Bryan! (00:03.811) You're listening to the bring me the axe. I'm gonna do that again. What the fuck was that? I blow it. Yep, it's not does it does not bode well. You're listening to bring me the axe. Brian White. I'm one half of this morbid equation and I'm joined by my coast and actual brother Dave White. I am fucking this up like crazy. I've seen let this roll. Let's get a let it roll. Dave. How you doing?

Dave! (00:10.095) You blew it! Five seconds into it!

Dave! (00:23.603) Yeah

Dave! (00:27.102) Yeah, oh, hey, oh, I'm all right. You know what I was just thinking about before we started this here recording was, I was thinking about how in the 60s, there were so many television shows that were about rural people and rural environments. You got like, you got Green Acres and Petticoat Junction, you got Beverly Hill Billies, like even Mr. Ed, even Mr. Ed, which took place in Los Angeles, was still a decidedly Western feeling. And I thought,

Bryan! (00:46.115) Oh yeah? Barely heal abilities.

Bryan! (00:55.833) Yeah.

Dave! (00:56.494) How weird is it that there were this like over-representation of rural populations on television at a time when most rural people probably didn't have a television?

Bryan! (01:06.207) That's right. A running water or, you know, indoor plumbing. It's pretty fucking strange. Yeah. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, I'll tell you what. You know what that was is they had all those like Western sets left over. And they were like, well, we got to do something with them, you know. And then like the next thing you know, they kind of give it up. And then the spawn ranch falls into disrepair. And it's just all history from there. Yeah. God damn it. It's just the death of the Western. It's all their fault. Yeah.

Dave! (01:08.074) Yeah, well that was pretty weird.

Good show, though.

Dave! (01:18.231) Probably.

Yeah.

Dave! (01:27.566) And then Sharon Tate's dead.

Bryan! (01:35.435) So wow, we practically grew up in neighborhood video stores and the steady diet of utter garbage that those shops provided us with continues unabated to this day. There's no one else I enjoy chopping it up with more about trashy movies than Dave. So just before we get into it, here's a little housekeeping. If you wanna keep up with us between episodes, you can also find us on Instagram at bringbethexpod and Dave's over there at that queer wolf. We're having a really good time. We got a whole new thing we're doing like weekly with sort of like a mystery double feature.

It's a good time. Subscribe, follow us over there. You know, we do it in the stories. We keep it up. It's a good time.

Dave! (02:08.014) I mean, I do it in my head all the time anyway. I may as well do it on the internet.

Bryan! (02:09.963) Oh Jesus Christ for real. And it was cool. Like the last time we did it, it was fun. We had a lot of really good, like a lot of really good. Responses, way more scream threes than I think I was expecting, but, uh, you know, I think that's.

Dave! (02:21.494) Yeah, for the record, my recommendation was Shadow of the Vampire, and I'm pretty sure that was the best choice, but I'm biased.

Bryan! (02:29.655) Yeah, I went with demons, you know. So yeah.

Dave! (02:33.186) That's just a horror movie that's in a horror movie, though. It's not like a.

Bryan! (02:36.163) Well, no, that was the whole thing was horror movies and horror movies. I didn't really have a whole thing, but we got a sweet website now at bring me the axe dot com. You can listen to all of our past shows there. Read the transcripts. I'm actually a little bit behind on that. I got to get that updated. And if you don't know, we have another show called 99 Cent rental, where we cover all manner of video store madness on the weeks that bring me the axes off. So our latest episode covering polyester is out now. We'll be back next week with a look at Phantom of the Paradise.

Dave! (02:39.791) I guess.

Dave! (03:05.103) I feel like that polyester episode was like seven weeks ago.

Bryan! (03:08.351) I know. Well, you know what? I think it was because we recorded it way like a long time ago. But but yeah, yeah. So that Phantom of the Paradise is going to be the last one that we post in the Bring Me the Axe feed. So if you are enjoying it, you're going to want to go over to 99 Cent Rental and subscribe there if you want to keep, you know, keep getting notifications when new episodes drop. So.

Dave! (03:11.307) That's true.

Bryan! (03:30.871) You can also contact us directly at bring me the X pod at gmail.com with any questions, comments or suggestions. Do let us know if there's a movie that you love and would like to hear us give it the business. Lastly, if you like what you hear you can scribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. We're on YouTube now searches by name subscribe in there if you prefer to consume your podcasts that way. Maybe do us a favor by leaving us a five star review on Apple podcasts and Spotify. Now's the point where I give you all a hard time about doing

If you have not done it yet, you really ought to. It's super simple and it makes me feel so good when I see that number go up. So if you haven't done it yet, just do it. Takes a second, literally. Yep. And if you listen on YouTube, do us a favor, give the episode a like and leave a comment. We do love hearing from you guys. So I just want to get all that out of the way right at the top of the show, because I'm about to give you a taste of what we're doing tonight.

Dave! (04:00.706) But just do it. Just, it's really important to me.

Dave! (04:26.754) It's a very special bonus episode. Bonus episode.

Bryan! (05:12.494) Oh, Howard.

Dave! (05:14.825) Ah, word.

Dave! (06:48.862) God damn, I love this movie.

Bryan! (06:50.758) Yep, my bloody Valentine. It's a seasonal, it's a seasonal favorite.

Dave! (06:52.99) I'm gonna say this is my third favorite horror film.

Bryan! (06:57.343) like of them all? Huh.

Dave! (06:59.254) Yeah. I love this movie so much. I get excited just thinking about it.

Bryan! (07:03.095) I enjoy it. I enjoy it a great deal. It's definitely one of my favorite slasher movies for certain and it used to it took a long time for me to really come around to that because the available versions of it until about like I don't know like 2009 were really yeah like

Dave! (07:07.915) Hmm?

Dave! (07:20.898) 2008 was when the remake came out.

Bryan! (07:25.827) Yeah. So yeah, so this movie got butchered real hard. Now, I had a I'll talk about it a little bit when we get there. I had a version of this in the 90s that actually had that like footage that the studio insisted was lost in it.

Dave! (07:40.886) Well, some of it is actually lost. So there's about nine minutes that got cut. Five minutes of it have been restored. The other four, I think, are just gone.

Bryan! (07:49.687) Yeah, so uh yeah, so this is this was the question I wanted to ask you. Is this the most Canadian movie that we have covered yet because we've done another and it is really Canadian.

Dave! (08:02.47) Well, I think Peanut Butter Solution is the most Canadian movie we've ever covered. But Peanut Butter Solution is very French-Canadian. This is just Canadian-Canadian, which might be why I love it so much, because I am on record as not just a big fan of Canadian horror or Canadian film, but just Canada in general.

Bryan! (08:06.507) Yeah, because this one is pretty fucking close.

Bryan! (08:14.767) Yeah.

Bryan! (08:22.351) Canada in general. You love you love hockey. You love poutine. I love poutine also like I need a real solid poutine hookup and we're reasonably close to Canada. So, you know, it shouldn't be as hard as it is. But now,

Dave! (08:25.254) I do not love hackling. I do love poutine.

Dave! (08:39.211) If you were listening, Michael might correct you and say it's Putin.

Bryan! (08:43.381) Ptah!

Dave! (08:44.49) And I would say, get out of here. You're not on this show.

Bryan! (08:48.629) I know, I know, but he could be. We should have him as a guest sometime. Because he's got thoughts.

Dave! (08:52.046) Good. I mean, he's 15 feet away. It wouldn't be that hard.

Bryan! (09:02.412) I'm gonna call him that next time I see him that. So uh should we do the facts?

Dave! (09:07.554) Can't get it.

Bryan! (09:09.399) So the year was 1981. It was a good year, as I'm about to tell you. Here's some other movies that were released that year. Number one, Final Exam came out in 1981. Ha ha ha.

Dave! (09:11.735) That's good here.

Dave! (09:20.494) Oh Jesus, just everybody just calm down. You can put your pants back on. I know everybody loves that fucking movie.

Bryan! (09:24.85) I know.

Bryan! (09:29.519) Yep, yep. So yeah, refer to our final exam movie, which is mostly a love letter to Radish. Also released in 1981, Toby Hooper's The Fun House. That's a good movie. Alive, alive. Also in 1981, Blood Beach, which is, no, but it's, it's at least, at the very least, it's a unique movie. It was a monster movie that came out at a time when monster movies were really not in vogue.

Dave! (09:34.4) Mmm.

Dave! (09:39.239) And also good movie.

Dave! (09:48.408) Not a good movie.

Dave! (09:57.646) I think of it more as an animal attack movie, even though I guess it's, they're less of an animal than a monster, I guess.

Bryan! (10:07.237) Yeah. Let's see. Also number four, Fear No Evil. Which is that Frank Lelogia. Yeah, yeah, not a very good movie. It's a very, very weird movie.

Dave! (10:14.903) No!

Dave! (10:19.618) But you know, Frank Loloja, he really, really tried a bunch of times and he never really hit it except for that one that was kind of big.

Bryan! (10:22.668) Yeah.

Bryan! (10:29.143) But you're gonna have to get more specific than that.

Dave! (10:31.124) The fuck is it called? Lady in white, is that what it's called?

Bryan! (10:35.075) Oh shit, yeah, that's right. That's a pretty good movie. Yeah, but Fear No Evil, I'll tell you what it does have going for it's got a fucking kick ass soundtrack. No, it's all it's all New York punk bands.

Dave! (10:37.986) That was okay.

Dave! (10:43.365) Did he do the soundtrack?

Dave! (10:48.131) Oh, I've heard of them. All of them.

Bryan! (10:49.815) Yep, all of them. And rounding it out, number five, the Monster Club.

Dave! (10:56.474) Not a good movie.

Bryan! (10:57.211) That one's okay. I have a soft spot for it because that was a creature double feature movie and it's one of the earliest movies that I remember seeing and there's a couple of parts to it that actually scared the ** out of me mostly because I was seven years old. So yeah, so here's some cast and crew. The director is a man named George Mahalka and honestly, not much to do about this guy. He stays fairly busy since the early 80s. This was his technically his first feature but

it came out after a sort of cheap. He was yeah, it was like an Animal House style sex comedy that called Pick Up Summer, as that was called. And yeah, he stays fairly active between film and TV. And as recently as 2015, having directed parts of the Black Christmas document, Black Christmas legacy, which is I believe is the one that's on the blu ray.

Dave! (11:27.257) He made one of the you make a comedy too

Bryan! (11:49.407) The one that we sourced all of our information for a black Christmas episode. I think I think it's the one I have to go I'd have to go back and check. I mean I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure like there's not a lot of black Christmas documentaries

Dave! (11:51.757) Really?

Bryan! (12:02.107) But yeah, so here's the cast. We got Neil Affleck as Axel. He's Ben Affleck's cousin. No, he's not, I paid that up. No, he's a Canadian actor, stayed fairly busy with small parts throughout the 80s. And then in the mid 90s, his career takes a really wild turn when he gets into animation, eventually directing several episodes of Family Guy and The Simpsons. And he was on The Simpsons on various roles for 10 seasons, it turns out. Yeah.

Dave! (12:09.49) Is he really? No, no, he's not.

Bryan! (12:29.183) and he's still quite active today as an actor and a director of animation. So yeah, the minor by the way is played by a different actor. That's a guy named Peter Cowper. He's a stuntman. Like most of the guys in these in the behind the mask were always stuntmen. Yeah.

Dave! (12:42.634) Yeah, well, I mean, because they had to do like big. Well, first of all, they usually had to look large and imposing.

Bryan! (12:47.383) Yeah, they needed big guys who were very physical to sort of do these things.

Dave! (12:53.578) Yeah. And I think a lot of them, because of they do so much like fighting, they probably had to be accustomed to that.

Bryan! (13:01.111) Yeah, them. So let's see, we also have Lori Hallier as Sarah. And this is her first feature role. She'd been working in stage productions prior to this and led to a busy career that continues to this day. She's done a ton of 80s television. And if the production was done in Toronto, she was probably in it.

Dave! (13:19.51) We should say the majority of this cast, I think the entire cast actually is Canadian and that is on purpose. I mean, it would have had to have been Canadian anyway. We'll get to that whole Canada film board thing in a minute. But. But he wanted to he kind of it was a point of pride for him to make it as Canadian as possible because it should be said this is one of very few of horror movies in general, I think. But.

Bryan! (13:25.557) Yes!

Bryan! (13:30.923) Yeah, I got a whole thing about the tax shelter era.

Dave! (13:45.882) from that era specifically, where they don't really go out of their way to make you think you're in the United States. This is very like specifically Canadian, which is I think one of the reasons I love it.

Bryan! (13:52.383) No, this one kind of wears it on its sleeve. Yeah, there's there's. Yeah, it's a it's an artifact of a very rich period for Canadian exploitation movies, Canucksploitation, I've heard them called.

Dave! (14:08.658) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (14:10.255) But this one in particular is one that's just like where the others try to make it kind of ambiguous, even though it's fucking obvious most of the time. Like this one's got Canadian license plates. It's all shot around Nova Scotia. There's Canadian beer prominently featured throughout it. There's an accent. Every every cast member has the accent. It's pretty it's pretty funny.

Speaking of Canadian actors, rounding it out is Keith Knight as Hollis, who is my favorite dude in the entire movie. In a movie that's about as Canadian as it gets, he is the walking embodiment of Canada. He played Fink in Meatballs. He's the fat guy who beats the stomach at the hot dog eating contest. And he also appears in a number of other Canadian exploitation movies.

Dave! (14:37.934) The house is pretty great.

Dave! (14:51.798) He is barnyard in a class of 1984, which is a year after this. And he looks about 15 years younger in that.

Bryan! (14:56.494) Yeah.

I know. You know what it is? Is it's the mustache. The mustache is doing a lot of work in this movie. He's also in Siege. Yeah, which we're gonna do on 99 Cent Rental. I've not seen it. I'm saving it for when we do that one. That's what I've been told. And lastly, I want to mention this because he gets mentioned every now and then like in small parts. The music was done by a guy named Paul Zaza.

Dave! (15:01.951) Yeah, the mustache and the hair.

Dave! (15:06.614) Yes. Have you ever seen Siege? It's actually a surprisingly good movie.

Dave! (15:23.21) Yeah!

Bryan! (15:23.755) And so yeah, and if the movie was a low budget horror movie made in Canada, Paul Sasa is the man behind the music.

Dave! (15:29.166) Paul Zaza did most of Bob Clark's early movies. He did the prom night soundtrack, which is fucking awesome. The soundtrack of this is awesome.

Bryan! (15:33.279) Yep. So he is which is my thing is this the soundtrack to yeah so Porky's was the first Bob Clark movie he did. He also did a Christmas story like a year prior to this. He just said prom night. He did all of the disco sound like stuff not to mention all the just rather scoring stuff for prom night. He's a really

Dave! (15:53.482) Yeah, he's really good at writing like knockoff shit. Because if you listen to the Prom Night soundtrack, every one of those songs is gonna sound really familiar, even though they are all original.

Bryan! (16:00.271) Well...

Bryan! (16:04.075) Well, yeah, it was like when I was watching it, like I think I watched it a few months ago. Like, I think it was back in either September or October and I was texting you and I was like, ah, this one is I will survive, isn't it? Yeah.

Dave! (16:13.002) Yeah, most of it. Yeah, I love Paul Zaza. He did this soundtrack to Windows, which is really cool. Yep. He's just really great, great stuff.

Bryan! (16:18.843) The curtains. Yeah.

Bryan! (16:24.683) It's yeah, he's a real utility musician. He's very talented. I do. I like all of his stuff. Whenever I see his name in the credits, I'm like, yes, because you know, it's going to be good.

Dave! (16:31.922) And he worked a lot with Christ, what's his name? The one who did Black Christmas.

Bryan! (16:38.419) Oh shit, no, I can't. We just did that, I can't remember that guy's name.

Dave! (16:41.33) Yeah, they work together a lot because they kind of complimented one another in terms of the type of stuff they did.

Bryan! (16:49.527) Yeah, Zaza did the music and this other guy, the other guy. I'm gonna have to look it up. But he was the soundscapes guy. Yeah. So here's some tag lines for this movie. Not really. There's a shitload of them on the IMDB taglines list. Most of them. Most of them appear on like Mondo posters and shit. It's just like stuff that people kind of came up with recently. There's really only two that showed commonly. One of them is on every poster.

Dave! (16:59.327) None of them are good. They all suck.

Which those don't feel like they're real.

Bryan! (17:17.483) and that is there's more than one way to lose your heart. No, it's not bad. There's another. There's another one that's a poster that looks like it was fairly rare. It was probably used in international markets, and that one is Harry's out to steal your heart. Yeah, yeah, and this is the last one, which is one that I found the on some VHS boxes this Valentine's Day. Romance is dead.

Dave! (17:21.218) Pretty good. I like that one.

Dave! (17:34.916) Okay, so less good.

