The Crow & Dark City

We’re taking a look at two dark films from Alex Proyas. First up, we discuss the tragic death of Brandon Lee on the set of THE CROW, but then dive into all the things we love about the film. Then, we wonder about Kiefer’s acting style in DARK CITY.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:46):
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Speaker 4 (00:50):
X No one under seventeen admitted is speaking of random shit.
It's our podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:01):
Random Ship, the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
I would listen to that podcast, well, not if it
was the random Ship.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
We talk about They have interesting people.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Wrestling and movies, and.

Speaker 5 (01:17):
It's true we do. We do talk about all the
things that I.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Like, so I liked That's why we talk.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
I do enjoy the parts where it's me talking say
it works out.

Speaker 5 (01:30):
It works out pretty well. Whenever it's the the ship
that I like that we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Uh did you hear that? Brett Hart said he thought
that Vince mcmahonshaw Michaels were sleeping together during the.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Okay, but that's not new. Why Why is everyone excited
about it all of a sudden That rumor has been
out there forever and lots of guys have like said, yeah, maybe,
I don't know. I think there's even even Like Scott
Hall has implied that it might be true, and he's
like friends with everybody here.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
He was see Kevin Nash is the other side.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
He was like, no, yeah, I don't. I don't take
much of what Kevin Nash has to say to heart.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
I really.

Speaker 5 (02:14):
Don't.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
You did Scott Hall?

Speaker 4 (02:17):
Well, I don't know as much about Scott Hall, but
like Kevin Nash has said a lot of things over
the last bunch of years, and a lot of it
is whatever makes him and his friends look good, that's correct,
and everything else is a lie, up to and including
trying to claim that the Montreal screwjob was a work
and I'm like, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Like you're

(02:39):
the only one who thinks.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
That that's not true. Scott Hall not that too. Okay,
actually it was it was on the dark side of
the ring. He was actually one of the people that
kind of went through the whole thing and explained why.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
And I don't remember that. But so now I don't
trust either one of them. But they're saying contradictory things.
So now I'm I'm going back the outsiders. I now
think they're both lying, but they're saying things that directly
contradict each other, so they're both right. So oh no,
the paradox of listening to two different people tell two

(03:15):
different lies.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
I just watched an interview with uh, like literally earlier
today with Ric Flair about why he hated Diamond Dallas Page.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, one of.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
The most positive people in wrestling, who has done a
lot to help other people, and he's like, yeah, he
wasn't very good. He didn't deserve to be a world champion.
That's correct, though.

Speaker 5 (03:37):
I mean the thing I kept hurt is that I
guess he.

Speaker 4 (03:40):
Hurt several people, yeah, because they kept he wasn't qualified,
and they kept putting him in the ring with like
big name wrestlers and then they'd get hurt. He never
really had even a decent match the whole time, and
then he goes to WWE and they're like, yeah, you're terrible,
so you're not allowed to stay here, and everyone acts
like it's some kind of a like conspiracy, and it's like, no,

(04:02):
he was just bad at what he did. He's apparently
a very good person who helps a lot of people,
but he was bad at wrestling, and.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
I remember him being bad. I remember enjoying I think
I would have to go back and rewatch.

Speaker 5 (04:18):
Well, here's his matches, like specifically, so from the point
where the whole him rejecting the nWo and then him
kind of unintentionally becoming the whole people's champion kind of
thing was a great storyline, and those matches were good.

(04:44):
But I don't necessarily know if they were good because
Diamond Dallas Page was that good, or if he just
happened to be working with people that that kind of
style and the whole. You know, but prior to the
RKO out of No Way, it was, you know, those
crazy reversals he would do into the.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
But go back and watch those. By crazy reversals, no,
they're not good.

Speaker 5 (05:11):
I'm sorry, Well, by crazy reversals, I just mean they
would kind of come out of nowhere in the match,
as opposed to the type of match that like John
Cena puts on, where like you know every move that's
getting ready to happen, you know when the match is
going to end, you know, you know what I mean. Like,
that's they're just different. It's I don't know, They're two
different fucking things. It's like the difference between saying, like

(05:33):
Dean Malinko is good at wrestling, when Dean Malinko is
a fantastic technical wrestler who is about as charismatic as
a block of fucking would.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
I don't I don't know why we're talking about Dean
Malinko all of a sudden.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
Well, I'm just saying it's different things. You can't like
arguing that Diamond Dalla's page wasn't good at what he
did is kind of psychotic. Whenever he caught the zeitgeist
and people fucking loved That's what matters, right, Like it
matters at the end of the day that the fans
fucking loved it while it was happening.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
Well, as somebody who was a wrestling pan at the time,
I can confirm that I did not love it while
it was happening.

Speaker 5 (06:11):
And secondly, yeah, I'd completely jumped ship from like WWF
because I was like, holy shit, WCW is awesome, and
then WCW completely fucked up.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:22):
Yeah, they did things like let Diamond Dalla's page be
in their main events, Like that's what fucking up is.

Speaker 5 (06:28):
I was getting ready to say that. I think that
their problems were the exact opposite of that. They had
all these people who were just fucking over and people
loved them, and for some reason they were like, no
Whule Cogan and it's like no, like god damn it,
Like I get it, Evil Whole Cogan like started everything,
but no one gives a fuck about Evil Hull Cogain.

(06:50):
Everybody wants to see the twenty people that people fucking
like do their thing.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
I don't think WSW did anything right the entire time
they were in business. They were at their their real
peak was either they hired away the talent from another
company or they their Their biggest times were probably when
they were just not trying to compete with WWF and
just accepting the fact that they were the smaller time.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
The biggest times they made the most money when they
stole people from WWF.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
For a very brief period of time.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I agree. The biggest problem. I don't know why this
is a wrestling podcast, but uh, their biggest problem is
they had one fantastic idea and they didn't know what
to do after.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
I would I would suggest that, no, they didn't the
invasion angle the whole like outsiders coming in nWo thing
from Japan. I know, but it was also a thing
that had happened in WCW before. The only difference was
that they got a billionaire to sign on and give
them a paycheck, so they could just hire away people
who were known from another company. The entire success of

(07:59):
the entire thing is based on the fact that they
were able to hire away WWE guys and treat them
as if oh, WWE is invading us. They were riding
the coattails the entire time, and the only reason that
it took that leap into the stratosphere is because Hogan,
known as a WWE guy, joined the group. And then

(08:20):
once they had that attention on them and they had
oh my god, look at what's happening, then they didn't
know what the fuck to do with it. Within weeks,
they'd screwed it up. Started adding in everybody, breaking it
up into different factions.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Apparently it was good for eighty three weeks.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
That's how long because that's how long they could that's
how many million dollar paychecks they could write to bring
in a new guy from WWF every week.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Is a strategy, though.

Speaker 5 (08:47):
I was gonna say, see, but there, I don't know.
There's just I feel like that's oversimplifying things because they
had things like the Cruiserweight Division, which was just fucking
like the thing, and everyone fucking was like, yeah, dude,
and then they were like.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
But they refuse to do it. Yeah, because they're a
terribly run company.

Speaker 5 (09:05):
It was so strange. I don't know. The strangest bit
was it was like, but that was your idea. You
guys came up with the thing, and everybody was like, yeah,
we liked the thing.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
And then.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Well, the biggest problem is giving Hulk Hogan, Kevin Ashon,
Scott Hall creative control. So then when it came time
to highlight those guys that they.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
Were all like and in the interest of fairness, that
started when they were giving guys like Ric Flair creative control.
The problem of putting wrestlers in a booking roles is.
It's never a good idea.

Speaker 5 (09:38):
Ric Flair's entire like ons is. He goes, hey, what if,
like what if I win the championship again and then
lose it again? Immediately?

Speaker 4 (09:48):
He just that was just he just had a button
he pushed and it just read that out loud in
the meeting, and for some reason they went with it
every time.

Speaker 5 (09:57):
They're like, oh yeah, he's I don't want to hold
on to it, like I don't need to keep the
title for any period of time. I just I just
win and and then somebody else takes it from me
because everyone hates me.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
And that worked when they were a minor league organization.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
You know what really worked though? When Scott Hall asked
Sting if he had ever seen the Crow before.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
I still don't believe that Sting never saw it, by
the way, I think that's that's another thing I don't believe.
But but good job transitioning, Brian. I do believe in
your ability to transition. I don't believe what Sting said
about that.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Uh hey, so we're watching too Alex Broy's movies One's
Crow and in an effort to get away from wrestling talk,
which you're not here to listen to.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
That.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
You are one guy that listen to all that was
all excited. Mad.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
Oh, they're going to go down the whole thing. They're
going to talk about Sting's transition from surfer Sting to
crows thing.

Speaker 4 (11:08):
Anyways, No, we're not. Maybe later, maybe later in the
show if we accidentally drift back onto nineties wrestling anything.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
However, Hey uh no or Hey Doug, do you want
to tell us about the Crow?

Speaker 5 (11:21):
About the Crow?

Speaker 4 (11:23):
Yeah? Crow is a nineties film, a very nineties film
about a guy who is killed, but hey Crow carries
his spirit back and allows him to take revenge on
the gang that killed him and his girlfriend. And wouldn't
you know it, of all the bad luck, the gang

(11:44):
leader is involved in some voodoo type shit so he
can eventually figure out how to take his powers away
from him. But then through the power of friendship with
Ernie Hudson, he's able to win the fight anyway, and
the power disappears in the darkness. Yeah, it's it's a
bit of a flaw in the film that his powers

(12:07):
are stripped from him and then he can still use
his powers. But the movie is so good that no
one cares well.

Speaker 5 (12:15):
But the argument is that, like, I don't know, there's
a thing in the film that kind of explains it.

Speaker 4 (12:22):
The thing in the film that explains.

Speaker 5 (12:23):
It because most of his powers came from the Crow,
but the pain didn't come from the Crow. The pain
he took from Ernie. Okay, so he is carrying that
with him, and.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
You know what, great back to a perfect movie. My
one criticism limited. I didn't want to say anything bad
about the Crow. I fucking love this movie. It's it's
not a secret. I'm sure I've told you guys that
I love this movie in the past. So like watching
it and like trying to keep a critical eye on things,
I'm like, oh, yeah, I've seen this maybe a hundred times, and.

Speaker 5 (12:57):
Guess what, guys, I also love this movie.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Wait, hey, guess what what. I also love this fucking movie.

Speaker 4 (13:05):
That's good. This would be one of those shows.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
There's no there's no way that I was going to
watch this and be like, what a piece of shit
that hasn't held up? No, because, all right, even if
it doesn't hold up for a new viewer, I don't care.
Thirteen year old Brian, this was the best movie in
the world.

Speaker 5 (13:23):
It is about his fucking nineties is a movie can
be because.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
I was so mesmerized by it. I remember sitting in
the theater after I snuck in to watch it underage,
and I remember like the credits rolling and the music's playing,
and I'm like, I'm not getting up, I'm staying like
I was just mesmerized. I just I didn't I want
to Are they just gonna play it again? If I
sit here long enough, I already snuck in once I
can sneak it again. I loved this movie.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yeah, I loved this movie. And then showed it to
my brother, who's five years younger than me, so it
means he was about eight or nine. Perfect and he
was in that he was in that mode where you know,
he would watch the same movie over and over again
every day. So my parents got to watch The Crow
a lot because perfect. And then he bought the soundtrack

(14:14):
and listened to the soundtrack all the time because it's
an amazing soundtrack.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
I honestly, I still listen to the soundtrack all the time,
so I can't say anything.

Speaker 5 (14:23):
It is a fucking good ass soundtrack.

Speaker 4 (14:26):
But so like, obviously we're going to do the part
where we talk about what our favorite things about the
movie are But what's really interesting about the movie from
like a logical perspective is it's so simple. It's so basic.
It's the kind of like I'm literally going to tell
you guys about another movie that has almost the exact
same plot later on tonight, and I watched it by accident.

(14:47):
I wasn't trying to watch another movie the same plot
as The Crow. I just did. And it's like, why
does this work so well? That's I think the question,
And why did it capture the culturals geist the way
it did and become this iconic thing? You know?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Questions? Well, my questions was going to be, do we
feel this movie is so iconic because of the death
of Brandon Lee? Or is it in spite of the
death of Brandon Lee?

Speaker 5 (15:17):
I think it's in spite.

Speaker 4 (15:18):
Okay, I think can it be both? I think that
in making the movie overcoming that death wasn't a major
accomplishment because I had to figure out how to film
around not having him anymore and stuff like that, and
so the fact that the movie turned out perfect without
having him available for like reshoots and stuff is amazing. However,

(15:41):
I do think in the history of film, like when
people talk about this movie, it probably gets talked about more.
It probably has benefited the film to have that lore
around it that Brandon Lee died while making it.

Speaker 5 (15:55):
Yeah, maybe maybe the endurance was affected.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
Yeah, even just even just at the time. I mean,
keep in mind, this is a very goth friendly film, right,
you know, like you know what I mean. So it's
it's very like, you know, these kids who are walking
around in all black clothes and long coats and you know,
wearing their hair over their eyes and shit, and you
know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
So yeah, like I said, like just like somebody who's
going into.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
Yeah, listen, it's like somebody who wore a long black
French guilt for a long time in my younger.

Speaker 5 (16:27):
Years, these fucking cuns.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
But for the for that crowd of people, I think
adding like a semi mysterious kind of mythical death to
the lore. I think really, even in the moment, people
talked about like, oh, isn't it weird that his dad
died and he died, isn't it weird that he died
while filming this movie that's in many ways about death

(16:52):
and about grief and all this stuff, you know what
I mean? And then add to that just the idea
that this was this up and coming star that I
think a lot of people had a lot of high
hopes for and you know, taken away at that age.
It adds that story to you know, get people into
theaters and stuff.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Well, that's gonna be my next question. Do we feel
because he the way they sort of looked at it,
the way they sort of look at it after everything,
is that, oh, this was the movie that was going
to push him into like Superstar. Do we feel that

(17:30):
way or do we feel that it again, it's because
it had a lot of publicity.

