FH Mini 102 - The Films of Larry Cohen

[0:00] Hey there floppers, this is Elliot speaking.

[0:02] Before we begin this week's,

[0:03] let's be nice and call it nonsense.

[0:05] I just wanted to make sure you knew

[0:06] about the live show stuff we have coming up

[0:09] in case you miss it later in the episode

[0:11] or just can't wait to hear about it.

[0:13] We are still in the streaming window

[0:14] for the Flophouse Sinks Speed 2,

[0:16] our virtual online video event.

[0:18] Just go to stagepilot.com slash speed

[0:21] and you'll be able to see that whole show

[0:23] with exclusive footage that the in-theater audience

[0:26] didn't get to see through May 19th.

[0:29] After May 19th, of course,

[0:30] it goes back to the Flophouse Vault

[0:32] where it will never be seen again for a long time.

[0:35] Then on May 24th, we will be in Oxford, England

[0:38] as part of the St. Audio Podcast Festival.

[0:40] We're doing two shows in one night, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.,

[0:43] two totally different shows, totally different movies,

[0:45] totally different presentations,

[0:46] totally different questions.

[0:47] It'll be great.

[0:48] And then for something even more completely different,

[0:50] on July 26th, we will be in Boston in person

[0:53] at WBUR City Space.

[0:55] We don't know what movie we're doing yet,

[0:57] but it'll be a fun show.

[0:58] It's gonna be all new stuff.

[0:59] You're gonna love it.

[1:00] So that's the Flophouse Sing Speed II

[1:02] streaming now in Oxford May 24th

[1:04] and in Boston July 26th.

[1:06] And now, on with our regular nonsense.

[1:09] ♪♪

[1:13] Hey there, folks.

[1:15] Welcome to another Flophouse Mini.

[1:17] That's a mini episode of the Flophouse Podcast,

[1:20] a podcast where we watch a bad movie and talk about it.

[1:23] And though normally on a mini,

[1:24] we just kind of do whatever we want,

[1:26] today we're gonna be doing something

[1:27] a little bit different.

[1:29] We're gonna be talking about a movie we watched.

[1:30] Do something different than whatever we want?

[1:32] It implies that someone's forcing us to do this.

[1:37] That is actually kind of what's happening

[1:39] because I'm forcing Dan and Elliot

[1:41] to talk about the thing I want to talk about today.

[1:44] Which is, we are opening up the old movie minute mailbag

[1:50] and pulling out the first Flophouse mini.

[1:54] I believe the first Flophouse mini we did

[1:56] was a Miss That movie.

[1:58] I could be wrong,

[2:00] but I'm pretty sure it was a Miss That movie.

[2:01] And that's kind of what we're gonna do today.

[2:03] We're gonna talk about a movie

[2:05] that we did not cover for the podcast,

[2:07] but in a way we are gonna be kind of covering it

[2:09] for the podcast.

[2:10] But before we get to that,

[2:12] I'd like to introduce myself.

[2:14] My name is Stuart Wellington, I'm one of the hosts.

[2:16] And joining me are...

[2:17] I'm Jan McCoy, here wondering why mailbag was in there

[2:20] other than to be another M word.

[2:24] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[2:25] And you're right, McCoy could have been the other M word.

[2:28] Oh God, just put it...

[2:29] Alex, go back, swipe out mailbag and put in McCoy.

[2:34] Anytime I said mailbag,

[2:35] just swipe it out from McCoy like a Mad Lib.

[2:39] Mad Lib starts with M too.

[2:42] Wow, what doesn't start with M?

[2:44] Well, the movie we're gonna be talking about.

[2:46] We're talking about a movie that starts with...

[2:47] Well, it kind of does start with an M.

[2:50] M is the second letter.

[2:51] It's the runner up to the main word in the title.

[2:53] Jesus Christ.

[2:56] Jesus Christ doesn't start with an M.

[2:57] You're right, Dan, you're right.

[2:58] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[2:59] Well, I can salvage this, guys.

[3:00] Okay.

[3:01] We can...

[3:01] Impossible.

[3:02] No, we can just start over.

[3:03] We can just start back on the rails.

[3:04] Okay, this is fine.

[3:05] Okay, thanks again for listening.

[3:07] If this is your first episode,

[3:08] don't find it right away. Go back, find a different one.

[3:10] Yeah, find a different one.

[3:11] Don't...

[3:13] If this is your first episode,

[3:13] throw your phone in the ground, bury it.

[3:16] Never tell anybody about what happened.

[3:18] So before I talk about what we're gonna do on this episode,

[3:20] let's give a little backstory.

[3:22] Okay, please.

[3:23] Taking a page from me.

[3:24] So a couple of weeks ago,

[3:27] I went out for a movie date

[3:29] with my favorite movie date in the world.

[3:31] That's right, Dan McCoy.

[3:33] And we went out to a screening at the Nighthawk,

[3:36] part of their Ridiculous Sublime screening series

[3:40] that's hosted by our friend, Christina Cacioppo,

[3:43] longtime friend of the Flophouse.

[3:46] And this is a, what, a monthly screening series they do?

[3:49] I believe so.

[3:50] And it's been bangers so far.

[3:53] I hope it keeps going on forever.

[3:55] It's a great series.

[3:56] Bangers all the way down.

[3:57] I think a previous recommendation,

[3:58] Prison, was part of that series.

[4:01] And Don't Tell Her It's Me?

[4:03] I don't, was that part, I guess,

[4:05] I think it must've been because-

[4:06] No, I'm asking you, Dan.

[4:07] Should I tell her it's me?

[4:08] Oh.

[4:10] Just kidding.

[4:11] That's a movie that is also known as The Boyfriend School.

[4:15] Just because you brought it up,

[4:16] I have to say that like,

[4:17] so Stuart and I-

[4:20] Do you have to say it?

[4:21] Stuart and I and our friends, Matt and Ksenia,

[4:24] introduced a screening of The Boyfriend School

[4:27] at the Nighthawk Cinema,

[4:29] which is in part kind of a weird like anniversary screening

[4:32] of the fact that one of the first things

[4:34] that the Flophouse ever screened

[4:36] was programmed by Christina

[4:38] and we watched Don't Tell Her It's Me.

[4:41] So we all came back together.

[4:42] It wasn't even like a big,

[4:44] it was like the 11th anniversary.

[4:46] It wasn't like a round number or anything,

[4:48] but we were hosting the screening.

[4:50] And before that, there was a trailer for Prison.

[4:53] And we had friends in the audience because-

[4:55] Not the thing.

[4:57] Yeah, not the thing, the movie.

[4:59] We had pals in the audience coming out

[5:01] to see us do this screening.

[5:04] And there was like this huge reaction

[5:06] to this trailer for Prison, the next film in the series.

[5:08] And so, so many of those people came back for that movie.

[5:12] And then before Prison,

[5:14] there was a trailer for The Ambulance,

[5:16] what Stuart's about to talk about.

[5:17] And there was such a huge reaction to that trailer,

[5:19] a bunch of people came back.

[5:20] They're really selling these movies

[5:22] based on good old trailers for these things.

[5:26] So Dan and I went and saw The Ambulance,

[5:29] written and directed by Larry Cohen.

[5:31] And what we're gonna do

[5:32] is we're gonna talk a little bit about that movie.

[5:34] But Elliot, I have a feeling you haven't seen

[5:35] The Ambulance in quite a while.

[5:37] Yes, I saw it years, years ago,

[5:39] but I've not seen it in a long time.

[5:41] So I don't really,

[5:42] I remember kind of stuff about the basic premise,

[5:44] but I don't really remember the movie very well.

[5:45] So maybe what we're gonna do

[5:48] is we're gonna take a second.

[5:49] We're gonna watch the trailer.

[5:50] I think over the course of this episode,

[5:52] we'll probably reference a couple of trailers.

[5:54] Those will maybe be linked in the show notes.

[5:57] And if not, you might just have to use all your own,

[6:00] if you wanna follow along with the Flophouse,

[6:02] just use your Googling skills

[6:03] to watch some of these movie trailers.

[6:05] So we're gonna start with The Ambulance,

[6:06] starring Eric Roberts,

[6:10] So why don't we roll this first trailer?

[6:13] The Ambulance.

[6:14] If you call for help, you're dead.

[6:20] So that's the exact same trailer they played before prison.

[6:24] So you can see why the audience got all worked up

[6:26] and had to show up for the next screening.

[6:29] Oh yeah, you need to see it.

[6:30] It was a Rite of Spring-style riot.

[6:32] The, yeah, the very specific,

[6:37] like the very specific,

[6:39] like the very specific,

[6:40] yeah, the very specific,

[6:42] like the very last line.

[6:44] First off, I don't know,

[6:46] that trailer just reminds me so much of how much I miss

[6:50] the trailer guy voice,

[6:52] you know, who like coaches you through

[6:54] what's gonna happen in the movie.

[6:56] To be honest, I think a lot of trailers nowadays

[6:58] are not very good,

[7:00] and through no fault of the people making them,

[7:02] because they're not allowed to use,

[7:03] or the style went out for using voiceover narration.

[7:06] I think having a voiceover that can just kind of

[7:07] fill in gaps in an exciting way,

[7:10] adds so much to the trailer.

[7:11] Like trailers would be much better

[7:12] if you had someone who could just be,

[7:14] just tell you a little bit of the story.

[7:15] And honestly, I wonder,

[7:17] I mean, maybe I'm wrong,

[7:18] I wonder if it has made screenplays dumber in a way

[7:23] where like they insist on having a few lines

[7:27] that could just be pulled out in the trailer

[7:28] to explain things.

[7:29] Maybe, yeah, it's possible.

[7:31] Yeah, some moments of exposition

[7:33] they can throw in there.

[7:33] So, the Ambulance is a movie from 1990,

[7:39] It's got that grimy New York feel.

[7:43] It stars Eric Roberts,

[7:44] who plays a cartoonist working for Marvel Comics.

[7:47] So we get to see-

[7:48] He's a comic book artist.

[7:49] We get to see Stanley himself.

[7:51] That's the part I remember.

[7:52] Yeah, playing himself.

[7:53] It was the first,

[7:54] it was his first acting role in a movie, I believe.