Bryan! (17:48.303) there.

Dave! (17:48.723) Speaking of VHS boxes though, cool ass poster art. This is another one of the ones that I remember distinctly because of how cool it looks. It is a very, very simple image, but very effective.

Bryan! (17:52.143) This is, yep.

Bryan! (18:02.335) one of my all time favorites. I would say that this is easily like if my favorite one of all time like the one that I consider like the most evocative is the Friday the thirteenth poster. This one is right up there with that because it's yeah, I would I was gonna say top three very easily. It's it really kind of it doesn't tell you very much about it. It gives you an idea of the of what the killer is gonna be.

Dave! (18:11.954) Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I'd say it's a top five.

Bryan! (18:27.087) There's something about the look in his eyes that they show that's very alarming. It's a very cool.

Dave! (18:32.278) Because the killer is cool as hell. And it's like, I think out of all these slashers, this is the, the minor is the coolest looking villain in any of them. And I'm including Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, all of them. I think the minor is the coolest looking one because that fucking mask is terrifying. I mean, no matter how you, how you wear it or wear, it's still creepy as shit. And like, I mean, he's got a giant pickaxe.

Bryan! (18:44.824) Yeah.

Bryan! (18:48.704) It's very spooky.

Dave! (18:58.026) It's just a really awesome villain. Like this movie is very well put together. It's very well made. It's very well thought out. It's very efficient.

Bryan! (19:05.259) Yeah, it really is. And it was based on a single page synopsis by the executive producer, a guy named Stephen Miller, and was originally called The Secret.

Dave! (19:15.262) I think that's because they didn't want to give away what they were doing. Because they're essentially making if they had said what they were like, if they given it any kind of name that indicated the content, it would have been obvious what they were doing.

Bryan! (19:20.185) Uh, yeah, that could be.

Bryan! (19:25.595) that's they what they were trying to do is protect the the the holiday theme because this was obvious. This is 1981. It's the period where everybody's gotta do ** holiday themed slasher movie and so there's like a million of them. They wanted like this one to remain theirs so that nobody else kinda like swooped in and scooped them.

Dave! (19:47.198) Now to their credit though, this one integrates the holiday better than any other one has ever done because it is it is really built into the story.

Bryan! (19:53.323) Oh yeah, the other ones. The other ones were. Yeah, the other ones were basically anytime there's like a movie like a slasher movie of the period of this Golden Age of the slasher that had a theme like a holiday theme, it was usually shoehorned in after the story was written.

Dave! (20:09.566) Yeah, like even Halloween is like, well, it happens on Halloween. That's about the extent of it. Like it doesn't play much of a role beyond that. I guess you could argue April Fool's Day. The big the big twist at the end is kind of related, but otherwise, it's not really necessary.

Bryan! (20:14.036) Yeah.

Bryan! (20:21.199) Yeah.

Bryan! (20:24.763) Yeah. So, this movie was produced on a budget of a little over 2 million dollars which for these slasher movies of the period, that's a lot of money. Cuz Friday the 13th came was produced a year before this one on a half a million dollar budget.

Dave! (20:34.738) It does seem like a lot to me.

Dave! (20:41.97) I'm guessing though, there's a lot that got eaten up. Like insurance must've been a bitch on this.

Bryan! (20:47.247) probably also I know that there's weird like sort of like making of secrets that I kind of picked up here and there apparently when the company that owned the mine found out that they were gonna be you know, hey, they're gonna make a movie in our mind. Okay, yeah, what they did was they were like, oh shit, we don't want to look like a bunch of slobs. So they went like, cleaned it up and like

Dave! (20:59.398) Oh, it was actually the town that owned the mine at that point.

Bryan! (21:08.479) sort of renovated it and painted it. And when they got, when the production crew got there, they were like, what the fuck have you done? We picked it because this was like so dreary and run down. So they had to spend like a hundred thousand dollars, you know, that like mashing it up and making it look nasty again.

Dave! (21:13.996) Yep.

Dave! (21:23.742) And the reason they wanted to do that. So it's in what's called Sydney, Sydney's mine, Sydney Mines, something like that is the name of the town. That's the name of the town. But they were hoping that this would be like kind of help revitalize tourism. And I, you know, I don't want to shit on the town. And so it's just a fucking seaside town. But at the same time, like what tourism? You've got like a giant fucking factory and you've got a mine. That's it.

Bryan! (21:28.835) something like uh yeah I've got it I've got a little thing about that but yeah

Bryan! (21:45.847) Yeah, like they turned eventually they turned the mind.

Yeah, eventually they turned it into a mining museum. So basically.

Dave! (21:53.526) That was what they wanted to do to it, but they didn't because they already had a mining museum that was like, I don't know, 20 miles away or something. So they just like had an empty mine. And what they do with mines when they stop working is they either seal them off or they fill them in with concrete. And so it's like, you've got this resource. You're either going to just jump a bunch of fucking concrete into it or wall it off. So I don't know. But it just seems weird to me that they were like, we're going to, you know, because the.

Bryan! (22:08.895) Yeah.

Dave! (22:20.254) The town itself plays a big role in this. You do see a lot of it. It's kind of like, what are you promoting?

Bryan! (22:25.567) Yeah, yeah. You know what it is? I get the feeling that this was a desperate post-industrial town where the because the mine closes. Yeah, it really is. The mine closes in 1975, which means there's no work there. There's no reason to really be there. It's very remote. It's very run down. It's a coal mine. So everything is like black and gray and brown. Like there's just there's nothing there.

Dave! (22:33.514) Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's a straight up Bruce Springsteen song.

Dave! (22:51.61) say though, that is a huge, this is a one of the things I think is really great about this movie is that it's one of very few slashers, I think maybe slashers in general, but of this era, that is very class conscious, in that the fact that these are blue collar people and sort of working class people is built into the story. It's a big part of the story. And you don't see that in other stuff.

Bryan! (23:14.047) Oh yeah, cuz there's a whole thing. Fuck no. No.

Dave! (23:18.27) Like, I think if you if you see class in other movies, it's either well, it either gets ignored, which is sort of a statement itself, or it's kind of used like a working class backgrounds and working class identities are sort of used like, almost to justify a killer's rampage or something like that, like think Texas Chainsaw, where like that rural thing and that the idea that like,

Bryan! (23:36.883) Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a very, that's a very similar setup where it's like, well, the slaughterhouse closed and like, what the fuck were we, you know,

Dave! (23:43.934) Right. And so this is one that is it uses it in a way that is sort of like these are it's not hopeless, but it is a very sort of bleak future for everyone. Because if you live in this town, you work in the mine, the mine is the only industry.

Bryan! (23:59.347) right? And especially like the real mine that this was that this you know this town occupied was a was this was a company town. So,

Dave! (24:07.554) And that's evident. And when you see the building. So for people who do not know a company, Town is essentially a long time ago. Companies would basically buy up a fuckload of land, build housing and general stores and everything for the employees. And it's real slimy. It's really sleazy. And it was the whole thing was designed to exploit your labor. But you can see it when they walk around town, there's all these little houses and it's like this was all part of the mine. Even if you were shopping downtown.

Bryan! (24:35.067) Yeah.

Dave! (24:37.122) You were shopping at a company store.

Bryan! (24:39.063) Yeah, yeah, yeah. The company store was, it was basically, it was everything that you needed, and it was right there because going elsewhere was basically impossible. I mean, it wasn't impossible, but it was a humongous tax or an restraint on your... Yeah, so like if you want to see like...

Dave! (24:50.378) And that was on purpose. And a lot of what they would do too, is they would sometimes, in certain cases, they would give their employees either a portion of their pay or sometimes all of their pay in like credits for you to go use at the company store. And so it's like, that is the shittiest thing I've ever heard.

Bryan! (25:09.279) Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to, if you want to like know more about this and sort of see what the kind of the end result of this is do yourself a solid and search the Battle of Blair Mountain. It's a real sad story about American labor but it'll give you an idea of.

Dave! (25:26.399) or Levittown.

Dave! (25:36.53) It's fine. Everything's fine. You can't live there, but it's fine.

Bryan! (25:38.439) It's just it's just the ground's on fire. Yeah, so. So yeah, back to back to what I was saying. So so this movie. Produced on a budget of over two million, movie ends with an obvious opening for a sequel that never comes, having to do with the movie's week return at the box office.

Dave! (25:57.918) Well, so that's I think that's probably the real reason. So Mahalka says that a lot of it is due to sort of the hubbub with the MPAA, which I mean, they're both can be true.

Bryan! (26:08.199) his I guarantee his experience and Paramount's exterior experience by extension with the MPAA in this instance was probably enough to make them be like I don't know if we want to do a slasher movie again because

Dave! (26:21.502) And that's probably the other thing worth noting up at the top, is that if this movie is memorable for anything, it is probably that... I don't want to say controversy, because it's not a controversy, but this movie was extremely gory when it came out, and it is still extremely gory. There are scenes that are pretty gnarly in this. Also originally, CinePix is who put this out. CinePix is now Lionsgate.

Bryan! (26:32.332) not really, but it is note. It's notable. Yeah.

Dave! (26:48.194) But they originally they were like sort of the bigger Canadian. How were they? They're not a studio. It's like a distributor, I guess. They weren't a production company. There's something in between, I guess.

Bryan! (26:55.611) distributor. Yeah, sort of.

Bryan! (27:01.391) They were like, if you could have a company that was nothing but executive producers, it was people who paid for movies to be made and but didn't produce but didn't like involve themselves in the infrastructure. So if you're like an independent film, film production, you basically you would get the money through them, they would sort of oversee the production, but the actual production and the people involved in the production was kind of up to you and your producers. So yeah.

Dave! (27:24.918) Yeah. I mean, they put out they did all of David Cronenberg's early movies done through them. But so this is, I guess, a good point because we've alluded to or referenced in the past why so many of these movies were made in Canada.

Bryan! (27:38.871) Yeah, actually put a pin in that, because I just want to get through this last note here. Because this was, like we said, distributed by Paramount, which is the same studio that released Friday the 13th. And they placed this movie in as many theaters as Friday the 13th. So they had this model for it, which is somewhere around 1,200 movie theaters. And so where Friday, which was a movie made on a quarter of this movie's budget, returned 10 times the box office of this one. So when this one came out,

and kind of fell flat. They were like, well, shit, this was such a pain in the ass to put together. And the return was so weak. Like, I guess we're kind of done with this for now. But to your note about the about the whole the Canadian sort of film industry, go.

Dave! (28:27.306) Well, so I don't know a lot about it. I know a little bit about it. So there were obviously a shitload of movies that were made in Canada at the time. And a lot of people refer to it as like the tax break era. And that is kind of what it was.

Bryan! (28:39.267) Well, yes, because specifically prior to 1975, the deduction amount varied from year to year but 1974 film investors were allowed to deduct 60% of their investment of a film as taxable income and then in seventy-five and this ends in 1982, they increased that number to 100%. So, you could

you could invest a sum of money into a film produced in Canada and then you could deduct all of that investment from your taxable income. So what would end up happening is you could just back these trashy exploitation movies, deduct your entire investment from your taxes and then get that money back as well as however much the movie made. So like this was a fucking

Dave! (29:33.534) And I mean, that does come with certain conditions too. I mean, you had to get to use like, I think 60%, 70% of your cast and crew had to be Canadian. You know, had obviously had to be filmed again.

Bryan! (29:37.781) It had to be.

Bryan! (29:42.647) Yeah, yeah, which is which is pretty, which is pretty standard. That's that's how it works in Italy also at the same time.

Dave! (29:48.406) Yeah. And so it gets a little bit more complicated, though, because the Canadian Film Board essentially, I can't remember their full title, Canadian Film Development Corporation, Canadian Film Development Corporation is what they were called. And they were just dumping money into promoting this type of thing. And what's interesting about all of this is that the and I'm sure there was a lot of corruption involved. You know, anytime there's lots of money changing hands, there's going to be corruption. But

Bryan! (29:58.795) I believe it was the CFB.

Dave! (30:17.174) What I think is really interesting is that people got pissy about it because, of course, they're making lots of low budget movies, exploitation and horror movies. And so there was a lot of like, do you want your tax dollars going to this type? You know, a lot of moralizing. And what I really like is there was a quote and I should have written the fucking quote down but it's basically it's from the guy who took over in right around the time this tax thing went into effect. And he was basically like, hey, everybody, fuck you.

Bryan! (30:30.748) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave! (30:45.31) We just want people to make Canadian movies. I don't care if they're making horror. They can make whatever they want. I want them to make movies in Canada. What Canadian filmmakers to make movies in Canada, because what they were really shooting for, and they kind of had been shooting for this for a long time, was to make the big crossover hit, the big Canadian movie that did well in American markets. And that was what Black Christmas was supposed to be. And it kind of wasn't, and neither was this. But I do think there's something...

Bryan! (31:07.769) Yeah.

Bryan! (31:11.787) really any of them really.

Dave! (31:13.314) There's something to be said for someone who's just like, it's not for me to say whether what they're making is good or not. I don't care. They're not making it for me. They're making movies and that. And I think there is still an element of that exists in Canada today because they do still have not this, not this type of thing, but they do still have laws in that support the arts in Canada. So they have like in development.

Bryan! (31:34.083) Sure, you can apply very easily for a grant from the government to make a movie, and they'll give you a significant amount of money to make the movies.

Dave! (31:40.83) Yeah, Ireland does the same thing. And but like they also do shit like with property developments and new construction. They have like I think they refer to it as like a one percent thing where like if it's a over a certain size or over a certain budget, one percent of that has to go into funding the arts as well. So it's like there is as much as I'm sure there was a lot of corruption in all of this. There is a part of it that I think is genuine.

and really, really admirable that it's like, we just want to inspire new because this is around the same time as like, new Hollywood, like that whole, you know, getting all these people coming out of coming back war. I think there's just a lot there's really something to be said for that I you know, as much as it's like, no, they're cranking out really schlocky shit. Sure, I don't give a fuck what they're cranking out though. Like, that's not the point. The point is, they're promoting Canadian film. The US has never done anything like that. They didn't have to but

Bryan! (32:13.012) Oh yeah.

Bryan! (32:29.603) Yeah, yeah. And it's oh yeah, no, that's antithetical to our sort of economic philosophy here. But it's thing is it didn't end after the tax break sort of changed because they kicked it back to 50% in 82. But there was still yeah, there's still a thriving

Dave! (32:48.074) Yeah. Which is more reasonable.

Bryan! (32:54.211) Canadian film industry like well into the 90s, you know, I mean, it's still today but like not quite on the scale that it was but like.

Dave! (33:00.534) I think it's a little bit different. Like you get a lot of hallmark and stuff like that. A lot of television.

Bryan! (33:03.767) Sure, yeah, but also to that point about people being kind of pissy, there was some bitterness because American film producers could go there and sort of take advantage of this situation as long as they crewed their movies with Canadian crew and like actors and shit. Correct. So like.

Dave! (33:21.482) And this is at a time too when you didn't need a passport to go back and forth. So if you're in Los Angeles, you can pretty easily just, you know, just sort of shoot people up to Vancouver and you're there.

Bryan! (33:31.115) Yeah, yeah. And then the thing was like Hollywood itself didn't really necessarily need to take care. They had their own infrastructure. They had their own sort of like financial loop. It was mostly the Andes. And so at this time, well, like when this movie comes out, like there was a shitload of slasher movies being produced, primarily in New York and New Jersey, which all of a sudden, that's just a real quick trip north where all of a sudden, like you've got investors lining up to just throw money at your production. So yeah.

Dave! (34:00.254) Especially once you start to see things like prom night that are that are pretty profitable because prom night is shot in Hamilton, Canada Um, and so I think once people started to see that they were like, oh we can get our fucking money back And get whatever profits come out of this if and if none come out of it, who cares? We got our money back But I think something interesting is related to that and sort of tied to that You know moral panic about horror movies is i'm gonna hit you with a review

from one Mr. Gene Siskel. This is from his, my Bloody Fountain interview. It says, a great many films have been made in Canada, but a lot of schlock thrillers have also been made there. And I wonder if the citizens of Canada know that their tax money is in effect paying for such dismal and depressing horror films. Now, before you react, before you react, I'm gonna say something because I-

Bryan! (34:28.191) Oh, good. Oh, great.

Bryan! (34:47.993) Oh, fuck you.

Dave! (34:52.494) I hear a lot of people being like, well, you know, Gene Sisco and Roger Ebert, you know, they were really good writers, really good critics. I don't think they were actually. I think if you're going to say shit like this, you're not being objective at all. And the whole fucking point of being a critic is to try some objectivity. I think what around this time, because they are obviously the big fucking opponents of horror. I really think that they had positioned themselves as sort of cultural gatekeepers when it came to film.

Bryan! (35:21.081) Yeah.

