Bryan! (00:03.896) You're listening to Bring Me the Axe. I'm Brian White, one half of this morbid equation, and I'm joined by my cohost and actual brother, Dave White. Dave, how you doing?

Dave! (00:12.518) Thank you for asking. I'm doing pretty well. You know, I will tell you what I did last night. Well, actually, it was all of yesterday. I went to a day-long bachelorette party in Salem, Massachusetts. And let me tell you something, that city is as much a shit show in the first week of November as it is all of October.

Bryan! (00:21.552) I've seen the photos.

Bryan! (00:31.488) Oh yeah, because everybody what everybody does is they they've now learned like you can't go there from October 1 to October 31st. So like let's just wait it out. But now there's this like extended two-week period where it's still like a shit show until about Thanksgiving when everybody's like fully over.

Dave! (00:39.057) Mm-mm.

Dave! (00:48.502) Yeah, but you know what it felt like? It felt like haunted happenings 50% off. It's like when you go to Michael's, like a week before Halloween, it's like all 75% off. It was like that. Like even the people, I'm like, this isn't your best, is it, Salem?

Bryan! (00:52.614) Hahaha

Teri (01:02.849) Oh no.

Dave! (01:04.046) And that's what I did.

Bryan! (01:06.264) So, uh, oh, did you go to the, uh, did you go to the satanic devil?

Dave! (01:09.814) Uh, well we did, so we actually had to meet them there later, so we got there as they were like finishing up. But we had to like, cause you have to like ring the bell to get in, and I was like well that's kinda sad, but I get it, but... I mean...

Bryan! (01:15.524) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:21.584) Yeah, they've got they got to take security pretty serious over there even in Salem Yeah, yeah Yeah, also, I mean for me I found out that tonight is the 34th tree house of horror and I am feeling really fucking old right now Yeah tree house of terror 34 So hey Dave Who's this over here?

Dave! (01:25.934) It's a nice place though, it's a beautiful building.

Dave! (01:36.366)

1. Goddamn. Yeah. Well, we have a guest here with us today. We have an actor, writer, podcaster, co-host of the Horror Movie Survival Guide podcast. We have Terry Gamble. Hello, Terry, how are you? And thank you for joining us.

Teri (01:57.731) What's up, guys? Hi, Brian. Hi, Dave. Oh, I love Salem. Such a weird, wonderful place. I have only been there in the summer. I've never gone for Halloween, and I think I'm grateful for that because I hear it is a hot, hot mess. But it's a hot mess. I feel like most of the time, though, because even when you go there, you're talking about the off brand moment. Like, I've definitely felt like that experience going there to like some of the museums and some of the shows. Mm hmm.

Bryan! (01:59.172) Hey.

Dave! (02:09.155) It's... it's hard.

Bryan! (02:12.072) Yeah, yeah, let me tell you about it.

Bryan! (02:18.756) Hehehehe

Bryan! (02:26.349) Yeah, last year, they there were actually like letters to the editor articles in the local paper, like the Salem paper that was basically like, please, everybody. We know you love Hocus Pocus, but the city's infrastructure literally cannot handle this many people. It's like they were actively discouraging people from going in October. Oh.

Teri (02:48.123) But people want it for their Instagram. Just go another time of year. It looks like pretty much the same, you know? You can go get the weird pictures by like, I mean, the museums have all the photo ops you probably really want anyway, so yeah.

Dave! (02:52.714) Yeah, it's going to look like that three months out of the year.

Bryan! (03:02.688) Yeah, yeah, it's I do I do like going there. I don't make it a habit of it. But like I live like 30 minutes away. So like there's really no excuse. It's wonderful.

Teri (03:11.947) Oh, yeah. Yeah, I used to live in Massachusetts and I would take the train when I lived there. I lived in Somerville for a while. And so, yeah. Yeah. So I used to take a little jaunt, you know, enjoy, enjoy some spooky good times with my friends and, you know, that little bookshop that has like I don't forget the name of it, like stacks and stacks and stacks of books. And you go in there. I'm sure that guy's probably not there anymore. But there was a little man I'd walk in and I said, do you have this certain book? I forget the name of the book. And he was like, no.

Dave! (03:18.274) Hey, that's where I live.

Bryan! (03:19.805) Yeah, Dave lives in Somerville.

Bryan! (03:24.836) Alright.

Teri (03:41.479) I was like, how do you know? And it looked like, I don't know, it was like Flipwick's shop for like, you know, freaking wands and stuff like that. And he kind of had that same energy where he was just like, no, the book is not here. And I could barely see him past the stacks, but he knew exactly everything that was in that freaking book shop. Anyway.

Bryan! (03:54.535) Ah!

Bryan! (03:57.708) Yeah, yeah, it's a city full of characters. It's it really is. Yeah. Hey, so we practically grew up in neighborhood video stores, the steady diet of utter garbage that those shops provide us with continues unabated to this day. There's no one else. I enjoy chopping it up with more about trashy movies than Dave. Just before we get into it, here's a little housekeeping. If you want to keep up with us between episodes, you can also find us pretty much on all the socials searching.

Teri (04:00.335) It's cool and creepy.

Bryan! (04:20.58) Bring Me the Axe Horror Podcast, though we're really only active on Instagram these days mostly. You can get me at the Bring Me the Axe Pod and Dave's That Queer Wolf over there. We have a good time. We just came off of a whole October thing and it was a good time. We're finding new ways to sort of carry it out into November and beyond. You can also contact us directly at bringmediaxpod at gmail.com with any questions, comments or suggestions. So do let us know if there's a movie that you love and would like to hear us give it the business.

Lastly, if you like what you hear, you can subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts and you'll be doing us a favor by leaving us a five star review on Apple podcasts. You can also do that on Spotify now and it's very nice. I keep I keep I don't do it on both as a matter of fact. You're right. He was at the satanic temple. He knows. Yeah. But yeah, I keep seeing that number go up. It's so nice. It's just so nice, but we're going to continue to give you all a hard time about it. So fucking do it. Yeah.

Dave! (05:01.154) Please do them both. Do them both or I will hex you.

Dave! (05:07.886) That's right.

Teri (05:18.427) Yeah, do it. Do it already. Give him a nice review, come on.

Bryan! (05:19.904) Yeah, right. Even Terry says so. So I just want to get that all out of the way, right at the top of the show. So, oh boy, I'll give you a little taste of what we're going to talk about today.

Bryan! (07:30.481) Oh boy, the Watcher in...

Dave! (07:31.178) That is a fucking- that is a five-star cast right there, and they are not gonna use any of them.

Bryan! (07:36.044) Yeah.

Teri (07:36.483) Oh no, untrue, untrue. Kyle Richards is gonna give it to us hard, okay?

Dave! (07:39.172) That is my favorite line. I love that line with Betty Davis. OK, yes. Yes.

Bryan! (07:39.789) Ugh.

Bryan! (07:45.588) Yeah, I'm on board with that. I'm definitely on board with that. So, so Terry, we hit you with like a list of movies to see like what you might be interested in talking about. You picked this one.

Teri (07:56.527) You guys seem so bummed about that. What's that energy about guys? Talk to me. Why are you upset?

Bryan! (08:00.588) Oh, so this, we had this one on the list. We've got the show scheduled into like way into next year. And we had this one on the list, I think for the somewhere in the summer where we originally planned to do sort of like a Disney horror double feature kind of thing with this one in the black hole. And we both, I don't, I mean, oh, we're gonna do something wicked. And I have very unusual memories of this one because I feel like I've seen it a lot.

Teri (08:08.987) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (08:20.104) Something wicked. We're gonna do this in something wicked.

Bryan! (08:30.424) But upon watching it this time, it occurred to me that I probably saw this when I was like eight or nine. And like, I just kind of have like faint memories about it. And it always kind of haunts me as this mysterious little picture that Disney would rather forget about. And so I think the idea of the Watcher in the Woods was way, way more exciting than the execution of the Watcher in the Woods.

Teri (08:45.22) Oh yeah.

Dave! (08:53.954) Let me tell you something about this movie. I've seen it a shitload of times. Probably the last time I watched it was maybe 10 or so years ago. And it's familiar in a way that no other movie is familiar to me. It feels like I know it beat for beat, not the content necessarily. It just feels so familiar, like watching it. And as we were saying before you got on here, Terry, is that you remember the pre-roll trailer that Disney would run at the beginning of every movie.

that was sort of like, they would just show all of these live action, like what became touched on pictures. And these scenes, like I remember being drawn to these scenes in particular, because they're the best parts of the movie that are in that trailer. But watching it again, I was like, this is the most familiar thing. It is like a movie, I swear to God, it's like I've seen it a million fucking times, even though I'm not that familiar with it like.

Teri (09:23.408) Yeah.

Dave! (09:47.554) with the content of it. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it was so weird. I'm like, this just feels so familiar to me.

Teri (09:52.963) Cause it haunts you like it's supposed to, you know?

Dave! (09:55.538) Well, maybe. It does something.

Bryan! (09:56.792) Yeah. So here's a warning before we get rolling. We're basically going to talk about this movie from beginning to end. So spoilers to follow. You can find this nowhere. Basically. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's a, there are very good reasons why you can't watch this movie on Disney Plus. It has, I, it's just a very weird movie that they are.

Dave! (10:09.362) Nowhere. No. Yeah, I had to buy it.

Teri (10:10.071) Nowhere, you have to go to a video store. I had to go to the video store. Yeah.

Teri (10:23.207) I'm sure it's just some weird like rights thing. I love this movie. You guys are gonna hate on it. I can feel it, but.

Bryan! (10:27.112) Uh... Ahahaha!

Dave! (10:29.246) No, actually, that's not the problem. I actually don't hate it. There's not much to hate about it, but there's also not much to love about it either. It's so confusing.

Bryan! (10:33.7) That's yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, like I am. I have no intention. I have no intention of dunking on this movie. It's just It's just weird. It's just it's tonally. It's very strange.

Teri (10:44.599) It's super weird and it was like, yeah, it's super weird. And I guess that makes sense because I'm super weird. But I think it's just like, it's a nice little gateway. I understand now like watching it as an adult. I hadn't watched it in probably about the same around the time, Dave, about 10 years ago, probably last time I saw it. It was a movie that me and one of my best childhood friends used to rent every time I would spend the night at her grandmother's house. Her grandmother lived next door to me and my friend lived down the street from me when we were growing up.

And then when they moved away, we still would meet up at her grandparents. Her grandmother lived in a house out near a bunch of some woods, like on the edge, like looking very much like what it looks like in this movie. And so there was something about having watching this scary ass movie that looked exactly like where we were staying and us just scaring the living daylights out of each other. We're like watching this movie. And so it's just very it was very seminal. And that's how the deer placed in my heart.

And just getting to see Betty Davis, you know, be creepy and ominous and wonderful. You're just like, oh, OK. And then later on in life being like, oh, my God, like, she's so good in everything and just, you know, I don't know.

Bryan! (11:47.361) Yeah.

Bryan! (11:52.512) Yeah, there are times when I was watching this when I was like, I'm like, oh, they must have, they must have lifted notes and beats from burnt offerings because

Dave! (12:02.206) Oh my God, the entire opening of this movie, the first 10 minutes of this movie feels like it is pulled directly from Bird Top Race. Yup.

Bryan! (12:08.024) Note for note. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. Alright, so here's some facts. The year was 1980 and some other movies that were released that year. The Children, which I just watched recently and holy shit. I love this movie to death. Also Fade to Black, which I also watched recently.

Teri (12:26.447) One of the best we love Dennis Christopher. We've had him on horror movie, Survival Guide. He's a very good friend of Julia's. We are obsessed with, this is a movie. That's a big movie for us. We love Fade to Black. It's a love letter to cinema. If you haven't watched it, I implore you listeners, please, please pause this and watch that. And then maybe watch Watch in the Wood or just listen to us talk about it. I think, I feel like Fade to Black is more important in the cinema lexicon. It's fucking amazing. And Dennis went there. Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (12:35.3) I love Fade to Black. It's...

Bryan! (12:50.undefined) Yeah. It's it's so goddamn good. I love how I love how just it it's campy and then it's like deliberately campy. It's such a great movie. Yeah.

Teri (13:04.311) Yeah, it's like a little bit of that psycho kind of element where you're just like, oh gosh, like he's absolutely lost it and it's beautiful. So yeah, and that Marilyn Monroe, the girl who plays Marilyn like in that fade to black or looks like her, she's absolutely stunning. So, anywho.

Bryan! (13:08.014) Do ya?

Bryan! (13:22.072) Also, Altered States, Inferno, and the original Satan's Slaves, which was remade just recently.

Teri (13:24.173) Mmm.

Dave! (13:33.046) Rough year, rough year for movies.

Teri (13:33.316) I do not.

Bryan! (13:35.98) No, well, you know what? We've done so many movies set night for like in from 1980 that I'm kind of scraping the barrel for like titles that we haven't already mentioned. It's probably. I guarantee we've done like of all the movies we've done, like I think the most of them are like set right in 1980. Yep. Cast and crew director is a guy named John Hoff, who's a utility director responsible for both Witch Mountain movies, plus the Legend of Hell House.

Dave! (13:42.346) All right. It is one of my favorite eras. It is actually probably my favorite era.

Teri (14:02.875) Okay.

Dave! (14:05.474) I mean, they're like twins of evil.

Bryan! (14:05.528) Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Twins of Evil, and American Gothic, which is also campy as hell and delightful.

Teri (14:09.58) Ooh. Yeah.

Dave! (14:11.412) and Howling 4.

Bryan! (14:13.676) No shit, I did not know this. All right, all right, yep. Poor guy did his best with this one, but honestly, I'm not sure if anybody could really turn out a coherent picture with what he was getting.

Dave! (14:14.506) Yeah, I like four.

Dave! (14:25.546) No, this is the screenwriter's fault, I'm pretty sure.

Bryan! (14:29.984) Yeah, because he's a the thing is, is this is not a movie. This is not a movie without merit. It is there's some there's some really sweet photography great some really good scenes. It's just the script. There's like something like four or five script credits.

Dave! (14:32.022) He's a TV guy.

Dave! (14:45.514) Yeah, well that's what I said to you when I was watching it. I was like, this movie, everybody in this is super competent. They are doing, I mean, I'm not gonna say they're doing their best, but they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. This thing falls apart because of a convoluted script, and the ending is a little bit...

Teri (15:02.575) Well, there, did you watch the alternate endings? Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Bryan! (15:02.612) Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Dave! (15:04.999) I did. There's a long story behind all that, which we'll get into eventually, but...

Bryan! (15:08.428) Oh yeah, we're gonna get, we'll get to the endings because it's kind of like, if anybody knows anything about this movie, it's because it has like three endings and it was like, yeah, you know. Cast, we got Lynn Holly Johnson, who I will call.