[7:57] And one of his largest parts.

[7:59] Yeah.

[8:00] Yeah.

[8:01] We get to see the inside of Marvel Studios,

[8:04] which apparently is very inaccurate

[8:06] for actual Marvel Studios at the time.

[8:09] And so the premise of the movie is like,

[8:12] Eric Roberts has an amazing mullet

[8:14] and he wears a lot of great suits.

[8:15] Wait, that's the premise?

[8:16] Yeah.

[8:19] And he becomes obsessed with a woman he sees

[8:23] whenever he takes his lunch break.

[8:24] Of course, it's Janine Turner.

[8:25] So it makes sense that he's obsessed with her

[8:27] because there was a period of time

[8:29] where she was the hottest woman on the planet.

[8:31] You may remember her as the female lead

[8:34] in Northern Exposure,

[8:35] a show that has just come to Amazon Prime.

[8:38] So we've started rewatching it,

[8:41] or Audrey, for the first time.

[8:43] You might also know that she's in the movie,

[8:44] Cliffhanger, which rules.

[8:47] And he becomes obsessed with her

[8:49] only to follow her around.

[8:51] And then she collapses in the street

[8:53] and is picked up by a mysterious ambulance

[8:55] that whisks her away.

[8:57] And when he tries to track her down,

[8:58] he is unable to.

[9:00] Is this mysterious ambulance a murder machine?

[9:02] It could be that the problem might be

[9:05] that he tries to track her down

[9:06] by showing around this drawing

[9:08] that he has done of her

[9:09] that looks more like a Nagel painting

[9:10] than it does Janine Turner.

[9:13] Which is like, I feel like,

[9:14] I'm not the best artist in the world,

[9:16] and I certainly don't work for Marvel Comics.

[9:18] Don't cut yourself down, Stuart.

[9:19] I think you are.

[9:22] You're in the conversation.

[9:23] You're in the top three.

[9:26] Yeah, thank you.

[9:27] Elliot is being the voice of my therapist.

[9:30] I shouldn't minimize myself in front of the audience.

[9:33] But I think that I could probably

[9:36] do a quicker sketch of Janine Turner.

[9:39] Yeah, a more accurate version, certainly.

[9:42] That he's like shopping around this sketch of her

[9:45] with a word bubble that says like,

[9:47] have you seen me?

[9:48] I think it's very good.

[9:52] Luckily, walking around with this drawing,

[9:56] he manages to bump into her roommate somehow.

[9:59] Somehow.

[10:00] And he buys her the largest pina colada I've ever seen in my life.

[10:03] Yeah.

[10:04] And you're a bartender.

[10:05] You're a professional.

[10:06] I'm a bartender.

[10:07] I've seen plenty of pina coladas.

[10:09] This is a lot of pina colada, am I right?

[10:12] Along the way, he runs afoul of the police.

[10:16] Pause for laughter.

[10:17] Yep.

[10:18] Yep.

[10:19] I'm sorry.

[10:20] Okay, hold on.

[10:21] We gotta pause.

[10:22] I steamrolled over your joke.

[10:23] Yeah.

[10:24] It's okay.

[10:25] We haven't been working together that long.

[10:26] Yeah.

[10:27] Along the way, he runs afoul of the police.

[10:28] I ask you to introduce to James Earl Jones who plays a police detective.

[10:30] Dan, how would you?

[10:31] So Eric Roberts' performance is a little big, right?

[10:34] Yeah.

[10:36] How would you describe James Earl Jones?

[10:38] Eric Roberts, a man who's not afraid to go big, has gone big for this, what could have

[10:45] been played as utterly normal leading man rule.

[10:48] That's not what Eric Roberts does.

[10:50] Eric Roberts does not play normal people.

[10:53] And meanwhile...

[10:54] Now, does James Earl Jones bring the gravitas he usually brings?

[10:57] Well, that's the thing.

[10:58] If you want to see James Earl Jones cut loose, if you're like, sure, you know, respected

[11:04] actor James Earl Jones, as you say, brings the gravitas.

[11:06] If you want to see him instead do sort of like his gum chewing spin on a cop, a police

[11:17] chief in an old Superman cereal, say, then that's kind of what he's bringing to the table

[11:25] here.

[11:26] Now, having watched the trailer, do you remember any of the movie, or is this like a...

[11:31] I'm remembering more of it than I thought.

[11:33] I had forgotten.

[11:34] I remember that it was like the ambulance takes people to a place where they die.

[11:38] I can't really remember why or what, but there's scenes in it that I remember now.

[11:43] Like when he's...

[11:44] I had forgotten the part where he's strapped to like a gurney bed in the back of the ambulance

[11:50] and kind of wheels himself out of the back of the ambulance through the power of shaking

[11:55] slightly.

[11:56] That part I had forgotten, but now it's coming back to me.

[11:58] So Larry Cohen...

[11:59] Do you remember Academy Award winner Red Buttons?

[12:02] How does he come off?

[12:03] Oh, my God.

[12:04] Red Buttons is...

[12:05] There's a period in this, in the middle of this movie that turns into an Eric Roberts

[12:10] Red Buttons buddy detective movie, a team up you never in a million years would have

[12:17] thought you needed, but it's great.

[12:20] It's like all of a sudden Red Buttons comes on and just grabs the steering wheel and he's

[12:23] like, we're going where I want to go from now on.

[12:28] And I mean, I feel like Larry Cohen is a specific type of like schlockmeister who puts out some

[12:34] really great junk, like really great, very entertaining junk.

[12:39] And I feel like so much of his work, and we're going to be talking about some of his other

[12:44] movies later, but so much of his work is based on him like seeing something normal and being

[12:49] like, what if that thing was scary?

[12:51] Yeah.

[12:53] Very much so.

[12:54] And I feel like the ambulance is very much alike.

[12:56] What if instead of an ambulance came to pick you up for safety, it picked you up for bad

[13:01] things?

[13:02] Yeah.

[13:03] I will.

[13:04] Larry Cohen is so known for, as you say, these high concept grabby premises like this.

[13:12] It's alive with like a monster baby.

[13:14] We'll get into some of them.

[13:16] But I think that what's interesting to me is he actually doesn't sort of rest on his

[13:21] laurels with those premises.

[13:23] I think a lot of actual, you know, big budget blockbusters are like, okay, we got a great

[13:27] idea.

[13:28] Done.

[13:29] Whereas he's like, no, the audience has to be entertained at all moments.

[13:33] And what struck me about the ambulance is the movie is perfectly happy to waste time

[13:38] on characters acting weird or doing like funny bits of business or stuff.

[13:42] You think Red Buttons is doing funny bits?

[13:44] Yeah.

[13:45] And in the meantime, like stuff that normally would be in a normal movie, like characters

[13:51] sort of getting to know each other and relationships developing or like the plot mechanics needed

[13:57] to get you to one place to the next.

[13:59] He strips that down to the bone and he's like, yeah, you've seen a movie before.

[14:03] You get it.

[14:04] You know, and it's really entertaining.

[14:05] They're like, oh, the people that are all missing, they all have diabetes.

[14:10] And then like a woman gets a woman gets strangled as a way for the bad guys to get to Eric Roberts.

[14:16] And they're like, that woman who just died.

[14:18] She also has diabetes.

[14:19] Yeah.

[14:20] It's like, wait, how's that figure and you killed her?

[14:23] Doesn't make any sense.

[14:24] Why did that have to happen?

[14:26] He's someone who Larry Cohen is one of these guys who I think is a, he exists kind of halfway

[14:31] between the schlock world and the, and the respectable world, his work.

[14:36] And like, he's someone who gets more respect than your average schlockmeister, but yeah,

[14:39] you watch his stuff and you're like, this is someone who knows how a movie works and

[14:42] is deciding at different points, but we're not going to do it that way this time.

[14:45] Like we're going to, yeah, it's all, it's, I'm going to do the most out of things.

[14:48] There's something exciting about that.

[14:50] Yeah.

[14:51] And each scene, it feels like they're like, we could block it out and have choreography,

[14:56] like choreograph this fight sequence, or these guys can just wrestle on camera for a minute

[15:00] and we'll see how it shakes out.

[15:03] There's like car chases where James Earl Jones is chasing the ambulance and he's chewing

[15:08] gum the whole time and seeming kind of bored, but then they'll cut to shots of like cars

[15:14] whizzing through the rainy mean streets of New York.

[15:17] It's great.

[15:19] Over the course of the movie, we discover, yeah, that the, these, this ambulance is picking

[15:23] up people so that they can test drugs on them and then eventually dispose of their bodies.

[15:31] And they're doing this in what, like the second floor of apartment buildings above dance clubs?

[15:39] Yeah.

[15:40] He eventually, you know, he tracks the, it goes back and forth where he gets taken away

[15:44] by a different ambulance.

[15:47] You're worried about these guys coming after him.

[15:48] The whole premise is that like he, it could lean into the idea that Eric Roberts doesn't

[15:55] know if he's like imagining things or not, but that is not the case.

[15:59] He is a hundred percent correct.

[16:02] This ambulance is bad.

[16:03] The cops eventually side with him, but it does become this weird buddy comedy.

[16:09] And then of course there's a big showdown in a dance club that features the ambulances.

[16:14] The titular ambulance is parked in the club, in the center of the club, and then the bad

[16:19] guy drives it around inside before driving through a wall or a doorway.

[16:25] Yeah.

[16:26] Why is this, why is this kitschy, interesting club decoration gassed up and ready to go?

[16:32] Turns out it's a killer ambulance.

[16:33] It's just, it's, it's this wild thing of like it, the one thing that I love about the movie

[16:38] is that it's constantly like coming up with new ways to be interesting, even if that doesn't

[16:44] necessarily relate to what was going on before.

[16:50] And of course, like Eric Roberts is giving one of those like career all time performances

[16:54] where you're like, this guy's a pro.

[16:56] He knows, he knows what this movie needs is a lot of life and energy.

[17:00] And he, you know, he brings it.

[17:02] It's great.

[17:03] Yeah.

[17:04] This is a movie that no one is acting normally in this film.

[17:08] No one is acting like sort of your basic model human.

[17:13] You know, it's a movie that where Larry Cohen is like, well, what if everyone was like really

[17:19] weird in some way and they exhibited it in most scenes.