Dave! (35:21.214) And they really, really leveraged this position and this sort of anti-horror, a moral outrage bullshit in order to strengthen their position as gatekeepers. So there's something so fucking disingenuous to this. Now, I'm reacting this way because I am a big fan of horror. But also, I just find this shit really, really objectionable to just be like, how dare that? It's like you didn't even fucking watch the movie. Why don't you shut up?

Bryan! (35:46.871) Yeah, there are numerous movies that I've seen Roger Ebert write up where he's like, I left this movie halfway through. And it's like, well, how the fuck can you write a review of it, man? It's like, I mean, I get it. Like, the thing is, they're not the only people like reviewing movies and reviewing horror movies poorly. Like Leonard Bolton was kind of bitter about this sort of shit. There's like other guys.

Dave! (36:08.802) Yeah, but I have a lot more respect for Leonard Moulton than I do for these fucking guys.

Bryan! (36:12.511) Yeah, but like, I mean, even like Vincent Canby would review these horror movies every now and then.

Dave! (36:16.874) can be, but Vincent can be. And who's the one from New York Times, the woman?

Bryan! (36:22.433) I, Pauline, Pauli Kale.

Dave! (36:24.734) Yeah, Paul and Cale. Same thing. Vincent Canby, Paul and Cale. They were of an older generation. And so and I do sympathize with a lot of people, particularly these kinds of people, where it's like, well, this is not the horror that you really grew up with. So to you, this probably is really offensive. Whereas for us, this is exactly the horror we grew up with. But I can watch shit today and be like, you know what? This movie sucks. But I think it sucks because this movie is not made for me.

Bryan! (36:29.56) Yeah.

Bryan! (36:50.808) Yeah.

Dave! (36:50.886) So I can watch something like, you know, what's some of the shit we watched recently? Yeah.

Bryan! (36:54.043) Yeah, that was like when we did that roundup for the 2023 movies. There was a bunch of them that we just didn't like, but like we very, very freely admitted that it was like this movie was not made with us in mind. So.

Dave! (37:03.606) Right, and whereas I can look at something like that and say, there is craftsmanship here. I may not like the story or it might not resonate with me, but I can see what they're going for. And I'm sure for people that age or whoever the audience is, they probably really like it. The problem is these are white men in their 30s in 1980 or whatever. So they think everything is for them. And when something doesn't resonate with them, it must be because it's fucking terrible. Fuck off. That is such a bullshit perspective.

Bryan! (37:28.855) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the thing is my like my whole thing with Kambi and Kail is that they reviewed this stuff and they reviewed it poorly but their reviews were really more like a like an eye like an eye roll in writing, you know, it was mostly yeah, but uh

Dave! (37:45.386) Yeah, I mean, they're not quite like it's not like Rex Reed, who's just kind of like a sassy asshole about everything. But I'm derailing us here. But it is to say that this comes at a time this is sort of the end. And this is another thing I think is kind of wild to think about is that we think like, oh, the 80s was all about slashers. It's like, well, no, not quite. From 1978 to 1982 is all about slashers. The rest of the 80s is just about other stuff. So it's just

Bryan! (37:51.371) Yeah. So about.

Bryan! (38:06.051) know the Golden Age of the Slasher movie is like yeah.

Bryan! (38:13.323) And honestly, I think I think saying 78 is giving it a is sort of is being a little generous because it's really 80 to 82 when things kind of go nuts because like Halloween lit the fuse but Friday the 13th was the explosion, right?

Dave! (38:18.582) I mean, that's it's really 80 to 82.

Dave! (38:28.33) Right. And that's just so wild to me to like. So, I mean, yeah, they're getting flooded with all this. And this one is coming at the end. So it's really easy to attack shit like this and be like, great, here's another one. But you know what? Your fucking job is to review movies, which is an extreme privilege. So why don't you sit down, watch the goddamn movie that you're getting paid to talk about and then write objectively, which they clearly could not do because they found nothing redeeming about any of these movies.

Bryan! (38:50.319) Oh, I know, right.

Dave! (38:57.958) And it's because they didn't want to, which is so fucking childish. It's like, I can't believe you have been given this job when you seem incapable of doing it.

Bryan! (39:02.571) Oh yeah, most of the time. I know for real, like if I could do this for a living, could you fucking imagine? Oh my.

Dave! (39:11.21) And I mean, like, I get it. I have a job that people would be like, oh, man, that must be the greatest job in the world. It's like, yeah, it's still a fucking job, though. Like, it's still like it sounds great. But like, you know, if you can't sit down and be like, well, this is not going to be for me. But I'm going to see what they're doing, because the whole thing about reviews. And this is why I don't say that we do reviews. And I'm not a critic. It's because these criticism, cultural criticism is a thing. It is an actual thing that people are good at and trained to do. And one of the things you do is you're supposed to look at it and say,

Bryan! (39:18.012) Yeah.

Dave! (39:40.182) What is this person trying to do with this movie? And are they doing it? That's really the, that's the sort of the core of cultural criticism. That's where you start from. Not just like, oh great, another slasher movie. Well, sorry, pick a different fucking movie then I guess. I don't know. Anyway, I've derailed this, but I find a lot of this really distasteful.

Bryan! (39:55.857) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bryan! (40:03.191) Yeah, yeah. So let's keep that outrage going. Let's give it a little momentum because I want to talk about the censorship of this movie a little bit too. So usually when a movie goes to the MPAA for certification, there's a process of bargaining that goes back and forth between the studio and the association and seconds get shaved off the movie here and there when they when the when the MPAA sends back and sort of check. No, no, no.

Dave! (40:09.212) Oh, right.

Dave! (40:23.874) So not 10 minutes, not whole scenes.

Bryan! (40:27.343) know what they'll do is they'll be like you gotta lose eight you know eight frames here ten frames here in case you are unfamiliar with uh with frame rate film twenty-four frames equal one second and so when they say like you need to lose like ten frames here they're chopping half a second of the thing off.

Dave! (40:45.962) And it's usually like, you know, a side boob here, a thrust there.

Bryan! (40:48.791) Yeah. Little, little things like, oh, we can't see, uh, that much blood, which is why like Evil Dead goes and, and gives you a little bit of red blood, but then it turns like black and green and shit like that.

Dave! (41:01.102) But a lot of this shit is also really arbitrary and it's guided by weird shit. I mean, there's a documentary about this that came out, I don't know, 15 years ago or so. It's called Rated X. Something like that. Yeah, that's what it was. But yeah, a lot of this shit is like it's essentially tied to public morality because what the MPAA comes out of is it's a compromise in order to get rid of the Hays Code. And so it's basically like, okay, but you have to police yourselves then.

Bryan! (41:09.303) Yeah. Uh, or not, this film is not yet rated? Is that the one? Yeah.

Bryan! (41:26.884) Yeah.

Bryan! (41:30.999) Yeah, and so even though it is.

Dave! (41:31.418) And even that it's tied to public morality. So it's like, you can see full frontal nudity for women, but not men. Why? Well, because that's just fucking gay. Because who do you think is making these choices?

Bryan! (41:39.443) Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Because yeah, the thing is, is they often are they often are arbitrary. They are usually left up to sort of subjective reactions to scenes. But the compromise

is like you can do this but you can do it for like this many seconds you know and it's like trim a little here trim a little there a movie loses one or two minutes like if you've ever gotten a dvd or blu-ray or whatever and you're watching the deleted scenes and you realize like this deleted scene lasts like four seconds or something like that so that so a notorious

Dave! (42:19.062) And I mean, like I was serious when I said, you know, a thrust here or there, because some of it really comes down to, well, you can see him, you know, thrust his hips three times, but not four.

Bryan! (42:29.751) Yeah, yeah, we talk about that in the Hellraiser episode a bit, where they were, that was very much an objection.

Dave! (42:35.07) And that actually is a big issue in this movie as well.

Bryan! (42:37.995) Yeah, so there's like there, like let's take it a notorious bloodbath. For example, RoboCop. RoboCop had fucking love it. RoboCop had three minutes cut from that movie in order to get an R rating. My Bloody Valentine lost nine minutes. Nine minutes.

Dave! (42:46.038) hell of a movie.

Dave! (42:56.643) minutes and in whole scenes like a whole scene was had to be cut and reshot.

Bryan! (43:01.283) Yeah, so yeah, the original, the original theatrical cut of this movie is very, very tame because of this. And I think that until the 90s, when I kind of caught up with a very particular bootleg of the movie, I really did not care for this movie. I thought it was, it was mostly just bland, you know.

Dave! (43:22.402) Because this movie is, and we will get into it, this is a melodrama in a lot of ways. This is sort of a kitchen sink melodrama in certain ways because it is a relationship-based film, which is, I think, one of the reasons it really sets it apart. It just happens to be a relationship film that is intercut with some fucking gnarly gore.

Bryan! (43:27.637) Yeah.

Bryan! (43:42.243) Yeah, so the uncut version of the movie remained unseen until 2008 or 2009. It's whenever the remake came out.

Dave! (43:49.214) It's 2008. Did you so did you have the original? So when the remake come out, have you ever seen the remake? I've seen I've put it on. I've never made it through. It's supposedly decent, but I've just never gotten to it. Has Tom Atkins in it?

Bryan! (43:53.924) No, no.

It's, yeah, with Jensen Ackles. I was also in it.

Dave! (44:03.934) The guy from Supernatural, but Tom Atkins is the sheriff, I think. So whenever they whenever that came out, Lionsgate put out the original or the first DVD release, and I had that one and that one. They did. They cut the scenes. I'm pretty sure they cut them back into the movie. So certain scenes got cut back in the movie. They didn't do much, though, to clean it up.

Bryan! (44:07.935) Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

Bryan! (44:29.12) No, and you can-

Dave! (44:29.13) So it's like that, it's that situation where you're like, oh, this looks like it was pulled from VHS and just dropped back into the movie. And so it kind of looks like shit.

Bryan! (44:34.763) Yeah, because you can see it in the 4K. Yeah, in the 4K, like there are certain scenes where like the color timing is way different than like the surrounding footage.

Dave! (44:41.65) And that's because they're pulling it from whatever. It's not an inter positive and it's definitely not camera negative. So some of these are like, you know, a work print they found kicking around.

Bryan! (44:51.175) I would I would bet that okay. So so somewhere in the mid nineties is when I'm when I'm trading videos pretty heavily. I got a tape through video Wasteland which was like a mail order rental company. It was basically Netflix for horror movies, but like way before there was ever a Netflix.

and they advertised that they just got it. It was very exciting and it was a bootleg of the movie that was sourced from a factory pre-record, which is one of the just the tapes that's intended for rental. So it's a first generation tape. But somebody took a Japanese laser disc, which was the movie that we know today and most of.

Dave! (45:36.306) Most of.

Bryan! (45:38.604) and spliced those scenes that have been cut from the theatrical cut here back into it. And so...

Dave! (45:45.986) Which must have looked like shit.

Bryan! (45:47.923) It was, it was very jarring because also I think that

Dave! (45:51.074) Because you can't cut a VHS like that.

Bryan! (45:54.135) No, no, no. It was it was janky as hell. And also you could tell that like the source footage of all of the sort of excised violence probably came from like a second or third generation tape because it was a little blurry and shit, you know, and shit. But like it was the first time anybody had really ever seen it. And I think I can't remember who was who released it was either Video Search of Miami or it was Ravik Film Prodigies. But yeah.

Dave! (46:15.514) Oh, we're here searching Miami.

Bryan! (46:19.495) I know I was I was thinking about them today. I've looks like they have been they've been scrubbed from the Internet completely. Like I do. I'd like to see if I could find information about them.

Dave! (46:28.362) They had they had a lot for this was a long time ago. I was writing a lot about like in not pornography, but like gay indie movies that were very sort of on the edge there kind of pornographic. And I found a lot of stuff through them because they would just have this weird catalog that they must have been it must have like the Wikipedia of fucking VHS and

Bryan! (46:50.635) It was a massive catalog and it was my it was it was so great because I ordered them because the thing was is you had to you had to first you had to request a catalog and it came and it was like a really thick book and all of their movie listings were like little tiny like small fine print lettering because yeah it was it was.

Dave! (47:09.75) It's like a fucking serious Christmas toy catalog. Yeah, but for weirdos and perverts.

Bryan! (47:14.879) Yeah, it was gigantic. It was all trashy, you know, charming garbage. This a lot of stuff that ended up on Mystery Science Theater. But like I in order to order from them, you. Yeah, or something weird. But in order to order from them, you first had to at least when I when I bought tapes from them, you first had to pay them a like a membership fee. And I think it was a way that they kind of up until the change the laws. It was a way that they sort of.

Dave! (47:21.875) Or something weird.

Bryan! (47:38.631) excluded themselves from being like a like essentially selling bootleg tapes to being a like a

Dave! (47:44.49) Well, that and they don't want to get fucking dragged into court for being accused for like selling snuff movies, which was a very real fear at the time.

Bryan! (47:52.043) Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, I think it made him a film club or something like that. And then I had I ordered stuff like they had that five hour work print of this is spinal tap that I that I got. And I think that was the sort of thing that eventually gets them in trouble because you cannot find them anywhere. There's there's photos of the of the catalogs, which are which are a lot of fun. You can find them online. But yeah, I wish I wish I could talk to people who were actually behind that because a very fascinating organization. But yeah, that's

Dave! (47:55.788) Nice.

Dave! (48:19.722) So so the 2008 one, that's the Lionsgate one that they put out. And it's a bunch of the shit that's on the newer blu rays. The bonus features comes from that era. And then I think it's 2018 is my guess around when Shout Factory puts it out. And Shout Factory, despite what they've sort of become, I have a lot of criticisms, but.

Bryan! (48:31.097) Yeah.

Dave! (48:42.934) They did put a lot of effort into really restore, like lovingly restoring this movie because the stuff that they cut back in, the gore they cut back in, is actually, it looks pretty good. There are moments where you're like, that whatever source material you have is a little bit rough, but I think they do a really good job with it. And so you get five more minutes of it, but it is some really, really hard stuff. But the effects in this movie are so good, like really underappreciated.

Bryan! (49:00.057) Yeah.

Bryan! (49:06.247) some of it's really, really hardcore. They're wicked good. I've got, yeah, and I got some notes about the outfit that did it. But back to the MPAA thing. Jack Valenti, who was the president of the MPAA, humongous dick, was so offended by this one that he sent a letter back to Paramount that said, "'Tell those Canadians to take their movie and go home.'" Yeah.

Dave! (49:19.718) And a giant asshole.

Dave! (49:32.179) Wow. Hey, hey, Jack, you and Jean Sestel, Sestel can eat a whole bag of dicks. Because again, this is more of that. This is more of that gatekeeping of like, we get to decide what culture is. We get to decide what art is. And it's like, fuck all of you.

Bryan! (49:37.347) whole bag of dicks. You know, I I'll bring I'll bring along something for everybody.

Bryan! (49:47.155) Oh, sure. I am sure that once like when you put a group of people like that in front of you know, theatrical distribution because like it really was kind of a kiss of death to get an X rating or to opt not to have your movies rated because then you couldn't really advertise them. Newspapers wouldn't publish that stuff but yeah.

Dave! (50:07.03) Well, and studios or theaters wouldn't pick them up. Theaters would not run with movies that were either X rated or R rated because it just wasn't they couldn't market it. They couldn't they couldn't book it. So they wouldn't do it.

Bryan! (50:17.487) Yep. God damn. I was in the city, but yeah.

Dave! (50:21.286) Even then, though, like it was such a big and because the way that the studios for a long time owned theater chains. So that's why a lot of that shit worked. And then even then, like they still had tons of influence because they'd be like, well, we'll you know, we'll give you a break on this one if you take this one. But no one's going to be like, I guess, but it's X rated. So who's going to come see it? Unless it's the 70s for a little while and people are all rushing to the theater to see Deep Throat for some reason.

Bryan! (50:27.332) Yeah.

Bryan! (50:46.689) like, yeah, everybody was like, to porno movies on date night

Dave! (50:50.966) They were telling the story about when the time I was working, it was four of us working in the bakery. And we were talking about, I think we're talking about porn, like when it had come out in the theater. And mom was like, and mom was like, Oh, yeah, we went to see that when it was in the theater. And I was like, what gasp I said.

Bryan! (51:01.505) Behind the green door.

Shut up. I have never heard this story.

Dave! (51:12.754) Yep. And I was like, well, you know what? That sounds like a story I don't want to hear. So so I'm going to put on prints and we're just going to get back to work.

Bryan! (51:17.525) Hahaha!

Bryan! (51:22.491) going to put my fingers in my ears here. That's a nightmare. Uh yeah. So uh let's see. George Mihalka credits Black Christmas as being a major influence on him when he made this movie which is nice to hear. Yeah, you can see it. Uh this was also

Dave! (51:27.284) Yeah, it was a really weird moment.

