Friday the 13th Ep. 07 - Satan's Blade / The Mutilator

Summer’s over! It’s time for Fall and Winter slashers to answer the question: Does changing seasons help change up a Friday-style slasher?

SATAN’S BLADE (1984) combines bank robbing, attempted adultery, and boom mics with a local legend, while THE MUTILATOR (1984) mixes tones, tunes, and the craziest game of Blind Man’s Bluff you’ve ever witnessed.

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Hello and welcome to Get Me Another, a podcast where we explore those movies that followedin the wake of blockbuster hits and attempted to replicate their success.
My name is Chris Ayanakone and with me is my co-host Justin Beam.
Chris.
I'm so excited to be here.
When we first got on the call, I was going to announce myself as boom operator in Satan'sBlade because it is probably the most prominent role in either of the films we're going to

(00:36):
discuss here.
It is.
is amazing because in fact, Rob could not be here this week because he's taking a littletime to relax down at a secluded cabin by the lake.
But I actually got a text message from him just a few minutes ago saying, having a greattime at the lake, watch out for boom mics in Satan's Blade.

(00:57):
Amazing.
It is.
is.
Today's episode seven in our Get Me Another Fry the 13 series, and we'll be looking at twoindependently produced slasher movies with slightly different settings than the ones we've
become accustomed to in these types of films.
Our first film today, released in 1984, is Satan's Blade.

(01:17):
It came from hell, bearing a curse as eternal as the devil himself.

(01:38):
Satan's Blade was directed by L.
Scott Castillo and written by Castillo and Thomas Q.
It was primarily shot in 1980 in the area of Big Bear, California.
although additional shooting may have happened on and off over the next couple of years.
It was released on VHS by Prism Entertainment in 1984.

(01:59):
So it had a significant time on the shelf between when they shot the main part of the filmand when they were able to finally secure a release.
The film stars Tom Bongiorno, which is just a fantastic name, as well as Stephanie LeeSteele, Thomas Q.
Elisa R.
Malinovitz and Ramona Andrada.

(02:21):
And it's undoubtedly a lower budget effort than some of the other films we've watched, butthere's some really interesting things happening in this movie.
Yeah, yeah, it's the lone outing for Castillo as a filmmaker and not a single person inthe cast even has a picture on IMDB.
So this is definitely indie.
It's casting probably friends and things like that.

(02:44):
And it wears it on its sleeve, but it
It manages some neat stuff throughout.
It does.
And it's just a really interesting film.
One of the things that I think is unique about it is the snowbound setting.
Like we open with that shot of the snowy lake and it gives it a real visual distinction,which it's so interesting that this movie has that considering how like.

(03:09):
How much fans seem to be clamoring for that idea of the snowbound Friday the 13th movie.
Like there was talk of if they did a sequel to the 2009 iteration, that it would be likeset in the snow.
like here they have that idea.
mean, I don't know if they fully kind of, I don't know they fully realize it to the degreethat they could.

(03:31):
Like there's never a shot of blood on the snow.
You need blood on the snow.
It's perfect.
Yeah.
And it's also interesting that we have been talking about these Friday the 13th inspiredfilms and we've covered so many seasons already.
So we've had, course, all the summer films.

(03:51):
We've gotten into fall, which we're going to have a couple set in fall today, but nowwe're finally landing in winter here, which is a, which is a unique take.
And we're not at a traditional camp necessarily.
It's more of a ski resort kind of thing, but it's handled the same way, almost as thoughthese people are at camp together.
Yes, because you have a group that's going, they're going out of their normal thing.

(04:12):
They have to go to this place.
The other interesting thing about this film, the other thing I think it sets it apart fromthe movies we've talked about so far.
This is the first film we've watched in the series that has an explicitly supernaturalbent to it.
There's films, there's slasher films that sort of hint at the supernatural, but here, youknow, we open with this shot of the titular Satan's Blade being

(04:37):
thrown into a tree and then it starts to glow with this red aura.
And it's like, right from the beginning, we have, you know, there's a supernaturalelement.
And it's interesting because that would obviously be where the slasher genre would go postnightmare on Elm Street.
Yeah, yeah.
And the other funny thing about it is that even though, I kept looking for it throughoutthe film, that it, the story, the mythology behind this that we're going to get into in a

(05:04):
minute here, as you're talking about the breakdown,
It definitely is about this supernatural element and this magical blade, but none of therest of the film is supernatural in any way at all, except the very last shot in the
movie.
It's like the beginning, it bookends it, the beginning and the end, which is almost thesame shot all over again by the time we get there.

(05:25):
But yeah, for a supernatural setup, you're kind of expecting some kind of fantasy elementthroughout or.
something, it never really arrives.
Yeah, it is.
You're right.
It absolutely bookends it.
open instead, like after that, that's one shot going into the, into the, the blade goinginto the tree.
We cut to a bank or rather what looks like a San Fernando Valley apartment complex as abank.

(05:50):
Yeah.
And the sign out front is it's like, it's, it's clearly been put together about 10 minutesprior to filming here.
It's the Sierra foothill bank.
Yeah.
It looks like it was, was, it was clearly made in somebody's garage and it has thatdistinct handmade quality that this film has.
then I don't have like, I don't have a problem with that.

(06:11):
Like again, it's their filmmakers pushing the envelope.
There's other things I think that they could have done better, but like I get that, Hey,they only have so much money and they're just trying to make a film.
I get that.
Yeah.
And that was probably on a Sunday when the building wasn't open and they got the shots asquickly as they could on those exteriors.
Yeah, the sign reminds me of Blood Rage because there's the apartment complex in BloodRage that has a clearly spray painted, like pretty fresh looking spray painted sign

(06:37):
outside the apartment complex there.
It's another movie that was done for a modest budget, but manages to do some pretty coolthings.
yeah.
we had a great time talking about Blood Rage back in our Halloween's here.
Blood Rage, which which fits into with the mutilator, our second film today, into thatcategory of condo centric.
slasher films.
It's a, it's a very exclusive club that those guys.

(07:00):
is very exclusive.
It's a very fancy jacket you get once you're a part of it.
I should make those t-shirts.
Yeah.
That shot at the end of blood rage where he's bouncing on the diving board, just havingfun with himself is one of.
the best in all of Slasher history.
fantastic.

(07:20):
Such a simple little thing.
I gotta, I gotta watch that again this Thanksgiving.
I told my wife that's going to be a Thanksgiving perennial and she, she was notnecessarily amenable to it, but we'll see how it goes.
You know, it's not cranberry sauce.
It's not cranberry sauce.
It's not Chris.
So a pair of bank robbers, they force their way into the bank.
They clear out the tills.

(07:41):
One of the robbers uses a knife to pop off.
the buttons of the woman's blouse, like these robbers who we don't see, they are, first ofall, they're here for more than money, but they also, shoot and kill the two employees and
then flee.
And what I thought was interesting is they clearly didn't have the money or the ability todo squib effects, but the way they did the gunshots as the two employees are gunned down,

(08:05):
I mean, it was pretty effective, even though I know, it's like, there's no squib there,but I know what they're doing.
I like it anyway, you know?
And it's weird that you mentioned the unbuttoning of the shirt where one of the thugs usestheir knife to slowly pop each button off the shirt.
have a lot of trouble with the last one at the bottom too.
And they just left the camera roll and they left the whole shot in there.

(08:28):
But it leads to nothing.
It's not like there's some kind of assault or something that happens there.
It's just like, we're going to open this shirt.
All right, moving on.
then that's blam, blam.
And the gun that's used clearly looks like a cap gun.
It's got the red.
It even looks like it's got the cap thing put in the back of it.
It's so great.
Yes.
Yes.
I also want to point out the, the, the wall calendar.

(08:50):
They found a calendar with the initials S F B at the top for the Sierra foothill bank, butthen they changed the S to a dollar sign.
Like, I'm like, that is the most baller bank.
Like you like, honestly,
keep your money at the Sierra Foothill Bank.
that is, they spent all their money on their calendars.

(09:12):
They didn't have time money for a sign.
The sign was an afterthought.
The dollar sign costs money.
Yeah, you know it.
It's a, I'm pretty sure that this scene was some of the additional material that was shotlater.
Cause I know in looking, doing some of the research about the movie that they had to shootadditional stuff with kills and nudity in order to secure a release.

(09:34):
And this scene has both,
kills and nudity, which it doesn't necessarily need to.
It doesn't really have nudity.
Well, when they get to the cabin, there's more nudity.
Well, so we go up to the cabin and, wait, I just got another text from Rob.
Lake is great.
And by the way, the bank at the beginning of Satan's Blade is actually the set from FionaApple's criminal music video.

(10:01):
Well, there you go.
It looks just like it.
What?
Don't think it's actually, but it really does look like that.
Rob, you know, I appreciate Rob, you know, the texting in his thoughts for, for, for thisepisode.
Yeah.
If he's so invested, why is he being lazy and not on the show here?
He's like, well, I don't have time for this.
But then he just sitting there barraging you with messages.

(10:23):
a creep.
The robbers, they retreat up to the mountains to this cabin where they take off their verybulky clothes and they reveal that they are in fact women.
Dun dun.
This is like in chips.
There's an episode of chips where these two creeps on motorcycles who are out there like Ithink robbing banks.
Sure.
And then they pull off to the side of the road and punch and the other guy go up to punchand John and John.

(10:49):
then they're like, Hey, you guys, you can't, know, it's really leaning into the fact thatit must be men.
And then the girls take off their helmets.
and it's got long flowing hair and the guys are just like in a like in a cartoon women onmotorcycles.
What women commit crimes to.
What is this?

(11:09):
It's interesting because like I wonder if if the the the popping off of the buttons on theblouse was sort of like a like, hey, we're going to make the people that we're robbing
think that it's dudes doing.
Yeah.
But you're going to kill them anyway, so it doesn't really end up.
Like they're not giving a report to the police.
Like it's, it's interesting.

(11:32):
So, it's strange about it.
So they take off their clothes.
have very bulky clothes.
They take off their clothes, these giant boots with no socks underneath.
like, what are you doing?
And then for no discernible reason, one of them takes off her pants.
Like she's just, and both of the women are fairly unclothed in this scene.
Again, this is what I mean is that this, this sequence, you know, nudity added to securerelease perhaps.