Speaker 5 (17:36):
And listen, as a person who very much enjoys shit movies,
as we all know, I am right, Brandon Lee's acting
in a lot of his other movies, it's not good, agreed,
Like it's very hammy.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
He covered some of them on this show.

Speaker 5 (17:54):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, in which it's fun and I enjoy it.
And I do not think he was a terrible actor.
I just don't think he was a good actor. But
in this movie his performance is so fucking good, Like
he sinks into the character in a way he did
not do in any other movie that he was in.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
But is it is it a sign of a good
actor that he can do this, and he could do
like that handmade stuff.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
That we like.

Speaker 4 (18:21):
What was that Buddy Cop movie? Did that he was in.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Show Down a little Tokyo.

Speaker 4 (18:24):
Yeah, like the fact that he could do that, and like,
did I love that movie? No? Was his performance consistent
with what was going on around him in the film?

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (18:35):
Right, so No, that's not my too. I don't think
that was great acting. But he was doing what he
needed to do in the movie. And then turn around
and be able to do this, which is a completely
different style of acting, right, a completely different persona, and
to be able to do both. Was he able to
just jump back and forth and just this was his
first chance to get a really good role.

Speaker 5 (18:57):
Yeah, I was gonna say. The other thing I would
say about this movie is I'm sure, as far as
ticket sales go, that the mystique clearly affected it. But
whenever I saw this movie, I knew nothing about the
death of Brandon Lee, about any any of that stuff,
you know.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
What I mean.

Speaker 5 (19:14):
He's just a dumb teenager that wasn't paying attention to
the existence of the world around me. And I still
fucking love the goddamn movie.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
Yeah, I can't. I can't remember if I knew going
in about his death and stuff. That's something i'd learned
after because.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
I definitely knew, and you know, I watched the movie
was kind of blown away and just like, oh fuck,
this is like as an angsty thirteen year old, this
was like fucking crack. It was just like, ah, this
is saying everything you know that I want to say
as a thirteen year old bit can it's a white's

(19:50):
Midwest guy from Podunceville, Illinois.

Speaker 5 (19:54):
I'm just going to say some of this movie too,
Like admittedly it's you know, we talk about style over
substance movies sometimes and god damn it, like him pouring
the rings into the fucking shotgun, Like.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Is that gasoline? I smile.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
Yeah, it's like, come on, that's not that's not like
a brilliant filmmaking or anything like that. But you're just like,
right now, without fucking I fucking love this.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
The thing is, I think they know, I think there's
a lightning in the bottle element to this film, and
that's why they've never been able to recapture it with
the sequels and the remakes and whatever else. Right in
the TV shows the reason to have it, there is
this element of like, they seem to walk that line
just enough. Yes, it is style over substance when you

(20:45):
see him pouring the rings in, when you see them
like lighting the fire and the big crow symbol shows up,
you know what I mean, or the blood draws a
big crow symbol whatever.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
You know.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
However, many different big crow symbols show up in the film.
That's obviously style over substance, but they seem to know
how to pull it back a little bit and give
us those character moments that make us feel for that guy.
So we're therefore we're excited to see him do those things.
And that's a hard line to walk, right. It's really
difficult to have those big action moments and not turn

(21:18):
it into an eighties style action film, you know, because
even some of the stuff like he does, like you know,
I'm watching it and I'm like, why is he quote
it quoting the raven if he's a crow? That technically
doesn't make any sense, but it's cool enough, and again,
we like the guy by the time he's doing that.
So because we like him and he's doing something that's cool,

(21:41):
you don't ask those questions. You're not meant to. And
I don't know if it's like, I don't know how
much of that some of that credit must go to
the source material. I've never read it, but you know
you can definitely. I'm assuming there's a panel in the
graphic novel where he's pouring the rings into the gun
that feels like.

Speaker 5 (21:59):
I don't know. So in truth, this is not a
very direct adaptation of a comic no Okay, true.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, there's some of the similar They use some of
the same characters and similar situation where his girlfriend died
and he comes back to Avenger, But I mean the
circumstances and the setting and everything else I.

Speaker 5 (22:23):
Was gonna see. The biggest thing they change, which is
actually weird and none of the Crow.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Movies have done this yet, is in the.

Speaker 5 (22:32):
Movie he has the healing factor shit, like he's Wolverine. Yeah,
and in the comic book that is not correct. He
is a corpse and he is dead. He does not heal.
So as he goes through the story and he's getting
shot up and fucked up, he's just getting more and
more fucked up.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
Okay, So that's interesting because like in the movie they
portray him as like wrapping himself in electrical tape and
stuff to like, Yeah, but that's not really to cover wounds.
It's more like to cover the parts just clothes that
gout ripped by bullets or whatever. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay,
So I guess credit goes to the filmmaker then, for

(23:13):
somehow magically knowing how to walk that line in a
way that seems near impossible.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah. Yeah. And some of the interesting things is like
after Brandon Lee died, they had to I don't know
if event is the correct words. This may have been
around before, but they at least had to sort of
utilize a bunch of new filmmaking techniques to like finish it. Yeah.

(23:45):
I know, there's like some face replacement CGI stuff that
they actually do a pretty good job with for being
nineteen ninety.

Speaker 5 (23:52):
Three, Oh fucking the the so the scene where he's
looking into the broken mirror, like you know, it's his
face that that is digitally rendered, Yeah, which is an
insane for that era. It's so good it looks it
doesn't just look good, it doesn't look like there's an effect.

Speaker 4 (24:15):
Yeah. Yeah, No, I agree one hundred percent with what
you're saying. And I think some of that was the
smart of having the mirror broken. I think that makes
it maybe easier for them given the technology of the day.
But it's still like I've gone through this movie lots
of times, including like having it on Blu ray and
like trying to figure out where the special effects are,

(24:36):
and it's not noticeable. And some of that is like
the overall kind of motif of the movie. The darkness
of everything gives them the ability to hide stuff.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
But still the scene where he walks into the apartment
for the first time is one of the big ones.
They replaced the background because it was a shot of
him walking through the alley and they replaced the background
the apartment door or whatever. And I think it's only
really noticeable for me just because it's one of those

(25:06):
that they used in like some of the special features
and stuff to explain how they did it. And so
for me it like sticks out like a sore thumb.
But if some casual watcher was watching it, they probably
would have no idea.

Speaker 4 (25:17):
Yeah, I think I think it's it's at the end
of the day, it's a fantasy film as well, right, Yeah,
and so things aren't. Yeah, it's kind of set in
the real world, but not really, you know, And it's
I think that anything that looks a little off, your
brain just goes, yeah, that's just part of the movie,
you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah, yeah, who gets you shit exactly? Yeah. So I
loved this movie when I was younger, and I bought
a giant poster of It's like a publicity still or
publicity shot that they obviously were just taking pictures on
the set or whatever. And he's like sitting in this

(25:56):
chair and like with his hands classed and he's like
looking directly into the camera, and they took a picture
of it. And so my grand because I live with
my grandparents, my grandma saw it and she's like, what
is that picture of that? That that evil looking man
on your wall?

Speaker 4 (26:14):
A hero? He's a hero?

Speaker 5 (26:15):
Yeah, why do you have of the satan?

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Grandma?

Speaker 4 (26:25):
I once witnessed an argument between a boyfriend and girlfriend
who were moving in together, and she's like, well, obviously
that won't be hanging in the living room anymore in
the same picture you're talking about, yeah, And he's like,
why would we take that down? She's like, and I'm like, oh,
this is interesting to see how this plays out.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
It's like, the fuck we won't be hanging then on
the wall.

Speaker 5 (26:45):
You said you don't like Brandon Lee Get Out.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
I don't know where that poster is anymore either. I'm
really bommed.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
You can still buy it if you need no copy.
There's still teenagers discovering this movie and buying that exact
same poster.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Do we have any favorite? Well, I get that's a
stupid question. What are some of your favorite scenes from
this movie? Jesus Christ? Uh, there's so many.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
Do you know what scene I love that I think
nobody talks about And I don't know why I love
it so much. Just the shots of him running across
the rooftop right before he does his first big kill
and steals his coat. The shots of him running across
the rooftop are so fucking cool, and I think, like,
for a film of this size at that time, to
have been able to get those shots is so impressive.

(27:35):
And I'm like, you can you can compare those two
the shots of like a decade later, when Sam Reimi
made Spider Man movies and you had Peter Parker running
across rooftops, and I think these ones look better like
it's you know, and it's there's just something about the
smoothness part of getting a martial artist in that role too.

(27:56):
Of so when he's leaping over things and hop in
like kind of park pouring his way across, he's not
doing it in a way that looks like he's trying
to be cool. It looks like he's just trying to
move as quickly as he can, and there's something really
cool about it. And then just that casual way he
falls off the roof at the end of that so
he can just be at the bottom and he just.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
Starts moniacally laughing really loud.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
And yeah, oh yeah. And then that kill is really
fun too, because he kind of just toys with the
guy and just when he's done, he just stabs the
shit out of him and takes his coat.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah, you mentioned the like the crow symbol, which I
always thought some of that stuff was funny, not that
the symbol itself is funny, but like he's leaving like
it's a revenge movie, so he's leaving like all this
shit around so that the other people in the gang
will know that, like, oh, that guy's coming for me.

(28:54):
But I do like when that detective shows up and
he's like, what the hell is that Ernie Hudson's like,
I'd call it blood, but I suppose you'll write it
up as graffiti. He's just like, be a smart ass.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
Ernie Hudson. Let's he is perfect in this role. He's
so good, perfect because he is just there's something about
his performance where you're like, he's sympathetic, but at the
same time, he's kind of a likable, sarcastic prick in
that way, do you know what I mean? And it's
difficult to walk that line to be sympathetic and be sarcastic.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
He's one of my one of my favorite jokes in
the entire movie, which is when he meets Eric Draven
for the first time coming out of and spawn shop. Yeah,
you know, pulls a freeze, you know, don't move, and
he's like, I thought the police always said freeze. That
whole situation so fun. And then he turns to yell
at some looters and he turns back and he's gone,

(29:54):
and he's just like, yah, I have to run into
the mind from hell. And then he's like, he said,
didn't do that walking against the wind? Should I hate that?

Speaker 4 (30:03):
He's he's so good to the role. What about the
scene when Eric Draven visits his apartment. Yeah, he's like
a look of shock on his face, like, holy fuck,
there's a ghost in my apartment. And and again like
it's it's both performances because Brandonly is so fucking cool.

(30:25):
He goes over to his fridge and just gets him
a beer, like you're gonna need this, and it's like, yeah,
there's a ghost in your apartment, you're entitled to a
sip alcohol. That makes sense to me. I agree with that. Yeah,
it's yeah, the whole thing is so well played. And
then that's where he absorbs the memories, and that's that's

(30:46):
I think that's too. It's a simple it's a it's
a simple scene in the context of the movie, the
idea that he's able to like learn about Shelley's pain
by absorbing the memories of the Ernie Hudson character, but
it tells us so much about that character. We already
know that he's still helping to take care of Sarah.

(31:06):
We already know that he's, you know, an air quotes
good cop who gets busted for like trying to solve
crimes when the other cops just want to run their
stats or whatever. And now we know that he stayed
with her while she was suffering to try to ease
her pain as much as he could, and it's like,
is there anything better you can do as a human being?
Like you know what I mean. It's so it's just

(31:27):
this kind of fantastic moment that is really simple and
it's a couple of seconds in the movie, but it
tells us what we need to know about why he's
also a hero in this story.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yeah, the whole movie does a really good job of
story economy, I guess. Yeah, Like there's that what you
just talked about in like the very beginning. Normally I
hate movies that open with the voiceover because for me,
that's a studio note that like, oh, they couldn't figure
out how to explain this movie to people, so they

(32:00):
just have someone say it at the beginning, which.

Speaker 4 (32:02):
Is something you're jumping ahead. You're talking about the next movie, right,
We're going to talk about that in the next movie too.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
But so normally I hate it. But having Sarah open
the movie, which is a simple, like explanation of the
lore of the crow in like three sentences, yeah, perfect,
Like it sets all that up so perfectly that you
just don't question anything that happens with kiss Eric's character

(32:27):
for the rest of the movie.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
There's something about the simple way and in which a
kind of semi complex story is being told, you know
what I mean. Like it's they use flashbacks in just
the right way. They use that voice over in just
the right way to tell the story in I don't, Like,
I don't know how long the movie is, but it's
not a long movie considering how much actually does go on.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
Yeah, let's say it's like an hour thirty five or
something like that.

Speaker 4 (32:55):
Yeah, So it's like to tell this much story with
a heavy concentration on action sequences in this really efficient way.
I think. I think that helps. That helps the audience
just go with everything. And I don't I don't even
know how to explain. I don't wouldn't know how to

(33:16):
explain why this movie is so much more efficient than
some other movies. But we've watched lots of other movies
where you're just you're spending a lot more time figuring
out what's going on with that character rather than the
easy ways they do it here. Fuck, this is a
good movie, man.

Speaker 5 (33:37):
Any favorite scenes, Noah, Almost all of my favorite scenes
in the movies are random bad guy quotes that happened
throughout the story.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
Selling they're so good.

Speaker 5 (33:48):
Yeah, Jesus Christ, the somebody stuck knaves and all the
tea birds organs in alphabetical.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
Order, and.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
You can't go back.

Speaker 5 (33:59):
This is the the real world.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
David Kelly's great in this there's so many perfect.

