Episode #378 - Amityville in Space

Stuart Wellington

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Amityville in space!

[0:06] To be clear, we're still on Earth.

[0:09] It's Amityville that's in space.

Dan McCoy

[0:11] Well, technically, we're all in space, Stuart.

[0:13] What the f-

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse.

[0:39] I'm Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[0:40] Hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:42] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:44] Guys, ask me if I was at Ikea this morning.

Stuart Wellington

[0:46] Hey, Elliot, were you at Ikea this morning?

[0:48] How'd you guys know I was at Ikea this morning?

Elliott Kalan

[0:50] Okay.

[0:51] Stop watching me.

Dan McCoy

[0:52] Get out of my life.

[0:53] That's where Audrey is right now.

[0:55] At the same Ikea in Burbank?

[0:57] Well, probably not.

[0:58] I mean, who knows?

[0:59] I guess I could text her to ask, just to be sure.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02] Dan, you don't put a tracking device on your wife at all times.

[1:06] How uncharacteristic of you.

[1:08] Don't start lies about me.

Dan McCoy

[1:13] Why do you bring up Ikea, Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[1:15] Because it may explain why my head hurts and why, while I'm doing the summary of this movie today,

[1:21] it may get a little unorganized.

[1:25] What's the word for it?

[1:26] Things are not organized.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28] Well, were you watching the movie while you were in Ikea?

[1:31] Unfortunately, yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32] Well, they were playing it on all the screens.

Dan McCoy

[1:34] Were you washing dishes in their kitchen section of Ikea?

Elliott Kalan

[1:38] I walked into one of their fake kitchens and went to a fugue state and started washing the dishes,

[1:42] think I was in my kitchen.

[1:43] Yeah.

[1:43] Everything clean.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45] Must get everything clean.

[1:46] Punish, punish, et cetera, et cetera.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48] Well, look, let's back up.

[1:50] And I'll say this.

[1:51] If you're taking kids to Ikea, they are going to want to open all the refrigerators and freezers.

[1:54] They will never not find it hilarious when there's a sign in the freezer that says,

[1:58] take your favorite meatballs home, advertising that you can buy frozen meatballs at Ikea.

[2:03] When that sign wasn't in the freezer, they were noticeably disappointed.

[2:07] And they'd say, let's check the next one.

[2:08] And they'd open it up and go, take your favorite meatballs home.

[2:11] Like, this is hilarious.

[2:13] So.

Dan McCoy

[2:13] Yeah.

[2:14] Oh, man.

[2:14] I can put myself there.

[2:16] I think if I were a kid, I'd feel the same way.

Stuart Wellington

[2:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2:19] I mean, you've done a lot of acting exercise, so you can really.

Dan McCoy

[2:23] Sense memory.

[2:24] Yeah.

[2:24] That's what we call it.

[2:25] The sense memory of knowing that meatballs exist.

[2:27] Uh-huh.

[2:28] I was going to set up what this podcast is, though.

[2:31] Oh, granted.

[2:31] Sure.

[2:31] This is a podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[2:31] So this is a podcast called Ikea Memories, where we talk about things that happen to us

[2:35] at Ikea.

Dan McCoy

[2:36] It comes out four times a month.

[2:38] Two of those times are episodes like this one, where we talk about a bad movie.

[2:43] We watch a bad movie.

[2:43] We talk about it.

[2:44] Or, you know, sometimes it's not bad, but the word on the street is it might be.

[2:48] You know, we hear a lot of rumors.

[2:50] Uh-huh.

[2:51] Uh-huh.

[2:51] We're kind of like movie investigators.

[2:54] Yeah, we go down to the Shoeshine Boy.

[2:55] Yeah, can we?

Elliott Kalan

[2:56] And we go, you hear about any bad movies there, Curly?

[2:58] And he goes, I don't know.

[3:00] Maybe I've seen a bad movie.

[3:01] We hand him a 10.

[3:02] And he goes, all right, all right.

[3:03] There's a new bad movie coming out.

[3:05] It's called Amityville in Somewheres, but my memory is fuzzy.

[3:09] We hand him another 10.

[3:10] He goes, oh, yeah, now I remember space.

[3:12] Amityville in space.

[3:13] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:14] Inflation is also hitting Curly.

Stuart Wellington

[3:16] Yeah.

[3:16] And he's like, yeah, you know, maybe I can tell you a little bit whether or not people like

[3:20] it or not.

[3:21] If you refresh my memory.

[3:22] And then Elliot slams him up against the wall.

[3:24] And he's like, how about I don't rearrange your face, Curly?

[3:27] And Curly's like, well, my face is already Curly.

[3:29] That's how I got the name.

[3:30] And I'm like, Curly?

[3:31] How could a face be Curly?

[3:33] Is it a beard or is your face just weak?

[3:34] And he goes, look at me.

[3:34] Look at me.

Elliott Kalan

[3:36] Well, when I was born, they didn't have forceps.

[3:38] So they used a spiral cut ham spiral cutting machine.

[3:41] And I was left with this curly spiral face.

[3:43] His face is curly.

[3:44] Yeah.

[3:45] That's why I wear this big hat with the shadow that goes over my face.

[3:48] So you can't quite see the curliness of it.

Stuart Wellington

[3:50] And I'm into-

[3:51] All his portraits have to be drawn by Junji Ito, et cetera.

Elliott Kalan

[3:54] Yeah.

[3:55] Yeah.

[3:55] I have to commission them, especially.

[3:58] I'll never forget when I first read Uzumaki and I said, finally, a story I can relate to.

Stuart Wellington

[4:03] Yeah.

[4:03] Finally, I can see myself in comics.

Elliott Kalan

[4:05] And we're like, just tell us what they said about this on Rotten Tomatoes.

[4:08] Ah, I'm going to need another $5.

[4:10] Listen, your face is going to be Rotten Tomatoes if you don't tell me.

[4:13] He goes, well, my face is covered in a mask of Rotten Tomatoes.

[4:17] It hides the curliness.

Stuart Wellington

[4:19] When it's curly and it's covered in tomatoes, is his face spaghetti?

[4:23] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[4:23] And then he goes, you caught me.

[4:24] And he runs away.

[4:25] We go, wait, that was Spaghetti Jones, the bank robber.

[4:28] After him, boys.

[4:29] Oh, my God.

Dan McCoy

[4:31] We could cut Curly out, you know, and just check Rotten Tomatoes ourselves.

[4:35] But, you know, he's a small businessman.

[4:36] Yeah.

[4:37] We want to support.

Elliott Kalan

[4:38] He's also small.

[4:39] Yeah.

[4:39] He's a small man with a very small business.

Dan McCoy

[4:43] Very specific business that really only caters to us.

[4:46] Anyway, I hope that's an all-important backstory.

[4:49] But another important piece of our backstory is as the summer comes to an end and the fall months.

[4:54] So much world building.

[4:56] Yeah, keep going.

Stuart Wellington

[4:56] What is this, rings of power?

[4:57] Come on.

Dan McCoy

[4:58] We get a couple of theme months.

[5:00] And we're entering the first of our Flophouse calendar theme months.

[5:05] Small Timber or Small Vember?

[5:06] Small Vember.

Elliott Kalan

[5:08] There's a little bit of disagreement over whether it's called Small Timber.

[5:10] One third of the Flophouse, Dan, calls it Small Timber.

[5:13] Two thirds, Stuart and me, call it Small Vember.

[5:15] And amazingly, this is the beginning of a feud that will eventually tear the galaxy apart as two sides, one calling it Small Timber, one calling it Small Vember, war against each other for eons.

[5:28] Until really the universe is laid waste.

[5:31] So if any future historians are wondering where did this civilization-defining clash begin, it happened on this podcast.

Stuart Wellington

[5:39] It was, just to clarify, it was when the other third called it Small Vember.

[5:44] And then we laughed and insisted on calling it Small Vember for the rest of the time.

Dan McCoy

[5:48] Yeah, well, anyway, the whole point is, it's the one month year where we give in to the worst angels of our nature and don't punch up at big Hollywood movies, but find some smaller movies to talk about.

Elliott Kalan

[6:01] And oh boy, did we find a small movie to talk about this time.

Stuart Wellington

[6:04] Yeah, Hollywood breathes a sigh of relief as we're not coming after them.

Dan McCoy

[6:09] There is an interesting bit of backstory with this.

[6:12] Ellie, I know you probably, you know, you've started doing some research too.

[6:16] You may have come across this.

[6:17] Mark Polonia, who directed this movie.

[6:21] And wrote it.

[6:22] And wrote it.

[6:23] He started making low-budget horror and sci-fi movies back in sort of the direct-to-video era.

[6:31] And his movie Feeders came out.

[6:36] Blockbuster Video picked it up close after Independence Day came out.

[6:42] Wait, what's the movie called?

[6:43] Feeders.

Stuart Wellington

[6:44] Feeders, okay.

[6:45] I thought you were saying Feeders weird.

Dan McCoy

[6:48] Yeah, the very fact that it had aliens in it, apparently, and again, this is Wikipedia research, so take it with a grain of salt.

[6:56] But it catapulted it to the top independent rental of that year.

[7:01] And he's had a career of just like, he's a low-budget, like he's had like 70 movies.

Elliott Kalan

[7:07] Oh, he came out in 2022 alone.

[7:09] He came out with one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine movies.

[7:15] And I'm sure these are all, I don't think any of these are getting theatrical releases.

[7:19] Yeah.

[7:19] These are all direct-to-video or VOD, you know.

Dan McCoy

[7:21] This is also the fourth movie he has made with Amityville.

Elliott Kalan

[7:26] He made Amityville Island, Amityville Exorcism, Amityville Death House.

[7:29] Well, I want to talk a little bit about that.

[7:30] Right what you know.

[7:31] Before we start, so anyone listening who's not familiar with the Amityville house, in the 1970s, there was a book called The Amityville Horror about a supposedly true story.

[7:40] It's not true, about some people who moved into a house where murders had taken place and they were haunted by things.

[7:45] And this led to a brief burst of movies that were about – the first movie in 1979 based on the book and then a sequel to that and another sequel to that.

[7:55] But then also, it's a true story, so nobody can really own it completely.

[8:00] So for years and years, there have been Amityville movies.

[8:03] And then in the past ten years, there was this sudden explosion again in new Amityville movies all made by different companies with different angles on them.

[8:12] Dan, you wonder and then I want to talk about some of the angles after you say.

Dan McCoy

[8:17] Okay.

[8:17] I just wonder if some of the new explosion comes because of the Conjuring universe being big and the two hucksters at the center of the Conjuring world,

[8:27] the purported actual ghost investigators, real life people who just want to make money off of the idea of ghosts at the center of the Conjuring are also –

[8:37] they figure into Amityville lore.

[8:40] Yeah.

[8:40] I wonder if that's the reemergence.

[8:41] I think that's probably a big part of it.

Elliott Kalan

[8:42] I think ever since – I mean ever since Paranormal Activity, there's been like a haunted house, low-budget haunted house resurgence.

[8:50] But that – since 2011, there's been the Amityville Haunting, the Amityville Asylum, Amityville Death House, the Amityville Playhouse, Amityville No Escape, Amityville Vanishing Point, the Amityville Terror, Amityville Prison, the Amityville Murders.

[9:05] That's not – and these are not – the big budget one was Amityville The Awakening, the Amityville Harvest, and Amityville Poltergeist, Witches of Amityville Academy, then Amityville Island, Amityville Vampire.

[9:14] Amityville 1974, but then on IMDb, these are the ones that showed up when I looked up Amityville in space alongside it.

[9:21] There was also – hold on.

[9:24] There's also, let's see, Amityville Cop, Amityville Germany.

[9:27] It's coming out next year.

[9:28] Amityville Bigfoot, Amityville Toybox, Amityville Scarecrow.

[9:32] There's Amityville Clown House.

[9:35] There's a movie called Amityville Pooh, Killer Poop 2.

[9:38] Amityville Ghosts was another one.

[9:40] And the one – let's see, there's also Amityville in the Hood, which I don't know how this haunted house in a very specific place ended up in the hood.

[9:46] A comedy called Amityville Karen.

[9:49] There's one called – I mentioned Amityville Bigfoot.

[9:52] And of course, Amityville Vibrator, which is a comedy about a haunted vibrator in a haunted house.

[9:58] So there's a lot of –

[9:59] It's what, a full moon picture?

[10:01] I mean, I'm sure a full moon is in the picture at some point.

[10:04] But Amityville has just become shorthand for haunted house.

[10:07] So it's very funny that this one specific house, it's now just shorthand for it.

[10:13] Yeah.

[10:13] The way that you could say, like Loch Ness Monster, I mean, any kind of sea serpent, no matter where it is.

Dan McCoy

[10:20] But I – so you have answered, I guess, a question that I had.

[10:24] And that's – because this is based on real-life made-up shit, it is not copyrighted in the same way that like –

Elliott Kalan

[10:33] No, and that's why there can also be a movie called Amityville House of Blues because –

[10:37] Yeah.

[10:38] Apparently, because you can't copyright the idea of the blues either.

[10:41] But yeah, so Amityville is a – it's like if they – like the movie Casablanca exists.

[10:47] Yeah.

[10:48] And when Marx Brothers were making the movie A Night in Casablanca, Warner Brothers said, don't do that.

[10:52] And the Marx Brothers were like, well, it's the name of a city.

[10:54] Like we can use it.

[10:55] Yeah.

[10:55] You can't copyright the name of a city, you know.

[10:57] So Amityville Casablanca should be coming out soon.

[11:00] It's about a haunted cafe during World War II.

Dan McCoy

[11:03] I also – this is kind of –

Elliott Kalan

[11:04] Oh, in development according to IMDb is Amityville Bulldozer, which is just Killdozer, I assume.

Dan McCoy

[11:10] Yeah.

[11:11] This is a slightly roundabout story, so I implore you to cut down on the interruptions.

[11:16] But –

[11:16] Did I mention Amityville Leprechaun already?

[11:18] Oh, God.

[11:19] I think I did.

[11:20] I'm just asking for trouble.

[11:21] No, I – you guys know – I don't think you've been able to drop by and see them because you're way too busy for such shenanigans.

[11:31] But I do a thing sometimes called Cinema Pandemica where me and my friend John, we like trade off times.

