Friday the 13th Ep. 08 - Body Count / Edge of the Axe

It’s time for a European vacation with two films from across the pond that put their unique spin on the American slasher movie trend:

BODY COUNT (1986) from famed Italian director Ruggero Deodato and Spanish slasher EDGE OF THE AXE (1988) directed by José Ramón Larraz.

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 Iannico and with me are my co-host Rob Lemorgis, who has successfullyreturned from his vacation.
That's true.
Nothing unusual.

(00:31):
I certainly did not pick up any kinds of cursed knives that have since possessed me.
that's good.
You want to avoid the curse knives for sure.
But I did have a revelation while I was out there.
yeah.
Chris, I think you ought to consider moving to New York and doing some modeling.
Really?
Yeah.

(00:51):
that's right.
How about you go get us a couple of beers?
I'm going to stay in the car.
That's right.
I got, I took me a second, but I did get it.
Yes.
I can lay it on thick when needed.
Don't worry.
And when it's not needed.
Yeah.
And also with us this week is Justin beam.

(01:13):
that gentleman was excited to head back to the forest once again for another adventure insilliness and blood.
I'm so excited.
This is episode eight in our Get Me Other Friday the 13th series.
And while Rob has returned from his vacation, we are all taking a bit of a vacationtogether.
A European vacation that is.

(01:36):
Because this week we'll be looking at two European films that followed the generally veryAmerican slasher movie formula.
So first up today from Italy is 1986's
Body count.
Within the seclusion of a forest lies the secret of a terror unimagined.

(02:00):
I don't know whether you'd like it though.
It's right in middle of nowhere.
Where the young come to play and to party.
I guarantee you this is gonna be a weekend you'll never forget.
Campers it's like a minefield.
What'd you set all these traps around the house for because I'm gonna get him By the way,there's

(02:28):
A lot of kids around here.
Anything happens to them, I'm gonna hold you responsible.
See how you do it, Tracy?
I missed.
You know, you don't have to swallow, Sissy.
In these woods, fresh air can be bad for your health.
This was no accident, Tell us about the murder, then.

(03:04):
who can save those kids.
If there weren't an orgy in there, would I do this?
you
you

(03:25):
Stay away!
Come any closer!
Run!
mathematics of murder and menace where the hills are alive with the sound of screamingbody count.

(03:56):
Okay, guys, we've watched a lot of movies over the course of this podcast and maybe withthe notable exception of Jake Speed from our Get Me Another Indiana Jones series.
I don't know if I've been quite as flummoxed by a movie as Body Count.
This is one that's actually, it's very hard to find or it was for a long time.

(04:18):
I don't think it's ever had a proper video release beyond VHS.
No, I don't think so.
And it's not like it's unknown people.
mean, you'll get into it.
The names behind it.
mean, notable composer, notable director and everything like that.
Notable star, certainly from the, from genre realms.
But this thing has flown so far under the radar for a long time.

(04:38):
And I think that flummoxing has a lot to do with it, Chris.
my God.
Yeah, Body Count, which was released in Italy under the title Camping del Terrore, and itwas also released in Denmark under the title Shaman, we'll get into that.
It was directed by Rogero D'Addato, who is of course most famous for the 1980 filmCannibal Holocaust.

(05:01):
But he also directed a film we talked about in our Get Me Another Conan series, TheBarbarian.
with the Barbian bros.
my goodness.
Which was just around the same time.
That was basically around the same time as Body Count.
totally.
Yeah.
He's a relatively notorious filmmaker too for Cannibal Holocaust.
Yes.
For a lot of reasons in that film.

(05:23):
And it kind of predates the Blair Witch where the word on the street was that what youwere about to see was real.
Right.
And that drew people into the theater.
And frankly, sadly, as an animal lover, some of it was.
Yes, unfortunately, yes.
The film was originally gonna be directed by Alessandro Capone, but Diodato took the reinsmid-production and the script was rewritten by Dardano Cecchetti, who was the writer of

(05:47):
movies such as Bay of Blood, Cat Anine Tales, and 1990 The Bronx Warriors, which we lovedduring our Mad Max series.
Unquestionably, Italian gialla movies, such as the ones we talked about in our Bird withthe Crystal Plumage series, were a major influence on the American slasher film.
And here we have what you might call like a cultural feedback loop with the Italian takeon the American slasher.

(06:14):
But there are certainly a number of very Italian and sometimes very giallo touchesthroughout this film that in some cases made me question my understanding of the entire
genre and perhaps cinema itself.
Yeah.
Well, both, movies today, even the Spanish one have their giallo influences, I think.
For sure.

(06:34):
But.
Before we get into all of the befuddling aspects, just, I realized one thing about thismovie that told me a lot about cinema.
And that is, and I think you all will know the particular shot that I'm referring to inthis film.
If, my life was on the line and the person who held my life in their hands told me I needan amazing shot of a hallway, a static

(07:05):
The camera's not, the camera can't move, but this better be a good enough shot of ahallway that I won't kill you.
That job is going to an Italian genre director in the seventies and eighties.
There's no question.
And let me tell you, body count delivers on the hallway shots that would just be fluff insomeone else's movie.

(07:26):
Diodato, the visuals in this thing, they're not always as flashy as like, you know, anearlier stylistic, you know, jolly.
film because let's face it, a giallo post slasher, if you're in Europe means everyone'skind of a crazy idiot and there's no style.
Those are the major differences that I see.
Maybe so, maybe so.

(07:48):
But these hallway shots are to die for.
They are.
They really are.
And that, and that, hunting cabin that they keep going back to that almost it's like thebarn in Friday the 13th, part three, people keep going in and bad stuff happens.
So the film, stars a number of American actors, including Bruce Penhall, David Hess ofLast House on the Left fame, as well as Mimsy Farmer, who we previously saw in Four Flies

(08:14):
on Grey Velvet, and prolific actor and Russ Meyer favorite, Charles Napier as the sheriff.
We also have an appearance by Ivan Rassimov, who appeared in a number of the films wediscussed in our Giallo series in a,
a strange role that almost feels like it's out of a different movie.

(08:35):
Well, you want to talk about the characters for one second here.
I'm going to a little peek behind the curtain here.
I'm going to very quickly.
I often make notes about, you know, characters with a little descriptor so I can rememberwhat's going on.
Well, that's because you're a professional, Rob.
I know that I'm nothing if not professional.
But I'm going to quickly run through the notes on these characters.

(08:56):
And I think it'll give our listeners some idea of.
The terror of body count.
We have Dave Callaway, motorcycle jerk.
Julia Richie owns a camp and Ben's mom.
Robert Richie also owns camp, Ben's dad.
And now we have Ben Richie, army dude, son of the camp owners.

(09:20):
Carol, red vest with Tony.
Tony, sunglasses greaser guy.
Sid.
Green Jacket funny guy, Tracy, blonde lady, big hair, Dr.
Olsen, fisherman asshole, Sharon, brunette in truck, Scott, he'll make a man out of you,and Charlie, the sheriff cop who's with Julia.

(09:42):
And let me tell you, that's it.
That's what I got.
That's my character breakdown.
Just send it out to the casting director right now.
No, you got it.
You got those characters cold.
is amazing.
my goodness.
you nailed it.
Yeah.
There's no question.
It's kind of like, it's back to Italians.
It's kind of like the troll to approach of like, well, this is surely how Americans act.

(10:07):
This is what they do and what they say.
I like girls.
Things like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're just, it's a playbook.
That's more of a CliffsNotes on American culture, I'd say.
But honestly, some of their observations feel like they're not people made by people fromanother country.
They're made by people from another planet.
It's some of the little, well,
We'll get into it.

(10:28):
It's amazing.
What I love is that the center of gravity of the Italian POV is so heavy in this film thateven actual Americans don't behave like Americans in this movie.
There's no correction happening at all.
Before we get much further, we should mention the terrific synth score from Goblin'sClaudio Simonetti.

(10:53):
And it's one of the things that gives this movie a kind of giallo echo, even if it isfollowing the more American slasher film formula.
And the music is somewhat claustrophobic too.
think that really helps.
the, you'll get into the scenery and everything in this.
It all plays into, there are things that work in this movie.

(11:14):
There are some things that work in this movie for sure.
There are.
no.
Yeah.
There definitely are.
And this score I think is the only one.
It's not just riffing on Harry Manfredini a little bit, but specifically Disco Manfredinifrom Friday Three.
It really is.
Yeah.
But he just adds some Indian drum beats and I made air quotes there, if you will.

(11:38):
Yeah.
So I want to talk about this opening sequence because this opening sequence, it did anumber on me because it really was not
what I expected was happening.
So we open in this hub of modern architecture that is Colorado.

(11:59):
Actually, it's not Colorado.
The film was shot in Italy, specifically in the Bruzi region.
And there's some very distinct modern style architecture that doesn't feel Colorado atall, including this gym where this basketball game is going on.
And it's like, it's a beautiful gym, but I'm like, it feels off right from the beginning,right from the start.
And one of the players, he's not very focused.

(12:20):
He's on the court and the coach, he sends him over to the doctor.
And thank goodness that doctor has a stethoscope in his back pocket at the game.
So, you know, he's a doctor.
He carries that stethoscope everywhere.
And so the player has a conversation with his girlfriend.
At this point, I wasn't really picking up names and he's upset that she was talking tosome guy, but the girlfriend looks like the Italian version of Ferris Bueller's sister.

(12:45):
Totally.
She's got the same kind of generally pissed off look and don't get me wrong.
It's a good look.
then Dr.
Stethoscope's daughter Rose shows up, one of the number of people in this movie withabsolutely fantastic hair.
And she asks her father's permission to go up to this campground with Tom, who I think wasthe guy that Ferris Bueller's Italian sister was talking to.

(13:07):
And her dad doesn't like Tom and he warns that the woods are dangerous, which they are.
Yeah, though I have to say dad's completely wrong about Tom.
He winds up being kind of a stand up guy.
He does doesn't wind up working, but Tom was a keeper.
That's all I'm saying.
Yeah.
Then we cut to Robert and Julie Richie.
They are the characters played by David Hess and Mimsy Farmer and he's American and youknow, he's American because he's watching football and he's very angry about the game and

(13:37):
he's also holding a football just in case you didn't get it.
Now for our European listeners.
That part's dead accurate.
will say.
This is American football, not association football.
But the guy being just unreasonably irate over the game.
He's angry about % real.
So angry.

(13:58):
So angry.
And they seem to live in some kind of store that's also their home.
I didn't get it at first, but there's a big Schlitz sign inside.
Cause nothing says America more than Schlitz.
It's the hub of the campground.
So it's like, it's where people would go to socialize and have a few Schlitz's and hangout talking about surely not getting murdered and stuff.

(14:21):
Surely not getting murdered.
No.
Yeah.
And then I got that as it went along.
But at first I was just like, that is a weird way to decorate your house.
Like that is unusual.
and at this point, his wife, Julie,
starts talking almost unprompted about the fact that the campground that they run wasbuilt on an Indian burial ground.

(14:43):
You know what she says?
This used to be an Indian burial ground.
She says it's haunted and that a dog was clawed to death by the old shaman.
You know about it?
It's just a legend.
Well, me.
some medicine man put a curse on his tribe.
Said he was going to keep the spirits prisoner here.
And David Hess is so blasé about all this.

(15:06):
yeah, some medicine man put a curse on it.
But he's so, like, disconnected from it.
It's really curious.
So then they have a kid, this couple, they have a kid who has lost his teddy bear.
And he says that he's lost his teddy bear in such a...
creepy way you'd think he was from the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks.

