December 27, 2024 • 62 mins
Are you trapped in an existential crisis? Do you have aging parents with creepy woodworking talents? Have you ever refused to pay an exterminator? If so, good news! You'll feel seen by our episode this week as we chat about The Piper on Tubi, The Amazing Digital Circus on Netflix and Creswick on Shortverse. Also, if a meteor reversed Earth's polarity, how quickly would you get eaten by seabed monsters?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Well,
it's what happens when I get my rosaceaand I just want to itch the hell out of
it. So itchy, I end up scratchingand then it scabs and I have scabs.
But apparently you're really not supposedto in this area because I learned that
it's called the zone of Death apparently.
(00:22):
Yeah, so all of the blood vesselsand stuff like that around your
T-One actually. Oh.
I thought you meant Houstonwas the zone of death.
Well, yes, that too, but that's not whatI'm talking about. I'm talking T-One.
(01:01):
So welcome to Imported Horror.
This is the podcast that bringsyou the very best of creepy
clowns,
unsettling scores and ambiguous chair
demon things from beyond the shining seas.
I'm Marcus. I've only seen two of thethings we're talking about this week.
(01:21):
Guess which ones?
And I'm here with my punctual.
We're back for the second week ina row. We're awesome like that.
Melissa.
And I'd have to say that the only thingthat Marcus didn't watch was the thing
that was super short and was his ideafor all of us to watch. So I'm Melissa.
(01:43):
That shouldn't surprise you thatthings have just been crying.
The funny thing is you'll never knowuntil Melissa and I stopped talking about
whether or not the chair demon was anactual thing or I just made that up to
mess with you. So you'd flub the intro.
I mean, I have flubbed harder for less,
so I can't even dispute that.
(02:06):
I mean, that's just fact.
So
this week we've got the amazingdigital circus from Australia.
We've got the Piper,
which is technically accordingto IMDB from the United States,
but I'm going to argue it's an exception.
And Melissa's short movie,
(02:26):
I don't even know what it's called.
Oh my God, now I'm.
Blanking out.
Neither either you're mocking me andyou don't know what it is either.
I keep wanting to sayCreekside, that's why Creswick,
it's Australian and it'sa short from short verse.
So we haven't caught upwith the coming Soons yet.
(02:48):
That will be back next week for January.
I hope everybody had a MerryChristmas if you're into that.
I hope everyone had a relaxingWednesday either way and
and hope everybody's safe.It's been kind stormy,
at least here in southeastTexas the past couple of days.
(03:08):
Yeah.
We don't have,
don't a full coming soon,
but we do have one movieI thought I'd mention to.
So this is courtesy ofmy wife who sent me a
TikTok about it. It is called,
lemme pull it up here. Survive.
(03:32):
I sent this trailer to y'all.Did you watch this trailer?
I did.
Yes, I did not.
I'm excited for it. When yousend me things during work hours,
I'm not able to watch them and it's likea 50 50 shot on whether I'll remember
to watch it later.
In this case, I don'tthink you missed anything.
And also you missed a great deal.
(03:52):
This has to be movie written all over it.
So this is Survive.
It's the IMDB summary.
A couple celebrates their son's birthdayin the middle of the ocean on their
boat,
a violent storm hits and it brings uphungry creatures from the depths and they
(04:12):
fight for their survival.
And that's really not fully accuratebecause the violet storm was
caused by a meteor,
which reversed thepolarity like the Earth's
poles. It made North gosouth and south go north.
That's not how a lot ofthings in that sentence work.
(04:36):
But wait for it. Wait for it.
So that reverse polaritymade all the water rush
out of the oceans and go somewhere.
It's not clear where the bottom of theocean incidentally looks a whole lot like
the Arizona desert whoknew. Yeah, that's right.
And some sort of creepy crawly bug.
(04:57):
Things came out of the depthsof the ocean and they are
enraged by the oxygenand also they can walk.
And so
there's a shotgun on this boatbecause of course there is.
Why wouldn't there be a shotgun onthe boat? And it just has safety,
(05:19):
whopping safety.
Feature in all boats.
Yes,
as a's trueWhopping 4.5 out of 10 on IMDB
release date January 10th,higher than I expected,
but it is much higher than I expected.
You can rent it right now on Primevideo. So I don't know why that,
(05:39):
I don't know. I gotnothing. But this is from
France and Belgium and thatraises some questions because I
remember when we did revenge, Iguess it's been a couple of years,
and that movie was a couple ofyears older than our episode,
but the director was talking about howit was difficult to get genre films
funded and distributed in France.
(06:02):
And I wonder if that's still accurate.
Shark or blue just blewthe gates wide open.
That's not what the movie's called.
I don't remember what the movie's actuallycalled because I call it Shark Blue.
It was that French shark movie onNetflix that got really, really popular.
Under Paris. Yes, thank you.
(06:23):
And there was your favoriteGirls with Balls and
there was infested, which was allright, that's on Shutter Spider movie.
So I wonder
maybe it's more investment,maybe things are changing.
Maybe that director was embellishinga bit to promote her particular
(06:45):
film. I don't know.
Yeah.
This looks like a masterpiece.
Do we think this is goingto be better or worse
than blood and snow?
I mean.
Does it depend on howseriously it takes itself?
(07:08):
I think so.
I can't imagine there areany misogynist rants in this.
And I also, but you.
Never know tendency,
you never tendency to popup when you least expect it.
There was at least enough creature inthe trailer for the creature feature.
(07:28):
That makes me think maybe some of themonster stuff will be interesting.
So apparently in some of the reviewsit says that it was confusing
because the first part of the movie isin English and then the second half of
the movie they start speaking French.
(07:50):
And I'm not really sure.
In Ponti pool.
I'm really now I'm just curious.
I'm not for any flop reasons. So now wait,
was that because they were dubbing itand they ran out of money to finish the
dub and they just retainedthe French original?
Or is it like the same actorsjust switching languages?
(08:12):
So here is the exactline from this review.
The movie itself is frustrating to watchin that for a while they are speaking
English. Then about halfwaythrough they switch to French.
To make matters worse, the captioning forthe movie is the worst I've ever seen.
Often makes no sense.
I'm.
So excited.
(08:34):
Bad captioning is a legitthing to complain about, but
that is an interesting choice.
Yeah. Well, and here again,this is another review.
The characters are obviously not nativeEnglish speakers and they go from
English to French randomlythroughout the movie.
(08:56):
Well, I mean we see that in Europeancinema and Canadian cinema to a point,
and Australian cinema to a pointbecause there's this sense, hey,
we have to make it feel and look likean American movie either because they
want the Americans to take it seriouslyor because that's sort of the currency
of the realm when you're talkingabout horror movies or I don't know.
(09:18):
I don't know when Canada does it,
there's not a language barrierthere for the most part, but
it's still like black Christmas.
You could just set that inCanada. There's nothing,
the Australians do that a lot too.So I don't know. I don't know.
(09:40):
In the case of my movie,
the director was actively trying tomimic a mainstream American horror movie.
So I sort of get it, but eventhen it was the same thing.
Accents popped up at timesand you're like, okay,
you're not okay, it's fine.I'm not going. I'm the French.
(10:01):
It's like I don't care if you're British,
but you might want to do another takeif you really either own it or don't.
But I don't know.
Depending on how much it is,I've got some prime credits.
I might rent this thing and watch it.
Right now it says 1499,
maybe the rent buy for 1499doesn't happen until January 10th.
(10:23):
Maybe if we're extra lucky we cancatch this in theaters on January 10th.
Oh God.
That is the process.
I mean, I guess if I'm going to,
I guess would have to pay 14,9, 9 to watch it on my tv,
I might as well pay 1499and watch it with popcorn.
(10:45):
And an empty movie theater becauselet's be honest, it would be empty.
Yeah.
Which is a weirdlywholesome experience. But.
I don't know.
We thought the unbearableweight of massive talent would be empty and there were
a whole five other peoplein that theater. That's.
True. That's true. That'strue. I don't know.
(11:07):
Well mark your calendars
for survive.
But I talked to Emily later. I said,I saw that trailer, it looked awful.
And she said, I know that's whyI sent it to you. And I said,
and I looked it up, it's foreign. Shesaid, I know that's why I sent it to you.
And I didn't ask if she wantedto see it because I already know.
(11:29):
Of course she wants tosee it. Why wouldn't she.
Your wife? So Well.
Yeah, I really do.
So well, it's amazing.
It really is this going turn into oneof these things where Uncle Grady has to
watch Ross for a few months, isn't it?
(11:50):
Very possibly, yes. Okay.
We also have a new segment that I
don't have sound effects yetfor, but I want to make them.
And Melissa, you love your shortfilms. And so I thought, hey,
let's make a new segmentcalled Melissa Short.
(12:15):
Get it. I'm also short.
You're like four foot five. Yeah.
I'm four 10 and a half. Okay.
I was, she's very.
Defensive about that. 11.
I was about to be like, you'refour foot 11. I thought no,
(12:35):
make it even shorter for comedic effect.
Now I wish I'd overshot justto see what would've happened.
My license though, and I'm sorry. Yes,I lied. On my license it says five foot.
I wear shoes that make me a little taller.
I mean, I kind of have the oppositeproblem. My license says five foot 11,
(12:57):
but I was still going through period.So I grew an extra inch. I swear to God,
I am exactly six feet tall.
So the fact that my licensesays five 11 irritates me.
So if we combined the power ofour licenses, we're good to go.
(13:18):
Here we go. Just combine it. But yes,
since I love shorts andI'm short, Melissa's short,
I'm not going to get too mad aboutit. I mean, none of it's not true.
So what is our, let's be.
Honest.
What is our short for today?
(13:39):
So the short for today is called Creswick,
and this is from Short verse,
which is one of the websitesthat I watch my shorts from.
It is a 10 minute short,it is from Australia.
And Grady ended up watching it too,which I was really excited about.
(14:01):
So it's interesting because
it basically premise is awoman is helping her dad
clean out the house that they areselling. So this is her childhood home.
This is where she grew up,the family grew up, whatever,
and they're going to sell it. And
(14:23):
it reminded me a little bit of whenmy grandparents ended up going into a
senior home and we were cleaningout their house to sell.
When you're removing things from ahouse that has been in the family for so
long,
I feel like it brings upold ghosts for lack of a
(14:44):
better term.
And in some ways I think that that's
of the idea that this movie is trying to
encapsulize is the cleaning out of all
of the old trauma from whatever it was.
(15:05):
But also I think it kindof hit on the themes of
being older and watching yourparents get older. The thing
that I really liked about it isbecause of the way that it was shot,
it felt unsettlingthroughout the whole thing.
And there were a lot of mirrors anda lot of shadows that you weren't
(15:29):
sure when things were going to getcreep or what was going to happen.
And even at the end, you weren'treally sure what you saw.
