Ep. #308 - Verotika

Jesse Thorn

[0:00] Hi, it's Jesse, the founder of MaxFun, coming to you from the microphone at my home office

[0:07] where I am socially segregating. So we promised you a MaxFun drive this week, but things

[0:14] haven't exactly gone how we expected. So given the pandemic, we're going to postpone this year's

[0:21] drive. Events are still fluid, so we're hesitant to give you specifics about new dates. Right now,

[0:28] we have late April penciled into our calendars. We'll keep you posted about that. As it stands,

[0:34] a lot of our drive machinery was already cranked up. So for one thing, you might hear a reference

[0:39] or two to the drive in our shows, which might have been recorded before we made this decision.

[0:45] And here is some good news. There's a bunch of great bonus content available for all of our MaxFun

[0:51] members. If you're a member and you missed the email with instructions on how to listen, check your spam

[0:56] folder or log in at maximumfund.org slash manage. Also at maximumfund.org slash manage. You can change

[1:06] your membership if your circumstances have changed. We know this is a tough time for a lot of people and

[1:11] we understand. You can also go to maximumfund.org slash join at any time if you'd like to become a

[1:19] member. During the next couple weeks, what would have been the drive, we're going to do our best to be extra

[1:27] available to you. We've got some streaming events planned, some social media stuff. We know a lot of folks

[1:33] are isolated right now and we want to help provide comfort in the best ways that we know how. You can follow

[1:38] us on social media and we'll let you know what's up. During this tough time, I have been feeling really

[1:46] grateful for my community of colleagues here at MaxFun and for you, the folks who make our work possible.

[1:55] Goofy as that work may sometimes be. Stay safe out there. We're thinking of you.

Elliott Kalan

[2:01] On this episode, we discuss Veratica. The movie that shows that Glenn Danzig is a double threat,

[2:09] musician and crazy person.

[2:31] Hey everyone and welcome to the Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[2:41] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington. You might know me from a viral tweet about not washing his hands.

Elliott Kalan

[2:48] Yeah, how does it feel you guys to be stars overseas in the international not washing hands

Stuart Wellington

[2:54] Twitter zone? Yeah. Thank you, former guest Jenny Jaffe, friend of the podcast, for making me a

Elliott Kalan

[3:02] household name. Yeah. Vaguely implying that maybe we don't wash our hands.

[3:08] Let's not talk about former guests and talk about our current guest. We've got special guest

[3:12] April Wolf. That's right. Writer, screenwriter, most recently of Black Christmas, the award-winning

S5

[3:18] hit movie, probably. We've gotten a lot of awards. A lot of awards and a lot of buzz.

Elliott Kalan

[3:24] It's very buzz-heavy. And host of Max Phones. Max Phones. Max Phones. Thank you. Max Phones'

[3:31] own Switchblade sisters, April Wolf. April, thank you so much for joining us.

S5

[3:35] Thanks for having me on to talk about this movie in particular.

Elliott Kalan

[3:39] We had to have April on to talk about this, perhaps the craziest, maybe the worst movie we've

[3:45] ever done. Maybe the least movie we've ever done.

[3:48] The least, perhaps the least movie we've seen. This is a world where love on a leash exists,

[3:52] people. Let's not. I think Love on a Leash may have been more of a movie than this one.

[3:57] That's true. It has a plot. At least this one had a soundtrack, though.

[4:00] Yeah. And also joining us, as you probably heard, is special guest Samuel Kalin.

Stuart Wellington

[4:07] Sammy's on because this is a kid's movie, right?

Elliott Kalan

[4:11] Yeah, exactly. Also, I should mention, my name is Elliot Kalin. I don't think I ever mentioned

[4:15] my name. I'm one of the regular co-hosts. Yeah, Sammy's here because it's a kid's movie.

[4:19] He and I watched it the other night. He's a big Danzig fan. And so, you know, what's your

[4:25] favorite song that is? Twist of Cain? Or, you more a fan of Samhain?

[4:31] He said, are those songs? He just whispered to me.

[4:34] Wow. The classic podcast movie.

[4:37] Throw in quiet shade. Whispering.

[4:39] So, would you guys call it the biggest movie of the year?

[4:45] Most anticipated.

[4:46] Most anticipated, yeah, yeah.

[4:48] The one more people are interested in than any other.

[4:50] The movie we watched is Veronica. This, of course, is the feature directorial debut from

[4:55] Glenn Danzig of the band's misfits Danzig.

Stuart Wellington

[4:59] Yeah, so this is part of our Rocktoberfest, right? Because we just did The Fanatic.

[5:03] Fred Durst.

Elliott Kalan

[5:04] Yeah.

[5:04] Yeah, I guess that's true.

Dan McCoy

[5:06] What's up, Dan?

[5:06] What are your feelings on Glenn Danzig? I don't know him as a, I guess I've known some

[5:10] misfits songs. I don't know him as a musical figure. I know him mostly from you guys talking

[5:14] about how Wizard Magazine wanted to make him Wolverine.

Stuart Wellington

[5:17] Yeah, when I saw you as directing a movie, I'm like, but that's a mistake because he's clearly

[5:21] an actor. He played Wolverine in all those movies, right?

Dan McCoy

[5:24] But you guys are a couple of hard rock fans. What are your thoughts?

Elliott Kalan

[5:28] I mean, so I'm going to go on record as a fan of, like, let's call it the first half

[5:34] of Danzig's career. Like, I love his era of the misfits, that first Danzig album. I love

[5:39] a lot of the songs on it. But then there's a certain point where things that I think I

[5:43] enjoy, ironically, I started to realize he enjoyed them very sincerely. Those things being

[5:48] like human sacrifice, witchcraft, like sexual violence, things that like, where I was like,

[5:54] oh, this is a metaphor for something. I'm like, no, he's just singing about a guy who collects

[5:57] skulls. Like, that's all it is.

S5

[5:59] It's literally just like his neighbor that he's just into. He's also one of the only cat

[6:04] people who doesn't enjoy talking about his cats.

[6:07] Yeah, well, there's that-

[6:08] Which is insane to me.

Elliott Kalan

[6:08] There's the famous photograph of him in a parking lot just with a big box of kitty litter in

[6:12] his hands.

S5

[6:12] Oh my god. I just remember hearing that three liter bottle of Mountain Dew. Like, that thing

[6:18] over and over for like a year after that.

Stuart Wellington

[6:22] Yeah.

[6:23] He's also one of the many musician celebrities to come from New Jersey, and I think he still

[6:28] lives in New Jersey, right?

Elliott Kalan

[6:29] I think he does. I remember someone telling me the story once, I forget who it was now,

[6:33] of going to a dancing show and being really excited and then seeing Glenn Danzig and the other

[6:38] guys like unpacking the equipment before the show and they're all just wearing Jets jerseys.

[6:43] And it like really ruins the mystique of them as horror monsters, since they're just like

[6:47] Jersey dudes. But Glenn Danzig is one of these, Glenn Danzig is one of these guys that I have to,

[6:53] especially in the type of music I enjoy listening to, where I have to be like, this is someone

[6:57] whose work I often like, but if I met this person in person, I do not think I would like this

[7:02] person at all. Like he seemed, by all accounts, he seems like a real big jerk.

S5

[7:05] Yeah, he'd be really boring though, I think, is the thing.

[7:07] Which you actually see in this movie, you're like, oh, it wouldn't even, oh, I get it,

[7:12] it's just boring. Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[7:15] So, uh, so, Veronica is based on a comic book publisher that he has.

Stuart Wellington

[7:20] Oh, and you, and you, you love comic book movies, right?

Elliott Kalan

[7:23] I love comic book movies, Spawn, Mystery Men, Tank Girl, like all the big hits. Uh, what other

[7:29] great comic book movies are there out there?

[7:30] American Splendor.

[7:31] I mean, I did like American Splendor a lot. Yeah, yeah. Ghost World, all these big superhero

Dan McCoy

[7:37] movies that are out these days.

[7:38] And Veronica belongs to the genre, I think that we can call, uh, erotic horror.

[7:44] Yeah, yeah.

[7:45] Trash.

[7:45] I don't want to, I really.

Jesse Thorn

[7:47] Oh, that's Veratica.

[7:49] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[7:49] Erotica.

[7:50] Erotic violence.

[7:51] Oh, it took, I'm glad you finally.

Stuart Wellington

[7:54] Why did I don't want to, like.

[7:55] Why do you just tack a V on there? Is it because there's vampires?

[7:58] I think it stands for violent.

[8:00] Oh.

[8:01] Violent erotica.

[8:02] And it's also spelled with a K.

Dan McCoy

[8:04] That, that, that, that goes directly to what I was going to say, which is like, I don't,

[8:08] you know, begrudge anyone their, like, uh, consensual innocent fantasies, let's say.

Elliott Kalan

[8:13] Because I, I think I hear some begrudging coming up.

Dan McCoy

[8:15] Well, there is a little bit of begrudging in the sense that, like, erotic horror has never

[8:20] been a thing that I quite understand, because I'm like, I don't want killing in my sex movie.

[8:25] Uh-huh.

[8:26] And this is.

[8:27] He's not American, I think.

[8:28] I don't.

[8:28] Okay.

[8:29] I mean, yeah, Americans love that stuff.

[8:31] So this is what, uh, this is one of the first flaws in the conception of this movie.

[8:36] For you, at least.

[8:37] For you.

[8:38] That it doesn't appeal directly to you, because there's a lot of movies that would be a flaw for.

[8:41] Not for Glenn Dancing, I'm sure.

[8:43] Yeah, I'd love.

Elliott Kalan

[8:43] He's deeply into the stuff of this movie.

[8:46] Now I want to see you as a professional film critic, Dan, so that each of your, each of your

[8:49] reviews is like, well, one of the major flaws of Herbie fully loaded is it doesn't appeal

[8:54] directly to me.

Stuart Wellington

[8:56] There's a point where, any point during the movie, Herbie could have turned to the camera

[9:00] and said, hey Dan, how do you like the movie so far?

[9:02] But at no point does he do that.

Dan McCoy

[9:05] And yet, I was not addressed once throughout the film.

[9:08] Yeah, that's a very like.

[9:09] I would like that, but I wouldn't, because I would try to talk back to the screen and

[9:12] it wouldn't work, and I would get confused and frustrated.

Stuart Wellington

[9:14] It's like in Metal Gear Solid, when Psycho Mantis starts reading your memory card and telling

[9:18] you what video games you like.

Elliott Kalan

[9:21] Now, Dan loves interacting with the movie screen.

[9:25] That's why Mr. Payback is his favorite movie of all time.

Dan McCoy

[9:27] Did they do a second interactive movie?

Elliott Kalan

[9:30] No, I don't think they did.

[9:32] I think there were two of them, but Mr. Payback was the famous one.

[9:35] The famous one, yeah.

[9:37] People are always asking for it.

[9:38] Have you ever seen it?

[9:41] Wait, what's Mr. Payback about?

[9:43] You don't remember Mr. Payback?

[9:44] No.

[9:45] Mr. Payback was a movie that came out where, using the new advanced laser disc technology

[9:51] that was also seen in such great games as Dragon Quest, you would go and you would vote on which

[9:57] way the movie would go.

[9:58] And there were three jerks, and you would vote on which one Mr. Payback would give payback

[10:03] to.

[10:04] And Mr. Payback was like an Inspector Gadget type cyborg, I think.

[10:07] Um, and you'd just decide what was going to happen in the movie, and the audience would

[10:10] vote on it.

[10:11] Okay.

[10:12] And I've never been in an audience that actually experienced this film, though it was meant

[10:15] to be seen, but I remember seeing trailers for it and being like, wow, that looks amazing.

S5

[10:20] That is, like, okay, so you're voting to see who this guy kills.

Elliott Kalan

[10:25] Not kills, but like, beats up or pulls a prank on.

S5

[10:28] Oh, wow.

[10:29] Okay.

[10:29] All right.

Elliott Kalan

[10:29] It wasn't like the Mel Gibson movie, Payback.

[10:31] I don't think anyone actually died.

[10:32] Yeah, that's what I was...

S5

[10:33] Okay, hold on.

Elliott Kalan

[10:35] Now, Black Christmas is also an interactive movie, right?

[10:38] Yeah, it is.

S5

[10:39] Yeah.

[10:40] Um, welcome to punch any screen that it's playing on, truly.

Dan McCoy

[10:45] So, okay, in 1992, there was an interactive motion picture, the first one, apparently, called

[10:52] I'm Your Man.

[10:54] Uh-huh.

[10:54] Okay.

[10:55] Based on the song.

[10:57] I'm looking, I'm clicking through to find out anything more about...

[11:00] There is no plot summary for I'm Your Man, because I guess no one ever saw I'm Your

[11:04] Man.

Stuart Wellington

[11:05] Uh, which is weird, because it's a movie, right?

[11:08] It's not a man.

Elliott Kalan

[11:08] Yeah.

[11:09] Well, also, it's an interactive movie, so without an audience watching it, no one can make the

[11:13] decision.

[11:13] So, I have to assume somewhere in some movie theater, there's still a character on screen

[11:16] saying, press the A button if you'd like me to keep going.

[11:21] Press the B button if I should look for a different adventure.

[11:24] And then just repeating that for years and years, over and over again.

[11:27] Yeah.

[11:27] And the projectionist, the projectionist has died.

Dan McCoy

[11:30] Just a cosmic at the bottom of the sea, looking at the Blue Fairy.

Elliott Kalan

[11:33] Just wishing at the Blue Fairy to be real.

[11:35] So, guys, let's talk about Veronica, as we already have been.

[11:38] So, Veronica, it's, what he's trying to do is revive the classic horror movie anthology

[11:43] film, as he tells three spine-tingling, blood-curdling tales of not very much happening.

[11:51] And the movie opens with a kind of satanic witch lady poking out a screaming woman's eyes with

[11:57] her fingernails.

[11:58] And then she introduces herself to the audience with the immortal line, we all know it, welcome

[12:02] my darklings.

[12:03] My name is Mirella.

[12:04] So, she will continue to address the audience as her darklings throughout the movie.

[12:08] Now, here's the weird thing about this movie.

[12:11] You have a horror host, Mirella, who is some kind of a Satan witch.

[12:15] She doesn't introduce the movies.

[12:18] She just shows up after the stories and has a pun.

[12:21] And then a title card comes up from the next one.

[12:23] It seems like the horror host's main job is to introduce the story and kind of prepare

[12:27] you for what you're about to see.

[12:28] But instead, she is not available.

S5

[12:31] She's also bored by them.

[12:32] At one point, she just goes, well, that's that.

[12:35] And what?

Dan McCoy

[12:36] Right.

