Halloween Spirit: Overlord (2018) with Scott Weinberg

Getting into the Halloween Spirit, Brian & Weinberg bust bunkers and Nazi zombie skulls in Overlord! 

Scary feels good in a place like this.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:34):
All right, this is Dick Miller.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
If you're listening to Junk Food Cinema, who are these guys?

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Listen up there, troops, You've just parachuted into a violent
new episode of Junk Food Cinema, brought to you by
every Day is D Day dot com dot com dot
com dot Yes, indeed, every day is D Day when
you're with me at Duncan Donuts. This is the weekly
cult and exploitation film Gust so good it just has
to be fattening. I'm your host, Brian Salisbury and Cargill

(01:18):
this week is off storming the Beaches, which means he's
watching his VHS copy of Beaches outside in the rain,
so no one sees him cry. But in his stead
we have the beloved third leg of Junk Food Cinema.
Whether he's playing the hero or the villain, he's filled
with main character energy and always always saves the cat.

(01:38):
Mister Scott Weinberg, it's me, Scott.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
I'm back a Scott.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
It is so perfect that you are here, that we
have you on this week because Junk Food Cinema is
getting into the Halloween spirit.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
That's the most wonder Halloween.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Halloween spirit, not spirit Halloween for legal reasons.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
It's Halloween spirit oh oogy scary.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
And you are the Internet's resident horror guru, and this
is the most wonderful time of the year.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
It really is. You know.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I get, obviously, I get the appeal of Christmas, but
I prefer horror Christmas.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
That's what I call Halloween.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh, Horror Christmas. Merry horror Christmas to all of those
who observe.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Or for those of the Jewish persuasion, Horrornica, horror.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Harnuka, Harnicah, harn.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
If I ever have a daughter, I'm gonna name her Harnicah.
That's a beautiful name.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
When we thought that there was only enough horror movies
for eight nights, but then we opened another their drawer
and found a thousand more horror films.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
See. I feel I love that, Scott, because I feel
like that it describes so many of our listeners. Where
most people have room in their hearts for scary movies
just one night of the year, most of the listeners
of junk food cinema can make room for eight days,
eight months. It goes on and on. The room in
their hearts for horror movies is boundless and you are

(03:24):
a great representation of that, and today, as we get
into that Halloween spirit, we're not just smashing pumpkins but
also bustin' bunkers with twenty eighteen's Overlord.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
What's inside that church?

Speaker 4 (03:41):
What happens to those people?

Speaker 5 (03:44):
You've give it a.

Speaker 6 (03:51):
Boss books, Chase, He's dead, Chase, I feel I feel

(04:14):
really good?

Speaker 5 (04:18):
Holy Christ, Overlord, Overlord, Overlord does whatever?

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Spider Lord Lord h Yeah, I'm gonna spoil it right now,
and I'm gonna use profanity.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Oh shit, I fucking love this movie.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Oh man, this is so much fucking fun. It it
makes perfect sense that the first time I saw this
was at Fantastic Fest. It is a true blue Fantastic
Fest movie.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, And what's fun is that this is the kind
of movie, without doubt, would have played Fantastic Fest eight
nine years ago, which it did, but normally it would
have been it would have cost one tenth of the
budget and come from Bulgaria.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Right, Yeah, and probably been directed by Uve Bowl.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, it's a Fantastic Fest film with a budget. And
because it's obviously a studio release. And I'll get this
out of the way right now. If you told me
that this was a literal adaptation of Cassel Wolfenstein. Yes,
then at the last minute they lost the rights and

(05:42):
had to change the title.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
I would believe you, dude.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
I have that in my notes. This feels like a
Castle Wolfenstein movie, which again feels like it's stepping on
the dick of Ouve Bowl and everything he's tried to
do in Eastern Europe for the last twenty years. But
somehow does it better.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
All right, let's not that's the last time we're mentioning him.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Fair enough, fair enough, because this is.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Such a good example of you know, b horror uh
video game ish movie and and I don't want to
every time you mentioned his name, I get a little
hiccup in my soul.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
You're not wrong. I don't want to sell you this
by comparison. This is a This is like the most
absolute Criterion collection version of everything tried to do. So
I totally understand. I love that we're not just talking
about a horror movie today. We're not just helping to
kick off, you know, our our Halloween Spirit series here

(06:39):
for the next couple of months, but we're actually dabbling
into a very specific horror subgenre like the Nazi zombie
horror is its own revered subgenre that somehow, in the
eleven years of doing this podcast, this is the first
movie we've tackled in that miliu.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
And it probably is the best of of them.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the list here. We
got stuff like, I mean really good stuff like Dead
Snow and oh yeah, The Post and I you know,
even something like The Bunker. H. Then you got your
your sort of like bad fun, bad but fun things
like shock Waves and Frankenstein's Army, And then you got
your just just.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Absolutely I love Frankenstein's Army is great.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
That's the perfect double feature for Overlord.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
It really is. It absolutely is. And then you got
like the bottom of the barrel stuff like your Zombie
Lakes and at least a couple of them their Blood
Rain movies. Probably.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Oh nice.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
I was waiting for you to mention Shockwaves and Zombie
Lake and you covered both.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah. It's it's a very specific shub subjon shub schan shra.
There's a very specific shub genre sas Sean Gannery. Uh,
but yeah, no, it's it's one that I have a
lot of reverence for because it it does this amazing
thing where it takes cinema's easiest bad guy, Like you
don't have to do a lot of work to make
the audience hate these bad guys, right, But then what

(08:02):
if we made them undead monsters. It's really like putting
a hat on a hat and that hat has like
a skull and crossbones on it.

Speaker 7 (08:10):
Yeah, And you know, I've sometimes in my life I've
been a bit sensitive about the way that the atrocities
of World War two or Nazism has been co opted
into say, fun pop culture.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
I guess it's just because you know, what I was
raised to learn about the Holocaust and whatnot, and it
seems like that.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
You're gonna make a fun horror movie about that.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
And I guess it's the passage of time that allows
it right well.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
And I think the added element of the military, like
this being a military movie as well, where it's not
just like, oh my gosh, Nazi zombies, what are we
gonna do? It's like we are actively fighting against this regime,
even before we knew there was an undead side of it.
So I think that that definitely softens it. I mean,
at least for me. I can't I can't speak for you.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Somehow, it's not.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
As tacky or is you know, unpleasant plot wise as
you may expect. It's it's you know, obviously, you know,
fifty plus years have gone by, so it's like, when
does something is it? When is it quote unquote okay
for something to be fodder for horror films? And I'm

(09:25):
not I don't have an answer for that. And does
it feel a little bit weird that I love.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
This movie that much?

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (09:32):
But oh well that's life.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, I mean, let me ask you this question, though,
do you think that part of it that allows for
you to kind of give over to the movie is
that the Nazis in this movie are not being treated
as kitsch or fun like. They are monsters who transform
into other monsters. So it's almost like addressing the horror
of the reality of what a Nazi is and what

(09:56):
the Nazis have done in the history of the world.
This is this is not a comedy, do you know
what I mean?