And I like that because I thinkthat you can take this concept
and if you do it right,
you can make it into a greatfull length movie that would have
(15:50):
a great story to it. And that'swhat these shorts really are, right?
They're trying to showcase this work.
If this particular filmmaker did anotherone, I would completely watch it.
I hope somebody picks this upbecause it really, I think could have
expanded on the story that we saw.
And I think one of the creepiest things,
(16:11):
and this is where the chair demoncomes in. So the dad is a woodworker.
So now wait, time out.Time out. Hand on. Yeah.
Is the demon sitting in a chairor is the demon a physical,
literal chair?
So neither.
Well then why call it a chair demon?
Because I was messing with you.
(16:34):
Well.
Are you messing with me.
Now? Yes. I guess you'regoing to have to watch it.
So the dad is a woodworker andhe keeps making this chair.
And at night the woman hears
these sounds coming fromthe woodworking shed.
(16:56):
And she goes out thereand her dad has made a
couple of these chairs,
but they've gotten progressivelyweirder in the way that they look
and how they're set up.
And it almost looks likethey're turning into
bones of a thing.
(17:17):
It felt so weird and uncomfortable.And I don't know if that was
supposed to indicate a mental decline of
the parents, which is kind of whatI thought was what was happening at.
Yeah, that's kind of where my head went.I thought the whole thing was just, oh,
(17:37):
the dad's losing it andthis is actually kind of sad
and thinly failed horror.
So I thought that,
but then there were other things thatmade me question that the book of
sketches that she hadthat her dad was like,
(17:58):
Hey here.
And she had sketched herlooking down a dark corridor
and it mimicked the dark forest thatshe was looking down. And again,
that could be an allegoryfor the unknown and
looking into what a future might look like
(18:19):
with certain things happening. Andthat in itself can be terrifying.
So I do think a lot of it was allegory,
but I do think you could have the end.
There was a legitimatething to be scared of. And
(18:42):
whether that particular thingwas part of the allegory or not,
I'm not sure
there was indication thatwhen they were growing up,
there was always weird thingsthat were happening in the house.
And again,
not sure if that had todo with mental decline
(19:04):
and those things were happening becauseof some kind of mental illness going
through the family or something else. But
overall, I mean, Grady, how didyou feel about the way it was shot?
I thought it was neat.
I thought the lighting was cooland something about that one
(19:24):
straight shot of the forest path thatthey keep going back to that was kind of
creepy speaking as someone whoactually lives in a really forested
area. I thought about you.
And also full disclosure, loopingback to somebody said earlier,
I watched this twiceand somehow both times
(19:47):
I completely forgot about thesketchbook at the beginning.
So that ended up not filtering into my
interpretations at all justbecause for some reason
that scene just kind of left my head.
But now that I'm think
(20:08):
now that I'm thinking about it,
what did that sketchbookmean? What did it add? And
that's.
Why.
Fermented artists that
GoingThrough some stuff,
maybe that's the thing that kindof runs in the family or I dunno.
(20:30):
Oh, that's a good point.
Because with her sketchingand him doing woodworking,
that's all imaginative art.
And that would make sense with herdrawings going darker and darker and
his woodworking turning into what it was.
Yeah.
(20:51):
Oh, that's an interesting point.
I think I focused on the sketchbookbecause So did you feel as unsettled
as I felt waiting for whatwas going to happen to happen?
I mean that's just kind ofsomething that happens when you
(21:12):
watch anything that's spilled asa horror movie you're waiting for.
Fair enough.
The thing to happen. But.
Fair enough.
I mean the way this wasshot, I was kind of like,
okay, where's the twist?
Where's the thing that jumps out at you?
(21:33):
And in this case, it kind offelt like there wasn't one.
But at the same time, I'm wondering ifmaybe there was and I just didn't get it.
That's kind of where Iwas kind of confused here.
I also wonder
if there were things that Imissed too because I was so
(21:58):
when the sketchbook happened,
I was actually really focused on thatbecause I think that whenever you have a
sketchbook and a horror movie,I'm like, oh, obviously something,
somebody drew something crazy.
And so I was so focusedon the shots of the woods.
We didn't even give your childblack crayons. What happened?
(22:19):
Yeah, exactly. I was so focusedon that. I wasn't really,
I think that that's why Ifocused so much on that.
And now it makes me want to go back andrewatch and see if I missed some things.
I really thought when she was in thebathroom and she got her little stuffed
bunny that something was going tohappen in the mirror in the bathroom.
(22:40):
Why didn't that stuffed bunny have aface? It not like that. I don't know.
I did not like it. Not at all.
It looked like it was somethingthat was being in the process of
being made,
which is another good point. Was.
It So ambiguity is sortof central theme here?
(23:04):
Little bit, yeah. Yeah, that's.
Ambiguity.
The way that she treated the staff moneyat the beginning, it wasn't like, oh,
this is a toy that I love.No, she threw it at him.
He was joking about whethershe wanted to keep it or not.
(23:25):
So it was either something thatprofoundly creeped her out as a kid
or some kind of weird insidejoke with the family like, haha,
aunt Mildred gave you this money withouta face and now you have to like it.
Fair enough. Nothing. Y'allare saying me. I don't know.
(23:47):
I'm here for it.
But also you I think tend toambiguity more than most people,
Melissa, but I can.
Ambiguity is kind of a thing.
I can definitely appreciatethe horror in because we're
all around 40 sort ofhovering in that neighborhood.
(24:08):
And that's exactly when youstart thinking about that,
your parents and everything. Andespecially if you've got kids of your own,
you're sort of caught in the middle.
So I find myself watchingfewer dead teenager movies,
so to speak and stuff likethis. That's actually scary.
I mean, yeah, it's true. It's true.
(24:31):
So I don't know, but I'llinclude a link to it.
Wonder. Yeah, please.
Do.
Sarcastic. That's okay.
Hey, we're still rusty.We're getting back into it.
So I also wonder if myinterpretation of the film
(24:53):
isn't also based on my experience
with assisted livings andAlzheimer's homes that I've
worked with for years. Because
you kind of see the regressionand it makes you kind of look at
(25:16):
things a little differently.
And I got to wonder if that might be mereading too much into it or it might not
be.
And I mean admittedly I've notto the same extent that you have,
but especially recently,
I've kind of been building offa lot of similar issues and
that probably coloredmy interpretation of it.
(25:39):
Too.
I think that I would like to watch afull length of this to see if they did a
little bit more explaining.
And I really just wantto know about the chair.
I want to know where it was going togo. That is a part that I just come on.
I just need to know.
All right, well,
I'm going to watch this and give adefinitive take on the chair for next
(26:02):
week, or I'll forget. I don't know.
I'll try to send you my shorts earlier.
Well, no, I mean I askedfor it and I should have,
I had a conversation with a 2-year-oldand I said, go the fuck to sleep.
And she said, I said, go tosleep, which is hug and okay,
(26:24):
I'll give you a hug
and repeat for about an hour.
And that makes it a little difficult.
So what I did, I watchedthis a week or two,
maybe I guess two or three weeks agoat this point. This is the piper.
(26:48):
I was in the mood for a Tubie moviebecause I didn't really have the bandwidth
to commit to a good moviewhere I had to really think,
but I also didn't want to be disappointed.
Like you were with Blood and Snow.
Like I was with Blood and Snow.Yes, Grady Resist her siren song.
You do not have to watch thatmovie. I'm going to keep repeating.
That. I'm going to keep bringing itup. I'm going to keep bringing it up.
(27:11):
It was awful. And not in a fun way.
This was all right in Grand Tub fashion.
It was TV Ma for no real clear reason.
I don't know why theyput the TV MA logo on it.
I don't know what Tobe considersma, but we have varying definitions.
(27:33):
When a composer is tasked, thefinishing her late mentors concerto,
she soon discovers that playing themusic summons Deadly Consequences,
leading her to uncover the disturbingorigins of the melody and an evil that
has awakened. I mean,
the title is the Piper,
so you can probably guess thisis a riff on the Pied Piper.
(28:00):
Let's see, where's my diary?
So the review I put on letterbox for this,
an orchestral remix of the ringwith notes from the Beyond and
the Matrix. This melodic fulco hasfun ideas and a catchy soundtrack.
Execution feels a smidgetoo rehearsed and familiar,
but overall it's in tune with thebetter parts of Tubi collection. And
(28:26):
the director is Icelandic.
And he wrote this during the pandemic and
shot this I think not long afterward,maybe when some of the stuff,
the Covid stuff was still goingon, and I can't find the article,
I'm going to keep digging for it.
But he said that he really wantedit to be like an American horror
(28:46):
movie,
an American PG 13 ishhorror movie that is very
mainstream and hits alot of the same notes.
And it's got a cool fox moldermoment. It's got a cool lore,
it's got cool backstory. Ihad heard of the Pied Piper,
but I didn't know the originalGrims fairytale version that
(29:07):
gets really dark and they play with it.
What is the original fairytale?
So this town is having a problemwith rats and a guy shows up and he
is like, I can deal with the ratsfor you, but you got to pay me.
And they were like, okay, dealwith the rats. And so he does,
and this is all according to themovie. And then they don't pay him.
(29:29):
And he's like, well, if you don'tpay me, I'm going to have revenge.
And they go, whatever.
And so he plays his demonicflute at night and all the
children in the village followhim in a chant in a daze,
and they go to the lake and they drown.
(29:50):
The only one that didn't tales werefucked up was, Yeah, no, this was, yes.
This is not like theDisneyfied version of it.
There's a mother-daughter relationshipthat's really central to it,
and the daughter is hearing impaired.
And I really love the ideaof disability as immunity or
(30:12):
disability as advantage.
They play with that in some funways and it lives and dies on the
score and on the music.
And when they get started,
it feels unfinished and a little janky.
And I was sitting therethinking, okay, this,
I want it to be catchier. Why is it?And it's because it's not finished yet.
(30:36):
And as they go through the movie,
they keep building on it and they keepadding layers and they keep adding
instruments and that sort of thing. Soby the time you get to the end of it,
it will earworm into your brain.
And the last sequence musically is reallycool. It just takes a little while to
get there. And they hit allthe, it's got the jump scares,
(30:56):
it's got the mother-daughter relationship.
It definitely feels likea PG 13 American movie,
but it also feels a littleextra almost sappy at the
end
because the Ring has some similarmother-daughter. And you can tell,
I don't know when this guy was born,
but I know he's in our same age bracketbecause a lot of the shots felt very
(31:18):
ringy when they go home and theylive in this apartment and the angles
are like,
you're looking at the car and everythingand it's very noir and you're looking
down and it's pouring down rain,like all those shots in the Matrix.
And there's stuff the beyond.
You already know whatshot from the beyond.
I'm talking about if you'veseen it and that's older, but
(31:42):
I'm picking up what he was putting down.I think he might've made it a little,
it felt definitely turn to the century.American Horror, maybe not modern.