[12:37] I think one of the intros is basically, she just basically says, well, here's another one.

[12:43] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[12:44] I did a little research.

[12:47] Mirella is played by actress Caden Cross, who just recently won Best Director at the 2020

[12:54] AVN Pornography Awards.

[12:57] Oh, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[12:58] So, this is like Martin Scorsese appearing in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams as Vincent van Gogh.

Stuart Wellington

[13:03] Yeah.

[13:04] So, she's a director or she is a...

[13:07] I think she's both been in front and behind the camera.

[13:10] I think she just won an award for her director.

Dan McCoy

[13:11] Oh, I see.

[13:12] The best way for porn actors to continue to make money in this world of internet and aging

[13:21] is to transition to being behind the camera.

[13:24] I see.

Stuart Wellington

[13:25] Which I think is true also in non-pornographic film.

[13:28] Yeah.

[13:28] It's like A Quiet Place 2, Dan.

[13:30] You already got your tickets, right?

[13:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[13:33] So, I guess...

[13:34] I can't be ripping off of that comment.

Elliott Kalan

[13:36] So, are we saying she's like the Greta Gerwig of the adult video world?

Dan McCoy

[13:39] Okay, let's not get too deeply into this.

Elliott Kalan

[13:42] I don't know.

[13:42] Anyway, so, some things that I found interesting in the opening credits to this film.

[13:46] There's a person in the movie whose name is Kansas Bowling.

S5

[13:49] Who was on Switchblade Sisters, actually.

[13:52] Really?

Elliott Kalan

[13:52] Which episode was that?

S5

[13:54] She did the Monkees movie, Head.

[13:57] Oh, I listened to that one.

[13:58] I forgot about that.

Elliott Kalan

[13:58] I forgot about that.

[13:59] That's her who did it.

S5

[14:01] That's a good episode.

[14:02] In this, she plays a role in the third installment, the third anthology.

[14:07] Whatever we call it.

Stuart Wellington

[14:08] Is it a...

[14:09] You can't call it a story.

[14:10] There's not...

[14:11] It's not really a story.

Elliott Kalan

[14:12] I guess we can call this a library of thrills.

[14:16] Yeah.

[14:16] Maybe like a...

[14:17] Can I return the book that I checked out?

[14:20] I mean, I think you should.

[14:21] And the movie was edited by Brian Cox, but probably not that Brian Cox.

[14:25] I was like, oh, shit!

[14:28] Talk about a double threat.

[14:29] I mean, it makes sense.

[14:30] He's never done it before, so he's starting out with this one.

[14:32] I know.

S5

[14:33] He just takes...

[14:33] He's got a hiatus from succession, and he's just ready to learn the trade.

Elliott Kalan

[14:38] He was hanging out with his friend, Glenn Dan, saying he's like,

[14:40] Glenn, I taught myself final cut.

[14:42] Well, that's why...

[14:43] Do you have any projects I could work together with you on?

S5

[14:46] Of course he's still working on final cut.

Dan McCoy

[14:49] That's why in between scenes, there are all those scenes where someone shows up to just

[14:52] explain different types of scotch to the audience.

[14:55] Brian Cox put those in.

Elliott Kalan

[14:57] And you said this movie was not appealing to you, Dan.

[14:59] Huh?

[15:00] Interesting.

[15:00] Yeah, I know.

[15:01] I know.

[15:02] Weird.

[15:03] So, Morella comes out and blinds a woman, and then is like,

[15:06] welcome, my darklings, here's the movie.

[15:08] There's also a moment like this.

Stuart Wellington

[15:10] This starts a trend in the film where somebody removes a body part, and the person's reaction

[15:16] is just to say the body part over and over.

[15:19] In this case, she just says, my eyes, my eyes.

[15:23] That's true.

[15:24] Later on, we'll hear my face, my face.

Dan McCoy

[15:26] And of course...

[15:28] If I got my eyes poked out, I think that's probably what I'd be screaming for.

Stuart Wellington

[15:30] And you're like, the person that poked out your eyes, probably some kind of a witch, or

[15:35] I don't know, a regular person, would be like, yeah, duh, I know, I just did it.

[15:40] It's like, newsflash, I'm the one who did it.

Elliott Kalan

[15:42] I know you're blind, you can't see that I'm the one standing here, but it's me.

S5

[15:46] Also, she licks the blood off of her fingers from it, too, which is just like insult to injury,

[15:51] because that woman can't even see that flex.

[15:53] Like, she can't even tell.

Elliott Kalan

[15:56] Unless her hearing has become so advanced in that moment that she can hear the sound of

[16:00] a tongue scraping...

[16:01] Oh, God, she's licking my blood, I know it.

[16:03] I hear a tongue scraping against finger skin, but there's an extra level of liquid in there.

[16:09] It sounds a little different.

[16:11] So anyway, then we get the title screen for the first of our trilogy of error, let's say.

[16:16] Let's call it a trilogy of error.

[16:18] It's called The Albino Spider of Dead Jet.

[16:21] And the title, frankly, promises almost everything except one thing.

[16:25] We open with a CGI spider watching fake French people making out on a couch, and the woman

[16:31] does not want her shirt lifted up, but the man does it anyway to reveal she has eyes instead

[16:36] of nipples.

[16:37] Bump, bump, bump.

S5

[16:39] She could have worn a bra, I'm just saying.

Dan McCoy

[16:41] You would think.

[16:42] I don't want to...

[16:42] It's really uncomfortable, it's like a blindfold all the time.

[16:44] I really don't want to blame the woman in this scenario, but also, like, if she was making

[16:50] out with him as enthusiastically as she was, she probably could have anticipated that, like,

[16:56] he would try to take her shirt off at one point.

[16:59] Like, what was her plan initially, I guess?

[17:01] I mean, she does...

[17:01] At one point, she does...

[17:02] Once we get to the point where...

Stuart Wellington

[17:03] You're being weird, Dan.

[17:04] No, no, I mean, like...

[17:06] But she does say, like, oh, no, not again.

[17:09] So you would think, like, oh, okay, this is...

[17:11] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[17:12] I mean, that's the thing, is once...

[17:13] Once, shame on the guy.

[17:16] Twice, shame on her.

[17:17] She knows what people are going to respond to her eye boots with.

Dan McCoy

[17:18] Yeah, she's just got to give, like, a little prep, like, don't freak out.

[17:21] Okay, here's something you should know.

[17:23] My nipples are a little different.

Elliott Kalan

[17:24] I have eyes on my mammaries, and I know that's out of the ordinary.

[17:29] I will explain to you how that happened, because the movie will not.

[17:33] I kept waiting, I was like, oh, I mean, at least I'm curious to find out how

[17:36] this happened.

[17:37] No, I think it's just supposed to be that she was born that way,

[17:40] which is not something that can happen in a human being, as far as I know.

[17:43] Well, you know, there's a lot we don't know about.

[17:47] That's true, that's true.

[17:48] Yeah, I don't want to participate.

[17:48] Maybe somewhere buried in the Time Life Mysteries books there.

Stuart Wellington

[17:51] Yeah, I mean, this is like...

[17:52] It's like a Blechdrummel, Tin Drum sort of thing, you know?

Elliott Kalan

[17:56] Okay, fair point, fair point.

[17:57] This is the magical realism of the story.

[17:59] So he runs out.

[18:01] She, we learn, is De Jet, a model.

[18:04] A lot of information.

[18:05] She's consoled by her bikini-wearing roommate.

[18:07] Oh no, I guess neighbor?

[18:08] Neighbor.

[18:09] She has like a Kramer-type neighbor who just wanders into the apartment, but wearing a bikini

[18:14] top, which Kramer normally didn't do.

[18:16] And De Jet is so sad that she...

[18:18] Nine times out of ten.

[18:19] Yeah.

[18:20] She cries and her tears knock that spider onto the floor and it transforms, I guess, through

[18:25] the power of her erotic sadness into a spider monster man who declares his love for De Jet

[18:31] and said, while you sleep, I'm gonna go out and snap women's necks.

[18:34] Yeah.

[18:35] He is also into anal sex a lot, though, too.

[18:37] Yes.

[18:37] Which is weird.

[18:38] Yeah, that was something that he...

[18:39] What?

[18:40] It's a real...

[18:40] It is character diamond.

[18:41] He is a man spider.

[18:43] He's a murderer.

[18:43] And he's only interested in that.

Dan McCoy

[18:46] Yeah.

[18:46] I totally missed that third part.

[18:48] I have no idea how...

[18:49] Because he says it.

[18:51] Well, I mean, the movie's not...

[18:55] Okay.

[18:55] No, you're right, Dan.

[18:56] The movie...

[18:56] Things were flying fast and furious.

[18:59] You're right.

[18:59] It was...

Elliott Kalan

[18:59] The movie was so...

[19:00] I mean, this was a real sneakers.

[19:02] You really had to pay close attention and figure out who was conning who.

[19:04] I don't know how I missed that at all.

[19:05] That's crazy.

[19:06] I know.

[19:06] A movie like this, much like Robert Altman's images, it's, you know, it's throwing so much

[19:10] at you and it's such a surreal vision that when the character walks up to another character

[19:15] and says, I'm going to bend you over and do you in the ass, I see

[19:19] how you can miss that.

[19:20] Okay.

[19:20] Because you're like, wait, what am I taking in here?

Dan McCoy

[19:23] So...

[19:24] Oh, wait.

[19:24] Hold on.

[19:25] So I want to explain this character a little bit.

[19:27] He's a bit of like kind of a dark angel figure, like your pinheads a little bit or your like

[19:35] candies men.

[19:36] But like I kind of didn't understand why he was killing the specific people he was killing

[19:42] while she was asleep because it was like...

[19:44] I think...

[19:44] These people are not standing in her way somehow or something like this or like this is not

[19:48] fulfilling some need in her that I could see.

Elliott Kalan

[19:51] See, that's what...

[19:52] Because this story is twisted.

[19:53] In a regular story, this guy would go out and kill the men who had wronged her and she'd

[19:57] be like, no, no, I didn't want that.

[19:59] Instead, this guy is worse than the men who have wronged her.

[20:02] Yeah.

[20:02] And is just going out and killing women for no reason.

[20:05] He just snaps their necks.

[20:06] For no reason.

Dan McCoy

[20:08] That implies that there could be a reason.

Elliott Kalan

[20:10] Well, no, but I mean, if this was a normal horror movie, she'd have a logical revenge reason.

[20:15] Yeah, that's right.

[20:16] For why this guy's...

[20:17] Like, monkey shines.

[20:18] That monkey's killing those people for a reason.

Stuart Wellington

[20:20] Yes.

[20:20] Yeah.

[20:21] Police called a motive, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[20:22] Wait, hold on.

[20:23] Hold on.

[20:24] Did we mention that everyone has French accents?

[20:27] Yes.

[20:28] They all have very fake...

[20:28] I mean, are they though?

[20:30] They have someone's idea of a French accent.

S5

[20:32] Because I thought, I was just like, okay, I can see that these people moved to France

[20:36] from Russia.

[20:38] And so that was the vibe I was getting.

[20:43] Yeah, that's a fair point.

Elliott Kalan

[20:44] They all seem like they were trafficked at some point to Western Europe from Eastern Europe.

[20:48] Yeah, it was very interesting.

Dan McCoy

[20:50] I Googled to find out why they all had French accents.

[20:54] And I guess there's online, you can find that there's a tweet saying that someone asked

[21:00] this at the premiere of Danzig and he says, oh, they're in Paris, which is not something

[21:04] the movie explains.

Elliott Kalan

[21:06] No, I mean, the movie is too busy just getting deep into the story of this spider's man snapping

[21:11] people's necks.

[21:12] He kills her neighbor and she's horrified.

[21:14] Next, he kills a prostitute in a very fake looking alley while she is falling asleep backstage

[21:19] at some sort of very low energy leather fetish model shoot where...

Stuart Wellington

[21:23] It's like a Shutterstock fetish.

Dan McCoy

[21:27] You know that there's going to be a watermark over the image.

[21:32] They've got four or five women kind of standing against a backdrop doing kind of a backup dancer

[21:39] for a Robert Palmer, like kind of like sort of like lazy squirming, I would call it.

[21:44] Yeah.

[21:45] And the photographer's going, beautiful, sexy, sexy, beautiful.

Elliott Kalan

[21:49] And he's got the jankiest old camera too.

[21:52] That part's great.

[21:54] And she happens to see on TV that the second victim has been found.

[21:58] And this is my favorite part is that the reporter reports that the police are already calling

[22:03] the murderer Le Neck Breaker because it's France.

Jesse Thorn

[22:07] It's France.

Elliott Kalan

[22:09] So it's Le Neck Breaker.

[22:10] And it's not even like...

[22:11] It's like Le Blue Jeans.

[22:13] Even in America, that would be a lazy name for a murderer who snaps people's necks.

[22:16] The Neck Breaker.

S5

[22:17] Yeah.

[22:18] It's a translation from French to English though.

[22:22] It lost something in the French.

Elliott Kalan

[22:24] In French, it's probably beautiful.

[22:25] Yeah, it's beautiful.

[22:26] It's gorgeous.

[22:26] Le Neck Breaker.

[22:27] Yeah.

[22:27] The fact that he says Le Neck Breaker was so funny to me because they're like, oh yeah,

[22:31] we got to remind people it's France.

[22:33] DeJette is doing her best to try to stay awake.

[22:35] She goes to the movies and sees a...

[22:38] Goes to a porno theater where the marquee, if I'm translating correctly, I think it's nude

[22:42] without a face, which is like...

[22:44] I guess their play on eyes without a face.

[22:48] And the guys in the theater...

[22:49] She falls asleep.

[22:50] Of course she does.

[22:50] She's so tired.

[22:51] She's done nothing but sleep all movie.

[22:54] I mean, there's a certain point at which like...

[22:57] She doesn't need to sleep anymore, right?

[22:58] Yeah.

[22:58] Because she's slept for, I think, 40 hours straight while Le Neck Breaker is just running

[23:02] out and breaking necks.

[23:03] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[23:03] There's a point where after she falls asleep, one of the guys leans over to his buddy and

[23:07] he mansplains.

[23:07] He's like, this part coming up is great.

[23:10] We're like, this is the part where she does it with this guy.

[23:13] Yeah.

[23:13] I'm like, ah, realism.

[23:15] Yeah.

[23:15] This guy, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[23:16] He's a real repeat customer.

[23:18] But also, he reminds me of like, whenever I see...

[23:21] So I don't want to get too deep into it, but whenever I see like a pornographic video

[23:25] online, I see that there are like comments below.

[23:27] I'm like, who are these people?