Teri (15:22.759) Please don't let this feeling end. That's all I, sorry, Ice Castles to me. That's what I just want to call her, Ice Castles. She's the star of Ice Castles, one of my favorite movies from the eighties. Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (15:26.418) Hahaha

Bryan! (15:30.024) Yeah, I'm a cop. I'm just gonna call her Lynn from here on out because that's a mouthful. Former professional figure skater turned actress whose agent somehow turned a Golden Globe nomination for ice castles into a role in a movie so disastrous she nearly quit acting it. Now, and it's and that's not this movie I'm talking we're talking about where the boys are 84. But yeah. Coming up behind that is a Betty Davis, Hollywood legend who's phoning it.

Dave! (15:43.254) Yes, she never really worked much again.

Dave! (15:56.99) I like how you put Lynn Holly Johnson above Betty fucking Davis.

Bryan! (15:59.98) Well, here's why. Lit Holly Johnson is all over this movie, and Betty Davis is just, she sort of like looks out her window ominously and sort of shows up occasionally to say like something. She is phoning it in so hard in this movie.

Dave! (16:04.494) That's true.

Dave! (16:10.218) Yeah, she could have done this whole thing from her hotel room. And it would have been just as good.

Yeah.

Teri (16:19.599) No, oh my God, no. I think she's just doing her thing, yeah. She's just like, I will stare and be scary and scare this child a little bit and like scare the mom a little bit. And each like one of the girls has a scene where they're like, I'm scared of her. Like, it's like, first it's like Lynn, then it's like they go through each one of them has a moment where like I'm scared of her and then finally they're like, oh, I guess we should listen to this freaking ghost. Like something's up.

Dave! (16:21.134) I mean, she's doing what she does. She's doing what Benny Davis did in the 80s.

Bryan! (16:25.636) There are.

Bryan! (16:34.933) Yeah.

Dave! (16:42.71) Yeah, she's not- she's only scary because she's old apparently?

Teri (16:46.179) That happens a lot, I feel like, in like this era of filmmaking, you know, even to this day.

Dave! (16:49.415) Yeah.

Bryan! (16:49.492) Oh yeah, yeah. You never underestimate the fear factor of the crone. But yeah, most of the movie's unfinished qualities have to do with Disney rushing the movie to release in time for her 50th anniversary in Hollywood. And so a lot of the reason that the endings shifted a lot has to do with the fact that they released the movie before the ending was even done. So and rounding it out, we got Carol Baker.

Teri (16:54.616) Yes!

Bryan! (17:17.616) who fled to Europe in the mid 60s to outrun a Hollywood blacklist. And yeah, Settling in Rome, she goes on to star in several Jolly directed by Umberto Lindsey. So sweet, so perverse.

Dave! (17:21.866) and fucking killed it in Italy too.

Dave! (17:27.574) Yeah, she's in, uh, she's in... Britta Lenzenberg, she's in, uh, the Paranoia, she's in Soul Sleep Por... So, first... She's in the other, the third one, something about ice.

Bryan! (17:37.508) the dagger of ice. She's also in a quiet place to kill. She's in a bunch. She's in a bunch and she is great and she credits this that period in Italy with like reinvigorating her entire career because like even before god was his name, Steven Levine, Bob Levine, the producer who kind of locked her into the baby doll character like escaping to Europe was

Dave! (17:39.598) I forgot my gap. Yup. I'm going to go ahead and do a little bit of a

Teri (17:42.439) She's so stunning. Yeah.

Dave! (17:43.871) Yeah.

Bryan! (18:05.132) like the best move she ever did, because she came back to America after that and started doing this and.

Dave! (18:09.122) Well, because the movies she made there with Berta Lindsay are, they are, sexy is an understatement. Like they are very explicit movies and they're good. I mean, they're good movies, but like she finally got to break free and be like a, you know, I think the character or actor she wanted to be.

Bryan! (18:15.12) Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Bryan! (18:26.383) Mm-hmm. Yep. But yeah, yeah.

Dave! (18:26.446) Because she's good in this too, I think she's great in that. I mean fucking everybody's good in this, it's just...

Teri (18:29.999) Yeah. And rest in peace, David McCallum. I was just like, aw, yes he did in September. So, Ducky, NCIS, one of my best friends. That's like her favorite show. I was just like, aw, what a sweetie.

Dave! (18:33.77) Yay, didn't it just die?

Bryan! (18:38.072) Yep. Ha ha ha.

Bryan! (18:44.42) Carol Baker is still alive. She's like 92 or 93 years old. She's still doing it. Good for her. Yeah.

Teri (18:51.128) Amazing.

Dave! (18:52.382) Like even the composer for this is really, really good. He's the guy that did Deer Hunter and Pick Up Your Ears, which are both awesome scores. I can't remember his name, but yeah.

Teri (18:57.775) Ooh! Ooh.

Bryan! (18:57.864) Yeah. Yeah, I got notes about that. It's a guy named Stanley Meyers. He was and who was prolific.

Dave! (19:05.182) I mean, he did a lot of TV too, but he did some big movies. I think he did The Witches as well. He's really good.

Bryan! (19:09.464) The Witches, he did scenes from Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, like a bunch of shit. Like, I mean, it wasn't like he's got a few like real noteworthy titles to his name, but like he also did a lot of fucking garbage. But at the same time, he worked with Hans Zimmer like a shitload throughout the 80s. Yeah. And the soundtrack here is like spooky gothic stock. But there's like a lot of chiming music box stuff. But there is some just

Teri (19:24.559) That's cool.

Dave! (19:33.354) Yeah, but I love that shit. Like, that is my jam.

Bryan! (19:37.84) howling madness on the soundtrack that really kind of nails home what's going on in some parts. Like if you're if you're like me at certain parts where you're just like what the fuck is happening in this movie? Like all of a sudden comes this like atonal like what is it diegetic or non-diegetic sound comes in to be like oh I should be scared right now. So it's absolutely works.

Dave! (19:39.275) Yeah.

Teri (19:59.559) Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then you'll get some weird like lighting thing and some weird symbol or shape. You're gonna get a circle, a triangle. Or some weird like, yeah, some weird lasers. Yeah.

Dave! (20:06.558) You're gonna get a lot of lasers in this.

Bryan! (20:08.26) Yeah. So, um, live action movies at Disney were not really a new thing. They've been producing them since the 1950s. And while I would say like the bulk of them kind of lie forgotten today, they built like a massive enterprise on the back of like Kurt Russell and Hayley Mills.

Teri (20:29.943) Yep, I was obsessed, obsessed with Hayley Mills as a child. My mom used to call me her little Pollyanna because I could play the glad game and find everything positive. Summer Mad Magic, all of that. Those were my jam. And then also Fred McMurray, Happiest Millionaire, like all of those things. This is like my wheelhouse as a child because my family is a little conservative and Disney was like the safe space between that and Fairytale Theater. I feel like these movies raised me.

Bryan! (20:35.987) Hahaha

Teri (20:54.723) But Watcher was the scary one out of all of those. I was like, oh my gosh, this is Disney. This is terrifying after watching like the sweet Haley Mills movies.

Bryan! (20:54.865) Yeah.

Bryan! (20:59.501) Yeah.

Dave! (21:02.186) I think that's probably true. That's true for us too, I think, because there's three years between all three of us. So, you know, there's kind of an age gap. I think these movies were probably like, well, these will satisfy everybody, maybe, at least to a certain point they did.

Bryan! (21:02.279) right, right. I

Teri (21:15.623) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (21:16.456) Oh, I was such a bitch about it, too, because like we go to the video store. We went to this place in Salem called Video Paradise, and it's my parents and three young children at the time. And like me, I wanted action and fucking monsters and stuff. And they would be like, well, we're going to rent this. We're going to rent candle shoe. And I was such a fucking asshole about it. Like, I don't want to watch that. And then I'd sit down and watch it and be like, all right, fine. That was pretty good. Now.

Teri (21:39.143) It's not bad.

Dave! (21:42.618) like Disney's heyday with live action movies and the problem was is that era kind of ended and that audience aged out of that and so they were like well we got how do we recapture them it's like i don't know let's make a bunch of kind of low rent shit and try to lure them back i guess and put Elliott Gold in half of them for some reason

Bryan! (21:57.74) Yeah. Uh the. No, the black hole. I believe the black hole is the first movie that I think I ever saw in a movie theater and I remember cuz dad took me dad took me to see it with

Dave! (22:04.15) Black hole's pretty good.

Bryan! (22:13.764) his with like his friend and his son who I played with occasionally. And there were parts of that movie that scared the shit out of me. Also, nobody told me it was a Disney movie. So my expectations at like four years old were like, hey, I like I'm going to go see a movie in space. And then Anthony Perkins gets like chopped up by an evil robot. And the ship is manned by a bunch of zombies. That's crazy. Yeah.

Dave! (22:37.771) That's New Disney. New Disney's gonna chop up Anthony Perkins right in front of your eyes.

Bryan! (22:44.348) But yeah, but in spite of their like wild successes with live action films, because the live action movies were really where they were making the money for a little while, because like there would be like, you know...

Teri (22:50.875) Yeah.

Dave! (22:52.078) Because they didn't make any, they'd stopped making animation. Like Fox and the Hound was like the last one, maybe?

Bryan! (22:56.108) Well, I mean, I mean, even through like the 50s and 60s, like it cost a lot of money to make an animated picture and it takes a long time to do it. And so like they were filling the gaps with like Davy Crockett, Crockett movies and like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and like Treasure Island.

Teri (23:01.775) Robin Hood.

Dave! (23:01.95) and it takes a shitload of time.

Dave! (23:11.798) I mean, it's the same reason they don't hand animate now, too. It's like, that's why everything's digital now, because it takes so fucking long to do it.

Teri (23:12.507) Well, they were.

Bryan! (23:16.472) Yeah. But

Teri (23:18.627) And they were using their like, um, mouseketeers and stuff like that and stuff like that and parlaying those guys into, into stars and using those properties that way.

Bryan! (23:21.979) Oh yeah.

Bryan! (23:25.94) Yeah, it was really like Annette Funicello is probably like the earliest example of like their like Miley Cyrus kind of experiment. Oh, no shit.

Dave! (23:31.362) Mm-hmm.

Teri (23:32.995) I got to meet her when I was 16. Oh, it was not, I was at, sorry, I was at Disneyland because I'm a Southern California native. I was there for a week because I was in a show choir competition. Yes, I lettered in show choir drama in high school. And I happened to be wearing a mouse club t-shirt and Annette and Frankie were doing a signing in the gallery which is like right by Pius of the Caribbean. And I happened to be there that day and got to meet them and got a picture with them. And...

Dave! (23:36.054) Was it at a mall? Please tell me it was at a mall. Damn it.

Bryan! (23:48.999) Hahaha

Teri (24:02.455) one of my most prized possessions to this day. She was already, you know, had declined quite a bit and was, had a stamp instead of being able to do her signature because of MS and stuff like that. But she was just as lovely as could be. And, you know, anyway, a dream. Beach blanket, me go dream.

Bryan! (24:09.527) Yeah.

Bryan! (24:16.024) That's... that is awesome.

Dave! (24:16.186) Yeah, those stars, they hung on to that shit too. Like Tommy Kirk lasted until he was like in his early 20s and then he was gay. Apparently that was a problem for Disney. So he was no longer going to be in their films.

Bryan! (24:26.48) Ha ha

Teri (24:26.603) I mean, if you're out, but no, like the amount of Disney stars that have moved on, even the modern ones. Yes.

Bryan! (24:32.408) Yep.

Bryan! (24:36.3) Yeah. But like Dave said, by the 70s, the company was in decline. So Walt Disney dies.

Teri (24:40.56) Yeah.

Dave! (24:41.334) Cause they had also spent, they had dumped a shitload of money on Epcot center, which was not successful.

Teri (24:46.075) It was a failure, yeah.

Bryan! (24:47.168) Well, yeah, so Epcot was in 82, I think, and it was it was it had been in development since like the late 70s. But yeah, that story is fascinating as hell because it was not supposed to be a park. It was

Dave! (24:59.946) But it's all part of this whole thing. Yeah.

Teri (24:59.975) It was supposed to be a living community. Yeah, it was supposed to be like the modern community that, yeah.

Bryan! (25:02.048) Yep. Yeah. So so.

Dave! (25:04.982) because it was that and these live action movies that almost sank Disney.

Bryan! (25:08.408) Yeah, so Walt dies in 66 and then his brother Roy dies in 71 and kind of took their vision with them, leaving the company in the hands of Ron Miller, who is Walt's son-in-law, who'd been floating. He'd been kind of around since the 60s as like a producer. And he but ever since then, he'd been floating this idea around the company that like, we got to stop this animated stuff and focus on like adult oriented.

Dave! (25:37.079) DUMMY!

Bryan! (25:37.14) movies to which everybody in the company was like, are you fucking crazy? But then something happens. Disney passes on Star Wars. But then again, fucking everybody in Hollywood passed on Star Wars. 20th Century Fox. They get it in the end, right? Oh, it's the goddamn best. With when that when that door opens and it's just a wall of stormtroopers.

Teri (25:49.959) It's okay, they bought it later. It's the best ride ever they've ever done is Rise of the Resistance. It's literally the best attraction they have ever done.

Teri (26:07.085) It is.

Bryan! (26:07.085) I love it.

Dave! (26:07.39) Hey, hey, nerds, we're talking about another thing now. We're talking about that.

Teri (26:11.107) I'm sorry, but can I just, no, I just gotta say, this is Disney and this is one of, okay, anyway, get yourself there. This is the best attraction I try. I like, people are like, oh, it's great. I'm like, no, I need to let you know, it is beyond an attraction. It is immersive. It is the best thing they have ever done at the park. And I was an annual pass holder and went all the freaking time.

Bryan! (26:13.101) Yeah, God. No, we're having a little conversation over here. You chill.

Dave! (26:16.818) I haven't been to Disney in, I don't know.

Bryan! (26:24.547) No.

Bryan! (26:32.031) I would wait.

Yeah, I would wait three hours in line for it.

Teri (26:38.467) I would wait 10 and just be like, okay, I did that today. Bye. Fine.

Dave! (26:42.326) Well, you could have lived at Epcot. You would never have to leave.

Bryan! (26:42.922) It's... yep. Yep. Nope.

Teri (26:46.355) No, I'm good. I don't know. After being there that week in high school, it was I never want to spend that time that long a time again. It was too much. It was too much. Hidden Mickey's are everywhere. It makes you crazy after a while. Like, yeah.

Bryan! (26:55.436) Yeah. So.

Dave! (26:56.93) That's true.

Dave! (27:00.79) But there is a weird thing that also happens, because it's not just Star Wars. It's also The Exorcist. So The Exorcist comes out in, what, 73? Everyone's like, shit, we got to get into this horror game, because horror is getting really big. So Disney was like, well, how can we do that? What if we blend our usual family there with some spooky things? And I'm surprised nobody was like, I don't think that's a very good idea. We're not known for devil worship.

Bryan! (27:09.198) Oh well

Bryan! (27:15.481) Yeah.

Bryan! (27:26.594) right. Yeah, cuz uh

Teri (27:30.003) of art. I'm sorry, but Fantasia is fucking scary. And has a big old devil in it.

Dave! (27:31.179) Now.

Bryan! (27:34.82) Yeah. And I mean, honestly, yeah, if you're a Republican in America, you think they're all worshiping the devil down there.