[11:37] And then we also have guest people just to edit like an hour of clips of – like on a theme.

[11:43] Like it's just a thing we started doing during the pandemic to spend the time.

[11:48] And I was putting together a new one and it was going to be called Shark 2020.

[11:54] Well, it is called Shark 2020.

[11:56] And it's like I looked at all the movies tagged Shark on IMDb and I paired it down to ones that were actually about sharks and were fiction films.

[12:06] So not like Swimming with Sharks, which has no actual sharks in it.

Stuart Wellington

[12:09] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:10] But I made like a one-hour super cut of like shark movies from 2020 that doesn't really follow a normal narrative logic.

[12:17] But I tried to give it at least sort of an exquisite corpse logic.

[12:21] And one of the movies I downloaded was this Amityville Island by Mark Palona.

[12:27] And I had to not use it in the thing because I was like – I scanned through the whole thing like three or four times being like, where's the shark in this?

[12:34] Like why is this tagged with the keyword shark?

[12:37] And then I'm like, well, I guess it's not – I can't use it.

[12:40] But it was kind of – I wanted to do it because it had some of the same actors as Close Encounters of the Shark kind also by him.

[12:49] And I'd be like, oh, it would be so confusing to people being like, these same actors are like totally different characters on top of all the other editing I'm doing.

[12:57] Anyway, that was a long walk.

[12:59] But I'm just to say that this Amityville thing is sweeping the nation.

[13:03] It is.

[13:03] I saw it just the other day.

Stuart Wellington

[13:05] Yeah.

[13:05] You guys might know that I'm a bit of a horror movie buff.

[13:09] But I have to admit I've never seen an Amityville movie up until this point.

[13:14] There was one with Ryan Reynolds, right?

[13:16] Yes.

[13:16] Where he's like wet and shirtless most of it.

[13:19] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[13:19] Sort of the big budget remake.

Stuart Wellington

[13:21] That was the more – he's a shirtless psycho dad.

Dan McCoy

[13:24] Yeah.

[13:24] The original with Josh Brolin and I think Margot Kidder.

[13:28] James Brolin.

[13:29] Is that right?

[13:30] James Brolin.

[13:30] It was Josh Brolin.

[13:31] James Brolin and Margot Kidder.

Elliott Kalan

[13:32] Yeah, it's about Margot Kidder marrying a baby and a ghost is like, that's crazy.

[13:36] Don't do that.

Dan McCoy

[13:37] That one was a big hit and it's kind of inexplicable because it is so boring.

[13:43] But I forget which one it was.

[13:45] Either two or three is kind of a bonkers horror movie, which I know that you like.

Elliott Kalan

[13:50] Well, speaking of bonkers, coming up next year I think or maybe later this year is Amityville Thanksgiving.

[13:55] So there's even more Amityville enjoyment going on.

[13:58] But today we're talking about –

Dan McCoy

[13:59] Elliot has bonkers candy on Thanksgiving.

[14:01] That's why that was the only –

[14:03] Yeah, it's a Jewish thing.

[14:04] That's what I've got to use.

Elliott Kalan

[14:05] Yeah.

[14:06] So guys, let's talk about Amityville and space.

[14:10] That's the one we're here to talk about.

[14:11] Let's do it.

[14:12] Now, you know the background, everybody, now.

[14:13] Amityville is a haunted house.

[14:14] Murders took place in this house.

[14:16] Now it's full of ghosts and goblins, ghouls and geists.

[14:19] That's poltergeists, not like Willy Geist, the former media person.

[14:25] That's scary in its own way.

[14:26] Yeah, very much so.

[14:27] So we begin.

[14:29] We're watching through a video camera viewfinder, which makes sense because the movie is entirely shot on video, on digital video.

[14:35] And I will mention right at the top.

Stuart Wellington

[14:36] Just like Michael Mann's movies.

Elliott Kalan

[14:40] Yeah.

[14:40] At first I was like, did Michael Mann direct this?

[14:42] Did Michael Mann do this?

[14:44] No, the images were actually a little clearer than some of his TV movies.

[14:49] So this is, so Small Vembre, this is maybe the smallest Small Vembre movie we've ever, I mean, I guess A Talking Cat is a little smaller than this.

[14:57] Well, yeah.

[14:58] I'm not sure.

[14:59] I mean.

[14:59] Because like Andy the Talking Hedgehog at least had like, what was it, Dean Cain in it?

[15:04] Like this movie, it is so, this is one of those movies where they're like, let's go to the spaceship computer and it's clearly the editing computer.

[15:12] And everything is taking place inside the same living room or the same conference room, you know.

[15:18] Or edit room.

Dan McCoy

[15:19] It's very small, but it's small in a way that movies never used to be now that like computers have given people the illusion that they can make anything look good.

[15:31] Because like, I feel like this loosely is a mockbuster in its way.

[15:37] You know, like it's got its.

[15:38] Yeah, kind of.

[15:38] It's name that plays on a known quantity and then it tries to do this special effects story, but it does it by just, you know, compositing a picture of like a house into space, you know.

[15:51] And then put it, like putting up some like aluminum foil on the wall to make it spacey.

Elliott Kalan

[15:57] Yeah, so I was trying to figure out, I guess I could have looked it up on IMD maybe.

[16:00] I was trying to figure out what the budget of this movie was.

[16:03] And I can't imagine it was more than $2,000 or $3,000.

[16:06] If that.

Stuart Wellington

[16:08] What do you think?

[16:09] Yeah.

[16:09] And we just contributed to paying back that budget.

[16:13] Well, that's the thing.

Dan McCoy

[16:13] Like this is one of these movies where I'm going to, I don't want to get too ahead of myself.

[16:20] I texted Elliot.

[16:21] I'm like, this movie shouldn't be so boring for how silly it is.

[16:24] Yeah.

[16:24] But.

Stuart Wellington

[16:24] And I got to say, looking at the, looking at the poster art, I was kind of excited because you have the house is on like a rock that's a skull and the whole thing kind of looks like a late period Iron Maiden album cover.

[16:37] Yeah, sure.

[16:38] I'm like, why not?

[16:39] Eddie's a house now.

[16:41] He's a haunted house.

[16:42] I'm sure.

Elliott Kalan

[16:43] His travels through time and space have twisted him into a haunted house.

[16:46] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[16:46] Yeah.

[16:47] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[16:47] But it's hard to like, that being said, it's hard to kind of make fun of it as much as I want to just because it's like, yeah, well, clearly this is this guy's business model.

[16:57] He makes movies that cost almost nothing.

[17:00] He can sell them off.

[17:01] And he's a successful independent artist because of it.

Elliott Kalan

[17:04] I kind of, well, this thing, watching it, I was like, I admire that someone got together, like a bunch of people got together and made a movie regardless of how bad they knew it was going to look.

[17:13] Which is a kind of confidence I've never had.

[17:16] Yeah.

[17:16] There's nothing stopping me from picking up a TV camera, making a movie at home, not worrying if it looks like garbage, and just making it.

[17:23] But except my own fear that someone's going to look at it and say, this looks like garbage.

[17:27] But these people don't care.

[17:28] And clearly their business model is to make a movie for nothing, get guys who do a bad movie podcast to pay to rent it, and then make the money back that way.

[17:37] And it's a brilliant business model.

Dan McCoy

[17:38] These days with the explosion of podcasts, I can only assume he's doing great.

Elliott Kalan

[17:43] I mean, I guess, rather I assume it's the same way that you had, he made his bones, I guess, in the direct-to-video market where video stores needed stock to fill their shelves.

[17:53] It's kind of similar, or drive-in theaters, the years before that, needed movies to show.

[17:58] So they'd show low-budget stuff.

[18:00] That like Amazon Prime and Netflix and others, they need poster thumbnails to just fill their screens with, and nobody's ever going to choose this, but the poster will fill a spot.

[18:09] Pretend they have a lot of content.

Stuart Wellington

[18:11] What was that one we watched where the guy morphs into a dog for a while?

[18:15] Oh, A Love on a Leash.

[18:16] Was that it?

[18:16] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[18:17] A Love on a Leash, yeah.

[18:18] You know what?

[18:18] That was pretty low.

[18:20] I forgot about that one.

[18:20] We did see some stinker small boys.

[18:22] So yeah, this is a small stinker just like those ones.

[18:25] So again, Michael Mann directed it.

[18:27] We're watching through a video camera viewfinder at a house with a ghost in the window.

[18:31] And the ghost in this manifests mainly as like two glowy eyes that float around, or two glowy lights that look vaguely like eyes.

[18:38] And there's police tape around, and there's a reporter.

[18:41] You can tell she's a reporter because she's wearing a zip-up sweatshirt.

[18:44] And she says –

Stuart Wellington

[18:45] And there's a couple of police you can tell because they're wearing berets.

Elliott Kalan

[18:48] Yeah.

[18:48] And it's in the greatest tradition of student film.

[18:53] You just have your friends pretending to be police officers, and they look nothing like it.

[18:57] The reporter says, something is going down at the Amityville house that resides – and she's talking about the evil that resides in this house, in our neighborhood, and in our nightmares.

[19:07] And it's right off the bat.

[19:08] It's like I'm enjoying some of this dialogue.

[19:11] So that's where we're introduced to one of the main characters.

[19:14] This is Father Benna, who – it's hard to take him – he's a priest, but it's hard to take him seriously as a priest, partly because he wears kind of like the kind of hat that like a white jazz musician wears.

[19:25] But also he has hair like Larry Fine from The Three Stooges.

[19:28] And so I kept thinking – he has this air about him.

[19:31] I'm like a clown with his makeup off.

[19:32] Is that how you guys felt?

Dan McCoy

[19:34] Well, I mean, I first – this actor first came to my attention, of course, in a little film called Close Encounters of the Shark Kind.

[19:41] We all remember it.

Elliott Kalan

[19:43] Dan, did you take anything from their other movie apparently he's in, Sharkula?

[19:47] I guess Dracula bites a shark.

Stuart Wellington

[19:49] Yeah.

[19:50] Well, he –

[19:51] I mean, Elliot, it could be that a shark bites a Dracula.

Elliott Kalan

[19:55] That's fair.

[19:55] That's a good point.

[19:56] That's a good – and more likely, to be honest.

Dan McCoy

[19:58] But this character is so convincingly embodied, chattier of two goons that I can't see him as anything else.

[20:08] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[20:08] Now, you say you can't see him as anything else.

[20:10] Of course, he does play Father Benna in another movie apparently, Amityville Exorcisms.

[20:14] This is a recurring character.

Stuart Wellington

[20:16] Oh, yeah, because, I mean, when he shows up, the reporter's like, it's Father Benna.

[20:20] So, like, he's clearly – everybody knows him.

[20:21] You also probably don't take him serious, Elliot, because his priest's collar seems to be falling out the whole time.

Elliott Kalan

[20:28] Always.

[20:29] And later when he throws holy water around and he has a little bottle with holy water printed on it.

[20:33] But, Dan, some of the other roles that – and I don't like to make fun of people in Low Bunch of Things completely.

[20:37] But just – so this actor, he's been – he also – he's played a lot of parts.

[20:40] He also – wait.

[20:40] He also played Father Benna in a movie called Noah's Shark.

[20:44] So, Dan, I hope you –

Dan McCoy

[20:46] Now, that is a movie name.

[20:48] Yeah, Noah's Shark.

[20:49] That's a title to spark the imagination.

[20:52] Yeah, because what a bonanza for a shark Noah's Ark is.

Elliott Kalan

[20:56] There's two of every animal on there.

[20:58] He's also in a movie called Jurassic Shark 2, Aquapocalypse.

[21:02] But he was in the movie – he's in a lot of these movies that are the same director made.

[21:05] There's Dune World, which is – I don't know what it's a ripoff of.

[21:09] And the Empire of the Apes movies.

[21:13] But he also played a character named Yamoto in a movie called Zillafoot, which makes me worries that he played a Japanese character, which would not be okay.

[21:21] Anyway –

Dan McCoy

[21:21] Maybe he's just someone who was born in Japan and was given a Japanese –

[21:26] That's possible.

Elliott Kalan

[21:26] He also plays Captain Bermuda in the movie Landshark and Klaus in the movie Sharkenstein.

[21:31] So, Dan, you've got – there's a lot of shark movies for you to look at.

[21:35] But anyway –

Stuart Wellington

[21:36] If anything at this point we can agree he's probably an amateur ichthyologist.

Elliott Kalan

[21:40] But he's not – he's also kind of an amateur priest.

[21:43] He's not very good at it.

[21:44] He mainly just remains calm.

Stuart Wellington

[21:46] He said a house into space.

Elliott Kalan

[21:47] Well, he didn't do it.

[21:49] We'll see what happens.

[21:50] He says this is the final confrontation.

[21:51] He tells the reporter and the cops to leave.

[21:53] And he walks into the house and suddenly there's spooky lights and growling laughter immediately.

[21:57] And there's kind of this glowing cloud of flame.

[21:59] Describe the house, Elliot.

[22:00] The house looks like a house.

[22:01] Just looks like a standard –

Stuart Wellington

[22:03] Yeah, like you just walked into a random person's house.

[22:05] Kind of a standard –

[22:05] At one point they go into a bedroom and you can see like a nice selection of Blu-rays and Xbox games.

[22:11] Yes.

[22:12] Lining on the shelves.

Elliott Kalan

[22:13] That does happen later.

[22:14] Most of the movies takes place in the living room.

[22:17] So, it's kind of funny.

[22:18] It's kind of funny later when one of the – jumping ahead, one of the astronauts shows up.

[22:21] Oh, no.

[22:22] A cyborg shows up in the living room.

[22:24] Thank you.

[22:24] Yeah.

[22:24] And then it just looks over and sees that there's a demon, some sort of demon ninja just standing on the stairs looking at him.

[22:30] It's amazing.

[22:31] It's amazing.

[22:31] So, this glowing cloud, he taunts him.

[22:34] He says Christ is powerless.

[22:35] Christ is very powerful, but this father is – this priest is weak and he splashes holy water around from a surprisingly tiny bottle that just says holy water on it with a cross written on it.

[22:44] Looks like a little hand sanitizer bottle.

