The Flop House: Episode #67 - The Uninvited

Dan McCoy

[0:00] A PG-13 remake of an Asian horror film?

[0:03] Those things never suck.

[0:05] In this episode, we discuss The Uninvited.

[0:30] The Uninvited.

S2

[1:00] The party sounded like it was happening up here.

[1:01] Going for the potluck.

[1:02] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:04] Yeah, Elliot, I don't know.

[1:05] He got married, and I guess he wants to spend time with his wife.

[1:09] Yeah.

[1:10] I don't really understand it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11] I think he's nervous that she's going to chase after him with a rolling pin or whatever wives do.

Dan McCoy

[1:16] That's why we got John in here, because John also just got married.

[1:19] I think he got married even more recently than Elliot.

[1:21] Yeah.

[1:21] No kidding.

[1:22] And so we got him in here to prove that you can still do a podcast when you're married.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28] This is kind of like an elaborate burn on Elliot.

[1:30] Yeah, it's not even that elaborate.

S2

[1:31] It's a burn on Elliot.

[1:32] It doesn't actually help me, though, because I can't go home tonight.

[1:35] I've actually been kicked out of my apartment.

Dan McCoy

[1:36] Oh, okay.

[1:37] Oh, okay.

[1:38] Well, um...

[1:39] We didn't really prove anything.

[1:41] Well, I mean, I proved that I could screw up your evening.

[1:44] That's true.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45] Yeah.

[1:45] That's true.

[1:46] And possibly the listeners at home.

[1:48] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[1:49] So, guys, Shocktober.

[1:52] Yes.

[1:53] This is the second Shocktober episode.

[1:55] Is it?

[1:56] In my favorite month, Shocktober.

[1:59] Okay.

[2:01] Because, uh...

Stuart Wellington

[2:02] Do you get money every time you plug Shocktober?

S2

[2:06] Nike has some type of Shocktober-related launch, right?

[2:10] Sure, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:10] I'm not sure who owns the patent on Shocktober.

[2:13] I just know I get 75 cents every time I say that word.

Stuart Wellington

[2:17] Yeah.

[2:18] I think Stevie Ray Vaughan has Rocktober patented.

[2:22] Yeah.

[2:24] Cocktober?

[2:25] That's something else entirely.

Dan McCoy

[2:27] Mocktober is for people who are allergic to October.

[2:31] Yeah.

[2:33] Getting Mocktober burgers.

Stuart Wellington

[2:35] So, we're talking about October again.

[2:38] What do we do during this month?

Dan McCoy

[2:41] We watch horror movies with a slightly increased frequency than the rest of the year.

[2:46] Sure.

[2:47] And apple picking.

[2:48] We also do apple picking, but that's not based on...

Stuart Wellington

[2:51] We don't really talk about that during the...

[2:53] It's really unrelated, yeah.

[2:54] Yeah.

[2:54] Podcast.

[2:55] We don't really cover that.

[2:56] I mean, maybe in a movie minute.

[2:59] Yeah.

[2:59] Yeah, not right now.

[3:00] So, we watched a horror movie tonight.

Dan McCoy

[3:03] Yeah.

[3:04] A horror movie.

[3:05] Not a horror movie.

[3:06] No.

Stuart Wellington

[3:07] That would have been something else.

Dan McCoy

[3:08] I would have enjoyed the evening much more.

Stuart Wellington

[3:11] Yeah.

[3:12] Sitting around with a couple of dudes, watching a movie about a bunch of whores.

S2

[3:15] Would have been more awkward when your wife came home and we were just watching a horror movie.

[3:20] No.

[3:21] I don't think you know my wife.

[3:21] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[3:22] That's true.

[3:23] She's probably seen worse.

Dan McCoy

[3:26] No.

[3:26] We watched a film called The Uninvited, which is an American remake of a Korean horror film

[3:34] by the name A Tale of Two Sisters.

[3:38] Mm-hmm.

[3:40] Oath.

Stuart Wellington

[3:41] Neither of them sound like horror movie names.

[3:43] No.

[3:44] Neither do.

[3:45] I mean...

[3:46] I mean, Uninvited, I guess, sounds like...

[3:48] But I don't know what it would be about.

[3:50] It doesn't really clue you into what...

[3:52] No.

S2

[3:53] I mean, I imagine, like, a house and somebody shouldn't be in the house.

[3:57] Mm-hmm.

[3:57] That's about as far as it really seems to go for me.

[4:00] It doesn't evoke much more.

Dan McCoy

[4:02] Or it could be a movie about...

[4:03] About...

[4:05] What's-her-face?

[4:07] Alanis Morissette.

[4:08] Okay.

[4:08] And the writing of her hit song, Uninvited.

Stuart Wellington

[4:12] That was a hit song by Alanis Morissette?

Dan McCoy

[4:13] Yeah.

[4:15] I think the lyrics were, uh...

[4:17] And you...

[4:17] You are not allowed.

[4:19] You're uninvited.

[4:20] Is that off of Jagged Little Pill?

[4:22] No.

[4:22] This was...

[4:23] This was after she was relevant.

S2

[4:25] I just stopped following.

[4:27] Uh...

[4:27] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[4:29] Uh...

[4:29] Yeah.

[4:29] I imagine it would be a horror movie about a party of werewolves.

[4:35] Mm-hmm.

[4:35] And one person turns up, and they're not a werewolf.

[4:38] And they weren't invited in the first place.

[4:39] That makes more sense.

Dan McCoy

[4:40] That sounds like a great movie.

[4:42] Although I would call that movie Werewolf Party.

[4:44] Sure.

[4:45] I think you'd get more eyes.

[4:47] You'd get a bigger audience if you called the movie Werewolf Party.

Stuart Wellington

[4:50] With an exclamation point at the end?

Dan McCoy

[4:52] Yep.

[4:53] Yeah.

[4:54] The Uninvited.

[4:54] I mean, that...

[4:55] Can you think of a blander title for a movie?

S2

[4:59] Ghost.

[4:59] Ghost was a pretty bland title.

[5:02] Yeah.

[5:02] But it actually, weirdly, ended up being much more appropriate to the movie.

[5:06] Right.

[5:07] Yeah.

[5:07] Now, think of...

[5:08] Life as We Know It, starring Katherine Heigl.

Dan McCoy

[5:10] There you go.

[5:10] That's a more...

Stuart Wellington

[5:11] They put an exclamation point at the end of Ghost.

[5:14] Turned it from Ghost to Ghost!

[5:15] Ghost!

[5:16] I think that would have been a much better movie.

[5:18] That's a very good point.

[5:19] I mean, people probably would have seen it.

[5:20] Yeah.

[5:21] It wouldn't have died a slow, painful death of obscurity.

S2

[5:25] They could have let Whoopi Goldberg really let herself loose.

[5:29] Sure.

[5:29] Do her full comedic powers.

Stuart Wellington

[5:30] Maybe the poster would have been her pointing at Patrick Swayze shouting ghosts in a word

[5:35] balloon.

Dan McCoy

[5:37] Man, you know what?

[5:38] I realize that we have fucked this up entirely.

[5:41] Because we introduced that John Kingman was here.

[5:44] But we said nothing about him as a person.

[5:48] So you want to rewind it?

[5:49] No, I just want...

[5:50] I think that before we get into the meat of the movie, which we, oddly enough, haven't

[5:54] done.

[5:54] Yeah.

[5:55] We've been dancing around it.

[5:56] We're deep into the podcast.

[5:57] We should say a few words about our guest host.

[5:59] Should we say or should I?