I think American mainstream horror haschanged in a couple of different ways,
but it's still a good effort. I didn'thave to think about it very much.
And every now and then somebody flipsback into a British accent or you see
(32:03):
something that doesn't quite fit.
Or somebody makes a comment aboutAmerican healthcare that is maybe dated
by 10 to 15 years. And you're like,well, okay, you're European. I.
Get medicine. Sure is great. I'msure am glad we can afford it.
Well, the other direction,
they were perhaps a bit extracritical as they tend to
(32:26):
do over across on the other side ofthe pond. But I mean, I liked it.
It was a cool idea. Not magnificent,
but it was fun. I enjoyed it. Thewas catchy. I had no complaints.
And one other thing I wantto mention, this wasn't,
so Julian Sands, thiswas not his last movie,
(32:51):
but it's pretty much hislast movie to get released.
It spent a lot of time in editing.
And this is something he playsthe conductor of this orchestra.
You will recognize him.
He's been in a bunchof stuff just all over.
Julian Sands.
He was in Arachni Phobia, he wasin Warlock. He was just in Ton.
(33:16):
Okay. He's very familiar.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. AndI couldn't place him.
I couldn't figure out whereI know him from. And I still,
I am thinking it's ar Ach phobia, butI'm not a hundred percent sure. But
he got lost in the mountains. He wasa hiker outdoorsman type of thing.
And he got lost and there were someweather issues and everything and he
(33:38):
didn't make it. So, oh.
God.
Yeah. Everything I read said there's noindication that it was anything but an
accident. He just got turnedaround out there in the wilderness.
But yeah,
if for no other reasonthan him just really owning
it and Overacts a bitbecause it's a B movie,
(34:01):
but not so much that it's distracting.
Understood. Oh, you know what?
So he did. He did Warlock.
That.
Cover of that movie is somethingthat will never leave my head insane.
The cover.
I've actually never seen it.
(34:24):
The movie's not great.The cover's amazing. Well.
Yeah. I'm going to pull itup here too. From 1989. Yes.
Yes. Oh no. And that's not thecover I'm looking for. Hold on.
So there apparently are two differentcovers. This is one I remember. Oh,
(34:44):
the Warlock Warlock, the Armageddon.That's the one that's the cover.
The 19 93 1.
Oh, okay.
I remember seeing that on a VHS when Iwas younger and being like, oh my God.
Oh, okay. Yep. That isexactly what I imagine a
(35:04):
blockbuster directive videomovie from 1993 looks like.
Just what all of their, that'sthey all look like, yeah.
This has huge subspecies.
Energy. Yes. Oh yes, exactly That 100%.
100%.
(35:25):
Hello. I am more luck the Armageddon.
Would you like to meetmy finger Demons? The.
Sun draws die.
I fucking love Du love du.
Freaking. Awesome.
Anyway, that's all I got. I gave it,I think, three stars on Letterboxed.
(35:47):
The pair scale is, nah,don't worry about it.
But if you're doing the thing that I dowhere you're scrolling through Tubi and
you're like, is this all right? Should Iwatch this? Yeah, this one's all right.
You should watch it.
I'm glad to hear especiallythat they did good
with the soundtrack, because a lotof movies, especially horror movies,
where sound is an actualimportant part of the plot,
(36:10):
they just don't for some reason.And that always annoys me.
Well,
and they had a real orchestralike doing the score and being.
Yeah. Another example too.
That was just one thatimmediately left to.
(36:31):
Mind. No, I think that was a goodone. I'd forgotten about that one.
That's Argentinian. It's a girl rock,
girl punk rock band fight zombies.
But there's remarkably littlegirl punk rock in the whole movie,
and that doesn't make.
Which sucked. That was the wholereason we were excited about it.
Yeah, I mean, it was far from theonly bad thing about that movie,
(36:53):
but it was definitely one ofthe bad things about that movie.
Yes. Or fricking, Emily willnever let me live this down,
but Anna in the apocalypse,
the soundtrack is bumping until somebodygets bit and turns into a zombie and
then they stop singing,
and then you're just left with everybodyelse's feelings about the apocalypse.
It's like, what? No, giveme a zombie dance number.
(37:17):
And they didn't. It was very sad.
But I'm glad that thismovie did good music for its
very music based premise.
Yes. Yes. I think it did. Ithink it did. My life is chaos,
and so I can't at this moment pick outthat particular earworm from the rest of
them, but I'll see if I can find it onYouTube and post it to the show notes.
(37:40):
It's catchy. It's catchy. And Ilove a good Fox Mulder moment.
And this one definitely worked.
I mean,
pretty much every earworm that gets intomy ears gets gradually replaced with
pizza time. So I'm not.
So real quick, I have something elseto say about my short movie. I'm sorry.
(38:03):
I know we have moved on from it.
But we've already, I'm anidiot. Melissa's short.
And the whole point is that it's short.
You're keeping it short because you'reshort. Melissa, what did you discover?
It's a short film.
Thank you. So I thought the writerand director looked familiar,
but I didn't click the plus signwhere I could see more about
(38:24):
her and what she's done.
And I should have done thatbecause her debut feature was
Relic.
Okay, that tracks. Yep.
Oops, my bad. So she.
Has a theme. SheDefinitely has a theme.
(38:46):
I'll say that this was atleast much better than Relic because it didn't make me
inconsolably angry. So there's that.
I have learned an important lesson,
which is to click the plus signto read the rest of the biography.
Well, I'm glad that you
(39:07):
didn't tell me that.
It was by the lady that Made Relicbefore I watched this because I don't,
my dislike of Relic is strong enoughthat I would not have given this movie a
fair shot. I would've just sat theremaking fart noises the whole time.
So I did good without meaning to.
(39:28):
So I was deliberately not bringing upRelic when I was talking about, oh,
maybe it's an old personhaving mental issues.
I feel like I harp on Relic too much.
So I was deliberately not mentioningRelic, but I was like, oh yeah, okay,
this is basically Relic, butshort and not rage inducing.
(39:50):
Am I crazy? Or when we didRelic, did we talk about,
or did we read about the director? Whowas Natalie? Erica James. By the way,
you're basing at least someof this on a short film
because I can see theProto Relic a through line.
So Creswick came outin 2017, Relic in 2020.
(40:16):
So I mean, they're definitelyvariations on a theme.
She's also the same directordoing, are they still,
I don't think they're officiallycalling it a Rosemary's Baby prequel,
but it's a Rosemary's Baby prequelApartment seven A that's coming out.
(40:36):
Oh, it already came out. When did Imiss this? I guess it already came out
2024. Okay. I guess I missed.
It. 5.8, I don't know.Okay, well that's the same
director.
Alright. Oh God.
Now I'm just mad because they could taken,
(41:00):
she could have taken this andexpanded it instead we got Relic.
I mean, I get theobjection. I liked Relic.
It does go in some other.
Directions. And to be fair,
I was in a terrible mentalheadspace when I watched Relic.
I still don't like it, butI will acknowledge that there's a difference between
(41:24):
objectively bad and not for me. AndRelic is so not for me that it hurts,
but
not to the point where I judgepeople that do like it. Just
like I said.
Not for me.
Fair.
Yeah, I mean it was scary,
but in a sort of realistic,
(41:48):
the whole notion of horror derivedfrom parents getting older and
terminal illness and mentalillness, all those things,
that's not, oh my god,
Michael Myers is here and he'sgoing to stab me in the boob.
It's a very different vibe.
But I nearly said something about Relictoo, when you were talking about it.
(42:11):
There are two kinds of podcasts out there.
There are some that do researchand there are some that do not.
And I am comfortable inour, oh hey, guess what?
We're all professionalshere and there are.
That simply just don't push theplus sign when reading about a
writer and director,which I will no longer.
(42:31):
Do. You didn't even look atthe rest of her filmography.
You didn't need to push the plus sign.
No, I did. So the other one was justdrum wave, that's all that's listed.
So I was just looking at her shorts.
On IN.
Db. Not her whole thing. No.
Oh, well, that you can'tdo that on. Oh, well. Yeah,
you got to look her up on IMDB.
(42:52):
Well, obviously now I know that
we're learning.
See, that doesn't really work forme because of the three of us.
I'm the one that reviewsnon movie things the most.
So IMDB is a little bitof a crap shoot for me.
So I actually have to do research.
(43:14):
And by that I mean look at TV tropesinstead of IMDB, but still it's.
They don't have an app, sothat's extra work. Yeah, exactly.
So tell us about AmazingDigital Circus Grady.
So before Melissa Rediscovers,
something even more obviousabout her short film?
(43:38):
Well, no.
That sounded mean. I'm sorry.
That was mean.
That was less mean in my head. I'm sorry.
Alright. Again,
I came at the movie with a clearer headnot knowing it was associated with one
of my least favorite movies that we'vedone for the podcast. So No Harm Done.
(44:01):
So amazing digital circus from
Australian Animation studio called Knownas Glitch. Formerly Glitch Productions
was YouTube exclusive. Pretty muchall of glitches stuff for a while,
but Netflix very recently pickedit up, which is why I'm glad,
(44:22):
because here's the thing.Before we went on hiatus,
this was going to be the nextepisode that I was going to do.
And there was only two episodesin, but out of a Plan nine.
But I really wanted to talk about itbecause I think it's amazing and it
technically counts as horrorand it's technically foreign.
And literally the week afterthat episode would've gone up,
(44:45):
if we hadn't gone on an impromptu break,
the episode would've becomeoutdated immediately because all of the news for the
amazing digital circus just startedhappening. Netflix picked it up.
It has four episodes now instead of two.
It was a lot. So
(45:07):
I'm glad that I'm talking about it now.
So the basic summary,
the story revolves around six troubledhumans, timid, newcomer poney,
comedic sociopath, jacks, jovialoptimist, rag atha, emotionally fragile,
gle paranoid veteran Clingerand moody cynic zule who
(45:27):
find themselves trapped inthe amazing digital circus,
a zany virtual world of infinitepossibilities, except for two things,
swearing and leaving,
hosted by the goofy, fun living AI ring,
Mr. Kane and his deeplyunsettling assistant bubble,
the six embark on all sorts of wacky,
often traumatizing misadventures whiletrying to keep their sanity intact lest
(45:51):
something terrible happened to them.
So I don't know if either of you arefamiliar with the Short Story or the
Adventure Game based on theShort Story by Harlan Ellison.
I have no mouth and I must scream.
I've heard the name.
Okay. Well, this show is basicallythat premise, but played for comedy,
(46:16):
like a bunch of people are trappedin a computer by a malevolent ai.
Although Cain malevolent is probably
true. I don't know where the restof the episodes are going with it,
but it has a bunch of asterisk next to it.
So we watched What, and also, noneof the characters are secretly Nazis,
(46:39):
although actually four episodes in,I'm not entirely sure about Jack's,
but as far as we know, none ofthe characters are secretly Nazis.