[22:45] There's a real battle of wills which comes to a head or should I say a hand when the demon uses telekinesis to twist Benna's surprisingly mannequin-y hand right off of his arm and it falls to the ground, clearly a mannequin's hand, not even attempting to make it look otherwise.

[23:02] Benna wins though somehow and he says he's going to sacrifice his life and he calls on God to remove this house from the earth, causing the house to lift up into space.

[23:12] And in a sort of Gilliam-esque animation, not exactly realistic.

Stuart Wellington

[23:16] Yeah, a transition that would be fitting for one of my PowerPoints.

[23:20] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[23:21] There's a real – there's a cut rate element to the whole movie and the house disappears taking the priest with it.

[23:27] Then we get the titles, Amityville and Space and those run for a while over space.

Stuart Wellington

[23:32] A charitably long credit sequence.

Elliott Kalan

[23:34] Yes.

[23:34] For a movie that's an hour and 15 minutes long, a fair amount of it is opening credits.

[23:39] Suddenly, we don't have time for opening credits.

[23:41] We're in space.

[23:41] It's the year 3015.

[23:43] That's right.

[23:43] Not quite 100 years from now, but pretty close.

[23:46] Yeah, yeah.

[23:47] There's a readout on screen that says it's 3015.

[23:49] This is the deep space cruiser Wyoming 227 that's floating by.

[23:53] A space cruiser that I like is named in honor of both the state Wyoming and the hit sitcom 227 starring Jack Hay.

Dan McCoy

[24:00] What if a movie like this just had like, you know, it'd be like the future 3015.

[24:07] All disease has been eradicated, but one government rules the universe.

[24:14] Pants are optional.

[24:15] Like what if it just ended with like, let's strap you into this part of world building.

Elliott Kalan

[24:20] I mean, it asks a lot of questions and I hope the movie answers them.

Dan McCoy

[24:24] That's the future liberals want.

[24:26] And by liberals, I mean me.

[24:27] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[24:28] And I guess Winnie the Pooh and Donald Duck.

[24:32] My style icons.

Elliott Kalan

[24:34] Yeah.

[24:34] And Porky Pig.

[24:36] Porky Pig is the leader and he goes, well, we did it to discovered.

[24:39] I won't do any more stuff.

[24:39] It's offensive.

[24:40] We discovered that we could remove people's freedoms to speech, religion, protest, and other things as long as we gave them the freedom not to wear pants.

[24:51] They fell for it.

Dan McCoy

[24:51] Yeah, it was the discomfort of those pants that was doing all of it.

Elliott Kalan

[24:54] And then we pan down to hell and Hitler is like, oh, if only I realized pants was a key.

Dan McCoy

[24:58] Yeah.

[24:59] Yeah.

[24:59] Anyway.

[25:00] Anyway, back to this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[25:02] Back to this movie, which has put even less world building into it than we just put into ours.

[25:06] Yeah.

[25:07] So the mission that the spaceship is on is to destroy rogue black holes in space.

[25:12] This creates the idea of a rogue black hole, which is a funny idea because black holes are naturally occurring things.

[25:19] They don't have – it's not like they're –

[25:20] They don't have motivations.

[25:21] Or they're good ones.

[25:22] And they destroy them by throwing nukes into them, which shouldn't work.

[25:26] A black hole's gravity is so dense, I assume it would just suck the nuke and the radiation right into it.

[25:30] But again, this is a movie about a haunted house that flies into space.

[25:33] So we can't really be that upset about them not getting the physics of black holes exactly right.

Stuart Wellington

[25:38] And we will see – later on in the movie, we'll see animations of those nuclear rockets being launched from the launch bay.

[25:44] And the animation does look a lot like one of those animations when you get a strike at a bowling alley.

Elliott Kalan

[25:50] Yeah, very much so.

[25:51] Yeah.

[25:52] And what is a bowling alley but throwing something into a black hole?

[25:55] Exactly.

[25:56] Yeah, I mean it's not a black hole full of pins, but still.

[25:59] So the crew, they all get their names on screen.

[26:01] Let's meet our robot roll call here.

[26:03] There's the leader, Captain Halstead.

[26:05] There's the medical officer, Dr. Nermy.

[26:07] She's the only woman on board.

[26:08] There's Jakeowitz, the weapons specialist, who appears to be managing things from the editing bay for the movie.

[26:13] And he has sunglasses on, which is how you know he's a cool dude, I guess.

[26:16] And that's the extent of the character personality building for Jakeowitz.

[26:20] There's Maitland.

[26:20] He's the navigator.

[26:21] He has a beard and has a balloon.

[26:23] He likes to complain a lot.

[26:24] So he's kind of the Dan McCoy of the group.

[26:25] And he's basically always seated.

[26:27] Yes, and he's always sitting down.

[26:28] Again, kind of the Dan McCoy of the group.

[26:30] And then there's Vox, the cyborg analyst, which is –

Dan McCoy

[26:35] Can you explain the look of this cyborg?

[26:38] I would love to.

[26:39] Maybe that's what you're going to get into.

Elliott Kalan

[26:40] So we've got to talk about Vox.

[26:41] So imagine you were wearing a child's Halloween costume that's meant for like a hazmat suit, but it's silver.

[26:48] And he just kind of moves herky-jerky like a robot and talks like this and is very logical.

[26:55] And I'm wondering what part of him is a cyborg because –

Dan McCoy

[26:58] Yeah, no.

[26:59] It's clearly just a man wearing some Mylar or whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[27:03] Now, so –

[27:04] No, no, no.

[27:05] Dan, that was your Lar.

[27:06] I thought it was Mylar.

Stuart Wellington

[27:07] Sorry.

[27:08] Now, the question is, do you think he's – the character is supposed to actually be an android or do you think the character is actually supposed to be a guy pretending to be an android?

Dan McCoy

[27:18] Everyone on the ship is just sort of indulging it because they know that's how they get the best work.

[27:23] I mean, I would love that.

Elliott Kalan

[27:23] I mean, Roger Ebert said, you know, rest in peace, said that you can't bring in things from outside of what you're shown on screen, really.

[27:30] It's not fair.

[27:31] But I like that reading of it, that in the future there's a subset of people who just pretend that they're robots and everyone has to deal with it.

[27:37] And one of our conservative listeners now is like, well, that's where we're heading.

[27:41] Kids are going to decide they're robots and we're going to have to allow it.

[27:43] And I'm like, let's – come on.

[27:44] That's the reason it doesn't exist.

Stuart Wellington

[27:46] And stop listening to our podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[27:49] I mean, keep sending us money, but don't listen.

[27:52] So, Nermie, she's in the middle of giving Halstead a checkup.

[27:55] He kind of hits on her, but it's – as the movie unfolded, I was like, oh, he's just kind of being like a – the way that like a friend would like make a joke about a friend.

[28:05] It's not a – he's not – I was worried there's going to be some scene where they have either a romance or harassment, but it's just – but she denies him anyway.

[28:11] He is tired of this mission and she has a son back home who's waiting for her.

[28:14] And he's like, how old is he now?

[28:16] And she goes, three.

[28:17] And it's like, thanks to the theory of relativity, that kid is probably like 50 years old now.

[28:22] Sorry, Dr. Nermie.

[28:23] Yeah.

[28:24] If the deleted scene from Aliens taught me anything, it's your kid is a dead old person by now.

[28:29] Yeah.

[28:30] So, Jakowitz, he programs a black hole-destroying missile, which, as Stuart said, is a CGI, very flat graphic.

[28:37] It's great.

[28:38] And Maitland, he's getting annoyed at Vox's logical thinking.

[28:41] Oh, why do you have to be so damn logical?

[28:42] Yeah.

[28:43] And Maitland appears to work at a local news desk that has had foil put behind it.

[28:47] And I think that's exactly what it is.

[28:49] Yeah.

[28:50] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[28:50] This is – this is one of the more inexplicable choices because there are like a couple – there are a couple of shots in this where I'm like, okay, someone who kind of knew what they were doing like worked on this.

[29:00] There's like – it looks cheap.

[29:02] Wow, high praise.

[29:03] No, no.

[29:03] I mean it looks cheap but you're like – you've got these CGI-built environments of a spaceship.

[29:10] And then you have a wall that just has like billowing metallic fabric on it, shooting lights back into the camera.

[29:22] Yeah.

[29:23] Like all these hot spots.

Elliott Kalan

[29:23] So it's similar to when they go to the – he goes to the futuristic comm device and it's clearly a desktop with an Apple logo right on the front of it.

[29:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[29:31] Well, I actually want to get to that.

[29:32] But like with this scene, I'm just like, does the same director look at this and be like, yeah, okay, sure.

[29:38] This is a – like –

Elliott Kalan

[29:40] It seems like this director is pumping out about a movie a month.

[29:42] So I don't think he's spending that much time on it.

Dan McCoy

[29:44] I know, but some of it has effort.

[29:45] But the thing I thought about when the Apple computer came up, I'm like, yeah, like in a better movie, like this could be like a sort of an Alphaville thing where not everything is modern.

[29:56] Like I kind of wonder –

Elliott Kalan

[29:57] Or even a satirical thing where like they work for Apple.

[29:59] Apple's the world government now and like Apple has sent them out to blow up black holes or whatever.

[30:05] You could work with it.

[30:06] But it is – I mean it is a movie in which not everything is futuristic because almost nothing they have is futuristic.

Dan McCoy

[30:11] But I like that this guy is sitting down to what is clearly just a computer on a desk because I'm like, yeah, why wouldn't that still exist in the future?

[30:20] Why in the future does everything have to be built into a console or the wall so you have to like – what happens if that wall needs to get ripped up or whatever?

Elliott Kalan

[30:29] But also when they walk into a house, as we'll get to, they act as if they have no idea what it is because it's so far in the future, which I think was very funny.

[30:36] But anyway, so Hal Stead reports is reporting to Madam Tice who seems to be some sort of galactic president.

[30:42] But also she keeps hitting on him and she invites him to get drinks when they come back for a rest break.

[30:48] It's kind of a wild interaction.

[30:50] Yeah.

[30:50] It starts out business and very quickly becomes pleasure.

Dan McCoy

[30:53] Well, also she talks in such a like a clearly like I'm making a double entendre like sort of voice where it's like I've always found you to be very accommodating.

[31:03] And it sent me into like this thought spiral where I'm like, do I know anyone who has ever like talked to me in that tone?

[31:14] But it's not an entendre unless you give it that tone because otherwise it just sounds like – I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[31:21] I mean –

[31:22] It's interesting acting.

[31:23] She may have just been like, I thought maybe we could get together for some sex quotes.

[31:29] Like wait, so hold on.

[31:31] Is that – is that a not even entendre?

[31:33] Like is that a zero entendre?

[31:34] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[31:35] If you're going to be that obvious, why don't you just say like, hey, I can't wait until you come back to Earth so we can fuck.

[31:40] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[31:41] Well, this is – because this movie is PG I think probably technically.

[31:44] So they encounter – oh, no, there's some swearing in it.

[31:46] They encounter – so it is hard R.

[31:48] They encounter the largest black hole on record and they're about to shoot it with a missile when Vox says to stop because there's an item floating through space and they're baffled as to what it is.

[31:57] It seems to be made out of wood with some metal and there's organic material.

[32:01] It's a house.

[32:01] They've never seen a house.

[32:02] This is less than 100 years in the future.

[32:04] Yeah, very strange.

[32:05] And they've never seen – oh, I'm sorry.

[32:06] No, this is less than – what do you mean?

[32:08] This is less than 1,000 years in the future.

[32:09] I did my math so wrong earlier.

[32:10] This is less than 1,000 years in the future.

[32:11] I meant to say earlier.

[32:13] And they don't know what a house is.

[32:14] And it's like if you went back to the year 1022 and you walked up to – you were in a village and you saw a house, you wouldn't be like, what is this?

[32:21] This thing.

[32:22] You'd be like, oh, it's an old house.

[32:23] Is this some kind of mud-based domicile?

[32:26] Yeah.

[32:27] I'm looking inside.

[32:28] I'm seeing some sort of bed-like thing.

[32:30] It's straws in some kind of primitive sleeping horizontal.

[32:36] But I meant earlier when I said 100 years, I'm going to say 1,000 years.

[32:38] It's less than 1,000 years in the future.

[32:39] But they keep saying – later they're like, your religion disappeared eons ago.

[32:44] And it's like, eons ago?

[32:46] Yeah.

[32:46] That doesn't make any sense.

[32:48] But anyway, there's a house floating.

[32:50] They don't know what it is.

[32:51] It gives Dr. Nermi a scared feeling.

[32:52] And Vox detects a life form inside.

[32:54] And then they experience a shockwave, which creates a goat head pentagram floating in space between them and the house.

[33:01] It's great.

Dan McCoy

[33:01] Now, Elliot, Stuart, as a metalhead, so you both just leap out of your seat and just sort of psychically astral project so you could high-five each other.

[33:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[33:11] That's what happened.

[33:12] I immediately played all –

Stuart Wellington

[33:13] Have you been secretly looking at our text thread?

Dan McCoy

[33:17] Our collective text thread?

[33:19] No, the Stuart and Elliot secret text thread.

Elliott Kalan

[33:22] Yeah, yeah.

[33:23] I can't believe you would do that to me.

[33:25] I mean, Dan, you and I have a separate text thread from our Flothouse text thread.

[33:28] Don't tell Stuart.

[33:29] What?

[33:31] But you said I was special.

[33:33] You are special, just not that special.

[33:35] Anyway, I'm moving along.

[33:37] I said that came out wrong.

[33:37] You're not making eye contact with me, Elliot.

Stuart Wellington

[33:39] That's a clear sign that you're lying.

Elliott Kalan

[33:42] No, but Dan, you're right.

[33:43] I immediately stopped, listened to all three albums from Green Lung, the English pre-Christian metal band, and then went back to this one.

[33:52] And they're all like – they're like, it seems evil.

[33:54] And then one of the – maybe the captain's like, good be a coincidence.

[33:58] Like as if this is some just cosmic thing that happens.

Stuart Wellington

[34:01] Yeah, it's just a normal thing that happens.

[34:03] So – and we get a lot of shots where we will get to – we see the spaceship.

[34:08] We see the black hole.

[34:10] We see the pentagram.

[34:11] And then we see the house.

[34:12] And it looks really cool.