Speaker 3 (10:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (10:01):
No, no, Yeah, it's taken seriously and it's like for
the most part, and then it's also that idea of
oh my god, what horrible things are going on behind
those walls? And then a horror movie can use that question,
you know, to just make it something amusing and darkly fun.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, I mean, much like much like the beginning of
Freaky Tales, right, which we covered just a couple of
weeks ago. It's like, it sucks and it's awful that
Nazis existed, that they still exist today, that they've existed
in pockets ever since their regime was wiped out. But
because we all collectively know and understand, or at least
the vast majority of us know and understand it, embrace

(10:40):
the fact that Nazis are evil, it makes it a
little bit cathartic to watch them get killed brutally, and
and we don't have to apologize for that.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah, it's like the Raiders rule. You know.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
It's like they've become such cinematic villains now that you know,
we're not shocking or offensive to see them used in
a in a cinematic way, you know, like this is
like a comic book movie, a comic.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Book horror movie, i should say.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
And it's just you know, every other historical monster, well
not every but a lot of historical monsters have been
defanged and weakened and lessened, mocked.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
Call it what you want. By genre film.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
And this movie does a good job of, you know,
kind of retaining what makes them monsters, but also allowing.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Them to be cinematic monsters.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Indeed, and this is a movie that takes place on
the eve of D Day in an alternate nineteen forties,
a paratrooper squad is sent in to destroy this German
radio jamming tower in an old church because that is
crucial to allowing for the invasion of Normandy, which is
of course Operation Overlord. Historically that's what it was called.
It where the movie gets its title, And it's basically

(12:03):
about the soldiers that parachute in here and what they
encounter when they get to the town that has the
church and this old creepy castle and what the Germans
are doing there and the horrors that they uncover. That's
the entirety of the plot. This is not a movie
that's heavy on its on its plot. Like we we
basically know, it's a it's a unit that's going in
to take out this tower. Something bad happens when they
get there. They have to fight their way out.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
But yeah, we picture any picture, any good or bad
World War two movie which is a platoon on a mission.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Uh. And then it turns into horror.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
It's just it's just a great example of how to
combine genres.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
You mentioned a good handful of them.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
I'm I'm fascinated by World War two horror, beginning with
the Keep and then moving forward.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
I've it's just a fascinating combo. Even World War One.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Anytime they you know, you what an ambitious idea to
come buy in a horror film with a war movie,
and you know it takes a lot of effort and
usually a lot of money to do that. And I'm
just impressed by when two genres are combined so well.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
I mean, horror collectively, societally has always been our way
to sort of subconsciously address the evil things in the
real world.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yes, had to deal with the really difficult stuff. We
could tell a scary story about it, right.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
And have that safety net. And I feel like that's
why World War Two and World War One, like what
war in general lends itself so well to I mean, Scott,
this isn't even the first military horror movie that you
and I have covered on this show, do you know
what I mean? Like, we've had Dog Soldiers, which is
the military up against werewolves. Now we're talking Overlord, which
is the military against zombies. And I mean, I think

(13:46):
a lot of the reason why, you know, in the
early to mid two thousands, even into the twenty tens,
why we had so much of this is because you
have a generation of filmmakers that grew up on James
Cameron's Aliens, which is maybe the ultimate military horror movie,
or someone say military sci fi action whatever. But when
you have soldiers versus supernatural threat, I really think the

(14:08):
boilerplate the template is Aliens, and then we just changed
the monster a little bit. We we move around what
the big bad is, and you don't get much bigger
or badder than Nazi zombies. So I think they like
this may be the peak of you know that that
movement that came out, you know that came about because
of Aliens. But this is also Scott. I think it's

(14:28):
interesting to note that this, of all the movies we
mentioned within this subgenre, this is absolutely the one that
got the biggest released because it had the most mite
behind it. And I'm not just talking about the fact
that Paramount released it. I'm talking about the fact that
JJ Abrams produced it.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
And the writers who worked on this, the Jim Mark
Smith and Billy Ray or you know they they they're
like John Sales, which is the biggest compliment you can
give a writer.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
They well, he didn't really fluctuate.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
He started with great b movies he wrote like Arana
and Alligator and The Howling, and then he graduated into
writing and directing his own great films and guys like
Mark Smith and to a lesser degree, Billy Ray, but
they clearly don't have a problem switching from a drama

(15:16):
or a procedural or a dark comedy and then moving
into horror. Mark Smith wrote Vacancy, he co wrote The Revenant.
He's a fascinating screenwriter. And Billy Ray is just you know,
to see those two names as the writers, and it's
just so well directed by what is Julius Avery.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
I could devote literally an entire hour just to talking
about the writers, Like there's so much that I want
to get into with their careers. But just to go
back to Abrams for a second, I think it's really
cool that this is the first movie from Bad Robot
that was rated r his production company. I stot think
it's funny that initially they reported that this was going
to be the fourth installment of the clover Field series.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Was that the case, or was it we're gonna try
and retro fit it once it's finished. They did, they
try to retrofit it as a Cloverfield movie and thought,
now we don't ever really open path to that.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
I think what happened was the initial scuttle butt was
though it's gonna be the fourth part of the Cloverfield series,
and then a CinemaCon, which was that same year, twenty eighteen.
At CinemaCon, Abrams had to come out and announce that
it would not belong to the series because the rumor
had gotten so big. I don't think it was every.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
Right, but ans my question, where would it fit?

Speaker 1 (16:33):
That's a great question, Like I guess the original plan
if I mean, obviously that wasn't a plan. He came
out and said it wasn't. It was just rumor. But
let's go along with that with that alternate dimension for
a second. It would have to be like I mean,
I don't know, like would they would the whis the
original plan that they get down into the lab and
find the Nazis turning dead soldiers into Cloverfield monsters, Like

(16:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Also, I can think of as like some kind of
a at the end of the very end of the movie.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Like we used to always have constant sequel teasers.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
You know, you'd have the bad guys maybe in a
second location, still working on their experiments, and they'd go, Okay,
the zombies didn't work out.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
But look, now, look what I came up with.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
I am a man of constant teasers for sequels I
will never make.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, so I thought, you know, because like Cloverfield Paradox
was just an outer space movie, and they kind of
announced that it was going to be a Cloverfield movie
like after the fact, right after they.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Made it, right, but including this in the Cloverfield universe
would have been in and of itself a Cloverfield Paradox
because it would have had to have been a prequel.
So that would have suggested that the Cloverfield monsters were
man made and therefore not extraterrestrial. It basically would have
undone everything they had done. So yeah, I don't believe
this was ever actually intended to be part of that series.
I think that's just rumors got spread and Abrams had

(17:57):
to come out and be like, no, you fucking idiots,
it's not part of that Overfield Universe.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Because it's a bad Robot production, right.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
But let's go let's let's talk about the writers again here,
because the writing team behind this is Scott mentioned is extraordinary.
You got Mark L. Smith, who co wrote The Revenant
and co wrote most recently, Twisters, which is enough to
give you whiplash. The fact that he co wrote The
Revenant and the Twisters sequel. I just love that.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
I just, you know, I really admire.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Eclectic works from the writers and directors. Somebody who could
do a heavy drama and then turn around and just
do a fun horror movie. A lot of times writers
get like into a niche like, oh, they're comedy screenwriters,
that's what they do. And but I like when I
see writers and directors, you know, working on six seven
different genres over the course of their career, it's you know, uh, satisfying.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
I don't know, there's something something colorful about that.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
If you like eclectic, buckle the fuck up, because now
I'm going to talk about Billy Ray. Billy Ray, who
not only sounds like one of the Dudley Boys from
the ECW days, but also co wrote Volcano, State of Play,
The Hunger Games, Captain Phillips and wrote and directed The
Secret in Their Eyes Like that in and of itself
is a very impressive career.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Right, did he not write Shattered Glass?