Speaker 5 (34:05):
Or the hey, how about a quick impression? God, god,
dang fum dead.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
He's so good.

Speaker 4 (34:14):
Everybody's good in it. And and those lines are all
like like every line you just said, it's like as
soon as you started, I know the rest of it.
And it's there's something about again that's efficiency, right, Like
every line of dialogue seems to fucking matter, and every
line of dialogue is delivered for a purpose.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah, everything, Like if I if I texted my brother
right now, the one like the like three or four
words can't rain all the time, you would just be like,
are you watching the fucking crow? Like these the lines
in the movie are so just like good and so
like embedded in this movie. Yeah, for somebody who's watched it.

(34:54):
As soon as you yeah, like you said that, you
start you start saying a quote like in your head,
you're already playing the scene.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
It's yeah, and it's I think there's the casting is
really well done too, because a lot of those smaller
roles in different movies, they wouldn't have cared so much.
But it's like everybody the guy that runs the pawn
shop is fucking perfect. Like the way he's like, he's
like the big tough guy until he's actually attacked and
then he's like that whole movie where and his line,

(35:25):
his line that it comes to my aw shit on me,
on me, but every bit of delivery is great. And
then there's like those moments where he's like arguing with
the bartender about the fucking about like how much to
pour in the glass and he's getting really mad, and
even the bartender is good, Like we see the bartender

(35:45):
has like three or four lines of dialogue, right, but
but you see him.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Being technically she's off right now.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
Yeah, that that is that is so hard for me
to watch that mom treat that kid away throughout the
part of the movie, but I did. But but again,
really simple storytelling. The reconciliation moment is beautiful where they
both have to kind of forgive each other and decide
to move forward together, and you get that moment it's

(36:14):
the stupid eggs scene where she's like, I can't remember
how to cook your eggs, and she's like, Sarah's given
her attitude, and then she's like when she starts to
like give up, Sarah's like, no, no, I want this.
I still want my mom back, Like you know, I'm
just being a shitty kid, you know.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah, and then even like like the the mom the actress,
like I've seen her in other things, and immediately just
the alarm goes off in my head, like oh it's Darla. Yeah,
she's in Bad Boys or something. I'm like, oh, it's
fucking Darla.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
That that moment where he grabs her arms and likes
sweet drugs back out, It's like, how will you ever
forget her face?

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Just he just like says that line to her like
God is the name.

Speaker 4 (36:58):
Mother is the name for God on the lips and
hurts his children. It's so fucking gothy and weird when
I say it, but he's so good at doing it.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
Yeah, he just like lets her go and stuff and yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:11):
But again, she wasn't involved in the murder. He's only
he only goes after guys that deserve to be gone after. Right,
He never a very Terminator two style. He doesn't kill
a bunch of the cops that come looking for him
or anything. He just goes after the bad guys, and
we know that they're terrible guys. We don't care if
they get killed right now.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Yep, just watching uh you know, you know, uh separately,
I've been watching Supernatural, like two seasons ago. The guy
that played like fun Boy is on Supernatural. Yeah. I
saw him and I got really excited, like, oh it
was a fun Boy, And then I got really sad
because apparently he was the one that pulled the trigger

(37:50):
on the gun.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Yeah, that story. Like we talked about how that story
was probably beneficial for the movie, like in creating its
reputation and stuff, but it was really painful for him,
apparently for a guy that just did nothing wrong, like you.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Apparently, yeah, he lived with a lot of guilt. He's
just died like last year, the year before, and uh,
apparently I lived with a lot of guilt afterwards. And
you know, everybody told him like, oh, you know, it
was not your fault whatsoever, Like there's nothing you could
have done to prevent it. And it's just such a
bummer that.

Speaker 4 (38:24):
But you know, you know, people get in car accidents
where they're not doing anything wrong, somebody gets hurt, they
still feel bad, you know what I mean. This is
an extreme example of that, and it's something that you'd
be reminded of constantly because that film became so iconic. Right.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah, that fucking guy that plays Skink, he's such a weird,
oh horrible piece of ship too, but he's so good
in the movie.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
Uhan dead.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
Dead Yeah, Like he's trying to explain what was going
on to the Michael Wincot character and he's just like,
maybe we should record it and play it back in
slow motion.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
Yeah, but it's just even he was a there's something
that he's such a simple minded, stupid character who's also evil,
so it's okay that we kill him. But then when
he's pushed to his limit, he just cannot. He does
not know how to function. And it's great, Yeah, the performance,
Like that little scene he does where he's like trying
to explain it all and then he starts he breaks

(39:34):
into the fire and up fire it up chan in
the middle of it, and he starts taking shots of whiskey,
and it's like like that that's a hard thing to do.
It seems like a silly moment in the movie, but
imagine trying to just do that on a set one day,
people like, Okay, do that. I can't. I don't think
many actors could pull it off in the way he did.
And I'm assuming that's just a really good casting agent

(39:56):
that got the right guys in the right roles, you know, but.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Yeah, because they're all good, like, uh not T Bird.
What's the black guy?

Speaker 4 (40:05):
I don't know what his name is now, the one
he gets his blades and always.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Is that T Bird. Yeah, some reason I was thinking
the guy from Warriors was Bird. Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Like I've seen him and others, like he was in Hackers,
and I've seen him on a couple of other things,
and he's like completely just an unassuming character in most
of those, and then like in this, I'm just like
he is an evil piece of ship.

Speaker 6 (40:32):
Ye.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
So yeah, they were casting agent was able to be like, no,
this guy will be able to pull this off.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
I don't worry. It's and again like they make them
do terrible, horrible, evil shit right before they kill him too,
so you're just so happy to watch him die. It's
almost like in some ways. This is like a slasher
where they found a way to make, you know, Jason
or Michael be the hero so that we're supposed to
be rooting for him. It's not just us weird on

(41:00):
horror fans. Are you know rutefually guts to get killed?

Speaker 3 (41:07):
You know, there's scenes we should highlight. I feel like
the big shootout seeing all the gang members and yeah, good,
well there's there's.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
All sorts of like visual things that happen in this
movie that I'm just like, I don't it's it's those
things that I believe if on paper you would go
that's the dumbest why would you fucking do that? And
then it works. So the sword fight where he's the
guy has a sword and he's got a weather vein,

(41:39):
Like on paper, that's fucking stupid.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
But it gets by lightning, which makes it awesome.

Speaker 5 (41:45):
Well, in the movie, it's just fucking cool. Like the
whole time it's cool. You're like, oh, and it's again
because we're going goth as fuck.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
It just works.

Speaker 4 (41:56):
Yeah, there's something about leaning into it as hard as
they do that makes the ridiculousness go away, because even
like when he walks into the big shootout scene and
he hops up on the table and sits like crisscross
applesauce on the table to have his conversation with the
gang members, and it's like, what are you doing? Like
how are you making this cool? If I tried that,

(42:17):
it would not be cool.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
There's so many good scenes that are just like like
specific shots that are just amazing, Like when he's sitting
outside before he walks in and he's like sitting on
the fire escape and his eyes are closed, he's got
the bird on his shoulder, and then he just opens
his eyes and looks in ato the camera and you're like, ah, fuck,
that's a fucking awesome scene.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
Yeah, it's great, and it's just like yeah, and like
the scenes of him like this again it sounds so
corny when you say it, but him playing guitar in
the loft with the broken mirror in the background or
broken window in the background, and it's like that shot.
Everything's all that weird lighting that they do throughout the
movie to make it seem even more goth.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
You're like, ah, it's like this whole town is goth.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
It's a goth town. And then they're like, yeah, but
he's the gothiest character. So that's what he gets to
be the hero of the movie.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
The bad guy is so goth that he has to
get him paled on a gargoyle that makes it look
like he's vomiting blood afterwards. It is.

Speaker 5 (43:20):
And because it's our podcast, his weird in cestuous sister relationship.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
Yeah, we didn't even talk about that. Yeah, I like,
that is my mother's daughter or she's my father's daughter. Yes,
I was gonna.

Speaker 5 (43:35):
Say, we do have to stop and point out that.
So there is a flaw with the film because this
was made in the nineties.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (43:41):
The Asian lady in the film.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Is magic bi Ling. Yeah, yeah, of course she is. Yeah.
Uh And a big thing we haven't talked about fucking
Tony Todd in this movie.

Speaker 4 (43:54):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 5 (43:55):
Tony Todd, who maybe in the one role in history,
manages to like vanish into a side character.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
Yep, He's the only subtle character in this whole fucking movie. Yeah,
it's like, why would Tony Todd be the subtle one
that makes sense?

Speaker 5 (44:16):
Well, I like, I straight up looked at Charlet I
was watching this. I was like, how did I fucking
forget that Tony Todd's in this movie.

Speaker 4 (44:23):
I forget he's in it while I'm watching the movie,
while he's on screen, because he's not being Tony Todd
again Lightning in a Bottle to go. We're gonna get
Tony Todd and we're gonna make him be the quiet
guy on set. Why would you do that? I don't know,
but it fucking worked.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
Sure does. He's the quiet one who investigates stuff.

Speaker 4 (44:44):
Yeah, maybe member of the gang.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
Maybe.

Speaker 5 (44:48):
My only complaint is they should have left in Skull Cowboy.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
That's true.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
Is that from the novel graphic novel?

Speaker 5 (44:56):
Yeah, so skull Cowboy like is the one who in
the comic book, it kind of like shows up and
teaches him how to what what he is, you know
what I mean? And they they filmed those scenes and
skull Cowboy was played by oh god, damn it, the

(45:17):
kind of weird looking dude from Hills.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Have Eyes Michael Berryman.

Speaker 5 (45:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Michael Berryman. And they just know and
they just cut those scenes and a few of the
scenes still exist, but they're the few edits that have it.
They're so bad and degraded and awful that like it's
almost unrecomfortable bad, you know what?

Speaker 4 (45:39):
I mean, but I'm going to go ahead and say
that what we were saying before about the efficiency of
the filmmaking, that's what they were trying to avoid. His
scenes of montage of him training and learning how to
use his crow powers, and.

Speaker 5 (45:51):
Well, but he doesn't. That's not a thing that happens.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
He doesn't.

Speaker 5 (45:55):
It's basically so the monologue that Sarah gives it the
beginning of the movie. Instead, the skull cow Boy gives
that to Eric after he's reborn, if that makes sense.
He shows up and he's like, listen, you are going
to live long enough to avenge your dead wife.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Go do your thing.

Speaker 4 (46:11):
I'm gonna take it as the movie's perfect as is,
so adding that in would make it worse.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
It's one of those as a fan of the comic,
it would be cool to see it on film. Yeah,
but since you know, we've seen this version of the
movie since I was thirteen, Like, I don't think I
want it, because, like you said, it's the movie's very
efficient without it. But it is one of those like

(46:37):
couldn't someone just restore that lost footage and just so
I can have it on DVD to like watch those
scenes and be like, oh, that's cool, and then like,
you know.

Speaker 5 (46:47):
Well and listen, you don't you don't fucking edit Michael
Berriman out of the movie. Do that?

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Do you love me some? Michael Berryman? Yeah, it's not cool.

Speaker 5 (46:58):
He's a really nice guy.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
I really like the Sarah actor actress whatever. Yeah, I
feel like for a kid actors, she's really good in this.
And then I'm shocked that I never really saw her.
I'm not saying she didn't do anything else, but she
just didn't seem to blow up from this.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
No, just she has some demanding scenes like that scene,
the eggs scene with Darla, the moments of sitting at
the bar, the interactions with Eric when she goes from
being mad at Eric like to being sad to being
happy all within the same scene. She does a really
good job of that, and it's it feels very real.

(47:44):
It feels very like, you know, somebody that left you
left your life comes back in you're simultaneously mad at
them for going well being happy that they're back, and
it feels very authentic, and that's really hard for a
younger actress to pull up.

Speaker 5 (48:00):
Yeah. I do like the uh because they're interesting interactions
like the one where she goes and she's kind of
she kind of knows he's there, and she's cussing him
out for not talking to her and all that kind
of stuff, and he, you know, tries to give her
a speech of you don't get it. He's like, I
I came back from the dead and it's not for you. Yeah,

(48:22):
that's that sucks, but you know, I care, but I'm gone,
you know.

Speaker 4 (48:30):
Yeah. It's it's all very well done too, in the
sense that it allows us to see her, Like you
get that first interaction they have where he grabs her
off the skateboard, and instead of being grateful that he
saved her, she gets mad at him because she doesn't
know who it is yet, and she gets that tough
demeanor that she's putting on. But then you see it

(48:52):
kind of collapse away when she realizes that it's her
friend back. And that's that's really cool the way it's
done again, real emotion in the movie, so that all
the other moments matter more.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah, So it took Sarah. It took the actress that
played Sarah fifteen years before she did another movie after this, Okay,
in the movie's a movie called hell House from two
thousand and nine and the lead actor, as far as
the top cast goes, is one Al snow So.

Speaker 4 (49:26):
So she all right, let's not talk about that anymore.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Let's gonna get that. She had a movie come out
this year called look Out Weekend Cool Summer four.

Speaker 4 (49:38):
All right, well, we're not talking about that anymore. We're
talking about The Crow, if you don't mind. Yeah, it's
also like, because it's this podcast, we should probably point
out they have an adult male character with a young
teenage character and they hug on screen and they have
these very deep, intense conversations and it never gets weird,

(50:00):
which means all those other fucking movies we talk about
all the time, don't they do anyway? Fucking Italians?

Speaker 3 (50:11):
I mean, he does buy her hot dogs? Is that
some weird sexual one?

