Feardotcom

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss fear.com.

[0:03] But not fear.org, a charitable organization that scares people.

[0:09] It's pretty good.

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

[0:35] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:36] Dang, Dan.

[0:37] You made that sound great.

[0:39] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:40] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:41] And I want to interrupt these compliments for a moment because I've

[0:45] got an important message.

[0:46] We're in the middle of this year's Maximum Fun pledge drive.

[0:49] That's when we ask you, our listeners, to help us, The Flophouse, keep

[0:52] this show going another year by pledging cash dollars to Maximum

[0:56] Fun. As part of the Maximum Fun worker-owned cooperative network,

[0:59] we don't have some big fancy company paying us salaries or buying

[1:03] us equipment.

[1:03] That means we get to do and say whatever we think will make the

[1:07] best show or sometimes just whatever pops into our head at the

[1:10] moment. But it also means we rely on your support to make this

[1:13] show possible.

[1:14] There will be more drive talk later in the episode.

[1:16] But for now, why wait for that?

[1:17] Why not go to MaximumFun.org slash join right now, today, right

[1:22] now, this moment, and make your pledge of as little as $5 per

[1:25] month to keep this show going.

[1:27] Will you please become a Maximum Fun member?

[1:29] It takes less time to do it than it took me to tell you all this

[1:32] and I'll take more time telling you about it later in the episode.

[1:36] Dan, what do we do on this podcast?

[1:37] Yeah, if you do it now, you get to skip all the other discussions

[1:40] of it later.

[1:41] You just hit that sleep button and you can't skip it if you don't

[1:44] do it. You can't do it.

[1:45] No, it's illegal.

[1:49] This is a podcast where we watch movies that were critical or

[1:53] commercial flops and then we talk about them, see what we think

[1:57] of these pictures.

[1:59] We are the judges and the executioners.

[2:01] Guilty or innocent.

[2:04] Of course, as people who listen to our Maximum Fun bonus content

[2:08] will know, even if you're innocent, they'll still send you into

[2:10] the pit of the Sharktacons.

[2:12] So guys, that's one for the bonus content listeners.

[2:15] Dan, but what do we do?

[2:16] Well, I said that part.

[2:18] What's special about our Maximum Fun episode?

[2:22] Yeah, I'm getting there.

[2:24] We have been picking a movie to bring to the table.

[2:36] There's three Maximum Fun Drive episodes for us.

[2:38] There's three Flophouse hosts.

[2:39] It was a no-brainer.

[2:40] We each get to pick one.

[2:42] And considering, I think I suggested it, Dan is basically saying

[2:47] I have no brains, which I am not necessarily arguing with, but

[2:51] No, I'm saying I did not have to use my brain to say yes to that idea.

[2:56] I think we can all agree, Stewart, that you have the rudimentary

[2:59] nervous system, equivalent to at the very least a sea cucumber or

[3:02] a peanut shrimp.

[3:03] You can feel pain.

[3:04] You can feel pain, you can move your limbs around, you can detect

[3:07] when food is floating by.

[3:08] You certainly can, yeah.

[3:10] Floating by at the pool bar.

[3:14] You know, floating by food hates to see me coming.

[3:18] Uh-oh, that guy can detect us.

[3:22] But this is my turn.

[3:26] I'm in the driver's seat this time around, and I chose Fear.com.

[3:30] Stewart, take the wheel.

[3:31] Take the keys away from Dan.

[3:32] No, Dan's not drunk enough.

[3:34] Fear.com.

[3:37] So, Dan, what made you want to choose 2002?

[3:39] Am I remembering that correctly?

[3:41] Yeah, so what made you want to choose 2002's Fear.com?

[3:46] It is a well-known bad movie of the era.

[3:51] It was like shortly before we started the podcast, which was

[3:56] 2007, so we never did this one.

[3:59] And I have a real fondness for dumb horror or thrillers from the

[4:07] beginning of the internet era when everyone's like, we're scared

[4:11] of this.

[4:11] It's new.

[4:11] We're scared of it.

[4:13] We don't like, and you know, as Elliot suggested in one of the

[4:17] many possible openings to the show, I don't know which one got

[4:19] picked.

[4:20] You know, we were right to be scared of the internet, but not

[4:23] for the reasons that horror movies postulated.

[4:26] It was not going to be because ghosts and serial killers would

[4:29] take advantage of this new technology to lure us into their web

[4:32] of death.

[4:32] It is because it is the greatest form of radicalization and

[4:36] misinformation of young people and the elderly that has ever

[4:39] existed.

[4:40] All in service of capitalism, which is grinding us all to dust.

[4:45] Yeah, it's worked out great.

[4:47] I was thinking the other day.

[4:48] I was like, hard things.

[4:49] Could you say they're net better because of the internet?

[4:52] Well, this show exists only because the internet, so that's

[4:54] something.

[4:55] That's a good part.

[4:55] Yeah, just the general idea of like, there used to be fucking

[5:00] websites with animated menus that we could go to.

[5:03] Yeah, with scalpels.

[5:05] Now there's only social media sites that sell us stuff.

[5:08] Perhaps designed by Parker Bennett, our friend who co-wrote the

[5:12] Super Mario movie and then became a designer of websites.

[5:17] He wrote in recently to tell us, perhaps he worked on fear.com.

[5:21] Maybe, Parker, write in.

[5:23] We know you worked on the Master of Disguise website.

[5:25] Yeah, I like that stuff.

[5:27] And I also, over the years, have grown fond of this dumb era and

[5:33] horror, this new metal style that I hated at the time.

[5:36] But now I'm like, yeah, take me back.

[5:40] Send me to a Rammstein video, please.

[5:44] There's something about the things that you hated as a youth that

[5:46] then become cherished items when you're older.

[5:48] There's so much music that I despised when I was young and now

[5:51] we're here and I'm like, this is fine.

[5:52] You know what?

[5:53] This takes me back.

[5:54] Yeah, and you know, in keeping with my places.

[5:58] In keeping?

[5:59] Is that what you're doing for a living now, Dan?

[6:00] Is your in keeping?

[6:01] You actually, you joke.

[6:03] I think Dan would be a great in keep.

[6:05] Like a Newhart style.

[6:06] I think he'd be a great Basil Fawlty style, irritated in keeper who

[6:11] does not like dealing with the guests.

[6:12] Dan, what would be the name of your inn where you are annoyed by the

[6:15] guests, but you still, people still show up.

[6:17] It's like a little place.

[6:17] It's going to be like a little bed and breakfast, like Newhart.

[6:19] Yeah.

[6:22] Why would you pit me out like this?

[6:24] Something like the hammer and sickle or the sword and cross or something like that.

[6:30] It's not a pub.

[6:31] The box and the slaughtered lamb.

[6:32] It's not a medieval pub.

[6:34] Yeah, we'll figure it out.

[6:35] It would be like, I imagine it would be called like the sleepy arms or

[6:39] something like that.

[6:39] Dan and breakfast.

[6:41] The sighing man.

[6:43] The sighing man.

[6:44] There you go.

[6:46] And the image is a green man rolling his eyes.

[6:49] Yeah.

[6:49] Yeah, but sort of in keeping with my places.

[6:53] Oh, you're an inn keeper now?

[6:55] Dan, find a different phrase.

[6:58] God damn it.

[7:00] So Dan, as the host, as arguably the most soft-hearted member of the flop house,

[7:06] I didn't opt to punish quite in the exit to Eden or 40 Days and 40 Nights level.

[7:11] I picked a thing that I thought might be fun to talk about.

[7:14] It was, but I will say, pretty unpleasant to watch.

[7:18] It was, ironically, it didn't punish me as much as a recent horror movie that we

[7:23] have coming up after we're done with the pledge drive.

[7:25] Okay, no spoilers.

[7:27] No spoilers.

[7:28] But I will say that I did find this movie incredibly unpleasant.

[7:32] So we can we can talk about it, you know?

[7:34] Yeah, that's the point.

[7:35] Anyway, let's go.

[7:36] Let's get into it.

[7:36] Let's get into this thing.

[7:38] So real quick, had either of you guys seen Fear.com before?

[7:42] No, this is the third time I've seen it.

[7:45] I definitely saw it in the theater.

[7:46] I remember seeing it in the theater.

[7:48] And being kind of like, I do have to point out this era of time.

[7:52] Like, this is a movie that came out, what, two or three years after the Blair Witch Project?

[7:56] Yes.

[7:57] So I feel like in a post-Blair Witch Project world, it's like, movie?

[8:01] Do you, like, you know what people find scary now, right?

[8:04] It's not, not necessarily this.

[8:07] For an early 2000s movie, it feels very 90s to me.

[8:10] Very early 90s.

[8:11] I mean, which makes sense.

[8:12] The early 2000s are like the hangover of the 90s.

[8:13] But it definitely has a 90s sense of style, I would say.

[8:20] Yeah.

[8:21] Well, let's get into it.

[8:22] It starts in a rainy subway station.

[8:25] It's abandoned.

[8:26] Like, it seems like trains still come through here.

[8:28] But it's filled with so much garbage and stuff.

[8:31] It's one of these cities.

[8:32] And Roger Ebert talks about this.

[8:34] Before Bloomberg cleaned up New York.

[8:36] Roger Ebert has a surprisingly positive review in some ways for this movie.

[8:39] He talks about how the setting of the movie feels like the whole city is falling apart and disgusting.

[8:45] Even people's apartments seem to be, like, grimy and full of broken glass.

[8:49] But, like, the, yeah, the subway station, it seems like the, it seems like some,

[8:53] everyone left the city and forgot to tell Udo Keir that there's no one living there anymore.

[8:58] And he's just like, where's this train going to show up?

[9:00] It's nothing but slime and grime in this subway.

[9:02] And that, and that description by Roger Ebert, I think, is actually pretty fitting.

[9:07] But I wish that that was played into more of the idea of, like, well, this world sucks.

[9:12] Yeah.

[9:13] So people are looking for solace or connection or something on the, this new internet.

[9:19] But they, they don't really like, they don't really.

[9:21] No, they just want it to look creepy and spooky.

[9:23] No, the internet, success is creepy.

[9:25] It's very dark.

[9:26] It's very dark, yeah.

[9:27] Treated as, like, oh, people are on this thing.

[9:31] Wow.

[9:32] What a coincidence that they're all on the internet.

[9:36] A coincidence?

[9:37] Well, that's how it's treated.

[9:38] I think it's early enough that people are like, huh, all these people had computers.

[9:43] Weird.

[9:44] Yeah.

[9:44] It's like, I love the, the, the early internet pre-smartphone era is such an interesting time.

[9:50] Because smartphones are when the internet became less cool.

[9:54] Yeah.

[9:55] But I think, but it is a, that's true, Dan, you're right, that, like, they, it takes a while for the police

[10:00] officers to realize that maybe the fact that all of their computers were set to

[10:03] the same website

[10:04] might be related to their mysterious murders.

