The Flop House: Episode #115 - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

[0:30] Hey everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:35] Hey Dan, I'm Stuart.

[0:36] Hey Stuart, and Dan. I'm Elliot.

[0:38] Thank you again for introducing yourself to me, Stuart.

[0:41] Oh, hey Elliot, what's up?

[0:44] Oh, hey Stu.

[0:44] It's been a while.

[0:45] It has been. You were on a trip, I was on a trip.

[0:48] We're all tripping.

[0:49] So what are we doing here again?

[0:51] That's true. We watch a movie all together. We sit in a room.

[0:57] People ask, do you sit in a room and watch the movie?

[0:59] We do.

[1:00] No one's ever asked that.

[1:01] We all sit together in a room and watch the movie, and then we talk about it.

[1:05] Okay, you've done an incredibly thorough job of explaining how we sit when we watch the movie.

[1:08] We're next to each other sometimes, on top of each other.

[1:12] Who cares?

[1:12] Yeah, come on.

[1:13] It's cool.

[1:13] It's a movie watching.

[1:14] Sometimes Elliot's hands creep up my thigh.

[1:17] That's not true at all.

[1:18] He's too busy eating chicken.

[1:19] I'm usually just looking for your penis.

[1:21] So this is a bad movie podcast.

[1:24] It's called The Flophouse.

[1:25] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:27] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:27] We did this part, guys.

[1:29] Did we?

[1:29] I have that memento thing, but I forget anything that was 45 seconds earlier.

[1:33] Immediately.

[1:34] My name's Ellie Kalin.

[1:35] Okay.

[1:35] And tonight we watched a little film, a very little film.

[1:41] It was a major motion picture.

[1:42] Called Abraham Lincoln colon vampire hunter.

[1:46] Wait, so Abraham Lincoln's colon was a vampire hunter?

[1:48] According to the movie, I think.

[1:50] Many men's colons just get diseased as they grow older.

[1:55] men fought vampires.

[1:56] Wow, he really was a great historical figure.

[1:58] Certainly what he did in real life is

[2:01] overshadowed by the vampire hunting.

[2:02] So, Elliot.

[2:05] That's my name. You love Abraham

[2:07] Lincoln. I do very much. I consider him the

[2:09] greatest of men. Okay, so

[2:11] I think we've talked about this. You were

[2:13] really excited about watching this movie. Oh, yeah.

[2:15] I was. Actually, I was a little excited about

[2:17] watching this because I knew it was going to be awful.

[2:18] But I was very unexcited when the book

[2:21] this movie was based on first came out.

[2:23] I thought it was kind of a dumb idea, and to be fair, I didn't read the book, so I can't

[2:28] judge it on its merits, but the movie is great.

[2:32] No, it's terrible.

[2:34] It's very bad.

[2:35] Spoiler alert, it's not a good movie.

[2:36] Yeah.

[2:37] But it seems like the movie is even very loose compared to the original book, from what I've

[2:41] heard.

[2:41] Okay, but wasn't it written by the same guy?

[2:44] The screenplay is written by the same guy, Seth Graham Smith, who a lot of people know

[2:48] best from his book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

[2:50] Sure.

[2:51] The book that helped invent the mash-em-up tradition.

[2:53] The book that kicked off a million irritating things.

[2:57] Well, it's the book that invented a tradition invented by Philip Jose Farmer

[3:01] and before that invented by other people of taking different types of fictional characters

[3:05] and mashing them up together.

[3:06] And Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was described as a mash-em-up also,

[3:11] but it's not.

[3:11] It's just historical fiction.

[3:12] If that's a mash-up, then Harry Turtledove's career is a mash-up

[3:17] because he's written a whole series about aliens invading during World War II.

[3:21] Yeah, I do not.

[3:23] But no dragons.

[3:24] There's no dragons in that one.

[3:25] I don't think there are dragons in that one.

[3:27] You're thinking of the World War I dragon comic book,

[3:30] Aerosmith, by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco.

[3:33] That's how you pronounce that name?

[3:34] Maybe.

[3:35] Okay.

[3:36] Aerosmith, the hit Boston rock band?

[3:39] Not Aerosmith the rock band, and not Aerosmith,

[3:42] the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Sinclair Lewis.

[3:44] All right.

[3:45] Although he turned down the Pulitzer Prize for that one.

[3:49] Why don't we give an overview of this thing?

[3:51] Well, it's directed by, what's his name?

[3:54] Timur Timbuktu?

[3:55] Timur...

[3:57] Bekhamadekham?

[3:59] Berinkov?

[4:00] Berinkov?

[4:01] Here, I got it written down in front of me.

[4:02] Timur...

[4:03] The Night Watch guy.

[4:04] It's directed by Timur.

[4:05] His name is Timur Bekmambetov,

[4:07] and he is a Kazakh-Russian director

[4:10] best known for, yeah, the Night Watch, Day Watch, and Wanted,

[4:13] the hit film starring Angelina Jolie's tiger tattoo.

[4:17] Yeah.

[4:18] Starring Angelina Jolie getting out of a pool naked.

[4:21] And a bullet that curves around things, right?

[4:24] Yeah, yeah, the movie where at the end the main character tells you that you haven't done anything worthwhile because you haven't shot anybody across the world.

[4:31] You're not an awesome hitman like he was.

[4:34] So there's a lot of style in this movie, maybe too much style.

[4:37] And it tries to cover up the fact that there's not a lot of story in this movie, which I will explain thusly.

[4:43] We begin around 1818.

[4:46] Actually, that's not true.

[4:47] We begin in modern-day times, then as Abraham Lincoln narrates, we go back to the 1860s, and then we go back to 1818.

[4:55] This all happens in about a minute and a half.

[4:57] There's no reason for us to start in the present and go to the past.

[5:00] To remind people that the United States has a history.

[5:04] I guess they're introducing the first character, history.

[5:07] To remind people that the Union did not dissolve, that in fact—

[5:11] We still have it.

[5:12] Yeah.

[5:12] So, spoiler alert, Abraham Lincoln was successful in saving the Union.

[5:17] Abraham Lincoln, we go back to 1818, he's about nine years old, and his dad is a poor guy working on a dock or a warehouse or something, and some mean guy is whipping black people, and Abe Lincoln tries to stop him, and he starts whipping baby boy Abe Lincoln, and Abe Lincoln's dad stops the guy from whipping him, and the guy says, I'll get revenge.

[5:40] Next scene, it's nighttime, Abe Lincoln's at his house, I guess reading by candlelight or something, the guy was always self-educating.

[5:47] And a vampire attacks his mom.

[5:49] Gross.

[5:49] And his mom dies of vampire attackism.

[5:52] And he vows that he will kill the man who did this to his mom.

[5:57] Who he does not know at this point is a vampire.

[5:59] He does know he's a vampire, but he saw him do it.

[6:01] So he knows he's a dude.

[6:02] Now he's an adult.

[6:04] He goes to get his revenge, shoots the guy in the eye, and he's still alive.

[6:09] He's a vampire.

[6:10] Opens his mouth wide, big fangs.

[6:12] He's got a monster face.

[6:13] And he's all veiny.

[6:15] Because when vampires get vampire-y, they get veiny.

[6:17] And he's almost killed, but is saved at the last minute by a man named Henry,

[6:22] who teaches him how to be with the cool name of Henry.

[6:26] It plays it pretty fast.

[6:27] They do a lot of shorthand where they're just like,

[6:29] ah, people know what vampires are.

[6:31] Just make them veiny and give them a wacky mouth.

[6:33] Yeah, wacky mouth, like wax lips.

[6:36] And a big Mick Jagger's Rolling Stone tongue.

[6:39] They like steampunk outfits.

[6:41] Yeah, they all wear sunglasses, even though it's the 1860s.

[6:45] And Henry teaches Abe Lincoln

[6:49] How to be a vampire hunter

[6:50] He says you can't just do this for vengeance

[6:52] This is about saving people like you

[6:54] From what happened to you

[6:56] And mainly being a vampire hunter involves twirling an axe around

[6:59] Like a lot

[7:00] Like a drumline type stuff

[7:02] It's like he's training him to hunt vampires

[7:05] In a parade

[7:06] When you're imagining this movie

[7:07] Imagine that if Abe Lincoln has a spare moment at all

[7:11] He's twirling an axe around

[7:12] and uh as as dan pointed out we're given no reason to care about this character except that he's abe

[7:18] lincoln and we know that abe lincoln is a famous historical figure otherwise this guy is a bland

[7:24] cypher which is too bad because he's played by benjamin walker who i saw on stage during the

[7:29] off-broadway run of bloody bloody andrew jackson in new york and he was really good as andrew

[7:34] jackson and surreal and maybe it's because he was that was like a cartoony show and he was allowed

[7:39] to like really be big

[7:41] and like wacky but he did such a better

[7:43] job of creating a

[7:45] character out of a historical figure that was like

[7:47] lively and interesting

[7:49] and here he's just like

[7:50] you might as well have just slapped a beard

[7:53] and a hat on a mannequin

[7:54] because all the wackiness

[7:56] comes through in like the special effects

[7:59] and the slow-mo action scenes

[8:00] but it's not supposed to look wacky

[8:02] it's supposed to look really cool

[8:04] the movie is

[8:05] one of the problems with the movie is that it takes itself really

[8:08] seriously or rather it expects you to take it really seriously but it doesn't put any effort

