FH Mini 91 – Best Horror Villains, Part 2

Stuart Wellington

[0:00] Hey! Yeah, that's right. This is the Flophouse Mini, a mini episode of the Flophouse Podcast,

[0:10] a podcast where we normally watch a bad movie then talk about it, but instead today we're

[0:13] going to be doing something a little bit different because it's a mini. We're doing part two

[0:17] of our official 2023 horror movie villain power rankings. That's right, we're ranking

[0:23] our horror movie villains, all 14 of them on three different categories, scariness,

[0:30] star power, and lucky dip. If you haven't listened to part one, I'd just go back one or two entries

[0:36] in our little catalog and I'd listen to that bad boy first. To introduce ourselves-

Elliott Kalan

[0:40] I think we got through how many? I think we got through three villains in the first part.

Stuart Wellington

[0:43] We did half of it. We only have 11 left.

[0:46] Good thing Elliot's in charge of the math part of this show. I am your host, Stuart Wellington,

[0:52] and joining me are- Dan McCoy.

[0:55] And Elliot Kalin.

[0:56] Yep, and together we make the Flophouse, a podcast about movies. So, last time we ranked-

[1:03] And three-fifths of Captain Planet. Sorry.

[1:06] Yep.

[1:08] Worth it. 100% worth it.

[1:11] When we combine, he's missing one arm and most of his torso.

[1:15] Yeah.

[1:17] But you know what? That's better than nothing.

[1:19] Better than nothing.

[1:20] Better than no Captain Planet.

[1:21] Yeah.

[1:21] Yep, he looks kind of like Oro from Street Fighter 3, but we'll talk about that later.

[1:26] Okay.

[1:26] Yeah.

[1:26] Is that one of the horror monsters that we're ranking?

[1:29] Yes, Oro from Street Fighter 3. Yeah. I mean, Street Fighter 3 does have some good monsters,

[1:34] but I think the game you're thinking of is Darkstalkers, the Capcom fighting game that features all classic movie monsters.

[1:41] What was I thinking?

[1:43] You were thinking of it.

[1:44] Yes, you were. Deal with it.

[1:45] I believe you have a- A couple years ago, you did a Morrigan cosplay. Somebody just Google that. I'm sure you can find Elliot dressed as Morrigan from Darkstalkers.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Captain Morrigan from the liquor brand.

Stuart Wellington

[1:59] Oh, man, that's the mashup that everybody's dying for. Okay. Two very popular brands. Okay. So last time we talked about, just to recap, we talked about Chucky from the Child's Play franchise.

[2:13] We talked about Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise. We talked about Jigsaw from the Jigsaw franchise. We talked about Predator from the Predator franchise.

[2:22] We talked about the Babadook from the Babadook single movie. We talked about Pinhead from the Hellraiser franchise. And finally, we talked about the old Fredhead himself, Freddy Krueger, from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

[2:37] Yeah.

[2:37] And just to give you the rankings-

Dan McCoy

[2:38] If you are listening to this one, but not that one, like some sort of maniac who sees part two and something is like, no thank you to part one.

[2:47] Yeah, they're like, how can I skip to the end? Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:50] Maybe I'll start this book in the middle. Who are these characters?

[2:52] I hate it. They're not set up right.

[2:54] So I like you calling them franchises, Stuart, because it sounds a little bit like anybody can apply to the home office to open their own Nightmare on Elm Street.

[3:02] Nightmare on Elm Street is not a franchise, although there are books based on it.

[3:06] Does that count?

[3:07] Really?

[3:07] Stuart, as part of our franchise?

[3:08] Who wrote those books?

Stuart Wellington

[3:09] Let's start to get to whatever these numbers are that he wanted to say.

Elliott Kalan

[3:12] Anyway, so apply to the home office of Nightmare on Elm Street. See if you can open up a local one.

Stuart Wellington

[3:17] And just to throw out a guess, can you guys, at this point in the rankings, can you guess who is on top?

Dan McCoy

[3:25] To the best of my memory, I feel like the Babadook had some really good rankings, so I'm going to go with that.

Stuart Wellington

[3:32] Babadook's number one.

[3:34] And who is dead last?

Dan McCoy

[3:38] I think it's Freddy due to an unlucky, lucky dip.

[3:42] This is my guess.

[3:44] He did have a bad lucky dip.

Elliott Kalan

[3:46] I'm going to say Predator.

Stuart Wellington

[3:50] You are right, Elliot.

[3:52] It is Predator, who also had an unfortunate lucky dip.

[3:55] Who in their right mind would want to take that fellow to a nice restaurant?

[3:59] Not me.

Elliott Kalan

[4:00] I don't want to watch him eat all those little claws on his face.

[4:04] Come on.

[4:06] It's like a crab.

[4:07] Yeah, I'm going to pull back the curtain again.

[4:09] I think I may have talked about this last time.

[4:10] I have a pet crayfish in the house.

[4:12] I watch it eat, and it is horrifying.

[4:14] There's so many different appendages involved in that exercise, in that operation, and it is frightening.

[4:19] It's really scary.

Stuart Wellington

[4:21] Do you think humans would be more efficient eaters if they had extra little appendages in their mouths?

Dan McCoy

[4:27] Yeah, probably.

[4:28] I mean, well, it depends on how you're eating.

[4:30] I mean, not with a fork, because there you're already talking about a bite-sized thing.

Elliott Kalan

[4:35] Yeah, I think you would have to lower your head down to the plate and have all these little hands and claws pulling at pieces.

[4:41] Yeah.

[4:41] I imagine it would be like a typewriter when you push too many keys, they all get tangled up.

[4:45] Someone has to pull them apart.

[4:46] That doesn't sound good to me.

[4:47] Give me good old-fashioned teeth.

Dan McCoy

[4:49] If you brought a handful of food up to some mandibles, you could eat it pretty quickly.

Stuart Wellington

[4:54] I think that's true.

[4:55] What if humans had mouths kind of like the vampires, the vamps from Blade 2 with the crazy vagina mouths?

[5:02] What do you think?

[5:02] Do you think that would be cool?

[5:03] Would they unfold and open up?

Dan McCoy

[5:04] What do you think in what sense?

[5:06] Well, the hard part is-

[5:07] What do you guys think?

[5:07] Should that happen?

[5:09] The hard part is-

[5:09] Should we do it?

[5:10] Should we do that?

[5:12] I mean, everything right now is kind of built for the other way, so I would say-

Elliott Kalan

[5:16] We'd really be asking all of human civilization to reorient itself around our three vagina mouths.

Stuart Wellington

[5:24] That's true.

[5:25] I don't think it would be worth the changeover.

[5:27] You don't think it would catch on?

[5:28] Okay, that's fine.

Elliott Kalan

[5:29] It reminds me of when there was a new iPhone years ago, and they were like, people keep accidentally hitting the picture button.

[5:35] And Steve Jobs was like, well, people are going to have to start learning how to hold phones differently.

[5:39] And it was like, dude, the human hand has been around for a long time.

[5:42] Why don't you make the machine to accommodate that?

[5:45] Instead of forcing me to change the way I hold my fingers.

[5:47] But he could do that.

[5:48] And you know what his secret was?

[5:50] A turtle monkey?

[5:51] He was an asshole, so he did not care.

Stuart Wellington

[5:53] Oh, wow.

[5:55] Yeah.

[5:56] Man, I got to try that out.

[5:57] Okay.

[5:58] So, are you guys ready for the part two of our horror movie villain rankings?

[6:03] Yeah.

[6:04] Oh, boy, am I.

[6:05] Oh, and we are starting off with a scary one.

[6:08] That's right.

[6:09] Ghost Face from the Scream franchise.

[6:11] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[6:11] Ghost Face.

[6:12] He's a killer.

[6:13] A different one each time.

[6:14] Spoiler alert.

[6:16] Have you guys seen them Screamos?

[6:19] Have you seen the Scream movies?

Dan McCoy

[6:20] I've seen all the Screamos except for the most recent one, which I have a general—

[6:25] New York Screamo?

[6:27] Yeah, New York Screamo, I've just been sort of avoiding out of like a general feeling of solidarity with Elliot.

[6:34] Thank you.

[6:34] I appreciate it.

[6:35] I appreciate that very much.

Elliott Kalan

[6:36] I have personal reasons that I have been advised not to go into on this podcast for why I will—because of the last Scream movie, be giving Scream Face, Slasher, Screamer, Ghost Face.

[6:46] I will be giving him zeros across the board.

Stuart Wellington

[6:48] Yeah, you're—

[6:49] For reasons I am—

Elliott Kalan

[6:50] I've been advised not to go into—

Stuart Wellington

[6:51] Your lawyer, 1R Giuliani, told you not to talk about it.

Elliott Kalan

[6:56] Exactly, yeah.

[6:57] My lawyers, Giuliani and Powell, told me not to go into it.

Dan McCoy

[7:01] But I've seen all the other Screams and have basically enjoyed all of them.

Stuart Wellington

[7:06] Yeah, I would say—I would argue that I think this most recent Screamo, which I have seen not out of solidarity with Elliot—

[7:14] I appreciate it, yeah.

[7:15] It was a deliberate dig at me, yeah.

[7:17] Well, it's a bit of a disappointment.

[7:19] It's a bit of a bummer.

[7:20] It's not as good as some of the others, I would argue.

Elliott Kalan

[7:22] It's almost as if the idea from a different story was grafted onto the Scream films in a way that was not actually natural.

[7:30] Not as good, yeah.

[7:31] Or ethical.

[7:32] But, I mean, the Scream movies in general, they've got a pretty high standard, though, aside from—

[7:37] Generally, yeah.

[7:37] Which I've never seen.

[7:38] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[7:39] I would argue it might be the most, like, second most consistent franchise out there.

[7:45] The top one being, of course, Final Destination.

Elliott Kalan

[7:47] I thought you were going to say Final Destination, yeah.

[7:49] Final Destination, number one.

[7:51] I think that's true.

[7:51] I think in terms of consistency, yes, I think you're right.

[7:54] Yeah.

[7:55] Like, when you go into a Final Destination or a Scream movie, you know what you're going to get, and you get it.

Stuart Wellington

[7:59] Yeah.

[7:59] You get exactly it.

[8:01] So—

Elliott Kalan

[8:01] Unless there's somehow a drawing inspiration from outside the Scream universe in a way that—

[8:06] I thought that you were advised not to—

[8:09] You're right.

[8:09] I won't get into it anymore.

[8:10] That's true.

Stuart Wellington

[8:11] That's true.

[8:12] So, speaking of that, let's talk about Ghostface.

[8:14] Ghostface, let's rank that guy on scariness.

[8:17] I say guy because almost always Ghostface is a guy, although I think sometimes it's a gal, right?

[8:22] I can't remember.

[8:23] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[8:24] I mean, honestly, Ghostface, no matter who is Ghostface, because Ghostface is just a mask that people put on from varying from movie to movie.

[8:36] Well, Dan's face—

Elliott Kalan

[8:37] And a sound.

[8:38] And a voice sound.

[8:39] But I'll quote Professor William Joel when I say, Dan, we all wear a mask.

[8:43] No, it's true.

[8:43] Some are lace and some are leather.

[8:45] So, in a way, we're all Ghostface, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[8:47] I'm saying that they're all valid Ghostfaces, but the one consistent thing is the mask.

[8:52] Has a good record of, like, killing a lot of people, so that's pretty scary.

[8:58] But also seems to just be, like, easy to knock down or do, like, sort of slapstick things to.

[9:05] Part of the appeal, yeah.

[9:06] So, I'm going to give Ghostface a five.

Stuart Wellington

[9:09] I think that's fair.

[9:10] Yeah.

[9:10] He also—he primarily uses knives and bladed weapons, which are kind of scary because they cause a lot of bleeding.

[9:17] And he always seems to be, like, right behind you, and you're like, what?

[9:21] How'd he do that?

[9:23] But also, like, half of them have just been, like, movie nerds, and I deal with those guys every day.

[9:30] So, I think I'm with you.

Elliott Kalan

[9:32] I'm going to say five.

[9:33] I'm going to say a three in terms of scaring—maybe even a two in terms of scariness.

[9:37] When you get down to it, Ghostface is just a regular person with a knife and a mask on, which is scary.

[9:42] But it's not—

[9:43] Yes.

[9:44] I feel like that's more scary in real life than it is in a movie.

[9:48] Like, Michael Myers is a guy with a mask and a knife, but he's also, like—

[9:52] some kind of unkillable madman.

[9:55] Yeah.

[9:56] He's a big one.

[9:58] And he's also big.

[9:59] He's also tall.

[10:00] Whereas the—

[10:00] He's a weird—

[10:01] You never know which Ghostface you're going to get.

[10:02] A big one, a little one, one who climbs on rocks, even ones with chicken pox.

[10:06] I think there's a weird—

[10:07] Love Ghostface.

[10:08] Arm or Ghostface?

Dan McCoy

[10:09] A weird, like, objection to the rule that you're making.

[10:13] Like, just a small corollary.

[10:15] Whereas, like, Michael Myers, to me, was the most scary at the beginning where there was some ambiguity about, like, is this just a human or is there something more going on?

[10:27] And as that ambiguity was lost and became supernatural, I found him less scary.

Elliott Kalan

[10:32] You could see that.

[10:33] I could see that.

[10:34] Because it's less real.

[10:34] It's not going to happen.

[10:35] Yeah.