[6:01] Should I probably say a few words about it?

[6:01] You should say something about yourself.

[6:02] I probably shouldn't do the introduction.

S2

[6:05] Justify your existence, Joe.

[6:07] I am a...

[6:09] What am I?

[6:09] I am a comedy director.

[6:12] I have directed a variety of stage and video comedies.

[6:19] As well as some industrial shorts for money.

Dan McCoy

[6:24] Wait, you weren't doing those industrial shorts for love?

S2

[6:27] For both.

[6:28] There's a lot of love when you're trying to talk about proper HR policies.

[6:32] And I think that you need to bring an artist's touch to that.

[6:36] But the paycheck of a whole 50 cents.

[6:40] Yeah.

[6:41] An auteur's direction.

Dan McCoy

[6:44] You've done a lot of...

[6:45] Your work is readily available on ucbcomedy.com.

[6:50] Yes.

[6:51] And the YouTube.

S2

[6:52] You can go there.

[6:53] I have a channel with my name on it.

Dan McCoy

[6:55] And you and I met each other during...

[6:58] Is it like guys getting kicked in the nuts by little kids and stuff?

[7:02] Squirrels.

[7:03] Squirrels kicking people in the nuts.

[7:05] Sure.

[7:05] I'll watch that.

S2

[7:06] My wife and I have a very funny cat.

[7:09] And it does a lot of things that we just think are darling.

[7:12] Insult comedy?

[7:13] Does your cat do insult comedy?

[7:14] I do voiceovers over the cat.

[7:16] Okay.

[7:17] It can't actually talk.

[7:18] So I had to lip sync over it.

Stuart Wellington

[7:20] You do like song mash-em-ups where it looks like the song's doing the singing?

[7:23] Yep.

[7:23] With the song.

[7:24] The song's doing the singing.

[7:25] Oh man, I got mixed up.

[7:27] Metaphysical.

[7:27] Yeah.

S2

[7:28] Sometimes I just post Nas songs with the lyrics over them and then maybe like some inspirational

[7:33] pictures too.

Stuart Wellington

[7:34] I hope you bleep out all the swear words though.

[7:36] Oh yeah, definitely.

[7:37] Because that's not inspirational.

[7:37] It's not family friendly.

S2

[7:38] We don't need to keep those types of F's and S's in there.

Dan McCoy

[7:40] No, but you and I met each other during the production of a show called Video Gaga.

[7:45] Yes.

[7:46] Then our mutual friend Sarah Schaefer, now an Emmy-winning writer.

[7:50] Congratulations, Sarah.

[7:51] For the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show.

[7:53] Woo.

[7:55] But yeah, it was a music video themed stage show.

S2

[8:00] It was a variety show really because we also had like live guests.

[8:04] We had some semi-high profile musical entertainment.

[8:09] Some dancing.

[8:10] Uh, can't really remember.

Dan McCoy

[8:12] In violation of cabaret laws.

[8:14] Yep.

[8:15] Yep.

[8:16] Yeah.

[8:17] Okay, well that's, I think you've justified yourself enough.

[8:19] That's me.

[8:20] You deserve to be here.

[8:22] Okay, so now we can get back to The Uninvited, which is a movie.

[8:26] And in Elliot's absence, I'll try and quickly synopsize this film.

[8:31] It begins with our heroine.

[8:33] Probably better that I'm not doing it.

[8:34] Our heroine played by Emily Browning.

[8:37] Okay.

[8:37] Who was the elder sister in the Lemony Snicket series of Unfortunate Events movie.

[8:45] So she is getting out of a mental hospital for youths, troubled youths.

[8:53] Mm-hmm.

[8:53] Uh, her mom had died.

[8:56] Yeah.

[8:56] And that had made her troubled.

S2

[8:58] In a mysterious fire.

[9:00] Mm-hmm.

[9:00] Her mom had died in a house fire explosion combination.

Dan McCoy

[9:05] Yeah.

[9:05] And her father.

[9:06] Which is how I want to go, by the way, guys.

[9:08] Okay.

[9:08] It's a peaceful one.

Stuart Wellington

[9:09] I want to go in the biggest explosion you can do.

Dan McCoy

[9:12] So, like, when you're getting old and, like, it looks terminal, I should just come to your

[9:17] place and, you know, just, you know, open up all the gas lines.

Stuart Wellington

[9:22] Yeah.

[9:22] I mean, I want you to set it up like a mousetrap thing.

[9:24] I don't want you to, like, just throw a stick of dynamite at me.

[9:27] That'd be stupid.

[9:28] That'd be murder.

S2

[9:28] You'd get in trouble.

[9:29] Do you want some type of, like, Rube Goldberg device that goes around the room so you can

[9:33] watch all of the pieces fall into place before you die?

[9:36] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[9:36] I want to be like, oh, okay.

[9:38] I like this.

[9:39] Oh, I didn't realize that frying pan could do that.

[9:42] Things like that.

[9:43] Yeah.

[9:44] And then when I die, I want to be, like, clapping.

Dan McCoy

[9:47] As I get blown off into the neither world.

[9:50] Okay.

[9:51] There's going to be an egg that falls onto a hot plate.

Stuart Wellington

[9:54] Yep.

[9:55] And it has to cook to a certain point.

S2

[9:57] I'm pretty sure you need a mouse running on a treadmill at some part in that.

[10:00] You need some kind of a live animal.

Stuart Wellington

[10:02] Yeah.

[10:02] You have to take somebody with you.

[10:04] You have to scare a chicken so it shits out an egg.

[10:06] A candle needs to burn through a string at some point.

[10:09] This is just the beginning of Pee-wee's Big Adventure, isn't it?

[10:12] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[10:13] The Uninvited was clearly a very good movie.

[10:16] All right.

[10:16] Well, to get back to it, her dad, played by David Strathairn, famed John Sayles' favorite.

[10:25] He's great.

[10:26] David Strathairn.

[10:27] I don't even know if I'm saying his last name correctly.

[10:30] Strathairn?

[10:31] I don't know.

[10:32] Jason Statham.

S2

[10:34] Played by Jason Statham.

[10:36] He was the father in the movie.

Dan McCoy

[10:38] It was a stretch for him.

S2

[10:40] Yeah.

[10:40] I didn't see a bald man in this role.

[10:42] He did a really good job with the car chase scene and the part where he fought the two giants in the bar.

Stuart Wellington

[10:49] Yeah.

[10:49] The two giant, I guess, they looked Eastern European guys.

[10:53] Yeah.

[10:53] And he covered himself in some kind of butter or something.

[10:55] Yep.

[10:56] So they couldn't grab his body.

[10:57] It was really impressive.

[10:58] Yeah.

[10:58] So I think his heart had died.

[10:59] So he only had like a nine-month battery keeping him up.

S2

[11:01] They gave him the Hong Kong cocktail.

[11:02] Right.

Dan McCoy

[11:04] So what happened is Emily Browning comes home.

[11:08] She finds that her dead mother has been usurped.

[11:12] Sure.

[11:12] She's a dead mother played by Elizabeth Banks, known as a comic actress here in a straight role as the evil stepmother.

[11:23] Now, this woman was her mom's nurse who then stepped in once her mom died to take her place.

S2

[11:32] That's how you get the moniker stepmother too, right?

[11:35] Like you step into the place of the original mother.

Stuart Wellington

[11:38] You step over the dead body of the mother.

Dan McCoy

[11:40] Step on the corpse.

[11:41] You step up to the streets.

[11:42] Right.

[11:43] Two.

[11:44] Three days.

[11:46] So that happened.