(11:55):
But I got to say though, like the writing here is really interesting because you reallyget a camaraderie between the two women.
Like, if they hadn't murdered those bank employees, I might be rooting for them a littlebit.
Like, know.
And they're aiming to head to San Tropez.
That's their goal.
We can't wait to get to San Tropez.
That is the perfect, perfect early eighties vacation.

(12:19):
know.
And lamb desti- San Tropez.
Perfect.
That no one talks about anymore.
that I never hear about anymore in this day and age.
But yeah, they're sitting and they have this conversation and you see, yeah, you do see abond between them and that it's set up in a playful way.
Like you don't know what their relationship is either.
You're not how close are these two?

(12:39):
They're very comfortable with each other in terms of one of them just being naked and thenthe other one.
And they're running a bath and the other, know, is Trish and Ruth and Trish takes off hertop, starts dancing around and then,
Things shift.
Things shift.
So they hide the money that they've stolen in this air conditioning duct as they're aboutto, they're awaiting their partner, the third partner, George.

(13:05):
And we soon learned that one of the women, Ruth, is planning to double cross George.
She doesn't want to share the money with anybody.
And she in fact turns on her friend who seemed very kind of close with and shoots her incold blood.
like,
genuinely surprising.
Yeah, and her reaction too, Trish in the bathroom looking at Ruth saying like, what areyou doing?

(13:29):
What's going on?
It's so goofy, but here you really feel like she's like, what?
I mean, you see it in her.
that actress- There's a sense of betrayal, not just shock, but betrayal.
Yeah.
It's there in these two actresses' performances, it really is.
Right, right.
But what Ruth doesn't know is that a killer.

(13:49):
is lurking outside the cabin and she's stabbed in the back as she's about to take the bodyof her friend out to the lake in her underwear, no less.
Well, we also need to say that what happens is that Ruth shoots Trish.
Trish is in the bathroom getting ready for a shower.
The door flies open and there's Ruth standing there with a gun aimed at her.

(14:09):
That's what the exchange we just discussed happens.
She shoots her and then Trish has one of cinema's longest and most
dramatic death sequences.
She gets shot once and then a second time and there's eventually a third shot, but she'sslowly falling back.
yeah.
No, it's just plays out without any, they don't make any effort to speed these things upin this film.

(14:33):
No, they, they, they let it, let it take its time.
They make a meal out of it in that, in that sense.
mean, you know, I guess they, they need a feature like running time.
So it's like, why are we going to hurry up?
Let's let the.
Don't let it take what it is.
But then Ruth gets like the door opens, she opens the door, she's about to take the bodyout and then like the killer comes in, like just stabs her in the back.

(14:56):
Like doesn't even step inside, just stabs her in the back and we get this sort of,another, she takes her time dying.
Gialo black gloves.
Gialo black gloves.
You know, the knife that was thrown into the tree at the beginning and.
Yeah, and then we cut to two cops arriving who heard the shots and they find both womendead.

(15:21):
They find this strange symbol drawn in blood on the wall and the cops, there's like anolder guy and a younger guy and they don't seem like the best cops.
Like they seem kind of keystone cops, like they're there for comic relief.
It's the cops in Halloween five.
What they need is like the horn and the kazoo.
From Halloween five.
my god.
Yes, yes.

(15:41):
And honestly, know, this sequence, this early sequence gives you an idea of what the filmis going to look and sound like.
And some of that is fairly rough.
There's a lot of hard lighting and a lot of shadows, you know, but hey, there's shadows inlife.
You know, that's, you know, that's.
You live in shadows.
Yeah.
But they did set up some things that I thought were interesting and that didn't come back.

(16:04):
Specifically, George.
Like I.
I was waiting the whole movie for George, the unseen third partner to come back and like,that's going to be a thing is when he comes back for the money.
He already was off to San Tropez.
He don't know what he did, but like.
dust for now.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(16:24):
We then cut to two separate groups headed to the lake for a little rest and relaxation.
One is in a sedan and one is in a very sweet late seventies, early eighties van.
If I ever own a van, I want it to look like it's from that era because it's so cool.
There is no other era.

(16:45):
my God.
So one group consists of two couples, Tony and Lisa and Al and Lil, who are going to thelake for a week to celebrate Tony passing the bar, which is a very...
specific thing for them to be celebrating.
is.
And it sets up a runtime just replete with lawyer humor.
There's like lawyer jokes sprinkled throughout the whole film.

(17:08):
Who is your audience?
Is it really just aimed at lawyers?
Is Satan's blade somehow aimed at lawyers?
Like it's just, it's an excuse for Al to keep calling Tony counselor.
okay.
Counselor.
Like it's continually.
Yeah.
The second group consists of five girls.
They seem to be there to help Sue, one of the girls, get over the recent death of herfather, which would kind of make you think that she's going to be the main character of

(17:35):
like the group.
But that's not really true either.
It's really interesting.
Like Sue starts out, you think she's going to be the central figure of that cohort, butno, no.
So they all arrive at same time.
And thankfully for the girls who do not have a reservation, there is one vacant cabin.

(17:56):
There's a vacant cabin because of the murder the previous night.
Yeah.
And they discuss it when old Norman Bates there behind the counter talking to his mom whorun this place.
They're like, no, we can't use that room.
And the guy and the girl's like, well, one of them's like, it might make it moreinteresting.

(18:17):
They just straight up tell them, you guys, is a murder room.
There was a murder here.
And then the girls are just like, no, that's all right.
Yeah, we'll take it.
But it's not like, a murder here 10 years ago or, you know, like there was a murder theprevious night.
This is yesterday.
unsolved murder and they have been given a go ahead apparently by the cops to rewrite thecabin where the crime occurred.

(18:38):
They were quick, these cops.
were very quickly.
They got all the forensic evidence they needed.
know, it was different back in the early 80s.
You know, didn't have as much.
But they left the blood on the wall and stuff for you.
the blood on the wall.
We're just going to leave that there.
Yeah.
No, like you could see that's like when they go in the cabin later, it's like scrubbedout, but not really.
It's like, yeah, it's real.

(19:00):
Interesting.
We're also treated to a little bit of folklore by the woman at the front desk who she'sshe's so eager to tell this story about the spirit of the mountain man that lives under
the lake.
She's like, she's like, don't twist my arm.
I'll tell the story.
Like, it's something.
There was a time when there wasn't a soul living these parts, except for a giant man andhis family.

(19:23):
The mountains provided everything they needed.
But then the people started coming in.
They bought land, changed things.
They forced him higher and higher up the mountains until he didn't have a place to live infor himself.
And that's when he decided to fight back for the land he felt was rightfully his.

(19:47):
So he asked the gods of these mountains for help.
They say he was given a weapon, but that wasn't from the gods.
That was from the evil spirits of these mountains that wanted them for themselves.
They tricked him into using the weapon to kill not only the people that were coming in,but even his own family.

(20:09):
And some say even himself.
Still others believe he lives beneath the waters of the lake where he has become a monsterof death and stalks all who come to these mountains.
Yeah, it's really, it's a great
like local folklore tale.
is.

(20:30):
Yeah.
I mean, it's this guy who lost his land.
And so he got angry and he wanted to get revenge.
And he came across a knife.
That's it.
A knife in the lake or in the tree near the lake.
Maybe he come out of the lake.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's he wasn't good at revenge until they happened upon that.

(20:51):
And then things and then things change.
And this is all while Al
the creepy mustachioed guy from group A is just straight leering at all these girls.
Like they just show him he's off on the side of the shot.
With his wife there.
His wife is right there and my gosh, it's creepy.
So the two groups go to their cabins.

(21:11):
can say you can see the symbol in blood has been scrubbed off, but it's still kinda sortathere.
But of course these two cabins right next to each other.
that's, and one thing I gotta say about these cabins, they look
absolutely right for the time period.
often styles from the past get exaggerated in hindsight.

(21:32):
Like not everything in the eighties was actually covered in neon, but the interior ofthese cabins, like it honestly feels like my family room for when I was a kid.
Yeah, I've been to, I spent a lot of time in the past up in Lake Arrowhead, which is rightnext to Big Bear where they shot this kind of in that region.
And I've been
I was part of a film festival at Big Bear years ago and I was put up in a cabin sort ofretreat place there.

(21:57):
This is, I went to several houses locally where we had different events and parties andthings like that.
And this looks like that.
Like in that area, there's a lot of sort of half realized, not really nice, not reallyawful or run down places where people can stay.
And this has all of that.
It very much.
is just, we found these locations.

(22:18):
We're not going to touch a thing.
We're going to head right in and start shooting.
Roll them.
Yeah, because here's the thing.
Wood paneling is real.
covered in wood paneling back in the day, it reminds me, like occasionally, I think oncemy parents, we went up to the Poconos from New Jersey.
know, like that had that similar kind of vibe.

(22:41):
Yeah.
So Tony and Al, they decide they could go out in the lake looking into the fishing andthey run into a local old man who says that the fishes are biting and the last time that
that happened was 14 years earlier, which happens to be the last time that murders tookplace around this area 14 years earlier.
He's kind of their crazy Ralph, although he's not that crazy.

(23:04):
still, and he seems mostly irritated that they're there.
Yeah, he doesn't like many locals when you have the tourists come in.
It's just like, man, I'm just, I'm just trying to fish.
I'm like, you know, like I'm just trying to fish.
and he also mentions that the locals don't like to talk about the knife.
Right.
They don't want to talk about that.

(23:25):
They don't want to talk about that.
We're not going to say anything more about it now, but we're going to, he's going tomention it ominously.
Yeah.
The knife.
So that night, Tony and Al
This I found so fascinating.
They wait until their wives go to sleep to get drunk.
Together.
We cut over to the cabin.
Like it all feels very awkward.

(23:45):
Like they're just sitting around.
Tony and his wife are making out.
Like they didn't bring a board game or anything.
Like it's just, it's just, and then the wives decide to go to bed and the husbands startto drink excessively.
the wives go to bed together in the same bed.
The husbands are.
are on the couch drinking together.

