The Ghost And The Darkness

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome to another horrifying episode of Bill and Ashley's Terror
Theater on the Marquee. This week is nineteen ninety six
is the Ghost and the Darkness? Join us right after
we get back from googling if hippos really do fart
out of their mouths? All of that after these ads
we have no control over. Welcome back, I'm Ashley Coffin,

(00:49):
Join as always by my co host in Terror, Bill Bria.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Bill Darling, how are we today? You've been going through it.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Honey, Yeah, I'm not doing super hot, but do you
know what I'm going to sort it out.

Speaker 4 (01:02):
I'm going to sort it out.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, we're going to sort everything out after you get
into what's going on in the the necronomicon of horror
news the COKA.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
So I have some little tibits here of some upcoming
films from people that I believe both of us. I
believe both of us are interested in their next works.
We'll see starting starting with mister ari Astor Eddington is
going to premiere in competition at the con Film Festival
next month.

Speaker 5 (01:37):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
This is his next A twenty four release, after Bo's
Afraid So Good on A twenty four for not abandoning
Ari after the performance of that movie, which everybody wrongfully hated,
and this is being described his as his contemporary Western.
It's gotten ensemble cast with Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone,
and Austin Butler. The log line from Variety is quote

(02:00):
the film is now in post production. Is believed to
revolve around a couple stranded in a small New Mexico town.
Though they're initially welcome to the town takes a sinister
turn by nightfall. Joaquin Phoenix portrays the town sheriff with
ambitious dreams unquote. And there's some buzz from I guess
maybe some people that worked on the movie that apparently,
similar to Boe is afraid this movie, although it's not,

(02:21):
you know, it doesn't have like an obvious horror movie premise.
Apparently it does devolve into a very horrific situation, that's
what I hear.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Nice the poster makes me sad.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, yeah, and I can think it's based The posters
based off of a famous photograph of I guess Buffalo
falling over a cliff. So yeah, it's it's already and
the tagline is already causing so much discourse online which
is hindsight is twenty twenty. So uh I like it, yeah,
and I think that you know, it's like, does this

(02:53):
take place during twenty twenty and the pandemic and all that,
and so good old.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Argaet stranded it up.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yes, fine, yeah, so good old AI is wandering into
some controversial territory once again.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
So we're excited to take it follow him in there.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Another debut at Con next month is going to be
the next one from French filmmaker Julia de Cornell, who
made Raw and Titan. This new movie is called Alpha,
and it's being described by the Hollywood Reporter as quote
a nineteen eighties set shocker that follows an eleven year
old girl who's rejected by her classmates after it is
rumored she's been infected with a new disease.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Cooties.

Speaker 4 (03:35):
Cooties.

Speaker 5 (03:35):
You got cuties, by the way, since you brought it up,
love cooties the movie Cooties. Yeah, but uh so, yeah,
this will be Julia di Kerner's Cooties. If anyone who
out there has also seen Raw and Titan, you'll know
that she is a singular filmer filmmaker. She's her movies
go some crazy, strange places, very French, very out there French.

(04:00):
So yeah, I'm going to be looking forward to that
and seeing what that is all about. Another movie coming up,
I believe it's supposed to be released in May of
this year and it was shot maybe in twenty twenty
three in Bogata is a movie called Rosario.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
Have you heard of this?

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Ash no like Dawson, Yeah, no, yes, that's the way
it's spelled. But no, she's not in it. But this
is interesting because I was at my laundromat the other
day dropping off my load of laundry and I saw
a billboard for it. This is in La a billboard
for this movie right above the laundromat, and I was
shocked because I was like, I haven't heard of this,

(04:40):
and it's clearly a horror movie. It's a picture of
a woman. I believe this is the titular Rosario, played
by Emberd Tobia, and it's got some sort of demonic
looking hands kind of grabbing her around the neck and
the tagline is you can't escape the curse.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
But guess who the male lead of this movie is
one of our favorites, David Desmalchion.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Oh oh yeah, I didn't. Okay, I saw a different
poster for it. Oh, I read one, but I did.
I didn't look at anything, but I go, Oh, David
does Malchin?

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Now that was scrolling? Was look good for him? Means
something else?

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Yeah, and so far I don't know what the log
line is. I mean, obviously there's a curse involved, maybe
a demon. I see that the Blair brothers Brook and
Will doing the music, and they've done a lot of
horror scores in the past. The director is Felipe Vargas,
but this is his feature debut, so really not much
to say about.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Why do I know that name? Is that Alien?

Speaker 4 (05:37):
It does? It does have a familiar ring to it,
but I don't.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
He doesn't even know the guy who who directed Alien Romulus,
Fiddie Alvarez.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yes, okay, I've got my v's and my p's and
my f's mixed.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
Uff.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's normal.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Wait till this episode when I have to say names
of countries in Africa.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
I'm not good at it.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, we'll get there, right, but uh yeah, so we're
you know, David's Smalchin horror movie Demons again, I'm down.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
See, we'll see what.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
That's always support him hell yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
I also wanted to mention just because it was something
that I recently saw and I kind of loved. There
is a pseudo remake coming up of the two thousand
and six movie The Breed, and this one is called
a Breed Apart now I happen to see the two
thousand and six The Breed is part of the surprise
marathon at the New Beverly Cinema out here. I think
it well last year. I don't know if you've seen

(06:25):
The Breed, Ashley, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
I don't remember, but.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
So it has like I think Michelle Rodriguez is one
of the actors in it. It's got like a cast
of like yeah, like it's nearly two thousand. Yeah, well no,
it's it's killer Dogs, like literally didn't stay away from those. Yeah,
And it surprised me by being a lot of fun
for its premise, and I figured animals attack, you know,
kind of going to this premise this episode.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
It is very strange that I like this movie, the
one that we're covering today, but like under the Dogs.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
No really that, but apparently they're they're doing a meta
twist on the remake. Whereas the original Kids, well no,
the original Breed was just about these teens who are
stuck on this island where you know, these killer animals
are being bred and hence the breed, and you know
they're trying to survive and get off the island. This
one is apparently about quote. When Violet accepts an invitation

(07:15):
to a private island with some of the world's most
famous social influencers, she expects a week end of unrivaled
viral opportunity. She soon becomes part of her own horrific
reality show when the guests are pitted against each other
to capture the island's legendary mandating dogs before they become
victims of the monstrous canines.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Oh my goodness, So I guess it's like part evil
reality show, part surviving killer dogs. The It stars Virginia
Gardner and Hayden Panetary, as well as Grace Caroline Curry,
and the poster image they have looks like the most
painfully two thousand's image of photoshop you'd ever see in

(07:55):
your life. I'm gonna send it to you right now,
just so you can look at it, ash, because I
think you'd have.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
Something to say.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
It's like I need a movie to do since they're
releasing until donn and didn't ask me to be there.

Speaker 4 (08:05):
So just scroll down to the poster. I'll see what
I mean.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
The dog. Wait, it's just the dog jumping through the
subway doors. Or is it a ship? Oh wait?

Speaker 4 (08:12):
Scroll down, scroll down.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Oh my god, Blue crush with dogs.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
Crush dogs.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, oh my god, German Shepherds. I'm not watching this movie,
but good for them.

Speaker 4 (08:27):
Oh god, I'm watching the hell out of this man.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Like seeing dogs get hurt. Cal know they're not. Only
there are no dogs.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Sure harm to the making of this movie anyway, So
I wanted to bring that to your attention. Another just
because of that poster alone. Another gestating remake, which I'm
just very curious about, giving the it's pedigree and the
fact that it's a remake of this movie, of all things,
is Chuck Russell's remake of Witchboard.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
I'm actually excited for that. Let's see what let's see
what they could do. I love the original.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Oh my god, yeah, me too.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
And it's a Kevin s. Tenny movie that our favorite
night of the Demon's guy. I think it was his
first film that he ever made. And this is being
remade by another nineteen eighties luminary Chuck Russell, who was
responsible for Dream Warriors Night Maynol Street three as well
as the Blob remake. And I don't know what old
Chuck has been up to prior to this. I mean

(09:25):
after the nineties, and he made stuff like, you know,
the Swartznagger eraser and stuff like that. It kind of
feels like he went into TV or kind of disappeared.
But this one's got a slightly different you know, if
you remember the original Witchboard with Tony Kataine, you know,
was about people so beautiful. These people at a party
and they play around with the Ouiji board and they're
supposedly like a friendly spirit that she'd be friends, but

(09:47):
it turns out he's not so friendly and he's trying
to So this one is about quote Emily, her fiance Christian,
and a group of their friends opened an organic cafe
refurbishing an old carriage house in New Orleans' French Quarter,
But a darkness descends over Emily when she discovers an
ancient pendulum board once used to summoned spirits. Christian seeks

(10:08):
helped for Emily from a expert, Alexander Baptiste, but Baptiste
has secrets of his own, knowing the fateful bloodlines that
binds them all to the Witchboard. A modern coven of
white Witches, a masked ball at Baptiste's mansion, and the
legacy of Nagasoth, the Queen of Witches, are all part
of a dangerous game that puts Emily's very soul at risk.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Okay, why are we calling this a remake of Witchboard?

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Then?

