Bryan! (00:06.712) You're listening to Bring Me the Axe. I'm Brian White, one half of this morbid equation, and I'm joined by my co-host and actual brother Dave White. Dave, how you doing?

Dave! (00:14.969) Hey, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good.

Bryan! (00:17.372) All right, all right. So 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. And there's no one else I enjoy chopping it up with more about trashy movies and 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 pretty much all the socials by searching Bring Me the Axe Horror Podcast. We've also got a sweet website now at bringmetheeaxe.com. You can listen to all our past shows there and read the transcripts.

And you can also contact us directly at bringmetheaxpod 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. And lastly, if you like what you hear, you can subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. And you'd be doing us a favor by leaving us a five-star review on Apple podcasts. Just want to get that all out of the way right at the top of the show. How am I sounding, by the way? Am I okay?

Bryan! (01:13.388) Like, this is my voice on. Yeah, cuz yeah, cuz you know, cuz no, but just the way my voice sounds, cuz I don't usually sound like this. We want to see go. Yeah, don't get the don't get the radio voice going. Yeah, cuz we went to see ghosts last night. And them being my favorite band in the world. And I know every word every song, I basically screamed along the entire way. And basically forgot what happens the next day when you do that all night long. So now I kind of sound like, you know,

Dave! (01:13.885) Your dulcet tones or like your volume?

Dave! (01:20.562) It's silky and smooth, what are you looking for?

A little bit, yeah.

Bryan! (01:43.508) Stick around after the pod for my one man show of whatever happened to baby Jane. I'll be doing both Joan Crawford and Betty Davis. I kind of sound like a Yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, so um, what's going on over here? Who's this? Do we have a guest? We have our very first guest. This is awesome. I'm very excited about this.

Dave! (01:51.218) Yeah, to quote Henry Rollins, the voice doesn't come snapping back the way that it used to.

Dave! (02:05.742) We have eight guests, we have our first guest.

Bryan! (02:11.512) She is one of the busiest people I've ever seen. She's a writer, one half of the horror movie Survival Guide podcast and a filmmaker with the documentary Out of Print under her belt and the recent Stephen King adaptation. I know what you need. It's Julia Marquesi. Julia, how are you? That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's probably like it's the middle spot on the bingo card. You know, the one that just give you for free.

Julia (02:25.172) Hi, I cannot express to you how excited I am to be your first guest. That makes me feel so honored. I can check it off the bucket list. I've never been like a podcast first guest.

Bryan! (02:41.412) But yeah, yeah. So like when we first started kind of tossing these ideas around about like playing around with having some guests on and sort of adding a third party to this, like it came like right around the time we started talking about doing these Stephen King movies. And you were kind of like the first name that came to mind because I followed you for a while on the socials. And I know for a fact that you've been to Bangor and you've actually been to the house.

And you're kind of a in my mind you're kind of like the first person that comes to mind like in terms of like Stephen King Fandom who's also you know got experience with this, you know doing podcasts and stuff. So it was just it was a natural It was a natural thing It makes it easy

Julia (03:23.249) Thank you. Well, it's very nice to be encouraged for things that I am naturally enthusiastic about. So, sure, right? And like, my enthusiasm is my kind of great thing because that's the thing I think is very infectious, right? Is something like when somebody really likes something, you're excited for them.

Bryan! (03:44.033) Yeah. And you've been you've been knee deep in it too with this with this with I know what you need like you're promoting it very heavily you've been. It's been in production for a little while as well like it's, I'm sure like it's been firmly center of mind.

Julia (03:44.796) But also my friends are kind of sick of hearing me talk about Stephen King, so it's nice to have people who are like, oh, let's talk to you about it. I go, yes, please.

Julia (03:56.215) Yeah.

Julia (04:00.297) Mm-hmm.

Julia (04:05.284) Oh, yes, for sure. And no, please.

Bryan! (04:06.504) Yeah, yeah, like how, like how, I'm sorry, go ahead. I was gonna ask you like, how far does this go back with like the Stephen King thing? I feel like for a certain, for certain people, it's something that you kind of discover really early on in your teenage years, and it kind of anchors itself there. Yeah.

Julia (04:23.284) That would be me. I read, I was the kid on the back of the bus reading Stephen King at 11 years old. So I read it and Pet Sematary and Carrie kind of concurrently. And Pet Sematary in particular really was the first one that got me into both horror, which I hadn't liked before, and Stephen King, which I hadn't really read before. So it was this kind of double whammy and I was obsessed with Pet Sematary. I watched it over and over and over.

Bryan! (04:34.686) Yeah. No.

Julia (04:48.7) And so I read, you know, heavily read throughout my life. And then I realized five years ago, six years ago now that I hadn't read the Dark Tower series, which is his master work. So I was like, okay, this is an eight book series. Let's get into it. Very, very excited. Uh, but I didn't realize how interconnected his universe is and how many of his books tie into the Dark Tower. So I stopped in the middle and I read everything related to it, which I didn't realize is kind of everything. So I've recently read, I've recently read everything I've finished.

Bryan! (04:58.476) Yeah. You're you're a scholar basically.

Julia (05:18.548) Everything. One could ask me many Stephen King questions and I would be able to answer most of them. So when I was doing that, I came across, I Know What You Need, which was written in 1976 and it's in night shift and I really loved it. And so I was like, how do you get a Stephen King adaptation rights? How do you do that? And so I emailed them and they have a program called Dollar Baby where you can buy the rights to certain short stories for a dollar for a year.

and you get to go out there and make that story. And it's so cool because Stephen King doesn't need to do that. And part of the contract is you have to send a copy of it for him to watch. So he, you know, yeah, you know he's gonna see it. So like, I haven't heard anything about it, but hypothetically he's watched it. And so I was very excited to set the movie in the 70s and because that's my aesthetic and also the story wouldn't work if it was modern and.

Bryan! (05:55.076) Oh, no kidding. So he's seen it. That's awesome. I'd heard about that. Yeah.

Julia (06:10.836) I got to shoot on location at the University of Maine where the story takes place. So in his actual dorm we shot and in the library and this beautiful campus. So it was really, you know, Stephen King nerd dream come true. And the fact that you think Stephen King and think of me is really nice. Like that makes me very happy in my heart. Cause you know, the people, the people have watched the film have said, it feels like you, but it also feels like Stephen King. And I feel like that's kind of the ultimate of what you want.

Bryan! (06:31.023) Yeah. That's great. So, all right. So here's a here's one to put you on the spot. What's your favorite novel? Okay.

Julia (06:45.36) it. Yeah. I mean, that was one of the very first ones. And honestly, like I, you know, when I was a kid reading on the bus, I really wanted to be in the losers club so bad. Like that was one of my, I was like, how can I be a loser? They're so amazing. Um, and obviously they're fictional, so that couldn't happen. But then I just, uh, was asked to actually officially join the losers club podcast. So I'm now actually a loser in the losers club. So I have actually achieved, I have achieved the dream.

Bryan! (07:08.817) Ah, that's awesome. You're just making dreams come true over there, like left and right. That's crazy. Dave, have I asked you that before? Like, what's your favorite? What was your favorite novel?

Julia (07:14.774) As long as they're Stephen King related, they seem to come through okay.

Julia (07:24.536) I wanna hear yours too, right?

Bryan! (07:26.365) Oh, I'll tell you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was.

Dave! (07:26.608) I don't I don't know I mean of his I think the first three are really solid I think the shining is really good I just read burnt offerings and having finished it I was just like wow that's basically the shining

Julia (07:40.838) Ah, interesting.

Dave! (07:42.55) But Burn Off Rings was published, I think, quite a few years earlier. But yeah, I think it's I think probably I think Salem's Lot is really good. I like that it's kind of like a like a bourgeois novel. It's like Peyton Place, but with vampires.

Bryan! (07:56.793) Yeah, yeah. That's that's actually that's the answer to my to my that's I that's uh Salem's Lot is my favorite one by like a long shot. I have to read the first one and I read the I read most of the second one and I got to a spot where I was like um it's not hooking me like I thought it would.

Julia (07:57.48) Mm-hmm.

Julia (08:04.192) Okay, have you read the Dark Tower series?

Julia (08:16.552) Okay, here's the thing though, if Sabin's Law is your favorite Stephen King novel, then you need to read the Dark Tower series. I'm not going to, no, I'm telling you man, I'm not going to elaborate, but I will say it'll make sense later.

This is what I do. I shove Stephen King onto people, you know? This is my job. Okay.

Bryan! (08:36.607) Yeah. Alright. Okay, okay. Alright, so.

Julia (10:03.852) So you guys know that if it says Stephen King's and then the title, he wrote the screenplay. But if it does, so that's the specific Stephen King's, this thing.

Bryan! (10:14.22) Oh, okay, actually, I did not know that because I actually have a note that's just like, just to show you what kind of a quantity he was in the 1980s, like they had to attach it to this one because it wasn't quite as well known as his other novels, but he was such a humongous commodity at the time. You could slap his name on anything and people would go see it.

Julia (10:32.02) It's also changing the name from the novelette, which is cycle of the werewolf. So they didn't keep that. So maybe they want to be like, Hey, same story, just so you know. Have you read that one?

Bryan! (10:35.68) Right, right. Yeah. That is one that I have not. I have not. I don't think I've ever even seen it. Right. Yes, Bernie Wrightson.

Julia (10:45.972) It's super cool because it's just one month for the entire year. And so it's just like, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's a cool idea. It's like, you know, every month has a little vignette and then there's art that goes along with it. That's really lovely. Yes, really good stuff. Two things, I just re-read it yesterday to freshen up. And this is always weird to me when this happens when...

Dave! (10:50.561) Yeah, it started as a calendar.

Julia (11:09.48) in a movie like the book they change because I almost always try to read the book before the movie and sometimes they change names for no reason it always flummoxes me so in and this is uncle al in the novelette and her and her name isn't jane it's kate and i'm like why they're so innocuous names why did steven king do that

Bryan! (11:13.223) Yeah.

Dave! (11:17.118) Red.

for no particular reason at all.

Bryan! (11:25.641) That's so weird. It's it's so arbitrary. Yeah. But No, no, no. They give you a little title card at the beginning just so you know it's 1976 here but like the rest of the movie is very clearly like I don't know it's the date is arbitrary. There's nothing that really kind of

Dave! (11:29.23) It's also set, it's set in like 1978 or something, or 1975 for no particular reason.

Julia (11:35.212) But the movie is not costumed that way. They're not in the 70s in that movie, right?

Bryan! (11:50.224) plants in a particular time. The fashion doesn't really reflect it, maybe a little bit. But almost immediately, I forget that it's set in 76. And it's such an arbitrary date that it doesn't even matter. No. That's a very good observation. So as.

Julia (12:01.664) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (12:02.206) Let me tell you something about this movie. This is a, I think this is a good movie that could be a great movie, but it cannot get out of its own way.

Julia (12:14.452) You'll have to...

Dave! (12:14.634) And I think everybody involved kind of agree. So if I don't know if either of you have the Blu-ray, but it's a movie that can't they. So on the Blu-ray, the commentary with Martha De Laurentiis, who was the producer, I think on this one, she was also Dino De Laurentiis' wife eventually, not at this time she wasn't, but and Dan Addius, the director. So Dan Addius and Martha De Laurentiis wanted this to be kind of a YA,

Julia (12:19.743) What do you mean by that?

Dave! (12:44.89) like a movie young adult thing for kind of for kids. And Stephen King and Dino De Laurentiis were like, no, we want to go hard R on this. And they never really worked it out. So they're kind of fighting each other throughout this whole movie. So you've got a movie that is essentially a coming of age story that is also gory as fuck. And the tone just bounces back and forth and you're never quite sure how you're supposed to feel. It's like.

Is this a sentimental moment? And then there's like a 12 year old boy being torn apart. And so it's just this, it's constantly like fighting with itself to be something and they never really settled on one or the other. And I think because of that, and this is what, what Martha De Laurentiis says, is that because of that, what they had done, it never really finds its audience as a movie. Cause it's like, is it for kids? And if it is, they can't get in to see the movie.

Julia (13:37.816) I kind of disagree with you, honestly, because I feel like the kind of horror movies that intrigue me most are character driven. So the fact that this is more kind of more about Marty and Jane than it is about the werewolf, I enjoy because I really like getting into their character. And then you do care if something happens to them. Because I think about it, you know, you have like the 2017 version of it. It's basically Stand By Me, but with a Pennywise inserted.

Right? You're getting the heart of it is these, the losers, these characters. And then the horror is kind of secondary to that. So I think there's just enough gore in this for me. I mean, I'll always take more gore, but.

Bryan! (14:16.287) Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of a mind with Dave on this one. It's mostly just it seems that it seems to lack a singular vision. And I think basically of all of the research that I did on it, it does seem to be a movie where everybody was butting heads with one another.

And that quality of it kind of shows. But we'll get there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dave! (14:36.578) I mean, it starts at the beginning with Don Cuscarelli, who doesn't, he makes it like two weeks on this movie and they fought so much, I think over the design of the werewolf was the big sticking point that eventually he, I think he says he walked away. I think they say he was fired. And I think Dan Addeus is like, never heard of him. Which is like, okay, dude, come on. We've all heard of him.

Bryan! (14:58.556) So as usual, we're going to talk about this from start to finish, so be warned, spoilers to follow. So let's let that run down the facts here. This was released in 1985, and some other movies that were released that year, but housed. And Life Force, you know, Tobe Hooper's notorious naked vampire movie. We also got Return of the Living Dead, Demons, and Googly's. Which is a really, really stupid, but very fun movie.

Julia (15:26.226) That's a solid list honestly. Yeah, you know, goolish

Dave! (15:27.874) Wait, was the last one Ghoulies? You know, that was the first big, is it Empire, put that one out? It was like the first big Empire movie. Like that was the one that made the machete load of money. Of all their movies.

Bryan! (15:35.4) Yeah. That's, that's, you know, it kind of makes, it kind of makes sense with the, the poster art that, you know, the, the art that was on the box, it just sells itself. Yep. See, here's the thing. We don't even have to describe it. You're seeing it right now as you listen to this. Yeah.

Dave! (15:45.874) Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Julia (15:48.198) It's the VHS cover that everybody remembers. You're like, oh yeah, the ghoulies got that in my brain forever.