Dave! (27:40.086) The big sexy devil in it?

Teri (27:42.895) Well, I was like my dad. And then you also, you know, you have, I don't know, that was scary to me and that was like devil-y to me. But there's some other stuff, like even Snow White is scary as all get out if you watch the OG Snow White. Yeah, yeah.

Bryan! (27:46.253) Hahaha

Dave! (27:56.534) But this was their attempt to go right for horror, to try to lure that teen horror audience. And it was like, I don't.

Bryan! (27:57.409) Oh sure.

Teri (28:03.203) And Pinocchio 2! And honestly Dumbo, those are all scary movies, those old ones, just watch them again, they're terrifying.

Bryan! (28:09.16) Oh sure, but I don't think they ever really, I don't think they deliberately set out to make them scary. They just kind of happened that way.

Dave! (28:09.218) Well, they are, in a different kind of way.

Dave! (28:15.114) No, they're just, they're just moralistic tales, which are inherently scary.

Bryan! (28:19.4) Yeah, no, but like things in the 70s like the just, you know, the general social vibe was shifting and you know, right. Yeah. So they ultimately start touchstone pictures as kind of like a direct result of this kind of experimental period, but that's not until the 1980s. And Disney is going to have to endure a period of seriously dark pictures before they figure out how to pull it off.

Teri (28:22.372) Yeah.

It's not Freaky Friday. Yeah.

Bryan! (28:45.5) So as I said, the impetus for this was Star Wars, which Disney passed on producing. And because at the time, Hollywood sci fi was considered shit. And then George Lucas proved everybody wrong. So the Black Hole was a movie that had been kind of kicking around since the early 70s. And I thought it was really funny to find this out. But it was originally conceived as a sort of Disney's answer to the kind of disaster movie craze at the time.

Dave! (29:14.839) I get that.

Bryan! (29:15.168) So so like, yeah, they were like they wanted they were like they were like, hey, everybody really likes the Poseidon adventure and the Towering Inferno. What if we did that? But in space, which I don't disagree. Nobody else was doing it. But the but like the sort of the road to production on the black hole. Fascinating as hell, but we're not talking about the black hole. It's enough to know that it did well enough at the box office and it reviewed well enough to encourage Disney to keep on with these sort of like offbeat live action.

Teri (29:16.431) Everyone was trying to make a Jaws and all that stuff around this time, yeah.

Hmm

Dave! (29:27.19) Yeah, no one else had done it.

Bryan! (29:44.532) movies that eventually they lead to like Tron and Dragon Slayer and something wicked this way comes.

Dave! (29:47.914) And these are the ones that really start to drag them down.

Bryan! (29:51.604) Yeah, because they spend way more money on them than I think they intended to.

Dave! (29:53.782) Well, I think that the intro that like, there's a sequence in something wicked that the train when the train arrives and the circus arrives, that is I think at the time was the most expensive scene ever shot in Hollywood. It was like CGI, this was the earliest use of CGI and it was the most expensive scene ever created. And it like, it kind of broke the movie and the movie sucks, but the scene is super expensive.

Bryan! (30:02.254) Yeah.

Bryan! (30:11.818) Oh, right, yeah.

Bryan! (30:18.92) I haven't seen in a while but I remember watching it when we were kids.

Dave! (30:20.242) It's not good. And I love that is my favorite book. And the movie is just not good. Jonathan Price is incredible in it, but he's the only good thing about it.

Bryan! (30:24.448) Are you? Jonathan Price is terrifying in it.

Are you biased because you like the book?

Dave! (30:31.822) I am obsessed with the book. It just doesn't, it doesn't capture much of anything. It's like this, where it's like, you're trying to do something and you're trying to rely too much on tone and sort of atmosphere and you're not paying enough attention to a story. And so it all just kind of falls apart because you're like, well, it's visually kind of cool. I mean, Pam Greer is in it too, which is fucking incredible in it. But otherwise it's like, I don't really know what's happening or what I'm looking at, aside from a really expensive movie. Yeah.

Teri (30:32.679) Probably.

Bryan! (30:33.936) Hahaha

Teri (30:57.551) They went all vibes, all vibes. I feel like this is a little bit, yeah, I was gonna say this one is, I kept writing me like, it's just vibes. They're just trying to get like spooky vibes.

Bryan! (30:59.588) They did all vibes.

Dave! (31:01.694) And that's what they do in this movie.

Dave! (31:06.614) Which I think is why kids are, kids were probably so drawn to it. It's probably why for us it resonated so much. It's like when you're six years old, it's really, it's very atmospheric. It's very tense and scary as hell. When you're 45 years old, you're wondering, what is happening in this movie? Why are there lasers?

Bryan! (31:21.904) that's a good point. I I think that that has probably has a lot to do with why I was so kind of captivated by it by it when we when we first started kind of catching wind of it was because I the closest I had come to like horror movies at the time was like creature double feature and so like it's like I got a taste of it. It's all I was really interested in and when your parents were just like we're just never going to rent you ** Friday the 13th.

this was like also like as close as you got to it. So like there's a bit of there's definitely a bit of that in there for me as well.

Teri (31:58.299) I had already seen Friday the 13th before I saw this at my babysitter's house. I had a babysitter who was from Korea, so she did not speak perfect English. So the stuff that she let us watch scarred me. Like, I remember watching like Poltergeist and all that stuff before I ever saw this movie. So.

Bryan! (32:01.316) Damn!

Bryan! (32:04.857) Hahaha!

Bryan! (32:09.817) Ha ha!

Dave! (32:13.782) Oh, you know, any heavy metal, any heavy metal or horror movies that entered our house went into the trash.

Bryan! (32:14.064) Ooh, yeah.

Teri (32:19.823) So it wasn't at my house, I was at her house. So I got away with some things before I probably should have, so yeah.

Bryan! (32:26.476) Yeah. So, when this movie comes into the picture, everybody in the company is very, very excited because they think

Dave! (32:34.562) The greatest Disney movie of all time is what they thought. Of all time. Snow White. Ha ha ha.

Bryan! (32:38.34) God damn. I thought it was Miller who said it, but yeah, I thought it was Ron Miller who said it, but it turns out it's some other producer who worked with him who was like, this is going to be our exorcist, which is just which is such a strange idea to think that like these people inside the Walt Disney company were like, we gotta make a we gotta make our version of the exorcist.

Dave! (32:52.694) But they all shared it. They all shared this idea.

Teri (32:54.502) Uhhhhhh

Dave! (33:04.878) which is bonkers. Like, it is a movie for adults based on a book for adults about demonic possession. Why are you trying to recreate your exorcist?

Teri (33:05.239) It's so weird. Why?

Bryan! (33:10.764) Yeah. Yep.

Bryan! (33:19.426) the

Dave! (33:27.414) Yeah. Yeah, great. I'll take them both.

Teri (33:28.603) Those are so fun.

Dave! (33:35.746) Well, Christopher Lee is in it, and what's his face from, the guy from, the guy from, In the Heat of the Night, yeah. I can't remember, is it Jonathan something? I can't remember his name, but In the Heat of the Night.

Bryan! (33:39.036) And the guy with the coffin and burnt offerings. Yeah.

Teri (33:39.067) God, I love Christopher Lee. Ugh.

Bryan! (33:47.156) we just we talked about him. We talked about him a shit load with Sam. That's crazy. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I'll look him up. Uh but yeah but so they pumped him up and they're like horror movie, horror movie, horror movie and so he starts to make a horror movie and they're like, whoa, whoa. What are you doing? And so everybody including Ron Miller are like trying to pull him back and get because they don't want something that's gonna be beyond a PG. You know, there was no PG.

Dave! (34:12.834) Do you think he was just like, but you said you wanted the thing. I was making you the thing. I was doing the thing you wanted. You said horror. I was doing horror.

Bryan! (34:17.076) Yeah. Yes, that's my mental image of this is he was just like confused like what are we doing here? Yeah. So yeah, but like all of this producer meddling is all on screen like you can definitely see it's a mess tonally. It's very strange at times. It feels like a dour Hammer horror movie and other times it feels distinctly Disney.

Dave! (34:25.194) Look, you said exorcist, but for kids, right?

Teri (34:37.521) Yeah.

Bryan! (34:42.804) I think a lot of that has to do with Lynn Johnson because like everybody else seems to know what kind of movie they're in but her delivery of everything is like she is acting in a way different movie.

Dave! (34:49.596) Yeah.

Dave! (34:53.278) I'm gonna be honest, I'll be honest, Lynn Holly Johnson's kind of the weak link in this movie. She's not a great actor.

Teri (34:59.419) She is and I feel so bad because I love her. I love her in Ice Castle so much because I guess that's probably the closest character to her real life at playing an ice skater and going through all that stuff. But her, like yelling in scenes where I was like, why are you screaming right now at the top of your lungs? There's no need. It's so strange. It's very disjointed. And like she seems like upset the whole time. And I was like, why are you upset before you even know what's going on? I don't know. There's a lot of that. Yeah.

Bryan! (35:08.066) Yeah.

Bryan! (35:12.261) Ha ha ha!

Dave! (35:13.982) And she is so, she's so.

Bryan! (35:17.168) There are.

Bryan! (35:23.08) Exactly. Oh my god. Yeah, because there are moments. That's the thing is

Dave! (35:24.854) But in a very Midwestern way. Like, she's so, like, corn-fed, middle America. Like, I know why they chose her, probably because of that and ice castles, but, like, eugh.

Bryan! (35:32.352) Yeah. Well, Diane Lane was the original, was originally cast as Jan. Yeah, and I don't. Yeah, I have.

Teri (35:40.171) Oh, and she can act her face off. Like she's amazing. Probably not, but you would have at least, I think there would have been a different kind of groundedness to those scenes that's really missing in some of those moments where it's like, you're pairing her with like these veteran actors, you know, that are just like phenomenal. At least like, you know, the grownup adults who did something wrong when they were young and not wanting to be confronted. And she's like the most annoying. I was like, you're never gonna get them to give you any information, lady.

Dave! (35:41.006) See?

She- even Diane Lane wouldn't have saved this one, though.

Bryan! (35:57.71) Yeah.

Bryan! (36:09.376) Yeah, because most of her most of her time on screen is her yelling. We have to help Karen with that like that Chicago accent. And then like some English person just kind of going. Yes. Cut.

Teri (36:09.411) when you're just like screaming at them like this. It's so weird.

Teri (36:16.593) Yes.

Dave! (36:18.478) Uh-huh.

Dave! (36:25.733) There's a lot of like, get away from here, girl!

Bryan! (36:28.193) Yeah. Yep.

Teri (36:29.379) Yeah, which makes it feel like a hammer in that moment, but then you're like, you cut to her and it feels like footloose or something. It's very strange.

Dave! (36:34.114) But even little Lindsay Wallace, she's killing it too. I mean, she's really just kind of a... She's kind of the weaker part of the movie. She did her best, I guess.

Bryan! (36:34.734) Hahaha!

Bryan! (36:39.417) Lindsay Wallace. Yep. Yeah. Younger sister, younger sister Ellie is played by Kyle Richards who played Lindsay Wallace in Halloween.

Teri (36:49.903) We love Kyle Richards. She's not, she's Real Housewives in my notes because she's a Real Housewives icon and legend.

Dave! (36:50.122) I mean, she's just Lindsay Wallace in my notes.

Bryan! (36:55.854) Well, is it her or is it Kim Richards or are they both on it because I don't watch that stuff.

Dave! (36:56.633) Bye.

Teri (37:01.307) They're both been on it. And Kyle Richards also was in a movie with one of my good friends, Jurneth Scarchato, which was like a Christmas movie that was like Christmas, Real Housewives of Christmas or whatever. Anyway, I love Christmas movies, just so you guys know, along with...

Bryan! (37:13.51) Oh God.

Dave! (37:16.69) Um, don't you? I am a huge, huge fan of... I love a Hallmark movie. I love a Christmas movie. Mm-hmm.

Teri (37:23.227) That's what I'm talking about. And I love the crossover because so many of our wonderful horror stars are in those shitty, wonderful Christmas movies. And it's...

Dave! (37:32.035) How many horror movies and Christmas movies has Michael Verratti written? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Teri (37:35.659) A lot. And I love it. He's always working on more. And I always am bothering him about it because I love to like be like, OK, what else? I'm trying to angle and I got it. I got to play, you know, Lacey Schabers, like best friend or my friend, Autumn Reeser, who was one of my classmates from UCLA. I got to be one of her like, you know, I was like, girl, I got to be one of your best friends. Let me know. Get me in there. Give me that Hallmark money.

Bryan! (37:46.832) I'm out.

Bryan! (37:56.544) You got, you got, keep, don't stop believing. You're gonna, you're gonna get there.

Teri (37:59.463) I believe in myself. I think it's gonna happen like probably next year.

Bryan! (38:01.68) the movie. Mm hmm. Yep. So, it is hard to imagine a time when studios did this since it's so uncommon these days but back in the day before VCRs made this entire notion obsolete, Disney used to re-release their classic big deal big deal pictures periodically and they'd still do solid. Yeah. And they'd still do solid box office. So, they planned to put Mary Poppins back in theaters in 1981 but this movie got

Teri (38:18.843) from the vault.

Bryan! (38:29.184) hold from its initial...

Bryan! (38:33.84) theatrical run for reshoots for the endings because people were just like, what the fuck is happening here?

Dave! (38:40.066) Yeah, and then they spent a million dollars and it still doesn't make any fucking sense. They actually took out the part that kind of explains it.

Bryan! (38:46.732) Yeah, but so to fill the gap, they took Mary Poppins and they moved it up a year to sort of like take over. And I definitely remember mom taking me to see Mary Poppins when it was in the theater. Yeah, yeah. So

Teri (38:58.809) Aww.

Dave! (39:00.994) Could have been this, you missed your chance.

Teri (39:01.351) I love Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins is also one of my favorite crossovers because of Elsa Lancaster as Katie Nana, bride of Frankenstein, one of my favorite people. And I played Katie Nana in a play once, one of my first plays as a child. So I always just felt a kinship to her. I love that. So yeah, we love Mary.

Bryan! (39:17.703) Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, this is an adaptation of a novel by an author named Florence Angle Randall, which doesn't sound like it makes that much more sense than the movie does. I did a little did a little research on that and it seems like everybody's reaction to it was also what?

Teri (39:35.195) Huh?

Dave! (39:36.574) Well, did you read any of the reviews for this when it came out? Because this was pretty much universally panned both times it came out. See, it was a little bit, the second reception was a little kinder, but not much.

Bryan! (39:43.24) Uh, no, I read, I read a lot of like, no, the only reviews of it that I read was just when I was like looking shit up on like letterbox and I'm like, all of my friends love this movie. Like what is happening right now? Yeah.

Dave! (39:54.966) So Vincent Canvey, it was.

Teri (39:55.171) because it was a gateway drug, because that's what I'm telling you. Like, I'm like watching it, like you talked about it, it's all the vibes. It's like, it literally terrified us. Like if you blindfolded one of your friends, you tried to recreate a seance, it has all those things that like, of playing a game of Ouija, if you didn't have friends to do that with, you could put on this movie and feel those same kind of like shivers. And especially because the little kids were, and also because the little kids were the one getting the messages and the parents didn't believe them, it's that thing of like, parents don't understand, you feel that connection of like,

Dave! (40:13.642) Yeah, it's all atmosphere.