(15:34):
What's the matter?
I lost my teddy bear.
Your mom is looking for you.
And meanwhile, Tom and Rose, they're in often a tent having sex and they immediately starttalking about getting married, which is something that teenagers often do.

(15:56):
And they even discuss their differing religious backgrounds.
She's Jewish.
He's Presbyterian.
Isn't America colorful?
Isn't America colorful?
Exactly.
She leaves the tent.
get a few quick flashes of a rocking chair and some other couple having sex.
And Rose is carrying a small stuffed bear.
And I...

(16:17):
Okay, this bear.
Is this the teddy bear that the weird kid lost?
Because when you say teddy bear, I think of something bigger, but maybe, who knows, thisbizarro version of America through an Italian lens.
But that teddy bear is going to come up and, guys, I still don't know what it means.
Yeah, it means that it looked cool.
Hey, we have a bear.

(16:37):
Yeah.
We got a bear.
So, Rose comes upon this police car parked in the middle of the woods and the lights areflashing.
And she encounters a figure in like an old man mask with glowing red eyes.
And she's freaked out, understandably so.
So she gets in the police car and immediately, like faster than in Seralia, like thekiller's in the back seat and jabbing the knife through the seat.

(17:02):
Like how did that killer get in there that fast?
It's really, really amazing.
Could it be related to the burial ground?
And the medicine man's curse and the Schlitz?
I am not sure if there's actually supernatural stuff happening in this movie or if it'sjust, it's, there's a weird line that walks.

(17:22):
like, I'm just not sure.
Like I've watched the whole movie.
Frankly, I've watched the whole movie like twice and I'm still not sure.
I'm rock solid when we get to the end.
I'm rock solid in my beliefs.
I'm very curious because I am.
Like the rest of my country, Chris, I have chosen my path and no amount of evidence isgoing to convince me of changing my opinion on this one.

(17:50):
So, so he, the killer, this, this masked killer, he tax her in the car, she gets out andshe runs, her hand gets wounded and a very, a very convincing, makeup effect.
And, Tom hears this and he starts calling out for her.
He doesn't just leave her to, you know, to die.
He's as you pointed out, Rob, he's a standup guy.
So she hides in this downed tree stump and the knife starts stabbing in the tree stumpfrom above.

(18:15):
And then Tom finds her and he turns her over, but it's the masked figure and Tom's stabbedand killed and we see her body nearby.
So we know that the killer got her.
All of this happens very, very quickly, is a little confusing.
And then the creepy kid pops up from on top of this tree stump looking down on them.
And I'm really wondering, I don't know what is going on.

(18:38):
What's with the kid?
I swear to God, I don't know.
This is actually something I've thought about.
I'm going to get serious, although I will get totally not serious later on as well.
But comparing it to the original Friday the 13th, which also has as many of these slasherAmerican films do, you have the opening sequence of the past inciting incident or inciting

(19:00):
murder, whatever, right?
Right.
And then in this case, we flash 15 years later, but this
You compare the two sequences.
Number one, I did not bother.
I don't know if this opening is five minutes or eight minutes, but it's not two minutes.
I can tell you that it's 10 minutes, 10 minutes, and it's many different scenes.
And the thing about the Friday opening, again, a lot of people look down on a Friday the13th movie, but you look at it you go, that opening is it's like a true American cold open

(19:32):
to either or teaser, whatever you want to call it to like a TV show or a movie.
It's positively Aristotelian, right?
Right.
A single time, a single place.
You actually, think in that one, really you could say there are three real characters.
You have other characters singing, but you have the couple that goes off and then theunseen killer.
Absolutely.
And what happens is extremely clear.

(19:53):
we don't what the context and why that's the mystery, but we know exactly what happened.
Right?
Right.
And it's the, we're going to the future and we know we're probably in that area.
So that's what's creating all of the tension dramatically.
Yes.
In this movie, without bogging down too much in the details, you have multiple scenes,multiple locations.

(20:16):
You have whole characters who frankly, even if they show up later in this movie, do notneed to be in the beginning.
Correct.
You don't need to see her asking her dad's permission to go to the woods.
You don't need that basketball game.
The basketball game, Italian Ferris Bueller's sister.
Like it's, you don't need any of it.
They should have just gone straight to the woods.

(20:37):
Maybe you have the couple who's, you know, motel campground area it is or not.
You could see the kid or not, but in any event, I won't belabor the point cause I alreadyhave, but this is, it's just too much.
It's too unfocused.
And so,
it leaves a podcast host and co-host feeling a little befuddled.

(20:59):
you kind of you went over it very quickly.
But then after this sequence, we cut 15 years later.
Like it was I've never been so jarred by a time jump in a movie because at this point Ididn't realize like Friday the 13th, that opening sequence, it's very clear very quickly
that we are in the past, that this is the the and as you say, because it is

(21:23):
has a unity of time and location and character.
Here, I thought I was in the present of the movie, in part because everybody looks likeit's the 1980s.
So I'm like, wait, is this supposed to be 1971 or was it 1986 and they've jumped to 2001?
We eventually find out it's the former, but it really was like, I didn't know where I was.

(21:47):
I didn't know what was happening.
I've never been so confused.
So that opening, it did a number on me, guys.
Then we cut to a Winnebago.
And everything's all right.
my god, Winnebago.
This whole new group of characters driving in a Winnebago.

(22:08):
And again,
These are the biggest bunch of assholes, I swear to God.
I mean, I don't know if this is what like the Italian perception of what they thinkAmerican kids talk like.
Of course it is.
I swear to God I jump out of a moving RV to get away from them.
We've done 30 miles since we turned off.
Are you sure this is...

(22:29):
Will you shut up a minute?
You sure this is the right road?
Tony, let me navigate.
Wilderness weekend.
I bet it snows.
This isn't good for my ovaries, Ever since that trip to the abortion clinic, yourreproductive system has been very weak.
I noticed you stole one of my chocolate bars, so I wouldn't notice that, you thievinglittle witch.

(22:51):
I sure did, Sidney.
Is that all Don't call me Sidney.
Nobody calls me Sidney except my mother and Oral Roberts.
No.
Mostly I think about Frank Sinatra and Novak.
I need the chocolate for my energy.
Energy for what, Sid?
Energy for making you my own, my little mix of love.
No way.
As hard as that I'll never get.
Boring.

(23:12):
Life doesn't agree with you.
Nobody calls me Sidney except my mom and Oral Roberts?
What does that mean?
It is our second Winnebago film of this series though.
It is.
Because Just Before Dawn also has a Winnebago in it.
Indeed, indeed.
There's a common Winnebago thread as well as the many, many vans from the late 70s, early80s period.

(23:36):
this movie, it reminds me of a film we did from our Halloween series, Slaughter High.
Yes.
Which was made in the UK but set in the US.
And there were a bunch of little details that felt kind of off.
this movie is like that to the nth degree.
It's like you have these little sayings, like later in the film, someone rather than usingthe phrase, it's a free country, you'd hear people say that in America all the time, it's

(24:05):
a free country.
Someone says, well, you know, we're in a democratic country.
Body count is like a feature film expression of the scene in Inglourious Basterds.
where Michael Fassbender holds up the wrong three fingers.
That's my big one.

(24:25):
That's my big insight.
Dude, you did it too early.
We have so much of this movie left.
no.
god.
The long road.
If body count has taught me anything, it's that you don't state it clearly.
You wait as late as possible and then kind of half do it.

(24:46):
Yeah.
and in meanwhile, there's another group of kids who seem a little less obnoxious, butthey're really into dirt bikes because it's an Italian movie.
So, you know, as we learned from our Giallo series, I guess dirt biking is really big upthere.
Yeah.
You got to your motocross, man.
It's Italy for Colorado, which doesn't look at all like Colorado, which is interestingbecause it actually looks very much like New Hampshire or Vermont.

(25:11):
Like, and I don't know why they didn't just set it there.
It's not like
Colorado is somehow intrinsic to the story.
I think, I just assumed that they had the Colorado flag in their kit.
So it had to be set there.
That's it, that's it.
As well as I noticed on the camp, they have an American flag flying outside the camp.

(25:31):
Yes.
But it's the 48 star version.
They had not updated their flag since the late fifties.
So it's before Alaska and Hawaii.
they don't recognize Alaska and Hawaii.
It's a bridge too far.
So the kids in the Winnebago, they pick up a guy in an army uniform who's hitchhiking.

(25:52):
and and he is his bet.
His name is Ben and he is the creepy kid all grown up.
Admittedly, he is less creepy at this point, like he's just he seems perfectly normal, buthe's wearing an army uniform.
So, you know, he's an American soldier.
Did you catch the J and B bottle?
Yeah.
missed it.

(26:13):
In the Winnebago.
Winnebago's stopping.
Yeah.
It's Sydney catches the very prominent J and B bar.
Again, echoes of Giallo.
But you, forgot the most important characteristic of Ben though, when he shows up.
please.
It's that he's hunky in a uniform because the ladies definitely talk about that.
The ladies talk about him and it's so, it's, it's so weird.

(26:34):
the girl puts on his, his army cap.
and says, don't I look good in a beret?
Or she says, your beret is really neat.
I'm like, that's not a beret.
That's not a beret.
And then the other girl puts her shirt over his head within three minutes of meeting him.
This guy's got magnetism.
It's never happened to me.
It is, yes.
And both the Winnebago group and the dirt bike group, they arrive at this campground onlyto find Ben's dad, played by David Hess, now has a couple of gray streaks in his hair so

(27:03):
you know that time has passed.
He doesn't want anybody hanging around.
but both groups decide to stay anyway.
Ben's dad, by the way, has placed booby traps all around the property in hopes of catchingthe shaman killer, who from the way they talk about it, doesn't seem to have appeared in
the last 15 years, but you know, he's still putting traps around the whole thing.

(27:27):
I don't know how they stay in business.
That's what I was gonna say.
If you're running a camp,
The last thing you want to do is accidentally murder your people who are coming to stay.
And the way he set these up are so haphazard that, and they don't seem that far removedfrom camp either.
It's not like they're out in the wilderness somewhere.
So he's just open to murder.
And I also love that cheap gag of like, well, how, how do we know time has passed?

(27:51):
Grab that little hairspray.
here.
They come over.
He's got like.
streak on either side.
He looks like the bride of Frankenstein.
like Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street.
was thinking maybe a little Ash once he gets his silver streaks.
Sure.
These booby traps are way more elaborate than even the final terror, which was prettyelaborate.

(28:14):
Booby trap.
yeah.
No, it's like a spike and he's showing it off to the sun.
He's all proud of it.
And the sun's like, this sucks ass.
This is not cool at all.
then he also instantly says, let all these random friends I just met also stay here inbooby trap land.
In my father's booby trapped nightmare of a campground.

(28:37):
It's we also meet Charlie the Sheriff, played by Charles Napier, who is having a longrunning affair with Robert's wife, Julie, which Robert seems to know about.
Like he seems well aware of.
And, you know, I mean, he's not cool with it, but
You know, he's aware of it.
And Charlie keeps what looks like a small stuffed bear, the one that Rose was holding thenight she was killed in his police cruiser.

(29:04):
Guys, there's some significance to that, but I'm sure as hell don't know what it is.
No idea.
If you, if you think it's a clue that will be explained later, it won't be.
Chekov's bear.
Maybe he was going to make a sequel.
Maybe there was going to be.
Even more body counts.
Body count.
The body count increasing.

