Talking Pondo: Friday the 13th and The African Queen with The Hoeys

 In this episode, Jim and Dani Hoey (from "Bravo for the B-Side") join the podcast. They bring along the movie The African Queen, while Marty and Clif give Jim and Dani the movie Friday the 13th to watch. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to season two of Making Pondo and Talking Pondo. Talking Pondo is a podcast where Cliff and Marty give each other a film to watch and talk about them in detail. Some episodes will include a special guest. Making Pondo is a podcast where Cliff and Marty talk to people they have worked with and discuss their experiences on set. Hi Marty, looks like we're back.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

We are back.

unknown 0:26

Woo!

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Should really clear my throat before we hit record, but I'd like to save it for the beginning of the show.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

That's our intro music.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Yeah, that is the intro music. It's a theme song. People are saying you don't have a theme song. We do have a theme song. It doesn't have any lyrics. It goes like this. Oh no, the lyrics are actually uh today you are in talking pondo. We blah blah blah blah blah, the little talk-up thing we do. Anyway, today it's talking pondo with guests. Guests, yes, this is the first time we're trying to have four people on the show at once, so this should be fun. Uh well, I could tell you right away setup was easy.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

So that it didn't take long, didn't take long at all to get it to get everything started. That was good.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

And so uh today we have uh two movies from Paramount Pictures.

SPEAKER_05 1:15

Woo!

SPEAKER_01 1:16

That might be the only thing they have in common. No, actually, I think there is a part on Friday the 13th, one of the movies we covered today, the 1981, not the 2009 one with the same name, uh, where one of the actresses is doing a small Catherine Hepburn impersonation. Oh god, you're right.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

Oh, Jesus, you're right connection. Always find a way to connect these fucking movies. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Jason might be living in the bottom of that water too, for all we know.

unknown 1:52

Down there.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

Jason goes to Africa Friday the 13th, part 12. So I'd watch it. I watched him go to space, so I'd watch it. Yep. So Friday the 13th, and the African Queen, and who are our guests today? A couple good ones for you, folks.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yes, from Bravo for the B Side podcast. It's Jim and Danny.

SPEAKER_05 2:15

Woohoo!

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Hello, everybody.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

So uh Jim and Danny have been kind enough to have us on their podcast. They've reviewed our films, um, and through that we've kind of gotten to know them, kind of become friends, and so we thought, who better to have honest guests than our friends? Plus, they're really into movies. These are these two people are super into movies. So this should hopefully be a pretty good discussion. I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_06 2:44

Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine that we you know won't go off the rails at some point.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

It's cool. I mean, it all it happens. The last one we did, it went off the rails, but then it sort of circled back and it all made sense, right? It was all you just you know, you'll have to figure out how to tie it into the whole conversation. That's the key, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Those are the best journeys.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Yeah. Well, again, thanks guys for coming on. We we're big fans. Thanks so much for your loving reviews of the last two movies. Um, it's obvious that you guys really enjoyed them. Yeah, um, you're welcome that we stuck your logo in our movie.

unknown 3:19

Just gonna say that.

SPEAKER_05 3:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

Oh, yes, thank you. It's my favorite part, is like Jim goes, full stop. I just had to say full stop. There's our logo in the background right there.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

And I was like, Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

We had to wait so long to tell people about that. And it's you know, it's a big deal for us because it's just like such a small thing on the screen, but you guys have so much going on putting a movie together, and for you guys and Jeff to be like, hey, let's put this up here, you know. That's you know, means a lot. It means a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:51

Well, I was adamant that we should get it done. We we should do it. It's a fun way to kind of like you said, it's a fun way to kind of honor and sort of poke at people that you like and that type of stuff. You know, we've got other art in the background of people that we like. We had Frank Powers on a little while ago, and he's he did um pissed off panda. Have you seen some of the artwork in he did the pissed off panda stuff? And so um, yeah, it's a fun way to drop that stuff in.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

I'm just glad you're finally got to see it. And and that's the movie The Love Song of Volume How you'll be able to see it soon as well. With and then you can spot where the Bravo for the B-side artwork is. Go into the movie looking for it in every little corner of the film until you eventually it's in several it's in several scenes in the movie, I think.

SPEAKER_03 4:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 4:36

It is, it's in a couple, it's pretty prominently displayed at at least one scene.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Yeah, we put it right behind the counter, right? Like right there.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yeah, so most of the front counter stuff is right there.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

Yeah, we had so I think it shows up in like the Adam stuff, right? Like when Adam's doing his all-in-the-street counter stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Yeah, we had so much stuff all over that store in comics. I remember I I forgot about this until just now. Uh, I remember Eric and Jeff and uh Biscuit for that matter saying, like, did you cover this area or this? Because we want to make sure that that's in the movie somewhere, and we're and we're just like, don't worry about it. We'll just we're shooting enough stuff in here that everything is gonna get covered, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few items. I think they still complained. Yeah, I think they still complained and get everything. Yeah, random close-up of it. It has to be organic to the to the story, but I think we did a pretty good job of covering it all. There might be some comics underneath the desk that weren't highlighted as much, but hey, what were they doing taping comics to the front of the desk?

SPEAKER_03 5:42

I think we have I think we're probably the worst product placement people ever. Like, I mean, we probably shouldn't say that, like like if you know, if if Coke gives us money, it's gonna be like some dude quickly sipping out of a Coke for a second and putting it down and then well, look, it's in the movie. Like, we put it in the movie.

SPEAKER_06 5:56

We're like, no, no, no, no, you gotta prominently place the products or well, that's why with your new distribution deal, you gotta put out like an art book.

SPEAKER_03 6:07

We've been talking about that. We've been talking about an art book. We've also been talking with them about possibly a an actual physical uh box set release with all three movies. Oh, that'd be fun. Yeah. If we can get the I I really believe if we can get the hits and the movie can generate some some click, you know, some some clicks online that they'll they'll be interested in that. So they that was the one of the first things the guy who signed us was talking about. He was like, I see a lot of potential here for a box set. I'm like, oh let's do this. Yeah, because Jeff, Jeff will knock that up, no problem. We'll have you know, we'll have all the all the Blu-ray covers and all the box art cover ready to go at that point.

SPEAKER_06 6:45

Oh, Jeff will have a great time doing that.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Yeah, yeah, that's he lives for that stuff. That's hilarious. Yeah, and with the art book, uh like you were saying, that's the way that all the stuff that was only seen in the movie for half a second gets a second life and people get a chance to actually see it. So maybe we'll have a small version of that in the box set, but we're we're still pie in the skying about right now.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

Yeah, we were talking, we were talking about including a small one or like a small ash can of it, but also doing like a really nice print. If we can find a place that does nice print on demand, yeah, coffee table style, that would be really cool. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 7:22

Yeah. Well, you gotta talk about all this, like, oh, if we do that, you know, if it gets big enough to do this, if it gets big enough to do this, because then when it does get big enough to do this, then you're like, we know exactly what we want to do.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

Yeah. True. True. True. Um, all right. Well, great. I um first off again, thanks for having us uh coming on. We appreciate you letting us have you on. And um what movie do you think you want to tackle first?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Oh, yeah, that's right. Uh, we gave them Friday the 13th from our crazy list of pick a movie, and then they gave us from their list of movies was uh African Queen. So which one do we want to do first?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Well, I don't know. I uh Cliff's got that that shirt on, so uh from Mad Monster.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

I do have that guy. I do have my Jason shirt on from Mad Monster, so I mean I'm not I'm not I didn't put it on to be like, let's do Friday the 13th first, but you know Jason's barely in this movie, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Let's uh Cliff. What is Friday the 13th from 1980?

SPEAKER_03 8:26

Friday the 13th from 1980, uh a group of teenage camp counselors attempt to reopen an abandoned summer camp with a tragic past, but they're stalked by a mysterious, relentless killer. Um that's your base of the log line, and your storyline is uh in 1957, a young boy named Jason drowns in a lake camp near Camp Crystal Lake. Next year, two counselors are murdered. In 1980, a descendant of the original owners reopens Camp Crystal Lake with some counselors' help. The counselors get killed one by one by a mysterious person. Could it be Jason out for revenge?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

There you go. No, it couldn't because you wouldn't know who Jason is yet. Right? Jason's dead at the bottom of the lake, people. Uh I watched a lot of supplemental materials about this movie after I watched it. And uh it does really kind of feel open-ended, right? Where the carry shock type ending, we do all sorts of spoilers here. If you haven't seen it, you gotta watch it before you listen to the show, guys. Or at the end of the movie, Jason jumps out of the lake where that was kind of tacked on as this extra scare ending to the movie. Uh, it does make it seem like they were leaving it open for more sequels, but every sequel yeah, every interview I watched basically said we were just trying to keep the lights on. We had no idea this movie was gonna explode the way it did. It was a little no-budget movie we made in Blairstown, New Jersey, of all places, and then Paramount picked it up, decided to go nationwide with it, with its distribution, and the thing just blew up. And so then the next thing you know, we're gonna make part two. And Sean Cunningham, the producer director, was like, How are you how are you gonna make part two? Jason's dead, you know, but you know, don't worry about it, you know. He he said throughout the years, people have come up to him and said, you know, I want to make a horror movie, but I want to leave it open-ended, you know, because we got to set it up for a sequel. And he always tells them, just make your singular film, and if the movie's successful enough, you'll figure out a way to come up with an idea for part two. And that's what they did here. But uh, this is the first one where Halloween was big, and then they saw that and said, Hmm, let's find a way to rip that off. And they did a very good job of it. So that was my first little rant there about it. This was also the first horror movie I ever saw as a kid, all the way through. I must have been six. I had a big fear of horror films, and one of my older sisters uh sat me down and had me watch this thing from beginning to end, and I did have trouble sleeping seeing Mrs. Voorhees' head fly off over and over again in my nightmares. But the movie uh the movie helped me realize oh, it's more of a magic show, it's sawing a person in half, it's not you know real. Kevin Bacon's still alive, you know. Thank you, right?

SPEAKER_06 11:21

What a treasure.

SPEAKER_03 11:24

To me, this this one does not feel like it's connected to the rest of the franchise at all. No, it's it doesn't, it does not feel like it feels like its own separate movie, and then they were like, all right, we're gonna spin a franchise off of this, we're gonna figure out a reason to drag this kid out of the fucking lake and reanimate him or whatever and continue on with this series, right? Because we've killed Miss Voorhees, we can't do anything with that. Yeah, uh well, we were just talking about it doesn't feel yeah, it doesn't feel connected to the rest of the series at all.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Friday the 13th makes every list of like uh uh you know those those milestone moments in a genre, sure, right? And Friday the 13th is uh hailed as the the egg from which the modern slasher has evolved because we had grindhouse stuff, we had all these other things before that. But when we were re-watching this, and every time I see it, I can't help but ask the question, why? Yeah, there really isn't anything groundbreaking in this because there's a couple things like the scene where they use the same Jeep for the guy, you know, one of the counselors like, I gotta run to town and get some shit and takes this Jeep. And then we see the Jeep with the top up driving, and it's a different person, and we're supposed to think it's great shows up in a fucking Jeep.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

They must have gotten paid by Jeep, like probably and but I think color Jeep.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

The whole thing about this, I think it was time and place because not too long prior to this, we had Halloween, which is a way different horror movie.

