Colony Mutation (1995) with TYTD Reviews

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris (00:10):
Sign that one.
I've been, I guess, watchinga lot more TV than I have ever
in the, like, past decade.
Not anything current, of course,because that would be too normal.
But lots of, I I wonder if youhave seen this, uh, a lot of Nigel
Neal's stuff specifically recentlyI watched his anthology show Beasts.

(00:32):
Is that, have you ever seen that?

Dan (00:34):
You know, I haven't, but I have heard about it.
It's apparently very, the good,the goods are great, the less
than goods are reviewable.

Chris (00:43):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It has some, some standouts, um,that I might possibly want to talk
about on this show in the future.
But also I've been watching a lot ofthe movies that he scripted, like the
Stone Tape, some of the equator, massmovies that I hadn't seen before.
Just love.
Fantastic.

Dan (01:01):
The stone tape in particular is, is fantastic.
Very, very atmospheric.
They used to play it a lot around kindof November, December over here, which
is the perfect kind of atmosphere,setting a cold, a little bit foggy,
sort of dark nights and you know, you'dsort of getting from into the TV and
that would be on and um, yeah, it's,it's definitely got a very strong vibe.

(01:23):
And the thing as well to bear in mindwith, with Nigel Neil, and it's quite a
nice sort of Easter egg if you are intowatching, um, particularly British mm-hmm.
Old British television, is he used todo a lot of moonlighting in, um, kind of
pitching and script editing in particular.
He did quite a bit of work around Dr.
Who.
So, you know, there are at least a handfulof Classic Doctor who episodes from the

(01:46):
seventies where if you do a bit of diggingand find out who was script editing it
or who Ghost wrote it, it was Nigel Neil.

Dan (2) (01:53):
Yeah.

Dan (01:53):
He was very good friends with the Doctor who production team.
So they'd sort of regularly gettogether and just sort of throw ideas
around, which was quite, quite good.
I couldn't tell you off the topof my head which ones they were.
I, I think my gut is telling me therewas one called the demons, or the
demons that was very wicker, Manny,that he had some involvement in, and
there was one called Inferno, uh,in the early seventies as well that,

(02:15):
um, was, was very kind of his style.
Mm-hmm.
Um, it deals with sort of paralleluniverses and basically the doctor lands
in a, an alternate reality where, um,a. Global disaster is about to happen
due to a, uh, oil drilling exposition.
And he spends half the story tryingto warn the parallel universe that

(02:37):
this is gonna destroy the earth.
And he fails and then gets sent back tohis original universe where they're just
about to start and he gets another chance.
And he sort of is able to learn from whathappened in the parallel universe 'cause
it's running similar sort of themes.
He's able to sort of steer timea little bit away from it, which
is, uh, is quite interesting.
He, he was a very clever man.
He had a lot of very interesting ideasand he, yeah, he almost certainly

(02:58):
was a flavor enhancer for Britishsci-fi and horror, especially when
it came to, uh, to other writers.
You'd, you know, you'd be amazedwhere he sort of turns up randomly.

Chris (03:08):
It's good stuff though.
Oh yeah.
I guess, uh, should wejust get into it then?
Yeah, let's, alright.
Hello everyone and welcome to DeadFormats, a movie podcast where sometimes
I can't come up with anything more cleverto say than we talk about obscure shit.
So I'm your host Chris, and thisepisode we're going to be discussing

(03:29):
colony mutation from 1995.
Today I'm joined by a very specialguest, a man whose name is up
there with Einstein and Jesus.
Dan, how are you doing this evening?

Dan (03:42):
I'm, I'm loving my, uh, my, my intro.
It's very, uh, very nice.
Usually I'm the one to say I'm Jesus.
So, you know, it's nicefor somebody else to Yeah.
To throw that out there.
I'm doing good.
I'm doing good.
It's, it's great to be back on.
I was, I was just saying before we,uh, we started recording that it, it
seems like our ages since we last spoke,um, I know, and those many moons ago
during Star Crystal when, uh, yeah.
When you were living a,a different life, so,

Chris (04:04):
yeah.
Yeah.
So Dan is a film critic and YouTuberfor his channel, TYTD reviews.
So, Dan, tell the listeners alittle bit about what you do.

Dan (04:14):
Um, certainly.
So, um, my channel as mentioned is TYTDreviews and, uh, basically we sort of
take a analytical look at, uh, forgottenfilms, cult cinema, strange oddity
pieces, and we, we try not to just sortof, uh, look at it on a surface level.
I, I try my best to kind of takethe film apart, analyze what worked,

(04:38):
what didn't work, you know, sort oftrace its inspirations, things like
that with the aim really to sort of

Dan (2) (04:45):
mm-hmm.

Dan (04:45):
Discuss it from a more, um, analytical level to sort of piece
together how it maybe could have beenbetter and, and sort of what, what sort
of things make it the way that it is.
We also have a series called TheRed Triangle, which does very
similar stuff but with a moreadult oriented sort of theming.
Um, and when I'm not doing that,I'm doing some streams with various

(05:07):
other people playing, uh, varioussort of games like riff tracks or
what the dub, which is quite good.
So.

Chris (05:13):
Yeah.
Yeah.
One thing I feel like we're kindof kindred spirits in a way of,
one thing I've always enjoyedabout your channel is the way that
you meet a film on its own terms.
You're, you're not usually watchingsomething that you would assume is
high art, but that doesn't stop youfrom giving it the same attention

(05:35):
that, uh, you know, LA Samurai wouldbe given or something like that.

Dan (05:40):
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the thing.
I, I find a lot of people.
Look at contemporary, sort ofthe latest big mainstream films
and then try and compare filmslike Colony Mutation to them.
And, um, it, it's a bit like anapples and oranges situation really.
So I, I always, I try and approacheverything that I review from the

(06:01):
perspective of somebody wanted tomake this because I don't think
anybody's ever really completeda film that from the moment they
started it, they didn't wanna do it.
Uh, somebody somewhere had tobelieve in it to get it to the end.
And that's where I kind of meetit and them, for better or worse.
We, we take it apart and see, uh, seeexactly what the damage was with it.

(06:22):
Um, so yeah,

Chris (06:23):
yeah, definitely check that out.
Check out the episodes on,uh, the commentary on Chick
Boxer or a House of Wax.
Oh, yes, no, no reason in particularwhy you'd want to check those
out, but I encourage you to

Dan (06:36):
do so.
Absolutely, absolutely.
We had some stunning guests for that one.
Naming no names.

Chris (06:43):
So our dead format for this week is eight millimeter films, and the movie,
like I said, is colony mutation from 1995.
But before that, I'd like to givea little bit of a backstory on how
and why I started this podcast, andit's, it's all going somewhere, but
just bear with me for a few minutes.
So nearly six years ago at thispoint, started my first podcast.

(07:06):
It was called Channel 83, and itwas sort of an aimless guy, talks
about horror movies, podcast,and it was a solo podcast.
And the reason for that is I hadoriginally planned on doing it with a
friend, but they very quickly becamedisinterested and it was kind of a, you
know, now or never sort of scenario.
So I decided to just forgeahead and do it myself.

(07:27):
It was a good experience.
I did learn a lot about how toedit a podcast and all that.
Um, you know, met some good people alongthe way, like Dan, and, but it wasn't
too far into it that I sort of realizedthat, uh, the concept didn't really work
as a solo podcast, but that didn't stopme from doing it for two years anyway,
so I did that, took a few years off andabout a year and a half ago I wanted to

(07:52):
get back into doing something and toyedaround with concepts that I thought.
Might be interesting andthat could be done solo.
And that turned into a sort of limitedseries podcast called Mount Molehill.
I think it mostly worked, but eachepisode was just so much effort to put
together that by the end of it, I justknew that there was no way I could

(08:13):
continue doing it and stick to anysort of consistent release schedule.
And also, it wasn't a movie podcast in anyway, but I did notice that so many of the
potential topics I was coming up with forepisodes of that show were movie related.
So that's when started thinkingabout doing another movie podcast,

(08:33):
which eventually became the showthat you are listening to now.
And I knew two things.
One, I'm not going to be able to finda permanent co-host for this thing.
It's too niche, too esoteric.
I don't know anyone that would beinterested in talking about this sort
of stuff on a semi-regular basis.
And two, that I did not want todo another, uh, solo podcast.

(08:56):
That's just me talking.
So the obvious solution to that is tohave a guest or guests on every episode.
So when I was planning out episodesfor the show, that's sort of what I
started with is a list of people Iwould like to have on at some point.
And then from there I tried to think oftopics to discuss that would not only
fit in with the type of show that I wantto create, but that would also mesh with

(09:20):
the potential guests and their interests.
And the point of telling the story is allto lead up to this question, which is Dan.
How does it feel that whenI landed on covering colony
mutation, I didn't ever considertalking about it with anyone else.
I thought, this has gotta be, Dan,

Dan (09:39):
you know what?
I feel honored, I feel privileged.
I am a little queasy, but you knowwhat, it's, it's very kind of you.
I, you know what the, my brief,when I started doing what I do was
I wanted people, when they thinkof films like Colony mutation,
they immediately think of me.
So I, I'm glad that my briefhas been met with this one.

(10:01):
No, that's, that's awesome.
No, that's really good,

Chris (10:03):
man.
And exceeded, I would say.
Oh yes, absolutely.
Um, it's just, you know, I hang out inthe horror corner, you know, obscure
movies and so I do know a lot of peoplethat have, uh, more of a tolerance
for films that are not that good.
But there is a level below that.

(10:26):
So far below something like choppingMall or even Star Crystal that I really
have a hard time convincing anyonethat it's a good idea to watch it.
But you,

Dan (10:40):
I run towards the explosion.
Yeah,

Chris (10:42):
yeah,

Dan (10:44):
yeah.
We, when we get into your, uh, woodchipper, massacres and your, uh,
check boxes of the world, right?
Yeah.
That, that's my, uh, that'smy favorite kind of roadhouse.
Um, and to be honest, like I say, I,I. This year for myself has been a
very hectic and busy one, and I haven'thad a lot of time to watch films.
Um, so when you messaged me tosay, would, would I be interested

(11:06):
in doing colony mutation?
My, my first thought was, um, once I, onceI read what the, the basic premises of, of
it was, was, oh, this is, this is perfect.
Because, um, I've been in a bit ofa rut sort of trying to figure out
what, where I wanted to sort of start,because I've got so many movies to,
to catch up on and, and go through.
Um, it was like you sort of pluckedthe perfect kind of option to, to help

(11:29):
get me back into the swing of things.
So, yeah, no, it's, uh, itwas, it was very good of you
to, to reach out when you did.
'cause it really helped to reconnectme with my, um, b-movie roots.

Chris (11:40):
Yeah.
And here's the thing, and I'm sureyou, you probably feel the same way.
Um, people ask me, I. All thetime or comment, you watch
so many terrible movies.
But the thing is, is that I don'tset out to watch terrible movies.
I set out to watch things thatmay possibly be interesting to me.
And those things just happento more often than not be bad.

Dan (12:06):
Yeah, no, completely agree.
And, and this is the thing I I, findinga bad movie nowadays is incredibly
easy because we live in a timewhere so many films are made mm-hmm.
As quickly, as cheaply as, you know,um, borderline as possible and just
released and just put out into the world.

(12:27):
It was a little harder before.
Companies like the asylum or Yeah.
You know, independent companies,um, like Sterling Entertainment
is probably a good example.
Started just literally pumpingout 10 to 20 films a month.
Mm-hmm.
But it doesn't really interest me to seefilms that are manufactured to be bad
on purpose or manufactured to just bea quick and cheap, you know, here's a

(12:49):
title, make a film about it kind of thing.
Because so many of them are just thesame plot over and over and over again.
Yeah.
With very little kind of wiggle room.
And it kind of ties back towhat I mentioned earlier.
I, my favorite ones are the filmswhere somebody has produced something
that they genuinely believed in.
At some point in the production process,there was some heart somewhere in

(13:11):
it, and it just isn't quite right.
It's just a click off being mm-hmm.
That, that vision that they want,whether it's because of budget or
casting, or whether the director whocan't act, wanted to be the leading
star in it or, or something like that.
There's, there's just something that,that fundamentally did not stick with it.
And that because of that onedecision, it's now veered off

(13:33):
into the most unusual of Yeah.
Sort of cinematic oddities, you know?
Yeah.
Um.
And it's, it's interesting because you,you never quite know for sure what film is
gonna be just a 70 minute kind of paddedwaste of time and what movie you're gonna
put on that's going to change your life.
And it's gonna be the next kindof five outta five film for you

(13:53):
that you'll put on every year.
And you'll get the friends aroundfor a few beers and laugh and, and
throw popcorn at the screen at it.
So everyone is a roll of the dice.
So, yeah.
Yeah, that's what I, what I like about it.

