so that is what the Buggins cam is tapping into
in a way. So we see from the monster's point
of view, as like feet and leg go by, but
then also as people cower and scream as the monster
is approaching from the floor looking up at them, and

(01:01:07):
then also the attack. The Buggins attack almost always has
a pulling or dragging action. The victim is seized by
some extremity, usually by the feet, but sometimes by an arm,
like if they reach into something and then dragged away.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Yeah, and it seems like the Biggins has at least
two tentacles going on some sort of arms. One is
for grabbing and the other is for slashing at a distance.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
Yeah, it's got a nail on the end of the tentacle.
So the next day the cops pull the landlady's car
out of the ditch. There's no sign of her around
and down at the mine, our boys are still exploring
and they're mapping out the tunnels. They find a cave in,

(01:01:54):
perhaps the one that closed the mine in nineteen twelve,
and they start clearing away the rubble by hand. I
don't know what you actually used to clear a rubble
in a tunnel. Maybe you just pick him up, and
maybe maybe that is what you do. But finally it
is time to meet Jessica and Trish our main two
women characters. So they're making a trip up the mountain.

(01:02:15):
They're on the highway in Jessica's yellow Volkswagen, which is
named Molly. Jessica is driving and Trish is navigating, though
Trish is really struggling to decipher the map, and Trish
makes a joke about the fact that Jessica is the
kind of person who names her car. Jessica's defense is
that at least she's not as bad as Roger. Again,
this is her own boyfriend who names certain parts of

(01:02:37):
his own body. And then she leans over to whisper.
He calls it herman.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Wow, what part does he call herman? Is the butt?
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
We could have no idea what part of the body
it would be. Yeah, we'll have to assume his gallbladder
is Hermann. So Jessica pulls over so they can let
their dog, Tiger, have a bathroom break. Tiger is an
off leash mania. He just runs off into the woods.
They set him loose, and then they're kind of surprised
when he doesn't immediately come back. They're like, why did

(01:03:07):
he run away?

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
So the next scene Jessica and Trish are walking around
in the snow calling for the dog and complaining about
him and calling him names. You know, come here at
Weasel Breath. I don't know if we've already discussed everything
that needs to be said about this, but one of
the most shocking things about this movie to me is
the non stop expression of negative sentiment about this cute

(01:03:33):
little dog. It feels almost like the screenwriters thought they
should include a cute dog, but maybe they hated dogs
and just assumed everybody else does too. What did you
make of this?

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
Oh, I don't know. They do trash talk the dog.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
A lot, non stop. They never say anything nice about
the dog.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
But the dog is also absolutely cute and is one
of the stars of the picture. And you know, we
don't have we I don't think we as the viewer
have reason to hate the dog. The dog's not going
around doing things that deserve death by monster or anything.
I don't know. It made me, I did. It did
make me reflect a little bit on my relationship with

(01:04:16):
my own pet, who's not a dog and is a cat.
But you know, I probably talk a lot of trash
about this cat. But at the end of the day,
I love this cat, even even when she's you know,
acting against me and actively jumping out at my feet
from underneath things, oh interest, much like a Boogin's. So yeah,

(01:04:37):
but yeah, they do spend a lot of time talking
trash about Tiger.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
So after a while they get tired of looking for
Tiger and they head back to the car. I don't
know if I mean like they're planning on leaving without
him or something. But then when they get there, Tiger
is sitting on top of the Volkswagen like womp womp.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Yeah again, you could have you could have dropped a
laugh track on this film, and it would have worked
perfectly for much of it. Like it's it clearly has
that good natured comedy energy going on.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
The next scene is pretty funny. Back at the mine,
the guys break through the rubble pile and just beyond it,
the tunnel opens up into this big chamber. It's shimmering
with purple light. They go in and it is an
underground lake or pond. There's this big, you know, very
still water, massive still water covered with fog. It's kind

(01:05:22):
of atmospheric at first, you know, it's not the most
expensive set ever, but it's you know, they get it
gets an atmosphere. They followed the edges of the lake
and we see things moving in the water below, but
they don't see it. And then they come across a
gigantic pile of clean, dry, bleached bones. One of the other,

(01:05:43):
one of the older guys, picks up a human skull
and says, that looks human. What else is it going
to be?