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yes? Yes, also Sattered Glass.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yes, I love that one.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, It's just it's to me, it was like,
it's like the Robert Wise thing when I first started
getting into filmographies and like figuring out who who a
filmmaker was and everything, Like Robert Wise, who directed like
the Sound of Music and West Side Story. He He's
done a little.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Bit of everything.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
He did like Audrey Rose, which is not a great
horror movie, but he's done comedies, romance, drama, horror, and
you know, I've just always been a fan of directors
who do that kind of.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Like your Danny Boyle's, your Jay Lee Thompson's. I mean,
like you could go throughout cinema and fine, guys, great.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
You're Sidney J. Fury's. Yeah you r h.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Peter Hyams is perhaps.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
Oh yeah, I mean would it. I don't know if
it counts, but I will.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
I want to just say his name, Joe Dante maybe.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, mostly genre, but yeah, I don't think, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
I mean he also, you know, he directed some heavy
stuff like the Second Civil War is a good cable movie.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Scott, I'm gonna hit you with one more your takashe
me case.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Oh god.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Not only that, but he directs a different genre every
six weeks.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Boom. But here's the thing, Scott, all of this stuff
is impressive. This makes Billy Ray's resume so overwhelmingly impressive, right,
But for me, none of those were his most impressive credit.
He also evidently wrote, though we make movies better promo
for AMC Theaters starring Nicole Kidman, we come.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
To this place for magic.

Speaker 6 (20:55):
We come to AMC theaters to love, to cry, to.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Cam heartbreak feels acceptable in a place like this.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Members of the JFC patron Discord know how hilariously foundational
that promo is to our community. And all I can
say right now is we come to this place to
make fun of the idea that Nicole Kidman has ever
set foot in an AMC theater.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Oh god, well maybe she has never.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
I guarantee, amnt you that Nicole Kidman has never been
to an AMC theater. Okay, there's no, They're not They're not.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
There aren't that many in LA. I know that she watches.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
On the side of the original like Palace at Versailles,
like she is not going to AMC theaters.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
After these messages.

Speaker 4 (21:50):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Where show up next.

Speaker 4 (22:07):
If you're not having fun, your chance to scream? That
helps you bet the seeds.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
All right, Scott, we've teased it. We've teased it, we
tease it. Let's talk about the opening of this movie,
because this opening sequence is fucking incredible.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I'll leave it mostly up to you, but kudos to
the writers and the director, because in order for you
to sell a horror movie set in during the war,
you have to establish that it's a believable war movie
and then you introduce the horror and man, this prologue

(22:49):
does a phenomenal job. And now I'll leave it to
you to describe the rest.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yes, the director does a great job here, and I'm
sorry I skimmed over him. Julius Avery, who also directed
Samaritan and the Pope's Exorcist, which is a wildly entertaining
bad movie and also one important to the junk food
cinema Patreon community. Yeah, this opening is it just conceived
like the way it's it's conceptualized. Being on this plane

(23:14):
the plane is under attack, you got paratroopers. You never
think about what happens if the plane starts to like
disintegrate and fall out of the sky before the paratroopers
get out of there, And what it must be like
to be in essentially a flying fiery cone that if
you could just find the right hole out of you
might be okay because you're wearing this parachute as long

(23:35):
as you don't die before you get out of there, right,
Like it's it's so it's like it's like if they
set the boat in doss boot on fire, Like if
they set Doss boat on fire when it was surfaced
and all you had to do was like just get
out the exit, it's still incredibly claustrophobic and so harrowing.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah yeah, I mean really, you know, it's one of
those great invasion forces, you know, all one, hundreds dozens
of planes, and you know it really, I know it's
not obviously it's not saving private Ryan, but there's times
where we were watching this where you're like human beings
did this, Like they actually did go and fly over

(24:15):
enemy lines, jump out of a plane in the dark
while being shot at. I mean, it's a strange movie
to remind you of what our veterans went through. But
this section does it. It's just like, damn, that's scary
as hell.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Well, and I feel like there's a juxtaposition here. I
feel like you and I have talked about this. How
horror movies they're scarce sequences, their big set piece are
usually conceived as being night shoots.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
It's actually very hard to craft scary horror moments in
the light of day, and we give a lot of
credit to the horror movies that are able to do that.
To create something really visceral and terrifying in the light
of day is incredibly difficult. The flip side of that,
for a war movie, I feel like it's just the opposite.
War movies traditionally have their big set pieces in full daylight,

(25:08):
so you can see the full scope of the battle.
You know, all the tanks, as far as I can see,
the horizon filled with soldiers. It's usually about daytime battles, right,
So for a war movie to put together a sequence
this tense and this spectacular at night is almost as
impressive as a horror movie scaring you in the light

(25:30):
of day.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Yeah, I mean, just technically speaking, it's a fantastic sequence
and it's written well too. You know, it's establishing characters,
it's setting up the stakes, and it's also people dodging
bullets and exploding airplanes at the same time.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
I mean, the amount of practical used in this movie
is thoroughly impressive, like this in this scene just alone,
like they talk a lot in the end of AA Trivia.
So I have to believe it's true. And I've seen
the movie and I've looked very closely. I definitely believe
that the majority of this is practical. But the way
that the fuselage of the plane starts to break up

(26:07):
and part of it starts to sag backwards, and you
literally see soldiers tumbling out the back of the plane
which is on fire. So they're going through this fire, right.
They achieved this by actually rigging a plane, like a
section of plane fuselage on a gimbal, which is a
big arm that moves back and forth. It's the way
that you know, they make it look like people are
dancing on the ceiling and in the lin of Ritchie video,

(26:29):
oh movie.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
When you're dancing on the seiling.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Sorry, or if you're watching break In two, all these
all these things are incredible, right, So they put the
fuselage on one of these big arms and they they
start to tilt it. They blow up the front with
with pyrotechnics, and then they tilted as if it was
actually falling through the air. And then they have live
stuntmen who are tumbling through real fire out the back.

(26:55):
It is fucking incredible what they went through to get
this shot.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, it's insane, and I hate to say it, but
I'm sure everybody from Abram's on down New like while
you're working on a movie like this.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
These movies don't often make a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
It's a tough cell, you know, period piece, war movie,
horror film. It sounds like a blast to somebody like
you and me, but they're often tough cells.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
And to your point, Scott, this movie barely made its
money back. It's insane to me how it's got this
kind of push point.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, which means it lost money.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Which means it lost exactly well. And I think the
other problem is while it premiered a Fantastic fest in September,
it didn't hit regular theaters, so that you know, Nicole
Kidman could tell us that it feels good in a
place like this until November, and I'm like, if this
had been released right before Halloween, I think it would
have fucking slayed.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I vaguely remember it being like delayed several times, or
at least one long time that it was like do
it in April and then.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Got pushed back to November or something.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
I just remember that it was it got delayed and
they didn't know, like the distributor wasn't sure what to
do with it. I guess maybe they had some tough
test screenings.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
I don't know, but.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Kudos to whoever greenlit is because movies like this do
not escape from the Hollywood system very often. And like
you mentioned a handful of good horror of wartime horror movies,
you know, the Bunker and Outposts, and you know those
are indie films and imports. You know, you'd have to
go back to, like I said, like to keep or

(28:40):
off the top of my head, I'm trying to think
of World War two horror films that come from studios, right.
You know, they're very, very uncommon, and so obviously people
like you and I were already predisposed to liking this movie,
but now having seen it.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Three or four times.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
It's not just the genre fan in me, who who's
making mysel or like compelling myself.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
To like it. It's just a really well made movie.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
And I feel like I agree with you, and I
think it's having to do with the war. Movies are expensive.
You gotta, you know, gear everybody up, you gotta costume
them in period attire. You've got to, you know, if
you're shooting in the right village in Eastern Europe, maybe
you don't have to do too much set dressing, but
that's an expensive endeavor. And then on top of that,
to have filmmakers that demand to use, you know, largely

(29:28):
practical effects, that's an added expense. So I think the
double whammy. I mean, this movie costs thirty eight million
dollars and doesn't have a huge above the line star
in it, so all of that money is in the
production pretty much.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah, yeah, yep, which I mean, is it time to
talk about yo?