Mm-hmm.

Teri (40:23.243) I need the parents to listen. They're not freaking listening. Like, ugh, so good.

Dave! (40:28.202) So noted curmudgeon Vincent Canvey from New York Times. So he was probably the most savage with it. And here's an excerpt from his. It says, the talents are still there, but it's as if they've been placed under a spell of fearful silliness. I challenge even the most indulgent fan to give a coherent translation of what passes for an explanation at the end. And here comes the shadiest, bitchiest part. But the woods, the lawns, the fields, and the houses are, however, splendid. Girl!

Come on!

Bryan! (40:59.044) That's Canby though. He's such an asshole. Yeah.

Teri (41:00.623) She said your sets are pretty. That's.

Dave! (41:03.034) Yeah, it's basically like, look, this movie fucking sucks, but it's really nice to look at. Which, honestly, coming away from it, I was like, well, the architecture was nice.

Teri (41:13.115) Wow.

Bryan! (41:13.16) Yep.

Dave! (41:13.91) But it does, it really does suffer because it's like, who is this movie for? It's a little, maybe a little too spooky for kids, younger kids. It's for teenagers, it's like it has YA appeal, but they don't spend enough time on any of that to develop those characters. And for adults, there's fuck all to look at, and it's confusing. So it's like, you're missing all of your audiences because you're trying to appeal to all of them, and it just does not work. And the story is confusing as hell.

Bryan! (41:31.98) Yeah.

Bryan! (41:38.137) Yeah.

Teri (41:40.12) happens. Yep.

Bryan! (41:40.996) Yeah. But uh last uh lastly the movie was remade in 2017 for Lifetime directed by Melissa Joan Hart and starring in Jethroke Houston. I have not seen it.

Teri (41:54.915) Nor have I, I probably should have for this. I love all of those people, but I'm thinking of who's reviving it and all that stuff too. Melissa Joan Hart, Sabrina Teenage Witch and all that kind of stuff or whatever too, right? So it's like, I don't know. There's something about this zeitgeist of the Watcher in the Woods that was very witchy. And I feel like between like Fern Gully, between this, between like there's certain touchstones of like young spooky people who are spooky now who love these movies when we were kids, these were the gateway drugs.

Dave! (41:56.637) I love Angelica Houston.

Bryan! (42:22.456) Yeah.

Teri (42:24.451) to our future witch lives.

Bryan! (42:27.436) Yep.

Dave! (42:28.258) But even you can't, the other one's not available either. Which makes sense, it's a TV movie, those tend to be harder to find, but it's not that old, so.

Bryan! (42:35.416) Yeah. Oh, there's gotta be like a streaming service that has all of that stuff. You know, but yeah, let's get let's get into it. Let's get down to it. All right. So the film opens on misty footage of a forest as the Curtis family is accompanied by a real estate agent in search for a home to spend their summer. Or are they looking for just a place to move?

Dave! (42:39.982) Amen.

Teri (42:43.751) depends on the rights. Yeah. Okay.

Dave! (42:58.765) unclear.

Teri (42:59.168) Unclear.

Bryan! (43:00.368) because it's it sounds like they want it for the summer, which is like the setup is just like burnt offerings where they're like where he's like, Are you sure it's not $1,000 a month? It's $1,000 for the whole summer.

Dave! (43:11.19) Yeah, it has real, it has like the Sentinel and Burnt Offerings vibes.

Bryan! (43:14.956) Yeah, because they do the same exact thing in burnt offerings where the eagle was like $900 for the entire season.

Dave! (43:22.599) And she's like, I think $700 is perfectly reasonable.

Bryan! (43:26.212) That's right. So as the car drives down the winding path to the house, we get some Watcher in the Woods POV steady cam material as it tracks the car through the woods. And so, like most of these English Gothic horrors, they come upon an ivy covered home with a price tag that's too good to be true. And that, yep, now we learn that the place is owned by an elderly woman named Mrs. Aylwood, who has no family and needs the income.

Teri (43:45.467) Yes. Love it.

Bryan! (43:54.804) She lives in a cottage off to the side of the house. And as we begin, we have the Curtis family as such, mother and father respectively, Helen and Paul, played by Carol Baker and the man from Uncle David McCallum.

Dave! (44:06.668) or ducky.

Teri (44:07.739) Yeah, ducky.

Bryan! (44:07.956) or ducky. And they have two daughters, Jan and Ellie played by Lynn Johnson and appearing in her second Bring Me the Axe episode in a row, Kyle Richards who played Lindsay Wallace in Halloween.

Teri (44:16.199) ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Dave! (44:17.41) Now we're on a real hot Kyle Richards.

Teri (44:19.547) That's wild.

Bryan! (44:19.616) I know we yeah we're just gonna plug in the next one just to make sure we get her in it.

Dave! (44:24.258) Nope. No we don't.

Bryan! (44:25.884) hahahaha

Teri (44:28.259) Oh, come on, she's fabulous.

Bryan! (44:31.293) So while touring the house, Father Paul sits down at the piano, bangs out some bluesy melodies to the horror of the real estate agent who thought he was an opera composer.

Dave! (44:39.658) Yeah. I thought he was a serious musician. It's like, bitch, he is playing jazz, not like blowing into a fucking old jug. What are you talking about? She's so offended.

Teri (44:48.187) She's like, we don't approve of that jazz music here. Ha ha ha. What is that?

Bryan! (44:50.52) Yeah.

Dave! (44:52.629) Really?

Bryan! (44:53.044) Yeah. But I mean, so what's up like an English horror movie of the period without some judgemental comments? Yeah. All of them.

Dave! (45:01.143) Seriously.

Teri (45:01.999) They all have it you have to you have to have that care that to this day I feel like there's always somebody was like, ah, no

Bryan! (45:08.617) It's like Ava Gardner in The Sentinels. Let's go. I thought you were an actor.

Dave! (45:10.634) Yeah. Oh, commercials. I thought you said you were an actor. Damn.

Bryan! (45:15.355) Hehehehe

Teri (45:17.435) Burn.

Bryan! (45:19.96) Yeah. So Jan is upstairs looking out the window, spots a strange blue glow in the forest right before the window cracks in a triangle pattern where her hand touches the pain. And she gets cut. And I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it is about that. But like even every time I see it, I'm like, Oh, like, ah, like, because I can like, feel it, I can feel it. Like, I know what that feels like. And then Mrs. Ale would assails her with questions about

Teri (45:32.888) and she gets cut, she's bleeding.

Dave! (45:41.302) It's cause you can imagine it.

Bryan! (45:48.908) She comes in and she's like, are you hurt? Did you cut yourself? And then she's like, what sort of person are you?

Dave! (45:54.087) What sort of person are you?

Teri (45:54.119) Are you adventurous? Are you kind? Do you sense things?

Bryan! (45:59.888) Do you sense things? Oh yeah!

Dave! (46:01.062) Are you sensitive? She is doing it. She's like, I'm going to give you the most fucking Betty Davis Betty Davis performance you're ever going to get. But let me tell you this. Whoever styled Betty Davis should be brought up on war crimes because.

Bryan! (46:16.032) Oh my God, because only like a few years earlier, she's cut. She's got that sweet little Bob in burnt offerings. And this one, she is like coming apart.

Dave! (46:20.994) Mm? Like, yeah. Here's the question. Is it a wig? No, and it's dry as fuck. But at the end, in the scenes that get cut out, I guess they're probably trying to make her look like a little more haggard, but like, she's clearly a beautiful woman, and I don't know if they're trying to make her not look that way, but like, she has got on pounds of foundation. Her hair looks like it is just ratted. It is terrible.

Bryan! (46:28.236) Hahaha

Teri (46:29.723) She just, they're giving, she's giving hermit. Yeah, she's giving hermit.

Teri (46:50.375) I think, you know, I don't know resolution wise, I mean, I was watching it on Blu-ray. So I don't know what it looked like on the cinema, like, you know, OG style. Do you know what I mean? I feel like right now, sometimes it is harder when you see some of those older films on our modern resolution. Yeah.

Bryan! (46:59.18) Yeah, we...

Bryan! (47:03.768) we talk about that a bit. Yeah, in recent like in recent episodes, because like everything we're reviewing is just like all the all the modern formats. And in a lot of cases, particularly these like movies of this period, the UHD treatment is doing them no favors. Right. Because, yeah, she is she is covered in like pancake powder. She's like John Carradine in the Sentinel. Yep.

Teri (47:21.847) Nope. It's pretty bad.

Bryan! (47:32.664) So, we next learn that Mrs. Aylwood likely allowed the Curtis's to live there because Jan looks like her daughter who was lost many years ago. Yep. And as they pull away, Mrs. Aylwood addresses the forest. She's like, she's going to stay here. Is that what you wanted? Like

Teri (47:42.151) Hmm.

Dave! (47:51.822) Who are you talking to?

Bryan! (47:52.673) Who are you talking to?

Teri (47:53.527) I love that. Well, we see the little blue light, so we get that it's some sort of lights or some sort of entity. I was like, ooh, she's talking to ghosts. Cool.

Bryan! (48:00.492) Yeah, it never comes back though.

Dave! (48:00.734) And I think that's the problem with this movie is they never ever decide what is the supernatural element of this movie. Because is it ghosts? Is it aliens? Is it all of them? Is it none of them? Who cares? Doesn't really matter.

Bryan! (48:11.02) Well, yeah, well, when we get to the end, when we get to the end, they very clearly did like determine what the force is, because like it's pretty cool, but it is up to that point, entirely nebulous. And they never ever pull the pull the curtain back at least a little bit to sort of give you give you a taste because like for the most part, it's just a blue laser that shoots stuff.

Dave! (48:32.15) Yeah. And then they're gonna give you, at the end they're gonna give you an explanation that asks more questions than it does answer.

Teri (48:39.751) Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, and like, yeah, I guess it's just, you do never get really clear rules of what the entities are, right? And what's happening, that's true. Like with the mirror stuff and like, it's like, okay, we're gonna get voices, we're gonna get people talking through people, we're gonna get, you know, things that look like apparitions, but it's not exactly, so yeah.

Bryan! (48:42.327) Yeah.

Bryan! (48:50.464) Yeah, yeah.

Dave! (48:58.774) Yeah, but it is Karen, but it's not Karen.

Bryan! (49:02.544) Yeah. So, as the Curtis's move in, Jan moves a big ass gilded mirror, which does not reflect her, which I think is actually a pretty cool little set piece.

Dave! (49:13.55) And then David McCallum says, oh, you know how old mirrors are. What do you mean how old mirrors are? We're trapping the spirits of unsuspecting young women? Is that how they are? What are you talking about?

Bryan! (49:17.092) They're always breaking.

Teri (49:20.953) ehehe

Bryan! (49:22.267) Yeah. Yeah, because

Teri (49:24.527) the seven years bad luck thing that little Ellie Kyle Richards talks about and he's like oh when I when I met your mother I had a broken mirror that day you're like why what

Bryan! (49:32.509) Wah wah.

Dave! (49:35.478) What are you saying, David McCallum?

Teri (49:38.471) Brutal. Take my wife, please. No.

Bryan! (49:38.976) Yeah. But yeah, but like.

Dave! (49:41.41) Yeah.

Bryan! (49:44.88) Yeah, she so but she doesn't it again where she touches the mirror glass and then it breaks in that like triangle pattern again. But this time there's like a blindfolded girl like in the little triangle who's reaching out to Jan before the whole thing shatters and falls.

Dave! (49:59.594) And she's spooky as shit, like it's very effective.

Bryan! (50:02.24) It is, it is. It's ghostly. It's weird. Again, we have at this up to this point, we have no idea what's going on. Yep. So Jan tells her mom that she wasn't reflected in the mirror beginning a series of crazy declarations throughout the movie, which everyone else just casually laughs off.

Teri (50:08.272) Right.

Dave! (50:18.274) Yeah, probably because she is screaming them at everybody at all times at 11. Like she is just, she is insistent. They have to save this ghost girl in the fucking mirror. And everyone's like, I think you need to calm down, have a tea and maybe take a nap because you're talking crazy.

Bryan! (50:23.928) Ha ha.

Teri (50:35.143) Well, she's like the crazy American in the midst of like this like British, you know, like pastoral scene, right? It's like kind of how they've cast her. And I feel like it's a little bit like, oh, teenagers, right? They're wacky. They think things are happening around them, but you know, she's just a teenager.

Bryan! (50:45.917) Yeah.

Dave! (50:46.014) It definitely does. Because the only one who really believes her is her sexy boyfriend.

Bryan! (50:52.016) the carnival. Yeah. But even he but yeah, exactly. There's a part Yeah, at the at the it does come to point at the carnival where he's like, you sound insane right now. Yeah. So, that night, Jan watches Mrs. Alewood going out to the forest by lantern light.

Teri (50:52.815) But he kinda almost doesn't either. He was very doubtful as well. He's more pragmatic than she'll ever be, yeah.

Dave! (50:57.462) Yeah. Well, thank fucking God.

Dave! (51:10.196) Guided by Hurricane Lantern Alone.

Bryan! (51:13.116) Oh, it's awesome though. It's such a cool little shot. So much of this movie looks like the cover of like Doom metal records. Yeah, here actually.

Dave! (51:20.182) Yeah. Now who was the guy who did all the fucking... The guy who did the paintings for the one sheets for like Conan the Barbarian, what was his name? It's like that kind of... that style. I can't... is it? Yes.

Teri (51:21.711) Like just sweet t-shirts, you know? I want like a t-shirt of all of them, all the scenes.

Bryan! (51:26.061) Yeah, here, let me.

Bryan! (51:33.2) Oh, Frazetta. Yeah, like this, this like this picture right here. This this could be a band called Catholic Guilt.

Dave! (51:37.77) Yes.

Teri (51:42.959) I love it.

Bryan! (51:43.935) Hahaha

Dave! (51:45.19) What you can't see in this picture though is you can't see Kyle Richards like sweet, like astronaut ice cream jacket that she has. It's like big silver puffy jacket. It's great. I loved it.

Bryan! (51:53.824) Heheheheheheh... Yeah.

Teri (51:58.279) She's wonderful. Poor Lynn Holly. She really, like, I really feel like the other two looking at that picture was like, we're giving so much more. Kyle was even more grounded and just was like, yeah, like creepy as hell. Yeah.

Bryan! (51:59.46) Yeah.

Dave! (52:05.793) Yeah.

Dave! (52:09.074) Yeah, Lynn's giving you Midwest. That's what she's giving you. And she's got like hillbilly Midwest girls, her one speed that she's kind of got.

Bryan! (52:16.528) Yeah. And meanwhile, Out in the Forest is about a third of the movie's budget spent on dry ice happening there. There's so much fog in this movie. It's it's the best

Teri (52:28.667) giving me the fog. Little howling, little fog, yes.