SPEAKER_03 12:59

Right. But to me, that's the that's the slasher that starts everything, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

I I mean people can argue chainsaw too, but um yeah, I think of of Halloween as more the the horror thriller, in that it wasn't just jump scares, because they touched on some very things, the boogeyman, the whole there was just something about him, and they had a baller cast. I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, and when Donald Pleasance looks at the screen and says, All I saw in his eyes were evil, I mean, it creeped me the hell out, you know. But from Halloween, I think we had a bit of a segue from just brutal slashers, and then this thing showed up, and it's young kids, and you know, it's it it wasn't creepy so much as uh, you know, um, and just that hanging horror suspense of that's the first sound you hear in the movie. Yeah, who's gonna get it?

SPEAKER_03 13:58

First sound you hear in the movie. Um I I why did first off, why did we ever trust a bunch of horny young 19-year-olds to watch over a camp full of kids? Was that like this is this is what the hell?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Well, nothing ever happened before, except for I guess not except for that one kid dying.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Yeah, I just I just can't I just can't, and that's how it was back then. Back in the 60s and 70s, you'd you'd go to a camp and then you'd graduate to being like a camp, not a counselor, but like a camp leader or whatever, you know, and you know, you'd come kind of come out for the summer and get paid to watch over these kids. It's like, oh my god. Um yeah. Uh this movie to me, I agree with you. It feels it doesn't I don't know why it's a prototypical slash. I don't know why that they consider this one to be the like the mother of them all. I think Halloween is more geared towards that. I think maybe because this one has a bunch of young kids in it. So people, you know, a lot of kids in the 70s and 80s could identify with this movie. Going to camp was still a popular thing, going to the lake was still a popular thing. It's not, I mean, I don't know kids that go to camp now. Do you know anybody who goes to camp? No.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

No. Not like that. You know, yeah, certainly not like that. Well, I mean, there's computer camp, there's math camp.

SPEAKER_03 15:12

Right, but there's no like just go to camp for archery and swimming and boating and you know, get out of my parents' hair for six or three months.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Ernest. Ernest went to camp. That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_06 15:26

You know, like I ate up horror movies as a kid, and I've watched this one, and it was never in my top favorite one. And I didn't revisit it a whole lot.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

I prefer two over this way more.

SPEAKER_06 15:38

Oh, yeah. Two is way better. I mean, and as they get more unhinged, as we go.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

Jason and space.

SPEAKER_06 15:47

Yes, that's my kidding me. Jason can be it turns into a nanobots or something. It's like but this one, and I was talking to Jim, but I'm like, this one is structured as a who-done it, the whole movie. But there is there is no way for you to puzzle out who done it. They don't give you enough.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

They don't give you any clues, yeah. It's true at all. Yeah. It rem it reminds me a bit of that um, what's that movie with the was kind of the farce horror with the the sh where you'd get it from the killer's perspective, and it'd be huffing and puffing like a student bodies. Student bodies. Where it's that where it's that perspective from the killer, but but yet yet the killer's not really hiding. Because like at one point the girl walks by this tree and the camera's like three feet from behind the tree, just panning left to right. It's like nobody's hiding there.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Like well, it's only the killer's point of view if you hear music, is what the composer said in one of the interviews I watched. Okay, that arrow flies by the beginning when she's setting up the archery. That one counselor, that's why there's no music sting there, because they want you to realize it's not the killer. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Weird. We explained to our daughter the timeline because we're you know, we've been talking about this for for the podcast, and she hasn't seen any of these, and she's not interested. That's fine. But we explained, we went from this to you know, number two, and how this dead kid grew up, and then number three, where they tried the 3D thing, and then that it wasn't until number three when we get the the mask. Yeah, the one thing that we know is Jason is that mask, and then the one with Corey Feldman and the New Blood and the last and all this, and you know, Jason takes Manhattan, all these. And even she was at the end, she was like, So, how does that all come back to the first film? And the answer is, well, it really doesn't, because it is kind of an outlier, and it just gave the idea, and then they just went each one a little bit more ridiculous, a little bit more gore. And you know, it's endured, and I'm not gonna complain about it, but right.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

But it definitely became about Jason, right? Not about a bunch, not a bunch of not about the camp, the camp or the counselors, the kids or any of that. It was just about by two, three, and four, you're like, this is just about Jason. How how is he gonna come back? How is he gonna kill? How are they gonna stop him again?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah, that's why uh I I think if they had never made a sequel and this had just been a singular work, it'd be a lot creepier because you just see that last shot where she's imagining the lake where she thought she got pulled in, but it's just like, oh shit, that woman snapped and killed all those people, and that's the end. And it's like that's kind of creepy just by itself, you know. But you can't help but think, you know, Jason's down in that lake somehow.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Do you think that these movies contributed to to um less and less hitchhiking? Always seems like in these movies some suckers just hitchhiking, hey, thanks, buddy. And then it's like Texas Chainsaw. What are they what are the first things that they do with Texas Chainsaw? Hey, let's give that guy a poor that poor dude a ride. What do they get? They get cut on the hand and they have to throw him out because they're freaking weird, you know. And it's a picture. And even this one, this girl, this poor girl's just trying to get to camp so she can cook for all these kids, and you know, she gets, you know, she's hitchhiking along, and then boom, dead. I'm glad that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

I think it might have had a little impact. Um, but certainly as the Friday the 13th bit grew on, it went on before they went away from the summer camp, and then when we actually had the the hitcher and uh and the hitchhiker, I'm pretty sure that kind of put the uh the damper on it. Yeah, I'll I'll say the adventurous folks, but because you know there's always people who need to hitchhike, so you know.

SPEAKER_03 19:48

Well, they they made it illegal at some point. I don't think it was illegal before, but uh I think they made it illegal at a certain point to stop and pick pick people up and and for you to stand there with your thumb out, like on the highway.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yeah, interstate, you can't be on those at all, and a lot of state highways they've just yep, nope, can't stop and pick up. And then, of course, if you drive through Arizona, I love it that they have the signs don't pick it up, don't pick up hitchhikers, they could be escaped inmates. Yeah, we have that here in Oklahoma too, yeah. You guys got there too? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

I'm glad you bring up the Annie character, the one who's trying to be the cook, right? Uh because this movie kind of follows that psycho mold in a little bit where you think Annie might be one of the main characters, right? Right. And then she gets killed off pretty much.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

I like Annie too.

SPEAKER_06 20:35

Yeah, Annie's very charming. You spend a lot of time with her at the beginning. You grow to like her a lot, and then just right away for Annie.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Yeah. This is kind of psycho-inverted because the son is dead and the mother's doing the killing.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

So it reminds me of it reminds me of that early scene where Annie walks into the cafe, she gets into town and she walks into the cafe and they all kind of stop and she's like, hey, you guys know where Crystal Lake is? And they're all just like, what the fuck? And then and then the crazy old man comes out, and everybody's like, God damn it, Ralph, shut up, Ralph! You know, and he's like, It's got a death curse. Yeah, they can't be too early in the world. Bless Ralph. Yeah, he tried to do that.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

It it reminded me of the folks in Amityville and Jaws. Yeah. Just a whole building full of people. You're like, these aren't extras in in the term of, you know, hey, I'm an extra. It's they're just people who are like, yeah, whatever, I'll sit here as long as I get my eggs.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Oh god, it's like that's like when we shot uh, dude, when we shot Revenge of Zoe. We had we had just people, I mean, I'd be shooting two actors up against the wall. I want a comic book. He'd just walk right into frame to get his comic book, walk, cut. One guy wouldn't move. We needed to shoot in this one area, and he wouldn't move. So I just walked up to him with the release, said, Sign this, you're in the movie. He was like, Well, oh, okay, sure. And then we had to we just shot with him in the background because couldn't fucking wait anymore.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

But yeah, yeah, I sort of the same thing. It's funny, the one of the guys in in that scene in the like you're talking about, the one guy, the big guy with the mop, he's in Zapped, he's in the Warriors. Yeah, he pops up in also little B movies the character actors. So yeah, he's one of those guys with a great face. You put him in the background and you're like, ah, he's got that great face. It took me years later, and then it was like, wait a minute, that's the same guy that's in this, you know, head explodes, you know.

SPEAKER_06 22:26

But if oh I checked my bottle, is Mama Voorhees in that scene in the cafe? Because that would have been a great lead-in.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

She wants to bury her in the background would have been really smart.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

And Sean Cunningham was like, Yeah, we don't want to give a clue. And Betsy Palmer's like, Can I be earlier? And he's like, No, we don't want them to figure it out. And so it was deliberate, apparently, from the interview cycle.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

I've always used this as an example of how if if any one of us were to write a script and pull this Agatha Christie last second, it was the dude in the back of the caboose who we haven't seen until just now. If we could get somebody to read the whole thing from front to back, they would send it back to say, absolutely cannot. Do you not know the tenets of story writing for this? The suspense, the horror, the bringing the people in. And I just I think for me, I have an adoration for this film because there's so many errors in proper structure. But you know, we all know so I saw this in the movie theater when it came out. So I was like, what was I? I was 10. Snuck into the movie theater, and I didn't know any of that at the time. I would have eaten up anything. And I think though the the creepy factor was I think this did so well in that the lack of nudity in this one in particular, because I've seen a bunch of you know horror stuff before that. And it's just, you know, we watched a documentary, Blood, Boobs, and Beast. Those are the three things that lock down a successful horror film. Sure. You know. Um and um I the whole thing of of I hadn't gone to any summer camps by then, but yeah, to have these people out there to be in the woods in the dark, not have anything available to you. The the the story bits and the oh my god, these people, are they even smart enough to tie their shoes? Because you know, at 10 years old, I'm figuring things out. I'm like, well, you want to fix the problem, man. Do this, right? Lights go out, okay, go fix this. And you know, all these little things. Um and it it just, I don't know. The simple fact that it didn't have anything distracting from the story, I think that was what kind of sold it to people. Because a lot of films that were grindhouse level, really just topless people running around and throwing goat's blood on the wall and sheep's stomach, you know, through the door. And I I think it was just different enough because of that that it really clenched people. Because when a couple years later, when I got my or not a couple years, but when I got my issue of Fangoria, and it had sneak peeks of Friday the 13th, part two, I was like, I'm in. I don't I don't know how it's gonna work, but I'm in. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_03 25:21

Well you you make a great point about like I was talking to Marty about this before we we had you guys on, and and to me, this this movie only works because everybody makes really bad decisions. Like if you if you and and and I think that the audience likes that because they're like don't go in there, what are you doing? Oh my god, you know, that type of thing. Oh shit, she's going back outside, you know. You locked yourself in the fucking house. Why would you you know, why would you leave at that point? Hey, look, I'm sorry, somebody's out there screaming for help, but I'm here. You know, I I mean there's a killer on the loose. What are you gonna possibly do? You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I guess it's heroic to go out there and save the person, but at the same time, it also seems really dumb. Um my favorite scenes is the snake, right? And so the snake's in the thing, and she's like, oh my god, there's a snake, and they all rush in, and what's what she's like, it's under the bed, and what do they all do? They fucking lift the sheet and they just shove their faces under the fucking bed. Like, oh where is it? It's like, dude, that's a great way to get bit in the face. What are you doing? Um, so it just seemed like they and uh and also I think they really killed that snake.