[10:36] You know.

[10:38] But I think what it is with Ghostface is it's less scary because, as you guys have already said, it depends on which Ghostface you're going to get.

[10:45] I feel like Ghostface, to me, is not a character in the same way these other ones are.

[10:50] It is a—it's just a mask that someone puts on when they want to stab somebody.

[10:55] You know, it's like there's—as opposed to—I know in the Saw movies, you have, like, Jigsaw's followers.

[11:00] But it feels like Jigsaw is still a presence, you know?

[11:03] Whereas, for me, Ghostface is not—there's only one Ghostface, and he's a real killer.

[11:08] That's right, Ghostface killer.

[11:09] The one consistent Ghostface.

[11:10] Oh, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[11:11] Yeah.

[11:11] Oh, wow.

[11:12] Classic hip-hop reference from Elliot Kalin.

Elliott Kalan

[11:14] You just know that's the world I swim in.

[11:17] Yeah.

[11:18] So, yeah.

[11:19] But I'm going to give—so, you know, I'll go as high as a three.

[11:21] I'll say a three.

[11:22] It is scary to have someone in a mask with a knife running after you.

Stuart Wellington

[11:24] Okay.

[11:25] Do you want to change your rating anymore so that I can have to scratch it out?

[11:30] Okay.

[11:31] So, that's—we've talked about scariness.

[11:32] Let's talk about style.

[11:34] I think Ghostface has a little bit of style.

[11:37] You know, he talks—he has a lot of, like, games.

[11:40] He has his little sound effects.

[11:43] He likes to, like, set up elaborate traps where he's, like, chasing people.

[11:47] Not—not—I mean, in a way, I feel like Jigsaw's got him beat on both games and traps.

[11:52] But I feel like—I feel like the Ghostface kind of, like, builds the scariness where he's, like—at first, you're like, who's this annoying guy calling me on the phone?

[12:02] And then by the end, you're like, oh, he's going to kill me.

[12:04] Yeah.

[12:05] Text me, bro.

Elliott Kalan

[12:07] I—yeah.

[12:08] You know what?

[12:09] You just meant—you said it makes me think Ghostface's threat level is a lot lower here in a world where people don't pick up numbers they don't recognize.

[12:16] Yeah.

[12:16] So, like, he's just sitting there calling over and over again being like, pick up so I can ask you if you like scary movies and then kill you.

Dan McCoy

[12:21] I think that—I think at least one of the later screams made hay out of that.

Stuart Wellington

[12:26] Did they?

[12:26] Yeah.

[12:27] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:28] Yeah, I mean, I forgot about the taunting.

[12:30] That's pretty good, I guess.

[12:31] I just—I still can't get over the fact that Ghostface is basically just a mask and a mask that is stolen from the scream in a way that, you know, at this point, as many people, I think, associate that look with scream as they do the Edvard Muncher painting.

Elliott Kalan

[12:49] I mean, that's an argument in favor of its iconic quality, you know.

Dan McCoy

[12:53] Well, that could take over, yeah.

[12:55] Yeah.

[12:55] But if it feels like stolen valor to me, I don't know.

[12:58] I'm going to give him a three.

Stuart Wellington

[13:01] Three for style.

[13:02] Okay.

[13:03] I'm going to go a little higher.

[13:04] I think he's got some charm.

[13:06] I'm giving him a six.

Elliott Kalan

[13:08] I'm going to give him a four, a little bit higher than Dan, because I do think it is a good style.

[13:12] It's a good scary movie look.

[13:14] And this is where I think it works, that it looks like an off-the-rack Halloween costume, because when you dress up like him for Halloween, you could be the real him, and you don't know.

[13:25] Yeah.

[13:25] Which, you know, which adds to it.

[13:27] But there is part of me that's like, oh, I like that painting.

[13:32] And it's too bad that now that painting is the Scream movie painting, as opposed to another one of Edvard Munch's expressionist masterpieces, where he's letting out into the open the turmoil inside his very soul.

Stuart Wellington

[13:46] Do you think he has other paintings that he's like, why didn't you turn this into a movie?

Elliott Kalan

[13:51] Probably.

[13:52] Probably.

[13:52] And that's what he sounds like, too.

[13:53] Oh.

[13:53] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[13:54] Why didn't you turn this into a movie?

Elliott Kalan

[13:57] Yeah, because he's an Israeli used car dealer.

[13:59] Yeah.

[13:59] That sounds a lot like Watto.

[14:04] Okay.

[14:04] I mean, what is Watto, but it is really used car dealer.

Stuart Wellington

[14:08] Okay.

[14:09] So, I think it's time for everybody's favorite part.

[14:12] Lucky dip.

[14:13] Dan, why don't you give me a number between one and seven, because I've already eliminated the ones we've already picked.

Dan McCoy

[14:17] Uh, seven.

Stuart Wellington

[14:19] Okay.

[14:20] How, this is actually pretty good for Ghostface.

[14:23] On a scale of one to ten, how effective do you think Ghostface would be at explaining the rules of a complicated board game to Dan McCoy?

Dan McCoy

[14:33] Uh, I mean, obviously, Ghostface in general is, like, sort of, like, coded as a nerd, at least from the start, in that Ghostface is interested in following all of these horror rules.

[14:48] So, obviously.

Elliott Kalan

[14:49] He's the horror villain that loves categories the most.

Dan McCoy

[14:52] Yes.

[14:52] Mm-hmm.

[14:53] So, obviously, very good, you know, from that perspective, but there's a slight chance that he'd get impatient and kill me.

Elliott Kalan

[15:05] He gets frustrated.

Dan McCoy

[15:07] So, I'm not going to give him the full ten, but I'll give him a nine.

Elliott Kalan

[15:11] Dan, this was exactly my thinking.

[15:13] He has a little bit of patience, but I don't think he has enough patience, so I'm also going to say a nine.

[15:18] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[15:19] Having explained complicated board game rules to Dan McCoy, I know, Ghostface is going to get frustrated.

Dan McCoy

[15:26] Yeah, you just have to accept that I'm going to check out halfway through, but then once we play the game, I'm going to understand how it works, like, by playing.

Stuart Wellington

[15:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[15:37] And that's, I don't think Ghostface needs to be in control, so I'm giving him only an eight.

[15:41] But that's still respectable.

[15:43] Well done, Ghostface.

[15:44] Okay.

[15:45] Not a bad total.

Elliott Kalan

[15:46] I think his patience level compared to other horror villains, I think, is high.

[15:50] Because he's willing to engage in conversation before killing.

[15:53] At mass.

[15:54] Yeah.

[15:55] Yeah.

[15:55] And there's a lot of setup.

[15:57] That's what really gets him off, you know.

[15:59] A lot of the other villains, they're just like, you're here, you're dead, goodbye.

[16:04] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[16:05] Okay, so Ghostface, not a bad showing.

[16:08] To continue our face category, our next villain, that's right, it's Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.

[16:16] Oh, great.

[16:17] He's got, the boy's got the moves.

[16:20] You guys have seen at least some of the Texas Chainsaw Massacres, right?

Elliott Kalan

[16:24] Yes.

[16:24] I've seen the first two.

[16:26] I did not see any of the remakes or anything like that, the later sequence.

Stuart Wellington

[16:29] Did you see part three with Viggo Mortensen?

Elliott Kalan

[16:32] Oh, you know what?

[16:33] I did.

[16:33] Okay, so I have seen part three.

[16:34] Yeah, yeah.

[16:34] I forgot about that one.

[16:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[16:36] I think the only one I haven't seen is the one with, what's his face and what's her face?

[16:41] It'd be kind of, hey.

[16:42] William Devane and Judith Light, you're thinking of the sitcom Phenom.

[16:46] About a tennis playing team.

[16:47] Was Zellweger the other one?

[16:49] It was that one?

[16:49] It was Zellweger, yeah.

[16:50] Oh, yeah, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[16:51] Yeah, that one is.

[16:53] Oh, wait a minute.

[16:54] I haven't seen that one in a long time, but I remember seeing that a long time ago.

Stuart Wellington

[16:57] I do feel like, for a long time, that was my least favorite movie available to watch.

[17:04] It was like, it felt like, you know, almost every Texas Chainsaw Massacre features a, well,

[17:11] most of the good ones, feature a lengthy dinner scene that just involves a lot of yelling.

[17:17] And I feel like that was just most of that movie.

[17:18] Oh, like that episode of the bear?

[17:20] It was a lot like, the episode of the bear was a lot like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

[17:25] Although it was more of a Chicago Chainsaw Massacre without a chainsaw.

[17:30] Yeah, so let's talk about scariness on the old L face, Leatherface.

Elliott Kalan

[17:37] I mean, I'd love to go first.

[17:38] I'm going to give Leatherface a 10 on scariness.

[17:40] That is one scary guy.

[17:41] He lives in a gross house full of bones.

[17:44] Sounds delicious when you think about it.

[17:46] There's just chicken bones all over the place.

[17:47] But I bet it smells really bad.

[17:49] Reports from the set where that smells really bad.

[17:51] There's just something about him that is, and him and the world he exists in,

[17:55] that is so, is so disgusting and frightening to me.

[17:59] Because it feels like it's both grotesquely exaggerated, but also could very well happen.

[18:06] You know, there might be somebody somewhere who's just sitting in gross soil clothes

[18:12] and wears skin over their face and is just hanging around in a humid,

[18:15] stuffy house full of bones and meat and things like that.

[18:18] Really gross.

[18:18] So I'm going to give it a 10.

Stuart Wellington

[18:20] More than almost any other horror villain, you know he smells bad.

[18:24] Yes, yes.

Elliott Kalan

[18:25] Just looking at that guy, you're like, no thanks.

[18:27] It comes through, there's something so, I mean, that first movie is so brilliant

[18:32] and it's so amazingly well made because it's so visceral and tactile

[18:35] and it feels like it's assaulting all of your senses at the same time.

[18:40] And it just did, I mean, it sounds like it was a nightmare to make.

[18:42] Everybody involved had a terrible time.

[18:45] But that terrible time really comes through in the film.

Dan McCoy

[18:49] Yeah, I want to say that at this point a pretty jaded fan of horror movies

[18:56] who like actively seeks out weird stuff and what, like, there is very little in horror that,

[19:02] like, I still enjoy it, but it doesn't usually actually scare me all that much anymore.

[19:09] But with a few exceptions.

[19:11] And I think that like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a movie that when I finally got around to see,

[19:16] it was pretty late actually.

[19:18] Like, broke through defenses.

[19:18] Is it like 11 o'clock?

[19:20] That's pretty late.

[19:22] It's pretty late.

[19:22] You might fall asleep while watching it if you watch it.

[19:24] I'm just saying, well, it wasn't one that I saw as a teen.

[19:26] Like, I saw it late enough that like some of these calluses had worked up.

[19:31] But it still like really unnerved me in a way that, you know, is unusual.

[19:37] And so I'll give it a 10 too.

Elliott Kalan

[19:38] I feel like it has all this, the movie itself, and we're just talking about the movie,

[19:41] we're not talking about the character.

[19:42] But the movie itself has all the strengths of a well-made film and all the strengths of an

[19:47] Exploitation Grindhouse film.

[19:49] When you're watching it, you're like, I know this is not real, but at certain moments it feels so real to me.

[19:53] And that's super frightening.

[19:54] And Leatherface, what I like about him as a character is that he is so clearly, when he's used right,

[20:01] he's so clearly like, doesn't really understand what he's doing wrong, you know?

[20:06] He's as opposed to some of the other villains who are hate machines.

[20:09] Leatherface doesn't hate.

[20:11] He just is, you know, he was raised bad.

[20:14] And there's something extra scary about that to me too, that he's an innocent who's also a monster, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[20:20] Yeah, he's this like primitive, primal, like almost animal.

Elliott Kalan

[20:25] So knows how to tie a tie, unless his dad tied that for him, which is possible.

Stuart Wellington

[20:29] I'm assuming somebody tied it for him or showed him how to do it enough times that he picked it up.

[20:34] One of the things about the movie is that it is like, of all the like slasher movies,

[20:39] it's the one that best captures like a folk horror vibe, where you're like, you are in a world you do not understand.

[20:47] Yeah.

[20:48] And the rest, and like, as the movie goes on, more of it's revealed that you're like, everyone's in on it.

[20:55] This is, I am like, the world, this is a complete malign paradigm shift.

[21:00] I do not understand what is going on.

Dan McCoy

[21:02] Well, actually, like Audrey is by no means like a horror fan,

[21:07] but that is like the thing that she like has brought up more than once about Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

[21:12] that like she really zeroed in on exactly what you're saying, that she's like, you're in this world.

[21:17] You're like isolated in this world.

[21:20] Like you're out in the open.

[21:21] It's the country, but you're isolated in this world and you discover that like no one's there to help you.

[21:26] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[21:27] It's all that.

[21:28] There's a little bit less of that feeling in the second one, what with the theme park and everything.

Stuart Wellington

[21:32] The super silly fun one?

Elliott Kalan

[21:35] Yeah, yeah.

[21:35] The super silly fun one.

[21:36] But that movie is going for something different.

[21:38] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[21:39] Okay.

[21:40] So, Elliot, what is your scariness?

Dan McCoy

[21:43] Wait, did you go first?

[21:44] Who went first?

[21:45] Yeah, I said 10.

Stuart Wellington

[21:45] 10 scariness.