Julia (15:58.059) Hahaha

Bryan! (16:00.148) So cast and crew, the director is Dan Addeus. And this was his first director's gig after nearly a decade of gigs as a second assistant director. Nowadays, like most of the people who were hired guns rather than on tours, he does a lot of television and he still does a good deal of work today. He wasn't De Laurentiis' first choice, as we said, the job originally was Don Cascarelli's, Don Cascarelli, of course, of Phantasm fame. And it sounds like it was a bit of a shit show to start off. And we-

hit a few hit a few points there where like everybody seemed to have conflicting visions for this movie so costarelli bows out or you know it depends on who's telling the story but it prompted dilorentis to bring in adius and i'm not really sure how the what the vector was for i don't really know how that happened

Dave! (16:46.774) He was like a second AD on a bunch of shit. So he came out of, there was a program, I think at USC, that he had gone into the film program and then like dropped out after a year and joined. It was like this second AD program, like a training program, vocational thing. So essentially it's like a pipeline right into movies. So he does that and gets dumped into the industry essentially and starts working on shit like airplane and ET. And I think that's kind of how he gets in

Bryan! (17:03.39) Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Alright, and the writer, as Julia mentioned, Stephen King himself. He

Dave! (17:16.662) with, there is a direct connection. I can't remember which movie it is, but that's how he gets involved.

Bryan! (17:29.236) And like we said, he wielded a tremendous amount of power over the production in this. And that's also kind of unique for a writer. Yes, yeah, so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Julia (17:37.132) Well, he was also like, this is height of addiction levels. So this is like near maximum overdrive, where you're like on, yeah. So this is a Coke party, a go-go, right? And I don't.

Dave! (17:44.014) This is right before.

Dave! (17:48.906) So, but he's doing it at this time. He's doing, he's writing this. He's I think starting to work on maximum overdrive. He's editing the last half of it. And he's starting to write, I think Tommy knockers. So he's doing like seven, like of course he's on cocaine. What else are you gonna do? Oh, and something about creep show too.

Bryan! (18:03.253) I'm not sure. Yeah. And oh yeah. Cuz Creepshow 2 comes along and uh not long after this but yeah, we did Maximum Overdrive in our last episode and oh boy that one is completely disconnected from reality in a way that is just so particular to itself. Uh this one I don't

Julia (18:03.276) Yeah.

Dave! (18:16.502) to doozy.

Bryan! (18:25.796) I don't get that vibe at all. It's not as out of control. It doesn't have like Stephen King at the helm and just kind of like doing everything you can. This one feels very much rooted in like a real place. Like it's a very Right, cuz Cat's Eye came out the same year. Yeah, yeah, it's a really good one. Oh my god. Yeah. Oh.

Dave! (18:36.998) It's also the last, it's the last of the De Laurentiis movies that he does because they had like a weird falling out at the end of this movie.

Julia (18:45.74) which is great.

It has one of my favorite sequences in all of horror cinema, the troll battle at the end. And it's like on the roller, like the record of the cats playing with it, it's genius.

Dave! (18:54.786) When it gets sucked into the fan.

Bryan! (18:55.16) It's like, yeah. It's the it's the only part of the movie. I haven't seen Cat's Eye in forever. I'm going to have to do something about that, but that's the only part that I remember. It's so good. And then the Goblin is so cool.

Julia (19:07.16) because it should be burned in your brain. Well, maybe.

Yeah, it really is. I wish it got more screen time. I think it's possible that maybe I connected more with this movie because it has a teenage girl protagonist, which is something like and not in a Carrie kind of way, right? Like, you know, I think it's unusual to have one who's so mild. Usually his characters are bigger when they're, you know, we get a lot of women with powers and whatnot, but I think they're actually their relationships really cute. And I thought.

Bryan! (19:14.052) Yeah. Like this little. It's

Dave! (19:38.143) Yeah, the two leads in this movie do great. Like, Corey, as Corey came, he's adorable, he's a great actor at this point. Like, you know, we don't have all the baggage. She's also great.

Julia (19:40.464) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bryan! (19:50.654) Yeah. Well, she was the Anne of Green Gables or something like that. Like that was her big, that was her big role. Like either before or after this. But yeah, this is not, well, this is, yeah. So this is not his first role. It's his first starring role though.

Julia (19:53.112) Mm-hmm.

Julia (19:57.172) And this is early for Corey Haim as well, right? He's only done a couple of movies. He's done Firstborn. No, he does Firstborn. He does Lucas. Lucas is right after this.

Dave! (20:00.43) I think it's his first movie or second movie. Yeah, Lucas was performing.

Bryan! (20:10.092) So yeah, so Corey Haim, obviously one of the two Corey's of legend, absolute icon of the 1980s, and a real sad story about how Hollywood chews people up and spits them out. Like I said, not his first role, but his first starring role. And so it goes. Of the two Corey's, I think he was my favorite. Yeah. Oh, no, really? Damn. Yeah.

Julia (20:24.257) I was obsessed with him when I was a kid. He was one of my, oh yeah, he was one of my number one. I wrote him letters, we're talking about that kind of fame. I was always kind of bummed about it because he never wrote me back. I got a lot of letters back that were obviously just robo-signed, which is fine. I was like, oh, Cory, but I'm always on his side and I'm sad that things didn't turn out for him. I was always hoping he did have his John Travolta comeback. You'd have this role that would just...

Bryan! (20:42.301) Yeah. Oh, right. He popped up in crank two, and I was like, Oh shit it's Corey Heim and then like he and then I think he died the same year I believe. Yeah, I know. But uh yeah, two years later he does the Lost Boys in the

Julia (20:52.18) launch them back into the stratosphere about Brendan Frazier.

Julia (21:02.13) aww, RIP Corey, we love him.

Bryan! (21:10.601) the story of Corey's begins not the only Corey to appear in six, Corey Feldman starred in up is Yeah. The Corys are what a what a bummer. Yeah. stars Everett McGill who is

Dave! (21:18.283) And he turned out to be a sex predator.

Dave! (21:27.446) Yeah, the 80s man.

Julia (21:28.288) Hollywood, it's so glamorous.

Dave! (21:35.492) Yeah, big head.

Julia (21:36.384) Big head!

Bryan! (21:36.988) immediately recognizable as Big Ed Hurley from Twin Peaks. This is not his first run in a De Laurentiis picture. He was also still guard David Lynch's dune. Then he went, oh, no kidding. All right, yeah. And he also went on again to work with Lynch in The Straight Story, which if you guys seen that, it's great. It's the last. I love it. I think it is adorable. It is the last thing you expect from David Lynch.

Dave! (21:44.406) That's how he got this movie.

Julia (21:52.68) Yep. Mmm. Ha ha.

Julia (22:01.292) Okay, I just remember, you know, very long scenes of a man going across the screen on a lawnmower a lot in that movie. That's what I remember.

Bryan! (22:07.52) Yeah, you know, here's the thing. A lot of people also talk very positively about Inland Empire, and I am not on that ship, because that's a lot of just still shots of Laura Dern just doing nothing. But yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's one that really stays with you. I'm also a very big fan.

Julia (22:21.836) Well, Twin Peaks though is my jam. I mean, the original OG season, I am all about it. I was very obsessed when I was in high school and obsessed still.

Bryan! (22:35.72) I recently went back to the people under the stairs and for him and Nadine to show up in that as sort of like... Yeah, yeah, but as like fucked up versions of themselves on Twin Peaks.

Dave! (22:43.195) That's why they're in it though. They're in it because of the show.

Julia (22:46.032) I know, but like, yeah, I really never wanted to see them in the S&M gear. And I was like, oh, you're like kind of frying my brain with that. I don't know if I'm okay with it.

Dave! (22:48.781) Yeah.

Bryan! (22:53.052) the yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. They're gonna give it to you but also this is this is a pre motorcycle crash role for Gary Busey. So, in in 88, he was involved in a, you know, a well publicized motorcycle crash which he wasn't wearing a helmet. Ironically, he was one of the outspoken like no helmet laws guys and uh note the the no helmet thing kind of **

he suffers a fractured skull and from that point on, he kind of gradually becomes the Busey that we know today. If you go, he's a little he's definitely a little wily, but like the guy that they had, remember that show I'm with Busey? That was obviously an exaggeration for reality TV, but like he really is kind of a just a maniac these days. And like a head injury will do that to you, like radically changes your uh your behavior.

Dave! (23:25.873) I don't know, I see shades of that beauty in this character.

Julia (23:27.525) Yeah.

Bryan! (23:49.22) And so if you go, if you look, and I noticed this today when I was kind of looking him up, if you like, check him out, the top image search results for him are him just looking like a madman. No, he's he I'll do this. Yeah, yeah, not this insane, but like, I feel like that was something that was definitely exacerbated by the by the accident.

Julia (23:58.328) Mm-hmm. But he's, he, he... He's always been insane.

Dave! (23:59.242) Yeah, he's not a great person either. Unfortunately.

Julia (24:13.54) I love that they cast him in this though, because I feel like Uncle Red should be this kind of like sympathetic guy who you're like, yeah, he'll be on their side. And then I'm like, I don't know what he's going to do. He seems kind of out of control.

Bryan! (24:24.084) I'm not sure. It's a great choice too because he really connects with the character and I guess he like ad libs most of his lines.

Dave! (24:25.014) Well, Dan Addius went like real hard for him. He like lobbied for him because Martha D. Lorenz didn't want him. And so Dan Addius was like, no, we're doing it with him or we're not doing it at all.

Dave! (24:40.266) Yeah, there's a bunch of ad-libbed shit in this.

Bryan! (24:42.156) And it's great. Like it's he's very natural. You could feel like there he definitely connected with it and kind of brings it out. It's like he's really like the third star, like the really the third leg that holds the thing up. It's it's he's a really great character in this movie. So let's do some notes. This is. Oh, no, I got a note about J. Shadaway. Yeah. So like like.

Dave! (24:59.666) You left out Jay Chadaway on this one. Left out my boy.

Julia (25:04.116) Hehehehe

Bryan! (25:07.904) Maximum Overdrive is a shot in and around Wilmington, North Carolina. You had a huge like studio property there and like that. He really got his money's worth out of North Carolina. The problem is we live near Maine and so like I know what I know what Maine looks like. It doesn't look like North Carolina. It is set in Tarker's Mills, which is one of the many fictional towns in Maine that King created, you know, reuses and mentions and other stories. Thing he picked up from H.P. Lovecraft.

Dave! (25:20.769) And there is nothing about this movie that looks like New England.

Bryan! (25:37.992) He's got his own short stories take place around real towns and locations in New England, a sort of persistent in-book universe. For King, his most well-known town is probably Castle Rock or Derry, depending on who you ask. And creature effects were done by Carlo Rambaldi, who up to this point is a goddamn legend, unsung hero of Hollywood special effects. He made E.T. god damn it. He made the alien. Yeah. Which makes the werewolf suit in this movie so suspicious.

Dave! (25:54.638) Yeah. He made ET.

Julia (25:59.564) Mmm.

Dave! (26:01.394) and the Xenomorph.

Dave! (26:06.99) So I got a little information on this werewolf. So originally the reason Cascarelli, so none of them liked it at first. They all thought, they all said it looked like a bear. And I honestly, I think it still looks like a bear, but apparently that De Laurentiis got so frustrated that he went to the UNC zoology program or something and was like, try, you know, can you help us make this look like a wolf?

And it's like, did you get the secretary? Because whoever helped you make this look like a wolf should be fired. Because it looks like a stuffed animal.

Bryan! (26:41.795) Yeah.

There's, there's an, I got like, I got a note in here towards the end, like when we really finally see it, because the wolf is kept. This was a sort of a Stephen King device, specifically for the movie, where you don't really get a good look at it. Like, this isn't the howling or American werewolf, like where the point is to come to the movie and see a transformation on screen. Like, this was supposed to be a shape in the darkness that you catch glimpses of. And that's. Yes.

Dave! (27:06.85) Well, this also has tons of Jaws influence in it.

Bryan! (27:10.732) Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. I actually have a note about that. But moving forward, the soundtrack is by Jay Chataway, who also did Maniac, Seer Maniac episode. He spent a lot of time in the 80s moving between productions for Bill Lustig, Canon Films and De Laurentiis. We were, we were, that was a movie that like, go back and listen to our episode. We spent a lot of time kind of re-examining it. I enjoy it.

Julia (27:24.936) We just did an episode on Maniac for my podcast as well. I am a giant fan of that movie. Thumbs up.

Dave! (27:25.41) End of s-

Bryan! (27:40.152) Not as much as I remembered enjoying it, but it's definitely worth a watch for sure. Awesome. It's all over the place.

Dave! (27:45.387) I'll tell you, Shadoway's score for that is awesome. His score for this though, it is really all over the place. It's like there are parts of it that are so sentimental and like just dripping. And it's kind of like this feels like weird kids TV. Like it feels like the late 80s HBO stuff.

Bryan! (28:00.475) Yeah, but then there's other tracks that are. Yeah, but then there's tracks in the middle of it that are that like buzzy keyboard stuff that he does. Yeah, yeah, it's all over the place.

Dave! (28:05.91) Yeah, that great, yeah.

Julia (28:09.664) Well, I think you have to also remember too, there's a lot of things going around this time that are kind of a mashup of this. Like you think of the Monster Squad, right? Which is a movie mainly about the kids that happens to be monsters as well. So I think there's this time right now, which is good for kid-ish horror, which I think this is, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I don't feel like as an adult, I watch it and think that. I feel like...

Dave! (28:30.41) I think that's what Dan Addy has had in mind, is he wanted it to be that kind of monster squad, kid friendly or kid friendly-ish. And that's why they're constantly like, okay, great. But then they, you know, they're pushing for this hard R thing. And it's like, okay, you can't have it both ways.

Bryan! (28:38.127) Yeah. This is the same year as the goonies, which I don't I mean maybe they were aware of the production but like that movie sort of set the pace for like the

the kind of kids in peril, like adventure movies, because I always felt like Monster Squad is the goonies for kids who like horror. Explorers is the goonies for kids who like sci-fi. Like there was a bunch of those movies that all kind of came out at the same time. And this definitely kind of feels like it's definitely, it's definitely cracking that seal. Like you can see that a part of it, like the director's vision was like, we want to serve this up to kids while like, you know, other.

The content makes that kind of impossible because you can't really get around the R rating. I think, yeah, I think it would have been messed up if it would have been way off brand for a Stephen King movie to be sort of sold to children in that way. I don't know. That's just the impression I get because that wasn't really his thing.

Dave! (29:25.792) I guess that was what I was getting at. That was the point, was that they wanted this to be, and it feels like a kids movie. It has that vibe to it, but the kids couldn't get in to see it.

Julia (29:26.332) And you shouldn't.

Julia (29:46.764) Well, you have to remember, yes, they couldn't get into the movies to see it, but this is when the VHS is like having its heyday and you may not be able to get in the movies, which you could rent that VHS.