I hate that we have to put that caveaton practically everything these days.
Yeah, I mean,
I would count this as horror. I sawthe first three episodes with you,
(47:02):
I guess it's been a little while, but
existential dread, you canonly make scary for so long.
Trying to make it funny almost makesit scarier because it's clearly
not funny, if that makes sense.
I know how weird thatsounds. But if you're, oh no,
(47:23):
I'm so scared there's a window forthat. There's a time limit for that.
But if it's, I'm so scared,I dunno what's happening,
then that somehow gets scarier.
Like Kane, depending on wherethe rest of the show goes,
and a couple of years down theline, once they finally finish it,
(47:45):
I may need to revisit it oncewe have the full picture, but
he may be one of the creepier horror
villains out there because he doesn'tknow that he's a horror villain.
Or maybe he does. And he's justplaying the long game in his, I guess,
spoilers for a show thatended a long time ago.
(48:06):
He's Ted Dan from The Good Place, but.
Fair.
He is unsettling, but he's alsoso naive and he's hilarious.
And I quote him all the time, Idon't torture you deliberately.
I torture you by accident.Any good war criminal.
(48:27):
I sort of assumed he was also a victimof the whole thing. He might be,
he wasn't the Mastermind.
I don't know. It's still vague,but he is definitely in charge.
And the other charactersdefinitely do not like him.
Yeah.
Well, and isn't that not the worst,the scariest type of villain?
(48:50):
The villains that don'tknow they're the villain?
Yeah. I mean, yeah.
Because if you know you'rea villain, then at least
your own motivations andpeople know your motivations.
But if don't know you're the villain,
(49:11):
then your motivations areunclear to everybody else.
And unpredictable is what comes to mind.
Brittany's holding up a plushie of the
character we're talking about,
which is like a wacky jawwith eyeballs inside it,
wearing a tuxedo, I think a tuxedo.
(49:35):
Ringmaster. That sounds.
If that sounds weird,that's because it is.
But I also feel like I'mnot doing it justice.
So I'll include a link or not,because Melissa's shaking her hand.
No, no, no. Yes, yes.Include the link. Yes. No,
what I was going to say isthat feels like a plushie,
(49:55):
that the dentist from Little Shopof Horrors would snuggle to bed
every night.
Yes. Honestly,
I could see Steve Martin doing itin real life too. You never know.
Yeah.
I could see Steve Martinvoicing this character.
(50:16):
There's definitely a throwline in the style of humor.
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So why is it taking so long to,
I feel like that's anaive question, but why.
That's kind of,
so I'm going to get intothe production a bit.
(50:37):
Glitch was founded in2017 by brothers Kevin and
Luke, I am never going to be able topronounce this last name to save my life.
Lu Witch, I dunno.
Ah, yes. The Lord Witch.
Yes.
But they're kind of a small indie
(50:59):
animation studio.
They've been doing theseoriginal web video things
for years. This is just the mostrecent and most successful one.
They always do these seven or eightepisode things that take years to produce
just because they have a small team.And the animation's just really,
really intricate. And
(51:22):
this is kind of a similar thing.
Maybe with Netflix adding themoney, it'll get done faster,
or I am not sure,
I'm not a hundred percent sure what allNetflix brings to the table other than
putting it on Netflix.
Well, they did thatwith Purely Infrequency,
(51:42):
and we had some of the same questions,will this lead to more or not?
And it really didn't.Maybe one or two more,
but not what we were hoping.
And I think that part of it is also,
and I think that may be partof why the creator of the show,
Cooper Smith Goodwin is the creator.
(52:05):
She is mostly known by herYouTube handle. Goose Works.
I was actually a fan of herlong before this came to be.
She did all these really good,she's an animator and a composer,
and I first learned abouther from these really,
really good video gamecovers that she made and
(52:27):
just have been following her career.
And this was the biggest and by far,most successful thing that she's done.
And she's made it abundantly clear,
even before Netflix pick it up, thereare only going to be nine episodes.
She's got a plan. Sheknows this whole story,
(52:49):
very real possibility that Netflix isnot going to change her mind on that,
partly because we know what happens whenthings get renewed for a second season
on Netflix. They getbanned on a cliffhanger,
and then there's no season three.
Never come down. It is.
A trend.
If we were responsible, we'd betalking about Squid Game season two,
(53:12):
but I don't know if I've gotit in me, if I'm being honest.
Fair enough. I don't,
not to get into spoilers,wed game season one,
but I don't understand how therecan be a squid game season too
mediator.
I just feel like it doesn't make.
(53:33):
Sense.
No things were, I don't want tosay wrapped up, but wrapped up.
Yes. That's what I say.Yeah, I said it wrapped up.
Well for the circus.
So I have a 2-year-old and Iwind up half watching quite a
(53:55):
bit of animated television and some of it,
Daniel Tiger, that animation.It's fine. It's comforting.
I think it's kind of old school.
It's clearly meant forlittle kids like preschool,
but it doesn't heat. The catobviously has a higher budget,
(54:16):
but still more or lesselementary school, preschool age.
But some of the other stuff,
when you finish with one of those andit just automatically kicks to something
else, some of the art style on alot of that kids programming is
just unsettling in weird,
uncanny valley ways thatjust make it hard to watch.
(54:40):
And this didn't do that.
And I could see somethingwith this premise,
the whole existential dread of havingan existentially uncomfortable animation
style. And it really didn't. AndI really appreciated that. And.
I kind of have a funny story to addto this, because for timely purposes,
(55:01):
the first two episodes thatI was initially going to do our initial review on
before the hiatus, the horror, I mean,
there were some explicitlyhorror related things. I mean,
we were already introduced to the ideaof characters abstracting and turning
into monsters. And that was playedpretty creepy. But for the most part,
the whole thing was more comedic.
(55:21):
And the scary stuff was just kind ofjust there. If you thought about it.
And I discovered episode three wason YouTube while I was visiting you,
Marcus. And I was just kind ofwatching it, half watching it,
half watching Roz while youand Emily were doing something,
and Roz was just kind ofwatching over Shoulder. Oh, okay.
Roz wants to see whatI'm watching. Okay. And
(55:45):
then, hold on, let meget into the chat here.
Trying to, how do I, oh, okay. I see.
And then this thing came on screen
and I was like, okay, hi Roz.I'm going to watch this later
(56:08):
spoil. Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah.
Yeah.
Not going to lie, but it wasprobably better than Daniel Tiger.
Yeah, Roz was delighted.Roz just kind of giggled.
But I was like, oh, okay.
She has a remarkable tolerance. Yeah,
(56:31):
because at first it was the funny animatedgag where characters are in the dark
and you just see their eyes and they'removing all expressively and stuff,
and they're arguing because thedumb one just broke the light,
and all of a sudden.
It was weird. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah,
(56:53):
that's great.
But I would say even my only complaintabout it was that there's not more of it.
And even knowing that, I don't know when,
or possibly even if this is goingto finish the first three or four,
at least three, I've seen him.Episodes are definitely worth seeing.
Yeah.
Fourth one's good too. It getsvery existential for my taste,
(57:16):
but it's good.
See, the problem is I don'ttrust anything with Netflix now.
I don't trust them tofinish any series that we
love, and I want to tryto start these series,
but it's almost like I'm going to refuseto watch it until I know everything's
out. I do. The fact that she knew it wasonly going to be nine episodes before.
(57:40):
Because.
Number one, it means that shehas a solid, clear ending,
which I think is really hard forsome of these shows. And number two,
at least we know when it's all out,
we know that that'll be it.
And like I said,
I wanted to talk about it now insteadof waiting for it all to be released,
(58:02):
because I really like it and wantto get the word out. And again,
going by glitches, usual release schedule,
it might be like end of 2025 into 2026.
By the time the Solve, by the timeit's actually a complete series.
Yeah.
Well, and the more people thatwatch it, the more popular it gets.
(58:22):
Maybe Netflix will be like, oh my God,we should throw some funding this way.
Maybe. I don't know. Maybe ifthey've done that already, because
the gap between episode threeand four was way shorter than
the others. So I'm wondering if,
(58:42):
and Netflix picked it up shortlybefore the release of episode three.
So I'm wondering if maybe they're already
throwing some money into it and they'regoing to be able to get it out faster
now. I.
Hope so. I.
Haven't paid a lot of attention tothe behind the scenes stuff because
(59:03):
the fandom for the show gets a bit,
it's a little hard to tell the truthfrom fiction and news about the show.
So I'm just kind of letting what I seein the show itself speak for its own
maritime. I'm just going to leaveit at that. I think that's fair.
Fair enough.
Understood. One for one ofthese characters exists,
(59:26):
and by one of these characters,I mean, all of these characters.
Rule 34. Thank you.
Really the most important of the rules.
I mean, that is just true though.
We have a three for motion picture, tearscale, five for quality and enjoyment.
That.
Works
(59:47):
maybe a four by the end of the seriesif it's going where I think it's going.
But definitely a three right now.
Fair.
So this weekend,
I'm definitely seeing Gladiatortwo before it leaves theaters,
because I haven't done that yet.
And my brother reallywants to watch it with me.
So I don't know if I'm going tomake it to see the Nosferatu remake,
(01:00:07):
which I also really want to see.
But I also haven'tactually seen the original
Nosferatu. Really? Yeah.
I don't have an excusebecause it's like og.
It's not even a long movie.
So I think I'm going to do thatfor next week. I'm going to see,
(01:00:30):
I think I can get, it'snot on Shutter anymore,
but I think all the old Joe Briggslast drive-in episodes or on
AMC Plus, and I know he did it for thelast drive in a couple of years ago.
So I'm going to see if I can find theversion with Joe Bob Briggs cutting in and
talking about the movie.
(01:00:50):
We could watch that on New Year's Eve.
We could. That's true.
Just saying.
That's true. We could.
I haven't seen it in forever.
Okay. So I'm not the only one. Okay,good. Good, good, good. Have you seen it,
Grady?
(01:01:11):
Feel like I've seen.
If I.
Have. It's been a very.
Long time. Yeah.
Well, let's do that.
I genuinely don't know if I've actuallyseen it or if I just know it from pop
culture. Osmosis.
Yeah. Well, and it's blackand white. It's silent.
(01:01:31):
I could see it being a hard movie towatch if you're not a hardcore cinephile.
But I could also see a lot of ourfilm studies classes in college
showing it and talking aboutit. I don't think they did,
but it's been a while.And I could be wrong.
(01:01:53):
It would be a good thingto just pop on New Year's.
So if that's cool withyou guys, let's do it.
Yeah, that sounds great.That sounds great. Well,
we'll talk about that next week. In themeantime, if you're still listening,
give us a shout out on Threads. Follow us,
because we're going to start postingthe coming Soons back there on social
(01:02:14):
media. Follow us on Letterboxed, shootus an email, give us a shout out.