SPEAKER_06 26:33

They did really kill that snake, and the handler was very upset about it. I think it was uh I think it was a baby ball python.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Yeah, you could tell it was like, ooh, geez, that's uh machete.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

That's not uh you know that I think was a leftover from like oh um cannibal massacre.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Yeah, you're thinking of face to death.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

No, not uh no, there's there were some movies that we've seen that um like cannibal they were filmed like down in uh South America, Central America, where uh one is cannibal massacre, one is cannibal holocaust. Yeah, there are these movies that are just really stupid, don't really go, but the the big catch is for no reason they have pictures of the native peoples killing and skinning alligators, uh killing the snakes and doing these things. Terrible just raw killing, and that was a huge thing. And I think somebody was a fan of that and and had like a closet discussion. Hey, you know, we're gonna have this snake on set, man. Um whack whack, what can they do?

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Yeah, that's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

It is.

SPEAKER_06 27:47

Well, I'm glad they've moved past that in filmmaking because I've I also read how many kittens died in like the filming of Milo and Otis, which is this like adorable little but I mean you send a kitten down and then there's one to be there.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

My wife still claims that uh the the horse in uh never ending story in the in the in the uh the quicksand dies. She's like, that that horse died. And and I've the director claims that's not true, that they had two, but my wife's like, I read it, I heard it from some one of the actors, the horse died. I'm like, oh, so she won't watch that movie at all. Like, I'm not watching that. She turned John Wick off 15 minutes into it because they killed the dog. She's like, I'm done. And I'm like, and I watched kill the dog in real life, though. He yeah, but he killed he killed 60 fucking people over that dog. It's it's the entire point of the movie. Like, if there's ever a reason to watch someone, you know, that's it, because you're gonna it's just revenge fantasy for me down.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

That just means she is John Wick, and it's never enough. I guess I guess uh we can kill long and still ain't bringing my dog back. I can't watch it.

SPEAKER_03 28:58

Speaking of killing, the killings in this are relatively tame. The f not the effects are good, but um, but we do get a repeat throat slash. Um and like for instance, the axe kill, right? The axe comes in, she screams, they cut away to her falling with the axe in her head.

SPEAKER_05 29:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

So we so we never actually see the axe go in. And I it it really struck me how far we've come in the in terms of like terrifier three, which is literally, you know, and people are throwing up, and apparently there's a that he, you know, Danny Maloney stole the rat scene from um what's the crazy, what's the movie that uh um about Wall Street, about the the serial killer who's uh on works on Wall Street's uh American Psycho American Psycho, yeah. So the rats, the rat scene that they didn't put in the movie, but it's in the novel. Apparently, he took inspiration from for his movie. So like that's the that's where we are now with modern horror. And yeah, in the in 1980, we're getting these kind of like, well, we'll have to cut away for just a second to do this effect.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

We watched the uncovered version, which has a couple extra seconds of those shots. Yeah. Uh Savini was explaining why you see the axe hit the lamp first, it's to give it a feeling like it has weight, like it hits it, so it feels solid. So then when you see the styrofoam piece attached to her face, it feels like funk, you know.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

Oh, it sells it's a sell. Okay, that sells it. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Okay, yeah. But I know what you mean. They had to be a little bit more uh subtle with it, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 30:30

Yeah, I think there's even one where the they don't show him getting killed, but then she swings the door open and he's been hung up on the door.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah, with the arrows, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Harry Crosby, Bing's uh son.

SPEAKER_06 30:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Strangely enough in this film, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 30:47

I did not know that.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

No, I didn't either. That's insane. My favorite kill out of any of the whole franchise is the kid in the wheelchair in in two. Oh, yeah, yeah. I love that so much. Uh that movie, I had nightmares about that. That was the first horror movie like Marty that I sat all the way through. And my sisters made me sit through it. And my dad, I remember my dad waking me up in the middle of the night and wake up! And I guess I'd been just screaming in my sleep, and he's like, Stop letting him watch fucking horror movies.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yeah, there was uh people getting injured on the set of two and other unspeakable th horrors that I've discovered through watching bonus features on that, and it's like, oh wow, the wild west of filmmaking, like we've discussed on this pod before, about how just that there wasn't anybody uh paying attention, and it's amazing people did not get killed making some of these movies with the shit they pulled off. Like in this one, that scene you're talking about where he's got the arrow in his eye and he's hanging up on the door. Yeah, they put the wrong solution in in his eye underneath the prosthetic. So when they took it off, it immediately started burning, and they had to run him to the to the hospital, and uh apparently he couldn't see out of that eye for about six months. Oh my god. And he was cool with it because they were all a bunch of kids. They were all kids making this movie. It's just a bunch of kids out there making this shit. But it's just like, wow, that wouldn't nowadays that's like scandal, you know. But back then it was like par for the course, like we're on a Werner Herzog film or something, like, oh, you got hurt. Well, there you go. But and he's like, then I saw the movie, it was great, but it's like your eye was blurry for like six months because it's just crazy that you know it could have been maximum overdrive. Yeah, we actually lost the eye, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

The yeah, the director of photography lost his eye shooting that movie because uh uh yeah, because um the lawnmower sprang over the water. King King wanted the King wanted the blades. He wanted to see the blades on the lawnmower spinning, and it hit a piece and hit and the piece hit him in the eye and lost his fucking eye.

SPEAKER_06 32:55

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

Yeah, this is Wild West filmmaking for sure.

SPEAKER_06 32:58

Um it is. I mean, even now in some independent filmmaking, I mean, there are a lot of actors and cast members and everyone who are just like, I'll just do it, I'll just do the stunt, you know. We talked to I think it was uh failure boys, and they were talking about in one scene in one of their films they've got someone being drugged behind a van, and they were like, It was just being drugged behind a van.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Wow. Well, yeah, that was fun, yeah, for Firefly. Oh yeah, yeah, for Firefly. Yeah. Um I you know, and it's funny watching Friday the 13th, that it is kind of the epitome of independent film, where you know, we always lawed, you know, do what you gotta do. But the one thing that we always draw the line at is gorilla filming, understand what you're doing. Because we actually were when we were in Madison, um, we were downtown at night and we're just walking around, and there was a whole big kerfuffle. Some genius decided to put red lights on a car, dress up as a cop, get fake guns, and shoot a scene in the middle of downtown without telling anybody because they didn't want permits and stuff. Oh no, because the police showed up and it could have gone poorly.

unknown 34:06

Very badly.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

So that is our only thing is you know, always always think about safety. But movies like this, especially back then, it's like, you know, these guys are happy that someone handed them a check.

SPEAKER_05 34:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

And they're like, wow, we get to do this shit. Do whatever you gotta do, man. Let's get the most we can out of this budget. And, you know, is this safe? Well, we'll find out. Yeah, that's not the best way to go about it.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

And roll around and beat the shit out of each other. There's no stunting in, you know. They had to do that last fight. Oh, that was them just knocking each other around.

SPEAKER_05 34:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

Makes me think of night riders, like all that motorcycle work they had to do, and all you know, all the all the stuff driving, you know, having to hit each other. I'm sure people got injured.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Oh, they have to oh, there were there were plenty. Yeah, they couldn't afford doubles. Uh I love that movie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:55

Oh, you and Marty, you and Marty are big fans of that one, huh?

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

That's good. Um my favorite shot of the movie is um the bunk bed, uh, where they're on the lower bunk bed and the and the camera just jibs up, and then you see the dude with his throat slit playing the top bunk. I'm like, oh, that's so good. That's so well done. I really enjoyed that.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

So it's showing you the terror is up, so you don't think it's gonna be below when it comes up from behind under the bed later. Yeah, arrowhead right through right through Bacon's throat.

SPEAKER_03 35:28

Oh, and we haven't even talked about that. Kevin Bacon's in the Kevin Bacon?

SPEAKER_05 35:35

Oh, no.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

New York theater actors. Yeah, that's who's in this.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

Baby Bacon.

SPEAKER_03 35:43

He's even got that, uh, he's still got a little bit of that East Coast accent. He hasn't dropped it fully yet. You'll hear it in some of his line reads. Like, oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Yeah, it's all New York theater actors in this film. So that's why it's such a strange cast. Yeah. That's great. That's how you get weird things like Harry Crosby and yeah.

SPEAKER_06 36:05

Right. And he's good. That makes good in this film, you know?

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Yeah, yeah. Um, I feel like the director did a great job of making everyone feel like a caricature of someone that you might know. Like the like the the at the smart ass kid who shoots the arrow next to the girl, the pretty girl who doesn't want anything to do with this, the the responsible girl who's trying to take care of things, the you know, the the um the good-looking dude, you know, Kevin, the Kevin Bacon, you know, uh it just seemed like it just seemed like everybody had their own like carrier. Like, I kind of know somebody like that. Oh, I kind of know somebody like that, you know.

SPEAKER_06 36:39

Yeah, I mean, I wonder if it's one of the first, you know, like one of the first sort of films like this that really does nail in all of those tropes that you see in later horror films.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

It seems to be laying them out, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Yeah, I I would agree with that. I don't know if it's the first, I mean, but it it's like like I said, like you guys said, there's a reason that you know this thing was a prototype for a lot of stuff that came afterwards, right? Like, you know, it's got it's just got something to it. Um I'd like to point out that Meatballs is released the year before this. Right. Which I think has which I think has something to do with the success of this movie. It's the same thing, only people are dying.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

We're gonna take Halloween out of the suburbs, and there's no and there's no kids. We're gonna go rural again. We'll take well Texas Chainsaw is out in the middle of nowhere. We're gonna take that, put it in suburbs, call it Halloween. Now we're gonna take it, put it back in the forest again, and now we've got Friday the 13th.