[11:49] And so Emily Browning and her sister, played by some girl who was in John Tucker Must Die, hang out together,

[12:00] complaining about this new bitch who's entered their lives.

[12:05] And there's a shitload of ghosts hanging around.

Stuart Wellington

[12:09] Yeah, man.

[12:09] It's fucking Ghost Central.

[12:11] Her mom appears as a ghost.

Dan McCoy

[12:14] There's some little kids because kids make the best ghosts.

[12:17] Three creepy kids.

[12:18] Two brothers and a girl who looks like she's a pilgrim.

[12:21] You assume they're brothers?

S2

[12:22] You don't know they're brothers right off the bat.

[12:24] They just have matching outfits.

[12:26] They look very similar.

Stuart Wellington

[12:26] Yeah, I mean, but they don't say anything like, hey, this is my ghost brother.

[12:30] No.

S2

[12:31] No, they might just do their shopping at L.L. Bean, both of them.

[12:34] And it's a normal thing.

[12:35] Yeah, I mean, they could be just really good friends with the same taste and clothes.

[12:38] All right.

[12:39] Everybody likes a blue Oxford and some khaki pants.

[12:41] I don't think that that's like crazy.

Stuart Wellington

[12:42] They looked a little bit like pilgrims.

S2

[12:44] Yeah, no.

[12:44] They were like pilgrim kids.

Stuart Wellington

[12:47] That's what I was wondering.

[12:48] Was this a movie about pilgrims?

[12:49] But it wasn't.

[12:50] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:51] No, I think that those kids probably just got killed on their way to production of The Crucible.

[12:57] Like a school play.

S2

[12:59] I thought it was Blair Witch 2 Step Up to the Streets.

[13:01] Okay.

[13:02] So I got confused halfway through the movie.

[13:04] Sure.

[13:04] Very confusing.

Stuart Wellington

[13:05] Because Dan said we were going to watch that.

[13:07] Yeah.

[13:07] I remember he got excited and he went to the bathroom when he made the decision that we

[13:10] were going to watch The Unabashed.

Dan McCoy

[13:11] He went to the bathroom while I explained that movie doesn't exist.

S2

[13:17] But I came out very excited.

[13:19] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[13:19] So we didn't want to say anything because you were so excited.

[13:23] So yeah, there's a bunch of ghost stuff going on.

[13:27] Like the mom was like shenanigans.

[13:29] The mom's pointing at Elizabeth Banks and being like, murderer.

S2

[13:32] I think she actually, she just said murder.

[13:36] She did not say murderer, which was confusing to me because I wasn't really sure what she was

[13:42] trying to point out about Elizabeth Banks when she was pointing out the window saying

[13:46] murder.

Stuart Wellington

[13:47] Yeah.

[13:48] I mean, that must have been some kind of like a thing where our brain kind of finishes the

[13:53] word, right?

[13:54] Sure.

[13:54] Right.

S2

[13:55] Or I might have gone back to the bathroom.

[13:57] Okay.

[13:57] I went to the bathroom a lot tonight.

[13:59] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[13:59] Does her probably have a bladder infection?

S2

[14:02] I don't think so.

[14:03] It just hurts.

[14:04] It hurts a lot, but I think it's fine.

[14:06] Well, that sounds like a bladder infection.

[14:07] Well, I'm not going to go to a doctor, so let's just.

Stuart Wellington

[14:09] I mean, you just got married, so you probably just got a new piercing down there.

[14:12] Yeah.

[14:12] Because, I mean, that's how you keep your wife, right?

[14:15] That's how you.

S2

[14:16] That's how you get a wife.

[14:17] Oh, okay.

[14:19] I don't know if you've been through an engagement process.

[14:21] I haven't, no.

[14:21] Watch the movie A Very Long Engagement.

[14:23] It'll teach you everything about the piercings that you'll need.

[14:26] Okay, cool.

[14:27] And the other marital aids.

Stuart Wellington

[14:28] That's actually really good advice.

[14:30] Listeners, you should write that down.

[14:32] And then email it to me at Stuart Wellingham.

Dan McCoy

[14:37] They have to write it down and then email it to you?

[14:39] I don't have a pen and paper, Dan.

[14:40] I'm doing a podcast.

[14:42] I don't know why you're making the listeners into your personal assistance.

Stuart Wellington

[14:46] And write it down.

[14:46] Send it to Stuart at theflophouse.edu.

[14:49] It's not an email that exists.

S2

[14:52] So I didn't realize the Flophouse was an accredited institution of higher learning.

[14:56] It was an educational.

[14:57] It's a primarily educational mission.

[15:00] I had no idea.

[15:01] I just thought it was movie reviews.

Stuart Wellington

[15:04] So you learned something.

[15:06] Yeah.

[15:06] Yeah, that's cool.

[15:07] Do, do, do, do.

Dan McCoy

[15:08] So by the end of the movie, the two girls, the titular sisters,

[15:16] if this was the Korean version, which it isn't,

[15:18] but the two sisters decide,

[15:22] they think that Elizabeth Banks has killed three children.

[15:28] And their mom.

[15:29] And their mom.

[15:30] And probably this dude, Matt.

[15:32] Yeah.

[15:33] Yeah, this dude, Matt.

[15:35] We didn't even mention Emily Browning's beau,

[15:39] or possible beau.

[15:41] Like the most awesome, most awesome guy in the world.

[15:44] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[15:44] I think.

[15:44] Yeah, he's a hunk.

[15:46] Yeah.

[15:46] A beefcake a little bit.

S2

[15:48] Yeah.

[15:48] Really, like, really cool dude.

Stuart Wellington

[15:51] Yeah, and kind of really down to earth, you know?

[15:54] Yeah.

[15:54] He drives his cool speedboat around.

[15:56] Got like a boat.

[15:57] Delivers groceries.

[15:58] He works in this really dark storeroom.

S2

[16:00] Got some cargo shorts,

[16:01] or maybe they're like cargo pants that are just rolled up to short length.

[16:05] A little confusing, but it looks really good.

Stuart Wellington

[16:08] Yeah.

[16:08] No, he's always around water,

[16:10] and water can get on your pants if they're not rolled up.

Dan McCoy

[16:13] Well, the point is,

[16:13] the girls become convinced that Elizabeth Banks is this black widow character

[16:18] who, what she does is she moves in.

[16:21] Like a stepfather.

[16:22] Yeah, like she's a nurse,

[16:25] and then she moves in,

[16:26] and she kills off people.

[16:28] Like, and the proof of this is they,

[16:31] like these three children that died

[16:34] who have been pointed to by these ghostly apparitions.

[16:40] Like the main character finds their graves

[16:44] and then Googles their names,

[16:45] and she finds a photo of all of them,

[16:50] and the mother.

[16:51] Who was murdered.

[16:52] Who was murdered of these children

[16:53] is wearing a pearl necklace.

[16:56] Yeah, a literal pearl necklace, too.

[16:59] There's no,

[17:00] it's not ejaculate.

[17:02] No, I'm just going to keep laughing.

[17:05] So she's wearing a pearl necklace

[17:06] that Elizabeth Banks also has,

[17:10] a pearl necklace of the exact same make and model.

[17:12] Which was pretty coincidental, if you think about it.

[17:14] They had the exact same looking.

[17:16] It's crazy that two women would have pearl necklaces.

[17:23] A really uncommon type of necklace.

Stuart Wellington

[17:26] Yeah.

[17:26] And somehow she tries to give that pearl necklace to her stepdaughter.

S2

[17:33] Don't know how that's going to work out.