Chris (14:04):
So I first saw this almost four years ago, and, uh, full disclosure,
I had incorrectly remembered this as ashot on video film, which is partially
why I asked Dan on the show to talkabout it, because that's a genre that
he has quite a bit of experience in.
But when I started watching this acouple days ago, I quickly realized that
I was mistaken and Colony mutation wasshot on film specifically Super eight.

(14:29):
So I guess the question is, have you seenany, are you really familiar with features
shot on small format film like this?

Dan (14:38):
So my knowledge of Super eight millimeter films is a little bit
more limited than I would like.
Um, I've obviously seen some of themore notable eight mil offerings
such as, uh, things and, um, theDead Next Door, and I think Ozone
might know Ozone was shot on video.
Uh, the, the JR. Buchalter did aseries called Chalking Shorts, which

(15:01):
was basically a compilation of all ofthe films that he made in his sort of
teen years leading up to his SOV kindof dead Next Door type adventures.
Um, and that was very good as well.
And it's a very interestingformat because it, when people
think of film traditionally, theythink of it kind of being almost
like a limitless medium, right?
So like, uh, when people think of a16 mil print or a 35 mil print, they

(15:25):
think, you know, oh, you can do 2, 4,6, even eight K scans if you really
wanted to, and you wouldn't reallylose any resolution or picture image.
But there is limitations with eight mil.
Um, you do start getting diminishingreturns once you go above a 2K scan on it.
So that coupled with the fact thatit, for a lot of filmmakers who
were going into the SOV era, it wasalmost like a transitionary format.

(15:48):
People would start on Super eight becauseit was cheaper than buying a video
camera and buying tapes and, and goingthrough all of that kind of business.
But it was also a lot more rudimentary.
For example, as is the case with colonymutation, um, a lot of super eight cameras
had no sort of built in sound, right?
So you either had to do sync sound,which is then carrying round a load of

(16:10):
audio equipment whilst you're filming.
And super eight cameras are notthe quietest cameras in the world.
It needs to be said.

Dan (2) (16:16):
Yeah.

Dan (16:16):
Or you, uh, have to become very creative and basically turn
into your own Foley artist and startdoing all of the, uh, audio as a ub,
which is what Colony Mutation did.
Uh, and also things did that,um, both of them are very similar
in terms of the amount of effortthat went into their, um, duing.
But yeah, no, it's, it'san interesting format.

(16:37):
It's, I probably would say thatthere are, there are almost certainly
the better examples of eight milhaven't yet really been properly
released in a digital format.
A lot of it is still trapped ontape or trapped on film prints that
have sort of been cycled round.
It's almost a little bit like a forgottenformat to an extent because SOV is

(16:58):
so popular and had such a big impactfrom sort of the mid eighties onwards.
And if it's not that, then obviouslyyou've got your bog standard film,
which, you know, most people shooton 16 mil for these kind of things.
So eight mils, kind of the, the latchkeykid of the, of the formats really?
Yeah.
It's kind of just the middle child.
Yeah.
It, it never quite hit the highsthat the, the other two formats

(17:20):
around it would at, would attain.
So,

Chris (17:23):
yeah.
I think also with the, the sort of peoplethat are, you know, into collecting these
boutique label things, I think shot onvideo just, it ha it, it, it's easier
to understand, like when you say shoton video, I think people have a certain
expectation of what that might be like.
But saying shot on super eight,they may not really even know what

(17:44):
that is or what that would mean interms of how it was produced or what
type of person would produce it.
So I can see that.
Yeah.
And I think I, you know, I, I. KnewI was gonna ask you this question.
So I kind of tried to figure out ifI had seen any feature length films
shot on eight millimeter, and it wasactually hard to even find a list of

(18:07):
them because every list I could find wasSOV slash eight millimeter like movies
shot on SOV and or eight millimeter withno like, distinction between the two.
Hmm.
So I maybe have seen, I think themovie Cutting Moments maybe has
partially was shot on eight millimeter,but that's not feature Link.

(18:28):
So I think this might bethe only one that I've seen.

Dan (18:32):
Absolutely.
Well, I mean, this was the, thiswas the thing really at, at the
time that this film came out.
Eight mil was a long,sort of finished format.
Um, you know, SOV had been the sort ofdominant filming format probably since
the late 1980s, 80, 80, 89 I would say.
Um.
So it's difficult because SOV primarilywhen you sort of, sorry, eight mil

(18:59):
primarily when you, when you kind of thinkabout it, is it's mainly home movies.
Silent home movies, right.
Or the other sort of option for it, whichwas a sort of popular way to distribute
films before VHS was super cuts.
You know, you would get like, sayfor example, an eight millimeter
highlights of the Rocky Horror PictureShow or highlights of The Wizard of
Oz. And it was just a kind of thingyou could play to watch the film.

Chris (19:21):
I actually, uh, have one for the, the movie, the Snake movie?
Yeah.

Dan (19:27):
Oh yes.
Really?

Chris (19:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I can see it from here.
It's a little eight mil.
Eight millimeter, like super cut.
Like you said, it's pretty beat up.
Like I did put it in a projectorwhen I first got it and it's
all, it's completely red.
Like, I mean, you can see what's onthe film, but it's completely tinted
red because whoever had it beforeme did, was not storing it properly.

Dan (19:51):
Yeah, the, uh, it's the joys of the, uh, the format unfortunately.
I mean, you'd be amazed at whatsort of film restorers can do with,
with that kind of red footage now.
I mean, I dunno, have you, there's a bitof a tangent actually, but I dunno, have
you seen the, um, game of Clones, BruceLee box set, the Severn put out last year?

Chris (20:10):
I haven't.

Dan (20:11):
It's a, it's a big boxer of Bruce exploitation films.
They, they did sort of all of the, thesort of big hitters, um, of the genre.
But the one that piqued my interest,as you you'll probably know, is a
film called The Dragon Lives Again.

Chris (20:23):
Oh, yeah.

Dan (20:24):
Yeah.
They, uh, they re-scanned it in in two KIwanna say it was, and they restored it.
But like you've said with, um, itwas a completely dyed red print.
It was like, there's only two printsthat exist of that film anymore,
but they've done astounding work.
It, you wouldn't have known that itwas basically completely read Wow.
From, from how they've remastered it.

(20:45):
So, you know, there may be hope foryour, your print let yet, although in
fairness as well, I mean, you got luckywith, you could have ended up with a
copy of Curse of the Puppet Master.
Yeah.
Which no one wants that.
No, no.
It's basically, but made of wood.
Yep.

Chris (21:02):
Um, I guess I wanted to, I. Pick your brain a little bit more on
this, since you do have backgroundin film production and all that.
What do you make of this movie?
It's 1995 usually, I think.
Okay.
Film is like, this is gonna be a morelegitimate production, but then they

(21:22):
do it on Super eight and then alsoyou see the quality of the movie.
So it's like you, you have to imaginethey never would've diluted themselves
into having any aspirations otherthan this going direct to video.
So I guess, what do you make oflike this being shot on Super eight?
It's, it's very perplexing to me.

Dan (21:45):
I did sit and think about this through the movie's runtime, and the
only conclusion I could really drawfrom it was one of two scenarios.
One was that the filmmaker in questionknew how to edit super eight footage,
but didn't know how to edit tape.
So he just shot on that because thatwas the only way he knew how to cut.

(22:08):
The other option, which is a little bitmore farfetched, but if you know you've
got delusions of grandeur, I could,I could totally believe you'd go down
this route, is that by 1995, if youwere particularly embedded into the tech
community, the sort of conversationsaround high definition images.
Was becoming a, a muchmore stronger point.

(22:29):
Um, a case in point, Cisco and EBITwere discussing it in 1993, that, that
within the next 10 years, high definitiontelevision footage would be the norm.
And even by 95 there wereconversations around how videotape had
limitations in terms of preservationand kind of upscaling to high
definition and that kind of thing.

Dan (2) (22:50):
Mm-hmm.

Dan (22:50):
Um, so I could maybe believe if, if our brighter director here was
very, very tech savvy that he thought,well, if I shoot on eight millimeter
film, film has a better chance at transtranslating to a high definition format
longer term than shooting on tape.
Um, but to be honest, if I wasgonna pick a theory, I'd probably go
ham's razor and just say he probablyonly knew how to cut on eight mil

(23:12):
and that was what he stuck with.
Um.

Chris (23:14):
Yeah, I mean maybe he just had one in his family from shooting home
videos or something, so he is like,okay, I'll use this 'cause I have it.
But then, yeah, it's like you would stillthink in 1995 buying, uh, a camcorder
that uses full size VHS is probablystill cheaper than the amount of money it
would cost to process a super eight film.

(23:36):
I don't, I don't know.

Dan (23:38):
Well, when I did my degree in film, the lecturer who I had was actually
in the process of shooting a film.
On film.
I. And he told me that in the ninetiesyou could judge how much a film
was gonna cost because the film,the cost of processing the film was

(23:59):
roughly for you guys a dollar a foot.
So if you imagine it'sa foot a second mm-hmm.
You could literally start the camerarolling and go on 2, 3, 4, $5, 6, 7, 8.
Yeah.
Nine, $10.
So, yeah, I mean, I don't know whatthe budget for colony mutation was.
All I can assume is that theydid, well, I say all I can assume,

(24:20):
I know they didn't do retakes.
Um,
um, it was very much a, uh, a sort ofEdward approach I imagine to this film.
It was a one take, and thatwas perfect for most of the
production, largely due to cost.

Chris (24:36):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's super weird.

Dan (24:39):
It's very strange.
I, as you say, for, for 95, youknow, I mean, realistically by
that point, what a five pack oftapes would've been being generous.
Probably what, $15 maybe for Yeah.
You know, it wasn't exactly expensive.
I know that tapes were quiteexpensive up to the turn of the early
nineties, but, and cameras weren'tterrifically expensive at that point.

(25:02):
They were just startingto really come down.
So, yeah, I mean, I, I can onlyassume like you, like you rightfully
say that maybe they just had onein the family that was available.
But in doing that, they've kind ofalso made a rod for their own back,
because like you say, you have todo the entire sound design yourself.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, you're probably gonnahave to pay out for decent sort
of audio recorders, or at the veryleast, some kind of stock sound

(25:24):
effects to do a film over with.
So,

Chris (25:27):
yeah, I guess we'll never know because, mm. Colony mutation was written,
directed and produced by Tom Burna,couldn't find any information about him.
No interviews.
No commentary on the DVD.
So he also has credits on this filmas part of the camera and electrical
department, and he appears as anactor in this film as bum number one,

Dan (25:51):
the finest of all the bums.
Yeah.
Um.
Um, yeah, no, I, I did abit of digging as well.
The only information I couldfind is he had seven acting
credits, including this film.
Um, his last one was sort of the turnof the millennium and that he'd done
some work in sound design and sounddepartment related sort of recordings.

(26:13):
Uh, and I think this waseither his first or his second.
Credit for that.

Dan (2) (26:17):
Mm-hmm.

Dan (26:18):
Other than that, the man's a mystery.
Yeah.
He, he completely felloff the face of the earth.
And, um, whilst I was trying to findsome information, any information about
this film, the only thing I could find isthat it had around about 130 logs on IMDB
and I was the 52nd log on letterbox for

Chris (26:37):
Yes.
This is one of those movies where I havethe most upvoted review on Letterboxed
by virtue of, I was probably thefirst one to review it because like
I said, a fine job you did of it too.
Oh, thank you.
That was, it was four years ago, so ifit's 52 now is probably considerably
less than because now this is onTuby, so it's much easier to watch,

(26:59):
but still no one's watching it.
Um, but yeah, like you said, as bestI can tell, there was just a, a short
period of time in the mid to late ninetieswhere it seems like Tom Burna was.
Involved with the regional WisconsinIndependent filmmaking scene, and
this is just a result of that, youknow, really not much to go on.
No, no.

Dan (27:22):
In terms of the, uh, history of this film, the only other piece of
information that I could find was thatthe DVD release and eventual digital
release that is on Tuby was distributedby a company called Visual Vengeance.

Dan (2) (27:36):
Mm-hmm.