[10:07] He's waiting for a train and what does he see? Udokir's here, he's doing something

[10:12] probably not scary. Udokir's never up to anything weird.

[10:15] There's a white ball that bounces out of nowhere and a spooky little girl

[10:19] chases that ball onto the tracks and he follows her

[10:23] because he's dumb and is splatted.

[10:26] It's so funny, the police come and they're like, from the look on his face it

[10:29] looks like he saw something terrifying before he died and it's like, well he was

[10:32] hit by a train. That qualifies, I think, as being terrifying, seeing a train coming

[10:36] towards you.

[10:37] Yeah, yeah. Maybe somebody had like a really scary like Tasmanian

[10:42] Devil bumper sticker on the train, super scary. Also the fact that he's hit by a subway train and they're like,

[10:47] the look on his face is that he's terrified. I'm like, I don't know if there would be enough of his face left to see what the expression would be.

[10:53] This was not a particularly rough train accident, you know. Yeah, briefly

[10:58] before we get the cops looking at him, we are introduced to Natasha McElhone,

[11:03] who's waking up. She's part of the Department of Health. She's going to

[11:06] figure in later, but when we return to the crime scene,

[11:09] Mike Riley, detective within NYPD, played by Stephen Dorff, is

[11:14] investigating. As Elliot says, Kir is frozen in this like horrific death

[11:19] mask and his eyes are bleeding.

[11:21] Yeah. And they're like, what caused this fear.com? Well, cut to surfing someone

[11:28] cut to surfing. Someone's surfing a site. Cut to surfing.

[11:31] Cut to endless summer. We got in footage from the documentary.

[11:40] No, someone's on a site. Stephen Dorff is shooting the tube as part of his detective work.

[11:44] Yeah. No, they're on a site with way too much flash animation for the internet speed of the day.

[11:51] Yeah. And that was the main issue with the movie. Yeah.

[11:55] I do love that this like haunted website has like still uses flash.

[12:00] Yeah, it's so there's a there's a there's so there's a lot of funny.

[12:04] So when we maybe it's a ghost. Yeah, it feels so after we say more than maybe we can talk

[12:09] about this website. There's so little about it that makes any sense whatsoever.

[12:13] And you have to put so much effort into unlocking this website to get to get to the scary stuff.

[12:20] And it's always like, do you want to hurt me?

[12:22] And it's like, no, probably not. Like, I don't know.

[12:24] You know, it's it's anyway, it's a hilarious website.

[12:27] Well, up front. Yeah, up front. It looks like it sells distressed furniture.

[12:32] But if you click around enough, you can get to some sort of creepy show.

[12:38] And anyway, show. No, I don't know if you get only access.

[12:42] Yeah, you have to get a modern you have to get a modern shutter subscription

[12:46] of access to creep show.

[12:49] Mike is going over the evidence for an old case, a serial killer called the doctor.

[12:54] And in that scene, we we get the entrance of Jeffrey Combs as Stiles, his jaded partner.

[13:00] Sykes, Sykes, I think. Oh, Sykes, Sykes. Yeah.

[13:03] Yeah. Put Stiles down. Yeah.

[13:06] Because he thinks he's with dick nose or whatever.

[13:09] But Jeffrey Combs is I'm just going to say right now, not a surprise.

[13:12] My favorite part of this whole movie. Yeah.

[13:14] He plays his character as such a scumbag.

[13:17] And it's so funny. I'm like, I wish he was the hero of the movie.

[13:19] It would be I would love to see this scumbag cop who could not care less

[13:23] having to investigate this murder website would be one of the things about Jeffrey Combs.

[13:27] You know, a little guy I like to call J.C.

[13:30] Is that he you don't have to go, hey, I can tell you about someone radical

[13:34] with the initials J.C. who had an interesting message for the world.

[13:37] Understood what he was the message he was bringing.

[13:40] His body was a road map of pain.

[13:42] His name is Jeffrey Combs, and you may know him as Brunt from the Star Trek universe.

[13:48] Is that Jeffrey Combs is like is I would say a rare character actor

[13:53] who can really bring it in these small roles.

[13:56] But also, if he's tasked to be the lead in a movie, he's also great.

[14:01] Yes. Yeah.

[14:01] Like he's good in everything. He's yeah.

[14:03] I mean, yeah, I this will, you know, show the depths of my own sickness.

[14:09] After watching this movie, I watched William Ballone's next movie,

[14:13] the director of this called Parasomnia.

[14:16] And Jeffrey Combs also plays a scummy cop.

[14:19] And that was a delight.

[14:21] That makes perfect sense.

[14:22] He's like this crushed.

[14:24] Let's do this.

[14:25] Bring it back.

[14:26] The one thing everyone liked about fear.

[14:32] So while he's looking at these files, a man's brought in for processing.

[14:36] He's screaming in German and also bleeding from his eyes.

[14:39] And for a second, I thought he was like speaking some like

[14:42] a unspeakable tongue, like Lovecraftian tongue.

[14:45] And I'm like, no, it's just German.

[14:48] But they act as if this is a crazy like they're like they're like,

[14:50] if you can get anyone who understands what he's saying, it's like, well, German,

[14:53] like I can understand these cops don't speak German, but it's a recognizable language.

[14:57] Yeah, I, unlike Stewart, do not speak German.

[15:00] But I was like, oh, German.

[15:04] But Mike asked for someone speaking French like actor French Stewart,

[15:08] who, of course, only speaks in French.

[15:12] Mike wants someone from the Department of Health to check in because

[15:15] eye bleeding seems like, I don't know, maybe that's a symptom of something.

[15:19] Could be.

[15:19] It's not a normal thing for eyes to do that.

[15:22] Healthy eyes don't routinely bleed.

[15:24] Yeah.

[15:24] And so they go to this German guy's place,

[15:27] which is your like typical post seven squalid apartment where they find a.

[15:32] Where it looks like they set up like floodlights just outside the apartment.

[15:36] And they're like, OK, we need more curtains in this thing.

[15:39] Have just water dripping from somewhere.

[15:41] Stacks of stuff coming up from the floor.

[15:43] Like, yeah, things are ranged.

[15:45] Every apartment in this movie looks like it was abandoned about three weeks ago.

[15:51] That construction is going on at night outside the apartment.

[15:54] And so it's very brightly lit.

[15:56] And yeah, there's there's all sorts of water and moisture damage.

[15:59] I mean, I'm a big fan of like no normal, like over it, like recessed overhead lighting.

[16:05] It's all lamps or whatever.

[16:07] I mean, you could say that as an interior designer, I'm a fan.

[16:11] Yeah, I mean, you could say that these that it's all probably converted loft space.

[16:15] And that's one of the reasons it's more industrial.

[16:17] But I like to call these shoes on apartments that you see a lot in these movies.

[16:22] I just always imagine like if you lived here, you'd walk around with your shoes off and you

[16:26] just get glass and splinters in your feet all the time.

[16:28] You got to wear shoes.

[16:29] Like I imagine them getting out of the shower with shoes still on and walking around.

[16:32] You know, it feels like at a minimum, it's going to feel like you're walking around on

[16:36] Rice Krispies, you know, at a minimum.

[16:40] And I don't know about you, but that's not a sensation that I find particularly.

[16:43] It's like a little bit hard and then it crumbles.

[16:47] Things shouldn't be like that.

[16:49] To be honest, it reminds me of my house where no matter where my foot lands, it happens

[16:53] to land on the one place where there is a crumb, a piece of rice or a toy.

[16:58] And so and I'll look and the floor will be devoid of those items except for the one place

[17:02] that I stepped.

[17:03] There's always something.

[17:04] And the amount of time I step on like little sprigs of broccoli or whatever that my children

[17:08] have dropped on the ground.

[17:09] It's disgusting.

[17:10] Yeah, this is a very like Final Destination style set up.

[17:14] Yeah, although often it's just rubber bands.

[17:15] Often it's like they're taking the rubber band off a bag of chips and it's left on the

[17:19] floor and I step on it.

[17:20] And then you then you hop around on one foot and you're like, owie, owie, a rubber band.

[17:25] And I need to use tweezers to remove the rubber band because it's embedded itself in my skin.

[17:28] Yeah.

[17:29] Wow.

[17:29] Yeah.

[17:31] We use barbed wire rubber bands over here to keep the elves out of our snacks.

[17:35] The thing is, it was a branded item for the barbed wire movie.

[17:38] It's an Italian product.

[17:40] When me and Matt Singer went and got the Denny's barbed wire brunch,

[17:46] we had to eat it all.

[17:47] Then you've got to pick the barbed wire out of your teeth because it's in the pancakes.

[17:50] Yeah.

[17:51] They put it in the batter.

[17:53] So many lawsuits.

[17:54] They call it barbed batter.

[17:55] It was yeah.

[17:56] Anyway, we had to go right away because we knew they were going to shut it down pretty

[17:59] quick.

[17:59] Yeah.

[18:01] In this apartment, they find a smashed computer and there's a naked dead woman in the tub.

[18:09] Glad he lists them in order of importance.

[18:12] Well, they kind of are in the order of importance of Fear.com, a movie about a killer website.

[18:17] I know.

[18:19] I thought you were about to say Fear.com, a movie about a killer whale.

[18:21] And I'd be like, did I watch the right movie?

[18:25] Fear.milly?

[18:26] Natasha McElhone, Terry from the Department of Health shows up.

[18:32] You might know her from Ronan the movie.

[18:36] You might know her as Sherlock Holmes mom from the New Guy Richie Young Sherlock series.

[18:43] Nothing New Guy Richie Sherlock.

[18:45] For a second, I was like, wait a minute.

[18:47] He directs the whole movie.

[18:48] Just completely starker.

[18:51] Guys, we haven't talked about.

[18:51] It makes me feel more comfortable on set.

[18:54] That's how I assume he sounds.

[18:56] So, guys, I brought up Ronan and like a man of a dad age.

[18:59] I got to say, Ronan's pretty awesome.

[19:01] Ronan's pretty great.

[19:02] I mean, I've been a fan of Ronan since it came out, since I saw it in the theaters.

[19:05] It's a really good movie.

[19:05] That was when we knew we were dads in the making.

[19:08] Yep.

[19:09] And you're in the making.

[19:10] You've yet to finish that process.

[19:13] You're still in the pupil stage, I guess.

[19:14] Yeah, I'm a pupil.

[19:18] Yeah, I just I remember seeing Ronan.

[19:19] I probably told this story before, but I was in the theater.

[19:22] Tale of seeing Ronan.

[19:25] Well, gather, gather round children.

[19:27] Stewart doesn't have much like how Ethan Hawke has said that he remembers the experience of

[19:32] seeing every movie he's seen in the theater like that whole experience.

