The Flop House: Episode Thirteen - The Invasion

[0:00] On this episode of the Flophouse, we discuss Invasion, the only film to tackle the body-snatching menace.

[0:06] Other than, you know, all those other ones.

[0:30] So, you start with the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass, as if Gene Martin is hosting this episode of the Flophouse.

[0:43] This is the Flophouse Celebrity Roast.

[0:48] So, this is the first daytime recording of the Flophouse.

[0:52] Sure.

[0:53] I don't know whether that's going to affect the attitude.

[0:56] Maybe.

[0:57] The sound quality, the general...

[1:00] Possibly.

[1:01] Atmospherics.

[1:02] Atmospherics.

[1:03] Also, I will probably be doing minimal editing on this.

[1:06] So, I warned the listener ahead of time that you might be hearing a lot more ums and...

[1:11] General nonsense.

[1:13] Yeah, because the reason we're...

[1:15] Uncontrolled cursing.

[1:17] The reason we're doing a daytime recording is because Stuart has been in Baltimore recently running a wiretap, I assume.

[1:23] I can't talk about it.

[1:25] And next week, I'm going to be out of town on my first vacation in years.

[1:29] Where are you going, Dan?

[1:30] I'm going to San Francisco.

[1:32] Very nice.

[1:33] Or as I would say if I was Sulu in Star Trek IV, San Francisco.

[1:39] Which he did.

[1:40] That's the one with the whales, right?

[1:41] Yeah, the whale one.

[1:43] The one where the message is, killing whales is bad.

[1:48] I didn't know that before the movie when I was a kid.

[1:51] I actually had posters of whalers on my walls.

[1:56] You'd like to whaler trading cards.

[1:58] Whaler team beat.

[2:00] Bjorn Svensson is up to 70 whales this season.

[2:04] He's got a good cast to his harpoon.

[2:07] Sorry, my knowledge of whaling is based exclusively on one cursory reading of the...

[2:13] Moby Dick?

[2:14] Yeah, of the illustrated Moby Dick.

[2:16] I think that whaling is...

[2:17] Classic illustrated, I believe.

[2:18] It's pretty much the same now as it was at the time that Melville wrote...

[2:21] Probably.

[2:22] The classics illustrated version of Moby Dick.

[2:25] Melville, we like your book.

[2:27] We need you to condense it for this classics illustrated.

[2:30] All right, I am working as an anonymous civil servant.

[2:32] I will do it for you.

[2:34] That's a little bit of information about Melville's life.

[2:37] Good listener.

[2:38] I think that probably sunk into that one story of his that I can't remember.

[2:44] Bartleby the...

[2:46] Let's talk about the movie we actually watched.

[2:48] I'll save this for my American literature history podcast.

[2:51] So we watched the movie Awake, which I would say...

[2:54] No, wait, wait, wait, that's not what we watched there.

[2:56] No, we didn't watch it at all.

[2:57] Jesus fucking Christ.

[2:58] That shows how well the movie we did watch today sunk into your mind.

[3:01] I'm glad that this is the one I chose to do a little editing on.

[3:05] The Invasion, Daniel.

[3:07] The Invasion.

[3:09] Which is...

[3:12] Probably the highest star power of any film that we've watched.

[3:18] It starred Virginia Woolf and James Bond.

[3:20] Yes, and they were playing the characters Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in the movie.

[3:27] Hello, hello.

[3:29] In the roles of American woman and English doctor.

[3:32] Yeah.

[3:33] American woman with an inexplicable penchant for running into a bit of an Australian accent

[3:38] at moments of high stress.

[3:41] Give us some background on the Invasion.

[3:43] Well, it's the fourth cinematic remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[3:49] The fourth official one, even though you would argue that that concept has been stolen by a lot more movies.

[3:56] There was the Don Siegel version.

[3:59] There was the Philip Kaufman, the second one.

[4:03] The 70s one.

[4:04] And the Abel Ferrara one in the 90s.

[4:07] The directors are getting less and less famous as the movies go on.

[4:10] Yeah.

[4:11] To the point that I don't know the director of this one.

[4:13] Well, the thing about this movie is it was directed by a German director.

[4:18] It started out with a German director.

[4:19] I think it was the guy who did the movie Control.

[4:22] I'm not sure about that, so I could be giving false information over the medium of podcast.

[4:27] It was either him...

[4:28] Which I believe is an FCC findable violation.

[4:31] It was either him or Fritz Lang.

[4:33] Yeah.

[4:34] But his version apparently was too slow.

[4:38] Really?

[4:39] I can't imagine.

[4:40] Because this movie was incredibly slow.

[4:43] But they brought in, the Wachowski brothers brought in the person who did V for Vendetta to do reshoots.

[4:48] Oh, that makes sense because V for Vendetta was also very boring.

[4:51] Yeah.

[4:53] This film was, as they say, plagued by reshoots.

[4:56] This movie was plagued by the idea that exposition is inherently interesting.

[5:02] Much of the movie is people explaining how other people are being invaded and body snatched in the driest way possible.

[5:11] And it's like, normal viruses are this size, but this virus is this size.

[5:16] And it doesn't die when it's heated up to 700 degrees.

[5:19] Okay, fine.

[5:21] Can we get to some body snatching?

[5:23] Yeah, because the idea of heating up something to 700 degrees is really scary to me.

[5:28] I'm like, oh, shit, if I heated up an alien to 700 degrees, it would still be an alien?

[5:32] Well, what they're saying is, like, you could not not be snatched by, say, walking into a fire.

[5:39] That wouldn't save you.

[5:41] Yeah.

[5:42] Nice.

[5:43] Because I like to think that her thought process, Nicole Kidman's thought process, her first idea is like, oh, shit, somebody vomited alien shit all over me.

[5:52] I'm going to jump into a fire.

[5:53] That'll kill it.

[5:55] But the joke we made during the film was that this movie was rated PG-13 MD.

[6:00] Yeah.

[6:01] It meant a lot more to someone with an advanced medical degree.

[6:04] It was a really funny joke.

[6:06] It was better when we told it.

[6:08] Yeah, we laughed.

[6:10] Now, like in previous versions of the story, usually there's a pod of some kind that creates a duplicate.

[6:18] And that's where the phrase pod people comes from.

[6:21] Oh, I didn't know that.

[6:22] Thank you.

[6:23] Yeah.

[6:24] Well, this has been Science Fiction Facts.

[6:27] I'm Dan McCoy.

[6:28] If you have any other questions about the work of Finney or other science fiction greats, just let me know.

[6:33] Email me at elliottkalin at sciencefictiongrandmasters.blogspot.edu.

[6:41] Subject line query, and then the name of the author you'd like to ask me about.

[6:46] Yeah, but the thing is about...

[6:48] Everyone from Algis Budris to Roger Zelazny.

[6:53] Just right on in.

[6:57] I have a question about Stanislaw Lem.

[6:59] Sure.

[7:01] I've been wondering why our numbers have been going down, and I think I've discovered what it is.

[7:06] But, yeah, usually there's a vegetative pod sort of thing that actually creates a duplicate.

[7:13] And what are you laughing about, Stuart?

[7:17] Roger Zelazny's name is really funny.

[7:21] For other funny names of science fiction authors.

[7:24] I'm surprised that Algis Budris is not the name that you laughed at for Roger Zelazny.

[7:27] Well, because I don't even know that person.

[7:29] I don't think he made it up.

[7:30] No.

[7:31] He wrote a book called Who, which is very good, actually.

[7:33] It was made into a movie, actually, that we could watch sometime with Elliot Gould in it that I picked up a long time ago because it looks terrible.

[7:39] I think it's called Roboman.

[7:41] It sounds really good.

[7:44] But in this version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or shortened to The Invasion.

[7:48] The Invasion, because people don't like long titles.

[7:50] Yeah, modern people can't after two words.

[7:52] Frankly, I'm surprised they called it The Invasion and didn't just call it Invasion.

[7:56] Yeah.

[7:57] Or I.

[7:58] Yeah, or just I.

[7:59] I think it was originally.

[8:01] Because movies tend not to have the word the in the title anymore, when it used to be very commonplace.

[8:08] It was originally Invasion, but then when the Wachowskis came in and replaced the director, they were like, there's got to be a the in here.

[8:14] Invasion, that could be anything.

[8:17] It could be any invasion.