Dan (27:37):
Who I believe did a release called Split, which was a film I covered on my
channel years ago that I really enjoyed.
It was a very surreal art house filmthat was directed by a mathematician.
He'd never made films in his life.
He just did maths.
And that's a, I do remember make

Chris (27:54):
film your review of that and thinking it seemed interesting.

Dan (27:58):
Oh, it's, uh, it's a trip for sure.
I, uh, um, I, in the very privilegedposition of, I, I picked up a
hall of tapes a couple of yearsago now, and just randomly in
there was a US copy of Split Wow.
Which given it was quite a, adeep cut title for the US market.
Somehow a copy made it to England.
I don't know, but it's,it's on my shelf right now.

(28:18):
I think they also did, um, thedistribution for Wood Chipper Massacre,
which is I know is one of your favorites.
Um, as well.
But yeah, and I, I dunno whether youwant to go into this as you know this
soon in or not, but, um, the versionthat is on Chubby and the version
that is more readily available, um,has been somewhat tampered with.

Chris (28:43):
Yeah.
Which, so we can talk, yeah,we can talk about this.
So there's at least three, possiblyfour distinct versions of this film.
So I, it sounds like youwatched the Tubi one, right?

Dan (28:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris (28:55):
So that one runs about 77 minutes.
I ori like, I think it's only been onTubi for like four months because Visual
Vengeance, they, they did somethingwith it where they like upgraded it
and released it solely to streaming.
It's not really a process I'mfamiliar with, but I'm sure they're,
they're making, uh, 25 cents ayear off of putting this on Tubie.

(29:17):
Who knows?
But, uh, so I originally watchedthis on what is a very poor DVD
RIP from A DVD released by the nowDefunct Apprehensive Films in 2007.
That version runs about 82 minutes.
Oh, on me, the titleshortened to Just Colony.

(29:38):
But I did see that there's a differentDVD version released by the same company
called Colony of the Dark, and thenthere's also a VHS of this, and on the
back it lists the runtime as 85 minutes.
So it seems that with each new release,the film is getting shorter and shorter.

Dan (29:57):
I'm actually amazed that it ran longer.
Um, oh yeah, it's, it very much felt likeone of those films where like if they'd
had any sort of accidental, the camerawas running footage, they'd have put it
in there just to get it up to runtime.
So the fact that there are deleted scenes,

Chris (30:14):
well, so that's the thing.
Um, I did give this, when I watchedit, a half star on Letterbox,
which puts it down there with likeabout four or five other films.
Like I don't give out a lot of five stars.
I also don't give out a lot ofhalf stars because most things
fall in between that and the mostthings are just sort of whatever.

(30:35):
Um.
And I think, you know, this timearound, I watched the two B version.
I did not hate it as much.
I would say I don't actively hatethis movie, just that I don't
think on a technical level it'sany good in any way, really.
Um,

Dan (30:51):
yeah, no, I'd agree with that.
I'd agree with that.
I, it wasn't one that I watchedand was like, you know, half
star, this is terrible, but.
Un, I suppose unremarkable is kindof the Yeah, the vibe it gives off.
It's just one of 'em where the creditsrolled and I was kinda like, oh, okay.
Yeah,

Chris (31:08):
went done.
Fair enough.
Like I said, so this time Iwatched the Tubie version because
the version I had is terrible.
You can't see half the movie 'cause it isripped from A DVD, but it's also like been
shared around, so it has a bunch of likecompression pixelation all over the place.
But, uh, I did do about a 30 minutesof side by side comparison with DVD

(31:32):
versus Tubi, not the whole thing.
'cause there's no way I wasgonna watch this three times
in the matter of two days.
But, uh, the main difference isthat, you know, a different title
sequence and just tighter editing.
There aren't any differentscenes, it's just.
As much as the version on Tubi,the shots linger too long.

(31:55):
They linger even longeron the DVD version.
So much so that they were able to cutout a full five minutes of the movie by
just taking off a second here and there.
God.
Wow.
Yeah, so that's amazing.

Dan (32:09):
It's impressive.
This was the thing.
I mean, I, when I was watching the,the Tuby version, the, the only thing
that really jumped out at me was.
I, you know, obviously from the soundsof it, they did a good job, at least
with the edit in terms of mm-hmm.
You know, making it more succinct.
Yep.
My issues with it predominantly were whatI'm gonna call the enhancements mm-hmm.

(32:31):
That they've chosen to make with it.
So, for example, they have croppedit from what would've been a full
frame kind of four, three Yeah.
Ratio into wide screen, which meansthat there are moments where you lose
the top and bottom of the screen.
And it also really negativelyimpacts the framing.
There's a lot of shots whereI'm sort of looking at 'em and
going, why is it framed like that?

(32:51):
And then I realized it's becauseabout a third of the picture on the
top and bottom's missing, so mm-hmm.
They've just kind of madeit fit as best as they can.
Yeah.
Um, the color correction choices as well.
They've, they've regraded the film.
In places to try and assume,give it a bit more atmosphere.
But their grading basically consistedof either turning the picture a sort

(33:12):
of very muddy brown and then just kindof leaving it like that for a while.
Or in the final act.
And in the final scene of the finalact, in particular, just tinting
the whole film blue for some reason.
Yeah, like a really dark blue, whichgiven that that part of the film
especially had some very interestingkind of, um, I hesitate to use the

(33:32):
word kiro lighting because thatimplies he chose to do it that way.
But very kind of low experimentallighting, very atmospheric.
Putting that blue filter on justbasically crushed detail outta the image.
So yeah, I was watching it on thescreen and basically it was just like
a blue screen and occasionally youmight see a closeup of an eye kind of
very quickly swish past the screen.

(33:53):
Mm-hmm.
And then that would be it.
They also put some CGI, I say CGI,it, it looks like basically animated
Photoshop images in occasionally totry and put some new visual effects in.

Chris (34:07):
Um, so some of that's, that stuff is in actually the DVD version.
And one of his creditswas as a CGI artist.
So I wonder if he was just one ofthe few people that had the skill
and means to do that back in 9019 95, or if it was added in 2007.

(34:28):
And that's part that carriedover into the Tubey version?

Dan (34:32):
Possibly.
Possibly.
It could be.
I mean, I could believe, um, thatmaybe the stuff that's in the 2007
is some kind of upscale version.
Maybe like put it back into amodern version of the mm-hmm.
The stuff and reexportedat a higher resolution.
I. The editing software from 95 would'vebeen maybe a little too rudimentary
for that kind of higher quality.
Mm-hmm.
Because it, it's a noticeableshift between the eight mil

(34:55):
footage and, and the seat, thesort of computer generated stuff.

Chris (34:59):
One of the things that they definitely inserted in the Tubi version is
they show like a closeup of stopwatches.
Like that sort of thing isnot in the 2007 version.
They will just show youan actual stopwatch.
I don't know why they chose to add that.

Dan (35:16):
Yeah, no, this is it.
And I, there was just, therewas just a lot of moments where
I kind of went, oh well, okay,well why, why have you done that?
Like the intro title cards?
Um, I'm pretty confident the original95 release of it didn't feature
sort of twirling DNA strands, no.
With the credits in times New Roman,it's were very atmospheric music.

(35:38):
But

Chris (35:39):
yeah, that part is definitely better On the DVD, it, it's like kind of
just abstract lights with pretty much thesame titles going on, but it's, you know,
just a green double helix spinning aroundis not fun to watch for two minutes.
No,

Dan (35:56):
I, I added it all up.
And this thing has six minutes oftitles and credits all together,
which, you know, is when you,when you film 77 minutes long.
Yeah.
It's, uh, it's not quite the atrocityof, um, humanoids from Atlantis
Jr. Book Walter's final mm-hmm.
SOV film from his six pack thathe did, where I think it has,

(36:18):
it's a half an hour long filmand it has 10 minutes of credits.
Wow.
Yeah.
You, you really need to getthe runtime up on that one.
But yeah, I mean it on the whole,I, I did, again, I didn't hate the
enhancements, but they were, theywere the things that, that for me,
bought the film down a little bitbecause, you know, if I'm watching
something like this, I personallyprefer the kind of rough and ready Luke.

(36:40):
Mm-hmm.
I, I'm quite happy to watch a filmfrom 1995 and, and if the effects
aren't great, well that's, that'skind of the selling point for me.

Chris (36:48):
Yeah.

Dan (36:49):
So when, when these kind of enhancements happen and, and this film
is isn't a loan example, there are plentyof SOV films where they've gone back
and added digital effects or updated thetitles and credits or reedited it or,
or all these various bits and pieces.
But I often find that every attempt todo that with only one exception, which
is the, uh, uncut version of boardinghouse, um, which runs to two and a

(37:12):
half hours long, which was just mindmelting 'cause it was edited or reedited
on Windows movie maker of all things.
Wow.
Um, um, I, I often come away a littledisappointed when they go back and
try and kind of modernize theseolder kind of A-L-S-O-V features.
Um, 'cause I, I like 'em wart and all.
That's, that's my kind of thing.

(37:33):
I just like to be able to see.
What was, and if they wannado it as a supplemental thing,
then, you know, absolutely.
If, you know, if you wanna do aspecial edition or something that,
that's like a, you can watch thisalongside it, you know, fine.
But that, that was one of the onlythings that really hit me as a
bit disappointing with this one.
Mm-hmm.
Was just, you know, I, I would'veliked to have seen it a little
bit more in its original format.

(37:54):
Yeah.

Chris (37:55):
In terms of the color grading, I would kind of say it's six and one
half dozen in the other, because like,I don't think, you know, in just normal
scenes, I don't think either of themhave a very natural color palette.
And then in the darker scenes, likeyou were talking about, the version I
have is just you, you can't see shit.

(38:15):
So you can't really compare either of thembecause it's like, is that, you know, a
compression algorithm that's been run onthis, someone uploaded it to YouTube and
downloaded it and uploaded again, or isthat truly the way it looks on the DVD?
So.
Really with the color grading's,kind of a kind of a toss up.
I don't think either versionthat I've seen gets it.

(38:37):
Right.

Dan (38:39):
And I mean, another thing as well that that kind of got the gears whirring,
and I wasn't entirely even having watchedit, I wasn't entirely sure whether
this was the case or not, is I couldn'tfigure out whether the eight millimeter
footage that was shot was what they usedto create this new version, or whether
they just pooled it off of a VHS copy.

(39:01):
Like whether they finishedthe eight mil footage on tape.
Mm-hmm.
And then went back to the tape torestore it for the DVD and GB versions,
or whether they actually bothered torestore it from whatever the eight
millimeter master would've been for this.
If an eight millimetermaster even exists of it.

Chris (39:16):
Yeah.
'cause I feel like they would've, theyhad to have done something because the DVD
version, you can see interlacing, so I'm,I'm, you would feel like the DVD version
was pulled from some sort of tape source,like maybe they just got the commercial
release of the movie and slapped it on a

Dan (39:36):
DVD.

Chris (39:37):
Mm,

Dan (39:38):
yeah, I know that's quite a common thing.
A lot of, a lot of those eight millimeterfilms would be finished on tape and then
that master tape would then be what woulddub the copies that would be distributed.
So it wouldn't surprise me to findout that there isn't, that the eight
millimeter rushes or the originaleight millimeter master that was used
to dub the tape no longer exists.

(40:01):
It's weird, like, say, the only other filmI've ever had any kind of experience of
that sort of thing with is, um, it's oneof the first SOV films is boarding house.
Mm-hmm.
Where it was shot on tapeand they did the opposite.
So rather than it being a film productionthat got dubbed to tape and then
they've used the tape for every masterthereafter with boarding house, they
shot it all on tape and then becausethey wanted it to play in theaters, and

(40:24):
theaters couldn't project VHS footageat that point, they had to basically
make a 16 millimeter print of themaster tape that they cut together.
And then they'd make esof that 16 mil print.
So you had a 16 mil copy of a 16 mil printthat was a videotape dubbed onto film.

(40:45):
But I imagine for this it was, itwas a little bit easier going the
other way round, just editing it onfilm and then dubbing it to tape.

Chris (40:51):
Yeah, one of the many mysteries of colony mutation.

Dan (40:58):
It's very much the onion of the, uh, eight millimeter world.
A lot of layers.
Yeah, a lot of

Chris (41:02):
layers.
Um, speaking of mysteries, one thingto point out is that of the 25 credited
actors in this film, only one of themhas a headshot on IMDB, and I think
maybe only five of them have actingcredits other than colony mutation.
And it's all for stuff that isequally as obscure as this film is.