[19:36] And he forgets the ones he sees at home.

[19:38] I remember the experience of going to the theater in college to see Ronan with my roommate at the

[19:43] time, Casey Crowe, and they show a beautiful French city.

[19:48] And my roommate goes, nice.

[19:50] And then it's this nice France.

[19:53] And we like cheered in the theater is awesome.

[19:58] So they go back to the stage.

[20:00] The German guy's died, he's written murderer and 48 on the wall in blood.

[20:08] And there's one part where Mike sees some hazmat suits and is like, should we be wearing

[20:12] one?

[20:13] And Terry says, we're probably already infected.

[20:16] And he yells at her, what is it with you people?

[20:18] You let this shit run wild.

[20:20] And I'm like, what?

[20:21] It's so funny to me that he's blaming her for a possible virus outbreak.

[20:26] But also, if they are infected, shouldn't they quarantine at this point or it's pretty

[20:31] loosey goosey and feared over and over in Horror City, like they're just ready for this

[20:36] kind of stuff to happen.

[20:37] Yeah.

[20:38] Okay, with it now.

[20:39] Now, I know what my brother's probably listening to this and he goes, 48.

[20:42] Does this mean that Mets pitcher Jacob de Grom is the killer in this?

[20:46] Probably.

[20:47] That's what he's implying.

[20:48] You're going to be disappointed, David.

[20:49] I'm sorry to tell you.

[20:50] Yeah.

[20:51] But they discover from the test results.

[20:54] It's not a virus.

[20:55] What is it?

[20:56] Let's leave that cliffhanger going and toss back to my friend, Elliot Kaelin, for some

[21:01] Max Fun Drive talk.

[21:02] That's right.

[21:03] Let's leave you wondering if it's a virus.

[21:05] It's not.

[21:06] It's a killer website.

[21:07] And I'll talk about another killer website, but killer in a cool way, not in a it will

[21:12] kill you way.

[21:13] And that's MaximumFun.org slash join.

[21:16] Now, earlier in the episode, I mentioned this is the Max Fun Drive.

[21:19] So let me break down in more detail what that means.

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[24:36] Dan, what's going on on Fear.com?

[24:38] On Fear.com, some creepy weirdo is videotaping a lady in a cafe and when she notices he's

[24:46] like, sorry, you're just a perfect leading lady for this film I'm making and gives his

[24:51] card and somehow she seems actually interested and doesn't immediately just drop it and run

[24:57] far away from this thing that's happening.

[25:00] Now, there's no reason for her to drop it unless say this guy has a really weird, creepy,

[25:04] strange American accent that doesn't sound quite right, right?

[25:08] Well, there's that, sure, and also just the fact that he's a guy with a VHS recorder videotaping

[25:17] a woman in public.

[25:18] A guy who most likely, I'm assuming, is licking his lips a lot.

[25:22] Yeah.

[25:23] Which is not his fault if he has dry lips, you know?

[25:28] This was 2002, a time when there were limited chapstick options.

[25:33] Exactly.

[25:34] Is he the bad guy or just some innocent bystander?

[25:37] Who knows?

[25:38] No way of telling.

[25:39] Well, the movie is called Fear.com and has videos of people being hurt, so probably the

[25:43] guy with the video camera is not good, yeah.

[25:46] Meanwhile, Terry and Mike are on the case.

[25:49] They're watching a videotape that the German victims had made of themselves.

[25:53] We see them sort of frolicking in the park, getting naked back home, and then seeing some

[25:58] real strange days vibes.

[26:00] Yeah.

[26:01] They see something on the computer that freaks them out and then there's taped flash of them

[26:06] looking sicker over time, descending into madness.

[26:08] What's going on?

[26:10] The cafe lady goes to the theater and is not dissuaded by the big, empty, scary place filled

[26:15] with flickering lights.

[26:18] And she's grabbed.

[26:19] Because that's just what life is like in Horror City.

[26:21] Yeah.

[26:22] That's what you have to deal with, I guess.

[26:23] This is how I get a big role.

[26:24] This is how I make my big break.

[26:26] Yeah.

[26:27] She's grabbed by this mysterious man who, like, straps her, like, he's, like, the German

[26:33] industrial music starts playing.

[26:36] Yeah.

[26:37] Rammstein.

[26:38] And he, like, yeah, he straps her in.

[26:39] There's, like, I don't know, a bunch of TV monitors and camcorders, like, a million camcorders,

[26:45] which is crazy.

[26:46] Yeah.

[26:47] This guy's a real sliver.

[26:48] Can't really, can't really, can't really live stream that, right?

[26:50] With a bunch of camcorders.

[26:51] Well, I mean, maybe if he's got some kind of way to mix, to edit the video on the fly,

[26:56] like a sitcom director, as he's broadcasting the stream or something like that.

[27:00] He's got someone in the back calling out camera one, camera five, camera two.

[27:05] Yeah.

[27:06] It's just like the Oscars.

[27:07] Anyway.

[27:08] Yeah.

[27:09] He's got Gil Cates back there doing all this.

[27:10] Yeah.

[27:11] Uh, Terry reports to her weird supervisor who has to be updated on the case, and this

[27:16] guy is, this guy is like, I'm not sure if they were trying to, they're like, we need

[27:23] a red herring to see if there's, because it's so obvious who the bad guy is.

[27:27] But it is like they went for the strangest possible performance that they could have.

[27:32] Like the most.

[27:33] Other than Terry, everyone in this movie is weird and diseased, and they specifically

[27:39] are talking about this guy later and she's like, no, there's no way he's done anything

[27:43] illegal ever in his life.

[27:44] I'm like, that's impossible.

[27:45] There's no way.

[27:46] He seems like such a, he's like, he is a Dorian Gray painting walking around.

[27:52] He is doing bureaucrat working for the German government in an Indiana Jones movie type

[27:57] performance.

[27:58] Yeah.

[27:59] Yeah.

[28:00] Yeah.

[28:01] And his computer is mysteriously missing.

[28:02] Oh, cut to him in an abandoned train yard, just hanging out.

[28:07] No explanation for why he's there, right?

[28:10] He sees, uh, he sees that weird, uh, white ball girl.

[28:13] Oh, his nose starts bleeding.

[28:15] He's startled by the girl and he drops his cigarette, which starts a fire in his car

[28:19] and the car starts driving on its own and slams him into a wall.

[28:23] It's a real final destination.

[28:25] Yeah.

[28:26] Yeah.

[28:27] Um, and, uh, the timing is good.

[28:29] And as we later learned, he is, he was afraid of car crashes.

[28:32] Yeah.

[28:33] Terry's like most people, most people are like, bring it on, dude.

[28:37] It means I'm going to get laid.

[28:38] That's what David Cronenberg says.

[28:40] Yeah.

[28:41] Let's take something in a gash.

[28:44] That would be very ironic for someone to watch crash an impressionable age and then that

[28:49] becomes their kink.

[28:50] Yeah.

[28:51] And now they have to make, now it's like that Anaconda movie.

[28:52] Now they want to make their version of crash.

[28:54] So they go into the jungle with their best friend, Jack Black.

[28:57] Oh, trouble comes along.

[29:00] Jack Black has been in a, I would say a disturbing lack of erotic thrillers.

[29:05] No, you're disturbed by it.

[29:08] Poor sex on legs, Jack Black.

[29:09] I think it's fucked up that he's not in a bunch of erotic thrillers.

[29:12] I mean, I would, to be honest, I think that he would be great in one of them.

[29:15] He would be great.

[29:16] Yeah.

[29:17] Jack Black does sound like the, the name of an actor who would be in a movie like that.

[29:22] Yeah.

[29:23] And he has that like devilish look in his eye where you're like, I don't trust this

[29:27] guy.

[29:28] I totally buy him as a guy.

[29:29] He is a low rent detective who gets hired for the wrong case, gets pulled into a, into

[29:33] a web of deceit, you know, and seduction.

[29:37] And seduction.

[29:38] Yeah.

[29:39] Of course.

[29:40] Yeah.

[29:41] He's really more, he could do more rom-coms.

[29:42] He's in like one.

[29:43] I think.

[29:44] He was in the holiday.

[29:45] Yeah.

[29:46] Was he in other ones?

[29:47] Yeah.

[29:48] Yeah.

[29:49] That's kind of a rom-com, I guess.

[29:50] The holiday is.

[29:51] Yeah.

[29:52] That's huge.

[29:53] Yeah.

[29:54] Sleepless in Seattle too.

[29:55] This guy's still sleeping.

[29:56] Yeah.

[29:57] I mean the opposite, right?

[29:58] Yeah.

[29:59] Wait.

[30:00] No, no.

[30:01] That's what's good.

[30:00] The twist on the second one was that he's sleeping too much.

[30:02] Yeah, yeah.

[30:04] While you were sleeping too, wide awake.

[30:06] Again, the twist was that he's not sleeping

[30:08] in the second one, yeah, yeah.

[30:10] Eyes wide shut, can't see nothing.

[30:12] That was the sequel he did.

[30:14] Direct-to-video, yeah.

[30:17] Basic Instinct 3, very complicated Instinct.

[30:20] Exactly, because you want to twist it.

[30:22] You want to tweak it for the sequel, you want to reverse it.

[30:25] Yeah, we saw this, what's the opposite?

[30:27] See, Elliot's been working

[30:28] with all these high-powered executives.

[30:30] He knows what entertainment people want.

[30:32] Yeah, King Kong 2, mini-gorillas,

[30:33] and it's just like there's lots of little gorillas.

[30:36] Like there's one big gorilla in the first one,

[30:37] but then there's like a lot of tiny ones.

[30:39] A lot of tiny ones that are getting in all your stuff.

[30:41] Yeah, exactly.

[30:42] And they're mischievous little devils.

[30:43] Small gorillas.

[30:44] They can like form into one big one

[30:46] and then fall down and split into a bunch,

[30:48] like in that scene in The Gate.

[30:49] Exactly, exactly, yeah.

[30:51] The Gate 2, no gate, exactly.

[30:54] That's already a twist. Gate closed.

[30:56] Gate closed, yeah.

[30:58] Gate 2, just a wall.

[31:00] I think having the sequel just be like,

[31:02] no, the thing is like Anaconda 2, no Anaconda.

[31:06] That's not fair.

[31:06] It's not like that, yeah.

[31:07] You can't do that.

[31:08] That's not, that's against the rules, Counselor.

[31:10] Who says you can't do it?

[31:11] What, will it be law?

[31:12] I don't understand.

[31:13] Yes.

[31:14] Did it take me to title jail?

[31:18] Shawshank Redemption 2, no redemption.

[31:22] Yeah, so the audience has surely forgotten right now

[31:24] that Terry's supervisor just got-

[31:25] Don't call me Shirley, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[31:27] Terry's supervisor just crashed into a wall.

