Bryan (00:03.052) You're listening to the Brothers Grimm podcast presented by the Cinema Suicide Film Society on Substack. I'm Brian White, editor in grief of Cinema Suicide. I'm joined by my co-host and actual brother, Dave. Dave, how you doing?

Dave (00:14.506) Hey, I'm doing all right. First, first warm day we've had in like 17 months. So I'm into that.

Bryan (00:23.232) Yeah, yeah, we had a lot of rain, so this was this was nice. So we practically grew up in neighborhood video stores and the steady diet of utter garbage that those shops provided us with continues unabated to this day. There's no one else I enjoyed chopping it up with more about trashy movies and Dave. Just before we get into it a little bit of housekeeping. If you want to keep up with us between episodes, you can also find us on Twitter and on Instagram at GrimBrosPod.

Bryan (00:48.472) We've also got a sweet new website now at brothersgrimpodcast.show. That's dot show dot com takes you to another Brothers Grimm podcast. You can listen to all of our past shows there and read the transcripts because we're just that funny. You can also contact us directly at Grim Bros Pod at Gmail dot com with any questions, comments or suggestions. Do let us know if there's a movie that you love, would like to hear us give it the business.

Bryan (01:13.44) And lastly, if you like what you hear, you can subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. You'll be doing us a favor by leaving us a five-star review on Apple podcasts. So I just want to get that all out of the way right at the top of the show. So here it is. I'm going to give you a little taste of what we got coming up.

Bryan (03:32.369) and of course, Grace Jones. Yep, that's right.

Dave (03:35.382) You know what that movie is? That's, that is The Breakfast Club in decrepit Los Angeles, but also Grace Jones.

Bryan (03:42.144) Yeah, and also Grace Jones. Yeah, that's actually not a bad trailer. Like for once, one of the ones that we were on, it actually kind of represents it. It's one of those ones that it uses a lot of footage that's not actually in the movie. There's a couple of shots in there that just, I would love to know what that is. Like there's that one scene where it looks like Makepeace is falling out of like a garbage chute or something like that. So yeah.

Bryan (04:08.172) But warning before we get rolling, we're going to talk about this movie from beginning to end, so spoilers to follow. But also, this kicks off our Pride series. It's June, Pride 2023. And given the dire status of LGBTQ plus rights in the world, it's more important than ever to stand in solidarity and support everyone who's under attack right now.

Bryan (04:28.684) Let them know that they have a safe haven with us. It's also vital that we highlight queer artists, culture makers, as a reminder that the color that they provide the world with isn't born in a vacuum. And because I personally am gleefully antagonistic, I cherish every opportunity to stick my middle finger in the face of bigots everywhere. So just to let you know. So here we are, some facts.

Bryan (04:52.984) We're actually moving out of our usual sort of comfort zone. We've been in like 1980 to 82. This one is made in 1986. It was a hell of a year for horror movies. So some other movies released that year from beyond. Spookies, which I watched recently. That movie fucking sucks. It's terrible. I don't know if I even finished it. The Fly also came out this year. Awesome. That is a fantastic one.

Dave (05:12.938) Yeah, that's a hard one. That's a great one.

Dave (05:22.963) and super gross.

Bryan (05:24.261) Yep, super gross. You get the full Gold Bloom. Invaders from Mars, which I haven't seen since I think it came out. I should really go back and watch that one at some point. Also, Friday the... Hoopers, yeah. It's one of the ones he did for Canon. I think right after that was the one he did, Lifeforce, the naked vampire one. Friday the 13th, Part 6, Jason Lives. And lastly, Night of the Creeps.

Dave (05:35.074) That's Tobe Hooper.

Bryan (05:50.528) I mean, just to name a few. I fucking love that movie. That movie was written specifically for Tom Atkins to just do what he does. It's so good. So, cast and crew on this picture. So this was directed by a guy named Richard Wank. It's a very unfortunate last name.

Dave (05:50.743) and love that movie.

Bryan (06:11.902) This was his first feature and following this one he did a few more movies before transitioning to a writer on pictures like The Expendables 2 and he did the two equalizer movies. And 16 Blocks, which I think is a remake of the Clint Eastwood picture of the Gauntlet. But he hasn't been terribly busy. Prior to this movie he made a short film in 1979 called Dracula Bites the Big Apple, which is available on the Aero Blu-ray. It's also on YouTube.

Dave (06:38.014) Let me tell you something. Did you watch that movie? Wow.

Bryan (06:39.816) I did, I did. It was extremely funny.

Dave (06:44.002) That is really is a is a fine piece of cinema. It is a very odd movie.

Bryan (06:49.754) I didn't know what to expect, but what I was definitely not expecting was a musical. Yeah, it's very funny. It's 20 minutes. I'll link it in the show notes. Everybody should watch it. It's really funny, and it's like a real kind of like snapshot of New York in 1979. Like they go all over the place, you know, to all the tourist spots, and they even end up at Studio 54. And like Steve Rubell is even in the movie himself, which is...

Dave (06:54.006) Yeah, that was pretty, it was pretty hilarious.

Bryan (07:14.536) itself is pretty funny and it really plays up the whole 54 thing with how like how

Dave (07:18.794) Yeah, Steve Rubell looking as self-conscious as a person could ever act. Like, it would be like if you put me in that movie, I'd be like, I'm acting.

Bryan (07:23.412) Oh, I know. It's. It's like, it's like the way he acts is almost like a, when somebody like a news crew shows up to somebody and they just stick a mic in somebody's face and he's like, oh, I guess we're doing this.

Dave (07:38.014) And he's on just piles of cocaine at the time, so you know it's really tough for him to keep it together.

Bryan (07:40.041) Oh my god, yeah.

Bryan (07:46.176) the cast is we got a we got meatballs or my bodyguard.

Dave (07:55.05) Or, alternatively, you might also remember him from Maces and Monsters, the fantastic anti-Dungeons and Dragons movie starring Tom Hanks. It is hilarious and you can find it on YouTube.

Bryan (08:00.652) That is right. Right, Joe Manning? That's gotta be on Tubi also. That's got Tubi written all over it. We've also got... It's pretty good. We've also got Robert Rustler from the other Wicked Gay Horror movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2.

Dave (08:12.084) It's really good.

Dave (08:20.49) Which I would argue is not a gay horror movie, it's actually quite homophobic.

Bryan (08:23.932) You know I that I think we talked about this or before but I'm glad that it's been sort of Reclaimed and the sort of power has been sort of taken away from it, but that movie fucking ruined Mark Patton's life and like it is the most it is super homophobic in a way that's like really gross Because I remember like really right it seemed like right around time like Halloween 3 kind of got its reappraisal like everybody Was like hey, what about Nightmare on Elm Street 2?

Dave (08:32.01) Mmm.

Bryan (08:53.32) And right before that, like about a year prior, like I think you had watched it and you texted me and were like, have you seen this movie in a while? And I was like, I don't know, probably not. And you're like, there's like a leather bar scene and a part where a dude gets his ass whipped.

Dave (09:07.206) It's it's not you know what? I think we should all just skip it. If you want to know about it, watch the amazing documentary Scream Queen. Pretty sure it's still in shutter. But the movie, those guys can go get fucked. They suck.

Bryan (09:10.889) I'm sorry.

Bryan (09:20.448) I know, I recently just saw, I cannot remember what outlet it was, but so that director Jack Scholder, he also did, fuck that guy right in the face. He also did Wishmaster 2, which I don't think I've even seen the first one. I don't care, but apparently, Wishmaster 2 also has the same sort of like day panic themes and that was made in like 1999, which,

Dave (09:28.111) He's a piece of shit.

Bryan (09:49.268) which kind of feels like it was at least past the turning point where like you could really sort of get away with that like that sort of thing really feels like it was right at home in the 80s you know it's so weird I've tempted to watch it but I don't know if I care enough like I don't give a shit that guy can you know suck it but Robert Russell he's done a ton and he's still working like a lot of these guys he's in TV these days also getting what on a baby.

Bryan (10:17.772) who must have been thrilled to do this movie, because for once he's, it's Watanabe is how you would pronounce it, yeah. I just have been saying it that way because I'm fucking lazy. But for once, I know, we're the worst. He's just some guy and he's not Wong Duk Dong and he's not doing an accent, which he's basically like up all the way to 1990 was kind of his thing.

Dave (10:20.142) Is it Watanabe or Watanabe?

Dave (10:29.898) White people.

Dave (10:43.562) Yeah, he said that he was worried. He was worried he wouldn't be funny without the accent. And I say, Getty, don't you worry, you're a fucking star.

Bryan (10:48.633) Oh, that's so sad, man. I feel for him.

Bryan (10:54.464) He is one of the reasons, one of two very good reasons to watch this movie. We are gonna talk, probably gonna talk about him a lot because he's like my favorite character in the whole thing.

Dave (11:03.074) Like I know this guy, he has built a perfectly respectable career for himself ever since then, but he is just fantastic in this movie.

Bryan (11:12.32) He's great. And like, I didn't know this. Like, I kind of lost track of him and like really, and I admit it has a lot to do with just the way that he was portrayed. Like I did, I just kind of stopped seeing him in movies and it's mostly cause he moved over to television, but he was on ER for like seven years. Yeah. But like, yeah, like he's just a regular dude in this movie and it's great because like he had to do that.

Dave (11:26.719) It was like eight years.

Bryan (11:36.9) Asian guy schticks like straight up to like at least 1990 because I just watched gremlins 2 recently And he's in that and he hardly has any lines because he's too busy being asian guy with a lot of cameras Yeah, yeah joe dante you're letting me down

Dave (11:50.929) Hey, man. Come on.

Bryan (11:54.62) But also, and of course, like this is one of the reasons that like we that this movie is even really kind of like Kept up in that sort of collective memory and that's because grace Jones is in this movie As the sort of big bad villain she plays a vampire named Katrina and she is the draw She's awesome because this is honestly

Dave (12:13.898) And if you don't know who Grace Jones is, turn this off right now.

Bryan (12:17.692) Oh yeah, go look her up. So she was like, so this is honestly, this movie is really kind of like a mid-level horror comedy and it's not a red hot nostalgia item for some pretty good reasons. But if there's one reason to watch this and I'm gonna hit that nail a lot, it's Grace fucking Jones. So she was basically in a nutshell, a model, but way, way more than that. That undersells it hardcore because like, if...

Dave (12:42.716) That undersells it.

Dave (12:46.05) She is a performer is what she is.

Bryan (12:48.556) Right really like she's probably the character who was at the dawn Not really of the supermodel thing, but really of the model as a kind of cultural export She was also a singer This yep, she's still performing if she ever comes around man. I will I will go see her in a second

Dave (13:04.462) Still is.

Bryan (13:11.572) She was real, like a central figure in the New York art and fashion world. She was like a regular of around Andy Warhol. And anybody who took, like was like an art photographer has shot her. You know, she, I mean, like, if you're listening to this, you fucking know what Grace Jones is. She cuts a very sincere.

Bryan (13:37.924) profile like there is she's like a living Patrick Dagle painting it's really

Dave (13:42.166) Yes, she is. She's probably one of the most fascinating, captivating looking people I've ever seen.

Bryan (13:48.98) Yeah, yeah, like, and I mean, it's really one of the reasons why they cast her is the character that she's playing was written without lines. And I listened to the director commentary, and the reason that he did it was because every time he tried to write lines for this character, he would read them back and be just embarrassed by them. So his whole thing was fine. This character is really more like an animal than a person.

Bryan (14:14.196) So in order to carry a role like that, you need somebody who's got fucking presence. Originally it was supposed to be Tina Turner because like this was that whole private dancer era and she was really, really big and she was getting into... Also, it wouldn't have landed the same. Like she was a very, very interesting person in her own right. And like this was right around that time, she's trying to get into movies like she had just done Mad Max.

Dave (14:27.274) It's just too classy for it though.

Bryan (14:41.28) you know, she had a shitload of hits. Like this was like really on the upswing of her comeback, but like she just would not have carried the movie the same way. Bianca Jagger was also supposed to be, was their next pick? And then when that kind of, right, like this gets Studio 54 all over it.

Dave (14:53.614) Speaking of Studio 54...

Bryan (15:00.024) But yeah, she's a real Renaissance woman. This was her third role. She had already done Conan the Destroyer. She was May Day in that sort of notorious low point for the Bond franchise of You Do It Kill. And so this was like her, really like her third acting role. And like, you know, she still shows up here and there and stuff.

Bryan (15:25.528) So yeah, yeah. So let's get around to some notes here. So this was like, this was released by New World Pictures. So it was like a really kind of a, I guess they're technically an independent production company. It was a poster before it was a movie. And that's kind of the way that a lot of these outfits do this where like a producer will come up with an idea.

Bryan (15:53.428) It's really how it works in Europe a lot, particularly in the 70s in Italy, where somebody will say, I want a movie that has Mad Max cars and people fighting with swords and like this, and then they'll make a poster and they'll go sell it. And then they'll write the script. So this is kind of like that where...

Dave (16:11.542) And the film is called The Scorpion Fish Kills at Night.

Bryan (16:15.1) Yeah, 13 times. It's got to have a number. It's got to have an animal. It's got to be really wobbly when translated into English. So yeah, New World Pictures. This was a company that used to be Corman, a Corman joint, but he basically sold the whole thing in 1983. One of the things that I found in an interview with Donald Borcher. I think he's the producer on this movie is

Dave (16:37.494) Yeah, he used to work with.

Bryan (16:39.188) So he was there at New World, I think, from like somewhere in the mid 70s. And so when Corman sold his interest in the company to, whoever bought it, he basically sold them the movies and like all of the sort of like IP, but he took all of the company's assets with him so that when he left, he took like desks and chairs and phones and stuff. So like the people who were left over were literally left with like empty offices. I think that's a very funny thing about the guy because he probably just turned around and sold it all at a yard sale.

Bryan (17:11.542) But yeah, they only had a very vague idea of what this movie was going to be about when they got to Wenk. And they got to him because of that Dracula short that he made. They were like, here's the guy who made a vampire movie.

Dave (17:24.128) Yeah, that's a I don't think I understand that connection because it's like that. What can you call it a vampire movie if you want to be charitable? But that would like if there were no other vampire movies ever made. Okay, cool.

Bryan (17:37.655) Yeah.

Dave (17:38.422) Like if this was the first time anyone had ever seen, like since- since Bellegos sees Dracula. This is the first time anyone's ever- Okay, then I get it. Otherwise, what the fuck?