Dave! (51:36.682) I think you can see it. Because this also, we should also say too, that this is a movie. One of the things they were trying to do with this is historically, there has been a perception of horror that it is a genre for young white men, and that is who it's been marketed to. That is actually not true. It is not a genre for young white men. And it has also not historically been marketed to them. This is one of the

Bryan! (52:02.307) That's true. If our demographics are anything to hold that up to, that is definitely not true.

Dave! (52:08.734) And I mean, I think that's a that's a perception that goes across the board. That's why people are like queer or what? And that is a very new concept. But, you know, that speaks to the reality that like we were always here. You just didn't give a shit.

Bryan! (52:14.123) Yeah. Oh, sure. And there's definitely like

Bryan! (52:21.139) Yeah, yeah. That's like the same thing kind of is weird that everything kind of gets all the all the mainstream stuff kind of gets thrown at the bros but like

Dave! (52:29.034) Well, and but that's it goes back to that Jane Siskill thing of like, oh, you just thought that everything was for you and you're shocked to find out that it's not. And so this is one of those movies where they were really trying to sort of lure or appeal to, I shouldn't say lure, but appeal to. Yeah. They're trying to appeal to younger women. And that is why you get a lot. When we get to the plot.

Bryan! (52:36.578) Yeah.

Bryan! (52:45.851) trying to groom children.

Dave! (52:56.394) we talk about it, but that's why you get this sort of real heavy romantic storyline in this movie, because they are trying to appeal to, you know, younger women who want to bring date, you know, go to dates to see the movie. So this is one of the stronger examples of that.

Bryan! (53:01.731) Yeah.

Bryan! (53:08.223) Also, I would say that yeah, I would say that in the to like speaking to that also like Sarah is a pretty she's not really there's not really a final girl in this movie but as a kind of woman of action, she's definitely one of the stronger ones.

Dave! (53:24.17) And that it's complicated because there are moments where she is. And then there are other moments where it's like because the gender politics and the sexual politics of this movie are one of the things that unfortunately do not age very well. And yet at times they kind of do it a very interesting way. So I think that's another thing to really point out. That's one of the things I think that makes this stand above the others in that they really do go out of their way, not just to build out the characters and the environment.

but to sort of build out personalities and to make them feel real.

Bryan! (53:58.619) Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. But getting back to your comments there about the sort of class consciousness of this movie, Mihalka also intended this movie to be the deer hunter of horror films. Yeah.

Dave! (54:09.83) Okay. Did he see Deer Hunter? Does he know what that's about?

Bryan! (54:15.472) I don't I don't know but like it's got it's got the same kind of vibe, you know.

Dave! (54:19.734) Well, I guess I can sort of see it because there is a hopelessness to this movie in terms of what people have ahead of them.

Bryan! (54:27.659) It's also, but it's also like, it's also, but it's also, it's a real hard portrait of kind of like blue collar, like a day in the life of like young blue collar people.

Dave! (54:37.23) Well, that's what I mean is like there's a there's an idea like, you know, Dear Hunter, a lot of the themes of that are like, again, that first Springsteen thing of like, you came back from the war, and there's nothing here for you. And yet this is going to be the rest of your life. There's a very similar vibe to this movie in that like you work here, this is your life, whether you like it or not. So make the best of it.

Bryan! (54:54.82) Right.

Bryan! (54:59.895) Yeah, because

Dave! (55:24.814) Those interviews were so fucking weird. Because it's like, first of all, why is the person doing the interviewing not on the actual recording? And then, but they ask them the same questions too.

Bryan! (55:33.432) Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe they had a weird voice or something like that. They were like, oh, we can't we can't have this person speaking on the audio track. It was like a 15 year old or something like that. Bobcat Goldpoint in the 80s. That would make. That would that would make sense since we're in Canada.

Dave! (55:42.382) I think that's it.

It's Grover. From...

Dave! (55:52.254) Or that kid from You Can't Without a Television who just used a man of a thousand voices except they all sound like Bobcat Goldthwait.

fucking greatest bit ever

Bryan! (56:05.759) Yeah, so like we said remade in 2009 apparently was made remade in 3d

Dave! (56:12.038) Yeah, because this is during the so it's not just during the big remake and do is the as in which like I honestly think that's the worst era of horror ever. It's also

Bryan! (56:15.408) The remake craze.

Bryan! (56:19.675) Yeah, yeah, I really feel I really feel for people who like that's their that's the era of horror that they're nostalgic for is like, when not only did we have nothing but remakes of much better movies, it also everything had to be in fucking 3d

Dave! (56:33.01) Yeah, I think I have previously referred to that as if an era of horror could be a piece of clothing, it would be a fedora.

Bryan! (56:43.615) It would be low rise jeans with fringe.

Dave! (56:45.674) Yeah, it would be a soul patch is what that would be.

Bryan! (56:50.999) be a lit a lit t-shirt. Yeah, so shall we shall we get into it?

Dave! (56:51.383) Jesus Christ. Ugh.

Dave! (56:57.202) I mean, it's been seven hours. It may as well.

Bryan! (57:02.121) So we open on two people in mining gear, right down to the masks and breathing apparatus. Upon reaching a suitably secluded spot, one of them undresses, revealing that she's a sexy lady with a heart tattoo over her actual heart under all that mining equipment.

Dave! (57:07.35) Yeah, we open up the most canted of angles.

Dave! (57:20.002) This, I think this scene is weird because it, this is the only scene in this movie that feels like an afterthought. And it feels like someone, maybe someone in Paramount, or I mean, could have been anyone, but it has that feeling of like, no, you have to make it sexy though. Like, like, if you're seen Friday the 13th, put that in there. Because this is unconnected to anything. It doesn't feel like it fits at all.

Bryan! (57:38.155) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because well, no, it is. This is the precursor to the to the very first heart that appears. But but

Dave! (57:45.327) I guess.

I guess so, but like you could have just you could have done that another way. This this feels like they jammed it in at the end because it has an exploitive sort of over sexed quality to it that does not exist throughout the rest of the movie.

Bryan! (58:00.943) Yeah, yeah, because this movie is remarkably not sexy.

Dave! (58:06.494) It's, no, not really. Even in the scenes that are supposed to be, they are not.

Bryan! (58:10.579) Yeah, but yeah, so the sexy lady there she suggestively strokes the breathing hose of her companion, who then pushes her onto the spike of a nearby pickaxe. Sexy lady screams we cut to the title card.

Dave! (58:23.954) And you also, you see the, whatever spike is, you see it rip through her chest.

Bryan! (58:28.907) Yes, it's a it's that's a cool fucking effect because it's not like, it's not like it's not the sort of thing where you're like, it looks like they built a fake body or something like that. Like it weird. It's weird. It looks like as though it is piercing her chest. It's pretty cool. So then we cut to Thursday, the 12th. Get it? You get everybody? Yeah, the boys are. Yeah, so the boys are done with their shift at the mine and they're

Dave! (58:32.594) All of the effects in this movie are so cool.

Dave! (58:50.631) You get it everybody? Nudge, nudge.

Dave! (58:57.93) Listen, being a miner looks fucking terrible.

Bryan! (59:01.427) unbelievably terrifying. I because like later on we're going to actually see them working in the mine and they're all like fucking hunched over and shit because

Dave! (59:09.47) I mean, this is a it is a as in. In terms of environmental storytelling, it's cool as shit. It's really fucking awesome. It is a unique environment for horror. It's a unique environment pretty much for anything. And it's really awesome. But goddamn, does this look like a hard, hard life?

Bryan! (59:26.963) Yeah, yeah. So yeah, they're all there. They're done with their shift. They're coming back up to the surface all dressed in their mining gear.

Dave! (59:32.242) And if you're not sure where this takes place, just wait until someone opens their mouth.

Bryan! (59:37.623) They head off to the showers to clean up and it's just dozens of naked dudes playing.

Dave! (59:41.053) Yeah. Yeah, it is lots of that's a real sexy horse play is what this is. Snapping towels and talking about each other's dicks.

Bryan! (59:43.907) dude play, play and grab ass with each other.

Bryan! (59:49.803) Yeah, apparently so the entire scene because you know, it's a movie in the 80s is shot from like the waist up, but apparently everybody was fucking nude.

Dave! (59:57.954) Gotta get that authenticity. It's also like 30 degree water and they're just pumping smoke in to make it look like steam.

Bryan! (01:00:04.555) Oh, good God, man. Could they not afford hot water?

Dave! (01:00:09.518) I mean, you know, we grew up on the seacoast. That's essentially what this is. This is Cape Breton, you know, in September and in a mine that is now defunct and ready to close down.

Bryan! (01:00:20.599) And it's got to be cold. It's got to be cold as fuck underground too, because there's parts a little later on when they're running around underground where I'm like. Which is a long way.

Dave! (01:00:27.498) Yeah, they're what? They're like 2000 feet underground. Takes 15 minutes to get down to they. What do they call it? The something like the drill, mass drill head or something.

Bryan! (01:00:39.159) Oh, I can't. Yeah, I can't remember what they call it, but. Yeah, but yeah, so it's going to it's going to be a hot time on Saturday night.

Dave! (01:00:45.898) Hot, hot time on Saturday night just talking about dicks.

Bryan! (01:00:49.635) Just a whole bunch of dudes just excited for Valentine's Day, eh?

Dave! (01:00:53.715) Oh man.

So good.

Bryan! (01:00:57.314) Yeah. So, we learned two things. A dude named TJ has been away for a while, doing God knows what, but he's back now. Yeah, and his old sweetheart Sarah is dating a dude named Axel.

Dave! (01:01:04.104) And he seems like a real asshole.

Dave! (01:01:10.434) Now who also seems like a real asshole?

Bryan! (01:01:13.443) Both of them just jerks. Terrible. She's got a type. Let's just say she's got a type. The also the doing part of the, you know, the research process. I always go to see what the trivia on the IMDB page for any given movie is. This this page has something like 50 facts about like trivia facts about it. And like 35 of them are like mining facts. Like just learn about this particular mine.

Dave! (01:01:15.55) Sarah has terrible taste in men.

Dave! (01:01:38.174) Okay, I like to learn stuff about stuff.

Bryan! (01:01:42.842) Uh...

Dave! (01:01:43.447) I know all kinds of weird shit because of movies.

Bryan! (01:01:45.531) I've just I learned a lot about mining in this movie. So everybody is now cleaned up the hall ass back into town for brewskis.

Dave! (01:01:53.854) Now, we should say, and I don't know who it is. I have an idea of who it is. So in this scene, I'm pretty sure they shot this particular part. This is sort of shot towards the end of production. So when they're all pulling out, these are stunt drivers who are driving as they pull out of the mine for, you know, union reasons, I guess. But one of them, I think it's the guy who plays TJ, was like, no, I'm totally cool. I can drive, I can do this part.

and you know drives out along with them and I think he hits somebody. Yeah they don't say who it like George Mahalka makes a lot of references to it. I've read an interview pretty lengthy interview with him and he references it but he won't say who it is but he was just like

Bryan! (01:02:28.072) Oh, Jesus Christ.

Bryan! (01:02:39.467) was it was it the banjo player?

Dave! (01:02:42.842) No, no, no. It's a, I think, wait, did he hit the banjo player? Because there's some real folksy music going on here.

Bryan! (01:02:48.315) This is a real, this is a real banjo. This is all hat, this all takes place to a real rollicking banjo jam.

Dave! (01:02:52.286) Yeah, I'm the fucking soundtrack to this is awesome. Begin it and wax work put it out if you got a record player get this soundtrack because it rules.

Bryan! (01:02:55.615) It is really great. Yeah, but

Bryan! (01:03:01.559) And so we learned that this movie takes place in Valentine Bluff, the little town with a big heart. So this movie was shot around the Sydney mines in Nova Scotia due to its dreary industrial look.

Dave! (01:03:05.775) The big little town with a big heart.

Dave! (01:03:13.59) No, no, no. The town is called Sydney Mines. Yeah.

Bryan! (01:03:16.939) Yeah, that's what I said. It's called Sydney Mines. And so this was an actual mining town, as we said. I'm going to skip all this because we fucking talked about it.

Dave! (01:03:26.25) What I like about this part is, so they all get out of work, and they go downtown to do whatever they do, they go to the bar. What I like about the core group of this, and that was what really resonates, and this I think is tied to the sort of working class aspects of it, is what resonates with me is like, this was essentially me in my life in the 20s, in my 20s, not the 20s.

In that like, you know, me and all my friends worked in retail or restaurants. I mean, if you have had like professional job, I did not. I worked in retail. But like, you know, everybody would get out of work. You'd either go to the bar and get hammered until the bar closed or you go to like, you know, someone's apartment and there would be, you know, people are either getting drunk or getting high or doing whatever. Well, yeah, I mean, a lot of them are shooting whatever. But like it.

Bryan! (01:04:12.691) half a gas

Dave! (01:04:19.09) It felt, it was very familiar to me. Like, oh, this is just life in a small town. Like before I moved to Massachusetts, like that was kind of my life, was like, we all just hung out. We'd work our shit jobs during the day and we all worked near each other. So it kind of had, it's like we didn't work together, but we worked kind of together because it's not a big place. And then we just go out. And I think that's one of the things about this movie, like Black Christmas, where you really feel like these characters are very real to you.

Bryan! (01:04:24.76) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:04:37.147) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (01:04:47.094) This I think resonates because these people do feel very real. They feel like just people, you know, like this was your life. If you lived in a small place.

Bryan! (01:04:56.323) Yeah, yeah. You know what it is? What it is it's a portrait of isolation and like because I also not you know, you're that's a perfectly you know apt description of what this was but I won't say why I was in the situation that I was in but also I there was a thing where there's a small group of us who were not allowed to leave and we had to we had to kind of we seized on the small things in order to sort of

have just have something to do and sort of these moments to be social and so like little things like fucking just getting to watch tv for like a couple hours was a humongous like occasion and so like that's i when i was watching this i was like yeah i kind of recognized that because i've certainly i've certainly been there it's like there's not much to do

Dave! (01:05:43.414) Well, and when you believe in like, you believe that that's your fear. I mean, in terms of what you're referencing is a little different. But just in general, like if this is your life, and you feel like you're never going to get out, like this is like, you try to sort of make the best of it. And that's why like in this movie, because I think if you look at an objective, you're like, why are they all so fucking excited about a Valentine's Day dance? It's like, they're excited about anything. Because what else are you going to do?

Bryan! (01:05:59.981) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (01:06:07.899) There's not much else going on. Yeah.

Dave! (01:06:11.458) Because if you look at it from that perspective, it's like, oh shit, it's either this or I kill myself.

Bryan! (01:06:17.335) Yeah, because I used to have the same thing where I was like, why is everybody so fucking excited about Valentine's Day here? And then I like, eventually I had a little bit of perspective and was like, oh, it's because there's not really anything else to do.

Dave! (01:06:26.538) Yeah, because they work on a goddamn mine. You know, moose head beer on a fucking Saturday night is the best they've got. So you make that to be the greatest thing ever. And that really resonates with me because it's like I fucking hated living in New Hampshire. I lived there because that's where I grew up and I thought, well, I guess this is just kind of the way it's always going to be for me. Make the best of it. Now, the best of it was alcoholism and bad choices. And that's kind of what they're doing.

And so it's like it really it speaks to that idea of like, you know, TJ is a giant failure or feels like a giant failure because he was like, fuck it, I'm out of here. I'm gonna, you know, make something to myself. And he ends up coming back. And so like, that's why they're all so excited about this goddamn dance. At you know, the odd fellows hall or whatever.

Bryan! (01:06:55.395) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:07:12.695) Yeah. The Union Hall. So yeah. You can join the Oddfellows. Yeah, yeah. You can join the Freemasons. We can, you know, join the Elks Lodge.

Dave! (01:07:19.546) The Oddfellows thing, can I join the Oddfellows? I think of myself as an oddfellow.

Dave! (01:07:31.607) I don't know if they have a place for me. But I mean, my note says these people friggin' love Valentine's Day.

Bryan! (01:07:33.851) So

Bryan! (01:07:37.775) They're so into it. Yeah, so all the dudes come pouring into the local town hall, each one of them pulling off a bottle of Moosehead Lager, which might be an even more Canadian beer than Molson.

Dave! (01:07:45.812) Yeah.

Hey, fun fact about Moosehead Lager. It is the only is the last and only brewery in Canada still owned by Canadians. I mean, I think large scale, I'm sure there are tons and tons of craft breweries there.

Bryan! (01:07:57.135) That's awesome.

Bryan! (01:08:01.343) Oh, I'm sure because it's you know, it's the thing but there they find all their sweethearts decorating the hall for the big Valentine's Day dance.

Dave! (01:08:08.844) It's some real 1950s shit too, because each one, there's a lady for every man.

Bryan! (01:08:13.079) Yep, except for TJ who doesn't have a date. And Howard, the movie stand-in for the prerequisite slasher movie Joker.