[31:32] So Terry is at the autopsy of the German woman

[31:36] and the supervisor's body arrives

[31:39] and he's got the same scared death mask, bloody eyes.

[31:43] So she goes with Mike to see his widow

[31:45] and they take his computer to check it out.

[31:48] And we go back to the weirdo with the camera.

[31:51] His widow's like, he was always using the computer.

[31:53] Yeah, it's very unusual.

[31:55] This is 2002.

[31:58] E-commerce is in its infancy.

[31:59] Yeah.

[32:00] We go back to the weirdo with the camera

[32:02] and we finally get a look at his face.

[32:04] And that's when I'm like, oh, that's Steven Ray.

[32:05] So he's waxing poetic about shooting this snuff movie

[32:12] that he's gonna do with the cafe lady.

[32:15] It's such kind of serial killer movie,

[32:20] movie serial killer power.

[32:21] I believe death should be intimate.

[32:24] It should not have a distance.

[32:26] It's like not crazy enough.

[32:30] It feels like you're like,

[32:31] I feel like you're just doing a monologue, buddy.

[32:33] Like, it's not crazy enough where you're like,

[32:35] oh, I'm dealing with a genuine, like wild person

[32:38] who's like, you know, like, you want them to-

[32:41] To tap into your dark instincts, sir,

[32:43] to give us a monologue.

[32:44] Yeah, yeah, give us one, sir, yeah.

[32:46] I mean, like, you want it to be something like,

[32:48] yeah, I need to slice open your skin

[32:50] to reveal the secret alien civilization

[32:52] that lives inside of you.

[32:53] Like that's what it's like.

[32:54] Call them cops on this guy.

[32:55] This is one of these things,

[32:56] I guess this is an ancillary to my,

[32:58] or a corollary to my distaste for movie hitmen,

[33:02] where hitmen in the movies are always depicted

[33:04] as kind of suave, smooth operators,

[33:06] when in reality hitmen are fuck-ups.

[33:08] Like, you're not doing that job

[33:10] unless your life is falling apart.

[33:11] But the serial killers in real life are, again, losers.

[33:16] Like, they're people with mental issues

[33:19] that cause a kind of a sexual perversion

[33:22] that involves pain or murder or something like that.

[33:24] Whereas in the movies,

[33:25] they always have elaborate philosophies

[33:27] that they are trying to communicate through death.

[33:30] And it's the kind of one of these things where, again,

[33:32] the movies are creating a glamor around something

[33:34] that there is no glamor around.

[33:36] That's just Jordan and Squalid, yeah.

[33:37] There are no serial killers who are like,

[33:40] I'm trying to reveal the truth about our fetid world.

[33:43] Like, it's always something.

[33:44] I think part of it is to try and like,

[33:46] trying to take something that's horrible

[33:49] and try to make it like, add something,

[33:52] like some meaning to it, I guess,

[33:53] where it's like, oh no, these crimes weren't committed

[33:56] by some lame-o, piece-of-shit monster.

[33:59] It's by a monster that has some kind of higher calling.

[34:02] I will say that.

[34:03] But the flip side of that is that

[34:04] then serial killers come off as super geniuses.

[34:07] Like, once you get to a certain level of genius,

[34:09] you have to kill, which is not true.

[34:11] That's the part that bothers me,

[34:12] the fact that they're depicted as these super geniuses.

[34:15] The stuff about their monologues or whatever,

[34:17] I can accept that as like,

[34:19] oh, these guys are trying to rationalize

[34:22] their baser instincts and like, turn them in,

[34:25] like, pretend that it means more.

[34:27] Whereas like, it really genuinely, I'm like,

[34:30] these are not like, Moriarty-style, like, super crime.

[34:34] No, there's only one super genius,

[34:36] and that's Wile E. Coyote, who is not a serial killer.

[34:38] He's just looking for some food.

[34:39] But there's two kinds of serial killers, I guess.

[34:41] There's the super genius Moriarty ones,

[34:42] the Hannibal Lecters, and then there's the ones

[34:44] who are like, punish me, mommy.

[34:46] Mommy, do you love me?

[34:47] Like, the child brain serial killers who are in movies, too.

[34:50] When in real life, serial killers

[34:51] are neither of those things.

[34:53] They're messed up people who do terrible things,

[34:55] but they're not fun, I guess is what I'm saying.

[34:59] But in the investigation, Mike and Terry finally realized-

[35:02] They don't have, you know, they don't have like,

[35:04] you know, they don't have the juice, you know?

[35:06] They're not a, they don't have a Q factor.

[35:08] They don't have a lot of riz.

[35:10] John Wayne Gacy had limited riz.

[35:12] Let's just say that, you know?

[35:13] They're like, throwing confetti

[35:14] around their crime scenes or something, you know?

[35:16] Well, except for-

[35:18] Making it a party.

[35:19] Why am I forgetting the name of the comedian

[35:21] who would throw confetti all over the place?

[35:23] Rip Taylor.

[35:24] Rip Taylor, yeah.

[35:24] When Rip Taylor was killing people,

[35:25] they called him the Ripper.

[35:26] I mean, he did throw confetti.

[35:27] The victims had been, their guts had been ripped out

[35:30] and their abdomen's filled with confetti.

[35:32] They're like, damn it, Rip Taylor's got another one.

[35:34] Yeah, yeah, and their knees have been slapped off.

[35:38] This one, Rip Taylor's been here.

[35:40] His sides have literally split

[35:42] and his knees have been slapped into dust.

[35:44] They've busted guts.

[35:44] I have to tell you, the first time I saw Rip Taylor

[35:47] do his like, fang on something,

[35:49] I'm like, what is this?

[35:50] But I laughed so hard.

[35:51] Yeah, I'm like, what is this guy?

[35:54] I love it.

[35:56] Telling terrible jokes and throwing confetti at people

[35:58] and he seemed so happy about it.

[35:59] This is horrifying to hear

[36:00] because this could have been the end of Dan.

[36:02] Luckily, he survived his encounter with Rip Taylor.

[36:04] Rip Taylor, yeah.

[36:05] He escaped, he was one of the lucky ones that escaped.

[36:07] Rip Taylor led him out of his car

[36:09] and he just went home covered in confetti

[36:11] and his mother saw that and was horrified

[36:13] and said, what happened to you?

[36:15] Oh yeah, this guy gave me a ride in his car

[36:16] and he threw a lot of confetti.

[36:17] He was so funny.

[36:18] He's so funny.

[36:19] And she was like, just fell to her knees

[36:20] and prayed for thanks to the Lord

[36:22] that Dan had been spared.

[36:23] Yeah, I'm looking for an It parody that's called Rip.

[36:26] So a kid sees Rip Taylor in a sewer drain

[36:30] and he's throwing confetti out.

[36:31] Come on, kid, come on over.

[36:33] Yeah, I would love to see that.

[36:35] The town of Derry has a legend about Rip.

[36:40] Except the thing is, at the end,

[36:41] they've got to do like a joke telling contest, right?

[36:43] And they're going to lose because Rip Taylor's hilarious.

[36:45] Yeah, he's a funny guy.

[36:47] Look him up.

[36:50] So Mike and Terry have realized,

[36:53] oh, they all have Burt computers.

[36:55] So they call this forensic programmer named Denise.

[36:59] And alone that night, she finds a site on their computers.

[37:02] Is it fear.com?

[37:03] No, my friends, it is fear.com.com

[37:06] because the makers of the film

[37:08] were not able to secure fear.com, the site for their movie.

[37:13] Guys, you could not write a funnier joke than this.

[37:17] It's really funny.

[37:18] I mean, once you notice it, it is really funny.

[37:20] I have to give it to them on a certain level

[37:21] because your brain just sees fear.com.com

[37:25] and reads it as fear.com

[37:27] unless you like are really looking at what's going on.

[37:31] I don't think they let the camera linger on the URL

[37:35] for exactly that reason, yeah.

[37:37] But this fear.com, so it's like a lot of flash animations,

[37:40] but then there's also a fairly primitive

[37:42] chat GBT type function where you can type it.

[37:45] The computer's communicating with you

[37:46] and you're typing into a text box.

[37:49] You're communicating with the ghost in the machine.

[37:50] In this case, we're gonna find out it's a real ghost.

[37:52] Yeah, we see her log on.

[37:55] There's a bunch of creepy shit on it that freaks her out.

[37:57] And this woman appears and says,

[37:59] hello, Denise, do you wanna play with me?

[38:01] Do you want to hurt me?

[38:03] And then we get like a flash of a bunch

[38:04] of random scary stuff zipping into Denise's eyes,

[38:07] into her brain.

[38:09] She's got the fear.com.com download.

[38:11] That's how I feel every morning

[38:12] when I wake up and look at my phone.

[38:14] Meanwhile, around here, Terry realizes from the time code

[38:19] on the German's computer that he died 48 hours

[38:22] after seeing whatever was scaring them on the computer.

[38:25] And that's what the 48 means.

[38:27] Guys, can I interrupt real quick?

[38:28] I think there is a well above zero chance

[38:32] that people involved in making this film

[38:34] saw Ringu or The Ring,

[38:37] because it came out in Japan in 1998,

[38:39] which is a couple of years before this,

[38:41] which explains why a number of the ideas,

[38:43] probably the ideas that might work the best

[38:46] are cribbed from The Ring, right?

[38:48] I mean, you mean the story,

[38:49] not to spoil it too much,

[38:50] since Dan's leaving the summary,

[38:51] but the story of a dead girl's ghost

[38:55] that is using electronics to trap whoever encounters it

[39:00] into dying in a certain amount of time

[39:01] unless they accomplish a very specific task,

[39:04] that might have something in common with Ringu?

[39:07] I think so.

[39:09] I think so, yeah.

[39:10] This is a safe space.

[39:11] I'm just throwing this idea out there.

[39:13] If I'm way off, you guys, please tell me.

[39:15] If anyone who is involved in the making of Fear.com

[39:18] is listening, please let us know

[39:19] if you were influenced by Ringu.

[39:21] Mm-hmm.

[39:21] I'm looking up-

[39:22] We have some movie detective work here.

[39:23] Now, wait, so looking up-

[39:24] If anything, I wish some of the effects-

[39:26] The American Ring also came out

[39:28] this same year as Fear.com, a couple months later.

[39:31] So on top of the existence of the Japanese one,

[39:35] they probably knew that The Ring was in production.

[39:38] Yes, I'm sure.

[39:38] And it was like, we gotta get this out.

[39:39] We gotta rush into production, yeah.

[39:40] And is great, is genuinely great.

[39:42] The American Ring, I think, is really good.

[39:44] Yeah, yeah.

[39:45] Now, how would you guys think this movie was different?

[39:47] According to Wikipedia, this was originally developed

[39:50] as an erotic horror film intended for Zalman King to direct.

[39:53] How do you think this movie would have been different

[39:55] as a Zalman King film?