Bryan (17:44.138) Yeah.

Bryan (17:48.2) I know, I know. I get the feeling that it's a little bit of that, like the Hollywood logic where it's, nobody's really thinking. They just put, they just connect like dots. It's like word association. Like they saw, they probably saw the short somewhere and were like, oh, well, we have a movie that's gonna have vampires in it. And here's a guy who made a movie with a vampire in it. So we'll get him and he'll be fine. Cause he'd never done anything before. This was his first.

Bryan (18:17.196) feature.

Dave (18:18.42) Yeah, I mean, more likely they were like, we need someone who's going to work for real cheap. And who knows what a vampire is.

Bryan (18:21.964) Yeah, it was made for $2 million. So yeah, the idea, when he got to it, the whole idea was they wanted a movie that involved frat boys, strippers, and vampires. And he wrote the movie in a weekend.

Dave (18:36.814) Well, I can tell.

Bryan (18:39.4) It kind of shows, kind of shows. There's some gaps in this movie that drive me crazy. Also, supposedly the chair from Katrina's scene where she does her like strip tease thing is supposedly molded from the body of Dolph Lundgren, who was her boyfriend at the time.

Bryan (18:59.176) Yeah, yeah. So, um, yeah, so... I know she's... Yeah, she, uh, she's dated a lot of really unusual people. Yeah, but, um, sure. So, uh, the movie opens on a drama... on dramatic music. There's a group of robed men drag two struggling men into what appears to be a church, and at a...

Dave (19:01.688) Okay... What a fucking wild couple! Neither of them speak very good English!

Dave (19:24.81) Yeah, this is some legit Omen music.

Bryan (19:27.36) Oh yeah, it's very baroque and ominous. And at its top, they're fitted with nooses. And these men are Chris Makepeace, who plays Keith, and Robert Rustler, who plays his buddy AJ. And it looks like it's some sort of ritual or like an execution, but it's just a frat initiation that goes wrong.

Bryan (19:47.748) There's like a booming voice that's sort of giving a narration and sort of like telling what's going to happen. But then it turns out that it's just a guy mouthing the words that's playing from like a boombox that's currently eating the tape. That's Christopher Plummer's voice, by the way. He came over and just like recorded it because he was like in a hotel that the director was staying at.

Dave (20:04.706) What is it from? Weird. Cause I'll tell you what, Christopher Plummer does not strike me as the kind of guy who has a great sense of humor. I-

Bryan (20:19.06) really well he played a uh he played a clay on once you know so maybe yeah maybe he's into that sort of thing but yeah they or either that or he was like uh yeah a thousand bucks right now and he gave him cash or something uh but this scene kind of flips the script on the whole uh frat comedy thing where usually the pledges are desperately trying to get into the to the frat these two act like they couldn't give shit um and

Dave (20:47.419) Yeah, but I'll tell you what, as college pranks go, this one is right up there with the school shooting in everyone's favorite movie, apparently Final Exam.

Bryan (20:55.624) because they're going to hang them. I don't know, there's a lot of, you know, in like Skull and Bones and others, I mean, I'm pretty sure that like your average Greek house isn't doing something quite this elaborate, but like some of the ones that are like really old and at like Ivy Leagues involve a lot of death imagery. Like Skull and Bones involves actual skulls and bones and coffins and shit.

Dave (20:56.938) Yeah, it's like, Jesus Christ!

Dave (21:17.014) I guess. I don't I don't know anything about fraternities. I went to the liberal arts college. But this shit just looks ridiculous and it seems really dangerous.

Bryan (21:24.867) Hahaha

Bryan (21:28.848) Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is weird, because by this point, most frats were just doing stuff like what we saw in final exam, where it's just torturing people and a lot of shaving cream and nakedness and stuff. So this strikes a very particular Ivy League chord. But yeah, AJ and Keith want in on the frat.

Bryan (21:58.784) but they want to sort of do it on their terms. And this is where we sort of establish that like, they go back a ways, they've got chemistry, and they really do. I feel like these two, I buy them as like old friends. They really jive pretty well. But AJ.

Dave (22:13.195) I will come back to that a little bit later, because it's important for why, it's one of the reasons I chose this movie.

Bryan (22:18.876) Yeah, yeah, I think I know what you're talking about but uh, AJ is sort of like a wheel and deal business man

Dave (22:26.57) He's a very, he's a classic 80s trope. He's that, uh, what do you, what do you want? What do you need? I got it for you. I'll get it for you, baby.

Bryan (22:29.174) Right.

Bryan (22:32.36) Yeah, like he could like turn up his collar, you know, like that was that's really kind of the thing and so he says That instead of doing this stupid initiation that he will uh, he will provide them with party favors for this party They're having like tonight Instead of the usual pledge nonsense. That means getting them a stripper for the party

Dave (22:51.894) Yeah, referring to women as party favors is super gross.

Bryan (22:56.076) Uh, yeah, that's, that's my word. Unfortunately, I can't remember what.

Dave (23:02.183) It's the same idea, I mean...

Bryan (23:03.504) Yeah, I mean that's really what I was pulling it from there But uh, yeah. Yeah, but this was also like this was this was 1986 So it's the peak yuppie years like really right before it sort of like tips over Yep, yep, so And this is the thing is it makes it really hard for me to really like either of them Because I find them both

Dave (23:16.554) Yeah, this is Blair in Pretty in Pink.

Dave (23:29.774) Well, especially Chris Makepeace's character and Chris Makepeace is not a particularly magnetic character or actor, I'm sorry to say.

Bryan (23:37.28) Now, maybe it's just because of like meatballs. Like I, every time I see him, all I think of is Rudy the rabbit. And like in that movie, he's the underdog, but he's also like 12. And, cause that was before meatballs, I think. Or maybe it was after. Yeah. But so we cut to their dorm room and it's very typical of college comedies. The whole thing is cluttered and there's like shit all over the walls. And

Dave (23:47.562) Oh, you should see them in Mazes and Monsters. Fucking classic.

Dave (23:52.654) I think it might be a little bit after, but.

Bryan (24:07.453) Keith, please.

Dave (24:07.614) including, including a, what you might call, Chekhov's bow and arrow.

Bryan (24:13.042) I was about to just say, check out Bow and Arrow!

Dave (24:14.39) There it is. Because the first time I saw it, I was like, why does he, first of all, why is he using it indoors? Second of all, why is it just hanging on the wall?

Bryan (24:22.92) It is a super awkward placement. Like it's the most obvious thing. Like I remember I saw this. Yeah, like it's not, it's not just like a gimmick one or anything like it's a serious like compound bow. Like it's got a huge like target on the wall behind him. So it's like, is he shooting arrows into that wall? Like what is going, like what exactly is this thing doing in his room apart from just sort of establishing the fact that he knows how to use this.

Dave (24:28.866) And this is like some Rambo bow and arrow shit.

Bryan (24:53.084) It's about the most like awkward placement of like a Chekhov's ex ever. So immediately like I hadn't seen this movie in a really long time. Like I think the last time I'd seen it was like 1989 or something. And so I had completely forgotten most of the plot points. But as soon as I saw that I was like, oh, he's gonna kill vampires with that. So

Bryan (25:17.924) um, ha is calling up friends of his on a on a full-size payphone that is not on a wall or anything He's like carrying it around with him It sounds like he's just calling women Uh to that he knows who are like either dancers or maybe they're just women and uh, he's trying to convince them to be straight

Dave (25:27.566) Yeah, that's just how you talk to ladies in 1986. You just assume they'll all dance nude for money.

Bryan (25:36.512) Yeah. This it is really appropriate in 1986. I mean this was like right when like Andrew Dice Clay was coming up. Um? Oh good God, I know I know. But they want out of this dorm because apparently.

Dave (25:48.254) Making the shitty people.

Bryan (25:55.976) the whole dorm hall is like a shitshow and like at one point to sort of like illustrate this AJ like opens up the door and it's just mayhem out in the out in the hall where there's like a guy tied like being carried like tied to a stick and like somebody's like firing up like a it really is and like i don't know about you i'd probably be okay like living in a place that's just madness all the time

Dave (26:10.579) God, it's like Apocalypse Now in the hallway.

Bryan (26:21.668) But yeah, they want to they want out. They want into this frat house because it's like a frat house and it's not this crazy ass dorm. No, that's right. Yep. Nope, especially not that like I think Jesus Christ, I thought was about the year that we actually got cable for the first time like when our family did. So that's a big deal. It's a big deal HBO Cinemax. All right.

Dave (26:28.263) And because they have cable television.

Dave (26:33.334) which you know nothing to sneeze at.

Bryan (26:51.688) So they decide that they're going to drive into the city to find a professional which

Dave (26:59.614) Now, do they ever say where they are?

Bryan (27:02.828) No, it's actually this was shot at USC, but they're the.

Dave (27:06.626) Yeah, they're in Los Angeles. The whole thing is in Los Angeles, but I don't think they ever actually say it.

Bryan (27:11.008) No, no. And the city itself, like the city itself, like the skyline is recognizable in that sense, because like this was around the time where they stopped sort of using New York as the shorthand for like urban decay and started just doing like Los Angeles. And so LA, because of sort of exotic nature was that. So you just knew it, but like they don't actually say they're going to LA, you just kind of assume it. Or actually, I think they do actually say you're in downtown LA, but.

Bryan (27:39.524) I don't know. It's beside the point. They don't say where they're at, but to get into the city, they need a car. And to get a car, they have to talk to Duncan. And so we cut to Duncan's dorm room.

Bryan (27:52.628) And he's in there. And this is like the exact opposite of AJ and Keith's dorm room. It's like a spacious, it looks like the library but a palatial estate in like New England somewhere. Like it's humongous. It's full of people who he, it turns out he's, Duncan has paid to be there for one reason or another. It really is. When we were introduced to him, it's just, this is getting Watanabe by the way. He is shown to be like.

Dave (28:09.52) Yeah, this is some real back to school shit.

Bryan (28:21.456) golf balls into a net as a guy stands next to it sort of laconically announcing like how awesome the swing was. And it turns out there's like a bank of dudes off to the side on computers like writing all of his class papers for him. And then they all get up and they leave and he's sort of like in a hurry, he's trying to get him to stay and hang out and be buddies and stuff. So what we're learning about Duncan is he doesn't have a lot

Bryan (28:50.88) And the way that he's written, the way that he's written is he's supposed to be like a spoiled rich kid, but the way that Kenny plays him is not that way. And the joke doesn't really ever land. In fact, AJ and Keith kind of make a big deal out of like, their deal to get a car out of him is, instead of paying him, they'll like be his friend for a week, or they'll pretend to be his friend for a week, which sucks, but...

Bryan (29:21.356) He doesn't really strike me as a bad guy. And the perks of hanging out with him seem pretty good since he seems to have a bottomless bank account. He's got a wallet full of cash and credit cards. He presents them with a tray of bagels to eat and crudite. Or crudite. Yeah, he seems, he seems, that's it. He's more awkward than annoying. And I know plenty of people who are awkward.

Dave (29:37.01) I mean, who doesn't like bagels? Exactly. I'd hang out with him. He seems weird as hell.

Bryan (29:51.724) I would hang out with him in a Harpy because he's probably picking up the tab everywhere he goes. But they need him for the car and it turns out that he like rents his cars out because he's got several of them. As a matter of fact, yeah or nine of them because the license plate says one of nine. But yeah, so they cut this deal where like they'll pretend to be his friend for a week if they'll if they can use the car and he goes along with them.

Dave (30:04.194) It has ten of them.

Bryan (30:21.22) And this is when they start to drive into the city. So we cut to the car ride down and they appear to be in the wilderness, like on a dusty dirt road. You see the city off in the distance, but it's just hills. It's the hills outside of Los Angeles, basically. But it's really weird in the way that they go into town because you don't see them leave.

Bryan (30:50.028) We don't know where they're coming from. And so the city may as well sort of like be like an entire world away.

Dave (30:57.435) Well, that's why I asked if they ever say where they're going because, you know, I watched the making of documentary on the Arrow Blu-ray and the director of photography

Dave (31:07.158) really like the fact that this is in Los Angeles is like super important to him. And yet nobody else seems to give a shit about it and they never really talk about it. So the fact that like this movie could have been shot anywhere is really weird when you consider how important it is to him and sort of his imaginary of this film.

Bryan (31:26.112) Right, it sort of sounds like he has an idea. He almost like he has his own idea of what this movie is about and the location is very important.

Dave (31:34.494) And he's I don't think he's wrong. I just don't think that anyone else gave a shit about that.

Bryan (31:39.452) Right, it just needed to be urban, right? So like along the way, like Duncan's in the back seat and he's basically flipping through the back pages of some like free newspaper. While AJ and Keith like sing that Robert Palmer song, Bad Case of Loving You, but like they don't quite know it. It's basically, it's essentially just them building rapport. Like these guys are tight, you know, tight bros. They're like.

Dave (32:03.21) Yeah, they couldn't afford the song. They could afford the rights to perform the song, which is a very different thing than actually getting the license for the song.

Bryan (32:09.114) Hahaha

Bryan (32:13.44) Yeah, but Duncan finds an ad for a strip club called the After Dark Club, which was supposed to be called the After Hours Club. But they couldn't clear the title After Hours because that's the Martin Scorsese movie. So it's called the After Dark Club. They roll into downtown LA and immediately enter into the longest car spin out in the entire history of film.

Dave (32:39.562) Now I'm gonna stop you right now, because here begins one of the reasons why I chose this movie. Obviously there is nothing explicitly queer about this movie, aside from Grace Jones, but.

Bryan (32:44.629) Okay.

Bryan (32:51.632) It's got connections, but nothing about the story or the characters is directly gay.

Dave (32:53.282) But yeah, there's.

Dave (32:56.902) Yeah, there is, however, a kind of vibe to it. There is an aesthetic and this sort of like, I don't know, it's something it's like an edginess that I think you find more commonly, like in John Waters movies, you find it in that kind of new queer cinema in the 90s, like Gregor Rocky, stuff like that, where it's like they're using there's a lot of fantasy elements because this movie has a shitload of like it feels like a fantasy film.

Dave (33:24.446) in a lot of different places. And it has this kind of almost like a Wizard of Oz like vibe to it, where this car spins a million times and then all of a sudden you're in this other magical place that is for some reason. Well, I know the reason, but it is pink and green. Everything is hard lighting.