SPEAKER_03 37:40

They keep what was popular last year? Meatballs. Let's take Halloween and put it in summer camp. Perfect. All right.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

There we go. I do remember watching this the first few times, um, after the first time I saw it. The the suspense. Like, are there actually gonna be kids in this at some point? Right, because they are the kids ever coming? Well, yeah, we don't know. Is it gonna be like meatballs is like a whole week-long thing, right? Everything's going on. This is one night, and you don't know that going in. So it's like they're gonna get this thing ready for kids, these things are happening. It's like, oh my god, is you know, the owner one of those guys is gonna open this up anyway, and just be like, Well, the the killing's done, they got it out of their system. Let's bring the kids in, you know.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Gotta be safe now, everybody's dead. Oh, that's right. That's the one with Corey, isn't it? Isn't it isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 38:37

That's uh the it's a Tom Man's one, actually. Yeah, it's a six. They gets they get so confused, but Corey was.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

I think Corey's in one of the five, the new blow.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

And then he's at the very beginning of five and the flashback, and then it's suddenly now he's an adult and he's going to the mental asylum because the traumatic events of Jason have driven him crazy, and maybe he's the one killing people this time. They they go back to the Who Done It in part five. And then in part six, Jason becomes Frankenstein, right? He gets struck by lightning and he comes back to life, and then we start getting really ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

So I think my favorite scene out of all of them is Jason takes Manhattan, and he's there's two things. One, uh, it was the first time that we learned Jason could teleport because he's just doing the slow walk that he got famous for. And these the we see the actors run what had to be like six New York blocks, right? They go up five flights of stairs and Jason's right there waiting for him. Smack! Um, but my favorite one is when some street guy starts giving him lip and Jason pulls the mask off. I just I love that. I'm like, don't stab him, don't hack him, just go have a look, sir, and move on.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

It is almost like Jason is a ghost in part eight that takes Manhattan because he's got more of a spectral type of like he pops up here and there. Maybe the next time I watch that, I'll think of it that way. Maybe it'll make more sense. Yeah. That he's just a spirit in that one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:09

Um I like the old man, you know, the crazy old man shows back up. Get out of here, you crazy kid. You know, what are you doing here? Screw you, old man. It's it but it's sort of it sort of takes away from the sinister message and delivery when he gets on a bicycle and pedals off. Like, I don't know why. I always thought that was creepy when I was a kid. Like, it just deflects for me, it was just like, what the fuck? Why is he on a bicycle? Like, it just wasn't a jeep. It's a booty. He should have just started walking away, just flipping, turn around to flip them off every now and then and keep hollering at him as he disappeared in the distance. That's what I would have done.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Yeah, when I was a kid, Crazy Ralph was as creepy as anything else in the movie to me, if not more. The bite kind of added to it. Like I was gonna say, I I remember this world. You remember when the world looked like this movie, right? That's one of the weird things about going back and looking at this.

SPEAKER_03 41:02

It's like, wow, that's that's how uh one of my favorite lines of the movie is I told you to sit on it, Tonto, which is from the from the the police officer, uh Canon coaches, and then uh Columbian Gold Man, he keeps you know thinking that they're smoking weed, and then I told you to sit on it, Tonto, which I made me laugh because it's just stupid.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Yeah, they didn't want the cops to go out there at all, and they're the writer because he wanted it to be where they were cut off completely from help from the adults. And so this is like Sean, oh the cops are right there, but of course, obviously they are cut off from them. Uh talking about tropes again, uh a lot of people think this one starts the whole if you if the virgin survives and if you don't do drugs, if you do drugs, you die. But it's really like that because Alice had a relationship with Mr. Christie and she's smoking pot. The writers and the director kind of described it more of we weren't trying to do a moralistic thing, it was more like you're getting killed for no reason, and that's scary because you just happen to be there doing your thing, and then as these movies continued, it started to turn more into the tropey.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Last girl standing last girl, yeah. Last girl standing, and she was always the one who showed up in a in a big heavy sweater, and you know, everything but a chassis.

SPEAKER_03 42:25

Is that why she's wearing a sweater at the beginning of Scream? I think Drew Barrymore was wearing a sweater.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

I think so. Yeah, she got that lights wrong, too.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

So that's true. Speaking of tropes, I want to jump back to the the wild old man.

SPEAKER_05 42:41

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Now, I I'm sure there might have been something previous, but this is the first time I remember like some just random psycho dude doing his Armageddon speech or shouting after this film. That shows up in so many other horror movies.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

Yeah, my first thought is poltergeist. Yeah, yes, this year. Which is like I think poltergeist is literally like the next year. Probably two years, but yeah, pretty close. Like 81 or 82 or something like that.

SPEAKER_05 43:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

And that's Kobe again.

SPEAKER_03 43:16

So many tropes in this movie. I mean, it it it really spawned. Uh and you know, I think that's why like what you were saying earlier, where people point back to it and go, this is sort of seminal, this is where a lot of stuff started. It's well, it's because you guys all took it and you know extrapolated from it and made more stuff from it. You know, it's that's why.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Um I met Adrianne King a few years ago at one of the cons. She was one of the most nicest and gracious uh horror celebs I've ever met. She stood there and told talked to me and all my friends for like a good ten minutes, telling us various stories. She was but like, oh, this ring I have is the ring I was wearing when I got pulled into the lake. And so she was just she was just really into it and really nice. So if you ever get a chance, she's a she's a good one to talk to.

SPEAKER_03 44:07

They don't ever explain why Jason because like in even in the flashback, and especially at the end when he jumps up and you get the clothes up, he's all fucked up. He's not a nor he's not just a normal looking kid. No, it's not just different.

SPEAKER_06 44:24

Yeah. They hint at him being like he was killed or ignored, you know, because or he wasn't killed, but he was ignored because he was, you know, like disabled in some way, is what they're hinting at. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Well, so I can talk to this because this was a huge article in Fangoria where the unspoken, and I think it it was mentioned once and they cut it, but Jason was supposed to have had Down syndrome. Oh and he should not have been out on the uh on the lake. Now the especially the scene in in part two where he's wearing the canvas mask and they pull it off and he kind of ends up coming through the window. They actually did, if you look closely at the stills, they did craft the makeup to look like he had uh uh mild uh I don't know what the word is I'm looking for, features like the figure of Down syndrome. Yeah, but then they added the whole, you know, goofy, you know, he's been at the bottom of the lake kind of thing. But that was the thing is you know, it was to make him it was supposed to make his death more tragic, you know. What's more interesting?

SPEAKER_06 45:41

So mad and bent on revenge.

SPEAKER_03 45:43

But but but also if it's yeah, I mean I see that, but it's it's also like this thing where it's like, well, you're you're killing them for the wrong reasons because your kid shouldn't have been out there in the first place, right? Like, yeah, they should have been watching him, but he shouldn't have been out there. Like, why was he why did you let him go? You know, right? So it's almost like she has guilt a certain amount of uh responsibility in it or something. I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

All the bonus issues I watched. Uh go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Oh no, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Oh, uh all the bonus stuff I watched, it seemed like everybody was trying to take credit for the Carrie ending. Oh, that was my idea to come up with this, and that was my idea to do this. So a lot of the stories get mixed up, but one of the consensus was uh Victor Miller, the screenwriter, was like, I never wrote Jason to be a deformed child. That surprised me when I saw the movie. And then Betsy Palmer, when she showed up, she immediately went to Savini to get her head mold done, and so he's showing her pictures of some of the other work, and she goes through and she's all who's this? And he's like, Oh, that's your son, Jason. What? Oh, yeah, he's yeah, I made him a mongoloid. I didn't know this, and then she and went, I'm oh, that makes it more tragic, and so she starts building that into her backstory and stuff. So it is kind of interesting how that all but right, you always take your ideas from you never know who they never really they never really truly define it in the film.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

It's it's kind of it's kind of hinted at and hand-waved at a bit, and you're sort of you're sort of left to fill in the blanks on your own, of like, oh, this kid, this wasn't just a normal kid. Something something going on with him.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

And here they thought this movie wasn't gonna do anything, and their Manny's Orphans Bad News Bears rip off was gonna become a successful TV show. That was gonna be their hit. So you never know. You never know.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

I think you know what I would equate, I would equate the original Friday the 13th. Um, I would compare it to Star Wars as it's the ultimate B movie of horror. Star Wars had so little interest, and no one realizes it was only ever a B movie. The studio's like, here's a little bit of money, yes, yes, yes, shut up. So quickly, I mean, they never they never had Lucas sign anything, they never put anything in the contracts. That's why George Lucas is is the richest man in the universe, because everything Star Wars goes 100% to him. Studios never got anything off of that.

SPEAKER_06 48:09

Well, yeah, until he sold it.

SPEAKER_00 48:12

Well, until he sold it. But I I think Friday the 13th is that kind of thing. They're just like, do whatever, do whatever, do whatever. And boom, it pops out as this just right time, right place. If Star Wars had been a year earlier or a year later, I don't think it would have because we were just coming off of like Space 1999 and Logan's Run and them trying a series and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_03 48:39

Um this was the first like dirty sci-fi you'd ever seen, right? Like Star Wars was like the rebels were dirty and their stuff was broken and analog, and the empire was gorgeous and clean, and yep, science fiction hadn't really done a lot of that.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Yeah, and so they have Friday the 13th, and what I find funny, number one, we're just talking about they had all these things that were going on, but they never bothered to put it in the movie to let us know. But to capitalize on it, I don't know if you guys have given Friday the 13th the series. Oh, yeah, I remember that show.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Oh god, I remember that shit. Yes, yeah. The haunted antiques that's the it's like a team, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Like the guy who owns the antique store and the guy in the air for him or it was a brother and sister, and their uncle let all this devil-infested shit out into the universe, and they're trying to go get it. So every episode is trying to get this thing that screws everyone up. But it's funny, people watched it. I tuned in because it was Friday the 13th. Right. And by that time, we had cemented its place in history. It's like, oh, even when I looked at it, I'm like, well, there's no Jason.

SPEAKER_03 49:51

There's no this is four he's what the hell's good.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Yeah, they explained.

SPEAKER_06 49:57

Oh god, sorry. It came on TV, you know, like a week or so ago. We leave the TV on for our dog because he watches TV. And it was on whatever channel was playing. And I was like, oh, what is this? Because Jim, you know, sort of watching it a little bit. He goes, Oh, it's Friday the 13th. And I'm like, no, it isn't. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 50:19

No, it is, but you think is.

SPEAKER_06 50:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

It's like we have something called Godzilla, and Godzilla's not in it. That's the whole Halloween three thing. Like, where's Michael Myers? How is this Halloween? Oh, yeah, the person. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:34

But yet people love that one. There is a group of people that swear that's the best Halloween out of them all.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Well, there's a people who like Troll 2 and think that's one of the best movies ever made, too.

SPEAKER_03 50:44

So you know, same with the room. In fact, I think I'm talking to two of them.

SPEAKER_05 50:49

The room is a masterpiece.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

Or did you use it? My quote.

SPEAKER_05 50:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Yeah, it's a masterpiece of some kind.

SPEAKER_06 50:59

There's so much ordered some mugs from Tommy Wissl's website with the you're tearing me apart, Lisa, little thing on them.