[34:14] And it would be a great desktop background or a screensaver.

Elliott Kalan

[34:18] Yeah, it's got a real adult swim type quality, a lot of this.

[34:22] So Maitland is like, send Vox to investigate.

[34:25] Now, we don't care if anything happens to him.

[34:27] He's just a cyborg.

[34:28] And that's when Dr. Nermy – for the first time, we get to see the kind of like the ship CGI hallways with someone actually walking through them.

[34:37] And it doesn't work that great.

[34:38] It's just someone in front of a green screen with this CGI.

[34:42] And I imagine, Dan, the reason it looks so much better is they probably bought these pre-made from somewhere.

[34:46] Like these are – I imagine this is stock spaceship hallway graphics.

[34:52] And that's where the majority of the $700 budget went to probably.

[34:56] And she senses a presence right before something falls and narrowly misses her.

[35:01] And the way this is framed, I could not tell what it was.

[35:02] It seemed to be a support beam, but I don't know why you would have one of those on a spaceship hallway.

[35:06] It might have been a pool noodle.

[35:08] What was it that fell and almost hit her?

Stuart Wellington

[35:09] It might be the sloppiest cat scare I've seen in a horror movie.

[35:13] Yeah.

[35:14] It was like a mop, right?

[35:15] It was like a mop handle, literally.

Elliott Kalan

[35:18] I knew it was a long straight line of some kind.

Dan McCoy

[35:21] Yeah.

[35:21] It was basically just like the rake gag from The Simpsons.

[35:24] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[35:25] Yeah.

[35:26] And then she goes into her office and she's attacked by – she describes them as tentacles.

[35:30] But they look like pool noodles that are coming out of the camera.

[35:33] So it's like our monster's eye view of these pool noodles just hitting her.

[35:36] And then they disappear and she's like, what?

Stuart Wellington

[35:38] And so Vox –

[35:39] And I don't know about you guys, but at this point I'm like, I think we're in for a good movie.

[35:43] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[35:44] Yeah.

[35:44] This movie has checked off all the boxes of quality.

[35:47] So Vox beams over to the house and Nermy is like –

Stuart Wellington

[35:50] Now, Elliot, let's clarify.

[35:52] So this spaceship has a transporter technology.

[35:56] Yes.

[35:56] Which involves somebody walking into like a little closet.

[35:59] And you can clearly see on the back of the closet it says revolving dark room door.

[36:03] Yes.

[36:04] Yeah.

[36:04] Printed on the wall.

[36:06] Similar to the previously mentioned Apple logo on the Apple computer.

[36:10] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[36:10] They were very – I mean maybe there's something kind of Penn and Teller-ish about how open they are with the everyday props they were using for this.

Stuart Wellington

[36:18] I mean clearly they were relying on the performance to sell the illusion.

[36:22] Yes, exactly.

[36:22] It's like Dogma 95 sci-fi movie.

Elliott Kalan

[36:26] Much like Frederick March and – sorry, Frederick March.

[36:30] Fred McMurray and Barbara Stanwyck had to mime using an ignition key in a car in Dublin Demnity because the fake car they were in did not have a real dash.

[36:41] So they had to mime turning the key, the engine not starting, being nervous, turning again, the engine starting.

[36:47] Just as they had to do that, these people have had to use the – fall on all their object work and their acting training to mime being in a transmitter that is not just a revolving dark room door.

Dan McCoy

[36:56] Yeah.

[36:57] No, I saw that sign, the revolving dark room door sign, and I immediately thought of like the moment in Ed Wood where Tor Johnson –

[37:08] When he bumps into the doorway.

[37:09] Walks into the doorway and I was like, in real life, you deal with that problem every day because of the size.

Elliott Kalan

[37:16] And there is a moment later on with a disembodied hand that is just like the scene with Bela Lugosi having to wrap tentacles around himself and then pretend that he's fighting an octopus.

[37:25] So Halstead – so Nermy is like, I was attacked by a tentacle monster and then it disappeared.

[37:30] And Halstead goes, sounds like you got a case of nerves.

[37:33] Vox, he transmits into the house.

[37:35] We get his POV of just wandering around a house, very house of the devil.

[37:38] And he IDs it as a primitive living quarters with oxygen.

[37:41] And Jakowitz is like, I don't believe it.

[37:44] Everyone is always rude to Vox.

[37:46] They're so anti-cyborg.

[37:47] It's really offensive.

[37:48] And he wanders around for a while and there's a – suddenly there's a hooded demon man on the stairs.

[37:54] And –

[37:54] Who's like standing like he had just come down to like meet his date.

[37:58] Or like he was upstairs in his man cave and decided, yeah, I will have some ice cream and walked halfway downstairs for realizing there was a cyborg in the living room.

Stuart Wellington

[38:06] Dan, can you describe this demon creature?

Dan McCoy

[38:09] Well, you only see – I mean, don't you see like half his face?

[38:15] Because like the top house –

[38:16] He's got a little –

Dan McCoy

[38:18] Like ninja mask.

[38:19] A little hood.

[38:19] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[38:20] A little modesty veil.

Dan McCoy

[38:21] Yeah.

[38:21] I mean, he's – I don't know.

[38:23] He's kind of like a dark – like a gray or purpley kind of thing.

[38:27] He looks kind of pruney face.

[38:30] Yep.

[38:30] Like your standard sort of demon, you know –

[38:34] Spirit Halloween demon mask.

[38:35] Yeah.

[38:35] Off the rack mask.

Stuart Wellington

[38:37] Yeah.

[38:37] I would say.

[38:38] Wearing a lot of black.

[38:39] He does have bare human hands.

[38:41] And when he moves his head in different directions, you can see he also has bare human skin in his neck joints.

Elliott Kalan

[38:49] And as the movie goes on – I mean, you can – obviously his lines were dubbed in afterwards.

[38:53] There's no moving mouth in the mask.

[38:54] What?

[38:54] But as the movie goes on, he gets more and more overly effusive with his head movements.

[38:59] When he's supposed to be talking.

[39:01] He's great.

[39:01] To the point where it looks like he's just jerking his head around at times to represent speech.

[39:06] So Vox sees this demon, but his visual feed back to the spaceship is not showing it.

[39:11] And the demon calls himself Legion.

Stuart Wellington

[39:13] And Vox says, does not compute, which is hilarious.

[39:20] It's like, what?

[39:21] You're supposed to know all the names in the universe?

[39:24] Come on, Vox.

[39:24] Get out of here.

Elliott Kalan

[39:25] It's not a Tobin spirit guide.

[39:26] I don't know.

[39:27] I wish that Legion had said, well, Vox is a pretty messed up name too.

[39:30] But Legion grabs Vox's face and the feed goes down.

[39:34] Oh, no.

[39:35] And Jakowitz goes, let's just blow up the house.

[39:37] Who cares about Vox?

[39:38] And Halstead is like, no, we should rescue him.

[39:41] Actually, good point.

[39:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[39:43] We should rescue him.

[39:44] He's got great infographics.

[39:46] Can sort of explain difficult things in the news to us.

[39:49] Mm-hmm.

[39:50] Yeah.

[39:50] Oh, you just want Vox, the website.

[39:52] Other things that Vox does.

[39:54] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[39:54] They're very good at explaining ends of movies that needed no explaining.

[39:57] Clarity.

Dan McCoy

[39:59] Do they recognize the union, by the way?

[40:01] I would say Vox tends to actually stick itself to the ones that actually explain.

[40:06] Other sites have no problem being like.

Stuart Wellington

[40:11] Yeah, before we praise them too much, do they recognize their union or no?

[40:15] I don't remember.

[40:16] I don't remember.

Dan McCoy

[40:17] No, I don't know anything about the workings of them.

[40:19] I don't want to make any claims for them as a worksite.

[40:22] They do explain the news well, but they should pay people to write.

[40:26] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[40:27] We here at the Flophouse agree.

[40:28] We stand up for labor organization and fair wages.

[40:32] In fact, more than fair wages.

[40:33] Forget fair wages.

[40:34] Generous wages.

[40:35] Yeah.

[40:36] Extravagant wages.

[40:37] Yeah, exactly.

[40:38] Yeah.

[40:39] Ludacrously extravagant wages and healthcare.

[40:41] So Halstead and Nermie, they take plastic guns and they beam over.

[40:45] These plastic guns are so funny.

[40:47] They're just toy plastic lasers.

[40:49] And almost throughout the movie, whenever you have them firing, they're very noticeably

[40:53] pointing them off frame so you just hear the sound effect.

[40:55] And later on, they have to check their weapons before they all go into the haunted house.

[40:59] And Maitland is checking the weapons.

[41:01] He just kind of shakes them or like squeezes them a little bit because there's no way to

[41:04] check them.

[41:05] They have no moving parts.

[41:05] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[41:06] Yeah.

[41:07] I mean, also, you know, the one I remember most was like just sort of flat red.

[41:11] They did no additional painting to sort of give it any sort of modification.

Stuart Wellington

[41:14] I would have loved like a Bad Boys or like a Hot Fuzz style gear up montage with these

[41:20] crappy weapons.

Dan McCoy

[41:21] There's no indication.

[41:23] Like none of the actors are making any effort to indicate weight.

[41:26] No, not at all.

[41:27] Plastic weight weapons.

[41:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:30] Yeah.

[41:30] I wish they were just sticking them in their side pockets or their pants.

[41:33] So they go, so they beat, so the two of them beam onto the ship.

[41:36] They transmit over and they just kind of spend their time again, more house, the devil

[41:40] stuff, just walking around.

[41:41] They try out recliners.

[41:42] They laugh at an old TV.

Stuart Wellington

[41:43] They're like, this seems, this seems to be like some kind of primitive nutrition center.

[41:48] Yeah.

[41:48] When they go to the kitchen.

Dan McCoy

[41:49] That was the part that made me, when they laugh at the TV, they're like, look at that

[41:52] monitor.

[41:53] They're like, you were just using like just a normal iMac Pro earlier.

Elliott Kalan

[42:00] In a bunch of the scenes, they have tube monitors.

[42:03] They have old TVs that are hugely deep because they have vacuum tubes in them.

[42:07] Like that's crazy.

[42:08] It's looking exactly the same.

[42:09] Or whatever kind of tube it is in an old TV.

[42:11] But yeah, a flat screen TV, you'd think they'd be like, cool, look at this.

[42:15] And Normie is briefly spooked by a hand scuttling along the floor and Halstead rolls his eyes

[42:20] at her.

[42:21] Ugh.

[42:21] Medical officers always seeing things.

[42:23] Yeah.

[42:24] And they find Vox depowered on the floor.

[42:26] Halstead goes, looks like something tore him to pieces, which is not the case at all.

[42:29] He's in one big piece.

[42:30] Not true at all, yeah.

[42:31] It's a ridiculous thing to say.

Stuart Wellington

[42:32] That's when you kind of have to go off script to kind of deal with your actual environment,

[42:36] right?

[42:36] Yeah, I guess that's true.

[42:37] I'm not an actor, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[42:39] He just had to radio play it a little bit just to give the audience more of an excitement.

[42:44] And then Legion's glowing eyes appear before Normie and she walks upstairs in a trance and

[42:50] points to a closet door while the zombie hand is creeping around.

[42:53] Halstead opens the door and it's a closet and inside is Father Benna in what appears to

[42:57] be like a coma or something.

[42:58] And Normie comes out of her trance anxious.

[43:00] She doesn't remember it.

[43:01] And they transfer back taking Father Benna with them.

[43:04] Maybe this retired clown can tell them what's going on in this haunted house.

[43:07] And here's where I want to stop and say one thing.

[43:10] Watching this movie, I was like, when we picked Amityville in space, I was like, this is a

[43:14] dumb idea for a movie.

[43:15] And then watching it, the more and more I was like, this is a good idea for a movie.

[43:18] Like, it's a really cool idea to don't have the opening, but have a spaceship find a haunted

[43:23] house, like a real house floating in space.

[43:25] And they got to put on their spacesuits and wander around this house.

[43:28] Maybe the house is much bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside.

[43:30] It's spooky, you know?

[43:31] And there's ghosts in the house.

[43:32] I love the idea of astronauts, like spacemen, having to explore a really scary haunted

[43:37] house.

[43:38] But this movie has no budget and it doesn't have any ideas of what to do with this.

[43:42] So I felt like, well, it took this amazing idea and just wasted it, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[43:45] The movie you're describing, Elliot, is not far from Event Horizon.

[43:48] I know.

Elliott Kalan

[43:49] Which is a really good movie.

[43:50] It is really good.

[43:50] And I wish that Event Horizon could have gone further and been, instead of a haunted spaceship

[43:54] that takes the place of a house, like a real, I think there's something really eerie

[43:57] about, like, you go to, like, finding a house in space and wandering through it.

[44:01] And, like, for some reason it has gravity.

[44:03] Like, the laws of reality don't affect this house.

[44:06] It's really cool.

[44:06] But it's not what they do in this movie.

[44:08] But anyways, good idea.

Dan McCoy

[44:09] The version that I want is they find a haunted fun house in space.

[44:14] Oh!

[44:15] Save it for the sequel!

[44:16] It's a bunch of astronauts walking around and then, like, just like a spring-loaded skeleton

[44:21] pops out.

[44:22] I mean, that sounds like a very good sequel to Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

[44:26] Like, some air bursts into their face.

[44:29] Man, I did the spook-a-rama at the Coney Island recently.

[44:33] There's a part that we went by that was just like, it was like when you go to the eye doctor

[44:38] and get your eyes tested and they burst a bunch of air into your eyes.

[44:42] And that was all it was.

[44:43] I mean, I guess the scary thing is I don't know what diseases just came out of my body right now.

Elliott Kalan

[44:47] I know the spook-a-rama was in 4D.

[44:49] Whoa!

[44:51] So they find Benna, they take him back, and Nermi examines and goes, oh, Benna's not dead.

[44:55] He's in some sort of suspended animation.

[44:57] And it's a surprisingly casual conversation considering they found an ancient house with a person in it

[45:03] and brought him back and he's still alive.

[45:04] It's just kind of very casual about it.

[45:06] And then Benna opens his eyes.

[45:07] And he's clearly missing a hand.

[45:10] Yes.