Speaker 4 (50:16):
The one though that No, it's but you have like
you have, you have all of these and really like
Eric's relationship with her and the cops relationship with her
both and nobody ever seems threatening to her. Yeah, and
I think that. So one of the things this movie
I think gets right is Okay, you've got this horrific

(50:38):
world that's set up right, and you've got people doing
drugs and crime and people starting fires that somehow they
magically profit off of in a way that's not experienced.
You've got all this shit going on, right, but there's
all of these halfway decent human people scattered throughout. You
have Eric and Shelley in their little apartment. You have

(50:59):
the Ernie Hudson character, whose name I'm never gonna remember
because it's if they wanted me to know his name,
they would not have cast her any Hudson. But even
like the bartender like there's and the guy that runs
the hot dog stand, they all know Sarah and they
all kind of protect her because there are decent human
beings trying to do the right thing in this mess.
And then you know, Eric has kind of given the

(51:21):
authority to take his revenge, and it's like, yeah, he's
finally striking one back on behalf of all of the
decency that exists within this horrible world that the film
is set in. And I think it's it's like a
superhero movie where somebody's going to take over the world
and it's like, oh, but only this one person can
finally do something about it, and so that we're all

(51:43):
immediately on their side and there's something about the way
it's all set up that is just again perfect. Right.
We spent just enough of that of these characters interacting,
specifically with Sarah, showing like, look, there's somebody out there
trying to protect the decent human beings in this world.
It's they're just not winning the fight quite yet.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Uh so I showed this movie to my dad. Okay,
his birthday is October thirtieth. Nice, So when the movie
opens and it says October thirtieth, the Devil's Night, he
just went, what the fuck? It's like Devil's night? What's
this bullshit? It's like, I don't worry about it.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
That's funny.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
It's really mad they were merchant his birthday.

Speaker 4 (52:36):
It's funny because after this movie came out, people would
refer to October thirty this Devil's Night, and I don't
I don't think anyone did before and apparently in certain
very specific areas like Detroit and stuff, they would call
it that, But after the movie it just became part
of common vernacular.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
All right, anything else we need to bring up.

Speaker 5 (52:59):
It was a nice movie, is awesome Playing guitar on
the roof, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
It's dope. The guitar afterwards because he knows he's not
gonna need it.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
Also, yeah, we're also talking about so efficient filmmaking, like
they're just there's not a single like scene of this
movie that is not enjoyable start to finish, Like it's
just good.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, struggle as I might. I mean,
I guess, why would people who are so gothy have
a white cat? Is that a criticism? Is that?

Speaker 3 (53:38):
And then Nabel name him after an angel?

Speaker 4 (53:40):
Well that makes total sense. That's a real goth move,
do you know what? You know what we haven't. We
started out this conversation trying to talk about why this
film is so iconic and why it's so long lasting.
And I think one of the things that it does
really well is it takes the dark gothic character right
and he's he's very you know, rock and roll. When

(54:03):
we see the flashback of him and Shelley, we see
that he's not a dark, depressing character that yeah he
dresses a little different, Yeah he looks a little different,
but they're happy together. And you know what I mean,
this idea that I think especially for like those of
us who were young when this movie came out, the
idea that Okay, I don't look like everybody else, I
don't talk like everybody else. But that doesn't mean you

(54:25):
have to like go out and assume because I'm wearing
too much black, that I'm into some weird shit. Me
and my friends are just getting together and dressing this
way because we all dressed, you know what I mean. Yeah,
And it's and it's I think that that's part of
why this movie is so appealing to young people is
this idea that these outsiders who don't quite fit in

(54:48):
right are still portrayed as like decent human beings who
are happy in their life, who just choose to look
and talk a little different than everybody else, and that's okay,
you know. And that's really import for young people to
see that in a movie because that allows them to
immediately connect with Oh yeah, me and my friends, my
parents get mad at how we dress. I assume parents

(55:09):
still get mad at how teenagers dress. I think they
have since like teenagers started existing, since you know, since
our lifespan expanded to the point where we have something
between child and adulthood. And it's like, I think that
that there's constantly that assumption that, oh, if you're dressing
in dark clothes, if you're dressing whatever, you're part of

(55:29):
some like deviant lifestyle. And it's like, no, they're just
happy people doing their own thing. And I think that's
why kids can continue to relate to this movie in
a way that is like not a lot of movies
can you show them to generation after generation and they
continue to find it iconic the way they do with
this movie.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I still get a little
teary eyed at the very end when Shelley comes for him.
He's like laying up a gravestun and stuff.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
Sure, why not, there's nothing wrong with it. It's a
very well done moment. And it's like the idea that
we've been on this journey with this character for an
hour and forty two minutes, and we've seen him go
to Helen back, and we've seen him always do the
right thing all the time this whole time, and then
he finally just gets to rest and be with his
girlfriend again. Perfect.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Yeah, all right, Noah, do you want to break down
Dark City for us?

Speaker 4 (56:27):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (56:28):
Yees?

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Although the problem is.

Speaker 5 (56:31):
The plot of this movie I feel like is so
overly simplified. There is a guy who his memories are
all fucked up, traveling through a city that is filled
with strange anachronisms, being chased by weird bald men who
talk strangely, and one bald child who are clearly aliens.

(56:56):
Within like the first ten seconds of the movie, much
happens immediately, uh, and then he discovers that he has
the ability to tune, which is changing the sort of
weird shape and style of the city, which the aliens
also do from a weird labyrinthian hive beneath the surface. Meanwhile,

(57:21):
a doctor is doing weird machinations and it's key for
Sutherland going full Nick Cage in a movie, which is
pretty delightful.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
So he's got a very interesting cadence that we should
talk about.

Speaker 5 (57:35):
Oh yeah, he goes like I said, he goes full cage.
He's just being weird, which I'm into, Like, I'm down
for it. I'm down for him to just fucking be weird.
But yeah, yeah, I mean that's the gist of the
plot of the movie. I mean, it doesn't really get
I guess, well, no, they set him up as a murderer. Meanwhile,
the one of the weird alien guys injects the memories

(57:58):
that they want to do on plant him with of
being a murderer into himself, which makes him a murderer
because he's got crazy burning injected in himself.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Sure, it's very strange.

Speaker 5 (58:11):
The plot is very strange. The movie is very good,
but the plot is sort of nonsensical.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
You know, yeah, when you watch it at all makes sense.
But yeah, you can't explain it to somebody that's just like, oh,
that sounds weird.

Speaker 4 (58:23):
So did you guys watch the director's cut or the theatrical cut?

Speaker 3 (58:27):
I watched the director's cut, but to be honest, I
fell asleep about halfway through the movie.

Speaker 5 (58:32):
I watched whichever one is on to b Okay, I don't.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
Have ac on to be here.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
So the big reveal, the big the big way to
tell is the director's cut does not have an opening
narration like keeper soutlent.

Speaker 5 (58:48):
Yeah, I think there is a yeah the okay?

Speaker 4 (58:52):
So yeah, because I guess then this is maybe a
question for you, Brian. Is the movie so much better
in the Director's cut just by change that? I don't
know what other changes are made, but that opening narration
I feel like it's an obvious studio note of like
do like you do like you did in The Crow
and have them add in an explanation at the beginning.
But this movie would work so much better as kind

(59:14):
of a mystery where we don't know from the get
go what the whole story is.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
Yeah. I haven't watched the theatrical cut in a long
time because I always just lean more towards the director's
pat sure, so I can't remember even what the opening
narration is. I know that he apparently it gives away
a couple of blot points that.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
Well, it explains, it explains the entire movie.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
Basically, it does.

Speaker 4 (59:40):
It's like what The Crow does, except it works in
The Crow and it does not work as well here
because here is they made a mystery movie and it's like, well,
they tell us the end of the mystery at the
beginning of the movie.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Yeah. Yeah, Apparently Alex Priyce was like livid at this,
and you know, pretty much disowned the.

Speaker 4 (59:59):
Movie because I will say, I get it if I
was a studio head and you turned in this movie
at this time, like in ninety eight, you turned in
a movie with literal aliens that can change reality, and
for some reason, one of the humans can also change reality.
And we're not going to explain that to the audience

(01:00:20):
until halfway through the film, and we're not going to
know what's going Like, I can understand how that would
have been something where they go whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa.
That'll never work until next year when the other guys
do it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
But like, yeah, yeah, this movie got even though this
came out first, it definitely got outshined by the Matrix.

Speaker 4 (01:00:43):
What Happened.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Yeah, had a very similar underlying plot, which is just
there's a reality underneath the reality that you are aware
of and all this stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:00:53):
But yeah, well, and the frustrating thing is maybe the
thing that like is the best about this movie is
the actual effects of the city changing and that kind
of stuff. And oh, we could have talked about this
with the Crow too, because this period in the nineties
movies perfected miniatures, like the miniatures of the cities and

(01:01:18):
stuff look so fucking good. And the fact that we
went from that to the fucking garbage ass cgi shit
it would be coming like five years later makes me
so angry.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
I think in these movies as well, though, because first
of all, they are both set in kind of hyper
realistic realities. But also everything is very dark, gloomy and gothy.
I think that helps with the landscapes looking as good
as they do. Because you shine a bright light on something,
the imperfections become more clear. There's no bright lights, and

(01:01:51):
either of the two movies we're talking about this week,
they just don't have any.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
The funny thing is so yeah, we pointed out that
this is very similar, like you know, uh theme to
The Matrix, And I've read that apparently a lot of
the rooftop sets were sold to the Matrix production company.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
Oh really, because because it's not just like it's not
just the general theme of the you know, underlying reality
that's different from our headline. It's the also the idea
that our main character is somehow stuck in between the
two worlds and then has to become and then has
like these superhero type powers to like change the reality

(01:02:36):
that he's working within, you know what I mean. And
it's like and they all wear like long trench coats. Yeah,
it's like, it's all it's very similar. I'm not accusing
anybody of anything, Like I think it's just a yeah, yeah,
Like I think the world was ready for this type
of movie at this time, and Alex Proyas kind of

(01:02:57):
got there first, and then you know, the Wachowski's did
something similar within a very short period of time.

Speaker 5 (01:03:05):
Well, I mean arguably everything that they did was like stolen. Yeah, sure,
which is fine, like I'm not, I'm not whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Yeah, they took different philosophies and filmmaking styles and all
this other stuff and mashed them into like one single vision,
which Quentin Tarantino gets praised for. So yeah, there's no uh,
there's no shade from us before. But yeah, I find
that this story interesting that we are thrown into this

(01:03:36):
with somebody who has amnesia and just wakes up at
a bath ub has no idea what the fuck is
going on? Yeah, and then we're sort of just let well,
in the director's cut, we're just sort of let loose
into this world for him to figure it out. And
I really like that aspect of it, which is pretty
much why I exclusively watched the director's cut.

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
I actually want to add the director's cut to our
list to discuss again. In like a year, we'll do
the director's cut of this and the Director's cut a mimic,
because apparently we watched the wrong version of both so.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
But yeah, I really like this movie. It's got maybe
a couple of things here there that could be improved upon,
but I don't know how much of that is just
the studio made decisions, and for the director's cut, Alex
Prey is put back what he could, but maybe, you know,
couldn't everything.

Speaker 4 (01:04:32):
But I do feel like the movie doesn't look quite
as good as The Crow or The Matrix, which are
two obvious movies you can compare it to, And I
think that maybe he was It's one of those things
where he maybe just didn't have the budget to make
it look as good as he wanted to, and instead
of scaling back, he just did the best he could.
And I'm not sure if that was the right decision.

(01:04:55):
There are times when the movie feels a little bit cheap,
and it's obviously not cheap, but it's not at where
it needs to be to look the way he wants
it to look.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
Some of the CG doesn't work super well. Other stuff
I was kind of surprised held up as well as
it does, like doors just appearing and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
That is a really cool effect they have when like
the door kind of grows into the wall and it's
like that. I don't know how they did that with
the technology of the day, like today that would just
be simple CGI.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
But yeah, that stuff looks cool. The weird like I
don't know, brain waves that they shoot out of their
heads at each other. We're kind of like, yeah, it
was a little iffy.

Speaker 5 (01:05:36):
But yeah, but the actual the aliens themselves, they're getting scannery.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:43):
Yeah, the aliens themselves, I think look cool. They're sort
of weird. Somewhere between the borg and the cenobite. It's
I like the long like again, well black robes, go figure.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
The host bodies or the actual.

Speaker 4 (01:05:57):
Aliens the host body I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
Do they not show the actual aliens? And I don't
This little electricity looking thing pops out of one of
the guys. I liken them to the not the Adam Warlock,
but the Warlock character from like the X Men comics. No,

(01:06:23):
we'll probably know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
But the look of the host bodies, yeah, the sort
of bald look, trench coats, derby hats, like all that
stuff is really cool.

Speaker 4 (01:06:38):
They do starting to turtle it up, like when they
go into the world, they put the hat on and
the glasses to try to like, no one will notice
that we look weird.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
We are blending in.

Speaker 5 (01:06:49):
It's like no one knows us.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
I did, like like I noticed it on this time.
This rewatch that the movie has a little bit in
common with like the Truman Show. Yeah, like this fake
city that's been put together, and you know, for the aliens,
it's just so they can study people to be more

(01:07:16):
like them. And you know, on the Truman Show, it's
because it's a reality show. But this is more like
nobody in the city knows what's going on, and so
the idea of like this fake city that is constantly
being rearranged and people shifted from one role to another.
Like the opening scenes are kind of cool, like when

(01:07:37):
he goes to leave the hotel and he sort of
has a conversation with the manager and he's getting a
little like, you know, hey, you're paid up, you know
for the next like three hours after that whatever. He's
kind of copying in an attitude, and then we see
him go up to the room to kind of be
like think he's going to go in and get rid

(01:07:57):
of all of his shit or whatever, but find like
a dead prostitute or whoever. The lady was supposed to
be and then like something happens and that guy I
don't remember does he die or does he get you
just get rearranged somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (01:08:15):
I think he just gets, like, yeah, it turned into
something different. Yeah, I don't know if that counts as
dying or not. It's very implicated.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
So then later when we come back to the hotel,
there's another guy who's like a bigger guy who looks
more like Cuban or something like he's got he's definitely
a different ethnicity ethnicity, but he's got the same like
wife beater and Hawaiian shirt on, and he's complaining about
the same shit. Yeah, And so that stuff is like
super interesting where it's like, oh, they are just like

(01:08:44):
plugging these people into different roles, yeah, just to kind
of see what happens with different people.