(24:05):
to each other bumping into each other.
It's very, it's like literally, and it's, they're drinking terribly.
Like they're literally like spilling booze on themselves.
yeah.
And it's like, you know, it's just like, and the way, like, it just seems like they wereplanning something much more sinister than just like getting blitzed on the couch next to

(24:28):
each other.
It's so strange.
is a swinger's weekend gone wrong.
Yeah.
It's terribly, terribly wrong.
Guys, that's not how this works.
We're doing something wrong.
But then we have an odd sequence that directly follows this, where we see these images ofthe girls in the other cabin, the other group, are being murdered one by one.

(24:52):
And this is where I actually think the very handmade quality of this film really works forit in this sequence, because it feels
Like it feels there's something about it that feels very visceral and real.
And we see the killer who is this husky guy wearing this incredibly creepy mask.
It like covers the upper part of his face, but it leaves the mouth exposed as well as hiseyes.

(25:18):
It reminded me a little bit of the mask from the black phone, but a little less stylized.
Well, it's got that kind of beak on the front of it.
It's not really a nose.
It's almost like a bird beak.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's just it is genuinely creepy.
kept waiting for that mask to come back.
Yeah.
But it didn't.
And he kills all of the girls one by one, except for Sue, who is sort of watching.

(25:41):
And then he turns to look at Sue and looks directly into the camera and moves towards it.
And it's really it is really unsettling.
And then she wakes up.
It was a nightmare, guys.
It's a nightmare.
Everything's OK.
But she looks over to her friends asleep in the other bed She lays back down and then wesee a masked face a different mask in the window behind her on the second floor I might

(26:08):
add well It's big so She screams, know The girls all wake up run downstairs and we realizethat it's Tony and Al in it with this other mask in this blanket and they end up wrestling
with the girls outside but those two guys were almost immobilized
due to alcohol just moments prior.

(26:28):
And now they're out there just full of energy, Vim and Vigor wrestling around with girlsand throwing snow around and stuff.
And the way it's cut is so weird because if you blink, you wouldn't even know it was thosetwo.
There really isn't like a big reveal shot that's in there.
You're like angling to see who is that?
And then it cuts right to the next scene.
You're like, well, I guess that was them.

(26:49):
Yeah.
All right.
Well, then they're on the ground.
Tony's wrestling with this.
one girl and you know just a time for for his wife to stick her head out the window and belike I think it's time you came to bed all annoyed that his husband her husband is like
wrestling in the snow with this chick and it's just like man this all feels very verythere's there's a lot of tension going on in this marriage yeah that's not the swinger

(27:14):
party that she approved none in the other like like lil and al are fine yeah right
Right.
other's fine.
Everything's cool.
But Tony and Lisa are having a little bit of a time.
Tony deals with this rough patch in his marriage by going down to the lake to fish.
Mm-hmm.
As one does.

(27:35):
where the girl he was wrestling with the night before, Stephanie, she decides to go meethim and put the moves on him because she's interested in that guy who was giving them, you
know, she was out wrestling with in the snow the night before.
And Lisa sees Stephanie leave her cabin and go in the direction that her husband went.
And does she like do anything?

(27:57):
Does she go and follow to try and save her marriage?
No, no, she sits and stares at the fire for a few hours.
Yeah.
And this is the beginning of Stephanie's Sasquatch adventure in Big Bear because shespends the next like 25 minutes of the film just tromping around the wilderness looking
for someone to have sex with.
She's out there.

(28:18):
for so long.
She's out there for like, for like literally for like half a day walking around in thesnow.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
As her friends are inside, just going like, is, actually they're going skiing soon.
And she, she just, mean, she's not a part of any of that.
I don't know if they had to shoot her separately for most of this or what the reasoningwas for it, but she ends up just this, like I say, she's like a squash in the woods, just

(28:42):
wandering around.
You catch a glimpse once in a while and it cuts back to the other action.
As Stephanie's still out there somewhere.
She's out.
Yeah, she's she's out there.
She's trampling through the snow.
She does meet up with Tony down as you know, as they're he's out there fishing.
And there's this whole sequence where Stephanie comes on to Tony and it seems like he'sthinking about maybe, you know, doing something, you know, for a moment.

(29:07):
And then he catches himself and he tells her that he's a married man.
Wait, wait, wait a minute.
We can't do this.
You gotta understand something.
And I love my wife.

(29:28):
She doesn't know we're here.
but I know.
faithful husband.
That's rarity.
Look, it's nothing against you.
You're very beautiful.
But I could never bring myself to hurt her.
You know, it's kind of funny.

(29:52):
find you even more attractive now.
But I guess there could never be anything between us.
I mean, these vacation romances never work out anyway.
Well, I wouldn't mind you being my friend.
And basically he does the right thing, even though he's been kind of leading her on, youknow, he's got that law.

(30:13):
It's like, I wouldn't mind you being my friend.
Yeah, but he I mean, really, this is kind of a rare character because in these films, itseems like everyone's trying to get laid.
That seems to be the primary motivation of so many characters in slasher films.
And for him to stand to be the stand up guy and say, like, look, I'm married, I love mywife.
And then he does.

(30:34):
mean, Stephanie accepts it and she
She introduces herself, shakes his hand, and then he teaches her how to fish.
But he remains a good guy.
There isn't the moment of slipping up that you would expect to occur here.
I mean, I will admit that I think I was like, now you're going to stay there and teach herhow to fish, other than excusing yourself and going back and making things good with your

(30:55):
wife.
He stays there and shows his new friend how to fish.
I'm like, that's...
It feels like you're still leading her on a little bit.
Like, you know, you could, this might be the time to just say, excuse me.
But your point is well taken because yeah, usually it's just people are horny.
And the fact that we have married people differentiates it like from other, it's anotherthing that differentiates this movie from other ones as well.

(31:19):
We do have a scene where the cops get basically the same information that Tony and Al gotfrom the fishermen that there were two murders 14 years earlier in the same cabin.
And then it looks like the killer is duplicating the circumstances of that earlier murder.
And then the cops, they're eager to get back to their lunch because they are eating whenthis information gets kind of discussed, but it's more like, you know, we got sandwiches.

(31:43):
Yeah, the scene starts with discussion about lunch.
It's all about lunch with a little bit of plot in, you know, kind of, you know, just inthere with the call cuts.
Yeah, but they're also both very excited to talk about murder.
And the one cop is new.
He's only been there a few weeks or whatever.
This is his first murder case and the other more seasoned cop who was on the previouscase.
Right.

(32:03):
He goes, yeah, this is your first murder, isn't it?
And he's like, yeah, yeah, this will be, we can work together kind of a thing.
And it, this whole thing with the sandwiches and all reminds me of, think it was Halloween2018.
One of those last three Halloween.
the balmy sandwich sandwich scene, goes on for an eternity.

(32:24):
I mean, they're just sitting in a car talking about sandwiches for so long.
It's like it's are you trying to be Tarantino here?
What what is happening?
But yeah, these cops in movies like this in horror films, it's usually the coroner that'seating all the time.
But in this one, because they want to be ironic.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, the coroner's eating and he's around here.
They didn't have they were not.

(32:45):
There was no coroner set for the there was no, you know, they weren't doing they weren't.
There was no coroner.
for this film.
They don't have a coroner budget.
They're outdoors and they had a cop car for a day.
And so they shot as much as they could leaning up against it with sandwiches and whateverelse to make maximum use of that.
So Tony, he does go back to the cabin eventually.
Stephanie is going to continue walking through the snow for hours.

(33:09):
And I mean, she's out there so long that all the time she's out there, Tony and his wifereconcile.
They have sex and then they decide to walk a mile and a half to go get dinner with Al andLil.
Like all of that happens, which they don't even succeed.
They end up all bringing back pizza.
they cut to Stephanie every once in a while, just like sitting on a rock, throwing stones.

(33:33):
The next shot is her just sort of clomping through snow and then back to the action here.
And it's also established, which is never they never expand on this, that Al's a bigeater.
And so they say, boy, I'll have seconds or thirds.
Why is that so vital?
Yeah.
Why is that so vital to let us know?

(33:54):
don't understand.
God.
Yeah.
So they come back with pizza and I mean, honestly, it's, it, this whole thing is a way forthem to not have them in the cabin when the killer is going to strike next door, because
that is what happens.
The killer strikes next door, killing the four girls one by one.

(34:15):
And there's some interesting stuff here.
there's, this is all, by the way, all this is all while Stephanie still walking throughthe woods.
She's still out on her walk.
There's a lot of first person shots of the killer moving through the cabin.
Very Halloween.
lot of POV and heavy breathing.
Yeah.
The kill one of the first girls she's drowned in the sink.
And then she bleeds for some reason.

(34:36):
the sink fills with wasn't sure.
Like you see her held underwater and then like a blood come out.
I'm like, what?
Did he bang her into the bottom of the sink?
Or did, you know, it's, it's strange.
I will say this, and this must be because they used real cabins.
I understood the geography of those cabins perfectly.
Yeah, they explored it It's like you have like the living room, there's the kitchen on theright, and then in the back is the bathroom and the downstairs bedroom and then the stairs

(35:01):
that go to the upstairs.
But I'm like, I understand the geography of this perfectly.
One by one, the killer stalks the four girls that are in the cabin, including Sue, thegirl who apparently dreamed of her own death.
The night before which is she's like this clairvoyance like I thought that might be alarger thing but no no she's just killed because it turns out that you know satchelot

(35:25):
Stephanie is actually the main character of these of these of these five who would havefun it and then also the first appearance of the boom mic is earlier in the film.
this is back when they were at the lodge and they were talking with Norman Bates and hismom and the boom mic pops in there here throughout this sequence.

(35:48):
It is almost every shot.
And there's one of the shots where you see the actual pole and the cord on the right sideof the frame.
So I was thinking, maybe this is just matted wrong.
Maybe there's maybe whatever I'm seeing here from this olive blue ray.
It just, it's not the right aspect ratio, but it's rare then that you would see.
the entire, like you might as well have the boom operator in the shot right off on theright hand side of the frame at one point.

(36:12):
I'm like, this is crazy.
really is.
Miss it once.
Okay.
Miss it twice.
Huh?
Miss it like six times.
Wow.
And then you got the whole pole in there.
It's it's amazing.
It's, it's got, there's gotta be something where it was intended to have like a one eightfive.
Yeah.

(36:33):
There must be some reason though.
there has to be.
No, it's got to be that they intended a different aspect ratio.
then this, obviously this was a film that was not in circulation for a while and then has,you know, has kind of come back.
don't, I don't know if it's quite come back to province.
It's still a fairly, you know, obscure film relative to some of the others, but, it'scertainly more available than it was, you know, 15, 20 years ago.