Tell your friends, tell your family,tell anybody into horror about us.
I think we're cool. Andwe're back. So that's Nate.
Yay. And we'll talk to you all next week.
Well,
it's what happens when I get my rosaceaand I just want to itch the hell out of
it. So itchy, I end up scratchingand then it scabs and I have scabs.
But apparently you're really not supposedto in this area because I learned that
it's called the zone of Death apparently.
(00:22):
Yeah, so all of the blood vesselsand stuff like that around your
T-One actually. Oh.
I thought you meant Houstonwas the zone of death.
Well, yes, that too, but that's not whatI'm talking about. I'm talking T-One.
(01:01):
So welcome to Imported Horror.
This is the podcast that bringsyou the very best of creepy
clowns,
unsettling scores and ambiguous chair
demon things from beyond the shining seas.
I'm Marcus. I've only seen two of thethings we're talking about this week.
(01:21):
Guess which ones?
And I'm here with my punctual.
We're back for the second week ina row. We're awesome like that.
Melissa.
And I'd have to say that the only thingthat Marcus didn't watch was the thing
that was super short and was his ideafor all of us to watch. So I'm Melissa.
(01:43):
That shouldn't surprise you thatthings have just been crying.
The funny thing is you'll never knowuntil Melissa and I stopped talking about
whether or not the chair demon was anactual thing or I just made that up to
mess with you. So you'd flub the intro.
I mean, I have flubbed harder for less,
so I can't even dispute that.
(02:06):
I mean, that's just fact.
So
this week we've got the amazingdigital circus from Australia.
We've got the Piper,
which is technically accordingto IMDB from the United States,
but I'm going to argue it's an exception.
And Melissa's short movie,
(02:26):
I don't even know what it's called.
Oh my God, now I'm.
Blanking out.
Neither either you're mocking me andyou don't know what it is either.
I keep wanting to sayCreekside, that's why Creswick,
it's Australian and it'sa short from short verse.
So we haven't caught upwith the coming Soons yet.
(02:48):
That will be back next week for January.
I hope everybody had a MerryChristmas if you're into that.
I hope everyone had a relaxingWednesday either way and
and hope everybody's safe.It's been kind stormy,
at least here in southeastTexas the past couple of days.
(03:08):
Yeah.
We don't have,
don't a full coming soon,
but we do have one movieI thought I'd mention to.
So this is courtesy ofmy wife who sent me a
TikTok about it. It is called,
lemme pull it up here. Survive.
(03:32):
I sent this trailer to y'all.Did you watch this trailer?
I did.
Yes, I did not.
I'm excited for it. When yousend me things during work hours,
I'm not able to watch them and it's likea 50 50 shot on whether I'll remember
to watch it later.
In this case, I don'tthink you missed anything.
And also you missed a great deal.
(03:52):
This has to be movie written all over it.
So this is Survive.
It's the IMDB summary.
A couple celebrates their son's birthdayin the middle of the ocean on their
boat,
a violent storm hits and it brings uphungry creatures from the depths and they
(04:12):
fight for their survival.
And that's really not fully accuratebecause the violet storm was
caused by a meteor,
which reversed thepolarity like the Earth's
poles. It made North gosouth and south go north.
That's not how a lot ofthings in that sentence work.
(04:36):
But wait for it. Wait for it.
So that reverse polaritymade all the water rush
out of the oceans and go somewhere.
It's not clear where the bottom of theocean incidentally looks a whole lot like
the Arizona desert whoknew. Yeah, that's right.
And some sort of creepy crawly bug.
(04:57):
Things came out of the depthsof the ocean and they are
enraged by the oxygenand also they can walk.
And so
there's a shotgun on this boatbecause of course there is.
Why wouldn't there be a shotgun onthe boat? And it just has safety,
(05:19):
whopping safety.
Feature in all boats.
Yes,
as a's trueWhopping 4.5 out of 10 on IMDB
release date January 10th,higher than I expected,
but it is much higher than I expected.
You can rent it right now on Primevideo. So I don't know why that,
(05:39):
I don't know. I gotnothing. But this is from
France and Belgium and thatraises some questions because I
remember when we did revenge, Iguess it's been a couple of years,
and that movie was a couple ofyears older than our episode,
but the director was talking about howit was difficult to get genre films
funded and distributed in France.
(06:02):
And I wonder if that's still accurate.
Shark or blue just blewthe gates wide open.
That's not what the movie's called.
I don't remember what the movie's actuallycalled because I call it Shark Blue.
It was that French shark movie onNetflix that got really, really popular.
Under Paris. Yes, thank you.
(06:23):
And there was your favoriteGirls with Balls and
there was infested, which was allright, that's on Shutter Spider movie.
So I wonder
maybe it's more investment,maybe things are changing.
Maybe that director was embellishinga bit to promote her particular
(06:45):
film. I don't know.
Yeah.
This looks like a masterpiece.
Do we think this is goingto be better or worse
than blood and snow?
I mean.
Does it depend on howseriously it takes itself?
(07:08):
I think so.
I can't imagine there areany misogynist rants in this.
And I also, but you.
Never know tendency,
you never tendency to popup when you least expect it.
There was at least enough creature inthe trailer for the creature feature.
(07:28):
That makes me think maybe some of themonster stuff will be interesting.
So apparently in some of the reviewsit says that it was confusing
because the first part of the movie isin English and then the second half of
the movie they start speaking French.
(07:50):
And I'm not really sure.
In Ponti pool.
I'm really now I'm just curious.
I'm not for any flop reasons. So now wait,
was that because they were dubbing itand they ran out of money to finish the
dub and they just retainedthe French original?
Or is it like the same actorsjust switching languages?
(08:12):
So here is the exactline from this review.
The movie itself is frustrating to watchin that for a while they are speaking
English. Then about halfwaythrough they switch to French.
To make matters worse, the captioning forthe movie is the worst I've ever seen.
Often makes no sense.
I'm.
So excited.
(08:34):
Bad captioning is a legitthing to complain about, but
that is an interesting choice.
Yeah. Well, and here again,this is another review.
The characters are obviously not nativeEnglish speakers and they go from
English to French randomlythroughout the movie.
(08:56):
Well, I mean we see that in Europeancinema and Canadian cinema to a point,
and Australian cinema to a pointbecause there's this sense, hey,
we have to make it feel and look likean American movie either because they
want the Americans to take it seriouslyor because that's sort of the currency
of the realm when you're talkingabout horror movies or I don't know.
(09:18):
I don't know when Canada does it,
there's not a language barrierthere for the most part, but
it's still like black Christmas.
You could just set that inCanada. There's nothing,
the Australians do that a lot too.So I don't know. I don't know.
(09:40):
In the case of my movie,
the director was actively trying tomimic a mainstream American horror movie.
So I sort of get it, but eventhen it was the same thing.
Accents popped up at timesand you're like, okay,
you're not okay, it's fine.I'm not going. I'm the French.
(10:01):
It's like I don't care if you're British,
but you might want to do another takeif you really either own it or don't.
But I don't know.
Depending on how much it is,I've got some prime credits.
I might rent this thing and watch it.
Right now it says 1499,
maybe the rent buy for 1499doesn't happen until January 10th.
(10:23):
Maybe if we're extra lucky we cancatch this in theaters on January 10th.
Oh God.
That is the process.
I mean, I guess if I'm going to,
I guess would have to pay 14,9, 9 to watch it on my tv,
I might as well pay 1499and watch it with popcorn.
(10:45):
And an empty movie theater becauselet's be honest, it would be empty.
Yeah.
Which is a weirdlywholesome experience. But.
I don't know.
We thought the unbearableweight of massive talent would be empty and there were
a whole five other peoplein that theater. That's.
True. That's true. That'strue. I don't know.
(11:07):
Well mark your calendars
for survive.
But I talked to Emily later. I said,I saw that trailer, it looked awful.
And she said, I know that's whyI sent it to you. And I said,
and I looked it up, it's foreign. Shesaid, I know that's why I sent it to you.
And I didn't ask if she wantedto see it because I already know.
(11:29):
Of course she wants tosee it. Why wouldn't she.
Your wife? So Well.
Yeah, I really do.
So well, it's amazing.
It really is this going turn into oneof these things where Uncle Grady has to
watch Ross for a few months, isn't it?
(11:50):
Very possibly, yes. Okay.
We also have a new segment that I
don't have sound effects yetfor, but I want to make them.
And Melissa, you love your shortfilms. And so I thought, hey,
let's make a new segmentcalled Melissa Short.
(12:15):
Get it. I'm also short.
You're like four foot five. Yeah.
I'm four 10 and a half. Okay.
I was, she's very.
Defensive about that. 11.
I was about to be like, you'refour foot 11. I thought no,
(12:35):
make it even shorter for comedic effect.
Now I wish I'd overshot justto see what would've happened.
My license though, and I'm sorry. Yes,I lied. On my license it says five foot.
I wear shoes that make me a little taller.
I mean, I kind of have the oppositeproblem. My license says five foot 11,
(12:57):
but I was still going through period.So I grew an extra inch. I swear to God,
I am exactly six feet tall.
So the fact that my licensesays five 11 irritates me.
So if we combined the power ofour licenses, we're good to go.
(13:18):
Here we go. Just combine it. But yes,
since I love shorts andI'm short, Melissa's short,
I'm not going to get too mad aboutit. I mean, none of it's not true.
So what is our, let's be.
Honest.
What is our short for today?
(13:39):
So the short for today is called Creswick,
and this is from Short verse,
which is one of the websitesthat I watch my shorts from.
It is a 10 minute short,it is from Australia.
And Grady ended up watching it too,which I was really excited about.
(14:01):
So it's interesting because
it basically premise is awoman is helping her dad
clean out the house that they areselling. So this is her childhood home.
This is where she grew up,the family grew up, whatever,
and they're going to sell it. And
(14:23):
it reminded me a little bit of whenmy grandparents ended up going into a
senior home and we were cleaningout their house to sell.
When you're removing things from ahouse that has been in the family for so
long,
I feel like it brings upold ghosts for lack of a
(14:44):
better term.
And in some ways I think that that's
of the idea that this movie is trying to
encapsulize is the cleaning out of all
of the old trauma from whatever it was.
(15:05):
But also I think it kindof hit on the themes of
being older and watching yourparents get older. The thing
that I really liked about it isbecause of the way that it was shot,
it felt unsettlingthroughout the whole thing.
And there were a lot of mirrors anda lot of shadows that you weren't
(15:29):
sure when things were going to getcreep or what was going to happen.
And even at the end, you weren'treally sure what you saw.
And I like that because I thinkthat you can take this concept
and if you do it right,
you can make it into a greatfull length movie that would have
(15:50):
a great story to it. And that'swhat these shorts really are, right?
They're trying to showcase this work.