[17:25] And I'd even forgotten.

[17:26] There's a whole sequence where James Earl Jones is what assistant the, the other police,

[17:32] the police, the other, the lady who becomes more important.

[17:36] Yeah.

[17:37] Like shows up in uniform initially to mainly remind James Earl Jones about his schedule.

[17:44] She then spends the rest of the movie helping Eric Roberts track down this ambulance, but

[17:52] she's not in uniform anymore.

[17:54] And they kind of fall in love.

[17:56] And there's a lot of scenes where you're like, are they going to try and do like a love scene,

[17:59] but they kind of don't.

[18:01] It's very fascinating.

[18:02] I wish I remembered more of the movie because honestly, I was fucking wasted.

[18:06] Wow.

[18:07] This is a real twist on the end of the ambulance here.

[18:11] Not what I expected.

[18:12] Yeah.

[18:13] No, I love that.

[18:14] I love the way that woman who eventually becomes sort of the female lead is introduced where

[18:20] she's reminding James Earl Jones about his dentist appointment.

[18:25] And he yells at her, like mad that she's in his business, mad that she knows his schedule.

[18:30] And then she reminds him for something else.

[18:32] He's like, get out.

[18:33] And then he gets this little sly smile where you're like, he likes it so weird.

[18:39] And then of course, he has a death scene that is one of the strangest things I've ever seen.

[18:44] I don't remember that.

[18:45] I don't remember that part.

[18:46] What happens to him?

[18:47] Yeah.

[18:48] So he, he shoot, you know, he's having like a, he's playing chicken with the ambulance.

[18:52] Yes.

[18:53] He's like shooting.

[18:54] He's trying to shoot the ambulance.

[18:55] Right.

[18:56] And he eventually like the, the ambulance runs him over it like, you know, it's him and it

[19:00] hits him and he's chewing gum at the time.

[19:03] And then he rolls over on his back and he's still chewing gum as he dies.

[19:08] Yeah.

[19:09] But it becomes a sort of mechanical, like, you know, death slows down.

[19:13] Like, yeah.

[19:14] Chewing.

[19:15] Yeah.

[19:16] And then he does it in this like death, like Richter's grin of chewing.

[19:21] And the ambulance is not, there's nothing supernatural, right?

[19:24] No, no, it's not.

[19:26] It's the idea.

[19:27] So the movie, it's the problem is really not the ambulance so much as the people driving

[19:30] the ambulance.

[19:31] Yes.

[19:32] It's not like the ambulance is a character.

[19:33] It's not like Christine or something.

[19:35] Yeah.

[19:36] I mean, it is literally a car.

[19:37] I'm not going to name the names of the car.

[19:39] That's true.

[19:40] I'm not going to name the names of the other movies because then it would be spoilers for

[19:44] those movies.

[19:45] But it's one of those, like, the medical profession is, you know, stealing people for tests and

[19:51] such kind of.

[19:52] You know, one of those kind of movies now, there are three measures or whatever.

[19:56] Now, eventually they track down.

[20:00] I apologize. I shouldn't have. That's the one that we all promised on the souls of our parents never to reveal what was going on in it.

[20:11] Yeah, yeah. When we went to go see Extreme Measures, we were like, I wonder how these measures are. Do you think they're normal?

[20:17] I remember when Michael Apted came out after the screening and said, please, don't ever reveal the twist of what's happening in Extreme Measures.

[20:27] And I was like, are you going to do any more of those movies? And he goes, I have to wait seven years in between them.

[20:31] I wish I didn't. I wish I had given them a different name. So I didn't have to wait so much time between them anyway.

[20:36] So one of the fascinating things about this movie is that Eric Roberts character is obsessed with Janine Turner and his like driving forces that he wants to try and find this woman and save her.

[20:47] This woman he believes is in danger. A woman he has only seen from afar and then had one conversation with her in the street.

[20:54] That's all. And he knows she's diabetic. Eventually he tracks her down.

[21:00] Yeah, he tracks her down in this like weird medical ward above a dance club.

[21:05] And and they're like rescuing all the people who were patient prisoners of the ambulance operation.

[21:12] And he finally gets to have a conversation with her. And she's obviously overjoyed that she's been saved.

[21:16] And she's like, can you can you call my boyfriend and tell him I'm OK?

[21:21] And Eric Roberts walks away so sad, like, boyfriend, what a bitch.

[21:28] It's like such a like a Matt Barry that like Matt Barry snuffbox bit was like as soon as each woman mentions a boyfriend, he just like smashes.

[21:38] He's like he's like carrying a fish tank for one of these.

[21:42] Help me with that, my lady. And then she says, whatever. And he just drops it.

[21:45] A brilliant turn by the movie, because like when you he's our hero and he does eventually help a bunch of people.

[21:52] But we were introduced to him being like a real pest to Janine Turner.

[21:55] And so it is a funny turnabout for her to be like, yeah, I have a boyfriend.

[22:00] That's why I was trying to brush you off like you didn't have to go through all that.

[22:04] But you didn't even clarify that. She's just like, yeah, just tell my boyfriend I'm OK.

[22:09] But it's a good antidote to movies that are like, well, you know, the guy rescued her.

[22:15] So now they're together, I guess. If you're enough of a pest to the point that you will defeat a criminal organization.

[22:23] Yeah, no, it's a it's a wild, funny, fun movie.

[22:28] So that was the ambulance. Now, Larry Cohen, as as we mentioned, has a huge as a as a pretty big career of as both a writer and a director.

[22:37] And I want to talk a little bit about some of these movies, both that primarily focusing on things that he's written,

[22:42] but ideally things that he's both written and directed.

[22:44] And I've collected a collection of trailers kind of going through his career.

[22:49] Now, I think one of the big ones is the It's Alive series. Now, what have you guys seen?

[22:54] Any of the It's Alive movies? I've seen It's Alive. I've not seen any sequels to It's Alive.

[23:00] I've seen It's Alive and the two sequels. But I strangely actually maybe I've never seen the second one.

[23:05] I remember It's Alive. I know very well. And It's Alive three Island of the Alive.

[23:09] I remember very well, but it's alive. It lives again. The second one, maybe I haven't seen it, actually.

[23:13] Now, all I don't know. But why did I see the third one? Probably whatever was showing on Monster Vision.

[23:20] Obviously, the premise of this one is what if a baby but scary, right?

[23:25] And also I got to say this is a perfect example of how I feel like Larry Cohen's movies also all have banger posters.

[23:34] Yes, this is a great poster.

[23:36] Yeah, the poster for It's Alive and then the poster for It's Alive three Island of the Alive,

[23:42] which is the same baby bassinet just sitting on a beach.

[23:46] Now, this is not a visual medium. Perhaps you can say what the poster is.

[23:51] That's what I just said. It's a baby bassinet shot from behind.

[23:55] It's the exact same one that's on the cover of the original It's Alive movie.

[24:00] But we didn't even clarify that.

[24:02] So the first movie, there's a baby bassinet and there's kind of like a claw coming out of it.

[24:07] And it's got one of the all-time great movie taglines.

[24:10] There's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. And then at the bottom, it's alive.

[24:16] There's only one thing wrong with it. It's literally that it's alive because it's a monster.

[24:22] It's a perfect movie poster because it raises just as many questions as it answers.

[24:28] Yeah, like what is it?

[24:29] Yeah, what is it?

[24:30] Okay, so why don't we fire up some of these trailers?

[24:36] If you guys are familiar with the first It's Alive, we don't necessarily need to see that trailer.

[24:41] It's great, but it is mainly clips from the movie.

[24:46] The next two trailers are actually much shorter.

[24:48] Let's just do the second and third one just because you've got a lot of other trailers here.

[24:51] Okay.

[24:54] The It's Alive baby is back again, only now there are three of them.

[25:03] It's Alive Part 3, Island of the Alive. Don't see it alone.

[25:12] Okay, guys, so that's It's Alive.

[25:14] So that It's Alive again – that It Lives Again trailer is –

[25:19] It's a work of art.

[25:20] It was – that's maybe the most perfunctory trailer I've ever seen.

[25:24] Yeah.

[25:25] It just goes, hey, remember the It's Alive baby? Well, there's three of them now.

[25:29] It Lives Again, the movie.

[25:30] And then you see a cake with a little claw footprint in it. I love that.

[25:36] And then – so – but I love It's Alive 3, the trailer, because I had no idea this is where the series went.

[25:44] Yeah.

[25:45] It starts off with, hey, remember those babies?

[25:48] I mean like again, it's like, hey, those babies, where do we put them?

[25:51] We put them on an island.

[25:53] Because the crazy thing about that movie is – so the babies are growing up.

[25:56] They're older now, and they're on this island, but they still look like giant babies.

[26:00] Like they're still – they don't become grown-ups.

[26:03] Interesting.

[26:04] They're still baby monsters.

[26:05] And so just real quick, the premise of It's Alive is that it's a – that like medical experimentation has been causing babies to be born monsters, right?

[26:22] Okay.

[26:23] I'm trying to remember.

[26:24] I don't –

[26:25] Is it – I think – I thought it was Waste of some kind.

[26:27] I thought it was like – it was – I can't remember.

[26:30] I remember that they go down to like the – like they're in the sewers or viaducts or something.

[26:35] Well, eventually the baby gets in the sewers.

[26:37] The baby is using the sewers to travel around the city.

[26:40] Yes, because the baby – even though the baby is a newborn, it has an intense understanding of public municipal infrastructure.

[26:46] Yes.

[26:47] The baby has claws and sharp teeth, and what's – so what I like in that movie is that the dad is like we got to kill this thing.

[26:54] But then when he's confronted with it, he's like this is my child.

[26:58] It's kind of goofy and silly, but the second one – I don't think I have seen, but there's more of them.

[27:03] Is it from –

[27:04] And they do have – I think the later ones have Michael Moriarty or is he in the first one as well?

[27:09] I mean he seems to be a Larry Cohen.

[27:11] He's a Larry Cohen special.

[27:13] He's in a lot of – he's in Q.

[27:14] He's in a lot of Larry Cohen stuff.

[27:15] Oh, yeah.

[27:16] Yeah, apologies.