[17:33] There's a lot of exchange of pearl necklaces in this movie.

Dan McCoy

[17:37] So, now that that's done with.

Stuart Wellington

[17:41] So this one-of-a-kind pearl necklace is...

[17:46] It is hard not to laugh.

[17:48] That's the key point of evidence, right?

[17:49] It's this unique, no one else in the world has a pearl necklace at all

[17:52] that looks even kind of like this.

[17:54] Yeah.

[17:54] Three strands of pearls.

[17:57] Yep.

[17:57] Well, that's how they knew.

S2

[17:58] Because usually it's either a one-strand or a two-strand pearl necklace.

[18:04] This had three individual strands,

[18:06] thereby sealing the evidence.

Stuart Wellington

[18:10] Yeah.

[18:10] Yeah, there's no way.

Dan McCoy

[18:11] So, at the end of the movie...

[18:14] Oh, Jesus.

[18:15] Do you guys do spoilers on Splatouse?

[18:17] No, we do spoilers.

[18:18] Yeah, I don't give a shit.

[18:19] Why don't you tell the big shocking reveal?

Stuart Wellington

[18:22] Yeah, okay, so the whole movie,

[18:25] you think Elizabeth Banks is this crazy murderer.

[18:29] This ghost keeps showing up to tell our main character that,

[18:33] you know, she's got to get out.

[18:34] She's next.

[18:35] She's going to get murdered next.

[18:37] And then it all turns out that she has been imagining that her sister's there.

[18:42] Her sister's been a figment of her imagination

[18:45] because she accidentally killed her sister and her mom

[18:48] and then went crazy and then killed Elizabeth Banks

[18:51] and this dude, Matt.

[18:53] It was her all along.

[18:54] She was the killer.

[18:56] Our narrator was a crazy person.

[18:58] Huzzah.

[18:58] A reliable narrator.

S2

[18:59] Right.

[19:00] So the real reveal is that Elizabeth Banks isn't a murderer.

[19:03] She's just a bitch.

[19:04] She's just a shitty stepmom.

[19:06] She wasn't even there.

Stuart Wellington

[19:06] I think she dug her own grave, to be honest here, guys.

[19:09] I mean...

S2

[19:09] She was trying hard.

[19:10] What about the pork roast, man?

[19:12] I can't remember what the actress's name is.

[19:14] The main character...

[19:15] Emily Browning.

[19:16] Emily Browning knocks over a pot roast

[19:19] and Elizabeth Banks comes in

[19:20] and she throws a whole bitch fit about...

Dan McCoy

[19:23] But that was an important dinner party.

[19:25] It was a very nice dinner party.

[19:27] The local minister was probably there.

[19:30] Maybe not the mayor, but maybe the comptroller.

[19:34] Maybe an astronaut.

S2

[19:37] Definitely an astronaut.

[19:38] I think I saw Buzz Aldrin in the background.

[19:40] Oh, no shit.

Stuart Wellington

[19:41] NBC's using that guy for everything now.

S2

[19:43] He needs some money.

[19:44] I think he's...

[19:45] You don't get a lot of money going to space.

Stuart Wellington

[19:47] He should have brought back more moon gold.

[19:49] Yeah.

[19:51] That's what I would say.

S2

[19:52] There was plenty of room on the shuttle for moon gold.

Stuart Wellington

[19:54] Yeah, I mean, it was fucking probably empty.

[19:56] They just brought rocks back.

[19:57] They used all that fuel to get up there.

[19:58] They didn't have to use it to get back.

[20:00] Yeah.

[20:01] So I don't know about you guys.

[20:04] I was a little frustrated.

[20:05] Because I don't really like it when a movie where you think one thing and then whoop,

[20:11] whoop, they switch it up on you and it turns out that this ghost thing probably never happened.

[20:15] They just threw that in there for you to get scared.

[20:18] Because, I mean...

[20:20] Oh, no.

[20:20] You think there was actually a ghost.

[20:22] You think there's ghosts that are haunting ghosts.

[20:23] No, I don't think there was a ghost person.

Dan McCoy

[20:23] I think that she was crazy the whole time.

[20:25] I will...

[20:26] No, what I was going to say is like...

[20:27] Crazy for ghosts.

[20:28] The thing I hated least.

[20:29] Cuckoo for Cocoa.

[20:30] Sure.

[20:31] I'm not going to say the thing I like best.

[20:33] I would say the thing I hated least.

[20:34] about the movie was actually the twist.

[20:36] Okay.

[20:37] The twist, I felt like they played fair.

[20:39] I mean, like at the beginning of the movie, they set up that this is a crazy person being

[20:42] released from her crazy person hospital.

[20:45] And so why should we believe that anything that she thinks is the case?

[20:50] You know, like they do the whole sixth sense thing where the sister is never addressed directly

[20:55] by anyone other than our main character.

[20:59] They're never...

[20:59] Like she's never looked at.

[21:00] Okay.

[21:01] That's fine.

[21:02] All that is like...

[21:03] All that has been played, you know, pretty fair.

[21:06] And, you know, in a better movie, in a better movie, I think it would be a genuinely creepy

[21:11] ending where you're like, oh man, I invested all my feelings in this person and now they're

[21:16] a horrible murderer.

Stuart Wellington

[21:18] Well, because you went into it thinking it was going to be a ghost story, but it was actually

[21:21] a murderer story.

[21:22] Well, I guess, yeah.

[21:23] Slash him up.

S2

[21:25] Yep.

[21:25] At that point, that's where they really, they lose the audience, or at least this audience,

[21:29] which is that they didn't invest anything in the main character.

[21:33] Right.

[21:33] Like, she's not a person.

[21:34] She's just a cardboard cutout walking through scenes.

[21:39] Expositing?

[21:40] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[21:40] Exposing?

[21:41] Well, the shittiness of the movie before the twist...

[21:44] Right.

[21:44] ...you know, fails the twist, I feel like.

Stuart Wellington

[21:47] I mean, it is like, it's a modern horror movie, and modern horror movies have this sense

[21:53] that if they don't keep you constantly scared, that you're not, you're going to get bored

[21:58] and walk away from the movie.

[21:59] Like, within the first five minutes, you need to see a corpse falling out of a garbage

[22:03] bag.

Dan McCoy

[22:04] Right.

[22:04] Which you do.

[22:05] Yeah.

[22:05] In this movie.

[22:05] You need to see blood shooting out of a lock.

[22:08] This movie starts out, we should say, with a crazy dream sequence that had Stuart being

[22:13] like, what the fuck is, what the fuck, what kind of movie is this?

Stuart Wellington

[22:16] That's actually an incredible impression of me, Dan.

[22:19] That was...

Dan McCoy

[22:19] Well, I can't make...

[22:20] My voice is low as yours, but...

Stuart Wellington

[22:22] Yeah, that's true.

[22:23] But yeah, I was confused.

[22:25] I was like, what am I watching?

[22:27] You were saddened.

[22:27] There's, who are these people?

[22:29] Where are we at?

[22:30] What season is this?

S2

[22:32] Well, and if it was...

Stuart Wellington

[22:33] Why are there so many bikinis?

S2

[22:35] If it was a Friday the 13th sort of scenario, that first five minutes, one of those characters,

[22:40] whoever we were watching, would have been murdered by the bad guy, and then that would propel

[22:44] us into the world of this terrible thing.

[22:46] But instead, it was just a dream sequence.

[22:48] Yeah.

[22:48] Filled with red herring.

[22:50] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[22:50] It's just like, oh, here's some unrelated scare moments.