If this particular filmmaker did anotherone, I would completely watch it.
I hope somebody picks this upbecause it really, I think could have
expanded on the story that we saw.
And I think one of the creepiest things,
(16:11):
and this is where the chair demoncomes in. So the dad is a woodworker.
So now wait, time out.Time out. Hand on. Yeah.
Is the demon sitting in a chairor is the demon a physical,
literal chair?
So neither.
Well then why call it a chair demon?
Because I was messing with you.
(16:34):
Well.
Are you messing with me.
Now? Yes. I guess you'regoing to have to watch it.
So the dad is a woodworker andhe keeps making this chair.
And at night the woman hears
these sounds coming fromthe woodworking shed.
(16:56):
And she goes out thereand her dad has made a
couple of these chairs,
but they've gotten progressivelyweirder in the way that they look
and how they're set up.
And it almost looks likethey're turning into
bones of a thing.
(17:17):
It felt so weird and uncomfortable.And I don't know if that was
supposed to indicate a mental decline of
the parents, which is kind of whatI thought was what was happening at.
Yeah, that's kind of where my head went.I thought the whole thing was just, oh,
(17:37):
the dad's losing it andthis is actually kind of sad
and thinly failed horror.
So I thought that,
but then there were other things thatmade me question that the book of
sketches that she hadthat her dad was like,
(17:58):
Hey here.
And she had sketched herlooking down a dark corridor
and it mimicked the dark forest thatshe was looking down. And again,
that could be an allegoryfor the unknown and
looking into what a future might look like
(18:19):
with certain things happening. Andthat in itself can be terrifying.
So I do think a lot of it was allegory,
but I do think you could have the end.
There was a legitimatething to be scared of. And
(18:42):
whether that particular thingwas part of the allegory or not,
I'm not sure
there was indication thatwhen they were growing up,
there was always weird thingsthat were happening in the house.
And again,
not sure if that had todo with mental decline
(19:04):
and those things were happening becauseof some kind of mental illness going
through the family or something else. But
overall, I mean, Grady, how didyou feel about the way it was shot?
I thought it was neat.
I thought the lighting was cooland something about that one
(19:24):
straight shot of the forest path thatthey keep going back to that was kind of
creepy speaking as someone whoactually lives in a really forested
area. I thought about you.
And also full disclosure, loopingback to somebody said earlier,
I watched this twiceand somehow both times
(19:47):
I completely forgot about thesketchbook at the beginning.
So that ended up not filtering into my
interpretations at all justbecause for some reason
that scene just kind of left my head.
But now that I'm think
(20:08):
now that I'm thinking about it,
what did that sketchbookmean? What did it add? And
that's.
Why.
Fermented artists that
GoingThrough some stuff,
maybe that's the thing that kindof runs in the family or I dunno.
(20:30):
Oh, that's a good point.
Because with her sketchingand him doing woodworking,
that's all imaginative art.
And that would make sense with herdrawings going darker and darker and
his woodworking turning into what it was.
Yeah.
(20:51):
Oh, that's an interesting point.
I think I focused on the sketchbookbecause So did you feel as unsettled
as I felt waiting for whatwas going to happen to happen?
I mean that's just kind ofsomething that happens when you
(21:12):
watch anything that's spilled asa horror movie you're waiting for.
Fair enough.
The thing to happen. But.
Fair enough.
I mean the way this wasshot, I was kind of like,
okay, where's the twist?
Where's the thing that jumps out at you?
(21:33):
And in this case, it kind offelt like there wasn't one.
But at the same time, I'm wondering ifmaybe there was and I just didn't get it.
That's kind of where Iwas kind of confused here.
I also wonder
if there were things that Imissed too because I was so
(21:58):
when the sketchbook happened,
I was actually really focused on thatbecause I think that whenever you have a
sketchbook and a horror movie,I'm like, oh, obviously something,
somebody drew something crazy.
And so I was so focusedon the shots of the woods.
We didn't even give your childblack crayons. What happened?
(22:19):
Yeah, exactly. I was so focusedon that. I wasn't really,
I think that that's why Ifocused so much on that.
And now it makes me want to go back andrewatch and see if I missed some things.
I really thought when she was in thebathroom and she got her little stuffed
bunny that something was going tohappen in the mirror in the bathroom.
(22:40):
Why didn't that stuffed bunny have aface? It not like that. I don't know.
I did not like it. Not at all.
It looked like it was somethingthat was being in the process of
being made,
which is another good point. Was.
It So ambiguity is sortof central theme here?
(23:04):
Little bit, yeah. Yeah, that's.
Ambiguity.
The way that she treated the staff moneyat the beginning, it wasn't like, oh,
this is a toy that I love.No, she threw it at him.
He was joking about whethershe wanted to keep it or not.
(23:25):
So it was either something thatprofoundly creeped her out as a kid
or some kind of weird insidejoke with the family like, haha,
aunt Mildred gave you this money withouta face and now you have to like it.
Fair enough. Nothing. Y'allare saying me. I don't know.
(23:47):
I'm here for it.
But also you I think tend toambiguity more than most people,
Melissa, but I can.
Ambiguity is kind of a thing.
I can definitely appreciatethe horror in because we're
all around 40 sort ofhovering in that neighborhood.
(24:08):
And that's exactly when youstart thinking about that,
your parents and everything. Andespecially if you've got kids of your own,
you're sort of caught in the middle.
So I find myself watchingfewer dead teenager movies,
so to speak and stuff likethis. That's actually scary.
I mean, yeah, it's true. It's true.
(24:31):
So I don't know, but I'llinclude a link to it.
Wonder. Yeah, please.
Do.
Sarcastic. That's okay.
Hey, we're still rusty.We're getting back into it.
So I also wonder if myinterpretation of the film
(24:53):
isn't also based on my experience
with assisted livings andAlzheimer's homes that I've
worked with for years. Because
you kind of see the regressionand it makes you kind of look at
(25:16):
things a little differently.
And I got to wonder if that might be mereading too much into it or it might not
be.
And I mean admittedly I've notto the same extent that you have,
but especially recently,
I've kind of been building offa lot of similar issues and
that probably coloredmy interpretation of it.
(25:39):
Too.
I think that I would like to watch afull length of this to see if they did a
little bit more explaining.
And I really just wantto know about the chair.
I want to know where it was going togo. That is a part that I just come on.
I just need to know.
All right, well,
I'm going to watch this and give adefinitive take on the chair for next
(26:02):
week, or I'll forget. I don't know.
I'll try to send you my shorts earlier.
Well, no, I mean I askedfor it and I should have,
I had a conversation with a 2-year-oldand I said, go the fuck to sleep.
And she said, I said, go tosleep, which is hug and okay,
(26:24):
I'll give you a hug
and repeat for about an hour.
And that makes it a little difficult.
So what I did, I watchedthis a week or two,
maybe I guess two or three weeks agoat this point. This is the piper.
(26:48):
I was in the mood for a Tubie moviebecause I didn't really have the bandwidth
to commit to a good moviewhere I had to really think,
but I also didn't want to be disappointed.
Like you were with Blood and Snow.
Like I was with Blood and Snow.Yes, Grady Resist her siren song.
You do not have to watch thatmovie. I'm going to keep repeating.
That. I'm going to keep bringing itup. I'm going to keep bringing it up.
(27:11):
It was awful. And not in a fun way.
This was all right in Grand Tub fashion.
It was TV Ma for no real clear reason.
I don't know why theyput the TV MA logo on it.
I don't know what Tobe considersma, but we have varying definitions.
(27:33):
When a composer is tasked, thefinishing her late mentors concerto,
she soon discovers that playing themusic summons Deadly Consequences,
leading her to uncover the disturbingorigins of the melody and an evil that
has awakened. I mean,
the title is the Piper,
so you can probably guess thisis a riff on the Pied Piper.
(28:00):
Let's see, where's my diary?
So the review I put on letterbox for this,
an orchestral remix of the ringwith notes from the Beyond and
the Matrix. This melodic fulco hasfun ideas and a catchy soundtrack.
Execution feels a smidgetoo rehearsed and familiar,
but overall it's in tune with thebetter parts of Tubi collection. And
(28:26):
the director is Icelandic.
And he wrote this during the pandemic and
shot this I think not long afterward,maybe when some of the stuff,
the Covid stuff was still goingon, and I can't find the article,
I'm going to keep digging for it.
But he said that he really wantedit to be like an American horror
(28:46):
movie,
an American PG 13 ishhorror movie that is very
mainstream and hits alot of the same notes.
And it's got a cool fox moldermoment. It's got a cool lore,
it's got cool backstory. Ihad heard of the Pied Piper,
but I didn't know the originalGrims fairytale version that
(29:07):
gets really dark and they play with it.
What is the original fairytale?
So this town is having a problemwith rats and a guy shows up and he
is like, I can deal with the ratsfor you, but you got to pay me.
And they were like, okay, dealwith the rats. And so he does,
and this is all according to themovie. And then they don't pay him.
(29:29):
And he's like, well, if you don'tpay me, I'm going to have revenge.
And they go, whatever.
And so he plays his demonicflute at night and all the
children in the village followhim in a chant in a daze,
and they go to the lake and they drown.
(29:50):
The only one that didn't tales werefucked up was, Yeah, no, this was, yes.
This is not like theDisneyfied version of it.
There's a mother-daughter relationshipthat's really central to it,
and the daughter is hearing impaired.
And I really love the ideaof disability as immunity or
(30:12):
disability as advantage.
They play with that in some funways and it lives and dies on the
score and on the music.
And when they get started,
it feels unfinished and a little janky.
And I was sitting therethinking, okay, this,
I want it to be catchier. Why is it?And it's because it's not finished yet.
(30:36):
And as they go through the movie,
they keep building on it and they keepadding layers and they keep adding
instruments and that sort of thing. Soby the time you get to the end of it,
it will earworm into your brain.
And the last sequence musically is reallycool. It just takes a little while to
get there. And they hit allthe, it's got the jump scares,
(30:56):
it's got the mother-daughter relationship.
It definitely feels likea PG 13 American movie,
but it also feels a littleextra almost sappy at the
end
because the Ring has some similarmother-daughter. And you can tell,
I don't know when this guy was born,
but I know he's in our same age bracketbecause a lot of the shots felt very
(31:18):
ringy when they go home and theylive in this apartment and the angles
are like,
you're looking at the car and everythingand it's very noir and you're looking
down and it's pouring down rain,like all those shots in the Matrix.
And there's stuff the beyond.
You already know whatshot from the beyond.
I'm talking about if you'veseen it and that's older, but
(31:42):
I'm picking up what he was putting down.I think he might've made it a little,
it felt definitely turn to the century.American Horror, maybe not modern.
I think American mainstream horror haschanged in a couple of different ways,
but it's still a good effort. I didn'thave to think about it very much.
And every now and then somebody flipsback into a British accent or you see
(32:03):
something that doesn't quite fit.