Dave! (01:08:15.582) and Howard.

Yeah. Yeah, because Howard starts to sexually harass that lady and she's not having it. Yeah, she says suck it in and zip it up. Will you? I don't know why I love that, though. Also, Howard Tatt says love those hookers.

Bryan! (01:08:23.811) Gretchen, none of it. Yeah. Hey, he says, Hey Gretchen, you know, it looked good on you. Me. Yeah.

Dave! (01:08:38.686) Me. Suck it in and zip it up, will ya?

Bryan! (01:08:42.857) So outside Mayor Hanniger is complimenting a lady named Mabel for her decoration committees.

Dave! (01:08:47.454) Now, you might notice that Mayor Hanneger and Mabel are standing outside of OK Ladies Wear. I mean, how are the clothes here? Are they great? No, they're just OK. Just OK Ladies Wear.

Bryan! (01:08:55.714) It's just okay.

they're alright. They're they're okay. It's doing wonders for the town since they haven't had a Valentine's Day dance in 20 years. Why in 20 years? I want. Yeah, it's a mystery for now but there's uh all that other business that they need to play dumb about but suddenly Howard comes stumbling out into the street with a terrible bloody head wound but you know, it's all just a joke.

Dave! (01:09:08.656) I wonder what could have happened.

Dave! (01:09:21.738) Yeah, I mean, this is real. Who's what's that fucking the asshole in Friday, the first Friday the 13th? He's that one. The guy who keeps me on the chips.

Bryan! (01:09:27.499) Yeah. He's that guy. Yeah. I know. Yep. Annoying. He lives way too far into the movie.

Dave! (01:09:34.642) What I will say though is that, you know, these are all very kind of stereotypical, very heteronormative relationships. There is obvious affection between the men and the women in the movie. And that's another thing I think that sets it apart. And again, that is the that attempt to kind of lure, capture, abduct female audiences. It's that idea of like, oh, you know, these are natural relationships. These these people feel.

Bryan! (01:09:47.086) Yeah.

Dave! (01:10:04.394) Like they feel real. They're not just like in Friday the 13th where everything is just a prelude to sex. It's affection, you know for the sake of affection.

Bryan! (01:10:09.224) Yeah, yeah.

Bryan! (01:10:13.131) Oh, yeah, sure. Even the couples that hook up like that, it takes a while for that to happen. It happens really late into the movie. And but leading up to that, even though they're like, mostly unnamed characters, there are still these like character beats and these moments that it's like, OK, these like these people have like a relationship and it feels natural because you see it in action, whereas, you know, like other like sort of less skillfully crafted horror movies, they're just kind of smashed together like fucking Barbie dolls.

Dave! (01:10:42.494) Right. So, I mean, it's not it's not Black Christmas to the point where, like, we get all the information we need to know about these people. But it is a little it's not it's not shallow either. These feel like authentic people. Drinking Moosehead beer.

Bryan! (01:10:53.879) Yeah. So, uh there's some moose headlager all the way through, man. They must have, they must have paid for that. So, so there's some complaining inside about lazy young people. We learned that TJ's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder for mysterious reasons. He's just an angry young man who went out to the west coast to do something.

Dave! (01:11:00.91) Mm hmm. I want to go to Moose. I'm going to go to Moosehead Brewery.

Dave! (01:11:15.534) So Paul, Paul Kalman, who plays TJ in one of the interviews with him, he says that TJ went to university and failed within the first year. And that's why he came back. And now that implies that if he failed in the first year, assuming he goes and most people go to college, that would make these people like 18 or 19. They're not. Yeah.

Bryan! (01:11:36.203) Yeah, and they clearly are not. These are like mid-twenties.

Dave! (01:11:40.318) I mean, you know, Hollis will play a high school student convincingly a year later, but for now, he's 36.

Bryan! (01:11:45.291) Yeah. But he's back and he's also the mayor's son who put him to work in the mine. But you see, yeah, you see he... that's troubling.

Dave! (01:11:53.13) Yeah, the mayor owns the mine. There's a big problem there. I think I know why everything feels so bleak in this town.

Bryan! (01:12:03.4) So, now he's going to leave to go grab another beer, have a good nose pick. So, now, that is a weird, weird thing to say, but yeah. Now, Mabel has to leave too. She has to wash these decorations that got red paint on them from Howard's bloody head gag. Uh and you see, he's real sorry about it. Yeah. Uh also, I did a little, did a little research on that, on that accent. It's called the Canadian Raising.

Dave! (01:12:08.712) Why does he say what a weird thing to say?

Dave! (01:12:22.41) Yeah, oh, I'm real sorry.

Bryan! (01:12:32.003) it has it has to do with the way that you're yeah the way that you it has something to do with the way that you sort of like you shape the word the diphthongs which is like two vowels together uh with your tongue and so that's it so the Canadian raising is why you get a boot and uh you know a boat it's a it's a boat it's a boot a boot yeah well everybody says it's the boot because of South Park

Dave! (01:12:32.15) Oh, it's Celtic. It's Celtic, everybody. If you ever wonder where it comes from, that's where it comes from.

Dave! (01:12:50.026) It's not a boot. Everybody says a boot. It's not a boot. It's a boat. Boat a boat one time. One of one of my favorite moments in my dating history was when Michael would he will send like Siri texts like audio text in a voice to voice text. And the one that I got was something it was like something a boat.

Hilarious. Your Canadian heritage is hilarious.

Bryan! (01:13:20.479) That's awesome. Is he Canadian?

Bryan! (01:13:29.191) So, yeah, the town is obsessed with Valentine's Day. Even the radio station isn't having call letters, QPID. But you see, also, someone left a very special Valentine for the mayor, but nobody knows who. Now, the mayor thinks that it's candy, as one does, but what do you...

Dave! (01:13:37.612) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (01:13:47.158) Now look, I am a middle-aged man who loves candy, and I get why he digs into this thing. Like, it is fucking Christmas. I get it.

Bryan! (01:13:50.584) Hahaha!

Bryan! (01:13:56.667) I'm gonna tell you what, I fucking hate Valentine's Day candy. The mystery chocolate pisses me off.

Dave! (01:14:02.742) Well, he does. He gets mystery chocolate, except it's a human heart. Wouldn't that heart smell bad? I couldn't you notice that is a human heart. This is not a box of chocolate.

Bryan! (01:14:05.319) Yeah, it's not misreach. It's a human heart.

Bryan! (01:14:14.875) probably but also it's super bloody so like like later on there's gonna be a bloody box that's like all the dogs are like nibbling at and ** Yeah. Uh so uh it it has a note attached. It reminds him of what happened 20 years ago as the dance get closer. And so later at the bar as Axel and Hollis, the most Canadian dude I've ever seen play play five-finger fillet on the table with their knives. Uh it's got a bunch of names but that's that's

Dave! (01:14:21.558) Yeah, that seems rough.

Dave! (01:14:36.494) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (01:14:40.246) Oh, so that's just called that. I just call it Bishop's knife trick.

Bryan! (01:14:46.12) Yeah, so that's what it is. If you ever seen Aliens, it's the knife thing the bishop does to Hudson. Yeah, and the bartender, the movie's standing for crazy Ralph, grimly recites the local legend of Harry Ward.

Dave! (01:14:58.922) And he is, you on Canada, this guy's Canadian.

Bryan! (01:15:02.027) And he is going to tell this story staring straight down the camera lens.

Dave! (01:15:06.802) And he does it with such glee in a way, like it has a sing-songy cadence to it. I think some of it even rhymes.

Bryan! (01:15:12.127) Oh yeah, yeah. It's it's yes, it does. There's it's you know what it reminded me of and I'm going to bring it up a little bit later on is um fucking TP's story in Madman. Yeah. So, 20 years ago.

Dave! (01:15:22.602) Yeah. Also, this is what while he's doing this. I don't know if they if this happens before after but like Axel is getting real grabby.

Bryan! (01:15:33.983) Yes. Yeah, that I think that kind of comes after because then they have a thing she's going to charge off. But 20 years ago, on Valentine's Day, on the night of the big dance, a 100 year tradition, seven miners were still back at the mine, five of them still underground with a methane gas ignited causing a cave in all while the rest of the town dance and made merry evident by Dutch angle shots of oblivious partygoers lit in menacing fashion.

Dave! (01:16:02.226) Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is real like You really know you're in a you're in a flashback

Bryan! (01:16:04.247) It's, you know what it is? It's the, it's the Wisham away to the cornfield section of the Twilight Zone movie. Yeah. So yeah, the town did what it could to dig the men out. And when they finally broke through after weeks of digging and they found one man alive, Harry Warden, who survived by eating the other man. So driven mad, he escapes from a mental hospital and runs wild on Valentine Bluffs on a murderous rampage. Killed everyone at the dance and put their hearts.

Dave! (01:16:10.231) Yeah!

Bryan! (01:16:32.023) heart-shaped candy boxes and he warned the town never have another one of these dances again. So

Dave! (01:16:37.278) Yeah, now look, I don't want to be on record supporting murder. But I'm kind of on Harry Warden's side.

Bryan! (01:16:42.018) Hehehehe

Bryan! (01:16:46.799) Yeah, they were all dancing while he was like eating dudes. Yeah, so Howard being the Joker blows a raspberry, which makes everybody laugh. And the bartender.

Dave! (01:16:55.446) Yeah, I mean, I got to say Howard's borscht belt stick. I don't think it's that funny.

Bryan! (01:17:01.759) I get tired of him immediately. Whenever there's one of these guys in the movies, I just immediately check out on that guy. It's like, I hope he gets killed first, even though they're gonna fucking drag it out, because they think everybody loves this character.

Dave! (01:17:12.362) I mean, and like Howard's like the most likable of them, of the yucksters, but.

Bryan! (01:17:16.947) he's the least the least insulting I think yeah so yeah the bartender tells them to laugh now but they'll be sorry that they didn't listen to him so this is where TJ and Sarah have a vague chat about the way things are between the two of them which pisses off TJ because he's all fucking hands in shit

Dave! (01:17:36.682) Yeah, because TJ really, really inappropriate, really disrespectful.

Bryan! (01:17:42.307) Here's the thing is he fucking disappeared. Like what the fuck was she supposed to do? Like, and he was gone for some. Yeah. So at the.

Dave! (01:17:46.718) I mean, that is that is literally what she says. Yeah, I mean, so Axel is a piece of shit who's like real, you know, handsy and kind of like borderline abusive. But like her other option is TJ. Like this is life in a small town, everybody. God help you if you're gay. But, you know, she's got two choices. One's a weird kind of menacing asshole. And the other one's just kind of like manipulative and gaslighting.

Bryan! (01:17:59.527) Yeah. Up. Ha ha ha.

Bryan! (01:18:13.443) Well, yeah, he's also a murderer, but you know, well, which one is which one are we talking about? So yeah, at the crime lab, they confirm that the heart is that of a 30 year old woman, and they need to check to make sure that Harry Warden is still locked up because no one is certain that he is or not.

Dave! (01:18:17.169) Oh, no, well, spoiler alert.

Dave! (01:18:31.166) I love how they're immediately, it's like, well, I guess it's a serial killer because there couldn't possibly be any other explanation. It's very much like Ed and Lorraine Warren, but it's like, well, must be the devil because there is no other explanation for the noises you're hearing.

Bryan! (01:18:37.959) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:18:45.203) Yeah, yeah. So, Athelondra Matt, a man in mining gear, watches Mabel. I know, if anybody did not deserve to get fucking killed in this movie, it's poor Mabel.

Dave! (01:18:49.345) Ugh.

Oh, Mabel. Mabel is she is the sweetest lady. She has a crush on the mayor or mayor knows on the maybe it's both. But she is she seems like a delightful lady. She's very excited about the Valentine's Day dance. She's the owner and proprietor of Madam Mabel's laundromat. I mean, nobody deserves this less.

Bryan! (01:19:00.643) Yep. It's the mayor. No, no, it's the sheriff. Oh, fuck. No, it's the sheriff.

Bryan! (01:19:16.731) La Drette.

Bryan! (01:19:21.635) No. So when she walks away for a moment, the miner seizes the opportunity to drop a valentine on the table with the rest of her stuff. Now she eagerly opens it and reads the... So pleased. I mean, what... I know. She reads, roses are red, violets are blue, one is dead, and so are you. And then the lights go out and the miner attacks. He gets her on the ground, hits her with his pick. So elsewhere...

Dave! (01:19:32.398) She looks so happy about this, and it makes it so much worse.

Bryan! (01:19:50.752) at the junkyard. Hollis? Howard? They're at the dump.

Dave! (01:19:55.4) just cooking dinner on the engine block like you do.

Bryan! (01:19:57.339) cooking TV dinners on the engine of a running automobile while we get a POV shot of someone sneaking around. He sneaks up on Axle, who plays harmonica while sitting in a junked car, and it turns out.

Dave! (01:20:07.826) Now, I'll say, having grown up in a rural place, I feel like this is not that far off.

Bryan! (01:20:13.679) No? No, no, no. Me and my friends used to fuck around at like those, the worst fucking stupidest places because there's like no cops to like bust up, you know, beer drinking and shit. So, or like they just want to cook their TV dinners in peace. So, it turns out that the stalker with the with the steady cam is TJ with a bottle of whiskey.

Dave! (01:20:24.498) or engine block cooking or harmonica playing.

Dave! (01:20:35.59) Oh, I'd say George Mahalka says this is the first use of, well, he says initially the first use of Steadicam and someone on the panel was like, ah, no. And he was like, ah, first use of Steadicam in Canada. Is that true? Don't they use Steadicam in Black Christmas?

Bryan! (01:20:44.418) Oh

Bryan! (01:20:48.751) that can't be true. No, because we actually have it. We actually talk about that where Steady Cam didn't Steady Cam didn't come out until 77 or 78 and that's why the handheld footage in Black Christmas is so fucked up. Yeah, Panaglide, but Panaglide was the first Steady Cam system. I mean, there were this could not possibly be the first

Dave! (01:20:57.858) Halloween is one of the first.

Dave! (01:21:04.598) Well, Panaglide, Panaglide specifically came out, I think it's 77.

Dave! (01:21:13.162) find it hard to believe that this is the first time.

Bryan! (01:21:17.371) like I the thing with that is once that technology became widely available like everybody jumped on that because the ** usages of it are so great, especially if you're making a horror movie. So yeah, this can't possibly be. He's gotta be wrong.

Dave! (01:21:33.13) I mean, I could have looked it up, but god damn it, it is Sunday. I'm tired.

Dave! (01:21:42.553) and or Hallmark movies to watch.

Bryan! (01:21:45.438) Yeah.

Dave! (01:21:48.242) I do. I love them both.

Dave! (01:21:55.326) And so this is where you get that love triangle thing that I think is, I mean, as much as I find it distasteful and kind of awful today, I can see why this something like this kind of romantic fantasy love triangle would be appealing to younger female audiences. I mean, or younger male audiences, I guess I shouldn't limit it just to that. Like, I can see why.

Bryan! (01:21:58.787) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:22:17.082) Yeah, well yeah.

Dave! (01:22:22.154) Like, I see this shit as horrible and abusive and manipulative, which is what it is, everybody. If you find yourself in this, extract yourself immediately. It's terrible. But I can see why they would think, oh, this might appeal as this might be like a romantic conundrum.

Bryan! (01:22:38.139) sure. Yeah, I mean, it was, it's just, you know, yeah, it's just, it's just a ** love triangle, you know, plot angle. I mean, they've been doing it for as long as there's been movies with romances in them, you know, it's

Dave! (01:22:40.11) because so much of this movie is built around this love triangle.

Dave! (01:22:51.906) And this is where she says like, oh, you went away. What was I supposed to do? And then he says, oh, sure, it's not his fault. It's nobody's fault. And I thought, well, actually, it's your fault, TJ. It's your fault. You went away. You left and didn't tell your girlfriend where you were going.

Bryan! (01:22:55.301) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (01:23:01.023) your fault TJ you went away and now you're back and you're like try to pick

didn't call, didn't write. So, she probably thought that he was dead. Yeah. But um yeah, the cops then go to check to see if Harry Warden is still in the institution. It turns out they have no record of him there.

Dave! (01:23:20.798) Now here's the thing about hospitals. If they're good at anything, it's records. Because they don't wanna get sued because they get sued a lot. I find it very hard to believe that you have a high profile murderer in your hospital at any point and she acts like she doesn't even know the name. It wasn't that long ago.

Bryan! (01:23:24.751) It's record keeping.

Bryan! (01:23:38.469) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:23:46.102) No, no, no

Dave! (01:24:08.35) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:24:10.443) And at no point, only recently, the last several years, came to the realization that, I'm supposed to wonder if Axel or TJ is the killer, but the whole fucking movie, they're telling me it's this escaped maniac.