[39:56] A lot more fluttering curtains?

[39:57] We're gonna call it sex.com.

[39:58] Ponytails.

[39:59] It's the same sex.

[40:00] Yeah.

[40:01] Yeah.

[40:02] There would certainly be more candles in the bedrooms.

[40:06] There would be more red shoe diaries involved.

[40:08] Saxophone music.

[40:09] Yeah.

[40:10] There'd be a lot more of all that stuff.

[40:11] Yeah.

[40:12] Pardon me while I burp a little bit.

[40:16] I feel like there might have been a role for George Hamilton in it.

[40:19] Whoa.

[40:20] George Hamilton.

[40:21] Yeah.

[40:22] Interesting.

[40:24] So Denise shows up and lets them know that the victims were all connected to fear.com.com

[40:30] and Mike's like, but he wouldn't use the same site twice because apparently the doctor's

[40:34] MO was to put on live stream death shows.

[40:37] He's made the connection to the doctor.

[40:39] Meanwhile Denise is acting hilariously weird because she has been infected with the fear.com.com

[40:45] mind virus.

[40:48] And Terry takes Mike to find the author of the book that Udo Kier died while clutching,

[40:54] who is this drunk guy in a black fedora, the uniform, the uniform of the male weirdo.

[40:59] I kind of love this scene of a guy who's like, yeah, he's just, he just lives in this bar,

[41:05] I guess.

[41:06] Yeah.

[41:07] What I do like this though is also they're going, this is the scene where you go to the

[41:10] expert who tells you, oh no, you found something terrifying.

[41:13] But he is like, uh, I don't believe in any of that stuff anymore.

[41:16] Like he's the expert who is like also dismissive of the things he's telling them, which I think

[41:21] is a funny, funny twist on that.

[41:22] No.

[41:23] Yeah.

[41:24] He's like, oh, everything I put in that book was bullshit.

[41:25] I just needed to write a book.

[41:26] But, uh, and it would have been funny if like while they're talking to him, Jeffrey Combs

[41:31] comes out of the bathroom and he was like, yeah, I was just hanging out with them because

[41:34] they're both the same level of scummy.

[41:37] They are.

[41:38] That's true.

[41:39] Uh, neither of these guys owns a functioning razor.

[41:40] It works sometimes, but not all the time.

[41:43] Yeah.

[41:44] So the general idea was that having all these computers linked could create a neural network

[41:48] that could receive and spit out psychic energy.

[41:51] How?

[41:52] Who knows?

[41:53] But Udukir's character believed in it and came to believe he knew where the sort of

[41:57] like locus of it, the site that could do these things was.

[42:00] Uh, meanwhile, Denise, our forensic, uh, whatever, isn't doing so hot.

[42:07] She's seen cockroaches everywhere.

[42:09] Her apartment has turned into a Joe's apartment and no fear is simply Joe's apartment.

[42:15] Yeah.

[42:16] Uh, seeing it again.

[42:17] No.

[42:18] This is one of those things.

[42:19] There are cockroaches everywhere.

[42:20] And I'd be like, this is obviously, you know, that the thing that she's afraid of that fear.com

[42:24] is bringing out of her.

[42:25] It's also like, well, maybe you shouldn't live in squalor.

[42:28] Like if you don't want cockroaches, maybe you're a part of a choice that doesn't watch

[42:33] fucking creep show.

[42:35] Like even if, even if you clean everything, you can still get murdered by bugs.

[42:39] I mean, you're still going to get bugs even in, even in a clean house, but because, because

[42:42] humans create spaces that are particularly welcoming for other vermin, humans being alpha

[42:47] vermin species and being beta vermins.

[42:50] But the, but the idea that she's like, uh, wasn't that a Spider-Man villain or something?

[42:53] Well, he just had a villain called vermin.

[42:55] Just vermin.

[42:56] Alpha vermin is my own, is my own, uh, term.

[42:59] But the, but the, uh, the idea that she's like, how are these bugs getting in here?

[43:02] It's like, I don't know.

[43:03] Everyone's windows are shattered and they have crap all over the floors and like wet

[43:08] wood everywhere.

[43:09] Of course you're going to get these, but anyway, you live in seven town, you're going to get

[43:12] this.

[43:13] Yeah.

[43:14] But, uh, she's so freaked out by this.

[43:15] She jumps out the window.

[43:17] Uh, Denise doesn't fit the 48 hours pattern though, which leads Terry to make some leaps

[43:23] that are like huge logical leaps.

[43:24] She's not as big as a leap says the leap that Denise took.

[43:27] No, no, no, not that big.

[43:29] But she says maybe dying was better than whatever scared her.

[43:32] And she reveals that her supervisor was terrified of car crashes and the German girl was scared

[43:37] of drowning and she died in the water.

[43:39] Yeah.

[43:40] Died in a bathtub.

[43:41] Yeah.

[43:42] Uh, Mike points out that doesn't make sense.

[43:43] What was the guy who died in prison, frightened of dying in prison?

[43:47] I guess probably.

[43:48] Yeah.

[43:49] Yeah.

[43:50] Uh, Terry's like, just, you're afraid of trains.

[43:53] Yeah.

[43:54] Probably.

[43:55] Yeah.

[43:56] He put himself in the train station.

[43:57] He didn't have to be there.

[43:59] You know, I think everyone's so discombobulated by, uh, they're like fear, fear, brain running

[44:05] from some other fee.

[44:06] Yeah.

[44:07] One of the most disappointing things about this movie was realizing fairly early in that

[44:09] Udo Kier would not have a larger role.

[44:12] No.

[44:13] Yeah.

[44:14] Just want to run, you know?

[44:15] Uh, Terry says to Mike, just promise me he won't visit that site.

[44:19] And then Mike hugs her and cradles her head.

[44:21] And I'm like, did they, they just met?

[44:23] Like what kind of relationship to this was one of the, this was one of the weird things

[44:26] about this movie.

[44:27] This movie is really weird and in many ways, but when the worst things was Terry and, uh,

[44:32] and Mike, they seem to treat every moment they're with together as if it's a potential

[44:37] date.

[44:38] The minute they're first introduced as like, you're going to be working together on this

[44:41] case.

[44:42] They're already acting like this is a potential romantic situation.

[44:45] When you meet Steven Dork, you know, like immediately, I mean, even in Bridehearts as

[44:49] a bride's didn't run off with him.

[44:50] Yeah.

[44:51] It's like huge, like work, wife, work, husband energy, right?

[44:54] Yeah.

[44:55] Yes.

[44:56] For people who have just met.

[44:57] Yeah.

[44:58] But, uh, so cut to Mike watching Terry sleep and then he goes off with one of the computers

[45:01] and immediately logs on to peer.com.com.

[45:04] He ignores her wishes.

[45:05] She can't tell me what to do.

[45:06] I'm my own man.

[45:07] Yeah.

[45:08] Yeah.

[45:09] Her, her desperate plea.

[45:10] Please don't visit that site is the same feeling I experienced when my dad was talking

[45:11] to me on the phone and he made a reference to fans only.

[45:12] And I'm like, dear God, dad, please.

[45:13] I beg of you.

[45:14] Don't follow this rabbit hole down any further.

[45:15] Do not go down there.

[45:16] Well, I'm a fan.

[45:17] No.

[45:18] I'm a fan of, of onlys.

[45:19] Uh, so the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

[45:21] the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

[45:25] the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.

[45:26] The.

[45:27] Dan, here's the thing.

[45:28] I can understand if Mike was like, why I'm not.

[45:29] I'm a cop.

[45:30] I'm investigating a case that seems to be linked to the site.

[45:31] I've got to look at the site.

[45:32] He doesn't make that argument.

[45:33] He just tells her short and then goes and looks at it.

[45:34] Anyway, just out of curiosity, I guess.

[45:35] Yeah.

[45:36] But, I mean, I guess good thing he does because when you logged on, he recognizes the mysterious

[45:37] woman right away as Jeannie.

[45:38] That one of the doctors, like first victims.

[45:39] And she tells me, did he use protection?

[45:40] Did he use a VPN?

[45:41] So that the ghost can't kill it.

[45:42] We're not sponsored by one right now.

[45:43] You don't have to.

[45:44] She says, find me.

[45:45] You have 40 seconds to confirm that.

[45:46] There's a link to the website.

[45:47] You can look it up.

[45:48] It's in the description.

[45:49] So you can look it up.

[45:50] But this is the thing.

[45:51] I can understand if Mike was like, why I'm not.

[45:52] I'm a cop.

[45:53] I'm investigating a case that seems to be linked to the site.

[45:54] I've got to look at the site.

[45:55] He doesn't make that argument.

[45:56] He just tells her short and then goes and looks at it.

[45:57] Anyway, just out of curiosity, I guess.

[46:29] where the ball tries to chase him into the elevator, where there's this creepy, glamorous

[46:35] lady putting on lipstick and she drops her glove and turns into a monster and that freaks

[46:40] his bean a bit.

[46:41] And he's taken away.

[46:42] His bean is pretty freaked, yeah.

[46:44] He's taken away by paramedics.

[46:46] And while he's being loaded into the ambulance, he tells Terry that the woman is Jeannie Richardson

[46:51] and she's not just psychic energy, but she can live in objects.

[46:54] And Terry's like, uh, what?

[46:56] Love it.

[46:58] And he's like, there's like 45 hours left.

[47:02] You got to save my ass.

[47:04] So to get answers, she does the one thing you're never supposed to do.

[47:09] Log on to fear.com.com.

[47:10] Gotta go.

[47:11] Gotta do it.

[47:12] And she sees some like, it's a funny little game, guys.

[47:18] Yeah.

[47:19] She gets the only way to win is not to play.

[47:21] She is the fear download.

[47:23] There's a naked lady crawling down the hall, vomiting blood.

[47:26] Now, the director, the director was talking about making this movie and he said that,

[47:32] you know, the script didn't really make much sense.

[47:34] So he just wanted to make a bunch of cool looking imagery.

[47:36] And I would argue he's kind of successful.

[47:38] I think he, I mean, if, if this was the script he was handed to work with, that was probably

[47:43] the right call.

[47:44] Yeah.

[47:45] If he was like, I'm just going to be, it's going to be nonstop bean freaking, he does

[47:48] it.

[47:49] I'm just going to put, I'm just going to put some, some strange stuff on screen.

[47:52] And I mean, by the end of the movie, it is a visual phantasmagoria.

[47:57] We're the visuals are, are fully just leading the way in the story is, has fallen into nothingness,

[48:01] you know.

[48:02] Um, Terry wakes up the next morning, she's got this internet hangover.

[48:06] Terry Zweigoff?

[48:07] Yeah.

[48:08] Yes.

[48:09] Late into the summary, you're confused about who I'm talking about.