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Is it? Jovan Joe van at Depot.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
He is so good as private voice in this movie,
and he's the one that we're kind of following down
to the ground once we finally get out of this
terrifying situation in the burning fuselage. Of the play, we're
following him down to the ground. And the thing that's
crazy that you never think about when you think about
paratroopers is that even after they jump out of the plane,
they have to pray to God they don't run into

(30:12):
another plane or debris on the way down and get killed.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Or person or bullet.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's just astonishing the amount
of bravery that it takes to do these things. And
I love this actor. He broke out through Fences was
his breakout movie. And I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing his name.
I'm pretty sure it's jo Vaughn, but yeah, he's fantastic.

(30:39):
And then there is some really good chemistry between him
and Wyatt Russell, who is a great second lead. But
it's it's Jovon or mister Adepo's film entirely. It's all
you know, you see all of the horror and all
of the you know, intensity through his and he is

(31:01):
just great.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
And before we get to why, because we're gonna spend
a lot of time talking about Wyatt Russell in this
movie because it's not gonna take us very long, let's
talk about bou Keem Woodbine, who is one of my
favorite character actors, and he's like their commanding officer in
this movie. And I think, I think this is the
smallest increment of time we've ever gone between Welcome to
the movie Boukeem Woodbine and that's a wrap on Boukem Woodbine.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Yeah, and I do.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
I think that's one of those clever little casting techniques
where you see an actor you recognize and you're like, oh,
he's gonna be important.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
He's I know this.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Actor, and your brain registers that, oh, you know, he
must be important. They wouldn't hire an actor of his,
of his you know, skill and experience level to be
oh he's gone.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
It's crazy because at this point in time, he is
the biggest star in this movie. Like Wyatt Russell at
this point had been like the fifth lead in the
second twenty one Jump Street movie and that was pretty
much it. Yeah, you got Wyatt Russell, you goto Keem Woodbine,
and then you've got you know, some actress who are
on Game of Thrones who you may be recognized. But
Bokeem Woodbine, just because of the staggering body of work
he has, is technically the biggest star in this movie.

(32:11):
So they kind of pull a Janet Lee where you think, well,
you don't hire bokeem woodbind just to have him be
in the movie for five He's gone, Okay, shit, I
guess this is now. This is now a two hander
between between our boy Jovan Nadeppo and Wyatt Russell. And
I got to talk for just a second about Wyatt Russell,
who apparently had mono while filming this movie and lost

(32:34):
about twenty five pounds during the production. But there's something
so interesting about him in this movie is that he's
got the chisel jaw and like the movie star face,
like his dad. Oh by the way, if you're one
of the three people who doesn't know this, whyat Russell's
dad is Kurt Russell a personal hero of mine and
a legend. He's on Mount junk More for sure. But
even though he looks like his dad in the face,

(32:54):
he sounds in this movie like a grumpy Owen Wilson.
I don't know if that's it. And you know, maybe
like because I've seen you know, Thunderbolts, and I watched
that you know, Falcon and Snowman movie and a Falcon
and Snowman, Falcon and Winter Soldier movie, not the Falcon
in the Snowman.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
That's Timothy Hutton. Crazy ass.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yeah. The only person missing from the Marvel Cinematic universe
in my opinion, is Timothy Hutton. So let's just let's
let's fix that on me. You think he's an ordinary person,
he's a superperson. Okay, fucking figure it out.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Figured it.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
I don't know if I just maybe haven't picked up
on the fact that this is just how he normally talks.
But it hit me so hard in this movie, like
he sounds like if Owen Wilson was really grizzled, Like
if Owen Wilson got one of those like leave me
the fuck alone. You don't know what I used to
do for a living revenge movies as an old man.
This is how he would sound now.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
And it's smart writing and directing to have this guy
be like the distant second lead, because you need somebody
like a depot who is good, decent and you know,
maybe fatally curious in a bad way, but he's a
noble character.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
And with with why Russell, he's kind of a wild card.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Like you like him obviously because you know he's an
American hero soldier, you know, paratrooping into into a World
War two battle. But he also has that kind of
swagger that we like the John wayneisms.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
But he doesn't overwhelm the lead.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
He doesn't take over the movie ever, even though his
personality probably could.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, at the same time, you can see a little
bit of the presence and the demeanor that he'd later
use to play John Walker to be the new Captain America.
Like you can see it in there in this character.
And I do like that classic conflict between between him
and Voice, where his character, Corporal Ford is much more
by the book, we gotta follow orders, this is what

(34:48):
the mission requires of us. And then you've got Boyce
who's like, I want to do the right thing. I'm
not gonna leave anybody behind. I'm not gonna let people suffer.
So it's that classic sort of duty versus mora kind
of thing. And if there's a difference between, you know,
doing what is right and doing what is best, and
you know, there's just a lot of kind of good
moral meat to chew on in this zombie movie. So

(35:10):
I do like the relationship between between the two of them. Also,
so they land, there is a moment after we've lost
spokem Woodbine tragically where there's another trooper as they're just
walking along. And this is another great thing. If you
watch enough warr movies, you'll see this a thousand times,
where we're talking about what we want to do when
the war is over, and then we literally get cut

(35:32):
down mid sentence. Oh that and this one poor trooper
who steps on a land mine.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Yep, it blows me away and it blew hill away.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, that sequence would work equally as well in a
completely fact based war film that is not a horror movie.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
It is just good writing.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
So much that's naturally upsetting and horrific about the concept
of war that there's such natural bed like there should
be more war horror films, military horror films, warror warror films. Scott,
we have coined a new genre. It is the world
mans No.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
When I you know, obviously I used to cover a
lot of film festivals and whenever I would get the guide,
you know, I'd be Horror films were my first or
sci fi were my first choice. And if I saw
anything you know, three three shell shocked, you know, soldiers
find a haunted bunker, I'm like, that's my number one movie.

(36:33):
I mean, yeah, there's something fascinating about the combination of
war and horror and that.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
I just love.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
And whereas it's usually the realm of like I said,
low budget or international horror films, this is, you know,
a studio movie, jumping in with both feet, and the
money is all up there on the screen. It's not
like you're never sitting there thinking this costs thirty five
million dollars, what are you crazy? Like the production design,

(37:03):
the set pieces, the special effects, it all works.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, And there's also a natural sort of parallel between
Gore and Breakfast, I guess, because this poor trooper who
steps on a land mine is instantly scatterfried like a
crispy order of hash Browns.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Just yeah, I would say, more like I would have
called him Colonel Popcorn.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
He Orville Redden buys the farm at this point, and
just yeah, he goes off. He goes off in a jiffy,
let's just put it that way. It's from here that
they meet this this local woman, Chloe played by Matteil Delivier,
who's so beautiful but has that of course, like my
village has been taken over. We have to follow these rules.