[23:30] Who are like, I really need to let you know the exact point that I orgasmed.

Elliott Kalan

[23:34] From user Flophousecat.

[23:37] I just think it's...

[23:39] This must be what it's like to go to a porn theater in New York in the middle of the day

[23:42] when it's just old people going to the movies.

[23:44] Because if my experience at Film Forum is any indication, old people just love to talk to

[23:48] you about what's going on in the movie while the movie's going on.

[23:51] So that's probably what it's like when they're at those theaters, too.

S5

[23:53] And they also sit too close to you.

[23:55] Yes.

[23:56] As DeJet did, a little bit too close to these guys in this theater.

[23:59] I mean, it's...

[24:00] It's like an open theater.

[24:01] And she's like, I'll sit behind these two men.

[24:03] I'm like, what?

Elliott Kalan

[24:04] It's okay.

[24:06] They start pawing at her while she's asleep.

[24:08] But this wakes her up, interrupting the man spider in the middle of an act that Dan didn't

[24:12] realize what he was doing.

[24:14] But again, we know that it is...

[24:16] So wait.

[24:17] This is a weird message.

Stuart Wellington

[24:18] So their assault saves a naked woman's life.

[24:22] Yeah, this is what I was going to say.

Elliott Kalan

[24:23] I guess what I'm saying is there's no moral reason this movie should exist in any sense.

[24:29] Like, I'm not one for censorship.

[24:30] But if the government was like, we have to get every copy of this movie and burn it, I'd

[24:34] be like, well, if you've got to burn one movie...

[24:37] Oh, boy.

[24:37] Maybe this is the one.

[24:39] This is a weird chance to take.

[24:41] Wow.

[24:43] But anyway, so she's like, I've got to go somewhere else.

[24:46] She goes to a cafe, which strangely enough has a neon sign that says cafe inside the restaurant

[24:51] on the cafe side of the window so that you can read it while you're in the cafe and know

[24:56] that you're in a cafe.

[24:57] Oh, yeah.

[24:58] Yeah.

[24:59] It's a strange piece of set dressing.

Dan McCoy

[25:02] Is this where she encounters the waiter with the absolute worst of the fake French accents?

Elliott Kalan

[25:06] Yes.

[25:07] The waiter comes in.

[25:08] It's weird.

[25:08] She sits down at a table where there's already a coffee mug sitting there.

[25:12] And I was like...

[25:13] That happens.

[25:14] Is it supposed to...

[25:15] But then the waiter comes by and I think he's going to refill that mug.

[25:18] Do they just have the one mug at the restaurant?

[25:23] Like, why can't the waiter bring a mug?

[25:24] And the waiter is like, you shouldn't be out.

[25:26] You should be at home.

[25:27] The neck breaker is out.

[25:28] Yeah, but he says it crazy.

Dan McCoy

[25:29] He's like, neck breaker.

Elliott Kalan

[25:31] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[25:32] And this guy cares about necks because he has some very badly disguised neck tattoos peeking

[25:37] out from the collar of his waiter shirt.

Elliott Kalan

[25:39] Oh, yeah.

[25:40] So he knows he's a target.

[25:41] She goes home, hangs out in her underwear for a little bit.

[25:44] And then she has this elaborate plan to catch the neck breaker where she reports a murder

[25:49] on the phone to the police.

[25:50] And then she looks at some pills that are on a bedside table.

[25:55] And the man spider shows up and the police knock at the door.

[25:59] And she dies.

[25:59] I assume having absorbed the energy of the medicine that she overdosed on just by looking at it.

[26:05] She just absorbed it through her eye beams.

[26:07] And they break in and they find her and they find the man spider.

[26:11] And they shoot it to death.

[26:13] No questions asked.

[26:14] And seem pretty chill about it.

[26:16] Yeah.

[26:17] And they look down at him and they're like, there's the neck breaker.

[26:20] Pale as a ghost.

[26:21] And I was like, do you not want to comment on the fact that he has six arms?

[26:25] Like, is this not something worthy of mentioning?

Dan McCoy

[26:28] It's also a very strict...

[26:29] Like, if I'm not mistaken, this is like the last few shots of the movie is like the camera

[26:34] on the floor in the neck breaker's point of view shot.

[26:37] And these like detectives looming over him looking down like they're in a football huddle.

[26:41] And they just like exchange a few lines about the neck breaker.

[26:45] Like, very casually.

[26:46] Like, it's like, oh, and how about the weather today?

[26:48] And then like the thing ends.

Elliott Kalan

[26:50] And it's like, what?

[26:51] Well, then they don't...

[26:52] Then they look down at her and they go, oh, she has eyes on her boobs.

[26:56] And they're like, oh.

[26:58] And that's the end of the story.

[26:59] And then it comes to Morella.

[27:00] And that's when Morella says, well, there you go.

[27:03] The eyes have it.

[27:04] Which doesn't make any sense.

S5

[27:08] I love it so much.

Elliott Kalan

[27:10] That is the laziest pun.

[27:13] And it is so nonsensical.

Stuart Wellington

[27:15] Do you think the movie would have been...

[27:17] Do you think this story would have been salvaged if the coroner came in and like closed the eyes on her face?

[27:23] And then the reach of the eyes closed down.

[27:24] Put corners on the eyes?

[27:25] Yeah, put pennies down.

[27:26] Or whatever.

S5

[27:29] Did you guys forget?

[27:30] I kept forgetting throughout that she had eyes on her tits.

Elliott Kalan

[27:33] Yeah, because they don't talk about it after the first time.

S5

[27:36] Yeah, it's just like...

[27:37] And then I was like, oh, shit, that's right.

[27:39] Oh, that's weird.

[27:41] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[27:41] It seems like it is the most noteworthy thing about the story.

[27:45] And yet it's the one thing that...

[27:46] I mean, I don't run in the same circles that Danzig runs in.

[27:49] Maybe that's not that weird a thing where he's from.

[27:51] But certainly that's...

[27:52] I kept being like, are they going to explain about that?

Stuart Wellington

[27:55] Yeah, do you think it's like a product of the body mod community he's into?

[27:59] And like when she was a kid, she got these eyes put on there.

[28:02] And she's like, oh, I can't get them...

[28:04] It's way harder to get them swapped out with normal style nipples.

[28:08] Normal style.

Elliott Kalan

[28:09] Well, the way the thing...

[28:11] With nipples classic, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[28:13] The way the thing treats it, it's like...

[28:16] I feel like they forget about it because Danzig only cares about it as motivation for her erotic frustrations.

[28:24] But I also think that that's hilarious.

[28:26] He couldn't come up with a simpler, normal reason for it.

[28:29] He's like, hmm, why is this woman sexually frustrated?

[28:32] Like, I know, men are creeped out by her eye boobs.

S5

[28:36] But that's...

[28:37] Okay, I like this one.

[28:38] Okay, this is by far the best of the stories.

[28:40] Yeah, this is the one where I was just like, okay, if this is the first one, like, let's hang in.

[28:45] What's going to happen?

[28:46] Because there's like great lines like, milk or beer, milk or beer.

[28:50] Like when the roommate or the creamer person is just like going through her refrigerator and it's just like, what?

[28:56] Yeah, when are those ever...

[28:58] There's random, like, small things where you're like, wow, the detail in this really reveals character.

Stuart Wellington

[29:03] I'm a bartender.

[29:04] So that's usually what I ask people when they come into the bar.

[29:07] Milk or beer.

Elliott Kalan

[29:09] The two drinks.

[29:11] There was like a little bit of like unnecessary back and forth cattiness between the other models at the photo shoot.

[29:17] Oh, yeah.

[29:17] And it was like, she's like, if you're feeling so soft hearted, how about lending me some money?

[29:21] Ha ha ha ha.

[29:22] Yeah.

[29:22] And I was like, are you trying to build this up as like a world that these people are in?

[29:25] Because we never see any of them again.

S5

[29:28] But it could have been.

[29:29] That's the thing.

[29:29] We're like, it really could have been.

[29:31] And I kept being like, oh.

[29:33] The funny thing is that like, if you look on IMDb, there's only one writing credit and it's Danzig.

[29:38] But if you actually watch the credits, there's four writing credits, including Danzig.

[29:42] And I was watching it with my friend Janet and my husband.

[29:46] And we read the credits and we were like, holy shit, did Bridget write this movie?

[29:50] We knew one of the writers.

[29:52] And we texted her.

[29:54] She's a comedian.

[29:55] And we were like, did you write Veronica?

[29:58] She's like, no, I don't think so.

[30:02] But I was like, first off, what an answer.

[30:05] Secondly, I guess she had worked on a project with Danzig for Shudder.

[30:10] And then something happened, like it disappeared.

[30:13] And then she was like, oh, I guess he stole some stuff.

[30:16] And I was like, oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[30:18] I mean, because I imagine my vision is Danzig checking the IMDb profile every day to delete other names that got added.

[30:26] Yeah.

S5

[30:26] Because that is the sign of a professional director.

Elliott Kalan

[30:31] So that's by far the most coherent and the most legible of the stories.

[30:36] It has the most story in it.

Dan McCoy

[30:38] And it has more like weird stuff than the other things, which is nice.

[30:41] Like the other ones are a lot more boring.

Stuart Wellington

[30:45] Well, if you guys liked that little tale, I'll be summarizing the next ghoulish adventure.

[30:53] Oh, boy.

Elliott Kalan

[30:53] You're really getting into it.

[30:54] Much more than Morella who says, well, there you go.

[30:57] And then it fades out.

[30:58] And we just get the title of the next story.

[31:02] And what is that title story?

Stuart Wellington

[31:02] The title is Change of Face.

[31:04] And it's also a change of font than the last one.

[31:09] Change of typeface.

[31:11] So we open on the hot L.A. streets.

[31:16] A strange woman, almost a mystery girl, if you would, is stalking another woman.

[31:22] And by stalking, I mean they're like standing on other ends of the alley.

[31:26] The mystery woman has a knife and is like, I just want to cut off your face.

[31:29] And she's like, no way.

[31:30] And then she does it.

[31:32] She cuts off her face.

Elliott Kalan

[31:33] The mystery woman is very offended that this other woman won't give her her face.

[31:37] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[31:38] So cut to the interior of a hard rock strip club that we later learn is called Pussycats.

[31:46] It's very cool.

[31:47] It's the sort of, it's, I feel like.

Jesse Thorn

[31:50] Well, hold on.

Stuart Wellington

[31:51] I feel like there's two different types of ways you can, like, there's two different guys

[31:55] who make movies with strip clubs.

[31:57] You have the ones that are like, let's make it look awesome.

[32:00] And those are totally fabricated.

[32:02] And then there's like a strip club in like HBO's The Outsider where you're like, oh, this

[32:07] looks right.

[32:08] This super long, boring show, this is what a strip club actually looks like.

Elliott Kalan

[32:14] So what made it so cool, Stuart, other than the incredible hard rock tunes?

Stuart Wellington

[32:19] There's banging hard rock tunes.

[32:20] There's the same regulars hanging out.

[32:23] The shots are angled in a way that you can still see the ceiling struts.

[32:28] And it still looks like a cheap strip club.

[32:31] Dan, you thought it was pretty cool.

[32:33] You're a regular at Pussycats, right?

[32:38] You're that gentleman wearing the cowboy hat with the nameplate fuck on the front of it.

Dan McCoy

[32:44] It's weird.

[32:45] Like, this movie is so intensely just focused on undressing women.

Elliott Kalan

[32:55] And yet you said it didn't appeal to you.

Dan McCoy

[32:58] Yeah, well, again, there's killing in it too.

[33:02] Well, he watched it with his mom.

S5

[33:03] It was a tough watch probably.

Elliott Kalan

[33:06] Yeah, but it was because your mom asked you.

[33:07] She wanted to watch it, right?

[33:08] Yeah.

[33:09] Yeah, she's a big Danzig fan, right?

[33:10] That's why she named you Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[33:12] And I'm not...

[33:13] I'm certainly not...

Dan McCoy

[33:15] I'm certainly not arguing for more nudity when I make this observation.

[33:22] But this movie is so concerned with sex and nudity.

[33:26] Stuart looks skeptical.

[33:26] And then, like, the strip club very frequently is, like, not very naked women on stage.

[33:33] So it has that thing that, like, all movies have to have where they're, like, the strip club where people aren't getting nude that much.

Elliott Kalan

[33:41] You see women just kind of, like, swinging around poles for the length of an entire song.

Stuart Wellington

[33:46] Yeah, it does feel a little bit like an infomercial for strip clubs.

S5

[33:50] Yeah.

[33:51] But these aren't strippers.

[33:52] Like, I think that people are getting their...

[33:54] Like, he got his sex workers mixed up.

[33:55] It was just, like, he hired porn stars to play strippers.

[33:58] But, like, strippers is a different specialty.

[34:00] Yeah, they don't really do it.

[34:01] And I were just criticizing the stripping.

[34:03] I was just like, what is going on?

[34:05] Like, you are so unprofessional.

[34:09] It just felt...

[34:09] It was off.

[34:10] Yeah.

[34:11] It was off.

Dan McCoy

[34:12] I watched this with Audrey and, like, the mystery girl that comes up later.

Elliott Kalan

[34:15] She was like, she's just swinging her cape around.

Dan McCoy

[34:18] I mean, she's...

[34:19] She's swinging her cape around.

Elliott Kalan

[34:20] So...

[34:20] It's by far the most lackluster dance I've ever seen.

[34:23] She does not deserve the intro or the pseudonym.

Stuart Wellington

[34:25] Yeah, with about the same amount of excitement, the hype man DJ,

[34:30] at the...

[34:31] At Pussycats, brings up the new dancer.

[34:35] That's right.

[34:36] The mystery girl.

[34:38] Who is a woman wearing a cape.

[34:40] And she has skulls taped over her nipples.

[34:43] And she is wearing a veil that does very little to disguise the scarred marks around her eyeballs.

[34:51] Which ends up scaring off some potential tippers.

[34:55] And she mainly danced by wiggling her cape around.

[35:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[35:01] I think it's very funny that they're like, here she is, the mystery girl.

[35:03] The girl who's showing even less than all the other girls because she has a cape on.

[35:08] And the cape stays there the whole time.

[35:10] Like, it's not like it's a mystery theme.

[35:11] It's not like a Riddler-themed stripper.

[35:14] Which, if I hear mystery girl, correct me if I'm wrong.

[35:16] I want to see a stripper who's themed like the Riddler from the Batman series.

[35:20] Maybe she's wearing an outfit covered in question marks.

[35:23] Or maybe she's hurling riddles out to the crowd.

Dan McCoy

[35:25] And they have to solve them before she'll take any clothes off.