[8:13] into earning that seriousness it's just kind of like we'll just make it like a grim serious

[8:19] vampire tale and or shit or whatever they'll just buy it as long as everything's dark and

[8:24] shot in like golds and grays it'll look people take it seriously you know what's dark slavery

[8:30] what else is dark vampires put them together it's super dark so he learns how to fight vampires with

[8:38] an axe and then he's following the steps of the real abe lincoln's life he goes to springfield

[8:42] illinois he rooms with his best friend joshua speed uh he falls in love with mary todd and

[8:49] uh he meets stephen douglas played by alan tudyk he meets stephen douglas who never really

[8:54] does anything after that it's too bad like well you got an alan tudyk you gotta use that at least

[8:59] do a debate scene like they debated it's a major moment in american history not as major as awesome

[9:06] axe fights versus vampires. And at the same

[9:08] time Lincoln is becoming Lincoln, he

[9:10] is, at night, Henry is sending him letters

[9:12] saying, this dude's a vampire, go off

[9:14] him. And he does, and he kills like six guys

[9:17] in this town. And no one seems to notice

[9:18] that, like, the pharmacist

[9:20] and the bank manager are all dying

[9:23] off one by one. The wounds all seem to be

[9:25] made by a tall man.

[9:26] Possibly one wearing a top hat.

[9:28] You see the way the

[9:31] axe marks go this way. From that

[9:32] we can tell that he is a rail splitter.

[9:35] There's a steampunk David Caruso who's putting on sunglasses and like, this looks like the

[9:42] job of a rail splitter.

[9:44] Ow!

[9:45] Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

[9:48] Another vampire killing.

[9:50] I guess it's a case of lies and tooth.

[9:52] Well, I don't know, David.

[9:56] No, that was okay, right?

[9:57] I mean, there's been a lot of these killings.

[9:59] I don't have a lot of puns.

[10:01] They're calling him David Caruso?

[10:02] The actor's name?

[10:03] Well, just the sound effect calls him that.

[10:05] I don't know if that deserves an ah, David.

[10:08] Please, come on.

[10:09] I have a family.

[10:10] I need to support them.

[10:11] Right?

[10:12] Does he?

[10:12] In the memory of my ancestor, the great Enrico Caruso.

[10:16] You know, the opera singer.

[10:19] Anyway, so he goes through the thing.

[10:22] He marries Mary Todd.

[10:23] His old friend, his old black friend, comes back grown up.

[10:30] Will Johnson.

[10:31] Will Johnson.

[10:32] And he saves him from some slave bounty hunters who are trying to drag him south.

[10:35] A lot of spinning, slapping of guns away.

[10:38] A lot of spinning, slapping guns away.

[10:39] Eventually, Lincoln gets his revenge on the man who killed his mom in, I'm just going to say right now, the only scene I enjoyed in the entire movie.

[10:47] And that is because it is a fight between the two characters in the middle of a horse stampede.

[10:52] And they're fighting on the backs of horses.

[10:54] They're picking up horses and throwing them.

[10:56] And by the way, we should mention Abe Lincoln has super strength because he has the power of truth.

[11:01] Henry, while teaching him, says, I want you to chop down that tree with one swing of your axe.

[11:05] And Aveline's like, I can't do that.

[11:07] That tree, with this blast shield down, I can hardly see anything, let alone hit that tree.

[11:12] And Henry says, it gets him really mad, and eventually he does it out of truth rage or something like that.

[11:19] He's so angry.

[11:21] Henry tells him he has the power of truth, and he's so mad he knocks the tree down.

[11:24] And it's one of those things like Dark Knight Rises where it's like, hey, if you want something bad enough, you get super strength.

[11:30] Of all the things that made me angry in the movie, this might have made me the angriest.

[11:34] Because Abraham Lincoln in this movie is basically a superhero.

[11:37] And we're given no explanation for all of his awesome fighting skills other than, man, he just wants it.

[11:43] He just wants it a lot.

[11:45] Apparently he's awesome, I guess.

[11:46] You would have hoped that he made love to a gypsy and the gypsy gave him the powers.

[11:50] Or he has a magic amulet that he stole off a mummy.

[11:53] Or he got a magical tattoo from a dying shaman.

[11:56] Or like a voodoo priest slave, put a spell on him to make him the defender and the champion of the black people of America.

[12:03] Or he's the long-lost descendant of Theseus.

[12:05] Or he's got like alien blood from a blood transfusion he got from an alien.

[12:09] All of these things.

[12:10] Like Abin Sur crashed his ship into Antebellum, America and gave Lincoln a bunch of Green Lantern whatevers.

[12:16] All of these things would be preferable.

[12:17] As it is, it's like a copy of The Secret fell through a wormhole from our time back to Abe Lincoln's time.

[12:23] And it's just like, man, if I can...

[12:25] That's crazy. That's a crazy idea.

[12:26] If I can imagine it, I can have it.

[12:27] Let's get back to the shaman spell Green Lantern Mummy that gives him his powers.

[12:31] Yeah, he's just like, oh, I've got the power of furiousness.

[12:35] He's like Mystery Man.

[12:37] Except for it actually works.

[12:39] Like, he smashes through a fucking tree just because he cares so much.

[12:42] And he punches vampires in the face.

[12:43] But he doesn't do it in one stroke.

[12:45] I mean, he takes them like seven swipes.

[12:47] Yeah, but that's because...

[12:48] It's just the last one is awesome.

[12:49] No, but that's because he was seeking the right trigger.

[12:51] The final trigger, he found the power of truth.

[12:54] It's the subliminal password that he embedded in Abe Lincoln's mind that gives him super strength.

[12:57] Yeah, perfect.

[12:58] It's part of what I would call the – something you see a lot on the internet, which is the awesoming up of things.

[13:04] And I think I may have talked about this in the podcast before that like a friend of mine sent me a picture they found on the internet that was Abe Lincoln riding a bear, holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in like an M-16 or some kind of automatic machine gun.

[13:18] And they were like, I bet you like this, huh?

[13:20] And I'm like, I don't.

[13:22] Like that's – but what you're basically saying to me is you don't be more awesome about Abraham Lincoln as if he rode a bear and had a machine gun.

[13:29] No, you're wrong.

[13:30] It's more awesome that he fought the actual conditions of the time and overcame them.

[13:36] And that he did great things through enormous effort and against amazing obstacles and complications.

[13:41] Like if he can just tap into his inner anger and punch a vampire to death, like that's not as impressive as if he has to try and work hard to get it.

[13:51] But the Karate Kid, it would be a lot dumber if Mr. Miyagi was just like, want it.

[13:56] Want it, Daniel-san.

[13:58] Okay, you're good.

[13:59] And then the movie was over, and he just beat up everybody from that point on.

[14:02] Yeah, well, I mean, this is a problem that I've talked about too myself.

[14:04] I feel like if everything's awesome, nothing is awesome.

[14:08] Yeah.

[14:08] Like you have to have –

[14:09] Like Scott Pilgrim.

[14:10] What?

[14:11] Like Scott Pilgrim, Where's the World?

[14:13] That's some people's complaint on the movie is that –

[14:15] I mean, I like that.

[14:16] I thought that was fun.

[14:17] But he's also a fictional character.

[14:19] like you could make a fictional character fairly awesome but it's like if but also i would i would

[14:24] argue that that's not the case i mean like that has different tones in it like i feel like too

[14:28] many movies now are pitched all the same level 100 of the way it's at 11 the entire time yeah

[14:34] and you look at like a great movie like that i know both elliot and i love like the original

[14:39] taking appellant one two three like part of what makes that work is like it's grounding in some

[14:45] sort of reality so the awesome parts are more awesome because it comes out of something and

[14:50] it's awesome that walter matho walter matho is awesome because he's this kind of dopey guy who

[14:56] manages to do who's like crafty and does this stuff rather than being like a kick-ass fighter

[15:00] yeah it sounds pretty awesome he's just kind of like shuffling around it would be awesome if

[15:04] walter matho is a kick-ass fighter and maybe like grumpy old men was called grumpy old awesome

[15:09] fighters and he like knew drunken style and taught a he and it sounds pretty awesome yeah and jack

[15:15] lemon kung fu fought for ann margaret for like two hours just the whole movie that would be pretty

[15:23] great it would be terrible that'd be a terrible movie uh so you were gonna say something stewart

[15:28] no i was trying to get you back on track you crazy guys okay well anyway for some reason that

[15:33] i can't quite figure out what happened uh oh no i okay i'll say so there's this one lead villain

[15:38] vampire because there's always one lead

[15:40] guy from dark city played by rufus sewell

[15:42] rufus sewell everyone's most forgettable

[15:45] australian actor who i will say again

[15:49] like i think he's probably australian

[15:51] he's probably austrian you know what

[15:54] let's just say he's austral he's

[15:55] australasian how about that yeah i mean

[15:58] i i i liked dark city and that's about

[16:02] it i gotta say again these guys that i

[16:05] saw him on stage in london and he was

[16:07] not very good and i saw him on stage on broadway in new york and he was great he was in tom stoppard's

[16:14] rock and roll yeah he was really fantastic in it and it's again like to see it's rare when you see

[16:19] the first i've heard of it i apologize i didn't bring this up earlier conflict of interest i saw

[16:24] him in a play once i liked it this tom stoppard sounds like a made-up name to me thomas stopper

[16:30] you put him in a bottle and he makes things not pour out of it uh it's it's weird to see a movie

[16:36] like this where it's a really dumb

[16:39] stupid movie and you've seen

[16:40] both of the lead actors, the hero

[16:42] and the villain in plays that you liked a lot

[16:45] and that they were good in.