[45:10] The space pentagram starts glowing and Benna starts choking Nermi,

[45:14] which you think he wouldn't be able to do that well because he's just got the one hand.

[45:16] And then he snaps out of it and yells, no, no, and runs away.

[45:20] Red alert, red alert, uh-oh.

[45:22] Quick cut montage of stuff as Benna wanders through the green screen corridors.

[45:25] There's a red alert siren.

[45:26] He runs to the weapons room and starts typing on a keyboard.

[45:29] And then Halston Maitland hit him with a stun ray.

[45:31] And they're like, how did he know the launch sequence?

[45:34] And we never learn that, how we learn the launch sequence.

[45:37] Then we get a demon's eye view of wandering around the house for a while.

[45:40] And Legion is just kind of talking to himself about how there's so many places to rule on high in this new future.

[45:46] And the crew goes into what appears to be either a utility room or a conference room.

[45:51] And they interrogate Benna.

[45:52] And he goes, I'm from Earth.

[45:54] And they go, Earth?

[45:55] Oh, yeah.

[45:55] That was that planet that was destroyed by an exploding sun centuries ago.

[45:59] And he's like, oh, yeah, I believe in God.

[46:01] And they're like, huh, that's an ancient thing.

[46:03] Nobody remembers that anymore.

[46:04] Things have changed so much in the less than 1,000 years.

Stuart Wellington

[46:06] And it's pretty impressive that he has such a good grasp of galactic common as well, right?

Elliott Kalan

[46:11] Yeah, that universal basic in English still remain the same language.

Dan McCoy

[46:16] That's true.

[46:17] There's been no language drift over the centuries and millennia.

Elliott Kalan

[46:22] Yeah, or ethnic drift.

[46:23] You could still have an all-white crew of this intergalactic ship.

[46:26] You never see a non-white person in the entire movie, I think.

[46:30] Benna handles all this.

[46:31] And he handles this information pretty easily.

[46:34] It's not that big a shock to him to learn that he's in the future and the Earth is gone.

Stuart Wellington

[46:37] He didn't have a lot going on back in his time, it seems.

[46:41] And he's like –

[46:41] I mean, he's still coping with the loss of a hand.

[46:44] That's true.

Dan McCoy

[46:45] Everything paulsed before that.

[46:46] Well, you know, it seems like a small sacrifice to him in the face of –

[46:50] That's true, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[46:51] In the face of Satan.

[46:52] I mean, to defeat Satan, I'd lose a hand too.

[46:54] That's a pretty fair – because you'd be famous, for one thing.

[46:56] You'd get a cool robot hand like in I Know Who Killed Me.

[46:59] That's true, yep.

[47:00] And I will say, maybe it's the enormity of the thing.

[47:02] There's that scene in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur Dent can't quite comprehend the idea of no more Earth.

[47:08] And so he has to think about how there's no more McDonald's hamburgers.

[47:11] And that's something that he can kind of feel something about because it's small enough for him to comprehend.

[47:15] And I think about that all the time how there's going to come a point when either I die and Popeye's is still around or Popeye's ends before I die.

[47:23] And I don't know which one I'd be sadder about.

[47:25] If I die and I know there's still Popeye's chicken out there that I'm not going to get to eat or if Popeye's runs its course before I do and I have to live a life without that amazing, delicious chicken because I love that chicken from Popeye's.

[47:36] Guys, which do you think would be worse?

Dan McCoy

[47:38] Oh, I thought your sadness – I mean like you're going to die either way, Elliot.

[47:42] So I thought the sadness in the one –

Elliott Kalan

[47:44] I'm not so sure, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[47:45] Scenario was just that your children and your children's children will be denied the chance to know the deliciousness of Popeye's.

Elliott Kalan

[47:54] I mean my children already know it well, but yeah, I want my grandchildren to know it certainly.

Stuart Wellington

[47:57] There is a chance that Elliot will be loudly having a conversation in an inn about how he will never die.

[48:03] And then death and the Lord of Dreams will be walking by, overhear him, and grant his wish and he'll live forever, Dan.

[48:11] What a sweet deal.

Elliott Kalan

[48:12] And every hundred years I know I don't have to make plans on one day because I already have plans.

Dan McCoy

[48:16] Also, you know, occasionally it could happen that Elliot, you know, takes the bag that death has and orders death into the bag.

[48:26] Yeah, yeah.

[48:26] Oh, okay.

[48:27] And all I really wanted was a set of –

Elliott Kalan

[48:29] All I wanted was a deck of magic cards that never lost, but instead I decided to put death in that bag.

[48:33] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[48:33] Yeah.

[48:34] Well, these are all good possibilities.

[48:36] These are all things that have happened.

[48:38] Pick your own.

Elliott Kalan

[48:38] Choose your own adventure.

[48:39] Choose your own death venture.

[48:41] So, he's like, well, anyway, it's a house and there's evil in it and I fought it and I lost my hand and God took us up into the heavens.

[48:48] And Halstead is like, this guy's crazy.

[48:50] And Benna says, this demon won't stop until it destroys the galaxy, which I don't know why he would assume that.

[48:55] It's not what the demon is saying.

[48:56] The demon wants to rule the galaxy.

[48:58] And Nermie is like, I believe him.

[49:00] And Halstead says, it's all a series of coincidences.

[49:02] And they lock up Benna.

[49:03] They take him out of that room and take him to what looks like the same room and lock him up.

[49:07] But Benna vows to the universe that he's going to finish this.

[49:11] And Nermie is like, are we ever going to get home?

[49:13] And Halstead goes, sure, we will.

[49:15] And Benna gets those demon floaty eyes again.

[49:17] And then the eyes go down the ship's corridor to the Apple computer that Halstead uses.

[49:23] And when he calls Madam Tice, Legion calls Madam Tice and then chokes her through the computer and turns her evil.

[49:32] And you kind of wonder, after that point, why is Legion bothering with anything else on this spaceship?

[49:37] Yeah, man.

[49:37] When he's turned.

Dan McCoy

[49:38] Yeah, there's no point.

[49:39] Transmit over normal radio frequencies or whatever they use.

Elliott Kalan

[49:42] And he's already converted the Empress of the Galactic Kingdom or something to evil.

Stuart Wellington

[49:47] At the very least, the head of this corporation.

Elliott Kalan

[49:49] Yes.

[49:50] Yeah.

[49:51] Who goes by the title Madam.

[49:53] And Maitland falls asleep at his post.

[49:55] And this is a series of scenes in which each of the crew members has a dream where Legion transports them to the house or somewhere and messes with them in some way.

[50:04] So Maitland wakes up in the house and it's implied, I guess, that Legion is crushing him.

[50:09] You hear like crushing noises, but Maitland's just going, ah, ah, ah.

[50:12] And then he wakes up at his desk and goes, what the fuck?

[50:15] Which was hilarious.

[50:16] Yeah.

[50:16] And then Legion wanders into the weapons room and he sends Jakowitz into sort of a space void where he encounters an evil vision of Benna.

[50:24] And the zombie hand grabs Jakowitz's head and he tries to shoot off the zombie hand and shoots himself and then wakes up and goes, huh?

[50:29] And then Nurmi's transported to the house and she gets a headache and she's attacked by evil versions of her crewmates.

[50:35] And Vox stabs her and Nurmi goes, why?

[50:37] And Legion goes, because I want to.

[50:39] And the delivery is hilarious.

Dan McCoy

[50:41] Yeah.

[50:42] I mean, like that last one causes damage.

[50:45] But up until that point, it's just like, okay, I guess they're having bad dreams.

Elliott Kalan

[50:49] Well, this is still a bad dream because Legion snaps her neck and she wakes up crying.

[50:52] Yeah.

[50:52] And then Ben is tossing and turning in his sleep and Halstead, now he finally appears in the house and he gets surprised by Legion.

[50:58] And he goes, what the hell?

[51:00] And Legion says, exactly, hell.

[51:03] Oh, that's great.

[51:04] He and Halstead, for some reason, can now go on to have a very casual conversation about the nature of evil.

[51:10] And Legion, his personality is never quite clear.

[51:12] I love it.

[51:13] Yeah.

[51:13] He goes, I am, shall we say, malevolent.

Dan McCoy

[51:20] We shall say that.

[51:22] Not to put too fine a point on it, some have described me as pure evil.

[51:27] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[51:28] And it's very weird to have Legion suddenly be like the chatty kind of charming devil when before he was just kind of a mean devil.

[51:37] Don't worry, I'm the baddie.

[51:40] And they talk about good and evil and Satan's backstory.

[51:43] And Legion goes, do you like to.

[51:45] The devil's backbone.

[51:46] Yeah.

[51:46] The devil's backbone and the devil's staircase, which is part of the West Highland Way.

[51:49] The devil's funny bone.

[51:51] The devil's toxics.

[51:52] The devil's tower.

[51:53] Yeah.

[51:54] The devil's anvil, stirrup, and other bone in your ear.

[51:58] Hammer.

[51:59] That's what it is.

[52:00] And Legion goes, do you like to play games?

[52:02] And Halstead says, no.

[52:04] Which is a hilarious response.

[52:07] It makes you wonder, in the beginning of Scream, when he says, do you like scary movies, does she say yes or no?

[52:12] Because if he was like, do you like scary movies?

[52:14] And she goes, no.

[52:15] And he goes, oh, well, then I guess you don't have a frame of reference for what I'm doing right now.

[52:19] Um, uh, isn't what I expected.

Dan McCoy

[52:21] Um.

[52:22] She indicates a general fondness for the genre.

[52:24] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[52:25] Yeah.

[52:26] Uh, and Halstead's eyes start to bleed and he wakes up seeming slightly perturbed.

[52:30] Halstead is never really affected by much of anything.

[52:32] Uh, anyway, Benna wakes up.

[52:34] He sees Legion on the ship.

[52:35] And, uh, Benna seems more annoyed than scared.

[52:37] Wait a minute.

Stuart Wellington

[52:38] Is this, is this where he wakes up on his cot?

[52:40] And you can clearly see somebody standing in front of him.

[52:43] And he like takes his time.

[52:44] He puts his hat on his head.

[52:46] He sits up in his cot.

[52:47] Yes.

[52:47] And then he looks up and then it cuts to Legion just standing there.

[52:51] Yeah.

[52:51] And Legion was very politely waiting for him to adjust himself and get ready for the conversation.

Elliott Kalan

[52:56] Uh, Legion is like, God is gone.

[52:59] Evil has won.

[53:00] We're in the void.

[53:00] There is no God here.

[53:01] Which implies, okay, Dan, your dad is a minister, right?

Dan McCoy

[53:04] So, uh.

[53:06] Well, he was at one point.

[53:07] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[53:08] He's a, he was kicked out of the church, right?

[53:10] But he has a basic, he has a basic understanding.

Dan McCoy

[53:12] So.

[53:12] He was a minister.

[53:13] Then he became a theology professor.

[53:14] And now he is retired.

[53:16] Okay.

[53:16] I thought you said something about failed exorcisms.

Stuart Wellington

[53:19] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[53:20] Too many failed exorcisms.

[53:22] So the idea that in the void of space, there's no people, I guess.

[53:25] So there's no God.

[53:26] Uh-huh.

[53:26] Really runs up against my idea, my understanding of God, which is that the entirety of creation

[53:32] is his and he's everywhere.

[53:33] Yes.

[53:33] Omnipresent.

[53:34] Even the places where there's no people.

[53:35] And omnipotent.

[53:36] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[53:37] Yeah.

[53:37] I mean, yeah.

[53:39] I, maybe he means that like in the same way that, you know, there's certain parts of

[53:44] my life that are, that I don't think about at all because it would just be sort of a

[53:50] waste of my time.

[53:51] Oh, I see.

[53:52] You know, so maybe God's just not paying a lot of attention.

Elliott Kalan

[53:54] So, so the vast, vast, vast reaches of outer space are kind of like a gym membership God

[53:58] has that he just forgets about.

[54:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[54:00] Yeah.

[54:00] And it gives, it gets auto build every month.

[54:02] Okay.

[54:02] I can see that.

[54:03] Uh, and it reminds me of the time when I went through a really rough patch and, uh, I'm sorry.

[54:09] And I said, God, what's going on?

[54:10] And he said, look behind you in space.

[54:13] And I said, well, there's just one spaceship.

[54:14] I, and he goes, those were the times when I was piloting the spaceship and you were in

[54:19] hypersleep.

[54:19] And I was like, God, I don't think the metaphor really works the way you want it to.

[54:23] God.

[54:24] What is hypersleep anyway?

[54:25] He's like, you know, it's kind of like a cold hibernation of some kind.

[54:28] Well, wouldn't you want to say cry asleep?

[54:29] Sleep plus.

[54:31] Yeah.

[54:32] It's like sleep plus.

[54:34] You know, regular sleep.

[54:34] It sounds pretty good, honestly.

[54:35] This is even better.

Stuart Wellington

[54:37] Well, it's like a full night's sleep, but you do it in 10 minutes.

[54:40] Yeah.

[54:40] Oh, amazing.

[54:41] But it lasts a hundred years.

[54:41] That sounds pretty good, actually.

[54:43] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[54:44] Uh, so, uh, they talk about how evil's over and Legion says, why don't you join me and serve

[54:49] at my right hand?

[54:50] Wouldn't that be ironic?

[54:52] Which, I love that.

[54:55] That's a good move.

[54:56] He almost got him.

[54:58] Ben is like, it would be ironic.

[54:59] I love the irony of that.

[55:01] Um, and this is when he's really overacting his head bobbing for the, for the conversation.

[55:05] Anyway, it goes on for a while.

[55:05] They talk about prophecies.

[55:06] Ben realizes he's lost his cross and he asks God why he's forsaken.

[55:10] And then evil Madam Tice calls Halstead and berates him.

[55:12] And you can tell she's evil because she enunciates everything she's saying.

[55:17] Captain Halstead.

[55:19] Because that's how evil people talk.

[55:20] And her hair's kind of in her face.

[55:22] Yeah, and her hair's a little bit messier.

[55:24] Yeah.

[55:24] Uh-huh.

[55:25] And she says, toe the house back.

Stuart Wellington

[55:27] Not full, like, Ringu or anything, but, you know, it's, you know.

[55:31] That's right behind.

[55:32] It's not brushed.