[27:17] Well, I was going to say it's the doctor who prescribed the contraceptive pills I'm reading off of Wikipedia right now.

[27:22] Oh, that's what it is.

[27:23] He is contacted by an executive of a pharmaceutical company who acknowledges that the Davis' child's mutation may have been caused by the drugs.

[27:31] Yeah, so again, we have some regular Larry Cohen touchstones.

[27:35] We have a seemingly normal thing is now scary, but also the element of like big business or whatever is conspiring against you.

[27:45] There's this conspiracy element.

[27:47] He likes having a satirical bent to things or to take on – like The Stuff is another one of his.

[27:53] Maybe we'll talk about that later.

[27:55] I don't know.

[27:56] Yeah, of course.

[27:57] Now, yeah, so that's It's Alive.

[28:00] I feel like that was kind of one of his earlier movie – one of his early hits.

[28:06] Yes, I think that was his first one that was like a big hit and the – oh, no.

[28:11] You know what?

[28:12] I wonder if Black Caesar was his first big hit.

[28:15] Yeah, Black Caesar was before It's Alive.

[28:17] Yeah, because he started more exploitation stuff, but It's Alive.

[28:21] The crazy thing about it is that Bernard Herrmann does the score for it, and it's one of his last scores.

[28:26] You listen to it, and there's so much in it that sounds like the taxi driver's score, which was his last score, which he did pretty much right afterwards.

[28:33] There's part of me that's like, how did he – how did Larry Cohen get Bernard Herrmann to do the score for it?

[28:41] It's like, well, you worked with Hitchcock.

[28:43] You're one of the all-time greats.

[28:45] You're getting towards the end of your life.

[28:47] Do you want to do this killer baby movie?

[28:49] Well, now that you've said that, I'm imagining Larry Cohen like hanging out outside the recording studio being like, hey, if you got any casts off from Taxi Driver, any tracks you're not going to use, we'll just put it in It's Alive.

[29:01] I mean that is my – that's my theory is I don't know the timeline of it, but I wonder if he was already doing Taxi Driver, and he was like, yeah, I'll take this other job.

[29:09] Here's some stuff I did for Taxi Driver.

[29:10] You can use it now.

[29:11] OK, so we're going to move on.

[29:13] Oh, and we should mention that it was – the baby was created by Rick Baker, so there's a lot of good stuff working on this, a lot of good people working on It's Alive.

[29:20] I want to go to one of his next movies.

[29:24] This is a movie called God Told Me To.

[29:26] Yeah.

[29:27] This is a nice short little trailer.

[29:28] This is what I've heard a lot about, but I've never seen it, and I've been meaning to watch it for a while.

[29:32] But this – I just – I've got to mention it again.

[29:34] If anyone's – to see that short – the short trailer for It Lives Again, it's just totally worth it for the read of the voiceover guy, which is like, hey, there's three of them now.

[29:44] Well, and it's so funny because it begins – like it shows a birthday cake.

[29:48] Monster Claus slaps the shit out of that cake.

[29:51] Then we get the voiceover.

[29:52] We see the bassinets, and then the camera just pans back down to that birthday cake and is like, what do you expect?

[30:00] Like, this is like an early version of, like, James Cameron walking in and adding an S to

[30:06] alien.

[30:07] Yeah.

[30:08] What if there's three It's Alive babies?

[30:10] I mean, they should have called it It's Alives.

[30:12] That would have been great.

[30:13] I mean, they're alive, I feel like, is too thoughtful.

[30:17] Yeah, yeah.

[30:19] Implies too much, too much work.

[30:21] Yeah.

[30:22] Okay.

[30:23] So should we watch this next trailer?

[30:24] Yeah.

[30:25] Let's fire up God Told Me To.

[30:27] God told me to.

[30:36] Whoa.

[30:39] I told him to.

[30:44] Now, Stuart, I do want to point out it was released in some theatrical markets as Demon.

[30:50] Okay.

[30:51] I have seen God Told Me To, but re-watching that trailer right now, I was like, I don't

[30:57] remember any of this.

[30:58] I don't remember.

[30:59] I can't even remember, like, I think the ultimate solution is, I don't think God is actually

[31:06] telling them to, but I forget the details.

[31:08] No, there's somewhere, it's aliens are involved somehow.

[31:11] Yeah.

[31:12] Spoiler.

[31:13] This was one that, yeah, no, I really wanted to see this one in particular, because to

[31:19] me, that's such a creepy idea.

[31:22] In Larry Cohen's book of great ideas, killers who are all just like, God told me to.

[31:29] That's alarming because it puts such a, I mean, I don't know, you don't see in movies

[31:39] that sort of distrust of religion, because there's too much fear of telling that story.

[31:46] You want a wide appeal thing, you're going to offend a big group of people maybe doing

[31:51] it that way.

[31:52] And I don't know, I find that a very effective idea.

[31:56] Well, especially because it puts it, I mean, it puts it in the title.

[32:00] Yeah.

[32:01] Now, this is a, I mean, I feel like this is an element of tying in with a rip from the

[32:06] headlines fear of mass shootings and, and killer and like serial killers who are motivated

[32:14] by religion.

[32:17] I love that it's more like grimy New York crap.

[32:21] I feel like, I feel like we lost a little something.

[32:25] We don't have as many grimy New York movies.

[32:27] I mean, New York is less grimy, certainly.

[32:29] So that's, that's why there's less grimy New York movies.

[32:31] Maybe you're not going to the good parts.

[32:34] There are fewer, I think, movies, at least at this level that are shooting, you know,

[32:41] on location too.

[32:42] There used to be.

[32:43] That's true.

[32:44] And in the, in this period too, it was also very easy to shoot a movie in New York.

[32:48] Like the city made it very easy to do so, which meant that a lower budget production

[32:52] like this could, could do it, could, could shoot in New York much more easily, easily.

[32:58] And they're also like the, so Larry Cohen was on Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal

[33:03] Podcast at least once.

[33:05] And he would talk about how they would just go do stuff.

[33:07] You know, they just like, if there's a scene with a sniper, they're not, they don't worry

[33:11] about that, especially the way he did it.

[33:12] They would just go and like shoot this scene in Times Square or whatever, and not, and

[33:16] not really worry about permits or things like that and just let normal people deal with

[33:21] the fact that this was going on, you know, is this the one where they stole a bunch of

[33:24] parade footage?

[33:25] Is that Q, like one of them, they like shot in the middle of a parade and they were just

[33:29] like, yeah, we're here.

[33:30] It's fine.

[33:31] Like, yeah, it was the way it used to be.

[33:33] It's great.

[33:34] That's looking at Wikipedia right now.

[33:35] I didn't realize that Bernard Herrmann almost scored this movie as well, but he died before

[33:40] he could.

[33:41] God told him to come home.

[33:42] According to Wikipedia, Cohen then asked composer Miklos Rosa to score the film.

[33:48] Rosa turned it down saying, God told me not to.

[33:50] Amazing.

[33:51] That's a good bit.

[33:53] I feel like this is the perfect time to take a little break and have a word from the Flophouse

[33:58] sponsors.

[33:59] Who's first?

[34:00] You are.

[34:01] Oh, perfect.

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[34:25] I can't tell you enough how huge an effect manicuring and taking care of my downstairs

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[34:38] And I also cannot stress enough how useful it is to have a shaver for down there that

[34:46] has a built-in flashlight.

[34:48] It's very useful.

[34:49] You wouldn't expect it to be.

[34:51] I was not aware that was a feature, but that makes sense.

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[35:34] Yes.

[35:35] Super scraggly.

[35:36] I'm going for my unkempt beard.

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[35:48] Nothing like a little spring cleaning in your pants.

[35:51] And now for some tonal whiplash with these ads, Mother's Day is coming up.

[35:57] Dan, Dan, a properly groomed man's body is not a bad present for some mothers.

[36:03] Hey, that's a gift for some mothers from their spouses, not from progeny.

[36:08] Come on, get your mind out of, anyway, we should probably, uh.

[36:15] I was, I was, I was just thinking people in a relationship, but sure.

[36:19] Yeah.

[36:20] Yeah.

[36:21] Anyway, Mother's Day is coming up.

[36:22] Everyone, you want to win your mother's day.

[36:26] I don't know why you have to turn into a competition between you and your siblings for your mother's

[36:31] love.

[36:32] But you know, sometimes perhaps that's the way it is.

[36:33] Well, there's only so much love, Dan.

[36:35] There's only so much love to go around.

[36:37] And why not win your mother's heart with a beautiful, I'll quote, I'll quote Hanson.

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[38:39] Hey everybody, hey listeners, we also want to promote some Flophouse stuff.

[38:44] When this episode is released, which is right now, we'll still be in the streaming window,

[38:47] which we are right now, for our current streaming video release, the Flophouse Sync Speed 2.

[38:52] This is our online live video release of a live show that we did.

[38:56] It operates like our Battlefield Earth show from last year.

[38:59] You buy a ticket.

[39:00] You can watch this show at your leisure.

[39:02] As many times as you want until May 19th.

[39:05] That's when it goes away, back to the Grey Havens, only to be enjoyed by elves and so

[39:10] forth.

[39:11] It's a super fun show.

[39:13] Stan Stewart and I did all new presentations for it.

[39:15] We talked about Speed 2, which is a super fun movie.

[39:18] It's a movie that does not work, but should work, but kind of works, but doesn't work.

[39:25] We had a lot of fun talking about it.

[39:27] Go to stagepilot.com slash speed.

[39:29] You can see the trailers to see for yourself.

[39:31] You can buy tickets for the show.

[39:32] You can buy a Flophouse VIP experience, where you get to talk to us through your computer,

[39:35] or you can buy exclusive Flophouse merchandise that's only available from StagePilot during

[39:40] the streaming window.

[39:41] If you saw the show when we performed it live last year, there's footage in this video that

[39:46] you didn't see.

[39:47] How is that possible?

[39:48] You'll have to go to stagepilot.com slash speed to find out, but you've only got until

[39:52] May 19th to see it, so don't miss your chance.

[39:55] Hey, something else you don't want to miss that's also in May, next month.

[40:00] Next, Dan, do you not know, I'll tell you.

[40:04] I got so wrapped up.