Bryan! (29:52.944) Oh, god. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember that. I remember the Well, also, the marketing on this movie was particularly poor. Like, the posters didn't really sell it well. Um I personally, I thought that trailer was pretty good but like, that's, I don't, I don't, like, I don't know if I ever actually saw it. Uh no, that's the original theatrical trailer.

Dave! (29:56.238) But the movie ends up tanking in the theater because the box office receipts were so bad because kids, nobody wanted to see it.

Dave! (30:14.626) Yeah, but I think Scream Factory cut that trailer.

Julia (30:19.948) Didn't you, couldn't.

Dave! (30:20.142) Because I was trying to remember the cover to this VHS and I could not remember it.

Bryan! (30:24.269) It was white. Yeah. Yeah, but you like, yeah, it does get, you know, I mean, it should, the title alone should like imply werewolf, you know, I mean, it's kind of like it's the common element of all werewolf stories, I don't know I the basically the marketing didn't did nothing for the for the movie. But I again that videotape was one like

Julia (30:24.328) It's like them both of them look at the kids looking in an anthisic animated and there's a bat in the foreground with the wolf paw. Okay.

Dave! (30:30.75) Still got nothing. Nothing comes to mind.

Bryan! (30:49.072) go to the video store, I would always go to the horror section, flip that one over because you saw Everett McGill with the with the eye patch juxtaposed with Corey Hayne with the fireworks and I was like, oh, that's that looks awesome. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But I did not I did not have the presence of mind to even consider that because I'm just like reading the text and I'm like, this looks great, man, like

Julia (31:01.228) They put him with the eye patch on the back of the VHS. That's a spoiler.

Dave! (31:04.682) Yeah, this is giving it all away.

Julia (31:07.88) I would have been furious if I had rented that and been like, what? You ruined it for me on the box.

Bryan! (31:18.916) This kid shooting fireworks into people's eyes. There's a werewolf apparently. Yeah. Now have you ever seen the, that Night of the Living Dead box that kind of makes the rounds every now and then that actually has the end of Dwayne Jones being thrown on the fire on it? Yeah. So, Oh yeah.

Julia (31:32.556) Oh, no, come on.

Dave! (31:33.774) Jesus.

Julia (31:37.204) I'm so, I know we're doing, it's hilarious because like my podcast is all spoiler like this. Like we go through the whole movie, we talk about everything, but in real life I am so anti-spoiler, it makes me furious. And it become, it's because of Twin Peaks. It's because when I was in junior high, the Who Killed Laura Palmer, the episode came out and everyone was talking about it at school and I didn't watch and I was like, oh, tell me, because I'll never watch the show. And then they did. And then later I became obsessed with the show and I was like, I know who it is. And I was so mad.

Bryan! (31:49.256) I. Yep. Ah. I'm kind of the same way. I'm not quite as I'm not quite as passionate about staying free. Like, if I find out it's a bummer, but like, you know, whatever, there's more.

Julia (32:06.216) So I never, from then on, I was like, no spoilers, never ever.

Bryan! (32:16.54) There's more happening in the movie. I can still kind of get carried away. Oh, God, yes. Yeah, I think that's really what worked for barbarian with me. Like everybody kept saying, like, go into that one blind. Don't look at nothing. I will not tell you nothing about it because that movie surprised the hell out of me at every turn. But yeah, yeah. So let's get into it. The title.

Julia (32:18.912) Well, trailers right now like give everything away, you know, so that's why I like I don't really watch trailers unless I'm in a cinema and I can't help it because I'm like the less I know the better.

Dave! (32:24.75) I'm sorry. Right you see did you see who the DP is on this. Armando Nancy who was viscantes cinematographer on everything is later stuff.

Julia (32:32.008) Yeah, I haven't seen it yet, so don't tell me.

Bryan! (32:49.702) Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Uh yeah. the De Laurentiis movies like Yeah. Oh yeah. Especially that nice disc and it really

Dave! (32:57.622) Yeah, and this guy is, this movie looks gorgeous. Like the cinematography on this is stunning.

Dave! (33:08.386) But apparently he spoke no English at all. So that must've been interesting.

Bryan! (33:14.637) Uh, yeah, it's kind of like we were talking about Raw Deal earlier, where like that's that was like that. If the only thing that does not make that a police, your test go is that it's got Arnold Schwarzenegger in it. Like the crew, the writers, everybody like the writers were some of more conies guys or guys or no, not more corny. Sergio Leone. Not Dardano, but it was it was some of the one of the others. Dardano, security. Hmm. My God.

Dave! (33:33.747) So that would be Dardano Siketty, basically.

Bryan! (33:42.916) But yeah, the movie opens on a title card, which like we said, places it in 1976, the same year that Carrie hit theaters. The narration informs us that it's a full moon and that Tarker's Mills year-long nightmare was just beginning. And we begin on the local drunk who's a sort of Stephen King mainstay archetype. He's out on the tracks doing a little work. We're being stalked. This is a...

Dave! (34:06.37) Oh, yeah, we're going to get this. The Stephen King stock characters. This movie is rich with Stephen King stock characters. Yeah.

Bryan! (34:11.096) Rogues gallery of them. Yeah. Oh, that's a very good point.

Julia (34:13.196) But also you mentioned Sam by me, which is, you know, we get the Richard Dreyfuss narration going back to his childhood self. And this is the same for Jane, right? It's just her adult self talking about this incident.

Dave! (34:24.126) This is some real boomer nostalgia bullshit, this movie. They dip in and out, but the weird thing about the narration is that it starts off with a strong narration and then it just fucking disappears for like an hour and 20 minutes.

Bryan! (34:37.58) Yeah, it pops up in weird spots where it almost feels like the story was kind of getting lost a little bit and she kind of centers it again. Because it does sort of, you get it at the beginning, you get quite a bit at the end, and then there's like little bits and pieces throughout of her just kind of like contextualizing everything. Because also, the flow of time in this movie is very strange. Because where the book was set across an entire year, this is like a few months from like summer to f*ing summer.

I think the end of spring is this. We're kind of going into summer and it ends on Halloween, but it doesn't move. It all seems to happen night after night after night. So it's really kind of weird how things kind of feel a little fluid. Yeah, yeah.

Julia (35:21.996) Well, and that's the thing I like about werewolf movies and vampire movies is that every movie or has a different rules for each character each monster. So you never know, especially with werewolves, can they change at will or is it by the moon? Right. And you have to

Bryan! (35:36.468) Yeah, because the whole moon thing with werewolves, basically you either throw that out the window and kind of play by your own rules or you set your movie on one night and that's very restrictive. Yeah, so the this drunk guy here is getting stalked from something behind the bushes. We catch it. He catches a glimpse of a large clawed footprint and then his stalker emerges and literally tears his head off.

sending it sailing through the night. Uh I love it. It's it's a it is it's because it's like slow mo and it's like it's cast in you know against the night sky and it's a good looking head too. Uh but then after that a howl is heard throughout the town. We get a couple of shots and like people kind of like as they as they hear the they hear the howl but then in the daylight, we had a big town event where everybody is bringing some sort of casserole to the table like literally.

Julia (36:05.448) Yay.

Dave! (36:07.301) And it's great, it's such a great moment.

Dave! (36:31.37) I guess so I got to stop you here because I got a question. I you know, I watch a lot of 80s movies now, Julia. I don't know how old you are or where you grew up, but we grew up in New England in the 80s and I you see this shit in movies all the time where it's like big like family picnics or like town founder day or whatever. Like we grew up in a really small town. I don't remember shit like this happening ever.

Bryan! (36:53.407) Okay, I've got a counter to that because you were probably too little to remember it. But when we lived in Marblehead.

they used to do this sort of thing. And like this actually kind of brought that memory back where at Halloween, the whole town used to do like a big like everybody comes downtown and they had the big costume party and the YMCA had that had a terrifying haunted house or at least you know, it's terrifying to yeah, yeah. But, but like they did that. And then our neighborhood in the middle of the summer

Dave! (37:18.868) So that's so they don't get kidnapped by Satan. That's what happens in the 80s. Everybody.

Bryan! (37:27.864) had that again another like costume thing where we'd like put on costumes like march around the neighborhood and there was like a big like barbecue in that in that field that was adjacent to the to the radio station was the bottom of the hill and I you probably don't remember it because you're probably like four or five at the time but like yeah like one oh I'm sorry oh my god of all the

Dave! (37:34.216) Fuckin' rich white people.

Julia (37:44.684) Well, I grew up in Las Vegas, so there's nothing like this happening in Las Vegas.

Dave! (37:53.468) Like I feel like I just have mediated memories of all this stuff, because you see it in everything. And I'm like, this doesn't feel like real life to me.

Bryan! (38:00.085) Yeah, when we moved up, when we moved up to New Hampshire, that definitely ceased. Northampton would, no, our motto is fucking live free or die. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so again, everybody, and like literally everybody is bringing a casserole to this thing. Like they show like a sort of like

Dave! (38:06.422) It's not a friendly state.

Dave! (38:12.15) Our motto is, get the fuck away from me, god damn it! Doesn't all fit on the license plate, but you get the point.

Bryan! (38:26.16) panning shot of the table. It's like covered in like dishes and ambrosia and like all kinds of like 70s food.

Dave! (38:34.687) It's just the worst shit you don't want to eat.

Julia (38:37.241) I don't know man, ambrosia is pretty tasty. You get that those fluffy marshmallows. I mean

Bryan! (38:39.348) It is. Don't sneak anything weird into the jello though because I I'm not going for that but uh yeah Terry O'Quinn he's uh he plays the he's the police chief for yes yeah and the stepfather um he introduces Reverend Lester Lowe played by McGill to address the crowd and this is where we meet teenager Jane Coslon or brother Marty who's played

Dave! (38:40.523) Ugh.

Dave! (38:52.043) Teach on Locke.

Dave! (38:56.398) Oh yeah.

Dave! (39:04.986) Man, Jane is a fucking asshole.

Bryan! (39:08.036) I, you know, here's the thing. I kind of feel for her because she says like Marty was the cross I had to bear. Her parents foist him on her.

Dave! (39:16.746) Listen, that is some crazy, ableist bullshit. This movie where they're just like, you do everything for him. It's like he's in a fucking wheelchair.

Bryan! (39:26.817) He's in a sweet wheelchair though. Jesus, it's got a motor on it.

Dave! (39:29.538) So I'm gonna jump in because Dan Addius makes a very, very early on. I don't know if you've listened to the commentary. He makes a point of saying, what was it? It's like, oh yeah. So his whole vision for this movie is that the whole movie is about Marty overcoming his disability. How do you overcome being in a wheelchair?

Julia (39:51.648) Maybe it's his mindset. Like he, you know, he felt like.

Bryan! (39:54.012) He's definitely...

Dave! (39:54.198) But so they go out of their way to try to make it that or in the commentary. But no, they very, very rarely in this movie. Do you feel like he is sort of self defeating or that he ever feels bad? There's just like some ham fisted comments in there. Yeah, like he's climbing trees and shit.

Bryan! (40:06.037) Oh no, he's plucky as hell in this movie.

Julia (40:06.332) No, there's...

Julia (40:09.96) Yeah, but there's that shot. He is, but there's the shot of him watching all his friends play baseball and he can't play.

Dave! (40:15.262) So I think that feels like an ins- that feels like a late insert where they were like, oh yeah, we were supposed to do this with the story. How do we do it? And they just kind of jam that shot in there because never in this movie, do you feel like he feels bad for himself or that other kids feel like they're all really welcoming. Even in that shot, they're like, hey Marty, we're gonna go do whatever fucking kids do. Do you wanna come with us? And he's like, no, I gotta go. It's like, they want us to think that, but they're not really selling it that hard.

Bryan! (40:32.822) Yeah. So, this is all like they this is a big setup

the you know the next scene where Marty and his friend Brady are conspiring to scare Jane with a snake. I said this time that we find out that Marty is wheelchair bound but it's a sweet wheelchair. It's got handlebars and a motor. Um a little sign on the back says it's called the silver bullet but the prank goes too far. Jane ends up in a puddle and then she retreats humiliated to the bushes to take her ruined panty hose off as she witnesses a woman tearfully telling her boyfriend that she's pregnant while he shakes her off and tells her.

Hey, remember the good times, babe. Yeah, clearly. Yeah.

Julia (41:22.496) off.

Dave! (41:22.665) I actually I love this shot. I love this whole scene because this is that kind of bourgeois novel thing that I really Stephen King does really well.

And I mean, pretty consistently throughout his entire career. But like, you just get that like small town, people are talking shit. It's not my baby. Like, it feels very paid in place. Like, it's that the shot is great. The whole the whole scene is I think it's fantastic.

Bryan! (41:46.84) Yeah, and they're clearly local talent too, because nobody in Maine talks with a southern accent. Yeah, yeah, but the you know, and now we now we go home and they really sort of nailed down like what a burden Marty is to her. She says it a few seconds earlier, but her parents do kind of stick her with that responsibility because either one of them could have helped him to his chair and get him into the house. But they had like baskets to carry and shit.

Dave! (41:51.21) Yeah, for Maine, these people are oddly southern.

Julia (42:13.516) They had groceries!

Dave! (42:16.554) So this is that weird this is enough this is like a stock Stephen King thing where it's like the Association with this of like disability and sort of purity in some way. It's really kind of It doesn't feel great But it really I think the phrase I don't and I either one of you tell me if this sounds right I think the phrase is the tyranny of diminished expectations. Is that does that sound right? It was like a It's like a right wing. I think it was big in the 80s, but I think it's still probably pretty pop

Bryan! (42:27.663) Yeah Hmm

Julia (42:40.152) I've never heard that.

Dave! (42:46.526) it was a kind of a right wing concept of like, if you sort of make accommodations for people who are marginalized or whatever, then you're kind of doing them a disservice because they're not gonna be able to pull themselves. Like it's real, like right wing bullshit. Yeah, it's real right wing bullshit, but it's like, there's a lot of that in this, like in either in his parents or in the sister where it's like, if you don't.

Bryan! (43:03.468) Oh, it's the pull yourself up by the bootstraps thing. Yeah.

Dave! (43:13.01) let him do for himself. It's like, yeah, he can't because he's in a fucking wheelchair. Like, yeah, but it's, there's a lot of that in this story in particular, but he does it a lot in the 80s in particular, where it feels a little like, oh, about that.

Bryan! (43:28.496) But that night, they make up in a really, I think it's a very sweet scene where Marty kind of rolls into a room, and she pretends that she's being asleep. She doesn't want to talk to him. And he puts a little money on her table there to sort of buy new pantyhose. And you know, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Dave! (43:43.048) but she specifies she can get a pair of legs at the farm i just love that she's very specific about it like i can get a pair of legs for 149 or 159 i don't i don't know i hope so i love how specific it is though

Julia (43:51.06) Was that product placement perhaps? Who knows?