[21:45] Dan, Dan, what are you giving Leatherface on the old scary meter?

[21:48] I gave 10 as well.

[21:49] 10.

[21:50] I'm going to give him a nine because sometimes he's a little silly.

Elliott Kalan

[21:54] It's true.

[21:55] He is a little silly sometimes.

[21:57] On the subject of –

[21:58] And he's also – here's the thing that shouldn't be scary about him and is.

[22:01] That moment in the first movie when he falls and cuts his own leg, that should make him less scary.

[22:07] But somehow it makes him more scary.

[22:09] I don't know why.

[22:09] Yes.

[22:10] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[22:11] So, speaking of him being a silly little guy, where do we put him on the style meter?

[22:19] What kind of style does our boy Leatherface have?

[22:22] Well –

[22:23] Real normcore.

Dan McCoy

[22:24] Real normcore.

[22:25] Yeah, if we were talking about the traditional version of style, he would rank very low.

[22:31] But I think we're talking about –

[22:32] Actually, it's star power, not style.

[22:33] Star power.

[22:34] Yeah, it's star power.

[22:35] And so that's why he still gets ranked pretty high.

[22:39] I'm not going to give him the high heights because he hasn't entered the public consciousness to the way that Freddie or Jason has.

[22:49] But I don't know.

[22:50] I'll say eight.

Elliott Kalan

[22:52] That's still pretty good.

[22:54] I'm going to give him a seven because there's something – I feel like the name is well-known, but I think Dan's right that the image is not as necessarily recognizable.

[23:04] I think that's because his look is very busy.

[23:07] It's hard for me to – it's hard to tie down like what – it's like Jason, hockey mask, Freddie, hat, sweater, glove with the claws on it.

[23:15] Michael Myers, mask.

[23:16] Like they have their one thing.

[23:17] And Leatherface, it should be his leather mask, but it's so gross looking and so complicated looking that it's hard to draw like a cartoon version of Leatherface.

[23:25] Whereas you could draw a cartoon version of these other characters.

Stuart Wellington

[23:28] Yeah, you couldn't do like a little – you wouldn't want to do like a little amiibo, like a little like chibi version of Leatherface.

Elliott Kalan

[23:34] No, it's hard for me to imagine a Funko Pop of Leatherface.

[23:37] I'm sure there is one.

[23:38] I'm sure there is one.

[23:40] Freddie, Jason, all those guys, I can visualize the Funko Pop, but it's hard to visualize Leatherface.

Stuart Wellington

[23:46] What I do not want to see are all the rejected Funko Pop of Leatherface.

[23:50] Ooh, good.

[23:53] Yeah, I'm going to give him a – I'm going to give him an eight.

[23:58] I would give him a seven, but I'll give him an extra point because of the way he kind of co-opted the franchise a little bit.

[24:04] I don't know if that's just the natural feeling of a horror movie franchise to latch on to a single individual.

[24:09] But I feel like he is not like the main – in the text Chainsaw Massacre, there's a lot of bad stuff going on.

[24:18] Yes, there is.

Dan McCoy

[24:18] And I feel like he becomes more and more the focus as the series goes on.

Stuart Wellington

[24:22] Okay, so I think it's time for a lucky dip.

[24:25] Elliot, why don't you pick a number between one and seven?

[24:28] I'm going to say four.

[24:31] Ooh, this one might be okay for old Leatherface.

[24:34] He's on a scale of one to ten.

[24:35] How likely are you to invite him to babysit or cat-sit for you?

[24:40] I say cat-sit for me and Dan who have no children.

Dan McCoy

[24:45] I'm going to give a one because I'm pretty sure Leatherface is going to taxidermize my cats immediately.

Elliott Kalan

[24:58] Yeah, I'm going to say a zero on this because that baby is going to get eaten for sure.

[25:02] But even if he doesn't eat the baby, do I think Leatherface can change a diaper?

[25:06] No.

[25:06] Do I think Leatherface can put together a meal?

[25:09] His dad can.

[25:10] It would be cannibal flesh.

[25:11] But still, do I think Leatherface is going to be able to turn on the TV so the kids can watch a cartoon?

[25:18] No.

[25:18] He is incapable of doing these things.

[25:21] Try and smash it with a hammer.

Stuart Wellington

[25:24] I'm going to give him a two because I think there's a chance that he will be charmed by my annoying cats and will want to take care of them.

Elliott Kalan

[25:31] Oh, I bet he'll love the cats.

[25:33] I bet it'll really speak to his innocent side.

[25:34] But the minute the cat does something he doesn't want, he's going to reach out and bring a snack or something.

[25:39] It's like a mice and man.

[25:39] Trouble city, yeah.

[25:40] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[25:41] Okay.

[25:42] Well, Leatherface had a little trouble there, but that's okay.

Elliott Kalan

[25:44] Run by Mayor Leatherface.

Stuart Wellington

[25:46] Yeah.

[25:47] Okay.

[25:48] Number three.

[25:50] You know him.

[25:51] You love him.

[25:53] Candyman from the Candyman franchise.

[25:55] Tony Todd himself.

[25:56] Yeah.

[25:56] I do know him and love him.

[25:57] Yeah.

[25:58] Obviously, I'm referring to Tony Todd from the original Candyman run, not the recent reboot.

[26:04] So, Candyman guys, have you seen any Candymans?

Dan McCoy

[26:10] I've seen the old Candyman.

[26:14] I did not see any of the old, just the one sequel.

[26:19] Farewell of the Flesh?

[26:20] Yeah.

[26:20] I think that's the only one.

Elliott Kalan

[26:21] And then I saw the reboot.

[26:24] Called a remake.

[26:25] Yeah.

[26:26] Let's call it a remake.

[26:27] Reboot.

[26:27] Come on, everybody.

[26:28] They're not computers.

[26:29] They're movies.

[26:30] Come on.

Stuart Wellington

[26:31] They're not trying to relaunch a franchise, though.

[26:33] You don't think?

Elliott Kalan

[26:33] Movies get remade.

Dan McCoy

[26:35] Content gets rebooted.

[26:37] It's a direct sequel to the original Candyman.

[26:39] Then I would just call it a sequel.

[26:40] But it's a legacy sequel.

[26:43] It's obviously meant to set up.

[26:46] I think reboot serves a specific purpose.

[26:47] We got a ghost face right here.

[26:49] What with this movie nerd rules?

[26:50] I think there's a specific purpose for the word that it actually applies in this case.

[26:56] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[26:58] But the TV show reboot that was on Hulu was not a reboot of the TV show reboot from when I was a kid.

[27:03] Where they all looked at the computer.

Stuart Wellington

[27:05] It was about Candyman.

Elliott Kalan

[27:07] It was about Candyman, though.

[27:07] Is Judy Greer a robot lady?

[27:10] Possibly.

[27:11] Digital?

[27:11] I just re-watched the original Candyman last year, I think.

[27:15] Oh, wow.

[27:15] Yeah.

[27:16] I was like, this movie holds up real good.

[27:18] It's a good horror movie.

Dan McCoy

[27:19] I mean, here's the thing.

[27:21] I'm going to split the difference here because on the scariness, which is our first thing always.

[27:28] I think Candyman, the movie, is extremely scary as horror movies go.

[27:35] And I think that he's scary.

[27:38] I think that I can't be all that scared because I don't think I would say Candyman five times into a mirror.

[27:48] Just three times.

[27:50] Nobody would say it five times.

[27:51] No, it's five times.

[27:51] It's fucking five times for Candyman.

[27:53] That's part of what's so weird about it.

Stuart Wellington

[27:55] Oh, okay, because I would only do it three times and be like, this didn't work.

[27:59] Deuces.

Dan McCoy

[28:00] I mean, I'm going to look it up to be sure, but I'm pretty sure I'm right on this.

[28:02] Maybe I'm wrong.

[28:04] And that's the weird thing to me, too, about it.

[28:06] It's like, that's a lot of commitment.

[28:07] Five times?

[28:09] Even just to say it at all.

[28:10] You're really asking for Candyman to show up.

Elliott Kalan

[28:13] It's also not like he arrives and gives you candy.

[28:15] The story is you say it, and then he shows up and kills you.

[28:18] So the idea that anyone would do it.

[28:20] It is a –

[28:21] Yeah, five times.

[28:22] Five times.

[28:23] I don't know why I remember it as three.

[28:25] It is a –

Stuart Wellington

[28:25] Because that's what makes sense.

[28:27] That's what everything else is.

Elliott Kalan

[28:27] Because that's Beetlejuice, bitch.

[28:29] Yeah, maybe that's it.

[28:30] I think that – yeah, I'm going to give him – if he shows up, he's pretty scary.

[28:35] But you're right.

[28:36] It is a – it's a high bar for a monster to clear if you have to call him yourself.

[28:40] You're opting in to Candyman.

[28:42] Yeah.

[28:43] You don't have – it's not – usually with monsters, you have to uncheck the opt-in box.

[28:46] It's pre-checked.

[28:47] His does not come pre-checked.

[28:48] You've got to click that.

Dan McCoy

[28:50] I accept the terms and conditions of having Candyman visiting me.

Stuart Wellington

[28:55] I could understand how you would accidentally watch the videotape from The Ring.

[29:00] Yes, of course.

[29:01] That's possible.

[29:01] But like accidentally saying Candyman five times?

[29:04] You assume it's boring.

[29:05] You put it in.

Elliott Kalan

[29:05] Yeah.

[29:06] You would have to – what kind of – I wish that was the way they did the movie.

Dan McCoy

[29:09] If you're a cabaret singer who has to sing the song Candyman over the course of five evenings.

[29:14] But even there, you don't sing it five times in a row in the song.

Elliott Kalan

[29:18] Yeah.

[29:19] But there's part of me that's like – I wish the movie was about what kind of elaborate situations does he have to orchestrate in order to get someone to say the word five times in a row.

Dan McCoy

[29:30] He dresses up as if he's a man carrying candy around.

[29:34] And he pretends not to hear people.

[29:37] So they have to keep going, Candyman!

[29:39] Candyman!

[29:41] What's funny then is he's already there in that scenario.

[29:43] Yeah, he's already there.

[29:45] He's already –

[29:46] But not in – I'm saying not in his work mode.

Elliott Kalan

[29:49] Because once he shows up, he's scary.

[29:51] Yeah.

[29:52] That's what he's – once he shows up, he's – oh, you're saying when you say it five times, it's like it flips the switch.

[29:56] Yeah.

[29:56] And it's like, oh, okay, now I can do it.

[29:58] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[29:58] Yeah, I mean, he kills you with a hook.

[30:00] That's pretty gross.

[30:01] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[30:02] He's got a hook.

[30:03] He's got bees.

[30:04] There's scary stuff going on with him.

[30:06] People get scared of bees.

[30:07] Tony Todd is an imposing, very charismatic figure.

[30:10] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[30:10] Yeah, so I'm going to – I'm kind of with you guys.

[30:15] I'm going to say movie very scary, but he himself – I'm going to give him a seven, though.

[30:19] I think he's a scary dude.

[30:21] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[30:23] No, I'm sticking with my split the difference of five, but I see that as a villain, if I were in that situation, very scary.

Elliott Kalan

[30:31] And I'm going to say six, just in case I find myself in a room where somebody calls forth Candyman.

[30:36] You have a lot of chances to say stop or shut up or cover their mouth because they've got to say it like Dan says five times.

Dan McCoy

[30:41] If you just happen to be around, I'm pretty sure Candyman's not going to really differentiate whether he's going to kill you or not.

[30:46] So there's always the chance of sort of a drive-by Candyman-ing.

Elliott Kalan

[30:50] Yeah.

[30:51] Yeah.

[30:51] That's why it's not protected speech to say Candyman five times in a crowded theater.

Stuart Wellington

[30:56] Yeah.

[30:56] I mean, I think altogether we've said it way more than five times already.

[30:59] Oh, no.

Elliott Kalan

[31:00] Yeah, but we've said other words in between is the thing.

[31:02] I mean, well, that's like – if you say it five times over the course of several days,

[31:06] does that still count?

Dan McCoy

[31:07] That seems unfair.

[31:09] It seems very unfair, yeah.

[31:10] And it's not intentional anymore.

Stuart Wellington

[31:12] Yeah.

[31:12] Okay, so let's talk about star power.

[31:14] How much star power does our guy Candyman have?

[31:19] He's got a coat.

[31:20] He's got a coat.

[31:20] He's got bees.

[31:21] He's got a hook.

Elliott Kalan

[31:22] I'm going to say an eight.

[31:24] He's got a coat, bees, hook.

[31:26] He's got a great tragic romantic backstory.

[31:29] I do love that.

[31:30] But he doesn't have the – again, he doesn't have as much of that iconic look.

[31:35] Again, I'm having trouble imagining the Funko Pop of Candyman.

[31:38] Yeah.

[31:38] It would just be Tony Todd.

[31:39] He's got that coat.

[31:41] But there's a certain point where if you don't know he's a monster villain and you just saw him walking down the street,

[31:46] you'd be like, that's a cool guy with a cool coat.

[31:48] It wouldn't – you would be scared.

Dan McCoy

[31:51] Elliot, you know, Elliot's reaction is entirely my own.

[31:56] An eight was what I was going to give it and for the same reasons.

[31:59] So we can shorten this part of the episode and have me shut up.

Stuart Wellington

[32:04] I'm also going to give him an eight.