[40:05] Dan, how would you like it if the Flophouse went to England?

[40:09] I would love it.

[40:10] As a member of the Flophouse, I would love to go to England.

[40:13] Well guess what, Dan, because you're going, because we're doing two shows on the night

[40:17] of May 24th in Oxford, England, as part of the St. Audio Podcast Festival.

[40:20] Dan, were you aware of this, or is this a surprise to you?

[40:23] You know what, I like to live every moment, you know, in the moment, and the past and

[40:30] the future are sort of a gauzy haze.

[40:33] Yeah, it all kind of becomes one, right?

[40:35] Like you don't know, time is different for a Dan.

[40:38] He's kind of like the aliens from Arrival.

[40:42] Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, Dan is experiencing all moments at once and no moments at once.

[40:47] And he communicates with inkblots, like the fireworks from Dune II.

[40:51] Well, Dan, on May 24th, we'll be in Oxford, England, doing two shows at 7 p.m.

[40:55] We're talking about The Avengers, starring Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes from the 90s.

[41:00] And at 9 p.m. we'll be talking Spice World.

[41:03] And we're doing new presentations, it's going to be a really fun question and answer session,

[41:07] all the stuff you see in a Flophouse live show, but this time it's in England and we're

[41:10] going to do our best to use the right words.

[41:11] We're going to say lorry instead of truck, we're going to say bin instead of garbage

[41:15] can, we're going to say England instead of America, all the words that we're supposed

[41:19] to say for different things.

[41:20] For tickets and more information, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events, and then scroll down slightly

[41:26] to the Oxford show listing and then click on more info that will take you right to the

[41:30] ticket links for each individual show.

[41:33] You know, speaking of Dune, Arrakis is kind of a Spice World, uh, yeah, yeah, no kidding.

[41:40] Yeah, pretty much.

[41:41] That's all.

[41:42] Thanks.

[41:43] I feel like Spice, Spice, Spice, Spice World, Dan, thanks.

[41:46] I mean, I haven't seen the movie Spice World yet, but I'm assuming the, the stars, the

[41:51] Spice Girls make reference to Arrakis quite a bit.

[41:54] Yeah, yeah, probably.

[41:55] I think it's all about how baby Spice, uh, can fold, can fold space.

[41:58] Oh, that's how she can do it.

[42:01] Girl pop abilities from the Spice Melange.

[42:03] Exactly.

[42:04] Uh huh.

[42:05] Hey guys, guess what?

[42:06] We're also doing another live show this summer.

[42:09] Yay.

[42:10] What?

[42:11] In July.

[42:12] That's right.

[42:13] We're going to be in North America and France, celebrate their independence for independence

[42:16] from things.

[42:17] Okay.

[42:18] Uh, we're going to be in Boston, Massachusetts.

[42:21] Just a few weeks after Independence Day, we'll be in the cradle of independence itself.

[42:25] Boston, Massachusetts at the WBUR city space, courtesy of WBR radio.

[42:30] We have not decided as of this recording, what movie it's going to be, but it's going

[42:34] to be something exciting and something bad that we can make some jokes about.

[42:37] It's going to be super fun.

[42:39] We went to Boston years ago.

[42:40] We did some really fun shows there and we're really glad to be back all these years later.

[42:44] I hear the goodwill hunting is especially good this season.

[42:47] The goodwill population is really exploded because it has no natural predators.

[42:51] So they've stopped enforcing the limits on how much goodwill you can bag.

[42:53] I'm looking forward to taking home some goodwill pelts after the show.

[42:56] Give them to my family.

[42:57] It'll be great.

[42:58] Let's go hunting for that goodwill for tickets.

[43:01] You can either go to WBUR.org slash events slash 931089 slash the dash flop dash house

[43:08] dash live or Google the Flophouse and WBUR.

[43:12] Or perhaps maybe by the time this episode is up, Dan will have put a listing for it

[43:15] on flophousepodcast.com slash events.

[43:19] I bet he will.

[43:20] Yeah.

[43:21] That's three great, three great ways to see the Flophouse.

[43:22] Go to stagepilot.com slash speed to see us online on your computer or go to Oxford, England,

[43:28] May 24th, or go to Boston, Massachusetts, America, July 26th.

[43:34] Go to flophousepodcast.com slash events for all the information on all of those shows.

[43:39] Hi, this is Biz and this is the final season of One Fab Mother, a comedy podcast about

[43:50] parenting.

[43:51] This is going to be a year of celebrating all that makes this podcast and this community

[43:56] magical.

[43:58] I'm so glad that I found your podcast.

[44:01] I just cannot thank you enough for just being the voice of reason as I'm trying to figure

[44:07] all of this out.

[44:09] Thank you and cheers to your incredible show and the vision you have to provide this space

[44:13] for all of us.

[44:14] This is still a show about life after giving life and yes, there will be swears.

[44:19] You can find us on maximumfun.org and as always, you are doing a great job.

[44:28] All right class, tomorrow's exam will cover the science of cosmic rays, the morals of

[44:32] art forgery, and whether or not fish can drown.

[44:34] Any questions?

[44:35] Yes.

[44:36] You in the back.

[44:37] Oh, what is this?

[44:38] It's the podcast, Let's Learn Everything, where we learn about science and a bit of

[44:43] everything else.

[44:44] My name's Tom.

[44:45] I study cognitive and computer science, but I'll also be your teacher for intermediate

[44:49] emojis.

[44:50] My name's Caroline and I did my master's in biodiversity conservation and I'll be teaching

[44:54] you intro to things the British Museum stole.

[44:56] My name's Ella.

[44:58] I have a PhD in stem cell biology, so obviously I'll be teaching you the history of fan fiction.

[45:02] Class meets every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

[45:05] So do I still get credit for this?

[45:07] No.

[45:08] No.

[45:09] No.

[45:10] Obviously not.

[45:11] No.

[45:12] It's a podcast.

[45:13] And now back to our show with your host, Stuart Wellington.

[45:16] Hey, this is Stuart Wellington and we are talking about the films of Schlockmeister,

[45:23] Larry Cohen.

[45:25] We've talked about a couple of good ones.

[45:27] Now we're going to talk a little bit about Cue the Winged Serpent.

[45:29] Now I feel like you guys are both familiar with this movie.

[45:33] I've seen this one.

[45:34] Yeah.

[45:35] I feel like we almost don't need to pull up the trailer, although if you haven't seen

[45:38] it yet, you should check out the trailer at home, folks.

[45:41] So Cue the Winged Serpent.

[45:42] This is a star as a Carradine.

[45:45] Which one?

[45:46] Well, it starts Michael Moriarty, basically, right?

[45:49] Yeah.

[45:50] But like one of the one of the things that I love about the trailer is it highlights

[45:53] the Carradine-ness of it.

[45:54] Oh, does it?

[45:55] Yes.

[45:57] Who is, I argue, I think at the time, probably a bigger star than Michael Moriarty.

[46:02] Am I being an asshole saying that?

[46:04] No, no.

[46:05] David Carradine had been the star of a television show.

[46:07] Yeah.

[46:08] And the premise is that a giant flying dinosaur thing is flying around eating people in New

[46:15] York that was summoned by a cult, right?

[46:17] Is that the-

[46:18] Oh, that Carradine.

[46:19] Okay.

[46:20] There's so many Carradines running around.

[46:21] There's only the three Carradines.

[46:25] So yes, this is David Carradine, brother of Keith, son of John.

[46:31] What I always found funny about this movie is, so there's a giant dragon that was brought

[46:36] into existence because of an Aztec cult, right?

[46:38] Yeah.

[46:39] Cue stands for Quetzalcoatl.

[46:40] Or however you-

[46:41] The Quetzalcoatl is, I believe, a feathered serpent.

[46:44] And the monster in Cue has no feathers.

[46:46] He's very much a reptilian dragon type, which I think shows you how accurate the movie is

[46:51] striving to be at all times.

[46:53] But it's a weird combination of movie because it's a very schlocky, kind of cheap looking

[47:00] monster movie.

[47:01] I mean, there's great stop motion effects that I love in it.

[47:03] Yeah.

[47:04] But in the middle of it, Michael Moriarty's performance, he's taking it so seriously at

[47:08] all times.

[47:09] Yes.

[47:10] He's really performing the hell out of this movie when he really doesn't have to.

[47:13] And it feels so often as if you are ping ponging between two movies.

[47:16] One about kind of like a low level crime figure with nowhere to run, and one about a stop

[47:22] motion dragon that is biting people's heads off.

[47:24] You know, was this a Samuel Arcoff production or whatever?

[47:28] Yes, it was.

[47:29] Yeah.

[47:30] Because, okay, because I remember reading, and perhaps you've read this anecdote too,

[47:35] like Roger Ebert talked about running into Arcoff at like a film festival and being like,

[47:40] Cue, what a surprise.

[47:41] Like all that schlock.

[47:42] And in the middle, this great method performance from Michael Moriarty.

[47:46] And Arcoff said, the schlock was my idea.

[47:50] Oh, that's great.

[47:52] Yeah.

[47:53] So this, I feel like this is a fun one and it's a super weird one, but it still has all,

[47:57] it has Larry Cohen's fingerprints all over it.

[47:59] Yeah.

[48:00] Yes.

[48:01] This is like, I feel like this is Larry Cohen when he's, when he's really doing what he

[48:03] does best, which is like throwing together a mess of a movie that is surprising you all

[48:08] the time.

[48:09] You know, just from moment to moment is not what you necessarily expect from it.

[48:14] Relentlessly desires to entertain you.

[48:16] Yes.

[48:17] Does everything in its power.

[48:18] Yeah.

[48:19] So the next movie I want to talk about is one I definitely haven't seen, but I had to

[48:23] watch the trailer for, it's called Full Moon High from 1981.

[48:28] I think he just wrote it.

[48:29] I don't think he, I don't think he directed this one.

[48:32] But this came out, I got to point out, came out four years before Teen Wolf.

[48:36] All right.

[48:37] Interesting.

[48:38] I'll buy it.

[48:39] Yeah.

[48:40] I got to see this trailer too.

[48:41] Cause I haven't seen, I don't know this movie.

[48:42] Full Moon High, it's not just another teenage werewolf movie, it's a fight out on the town.