Bryan! (52:34.354) Yeah. You get you get that you get that glowing, you'll be glowing in the forest. So it's also glowing fog. Yeah. So yeah. And also Ellie is now talking in her sleep about opening the door.

Teri (52:39.147) Yeah.

Teri (52:46.211) Yeah, but they also have to get the puppy. And this is the moment that like, where it gets all crazy too.

Bryan! (52:50.612) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the morning, we meet Mike, the movie's exceptionally handsome motorcycle racer. As Ellie

Teri (52:57.059) Like why is it just like they were just like, what's popular right now? Kids are.

Dave! (53:00.47) Yes. What is more 70s than motocross? Fuck it, nothing. Yeah.

Bryan! (53:03.984) Yeah, I'm surprised that they didn't have him talking on CB radios and ** Yeah. Yeah. Oh, but like, but I mean, at the same time, like that must have been a Europe thing because like whenever you watch Italian movies like Jalo, you watch Polizio Teschi, there's

Teri (53:08.979) BJ and the bear.

Dave! (53:21.846) It's not European though because it because as you know and Terry you probably don't know I'm a big fan of peanuts like Snoopy and In the ones from the 70s a bunch of times around like late 70s early 80s Motocross pops up for no particular reason and it's like it's just because it was really popular at that time Like it just was a huge thing. I don't really understand it But I just know that it was it just shows up and shit and it feels so fucking 70s

Bryan! (53:47.716) Yeah.

It does. It does. It's awesome. I'll give I'll give him that. But it definitely it's got it's definitely it wears the era on its sleeve. So yeah, as mentioned, Ellie picks out a puppy at a farm. And then she goes into some kind of a trance and traces the word near ac on the dust of a window, declaring that it's the dog's name. But

Teri (53:53.925) Yeah.

Dave! (54:11.126) Let's be honest, you can only see one thing when you look at that word.

Bryan! (54:14.448) I know, I know. On the other side of the window we see that it's just Karen spelled backwards.

Teri (54:19.959) It's my favorite thing that is how I name almost all of my D&D characters. People are like, wow, that name sounds so cool. I had to play the guy named Eo's. It's just Joe backwards. Like, I mean, you know, I still do that to this day. I love it. Yeah, Nerik would be a great D&D character name. That's hilarious. Yeah, done.

Bryan! (54:27.364) Ha ha ha!

Dave! (54:34.442) It works.

Bryan! (54:38.132) Yep. Yeah. Put that one in your pocket. Save it for later. Yep. And so Jan, for some reason, is disturbed by this. And then Mike's mom is shocked upon seeing the word Karen spelled on the window.

Dave! (54:38.773) Today broke.

Dave! (54:49.546) Yeah, you'd think Mike would be a little bit more believing since his mom is suspicious as hell from the moment they meet.

Bryan! (54:56.013) Yeah.

Teri (54:56.903) She seems like she's terrified of everything and has seen a ghost her whole life. This woman.

Dave! (55:02.71) But also not a ghost, but maybe it is a ghost. Who's to say, really?

Teri (55:04.999) But who knows, who knows, but she's haunted either way, right?

Dave! (55:10.748) She's the most British looking woman I've ever seen.

Bryan! (55:14.076) The guy playing Tom, actually all of them are. John Keller and Tom Colley are as British as they come.

Dave! (55:15.666) Yep, they all are.

Teri (55:17.671) They're great. Yeah.

Teri (55:21.863) It's one of my favorite things. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Just takes me back.

Dave! (55:25.138) I have a note that just says, this movie is 80% intense troubled stares and pearl clutching. And then the note right underneath it says, the music is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Bryan! (55:35.632) Ha ha!

Teri (55:36.123) Uhhhh... Ugh.

Bryan! (55:40.308) So, later on, Jan watches Ellie run off into the forest. Unbeknownst to Jan, there's also a creepy dude in a trench coat lurking about. Jan follows her into the woods, while Mrs. Alewood watches from behind a wrought iron fence.

Dave! (55:54.09) I mean, you'd think Mrs. Alewood, I don't know, might intervene when there's this strange man lurking about the woods, but, eh, she's fine. Yeah.

Bryan! (56:00.307) Yep.

Teri (56:01.359) No, she knows who it is though, and so she wants to see what the kids dredge up because it sounds like they're actually hearing more than she can. I'm guessing she's heard some voices too, but now that she's channeling through these children and using them as pawns to try to get her daughter back, because she knows in her heart and her soul of souls that Karen is not dead. She needs our help and wants to return, I think.

Dave! (56:22.698) Listen, your version of this movie is more coherent than the actual movie.

Bryan! (56:22.892) Yep.

Teri (56:28.129) Well, that's what I saw. That's what it seemed like she was saying, you know? So yeah.

Bryan! (56:30.776) Yeah. But again, Betty Davis looking haunted from behind a wrought iron fence. Yeah. Hell of a shot again. Doom metal.

Teri (56:39.067) giving me so many spooky vibes. Yeah, it's great. It's vibes, picture, picture.

Dave! (56:42.946) Yeah, the movie feels like a Halloween episode of Murder, She Wrote. It feels like such, it has such like made for TV movie vibes where it's like, it was written in a real hurry. So it's very kind of vague and nonspecific, but everyone's doing their best, so.

Bryan! (56:58.4) You know what it is? It's like an amicus movie where they wanted to do Hammer, but they couldn't get all of the usual people. So they're just like, fuck it, write a story like a Hammer movie and we'll just fill it in with whoever we can get.

Dave! (57:02.155) Yes.

Dave! (57:12.086) Yeah, they spent all their money on Peter Cushing so they didn't have anyone to write the script.

Bryan! (57:15.888) Yeah. So Jan searches for Ellie in the woods and ends up struck by a blue beam while investigating a strange flash by the water. Yep. Before falling in, she sees a ring of blue light, then in comes also she falls into the water she gets she gets stuck like on a tree branch.

Dave! (57:25.666) Lasers.

Dave! (57:35.95) This part's actually pretty cool. Because at a certain point, it looks like she's under, and she probably is under a sheet of glass.

Teri (57:36.071) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (57:42.592) right? Because the bubbles aren't fully surfacing. It's either she's under a sheet of glass or she's like submerged in like KY jelly or something. It's such hmm. And in comes Mrs. Alewood with a stick to push Ellie under while shouting in that recognizable Betty Davis manner. Yep. And uh that's

Dave! (57:50.23) But it looks, whatever it is, it looks really cool.

Teri (57:53.499) terrifying. Yeah.

Teri (58:03.783) It looks like she's murdering her, you guys. It looks like she's fully murdering her, and it's so scary. You're like, oh my God, Betty Davis is about to kill this kid. You're like, no, she was pushing her down to get her unhooked from the branches. She was actually saving the poor girl's life, but it looked so scary.

Bryan! (58:20.154) Listen to our burnt offerings episode for excellent Betty Davis impressions.

Teri (58:24.003) Oh my god, I would like to hear some now, please. Give it to me. I... Oh my god, I love Sam. Ugh, so good.

Bryan! (58:27.287) We gotta get Sam Pancake on the show to do it.

Bryan! (58:33.62) Yep, he was our guest for burnt offerings. So it turns out that Jan was just stuck under a falling tree. Mrs. Alewood was pushing her down.

Teri (58:35.352) Oh, he's wonderful.

Dave! (58:40.33) Which like, let's be honest, she could have gotten herself out of that. She wasn't really trying.

Bryan! (58:44.108) I don't know, she was panicking.

Teri (58:44.867) I think she panicked. I think that's one of those things you'd only need, was it two inches of water? Like it's like, if you freak the freak out and you're underwater.

Dave! (58:51.138) This feels like when Annie Bracket gets her leg stuck and getting out of the window. It's like, bitch, you could have gotten your leg out of there. You're just not really trying that hard.

Bryan! (58:55.015) Hahaha

Bryan! (59:01.56) So yeah, but then we, they do that, like they do this smash cut thing a bunch throughout this movie. And this is one of the examples of it where we go from this like panicked moment straight to a like extreme close-up on Lindsay Wallace explaining like, no, she saved your life actually. And so

Dave! (59:18.53) Yeah, there's a lot of hard cuts where they're like, well, how do we transition from here to here? Doesn't matter. Just go.

Bryan! (59:23.188) Yeah, as Jan recovers and Mrs. Alewood's cottage, we find out that her daughter's name was Karen and Jan explains that she's seen Karen in visions.

So now we get to the story Karen's disappearance in flashback. So this is like, you know, I think it's 30 years prior. And apparently, Betty Davis insisted on playing the young version of herself in this scene. And there were makeup tests.

Teri (59:43.055) 30 years ago, yeah.

Bryan! (59:56.7) shot specifically to convince her that this wasn't going to work. And to her credit, she agreed.

Dave! (01:00:00.842) Oh, come on, man. You don't have to do that. Just be like, I'm the director, I say no, not I have to show you how old you-

Teri (01:00:01.765) Aaaaaaahhh...

Bryan! (01:00:04.837) Hang on a sec, I lost my audio here.

Teri (01:00:08.551) That's so messed up. Just let her do it, who cares? It's before we had Irishman technology, right? So it's like...

Dave! (01:00:17.942) I mean, to be fair, she was like 75 years old or something, but still, you could have just been like, no, we're gonna do something else, don't worry about it. But what I, I don't understand about this ritual they're doing, because this is another part that is extremely vague, where it's like, all right, so there are three of them, but they're like teenagers, they're like 18 or something, like 16, 18, something like that.

Teri (01:00:20.42) I get it, I get it, I get it.

Teri (01:00:36.128) Mm-hmm.

Teri (01:00:42.276) Right.

Dave! (01:00:43.194) And like, why are they playing in the woods together like a bunch of 10 year olds would? And that's true because it's 1950 in rural England. What else we should do?

Teri (01:00:48.391) Because there's no TV and it's like 1950. They're essentially like, I mean, that's the thing. And so they're also it's also not just that they're playing. It's a secret society that they've made up. So that feels very like, yeah.

Bryan! (01:00:53.456) in rural England. What else do you have? They're essentially like, I've.

Dave! (01:01:01.974) That's the other question though. It's like, what is this? Because it has a real kind of satanic ritual vibe to it, but it's like, what are you doing? What... and there's only three of you. This club does not look cool at all, by the way. And so then, like, the worst of them, the fucking stodgiest stuffiest of them, like, runs through this... I don't know what this... kind of... what do you call that? Like, his ritual, his kind of right of initiation or whatever.

Teri (01:01:14.105) Right?

Teri (01:01:29.067) It's like the fear test. He makes her go, like he's like, it's like fear factor. And also she's new. And so I think it's that strange thing too, of like, I feel like there's a little bit different, I don't know, in British culture versus like American culture of like hazing and like allowing friends into your friend group. That's a little different I feel like then even, we have that kind of here too, but not to the effect of like bullying in Britain is a different sport than it is in America. Just straight up.

Dave! (01:01:33.949) I- Yeah, okay, I-

Dave! (01:01:45.325) Yes.

Teri (01:01:58.639) just culturally speaking, I, yeah. And I think that's part of why it was so kind of brutal. It's like, okay, if you want to be in our friend group and you're an outsider, this is what you need to do. It's very intense. It's very, very intense.

Dave! (01:01:59.726) And this is the 50s version of it.

Dave! (01:02:10.894) Cause it's like weirdly intense. And then they burn the church down.

Teri (01:02:18.159) Well, they didn't do it. It was lightning, you know, so.

Dave! (01:02:18.434) Which is pretty metal.

Bryan! (01:02:21.035) It's lasers.

Dave! (01:02:22.099) Or was it? Was it perhaps lasers? Was it perhaps a ghost? Who knows really? Who's to say? I'm not there, I don't know.

Teri (01:02:26.247) Space lasers.

Bryan! (01:02:28.078) Yeah.

Yeah. So the important part of the story is that there was an eclipse going on when Karen vanished. Yep. You guys jumped way ahead.

Dave! (01:02:34.214) Oh, right, forgot that part. And that's relevant. Look, your shit broke. I did my best, okay?

Bryan! (01:02:41.08) Hahaha!

Teri (01:02:43.215) We can go back, we can go back. I mean, we skipped, you know, all the premonitions. And yeah, there was a lot, there's a lot of little things that happened on the way, but yes.

Bryan! (01:02:45.164) No, no, we're doing great.

Dave! (01:02:46.134) Look, I'm just here for the fucking jokes.

Bryan! (01:02:54.268) Yeah, so what it's about, Mrs. Aylwood runs to the nearby church ruin. She hears the bell, she's struck by a blue laser and as children run from the place in panic while the church catches fire. And now Mrs. Aylwood thinks that her daughter is still out in the woods somewhere. I think that line was in the trailer. But yeah, but cut to exciting dirt bike action.

Teri (01:03:09.092) Yeah.

Dave! (01:03:13.162) All right, here's my thing about this. They are cheering for Mike because Mike is a hot motocross rider. They are cheering for Mike like they have known him forever. They have known him for two fucking days.

Bryan! (01:03:23.692) Well, you know what it is? It's like it's like you go to a sporting event and you have no idea what's going on. You don't know any of the teams and you just you just pick a team or you go with like whoever, you know, and they've known him for the longest out of all of the bikers ostensibly and so they're just like fuck it. We're gonna we're gonna cheer for Mike. I mean I would do that cuz he.

Dave! (01:03:28.822) You just get caught up in the moment.

Teri (01:03:41.495) You go there and yell. I've done it. I, my ex, my friend Mike was a super cross road. I used to go out there and be like, you just, you do just go there and cheer. You pick your guy and watch them go around the circle or on the track and a cheer. Oh yeah.

Bryan! (01:03:45.488) I'm out.

Bryan! (01:03:54.544) Yeah, yep. She goes to catch a closer look at the race when Ellie falls into another trance and then hurriedly calls her over just in time for one of the bikes to fly widely out of control and burst into flames where Jan was just standing.

Dave! (01:04:07.682) the trance that she attributes to the dog.

Bryan! (01:04:10.093) Yeah.

Teri (01:04:11.703) Narek told me, Narek told me, I was like, okay, kid. Okay, sure, sure. Sure, sure, sure. I just was like, is he talking in the back of your throat, little Danny? Like what's going on? Like, it's just like, okay, okay.

Dave! (01:04:14.729) Mm-hmm. Yeah, son of Sam said the same thing.

Bryan! (01:04:17.934) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:04:22.541) Yeah.

Dave! (01:04:23.162) Mm-hmm.

And like, why are they talking to her now? And who is they?

Teri (01:04:28.995) That's the thing that's so weird is like, it's like both the sisters are getting visited, but I thought it felt like at first it was just gonna be Jan.

Dave! (01:04:36.022) Yeah, because later on it's like, well, Jan can, she's the only one who can save them. And it's like, well, I don't know, it seems like Lindsay Wallace is helping out too. I mean, yeah.

Bryan! (01:04:36.697) BUSH

Bryan! (01:04:42.284) She's doing a lot of the work actually, but The Shining was also 1980, right? Because this also has a person channeling voices and writing backwards.

Dave! (01:04:47.383) Yes.

Teri (01:04:48.005) Yeah.