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, I don't know, but I'll just a wit of
vngulum Board. But the cast includes Madison Eisaman who was
part of the Goosebump sequel, as well as Al Comes
Home and I know what she did last summer of
the series, which I did not see. It also starts
Jimmie Campbell Bauer from Stranger Things and you know Twilight

(10:51):
and all that, and yeah, so I'm kind of like it,
like you ash, I'm intrigued what he could be doing
with this. And then finally just to wrap up, just
because it's kind of been the big news but not
it's not so big once you understand. I guess there's
there's a big partn theer's a little part. Big part
is that we are definitely getting a Beatle Juice Beatle

(11:13):
Juice sequel.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
From director Tim Burton.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
I guess they went over the the feedback and the
and the box office receipts from the second one, and
they said, you know what, good enough to make a third.
And I'm kind of happy about that because I feel
like they, you know, Burdon found a little bit of
his mojo again with the sequel and it was fun
to see, you know, all these new characters and new
environments and all that. And they left it on the
note which feels like it could have gone into another movie,

(11:38):
so obviously they are doing that. The other news paired
with this is that apparently Warner Brothers is also very
bullish on making another Gremlins movie, and yeah, this would
be a third Gremlins movie, and they are involving the
original writer, Chris Columbus, so you became a director of

(11:58):
his own and did Home Alone and the first two
Harry Potters and so on and so forth. No mention
of Joe Dante, though I don't know if they reached
out to him or if they want him involved at all.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
I kind of assume they.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Wouldn't want him to make the movie because he's kind
of on the older side. Now he's kind of slowed
down production. I think he would probably go insane if
he had to work with a bunch of puppets again. Yeah,
but I would hope you'd be involved in some capacity
as a producer, maybe a writer or something, because you know,
it really is his voice that lent those first two movies,
you know, the specialness that they have. I know, they've

(12:30):
had this cartoon that they're in the second season of,
I think the Wild Batch or the New Batch or something,
which I haven't seen.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
I don't know if you have.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah, and I just haven't heard much about. And it's
a cartoon, so it doesn't have the same, you know,
quite the same appeal as like the original movies because
of the puppet angle. So yeah, hopefully, hopefully this is
an indication that they might be looking to sort of
recapture some Gremlins magic rather than just, oh it's an ip,
let's just make more, you know.

Speaker 4 (12:59):
Yeah, sort of.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
I'm going to be there keeping my eye on them
with that, though. They got to be very careful. That
is a that is a loved you know, don't come
out and make it a g you know, G rated movie.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, No, I think the mistake would be to try
and pivot it completely to a only kid friendly audience,
because as we these days, kid friendly is not what
he used to mean, you know, and kid friendly is
just very like low common denominator freaking Minecraft movie, you.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
Know, just garbage.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
Yeah, so, yeah, you want Gremlins to have the edge
that that those first two films had, so hopefully they would.
And since I'm in the boat anyway, and since this
episode will drop past April sixteenth, I can say here
that I've seen until dawn. I saw that movie last week,

(13:54):
and uh, I think it's a it's a sleeper. I
think that, you know, if you're a fan of the game,
but certainly even if you're not, if you're just a
horror fan, I think it's something you might want to
check out just because of it's not the best horror
in the movie of the year, but it might be
the most because the gimmick is that they keep introducing
a lot of new elements of horror movies into the
into the film as it goes on, and it's only

(14:15):
not even at long movie, so it's it's actually just
choc a block full of stuff. And yeah, if you're
kind of if you've kind of been digging the high
concept horror of recent years, kind of like Happy Death
Day or something like that. I think this is a
really good example of it.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
I'll support Gary even if I don't like all his movies.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Gary Doverman one of the screenwriters of Until I can
call him that. Yes, yes, yeah, and so h so
give that, Give it that a shot, because I feel
like it doesn't. It's not getting a lot of buzz yet.
Maybe it will when the when the release date is closer.
But yeah, I think it's definitely a fun, a fun
one to go out to the theater for.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
It's one video game I played actually with Gary's college
roommate Marty, when Marty and I played that game together
all the way through, which is me playing a game
together with somebody as I sit there and I watch,
but I like, you know, I'm like, go left, go right,
pick that up. That's how I played because I'm not
very good, but I like watching people play.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
That's how I played the first two Resident Evils because
they came out when it when we didn't have those
consoles and so I had to go to other people's
houses to ye to watch them or like help, you know.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, help, We're gonna do that. And we sat.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
We played the whole game in one day, so I'll
be interested to see what they do. And there were
very famous people in that, like we said, I hate
them Penetiera, but Rammy Mallick was in.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
It in the game, not the movie.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
In the game. Yeah, yeah, which made it feel a
little bit more theatrical. But it was fun.

Speaker 4 (15:34):
It was fun.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
It was yeah, all right, well we will We're to
going to take a quick break, so we'll be right
back with our feature film after these miss ups from
the grave that we have no control over, and now
it is time for our feature film. Okay. So this

(15:55):
is like the last couple of movies that we have
done that come at that came out in like nineteen
ninety for nineteen ninety two, nineteen ninety six that I
just feel like I've always seen. I have watched this
movie a million times, and it's one of those movies
I will defend until I die.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
I'm literally shocked when people say that they didn't like it.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
And why this is one of the most realistic killer
animal movies ever made. I think because it is very
actually factual things that you wouldn't even think or you know,
just seemed crazy actually did kind of happen. And there
are a lot of these kind of movies, but I
will say off the bat, they're not my favorite kinds
of movies. I have a very hard time watching movies

(16:36):
where animals get hurt.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
But these lions were so badass that I was like, I.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Don't know, I'm on the I'm usually on the lion's
side throughout the movie, and it's hard. It's hard for
me to watch animals getting hurt no matter what. So
I go very back and forth with my emotions because
you love a lot of the characters that you meet,
but also I'm like, you're in their house. So yeah, yeah,
Michael Uglas, I'm talking about you. We'll get to that
fuck around and find out. But yeah, I mean I

(17:05):
was shocked when you said you'd never seen this.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
I think it was a mixture of the fact that
it came out during a time when I was in flux.
You know, the mid nineties were a weird time for
me in terms of what kind of movies I was
exposed to. I was only just starting to be given
the Uh, it's funny. I was talking with the you know,
as our listeners probably know, I work for Slash Film,
and we were having a chat between ourselves, all of

(17:29):
our writers in the slack the other day about growing
up and how our parents were strict or not strict,
you know, and I know that you and I should
have talked about that before, and I kind of pinpointed
the fact that like the early nineties or late eighties,
you know, one two three punch of like problem Child
Home Alone and the Simpsons like really gave my parents
the willies or something because they were like, oh no,

(17:52):
all these kids are going out of control and they're
turning against the parents and they're being so rabunctious. We
kind of locked down our kids, like we got to
really just you know, protect them from the evils of
the world sort of thing. So that's when they really
instigated the you know, the no console band, you know,
no Nintendo, no Sega, and you know, being restrictive about movies.
And then there was also my own self restriction too,

(18:12):
where it's like, you know, I had the opportunity to
see pulp fiction earlier than I did at a friend's
birthday party because for some reason, you know, a fourteen
year old birthday party was they were going to show
pulp fiction at all.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Right, that's like my party. I showed Dustill Don at
my thirteenth party.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
But even Dustill Don.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Is like more fun, Like that's some more of like
you know, because there's empires in it and everything pulp fiction.
It's like you kind of want to be an adult
to appreciate pulp fiction, right, So I.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Know it was a completely different movie.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
When I like watched it again, I was like, oh
my god, I did not understand.

Speaker 4 (18:43):
Okay, right, this makes sense now.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
So so yeah, so I was in that weird period,
and I guess that it just happened to come out
at a time when it was this was ninety six,
and like ninety six was a huge year.

Speaker 4 (18:54):
I remember going to the movies a lot that year.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
Obviously Independence Day, Mission, Impossible, you know, all these great
some movies. And I think this came out in was
it August or October even actually it wasn't summer movies.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
So and they felt, I mean what they filmed it
in ninety two, Yeah, it took a minute ninety two
or ninety three.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
They he wrote the script in the late eighties, but
I think they shot it no, they shot it after
because Copkins talks about how Kilmer had just come off
of Doctor Moreau. So yeah, they shot it like ninety
five somewhere around.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
It was it ninety five, Okay, I know it took
it took a minute.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
It took it took a minute. But so yeah, So
this came out in October of ninety six. I was
obviously in school ending my middle school tenure there, and
so yeah, I think I was just like I was
too distracted and messed up, and I guess it just
never got to it a video. I never saw it
on cable, you know, I don't know if it played
on cable and it off of TV, so it must

(19:50):
have at some point, and I guess I just never
caught it there. And it's never been one growing up
that like friends of mine had seen and like really
like you know, advocated for. And as I found out
doing my research for this episode, it doesn't have the
most stellar reputation, which is really shocking to me because
how great it is. But also I feel like its

(20:11):
reputation has gotten better over the years amongst you know,
siniphile circles and whatnot, and so I think it's it
got weirdly lumped in with like, you know, the the
Congos and the water Worlds of that.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Era was the critics. The critics were really mean, but
the people liked it.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, yeah, And again I think this what I was
trying to say is I think it got lumped in
with the water Worlds of that era because so much
of the negative press about those movies, this water World
others that I can't think of right now is it
wasn't even necessarily the movies themselves. It was the gossip
about the making of these movies, you know, and how

(20:48):
like there was bad press about you know, oh soone
so and so is having creative technicilities with this person.
Oh the budget's gone over or oh you know whatever.
So I think that that was the nineties were when
like that could break a movie and actually affected its
box office and its reputation, which is sad, but I
think that might have all contributed to just being so
late to.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
This watching it with a more critical eye like I
did this time. I absolutely do blame Michael Douglas and
his production team for a lot of the issues with
the movie and the changings that we're going to go through.
But when I heard what the original vision was to
see what he came in and did. It was funny
you brought up water World because we're going to talk

(21:29):
about Vin Costner a lot. I was like, oh, okay,
so there was a little bit true. There was a
little bit that you know, the people were seeing and
saying that were right, and it is your fault, Michael Douglas.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
But you know what I'm going to go on the
other end too, is that I think that part of
so much of what I enjoy about the movie too
is because of him and because of what he was
able to bring to it. I think that I will
agree with you in terms of the choices that he
made hurt the movie, but I think that it's not
like his presence in and of itself is bad, you know,
in the sense that like.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
No, I wasn't talking about Michael Douglass the character of Oh.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Yeah, but I mean even hiring you know, people like
Villmo Sigamond and Jerry Goldsmith, you know, like, you know,
bringing this production team in and getting these people on board,
because there's just a murderer's row of talent in this
movie for sure.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
So this film was directed by Stephen Hopkins who directed
Predator to Nightmare on ELM Street, dream Child, Blown Away,
Lost in Space, but you know, he had a couple stinkers.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
But what I thought was amazing, Actually we should we
plot it?

Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, just just before we plotted, I just wanted to
give a little context to in terms of like why
this movie was made in the mid nineties. And I
think it was because the Midnightties were having like a
moment or a wave if you will, you know, because
these things come in waves and trends and all that.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
Hollywood is never original.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Of not even animal attack movies, but sort of animal
attack movies mixed with like exoticism, like you know, Travelogue
sort of you know, oh, like because I'm thinking of
John mcneernan's Medicine Man with Sean Connery, you know, which
was not an animal attack movie, but certainly has a
similar adventuresome you know.

Speaker 4 (23:15):
Aspect to it.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
There's also the retro pulp you know, adventure spirit that
was kind of you know, started by Batman, which then
evolved into like The Shadow and The Phantom and even
stuff like George the Jungle, and then you had you know,
the the animal attack movies. Like obviously you had stuff
like Rechnophobia and Anaconda, which I think was the year

(23:38):
after this, and of course, you know, you always have
shark movies like Deep Blue c and like Placid, like Alligator,
even something like Tremor's you know, has a bit of
that too, And so I think there was, yeah, there
was probably all of this happening, which because you know,
as we'll talk about, the script has been going around
for a while, and I think it was in Congo.

(23:58):
I think I already mentioned Congo as well in Jurassic Park,
you know. So I feel like all of these kind
of contributed to Ghost of the Darkness because it is
Watching it the other night, I was I was struck
by how like, wow, you wouldn't see a movie like
this made easily today for theaters and even back then,
like it's kind of an outlier where it's like, oh cool,
like a classic you know, kind of adventure animal horror movie.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
You know.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Ah, well, I think that's what classifies this as more
of a horror movie because of how true it is,
like the things that happen out there are actually horrific
and could.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Kind of happen.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
So I think that's what because most people wouldn't really
see this as a horror movie, even though I feel
like in the movie theater not movie theater, and like
a Blockbuster, it.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
Usually was in the horror section. Yeah, I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
I guess you could make an argument you could put
it in an adventure, you know, if they have an introsection,
because but certainly I would. I would absolutely compare it
to Jaws, you know, and I think most yeah, Jaws.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
We even less than those big ones that you're talking about.
That's like Man's Best Friend had just come out around
that time, and the lower level budget movies using the
real animals, which makes it look so much better than
like the I like the mix of the animatronic and
the real like because of course you can't do everything,
but the choice to use the real ones was the
right choice, all right. So, Sir Robert Beaumont or Beaumont,

(25:26):
I don't even know, Okay, Sir Robert Beaumont is behind
schedule on a railroad in Africa, enlisting noted engineer John
Henry Patterson to write the ship Beaumont expects results. Everything
seems great until the crew discovers the mutilated corpse of
the project foreman seemingly killed by a lion. After several
more attacks and trying every way possible to stop the

(25:48):
killings and being denied help from the English soldiers, Patterson
is a lost. Beaumont threatens Patterson that should his commission
not be concluded on time, he will tarnish his reputation.
He also announced that he will be contacting the fame
hunter Charles Remington to help Patterson in eliminating the threat
due to his past failures. Remington arrives and quickly learns
that he may finally have met his match in these

(26:10):
bloodthirsty lions.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
So yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
This movie is the fictionalized account of two Savo man eaters,
a pair of lines that terrorized workers around Savo, Kenya
during the building of the Uganda Mbasa Railway in East
Africa in eighteen ninety eight. Patterson wrote a book about
his experiences, which, let's be honest, I'm sure he flourished

(26:37):
it a little bit puguage in there. You know, I
believe a lot of what he was saying, because it
is it's a really crazy story.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Well, like John Connie, who plays the character Samuel in
the movie, he is a narration over the film and
it's a very curious narration too, because it really is
a meta It's a more meta narration than you're used to,
I think, especially in this era's you know, nineties movies.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
I think we're you know, maybe more used to it
now a days because.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
We've had such a long period of post ironic you
know stuff. But yeah, he's talking directly to the viewer
in his narration, and he's saying, like, this is a
true story. This like, you know, you'll be surprised how
much of this really happened. And at the end he
says that if you want, you can go to the
Chicago Museum. I forget which museum it is in.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Chicago, but I have it in my notes somewhere. Yeah,
And he's like, you can go see them, you.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Can go see these remains of these lions, yeah, which
is yeah, it just adds that special free song of
realism to it that only makes it more intriguing and
eerie rather than you know, so distant in the past
and anything that.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
And so William Goldman first heard about the story when
he was traveling in Africa in nineteen eighty four and
thought it would make a good script. So, like you
were saying, This script has been around since pretty much
eighty nine when he started pitching it around a paramount
as a cross between Lawrence and the Lawrence of Arabia
in Jaws, which I I think it is hilarious, and
they commissioned him to write the screenplay, which he delivered
in nineteen ninety and I do like that he everybody like.

(28:08):
So it's called the Ghosts in the Darkness because they're
supposed to be the locals thought they were demons and
not actually lions, and Goldsmith's said, or Goldman said of
the lions, like, my particular feelings is that they were evil,
and I believe that for nine months, evil popped out
of the ground of Ssava.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
I'm like, okay, well that's a good way to sell
your script.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
But yeah, nobody there shut out Goldman because Golden's one
of my favorite screenwriters. He was one of the most
incredible screenwriters in the nineteen seventies, like his Run from
Butch Casside and The Sance Kid Through the Hot Rock,
The Stepford Wives, Great Waldo Pepper, marathon Man, all the
President's Men, Bridge Too Far in Magic, Like that's incredible,
and like you know, he would also go on to

(28:45):
do obvious luminary movies like The Princess Bride and Misery
and more of a visible man for John Carpenter, Hey
I and stuff like this and Absolute Power in General's Daughter.
He kind of in a later part of his career,
I guess towards the end he sort of devolved into
more of a pop boilery kind of you know, adult

(29:06):
contemporary if you went from like like his seventies period
was like, you know, edgy pop rock, like you know,
his later period was like, you know, adult contemporary version
of that, like kind of like later Rolling Stones, if
you know what I mean, right, Oh yeah, where it's
like the Rolling Stones when they were like young, they
were like, oh man, these guys could do no wrong.
They were just like so incredibly broundrey pushing, and then

(29:27):
by the end, you know, it's kind of like, Okay,
it still sounds like The Stones, but like he's doing
stuff like Hearts and Atlantis and Dreamcatchers.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah, that's a comparison.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
But I really do respect Goldman as a writer a lot.
He wrote that famous book about Hollywood in which he
has that axiom which I'm always quoting, and so many
of my pieces that I write, which is that there's
only one truth in Hollywood. I'm attributing here, I'm misquoting,
but it's something like there's only one truth in HOLLYO,
which is that you know, nobody knows anything you know
mm hm, which is which is.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
That there is no.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
One principle or axiom that you can subscribe to as
a filmmaker where it's like this is going to work,
this is one hundred percent oh yeah, yeah sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
He's just buckle up because that's about to be what
we're going to get into. So our boy, Brian de
Palma had just had What the Untouchables come out, and
he was picked to direct out of a big group
of directors who all.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Wanted to work on this movie.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
And he got, of course Kevin Costner, who was a
star of Untouchables, to star as Val Kilmer's character, and
his career was.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Just kind of started taking off.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
That was Dances with Wolves had just come out but
hadn't gotten like as big as it was, and de
Palma started making like script adjustments and everything was on
track until nineteen ninety, like we were saying, when his
film Bomfire The Vanities came out and I guess it
bombed and Paramount got scared him was like hey no.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Yeah, which all was crazy. Fortunately, like a very big
blow to Di Palma in his career. You could really
you can charge to Palma's career from like pre Bonfire
to post Bonfire. I think he made some of his
best work post Bonfire. But like the reception of that movie,
like clearly, like you know, made a impact on him.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Paramount panicked and they were like, get out, and then
they hired Kenneth Branna and I was like, oh, okay,
let's keep this going. But because they fired to Palma,
Costner was like I'm out. He wanted he was like
trying to fight for it, and they he didn't have
a leg to stand on.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
So I guess maybe they fired him too.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
I can't remember which way it went because it's a
oh maybe he bailed because Dances with Woods had just
come out and Paramount didn't know, so there wasn't a
fight to keep him because Paramount wanted goddamn Tom Cruise
to be the lead and he was like pass, and
then they got mel Gibson, and mel Gibson was like pass.
So Branna sens that there was some trouble and he bailed,

(31:47):
and that's how we move on to Michael Douglass and
his production company.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
He was partnered with Steve Rutherford.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Or whatever for Constellation Films, and Douglas wrote the script.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
He loved it.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
He said, it's an incredible thriller about something that took place.
I'm totally in And he decided to get Hopkins to
direct it, who just did a couple of the flops
like we were just kind of talking about, and he
probably hired him so he could keep more control over
the film.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Probably, And Hopkins is an interesting guy, Like I I
know that he has a reputation ish as like a
maker of trash, but we like that trash.