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
It's like the Truman Show reference is like really interesting
because the idea that everything is wrong and everything is
fake around you, and when you try to leave town,
there's always just a different excuse that you can go.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
I also thought about WandaVision when I was watching this,
and oh, yeah, these people are being shoved into these
roles and they're just kind of like acting the way
they need to act for the moment kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
Visually, I really like the architecture of the city. Yeah,
and then when they start moving buildings around and stuff
like that. There's a really cool scene where Rufus Sule
the main character I don't remember his character's name is John,
When John is trying to escape up a fire escape

(01:09:35):
and another building starts moving towards them, like it's just
gonna smash into them. Yeah, and he's able at the
last second to pull a window up and jump in
before the buildings just smushed together. And the alien guys
are a couple floors below them, and they're trying and
two of them get in, but one doesn't and he

(01:09:57):
just gets squished between the buildings and stuff. All that
stuff is like really cool. I just love how all
this like stuff works with the city.

Speaker 4 (01:10:07):
Yeah. I mean, like I did say that, parts of
the movie look cheap, but visually overall, like again, Alex
Price is a very visual director. He knows what he
wants and he's able to make those scenes work in
a way that like what again when you said that
out aloud, Oh, buildings coming at him and one guy
could invent a window and some of them jump through,
but one of them didn't make it. It's think about

(01:10:27):
how stupid that sounds. But it does look really cool
in the movie. And again part of that is like
a series of great performances throughout this movie, Like everybody
is quite good, and I don't know how this director
keeps getting these performances out of these people.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
Yeah, we should point out, Yeah, it's ru Vasul, who
was a big English actor at the time. Apparently a
lot of people didn't know him in the United States,
which is specifically why Pray has hired him, because he
wanted that sort of unknown for the lead character. But
then you have Yeah, Keifer Sunland is the weirdo doctor,

(01:11:07):
and then Jennifer Connelly is the love interest, and William
Hurt is like a noir Ish detective sort of going
around trying to figure out what's going on.

Speaker 4 (01:11:16):
It's really interesting because like both William Hurt and Key
for Sutherland, if I hadn't seen them in other things,
I would not know they were good actors. I would
genuinely think, oh, they just cast guys that are weird
to act in those ways. But because I've seen them
do other shit. I'm like, oh, so this isn't how
they normally behave. It's really impressive.

Speaker 5 (01:11:36):
Well fuck the funky thing. So William Hurt's character, I
understand the acting choice that he made because the idea
is that he's not a new art detective. He's this
weird collection of memories. The aliens think it's the new
art detective guy, you know what I mean. So's he's

(01:11:56):
just kind of being this weird Hammy stereotype. But Key
for Sutherland's character does not have that excience. Why is
he so fucking weird? He's just a weirdow Like he's
just straight weirdo through the whole movie, and you're.

Speaker 4 (01:12:10):
Like, what I think? Yeah, I think conceptually we're meant
to understand that he is like broken, like he's been
basically taken in by these aliens and be's forced to
run these experiments and he's just at his wits end
all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
We should point out his cadence is reminds me of
Nicholas Cage's cadence when he plays Big Daddy and kick Ass. Yeah,
it's very adam Ofsted, sort of like uh weird, like
breathing in between different words and stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:12:45):
Yes, yeah, no, I agree with what you're saying. His
performance also reminded me a little bit of the scene
at the beginning of Young Guns Too, where they've arrested
him and he's trying to be like, no, no, I'm
just a school teacher. I've never participated in a shootout.
He's putting on like this weird kind of intentionally arrogant
cadence to sound more educated and stuff. So yeah, but

(01:13:14):
I think, yeah, I think this film is like it
got buried obviously by the Matrix. I mean, otherwise this
probably would have found a huge market on like DVD
at the time. But the ideas are so unique for
its era and so kind of original to anything else
that was happening. And then it's mixed with the visuals

(01:13:34):
that we saw in The Crow, and it's it just
creates something entirely unique. I've never seen another movie like this,
Despite the fact that we're saying it has these similarities
to these other films, there's nothing quite like this out there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
Yeah, it is a very original idea, I guess at
least it was up till that point. I'm sure there's
others that we're kind of similar, but just yeah, the
way that Bryas like films it and you said the
architecture of the city is really cool, and just the
look of everybody. I know, they purposefully try to keep, uh,

(01:14:17):
keep this movie from being nailed down to a specific
time period, Yeah, which is why there's cars from different
time periods and the way people dress and stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:14:27):
But once we know that reality basically alters every night,
then that all just starts to make sense too in
a way. Yeah, where it's like, it's not it's not
the filmmakers who are trying to make it now doing
a certain time period. It's the aliens that are controlling
things that are making it not get nailed down to
a certain time period.

Speaker 5 (01:14:45):
Yeah, they've really the movie really fucks up by giving
you too much too fast, Like yeah, it's just everything's
very you've kind of just like I said, you kind
of just fucking know, you kind of know everything that's
happening in the first sentience of the movie, which is
just a weird way to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:04):
I think that's yeah, And I think that's why we
need to wait a year and then discuss the director's cut,
because that's I think that's I again, I already said
I understand why a studio looking at this film would
be like, WHOA, how the fuck are we gonna mark this?

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
Like?

Speaker 4 (01:15:23):
But I also think the film would be better served
if it was like a mystery and we didn't know
what was going on for a long time, and then
we got the gradual reveals of everything leading up to
the big reveal that I don't even know if we've
said this yet, that they're on a spaceship and that's
why you can't leave towns because if you get to
the edge of town, you're gonna fall into outer space.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
I'm curious if you know they redid they put all
these notes in and they redid a bunch of shit
or whatever, because like, well, nobody's gonna understand this, like
fair enough, people are gonna be so confused. But then
I'm wondering if like a, you know, a year later
the Matrix came out, it blew up into like a
fucking billion dollar movie. Someone was just like, get Alex

(01:16:06):
Price on the phone, see if he wants to do
a director's cut all the shit back.

Speaker 4 (01:16:11):
But do you remember trying to explain the Matrix to
people when it was new, like they didn't get it? Yeah,
normal audiences that don't take the time to stop and
think when they watch movies aren't going to necessarily understand
that film in a real way.

Speaker 3 (01:16:23):
The Matrix a perfect movie that should have been a
single movie instead of a franchise.

Speaker 4 (01:16:29):
Listen, we're not here to talk about that, and we
will not be discussing those movies anyways. The Segulls came
out too late, when I'd lowed to talk about them
there after the year two thousands. So that's our rule
that sometimes we have.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
It depends on what no one wants to watch.

Speaker 4 (01:16:50):
Yeah, what do we think about the end of this movie,
because so the main character, they're stuck on this spaceship
you can't go he can't go home because there is
no home, right, But he basically puts himself back together
with his wife, who's not really his wife. It's just
they have these memories together when it's convenient because the

(01:17:11):
aliens made them think they were married so that they
could watch how they behaved.

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
And then yeah, they destroys a weird factory that stores
all the.

Speaker 4 (01:17:22):
Yeah, so it's like, okay, so we're just gonna like
but it is this weird thing of like, Okay, we're
still stuck in this like fake world. I just put
myself in this situation where I seem to recall being
happy and.

Speaker 3 (01:17:34):
Yeah, well it's interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:17:36):
It's almost like like the we're just living with the
fact that we are not like there's no there's no
real end to the story. There's no like, oh well
we won, there's It's like, okay, it's like we've been
taken over. We are now just living in this reality.
Might as well be the reality where we get to
be happily married better than the one we're divorced.

Speaker 3 (01:17:56):
Yeah, it's interesting that because I think remember correctly, it's
just key for Stalin that knows that he has like
all these powers or whatever. Right, So like, yeah, the
civilization I guess continues on the he turns the city
towards a star, so they at least get sunlight.

Speaker 4 (01:18:17):
Now, oh yeah, I forgot about that. But so there
can't be a sequel because Alex Price will refuse to
direct a movie where there's that much light.

Speaker 3 (01:18:27):
Probably, I mean, considering he made Pitch Black, it keeps
with this theme. But yeah, so I mean, yeah, he
just puts him in a situation where he's gonna meet
up with his ex wife ish and then try to
start a new relationship or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:18:46):
Yeah, it's really strange because it is kind of this
like acceptance of like, all, we made the world a
little brighter, just moving on now. I guess it's I
don't know. I find the ending to be very interesting,
and I'm not sure what to make it because it's like,
normally the ending would be he destroys the ship and
they somehow get back to Earth or whatever, and everything's

(01:19:06):
saved and everybody goes back to who they actually are.
But that's not what this movie does. It's like there
is no way to find out who these people actually
were at any given time.

Speaker 5 (01:19:15):
Yeah, and they're on a random spaceship, yeah, some word.

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
In space, which I'm assuming John then is in charge
of the spaceship. Now I guess, like, is he the
one has to keep it going and I don't know,
keep them floating in space?

Speaker 4 (01:19:31):
And that's how space works, you just naturally float.

Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
If you do know what I'm saying, Like, obviously seems
like something's got to power that entire city. I assume
he's in charge of keeping up with all that shit.

Speaker 4 (01:19:44):
Now I'm just gonna I don't think we're supposed to
be asking that question. Definitely, Like I say, the ending
is is it's different because it's sort of like what
if Truman got to the edge and went nah, I
went back into that like you got like you took
that boat out to the edge and then like the
door was locked and he's like.

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
Well, shit, back in the boat, head back to town.

Speaker 4 (01:20:05):
Yeah, or like yeah, at.

Speaker 3 (01:20:07):
Least he created He actually created shell Beach, so there
was at least like, yeah, a part of it did
become a reality. It's just nice.

Speaker 4 (01:20:15):
It's like if the residents of Wanda's little town were
able to vote on which sitcom they wanted to live
in the rest of their lives to Wanda, but we
can't actually go back to reality.

Speaker 3 (01:20:30):
All right, Does anybody else have anything else they want
to No?

Speaker 4 (01:20:33):
I assume we're all like very positive on this movie, right,
none of us really have a lot of criticisms.

Speaker 5 (01:20:38):
Yeah, I mean it's it's fun.

Speaker 3 (01:20:39):
It's just yeah, I looked at his filmography other than
Pitch Black. I don't really know anything else. Price is done.

Speaker 4 (01:20:51):
It's funny that he did Pitch Black. I forgot about that.
I'm like, oh, so, like all of us movies are
kind of called pitch black. It just.

Speaker 3 (01:21:00):
Darkness.

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):
I'm in.

Speaker 6 (01:21:02):
Thanks for calling The Midnight Driving No one is here
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Midnight drive In on Twitter at MMn drive In pod,
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(01:21:23):
ax at the drive in will immediately be taken to
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for calling.

Speaker 3 (01:21:34):
So I was actually wrong. It was not Alex Proys
who directed Pitch Black. It was David Tooey, And for
some reason, I was like, oh, I got them confused
because they he worked on something similar to what we
were just talking about. And then I looked over his homography.
I'm like, no, he didn't, So what the fuck am
I talking about? No idea? No idea somehow makes those

(01:21:57):
two up. Don't know why, but that's.

Speaker 4 (01:21:59):
Fine because I just went with it because I just
assumed you had looked it up.

Speaker 3 (01:22:07):
Well, he just looked at his IMDb Alex PRIs and
I was like, oh, yeah, Pitch Black's definitely on there.
And then I looked and I'm like, no, it's not fuck,
what was I talking about? You did direct knowing though
with Nicholas Cage. During that Nicholas Cage was in that
I'm gonna make four movies a year that go to
theaters that aren't very good, and that's when they started going, look,

(01:22:31):
we're just gonna start putting those on video. So yeah,
what does everybody watched? This last episode?

Speaker 5 (01:22:39):
Mostly just Supernatural? To be honest, I well, season on
season I'm about halfway through six.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
Oh, he jumped ahead of me. Me and Cindy had
a very lazy Saturday, did not get off the couch
and we just watched Supernatural all day. I'm about halfway
through season five, so good times.

Speaker 5 (01:23:03):
I will say this, I feel like the ending of five,
that in which a lot of people you know, joke
about that that's the story of Supernatural that missed opportunities.
They had an opportunity for the most perfect, most satisfying
ending to that storyline and they fucked it up.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
All right, No, we can talk about it after you. Yeah,
I'll keep I'll keep an Eyeut would you watch done?

Speaker 4 (01:23:32):
I also got lazy and I ended up finishing Buffy,
so I don't have to bring that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
Up anymore until we start the Buffy rewatch.

Speaker 4 (01:23:40):
Well, we'll see that could happen anytime. Yeah, I don't know.
I'm still not a huge fan of the ending. So
whatever it is what it is.

Speaker 5 (01:23:49):
Yeah, a good a good series finale is a legitimately
rare thing.

Speaker 4 (01:23:58):
And like Buffy's isn't Game of Thrones or Dexter Bad,
you know what I mean, Like they didn't completely shit
the bed. It's just not like when you watch the
whole series in a row like that and you realize
how many times they were able to do a good
season finale and then the series finale is me you know,
it's rushed. There's too many ideas they should have picked
and chose what ideas they were going to put in.