SPEAKER_03 51:08

Did you ever see the Adult Swim view screening of that that they showed? They so Adult Swim showed the room in its entirety, uncut. Uncut on Adult Swim. And at one point, like, you know, this got that you've got the early on sex scene. At one point, it's like half of the screen is just black. They've blacked out half the screen. Even after the sex scene, they basically black out the entire scene except for one small square pixel in the type right corner. Like they're they're just like, this movie's so trash, we're not even gonna show you this scene. And they just they did that throughout the movie, kind of riffing it in their own weird way. It was glorious.

SPEAKER_06 51:44

Don't worry, you're not you're not missing anything.

SPEAKER_03 51:45

You're not missing a damn thing. This is funnier. What we're doing to it is funnier than what you're gonna be seeing.

SPEAKER_06 51:51

Yeah. Uh Rift Tracks killed it for their list.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

Like a book.

SPEAKER_06 51:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:59

So uh there's a riff track for Halloween, but not a rift track for Friday the 13th. So maybe they'll have to get on this.

SPEAKER_03 52:06

That seems like, yeah, that seems like a real miss on their part. That seems like an easy one to riff, too. Uh speaking of which, I'd like to circle back to a couple things real quick just to make a couple comments. Okay, we got we got uh strip monopoly. Fine. Um, but at one point, strip monopoly ends, and the girl goes, Well, I guess that's the end. We continue tomorrow, and leaves her clothes in the living room, grabs a fucking poncho, and just goes to her cabin where she proceeds to wear the poncho while she's brushing her fucking teeth. Like, yeah, yeah, this is this is the way you do it. I'm gonna do my Catherine Hepburn impression, and then I'm gonna brush my teeth in my poncho. And then later on, you're like, hey, what'd you do with the poncho? Because it's gone now, and she's in her nightgown. And then she proceeds to run it into the fucking rain in her nightgown. These costumes are backwards. What is going on? Anyway, um, I found that hilarious and I had to point it out. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

So it goes back to that all wrong decisions.

SPEAKER_03 53:09

Yeah, exactly. And and it's this is not like there there are horror movies or movies that I've told Marty the the entire the entire movie, the premise of the movie relies on these people being the dumbest version of human beings you've ever seen in your entire life, right? Just fucking stupid. This is not that. These these kids are capable, they get the generator going. When he checks it for gas, he knows how to check it for gas, he knows to dip the stick in there and check the level. There's a level of capability there. They're capable people, right? Um, but they just don't make good decisions because there's just oblivious, especially at the end when it's just the two of them, right? It's just the two of them. You haven't seen your buddies in God knows how fucking long. You're wondering what to do. And he's like, why don't you just land on the couch and go to sleep? I'll go wander around. The fuck? What? And she does. She's like, Yeah, I think that would be really good, right? I know, I know. It's uh, you know, yeah, it um I do I want to point out one other thing. They did a great thing with lighting, they got those Coleman gas lamps in particular. Candle, candle and Coleman gas lamps, and you can see them switching lighting sources off and rotating lighting sources as they're and dimming lighting sources as these lamps are moving and the and the candles mean. I thought it was a really excellent production touch. That was something to really sell it, and it's really well done.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

Yeah, exactly. Uh, I was watching it and I thought, do they even know how fucking good they did this? Yeah, because they walk in and it just very slowly melded. Where even today, someone will walk in, they'll light a lamp, and I'm like, where the fuck is that light coming from? The lamp is below his chin. Why is it 45 degrees from his right temple? You know, uh, they did that really well. I like also the fact that they relied heavily on those shit lamps at every summer camp that just hang by the cord that have the symbol reflector on it. Um they managed to keep that feel all the way through when it was dark. There were very few instances where they're out wandering around where it was just spotlights, you know, on everything.

SPEAKER_03 55:18

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's um in fact, the only bad lighting I saw was when they had to simulate a lightning strike on Kevin Bacon, and you could tell they were just flashing an incandescent on him or a very bright light. It didn't set it because it wasn't a whole big you know crash like it should have been, right? But other than that, I mean, especially when it came to moving the light sources around, they did such a fantastic job. Um I don't understand, and this is uh, I think another thing with horror movies, right? Where back in the day when this type of movie was made, you would go, well, I understand why you wouldn't, you know, like Mrs. She knocks Mrs. Voorhees out, kill her. You're done with it, tie her up. Yeah, and what so what'd she do? She runs, right? And back in the 80s, you go, Yeah, well, yeah, you're scared to death. You run. Now you're like, no, you finish her. I've seen enough horror movies now to fucking finish her.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Yeah, right? Don't you watch any movies? Kill that bitch. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

We have to wait till Jason lives part six for the series to get meta, where there's a line like, 'I've seen enough horror movies to know that a guy standing in the road is never a good thing,' and the woman starts backing up, and it's like now the movie's becoming self-aware. Yeah. But back then was in shock, and so she's running away.

SPEAKER_03 56:30

Yeah, that that last fight with Mrs. Voorhees is like a WWE cage match. She just fucking, she's like, she's like the Undertaker, she just keeps getting up. Like in a matter of how many times you chokeslam her, she's fucking getting up coming after you. Almost kind of like Jason in the next series of movies, you know.

SPEAKER_01 56:47

Yes. Um and apparently the casting of of uh Betsy Palmer would be like if you put Katie Couric in this movie nowadays, or you'd be like, What? You're not you're like a wholesome person.

SPEAKER_03 56:58

And so that was the big shock at the time. That's hilarious. Did you guys catch the man hands during the decapitation? Oh, yeah. It's uh the hands, the hands that come up are just hairy as hell.

SPEAKER_00 57:13

That so in in part three is where someone ends up taking a dive out of the barn on the top level of a bar in the loft. Yeah, I believe. And if you look at that, it's the same thing. It it that's the scene that they've made fun of so many times that the dude didn't shave his mustache, he wasn't gonna do it. So they they tried to put some makeup on it, but yeah, it's this big hairy, steel-jawed, furry lip dude with a blonde wig falling out as as as Jason's coming up to the thing. You do what you can, you know, you do what you can with what you have, right? Exactly. Trying to get it finished. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

Well, I'm gonna give it a three out of five. I do like it a little more than that, but I can't really justify giving it more like as a horror classic of the slasher genre, probably more of a four, but overall I'm gonna say a three. Just as a as a film, yeah. I do enjoy it. It's very nostalgia for me. What about you, Jim?

SPEAKER_00 58:18

I you know what? I uh same thing as Marty. I would give it a three. It has a lot of you know, in here in my heart feeling. But like I said, there's so many like things that were just glazed over. The the writing, the story structure, the whole thing, just kind of popped surprise. Um we were talking about it. Thought maybe, you know, it's almost as if they they are like, okay, let's start filming and let's just see how it goes. You know, almost so I would give it a three because it had some good moments to it. And you know, it's still fun. Still fun.

SPEAKER_06 58:55

I'm gonna have to give it a two because I can't I have a lot of affection for this movie, but I cannot get past the fact that it is structured as a whodunit, and there's no possible way for me to figure out whodunit, and that feels like a personal, you know, it's personal.

SPEAKER_03 59:14

I'm gonna go right in the middle, uh, two and a half.

SPEAKER_05 59:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 59:18

Um I think it's I think the filmmaking's good. I think they did some, they they did some tropes that pay people, you know, we'd like we talked about grabbed onto and used for years, but I agree with the structure of plot and it's really weirdly written. Some things just like I said, rushing out into the rain in a night dress when you've just been walking around for 10 minutes in a fucking poncho is is just like what? Um and a few other things like that. But for the most part, I I and and uh I'll say this I would rather watch two. If you gave me the option of one or two, I'm like, put two in. We'll watch two. I'll watch two with you over and over again. One I'm probably not gonna watch that often. It's worth a watch and maybe worth a relook every now and then, but it's not something that I'm gonna put on my shelf and pull down and put in the VCR.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:02

The VCR, Jesus, the Blu-ray player. That's how we did watch this. Three movies on one tape at the six hour speed. Oh, I just I just bought a VHS copy of Night of the Comet for three dollars.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:14

I was really excited for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:15

Oh, nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:18

Speaking of VHS, we do have a VHS copy of African Queen.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:22

Oh, do you really? Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. That's great. Let's then perfect segue. Yeah, right. She just segued us right into African Queen perfectly. Jeez, it's almost like she has her own podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

The African Queen, a movie where things escalate very quickly. There's a war going on, yeah, it's right there. What is the African Queen clip?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:46

The African Queen. Um, oh, you would ask that. And of course. Yeah, I asked the difficult questions. You do. Um, okay, the African Queen. So this is um directed by John Hughes uh Houston or Hughes?

SPEAKER_06 1:00:59

Houston. Angelica Houston's dad.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:02

Yes. Um, I was, yeah. Um, which who, by the way, she was born during the making of this. Um, so um, let me go back to my thing here. Sorry about that. So starring um Humphrey Bogart, Catherine Hepburn, written by C. S Forrester. C. S. Forrester is known for having written the um Horatio Hornblower series, amongst other um things. Uh, let's see. In World War I, East Africa, a gin-swilling Canadian riverboat captain. I just love that line. Uh, a gin-swilling Canadian riverboat captain is persuaded by a straight-laced English missionary to undertake a trip up a treacherous river and use his boat to attack a German gunship. So that's your log line. Your storyline is Um September 1914, news reaches the colony in German East Africa that war has broken out across Europe, making British Reverend Samuel Sayer a hostile foreigner. German Imperial troops burned down his mission, he is beaten and dies of age or fever. His well-educated synobus sister Rose buries him and leaves him and leaves by the only transport available, which is the dilapidated river steamboat African Queen, uh, captained by grumpy Charlie Alnut. As if a long, difficult journey without any comfort were bad enough. Um, Rose is determined to find a way to do their part for the British war effort while avenging her brother and aims high, as God is obviously on their side, and constructs their own torpedo and uses the converted steamboat African Queen to take out a huge German warship called the Louisa, which is hard to find or reach on a giant lake. Um she presses Charlie uh and he accepts to steam up the Ulanga, brave a German fort, raving raging rapids, bloodthirsty parasites, and the endlessly branching river which seems to go nowhere but in penetrable swamps.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:45

That's it. Done. Moving on. Done.

unknown 1:02:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:49

There you go. That was a long one.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:52

So during that whole thing, I was trying to patch capture in my head what what would this movie look like if John Hughes got the script? Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:03

First off, so here's what I think. This is still a fucking rom-com. Yes, yeah. This is a romantic comedy. It's just it's just got some, it's just wrapped in a dramatic war sort of uh um theme. But this is about two people who can't stand each other, slowly begin to like each other, fall in love. It's got it's even got a fucking meat cute. Yeah. You know, when he's standing there outside the church and he's you know he's caused a problem with all the natives, and they go rushing out of the church and she's playing the organ like, oh god, I hate this guy, you know. That's out of my match. It's a fucking meat cute. They want that cigar.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:43

Yeah, they did want that cigar.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:46