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Well, you know, he's in his spare time, he reads
up on human ancestors, and so he was very curious
to see if this was indeed a modern human.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Skulls Australopithecus in the cave. Yeah, so, you know, they've
got this massive bone midden in the cave. In the cave,
it seems to contain the bones of twenty or thirty
human bodies. They're all mixed up and jumbled together, and
they're like, what could have caused this? And they're like, well,
it probably a gas leak or something. You know, these

(01:06:21):
are the miners who died in here.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Meanwhile, we just glimpse something like a large creature swimming
in the underwater pool, but no cause for alarm. Let's
just keep looking for that silver.

Speaker 3 (01:06:32):
So Trish and Jessica arrive at the cabin, Jess claims
the room with a big brass bed for herself and Roger,
and she starts testing out the bed like jumping on it,
and it immediately breaks and falls to the floor. Meanwhile,
Trish wants to take a shower, but she can't get
hot water, so she goes to the basement to turn

(01:06:53):
on the water heater, and while down there, she hears
some odd noises and there's some suspense while she reeps
around looking for the source of the scuffling. But this
ends with a poodle scare because Tiger jumps out from
behind some boxes. Next, we check back in with the
boys at the mine. Roger is narrating in graphic detail

(01:07:13):
his strategic plans for sex Well. The boss interrupts them
to say that somebody has to drive to Denver overnight
to pick up new maps that they're going to need
for the next morning, and it's got to be Roger
because the boss needs needs Mark there, I think for
some electrical tasks, and Mark has the electrical knowledge and
Roger is like, no, Boss, my girlfriend just got up here.

(01:07:37):
It's been twelve days. But the boss does not sympathize,
so they make plans for Roger to take the boss's
pickup truck and he's gonna leave at three am for
some reason.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't fully understand the timing of all
of this, but yeah he has. But he assures him
it's like, look, you've got you don't have to leave
till three am. Do whatever hormone Man stuff you have
to do up until three am, but then you've got
to go to Denver and pick up the maps.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
This is the first scene where Roger does a Hormone
Man monologue. So he starts referring to himself as hormone Man,
and he's narrating it like a Superman radio serial. You know,
Hormone Man can leap tall buildings of sex. And while
Hormone Man is yammering, we suddenly pan over to the
grizzled old Codure and he's just like spying on Hormone Man.

(01:08:27):
And so we're just gonna get a lot more creeping
scenes throughout where the old Man is. You know, he's
outside wherever they are, like looking at people.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
But it's still it's like, I'm not buying for a
second that this guy's a threat. It's like he's here
to tell us about the monster. There's no doubt about it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. His message is not I'm
going to harm hormone man. It's that hormone Man is
in danger and needs MP.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
But he's very anti social, He's I guess the whole time,
He's like, should I tell him? Is now a good
time for me? Don't? I don't want to come off
as awkward or weird, but I've got to warn him
about these boogets.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
So back in the cab our, Core cast is finally united.
Jessica and hormone Man have a screaming tickle fight, and
Trish and Mark's first meeting happens in the middle of this.
So like, Mark comes in the front door balancing a
bunch of boxes from the liquor store heavy Core's presence
in this film, Core's banquet, and he's got a box

(01:09:20):
of a vodka brand I'd never heard of, called barren
Rothshield Vodka. Meanwhile, Trish gets out of the shower to
investigate the screaming the tickle fight and is standing in
the doorway half wrapped in a towel. And this is
the part where we get that unintentionally funny moment where
the camera does a Jallo style like glide zoom on