[32:06] I'm also going to point out that Tony Todd has that voice.

[32:08] You know, there's something pretty amazing about his cool deep voice.

[32:11] You know what?

Elliott Kalan

[32:12] That's true.

[32:12] I've been judging a lot of this on look when I should be including voice and other aspects.

[32:16] He's very charismatic.

Stuart Wellington

[32:17] Yeah.

[32:18] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[32:19] In which case, Leatherface is still super scary.

[32:20] He just grunts and squeals.

[32:22] Horrifying.

[32:23] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[32:23] Yep.

[32:24] Okay.

[32:25] So that's Candyman.

[32:27] Now let's talk about Lucky Dip.

[32:30] Dan, can you pick me a number between one and seven?

[32:33] Six.

[32:36] Uh-oh.

[32:37] I think he lucked out.

[32:39] On a scale of one to ten, how effective would Candyman be at killing a whole school trip of pesky teenagers?

[32:47] How did that slip in there?

Dan McCoy

[32:49] Wow.

[32:50] That seems like a gimme for most of these.

[32:54] It's the luckiest dip of all.

[32:56] Yeah, it's the lucky dip.

Elliott Kalan

[32:58] So I think they'd have to say a ten, right?

[33:00] Yeah.

[33:00] Especially if some of these kids have bee allergies.

[33:02] A ten.

[33:03] Oh, man.

Stuart Wellington

[33:03] Kids these days with their bees and peanut allergies?

[33:06] Yeah.

[33:06] Does he have peanuts?

Elliott Kalan

[33:08] Does he carry peanuts?

[33:09] He does.

[33:09] He has little peanut shells of bees inside of them.

[33:11] He calls them bee nuts.

[33:13] And he goes, excuse me, would you like a bee nut?

[33:16] And he hopes people think he said peanut.

[33:17] And they take a bite and a bee goes in their mouth.

Dan McCoy

[33:19] Yeah.

[33:19] Especially when he's like, oh, the Candyman's here with some bee nuts.

[33:23] Everyone would be like, oh, what are those?

[33:24] That sounds like the great nutrient.

Elliott Kalan

[33:26] Yeah.

[33:27] Probably honey covered peanuts.

[33:28] Sounds delicious.

Stuart Wellington

[33:30] And he also has the advantage that all these kids on the bus are going to be glued to their screens

[33:34] instead of paying attention to the murder.

[33:36] Oh, these modern kids.

Dan McCoy

[33:38] I want to see someone to make an ad for Candyman's bee nuts.

[33:42] Like a little packaging, you know.

[33:45] Friendly little Candyman.

Stuart Wellington

[33:47] So I think Candyman's going to crush those teens.

[33:50] I'm giving them a ten as well.

[33:51] Yeah, that's ten.

[33:52] Dan, I think we're just waiting on you.

Elliott Kalan

[33:54] No, I gave them a ten, I think.

Stuart Wellington

[33:56] Ten.

[33:56] Ten, ten.

[33:57] I bet you.

[33:57] Ten's across the board?

[33:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[33:59] Okay.

[33:59] Awesome.

[34:00] Even the Russian judge is giving them a ten.

[34:02] Undeniable.

[34:03] Yeah, very tough judge.

Stuart Wellington

[34:04] Okay, we're on to our fourth horror movie villain.

[34:07] We have, we've talked about iconic looks, but this might be the most iconic.

[34:12] The xenomorph from the Aliens franchise.

[34:15] Oh, is it a penis?

[34:17] Who knows?

[34:18] Mine doesn't look like that, or does it?

Dan McCoy

[34:24] It's like someone hit a bunch of keys on a Stuart soundboard all at once.

[34:31] What vamping, anyway.

[34:33] Yeah.

[34:33] Good job.

Stuart Wellington

[34:34] Okay, we're talking the xenomorph as designed by H.R.

Elliott Kalan

[34:38] Geiger.

[34:39] How, you know a monster's scary when the guy who designs the monster is scary.

[34:43] Yeah.

[34:44] Is scary as fuck.

Dan McCoy

[34:45] Yeah, famously so.

[34:48] Like, yeah, it's hard to, most of these creatures don't have like a name associated with them in the same way too.

[34:57] Like the alien is so iconic that we have like a singular guy that we can be like, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[35:03] Well, it's one of the rare cases where, I mean, it's like Ghostface in a way.

[35:06] It's like Ghostface if they had hired Edvard Munch that like the alien directly came from one of H.R. Geiger's paintings.

[35:14] Like they said, it should look like that.

[35:16] And he was like, oh, I'll be happy to do that for you for a little bit of scratch.

[35:22] Yeah.

[35:22] That's how he talks, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[35:24] I would like to crank one out for you.

Elliott Kalan

[35:27] Have you ever seen, I saw this somewhere and I've always wondered if it was real or not.

[35:30] His design for the facehugger, which was like a chicken that would place its beak into people's mouths to put the egg down.

[35:37] And they were like, uh, we'll handle this.

[35:38] We'll design something else for this.

[35:41] I was wondering if that was an April Fool's prank.

Stuart Wellington

[35:43] Oh, yeah, we'll save that for another creature.

[35:47] Yeah.

[35:48] Maybe in species.

[35:49] Yeah, maybe for both three guys.

Dan McCoy

[35:50] Okay, which does sound very disquieting to me.

[35:52] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[35:54] I will never look at chickens the same.

[35:55] Okay, so on scariness factor, where does the old xenomorph go?

[36:00] How scary is that xenomorph?

Dan McCoy

[36:02] I mean, this is a 10 for me.

Elliott Kalan

[36:04] If anything's a 10, it's the xenomorph, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[36:07] Oh, man.

[36:08] It looks so different than anything I'd ever seen when I first saw it.

[36:14] And just immediately, like the movie's called Alien, and it's a thing that feels genuinely alien in a way that most creatures don't.

Elliott Kalan

[36:25] There's a book called Shock Value by Jason Zinneman that came out a bunch of years ago where he talks about the monster problem where the monster, when you see it, is never as scary as you imagine it's going to be.

[36:36] Like, it's being hidden all this time, and as soon as you see it by the end of the movie, it's not scary.

[36:39] And that the alien he talks about as the monster that solved that equation, where when you see it, it is as scary as you thought it was going to be and in some ways scarier.

[36:47] It's so unlike any other stuff, the mix of organic and not organic, the fact that it has weird human teeth, that it's so drippy, that it's got that second toothed tongue inside of it.

[37:00] Like, it's a scary monster.

[37:02] And also, it's got acid blood.

[37:04] It eats people all the time.

[37:05] It's babies shoot out of your chest.

[37:06] Like, this monster, it's like they use four different ideas.

[37:09] I mean, that idea was taken from an earlier science fiction story, but it's still a really scary idea.

[37:14] So, there's so many different ideas in this monster, you know.

[37:17] And it's a little bit sexy, I think.

[37:20] Yeah, and it's very much so.

[37:21] I mean, I think that's one of the scary things about it is it has that – parts of it have that sleekness and that sexiness, and that's very much HR Geeker's thing.

[37:29] Like, his stuff would not be as scary if it was not also supposed to be sexy.

Dan McCoy

[37:33] Now we've got to add sexy xenomorph to this episode, I think.

[37:36] Oh, yeah, probably.

Stuart Wellington

[37:38] I think that's easily done.

[37:39] Okay, so we got a 10 from Dan Elliott where we've fallen in the scary factor.

[37:44] Oh, 10.

Elliott Kalan

[37:45] Hugely 10.

[37:45] I love that monster.

[37:46] Love the design.

[37:47] Very scary.

[37:48] Even when they made toys of it where they mashed it up with different animals, like a gorilla alien and a bull alien, they still look scary.

Stuart Wellington

[37:55] Yeah, and even – I feel like even as they introduce more of them, it doesn't make them less scary.

[38:03] No, I agree.

[38:04] Like, they're still scary in Aliens and in Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection.

[38:09] Like, they're always still scary.

Elliott Kalan

[38:13] They're scary when there's one of them stalking you through carters, and it's scary when there's 100 of them leaping out at you or swarming over something.

[38:19] Yeah, it's just such a scary thing.

Stuart Wellington

[38:21] I'll give it a 10.

[38:22] Now, I think this is actually – before we get into Star Power, I think this is a perfect time for us to take a break from the sponsors of this episode.

Dan McCoy

[38:30] Hey, you know what might be fun with some horror movies, some monstrous villains?

[38:37] A little microdosing.

[38:38] Our show today is sponsored by Microdose Gummies.

[38:41] Microdose Gummies deliver perfect entry-level doses of THC that help you feel just the right amount of good.

[38:48] And beyond feeling good, I mean, I find that they can be useful with creativity, sort of get you into sort of a focused, relaxed place that a lot of more unique ideas have sprung for me at those times sometimes.

[39:08] And I don't know.

[39:10] I like to draw a lot, and I think it helps me take away sort of the inhibitions of my hand when I'm drawing, when I'm – Stuart is making a face of me.

Elliott Kalan

[39:22] I'm so glad you said drawing.

Dan McCoy

[39:26] Yeah, I'm sure that they want to be associated with you guys' dirty minds.

[39:30] Microdose is available nationwide.

[39:33] To learn more about microdosing THC, go to microdose.com and use code FLOP.

[39:38] That's F-L-O-P to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.

[39:42] Links can be found in the show description, but again, that is microdose.com, code FLOP.

Elliott Kalan

[39:47] And we're also sponsored this episode by Factor.

[39:50] Factor is a food company that, I'll tell you, I have some very good things to say about.

[39:56] It's a fact that Factor is something that I support.

[40:01] Fuel up fast this fall with Factor, America's number one ready-to-eat meal kit.

[40:05] Save time, eat well, and stay on track with your healthy lifestyle.

[40:08] Look, everyone knows my stance on cooking.

[40:10] I don't like it.

[40:11] I don't like having to do it.

[40:12] It takes time.

[40:13] I'm not good at it.

[40:14] It's like a little bit of failure every time I try.

[40:17] That's why Factor is so great.

[40:18] Factor is fresh, never-frozen meals are ready in just two minutes.

[40:21] All I have to do is heat it and enjoy it, and then go back to whatever you were doing.

[40:24] Just go back to succeeding in life, free from having to fail at cooking.

[40:29] This autumn, adjust your stride without missing a step.

[40:31] Choose from 35-plus weekly flavor-packed fresh, never-frozen meals that promote a healthy lifestyle and meet your meal preferences.

[40:38] They have the best of autumn with fall flavors, a limited-time-only, hearty, comforting meal series featuring seasonal veggies like cranberry pecan chicken and apple Dijon pork chops.

[40:50] There's more than pumpkins in the fall, everybody.

[40:52] There's more to the fall than pumpkins, and Factor has it for you.

[40:55] They'll satisfy your fall cravings during the busy season without the hassle.

[40:59] Now, I'd love to share my personal experience with Factor.

[41:01] There's nothing I'd like to do more than that.

[41:03] Unfortunately, I can't really because I only got to eat one of the Factor meals they sent to us to test out.

[41:10] And then my wife tried one, and she liked it so much it became her go-to bring-to-work lunch choice.

[41:15] So you'll have to track her down and ask her which dishes she liked because she liked them so much she took them all, and I didn't get to have any more of them.

[41:23] So that's my sales point on that is get them, you'll enjoy them, but protect them from your spouse's thieving hands because they're apparently a great thing to take to work for lunch and leave your husband, who works at home, with nothing.

[41:38] Nothing at all.

[41:39] Head to factormeals.com slash flop50 and use code flop50 to get 50% off.

[41:45] That's code flop50 at factormeals.com slash flop50 to get 50% off.

Stuart Wellington

[41:52] And you know what?

[41:53] We also have a Jumbotron today.

[41:56] This is a fun one.

[41:59] What's better than an hour with your favorite peaches?

[42:03] How about an hour with each peach talking about their favorite Broadway cast album and or heavy metal concept album?

[42:12] Listen to the original cast podcast to do just that.

[42:16] Fans of the Flophouse can go to bit.ly slash original cast.

[42:22] And find out Dan's thoughts on a pre-Mrs.

[42:27] Fletcher Angela Lansbury.

[42:29] Stu's musings on heavy metal bands' logos.

[42:32] And what Elliot thinks the ethical uses of a resurrection machine would be.

[42:37] So go to bit.ly slash original cast flop and listen to each of your favorite peaches talk music on the original cast.

[42:47] This is a podcast that we, I think now we've all been guests on.

[42:51] It was a ton of fun.

[42:52] And Patrick, the host, was nice enough to allow me to flaunt the rules of the show.

[42:59] And instead of talking about an original cast album, talk about King Diamond's Them, one of my favorite heavy metal concept records.

[43:08] And a very spooky, spooky album to listen to in this spooky time of year.

Dan McCoy

[43:14] I'm glad that we were able to get through that Jumbotron without associating the product either with masturbation or marital strife as we did in our first two commercials.

[43:24] I tried.

[43:24] I couldn't do it.

Elliott Kalan

[43:25] The Jumbotron was too well written.

[43:27] They told me to speak about my personal experience with Factor and I did.

[43:31] My wife liked it so much that I didn't get to eat more of it.

[43:34] People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.

Stuart Wellington

[43:43] Which is why here on Just the Zoo of Us, we judge them by so much more.

S4

[43:48] We rate animals out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics, taking into consideration each animal's true strengths.