Dave! (01:24:23.37) Well, the TJ thing, I think I kind of get what see, I'm the opposite of that, because I feel like the they try to do the it's Harry Warden thing. You're like, okay, but you haven't really said much about Harry Warden. And as far as we know, he's locked up somewhere. And even the lady at the hospital who's serving real you've got to be kidding me face. Even she's just kind of like who? And so I think we're supposed to like I

The way I've always thought about it is like, it's just somebody and you don't yet know who it is. I never feel like we're supposed to take seriously that it's Harry Warden. And I think that's part of the kind of convoluted muddiness of what they're trying to do is like, you're never giving me enough of anything. I guess if anything, it's like you're supposed to. TJ is going to be the red herring. We'll get there. We're going to spoil it anyway. It's not TJ, everybody. He's the red herring because he's the one who just came back.

Bryan! (01:24:58.374) Oh, yeah, see, because.

Bryan! (01:25:06.564) Yeah.

Dave! (01:25:19.038) and then his return coincides with the murders. So realistically, who else could it be then?

Bryan! (01:25:26.183) Yeah, I mean, but also at the same time, like they're really leaning into the Harry Warden thing like throughout most of the movie and but then they do this whole thing where it's like, since like somebody will go and get killed and then fucking Axel is just back in his clothes in the same location like you never you know, it's really it's just it's a part that doesn't fucking work. It's not enough to really make me go fuck this movie, obviously, because I fucking love it. But it's just

Dave! (01:25:48.682) Yeah, no, because it's but I think that also speaks to the fact that they've built up enough of a sort of character study that you don't really care about the, you know, the and then there were none aspect of it. Like, whatever. I don't really it doesn't matter who it is.

Bryan! (01:26:03.287) Yeah. Also, it takes this movie takes its time. Like most of the back. It's really heavily loaded with violence in the back half.

Dave! (01:26:10.962) Which is funny because that was another one of the criticisms. You know, I actually dug through a lot of reviews because I checked a lot of American reviews, you know, contemporary reviews. And then I was like, I wonder if it got different reviews in Canada. The answer is no, it was sort of universally rejected. But the funny thing is, a lot of them are like, you know, it's so slow. It drags out this, you know, this whole thing. And it's like, so wait a minute, you all get real fucking pissy when it's violent from beginning to end. And now you're pissy because it's.

Bryan! (01:26:24.824) Ha ha ha.

Bryan! (01:26:31.869) Oh, interesting, because I don't think it's...

Dave! (01:26:39.286) too romantic. I think the issue might be that it's a horror movie.

Bryan! (01:26:39.939) because it's got pacing problems on top of it all. I don't think, I personally, I personally don't think that it has pacing problems. I think that it's quite snappy, it moves along, it's got characters that I actually like.

Dave! (01:26:47.698) No, I don't think it does.

Dave! (01:26:53.586) It, I think it, it spaces out the set pieces in a way that is to its benefit, because even when you're, you're getting drama, because you do care about these characters, not maybe not quite to the extent that you do say like Halloween, but you still do care about them. Like you do want to see this kind of unfold and however it unfolds. I want to, I'd like a little more Hollis personally.

Bryan! (01:27:08.067) Right.

Bryan! (01:27:16.949) More Hollis, less Axle.

Dave! (01:27:18.878) It is very male focused, obviously just because they work in the mine.

Bryan! (01:27:22.359) Well, that's those are the guys. Yeah, those were the guys who are making the movies. There's actually a part where, you know, the mind's got rules. No chicks. Yep. No women in the mines. Yeah, so then there's a bit of agonizing on Sarah's part about whether she wants to be with T.J. or Axel, but maybe she ought to dump the both of them.

Dave! (01:27:25.755) Um.

Dave! (01:27:30.698) No women, no women in the mines. And I thought, well, that's sexist.

Dave! (01:27:45.754) I, you know, I kind of like, is this the part when they're walking down the street though? Yeah, Patty's great. And I like this part in a way because there is, I feel like when you watch movies of this era, there's always something really refreshing about seeing women sort of talk openly and maybe with enthusiasm, maybe not so much about sex, but just in general about relationships and about sexuality. Because the, you know, Patty's sort of like, I'd take them both myself. And it's like,

Bryan! (01:27:48.483) Yeah, because I like Patty a lot too. Patty's.

Dave! (01:28:14.806) There is something really nice about those, you know, like the, the Annie brackets and the Lindas where it's just like, this is just how people talk when you're with your friends. It's like, you know, she's, it's not, no one's being portrayed as sort of morally bankrupt or slutty because she's talking about sex.

Bryan! (01:28:32.547) that's another point. Another point I had about this is this does not play that game.

Dave! (01:28:38.366) No, this movie makes no judgments about these people at all.

Bryan! (01:28:43.387) Yeah. So

Dave! (01:28:43.606) But I mean, I just like when you see that, you see people just sort of be like, this is just ladies talking about, because there is that idea of like, well, women are so, they're not interested in this. It's like, yes, they are.

Bryan! (01:28:53.492) Yeah, yes they are.

Dave! (01:28:55.658) I mean, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Not even a little.

Bryan! (01:28:58.312) No, not even close.

Dave! (01:29:00.534) But it is still nice to see them just sort of being a little bit more honest in terms of their portrayal.

Bryan! (01:29:06.708) Yeah. So the sheriff then drops by Mabel's laundrette to talk, talk to her about the dance, makes a terrible discovery when he smells burning and finds all these heart decorations inverted. One of the dryers is smeared with blood pops open, revealing the badly burned body of Mabel just tumbling in the dryer over and over. I think and I think the tumbling

Dave! (01:29:11.211) Meanwhile, my heart is breaking.

Dave! (01:29:27.97) This part is so hard.

Bryan! (01:29:30.255) The tumbling makes her death so much worse because she's just like rolling and rolling and rolling.

Dave! (01:29:32.791) Yeah.

Dave! (01:29:36.126) Now, my first thought was, how has this been going all night if no one's there to put quarters in?

Bryan! (01:29:41.912) That's a really long dryer cycle.

Dave! (01:29:44.114) Also, this is the only death scene in this entire movie that the MPAA had no problems with it. Because it's hard. But the thing is, it's the most emotionally devastating, but it's not the most graphic, because there's nothing graphic about it. It's just a burned up, you know, kind of melty corpse tumbling around in a dryer, quite literally tumbling in the dryer. But there's nothing.

Bryan! (01:29:50.415) Which is crazy, because it's probably the most gruesome. Yeah.

Bryan! (01:30:08.035) Yeah, it's quite literally tumbling. Yeah. So.

Dave! (01:30:13.066) like exceedingly violent. It's like so and I think again, that goes to that idea of like, oh, this is about like moral gatekeeping. Like this should be the worst death of the movie, because it's so heartbreaking.

Bryan! (01:30:24.955) Yeah, yeah. You know, they they really weren't not they weren't thinking or maybe maybe the I mean, I maybe the MPA has to be objective. Maybe they just didn't give a ** about the like the sort of quality of the character.

Dave! (01:30:36.394) No, it's an it's an older sort of spinster ish woman who dies in this way. There's nothing sexual about it. There's not like it's not gratuitous. I mean, I would argue this kind of gratuitous since she's flopping around melted corpse. But I just think it's odd that like this is the worst death in the entire movie, I would say. And they don't really seem to get a shit.

Bryan! (01:30:50.474) Hahahaha

Bryan! (01:30:56.676) Yeah.

now. No, it's really weird. But yeah, the effects are all done by a guy named Tom Berman, or rather his he had a studio that he was the head of that. And so

Dave! (01:31:07.602) And he fucking nails it every single time. These are really, really cool, really inventive, you know, makeup and effects.

Bryan! (01:31:14.615) Yeah, yeah. So he had previously worked on movies like Phantom of the Paradise and the 78 Body Snatchers movie. He also worked on Happy Birthday to Me the same year. And the Blu-ray features an interview with him where he uses a really peculiar phrase to describe horror movies. He calls it graphic repulsion, and he says it over and over. And it's pretty clear to me that he didn't care for horror movies, because this is one of the last ones that he does. I know. But which this.

Dave! (01:31:23.229) Also great movie.

Dave! (01:31:38.54) W-weird line of work.

Bryan! (01:31:42.883) sort of he still does violent special effects because he also worked on the exterminator and shit and his studio. Yeah, his studio goes on to work on goes to work on stuff like Teen Wolf. He did some he did some X-Files and his studio did the makeup work for Sloth in the Goonies.

Dave! (01:31:49.122) So he had standards.

I guess.

Bryan! (01:32:03.159) So now, down in the mine, the boys are having a bit of static. Axel wants to send TJ deeper down into the pit to check the sump, which I guess is a shit job. And it's all because of Sarah. TJ moves like he's going to fight Axel who, so help me God says, anytime hoser, he, I swear to God, he says hoser.

Dave! (01:32:22.478) Does he really? Oh man. But again, this is just TJ being disrespectful and wildly inappropriate. Like, hey man, she's not your fucking girlfriend. Stop doing that. It's really rude.

Bryan! (01:32:32.375) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:32:36.687) I know, I know. He like, he just kind of thought he'd step back into the, into the, into the saddle like he'd never left. Yeah. So at the Laundrette, the sheriff is doing his best to keep a lid on the murder. He keeps, he finds a valentine inside the corpse which reads, It happened once, it happened twice. Cancel the dance or it'll happen thrice.

Dave! (01:32:41.898) And then it just gets even worse. What he does next is even worse.

Dave! (01:32:57.546) Yeah, that's really hard that he pulls it out of her chest cavity.

Bryan! (01:33:00.647) Yeah, but I love that the killer's got a little get a little poetry in him. So they decide that they have to cancel the dance, which is letting the terrorists win, if you ask me.

Dave! (01:33:03.37) He does. He's got a little sense of whimsy.

Dave! (01:33:10.898) Yeah, and that is not American at all. Thank God it's Canada.

Bryan! (01:33:14.854) So TJ races over to wherever it is that Sarah works and he steals her despite her telling him that she doesn't want to go with him.

Dave! (01:33:22.39) Yeah, she's like, why can't you just leave me alone?

Bryan! (01:33:24.623) Yeah. So they go out to the coast for a tender moment or

Dave! (01:33:27.69) Man, I gotta say, I love that their spot is like an estuary just filled with industrial runoff and overrun with seagulls. Dear God, it is grim. Life in Valentine Bluff is grim.

Bryan! (01:33:35.159) just mining slurry and seagull shit everywhere I know and this is he is it's great maybe that's why he's so fucking desperate to have some sort of normalcy returned to his life I mean he's a gigantic fucking baby about it and he begs her to come back to him despite

Dave! (01:33:57.942) He really is. He is American masculinity, albeit Canadian, but it really is this idea of like, but you're supposed to be here for me.

Bryan! (01:34:07.627) Yeah, yeah, he apologizes saying that he's so damn sorry. And then they kiss.

Dave! (01:34:14.018) Um, what I do like about this moment is she calls him Jesse, which I think is really, it's a really nice touch that you could just totally, you know,

Bryan! (01:34:22.271) I had to look that up to see if she fucked up and called him by the actor's name. But no, his name is Thomas Jesse Hanegger. And I was.

Dave! (01:34:27.986) No, that would be the J.

Dave! (01:34:32.01) Yeah. And I think I think I mean, you know, most of us would infer from context that is his name. But I just think it's a nice sort of it conveys an intimacy that again, you don't really get that in a lot of these other movies, they're taking the time to kind of give these touches that really make this elevated a little bit.

Bryan! (01:34:54.519) Yeah, yeah, you know, it kicks it up a notch.

Dave! (01:34:56.918) Yes, I'm sorry. I'm so damn sorry.

Bryan! (01:34:59.979) so damn sorry. So back at the bar, everybody's bummed about the dance being canceled. So they decide to throw a party instead. TJ. Yeah.

Dave! (01:35:07.67) I, look, if we're not gonna have a Valentine's dance, why don't we have a Valentine's party? Bitch, those are the same thing.

Bryan! (01:35:14.647) TJ. TJ success suggests that they do it in the mine, which sounds like a terrible place to have a party based entirely on what I've seen of the mind so far, but everybody is really amped up to party there. What I what I would actually I what I misunderstood that they're not going to do it in the mine. They're going to do it in the mine rec room. And so.

Dave! (01:35:24.866) God.

Dave! (01:35:32.446) Right. Also, this is where you get there's some really awesome songs, some of those Paul Zaza songs in there that sound a lot like Linda Ronstadt songs like they're really great kind of folksy rock. Awesome. Also, those are on the soundtrack purchase the soundtrack you get those

Bryan! (01:35:40.712) Oh, I love. Yes, I love that.

Yeah.

Bryan! (01:35:49.371) Yeah. That's great. That's the thing is there's a lot of there's a lot. I think if this were any other movie, they would have just done what like George Romero does where they just like pick like library tracks of like of like country ish kind of music or like banjo tracks but ** Paul Saza like composes his own songs.

Dave! (01:36:02.742) Yeah, you just buy library music.

Dave! (01:36:10.734) I don't I mean library music I don't think they kind of stopped doing it in the 70s in the US at least obviously in places like Italy and France it was huge still is still kind of huge. Yeah, I mean even in the 70s though like once you get like into like the sort of that new Hollywood movement where it's like you want either you know they stop using or orchestral scores and stuff like that you want people to make unique you know film scores for you.

Bryan! (01:36:20.671) it falls off somewhere in the early 80s. And I think it was mostly because.

Bryan! (01:36:34.135) Yeah, yeah.

Bryan! (01:36:38.175) Well, sure. And also some of the studios either get bought by larger companies that own music labels or they buy into like music labels or they start their own.

Dave! (01:36:48.242) Right. And well, that's why you end up with those a lot of those soundtracks that are like, why are these all very timely? Like, you know, it's one or two bands you've heard of, and then a shitload of stuff you've never heard of. And that's because they made a deal with a record label to promote all the new stuff. And in exchange, they gave them, you know, a new kids on the block song. It's like that kind of deal.

Bryan! (01:37:08.299) Yeah. Like we talked about this. We talked about this a bit on our vamp episode. Um but yeah, so Hap, the crazy bartender tells them to forget about it or they'll be sorry. So, later on, to teach those damned kids a lesson, Hap goes over to the mine, sets up a scare involving a mining uniform on a

Dave! (01:37:26.51) Also, I mean, man, Hap is really fucking insensitive. Maple just died. Have some goddamn respect.

Bryan! (01:37:32.132) he is. Yeah, also hell of an engineer.

Dave! (01:37:37.634) I also thought like, this is quite a prank. You're very elaborate.

Bryan! (01:37:40.691) Yeah, he's very, very proud of it and he should be because it's a very elaborate pulley system.

Dave! (01:37:45.746) He is very proud of it. He is amused, amused beyond belief.

Bryan! (01:37:51.159) Yeah, cackling like a madman as he tests it out. But on his last test, he happily throws the door open. And it's the real miner this time who swings his pick and catches half under the jaw, knocking his eye out. And then he drags the body away by the hat.

Dave! (01:37:56.375) Yeah.

Dave! (01:38:02.438) And so this was one of the ones. Yeah, this was one of the ones that the MPAA really objected to because it's not just the visuals. The visual is the pick part of the pickaxe comes up through the bottom of his chin and out through his eye. And then it makes this sound that's really gross. And then he drags him by that through the gravel and it is fucking brutal.

Bryan! (01:38:21.146) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:38:25.431) You know, it's so cool. Very brutal. Yeah, so now on the night of Valentine's Day, the fellas and their sweethearts bust into the mines rec room with all the Molson and moose head they can carry just ready to party. At the at the police station, another Valentine has arrived, the chief cautiously opens it expecting more gore, but finds nothing but a box of chocolates instead. Sent to him from Mabel before she died.

Dave! (01:38:39.351) Oh, man.

Dave! (01:38:49.858) God, Mabel loved Valentine's Day so much.

Bryan! (01:38:54.595) God damn it, Mabel. I'm so sorry.

Dave! (01:38:58.082) What you get, I think something else you get in this that you don't get, especially in later scenes, you get a lot of male emotion. There's a lot, so.

Bryan! (01:39:07.063) Yeah? Oh right, yeah, like when she dies, like his reaction is visceral.

Dave! (01:39:12.01) And then when he gets the chocolate, he's like, he's shaken, not so much because he thought it was going to be a heart, but because it's from Mabel and he is deeply moved and then kind of heartbroken. And you're gonna, we'll get this a little bit later too. There's a lot of moments where it's like men reacting in ways that you would naturally react. Like, it's not, it's not the sort of stoicism or let's go, you know, kill this, this menace. It's, it's very real.

Bryan! (01:39:24.569) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:39:40.899) You know why it is? Because it's Canada and not America. Yeah. They're just dudes being dudes up there.

Dave! (01:39:42.975) Yep.

Dave! (01:39:47.134) And hey, look, I have no illusions. I'm sure Canada has a shitload of problems. Matter of fact, I know they do, but they're just a bit.