(36:56):
you know, it's, it's, you there is a Blu ray available from Olive.
So.
Everyone is dead.
The two couples come back with what I'm certain is terrible pizza.
And Stephanie has got to be frostbitten by this point from literally walking six hours inthe snow.
Stephanie comes back to her cabin, freaks out upon seeing all of her friends murdered, andruns next door, which admittedly, even though she just made a pass at Tony a couple hours

(37:26):
earlier,
is still a very reasonable thing to do.
Because these characters for a little while do very reasonable things until some of themdon't.
But for a while, know, so Tony and Al, they go check out, they're not gonna take thisgirl's story, you know, they go check it out themselves and sure enough, people are dead.
And then they're like, well, let's get the hell out of there.

(37:46):
But the killer has slashed the tires of their car, which we don't actually ever see.
We just have Al coming back in and reporting it like a spear bearer in,
you know, in a Shakespeare play where he comes, the king is dead.
My dear.
It's kind of like an earlier when the girls are, they set out on this ski trip that dayand we don't see any of it.
There's like, no, there's no ski footage at all.

(38:08):
All we see is the conversation after that, right?
Where they're sitting around saying, boy, skiing was fun.
And boy, you know, those instructors were really friendly and some of them were sure sexyand whatever.
You saw none of that.
It's reported after the fact here.
Yeah.
So then the question is, what are they going to do now?
And I'm not clear how far it is to the check-in area that we saw at the beginning.

(38:29):
Maybe it's like the mile and a half that they were trying to walk before.
There's clearly no phone to call for help.
The cabin doesn't have a phone.
So now here's where people start to do stupid stuff.
Tony thinks they should stay there and barricade themselves in the cabin, safety innumbers.
And I agree with that assessment.
I think that is the right call.

(38:49):
Al wants to go leave on foot at night.
and try and make it wherever they can.
That's stupid.
You know, and Al and his wife, Lil, they leave and he's in such a hurry.
She doesn't even have time to grab her coat.
it's like it is freezing.

(39:12):
There's snow on the ground and the killer, you know, knows this area.
What do you think is going to happen?
I'll tell you what you think is going to happen is exactly what happens.
Al is killed first.
And then the killer throws that signature knife right into Lil's back and she takes a longtime to die.
does.
It's like earlier, there's these long drawn out.

(39:33):
It's almost like in a Mel Brooks movie or something where people where they're dyingforever and ever and ever.
Paul Rubin's in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.
they're there.
There really doesn't seem to be anything magical about this knife either.
And you're seeing a lot more of it at this part.
And it's said earlier on that the knife

(39:53):
kind of possessed this guy to do what he's doing.
He's under the charge of this knife, but there's nothing about it outside of it going redin the beginning that, they, you know, I mean, it's, so bizarre that, this does not any
kind of magical knife.
isn't anything supernatural happening around it.
And as Tony, and then Tony goes to light a fire and he's just throwing some, like a pileof balsa wood in there and we see it in real time.

(40:22):
Yes, we do.
You're talking about the girls dying and taking forever.
We see this guy decide to make a fire, find the balsa wood pile and then go about tryingto like, we see every step of all of it.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
And the fire thing is so peculiar because he's going to use it later to make like a torchas a weapon.

(40:44):
He's got like a stick and he's got like a fabric around the end and he's going to lay iton fire and use it swinging around.
And I'm just like,
That's great, pal.
Just like burn down the one refuge you have.
Like set the, like, meanwhile, there's a poker by the fireplace, which is a perfectly goodweapon.
and meanwhile, the lights are on.

(41:05):
There's no reason for him to need a torch.
This isn't like Nightmare of the Living Dead where they need to set a couch on fire orsomething.
All of a sudden he's like, no, we need to do this caveman style.
I want to prove my machismo or something.
I'm going to create this hand torch that surely won't be a problem at any point.
But he also seems to have a
problem with finding light switches, which we're about to have happen here.

(41:25):
Like the killer kind of like a hand of the killer, the black glove hand kind of comes inthe door a little bit and turns off the lights.
But it's not like they cut the what they just hit the switch.
Turn it back on.
But he doesn't.
He doesn't even make an effort to try to find the light switch.
He just so so the next like five and a half minutes of this movie are in just darknesswith occasional fireplace seen in the background.

(41:51):
Yes.
What's interesting is that they do push the couch in front of the door as a kind ofbarricade.
then, like the wife, Lisa, she puts Stephanie in the upstairs bedroom and she comes downin her bathrobe, plops down on the couch right in front of the window.
And I actually wrote down, don't sit in front of the window.

(42:14):
Yeah.
And then, of course, after after his long, you know, sequence building a fire, of course,what happens is the killer's arm burst through the window, grabs Leets's bathrobe, which
he slips out of, leaving her underwear.
I'm like, you shouldn't have sat there.
And second, if your cabin is under siege, put on pants.

(42:35):
there are rules.
They needed Randy in the room to explain the rules of how this stuff should have worked.
But yeah, if we learn anything from Friday the 13th, part two, it's like don't sit infront of windows.
Especially in front of windows.
Don't do it.
Yeah.
Come on.
So Lisa goes upstairs.
She finds no sign of Stephanie, who's disappeared, which actually surprised me.
And then Tony struggles with the killer downstairs.

(42:57):
We have this long struggle in the firelight where Tony and the killer are fighting witheach other.
We don't know which one of them is killed.
And then we have this long moment of tension where someone's coming up the stairs.
And Lisa's like, who is it?
And the person's not answering.
So presumably if it was her husband, her husband would have answered.

(43:18):
Like, it'd be like, hey honey, it's me.
I killed the bad guy.
But instead, you know, the killer comes up and what we realize is that Stephanie is hidingunder the bed.
And I actually think that this is really one of the most well-shot sequences in thismovie, because the lighting on Stephanie's face as she's watching from under the bed and

(43:39):
we're getting her POV.
where you see the feet of Lisa and the killer struggling and then Lisa falls down andalmost looks right at her under the bed.
it's like, you she's dead, she's looking right at her.
It's like part Pride of the 13th, part two, which is Amy Steele under the bed, also parthigh tension, which is one of one of my favorite French horror films that is so incredibly

(44:05):
intense.
But there's that whole scene in the bedroom where
The main character is watching through the slats in the closet door, seeing this womanbeing murdered and just laying there.
And then it's the same shot where she's dead eyes staring her right in the face.
Yeah, it's strong.
is.
It is.
It's that limitation of what you can see is really an effective tool and they use itpretty well.

(44:28):
So the next morning we see a hand open up the air conditioning duct, take the money hiddeninside.
Stephanie comes down to find Tony dead.
and the same symbol painted in blood that was on the wall on the cabin.
It's interesting, because this was a movie that came out, again, was made, I should say,made in 1980, 81.
So you're only a little over a decade from the Charles Manson inspired killings, the Tateand LaBianca murders, where there was something put on the wall ostensibly to sort of

(44:59):
throw off the cops.
In the victim's blood, yeah.
And I'm like, that was clearly in the background of people's minds very strongly at thattime.
Well, and this is also dealing with Satan, which there was a whole Satanic, satanicelement to that too.
that's why.
yeah, this was the satanic panic era at its height, you know, for sure.

(45:19):
Stephanie, she comes down, she goes outside and I got to say, like Stephanie Lee Steele,she is really good.
Like she communicates a sense of
pain when she sees the dead people, but also mixed with that, a relief that she's alive.
Yeah.
Like I actually think there is, there's some, there's some somewhat not professionalacting in this movie, but there are moments that are really strong and this is really one

(45:47):
of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She's great.
And they, and I think part of it too, is that this is a movie as we've talked about a lotthat doesn't do a lot of fast cutting of anything.
And so we're getting a little more time with each character in there.
how these different events are resonating with them, which isn't always the case in thesemovies, these kinds of movies.
That's absolutely, absolutely true.
So we see the younger of the two cops whose name happens to be Ski.

(46:11):
There you go.
He's run into his car.
It looks like he has the package of money in his hand.
So I guess he took it.
And he's also got a knife in his hand.
So I guess he's the killer.
The reveal of that is so nonchalant.
It's not dramatic.
It's just like,
I guess that guy must've killed everybody.
And then Stephanie comes up to him and she's relieved to see that, you know, she'srelieved cause she's a cop.

(46:35):
You know, was like, you know, and then, you know, he stabs her and we, we get this wholespeech about how he really only in the month wanted the money, but the knife made him
commit the murders and the spirit of the woodsman starts talking through him.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
Also this scene right here reminds us that these cops,

(46:55):
they're not prepared at all for winter.
have, they're wearing shirts, the whole film.
have no winter coats or anything like that.
And this is a very snowy movie, which I really appreciate.
Yes.
And to your point earlier about not really using the landscape that much, there is onereally beautiful shot of the snow that I forgot to mention back toward the beginning when

(47:16):
we have, the fishing scene where it's Tony and Stephanie talking and
there's some really pretty shots of them on that sort of out.
Like the rocky outcropping over the lake.
Yeah.
I thought that was, that was really pretty and probably the best use of the nature inthis, but here, and then not only does he do that, but he also rolls up his pants.

(47:42):
So I noticed that it was so weird.
His pants rolled up in a short sleeve shirt, walking through the snow angrily with hisknife, just this internal strife, this conflict with his knife.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he goes down, he goes down to the lake and he throws it back in like it's an evilExcalibur.
Like that's the whole vibe.

(48:04):
And we don't really find out what happens to him.
Like later, at the very end, we get a hand coming out of the water and throwing the knifeinto the tree and it glows red just as it did in the opening.
And then we see some schmuck walk up to it he's about to pull it out of the tree.
So I guess that guy is going to be the next murderer.
I in this area, I guess.

(48:24):
Yeah.
He's like a cowboy.
He's got this big cowboy hat on.
see him grab it.
Then he just cuts away.
But yeah, what happens is so after the cop shows up, he stabs Yeah.
he chases her back into the cabin.
Right.
But but he's first he starts stuttering and yes.
And she's asking him like, why?