[8:18] This is a particular invasion, not just the idea of invasion.

[8:22] But yeah, here it was a virus.

[8:25] A virus that was spread by people puking on people.

[8:28] Unlike normal viruses.

[8:31] It's almost as if they wanted to make a zombie movie, but had already paid for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers rights.

[8:39] Yeah.

[8:40] I think Elliot brought this up, is that this movie does not fuck around.

[8:44] It goes right to the hey, these people are aliens premise, like right away.

[8:49] Like within five minutes, the presidential aide is approached by a girl carrying a chunk of space debris.

[8:56] Yes.

[8:57] Which he touches, because she's like, hey, look at this.

[9:00] And he's like, of course, little girl.

[9:01] Ow, I'm bleeding.

[9:02] And then he drops it.

[9:05] She hands it to him.

[9:06] It infects him.

[9:07] He's like, ow.

[9:08] He drops it.

[9:09] He turns around, walks away from the little girl without saying anything, without taking the space debris.

[9:14] This is all taking place, by the way, in case he didn't know it was space debris, is what the listener might be thinking.

[9:20] No, this is at a locked down site where a spaceship has crashed.

[9:24] And there are guys in hazmat suits everywhere.

[9:26] And he just came out of that.

[9:27] So really he should have known that she was carrying a piece of a spaceship.

[9:30] And I think I'd much rather watch a movie based around the adventures of this, like, really sassy little kid who sneaks into fucking a space shuttle crash site and is like, hey, let me pick up this chunk of space debris.

[9:42] Let me show it to this smart guy.

[9:45] But you were saying about the, like the movie doesn't set up the characters before they get involved in this, the body snatcher stuff.

[9:52] It's like body snatchers.

[9:54] Okay.

[9:55] Oh, we need some characters to get their bodies snatched.

[9:57] Throw them in.

[9:58] And then after about 20 minutes of dicking around.

[10:00] and it's like uh...

[10:01] clock's ticking

[10:02] let's get some fucking body snatching going on let's get some vomiting out of

[10:05] the yeah but by the body snatching

[10:08] a lot of

[10:08] uh... seeing nicole kidman at work

[10:11] yes uh... singer fix

[10:13] uh... breakfast for her child and uh... surprisingly revealing pajamas yeah

[10:18] but it's one of those movies were like

[10:20] there's no progression at all instead of her slowly realizing that they're aliens

[10:24] around

[10:25] it's almost as if

[10:26] it suddenly

[10:27] everybody in the world is an alien and it didn't do it what it just happened

[10:30] overnight and then later on when they when the problem is all that's like

[10:34] good everyone's not an alien anymore like there's no logic right and that's

[10:38] such a bad choice to because i think that in a horror movies

[10:41] really like the setup is what the best part like

[10:44] seeing the world slowly fall apart

[10:47] is the creepy thing

[10:49] not the actual like release of the chaos but the uh...

[10:53] but also the fact that

[10:54] she wrote once she discovers their aliens around she runs into maybe a

[10:58] dozen people at different places

[11:00] or alike

[11:01] don't show any emotion

[11:03] that's what they noticed will walk slower these are just innocent bystanders

[11:06] why are we following the last person on earth to learn about this

[11:10] it really seems like everyone else had that moment of discovery

[11:13] before the main character of the film did

[11:15] yet as i said at the time i'd think that this is moving by saying uh... there'll

[11:19] be a lot of thrilling scenes

[11:21] of nicole kidman walking very slowly and trying not to show emotion

[11:26] as she walks by aliens and uh... furtively looking around

[11:30] which is thrilling but the thing is like they could have actually

[11:34] tried to make an effort to make it seem like she's actually going through some

[11:37] effort to not show emotion

[11:39] but instead they're just like let's just do this normal scene of her walking from

[11:42] one place to another place

[11:44] she'll just be walking slower and her eyes will be moving more yeah it was

[11:48] it's very lazy stuff like i think i think the scene in uh... shown the dead

[11:52] where they're trying to pretend to be zombies is more thrilling than any scene

[11:56] in this movie well it's almost like they felt like the movie would get by on the

[11:59] gimmick of like

[12:01] shit everyone she knows is turning into an alien she's gotta pretend to be one

[12:04] but there are three other versions of this story it's like if

[12:07] peter jackson remade king kong and made it like an hour and a half long was like

[12:10] don't worry

[12:11] people who can get blown away by the idea of a giant ape climbing a building

[12:15] peter jackson this is the

[12:16] you know the third official king kong that with

[12:19] not having the sequels in the japanese movies like it's you know

[12:22] thinking of king kong vs godzilla, king kong escapes, where he fights mecha kong

[12:26] the best maybe the best scene involved in any king kong movie

[12:30] yeah well i think a robot monkey

[12:33] yeah well technically it's a robot gorilla

[12:36] all right elliot

[12:38] so it's a different type of animal completely

[12:41] a great ape yeah a great ape yeah all right

[12:44] well uh... this movie had a lot to teach us about society

[12:47] that's for sure

[12:49] uh... yes

[12:50] nice segue yeah well there's a guy

[12:52] a russian guy there's a russian guy and we know this because he was at a party

[12:55] where everyone had an accent

[12:57] his accent was a russian accent that party was taking place at a diplomat's house

[13:01] okay fair enough the city with this this whole movie takes place in washington dc

[13:05] and here's another before we get into that here's another flaw with the film is

[13:07] the movie is about

[13:09] a force of conformity coming in and turning people into basically robots

[13:13] and one it's hilarious because they all talk like robots

[13:16] which is something we didn't mention before but right like two seconds in

[13:19] like yeah the first character we see who gets turned into an alien who's the guy

[13:22] who holds the space debris

[13:24] the next scene we see of him he calls his ex-wife nicole kidman and he says

[13:27] hello

[13:28] i'm in the old house we used to live in

[13:30] i like humans and and and she was like and she's talked to daniel craig later on

[13:35] and she's like

[13:37] there was something different about him it's strange uh... he never

[13:40] and this is like

[13:41] he never calls me

[13:43] but that was what was

[13:44] what did you think about it

[13:45] like this is a man she's been married to and had a child with that's the most

[13:49] strange things you can find it but it but like

[13:51] it said it's about movie but conformity coming in and smoothing out all the

[13:54] differences between people

[13:55] so they choose

[13:56] washington dc a city that

[13:58] yes has its difference and it's like racial troubles things like that

[14:01] but visually

[14:02] is a very boring looking city

[14:04] in terms of

[14:05] it has these beautiful monuments but they don't look particularly

[14:08] it's not like

[14:09] uh... all this is a city with the crazy social life but i think it's that like

[14:13] the second version of the sentence in francisco which is

[14:15] since which is a city that has

[14:17] is very specific vibe of like anything goes in san francisco that's where you

[14:21] can be yourself

[14:22] but what do you think it's like

[14:24] well

[14:24] it's a goal of the the government

[14:26] you know there's no there's no just lost a bunch of listeners by the way well

[14:29] because my pros and consistent in your hands uh...

[14:32] uh... washington dc i don't nothing i don't like what you see that they could

[14:35] have picked a more

[14:37] a city that was

[14:38] conformity maybe is less

[14:40] we are hosted on the pentagon website that's where all our files are kept

[14:45] uh... but you're talking about uh...

[14:48] well now i see you make a point we should go back and say that

[14:50] in the original uh... the first version of invasion of the body snatchers which

[14:55] is uh... still my favorite even though i really like the seventies version

[14:58] uh... the thing about the

[15:00] people who are snatched is

[15:01] they're exactly the same

[15:03] yes just that because we are human we cannot recognize what is human another

[15:07] person and we don't like the people are like

[15:10] there's nothing different about these people but i know they're different and

[15:12] that was what was creepy about it but the idea that the

[15:16] nothing rational could be explained by what different

[15:19] but these guys basically they could be wearing signs that say alien across

[15:23] their chest and they march in

[15:25] and there's a scene early on nicole kidman is a uh... psychologist

[15:29] and she's

[15:30] with one of her

[15:32] patients and the woman's like

[15:33] my husband is in my husband

[15:35] and one of the example she gives is the husband comes home

[15:39] and the dog runs up to him barking

[15:41] and the husband breaks the dog's neck

[15:43] and nicole kidman's response is to

[15:46] up the dosage on the woman's medication

[15:49] rather than you know as you pointed out maybe

[15:51] giving the medication to her husband

[15:54] i think it was stewart

[15:55] it was mine

[15:56] well the podcast listeners can't don't know who i'm looking at when i say these

[16:00] things anyway that's it that's you can't like in the original i think it's in the

[16:03] original story

[16:04] and maybe it's in the first movie that mentions that uh...