Speaker 4 (32:25):
We like that trash. And I think that.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
He's someone who I don't know if he's fully become
one of my guys in terms of like, yes, it happens,
but he's close in the sense that like he's someone
who have just continued to gain more respect for as
a filmmaker rather than lose it, as I've you know,
stayed with his movies or revisited them or even discovered them.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
In this case, we were just talking about Blown Away.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
We're just talking about Blown Away, which is just a
lot of fun.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
It's it's very goofy in its own way, but like
it has a lot of fun with the suspense of
like what if there were a mad bomber who's just
like super great at making crazy bombs, who loved you
and was a Texan with an Irish accent.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Speaking of Irish accents, I think I.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
Think it must have been.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
It must be like Hopkins is like thinking, like, continue
this Irish accent thing. I got to make these guys
do Irish accents. But yeah, Like he started with a
slasher film in his native Australia which I have not seen,
which is called Dangerous Game, which I would love to
see because I think one of Hopkins's biggest strengths is
as a visualist. I think that he, in my mind,

(33:34):
creates images that are very graphic novelty in a way
that feels honest to me and not Zack Snyder, which is,
you know, if Zack Snyder is somebody who's like, hey man,
I'm gonna take this graphic novel. I'm gonna like put
it on the screen. It's gonna be like exactly like
you've seen in the graphic novel and it's kind of
you know, lazy in that way.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
To me, Hopkins is someone who.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
I feel like absorbs the esthetic of a graphic novel
rather than the letter or the actual you know, just
clean copy and paste of it, and puts, you know,
his ideas, his visual his visuals on the screen. Because
everything from you know, Nightmare five to Predator two, Judgment
Night and Blown Away and this and certainly Lost in
Space as well. I haven't seen any of his films

(34:15):
past Lost in Space, but I loved Lost in Space
when I was a.

Speaker 4 (34:18):
Kid, So me too.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Joey Joey and Fucking Spider Gary Oldman. Yeah, but uh
but yeah, Like there is shots in all of these
movies that are just going to stick with me forever
because they're just so vibrant and so intense in terms
of their composition and in terms of their visualash, you know,
just like, yeah, they leap off the screen to me.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
You know, my favorite shot in this is when we
finally see the two lines for the first time, the
ones in the foreground and ones in the back, and
they show the entire screen and you're.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Like, there's joe You're like, oh shit.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
One of my favorite sequences visually is when Douglas's character
what's his name, Remington, Remington Steel, No, Charles Remington. He's
he's doing his ritual with a messiah and you're intercutting
that with Val Kilmer's character, like you know, watching it
and sort of absorbing what all this means and in
a in a sequence that really, in other hands could
have been so dull, and so like, okay, can we

(35:17):
please get back to the Lions.

Speaker 4 (35:19):
I was riveted.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
I was like, oh, this is really fascinating stuff, you know,
for some reason, and it's just because of the way
that it's shot, and uh And I do have to say,
like this does have one of my favorite cinematographers on
it too, which is Vilmost Sigamond, who the Hungarian American
who you know, was such a huge part of the
American New Wave movement due to his work with Robert Altman.

Speaker 4 (35:41):
You know, the guy just has like this incredible uh.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
CV where he's He's worked with not just Almond, but
but Palma as well, Michael Chimino on The Deer Hunter,
you know, Steven Spielberg and Close Encounters, and he even
shot like I'm pretty sure he shot Ghostbusters too.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
Really, Yeah, Well, even like directing, acting, everything aside the
cinematography and score.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
I could be wrong about Ghostbusters, actually I think that's
that's another one who I always picks them up with anyway, So.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
The cinematography and score really make this this is. I mean,
we love Jerry Goldsmith. We talked about him a million times.
You know, he's did Gremlins, he does Chinatown, The Mummy.
Score total recalled so many But I remember as being young,
when I was younger, like the score you know me,
I'm a score whore, always really stuck out to me.
And I think it lends to taking you to feeling

(36:32):
like you're like on an adventure in Africa, Like it's
perfect and there's so many ups and downs and iconic
parts of it that you'll hear sampled other places and
not realize, like when they get to the cave that
like that they only play that the one time in
the whole film, and it is so good and it
sticks with you and every time you hear it in
the future like I've heard this before and you'll never

(36:53):
think Ghosts of the Darkness.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
But yeah, the score is very good.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Well, Jerry was always someone as a composer who was
really interested in combining the not necessarily electronic sounds, but
electronic ish sounds, like really trying to push the envelope
between an organic orchestra and material that he could work
with that you know, wouldn't go so far as like
EDM like electronic dancers, right, but would certainly approach it more.
You know, you think of his score of the original

(37:18):
Planet of the Apes and the echoplexing that's going on
in that score. Obviously it's Star Trek the motion picture,
and the thing that was called the blaster beam, which
is this like sort of pipe that they could just
hit and it would make this wow sound. And yeah,
whatever he does with the African choir in this score
is so because it's it's obviously organic, it's obviously people's voices,

(37:39):
but it feels like it's almost sampled almost or something
like there's something, Yeah, there's some quality to it.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
The Mummy almost The Mummy takes you to Egypt the
way that this kind of takes you, and you're just
transported and it changes and evolves throughout the whole movie,
which I like so much. Now, do you think that
they're going lion because that's what I hear every time
that they're saying. I guarantee that's not what they're saying,
but it really sounds like lion.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Lion.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
There's a name for that, right, like not automatopoia, but
there's like an actual, like psychological term for that, right
where you're like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
You hear it, I hear it.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
We're talking about lions. So we're doing this because of
Val Kilmer, and we wanted to like really talk about
him and you know what he's meant to both of
us through his career. I mean, he was probably one
of my first loves a is mad Martigan and I
knew I was like into the Bad Boys when I.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Was five or whatever.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
But Heart of Gold someone whose career I feel like
I have followed and been tied into, even like him
being Batman, like that was a very big deal for me.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
And this was right after Batman.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
He had just made that, and he loved Africa, so
that's why he really wanted to do it, and that
helped the movie to be financed a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
But I don't know, I.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Just there, I'm gonna miss I'm gonna miss him. I
just don't I don't know, you know, from Tombstone.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
To heat to even mcruvor like he was in.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
That Top Secret. Of course, real genis Gun Top Gun.
The Doors.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
Yeah, man, like a kiss, kiss bang bang.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
I watch every Christmas because it's just one of the
most superlatively hilarious movies I've ever seen, and it's just
so rich with depth and funny. I think that Valas
is one of the few like singular leading men actors
in a sense that like he was, he could be rugged,
he could be strong, he could be bad boy, but

(39:38):
he also could be like super obviously intelligent, really deep, soulful,
spiritual and and kookie and just weird, you know, and
just off the wall character actor, but without going so
far as to be like a caricature. And I was
really taken with his performance in this as.

Speaker 4 (39:58):
Of course, I can't.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Remember his character's name, Johnahn Patterson collor Colonel Patterson, because
he's got that classic, you know, uh, Hollywood leading man
arc of being someone who is clearly with it, clearly
has an integrity, has a moral value, has you know,

(40:20):
has these things in him. He has, you know, his
wife and this child on the way we're introduced to him,
and he's we already think he's a pretty good guy,
and yet, you know, because of his pseudo failings in
terms of you know, just being maybe a little bit
too arrogant, a little bit.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Too oh he got the Robert Downey junior sentence.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
A little bit of Robert.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
But there's there's kiss kiss bang.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
But yeah, certainly, certainly because of things I guess I'm
gonna be vulgar and uh and describe this in my
own way. But this, this script in this movie does
such a lovely typical thing with so many male heroic
adventure movies, especially if you have two male leads where
it's the you know, the dick measuring where like, oh, yeah,

(41:04):
you know, you start the movie with a guy who's like, okay,
well that you know, that dick's looking pretty good. It's
pretty girthy, it's pretty nice, and uh, I think you
can get the job done. And then some other character
will come in and go, oh my god, wait, that
guy's huge, like this guy, this is the big dick guy.
This is the yeah, And then of course it reverses
that because you know, it turns out big dick guy
maybe he doesn't have the biggest dick and uh, you know,

(41:27):
maybe it's time for our original guy to to grow a
bit more, you know. So I it's always it's a
dynamic that always really works, you know, in terms of
giving you a status and undercutting it and then raising
it up again.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah. And he was right at in the middle of
like being labeled by Hollywood as being like a problem,
a problem because of The Island of Doctor Moreau, which
I mean, whatever happened on that, I don't agree that
he was the problem. He was reacting to the problems
that we're having around. So Vau came into this set
on the worst conditions immageable. He was completely exhausted from

(42:03):
doing the The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was dealing
with the unfavorable publicity from the set, he was going
through a divorce, and he barely had time to get
his teeth into the role before they started. And it
was and he's in nearly like every scene. And the
director was saying, like he worked him six or seven
days of weeks for four months under the worst conditions literally,