Bryan! (43:56.364) I would have loved to have actually seen it because as soon as she said that, I was like, those are the eggs she's talking about. Yeah. But yeah, so they we also find out that Uncle Red is getting divorced again and that he's a drunk. Yeah.

Dave! (44:10.038) Yeah, this is the I think I texted you. I was like, this is the most raggedy of all Stephen King's movies. Like the public, the moralizing and hand wringing in this movie is just off the charts.

Bryan! (44:21.undefined) Yeah, but nobody has a secret stash of like illegal weapons. So that's it. That's doesn't have that going for it. But elsewhere in town, the pregnant woman from before is in a room pounding an entire bottle of pills while the unanunced soccer moves up toward the house and then up to a room. But now we see that it has furry hands and it bursts into a room and attacks her giving us glimpses of its face and teeth general vagueness of its shape, which was King's intention for the wolf in this movie. He never intended for us to truly see it.

Dave! (44:24.791) That's true.

Dave! (44:50.254) Because it looks like a big stuffed bear.

Bryan! (44:50.34) But the thing that really kind of. Yeah, the thing that kind of gets me about the scene is she is fully intending to kill herself, and then the thing comes in and she's like, oh, God, somebody help me. So. I know that's. Just you just go to sleep rather than, yeah, being shredded, but like he's doing her a favor. I. Yeah.

Julia (45:00.588) Well, you don't want to get, you wouldn't want to get torn to shreds. I mean, there's a different thing. You take pills so that doesn't happen. So you lay down peacefully and die peacefully.

Dave! (45:01.067) This scene is great.

Julia (45:13.464) Well, he'll, we will.

Dave! (45:13.646) We're gonna get a call back to that later at the end of the movie and it's- it is weird.

Bryan! (45:18.272) And the house mother goes up to her room. She finds her again, shredded. It's a really, it really is a good scene. Like, there's a lot to, there's a lot to, yes, it's very jello in a lot of ways. Because like, the hands are very, are very prominent in it. I f-

Dave! (45:22.03) I love this scene. I think it's fucking great.

It has, it feels really Italian to me.

Dave! (45:31.234) Yeah.

Julia (45:31.507) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (45:35.562) And it has that like really, it's you don't really see her get killed, but you see the aftermath of it that feels very like woman laid out on the stairs of some fucking cathedral in Rome.

Bryan! (45:46.18) I feel like I've seen that shot in an Argento movie. Yep. So, uh, yeah, at the local bar, loudmouth Andy Fairton is talking shit about the local police chief, Joe Haller. Yes. Yeah. See, yeah, I can't remember his name off the top of my head. He's a very well-known, like, TV character actor. I believe he was on one of the, like, one of those long-running, like, crime scene shows.

Julia (45:48.873) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (45:56.754) Is this the dad from Life Goes On? I knew it!

Julia (45:58.728) It is.

Bryan! (46:15.216) but I'm drawing a blank. Oh, he's a riot because like every time he's in the sheen, he's like uh Haller couldn't catch a cold. He couldn't you know like he this is Yeah. It gets into a verbal sparring match. I mean but also with the kind of dopey deputy character that they've got um and some of the locals

Dave! (46:16.734) He was on Life Goes On, too. Yeah, he does.

Julia (46:18.106) He's got sweet chops in this movie.

Dave! (46:28.138) Yeah, he... As rabble rousers go, he is rousing all of the rabble, and he is doing a fine job at it.

Bryan! (46:44.012) And the heat is turned down by bartender Owen, who is played by yeah, Hollywood maniac of legend, Lawrence Tierney.

Dave! (46:47.147) Love that guy.

Dave! (46:50.962) Yeah, who I believe was in prison and that's where he learned how to act. I'm pretty sure he was in prison with who was a machete. What's Danny Trejo? Yeah, they were in prison together. I'm pretty sure.

Julia (46:51.116) Yeah!

Julia (46:56.845) Bye.

Julia (47:02.078) Daytreeho.

Bryan! (47:02.302) Oh Danny Trejo. Oh my god. Jesus. Yeah. Listen, you really wanna play Hamlet a little bit less hammy, you know? Yeah. Oh god, Lawrence Tierney, if ever a movie needs a bartender with like a with that voice, he's the go-to guy. He's got the peacemaker. It's a baseball bat with the peacemaker like uh carved into it.

Julia (47:05.536) Wow, I bet if you fly on the wall for those conversations.

Julia (47:12.844) Hehehehe

Dave! (47:14.51) Hang on.

Dave! (47:22.206) And the and the peacemaker.

Dave! (47:28.858) Also, nary a woman to be seen in this bar.

Bryan! (47:28.924) uh nope you might you might call that Chekov's Peacemaker so yeah so it's just it's we're introducing we're sort of broadening the scope of characters in this like this is a town with people in it and uh some of them like the like the police chief and apparently Andy Farriton does not so as school lets out Marty and his friend Tammy ride home

Julia (47:35.041) Ha ha.

Dave! (47:35.058) Yeah, well... Chekhov's dopey peacemaker.

Bryan! (47:59.08) But at her school, or at her house, rather, she points out that she's been hearing noises at night from the shed, that they're scary. And then at the same time, we meet Tammy's father, another regular Stephen King archetype, the creepy, abusive dad.

Dave! (48:11.476) Oh, wait, I'm going to tell you, this is the moment when I noticed Chado a score is when they're riding back and like he's in his wheelchair and she's kind of riding around him. And it has this really weird like, I don't know if either of you remember in the late 80s, HBO had shows like was that like Encyclopedia Brown and shit like that, where it was like very specifically kid friendly stuff. And it all had.

Bryan! (48:29.192) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's very, it's very whimsical. It strikes me as like he just kind of like lifted it from Jerry Goldsmith. Um it's it Yeah.

Dave! (48:33.578) that kind of like real syrupy sentimental score. And it like jumps out at you in this one.

Dave! (48:46.486) You know, maybe, but it's it is very it feels very TV specific, which is probably I mean, Jay Chataway went on to basically make a career on TV in the 90s.

Julia (48:55.084) Can we just point out that Marty and Tammy kiss right here? Because I think that's very significant.

Dave! (49:00.691) It is and it's a cute moment.

Julia (49:01.997) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (49:04.348) her dad.

Bryan! (49:06.561) the guy's name. Yeah. It's yep. But uh already know this guy is a cripple and he announces that Hitler. He I'd electrocute them

Dave! (49:09.774) Ah, yeah, the shit that comes out of this guy's mouth. So.

He's another Stephen King stock character, though, where it's like you gotta hate him because he's so fucking trashy. But this is that weird Reagan era, like real, like liberal, liberal kind of construction of conservatives in the 80s. So what he says is, damn cripples, ought to electrocute them all and balance the goddamn budget. It's like Jesus fucking Christ, Stephen King. For God's sake.

Bryan! (49:39.043) Yeah. It's so on that it's so on the nose. It's just the bluntest shit in the world.

Dave! (49:46.274) But it's like, it's really, it's a, he's a character that's like a backstop for like liberal outrage and mockery. Like he's, he's conservative, so he's trashy. So he's drinking in the daytime. So he watches wrestling and it's like on and on and on. It's like, we get it, he sucks.

Julia (50:01.42) Do you know who definitely had product placement in this movie? Ryan Gold. Because at the beginning, the railroad worker is singing the Ryan Gold song, and then now you see the dad drinking a bunch of Ryan Gold here.

Bryan! (50:06.124) Mm. Red. Is it Reingold?

Dave! (50:06.844) Yeah, Pepsi.

Yep.

Bryan! (50:11.784) Oh yeah. See, I saw the I saw the beer bottle and immediately red stripe jumped to mind. Yeah.

Dave! (50:14.986) So.

Julia (50:18.913) Yeah, it's the same bottle.

Dave! (50:18.926) The funny thing about that scene, that scene in the beginning with the Rhinegold where he's singing the song is in the original script. You could find the original script online somewhere. I can't remember where, but it's out there. The original script, the werewolf also starts singing the song.

Bryan! (50:35.72) right. There's gotta be one. Right. Apparently, the werewolf, the wolf in the in the story talks sort of right like he can vocalize, but it's like grunts and growls that sort of make an approximation of speech, which is the thing. Yeah.

Julia (50:35.776) Werewolf musical have we had that yet because that needs to exist

Dave! (50:37.514) Yeah, no, there is a bunch of there's a bunch of goofy shit in this. And I think someone thank God somebody was like, OK, man, look, we cannot put all this in here. We got to cut the werewolf song.

Dave! (51:01.922) Well in this script, he is a real ham. I'll tell you that.

Bryan! (51:05.164) Yeah, that's but that's a quality of writing that I really like. Like H.P. Lovecraft did that a bit like King. No, but. Yeah. Yep.

Dave! (51:10.15) Oh, I hate that shit about Stephen King. He cannot help himself when it comes to like the goofy fucking dad joke every time he'll go for it. I'm glad someone called him off on this one. Like, look, we got to cut the werewolf song, you know, we're.

Julia (51:24.444) I am pro werewolf musical, I will say that. There is all movies are always better with music. My motto is movies are always better with a dance number. When everyone comes up, I'm happy. So if there was like a big werewolf dance number, I'd be very happy in this.

Bryan! (51:37.231) I'm going to pitch. Let's pitch that movie. It's it's a werewolf musical. Yeah. So, uh yeah. Absolutely. Yes, there is. Yeah. But I mean, like, let's really, oh

Dave! (51:37.246) Oh yeah, I want a deleted scene for sure. I just don't want to end the movie.

Julia (51:39.408) Oh, there is a... Right.

Dave! (51:46.614) but also with tap dancing.

Julia (51:48.436) Well, I mean, there is a werewolf vampire musical number in Fright Night 2 in a bowling alley. So we do see some of them dancing werewolves there. And Teen Wolf, Teen Wolf.

Dave! (51:53.59) That is true.

That is a Tommy Lee Wallace original.

Bryan! (52:03.42) Alright, but uh, no, it could be. We'll take it to Broadway. Yep. I know. Yep, guess who's gonna die next? So we enter Uncle Red, who is indeed quite drunk. Drinking out of an entire bottle of Wild Turkey while playing cards with Marty. Yeah, but he's the fun uncle.

Julia (52:03.551) But Teen Wolf's not a musical.

Dave! (52:06.807) But it can be.

Julia (52:07.857) I would like that.

Ooh!

Dave! (52:12.534) Anyway, these damn cripples. We oughta electrocute all of them. Well...

Dave! (52:23.106) Yeah, it's just fucking wild turkey straight out the bottle.

Bryan! (52:33.372) in Marty's life and he's kind of like Yep. Yeah. Yeah, he's kind of like he's kind of like Mike's father.

Dave! (52:34.402) So here's my question about this. Uncle Red, Uncle Al, if you will, he's supposed to be Marty's father figure, but Marty has a father.

Julia (52:44.46) who we barely see in this movie at all.

Dave! (52:47.926) Like, why don't you just kill off the father?

Julia (52:50.804) Well, because I think his parents are serious, right? So like he needs to have somebody who has a sense of humor about him and treats him kind of because his parents treat him like he's handicapped all the time. Right. But Uncle Red doesn't at all. He treats him totally normal. So I think that's a good despite.

Bryan! (53:00.213) Yeah. Right. Yeah. His dad and his dad in this movie's a lot like Mike's dad in Stranger Things where he's just he's around but like barely conscious of anything that's happening. Yeah.

Dave! (53:00.226) Oh yeah, his mom's a real stick in the mud, I'll tell you that.

Dave! (53:15.246) That's kinda like an 80s dad.

Julia (53:17.107) Yeah.

Bryan! (53:20.272) But yeah, but this is another one of those things. This is kind of like Jack Torrance in a little bit. At least the way that I see this character is, this is Stephen King kind of working something personal out on the page because he's... Yeah. Yeah, he's on the outs with the family. He's getting divorced.

Dave! (53:33.142) But maybe unconsciously because there's not, his a lot of his novels deal with substance abuse. This one, it's in there. This shit is real heavy in there, but it seems like it's not quite so conscious. So.

Julia (53:44.983) And it's.

Dave! (53:48.554) But Adidas says in that commentary that Marty and Uncle Red's, they're kind of on a parallel track, I guess, in terms of like a narrative arc. And it's like, I don't really get what that means, but I guess.

Julia (54:02.176) Well, this is I mean, his alcoholism is really pushed in the script. So it not really in the novel at all. So this is something that he made just for the movie as he wanted this to be part of his character. But the thing is, is like Gary Busey. And I feel like this is the same with Jack Nicholson is like, they already seem insane to begin with. Right. So like they seem always on the edge of being out of control, which is what makes them.

Dave! (54:07.18) Hell yeah.

Bryan! (54:21.729) Yeah. There's, there's something about his presence, that is a little much right.

Julia (54:26.88) Like Gary Busey is great in this movie and he makes me laugh. He's really hilarious and he's really giving it. But I'm also like, he always freaks me out no matter what. Like you're just this creepy, creepy guy.

Dave! (54:42.333) Well, and some of those ad libed moments really feel like they're about to kind of fly off the rails a little bit. Like there's one scene, I think it's when they're all eating at like a table outside, and you can tell that they're not quite ready for him to be doing sort of improvisation. And everyone's trying to go along with it, but it feels a little haphazard. And you're like, oh, where's this going?

Julia (55:02.168) Because as an actor, you have to warn your fellow actors if you're gonna do something like that, right? Because if somebody is, no, like, you know, it's a kind of, you have to prep, you're like, you feel like you're gonna be on the page and all of a sudden it's like shot off into this different direction, it throws you.

Dave! (55:07.335) And I don't think he did in this case.

Bryan! (55:17.216) It's gotta also it's gotta be very difficult to work with an actor who's just ad libbing while you're sticking to the book, right? Uh we've already lost too many people. Yeah, but back at Tammy's house. Yeah. No, it's beauty, man. He's great and lethal weapon, which came out like right after this too.

Julia (55:25.225) Yeah.

Dave! (55:26.926) I wonder if, like, Gary Busey just kept showing up drunk and they were like, fine, fuck it, it's part of the character now.

Dave! (55:36.443) You ran Coscarelli out two weeks in. Can't get rid of Gary Busey.

Bryan! (55:46.404) But yeah, back at Tammy's house, her dad is getting drunk while watching NWA Wrestling, which is sort of the big. It is, it's, it's a little judgy for sure. Yeah. Again, another little touch of the south because NWA was a Georgia, is a Georgia promotion. But he's, he is a classic shithead drunk in a stained undershirt.