Bryan! (01:39:51.925) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:39:56.568) We're exaggerating a little bit over here, but yeah.

Dave! (01:40:00.293) But I do love their country a lot.

Bryan! (01:40:02.596) So at the party, everybody's getting crazy. Axel arrives with Sarah, and they're also boiling hot dogs out back in the kitchen.

Dave! (01:40:08.938) Yeah, Axel, Axel Ravis, Sarah, and he's being real fucking handsy again. I hate you know, I because for a very long time when I worked downtown, I rode the train to work every day and rode the buses to work every day. And you see a lot of like young men being handsy with their girlfriends. And it's like, you know, it's obviously it's an insecurity thing. I don't really give a fuck what the reason is, I find it really upsetting. And I really don't like watching men handle women. I'm like

Bryan! (01:40:12.781) super gross with her.

Dave! (01:40:37.686) people do in general, but like just grabbing and moving and manipulate. It's a very controlling thing to do. Shelly Winters does it as well in her pictures.

Bryan! (01:40:45.712) Yeah, we see it and we see it with the eagle in burnt offerings.

Dave! (01:40:50.486) Yeah, but like he does it in this a lot. I mean, I think it's a good choice in this because you're not supposed to like Axel. I think.

Bryan! (01:40:56.779) No, no, but also this is also highly performative just to sort of set TJ off.

Dave! (01:41:02.014) Yeah, and I think I mean, I don't know if we're supposed to root for TJ either, but I think we kind of are.

Bryan! (01:41:06.751) I think we are, but God, why? He's such a fucking jerk and such a baby. Yeah.

Dave! (01:41:09.45) They both, they both fucking suck. They're two sides of the same fucking gross man baby coin, but I just hate watching men, like manhandle women. And he does it throughout the whole thing. And every time I bristle.

Bryan! (01:41:23.127) So, one of the unarmed miner guys goes back to get one, uh, a hot dog, and the miner strikes, stuffing his head in the pot, boiling him to death, sleepaway camp style.

Dave! (01:41:34.587) But again, for a guy who didn't like horror, he's really fucking good at horror effects. Because this death is.

Bryan! (01:41:39.939) he is these are fucking outstanding effects. Because yeah, they explains how they did it. And I was like, Damn, that's really fucking clever, like, because it's like layers of different sort of material that are like reactive to water and like temperature in different ways. So like, it's not like they applied a little bit of makeup, and then they applied a little bit of a makeup, like they put his head there and just over time, it sort of like eroded and sort of boiled away. It's cool. So fucking awesome.

Dave! (01:42:04.142) Yeah. And I'm not like I'm not a gore person at all, but this everything in this movie is really, really impressive.

Bryan! (01:42:10.732) I love I love I love a skillful effect that requires a lot of like technique like when I can look at an effect and look at it in the same way that I might like a magic trick like I really love that shit. So outside the police station, another gory valentine has been left behind by the minor and this is what we're talking about. There's all these like dogs like trying to try to chew through the package. It's pretty heavy.

Dave! (01:42:23.022) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (01:42:32.498) It is rough because they're like fighting each other. And then the chief comes out and they're like snapping at him.

Bryan! (01:42:39.915) Yep. This time the card says, you didn't stop the party. And I'm really disappointed that there's no rhyme. But also the sheriff is completely unaware of the party. He's like, what party?

Dave! (01:42:46.55) Well, look, there's a part there's a party going on. He can't do everything. You know, it takes a while even if you're coming up with a bit, you gotta give it time. He's got things to do.

Bryan! (01:42:57.547) Yep, so back of the party Axel is all over Sarah, who's not having it. That Axel and TJ fight, it takes Hollis, good old Hollis to break it up. Sarah tell.

Dave! (01:43:05.266) And he is a, Hollis is a man beast in this moment. He grabs them both and I don't know, some sort of bear hug moment.

Bryan! (01:43:07.799) He is a large man.

Bryan! (01:43:13.035) And it's weird like, yeah, it's a weird like half Nelson, but on both of them at the same time. That's so yeah, so

Dave! (01:43:17.49) Yeah. And then Sarah speaks up and she's like, I just shut up both of you. And it's like, okay, I kind of like this a little bit. Like I like that. She's sort of exercising her agency and speaking up. But like, you know, be really great if she just fucking dish both these losers.

Bryan! (01:43:24.804) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:43:33.864) Yeah. Yep. To break up the tension, Howard snorts some beer up his nose. Everybody loves it. Yep. So elsewhere in the mine, a couple of unnamed victims be fooling around in carts that take all the dudes down into the mine. And she sets up an I'll be right back moment when she asks her boyfriend if he knows what they need. He produces a condom. But this being Canada, she corrects him telling them that they need a couple of beers.

Dave! (01:43:38.166) Yeah, they all just go right back to partying.

Dave! (01:43:57.674) This is a really cool moment though, because they've got the scene where it's the uniforms, I guess, for lack of a better...

Bryan! (01:44:04.463) Yeah, I would imagine that is a mining thing that like because

Dave! (01:44:08.858) I feel like they probably walked it. So if you've not seen the film, they have all of their like, I don't know, it's not a uniform, but it's like coveralls, I guess. And it's all hanging from the ceiling in this way that like you would pull a cord and they would drop down. And I imagine this is the kind of thing where they walked in and they were like, holy shit, we're working this in somehow, because this seems like just a real thing that exists somewhere.

Bryan! (01:44:16.791) It's like it's coveralls, it's breathing apparatus, it's helmets. Yeah.

Bryan! (01:44:33.175) Yeah, I kept I'm trying to understand like the why of it because it doesn't really make sense. Maybe. Because it's a legitimately cool like in the way that they use it is great.

Dave! (01:44:38.226) I guess just to save space, probably. Because you don't have a lot of space if you're in a fucking mine. Yeah. And it's like, it's the kind of thing where like, you see it more now, like if someone walks into a store at night that's closed, and it's like, mannequin, things covered in like sheets. It's that kind of thing where it's just like, vaguely human looking things, and they're all hanging from the ceiling in this precarious way.

Bryan! (01:45:06.711) Yeah. So he goes to get the beers in the rec room. A couple of girls find a boiled heart with hot dogs. And he and he oblivious misses the dude's dead body chilling in the fridge. So back in the mine, the girl thinks her boyfriend is back taking a shower for some reason. So she goes to check and then the miner unseen scares the crap out of her by dropping all the clothes that are hanging on those hooks.

Dave! (01:45:13.758) must have been Howard.

Bryan! (01:45:31.311) buddy herds her around with these dropping clothes until she finds Hap's dead body. And then he attacks her, lifting her up by the head, violently impaling her on one of the shower pipes. Yes, because that guy like lifts her up by her head.

Dave! (01:45:39.51) which is a callback to when they arrive at the dance hall originally.

Yeah, it's very weird and aggressive, but. Well, she's not delighted this time. This is the coolest kill in the entire movie.

Bryan! (01:45:50.223) She is delighted when it happens. Yeah, yeah, like lifts her up. And there's like a shower head that is just a pipe. Fuck it spikes her head on it.

Dave! (01:46:02.354) And now originally she was wearing a Angora sweater when they filmed this. And so the Angora just as a fabric does, it's sort of it's like a hydrophobic fabric. And so all the blood and water was like beading off and just kind of rolling down it. And he was like, God damn it. So they had to do it again. It's like this is the seacoast in late September. And so they had to shoot this whole thing again with a different sweater. Hold that thought. I'll be right back.

Bryan! (01:46:06.329) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:46:18.756) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:46:24.495) Yeah. Okay.

Dave! (01:48:54.652) Game on

Bryan! (01:48:55.827) Yeah, all right. Where was I? OK, all right. Yeah, so her boyfriend, whose name is John, arrives thinking that she's in the shower and he gets all excited. He's like, all right.

Dave! (01:48:59.608) I just got her head impaled.

Dave! (01:49:06.334) I mean, again, like you're at a party with like a couple dozen people. Is this the time for shower sex?

Bryan! (01:49:14.103) Also, that's a grimy nasty shower because it's like fucking coal runoff. Yeah, he starts to interest until he finds her dead body impaled on the pipe and blood and water is just pouring out of her mouth.

Dave! (01:49:17.098) Yeah, and he's just like super into it.

Dave! (01:49:27.198) And it is, I mean, it is, it is really, really awful.

Bryan! (01:49:31.531) Yeah, it's um it's up there with uh Daniela Doria's death in uh City of the Living Dead with the uh the gut that's the gut vomit scene.

Dave! (01:49:39.622) not seen that in a very long time. I'm gonna watch that later tonight because I got night flight it's on there.

Bryan! (01:49:46.747) Fuckin' A.

Oh, very nice. So, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Else.

Dave! (01:49:54.238) No, so his reaction is this is sort of as getting at earlier. His reaction is another example of this is someone who has been legitimately traumatized, because I mean, I don't know how to react when you stumble upon something like this. But he maintains this because this is not the only time you see him again.

Bryan! (01:50:11.459) Oh no, he's gonna come back and be really fucked up about this.

Dave! (01:50:15.026) And he is like, he is crying hysterically, there is snot pouring out of his nose. And this is again, the defying that idea of masculinity. I really appreciate that.

Bryan! (01:50:19.995) I'm sorry.

Bryan! (01:50:28.963) So elsewhere, the girls all want the guys to take them down to the mine. And then, yeah, they relent after some resistance. But as they're about to go, TG rushes out to stop them reminding of them. No women in the mind. They go down anyways, and man, are these girls into the mine.

Dave! (01:50:32.898) Great idea.

Dave! (01:50:38.038) Well, yeah TJ says no women in the mine.

Dave! (01:50:45.278) Yeah, I mean, it's dark, it's cold. You'll have trouble breathing. It sounds great. Oh, that was the only thing we failed to mention is that this was an active mine until they started shooting in this, so they could only use maximum 50 watt bulbs. So everything is shot in low light.

Bryan! (01:50:47.971) Yeah. You know, you might blow up because of a methane build up.

Bryan! (01:51:01.355) Yeah, otherwise. Yeah. Yeah, they used really high speed film too. So all the shit that's shot in the mind has a particular look to it. It's kind of it's kind of cool.

Dave! (01:51:13.158) I actually learned why that was, and this was something that, I think it's late 70s, early 80s, I think it was Kodak, had created a new low light film, but the film, the grain on the film is much larger, and that's why it has that sort of, it's not grainy, or it looks a little bit blown out, and that's why it looks that way.

Bryan! (01:51:22.372) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:51:33.539) Yeah. So while they're down there, one couple peels off for a little privacy in this oh so romantic mine.

Dave! (01:51:39.87) Yeah, like, hey, Hollis, we're just gonna branch off and go fuck in this dirty mine. Be right back.

Bryan! (01:51:46.26) Yeah, maybe. Yeah, this is honestly, maybe it's the worst place to fuck to the dump. So, back up top, however, the body of the boiled dude has been found. And john stumbles into tell everyone that his girl is dead to they all come to the conclusion that Harry warden is on the loose. TJ tries to call the cops phone is dead.

Dave! (01:51:47.17) And this is the part where the movie gets really mean.

Dave! (01:51:53.775) Ah, hilarious.

Dave! (01:52:08.578) To which everyone says, who?

Bryan! (01:52:10.731) Yeah, TJ and Axel suit up to go down and get Sarah. So there's some more goofs on everybody down the mind until they all real

Dave! (01:52:18.114) They all act, they act like it's like so glamorous down in the mud. They're like, oh, this is so great. What a novelty. It's a fucking filthy hole in the earth. That's literally what it is.

Bryan! (01:52:29.841) the couple is missing. So, they're all off making out of course but as this is happening, the minor is running loose in the tunnel smashing up the lights. It's cool as hell. It really is. Up top, some of the kids

Dave! (01:52:37.959) Oh, that scene is fucking cool as hell.

And that's where that low light film really lends itself because it just looks there's something so stark about that scene.

Bryan! (01:52:51.201) the party. They get the sheriff who then rushes over to the mine. Now, down in the mine, TJ finds everybody, minus Axel and the makeout couple. And he says, do I look like I'm joking?

Dave! (01:53:02.722) And he has a, it's got a real, is it TJ that has a real kicky scarf wrapped around his neck?

Bryan! (01:53:08.351) Yes, he's got first of all, he's got his shirt on like unbuttoned down to his fucking navel and he's got this like little like blue scarf like tat like jaunty little scarf. Yeah, so Hollis runs off to find the make out couple and finds the two

Dave! (01:53:17.68) Yeah, it's a real Charles Nelson Reilly look, and I appreciate it.

Dave! (01:53:26.122) Now this is an interesting part though, because Howard says, because he leaves to be like, I'm gonna go that way, Howard stay here with them. And Howard says, I don't even know my way around here. And there's something so ominous about that line.

Bryan! (01:53:38.203) right? Cuz it's a call back to an earlier like gag where no, he's new and they they left him down there after the shift to sort of like like as like a hazing ritual and so now he's down there and he's like what the ** do I do? Yeah. Uh so yeah, Hollis runs to find the make out couple. He finds the two of them run through Friday the thirteenth part two style.

Dave! (01:53:41.654) Because Howard is not one of the regular crew.

Dave! (01:54:02.094) So there was an actual, this was a scene they did film, and this was the scene that the MPA made them cut the whole scene. Because it is them having sex, and then, and this is because this is at a time when, up until now, essentially, until this point in the 80s, there was sex and there was violence, and they would cut for these things. Sex and violence together was a new thing, and that's what this is, because they die

Bryan! (01:54:08.991) of them actually getting run through.

Bryan! (01:54:28.844) Yeah.

Dave! (01:54:31.802) in a way that integrates the sex and the violence in a way that like personally, I've always found the sort of mingling of these things to be really upsetting. I don't like the two of them together. But that was why they were like, he was like, well, so how much do we have to cut? They were like, the whole scene has to go. We're not letting you through with this scene. And so yeah, but it's like my other question is, has this weird sex den always been down here in the mind?

Bryan! (01:54:53.38) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:54:59.692) Oh, I know. Yeah.

Dave! (01:55:00.674) Cause it's like a fucking mattress on the floor and like a little end table.

Bryan! (01:55:06.067) Oh, God. So much coal dust getting in the although. Yeah, no, I'm not going to go there. Yeah. Any folds?

Dave! (01:55:11.072) Ugh. God. Just all up in your parts.

Dave! (01:55:15.695) Up in your up in your mind.

Dave! (01:55:20.752) If I had given it more thought I could have come up with something better.

Bryan! (01:55:24.418) I really put you on the spot with that one. So Hollis then has the misfortune of running into the miner who shoots him in the temple and then the forehead with a nail gun.

Dave! (01:55:25.439) I'm working without a net here.

Dave! (01:55:34.294) This is the second worst death of the entire movie. And whereas like the Mabel thing is like, oh, she's such a sweet lady. It's so hard to watch this happen. This death is cruel in a way that I cannot think of, like a comparable scene off the top of my head.

Bryan! (01:55:36.941) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:55:52.023) Yeah, because it's not particularly gory. It's just... Yeah, and also he...

Dave! (01:55:55.146) No, it's just mean and up close. And because he's still, so he shoots him in the side of the head with the nail gun, and then he loads it again and shoots him in the forehead, and he's still alive as he sort of stumbles out to where they are. And there's something so hard about this, that it's just like, it is mean and cold, and this is a character you really come to like.

Bryan! (01:56:11.279) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:56:16.599) Yeah, that's really, that's really, the burning has moments like this too, where.

Dave! (01:56:21.49) But the burning is on an almost nihilistic movie in general. I fucking hate that movie. That is a movie, y'all. It's a movie you will never hear us talk about.

Bryan! (01:56:26.056) Yeah. So

Bryan! (01:56:31.824) I'm kind of ambivalent about that one.

Dave! (01:56:33.77) It's a Weinstein picture in all in all the ways.

Bryan! (01:56:37.559) Yeah, so Howard runs away, but Sarah and Patty stay behind.

Dave! (01:56:41.186) He just fucking runs off. Now that I have trouble with that as well, because he's goofy and he's the jokester. He doesn't really come across as sort of like this callous coward, though.

Bryan! (01:56:54.723) Right, right. But also, I don't, this is not really this.

Dave! (01:56:58.554) He does, he sort of runs away in this way of like, come on everybody, let's go.

Bryan! (01:57:02.827) It's yeah, because this is I don't really see that as this is cowardly. This is him panicking, you know, but yeah, because he tries to get him to go with them. But they don't because Patty is. No.

Dave! (01:57:13.026) But Patty, Patty is not having it. She cannot move. And this is a little bit like John in the previous scenes where it's like, this is an actual, this is how you would react if someone was shot in the head twice with a nail gun and then fell down in front of you. Like she refuses to go.