(29:27):
That's right.
Yeah.
by the way, I should mention that Ivan Rasmov plays another sheriff who appears to haveliterally no story function whatsoever.
Like we're told halfway through that he's moving to Denver and I guess that's what happensto him.
Colorado.
Like I don't know why he's in the movie.
Like it's good to see Ivan Rasmov, but I don't know what he's doing.

(29:48):
The Winnebago crew finds this deserted hunting cabin that is absolutely disgusting.
It is, it is, it has been, it has fallen into disrepair.
it, and, and, and like literally, and I'm like, these kids, decide what are they going todo?
They're going to clean it up, you know, for fun.

(30:10):
Cause that's what I want to do on a vacation is
accidentally get tetanus.
They do a lot of things in this very filthy place.
my god.
I wouldn't set foot in that.
Throughout the film, it's not even about like, don't go in there because your friendshaven't been returning.
It's like, just don't go in there.
This goes back to my whole hot tub, freaking out about sex in gross places things.

(30:30):
Like you just don't, you don't do the things that they do in that space.
Several girls take showers in those showers.
Yeah.
You couldn't pay me money.
No.
You couldn't pay me money to take a shower.
It's just, it's just, my God.
Yeah.
And this is a, and the cause well, you know, to get into a little bit, this is a moviewhere, you know, dead auto wanting cool visuals when he wants them, he just does not care

(30:58):
about reality.
And look, it often makes for a nice looking movie.
Like, okay, there's one of the scenes when Charlie the cop early on here, you know, earlyish when, he like,
parks at an angle in the middle of the mountain road blocking the whole thing when he goesover to talk to them, right?
And it's like you would never in a million years ever do that.

(31:21):
Right.
It's like a blind corner.
Like someone could come right around there and slam right into your car.
Yeah.
No, no, no human being would park like that.
No.
but it makes for a great shot because you're looking down the road, but the car is at theangle, which is giving you like a much better, like light on the car and all the shot
looks amazing.
It is nonsensical.

(31:43):
And that is, think that's the true key for me of unlocking this movie is you will see alot of really cool stuff.
Like, you know, for, you know, story wise, it is boggling often for me.
but the craftsmanship's there and you know, and like the, haven't gotten to a ton ofstalking sequences, but they're usually a little shorter lived like in a Giallo movie.

(32:06):
Like that opening one with Rose in the, you know, is a fairly short scene, but it'seffective and it works.
It's effective.
But I feel like the Italians, they just don't want like eight minutes of someone coweringand hiding from someone usually.
Whereas almost every American is like,
I know what I want to see.
is what we're here for.

(32:27):
Yeah.
It's like, it is the set piece to have.
And I want to point out that I meant just to mention briefly earlier that this is a fallset film.
Yes.
They're not faking the fall.
They're not like spray painting leaves and things.
There are plenty of movies that are shot out of season, but this film, and I'm a, as I'vesaid before in this series, I'm a very seasonal watcher of things.

(32:48):
Sure.
And this actually is part of my fall role.
This, I have a
DVD that someone gave me years ago of this and it is part of that because so few filmsswim in the season like this one does.
So it is, it's the changing color of the foliage.
It's the, the, trees that are barren in a lot of places.
And so it really, it swims in that and everyone's dressed appropriately.

(33:11):
We watched, can't remember which one it was where it's in the middle of winter and noone's wearing any coats or anything.
Satan's blade.
There you go.
Satan's blade.
But in this one, like Napier, everybody looks like they should.
in the middle of cold mountain environment in the woods.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's appreciated.
Yeah, and it's interesting because there's a vibe that this movie does achieve.

(33:34):
And it does have moments where it looks great.
I wish that Vinegar Syndrome or one of those labels would give this movie a really goodremaster because as you mentioned, it's never been released in the digital era.
And I would love to see it in a better quality than we were able to watch it.
Like it's available.
You can find it, but it's not great quality.

(33:55):
I'd love to see it get a real release because it does look great.
Yeah.
And I think the picture would benefit.
what I really also I would love to hear that score.
yeah.
Remastered as well.
I think it would really, really do.
But I agree 100 percent with what you said, both of you in is that this is a very highvibes movie.

(34:18):
So for all of my kidding, like this is a very enjoyable movie for me, at least as aslasher to watch.
And I, you know, I have a high tolerance for what just happened.
You know, admittedly, you know, but at the end of the day, for something like this, I'mlike, if it's cool, I'm like,
I guess the cool thing just happened.

(34:39):
Well, sure.
What I would love for the, for a D or like a proper Blu-ray release.
And it's unfortunate that Diodato passed away recently because boy would I love acommentary talking about everything behind this movie.
And because it's never even seen any kind of DVD release in the past, there's just solittle out there on it.
Absolutely.
It's, it's, it's, it's one those ones that really seems to have fallen into, into relativeobscurity.

(35:04):
And it's, it's, it's fascinating.
It's
I was flummoxed, but it's not, if it wasn't interesting, I wouldn't have been flummoxed byit.
Like there's the key.
Well, and it's, it's again, which we see a lot of times it's like what people latch ontoto take as something that's intrinsic and then what they leave behind.

(35:26):
Right.
So here it's like, yeah, you're going to have your Shelley S character and Sid who's goingto do fake scare at one point.
You're going to have a couple on a bed.
They lie down and then they get stabbed from underneath.
We got that gay.
There are a lot of things that are in this genre at this, in this time period where you'relike, they were, you know, I don't know if, you know, they watched other movies or not,

(35:52):
but there's a lot of, you know, moments that get nailed with precision in this movie.
I do think that the,
It's the character and the story is in the lore, particularly.
The lore is so confusing.
Yeah.
It's, it's almost handled like dreamlike.
Like they don't want you to really know what the lore is.

(36:13):
Yeah.
You know, there's a mystery to the lore, whereas, you know, in, in a U S film, you aregoing to know exactly what the hell the lore is most of the time right up front.
But even if you don't buy the end of the movie, you a hundred percent will know there.
Like there's never any doubt.
Well, was that really Freddy Krueger or is it just a guy pretending or were people justdumb?

(36:36):
Like that's kind of the level of the shaman in this movie.
Well, even in in Jawa movies, you might be confusing at the outset, but you'll get thelore dump at the end.
You will learn why everybody is doing things here.
I still don't know.
I still don't know.

(36:57):
the two kids, two of the kids from the dirt bike group
They go hunting and they're attacked by the Shaman.
One guy's thrown off a cliff.
He's wearing a New York Mets shirt by the way.
So, you know, he's American.
That is amazing because that guy's the arms are flailing and that is not a dummy.
That is not a dummy.
They threw a dude off a cliff.
I was very impressed and slightly worried given what we know about Dan.

(37:20):
I was a tractor.
my goodness.
Concern for safety.
But,
Man man, that was stunning.
Yeah, no, that was really good.
The girl, she runs away.
She goes into that abandoned hunting cabin where she finds the stuffed bear that I'vementioned a couple of times.
The bear accompanied by a little tune, which reminded me of like the flashback music fromDeep Red, like the past flashback music.

(37:44):
And the bear is apparently important, but I don't know why, still don't know why.
It's a thing.
The sequel.
And I believe in this sequence, this, I think it's this one guy, cause there are manyteddy bears leading to a lot of bears and a lot of stuff in that cabin.
Yeah.
And my notes are incomplete.
will just fess up on that, but I think this is the one where you get the shot where youhave the teddy bear and then it leads to the hand crashing through the mirror and pulling

(38:11):
her to the mirror.
Yes, that's right.
I mean, it is, and this is one where this is going.
Slasher and Giallo almost into like some weird Suspiria territory where it's, I'm stillnot sure if there actually was a space behind that mirror or was it a window or is this or
was that supernatural?

(38:32):
I think there was a room behind the mirror.
Yeah.
But I'm not sure.
It looks like there's a black box theater behind that mirror that the killer is in, butI'm not, you know.
Not sure.
And there's some very, very red giallo style blood on the knife when that, when, you know,like there's that that's full giallo blood for sure.

(38:55):
yeah.
yeah.
I need to talk about this campfire scene with the Winnebago crew, plus Ben and Dave fromthe dirt bike group.
and the reason I need to talk about it is because they cook some of the most bizarrelooking hot dogs I've ever seen.
It's not shaped like a hot dog.

(39:18):
It's more like a huge kidney bean that the girl proceeds to eat without a bun.
Like, I don't even know what it is.
Like, it doesn't look right.
And I would not put that in my mouth.
It is unsettling.
Again, the Cliffs Notes version of American culture.
Exactly.
It just says people go to games and they put things in their mouth that look like tubes.

(39:40):
All right, find something that looks like a tube.
It's like a kidney bean with a pituitary disorder.
It is so weird.
really is like someone thought hot dogs were sweet breads or something.
By the way, Dave, who is the one from the Dirt Bike group who's now hanging out with crewWinnebago, he is completely unaware and unbothered that the other two members of his party

(40:06):
are missing.
For like a long time.
For a long time!
They went missing the day before.
Yes!
This, I think this is the least concern we've seen from any teen group or young adultgroup.
He doesn't give a shit.
No.
He doesn't give a shit.
And instead he's just telling one of the girls how much he loves Iron Maiden, which hesays, and I quote, is good listening.

(40:32):
Yes, fellow human.
I too think that the rock and roll collective Iron Maiden is good listening.
Not wrong though.
And this guy's got a sweater on, this guy's the least.
plausible Iron Maiden fan I've ever seen.
Forget it.
He contains multitudes, Chris.
Well, don't we all, don't we all?
After dinner, they go down to the hunting cabin to get to work on cleaning, because ofcourse that's something you would do at night.

(40:57):
And they basically end up laughing and throwing buckets of water on each other.
Again, I don't know any human being would behave like this.
We have a dream sequence from Ben's mom where she imagined Ben finding this seeminglynaked woman in the Winnebago.
And then the woman, pulls back the cover and it's replaced by a severed leg.

(41:22):
And then Ben finds himself in this room full of glass jars containing body parts.
then wakes up, it's Julie is having this dream.
She goes out to where she finds Sheriff Charlie.
And we learned about their relationship, we get more of their relationship that she wantsto run away with him, but she feels, you know, loyal to her husband and her son.

(41:45):
And the guy who was thrown off the mountain, he shows up alive.
That's amazing.
The girl in the hunting cabin, she's still missing, but at least now Sheriff Charlie's onthe case.
The other sheriff, that's Ivan Rasmus' character, has a conversation with Dr.
Stethoscope from the opening sequence whose daughter Rose was killed.
And he reveals...
And this was, again, another shocking revelation that the distracted player from thebaseball game and Ferris Bueller's Italian sister were also killed 15 years earlier.

(42:15):
These dumb accidents.
This was no accident,
What do you mean?
I can tell you there'll be more killings.
Come on, what are you talking about?
Who's gonna be killed?
My daughter Rose was not the only one to be murdered.

(42:38):
Remember Bob Bates and Pamela Hicks?
Sure, a bear got them.
That's what everyone thought.
And we get this whole like 10 minute flashback that feels like it's from another movie.
That is right.
It's the weirdest thing.
If the opening in the past wasn't long enough, it's like what if in the middle of Fridaythe 13th, we go back to camp in the 50s?

(43:03):
We're gonna supplement it.
It's just very weird.
Because, you know, and again, just look at these things.
The POV breaks in this movie are just very bizarre because like in Friday, you jump arounda lot of people's POVs, right?
Right.
But you're set up that here is your group of, you know, counselors getting the camp readyand we can go between any of them really.