Bryan (33:33.229) That's...

Bryan (33:43.36) Yeah. Okay, so that DP that you mentioned, so this was his this was basically his first like feature also. This was the first for a lot of people like Diddy Pfeiffer.

Dave (33:55.966) And he's like, he's like, he's got a big, big time dude now.

Bryan (33:59.18) Yeah, like he works with Steven Soderbergh. He works on movies that everybody has seen at this point. And he's a well-known, very respected guy. So the reason that the color palette was chosen this way, and probably the reason that he was so enthusiastic about the location was because a lot of what he was doing here, he was patterning after the movie, After Hours, which have you ever seen it?

Dave (34:24.226) I have seen it but it was a very long time ago.

Bryan (34:26.112) So I watched it just recently because it came, I think Criterion was putting it out. So I watched it, cause I realized like, I don't think that up to that point, I don't think I'd ever seen it. And I had heard that it was Scorsese's comedy, cause he's not a comedy guy, right? And so I was like, well, let's... Absolutely hilarious, I know, what am I thinking? But...

Dave (34:44.857) What are you talking about? That monologue in Taxi Driver is hilarious.

Bryan (34:54.136) I watched that movie and oh no, it was because there is an episode of Ted Lasso recently in the second season that is also based on it. So I was like, I've got to see what this is all about. So I watched it and first of all, maybe it's just me. I don't think it's very funny. I do however consider it a horror movie from front to back because it takes this like.

Bryan (35:19.58) It takes Griffin done and he was a thoroughly unlikable character. He's just a fucking dick And it's also like a yuppie and it dumps him into this like really Otherworldly Part of the city so he in the movie he's from uptown manhattan Which is like it may as be may as well be worlds away from lower manhattan like it's a It's an entirely different environment

Bryan (35:44.66) And so it deposits him and sort of keeps him stuck in, I think, the East Village for most of the movie. I might be wrong about that. But it's definitely down in lower Manhattan. And it is a world away from the world that he knows. It's full of fucked up locations and weird people, and he's completely out of his element, which is exactly what this movie kind of is. Maybe...

Bryan (36:12.832) I can't remember what the director of photography's name is, but maybe the reason that the location is so important to him is because in his head, this was his riff on after hours, because it very much is the same thing, where it's these two yuppie kids who get stuck in downtown Los Angeles, which I was just recently there, and downtown LA may as well be another planet.

Bryan (36:38.348) compared to the rest of the surrounding areas, it is worlds away from Hollywood, which itself is a fucking nightmare. But it's nothing like, it's the place in Los Angeles County where like after World War II, everybody fled from and moved out to like Glendale and Burbank and Pasadena, which are now like very posh and very expensive places to live while downtown LA is like Thunderdome, it's crazy.

Bryan (37:08.052) It's crazy.

Dave (37:09.707) Well, so I think that that's significant in this context because, you know, I think a lot of people have probably forgotten, maybe not, I don't know, that this was at a time

Dave (37:22.626) time when, you know, in the 80s and before that especially, it's a time when queer people, gay men in particular, are still kind of ghettoized with other minorities. So when you have this run down part of town where just, you know, this is where you'll find big Mexican populations, big Black populations, it's also typically where you would find big gay populations. You would find a lot of, like, the freaks, the drag queens, you know, the trans people. This is where everyone is sort of

Bryan (37:50.364) Oh sure, yeah, it's like the Castro or the Tenderloin or you know, not like nowadays it's all kind of in West Hollywood, but yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Dave (37:53.591) Yes.

Dave (37:59.21) And so this is that it has that vibe of like, it's a fantasy and it's a hard transition. This car spin is a hard transition into you are now in a very different world in which you don't belong, but everybody else does belong. You're on their turf now.

Bryan (38:10.803) Right, yeah.

Bryan (38:13.6) Yeah. Right, because what we see, everybody who inhabits this part of the city, and the way that transition you were talking about, it very much is like the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. And that's not a last Wizard of Oz reference we're going to get. Because.

Dave (38:32.73) No, no, this is chock full of weird, kind of queer fantasy elements.

Bryan (38:37.82) Yeah, so like right after that, make peace says, uh, like I think we're not in Kansas anymore, something like that. But, uh, yeah, like the people who inhabit this part of the city are like, uh, strippers, they're homeless people, there's a lot of like blue collar workers that also happen to be vampires, um, and the metaphor there, since they're all vampires and they're also,

Bryan (39:07.12) is that these are these are not romantic and rice vampires. These are predatory creatures and they're represented by people who yuppies that fled LA are trying to run from.

Dave (39:24.572) It also this also has a lot of like.

Dave (39:26.646) You can feel that influence of like the warriors and streets of fire, which are themselves very theatrical, like, I mean, theatrical and like the sort of theater sense, the dramatic sense, like those are big theatrical performances. You can feel that in this. They don't execute it the same way, but it's there. That influence is also there.

Bryan (39:31.undefined) Yeah.

Bryan (39:47.36) Oh, right. Yeah. And also, well, it's funny that you mentioned that because while I was listening to the commentary when The second time that the albino gang shows up when they sort of emerged from this the steam in that car The director actually says like this is our big Walter Hill moment. Yeah.

Dave (40:05.758) Yeah, I mean, you can feel like there's that scene in the Warriors when the Turnbull ACs come like they're coming down the street in the bus. It's the same scene. Except it's way cooler in the Warriors because the Warriors is just a cooler movie.

Bryan (40:12.46) With the bus! Yeah, that's awesome. Oh, the fuckin' Ooh, perfect, five stars, no notes.

Bryan (40:23.584) But anyways, yeah, so now they're in the city, but they have the spin out and also like maybe this is, cause I had a note where it was just like, all of a sudden it's night. We go from broad daylight to night. They're on a very crowded city block at one point and now they're in this like barren part of the city where nobody's out. But it's also like the middle of the night, which I think.

Dave (40:43.798) Yeah, this is a hard cut to you are no longer in a safe place.

Bryan (40:46.9) Yeah, so that's I think that's really where I was kind of puzzled now. Contextualizing it this way, it makes way more. It makes way more sense. That we've that it's there's the passage of time is really kind of irrelevant. We have just cut to a different place. So they take a minute to we cut to a diner, which is a closing time, and Duncan is in the restroom, and the owner is getting ready to hit the streets by donning a priest's collar

Dave (41:15.349) And a giant goofy cross.

Bryan (41:17.789) gigantic crucifix on like a really long chain. But just as he's about to close, several spooky individuals led by B-movie legend Billy Drago enter.

Dave (41:26.87) drag out looking like shit at any age. This guy is the weirdest looking motherfucker.

Bryan (41:29.394) I don't-

Bryan (41:32.004) I, you know what it is, I, he, I, maybe, I don't know if he ever intended it, or maybe he looked at himself in a mirror and was like, okay, if I'm gonna go to Hollywood, I'm gonna play villains. Because when I think of him, like the only time that I can think where he's like put together and he doesn't look like a fucking weirdo is in The Untouchables, because he played Frank Needy in that one. And in that one, he's like dressed up like a, like a Chicago mobster. But like any other time I've seen him, it's that.

Dave (41:59.786) Otherwise, it's like, do you need a sorcerer? I've got your guy.

Bryan (42:02.792) It's like that crazy hair, he's always very pale, he's got a look. So if you've ever spent any time whatsoever waiting through low budget cheapos, you've seen these guys. He's a very intense presence and a look of his own. He's definitely among those, oh I know that guy, like character actors. Nowadays I guess he's like an acting coach. He still shows up here and there.

Bryan (42:29.14) and stuff usually playing villainous roles. I think the last time I ever really noticed him in anything, he was in a Michael Jackson video. One of those like, it was like a sequel to his bad, smooth criminal video. So, dangerous maybe like, yeah, right before like, everything went to hell for Michael Jackson. The second time or third time. Yeah.

Dave (42:41.564) So the real good era.

Dave (42:52.766) It was a hard road.

Bryan (42:54.372) Heart road my god, but uh, so it turns out that uh, they're in some kind of a gang It's it's uh, it's him and it's two women he shows up and he offers he asks for two coffees at six cups which is a like a Reference that keeps getting brought up There's more of us is it uh, but yeah, so um

Dave (43:12.33) It's a heavy-handed way of saying there are more of them.

Bryan (43:20.504) I, this goes back to when we did the Sentinel and I had weird memories of how I thought this movie went. So when I first saw this, I at some point got mixed up with another movie. I seem to remember his gang being like a gang of vampire hunters, but that's not the case at all. They're just this DTLA gang of weirdos.

Dave (43:42.486) Yeah, because it's really unclear if they're actually vampires, and that will come up later.

Bryan (43:47.636) Right, because they come in and I think that, you know, your expectation is you're going to get vampires because the movie is called fucking vamp. And so they come in and they're weird looking. And like one of the women is like flirting with Keith. She keeps like smiling at him and winking at him and he's doing it back. And then she smiles at him and has this like mouthful of like fucked up teeth that causes him to do like a.

Dave (44:10.358) Like, real gnarly.

Bryan (44:11.776) like a spit take, but it's like, it's a really janky like mouth appliance that looks like it's gonna fall out of her mouth if she like opens it too wide or something. This sets off Drago's character's names. I think that either his name is character's name is Snowflaker, they just call him that because he's white hair, white skin, like he's got the kind of the red eyes and like all that stuff. He's supposed to be like an albino.

Bryan (44:40.656) and he comes over to sort of be menacing and they start to kind of threaten the two guys. Duncan comes out in the middle of all of this and he sees what's going on and he pretends that he's like the plumber and so he kind of like shrinks back into the men's room while this is all happening but it turns out that AJ is good enough to handle the whole situation and like he single

Bryan (45:08.544) not so much chase them off, but he grabs Snowflake by the balls and kind of pins them up against the wall. And there's a lot of crotch shots in this scene. Like they're constantly going from like the super tight shot of like the two guys in the face and then like down to Robert Rustler's hand on this guy's nuts.

Dave (45:19.071) Mm hmm. Well, a very loud volare plays in the background.

Bryan (45:32.68) Yeah, Polare plays, yep, which is a song we're going to hear a couple of times. But it's enough to sort of like get them out of the place and kind of move them, move them on. From here, we arrive at the After Dark Club, which is the place and. Duncan's very excited to go in, but the plan is not that all three of them go in. AJ is just supposed to go in, pick one of these women and like hire her to come back with them, essentially.

Bryan (46:02.316) But Duncan is very excited. And so he, what is the song that he sings? I'm in the mood for love? Something like that. I can't remember what it is.

Bryan (46:17.665) But uh...

Bryan (46:20.704) It ends up drawing them him Duncan and Keith into the place behind AJ doesn't immediately realize that they're all there but

Dave (46:28.39) And Keith, it should be said that Keith from the very beginning of this movie seems put out by this whole thing. It's like he doesn't want to be there. He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to have to go in. He's not even interested in like he doesn't want to go to the party. He doesn't want to be in the frat. The whole thing, he hates the whole fucking idea. He's just kind of going along for the ride. S stick a pin in that because we're coming back.

Bryan (46:47.037) He should have followed his instincts because like this... Yep, yep, so... So what it turns out is the club has... This is how they get a sort of... We as viewers get a look at the machinery of this club and the way that the vampires inside operate. So because AJ goes in by himself, he's received as a single man and it turns out that this place has a single...

Bryan (47:12.86) Men's special which is like way too good to be true all you can drink for a dollar And really what it is it just it takes these kind of like dregs of society these people who? Just kind of wander into the place with no money on their own it singles them out and they become food for the vampires So that's what's at work here AJ and Duncan or Keith and Duncan going in Afterwards

Bryan (47:40.816) Separates them and creates a complication Vic yep, so the I Don't I you know I probably so this is this is the this is the clubs like managers guy The gun in Vic he's played by gun in sandy baron. I don't know if I've ever seen him in anything. I didn't really I Have not seen leprechaun to

Dave (47:44.792) And they are graded by Vic at the door. Now, Vic, I only know Vic from Leprechaun 2.

Dave (48:04.91) That's because you haven't seen Lippercon 2.

Bryan (48:09.728) But I'm sure he seems like a guy who was like a character actor in a lot of stuff He's great in this so in that and I'll link I I've mentioned it I'll link to it in the show notes, but there was an interview I found on YouTube with Borger About this and there's a lot of There's a lot of really weird stories that he tells in it And I'm not sure how many of them I can trust because some of the stories that he tells are fucking strange, but apparently

Bryan (48:38.592) This role was written for Jerry Lewis originally, which I would have loved to have seen. I would have loved to have seen that. But the guy... Oh, but he would have been great.

Dave (48:41.954) Eugh. I wouldn't. Jerry Lewis is fucking human garbage.

Dave (48:51.73) I'm taking a hard stance on that one.

Bryan (48:54.28) Oh no, I'm not fighting you. I just think he would have been great in the role. But this guy, Sandy Baron, he's really great. But yeah, this is a strip club, but for a strip club, not a lot of stripping going on.

Dave (49:10.73) No, it is a very sad place.

Bryan (49:12.756) Yeah, I mean that's supposed to be the point.

Dave (49:14.602) And the lady, I love the sexy construction lady on the stage stripping in a tool belt and a hard hat.

Bryan (49:20.905) And the whole thing, the only part of her wardrobe that comes off is the tool belt. Like she leaves the stage wearing what we first see her in. And that's kind of how it goes for a lot of these women.

Dave (49:29.086) Yeah, the. The performances, the dancing performances in this movie are hilarious.

Bryan (49:36.396) very obviously there was no choreographer involved. Nope. Not like I said, not a lot of stripping going on. So, but there's a lot of music, there's a lot of songs that like, you're probably not gonna recognize because even by the standards of the time, these were kind of... Oh, but yeah, but so did I. But like we're fucking weirdos and we worked in a record store for like 10 years. So like we were definitely clued in on, but this is...

Dave (49:39.296) No!

Dave (49:53.846) Well, maybe you won't recognize them, but I do.

Dave (50:04.566) I'm also particularly fond of that era in Los Angeles rock music.

Bryan (50:08.944) Oh, I know, I know. So this is kind of a high point for soundtracks over scores. Like we've talked about music in these episodes before, but we're usually talking about like composers who are scoring a movie, a single person who composes all the music. And there's definitely a little bit of that in this, just like interstitial stuff to kind of underscore certain scenes when it needs like a little bit of that. But whenever we're in the club, there's licensed music playing.