Dan (41:24):
It's, uh, it's gotta be a testimony to the, uh, Midwest and film industry.
Yeah.
Um,

Chris (41:33):
it's, uh, it stars Joan Dinko as Jenny Dole, David Rommel as Jim
Matthews, Anna Zizo as Meredith Weaver,and Susan L. Kane as Suzanne Dole.
Those are, I guess, the maincharacters of the movie.

Dan (41:49):
Yeah, pretty much.
I'm very disappointed We didn't getto find out who bum number two was.

Chris (41:54):
Yeah, I didn't write that one down.
He is credited though, so that's good.
At least look him up.
Yeah,

Dan (42:02):
I'll have a, I'll have a dig.
I'll have to have a dig.
This is the thing though, when youget into these, you know, let's say, I
don't wanna say ramshackled 'cause thatmakes it sound a bit worse than it is.
Mm-hmm But you know, these lower fiproductions, um, the sort of documentation
is significantly less coherent.
Right?
Like, you know, you get these actual SOVfilmmakers, you know, people like who

(42:26):
work for Sterling or make flick or Tramereven, and you'll have production files,
you'll have scripts, you'll have castingcall sheets, you'll have all of the kind
of paperwork you need to make a film.
And then you probably get to colonymutation where the script was probably
written on a napkin that was used at thediner the day they went to go and film.
And, you know, the, the cast wereprobably paid with breakfast, dinner,

(42:48):
and a drive home if they're, yeah.
So it becomes increasingly difficultto kind of piece these films together.
I. It only really seems like the aufilmmakers, the ones like you, Barry j
Gillis of the World, who bothered to kindof really, really keep track of every
possible detail of their film productions.

(43:08):
Yeah.
But you know, the, the people who madecolony mutation very likely just sort
of made it and then sort of hid itin a closet for 20 or 30 years until
it, uh, until it got destro again.

Chris (43:19):
Yep.
Which is where we find ourselves today.
Mm. So, uh, yeah, let's getinto the pot of this thing,
and I, if you can call it that.
Um, so the movie begins as we said,with two minute long title sequence
of, uh, DNA strands twisting to thetune of some industrial droning.
We then cut to a short scene of a womanwalking through a house with a gun.

(43:43):
She doesn't say anything andfires at something off screen.
We then get an intertidal readingGen Des Corporation three weeks ago.
So

Dan (43:54):
at first I was intrigued and then it just kept going.
It was one of those where I waslike, okay, woman with a gun, dark
apartment, nice bit of light in.
Fair enough, fair enough.
And then nothing was happeningand it just kept going and going.
And eventually I was like.
What is, is anything going to happen?
And then, you know, you, you getthe, uh, shooting at something

(44:16):
offscreen, cut to black and Oh, okay.
Right.
Fair enough.
But yeah, it's, uh, immediately I kindof started to get the vibe that this
was gonna be one of those films wherethe feature runtime was a goal rather
than a, uh, rather than a guarantee.
Right?

Dan (2) (44:35):
Yeah.

Chris (44:36):
So after that, we get an exterior shot of the Gen Des Corporation
footage of a man walking througha hallway and into a laboratory.
We see a non-descript scientistsdoing nondescript science work.
We see something on a shelflabeled reagents for RNA work.
We see a woman looking into a microscope.

(44:56):
We see something that I couldn't eventell what it is, but it looks like an
extreme closeup of one of those oldschool bubble light Christmas decorations.
And, uh, you know, we get more nondescriptscience stuff and more walking through
a hallway before we are introduced toour main character, Jim Matthews with an

(45:17):
abrupt cut to an office where a guy sayssome generic business stuff about needing
a report on his desk by 10:00 AM tomorrow.

Dan (45:27):
Yes.
And, um, two of the immediate redflags that popped up for me during
that sequence, the first was whenwe were introduced to the two
scientists who were doing theirnondescript science activities.
Uh, neither of their mouths weremoving, but dialogue was happening,
um, which had me for a second.

(45:50):
'cause I'm sort of sitting therethinking, well, hang on a minute.
Um, they're, they'resupposed to be talking.
Why, why is their mouths not moving?
Moving on this one?
Mm-hmm.
That was at that, at that point Irealized that it was gonna be entirely
redubbed and that the whole film was gonnabasically just be like a, a manufactured
soundscape that they had no onset audio.
Yeah.
Um, my other highlight was that thefemale scientists doing the experiments,

(46:15):
um, couldn't pronounce the word genome.
Yep.
She kept saying it was a genome.
Mm-hmm.
Or genome.
Yep.
Which she did.
Which, which was great graphicrat dissection as well.
Lovely.
Which was less.
Appealing especially.
Mm-hmm.
Given that they seemed to have starteddoing the grading nice and early.

(46:37):
'cause this was a very murky, itwas reminding me of some of Ray
Denis Eckler's adult film work.
It was that level of sort ofgrimy, seedy, green stickiness.
Yeah.
It was, yeah.
It was already establishingquite a presence.
Yeah.
In the, the opening moments already.

Chris (46:57):
Yeah.
So during this part we are introduced toMeredith Weaver, who's another scientist.
Uh, Jim runs into her in the hallway.
She's on her way torecord another experiment.
We find out through, I guess,quote unquote playful banter,
that that's actually Jim's wife.
And then we meet his receptionistslash secretary, Jenny Dole.

(47:20):
No idea what her actual job is, but she'sintroduced via more generic science.
Talk about some scientists needing partfive of a report done with revisions, but
they're not actually revisions becauseJim has cleverly inserted a post-it
note in the report that reads lunch.
I get out at 12, same place.

(47:41):
So, uh, it appears that Jenny'sreal job is being Jim's mistress.

Dan (47:47):
Shock horror.
A big reveal.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, again, much like yourself, I,that bugged me for most of the runtime.
I was kind of just sitting there tryingto figure out exactly what her job was.
'cause at first I thought secretary, butthen they mentioned a few times throughout
the film that she has a little bit moreof a scientific background, but they don't

(48:07):
go into detail about exactly what that is.
So then I'm thinking maybe an apprenticeor an assistant, maybe pa possibly,
but they, they never really reveal it.
Yeah.
Which is very disappointing.
'cause I, I was just out there going,well, I dunno what's going on now.
Mitre is probably, yeah.
It's probably the closest to afull-time profession here that, um,
she gets, because whenever she's onscreen in the lab environment, she's

(48:30):
just basically moving stacks of paperfrom one desk to another and mm-hmm.
And picking the phone up occasionally.
And I must say she has some of the most.
Interesting phone acting that I've seen.
I dunno whether it was just badediting on the, the sort of filmmakers
part, or whether it was just thatshe couldn't get timings right.
But you know, at the timeshe'd sort of pick a phone up.
Yeah.

(48:50):
And then there'd be a very longpause and then she'd just say like,
outward and then put the phone down.

Chris (48:56):
Yeah.
And this is something we're gonnatalk about throughout this, but
this movie has a huge preoccupationwith people talking on the phone.
So

Dan (49:05):
another great padding exercise, a thinned out, get a lengthy
phone conversation going on.

Chris (49:11):
Yeah.
So I think this is kind of whereyou first get the flavor of like
what this movie's gonna be like.
Because you see a note that saysLunch I get out at 12, same place.
And then it just smash cuts to them, tothe scene of them having lunch abruptly.
Yeah.

Dan (49:27):
Absolutely.
And this was the thing with it beinga enhanced version, that was one of
those moments where I was like, is theresupposed to be a scene in between there?
Is that part of the enhancement thatthe, you know, I was, I was, I was
trying to figure out, at this pointin watching, I was still trying to
figure out whether it was just thefilmmaker not really getting pacing.

(49:47):
Mm-hmm.
And nuance, or whether it was justsome editor further down the line
trying to do a redux version wherethey're just like, oh, there's a
lengthy walking to lunch scene.
We'll just chuck it out.
Smash, cut, job done.

Chris (49:59):
Yeah, it's, it's the former rather than the ladder.
'cause that is a

Dan (50:03):
Yeah.
Oh.
But the walking, the extended walkingto lunch scene was my favorite scene.

Chris (50:09):
Yeah.
Well that's okay.
'cause they left in all of the extendedwalking through hallway scenes.
Fantastic.

Dan (50:18):
Fantastic.
I shall keep those to heart.
Yeah.

Chris (50:21):
The while they're at lunch, they discuss Jenny's jealousy over Meredith.
While Jim maintains that Meredith willnot find out about the affair as long
as he gets to the mailbox in time.
Spoiler alert, will find out later.
He does not get to the mailbox in time.
And, uh, we go back toMeredith in the lab.
As she mentioned previously, she'sgoing to videotape an experiment.

(50:44):
There's yet another scientist here.
I think his name ends up being Kelly.
And, uh, Meredith asks, as you said,how's the genome project going?
To which the other scientist responds.
Once I prove that this is the genethat causes penis size, my name will
be up there with Einstein and Jesus.
So is this a joke or is this actuallywhat the corporation is trying to do?

(51:07):
I'm, I was very unclear on that.

Dan (51:10):
You know what?
I think it's open toaudience interpretation.
Uh, I personally would think itwas hilarious that this company's
two main aims were, were, um, penissize increasing or decreasing and
creating John Carpenter's the thing.
Um,

Chris (51:28):
yeah.
And it's very hard to tell becausethey don't explain what the purpose
of the experiment is at all.
We just watch this guy fiddle aroundwith a dead rat for two minutes.
He injects it with something calledProteome, batch number 6 0 7, and
uh, Meredith has a quote that is

Movie Clip (51:48):
pseudo pod formation at 16.75 seconds.
This batch has the sameproblem as the last two.
Instead of re bonding the fleshof the test subject, the serum
has created a coexistence symbioto the left limb amputated.
When the anesthetic wears off, thesymbio will act as the subject's limb in
return for the subject's body feeding it.

(52:11):
My assistant has termed thesecoexistent parasites, a colony.

Chris (52:17):
So.
It's, it's very plot dumpy, butat the same time, is it, 'cause it
actually doesn't mean everythingshe just said means nothing.

Dan (52:26):
This is it.
It's, it's just words.
It's, it's just, it's abit like automatic writing.
It's just somebodyspeaking a load of words.
Whether they make sense ornot is not a really a thing.
'cause it doesn't addanything to the actual plot.
The only thing I picked up on, and I,again, I might be misremembering this

(52:46):
was, I, I do recall them very briefly andI, and I say this in the, the heaviest
of words that they very lightly saysomething about the experiment causing
regenerative regeneration of tissueor something to help support movement.
That I think there's some discussionthat they have back and forth about if
you chop a leg off and this parasite isin you, it will grow a, you a new leg

(53:09):
and, uh, control it for you or something.
But I. That, that again, doesn'thelp explain the plot, that just,
that's just a, a thing that happenswhether it's relevant to what the
actual experiment is, I don't know.
But yeah, at this point I was kind ofvery lost and, and hoping that we'd,
uh, we'd, we'd get back to, uh, somemore sort of common ground maybe,

(53:31):
um, maybe the affair will, will giveus some best, some better answers.
Yeah.
Or at least some grounding.

Chris (53:37):
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of the times I find thissort of thing charming, like in Star
Crystal for example, or, uh, extratwo, they talk about Duo Tangent a lot,
or in a movie that was covered on a,an earlier episode of this show, uh,
biotherapy, where the McGuffin is this,uh, GT medicine and they just keep

(53:58):
saying it even though it has no meaning.
But I feel like this got to a pointwhere I just like, this is not charming.
Like I just had to throwmy hands up and give up.
Yeah.

Dan (54:10):
No, and, and, and you know what?
Fair play.
Fair play.
If the, if the film isn't willing tosort of hold a handout and take you
on the journey, you are more thanwelcome to throw your hands up and
say, you know, thank you, whatever.
I'm just gonna see whereyou take it yourself.

Chris (54:24):
Yeah.
So anyway, Meredith gets home.
She finds a credit card bill in the mail.
She sees a bunch of charges for aHoliday Inn in Murphy V. She calls
the credit card company to confirm thecharges, and this is how she discovers
that Jim has been cheating on her.
So he knew he was gonna stayat the office late that night.

(54:44):
I don't know why he thought hewould get to the mailbox before her,
but as I said earlier, he didn't.

Dan (54:50):
Absolutely.
And I will say the conversationthat Meredith has with her banking
company was as thrilling as the fiveminutes they chose to allocate to it.
I'm very surprised they didn't put ayes I'll hold and then just her holding
the phone in silence for a minuteand a half to try and get a bit more.
Yeah, so that's, so adding put on there

Chris (55:10):
we're, I don't know, probably less than 10 minutes at this point.
So far there's been at leasttwo phone conversations, so I'll
try to keep a running tally ofthat 'cause it happens a lot.
Um, oh yeah, we then cut to Jenny and Jimand bed at a Holiday Inn as they reminisce
about how they first met and talk aboutwhat their future together will be like.