[16:45] It's got a good supporting cast.

[16:47] I mean, look,

[16:49] I like Alan Tudyk

[16:52] who's awesome, who's wasted

[16:54] but he's in it.

[16:56] And Mary Elizabeth Winstead

[16:58] plays Mary Todd Lincoln

[17:00] and I like her.

[17:02] I liked her in the aforementioned

[17:04] Scott Pilgrim. I liked her in Death Proof.

[17:07] I think that she is

[17:08] a talented actress. She's not gross looking.

[17:12] And I think she's cute.

[17:13] Yes, that's true. There it is.

[17:15] That's what I was reaching for.

[17:17] You like to think of me

[17:19] as pervasoid number one, but the best

[17:21] I can say about her is I think she's cute.

[17:23] Maybe that says more about her

[17:25] than about you.

[17:26] Would you rather she's just prancing around

[17:29] in a thong slingshot bathing suit, Dan?

[17:31] Would I rather that? Is that what you'd prefer?

[17:34] Would I rather that than watching Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter?

[17:36] Yes, that would be a great movie.

[17:38] Because that would be not historically accurate.

[17:39] That type of bathing suit was not invented until the 1880s.

[17:43] That would be filed under goofs on the IMDb page.

[17:48] Goofs.

[17:48] Mary Todd spends much of the movie in a Wicked Weasel sling bathing costume,

[17:54] which was not invented in the 1860s.

[17:57] Fair enough.

[17:58] Goofs.

[18:00] Abraham Lincoln is played by a topless woman.

[18:02] Goofs.

[18:03] Abraham Lincoln is shown fighting vampires, when in reality, he fought no vampires.

[18:08] Goof.

[18:08] Vampires don't really exist.

[18:10] That's what the IMDb vampires want you to think.

[18:14] Continuity errors.

[18:15] In this scene, Abraham Lincoln is seen fighting a vampire, and in this scene, he's seen not

[18:20] fighting a vampire.

[18:21] But that's not a continuity error, that's just different scenes, IMDb.

[18:25] So, there's a point where he gets in a big fight with, like, the boss vamps.

[18:30] He gets invited to go to the boss vampire's house, and he goes there and sees a ball where vampires are just killing black people.

[18:38] And it turns out slavery is, I guess, some kind of plan by vampires to have people on hand that they can eat.

[18:45] Yeah, the idea is you can just buy food, I guess.

[18:48] But they don't seem to have any problem finding people to kill the past thousands of years.

[18:52] Yeah, I don't know.

[18:52] It's just a stupid way of making confederates into slaves or into vampires.

[18:57] It's a very elaborate metaphor to explain to us why slavery is bad, which it seems like is the movie doing homework it doesn't need to do.

[19:03] For sure.

[19:03] You know what, movie?

[19:04] I'm ready.

[19:05] The vampire thing is a little hard to buy, but I'm ready to buy into the idea that slavery is a bad thing.

[19:09] I'm on board with that already.

[19:10] You know what?

[19:10] I think the year is 2012.

[19:12] The movie came out.

[19:14] Was it this year or last year?

[19:15] Last year, I think.

[19:17] So 2011.

[19:17] I think America is ready.

[19:19] So it was skipped early this year.

[19:21] America is just ready to take it for granted that slavery is no good.

[19:24] Yeah.

[19:24] Finally.

[19:26] So it gets set up into this Abraham Lincoln versus Rufus Sowell battle of cat and mouse across the decades.

[19:33] Because Abraham Lincoln said, there are other ways to kill vampires.

[19:36] I'll become president and stop slavery.

[19:39] And that will stop the vampires.

[19:41] Yeah.

[19:41] A much simpler way of going about it.

[19:44] Rather than killing all the vampires, I'll merely – this is a plan that involves me, a backwoods country lawyer who also is a vampire hunter, becoming president of the United States.

[19:53] This reminds me of, like, you and I have talked about this when we saw the trailer for National Treasure Books of Secrets.

[19:59] National Treasure Book of Secrets, yeah.

[20:00] National Secrets, the Cinemax version.

[20:02] National Secrets Book of Secrets.

[20:04] Oh, I need to look at the President's Book of Secrets.

[20:07] And both of us, when we saw the trailer, thought, like, oh, Nicolas Cage is going to become president.

[20:12] He's going to run for president.

[20:13] No, he's just going to kidnap the president.

[20:15] Yeah.

[20:15] Disappointing.

[20:16] Much less fun.

[20:17] Real bummer.

[20:18] So we get this super quick montage of Lincoln rising through the ranks of politics until there's literally old age makeup, slowly apply the old age makeup, the dumbest scene in the movie, which is him striding out to give, I guess, his inaugural address with stovepipe hat, full Lincoln beard, black suit, just slow motion walking towards the camera with this grim look in his face.

[20:40] And it looks like something out of a fucking like Funny or Die online video.

[20:44] You know, it's really lame.

[20:46] Anyway, the Civil War starts as it did in real life, but this time...

[20:50] Wait, what?

[20:50] Jefferson Davis makes a deal with vampires.

[20:53] That sounds like that asswipe.

[20:55] And vampire troops start fighting the Northern Union.

[20:58] So at Gettysburg, I guess this is where they unveil them.

[21:00] Pickett's Charge happens like we know it did.

[21:03] The Pickett's Charge is decimated by cannon shot and bullets.

[21:07] And then they get back up.

[21:10] Oh, no, the bullets didn't kill them, and they turn invisible.

[21:12] And then they rush the Union troops and kill them all.

[21:15] Ah, vampire soldiers, you can't kill them.

[21:17] So, yeah, the Union troops should have known something was up

[21:19] when all the Confederate guys have fucking sunglasses on.

[21:23] That's the other thing.

[21:24] In this movie, vampires can go out in the sun

[21:26] as long as they're wearing sunglasses and sun cream.

[21:28] They all have a sun lotion.

[21:29] They're like ultraviolet, is what you're saying.

[21:31] Basically, they have a sun lotion they can put on, you know.

[21:33] And we were wondering why the vampires even were at the battle at all.

[21:38] Why didn't they just show up at night and kill everybody when they can't see?

[21:41] Or why didn't they go to Washington and kill Lincoln?

[21:43] Like, what's the, why bother to go through the motions?

[21:45] I don't understand, like, this movie has a Bratz-esque time gap in the middle

[21:51] where, like, Lincoln puts down his axe and becomes president.

[21:55] And picks up his ten-year political career.

[21:57] Just like, wait a minute, did the vampires forget who Lincoln was in between times?

[22:03] Rufus Sewell was very busy during that time.

[22:07] He was like, I'm going to take my music career.

[22:11] He had to replenish his supply of extras that are vampires.

[22:18] I'm going to stop that Abraham Lincoln and take over the nation.

[22:22] Just as soon as I finish reading all of the Tolkien juvenilia I've never picked up.

[22:27] The Silmarillion.

[22:28] I've had it on my shelf for years.

[22:30] It's finally time to sit down and read it.

[22:32] The complete works of Dickens.

[22:35] All right.

[22:36] Old Curiosity Shop.

[22:38] Page one.

[22:41] Chapter one, page one.

[22:42] If I read it out loud, it's going to take him forever.

[22:45] If I read it aloud, my throat is so parched.

[22:48] Okay, done with that.

[22:52] Now on to little Dorit.

[22:53] Paid by the word he was.

[22:57] So yeah, he takes a long, he waits for Lincoln to get into position.

[23:02] But so what, it's this dumb thing where, that's the problem with the movie, is that.

[23:05] The idea of.

[23:07] That's the problem.

[23:08] The singular problem.

[23:09] Well, many problems with the movie, but one of the problems with the story is that rather than letting the existence of vampires distort history in a way that you have the same historical figures but their lives have changed because these vampires, they keep to the real historical record fairly closely in some ways.

[23:26] So like instead of vampires attack and Lincoln, instead of becoming president, like leads an army or something like that, or Lincoln is president, but that means the vampires attack the north and attack D.C. instead of going through the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg and stuff like that.

[23:41] They're like, well, the same stuff happened, but there were some vampires there.

[23:46] They're like, well, why would vampires bother doing that?

[23:49] Yeah, well, vampires did it.

[23:51] I can stretch my belief to accept that there's vampires, but what I can't stretch my belief is that U.S. history happened in the exact same fashion.

[24:00] With vampires there.

[24:01] Yeah.