(43:29):
Right.
You know, at any time and maybe we'll cut away to some heavy breathing.
Right?
Exactly.
Here, we haven't seen this guy for like over half the movie at this point.
We're cutting back to the, you know, these two tertiary characters that we saw in theopening sequence that I honestly forgot about.
So when I first watched the I watched the movie the first time through, I said, we've notseen these characters before.

(43:50):
This is a flashback to two characters.
I don't know.
And then I realized that it was the two from the opening.
And I was just like, I get it.
So she ends up in the cabin, you know, and she, there's a long period in the hunting cabinwhere she's being stalked.
And she ends up laying down on this bed where she's stabbed underneath like Kevin Bacon inFriday One.

(44:13):
And apparently that murder was mistaken for a bear attack.
That was the official explanation that we learned.
was a bear attack.
Do bears stab their victims with knives in Colorado, Italy?
I don't know.
That's a theme in this series too, is that bears are blamed for so much.
Bears get a lot of the blame.

(44:33):
Yeah.
If you, if you set a movie in the woods and someone's face gets sawed off, whateverhappens, it's gotta be a bear.
That's the default setting for every sheriff, every cop, every local bar guy, whatever.
was the bear.
Wait until we get to the next movie with the cop who just will do anything to notinvestigate a case.
That's a.
Well, we'll get to that.

(44:54):
to be fair, he is, he does work in big bear.
So it makes sense that he's on the lookout there.
Yeah.
yeah.
And by the way, this is the last, like this whole flashback we get Dr.
Stethoscope and the Denver bound sheriff.
And it is the last we see of either of those characters.
They are now exiting the movie.

(45:14):
Bye bye.
And again, why, why were they there ever?
don't know.
You didn't need them in the beginning and you don't need them here.
It's.
And this is the stuff where just, you know, this is where the strangeness and theweirdness comes in as far as the feel of the story.
It's funny.
You know, I am convinced I could do a fan edit on this thing and I could fix, I could fixa lot.

(45:35):
I would be very curious to see that.
I don't think you actually need to add much.
think you need to take away.
If you cut like 10 minutes, the right 10 minutes out of this movie, I think it would beless befuddling.
I think you're right.
I still wouldn't answer the question I have at the end, which we will get to.
That would still be an open question because you don't have the footage for that.
Nope.

(45:55):
Unless there's deleted stuff we don't know about.
We spend more time with the kids from the Winnebago.
They're dancing.
They're doing normal teenage stuff.
One girl finds a bear in the Winnebago.
I still don't know what it means.
There's a girl with the worst Southern accent in cinema history who goes to take anothershower in the hunting cabin.
And one of the guys shows up looking for sex and they discover that the wall in the cabinis not real.

(46:19):
And then he's like trying to get into this room through the wall and she finds a trap doorwhich she goes into and there's a room with all body parts in jars.
Yeah.
Which ties in with Julie's dream but I don't know how.
Like I just I literally don't know how that like, has she been in that room?

(46:41):
Is that why she's dreaming about it?
She's not the killer because we're gonna find out why she's not but like it's
Like, it's anyway, the killer does show up and he kills the girl who went into the roomand then the guy busts through the wall only to find her with a knife through her mouth.
It's very disturbing.
And then meanwhile, one of the other girls is trying to convince Sydney that there's anorgy in the main cabin.

(47:04):
And he doesn't believe her until she starts to take her clothes off, which then he doestoo.
And she pushes him into the room naked with Ben's parents.
Come on, never again.
I don't want to do this, Wayne!
You lie to me all the time!

(47:24):
There's no orgy in Ben's parents live in there!
There's no orgy in there.
Sid, if there weren't an orgy in there, would I do this?
You're gonna love it!
Holy shit!
Sissy, I'm gonna...

(47:51):
I think I'm going to kill that kid.
Honestly, I kind of wanted David Hesse to kill all these people, like particularly Sidney,who might be the most annoying character in the history of cinema.
It's he's like this bizarro reflection of Shelley from.
Friday three, but without any of the stuff that makes Shelley deep and interesting is justbizarre.

(48:17):
Like, my God, like it's, it's I was, was Shelley, the Sydney.
was like, I can't, I can't with Sydney.
I, you know, maybe this is just me, but the, naked tricking here feels like it, this isthe kind of thing that should be earlier in the movie.
Yes.
Yes.
Like we are way too, there are way too many bodies at this point.

(48:41):
Now I know these, characters don't know that.
But the characters know that some people are missing.
The girl is still missing.
One guy was thrown off a cliff.
They really don't care.
Cause after this scene, I mean, it's the next morning and they are so nonchalant aboutlike four to five of their friends no longer being around.
Yes.
Like they just don't care.
They do not care.

(49:02):
They are, they are like,
There's at least three people missing from the two groups, plus the dude who was thrownoff the cliff, who's presumably in a hospital, and no one seems is concerned.
No one at all.
It is, it's amazing.
So meanwhile, Julie comes to Robert, who is again watching football because he's anAmerican, and she tells him she's leaving him for the sheriff.

(49:28):
I'm leaving.
So after all these years, Charlie finally took into it.
Do you really better than me?
He has nothing to do with it.
What about this place?
What about the camp?
What about Ben?
What about me?

(49:48):
I'm gonna to see things about myself.
Julia, you've always thought about yourself.
You never tried to understand my problems.
How hard it was for me to love you knowing about him.

(50:14):
I really did try to understand.
But he's the only one who ever showed me any affection or any love.
And I really need that.
There's something warm between your thighs.
your mind out of her gutter!
And this leads to a confrontation where he starts to choke her.

(50:36):
I was like, it's getting serious.
And then she hits him in the head with some object I couldn't tell what it was and killshim.
And again, I was like, shit.
Like then she drags the body out to the shed to hide.
It's so crazy.
And meanwhile, the kids are playing frisbee and fucking around with a dirt bike.
It's just, it's all so like the tone is crazy.

(50:59):
Though here at least, I mean, the two actor and David Hess in particular, for anyone who'sseen last out, I mean, this is a guy who can project that menace.
Like this scene I thought was fantastic, but between the two of them, just from watchingthe two actors go at it, it's shocking.
It is, but it's so incongruous with the things that are happening around.

(51:20):
Like it was, it was in and of itself.
It was great, but it was like,
And then we're back to the kids and I'm like, they don't know this is happening, but it's,it's the whole tone.
That's so strange.
The POV and tone switches are, you know, a little unusual to say the least.
Whiplash inducing would be my, my word for it.

(51:41):
Like, and then, know, another girl goes and takes a shower in that disgusting cabin.
I don't understand how anybody's doing that.
and there she finds a stuffed bear and Tony's body.
So she starts to freak out.
So finally someone's freaking out, know, at long last.
And this girl, Carol, she ends up back at the main cabin where she meets Julie.

(52:03):
And this is an interesting moment, and maybe my favorite moment of the movie, where she'ssaying, he's dead, he's dead.
And Julie thinks she's talking about her husband who she thinks she just killed.
What's the matter?
He's dead!

(52:25):
Who's dead?
All dead.
It was horrible.
In the bathhouse.
All dead.
All dead.
What are you talking about?

(52:47):
Where is it?
Don't!
No, please.
NO!
And so she stops her from calling the cops and they wind up in the shed where Julia leftthe husband's body and he pops up and kills Julie.

(53:09):
It's like there's there are turns in this movie that took me by surprise.
this was one of them.
Mysteries of Poppin.
my God.
Yeah.
And then then Carol gets locked inside.
I don't I don't even know if Robert even saw her because he's clearly just out of it.
Like he goes a wandering into the woods.
And then one of the other girls, Sissy, she goes into the hunting cabin and she runs outscreaming.

(53:31):
She's running through the woods and encounters the very out of it bleeding Robert, scaresher even more.
That triggers Cindy.
Cindy comes running.
He triggers one of the traps, the Robert's booby traps, and Cindy dies.
And few things made me happier in the movie than that.
And then the killer attacks Dave while he's in a tent singing a Bruce Springsteen song.

(53:52):
Cause you know, America.
And Ben shows up and talks about how the shaman's back.
There's a lore here that feels missing of the shaman.
Like we got that info dump at the beginning, but I don't really understand it.
Like, we really believe this is a supernatural shaman or?
I don't know.

(54:13):
I still don't know.
the weird thing is, and this is partly just the budget level, right?
Because throughout this movie, when the killer attacks, we see that old man mask.
but it's often shot in such a way that I it's unclear.
Are you supposed, is this just low budget makeup and it's not supposed to be a mask,right?
Or is it supposed to be a mask?

(54:34):
And I don't, you know, it's possible given what the end of this thing is that they weredoing that on purpose, right?
Or maybe they weren't, but it certainly, it adds to the confusion of what is actuallygoing on.
Is this a man in a mask or is it supernatural?
I still don't know.
I mean, yeah.
I still don't know.

(54:56):
Carol, she chainsaws her way out of the shed and everyone winds back up at the main cabin,except for Robert, who's out there wandering the world with his head wound.
And Carol tells Ben that his mother is dead, which freaks him the hell out.
Like, no, not my mother.
And he runs off, he finds the mother's body.
And we learn in a very Giallo flashback moment that as a kid, he saw his mom and SheriffCharlie

(55:23):
having sex and she made him promise to never tell.
Like that's obviously would be an upsetting thing for a kid.
I still don't quite understand the implications of it, but hey.
That is a common thing though.
got to, that's a trope.
That is a trope.
Yes.
Especially in Slasherville.
That's something like seeing people bone equals somehow a psychotic breakdown down theroad.

(55:46):
Yeah.
There's no such thing as healthy sex.
There there is not.
There is not healthy sex.
But that is one thing that they do nail about America as well.
That's angry about football and the attitude's weird about sex.
That is true.
So the kids, the three remaining kids, they barricade themselves inside the cabin, but theshaman gets in anyway.

(56:10):
I'm not clear how Sissy takes an ax to the face.
And there is this full out brawl between Carol, Dave, and the shaman, which is very good.
Which ends up, know, the shaman crashes through the window and does the interesting thingof crashes out of the window.
It even gotten out of the cabin.
The shaman crashes out of the window and then Sheriff Charlie shows up and blows theshaman away with a shotgun.

(56:34):
And then we have the Scooby Doo moment guys.
my God.
The mask comes off to reveal its Ben.
He would have gotten away with it too.
For the sheriff who's back in a shotgun.
The philandering sheriff?

(56:54):
The philanderer.
Would have gotten away for it too if it wasn't for you, philandering sheriff.
if only he'd said that.
My God.
But here's the thing.
Ben was eight years old 15 years ago.
So he wasn't the killer then.
I know that much.
So who was?
Characters say that earlier.
I believe that it, and I, once again,

(57:14):
I'm lazy.
did not go back to rewatch a second time, but I swear that Robert, when he's talking withCharlie in one of those earlier scenes, I think they only had one, maybe two at tops
together.
I swear at some point, Charlie, the sheriff is talking about Ben saw the killer.

(57:36):
back in the day, referencing the beginning.
Yeah, it's coming up.
We get this nugget of wisdom from Sheriff Charlie.
Sheriff, how many people did Ben kill?
So far, the coroner's found the remains of 15.
So he really did kill that girl a long time ago?
No, but he knew who did it.
So that and the curse of the old Indian shaman probably did the rest.