(01:09:41):
Trish's butt, and then yeah, it's very weird, like it's
the way a Jallo movie would like zoom on a
bloody weapon, you know, like, oh, there's the clue. But
so Mark and Trish are both embarrassed and they make
an awkward introduction. But then later she comes out into
the kitchen and joins Mark and they start to get
to know each other. You know, they're bonding a bit

(01:10:04):
over first scornful mockery of our beloved Tiger, including one
part where Mark he's like, yeah, I went to school
for electrical engineering. The reason is I'm trying to invent
a dog sized electric chair for Tiger.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
What.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
Yeah, So they share some cores banquet, and then we
get a bit of their backstory too. So Mark, you know,
got out of electrical engineering school. He's working this mind
job until he figures out what he wants to do next.
Trish and Jessica went to journalism school together, and Trish
just got a job at the Denver Post working on
their Sunday magazine, so she is aspiring for a bigger

(01:10:39):
career in journalism. And then there's a knock at the door.
Who is it? It's the cops. They are trying to
find the land lady who disappeared earlier. Her car was
found in the ditch, but nobody knows where she is,
so the cops come in and they have to end
up interrupting Jessica and Hormone Man in the middle of
whatever they're doing. So now since everybody is out of

(01:11:01):
the cops, of course they don't find out anything, so
they leave, and now that everybody's out of bed, our
heroes decide to go into town to get some supper,
and they're gonna leave Tiger by himself at the house
to chew on Roger's shoes, so we stay with Tiger
for a bit. Tiger again choose on hormone man shoes,
and then he hears a noise in the basement and

(01:11:21):
he goes to sniff it out once again. Wonderful dog
reaction shots and growling and lip curling. Very expressive, little
little curly haired dog. He yaps a bit at what's
going on in the basement and this leads to a
Buggins attack. We see Buggins Cam come up out of
the basement into the kitchen and Tiger hides in a
kitchen cabinet while we see the Buggins cam like rushing

(01:11:44):
toward him. And at this point I just assumed Tiger
was done for like already could put but he pops
up again later, so I guess the cabinet door was
enough protection, which is very funny in retrospect once we
see the Buggins like flicking huge a furniture out of
the way like nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
Yeah. I wasn't surprised that Tiger survived this encounter because
it seemed like the film had already devoted a lot
of time to Tiger, and also just sort of the
general knowledge that you shouldn't kill off a dog in
a film if you can avoid it. Not that it's
stopped plenty of films that we've watched for weirdout cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
Well, but they do later.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
That's the weird thing. I don't remember Tiger dying, Yeah,
pointed out to me when we get back to it.
Maybe I was hiding the film from people or something.

Speaker 3 (01:12:30):
It happens off screen, but okay, it does happen.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
Yeah, Yeah, And I guess it's surprising that Tiger would
eventually get killed in this It seems like tiger would
be your survivor because he's again he's great. I would
put this performance and the way they shot it like
on par with Jonesy and Aliens. You know, easier to
do with a dog than a cat. But still we're invested.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
Yeah, it's funny that you pointed out he's a survivor
because he does have the eye of the tiger.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
M that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):
So at dinner, our four some they stumble out of
a restaurant complaining about the bad food, and then they
head over to the billiard hall where the bosses are
shooting some pool. Because remember, hormone Man has to get
the keys to the truck so he can do the
overnight drive. So hormone Man takes the truck and the
other three hang out.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
I want to point out this surprised me, and I
think maybe speaks again to the good natured heart of
this film. Roger has been talking this big game about
the sex, and his bosses are even like, look, you
can do whatever you want till till three am. That's
when you have to leave. Roger instead of like pushing
to the absolute limit of his time and then leaving

(01:13:39):
for his work trip, is like I need to go
to bed early so I can get up at three am.
Like he's so he's ultimately so responsible. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
Well, and he's telling the other people, He's like, y'all
hang out, y'all have a good time. I'm gonna go.
I gotta go do my thing.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
And so the other three hang out at the billiard
hall with the bosses. Yeah, and that's weird. Jessica, it
turns out, is a pool hustler. She starts She's absolutely
destroying Dan at pool for money, and he keeps going
double or nothing and she keeps winning. Meanwhile, Mark and

(01:14:15):
Trish sit at a table drinking with Brian and again
hilarious that this destination multi day blind date has turned
into getting drunk with my blind date's boss.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
Yeah. Luckily, everybody's just a likable character and to get
along so well.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
However, Trish does learn some important clues in the scene.
Brian tells her about the history of the mine, so
she learns that there were cave ins. She learns about
the big pile of human bones they just found. By
the way, have they reported these unburied human remains to authorities?