[24:01] Well, it's similar to how, like, the books, like the Anno Dracula books that, who is it, Kim Newman, is that his name, wrote where it's like history goes off on this other tangent because Dracula is real and he introduces vampires to the world.

[24:17] And there's some events that are similar, like World War I, but they don't have it exactly the same because there's vampires involved.

[24:22] But here it's like, well, I guess if you introduced vampires into American history, it would be pretty much the same.

[24:28] There's really no difference between a world with vampires and a world without vampires.

[24:31] It's pretty much the same.

[24:32] If you introduced mummies, merpeople, whatever the fuck, it happened the same way.

[24:38] Those are underwater mummies.

[24:40] Those are the grossest mummies.

[24:43] It's so, like, because the wrappings just absorb water and get really disgusting.

[24:47] Seaweed wrappings.

[24:48] Oh, see, a seaweed mummy as a mer-mummy is a pretty good idea.

[24:50] Yeah, it's a great idea.

[24:51] I like that.

[24:51] A mer-mer made.

[24:52] Very good skin, though.

[24:53] A mer-mer made.

[24:54] Wrapped in seaweed.

[24:55] Yeah.

[24:56] They just got great pores.

[24:58] It's delicious, yeah.

[24:58] Celebrities pay top dollar for that.

[25:00] And for some reason they still put cucumbers on their eyes.

[25:02] So Lincoln comes up with an idea.

[25:06] Literally, oh, and also Lincoln's son is killed by a vampire.

[25:09] That happened.

[25:11] His son did – and it's one of those things where like his – one of his sons – I mean all of his children except one died before they reached adulthood.

[25:19] Two died during Lincoln's lifetime.

[25:21] One of them died while he was in the White House.

[25:23] So the movie says that's his only son.

[25:24] And as a Lincoln aficionado, you must have really loved that this movie made vampires out to be the culprit.

[25:31] Yeah.

[25:32] That made his death so ironic rather than just –

[25:37] It was so not tragic when his son just died of cholera.

[25:41] It was so much more tragic when a vampire vixen dressed as a maid did it.

[25:46] And so then Mary – because Mary Todd can't shoot cholera with a sword from – a tiny sword from her son's toys.

[25:53] She can shoot a vampire vixen.

[25:54] You're getting ahead of yourself, though.

[25:55] Yeah.

[25:57] Well, there's not much more to go through.

[25:58] That's true.

[25:58] But Lincoln is literally –

[26:00] Lincoln realizes –

[26:01] Lincoln's like, oh, how am I going to stop these vampires?

[26:04] And he's eating with Mary Todd and he's like, oh, and he's waving his fork around and he looks at the fork and he goes, of course.

[26:09] This is what we need.

[26:11] silver it's like well good thing he was eating fucking dinner when he was talking about it

[26:14] or he never would have remembered that silver kills vampires even though his axe has silver

[26:19] on it and that's how he kills vampires professional vampire killer he wrote it down in his journal

[26:24] you could just read that anytime that's right the whole time his resume reads rail splitter

[26:28] vampire killer president like you should have recalled that from his skills not a lot of breaks

[26:33] not a lot of breaks in that uh that job no you never want to see too many empty spaces in a

[26:38] resume special skills see above vampire hunting objectives vengeance ridding world of vampires

[26:45] where do you see yourself in five years have with a beard proficient in vampire killing

[26:50] and microsoft excel so they take all the silver in the country and melt it down and in the dumbest

[26:58] ploy they lincoln and his friend joshua speed and his friend his other friend is will johnson will

[27:05] johnson staff a train just the three of them and decide they're gonna i guess ride it to the south

[27:10] this train full of silver bullets i guess hoping they run over some vampires on the way

[27:15] and no they'll ride it into the reactor in the south and it'll explode

[27:19] into the reactor the one that powers the slaves you know yeah it's in uh i don't know because

[27:30] once they blow up the reactor all the slaves will power down and the south will be defenseless

[27:33] uh i mean you think it's full of silver but it's a decoy well first it's attacked by a ton of

[27:39] vampires it looks like joshua speed his best friend who he literally shared a bed with but

[27:44] not in a gay way or may have been uh all the stuntmen in the sky were there it looks like

[27:49] he looks like he betrayed them and a ton of vampires are jumping on the train and we learned

[27:54] the thing what we learned with the movie legion which is that i guess when it's one person against

[27:59] one monster it's very hard to kill that monster when it's one person against dozens of monsters

[28:04] they just fall like flies and like most of them fall for the same trick like they just run right

[28:09] into his axe it's that thing where he spins his axe around they just fall down dead they every

[28:14] time they don't see his axe they assume he's dropped it or maybe they maybe they made up the

[28:18] fact that he had an axe and they imagined that nope axe to the face i would think after a while

[28:23] they'd start carrying axes or something but none of them use guns like well it's the same thing as

[28:28] in like i in so many things where it's like vampires only use their teeth and their claws

[28:33] but like just pick up a gun guys like abe lincoln's a regular guy you know what ended up

[28:39] killing abraham lincoln a bullet in the head like spoiler alert spoiler alert for history

[28:43] you don't need any magic and will johnson his friend is taking out tons of vampires too it

[28:49] turns out you just need to be a dude turns out vampires fangs a very close range weapon

[28:55] That's true.

[28:56] What kind of dice would you roll for that, Stuart?

[28:58] For a fang?

[28:59] Yeah.

[29:00] What's the size category of the vampire?

[29:03] Regular.

[29:04] Okay, that's only a four-sided die.

[29:06] Okay.

[29:06] So that's barely nothing.

[29:08] Barely anything.

[29:09] No, not going to do much damage.

[29:10] So Rufus Sewell gets them.

[29:11] They're on a bridge that's on fire.

[29:13] The train is falling down, and Rufus Sewell is like,

[29:15] I've got you, Lincoln.

[29:17] I've got you.

[29:18] And then he finds the train is just full of rocks.

[29:21] Joshua Speed snookered them.

[29:23] It turns out in a...

[29:25] Should have known from that giant fake beard he was wearing the whole time.

[29:28] The fakest beard you've ever seen.

[29:30] Let's take a note to point out that this movie has the fakest beards you've ever seen in a movie.

[29:35] People just dip their chin in glue.

[29:37] And then just rub their face against a yak.

[29:40] I think the beard budget for this movie must have been like ten bucks.

[29:45] They leave the extra glue on their face to make them look all old and wrinkly.

[29:48] Yeah, dries on there like old skin.

[29:51] They stretch their face, and they use one of those hair dryers to stretch it out.

[29:57] That's a Hollywood trick.

[29:58] Yeah, whatever you're saying.

[29:59] Anyway, so it's in a ploy stolen directly from the movie The Road Warrior.

[30:03] This train was a decoy.

[30:05] There was only rocks on it for weight, I guess.

[30:08] And meanwhile, how's the silver bullets getting to the soldiers in the south?

[30:14] Well, there was a different railroad during that time, Elliot.

[30:17] Which is what they say, because it turns out Mary Todd has been leading

[30:21] the Underground Railroad

[30:23] and all these freed slaves

[30:25] I guess came up to the north and then got

[30:27] silver bullets and then brought them back to the south

[30:29] the geography doesn't

[30:31] really work out for why the Underground Railroad

[30:33] would be an efficient way to carry bullets

[30:35] A plan fiendishly simple and it's

[30:37] an intricacies. I wish that they had just gone

[30:39] there's more than one railroad in the United States

[30:41] and Lincoln could have said yeah we have a huge advantage

[30:43] over the south in just the number of railroads

[30:45] and the miles of track we've laid

[30:47] we have more than one train and then just

[30:49] cut to another train zooms by them and rufus will shakes his hand at it and goes oh infrastructure

[30:56] infrastructure you got me again we vampires know nothing of planning uh physical plant development

[31:04] but uh anyway so this the freed slaves have smuggled silver bullets to the union soldiers

[31:10] they shoot all the sunglasses wearing vampire johnny rebs and and lincoln kills rufus sewell

[31:17] by literally wrapping the chain of a silver pocket watch around his hand

[31:23] and then just punching him so hard his heart comes out.

[31:25] Yeah, he says, give me your silver, and he goes, okay, right here,

[31:28] and punches and kills him with it.

[31:30] Yeah, and then the train is, like, stumbling along the tracks.

[31:34] Maybe this is right before.

[31:35] And Will Johnson and Lincoln might as well have been going,

[31:38] whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

[31:39] as they're, like, running across a train to get off.

[31:42] It is, like, it enters lethal weapon territory here,

[31:46] It's like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover just like, okay, on three we jump.

[31:51] One, two, three.

[31:53] Jump explosion goes off.

[31:54] I'm getting too old for this.

[31:56] This is beyond Looney Tunes level of zaniness.

[32:01] You got Rufus Sewell.

[32:03] There's a flaming train.

[32:05] There's flaming struts holding up the train.

[32:09] Rufus Sewell is going down below, kicking out flaming struts.

[32:14] not putting a lot of effort into it well he's depressed lincoln is on top of the train going

[32:21] and then he like leaps off of one train car and then onto another train car which is like skidding

[32:27] and like shooting out sparks and then there's a point where they're like they're bouncing like

[32:31] on a balance beam a flaming balance beam that they're walking across and it is the craziest

[32:36] fucking thing but it's crazy in a really dumb way unlike unlike the fight between lincoln and the

[32:41] man who killed his mother, where they're running

[32:42] across the backs of stampeding horses.