[22:55] I mean, the thing is, like, once you go through the movie, yes, they kind of tie up together.

[23:00] But as just like a narrative device, it's irritating to just start off with, like, okay, well, here's

[23:06] a bunch of unrelated money shots that then are going to immediately be revealed as sort of

[23:14] irrelevant right off the bat.

[23:15] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[23:16] And what, uh, what...

[23:19] I mean, she's describing this dream sequence to her psychologist.

[23:23] What psychologist is going to let somebody go when they're still having crazy nightmares

[23:28] regarding the incident that put them there in the first place?

S2

[23:31] Bags full of corpses and exploding houses and dead moms.

[23:34] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[23:35] And then his parting words were, yeah, you just got to work through it.

[23:38] Well, he did also...

[23:39] You got to finish what you started, girl.

S2

[23:40] He told her to go out and kiss a boy.

[23:42] So I think that that was really where he was trying to interject, like, she needs to really

[23:45] reclaim herself and go out and...

[23:49] Through sexuality, right?

[23:50] Yeah.

[23:51] If she could just whore it up a little bit, uh, she'll get past her demons.

Stuart Wellington

[23:56] Yeah, I mean, she...

[23:57] It's this lingering guilt about, um, getting a guy really turned on and then just not finishing

[24:02] it.

[24:03] Like, that hurts for a guy, Dan.

S2

[24:05] Yeah.

[24:05] Maybe we should talk...

[24:06] I mean, in the very, very...

[24:07] The first scene, uh, she is making out with, uh, Matt.

[24:11] Matt, yeah.

[24:11] The main male non-David Stratham, Jason Statham lead.

[24:16] And, uh, he says, you know, he really likes her and he has a condom and then she says she

[24:22] needs to go.

[24:23] That's true.

Dan McCoy

[24:24] So, like...

[24:24] That is a seduction technique.

S2

[24:26] He's like, I really like you.

[24:27] And I have a condom.

[24:28] I have a condom.

[24:29] I also know how to use that condom.

[24:32] Just in case you want to make blue animals.

[24:33] I mean, it shows that he...

Stuart Wellington

[24:34] Yeah.

[24:34] I mean, in Matt's defense, it shows that he put a little bit of effort into, uh...

[24:38] No, he's a gentleman.

[24:38] He thinks about it.

[24:39] Yeah.

S2

[24:39] No, he's a planner.

[24:40] Uh-huh.

[24:41] Well, that's, I think, again, why Matt...

[24:43] It's not all on her.

Stuart Wellington

[24:43] ...to be safe.

[24:44] No.

[24:44] That's true.

[24:45] It also means that he understands that, uh, when...

[24:48] Because he has genital herpes, he needs to make some kind of measures to protect...

[24:53] to protect the people he loves.

S2

[24:54] He listens to his doctor.

[24:55] He was really attentive to his doctor's, uh, direction.

[24:59] And as a result, he's got...

[25:00] I mean, it's not...

Stuart Wellington

[25:01] It wasn't inflamed that night.

[25:02] Mm-hmm.

[25:02] But that doesn't mean he can't be safe.

[25:04] Yeah, right.

[25:05] You don't have to have the current outbreak.

[25:07] Yeah.

[25:07] Transmissable.

[25:08] Transmissable.

[25:09] I don't know what you're talking about.

[25:10] Yeah, I don't know.

[25:11] Oh, man.

[25:12] What a great, great movie.

Dan McCoy

[25:14] You pointed out, Stuart, that, um...

[25:17] People in this film don't act like humans.

[25:21] Okay.

[25:21] Like, don't act like normal people.

[25:22] Like, just, like, that was one of the things about the movie is...

[25:24] I did think it was a movie about aliens first.

[25:28] People do not act like...

[25:29] I...

[25:29] The best example to my mind is the scene where our heroine...

[25:36] I still don't remember what her actual name was in the movie.

[25:39] Anna?

[25:40] Alex?

[25:40] Anna or Alex.

[25:41] It's one of the two.

[25:42] One of the two.

[25:42] Well, she, uh...

[25:43] Let's call her A.

[25:45] She, uh...

[25:46] goes to the sheriff with her, you know, hair-brained, uh, tale about, uh, you know, the murderous

[25:53] nanny.

[25:54] And, um, you know, she tells the sheriff this.

[25:56] The sheriff's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that.

[25:58] And then the sheriff's like, you hang out here.

[26:01] The sheriff leaves her in the room.

[26:03] And as he leaves, he turns the light out on her still sitting in the room.

[26:09] Because that's what you do when you are trying to go out and solve the case.

[26:13] Well, that's what you do when you exit a room that someone's still sitting in.

[26:15] And you're like, okay, well, I want to save the electricity.

[26:19] So, uh, you're okay just sitting in the dark, right?

Stuart Wellington

[26:21] Well, I think in his defense, in the sheriff's defense, there's a lot of scenes in this movie

[26:26] that are really dark.

[26:28] And there's a lot of scenes where people are doing things completely in the dark.

[26:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[26:31] So you're thinking that this is actually taking place in an alternate universe where people

[26:34] just hang out in the dark.

Stuart Wellington

[26:35] Yeah, they're like mole people or something.

[26:37] They have better vision than us regular humans.

[26:39] Or stew-mans in my case.

[26:41] Whoa.

[26:42] Yeah, I'm a stew-man.

S2

[26:44] I think we talked about the concept that there might have just been a budget issue with this

[26:48] movie.

[26:48] Because, like, you know, especially with this three-tiered pearl necklace being the, like,

[26:55] identifying, you know, necklace of the murderer, they couldn't get something that was a little

[26:59] more, like, ornate and unique.

[27:02] Right.

[27:02] Like, what is the Titanic necklace?

[27:06] The teardrop of heaven or whatever they call that thing.

Dan McCoy

[27:08] You know, like, we just, you know, like, you and I were just talking about Boardwalk Empire

[27:14] in the second episode.

[27:15] Like, the gentleman, like, gives his mother, like, a distinctive necklace.

[27:20] Very fancy and easy to recognize.

[27:22] Easy to recognize.

[27:23] Yeah.

[27:23] Like, why would you, if you're making a movie where, like, the idea is, like, oh, okay,

[27:28] well, a necklace is going to be a key plot point.

[27:30] Let's make it the most boring.

[27:31] Like, literally, like, the only thing they could have done that would have been more boring

[27:34] is if they just had, like, a plain gold chain with a cross on it.

[27:37] Like, one of those tiny crosses.

S2

[27:38] I would advocate for a candy necklace.

[27:40] Okay.

[27:41] I think that that would have been unique enough because it has multi-colors.

[27:45] Sure.

[27:45] And then also, maybe if the dead lady had taken one bite out of it, but she never finished

[27:50] it off, then there would be, like, a few pieces missing.

[27:53] Right.

[27:53] So then you'd be like, oh, well, that was...

[27:54] Or teeth marks.

[27:55] Right.

[27:55] Or teeth marks that you could easily identify.

Stuart Wellington

[27:58] Well, and so, yeah, so there's...

[27:58] I'm already writing my screenplay.

S2

[28:00] There's, like, there's poor lighting.

[28:02] Dead Lady Candy Necklace.

[28:04] There's a crappy...

[28:05] And Roy Stewart.

[28:05] Crappy props.

[28:07] And no...

[28:08] No named actors or actresses except for...

Dan McCoy

[28:11] David Strathairn and...

[28:13] David Strathairn and...

[28:13] Elizabeth Banks.

[28:14] Elizabeth Banks.

[28:15] Yeah.