[48:59] So Full Moon High is clearly, yeah, it's like a comedy werewolf teen movie.

[49:03] Now this is years before Teen Wolf, but it is years after I was a teenage werewolf, which

[49:08] is the movie that Teen Wolf is also pulling from.

[49:10] But I will say, Larry Cohen, sometimes ahead of his time, one of the things that, one of

[49:15] his legacies also is that he was one of the people that sued 20th Century Fox and Alan

[49:21] Moore when League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came out saying that they had stolen from

[49:26] his script, which was called Cast of Characters, and then hired Alan Moore to write a comic

[49:31] series using that concept so that they could then base the movie on that.

[49:35] And the studio ended up settling and Alan Moore was so pissed off about that.

[49:39] That's one of the reasons he removed his name from that movie, was because he was,

[49:43] I mean, it's also a bad movie, but that he felt like he needed his day in court to prove

[49:47] that he would never be like a hired gun stealing someone else's idea.

[49:51] If he's going to steal someone else's idea, he's going to mention it in the comic, just

[49:54] like he did in Watchmen when he ripped off that Outer Limits episode.

[49:57] He mentions the Outer Limits episode in the comic.

[50:00] So Larry Cohen got Alan Moore mad at him, which is not that hard.

[50:03] Yeah.

[50:04] I wanted to issue a correction too, I looked it up, Larry Cohen did direct this as well

[50:09] as writing it.

[50:10] Okay.

[50:11] This is a full Cohen.

[50:12] Which, now, Larry Cohen doesn't do a lot of comedy, right?

[50:17] Well, yeah, not like straight comedy like this appears to be.

[50:20] Like this is really in the zany mode.

[50:22] Yeah.

[50:23] I mean, I would say most of his movies have a comic edge at some point or another.

[50:28] Yeah, of course.

[50:30] I feel like he often couches comedy, like there's comedy and then he also manages to

[50:36] get a little bit of, you know, like cultural critique satire in there.

[50:41] So here he's critiquing the high school reliance on werewolves to win sports games.

[50:46] Yeah.

[50:47] It looks very silly.

[50:48] I thought it was, it felt like such an outlier when looking at his filmography that I'm like,

[50:54] we have to talk about this a little bit.

[50:55] I mean, I definitely like ran to my letterbox to see what people are saying about full moon

[50:59] high and like whether I should add this to my watch list.

[51:02] It's a it's a lower rating.

[51:04] It's a 2.6 overall and letterbox tends to be people like me who are exuberant about

[51:10] movies.

[51:11] So it's a warning sign, but I'm still curious.

[51:14] I'm still curious.

[51:15] You should look up, Dan.

[51:16] I think you should look up the poster for full moon high if you haven't already, which

[51:20] is.

[51:21] Is there a butt involved?

[51:22] Is it a full moon?

[51:23] No.

[51:24] It's very much a it's very much a sub Jack Davis caricatures chasing each other.

[51:30] Yeah.

[51:31] I love it.

[51:32] Where it is a woman with a knife is chasing Adam Arkin as he turned into a wolf.

[51:37] And it's and he has I was a teenage werewolf written on his shirt.

[51:40] So they're reminding you of the other movie.

[51:42] But it's not just a woman.

[51:45] She's wearing a halter top and Daisy Dukes, of course, because this is a, you know, a

[51:51] And it even says on the tagline is he he's today's teenage werewolf.

[51:57] Only the rules have changed.

[51:58] I wonder if they're aware what the rules are.

[52:00] I don't know what the rules are.

[52:01] What I like also is at the corner in this one, at least there are a couple of bats flying

[52:05] in the air, which doesn't make sense for a werewolf.

[52:07] Yeah.

[52:08] Yeah.

[52:09] I guess it's just a spooky thing, you know, just a leftover on the on the page.

[52:13] Yeah.

[52:14] Look, we were making a poster for a Dracula movie.

[52:16] It just has a moon and bats on it.

[52:18] Just make it a werewolf.

[52:19] No one's going to ask about the bats.

[52:20] It's fine.

[52:21] So speaking of satires, I think the next movie we'll talk about is something I think we have

[52:25] all definitely seen.

[52:26] And that's the stuff, right?

[52:28] Yes.

[52:29] This stuff, which is like full on kind of silly.

[52:32] Yeah, I would say that the ambulance, maybe I just had such a great time in the movies

[52:38] or whatever.

[52:39] But like that may have edged out the stuff.

[52:42] But that stuff was my previous favorite Larry Cohen movie that I'd seen.

[52:46] Elliot, do you have any do you have a history with the stuff?

[52:51] Just I mean, just having seen it, I wasn't involved in the making of any books about

[52:55] it.

[52:56] So you own stuff.

[52:57] And I do own stuff.

[52:58] I do.

[52:59] All right.

[53:00] I'm familiar with George Carlin stuff routine, which is not about the movie, the stuff.

[53:04] But but it's I mean, Oreos have double of it.

[53:08] That stuff with one F, Dan.

[53:09] That's a different thing.

[53:10] That's stuff.

[53:11] That's a different thing.

[53:12] Yeah.

[53:13] No, but I'm familiar with the stuff.

[53:14] That's one of the few film appearances by Clara Peller from Wendy's commercials.

[53:19] Now, for for our listeners who may not be familiar with this stuff, we should clarify

[53:23] that the stuff is a sort of a delicious goop that looks kind of like a marshmallow fluff

[53:28] kind of.

[53:29] Yeah.

[53:30] Yeah.

[53:31] But it is insidious.

[53:32] It's a thing that like kills you, turns into a blob that turns into sort of a blob.

[53:38] And then another great, weird performance by Michael Moriarty in it.

[53:42] Yeah.

[53:43] So we're in a cowboy hat and it was is it the stuff where one of the taglines was enough

[53:50] is never enough at one point, which.

[53:52] But maybe.

[53:53] Yeah.

[53:54] I think so.

[53:55] Yeah.

[53:56] They start selling this white stuff everywhere and people love it.

[53:58] And then it's all the white stuff.

[53:59] The movie is that the first astronauts, you know, step into space, very white.

[54:04] All of them.

[54:05] Yeah.

[54:06] That's wasn't that a weird owl parody as well?

[54:08] Based on the right stuff by New Kids on the Block.

[54:12] I don't know if that was a real weird owl one or just or one that went around.

[54:16] Maybe it was.

[54:17] I don't know about Oreos.

[54:18] Right.

[54:19] Yeah.

[54:20] Maybe it is.

[54:21] Dan, you'll put our researchers on that.

[54:22] Yeah.

[54:23] Get our researchers.

[54:24] I'm looking up the stuff.

[54:25] The thing I find kind of fascinating about the stuff is that by the start of the movie,

[54:29] this stuff is already super popular, right?

[54:33] I don't remember.

[54:34] I feel like it opens and the stuff is already this like popular everyday part of life that

[54:40] is that we learn as the movie goes on becomes more terrifying.

[54:46] But the best stuff about the best parts are like the commercials and things like that.

[54:49] Right.

[54:50] It's great.

[54:51] And also Paul Sorvino as the like the anti-stuff.

[54:52] Yeah.

[54:53] Yeah.

[54:54] That's great, too.

[54:55] And yeah, again, Michael Moriarty just doing weird shit.

[55:01] It's definitely a movie that I remember seeing the cover for and the the or the poster was

[55:05] very scary.

[55:06] A guy's face is all like melty off and stuff.

[55:08] It's coming out of his eyes.

[55:09] Yeah.

[55:10] I would like to read the tagline for the stuff, which is one of these old movie poster taglines

[55:16] at several paragraphs.

[55:17] Yeah.

[55:18] Bear with me.

[55:19] But it goes like this.

[55:21] If you see this stuff in stores, call the police.

[55:25] If you have it in your home, don't touch it.

[55:27] Get out.

[55:29] The stuff is a product of nature, a deadly living organism.

[55:33] It is addictive and destructive.

[55:35] It can overcome your mind and take over your body and nothing can stop it.

[55:40] The stuff.

[55:41] And the thing is so much information, it's so much information and it is not necessary

[55:45] because stuff and you see a guy and there's goop coming out of his eyes and his mouth.

[55:49] You're like, I guess I get a pretty good idea of what the stuff is referring to, you know?

[55:53] Yeah.

[55:54] Like I probably shouldn't touch it.

[55:55] Oh, that's the stuff.

[55:56] OK.

[55:57] Oh, that's the stuff.

[55:58] I mean, I don't know if seeing that picture will indicate that that is found in nature.

[56:02] Yes, that's true.

[56:03] You don't know it's a deadly living organism.

[56:05] Arguably, that should be a reveal of some kind.

[56:07] Yeah, that should be a reveal.

[56:08] Yeah.

[56:09] If the poster's telling you maybe, maybe that's not cool.

[56:11] OK.

[56:12] Oh, that's the thing.

[56:13] The other tagline was, are you eating it or is it eating you?

[56:15] That was the other one.

[56:17] Yeah.

[56:18] That's a good tagline.

[56:19] That's a good.

[56:20] That's what you put on the poster.

[56:21] OK.

[56:22] Not this long epic poem about what the stuff is, you know?

[56:23] Skip over a return to Salem's lot considered to be kind of a wacky one.

[56:28] Yeah.

[56:29] I've never seen it.

[56:30] I honestly, I've not even seen the original Salem's lot, which everyone speaks well of.

[56:35] But I also haven't seen it.

[56:36] Yeah.

[56:37] I tried to watch it.

[56:38] I'm like, this TV pacing of the time isn't working for me.

[56:41] I can't.

[56:42] So let's talk about the Maniac Cop series, which is, again, it's going on with Larry

[56:46] Cohen's idea, like with the stuff it's like, what if a marshmallow fluff was scary?

[56:51] In this case, he's like, what if a cop was a maniac?

[56:54] And I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, Larry, but let me show you some statistics that are kind

[56:57] of disturbing.

[56:58] I figured this was going to come up at some point.

[57:00] Yeah.

[57:01] And I want to push back just slightly on the idea that Larry Cohen's thing is what if this

[57:06] but scary?

[57:07] Because that could that could describe many horror films.

[57:09] That's fair.