(42:26):
which we'll get to and.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
He really came through. He said he has a passion
for the film.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
He said he's the best director, like one of the
best actors he's ever worked with, and he had unwavering professionalism.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Which might he might have been like.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Okay, I have to get it together and like be
a really good boy, but he did.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, he said he was the best actor he ever
worked with.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
And you know that's that's how I see, you know,
Vaal Kilmer like people go through crazy shit.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
Yeah, well, all you have to do is look at
there's a gulf between. You know, his work is Batman
and Batman Forever. His work is Chrisia Hurliss and Heat,
and his work is Patterson in this though that's within
like a two year period really, and there's course a couple.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
Other movies there.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
But in Batman, you know, he has that dynamism that
you want in a you know, capital L leading man
of you know, this is the guy who's you know,
the movie revolves around he's got to keep everybody in
his orbit so and so so on and so forth,
and he like he's the perfect encapsulation of a supporting player.
Like he is not the lead of that movie the best,
but yeah, but he's just got such a depth to

(43:27):
that character and every time he's on screen, it's just magnetic.
And you know, he doesn't he's not so strong as
to like pull your focus away constantly, but when he's
on screen, like you're definitely looking at him. And then
Ghost and Darkness is just like a classic like Hollywood.
Like I said, this is such a throwback movie in
so many ways to you know, classic Hollywood of like
the fifties. And you know, he's got that sort of

(43:49):
Bert Lancaster kind of vibe to him of just like
you know, rugged guy, but still has no this heart
of goal to him that you know, he's really relatable.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
It's funny that you said that, because the right said
that would have been his perfect casting for the roles
Burt Lancaster. So I'm only going to nitpick him a
little bit because I couldn't not see his highlights, which
I thought was really funny for eighteen eighty nine or
whatever year it was.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
But bring Kevin Costner back into this.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
I do believe that him having to go in and
out of that Irish accent or whatever the hell he
was trying to do takes away from his performance. Is
why people like nominated him for a Razzie in this,
and that when I feel like they would have taken
that pressure off him. He could have been a little
bit more present in the role instead of worrying about
the accent. Like the second he gets to Africa, that

(44:36):
accent is gone, but then it comes back, like you know,
it's very Nicholas Cage in Vampire's Kiss, like there it
is there, it's not.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
It's very funny. But I actually, like, I think it
makes me laugh.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
So I don't mind when people do that, when they
just go in and out of the accents.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
I help think you have Brian mccurtiy as Angus Sterling
with the thickest Scottish accent possible, So I don't know
how anybody could fight against an accent that strong, where
it's like if you're hard to share the screen with
him and maintain an Irish accent when it's not.

Speaker 4 (45:07):
Your native accent, like good luck, Like that's.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Just yeah, just let him talk normal, not normal, but
you know what I mean, let it talk normal for
himself because he was he was You couldn't even like
tell he was stressing himself out about it.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
But it's something that I think that you know, because
the fact that this character, it's really only important that
he is from a white Anglo Saxon background, like a
sort of civilized quote unquote background. They don't make a
meal out of the racial implications in this movie, which
they could have in another if this was made today,
like it absolutely would be a factor.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Beaumont's line is, we're going to save Africa from Africa
by building a bridge.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
I was like, girl, what did you just say?

Speaker 4 (45:48):
Ye?

Speaker 2 (45:48):
And we're going to stop slavery okay, which wasn't untrue.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Yeah, And then there's one moment, there's one scene where
VAL's character is called out by his foreman or something
where it's like, yeah, you're white, you could do anything.

Speaker 4 (45:59):
Yeah, I don't push that, and.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
He's like, what are you going to do about it?
Look around?

Speaker 4 (46:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Right, But I do think that, yeah, Valle's performance only
really needs to be his character only really needs to
have that background, and therefore his Irish accent isn't part
and parcel of his character in the same way that
Tommy the Joneses is for blown Away or you know,
someone like from Boston. Like, you know, there's probably a
ton of Boston accents, you can name it their bad,

(46:25):
but so many people playing Boston roles with like Boston accents,
they tend to have that as like a part of
their character where it's like it's defining trait, and I
think that Patterson's irishness in this movie is not so
defining as to be detrimental to my experience, you know.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, yeah, Since we were talking about conditions, Stephen Hopkins
also later said about the shoot that they had snake attacks,
scorpion attacks, tick bite fever, people getting hit by lightning, floods,
torrential rains and lightning storms, hippo chasing, hippos chasing people
through the waters, farting their cars, yeah, cars getting swept

(47:02):
into the water, and several deaths of crew members, including
two drownings. So where life imitating art kind of is
going on here? Because so the budget was thirty million
and they went up way over to fifty five million
because of having to change locations. There was some shady
shit going on with not being allowed to work in Kenya,

(47:22):
which nobody can really explain. Something that they were like,
oh no, it's too dangerous because of you know, smally whatever,
and then it really came down to they didn't want
to pay the tax or something.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
I don't know. No one's going to tell you the truth.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
So they had to move it to the Oh my god,
I'm so sorry song Malao game reserve in South Africa
rather than Kenya, and that was a big problem for
the budget because it made things go way over.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
It does feel like Hopkins in that quote, very very
neatly glides over the Oh yeah. There were some deaths
of crew members, like oh shit.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Yeah, you're like, I'm sorry, Can we sorry?

Speaker 4 (48:01):
What?

Speaker 2 (48:02):
What can we go back to that who died? Can
we give them a little luh?

Speaker 4 (48:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (48:07):
You know, and especially because everybody loves to crap on
John Landis in the Twilight Zone accident, you know, it's
kind of like, ah, I know, you know, it's it's
a thing that happens more often than not, and it's
something that should be shouted out as much as possible
every time it does happen, you know, as opposed to
and uh yeah, I mean I was talking to Ash that,

(48:27):
you know. I did buy the Blu ray of this
to see it for the first time, and I'm so
glad I did because they did a four K resto.
It's not a four K disc, it's a Blu ray disc,
but they restored the movie anyway from a print and
it looks gorgeous and this is I knew, being a
Stephen Hopkins movie that it would look good, and I
wanted to look as good as possible, and it does,
but it is surprisingly bare bones in the extras department,

(48:48):
and I was curious about that, given you know how
even the most uh, sort of seemingly unloved movie will
get like a special ultra deluxe, you know, mega edition.
And I think that this particular factors surrounding it of
just like the behind the scenes issues of this movie,
I guess, must be keeping people from wanting to talk
about it.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Well, now's a good time to bring up Michael Douglas.
So the part of Remington was originally offered to Sean
Connery and Anthony Hopkins, but both of them declined.

Speaker 4 (49:17):
That was the other one I wanted to mention the
Anthony Hopkins movie.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Oh yeah, Now I'm like, go bear, get them, eat them.
The producers wanted to ask Gerard de Purdue to do
the part, and that's when Douglas stepped in and he
was like, you know what, I'm gonna do it myself.
Hopkins is not happy about this because in the early
drafts of the script, Remington was originally supposed to be

(49:40):
you know, this crazy kind of like kind of crazy,
because that guy did not exist.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
In the real story. There was no Remington. But that
is a big fabrication.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
But when Douglas chose to play him, the character's role
was expanded and it was given history. So like he
was supposed to be just someone you didn't know anything about,
this like crazy guy with no background and yeah he
uh in Goldman's book that you were talking about?

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Was that Goldman's book you were talking about? Which line
did I tell?

Speaker 1 (50:09):
The screenwriter argues that Douglas's decision ruined the mystery of
the character, making him a wimp and a loser.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
Goldman's coming for him.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Oh gosh, So I disagree with that assessment. I think that,
as I was saying earlier in the episode, I think
that douglas is meddling obviously did have an impact on
the final cut of the movie.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
You know there's a did what.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Do you mean he took the final cut away from Hopkins?

Speaker 3 (50:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. I couldn't remember
if hed said that already. Yeah, he took the final
cut away cut supposedly forty five minutes. I don't know
if that's true.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Added himself in earlier earlier.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Which already I was surprised because I think he doesn't
show up until a good maybe forty or so minutes
until you know, so it does feel right to me,
It doesn't. It doesn't feel like he shows up in
the second scene, you know, right, and to the point where,
like watching it for the first time, I was like, oh, yeah,
Michael Douglas's is in this right, you know sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Well, you love that he puts himself front and center
on the cover. That makes me laugh because you think
it should probably be Valance.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Which it should be val, but it's not absolutely should be.

Speaker 4 (51:09):
Val It's absolutely should be val.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
But I just have to say, man like Michael Douglas
in the nineties, like it's my favorite era of Michael
Douglas that weave his weave, but also like we've but.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yes, as like Michael Douglas in.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
The nineties, freakin' basic instinct falling down even the kookie
as it is disclosure, Uh the American President this what's the.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
One where Gwyneth Paltri's cheats on him with Big.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Martin murder, which of Hitchcock's dial in for murder uh.
In the game, the one of the underrated Finishess. Oh yeah,
that was great too, So like, yeah, he had this
great run of this of during this era of like
kind of leaning into his age, you know, which I
think it was like mid late forties or something like that,
as like, you know, kind of got a swagger. But

(51:53):
also all of these roles, and I think Ghosts in
the Darkness very much included, has like a real undercut
to them in terms of like he's presented as like
mister huge dick, and then the rest of the movie
is like, here's why he's not mister huge dick, you know. Yeah,
And really that started with basic instincts where it's like,
you know, it's like, oh, this guy is going to
get this evil lesbian bisexual lady who's mean, and then

(52:15):
it's like, actually, the bisexual meat lady is kind of
right to maybe kill him.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
I guess, well that's how.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
I felt feel about what happened to him in this movie,
based off some of the stuff that he says, which
I think is good writing and good storytelling. Huh oh yeah,
I mean, and we're at the point so like, oh,
never give anybody your gun, like always take your gun
into battle. That's something that we learn in this is
where Bernard Hill, who we haven't talked about King Saladin

(52:43):
gives Falcilmer his gun. And you know what I never
noticed is how they make that scene seem a little nefarious,
like it does.