[55:33] Uh, goatee for, like, hair indicator.

[55:37] Yes.

[55:38] Hair and face, goatee, you're evil at that point.

[55:41] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[55:41] And she says, toe the house back to the home planet.

[55:43] The council of elders has spoken.

[55:45] And he goes, well, I disagree with the elders.

[55:46] And she threatens him and he calls an emergency meeting.

[55:49] And that's when Halstead encounters Legion in the hall.

[55:51] And we hear, but don't see the blaster fire.

[55:53] Yeah, Legion is just kind of hanging around.

[55:56] And Halstead points his gun off camera.

[55:58] And then we hear blasters and Legion disappears.

[56:00] Everybody meets up.

[56:01] Halstead's like, I believe Benna now.

[56:03] Now that I know that the empress is evil and there's a demon on the ship, I've seen him.

[56:07] And Benna goes, we have to destroy the house to stop Legion.

[56:10] He says, quote, it's life for, that's the point of it's life force for whatever reason.

[56:15] Because the movie's not bothering.

[56:16] It's kind of like in The Rise of Skywalker where they were like, the emperor's back somehow.

[56:21] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[56:23] Yada, yada, yada.

[56:24] The emperor.

Elliott Kalan

[56:25] And they say they're going to set explosive charges in the house, blow it up, and then nuke the black hole.

[56:30] And Madam Tice calls, but they pretend they can't hear that the call is coming in.

Stuart Wellington

[56:34] Like, oh, terrible reception.

[56:36] Oh, we're going through a space tunnel.

[56:37] I think that's literally the joke they use here.

[56:39] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[56:39] I think they do say terrible reception.

[56:41] They prep their equipment, which means just kind of shaking plastic guns.

[56:44] And Benna prays.

[56:46] They beam into the house.

[56:48] And Benna finds his dropped holy water.

[56:50] And Tice calls and orders Jakowitz to stand down.

[56:52] But he gives away their plans, and she demonized him.

[56:55] And they plant the charges, and then he blasts.

Stuart Wellington

[56:58] And the charges are, they're like bombs, right?

[57:01] Yes, yeah.

[57:02] They're like little bombs.

[57:02] They look like tiny little, like they look like the little magnetic things that you put your keys in or something.

Elliott Kalan

[57:08] Yes, which is probably what they are.

[57:09] And Jakowitz blasts Maitland in a trance.

[57:12] And I was like, oh, no, how are they going to beam back?

[57:14] The zombie hand attacks, and then the house shakes, and a kind of, how would you describe this monster?

[57:20] He seemed to be like a coughed up hairball covered in eyes and tentacles.

Dan McCoy

[57:23] So, okay.

[57:24] So, a little backstory.

[57:25] I mean, I would describe this monster as sort of like a monster made out of yarn that's sort of undulating, and it's got a bunch of like googly eyes on it.

[57:33] Now, I, a little backstory.

[57:37] Audrey's nephew, Cy, was here last night, and part of today we were babysitting, basically.

Elliott Kalan

[57:45] Do not tell me you showed him Amity Villain Space.

Dan McCoy

[57:47] No, well, I, here's the thing, like we went, we got up early, we went to the park with the understanding that I would leave at a certain point.

[57:56] They would stay out, they'd meet Cy's mom, they'd all go to Ikea, as previously said, you know, and the point was.

[58:03] I feel like I'm watching, I feel like I'm watching Go.

Elliott Kalan

[58:06] It's different stories that are all intersecting out of order, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[58:09] Don't want to, don't want this kid to see any of Amity Villain Space because it is nominally a horror movie.

[58:16] Like, ahead of watching it, I'm like, it's probably not going to be scary, but probably best not for the kid to see it.

[58:24] And then Audrey, at a certain point, was like, it's too hot, we got to come back, we're going to hang out in the other room.

[58:29] I'm like, that's fine, this movie is just boring, it's not scary at all.

[58:35] And then the one part that Cy was around where a monster was there, it was this monster.

[58:41] And I'm like, this monster's just kind of cute.

Stuart Wellington

[58:43] It looks like something in a Yo Gabba Gabba, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[58:45] Yeah, Cyrus looked over and he goes, pretty cute.

[58:49] And so, I guess I would say that.

Stuart Wellington

[58:52] To wait, his hair wasn't bleached white from terror.

Dan McCoy

[58:54] Yeah, this film, this horror, this ostensible horror movie has failed to scare a six-year-old.

[58:59] So probably it may not have, you know, reached all its core competencies.

Elliott Kalan

[59:04] And it's a good thing we didn't watch it for Shocktober, is what you're saying.

[59:08] True.

[59:08] So this monster, he starts out, correct me if I'm wrong, he seemed to start out stop motion,

[59:12] and then he was clearly just a model they were waving in front of the camera.

Stuart Wellington

[59:15] Right?

[59:15] Yeah.

[59:17] That's what it looks like, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[59:18] Yeah, and they run away from it really easily.

[59:21] They escape into a closet, and that's when they learn Jakowitz has been corrupted.

[59:25] And, oh yeah, Benna throws holy water on the monster, that's right.

[59:28] And the captain reveals, so I was like, how are they going to beam back?

[59:31] And the captain goes, well, I do have this machine in my pocket that I never mentioned before

[59:35] that has the power to beam us back.

[59:38] And it works just fine.

[59:40] They beat up Jakowitz, they set off the charges and blow up the house.

[59:43] Legion yells, and then Jakowitz creeps out.

[59:45] Like, cartoonishly.

[59:46] Like, it is, so this scene, they're like, we did it, we blew up the house, and they're

[59:50] all bent over a console, and Jakowitz, he might as well just be on tiptoes with a piano

[59:56] going, doot, deet, deet, deet.

[59:58] He creeps out so easily.

Stuart Wellington

[59:59] It looks like he's trying to, it looks like he's a performer who's just trying to, like,

[1:00:04] slip off stage without anyone noticing.

[1:00:06] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:07] There's a real children's pantomime kind of like, where's Jakowitz?

[1:00:10] Behind you, behind you.

[1:00:12] What?

[1:00:13] Behind here?

[1:00:14] No, over there, over there.

[1:00:15] Like that element to it.

[1:00:17] He's about to start the missiles to launch, I'm not sure why, and Nermi shoots him, and

[1:00:22] then they redirect the missile after it's been launched to nuke that pentagram in space.

[1:00:27] Nuke that pentagram!

[1:00:31] Which means also that the black hole is still there, and Benna says, goodbye, I've accomplished

[1:00:34] my mission, and just wanders off.

[1:00:36] He's on the same spaceship as him, like, I don't know where he's going or what he's doing.

[1:00:40] It's such a funny exit.

[1:00:42] It's all bunk time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:42] Like, they're just going to bump into him in the crew lounge.

[1:00:45] Sometimes, sometimes you just need your own space, you need to have this feeling of control

[1:00:49] where you can control your physical environment.

[1:00:52] That's fair.

[1:00:52] I get it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:52] And I have to imagine, like, he's been waiting a thousand years almost to defeat Legion,

[1:00:57] and they finally did it, and I'm sure he's feeling glad, but there's also got to be an

[1:01:00] emptiness about that.

[1:01:01] Like, this was his whole life for a long time, and now what does he have?

[1:01:04] Everything he knows is gone, he's stuck on the spaceship, he's on his own hand.

[1:01:08] He's missing a hand.

[1:01:09] Yeah.

[1:01:10] Although it's the future, I bet they can give him a new one.

[1:01:11] They have cyborgs.

[1:01:13] And the heroes realize their engines were knocked out, and they're drifting towards the

[1:01:17] black hole, and Nermi says they should pray.

[1:01:20] Then, that's when Benna sprinkles holy water around again, and he lures Legion into the

[1:01:23] transmitter.

[1:01:24] I forgot Legion is back, is still on the ship.

[1:01:26] And he starts, he basically walks into the transmitter and allows Legion to walk in with

[1:01:31] him and start strangling him.

[1:01:33] And then Halsted beams them both into space, and then blasts them with the ship's lasers.

[1:01:39] And then we get a quick moment where Benna arrives in heaven and is told he did a good job.

[1:01:43] It's amazing.

[1:01:44] Yeah.

[1:01:44] No notes.

[1:01:45] And the ship falls into the black hole.

[1:01:47] Oops, oops, all black holes episode of this.

[1:01:51] And Tice's fleet arrives to find only the black hole, and Tice laughs evilly, and her eyes

[1:01:56] grow demon-y.

[1:01:58] So that's setting up.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:59] And she says, all according to plan.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:01] Which is like, yeah, what was that plan?

[1:02:03] That seems, you know, that's got to be just for public.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:06] Her greatest enemy.

[1:02:08] Her greatest enemy, Father Benna's dead in heaven.

[1:02:11] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:11] But I mean, the Legion's gone.

[1:02:13] The house is destroyed.

[1:02:14] The pentagram is pentagon.

[1:02:17] Oh, yep.

[1:02:18] That's true.

[1:02:19] It's got to assume it's like whenever anything happened under President Trump, and he'd be

[1:02:23] like, yeah, like we meant to have happen.

[1:02:25] This is exactly what it's supposed to be.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:26] Yeah, you're right.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:27] So, and that's the end of-

Dan McCoy

[1:02:28] I meant to slip on that banana and dive into a pile of shit is a dream I had about Trump

[1:02:35] once.

[1:02:35] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:36] So Amityville in space, it does not leave you with a the end question mark.

[1:02:40] No.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:41] It could.

[1:02:42] It could easily have done it.

[1:02:43] It seems like an oversight to have not done that.

[1:02:45] It ends with an exclamation point.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:46] Yeah, and here's, and I'm just learning this now from the IMDb page.

[1:02:50] Here's the tagline to the movie, screams go unheard in space.

[1:02:54] Wow.

[1:02:55] Okay, well.

[1:02:56] It's a bootleg mockbuster of a tagline for a different movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:02] Legally distinct from-

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:04] Yep, legally different enough.

[1:03:05] So this is the part of the podcast where we do final judgments.

[1:03:09] Yes.

[1:03:09] Clearly, we were all pretty into it.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:11] This is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

[1:03:18] I'll just go really fast, which is that, as I said, I texted Elliot.

[1:03:22] It's a little too boring for how silly it is.

[1:03:25] Like, there's a charm to this kind of movie that goes for me beyond mere, like, irony.

[1:03:33] Like, I don't find a lot of joy just being like, ha ha, that we're dumb.

[1:03:39] Like, that's-

[1:03:39] You find a little bit of joy doing that.

[1:03:41] Maybe sometimes.

[1:03:42] But in general, I watch a movie like this, and I kind of enjoy the genuine sort of joy of low-budget filmmaking.

[1:03:51] Where it's like, you watch something like Be Kind Rewind, where they're sweeting all these blockbusters, and they get their homemade versions of the special effects.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:59] Yes, the difference with that being that Be Kind Rewind is a medium-budget movie where they're pretending to make low-budget movies.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:05] Yeah, sure.

[1:04:06] But there is, like, something charming about this kind of movie a lot of the time.

[1:04:11] Unfortunately, this version, I just felt, was a lot of, as Elliot said, walking around halls, people having conversations, and not enough genuine strangeness.

[1:04:24] If you're going to watch a Mark Polonia movie, go back to the beginning, where, like, he and his twin brother, who has since sadly passed, did a bunch of stuff at the beginning where I think they were trying a little harder, maybe.

[1:04:37] Yeah.

[1:04:38] Before it became an idea of, like, okay, well, this is our business model.

[1:04:45] And I saw Feeders 2 and found that a lot more kind of goofy fun.

[1:04:51] Yeah.

[1:04:51] But this one I found bad, bad.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:53] Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

[1:04:54] I feel like this is pretty close to a good, bad movie.

[1:04:58] It's very silly.

[1:04:59] But you're right.

[1:05:01] Like, there's not enough effort involved to be, like, I don't know, to get, like, joy.

[1:05:08] Like, it feels like it's just kind of cranked out.

[1:05:11] Like, let's get this done in one take.

[1:05:13] Let's spend as little money as possible.

[1:05:15] And hopefully we'll get some, make our money back.

[1:05:17] Which would be almost impossible not to.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:21] I think this movie is fairly boring.

[1:05:24] I think it is short enough that it could be a good, bad movie if you're with other people.

[1:05:29] It's very short.

[1:05:30] 74 minutes.

[1:05:31] Yes, it's very short.

[1:05:32] But I think on its own, yeah, it's a bad, bad movie.

[1:05:36] I was hoping it would be, like Dan was saying, sillier and, like, I thought, I was hoping for more of a bonkers energy, you know?

[1:05:45] Mm-hmm.

[1:05:46] But instead it feels, for a movie that didn't, it certainly didn't have to be made.

[1:05:51] And it felt like a lot, there was a fair amount of kind of going through the motions of what a movie like this is.

[1:05:55] But if you want to laugh at extremely low budget things, then this is, it's not the worst.

[1:06:02] But there are better ones out there.

[1:06:04] For instance, I was just looking, well, Dan, while you were talking at the, without the sound, I was looking at the trailer for Noah's Shark.

[1:06:10] And there is a part where someone is being attacked by what appears to be a hand puppet of a shark.

[1:06:14] So, so you could try that one, I guess.

[1:06:16] Sounds pretty good.

S4

[1:06:21] Hey there, I'm Ellen Weatherford.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:23] And I'm Christian Weatherford.

S4

[1:06:24] And we've got big feelings about animals that we just got to share.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:29] On Just the Zoo of Us, your new favorite animal review podcast, we're here to critically evaluate how each animal excels and how it doesn't.

[1:06:37] Rating them out of 10 on their effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics.

S4

[1:06:41] Guest experts give you their takes informed by actual, real-life experiences studying and working with very cool animals like sharks, cheetahs, and sea turtles.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:50] It's a field trip to the zoo for your ears.

S4

[1:06:53] So if you or your kids have ever wondered if a pigeon can count, why sloths move so slow, or how a spider sees the world,

[1:07:00] find out with us every Wednesday on Just the Zoo of Us in its natural habitat on MaximumFun.org.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:06] Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

S5

[1:07:14] Carrie, is it?

[1:07:15] Oh, yes.

[1:07:15] Hi, I'm Carrie.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:16] I am Psychic Ross, and I will be reading you this evening.