Um, this is the opposite of Out of Africa. My first my first note here is in Out of Africa, Redford really he admonishes um her character for trying to teach the Africans to be English. It's like they have their own culture, they have their own languages, they have their own stories. I don't think we should be teaching them to be British. And in this, there's in this movie, the first thing they're doing is learning learn my English song hymns, learn my English religion, oh yeah, you know, be English. So I I just that really struck me. We just did out of Africa, what, six three or four months ago. So it's still fresh in memory, and as soon as it started, I'm like, oh, that's a completely different take. And we also did probably a more accurate one.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

We also did Nathan Hayes, written by John Hughes, which is true. Like his version of the thing. Yeah, I listened to that. Like, because they all why do we keep having movies where people are getting hung? I don't know. We've had like we've barely done two, not even two seasons, and we've had like at least a half dozen movies where it involves a noose at one point in the block. We've we've done four, we've done four or five movies about boats already for five days. Very nautical here.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:55

See, now you gotta do something about on the man who would be king. Because there's no noose, it's a mountainside. And you know, I bring that up just because uh, like I said, it is kind of a rom-com. And the man who would be king. I it was the when I saw that uh I saw that before seeing African Queen when I was young. It was the first time I see Michael Cain, Sean Connery, in kind of a it's almost a buddy film, right? It's a British style buddy film, and they had their moments of comedy in the more far-stretching drama that was going on. And you know, these were like big guys, yeah. And when African Queen, I'm like, oh, Humphrey Bogart. My grandfather's like, hey, we're gonna go see a movie. What is it? African queen, who's in it? Humphrey Bogart. You know, seven-year-old Jim's like, oh, all right, I want to see Humphrey. I had never seen him like this before. Used to the gangster pictures. I am used to this is studio-owned Humphrey Bogart. He always looks the same, he always has that same attitude. And you know, to a kid, he was cool as shit. Can't deny. I love seeing him on everything. And to see him in this, when he sure first shows up, I'm like, oh my god, it's like somebody took him out back and fucking had it over on him. He just looks, you know, and and he's sober and everything. But that whole opening scene we were talking about, I think what um I think he was like the only guy who could have really pulled it off. And the line that Danny and I were talking about when he's doing the stomach grumbling things and he's trying to make excuses, and then finally, towards the end, it grumbles again. He's like, There's nothing I can do about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:40

Yep. Apparently they said that Charles Lofton was first scheduled to play this movie. To play really Humphrey Bogart's part. Charles Lofton, Betty Davis was going to play Catherine Hepburn's part, but she got pregnant.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:52

Yeah, they approached her a couple of times, and then by the time she got around to like being interested in doing it, they already had Catherine Hepburn lined up.

unknown 1:06:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:59

And Hepburn's got a fucking Oscar, so what are you gonna do? Right. Yeah. Speaking of speaking of Oscars, this is the only one Bogey won an Oscar for. Yes. And well deserved.

unknown 1:07:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:09

Which is funny. I you know, I think this is this goes to the whole you know, industry of movie making. The people that you want and you can't get may not have been the best choice, you know. Um, let's that's very true. Yeah, you know, let's look so I'll go back to Star Wars. Um, so uh Al Pacino, anywhere in that movie? I mean, really, really. I know it was a far-fetched dream, but thank God.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:40

No, so you know, I look at the combination William Caddis, Luke Skywalker, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:46

I know, right? The greatest American hero blows up a Death Star. Well, if he pilots the X-Wing like he flies, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

I'm gonna make him AI. Hard pass. Um his teeth blew me away, those teeth, man. That just yeah, that he obviously was wearing some sort of denture plate in this movie, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:08:10

The Bogartie, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:14

Oh, the buck tooth, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:15

Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, they were there, they were front enamels, and there's a couple scenes where he's from the thigh doing the rabbit tooth thing, and you can kind of see where they they didn't imagine. Yeah, where it wasn't like tapped in behind the other tooth because the teeth weren't you know perfectly straight. And um, I love that part too, because it was almost cartoonish. You know, he's he's having some problems, and every time he tries to get serious, you could see him lift his lip and pull his lower. Well, let's just you know, let's just go through this.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:52

He had that acting habit, anyways, of pulling his upper lip.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:55

Yeah, you know, yeah, shape.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:57

That sneer, that sneer, you know, he did. Yeah. Um, I feel like the hand solo and indie characters pulled a lot from this guy's character. A hundred times. I feel like they pulled a lot. There was a lot of inspiration pulled from from Charles.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:12

Yeah, because he's this you know scrappy, dirty, but smart, capable guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:17

Especially with the Millennium Falcon where it's like he's kicking it to fix it and shit. Oh, yeah, I drop a screwdriver down there. Why don't you tear it apart and fix it? I probably should do that one of these days, but the truth is I like to kick it. I kind of like kicking it. And I'm just like, it's fucking rules. Like, I love this guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:33

So the impression for me is a remake of this? Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:40

I mean, there's some there's just some echoes there to me. There's some serious echoes of of Han Solo and especially indie. Indy's, you know, indie's ability to get into trouble and then kind of be like, oh shit, here it comes, you know, uh shooting the rapids, uh uh when they're going past the fort and he's get down, get down. He's getting up, he's taping the thing together, you know. It's just God, that it just feels like, how about now? Try it now, you know, that type of shit. You know, no, okay, cross over the blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:10

I don't know how accurate it would be to say this, but it was it's my first impression of it while I was seeing this. But Charlie Ulnut to me was the first, like Walter White, Han Solo. The he's he's the absolutely most imperfect. He is the original dark superhero that everybody failed at.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:29

I think that's maybe where I'm coming from with this, right? Like, God, it feels he feels so much like that character. Yeah capable, hapless guy that things happen to, but yet at the same time, he's always some seeming to figure out a way to get out of it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:45

And there's those couple moments where you're like, God, he is actually kind of a dick, too.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:50

You know, when especially in the beginning of the wheel, the first time he gets with when he gets drunk, the first time he gets drunk and he really lets her have it. I was like, ooh, man, that's brutal.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

And I don't remember too many movies in the decades before that that really showed the vulnerability. I mean, the leading man was a leading man, you didn't jack with them, you know, unless it's you know Jack Wemon and Walter Mathau out, you know, fucking about in a comedy comedy, yeah. Yeah, you don't mess with them. This was it, it is so refreshing to watch. It is one of my like calm movies. Like when I just you know, at the end of the day, I just want to do jack shit. I can watch this, get immersed in it because I connect, and that's why I think everyone's desperately trying to find that right combination, you know, to to modernize where it's it's pretty real. It's pretty real. The guy's got some moments, and he's a good guy, but he can be a dick at times, and this is his Achilles heel. Um, you know, and then the big question is she gonna fix him or is she just gonna meet him halfway? You know, and at first she thinks she's gonna fix him when she dumps the gin overboard. I love that bit. You know, the the pain on his face is real.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:04

Couldn't even leave me a drop, not one drop.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:06

Yeah, and he's too hung over to fight her about it. Yeah, so I love that.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:10

But then even after that, the only incongruous part of the movie to me, and I think maybe it's just because of the way storytelling was back then, is that he didn't put up a lot of fight about the liquor being gone. We didn't see him having trouble not drinking, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:24

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:25

And I and I feel like maybe that would have been a little, and it's quite possible it was in the story and they cut it out. You know, there was maybe an extended sea that they cut out, but he just he went from oh god damn it to oh man, nothing like a clean shave. I bet you never seen it out of the beard, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:39

Which one's good, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:41

Yeah, I would have liked to have seen him kind of transition to that a little bit or something, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:47

I I think the centers back then would have had a real problem with showing someone with the DTs. We've had a lot of alcoholics, and especially all the gumshoe films and stuff, and they always go away and they come back clean. You know, I I've been in jail for six months and it's great, and I'm here to be your your uh you know your informant and all this stuff. I mean, a lot of really good story was was murdered before it was even born, just because they knew they're gonna go up against that wall. And it's like we can't show that. We can't show Humphrey Bogart shaking and swearing, and you know, who wants that?

SPEAKER_06 1:13:25

I mean, I kind of maybe this is just how I like to read into it, but um she comes up with her idea that that you know Almett's gonna make these torpedoes and they're gonna go, you know, bomb the the ship. And I think that he doesn't think that she's serious.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:41

No, he doesn't. He kind of goes along with it to a certain point. He's like, wait, you're fucking serious? Yeah, you meant that. You really want to do this. I mean, I I kind of humored you to get us this far, but what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:55

Yeah. And the alcohol is part of that him realizing that she is serious about it. And I think him coming the next day with the shave and going, like, look, I can look clean like you too. Um, you know, is is part of his maybe trying to like steer her away from that crazy idea.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:13

Okay. I'll I'll I'll go along with it to get you to go along with it to get you to agree with me. Oh, that's a good point. Okay. Okay. That's I can't. I know that's much more palatable. I like that.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:25

Anyway, that's how I can see what it is. You talk about you know Humphrey Bogert being Bogart being dirty dump. She is, you know, like um Jimmy said it last night, it's like Casting America for Rare is ugly buddy.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:41

Like Catherine Hepburn in a frumpy outfit with brown hair does not actually make her less pretty, but I guess it's supposed to.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:51

Yeah, it's just like we were talking about the faculty on the previous episode, and that had the whole, what did he call it, uh, she's all that syndrome, where it's like you wear the glasses and you're nerdy, and you take the glasses off and you're beautiful. Oh my god, she's so much hotter without the glasses. I'd how did I miss it?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:08

This is so silly. Jesus.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:10

But as they go down the river and her clothes get more beat up and her hair starts coming apart, you know, then she's more like I I think she's, you know, that's her prettied up, I guess, in the movie. She gets softer.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:23

Yeah, she does. And she leans into his lifestyle a bit, like into his like being, you know. I understand being dirty is sort of, you know, she learns how to fucking get the kettle going on the ship when he gets sick and she's driving the boat and everything. Like she leans into what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:37

Um, how they lean into their relationship.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:40

Yeah, if you pay attention, you can see. So Catherine Hepburn has this you know amazing jawline, she just has this whole facial structure that is.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:51

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:52

So when they had her, you know, very stiff as you know, as a character, but you can see where they they have the shading lines of the makeup to really bring out that jawline. Because physically, there's a couple of instances in the beginning where she turns and you can see that's not where her jaw, I mean, you know, physics, you can't beat it, right? They didn't have they didn't have special effects like that in in the 50s, uh, but that goes away as she becomes more like Charlie, as she becomes like stepping into his life, getting more into it. And that was the whole ugly betty thing we were talking about.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:28

Like, yeah, they soften her.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

They soften her a bit, but if the idea was to make her prettier, that's what I'm like, you know, that was like Casting America Ferrara's ugly betty. What the fuck are you gonna do? She's she's beautiful, no matter what. Catherine Hebburn was and always has been beautiful. Do what you can, but yeah, the dirtier she got, the softer she got.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:50