Speaker 4 (52:50):
Yeah, it does.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
He do that on purpose, And I was thinking that
for a second when the misfire happens, I was like,
was he like trying to maybe protect the lions or
you know, is he a annibal lover or something.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
Even Samuel makes a face when they so Bernard Hill
is like, my gun is more powerful. You should use
my gun and switch guns with me, And I'm going
to take your gun and stay in the infirmary. So
when they go out there, Michael Douglas brings the MESSI
what you were talking about, which was just really cool
to see how they would like hunt lions and it worked,
It actually did work. But the lion comes up behind

(53:20):
Val and Val goes to take the shot, which is
also another beautifully shot scene, and it doesn't go off,
and Val plays that like I was like, he just
shit his pants and I did too, Like we both
like at the same time, because that's it.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
What are you going to do. How are you getting away?

Speaker 1 (53:35):
And he's Michael Douglas is just yelling at him, shoot him,
shoot him. He does, and he's like what happened? And
he's like, the gun, you know, didn't fire. It's not
my gun. And he's like, you just got hit. And
I love that little like analogy.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
No, I think that the whole gun business really ultimately,
you know, at the end of the day, I feel
this movie has such a great Like I said, it's
so much of it as a throwback, you know, to
just old Hollywood, but but classic literature. And I think
that even even though Jaws, you know, which we will
be talking about later this year, is very clearly a

(54:09):
riff on Moby Dick, I feel like this is even
a closer one just because it does the similar thing
that Melville does in that novel, you know, which is
I don't know if Moby Dick was the first example
of it in literature, but it's certainly the most famous,
which is imbuing an animal with this spirit of something else,
whether it's a demon or you know, another person or

(54:31):
what have you. And I really do think that the
gun business is a is a offshoot of that, where
it's like it wasn't you know, nefarious in anybody's part,
Like you know, Bernard Hill was the doctor, was really
trying to help. He was like, look, my gun's more powerful,
you should have this one instead. Yeah, but that moment
is treated with this weird like you know sideye, like
what's going on here? Because yeah, spiritually you're you're.

Speaker 4 (54:52):
Never supposed to do that.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
It's like it's superstition almost, you know where it's like yeah,
like never step on a crack, otherwise you will break
your mother's back, you know sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah, it's it's wild, and I do I I know that.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Hopkins said that he felt like the way that Michael
Douglas's character came in took away from Val Kilmer's character
being like the main hero guy. And I kind of
disagree with that too, because you know Michael Douglas's So
they they make a plan whatever, they kill one of
the lions.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
They get him. I'm very upset. I'm like, poor baby.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Uh, But then, knowing full well that there's another lion
out there who's probably pissed, these three decide to drink
three bottles of champagne and laugh like loudly at this
lion station and he's like he's scared and he's alone.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Who's laughing.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
Now, well, well, well it's not really well with Douglas's
character Reminton's speech about these bullies that tormental, oh yeah,
bring up, and it was sort of like again he's
imbuing these lions with the with this you know, more
down to earth persona of like, oh, they're just mean
because they're a team. And as soon as we break

(56:02):
up the team, the other one's going to be you know, docile,
and he'll be fine, like we don't have to worry
about it sort of thing where it's like you.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
Were in their dead.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
You saw what they go into their dead, and there's
hundreds of bones of animals and people, and he's got
that famous line like this is not what lions do.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
This is not what lions do.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
The creepiest, the creepiest line to me in the whole
movie was when Bernard Hill, the doctor was was discovering
the first body that was left, or maybe it was
a second, but.

Speaker 4 (56:28):
It was the first.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
It was like, yeah, yeah, he was licking his skin
off so he could drink his blood, and I'm like, that.

Speaker 4 (56:34):
Is so evil is awesome?

Speaker 3 (56:36):
That's not even like that's not an animal behavior, that's
like demon shit.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Right, I want a little bit later, I do want
to get into I did some research on like the
real history and like the lions and like why maybe
this kind of happened.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
But yeah, like the blood drinking. I was like, is
that what they were doing?

Speaker 1 (56:51):
But lions, I mean, think about when you see your
cat or somebody's cat messing around with mice and not
killing them, but just like batting them around, like they
were actually having fun doing this, like it became a
game to them, like, oh, you want to go mess
with the people, Like are you bored? Yeah, I'm bored,
let's go. But anyway, back to what we were saying, Yeah,
the one lion gets him while everybody's dreat somehow nobody

(57:14):
wakes up, but they pull Michael Douglas or he pulls
Michael Douglas out of the tent and rips some to shreds.
And I think that is one of the coolest shots
because they could have gone gore, because they've been going
gore the whole thing. They could have showed you his body,
but they choose just to show you all the blood
in the tall like wheat grass and it is the cool,
like most visceral scene in the whole thing, because this

(57:37):
was this guy who was This wasn't supposed to happen
to him.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
We just met him.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
They were doing that what they should do, you know,
they're becoming friends, and bam, they got him. Because they
really kill everybody pretty much in this movie. Every time
you start to like somebody, they killed him.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
There's even a moment where I legit thought for a
second before the editing and the pacing clued me in
that it was a dream sequence. Before that scene was
the dream sequence of his wife.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
The wife Yoh, that gets everyone.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
I was like, you know, did they just do a
deep blue z on me? It's like, you know, I
was like, payback.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Is a bitch, get that wife and baby.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
But then it didn't happen, and I was like, see again,
you know you're messing around.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
With these lions.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
Yeah, but yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
I just I think the the ending gets a little
nineteen ninety six like action kind of movie when everybody's
jumping around, But up until there everything feels very realistic.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
One of my favorite sequences too is I guess it's
just before Douglas's death of you know, the makeshift.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Sort of you know that thing I would never get
up on.

Speaker 4 (58:33):
I would never get about him.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
But yeah, that there was a remarkable amount of tension
and the fog and everything of that.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Of course, the.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Fog was going to roll it, and that poor baboon
is like, who the hell did Like, how the hell
did I end up here getting dragged into this shit?
This is your shit and I don't even know these lions,
and here I am trying to like pull myself away
from this pole, like get me out of here.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
I felt so bad.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
For all the you know what.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Funnily enough, though, when you mentioned the ending, I yes,
I guess it does, you know, get into a little
bit more of a cliched territory. And I did quote
it at the beginning of the episode, but I love
that moment. It's just the classic, you know, third act
turn of a hero character where it's like, you know what,
I can no longer stand back and let this happen.

Speaker 4 (59:12):
I've got to take control, take charge.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
We're going to se I got to sort it out.
And the fact that it's happening on this bridge or
near it anyway, And so so there's a couple of things.
One is I think that it might be a deliberate
allusion to you know, classics like Bridge on the River Quai,
which although that was a movie about these you know,

(59:35):
prisoners of war being forced to make a bridge.

Speaker 4 (59:37):
Uh, there's a lot of talk in.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
The in this movie goes in the darkness about you know,
what bridges represent and why Vowle's character, you know, loves
building them, and why he's he's made it his life's
work and you know what he thinks that represents in
terms of, you know, bringing worlds together and you know,
making more of a sort of progress and civilization and
so on and so forth, and so in that way,
I feel like you have a visual metaphor of this

(01:00:00):
is the encroachment of the civilized world onto the spiritual
old world, you know, where it's like if these lions
represent like literally like Kluthu where the old gods. Yeah,
it's kind of like modern man saying, you know what,
you don't go any further than this, like we're building
a bridge. It's happening like you gotta go down because
it can only be one of us. And it also
reminds me of the visually of the ending I don't

(01:00:22):
know if you've seen this movie, Michael Chimino's Year of
the Dragon with Mickey Rourke, but that ends in a
very similar fashion where Mickey work is doing a mono
mono duel with another like bad guy on this bridge
in the middle of this bridge, like you know, just
firing in the middle of the bridge, and I just
when I see Val here and I see Mickey Work there,
I just see this comparison in terms of visual and

(01:00:44):
who knows if Hopkins had seen the movie and was
maybe thinking of it, but I think there's an interesting parallel.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
That's really interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
I haven't seen that off to check it out, all right,
So getting into the historical accuracy, uh So, although Patterson
claimed the lions were responsible for one hundred and thirty
five deaths, they only could verify like twenty eight to
thirty one. And the way that they did it was
doing tests off the fur that they got off of

(01:01:11):
the taxidermied lions, which I.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Just science is so cool.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
But the thing is that was only it only goes
back for like a month, It's not like how long.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
And the reason that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
There was only thirty one killings that were verified is
because when they were making this bridge. They were training
people in from India to work as well, so you
had the Africans working there and then you had the
Indians there who didn't exactly get along, but a lot
of them were undocumented. So you know, these lions killed
one hundred and thirty five Indian and African artisans and

(01:01:45):
laborers employed in the construction and didn't have documents or
papers or this and that, like kind of like they
didn't now and it's pretty messed up. Like the location
where the bridge was built is actually now called the
Man Eaters Camp in the Tsavo East National Park.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
But yeah, the terrified.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Locals didn't think that there were lions at all, but
called them the ghosts of the darkness after demons.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
And it was true.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
They were wrong for wanting to, like the Brits were
wrong for wanting to like try to save Africa from themselves.
There was truth in that they were trying to stop
the slave trades in Mombasa, and the slave trades is
probably why the lions started to even be there to
begin with. But because the journey was really long, people
get sick, they die, they fall off, and you know,

(01:02:30):
they would just throw the bodies into the bush and
the like, what better and easier thing for lions to do,
and that's how they kind of got the taste for
human flesh. And the bridge that Patterson was tasked to
build was right on the foundation of these hunting grounds
where people used to to go through, so you went
from like them having one buffet to another pretty much.