Teri (01:04:53.095) Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Bryan! (01:04:55.188) Yeah, all right. All right, 1980. I see you. So on the way home, Karen explains what Mrs. Aylwood told her when we learned that one of the fleeing kids from the church fire was Mike's own mother.

Teri (01:05:08.375) Merry! Yes.

Bryan! (01:05:09.556) Yep. And when Mike confronts her about it, she tells him that they were just larking about and that it was John Keller's idea. I love that line. We were just larking about.

Dave! (01:05:15.694) I like that.

Teri (01:05:20.571) Yeah, she did not go into how serious and how intense that situation really was for them.

Dave! (01:05:24.598) Yeah, we were larking about and then someone disappeared forever and the church burned down. You know, kid stuff. Yeah, and it's all my fault.

Bryan! (01:05:29.674) Yep.

Teri (01:05:29.911) And I broke the circle and I freaked out, you know, whatever. Ha ha ha.

Bryan! (01:05:36.413) So now David McCallum fucks off for the rest of the movie.

Dave! (01:05:40.11) Yeah, he's gone. Don't need him anymore.

Bryan! (01:05:41.184) Yeah, he's hardly in the movie anyways. It's it's that I don't know weird choice because now he's got a he's got to go and

Dave! (01:05:48.714) Well, they spent a lot of money on Betty Davis, is my guess.

Teri (01:05:52.199) And they were like, we have you for two days. Let's do this. And thank you so much for your time, sir.

Dave! (01:05:53.93) Yeah. Yeah, play a little jazz piano and you can get the hell out of here.

Bryan! (01:05:54.058) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:06:01.23) So now Ellie, Jan, and Mike are on horseback and the watcher presumably spooks the horses which sends them running in every direction. Yep.

Dave! (01:06:09.454) Horses know, horses know when things are.

Teri (01:06:11.831) Yeah, horses know when vibes are off. Yes, that's right.

Dave! (01:06:13.866) Now here's the question that this is the part about, the bigger part about this that does not make a lot of sense to me is does this alien entity care and evil spirit, does she want to kill them or is she trying to warn? Like there's a lot that goes back and forth here.

Bryan! (01:06:26.54) Well, well, here's no, because what happens is the laser because the horse is about to run into the street and the laser shoots the street as the truck or lorry if you're nasty tips over when its driver is blinded by the flash, right? And I love I love the shot because you could see the stunt driver like going like, wow, is the like his arms flying all over the place as the truck like tips over. So yeah, it's trying to like.

Dave! (01:06:35.709) Mm-hmm. Nice.

Bryan! (01:06:52.624) keep them reasonably safe, you know, as far as its lasers can do. And then, yeah.

Teri (01:06:58.831) So it's watching out for them. It's a watcher maybe from the woods.

Dave! (01:07:01.09) Yes, it is in the woods and it is watching.

Bryan! (01:07:06.898) Yeah.

Teri (01:07:07.047) whoosh. Yeah, it's the watcher, but also I think, right, it's trying to communicate to them and get through to them that they need help. And so it's doing everything it can to lure them to the place that it needs, and it's proving more and more difficult. There are moments where it seems like it's working, and then all of a sudden someone falls in the water, or it seems like it's working, and then the dog runs away, and then it seems like it's working, and then something goes wrong each time. So.

Dave! (01:07:25.226) Yeah, I-

Bryan! (01:07:30.649) Yeah.

Dave! (01:07:30.742) Lot of mixed messages from this watcher in the woods. This particular watcher.

Bryan! (01:07:35.179) No, because it is it's.

Teri (01:07:35.427) You know, sometimes you try to communicate with humans and it's hard.

Dave! (01:07:37.866) That's true. You need a dog and Lindsay Wallace.

Bryan! (01:07:42.078) that's a good point. You know, definitely because as we as we definitely well within this in them because it needs them to back. So, you know, we'll get but uh yeah, so Jan Jan's

Dave! (01:07:56.846) It's not going to make any more sense when we get there, so...

Bryan! (01:08:05.532) And she sees she goes in and she sees a triangle projected onto a stone coffin. And then Karen's ghost inside. Awesome shot. Another fucking cool. Very cool.

Dave! (01:08:13.142) Yeah, this part used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid. Because this is in that pre-roll Disney trailer. The next few scenes that are actually really, really good are in that particular trailer. And that one scared the shit out of me. Yup.

Bryan! (01:08:22.352) Yeah. Yeah, but she's she's projected in a coffin that's also like all burned up and ** I love it. Yeah. Yeah. And then she's chased off by that spooky overcoat dude from before.

Teri (01:08:30.31) That's very cool and very scary.

Dave! (01:08:36.199) Ah, he's like a Tom Collie coming again with these serious pedo energy.

Bryan! (01:08:40.364) Yeah.

Teri (01:08:41.071) Well, he also is, you can't tell he's, he doesn't know if she's real or not. And we find out later, he's like, where are you, are you a ghost? Are you a ghost lady? So, you know.

Bryan! (01:08:48.608) Yep. Yeah.

Dave! (01:08:48.63) Yeah, I got a lot of questions about him coming up too.

Teri (01:08:51.331) He seems like he's got some arrested development from exactly that time that girl disappeared.

Dave! (01:08:56.139) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (01:08:56.428) Yeah. So now Ellie and Mike show up and Karen is just like, I saw a ghost and I saw the triangle and you know, she's doing the thing where she screams. We gotta help. We gotta help Karen and everybody. Yeah, every

Dave! (01:09:08.642) Yeah, and they're like, you know, she's always saying that. She's been saying that since we got here. I keep trying to find a doctor, and it's not that easy out here in the country.

Bryan! (01:09:16.044) Now everybody is very accommodating to her crazy ass declarations and she is seeing like wild spectral shit like everywhere. Yep. Yeah.

Dave! (01:09:23.104) Mm-hmm.

Teri (01:09:26.243) gotta be hard if you're that person. I can't even imagine like...

Dave! (01:09:30.018) Well, she is also always in danger from some, like, vague lurking menace just everywhere. There's this creepy guy following her in the woods. There's an alien that is either trying to communicate with her and or kill her. She goes to the motocross show and the fucking motorcycle almost hits her and blows up. Life's rough for Jayan. This is a... it's a hard transition. Being a teenager is really hard.

Bryan! (01:09:40.376) This movie is definitely...

Bryan! (01:09:45.752) Yeah, this movie is definitely testing. It's testing her. Yeah, it's crazy what she's being put through.

Teri (01:09:53.091) Yeah, and like her mom, like literally at the beginning, it could have all been stopped if the mom had listened when her daughter was like, the vibes are off, the mom's like, it's cheap, let's go. So parents, listen to your kids if it's.

Bryan! (01:10:02.316) Yep.

Dave! (01:10:04.818) Next thing you know, it's the Amityville Horror.

Bryan! (01:10:07.68) Next thing you know, it's Mrs. Allardyce in the in the attic. So windows break suddenly in the chapel, pair of circular pieces of stained glass collapse on the floor, implying an eclipse if you're paying attention. But to everybody else, they should start to suspect that Jana is exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia since she's seeing symbols everywhere and seems to be hallucinating.

Dave! (01:10:10.056) Exactly.

Dave! (01:10:28.514) Jan might be bipolar.

Teri (01:10:28.935) It's like being at Disneyland, it's like being at Disneyland too long and seeing all those hidden Mickey's after a while.

Bryan! (01:10:36.107) You step outside the park and you're like, they're following me, I see them everywhere.

Teri (01:10:38.651) They're everywhere, yeah.

Bryan! (01:10:42.1) So now at John Keller's place, crazy Tom Colley tells him that he saw Karen when he really saw Jan. And incidentally, the ominous exteriors set against the Stormy Nighttime backdrop are the same exteriors that Robert Wise used for the haunting. Yep, yep. It's Hill House. Inside Keller, a haunted man broods by the fire. He really does. And he broods the shit out of the scene.

Teri (01:10:58.321) Okay. Yeah.

Dave! (01:11:05.416) He really does. This is...

Teri (01:11:09.804) Some very good haunting, haunting brooding, yes.

Dave! (01:11:12.47) What, wait, wasn't the Changeling also 1980? Because this has really heavy, like, Changeling interior vibes.

Teri (01:11:16.272) Yeah!

Teri (01:11:20.547) Yeah. Everyone's trying to make that exorcist. Like you said, that spooky thing, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dave! (01:11:25.283) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (01:11:31.084) the end. Yup. So, now, we, oh, stops. So, we now smash cut to funhouse and uh Jan enters a reflected in each of them in scene. Probably my favorite probably, yeah, my favorite

Dave! (01:11:40.106) Yes, this is the coolest part of the movie.

Dave! (01:11:44.638) It also scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Cause she has this like pleading look on her face and there's like just this row of.

Bryan! (01:11:50.352) Yeah, it's that sort of like endless mirror because it's like mirror against mirror. It's just a row of her extending to the horizon. It's it's

Dave! (01:11:57.674) Now this is also a trick they do in, they do the same thing in Something Wicked.

Bryan! (01:12:03.352) Really.

Dave! (01:12:04.194) The Hall of Mirrors plays a big part of that story. And it was a very similar part.

Bryan! (01:12:08.185) Um...

Teri (01:12:11.991) We love a good Hall of Mirrors kind of scene. Those are always really scary. Yeah, to this day. I love that. And the little scary like monster smash also looks like the little witch mask that little sister had been wearing, little Ellie had been wearing around back there. So you got like a little bit like are where are they? Oh, OK, there's someplace else. So it's fun.

Dave! (01:12:13.95) I mean, it works.

Bryan! (01:12:15.442) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (01:12:18.792) Even Bruce Lee.

Dave! (01:12:26.228) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (01:12:27.212) Oh yeah.

Bryan! (01:12:31.032) Yep. That's right. What is it?

Dave! (01:12:32.174) I think that's what frustrates me about this movie is that it could have been really fucking cool. It's shot really well, everyone's doing their best job at it, but it's like nobody bothered to write a coherent story.

Bryan! (01:12:42.96) the So, yeah, now, she runs place again yelling that they basically her entire arc.

Dave! (01:12:54.114) Yeah, this is her from here on out.

Teri (01:12:57.039) We have to help her, but also because Karen was saying, mouthing, help me, help me, help me. And so she can actually finally see it, that that's what she's trying to say. Cause before she was like, I don't know what she needs, but now she's like.

Dave! (01:13:08.878) I'm just saying, she could have been a little polite about it, though. There's a lot of, like, telling people what she wants, demanding that they do things for her.

Bryan! (01:13:08.948) All I can do.

Bryan! (01:13:15.614) grabbing them by the lapels and like pulling them in close. We have to help Karen. So now...

Teri (01:13:22.019) Well, she wants it to stop. If you had voices coming at you and you thought the only way to stop it would be to actually find out what's going on. Like that's, yeah.

Bryan! (01:13:25.812) Yeah, this is.

Dave! (01:13:25.91) from all angles. It's just a vague air of menace all the time.

Bryan! (01:13:32.212) Yeah, this is the thing is I kept putting myself in her shoes and I'm like, I know that if this were me and I were receiving messages from the great beyond a piece of me would be like, how the fuck do I communicate this to people in a way that doesn't get me locked up?

Dave! (01:13:47.754) Oh, if it were me, I'd be like, you picked the wrong fucking guy. Look, I got other shit to do. Look, I write a podcast every day, alright? I don't have time for this. I have important things to do.

Bryan! (01:13:51.662) I'm not going to listen. I got

Bryan! (01:14:02.17) But yes, Jan now confronts John Keller, shouting more crazy shit at him before he demands that she leaves.

Teri (01:14:10.983) A lot of me going, sure, Jan, like during this movie. I think so. Yeah.

Bryan! (01:14:13.385) Hahaha!

Dave! (01:14:15.382) Is this the part where he like almost runs her over with his car? And she's just like riding her bike right towards him? Like, this is too much.

Bryan! (01:14:20.301) Ah, n-

Yeah. So, then Jan goes to Tom Colley's place in the woods. He's I, I think he's the only character in the movie who is referred to by everyone else by his full name. He is always, he's

Dave! (01:14:28.778) Ooh, bad move, girl, bad move.

Teri (01:14:36.475) There's always that friend though. I'm that friend with a lot of my friends. They're like, even my friends' kids are like, Terry Gammel's coming over. Like they use my full name. Quite often, I'm that friend in the friend group. Yeah.

Bryan! (01:14:43.undefined) I'm going to do that. From now on, I'm going to do that. So now nobody is the thing is nobody calls him Tom. Nobody calls him Mr. Collie. Only Tom Collie. Yeah.

Dave! (01:14:56.01) And he's got real Lenny from of Mice and Men vibes. And like at one point he's just like, here hold my crow while I do crazy guy stuff. And it's like, what is happening in this scene? Why is he giving this girl a bird?

Teri (01:15:06.551) I mean, when you have a bunch of taxidermy in your home and you've done it yourself and taught yourself, no, I love, no, I mean, this is obviously where he's gonna get the information because he's like the quote unquote kind of crazy Ralph, right, he's the one that she needs to talk to because, yup.

Dave! (01:15:12.438) Yeah. Yeah, she needs to leave. She needs to leave immediately.

Bryan! (01:15:19.021) No, you know what?

Dave! (01:15:23.598) That's true.

Bryan! (01:15:23.808) Yeah, no. Yeah. You know what it is this is Norman Bates in at the beginning of Psycho when Marion Crane goes in and sees like all this crazy taxidermy while this

Dave! (01:15:26.39) He's got the pieces and he's gonna spill.

Dave! (01:15:38.23) that he's gonna tell her what happened, that he's gonna gasp and cover his mouth and then be like, oh, I shouldn't have said that to you. And that is how the movie proceeds.

Bryan! (01:15:45.765) Yeah. So, yeah, also, but she's also attacked by a jumpscare cat. And then, yeah, and then

Teri (01:15:52.983) I love the cat. Oh, I got so excited. I have two black cats I adopted this summer and I just get excited anytime I see a black cat in cinema.

Bryan! (01:16:02.028) I love a black hat.

Dave! (01:16:03.138) Well, you should be excited all the time because they are in everything.

Teri (01:16:07.108) I know.

Bryan! (01:16:09.487) you know, you're not going to And now, but now, Tom Collie is torgo. He goes right up to her. in her face, in her face, and

Dave! (01:16:13.861) He really, really is.

Teri (01:16:19.599) Are you real? Are you a real girl? Yeah. Well, that's still to know what his reality has been like. Like he's definitely probably the one who's, it looks like he's the one who stays closest to wherever this stuff went down, right? He's the one who's most haunted. And he's the one I think who still believes that maybe she's out there. Mm-hmm.

Dave! (01:16:20.982) Yeah. Alright, Tom Colley. God damn it.

Bryan! (01:16:38.388) I wonder if he was always like this or if this was a result of the experience.

Dave! (01:16:42.754) See, I guess that was my question, is like, he seems in the flashbacks like just one of the other kids, like there's no indication that he's developmentally delayed or has any like intellectual disability, he just like is... so I think we're still assuming this traumatized him. But then when he finally does touch her, he's just like, oh, you're real. Whatever. You're not a ghost.