Yeah, I I like that. I agree. Yeah, she's much much cleaner and much more um likely to sharp to cut you. Yeah, right. Like uh yeah. Um I I one of the things one of my notes was I love Bogey's entrance. Uh the first frame of the film is him on his boat and he's got a guy driving, he's got somebody fanning him, he's smoking a cigarette, yeah. He's smoking a cigar. He's like, he's living the life, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:16

Um Marx brother or or like George George Burns with that cigar going, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:24

Yeah, well, and I mean it's early that Animal Crackers, they they bring in Groucho in a in a in a in like a uh he's sitting in a sling cross-legged, and he's got four uh uh tribe tribe members carrying him on poles and shit. It's fucking great. It's great. Um I want to note that um my dude is chugging straight gin warm out of a bottle uh and uh half a glass at a time. And at one point he just dips the glass into the river. He's like, here, a little mixer, boom, and then he puts gin in the black. I'm like, oh my god. It's like an episode Enjoy your dysentery. Um speaking of which, he and John Houston were the only people during the filming of this movie not to get sick. Because they drank scotch the whole time. They drank scotch, and he said I I survived on baked beans, uh canned baked beans, canned asparagus, and scotch. And he and John Houston had boxes of it marked as medical supplies. Right. Everybody would fuck with it. And they said Catherine Hepburn got so sick that they uh during one season that they just put a bucket next to her and she would throw up in between takes, just vomiting, they go, okay, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:31

Insane. More of that rough filmmaking of days past. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:38

Uh yeah, and apparently, uh, from what I read, Hepburn loved Africa and Bogey hated it. Yes. And and Bacall came with Bacall came with him and kind of acted like a nursemaid to a lot of people.

unknown 1:18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:49

But Hepurn was like, this is great. What's the name of that? What's the name of that? What's this? And Bogey's like, we're gonna fucking be here forever. Could you get her like I want to go for two we're gonna I don't want to be here for two years while she figures out what everything is. Let's go shoot the picture, you know, stop telling her what things are, we're all camera, you know. He was he was he was desperate to get out of fucking Africa. He hated it. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:13

Well, and that's that's kind of like his life as a team. He was a studio man, and we've talked about that in different things comparing actor stuff today to back then. Uh even explaining to our daughter, you know, why people did the way they did things the way they did. It's like if you were, you know, uh Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, you did what the studio told you to because they would make or break you. If a studio kicked you out, they would make sure no other studio would work with you. So you had to do the shit movie now and again. You had to look this way, even outside of it. You know, I mean, there's how many stories are out there of people, you know, these these top draws, studio-owned actors. And when they go out in public, oh man, what a scam it would be if you know she wasn't wearing her absolute best dress, right? This is how you go grocery shopping when you're a Hollywood star. You you know to the nines all the way. And uh, you know, we we have these two muddying it up on screen. And I think maybe you know, we'll never be able to ask him, but I think Humphrey probably just was like, fuck, man, this, you know, we're doing half this movie in the studio and it seems pretty good. Why can't we just do all of it?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:29

Right, right. Can't we just shoot a bunch of fucking plates? We have rear projection now. I mean, and you could see it used in the move, you can see it used in the movie very effectively. There are points where they're like she's steering the back of the boat and he's running around and the water rapids, and you could I just know there's somebody right out of the frame with a bucket of water saying, Here you go, Catherine boom, throw a bucket of water on her, and it always makes me laugh, but it still sells, it still works. It does. Um, it's just it's just knowing how that's made.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:55

You kind of I kind of giggle to myself like and that was that was like the hardest thing in like any movie. Uh, anytime prior to like 1967 or 8, anything having to do with water, just really there's just nothing you could do. And I learned to forgive that, you know, it's like bad green screen. It's like, okay, you know what? You can only do so much, but yeah, those water scenes were wild. I will say one thing I love because of so much of it being done in Africa, and then in the studio in England. Um, I mean, you can clearly see, no matter how good they edit, that they have just cut from studio shot to while they were in Africa. And because it's just the intensity of the lighting, they just didn't have it there. But you look, and I paid very close attention, like consistency. I love consistency, continuity in things.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:44

And there's a lot of flubs in this movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:47

There, I mean, there are, but man, did they try? Like, you know, you look at uh at Catherine's mud and shit on her face, and then the next scene, it's a little almost continuity, yeah. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:58

I I I forgive that considering like I said, it was a rough shootout in Africa. Yes, you know, I mean it was it was fucking brutal out there, man. I mean, they they had to build a raft to go alongside the boat, and they built the boat so they could take it apart in sections and stick cameras in it, because they couldn't get the cameras inside that little ass boat. So that that whole that whole steam-powered machine was meant to be completely lifted up and removed from the boat so they could put a camera there and shoot, you know. So it was and then of course they had another raft trailing it with lights, scrims, bounces, all the shit that they needed to actually shoot whatever they were shooting. So I mean, god, in 51 it seems like a technical miracle almost.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:40

I know. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:41

You were running electricity on a river and nobody died.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:46

So the cameras that they were using were new and they were huge. That was part of the problem, too. I remember that and I came out what they were.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:55

Like three-level technicolor cameras that they were shooting with, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:58

Okay, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:59

Yeah, this is both of their first full color movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:03

Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:04

Hmm that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:06

So the impossible of filmmaking is all over this thing. Not only was it, you know, an impossible task to achieve making that movie, the movie itself is is you can kind of see the impossibility of filmmaking in it. Like, you're serious? You want me to build a torpedo? Yeah, build the torpedo. That's kind of how I feel about filmmaking. You know, it's like, go get the chairs for the Steam Cliff. I can't fit all the chairs in the car. Go get them. And then use some chairs. And it's kind of like, oh yeah, I see that in the in the movie as well.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:40

And I like that when he's he's you know, they're explaining to the Germans about the torpedoes, and he's like, I'm actually pretty proud of the detonator I built for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:48

He's like, guess what I used for it?

SPEAKER_06 1:23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:53

That's so good. Um, one of the things I one of my notes here is uh first off, this is a bold ass fucking thing movie to make because you've got two people on camera for 90 minutes. Oh yeah, it's a two-hander, huh? For the most part. It's a it is a two-person fucking film. Now, yes, you have people in the beginning and yes, you have people at the end, but right in the middle, a good solid 80 to 90 minutes is carried by these two fantastic actors who just chew the fucking scenery around each other. It's before sunrise on a boat. Yeah. Yeah, I I I thought about before Sunrise, and what I thought was, God, the difference between the dialogue and the acting is the dialogue and the acting before sunrise is adequate, it's decent, it's good, it's it's even maybe pretty good. The dialogue and the and the acting in this is fucking phenomenal. It's just it's the difference in it's a difference in talent, in my opinion. Like Ethan Hawk is not the actor Humphrey Bogart will ever fucking be. Ever. No. Ethan Hogarth's a f he's a fine, Ethan's a fine actor. I'm not shitting on Ethan's work, but Humphrey in this movie in particular is like, oh, it's fucking it's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:02

Well, this was like the pinnacle of his evolution and growth. All that gangster shit, Maltese following, all that in Castle Blanca, which you know had everyone swooning and stuff. This is where he just like came through. This is I I call this Humphrey Bogart's drug addict moment. Because if you remember, like in the late 80s into the 90s, every actor was desperate to play a fucking strung up drug addict because they wanted to get on camera and show they could punch through that shit and be that kind of thing. And I think this was his moment because this I I mean, he won an Oscar for it, which you know, great. Not everyone who wins an Oscar deserves it. We won't get into that, but he's he's just so good in it. And like you said, the conversation thing. Um, you know, we uh like Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, doesn't matter who you put in it, they had some great, great people. But what made that movie wasn't any there was no action, there was no anything. Dialogue, all these people being able to punch it back and forth across the table, every scene. But these this is two people, like you said, and I love things like that. I love that level of writing and acting and directing that come together where you're keeping me there, like you said, 80 minutes of just these two people going at each other, yeah, or talking to each other, and I just want to keep going.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:21

Yeah, I mean, you the the the leeches and pulling the boats to the reeds, like I could that's the part where I could see somebody going, that really dragged for me. For me, I was just completely engrossed. It didn't drag for me. I just was like, fuck, because he gets out of that boat and she screams and tears all those leeches off of him, and he's just like, Oh god. And then what's he do? He gets right back in the goddamn water and starts dragging that boat again. Yeah, and it's just like, damn.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:46

I'm like, uh, you might have some more leeches you might want to look for. Yeah, my old thought too. Yeah, my old thought too.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:53

Yeah, and then she's out there dragging it with him not long after that scene.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:57

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:58

Yeah, under under with him with the uh propeller or doing the shaft. Doing the shaft.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:04

And that's I love that I love that scene too because she's she has this all through the the movie, she has this wonderful way of just kind of making him do what she wants. And she doesn't brow, she doesn't browbeat him. She doesn't when it comes to the liquor, she does. But anything else that she wants him to do, she basically just says, Here's the plan, get to it. And he just like is almost scared to tell her no, which I think that's just kind of like a uh societal type thing to a certain extent. You know, you extend courtesies to a woman back then, and okay, ma'am, yeah, sure, whatever. But at the same time, you know, he didn't really understand, he thought she was bullshitting, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:40

It does seem like she realizes that wait a minute, she kind of makes a point.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:44

I can do that.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:45

I can do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:47

Yeah, especially when it comes to like repairing the prop and the prop shaft where he she's like, Well, I guess he's like, I don't have any. And she's like, Well, I saw the natives use this for fire. He's like, Well, yeah, I did see that. Well, I guess you can do this. It's like, yeah, I guess I can. And then he's like, and by the end of it, he's

SPEAKER_00 1:28:00

just like next thing you know they're on the fucking beach banging out the the shaft and putting the prop together and he's his mindset is completely changed because she delivered it prompting it yeah you know like I really well done just super positive it's just so then you know it's it's not it's not that far darling or it's not that hard darling is it so it shouldn't be like we should do it. Yeah she very she takes like a butter knife to his his stone walls and just very gently touch chips away and he does the rest he tears it down it's like yeah why the fuck can't I do this? Yeah yeah yeah exactly capable person yeah yeah uh yeah I I I haven't seen this movie in a while but I remember first off I love bogey movies where he's not the damn where he's not playing the gangster treasure madre this one you know when he when he's not playing that normal gangster role is fantastic um this movie is one of the first ones I saw as a kid on the old uh station and understood and liked I didn't like a lot of old movies back then because they didn't move differently it was kind of the same yeah yeah and and then but this one like when I was like that was really it grabbed you right like yeah and it's purpose was clear it's titty yeah that one got really well done that's funny that's something I gotta remember to try and say in the podcast as advice to you know the new folks out there and I'll even say it to you watch those old movies get into that group I love this shit so much because I grew up watching fucking Lawrence Welk uh my grandfather you know untouchables all this shit from when television television first began all the old movies and that's why I know Stewart and Bogart and all this stuff and I see everything that's been built on top of that like I look at Star Wars I'm like well George Lucas didn't come up with any you know wild shit he just he took a story made it simple put it in space it's damsel in distress and we don't know really anything about anybody it's just go get her and there's a bad guy with Vietnam War commentary that's exactly um yeah and this this uh African Queen still has uh that stuff to it that pacing everything but there's there's just something underlying that's magical that elevated above all the rest but I I love it so much because of that pacing because I think so much shit is out there like you guys do everything you can we can see it in the movies you know and we don't butter people up because we have just if you if you wrote and shot shit we would call it shit you know because um but we love watching your work because we see what everybody's doing we see where everybody's pulling from and we we we just see where it's going in that momentum and I can take it back to the hallmarks of uh filming and storytelling and um you don't have to label it indie you don't have to label it studio you just look at it and you're like it works because they care and that's kind of the thing that studios cared to a point because it was all about money but they realize there's 50 of us making films and there's only X number of theaters. So we have to care a little bit more about the movie than the money so we can get that spot and then make the money. And you wipe that aside I just I love it. It's just to me cinematic storytelling at its finest is when it was growing you know and and everyone takes a piece of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:28