Dave! (55:51.778) Which again, feels like a real kind of like liberal dig. Like, oh, look at this fucking guy watching wrestling. Like, hey man, come on.

Bryan! (56:12.632) out in the shed. There's all this commotion that Tammy was talking about. He grabs a shotgun and goes out. That's a good question because at the end, well, actually, it's in the scene where he kind of confronts Marty on the bridge. He seems to have like an agenda kind of but there's like he really only specifies one kill that was

Dave! (56:16.406) Now what's that deal with? Does the werewolf live in their shed?

Julia (56:19.476) I was asking, why are they in there? Is he like changing clothes in there? What is his deal?

Dave! (56:24.138) Or is he just there to like fuck with them? He's like, I'm just gonna go break their pots cause this guy's a drunk redneck.

Bryan! (56:42.048) everybody else just kind of was in the wrong place at the wrong time but Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dave! (56:45.134) But in the novel, he's very apologetic up to a point where in this he's just like, fuck all these people, I'm gonna kill all of you. Starting with this little boy in a wheelchair.

Julia (56:53.352) Well, I'm not really clear how much he remembers, right? That's also the thing with werewolves, like do you remember everything you've done the night before? So like, you know, at what point does he realize he is the werewolf, right? Cause there's a bit in the novelette where he's like, oh, it's me, but we don't really get, we never get that cause we don't get the backstory. And the only backstory they give you in the novelette is that he, that Revlin was picking flowers in a cemetery and he picked weird ones he'd never seen before. And we got her home, they were all black.

and then it turned into, so he thinks like it was the flowers?

Bryan! (57:27.025) Uh, like a wolfsbane thing.

Dave! (57:27.23) And but he is sort of sympathetic in the story in that he's very like he's an angry person in that he's like, why did this happen to me? I'm not bad. And now I'm just going to lean into it. Like, there's a there's an anger and sort of righteousness to it.

Bryan! (57:40.352) Oh. Well, that's another thing about Lo that kind of matches some of Stephen King's like religious characters like he's extremely critical of religion and there's always I mean, sure. I mean, I mean, you can you can have that kind of conflict within but like this isn't this isn't really quite as on the nose as like in the mist or like or anything like that like

Dave! (57:53.334) while also being very religious. I mean, I get, I get. Okay.

Bryan! (58:08.868) This is a character who's like, I don't know, he's not exactly pious. He's trying to do his best, but there's also this like other side of him. It's not. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't. Smashing the pots. So, yeah, so he goes out to the to the to the shed with a shotgun, talking shit the whole time. He's got a rock salt.

Dave! (58:21.814) Yeah, and then all bets are off when you're a werewolf. You go fucking up people's greenhouses, you're smashing their pots, you're ruining NWA.

Bryan! (58:37.76) In his in his shells. Yeah, stocks the greenhouse, we see some broken pots, of course, and then we see the wolf's eye. We got a jump scare of the spider and the wolf strikes from below, pulling him down, he gets impaled on a board, which is a fucking awesome touch. Yeah. What if he kills him? He's going to get ripped up on a board, too, because that's a really awesome like that's a really good, good hit.

Dave! (58:39.438) I like that touch. That's nice.

Julia (58:51.564) Yeah.

Dave! (58:53.366) Like that feels like one of those moments where it's like, okay, and then the werewolf's gonna kill him, and then Stephen King's like, no wait, I got a better idea. He's gonna pull him down.

Dave! (59:03.874) Like, and this, that feels very much like the scene where Quint dies in Jaws and they're like, I have an idea. What if instead the shark bites him and then everything explodes out of his mouth?

Julia (59:12.928) Hehehehe

Bryan! (59:13.091) Yeah. But uh yeah. So, he gets impaled on the board and then dragged under the greenhouse and nothing of value was lost. Uh but the next day, we learn that the town is held in the grips of fear and that Haller has instituted a curfew to get everybody home before dark. Uh and Marty and his friend from before Brady are flying kites in the park when Jane comes to get him.

Dave! (59:34.378) Anybody, did anybody catch the, the kite? The smiley face kite? Fuck yeah.

Julia (59:36.156) Yeah, I did. Yeah, I got two references. What do you got?

Dave! (59:40.81) I'm just gonna go Joe Dante.

Julia (59:44.5) Joe Dante, right? That's what I was like, oh, it's the howling. For sure you have the Joe Dante signature of the smiley face, but also Randall Flagg wears a smiley face button.

Dave! (59:47.175) Yep.

Dave! (59:52.163) Okay, yeah.

Bryan! (59:53.087) Oh, no shit. Had the stand been written by now? Okay. Yeah. I'm honestly not really sure what the chronology of the books are, but yeah, okay.

Dave! (59:57.568) Oh yeah.

Julia (59:57.856) Yeah.

Julia (01:00:04.192) Well, I happen to know that all of the, you know, the nerd voice.

Dave! (01:00:04.252) This stand is fourth.

Bryan! (01:00:08.436) I'm not sure. Maybe I maybe have some service. Yeah. So, they're flying kites and the park when Jane comes to get him. I know. I got a note about that. What could Brady not have gotten up there? I mean, I mean, it's impressive as hell that Marty climbs up and gets it but like

Julia (01:00:11.569) Yes.

Dave! (01:00:18.378) Yeah, but then he's like, oh, the kite is in the tree. So Brady's like, hey kid in a wheelchair, you mind climbing up that fucking tree and getting my kite? What the fuck?

Dave! (01:00:32.526) Also, also, Corey Haim does all these stunts himself. Even when he climbs out the window.

Bryan! (01:00:36.024) Yeah. It's legit impressive, like that part where he lowers himself out of the bedroom. I'm like, holy shit, he's doing that with his arms. Yeah, but it's proportional strength, man.

Julia (01:00:36.384) Yeah, well, I think they want to, I think they're giving you a forecast of like how strong Marty is. Like just in case you didn't know, he can do this kind of stuff. So when you see him crawl out later, you're like, okay, he's got to help your body strength. He's on board.

Dave! (01:00:56.59) To be fair, he weighs 80 pounds. Heh.

Julia (01:00:58.568) Yeah, but why do they have his? And how do, why do they have his when he has a bedroom on the second floor? Just have his bedroom be on the first floor.

Bryan! (01:01:06.326) Oh my god, it would have been so much easier. Yeah.

Dave! (01:01:06.454) Also a good- also a good question. What, did Brady plan the layout of the house?

Julia (01:01:12.369) It's all Brady's fault.

Bryan! (01:01:13.861) God damn Brady. But Brady's about to get his comeuppance because as they leave, Marty asks Brady if he's coming with, but he rebuffs him and keeps flying his kite. Which flying kites, he's into it. Like he looks like he's having a...

Dave! (01:01:17.41) Ugh, damn.

Dave! (01:01:22.998) But, oh, see, yeah, this is, we have another weird moment where Marty looks back and it's this weird, like long, longing stare. And it's like, Marty, your hands are fine. You can fly a kite. You don't have to stand up for that.

Bryan! (01:01:33.18) the that's I think that's really that's the implication here because by this point like we've got a few bodies everybody's supposed to be home by dark. It would have helped if there was a little less like daylight in the scene to sort of really kind of push the stakes but like I mean just the look back is enough to go. Oh, okay. He's next.

Julia (01:01:37.724) I think it's more like he feels like that maybe the last time he sees him, I feel like there's like a bit of premonition that he knows.

Dave! (01:01:58.814) Oh, I'm surprised we don't get some golden hour Stephen King bullshit behind him when he's looking back at him. And that was the last time I ever saw Brady alive. I'm a writer now and... I have two kids.

Bryan! (01:02:02.628) Yeah. Stay gold, Ponyboy.

Bryan! (01:02:09.929) the So, uh, yep. Uh but um back at Owens, Andy, loudly talking shit again and uh in comes Brady's father who looks like a young guy trying to play an old guy.

Dave! (01:02:24.654) You know who he looks like? He looks like the guy from, he was on, he was, Jesus Christ, he was on WKRP in Cincinnati. He was also on the Bob Newhart show and he pops up in like every, he's a character actor from the seventies. He's very like kind of nebbish and weird. I can't remember his name.

Julia (01:02:43.377) Do you know what I will say? I will say that I think this actor who plays Brady's dad is the MVP of this movie. He delivers, he delivers the goods.

Bryan! (01:02:43.718) I don't know. He is awesome. He's

Dave! (01:02:51.65) Do you know who he is? He's Mrs. Kittner from Jaws. That's what this scene is. This is the scene on the dock from Jaws. It's also the Evil Dies Tonight from Halloween Kills.

Bryan! (01:02:58.94) Yes. Oh my God. Yeah. Yes. OK, so I've got notes about that, too, because basically I could I just get caught up on how this guy looks. He looks like he's a cosplaying Mr. Burns.

Julia (01:02:59.432) Mm-hmm. Sure.

Dave! (01:03:15.842) But before we get to him, I will tell you something also from the commentary where Dan Adias says this whole private justice thing when the guy from Life Goes On is kind of giving his speech and rousing the rabble, as it were, and he walks right in front of a black guy, like the one black guy in the scene when he's giving this speech. And Dan Adias says he wanted to evoke lynching. And I thought.

Bryan! (01:03:36.79) Yeah. You don't gotta do that. You don't have to do that. But yeah, he's looking for his son, but meanwhile, back at the park, Haller has found the boy torn to pieces.

Dave! (01:03:43.81) God damn it, Dan Adias, that's fucking gross. Come on, man.

Bryan! (01:03:58.564) So at the funeral, Uncle Red is discreetly drinking gomoflasm. That's an oversized response for a joke involving us. Yep. But so now here we go. So back in the bar, there's a vigilante mob forming.

Dave! (01:04:00.662) That's come up and that's for what he did to Jane at the beginning.

Julia (01:04:06.752) Don't ever make a girl rip her pantyhose. This is the moral of the story. You will wind up torn apart by a werewolf.

Dave! (01:04:12.459) Yeah, that. Yeah, that boy's life, his life is worth $1.49. Yep.

Julia (01:04:18.604) Legs, legs, you know.

Dave! (01:04:22.402) Comes in a little egg, everybody.

Bryan! (01:04:28.508) uh Haller tries to talk them all down uh and we this is when we hear about private justice but Brady's father kind of riles them all back up selling the hell out of his grief in this scene. Um weird looking dude. Yeah but Jesus like he's very intense like I mean because they and they also they do the whole thing with like tight close ups on him. He's got that black arm band on

Julia (01:04:39.628) That's off.

Dave! (01:04:49.974) Cause I feel like they were like before the movie, they cast him and they were like, you think it'd be possible for you to grow a mustache?

Julia (01:04:57.498) I think he shaved the middle of his head as well. I think.

Bryan! (01:05:00.517) It looks like it. That's one of those things. That's one of those things where it kind of feels like maybe grainy 35 and like VHS just kind of like obscured the fact that he manufactured that look but like when you get up into these like 1080 presentations, you start to Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dave! (01:05:00.734) Something, there's something off about him where it's like, you don't look like this normally.

Dave! (01:05:19.598) It's like the cop at the end of Sleepaway Camp where you're like, wait a minute, that's not a mustache?

Julia (01:05:24.449) Hahaha

Bryan! (01:05:27.748) But yeah, it's such a, he's, yeah, he's such a weird, he's such a weird looking guy. Yeah. It's, yeah.

Dave! (01:05:28.458) Except this very much is a mustache. This is a Ned Flanders mustache.

Julia (01:05:32.78) But I feel like he's kind of in a different movie. Like he's giving a performance kind of well beyond what other people are doing in this movie. Like they feel like they're in a kind of a B horror movie, which they are, which I love. And then he's just given the fucking like sell on it. But in that kind of Peyton place kind of way, I guess, right? You get, yeah.

Dave! (01:05:48.118) Yeah, he's giving you Mrs. Kittner. He is all but slapping him in the face.

Julia (01:05:52.244) Yes, for sure.

Bryan! (01:05:53.496) Yeah, we encounter these in these movies every now and then where there's like one person who's just like, okay I'm gonna fucking bring it and they just do something else like the late Remember the lady at the beginning of pieces where she's like his father in the Air Force It's like completely out of whack with the with the rest of the movie I think there was a bit Yeah, yeah

Julia (01:06:00.778) Yeah.

Dave! (01:06:09.258) Oh yeah, she's...

Dave! (01:06:13.354) where they're like, this is my shot. It's now or never. And most of the time it's never.

Julia (01:06:15.905) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (01:06:18.584) But yeah, like this, but this next scene is when everybody rushes out into the street. And yes, this is this is that part from Jaws where like all the yokels hit the docks and go running. It's the Halloween kills, evil dies tonight, like mob justice scene. Yeah, but it just mayhem. The.

Dave! (01:06:35.178) except it's just better in this than it is in that. Because I hate that movie. Oh, no, we'll get there. We'll get there.

Bryan! (01:06:43.492) how dare you? Yeah. Just uh it's just mayhem. Only uh only possible outcome is disaster. And uh I love it. You know what it is? You know what and you know what it is it's very clear. It's like all the rest of the movie is shot on either exteriors around town or very convincing sets. This is on a sound stage and it looks like

Dave! (01:06:48.97) Now this scene is bizarre, but also really awesome. But it's very dreamlike.

Dave! (01:07:09.566) Yes, and very obviously on the soundstage.

Bryan! (01:07:11.408) looks like a soundstage, looks very weird, and the presence of like shitloads of fog makes it really weird. Yeah. Oh yeah. No. Yeah.

Dave! (01:07:17.93) And look, I love a foggy scene. I love a movie that has an oversized dry ice budget.

Julia (01:07:25.308) Have you seen, we just covered for my podcast, a movie called Liton, so 1982, it's French, and it is a high fog budget on that movie. It's like the majority of that movie's in fog, and it does give it that dreamlike quality, where I'm like, I don't really know if this is real or not.

Dave! (01:07:38.507) Beautiful.

Bryan! (01:07:41.132) Yeah. Yes.

Dave! (01:07:41.278) And well, especially in this movie, because there is a dream sequence in the movie. I think it's actually right after this scene. It's like, it just feels, I don't know. There's something about it that I really like, even though the bumbling hunters are a little much in this. Like the one who's just like the what she's like, you're going to make lemonade in your pants. That's a Jesus Christ, Stephen King. Are you a 12 year old boy?

Julia (01:08:02.9) Yes, yes he is.

Dave! (01:08:04.038) And in a lot of ways, yeah, he is very much, he's either going for dad jokes every chance he gets, or he's just really like fucking lowbrow, kids on the playground. There is no in-between.