[35:27] Or what if it's like a mystery date style thing.

[35:30] Where it's like, open the door for your mystery girl.

[35:33] And like, she opens the door.

[35:34] And that's when she's nude.

[35:35] Like, it's a burlesque thing where she was kind of like a slow tease before that.

Elliott Kalan

[35:39] Like, she closes the door.

[35:40] And then takes off an outfit.

[35:41] And then opens the door again.

[35:42] Yeah, exactly.

[35:43] And closes again.

[35:43] And then opens the door.

[35:44] But they play the jingle every single time they open the door.

[35:47] So it drives people insane.

S5

[35:48] You guys have some interesting desires.

Elliott Kalan

[35:53] That's a pretty good summary of this podcast.

S5

[35:56] But I think that like, also the mystery girl is really bad at her job.

[36:02] I don't know why she's doing it.

[36:04] Because there's a guy who's like offering her a hundred dollar bill.

[36:08] And all she does is bend down and stare at him.

[36:11] Yeah.

[36:11] Until he goes away and like sees that she's got someone else's skin over her skin.

[36:17] And it's just like, you could just take the money.

[36:20] You don't have to like intimidate her.

Elliott Kalan

[36:22] I think she's mad because she does it for the art.

[36:25] And it cheapens her performance.

[36:26] It is.

[36:26] To accept money for it.

Dan McCoy

[36:28] Well, that plays into something weird.

[36:30] She's like Banksy that way.

[36:32] When we were watching this, Audrey's like, okay.

[36:34] So she puts like other people's skin over her face.

Stuart Wellington

[36:39] Yeah.

[36:39] So as we found out, the mystery girl later on, we find out mystery girl is the same mystery woman from earlier who has been cutting off women's faces and putting it over her own face.

[36:48] Which is, she describes it as horribly scarred.

[36:51] But it's kind of like on par with Ryan Reynolds in the Deadpool movies where you're like, oh, you're fine.

[36:56] Yeah.

[36:57] Sorry.

Dan McCoy

[36:57] I let the cat out of the bag because I felt like it had already wriggled out a little bit.

[37:02] But she.

S5

[37:03] No.

[37:03] She's got some scratches on the side of her face where it's just like, you know, laser therapy is a thing.

[37:08] And also like a lot of people have some stuff on their face.

Elliott Kalan

[37:12] Look, if Bill Murray can be a huge movie star, there's no reason she can't live a normal life.

[37:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[37:17] But no, the thing is like.

[37:20] But sometimes the deepest scars are the ones you can't see.

[37:22] I've been trying to make this point for so long now.

[37:24] Go on, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[37:25] Well, Dan, maybe you should like make it then.

[37:27] Oh, God.

Dan McCoy

[37:30] No, we were watching it and this woman puts a face on her face.

[37:35] And Audrey pointed out that her cheeks look normal in this scenario.

[37:39] But and yet that's the part of her face that she chooses to cover with a mask.

[37:43] Whereas her eyes are on display.

[37:45] You can see the holes where she's put eye holes in this other skin.

Stuart Wellington

[37:49] Yeah.

[37:49] You would think if she was just if she was going to dance around with a mask over her lower part of her face.

[37:54] She doesn't need to wear someone else's face.

[37:56] Right.

[37:57] Because the lower half of her like.

[37:59] You're not seeing that part.

[38:00] Her plan doesn't make sense.

Elliott Kalan

[38:01] So you're saying, Dan, your big issue is that you can see it's a poor makeup job when she puts this mask on.

[38:07] Is that she's not exactly the Rick Baker of stealing other people's faces and putting them on her face.

Dan McCoy

[38:11] Like wear like a Zorro mask over your eyes.

[38:14] Oh, like a domino.

[38:15] The rest of it.

Elliott Kalan

[38:17] Yeah.

[38:17] Domino mask.

[38:17] Maybe that could be part of your Riddler themed strip routine.

[38:20] Yeah.

[38:21] So.

[38:21] For Bat-lesque.

[38:22] Bat-lesque is, of course, Batman themed burlesque.

[38:25] You have there's a woman Batman.

[38:27] There's a woman Joker.

[38:29] There's a woman Riddler.

[38:29] There's a guy who does Catwoman.

[38:32] You know, we're just mixing things up.

[38:34] It's Bat-lesque.

Stuart Wellington

[38:35] So now cut back to that alleyway where the cops are spending a long time standing over the murdered girl.

[38:44] They're kind of just dicking around.

[38:45] That's a theme here.

Elliott Kalan

[38:46] Yeah, the cops are kind of they do spend a lot of time just hanging around.

S5

[38:50] Just standing over naked and murdered with.

Stuart Wellington

[38:54] And it's, you know, it's a lot of, you know, like boilerplate cop dialogue probably gleaned from watching a couple episodes of SVU.

[39:03] While Glenn Danzig is drifting off to dreamland at night and he needs just one last story to put him over the edge.

[39:10] So SVU is special Veronica unit.

[39:11] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[39:13] Some cops handle special Veronica crimes.

Stuart Wellington

[39:16] So Mystery Girl we find has a pretty, pretty Spartan changing area where she has a bunch of faces nailed to the wall and a little, a little vanity.

[39:30] The, she, you know, talks to herself, talks to the masks.

[39:34] She goes and finds a new victim.

[39:35] Now when you say masks, you mean faces.

[39:37] Yeah, faces.

[39:39] Aren't all faces a mask at the end of the day?

[39:41] And so she, she opened, she opens somebody's apartment door using an apartment key.

[39:46] That's not really explained.

[39:48] It's fine, but they show it.

[39:49] So it's important.

[39:50] She goes in.

[39:51] The woman is a little surprised to have a stranger in her home.

[39:55] And then she's even more surprised when her face is demanded as payment.

[40:00] So the Mystery Girl and this new victim struggle.

[40:06] It's kind of awkward.

[40:07] They kind of, you know, they kind of sit and look at a knife for a bit and then they like kind of wrestle.

[40:13] And then she slowly touches the woman's face with a knife and blood comes out.

[40:18] And then she takes the face off and then the woman's standing there without a face and she's like, my face, my face.

[40:24] Thus closing the loop.

[40:27] The, we then get a, you know, we get another shot of the, of cops inside this woman's apartment.

[40:34] There's like a new detective that's like, okay, give me the brief.

[40:37] And the first detective explains it and he's like, all right, all right.

Dan McCoy

[40:41] Is the new detective the one that's kind of like a Michael Chiklis type?

Stuart Wellington

[40:45] That was the original guy, Michael Chiklis.

Dan McCoy

[40:48] The one that's putting on like the gravelly Batman voice.

[40:50] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[40:51] And we find out that there's been 13 murders.

[40:53] So they're taking their time.

[40:55] And they're worried that the press is going to find out because I don't know.

Jesse Thorn

[40:59] Wait, there were 13 murders they said?

Stuart Wellington

[41:01] Yeah, they said there was 13 murders and they're nervous about the press coming out because they're like,

[41:05] you know, as soon as the press finds out, they're going to come out with some badass name like Le Neck Breaker or something.

[41:11] Le Face Taker.

S5

[41:14] But that like, in the end though, when you see all the faces, there aren't 13 faces.

[41:18] So that means that there's another face taker.

Elliott Kalan

[41:21] I mean, or I got to imagine there's a shelf life for a disem, for a removed face.

[41:26] Like at a certain point, she's like, these faces are getting pretty rank.

[41:28] I got to replace them.

Dan McCoy

[41:30] That doesn't mean that there are 13 ghosts running around out there after.

Stuart Wellington

[41:33] Yeah, and Elliot, I think you misspoke.

[41:34] You said shelf life, but they're clearly nailed to the wall.

[41:37] Oh, sorry, sorry.

Dan McCoy

[41:38] I meant shelf life.

[41:38] It doesn't seem like a good way to store like faces you put on your face.

Elliott Kalan

[41:41] It's a very poor way to store anything, especially faces you're going to put on your face.

[41:47] So the detective.

[41:48] I wouldn't even store a coat that way.

[41:50] To nail it to the wall?

[41:52] Like, hang it on a nail, but come on.

Stuart Wellington

[41:58] Actually, I haven't really thought about it.

[41:59] I probably shouldn't store my face on the wall with the nail through.

[42:02] Thanks, Elliot.

[42:03] I'm glad we brought that up.

Elliott Kalan

[42:04] She walks over to the next wall to get dressed for her job, and all her underpants are nailed

[42:08] to the wall.

[42:09] Like, come on, lady.

[42:10] Buy a dresser.

[42:12] You have no furniture except for this table and this little vanity mirror.

[42:15] Well, she's not making money.

[42:16] That's for damn sure.

Stuart Wellington

[42:18] Yeah, she comes home.

[42:19] She's just bought a 12-pack of LaCroix.

[42:21] Each one she nails to the wall.

Elliott Kalan

[42:23] Oh, they're just going to leak out?

[42:25] Come on.

[42:26] So, of course, Detective Michael Chiklis tracks her down.

[42:29] She gets a package of Kraft Singles, and she's like, I don't want all these right now,

[42:35] and nails them to the wall individually.

Stuart Wellington

[42:37] No, unlike a normal, like a non-murderer person who buys a pack of Kraft Singles and eats

[42:42] every single one in one sitting.

[42:45] Yeah, it's called dinner, Stu.

[42:47] It's called dinner.

[42:48] So, Detective Michael Chiklis.

Elliott Kalan

[42:49] Look, you had a hard day at work.

[42:51] You just want to sit down and just make your way through a 64-pack of Kraft Singles.

[42:56] And you know what?

[42:57] You know it's a lot of extra waste because of the wrapping around every single one of the single.

[43:01] But at the same time, it's kind of where you get a little bit of enjoyment, too.

[43:05] Because it's like, look, I work hard all day.

[43:08] Why don't I get a little bit of luxury here?

[43:09] The luxury of knowing that each of these singles was individually wrapped just for me.

[43:14] Because really, the anticipation of the unwrapping is more enjoyable than the eating of the single.

[43:18] Maybe I'm out on a limb here.

[43:19] Maybe this is pretty radical.

S5

[43:21] No, it's like the joy of a hard-boiled egg as well.

Elliott Kalan

[43:23] Exactly.

[43:23] Yeah, it's the unwrapping of the individually plastic-wrapped egg.

[43:26] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[43:27] See, it would be a deterrent for me because the fact that I have to peel off the plastic each time gives me time to think about what I'm doing.

Elliott Kalan

[43:34] Yeah, and when you're eating Kraft Singles for dinner, your enemy is thinking about what you're doing.

[43:39] You want to get into it.

[43:40] That's the thing.

Stuart Wellington

[43:40] Eating Kraft Singles for dinner, the great thing about it is that in order to properly do it, you have to maintain conscious competence.

[43:46] Now, guys, I've done a little bit of – I used to be a trainer professionally.

[43:50] So it's all about keeping employees in that place where they know exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it.

[43:56] And that's what you're doing when you're eating Kraft Singles because if you don't pay attention, you're eating plastic and you can't do that.

Elliott Kalan

[44:02] But you want to have just enough brain power that you know what you're doing to unwrap it and not eat the plastic and not enough brain power that you're realizing you're just eating 64 slices of American cheese for dinner.

[44:13] And that's why you want to watch something like House Hunters where you don't need to pay full attention to it because it's the same exact show every single time.

[44:20] But you want to pay just enough attention to it so that you can know why the house they chose is not the right house for them in the end.

Stuart Wellington

[44:26] So Detective Michael Chiklis finds a break in the case.

[44:29] He finds a business card for the Pussycats Erotic Dance Club.

[44:35] And he –

Jesse Thorn

[44:36] It looks like Pussy Rats, though.

Stuart Wellington

[44:37] It does look like Pussy Rats.

[44:39] I feel like they should use a – like they should have used somebody like a graphic designer to fix that for them.

[44:45] Maybe that's the name of this place.

[44:47] I thought it was – is it Pussy Rats or is it Pussycats?

[44:50] I don't know if it's ever said out loud, is it?

S5

[44:52] No, it's never said out loud.

[44:53] Yeah.

[44:53] But it certainly looks like Pussy Rats on that card.

Elliott Kalan

[44:56] I guess I gave him the benefit of the doubt, you know.

[44:58] I think it's weird that she is carrying around her business card when she's going out hunting faces.

[45:04] But also weird that the police officer is never like, oh, the killer has been at this place.

[45:08] He's like, well, looks like it's Mystery Girl.

[45:11] Yeah.

[45:11] Like he kind of knows the dancer right away.

Stuart Wellington

[45:13] And he looks at the camera and after hassling the door guy for a little bit, he's like, do you know who Mystery Girl is?

[45:18] And he's like, I know a lot of girls, buddy.

[45:21] Detective Michael Chiklis takes a look at the camera and he says, ready or not, Mystery Girl, here I come.

[45:28] And then he goes and hassles some of the dancers.

[45:31] He threatens to shoot them.

Elliott Kalan

[45:32] Well, one of the dancers, she's like, Mystery Girl, a police officer came.

[45:35] You got to go.

[45:36] I'll stall him.

[45:37] And he goes, hey, do you know where Mystery Girl is?

[45:38] And she's like, I don't know.

[45:40] What?

[45:40] Huh?

[45:41] Like that's her version of stalling is just to like, just to irritate him for a moment.

[45:45] Yeah.

[45:45] She doesn't have a lot of fucking improv training right now.

Stuart Wellington

[45:49] I mean, maybe she does.

[45:50] Maybe it's just bad improv training.

[45:52] Okay.

[45:53] I'm not.

[45:53] I guess you're right.

[45:54] So the detective hassles some dancers.

Elliott Kalan

[45:56] I guess I'm saying, Stu, you don't know her background or her life.

[45:59] Maybe, maybe, maybe she had, maybe she went to like level one training and just didn't pursue it afterwards.

Dan McCoy

[46:06] So he then.

[46:07] I feel like this is comedy that's very specific to like, say, our group of people and not the world.

Elliott Kalan

[46:13] Well, certainly Stu is not interested in it.

[46:15] So continue, Stu.

[46:16] What happens next?

Stuart Wellington

[46:17] Yeah.

[46:17] So the detective goes into his path.

[46:22] The trail for the Mystery Girl leads him into a dark warehouse where he is ambushed by the Mystery Girl who stabs him.

[46:30] And then he shoots her a couple of times and he makes some grand proclamation of vengeance.

[46:36] Then we get a title card six months later.

[46:40] Uh-oh.

[46:41] We're in a new club and a new DJ introduces a hot new dancer.

[46:46] Onto the stage walks Mysteria who is dancing with obvious bullet scars and another mask.