[48:13] I thought you were talking about Terry Zweigoff this whole time.

[48:15] I'm like, why isn't he directing Crumb?

[48:17] What's going on?

[48:18] Yeah.

[48:19] Yeah.

[48:20] Uh, she asked Sykes if she can look at the doctor files.

[48:21] The old Sykes?

[48:22] The fictional character?

[48:23] Yeah.

[48:24] Yeah.

[48:25] Oliver Twist.

[48:26] Yep.

[48:27] Uh, the villain, Bill Sykes.

[48:28] You know what it really is?

[48:30] I'm over to, I'm overdoing the names now because when Stuart talked about fans only, I was

[48:34] just a little too slow to mention Jerry only from the misfits and I'm like, oh man, I didn't

[48:38] mention a name.

[48:39] My dad's a huge fan of Jerry only.

[48:41] That's what I figured.

[48:42] It's like, what if a skeleton was ripped?

[48:45] Yeah.

[48:46] But, but Terry's, you know, asking Sykes if she can look at the doctor files and he's like,

[48:53] his objection is the feds are covering it now.

[48:56] Not that the, not that she's part of the fucking department of health, which no one has mentioned

[49:00] for a long time, like they've just been bunny cops for a while.

[49:05] Once they know it's not a disease that's doing this, she has no jurisdiction, she should

[49:08] not be involved.

[49:09] We'll see.

[49:10] Yeah.

[49:11] Um, she sees some old photos of Jeannie.

[49:14] She starts nose bleeding all over the files and then the files themselves start bleeding.

[49:18] Um, and, uh, she goes to visit Jeannie's mom and there's a kind of a funny bit where

[49:24] she sees the little girl bouncing a ball in a photo album, like it's a living photo.

[49:29] Hell yeah.

[49:30] Um, she learns that Jeannie was a hemophiliac, which I guess is why all the bleeding happens

[49:35] with everybody.

[49:36] And the mom also identifies an address where Jeannie used to play.

[49:41] So Terry goes to check that out.

[49:42] Being a hemophiliac made Jeannie's greatest fear being sliced apart by knives.

[49:47] Something that normal people are not frightened of.

[49:49] Right.

[49:50] I mean, it is, it is funny that most of the fears in this are things that anyone would

[49:53] be afraid of.

[49:54] But that's the point of them.

[49:55] I mean, if you made fear.com and the fears were not common fears, it was like, I'm frightened

[50:00] food that's too moist. Exactly, I hate lots of little holes. Okay, well how do we turn that

[50:05] into a scary scene for a general audience? So on her trip she finds an old blind unhoused

[50:14] lady who seems to be expecting her and says, where is she? And the old lady points to a pool

[50:19] of murky water and Terry's like, cool, no problem. She like ran into a Dark Souls NPC.

[50:26] Immediately, Terry's like, yeah, sure, I'll dive into that and goes for a night swim in this gross

[50:32] runoff water where she finds the corpse of Jeannie and at Mike's hospital, she was like,

[50:42] now the curse has been lifted. I no longer have to be sentinel over this corpse. And she went off

[50:47] on her own. I don't know. Terry gets a call from Jeannie at Mike's hospital. Yeah, where you can

[50:53] get Mike's heart. That's mostly what's in the IVs. Terry gets a call from Jeannie who says,

[51:00] time is running out, find me. And it's like, what? She didn't find you. But Terry starts to

[51:06] hallucinate, goes to the hospital's horror basement, wanders around talking to Jeannie,

[51:11] saying stuff like, I did find your body. But the ghost just keeps saying, let's hang some

[51:17] more plastic sheets. I think a better movie, a more sophisticated version of this movie

[51:23] would have shown that like the woman she sees at the at the dark pool and stuff like that,

[51:27] that you would start to question, are these things really existing? Or is she

[51:31] hallucinating as she entered some kind of strange psychic space where she's seeing these things?

[51:35] But the movie has been so sinister and creepy looking all the way up to here that it just

[51:40] seems like more stuff in Horror Town. You know, oh, yeah, there's there's always some some blind

[51:44] women just keeping watch over pools of corpse water. You know, that's if you're going to get

[51:50] that in Horror Town, you know, they don't know. Oh, yeah. Go talk to the blind sentinel down there.

[51:54] Well, oh, no, you can't get to the can't get to the corpse pool from here. You got to take a ride

[52:00] at the blind sentinel. That's that's going to get you there. Yeah. Yeah. OK, thanks.

[52:04] Man at a gas station. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a cannibal. OK, cool. Me. No, I died 10 years ago.

[52:11] You're going to come back and I'm not going to be here. So pay for that gas now.

[52:15] Unlike usual, when I allow you to run a tab.

[52:21] You used to be able to do that until Donald Trump. Yeah. Until Donald Trump ruined it. Yeah.

[52:27] Around here, we trust our neighbors. We trust them to skin us. OK, can I leave now?

[52:34] So no, no, I have more folksy wisdom to give you. More folksy horror sayings.

[52:40] After this horrific odyssey, Terry, like, passes out and then she wakes up and goes,

[52:44] oh, my God, what time is it? Which, you know, I get because of the deadline. Yeah.

[52:51] And Mike's at her apartment. I overslept and missed my death. Oh, no.

[52:56] Mike's at her apartment asking, why do you log on, which is hypocritical? And they go to

[53:03] the gender roles in this movie are fucked. They go to the morgue to look at

[53:08] a genie's corpse. Like, why didn't this end the curse? And the examiner mentions that the body

[53:15] had a previous autopsy like before her death. And Mike's like, oh, he cut her over while she was

[53:20] still alive, which I don't think you can call an autopsy. No. Yeah. And and inside the body,

[53:26] they find this lipstick container with a with a message, a note inside that says

[53:30] the guilty must be punished. And Terry says she didn't want a burial. She wanted revenge.

[53:35] And I'm like, what are the rules that say that like she can say, find me, she can say,

[53:40] find me, but she can't specify that like the specifics of what she needs have to be delivered

[53:45] via lipstick note. Yeah. This is just I have a theory that there's a problem with communication.

[53:50] Yeah, I have a theory that these these types of stories, death is a form of extreme forgetting.

[53:56] First, you forget how to be alive. And then as you pass farther and farther into that stages,

[54:01] you forget how to how to communicate, how to be clear. And that's why ghosts are always like,

[54:06] do the thing. And it's like, if you just told me what the thing was you wanted me to do,

[54:10] we could be done with this. Right. The guilty must be punished. Just tell me who killed you

[54:14] and where they are and I'll deal with it. That's a cool idea that I wish one of these movies would

[54:19] actually be something I'm something maybe I'll be able to get a chance to use at some point.

[54:22] I think the idea that like a ghost is kind of losing its it's losing its memory of what's

[54:26] going on. It doesn't lose the intensity of desire for the motivation. Yeah. But now the ghost

[54:31] through this clue is finally being very helpful because the lipstick note has a specific address.

[54:37] So they go there. Do you think things haven't changed? Do you think that she was being cut

[54:41] up by a serial killer and then he left to answer the phone and she hurriedly wrote this note and

[54:45] tucked it into her gut for it to be found in the future? Like, yeah, I mean, just thinking,

[54:51] I guess there's a in Roger Abrams review, he talks about how the website seems to be

[54:56] this ghost revenge, but it also seems to be operated and run by the serial killer who the

[55:00] ghost wants revenge on, which is which is a plot hole. I feel like the movie does not square.

[55:05] Particularly. Yeah. But they go there. Mike, of course, is nearing the end of his 48 hours. So

[55:10] he's getting weirder. I do like that before they go there, they call up Jeffrey Combs and he's

[55:14] playing cards in a bar and he's got a fucking straight flush. Well, they they actually like

[55:22] when they go to the address, they find a picture of an old nuclear cooling tower.

[55:25] Yes, that's right. Which matches one of her fear visions. And she's like, oh,

[55:29] that must be where they are, which is so wild. They're like, oh,

[55:33] his lair is this nuclear cooling tower. This is supposed to be taking place in New York City.

[55:38] This it doesn't look like New York at all. But they're like, oh, yeah, yeah. One of New York's

[55:42] old abandoned nuclear cooling towers will go into one of those. It's like you might as well just put

[55:47] a pyramid in the city. You know, they don't have those. As Stewart says, yeah, they call Sykes for

[55:52] a backup. And when they get there, he's a criminal. When they get there and Mike puts the gun on a

[55:58] doctor and they have a standoff. The doctor reveals that Sykes has already arrived and he's he's had

[56:02] time to cut him up, which put him up at the wall. I will say nothing about Jeffrey Combs's character

[56:07] would indicate to me that he would be early. No, not at all. Or that he went to shoot first.

[56:14] That is not on them. They must have assumed he would show up later.

[56:18] They're like they're like Sykes isn't going to get here for a while. Let's take the scenic route.

[56:22] Set the directions to avoid freeways like let's just get slow and steady service roads. We can

[56:28] run a couple of errands before we get there because Sykes is going to be he's going to be

[56:31] way, way past the time. Yeah. Yeah. Just like cleaning all the empty cans and bottles out of

[56:37] his car will take forever. Terry distracts the doctor by holding up Jeannie's lipstick just long

[56:44] enough for Mike to shoot him in the leg. And the doctor shoots Mike back with what looks like a

[56:50] luger. And then there's definitely a luger, the gun of villains. There's a cut to the doctor's

[56:55] live stream. There's a reason for that. Yes. His life's villains and Han Solo subscriber count is

[57:02] immediately climbing upon this. And I'm like, how, how people are like, hey, guys, you got to

[57:09] see this. You know, there's more fighting. The doctor stabs her with a syringe. The nude victim

[57:17] wanders off, which is convenient because then the strap thing is free for him to strap Terry in

[57:24] there. Yeah. But Mike logs on to Fear.com as he's dying. Fear.com.com. And he downloads Jeannie

[57:31] into the doctor's brain. And then inside his mind, he's confronted with all these decaying

[57:37] corpse ghosts of his victims who judge him guilty for the crime of Fear.com.com. And he gets ripped

[57:44] apart like a bag of cockroaches and ash. And sadly, Mike doesn't get to enjoy his heroism because

[57:51] he's dead. And then the ultimate Fear.com cut to Terry's apartment. Sometimes later,

[57:57] she answers a ringing phone only to get ghostly static and she pets her cat for comfort.

[58:02] We haven't talked enough about this cat character who I loved. Yeah, there's a cat.

[58:06] Favorite character is that cat actor. What's the name of this character? I don't know,

[58:12] like Mr. Fitzroy or something. What a great name. You're right. You're right. Yeah.

[58:20] And that's Fear.com, guys. You know what I learned watching this movie? I think there's

[58:23] a thing I don't like in movies and it is seeing nude women attached to harnesses where they are

[58:28] then attacked with scalpels. Call me a prude. It's not something I'm into.