[57:11] But I feel like he has a way of like finding specific like there's this specific like close

[57:15] at hand innocuous thing that people would look for comfort.

[57:19] He's good at finding like a like a nerve that can be hit in it to make this is the

[57:24] scary thing that maybe you that you didn't expect.

[57:26] Yeah, that's true.

[57:27] Uh, have you guys seen the Maniac Cop movies?

[57:30] I definitely have seen at least Maniac Cop.

[57:33] I don't remember it that well, but I have seen it.

[57:35] OK, well, part two is the best one.

[57:37] Uh, you guys, why don't we fire up this trailer for the first one to watch either the Maniac

[57:42] Cop?

[57:43] Yeah, Maniac Cop trailer is great, OK?

[57:51] Maniac Cop, no, Maniac Cop, Maniac Cop now, obviously, I'm sure you guys notice it stars

[58:04] one of my favorite actors of all time, Tom Atkins.

[58:08] Yeah, well, yes, we will address Tom Atkins.

[58:12] But also it starts Robert Zadar.

[58:13] There's a part at which the narrator says, like, you don't remember his face or something

[58:19] like that.

[58:20] What?

[58:21] The Maniac Cop is Robert Zadar.

[58:22] If there's one thing memorable, you will remember his face.

[58:24] He's a distinctive looking man.

[58:26] He's a very it's his face is his main thing.

[58:29] There's also the fact that they're like no one in the trailer like no one knows his name.

[58:32] No one knows his face.

[58:33] And I'm like, then how do they know he's a cop?

[58:35] Wait a minute.

[58:36] Yeah.

[58:37] Are those victims being like, are they finding like cop juice on the victims?

[58:42] Yeah.

[58:43] They check the scat.

[58:44] But I apologize.

[58:45] Back to Tom Atkins, of course, Tom Atkins, Tom Atkins.

[58:49] I love the guy, you know, from Night of the Creeps, from Halloween three, three season

[58:55] of The Witch.

[58:56] Yeah, he's just so fun.

[58:58] I love that guy.

[58:59] And of course, it's got Bruce Campbell in it.

[59:02] Everybody loves such a baby face in it.

[59:04] He's a baby face.

[59:05] Bruce Campbell.

[59:06] You got Robert Zadar.

[59:07] I feel like Maniac Top Two gets a little bit crazier and also features another great Robert.

[59:14] Robert Davi.

[59:15] What a cavalcade of great like so many Roberts, so many Roberts, you know, Davi versus Zadar.

[59:23] Yeah, but I again, this is you know, it's it's it's grimy New York.

[59:29] It's leaning into some classic.

[59:32] Leaning into like corruption and the idea of a conspiracy like City Hall is like trying

[59:39] to there's a certain amount of protection going around protecting the identity of this

[59:43] maniac cop and then trying to find him.

[59:46] It's great.

[59:47] Thumbs up to maniac cop.

[59:49] So good.

[59:50] They made three.

[59:51] I like that we're getting kind of a unified theory of Larry Cohen throughout this thing.

[59:54] Yeah.

[59:55] I want to point out this is a slightly different grimy New York, too.

[59:59] So that's what's exciting.

[1:00:00] about getting into the Maniac Cop era is that God told me and some of the other ones, those

[1:00:05] are 70s Grime in New York.

[1:00:08] This is late 80s, early 90s Grime in New York, so this is the very last days of Grime in

[1:00:12] New York, and it's just got a different feel to it, you know, that 80s Grime.

[1:00:16] The ambulance has kind of that same vibe.

[1:00:19] The ambulance came out in 1990, I think Maniac Cop was a year or two before that?

[1:00:24] Yeah, yeah.

[1:00:25] Maniac Cop was 88, according to this, yeah.

[1:00:29] I would have placed it earlier if I didn't know it was as late as 88.

[1:00:31] Late as 88, that was the tagline, Maniac Cop, late as 88.

[1:00:36] Didn't make much sense at the time, but now, helpful.

[1:00:38] But now, in retrospect, for this conversation, it does make sense, yeah.

[1:00:42] Again, I feel like of the Maniac Cop movies, I feel like Maniac Cop 2 is probably the most

[1:00:48] fun of them.

[1:00:49] I'm gonna put it on my list.

[1:00:53] But we're gonna start jumping ahead.

[1:00:55] So we've talked a little bit about that era of Larry Cohen.

[1:00:59] I wanna talk about, this is kind of a smaller one, and this isn't a feature film, I wanna

[1:01:04] talk about the episode of Masters of Horror he directed, the episode Pick Me Up, which

[1:01:10] was actually one of my favorites, and certainly my favorite, again, it's a Larry Cohen thing,

[1:01:14] so it's got a big premise, but I think this premise is fucking great.

[1:01:19] Why don't we watch that trailer?

[1:01:21] You offer me a ride?

[1:01:24] That's the way it's supposed to go.

[1:01:26] Only question is which one of you is the bigger psycho?

[1:01:30] I'll tell you one thing I miss from that trailer, it's a fun trailer, I miss that voiceover

[1:01:40] narration already, that we're now in the era when they don't do voiceovers in trailers

[1:01:44] as much.

[1:01:45] Yeah, and I feel like that would've punched it up.

[1:01:48] So the premise of this is that a woman is on a bus that breaks down, Country Road, and

[1:01:54] she ends up getting caught.

[1:01:55] And Country Road is not taking her home, because the bus is broken down.

[1:01:58] And she gets caught between two rival serial killers.

[1:02:02] You have Wheeler, played by Michael Moriarty, who is a truck driver who picks up people

[1:02:06] and kills them, and Walker, who is a hitchhiker who gets picked up and kills the people who

[1:02:11] picks him up.

[1:02:12] And I think that's such a fun, silly premise.

[1:02:14] Yes.

[1:02:15] Yeah, that's great.

[1:02:16] I remember this well, of course, because we watched this back in the day, and we were

[1:02:21] transfixed.

[1:02:22] That was like a regular Stuart and Dan weekly thing, was us watching that show.

[1:02:25] Yes, true.

[1:02:26] We would get together to watch episodes of Masters of Horror as they came out.

[1:02:29] And there's a line reading in here that we reference a lot, because it was so goofball,

[1:02:36] where it's Michael Moriarty passing, it's an advertisement for a sideshow or whatever,

[1:02:42] like it says Monster Babies, or Baby Monster, and he goes, Baby Monster, you ever see one?

[1:02:50] Freak me out, or freak me out, or something like that.

[1:02:53] It's a weird-ass reading, I guess a reference to It's Alive, kind of, too.

[1:03:00] Yeah.

[1:03:01] Yeah.

[1:03:02] Yeah, it's fun.

[1:03:03] I feel like that whole, I mean, there's, not to do a deep dive in Masters of Horror, which

[1:03:09] would be a completely different podcast mini, but there's definitely some gems that came

[1:03:14] out of there, and I like this one quite a bit.

[1:03:17] And it's also, it came out pretty late, like this is a pretty late career Larry Cowan,

[1:03:21] but I still think it's a lot of fun.

[1:03:23] And then, I just want to wrap it up, the next three movies that we can talk about relatively

[1:03:29] quickly, I mainly think are funny, because these are all movies that he wrote, but you

[1:03:34] have Phone Booth, starring Colin Farrell, of course, Cellular, and then a movie called

[1:03:40] Messages Deleted, and I feel like it's so funny that it's three movies in a row that

[1:03:45] are all about phones.

[1:03:46] I mean, it makes sense for an elderly man, at this point, at that point, he was an aging

[1:03:50] man to be like, ugh, these phones, wait a minute, there's something there, hold on.

[1:03:56] One of the things that's kind of great about Phone Booth is that it is set in New York,

[1:04:00] which is, again, this is a Larry Cowan thing, and also, that it, from when he originally

[1:04:06] wrote the screenplay to when it was made, Phone Booth didn't exist anymore, so they

[1:04:11] had to make, they had to change the script to make it be like, this is the last Phone

[1:04:14] Booth in New York.

[1:04:15] Yeah.

[1:04:16] The, Phone Booth is a movie that, I remember, I haven't seen it since it was in the theaters,

[1:04:21] which is, you know, what, 10, 12 years ago now, but, I remember, I remember, like, it

[1:04:27] must be more than that.

[1:04:28] It was like 20 years ago.

[1:04:30] Well, for the purpose of my self-esteem, let's say it was five years ago, but I remember

[1:04:36] watching it, like, it's a, oh, it was like 20 years ago, it's a, it's a really, it's

[1:04:41] a well-constructed, like, thriller, you know, it's a, there's some parts in it that are

[1:04:47] super tense just because the character is so overwhelmed with stuff going on.

[1:04:51] The motivation of the bad guy in it, I always thought was pretty weak, like, it's pretty,

[1:04:56] they're like, admit to your wife that you once had lustful thoughts for someone you

[1:04:59] work for.

[1:05:00] And it's like, that's, wait, that's the crime he committed that justifies, like, his, his

[1:05:04] being tested by a psycho, you know?

[1:05:06] I feel like that's, that's, that's similar, that reminds me of some of Larry Cohen's other

[1:05:11] work, and that it's like, there's, there's a rock-solid, like, premise, but, like, some

[1:05:17] of the motivation might not make the most sense, but that's okay.

[1:05:20] Well, you've seen movies before.

[1:05:21] I wanna-

[1:05:22] Yeah, so, you know what, you're not really watching it to find out why the guy is being

[1:05:24] trapped in a Phone Booth.

[1:05:26] You just wanna see him get trapped in a Phone Booth, you know?

[1:05:27] Yeah, I wanna briefly shine-

[1:05:28] It's screenwriting, you get your guy trapped in a Phone Booth, you throw rocks at him,

[1:05:32] then you let him out of the Phone Booth.

[1:05:33] Also, I love the fact that this is a movie that posits a world where Colin Farrell could

[1:05:36] play a guy named Stu, you know?

[1:05:40] I wanna briefly shine a light on Cellular, which was directed by David R. Ellis, who

[1:05:45] did Final Destination 2 and Snakes on a Plane, and, uh, top-billed cast, listen to this,

[1:05:50] Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham, William H. Macy, uh-

[1:05:54] Bang.