(55:30):
After Jim leaves Meredith, Jim leavesthe hotel and we get a very long
scene of him walking and some guyin a car taking pictures of him.

Dan (55:41):
I was gonna say as well, also an extended conversation about, um,
wanting or not wanting to have children.
Mm-hmm.
Which gets weirdly personal.
Like there's, there's momentswhere I'm sitting there thinking
is, is this the director tryingto tell somebody something?
Or, you know, I was just having visionsof him, like finishing the film and
going around to his girlfriend's placeand, uh, just rewinding, complaining

(56:04):
that scene over and over again.
Mm-hmm.
Because it was very key, very clear that,uh, that Jim was not interested in kids at
all and that his secretary very much was.
Yeah.
Which is great if you're, you know,in the process of having an affair
with somebody where you're thinkingof leaving them for the other person.
So, but yeah, that, that particularscene, it, it was a little
too involved from a, mm-hmm.

(56:26):
From a sort of writing perspective,given this film is incredibly
hands off in wanting to reallygive you any information, that's
the one bit where I kind of satthere and went, hang on a minute.
This is, uh, this is gettinga little bit too detailed.
Is the director trying to tellus something or tell maybe
his girlfriend something?
Yeah.

Chris (56:40):
Yeah.
It is strange for sure.
And so after we see the guy takingpictures of Jim, we do another smash
cut to what I guess is the second chiefpreoccupation of this film, which is
scenes of people eating at restaurants.
You know, this occurs 10 days afterwe had just seen them in a hotel.

(57:01):
We know this, not because there'sany visual indication that time
has passed, but because Jennyflat out says something like, it's
been 10 days since I've seen you.

Dan (57:13):
And I, I get that they wanted to try and amp up the
tension a little bit, you know?
'cause the, mm-hmm.
Obviously the idea at this point is Jimhas been followed by some kind of private
investigator, and Jim is aware that thereis a private investigator following him.
But there are more tactful ways Ithink that you could probably do that.
Just having, yeah, the secretaryflat out go, it's been 10 days.

(57:36):
Why haven't you beenas just right as 1 0 1?
You know, you've gotta, at least, mm-hmm.
I mean, it wouldn't have hurt given,you know, the, the medium they're
shooting on, it wouldn't have hurt.
Maybe even just done a little bit ofa montage of him driving around and
being followed and some like clearbacking and forth in between the two of
'em to show a bit of passage of time.
But no, this film is to the point,almost to its own detriment.

(57:56):
And it was, like you say, just asmash cut to where have you been?
It's like about two minutes ago I wasin a Holiday Inn, but, you know, yeah.

Chris (58:03):
I mean, they also like the first intertidal, rather than saying three
weeks earlier, they could have just saidfive days earlier and then they don't
have to because they're just completelyomitting 10 days of the plot, which is,
you know, more than a third of the time.
Between the, you know, the beginningof the film and the end that were

(58:24):
shown at the beginning of the film.
It's like, you didn't reallyneed to say it was three weeks.

Dan (58:30):
Well, they needed the, uh, the 10, uh, working days so that
Meredith's credit, uh, card billscould come back as verified.
So, uh, she was on the phone.
I guess that's true.

Chris (58:43):
Um, they're arguing again about Jim leaving Meredith.
Jim says that Meredith has beenkeeping a really close eye on him.
When Jim gets back to the office,he finds a note on his desk from
Meredith that says, meet me in the lab.
When he gets there, Meredithconfronts him and asks him if
he's been boning Jenny Dole.
He at first tries to deny it, butshe shows him the photographs that

(59:06):
she hired an investigator to take ofhim outside the hotel 10 days prior.
Jim still tries to deny it, and Meredithsplashes him in the face with Proteome
batch number 6 0 7, and Jim still deniesthat he's having an affair with Jenny.

Dan (59:24):
Oh God, lab safety go into the wall.
That being said, it was thenineties, so, you know, probably
lab tech was a little less.

Dan (2) (59:31):
Mm-hmm.

Dan (59:32):
Careful.
But um, yeah, and this was the pointwhere I was really still trying to get
a measure of the film and I feel likethrough all three of the acts that make
up this film, I came away with threevery different sort of thoughts about
what the influences for the film were.
Yeah.
So, kind of up to this point, Iwas leaning more towards it being a

(59:56):
kind of a. Aiming to be more of a TAtypical kind of low budget sci-fi film.
Mm-hmm.
That was inspired by things likemaybe like the thing or Right.
Uh, you know, somethingof that kind of era.
And then the second act winds sort ofrevs up and it's, I mean, I don't wanna

(01:00:17):
jump too far ahead, but essentiallyit's just murder and, and sort of
sexual abuse for like 25, 30 minutes.
Yep.
Which was very much out of leftfield given, you know, the, the
sort of very pedestrian openingact that kind of happened.
Mm-hmm.
So then I was kind of thinking, well,maybe there's a kind of, I don't know,

(01:00:38):
sort of reference exploitation esqueedge to STDs here or something, you
know, being a bit more parasitic driven.
Another thing I noticed throughout thewhole of this film, but it starts creeping
in around about here, I. There's a lot ofhen lotter references dotted throughout.
Mm-hmm.
There's a lot of, mm-hmm.
Kind of just, not necessarilylike direct lines or like Easter

(01:01:01):
eggs so to speak, but like justreferences in the cini references
in the style of dialogue chosen.
Just little moments where you kindof sit there and go, oh, that's,
feels a bit like brain damage.
Or, oh, that feels a bit like bad biology.
Whether he was actually influenced by itor whether it's just, you know, something
that came outta the natural film process.

(01:01:22):
I couldn't say.
But, um, yeah, they were, the twobig things for me, especially up
to this point was there's a littlebit of head and lottery in this,
which was, was welcome in, in a seaof phone calls and going to lunch.
A few scenes that made me think of FrankHen Lauter were very, very welcome.

Chris (01:01:39):
Yeah, I agree.
So there we get a brief scene of Jenny ina parking garage, a beer, a weird mugger
guy attempts to attack her with a crowbar.
She just says, don't,and pulls a gun on him.
And I think the sole purposeof this is to explain why later

(01:02:00):
on there's a gun maybe I think.
If that's, that's not the purpose.
There is no purpose to this scene.

Dan (01:02:08):
To be honest, I hadn't put two and two together until
you just mentioned that to me.
The scene felt so random and out of place.
It was the closest toa Pythonesque moment.
Um, it's just like this guy sortof runs up with a crowbar gun,
runs away, and it's that fluid.
It's like, there's not likeeven a moment, a beat pause
where it's like, oh crap, a gun.
It's literally just giveme your money gun run.

(01:02:31):
Um, yeah, and it, nothing comes of it.
It's not like that mugger turns uplater in the film or like Jay mentions
that it's happened or anything.
That scene is dead.
The second the mugger runs off.

Dan (2) (01:02:43):
Mm-hmm.
So

Dan (01:02:45):
like, now that you mention it, yeah.
That, that is probably the only reasonthat's there, is like you say, so
the gun can turn up in the final act.
But in that moment, I,I audibly like I. Laugh.
I was like, what?
'cause it's just, it was justthe timing of the editing on
it was just so ridiculous.
It was, it was great.
It was, it was really well time comedy,

Chris (01:03:07):
uh, unintentionally.

Dan (01:03:08):
Oh

Chris (01:03:08):
yes.
So back at Jenny's apartment, Jim'swaiting for, uh, as Jim embraces Jenny
on the couch, we get a strange musicalcue and Jim begins to rub his eyes.
We then see a hallucination ofJenny from Jim's perspective, why?
Who knows,

Dan (01:03:29):
uh, very quickly followed up by, um, a extended sequence of him
wandering through some woodlands andthat weird arty sex scene that happens.
Um, yes, please walk usthrough the sex scene.
So it's set in, um, the Phantom Zone,seemingly it's just a black lead.

Chris (01:03:50):
Yes.
One

Dan (01:03:51):
of my

Chris (01:03:51):
favorite settings.

Dan (01:03:53):
Oh, yes.
The, it's the, uh, we ran out ofmoney Batman 66, uh, of set dressing.
It's got a red spotlight that is placedat a diagonal angle at all times.
It's never any other way.
Mm-hmm.
It's always like a 45 degreeangle from the ceiling down.
And it could best be described asa mass of pixels, kind of vaguely

(01:04:16):
writhing about on top of each other.
And occasionally you see a heador an arm or a bit of a body part.
It's simultaneously featuringnudity and no nudity.
'cause you don't see anything,it's just people's backs.
Yeah.
For about two and a half, three minuteswith, again, quite an industrially
style drone if memory serve.

(01:04:38):
Just running in the backgroundfor the majority of it, um, in my
notes, because I was, I was typingnotes whilst I was watching it.
Mm-hmm.
Um, I, I literally, I literally wrote RayDeni Eckler's, Nazi Pornos were framed
and looked more pleasurable than this.
Um, they just, it's, again, I can't tellwhether it's the, the redux that has

(01:05:02):
caused problems with the film or whetherit just never looked good to begin with.
It could be both, but the framingof every scene during that sequence.
Was really weirdly cropped.
Mm-hmm.
It was like, it was, it wasn't sent,it wasn't like slightly off scented.
It wasn't following the rules ofthirds of, of sort of cini and,
and um, compositional choices.

(01:05:23):
Right.
It was kind of a, it was weird.
It was like it was artificiallydutched and moved ever so slightly
too far off to the right and the top.
With the top and bottom ofthe frame being cut off.
It meant that you just regularly get,like, it starts on people's eyebrows and
goes down rather than getting the topsof their heads 'cause they're missing.
'cause the top of the frame's chopped out.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, it, it's just a very.

(01:05:45):
Very wobbly experience all in.
And I think it's a mixture of the directornot being able to really get what he
wanted on the day, but also then whenthey've redux it, them not reframing Yeah.
The, uh, the shot

Chris (01:05:57):
appropriately.
I mean, as you said there, there'snot really any nudity in it, but we
do get lingering shots of Jim's orgasmface, which is what we all wanted.

Dan (01:06:09):
Oh yes, absolutely.
Lummi.
That was, um, that was exactly whatI wanted after, uh, a hard day's
work was to see It was more of agrimace really than an orgasm face.

Chris (01:06:22):
Face.
Let's, because that's the thing though,is like you, you start watching this
movie and you see him walking throughthe hall and your first thought
is, I wonder what he looks likewhen he is having an orgasm and Oh

Dan (01:06:33):
yeah.
Thankfully they answer that for you.
Which was very kind of them.
Um, I hope they never do it again.
To quote The Simpsons, it's gonnareplace the whale in my nightmares.

Chris (01:06:46):
Jim lies in bed after having sex with Jenny, and he has a dream about
strolling through the woods and findinga buried, a hand buried in the ground.
Why?
Who knows?
It just happens

Dan (01:06:59):
equally, not the, uh, the best filmed either, strangely, off center,
weird color choices, and a again, I just.
They, the fact that you told me thatthey actually cut stuff outta this
in previous versions astounds mebecause, uh, like I say, whilst I was
watching that sequence, I was thinking,wow, they really did struggle to hit

(01:07:19):
feature runtime on this, didn't they?
But now I know.
Mm-hmm.
Wait, there it could be worse.
There was actually morethat was taken out of it.
Yeah.
Um, so yeah, it was, it was wild.
That's wild.

Chris (01:07:29):
Lots of, uh, in, in the longer version, lots of people stepping out
of frame, and so the camera's just likepointing at a door for eight seconds
before it cuts lots of that going on.
Oh no.
So, uh, Jim goes, he gets outta bed, hegoes to the fridge, I guess he starts
to get a weird sensation in his arm.

(01:07:51):
And as he reaches for a jugof milk, I guess his arm falls
off and he just goes, huh?
Dreaming.
Do you?
Yeah.
Like, do you have any idea?
Is that what happens?
Like he just, his arm fallsoff and he doesn't care.