[58:35] You know, this movie and the movie we're going to be talking about

[58:39] too soon for my liking. Kind of. Both came out in 2002 and both featured way more nudity than

[58:47] the majority of movies that we cover. And there was a time where a young steward had been like,

[58:51] hooray, nudity. But I'm like, this is horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Context matters. Yeah. Context

[58:56] matters. Thank you. Well, let's give our final judgment. Nudity is one of the things where

[59:02] context really matters. It does. You're right. Yeah. And just to be I'm an equal opportunity

[59:08] nudity enjoyer. Give me all as long as it's within the right context.

[59:14] So, Fear.com, is this a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie or a movie we kind of like? Elliot,

[59:21] I earlier you mentioned Ebert's review for this picture. And as coincidentally, I have a quote

[59:29] here that I pulled from the review that I wanted to read, which is him saying, do I recommend the

[59:35] film? Not for the majority of filmgoers who will listen to the dialogue and will expect a plot

[59:41] who will listen to the dialogue and will expect a plot and will be angered by the film's

[59:46] sins against logic. But that was in the context of him saying like, and yet this movie has

[59:51] something it has like a visual flair that makes it interesting, particularly, as you said, in the in

[59:57] the last section of the movie.

[1:00:00] It just turns into almost a non-narrative phantasmagoria of images.

[1:00:07] And I don't know whether I've been Stockholm Syndrome'd into it or what.

[1:00:11] I've now seen this movie, like I said, too many times for someone to have seen Fear.com.

[1:00:17] But I think I kind of like this movie.

[1:00:20] You don't, it doesn't make any sense.

[1:00:22] If you walk into it, being aware that it's not going to hang together and like a lot

[1:00:28] of it is silly and a lot of it is dumb, there is something to enjoy here.

[1:00:34] There's something in the look and feel of it that I like.

[1:00:40] But I agree with Ebert that I could not recommend it for the majority of viewers, only for weirdos.

[1:00:46] I'd love to hear Roger Ebert like doing a thing where he's like, you know what, normals

[1:00:53] stay away, sickos, this is for you, bad movie freaks, enjoy, soup's on.

[1:01:00] I'm going to say, yeah, I feel like I, I mean, I think this is a weird thing to say, but

[1:01:06] I think time has been kinder on this movie.

[1:01:09] I remember seeing it originally and being like, this is dog shit, I hate it.

[1:01:12] But watching it again recently, I do have a greater affection for that era of like weird

[1:01:20] cyber cinema and yeah, I, uh, it doesn't make sense.

[1:01:24] It's not like good, but there's things that are, that I enjoy about it.

[1:01:30] So I'm going to say this is like almost a movie I kind of like.

[1:01:34] I'm going to call it a bad, bad movie there, but more out of, I think it's a personal taste

[1:01:40] thing.

[1:01:41] It's that like there, as I do, there is something very nostalgic and comforting in a weird way

[1:01:45] about the like new metal visuals.

[1:01:48] And like, I think the movie excels in many ways on a visual level where it's creating

[1:01:51] like a nightmare world in every form.

[1:01:54] And the few times when you see Terry's apartment, which just looks like a normal apartment,

[1:01:58] it's kind of disappointing, you know, that it's like, oh, she just has a regular bed

[1:02:01] with blankets on it or whatever.

[1:02:02] And a cat.

[1:02:03] Yeah.

[1:02:04] Where's the, where's the Gothic candelabra?

[1:02:05] Exactly.

[1:02:06] She should, her bedroom should be full of doves from the open windows that are constantly

[1:02:10] blowing ragged curtains into the room.

[1:02:13] But yeah.

[1:02:14] Why is her last name like not, you know, Ken T or something?

[1:02:18] Yeah.

[1:02:19] But I found the, but I found the, uh, the story is so unpleasant to me and the overall

[1:02:23] feel to me was so unpleasant and I do not like torture movies and I don't like movies

[1:02:27] where there's like this sicko is gonna, is gonna cut up this nude woman, woman.

[1:02:32] Like I just, I don't, it's just something I don't like.

[1:02:34] And so I'm going to give it a bad, bad movie because it is not a well done movie and the

[1:02:40] plot is dumb.

[1:02:42] But I could see if you guys, I could see like these guys are saying, if you enjoy this type

[1:02:46] of movie, then you might enjoy it.

[1:02:47] And there's some really cool visuals in it.

[1:02:49] There are some really cool, like weird visuals in it.

[1:02:52] And so the movie is kind of at odds with itself where there are visual ideas in it that are

[1:02:58] more that are deserve a better movie to be in, you know?

[1:03:02] Um, but there's a ceiling to how much I can enjoy a movie where a woman is, is nude on

[1:03:08] a metal cross and is being cut up by a guy who's talking about we, what we have to do

[1:03:12] is make death a part of our understanding.

[1:03:15] That kind of stuff.

[1:03:16] It's just, I will, I will defend the movie and say there, there's not actually that much

[1:03:21] cutting though.

[1:03:22] No, that's true.

[1:03:23] It's more implied cutting.

[1:03:24] Yeah.

[1:03:25] I mean, there's a lot of cutting in the editing, you know, it's cut like a Liam Neeson, late

[1:03:30] Liam Neeson actions where they're trying to hide the limitations of certain things.

[1:03:35] Yeah.

[1:03:36] And I mentioned the director's followup to this movie.

[1:03:38] It's even more movie that like, I could not in good conscience recommend it because like

[1:03:43] there's some deeply like problematic elements like that.

[1:03:48] The hero is a guy who's like, oh, I've fallen in love with this girl at the hospital who's

[1:03:52] asleep all the time and I'm going to kidnap her to protect her.

[1:03:55] I'm like, no, you're the villain.

[1:03:57] But but it is also like re it gets even weirder in a way that like, I don't know if this is

[1:04:03] the kind of thing you're into.

[1:04:04] It might be a good, bad movie to watch.

[1:04:08] Yeah.

[1:04:09] All the maniacs out there.

[1:04:10] Here's another thing.

[1:04:11] Free to eat.

[1:04:12] Yeah.

[1:04:13] But.

[1:04:14] Throw this down.

[1:04:15] You're going to lose.

[1:04:16] Who's who's point of view?

[1:04:17] I approve.

[1:04:18] Yeah.

[1:04:19] But Dan, Dan likes to feel bad sometimes.

[1:04:23] He likes to feel a little naughty and nasty sometimes.

[1:04:26] Yeah.

[1:04:27] Yeah.

[1:04:28] I didn't say that.

[1:04:29] But Ellie, I believe maybe you've got some more chatter to talk about.

[1:04:32] Speaking about enjoying feeling naughty and nasty.

[1:04:34] I know what you're thinking.

[1:04:35] Isn't it time for another Max Fund pledge drive info segment?

[1:04:38] Yes, it is time for one of those.

[1:04:40] So here it is.

[1:04:41] Now, as I've already told you, we need your support to keep our show alive.

[1:04:44] And I've told you how important it is to us that your support allows us to stay independent

[1:04:48] and dumb.

[1:04:49] We can go out there and recommend fear dot com to the maniacs and the sickos in the audience

[1:04:54] because we don't have anyone telling us we're not allowed to do that.

[1:04:57] And I mentioned how all you have to do to become a member is go to maximum fund dot

[1:05:01] org slash join.

[1:05:02] But I also mentioned a thing called bonus content.

[1:05:04] You may be wondering exactly what the hell am I talking about?

[1:05:07] Let me explain.

[1:05:09] Every year, every maximum fund show produces extra bonus content that is exclusively for

[1:05:14] Max Fund members.

[1:05:15] Nobody else gets to hear it at all.

[1:05:18] Members only.

[1:05:19] If you ever saw someone with a jacket that said members only, they were talking about

[1:05:22] Max Fund bonus content.

[1:05:24] That is hundreds of hours of bonus content across all the Max Fund shows you get access

[1:05:29] to for a measly five dollars a month.

[1:05:31] Since we've been doing this for years, the flop house alone has something like, I don't

[1:05:35] know, a couple dozen hours of bonus content.

[1:05:38] Every year we get more ambitious for what we do.

[1:05:40] We've done extra episodes devoted to movies we wouldn't normally cover.

[1:05:43] We've done audio commentaries for movies.

[1:05:44] We've done multi episode role playing game storylines.

[1:05:47] Dan released an entire originally original fully produced radio play.

[1:05:52] We did six episodes of a of a role playing game called Slop Tales where we are working

[1:05:57] at a seaside restaurant.

[1:05:59] I legitimately think it is the funniest thing that we have ever done.

[1:06:02] I listen to it with my kids in the car a lot.

[1:06:05] It's very popular in my family.

[1:06:06] Slop Tales is a joy as is Flyscraper, the audio play that Dan did, as is our other role

[1:06:12] playing stuff, as is our cat's audio commentary, etc. etc.

[1:06:15] As the three extra episodes we did devoted to, which director was it?

[1:06:21] Graydon Clark.

[1:06:22] Graydon Clark, director of Joysticks.

[1:06:25] This year we're going back to basics by giving you extra episodes of the show all centered

[1:06:30] around the Transformers movies.

[1:06:32] That's right.

[1:06:33] We're giving you extra episodes about Transformers movies.

[1:06:34] We have committed ourselves to doing the original 1986 Transformers the movie.

[1:06:38] That episode should be in the bonus feed right now as you're listening to this.

[1:06:42] And we're going to do one on the first Michael Bay Transformers movie.

[1:06:45] And we're going to do one on the recent animated prequel, Transformers 1.

[1:06:48] That's three new episodes of the show you can only listen to if you become a member.

[1:06:52] We've already released that Transformers the movie episode right now.

[1:06:55] So like I said, if you go to maximumfund.org slash join right now and join, you can listen

[1:06:58] to it right away and hear me talk about how much I love the song Dare to be Stupid by

[1:07:02] Weird Al, which is a big part of that movie.

[1:07:04] But the more new members who join this year, the more Transformers movies we will subject

[1:07:09] ourselves to.

[1:07:11] If we hit 1,600, this 1,600 new and upgrading members, we will record two more episodes

[1:07:17] covering Transformers Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers Dark of the Moon.

[1:07:21] But if we hit 2,000 new or upgrading members, we will damn ourselves to recording four more

[1:07:27] episodes beyond that covering Age of Extinction, The Last Knight, Bumblebee and Rise of the

[1:07:32] Beast.

[1:07:33] So you're already getting three bonus episodes if you join at all.

[1:07:37] If you're a member, you get three bonus episodes for five dollars a month.

[1:07:40] But at 1,600 joins and upgrades, you will get five bonus episodes.

[1:07:45] And if 2,000 of you join or upgrade, you will get nine bonus episodes.

[1:07:49] Why would we do this to ourselves?

[1:07:51] Why?

[1:07:52] Because your support is just that important to us.