S5

[1:07:20] Oh, interesting.

[1:07:21] Well, okay.

[1:07:21] I co-host a podcast.

[1:07:23] It's called Oh No, Ross and Carrie.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:25] Yes, I'm sensing that.

[1:07:26] The spirits are telling me.

[1:07:27] It is a show about poodles.

S5

[1:07:29] Well, it's about like fringe science and spirituality.

[1:07:32] Yes, that's correct.

[1:07:32] And claims of the paranormal.

[1:07:33] Oh, you knew that?

Dan McCoy

[1:07:34] You do research online.

S5

[1:07:36] But more importantly, like we do in-person investigations.

[1:07:39] You do in-person investigate as well.

[1:07:40] Oh, my God.

[1:07:41] That's amazing.

[1:07:42] See?

[1:07:42] Me and my friend, this is so weird, my friend Ross, same name as you.

[1:07:46] Weird.

[1:07:46] He and I just go and try them all out.

[1:07:48] And actually, we've gone to a number of psychics.

[1:07:50] And to be honest with you, it's a lot like this.

[1:07:52] It's called Oh No, Ross and Carrie.

[1:07:53] They can find it at MaximumFun.org.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:55] I could have told you that.

[1:07:57] Hey, if you want to have some of the joy of a movie about a haunted house in space, but you don't want to actually watch a haunted house in space, microdosing, that's maybe an option.

[1:08:09] Who knows?

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:09] Yeah, that's true.

[1:08:11] Make your own house a haunted one.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:13] Same vibe.

[1:08:14] You've probably heard about microdosing.

[1:08:16] If not, know that all sorts of people are microdosing daily to feel healthier and perform better.

[1:08:22] Our show today is sponsored by microdose gummies.

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[1:08:31] If you don't want to feel maybe like you're impaired, but you want a little relaxation, you want a little silliness, you want a little creative fun, I like these microdose gummies.

[1:08:45] And they're available nationwide.

[1:08:47] To learn more about microdosing THC, go to microdose.com and use code FLOP to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.

[1:08:57] Links can be found in the show description, but again, that's microdose.com, code FLOP.

[1:09:03] Elliot, do you want to plug anything?

[1:09:07] Perhaps the graphic novel I just read?

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:09] Sure, I'd love to.

[1:09:11] Dan is referring to Maniac of New York, Volume 2, The Bronx is Burning.

[1:09:15] That's right.

[1:09:16] It's the second Maniac of New York comic from Aftershock Comics.

[1:09:19] I wrote it.

[1:09:20] Andrea Moody, the great artist, did the art for it.

[1:09:23] And it's continuing the adventures of all your favorite characters from the first Maniac of New York book.

[1:09:29] Maniac Harry, of course, the mindless slasher that is plaguing New York, but also Gina Green and Zelda Pettibone, the two women determined to stop him.

[1:09:38] And I know Dan enjoyed it, right?

[1:09:41] I mean, he was texting me when he was reading it.

[1:09:43] He seemed to like it.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:44] I mean, part of that was me, you know, sort of wanting to get credit for being a good friend in the same way that, you know, a petty person such as myself, like, has a hard time, you know, putting a tip into a tip jar without letting the person know that they haven't exactly been tipped.

[1:10:03] Because I'm just so scared about the way other people think of me, Elliot.

[1:10:07] Sure, sure.

[1:10:08] Yeah, sure.

[1:10:08] And whether they think that I am doing.

[1:10:11] But on top of all my personal issues, I thought it was a very, very good comic that I enjoyed.

[1:10:19] I gulped it down in one sitting.

[1:10:22] And I think all of you, if you enjoyed the Flophouse, if you enjoy this sort of thing, maybe it's something that you would enjoy as well.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:27] Yeah, I think so, too.

[1:10:28] So that's The Maniac of New York, Volume 2, The Bronx is Burning.

[1:10:31] If you haven't read the first one, Maniac of New York, Volume 1, The Death Train, pick them both up.

[1:10:35] And perhaps we'll see more of Maniac Harry in the future.

[1:10:39] But this is all there is right now, the two books.

[1:10:41] Perfect, perfect stocking stuffers.

[1:10:43] And if you've got kids, I mean, they are.

[1:10:45] For the horror fan in your life, if it's a wide enough stocking.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:48] Yeah, I guess.

[1:10:49] If you're not, yeah, if you're not afraid of the trade paperback, maybe bending a little bit.

[1:10:53] Yeah.

[1:10:53] If you're careful about how you insert it into the stocking.

[1:10:55] I mean, you don't know what my stockings look like.

[1:10:56] Yeah, yeah, Stuart is known for his wide stockings.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:59] And if you have kids, don't show them that comic, but do play them the Who Was podcast, a podcast I co-host with Megan O'Neill.

[1:11:06] And it's on iHeartRadio, but also available wherever your podcasts are available.

[1:11:09] And it's a history quiz show podcast for kids, kid contestants, kid listeners, adult historical figures.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:17] No swears, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:18] No swearing, no inappropriate humor.

[1:11:20] It's the opposite of the flop house.

[1:11:22] It's very focused and all ages.

[1:11:24] And worthwhile.

[1:11:25] There's information in it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:27] If it's for kids, it's basically just like Minions shit, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:30] There's a lot of, no, there's no Minions stuff in it, which my children are very unhappy about because they're obsessed with Minions right now.

[1:11:35] But that's the Who Was podcast.

[1:11:37] Get it with podcasts for kids.

[1:11:39] Stu, what about you?

[1:11:40] What have you got to promote?

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:41] Oh, hey, I have two bars in Brooklyn.

[1:11:45] We have Hinterlands Bar and Minnie's Bar.

[1:11:47] Just come by, say hi.

[1:11:48] Why not?

[1:11:49] Also, if you email, if you're like, I want to support Hinterlands Bar and my favorite podcaster in the world, Stuart Wellington, you can just, you can get some Hinterlands Bar merch.

[1:12:00] We just got our supplies back up to stock.

[1:12:02] You just need to email hinterlandsbarmerch at gmail.com.

[1:12:08] And that'll start the sales conversation.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:11] And if you want to buy merchandise that I get a taste of, you can do that at the Flophouse Podcast or FlophousePodcast.com.

[1:12:20] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:21] So which one is it, Dan?

[1:12:22] Which one is it?

Dan McCoy

[1:12:23] Flophouse Podcast.

[1:12:24] Without the the.

[1:12:26] So normally this is the point in the podcast where I would say we get letters from listeners and we read a few letters.

[1:12:32] But we passed an important milestone just recently.

[1:12:37] 15 years of the Flophouse.

[1:12:39] Last month, it was 15 years on from the first episode's release, Stealth, which Elliot was not on, but he joined very quickly thereafter.

[1:12:48] Episode 8.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:51] And the 15th anniversary is Crystal.

[1:12:53] So if anyone wants to send us anything.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:55] Yeah.

[1:12:56] Well, you know what?

[1:12:57] Elliot, that's the perfect segue because the little bit I was going to do in replacement of letters was Crystal themed.

[1:13:04] Oh, okay.

[1:13:05] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:05] In honor of the 15th anniversary.

[1:13:10] It's going to be a little taste of a mini right in the middle of a maxi.

[1:13:14] Oh, so we're playing a game.

[1:13:15] We're going to play a very short game.

[1:13:16] Love the most.

[1:13:18] A very short game.

[1:13:20] This is a quote from Crystal Bernard, female lead of the sitcom Wings.

[1:13:27] Okay.

[1:13:28] Starring Steven Weber and Tim Daly.

[1:13:29] Yep.

[1:13:30] About a small regional airline.

[1:13:33] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:33] I mean, and in there also Thomas Hayden Church.

[1:13:36] Mm-hmm.

[1:13:37] Tony Shalhoub.

[1:13:38] You know.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:38] Big names.

[1:13:39] Stacked.

[1:13:39] Got their start there.

[1:13:41] Stacked cast.

[1:13:42] Is it a quote from Billy Crystal?

[1:13:45] Of course, beloved funny man.

[1:13:47] Oops.

[1:13:47] Sweater wearer.

[1:13:48] Princess Bride, the Oscars, et cetera.

[1:13:51] Or is it a quote from Crystal the monkey, one of the most famous monkeys you may know, Crystal,

[1:13:58] from Community, The Hangover, and Night at the Museum.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:02] I would challenge the idea of Crystal being one of the most famous monkeys.

[1:14:08] I think probably a widely seen monkey, but known by name.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:12] Okay.

[1:14:12] Well, yes.

[1:14:14] Not personally famous.

[1:14:15] One of the biggest monkeys in Hollywood, along with that monkey that's in the Pirates of the Caribbean

[1:14:21] movies.

[1:14:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:22] And the one from Friends.

[1:14:24] That jerk from Friends.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:26] I think the Pirates one is the Friends one.

[1:14:29] Oh, Johnny Depp was on Friends?

[1:14:31] Yeah.

[1:14:32] Oh, man.

[1:14:33] Okay, so.

[1:14:34] What a piece of trash.

[1:14:35] Quotes.

[1:14:36] Is it Crystal Bernard, a quote from Billy Crystal, or Crystal the monkey?

[1:14:41] All right.

[1:14:42] Okay.

[1:14:43] I knew that I did not want to be a statistic, that I wanted happiness within, and I wanted

[1:14:48] to be present because I knew what a great mover I was.

[1:14:51] I could move things and make things happen.

[1:14:57] That doesn't sound like a monkey.

[1:14:58] Buzz in.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:58] Yes.

[1:14:59] Do we take turns?

[1:15:00] This is free form.

[1:15:02] I'll buzz in.

[1:15:03] Yeah.

[1:15:03] Billy Crystal.

[1:15:06] That was Crystal Bernard.

[1:15:09] Egg on Elliot's face.

[1:15:11] Okay, here's-

[1:15:11] What an idiot.

[1:15:12] A crystal egg.

[1:15:12] Here's another-

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:13] A Swarovski crystal egg on my face.

[1:15:15] Ow.

[1:15:16] Here's another quote.

[1:15:18] Eek, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek.

[1:15:20] Oh, eek, I got this.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:22] Yeah.

[1:15:22] Billy Crystal.

[1:15:23] No.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:24] No.

[1:15:25] No, sorry.

[1:15:27] I can't believe you messed that one up.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:29] That one was Crystal the monkey.

[1:15:30] Here's one.

[1:15:30] You're not even going to let's do steel?

[1:15:32] Consider the rose.

[1:15:34] The rose is the sweetest smelling flower of all, and it's the most beautiful because it's

[1:15:38] the most simple, right?

[1:15:40] But sometimes you got to clip the rose.

[1:15:42] You got to cut the rose back so something sweeter smelling and stronger and even more beautiful

[1:15:47] will grow in its place.

[1:15:50] That's from who?

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:51] Anyone?

[1:15:51] I'm going to buzz in.

[1:15:52] I believe that is from a commercial for Crystal Light.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:58] No, I'm afraid not.

[1:16:00] That was Billy Crystal.

[1:16:02] That was Billy Crystal.

[1:16:04] Okay.

[1:16:05] How about this one?

[1:16:06] We actors have to be conscious of ourselves.

[1:16:09] There's vanity involved.

[1:16:10] There's competitiveness.

[1:16:11] There's something that's not appealing to me about myself that I try to get away from.

[1:16:14] I'm constantly trying to see that in others.

[1:16:17] That doesn't feel like home to me.

[1:16:20] Yeah.

[1:16:21] Crystal the monkey.

[1:16:24] Oh.

[1:16:24] Crystal Bernard.

[1:16:26] Okay.

[1:16:26] Here's just two more.

[1:16:28] What's the score right now, Dan?

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:29] What's the score?

Dan McCoy

[1:16:30] Zero to zero.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:31] Oh, tie game.

[1:16:32] Anyone's game.

[1:16:33] Anyone's game.

[1:16:34] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:34] Here's one.

[1:16:34] What's so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you're constantly starting

[1:16:39] over all the time, and I love that.

[1:16:43] Hmm.

[1:16:45] Yeah.

[1:16:46] Tough one.

[1:16:49] Okay.

[1:16:49] I've got one.

[1:16:50] I've got one.

[1:16:51] I've got one.

[1:16:51] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:51] Is it Jesus Christ-al?

Dan McCoy

[1:16:54] That was not from Greasy Jesus.

[1:16:59] That was not from Jesus Christ.

[1:17:02] Super Crystal.

[1:17:04] No.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:04] Were you trying to say Jesus Christ Super School and you said Greasy's jeans?

[1:17:10] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:14] Greasy's jeans.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:17] Well, I'm going to remind you of the words of our Lord Greasy's jeans when he said, he said,

[1:17:23] burn the other beach.

[1:17:28] Okay, I got one.

[1:17:29] I got one.

[1:17:30] I got one.

[1:17:30] Let's remember the words of our Savior when he said that truly the me, the me, the me,

Dan McCoy

[1:17:35] G would embarrass the nerve.

[1:17:38] Oh, my God.

[1:17:40] I've got one final quote.

[1:17:41] Here it is.

[1:17:42] Oh, oh, oh.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:48] Yeah.

[1:17:49] Yeah, it was, yeah, sure.

[1:17:51] Fuck it.

[1:17:51] It was Greasy's jeans.

[1:17:52] That was.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:53] That was.

[1:17:54] Yeah, it was.

[1:17:54] I'm going to say Greasy's also.

[1:17:56] That was Greasy's doing an impersonation of Crystal the monkey.

[1:18:01] Oh, so we both got a point.

[1:18:02] Oh, cool.

[1:18:03] We both got one.

[1:18:04] Everyone's a winner.

[1:18:06] That's the way we do it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:07] And that was our gift to you, listener, to celebrate 15 years of this podcast.

[1:18:12] 15 years.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:13] You've been listening to this garbage for 15 years.

[1:18:16] This complete crap.

[1:18:18] Examine your lives.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:19] I think our show is really cool, actually, and the people who listen to it are also cool.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:23] No, it's true.

[1:18:24] We're uncomfortable with our own selves, so we discount accomplishments.

[1:18:30] Anyway, let's move on.

[1:18:32] I was thinking about this.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:33] Too real.