Bryan! (01:08:13.762) Yeah, but yeah, but like, sure enough, like one of the yokel steps in a bear trap and they like steps on it again. It's very like Keystone cops. Yeah, but elsewhere walking around the swamp, the mob starts to hear the wolf growling as they look for it. But then from below the fog layer, it attacks and kills several hunters, including Owen. Owen, by the way, is named after King's son. Yeah.

Dave! (01:08:22.07) There's a lot of singers in this part.

Dave! (01:08:39.766) Which one is Owen?

Bryan! (01:08:39.928) And he's, Owen is the one who is not Joe.

Julia (01:08:43.392) He did, he just...

Dave! (01:08:44.131) Look, no, not the kids, which one in the movie is Owen?

Bryan! (01:08:47.765) Oh, Owen is tyranny.

Julia (01:08:47.946) Lawrence Tierney.

Dave! (01:08:49.614) Okay, he's the one who's not jo- oh, so he's not the girl either? Like, I could've figured that out on my own.

Bryan! (01:08:57.369) He steals his bat and he beats him to death with it in the process. That's a brutal scene, too. Yeah, yeah. This movie really delivers on the violence like there's because the bat becomes kind of a leitmotif. But yeah, so we're at another funeral. Reverend Lowe attempts to console the town, but they grow angrier as the

Dave! (01:08:59.602) And I love that. That is the that is the zinger to end all zingers. He's beaten him to death with his bat. I love that part. I think this part and the scene after it fucking great.

Bryan! (01:09:24.032) sort of rumble of thunder plays beneath it all. But it turns out to be. They're swaying. Maybe. Yeah. This is the dream.

Dave! (01:09:26.622) OK, but also there, why are they all so they start singing and then they're swaying in a weird way? And I wonder, like, is this a thing people do in church or is this just to kind of sell that dream? Like, because it's really weird and also a little unnerving. Yeah.

Julia (01:09:42.688) This is the dream, right? So there you are. It does make you go, what are they doing? Why are you doing that? I couldn't tell you. They thought you.

Dave! (01:09:48.266) Look, I don't know. Christians do a lot of weird shit and I don't know. I don't understand what it is or why it happens. I just know they do it. Because. Yeah, that's a Catholic Church.

Bryan! (01:09:54.524) Yeah. Yeah. Well, we went to we went to church with mom for a long time and like that that I know. Okay, that's the thing. Yeah, like we're whipping ourselves and you know, like, you know, the chalices and stuff. Yep. Yep.

Dave! (01:10:04.714) So then Big Ed is up there and he's reading from the Bible and he says, The Bible tells us not to fear that which creepeth by night. And I thought, where in the Bible does it say that? Not to creepeth by night. Is that in the back somewhere?

Julia (01:10:20.225) What about the face of the beast always becomes known and the time of the beast always passes?

Dave! (01:10:23.014) Exactly, that was the other part of... I'm like, this is- you're making this part up. Come on now.

Bryan! (01:10:25.068) I got to look that up. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, but then like, but then it turns out that this is a dream and the entire congregation like transforms into wolves before low in one of the movie's best fucking scenes like I love this part. Yeah, you know what they look like? Oh, yeah.

Dave! (01:10:37.698) So this is my question, is you can make all these people, this whole transformation, this part, they all look fucking cool as hell. I love that the lady is still banging away on the organ as she's turning. You can make all of these people look really cool turning into werewolves, and yet your big Ed werewolf looks like a fucking stuffed animal. Like, where's the disconnect here? Come on, Carla, would you take off after you made the one?

Bryan! (01:10:55.721) Yeah. You know what they look like? That's probably, that's gotta be it. Like they probably made a bunch of wolf suits and they're probably, that's not cheap to do. There's a, there's a transformation scene. There's a D transformation scene. There's

Julia (01:11:01.06) I would say mainly, I could answer your question, one word, budget. They ran out of money. That would be my guess.

Dave! (01:11:06.375) I guess.

Bryan! (01:11:20.08) That's got to be a real expensive trick to pull off. At least. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, budget for this movie was $7 million. Yep. Yeah, because usually I mean you after especially now like you've got the couple you got a couple of real heavy hitters on the books.

Dave! (01:11:23.094) Well especially in the transformation stuff, it's all hand-laid, you can tell. So that must have cost a shitload of money.

Julia (01:11:32.44) Well, I mean, the werewolf movies are the pricier bit of monster movies, right? They're going to be more.

Bryan! (01:11:45.1) If you're going to do it, you got to either do what they do in this one and kind of play like downplay it or keep it on the download or you got to do another big on screen transformation that's like really fancy and stuff. I would have been OK with it also.

Julia (01:11:56.088) I think I would have been... Yeah, and I really think that if we had never really seen the werewolf, I kind of would have been okay with that. I feel like... Because I feel like the only one, in my opinion, the only movie that's actually done a werewolf transformation that wows me is American Werewolf, right? And thriller, I guess, but like every, like, everything else is like, there's, they're okay, but they're not like, damn, wow.

Dave! (01:11:56.239) And you don't swing for that unless you have money.

Dave! (01:12:04.926) Yeah, because when you do see it, it's kind of like, oh, OK.

Bryan! (01:12:21.157) Yeah. No. Yeah. Oh, wow. I don't.

Dave! (01:12:23.574) And even now, when you see those in the, like, the 4K transfers, it's kind of like, oh, okay. No, I'm still on board, but I'm a little less on board.

Julia (01:12:28.212) Well, you do know I collect VHS, right? This is, I have a giant collection of color coordinated VHS that I, so I love, I have Thriller on there on VHS.

Dave! (01:12:34.585) Are you just watching pictures?

Bryan! (01:12:44.16) I don't understand you people. Yeah. Oh. Yeah.

Julia (01:12:46.496) Well, it was I mean, I understand if you're talking about film quality wise, obviously, it's not ideal But I love movies a lot of like the Pet Sematary that I was obsessed with in junior high that I watched All the time. I still have it. It works fine, right? I can still watch that exact same tape and when Video stores were closing I would go and just buy a bunch of movies because it was like 50 cents a dollar and I know That they're going to a good home

and you can get bootlegs, you guys. I have my Star Wars Holiday Special bootleg that was passed hand to hand to me.

Bryan! (01:13:15.457) I'm not sure. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah, but you know what? They just sat in boxes like once I got like an all region DVD player like all bets were off like I didn't have to like mess around with like pal to NTSC

Dave! (01:13:19.338) Yeah, you say you don't understand these people. You also used to have a very large VHS collection long after VHS was obsolete. So.

Bryan! (01:13:40.828) humongous collection of VHS boots. When I was moving out of my house, I just didn't want to bring them with me, so I didn't have space mostly, which is the problem. I only recently started buying physical media again, because space is kind of a premium where I live.

Julia (01:13:43.112) What happened to it?

Dave! (01:14:00.734) Yeah, you filled your house with children. I filled my house with children's toys. Mm hmm. I that's about one third of it.

Julia (01:14:05.268) And also I can see behind you that you have a giant vinyl collection. So also, you know, that's.

Bryan! (01:14:11.616) Oh yeah. Yeah. Dave's thing is Dave collects a lot of stuff. My kind of fandom, like the way that I express that tends to be in like, I like to like craft props and stuff like that. Like, um, I don't know if you can see this, but like I painted this recently. Yeah. Like I bought, I bought a blank and I painted it myself because I used to have one of those NECA ones, um, and it broke. Uh, and then the recent ones that they put, they put out, uh, in the same sort of pattern, the part three mask.

Julia (01:14:23.757) Oh, Jason Hockey Mask, cool.

Bryan! (01:14:38.924) are, it's, they're, they're very bad. Like they're, I saw them at spirit Halloween one year and I was like, Oh Jesus, I'm gonna have to do the. Yeah. So like, I like to have that sort of tactile experience of like having a prop or something like that. Like I like, when I was in Pasadena, I went or I went to South Pasadena and I went to the hedge and I went to the Strode house and I went to the Meyers house. Like that's, that's what I, that's what I love to do. So yeah. But what I did with those tapes was I put

Julia (01:14:44.108) Well, if they can't do it right, you do it yourself, right? You got it.

Dave! (01:15:00.584) Oh, you know, I totally get keeping shit that you don't need to keep. My house is full of it.

Bryan! (01:15:08.768) I boxed them all up and I took them down to where like, I lived in a sort of like a condo complex and I put them next to the dumpster, but I'm not in the dumpster. And later on when I went to bring some stuff down to actually throw away, the boxes were gone. So somebody was like, holy shit, look at all these movies. But they probably like popped a tape in and it was like anthropophagus or something. And we're like, holy shit, a serial killer lives in this neighborhood.

Julia (01:15:24.525) Yeah.

Julia (01:15:33.228) Hehehehe

Dave! (01:15:34.763) Are they killing and eating an actual turtle? Yes, yes they are.

Bryan! (01:15:39.464) Yeah. Oh, God. Where were we? Um, Oh, that's right. That's right. So, uh, meanwhile, uh, looks like the town is turning into a ghost town as people flee, but back at home, Uncle Red unveils his gift to Marty, which is a seriously, seriously upgraded version of the wheelchair. It looks more like a motorcycle than a chair. This thing fucking flies. It looks extremely perilous and simultaneously awesome to drive.

Julia (01:15:43.64) Church Werewolf Orgy.

Dave! (01:15:54.483) Jane's about to be a bitch again everybody. Jesus.

Julia (01:16:05.96) And you can see Corey Haim's face of absolute delight in these scenes with this thing.

Bryan! (01:16:10.148) Yeah. Oh my God. If I were the kid who they were like, if you they're like, okay, Corey, you're gonna sit in this chair. You're gonna drive this thing. I'd be like, seriously? Fuck yes. You're paying me to do this? Yeah. But Yeah. But yeah. So like we said, time moves very strangely in this movie. We go from a cancelled Fourth of July celebration to a party at Marty's house, which I believe is in

Julia (01:16:21.856) Yeah, you can see that on his face, which I really like, that it's not character delight, it's actor delight.

Bryan! (01:16:37.692) September. It's something that Red says a little later on. So here's your 4th of July in September. That's why I say like things are very fluid in this movie. The passage of time is really strange. So like we're moving along sort of throughout the you know, the cycle of the werewolf.

Dave! (01:16:40.697) Yeah, that didn't make any sense to me because it's like he says something about like you didn't get your Fourth of July or whatever, but it's like he said it as though it's passed, but then right before it, the fireworks get canceled. So there's this huge gap in time.

Bryan! (01:17:05.236) But they're not really they're not really very good at indicating where we are. That's why I said it feels like everything is happening like day after day. Like one person gets killed and then the next night another person gets killed and then another kid gets killed and then somebody else gets killed. And it all happens within the span of a single week. Like, it's really not clear how time is passing in this movie. Yeah, yeah. We get Chekhov's fireworks. Yeah, yeah.

Julia (01:17:23.628) Very dreamlike, perhaps.

Dave! (01:17:27.14) You know what we get right here, though? We get some of that sweet. We get that sweet, but you see improvisation is what we get.

Bryan! (01:17:35.108) Yeah. And you could tell like in that part, like when he's kind of going off, like the rest of the cast are like, what do we do? Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, he gets we get we get some he gives Marty Chekhov's fireworks.

Dave! (01:17:40.79) Yeah, this is the part where I was like, uh-oh, it feels real precarious right now, everybody. Buckle up.

Dave! (01:17:50.874) He doesn't he says and he gives him the one the rocket. He says, save this one for last. It's a rocket. And then he says, you light it. And I thought, yeah, Uncle Red, you light all of them. That's how they work.

Bryan! (01:18:03.202) I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm

Dave! (01:18:04.118) Heh. Sometimes even Gary Busey goes too far.

Bryan! (01:18:24.444) crazy. We've seen him climb twice. Yeah. Yeah, he's got it right. Uh literally on his shoulders. So, yeah. That's a good, that's a, that's a great point. I think he's a wonderful actor who be kinda became victim to the Corey's, right?

Dave! (01:18:25.806) Corey Haim is carrying this movie. That's how much upper body strength he has. He's carrying this movie.

Julia (01:18:30.856) Hahaha!

Julia (01:18:35.48) I think that his performance is actually really good though, and I know that he became kind of a joke later. And I think my... And you look at...

Dave! (01:18:40.707) I think he's fantastic in this.

Julia (01:18:49.1) for sure. And I think you look at him here, you look at him and Lucas, I think he's incredible. And same with Corey Feldman is down by me. So my best friend, Marion and I have a thing where we go, okay, you look at someone, and it's like they're acting before they know their hot shit. And then after they find out what like after you find out that like all the girls are in love with you, and you're going to get everything you want, and then you kind of know. And I feel like you look at Corey Heyman, Lost Boys, and he knows that he's like heartthrob. But here he did. Exactly, exactly.

Bryan! (01:19:01.986) Yeah. Because after.

Dave! (01:19:12.918) Yeah, there's a smarmy swagger to him at that point.

Bryan! (01:19:20.48) So they could just do whatever they wanted and it was gold.

Julia (01:19:21.924) I, hey, hey man, I was there opening day of license to drive. I was, I have, I actually, I actually have the license to drive poster on my fridge right now. It is on the front of it. So there we are. And dream a little dream, what a movie. That movie makes no sense. Body swap kind of, but not really.

Dave! (01:19:27.06) I was gonna say dream a little dream.

Bryan! (01:19:32.697) Oh, that's a weird movie, right? No sense. Ah yeah. Maybe? Yeah. But uh yeah, so uh later that night, he sneaks out, second story window. We see him uh we see him ride out into the woods.

Dave! (01:19:42.262) It doesn't, at that point it doesn't matter. You just put the two in the thing and the girls will come a runnin'.

Bryan! (01:19:55.768) I guess, but he finds a good spot like on a trail with like a boardwalk bridge on some water and Yeah, yeah, but Yeah, yeah, so this uh the actual location of wilmington is like right near the right near the coast So like yeah, there's a lot of wetlands around there But yeah, like yeah, not even not even on the coast of maine as there are a lot of wetlands like this but uh, yeah, he catches the

Dave! (01:20:01.958) in one of the many swamps of Maine.

This is like some straight-up Scooby-Doo shit.

Bryan! (01:20:24.536) the attention of the wolf, which approaches him as he lights his fireworks. Marty lights the coup de grace rocket that he was saving for last, and he hits the wolf in the eye. When he gets home, he calls Uncle Red to tell him what he saw. But he is utterly dismissed. You know, Uncle Red really holds out in this one. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's had a busy night, it looks like.