[1:05:55] Uh, and I remember it being pretty fun, too, like, Phone Booth got the attention, and then

[1:06:00] Cellular came out afterwards, and they're like, oh, phones again.

[1:06:02] Another phone movie, huh?

[1:06:03] But I remember it being, like, a fun little movie, but I- what is Messages Deleted?

[1:06:08] That is what- the one that I have no context for.

[1:06:10] I also wanna point out that Cellular was also, I think it's a, uh, there's a remake that-

[1:06:16] Really?

[1:06:17] Yeah, there's a, uh, it was a-

[1:06:20] Tubular.

[1:06:21] Tubular?

[1:06:22] Like, the bells?

[1:06:23] Tubular.

[1:06:24] Well, two-ular, then there was three-ular, and then-

[1:06:27] Um, yeah, it's a movie called Connected, which I believe is- I wanna say it's Korean.

[1:06:35] Uh, it's from Hong Kong.

[1:06:37] I'm reading-

[1:06:38] Hong Kong is Chinese.

[1:06:39] The, uh, the IMDb synopsis for Messages Deleted, a screenwriting teacher is forced to live

[1:06:46] out the plot of a screenplay idea he stole from a student who now seeks revenge.

[1:06:52] Love this.

[1:06:53] Love it.

[1:06:55] And, uh, Larry Cohen was just like, what- what's something that I would relate to if

[1:06:58] I was in that situatio- like, the idea of writing a movie about a screenwriting teacher

[1:07:02] is very funny.

[1:07:03] And I do like-

[1:07:04] For someone who's been in the movie just for a long time.

[1:07:05] It stars Matthew Lillard and Debra Unger, and it's directed by a guy named Rob Cohen,

[1:07:11] which I'm like, is that Rob Cohen's, like, B-movie alter ego?

[1:07:15] Yeah, I'm looking- it- this appears to be his only directorial credit.

[1:07:18] He was- he's got other- he's like-

[1:07:20] That's what I'm saying.

[1:07:22] Production assistant on Space Hunter Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, uh, a writer of a few

[1:07:28] things.

[1:07:29] He's a second year director for a lot of stuff, though.

[1:07:31] Okay, well maybe we'll, uh, maybe we'll have to track that down for a future Miss That

[1:07:35] Movie.

[1:07:36] So we did a little, uh, we did a little career, uh, retrospective, kind of, uh, with probably

[1:07:41] about as much attention as, uh, I-

[1:07:43] I mean, this is great.

[1:07:45] Great stuff, Stuart.

[1:07:46] Sorry, I don't know why I interrupted your wrap-up to say that, but-

[1:07:49] No, I like this sport.

[1:07:50] That's the thing.

[1:07:51] I don't know why I came to you guys is so that you guys could tell me that I'm great.

[1:07:54] You know, validation's really helpful, guys.

[1:07:57] Um, so, uh, any final thoughts?

[1:08:00] Uh, does this make- does looking through his career make you want to revisit any of his

[1:08:05] older movies?

[1:08:06] Does it make you want to, uh, does it make you- does it make you miss things from older

[1:08:12] movies?

[1:08:13] I mean, for, uh, the listener at home, I'm not, uh, lying when I'm saying I'm adding

[1:08:18] stuff to my watch list.

[1:08:19] I have Letterboxd up.

[1:08:21] I'm looking at Messages Deleted, which is actually, you know, got a higher score than

[1:08:25] Full Moon High, so maybe that's worth, uh, checking out.

[1:08:27] Huh, interesting.

[1:08:28] Got a high- wait, got a higher score than Full Moon High?

[1:08:31] I know.

[1:08:32] Hold on.

[1:08:33] I thought- what's funny is I- until the end of that sentence, I thought you were gonna

[1:08:35] be- it was gonna be, like, a surprise, like, got a higher, uh, rating than, like, Phone

[1:08:40] Booth or something.

[1:08:41] I'm like, oh, I don't know.

[1:08:42] The Citizen Kane.

[1:08:43] Yeah, I know.

[1:08:44] It's actually a number one on the Sight and Sound's top ten list, Messages Deleted.

[1:08:47] Amazing.

[1:08:48] I mean, I guess the- In the Mood for Love just came in right under

[1:08:51] it.

[1:08:52] Sorry, Wong.

[1:08:53] Not this time.

[1:08:54] I guess the thing it gives me nostalgia for is something that we've talked about already

[1:08:59] a lot is, there was, you know, like, there was an earlier era where there were these

[1:09:05] movies, these scrappy, lower-budget movies with clever premises that could be in movie

[1:09:12] theaters, whereas now, you just don't get stuff, filmmaking at that level, that goes

[1:09:17] out into movies a lot, unless it's an indie that, you know, I don't know, picks up enough

[1:09:22] festival interest that some distributor will put it up.

[1:09:26] I mean, at best, a movie like that would now end- the modern equivalent of that will end

[1:09:30] up maybe on a streamer that you could possibly find if someone else recommends it to you

[1:09:35] or if you stumble on it, but, yeah, the era when movie theaters- when towns had multiple

[1:09:41] movie theaters, often, and those movies- or in a city like New York, there were tons of

[1:09:45] them and they needed movies to fill those screens.

[1:09:47] And so, you could- you had the- you had, not just the access to, but, like, the knowledge

[1:09:53] of these movies.

[1:09:56] Like you could open up the newspaper and see an ad, or at least the-

[1:10:00] for like Maniac Cop or Cue the Winged Serpent

[1:10:03] or something like that,

[1:10:04] and then go to your movie theater and see it.

[1:10:05] And it's the stuff-

[1:10:06] You take the newspaper and you're like,

[1:10:08] I want this, I want this one.

[1:10:10] The one with the bassinet.

[1:10:12] I wanna see what's got that weird hand on that bassinet.

[1:10:17] But like we talked before,

[1:10:19] there's greater access to this type of stuff now,

[1:10:21] but it's strangely harder to find.

[1:10:24] Like, and it does make me wish

[1:10:26] that there was more of that world

[1:10:27] where the kind of, you have like that,

[1:10:30] let's say there's four tiers of movies.

[1:10:32] There's like your top big budget movies

[1:10:34] that are meant to be big hits.

[1:10:36] Then there are the like smaller budget movies

[1:10:38] that studios make.

[1:10:39] Then there's like the high independence

[1:10:41] where often it's schlock,

[1:10:42] and that's where you've got like Roger Corman

[1:10:44] or maybe Larry Cohen.

[1:10:45] And then under that is grindhouse kind of crap,

[1:10:47] you know, like the sewage.

[1:10:49] And-

[1:10:50] Oh, well, that's, there's some good movies there.

[1:10:54] There are good movies, that's true, that's true.

[1:10:56] That's fair.

[1:10:57] But now it feels like those middle two levels

[1:11:00] don't really exist anymore.

[1:11:01] The kind of middle budget big studio movies

[1:11:04] and the higher budget kind of schlocky independence.

[1:11:07] You see either have, you're either watching Argyle

[1:11:10] or you're watching some snuff movie

[1:11:12] someone made in their house

[1:11:13] that's supposed to look like found footage.

[1:11:16] And there's very little in between, it feels like.

[1:11:18] Yeah, okay.

[1:11:19] Obviously what I'm saying is a huge generality

[1:11:22] and overstatement.

[1:11:23] It's not really fully true.

[1:11:25] It's just the way it feels at the moment, you know.

[1:11:27] Yeah.

[1:11:28] Okay, well, I think this has been a lot of fun.

[1:11:30] Thanks for going on this trip with me.

[1:11:32] Again, if you wanna watch any of the trailers

[1:11:34] of the movies we've talked about,

[1:11:35] you can find most of them on IMDb.

[1:11:38] I will, of course, take these links

[1:11:41] and put them in the show notes for this to say,

[1:11:46] Allie, sorry, Stuart,

[1:11:47] I keep calling you by each other's names today.

[1:11:49] Like what am I, my mom?

[1:11:50] Well, no, Stuart and I had a,

[1:11:52] Stuart and I had a call me by your name situation.

[1:11:54] So it's okay, we call each other by each other's names.

[1:11:56] Yeah.

[1:11:57] Oh, man.

[1:11:57] No, I will.

[1:11:59] I haven't seen that movie yet.

[1:11:59] Fan art, fan art, please, fan art.

[1:12:02] I haven't seen it yet.

[1:12:03] That's the one where they pee in a fountain

[1:12:04] and they switch bodies, right?

[1:12:05] Yeah.

[1:12:06] There is a prominently placed fountain in one scene.

[1:12:09] What I was trying to say was Stuart,

[1:12:11] of course, compiled this list.

[1:12:13] So the work has been done.

[1:12:14] I will just put these links in the show notes.

[1:12:17] Okay, so thanks again for joining us.

[1:12:20] This has been hopefully not too much of a pain to edit

[1:12:23] for Mr. Alexander Smith.

[1:12:25] You can find him as HowlDotty on various social media.

[1:12:28] He's the best and he does a lot of great work for us here

[1:12:30] at the Flophouse.

[1:12:32] You can find us and other great shows

[1:12:35] over at MaximumFun.com.

[1:12:37] Maximum Fun is our network.

[1:12:38] They put out a lot of great comedy and culture podcasts.

[1:12:40] Dot org, my mistake, sorry.

[1:12:43] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:12:45] I've been Dan McCoy, the dot org corrector.

[1:12:49] I'm Elliot Kalin, just amazed that Dan

[1:12:51] is still using his superpower

[1:12:53] of correcting dot org dot com mix-ups.

[1:12:56] He said to me, I have this power now.

[1:12:58] I'm gonna be a hero.

[1:12:58] And I said, what situations is that gonna be useful in?

[1:13:00] And yet it continues to be useful all the time.

[1:13:03] Uh-uh, I think you're mean dot pizza.

[1:13:07] Whenever internet domain names are mispronounced,

[1:13:09] missaid, misspoken, the dot org corrector swoops in.

[1:13:12] Okay, whatever, bye.

[1:13:16] Okay, whatever.

[1:13:17] I'm out of here.

[1:13:21] Bye.

[1:13:24] Maximum Fun, a worker owned network

[1:13:26] of artist's owns shows.

[1:13:28] Supported directly by you.

FH Mini 102 - The Films of Larry Cohen

Transcript

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