Bryan! (01:57:30.551) Yeah, Sarah, the only one of them doing any thinking, pulls the light off of Hollis, does her best to get Patty to focus, and she slaps her.

Dave! (01:57:37.482) Yeah, this is the best part though. It's great, because she goes, I can't make it anymore. And Sarah goes, shut up. Yes, you can.

Bryan! (01:57:45.156) Yeah.

Dave! (01:57:45.83) Sarah, this is Sarah feels very resourceful in a way that feels natural and it doesn't feel contrived in that sort of final girl way.

Bryan! (01:57:53.635) Yeah, yeah. So Axel suddenly arrives to help get them out of the mine, but nobody can find TJ. And so a little ways later at a fork in the tunnel, the three of them hear somebody approaching, and we see what looks like the miner approaching, and then Axel hits them with a board. It turns out to be TJ. So when they get back to the elevator shaft, they find the controls have been smashed up, trapping them in the mine, kind of. But there's a ladder though, and they climb, but it's a really long climb. This is...

as I believe Hollis says as they're going down, it's 2000 feet down.

Dave! (01:58:22.154) Yeah, it's too there. And they are literally 2000 feet underground. They so they were the elevator. George Malik says the elevator would take 15 minutes to get everybody down. So like you're if you're when you go down there, you are down there for the duration of the day.

Bryan! (01:58:24.899) Yeah, so that.

Bryan! (01:58:31.235) That is crazy.

Bryan! (01:58:37.527) Yeah, so Patty is scared. She keeps stopping and Axel at the top of the group climbs faster than everybody else. Then they eventually reach a spot where Patty slips and it sends Howard's body tumbling downward and he's dead by the miners hands and suspended from a rope by the neck, but the sudden stop at the end of the rope tears his head from his body. Yeah.

Dave! (01:58:48.368) Ugh.

Dave! (01:58:54.027) Yeah.

not for long. Jesus Christ. This is another part that's like, oh, God. And apparently this scene was supposed to be much longer. Like they were supposed to linger on his body and his head for a while. And I don't know if they I think they just didn't shoot it that way. But like it was supposed to be longer. It does not need to be any longer. It is very effective as is.

Bryan! (01:59:05.995) Yeah, you get a sense of that.

Bryan! (01:59:17.131) Right, because it also it's the it's not a it's an oligarh shot. It's very quick, but it's long enough for you to see basically the body drops, hits the end of the rope and then the body just tears away from the head.

Dave! (01:59:29.45) Yeah, you know what happens and it is deeply upsetting.

Bryan! (01:59:32.443) Yep. So, yeah, they all climb back down. At the bottom, they decide to go to the rail cars and leave that way, but they have to go through the sump. And so as they're crossing the sump, which is basically it's the ** pit of water. So the railing breaks and Axel appears to fall in. His light is disappearing into the pit of water, but we don't actually see him fall in.

Dave! (01:59:54.018) So did you watch the interview with the guy who plays TJ? And they say, well, why didn't your character jump in and try to save him? And it's like, well, what a fucking stupid question.

Bryan! (01:59:58.008) Yes.

Bryan! (02:00:04.219) I think that his response, the well, the question's not quite not not just that it's um it's like why didn't you jump in to save him? It would have been easy to do and I'm sitting here thinking they're all wearing like mining equipment and they're close. Have you ever tried to swim in your ** clothes? It

Dave! (02:00:23.116) And yeah, the easy answer is I didn't write the script, question mark. But the second answer is like, because it's super deep, and it's like filthy water in which you cannot see a single thing. And he even says in the movie, it's 60 feet deep.

Bryan! (02:00:26.18) Yeah.

Bryan! (02:00:32.879) pollute polluted water. Yeah.

Bryan! (02:00:40.139) Yeah. But yeah. So, a ways further, TJ sends the girls ahead on their own and disappears down a nearby tunnel for unknown reasons. They're really kind of dragging this like which of these guys is the killer thing out? Like I said, I don't, I always thought that I was supposed to think that it was this escaped killer, but whatever. As the girls are escaping, the minor suddenly emerges and hits Patty in the stomach with the pick killing her.

Dave! (02:00:53.483) Yeah.

Dave! (02:01:08.93) There's something so, again, every one of these deaths is kind of terrible from when they get here on, but like there's something so unceremonious about her death. Like everyone else has this really fucking graphic, gnarly death. She doesn't. And that's it. And then they just move on. There's something I think almost sadder about that. Cause she's another one that you really like. And like she just kind of gets it in the stomach and they move along.

Bryan! (02:01:15.237) Yeah.

Bryan! (02:01:21.335) She just gets it in the stomach, yeah.

Bryan! (02:01:27.975) like they didn't. Yeah, she's got a she's got great personality. Yeah. So, Sarah escapes. TJ eventually finds her and they arrive at the mine carts. So,

Dave! (02:01:39.63) This is where it gets a little Scooby-Doo for me. I mean, there is literally a part in Resident Evil 4 where you do this exact thing.

Bryan! (02:01:42.321) Yeah, so at the top.

Bryan! (02:01:49.603) Yeah. So at the top, the police show up with a bunch of miners. They start to make their way down. The miner finds TJ and Sarah as they board the mine cars. TJ fights them with the shovel. It's not a half bad set piece. They eventually tumble off, fight some more, leading him into a dangerous off limits part of the mine. Their fighting does a lot of damage to the supports. And so when the miners pick it stuck in the wall, he attacks with a knife that looks a lot like the knife from the first scream.

Dave! (02:02:17.452) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (02:02:17.895) Sarah takes the opportunity to pull the minors mask off. We see that it's not Harry Wharton, but it's Axel.

Dave! (02:02:24.722) I actually hate this part a little bit only because of the look on his face. Where I'm just like, why does he look stunned? Like, first of all, it's not that big a reveal. Like it's gonna be one of the two of them and he's the one who's not there, so.

Bryan! (02:02:26.543) I do too. Yeah, yeah, like.

Bryan! (02:02:42.432) the last of the script pages. they when they made the script pages. They kept them shot the ending last. And uh like maybe I'm the killer.

Dave! (02:02:55.78) It could have been either one of them. They didn't know.

Bryan! (02:02:57.135) But one of that what I think it's the guy who plays the guy who plays Axel says that like, they sent me off to Hollywood to have a cast of my arm made. So I just kind of did the path. Yeah, but yeah, so we flashback to Axel's youth and his father is getting ready for the big Valentine Bluffs dance when Harry Warden strikes kills him in front of Axel tearing out his heart.

Dave! (02:03:16.362) Now look, again, I don't want to be on the record supporting murder, but I kind of feel like Axel's father kinda had it coming.

Bryan! (02:03:24.405) So Axel traumatized hides under the bed.

Dave! (02:03:27.347) I don't know why that scene to me feels a lot like the opening to Pieces.

Bryan! (02:03:32.527) This one no the one of pieces is very silly This one really kind of bums me out because right before they cut away the kid is traumatized and just like frozen As well as any fucking sticks his thumb in his mouth and that part for some reason just feels a little Meaner than it needed to be. I don't know why it bums me out my way as it does

Dave! (02:03:40.742) and gets a spray of blood across his face.

Dave! (02:03:53.25) I think that's one of the that is the weird thing about this movie because they do the first I'm gonna say two thirds of this is they invest so much in the emotional story, the core of the story. And then they really lean into tearing it apart in a way that feels unnecessarily cruel.

Bryan! (02:04:11.991) It's mean and it's ghoulish, but without...

Dave! (02:04:14.71) But in a way that I kind of appreciate.

Bryan! (02:04:17.623) Sure, yeah, like there's not this I can't think of another movie of the period apart from maybe the burning again that goes the distance in the same way that this one does because like

Dave! (02:04:27.954) I just feels is slimy and sleazy, you know, in an exploitation kind of way. It's in that kind of maniac way. This is in a way that it almost knows what it's doing. By by killing Hollis in this way, it knows that it is killing the teddy bear of the movie in this really awful way.

Bryan! (02:04:30.54) It's vicious, yeah.

Bryan! (02:04:45.911) Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is it stands out because none of the other slashers have done this like Friday the 13th isn't even half as gory as this movie is but it doesn't invest in the doesn't invest in the characters in the same way. So like the deaths just feel like deaths like uh like they're just you know checking them off on the on the list like this one.

Dave! (02:04:56.729) Because they never invest in the characters.

Dave! (02:05:06.762) And so again, I think this is a good, you know, in defiance of, and I hate to do this because I think we put a lot, well, not way because I don't, but I think in general horror people, once they kind of, younger audiences caught on to sort of the Carol Clover argument, the final girl argument, people invest a lot in that. And the reality is that Carol Clover's argument is she is not right, I don't think. I don't, I mean, she's not. I think that it is one.

Bryan! (02:05:34.735) Well, no, we talked about it. We talked about it in the Halloween episode in that it's a bit antiquated.

Dave! (02:05:35.434) person's perspective.

Dave! (02:05:42.174) It is and it's also just one person's perspective that she's coming at from a, you know, a very feminist perspective. And it's fine. I think it's useful. It's contributed quite a lot to the discourse in general. But the idea that these are all about killing people for transgressions. It's kind of awful. And I think this movie demonstrates why she's not right. Because we get attached to, I think, the men more than the women.

And they're killed in the same way. And the reason that it works is because we care. It's the same reason why we hate to see Annie and Linda die in Halloween. It's because we like them so much. And that's why I hate that argument of like, well, it's the you know, it's because of their moral failings or whatever. And it's like, no, it's because these people actually took the time to build out characters that we care about. They should be celebrated and held up for making a movie like this. And unfortunately, they're not.

Bryan! (02:06:37.915) that. So using this distraction, TJ pushes Axel into the wall, which causes a collapse, trapping him under the rubble. Now TJ and Sarah run into the rescuers as the sheriff informs them that just before all this mayhem, they got a call from the hospital that Warden died five years ago.

Dave! (02:06:56.858) I'm glad the hospital got their shit together. That's why you don't call on the weekend.

Bryan! (02:06:59.703) I know the. No, so the. The rescuers dig axle out eventually revealing his arm, and this is one of my favorite parts of the entire movie. Yeah, so Sarah reaches out for him and grabs it. He grabs her arm and we cut to the inside the rubble axle busily works on severing his own worm with a knife and then they put.

Dave! (02:07:09.282) Well, no, Sarah has to go running back first. Why? Because she's a woman and she's fickle.

Dave! (02:07:20.638) Yeah. What I really like about this part though, is that they could have used this as a jump scare. Jason comes out of the water moment and they don't. He does grab her in a way that you're kinda like, ah, but it's not a big jump scare. It's sort of like, you know it's coming.

Bryan! (02:07:28.791) Yeah, and they don't. Yeah.

Bryan! (02:07:35.659) Yeah, she they pull Sarah back and she yanks his severed arm free. Yeah. So on the other side, he flees like a madman, cursing the town as he does, softly saying, Sarah, be my bloody Valentine.

Dave! (02:07:39.914) Yeah.

Dave! (02:07:48.446) Now this part, this could have been cheesy as shit because it's obviously so ADR, you know, it's a little goofy. I think it works though, because it sounds so hollow and spooky. It's just, it's a great line. Yup.

Bryan! (02:07:58.655) Yeah. Yep. Laugh. Laughing like a madman. We fade the black soft folk ballad about Harry Warden by Paul Zaza plays roll credits. Oh, it's not. He wrote it.

Dave! (02:08:07.866) Oh, no, that's not Paul Zaza. That well, he did. He wrote it. I can't remember the guy's name. He's I think Scottish folk singer. Because Paul Zaza had wanted to have like a real banger of a closing song, and they were like, sorry, we don't have the money. And he was like, all right, well, I know this guy. He's pretty good. I think we can get him to do it. And they do. And it's a great song.

Bryan! (02:08:27.448) This makes me re-examine my claim that Madman Mars was the first slasher to get his own theme song, because this movie was released in February of 81 and Madman was released in October.

Dave! (02:08:35.362) That's right.

Yeah, and it is fantastic.

Bryan! (02:08:39.715) Yep, so I stand corrected. Though I think the Madman Mars song is better. And scene, yep.

Dave! (02:08:44.118) And Fien. And then I ask to you, we are now, what is it, 40, well, 42 years from this movie.

How does this one hold up?

Bryan! (02:09:00.311) I think it holds up better than most. It doesn't have a legacy behind it like Friday the 13th, but in a lot of ways that kind of works against Friday the 13th since that kind of series falls apart pretty quickly. It's great. It's got fucking awesome special effects.

Dave! (02:09:03.395) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (02:09:24.523) it has very peculiar qualities to it that other movies don't have. And like watching it and sort of examining it very closely revealed to me just like how deep that kind of craftsmanship of the movie runs. Like it was made by a person who was very early in his career. And he still, despite the fact that he was making a movie that was kind of foisted upon him by the executive producer, he still set out.

Dave! (02:09:49.598) You still get the feeling though he takes it very seriously, like from reading interviews and watching interviews, you get the feeling that he took it very seriously and he didn't really think of it like it was just a horror.

Bryan! (02:09:57.399) Yeah, he set out to. No, he set out to it's despite it, you know, being a horror movie, he set out to make a good movie and he took it seriously and it fucking benefits because of it. I'm glad that the more violent version came out because prior to me seeing that one, I really kind of let this one kind of go. And without that without that stuff, it doesn't really quite have the impact that it does. There's something visceral and nasty.

Dave! (02:10:12.02) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (02:10:25.595) and it really kind of hurts a little bit more when your favorite characters die in such a terrible fashion.

Dave! (02:10:27.534) Mm hmm. Yeah, it's like watching Barb die in Black Christmas. You're like, Oh, God, I hate that.

Bryan! (02:10:34.047) Yeah, yeah. So yeah, no, this is a movie that really fucking holds up very well.

Dave! (02:10:39.586) I'm sort of a yes and no on it. I mean, in some, well, I'm much more of a yes than a no.

Bryan! (02:10:42.495) Well, again, there are parts of it that definitely do not hold up and it's yes.

Dave! (02:10:46.602) Yeah, the gender politics stuff, I'm a little like it's tired and it doesn't really work anymore. It feels a little gross and it's and it's kind of tough to watch that part of it. But if you can set that aside, I think this is a very underappreciated movie that probably got overshadowed by the MPAA part, by the fact that it is Canadian. So, you know, it kind of gets lumped in with a lot of the sort of junkier stuff that was coming out at the time.

Bryan! (02:11:12.973) an American's are racist against Canadians.

Dave! (02:11:14.966) But like it is, it just, it, they, this is, it is a representation of what you can achieve when you just approach something professionally and, you know, because how many of these fucking movies have we watched where the directors are like, well, I didn't really like horror pictures, but whatever. Like this guy was just like.

Bryan! (02:11:32.203) Yeah, yeah, like most of the time when I when I do the cast part, I talk about the directors like if it's not a person who's kind of. You know, had an interest in horror there, you know, most of my commentary was well they did some TV after this, and then they vanish and like that's that. But like George Michalka moves out of this eventually he doesn't really do genre stuff after this, but. He you know he takes it as seriously as anything else, and the fucking movie is better for it.

Dave! (02:11:58.902) I mean, you've got professional, all these are professional people working professionally in sort of the top of their craft. And I think that you come away with a movie that is I think really it's a pretty tight film that is still really fun to watch. It is really affecting in a lot of ways. You know, it feels a little dated, it looks a little dated. But in general, I think it still works really well. And I'm glad that it's finding a bigger audience. And I'm glad that it's also contributing to.

the sort of emerging discussions and interest in Canadian movies in general, because I think throughout the 70s and 80s, the Canadian film scene did kind of blow up. And there's a lot of really cool stuff that was coming out. And we're only just getting to see it now. I'm only just getting into Canadian genre stuff now because of Canadian International Pictures, that new company that vinegar syndrome is distributing. They're putting out a lot of genre stuff. That's really cool.

And so it's just nice to see stuff from another country that is very similar to what was coming out of the U.S. But it's just never been seen. And I think this is a good representation of that out of all the schlocky shit that was coming out because of the tax breaks. This one is like miles ahead.

Bryan! (02:13:06.383) Yeah.

Bryan! (02:13:14.391) Yeah, yeah, it really, it really was. It's just fucking, you know, there's a reason that it endures like it does. Not to mention that we covered it up top too, like fucking awesome killer on top of it, you know?

Dave! (02:13:25.674) Yeah, really cool looking. I mean, that's why Neca just keeps putting out that same fucking minor figure over and over again. And every time they do, I'm just gonna keep buying it. Why? Because I'm a dummy who throws money at everything.

Bryan! (02:13:34.565) Yeah.

Yeah, all right. So there it is. My my bloody Valentine. So yeah, we'll see you next time with our big anniversary show when we're covering Dawn of the Dead. So stay with us. We'll see you then.

Dave! (02:13:40.907) Eww! Fucking awesome.

Dave! (02:13:47.01) That's right.