(48:44):
What what is this about?
And he starts telling the story and they put this really lame effect on his voice thatmakes it just sound like he's kind of in a
I don't know, a rest stop bathroom or something?
It's kind of echoey maybe?
I didn't want to kill anyone.
I did never want to hurt anyone.
It's just...

(49:05):
There's something inside me that I can't control.
Something that I have to do.

(49:35):
There was never any doubt of what I had to do.
is my mountain.
And people that come to my mountain must perish.
You don't belong here and you have trespassed upon my world.

(50:04):
There must be no one left.
You all must die.
then he just stabs the hell out of her at the top of the steps.
There's no moment of maybe escape from Stephanie.
She runs, they go into the house and she climbs up the stairs and he just starts hackingaway at her.
And then as he moves out of the shot at the bottom of the stairs, you can clearly seeStephanie moving like her stomach is she's breathing and all that.

(50:31):
then he gets outside and this is when he rolls up his pants, starts walking through thesnow, throws the knife in the lake like a frustrated teen and then washes his hands in a
stream.
Which must be freezing.
But then, but this is the point though, and I think you might have missed this part, whenthe other cop comes up and says, George.
that's right.
Yeah.
George, what's wrong?
What's wrong?

(50:52):
You're right.
Yeah.
Doesn't that make him the third man from the beginning though?
I guess it does.
Maybe that, Cause wasn't the other guy's name George at the beginning?
That's right.
So he was their, their partner all along.
He was their partner all along in the beginning.
Well that see now it all fits.
That makes more sense.
didn't catch that, that the other guy called him George.
That's subtle this stuff is handled.

(51:13):
Earlier his like nickname was Ski, which was weird.
I know, I know, know.
But that's how subtle this stuff is handled.
There's literally just one line that sews the whole thing up.
It happens in passing as the experienced cop approaches him after the murder of Stephanieand all this.
And he says, what's going on?
What's wrong?
I missed that.
He called him George.
That's the there's because it only happens once.

(51:35):
There's the, there's the key thing.
my goodness.
And then we get the final title card at the end.
The legend continues exclamation point.
So there's sure.
It's gonna happen.
There's gonna be a Satan's Blade 2.
Satan's Blade 2, you know, you never know.
It could still happen.
You know, in this age of legacy sequels, you know, it's never too late, I suppose, forSatan's Blade.

(51:59):
I'm sure those cabins are still up there at Big Bear, you know.
That lake though, in the lake, the hand that throws it out is a feminine, it's a female'shand that throws It's also like burned and scarred.
Like there's some stuff, it's not like, you know, it's very kind of like, there's
It's been through some stuff.
Like that hand has been through some stuff.

(52:19):
Yeah, it's interesting.
this movie has some pacing problems, particularly in the middle where you just like,honestly, what this movie needed was the killer lurking around in the middle of the movie
to add tension.
Because there's a while where you forget that there's like a killer even at work.
Like it's just like, well, know, hey, we got some stuff to work out.

(52:40):
But it is tonally consistent.
Like there is a consistent.
tone of, you know, overriding, there's a sense of dread about this movie that I reallythought was, that was there throughout.
Again, the pacing was more of an issue, but I thought tonally this movie was really wellput together.

(53:00):
Yeah.
And it's bleak.
Yeah.
I think that the ending matches that tone.
Yes.
Because it ends, there's no bow at the end of it.
It's just a big open-ended thing with this new cowboy, but that's not really what matters.
What matters is
Every single character you met is been murdered.
Yeah.
There's no final girl, final boy.

(53:22):
That's it.
You know, they're done.
And that tonal consistency is something that our second film today struggles with a littlebit.
Little like another independent production.
This was shot just a couple of years later in 1983.
And I think it.
In just those few years, it really illustrates how quickly the slasher genre evolvedduring that boom time of the early 80s.

(53:46):
So first released in 1984, this is The Mutilator.
What do say?
Four days of R &R at the beach.
I'm in.
She's in.
I'm in.
Sounds good to me.
I got a bad feeling about this.

(54:15):
They thought their vacation would be fun.
They were wrong.
Dead wrong.
He's what's called a trophy hunter.
Dad used to tell me that he'd everything but man.

(54:36):
Hey!
I'm coming to get you!

(55:03):
School was hell, but vacation was murder.
The Mutilator.
Hey, I just got another text from Rob.
Found a random knife sticking out of a tree by the lake, felt a little spooked, so wedecided to head over to a house by the beach.
I'm sure everything will be fine.

(55:25):
Don't do it, Rob.
Don't.
The Mutilator was written and produced by Buddy Cooper, and he co-directed it with John S.
Douglas.
This film was shot in 1983 in the area of Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, and itoriginally carried the title Fall Break.
And just those two words, it's just haunting about something we're going to discuss in aminute here.

(55:46):
Yeah.
Fall break.
Yes.
It was released in Raleigh, North Carolina in early 1984 under the fall break title, butby late 84 had been retitled the mutilator, which is the title that it had when it was
released on VHS in 1985.
And the reason why you you mentioned those two words fall break is because the verydistinctive title song fall break.

(56:11):
We'll pack the car with escaping mind Forgetting about classes, leaving books behind Timeto get away Empty cottage sitting on the shore Tourists all left about a month before And
we're gonna have a good time Gonna have a good time Yeah, we're gonna have a good timeWe're going on out A ball break, walking hand in hand in the moonlight

(56:41):
the sweets on it.
I swear we'll never bar.
We're going on a fall break.
Fall break.
Fall break.
Fall break.
it's, it's, God, like it's, it's, it's, it's, of all, it sounds like junior varsity BillyJoel.
Like it's, it, it's not a bad song.

(57:05):
Like it's just so distinctive and it, it, it.
It doesn't match this movie at all.
It feels like it's something entirely different.
Like it's funny because the mutilator is kind of a generic slasher title.
There's like a lot of movies that could be called the mutilator, but fall break isn'texactly a great title either.

(57:26):
Like when I told my wife that she's like, is that a thing?
Like spring break is a thing.
Is fall break a thing?
The school year just started.
Yeah.
They're saying this takes place in September.
what school goes on break one month into not even a month into school.
It's crazy to offer a break to its students.
It's such a weird setup.
But before we get to the, the dumb song though, we got the woman making a cake herebecause there's going to be a preamble that sets up.

(57:55):
my God.
The preamble is, is absolutely like it's, it's surreal.
is a surreal scene.
Like it almost reminds me of some of the flashback stuff in
sleepaway camp.
yeah.
Like it has that quality of like this does not feel real at all.
A little dreamy, yeah.

(58:16):
Yeah, like so we have this mother preparing a birthday cake.
The son is making a sign for his dad's birthday and his sign reads, happy birthday daddy,all cleaned by me!
And he puts it on this gun case that is filled with rifles and he takes one out.

(58:36):
and starts cleaning it.
First of all, kid, you know, don't put the sign on the gun case till you finish cleaningthe gun.
But he's cleaning this rifle and it's huge.
It looks like a like an M1 rifle.
It is like this massive thing.
And it's like he's cleaning it.
He's looking down the barrel of the gun.
It is like it is intense and upsetting because it's like, know, something bad is going tohappen.

(59:01):
This is not going to be he successfully cleaned all of his father's
safely stored weapons and hey, his dad had a great birthday.
That's not how it's going to go.
And a kid holding a gun is unsettling.
Just it really is.
Yeah.
This whole movie is kind of just a parable about gun control in a way.
Cause the dad didn't have them locked up at all.
They're, they're in a case, but the case is just open.

(59:23):
Yeah.
Could have been on the table.
Like, and he's just, he's cleaning it and sure enough, it goes off and, and the mother isshot and killed.
And I'm just like, it's, it is terrifying in that sense.
And then the father comes home just after this happens with a duck on his shoulder.
was going to say he's, he's got like more, he's got like more animals, like dead animals.

(59:46):
He's clearly got more guns.
And he doesn't say anything.
He doesn't call an ambulance.
Like she suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen, which is not good, but like at leastmake
The attempt to try and save her, like maybe you get lucky.
Maybe the bullet didn't hit anything vital or if the ambulance gets there in time.
Instead, he grabs the kid and he hits the kid.

(01:00:08):
grabs the gun and he's clearly intending to shoot the kid.
And then he doesn't.
Instead, he sits on the floor with his wife's body and has a drink.
Well, he props her up.
He props her up against the couch.
props her up.
And then he sits next to her.
globe where the booze is kept.
master criminal globes that has alcohol inside of it, like from a James Bond movie.

(01:00:29):
He takes a sip, pours a little in her mouth, goes and grabs the sign from the gun.
And puts it on the body.
Puts it on her body.
my God.
Like it says to me this guy was nuts before this all ever happened.
This guy, this guy was nuts and...
And then we cut to fall break, break, fall break, fall break, fall break.

(01:00:53):
It's just that this song, it's just, mean, clearly it's like this, they had this song andthey wanted to make a movie with that title and they had the song for it, but it feels
like it should be like a coming of age college kid comedy drop, like on a
young adult version of the big chill.

(01:01:14):
Yeah, yeah.
And it's weird because the first time we hear it is on the jukebox in the bar.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is odd.
It's like, why, what is this about?
But it ends up being the show's like the movie's theme later.
throughout.
It's kind of carried through.
And I bet that just tells you how heartbreaking it must have been for old buddy here, thedirector, when they had to give it an alternate title to release it under the needle.

(01:01:37):
I bet he was just crushed by that because he's like, but the song, the song.
Like it's, well, first of all, you're not going to waste a perfectly good title song, evenif it doesn't carry.
That's a good, you know, it's like, and I both like the song and I'm just like, it isplayed so much.
the song was performed by Peter Yellen and the breakers.

(01:01:57):
and it has got lyrics like when you fall into my arms, I'll break into your heart.
I don't, I don't know what that means.
It's like, hang on.
I just got another text from Rob.
Releasing this movie with the title Fall Break is like calling Friday the 13th SummerLaken.
He's not wrong.

(01:02:18):
Not wrong.
Not wrong, So the film stars Matt Mittler, Ruth Martinez, Bill Hitchcock, Connie Rogers,Francis Rains, and Moe Lampley with Jack Chatham as Big Ed.
And a special appearance by Ben Moore as a member of the beach patrol.
gets the special appearance credit because he was in Herschel Gordon Lewis's 10,000Maniacs.