[16:07] this person's uncle i think is different she can't pinpoint how and she checked

[16:11] to see if the uncle's birthmark on his neck or something like that was there

[16:14] and the person she's talking to who is a doctor says

[16:16] and it wasn't there and she goes

[16:17] no it was it was like

[16:20] she's scared that he's an exact duplicate in every way so she can't

[16:23] convince anybody

[16:24] whereas as you're saying in this

[16:25] you know the man came home and snapped his pet dog's neck like this is

[16:29] if it's at the very least a criminal offense that's cruelty to man

[16:32] not a very sly invasion no but that's the other thing is this is maybe the worst

[16:36] hidden invasion in the world to the point that

[16:39] they might as well have just sent in dreadnought spaceships and started

[16:42] blasting the white house like

[16:43] it was almost like the aliens from independence day decided to invade but

[16:46] they're like

[16:47] we're not very good at being secretive like let's just take everything over and

[16:51] like do this thing

[16:52] and they broadcast their motives to anybody who will listen

[16:55] you don't have to wear special sunglasses to see them

[16:58] no and they're not

[17:00] you have to get in a really awesome seven minute fight to put on those sunglasses

[17:04] and the way they change a lot of people is that they

[17:08] projectile vomit into their mouths

[17:10] so that this virus gets in and it's like

[17:11] really that's not a very sly way of

[17:14] invading

[17:16] they use the projectile vomit attack in the movie slither

[17:20] which i think it actually worked in that movie because that movie was really gross

[17:24] it wasn't trying to be sneaky in any way

[17:26] yeah this movie had this classy sheen over it

[17:29] they have big name actors and actresses they have james bond it was shot like it

[17:34] was michael clayton

[17:35] in terms of visual style like it looks like vomiting

[17:37] with michael clayton where there's a scene which by the way that would be a

[17:40] better version of michael clayton

[17:41] michael clayton where there's a scene where a bunch of people are vomiting all over each other

[17:46] george clooney is like ahhhh

[17:48] but also like the fact they made it they changed it so that these are this is a virus

[17:52] instead of pod people to go back to what you were talking about before

[17:54] and what was scary about the other ones is that

[17:56] in this one you change

[17:58] you become a different person but in the original ones

[18:00] you get murdered by your double and your double takes your life

[18:03] they hide pods in your basement

[18:05] the pods duplicate you and while you're sleeping the pod people come and kill you

[18:09] and take over

[18:10] so there's a great scene where kevin mccarthy

[18:12] takes

[18:13] goes down and finds his double being formed and it's almost finished and he has to

[18:16] stab it to death with a pitchfork

[18:18] and he's stabbing his own body basically not himself but he's stabbing a duplicate of his body

[18:22] whereas in this it's like

[18:24] uh... well i still have all my memories and i'm just

[18:27] i'm just sick i've got a flu i've got an alien flu i'm just not as emotive as i

[18:32] once was

[18:33] but there's no danger of you being replaced it's more a danger of you just

[18:36] you know you're going to be all different yeah well and there's a scene in this movie where

[18:39] nicole kidman has a dream where her double

[18:42] is going to kill her and that was actually shown

[18:44] in the trailer and i remember that like seeing that in the trailer i was like

[18:48] oh that's that's a great shot of like nicole kidman's like devil sneaking up behind her like

[18:52] swinging i forget what it was either a pipe or a crowbar or a wrench

[18:56] might have been a wrench and uh...

[18:58] that's just like part of her little dream

[19:01] it's uh... it's uh... like a curveball they throw at you so if you wanted a cat fight between two

[19:05] nicole kidman's

[19:07] you're at a loss there it's almost like they were trying they tried so hard and this

[19:10] happens a lot with

[19:11] what i like to call classy horror or classy science fiction

[19:14] where they tried to tone down

[19:16] the more

[19:17] some melodramatic aspects like that like a cat fight between two versions of the

[19:21] same person and it's like

[19:23] no this would make your movie immeasurably better if it had like more

[19:26] excitement in it the same way this was almost like the road to perdition of

[19:29] science fiction horror movies where it's like

[19:31] we want to make a movie that makes a point about

[19:34] conformity you know about how we would say we're sacrificing

[19:37] peace for our individual well let's get back to that except

[19:40] we want to make it as unexciting as possible

[19:42] because the uh...

[19:44] because the the russian diplomat at this party

[19:47] goes off on a like

[19:48] i would say three minute at least monologue

[19:51] at nicole kidman like they're apparently having a conversation but nicole kidman

[19:55] doesn't say anything

[19:57] until the end

[19:58] uh... she she has a little

[20:00] well you know she refutes what he says that everyone around it was like

[20:03] hopefully although it's a lot of the party

[20:06] well-done smashing

[20:08] you know i have a yes yes yes daniel craig's character you should

[20:12] marionette

[20:13] but i mean i don't know what we did spend a lot of that all right

[20:19] well bob you know i'm going to listen a lot

[20:22] but uh...

[20:23] but this question is a

[20:25] the humans are a warlike creature who always will will will fight

[20:32] there's no way

[20:33] in my country but in your country

[20:37] and nicole kidman was like oh yeah

[20:40] i've got a shrimp on the barbie

[20:43] you're listening to funny voices

[20:46] stereotypical accents the podcast

[20:49] but um... good day mate

[20:54] but no i was in for a little way

[20:57] which was

[20:58] faraday the best film

[21:01] now she now she's a cockney

[21:04] but um... so what we're we're saying is that basically

[21:08] he states the theme of the movie at length almost as if

[21:11] it's always was it was almost looking at the viewer when he says that it would

[21:14] better be better to just let me turn the camera said

[21:17] audience i'm telling you this

[21:19] what do you think it's like the end of uh... the return of the king animated

[21:23] movie where gandalf looks to the audience is like

[21:26] maybe you have a little hobbit in you

[21:30] and you're like

[21:30] gross

[21:32] are you implying that i'm fucking a hobbit

[21:36] that reminds me of my favorite movie my favorite line in uh...

[21:38] godzilla two thousand which i'm sure you guys remember well which is at the end

[21:42] godzilla destroys the alien that basically

[21:45] tried to take over godzilla's territory

[21:47] and godzilla is walking away from the battle and destroying much of tokyo

[21:51] he's literally smashing buildings with his feet and shooting fire at them

[21:54] and the little kid says to the g-force scientist

[21:58] why does godzilla save us all time after time and he says

[22:02] perhaps there's a little bit of godzilla in all of us and it makes no sense also

[22:06] godzilla is basically just defending his turf

[22:08] and then this is as he's killing innocent people and then they literally do the end question mark

[22:14] it's my favorite

[22:16] ending maybe of all time it is set up for godzilla final wars in which

[22:19] godzilla and minya

[22:21] basically forgive america for atom bombing japan in a complicated way

[22:26] well that's only right i mean

[22:28] i mean he was created by the atom bomb i don't know if you guys have seen godzilla final wars

[22:32] it's the movie that involves

[22:34] monsters fighting

[22:35] but if they cut to a scene where rodan attacks new york

[22:38] and it's like a stereotypical new york in the eighties there's like

[22:41] is it shot in toronto it looks like it was but there's also like a cop

[22:46] arguing with a pimp wearing a hat with a feather in it

[22:48] with around an eighties car like it feels like a scene from

[22:52] like you know trading places and all that

[22:55] then rodan flaps his wings

[22:57] and the pimp's hat flies off

[22:59] and you hear this sound effect

[23:01] when the hat flies off

[23:03] and there are like all these matrix style fights in the movie and like

[23:06] there's this very big message about forgiveness at the end and the atomic

[23:10] you know destruction to japan but you do hear a hat fly off with a zing sound effect

[23:15] oh it's so good it sounds really good now the invasion

[23:19] the invasion almost feels like the science fiction movie that would

[23:24] have been made if everybody involved in making it was actually a pod person

[23:28] like that's about how exciting it was

[23:31] yeah well

[23:32] i really think that they directed the actors to not emote

[23:36] even before the pod people started taking over the

[23:40] the director was like

[23:41] oh now it'll be a really subtle

[23:43] uh...