Speaker 3 (01:24:21):
Yeah, Breaking Bad I think had one of the best
season serious finales.

Speaker 4 (01:24:27):
Breaking Bad is a miracle because not only did they
have a great series finale, but then they did a
follow up movie and somehow didn't ruin it. Yep, agree,
what's the fun I don't even know how that can happen.

Speaker 5 (01:24:39):
Well, it was good that they because it did feel
like the end of Breaking Bad. The one thing that
was unsatisfying is you're like, Okay, well he saved Jesse,
but he doesn't. Jesse doesn't really get any Catharsis. Jesse
gets no resolution at the end other than being alive,
which fell weird for him being one of two very

(01:25:04):
big characters.

Speaker 3 (01:25:05):
In the show. You know, sure I could see it,
because I think even I was like, what the fuck
happened to Jesse? But then yeah, we got the movie
wrap up, which I was okay with. Yeah, and then
we got a spin off that part of it takes
place in the past, and so some of it takes
place in the future, and that also works.

Speaker 4 (01:25:25):
See, that's something I haven't watched at all. I watched.
I watched like the first three episodes and I'm like,
this is really good. I should watch this forever. And
then I've not seen any more of it. It's good
maybe watching I'll watch that. Yeah. I did get some
movies to watch this week though, nice well, because we
did have an extra week, so I had nothing. But

(01:25:46):
now because we had the extra week, I'm not sure
how what the release order is going to look like.
But we had two.

Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
Weeks, so yeah, we're all caught up on episodes, so
there's gonna be a week with no show and then
this one's gonna come out.

Speaker 4 (01:26:00):
All right, So I don't know. I don't. Then I
tell you guys what Denegeek did to me. Those jerks. No,
they put out a list of like the twelve Frankenstein
movies and then rank them in order of like what
are the closest adaptations to the book. So now there's
like six movies I have to watch to find out

(01:26:20):
if they're right or not. And I don't know. I
don't know any way around it. I have to watch them,
so I tried. However, did you know that in two
thousand and four there were two different made for TV
movies called Frankenstein. So I watched the wrong one.

Speaker 3 (01:26:39):
Yeah, there's one of them that was based off of
Dean Koon's.

Speaker 4 (01:26:43):
Yeah, that must be the one I watched to tell
you about I Frankenstein. No, No, it's just it's just
called Frankenstein. But it's set in modern day and it's
clearly meant to be the start of a series, and
it's yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:27:00):
I frankenstent. Am I losing my mind?

Speaker 4 (01:27:02):
Yeah you are. But the thing is, like I turned
the movie on, I'm like, well, obviously this isn't what
I'm supposed to be watching. But I go to IMDb
and I'm like, directed by Marcus Nispel, starring Parker Posey
and like fucking Michael Madsen's in this, and is Frankenstein stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:27:20):
I'm like, how could it not be good?

Speaker 4 (01:27:22):
So I leave it on. I'm like, I gonna now,
I'm just gonna watch it. I guess right, it's not
very good. It is a neat idea, Like the idea is,
it's set in modern times. Parker Posey and Adam Goldberg
are these detectives looking into these killings, and basically, I
mean spoiler alert, they find out that Frankenstein is still

(01:27:45):
alive Dracula two thousand style. The not only is the
creature still alive, but there are a bunch of creatures
running around now because he's been creating them over the
course of two hundred years. And basically, these killings are
the creature that have kind of gone bad the way
that Frankenstein monsters sometimes do. And so the original creature

(01:28:09):
shows up and is like helping them to solve the
crimes and understand what's going on. So it's kind of
an interesting idea. It is this weird thing where some
of the some of the monsters are actually committing these
crimes specifically hoping to get caught, so that it's kind
of a suicide by cop type scenario because Frankenstein has

(01:28:29):
put something in them where they can't kill themselves but
they can be killed. So you get these weird moments
of like a guy doing an autopsy on a body
and he's like, yeah, I calls the detectives in. He's like, look,
you're going to get my report on this in the morning,
but I figured i'd call you in now and tell
you I found two hearts in this body. And I

(01:28:50):
cannot figure out why there would be like it's stuff
like that going on, where you're like, this is all
like good ideas, but it's just very two thousand and
four made for TV, and the ending is very much
designed to set up like a potential series, which I
don't know if they ever made anymore or not, but
so yeah, I don't know. I don't recommend it if

(01:29:12):
you're trying to follow, if you're trying to watch the
Frankenstein for two thousand and four, this is not the
one to watch.

Speaker 3 (01:29:20):
I Frankenstein is the one with Aaron Eckhart. It was
the movie. Yeah, it's an amazing cast from and it's
from twenty fourteen. It's Aaron eckar Bill and I Yvonne
whatever her name is. It was in the last season
Dexter Jai Courtney and then next twenty three Wolverine movies.

Speaker 4 (01:29:47):
I've given up learning names halfway through. Yeah, yeah, but
like I remember, it just looked terrible.

Speaker 3 (01:29:53):
Yeah, it looks bad very well.

Speaker 5 (01:29:57):
I was just thinking, I don't know, maybe it's the
book series thing a sore and iye, Frankenstein was the
one that was based off a Dean Koon's book series.

Speaker 3 (01:30:04):
But no, he did like three books in this Frankenstein series.

Speaker 4 (01:30:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:11):
Yeah, like you said, I think they were hoping to
turn it into a series and it did not.

Speaker 4 (01:30:17):
Yeah, they could also be something completely different. I'm not
one hundred percent sure, but this particular Frankenstein was a letdown,
especially because of all the names involved, Like especially like
in two thousand and four, with those names on the list,
you kind of expect something better, and I was not
very impressed. So then I gave up and just watched

(01:30:37):
cheesy eighties movies after that. As you do, I know,
I know what won't let me down. So I watched
blood Tracks from like nineteen eighty five. You guys ever
heard of blood tracks?

Speaker 2 (01:30:50):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:30:51):
So, a eighties hair metal band goes into the mountains
in the snow to film a music video, but they
get trapped there doing an avalanche, which I think their
rock music causes the avalanche, but I'm not really sure.
And wouldn't you know it, there's cannibals living in those

(01:31:12):
mountains and they come after them and start killing them off.
Just terrible bad luck. We literally get an opening scene
of like the movie. At the beginning of the movie,
there's like a family and like the husband and wife
start fighting and they kill each other, and then the
overlogs the voiceover is like yep. And then the family

(01:31:34):
lived in the woods in peace by themselves for forty
more years until intruders showed up. And then the intruders
is this very nineteen eighty five hair metal band filming
a music video in the snow, which I got to say, like,
it's a lot of fun to watch them film in
this music video in the snow. I don't know if
you guys like watching girls and thongs run around in
the snow while people play guitars, but pretty fun. Then

(01:32:00):
the avalanche comes and they don't I don't think they
have the budget for an avalanche, so it's mostly stock footage.
And then one car gets buried in snow, but there
are people having sex in the car when it gets
buried in the snow, so then they have to like
dig down and open the window and this girl has
to climb out all naked. So so, needless to say,

(01:32:22):
I'm having a great time watching this movie. And then
the second half the movie starts, which is just like
a battle between this cannibal group and this group of rocksters,
and it's so much fun watching them just like kill
each other. The special effects are bad, the makeup effects
are bad, so it's really fun to watch.

Speaker 3 (01:32:41):
There should be a movie where cannibals fight vampires.

Speaker 4 (01:32:45):
Maybe some of these cannibals do kill people by biting
their necks, so.

Speaker 3 (01:32:49):
Yeah, there should be a movie with cannibals versus vampires
and each side is just like, you can't just go
around eating people.

Speaker 4 (01:32:56):
Oh wait, this movie has something going for it that
I think you guys will appreciate, which is that the
bodies just get left around after they're killed. So you
have one moment where like like one of the guys
kills a guy and then shoves him in a closet.
And then, of course, like when the girl comes back

(01:33:17):
to the bedroom, she thinks it's her boyfriend in the bed,
but it's really one of the bad guys that's there
to get her. However, when he gets up to chase
her out of the room, the body falls out of
the closet and now it's in his way and he
can't catch up to her because he can't get the
door open, which is really fun to watch. He's like
pulling on the door and it's bumping something and you
know it's a body down there because you watched it
fall over. We also get a moment somewhere later in

(01:33:39):
the movie, like this chick is picked up and like
kind of like Vader with the Emperor, throwing over the
side of something, we get a dummy fall though. Yeah,
of course she lands on like a spike, and like
then she's coughing up blood and stuff before she dies,
and you're like, that was pretty fun to watch her kill.
But then like twenty minutes later, other people are running
away and run byer and they just like kind of

(01:34:02):
stop and go eh, like there's a body right there
because it's just still there, which is really fun. We
get somebody lit on fire, which is fun. The band
is up there where the music video they're recording is
called blood Tracks, so we also get a cool like
song that's the name of the movie. Yeah, I don't know.

(01:34:24):
I think we all knew I was gonna like this
movie when I told you what it was about it.
It really is kind of the Hills Have Eyes but
in the snow and much lower quality filmmaking, which perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:34:38):
Right, So.

Speaker 4 (01:34:44):
Yeah, big, big recommend for that movie that's objectively bad.
And then because I watched that too, B was like, well,
what about Zombie Nightmare from eighty seven? And I was
like all right, And then I'm like, why should I
watch this to be? And They're like, what about Adam
West with a mustache? And I'm like, sold, Adam West

(01:35:10):
with a very sort of stacy keaches mustache kind of
a little bit longer on the sides. Perfect. So this
movie is it's what if The Crow was an eighties slasher.
So we have this guy and he's like he's he's
really good at baseball, so he's an all American boy

(01:35:32):
and he stops the people who want to rob the
local grocery store, so we know he's a hero. And
then he gets like killed in like a very I
know what you did last Summer kind of way, where
like the guys hit him with the car and then
drive off, and then some of them are like almost
happy that they killed the guy because it's exciting and

(01:35:52):
so conveniently, there was a there was like a prelude
to the film where the boy's father was killed while
rescuing a just it's just a random black woman, but
in the world that this movie is set in, I
think all black people are naturally indovoodoo. So she's able

(01:36:14):
to resurrect him and give him bring him back as
this zombie to seek revenge on the gang that killed him.
And the rest of the movie is this zombie running
around what's clearly Montreal, but they're pretending it's some American city,
killing the people who who were responsible for his death.

(01:36:36):
And you have like the good guy cop who is
the good guy cop who's like figuring out that oh,
it's this guy's come back to life and he's killing
people and the other cops are telling him to shut
up and mind his own business and get out of
the case. The case is closed and we don't need
any more of your theories. So it's literally exactly like
The Crow. So yeah, I mean, I don't like, can

(01:37:02):
you tell I loved this movie too? Because this guy,
like at one point, he literally, at one point, he
stabs a guy with a baseball bat, right, So I
don't know if you know about baseball bats, but they're
not sharp, so you can't technically stab somebody with it.
And when it happens, I'm like, well, that's ridiculous and absurd.
And then for the rest of the movie, like the

(01:37:23):
one copy keeps going, you guys don't understand what I'm saying.
He stabbed him with a baseball bat. You know how
hard that would beat? It? Like, Okay, so the movie
knows it's ridiculous and absurd. That's great. Yeah, so you
have you have one of the one of the punks
that has to be killed off is a pre fame
tia career. And then the corrupt cop at the top

(01:37:47):
is Adam West's character. So he apparently filmed for two days,
but he has several scenes where he's just telling the
other cop to mind his business and stay out of
the case and all that kind of stuff. And we
do have a fun twist ending, should I spoil it?

Speaker 3 (01:38:03):
Sure?

Speaker 4 (01:38:04):
So the big twist ending is that Adam West is
actually one of the guys from the prelude to the
film that was harassing the black woman and killed the
father of the kid that's like the Crow character basically what.
So that's why he's like wants to stop investigating this

(01:38:26):
because he knows that's a voodoo woman, right, And so
eventually he shows up and he's going to kill her.
He shoots the zombie guy a bunch of times, who's
like dying anyway because he's fulfilled his quest of killing
off the gang, and he's going to kill this voodoo woman,
but she has done her magic again. So the dad
who died in the opening scene of the movie comes

(01:38:48):
crawling out of his grave, grabs Adhaim West and drags
him back down into the grave in a very kind
of monster squad or Friday thirteenth, part seven ending. And
I don't know if the thing is is it Is
it a great, extremely well done scene. No, it's Adam
West with a mustache getting dragged into a grave. Though,

(01:39:13):
So pretty happy about that. Yeah, I had fun with
that with that movie. I am a little disappointed because
I was enjoying the movie so much that I went
into and read up the trivia on it, and apparently
the dad was supposed to be played by superstar Billy Graham,
but the people making the movie forgot to pick him
up at the airport, so he couldn't be in the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:39:37):
Oops.

Speaker 4 (01:39:38):
Like, he flew to Montreal to be in this movie
and then nobody picked him up, so he waited like
nine hours and then just got on another plane and left.
Like I don't know how that can happen, but it did.
So Yeah, it's really weird how much this movie is

(01:40:00):
like The Crow from a plot perspective, and how the
only non white character is magical again having the same
problem that the Crow had. But yeah, yeah, if you
want to watch The Crow but it's an eighties slasher,
I would recommend Zombie Nightmare. There is I haven't watched
them yet, but there is both a riff tracks and

(01:40:21):
a Mystery Science Theater three thousand based on this, so nice,
I would suggest it's not a bad idea to watch
it that way. I don't again, I can't officially recommend
that I haven't watched it, but I'm assuming awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:40:38):
It can't make it worse.