Houston's one of its masters that doesn't hurt storytelling yeah it doesn't it doesn't hurt at all um uh the only other thing I had was one interesting other piece of uh trivia which was um in Catherine Hepran's autobiography she she wrote a book about the making of this film and about how it almost what they tried to do it basically I think it's like the making of African queen and how it almost killed me or something like that. And she says in the autobiography that she was shooting early on and Houston came to her hut and he said look your performance is too rigid too rigid. And he said think about um what did he say he said think about uh Eleanor Roosevelt and model your performance on that she's not a she's not a really attractive woman by any means but whenever she's in public she carries herself well and she has a very beaming smile and Catherine Hepherd said he left and she thought about it and she said that's the best piece of direction advice I've ever gotten in my entire life and that's exactly what she did. So awesome yeah that's an interesting little story. Also the uh African queen is in Keelargo Florida you can visit it if you want to take it down there.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:37

Yeah I remember not looking I was looking at stuff like that I'm like hey we can go visit the African Queen. Yeah one of the things I really love about this movie and I think the one thing that I carried through into other movies about like um I mean it carried through into Star Wars it carried through into you know like any movie where there's someone and he's got a ship and he loves his ship. His ship is his everything it's his first relationship.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:05

It's almost like a character of itself.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:06

It's almost like a like a yeah uh yeah and this boat is a character in itself of this movie and that like I haven't seen many other older movies that have that included in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:18

It doesn't mean there aren't any I just that's why I keep saying this big polls for the Millennium Falcon and hand solo and all that stuff in Indy it's just like it feels like they just really leaned on that.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:29

Yeah I mean he talks about the queen like she's you know she is a character lady yeah yeah and then you know as the more Catherine Hepburn's character um gets more the more Rosie gets to know her the more Rosie is attached to her as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:44

So jumping back into Star Wars see here so they try they didn't do a lot of that in Star Wars Empire Strikes Back is where they did the whole the million false becoming comedy yeah and when the prop warehouse burnt down and they lost the entire falcon and all the interiors if you remember Return of the Jedi they only had a map painting of it and they only ever did the cockpit and they always had the cockpit door closed except for one quick scene where it shut because they only built eight feet and that was it um I love things that I love boats and me too that's a draw to this is you know it is that connection it is understanding when someone's at sea with this boat it is a living being it's that whole thing. It's like a good relationship if you're good to her she's going to be good to you if you trust in her she will deliver to you trust the process right and yeah I loved that he just kind of did that right up into the end and I thought it was brilliant where it shifted he I because if if that boat had blown up within the first 20 minutes of the film he'd have lost his shit we'd never see him again. He would run screaming into the jungle and that's it for Charlie he didn't care. She did her bit the old girl is down and you know now he's got Rose that's the woman who's who's who she's been there for him.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:13

She's delivered and when he trusted in the process she got him going well there's that beautiful moment towards the end when they're about to take the boat to um to the ship that they're trying to blow up they can't remember the name of um and Catherine has yeah to the losses and Rosie goes let's clean up the queen let's make her look good yeah it's yeah I love it.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:36

I always love it I love it. I I one of my notes is God I love this movie. Even with Robert Morley and his wet fucking mouth which is just fucking gross he's got a wet mouth he does he's everything and and I don't like it. It's gross I don't like it. And it it literally pulls a half a star off the movie for me because I have to watch him in the beginning he's got a wet mouth and it's gross and I don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:04

Yeah to a lesser degree uh what you all were saying uh reminded me of Priscilla Queen of the desert where really Priscilla takes on their is the name of the vehicle and they care about the vehicle it's obviously not as much but it kind of I was starting to draw some parallels there. I think my uh my only other real note was I'm sitting there the whole time thinking who does Bogart remind me of or should I say the other way around maybe it's because I had the movie on my mind because we watched it not that long ago but the Cook and Texas Chainsaw Massacre is very Charlie esque do you see what I'm saying like even if the teeth and go messing around that old house and yeah kind of changes a little bit there's an echo there for just a little like a little thing it's but just it was one of those things we're like that's that's what I'm being reminded of that was my other problem with Friday the 13th is I had watched fucking Texas Chainsaw like two months ago and I was like it it's it's hard to really appreciate chicken when you've had really good steak.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:20

It seasoned well but I just had a steak really put your mind back into all of like you know first time seeing no influences I try to my my really only big takeaway from every time I watch this and and Marty had touched on it earlier is the Germans. So we have this introduction we have the introduction of Charlie and he's doing the thing and it it was almost mark's brother's level funny when they're like oh it shall never happen here we don't need to worry about it all that much and they walk outside and who comes out of the fucking woods 10 seconds later like oh the war's here shit okay and told us we wouldn't know what's going on yeah yeah and the Germans I love the Germans so much in this um now for a long time they were just you know whatever it's one dimensional monsters but now that we've had Raiders of the Lost Arc and all this stuff you talk about oh my god one dimensional the dude with the glasses shooting the gun it looks like the guy with the glasses doing the fucking torturing I was like holy shit and one of the Froggy Vladimir Putin like Putin the guy from Raiders with the glasses I called him Froggy because I honest to God I always believe that is Froggy from Little Rascals this is how he grew up that's hilarious.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:58

That's hilarious excellent but he to me he's like they were like you remember that guy who was shooting the rifle at the African queen we're gonna make him look like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:07

Find those glasses and he just find me an actor that looks like that was my uncle that's my grandfather I'm gonna give it a four that's an all-time classic you know it's got its few little things maybe it's a little too long for me but it's awesome it's kind of perfect. I've always enjoyed it since I first saw it when I was like 12 like Cliff was saying I used to not care too much about older movies and then that was one of the first ones that really caught my attention for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:39

So same same that and well when when I heard Spielberg watches Lawrence before he goes and makes a picture I was like I'm gonna go watch that and that was the one where I was like oh my god where the fuck have I been my entire life it's time to go backwards.

SPEAKER_06 1:39:53

Danny how about you I'm gonna agree with Marty and give it a four this movie is like very lovely super close to my heart.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:02

I really enjoy watching it every time you know there's not a bad viewing is there's just never a bad viewing I'm gonna give it a five yeah uh a little bit sentiment but this this when I first saw this movie it had nothing to do with going with my grandfather it just had to do with it was just the the most beautiful evolution of everything I had grown up with and since that point I see everything that has been built on top of it reaches back to it references it sponges from it and everything um and these two amazingly talented human beings who I just it it never fails to pull me completely out of whatever shit's going on or anything and I just from a if I'm doing it as a critic the writing the directing sets everything just I look at this and I'm like yeah there's a few little chubwubs there but you know it's 1951 right it's 51 yeah yeah but if man if if I could produce something like that I mean where where else do you do right? Where else do you go? This was just uh magnificent film all around so five for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:23

I'm again landing right in the middle of you two so I'm gonna go four and a half um I I think it's I think it's epic I think it's classic I think it's um all the things that we've talked about you know it's one of those movies that you put on and you immediately get engrossed in and you can't stop you you just keep watching it you just keep watching it you just keep watching it um I'm gonna give it four and a half because I can't get over the wet mouth mouth and it's it's it's taken it away. And having said that I've heard Casablanca a lot of people that's the most perfect movie ever five stars. I would rather watch this over Casablanca any day of the fucking week. Yes any any day of the week any day of the week. It's just a much more engaging captivating movie than Casablanca is in my opinion. Casablanca is great but it is very over like overhyped I think so too I agree and and like I said if you give me a bogey movie this is probably the one I'm gonna pick or treasures of the Sierra Madre yeah be the same.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:24

Well all right Marty that's it that was uh that was great yeah hour and 45 minutes man geez right on we can we can talk movies we did it and with very little technical blips that was perfect well we like I said it was easy to set up to be start so it was you know glad it all held out so is there anything you guys would like to plug I mean I know your your podcast obviously but uh yeah you know folks check us out Bravo for the B side uh you can you know find it on pretty much everything that's out there uh for listening you can go to our website lords of mysteryproductions dot com uh we want to make you work for it so you gotta type it all out and uh everything's there um links to uh uh the podcast to our observations of earth with BF McGillicuddy which is still sort of on hiatus but the videos links are there to YouTube um yeah everything and uh you know go back and check our episodes on these guys and uh yeah yeah for present and yeah the interviews um the ever get that all all female cast for for an interview we we did because we can do it for less song yeah that's true we'll work it we'll work it together I'll just I'll never forget when we did have it in Bradford running out of the hospital into the parking lot so we can get a cigar just pop in and talk with them.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:52

There's so many technical problems during that one it's so bad. Poor Nate he'd be like yeah I uh yeah we lost him and then he'd come back oh my goodness but yeah um guys look I'll I'll say this listeners um they have a great podcast and what's cool about their podcast is that when they take a movie they dig deep into it they go they go scene by scene uh almost moment by moment you know step by step inch by inch millimeter by fucking millimeter is the old joke from uh Rocky Horror picture shows they do a great deep dive into the pictures they also pick a lot of they don't pick a lot of normal stuff so they deep dive into a lot of beast side stuff a lot of uh obscure stuff some stuff that you've heard of terrifier um other things like that but also stuff that you haven't and um which is really cool because they expose um they expose their audience to a lot of independent artists get a lot of independent artists some opportunities to get exposure which is great which is uh appreciated from our side that's for sure yeah that's what we try to do you know yeah anything to help every movie has a lesson that's sort of our tagline well all right marty I guess that's the that's the uh end of it um yeah my uh yeah my favorite line is god damn it Ralph it's got a death curse you're all doomed get out of here man you're all doomed get out of here Ralph all right well I guess that's it guys thanks so much for coming on we really appreciate you thank you for having us it's been great thanks for having us see you soon yeah bye