[23:44] deep uh... message about how we're already pod people

[23:47] but it just made it really dull

[23:49] but also like uh...

[23:50] one goes against the theme of the movie but to get back to what you were saying about the

[23:53] russian guy stating that

[23:55] we're all monsters we're all animals underneath

[23:58] the pod people take over and world peace happens instantly

[24:01] we find this out on cnn

[24:04] basically there's like

[24:06] twenty minutes or so or half an hour of just like

[24:09] running around running around and then like in the background of a scene

[24:12] we see cnn on

[24:14] and we see that world peace has happened now that the pod people have taken over

[24:18] and then another like long chase scene and then at the end we discover that

[24:22] oh once the pod people are defeated

[24:24] everything goes back to normal

[24:26] but in between there's no there's nothing in reinforcing the theme at all

[24:29] nicole kidman looks

[24:31] at the looks almost at the camera

[24:33] and remembers the russian guy saying those lines about

[24:37] we're all animals inside and it's literally like

[24:40] here's the moral in case you didn't hear it the first time

[24:44] if you went to go to the bathroom during that scene this is what it looks like

[24:47] at the end of the film yes cnn is on again smash cut credits

[24:51] i don't think cnn is on i think daniel craig who's been healed is reading a

[24:54] newspaper that's the other thing

[24:56] he probably has a cane sitting right next to him yeah daniel craig

[24:59] the first time we see him nicole kidman i guess gets in his car and he says

[25:03] did you see this

[25:04] eighty three more people killed in iraq when will it end

[25:08] okay so that's his hobby is that he's a pessimist

[25:10] he never says anything like that again until the very end of the movie when

[25:13] it's like

[25:14] again when will this end seventy five more people killed in iraq

[25:18] cut to a uh... quiet shot of nicole kidman looking off into space

[25:24] thoughtfully

[25:25] and russian being the russian uh... words coming back to her

[25:29] and then as you say

[25:30] completely cut to black

[25:32] and it is the most abrupt strange ending

[25:36] i literally said what about eight times

[25:39] i believe instead of cutting to black it actually cut to some excellent computer

[25:43] graphics of cells and let's talk about these computer graphics there's a lot

[25:47] like

[25:48] throughout the entire movie i mean it was like anytime there's anything that

[25:51] wouldn't just be a person standing around

[25:53] they're like hey why don't we wouldn't that be better if we use a computer like

[25:57] if somebody's like sick and covered in alien goo

[26:00] instead of doing it with practical effects it's all fucking computer shit

[26:03] and it looks really fake but also doesn't look gross it actually looks

[26:07] really like really clean alien goo

[26:10] you have to understand as you said this is basically like a medical horror film

[26:14] so they got the team from house to do it they're just like you know the way we do it

[26:17] over in house is we uh... cgi every disease that sounds good that makes sense

[26:22] i was thinking about i remember a long time ago i was here watching the eighties

[26:25] version of the blob

[26:27] and

[26:28] one of the things that's so great about it is that there are a lot of you know

[26:30] their composite effects and things but it's basically like

[26:33] real goo and real puppets they don't have computer effects because it was like

[26:36] nineteen eighty-one

[26:37] five or six and computers are only green and black

[26:42] back when everything was wireframe

[26:45] it was so much it's so much grosser than if it was like a

[26:48] computer animated blob

[26:50] where it would be like oh okay

[26:51] that looks really smooth like it does like

[26:54] if you're going to have alien goo all over people it should be like chunky and messy

[26:58] and like sticky

[26:59] but this looked real this looked really like you could peel it off and people do

[27:02] that at times in the movie

[27:03] like nicole kidman literally

[27:05] like peels off spit that's on her face

[27:08] the first like

[27:09] she takes

[27:11] the uh... this piece of goo

[27:14] to uh... jeffrey wright who is a uh... reunited with his casino royale co-star

[27:18] daniel craig yeah who's a scientist who eventually uh... solves the alien problem

[27:23] she's literally

[27:24] handed

[27:25] the first piece of evidence

[27:27] like she's like

[27:29] what is this little

[27:30] piece of looks like wax paper except for there's uh... like veins in it and shit

[27:35] and she's like

[27:36] well even though i found this at a halloween party and this could be like a

[27:40] halloween thing i'm gonna take it to jeffrey wright and he's gonna put it

[27:43] under the microscope and solve everything she did find it on a creepy kid who had just survived a dog attack

[27:47] that's true

[27:49] yeah who was dogs don't like aliens

[27:53] that's how you know that's the first time you know that he's an alien because dogs hate him

[27:56] and because he was carefully organizing his candy or he has OCD at that point yeah the aliens are more

[28:01] obsessive compulsive things earth candy is delicious yay humans these sugary comestibles are

[28:08] quite enjoyable to myself they would love these back on my home planet

[28:11] i mean

[28:12] alien land which is earth

[28:16] the place that you live also our home planet gotta go

[28:22] they're robots milky way that's the name of the place you live in there was this there was also this

[28:26] theme of if you become an alien you dress very like for business

[28:30] everyone who was an alien wore very nattily dressed yeah wore very good very very

[28:34] expensive suits or pantsuits if you're a woman and when the kid comes back as

[28:38] almost one of the leaders of the alien this obsessive compulsive candy kid he

[28:41] comes back looking like leonard dimoy from in search of with like a blazer

[28:45] over a turtleneck

[28:46] or like a mini bond villain

[28:49] by the way have you ever done a bond movie where the villain was a kid

[28:52] no that's a great idea that'd be really awesome

[28:56] let's don't do not send this podcast out

[28:58] okay i don't want anyone stealing this great idea

[29:00] oh and uh... maybe we'll drop our other million dollar idea at some point

[29:05] but the thing i wanted to say though about that kid was uh... perhaps the

[29:08] best thing about the movie other than nicole kidman's sweater

[29:11] was um... the scene where nicole kidman

[29:14] threw a child across the room into a bed and almost broke his neck like he was an

[29:19] evil alien child but still to see a oscar-winning actress

[29:23] nicole kidman throw a small child around is pretty entertaining

[29:26] it's like nicolas cage in wicker man where he keeps punching women exactly

[29:31] exactly like that

[29:33] there's a scene let's talk about this

[29:35] there were so many scenes in the movie that could have been just much better if

[29:38] they had been set up

[29:39] that's like the right way that was a scene nicole kidman is taken into

[29:43] it looked like a very nice business hotel like i'm not quite sure what it

[29:46] was or an apartment like a very fancy apartment building

[29:50] and she's and her by the alien leaders who are a kid her ex-husband and some

[29:54] woman that i don't remember if we've met before

[29:57] and she's brought to a room and her son is there

[30:00] She's been looking for her little boy son.

[30:02] And the two of them are staring at each other.

[30:05] And both of them, it seems, have been pretending to be aliens.

[30:08] And neither one wants to tip themselves off

[30:10] if the other one is an alien.

[30:12] There's this moment that could have been great tension of,

[30:14] like, neither of them trust the other,

[30:16] even though the thing they want most in the world

[30:18] is to be with that person, the boy with his mother

[30:20] and the mother with her son.

[30:22] But neither of them wants to make the first move,

[30:24] because if the other one's an alien, then they're screwed.

[30:27] But instead, it just kind of happens for a moment.

[30:29] And then the mother refers to an in-joke

[30:31] about pickles that came up earlier in the film.

[30:33] And it's over.

[30:35] But we also didn't know what was going on with the kids.

[30:37] So it should have been, like, I guess

[30:39] they're going for suspense with the audience.

[30:40] But it might have been stronger if we

[30:42] knew the kid was pretending.

[30:43] You're going for the Hitchcock thing,

[30:45] where it's better if you know that there's

[30:47] a bomb under the seats.

[30:48] If you know all the pieces, yeah, exactly.

[30:49] Also, the fact that that's one of those things that someone

[30:51] read Screenwriting 101, or I guess,

[30:53] like, Sid Mead's book or something,

[30:54] and then didn't do much more than that.

[30:56] Because it was like, they did the screenwriting

[30:58] trick of, oh, they used that in-joke from earlier

[31:01] to find out if they were still human or not.

[31:03] But that in-joke appeared just once.

[31:06] And it appeared so obviously that we

[31:08] knew it must have been a clue.