Teri (01:16:53.708) Think it broke him Yeah, it broke him

Bryan! (01:17:01.047) D- Ha ha

Teri (01:17:01.843) Nah, he's still a little like trepidatious, but he's twanged. He twanged early and yeah, I feel bad for him.

Bryan! (01:17:09.961) So, now, he's gonna give her another flashback where we learn that they blindfolded Karen for sort of initiation ceremony. You guys went over this. They held hands around her. As soon as John Keller begins the ceremony, the church is struck by blue lights, set on fire, and then the tower bell crashes down where Karen was but she was gone before that happened.

Dave! (01:17:27.574) And there is so much going on at this point where I'm like, how can I keep any of this straight?

Bryan! (01:17:32.656) they're really starting to spin all the wheels. Like it's approaching the like the sort of the third act, right? And so elsewhere.

Teri (01:17:42.007) Yeah, but I thought like maybe like, I don't know. I thought it was just like because they ran away and it looked like she could have been like hit by the bell and then thrown into that casket that we've already seen with the ghosts, you know, character like looking being stuck in there. Like, oh, did she fall in there? Did they like do you know what I mean? Like, it looks like it looks like she fell in there. It looks like she fell in there and they just never went back. And that's why they feel like the other kids feel so guilty because they're just like, dude, we just couldn't see her. It's like, well.

Bryan! (01:17:50.072) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:17:57.556) Oh yeah, yeah I think.

Dave! (01:17:58.498) Well, cause then he says, then he...

Dave! (01:18:06.242) Well he does, he says he goes back the next day and I was like, the next day?! Should tell someone about this!

Teri (01:18:09.027) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:18:13.688) Well, that's what he said is, that's what he says is he we told them, we told everybody and we looked and we looked and we never found her. So yeah.

Teri (01:18:13.839) They were too scared! Yeah.

Dave! (01:18:23.114) And they say it was a lunar eclipse. So do you know how rare that is? And it's like, well, it's not that rare. It happens twice a year.

Bryan! (01:18:28.82) Yeah, no, but this is the whole thing with this one is it only happens every 30 years, right?

Teri (01:18:34.063) Well, then they were talking about the one, the thing that's not rare. They didn't say the lunar eclipse was rare. They said lunar eclipses happen all the time. They said it's the sun one, whatever, the other one, the other one, the one we just had. Solar eclipse, thank you. Happens not as often. Yeah, we love those moments. That also felt very like, I don't know, I just was watching Gerald's game recently. And yeah, anyway, those eclipse moments.

Bryan! (01:18:44.6) Solar Eclipse. Yeah.

Dave! (01:18:47.266) And that's why she has the big box of glasses.

Dave! (01:18:57.346) Well, I remember there was one at some point in the 80s because when I, I mean, I must have been, because we made those box glasses in school and we had to, we all went outside and looked at it. So it must have been like 86, 87, something like that.

Bryan! (01:18:57.6) Mm.

Teri (01:19:01.879) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:19:02.344) Oh, no, I remember it too, yeah, because.

Teri (01:19:08.035) I was at summer camp. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know, there's something, we just like recently had one too here, but I.

Dave! (01:19:18.082) I know, because Donald Trump looked directly into it.

Bryan! (01:19:20.882) Hahaha!

Teri (01:19:23.951) Sorry. Ha ha ha. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. But no, there is something I feel like magical in that energy. I feel like people feel with those types of events and things like that, like the mystics and stuff like that. Feel like it's a time for a reset of some sort.

Bryan! (01:19:24.716) Nope. It's a very, it's a very stable genius.

Dave! (01:19:42.19) But it just feels like one more element, they're chucking into this movie. Like eventually it's like, there is so much happening, so many fucking threads here. And you don't need any, like you need like, it's a fucking alien. That's good enough. That's her story. Cut all this other shit out.

Bryan! (01:19:54.542) Well...

Teri (01:19:55.171) I know, but they're keeping it ambiguous and you don't know it's an alien yet, which I kind of love actually, cause I was like, oh yeah, I think maybe it was like a supernatural thing, you know, of some sort, but not alien, you know? Like that's like, you don't.

Bryan! (01:20:06.054) Yeah, the...

Dave! (01:20:06.426) That's why you get to the end and it's like, what about all that other shit you said?

Teri (01:20:09.828) Yeah!

Bryan! (01:20:10.696) Yeah, cuz up to this point, the vibe you're left with is a cult, a cult horror. You know, we got symbols, there's triangles everywhere. She sees like, I think I might have skipped over it, but like before she sees Karen in the coffin, there's like a circle projected onto it in blue, which like these are supposed to be sort of like clues to enlighten us as to what's going on, but they don't really. Yeah.

Teri (01:20:16.804) Yeah.

Dave! (01:20:16.916) Mm-hmm.

Teri (01:20:28.547) Mm-hmm.

Teri (01:20:34.339) It feels like a luminati or something, right? Like they're giving you like triangles, circle. Like they're giving you those like.

Dave! (01:20:39.006) No, they're giving you clues to another story, because that's not how, that's not where these clues lead.

Bryan! (01:20:45.695) that's right. Well, even yeah, that initiation ceremony is Yeah, that initiation like Masonic as well like yeah, like it's all kind direction and then, you know, I with the ending is it just goes

Teri (01:20:47.992) Oops, sorry.

Dave! (01:20:55.822) Mm-hmm.

Teri (01:20:57.344) Mm-hmm.

Dave! (01:21:08.93) Yeah, like their whole point was like, we're gonna reshoot this movie. They invested a million dollars to reshoot this ending and it does not explain it. And it actually explains it even less.

Teri (01:21:09.412) Like it.

Bryan! (01:21:16.888) Well, I think it does, but it's still like.

Dave! (01:21:21.409) in a way, but it's not as obvious as the other one is, or one of the other ones.

Bryan! (01:21:25.024) Right, because the original endings don't have the voiceover that just is like, oh, by the way, this is everything that's happening right now.

Dave! (01:21:32.682) Yeah, there's a huge exposition dump at the end of this movie.

Bryan! (01:21:35.68) Yeah. Oh, yes, we did. Yes, we did.

Teri (01:21:36.079) They needed it. They definitely needed it. But I also, but I still don't mind it. I don't know. I don't feel like everything has to be like, I don't know, spelled out. I didn't mind the ambiguity in the ending and also what's happening just because it's like, that was the whole thing with these people. They're literally just like, no one understands what happens. It was an unexplained phenomenon. It's a little like.

Dave! (01:21:37.868) Yes.

Teri (01:21:59.231) What's that one in the sky? Whatever those guys that like got abducted, you know what I mean? That's like everyone's got their version of like what the hell they thought happened. None of it's really too real. It could have been an alien abduction and that's what we find out it actually was. That's okay.

Dave! (01:22:11.662) That's true, I jumped us way ahead. I jumped us to the end before we were ready though, so...

Bryan! (01:22:15.216) the same melody. So, elsewhere, Mrs. Aylwood hears Ellie humming a song and invites her in to show her a music box to play the same melody. And then,

Dave! (01:22:24.114) in the quaintest college you have ever seen.

Bryan! (01:22:27.156) It's delightful. I could live there.

Teri (01:22:28.291) It's so cute. And Ellie had heard it from Jan. Yeah. They really did. It was great.

Dave! (01:22:29.314) Like if central casting did that.

Bryan! (01:22:33.512) or yeah and so now in comes Jan who tells Mrs. Aylwood that Tom Colley would all what Tom Colley told her while also being followed by Steady Cam POV and then Ellie goes into another trance, you know, yelling must help Karen.

Teri (01:22:50.891) And a mom interrupts this one. And that is just wonderful. Cause mom's like, okay, kids, this little lady's got you guys screaming and then like fits. It's very crucible all of a sudden. Like these girls are like, I don't know. Like, hello, Salem. You know, what's going on? Like, you know, witch trials and stuff. And so a mom's like, well, I guess that was the price. It was too cheap. It was, this was too good to be true. And now I get this place is haunted and the strange lady is strange. You kids were probably right.

Bryan! (01:22:52.768) Yes.

Bryan! (01:23:12.725) Yep. Too good to be true.

Teri (01:23:19.055) Let's get the fuck out of here. But now the kids are like, no, we are too far into this saga. We cannot leave, Mom. We are ready to stay. We got to figure out where the hell and what the hell is going on with Karen. She's still out there. I don't think she's dead. Let's figure it out.

Bryan! (01:23:31.788) Yeah, they don't get far though. Cause just like in burnt offerings, uh, and unseen force stops them because they're in the car and they get the drive away at night and then they get stuck on the bridge and then they're like, oh shit, we should probably get out of the car just in time for another blue laser that strikes.

Dave! (01:23:47.758) So this is what I'm saying, like if they hadn't got out of the car, the blue laser would have hit them. Like it's kind of like, all right, you want their help, but you're a little bit reckless about it too.

Teri (01:23:50.619) They would have died.

Bryan! (01:23:57.294) Yeah, but it's exciting because you get an exploding car out of it.

Dave! (01:23:59.767) That's true.

Teri (01:24:01.115) I don't know if the blue laser was supposed to hit them. I think it's just like that was supposed to gain the, help mom gain the trust of the kids that they were going back to the right place and like stopping them from leaving that place, right?

Bryan! (01:24:04.662) It

Bryan! (01:24:12.3) Yeah, because it doesn't hit the car, it hits the bridge. And the car collapsing with the bridge is just kind of like, oh, shit, I guess the good thing they weren't in there, because really it was just to sort of cut off their exit. You got to stay here, you got to see it through.

Teri (01:24:15.867) Yeah.

Teri (01:24:26.903) Yeah. So you're saying the blue lasers are storm troopers and they don't have great aim is what I'm hearing. Uh huh.

Bryan! (01:24:31.648) Yep, it's collateral damage. So that night they're haunted by nightmares about helping Karen and Ellie again in a trance traces do again tomorrow on the bathroom mirror with soap. So the next day, while looking for that set of eclipse glasses that she made, Ellie utters some phrases from a trance the night before and Jan starts like making connections. So Jan

Dave! (01:24:32.35) It's as plausible as anything else.

Dave! (01:24:58.286) and shouting about other people.

Bryan! (01:24:59.78) Oh yeah, of course. Jan calls Mike to tell him that they have to do the ritual again with the same people from 30 years before. Good thing they're all still alive in there. And Jan is very confused about what a seance is because she says something like, when people put their hands together at a seance and they make objects move. Like, that's not what a seance is.

Dave! (01:25:17.942) Sure, good enough. I mean, this movie is off the rails at this point.

Teri (01:25:20.071) She's talking about some Ouija board thing, right? Like that's what it sounds like she's trying to have them do, but that's not what they're doing, yeah.

Bryan! (01:25:25.144) Yeah. So, she talks everybody into going back to the chapel to do the thing again and miraculously they do and Karen has been raving like a lunatic the whole movie and somehow everybody just goes with it.

Dave! (01:25:37.942) Yeah, she's acting like a crazy person and then they're all just like, fine, I guess.

Bryan! (01:25:42.788) That's really...

Teri (01:25:43.399) No, but it's because they've all been freaking haunted as well. Like, hello, their guilt is the only thing that gets them there because they know in their heart of hearts that they fucked up and they've kept it as like they're like do or die secret. But their secret has been unearthed. And they're like, well, if this girl figured all this much out, like there's got to be some sort of truth to it. So that's why they're guilt and curiosity.

Bryan! (01:25:46.758) Yeah

Dave! (01:26:04.714) I mean, they could just ride it out for like one more day and then they're fine. The chance is passed. But also, why is this the only happening now? Why has this not happened before?

Bryan! (01:26:09.288) Ah, yeah. So this.

Bryan! (01:26:16.228) because it's thick.

Teri (01:26:16.355) I bet they've tried because they didn't have someone who could listen and help.

Bryan! (01:26:19.276) Yeah, yeah. They will also they need the eclipse is a kind of crucial component to it. And so

Teri (01:26:25.348) Right.

Dave! (01:26:25.39) for reasons that don't get explained or do they? I'm pretty sure they don't.

Bryan! (01:26:29.496) Well, yes, ish in the in the in the in the Ellie in the version in the final version that we all saw that they've that they released Ellie explains.

Teri (01:26:32.083) ish.

Dave! (01:26:33.29) I was a little checked out by the end of this movie.

Dave! (01:26:42.21) Look, it's not that wild for me to not know what's going on. They had to reshoot the ending for this movie twice. And it still didn't make sense.

Bryan! (01:27:09.341) the

Dave! (01:27:16.119) Oh, but they might.

Bryan! (01:27:16.408) or break the circle, but man alive, is she proven wrong like twice?

Dave! (01:27:20.578) Cuz that lady is like, no, I'm gonna do it. She's like, I am gonna leave.

Teri (01:27:23.319) Mary's like, get me out of here again. I left the first time, I will do it again. I was like, girl, that's what you've messed up the first time.

Bryan! (01:27:23.406) Yep. Oh. She is.

Dave! (01:27:30.326) Yeah, she has every intention of doing the same thing. To which I say, well then why did you come? If you didn't want to be here, why did you come?

Bryan! (01:27:33.292) Yeah, she's terrified. The

Teri (01:27:39.695) Her guilt was so bad. Like, and so I was like, girl, yeah, it was shame on us. You know, twice, shame on you.

Dave! (01:27:41.666) Okay, but she's ready to leave immediately.

Bryan! (01:27:44.057) Yep.

Bryan! (01:27:50.204) Yeah. And so as soon as the ritual begins, Ellie's voice comes through explaining what happened and what we what we learn through extensive VO is

Dave! (01:28:00.546) Well, so then she, it's Vio, but then she comes walking in, but her mouth isn't moving? It's just still the voiceover.

Bryan! (01:28:05.044) Yeah, which I'm gonna give you this. I like that detail. It's kind of like have you ever watched old clips of Doctor Who where the good god. So the they're the sad. There's this

Dave! (01:28:15.874) Absolutely not.

Teri (01:28:19.013) Well...

Dave! (01:28:19.998) Listen, old BBC was ugly as hell.

Bryan! (01:28:23.14) Oh, but here's the thing. The Cybermen were fucking, they're fucking terrifying back in the day. And they were.

Teri (01:28:23.931) There's...

Dave! (01:28:26.126) Are you gonna say they're still ugly?

Teri (01:28:28.319) No. I was gonna say that it's delightful Dave. I don't know why you're so anti. I don't know. Do you not like cool, fun, weird things and like camp?

Dave! (01:28:32.85) Okay.

Bryan! (01:28:34.145) I'm telling you.

Dave! (01:28:36.902) i don't like science fiction, i'm not a science fiction person, do i not like camp?

Bryan! (01:28:41.632) You might actually like these old ones because they are delightfully terrible. Yeah. And but like the way that the Cybermen used to used to appear is they were just people in like body stockings and all this kind of like metal stuff kind of like bolted onto them. But when they would speak, the Cybermen would open their mouths, just open their mouths and then the voice would come through, but they would not mouth the words. Their mouths would just open and the sound would come out. It was an eerie, eerie thing.