[32:44] Flipping horses at each other. I'm just going to go out on a limb

[32:46] and say I enjoyed that scene a lot, and I thought it was

[32:48] fun. This train scene is not fun.

[32:51] If it was a short film, I would enjoy it.

[32:53] Yeah, if it was a short film called Lincoln Fights a

[32:54] Vampire with Some Horses.

[32:56] I would love that. I think that was one of

[32:58] Thomas Edison's first films.

[33:00] The sneeze, the kiss, and then

[33:03] Lincoln fighting a vampire with some horses.

[33:05] And then a trip to the moon.

[33:06] I know that wasn't really an Edison film.

[33:09] Don't write in, everybody.

[33:11] And so they saved –

[33:13] Still an early example of film art.

[33:16] They saved the nation from vampires, and it turned out earlier that Henry, Lincoln's mentor, is a vampire who was made a reluctant vampire and is turned against the vampire kind to help save them by teaching people to become vampire hunters because vampires can't kill other vampires for some stupid made-up reason.

[33:31] And so he says to Abe Lincoln – Abe Lincoln literally finishes writing the story in his journal, and then we won the war.

[33:38] The end, question mark, or was it?

[33:40] And Henry goes, Abe, let me make you a vampire so we can fight for humanity forever.

[33:46] And he says something like, there are more threats out there than vampires, which is like, so is this going to be like Abe Lincoln?

[33:51] There's other ways to be immortal.

[33:53] Well, he says that, but Henry says there's more threats.

[33:55] And you think like Abe Lincoln minotaur hunter, Abe Lincoln harpy hunter, Abe Lincoln chupacabra hunter, Abe Lincoln daikaiju hunter, you know.

[34:04] All these options.

[34:05] Instead, he goes, no, no, there's other ways to be immortal, by which he means history, I guess.

[34:09] and his wife says because we know it's the end of an abe lincoln movie mary todd has to say the

[34:14] thing that she's gonna say at the end of lincoln movies abe we're going to be late for the theater

[34:20] and these tickets are non-refundable we're seeing our american cousin at ford's theater you know in

[34:28] the box and john wilkes booth might stop by to pull a bullet put a bullet in your brain

[34:33] and then you'll die okay so hurry up i'll be right there mary i'll be right there have you

[34:38] seen my hat where's my hat and then he goes off to the theater i can't be shot without a hat

[34:43] he goes off to the theater for the it was my opinion one of the most tragic moments in american

[34:48] history and just to be honest emotionally here for a moment i read a lot of books about lincoln

[34:52] and every time i get up to that point there's part of me that wants to like reach into the book and

[34:56] pull him out so that he can't get shot makes me really sad anyway that's maybe the sweetest thing

[35:01] i've ever heard and i mean that honestly really oh it just makes me cry every time but anyway

[35:07] and it happened in real life so it's okay to cry about it

[35:09] it's not like when I cry at the Iron Giant where it's a cartoon

[35:11] you're like oh that Iron Giant

[35:14] look at it his head is

[35:16] rolling through the arctic and screws are coming

[35:18] at that point I cry out of

[35:19] joy because he's going to be back

[35:21] but when he says when he hears

[35:23] the boy when he hears Hogarth saying

[35:25] you are who you choose to be and he says

[35:27] Superman and then sacrifices his life

[35:29] for humanity makes me cry

[35:31] that's a different kind of joy

[35:33] both of them are like

[35:35] cry i don't cry for joy for that i cry out of sadness no but you're but but but you're crying

[35:40] for are you saying you're crying from joy when lincoln gets no i cry for sadness when lincoln

[35:44] gets but but you're crying for sacrifice there you're crying for someone doing something like

[35:49] yeah that is great it's like a dark knight rises thing yeah exactly to it to also be sort of

[35:54] serious like i think tools to be bruce wayne to also be sort of serious i remember reading i think

[36:00] it was roger ebert who said something like the older he got like the more he cried not at things

[36:05] that were sad but he cried when people behave very well oh well that's not what i do you know

[36:10] like i just like the idea like i think that as you grow older you realize like how infrequently

[36:17] like things turn out for the best and how valuable it is when someone like is is truly selfless

[36:26] that's really depressing and that's no but that's but that's more moving to you than like

[36:30] oh like this depressing thing happened like you learn to deal with depressing things but you are

[36:34] truly moved by it that's a bread and butter do something that's an interesting point maybe but

[36:40] anyway the point is lincoln's gonna die the point is this is a comedy podcast so let's let's yeah

[36:44] let's talk about the times we cry guys this one time i was listening to wish you were here oh shit

[36:50] oh this one time i was just listening to the aerosmith album just press play

[36:55] and uh there's one time i was cutting onions and guys oh boy boy were you crying out of joy

[37:03] anyway because

[37:05] fucking onions kill kill anyway so lincoln goes and dies and then we hear his narration

[37:12] we hear his narration about how history will not know about the truth about him

[37:20] and we go to the present day and suddenly we're in a bar this is similar bar to where henry met

[37:25] lincoln and uh-oh henry's about to meet another person in the modern time another vampire hunter

[37:32] i guess and maybe just maybe another president of the united states of america credits yeah so

[37:40] this is a it's a movie cycle that's the thing this is a movie that takes that takes itself

[37:45] very seriously it's like cowboys and aliens where it seems to refuse to admit that this is a goofy

[37:50] premise that it's dealing with and but rather than try to earn that seriousness it just kind

[37:57] of takes it for granted that the audience is with it and it is wrong to take it for granted because

[38:00] were not it's really stupid well it's a it's a movie that seems to have forgotten that it's

[38:05] selling itself on the fact that it's mashing up two things in the title yeah people like a title

[38:11] that people are going to read and be like okay it sounds goofy why is this why is this so somber

[38:19] and it's not a well-made movie like it's really flashy but like in a bad in a distracting way it

[38:25] moves too fast the carrot we don't know the characters the special effects look fakey

[38:28] everything's shot in the same like bland one color at a time style you know and it was originally

[38:35] 3d maybe no i don't know i feel like everything's originally 3d now yeah i mean it originally was

[38:44] before it was caught on camera turned into a two-dimensional film image but it's one of the

[38:50] fun fact i i when this book first came out it really bugged me um because like i was saying

[38:55] earlier the awesoming up of lincoln seems unnecessary to me like abe lincoln is not made

[38:59] cooler by making him a kick-ass vampire kung fu fighter it's he what he did was so amazing and

[39:06] he's such an amazing person that it kind of detracts from him to turn him into an action

[39:10] figure but the movie is so dumb and so like not good that's hard for me to be mad at it so it

[39:15] would be like being mad at like a dog that keeps bumping into a wall for getting the wall dirty

[39:20] like there's obviously a problem with that dog let's let's be let's have pity on it rather than

[39:25] hating it sure so you're saying if the movie just stuck with abraham lincoln as a kung fu fighting

[39:33] president you would have been okay no you didn't need the vampires no what i'm saying is let's

[39:38] let's just make a movie about abraham lincoln for himself we'll call it lincoln we'll have

[39:43] john williams write the shittiest score he's ever written and daniel day lewis will be in it and

[39:47] Everyone will overpraise his performance, but overall it'll be a good, enjoyable movie.

[39:50] What if they just made a movie about a kung fu fighting vampire hunter who just ironically,

[39:56] because it's pretty ironic, but he had the same name as the president?

[40:01] That would be fine with me.

[40:02] He's called Abraham Lincoln.

[40:04] He doesn't like it because people make jokes about his name all the time.

[40:07] Yeah, and he's like a horrible liar.

[40:09] And he's also really short.

[40:10] That's the thing.

[40:11] People expect a tall guy when they hear Abraham Lincoln, but he's actually quite short, like

[40:15] Puck from Alpha Flight.

[40:16] Yeah, but he has the same beard.

[40:17] It's just a lucky thing, yeah.

[40:19] Yeah, same beard, same hat.

[40:20] And he's played by Peter Dinklage.

[40:23] Let's just get that out there.

[40:24] He has to be.

[40:25] It's set 20 years in the future from now, so everybody drives space cars.

[40:30] In the year 2032, everyone drives space cars.

[40:32] Slavery has been over for a long time.

[40:34] No space cars.

[40:34] Scratch that.

[40:35] They all fly around in rocket boots.

[40:37] Cars have been destroyed.

[40:39] And Kung Fu has been forgotten.

[40:41] And so he has to rediscover some ancient scrolls of Kung Fu to fight vampires,

[40:45] who, in this future, don't bite people, they bite computers.

[40:49] They bite computers with their electro teeth and suck money out of them.

[40:53] We call it Midget Abraham Lincoln Robo Vampire Killer with Rocket Boots in the 23rd century.

[41:03] It's because they changed the century numbering system ten years from now.

[41:06] I hate to interrupt your pitch, but we're running long, so let's go to our final judgments.

[41:11] This is a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie you kind of liked.

[41:14] Elliot, what do you think?