[46:54] She then takes a hundred dollar bill, rips it in half and walks out.

[46:57] And we're like, that's the real crime, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[47:00] Yeah.

[47:00] It's a weird ending because you're...

[47:03] Because it's not an ending?

[47:04] Yeah.

[47:05] That's this time leap.

[47:06] And you expect like either the point is that, oh no, she's like gone on to another club and she's just going to do the same thing again.

[47:14] In which case they don't need to let her do her whole dance one more time.

[47:19] Uh-huh.

[47:19] Or as she does the dance, she leans down and sees the detective bent on vengeance catching up with her.

[47:27] But like, I mean like...

Elliott Kalan

[47:28] Or the detective wearing someone else's face and he's like, I get it now.

[47:31] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[47:31] Or the detective and he's holding a bunch of marriage photos of the two of them from their honeymoon.

[47:38] Yeah.

[47:38] And you're like, a lot's happened in six months.

[47:41] Yeah.

Jesse Thorn

[47:41] This is a very eventful six months.

[47:43] So I guess we're saying...

Dan McCoy

[47:44] But either of those choices would have been endings.

[47:46] Neither would have been good endings, but like at least they would provide some kind of closure.

Elliott Kalan

[47:50] Well, this is my new theory about Veronica that I just came up with now.

[47:53] Is that the movie represents the dissolution of the human mind and the way that narratives have frayed in this modern world we live in.

[48:01] Because the first story, there's a beginning.

[48:03] Woman is spurned by a lover and cries on a spider.

[48:05] There's a middle.

[48:06] Spider becomes a monster murderer and is breaking women's necks.

[48:09] And an end.

[48:10] Woman sacrifices herself to stop monster murderers somehow.

[48:13] Uh-huh.

[48:13] Second story.

[48:14] There's a beginning.

[48:15] Somebody's stealing faces.

[48:16] There's a middle.

[48:17] The police are after the face stealer.

[48:18] And there's no ending.

[48:19] And the third story, as Dan will go into, has neither a beginning or an end.

[48:23] It is all middle.

Stuart Wellington

[48:25] So I don't...

[48:26] I actually...

[48:27] I'm having trouble remembering.

[48:28] I know it's crazy.

[48:29] It's crazy because these little interstitial segments made a pretty big impact when I watched them.

[48:35] But what does Morella say in between these two?

Elliott Kalan

[48:38] I wish what I remembered exactly was something like, well, that's a look at a different face.

[48:43] She's holding her face in her hands.

[48:45] And she's like, what she should say is, yep, we still have the props from that one left over.

Dan McCoy

[48:49] And that face, I couldn't tell...

[48:51] Was it supposed to be the cop?

[48:55] Audrey's like, is that the cop's face?

[48:56] I'm like, no, I don't think so.

[48:58] I think it's just a face.

[48:58] And then I looked at him like, yeah, it could be.

Jesse Thorn

[49:01] That's just the human brain searching for connections.

Elliott Kalan

[49:04] Yes.

[49:05] That's exactly what I was going to say, Dan.

[49:06] You are searching for logic in a world without it.

Dan McCoy

[49:09] Well, but I'm saying, if Danzig meant that to be the kicker of the story, it is so incompetently delivered that there's no way of telling whether or not that was it.

Elliott Kalan

[49:21] I don't know that there's meant to be a kicker in this story.

Dan McCoy

[49:24] Well, that's what I'm saying.

[49:25] Possibly not.

[49:26] But maybe there was?

S5

[49:27] Maybe.

[49:28] It's anti-narrative.

[49:28] What you guys didn't hear was Elliot go, hmm, after he googled Veronica quotes on IMDb and there were none.

[49:35] Yeah.

[49:35] I was trying to...

[49:36] And he was like, huh.

[49:37] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[49:38] I was like, I'll look up and see.

[49:40] Maybe someone put Morella's lines onto IMDb.

[49:43] They're very quotable.

[49:45] And they were not available.

[49:48] No one has yet done that work.

[49:49] So I was disappointed in not being able to find it.

[49:51] But it is something like, it is some, like, oh, that's a face of a different color or something like that.

[49:56] Like, it's some dumb thing that doesn't make sense, you know.

[49:59] Yeah.

[49:59] So Morella, she is there.

[50:01] It is anti-narrative, as you're saying.

[50:03] Morella is there more to confuse us.

[50:05] The Crypt Keeper, for instance, he's there to ease us into the story and make it okay for us that we're watching a ghoul tell a tale of kind of humorous macabre.

[50:16] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:16] It's a brief port in a storm.

[50:19] It's a safe space in between two scary towns.

Elliott Kalan

[50:21] At the end of every Tales from the Crypt, you're like, ah, ah.

[50:24] And he comes back to the Crypt, you're like, oh, thank goodness.

[50:26] I'm just an evil crypt listening to a corpse talk to me.

[50:29] Oh, thank goodness.

Dan McCoy

[50:30] At the end of a story to either sort of give you the moral or to just kind of gloat over what happened.

Elliott Kalan

[50:37] Yes, whereas Morella is there to kind of, in a very bored, apathetic way, give you the least possible amount of wordplay before shuffling you off to the next title card.

[50:50] She might say something like, well, like, and here's another, or something like that.

[50:54] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[50:55] Okay, so I guess it's my turn.

[50:57] And this is going to be hard.

[50:58] I may need your help because, as Elliot says, it's all middle.

[51:02] And I requested this one because I was like, I don't know if I am prepared to do a summary.

[51:10] I'm like, okay, that'll be the easiest one because nothing happens in it.

[51:13] But the fact that nothing happens in it makes it very hard to remember.

[51:17] You should just start with the beginning.

Stuart Wellington

[51:18] What's the title?

[51:20] I will give you $50 right now if you take the title.

Dan McCoy

[51:24] Is it something like Drujia Countess or something like that?

[51:28] Oh, boy.

[51:29] You're not close enough, my man.

Elliott Kalan

[51:30] No, it's Drujia Countess of Blood.

[51:33] Okay, well, that's close.

[51:35] So Stuart gets to keep his Ulysses S. Grant in his pocket.

Dan McCoy

[51:38] Okay, so this story starts with, you see the titular Drujia, right?

[51:45] And is she like, is this like in the modern world, this first shot?

[51:50] Almost certainly no.

Elliott Kalan

[51:51] Okay.

[51:52] Since she's riding around in a medieval village on a horse.

[51:55] Wasn't there like a shot?

[51:56] She's smearing stuff on her face.

[51:57] First she's smearing blood on her face.

[51:59] Okay.

[52:00] And so she is a Bathory type evil countess.

[52:03] No, no, I'm going to get to that.

[52:04] I'm going to get to that.

[52:04] Okay, sorry.

[52:05] I mean, you seemed confused about when the most basic setting of the story.

Dan McCoy

[52:10] No, well, it confused me when I was watching it because I was like, oh, this is the modern world.

[52:14] And then it jumps like way back in time.

[52:16] And I thought that maybe it was indicating that because this is a Countess Bathory character, she hasn't aged over like decades and decades.

[52:23] But now I see that it is just Glenn Dan's incompetence at making it look like it's olden times.

[52:30] Yes.

[52:30] That made me think like, oh, this is happening in an apartment somewhere.

[52:34] So anyway, she's right.

Stuart Wellington

[52:35] Dan's search for meaning in this movie is like that Shining documentary.

Elliott Kalan

[52:39] Yeah, Dan is really room 237-ing this thing where I think the rest of us were all like, oh, this is a piece of junk.

[52:45] And Dan's like, what is Glenn trying to tell me?

[52:48] Is this about the extermination of the Native Americans?

[52:51] What's going on here?

Dan McCoy

[52:53] I think that for me, part of the enjoyment of bad movie watching is the psychological disconnect,

[53:01] like trying to find meaning in what the hell they were thinking and how badly they failed.

Elliott Kalan

[53:06] I think what Glenn was thinking with this one was, cool, she's naked and she's going to get blood on her.

[53:11] Yeah, so, okay.

Dan McCoy

[53:13] She's riding her horse around and I guess...

Stuart Wellington

[53:16] And the villagers are giving her some serious fucking side eye, right?

[53:20] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[53:21] Now, Dan, how would you rate her on a scale of Countesses?

[53:25] Ten meaning great Countess takes good care of the peasants and zero meaning bathes in the peasant's daughter's blood.

Dan McCoy

[53:30] Yeah, we give it a zero.

[53:32] Yeah, so...

[53:33] Okay, fair, fair.

[53:34] I just can't remember the order of the victims.

[53:37] Okay, so she goes...

[53:38] Do you like servants bring the first victim or is that later on?

Elliott Kalan

[53:40] No, she goes to a barn and she buys a virgin girl from that girl's mom.

[53:45] Isn't it pronounced Verkin?

[53:48] Do they say Verkins?

[53:49] Verkins.

[53:50] And so her mom is like, you're going to go live with the Countess now, it's going to be great.

[53:54] And then counts the meager number of coins that have been placed in her palm.

[53:58] And she is brought to the castle to be overseen by the evil Sheska.

[54:02] Yeah.

[54:03] Oh, that was her name?

[54:04] Yeah.

[54:04] Named after the evilest of children's book authors, John Sheska, author of The Stinky Cheese Man and the True Story of the Three Little Pigs.

[54:12] And also the Truck Town series.

[54:14] April is shaking her head now.

Dan McCoy

[54:19] So this first one is the one that the wrists are slit and she's strung up in the bath, right?

Elliott Kalan

[54:27] Yep.

[54:27] Yeah, she has a big bath.

[54:28] It looks like a giant demon skeleton.

[54:30] The bath gets its own credit in the opening credits.

[54:32] Yeah.

[54:33] The maker of the bath gets its own credit.

[54:35] Oh, really?

[54:35] Yeah, it's an amazing piece of it.

[54:36] It's a great bath.

[54:37] It says like demon tub by or something like that.

[54:39] Oh, yeah.

[54:40] The bathtub.

S5

[54:40] Yeah, Kansas Bowling is the one who's got her wrists slit and she's just like sitting top.

[54:44] She looks really comfortable.

Stuart Wellington

[54:46] Is that one of those bathtubs where you can like open the door and just climb out?

[54:50] It has to be because Glenn is getting on in years.

[54:53] Because those are the kind of, the thing about those tubs is like, I can't imagine it's good for you to be like, for like an old person to just sit there while the tub slowly drains, getting colder and colder.

Elliott Kalan

[55:04] I mean, there's only, you got to make your choices.

[55:07] You can either have to step over a tub or die of pneumonia.

[55:10] Those are your two choices.

[55:11] Yeah.

[55:12] Now, here's the thing.

[55:12] It's not a claw foot tub.

[55:14] It's a claw hand tub because it's a big demon skeleton.

[55:17] Yeah.

[55:18] All right.

[55:19] So.

[55:19] Now, Dan, you had recently installed a bidet in your house.

[55:22] So you like bathroom fixture jokes, right?

[55:24] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[55:26] More about that later, maybe?

[55:28] So she's got her, she's got her arms tied up and it is in this very artful organization because like the bath.

[55:35] Is it artful?

[55:36] Well, no.

[55:37] I'll explain what I'm saying.

[55:38] The bath is full of blood, completely filled with blood.

[55:42] Yeah.

[55:42] Ostensibly from this woman who is totally clean of blood except for like some like streaks going down from where her wrists were slashed.

[55:53] So apparently there was no spray of any kind.

[55:56] This, you know, like.

[55:58] Or clotting.

[55:59] Yeah.

[55:59] True.

Elliott Kalan

[56:01] I guess your wrists don't usually clot.

[56:02] And also.

[56:02] That's the way people feel themselves.

S5

[56:04] You'd think that like the tub would have some clotting in it.

[56:07] Yeah.

[56:07] Which is like, it's not as like cool to see like just big blood clots like.

[56:12] Yeah.

[56:12] Like congealed.

[56:12] All over her face.

[56:13] Like it's just gross.

[56:15] Well, that.

[56:15] Yeah.

[56:16] So you're saying that.

Elliott Kalan

[56:16] So that.

[56:17] So Sheska has been using some sort of thinner.

[56:20] Yeah.

[56:20] To like keep things like.

Dan McCoy

[56:21] Well, I wanted to say that that brings me to the look of the blood where the blood looks like sort of cherry Kool-Aid much more than it does like a thick human substance of any kind.

Stuart Wellington

[56:33] That's what's inside all of us, Dan.

[56:35] Cherry Kool-Aid.

Dan McCoy

[56:36] And if I was going to be.

[56:37] I mean, inside the Kool-Aid, man.

[56:39] I mean, if I was going to be generous, I could think like maybe this was a choice that Danzig was making because this movie is so clearly influenced by Jello movies.

[56:50] And like he wants to be, I don't know, Dario Argento or something the way he's using color and stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[56:55] Stuart again looks very dubious.

[56:57] I think maybe Dan meant that it's been influenced by Jello movies.

[57:00] Okay.

[57:01] Commercials for Jello.

Dan McCoy

[57:02] It is documented.

[57:04] Glenn Danzig has said this.

[57:06] And this is what he's trying to do.

[57:07] So maybe in a more generous frame of mind, I'd say, okay, the blood looks like Kool-Aid because he's trying to match that kind of heightened fake look of those films.

[57:18] That bright red intensity.

S5

[57:19] Yes.

[57:19] But instead.

[57:20] I can absolutely give him that because I do think he's trying to do some kind of Jello stuff.

[57:25] And there's certainly that represented in the first thing where the woman gets her eyes poked out because that is the staple of the Jello genre is that eyes get stabbed.

[57:36] Like, you get it out of the way.

[57:38] Like, eyes get stabbed.

[57:39] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[57:40] Bring your safety glasses.

Dan McCoy

[57:44] Okay.

[57:45] So she bathes in this woman's blood for what felt like two hours.

[57:51] It's a long bath.

Stuart Wellington

[57:52] And just when you're like, bath time's probably over, they bring another victim in and the victim is like, just kind of like a little concerned.

[58:01] And then they just cut her throat.

Dan McCoy

[58:03] And like, it's a Monty Python, meaning of life, vomit style, like arterial spray, which I mean, there would be like a lot of spray from the neck at first, but it goes on so long.

[58:15] Like her blood pressure would have dropped so quickly.

[58:18] And it just sprays and sprays her like a shower.

Elliott Kalan

[58:21] I mean, all of this also, it gets, like we were saying, blood is gross.

[58:25] Yeah.

[58:25] And like, it's like in Blade, right?

[58:26] When the blood is just squirting out of the ceiling onto all the party goers.

[58:29] Yeah.

[58:30] Like, blood's gross.