(37:51):
They're going house to house searching for people. And obviously
we see enough of the brutality of the Nazi regime
that has control of this town to understand and that
her agreeing to help this battalion of American soldiers would
definitely be her undoing. And you know she lives in
a house. It's just her and her adorable little brother Paul,
and you know they still agree to.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
Help ba who else? Uh?

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Oh okay, yes, Scott, I'm so glad you mentioned that.
I'm so fucking glad you mentioned that, because it's always
hilarious to me that in zombie movies there is what
I call Chekhov sick relative like yet there's always somebody's like, oh, yeah,
there's something going on. We don't know. They're doing some
experiments and I don't know my aunt's really sick, so
she's in her room. The person never recognizes that growling

(38:40):
and having glassy eyes and necrosis are not what she'd
call normal flu symptoms.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
Nope, No, they're just.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Under the weather. I'm like, Grandma's screeching like a hungry
hell demon from the other room, and her family's like, oh,
what a shame must be consumption, No, motherfucker you're gonna
get consumed. That's not what that is.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Most people don't know this, but that's what consumption really
was back in the day.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
Not tuberculosis.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
It was when someone said they died of consumption, that
meant a zombie ate them.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yeah, your lungs are weak because they just got shoot
on exactly. That's exactly.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
And that The history with what her grandmother is that
she was taken into the this local castle that the
Nazis have taken over, and when she got out, she
was very sickly and in a strange way, right.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah, yeah, And so we're just like, don't go in
that room because grandma's not feeling well. But when we
too finally see her, guess what, I hate to spoil
it for you. She ain't got the sniffles, She's got
the undevils.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Is that an actual term?

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, I'm a doctor. Okay, don't look into it, but
I'm a doctor.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
All right. I'm believe I liked.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
The decision in this movie, Scott to subtitle almost none
of the German dialogue. Yeah, there's very like all of
the French. You know that Chloe and her brother are speaking,
and you know, the people around the town are speaking
is subtitled, but almost none of the German dialogue is subtitled,
And to me it seems like both the demonstration of
trust in the audience to be able to figure out

(40:14):
from context clues what's happening, and also kind of a
fitting middle finger to these Nazis, like I don't even
give a shit what you're saying. You're just here to
become a zombie and then have us completely destroy you.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah, And do we want to spoil what's going on
behind the walls with this castle or no.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
I feel like we have to. We have to talk
about it. Let me just put it to you this way,
gentle listeners. My advice to you in this movie but
also just in life, is never ever handle rusty syringes,
no matter where you find them, but especially if you
find them in secret, underground Nazi laboratories.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
And like I love just about everything that takes place.
I mean just visually the escape at the end, which
there's all this elaborate one shot. It's just there is
so much going on action, you know, action and scary
wise that the movie just keeps you on your toes.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Well.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
And I also love the Domino mechanics of like boys
goes out and then a dog is chasing him, so
he jumps in the back of the truck and the
truck has dead bodies and he's like, oh my god.
But then the truck's being driven into the laboratory, which
is also right at the base of the tower that
they're supposed to blow up. So this turns out to
be good, great recon But then when he's in there
is when he starts to find all this return of

(41:32):
the Living Dead shit, like literally, there's a talking there's
that woman's severed head that's talking, which felt very Return
of the Living Dead to me.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah, that one's very I mean, it is a compliment,
but very B movie level, and it really like establishes.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Oh, you know, up to this point, you thought it was.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Just a very eclectic or fast moving, you know, at
war movie. And then when the horror is introduced with
this you know, body part, basically.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
It sells it right away. You know, you're you.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Know, you have to introduce the horror into a different genre.
You don't just you know, you want to maybe do
it subtly, but nope, not in this case. It's every
room he goes in there's another horrific discovery.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
And it's just it's just fascinating.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
It's fun, and I'm sorry to be the drum cone
call of the party that doesn't tell a good joke.
But let me go back for just a second. But
because before we get to that lab, we have to
talk about this Nazi commander that they capture played by
and I'm going to butcher this name. I'm so sorry,
Pilo Asbec I think is how you pronounced this name.
A lot of you might recognize him as you're in

(42:50):
Great Joy from Game of Thrones.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
It's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
He's a phenomenal villain. He's yeah, it's just a great performance.
Is instantly hate worthy, but then he's still consistently interesting.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
You know a lot of times when a villain just.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Reaches the peak of hatred, you're like, all right, well,
you know, you're barely a character anymore.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
I just hate you.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
And you know that that character he certainly pulls that
off as an actor, but then he's still darkly interesting
through you know, it'll just become bland because now he's
the ultimate and monstrous villain.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
It's a great performance, and yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, I especially like the scenes between them and the
woman and the platoon all like arguing, bickering, yelling back
and forth.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yeah, it's phenomenal. He's a great, great villain. When Boyce
comes back from this laboratory, he's kind of, you know,
telling them everything he's seen. And what's great mechanically about
this Nazi commander being their hostage is that he's able
to kind of say things like, you know, this is
the soldiers for the thousand year Reich and kind of
fill them in on what's going on. Whether he should

(43:59):
be doing that of his own volition is you know,
a little bit questionable that he should just be giving
up information so he can make cool speeches. But hey,
he's a Nazi, what are you gonna do? But then
you know this moment where he pretends to be dead
so that he can get to the drop on one
of these soldiers and put bullets in him. But then
there's this monkey's paul choice that Boyce has because he's

(44:20):
seen what this, he's been in the lab, he's seen
what the seerum can do, so in order to save
his platoon MAT's life, he injects him with this and
holy fucking shit, like this is such a great moment
of letting the entire platoon in on what the stakes
are and what we're dealing with. Where this soldier gets
up and it first seems like he's completely fine, and
also the choice that Boyce makes here is a great

(44:43):
foreshadowing of why at Russell's choice later on. But when
that soldier gets up and he's like, suddenly he's like,
I don't feel good. His veins are starting to like,
you got these great bladder effects, these veins on his arm,
and then the way he whips his head back off
of his spine and then right back and like the
clavicles are all broken. It is so grody in the