Or somebody makes a comment aboutAmerican healthcare that is maybe dated
by 10 to 15 years. And you're like,well, okay, you're European. I.
Get medicine. Sure is great. I'msure am glad we can afford it.
Well, the other direction,
they were perhaps a bit extracritical as they tend to
(32:26):
do over across on the other side ofthe pond. But I mean, I liked it.
It was a cool idea. Not magnificent,
but it was fun. I enjoyed it. Thewas catchy. I had no complaints.
And one other thing I wantto mention, this wasn't,
so Julian Sands, thiswas not his last movie,
(32:51):
but it's pretty much hislast movie to get released.
It spent a lot of time in editing.
And this is something he playsthe conductor of this orchestra.
You will recognize him.
He's been in a bunchof stuff just all over.
Julian Sands.
He was in Arachni Phobia, he wasin Warlock. He was just in Ton.
(33:16):
Okay. He's very familiar.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. AndI couldn't place him.
I couldn't figure out whereI know him from. And I still,
I am thinking it's ar Ach phobia, butI'm not a hundred percent sure. But
he got lost in the mountains. He wasa hiker outdoorsman type of thing.
And he got lost and there were someweather issues and everything and he
(33:38):
didn't make it. So, oh.
God.
Yeah. Everything I read said there's noindication that it was anything but an
accident. He just got turnedaround out there in the wilderness.
But yeah,
if for no other reasonthan him just really owning
it and Overacts a bitbecause it's a B movie,
(34:01):
but not so much that it's distracting.
Understood. Oh, you know what?
So he did. He did Warlock.
That.
Cover of that movie is somethingthat will never leave my head insane.
The cover.
I've actually never seen it.
(34:24):
The movie's not great.The cover's amazing. Well.
Yeah. I'm going to pull itup here too. From 1989. Yes.
Yes. Oh no. And that's not thecover I'm looking for. Hold on.
So there apparently are two differentcovers. This is one I remember. Oh,
(34:44):
the Warlock Warlock, the Armageddon.That's the one that's the cover.
The 19 93 1.
Oh, okay.
I remember seeing that on a VHS when Iwas younger and being like, oh my God.
Oh, okay. Yep. That isexactly what I imagine a
(35:04):
blockbuster directive videomovie from 1993 looks like.
Just what all of their, that'sthey all look like, yeah.
This has huge subspecies.
Energy. Yes. Oh yes, exactly That 100%.
100%.
(35:25):
Hello. I am more luck the Armageddon.
Would you like to meetmy finger Demons? The.
Sun draws die.
I fucking love Du love du.
Freaking. Awesome.
Anyway, that's all I got. I gave it,I think, three stars on Letterboxed.
(35:47):
The pair scale is, nah,don't worry about it.
But if you're doing the thing that I dowhere you're scrolling through Tubi and
you're like, is this all right? Should Iwatch this? Yeah, this one's all right.
You should watch it.
I'm glad to hear especiallythat they did good
with the soundtrack, because a lotof movies, especially horror movies,
where sound is an actualimportant part of the plot,
(36:10):
they just don't for some reason.And that always annoys me.
Well,
and they had a real orchestralike doing the score and being.
Yeah. Another example too.
That was just one thatimmediately left to.
(36:31):
Mind. No, I think that was a goodone. I'd forgotten about that one.
That's Argentinian. It's a girl rock,
girl punk rock band fight zombies.
But there's remarkably littlegirl punk rock in the whole movie,
and that doesn't make.
Which sucked. That was the wholereason we were excited about it.
Yeah, I mean, it was far from theonly bad thing about that movie,
(36:53):
but it was definitely one ofthe bad things about that movie.
Yes. Or fricking, Emily willnever let me live this down,
but Anna in the apocalypse,
the soundtrack is bumping until somebodygets bit and turns into a zombie and
then they stop singing,
and then you're just left with everybodyelse's feelings about the apocalypse.
It's like, what? No, giveme a zombie dance number.
(37:17):
And they didn't. It was very sad.
But I'm glad that thismovie did good music for its
very music based premise.
Yes. Yes. I think it did. Ithink it did. My life is chaos,
and so I can't at this moment pick outthat particular earworm from the rest of
them, but I'll see if I can find it onYouTube and post it to the show notes.
(37:40):
It's catchy. It's catchy. And Ilove a good Fox Mulder moment.
And this one definitely worked.
I mean,
pretty much every earworm that gets intomy ears gets gradually replaced with
pizza time. So I'm not.
So real quick, I have something elseto say about my short movie. I'm sorry.
(38:03):
I know we have moved on from it.
But we've already, I'm anidiot. Melissa's short.
And the whole point is that it's short.
You're keeping it short because you'reshort. Melissa, what did you discover?
It's a short film.
Thank you. So I thought the writerand director looked familiar,
but I didn't click the plus signwhere I could see more about
(38:24):
her and what she's done.
And I should have done thatbecause her debut feature was
Relic.
Okay, that tracks. Yep.
Oops, my bad. So she.
Has a theme. SheDefinitely has a theme.
(38:46):
I'll say that this was atleast much better than Relic because it didn't make me
inconsolably angry. So there's that.
I have learned an important lesson,
which is to click the plus signto read the rest of the biography.
Well, I'm glad that you
(39:07):
didn't tell me that.
It was by the lady that Made Relicbefore I watched this because I don't,
my dislike of Relic is strong enoughthat I would not have given this movie a
fair shot. I would've just sat theremaking fart noises the whole time.
So I did good without meaning to.
(39:28):
So I was deliberately not bringing upRelic when I was talking about, oh,
maybe it's an old personhaving mental issues.
I feel like I harp on Relic too much.
So I was deliberately not mentioningRelic, but I was like, oh yeah, okay,
this is basically Relic, butshort and not rage inducing.
(39:50):
Am I crazy? Or when we didRelic, did we talk about,
or did we read about the director? Whowas Natalie? Erica James. By the way,
you're basing at least someof this on a short film
because I can see theProto Relic a through line.
So Creswick came outin 2017, Relic in 2020.
(40:16):
So I mean, they're definitelyvariations on a theme.
She's also the same directordoing, are they still,
I don't think they're officiallycalling it a Rosemary's Baby prequel,
but it's a Rosemary's Baby prequelApartment seven A that's coming out.
(40:36):
Oh, it already came out. When did Imiss this? I guess it already came out
2024. Okay. I guess I missed.
It. 5.8, I don't know.Okay, well that's the same
director.
Alright. Oh God.
Now I'm just mad because they could taken,
(41:00):
she could have taken this andexpanded it instead we got Relic.
I mean, I get theobjection. I liked Relic.
It does go in some other.
Directions. And to be fair,
I was in a terrible mentalheadspace when I watched Relic.
I still don't like it, butI will acknowledge that there's a difference between
(41:24):
objectively bad and not for me. AndRelic is so not for me that it hurts,
but
not to the point where I judgepeople that do like it. Just
like I said.
Not for me.
Fair.
Yeah, I mean it was scary,
but in a sort of realistic,
(41:48):
the whole notion of horror derivedfrom parents getting older and
terminal illness and mentalillness, all those things,
that's not, oh my god,
Michael Myers is here and he'sgoing to stab me in the boob.
It's a very different vibe.
But I nearly said something about Relictoo, when you were talking about it.
(42:11):
There are two kinds of podcasts out there.
There are some that do researchand there are some that do not.
And I am comfortable inour, oh hey, guess what?
We're all professionalshere and there are.
That simply just don't push theplus sign when reading about a
writer and director,which I will no longer.
(42:31):
Do. You didn't even look atthe rest of her filmography.
You didn't need to push the plus sign.
No, I did. So the other one was justdrum wave, that's all that's listed.
So I was just looking at her shorts.
On IN.
Db. Not her whole thing. No.
Oh, well, that you can'tdo that on. Oh, well. Yeah,
you got to look her up on IMDB.
(42:52):
Well, obviously now I know that
we're learning.
See, that doesn't really work forme because of the three of us.
I'm the one that reviewsnon movie things the most.
So IMDB is a little bitof a crap shoot for me.
So I actually have to do research.
(43:14):
And by that I mean look at TV tropesinstead of IMDB, but still it's.
They don't have an app, sothat's extra work. Yeah, exactly.
So tell us about AmazingDigital Circus Grady.
So before Melissa Rediscovers,
something even more obviousabout her short film?
(43:38):
Well, no.
That sounded mean. I'm sorry.
That was mean.
That was less mean in my head. I'm sorry.
Alright. Again,
I came at the movie with a clearer headnot knowing it was associated with one
of my least favorite movies that we'vedone for the podcast. So No Harm Done.
(44:01):
So amazing digital circus from
Australian Animation studio called Knownas Glitch. Formerly Glitch Productions
was YouTube exclusive. Pretty muchall of glitches stuff for a while,
but Netflix very recently pickedit up, which is why I'm glad,
(44:22):
because here's the thing.Before we went on hiatus,
this was going to be the nextepisode that I was going to do.
And there was only two episodesin, but out of a Plan nine.
But I really wanted to talk about itbecause I think it's amazing and it
technically counts as horrorand it's technically foreign.
And literally the week afterthat episode would've gone up,
(44:45):
if we hadn't gone on an impromptu break,
the episode would've becomeoutdated immediately because all of the news for the
amazing digital circus just startedhappening. Netflix picked it up.
It has four episodes now instead of two.
It was a lot. So
(45:07):
I'm glad that I'm talking about it now.
So the basic summary,
the story revolves around six troubledhumans, timid, newcomer poney,
comedic sociopath, jacks, jovialoptimist, rag atha, emotionally fragile,
gle paranoid veteran Clingerand moody cynic zule who
(45:27):
find themselves trapped inthe amazing digital circus,
a zany virtual world of infinitepossibilities, except for two things,
swearing and leaving,
hosted by the goofy, fun living AI ring,
Mr. Kane and his deeplyunsettling assistant bubble,
the six embark on all sorts of wacky,
often traumatizing misadventures whiletrying to keep their sanity intact lest
(45:51):
something terrible happened to them.
So I don't know if either of you arefamiliar with the Short Story or the
Adventure Game based on theShort Story by Harlan Ellison.
I have no mouth and I must scream.
I've heard the name.
Okay. Well, this show is basicallythat premise, but played for comedy,
(46:16):
like a bunch of people are trappedin a computer by a malevolent ai.
Although Cain malevolent is probably
true. I don't know where the restof the episodes are going with it,
but it has a bunch of asterisk next to it.
So we watched What, and also, noneof the characters are secretly Nazis,
(46:39):
although actually four episodes in,I'm not entirely sure about Jack's,
but as far as we know, none ofthe characters are secretly Nazis.
I hate that we have to put that caveaton practically everything these days.
Yeah, I mean,
I would count this as horror. I sawthe first three episodes with you,
(47:02):
I guess it's been a little while, but
existential dread, you canonly make scary for so long.