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
I don't think.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Yeah, Because we go back to the mine later and
they're still there. Nobody's done anything about him, so Trish
gets interested in this and says she's going to go
to the local newspaper office the next and check it
all out. Also later in the scene, we get to
see Mark and Trish getting into a bit of awkward
but gentle flirting. They're kind of hitting it off now,

(01:15:09):
and they decide they want to head back to the
cabin for some romantic time in front of a roaring fire,
so they leave Jessica playing pool with the mind bosses.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:15:21):
The next scene is, unfortunately the death of hormone Man. Yeah,
a hormone man comes home. He finds a mess all
over the floor. He blames it on Tiger and then
he runs around the house cussing at the dog, but
he can't find the dog. Then hormone Man gets into bed.
We know this won't be for long. Buggins Cam fires
up in the basement starts zooming around, going around the

(01:15:43):
boxes in the dark. Then Roger decides he needs to
get out of bed and leave for his midnight road trip.
But when he gets dressed he goes out to the garage,
he is seized by the ankle from something under the
truck and dragged screaming underneath. So more of this grab
from underneath the car horror.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Yeah, and he gets the full business. He gets the
like the claw of the throat.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
Oh yeah, yeah, he gets messed up.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Yeah, there's no doubt. Like it's not like, oh, we've
got to save Roger later on, like Roger's toast.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
So by the time Trish and Mark get home, Roger
is missing. They assume he's already left on his trip.
So they build a big, roaring fire and they have
sex on the living room floor. And in the middle
of this there is yet more of what we initially
assume is Boogin's cam, but it turns out to be
Tiger cam. Something's creeping on them on the floor, but
then it's Tiger and he's just like yep, yep, And

(01:16:36):
so turns out Tiger is fine. While looking for the
dog the next day, Mark finds a weird hole in
the wall of the basement. It's partially boarded up, but
not really, and this apparently leads off into a strange
rock tunnel. He shines his flashlight down the hole but
does not pursue it any further. Meanwhile, Jessica bakes a

(01:16:57):
chocolate cake and talks with Trish about the prospect of
marriage Trisha. Trisha is interested in getting married one day.
Jessica rejects the idea, saying, can you imagine being married
to Roger with eight horny little rugrats drinking beer? I
was like, what, I think they'd only have beer if
you gave it to him.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know, but I guess she perhaps
rightfully thinks that maybe Roger is not marriage material.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
He's not ready at least, yeah, maybe he will mature anyway.
Trish heads off to the local newspaper office, the Silver
City Gazette, to go into research mode. So while she's

(01:17:46):
there digging into the archives about the mine, she talks
with this older lady who has worked in the newspaper
business for years, and this older lady is trying to
pitch her stories. She's like, Oh, you should do a
story on when the Denver Post had the first girl
paper boys.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
Yeah, And then then Trisha's like, actually, I want to
talk about the mining accidents. And for a second, I
was kind of expecting it to be like, oh, we
don't talk about the mining accidents around here, or get
some resistance, but She's like, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Actually,
let's research that now, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
Yeah. So Trish learns all about the tragic history of
the mine, the strange sightings, the cave ins, She learns
of a man who was sent to a mental institution
after trying to collapse the mine with dynamite, and then
finally reports that some miners inside the mind said they
were attacked by something.

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):
You know, I want to jump ahead to something that
is going to be revealed later, but we've already gotten
a sense off here, and that is that supposedly all
of the houses in this area are connected via basement
tunnels to the mines.