Bryan (50:39.476) And this was really kind of, and I'm not sure what the turning point was. It definitely wasn't this movie in particular, but like this is from this point on, you start to see a lot of these. That's right. Okay, okay, yeah. Yeah, right. Cause like, this is definitely like, they were selling those records as like compilation, like various artists compilations, and they were selling very well. So.

Dave (50:50.06) No, there's a John Hughes-y-ness thing. It's, you know, it's... That's where it all really comes from.

Dave (51:05.579) Because throughout the 70s and even into the early 80s, movies, like going out to the movies, that's still like adult stuff. Like you still go out for a night on the town or whatever. It's not until the 80s that you get like, movies are for kids now, or teenagers.

Bryan (51:13.12) Yeah Oh sure Right because and they still they definitely did this into the 90s with um Some of the more like next generation formats of video like when dvd first came out

Bryan (51:31.18) I remember like you go into like a store like you go to Suncoaster you go to a record store that's also sold Videotapes they have a very small Like number of DVDs for sale and it was always very adult fare. It was not like it was certainly not what it is now But the notion for a really long time was that kids don't spend money But then the 80s kind of changed that where kids all of a sudden had like disposable income of their own and like significant quantities to go and like buy

Bryan (51:59.76) by music. This was way back in the day when I think even cassettes were kind of expensive. Records were like a $20 affair in 80s money. This movie has got a ton of music and it's got tracks by Dream Syndicate, it's got one by Dream Six which was the original name for Concrete Blonde. I think at the time that they came onto this they were their previous self.

Bryan (52:28.32) But yeah, it's really sort of a specimen of that. Music's not bad. Not really, not a ton of real hits on it, but there's a couple of really good tracks on it. A year later, Docken hits with Dream Warriors for Nightmare on Elm Street 3. And that's, oh my God, yeah. But that's when horror movies, cause it seems like horror movies in particular.

Dave (52:43.623) Hell of a time.

Dave (52:50.923) And that was always a cool cassette because it was yellow, I think.

Bryan (52:54.464) Yes, yeah. But yeah, so like after that, after that, like The Lost Boys also did it. They had a big like soundtrack album. Nightmare on Elm Street 3 did, Shocker did.

Dave (53:07.626) And if anyone's wondering, is that Lost Boys soundtrack good? The answer is no.

Bryan (53:15.543) I remember a couple of songs from it that I really like way more than others. The Doors have a song on it.

Dave (53:24.338) Now Echo and the Bunnymen have a Doris song on it. Yep.

Bryan (53:27.456) Oh, no shit, I did not realize that. But yeah, there's also, there's a couple of, there's like an in excess track on it that I like a lot. But I don't know, we're not talking about that movie. What? Oh my God. I fucking love Lost Boys, what the hell's wrong with you? All right, so we're back in the club and we, and enter Amaretto.

Dave (53:39.398) never will.

Dave (53:43.667) Go on, go on. I've derailed this, and I'm gonna do it a million other times. That is a promise.

Bryan (53:56.352) Not her real name. This is D.D. Pfeiffer's character.

Dave (54:01.159) More popularly known as Michelle Pfeiffer's sister.

Bryan (54:03.82) Michelle Fife, her sister. She's, she's.

Dave (54:05.878) who I will say next to Getty Watanabe, she is another one who again, she has worked consistently. She has had a fine career, everything is fine. She should have been a bigger star.

Bryan (54:16.192) Yeah, because she's pretty good in this movie. I like her character a lot. I like her character way more than the frat boys. You know, like this is...

Dave (54:22.474) Yeah, she's very likable. She's very cute. She brings something to this movie that was desperately needed.

Bryan (54:28.608) Yeah, so this was her this again. This was this was her first role in a feature So she was really going for it like to listen to her on that commentary track She put a lot of thought probably a lot more thought into this character than it really deserved But what we got is way better than most of the movies. So, you know, that's great So the alternative pick for her role was Pamela Springsteen Yeah, Bruce Springsteen sister, but she ended up

Dave (54:52.919) Interesting choice.

Dave (54:57.551) Who would go on to play? Angela.

Bryan (55:00.3) Which I'm gonna say yeah, so she's she instead of this she's in sleepaway camp too And three you're right, so there's a bit of there's a bit of banter between her So the whole thing is she comes she sees Keith from across the bar and Enthusiastically greets him as though she he is though. They know one another and this is sort of a running I Hesitate to say joke

Dave (55:05.959) and three.

Dave (55:26.482) Yeah, this shit goes on way too long.

Bryan (55:28.136) It goes way too long and it does not pay off in any meaningful way. It's kind of like in um Kill bill where they it where if we find out that the bride's name is kiddo Or something or like I think that's her last name And that's why bill has been calling her that the whole time and it comes out with that Like music and i'm just and everybody I know is like, oh my god, that's amazing and i'm left thinking Yeah, i'm like what get the fuck out of here Yeah

Dave (55:50.726) And in your head, you're like, Oh, fuck you. Get out of here.

Dave (55:57.462) You know what I like about her character, though, is that she so these are supposed to be college kids, like young. They're living in a dorm. These are these are early college kids. They do not read that way at all. She actually does read like she is 18, 19 years old because she has this kind of youthful, not dumb, but like very naive, bubbly that's very like she is hyper fixated on this guy who she kind of likes and kind of remembers.

Bryan (55:57.667) So this.

Bryan (56:04.173) Yeah.

Bryan (56:08.394) No, they-

Bryan (56:16.164) She's bubbly.

Bryan (56:25.155) Yeah.

Dave (56:25.334) but she's being really coy and playful and she sells the shit on it.

Bryan (56:29.588) Right, because AJ and Keith, they could also, they're supposed to be like 19, maybe, maybe 20 at the oldest, but they read like day traders or something. Like, yeah, there's a bit of banter. And again, we, this is a plot device setup that never, like it just doesn't land. It doesn't land, we'll get there. But the whole thing is.

Bryan (56:56.556) What her real name is the is the going thing so? Keith is supposed to know it and she eventually kind of becomes pissed off that he doesn't But now comes the big scene so this we would now Vic announces Katrina who is like the reason that if you're gonna go to this the CD slip strip club You're gonna you're gonna go there to see her and this is this is enter grace fucking Jones

Dave (57:22.76) Yes, enter Dame Grace Jones as a goddamn weirdo.

Bryan (57:26.624) Yup, yup, not erotic, not sexy.

Dave (57:30.086) No, this is I my note actually says this is like anti sexual.

Bryan (57:34.9) it's it is because like at least the other women the others are they're doing an imitation of like of strip tees you know it's very chaste nobody's really taking their clothes off or anything like that but it's still in a mode that's recognizable as like strip club this is like

Dave (57:56.17) And this shit is this is wildly captivating to watch her do this, but it is not sexual at all.

Bryan (58:02.19) It's performance art. It's really, it's all I can think. Okay.

Dave (58:05.898) And you should probably describe what she looks like, if- if... for those who have not seen it.

Bryan (58:11.432) So the lights come up on the stage and she is at the feet of this like chair. That's the only way that I can really describe it is it's a chair molded in the form of a body that's Dolph Lundgren's body maybe. I don't know that's a weird story but and she is wearing this like neck to feet

Dave (58:25.678) Dolf Lundgren's body.

Dave (58:31.998) Like all good chairs.

Bryan (58:41.648) like red gown, but like you can kind of see below and she has this shocking like fire engine red wig on and her face is painted completely white, like white white. And she's got very.

Dave (58:54.746) And this was the cover of the VHS and this is why I remembered this movie so well for so long because it is a strange cover and it is super memorable for no other reason than it is just her face in this chalk white makeup.

Bryan (59:01.08) It's.

Bryan (59:09.585) Yeah, even if you have not seen this movie, you remember the cover of the VHS or the DVD. It was, it's still kind of a niche title. It never broke out big. It's not a big nostalgia hit, but everybody remembers that imagery and that's the thing. So eventually she gets up, she does her thing, the dress comes off and she is covered.

Bryan (59:36.068) from her neck down in these like white, in this like white squiggly pattern.

Dave (59:41.813) And it's sort of the inverse of the chair design.

Bryan (59:44.348) Right, so this was done on set. She actually brought him with her. This was painted by a guy, an artist named Keith Herring. So Dave, what do you know about Keith Herring?

Dave (01:00:00.554) Everybody knows Keith Haring's art because you have seen it fucking everywhere. Keith Haring was in the late 70s into the 80s and into the late 80s, I guess. He is a gay artist and kind of a starting in the early 80s. He becomes a very kind of vocal AIDS activist. His art is I don't it's pop art. And I don't really know. He's sort of at the forefront of that pop art.

Dave (01:00:30.21) like Basquiat and.

Bryan (01:00:30.748) Right his style like you everybody's seen it everybody has seen us art It's extremely it looks very simple but the power in it was it was almost like He was almost like a cartoonist where he was able to communicate very complex ideas through very simple Uh, like duo tone pictures. It wasn't a lot of

Dave (01:00:34.314) Yeah, it's very no wave kind of like New York.

Dave (01:00:56.786) and very subtle because his success is due a lot to that subtlety because his shit gets, it is so commercial, eventually, you can find it on fucking everything. You can find it on Starbucks gift cards, skateboards, coffee mugs, t-shirts. It's the Red Hot and Blue, I think, used some of it for their stuff. There's the Christmas, a very something, what's the one?

Bryan (01:01:07.144) Oh yeah. Yeah.

Bryan (01:01:17.72) The Run DMC one. The one that Run DMC Christmas song is from. Same, same, yeah, same Red Hot group did that one, I think. The Cole Porter, Cole Porter Foundation, if you will, was.

Dave (01:01:22.782) Yeah, it's something like this. It was a AIDS fundraiser for that.

Dave (01:01:29.598) Yeah, so it's a lot of that. Yes. And so you'll see it on a lot of that stuff. And he is he did. It was a lot of his shit was very political, but it gets a lot of it. I don't want to say it gets lost because I think part of its power is in that he is not putting one over on people, but he's getting something through in a way that a lot of other people couldn't at the time, because a lot of AIDS activism.

Dave (01:01:58.267) especially in New York, was very aggressive and for very good reasons.

Bryan (01:02:02.432) Well, yeah, it was I think that was really sort of at the core of it was he was able to deliver the message in it to a very broad audience at a time when The this it passed out of grids and became AIDS Formally and terrified the world in such a way that nobody would fucking talk about it It didn't the research towards

Bryan (01:02:31.556) cures or vaccines was just not getting through it. Like he was really one of the first voices to sort of, I don't know, I hesitate to say force it down people's throats, but he got it through in a way. Like I think...

Dave (01:02:42.324) He was definitely not one of the first, but he was one of the ones that got across because it was more palatable.

Bryan (01:02:48.352) That's probably yeah, because I think really the first place I ever saw him on was MTV was rotating his stuff, animations a lot in the late 80s.

Dave (01:02:59.486) And he so he died, I think, in 1990 from AIDS complications, but he did right before he died. He and I don't know if this was because his stuff was kind of commercial at that point. But he has a one of the last things he did. It's called Once Upon a Time. And it's at it's in the bathroom at I don't know if it's still the lesbian and gay community center in New York. It was at the time. And it's this giant mural in the bathroom. And it is it is.

Dave (01:03:27.218) It's in his style. It's the whole the whole thing is this usual kind of black and white kind of simple line drawing stuff. But it is extremely confrontational. It is a lot of like images of men having sex with men or suggestions of men having sex with men. It's it's images of blood or suggestions of blood. And there's a lot of implications in this thing is extremely powerful and very confrontational, which is why it is very cool, very moving and it is massive.

Bryan (01:03:56.168) like a physically large piece. Yeah.

Dave (01:03:58.494) Yes, because it's the Lesbian and Gay Center. It's the building is kind of like a YMCA. So it's a bathroom that is very, very large. It's a public bathroom. And so it's the whole wall. I think some of it goes onto the ceiling, too. But it is very cool. And it is sort of like a last gasp, kind of like, you know, this is what we are, and this is what you've done kind of thing. Like, it's very confrontational.

Bryan (01:04:08.268) Gotcha. Oh, wow. Yeah. So.

Bryan (01:04:25.008) That's a last will and testament for the guy. So this design that he painted on her was not originally intended for this movie. This is actually the second time that it shows up. This was originally intended for a Grace Jones photo shoot by Robert Maple Forp. Yup, yup, you got anything to say about him?

Dave (01:04:42.902) Oh, speaking of confrontational...

Dave (01:04:50.25) I know less about Robert Mapplethorpe than I do about Keith Haring. Most of what I know about Robert Mapplethorpe, I learned from, like all good things, I learned it from Patti Smith. There is a phenomenal book about Just Kids that is about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. It is fantastic.

Bryan (01:05:09.984) Yeah, I remember there was one there was what there was he had a big exhibit that was going to I think it was the it was it was either the one from the 90s Yes Okay, cuz that was the one that they were they were gonna do I think it was at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and I actually went to that just to see what it was because everybody was freaking out So it was me and Christine at the time

Dave (01:05:17.422) It's called the perfect moment. Yeah, it's a late, very late eighties.

Bryan (01:05:38.14) went to it and wasn't expecting that.

Dave (01:05:42.238) And so I'll give you a little bit more if you want. The show is called The Perfect Moment. And the reason it's so rather than a photographer starting late 70s, he moves to New York with Patti Smith mostly because he's so inspired by Andy Warhol. And he kind of comes into his own right in the late 70s and into the 80s. He becomes not so much an activist at the time, at least.

Dave (01:06:12.13) But he is still, he's very kind of no wave, outsider photography, but he does find, because he's very talented, he kind of finds his way into galleries and becomes a big name. A lot of it is sort of portraiture stuff. There's a lot of, some of his more famous stuff is like this flowers, a lot of up close shots, large scale stuff. However, there's another side to his art that is extremely graphically sexual. And so in the late,

Dave (01:06:41.41) 80s becomes a big controversy because there is the Corcoran Gallery in DC gets a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which is a federal organization, and they want to do this Mapplethorpe show. He, I think he'd either just died or he was like right about to die. He also dies of AIDS, complications from AIDS. And so they do this show and among, it's not all

Dave (01:07:10.454) sexual, some of it's just the typical stuff. He put the whole thing together himself. And in this portfolio, there are some very, very graphic photos of like, you know, like S&M, like gay S&M stuff and like really aggressive gay S&M stuff. And he, I mean, even outside of that, like some of his there's photographs. I find a lot of his stuff really kind of I don't like looking at it. It's very like he has pictures of like him because he was or like people who would cut themselves and stuff like that. I don't.