Teri (01:28:44.707) Cause it's camp! Yeah, that's what I love about old sci-fi, anyway.

Bryan! (01:29:09.808) And it's something it's immediately what I thought of when I saw this because Ellie walks in and she's not speaking but we hear that kind of affected version of her voice is the alien is kind of like speaking through her. But what we learn is the watcher is an invisible alien that switch places with Karen by mistake during the ritual. And so now she's been trapped here on earth in the woods.

Dave! (01:29:30.062) But where was the watcher going? Just pass him through?

Bryan! (01:29:34.19) Yeah.

Teri (01:29:37.219) I think they were probably writing on like, I feel like it's like a little bit like, like the comet kind of situation or whatever, where they're like, oh, like it was supposed to be, I don't know, it was supposed to be the alien writing on the comet or like through the eclipse. And it was supposed to something lined up for that night as well for them. And it was some magical thing for them, unexplained, but that's what I figured.

Bryan! (01:29:37.636) Hmm?

Bryan! (01:29:54.964) Yeah, they were going. They were they were going somewhere and this yeah. Yes, because okay, so like it has said there's two other endings and all of them have been cut and replaced with this one. You can find them on the anchor Bay DVD release the movie and you can also get them on YouTube. I'll link to them in the show notes.

Dave! (01:29:59.01) This is the reshot ending, right? This is the 81 version.

Teri (01:30:03.065) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:30:18.328) The original endings don't make a whole lot of sense, and they also don't include the voiceover. You're just supposed to kind of, I think they look better. I love the bug alien.

Dave! (01:30:22.734) I don't think it looked better though. I like the big flying bug. Which I believe Vincent Canby said, it looked like it was something that was stolen out of a Chinese New Year parade.

Teri (01:30:33.335) It's so awesome. It looks like a creepy dragon bat thing. And it kind of looks like, I feel like it made me think of the taxidermy that Tom was doing, because he had those little bats and winged, all these little winged creatures were his taxidermy. And I was like, oh, has he been seeing the creature and trying to recreate it somehow? And that's where he's stuck. Do you know what I mean? Like maybe he saw something in that flash.

Bryan! (01:30:35.756) It's super cool.

Dave! (01:30:35.878) I liked it, I think it was cool.

Bryan! (01:30:46.564) Oh yeah, all right.

Dave! (01:30:47.222) No, it like flies in.

Bryan! (01:30:54.926) Yeah.

Yeah.

Teri (01:30:58.423) and that's what he's continuing to make. So I was like, oh, this makes more sense if you see this thing to go with what he, kind of how he was doing, yeah.

Bryan! (01:31:03.437) Yeah.

Dave! (01:31:04.362) It's also just visually cool. Like it flies in and like wraps its wings around her and sort of like totally like wraps her up and then it flies away. I was like, that's, I like that.

Bryan! (01:31:07.396) Right.

Teri (01:31:10.052) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:31:13.356) it flies away and then it's cool because then we go to and this had to be like a thing like, okay, we're going to do our own version of 2001 or something because we go to this like psychedelic landscape where there is a crashed UFO and they go into the UFO and

Teri (01:31:20.486) Yeah.

Dave! (01:31:21.041) Oh.

Dave! (01:31:27.65) This is where it's like, what the fuck is going on? The tone in this movie has changed so wildly by this point. And it's like, this is like pure science fiction at this point, but like real cheap science fiction.

Teri (01:31:37.914) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:31:40.344) But yeah, but what we see is inside the ship is Karen, who's, you know, the girl we've been seeing the whole movie, she's trapped in some kind of like a crystal. And then Jan goes in, and they she gets her and then there's a big we cut back to the church and there's a big like flash of light and they're both standing in the spot where Jan was standing. And it's it turns out that the girl has not aged a day since the since she was trapped.

Dave! (01:32:10.03) That's a lot.

Teri (01:32:10.327) In this ending, in this ending.

Bryan! (01:32:12.172) in this ending. Yeah, and then

Dave! (01:32:13.162) Yeah. All right. Yeah, there's someone else in the other one. It's a totally different actor.

Bryan! (01:32:16.568) Uh, right. Because they brought her back because they couldn't get the original. And I guess they figured who cares? We'd never see her with a blind felt fold off.

Dave! (01:32:21.718) But in these endings, they also make, so Abedigavis looks good. Like, they style their hair, she's, their makeup looks fine. Like, she looks so much better in these. Like, why didn't you just let her look like that instead of looking like an old hag? But she looks like that before her daughter returns.

Teri (01:32:33.615) Because she's happy her daughter's returning. Because she's happy her daughter might be back.

Bryan! (01:32:36.395) Yeah.

Bryan! (01:32:40.04) Yeah. And then in another one, and I think it was, I think it was the original, like the original released version, like the one with the alien in the spaceship is not the one that was released. That was something that was that was the one that they never finished because they were trying to rush the movie off. The one that I think they did originally was.

the alien comes up, it grabs Jan and flies away, and then there's the flash and she's just back with Karen. I believe that's the original theatrical ending from 1980. But yeah, they cut all this UFO stuff out. I don't know.

Dave! (01:33:23.658) And then Jan says, he needed my image to set her free. And I said, what? What the fuck are you talking about?

Bryan! (01:33:28.825) Hahaha!

No, so what we instead got was basically the Blade Runner version where there's just like a voiceover going, like in case you haven't figured it out, like there's an alien and the girl's trapped and here you go. Yeah, and then.

Dave! (01:33:42.286) And Fiend.

Teri (01:33:43.399) She was trapped in suspension and frozen in time. Yes.

Bryan! (01:33:47.5) No, it has this

Dave! (01:33:47.639) Sure was, except Jan was able to reach right through all of that and just grab her.

Bryan! (01:33:52.508) Yeah, it has this whole I have to return to my home planet. My people need me kind of thing. Well, yeah. So, yeah, this time they but they this time they perform the ritual and concert with the eclipse. And then the strange light appears next to the entranced Ellie. This is the version that's on the disk, the one that we that they released in 81 and it has no alien in it. It's just this blobby light next door.

Dave! (01:33:58.178) Yep, absolutely.

Teri (01:34:00.34) E.T. Yup.

Bryan! (01:34:21.136) And the light surrounds Jan and Mike rushes in to break the circle, ending the ritual. But with the ritual complete and Jan safe, Karen stands there where Jan stood, not having aged a day since her disappearance. Mrs. Alewood wanders in for some reason, sees her daughter standing there, they hug. Fade to black. Roll credits.

Teri (01:34:39.495) she wonders in because that was her cue. I love it.

Bryan! (01:34:41.512) Yep. The Watcher in the Woods.

Dave! (01:34:43.83) Well good, because that's gonna lead me to my question. I'm gonna ask you, Terry, how do you think this movie holds up today?

Teri (01:34:51.591) Uh, you know, it's a little slow, but that's okay.

Teri (01:34:59.143) God, okay, how it holds up today.

Dave! (01:35:05.802) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Teri (01:35:06.279) after talking about it with you guys for a while. I still freaking love it. No, I think it's still just vibes. If you like vibes, if you like weird, like, occult witchy shit, that's what I feel like this gives me a little bit. I feel like it's like a really nice gateway. Like, watch this, watch The Wicker Man. Like, do you know what I mean though? Like, I don't know, if you're below the ages of 10, this will scare you, you know? Like, this is what it's for.

Bryan! (01:35:35.06) Yeah, I personally, I think that it's worth a watch as a weird piece of like a weird Disney Curio that's it's an artifact.

Teri (01:35:45.155) It's such an anomaly. It's a weird anomaly in the Disney lexicon. It's so strange.

Bryan! (01:35:50.2) Yeah, it's a bit of a, it's definitely a bit of a slog. But yeah, no, I think that it's very, it's fascinating, it's an art, it's an antique from a weird period of Disney history. And just the sort of broader picture of the period from when it was made is also a time in that company's.

sort of production history that I think is really fascinating because they were at a very strange crossroads and just did not know what to do and seemed to be like they were flailing but they were still kind of making money at the same time. Like of

Teri (01:36:23.747) happening right now. I think it's interesting because I just sorry, I feel like just even right now I feel like it's a similar thing where they're in a similar space right now. I think they're in that rebuilding time. So I don't know, I just, I'm that nerd that will go down like the Disney deep dives on defunct land and all that kind of good stuff on like YouTube and whatnot. And I just very curious what's going to happen with Disney right now in the midst of like, you know, post whatever writer strikes and actor strikes and all the stuff that's happening at the moment.

Bryan! (01:36:32.173) Yeah.

Teri (01:36:50.843) because they're in a transition again where like all the like last few like animated things that they've done have not done well. You know, nothing has been really meeting projections and because they are trying to do something different than what they've normally done. And so it's like, what are they going to ultimately learn and what are they going to come up with next? Because mostly they've just bought market share for the last like 20 years.

Bryan! (01:36:57.069) Mm-hmm.

Bryan! (01:37:10.668) Yeah, yeah, you know, it's been quite a while since they've had a frozen, you know, sort of like a sensation, you know? Yeah, so wild time, but.

Teri (01:37:15.875) Yeah. Yeah, it's been a decade.

Dave! (01:37:21.622) I don't know, I think it's a time capsule, but I can't imagine this movie resonates with anybody now. It's such a weird mashup of ideas and tones and themes and genres that just don't work together, despite the fact that everyone's doing their best.

Bryan! (01:37:27.746) It's.

Bryan! (01:37:34.592) It's 100% yeah, it's definitely it's 100% a nostalgia piece for a certain for a certain set. Like we are right in the right in that wheelhouse as we remember it from the home video period, you know, and like, you know, it's just we've got different perspectives on it. But we definitely remember it and it's a thing that resonates. In some way, just different ways for you know, the three of us. It's just it's a it's

Teri (01:37:40.903) Yeah, it's a gateway, yeah. It's a nostalgia and gateway drug, yeah.

Bryan! (01:38:03.488) It's just, it's a fascinating movie that's just not terribly interesting to watch, unfortunately.

Dave! (01:38:06.998) Yeah, I don't think it holds up now, but I also don't think it held up very well then either. So it's kind of like it did what it was supposed to do.

Bryan! (01:38:12.286) NO!

Teri (01:38:13.271) It scared the crap out of me as a kid and that's what it was supposed to do, right?

Bryan! (01:38:16.416) Yeah, it's definitely it's definitely of that like weirdo like experimental period like this movie. And I think maybe Condor Man are like the two movies.

Dave! (01:38:26.402) That's the other one that I always remember, Condorman and this one.

Teri (01:38:28.887) I loved Condorman and I rented that so much. Video Dollar Day, shout out. And Vista California, that was my video store. I used to rent that. Both of these, like, but Condorman especially, quite often, oh my God.

Bryan! (01:38:34.414) Hahaha

Bryan! (01:38:39.532) Yeah, they're just like, just kind of like forgotten, but there's other movies of the period that they were trying out that definitely worked better in terms of box office and also review. Like, you know, Tron was a terrible, like commercial failure for them. But fucking everybody loves that movie. There's

Teri (01:39:01.891) And it still has like, you know, a beloved space and, you know, and culture as well. And yeah. I heard it's one of the best rides as well. I heard it's yeah, you get on there. It's like you get on the bikes. Yeah. Like this like a year or two ago, it's new. So there's it's there's still, you know, using that IP, even like part of like, I just want to take their Swift's era's tour. Yes. I'll admit it. I'm actually in the closing credits because I got like.

Bryan! (01:39:06.34) Yeah, they just launched a ride at the Magic Kingdoms.

Bryan! (01:39:13.057) Yeah. So yeah, like it's.

Teri (01:39:27.811) It's not because my outfit was cute before the show, so I'm in the like freaking immortalized in the era's video. But even in her concert, she has a thing that looks like the Tron bikes. Like, I was like, holy crap, they're still like checking Tron like to this day. You know, I mean, they'll like within culture. So I think there's something about that. Yeah.

Dave! (01:39:45.706) Yeah, these movies are relevant because of nostalgia. I think once our generation kind of ages out, nobody will remember these. Which is, I don't know, maybe it's for the best. It's like, it's from a weird period.

Teri (01:39:57.263) I think it's okay, but it's a weird period, but I feel like a lot of our creators right now, obviously, this was a touchstone for us.

Bryan! (01:40:06.331) Yeah. Yep. So, Terry, thank you so much for joining us. This was uh this is a lot of fun and uh I I'm glad I'm glad we I'm glad we had you on to talk this movie because we intended we intended on doing

Teri (01:40:17.269) You did not want to talk about this movie, I guess.

Dave! (01:40:20.234) I actually, I really did want to talk about this movie. It was only after I watched it that I was like, well, there's just not much to say about it. It just is what it is.

Bryan! (01:40:28.203) Yep. No, but I'm glad I'm glad we had your perspective on it. You know, give it a balance things out a little bit.

Teri (01:40:35.755) Yeah, someone's gotta love it. Someone's gotta love it in the room. Yeah.

Bryan! (01:40:37.352) Yep. So, hey, where can everybody find you? What are you up to?

Teri (01:40:43.207) I'm just hanging out right now, you know, not talking about struck work, you know, but you can find me on the internet at the Terry Gamble, most places, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or terrygamble.com, that's Terry with one R, T-E-R-I, Gamble like Las Vegas. And I do an amazing show that you guys know about with Julia, who you've had on your show already as well, amazing Julia Marchese, my best friend of a million years. We actually met on the airplane on our way to England.

So this movie has a near and dear heart. We did our year abroad together. We studied together. That's how we met. So whenever stuff is British, I'm almost just like, ooh, so that's probably also why I love this movie because it's got that weird like American trapped and Britain vibe to it, which I can definitely relate to. Feeling loud and obnoxious compared to all of them. And I think that could be also maybe the direction because I feel like that happens a lot. They're like, you all are really loud. Yes, yes we are. We have more space to be heard. And you can, you know.

Find me there, Horror Movie Survival Guide, weekly podcast, we have over 300 episodes, lots of great interviews. We have a Joe Lynch interview that's just coming out for Suitable Flesh. And we just talked with Dennis Paoli as well, Stuart Gordon's wonderful, you know, who wrote the reanimator and From Beyond and lots of fun stuff. I feel like I'm his, oh, and Garf Horror X with the George J. Romero Foundation. We had a new

show that's on the Garf Network via YouTube that just started. We had a couple of interviews that are already up with Lori Cardil, amazing from Day of the Dead. Aha, just a badass, and just what a wonderful kind, kind woman. And then our second interview just came out recently with Chelsea Stardust. So check that out, amazing fun conversation with her. Our show's focused all about women and femmes and horror.

Bryan! (01:42:20.356) Day of the Dead.

Teri (01:42:37.071) And I feel like there's more stuff, but that's probably good for now, right? Yeah.

Bryan! (01:42:41.368) not bad. You're very busy. Alright, so uh yeah, that was it. The Watcher in the Woods. We'll see you back here in another week with uh our teardown of elves.

Ha ha

Teri (01:42:58.444) Thanks guys.

Bryan! (01:42:59.94) Thank you. Yeah. So.