[31:09] Or the same way that Daniel Craig's pessimism

[31:12] about the news showed up once at the beginning.

[31:15] There were these matched pairs of moments.

[31:17] Much like every time Nicole Kidman remembers her son

[31:20] that she loves, all the memories happen

[31:22] to be times that we've seen them in the movie.

[31:24] Earlier in the film, yeah.

[31:25] Like, oh, it's the little kid lying next to his trousers.

[31:29] They did have a weird moment, too,

[31:30] early on when Nicole Kidman figured out

[31:32] what was going on, where she flashed back

[31:35] to things that happened earlier.

[31:36] And was like, huh, there must be an alien invasion.

[31:39] However, it wasn't like a real puzzle film,

[31:45] where, oh, all these flashbacks.

[31:47] Finally, the picture comes into sharp relief.

[31:50] Instead, it was just like, oh, remember

[31:52] all those moments of foreshadowing earlier?

[31:54] They were foreshadowing something.

[31:55] Remember that?

[31:55] It wasn't the usual suspects, is what you were saying.

[31:59] Yeah.

[31:59] Oh my god, there were fucking aliens?

[32:01] When those people were ominous.

[32:03] I thought they were just weird.

[32:03] When those people were ominous and trying to vomit on me,

[32:06] it turned out that they were aliens.

[32:08] Also, when they sounded like aliens.

[32:11] When those people I knew started talking like robots,

[32:13] it turns out there's something wrong with them.

[32:15] But they weren't robots.

[32:17] They were aliens.

[32:18] But they talked, you know, like that.

[32:20] They talked in robot caves.

[32:21] If they were robots, I would love it

[32:23] if, like, aliens came from outer space

[32:25] and they replaced us all with robots.

[32:27] Well, that seems like such a waste of resources.

[32:29] Yeah.

[32:30] I don't know what the point would be, then.

[32:32] They don't have to fuck with us.

[32:33] Aliens, you could use these.

[32:34] Aliens are practical jokers.

[32:36] Why are you wasting all this steel and, like, circuitry

[32:38] on our planet?

[32:39] Why do you assume they're made out of steel, dude?

[32:40] They could have been plastic.

[32:41] That's true.

[32:42] Well, why are they wasting all that plastic?

[32:43] That's not going to buy our data.

[32:45] Like data?

[32:45] Yeah.

[32:46] Data's plastic, right?

[32:47] Is he?

[32:47] I don't know.

[32:48] I don't know.

[32:49] He had a, at heart, he was as human as you or I.

[32:53] Oh, right.

[32:54] Speaking of which, Brent Spiner, data as Brent Spiner,

[32:57] that's one of these few.

[32:58] Speaking of which, out to sea star, Brent Spiner.

[33:00] That's one of the few celebrities

[33:01] people have told me I look like.

[33:03] I'm like, thank you.

[33:04] Thank you for saying that I look like Brent Spiner.

[33:06] I kind of see it a little bit in the nose.

[33:08] I see a lot now that you mention it.

[33:09] Now that you mention it, I never would have thought that.

[33:11] Well, you know, it's weird.

[33:12] You know, you always get, like, you always get the spectrum.

[33:14] You know, like, if people, I don't

[33:16] know if you've had this experience,

[33:16] but I've had the experience that, like, you know,

[33:18] people will be like, oh, you look like this person.

[33:20] You look like this person.

[33:20] And then there are people that you're, like, really, like,

[33:22] happy to be told that you look like.

[33:24] And then people are like, fuck you.

[33:26] You know, like, on my, like, good side, people will be like,

[33:28] oh, you kind of remind me of John Cusack.

[33:30] Or, oh, you got a bit of a, like, a David Duchovny thing.

[33:32] And then, like, it's like, Brent Spiner or Kevin Spacey.

[33:36] That's right.

[33:37] People tell me they're like, oh, you look like Casey Affleck.

[33:39] And other times they'll be like, you know who you look like?

[33:42] You know the guy from the Goonies, like the retarded guy?

[33:44] That's who you look like.

[33:46] But that's more like little kids say that.

[33:48] Like, little kids used to say that around the time

[33:49] Goonies came out.

[33:50] Maybe they were just making fun of me.

[33:52] No, I think it's because your eyes are really weird.

[33:54] You've got that weird, like, ear that sticks out.

[33:57] You're also strangely muscular.

[33:59] You know Pinhead from that new movie Hellraiser?

[34:01] You look like him.

[34:02] What?

[34:03] I did have pins in my head at the time, though, so.

[34:06] Well, logically.

[34:07] Right through your shirt, that's the only thing.

[34:09] Oh, that's one thing that we said.

[34:10] You look kind of like that.

[34:11] They couldn't go to sleep.

[34:13] As you said, this was, like, a weird holdover

[34:14] from the original version.

[34:15] Because, like, it doesn't make sense.

[34:17] It was almost like the same way that humans have a vestigial

[34:20] tail inside their asses.

[34:22] This movie had little elements from the original story

[34:25] that were kind of like appendices.

[34:27] They were there, but they didn't serve any discernible function

[34:30] anymore.

[34:30] Like, you can't go to sleep.

[34:32] Well, why?

[34:32] Because the virus won't attack you if you're not sleeping?

[34:34] Like, it doesn't make sense.

[34:35] It's good science, dude.

[34:36] Well, yeah.

[34:37] Actually, sleep is better for you when you have a virus.

[34:40] White blood cells go to sleep.

[34:41] But, like, when you have a virus,

[34:42] when you have sickness, you're supposed to sleep.

[34:44] No, Elliot, that's why you're sick all the time.

[34:46] Well, when you go to sleep.

[34:48] I guess I should be out running 10Ks when I'm sick.

[34:51] Yeah, when you go to sleep, dude, that's when the virus

[34:54] sees you're sleeping and then pounces.

[34:56] That's when the virus tiptoes out

[34:58] from behind your blood cells and attacks you.

[35:00] And I was saying that I would like it if the virus looked

[35:03] like little Freddy Krueger's going through the guy's system.

[35:06] Like, oh, we've come up with an animation mock-up here

[35:08] to show you exactly how the alien virus works.

[35:12] I put a little hat on him.

[35:14] He's got this really, really fashionable striped sweater.

[35:18] No, we don't have any research.

[35:20] He says strangely homoerotic jokes when attacking you.

[35:22] We don't have any research to prove that the virus says

[35:24] one-liners afterwards.

[35:26] But we think it's pretty likely.

[35:28] Yeah.

[35:29] Oh, man, the research jumps really fast in this movie, too.

[35:33] Yeah, well, that's the thing.

[35:35] They should get Jeffrey Wright on the AIDS problem,

[35:38] because he found a cure for alien virus in roughly 48 hours.

[35:43] Yeah.

[35:44] Including he-

[35:45] And then it took-

[35:45] And while he was saddled with sassy Eddie Murphy, too.

[35:48] Yeah, I was just going to say, it took another 48 hours

[35:50] to cure the virus globally.

[35:53] Nice.

[35:54] The thing about it is that he not only figured out

[35:56] a way to solve the problem and also show people the problem,

[35:59] he also set up some kind of an animation

[36:02] so that you could see, like, it's

[36:04] that fucking whole movie computer thing where they're

[36:06] like, most people have never seen a computer, right?

[36:08] OK, let's just show this really cool CGI animation thing.

[36:11] Let's just say that computers do that.

[36:12] Yeah, and it's like, what, like Swordfish and, like,

[36:15] every other-

[36:16] I had the guys at DreamWorks mock this up for me.

[36:18] This is just to show the-

[36:19] Or hackers where they're, like, actually, like,

[36:21] flying through, like, CGI blocks.

[36:23] They're like, oh, this is what the internet looks like.

[36:25] It's a bunch of colored blocks.

[36:26] Fisher Stevens is trying to stop us.

[36:29] I think he's an Indian.

[36:30] We shouldn't mention anything about Fisher Stevens.

[36:31] He's skateboarding.

[36:31] Yeah, it takes Stewart off into his own Fisher Stevens world.

[36:36] He looks like a turtle.

[36:37] Thank you.

[36:38] That was my point.

[36:39] Thank you for proving my point.

[36:40] But, um, uh, Stewart, you mentioned before Daniel Craig

[36:45] in a cane, and I think that the audience has been spending

[36:47] this whole time being like-

[36:48] Understandably, yeah.