Bryan (01:07:20.3) Yeah. Yep.

Bryan (01:07:25.728) Yeah.

Dave (01:07:40.174) that I find that unnerving to look at. But it's some of that stuff, it's really hardcore stuff, and it becomes yet another fucking rallying cry for the Christian right, who kind of hone in on this very Boebert-esque way of getting in there, and it kind of blows up because the museum won't back down. They're basically like, no, you gave us money, this is art, you don't get to tell me what art is.

Bryan (01:07:43.116) Hmm.

Dave (01:08:09.962) and the Christian writers like, I don't want my money for this faggotry or whatever people like that say. And it becomes kind of a showdown. And eventually the museum kind of wins because the and some of the they do they agree to take out some of the pictures, I think. But most of them remain up and it kind of goes on.

Bryan (01:08:28.813) Yeah.

Bryan (01:08:31.572) Right, because the controversy in Boston when I went was it was the original exhibit with none of the omissions. And so that was, this was also, I think this was also right around the same time as like the National Endowment for the Arts also gave money for that peace piss Christ. Yeah, so like it was just, this was like, no that seems like it was it was deliberately set up to be pro-

Dave (01:08:51.054) Ah, Andre Serrano. Which is like far less artistic if you ask me, but.

Dave (01:09:00.138) Oh yeah, that is super antagonistic.

Bryan (01:09:01.204) Provocation. Yeah. Yeah, like in a way in a way. I'm like, come on, but in the other way. I'm like, yeah, I feel you

Dave (01:09:08.65) Yeah, I mean, I'm like, come on, man. Yeah. But I mean, Maplethorpe stuff is always, it's always done in a very, like it is, he is a very, was a very talented person. And this was, this was kind of his way, like this is, you know, like Herring's Once Upon a Time, this is sort of one of his ways of being like, this is also my life. This is also our lives. Like.

Bryan (01:09:10.866) Hehehehehehe Ah

Bryan (01:09:19.616) Yeah.

Bryan (01:09:29.344) Yeah, right, because this exhibit comes to eventually sort of overshadow the larger body of his work, which is not this sort of aggressive in-your-face sort of sexuality. It's like you said, it's mostly just portraiture of city life.

Dave (01:09:45.578) And I, but one, you know, one of the reasons, and I know this is a big departure, but it's important, I think, to talk about it. One of the reasons why this type of work was important and still is very important is that, particularly now, when you look at things like, you know, we have all these anti-trans legislation, anti-drag legislation, which is also, you know, the root of all that is anti-women legislation, essentially. But what you see is you have things like Drag Race, and I'm not gonna get on a fucking soapbox about Drag Race right now.

Bryan (01:10:07.809) Yeah.

Dave (01:10:14.506) I could and believe me, I want to, but I won't. But it's this very like, it's that Herring thing of like, here it's this very palatable, acceptable thing where everyone's like, oh my God, I love drag queens. I love gay people, blah, blah. It's like, okay, you love gay people, but here's another part of gay culture. How do you feel about this part? Or in Herring's case, it's like, okay, I know that you like Madonna and all this other stuff, but in the meantime, there are millions and millions of people, mostly men, who are dying right now and you don't give a f*.

Bryan (01:10:32.532) Right.

Dave (01:10:43.618) Fuck about them. And so his art is very important in that it's like, yes, you like these portraits. You like this pop art. Well, here's some more of my art. This is also my life. Look at this too, because I am a whole person. I am a whole artist. This is me as an artist, especially someone who is about to die. I mean, literally about to die.

Bryan (01:11:05.06) There's a tremendous power in that too. Like it really kind of puts a fucking, it really puts like an exclamation point on the whole thing.

Dave (01:11:11.498) And so when we talk about activism in this way, it's like, was Mapplethorpe an activist? Not really, but this is sort of his way of saying, you want the drag race without the fisting pictures. You want RuPaul without photographs, without Nan Goldin's photographs of men dying. That's, this is his way of saying, we are whole people. We're not just a fucking show on television or something on a coffee mug.

Dave (01:11:41.426) And so that's why these things are so important. And I think that was sort of his way of being, you know, doing that kind of AIDS activism. And so getting back to all of, you know, all of that said, this all comes from his photographs of Grace Jones in this herring design. In what I think is, and I don't really know anything about these photos, I've seen them many times, but I don't know much about them or where they come from. I think what he's doing in the photos is there's a...

Bryan (01:12:04.053) Right.

Dave (01:12:09.046) He's kind of playing with tribalism in a way because she does have a lot of, the makeup is one thing. She's a very dark skinned woman and she has a lot of, I don't know, headdress is a way to describe it, but it's very ornate jewelry and big metal pieces that she's wearing in a lot of the photographs.

Bryan (01:12:11.648) Mm-hmm.

Bryan (01:12:30.836) Right, and I think all of that is actually... Not all of it, but a number of those pieces appear in the movie. It's part of her costume. Because once the... Getting back to the movie. Once the... That's what we're here for, man. It's...

Dave (01:12:44.472) Sorry to get real, y'all.

Bryan (01:12:51.34) once the sort of the dress comes off and we see that pattern, the paint, the body paint and also there's also uh she's wearing basically like a bikini that's like metal coils uh that

Dave (01:13:04.238) And she apparently showed up with, so they had to do a lot of ADR for her, even though she does not even speak. It's all ADR for like noises that she makes, these kind of animalistic noises she makes. And apparently she showed up like in these fucking giant jangly metal costumes and they had to take them, she took them all off because it just kept being jangly in the ADR session. So finally she just took off everything she was wearing and did the whole thing nude.

Bryan (01:13:13.986) Yeah.

Bryan (01:13:26.81) Oh no shit.

Bryan (01:13:31.832) Which sounds Sounds totally on brand because they in the commentary they fucking dance around it and they do not say anything But they imply that she was very mercurial Right, so like when she's there and she's on set and she's in the moment she is fucking committed but

Dave (01:13:32.598) What can Grace Jones, man?

Dave (01:13:47.01) but like super into this movie.

Dave (01:13:54.23) But it sounds like the when she's there part is the issue.

Bryan (01:13:57.712) Yeah, that's the variable. So she performs her strip tease to a song called Vamp, which is also performed by her. It's one of her, it's a song that she's actually singing, and the song actually appears over the credits at the end also.

Dave (01:14:12.598) And her music is real hit or miss, but when she's on, it is, it's pretty fucking cool.

Bryan (01:14:15.804) Oh, it's mostly covers. She very, she's got like, right, but the stuff that she's mostly known for. Yeah. I can't remember if it was a police song first or if Sting wrote it for her, but that song, Demolition Man, is fucking awesome. Yep. But yeah, also like all of this and all of the wardrobe in the movie that she appears in.

Dave (01:14:20.59) Oh, she's got a lot of got a lot of fucking albums. Corporate Cannibal is a fantastic song.

Bryan (01:14:45.38) was her own wardrobe and it was all stuff that she had modeled for designers or it was stuff that designers had just like sewn for her to bring to it like it was not a budgeted like item for the movie like this or stuff that was made for the movie like she just showed up with a fucking bag full of clothes. And did that and also apparently Andy Warhol was on set. Yeah.

Dave (01:15:06.999) Yeah, she would just show up with him. And I think, no, this might be another moment to break and dust off my queer theory, literary theory skills. I'm going to tell you why, one of the reasons I chose this movie, because again, this is not an explicitly gay movie. But for me, I mean, and you know, whatever what resonates with people is very subjective,

Bryan (01:15:25.998) Right.

Dave (01:15:33.11) But it will come as a shock to nobody that historically queer people are not really represented in film and television until relatively recently. And when they do show up, or at least when they did show up, it was usually as a villain or as a victim, and it was to serve some kind of moralizing message usually. And as a result, this is kind of where this idea of like queer horror comes from. These are all postmodernist ways of looking at cultural texts.

Dave (01:16:03.498) But because of that, queer people had to sort of find themselves in movies or in performances or project themselves into things, which for me, I think because of a lot of like internalized homophobia, that was very, very hard for me. It's still very hard for me to do that. But what does resonate with me a lot and always has is this kind of vibe that...

Dave (01:16:29.714) you can look at a movie and say, or at least I can look at a movie and without these explicit queer narratives or queer characters, I can still look at it and say, gay people are responsible for this movie. So this vamp would not be what it is. It may not have an explicit queer narrative, but it would not be what it is. It would not even exist at all, probably, without the influence of queer culture or the contribution of queer people. Because

Bryan (01:16:49.282) I think that's a good question.

Dave (01:17:00.046) her whole her being in this film is the result of gay men basically.

Bryan (01:17:06.773) Yeah, and it's the reason that you remember it like, you know. Yeah. No. It's yeah it's fun.

Dave (01:17:09.45) Yeah, it's the only reason to watch this fucking movie because the performances are garbage for the most part. Every now and then they really hit, but like they're not great. This is not a good movie by any stretch. It's a fun movie, but you watch it for her. And the reason you're watching her is because of her association with people like Robert Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring and Andy Warhol because of this character would not be what it is without them.

Bryan (01:17:36.634) Yeah.

Dave (01:17:37.046) And so that is a vibe that I pick up on really heavily. And that's why I wanna watch this movie. And it's why when it comes to like, what is a, what's a good queer horror movie? Well, I think of something like this, because shit like Nightmare 2 does nothing for me, because it's an incredibly homophobic movie.

Bryan (01:17:54.292) Yeah, that's just straight-up hate Yeah, yeah, it's uh, this was this is definitely a good pick cuz Yeah Yeah, so We'll get back. We said it her performance isn't terribly sexy. It's very animalistic Which we Right, there's that part where she kind of like

Dave (01:18:02.818) So that is my rant, that is my aside.

Dave (01:18:14.73) And she's doing some like weird acrobatic shit. Because this chair, you've neglected to mention, this chair is kind of in the shape of a man. Well, it's in the shape of a person with no head, but there are moments where she's like fucking the chair in a weird way or like grinding on it in this weird way. But it is still not sexy at all. It is, it's violent and it like it conveys, Grace Johns is not an actor.

Bryan (01:18:24.325) Mm-hmm. With no head. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, she like climbs up. No, it's sexual, is what I would say.

Dave (01:18:44.754) Well, Grace Jones is not a good actor, but god damn, does she sell it in this movie?

Bryan (01:18:46.444) Hahaha

Bryan (01:18:49.928) Oh yeah, like as we're gonna see in the next scene, like she fully commits to this role in ways that I don't think any other actress would have done. Tina Turner definitely would not have done that scene.

Dave (01:19:01.066) No, no, Tina Turner wouldn't have done any of this and if she did, it would look silly. Like it would be embarrassing for, I don't wanna see Tina Turner do that. I have too much respect for her. I have the same amount of respect for Grace Jones because she does it.

Bryan (01:19:06.312) Yeah, right. It just. No. Nope. But.

Bryan (01:19:16.544) Yeah, so very much in the same way that us as the viewer are sort of like Held in thrall as she performs this scene It they show the club and the club is like dead fucking silent So like the her performance comes to an end And the lights go down and the place is silent It's just like a number of shots of just guys with their like slack jaws at their table

Bryan (01:19:42.492) And then eventually somebody starts to applaud everybody does it. AJ decides that she's the one for some reason. She's the stripper that they're going to bring back to their to the to the frat.

Dave (01:19:52.646) Yeah, he needs a last minute exotic dancer for a party. He's going to go with the wild performance artist who said nothing and did not take any of her clothes off.

Bryan (01:20:04.372) and terrified everybody. Yep. So, he sort of like talks his way backstage and he's brought back there. And this is like, we go backstage and we start to see the denizens of the club.

Dave (01:20:06.199) Yes!

Dave (01:20:18.674) On his way back, here is another important reason for why this movie was chosen, is on his way back, this whole time, Chris Makepeace, the Keith character, he's got D.D. Pfeiffer throwing herself at him, more or less. And he is not interested in her, he's not interested in the dancers. Do you know who he is watching? He is watching AJ walk. He's watching him go. And again, this is something that will probably resonate with

Bryan (01:20:33.384) And he is not interested.

Bryan (01:20:42.861) Yep.

Dave (01:20:48.342) with queer viewers in the way that he's watching him. It is a very, it's what you would call a homosocial relationship that they have, which is kind of, I mean, it's just a way of saying male friendship, but it has certain connotations. But it's, the way he's watching him is his very kind of longing looks. Like he doesn't wanna be here. He's here because of his friend. What he does wanna be is with his friend who he's now annoyedly watching.

Bryan (01:20:58.306) Yeah.

Dave (01:21:16.546) go off upstairs. So AJ is excited, he's going off to meet this incredibly crazy dancer quote unquote. And he just looks upset that he is leaving, that he is going with this woman. He's got Dee Pfeiffer relentlessly hounding him. He's got Gediwa Tanabe fucking yucking it up, carrying the movement.

Bryan (01:21:24.168) Yep.

Bryan (01:21:41.149) Do it.

Dave (01:21:45.118) And it's so it's a very it's like that is recognizable to a lot of people in the way that's like you see something in this character and you know it because you've done it now. Every other audience members straight audience members won't recognize that probably so that's that element of like you have to find yourself in these movies that's where you find yourself the way that he's looking at.

Bryan (01:22:06.1) Yeah, yeah, because this is this is a pattern that we see throughout the movie. There's a scene that makes it very obvious coming up that I'm sure you've got notes on and we'll get there.

Dave (01:22:19.254) It's also what makes the final scene in this movie feel so disingenuous and like just unconvincing. Because surprise everybody, it has a romantic conclusion that they jammed down our throat.

Bryan (01:22:24.233) Oh, I know. Yeah. So as we.

Bryan (01:22:31.28) Yeah. I know it's just like everything else. It doesn't land. It doesn't land. But as we as we go through the backstage area, it's occupied by some of the women that we've seen so far on the stage and We we pass by Yeah, yeah, but um

Dave (01:22:47.282) One of them's a bit of a stereotype.

Bryan (01:22:53.112) There's one scene where he passes by a dressing room where two of the women are applying makeup to one another. And it doesn't immediately make sense until a little bit later on when AJ just straight up explains it. But they look like they're facing like, it's like a makeup table and they should be facing mirrors, right? But because they're vampires, yeah. I thought it was...