Speaker 4 (01:40:39):
No guarantee you it won't. All right, that is all
I watched, though you got anything there, Brian, It must
have gone on a bunch.

Speaker 3 (01:40:50):
Of I did not. I've watched some movies, two of them.
We can get out of the way real quick because
it's Oh, it's Chris time. My girlfriend loves Christmas and
she wants me to watch the stuff with her that
really get shit about. But I watched. She's into musicals.
I am not into musicals. So we watched White Christmas.

(01:41:15):
First time I've ever seen it. I didn't mind. The
story a couple guys from like World War two that
serve together. Once they get out, they form like a
singing duo and become pretty popular, and they find out
that they're sergeant or whatever that they really liked he

(01:41:37):
opened like a inn, and so they go and find
out that the inn is very close to closing. So
they decided to come up with a way to set
up like a big musical show to bring in patrons
and then also reunite their platoon together to show the
general how much they appreciated them sort of as like

(01:41:59):
a surprise situation and the story itself, you know, of course,
they find a couple of women, they fall in love
with them during this whole scenario. The actual storyline not bad.
There's some good jokes, you know for a movie from
the fifties and chuckled, but every time they broke into music,
I'm just like, all right, I can check out for

(01:42:20):
this part of it.

Speaker 4 (01:42:22):
I've never seen that movie, but I hate it.

Speaker 3 (01:42:24):
So yeah, but I found, like a lot of movies
from this era, there's some that I'm just like, oh,
I'll find a good couple jokes, and you know, I
can find ways to enjoy it. But yeah, they're definitely
not my preferred movies. But this is one of the
girlfriend's favorite movies of all time, so I had to

(01:42:46):
watch it. Yeah, I was honest with her. I'm like,
I like the story. I think the story is good.
There's some good jokes in there, but yeah, the singing
I can do without. And pretty much the exact same
thing happened the next night when we went and saw
the second part of Wicked, which is like, oh, this
is an interesting take on the Wizard of Oz. Part
of the ruins is they break into song every five minutes.

(01:43:08):
You know what it is. She really liked it, her
daughter really likes it.

Speaker 4 (01:43:15):
So is there a reason you have to go? Walk
me through the logic of why you have to go.

Speaker 3 (01:43:20):
It's just a bonding experience, something they really want to do. Sometimes,
you know, they could do some stuff I want to do.
So I mean, if I would have said now I'm
not going to go, they would be like, all right,
But you know, I'm trying to trying to be a
little bit more participatory in my relationship, which was one

(01:43:42):
of the arguments that I was not in my marriage
before I got a divorce. So so just you know,
but no effort.

Speaker 4 (01:43:50):
It's fine, I'll stay single. Thanks for the advice. You're
welcome if it means I have to watch musicals, since
I can't see how it would be worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:58):
So the highlights of my experience was the day before, well,
I had to see White Christmas a little bit more
of a like our little independently run art house type
theater close by me randomly just threw up on their

(01:44:22):
Facebook page like a week week and a half before, Hey,
we're going to be screening demons on Thursday night, and
I'm just like, well, I'm fucking going to that. Yeah.
I took a friend with me who had never seen it,
and I explained it to him, like, I understand the
one reason I want to see this in the theaters
for the meta aspect, because it's about we're going to

(01:44:44):
sit in the theater and watch a movie where people
go and sit in the theater and watch a movie
about people turning into zombie slash demons, and then the
people in that theater turned into zombie slash demons. So
let's hope nobody in our theater turns into zombie slash demons.
Sadly nobody could.

Speaker 4 (01:45:02):
Yeah, I just you say you were hoping nobody does,
but deep down you were hoping somebody would.

Speaker 3 (01:45:08):
It's happening. I don't know. Demons is just one of
those movies that I really love, and awesome fucking Italian
movie with super good eighties gore and just nonsensical plot
lines that I'm like, I don't care because this movie
ends with the fucking guy on a dirt bike and

(01:45:29):
a katana sword driving around the theater sliceing heads off
of demon slash zombies. So yeah, it fuck you if
you don't like this movie.

Speaker 4 (01:45:42):
Luckily, there's nobody who doesn't like that movie, so I'm
not actually saying anybody.

Speaker 3 (01:45:47):
The friend I took was just like, Eh, it's all right,
and I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? How dare you?
I yelled at him for a good half an hour
for the whole drive back home. How do you not like?
How do you not love this movie?

Speaker 4 (01:46:00):
You to let him stay in your car for the
drive home?

Speaker 1 (01:46:02):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:46:04):
His brother came with us. His brother liked it. I
was like, how could you not like it?

Speaker 4 (01:46:08):
You out to do the friend switch aroo where you're
no longer friends with that guy and you're just friends
with his brother in stead.

Speaker 3 (01:46:14):
Come on, man, I had a great time. I don't
care this time was good or not. I sat there
with a smile on my face the entire time. I
don't care that there's a scene where some punk in
a card scrapes up cocaine off of a chick nipple
with the razor blade. It makes sense for the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:46:35):
Yeah, I mean in context, it's a plot relevant than
you're making it sound.

Speaker 3 (01:46:44):
Yeah. I just love that. Somebody was like, hey, how
about like a week before Thanksgiving? Me screamed demons and
somebody was like, fuck yeah, and I read it and
was like fuck yeah. So yeah, it was definitely one
I had to experience on the big screen in person,

(01:47:05):
just to say, I've seen the movie where the people
go to the movies to watch a movie about zombies.

Speaker 5 (01:47:10):
So did they did they show part two?

Speaker 3 (01:47:12):
They did not show part two.

Speaker 5 (01:47:14):
We should have showed part two.

Speaker 3 (01:47:15):
I would have went to see part.

Speaker 5 (01:47:16):
Two because because then you could have watched the same movie.

Speaker 3 (01:47:18):
Twice exactly, only this one takes place in the apartment
building and as some of the same actors playing different characters.
That's okay, Oh yeah, I don't mind. I was trying
to explain I didn't know going in if they're going
to be showing like the dubbed version, or are we
going to get the like the one was like in
Italian with subtitles or whatever. I was very happy to

(01:47:41):
find out it was the dubbed one because the black
guy with the handlebar mustache, his dub voice is fucking awesome,
and I was trying to explain it to my friend.
I'm like, imagine if this guy had like a really
raspy voice, like he smoked a lot but then he
sort of sounds like mister T who smoked a lot.
I'm like, that's who this guy is. Yeah, mother, motherfucker Tony.

(01:48:07):
And so yeah, that character, that guy shows up in
the next one. It's a different character which in same
dub voice, which is beautiful that it is important.

Speaker 5 (01:48:19):
Antie is maybe like a gay pimp the second something.

Speaker 3 (01:48:25):
Maybe very much a pimp in this movie, that's for
damn sure. Yeah, I don't know. At a at a
wonderful time. I was so happy that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:48:38):
Yeah, that'd be a really fun experience.

Speaker 5 (01:48:40):
Though, I'm just I'm so shocked by somebody not liking
that movie that I don't I'm having a difficult time
processing that information.

Speaker 3 (01:48:49):
My friend Jason, what a fucking idiot.

Speaker 4 (01:48:51):
Yeah, your former friend Jason, Yeah, my former friend, your
friend's brother, Jason.

Speaker 3 (01:49:04):
Yeah. So they've released the holiday schedule, which does include,
you know, screenings of like White Christmas and Home Alone
and National Lampoons, Christmas Vacation and all that stuff. But
they are showing the original Black Christmas, Oh yeah, which
I've gone to see before, but I will probably be

(01:49:24):
going to see again.

Speaker 4 (01:49:25):
I would go see that again.

Speaker 3 (01:49:28):
They're showing Christmas, Bloody Christmas, which I'm super excited about
see that on the big screen. And then seems like
there was another one that I was like. I was
like Christmas Carnage, which I don't know what that is.
I think it's like a super low budget recent indie
movie or something, so I don't know there, but yeah,

(01:49:48):
so I was very happy with their holiday selections for
this year. I'm just saying, is there no way we
can schedule New Year's Evil to actually play on New
Year's Eve? Amazing because I would definitely go see that
in the theater.

Speaker 4 (01:50:03):
You have to figure out what time zone you're in
and make sure that part of the movie plays at
the time it is in the rate if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:50:10):
Take some scheduling on their.

Speaker 4 (01:50:11):
Party, but I wouldn't have to do anything.

Speaker 1 (01:50:14):
So here's a brief glimpse of some of the truly
fine pictures we scheduled in the near future.

Speaker 3 (01:50:22):
You were tasked with coming up with some movies, well,
you were tasked with it last week and then we
didn't record, So hopefully you remember, because I forgot to
remind you.

Speaker 4 (01:50:34):
That's okay. I did well. When we're talking with the
Crow and I just kept thinking about how much I
love talking about that movie, so I wanted to do
something to follow it up. Luckily, No, we're watching the
other bird based films that we have on the list,
Beaks and Killing Birds, which is also known as Zombie five. Oh,

(01:50:57):
I've never seen either one. I think what we did
Zombie At one point we intentionally avoided going to five.

Speaker 5 (01:51:03):
Because another another entry in the continuity of the Zombie franchise.

Speaker 3 (01:51:11):
Well, because I think we did up to Zombie three.
Maybe Now I don't think we've gone anywhere past that.
So we've skipped the zomb before, and we're going to
Zombie five, which is about.

Speaker 4 (01:51:21):
Birds, right, killing birds?

Speaker 5 (01:51:24):
Yeah, well that's terrible. We might not know what's going
on with the plot because I did not see the
movie Zombie four, which I'm sure was directed by a
completely different fucking person on a script that has nothing
to fucking do with any of the other movies.

Speaker 4 (01:51:41):
That's probably correct, so we probably will be. I still
think we might be confused watching this movie. I just
don't think watching Zombie four is gonna help. And Beaks
is apparently about killer chickens, so.

Speaker 3 (01:51:58):
I should have had that for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 4 (01:52:01):
We didn't record the week.

Speaker 3 (01:52:04):
When it came out their proper week anyway.

Speaker 4 (01:52:06):
But I believe both movies were on two be at
one point. I don't know if they still are. People
are looking for them. I'm reasonably confident that you want
have to pay to see three of these movies.

Speaker 3 (01:52:18):
Very a very gentle search of YouTube, and I'm sure
they will pop up.

Speaker 4 (01:52:23):
Yeah. I think there are two different cuts of Beaks
out there. Some of people will have to see which
one we end up watching. One is called Beaks and
one is called Beaks the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:52:31):
Apparently blowing up a Balloonah.

Speaker 5 (01:52:38):
That makes me a little nervous that that Beaks the
movie is just a re edited something else that was
not a movie.

Speaker 4 (01:52:52):
It's not a re edit of a different movie. It's
a re edit of I don't know what else could
there be that would have enough footage to make it
into a movie.

Speaker 5 (01:52:59):
I don't know, to like a fucking re edit of
half an episode of fucking a TV show with five
minutes of it looped over and over again to make
it movie Lenked because it's Italian.

Speaker 4 (01:53:10):
That's actually a really good idea. I don't say that loud,
they'll start doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:53:20):
Mine need some more Italian movies on the list.

Speaker 4 (01:53:22):
There's some on there will be your turn to choose next.

Speaker 3 (01:53:27):
Week, Brian, So that works, I believe.

Speaker 4 (01:53:29):
So, yeah, you can go through the list and find
some of the Italian movies that are on there.

Speaker 3 (01:53:33):
Yeah, maybe we.

Speaker 4 (01:53:34):
Should mention I guess we're it's December now, which means
we're approaching Fanuary, which is our annual month that lasts
anywhere from three weeks to six weeks where the listeners
get to pick one or else two of the movies.

Speaker 3 (01:53:52):
You know that old tradition, in the tradition that I
think we just started doing either last year or the
year before, and then it's complete forget about until Doug
brings it up.

Speaker 4 (01:54:02):
Yeah, until like until Jeff started telling us to do it.
And I'm still not sure if it's something we started
or something he invented and tricked us into. But it's fine.

Speaker 5 (01:54:12):
Listen, if we're tricked into watching things, then we don't
have to make decisions.

Speaker 4 (01:54:18):
That's correct.

Speaker 7 (01:54:18):
It's also true, soe the you should see the emotional
turmoil that happens when I asked Doug to pick movies
for the next episode.

Speaker 4 (01:54:29):
Well, luckily because we had other bird based films on here.
The same week we watched The Crow it was no issue, So.

Speaker 3 (01:54:36):
I'm surprised bird Demic hasn't been picked yet.

Speaker 4 (01:54:38):
No, come on, we don't killer bird movies from the eighties.

Speaker 3 (01:54:46):
Come on, get your head out of your ass. Don't
be just saying stupid shit. Come on.

Speaker 4 (01:54:54):
Exactly, but listeners should seriously either email in or go
on Facebook or Instagram and let us know what they want.

Speaker 3 (01:55:02):
So the Midnight drive in at gmail dot com, Yeah,
tell us what we should watch in January.

Speaker 4 (01:55:09):
Also the Midnight Driving on Instagram and the Midnight Driving
on Facebook, so it's.

Speaker 3 (01:55:15):
Called Sure we have more people in the Facebook group
than actually download the episode, so there's a bunch of
people that have joined the group and then just have
never checked it for anything after that.

Speaker 4 (01:55:29):
You know what would be really fun is if there's
some asshole who just goes in there and makes suggestions
of intentionally bad movies because he knows he's not listening anyways,
watch these as.

Speaker 5 (01:55:39):
Jerks here you go, you piece as shit.

Speaker 4 (01:55:46):
Stays in the facebooks of whatever year around this time,
he can make suggestions.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
Yeah. See, Facebook can still be a fun place every
now and then.