(01:02:40):
That's I guess that warrants it.
So, yeah, we go we cut to the kid who Ed, who has the same name as father, who is referredto as Big Ed.
And he's hanging out with his friends and they're talking what they're going to do forfall break.
They don't have any plans.
And I still don't think that's a thing.
Like it still doesn't, you know, but like.
And then he gets, you know, the interaction's so odd.

(01:03:03):
Like the one girl, I'm going to set a new high score on video machine.
As if that's like a proper name for a video game.
Like, do you want to play Pac-Man or video machine?
it's so weird.
then, and then there's a phone call at the bar.
Yeah.
How often is this kid at this bar that he gets calls there?

(01:03:24):
dad calls him at the bar.
If my dad ever called me at a bar, I would be in trouble.
You in treatment, Chris, if that was the case.
I mean, honestly.
God.
Big Ed has a beachfront condo and you know, he wants him to close up the condo, which thekid agrees to do.

(01:03:46):
And it seems like the father and the son haven't had a great relationship in the yearssince the shooting and Big Ed has become a big drinker and a big hunter.
And he has spells.
Ed says he has spells.
Yeah.
It's always a good combination is drinking and hunting.
Yeah.
Like it's, you know, it's, but it agrees to do it.
And that group decides why not spend their fall break at the beach house, you know, fourdays of RNR at the beach.

(01:04:10):
That's what they say, but it's September and you're out East.
What are you talking about?
And by the way, we need to set up these other people, especially our good friend, thesweater guy, Ralph.
who is supposed to be the comic relief in this film.
Yes.
The main couple is Ed and Pam, his girlfriend, Pam.
she's the art art, the beach girl.

(01:04:30):
And then there's Ralph and Sue and then Mike and Linda and Mike and Linda, they're,they're kind of the least interesting.
Mike kind of looks like a nuclear man from Superman four, like that's he's blonde andhe's, he's a big dude.
And Ralph wears dockers and he has one of those sweaters tied around his shoulders likethey back.
It's like the, like in revenge of the nerds, the bad guys always had these sweaters tiedaround their shoulders.

(01:04:52):
And he takes great offense to redhead jokes, doesn't have red hair.
He points to his head like, what are you doing?
How offensive you would make this redhead joke.
Points to his head.
Everyone's like, yeah, sorry.
yeah, sorry.
What are you saying?
is brown.
Your hair is brown.
brown.
Yeah.
And again, this is where we get with these characters, these wild tonal shifts.

(01:05:16):
like they all, they all got to pack up the convertible to drive out to the condo by thebeach.
And there's this moment when Ralph is coming out of a building, like the car is by thecurb, the Ralph is coming out of the building and they're waiting for him and he stumbles
into this group of girls and like, he plays it with such like this broad physicality.

(01:05:38):
It's like acting from a silent movie.
It's so weird.
And then of course fall break.
plays in its entirety over the drive out to the beach and the credits.
Which goes on forever.
got, not only that, it starts and you're, driving, there's a lot of driving, like anextended thing.

(01:06:00):
Then they stop at a gas station to buy beer.
And this whole thing plays out at the gas station where they think they're tricking thesepeople into giving them two six packs for the lower price or whatever.
And then these two, clearly local actors.
who were looking at the camera half the time they're talking on screen.
One of them walks up and says, you didn't you didn't fool some more of these dumb collegekids with that two six packs for whatever price.

(01:06:26):
He just smiles.
I sure did.
Like what?
And fucking song cuts back and then you have an entire new sequence adding to this openingcredits on this thing.
It's.
can we mention that route like there's there's a sign that says for the senior discountand Ralph asks if he can get it.
You know, if you can get the senior, well, that's the no, but that's discrimination.

(01:06:47):
I'm a, I'm a, know, a lawyer student.
I'm a legal student.
And I'm like thinking to myself, here's this white kid telling this black guy behind thecounter that he knows what discrimination is.
God.
It's painful.
It's really painful.
And then, and the, just the way that whole thing plays out with them getting the beer andthen going back into this thing with it's not even funny.

(01:07:14):
I don't really know how it pays off there.
It wants to be.
It's trying to be.
this is coming after, like, this is literally like eight minutes into the movie afterwe've seen a kid blow away his mother.
Yeah.
Like it's the, again, the tonal shift is so, it's just so wild.
So they arrive at the condo.
And I will say that I think the condo itself.

(01:07:38):
Like they do a good job.
Like clearly the story was originally conceived of for like a cottage at the beach.
Like that's what it says in the song, a cottage at the beach.
Cause the song tells you the story sort of.
and, but they had a condo and they went with it and it mostly works.
you do get the vibe that it's the off season and there aren't a lot of people around.

(01:07:59):
but also because there's not a lot of space in this condo and the killer is hiding in thegarage.
Most of the time you wonder that they don't hear anything.
Like they don't hear him moving bodies around or anything like that.
It sounds like someone's down in the garage.
Like, let's go check it out.
Like, no, they don't hear a thing.
They do do a good job making the condo feel like it belongs to a psychopath.

(01:08:21):
Like with the way it's decorated, like the, the, general disorder, there's these halfempty bottles of booze.
There's hunting trophies on the wall.
Well, there's a framed picture of a guy that the dad ran over with a boat that they pointto.
They're who's this guy?
And they're like, that's just this guy my dad ran over.
It was an accident, Ed says.
Like, why does he have a framed picture of his bloody mutilated body here?

(01:08:47):
And why do we keep cutting to the swordfish?
There's so much short fish coverage in this room.
There's a giant swordfish on the wall.
Yeah.
There's, there's a Mayan sacrificial mask.
Don't tell us.
Your dad won a Halloween costume contest at the moose lodge.
No, wait.
Dad is a mask with a Mayan rain god, Chok.

(01:09:07):
Dad picked it up on a hunting trip in the Yucatan.
I think he stole it.
You know, the priests were supposed to wear these during ritual sacrifices.
Sacrifices?
Sacrifices.
Tell me they sacrifice lambs and little things like that?
Yeah, little things like that.
No, big things like girls.

(01:09:29):
Victims, young virgins, were shot with arrows or sometimes beheaded.
Take this away from me.
Virgins, huh?
Well, at least we're all safe.
Or are we?
We talked a little bit about this last week about masks in slasher movies, and it'sinteresting that they don't really become as prominent in sort of the Friday the 13th

(01:09:55):
inspired films until a little later in the cycle.
But what's amazing to me here is that they introduce a mask that they say was specificallyused for human sacrifice and they never have the killer put it on.
I'm like, it doesn't even look wearable.
It just looks like it looks like it was like something that like it was made in a kiln inlike in, you know, in a high school.

(01:10:21):
It looks like something you pick up a Pier one and that some soccer mom put on their wall.
Yeah.
But this is where we established the fact
that Ed knows about everything in the universe.
Yeah.
Ed can explain every single thing that's going to be happening from the ocean to, sinkerswhen you're, when you're fishing.

(01:10:42):
there's a sinker that's embedded in the wall, like that, that has a frame around it.
Cause like, apparently big Ed was with his drunk buddies and they threw it the wall andjust left it there and they put a frame around it.
One thing that is missing from, from the wall and they remark on it.
is Big Ed's battle axe.
Yeah.
That's right.
It's a battle axe.

(01:11:03):
And we've seen killers use axes before, but usually they're like the chopping wood varietyrepurposed for murder.
Here, this thing looks like it's out of Conan the Barbarian.
It's like a decorative, it's it's a.
a cosplay ax is what it looks like.
it reminds me it's, it's very expensive acts that you'd get at a rent fair.

(01:11:23):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And it looks like the one that's on the cover of this other slasher kind of low budgetkind of forgotten film called rush week.
And on the front of that, they have the picture of the ax and that's immediately what thisone reminds me of is, that's, is that the same ax from rush week?
What's the odds?
But in there too, is this big fishing hook.
thing that they, so they talk about every single weapon, every single thing that's in theroom is addressed.

(01:11:48):
Ed knows about it all.
Yeah.
All of them.
Yeah.
He knows about it all.
And then one of the girls is really bothered by the fact that the ax is missing and she ispressuring Ed to call the police on this.
Why?
Like someone broke in and stole the ax.
She's not worried about someone using it for murder.
It's like, you know, your dad might've been robbed of his $300 battle ax.

(01:12:11):
bought at the Renaissance Pleasure Fair in the San Gabriel Valley.
Or the clearly established drunk dad may have just put it somewhere else or thrown it in adifferent part of the house.
a drunk.
Or whatever.
He's And he's given to spells.
Yeah, spells.
Why would you think that this is a theft situation that we immediately need to report on?
It's just weird that she's so adamant about that.

(01:12:33):
And he's like, yeah, we'll look at it tomorrow.
But for now, let's unpack the car.
Yeah.
We do get glimpses of the father in an unknown location and he's got that battle axe andhe is having dreams of killing his son.
Well, he's cuddling with the axe.
He's straight up cuddling with the axe.
And we see like in his mind, we see him killing the younger version of Ed.

(01:12:59):
Three different ways.
Yeah.
It's strangle them.
It's strangling and then shooting and then this long drawn out throat slit with that axe.
These all happen like he's just running through fantasies in his mind of his differentways that he could kill this kid.
It's crazy.
It is.
It's it's I mean, there is there is a really demented aspect to this film that is you havea father who wants to murder his son.

(01:13:25):
Like we've seen parents driven to murder before most obviously like the original Fridaythe 13th.
But like Pamela Voorhees action are driven by grief and love of her child.
Here it's like the reverse.
It's like guy wants to murder his own kid.
And I'm like, it's a really extreme thing that to be honest, the movie does not explore onany kind of psychological level.

(01:13:49):
doesn't even touch on.
know.
Well, and you think about it, originally the dad just wanted the son to show up at thehouse by himself.
Right.
So he wasn't hoping that all these other kids would show up there.
Yeah.
He just wanted that.
He wanted his son to close the condo.
He thought the kid would come by as well.
We'll see what happens.
You never know.
But in the meantime, I'm going to sit here and masturbate with his ax and think about waysI can cut your head off and stuff.

(01:14:14):
God.
So the kids, hang out at the condo.
At least they thought to bring a board game, even if it's only Monopoly.
Two of them, Mike and Linda, they go for a walk and they find them this large, tentedpool, which I guess is the condo complex's pool that they put a tent on over for the
winter season.
Because you know what?
It's getting cold and it's nobody's nobody's around.