(45:05):
best possible way.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yeah, the practical effects are fantastic.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
I mean the digital effects are too, but you know,
there's something old school and lovable about practical effects, and
they're there. There's some great work on both sides in
this movie.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
You're absolutely right. This was done with puppetry and animatronics
and it it fucking shows. It's such a great effect
and I just love this. Slowly going from oh my god,
we saved our friend's life to oh, what's wrong with
him too? Okay, we gotta smash his head in like
a fucking overripe grape, Like this is something's wrong here.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
After these messages, we'll be right back.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
Invasion of where on Earth would show up sexts? If
you're not having fun so hot? I could be next to.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
I don't want to gloss over it.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
But the the ant that we barely see in the film,
who is just kind of like a sickly presence in
a back room for most of the movie, yeah, is
played by Meg Foster.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Holy shit, I forgot about that.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
God, most junk nuts jug foodficionados will know her from
what Brian uh.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
I mean that could be anything from they live to
the state that was what that was.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
The answer, But you can keep going obviously, But they
live is what I was asking Masters of.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
The Universe, Like, this is a woman who, like, when
you needed a stunning pair of blue eyes and a
woman who could hold her fucking own a genre film,
you know, things like Blind Fury with Rugger Howard. Like
if you needed somebody who was just a great presence,
like a great you know, womanly presence in a genre movie,
you got Meg Foster.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Yeah, And she's got these ice blue eyes that are
just haunting and beautiful. And yeah, in in certain contexts
very creepy. And you know, she's just a genre what's the.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Word that mainstay? She's a mainstay.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Yes, yeah, great, great genre name.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
And I didn't I don't think I even knew it
when I was watching the movie, but I think I
had noticed it after the fact that it was she's
played by Meg Foster.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
See, I had seen the movie before, so I kind
of like read over, like did my research, and then
went back and washed it and then did some more research,
and in the first round of research I came across that,
and then I completely fucking forgot it. It wasn't even
in my notes. I'm not even going to pretend that
I didn't completely forget about Meg Foster in this movie,
because that is a fucking crime for somebody like me
to forget about Meg Foster. Now, granted she's under twelve

(47:50):
pounds of prosthetics, but still, Jen, you flecked when you
hear the name Meg Foster. M So it's at this
point that you know, during all the hubb of about
you know, we've had to kill our friend twice or
our friends died twice now once by our own hands.
Because shit's gone sideways. This Nazi commander is fleeing the
scene and he snatches up the little boy and he escapes. However,

(48:13):
while escaping, we clearly see this commander get shot multiple
times as the chauffeur kind of drives him away. So
once we get back to the lab, of course, to
save his own life, he injects himself with the zombie
juice and I have to say, man, the makeup on
him and his sort of open face wound, it's so choice.

(48:35):
It's the chef's kissiest of chef's kiss and apparently that
makeup took five hours a day to apply, and it
looks amazing.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Yeah, it's fantastic there. I mean, it's just.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Top of the line studio horror. The money went into
this bakeup and you know, production design, and there's not
just it's just fantastic.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
It's just just simply excellent.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
It's insane to say this, but we're already at the
finale of the movie. The movie moves so fucking quickly
that I was shocked to find out it was longer
than ninety minutes.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
It's something that it's something that you realize when you
like a movie and see it three or four times,
and you know, sometimes John Carpenter's the Thing feels like
it's a half an hour. And you know, I'm not
saying this is as good as the Thing, but man,
it moves like a shot.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
It just does not slow down.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
It gives you the basic character development and plot that
you need, and then it just keeps moving.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
It's one hundred and ten minutes. It feels like a
brisk eighty like it moves so goddamn quick. And once
we get to this finale, which is probably the last
twenty five minutes of the movie, like, I just love
that we The thing that this movie does so well
and I whant I think it is so great about
Overlord is that it balances the combat stuff with the

(49:53):
zombie stuff so well that in many ways it's every
bit as effective as a war movie as it is
a horror film. And that's something that we give a
lot of praise to horror comedy when it does this right,
when it's able to be just as funny as it
is creepy, you know, the sterling like absolute paradigm of
this is an American werewolf in London. When it's able

(50:13):
to be as funny as it is scary, like we
really have to tip our hats. I think the same
can be said here for how well this is both
a great war film and a great horror film. And
I know that there were different versions of the script
over time. I know that one of the versions of
the script had sort of an amplification of both, like
at a certain point in one of the original scripts
that were going to be like an army of these

(50:36):
Nazi zombies, like coming out of the of the of
the church of the castle and having to be mowed down.
So it's going to be a much bigger war scene,
and I guess technically also a much bigger horror scene.
But I don't think the movie loses anything for pairing
down the scale a bit.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
No, No, I mean it's about this platoon, right and
if they can stop they obviously you don't want this,
you know, these monsters surviving and expanding beyond the area.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
But it works as just a localized scary story.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Yes, yeah, absolutely does.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
You know what the I'm sure you look, you checked it.
You know what the Rotten Tomatoes score is.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
For this movie.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
I actually don't know that answer.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
If I told you that it had two hundred and
twenty eight reviews.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
What would you guess is the percentage.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
I would hope it's in the nineties. I'm gonna guess
it's more like seventy six.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Oh not bad, you were close. It's eighty two percent.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Nice, yeah, have bad for the fact that almost all
those critics that reviewed it without question probably saw it fantastic.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
I don't even remember if it got press screened or not.
It may have.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yeah, I don't remember if it was a press screen
I just remember being at a screening of this movie
and it was a very raucous crowd and it was
a lot of fucking fun.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Oh yeah, I remember seeing get It fantastic.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
I just mean, like, for national critics, did it have
press screenings?

Speaker 3 (52:04):
It must have?

Speaker 1 (52:04):
It forgot that question. That's a good question.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
If it got, you know, over two hundred reviews, it
probably did get a press show. But if you had
told me, because I'm so you you know, and you
probably are too so used to decent horror movies getting
fifty eight forty four percent, you know, like, yeah, some
like a lot of backhanded compliments, but overall probably a
rotten instead of afresh. And to see that more than

(52:31):
four out of five critics like this movie, it's just
it gives me hope.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Yeah, that tomato meter tends to give good horror films
a rotten deal that is entirely accurate, and it's it's
a problem. But this final, this siege on the castle,
starts with them capturing this awful Nazi who actually tried
to rape Chloe, so they stick a grenade in his
mouth and tape it. I love this this gag, Like
we've seen this a lot in eighties movies, where you

(52:57):
put a grenade in someone's mouth or you shove it
down their pants. Like there's just a little bit of
inherent slapstick to that, but it's satisfying at the same time.
So when he's taped to this motorcycle that's also full
of dynamite, he's got the grenade in his mouth and
his dumb Nazi cohorts try to take the tape off
and it pulls the pin. Like it's just such a great,
almost wily coyote start to this what becomes an incredible

(53:19):
siege where you're going to get the guns up on
the hill and they're strafing fire to the doors, and
you got the rest of the platoon like sneaking in
from the bottom, and it's just again like it just
does the war stuff as well as the horror stuff
and it's amazing. And then once we get inside, the
climax of the film is actually set in real time.
So when Ford, which is whyat Russell's character says that

(53:42):
he's setting the explosive timer for eighteen minutes until the
church explodes, there's eighteen minutes left in the movie. And
I think that's a great choice.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Yeah, yeah, it's a fun gimmick. I like that. I
didn't I remember thinking.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
Is that an actual like real time but I never
stopped to check it.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
It is, you could set your watch to it.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
And how fantastic is that escape sequence that it feels
like a one shot but obviously it's a bunch of
one shots all tied together somehow.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yeah, we need to talk about that shot because I
love this one shot of boys running through the castle
like this is, you know, after everything's gone down and
he's running away from the explosions. But I mean, is
that actually a real one er or is it just
a bunch of cleverly masked edits. I cannot tell you.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
For Sartain, I've been given the fact that he is, like,
you know, running from actual explosions somewhat close to him
and all that, I think it's cleverly hidden edits you know,
because there's a lot of special effects involved. Sure it
was just him running around corridors, I'd say, oh, maybe
they did it like naturally, But considering that, you know,

(54:51):
there are so many effects moments in this escape makes
me think, no, they just use movie magic to make
it look like a one shot.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
And the way they hand back so as he's coming
out of the entrance, we see the entire scope of
the castle, we see the tower collapse like it's so smooth,
it's such a great shot.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
It's really a good director, man, he really is.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
I didn't love Samaritan, but there's some interesting stuff in
that movie.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
And uh, what was his next one?