[41:15] bad bad movie but if you can go up on youtube and see the horse fighting scene i'd recommend that

[41:19] scene uh i would say this is a bad bad movie i actually kind of hated this movie this movie

[41:25] made me angry just because like this is they put no effort into making you care about any of the

[41:31] the characters and it is as i said the problem of like let's make everything awesome and it is

[41:40] awesome in the most surface irritating uh unsatisfying way that you can imagine yeah

[41:48] no yeah it's a bad bad movie uh i thought things were looking up when there was a topless dead

[41:54] prostitute but uh you're wrong that was yeah that was just so the high point of the movie for stewart

[41:58] was the brief shot of a topless dead prostitute and there was a i thought we don't even know that

[42:02] she's a prostitute by the way it's just a woman who's dead and topless and i thought i was looking

[42:07] up later on when

[42:08] the hero, Abraham Lincoln,

[42:11] gets saved by his friend

[42:13] who's riding a horse-drawn carriage

[42:15] who drives it through a

[42:17] house window, I guess?

[42:18] And then skids on some blood.

[42:21] Skids on some blood. Skids sideways.

[42:23] And knocks

[42:25] the vampire rest who's

[42:27] sitting on top of him.

[42:28] Yeah, it's awesome.

[42:30] So, bad, bad movie. Dan? Mailbag?

[42:33] Well, before we move on to the mailbag,

[42:36] Just on behalf of all things comedy, our comedy collective friends,

[42:41] I want to say that Tom Segura is doing an hour-long comedy special

[42:46] December the 4th at Flapper's Comedy Club in Burbank.

[42:50] One day after my birthday.

[42:51] Go to Burbank and celebrate my birthday over there.

[42:53] If you want to be on the guest list for said show,

[42:56] If you are in the Burbank area, email Tom at T-O-M-S-E-G-U-R-A at me.com.

[43:06] That's all one word?

[43:07] Yes.

[43:08] With how many tickets you want, and write December 4th in the subject line, and there you go.

[43:14] And just on the note of other podcasts on the network, I would say,

[43:23] why don't folks check out Minivan Men with our friend Al Madrigal,

[43:26] or as fans of the show might know him, Owl Madrigal.

[43:30] A.K.A. Owl Magical.

[43:32] I don't know where they would have gotten that idea.

[43:35] Minivan Men. Rated R.

[43:38] But now let's move on to the Flophouse movie mailbag.

[43:46] We don't have time for a song, so I'll just sing one later in your dreams.

[43:51] This one is from Haral, last name withheld.

[43:55] He says, Dear Flophouse and Cat, I'm just writing to express my appreciation to the

[44:07] Flop crew and Cat for helping ease a recent transatlantic flight I had.

[44:11] For some reason, the stewardesses were giving away free booze, and the man sitting next

[44:16] to me immediately chugged half a dozen beers at which point the the stewardesses seeing his seat

[44:21] back pouch bulging with crushed cans cut him off then spent the eight hours alternating between

[44:27] haranguing me about the importance of backing up digital files and complaining that the stewardesses

[44:32] wouldn't give him more coors light i gotta sorry dude yeah who is why next to stewart i gotta say

[44:38] as far as a belligerent trunks to deal with just telling you to back up your files is a pretty best

[44:44] case scenario uh he kept talking to me even when i pretended to sleep and the only movies available

[44:50] were battleship and 1000 words luckily i had your podcast on the same movies and was thus able to

[44:58] escape into a magical world of flop cats and words that sound like other words until the plane landed

[45:04] thanks again uh that's from haral last name thank you very much for listening and writing in we're

[45:09] Glad we could help make that unpleasant situation a little less unpleasant.

[45:12] It seems strange, though, if they're giving out free booze

[45:15] so this guy got tanked on Coors Light, which is a lighter beer.

[45:19] You'd think he would be drinking liquor.

[45:21] He did have six of them, it sounds like.

[45:22] That's still not enough.

[45:23] Oh, really?

[45:23] I think it's weird that they just kept giving him cans

[45:27] and he would just shove them into the pocket.

[45:29] That's a lot.

[45:31] That's a lot of cans to shove into the pocket.

[45:33] Yeah, like you're stuffing them under a rug or something.

[45:34] Dan?

[45:37] This next email is from Danny of the Thor's House of Thunder podcast, he says.

[45:44] Oh, it's a Norse podcast.

[45:45] Yeah, he says, dear Stuart, Dan, and Elliot, in order of how tall you sound.

[45:50] Yeah, they saved the best for last.

[45:52] Oh, wait.

[45:53] Wait, tall we sound.

[45:54] Accurate.

[45:55] And I'm last?

[45:56] Yeah, no, that's, yeah.

[45:57] But I've got the, I've got the, I've got the voice of a man ten times my height.

[46:02] No, it doesn't work, sorry.

[46:04] They call me giant voice.

[46:07] hello down there danny says my roommate happens to own a copy of invisible maniac

[46:14] lucky you i finally got around to watching it i found it as awesomely ridiculous as

[46:20] stewart had made it out to be and as full of gratuitous nudity as dan had described

[46:24] the one thing neither of you had prepared me for however was how incredibly low the production

[46:30] values were all this just added to the charm i'm still wrapping my head around why that video box

[46:35] cover photo shoot, looks like it must

[46:37] have cost more to produce than the entire film.

[46:39] I asked my roommate

[46:41] why he owned this film, and he

[46:43] explained that he was walking down the street one

[46:45] day and came upon a cardboard

[46:47] box full of VHX tapes,

[46:49] including this one, which seems

[46:51] to be the most proper way to come into

[46:53] possession of this film.

[46:54] Cheers, Danny. P.S. I'd like to

[46:57] request Elliot make up even longer songs

[46:59] for the mailbag. Those are great,

[47:01] especially because of Dan's exasperated

[47:03] reactions. Yeah, it's a two-man bit.

[47:05] We don't have time this time, but next time I'll make sure I do an extra long one,

[47:09] like the Inigata DeVita of mailbag songs.

[47:13] The thick as a brick of mailbag songs, both sides.

[47:16] Yeah, every day I go walking down the street,

[47:20] I hope that I'm going to pass a cardboard box with a VHS copy of Invisible Maniac in it.

[47:26] Looks like he stole your dream.

[47:29] Danny stole your dream.

[47:30] Danny's roommate stole my dream.

[47:31] Danny's roommate stole your dream.

[47:32] I want a DVD copy of Invisible Maniac, but they would have to issue one.

[47:36] Sure, I would like a fucking Blu-ray version.

[47:39] I'd like a holodeck adventure where you can be the Invisible Maniac.

[47:42] And shoot him with a Tommy gun.

[47:44] Sherlock Holmes in the gangster era.

[47:48] Fair enough.

[47:51] This is from John, last name withheld.

[47:55] I'm just going to assume it's Juan, John Juan.

[47:58] It's titled Instant Humility.

[48:02] Hey Flophouse, you guys are great.

[48:04] Hey, thanks.

[48:05] My wife and I are big fans and I've learned a bit about cinematography by listening to your podcast.

[48:10] I don't understand that.

[48:12] I don't know. Mostly we just say things look boring.

[48:14] Everyone is allowed to have artists on their playlist they're a bit ashamed of liking.

[48:19] Mine is Alanis Morissette.

[48:21] What movies do each of you like but are slightly ashamed of liking?

[48:25] I don't mean the ones you know are bad and revel in liking,

[48:28] But the ones you feel slightly uncomfortable admitting you actually really unironically respected.

[48:33] Oh, respected.

[48:35] Because I was like...

[48:36] ROCK in the USA says John.

[48:37] I'm glad he signed off the proper way.

[48:41] ROCK in the USA to you too, my friend.

[48:42] I mean, the movies I'm most embarrassed about liking are like, you know, Cinemax bikini movies, I guess.

[48:49] But that doesn't seem to be what he's asking.

[48:51] No, he thinks the ones that you actually like but have a slight twin...

[48:56] You're not just watching for the boners.

[48:57] Oh, okay.

[48:58] Just a heart boner, maybe, or a brain boner.

[49:00] I've got one.

[49:01] Brain boners with John Turturro?

[49:03] I've got one that I will admit that I came into possession of a Best Buy gift certificate recently,

[49:13] and I spent part of it purchasing a Blu-ray of Neil Marshall's Doomsday,

[49:20] a film that I enjoy much more than I feel like the general public does.

[49:25] The general public thinks of it as kind of a weird John Carpenter trashy knockoff.

[49:34] Whereas I'm like, hey, a John Carpenter trashy knockoff.

[49:37] And I enjoy that movie quite a bit.

[49:41] Yeah, I mean, as somebody who also owns Doomsday, I mean, I appreciate it for Rona Mitra's ass and pants, which the trailer suggested.

[49:52] Yeah, suggested.

[49:55] Suggested that you would see a woman's ass fully clothed.

[49:59] A subtle whisper.

[50:00] It showed her from the front and pants, and the narration said,

[50:03] want to guess what's on the other side?

[50:04] You'll find out in Doomsday.

[50:06] See the back of this.

[50:10] Oh, man, it's tough.