[43:55] Like a pigeon's ability to tell a Monet from a Picasso or a polar bear's ability to play basketball.

Stuart Wellington

[44:02] Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, and more join us to share their unique insight into the animal's world.

S4

[44:08] Listen with friends and family of all ages on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts.

S5

[44:21] It's the final week of Co-Optober.

[44:23] I'm Richard Roby, producer, and I'm here with...

S6

[44:26] KT Wigman, operations specialist.

[44:29] To cap off National Co-Op Month, we're sharing how worker-owned co-ops can benefit their communities.

[44:35] Read about it in our newsletter or on social media at MaxFunHQ.

S5

[44:39] We're also trying to do our part.

[44:41] We're volunteering at our local food bank this week, and we encourage you to volunteer in your area too.

S6

[44:46] On Friday, we're announcing the donation that you helped raise in the PostMax FunDrive sticker sale, going to five food banks across the U.S.

S5

[44:54] And we want to make sure that you know this is your last chance to get our limited edition Launch Crew merch.

S6

[45:00] Grab a pin, hat, shirt, or hoodie before they disappear at the end of the month.

S5

[45:05] Details on merch, resources for volunteering, and all things Co-Optober can be found at MaximumFun.org slash Co-Optober.

S6

[45:12] That's C-O-O-P-T-O-B-E-R.

[45:15] Thank you so much for your support.

[45:17] And a great Co-Optober.

Elliott Kalan

[45:20] Okay.

[45:20] We also have a couple other things to mention.

[45:22] One is, this is Flophouse General Business.

[45:25] I'm sure you've heard a lot of it by now.

[45:27] You know.

[45:28] We have Flop TV, our monthly online screening series.

[45:31] It's a six-month season.

[45:33] We've had three episodes so far.

[45:35] They were all really fun.

[45:36] And our next episode is coming up soon.

[45:38] It's Saturday, November 4th.

[45:40] We're going to be talking about, over the top, possibly the greatest sports movie ever made.

[45:44] Yeah, Stuart?

Stuart Wellington

[45:45] I was going to say, I mean, how many other arm wrestling adventures exist in the movie world?

Elliott Kalan

[45:52] Very few.

[45:53] As far as I can think, none.

[45:55] Well, none that are directly about the world of arm wrestling.

[45:57] There are other movies with arm wrestling in it.

[46:00] But that's November 4th.

[46:01] If you want to watch it, go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[46:05] You can buy tickets for individual episodes.

[46:07] Or you can get a season pass that gives you a discount on the six-show bundle.

[46:11] And gives you access to these shows after they air.

[46:15] There's the video.

[46:16] Still up on the website.

[46:17] You can watch it whenever you want.

[46:20] And if you happen to miss the show on November 4th,

[46:22] your ticket or your season pass still gets you access to the recording after the show is over.

[46:27] It's really fun.

[46:28] We've had a lot of fun with these original presentations, original talk, questions from the audience.

[46:33] We were all in town in LA this past week before we recorded this.

[46:38] And we recorded some more intro videos that have all of us in the same room together.

[46:44] Spoiler alert.

[46:45] So that'll be fun.

[46:46] So that's over the top, the next episode of Flop TV, the television version of The Flophouse, November 4th.

[46:52] Go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[46:54] And then guys, I have a personal thing that I wanted to promote, if that's okay.

[46:57] Sure.

[46:58] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[46:59] How personal.

Elliott Kalan

[47:00] Okay.

[47:00] Anyone relate to that marital strife we were talking about earlier?

[47:02] No, I'm just kidding.

[47:03] Okay, cool.

[47:04] Elliot's single and ready to mingle.

[47:06] I'm neither single and have no interest to mingle.

[47:09] Yeah.

[47:11] I don't want to hang up a shingle.

[47:13] Say that again.

[47:13] And I don't want to have a pringle because once you pop, you can't stop.

[47:17] Anyway, I have a comic book series that is coming out right now.

[47:20] It's from Dynamite Comics and it's called Hades, starring the villain of the Disney Hercules movie.

[47:26] Issue number three came out on October 25th, one day after we recorded this, but a couple days before you hear it.

[47:32] So go to your local comic book store and pick up Hades number three.

[47:35] It's a five issue series.

[47:36] Issues one and two are out.

[47:38] Issue three comes out this week.

[47:40] And it's a super fun, funny, kind of like ancient Greek myth heist mashup with lots of fun characters and silly jokes and exciting action.

[47:50] Fans of the original Disney Hercules will like it and people who didn't like the original Disney Hercules, I think, will also like it.

Stuart Wellington

[47:55] I think it's a fun way to enjoy the character without being associated with James Woods.

Elliott Kalan

[47:59] Exactly.

[48:00] You can imagine any voice you want in there.

[48:02] It doesn't have to be him.

[48:03] Elliot's voice.

[48:05] Sure, I guess so.

Stuart Wellington

[48:06] You should release an audio book version of your comic book where you do the voice for everybody.

[48:10] Okay.

[48:11] So are you guys ready?

[48:12] Yeah, I do that.

Elliott Kalan

[48:12] It's called reading to my children every day.

[48:15] When I'm reading to them and they go, uh, voices?

[48:18] And I'm like, oh, okay.

[48:19] Well, every character has to have a voice now, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[48:21] Don't pretend you don't like doing voices.

[48:23] I like doing the voices.

Elliott Kalan

[48:24] Do you do accents too?

[48:26] Yes, when it's called for.

[48:27] Except there's one character in the Dogman books who is an Australian character, but other than occasionally her saying,

[48:32] I'm Australian, it never comes up.

[48:34] And I forget to give her an Australian accent during her scenes.

Stuart Wellington

[48:38] Okay.

[48:38] Well, that's a snapshot.

Elliott Kalan

[48:40] You asked and I told.

[48:41] If you didn't want to know, you shouldn't have asked.

[48:43] Shouldn't have asked, I guess.

[48:45] Let's go back to the horror.

[48:46] More fool me.

[48:47] That's mud on my face.

[48:48] It sounds like the Horror Express is about to leave Scary Station.

[48:51] Let's hop back aboard.

[48:54] Okay.

[48:54] Choo-choo.

Dan McCoy

[48:56] A real shift took place there.

Stuart Wellington

[49:00] Okay.

[49:00] We're back in the game.

[49:01] And you know, we just talked about scariness of the old xenomorph.

[49:04] So let's talk about star power.

Dan McCoy

[49:09] Again, I got to give this a 10.

[49:11] It is one of the most iconic.

[49:12] 10 out of 10.

[49:13] Yeah, I want to say 10 also.

[49:14] Or things ever.

[49:16] Not even in movies, I think.

[49:18] Just like in general.

Elliott Kalan

[49:20] Here's a show of how iconic and how star power it is.

[49:23] Alien is a word, a pre-existing word that it now owns.

[49:27] We thought it was a big deal that they took one of Edvard Munch's paintings.

[49:30] Everyone can take away a Norwegian painter's painting.

[49:33] You know, if he's not looking, just grab it when he's not there.

[49:36] Yeah, just grab it.

[49:37] The word alien and then the word aliens, it owns those words now.

[49:40] You can put out a movie called Alien vs. Predator.

[49:44] And people are like, what's a predator?

[49:46] They know what an alien is.

Stuart Wellington

[49:47] Yeah, you guys are right.

[49:49] I mean, I was about to knock some points off because it doesn't talk,

[49:52] doesn't have any cool catchphrases, doesn't do any bits.

[49:55] Unless it's Spaceballs in which he does bits.

[49:58] And he sings a song, yeah.

[49:59] But also, that's the show that he's got range.

[50:01] That's the show, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[50:02] He didn't get cast in anything else off of that.

[50:05] But, you know, the critics loved it.

Elliott Kalan

[50:07] I mean, he does have catchphrases like...

[50:10] Uh-huh.

[50:12] That's why.

Stuart Wellington

[50:13] And he's like, somebody stop me.

[50:15] Smoking me.

[50:16] Yeah, yeah.

[50:17] Yeah, smoking.

Elliott Kalan

[50:19] Yeah, that's the alien, all right.

[50:20] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[50:21] Oh, classic.

[50:22] Oh, okay.

[50:24] So, I'm going to ding him a point.

Elliott Kalan

[50:26] When the alien goes, really?

[50:30] Like that kind of stuff, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:31] Yeah.

[50:32] How wooed.

[50:35] And you're like, you didn't even pronounce the R right.

[50:38] It's adorable.

[50:39] I'm just getting warmed up.

[50:40] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[50:42] She's got a great ass.

[50:46] That movie makes a lot more sense when you realize that Al Pacino assumed the character was high on coke the entire film.

Stuart Wellington

[50:51] Yeah.

[50:54] Okay.

[50:55] Okay.

[50:56] So, I think it's time for a lucky dip.

[50:58] This could make or break.

Elliott Kalan

[50:59] The alien's last catchphrase.

[51:00] Hinka-tinka-too.

[51:02] Yep.

[51:03] Also be alien catchphrase.

[51:03] Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

[51:06] Wherever in the universe you are.

[51:07] Okay.

[51:08] What was the final?

[51:09] What's the lucky dip?

Stuart Wellington

[51:10] We're doing lucky dip.

[51:11] And I think, is it Elliot's time to choose?

[51:13] I think it's Elliot's time to choose.

[51:14] Sure, I'll choose.

[51:15] This could make or break the game for the old xenomorph.

Elliott Kalan

[51:17] Wow.

[51:18] At the risk, I'm going to say number one.

[51:19] I think he's the number one horror monster.

[51:21] Let's say number one.

[51:22] Let's see.

Stuart Wellington

[51:23] Interesting.

[51:23] Okay.

[51:24] On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to ask the xenomorph to help you move?

Dan McCoy

[51:31] Oh, man.

[51:32] This is where the score tanks.

[51:35] I don't know.

[51:36] Well, hear me out.

[51:36] There's a lot of them.

[51:38] That's a lot of helping hands.

[51:40] And they seem to be pretty strong.

[51:42] Yeah.

[51:43] They get into tight spaces.

[51:45] I do think that they're either going to shoot their little inner mouths out and kill you

[51:52] or have one of their friends lay eggs in you.

Elliott Kalan

[51:57] At the very least, they're going to lay eggs in all your stuff.

[51:59] And suddenly, your couch is going to be full of chestbursters.

Dan McCoy

[52:01] The highest I can go for this is a two.

[52:05] And that's mostly just because I want to give one of my favorite monsters a fighting chance.

[52:11] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[52:12] I'm going to go as high as a four.

[52:13] I'm going to say a four.

[52:14] Although, I do regret it.

[52:15] I wish that the xenomorph could have walked away with a perfect score on this one.

Stuart Wellington

[52:18] It's going to be hard.

[52:21] This category is always going to be the xenomorph.

Elliott Kalan

[52:25] I really wish that xenomorph could have gotten the killing a bus full of teams.

[52:29] Oh, man.

Stuart Wellington

[52:30] I would have crushed it.

[52:31] They're very good at killing people on vehicles.

[52:33] I think xenomorph of three because the xenomorph is, you know, they pick up kids and move stuff around.

[52:39] Like, you know, they're industrious.

[52:40] They move stuff.

[52:41] Yeah, they move stuff.

[52:42] Too bad, xenomorph.

[52:44] That was a tough round for you.

[52:45] Okay.

[52:48] We're about to talk about one of my favorite horror villains.

[52:51] I think it's also one of you guys.

[52:53] We're talking about the Tall Man from the Phantasm franchise.

[52:56] Sure.

[52:56] Yeah.

[52:57] As portrayed by Angus Scrimm.

[53:01] R.I.P. to a real one.

[53:02] The best to ever do it.

[53:04] Angus Scrimm.

[53:04] Like I said about Geiger, when the actor who plays the character has a scary name, that's already a good sign.

Elliott Kalan

[53:12] Okay.

[53:12] You could have told me that if in the movies they revealed the Tall Man's real name was Angus Scrimm, you'd be like, yeah, definitely.

Stuart Wellington

[53:17] Makes sense.

[53:18] He looks like one.

[53:18] Makes sense.

[53:19] Works, yeah.

[53:20] Have you guys seen – I actually still have not seen Phantasm Ravager.

[53:24] That's like my big shame.

[53:26] That's the new one, right?

[53:27] That's the most recent one.

[53:28] Yeah, I haven't seen it.

Dan McCoy

[53:29] I can't quite bring myself to do it.

[53:30] It's fine in that I'm glad that they got some sort of chance to close the series off because it is such a wild series of continued continuity, even though nothing that happens really makes any sense.

[53:44] No.

[53:45] So, I liked it on that level.

[53:48] It does feel like kind of what it is, whereas like Don Coscarelli handed this off to, you know, some kids to make like their fan film of the Phantasm.

[53:59] Yeah, that's kind of what I was worried about.

[54:01] But I liked seeing some sort of end to the story.

[54:08] Yeah, I can see that.

Stuart Wellington

[54:11] But up to that point, the first four, I love them.

[54:14] They're so weird.

[54:15] They don't make a lot of sense, but that's exactly what I like about them.

[54:19] And the fact that they have this like...

Elliott Kalan

[54:20] Also, the ambition of the movies gets bigger and bigger, even as the budgets are shrinking dramatically.

[54:27] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[54:28] After number two.

[54:30] And I mean, the quad shotgun is forever going to live in my brain.

[54:34] A shotgun with four barrels.