Dan (01:08:07):
Yeah.
So, um, uh, to be honest, at thispoint I was still kind of baffled.
Um, so yeah, it falls off and itkind of run, his arm runs off.
It kind of does like a thing fromthe Adams family and sort of mm-hmm.
Scuttles away.
I suppose what it's supposed tocommunicate to the audience is that
there is a, a sense of unease coming,but the audience should already know

(01:08:29):
that he's in trouble 'cause he is beensplashed in the face with the parasite.
So.
WWI don't, I dunno, maybe it wasfor the harder of thinking in the
audience, a kind of way for themto go, oh, something's up here.
His arms falling off.
Um, but, um, wait a minute.
Yeah, and to be honest, it's, it's abit weird that they choose to do it when

(01:08:50):
they do, because obviously the scenethat follows this immediately mm-hmm.
Is he wakes up and goes, oh, it's a dream.
He tells his secretary who he is beenstaying with, that he feels unwell and
she goes to sort of leave for work, buttells him to lock up when he leaves.
At which point the, his armstarts being weird again.

(01:09:13):
Yeah.
And if memory serves, he goes to thefridge and starts trying to find raw meat

Chris (01:09:17):
eating.
Yep.
Yeah.
We haven't really, uh, touched on this,but I feel like this is as good a point
as any, because I couldn't help feelthat our lead actor, David Rahmel, is a
glimpse into what Keanu Reeve's careerwould've been if Keanu wasn't just very
good looking because this guy's voiceand his fucking lion reads throughout the

(01:09:39):
movie, like in that scene, uh, afterwardsin the morning, he's just like, I

Dan (01:09:44):
feel a little sick today.
Do you have some bacon or sausage around?

Chris (01:09:52):
And they're atrocious.
But it sounds an awfullot like Keanu Reeves.
Oh, yeah,

Dan (01:09:59):
yeah, yeah.
No, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's.
It's a unique one.
I mean, there's visual appearance.
Um, to me there's a, a Canadian film.
That's it.
It was very popular when it came out,and then it fell into obscurity and
it's picking up a bit of traction again.
Now it's called Skip Tracer.

Dan (2) (01:10:17):
Mm-hmm.

Dan (01:10:18):
And the lead actor in that film looks exactly like this guy does, more or less.
Mm-hmm.
The only difference is theguy in Skip Tracer has a very
kind of commanding voice.
He's very kind of flat,but he, he's very forward.
I don't think the surfer dudevoice particularly since Jim.
Um, which again, doesn'treally help this film's case.

(01:10:40):
Uh, that actually leads me to a bit of abroader point with this, which was Tone.
I don't entirely know what thetone of this film was aiming for.
Nope.
There are moments where I get thefeeling it was trying to be a straight
cut, serious sci-fi film with horrorelements and that it was supposed to
be a bit influenced by Cronenberg.

(01:11:01):
A little bit influenced by films likeOzone from JR. Booth Walter and it was
trying to be straight cut, but thenthey do gag bits occasionally where
yeah, it, I dunno whether it's just thedelivery was wrong or whether it's, you
know, intentionally been done that way.
But there are moments where youlook at it and you go that, that
clearly is trying to be funny.

(01:11:21):
Mm-hmm.
So then I'm thinking, well is it asci-fi horror with a bit of comedy?
Is it trying to do the head andlot of thing a bit more heavily and
it never quite commits to a lane?
Yeah.
It never kind of nails itscolors to the mast, so to speak.
So you're kind of constantly leftwondering, well, is this intentionally
supposed to be a bit funny?
Is it supposed to be serious?
It.

(01:11:42):
It, it doesn't help the film.
It just leaves you kind of flailingfrom scene to scene, which in some
ways makes it feel a little bit moreavantgarde, but I don't necessarily
know if I want that in my Midwesternfilms featuring men eating ook bacon,

Chris (01:11:59):
it's a. It's a weird one to say the least.
So after Jim is eating said raw bacon,we go back to the Gen des corporation
where, uh, he's frantically riflingthrough filing cabinets for something.
Why?
Again?
Who knows?
And he admits to Meredith that hehas been cheating on her with Jenny.

(01:12:21):
But if she can just cure him from theill effects of Prote, batch number 6 0
7, they can patch things up and move on.
And marriage says

Movie Clip (01:12:29):
there is no cure, motherfucker rot in hell.

Chris (01:12:33):
And for that, she must die.
Jim starts slapping her and 30 minutesinto the movie, we get our first kill.
Do you want to try and explain this?
Kill Dan.

Dan (01:12:43):
Uh, okay.
So Jim starts beating Meredithrepeatedly before slowly unbuttoning
his trousers, and we don't seewhat's down there, the assumption.
I mean, my assumptionwas it was a parasite.

Dan (2) (01:13:03):
Yeah,

Dan (01:13:03):
it could be something else.
And essentially he, is there a tactfulway to say skull hooker to death?
Because I don't like it.
It's basically a, amurder rape scene almost.
Um, yeah.
And this the biggest

Chris (01:13:19):
like brain damage riff of the movie.

Dan (01:13:23):
Yeah.
And it was the, the problem thoughwith it is that brain damage again,
kind of the whole tone of brain damageis defined up front that it's, it's
definitely got that black comedy,very dark humor element in place and
running right the way through it.
And because this film doesn't have thatin place, this scene doesn't come across

(01:13:44):
to me as a kind of jokey, well, you know,maybe bad taste, but jokey kind of kill.
It comes across as just verymean-spirited and a bit shocking.
Yeah.
Um, and you don't get anything likethis again for the rest of the film.
Like every time that they lean toward,'cause there are more kills in this
film, but every time they go to leadinto it, they sort of enter a bit of a

(01:14:07):
cycle where Jim just goes up to somebody,talks to them, offers to take them home,
and then the next scene they're dead.
Yeah.
They don't, you know, go into any detail.
This is the only time you see it and it'sgenuinely quite shocking for this film.
But it also feels very out ofplace because of the fact they
just don't do anything likethis for the rest of the movie.
So it's an interesting one.

(01:14:30):
It's a brave choice.
I don't think it paid off, but,um, you know, to each their own.
Yeah.
One thing that did blow my mind a littlebit was the, the soundtrack that plays
during that scene is eerily similar to acouple of the soundtrack choices from the
Barry j Gillis eight male film things.
Hmm.
For some reason, the soundtrack takesa massive dive in quality around this

(01:14:52):
point, and it just goes to like a reallycheap synthesizer, just playing kind
of whirring noises for about two orthree minutes, which again, just made
the thing all the more surreal becauseI was kinda sitting there thinking of
other films whilst this was coming on.

Chris (01:15:06):
Yeah.
It was, uh.
Well, one of a few veryweird kills in this scene.

Dan (2) (01:15:14):
Mm.

Chris (01:15:14):
So after that, we are introduced to Jenny's sister Suzanne, via a
riveting phone call during which Suzannechastised Jenny for dating a married man.
Then Jim calls Jenny and he sayssome stuff, and this was the point
where I just really, I realizedhow much exposition of this film is
presented in the form of a phone call.

Dan (01:15:39):
Oh, absolutely.
And this is the, this is the thing.
I mean, whenever sort offilmmaking 1 0 1 is, they always
tell you to show, don't tell.
They always tell you that the best way toput a message across the audience isn't to
just sit them down and tell them the plot.
You can show it through thecinematography, you can show
it through the visuals, showit through the direction.
It can be a character'sreaction to something.

(01:16:00):
Subtle things help to tell the story.
And it's clear that this filmmaker didnot know that when he went to do this.
Because as you rightfully say, everysingle, like, I don't think 10 minutes
goes by where there isn't a lengthyphone call that basically explains
everything that's happened up to thispoint and then sets up the next two
or three minutes worth of the film.

Chris (01:16:19):
Yeah, and we should also point out that most of the phone calls between Jim
and Jenny, they're in the same building.
They just choose to calleach other on the phone,

Dan (01:16:30):
which is especially weird after Meredith's death because
like the only reason they were kindof creeping around in the first
instance was because of Meredith.
So now she's out the way youwould think they would be able to
sort of be a bit more, you know.
Public.
The assumption is that both actorsweren't available on the same day.
So they just filmed them both separatelyand then tried to cut it together.

(01:16:52):
But, um, yeah,

Chris (01:16:53):
it was an interesting one.
Yeah.
So after that series of phone calls,Jim wanders around on a beach again.
Why?
Who knows.
He goes into a coffee shop andstarts chatting up a woman inside,
and I think this is the first ofa couple of times where there is
a fade out and fade back in when acharacter is literally mid-sentence.

Dan (01:17:15):
Yes.
Yeah, it does happen a fewtimes and it kind of threw me
because it, this is the start of.
What I'm gonna callpadding in the second act.
And I know there's already been alot of padding up to this point.
Mm-hmm.
But, um, basically the film seems toget locked into a bit of a cycle over
the next sort of 15, 20 minutes ofthe runtime of Jim going out, meeting

(01:17:39):
somebody, talking to them extensivelyfor about two or three minutes, and then
that person being dead, and then Jimjust kind of being a bit ill for a bit
and then going out and doing it again.
And like I mentioned earlier, there'sno, they don't show much if any of
the actual kills of these instances.
It's just assumed that they're dead.

(01:18:00):
It's, it's weird.
It, it feels almost unfinished.
And it was around this time that Istarted to think of other eight mill films
that I'd seen that kind of replicated.
And there was one that stuck in my mind.
It's a film called NudistColony of the Dead.

Dan (2) (01:18:14):
Mm-hmm.

Dan (01:18:14):
Um, now the, the thing that happened with that one is it was
shot entirely on eight mill, butthere was a processing fault with it.
So they had to use a backup camerathat was filming on videotape
throughout, for various bits.
And then they had to stitchthe two films together.
So you'll have a scene where it wasplaying an eight mil up to a certain
point, and then it'll just hardcut mid-sentence to a completely

(01:18:34):
different scene that was shot onvideo from a slightly different
angle because they, they didn'thave the eight millimeter footage
'cause the processing failed on it.

Chris (01:18:41):
Right.

Dan (01:18:42):
So when I was seeing these, and it, like you say, it just sort of
fades down to black mid sentence.
I was thinking, oh my God, hasthere been a processing issue?
Is this, uh, is this similarsituation to new disc colony or, um,
you know, what was going on here?
It's, it's an interesting one andit kind of, again, goes back to I
wasn't entirely sure whether it wasa fault with the director's original
edit of the film or whether it was avisual, um, redux issue, so to speak.

Chris (01:19:08):
Yeah, who can say?
But while uh, Jim is talking to thiswoman, she goes to the bathroom,
he gets a rumble in his tumbly, heunbuttons his shirt to, I guess feed the
monster inside him a bit of a muffin.
Uh, we don't really understand whyuntil, like the very last scene or

(01:19:30):
sequence in this movie, why he does that.
But, uh, she off Jim offers to walkthe lady to her car, but when they
get to her car, he attacks her.
And like you said, that's, that'show the rest of the movie goes.
So, 'cause we don't see her death justabruptly cuts to another scene of Jim
in his office and another scene ofa phone call between him and Jenny.

(01:19:52):
And again, Jim invitesJenny to a restaurant.
So we're ticking allthe boxes right there.
That's the bread and butter of this film.
Phone calls and dinner plans.

Dan (01:20:05):
I imagine this would make a fantastic drinking game.

Chris (01:20:09):
Depends on your definition of fantastic, I guess.

Dan (01:20:13):
Well, by the third act you won't be able to see because you'll
have consumed that much booze.
So, um, yeah, phone call shot, restaurantshot, um, rumbling in the tumbly shot.

Chris (01:20:24):
You know, Jim invites Jenny to the restaurant as he's driving to meet her.
His stomach makes noises again.
I guess his penis startsto move on its own.
And then there's another abruptcut to Jim putting some clothes
in the trunk of his car.
I do not understand that at all.
No,

Dan (01:20:43):
no, that I got lost with that one as well.
There's, it's weird, this particularsection of the film leading
into the, the hobo conversation,um, that's coming up shortly.
Mm-hmm.
The whole thing is edited.
Very weird.
It feels more like scraps that werestitched together than an actual scripted
sequence, if you know what I mean.
Yes.

(01:21:03):
Um, very, very strange

Chris (01:21:05):
because that cut to, uh, putting clothes in a car is, it reads as like,
you know, he's like coming after a woman.
It fades to black and then it cuts to thatto imply that, oh, he just killed someone,
but it's not proceeded by any such scene.
So it's just a scene with nocontext of him putting clothes

(01:21:27):
in the trunk of his car.

Dan (01:21:30):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It again, it's it by this point inthe runtime, I think I'd just kind of
accepted that the film was just kindof gonna do what the film wanted to do.
Yeah.
It's just kinda like, okay, well ifI can't, um, sort of engage with this
film on a, uh, technical and scriptinglevel, I'll have to just ride it for
vibes and see where it takes me forthe next, next half an hour or so.