(01:02:53):
And the African locals refused to work on the bridge,
so did many of the Indian workers that were brought
in to do the job, very much like in the movie,
because they had no idea how to protect themselves. Being
from India, they didn't deal with lions, and these were
not just like normal lions. Tsavo lions don't have manes,
so there are a lot there's no like the scientists

(01:03:14):
think maybe it's because of the terrain that they like
evolved to be born without them, because as you see
in the movie, there's a lot of like bramble sticker
bushes and a lot of like grainy looking grass and
they would hide perfectly in that and not be seen.
And that's why this was so dangerous because not only
was it unusual for them to attack during the day,

(01:03:35):
but they would just come out of nowhere and get you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
And there was literally nothing that they could do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
And there's now one hundred thousand people I'm sorry, a
thousand people scattered for miles, exposed and vulnerable for these
two lions.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
To just be like having a field day with.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
And it's ironic that the word tsavo means place of slaughter. Like,
I don't know, it all just seems like ever.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Yeah, yeah, I think that this is an instance in
terms of the reality of you know, the story and
the encounters that the story that the film is based on.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
It's got to be.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
It feels to me like one of those instances of yes,
it's ostensibly a true story, but like the events could
be explained better nowadays than they could at that time. Yeah,
It's like at that time it was just, you know,
mankind just did not have enough knowledge or basis in
study of these animals or these conditions to understand what
was happening, and so it of course, would you know,

(01:04:31):
they leapt to the conclusion of like, well, I mean,
if they were saying it's demons, maybe it's demons.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
Then it's probably well they're also bigger, and they're testosterone
is higher, and they were really smart, which is why. Also,
like you're saying they thought they were demons, like the
lion's targeting the new hospital, that one hundred percent happened.
They did all that work to move the hospital and
like try to whatever, and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
They were like who you fullen.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Pulling people out of their tents by their their legs
like that one hundred percent happened, and val trying to
hunt in the Patterson hunting from the trees, and the
lions attacking the other side of the camp.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
All of that happened.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
And the box, Yeah, there's a great the great visual
metaphor of the box, which both Patterson and Remonton are
in agreement where it's like this is a great idea.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):
It does not work.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Everything that happened in that box actually happened, even down
to the bullet hitting the lock and letting the line
out and somebody going deaf from the roars because of
course it went in there and went.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Hey, like freak the hell out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Also the gun misfiring for Patterson, that happened, Like the
dude had really bad luck.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Let's just you know, put it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
The only thing that I found was kind of nobody
can confirm Patterson has it in his book Was the Den.
He has a picture of the outside of the cave,
but didn't have any pictures of all of the bones
in this and that no one has ever been able
to locate that with bones. And then they found the cave,
but it wasn't the bones like that. But I'm going
to choose to believe him.

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):
Sure, And you know, it's not too much of a
stretch to think, if, yeah, these lions were killing people,
why wouldn't they have brought a couple of bodies back
to feast on. Yeah, you know, and you know, of
course there would be bones around sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
No, I think it was just the the abject horror
of these these guys were, well this one guy in reality,
seeing something that they didn't expect to see and just
being appalled by it, where it's like, oh, this is terrible,
Like look look at what they're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Look at what they're doing, and yet they're at the
Chicago Field Museum.

Speaker 4 (01:06:32):
Chicago Field Museum.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Yeah, and like really, these guys were just having a
good time. And you look at your modern house cat
after watching this movie and go, oh, yeah, they were
just having a good time. So they were going to
use the animatronic lines, but when it came to like
do the shots, you could really see how fake like
you can see it because they obviously they can't have
a lion.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Bite somebody's head off or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Even though one of the coolest scenes in the infirmary
when the lion like roars and the fire looks so good.

Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
It looks great.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
So uh, they got real lions.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
And that's why these lions have the mains, because they
got Caesar and Bongo, our favorite little lion actors to
do it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
And I do think that it helps the movie a lot.
Those lions look so good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
I like their mains whatever, yeah, you know good and
they so there was three. It was two from France
and one from the United States, and I'm pretty sure
one of them is like the Paramount lion or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:07:26):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
I was thinking watching is too bad that this movie
went to paramedultimately, because think they had gone to MGM,
you could have.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
They would have gotten that guy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
But yeah, I wanted to shout out Caesar and Bungo,
you know, so thank you you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
You guys did an amazing job in this movie.

Speaker 4 (01:07:39):
Yeah, good job.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
No, I think that there's something you get just from
reality of actual animals and actual lions of this the
power of their movements, you know, whether if they're even
if they're just walking across a space, it's like, yeah,
you could really tell.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
They were the lions in George of the Jungle then yeah,
Or maybe it's not that it just said George of
the Jungle and I was like, huh, do they mean
my boyfriend Christopher Lambert's or my boyfriend Brendan Fraser or
so I'm not sure, probably Christopher Lambert's.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
No, they mean I think they mean Brendan Fracher. Okay,
Christopher Lambert was Tarzan, not George of the Jungle, Oh
that's right, yeah, or Gray Stoke rather, I think, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
Yeah, both handsome, both in a little loincloth, so yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
Both.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
Happily.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
The film did win an Academy Award for Best Sound
Editing Bruce Stambler Way to Go at the sixty ninth
Academy Awards.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
So they gave it something.

Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
They gave it something it should have gotten.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
Score you should.

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Sinematography because and maybe maybe cinematography too, because yeah, this
isn't like an Oscar Darling movie in the way that
maybe it would be if it had been made in
nineteen fifty five or something. But certainly it deserved a
better reputation than it got. And you know, other than
the bad press of you know, the perfect storm of

(01:08:52):
foul and Douglas's meddling and Hopkins's unhappiness and these deaths
that occurred on set and the out of control budget,
you know, there's nothing about it. I mean because like
you have people, you know, apparently in contemporary critics of
the time saying stuff like.

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
That it was, you know, something that they didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Oh boy, I saw what Roger Ebert or Ebert or
whatever his name is.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
I saw what he said.

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
He said it lacked the usual charm of being so
bad it's funny. Oh and but even Hopkins himself in
a nineteen eighty eight interview, but it's a mess. I
haven't been able to watch it, but I think that
was that must have just been his bad, bad blood
about the making of it, and you know, his comfortableness,
you know, dealing with whatever he dealt with on that

(01:09:39):
on that set. Because it really is, it's so watchable,
it's so gorgeous. It there's never a moment during the
movie where I thought, oh, this is this is messy,
Like I can feel the behind the scenes nos, like
getting in the way here, Like it never felt that
way to me, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
No, my last little bit about the history and like,
if you don't want to hear about animals getting hurt,
I know I don't like to, but I thought that
the last lion, So they did kill them one at
a time, just like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
In the movie, Like they got one and then they.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Were trying to go after the other one, and they
were smart enough to like split up a void and unfortunately,
you know, I'll say I'm sorry, unfortunately one got taken.
They were clever boys. But the real lion, they shot him,
he escaped. Patterson went after him with a group of people.
They caught up to him, shot him again, but this
boss lion escaped again and it took them another day

(01:10:29):
to find him. And by this lion took nine rounds
before it finally went down.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
So maybe he was a demon.

Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
You know, you never can tell.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
No, I think that's that's one of the enduring aspects
of this story, but also stories like it, which is
because the Animal Kingdom is still always going to be
a perpetual mystery to us. At the end of the day,
there's just so much that we can imbue, you know,
in terms of like our own human consciousness of like
why did you do that, why did you act that way?

Speaker 4 (01:10:59):
Why did you behave that way? Would you do that?
For sort of stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Yeah, And I think that it's always going to be
a point of attraction or interest.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
One of the funniest Michael Douglas lines are from the
trailer when the whole I Am the Devil.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Scene, and I remember that being played everywhere. Yeah, will
I pull this trigger?

Speaker 4 (01:11:17):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
The Devil?

Speaker 4 (01:11:19):
No? And I think that it's Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
I going back to my original confusion as to how
I missed this movie. I think that it must have
been just, yeah, the paramount, you know, maybe being too
scared of it or too nervous that there's already so
much but bablivisity. We don't want to push this because,
you know, if they had put a little bit more
effort into it, maybe it would have been a bigger
deal when it came out to me, and I would

(01:11:41):
have had to go see it in the theaters, you know,
or or whatever. If they had, you know, commissioned some
dumbass rock soundtrack for it.

Speaker 4 (01:11:50):
Maybe it would have. You know, there's been the Love
three from Ghost in the Darkness by.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
Gone so high over their budget it would have been
very successful. But it eventually did it. It made eighty
seven million by the end, but opening weekend was only
thirty eight million on a fifty five million dollar budget.
And like, I think two other stinkers came out at
the same time that were maybe stinkers, maybe not, I
can't remember what it was. When was a Chris O'Donnell movie.
Oh yeah, And like all three of them just did

(01:12:20):
about average at the movies. But like in a year
of we just had Independence Day and it's October.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
People are going to go see horror movies.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
I'm sure there was another Michael Myers movie in nineteen
ninety six, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:12:32):
Well not ninety six, but yeah, yeah, there's like what
there would have had to be something.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Something, But yeah, I mean, it'll always be a favorite
of mine, you know, even if it was just because
of Val Kilmer, that would have been a like, it's
a favorite.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
I do admit I'll biased, and I will fight you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
I'll not take it lightly if you tell me you
don't like this movie and you were valued.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
You know, have your opinions, just don't tell it to me.