[36:49] What?

[36:50] What was that about a cane?

[36:51] And there wasn't even a fucking cane, but we'll get to that.

[36:53] Yeah, there was something that we called that didn't happen.

[36:56] So, you know, there's the moment in all of these movies

[37:00] where the love interest gets turned,

[37:03] and that's the shocking, like, sad moment.

[37:06] And in this film-

[37:07] She has no one to turn to.

[37:09] Yeah, Nicole Kidman is protecting her kid,

[37:11] and Daniel Craig shows up, and he's turned.

[37:12] He was her rock.

[37:13] In the first one, in the first version

[37:15] of the Biosnatcher's movie, that's one of the scenes

[37:17] I like a lot, although when I saw it with an audience,

[37:18] people laughed uproariously at it,

[37:20] where he kisses his girlfriend and then realizes

[37:23] that she does not kiss him back,

[37:25] and that's when he notices that she's turned,

[37:27] and it horrifies him.

[37:29] Right.

[37:29] And now that he's had this contact with it also,

[37:32] and audiences nowadays find that hilarious,

[37:34] but it's like a really good way of doing it.

[37:36] They find the idea of kissing hilarious.

[37:39] That just happened back in the 50s.

[37:41] It was an audience of 11-year-olds also.

[37:45] Daniel Craig shows up, and he's threatening Nicole Kidman.

[37:48] And she-

[37:49] But very calmly.

[37:49] Yeah, Nicole Kidman shoots everyone around Daniel Craig,

[37:53] with perfect aim, by the way.

[37:54] She is a hell of a marksman with that handgun.

[37:56] Yeah, it was a lot of point of view of the gun.

[38:00] Yeah, it was like video games.

[38:02] I was surprised they didn't have a scene earlier

[38:04] in the movie where she was trying to hit a target,

[38:06] and she was just off, and they were like,

[38:09] gonna need more practice than that one, Dr. Bunnell.

[38:11] You know, someday I'll be able to shoot well.

[38:15] And then they get to that scene, it's like,

[38:16] is she gonna be able to shoot these people properly?

[38:18] Her aim's not that good.

[38:20] But her solution with Daniel Craig,

[38:21] who she still loves even though he's an alien,

[38:23] and she hopes that he can be cured,

[38:25] is to shoot him in the knee, Terminator 2 style.

[38:27] Yeah.

[38:28] And then leaves him.

[38:29] And we don't see him again until the ending.

[38:31] And I was always thinking like, okay, you know,

[38:33] she's like writing a note to herself on her hand.

[38:35] She's like, all right, remember, after cure is found,

[38:39] go back to pharmacy, get Daniel Craig,

[38:41] who I left bleeding to death on the floor.

[38:44] And we do, sure enough.

[38:44] And that's a painful wound.

[38:46] To be wounded in the knee is extremely painful.

[38:48] Yeah.

[38:49] And I thought that they were gonna deal with it

[38:49] by showing Daniel Craig with a cane later on in the movie.

[38:54] So that audiences were like, oh, yeah, in the knee,

[38:56] that's right.

[38:57] I hope they're in the wrong.

[38:58] I remember, that was something that happened

[38:59] earlier in the film.

[39:02] They would have beautiful babies.

[39:03] But they dealt with it by not dealing with it at all.

[39:06] They showed Daniel Craig sitting down at the table

[39:09] with a newspaper, and they cut to that abrupt ending.

[39:11] But also, here's the thing, is they cure,

[39:14] here's the difference again between the old-

[39:15] Well, Jeffrey Wright found a cure

[39:17] for a shot in kneecap, by the way.

[39:19] Jeffrey Wright, that's a Simpsons joke.

[39:20] We'll revive you as soon as we have a cure

[39:22] for 17 stab wounds in the back.

[39:24] How are you guys doing?

[39:25] We're up to 15.

[39:28] It was a virus, and Jeffrey Wright cures it,

[39:31] which means Nicole Kidman is a murderer.

[39:33] She's a mass murderer who's killed

[39:35] somewhere in the realm of 20 people in this movie,

[39:37] either shooting them, hitting them with their car,

[39:38] and then sending them through the display window

[39:41] of what was the name of that store, Lucy?

[39:43] Lucy, yeah.

[39:43] And at one point, I think, I don't remember,

[39:47] like her car's on fire, and she's driving into people.

[39:51] So I wonder if she has this on her conscience,

[39:53] that she's-

[39:54] Well, that's what she's thinking about at the end.

[39:56] The final monologue, like,

[39:57] I can't believe I killed all those people.

[39:59] She's a-

[40:00] and i heard a little bit later on that day by the way i need you to pick me up

[40:03] from court later unless they're taking me to jail in which case i don't need

[40:06] you to pick me up

[40:07] mhm

[40:08] so everyone else managed to make it through the alien invasion without killing anyone

[40:12] nicole kidman

[40:13] he was bloodthirsty

[40:14] and also and speaking of

[40:16] i remember this because it was around the same time speaking of bad cgi

[40:19] uh... jeffrey wright is flying around in a helicopter with some soldiers

[40:22] relaying to nicole kidman where she needs to go

[40:25] uh... much like a character in a video game would talk to you when you're on

[40:29] on the way to where you're supposed to drop the hookers off at grand theft auto

[40:32] but uh...

[40:33] turn right here the guys are getting nervous

[40:37] it's one of the worst cgi helicopters i've seen in a long time

[40:41] yeah it was really awesome

[40:42] okay we've talked way too long by the way so i gotta

[40:45] i gotta cut us off because uh...

[40:47] we didn't even talk about snatched

[40:48] no we'll save that, save that for your own blog

[40:51] maybe we'll put that in a movie minute or something

[40:54] but uh... so uh... final judgments quickly

[40:57] uh... is this a movie that you would uh... not recommend at all, a movie that you would

[41:02] recommend as a good bad movie or a movie that you kind of liked a little bit

[41:06] uh... who's going first

[41:07] uh... i would say i

[41:10] would not recommend it at all because this is kind of similar to awake and it was so

[41:13] passionless that

[41:16] there was not a lot to

[41:17] to latch onto

[41:19] it was very and also like michael clayton in that way

[41:22] this took place in a world where there were pod people but

[41:24] everyone had no emotions so it was very hard to although you do see uh... i don't know if

[41:29] stuart was going to mention this you do see

[41:31] nicole kidman wearing basically a see-through shirt at one point so you know that's

[41:34] yeah we can see that elsewhere

[41:37] yeah i'm gonna keep this short and sweet uh... this movie was a piece of shit don't watch it

[41:42] P.U.

[41:43] yeah i was gonna like there was a point early on when i was like

[41:47] you know i would watch this on like a late night like it's glossy it's you know

[41:51] but then as it progressed it just got more and more just

[41:55] straight-up dull

[41:56] yeah very dull

[41:57] and then the absurdly truncated ending came

[42:01] so i think the editor might have fallen asleep

[42:03] surprise surprise and his head fell on the delete rest of movie button

[42:08] and so that was all there was

[42:10] man they really should really not put those on those avid machines

[42:13] i don't know why they do

[42:15] so many lost films

[42:18] so many of

[42:19] orson welles classics

[42:22] because he was editing them on an avid

[42:24] where's the internal consistency in your joke dan

[42:27] fair enough

[42:29] that's how they lost eric von stroheim's greed

[42:31] in the avid

[42:32] they digitized all the footage

[42:34] you're a dick

[42:36] you're just a dick to me

[42:37] just when it comes to editing jokes

[42:39] alright

[42:39] let's move on to movies that we have seen recently and we would recommend or

[42:43] at least have something

[42:44] to say about if nothing else

[42:46] so uh... i went first let's go to stewart

[42:50] i went and saw paranoid park the other night uh... the gus van zandt uh...

[42:55] skateboarder movie

[42:57] and unlike previous skateboard movies i've seen like the skateboard kid with

[43:01] the talking skateboard

[43:04] this movie did not have a talking skateboard

[43:06] surprising choice for gus van zandt

[43:08] no talking skateboard

[43:10] i was expecting a talking skateboard possibly with like a wisecracking brooklyn

[43:13] accent

[43:14] but instead i got uh...

[43:17] i don't know like a phasma phantasmagorical dream uh... dreamlike film

[43:23] and uh... however it was pretty good and about halfway through it

[43:27] there's a scene where a dude is cut in half and is crawling around with his guts

[43:30] hanging out which was awesome

[43:33] so thumbs up

[43:35] yeah it seems like uh...