Dave (01:23:19.317) This dumbass gimmick. This dumbass Vaudeville gimmick.

Bryan (01:23:23.52) I thought it was really neat just because it's just a weird touch and there's kind of a spooky song playing as he's walking around in the back and they're either kind of like it there there. I don't know how to describe the way that they're moving but it's very dreamy and kind of strange it's almost like something out of a genre line movie but just like lacking all of the stuff that makes the genre line movie that. But it's I thought it was it was cool. The reason that they're applying makeup to each other is because they don't have reflections.

Bryan (01:23:53.892) Neat scene I thought but um AJ goes into Katrina's dressing room, and this is where he encounters her He's there by himself, and she kind of sneaks up behind him and she never speaks But she has all these sort of like animal qualities to her that I really appreciate

Dave (01:24:11.593) Actually, you know what? I'm going to take it back because I said she's not a good actor and I am I am rescinding that comment because this scene is really good.

Bryan (01:24:23.197) I think that in instances, in movies where she has dialogue, in where she's definitely being given direction, I think that she definitely goes through the, she's going through the motions, doesn't really have the direct, right.

Dave (01:24:35.67) Yeah, yeah, Grace Jones is going to do what she wants to do. And if you try to make her do what you want her to do, you're going to get the fucking bottom shelf bond girl.

Bryan (01:24:44.776) Yeah, like you get May Day, but I think that in this movie, and they don't say it in the commentary or anything, but I think in this movie, she was not really given a lot of direction. They were just like action. And when she's just allowed to do what she wants to do, it comes off way different than the rest of the cast who are like reading a script and trying to sort of like figure out where they're coming from and shit. All she has to do is whatever comes to mind and it fucking works because her whole thing is.

Dave (01:25:12.64) Yeah, she is like, I am an animal.

Bryan (01:25:15.06) Yeah, and she behaves that way.

Dave (01:25:18.466) But it reads on screen, so she starts to take off his clothes or whatever. And what he, I think, interprets as coming on to him and initiating sex. But what it feels like, if you're watching her, what it feels like is that she's doing what, just imitating what a person would do in that situation. But if it's like, if an alien came down,

Bryan (01:25:41.251) Yeah.

Dave (01:25:44.79) to Earth now and was to imitate it. It's like going through the motions in this weirdly animalistic way because she is very hungry for something, pun intended. But she's doing like, I'm supposed to do it this way to get what I want. And it really, it reads really well.

Bryan (01:25:54.317) Yeah.

Bryan (01:26:00.34) Yeah. She is licking his entire body. Like, once the clothes come off, like, and again, like, you, I think that other actors would be very self-conscious in this scene, not Grace Jones.

Bryan (01:26:17.976) She is all over him until she gets up to about his about up to his neck You know the typical location for a vampire and then all of a sudden her eyes roll back she's got these like long fucking fingernails these long toenails, which kind of freaks me out and No, no, I'm sure that on a lower resolution format Like this was probably passable as just low-budget special effects in the glory of 1080 not so much

Dave (01:26:33.545) And I will tell you, this does not look good on the Blu-ray.

Bryan (01:26:46.762) It looks a little wooden, definitely very plastic, but she's...

Dave (01:26:50.65) It reads like a cheap American werewolf in London.

Bryan (01:26:54.192) Yeah, yeah, because like her face sort of changes, their appearance changes. But, like, this is the thing, like, this is when we start to really sort of address the movie's vampire situation. This is the kind of vampire movie that I wish there were more of. Like, after really into the 90s, like, when I was a kid, I liked the tragic romantic vampire thing, the Anne Rice thing, but after a time

Bryan (01:27:23.804) I just phased out of it, and what I really, really like as a horror movie fan now are the ones where there are this predatory creature that needs to be destroyed. Like, I like them way more as a monster, as a threat, as an antagonist than this sort of sympathetic thing. Like, I save all of that shit for Frankenstein. This movie...

Bryan (01:27:48.872) uh and like near dark came out with like in a year of each other and they really present the sort of vampire although in way different vastly different contexts but that's really the vampire i like is they're there to get staked and like to drink blood and be a threat i god i wish there were more movies like this

Bryan (01:28:08.436) It does the thing that I don't particularly care for in vampire movies where when they go into vamp mode their appearance changes I really kind of like to keep it simple. That's just a personal thing Yeah, yeah, but um, yeah

Dave (01:28:18.808) Yeah, all or nothing, come on now.

Dave (01:28:21.486) It's like Salem's Lodge, just be the big blue wild creature.

Bryan (01:28:25.812) Yeah, like that, like, well, that, that fucking makeup design is so awesome. I give that one a pass, but like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did that a lot where, like, the vampires could pass among you until they were vampires. Then all of a sudden they were very monstrous looking. A lot of, yeah, like so many movies do that. I don't particularly care for that. The Lost Boys does it. I give it a pass just because I like that movie quite a bit. And it's not quite as intense as here or stuff that comes in the future. But I really...

Dave (01:28:39.022) Well, because they had to be sexy creatures.

Bryan (01:28:54.14) My favorite sort of vampires are like Lance Henriksen and that whole crew. Like they just got fags. They're fucking gnarly and nasty and mean and bad. Just keep it simple. It's that's all you got to do. But yeah, she Katrina changes into like a creature in this one. And then as the movie goes on, most of the vampires also eventually do that.

Dave (01:29:17.435) Yeah, I mean, it's from Dusk Till Dawn. This movie is from Dusk Till Dawn.

Bryan (01:29:20.972) That's, well, From Dusk Till Dawn is really this movie. But yeah, so she doesn't just bite his neck with the fangs. She like tears a humongous chunk out of his neck. Yeah, apparently the fang appliance that she's wearing, because it's not just fangs with her. It's like a shitload of like.

Dave (01:29:23.703) Yes.

Dave (01:29:34.51) Apparently she really hurt him.

Bryan (01:29:43.22) jagged, snarly teeth. It passed through the, like she really bit him and it passed through the appliance on his neck and like bit his real neck. But and again, and she again, she is going, she is going house on that wound and yeah, and so he dies. And so yep, she laughs. So sinister, sinister Grace Jones laugh.

Dave (01:29:57.03) Hey, do what you gotta do to be famous, man.

Dave (01:30:06.102) And then she laughs. She laughs in the most magnificent way.

Bryan (01:30:13.308) After a time Keith decides that he's been out there with Duncan by himself the whole time He decides that he has to go backstage and find AJ Because it's taken too long and before he gets there he sees some of the club's machinery in action He's in a restroom at one point and he sees Vlad No sense. Why is his shirt off? Why is Vlad's I? Have no idea no idea

Dave (01:30:30.318) This scene just makes no sense to me. Now why is this dude in the bathroom without a shirt on? If only to set up a comment that comes later.

Bryan (01:30:43.193) There's a bunch of wobbly scenes that are setups for other things that don't fucking make any sense. This is one of them. So Vlad is one of the ghouls. Maybe he's a vampire. It's really unclear where Vic and Vlad fall.

Dave (01:30:54.998) I think Vlad is supposed to, Vlad's like the bouncer, I guess. I think he's supposed to be kind of a Renfield in the same way that Vic is supposed to be. I mean, Vic is very clearly a Renfield.

Bryan (01:30:58.965) Yeah.

Bryan (01:31:02.204) Right.

Bryan (01:31:06.42) Yeah, because he's eating bugs.

Dave (01:31:09.034) I mean, he's not a cool Renfield like Dwight Frye is a cool Renfield, but he's still Renfield.

Bryan (01:31:12.056) wet Friday.

Bryan (01:31:15.552) He's red filled. He's changed his shirt for some reason. And the reason is just so that we can see his body where he's got all these little scars all over him.

Dave (01:31:23.382) they don't even look like teeth marks. They just look like puncture wounds in like a weird pattern.

Bryan (01:31:25.41) No!

Bryan (01:31:29.268) Yep, we cut outside of this to Vic, who's now chastising a waitress for serving cocktails without the little umbrellas, which makes them classy, which is something that he which is a gag he hits a bunch of times he wants everything to be classy.

Dave (01:31:38.87) Yeah, they're... I dunno.

Dave (01:31:44.734) And he's a stereotype in this other like he's a real schlocky. We got to go to Vegas. And I and I'll tell you what, I think this actor is deserving of and capable of quite a bit more than this, as he demonstrates later.

Bryan (01:31:51.22) Right, cause his-

Bryan (01:32:00.148) Yeah, yeah, he has a monologue a little later on that's pretty good Yep, but uh, yeah, but he does that he does the italian fingers thing when he says classy like every time he does it Yeah, because you gotta the finger thing means taxes

Dave (01:32:03.202) That's really good.

Dave (01:32:09.266) Yeah. Yeah, he's got to have a pasta primavera in front of him all the time.

Bryan (01:32:16.36) Yep, and I mean, and they even play like a Louis Prima song later. Yep, but this is where we. Yep, so he's Keith is unable to get out back. He tries to talk to the girl that AJ talked to who did bring about, but she plays stupid and so. The oh yeah she's picking up the slack for forgetting.

Dave (01:32:20.222) Yeah, I mean, goddamn. I'd be better, vamp. Come on.

Dave (01:32:35.582) She plays Asian stereotype is what she plays in a pretty offensive way Yeah, they were like well, we're not gonna do it with Duncan, but we gotta get it in there somewhere. It's the 80s man All sexy girlfriend You can cut it out if you want to but

Bryan (01:32:47.556) Yep, so Amaretto comes along. Oh no, oh no. Well, it's staying in. We gotta commit to our sins. Amaretto takes Keith out back. We find out that one of the hostesses has alerted Katrina to the problem from before. That AJ wasn't alone and that there's others and now they got a problem on their hands they gotta deal with. They gotta kill all three of them.

Dave (01:33:12.182) But first, Amaretto, is that really her name? Amaretto?

Bryan (01:33:16.372) No, that's just her stripper name. Yeah, because she actually says that at the very beginning when she goes over, she introduces herself. She says, hi, I'm Amaretto, not my real name. Because the whole thing is what a real name is, because a real name is Allison.

Dave (01:33:17.9) Okay.

Dave (01:33:31.279) Right. Because she has to go with the wigs now. She has to go pick up some wigs.

Bryan (01:33:36.332) Right, yes. OK. But.

Dave (01:33:39.746) I think they were just like, there's just too much time spent in this strip club. They were like, we gotta, we gotta change the scenery here a little bit.

Bryan (01:33:43.596) They need to... Right, and it's like that after hours thing where a good deal of after hours takes place in one location until it suddenly doesn't. They gotta get them back out on the streets where shit's going crazy. So she says, go out back, wait for me, and we'll go over to the hotel, because one of the strippers tells her that he left with the stripper named Candy.

Bryan (01:34:10.168) she's at some hotel or something like that. This whole part's a little muddy, but they'll walk over there and they'll find him and they'll leave. So they go looking for him. Keith has to wait out back of the club for her. He sees Vlad taking out bodies, and this is where you see like really that big like late motif that runs throughout in terms of like the art direction is

Bryan (01:34:34.232) There's like parts of the city, layers of the city in the background are lit up very brightly in like pink and green hues, which comes back. It's a big part of the movie's design.

Dave (01:34:44.768) So apparently the reason for that is that the DP had said, what's it, Richard Wank, I think this guy's the director, right? He said that the best thing, the most important thing the DP ever said to him was he was like

Bryan (01:34:52.184) That's the director, yeah.

Dave (01:34:58.806) bright white light at night looks like shit. And so because they were like, we can't light it. We have to light it somewhere because they had no money either. They were like, we have to do something to offset the fact that we can't light it like it's night, like with white light, essentially. We have to call it something else. They were like, I have an idea. We're going to light it like an early 90s porno apparently. And so that's why it looks like it's got the pink and green and all that because it was like I have to give it a fantasy look in order to make it look OK.

Bryan (01:35:06.434) Yeah.

Bryan (01:35:22.156) Oh yeah.

Bryan (01:35:27.812) It looks like pages out of a sharper image catalog or something like that. It's very 80s, but it also really smacks of Mario Bava. It has that, where the lights aren't as much a part of the scene as the characters. It's cool.

Dave (01:35:41.674) or it has like a real heavy kind of French film, like 60s, 70s French film vibe. Like these are hard colors, but they work.

Bryan (01:35:48.198) Yeah.

Bryan (01:35:52.32) Yeah. Yeah, it's great. It's great. I mean, they keep showing up throughout it. It's just it's a nice way to sort of like contrast gives the movie a little bit of character. So Keith and Amaretto walk out towards the hotel. That is more banter about why she strips even though Keith doesn't ask. But she is

Dave (01:36:11.773) And we actually get to see her strip later and it is fucking hilarious.

Bryan (01:36:15.124) It's pretty fun. It's pretty funny. They encounter a horror movie little girl sitting under the steps of a rundown apartment building way too late at night. And then for some reason, the milkman leaves the building in the middle of the night.

Dave (01:36:27.502) So again, this is that fantasy, you know, this is sort of like what is uncanniness of it all. This is the bad part of town. Even the milkman is delivering at night. Something's not right.

Bryan (01:36:41.113) Yeah. Uh back at the club, the girl who brought AJ to Christina or to Katrina is punished for messing up uh by having her heart ripped out. Uh and then we come back to uh to Keith and Amaretto who arrive at the hotel. Um they're sort of basically um

Dave (01:36:59.63) Arrived at the hotel from Maniac.

Bryan (01:37:08.084) It's a really weird, like there is a season of American Horror Story that takes place. I think it's just called Hotel. The one with Lady Gaga? Yeah. I don't particularly care for it either. I really liked that one. It reminds me of the hotel from that season. But yeah, they're...

Dave (01:37:15.214) That is the only season of that show I've ever made it through. Yeah, because I fucking hate that show.

Dave (01:37:28.77) Well, so they're in, but this is that fantasy element again, where they're in the elevator going up to wherever they're going. And the. He is this fucking weird again, that uncanny valley thing, but he's also in the elevator, the music that's playing is like the theme song from Donna Reed.

Bryan (01:37:34.996) And he's like an extra from a Coen Brothers movie, yeah.

Bryan (01:37:46.9) Yeah, yeah, and it even chases Keith out of the hall because what ends up happening is they ride the elevator up It's it's just this weird old man in a very obvious toupee um And at one point the doors open Keith gets out Uh, but it's the wrong floor and amaretto gets back into the elevator the doors close before he can get back on so He's sort of trapped on this

Bryan (01:38:09.684) on this floor and that music continues to play as he sort of like walks down the hall. There's like people screaming at each other through the doors and stuff like that. But he goes back and turns and he finds that the elevator is back on his floor. The door is like open. So he gets into it about halfway and we're and we're and we're jammed into a scene where like you've seen it a million times where there's these old elevators where the door closes on you halfway and then the elevator starts to go up.