[54:36] It's amazing.

[54:38] Okay.

[54:38] So, but we're not talking about Phantasm as a series.

[54:40] We're talking about the main villain, the tall man, played by Angus Grimm.

[54:45] So, where does he fit on scariness for you guys?

Elliott Kalan

[54:48] Now, I have a question before we do that.

[54:49] Are we factoring in the globes or not?

Stuart Wellington

[54:53] Yes.

[54:54] That is part of his fucking thing.

[54:56] If you buy an action figure, you get a fucking sphere.

[54:59] Okay.

[55:01] So, if you're unfamiliar with Phantasm, the tall man has a bunch of these weird spheres that float around them like silver and gold, and they all have different powers and crap.

[55:10] Some of them shoot lasers.

[55:12] Most of them just stick in your forehead and then drill into your head and shoot blood all over the place.

[55:16] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[55:17] Yeah.

[55:17] It's a real solution in search of a problem.

[55:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[55:24] I mean, well, they're so much lighter to transform once you take all that blood out of them.

[55:28] Yeah, yeah.

[55:28] Is that what people's heads you mean?

[55:30] Yeah.

[55:32] I mean, this is a weird one because like all the critiques of the tall man are also what makes him scary.

[55:41] Like, he doesn't really make any sense what he wants or what his powers are or any of that.

[55:47] Like, it's always unclear to some degree.

[55:50] And you could argue that's a failing or you could argue that that's a strength in terms of like whether it scares you.

Elliott Kalan

[55:59] So I would call that – I'm going to give him an eight because I would – for that reason, Dan, I would call that a strength that Phantasm at its best works on a sort of dream logic.

[56:06] And the tall man to me is a – he feels like a bad guy in a dream.

[56:10] Like, it feels like he's operating by not the rules of any established reality but by the rules of what a character in a nightmare would be like.

[56:17] And he looks scary without looking like a – he looks scary because he looks like a scary old man.

[56:22] You know, he doesn't look like a monster necessarily.

[56:25] And he's got those spheres flying around and there's something about him that is impenetrable to me in the way that a dream is.

[56:33] So that works for me in this case.

[56:35] So I'm going to give him an eight.

Dan McCoy

[56:37] Yeah.

[56:37] I can't go that high.

[56:39] I see what you're saying.

[56:41] I'm actually going to give him a six because he just seems like a guy.

[56:44] He seems mostly just like a guy and –

[56:47] I guess you know a lot of guys with spheres with drills in them that shoot blood out.

Stuart Wellington

[56:51] They're shockingly strong despite their slim frame.

Dan McCoy

[56:55] The drill spheres, like here's the thing about the tall man.

[56:59] It seems like if you don't go like prowling around the mortuary at night, if you don't poke the bear, he'll pretty much leave you alone.

Elliott Kalan

[57:08] I mean he does eventually go out and start taking over vast swathes of the United States of America.

[57:13] Wiping them out, turning everybody into dwarves.

[57:16] Yeah, but to be fair, in the first movie it is kind of more of a – if you don't mess with this business, then you can just go about your life and it doesn't matter.

Stuart Wellington

[57:25] Yeah.

[57:25] I'm going to give him a seven.

[57:27] As far as scariness, I think he's scary.

[57:29] But is he a top-tier scary?

[57:31] Not really.

[57:32] Let's move on.

[57:33] I'll give you that.

Dan McCoy

[57:34] He's a second-tier scary.

Stuart Wellington

[57:35] I'll give you that.

[57:35] So let's talk about Star Power.

[57:39] Where does the tall man reside in Star Power here?

[57:42] He's got a great voice.

[57:43] He has a couple of memorable lines.

[57:47] And he's got a pretty good look.

[57:50] He's got some cool toys.

[57:54] But I don't think he's really moved outside of the franchise.

Dan McCoy

[57:59] Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

[58:00] I think that he's not a breakout other than among horror nerds.

[58:05] So that takes him down a little bit.

[58:08] But I think that Angus Grimm is so charismatic in the role that I'm still going to give him like a seven.

[58:16] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[58:17] See, I'm going to be much lower than that.

[58:19] I'm going to give him a five for this.

[58:21] I think he works so well in those movies.

[58:23] I like Angus Grimm's performance so much.

[58:24] But I do think there's something – there's some it factor that's missing from making him, like you said, more than just the franchise.

[58:31] He works so well in the movies.

[58:33] But outside the movies, I don't think of him as a character that like does other stuff.

[58:37] Whereas the alien or Jason, it's hard for me not to imagine them in other scenarios.

[58:42] What's going to happen?

[58:43] You know, Angus Grimm, he just feels like a part of that phantasm story, you know, to me.

[58:49] Yeah.

[58:50] Or the tall man, I should say.

[58:51] Angus Grimm, I'm sure, had a life outside the phantasm movies.

[58:53] He was a human being.

[58:54] I'm assuming.

[58:55] He was in a sub-suchies movie.

Dan McCoy

[58:57] No, he just went into standby mode in between and they would boot him up.

Elliott Kalan

[59:01] Well, the funny thing about him is that I think in the first one, he's playing older than he actually is.

[59:05] So he ages quite a bit over the course of the movies and real life.

[59:09] But they just always make him look like the same old man, basically.

[59:12] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[59:13] So I'm giving him a six for this.

[59:15] So let's get into lucky dip territory.

[59:17] Dan, give me a guess.

[59:19] Number between one and seven.

Dan McCoy

[59:21] Now, I have no way of knowing which ones we've already picked at this point.

Stuart Wellington

[59:26] Okay, well, let me give you a choice here.

[59:28] We got two, three, five.

Dan McCoy

[59:34] Two, three, or five.

[59:35] I'm going to go with five.

[59:37] So it's easy to remember what's remaining.

Stuart Wellington

[59:40] Interesting.

[59:41] Okay.

[59:41] On a scale of one to ten, how good would the tall man be at being a gym teacher?

[59:47] A high school gym teacher.

Dan McCoy

[59:48] Oh, man.

[59:50] I feel like he would kill this one.

[59:52] He would fucking crush it.

[59:54] I mean, he already is just like, boy.

Elliott Kalan

[59:56] He only talks about playing games with boys and having to meet the kids.

[1:00:00] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:00] I mean, that's just like half a step away from yelling a kid's last name.

[1:00:06] You know, like McCoy.

[1:00:07] Hustle up.

[1:00:08] You know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:10] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:10] He's in many ways like one step removed from like a nightmare scenario gym teacher that you,

[1:00:17] that you're like already lives in your head.

[1:00:19] Yeah.

[1:00:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:20] Yeah.

[1:00:21] I mean, you know, there are like just reasons of like, I think he would have a tough time

[1:00:28] in that atmosphere that I'm not going to give him the full ten.

[1:00:31] Like, I think that, you know.

[1:00:33] Interesting.

[1:00:34] His disposition re-like, you know, killing people or turning them into dwarves or whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:42] Dan, if you think real gym teachers don't kill people or turn them into dwarves, you're being naive.

[1:00:46] Yeah.

[1:00:47] Maybe so.

[1:00:48] Wake up, dude.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:49] I'm just going to, I'm saying an eight.

[1:00:51] It's, you know, it's high, but not the highest.

[1:00:54] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:55] I'm going to give him an eight as well.

[1:00:57] I think he would be very good at this.

[1:00:59] And despite, you know, in some ways he would make a better science teacher.

[1:01:04] But I think, you know, he's strong.

[1:01:08] He's physically fit despite his years, you know.

[1:01:10] Yeah.

[1:01:11] I'm going to give him a nine just because.

[1:01:12] He would be a good motivator.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:14] Yeah.

[1:01:14] I'm going to give him a nine just because around the time of year when the presidential physical

[1:01:17] fitness test comes around, I find it hard to believe he would stick to that curriculum.

[1:01:21] But otherwise, otherwise, that's a solid nine.

[1:01:24] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:25] Okay.

[1:01:26] Not bad.

[1:01:26] Okay.

[1:01:28] So for our next horror villain, we are, we're talking about a classic here.

[1:01:32] Well, kind of a classic.

[1:01:33] Argued one of the scariest movies.

[1:01:35] The clowns from Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

[1:01:40] We are talking about Jack Torrance from The Shining movie.

[1:01:44] Interesting.

[1:01:45] Jack Torrance from The Shining movie.

[1:01:47] Considered by many to be the scariest movie of all time to me.

[1:01:52] It's the Zabruder film, but that's just me.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:55] I mean, it is the only movie that I thought I might have had a heart attack during, but I

[1:02:01] don't think that that's the movie's fault and more just something.

[1:02:03] That happened in my body.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:04] I mean, you certainly contributed to that.

[1:02:06] Your lifestyle has contributed to that event.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:09] I mean, my heart is fine.

[1:02:12] Sorry to spring this on the Flophouse listening audience.

[1:02:14] My heart is fine, everyone.

[1:02:16] Yay!

[1:02:16] Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

[1:02:17] Dan had it checked out.

[1:02:18] His heart is fine.

[1:02:19] But, yeah, part of me was like, was that part of that tension from The Shining?

[1:02:26] Who knows?

[1:02:27] Could be.

[1:02:29] Could be.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:30] Okay.

[1:02:31] So, Jack Torrance, we've all seen The Shining, right?

[1:02:35] Sure.

[1:02:35] Played by Jack Nicholson.

[1:02:37] Maybe you've heard of him.

[1:02:39] He was also a Joker.

[1:02:40] No.

[1:02:40] Who is he?

[1:02:41] He was a wolf once.

[1:02:42] He was a wolf once.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:43] That guy.

[1:02:44] Yeah.

[1:02:45] He flew over a cuckoo's nest.

[1:02:47] Yeah, Dan, you probably remember him best, as most people do, from the film The Passenger,

[1:02:51] Antonioni's film.

[1:02:52] Mm-hmm.

[1:02:54] He was an easy rider.

[1:02:56] Uh-huh.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:57] But he wasn't a raging bull.

[1:02:59] That was...

[1:02:59] No, he was not a raging bull, no.

[1:03:01] But he was a departed.

[1:03:03] Yeah, he was a departed.

[1:03:03] He was a departed.

[1:03:05] Yeah.

[1:03:06] He was a departed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:09] So, Jack Torrance.

[1:03:10] Dan, you may know him best from watching...

[1:03:12] From you having seen The Witches of Breastwick and then being like, is this a parody of anything?

[1:03:17] Oh, The Witches of Eastwick.

[1:03:18] That's what it's a parody of.

[1:03:19] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:19] Yeah.

[1:03:20] But then not watching The Witches of Eastwick.

[1:03:23] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:23] Which is...

[1:03:24] Which of those movies is better?

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:27] Uh...

[1:03:27] I...

[1:03:28] Well, one's directed by George Miller and the other's directed by Jim Wynarski from Chopper Hall.

[1:03:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:36] I mean, it depends on what you want out of a movie, I guess.

[1:03:40] Yeah.

[1:03:41] That's true.

[1:03:42] Because I'll be honest, like, Witches of Eastwick, it has a lot of stuff I like in it, but it

[1:03:46] is not one of my favorite George Miller movies, despite, like, all of the amazing star power

[1:03:50] and the great, like, George Miller camera work.

[1:03:53] There's a little something missing there for me.

[1:03:55] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:55] But I would...

[1:03:56] I would quality-wise put it above Witches of Breastwick, unless the quality you want

[1:04:01] is boobs.

[1:04:02] And then...

[1:04:03] The latter film takes the crown, I guess, in that scenario.

[1:04:08] Yeah.

[1:04:08] Yeah, it's a crown.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:09] Okay.

[1:04:10] So, Jack Torrance, we're talking about potential father-of-the-year candidate, Jack Torrance.

[1:04:14] Yeah.

[1:04:15] Failed novelist and arguably failed groundskeeper.

[1:04:20] I mean, who knows?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:21] All work and no play make Jack a doll boy could have been a bestseller.

[1:04:25] Yeah, it could have been a hit.

[1:04:26] Posthumously.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:27] You never know.

[1:04:28] Yeah.

[1:04:28] So, honest...

[1:04:29] It's auto-fiction.

[1:04:30] It's auto-fiction.

[1:04:30] Yeah.

[1:04:30] It's a new experiment.

[1:04:31] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:32] So, on scariness, where does old Jack fit in?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:36] I would say that personally scary to me was watching the movie and seeing Jack yell at his wife

[1:04:45] for interrupting him while he was writing.

[1:04:47] And let me be clear.

[1:04:48] I do not...

[1:04:48] I'm not abusive towards Audrey in any way.

[1:04:51] But I do get irritable sometimes.

[1:04:53] I wasn't even considering that, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:54] No, I'm just like...

[1:04:55] I was like...

[1:04:56] Dan, how often do you brandish an axe at her when you're trying to work?

[1:04:59] No, I don't...

Dan McCoy

[1:04:59] I mean, the fact...

[1:05:00] The point is, like, I know it's ridiculous to compare myself because it is, like, so far

[1:05:07] to the, like, end of the spectrum.

[1:05:09] But, like, I see...

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:10] And also, you don't have a child which puts so much stress on a marriage.

[1:05:13] Does it?

[1:05:13] I see the irritability.

[1:05:15] Let me make my point.

[1:05:15] I thought they can take care of themselves.

[1:05:17] Nope.

[1:05:18] For God's sake.