Chris (01:21:54):
Yeah.
So, as you said, he now findstwo bums in an alley, one of
which, as we talked about, is thegenius behind colony mutation.
Tom Burna and one of the menasks Jim to spare some change.
Jim takes off his pants.
The man says, sir, I said I washungry, but I'm not that hungry.
And Jim throws a tentacle monster atthe man that I guess is his leg because

(01:22:18):
he starts hopping around after this.

Dan (01:22:22):
Yeah, I think it, I think it was, and it.
It just, it leads to one of the moreentertaining kill scenes in this film.
Yeah.
And again, that, that sort of tiesinto the, the Henin lotter vibe.
'cause I feel like this kill scene mm-hmm.
In particular was alsovery henin lotter inspired.
I. There's a lot of bits, particularlyin the second act that remind

(01:22:44):
me of bad biology, which cameabout 10 years after this film.
Mm-hmm.
So, I, I'm, I'm very curious tosee whether he and Lotter may
have seen this at some point.
I mean, I know he gets a lotof screeners because it has a
separate distribution Right.
Operation that he runs.
Um, it wouldn't surprise me that he sawthis at some point because, you know,

(01:23:07):
he's, he's into that kind of crowd mm-hmm.
In those kind of circles.
It might have been, he watchedthis and, and got a bit of
an inspiration to pull that.
'cause there were elements fromthis where I went, oh, that, that
is literally a scene in bad biology.
Why is, why is that, that, you know?

Chris (01:23:20):
Wow.
Yeah.
I haven't seen that.
But I'll definitely have tocheck it out and see if it.
What it would be like if colony mutationwere made by a competent filmmaker.

Dan (01:23:30):
You know what, if it's not, it's not bad.
I don't think it's hen and lott's bestwork, but, um, when he was making bad
biology, specifically, he was undergoingtreatment for cancer and it was quite bad.
So he was basicallygoing into chemotherapy.
I think he said we were going intochemotherapy at half past seven
in the morning, and then he was onset all day from half past eight.
So he'd come out of it and gostraight into filming all day.

(01:23:53):
It's a, it's a fun film.
Um, it's very dark, very bleak in places,but I feel like it has a lot of influence
from a lot of cross wires with this film.

Dan (2) (01:24:04):
Mm.

Dan (01:24:04):
Um, but it's a lot more polished and a lot better constructed, and
they actually give it a much morecoherent plot, which is nice.
Um,

Chris (01:24:13):
I, I mean, if you're.
If your film, if Frank Henon Lauder'sfilm is much more polished and
coherent than yours, then that's trulysaying something about your film.

Dan (01:24:25):
This is the thing.
It's, it's, yeah, it's wild.
I mean, I definitely pair 'em upif, if you, if you can find a copy.
Severn did the 4K inBlu-Ray Mastro it recently.
But if you can find a copy ofit, um, I'm sure there'll be
some websites that will have it.
Um, yeah, it's, it's interestingand I think it would pair quite
well with this as a double feature.
Certainly.

Chris (01:24:45):
Yeah.
I think, uh, I think Colonymutation is sort of the midnight
movie once everyone's half asleepand has no idea what's going on.
They can just kinda watch thisin a haze after they were fully
cognizant to watching Bad Biology.

Dan (01:25:01):
After the beers have gone.

Chris (01:25:02):
Yeah.
So while Jim is killing these twobums, uh, Jenny's waiting for him
at the restaurant, but he nevershows up back at Jenny's apartment,
Jim and Jenny get into an argument.
They slap each otherand Jenny kicks Jim out.
Jim goes back to theoffice and falls asleep.
He has another dream aboutrunning through the woods.

(01:25:25):
Um, he wakes up and kills thesecurity guard, and we cut to the
next morning where you guessed it.
Jim calls Jenny on the phone.
He's trying to patch things up withher and, uh, she's a bit hesitant.
And then you guessed it again, Jennygets another phone call, but this time
it's from her sister Suzanne, who invitesJenny and Jim over to her house at an

(01:25:49):
unspecified date in the near future.
Jim goes to Kelly and he.
To try and find a cure toProte, batch number 6 0 7.
But Kelly reiteratesthat there is no cure.
So once again, Jim's legdetaches itself and kills Kelly.

Dan (01:26:07):
One of my, uh, favorite lines of the film, probably the favorite line of the
film for me is just before that scene withthe scientist, um, and I think it's Jim
who says it, he, um, turns to somebodyand just says, I gotta go drain my weasel.
Um, just perfect timing and verysincere delivery, but it, it just
caught me at the right moment.

(01:26:28):
I laughed for a good,solid 10 seconds at that.
Um, I'm sure if I, no, I caught

Chris (01:26:33):
that one, but I think I fully checked out by this point.

Dan (01:26:37):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It, it is, like I say, this is oneof those films where there's it,
there's long gulfs of dullness, andthen there's just random moments that
kind of snap you back in for a fewseconds and then let you go again.
Definitely.
It's like, you know, if you sit here forfive minutes and watch Jim go through the
woods, you get to see a scientist get hisleg ripped off, you know, it's okay, fine.

(01:27:00):
But yeah, up to this point, um,yeah, I'm, I'm just kind of, I'm
in a similar boat to yourself.
I'm kind of autopiloting a bit.
It is just little moments that I keeppicking up on here and there, but by
this point I'm, I'm now probably on IMDBlooking up Frank hen lots of filmography
to try and figure out where, whereI'm remembering all of these different
scenes and lines and vibes from.

(01:27:22):
So, yeah, that, that's, that's prettymuch where I am at this point with it.
Yep.
I thought that the, the scientistdeath scene was fun enough,
especially for low budget.
I mean,

Chris (01:27:32):
it's really the only death scene with any sort of, like, lighting in it.
Yeah.
It's only when you actually get to see,

Dan (01:27:41):
you know, it's a, it is a good sign when, when you're sing.
I liked this part of the film.
It had lighting,
but yeah.
I mean, the big question, sorry, thatjust that crossed, crossed my mind
after this scientist died was why arenone of these bodies being reported?
Like, Meredith's gone.
So this is the thing

Chris (01:28:01):
is that he kills his wife.
She's the first one that dies and then,but he never says anything to anyone
because, you know, coming up in a littlebit, him and Jenny have another argument
about why he hasn't left Meredith.
So.
Like it's not reported.
No one at the Gen des corporation hasbeen like, Hey, this person hasn't

(01:28:23):
shown up for work in however many days.
It's just like, it's so weird.

Dan (01:28:29):
Yeah.
I mean, not to mention the dead securityguard and the dead scientist now,
like, and I'm pretty sure Jim isn'tlike assimilating the bodies, or at
the very least he isn't cleaning up.
'cause he could barely eat a pack of rawbacon from a fridge when it was sealed.
So I can't envision him with a mop andbucket trying to hide the evidence.

Chris (01:28:46):
Right.

Dan (01:28:47):
Yeah.
At, at this point the, the sort oflogic issues started to crawl in.
It's one of the downsides whenyour film has long gulfs of nothing
really happening, it makes you think,which is the worst thing you can
do if you're one of these movies.
'cause then you start picking at it.
Yeah.

Chris (01:29:02):
So, yeah.
So like I said, you know, theyhave another conversation about
you needs to leave Meredith.
Uh, Jenny decides to give Jim anotherchance when he offers to meet her
sister for dinner the following evening.
And now, listeners, you may have noticedthat this film has fallen into a very
predictable pattern at this point.
So I'm gonna give you five seconds ofsilence to guess what happens next.

(01:29:25):
Yep.
You guessed it.
Jim picks up a woman and kills her onlythis time, his fingers, which look an
awful lot like Dick's Detach and Murder.
Jim's prey.
Wonderful.
I.

Dan (01:29:38):
Perfect artistry at its finest.

Chris (01:29:41):
Yeah.
We get a couple of minutesof nothing in particular.
Jenny Wistfully wanders around the city.
Jim, I guess, monologues about his life tothe corpse of Jenny because Oh yeah, Jenny
gets killed off screen on ceremoniously.

Dan (01:29:58):
I missed that.
Yeah, I think I was stillhooked up on the, uh, the scene.
I dunno whether it's coming upor whether it's the scene that's,
that was prior to that where it,the, the scene with the raw beef.

Chris (01:30:10):
Yeah, prior to that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't, I don't remember.

Dan (01:30:14):
There's, there's a scene where Jim, um, goes to feed his parasitic
penis raw beef and it eats a bit of it,and then he does a sick, which mm-hmm.
In fairness, I've done that on many aSaturday night, but that's by the bi.
Um, and that's where he kind ofrealizes that the parasite in
him can't eat raw meat anymore.

(01:30:34):
It has to eat fresh flesh.
Yeah.
That is, that is, you know, stillgot a pulse going through it.
I completely miss Jenny beingmurdered because I was still
focusing on the, I just watcheda man feed his penis raw beef.
Um, yeah.
So, let alone that it's off screen.

Chris (01:30:48):
Bloody hell.
There's a scene where she is meetingtwo women that have not been in
the movie before for like lunch.
Mm-hmm.
And she's just like, I gotta go.
And then it shows her, like, lookingout onto a, like a river wistfully and
then it a harsh cut to Jim Monologuingabout the sort of life he wanted to have.

(01:31:09):
And his body parts are shown.
Eating a body you don't see her face,but she's not in the rest of the movie,
so I have to assume that it's her.
And maybe he says something about it.
During the grand finale, I reallywasn't paying attention, so

Dan (01:31:26):
no, I didn't pick anything up either.
If you hadn't have told methat she, that it, that she was
dead, I, I wouldn't have known.
Um, yeah, in fairness, I got reallyconfused because the two women who are
coming up shortly who gym go to, goesto meet, um, I'm terrible with faces.
I thought that one of themmaybe was Jenny, but with like
a new hairstyle or something.

(01:31:46):
Um, so it took me a while to kindof figure, oh wait, now these
are two different characters.
Um, yeah.
But yeah, you mentioned it, her,her completely disappearing.
Is is.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I assume probably either theactress's check bounced or she
just saw some of the rushes andwent, nah, not doing this anymore.

(01:32:07):
Nope.
Don't,

Chris (01:32:08):
yeah.
So at this point we finally getto the dinner at Suzanne's house.
Jim tells Suzanne that Jennyhad to go to the store.
He, Suzanne, she slaps him and hishead goes flying across the room.
Jim's body removes its shirt revealingsome oversized nipples, a video drum,
stomach, vagina, and all of Jim's limbsdetached from his torso and attacks.

(01:32:32):
Suzanne, um,

Dan (01:32:35):
um, my literal guttural instinct, the seconder shirt
opened and I saw it was, oh wow.
It's my favorite show where?
Era kaiju, um, 'cause it's just.
Ba at at this point.
I think the film finally kind of leavesthe, leaves the road, so to speak.

(01:32:55):
Yep.
Because the thing is they haven't gotthe, the budget or the skill to even
really do a good final fight sequence.
Yes.
And because of the color grading andhow everything is very, very dark,
you can't really see what's going on.
You just keep getting sortof random flashes of things.
Uh, yeah.
Again, it, it kind of hit me strong withthe he and a lot of vibes, but it, at this

(01:33:18):
point, I'm, I'm done with the film really.
And even when it's going to, itsmost surreal kind of moments mm-hmm.
Of body horror, they don't reallycapitalize on it that much.
And that's where a lot of therandom updated computer generated
bits start creeping in as well.
Yeah.
Which only confuse things evenfurther because they're not.

(01:33:42):
They're not related toanything that's on screen.
It's not like they've digitallyinserted them into the video footage.
They've literally just hard cut yes.
To some random CG stuff that's noteven in the right aspect ratio.
If memory serves, I think it cutsfrom wide screen to four three.
Mm-hmm.
For it.
Yeah.
It, it's a total mess of a finale.

(01:34:02):
It's just footage beingthrown at the screen.
The script makes no sense.
The dialogue just is just,again, automatic writing.
It's just them saying things.
Yeah.
At one point, I think Jimmentions modular humanity.
Yep.
It's the newest thing.

Chris (01:34:16):
Modular humanity.
There's, yeah.
There's a couple pieces of dialogueat towards the end of this movie that
are, it's, they're like callbacksto things that never happened.
Hmm.
That's, that's one of 'em.
And so this last partis about eight minutes.
The first time I watched it,it's was basically watching eight

(01:34:38):
minutes of a black screen becauseof how poor the quality was.
And then suddenly A-A-C-G-I fingerwith wings goes across the screen.
And it was one of themost confusing things.
Uh, so I didn't evenrealize that during this.
Jim's head sprouts little arms andlegs and starts attacking Susan.