Bryan (01:38:36.208) and he's almost like you know he's gonna get cut in half but he like jams its progress with a fire extinguisher he sort of gets out and then manages yeah and then he gets he finds his way back down to the street runs out of the hotel in a panic

Dave (01:38:44.819) It's a real die-hard moment.

Dave (01:38:52.554) This is where the movie really starts to drag a little bit.

Bryan (01:38:56.097) It sags. It feels a little filler.

Dave (01:39:00.234) And mostly just because it's like, gotta get him out of the club, gotta do something.

Bryan (01:39:03.764) Yeah, we cut out of that. We go back to the club. Vic and Vlad are in the office now where Vic complains about wanting to go to Vegas, where clubs are a big deal and they're classy. It's the whole running gag thing. We cut back where Amaretto and Keith reunite on the street. She runs out on him again because she's mad about the way that he sort of perceives this thing in the past. Like he does not have any memory of who she is and she's mad about it now. So she stops off.

Dave (01:39:31.286) Yeah, there's like a real heavy implication that he should know her, but that's never very clearly stated.

Bryan (01:39:34.977) Yeah.

Bryan (01:39:37.44) No, and in the end it's like, how the fuck is he supposed to remember this thing that happened to him? I know, I know. So she runs out on him. Back at the club, Duncan is doing his shtick.

Dave (01:39:41.166) Also, who gives a shit?

Dave (01:39:49.55) This is where we get that hot concrete blonde song. If anyone's interested, the song is called Kim and it's from their first album, It Is Awesome.

Bryan (01:39:53.204) Yeah, yeah, uh, some.

Bryan (01:40:00.009) Yeah, so this is the second time that we see him struggle with banaka spray running joke. Legitimately funny. He's super drunk. He approaches one of the waitress he asks her, Hey baby, what time do you get off? And she tells him and he says, can I watch this some laughter?

Dave (01:40:15.102) Yeah, like it is the fact that they were able to get this out without everybody laughing is pretty amazing. And it reads that like you're supposed to think like this is a goofy moment. This is not him being gross and sad. I mean, it is. But it's like it's played for laughs in a way that actually is funny. Because getting want to not be it should be said, does not read as straight in this movie. I mean, I don't think he actually is in real life either, but he does not read that way.

Bryan (01:40:25.165) Yeah.

Bryan (01:40:30.912) Yeah, and it's funny.

Bryan (01:40:39.556) I don't actually know Yeah, I don't really get I don't think he really ever does like I remember he was on that VH1 thing They did I love the 80s and just like hearing him talk as just like himself He does kind of come across as a little bit gay But then again sort of radish and final exam and he's like a hetero dude. So I say I mean who fucking knows but yeah, I don't want to draw any conclusions about this guy But yeah, like he definitely this character in particular definitely comes across as a little gay

Dave (01:40:57.72) Well, so you say.

Bryan (01:41:09.908) um keith and no just a little just a little twist uh keith encounters the uh the albino gang again um they chase them around the frightening streets in their old school hearse they drive them down into the sewers or these drainage tunnels underneath the streets

Dave (01:41:10.574) Just a little bit.

Dave (01:41:24.142) I gotta say, the albino gang is a pretty boring gang.

Bryan (01:41:28.196) that they are that's you know in terms of like I mean especially with the precedent so like the Warriors like being a bunch of albinos I mean come on put some top hats on or some clown makeup or something

Dave (01:41:33.302) Yeah.

Dave (01:41:37.178) Yeah, you could put on some overalls and some fucking roller skates. Come on.

Bryan (01:41:39.956) roller skates, those guys had it nailed down. They still could fight in those roller skates.

Dave (01:41:43.926) Yeah, if you can't top the Moon Runners, then what are you doing? What are you doing here?

Bryan (01:41:50.346) the Van Cortland Rangers nobody's wasting nobody so now he keeps under the streets in these drainage tunnels and he at one point he you know every now and then like he's about to try to get out like an arm shoots down

Dave (01:42:04.406) Fucking leftover, leftover scenes from Chud.

Bryan (01:42:07.688) Yeah, he watches through a drain as one of the gangbangers encounters the little girl from before. This is definitely like a gold star moment for the movie. Like I definitely love this scene. For some reason when we see her she's like marching around the street.

Bryan (01:42:24.076) And the guy one of them it's not it's not snowflake. It's not Drago's character. It's like one of the guys but like he's like a big wrestler version of him and He like grabs the girl by the arm and she ends up like attaching herself to his to his wrist by her teeth because she's a vampire and he's like flailing around like whipping her all over the place trying to get rid of her, but she's Never changes now

Dave (01:42:28.83) It's the one who looks like him.

Dave (01:42:45.226) in this hilarious way that her body position never changes?

Bryan (01:42:49.973) I thought this was a dummy or something, but as it turns out, that was a real person.

Dave (01:42:54.346) No, that is clearly a person because you can tell, like she keeps the hold, the position right, but it is clearly a person, it has weight.

Bryan (01:43:01.568) It's like, yeah, the way that she's positioned, it's like she's sitting in a chair, but without the chair. It's a, it must've been very hard to hold that position. It's super fucking funny.

Dave (01:43:13.974) So yeah, weird little girl, you're the star of the fucking show.

Bryan (01:43:19.325) Keith returns to the service. He has to outrun the gang. He shoots down an alley, jumps into a dumpster, and he manages to give the gang the slip, but he finds AJ's dead body in the process. He jumps out of it. Yep. Mystery solved. He runs out. He finds a phone booth. He calls the cops. So the cops are coming.

Dave (01:43:30.946) Wah wah wah!

Bryan (01:43:45.296) Asian girl who brought who got her heart ripped out she was in the dumpster as well They've been found so Katrina and Vic have to do something about it Since she doesn't speak it's really hard to figure out what she's indicating here, but Vic seems to understand He tells Vlad to bring the bodies back in and then Katrina like cuts her wrist and like feeds him her blood

Dave (01:44:09.134) Which is another like you're just kind of like, do you feel like you had to put this in here I guess?

Bryan (01:44:13.416) It feels like it had a purpose. Like I didn't. I didn't really understand.

Dave (01:44:17.762) So apparently they didn't have to cut anything out of this movie. Like they were on schedule on budget the whole time. They never cut anything. So it's like all these kind of like kind of exposition-y moments are just sort of there for no reason.

Bryan (01:44:21.349) Oh.

Bryan (01:44:31.86) Yeah. Keith shoots into the restroom and inside the club. Somebody tries to get in and eventually opens up the door and it's AJ who's been resurrected as a vampire.

Dave (01:44:42.854) And hey, everybody, have you seen American Werewolf in London because you're about to see the knockoff version?

Bryan (01:44:47.66) Yeah, so this part really, this is one of the sort of like, they go out of their way to explain a lot in this movie, except this one sort of vital part about how this whole like resurrection things work, because a moment ago AJ was stone cold dead. He was just fucking dead. He wasn't undead, he was just dead, and now they did something to him to make him undead, but they never...

Bryan (01:45:15.056) explain what that is. They don't have to, I suppose, but it would have been fucking helpful, because I'm sitting here two viewings of this movie in going, like, how the fuck does this work? Like, what are they doing here? But he's fine, and the cops show up, and they essentially talk them off, but while this is happening, like...

Dave (01:45:19.19) Yeah!

Bryan (01:45:38.128) AJ has like fully vamped out like he's into whatever that lifestyle is or on lifestyle because he's like sucking on one of the stripper vampires his fingers and he's like really

Dave (01:45:49.993) And he is looking full Jerry Dandridge. This makeup is 100% Fright Night.

Bryan (01:45:52.7) Yeah, yeah, yeah. They get rid of the cops who are sent off for like the they're about they're about to close up. You know it's last call. They're going to watch the last show like I it's supposed to be funny I think.

Dave (01:46:07.514) We skipped over the part where D.D. Pfeiffer is dancing on the stage in like full pantsuit. No, just.

Bryan (01:46:11.723) Oh.

Bryan (01:46:15.316) Yeah, she's wearing like a tube top and like Form-fitting pants and in the process of this of this strip tease Neither of those things come off Nope Nor is there

Dave (01:46:27.19) Nope. There is neither strip nor tease. She is basically the girl standing by the jukebox at the arcade in 1986 at the Fox Run mall just shaking it until the Def Leppard song is over.

Bryan (01:46:42.928) dancing she shakes her hips she does a sort of like pointing at the dudes in the audience and then we cut away yeah I don't know it's again not a lot of nudity in this in this strip club yeah they're breaking the mold they're doing their own thing

Dave (01:46:57.39) God bless them, I love it.

Bryan (01:47:03.861) So now Keith learns that everybody's a vampire. He's in there, he's just in this, this...

Dave (01:47:10.53) except maybe Vic and Vlad. Maybe, we don't really know.

Bryan (01:47:12.484) We're maybe we really have no idea. The stripper vampire attacks him. And she goes, she turns into like another, like vamped out, like makeup vampire. And

Dave (01:47:24.606) It does have a very Buffy the Vampire Slayer feel, but the makeup has that look to it. Like it's kind of like sexy Nosferatu.

Bryan (01:47:30.357) Right.

Bryan (01:47:33.448) Yeah, yeah, yeah. She attacks him. She sort of like handles both of them very readily, but he reaches out and he kills her with a stiletto heel. Yep, yep, and it's irony, but now AJ is in full vampire mode. He's got the, you know, the eyes and the fangs and stuff and he's

Dave (01:47:44.918) Yeah, come up and s-

Bryan (01:47:59.9) Explaining, you know, I got a feed I gotta I'm gonna I gotta kill you Keith And they have this they have this exchange where Keith essentially offers himself to AJ as food

Dave (01:48:14.805) Huh, weird, huh? I mean, what with the way he's been looking at him all night.

Bryan (01:48:20.884) Yep, he it's a big bromance moment.

Dave (01:48:26.762) And by bromance, you mean homosexual romance. I mean, this is this moment, I think what they're going for is the sort of more dramatic moments of American Werewolf, but it comes across as gay melodrama. I mean, he even says, I love you in it.

Bryan (01:48:29.728) Yep. Yep, I do.

Bryan (01:48:39.478) Yeah.

Bryan (01:48:44.416) Yeah, yeah, definitely does. Yeah, there's no other way really to read it. I think I almost feel like the way that the movie ends is almost like the people making the movie were kind of aware of this and were like, well, shit, we can't make this a gay movie because it's 1986. So they really step on that deliberately because I don't know how else you're supposed to really read this scene. It's...

Dave (01:49:09.95) I got a secret from everybody who made this movie. You already made a gay movie when you put Grace Jones in it.

Bryan (01:49:15.607) Yep. So.

Bryan (01:49:20.436) Eventually, he's like, you gotta kill me. And so Keith is going to stake him with like, this basically a big piece of broken wood, but he can't do it. So AJ kind of does it for him where he positions the board in such a way that when he goes to attack Keith, he ends up kind of running himself through. And as he's dying, he's like, oh, and don't forget, you could burn them with sunlight and fire's good too. And I think you figured out the other one. And then he's like, ugh, ugh.

Bryan (01:49:49.276) uh like he dies yeah it's because it really is like he's about to die that he's like but wait it almost holds up a finger like he even throws up the keys to the to the by the way uh running water if you throw stuff on the floor they gotta count it uh you zeppelin rules

Dave (01:49:51.05) Which is kind of a fun moment.

Dave (01:50:00.819) I thought he was gonna, like, pull out a list of, like, here's some other stuff you should know, buddy!

Dave (01:50:10.171) Also my grocery list. Gotta go!

Dave (01:50:14.83) I'm sorry.

Bryan (01:50:17.656) So it's now last call out in the bar and Keith is stuck in the club And they're there the club is now ready to sort of close the gap They've got this problem that they need to address. They're gonna they've got to kill him And at one point Keith yells he's like panicking me he yells out to the club You gotta help me somebody call the cops these people are vampires to which somebody in the club replies that doesn't make them bad people

Dave (01:50:43.65) You

Bryan (01:50:45.384) And somebody else yells, eat shit and hell at the moon.

Dave (01:50:49.006) This is where you get that real snappy, Richard Wink dialogue. That's that Dracula bites the Big Apple humor.

Bryan (01:50:53.268) Yeah, and so. That's right, so this is the this is the scene where Vic does the big like villain monologue and it's it's.

Dave (01:51:02.378) And I'll tell you man, this is it is not right for this movie. It feels weird, but it is pretty fucking good.

Bryan (01:51:08.916) It's a good bad guy like monologue like in there going in like right as we're turning into the third act he He's like we provide a vital service to the community. We take out the trash kind of thing

Dave (01:51:20.534) And so this comes back to that idea of like, this is the bad part of Tally. This is why the location matters in this movie. And it's also like, you have, you know, it feels like they're trying to offer some social critique and they don't. Like, and they just really miss the mark, which is kind of a shame, because like, you're coming at a time that's like, you've got, you know, the ramp up of the AIDS crisis, you've got the crack epidemic is coming. Like you've got.

Bryan (01:51:28.032) Yeah.

Bryan (01:51:35.967) Yeah.

Dave (01:51:47.762) All this stuff about like marginalization, the deinstitutional, the Reagan shit, like it's all kind of coming undone. You have a real moment to really do social critique and he doesn't. It just so happens that he delivers it really fucking well.

Bryan (01:51:59.361) Nope, this is-

Bryan (01:52:02.804) Yeah, yeah. But what he explains, he explains to Keith, um, you, I'm really sorry, you gotta die. This was a whole accident. This is how it usually works. We get guys who come in here off the street, the dregs, the lowest of the low in society, and they sort of drag themselves in here, and they disappear and nobody misses them. Um, which is something that we find in a lot of like true crime stories of the period where it's just like these are people who will not be missed.

Dave (01:52:31.926) Meanwhile, you have the women behind the bar serving the drinks with those goddamn wigs. Holy shit. These are like, these are like reject Dolly Parton wigs.

Bryan (01:52:32.28) So.

Bryan (01:52:37.56) Yep. Crazy, crazy wig. It's like, um...