[1:05:19] The Shining tells you that a kid can just ride a big wheel around the empty halls of a

[1:05:23] haunted hotel all day.

[1:05:24] But in real life, they'd be like, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, play with

[1:05:28] me.

[1:05:28] Daddy, daddy, daddy.

[1:05:29] And you're like, just play with the fucking ghosts.

[1:05:31] There's ghost kids right here.

[1:05:33] Play with the ghost kids your own age.

[1:05:34] I'm busy.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:36] I'm sorry.

[1:05:37] I was starting to make a point, and it was interrupted in such a way as to make it sound

[1:05:43] the worst, and then you...

[1:05:45] I call that the Flop House podcast.

[1:05:48] Interrupting.

[1:05:48] Just let me say the full idea.

[1:05:50] Okay, you got it.

[1:05:52] It is so ridiculously out of bounds in the movie.

[1:05:55] It's like this horrifying...

[1:05:57] But the fact that I get irritable with Audrey when she's like, hey, I need this or that

[1:06:05] thing when I'm writing.

[1:06:08] There was this small part of me is like, is this how I come across?

[1:06:12] Whether or not it's real in the sense of like, I don't want to seem like I'm turning on someone

[1:06:21] just because at that moment I'm trying to...

[1:06:25] You know, like, I know I have that irritability within me, you know?

[1:06:28] So I was like, I think that it was personally scary to me because I was like, this is the

[1:06:33] worst case scenario of like the kind of like, like anger that lies within people, you know?

[1:06:40] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:41] So I could see...

[1:06:42] So the...

[1:06:43] What's scary about him is in a way you see yourself reflected.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:46] Well, again, I want to make it clear.

[1:06:48] I don't actually.

[1:06:49] But in that moment, I'm like...

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:51] You see the fears that you have reflect the fear of yourself.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:55] Yeah, the fears that I have about like...

[1:06:57] Yeah.

[1:06:58] I think that part of the thing that is scary about The Shining is it is a movie about hurting

[1:07:02] people who care about you.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:04] Yeah.

[1:07:04] So I guess in our version of The Shining, Dan is Jack Torrance.

[1:07:08] I'm going to be the cool bartender that's a ghost and Elliot will be, I don't know, Shelley

[1:07:11] Duvall?

[1:07:12] Or the kid.

[1:07:13] Or both.

[1:07:14] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:15] Yeah.

[1:07:15] I'm going to give him...

[1:07:16] I'm not going to...

[1:07:17] I don't find him that scary in it.

[1:07:19] I find the movie scary, but I don't find him that scary.

[1:07:21] So I'm going to give him like a six, I think.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:23] Okay.

[1:07:24] Six.

[1:07:24] Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:07:27] What?

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:30] What's the rating?

[1:07:31] Because we've been rating everybody on a scale of one to ten.

[1:07:33] No, I know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:36] You're trying to unleash the inner Jack Torrance.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:38] I get confused because I think every time I have said the number, then you don't write

[1:07:43] it down.

[1:07:43] You ask me at the end.

[1:07:45] Yep.

[1:07:45] So it's seven.

[1:07:46] Seven.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:47] Seven.

[1:07:48] Seven.

[1:07:48] Okay.

[1:07:49] I'm going to go six.

[1:07:50] Our company.

[1:07:52] Yeah.

[1:07:52] I'm going to go six as well.

[1:07:53] Okay.

[1:07:54] So let's talk about star power.

[1:07:57] Jack Nicholson.

[1:07:59] He's a courtside every Lakers game.

[1:08:02] Yeah.

[1:08:02] Lakers game.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:03] And he was able to steal someone else's catchphrase and make it his own catchphrase.

[1:08:07] Here's Johnny.

[1:08:07] I was going to say, I was going to use that exact thing for the opposite.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:11] I think the most iconic thing about him is someone else's catchphrase.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:15] Oh, but I think if you can take someone else's catchphrase and make it your own, then you

[1:08:19] have defeated them star wise.

[1:08:23] But that's just me.

[1:08:24] I could be wrong.

[1:08:25] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:26] No, I think, I mean, I think his performance really, maybe it might not necessarily make

[1:08:32] it scarier, but it definitely is very iconic and memorable.

[1:08:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:38] I'll give him a high, I'm going to give him an eight star power.

[1:08:41] Okay.

[1:08:42] It's not the character, it's Jack, but that's, you know, so that's why I take it off a little

[1:08:46] bit because he is one of the most charismatic stars of the, that generation.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:53] But I, and by all accounts, a bad person, but we're talking about his performance.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:56] By all accounts, a difficult person, not good to people, who knows what he's involved with.

[1:09:01] Abusive.

[1:09:01] I don't know.

[1:09:02] I don't know for sure.

[1:09:03] I don't want to open us up to anything.

[1:09:05] If you did, I would talk about that scream thing, but the, but, but it's not a person

[1:09:11] I would want to spend time around.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:13] I'm going to, like, we're not talking about Jack Nicholson, though.

[1:09:17] We're talking about the character of Jack Torrance.

[1:09:19] And I guess I'm going to say that, like, when you think of the shining, like, even though

[1:09:25] he's obviously got problems from the very beginning of that movie, like you, he's not necessarily,

[1:09:34] you don't think of him necessarily as the overall villain of the picture.

[1:09:38] You think of the hotel and its malign influence, I think, as the overall villain.

[1:09:43] And he's a weak man that it's channeled through.

[1:09:45] At least that's the way I think of it.

[1:09:47] And so otherwise it's just like, here's, here's Jack Nicholson in a sweater.

[1:09:52] And does that permeate as like a horror movie villain?

[1:09:57] Like, I don't know.

[1:09:57] I say I'm going to give him a six.

[1:10:00] A six.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:01] Anything else?

[1:10:02] The difference here.

[1:10:04] And give him a seven on star power.

[1:10:06] So now we are on lucky dip.

[1:10:08] Elliot, why don't you give me either a two or a three?

[1:10:12] Say a three.

[1:10:14] Okay.

[1:10:15] On a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to trust Jack Torrance to do your grocery shopping for you?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:25] Well, he's already, that's kind of the job he's doing in some ways, is that kind of caretaking.

[1:10:31] And he's not doing it well.

[1:10:33] He's not doing a great job.

[1:10:35] No.

[1:10:37] So yeah, I think he's going to go to the grocery store.

[1:10:40] A ghost there is going to offer him a drink.

[1:10:42] There's going to be a ghost in the beer aisle, offers him a drink.

[1:10:45] Next thing you know, he's throwing cans at people's heads, you know.

[1:10:49] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:50] I'll be the ghost bartender in the beer aisle.

[1:10:52] I'll be like, yeah, they don't.

[1:10:53] For some reason, they say you can't give free samples of beer anymore.

[1:10:57] What's wrong with people these days?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:59] Yeah.

[1:10:59] So I'm going to give him a, on the other hand, I'm having trouble not comparing him to the other monsters who I would also not really trust to do this job for me.

[1:11:09] This is at least something that I believe Jack Torrance has done at some point in his life.

[1:11:13] So I'm going to give him a five.

[1:11:15] Okay.

[1:11:15] You're giving him a five on this.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:18] I'm going to go way higher.

[1:11:21] I'm going to go with an eight.

[1:11:23] And I say that, I mean, he is basically a human man.

[1:11:29] Not just basically.

[1:11:30] It is.

[1:11:31] He is that.

[1:11:31] He can do errands, you know.

[1:11:33] And I think that like away from the hotel especially, you know, if you can send him out, not in this, you know, cooped up in a snowstorm, maybe that'd be good for his head.

[1:11:43] So, yeah, I think he could probably do it if you wanted him to.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:46] You make a good point that he is a person as opposed to like, I'm not going to send a predator to go get my groceries.

[1:11:53] You're going to be a fool.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:56] Yeah, he'll just bring back a bunch of skulls all polished up.

[1:12:00] Not what I wanted.

[1:12:02] Yeah, I mean, I feel like deep down Jack Torrance would be wanting to do a good job.

[1:12:08] And I think he would do okay at following instructions.

[1:12:12] He would still mess up a little bit.

[1:12:16] Probably, again, because he was drinking ghost beer.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:18] What?

[1:12:18] Go on.

[1:12:19] I feel like anytime you use Instacart, you're dealing with Jack Torrance.

[1:12:23] He's going to try his best.

[1:12:24] Like you're saying, he's going to pick the wrong item for a couple things.

[1:12:27] You're going to be like, well, when I asked for potatoes, I didn't want potato chips.

[1:12:33] Like, oh, they were out of potatoes.

[1:12:35] There's no way they were out of potatoes, Jack.

[1:12:36] Like, okay, but you did your best.

[1:12:38] I understand, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:39] Uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:12:42] Instead, he just got me two bags.

[1:12:43] I asked for two potatoes, and he gave me two bags of Tato skins.

[1:12:48] A chip they don't even make anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:50] No.

[1:12:51] Yeah, I got it from a ghost from the 20s.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:53] Yeah.

[1:12:55] Wait, they had Tato skins back in the 20s?

[1:12:57] Probably.

[1:12:58] Okay, so Jack Torrance, not too bad on that last bit.

[1:13:02] So we're going to wrap this whole game up with, I mean, he's been in the background this whole time, lurking, slowly pursuing us, occasionally teleporting.

[1:13:11] That's right, the terror of Crystal Lake himself, Jason Voorhees.

[1:13:16] You knew he was coming.

[1:13:17] He couldn't hide.

[1:13:18] We couldn't hide from him forever.

[1:13:20] Jason Voorhees.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:20] Now, even though we thought he was dead at the bottom of a lake, some idiot electrocuted him or stabbed him in his grave, and he came back.

[1:13:28] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:29] So Jason Voorhees, on a scary factor, where does old Jason sit?

[1:13:37] Here's the thing.

[1:13:38] Is that a lot of incarnations?

Dan McCoy

[1:13:40] If we were, you know, if we were doing Goosebumps rules, as we've talked about before, like that situation, unstoppable, seemingly teleporting killer.

[1:13:52] Determined.

[1:13:53] 10 out of 10, obviously.

[1:13:56] But I have to look at it from a bit of a distance, and I think I'm going to, like, take in the general vibe of the movies, which I find almost cozily enjoyable more than I do, like, scary.

[1:14:10] I don't think that there's particularly accomplished suspense filmmaking in the Friday the 13th pictures.

[1:14:18] So his whole vibe is scariness is lessened for me because of that, and also because unless he's, like, carted away on a cruise ship, he mostly just hangs around that one lake.

[1:14:29] So I think it's more of a 5.

[1:14:32] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:33] A 5.

[1:14:34] Wow.

[1:14:34] Death Elemental Jason only gets a 5.

[1:14:37] Elliot, what do you think on scariness?

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:38] I have similar thoughts to Dan, but I'm not, it's not going to, the number won't be the same.

[1:14:42] The idea of him is so frightening to me, but I agree that in the actual movies, it's not that, it's never that scary when you see him in action, but the idea of him is so scary.

[1:14:51] So actually, I'm going to give him a 7, because if it was just the concept of Jason, that's a 10.

[1:14:57] But in a lot of the movies, yeah, it's kind of like, he wouldn't be that hard to get away from, even with teleporting.

[1:15:02] He's kind of, gets distracted easily by stuff.

[1:15:06] Like, he persists all the time, but he's, there's something kind of in action, there's something kind of doofy about him compared to the idea of him.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:16] He's a star in need of a vehicle.

[1:15:19] I'm going to give him a little bit higher, because I got, you know, he's the Jason, I got to love him.

[1:15:25] So I'm giving him an 8.

[1:15:26] So let's talk about star power for the old Jason here.

[1:15:30] What do we think?

[1:15:31] Where does he sit in the star power?

[1:15:32] Now, he doesn't talk.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:35] He has a cool outfit.

[1:15:37] That's the thing.

[1:15:38] What's amazing is, he doesn't talk.

[1:15:41] He has little discernible personality.

[1:15:44] There's a little bit, but not that much there.

[1:15:45] His clothes are ripped and gross.

[1:15:48] And they're not cool clothes.

[1:15:50] But I got to give him a 10, because the audience can't be wrong about everything.

[1:15:56] He is one of the most iconic characters in horror, even with those deficits.

[1:16:00] This is a character who doesn't even get the most famous thing about him until into the third movie in the series.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:06] Yeah, he took over a franchise he didn't start as the killer of.

[1:16:10] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:11] Yeah.

[1:16:13] Yeah.

[1:16:13] It's like, it's when the, it's the, he's the original, he's the original chorus girl who comes back a star, you know, taking over the show.

[1:16:21] I'm going to have to give it 10.

[1:16:22] I mean, there's, when you ask, when you talk to a regular person on the street and you say, name a horror movie monster, it's very likely Jason will be the first or second person that they name.

[1:16:31] And probably Freddy is the other one, you know, at this point.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:34] Yeah, I agree totally.

[1:16:37] Like, I, not my franchise in general, even though I like it, but he's got to get a 10 for this, if anything.

[1:16:46] If anything.

[1:16:48] He's the iconic slasher.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:50] The fact that now hockey masks are inherently scary when they weren't before.

[1:16:56] They were just a thing that, that people who the old time NHL guys considered too chicken for not letting pucks hit them in the teeth and knock their teeth out of their mouth.

[1:17:05] Uh, they used to just be a face guard, but he made them instantly a scary thing.

[1:17:08] You called it a hockey mask.