(01:14:36):
The pool is never established.
It's not like it's seen earlier.
This feels like something that they inserted after the fact because it's nothing is shotin conjunction with any other elements of location or anything like that.
don't see them driving by the big tinted pool.
no.
And we also, by the time we get to this pool thing, there's been plenty of POV shots,heavy breathing POV, lots of shaky camera POV and this discordant

(01:15:03):
synth music that's been going on here and there.
And they're in and out of the garage, a of them.
now, I mean, the, it takes a while for them to get to the swimming pool set, but yeah,there's, we, we come to a realization about the dad and the interim before we even get to
the Yes, before we get to the, we know that the dad, like it's not, there's no, the dad isthe killer.

(01:15:24):
Like they're not, they're not hiding it at all.
There's no, there's no element of whodunit.
You touched on the music and I want to mention it because the music in this movie isfascinating in that there's no one tone.
You're right.
Sometimes it's this discordant modern music.
There's other times where it sounds like it's from a TV drama in the 80s.

(01:15:46):
It's vaguely Saint Elsewhere-esque.
Yeah, that's like when they're walking on the beach.
It cuts to this kind of flute music.
It's a riff.
It's very strange.
And which that is a recurring theme if there is one outside of fall break.

(01:16:07):
If anything, I suppose for a movie that itself is tonally incongruous, the music to betotally incongruous.
I'd like to think that maybe it's working on some meta level that I don't, but I don'tthink so.
Yeah.
Well, and most of the time when you're hearing when there's a scene accompanied by thismusic.
it just abruptly stops and it cuts to the next.

(01:16:29):
There's no fading out.
There's no, there's nothing.
It's just like, dude, and then you're into the next scene, hard cut to inside the house orsomething.
And it happens over and over again.
Yes, it absolutely does.
So Mike and Linda, they decide to go in the pool.
He jokes about how chlorine kills herpes, which I would not joke about if I was goingswimming with a girl.

(01:16:50):
Just, wouldn't, I would, I would avoid the herpes jokes.
And the lights in the pool start going on and off and they are not bothered by that atall.
My instinct would be if I would be like, there might be some electrical problem.
Let's not be in the water for that.
Yeah.
And they just kind of take turns going underwater where one comes up and the other comesdown.

(01:17:12):
Well, they're what they're doing is they're playing they're playing hide and seek.
Yeah.
And so but how do you not see someone else in this small pool?
There it is.
And they're popping up and looking around and going back down.
And then over here, it's kind of, I think of this scene when I think of this, the hot tubscene in madman, which we went into great disgust on a previous episode that there's all

(01:17:36):
this awkward behavior that people just don't do.
here let's play hide and seek and they can't find each other.
They can't find each other.
But then from out of nowhere,
The killer appears underneath Linda in the pool and pulls her down.
Like how did he get in the pool without them seeing or hearing him?

(01:17:57):
He's also good at hide and seek.
And also he has the stealth ability to exit the water with a body on his shoulder withoutmaking a sound.
It's insane.
It is insane that Mike does not see the killer climbing out of the pool with Linda's bodyon his back.
We see it, Mike doesn't see it, it's

(01:18:18):
Complete madness.
The killer then leaves Linda's clothes as breadcrumbs leading to the garage, where heattacks Mike with an outboard motor.
And holy shit, he carves Mike up.
I mean, this might be the most graphic kill we have seen in any movie we've watched forthis series.

(01:18:39):
Holy shit.
And it plays out like it was part of Satan's Blade, because he sits there on his kneesjust going, ugh.
forever as you just see his kind of gory stomach and abdomen that are all ripped open.
And just goes on and on and on.
Like I would figure that the shock of that impact would kind of knock him back.

(01:18:59):
Like as soon as like a little bit of a like, it's like, no, he just stands there.
It's like, my God.
So I will say for this movie, Mueller has some tonal problems and some logic problems, butI will say that it is well paced.
Yeah.
in certainly in contrast to Satan's Blade.
Like the first big kill comes around the 40 minute mark, so it's about halfway through.

(01:19:23):
And they structure it in a smart way so you could split off characters, in particularthose first two characters, in a way that people wouldn't immediately start looking for
them.
They also have Big Ed lurking around.
Like they took the note that I wanted to give to Satan's Blade of like, have a little bitof lurking so you know that there's a killer, you know, kind of

(01:19:45):
There's that sense of menace of a killer.
The rest of the group, they go walk on the beach.
They have an encounter with an affable beach patrol guy before they head back to the condoto play, Justin, the most bizarre game I've ever seen in a motion picture.
So they decide they're going to play a game of blind man's bluff.

(01:20:06):
At the suggestion of Sweater Ralph.
who's like, yes, sweater, a sweater.
Ralph's idea who has yet to crack a funny joke.
The entire runtime of this movie, even though he's supposed to be the comic, really.
not a, not a damn thing.
He says is not a damn thing.
He says is if he had lived, he would have gone on to work for like the Reaganadministration.
You just know it.
You just know it.

(01:20:27):
Now I looked up blind man's bluff.
It is a real party game and it is traditionally played where one person is blindfolded andthey have to find
and touch the other players without being able to see.
And sometimes the blindfolded person has to identify the person that they've touchedwithout, you know, without being able to see them.
But that's not what they do here.
What they play here is like a version of hide and seek.

(01:20:50):
Blind man's bluff.
I don't believe it.
We're going to grope around in the dark.
Would you rather grope in the light?
Get serious.
First, everybody gets a beer.
That's the important part.
Then...
we turn off all the lights.
Whoever is it stays in the house and the rest of us go outside and drink a beer.

(01:21:13):
Then the person playing it hides himself and we all come back in and try to find him.
When we do, we stand or sit or lie down next to him.
Finally, there'll just be one person wandering around the house.

(01:21:33):
trying to find everybody else.
like great fun.
You'll see.
You'll see.
And Sue, she hides in the kitchen, like behind, like she stands behind the kitchen tableand like she opens the top of this cooler, but she's of just standing in plain view.
Like what, that's not hiding.

(01:21:53):
Like, and then it was at this point, it was at this point I noticed perhaps the mostdisturbing thing in this film.
I mean, genuinely upsetting.
the refrigerator.
God.
Did you see that refrigerator?
It is covered in rust.
literally any food inside in that, that thing will give you tetanus.

(01:22:15):
It is, it was, I was, I was shook.
Like it was really disturbing.
Yeah.
It's disgusting.
So Sue's hiding and the others are trying to find her.
like, okay, I get it.
Maybe they have to keep their eyes closed and just find her by touch.
I'm like, well,
First of all, make sure you put the knickknacks away because they're going to be knockingshit over.
like that.

(01:22:36):
OK, I get if that's how it is, I get why she could just stand there in plain view.
But like they're walking around and they all have their eyes open.
I can see their eyes are open.
What kind of game is this?
The writers had literally no idea what hide and seek is.
They had no idea what Blinds Man Bluff was.

(01:22:57):
They just, how did they, why do they even employ these concepts in a movie where they soclearly exhibit their lack of understanding of it?
It is, is, it is insane.
The dad is the best.
The dad is the best at hide and seek because he's hiding out and seeking the whole timeand they hardly, I mean, it doesn't really find him to the end.
Right.
Well, here's the funny thing is like, so while this is going on, while this game is goingon, big ed encounters that beach patrol officer outside the condo.

(01:23:23):
He, he cuts that guy's head clean off.
And again, I appreciate the way this movie paces the kills.
Like they introduce the one authority figure in the area, because like the police stationsback on the mainland and then they give that gives them time for the killer like to to
kill him while the rest of the group is in the house and is still not realized they're ina horror movie.

(01:23:46):
But it's it's a puzzling death because in the first.
yeah.
The first thing isn't it's not just like a beheading.
The first thing he does, they take a board.
and kind of shove it into the side of his face.
And so he's sitting there with his giant board that's very clearly just in his cheek orsomething.
And then the head gets lopped off.
It's like, so what was the thing with the board?

(01:24:06):
didn't, that wouldn't have even killed him.
What was the board about?
It was like they prepped the board thing and they were like, well, we're not going to useit.
We'll use it with the, with the cop.
We'll use it with the beach patrol.
Ben Moore can take the board.
He's the special guest.
It's like a plank from a palette that's just jammed in this guy's cheek.
It's so, so weird.
God.
So.
After the beach patrolman's killed, the killer comes into the house.

(01:24:27):
Now I'm thinking to myself, okay, this is an interesting idea because they're playing hideand seek and they think they're hiding from their friends, but they're actually hiding
from the killer.
That's an interesting setup.
But the problem here is that they're hiding in plain sight.
Sue is standing behind the kitchen table.

(01:24:49):
The killer comes into the kitchen and apparently he's playing too because
Why is he pretending he can't see her?
He's in the room.
It is, is, I, I, my God, it is, is bananas.
I just, don't understand anything.
I don't understand anything.
I don't understand this game.
I don't understand who's playing it.
He's stealth.

(01:25:09):
He can get in and out of the pool silently with bodies on his shoulders.
He can stand in the room and not be seen.
This has more supernatural element to it than Satan's blade did.
And that's about a magic lake knife.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So Big Ed leaves, they finish the game and they all go to bed and Sue realizes that Mikeand Linda haven't come back and they can't walk up the house without walking them out.

(01:25:35):
So she sends Ralph out to find them with the promise of sex when he gets back.
Like, which prompts him to get up and get dressed at comically super speed.
Like it's like he's going, like it's like the film has been sped up and again, it's thatinconsistent tone.
So Ralph, of course, he encounters Big Ed in the garage and he's killed with what I thinkis a pitchfork.

(01:25:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then it's not long before Sue goes out to see where Ed is.
And at the same time, Pam, she thinks she hears something at long last, she thinks shehears something and wakes up.
so she's like...
She starts to go around the house, you know, she starts to get bad, bad vibes.
She rouses Ed who's sleeping fully clothed for some reason, like literally like in hisjeans and flannel shirt.

(01:26:25):
And I'm like, I don't know.
don't, boy, I don't know.
And then Sue is she's looking for Ralph in her nightgown.
Big Ed is still lurking around.
Eventually they all meet up and Pam decides they're getting the hell out of there, whichI'm like, okay, sure.
But like,
You don't know you're in a horror movie yet.
You're just having some bad vibes and you're going to leave three of your friends just badfriend, bad friends.