Bryan (01:52:43.78) They look like that or shit, Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray. It's that big like, bouffant.

Dave (01:52:47.934) Yes. Yeah, they are. There's like they just took them and like placed them on their head. There's they're not hiding anything.

Bryan (01:52:56.02) Yeah. So Keith does a thing where he's like, hey, how about like a last request? They do it in Vegas, to which Vic is like, what they do? Like, yeah, all right, fine. Yeah, but he's like, give me like a last drink before I before I die. So he orders brandy, three glasses, make it a triple, leave the bottle.

Dave (01:53:07.911) Way to ruin the moment, filmmaker.

Bryan (01:53:19.26) and he starts to very conspicuously walk all over the place just spilling brandy everywhere and then he sets the place on fire basically like the brandy is very flammable and so this gives him the means to sort of like distract the vampires give them a give them a means to escape

Bryan (01:53:41.716) with Amaretto and Duncan. They go down into like a basement and they go out through like one of those like garbage hatches with the elevator that kind of emerges onto the street. And then once as this is happening, Vic and Vlad celebrate one last toast and they died by fire, so it seems. And then the three survivors beat it back to Duncan's car, but they're like T-boned by

Dave (01:54:07.176) Oh man. The garbage truck. Oh, the garbage truck's the other truck.

Bryan (01:54:07.992) the like tow truck that we saw earlier and they try to escape them by like driving up onto the sidewalk and they get, yeah, so then they get trapped between the garbage truck and the tow truck, which played as like game of chicken with them in the longest, in probably long game of chicken where they're.

Dave (01:54:24.33) Something tells me this movie wasn't quite at 90 minutes.

Bryan (01:54:27.9) Yeah, yeah, because this scene goes on almost as long as that like spin out part from beginning Where what they're really watching is a guy do like a nine point turn to sort of like get out of a really small parking spot As soon as he does they floor it and get out back onto the street At just a time for the tow truck and the garbage truck to collide Um as they're driving away then it happens and this is the other part that fucking bothers me

Dave (01:54:46.932) And then...

Dave (01:54:49.952) And then it happens.

Dave (01:54:54.666) Man, this is like when Radish dies in everyone's favorite movie, Final Exam.

Bryan (01:54:59.26) Yeah, Duncan is a vampire now somehow.

Dave (01:55:03.342) Apparently he hated this moment. He said that this was the reason why he wanted to do the movie, because he thought it sounded really cool, but when he saw himself as a vampire, it like upset him.

Bryan (01:55:08.024) Yeah.

Bryan (01:55:13.52) It's he's he looks very strange

Dave (01:55:16.086) Cause he's the one, he's one of the only ones that doesn't look kind of goofy. He looks kind of creepy.

Bryan (01:55:22.464) Yeah, yeah, because he, um, he's not really alert. He, it's like, it's like this is coming, just coming over him. At no point is it ever, I mean, I suppose that there's plenty of times where he could have been bitten, but like, since we don't know how the vampire transformation happens, it, it just comes on suddenly. He gives no indication that he's been bitten, that he's had any sort of like contact with the...

Bryan (01:55:52.756) stripper vampires, but all of a sudden he's just a vampire in the back seat.

Dave (01:55:57.227) I'm guessing they just didn't know how to resolve that part of the stories. They were like, ah, he's a vampire. Blow him up in the car.

Bryan (01:56:00.556) That must, it must have been, it just, it drives me crazy. Cause yeah, so they drive it over some spikes, you know, going into a parking lot the wrong way and they crash. And then the car blows up with him in it. As they're running away, he goes, guys. And then the thing blows up and then you see his body like burning on the outside of the car and he goes, guys.

Dave (01:56:16.718) I'm sorry.

Bryan (01:56:24.703) Yeah.

Dave (01:56:25.301) That's fucking shame. He should have been the one with D.D. Pfeiffer.

Bryan (01:56:29.136) Yep, just two tight bros and she doesn't have to pretend to be his friend. Yep. But Amaretto and Keith break into a pawn shop at this point and we get the payoff to check off's bow and arrow. Yep, and Amaretto also picks up a horror movie flashlight that's probably going to die later on during an important scene.

Dave (01:56:33.197) Yeah.

Dave (01:56:42.827) There it is.

Dave (01:56:49.486) Don't worry, she'll bang it a couple times and it'll come back on. That's how flashlights work.

Bryan (01:56:54.309) Yeah, yep. Yep, they kill a vampire in there just to sort of demonstrate that Keith knows how to use the arrow. It's the garbage truck driver. And that's also at this point where he's doubting her humanity, like she might be a vampire too.

Dave (01:57:08.082) Yeah, this is where the name and you don't know who I am bullshit comes back. And it's like, I don't fucking care at this point. I feel like this movie is, but I feel like I have been talking for nine hours right now. I also feel like this I've been talking about this movie for 10 years.

Bryan (01:57:11.436) Yeah.

Bryan (01:57:16.617) Yeah, I know.

Bryan (01:57:19.884) No shit, no shit, this is so far, this is our longest episode by far. And I don't know.

Dave (01:57:26.09) We have been talking longer than this movie actually is.

Bryan (01:57:28.96) Yep, yep, so they see a bus and they run over to it and they open it up and the bus driver's got fangs, which really makes me wonder why the undead need to have all these blue collar jobs. I thought.

Dave (01:57:43.486) It does have a sort of like, uh, Salem's Lot quality to it where it's like, well, what happens when everyone's a vampire? I don't know, town just kind of keeps going, I guess.

Bryan (01:57:53.561) Yeah, yep, but they find themselves

Dave (01:57:56.138) It also has a very like, remember that Twilight Zone episode? Or like the going my way, the hitchhiker.

Bryan (01:58:01.6) Oh yeah, yeah. They find themselves surrounded by vampires on the street and they're saved when the albino gang shows up once again.

Dave (01:58:10.41) And now this is where I got confused, because I had thought this entire movie, and I have seen this movie several times, I thought the whole time that the albino gang are vampires. I don't think they are.

Bryan (01:58:21.068) They don't and that's the thing that really kind of gets me is because it is strongly suggested throughout the movie that everybody who occupies this part of town Yeah, it's just she's just got jacked up teeth They tricked you I think I mean when they're introduced I think we're supposed to think that they're vampires

Dave (01:58:27.882) I think she just has shitty teeth.

Dave (01:58:34.134) So they tricked us.

Bryan (01:58:40.492) But now it's revealed that they're not because they're like he looks at Billy Drago looks at him and he goes what gang is this? Which this streetwise gang at Tufts are like the only people in this part of town who don't seem to realize that vampires are fucking everywhere And so once again the little girl vampire like literally flies at him and it we cut away But it gives Keith and Amaretto enough time to run away they go down into the sewers But as they're about to go

Dave (01:58:53.11) Yeah.

Bryan (01:59:10.264) This is when she decides that the best time to sort of explain to her what is to him what her name is when they're being chased by a horde of the undead. And so there's this like moment when they have a story beat where she's like my name is Allison such and such it was in fifth in fifth grade summer break we were at a party we were playing spin the bottle.

Bryan (01:59:32.568) and I was supposed to kiss moose but you nudged the bottle to you and I had to kiss you and so that's it that's the whole payoff of the why don't you know who I am thing that has been dogging us this entire movie that's the payoff I hate it too they go down into the sewers I also hate this part they go down to the sewers the flashlight dies

Dave (01:59:46.049) I hate it. Yeah, but this part has a truly incredible moment in it.

Bryan (01:59:57.738) They find basically a secret hatch into like a mausoleum where all of the vampire coffins are and while they're in there...

Dave (02:00:07.094) Again, I swear to God, this is just they rip all this off from Chud.

Bryan (02:00:11.216) Yeah, so they accidentally knock over a barrel that's full of some fluid.

Dave (02:00:18.858) But you know, if you were a vampire, the best thing you could do is keep something flammable right next to your bed.

Bryan (02:00:23.012) Keep... Oh yeah, and perhaps the most flammable thing, and not just...

Dave (02:00:26.926) Take a tip from the burning. Don't keep flammable liquids around your bed when everything is lit by candlelight.

Bryan (02:00:32.704) are again and not and certainly not like a hundred dollars worth of like fuel of gasoline it turns out that these that these vampires this vampire lair is also where they're storing all of their gas for some reason uh there are barrels of just barrels of it everywhere and so they hide oh i know man that fuel crisis they um they hide out they watch the vampires get in but then the flashlight comes back on and it spooks dd or

Dave (02:00:49.698) That's Reagan's 80s for you, man.

Bryan (02:01:02.408) Amaretto who knocks over and they knock over the gas and then they knock over more gas they run out of there and Then they light it on fire and all of the vampires down there die um But now the two of them are separated and Keith kind of walks a little ways and he finds Uh, he finds amaretto now in the clutches of katrina in this like final standoff Where he draws the bow and arrow?

Bryan (02:01:28.256) And at one point he sort of looks up and he sees the sun kind of breaking through some boards in the ceiling and so The two by fours yeah Yep his blood from he's holding the

Dave (02:01:34.198) So which implies that the sewer, which is underground, under the road everybody, that sewer is just covered by boards. So that means that the road above them is two by fours.

Dave (02:01:49.934) It's the old timey part of Los Angeles.

Bryan (02:01:52.08) Yep, they haven't they haven't come up to code yet He he's holding the bow ready to throw the arrow and like his blood like the blood from the you know You know basically from holding it drips down distracts Katrina who he shoots in the mouth and it pins her to the wall and then Our other runs are through with a pipe commando style But Katrina gets loose does some horror movie laughing and then Keith knocks those boards aside and essentially like

Bryan (02:02:21.384) her between two beams of sunlight before he like knocks the last one out and she gets exposed to the light and gets you know gets burned up and just before they walk away her skeletal hand reaches up and gives them the finger which is not I watched it oh well now I

Dave (02:02:34.073) Now please, please tell me you watched this scene closely.

Dave (02:02:41.17) Alright, go back and watch it again. You can clearly see someone's hand in the shot, manipulating the arm. Like you can see a full person's hand manipulating that skeleton.

Bryan (02:02:50.685) Well now I have to because I definitely didn't but I was like looking for like cables and shit because it's definitely it's very mechanical it's very corny looking. Oh no. I did I did notice. I know it's like in the scene where the little girl leaps at snowflake right before they cut away you can see the harness that she's wearing.

Dave (02:02:58.29) It is in the show. You can see someone moving it with their hand. It's fantastic. Like you get I feel like they made it to the end of the movie and they were like, fuck it. We don't have any more time. Just do it.

Bryan (02:03:16.268) But yeah, this also I just want to say this does not feel like a thing that Grace Jones would do. No, but it's the 80s. So I'm gonna let it slide. Yep, so they're about to climb back to the surface. He still doesn't trust her. So he puts her in the sunlight and turns out she's okay. Just about. Yes, she's like, thanks.

Dave (02:03:24.767) This is the equivalent of Jason coming out of the pond.

Dave (02:03:34.966) when he kisses her hand romantically.

Bryan (02:03:39.884) Just about there about to climb out, Amaretto is pulled back down by Vlad who is pissed off that they killed Katrina But before he could do anything about it, he's run through by a stake from behind and it's revealed that AJ is still undead and it turns out It is it turns out that the board he staked himself with was like Formica and not wood Banter ensues

Dave (02:03:52.098) This ending is exhausting.

Bryan (02:04:02.008) You know I can get an I can go to night school and get a job the graveyard shift And then this is when Keith kisses amaretto as a rainbow crosses the sky in

Dave (02:04:11.23) And it is like the this is the most a romantic kiss I have ever seen on film. He spends this entire movie avoiding this woman and.

Bryan (02:04:17.162) Really they don't have All of his kid all of his chemistry is with Robert Russell er none with her whatsoever. Yep

Dave (02:04:24.234) Yeah. Yeah, like he is clearly not interested in her. And then all of a sudden, we're supposed to believe at the end that, oh, guess what, everybody, he really is into her. Don't worry, everybody, I guess.

Bryan (02:04:35.956) Yeah, he calls her hun. He calls her hun at one point in a way that just does not click. But yeah, that rainbow is the last of the sort of Wizard of Oz references. Also, pride. So roll credits over Volare again. But it also eventually fades into Vamp by Grace Jones.

Dave (02:04:49.118) Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

Dave (02:04:55.726) Cheers.

Dave (02:04:58.814) Look, they paid a lot of fucking money for Volare.

Bryan (02:05:01.708) They did actually. In the commentary, they note that it cost $35,000 to get that song. The studio didn't want to pay for it. And so the producer paid for it out of his pocket because they just needed to have it for some reason.

Dave (02:05:15.068) That that concrete Blonson 10 bucks. They just bought the record.

Bryan (02:05:20.384) Yeah, I wonder how that works though. Like, I mean, I would imagine that the studio or at least the label was like, we want to promote all these bands. So like here.

Dave (02:05:29.442) I imagine there's a deal with the label where they're like, we will give you this lot of music, these 10 artists, you put them in your movie.

Bryan (02:05:34.964) Yeah. But yep, that's it. Roll credits. That's VAMP. It is an exhausting movie that definitely has its strong points, definitely has its weak points. Yep. But gay as hell. Yep. So there it is. There it is. It's a movie that I...

Dave (02:05:39.751) Holy crap!

Dave (02:05:51.146) and has the most unrealistic, unbelievable romantic ending.

Dave (02:05:58.486) Yeah, very, very gay.

Bryan (02:06:04.316) I seem to remember, it's like a lot of these ones that we've done so much that I haven't seen in a long time that I remember enjoying quite a bit. And like watching this, like it's a perfectly adequate movie. I don't regret seeing it. I watched it twice and I enjoy it, but I don't think it's one that I will find myself going back to. I think it's one that in the context of this series, it's definitely worth seeing. It's a movie that...

Bryan (02:06:30.036) I think that you adequately pointed out is definitely fits into the queer horror milieu, but it's not one of the ones that is I see mentioned in those terms, you know, like, it's something that's happening a lot like shutter has a whole section of like queer horror, but it's not featured in that sort of group. And I really think that it definitely it definitely belongs there.

Dave (02:06:58.224) That's right. Oh next is Return of the Living Dead and you're saying wait that's not a queer movie and I'm saying oh isn't it? You're gonna have to tune in to find out motherfucker.

Bryan (02:06:58.976) Yep, so what are we doing next? What are we closing out our pride series with? Ooh. Yep, yep, so be back here in two weeks. We do return to the living dead.