[43:37] seems like that's made just for you

[43:38] yeah

[43:39] well i mean they could have used a talking skateboard

[43:43] then it would have been made for you

[43:45] a sassy skateboard

[43:47] at that point the guy gets cut in half and the skateboarder goes

[43:48] whoa that looks like it oi

[43:51] wait a minute

[43:51] you can talk you got that right you know something like that

[43:55] you and me buddy

[43:56] hey let's get out of here

[43:59] wheels don't fail me now

[44:01] whoa whoa whoa whoa

[44:03] he drives away

[44:04] basically turned into jabber jaw at that point

[44:07] then they're in a band the skateboard's playing drums it's awesome

[44:12] there's a guy with a snidely whiplash mustache i have to get my hands on that skateboard

[44:17] the guy who's cut in half is playing keyboard

[44:19] we just wrote

[44:20] top half is playing keyboard and bottom half is playing

[44:24] like tambourine or something like that

[44:26] i want to see this movie so bad

[44:27] and we'll call it talking skateboard

[44:30] talking skateboard 2

[44:34] oh my god uh... i

[44:37] i saw a lot of good movies recently

[44:40] i'll recommend one and i'll just sit there like i have

[44:42] two short things to say about two other movies that are just like parts of those

[44:46] movies but um...

[44:47] i watched uh... ms forty five speaking of uh... abel ferrara who uh... made the

[44:52] nineties version of invasion of the body snatchers

[44:55] uh...

[44:56] you know uh... i guess

[44:58] was that early eighties or or is it late seventies i don't it's uh...

[45:02] exploitation movie about a woman who um...

[45:06] it basically gets raped twice in one day although

[45:09] it's the most

[45:10] for a movie where there's two rape scenes it's the most sensitive and quick

[45:16] version of the scenes like it's not it's you know like it's not like it's not

[45:19] irreversible yeah it's not it's not like

[45:21] there's not even any nudity it happens very fast the whole point is just the

[45:25] impact on her it's not like

[45:27] hey check out this rape scene you know i which would be terrible obviously but

[45:30] um...

[45:31] but the point is it is what it said on the poster for the film

[45:35] so it's it's poor advertising but they were quoting roger ebert that's the thing

[45:39] that was directly from his review the point of the thing is like that just

[45:43] sets up the idea that this is a this is a damaged woman who goes out and then

[45:47] uh... basically avenges

[45:49] herself upon like

[45:51] at first any men who are clearly like a threat

[45:56] and then just

[45:57] men in general but the interesting thing about it is for an exploitation movie

[46:00] of this kind

[46:02] it is so clearly on the woman's side even when she goes crazy even like when

[46:06] she goes crazy just like shooting random guys

[46:08] it's like on the woman

[46:09] woman's side

[46:10] but it's

[46:12] it's like a hitchcock exploitation film because it's beautifully shot it's beautifully put

[46:15] together

[46:16] and um...

[46:18] there's some really funny stuff in it too like the woman is uh... a mute

[46:22] and like she's like seducing all these men into like coming to get shot

[46:27] and none of the men notice that she's mute

[46:30] like all the men are just happy to talk about themselves for the whole time

[46:34] and don't make any reference to the fact that she hasn't said anything

[46:37] and so it's sort of like

[46:39] and that joke isn't called attention to but it's clear that they're making fun

[46:43] of the the guys

[46:44] but but to summarize how's

[46:46] how's the nude scene

[46:47] there are no nude scenes

[46:49] that's another reason that's another reason why i think it's like

[46:53] it's clearly on the woman's side there's a

[46:57] part where you think that there's going to be a nude scene and in a normal like exploitation film

[47:01] there would be but it's uh... subverted

[47:04] and it's uh... well done

[47:07] and uh... what were the other fifty movies you wanted to talk about?

[47:09] no two other movies

[47:11] brief things that i wanted to say about them

[47:14] number one i saw uh...

[47:16] the most dangerous game

[47:18] sure just recently the old one?

[47:19] yeah the one with ice cube

[47:21] no the new

[47:23] surviving the game and it's ice tea

[47:26] i get my ice tea mixed up

[47:28] i saw the most dangerous game because

[47:30] you know it's a lot of the same people who did

[47:32] uh... the original king kong which is one of my favorite movies

[47:37] uh... but the one thing i wanted to say about that and

[47:39] you know everyone has probably read the short story the most dangerous game in

[47:42] school at some point right after an incident in owl creek bridge

[47:47] yeah and uh...

[47:48] gift of the magi

[47:51] uh... so and the necklace

[47:52] that's another one

[47:53] yeah that's true

[47:54] uh...

[47:55] penthouse forum jr eighty five

[47:58] did you guys not read that in school?

[47:59] just the letters

[48:00] just the letters

[48:02] so everyone knows that the most dangerous game is math

[48:06] i think it's hilarious there's one point early in the most dangerous game where they're

[48:09] talking about like

[48:11] so what do you think the animal feels like when it's hunted

[48:14] and the guy goes

[48:15] he literally says something along the lines of

[48:18] well they're hunters

[48:20] and they're the hunted

[48:21] and luckily

[48:22] i will never be the hunted

[48:25] the irony was less subtle back then

[48:27] it was the most

[48:27] hilarious foreshadowing i've ever seen in any movie

[48:31] and the other film i saw that i wanted to say something briefly about was uh...

[48:35] i saw the lucio fulci movie zombie

[48:38] and i hate

[48:39] italian horror

[48:41] and i've said it before

[48:43] you say you say that a lot outside of the podcast

[48:48] we have a big italian

[48:52] again funny voice hour

[48:54] uh...

[48:56] but i watched it

[48:57] mainly because

[48:58] this is a movie that's famous because it has a fight between a zombie and a shark

[49:01] yes sure

[49:03] i knew this going in that was the reason that i wanted to see it even though it was an italian

[49:07] horror movie

[49:08] zombie and shark fight eh?

[49:10] but what no one told me was uh... prior to the zombie and shark fight

[49:14] there's like uh...

[49:15] a minute of nude scuba diving like this woman

[49:19] this is an italian horror movie basically almost entirely nude

[49:23] uh... has like the tiniest of thongs and she straps on like

[49:26] an oxygen tank and she goes scuba diving

[49:29] so

[49:30] the order of events is

[49:32] nude scuba diving

[49:34] woman is threatened by shark

[49:36] woman is threatened by zombie

[49:38] zombie and shark fight

[49:40] which makes it like the best seven minutes ever committed to film

[49:44] the rest of the movie you can ignore but that sequence is great there's a really great

[49:47] splinter in the eye scene yeah that's the other good part of that movie there's a

[49:52] terrible italian horror movie called zombie lake

[49:54] which is all

[49:55] women taking their clothes off and then zombies attacking them and the opening is like a bad

[50:00] that. Where a woman takes off her clothes, swims for the entirety of the opening credits,

[50:04] and then a zombie kills her. And then later on, it gets really ludicrous, like a woman

[50:08] literally hikes up her skirt to fix her garter, and a zombie attacks her. And it's like, come

[50:12] on, really? Seriously?

[50:14] So Zombie Lake, you say. That's like Nazi zombies or something, right?

[50:19] Blood sucking Nazi zombies.

[50:20] No, no, that's a different, they are Nazi zombies in Zombie Lake.

[50:23] Wait, there are two Nazi zombie films?

[50:25] There are multiple Nazi zombie movies. That's the kind of idea like Nazi Vampires, where

[50:28] you're like, why hasn't anyone ever done this? And it turns out like 75 people have

[50:32] done it. I do have a Nazi Vampire story, I did one.

[50:36] So I think Dan's finally done. I think you were just waiting for him to talk about another

[50:40] movie.

[50:41] I was just watching until his mouth stopped moving. Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of

[50:47] not very good movies lately. A lot of stuff that I had...

[50:51] What was the worst?

[50:52] The worst was the film version of the play Equus, which has these moments of very brilliant...

[51:01] It means like horse or something, right?

[51:02] Yeah, well, it's, I don't know.

[51:03] With Ginny Agutter?

[51:04] If you're not familiar, I don't remember. Was she the little girl in it?

[51:08] Yeah.

[51:09] I mean, I was watching it...