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
Bizarre.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it. We get some great payoff
in the film with this, but it does not make
logical sense to me.

Speaker 3 (01:19:02):
I don't think it makes any sense at all, except
that they had to have a way for the Buggins
to get into their house.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
Yeah, because you want it to be a mine menace movie,
but also a basement menace movie, so you need a
system of tuns connecting those things.

Speaker 3 (01:19:16):
So we are later told by John Lormer's character that
all the houses in town are connected to the mine.
By Sam hols.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Maybe they were just like, we just want ways for
people to get to work without having to go out
in the snow. What if they could just cart directly
from their basement too?

Speaker 3 (01:19:32):
Oh that's true. Yeah, it makes me think about like,
you know, far far northern college campuses and stuff that
underground passageways. So meanwhile, that day at work at the mine,
there is vandalism. Someone has painted death on the mine entrance.
I wonder who that was. Inside the mine, Mark and
Dan are looking at this huge pile of human bones

(01:19:55):
they found earlier, and Mark finally observes, He's like, you know,
if these guys died from a cave in or a
gas leak, wouldn't you find whole skeletons instead of this
big pile of random bones all mixed up. And Dan says, yeah,
that is odd.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
You have a dance kind of like that's that's above
my pay grade though, I'm just here for the silver.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):
Also here, the old coadure is like stealing sticks of
dynamite out of the back of a truck. Trish comes
to visit Mark at work and they start comparing discoveries.
They learned that we learned that Jessica has found the
boss's truck still in the garage at the cabin, So
where's hormone man. Also, Trish tells Mark what she learned

(01:20:38):
at the newspaper office. There's weird things are doing, and
so Trish decides she's going to go back to the
cabin to see what's up. And then back at the
cabin here we get another Boogain's attack. So Jessica is
in the shower singing she'll be coming around the mountain
when she comes.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
Yeah, public domain.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
Yeah, and just notice like the inhabitants of this cat
are really diligent about hygiene. There's just lots of bathing.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
Yeah. Well, I mean I feel like I'm if it's cold,
taking a hot shower or something you can do, right,
that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
Yeah, So Tiger is barking at her through the door.
She tells him to be quiet, and then while the
water is running, guess what happens in the basement fires
up the Buggins cam And then here we get to
what I was saying earlier is I think the best
horror set piece in the movie the intake grate. There's
a furnace intake vent on the floor covered by a

(01:21:31):
metal grate, and suddenly a tentacle reaches up through the
grate and we see the metal folding down inwards in
this uncanny way, almost like it's melting. And then the
warped grate just becomes this ominous gaping hole in the floor,
like a dark pit, and Tiger barks at it. He

(01:21:51):
wanders up to investigate, and then suddenly, from beneath something
zooms on Tiger and there's a squealing sound. So we
don't see it, but this is the The implication is, oh,
that it got Tiger.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
Oh man. See, I think I was in disbelief, like
I just couldn't imagine Tiger would be dead at this point,
Tiger's going to come back once more, but he does not.
But I love the use of the grade here because
I remember I think maybe maybe one of the houses
that I grew up in had one of these, and
I think maybe my grandparents' house had one. And as
a kid, there is that weird sense of like there's

(01:22:24):
an underworld down there. You know, you can see through
the grate, and maybe you can see like an old penny,
maybe a small toy that fell down there and can
never be reclaimed or at least as far as you know,
it cannot be reclaimed.

Speaker 3 (01:22:37):
We lived in houses with these, and strangely enough, our
dog was always really freaked out by them, Like if
he had to cross the grade in the floor, he
would jump over it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
He didn't want to step on it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
I mean, maybe that had to do with just the
sensation on his paws, but he also acted just generally
afraid of.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
It's like there's dust down there. It's it's a weird vibe.