Julia (01:20:42.408) Uncle Red has a lady in his bed. So he's like, I can't be bothered right now, man. He's got bigger fish to fry.

Dave! (01:20:50.049) I'm busy, Marty.

Julia (01:20:51.955) Who is sleeping with Uncle Red? These are questions I have.

Dave! (01:20:54.518) Well, it's not Sheila, I can tell you that, because Sheila divorced him. And that is why he's a dirtbag, according to the mother.

Bryan! (01:20:54.936) Yeah. Yeah, he just picks up ladies. Yep. But Marty then tells Jane, who believes him, sort of, and she decides to help him out to find out who the wolf is. And so she. Oh, dude.

Dave! (01:21:11.358) In the weirdest fucking scene in this entire movie, this shit is so strange.

Bryan! (01:21:16.884) It's yeah, like the plan is sound. She goes out, she'll walk around the town collecting cans to get a good look at the people who are still left in town. And everybody checks out, but not before we get like long static shots of people just like flat affect staring down the bare. Yeah, yeah. And it's also kind of made doubly creepy that they're sort of like staring down

Dave! (01:21:32.886) Yeah, this is like a real rogues gallery of like the weirdest fucking faces Central Casting has.

Bryan! (01:21:46.896) 14-year-old girl. It's it's a it's a little alarming. But every Yeah. But. Yep. But uh it's you gotta build tension. But everybody checks out.

Dave! (01:21:52.295) I think what they're trying to give us is like, everyone is on edge, everyone is suspicious. But it's like, what you're really giving us is everyone's a fucking creep.

and possibly a killer. And then she goes and like, unwraps the guy's fate. Like, who, you don't do that.

Very forward.

Bryan! (01:22:16.22) uh and she's about to give up until she brings her cans to the church and we find that Reverend Lowe is missing an eye and is in possession of the peacemaker bat. No. You just you just commented. Oh yeah. Right because that's what happens next.

Dave! (01:22:23.766) Wait, is she at some point making notes in the movie? Cause I have a note that just says, these notes are amazing. And I don't know if it's my notes are amazing. Like I'm real self congratulatory for some reason.

Julia (01:22:32.68) Oh, it's the, it's the, no, it's, it, it's the ransom notes where they do that. They send in the letter and it says, I know. Yes. I know who you are. I know what you are. Why don't you kill yourself?

Dave! (01:22:38.95) Yes! Okay. God.

Bryan! (01:22:46.096) Yep. Yeah, so Marty tells Jane who, getting back to this, Jane and Marty rightly come to the conclusion that the adults will laugh at them. And so Marty comes up with a plan, which as we said, is to paste letters on one of those like ransom style like letters where they're gonna give to the reverend informing him that they know who he is and that he should kill himself. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dave! (01:22:46.154) Thank God, because I was just like, wow, this is just really feeling myself there. And yes.

Julia (01:23:10.728) that's smart right because his handwriting is gonna give him away he's gonna be like oh it's a kid right

Dave! (01:23:11.063) So what they...

Bryan! (01:23:16.192) right? And even like

Dave! (01:23:16.398) Well, also what they don't say in this, and I think they do say it in the book, is that the point is if he knows where they're coming from and calls the mother, then obviously it's not a big deal. But if he says nothing about it to anybody, then clearly he's suspicious. But they don't really give you that in the movie.

Bryan! (01:23:38.496) Yeah. But uh yeah, Big Ed receives it and they continue to send new letters and then they tell Uncle Red who again is less than enthusiastic about it. Uh but now Big Ed has Marty's number and he's stalking him in the daytime and this is that time we that part we talked about where he like he's kind of like looking a little bit forlorn at the kids playing baseball. Um uh and uh he

then he decides he's going to drive home and Big Ed tries to run him off the road with his car. But thankfully, the new silver bullet is fast as hell. It's yeah. Yeah. So yeah, like and like I mean, like he like swipes, wipes him kind of wipes him out and he has to turn around real quick and we get the sort of horror movie car trope where it's like the bike won't start and the cars getting closer. But he does eventually kind of give him the slip.

Dave! (01:24:09.715) This is some real Ben-Hur shit too, this is... Not going for it.

Bryan! (01:24:30.312) sort of. Marty gets cornered in a covered bridge when his chair runs out of gas and Big Ed confesses his crimes to him. But just as he's closing in on Marty, Marty flags down a farmer who's driving his tractor, Big Ed uses the opportunity to get away. Yes. Yeah.

Julia (01:24:44.172) But he does in this scene tell us kind of why he's doing what he's doing, right? He says he kills, he kills the woman who was going to kill herself because she would go to hell for that. But if she's murdered, she won't. So he's actually saving her spiritual life, even though he took a physical life, which of course as a werewolf, murdering people makes absolutely no sense. But you know, it's that reverent, that religious logic at it again.

Bryan! (01:24:57.972) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, something. Maybe because like, what about Brady? Like, what did he do? I mean, he's kind of a dick, but like.

Dave! (01:25:04.941) Well, there is a kind of hypocrisy. Like you have to wonder, is he doing this because this is like a retroactive thing? Like he killed her and then came up with an excuse for why he killed her.

Julia (01:25:14.717) Yeah, I think he's trying to.

Dave! (01:25:19.574) Yeah, Brady's been a shit the entire movie.

Julia (01:25:19.638) Hey.

Oh, I don't know. He kind of wins my heart because in the very, very opening scene, we see him run over a cockroach and they go, yeah, with his bike. And I was like, I was like, all right, I'm on your side, sir. Kill them all.

Bryan! (01:25:28.138) Yeah!

Dave! (01:25:28.83) Oh no, he's great! He's a real scamp. He's a real scamp, is what he is. Like, he's climbing trees, he's grabbing snakes, he's scaring girls. He's a boy.

Bryan! (01:25:44.077) the police. Yeah. But uh now with them and takes well sort of he and Haller goes over by night Big Ed finds the damage to the Red's story because their whole from his car on the silver and Haller sees the damage to

uh and so he encounters Big Ed out in the uh garage who wolfs out and beats him to death with the peacemaker in a very brutal yeah brutal scene too like he like he gets it over the bean like a couple of times and like right on camera

Dave! (01:26:13.087) That's what you get for trusting kids.

Dave! (01:26:22.562) So that's a kind of a weird feature of this movie is that, you know, in werewolf movies, you're a werewolf. You have teeth and claws and all the things. This guy though, he's just like, no, I'm gonna beat you with the thing you brought here.

Bryan! (01:26:31.58) the moon. Okay, so they kind of approach this a little bit when they start to like they start to establish a little bit of the lore but like way too late in the movie for it to really kind of explain anything that came before it and that is he can change whenever but the degree to which he kind of wolfs out has to do with the phase of the moon. So, the

The further away from the full moon, he's a little bit more himself, but just an animal. So that's probably why he's using the bat instead of just like knocking a dude's head off, right?

Julia (01:27:12.492) fun. Why if you why not? You could use your claws, but let's try that. You know, it's like humans. Yeah, but it's like humans like you could kill a human with your with your hands if you wanted to, but you could use an instrument.

Bryan! (01:27:13.668) Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, but it gives you options too, right? Like you don't have to stick to this full moon thing.

Dave! (01:27:16.94) Yeah, we have the-

Dave! (01:27:22.503) Oh, I want to, trust me.

I don't know when the last time you went to Boston was, but Jesus.

Dave! (01:27:35.594) I love it. You give us the peacemaker and you keep giving us the peacemaker. And I think that through line is fantastic.

Julia (01:27:42.612) It kind of reminds me of Ben Affleck's paddle in Dazed and Confused where it's just like, yeah, the fuck you. And it's just like that pole, it's just gonna be through the whole movie. Like that's gonna come around again.

Bryan! (01:27:45.767) the next day. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So, the next day, Marty asks Uncle Red to make him a silver bullet, which he does. Now, we got a nice montage of the gunsmith.

Dave! (01:27:46.762) Oh, the soul pole?

Dave! (01:28:02.154) Now, I got a question about this because this feels like the gun guy, this kind of old world craftsman bullshit. This feels like they kind of got to the like, did they shoot this movie chronologically because it kind of feels like they did. But you get to the end and they're like, we need more. We need more fantasy. We need like something that sells that hero story because like he's so nobody else in this town believes in werewolves except for the fucking gun guy. I mean, I guess if someone's going to believe you, who better? But

Julia (01:28:15.32) I like this guy.

Bryan! (01:28:17.192) I love him.

Julia (01:28:30.497) Maybe he's...

Bryan! (01:28:30.904) Right, because he right, because he casts the bullet and then he hands it over to him to read. And he's like, this is like the finest piece of work I've ever done. It's like, really? Like, you're just making bullets here. But. Yeah. Right, right. Like, like Reds, Redsby and Coy about it. He's internally like the gunsmiths, like, fuck, yes.

Dave! (01:28:42.709) Yeah, it's like, ah, you're gonna kill werewolves, huh?

Julia (01:28:45.46) Maybe he has dreamed his whole life. Maybe he's been a werewolf fan, and he's dreamed his whole life of someone walking into a shop and asking for a silver bullet. And he's like, ha ha, it happened today.

Dave! (01:28:59.562) Yeah, it's like, no, sir. I know why you're here. This one's for you. It's on the house, buddy. Get him for me.

Bryan! (01:28:59.964) Yes, fuck it.

Julia (01:29:00.215) Hehehehe

Julia (01:29:06.164) Yeah, if I was a gunsmith, that would be my joy. I would never be a gunsmith, but.

Bryan! (01:29:06.692) Yeah. Oh my, yeah, like, oh my God, like, it's finally happening. Yeah.

Dave! (01:29:09.002) It's just... Such a weird choice. Just be like, and then the fantasy gun guy at the end also.

Bryan! (01:29:18.596) Yeah. So the next full moon falls on Halloween and Red conspires to get the parents out of the house so that they can lure the wolf into a confrontation with the bullet. What? Oh man. Yeah. I mean, but he Yeah.

Dave! (01:29:26.838) Here's another question for you. The mom thinks Uncle Red is a fucking irresponsible, useless drunk throughout this entire movie, so she leaves her kids with him for two weeks?

Julia (01:29:37.656) I thought it was just for the weekend, but she, they just said they want a trip for, okay. He, well, I mean, but red's paying for that cruise, right? Like they don't know that, but he's.

Dave! (01:29:40.374) No, they're going on like a cruise.

Dave! (01:29:45.582) But they don't know that.

Bryan! (01:29:47.3) No, no, he they think that he wanted in a in a publisher's clearinghouse thing.

Dave! (01:29:52.41) They didn't realize at the time that wasn't really a thing that happened to anybody.

Bryan! (01:29:56.3) No, because they got those things in the mail and they're like, oh man, maybe he maybe he is a winner. We'll never know. It might, you know, it says it on the envelope. Oh, it must in some form. Really?

Julia (01:30:03.096) Does Publishers' Clearinghouse still exist?

Dave! (01:30:05.514) Yes. Yes it does. No, nobody ever wins anything. It's a giant scam and there are many, many lawsuits.

Julia (01:30:07.98) Okay. And do you still win a big check?

Julia (01:30:14.552) Okay, I'm not surprised by that. I've often wondered about the kind of like when they on Nickelodeon, when they had to like, come here and you'll win this prize and you get to go through the whole thing. And then I never knew anybody who won any of those ever. And I'm like, I don't think they actually had winners. I think it was just like how you get people's addresses and phone numbers. And then you'd like, yes, totally.

Dave! (01:30:31.682) Yeah, it's a carnival game.

Bryan! (01:30:33.403) Yeah, yeah. But the yeah, the allure of the novelty oversized check is a real dream. Yeah. So yeah, so yeah, he he's like, you know, the guy's like, you know, this bullet will, you know, it'll perform and he's like, dude, what the fuck do you think I'm going to do with this?

Julia (01:30:39.081) Yes it is.

Bryan! (01:30:53.284) We're like, what would I shoot with this? And the guy goes, how about a werewolf?

Dave! (01:30:56.406) Yeah, it's very like Pepperidge Farm, remember? It's like, it's a real like, yeah, I know what you're doing.

Bryan! (01:30:58.732) Yeah. Just to be sure, why not stop? I stopped there. Get six, just fill every cylinder. Yeah.

Julia (01:31:01.424) I would very much get two silver bullets if this was me. I would not count on getting just one. Yeah.

Julia (01:31:10.733) That's a good question. Just get...

Dave! (01:31:11.778) I mean, Uncle Red, you're an adult. You can get as many as you want. I mean, you're a drunk adult who doesn't seem to have a job, but still.

Julia (01:31:19.148) Well, he's having to sleep in his sister's house, so obviously he doesn't have any money.

Bryan! (01:31:19.521) I paid for this.

Bryan! (01:31:24.4) Well, he paid for this getaway. He could probably buy some silver. Yeah. Yep. But they're, yeah, but that's. Yep. So sure enough, the wolf comes and as red tries to get the kids to bed, like there's a staying up late, they do that thing that, that you see in these movies a lot of the time where they, they really kind of were that really plants a flag. This is not now this is.

Julia (01:31:25.665) It's true.

Dave! (01:31:26.902) That's true. That's right.

Julia (01:31:28.904) steal the silver from the parents house, you know?

Dave! (01:31:31.847) They owe him at this point.

He sent them on a trip and killed a werewolf.

Bryan! (01:31:52.448) in the past or at least by our thing. They do that when the when the TVs go off the air thing, you know, the poltergeist and all that. Yep. And so as he's trying to get him to go to bed, Jane sees the wolf outside. Paddock ensues. Red is pushing back like the he's humoring these kids up to this point. He's still not fully sold because he doesn't really have much to go on. He thinks that the killer is still a

Julia (01:31:59.732) national anthem into static and that's when it all goes down.

Bryan! (01:32:21.924) the fucking wolf. And this is now, yeah, yeah. Because, right, because he also, he also pulls the power cable out and the lights go out and he's still dubious, you know? Like

Dave! (01:32:23.623) Through the wall, through the side of the house. Not through the door or through the window, just through the wall.

Dave! (01:32:34.958) Which at that point, it's like, okay, Uncle Red, Uncle Al, you went and got a silver bullet. You believe this on some level. And you're not just hedging your bets here, buddy.

Bryan! (01:32:41.328) get on board already. Yeah. And so, yeah, he breaks in smashing through the through the wall. He throws red who drops the bullet and goes falls down a heating vent. A fight ensues between red and the wolf. We find this is when we finally get a good look at. So, yeah, as we said, De Laurentiis hated, hated the werewolf suit and I honestly can't blame him. Uh the 80s, the 80s is packed with so many good werewolf suits.