S2

[28:15] But the main characters, like the daughters, are sort of the replaceable teenage horror girls.

Dan McCoy

[28:22] Well, and...

[28:22] You know, and it's one of these cases where the name actors...

[28:26] You can tell why they're named actors because they were the best people in the film.

Stuart Wellington

[28:30] Right.

[28:30] Like, they created...

[28:31] A force, really.

[28:33] Character...

[28:33] Well, no, but...

[28:34] It was chewing the scenery, I think, is taking it too lightly.

S2

[28:37] With the nothing that they were given.

[28:39] Good Night and Good Luck was okay.

[28:41] I mean, it was a fine movie.

[28:43] But I wouldn't call it a film.

[28:45] But this movie I would call a film because Jason Statham really brought it.

[28:51] Right.

[28:52] He really did something much different than what he did.

Stuart Wellington

[28:54] He created a new human being.

[28:56] Yeah.

[28:56] It's like a Daniel Day-Lewis performance.

Dan McCoy

[28:58] Yeah, it's like giving birth.

[29:00] Yeah.

[29:01] Amazing.

[29:02] So, another thing that I think we should address is ghost stories.

[29:07] Sure.

[29:08] Now, you're really...

[29:09] Don't care for him.

[29:10] Too scary.

[29:12] You're really angry about ghost stories.

[29:13] And I am too.

[29:15] And one thing that I can say about this movie...

[29:16] When you say you, you're talking about the listeners at home, right?

[29:19] No, I'm talking about you, Stuart.

[29:21] Oh, shit.

[29:21] One thing that I can say for this movie is...

[29:24] At least the reveal sort of made the irritating ghost story elements about it more palatable.

[29:31] Because you're like, oh, okay.

[29:33] You know, she was just like these are figments of her imagination that she is misinterpreting.

[29:37] But up until that point...

[29:39] I can only assume...

[29:40] You know, it's playing out like your typical ghost story that is really frustrating.

Stuart Wellington

[29:44] I can only assume that she...

[29:48] Our heroine has watched a lot of like bad Asian horror movies.

[29:52] And so, when she was driven insane, her psychosis like imagines these ghosts that their only purpose is to like tell her that somebody is a murderer.

[30:02] Right.

[30:03] Like there are these weirdly scary yet benevolent spirits.

[30:06] Yeah.

S2

[30:06] It's just ingrained in her head from watching all that J-horror that like that's how these things happen.

Dan McCoy

[30:11] Yeah, no, like what ghosts do is they scare people into being better.

[30:18] Right.

[30:18] Yeah, into learning shit.

[30:19] Like police.

[30:20] They don't...

[30:21] Yep.

[30:22] They don't tell you...

[30:24] They're like spirit cops.

[30:25] Right.

[30:25] They don't tell you what they want you to do.

[30:28] They figure that by like a concerted campaign of scares, you'll eventually figure out what they're trying to tell you.

[30:36] Like Beetlejuice.

[30:37] Yeah.

S2

[30:37] I mean, that's how I got you to quit smoking was I just kept showing up in your house with blood dripping out of my eyes and screaming murder.

[30:44] And then I would run out before you could figure out was I asleep or was John actually in my house screaming murder with blood all over him.

Stuart Wellington

[30:52] Yeah.

[30:52] I mean, how long did it take you to climb up into the corner of the ceiling and just perch there until Dan got up to go to the bathroom?

S2

[30:58] Yeah, it's a real pickle.

[31:00] I'm not going to lie.

[31:00] It's not an easy task to get up there.

Dan McCoy

[31:03] I meant to ask you about this because I thought that that restraining order I put out in you was still in effect.

S2

[31:08] You can't do that to a ghost, Dan.

[31:09] Yeah.

[31:10] You can't put a restraining order...

[31:11] That's where you need spirit cops.

[31:12] Cop cops aren't going to be able to stop.

[31:14] No.

[31:14] A spirit, so...

[31:16] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[31:16] It's a legal loophole.

[31:18] It's really complex.

[31:19] Well, you have to get a lawyer with a Ouija board.

[31:23] Sure.

S2

[31:24] Contact the spirit cops.

[31:26] Oh, so speaking of Ouija boards, because this actually really pissed me off.

[31:31] Very early in the movie, they talk about a chalkboard.

[31:34] Yep.

[31:34] And they make a big stink about the chalkboard.

[31:36] And they even have a scene where Emma Browning...

Dan McCoy

[31:39] Remember how Mom always used to leave us messages on the chalkboard?

S2

[31:43] She would write us notes that would tell us things that were important.

[31:46] And then they put the chalkboard up, and then it's never brought up again.

[31:50] Why couldn't they just have had one scene with some ghost chalk?

[31:53] You have to figure that that did pay off.

Dan McCoy

[31:56] And this movie was less than 90...

[31:57] That was in a deleted scene, probably.

[31:59] This movie was less than 90 minutes.

[32:01] Right.

[32:01] That had to have paid off.

[32:02] But the thing is, if they cut the payoff, why was there still the scene of them walking

[32:07] around talking about a chalkboard?

[32:08] Right.

[32:09] Right.

[32:10] Cut it all, or leave it all in.

Stuart Wellington

[32:12] Well, I think they really liked expository dialogue like that.

[32:15] And they didn't really care about the payoff itself, but they wanted people to think like,

[32:20] oh my god.

[32:22] Because that was the whole thing.

[32:23] The entire ghost story was a red herring.

[32:24] Right.

[32:24] So they wanted to throw as many little like, hey, there's a fucking ghost, like bits to

[32:29] the viewer, and then be like, psych, no ghost at all.

[32:32] That might actually be true.

[32:33] Crazy person.

Dan McCoy

[32:34] Or maybe they were trying to sell the tie-in uninvited chalkboards.

[32:39] Sure.

[32:39] Which you bought one of.

[32:41] I thought it was going to be a collector's thing, but then it turned out that America

[32:46] hated it.

[32:46] Yeah.

S2

[32:47] Dan took a lot of notes during the movie on his uninvited chalkboard.

[32:52] Look, I've got to get my use out of that.

Stuart Wellington

[32:55] Yeah.

[32:55] I mean, it wasn't even that good of a chalkboard.

[32:57] No.

S2

[32:57] It's made out of plastic.

[32:58] The chalk won't stick.

Dan McCoy

[33:00] Yeah.

[33:00] It's not slate.

[33:01] So.

[33:02] Look, guys.

[33:03] I'm sorry.

[33:04] I didn't get the Consumer Reports issue about chalkboards.

[33:06] No.

[33:07] I apologize for not being a good consumer.

[33:10] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[33:11] I mean, it was just really uncomfortable.

Dan McCoy

[33:15] So, anywho.

[33:16] Yeah.

[33:17] I don't even know.

[33:18] I don't think that there's much more to say about this movie.

[33:20] There were a lot of bikinis.

[33:21] Yeah.

[33:22] I'll give it a thumbs up in the bikinis department.

[33:24] There was a scene where our lead actress was hanging around in a polka-dotted bra, which

[33:30] you don't usually see.

Stuart Wellington

[33:31] I mean, she was lying on bed, drugged, and then reaching for a butcher knife.

[33:36] I wouldn't consider that hanging out.

Dan McCoy

[33:38] By the way, as you pointed out, yeah, there was a, you know, Elizabeth Banks gets killed

[33:43] by a butcher knife because, I guess, there was just a butcher knife on the nightstand.

[33:51] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[33:51] Well, it was a bedtime butcher knife.

[33:53] Yeah.

S2

[33:54] I think a lot of people sleep with a butcher knife next to their bed.