[58:31] Like, it's, it's like sticky and disgusting.

[58:33] Like, if you're going to get coated in it, like it's going to feel awful.

[58:36] And like, it's not like you're in the shower.

Dan McCoy

[58:38] It's gross.

[58:39] Well, she loves it, obviously, but I want to, I do want to speak to it.

[58:44] That's fair.

Elliott Kalan

[58:45] She's, she has love and life.

Dan McCoy

[58:46] She's like, this is my best life right now.

[58:47] I do want to speak to the Countess's like affect, because I think that they're trying to suggest this kind of constant, like orgasmic feel from the blood, maybe.

[58:59] Yeah.

[59:00] Or like wonderment.

[59:01] But like, she looks like an alien, maybe, who has arrived on Earth for the first time and is just sort of taking in and amazed at everything.

[59:13] But it's just like her bathing in blood.

[59:15] But she's got this constant dazed amazement on her face while she's doing it.

S5

[59:21] What do you think Danzig was telling her, like directing her?

[59:23] Like, what do you think like he was giving her as like motivation or like, do it like this?

[59:29] You know, what was he saying?

[59:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[59:31] Do you think he climbed in the bath and he's like, do it like this?

[59:34] And then he like took a bath for like four days and you're like, okay, I guess the reason how this scene's going to go.

Elliott Kalan

[59:41] I mean, I think he was probably just telling like, this is the best thing, like this is the best feeling you've ever had.

[59:45] You love it.

[59:46] You love blood.

[59:47] It's re-energizing you and it's making you young and beautiful all the time.

[59:51] Because she, at a certain point, I think Sheska is like, ah, you're looking younger and more beautiful than ever or something like that.

[59:58] And otherwise it's never really.

[59:59] Sheska was directing her in this.

[1:00:00] It's like never really explained why she's doing this other than that.

[1:00:05] And because she's just mean, I guess.

[1:00:07] Like she's just a weirdo.

[1:00:09] I don't know.

[1:00:09] Well, that's the thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:09] This movie does assume that you're already familiar with the story of Countess Bathory who bathes in blood to make herself young forever.

[1:00:18] Allegedly.

[1:00:19] Allegedly.

[1:00:20] Let's say that a lot of powerful women's work history has very big lies.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:23] History is usually pretty kind to women in power, Dan.

[1:00:26] You're right.

[1:00:27] That's fair.

[1:00:27] When a woman is in power, usually people are treated with dignity and respect.

[1:00:30] Right.

[1:00:31] And they don't say that she bathes in blood or has sex with a horse or any of those things.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:34] None of those things.

[1:00:35] This movie assumes that you know that already.

[1:00:37] So it doesn't feel the need to be like give her any motivation for anything she's doing.

[1:00:44] Is this where she stares into the mirror for another five hours?

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:47] She stares in the mirror for a couple hours.

[1:00:49] And then she kills another virgin and bathes in her blood.

[1:00:52] I think we can skip forward to when she goes to the woods and has her encounter with the wolf.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:56] To be honest, there's a lot of me riding the 10-second skip button in this story.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:01] Oh, I should have done that.

[1:01:03] I should have done that.

[1:01:04] She goes to the woods.

[1:01:05] She's got a piece of meat with her that I guess is part of one of her victims,

[1:01:09] although it looks like it's a steak from the store.

[1:01:12] I mean, she can buy steak, dude.

[1:01:13] She's the Countessa.

[1:01:15] Yeah.

[1:01:15] And this wolf dog comes to her.

[1:01:19] At least that's what we're supposed to be like.

[1:01:21] We're supposed to think this is a real cool, threatening wolf.

[1:01:25] I don't think we're supposed to think it's really lame and boring.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:29] Yeah.

[1:01:29] Well, it's clearly a good boy.

[1:01:31] Yeah, this is not a threat.

[1:01:34] And I kept waiting for a plot to kick in.

[1:01:37] So I'm like, oh, okay, now she's going to encounter the devil in the woods or something.

[1:01:40] She's going to get in over her head.

[1:01:42] Yeah.

[1:01:42] And she's going to get her just desserts.

[1:01:44] No, that doesn't happen.

[1:01:45] And later, she's in the village again, and her men are looking at each other like,

[1:01:49] this is crazy.

[1:01:50] Are we really doing this?

[1:01:51] And I was waiting for them to rise up and overthrow her.

[1:01:53] That doesn't happen.

[1:01:54] Nope.

[1:01:55] It's just scene after scene of her just being a badass killer Countess.

[1:02:01] Yeah.

S5

[1:02:01] It's realism, though.

[1:02:03] Because that's just like, well, no one's going to stop her.

[1:02:06] I guess we just keep doing this.

[1:02:08] I guess so.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:09] And wait, is there just basically just another victim, and that's the end?

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:13] Well, she cuts open a virgin and eats her heart for a while.

[1:02:17] Yep.

[1:02:17] That takes a while.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:18] And then one of the captives escapes, and she runs for a little bit.

[1:02:22] Then she gets captured again.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:23] And that's when it gets decapitated, and they hold up the fakest-looking head of her.

[1:02:27] That was pretty awesome, though, right?

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:31] Seems like a waste.

[1:02:32] It seems like all that blood spraying on the ground.

[1:02:35] I'm like, why is the ground going to look younger?

S5

[1:02:39] Yeah, why are they?

[1:02:40] I was just like, they're wasting so much blood.

[1:02:43] Yeah.

[1:02:43] That is, it's like just, I don't know.

[1:02:46] It's irresponsible.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:47] I think she saw that head, and she was like, I want, I collect these now.

[1:02:50] Yeah.

[1:02:51] She holds up this head, and the only way it could have been faker is if they put a wig

[1:02:53] on a Mr. Potato head, and she held it up.

[1:02:56] Like, it looks like it's like, if she is holding up Wilson from Cast Away, it would have looked

[1:03:00] better than what she has there.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:02] But she takes his head home, and she goes into a room where she's got like 20 other human

[1:03:06] heads on the wall.

[1:03:08] Yep.

[1:03:08] That look a lot more real, because I think they just have the actresses putting their heads

[1:03:11] through the wall, rather than the rubber head that she's carrying around.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:16] I mean, and I have to assume this is, maybe this is a sly reference to the song Skulls,

[1:03:21] in which the singer mentions how he hacks the heads off little girls and put them on his

[1:03:24] wall.

[1:03:25] But maybe that's just a thing he thinks about a lot.

[1:03:27] I don't know.

[1:03:28] It's a little Easter egg.

S5

[1:03:29] Yeah, okay.

[1:03:30] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:31] Like, I guess maybe there's, maybe they're like dancing in Misfits Easter eggs throughout

[1:03:34] that I didn't notice.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:36] I do like when he goes into the room, and she takes her torch, and she just like, does

[1:03:43] like a little like spotlight on like four or five different heads.

[1:03:47] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:48] So you see this room with as many heads as like are on the wall in the George Harrison

[1:03:53] I got my mindset on you video.

[1:03:55] And...

[1:03:55] But they're not singing along.

[1:03:57] They're not singing along.

[1:03:58] And then it just kind of fades out.

[1:03:59] That would have been fun, though.

[1:04:00] Yeah.

[1:04:00] And you're like, okay, this, I guess, would have been like a reveal that she does this

[1:04:05] all the time if we didn't already know she does this all the time.

[1:04:08] So I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from this.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:11] And that's the end of the story, right?

[1:04:13] Yeah, that's the end of the story.

[1:04:14] That's how it ends.

[1:04:15] If you can call it a story.

[1:04:15] It's more of a character sketch.

[1:04:16] It's just sort of...

[1:04:17] It sort of expires.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:20] Then it's like, see you later, my darklings.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:22] Well, Mirella is in the demon bath from the story.

[1:04:25] She's like, after a story like that, I need a bath.

[1:04:27] See you later, my darklings.

[1:04:29] And yeah, that's...

Dan McCoy

[1:04:29] At the end.

[1:04:31] That's it.

[1:04:31] That's the story of Veronica.

[1:04:33] She's like, that's all for this time.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:35] So, April, as our special guest, how would you...

[1:04:44] I mean, I guess we can go to final judgments, right, Dan?

[1:04:46] But how would you sum up your thoughts on this film?

[1:04:51] What is it trying to do?

[1:04:52] What does it accomplish?

[1:04:54] What path does it blaze for independent filmmakers or big studio movies?

S5

[1:05:00] Okay.

[1:05:01] Okay.

[1:05:03] I always try to give every filmmaker the benefit of the doubt because you have the resources

[1:05:08] that you have and you have those things to work with and that's it.

[1:05:12] I am sure that everyone tried their best on this.

[1:05:16] There is a...

[1:05:17] There's certainly a lot of care and thought that went into makeup and prosthetics and people

[1:05:24] trying to do something fun.

[1:05:25] They're just trying to have fun.

[1:05:27] Yeah.

[1:05:28] And I'm sure that when they put the eyes on the tits, they were like, yes!

[1:05:31] You know?

[1:05:32] Or like the...

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:33] I feel like everybody kind of tried to match each other's energy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:39] Yeah.

[1:05:39] Okay, that's fair.

[1:05:40] I feel like the man spider, that makeup effect is pretty good.

S5

[1:05:43] Yeah.

[1:05:44] Except for...

[1:05:44] I mean, there's one point where they show him fully and his crotch is ripped open.

[1:05:48] And maybe that's part of the makeup.

[1:05:51] But I do think that the makeup of that is good.

[1:05:55] And you got to give credit where it's due.

[1:05:57] Because like, they're working with not a lot of resources.

[1:05:59] That's true.

[1:05:59] And they're making fun of...

[1:06:00] Or they're making some fun stuff.

[1:06:01] And a lot of times with makeup people, I feel so bad because it depends on how a person

[1:06:06] directs it and how the cinematography is.

[1:06:10] And so if that's not great, then it's not going to be the best showcase of their work

[1:06:14] and what they're doing.

[1:06:15] So like, you know, props to the makeup people.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:18] I feel bad how rough I was on that fake head at the end.

[1:06:21] Which...

S5

[1:06:21] They really tried.

[1:06:22] They really tried.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:23] Maybe he should have shot it from the back.

S5

[1:06:25] Maybe they should have shot it like not in daylight, I think.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:28] I mean, I thought the effect of like when they chopped off the head was actually pretty good.

[1:06:34] Yeah.

[1:06:34] Or at least it was fun.

[1:06:36] Yeah.

S5

[1:06:37] Yeah.

[1:06:37] I think there's some effects things.

[1:06:39] It was just like, okay, you got to remember there's like people working on this.

[1:06:42] They're giving it their heart.

[1:06:43] They're all...

[1:06:44] But like if your director is not into it and doesn't really hold it together, then yeah,

[1:06:51] it doesn't always amount to much.

[1:06:53] So that is my thought on it.

[1:06:56] And I think that it's interesting that he's trying to bring back the anthology considering

[1:07:00] that so many people already have.

[1:07:04] Like it exists and it's a big thing.

[1:07:07] So I'm just not sure where he's trying to go with it.

[1:07:11] It's just like making sure that people remember violence and sex and horror, which is like

[1:07:16] one of the things that I talk about a lot in terms of like maybe we need to change that.

[1:07:23] Yeah.

[1:07:24] So I don't know.

[1:07:25] Maybe it's already overrepresented.

[1:07:27] Yeah.

[1:07:27] It might have been overrepresented, but there's always kind of like this last dying gasp of

[1:07:31] just like, no, we've got to make it more violent with less story and lots of sex that

[1:07:36] ends in violence.

[1:07:37] And you're like, oh, okay.

[1:07:39] All right.

[1:07:39] I guess we're moving backwards here.

[1:07:41] So, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:43] So it sounds like a, I think there's a lot of good pull quotes in there.

[1:07:48] They were obviously having fun.

[1:07:49] Everyone tried their hardest.

[1:07:51] What about you?

[1:07:52] So Dan, you've met, you've been on the record a couple of times in the episode about how this

[1:07:55] movie was like tailor made for you.

[1:07:57] No, no, not at all.

[1:07:58] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:59] Yeah.

[1:08:00] I mean, to April's point and why I probably wouldn't recommend anyone to see this movie

[1:08:05] as a good, bad movie in any way, other than it just being kind of boring, is that like

[1:08:12] I do find the connection of like murderous violence and sex troubling in this movie.

[1:08:22] Like the best thing I feel like I could say for it in that area is it, it could have been

[1:08:27] more hateful.

[1:08:28] Like exploitation sometimes gets pretty hateful and this like has like a weird horror movie

[1:08:36] nerds like innocence to it.

[1:08:39] Like he's just like, oh, I put some Fangorias and Playboys together.

[1:08:43] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:43] It feels a little bit like if these were comics drawn by like Richard Corbin, I'd be like,

Dan McCoy

[1:08:48] oh, okay.

[1:08:49] Yeah.

[1:08:50] But I mean like, so that's the reason why I wouldn't like necessarily recommend it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:54] For a movie where a woman, a movie where a woman cuts out another woman's heart and eats

[1:08:56] it on camera, it's weirdly restrained.

[1:08:58] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:59] In a way.

[1:08:59] But I still wouldn't feel comfortable saying anyone should necessarily watch it unless they,

[1:09:05] you know, you can make your own choices.

[1:09:07] But that stuff is one of the reasons why I wouldn't.

[1:09:13] I don't think it's also as wacky as people have said.

[1:09:17] Like I think that the fact that Glenn Danzig directed it and it had like a crazy festival

[1:09:22] reaction has caused like it's no variety on the internet.

[1:09:26] But I think that there are movies much like this on like Amazon Prime if you dig into their

[1:09:32] like trash that people have made.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:35] So yeah, I mean, you guys can back me up on this.

[1:09:37] It's a, it's hard to tell a, tell a good third act in a story, right?

[1:09:41] It's hard to wrap things up.

[1:09:45] Very true.

[1:09:46] You start strong.

[1:09:48] Middle kind of lags a little bit, but then, you know, we have some trouble in the final

[1:09:53] third.

[1:09:53] Can't bring it home.

[1:09:54] So yeah, all the things you guys said is right.

[1:09:59] Wait, are we saying this is a bad, bad movie?

[1:10:01] I can say that?

[1:10:01] Yeah.

[1:10:01] Bad, bad movie.

[1:10:02] I wouldn't recommend it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:03] Yeah.

[1:10:04] I would, I would do the same.

[1:10:04] I think you're right, Dan, that if it wasn't Glenn Danzig that made it, this movie would

[1:10:08] have flown much farther under the radar.

[1:10:10] Yeah.

[1:10:11] And I feel like it promised a lot of craziness in the first couple minutes and then settles

[1:10:17] into instead a lot of, let's just call it half-heartedness.