Speaker 3 (01:22:56):
And so anyway, the sound makes Jessica get out of
the shower. She has to investigate. She wraps herself in
a towel and goes looking, and while she's checking out
the grate, she is attacked. Something grabs her by the
arm and pulls her into the grate. She manages to
get away, but her arm is all bloodied now and
this turns into a chase. So we still don't see
the full form of the monster, but it chases Jessica

(01:23:16):
through the house. She's chucking things at it kind of
half heartedly, just like tosses a kettle at it and stuff.
She also puts obstacles in the way, and the monster
bats aside furniture and doors and smashes through them like
it's nothing. Eventually, she I think, retreats into the pantry.
The monster smashes through the door and one of the

(01:23:37):
tentacles gets her. It slashes at her neck with some
kind of claw. Now back in the mine, in the
cavern with the underground pond, things turn horrible. Dan finds
the dead body of hormone man floating in the water,
and his face is sort of melted off, but his
body is not eaten, So again, Buggins don't seem to
be eating people. And then there's a confrontation. Lormer is

(01:24:00):
suddenly here in the room with a stick of dynamite
and a lighter, and he's explaining how he has to
blow up the mine again. He's got to get it
closed because they've opened it and the evil has escaped.
Though I was confused because if they just reopened the
main mine shaft, what would that change about the Buggins
getting to and from all the houses that are connected

(01:24:21):
to the mine via tunnels.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Yeah, I don't know. It raises so many questions about
the tunnel infrastructure in this town. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
So in the middle of this, Mark realizes that Jessica
and Trish are in danger. So he rushes off to
the house. He stops to call the police and send
them ahead also but this leaves Brian and Dan in
the mine with John Lormer, and before Lormer can use
the dynamite to close the mine again, Dan is attacked
by the monster and then John Lormer is also. He

(01:24:49):
like sinks to the ground in terror, and this is
the part where he sized the word buggins. And then
he also gets got you know. Actually the tentacle reaches
out from the water, grabs him by the head and
drags him into the water by the head. That's kind
of gross looking.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
At So at this point have we lost both silver
mine bosses and the old Brian's still okay? Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:25:11):
Are they have been boggins again?

Speaker 2 (01:25:14):
It's without the nastiness of an actual slasher film. We
have no deaths in this movie where we as the
audience are supposed to enjoy it on some level, either
in an understandable way or a nasty way, you know,
or a judgmental way. Like Again, a different sort of
picture would have like the nasty boss finally gets killed

(01:25:36):
or the morally objectionable victim character finally gets attacked, But
instead like everybody's reasonable, reasonably nice, and we don't want
to see them killed by predatory monsters.

Speaker 3 (01:25:48):
Yeah, it does not have the quality that some slasher
films have of resentful violence, where it's like you're seeing
people get what's coming to them. It doesn't feel like that.
So so back at the cabin, Trisha arrives and she
finds the whole scene. So there's trash scattered all over
the floor, water running in the shower, the gaping grate

(01:26:09):
in the floor. It kind of reminds me of you
get a scene like this in a lot of slasher
movies of this era. It's like the scene where Laurie
goes across the street to the other house in Halloween,
where she's investigating figuring out what's going on. So it's
a suspenseful investigation where the main heroine is trying to
figure out what happened to everyone. Eventually, Trish comes across

(01:26:33):
a blood stain on the floor where Jessica was killed,
and there's a funny moment where she like kneels down.
It's clearly just a puddle of blood on the floor.
She reaches down and touches it, and then when she
touches the blood. It's like, ugh, I don't know what
she learned by touching it. Maybe it wasn't clear that
it was wet, but the so there's a blood trail

(01:26:54):
from that part of the floor leading down into the basement.
Trish arms herself with a pitchfork and descends into the teller,
finds more blood, touches it again, finds Jessica's body, and
as she tries to climb the stairs and get away,
there is a Buggins attack. Trisha is grabbed by the
ankle from below the stairs, so once again there reaching
for the feet thing. And while Trisha is being attacked

(01:27:17):
by the Buggins, the cops and Mark arrive and the
sheriff shoots the monster and so Trisha is able to
get away from it and we finally get our first
look at the Buggins. The Buggins reveal happens here and
it is a big like what so it's a spider
turtle that's kind of mammalian in the head a little

(01:27:38):
bit and has tentacles.