(57:57):
Yeah, he knew who did it, but I don't.
Well, I think the answer of who really did it is coming up.
Very quickly here, almost at the end of this film, Chris.
Well, we get the final moment where we see Sheriff Charlie calling out for Robert who'srunning through the woods and he runs right into the shaman who raises an axe and freeze

(58:20):
frame.
Yeah.
There you go.
Who is the shaman?
Why?
Like it wasn't Ben.
He's dead.
wasn't Robert because he's being getting an axe to the face.
wasn't Sheriff Charlie because he was calling out.
Seconds earlier, he couldn't have changed that fast.
Who was wearing the mask in the final shot if it wasn't Ben, Robert, or Sheriff Charlie?

(58:43):
And who was the killer from 1971?
Was it the same person?
What do the bears mean?
The shaman's real.
The shaman is real is your answer.
And Ben just happens to have a mask that looks exactly like the supernatural version ofthe shaman.
It's so simple.
You're right.
I'm just, I'm, it's me.
I'm overly.

(59:04):
Come on, Chris.
Now your problem is that that version of the movie makes no sense.
And so you think it has to be something else, but I, but you're wrong, Chris.
isn't anything else.
It's just, it's just the nonsensical version of it.
Accept it.

(59:24):
Accept your.
my God.
it just, I, I,
I've watched it a couple of days ago.
Then I watched it again as I was doing notes and I was just like, I'm trying to solve thisthing.
Like it's a puzzle that is soluble, but I can't.
The greatest trick the shaman ever pulled on the world was making you think it was Ben ina mask.

(59:51):
no.
God, want to know more.
I need those answers.
really, it really...
It really flummoxes me.
God.
Now you know why it hasn't had solid distribution ever.
We should probably.
I want to, I want to, because it is, it has qualities.
Far worse movies have had 4k releases.

(01:00:13):
Far, far worse movies.
I actually, I I'll say, you know, this movie really tickled me.
if, and I think I've said this in past series, if you literally just live in the scene,
just scene to scene, think you'll have fun.
If like Chris, you crave logic and reason, maybe skip this one.

(01:00:39):
So I forgot until we were sitting here having this discussion that I wrote to Diodato backin 2019 about this film.
Really?
Because I was curious about the status of distribution and everything.
like, what happened to it?
And I wrote to him and he wrote back.
I just basically said, hey, who holds the rights?

(01:00:59):
What's the situation with it?
His response was simple.
He says,
No, the producer for for Cassie is wanted.
And I said wanted as in like legal trouble, or is he the one that I would want to reachout to?
And he says, definitely legal trouble.
my God.
So so that's the owning entity on this, I guess, is is that producer.

(01:01:24):
And and that's the reason, at least according to D'Addato, why this film hasn't everreally seen another solid release is because the guy who holds the rights is locked up
somewhere.
There's no key or something.
You didn't ask him who the shaman at the end was, did you?
I didn't even think so.
I should have.
And then darn it, a few years later, he passes away and the mystery endures.

(01:01:46):
my god.
Well, we'll see if I can get a little bit more concrete answers from our second film todayas we move from Italy to Spain.
From 1988, this is Edge of the Axe.

(01:02:26):
has always been a quiet little town.
series of brutal murders have been committed in the area by what appears to be a madman.
tell you, this place stinks of death.
A neighbor found her body a couple of hours ago.
My God!
Rita Miller was hacked to death.

(01:02:47):
The sharp, wide-bladed instrument.
Everything's gonna be alright.
Charlie, is that you?
Edge of the Axe was directed by Jose Ramon Larras, who had a long career in horror andexploitation cinema through the 70s and 80s, with this film coming fairly late in his

(01:03:10):
career.
And like Body Count, Edge of the Axe is a European film set in the United States, althoughI think it more successfully and authentically feels American right from the beginning.
yeah.
Well, and they shot it here.
Yeah.
Part of that is because they were able to shoot some of the exteriors in and around thearea of Big Bear, which was all we also saw last week in Satan's Blade, which was also

(01:03:33):
shot in the Big Bear area.
But I've got to say there's another reason why it feels better to me.
And I can I can pick one detail out that explains the difference between the Italians ofthe seventies and eighties faking a location and this this gentleman from Spain.
Sure.
In Italy, if you're
shooting one country for another, you are going to have a lot of flags, just flags, flags,flags, love uniforms, whatever they love them.

(01:04:00):
And you do get a flag, I think on the sheriff's patch or whatever in this one, which youwould that that's natural.
Yeah, it is.
But in this one, you don't see American flags in every location, but all of the foodstuffs nail it.
Yes.
Like you've got sun kissed.
You've got, God, I think they have like gold.

(01:04:22):
metal like flour for baking.
do.
I saw that.
Yes, absolutely.
All of the little things that are, you know, it's cheap, but you have to, you just have totake the time to do it.
They, I was just checking it out.
like, this is a much better way to sell.
Like you're, you know, this is the studio in Spain is really, you know, big bear,California.

(01:04:42):
Totally keying into the subtleties.
Yeah, I do want to say too that laraz I'm a huge fan of his film vampires.
Okay.
Yeah from a few years prior that is one of my all-time favorite Films really I mean, it'sit's absolutely wonderful and one of the sexiest movies ever made it has some real strong
violence in it to some surprising elements and I won't say too much about it here becausewe're not covering it, but I'll say check out vampires

(01:05:10):
That's what the Y V A P Y R E S it's, it's available in a number of beautiful additionshere in the States and is a hundred percent worth tracking down.
I definitely will.
I definitely will.
Just to speak to what Rob said, I, I, I agree.
I think that the brands and the, and the food stuffs totally sell the American-ness of it.
So much so that like, you have to really look like there's little details that might tipyou off and I'll get into some of them as we're going, but.

(01:05:39):
you know, if you didn't know that if you were not looking for them, you wouldn't see them.
I was looking for them.
So I saw them.
There's one subtle thing that I noticed where I was like, that's not like it is in theStates.
Cause here I, you know, our listeners outside the country may not know that if, if an axhits you here, it actually like would go into your body and hurt you.

(01:06:08):
It just kind of bounces off you and paints a little red on you.
yes, it takes a lot of wax for sure.
It does.
yeah, so it's it's interesting.
We open with this opening sequence where the woman is driving through a car wash and andwhile she's going through the car wash, a masked killer appears and he.
Yeah, he attacks her with an axe right through the windshield.

(01:06:29):
This makes no sense.
Chris, you're glossing over this shit.
Well, there was something I was going to say about the, about the exterior and theinterior, because the exteriors of the car wash were all shot in California, but the
interiors were all in Spain.
And I actually thought it was pretty good.
Like it was pretty seamless.
It did.
That worked well.
But the idea that there, anyone who's been through a car wash, they tend to be prettysmall.

(01:06:50):
Right.
And if there's anyone there, it's a couple of kids scrubbing you off of the brush beforeyou head into the automated thing or whatever.
That's right.
It's not like someone could just be lurking around in there in an Uncle Fester mask,waiting to kill someone.
First of all, it's the worst place to do it.
He's going to be completely wet.
He's probably going to get sick from the experience.

(01:07:11):
The odds of him even having clear access with all the foam and water flying around, itjust makes no sense at all.
But beyond that, he goes through her windshield.
Yeah, he goes through her windshield.
The likelihood of ever having a second swing after that in an automated car wash that'sguiding you through is very slim.
And those jets are hard.

(01:07:32):
That's hard.
Like that is forceful water.
He'd be knocked on his ass.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's very odd.
It's a very odd way to start this thing off.
Really segues into that opening theme song too.
my God.
my God.
The opening theme song.
Cause we get this moment where...
where the main character is riding through the town and it's this like 70s folk songplaying during the opening credits, which feels completely in Congress.

(01:08:02):
It's not the last completely in Congress music choice, but it's something.
Paul Newman and Robert Redford should be bicycling by.
That's how I feel with the song going.
I also noticed during that credit sequence where it's
Like all of the credits look like they're being typed out on the screen by a very 80slooking green computer cursor.

(01:08:22):
And I was thinking, well, what's up with that?
But the movie will soon tell me.
should mention the film primarily stars American actors in the main roles, includingBarton Falks, Christina Marie Lane, Paige Mosley, Fred Holliday, and Patty Shepard.
And our main character is Gerald.
He lives in the mountain town of Paddock, California.

(01:08:43):
And he works as an exterminator alongside his friend Richard, but his real passion iscomputers.
And he's got like a side business repairing them and other electronics.
we'll get into like the computer angle of this movie is fascinating and very, veryeighties.

(01:09:05):
Like there's a real war games kind of feel to the computer stuff.
Which again is when you get, cause this now,
I know the trend kind of never stops, but we are late in the trend.
is 87, 88 or, so it's, you know, Friday the 13th came out a long time ago, you know, in,movie trend cycle time.

(01:09:27):
So you start injecting other things in to try and freshen up.
and this one decided that, you know, computer computers and computer technology were goingto feature very prominently in a
in a very non evil speak kind of a way.
It's just like, yeah.
I have to think Kevin Williamson saw this movie before he, before he wrote scream.

(01:09:50):
Just no question.
Yeah.
The, the computers, way the, the, the way they talk it's, God, it's fascinating.
I should mention that Gerald lives with a guy who I thought was his grandpa at the, at thebeginning.
But then I later started to question that assessment and Gerald is kind of a jerk.
but he's also not kind of a jerk, which is really an interesting.
No, Gerald's just a dick.

(01:10:13):
He's terrible.
He's so mean.
And he's mean.
You bring up the old guy, he's a dick to him.
Very much so.
He does a dick move when he gives him a gift of his shirt.
And then he's like, and then the old man wears it the next day.
Kind of like, I'll show this guy that we know we don't really super get along, but this isa little bit of an olive branch maybe between us.
And when he comes up, he says, what do you think about the shirt?

(01:10:34):
And then Gerald's like,
That's not really a gift for you.
I get that for free when I buy ham at the store or whatever.
I'm like, what, why would you ruin this nice little moment?
think he, he, he, he says, it.
loves it.
What?
He tells him that he loves them.
That's puzzling.
And there's a lot of that in this movie where it's like they're jerks, but also sometimesnot.

(01:10:58):
It's very weird.
I don't, I don't know.
I will point out that not grandpa lives in an absolutely.
gorgeous A-frame house that I love.
And Gerald lives in this cool octagonal guest house right next door.
I love it.
It's so weird, but it's beautiful.
It feels like it's part of the compound in the howling or something, know?

(01:11:23):
It does.
Like the fake Esalen.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
So there's a killer lurking in this town.
And he kills the woman in the car wash.
And then he terrorizes this other woman by putting a pig's head in her bed.
Although at that point, maybe he's just trying to get his kid a role in the school play.
you mean just, just slitting a hog's throat?

(01:11:44):
Why do I even need to bother with that as the sheriff?
Dude, it's not slitting a hog's throat.
is a capitated head in a bed and the sheriff is just dismissing it.
Yeah.
The woman, the woman's husband goes to the sheriff and the sheriff's like, whatever.
I don't give a shit.
think he literally says, I don't give a shit.
I want him captured.
Now calm down, Trevor.

(01:12:04):
Do you know who it is?
No, no, I don't know.
But you can find him if you look for him now.
I'm not booking for anybody.
Just because somebody trespassed on your property doesn't give me license to start amanhunt.
That lunatic has slit a pig's throat and put its head in my bed.
She's your favorite style, Trevor.
You kinda sweet on her.
You son of a...