Trying to make it funny almost makesit scarier because it's clearly
not funny, if that makes sense.
I know how weird thatsounds. But if you're, oh no,
(47:23):
I'm so scared there's a window forthat. There's a time limit for that.
But if it's, I'm so scared,I dunno what's happening,
then that somehow gets scarier.
Like Kane, depending on wherethe rest of the show goes,
and a couple of years down theline, once they finally finish it,
(47:45):
I may need to revisit it oncewe have the full picture, but
he may be one of the creepier horror
villains out there because he doesn'tknow that he's a horror villain.
Or maybe he does. And he's justplaying the long game in his, I guess,
spoilers for a show thatended a long time ago.
(48:06):
He's Ted Dan from The Good Place, but.
Fair.
He is unsettling, but he's alsoso naive and he's hilarious.
And I quote him all the time, Idon't torture you deliberately.
I torture you by accident.Any good war criminal.
(48:27):
I sort of assumed he was also a victimof the whole thing. He might be,
he wasn't the Mastermind.
I don't know. It's still vague,but he is definitely in charge.
And the other charactersdefinitely do not like him.
Yeah.
Well, and isn't that not the worst,the scariest type of villain?
(48:50):
The villains that don'tknow they're the villain?
Yeah. I mean, yeah.
Because if you know you'rea villain, then at least
your own motivations andpeople know your motivations.
But if don't know you're the villain,
(49:11):
then your motivations areunclear to everybody else.
And unpredictable is what comes to mind.
Brittany's holding up a plushie of the
character we're talking about,
which is like a wacky jawwith eyeballs inside it,
wearing a tuxedo, I think a tuxedo.
(49:35):
Ringmaster. That sounds.
If that sounds weird,that's because it is.
But I also feel like I'mnot doing it justice.
So I'll include a link or not,because Melissa's shaking her hand.
No, no, no. Yes, yes.Include the link. Yes. No,
what I was going to say isthat feels like a plushie,
(49:55):
that the dentist from Little Shopof Horrors would snuggle to bed
every night.
Yes. Honestly,
I could see Steve Martin doing itin real life too. You never know.
Yeah.
I could see Steve Martinvoicing this character.
(50:16):
There's definitely a throwline in the style of humor.
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So why is it taking so long to,
I feel like that's anaive question, but why.
That's kind of,
so I'm going to get intothe production a bit.
(50:37):
Glitch was founded in2017 by brothers Kevin and
Luke, I am never going to be able topronounce this last name to save my life.
Lu Witch, I dunno.
Ah, yes. The Lord Witch.
Yes.
But they're kind of a small indie
(50:59):
animation studio.
They've been doing theseoriginal web video things
for years. This is just the mostrecent and most successful one.
They always do these seven or eightepisode things that take years to produce
just because they have a small team.And the animation's just really,
really intricate. And
(51:22):
this is kind of a similar thing.
Maybe with Netflix adding themoney, it'll get done faster,
or I am not sure,
I'm not a hundred percent sure what allNetflix brings to the table other than
putting it on Netflix.
Well, they did thatwith Purely Infrequency,
(51:42):
and we had some of the same questions,will this lead to more or not?
And it really didn't.Maybe one or two more,
but not what we were hoping.
And I think that part of it is also,
and I think that may be partof why the creator of the show,
Cooper Smith Goodwin is the creator.
(52:05):
She is mostly known by herYouTube handle. Goose Works.
I was actually a fan of herlong before this came to be.
She did all these really good,she's an animator and a composer,
and I first learned abouther from these really,
really good video gamecovers that she made and
(52:27):
just have been following her career.
And this was the biggest and by far,most successful thing that she's done.
And she's made it abundantly clear,
even before Netflix pick it up, thereare only going to be nine episodes.
She's got a plan. Sheknows this whole story,
(52:49):
very real possibility that Netflix isnot going to change her mind on that,
partly because we know what happens whenthings get renewed for a second season
on Netflix. They getbanned on a cliffhanger,
and then there's no season three.
Never come down. It is.
A trend.
If we were responsible, we'd betalking about Squid Game season two,
(53:12):
but I don't know if I've gotit in me, if I'm being honest.
Fair enough. I don't,
not to get into spoilers,wed game season one,
but I don't understand how therecan be a squid game season too
mediator.
I just feel like it doesn't make.
(53:33):
Sense.
No things were, I don't want tosay wrapped up, but wrapped up.
Yes. That's what I say.Yeah, I said it wrapped up.
Well for the circus.
So I have a 2-year-old and Iwind up half watching quite a
(53:55):
bit of animated television and some of it,
Daniel Tiger, that animation.It's fine. It's comforting.
I think it's kind of old school.
It's clearly meant forlittle kids like preschool,
but it doesn't heat. The catobviously has a higher budget,
(54:16):
but still more or lesselementary school, preschool age.
But some of the other stuff,
when you finish with one of those andit just automatically kicks to something
else, some of the art style on alot of that kids programming is
just unsettling in weird,
uncanny valley ways thatjust make it hard to watch.
(54:40):
And this didn't do that.
And I could see somethingwith this premise,
the whole existential dread of havingan existentially uncomfortable animation
style. And it really didn't. AndI really appreciated that. And.
I kind of have a funny story to addto this, because for timely purposes,
(55:01):
the first two episodes thatI was initially going to do our initial review on
before the hiatus, the horror, I mean,
there were some explicitlyhorror related things. I mean,
we were already introduced to the ideaof characters abstracting and turning
into monsters. And that was playedpretty creepy. But for the most part,
the whole thing was more comedic.
(55:21):
And the scary stuff was just kind ofjust there. If you thought about it.
And I discovered episode three wason YouTube while I was visiting you,
Marcus. And I was just kind ofwatching it, half watching it,
half watching Roz while youand Emily were doing something,
and Roz was just kind ofwatching over Shoulder. Oh, okay.
Roz wants to see whatI'm watching. Okay. And
(55:45):
then, hold on, let meget into the chat here.
Trying to, how do I, oh, okay. I see.
And then this thing came on screen
and I was like, okay, hi Roz.I'm going to watch this later
(56:08):
spoil. Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah.
Yeah.
Not going to lie, but it wasprobably better than Daniel Tiger.
Yeah, Roz was delighted.Roz just kind of giggled.
But I was like, oh, okay.
She has a remarkable tolerance. Yeah,
(56:31):
because at first it was the funny animatedgag where characters are in the dark
and you just see their eyes and they'removing all expressively and stuff,
and they're arguing because thedumb one just broke the light,
and all of a sudden.
It was weird. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah,
(56:53):
that's great.
But I would say even my only complaintabout it was that there's not more of it.
And even knowing that, I don't know when,
or possibly even if this is goingto finish the first three or four,
at least three, I've seen him.Episodes are definitely worth seeing.
Yeah.
Fourth one's good too. It getsvery existential for my taste,
(57:16):
but it's good.
See, the problem is I don'ttrust anything with Netflix now.
I don't trust them tofinish any series that we
love, and I want to tryto start these series,
but it's almost like I'm going to refuseto watch it until I know everything's
out. I do. The fact that she knew it wasonly going to be nine episodes before.
(57:40):
Because.
Number one, it means that shehas a solid, clear ending,
which I think is really hard forsome of these shows. And number two,
at least we know when it's all out,
we know that that'll be it.
And like I said,
I wanted to talk about it now insteadof waiting for it all to be released,
(58:02):
because I really like it and wantto get the word out. And again,
going by glitches, usual release schedule,
it might be like end of 2025 into 2026.
By the time the Solve, by the timeit's actually a complete series.
Yeah.
Well, and the more people thatwatch it, the more popular it gets.
(58:22):
Maybe Netflix will be like, oh my God,we should throw some funding this way.
Maybe. I don't know. Maybe ifthey've done that already, because
the gap between episode threeand four was way shorter than
the others. So I'm wondering if,
(58:42):
and Netflix picked it up shortlybefore the release of episode three.
So I'm wondering if maybe they're already
throwing some money into it and they'regoing to be able to get it out faster
now. I.
Hope so. I.
Haven't paid a lot of attention tothe behind the scenes stuff because
(59:03):
the fandom for the show gets a bit,
it's a little hard to tell the truthfrom fiction and news about the show.
So I'm just kind of letting what I seein the show itself speak for its own
maritime. I'm just going to leaveit at that. I think that's fair.
Fair enough.
Understood. One for one ofthese characters exists,
(59:26):
and by one of these characters,I mean, all of these characters.
Rule 34. Thank you.
Really the most important of the rules.
I mean, that is just true though.
We have a three for motion picture, tearscale, five for quality and enjoyment.
That.
Works
(59:47):
maybe a four by the end of the seriesif it's going where I think it's going.
But definitely a three right now.
Fair.
So this weekend,
I'm definitely seeing Gladiatortwo before it leaves theaters,
because I haven't done that yet.
And my brother reallywants to watch it with me.
So I don't know if I'm going tomake it to see the Nosferatu remake,
(01:00:07):
which I also really want to see.
But I also haven'tactually seen the original
Nosferatu. Really? Yeah.
I don't have an excusebecause it's like og.
It's not even a long movie.
So I think I'm going to do thatfor next week. I'm going to see,
(01:00:30):
I think I can get, it'snot on Shutter anymore,
but I think all the old Joe Briggslast drive-in episodes or on
AMC Plus, and I know he did it for thelast drive in a couple of years ago.
So I'm going to see if I can find theversion with Joe Bob Briggs cutting in and
talking about the movie.
(01:00:50):
We could watch that on New Year's Eve.
We could. That's true.
Just saying.
That's true. We could.
I haven't seen it in forever.
Okay. So I'm not the only one. Okay,good. Good, good, good. Have you seen it,
Grady?
(01:01:11):
Feel like I've seen.
If I.
Have. It's been a very.
Long time. Yeah.
Well, let's do that.
I genuinely don't know if I've actuallyseen it or if I just know it from pop
culture. Osmosis.
Yeah. Well, and it's blackand white. It's silent.
(01:01:31):
I could see it being a hard movie towatch if you're not a hardcore cinephile.
But I could also see a lot of ourfilm studies classes in college
showing it and talking aboutit. I don't think they did,
but it's been a while.And I could be wrong.
(01:01:53):
It would be a good thingto just pop on New Year's.
So if that's cool withyou guys, let's do it.
Yeah, that sounds great.That sounds great. Well,
we'll talk about that next week. In themeantime, if you're still listening,
give us a shout out on Threads. Follow us,
because we're going to start postingthe coming Soons back there on social
(01:02:14):
media. Follow us on Letterboxed, shootus an email, give us a shout out.
Tell your friends, tell your family,tell anybody into horror about us.
I think we're cool. Andwe're back. So that's Nate.
Yay. And we'll talk to you all next week.
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