[51:10] You may know her from American Werewolf in London Walkabout.

[51:12] Oh, yeah. I was watching it really to see how Richard Burton, who plays the psychologist

[51:16] in it, deals with his part and how Sidney Lumet directed it. And Sidney Lumet directed

[51:20] it by making the monologue scenes brilliant and making every other scene terrible. And

[51:25] they opened up the play, as you do, by making it more of like a mystery thriller. Like,

[51:32] in the play, there's a certain amount of mystery. Why did this young boy blind all these horses?

[51:36] And it turns out that he has a fixation, partly sexual, partly religious, on horses, and he's

[51:41] just very screwed up. But in this, they open it up by showing like, oh, his parents argue

[51:46] a lot. Oh, and also, you know, this is his job interview when he got the job at the stables.

[51:53] It got increasingly silly at times until they had a flashback to the first time that the

[51:57] young boy had ever seen a horse. And he's on the beach, and a man rides up on a horse

[52:02] clad all in black, knee-high, almost like high-half-calf leather boots, like this beautiful

[52:09] granite man. You know, so then he goes, whoa there. Hello, little boy. This is my horse,

[52:14] Trojan. Trojan, whoa, Trojan, whoa. And he's so ridiculously over the top. And the boy's parents

[52:21] are like, get away. Don't put him on that horse. What are you doing? He'll get hurt. What are you

[52:24] talking about? You're scaring the horse. Stop it. Whoa. And his voice is ridiculous. It sounds like

[52:30] it's a joke on itself. So that was a bad one. And I saw Zoo. This is totally unrelated. I had

[52:35] on my TV at the same time, Equus and Zoo, which is another movie about a man who has six little

[52:39] horses. I saw Zoo happen to be on TV, and I'm like, it's supposed to be good. I might tape,

[52:45] no, I don't want to see a documentary about a man having six little horses.

[52:49] That's the thing. It was a documentary that was afraid to be tasteless. So it was more a

[52:53] meditation on the idea of loneliness and being an outsider, to the point that the facts of the case,

[52:58] that this is a man who died having sex with a horse, don't come in until halfway through the

[53:02] movie. And you're like, these guys keep calling themselves Zoos, and they kind of get together

[53:06] and hang out at this one guy's house. This is why I haven't seen a lot of good stuff lately.

[53:10] But last night I saw, for the first time, this is a movie that I should have seen earlier,

[53:14] I guess, but Modern Romance, one of Albert Brooks's early movies, which was very good.

[53:21] It was back when Albert Brooks looked like he was about to take Woody Allen's crown,

[53:25] I guess, as the man who made kind of serious comedies. And there's a lot of funny stuff in it,

[53:31] and Albert Brooks is very good. And it's a really creepy movie. Dan and I were talking about this

[53:35] earlier, because it's about a man who is so jealous of his girlfriend that he basically

[53:39] torments her and keeps breaking up and getting back together with her. And it's this doomed

[53:43] relationship that he can't seem to lose hold of, probably, I guess, because she's super pretty,

[53:48] and he just doesn't want to let go of a super pretty girl. But it's really funny. It's a movie

[53:53] that, in a different tone, could have been a thriller, because he's basically stalking her.

[53:57] But there are also moments where, as the movie was released in 1981, and it's like Albert Brooks

[54:02] said to himself, this movie is being made in 1981, but people are going to watch it 27 years

[54:06] from now, and the way people did things in 1981 is going to seem hilarious. So let's play that up as

[54:12] much as possible. I'm going to wear a jogging suit that looks ridiculous. I'm going to have

[54:15] an old-fashioned, it's new now, but an old-fashioned alarm clock, old-fashioned record

[54:19] player. I'm going to listen to nothing but pop songs on the radio that are around at the time.

[54:24] And there are these moments that are very silly, and you almost get the idea that he knows this

[54:28] movie will be funnier in the future because of how ridiculous the present is at the moment.

[54:33] He strangely has his shirt off through much of the movie, which is bizarre to me,

[54:37] because he was in pretty good shape, I guess. No, the thing is, in the 80s, there were different

[54:42] standards for men and women. Women in movies had to be pretty sexy, but men could be just

[54:47] normal-looking. I used the movie Bachelor Party recently for something at work, and the women in

[54:51] it are pretty hot, but the women go to a male strip club, and the men are not even particularly

[54:56] muscular. They're just kind of not ugly guys, and it's just funny the way the standards were

[55:01] different. So, like, Albert Brooks' girlfriend is very pretty, but he's, Albert Brooks, he's not,

[55:05] he's not out of shape, but his body is covered in brillo pad-like hair, you know, so.

[55:09] Every time I think of that scene in Bachelor Party, I always imagine, like, for some reason

[55:14] my brain is fucked up, and I always imagine all of them having the face of the guy who runs the

[55:19] Cobra Kai dojo in Karate Kid. Like, they all have that guy's, like, weirdly, like, simian features.

[55:25] I don't think they do, but that's, you know. It's my imagination. That's how I like to remember

[55:30] Bachelor Party. Yeah. Not, the guy in charge, not William Zabka. No, no, no, like, yeah, yeah,

[55:38] William Zabka's great. The one, the one who's, like, the one who punches out the window at the

[55:45] beginning of, uh... Karate Kid Part 2. Yeah. Oh, to say, to say one more thing about Modern Romance,

[55:49] in case anyone's not sold on it, it is a movie that has George Kennedy and Meadowlark Lemon of

[55:54] the Harlem Globetrotters playing themselves in one scene, which I did not expect to put into it.

[55:58] Tremendous. And also, and a pretty good joke about the Incredible Hulk at one point. Like, it's all

[56:02] over the place, the movie, but it's very good. That's a tremendous recommendation. Well, um, we

[56:08] should, uh, get out of here, but, um, I wanted to... We should get the Saturday Night Live end-of-show music

[56:14] to start playing at this point. I should hire, um, what's his face? G.E. Smith. G.E. Smith. I'm sure he's not

[56:20] doing anything, so... Well, he might be going to, he might be backing up Bowie again. Before he was on Saturday Night Live,

[56:24] he was part of Bowie's backup band. Oh, my God. This has been Music Facts with, uh, that's what's, that's what's called a callback, ladies and gentlemen.

[56:32] If you have any other questions about musicians from the 80s through the 1880s, any John Philip Sousa

[56:38] questions, just write Elliot Kalin at musicfacts.blogspot.edu. So, um, but I want to, speaking of which, I want to thank

[56:45] people for, a lot of people actually did go and vote at Podcast Alley. Yeah. And we got bumped up to

[56:52] number 48. Nice. Number 48 in comedy for March. That's awesome. Holy shit. Not overall podcast, but in comedy for March. And what were we at before?

[57:00] We were at 101. That's a huge jump. That's a huge leap. That's a big jump. So I want to tell people that you can

[57:05] make a difference. I wouldn't like too much this week. Unlike in your, uh, unlike in American politics.

[57:11] Sure. Your vote can make a difference in the Flophouse. Dan, all you have to do is vote for change.

[57:18] Yeah. For instance, changing Flophouse from number 48 to number one. Why don't you do that?

[57:24] Remember, you can vote every month. So after March has ended, if you voted before, you can vote again.

[57:31] It's totally legal. Nice. So, um, but also if you want to, um, see show notes or anything else, you can go to

[57:39] theflophousepodcast.blogspot.com, or you can send us an email at theflophousepodcastatgmail.com.

[57:46] I bet you can Google it too. You can totally Google that shit up. That's the brilliance of Google.

[57:51] And that was one of the things that the invasion got right, is when Nicole Kidman has, suspects

[57:56] things, she Googles, my husband is not my husband. Yeah. There's a lot of text messaging in this movie.

[58:01] Yeah. And video text messaging. All right. Well, while they continue to talk about the invasion,

[58:06] I'll just sign off saying that I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin, or am I?

[58:12] Good night. It's not even night really yet.

[58:29] I used up all my jokes. You better believe I'm using snatched in this podcast. No. I call that.

[58:37] All right. I think that's fine. I was going to use, uh, you're snatched.

[58:43] Who's snatched now, dawg? I don't know why, but Sean Connery's in that movie.

[58:46] You're all about now. You're the man now, dawg.

[58:50] So should we start or what? You're the boss. Am I? Yeah.

The Flop House: Episode Thirteen - The Invasion

Transcript

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