(01:12:25):
Just like you to sit here and do nothing.
of trevor i can't be checking pig pens and chicken coops every time some animalslaughtered do whatever you want to find that bastard who scared the hell out of my wife
that's what we pay you for look mister you come into my office smelling like them hogs youhang around with wasting my time bitching about some pig has got his throat slit

(01:12:50):
Go call somebody who gives a shit.
There's why does he hate animals so much throughout this whole film?
The killer is really hot to hurt animals.
And for it to start with the pigs and that barn is just you're seeing a pig's ass and thenyou hear it squeal off camera.
And the next thing you see is his head on the bed.

(01:13:11):
It's very, very strange.
He hates animals.
And I'm thinking to myself, the husband goes to the sheriff and I'm like,
Pig's head or no pig's head, is it breaking and entering a crime?
Yeah.
You know what else is a crime?
Not buttoning your shirt.
Holy moly, this husband does not believe in buttons.
It is like open down to the navel.

(01:13:33):
I'm like, this is how you dress?
No wonder the cops don't believe them.
Like you gotta look a little better if you want to report it.
That sheriff does throughout the film keep saying things like, we don't like outsiders andpeople ask too many questions and
You know, he's, he's very averse to police work really.
No, he does not want to do his job.
He really, he will do anything to get out of doing his job.

(01:13:54):
That's, that's the sheriff they wanted on Amity Island.
The mayor would have loved to have this guy.
That's what they thought they were hiring instead of Roy Scheider.
Yes.
So Richard and Gerald, they, in their professional capacity as exterminators, they go tothis local bar where there's a terrible smell in the basement, which turns out to be a

(01:14:17):
decaying body of a waitress, another apparent victim.
And again, the sheriff who refused to do the, investigate the B and E, he doesn't evenwant to do any police work here.
He insists it's a suicide.
This fucking guy.
Well, it's tucked into the ceiling too.
This is another stage body.
into the Friday, the 13th war.
They get to the basement.
There's lots of stink jokes about like, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what's wrong in here.

(01:14:41):
It smells like shit.
Okay.
Good line.
And then they get down and then, and then for some reason the guy goes poking at theceiling with a stick or something.
then comes down this body that's dangling in front of them as they cower that they're justrepulsed by this thing.
like, who would have even thought that they would have ended up down there, let alonepoking around in the ceiling to find this thing.

(01:15:02):
It's not like it's a Bob stuck to a door on Halloween.
This is, this is a thing on no clues other than the snow at all.
And I have to say the, the, makeup effects here are pretty good.
Sure.
You know, this body looks very gruesome in it's it's pretty affecting.
And certainly these two gentlemen, after discovering this gruesome dead body, they'regoing to, they're going to have a quiet moment of reflection, right?

(01:15:30):
That's a negative.
Nope.
that's right.
They're just going to be horny.
Yes.
They're going to be horny.
Richard, they have a conversation about Richard's marriage because apparently he marriedan older woman very specifically for the money.
It's an odd little detail and it kind of tangentially figures into the plot, but it's...

(01:15:52):
It's a very curious thing.
He's also a dick.
The way he talks about her.
he's a total dick.
Yes.
See that guy is a dick.
Cause I was watching it and then I just had them in my notes as I had it rolling.
Cause I didn't catch the names right away.
I had it as dickhead and dickhead too.
Cause these two guys, because they're both just awful.
They're really awful people.
And the way he talks about his wife.

(01:16:14):
my God.
So casually.
And then he spends the rest of the movie trying to mount this other girl.
It's just a.
Well, yeah.
Yeah, they go to this lakeside pub owned by the Nebs family where Richard flirts andactively tries to seduce the older daughter, while Gerald goes in to meet Lillian, the
younger daughter who is home from college.
Now, it took me a couple of days to figure this out because I was like, Lillian looks sofamiliar.

(01:16:40):
And I'm like, I looked up the actress, Christina Marie Lane.
She was only in one other movie, which I was not familiar with.
And I'm like, but I feel like I know her.
And then it came to me.
It came to me today, guys.
She looks like eighties Jodie Comer, the star of Killing Eve.
yeah.
She does.
There it is.
And they have this meet cute over an arcade game called Cosmic Aliens.

(01:17:04):
He's not cute.
He's a dick.
The way he talks to her is so degrading.
just he the men in this film assume that all women are just complete mental infants.
And he is no different.
He's kind of a jerk about the video game.
He walks in and there's this Sega alien game that she starts talking and she's being verysweet to him.

(01:17:24):
She's trying to have a little bit of a connection like, Hey, what are you doing?
Whatever.
And by the way, she looks like she's about 12, but that, that must be noted too.
And then he's like, well, you wouldn't know anything about video games like I do.
And then she's like, well, yeah, I'm going to challenge you to a competition.
And he's like, you think you can beat me?
And she's like, yeah, hard end to the scene.
they don't ever have the competition in the Sega alien video game that I was so hopingfor.

(01:17:49):
I wanted her to whip him.
then as the movie moves on from this point forward, it's kind of just reinforced that eventhe filmmakers feel like she's a dumb ass and it never ends with her.
But I was just like, how do you have your two main characters as these two guys be sounlikeable?
are, they are both dicks.

(01:18:10):
this is the weird thing for me about this movie is that
Unlike body count, I would say that, you know, within the realm of a slasher film, right?
This thing, the story makes sense.
And at the end, there is some logic to it, right?
I never felt lost.
However, I think every character in this movie is insane.

(01:18:33):
Like no one behaves normally.
is no, like nothing feels like motivated by what I've seen on film or in, you know, mylife.
for how people actually act.
And what you're saying, I think is perfect.
mean, yes, he's treating her terribly.
She seems, it seems to all go over her head.

(01:18:54):
And then, yeah, the film is just like, and the natural culmination of this interaction, wewill not show you.
I'm curious, earlier on, when we first meet these two dildos, one of them, I think it'sdildo number two, is putting coins into some kind of a machine that's tied to a tree.
What was that thing with a note that it's like drop the coins for like good luck orsomething.

(01:19:20):
I have no, I saw that.
have no idea.
And then he calls the other guy and he's like, Hey, this thing's not working.
He's like, well, hold on a minute.
He comes out and they don't do anything about it.
Right.
Well also not working.
It's like half of a busted machine.
Like it's tied to a tree.
There's no electricity here.
What is it supposed to be?

(01:19:41):
Yeah.
It's like he's seeing the machine that's there in his mind.
Like everyone's insane in this movie.
Everyone.
This is again, the Cliff's notes version.
Like, well, Americans, they'll gamble on anything.
They'll gamble on a tree.
Again, can confirm pretty fair.
we, that's that's not wrong.
That's not wrong.
Yeah.

(01:20:02):
so, but, but he, you know, despite the fact that he, he's, he has one of the most terribleattitudes.
And, and, you know, but still he's able to get the girl to come back to his octagonalhouse to show her all of his eighties computer stuff.
And he's got a computer that can answer any question.
And if the computer doesn't know it talks to other computers.

(01:20:25):
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
He invented the internet.
He did.
Like before Al Gore.
You don't see the video game battle.
So you're not even sure she's really that dialed into this world anyway.
And they get back there and we've established very few things about Lillian.
That's the girl's name.
The only thing we really know about her at this point is that she likes Coke cold.

(01:20:51):
She says, he's like, you want something to drink?
And she's like, yeah, you got Coke.
And he's like, yeah, I got Coke.
And she goes, is it cold?
Yes.
And he's like, yeah, it's cold.
That's, that's the extent of the development for her in this film.
That is literally it.
But that's the thing.
It's because this movie was shot in Europe where they drink their soda at roomtemperature.
Yeah.
Like there's a moment, one of the few things that really tipped me off to that it was shotin Europe.

(01:21:14):
There's a scene later where they're in the cafe and behind them is this like, rather thanbeing a like Coca-Cola refrigerators with sodas inside, instead it's like an open set of
shelves with sodas just sitting out at room temperature.
Never, never would you see that in America.
Never.
Yeah.
Which I noticed this too.

(01:21:34):
And I thought, well, they knew enough that Americans do prefer ice cold Coca-Cola, right?
But they didn't know enough that the other option is just not an option here.
Like people don't drink warm sodas.
Right.
She wouldn't ask if it was cold because it would only be cold.
There's no other reason.

(01:21:54):
If it's not cold, it might as well not be servable.
And we talked about Friday the 13th, part four that
comes back into play in this sequence in a way as well, because when they're talking aboutthe computers, see, he has his new one, but then he has this older one.
And she goes, and he's like, it's much simpler.
doesn't do much.
And she's like, that would be the one for me.

(01:22:15):
Cause of course they want her to seem like she's a turnip with eyes.
And so he says, well, we can connect through this.
We can communicate.
said, we can communicate whenever we want.
And he said, yeah, I'll just plug it into the central terminal.
And you're like, wait, what is the central terminal?
And then it gets even better.
This is the moment where we really cement the majesty that these guys saw this characterof William with.

(01:22:41):
He establishes the fact that the computer can answer questions.
And by the way, the voice is just sounds like a guy at the end of a hallway.
it doesn't sound like a computer voice.
Like, know, we are a computer.
Like it's not a computer voice.
It's just a dude at the end of a hall.
camera like this.
But then she says, so how do I do it?
He said, well, you just type in a question and then she says, and then what do I hit?

(01:23:03):
He says, well, push the brown key.
And then first of all, what's a brown key?
What are you talking about?
A brown key, push the brown key.
Is this some filthy porno term I'm not familiar with?
And then second, and this is Lillian's real moment.
This is her moment to shine.
She goes, which one's the brown one?

(01:23:24):
And then she goes, is this the brown key?
She says, is this the brown key?
She might be colorblind.
don't know.
They've established that she's colorblind, Chris.
All we know about her is that she likes cold Coke and she doesn't know what brown is.
And she like everyone else in this movie is insane.
No, this is where the Friday the 13th part four thing comes in because what happens inthat when Crispin and what's his name are in the back of the Jeep, Ted are in the back of

(01:23:52):
the Jeep.
What does Ted do to help?
Crispin's character solve his sexual woes.
Let me enter it into the computer.
In this one, she enters a question in the computer.
comes back with no information there.
And he goes, that's impossible.
I've designed this thing and I'm brilliant.
So it has to have an answer.
What was your question?
She goes, I asked it if you were gay.

(01:24:13):
I think so.
is two movies.
After she like.
Or does it, or is it immediately then she attacks him to like kiss him?
There's a kiss, a brief kiss, and then she admits it and then they go into straightmakeout.
But this is the second movie in this cycle where people are depending on primitivecomputer technology to figure out sexuality.
Amazing.
And that's a very unique and very directly odd thing to connect these two movies.

(01:24:38):
God.
It's so strange.
This whole scene is so odd.
It's so odd.
real life.
computers will not connect you to your sexuality until Lawn Mower Man.
You need the advanced technology.
need the virtual reality or else how would you really know?
The movie is so far removed from its source material that Stephen King sued them and saidtake my name off of this film.

(01:25:09):
So the killer is still out there.
He stalks another female victim near a train station who is apparently a hooker namedRita.
But did you recognize Rita?
No, no, no.
Alicia Morrow, otherwise known for her role as trash in Exterminators of the Year 3000.

(01:25:29):
my God.
You're right.
I was super, super happy to see her.
my goodness.
They don't really establish her as a prostitute from the beginning.
No, no, they find the book.
They have the book.
She leaves the bar first and she walks past this straight up like Looney Tunes cartoondrunk sitting there.
You just can't control himself.