Dave! (01:33:02.622) It looks real bad.

Dave! (01:33:07.818) And I love a werewolf movie, probably more, maybe only second to a haunted house movie. And there's just like two good ones.

Bryan! (01:33:17.933) Yeah. Well, we covered one of them. Howling. Yeah. Uh yeah. So like I which I'm about to, I'm about to, I'm about to address because yeah, like in they had, we had we had a couple of really great werewolf suits. We had a couple of real sort of middling ones.

Julia (01:33:19.532) Who counts as your second, the howling?

Dave! (01:33:25.45) except for the end. I gotta qualify that.

Julia (01:33:27.212) Well...

Bryan! (01:33:39.076) And then we had this one which is probably gets my vote for the crappiest. This is like this is like and I'm comparing this to the D Wallace werewolf at the end of the howling where we got a movie packed with like they aren't great. They're a little silly looking but I love them so much and then we get that like puppy at the end.

Dave! (01:33:43.098) This is like an Italian werewolf.

Julia (01:33:50.22) Mm.

Dave! (01:34:03.15) Just don't get me started.

Julia (01:34:04.152) So you feel sympathetic for her? Okay. I mean, I feel like this werewolf suit doesn't throw me out. It doesn't feel like a level where I'm like, oh my God. I just feel like, okay, this is mid 80s werewolf and I'm okay because I-

Bryan! (01:34:07.996) I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, Yeah. But also, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think that we actually see a full body shot of it. We get a good look at the upper body, the arms, you know, those parts.

Dave! (01:34:19.818) Yeah, no, that's where I feel I'm at with it, too. I'm just like, this is what I expected, I guess.

Dave! (01:34:29.166) Hmm.

Dave! (01:34:33.41) But you do see him, the scene where he shoots him with the rocket, the one you have to light, not the other ones. When he shoots him with that, he's walking, they show his feet walking and he's not walking. So you went to, supposedly went to a zoologist and that zoologist told you a wolf would walk on flat feet? Because he's just walking like a... They're not really committing to any of this. I don't like it.

Julia (01:34:39.48) Hahaha.

Bryan! (01:34:44.774) Yeah. Then there's no, there's no pause. But yeah.

Dave! (01:35:02.868) I don't know.

Bryan! (01:35:04.988) this is probably the most kind of contentious part of the movie is this is the thing that De Laurentiis was like get rid of that thing and King and Rambali were like fuck no we're going with this and it resulted like in a standoff which we mentioned Coscarelli was

Dave! (01:35:22.646) That's because Rimbaldi is Italian and Stephen King is on all of the cocaine.

Bryan! (01:35:27.832) Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, we made Coscarelli just go like, fuck this, you guys are on your own. But yeah, eventually, De La Renta obviously caves this, this appears in the movie. I think that up to this point, the suit is used well. It's just, maybe they felt pressure from somebody to go big. Like you can't just hide it the whole time. You got to show them. And this is the big finale, right? But I...

Dave! (01:35:53.473) Now is this Paramount? Is that the distributor?

Bryan! (01:35:57.124) I don't know actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but yeah, so there's a bit of you know a lot of back and forth. Marty is like reaching down into the vent to get the to retrieve the bullet and he gets it and he puts it in the gun, pulls it back, shoots him in the other eye and no kidding.

Dave! (01:35:57.986) Paramount or MGM or something like that. And I imagine it's probably someone at the, one of the distributors is like, no, you gotta, you got, like, look, we have these other two big werewolf movies. You gotta show it. And they were like, oh, fine, here.

Julia (01:36:23.288) Marty's got aim, man. He is like a, he is like a gunslinger, you know?

Dave! (01:36:25.354) It does. Which I think is a scene I like.

Bryan! (01:36:27.744) the wolf. Yeah, yeah. Um and uh de-wolves right before our these are good. This is a this big thing is we're going to see they kind of de-emphasize the kind of this is in this part, and I think it looks great. Uh

Dave! (01:36:56.514) There are moments where it's like it's a little bit stilted and they linger too long and his face looks very kind of claymation-y, but other than that, yeah.

Bryan! (01:37:04.115) the eyes. Um It's the eyes. Yeah. It's eyeballs. You know, they're, I should, they should have, the weird. It makes them look a puppet. But yeah, like this is Ed like turns back into you know, horror movie scare

Dave! (01:37:23.493) Yeah, Carrie reaches up and grabs Zeus now and then we're out.

Bryan! (01:37:26.328) Yeah. And then Jane and Marty say that they love each other. What became of Marty?

Julia (01:37:31.564) Okay, but here's the question I have. Yes, he says he loves her. And then we get the voiceover of adult Jane. And she says, I love you too, Marty. Good night. So the question is, is she talking to us, the viewers, good night? Or is she talking to Marty good night? And if so, is he dying? Is he sick? What's wrong with him? Why is she telling this story? Is he like, does he have to mention now? No, but I want...

Dave! (01:37:54.43) This narration seemed like a good idea at first, and then they just kind of abandoned it. They were like, oh yeah, we got that!

Julia (01:38:00.36) I wanna know your opinion. Who is she talking to?

Bryan! (01:38:00.869) Yeah. Oh, I. Yeah. Oh, you got this is a real

Dave! (01:38:03.49) Well, she does say something else. She says something like, I didn't say it enough or I didn't say it something like that. And I think it's more like a, just one more time in case I didn't say it enough, Marty. It's real sentimental and sappy.

Julia (01:38:15.436) But who is she? Who is she talking? She's telling the story to him, right?

Dave! (01:38:21.19) No, she's telling it to us.

Julia (01:38:22.32) to us.

No, I think it might.

Dave! (01:38:25.738) Look, no it's not, it's cocaine. It's cocaine is the answer.

Julia (01:38:29.476) In my head, she's like, Marty's in a hospital bed dying, and she's telling him the story, and then they think, this is how you end it. You go, I love you, good night.

Bryan! (01:38:30.093) Yeah. I'm gonna. I'm gonna I'm gonna roll with you on that one, because like.

Dave! (01:38:38.286) I guess he never overcame his disability. It got the better of him! It was all those climbing trees and climbing out of windows.

Julia (01:38:40.396) No!

Julia (01:38:47.668) It changes the whole movie entirely if you're like, oh, is that what that was?

Bryan! (01:38:49.985) Yeah. Yeah, cuz this is like they do it like next year when Stand By Me comes out, the narration is way more competently handled and you know, you eventually you get the context for the whole thing. This I know but like just roll with me on this. I'm saying that this was an audition for that or something to that effect cuz it that's a she make you made a really good point. It's not really cool. You know.

Dave! (01:39:03.15) Yeah, because someone else wrote it.

Bryan! (01:39:17.104) clear who she's talking to and in this, you know, like framed this way, like I have no idea who she's talking to. I assumed that it was sort of towards us because all of the narration is sort of like just so you know, like this is what's happening and it's for our benefit. So I'm going with that because I think it's an awesome idea.

Julia (01:39:34.648) Hmm. But what if, what if it's like a notebook thing? Like what if he has the dementia and like he doesn't remember it and she has to refresh it? And she's like, this is where we grew up and this is what happened in case you didn't remember.

Julia (01:39:47.301) It makes Silver Bullet more than just Silver Bullet. It's on a whole nother meta level.

Bryan! (01:40:01.914) the

Julia (01:40:11.501) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:40:14.312) whole thing like we knew we were gonna do a Stephen King thing like right from the very beginning but when we finally put it on paper it was kind of on the back of like I had some time to kill when I was flying to California and I watched like a

Dave! (01:40:25.766) Well, I had just watched them and you said, what should I watch? And I said, watch these.

Bryan! (01:40:29.58) that's right and then and then this was this was the ninth in the 80s and the 10th overall like this it's crazy how many of these adaptations they were making

Dave! (01:40:31.082) And I chose these movies because I feel like so there's obviously a shitload of Stephen King movies and we could have chosen any of them for various reasons but I feel like

Dave! (01:40:49.706) And I feel like these two, the Maximum Overdrive and Silver Bullet, these two are the most 80s of all of them. I think of his entire film, oeuvre, if you.

Bryan! (01:41:02.635) I'll give you that.

Dave! (01:41:03.454) And I think that was kind of why I chose them. It's like these, these Dino De Laurentiis movies, and these two in particular, feel the most 80s, you know, watching this shit on cable or on local channels. Like these were the ones that came up the most.

Bryan! (01:41:19.568) Yeah. Cuz yeah, like my maximum overdrive was one that definitely was like in heavy rotation on cable. That's probably where I saw it the first time cuz like definitely this was not this was that was released in the time when like

Mom and Dad were renting the movies for us, and they were not renting Stephen King adaptations for us. We know. No, we had. So yeah, our local show was, he said, Creature Double Feature, which was literally just like a Saturday afternoon double feature movie.

Dave! (01:41:36.906) Now, Maximal Overdrive was definitely a creature double feature WLVI. That was that was where I saw it.

Julia (01:41:43.257) Did you have a local horror host?

Dave! (01:41:46.448) Uh, they didn't really have a host. They did occasionally.

Bryan! (01:41:58.612) I don't think they did Maximum Overdrive. They probably ran it at night during the eight o'clock movie. Like we had a kickass series of like UHF TV stations that just ran whatever they could afford. And it was almost always garbage. And like I think I saw the Warriors that way for the first time I saw. Like eventually. Yeah, but yeah, the creature double feature was almost all like AIP stuff and Toho and

Dave! (01:42:18.226) A lot of Toho movies, too.

Julia (01:42:19.642) Mmm.

Julia (01:42:25.153) Nice.

Bryan! (01:42:28.56) a lot of a lot of schlock. You can actually find like a complete list of movies. Actually, I have the complete list in my letterbox as a list that I kind of like hit every now and then with a random generator just to sort of like pick one. And it was all goo. It was all goofy, goofy stuff. I love it. All of it to death. Some of it has ended up on Mystery Science Theater and it deserves to be there. But yeah, like that was that was it. We didn't have a host, but a few. Nice.

Julia (01:42:41.836) That's cute.

Julia (01:42:53.684) We had in Las Vegas, we had Count Cool Rider. He was like the Elvis vampire host. He was pretty great.

Bryan! (01:43:00.361) Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, but nowadays you can catch like Svenguli like everywhere. So like, you know, it's cool that you can actually catch up with that stuff. But yeah, yeah. But Cat's Eye. Yeah. It's that's that was.

Dave! (01:43:05.902) Yeah, I chose them because they're super they're super reggae. They're like they're real. These are real 80s. Really 80s.

Julia (01:43:17.368) I feel like Firestarter falls in that category as well, where it feels very, very of the time. Oh yeah, it does.

Dave! (01:43:21.142) Yeah, Fire sort of feels more professional to me.

Bryan! (01:43:25.768) Yeah, that one's right on. That was right on the cusp for sure. Like the dead zone definitely has a little bit of that kind of 70s hangover to it. But but yeah, these were like right in the middle there.

Julia (01:43:33.996) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (01:43:40.094) And Firestarter, like those are really like everybody who worked on Firestarter is like really competent. And it's like everybody's sort of fire. Like it's, is it a great movie? Not really, but everybody's really firing like on all cylinders. Whereas like Maximum Overdrive is batshit crazy. And this one is just sort of like every. I'd say it's fine. I'm.

Julia (01:43:45.984) Yeah, for sure.

Julia (01:43:56.956) I think Firestarter's great. I think it's like, I'd say it's like my top five adaptations, really. I think like you got the music by Tangerine Dream, you got the like, you know, everybody, I think it's one of Drew Barrymore's best performances. You got fucking fireballs everywhere you look. And then you got the show. And it's all like MKUltra based, right, which makes me very happy.

Bryan! (01:43:59.75) I I'll I give it to you. Yeah. Yeah, it that one.

Dave! (01:44:06.142) Yeah.

Dave! (01:44:13.706) Yeah, I think it's like.

Bryan! (01:44:18.812) That one hits the sweet spot for like all of my like sci-fi needs because like that that's also a novel that I like a lot like Because it's sort of like a look into what it would have been like if King wrote the X-Men Yeah, so it's a it's not great, but it's cool is what I'll say

Julia (01:44:32.215) Mmm, interesting.

Julia (01:44:39.304) It's interesting you...

Dave! (01:44:39.918) I like this one. This is where they all fall apart though. Like I, that's, I kind of appreciate that where it's like everyone's just a little bit tired and they're all kind of like sick of dealing with each other. That's this movie.

Bryan! (01:44:48.092) I'm not sure if I've ever seen it. No. Yeah, the other one released this year is Cat's Eye, which is one that I feel like I have seen a million times in bits and pieces, but I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen it front to back in one go. Alright, I'll see you next. I'll see you in like 10 years.

Julia (01:45:02.904) Okay, so your assignments from this podcast are to watch Cat's Eye and also read the entire Dark Tower series. So enjoy, enjoy.

Dave! (01:45:09.326) I'm sorry.

Bryan! (01:45:16.464) Julia, thank you so much for joining us. This was wonderful.

Julia (01:45:19.06) I will talk about Stephen King and horror movies anytime you like. This is the joy of my life.

Bryan! (01:45:24.581) That's great. Where can I... What do you got going on? Where can everybody find you? Oh, that's right! I forgot about that one!

Julia (01:45:28.384) Uh, so I have two podcasts. I have horror movie survival guide. And I also have a podcast about the filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky called Joe Wowsky and so you can hear us dive into his works, not only movies, but comics as well, so we're going hard on him. Um, and you can find me, I'm on Julia C. Marquesi on all of the things. And I like to talk to people online. So talk to me about whatever you like.

Bryan! (01:45:58.619) All right. Now, Dave, what are we doing next?

Dave! (01:46:02.811) Oh, that's actually a great question. I know what we're doing next. I don't know what we're airing next. What are we doing next? Oh, shit, I know what we're doing next.

Bryan! (01:46:11.288) Yeah, yeah, we're diving into some fucked up territory. I cannot, I cannot wait. I cannot wait. I love the baby so much. I cannot really express it. It's one of the few movies that I wish I could go back and see for the first time again.

Dave! (01:46:14.77) Yeah, next month we decided we were gonna each pick a movie that is a real what the fuck movie, and you chose The Baby.

Julia (01:46:14.869) Yay!

Julia (01:46:23.233) Oh, have fun.

Dave! (01:46:24.758) We're gonna watch The Baby, which is a deeply strange film that I...

Dave! (01:46:41.23) I don't know if you think the baby is good, wait till you get to my pick. It's Canadian and it is insane.

Bryan! (01:46:41.24) Join us back.

Bryan! (01:46:48.422) Alright, so yeah, see us back here in two weeks when we do the baby.