(01:26:47):
So Sue reasonably says that they can't leave there without Ralph.
And again, it's, it's, there's no kid.
They just know that there's a killer around.
and Sue convinces them to take one last look around.
And of course, immediately runs into big, immediately, which leads to one of the mostdisturbing killings I've ever seen in a slasher movie.
my God.

(01:27:09):
They've established that big hook in the house.
Like we've drawn attention to it.
And Ed, he takes Sue, he puts her on the workbench and that hook goes right through hergroin and up through her stomach.
And comes out.
It's like she's a worm on a fishing hook.
Yeah.
And I mean, this movie struggled with getting an R rating.

(01:27:31):
Like a lot of stuff was cut and I understand why it has now been released in its uncutversion, but holy shit.
Like this movie,
The difference between in the like two or three years between the time Satan's Blade wasfilmed and the time this was filmed, it just shows you how more graphic and elaborate the
kills were.

(01:27:51):
It was like this arms race of like graphic elaborate kills.
It's like, it's kind of incredible.
was a time period where the practical effects world was exploding and you had Carpenter'sThe Thing, which really, while it wasn't a commercial success, it
it issued a challenge to all films in its wake when it came to special effects.

(01:28:14):
And this is when Fangoria was firing on all cylinders and it was making icons out of TomSavini and these other guys who were doing this stuff, which had really outside of Lon
Chaney senior never happened before in cinema history, where they became household names.
And so this was very much the beginning of the keeping up with the Jones's era when itcame to horror films, trying to one up not only on the gore,

(01:28:39):
but on unusual kills, unusual implements that haven't been seen yet.
And this movie tries to take a few of those and put them into play.
And it does.
The kills, the makeup effects in this movie are really good.
Those are the things this movie does really well.
So Ed and Pam, they soon, they find their way to the garage.

(01:29:01):
We have the classic finding the bodies sequence where, my god.
And then Ed hides Pam in a closet and he finally comes face to face with his father.
And I have to be honest, this is where the movie doesn't take the opportunity to mine thatconfrontation for drama.

(01:29:22):
Like that's his dad.
Yeah.
And he has discovered that his dad has killed all of his friends and wants to kill himnow.
That is, there's a lot of dramatic meat there.
And this movie uses none of it.
Like he could have been going up against any sle- He could have been going up against theSatan's Blade guy.
Yeah.

(01:29:42):
I think that this really is the result of Matt Milt-Mittler, who played Ed Jr.
It's his limitations as an actor because no one's good in this.
We're talking in the last film, like the Gaho played Stephanie, was very good.
Yes.
In this one, there really isn't a standout in terms of a good actor, but especially bad.

(01:30:03):
are Ed and Ralph, which is Matt Mittler and Bill Hitchcock.
mean, they're, it's painfully aware that these are inexperienced actors.
And I think that if it was in the hands of a more seasoned actor or someone who hadstudied differently than what this Matt Mittler did, there could have been a little more
weight put to this reveal and the interaction and then all that happens after that.

(01:30:26):
But there is something to be said about a limitation among actors too.
And that is true, that absolutely.
Ed quickly gets the big Ed, should say, quickly gets the better of his son.
And it's up to Pam to save them both, like to save both her and him.
She takes one those little metal things, the little fishing anchor that was embedded inthe wall and she, know, which they set up.

(01:30:49):
That's a nice setup.
And she, you know, she throws it and, and, you know, it's big Ed and takes out one of hiseyes.
So he's now lost his depth perception.
So then she stabs him.
She's got this little knife.
She, she gets close.
She's able to stab him with it.
And, and then they try and get away in the car, which they establish sometimes has troublestarting.
Yeah.
know, which, early on that's established.

(01:31:11):
Yes.
Yes.
And then of course, you know, they're, trying to get the car.
The big ed is not dead.
He jumps on top of the car.
This is why the car was a convertible in the beginning and driving to the, this place inthe middle of September or whatever.
On the customary fall break trip with the top down, you always want a convertible on thefall break, freezing their asses off.
get, they get there.

(01:31:31):
And then there's a whole scene earlier where the dad big ed is watching one of the galscome out and put the top up.
which is another scene that plays out in real time.
Which it's not a fast process on these old cars to hit that button and have it just popup.
we're watching it slowly.
No, it's not like Knight Rider when he became a convertible.
Like it's, hit the C button and then it pops, know, it's no, it takes time.

(01:31:55):
It's a thing.
It cuts.
keeps cutting back and forth between Big Ed in the garage and then out to the car, Big Edin the garage, out to the car.
Finally the thing is up.
So, but it all pays off when Big Ed can reach through that.
Through the thing.
Yes.
And get his hands in.
Yes, he does.
But she's got the cigarette lighter today.
You wouldn't have that in the car.
wouldn't be a thing.

(01:32:16):
And then she like rams Big Ed into this concrete wall.
It's like this random concrete wall that doesn't seem to be next to anything.
And she rams him into it and literally cuts him in half.
And I'm like, holy shit.
And it looks great.
Like I will say that.
It looks amazing.
then the cops show up around this point and Big Ed.

(01:32:37):
despite being literally bisected, manages to go full Darth Maul and chop off a cop's legwith his battle ax before he dies.
He's laughing while he dies.
One last swing.
my God.
And then, then Ed and Pam are shown in the hospital recovering, but that dude has gotyears of therapy ahead.

(01:32:57):
I'll just say that.
And the audience does too.
Because what's coming next, Chris?
Well, you know, we, well, first of all,
Wait, for one final incongruous moment, we end the film with Fall Break.
Over a series of bloopers and outtakes like it's Smokey and the Bandit Part 2.

(01:33:21):
Which shows you how out of touch they were with what they were making here.
It's so weird to have this jolly little jingle playing over death scenes and people- mygod.
Whatever.
I so each actor is getting their own scene with their name on it.
it's yeah.
So I mean, the pacing is great.
I'll give it that the makeup effects are first class.

(01:33:44):
the tone is all over the map and the acting.
Not great.
But I get why it's become popular, like revival houses and for like midnight show.
I get that.
Like that's how I first saw it here in L.A.
was, you know, because it's it does have that.
There's a certain thing, but like again, the any psychological implications of the factthat Ed's dad is a serial killer, like nothing.

(01:34:10):
And if you say, well, it's not that kind of movie.
There is more depth in the 10 minutes or so that Betsy Palmer is on screen in the originalFriday the 13th than this entire movie.
So it's not that it can't be done.
They just don't do it.
Yeah.
And you know, what's incredible about this too.
So Buddy Cooper really hasn't done much.
No, no.

(01:34:31):
He's been hanging his hat on the, on the hook that says mutilator for many, many years fordecades.
And he did a social fundraising campaign a few years ago for mutilator two, is nowcomplete and has had some screenings.
And I'll read to you about what mutilator two is.
Have you seen the trailer for mutilator two?

(01:34:53):
I haven't.
I have.
It is amazing.
Go ahead.
Read the, read the, I want to, I want to hear the, the.
Yeah, here's here's from someone who saw it at a screening somewhere.
It says Cooper has invited the original cast back to the 1984 filming location.
So they go to the same, the same place to attend the wrap party for a remake to his film.

(01:35:13):
So we're also met.
So, So it's the movie.
It's like stab and scream.
Like the mutilator was the movie they made back in the eighties and now they're, my God.
And this reviewer says, I think a misguided.
They hear it.
Sadly, we don't get a cover or throwback to fall break song.
What?
So they were a little disappointed that it wasn't.
I'm disappointed.

(01:35:34):
How do you not use that again?
But it says at times, Mutilator 2 plays like a black comedy poking fun at slashers in thegenre.
But it's clear everyone hears in on the joke.
There's a possible murder on the set of what's happening here of this movie.
So it's kind of taking place in the universe of the making of the mutilator.

(01:35:55):
Which is crazy.
But in this one, we got fish hooks, harpoon guns, swordfish ornaments.
Swordfish is finally brought into play in this one.
And then more, more effects.
Finally brought it to play.
Well, cause they kept showing it in this movie, never had anyone with it.
No, it's check off swordfish, but it doesn't get fired.

(01:36:18):
Like it's yeah.
You have to wait for the later.
It's funny cause we always.
you know, talk about like, what if they made the legacy sequel to this obscure movie here?
They actually did.
Yeah.
Like it's so, my God.
I have to see it though.
have to.
yeah.
for sure.
we'll be doing, get me another mutilator at some point.
My God.
We'll do it.

(01:36:40):
All the films inspired by buddy Cooper's mutilator.
God.
wait.
I got another text from Rob having a great time here at the condo.
October is actually the perfect beach weather.
been hearing some strange noises in the garage, including what sounded like an outboardmotor.
Going to go check it out, be right back.

(01:37:01):
So I'm sure he'll be fine.
It's interesting because most of the films we talked about in this series, with theobvious exception of Shigala, have been from the United States.
Well, next week we're going to look to two European takes on the Fry the 13th slashermodel, an Italian film called Body Count and from Spain, Edge of the Axe.

(01:37:23):
So this hopefully he will, he will survive going down to the garage and we'll be back for,for those two.
Cause it's going to be an interesting one.
Justin, this was, this was terrific.
This was terrific.
Thank you so much.
So much fun.
These are great.
And thank you everybody.
Thank you for listening.
We are your host, Chris Iannicone and Justin Beam.
If you've enjoyed the show, please consider subscribing and following us on Twitter,Instagram threads and blue sky at get me another pod.

(01:37:49):
In addition, check out the Justin Beam Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
And if you like the show, tell your friends about it.
Tell your enemies about it.
Tell all the folks still hanging around your condo at the beach during the off seasonabout it.
And join us next time as we continue to explore what happens when Hollywood says, get meenough.

(01:38:11):
I can hardly wait to head for the dunes Spread down a blanket, humming sweet love tunesfrom yesteryear Not a soul inside girl, heaven blessed Bring a radio, a cooler and a case
of the best and we'll disappear And later on maybe, who knows maybe Swim in the surf andoff birthday clothes and we're gonna have a good time Gonna have a good

(01:38:50):
Sweet soul I swear we're going on
I'll break into your heart