[1:17:10] I think most people just called it Jason mask.

[1:17:12] Well, that's yeah, exactly.

[1:17:13] But now they say to goalies at hockey games.

[1:17:15] So where's your Jason mask?

[1:17:17] They don't even say hockey mask anymore.

[1:17:18] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:18] So, uh, yeah, yeah.

[1:17:20] So, uh, yeah, he managed to get the puck past the Jason.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:24] Ooh, hits him right there.

[1:17:25] Good thing he was wearing a Jason.

[1:17:27] That's not what you're saying.

[1:17:28] The goalies are just called Jasons now.

[1:17:30] And even the point that David Hockney, the English painter is now called David Jason.

[1:17:37] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:37] That's, that happened.

[1:17:38] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:39] Uh, and also David Hockney of a, of a nude man jumping into a swimming pool in California, but he's wearing, but it's Jason and he's wearing his mask.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:47] Yeah.

[1:17:47] I mean, it's like, um, the, uh, so, and also I want to point out that in like, in Freddie versus Jason,

[1:17:55] Jason kind of de facto becomes the hero of the movie.

[1:17:59] Yeah.

[1:18:00] Like he kills people.

[1:18:01] But by the end, you're like, Jason, kill Freddie, please.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:05] There's something about him.

[1:18:06] That's the moment where he crosses over the same way that like Godzilla crossed over, where Godzilla went from the scary part to the hero.

[1:18:12] And I think the fact that Jason is a kid inside, you know, inside there's the mind of a child.

[1:18:17] Yep.

[1:18:18] That Freddie is.

[1:18:19] Yeah, but he's drinking milk.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:20] He loves the simple pleasures like murdering.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:23] Yeah.

[1:18:23] And that Freddie is so much a, a malicious grownup.

[1:18:27] Whereas Jason, similar to Leatherface is kind of like still, he's, he's a murderer, but there's still kind of something innocent about him.

[1:18:33] You know, you can project more, more, uh, positive feelings onto him.

[1:18:38] Whereas Freddie's just a, he's an asshole.

[1:18:40] Like I'll just say it.

[1:18:41] Freddie Krueger is an asshole.

[1:18:42] Like he's a dick.

[1:18:43] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:44] You know, there's a, a, a charmed, a certain charm to bad boys, but you don't necessarily want to be around them all the time.

[1:18:50] No, not at all.

[1:18:50] Okay.

[1:18:51] So yeah, that's a, that's a 10 for me on Star Power.

[1:18:53] Now on our final lucky dip of the night, there's no more options.

[1:18:57] Our last option is Jason Voorhees on a scale of one to 10.

[1:19:02] How likely are you to ask him for voting advice?

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:08] Ooh, this is going to hurt for Jason.

[1:19:10] Yeah.

[1:19:10] It's too bad.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:11] I mean, I feel like Jack Torrance is going to be bad too.

[1:19:14] Here's the thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:16] I, I'm more likely to ask Jason for voting advice than say if it was, uh, the alien or even, you know, cause like, I'm like, that's clearly a monster or the predator even who looks a little bit more like a man, but like, oh, that's an alien.

[1:19:32] And neither of them are citizens.

[1:19:33] They don't have, they don't have any skin in the game, you know?

[1:19:36] Exactly.

[1:19:37] Uh, whereas Jason, there's like a slim chance I would see him mistake him for just like a regular guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:44] Is that true, Dan?

[1:19:45] Who loves hockey.

[1:19:45] Would you, would you mistake a man wandering around in a hockey mask in like a torn up postal uniform or whatever it is that he wears?

[1:19:52] I'm just saying like.

[1:19:53] Wet from whatever lake he just crawled out of.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:56] I'm just putting it on the spectrum of like horror villains.

[1:20:02] Okay.

[1:20:02] Uh-huh.

[1:20:03] You know, like, like he, he looks person-like, you know?

[1:20:08] Yeah.

[1:20:09] Okay.

[1:20:10] Especially from a distance, you know?

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:13] He might just be a very pale man.

[1:20:14] If you just see him from a distance, you don't know it's a mask.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:16] Yeah.

[1:20:17] I will also say that I feel like Jason has a tendency to go after and target the like assholes first.

[1:20:23] Uh-huh.

[1:20:24] Which is, which is good.

[1:20:25] I like his anti-asshole stance.

[1:20:27] And also-

[1:20:27] He does save the innocent ladies for last.

[1:20:29] Yes.

[1:20:30] That he's a real final girl follower.

[1:20:31] Yeah.

[1:20:32] And also, I feel like he would endorse a candidate that has a environmentalist message.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:38] Well, see, here's my issue with Jason is I feel like he's young at heart.

[1:20:42] He's very straightforward with his morality.

[1:20:44] I think he's going to look at things with a little bit too much of a like simplistic view.

[1:20:48] Yeah.

[1:20:48] He's going to be into easy solutions.

[1:20:50] Well, why don't we just stab everybody in the face?

[1:20:53] We can't do that, Jason.

[1:20:54] Yeah, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:54] Yeah, you can't just do that.

[1:20:55] We can handle things that way.

[1:20:57] Well-

[1:20:57] Whereas I think Jack Torrance, I'm getting huge Trump voter vibes.

[1:21:01] I do not want that.

[1:21:02] Oh, yeah.

[1:21:02] Jack Torrance is 100,000% a white man who feels left behind and is mad about it.

[1:21:07] Jason, I feel like he's going to be-

[1:21:09] It's the-

[1:21:10] There are aspects of-

[1:21:12] I think he's going to glom on to kind of like the worst aspects of the Bernie movement,

[1:21:15] which is the simplicity of it.

[1:21:17] Yeah.

[1:21:17] And the lack of nuance.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:19] I mean, we're ignoring the key issue, which is I am unlikely to ask advice of someone who cannot talk and to my knowledge also cannot write to communicate.

[1:21:31] So that's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:32] If he could write or sign, also it's someone who is very much a dead child inside of a grown zombie's body, which means he's not eligible to vote, I don't think.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:42] Yeah, so I mean, I'm still-

[1:21:45] If I know nothing of Jason, you know, and I'm mistaken for a man, maybe I'll give him a two is what I'm saying.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:53] But you're not going to call him up.

[1:21:54] You're not going to call him up and say, Jason, I'm having trouble.

[1:21:57] Who do I vote for for a county supervisor?

[1:21:59] And just you're on the phone, chat, chat, chat, Jason.

[1:22:02] Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.

[1:22:04] What are you saying, Jason?

[1:22:04] That doesn't help me.

[1:22:05] It's so hard to hear you.

[1:22:06] What?

[1:22:07] Has anyone ever made the joke about that that's what Jason's saying as he walks around all the time?

[1:22:11] He's just going, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay.

[1:22:14] Like that?

[1:22:15] Because he's not supposed to be him, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:22:17] I believe that the actual thing is that it's actually, even though it sounds like a ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, it's actually a...

[1:22:23] And it's supposed to sound like mom.

[1:22:28] And it's like some sort of, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:30] When I watched it recently on, for when we did Jason Takes Manhattan, I had the captions on.

[1:22:36] And it said, the captions say it's saying Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay.

[1:22:39] And then kill, kill, kill, kill, Jay.

[1:22:41] And it's very funny to me the idea that like a little, like a baby, the way that my older son, when he was little and learning to talk, would crawl around going,

[1:22:47] da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

[1:22:49] Like he's just trying out words.

[1:22:51] I like the idea that Jason is kind of like, you know, he's a cute little baby who kills people.

[1:22:56] So...

[1:22:56] He is a cute little baby who kills people.

[1:22:59] But yeah, he's not going to be able to tell you any of that.

[1:23:01] So I'm going to give him, I think, probably a one on this one.

[1:23:04] What do you say, Jay?

[1:23:04] A one.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:05] You know, as I said for my previous statements, I'm going to give him a four.

[1:23:09] I'm going to give him a better than a doubt on this one.

[1:23:11] Okay.

[1:23:13] So let me do one final tally here to tally up our numbers.

[1:23:18] Should we like...

[1:23:19] Alex, why don't you throw in a counting sound?

[1:23:21] Yeah.

[1:23:25] Okay.

[1:23:26] So it looks like we will give the, we'll give a full ranking probably on what?

[1:23:33] Instagram, Twitter, maybe on our show notes.

[1:23:36] But it looks like with a whopping, what number, let's start with number three.

[1:23:44] Our third highest kind of a surprise is Candyman.

[1:23:48] I think the lucky dip really helped him on that.

[1:23:51] It did.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:51] Killing all those teens.

[1:23:52] That was a real lucky break for him.

[1:23:54] That was in some ways an unfair pull for Candyman.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:57] Yeah, with 72 for Candyman.

[1:24:00] Number two, Pinhead, iconic villain.

[1:24:03] Yeah, that's a good one for old Pinhead right there.

[1:24:06] Not surprising.

[1:24:07] Class act, everything about him.

[1:24:08] And that's 76.

[1:24:10] And then just beating him out with 79.

[1:24:14] That's the Babadook.

[1:24:15] I think that says a lot.

[1:24:16] It's a well-made movie.

[1:24:18] It did not have any sequels to kind of water down the message.

[1:24:23] Yeah.

[1:24:23] That's, looks like Babadook takes it for the power rankings on horror movie villains.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:28] This is one of the times when I find that, I find that ranking, the rank, the numbers don't

[1:24:32] tell my heart truth, which is that the Xenomorph should at the very least be in the top two.

[1:24:37] But we need to do it.

[1:24:37] Maybe next time.

[1:24:38] Maybe next time.

[1:24:39] What are we asking him to do?

[1:24:41] Help us move?

[1:24:42] Not laying to his strengths.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:44] As Stuart introduced it originally, these were the 2023 rankings.

[1:24:50] Suggesting to me at first that this was, that these were going to be rankings of 2023 movies.

[1:24:55] But no, these are apparently only this year's rankings, Elliot.

[1:24:59] So you can take heart that.

[1:25:00] That's true.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:00] Next year.

[1:25:01] I think that next year the Xenomorph could take it all the way.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:04] I think that's going to be Xenomorph's year.

[1:25:05] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:05] Yeah.

[1:25:06] Yeah.

[1:25:06] 2024 might be the year of the morph.

[1:25:09] Speaking of morphing, thanks so much for tuning into the podcast.

[1:25:12] This was a lot of fun.

[1:25:13] I'm glad we got through this.

[1:25:15] This has been the Flop House podcast.

[1:25:18] We are part of the MaxFun podcast network.

[1:25:20] Check out all the cool shows that are on there.

[1:25:22] This show has been lovingly edited and curated by Mr. Alexander Smith.

[1:25:26] Goes by Lydia Burrell on various social media platforms.

[1:25:30] Thank you, Alex.

[1:25:31] So for the Flop House, I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:25:34] I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:25:35] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:25:37] Bye.

[1:25:52] It was a crisp autumn night and I'm walking down the street looking for a special life form

[1:26:00] that I'd like to meet.

[1:26:02] Rising up in front of me, I beheld an eerie glow.

[1:26:06] But it was just the neon sign above the bar where I'd like to go.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:11] Stuart doesn't know what he's about to find.

[1:26:14] A slimy beast with a dirty mind.

[1:26:16] A body with a body from beyond the stars.

[1:26:18] From a distant planet called Super Mars.

S7

[1:26:20] Super sexy, super sexy Mars.

[1:26:25] Super, super sexy, super sexy Mars.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:29] I swole in the door with my collar popped.

[1:26:34] Order up a drink and some liver chopped.

[1:26:38] Out the corner of my eye, something glistened and gleamed.

[1:26:43] It was the techno-organic creature of my dreams.

[1:26:48] An instant spark from across the place.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:50] When he saw the little face inside the bigger face.

[1:26:52] She had a drip he had to taste.

[1:26:55] Could she have a third face inside the little face?

[1:26:57] Third face inside the little face.

S7

[1:27:04] She was a xenomorph.

[1:27:07] Xenomorph.

[1:27:09] Super sexy.

[1:27:11] Sexy.

[1:27:12] Sexy.

[1:27:20] Sexy.

[1:27:21] Sexy.

[1:27:24] I'm shaking like a leaf.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:26] But I gotta stay cool.

[1:27:29] And I don't wanna get burnt by her acidic drool.

[1:27:33] I touch her skeletal knee.

[1:27:36] And say hello.

[1:27:38] Shift her to the door.

[1:27:40] And say let's go.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:43] They slipped up the back.

[1:27:44] He was the luckiest of men.

[1:27:45] Little did he know we'd never see him again.

[1:27:47] She stole his heart.

[1:27:48] Ripped him in two.

[1:27:49] Played an egg in his tummy.

[1:27:51] Don't let this happen to you.

[1:27:52] Don't let this happen to you.

S7

[1:27:53] She was a xenomorph.

[1:28:00] So dangerous.

[1:28:09] So dangerous.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:28] Oh. Oh, yeah. No. No, no, no, no. It's cool. No one else is around. It's just me and you.

[1:28:38] No, leave the lights on. I want to see you.

[1:28:42] Oh, there is a second face. Oh, for me?

[1:28:47] Oh.

S7

[1:28:58] Xenomorph. Xenomorph. Xenomorph. Xenomorph. Xenomorph. Xenomorph.

[1:29:28] Xenomorph. Xenomorph. Xenomorph. It was worth it.

FH Mini 91 – Best Horror Villains, Part 2

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