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Oh, he did a film before this called Son of
a Gun, which is good, good action film.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Heard a lot of good things about Son of a Gun.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
And what was the one that you said they came after?

Speaker 1 (55:29):
So I am a big fan of The Pope's Exorcist
with Russell Crowe.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Because I well haven't seen that.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
It's bug nuts, it's acting. You know, what if you
want to make a bug Nuts movie about a bug
Nut story. The person you hire is twenty twenty two
era Russell Crowe, Like that's absolutely who you fucking get
for that.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
And then there's this great score by Jed Crazell. It's
been sick or Kurzel. I don't know how to pronounce
his last name, but he's a great composer.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
And this score is fantastic.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Super atmospheric. I like it a lot. I mean, there's
there's so much going on this finale. You know, we're
rescuing the little boy and that's great, and and Chloe
getting to use a fucking flamethrower like she's auditioning for
Inzo Castillari's Escape from the Bronx. Like, just there's so
much happening here. We got Wyatt Russell stabbing a radio
operator in the head, fucking hey man, Like, what the

(56:18):
hell is happening? And I have to ask you, Scott,
because we've also got some fighting back in the village.
As a Phillies fan, did it upset you when that
one soldier invoked the name of legendary Saint Louis Cardinals
hitter Stan Mucil? No, okay, I just wanted to be.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Sure, Allen, I don't.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
I mean, but I'm trying to think of like very
old Phillies players, Robin Roberts.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
I mean, like who is who? I don't know. I'm
not a historian.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah no, I couldn't. You know, if you had said
a name from like the the nineteen forty two Phillies squad,
if they were even a team, then I would have
just had to believe you, because I don't really.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
Been around since the eighteen eighties.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
See you know that at least Yeah, maybe Honus Wagner
got traded there at some point. I don't know the
point being Nope, that did not happen.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
But now I want to look it up.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
There's a really like again, we're doing the war stuff,
but we're also doing the horror stuff. Really well, whyatt Russell?
You know, in this fight, you know with the Nazi commander,
he gets hoisted onto that hook like one of Leatherface's victims,
and it hurts to watch, But it hurts in phases,
which is the most impressive thing about it, because there's
the initial grimace when he goes on the hook, and

(57:31):
then it hurts even more as we watch him, like
kind of hang there and try to lift himself off
the hook, and then it hurts even more when he's
unsuccessful a couple times and falls back down onto the hook.
Like it's almost like a comedy in three's kind of
set up, but for visceral reactions. And it's really remarkable.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Yeah, I mean, like gruesome moments like that are you
know what we remember? You know, just you know, you
just just this little gimmicks.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
Here and there.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
You know that that like when you look at that
castle and you look at like all the hallways and laboratories,
you know, you have to think the writer and or
director or et cinema photographer has to be like, well, wait,
you know, what could we do with this hook? What
could we do with this weapon? What could we do
with this machine?

Speaker 7 (58:23):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (58:23):
And you know the movie find some clever stuff to
do with it, with all the props and whatnot.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
And I love this fight between Wyatt, who, you know,
if facing his own mortality, has made the choice in
order to complete this mission, he's also going to inject himself,
which he knows is a death sentence, but he's going
to do it so that he can he can actually
go up again. Captain Waffner and you know, do battle
with him, and there's this fight is just it's a
lot of grappling and a lot of haymakers. It's a

(58:49):
real old man fight and that's great. And I had
to wonder, though, we've got you know, we've literally got
Wyatt Russell, who would go on to play a version
of Captain America in this movie. It's World War two
and he's taken this serum that's going to allow him
to fight and insane occultist Nazi who's also taken this
serum to make himself strung. Is this just the horror

(59:10):
version of Captain America First Avenger.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
I'll mean, yeah, we said it might have been a
Cloverfield movie. I think it's maybe more likely that Overlord
is a stealth MCU movie.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Right, Like, if you would have told me, you know,
since I missed the make Foster thing, if you had
told me I also missed the fact that this was
based on like an EC comic book, I would have
been like, absolutely, I believe you one thousand percent.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
And to go back to the Wolfenstein thing, yes, it
has it is so it feels so much like a
Wolfenstein game that it almost makes you wonder if they
considered like legal recourse.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
That's that's a really great question, because you have different
types of zombies. Like you've got this commander who is
able to just talk and be himself and just be
like a slightly more aggressive version of himself, but he's
still like talking and carrying on monologues and being essentially
the same asshole he was throughout the whole movie. But
then you have other guys infected with this serum who
are just shrieking and running like they're Danny Boyle zombie.

(01:00:15):
He's come up twice now in this episode, and like
they've got like appendages cut off and forged into just blades.
Like it's just they've got different levels of monsters, you know,
much like you would face in a Wolfenstein. And also
at one point, Boyce is being chased by dogs. Like
literally all this movie is missing is like eight bit cinematography,
and it would be Castle Wolfenstein.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Yeah, and again I'm not an expert on the series,
but I've played, you know, my share, and you know
that's what makes the movie feel. You know, It's like
it almost feels like Billy Ray, who wrote the original script,
said I want to see a Castle Wolfenstein movie. I
have not been hired to do that, but I can
still kind of do it, Like, you know, you can't

(01:00:58):
just copyright like Zombie in World War Two.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
So it clearly feels definitely inspired by the video games,
but just different enough that it's like, hey, you guys
should have You know, you had thirty years to make
a horror movie and you didn't, So I'm doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
You're so right. The concept and the subgenre is sort
of an open floor plan, like the furniture can only
go so many places, so it's like there's to be
some similarity.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Wherein Adapo is walking down hallways and I'm like, this
is literally Wovenstein.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
What am I watching here?

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
It's so true? And I love Whyatt's hero moment here,
you know, And I love that it's kind of a
one two punch of a hero's moment because he does
blast the commander down into the pit, and I love
even more than him doing that, the fact that the
fall absolutely does not kill him, and Whyatt knows that,
and why it has to sacrifice himself to blow everybody
up with the second more powerful blast, like we know
the first one's not to do the trick. Everybody knows that.

(01:02:02):
So there's sort of a one two punch of a
hero moment that's just so fucking good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Right, And it's it's this idea that you know, there's
so much death and carnage going on around him, you know,
by soldiers or being killed, and he's like, well, I'm
going to be among them, but.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
I'm going to take take them out at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
So you know, it's tragic to get this secondary hero
blown up, but he really, you know, helps save the
day by doing it. So it's you know, it's very
much the gung ho bravado, you know kind of action.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
I also just want to throw a quick shout out
to Eric Redman, who plays doctor Schmidt, sort of the
head of this laboratory. And the reason I want to
throw a shout out to him is because not only
is he in Overlord, he's in both saving Private Ryan
and Captain America the First Avenger, so he's in two
of the biggest arguably inspirations for this movie as well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
That is, that's funny, That is I did not put
that together.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
And again, you know, as a genre fan, you know,
if you come across something on Netflix or Hulu or
something that's in a lower budget or international horror war movie.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
You're like, oh, what a novel combo.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
But to see it from a studio and to see
the money spent so well, it's just a delight, it
really is.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
Couldn't agree more. And at this point, the mission is
a success, so that means Dday can be a success.
The war is saved, and Boyce ops to say nothing
about what they found in the lab, just that they
accomplished their mission and that their commanding officer was a hero.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
And like you start to realize, like, yeah, I would
probably do the same thing. What do you have to
gain by telling them what you know? A half the
people won't believe you, and the people who do believe
you are going to want to lock you in a
lab or lock you in an interrogation room.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
So yeah, probably just best to shut up about it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Which is sad and ironic, but you know, kind of realistic,
kind of or at least dramatic.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
I guess when it comes to monsters in the castle
during World War Two, that's one secret he decides to keep.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Overlord.