[50:13] Like, I'm sure if I went through my DVD collection,

[50:15] there'd be a bunch of movies in there that I'd be slightly embarrassed by owning.

[50:19] Yeah, I have to assume I have something like that,

[50:22] but like it's hard for me to think of a movie that i'm embarrassed about liking a little bit

[50:27] because i'm willing to have no shame well kind of when it comes to movies like if i like something

[50:32] i like it and i if maybe i'll defend it be feel defensive other people are attacking it but like

[50:39] there's no there it's hard for me to think of a movie that's like a real what they would call a

[50:42] guilty pleasure where like i feel guilty when i watch it or anything no no but i i have movies

[50:47] Because even if I watch Trash and I enjoy it, it's still...

[50:51] No, there's a difference between Guilty Pleasure and I have movies where I actually think that this is legitimately a movie that is worthy of enjoyment, but other people don't agree with me.

[51:03] And I'm on the defensive a little bit about it.

[51:06] I mean, I love In the Mouth of Madness, so that's kind of that situation.

[51:09] that's true another one that like uh comes to my mind is uh i i have in my dvd collection shanghai

[51:18] nights yeah that's true okay there that fits that people are big fans like people like it's it's

[51:24] weird people really like shanghai noon but for whatever reason they're like shanghai nights i

[51:28] don't know whereas i'm like no i really enjoy that movie i think that is the feel-good comedy of 2002

[51:36] like uh i mean i'm not gonna argue with you on that one yeah i don't remember any 2002 comedies

[51:42] at the end you know like they're like you got uh owen wilson and and uh and uh jackie chan

[51:48] fighting tommy carchetti come on and big ben what's wrong with that they're fighting a guy

[51:53] named big ben he's a big guy named ben they're fighting the guy who played tommy carchetti in

[51:58] the wire in wait they're inside the bell because big ben is the name of the bell not the clock

[52:03] the fucking victoria tower whatever it's called now it's called uh the elizabeth tower yeah

[52:09] because they named it after the current queen stew rat what are we gonna say i was just saying

[52:14] like i i mean i i bought hot tub time machine mainly because it reminds me of ski uh of ski

[52:21] patrol and ski school i guess i would say like maybe like old movies that are kind of that are

[52:27] pretty racist but i still enjoy them so like there's an edward g robinson movie called the

[52:31] hatchet man where he is a chinese assassin for a tong and every character every background

[52:37] character is a real asian person and every main character is obviously a white person in yellow

[52:42] face and like it's pretty objectively racist but like i still enjoy it as like a film noir set in

[52:49] a different not a film noir but like a melodrama set in a different setting than normal and edward

[52:53] g robinson is good in it you know or a day at the races where they have a a set piece called

[52:58] all got stolen got rhythm it's that's such a terrible scene though like you could take that

[53:03] out of the movie and it would make it a better movie not even because of the racism just because

[53:06] it makes no sense the idea that harpo is this magic sprite that makes black people dance you

[53:11] know is and the marx brothers put black face on for like two seconds and they wipe it off as quick

[53:17] as possible like you know that they were like this is not cool yeah they did it anyway uh last letter

[53:23] He's largely the hatchet man.

[53:23] Last letter of the evening tonight.

[53:26] I don't know why I'm saying the evening tonight,

[53:29] because you could be listening to this podcast at any time.

[53:31] Maybe you're listening to it at lunch.

[53:32] You should listen to it at 8 a.m.

[53:34] You should really listen to it at night, because it's sexier at night.

[53:36] Yeah.

[53:37] Awesome.

[53:39] This is the awesome episode.

[53:42] Okay, so next awesome letter.

[53:43] If this was a Space Ghost episode, the title would be awesome.

[53:46] This is called Some Quick Thoughts,

[53:49] and it's from David, Elliot's brother, last name with hell.

[53:53] Oh, God.

[53:53] Who will save me from this turbulent brother?

[53:58] He says, howdy, floppers.

[54:01] I know I was-

[54:03] I feel like he is officially our arch nemesis now.

[54:05] And then when he says, howdy, floppers, it's like the Joker just sent a recording to Commissioner Gordon's office.

[54:10] Hello, Commissioner.

[54:12] Perhaps we'll play a little game today.

[54:14] Like you're reading this letter, like the letter's written in blood or something.

[54:18] It has an ear in it, yeah.

[54:20] He says, howdy, floppers.

[54:22] I know I was specifically told not to write in.

[54:24] How did I get into your system?

[54:25] Perhaps you're wondering.

[54:26] I was told not to write in about the Pittsburgh Pirates.

[54:30] Please don't.

[54:31] But if you leave a piece of bait hanging on the hook like that, of course I'm going to nibble.

[54:35] I'll keep it short, though.

[54:36] There is no nickname whatsoever for the Pirates fan base that I'm aware of in any way.

[54:40] I will say, however, that PNC Park, the Pirates' home stadium, is my absolute favorite ballpark that I've been to in the majors.

[54:48] Well, the statues Elliot mentioned are actually pretty impressive,

[54:51] particularly the one beyond left field of Roberto Clemente.

[54:54] I agree, though, that it would have been pretty awesome

[54:56] if the statues had come to life in the movie

[54:58] because one of the statues is just a cast of Hall of Famer Ralph Kinnear's hands

[55:03] holding a baseball bat

[55:05] and is the silliest statue I've ever seen in a Major League park.

[55:09] And I've seen a lot of them.

[55:10] Yeah, his dream is to go to see every Major League sports team in its home stadium.

[55:14] I'm very curious as to what would have happened

[55:17] if a random pair of hands had come to life?

[55:20] Would they have caused a ruckus with that baseball bat

[55:22] and been able to move around independently?

[55:24] I mean, I don't know.

[55:25] A lot of thing from the Addams Family?

[55:27] Or would they have just laid on the concrete,

[55:29] bleeding like an actual chopped off hands would?

[55:31] In addition, I was excited.

[55:35] In addition?

[55:35] I was excited by the discussion of fictional movies

[55:38] we would all want to see.

[55:39] Though I was disappointed that not only that Elliot

[55:42] picked a movie that only he would pick for obvious reasons,

[55:46] But you did not mention my first choice, or at least not directly.

[55:50] You did bring up several of the movies Troy McClure starred in on The Simpsons.

[55:54] However, my personal choice would have been Leper in the Backfield.

[55:58] They show you a little clip of that.

[56:00] He catches the ball and then his arm falls off.

[56:02] In real life, that movie would have been rife with possibilities, says David Kaelin, last name without.

[56:08] So is David like a co-host now?

[56:10] What's the deal?

[56:12] I don't understand.

[56:12] He's answering letters that other people wrote in.

[56:16] He's the corrector, but then he took part in a little bit of a bit that someone else asked us.

[56:20] He is the corrector.

[56:21] I didn't realize that.

[56:22] All this time, I thought the corrector, but what Elliot doesn't know is the corrector is actually his brother, David.

[56:26] Yeah, you're like twins.

[56:29] His long-lost brother.

[56:30] You're like those stupid twin superheroes we talked about before where they need, I don't remember.

[56:34] Which one is that?

[56:35] I don't fucking know.

[56:36] Fafner?

[56:37] I don't know, like North Star and the other one.

[56:39] And Aurora?

[56:40] Yeah, those guys.

[56:40] No, but they don't need each other, I don't think.

[56:42] Maybe they do.

[56:43] I think they do.

[56:43] So...

[56:45] Well, thanks, Dave, for writing in, if only for the image of two hands suddenly coming to life and just bleeding out.

[56:51] That would be horrific.

[56:53] You got the people coming out who normally put the tarp over the field.

[57:00] They're just putting a tarp over these big, bloody hands.

[57:03] So wait, when they came to life, they'd be like flesh and blood?

[57:07] Or were they going to be like the brass or whatever the fuck they're made out of?

[57:11] Yeah, like they're just living statues.

[57:14] They don't come to flesh and blood life because then you'd have these baseball players being like, where am I?

[57:18] How did I get here?

[57:19] Or maybe they're just like they've just been born and they have the bodies of adult baseball players but the minds of babies or something.

[57:26] And they're just pooping all over themselves.

[57:28] But I assumed it was like clockwork statues or something like that, like golems.

[57:33] They'd be baseball golems.

[57:35] Like the fantasy sequences from Heavenly Creatures.

[57:37] Exactly.

[57:38] And there's your movie to pitch, Baseball Golem.

[57:41] Is it an adaptation of James Term's comic, The Golem's Mighty Swing?

[57:44] No.

[57:45] There was no real golem in that story.

[57:46] This would be a real golem who plays baseball, modern day.

[57:50] Sure.

[57:51] They find the golem of Prague.

[57:52] And he's defending a ghetto by playing baseball?

[57:56] Yes, exactly.

[57:56] They're going to shut the ghetto down if it doesn't win this charity baseball game and build a condo on it.

[58:02] Also, it's a bikini ghetto.

[58:04] It's called Bikini Ghetto.

[58:06] Bikini Ghetto meets the baseball golem.

[58:10] And can I be the evil land developer finally?

[58:12] You've got to be.

[58:12] The evil land developing strangler.

[58:14] You've got to be.