[1:10:22] Yeah.

[1:10:22] On the part of the filmmaker.

[1:10:25] But yeah, so I don't think I would recommend it.

Jesse Thorn

[1:10:34] Hey, you've reached Dr. Game Show.

[1:10:36] Leave your message after the beep.

S6

[1:10:40] Hi, this is Sarah, and I'd like to tell you about Dr. Game Show.

[1:10:44] Dr. Game Show is a band of geniuses, or nerds, or brilliant artists, or kids, or some combination

[1:10:48] of all of those who get together to make a show like no other that's family-friendly.

[1:10:52] It's an interactive call-in game show podcast.

[1:10:55] When I found Dr. Game Show, I found joy.

[1:10:58] I told my friends and family that if they weren't listening, they were wasting joy.

[1:11:01] I sent them the episodes that made me laugh until I cried, played it for them in the car.

[1:11:05] They laughed, too.

[1:11:06] Laughed their butts off.

[1:11:07] But they still don't listen on their own, so they're wasting joy.

[1:11:10] And I keep looking for someone to understand me.

[1:11:12] Maybe it's you.

[1:11:13] Give Dr. Game Show a listen and find joy.

S7

[1:11:16] Listen to Dr. Game Show on Maximum Fun.

Jesse Thorn

[1:11:19] New episodes every other Wednesday.

S7

[1:11:22] Hi, I'm Allie Gertz.

[1:11:24] And I'm Julia Prescott.

[1:11:25] And we host Round Springfield.

[1:11:27] Round Springfield is a new Simpsons podcast.

[1:11:30] That is Simpsons adjacent.

[1:11:32] In its topic, we talk to Simpsons writers, directors, voiceover actors, you name it, about non-Simpsons things that they've done.

[1:11:41] Because, surprise, they're all extremely talented.

[1:11:44] Absolutely.

[1:11:45] For example, David X. Cohen worked on The Simpsons, but then created a little show called Futurama.

[1:11:50] That's our very first episode.

[1:11:52] So tune in for stuff like that with Yardley Smith, with Sim Long, with different writers and voice actors.

[1:11:56] It's going to be so much fun.

[1:11:57] And we are every other week on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:05] Hey, what if Glenn Dancy did a song for the letters segment?

[1:12:12] Uh-huh.

[1:12:12] What would that sound like?

[1:12:14] What do you think that would sound like?

[1:12:15] Because it might be something like,

[1:12:16] Letters.

[1:12:18] Tell your letters yes to come my way.

[1:12:21] Send letters to Dan, let me hear what they say.

[1:12:25] Letters.

[1:12:26] Da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na.

[1:12:28] Letters!

[1:12:30] Read us letters that you write for a while.

[1:12:33] There's not much else to say about letters.

[1:12:36] Oh, letters!

Dan McCoy

[1:12:39] Yeah, April's reaction is great because it's both a fair amount of laughter and turning her head away as far as she could from Elliot.

[1:12:47] It is very loud.

[1:12:48] It is very loud.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:49] I can only imagine to avoid the spray of spittle flying from Elliot's mouth as he howls his song.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:57] Anyway, so if you want to write hell with me, send me a letter.

[1:13:00] Continue.

[1:13:00] Letters song.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:02] Okay, this first letter is from Lex, last name with hell.

[1:13:06] Hello, Floppers.

[1:13:07] Sci-fi channel show.

[1:13:08] I've been listening to old episodes, and deep in the archives are episodes where Mr. Pedant himself, Elliot Kalin,

[1:13:16] Pedant?

[1:13:16] needs to be reminded who, quote, new actors are, such as Emma Stone or Bradley Cooper.

[1:13:23] Since both are now Hollywood darlings, it leads me to wonder, are there any other actors you were surprised to see make it big in the decades you've been watching bad movies?

[1:13:33] Lex, last name withheld.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:35] I want to say for myself, it is only that it's hard for me to remember the names of actors who are not in black and white.

[1:13:43] Okay.

[1:13:44] So when I see modern actors and they're in color, it all looks the same to me.

[1:13:48] So it's hard for me to remember their names.

[1:13:50] Bradley Cooper, that's not a name I can remember.

[1:13:52] But, like, Guy Kibbe, that's a name I can remember.

[1:13:55] Yeah.

[1:13:55] They had names back then.

[1:13:57] Yeah.

[1:13:58] Now they don't have names.

[1:13:59] I mean, they do, but still.

[1:14:00] Back then we had faces.

[1:14:02] They weren't getting stolen from us all the time.

[1:14:05] Well, I don't know.

[1:14:06] There aren't really any actors that I'm surprised to see make it big.

[1:14:09] What about you guys?

[1:14:10] Oh, wow.

[1:14:10] Okay.

[1:14:12] I think everyone's proud for it.

[1:14:13] I mean, I don't know.

[1:14:14] I mean, also, like, who the, I mean, there are names that I think are funny.

[1:14:19] I think it's still very funny that there's an actress named Imogene Poots and that that is her name.

[1:14:23] And she's wonderful.

[1:14:24] And she's great.

[1:14:24] Yeah, she's great.

[1:14:25] And she's great.

[1:14:26] She just has a silly name.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:28] I was thinking about her because, like, I was watching the Fright Night remake recently.

[1:14:36] And compared to the rest of her, like, filmography, it almost feels like she's, like, cosplaying as a normal Hollywood starlet in that movie.

[1:14:46] Because she's normally in such, like, crazy weirdo movies.

[1:14:49] And it's such, like, a kind of normal one in that.

[1:14:51] I don't know.

[1:14:53] Okay.

[1:14:54] Yeah.

[1:14:55] Maybe.

[1:14:56] I mean, she's great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:57] What about you guys?

[1:14:57] Who are you surprised about?

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:59] I mean, when I remember sitting down to watch One Fine Day starring George Clooney, who, I guess George Clooney's a good one.

[1:15:08] I never would have thought seeing this guy in Return of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, he would then become, like, a huge movie star.

[1:15:15] But seeing George Clooney playing, I think, the father of a young Mae Whitman, who would have thought she would go on to be one of TV's good girls?

[1:15:25] Okay.

[1:15:26] That was weird.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:27] I mean, I guess it is, it is, I am, I'm surprised by how certain our actors' careers have gone.

[1:15:33] Yeah.

[1:15:34] Like, I never would have guessed that Jake Gyllenhaal would kind of be where he is at the moment, where he seems to, like, seek out weirder roles and Broadway roles.

[1:15:43] Yeah.

[1:15:43] More than kind of, like, big movie stuff.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:45] But, uh, I don't know.

[1:15:47] I think the people that I make mistakes about, I think, are often people I sort of just dismiss as big lugs.

[1:15:53] You know, like, um, for instance, who was I thinking?

[1:15:58] They went out of my head as soon as I, oh, like, Channing Tatum, you know, who, like, early on you're just like, okay, who's this, like, hunk of meat?

[1:16:06] But then you, uh, see him in a bunch of stuff and you're like, oh, he's, he's really good.

[1:16:09] He's, you know.

[1:16:10] And, uh, like, we had, I mean, not that he's, like, amazing, but I wouldn't have guessed that John Cena had such a facility for comedy.

[1:16:19] Uh, even, this is a little sad since he's no longer with us, but even Heath Ledger, I saw him, you know, early on in 10 Things I Hate About You.

[1:16:27] I'm like, okay, he's, like, a big lunk.

[1:16:28] And then everyone talked about how he was going to be this great actor.

[1:16:30] I'm like, really?

[1:16:31] And then it turns out they were right.

[1:16:33] So.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:34] Yeah.

[1:16:34] I mean, it's, I don't want to, like, slag anybody.

[1:16:36] I, I'm not, certainly not a judge of, like, who's up and coming talent.

[1:16:40] So, you know, there's no one that, there's no one where I'm, like, shocked, like, this person is a star.

[1:16:45] This is crazy.

S5

[1:16:46] I think this is, okay, so I actually have a story to tell for this.

[1:16:50] I, when I lived in Los Angeles back in, like, 2004, and I was very young and poor, um, I.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:58] I like that the story rhymes already.

S5

[1:16:59] I know.

[1:17:00] I'm trying to, I'm going to try to keep it up.

[1:17:01] Uh, it's not going to happen.

[1:17:03] I don't have that, uh, the faculties for that.

[1:17:05] But I.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:05] I mean, you heard my letter song, right?

[1:17:07] Like, the bar is very low.

S5

[1:17:10] I, I went on a reality show, um, that, that never ended up airing or doing anything because

[1:17:16] they were, they were putting together this show of, like, essentially you would name your

[1:17:20] style icon of, like, a star that you really liked their style.

[1:17:23] And then they would, like, give you a makeover like that person.

[1:17:26] And then that person would come at the end of the show and be like, oh, you're just like me.

[1:17:32] And so they asked me, like, uh, what celebrities do you think you have?

[1:17:35] Like, um, like, would be your style icon?

[1:17:37] And I really didn't, I don't care about celebrity generally, but I was just like, man, I really

[1:17:42] love Maggie Gyllenhaal.

[1:17:43] And they were like, ooh, Maggie Gyllenhaal.

[1:17:45] She's like kind of big, might be hard to get.

[1:17:47] Do you mind if we do Anne Hathaway?

[1:17:49] And I was like, okay, whatever.

[1:17:53] So yeah, then, uh, they were at that time, Anne Hathaway was just like, poor man's Maggie

[1:18:00] Gyllenhaal.

[1:18:00] And then all of a sudden she became like this big star and obviously is this huge persona

[1:18:08] in Hollywood.

[1:18:09] But at that time it was just like, you know, she's just like in some kids movies.

[1:18:14] She's still a princess diary.

[1:18:15] Yeah.

[1:18:15] And I thought that was really interesting.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:18] Now, Elliot, when she was your girlfriend, did you think she was going to be as huge as,

[1:18:22] uh, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:23] I don't know if April knows this story about Elliot's romantic, uh, past.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:27] I mean, not my girlfriend, that she was someone who was in the same high school as me.

[1:18:32] But other than that, we had very little interaction, but I think actually.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:36] Uh, actually Charlene had a question cause she was watching Princess Diaries for the first

[1:18:39] time on the plane back from San Juan.

[1:18:41] And, uh, that's a, that's a movie that is kind of hurtful to people with curly hair because

[1:18:48] she has curly hair at the beginning and then like, you know, she like classes it up by

[1:18:52] having straight hair.

[1:18:53] So does she have curly hair in real life or straight hair?

[1:18:57] Do you remember from high school?

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:58] She has straight hair.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:59] Oh, so do you think she had a wig for continuity's sake in Princess Diaries?

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:03] I think they might have crimped it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:04] I think they probably just curled her hair.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:06] They may have curled it.

[1:19:07] Yeah.

[1:19:08] I think they probably just curled her hair.

S5

[1:19:09] This is really funny cause I dated someone who used to flirt with her in high school.

[1:19:13] Really?

[1:19:14] Yeah.

[1:19:14] It was like in some plays, went to like a boys high school and they like did some plays together.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:18] I think we all kind of were like, oh, if anyone's going to be a famous actress, it'll be her.

[1:19:22] Cause she was like star of all the shows.

[1:19:24] Yeah.

[1:19:24] She was already in a TV show by the end of high school.

[1:19:27] So, so I think, you know what?

[1:19:28] We did know that Annie was going to be a big star.

[1:19:31] That's what we used to call her back then.

[1:19:32] Annie.

[1:19:33] Because she was an orphan with a dog and her, her adopted father was a war prophet.

[1:19:38] Yeah.

[1:19:39] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:39] And she didn't have any pupils in her eyes.

[1:19:42] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:42] No pupils.

[1:19:43] Very disconcerting.

[1:19:44] That is the thing.

[1:19:44] I mean, she had, it was strange in stage plays, but for the movies, they have to hand draw her pupils in every frame.

[1:19:50] Yeah.

Jesse Thorn

[1:19:51] It's a lot of, a lot of expense.

[1:19:53] A lot of expense.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:53] Yeah.

[1:19:54] So when you're watching a movie like Rachel getting married, you have no idea how much CGI work went into that film.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:58] Yeah.

[1:19:58] That's not a big budget movie.

[1:20:00] That's, you know, Jonathan Demme and his kind of like smaller picture mode.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:04] Yeah.

[1:20:04] Exactly.

[1:20:05] But it's, but again, they had to go to, I think, industrial light magic to hand draw the pupils into every frame.

[1:20:10] Yeah.

[1:20:10] Well, you know, film facts.

[1:20:12] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:13] Duncan, last name withheld.

[1:20:15] McLeod.

[1:20:16] Or says, dear flopper, flopper astadors.

[1:20:21] Flopper eastadors.

[1:20:22] I'm a big fan of apocalypse movies, but one of the more annoying tropes of the genre always seems to be the tendency toward

[1:20:29] God awful future sling.

[1:20:32] They can never just call zombies zombies.

[1:20:35] It's always walkers or biters or some shit.

[1:20:38] So my question is, what are your favorite examples of weird fictional lingo?

[1:20:43] Much obliged, Duncan, last name withheld.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:46] I mean, I love apocalypse movies too.

[1:20:48] I like that one where apocalypse puts his hand on a computer and he says, learning.

Jesse Thorn

[1:20:53] Wait, wasn't that, wait, you mean X-Men apocalypse?

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:56] Yeah.

[1:20:56] I mean, there's an apocalypse in it.

[1:20:57] I'm technically correct.

[1:20:59] Fair point.

[1:20:59] That is an apocalypse movie.

[1:21:00] Okay, fair.

[1:21:02] Yeah.

[1:21:02] Or like, there's that movie Apocalypto and it's like, guys, you can't even use English?

[1:21:06] Come on.

[1:21:09] I mean, I have to admit, since Dan sent us these letters this morning, I didn't have time to do research.

[1:21:16] But it is something that I do love is made up future slang in movies or science fiction stories because it never really sounds that much like real slang.

[1:21:26] It sounds like someone's idea of just how do you take words and like chop them into little pieces.

[1:21:31] But I don't have any off the top of my head right now.

[1:21:33] Do you guys remember any?

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:35] Dan's been a big fan.

[1:21:37] You're a big fan of younglings, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:21:39] Yeah.

[1:21:39] I don't like, I mean, that's a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

[1:21:42] It's not really future slang.

[1:21:43] Yeah, that's extreme past slang.

[1:21:45] Extreme past slang.

[1:21:45] But I was actually, I was going to go there too.

[1:21:47] I'm sorry for busting your balls.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:49] I don't like younglings.

[1:21:51] You're like, actually, that's not accurate.