(01:25:50):
She's on high heels stepping in every single puddle she encounters.
puddle.
And then the killer who's apparently wearing some kind of a drape is following her around,also stepping in every single puddle.
And then she asked him for a cigarette.
Well, she recognizes, she sees the killer and kind of recognizes like they're not.
clearly not wearing the mask at that point.

(01:26:12):
And, and she recognizes the killer.
It's kind of like the bit with Steve Christie before in Friday one, you know, it's like,what are you doing out here at the train yard at night?
And then he pulls the mask out.
She says, got to smoke.
And he's like, silence.
Here's a mask, puts it on.
then uncle Fester's back at it again.
Now he has an ax and he starts hacking away at her.

(01:26:36):
And you guys made light earlier of the ax.
action in this thing.
I found it quite jarring because a lot, mean, most movies you'll see one hit.
No, there's a lot of hits.
There's a lot of strikes against people and they're all on camera.
So they don't shy away from it.
Yeah.
They're not trying to explode the screen with blood, but they do not shy away from thebrutality with each one of these kills throughout.

(01:26:59):
They don't, but I not like I see the ax bounce off the body with damage.
That's all I'm saying.
And I don't need, I don't need like the end of Friday four in every film, but it was, itwas a little jarring.
Yeah.
the, the sheriff, when, when they come to the scene, he's, he's still a jerk.

(01:27:21):
at least he has to face the reality that a murderer is at work.
but again, he's more concerned about the names in the book.
Cause the railroad guy looks like he time warped straight from the civil war to talk tothe sheriff.
He has a really hard time with that hat.
Yes, he does.
Honestly, he has a really hard time with his lines.
I also have a hard time with that hat, but...

(01:27:43):
And the other, I don't know if it's the deputy or whatever, that guy is straight up, youcannot decipher anything he says in this film.
Everything he says is...
It's like that's from the Black Lodge, this guy.
He's like the mumbly Wishmaster.
I don't know what he is.
But Chris, please tell me you have queued up.

(01:28:04):
what the sheriff, you know, his delicate investigation after this poor woman's murder.
I mean, he's very concerned.
Who was that woman?
name was Rita Miller, 35 years old.
She came over to Paddock almost a year ago.
During the day, she worked over to Mrs.
O'Brien's beauty parlor and at night, according to the local gossip, she slept with almostanyone who paid her price.

(01:28:28):
$100.
$100?
She wasn't cheap, was she?
I don't know what she was worth.
You had some of it.
No, no.
My salary doesn't allow for such luxuries.
She costs a hundred dollars.
She'll have sex with anyone, it's worth it.
And then the other guy, and then the deputy, deputy wish master goes, they're like, whatare we going to do?

(01:28:57):
And then they share is like, well dust for prints.
What are you gonna dust for prints on in that filthy alley or wherever they were?
What are you dusting for prints?
Everything has dust all over it.
Honestly, he might be the worst.
He might be worse of a police officer than Detective Staten Island from He Knows You'reAlone.
And the $100 is brought up a number of times.

(01:29:18):
really go into it.
Like they really settle on that.
that.
They shame her continuously in this movie.
Her murder has nothing to do with what she's doing for money.
Not at all.
No, it's like she could have been anything.
You know, it's just so.
God.
yeah.
No, you're right.
It's it's.
But the one the one narrative upside to all of this.

(01:29:43):
We're getting a red herring.
I don't.
It's been a long time since we've had a red herring on.
right.
This this movie is so full of red herrings and they all come in the last half hour.
Like it's so confused.
all right.
So there's more computer stuff.
Lillian finds like a list of the women who have been killed so far in Gerald's computerfiles.

(01:30:06):
And when she asked him about it, he just kind of brushed it off.
You know, it's like, okay.
And Richard has started having an affair with Lillian's older sister, Susan, but he'sworried that his older wife is having an affair with Lillian and Susan's father.
He's projecting.
Which is really messed up.

(01:30:27):
We have another woman who comes home and the audience could tell that this woman's introuble.
She discovers her dog has been killed, which is again, another animal that is killed inthis thing.
And she tries to grab the shotgun shells to load her shotgun.
The killer chops off the fingers.
That is a very good looking effect.
And so it's four women that have been killed now and we're getting no closer to learningwhat the link might be.

(01:30:53):
despite the fact that it's actually getting fairly late in the movie.
Wait, so they're, leaving some stuff out here though.
So first of all, they go and they talk to this guy who, who was frequenting- The churchcarpenter!
The church carpenter.
They're in a church, but, but he says he makes reference at some point to like, shestarted coming around too much at the office.
I'm like the office?

(01:31:14):
You're a church carpenter?
What?
And by the way, that scene starts with him referring to the deceased as
that dumb bitch who loves to start problems.
And then the a hundred dollars comes up again.
This isn't a church that they're having this discussion.
And then it's established that everybody in big bear or whatever the town is with ahatchet is a suspect.

(01:31:34):
And the guy is literally like, he's fiddling with a hatchet as the cop is telling him he'sfondling it.
He's chopping like the air into his hand.
And what I love is then the sheriff essentially calls him out as suspect number one.
And what does the church carpenter do?
He does more menacing acts hand.

(01:31:58):
He just doubles down.
He's like, this is just what people do.
Right.
Yeah.
Everyone's insane in this movie.
You're right.
You're right.
Everyone is insane.
And I think I did, I did skip over the ax guy, church carpenter.
My God.
and then, you know, again, then we have this, this woman who's killed.
And then we get this awkward instant message conversation between Lillian and Gerald whereshe asks to see him in person.

(01:32:27):
I don't want to play tonight.
Why not?
I'm depressed and I have a headache.
What's wrong?
I'm scared.

(01:32:49):
Scared of what?
I have to talk to you tonight.
Can you come over?
Which is then made weirder by the fact that the next scene is them talking in person.
Why do we need to see them arranging the meeting?
Well, yeah, I don't.
I don't get it.

(01:33:11):
You OK.
You've OK.
So the scene where there's the storm approaching the woman in the house.
Yeah.
We skipped over that or are we not?
No, no, we got the, we mentioned the woman in house because the dog died.
Yeah.
Okay.
So the dog dies.
She, this is, she's back out with the pigs again, where he's just like crawling, thekiller crawling around in the muck and whatever.

(01:33:32):
This, the Foley in this film is bold.
You hear everything so loud.
Like that track was bumped way up for whatever version I saw of this thing.
And she takes a solid ax to the shin.
And then it acts to the back and then the music turns into goblin straight up from likesuperior phenomena.

(01:33:54):
And then it ends just as abruptly as in an Argento film where it's like, it just cuts hardcut to the next scene.
And that same thing happens here.
And now these two dummies are on their computers messaging each other.
And by the way, she just got this computer Lilith or whatever her name is.
And she already has it decorated with a statue of Donald duck and on the side of it.

(01:34:16):
Is deputy Doolittle?
Well, know, this is what Americans like.
Americans love Donald Duck.
Actually, Europeans love Donald Duck.
And then she's like, I'm afraid to go anywhere.
And he's like, well, I want to meet you in person.
So their next thing at a dock in the middle of the night, sitting in the dark.
Yeah, that's, that's a good way to make her feel better.
Well, here's where we need to talk about like the content of this conversation, becauseLillian tells Gerald about her cousin, Charlie, who died when they were children playing

(01:34:44):
on a swing.
So what's wrong?
I You mean you don't want to tell me?

(01:35:22):
to come over all the time.

(01:35:45):
And he yelled at me telling me to stop, but I didn't.
I just kept pushing him harder.
See your cousin flying through the air.

(01:36:12):
and I'm still trying to get my father...
The other night I asked my computer to check
you
There was only one man

(01:36:36):
Now, this is not an uninteresting sort of backstory wound for her, but it comes, likewe're nearly two thirds of the way into the movie when this gets introduced!
Like, she accidentally hurt her cousin when they were kids, and now he might be out therekilling people, that's not unreasonable, but like this is coming so late, and I'm just

(01:36:57):
like, what is-
Why?
Why is this coming now?
And this is such an easy fix, which is the cold open currently is the car wash kill.
Right.
But it should have been the swing.
The swing.
the kids.
Yeah.
If you just showed that, then I don't know that you would notice any difference.
Again, this is just like that little.

(01:37:20):
Again, you know, they get so many of the beats and the traps and the tropes of the slashergenre.
Correct.
but to fumble something like that that is so basic and intrinsic to a lot of these movies,if you're going to lay in your lore and your backstory, like you showed at the beginning
or, you know, a part of it at the beginning, it's just right.

(01:37:40):
It's very, I don't, I, it's so bizarre how people can get so much of it right.
And then something that's so critical like that, you're just like, whoosh, nothing.
And if you were hoping that a swing would come into play again, it will.
In fact, it's one of the most enormous swings you'll ever see.

(01:38:00):
my God, they're both on it.
They're both on it at some They're both on it.
It's like, it would, it's America.
America, big swings.
It's big, everything's bigger We got the biggest swings.
Everyone talks about them.
got swings everywhere.
Look how small that guy's swing is.

(01:38:21):
Mikhail smile swing.
Terrible impression.
It's amazing.
I love it.
It's another then.
Okay.
So like this is where like the red herrings are coming so fast and furious.
could barely kind of get my mind.
The name Christopher Kaplan gets said it like it doesn't come up before like an hour andfive minutes into this movie.

(01:38:46):
This is an hour and 30 minute movie.
But then it said like 50 times in the space of like three minutes, Christopher Kaplan.
what about Christopher Kaplan?
who's Christopher Kaplan?
Christopher Kaplan is a guy we see for literally 10 seconds playing an organ at thechurch.
And it's like when he's playing an organ, man, it's like he's the Phantom of the Opera,like the music that he's playing.

(01:39:09):
You know, it's it's like the abominable Dr.
Fibes.
They keep talking about this guy like I should know who he is, but it's flash so fast.
I have no idea who they're talking about.
Another thing to note here is that throughout this film, Gerald looks incrediblyunhealthy.
He doesn't look good.
He doesn't look good.

(01:39:30):
It's not looking good.
No.
And then Lillian confides in him a very strange thing about her dad.
She says, quote, my dad was the best doctor I ever had.
We became very close during that time.
What?
Yeah.
And then Gerald says in response, well, I keep a list of all automobile accidents inCalifornia.

(01:39:51):
What?
He doesn't talk about his parents, but he does that.
list.
What are you talking about?
All automobile accidents in the state of California?
Every day.
Every day you'd be adding hundreds.
Like how would that's not even like that's what for why?
Second of all, how?
Third of all, why?

(01:40:12):
Gerald is secretly Mr.
Glass.
Mr.
Glass.
God.
It's just, but like they have that conversation on the swing where they're side by side onthe giant swing.
Then we learned that Richard's older wife is broke.
Like that's the subplot that comes back at this point.
We're heading into the final stretch of this movie and we have this whole thing where welearned like she has a meeting with her accountant.

(01:40:38):
We cut a
We've barely seen her, but she's got a meeting with her accountant and we spend this time.
Need another red herring, Chris.
The sands of the hourglass.
Another red herring.
But yes, I mean, this is something where if this is going to be a subplot, right, thefirst point of it is fine where it exists in that first third-ish of the movie.

(01:41:00):
Right.
But there's no middle point and then...
third point is way too late.
Right.
Like the third point should have been 15 minutes earlier in the movie.
then anyway, it is, yeah, subplots and threads, but also again, the way she's talking, sheis also insane.

(01:41:21):
This is not a normal meeting with an accountant.
It is bizarre.
No, no, no, no, no accountant talks like this.
My dad was an accountant for God's sake.
He's not, it's not how this is not how accounts pay.
And then we see her at a bar with a guy who now this is where I admittedly I got confused.
I thought the guy she was talking to was Lillian's dad.