Dan (01:35:04):
I, I didn't see that either from the, uh, the Tubi version that I saw instead
of a black screen, it was a blue screen.
Wow.
With exactly the same issues.
Um, I, I could only make out Jim'shead at the very, very end, and I
didn't spot it was arms or legs, but itlooked very much like, um, I, I assume
you'll know this, you've seen GarthMeringue's Dark Place, haven't you?

Chris (01:35:26):
Yes.

Dan (01:35:27):
It reminded me very much of the first episode Hell hath fury where mm-hmm.
Um, Garth's friend explodes and it'sjust like a head on the floor through
like a cutout card piece of cardboard.
Yeah.
It's just a, it's just a very strange andincoherent finale that felt very out of

(01:35:47):
tone with the entire rest of the film.
And it really made me wish that they'dkind of done more parasite things
through the film rather than just makinghim have a bit of a parasitic penis.
Mm-hmm.
For most of it.
And having him do a sick,if he eats beef, um.
Yeah, it would've beennice to see it a bit more.
'cause I mean that's why films likeCronenberg's version of the Fly or Video

(01:36:09):
Drone work so well, they sort of slow bakein the body horror elements so that by
the time you get to the finale and it'sthe big reveal and everything's a bit
more like, oh whoa, what's going on here?
You've kind of had that slow dribs,dribs and drabs of information.
Mm-hmm.
Being peppered in throughout.
So you're kind of subconsciouslyprepared for it to go down.

(01:36:30):
Yeah.
This, this doesn't do that.
This just kind of.
Half A is it, and then at the end throwseverything at the screen at once and
expects you to kind of take it all in.
And there's nothing to take in becauselike you say, a lot of it's referencing
stuff that isn't even in the film.
Yeah.
So,

Chris (01:36:47):
so I mean there's a little bit of it throughout the movie of
like just sort of ReAnimator vibes.
Mm-hmm.
This was when I definitely got it.
And maybe it's just like, you know, adecapitated head talking to a woman.
Maybe that's what was having medraw the parallels to ReAnimator.
But it definitely shifts towards that sortof tone, like you were saying in these

(01:37:12):
last eight minutes, even though it reallyhasn't been like that up to this point.

Dan (01:37:17):
No, absolutely.
In fairness, and I, I'll say thishand on heart, I didn't clock
the re animator comparison, butnow that you mention it, yeah.
That is pretty one for onereally, in some regards.
Yeah.
You mention it?
Yeah.
It's um, I dunno, it,it, it feels frustrating.
It feels.
It feels like the filmmaker didn'treally know what to do with the finale

(01:37:42):
or part of the movie for that matter.
Well, this is it.
I mean, like it it for all of its flaws,the film throughout at least has, I.
Some kind of narrative elements in place.
There's some, even if it's all done overthe phone, at least they kind of bother
to put like a little bit of a plotting in.
I mean Yeah.
To be honest, um, the, I was thinkingwhen I first started watching this,

(01:38:05):
that the affair angle was goingto be the majority of the film and
that maybe, you know, Meredith'sdeath would be in the final act.
Mm. And that the, the filmwould be focused more around
the tensions of the affair.
And that the parasite side ofthings would've been more of a
metaphor for the guilt that wasbuilt in up in Jim about the affair.

(01:38:26):
Boy, were you wrong?
And Yeah.
I was very wrong.
Yeah.
Airlock that thing straight away.
And, and then the parasite has nomeaning other than it's a parasite.
Um.
So, yeah, I, I just, I don't know, asfar as endings go again, I just kind of
shrugged as the credits hit and went.
Well, it's an ending.

(01:38:47):
I guess.

Chris (01:38:48):
Well, before we get to the credits, there is one more thing we
have to talk about because at the endof this battle, Suzanne picks up Jim's
head and repeatedly bashes it againstthe linoleum until he is finally dead.
But just when Suzanne's trouble seemedto be over, there's a phone call.
Yes, there could not be a moreappropriate ending to this film

(01:39:09):
than yet another phone call.
The voice on the otherother line says, hello.

Movie Clip (01:39:15):
I represent the JCO Extermination company.
You currently have a problemwith household vests.
Not anymore.

Chris (01:39:23):
Boom.
Credits, boom, colony mutation.

Dan (01:39:28):
And if ever a film needed the inception drone harder
over those credits, just, yeah.
Wow.
What an ending.
Yeah.
One ending to something that couldat best be described as a film.
Um, so what are your

Chris (01:39:43):
thoughts on colony mutation, Dan?
I think it's a loaded question.

Dan (01:39:50):
It is, it is.
To keep it as simple as possible.
I, I don't hate it.
It has enough moments in it thatmade me enjoy it enough that I
wasn't calling for the director'sblood by the time of the credits.
I think this would've worked much betteras a short, um, a 30 to 40 minuter.

(01:40:11):
Yeah.
Probably would've beenmore than enough for this.
Uh.
It, it really screams to me a filmmakerwho was maybe a little out of his
depth at the time they were making thisfilm, but wanted to get it in front
of audiences and studios buy features.
They don't buy shorts, so I, I think hejust took an idea that maybe he'd pitched

(01:40:33):
as a short and just padded it out untilit hit the minimum possible runtime to get
it into cinemas and then got it out there.
I, I don't love it.
I think that it's technically absurd inevery sense when I say that, that things
is more technically proficient than this.
I mean it mm-hmm.

(01:40:53):
And the enhanced version doesn'thelp it in any way really, apart
from it makes some of the scenesa little bit more visible.
Yeah.
Which isn't necessarily a good thing.
Um, yeah, I mean, I, I kind of, Imean, I gave it, when I put it on
Layer box, I gave it a one and ahalf, and I know you gave it a half.
I, yeah.
The reason I gave it the one anda half is because the handful

(01:41:15):
of moments where I enjoyed it, Ithought it was actually quite funny.
But I, it's one of those where I feellike it would work more as a supplementary
film than something that I wouldactively, actively choose to watch.
I don't think I would sit downone evening and go, I'm going
to watch colony mutation.
I think it would be, as youfantastically put it, one of

(01:41:35):
those where I'm six movies deep.
I've had probably aboutfour or five beers.
Mm-hmm.
You know, the, the room feels smokyand hazy and I go, you know what?
I'm gonna put colony mutation onand yeah, just absorb the ambience
of this strangely made production.
It

Chris (01:41:50):
is, it's interesting that you bring up the point of this would've
worked better as a short, or, youknow, studios by features, not shorts.
Because two of two of the films I've,I've talked about on this show, GKI, dama,
and Biotherapy are two V cinema films.
And so basically a lot of the earlyV cinema films in Japan, straight

(01:42:13):
to video, there was a lot ofexperimentation with the length because
they wanted to create movies thatpeople wouldn't fast forward through.
So kind of the idea in the earlydays was all killer, no filler.
And what those movies do turn out tobe a lot of the times are just very low
budget practical effects, showcases thatrange from like 25 minutes to an hour.

(01:42:38):
And so I feel like, you know, thisactually follows a lot of the same
plot beats as those type of movies andit would be so much more enjoyable.
If they had filmed it with the intentionof it being, you know, less than an
hour in length, 45 minutes, 30 minutes,so that they could have saved some of

(01:43:00):
their money from, you know, pointlessscenes of people talking on the
phone and walking through hallways.
Use that up.
The practical effects.
Get some lights in thereso you can see everything.
It could have beenenjoyable at that length.

Dan (01:43:15):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I, I, I think that there's,it's got good bones.
It's got a good, a good framework.
It just, it's, it'sthose bloody phone calls.
It's the restaurants, it's, there's,there's so much stuff which you could
have shown in 10 seconds that is stretchedout to a three minute phone conversation.

(01:43:36):
I get the feeling that the castwere a little bit flippant.
I mean, obviously mm-hmm.
Um, one of our main characters disappearsbefore she even gets a kill scene.
But yeah, I, you know, it, it soundslike, from what you've just described
there, that it probably would've reallyworked quite well as a half an hour thing.
Yeah.
But yeah, it, I, like I said, Ididn't, I didn't, just didn't hate it.

(01:43:58):
I just, it's one of those whereI think I'd have to be in a very
particular mindset and probablyat least a few beers deep before I
would actively put this one on again.
Um, and I think it would be, it wouldwork best if you had friends who also
appreciated those kind of films mm-hmm.
With you, because then you can kind of,you know, have a little bit of a laugh
and a little bit of a riff with them.
Um, but yeah.

(01:44:18):
Yeah, it's, it's interesting.

Chris (01:44:20):
I think, you know, at the top I mentioned that this is, I think,
the only half star film for me onletterbox that I don't actively
hate, because usually for me.
That's what it's reserved for.
Like a half star film to me, is notonly just technically terrible, but
it also makes me angry watching it.
And so I can see why I would'vethought that the first time, because

(01:44:45):
you can't see half of the movie, um,watching the new transfer on Tubie.
Uh, I'm like, you, like II don't hate this movie.
I mean, and I think that the newtransfer allowed me to get some
sort of enjoyment out of it.
I still, I mean, would Ibump it up to one star?
Probably not.

(01:45:05):
'cause I still think it's pretty bad,but maybe three quarters of a star.
It's almost there because it's, it'sbad, but it's not offensively bad.

Dan (01:45:17):
Yeah, no, I'd agree with that.
I would agree with that.
It, it, it, it's, it's awkwardin the sense of it's so close.
Mm-hmm.
If it just pick a lane.
If it had just get that tonenailed down, get the edit just that
bit more tighter, it'd be there.
But it, it just isn't, and it's, it'sfrustrating in that sense, really.

Chris (01:45:38):
Yeah.
Um, I feel like we've, or at leastI have probably said everything I
need to say about colony mutationthroughout this discussion.
You know, if you like phonecalls, this is the movie for you.
But do you, did you have anything, justfinal couple words or anything like that?
Any, any thoughts or notes that youdidn't get the chance to get out?

Dan (01:46:00):
The only other note that I don't think I got around to, and it was just
the first thing I noticed was I sat andnaturally read the credits, which you,
you should never do with a film like this.
But, um, yeah.
The, the film seemingly had somekind of crowdfunding to restore
it for the Tuby version, the,the, the visual vengeance version.

(01:46:22):
And the first person they specialthanks from the crowdfunding is
somebody going by the name Ratso, whichI thought was wonderfully apt given
that the film opens with a rat beingliterally dissected for two minutes.
Yep.
Um, I, the, the note that I put, there's,they thank Ratso first and the special
thanks, and I think that says a lot.
Um, but yeah, no, that, that's,that's pretty much everything I

(01:46:46):
can, I can think of colony mutation.
It's kind of, sort of,

Chris (01:46:52):
so yeah, that was, uh, I. Colony mutation.
Dan, thank you again forcoming on and breathing life
into this dead format with me.
I'd love to have you back sometime ifyou're not too traumatized from this film.
Oh,

Dan (01:47:06):
absolutely.
Absolutely.
And thank you so much for having me on it.
Like I say, it's been genuinely lovelyto, uh, to catch back up with you.
Um, you know, so yeah, if you,if you ever want me back, I'm
more than ready and willing.
Oh, I've already,

Chris (01:47:17):
I've already got some ideas, but before I let you go, uh, why don't
you just once more give a plug forTYTD reviews and tell us about anything
interesting you've got in the works.

Dan (01:47:28):
Yes, certainly.
So, um, you can find me on YouTubeand letterboxed under TYTD reviews.
Currently I am in the process ofworking on a new season, which should
be going live sometime in the spring,uh, exact times to be confirmed.
Um, in between that as well, I'mcurrently working on a audio only

(01:47:51):
release of adult film reviews, uh,called the After Dark Collection.
We're doing a second volume of that,which should be out in early spring.
But yeah, um, at the minute there's,I think there's 470 reviews on
my channel currently, and wecover all genres, all strange
oddities and everything in between.
So head on over there and sayhi, and we'll say hi back.

Chris (01:48:13):
Awesome.
So, yeah, on behalf of Dan,uh, I'm Chris and this has been
another episode of Dead Formats.
If you have any questions about theshow or if you have a dead format
topic that you'd like to hear me cover,or if you have any suggestions for
potential guests, please reach out.
You can email me at Dead formatspod@gmail.com, or you can reach out to

(01:48:35):
me on Instagram at Dead Formats Pod.
Thanks for listening.

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