Dan McCoy

[33:58] I would just say, if you were crazy daughters coming back from the sanitarium, maybe stop

[34:06] putting butcher knives on nightstands.

S2

[34:08] But if you consistently give your crazy daughter or stepdaughter a rack of lamb to eat as a

[34:15] midnight snack, then you need to give her something to cut that rack of lamb with.

[34:20] So, I think there's pros and cons to it.

Dan McCoy

[34:22] There's a lot of midnight meat eating.

[34:24] Also.

[34:25] A lot of midnight meat trains coming through.

Stuart Wellington

[34:29] Also.

[34:31] I think an important lesson we can all take from this movie is that if you have a daughter

[34:36] that's in a mental institution, possibly involved with the death of your wife because of an

[34:41] explosion.

[34:42] Leave her there.

[34:43] Yeah.

[34:43] Or if she comes home, why don't you make a little more effort to deal with her?

[34:48] Yeah.

[34:48] Because her dad seemed to really not care that much.

[34:50] Yeah, that's true.

[34:51] I mean, I'm not saying he was cold, but he didn't really make that much, there weren't

[34:55] a lot of scenes of him interacting.

S2

[34:56] Stuart, he had just finished his big book, so he's probably pretty concerned with his book.

Stuart Wellington

[35:03] I'm not a writer.

[35:05] Okay.

[35:07] But, I mean, come on.

[35:09] How long does it take to write a book?

[35:10] Like, a couple of days?

[35:12] Probably.

Dan McCoy

[35:13] Probably.

[35:14] But, you know, that's a couple.

[35:15] How many minutes are there in a day?

[35:17] I mean, if you figure if you can write a page a minute.

Stuart Wellington

[35:19] Yeah.

[35:19] It'll be done in no time.

[35:21] I mean, it's just telling a story.

[35:23] I mean, come on.

S2

[35:23] That's how Hemingway did it.

[35:25] Page a minute, done, send that to the publisher.

Dan McCoy

[35:28] Yeah, hammer it out.

[35:29] Yep.

[35:29] Get that shit done.

[35:30] Go back to drinking.

[35:31] Yeah, go back to petting your three-toed cats or whatever he has.

[35:34] Yep.

[35:35] Or just five-toed cats.

[35:36] I don't know.

S2

[35:37] There were some toes.

[35:37] There's either one fewer or one more.

[35:40] Go to the Keys.

Dan McCoy

[35:42] You can find out.

[35:43] Hang out with those cats.

[35:44] So, time for final judgments, I think.

[35:47] Okay.

[35:48] So, what do we do here?

[35:49] We make a final judgment on the movie, whether it was a good-bad movie, a bad-bad movie, or

[35:56] a movie that we actually liked in some way.

[36:00] John, where do you go with this?

[36:01] I'm going to definitely say that was a bad-bad movie.

S2

[36:04] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[36:06] You care to elaborate?

Stuart Wellington

[36:08] You know, I think...

[36:10] What specifically made it a bad-bad movie?

S2

[36:12] Well, so, I was thinking about the concept of, like, the ghost movie, right?

[36:16] Sure.

[36:16] And I can't remember what the name is.

[36:17] I think it's The Haunting, the Nicole Kidman remake of another movie that was...

[36:21] Oh, The Others?

[36:22] The Others.

[36:23] That's a great, like, reveal ghost movie.

[36:25] I'm not going to say what happens, because, you know, some people might not have seen it.

[36:30] But Darth Vader is Luke's father.

[36:32] Oh, wow.

[36:33] Oh, my God.

[36:34] And...

[36:34] I knew it.

[36:36] Yeah.

[36:37] But, no, that was, like, that was a really good reveal ghost movie, and I felt like that

[36:40] was something where I was invested in the characters, and I really enjoyed it.

[36:43] And this, I just didn't care about anybody or anything that was happening, and then it

[36:47] ended.

[36:47] And I thought, huh, this movie's over.

[36:51] Yeah, I...

Dan McCoy

[36:52] Yeah, I'll say bad-bad movie.

[36:54] I mean, I actually enjoyed watching this movie more than many, because, like, it was weird.

[37:00] It was, like, 80 minutes long.

[37:02] And it went along at a good...

[37:03] Yeah, it was 80...

[37:03] It was, like, it was so short, and there were women in it that were cute in some scenes

[37:10] and weird-looking in other scenes, but...

[37:12] Just like in life.

[37:13] Yeah.

[37:13] But that distracted me, at least.

[37:16] But, yeah, by and large, I would not recommend that anyone check it out.

Stuart Wellington

[37:23] Yeah.

[37:24] I knew going into it it was going to be some kind of a ghost movie.

[37:28] I knew I wasn't going to like it, and I was right.

Dan McCoy

[37:31] Oh, and by the way, can we say that A Tale of Two Sisters, a movie that many horror fans

[37:37] love, but Stuart and I agree, is a tremendously dull...

[37:44] Yeah, I'll back that up.

Stuart Wellington

[37:45] I mean, that's basically what this movie was, right?

[37:47] Yeah, this was a remake of the Korean...

[37:49] I don't remember it too well, because it was really boring.

[37:51] Yeah.

[37:51] And, yeah, I mean, I can't...

[37:53] I don't want to read a book when I watch a movie.

[37:56] Subtitles, come on.

Dan McCoy

[37:56] Get out of here.

[37:57] No, that's not what we're saying.

[37:58] If you're going to watch a Korean horror movie, watch something like The Host, where there's

[38:01] like a big, goofy monster.

[38:03] Yeah, thumbs up to that.

Stuart Wellington

[38:05] So, yeah, this is a bad, bad movie.

[38:07] And I don't know...

[38:09] I don't quite know how I feel that the movie totally...

[38:12] I hate unreliable narrators, and I don't quite know how I feel when it changed from being

[38:17] a crappy ghost story to a crappy, crazy killer movie.

[38:22] But, yeah, it wasn't very good.

[38:24] I didn't like it very much.

[38:26] Okay.

[38:27] Could have used more boobs.

[38:28] Okay.

[38:28] Yeah.

[38:29] Seeing as there were none in the film.

[38:31] I mean, it was PG-13.

[38:32] I mean, there could have been way...

[38:33] Like, if you're going to have a movie with corpses in bags, you could have stepped it up to

[38:37] an R rating.

S2

[38:38] Or at least increased the bus size of the girls in the bikinis so that you're seeing more

[38:42] boom without breaking the rating code.

[38:45] Absolutely.

[38:46] I agree with that.

[38:47] Just more skin.

[38:48] More skin.

Dan McCoy

[38:49] See, it's moments like these that I'm amazed at our dedicated female listenership.

Stuart Wellington

[38:53] And David Straithairn.

[38:55] Yeah.

[38:55] He could have gone topless.

[38:57] Or bottomless.

[38:58] You know, for the ladies.

[39:00] Sure.

[39:01] I mean, he and Matt could have had a game of, like, you know, like, touch football on the

[39:05] beach.

[39:06] Hide the pickle.

Dan McCoy

[39:06] He's ruggedly handsome in the fatherly sort of way.

[39:11] Matt.

[39:11] That's who I'm talking about.

[39:12] Okay.

[39:13] So this is the point in the podcast where we make our movie recommendations.

[39:20] A movie that you would say the audience should watch, say, instead of The Uninvited.

[39:26] And because this is, again, Shocktober, I'm going to go, I'm going to say that we should make

[39:32] some horror movie recommendations.

[39:35] Stuart clearly didn't walk in with anything.