Speaker 5 (01:04:18):
Yes, somehow heartbreak Phils could.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
In a place like this, and that does bring us
to the junk food pairing, and this one's gonna require
a little bit of a long walk, so stick with
me on it. For my junk food pairing, I went
with an old timey syringe full of Fanta because this
is something I learned about. Fanta. So Coca cola was
bottled in Germany starting in nineteen twenty nine, but by

(01:04:41):
nineteen forty Coca cola was also a favorite beverage in Germany.
So access to the elixir halted abruptly when the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor. The war starts and America American companies
can no longer do business with enemy nations, right, so
what are the Germans to do? They want their Coca cola,
they can't get the elixir from America. So the German
branch of Coca Cola, running out of the ingredients required

(01:05:04):
to make Coca cola, invented Fanta during World War Two
to quench a national thirst. And the original Fanta, which
is a shortening by the way of fantastiche which is
the German word for fantastic. I never knew that was
different from what we know of it today because they
had to basically take all these leftover ingredients from other

(01:05:25):
things like apple pulp from making cider and you know
way that was cast aside from the cheese industry, and
beat sugar for sweetener. They were basically throwing this thing
together improvisationally, and the result was their bevers that resembled
coke but didn't really taste like it. But because it
was like there, fuck you, I won't do what you
tell me, Coca Cola leaves, We're gonna make our own.

(01:05:46):
We're gonna call it Fanta became a symbol of national pride,
and Germans across the Third Rite consumed Fanta, creating enough
of a market that Coca Cola kept producing Fanta after
the war. So Fanta got its first rebrand in Italy
nineteen fifty when the color and flavor were added and
shifted to orange, and it became the Fanta we knew today.
So what I'm going to suggest to you as you

(01:06:07):
watch Overlord is to fill a rusty old needle with
a mishmash of dead ingredients to other foods to make
an unholy similarchrum of the world's most jack booted soda.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Wow, what a great story. Your research is fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
Hey, oh, fantastish.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
I want to I want to put for my junk
food pairing something well that is known as sports woulder kirchtort.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
You know you've eaten it. I bet you know what
sports voulder is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
It sounds like I'm gonna eat a baseball, but go ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
Otherwise known as black forest cake.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Oh so good, my.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
All time favorite cake. It is chocolate whipped cream cherries.
It's it's a it was the The origins of the
actual who created the cake first is up for dispute,
but according to Wikipedia quote, the cake's recipe from nineteen
twenty seven is kept at an archive in Redelfzell, Germany.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
So it's a German cake.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
It's probably the most German cake it is.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Yeah, that would be my junk food pairing. Put that
and a glass of Fanta when you watch Overlord. There's
a diner near me that makes a black forest cake.
And I haven't been there probably in fifteen years, but
every time I used to go in there as a
kid or as a teenager with my friends from high
school after a movie, we'd want to go somewhere, and

(01:07:43):
it was one of the only places that was open
late so I would get a piece of black Forest cake,
a coke, and a side of.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
Fries that sounds like the best meal ever. And I
love I love the pairing of our pairings because I
went with something that was basically reanimated parts to bring
a soda back from the dead and that the Germans loved.
And you went with a cake not only from Germany,
but a cake that sounds like the exact place that
you would expect to run into Nazi zombies where you

(01:08:12):
in a movie like this? Oh yeah, where are the
Nazi zombies in the Black Forest?

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
I would like to see a sequel to Overlord where.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
A Deapo is sent under under Uh, what's the undercover
to find the recipe the original black Forest cake? And
you know what else we could tie this into? Did
I or did I not see it posted online on
Blue Sky?

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
A case of Fanta with our with our mutual friend
Cargio's monster on the case of Fanta.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Holy shit, I completely forgot about that. Yeah, an accidental
tie into black Phone to Bambalayam. Holy shit, He's gonna
be so happy about that. Missed that connection.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Yeah, so Grabber is now becoming an iconic Freddie type
monster man.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Yeah, I could see the grabber being a Nazi like that.
That doesn't seem like a big stone's throw at all.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
I don't think I've ever had fanto ever.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
I haven't either. That's what's crazy, is I've I've grew
up on those commercials, never fucking had to drop.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Somebody should make a horror movie about the kool Aid man.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
Oh my god, is he alive? Is that stuff in
him his blood? Or does it like if you if
you drink it, are you like draining his life essence?
There's so many questions I have.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Right, and we should call it Oh yeah. I always
just how to explain when when the parents get home,
be like, why is the why is the kitchen completely demolished? Well,
we made some ice to some high sea and then
this giant pitcher broke through the back wall, and the
parents would be like, I'm putting you up for adoption.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
That's all I got so far.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
I want to make a horror movie about the kids
that don't have sunny d that drink the purple stuff
and what the purple stuff does to them. It's a
sequel to the stuff called the Purple Stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
I'm okay with that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
I also would like to just plain old write a
remake of the stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Oh dude, god, Oh can you imagine, like you can
do so much with a oh, a Steve Jobs type
character who releases this product onto the world that everybody
has to have and what it does like, absolutely you could.
Oh that would be great.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
I would love that, and I would do it with
the love and affection for Larry Cohen because he was
an amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
B movie and horror movie guy, and the Stuff is
one of his very best King Cohen. Indeed, how did
we get onto Larry Cohen?

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
How did we get onto all of these juice box drinks?
I don't know, Scott, It's just what we do.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
I I just hope that we've turned on at least
one or two people of your listeners onto this movie.
And if you've already seen Overlord, I hope that half
your listeners are just nodding along with this, smiling because
they like the movie as much as we do.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Streaming on Paramount Plus right now, if you have that service,
or you want to go rent it somewhere, highly recommend it.
It's the perfect way to get into the Halloween spirit. Scott,
Thank you so much. For joining me on this episode.
Can you please let the people know where they can
find you online?

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
Yes, if you like my movie Banter.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
You can download episodes of Overheted anywhere you get your podcasts,
or you can go to patreon dot com slash Scott
e E for Edward Weinberg, and there you'll find one
hundred plus episodes that are not available for free, but
you'll be supporting me feeding myself and my cat. So

(01:11:45):
thank you, Brian, and if anybody out there loves Overheted,
thank you for listening.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
You can find eleven years of our horseshit on your
favorite podcatcher. You can follow us on social media at
junk Food Cinema. Any of you really like the show.
You really like the show? Do you like it as
much as I really want to know what's in that
purple stuff? You can go to patreon dot com slash
jung Food Cinema financially support the show. We greatly appreciate it.
That's going to do it for this episode on Overlord.

(01:12:11):
And as always, remember the Nazis are rotten sons of bitches.