[1:18:34] I was talking to my wife about this, and I was like, it's been 15 years, which means like,

[1:18:37] in five years, it's conceivable that we'll have 20 years of this show.

[1:18:41] And at that point, I just don't know how we stop.

[1:18:44] It just keeps going.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:46] Someday we might have 50 years of this show.

[1:18:48] That's the problem.

[1:18:50] Well, I think once we have to, what we're aiming for, let's be clear, is, what is it?

[1:18:57] The Mark Twain Award for American Humor.

[1:19:00] Okay, that's our goal.

[1:19:01] So, we got to elect a Flophouse president so that they can curry favor the Kennedy Center

[1:19:10] honors.

[1:19:10] I don't know how it works.

[1:19:11] Yeah, yeah.

[1:19:11] But we want one of those awards.

[1:19:13] Give us one of those.

[1:19:15] Okay.

[1:19:15] So, we'll just keep going for that one.

[1:19:17] But, um...

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:19] Or like an MTV Kids' Choice Award or Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award or whatever the fuck.

[1:19:24] Yeah.

[1:19:24] Just dump a bunch of cash on us.

[1:19:26] Yeah, like an MTV Movie Award for greatest what the moment or whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:32] Yeah, yeah.

[1:19:33] Or best kiss from the MTV Movie Awards.

[1:19:35] We'll take it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:35] It's always fucking Spider-Man.

[1:19:37] It's always Spider-Man.

[1:19:38] It's every year.

[1:19:39] It's every fucking year.

[1:19:40] Every year.

[1:19:41] And you know what?

[1:19:41] I get it.

[1:19:42] It's hot.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:43] They're up there, you know, Harry Styles and, I don't know, Olivia Rodrigo opening the envelope

[1:19:50] and they're like, oh, Spider-Man again.

[1:19:53] Why do we still do this?

[1:19:54] Why do we do this?

[1:19:56] Spider-Man is...

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:57] They're like, why are we trapped in this, you know, like Sardine hellscape where we are

[1:20:01] constantly just saying Spider-Man wins the best kiss.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:04] Yeah, that was the original.

[1:20:05] The original myth of Sisyphus was that he kept having to announce Spider-Man as winner

[1:20:09] of best kiss.

[1:20:10] The myth of spider kiss.

[1:20:12] It's the kiss of the spider kiss.

[1:20:14] And they go, Spider-Man will accept this award via satellite.

[1:20:17] And he's in his office.

[1:20:18] There's just a shelf full of MTV Movie Awards behind him.

[1:20:21] I can't believe you didn't say myth of kiss a face.

[1:20:24] Or kiss a face.

[1:20:26] Kiss a face.

[1:20:27] The myth of kiss a face.

[1:20:28] The myth of kiss a face is that he's just trying to smooch that boulder, but it keeps rolling

Dan McCoy

[1:20:32] up the hill away from him.

[1:20:33] The myth of kiss a face sounds like something that Jerry Lewis made sort of like later in

[1:20:39] his career.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:40] Yeah, but it's a Jerry Lewis kind of Greek myth type thing.

[1:20:44] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:46] Nice Athena.

[1:20:47] That kind of stuff.

[1:20:49] Let's recommend...

[1:20:51] Oh, movies that we saw.

[1:20:53] That's what this is.

[1:20:54] The movie podcast.

[1:20:55] Movie podcast.

[1:20:55] Talking movies.

[1:20:56] Let's recommend movies that we saw that we like.

[1:20:58] We love the flicks here at the old Flophouse.

[1:21:00] Yep.

[1:21:00] Flophouse has the movies.

[1:21:02] Recommendations.

[1:21:03] I'm going to recommend a couple of things.

[1:21:06] The first thing is more on behalf of Audrey who said that I should give honorable mention

[1:21:12] to a movie that we watched.

[1:21:15] We went to the wedding of one of Elliot's and my old co-workers at The Daily Show.

[1:21:24] And Audrey and I did.

[1:21:27] Elliot was not there.

[1:21:28] Not invited.

[1:21:29] I was not invited.

[1:21:31] When are we going to get to the movies?

[1:21:33] Confusing.

[1:21:34] This is a lot of backstory for what's just going to be the title of a movie that you're recommending.

[1:21:38] Yeah.

[1:21:39] We went up to Albany for this.

[1:21:41] We've been traveling during the day.

[1:21:43] We're out in the sun.

[1:21:45] Not like a lot of travel, but we, you know.

[1:21:47] I say, yeah.

[1:21:48] Everything getting out of New York is a hassle.

[1:21:50] It's true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:50] Just ask Bill Murray in that one movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:53] Yeah.

[1:21:53] Oh, boy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:54] Quick change.

[1:21:55] Yeah.

[1:21:55] So we were looking for something.

[1:21:56] Not that quick a change.

[1:21:57] Took a long time to get out of New York.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:58] That's the thing.

[1:21:59] The title's ironic.

[1:22:00] That's what makes the movie so good.

[1:22:02] We were looking for something.

[1:22:03] That's why Father Benna considers it.

[1:22:05] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:05] Very light and, you know, easy on the brain at the end of the day.

[1:22:11] Like pie?

[1:22:12] We were going through Netflix.

[1:22:15] Was that easy on the brain?

[1:22:17] A pie?

[1:22:17] Yeah.

[1:22:18] We were going through Netflix.

[1:22:19] The movie, not shoving a pie into your ear.

[1:22:21] Oh, okay.

[1:22:22] I was like, that was a pie easy on the brain.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:25] Yeah, that was when I watched the movie Pie.

[1:22:26] I'm like, when's he going to stick a pie in his ear?

Dan McCoy

[1:22:30] Point is, we were scrolling through Netflix.

[1:22:33] I saw the description for the movie Work It, which had the words dance, competition, and

[1:22:40] ragtag group.

[1:22:41] And I knew that those are three of Audrey's kiki words when it comes to things that she

[1:22:47] might enjoy.

[1:22:47] Kiki words?

[1:22:49] Kiki words.

[1:22:51] And point is, if you like.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:53] We're talking about Work It, the sitcom that barely existed about two guys who have to

[1:22:57] dress and drag to keep their jobs.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:58] Yeah.

[1:22:59] This is not even my main recommendation.

[1:23:01] I'm just saying.

[1:23:02] Well, there's certainly a lot of backstory for it.

[1:23:03] Jesus Christ.

[1:23:03] If you like it.

[1:23:04] Well, there's been a lot of roadblocks on the way.

[1:23:09] If you like that kind of thing, it's a fun example of that kind of thing.

[1:23:13] It's not much beyond that, but you don't always want that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:16] Yeah, I mean, you're not begging the Academy to work in it.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:20] No, I'm like, if you like a fun dance competition movie, that one might be for you.

[1:23:24] Okay.

[1:23:24] But the more challenging, much sadder movie I'm recommending is Resurrection, starring

[1:23:29] Rebecca Hall, about a woman who has, you know, it's a horror movie.

[1:23:38] There are levels of reality.

[1:23:39] It's hard to say exactly what happens in the film.

[1:23:43] Let us just say that someone who was part of an abusive relationship with her reenters

[1:23:48] her life and she has sort of a mental dissolution from that point, which makes it a very painful

[1:23:54] movie to watch in a lot of ways.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:57] And also a very Rebecca Hall movie.

[1:23:58] She likes to make movies about women whose minds dissolved.

[1:24:01] Yeah.

[1:24:01] That's what I was going to say.

[1:24:02] She's the best in the biz when it comes to brutal women.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:05] I fucking love Rebecca Hall, particularly though in horror movies about trauma.

[1:24:10] I loved how good she was in The Night House.

[1:24:14] Like, she is great at just being someone who is very strong, but also dealing with forces

[1:24:20] that would shake any strong person.

[1:24:23] And in this case, the force is Tim Roth, who is like equally good on the other side.

[1:24:30] Just like a horrible man who clearly is just a malevolent force.

[1:24:36] And, uh...

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:37] Talk about it.

[1:24:37] Did I ever tell you my story about when my brother met him?

[1:24:40] No.

[1:24:41] My brother met him and then asked him if they could take a picture and he went, no, and

[1:24:44] just walked away.

[1:24:45] I love it.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:48] But this movie, just be forewarned.

[1:24:51] Like I said, it is about someone who is sort of re-experiencing the trauma of past abuse,

[1:24:58] which might be not for everyone.

[1:25:00] But it's a horror movie that goes some very strange places.

[1:25:05] The acting is so good.

[1:25:07] And I just really had a great time, even while it being almost unbearable at certain points,

[1:25:12] too.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:14] I've been watching a lot of horror movies lately.

[1:25:17] And the one I'm going to pick out of my horror movie bag, I guess it's a horror movie,

[1:25:21] is Bodies, Bodies, Bodies.

[1:25:24] A kind of a thriller with a bunch of youngins all in a house.

[1:25:30] And somebody dies, and they're trying to figure it out, and they all suspect each other.

[1:25:36] Some important points is that Lee Pace is in it, and he is very tall.

[1:25:41] And let's see.

[1:25:43] Rachel Senat, I think.

[1:25:45] Senat, I don't know how to pronounce her name.

[1:25:47] From Shiva Baby, which I recommended previously and was shot in this very neighborhood that we're

[1:25:52] sitting in right now, mere blocks from where I'm seated.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:58] We're getting a lot of extraneous world building in all recommendations today.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:01] I'm blowing up my spot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:03] Yeah, when the Shiva Baby tour comes through, it's going to...

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:08] That must be Dan McCoy's apartment.

[1:26:11] Yeah.

[1:26:12] But she gives a really great, almost star-making turn.

[1:26:16] It's fun.

[1:26:17] It's light.

[1:26:19] It's, you know, got some jokes.

[1:26:21] I liked it.

[1:26:22] Bodies, bodies, bodies.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:23] I'm going to recommend a movie from 1947.

[1:26:26] It's called The Gangster, and it's a late noir film.

[1:26:30] I guess it's a medium-time noir film.

[1:26:33] And it stars Barry Sullivan as a gangster with the kind of funny name of Shabunka, who...

[1:26:39] And the movie has trouble getting over the fact that the main character's name is Shabunka.

[1:26:43] But he is a numbers guy.

[1:26:46] He runs the numbers racket somewhere in Brooklyn, I think.

[1:26:50] And he has this view of the world where he trusts no one.

[1:26:54] He always thinks everyone's going to betray him.

[1:26:57] He suspects everything, and he refuses to let himself relax or care really deeply about somebody else or let someone else care about him.

[1:27:05] And that ends up biting him in the end as a larger organization moves in on him, and he finds that he has nowhere he can turn.

[1:27:11] And it's got a really great supporting cast.

[1:27:14] Akeem Tamaroff is in it.

[1:27:16] Elisha Cook Jr. has a small role in it.

[1:27:17] All these people who are great in old movies.

[1:27:20] And there's a couple of side plots that are surprisingly funny or tragic.

[1:27:24] There's a tragic story about a man who owes too much money because he's been gambling and has embezzled some.

[1:27:29] There's a funny story about the soda jerk at a soda fountain who considers himself just a ladies' man but can't really seal the deal.

[1:27:41] But overall, it is a kind of dark movie.

[1:27:43] And one of the things that's real cool about it is it was super low budget for the time.

[1:27:48] They did not shoot anything on location in New York, which meant they had to create these kind of very artificial New York street sets and kind of like Coney Island-style boardwalk sets.

[1:27:57] And so it has this weird kind of like dream-like quality to it because the street scenes look so artificial in a way that I thought was really cool.

[1:28:06] So that's The Gangster.

[1:28:07] It's just a nice little strange noir movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:12] So, hey, we did it.

[1:28:14] Yeah, 15 years.

[1:28:15] We did it.

[1:28:15] Happy birthday to us.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:18] We celebrated that birthday with Amityville in space and a game about Crystal Bernard.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:25] Just like the Flophouse.

[1:28:28] Hey, if you like this nonsense, there's a chance you'd like the other nonsense over at MaximumFun.org.

[1:28:34] Some of it's not even nonsense.

[1:28:35] Some of it has real information if that's your flavor.

[1:28:38] Amazing.

[1:28:40] And also, tweet about us, review us, do what you can to spread the word.

[1:28:45] It really does help.

[1:28:47] If you've done it in the past, hey, we're not talking to you.

[1:28:49] Don't get mad at us for bothering you about it again, okay?

[1:28:52] It's fine.

[1:28:53] It's fine.

[1:28:53] Everyone's okay.

[1:28:54] Everyone's friends here, right?

[1:28:55] Calm down.

[1:28:56] Yeah.

[1:28:57] Dan, are you okay?

[1:28:58] Also, I think so.

[1:29:00] One other thing.

[1:29:02] This is edited by Howell Dottie, Alex Smith.

[1:29:06] Howell Dottie on Twitter.

[1:29:08] There's a podcast called Howell Dottie's Fast Track.

[1:29:12] Yeah, you were just a guest, right?

[1:29:13] I was recently just a guest.

[1:29:15] I forgot to plug it during the plugs, but I'll plug it now that we're talking about how great Alex is as our producer.

[1:29:20] We wrote a song in half an hour, and then I sang it.

[1:29:24] And you can hear me trying to find the notes of a song that I've never heard before because we just invented it.

[1:29:31] I mean, Alex gave me the notes, but it's so much harder than singing like a karaoke song that you've heard a million times.

[1:29:37] I'm like, I think this is the tune.

[1:29:39] Anyway, if you want to hear me sing a bossa nova about being an adult crybaby, then that's where you can do it, over at Fast Track.

[1:29:51] So check that out.

[1:29:52] But for The Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:29:55] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:29:56] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:29:58] Bye.

[1:30:02] I don't know.

[1:30:02] Should we start?

[1:30:03] Is that how we do it?

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:04] Yeah.

[1:30:05] Yeah, sure.

[1:30:06] If we don't start.

[1:30:07] We never finish.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:09] Yeah.

[1:30:11] As true as it is unnecessary to say.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:18] What is a podcast if not saying words, as Jesse says over at Fast Track.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:23] Yeah.

[1:30:23] What is a podcast if not saying unnecessary stuff?

[1:30:26] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:28] MaximumFun.org.

[1:30:30] Comedy and culture.

[1:30:31] Artist owned.

[1:30:32] Audience supported.

Episode #378 - Amityville in Space

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