[39:37] So I'm going to go with, I'm going to go to John first.

[39:40] I've got one.

[39:41] So you've got time.

S2

[39:41] You actually asked me earlier, and I didn't realize we were supposed to give good movie

[39:44] recommendations.

Dan McCoy

[39:45] No, it can be a bad movie that's actually enjoyable in its badness rather than something

[39:50] like The Uninvited, which is boring in its badness.

S2

[39:53] So the movie I was going to recommend is Satan's Blade.

[39:56] Good luck finding a copy.

[39:58] I stumbled upon it when I was 13 and I rented the movie Glory, starring Matthew Broderick

[40:04] and Denzel Washington.

[40:05] Got home, put it in the VCR, and it was, in fact, Satan's Blade.

[40:09] That's what's supposed to be.

Dan McCoy

[40:11] This is a sort of magical thing, by the way, that can happen in the days of VHS.

S2

[40:15] And my dad was at work, and I was like, well, I'm going to go definitely with Satan's

[40:18] Blade.

[40:20] Knife Murderer on the ski slopes.

[40:23] Very few actual stabbings, but a lot of bare breasts.

[40:30] So for a 13-year-old boy, you really, if you're a 13-year-old boy listening to The Flophouse,

[40:34] go rent that movie.

[40:36] Okay.

[40:37] Yeah, that sounds fair.

Dan McCoy

[40:39] I'm going to recommend a movie that actually stars a friend of mine, someone that you also

[40:48] know, Mr. John Kingman.

[40:49] Yes.

[40:50] I'm going to recommend the movie Sandman.

[40:53] Oh, I know that guy.

[40:54] Which is spelled S-ampersand-man.

[40:58] S-and-man.

[41:00] Yeah.

[41:00] But it's one of these, you know, it's one of these stupid spellings, we call them in the

[41:05] business.

[41:06] Cash.

[41:06] Where it means Sandman.

[41:08] And it's directed by J.T. Petty, a gentleman who I've met a couple of times, I don't know that

[41:15] well, but it's a nice guy who wrote, who directed some other horror movies, one called The Burrowers

[41:22] and one called Soft for Digging.

[41:25] But it is ostensibly a documentary about underground horror movies and people who are making very

[41:37] low budget horror movies that shade into the area of sort of like horror fetish films.

[41:43] And it also has commentary from a lot of sort of horror scholars.

[41:51] But there is another element of the film that I'm not going to ruin for people who haven't

[41:58] seen the film because it's best to be discovered on its own terms.

[42:07] But a good friend of mine is in the movie and that's all I'm going to say about that.

[42:12] But it's fun, it's genuinely creepy, and it's like 70 minutes long.

S2

[42:17] The New York Times actually gave it a very nice write-up that you shouldn't read because

[42:21] it also sort of gives away...

[42:22] Sort of spools things.

[42:23] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[42:23] Yeah.

[42:24] Yeah, I remember watching it with you in like a fucking like a basement or something.

Dan McCoy

[42:29] Yeah.

[42:29] That was actually, I think, the best way to see it.

[42:32] It was pretty awesome.

[42:32] Because you didn't...

[42:33] Yeah, you walk into it and you have no idea what it's going to be.

[42:36] Yeah.

[42:36] Yeah, I think that was because my friend Eric, he...

Stuart Wellington

[42:41] It was like four years ago.

Dan McCoy

[42:43] Well, the deal with the movie was it played at the Toronto Film Festival and it got some

[42:50] nice write-ups at the Toronto Film Festival, but as often happens with movies at film festivals,

[42:54] it just didn't get picked up for distribution.

[42:56] And so he's been looking...

[42:58] They've been looking for modes of distribution since then.

[43:02] And now it's finally, you know, gotten a DVD release and you can get it on Netflix.

[43:07] So, S. Ampersand Man.

[43:10] Sandman.

[43:11] My recommendation.

Stuart Wellington

[43:13] Oh, man.

[43:15] Yeah, I can't like...

[43:17] I've recommended so many horror movies on these things that I can't use my fucking brain

[43:21] Rolodex to think of all of them.

[43:23] Go-tos.

[43:24] I am...

[43:24] On kind of a similar vein, I watched a movie called The Last Horror Movie a little while

[43:32] ago, which is, you know, the movie begins like any dime a dozen horror slasher movie.

[43:43] And then, you know, it looks like the film's breaking or something or like somebody recorded

[43:47] over it.

[43:48] And it starts...

[43:50] It turns out that this guy has recorded over this VHS cassette and he's like a serial killer

[43:56] or something and he, you know, has recorded his movies of him killing people and then he

[44:02] like returns it to the video store.

[44:03] So, for you to find.

[44:06] I remember liking it enough.

[44:10] Yeah.

[44:10] So, go check it out.

[44:11] I can't remember how it ends, so I won't spoil it for you.

Dan McCoy

[44:14] I want to say on a similar vein, I remember when I was a kid reading a short story that

[44:18] was like about a guy who, you know, like he was like a violent criminal who like escaped

[44:22] from jail.

[44:24] And like, you know, it's this narrative story, but then it talks of like at the end it talks

[44:29] about how like this guy has... wants to prove himself to this other killer.

[44:35] Like, and he's going to do it by like killing someone at random.

[44:39] And he's inserted the story into like a magazine or a book or whatever.

[44:45] And like the idea is like, okay, this guy's following you as you're reading the story and

[44:49] he's going to kill you.

[44:50] And I have no idea what the name of this short story is.

[44:54] Like, it sort of haunted me for like years afterwards.

[44:56] So, if anyone...

[44:57] Literally haunted.

[44:59] If anyone recognizes what I'm outlining and knows the name of the story, you should

[45:04] write in...

Stuart Wellington

[45:05] Incident in the Old Creek Bridge.

Dan McCoy

[45:07] Yeah.

[45:07] That's what it's called.

[45:08] It's by Ambrose Bierce.

[45:09] It's actually about the Civil War.

S2

[45:13] Sure.

[45:14] Incident in Oglala, I think, is about the Indian reservation shooting.

[45:18] Mm-hmm.

[45:19] Sure.

[45:19] Feds.

Dan McCoy

[45:19] It's called The Necklace.

[45:21] Oh.

[45:21] It's by Guy de Maupassant.

[45:24] Yeah, I like it.

[45:25] The Necklace?

[45:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[45:27] If anyone has an idea, or if anyone just wants to write in, because we haven't gotten

[45:32] a lot of emails lately, write in to theflophousepodcast at gmail.com.

[45:38] And let me know, or just say something else that you want to say.

[45:43] Awesome.

[45:45] So, yeah, guys.

[45:46] Great.

[45:47] I think that's it.

[45:48] I've had a good time.

[45:49] Have you?

[45:50] No, not really.

[45:51] Okay.

[45:52] I enjoy myself greatly.

[45:53] Oh, that's cool.

[45:54] So, we should sign off.

[45:56] For The Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[45:59] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[46:01] And I've been John Kingman.

Stuart Wellington

[46:03] Good night.

[46:04] Yay!

[46:05] Spooky sounds!

[46:06] Spooky sounds!

S2

[46:19] This is going to be a problem that we all are deadpan, dry, bassy deliveries of things.

Stuart Wellington

[46:26] I can talk like this, guys!

S2

[46:28] People are going to listen to this and be like, one guy just sat in a room for the entire night

[46:32] talking to himself.

[46:33] One guy.

[46:34] One guy did all those voices back there.

[46:36] I know.

[46:36] Just one guy.

[46:36] That's the reveal.

The Flop House: Episode #67 - The Uninvited

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