Speaker 2 (01:27:41):
Yeah, you know what it makes me think of. There's
a topic we discussed on Stuff to Build your Mind
in the past about what happens when you have too
many elements in a particular imaginary work. How Like if
you have two things like, oh, it's part man, it's
part horse, Like, okay, that's evocative, But if you have
three to five things, Yeah, we don't necessarily know what

(01:28:01):
to make of it.

Speaker 3 (01:28:03):
Okay, folks, we just had to go off Mike for
a minute to figure out, try to remember what this
thing was talking. It was when we did a core
episode on a paper in the journal Cognitive Science from
two thousand and six by norn zion at All called
Memory and Mystery, the cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive Narratives.
It's been a while since we talked about this, so

(01:28:24):
I might not have all the details right, but basically
it was looking into what is the right number of
weird elements for a story or an image to have
in order to be maximally memorable. Something that's totally mundane
is not very memorable. If something is too weird, has
too many things going on, it's also not that memorable.

(01:28:45):
So it's like, you know, just having the right number
of twists on a familiar idea is what makes it
maximally memorable.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
Yeah, And I think that's the error here. There are
too many elements that I'm just doesn't leave an impression.
If they had just gone with say spider turtle or
squid rat, then I would they would have left more
of an impression. But instead they went for all of
it at once, and my mind just doesn't really know
what to think of it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
Yeah, I think that's right anyway. So they shoot the
Biggins and then the cops like it's all dead now, instead.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
Of and they got me here. I was a sucker,
and I was like, okay, seems about right, and maybe
it's kind of like that fifty sixties charm here. You know,
so many of those pictures ended with law enforcement showing
up and killing the threat. I was just like, all right,
totally say with cops have here, They've done it, saved
the day.

Speaker 3 (01:29:37):
But no, the Buggins then wakes up and it eats
the cops face, bites him right on the face, and
starts getting and we never get any explanation of the Buggins.
By the way, so the house catches fire. There's no
way to escape up the stairs, so Mark and Trish
have to escape to wear into the tunnels.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
The tunnels. This is great, so it's paying off no
matter how weird it is. It's paying off.

Speaker 3 (01:29:59):
They go through the hole in the well, we see
the cabin explode, just explode, like the walls are made
of c four uh. And they are again attacked in
the tunnels by the Buggins. This At this point, Mark
gets attacked and Trish saves him by smashing one of
the creatures of the big timber beam. They encounter Brian,
who is still alive at this point, but then Brian

(01:30:21):
gets snatched from above and kind of hanged by a
Buggins tentacle. That's creepy. Yeah, But then Trish and Mark flee.
They go out to the mine entrance, which wait a minute,
how far away was the cabin from the mine, Like
they made it all the way. Yeah, So they make
it out the mine entrance. The Buggins are chasing them,

(01:30:42):
and they use dynamite to blast the tunnel shut in
the end, which, on one hand, you're like, oh, okay,
they're safe now. But wait a minute, there were still
all those other tunnels, so the Buoguans could just go
out the other way and come get them.

Speaker 2 (01:30:54):
Yeah. Yeah, have we truly isolated the Bugin's threat? And
how many Biggins were down there? How many escaped, how
many other Bogins related fatalities have occurred in the Tri
County area. We just don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
Bugin's danger remains, so Trish and Mark are okay, though
they walk away while the credits roll in sad music plays,
and that's the end of the Buggins.

Speaker 2 (01:31:16):
You know. Thinking back on it now, I can really
see why Stephen King probably dug the movie so much,
you know, because you can see a number of things
that King is notable for digging, you know, the old
fifties and sixties monster movies obviously, but also kind of
like that, you know, he's very much a part of that,
like nineteen eighties, like to a certain extent, nastier trend

(01:31:40):
in horror, you know, also the sort of the working
Joe vibes of it all and underground tunnels, you know,
shades of Night Shift here to a certain extent, the
Night Shift had better monsters.