[58:15] And Mickey Rourke plays the golem.

[58:16] All right.

[58:17] So, guys, quickly, before we go, let's briefly recommend some movies that we saw recently

[58:26] or not so recently that we actually liked as an antidote to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

[58:33] I like you brought that up as if you just came up with that idea,

[58:36] even though it's something we do every episode.

[58:40] Stuart, do you have a recommendation you'd like to put forth to Flophouse Nation?

[58:44] Fine.

[58:45] Yeah, no, I'll recommend.

[58:47] I recently watched the Australian torture porn movie, The Loved Ones.

[58:53] And unlike a lot of, it's a little bit flashier.

[58:58] The cinematography is better than a lot of that type of stuff.

[59:03] The soundtrack is more interesting.

[59:06] and it's quite beautiful and horrific at the same time.

[59:10] So, yeah, watch it.

[59:12] It's pretty gross.

[59:13] It makes you want to barf.

[59:13] And it's not the 60s movie The Loved One.

[59:15] No, it's The Loved Ones because there's multiples.

[59:18] And it's not the English sitcom The Young Ones.

[59:21] No, it's definitely not that.

[59:22] And it's not the comic Love Is.

[59:25] It might be.

[59:27] And it's not the TV show Love American Style.

[59:29] It could be.

[59:31] And it's not the 60s movie Divorce Italian Style.

[59:34] It probably is.

[59:36] okay then i think we figured it out so stewart recommends divorce italian style it's gross

[59:42] and there's a lot of torture in it so i would like to recommend and i think that stewart may

[59:47] be recommended this already i don't know but who cares i'm gonna recommend the raid colon redemption

[59:54] i think somebody well maybe they didn't the indonesian uh martial arts film crazy not to

[1:00:01] If you want to see a movie where a guy

[1:00:04] Punches his way through an entire building

[1:00:06] The Welsh directed Indonesian

[1:00:08] Was it Welsh directed?

[1:00:09] Yeah the director is Welsh I believe

[1:00:11] But it takes place in Jakarta

[1:00:13] You want to see a movie where a guy punches his way

[1:00:16] Through an entire building

[1:00:17] Then this is the movie for you

[1:00:19] It is kind of funny by the way when you're talking about

[1:00:22] Punches his way through a building

[1:00:23] I realize there comes a point in the middle of the movie

[1:00:26] Where people stop shooting each other

[1:00:28] And they start punching each other

[1:00:29] And I'm like, I'm not sure why this switchover happened.

[1:00:33] Like why both sides agreed to just put the guns down and start fighting Kung Fu style.

[1:00:38] It comes apart about two-thirds of the movie where you're like, wow, they're really still punching each other.

[1:00:42] It's really still punching.

[1:00:44] There's one fight scene in particular where it's two guys on one guy that goes on an amazingly long time.

[1:00:49] That was the part your wife liked the best, right?

[1:00:51] Yeah, she didn't watch the movie.

[1:00:53] I think the part she liked best was that she didn't have to watch it.

[1:00:57] Speaking of wives, though, I was enjoying this movie, but I think that my wife enjoyed it almost as much hearing me react to the movie from the other room.

[1:01:06] Because there was a lot of like, oh, my God.

[1:01:10] Oh, my God.

[1:01:12] So you really orgasmed over this movie, huh?

[1:01:14] Well, there were some horrible things that happened in this movie.

[1:01:17] Two orgasms.

[1:01:18] And there's one scene in particular that has a suspense moment that I've never seen in a movie before that I'm not going to say much about.

[1:01:25] It involves a machete.

[1:01:26] Yeah.

[1:01:27] That's pretty good.

[1:01:27] All the best moments in a movie involve machetes.

[1:01:30] Duh.

[1:01:30] Except the movie Machete, which is weird.

[1:01:32] If you like things that are awesome,

[1:01:35] The Raid Colon Redemption is for you.

[1:01:38] It's an awesome movie,

[1:01:39] and it's got raids and redemptions.

[1:01:41] I'm going to recommend two things,

[1:01:44] a movie and a non-movie book.

[1:01:46] What?

[1:01:46] But don't worry, the book's about movies.

[1:01:49] It's just not a movie.

[1:01:50] Oh, fine.

[1:01:51] The movie is one that I watched recently

[1:01:53] that's, hey, surprise, it's a 30s musical comedy.

[1:01:56] Hey, what a surprise.

[1:01:57] The happiest millionaire or whatever the fuck we watch?

[1:02:00] Yeah, that's what it is.

[1:02:01] About a boxer who raises crocodiles.

[1:02:03] It's called Boxer Crocodile in the World of the Past.

[1:02:06] This is an Ernst Lubitsch film called One Hour With You, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.

[1:02:13] And it is a trim 79 minutes of a movie.

[1:02:17] I like that.

[1:02:19] It actually, even for a movie that's short, drags slightly near the end, but it's a lot of fun.

[1:02:24] It's very funny and it is a very strong example of a pre-code movie.

[1:02:28] Before the production code came in, all the characters are talking about sex all the time.

[1:02:32] And it's basically a movie about a Frenchman trying to decide whether he should cheat on his wife or not when it seems like his wife is actively pushing him towards it inadvertently without knowing it.

[1:02:43] And there are a number of scenes – there are some funny songs in it and some very funny moments in it.

[1:02:47] And a lot of scenes where Maurice Chevalier addresses the character directly, addresses the camera directly in a way that is very – feels very modern and is very funny.

[1:02:57] And I liked it a lot.

[1:02:58] It's a Lubitsch movie I've never really heard much about, but it's out on DVD called One Hour With You.

[1:03:03] I'd recommend that.

[1:03:04] And also I'm going to go to the Flophouse Book Club for a moment and recommend a book.

[1:03:09] It doesn't exist.

[1:03:10] A book for all you movie lovers out there called The Studio by John Gregory Dunn.

[1:03:15] In case you haven't read it, it's a book.

[1:03:18] John Gregory Dunn, the writer, former spouse of Joan Didion, current dead guy, he – before he became a successful screenwriter himself, he basically said in the late 60s to Richard Zanuck, the vice president of 20th Century Fox, I want to write a book about your studio.

[1:03:34] Can I have total free access to every part of your studio for a certain amount of time, talk to anyone, just be anywhere and talk to anyone?

[1:03:42] They were like, yeah, sure.

[1:03:43] Why not?

[1:03:44] And so he wrote this book with unfettered access to just about how a movie studio worked in the late 60s, and it's really cool. It's a great snapshot of a time when the old guard of movies was changing but the new guard hadn't come in yet and from the old guard's point of view, which makes it even more valuable because so many books now I feel like are written from the point of view of the new Hollywood and not the old.

[1:04:06] And a lot of it is around the making of Dr. Dolittle and Planet of the Apes when both those movies seemed like crazy risks.

[1:04:14] They thought Dr. Dolittle was going to be their big prestige hit, and they thought Planet of the Apes was going to be this crazy movie about apes and had no idea which one was going to be successful or not.

[1:04:22] And so the studio by John Gregory Dunn, who, according to Wikipedia, is the uncle of Dominic Dunn.

[1:04:34] No, his brother Dominic Dunn and uncle of Griffin Dunn.

[1:04:38] Wow.

[1:04:39] After Hours star, Griffin Dunn.

[1:04:42] And uncle of Dominique Dunn of Poltergeist.

[1:04:44] Rotting corpse from American Werewolf of London, Griffin Dunn.

[1:04:48] So if you've ever said to yourself, I like Griffin Dunn in An American Werewolf in London,

[1:04:52] but what's his uncle's book up like?

[1:04:53] Director of that one weird romantic comedy with Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick, Griffin Dunn.

[1:05:02] Addicted to Love?

[1:05:03] Yeah, that's it.

[1:05:04] Oh, I didn't realize that.

[1:05:04] And just like that guy, we're all done.

[1:05:08] Yeah, we are all done.

[1:05:09] I was racking my brain to come up with an awesome segue.

[1:05:14] There was just a great outline.

[1:05:16] Why are you still talking?

[1:05:17] All right, for The Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:05:21] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:05:22] And I'll always be Elliot Kalin.

[1:05:24] You can't change that.

[1:05:24] Good night, everyone.

[1:05:26] All done.

[1:05:27] Yeah, so you get a little bit of Twin Peaks connection there.

[1:05:35] Boner files.

[1:05:36] People who love boners.

[1:05:38] File this one in the boner files.

[1:05:40] Mysterious cases about boners that can't be explained through ordinary explanations.

[1:05:46] A mysterious affair at boners.

[1:05:47] The erection is out there.

[1:05:49] That's slapping of boners.

[1:05:54] When I was a child, I saw my sister abducted by boners.

[1:06:00] Since then, I've tried to prove the truth about boners.

[1:06:03] Sure, this is your character, Fox Boner?

[1:06:05] Yep.

[1:06:06] I like him, okay.

[1:06:08] And his sidekick, Boner Scully.

[1:06:10] Let's do this.

[1:06:12] It's hot.

[1:06:13] Of course, there's FBI Assistant Director Boner.

[1:06:16] And the boner smoking man.

[1:06:17] Very clever stuff.

The Flop House: Episode #115 - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

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