[1:21:53] But it is what I was going to say.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:55] Death sticks is dumb.

[1:21:57] Death sticks.

[1:21:58] Yeah, man.

[1:21:58] And then there's like, this is not future slang, but we have to talk, I think, a little bit about Stephen King's mastery of slang.

[1:22:08] Where, you know, he says things like fuck-a-rooney or like.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:12] Well, because he's trapped in the 1950s, Dan, and that's how they spoke.

[1:22:15] Is it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:16] Is that hep-cat lingo?

[1:22:19] No idea.

[1:22:19] Yep.

[1:22:20] Yep, it is, I think.

[1:22:21] I'm just looking up now, and I forgot that in Back to the Future Part 2, there's a part where a police one, according to TVTropes.org, it says that Hilldale is nothing but a breeding ground for tranks, lobos, and zip heads.

[1:22:33] And it's like, come on.

[1:22:35] Well, you don't want lobos running around.

[1:22:37] I forgot that in Children of Men, refugees are called fugees.

[1:22:40] Oh, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:42] Well, wait, is that?

[1:22:43] Wait, is it fugees?

Dan McCoy

[1:22:45] That's a short term that people use for refugees.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:49] Is it?

[1:22:49] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:49] That's where the fugees come from.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:52] Yeah.

[1:22:52] The, uh...

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:53] But all I know is the band.

[1:22:55] Well, that's what I'm saying.

[1:22:56] That's what it's short for.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:56] Maybe that's where they got their name from.

[1:22:59] Hmm, interesting.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:00] All right, well, strike that from the record.

[1:23:01] Slang I never heard before.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:03] Uh, I would say my, the weirdest one for me is, uh, in the Underworld movies, calling the werewolves

[1:23:11] lichens.

[1:23:12] Oh.

[1:23:12] Because it requires you to know that, like, lycanthropy is, like, the medical whatever condition.

[1:23:21] It felt very strange to me.

[1:23:23] Yeah.

[1:23:23] But, but, but, but still really sexy when it's Michael Sheen, you know?

[1:23:27] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:29] Uh, and I, I do like in, uh, there's a bunch of, uh, stuff in Fury Road, but I feel like

[1:23:34] that gets a pass because it's not supposed to be, like, a prediction about the future.

[1:23:38] Like, it's such a crazy movie that...

[1:23:40] Yeah.

[1:23:40] ...it doesn't feel like he's trying to predict slang.

[1:23:42] Instead, it's just, like, these are crazy things people might say.

[1:23:45] I just assume that's how Australian people talk.

[1:23:48] Oh, that's fair.

[1:23:49] That's fair.

[1:23:49] They talk about organic mechanics and things like that?

S5

[1:23:51] Uh, I wish I remembered specific things, but, like, Escape from New York and, um, like,

[1:23:56] Dread, I'm thinking of, like, just random things.

[1:23:59] But there's, there's something like that in every single post-apocalyptic movie, though.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:03] Yeah, and there's, and the names of future drugs are always pretty funny.

[1:24:05] Oh, yeah.

[1:24:06] It's always, like, give me a hit of Glenn's.

[1:24:08] Or, like, I need a hit of, like, Spice Ice.

[1:24:11] He's like, come on, guys.

[1:24:13] This is...

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:14] Yeah, I mean, I don't know, like, uh, I've seen The Wire, Elliot, and that's the kind

[1:24:18] of names they would invent for their drugs.

[1:24:21] Uh, is it?

Dan McCoy

[1:24:22] I don't know about that.

[1:24:23] Give me some Blasto.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:25] I mean, well, I think they, like, I think they call, like, WMDs and stuff.

[1:24:30] Yeah.

[1:24:31] It's not that far from RoboCop 2's Nuke.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:35] Yeah.

[1:24:35] Yeah, that's true.

[1:24:36] That is also a silly name for a drug, though.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:38] I don't know.

[1:24:38] I mean, when you're, Elliot, when you're just looking to get blasted...

[1:24:41] What's gonna blast you more than anything?

[1:24:44] Yeah, you're gonna get that.

[1:24:45] You're gonna get the product that promises the biggest blast, and that's Nuke.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:49] Stuart is taking deep personal offense to this.

[1:24:51] He's like, don't make fun of these.

[1:24:53] Don't make fun of RoboCop 2.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:56] I'm sorry.

[1:24:57] So now's the part of the podcast where we, uh, we recommend, uh, movies to watch instead

[1:25:04] of erotica, which you should watch, I don't know, anything instead of erotica.

[1:25:07] Maybe, uh, like, I don't know, like, there's YouTube videos.

[1:25:12] Just watch those of other stuff.

[1:25:14] Yeah.

[1:25:15] Uh, hey, I'll...

[1:25:16] Watch, uh, watch that TikTok of the old lady putting, uh, putting Mentos in that two liter

[1:25:20] of Coke.

[1:25:21] That's hilarious.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:22] It's always great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:24] So, uh, so those are your recommendations, Stu?

Dan McCoy

[1:25:27] Any YouTube video and also that TikTok video?

[1:25:29] Just getting started, Elliot.

[1:25:31] Uh, I, I'll, I'll kick us off, um, because verotica, uh, has a reputation as a fun bad

[1:25:41] movie, but, uh, we did not find it so much to be so, even though I think we had a lot

[1:25:45] of fun talking about it.

[1:25:47] Um, I'm gonna recommend a bad movie that I saw for the first time that kind of delighted

[1:25:54] me, and that's The Lawnmower Man from 1992.

[1:26:00] Uh, the effects still hold up, right?

[1:26:03] Yeah.

[1:26:04] The effects...

[1:26:05] So, okay.

[1:26:06] There was this brief vogue, uh, in the, uh, early to mid-90s, uh, for, you know, these

[1:26:13] internet-based thrillers, these technology thrillers.

[1:26:16] This is a virtual, virtual reality thriller, and, um, their conception of, uh, virtual,

[1:26:24] well, virtual reality...

[1:26:25] I think we've, uh, compared it to this before, it's kind of one of the, like, one of those

[1:26:28] mind's eye videos that you used to see back in, like, Radio Shack back in the day.

[1:26:32] Super cool, yeah.

[1:26:33] Of just, like, blobs, like, merging into each other.

[1:26:36] Mm-hmm.

[1:26:37] Like, there's, there's virtual reality sex in this that's literally, uh, two human blobs

[1:26:41] kind of just merging and intertwining.

[1:26:45] I mean, that's kind of what real life sex is.

[1:26:46] Yeah, that's what all biology is, Daniel.

[1:26:48] I don't...

[1:26:48] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:48] Just two human blobs intertwining.

[1:26:49] I guess so.

[1:26:50] And merging, briefly.

[1:26:52] Um...

S5

[1:26:52] Ah, and you have two children?

[1:26:54] Yes.

[1:26:54] No.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:56] I have two, I have two new human blobs, yes.

[1:26:59] The Lawnmower Man is a, it, it, it takes its title from a Stephen King story, but Stephen

[1:27:04] King sued to have his name taken off the film, uh, because it really has nothing to do with

[1:27:10] that story, which is about the god Pan, I believe, who's, uh, like, eating grass.

[1:27:16] Let's stay on target, Dan.

[1:27:18] Let's stay on target.

[1:27:19] You're talking about the movie here.

[1:27:20] The point is, it has nothing to do with it.

[1:27:22] This one, Jeff Fahey, is kind of a, uh, Flowers for Algernon style, uh, not too bright

[1:27:28] character, but, like, not in any way that's recognizable.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:31] And he dresses like the star of, like, a children's program.

[1:27:33] In Human.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:34] Yeah.

[1:27:35] Like, he's dressed like Chucky, basically.

[1:27:37] Yeah.

[1:27:37] Like a big, big old human-sized Chucky.

[1:27:40] Mm-hmm.

[1:27:40] And he's got a crazy blonde Dumb and Dumber wig on.

[1:27:44] And, uh, Pierce Brosnan wants to use his virtual reality to somehow, uh, increase his IQ.

[1:27:51] I'm not really sure how virtual reality does that, but whatever.

[1:27:55] And then he becomes sort of a godlike figure.

[1:27:58] Like, honestly, like, around halfway through the movie.

[1:28:00] And I'm like, where does this movie go from here if he's already a godlike figure?

[1:28:03] But I won't, uh, I won't go any further.

[1:28:05] It's directed by the same dude who later would direct Virtuosity.

[1:28:09] Oh.

[1:28:10] He really specializes in virtual reality.

[1:28:12] Yeah.

[1:28:13] Where Russell Crowe is a virtual reality composite of a bunch of serial killers.

[1:28:17] Dan, you don't have to go into it.

Jesse Thorn

[1:28:19] You're just recommending Lawn Mower Man.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:20] You don't have to go into the plot of Virtuosity.

[1:28:21] I have to explain a little bit about why these two movies are similar.

[1:28:26] And it's interesting that they're from the same director.

[1:28:28] But anyway, uh, I'm not saying it's a good movie.

[1:28:32] It's not.

[1:28:32] But if you want something silly that reminds you of a time when we didn't understand what technology was,

[1:28:38] uh, the Lawn Mower Man might fit the bill.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:41] I want to see that on the box now.

[1:28:42] I'm not saying it's a good movie because it's not Dan McCoy, the flop best.

[1:28:49] What about you, Stu?

[1:28:50] What did you see?

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:50] Oh, man, I've seen so much.

[1:28:52] Uh, I'm going to recommend, uh, I'll recommend The Lodge.

[1:28:56] It's, uh, a horror movie.

[1:28:58] Um, and it's kind of like a mishmash, like greatest hits of, uh, you know, modern, like boutique horror films.

[1:29:06] I don't want to talk about it too much because there is like, like a lot of modern horror movies.

[1:29:10] It has some very specific twists that you don't want to cover, but it does seem, I can say that it's about a young woman who spends some time in an isolated cabin with her boyfriend's two children who don't like her very much.

[1:29:27] And, uh, she also has a, uh, a history with a doomsday cult.

[1:29:35] And, uh, and then they get snowed in and stuck out there and spooky things happen.

[1:29:40] Uh, and it's, it's not great, but it's also like sillier than I was expecting and it's pretty fun and like, I don't know.

[1:29:48] Check it out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:50] And, uh, okay.

[1:29:51] So two, two strong recommendations.

[1:29:52] April, have you seen anything recently that you would like to get behind more strongly than Dan and Sturger getting behind theirs today?

S5

[1:29:57] Yes.

[1:29:58] I can absolutely recommend wholeheartedly.

[1:30:00] First cow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:02] Oh, I really want to see that.

S5

[1:30:03] Kelly Reichardt's newest film.

[1:30:05] She is one of my favorite filmmakers with very few missteps.

[1:30:09] And, um, her movie never takes the turns that you think it's going to.

[1:30:14] And it is riveting and it is like the lowest key milk heist movie you can imagine, but it's really sweet and really funny.

[1:30:23] And it's also, um, uh, you know, somewhere in there pretty devastating and, and, and hits your heart very, very deeply.

[1:30:31] So I, I love first cow.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:34] I have to admit, I can imagine a low key milk heist movie better than a high key milk heist movie that I would have a hard time imagining.

[1:30:41] Uh-huh.

Jesse Thorn

[1:30:42] And now I'm imagining it though.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:44] Yeah.

[1:30:45] It's like Ocean's Eleven versus milk.

[1:30:47] Yeah.

[1:30:47] Save it for first cow to second cow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:54] And, uh, I recently finally got to see The Farewell, the movie everyone was talking about that they liked so much that, uh, Lulu Wang made and it stars Awkwafina.

[1:31:01] And I really liked it a lot too.

[1:31:02] And that was really good.

[1:31:03] And, uh, I watched it after the Oscars and I was like, hmm, I like this movie a lot more than a bunch of the movies that were nominated for Oscars.

[1:31:10] The, uh, the grandma, the grandma is so good.

[1:31:15] Yeah.

[1:31:15] She's really good in it.

Jesse Thorn

[1:31:16] Oh yeah.

[1:31:16] She's wonderful.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:17] She's great.

[1:31:18] The, it's, it's, uh, it's always exciting to see a movie that is about a, is about a specific world and does not feel like it is made for explaining that world to people who are not from it.

[1:31:33] And, uh, there was, and there was, it was just, it felt like I was like, oh, okay, I'm experiencing what these characters are experiencing.

[1:31:39] And they're, and they're having conversations I could see them having that are like, you know, they're movied up a little bit cause it's a movie.

[1:31:45] But, uh, I just thought it was really good.

[1:31:47] And, uh, I really enjoyed it.

[1:31:49] I was with it the whole time, which is more than I can say for Veronica, which lost me, I think three seconds into the movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:56] And my, uh, my friend X, who I work with at the daily show has a small role in the farewell.

[1:32:02] Uh, guys, I think we've reached the end.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:05] Uh, yeah.

[1:32:06] So let's do a couple of plugs.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:09] Before you do that, why not check out Switchblade Sisters, also on the Maximum Fun Network, if you haven't already.

[1:32:14] It's one of my favorite podcasts on the network.

Jesse Thorn

[1:32:17] Thank you, Elliot.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:19] And, uh, and check out new to VOD, uh, Black Christmas, which I got a chance to rewatch.

S5

[1:32:27] Uh.

[1:32:27] On a plane.

[1:32:28] Thank you.

[1:32:28] Okay, I rewatched it on a plane.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:30] I was watching it.

S5

[1:32:30] No, I think that's good, because then people might be around you looking like, what is this thing he's watching?

[1:32:35] I'm gonna see this.

[1:32:36] It's like, yeah, it's free advertising for us.

[1:32:37] The fellow next to me was watching.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:38] They're making Black Christmases now?

[1:32:40] The fellow next to me was watching A Joker, and I think he watched the ending of it twice.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:48] Yikes.

[1:32:49] I don't, is that the, is that, would you say that's the target audience?

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:52] Did he look twisted?

Dan McCoy

[1:32:53] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:53] He was pretty twisted.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:55] Okay.

[1:32:55] Yeah, it's a lot of fun, April.

[1:32:56] It's great.

[1:32:57] All right.

[1:32:58] I think that's it.

[1:32:59] April, thank you so much for being with us.

[1:33:02] And for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:33:05] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:33:07] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:33:08] I'm April Wolf.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:10] Bye.

[1:33:11] Bye.

[1:33:19] What's a bidet?

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:20] A bidet is a, it's like a toilet that squirts water into your touch.

[1:33:25] It's a clean air.

[1:33:26] Here.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:27] So, so April, at this point, are you thinking about all the life choices that had led you here?

Ep. #308 - Verotika

Chapters

Transcript

In this episode

Description