Speaker 3 (01:12:57):
And I think that it's it's important to us as
horror fans to sort of champion this as a rare
valculum or horror film because the guy didn't really make
any obvious horror movies. You know, he didn't make a
vampire movie. He didn't make a well he did actually yeah, yeah,
but it was the Copola one. And it's kind of like,
is that you fine? Right, So he didn't make let's say,

(01:13:19):
obvious in terms of, like, you know, a franchise horror movie.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
I mean, he's literally in Dracula, but okay, we won't.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Count that one.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
But yeah, So it's like, you know, there's not a
lot of obvious ones that we can point out and
be like, yes, the the valculum more horror filming. So
I think that, and I think that in terms of
you know, Ghost in Darkness as a horror movie, because
I ultimately, if you put a gun into my head,
I probably would put it in the adventure you know,
section of the horror of this video store rather than horror.
But you know, it's when it does try and get

(01:13:53):
creepy and scary it works so effectively, you know, yeah,
it really does.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
Oh yeah, when just the first guy getting holed out
of the tent and then getting pulled through the fields
and the field itself is slicing him all up because
the grass is sharp, like ough, scary, scary stuff. But me,
I'd be like, wear okay, right right, You're not gonna
kill me?

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
I like you, Oh my god, immediately immediately.

Speaker 4 (01:14:22):
I would.

Speaker 3 (01:14:22):
I would be dead as well from attempting to run away,
but I would not be as fast as the allions.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
So would you say, Like one of the scariest scary
ish scenes is when they're barricaded in the hospital with
the blood everywhere, and then the lions are just straight
fucking with them. They're like, oh, I'm going to push
this door, I'm going to go over here, I'm going
to put my little pall through the window, and you
can't catch me, you can't see me. And they set
all of that up to just go attack the other
hospital geniuses.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Clever voice.

Speaker 4 (01:14:48):
It's that scene.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
It's it's the fog attack that really Yeah, that's like
the stuff of animal nightmares.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
Marker, were are we thinking of Carrie Ellis in Cupola?

Speaker 4 (01:15:00):
You were thinking of Karry was Yeah, yeah, who.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Are you talking about? What Copola want?

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
Is he in TwixT? Yeah, which is kind of about vampires.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
Yeah, yeah, Actually leave this in because I'm wrong. Bill's right,
and TwixT was weird.

Speaker 4 (01:15:11):
Yeah, that was weird. So it's like, yeah, it's not, Yeah,
it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
It's not one that you could be like, oh, the
Val Kilmer vampire movie. It's kind of like, oh, right,
there was vampires in that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
Kind of For a second, I was like, was he
quincy or was he the other guy?

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
No, that's a miss. That's a miss, though he should
have been. She would have been as Quincy.

Speaker 3 (01:15:28):
Yeah, honestly, as much as I love the guy, if
you had replaced Kennah Reeves with El Kilmore as Jonathan Arker,
like no.

Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
Because he would have tried to been like do the
accent and it would have both been terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
Was his iconic how dag you? Suh?

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
Again, I'm telling you those I love it so much,
and I love it so much that Kevin Costner was like,
I'm not doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
And nobody gave us ship as Robin Hood but yeah
no almost, like damn it, why did he do it?

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Because God, I love it so much. Oh, it's like
Mark Ruffalo to do accents. Give it to me, do
it in every movie.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:16:03):
It makes me laugh.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
Yeah, and again, like I said earlier, like VAL's accent
in this movie, it does not take me out.

Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
It just brings me in. It's just sort of like, hey,
this is fun.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Like it's every fifteen minutes you're like, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:16:17):
Yeah, you try to do a vowel thing there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
So do we have any those are final thoughts?

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
Yeah, I'm good. I think that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:16:27):
Do you have anything to recommend I do? All right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
So, like I said, I don't really like a lot
of movies like this because they make me sad. The
only one that really doesn't is nineteen eighties Alligator. I
love Alligator more than anything.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
By the way, just because we're doing a ton of
episodes on shark attack movies, you have to include those.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Well, sharks are my favorite, like shark movies, but anything
else that's like animal like shark kill them fucking sharks.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
I I don't mean that in real life. I'm terrible.
I can't even put a knee in the ocean.

Speaker 4 (01:16:52):
Honest. I just wanted to keep you if.

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):
We did our shark explanation.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
You know, I like the shark ones, I don't like
the animal any other animals like that be with Liam Nielsen,
I will never fucking watch that because you shouldn't be
in their woods.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
Yeah, no, I don't need to see wolves.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
I used to cry at Man's Best Friend, even though
I would watch the movie more than I should.

Speaker 2 (01:17:10):
Even Kujo, I was like, it wasn't his ful, you know,
very sad.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
But Alligator, on the other hand, it isn't the best movie.
But damn if it isn't one of the best bad
movies there ever is. It is total drive in trash
legend kind of movie, and it's one of my favorites.
And it's literal like eat the rich scene is my
favorite scene almost in all of b like horror movies.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
It makes me very very happy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
So if you want a good time and a good laugh,
go watch nineteen eighties Alligator.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
Yeah, Lewis t who came out of the school of
Regi Corman. Robert Forster is the lead. Love a good
Bobby Forster performance. This cop who you know, it's got
some some dick swagger of his own, uh speaking and
Higgs and John Sales's script is you know, this is
a writer on the time he was writing stuff like
the Howling, you know, so like it does have that

(01:18:03):
that you know, that special Junasa quav of a social commentary,
like you said, ash of the either rich scene and
everything like that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Oh that's so good.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
It's really good. So my recommendation is much more recent.
But this is twenty twenty two's Beast, starring Idris Elba
and Charlton Copley and directed by Baltazar Corma Crew similarly
about a man killing lion that is loose in South Africa.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Is that just one? Or is it too?

Speaker 4 (01:18:30):
It's just one, It's just one.

Speaker 3 (01:18:32):
And and this is you know, this was kind of
a refreshing, very B movie esque thing to see at
the theater a couple of years ago, and it came
out because it is very unadorned and it's I think
this is This was the same year that Fall came
out as well, about the two girls trapped on the tower.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
Okay, yeah, and it felt like.

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
The one two punch of like these two movies of
being like, hey, remember like when you can go to
the multiplex you could see movies like this that aren't
ip that aren't you know? Part four of six, you know,
and it's sort of like, just if you were in
this situation, what would you do?

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
Man?

Speaker 4 (01:19:05):
You know, like could you survive?

Speaker 3 (01:19:06):
And it's just Idris Elba versus this lion trying to
protect his family, and yeah, stay away from this line.

Speaker 4 (01:19:13):
They're not in the Safari. I don't think there's a
he's a doctor.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
They do to piss the line off? Did they like Bigfoot?
Like did they hit its baby or what happened?

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
I think it's because yeah, they were they were near
a restricted area where they're staying, so.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
They were doing the wrong thing.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
I see what you're doing. Yes, I understand what you're
trying to say. Your wait, you know what, you're gonna
tie it in again. We're gonna this is this is
what you're looking for? Is the transgression of the characters
something we love to talk about on the show. Or
it's like what did the characters do to conserve their No, no, no,
that's too far, that's too far. But anyway, it's it's

(01:19:53):
got a lot of really great tension in it. Uh
it it doesn't pull its punches. I felt and eatress Idris.
He's really great.

Speaker 4 (01:20:01):
And then I think he's always great.

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):
Yeah, and so it really just has a fun B
movie vibe to it that if you were in the
same vibe as Ghost in the Darkness, then I think
you'll enjoy.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
I'm probably not gonna watch that, okay, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
No, but it did it looked its very CGI right
or did they use real lions? Uh?

Speaker 4 (01:20:20):
It was mostly I mean I have because I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
In for like acting animals. I'll watch it for the
support of that of Cocoa and Bongo or.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
In Bongo.

Speaker 4 (01:20:30):
Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:20:31):
I don't see anything listed here in terms of what
how they shot it with the lion. So maybe there
was partial real line in Vault, But certainly, as as
I recall accidentally saw it the once, as I recall
certain sequences, they had to have used a CG lion
because exactly you couldn't safely do some of the things
that are done in this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
They didn't, like, they didn't got to the darkness like
they had that lion just jumping on people, and I'd
be like me, next.

Speaker 3 (01:20:58):
Well, hey, maybe someday we can review that one movie
that about uh that Jan de Bond almost died on with.

Speaker 4 (01:21:05):
Yeah, Tippy Hedron's family, isn't it. Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:21:09):
Yeah, where they had the game preserve in their Beverly
Hills home or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Melanie Griffith got our face ripped off right, Yeah, she's but.

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
I still live with them. They're so cute and Conda Lee.

Speaker 3 (01:21:24):
Thank you all for joining us for this episode of
Bill and Ashley's part of the Stranded Pana Network. You
can find my work in the show notes links below.
Check us out on social media. You can find this
show at strandedpanda dot com and everywhere else you get
your podcasts. If you have questions or comments, please feel
free to write to us at Bill and Ashtara Theater

(01:21:44):
at gmail dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:21:46):
We're dying to hear

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
From See you, night, mans.

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