(01:41:43):
And because I think they both have mustaches and they leave, they're driving down thisdark road.
The guy is literally like he's in the front seat of this big bench seat of the stationwagon.
This guy is so drunk.
He's literally falling over.
Like he can't even sit up straight.
And like, I'm like, what is going on?
and she swerves to avoid a fallen tree branch and she gets out of the car because she dida near accident.

(01:42:07):
She's kind of shaken up and then she turns around and instead of the drunk guy, the killeris sitting in the car.
Yeah.
And then he chases her down and axes her and I'm like, wait, does this mean that Lillian'sdad is the killer?
Like he was faking being drunk?
Spoiler, that is a completely wrong interpretation of what I've seen.

(01:42:31):
But I was so confused.
Like we didn't, we realized a few scenes later that the guy she was with in the bar is theaforementioned Christopher Kaplan.
But I didn't realize that because I saw him before earlier in the movie for 10 seconds.
Also, if people think that Jason Voorhees might have the power of teleportation at times.

(01:42:54):
this is a moly edge of the act.
Jabberwocky killer.
You can just, I, is amazing.
The skills that pay the bills here.
my God.
Both, both of the killers in both of these movies clearly have teleportation abilities.

(01:43:14):
the deputy arrives to the pastor of the church to tell them that they found two bodies,that they can identify the guy, but the woman is Mary Simmons.
I'm confused because Richard's older wife is named Laura Simmons.
And I think it was just a mistake by the actor.
He just said the wrong name and they said, fuck it, we'll just leave it in.
Cause he's struggling to get his lines out.

(01:43:35):
And now that Christopher Kaplan's dead and no longer a suspect, they try to make theminister a suspect cause he starts acting kind of weird and squirrely.
And then we finally, we get to the end.
Lillian is alone in the house and Gerald is sending messages on the proto instantmessenger, but she's not responding.
And she seems to think that someone is menacing her outside, lurking outside the house.

(01:43:58):
She's got an axe to defend herself, so that's good.
And what we soon discover is that there is someone out there wearing black boots and blackgloves purchased from the Giallo Black Glove Emporium.
They ship worldwide.
And there's this tense scene where the figure breaks into the house and is creeping up thestairs.

(01:44:21):
And she opens the bedroom door, and she starts calling out to Charlie.
because she has come to believe that Charlie has returned and is doing all of the killing.
But it's Gerald.
Charlie?
Charlie, is that you?
I'm not Charlie.

(01:44:42):
Charlie doesn't exist.
You invented him.
You're Charlie.
No.
God, no!
Charlie, no!
And he proceeds to tell her that he's learned that there is no Charlie.

(01:45:04):
That Charlie was the person created by her unconscious mind to deal with the injury shesustained on the swing set as a child.
And he's got all this evidence that he's found on his computer.
admitted to the psychiatric ward at the age of eight.

(01:45:24):
She fell from the swing and suffered psycho amnesia.
Please let go of me!
No, look!
You've got to know everything!
Diagnosis, cranial encephalitis.
Traumatic.
I can't let go Lillian Hibbs, diagnosis, acute psychopath.

(01:45:49):
And then at the sanitarium during your recovery period, you see?
That's what Charlie was born...
You need to destroy your past so you invented something to help you.
Shut up!
don't know what you're talking about!
no!
Look at this!
First of all, if he's coming to tell her this, why does he need to break into the house?

(01:46:11):
Like, why does he just knock on the door or yell up to the window or call her or whateveror just say, hey, I'm outside?
Why the whole giallo killer act?
If he's not coming to kill, like, they want you to think that he's the killer.
So they make him act like the killer, but there's no reason for him to act like thekiller.
It's insane.

(01:46:32):
As Rob says, everybody in this movie is insane.
God.
I, I, I, so he's got all this evidence on his computer and he's, he's showing it to herand all the victims either knew her story that she was Charlie or they were expressing an
attraction to her dad.

(01:46:54):
And Gerald's like, hey, you I don't care.
I don't care.
You're an ex-murderer.
I want to run away with you anyway.
Justin.
It's funny.
This week we had a movie that kind of broke me a little and then a movie that clearly hasbroken Justin.

(01:47:17):
But she doesn't believe him.
She thinks that he's the real Charlie.
And so, you know, there's a whole thing.
She runs outside, the cops are waiting and then he runs out and the cops gun him down.
Admittedly, in America.
Seems plausible.
It happens.
Yeah.
You know.
Especially when you are running like a maniac chasing a woman.

(01:47:40):
costume?
In a giallo costume and with an axe in your hands.
Why bring the axe?
Again, if he thinks he's doing what he's doing, why?
Why would he?
he break into the house?
Like it doesn't make any...
And then the jerky sheriff who doesn't want to do his job, he's comforting her.

(01:48:03):
And he's telling her, well, now there'll be no more murders.
And then guys, this demented smile comes across her face because Gerald was right abouteverything.
And we freeze frame on Lillian.
She was the killer all along.
And then we get this this song that is even more tonally incongruous than everything.

(01:48:25):
Like it sounds like JV Dolly Parton.
but it was clearly written for the movie because the lyrics are describing the plot.
what I love is again, this is late trend, right?
So you are now solidly in, you know, your past Friday for time wise.
So you're, you're solidly in is the evil getting passed on, you know, although here muchmore so than with Tommy at the end of four, right.

(01:48:50):
But, and then you're also getting, I think you are very far from the naturalism of
the characters in Friday the 13th, original, and you are now just in like, let's crankeverything to 11 all the time.
Now you're in another fucking dimension.
Yeah.
And you're like, you know, there was the hint of, you know, if Friday one hinted at andultimately kind of discarded some of the more explicit lines about, you know, the,

(01:49:20):
possible romance with a married man.
You know, state, right?
In how that affects, you know, her relationship with Steve Christie.
Here, it's like, how many different affairs are going on?
And you've got, you know, my God.
And just all sorts of craziness.
she was the killer all along, right?
That's what the movie is trying to say.

(01:49:41):
So there is no in this one, there is no evil being passed on.
This is just the surprising killer of it all.
Right.
Yeah.
But like, I don't
I don't know if I buy that she could do the killings, not because she's a girl, because agirl can be a killer, but the actress who plays Lillian, her body type doesn't match the
masked killer at all.

(01:50:02):
Like it feels like the masked killer seems to have a much bigger frame than thisrelatively petite, young looking girl, as just to point out, like she looks like she's 12.
Like, so it's like, don't, it doesn't feel like, it's not like, yeah, they had her in themask the whole time.
No, I don't buy that at all.
And it's a stupid mask.
It's a, well, it's, it's just kind of blank.

(01:50:23):
It's just, it's a, as you say, it's like uncle fest.
It's it's a very lazy, lazy mask.
It's, it's a mask you buy at like Michael's craft store so that you're supposed to paintthe mask.
Right.
that is what it step one mask.
Yes.
It was honestly, it was like when I was in cub scouts for a little while briefly and thePinewood Derby, you guys familiar with that?

(01:50:48):
I did that.
Yeah.
I didn't.
shaved down the car.
It was just a block of wood going down the thing.
Really?
Yeah, I didn't know what to do.
And I was just like, just painted it.
I didn't sand it down.
It was a block of wood that I painted a Where was your father?
Well, he was helped, but I was a very stubborn kid.

(01:51:12):
later, I did another one that I figured out.
But it was like, I felt like I had no instruction.
Yeah.
He's going to, he's going to listen to this and be like, that story is complete.
He's going to be like, that is not how it went down.
I know that I'm going to get a phone call and be like that Pinewood story, that PinewoodDerby story is bullshit.
car was great.
That's the car.
I worked for hours on that car.

(01:51:34):
I hand sanded that thing.
So if you are hearing this story, save this podcast episode before Chris is forced toreedit the retraction.
But like, just the other thing is that mask as lazy as it was, I thought it would comeback at the end.
Like I thought would like, it just disappears.
I thought like we'd see it in her bag or something or in her room, but like it just kindof vanishes.

(01:52:01):
it ends on the final shot of Friday the 13th, the final chapter.
It does.
It does.
It's, it's the same.
You're getting the hug over the shoulder face, partly obscured.
And then you look psycho, you know?
Freeze frame, we out.
What a European vacation we've had this week, guys.
my goodness.

(01:52:21):
A wild one.
I got, honestly, I gotta lie down.
It's it's, I'm exhausted.
This is just an exhausting, exhausting pair of films.
They're fascinating, but exhausting.
Yeah, we, often talk about this.
you know, these series can get real long sometimes.
And

(01:52:43):
I am so deep this the week for you, Rob?
Are we there, Rob?
To be honest, it was two weeks ago.
no.
I wish I'd brought my compass, gentlemen, because I am so lost now.
We got a couple more weeks to go.
We got a couple more.
Yeah, and it's funny because I always- to survive.

(01:53:04):
I got to be a final boy in this one.
I do reach the saturation point in the series towards the end and it's just like,
You know, again, the series is designed in some ways is this weird reflection of, the waymy brain works, where I learned everything about something and then move on to the next
thing.

(01:53:24):
But there's always that moment or two where it's like, I'm ready to move on.
But we still have to review more weeks.
In seriousness, every single time.
it, and look, we are like, we are years, decades away from the marketing and whateverreviews happen for these things.
as,
You know, very, I very honestly don't look at anything before I watch a film.

(01:53:47):
If I haven't seen it before, if I've seen it, whatever, you know, it's open season, butevery single time, every single series for the most part, maybe one or two that I would
say were exceptions because they were shorter.
Every single series though, that goes long.
I see the trend decay and I start to hate the trend just like in real life when ithappened.

(01:54:10):
You can see.
All of the things that start going wrong is like the DNA misreplicates.
People try to keep it fresh.
It becomes inbred is what it does.
And it's just, it goes awry and we're there.
Well, and here's a little peek behind the curtain.

(01:54:31):
I think we've settled on what will be the first series for 2025, which we're not ready toannounce yet.
But there's that thing where now all I want to do is think about that next thing.
My brain is kind of starting to move on to get me another yet to be revealed.
But, you know, stay tuned.
We will reveal it soon.
You want to move on like Gerald's extermination buddy.

(01:54:52):
want to move on from our rich older wife that is get me another Friday the 13th and go offboating.
But we're still not done.
Next week, we're going to head back to the United States for two slashes that are going totap into
very different folklore traditions.
So join us next week.

(01:55:12):
We're going to be talking about 1987's Berserker as well as 1988's Twisted Nightmare.
And I've tried to say those titles, you know, excitingly, but I'm not entirely sure thatthey've, they've filled, I'm a little nervous about next week.
We'll find They're both going to be new to me.
Yeah, for sure.

(01:55:33):
New to me as well.
None of us have seen either of them, right?
No, I think this is why they're all fresh.
All right.
it's interesting.
Well, anyway, thank you guys so much for listening.
We are your host, Chris Iannico and Rob Lemorgis 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.

(01:55:56):
In addition, check out the Justin Beam Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
And if you've liked the show, tell your friends about it.
Tell your enemies about it.
Tell that guy in a shaman mask, even if you still don't know who he is.
And join us next time as we continue to explore what happens when a Hollywood says, get beanother.

(01:56:20):
The other night here in this town Something weird took place They say that a woman died Noone knows why Everybody is suspended Anybody could have been I said, hey you

(01:56:44):
There you go.