Speaker 3 (01:31:55):
Yeah. I can see Stephen King just enjoying a silly
monster movie, hm, maybe for way in ways that are
not totally related to its objective merits. Yeah, and just
wanting to go into battle for it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
Yeah yeah, and uh yeah, and I honor that for sure. Yeah,
because at the end of the day, Yeah, the Boogins
is a very watchable, very fun film. The monsters feel dangerous.
They might be a little goofy when you finally get
to see them, but I mean, compared to other rubber
monsters that we've that have been revealed to us in films,
these things are not bad at all. I don't want
to I don't want to make it sound like they're

(01:32:33):
particularly crappy looking or anything.

Speaker 3 (01:32:35):
Something's not quite working perfectly with them, but they do
work on some level. I mean, it's not the the
Eye creatures.

Speaker 2 (01:32:42):
Right, They're not so goofy looking that we're just laughing
out loud when we finally see them. We're just kind
of like scratching your head, like, huh, that's in them,
that's the Boogins.

Speaker 3 (01:32:50):
Okay, all right, yeah, okay, I see yeah, rat spider, turtle, octopus. Yeah, okay, hmm.
Gives you something to think about. They go home. Chew
on that a little bit. Why the rat, spider, turtle octopus?

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
Where do they come from? Where indeed do they end
up going? We have no idea. We just know that
we shouldn't have disturbed them to begin with.

Speaker 3 (01:33:11):
One last question before we wrap up any more thoughts
about can you see the legacy of like Bermuda Triangle
and Bible documentaries in this horror movie? Does that come
through it all? Like what's happening?

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
I think so. I mean, we can definitely see the
documentary influence on the initial setup, but also in the
sense that in documentaries are typically stories in which is
certainly when you think of like seventies and eighties, like,
none of the humans are the bad guys, They're just
normal people, you know, out there in the world. And
then there is a mystery beyond human life, beyond normal life,

(01:33:47):
and so the bookends closely matches up with that. There's
some sort of strange mystery beyond us. But you know,
the human characters are just for the most part, likable folks.

Speaker 3 (01:34:00):
Yeah, there is. I can see it in the going
into the archives segment to like try and find the
old stories that give you something sensational to talk about.
I can also see, not to be mean, but in
the feeling of trying to make more of something than
there is there.

Speaker 2 (01:34:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:34:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:34:18):
And then finally also I would say in the sense
of oh, making like Bermuda Triangle documentaries there's a kind
of you were warned there's a danger out there, you know,
we had the warning that we didn't listen to the
prophetic voice sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):
Yeah, you can also see it as sort of a
payoff to the frustration of making those documentaries where they're like,
why don't we just make a horror movie and then
we get to choose what the thing is and the
thing is absolutely real, and then it can murder a
whole bunch of people.

Speaker 3 (01:34:45):
You don't have to feel bad about making stuff up.

Speaker 2 (01:34:47):
Yeah, let's just like absolutely make something up, and then
we can make it as cool as we want to
make it and don't have to like read between the
lines and like torture the data to try and summon
the specter of them on.

Speaker 3 (01:35:00):
Yeah. Okay, Well, once again I enjoyed the Bogins. I
hope you did too, Rob.

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
Yeah, this one was a fun one, good pick. Sometimes
it's the random title based choices that end up being
the most rewarding. All right, well we're going to go
and close it out here. Just a reminder to everyone
out there. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to

(01:35:28):
just watch a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema.
We've been doing these for years. You can find episodes
of Weird House Cinema in the archive wherever you get
your audio podcasts. If you are on letterbox dot com,
look us up we are Weird House and you'll find
a nice list of all the movies we've covered over
the years, and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming
out next.

Speaker 3 (01:35:48):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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 con tact at Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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