Speaker 4 (01:55:55):
Sure, sure it can anyways, Yes, we'll we'll do that
month month. When do we do it? January or February?
I don't know, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (01:56:08):
Both. Sometimes yeah, just because we get lazy. And then
sometimes I don't post episodes for a while, and then.

Speaker 4 (01:56:17):
I think last year we had too many suggestions too.
It's not that many suggestions. We can just do them all.

Speaker 3 (01:56:24):
No, what are you doing like yoga or something? Maybe
it sounds like you're vaping.

Speaker 4 (01:56:32):
Why do you send paping and yoga?

Speaker 3 (01:56:33):
Make says, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:56:36):
Can we stop doing that?

Speaker 3 (01:56:39):
Jesus? I think it's fine. I just I don't know
what's happening.

Speaker 5 (01:56:44):
Just weird noises.

Speaker 4 (01:56:46):
I'd like to point out that it's actually not fine
listeners when they say that too, it's like fine.

Speaker 5 (01:56:53):
About it, just picking up a random weird thing, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:57:01):
Should were talking about wrestlings.

Speaker 4 (01:57:04):
My kid made me resubscribe to Netflix so we can
start watching wrestling against Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (01:57:08):
The kid's gonna break you out of house at home
because fucking WW don't give his ship no more. So
you're gonna have to watch Netflix. I guess you don't
have to do the ESPN.

Speaker 4 (01:57:21):
Like we get raw SmackDown and the pls are all
on Netflix. Oh see everything, I think, everything except the
Saturday Nights main events, which is the next thing he
wants to watch.

Speaker 3 (01:57:31):
Of course, because John Cena's last match.

Speaker 4 (01:57:34):
Oh is that what's going on?

Speaker 3 (01:57:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:57:36):
As heard, he like came running. He's like, when does
Saturday Night's main event? And I'm like, I don't know.
I can, I know how to google that, but I
don't know anything about it, and then have to watch it.

Speaker 3 (01:57:47):
I'm like, it's never a huge John Cena fan. I
gave him credit because he did like a billion make
a wish things and you know whatever, And I do
want to give credit because he is doing what he
can to help on the way out, because apparently they
wanted to do like this, We're gonna do a whole

(01:58:07):
episode that's just a tribute show to you, and he
was like no, no, no, no. He's like, how about
grab some some up and comers from NXT and they
come and each one of them gets a match against
like a really well known like veteran on Saturday Night's
main event. So he's trying to at least help get

(01:58:28):
more people on TV who have not been on TV before.

Speaker 4 (01:58:32):
So the whole thing has been pretty gross, the whole
like year long thing, and the storylines were not well
thought out.

Speaker 3 (01:58:42):
Well, like, I don't really watch anymore. I haven't watched
for a while, and then their association with certain political
figures has made me be like, yeah, I don't need
to watch, so I haven't missed it. But from what
I've heard, it's, uh, it's not no.

Speaker 4 (01:59:00):
It's not like I don't know. My kid just just
watching Survivor series or where the las pl he was,
and I'm watching it with him, and I'm like, this
is just it's so utterly predictable and like, even as
somebody who doesn't watch, I can predict everything that's happening. Yeah,
and I'm like, it's it's boring, and it's it's really corporate,

(01:59:21):
and it's really everything feels very overly stage now. And
I know wrestling is staged, but it's to this ridiculous
extent where it's like nothing feels like there's no suspension
of disbelief whatsoever anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:59:34):
Yeah, I don't know. I've heard that the ticket prices
are out of control, because that's what I've heard. TKO
is doing everything they can to make as much money.
Rumor is they want to try to make it look
as profitable as possible so they can sell it off
to the Saudi's.

Speaker 4 (01:59:51):
That's that's what Stevie Richards keeps saying in his YouTube videos.
I randomly trust him for reasons that I can't.

Speaker 3 (02:00:02):
I've heard it from other places too, but maybe it's
all just coming from him. I don't know. Like I said,
I don't care, I don't watch, so yeah, it's just
it's weird. A lot of people have said, like, you know,
Vince McMahon is a person who's maybe a gigantic piece
of shit, but as a guy running a wrestling business,
he at least knew that in order to keep it

(02:00:24):
long term, you have to keep prices low enough that
families can go, so that you build younger fans along
with the older fans.

Speaker 4 (02:00:32):
And then well, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (02:00:35):
He refused to put any corporate sponsors on the ring
map because you know, from a old school perspective, the
ring map was supposed to be sacred and stuff. And
as you know, as soon as he was gone, they're like, yeah, yeah,
let's sell every inch of sponsorship we can, which is
why slim gym sponsors all their tables that they put
wrestlers through it.

Speaker 4 (02:00:56):
The corporate sponsorship stuff is gross. It makes it feel
real low rent. But like, I don't know, I don't
know where the sports in general is headed. Because if
it's like they're trying to find a way to run
these billion dollar businesses but not have to have fans
because nobody can afford to go anymore and stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:01:18):
Well, I think they're they're going on the same model
as phone applications. So the idea is most people are
not going to spend any money, but the handful of
people that spend money spend so much money that it
just makes it efficient, which is terrible. So basically, the

(02:01:40):
you know the weird little gaming apps that you're like,
why would anybody ever pay five dollars for crystals or whatever?
Most people agree with you, but the crazy people spend
twenty thousand dollars on a game that's free.

Speaker 4 (02:01:56):
Well, and I guess you're right, right, Like they're going
to like it's seven ninety nine a month from my
Netflix subscription and I get all of the wrestling. But
you know, the people who are still going are spending
five hundred dollars a ticket. That's how they're making their money.

Speaker 5 (02:02:12):
Right well, and they're in the and then they're paying
you know whatever, they're paying for the experienced ticket, you know,
because they want to fucking do the meet and greet
after whatever the.

Speaker 4 (02:02:24):
Fuck I guess, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:02:28):
You gotta buy a T shirt and you got to
buy a program and a foam finger thing whatever, and yeah,
it's gross.

Speaker 8 (02:02:36):
Yeah, capitalism, yay, the world has gotten Yeah, it's we
We've I hated when people started saying, oh, we're in
late stage capitalism where everything gets worse.

Speaker 4 (02:02:48):
But it turns out they're right, Like everything is just
actively getting worse, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (02:02:53):
Oh yeah, and it's like.

Speaker 4 (02:02:56):
Every now and again, like a lot of the stuff
that gets worse, You're like, oh, they they made it
worse on purpose, like they just like you know what
I mean, Like businesses is like that you love shopping
at go out of business and you're like, oh, that's
too bad. They weren't making money, and it's like, oh,
they weren't making money, but venture capitalists bought them up
and destroyed them.

Speaker 5 (02:03:13):
Anyway, Yeah, they were making they were making money, but
they weren't making enough money.

Speaker 4 (02:03:19):
Or they were making money in the wrong way where
it would get distributed to a lot of people, and
then a few people could figure out how to make
it get distributed all to them.

Speaker 5 (02:03:28):
Well, there's also the I'm trying to remember it's got
a specific name to it, but there's like an entire
business model within venture capitalism that they they buy businesses
that are successful but not psychotically successful. They come in
and they essentially intentionally.

Speaker 3 (02:03:49):
Destroy the business.

Speaker 5 (02:03:50):
They they fire all the workers, they cut all the costs,
you know, they make all the products clearly worse. But
for a very short period of time, that loss of
cost makes the stock prices go up, which makes it
look like they're improving the business, even though that has

(02:04:10):
nothing to do with improving the business. It just makes
it look more profitable for a short period of time.
And then they bail and everyone gets a payout. The
shareholders get a pay out, the crazy owner person gets
a payout, all the workers get fucked, and everybody loses
the business.

Speaker 3 (02:04:27):
That they liked.

Speaker 5 (02:04:28):
Yeah, which is just weird. That's the system we've built,
But that's a thing that can be done.

Speaker 4 (02:04:34):
Because I think it was Red Lobster, it was one
of the restaurant chains. I think Red Lobster was one
where they owned all the like the land and building.
That's whatever company took them over basically sold all the
landed building, took that money, bonused it out to like
the board of directors, and then all of a sudden,
the restaurants are losing money because they were doing fine,

(02:04:55):
but now they have to pay rent every month when
they didn't used to have to pay rent. Their whole
business model around them not paying rent, and so then
it started to go under. But the people who made
those decisions had already gotten their big payout. And it's like,
so you ran, You get paid millions upon millions of
dollars to take a business that's functioning and destroy it.

(02:05:15):
What a gross, gross system.

Speaker 5 (02:05:18):
Yeah, But and again the people who wanted their money
out of it all got their money out of it,
so to them it was a success.

Speaker 4 (02:05:25):
Yeah. It's fascinating, it's yeah, and it's you know, like
the same thing just happened with Hudson's Bay Company here
in Canada, like where American investors bought it up and
kind of intentionally ran it out of business. And it
was like because it was already struggling, but when they
were buying it up. They were implying that, hey, we
could you know, we could fix this, and then that

(02:05:45):
was never the intent. It was just immediately strip everything
out of it and drive it into bankruptcy.

Speaker 5 (02:05:51):
Yeah, I mean I was the furniture company that I
worked for years and years ago. Uh, that's very literally
what happened. We were building the company. It was slowly,
like increasing, we were making ground. It had this great,
not perfect, but pretty good culture where all of the
managers of all the different stores kind of liked each

(02:06:12):
other and we were all kind of working together to
figure it out, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:06:15):
What I mean.

Speaker 5 (02:06:17):
And then they brought in a new CEO and we
were all like, hey, that new CEO makes us nervous
because that's the CEO from Circuit City that came in
and destroyed Circuit City. And they were like, no, that's
not what's happening here, and we're like okay, because at
Circuit City, he came in, he fired all the management,
brought in his own guys, and you know, bombed all

(02:06:40):
the products and everybody got a payout and they went
out of business. Now that's not what happened. And then
he came in and the first thing that started happening
is all the long term managers started getting fired and
they were replaced by his handpicked crony guys that he's
worked with at other places. It's just at lower wages,
you know what I mean. Stock price went up, all

(02:07:02):
the products. We went from having a pretty good selection
of you know, like standard. You know, you could come
in decide, oh I want that, but I want that
in blue, Sure we can do that. Instead it was no,
you have these five couches, sell these five couches. And
we're like, but what if somebody doesn't want one of
those five couches. And they're like, well, that's your fault.

(02:07:23):
That's your fault for not being able to sell one
of the five couches that we so graciously have given you,
you know. And then the whole business was gone in a year.
In a year, everything was trashed and gone.

Speaker 4 (02:07:34):
Well they do it really quick, Yeah, they have to,
because otherwise the system will collapse out from one of
them and they won't get their pay. No.

Speaker 3 (02:07:41):
Yeah, it's all terrible. Everything is terrible.

Speaker 5 (02:07:44):
Yeah, everything is up.

Speaker 3 (02:07:47):
Happy holidays everybody. Everything is terrible.

Speaker 4 (02:07:50):
Not the holidays yet.

Speaker 3 (02:07:57):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:07:58):
Everything's everything's well wonder if what the reason we don't
have listeners is because anybody who listens to the end
of our podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:08:05):
Depressed that then kills himself and then we just lost
had such a fucking bummer every But it's just like
living in the world.

Speaker 5 (02:08:15):
Living in this world, every day's a fucking bummer.

Speaker 3 (02:08:18):
Yeah, well, just like everything's gotten so shitty and it's
not even like oh, like fucking you're just mad at
Trump or whatever, like, yeah, that's a part of it.
But also then if you look at like and I
know people are like, well that was garbage to begin with,
but like if you go to McDonald's, like their food
is trash, and yes, their food has been trashed for

(02:08:40):
a while, but.

Speaker 4 (02:08:42):
Used to be trash that tasted good.

Speaker 3 (02:08:44):
It's even more trash than it used to be. It's
just like, oh and now nobody cares. People that work
there don't care. Like some of the fast food places
are like some of the worst places ever. And I'm
just like, I'm on my lunch break, I just want
a couple of tacos from Taco Bell. Why is is
everything so garbage and why is everything just terrible?

Speaker 5 (02:09:04):
Yeah, well, then you listen to people, people from other
countries come over. Sure, they're always like why is.

Speaker 3 (02:09:10):
Everything so bad?

Speaker 5 (02:09:12):
Or like, I we don't know, we don't know why
they do this. They just keep doing it.

Speaker 4 (02:09:17):
Yeah, well we do know why. It's because things aren't
bad for the people making the decisions.

Speaker 3 (02:09:23):
Yeah, yeah, because they reduced the quality of the products.
And then yeah, try to reduce the prices on everything else.
We'll try to reduce how much everything costs, but then
still jack prices up, and then yeah, it's it's I.

Speaker 4 (02:09:37):
Think a lot of it is just like the broken
idea that somehow there has to be this perpetual, never
ending growth, and that a company that makes like a
billion dollars, if they make nine hundred and ninety eight
million next year, somehow that counts as failing. It's just.

Speaker 5 (02:09:55):
Yeah, well it does. It does appear to be failing
whenever inflations insane way high, because if you make the
same amount of money, you've actually made less money because
money's worthless because they've destroyed the system.

Speaker 3 (02:10:08):
Again, Yeah, everything's terrible.

Speaker 4 (02:10:11):
All right, guys, I'll talk to you next week then, Yes,
street movies of birds eating people. That'll be fun. That'll
be fun.

Speaker 1 (02:10:18):
Right, Please remember to replace the speaker on the post
when you leave the theater.

Speaker 3 (02:10:32):
And now, folks, it's time to say good night.

Speaker 1 (02:10:35):
We sincerely appreciate your patternage and hope we've succeeded in
bringing you an enjoyable evening of entertainment. Please drive home
carefully and come back again soon.

Speaker 3 (02:10:44):
Good night,