[1:07:55] So that's a lot of new episodes of the show that you will only get if you become a member

[1:08:00] at maximumfund.org slash join.

[1:08:01] All you need to do is become a member or upgrade your membership to force us to produce an

[1:08:06] avalanche of new episodes of the show.

[1:08:08] You get to listen to all of them, like I said, for only five dollars per month.

[1:08:11] And if you pledge ten dollars per month, you get all that bonus content and access to our

[1:08:15] ad free feed for a regular show.

[1:08:17] So your member dollars directly translate into less time spent listening to ads and

[1:08:22] more time spent listening to us talking about how Grimlock of the Dinobots is a halfway

[1:08:27] decent idea.

[1:08:28] I wish he wasn't so dumb and why Walter Magnus is a total loser and the worst of all the

[1:08:32] leaders of the Autobots.

[1:08:34] So will you please become a Max Fund member and give yourself access to hundreds of hours

[1:08:38] of bonus content?

[1:08:39] It's so easy to do.

[1:08:40] You just visit maximumfund.org slash join.

[1:08:43] Pick which shows you want to support at just five dollars a month or more.

[1:08:46] Just a few clicks and you're done and you get to hear us talk about robots that turn

[1:08:50] into cars and dinosaurs and shit forever.

[1:08:54] Yeah, it was the train to shit.

[1:08:58] That was that was that was FISA Tron.

[1:08:59] Yeah.

[1:09:00] No, no.

[1:09:01] That's kind of my description of Devastator.

[1:09:02] Honestly, FISA Tron was the Autobot and and Coprobot was the Decepticon.

[1:09:06] Yeah.

[1:09:07] Yeah.

[1:09:08] I mean, that is like they all run away.

[1:09:10] Oh, gross.

[1:09:11] It works every time.

[1:09:15] Hey, let's speaking of our wonderful listeners, let's answer a few questions from listeners.

[1:09:22] Sure.

[1:09:23] You know, we're opening the old mailbag and the first that was us unzipping the mailbag.

[1:09:28] Oh, thank God you were scooping out mail and stuffing it into our gums.

[1:09:34] Yeah.

[1:09:35] Oh, no.

[1:09:36] Mail.

[1:09:37] Oh, I was going to read that letter.

[1:09:38] Well, this other letter is from Samantha parentheses Sammy.

[1:09:44] Last name withheld.

[1:09:45] Who writes?

[1:09:46] Hagar.

[1:09:47] Samantha Hagar.

[1:09:48] Sure.

[1:09:49] Yeah.

[1:09:50] I have two questions.

[1:09:51] First is for all three of you.

[1:09:54] Recently I've started rewatching Once Upon a Time.

[1:09:56] As a Disney adult, there are obvious reasons why I love the show.

[1:09:59] But sometimes I forget.

[1:10:00] I'm not a Disney fan.

[1:10:00] it's so cheesy it's painful to watch. This made me wonder if the Flophouse

[1:10:05] decided to cover bad TV instead of movies, what show or season of a show

[1:10:09] would you like to cover? Second question is directed toward Elliot. I have a

[1:10:14] three-year-old son who has always liked Spidey and his amazing friends, but

[1:10:19] recently he's been really into flipping through my Marvel encyclopedias and

[1:10:22] asking about all the heroes and villains he sees. He has some Spidey

[1:10:28] picture books. I don't think he's ready for comic books, so are they are there

[1:10:32] any Marvel children's chapter books that I could read to him to keep his interest

[1:10:38] growing? That's Sammy, last name withheld. I'll answer the first question first. I

[1:10:44] don't know if you guys feel the same way, and this is a show that would not be of

[1:10:47] interest to most other people, but when you say if you covered a season of a bad

[1:10:51] show, what show would you want it to be? There's just one show that comes to mind.

[1:10:54] Dan, you might be thinking the same show. It's called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

[1:10:57] It's behind the scenes of a late-night comedy variety show, and it is so

[1:11:01] fucking dumb. It is Aaron Sorkin at his worst, and all these talented performers

[1:11:06] being forced to do the dumbest things, and it's both not funny and incredibly

[1:11:10] inaccurate as to how television shows work. It's so funny. You know, it has

[1:11:14] that thing that a lot of the best bad movies do, where it's

[1:11:18] like, okay, well, this is a simulacrum of a good thing. It has the

[1:11:25] elements there. It has talented people. If you looked at it with the sound turned

[1:11:30] off, you'd be like, this is probably a good show. Yeah. It is profoundly

[1:11:35] watchable because it is a bunch of good people trying to do a show that is

[1:11:42] ill-conceived, and not to do too much more Max von Drive promotion, but

[1:11:50] we do have an episode of bonus content where we talk about an episode of Studio 60.

[1:11:56] Yeah, so you can imagine what that show would be like. Yeah, you did all of it, but I

[1:12:00] would want to do the whole season. I don't know the exact season, but I

[1:12:04] feel like a current show that I would want to cover is the rookie

[1:12:10] that my wife, every time my wife is watching it, I'll be like painting

[1:12:13] something and looking up, and it's the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life.

[1:12:17] There's an episode that features an unexpected home birth that I have

[1:12:21] rewound and watched like ten times. Is that the Nathan Fillion one? The Nathan

[1:12:26] Fillion one, yeah. I watched the first couple seasons of that because I like him

[1:12:30] so much. But it gets so bizonkers, Dan. Yeah, it's a silly show. It's hard. And to

[1:12:39] answer your second question, if we're ready for that, there are Marvel

[1:12:43] chapter books. I know there's a series called the Mighty

[1:12:46] Marvel chapter books, but I'm not familiar with them. But there are

[1:12:50] three Spider-Man graphic novels that are really good for kids that are by Mike

[1:12:54] Mayhack, and I know you can get them as a set, but there's three of them. They're

[1:12:57] called Animals Assemble, Quantum Quest, and Cosmic Chaos, and I know we have the

[1:13:03] Animals one for my younger son, and my young niece, who is a big Spider-Man fan,

[1:13:07] really likes those books also. And so I think those are good entry Spider-Man

[1:13:11] graphic novel comics for little kids. I was a big fan, I feel like for little

[1:13:15] kids, I'd be a big fan of Spider-Man The Torment Story, just because Todd McFarlane's

[1:13:19] art is so sick. Yes, it's so extreme, and the writing is great. But I would

[1:13:26] recommend those. I think that they're available in a box set called Spider-Man

[1:13:29] A Mighty Marvel Team-Up, and it's three books, but you can get them separately too.

[1:13:32] It's fine. You don't have to buy them all together, and they're readily available.

[1:13:37] So I'd recommend those, the Mike Mayhack Spider-Man graphic novels. And this other

[1:13:43] letter comes from Eli Lastname Withheld. Really? Who writes, wow, I was greatly

[1:13:50] enjoying your Mercy episode and browsing the movie's IMDB page when I realized I

[1:13:55] had perpetrated my own injustice. I thought the villain was played by David

[1:14:00] Dinman, who I will always remember as Skip on Buffy because I'm old. When I

[1:14:04] realized it was another actor, I felt terrible. I hope no one else

[1:14:09] commits this calumny, and I'm sure glad that Mercy Court isn't real. Even

[1:14:14] though I never shared that incorrect casting with anyone, I still

[1:14:20] feel like I've wronged Mr. Dinman. I'm sorry, and if anyone else made that

[1:14:24] mistake, please be sorry too. Eli Lastname Withheld. And I just, you know, some of

[1:14:30] these letters are questions, and some of them are sort of like... Apologies for

[1:14:34] plot crimes. You know, I initially, when that actor first showed up, maybe I'd

[1:14:39] been, like, my eyes were blurry or something, and I also thought it

[1:14:43] might have been David Dinman. But I, you know, there's a, you know, he's

[1:14:47] played a number of villains over the years, but there's, his recent performance

[1:14:52] in Rebel Ridge taught me to not always trust my initial impression of David

[1:14:56] Dinman. And also, as a public figure, you know that your words carry weight.

[1:15:00] You're not just gonna go half-cocked, just assuming that one actor is another actor.

[1:15:04] I didn't pause the movie and run over to, what's the social media platform that I

[1:15:09] should be making fun of? Blue Sky? Threads? I didn't go over to Threads and write a

[1:15:16] scathing takedown of David Dinman and his performance. Let's recommend some

[1:15:24] movies. Movies that we saw recently. We've never done it before. Let's start.

[1:15:30] Yeah, we've enjoyed. I'm gonna recommend a movie that... Are you about to freak our

[1:15:36] bean? Maybe. I love it when Dan says, I'm about to recommend it, and then laughs to himself as if,

[1:15:40] let's just say again, these assholes have no idea what I'm about to do. I'm gonna

[1:15:45] fucking do it to them. Yeah. I've mentioned my bad movie-watching crew.

[1:15:51] You gonna give them a little shout-out here? You gonna give a little shout-out? Yeah, I know they all have cool

[1:15:55] nicknames. Of course, there's Dewey, Snotball, and the Beast. Don't get on the Beast's bad side.

[1:16:04] Oh no, but he's a big-hearted guy. It's because of a movie that I didn't see, like I missed a

[1:16:09] movie one week and I came back and all of a sudden everyone's calling the group

[1:16:13] Butter Creamers. I don't know why, but I guess shout out to the Butter Creamers

[1:16:19] out there. One of the members, Phil, his selection was not a bad movie, a

[1:16:28] movie that we all ended up enjoying quite a bit. Everyone in the chat had a

[1:16:33] great time watching it. It is Gumby the Movie from 1995. What is great about

[1:16:41] Gumby the Movie? Well, there's many things, but one of the great things about Gumby

[1:16:44] the Movie is like despite being made in 1995, this is not some hip modern update

[1:16:50] of Gumby from, you know, I know 1995 is not modern anymore, but like what

[1:16:55] the 60s or whatever, the original Gumby, early 70s maybe. It is still Art

[1:17:03] Clokey, the creator of Gumby, doing this. Him and I don't know, maybe some

[1:17:10] other people, but mostly him, I think, doing the voices, these like flat voices

[1:17:14] of like, oh no Gumby, oh holy Toledo. And it is bigger in the sense that it is

[1:17:23] longer and more stuff happens, but it is not like, oh we gotta make this the Gumby

[1:17:30] event movie. It is just a long Gumby with everything that suggests, which is a

[1:17:35] bunch of shit happening that doesn't make sense. The narrative goes all over

[1:17:40] the place, like a stream-of-consciousness clay dream. And it

[1:17:47] has a couple of rock songs, both about Gumby and who Gumby is and what his deal

[1:17:51] is. And it is just really fun. If you want something that just is bright and silly

[1:17:59] and weird stuff is constantly happening and it flows into each other, Gumby is a

[1:18:05] fever dream of children's entertainment made back from the time when like, you

[1:18:11] know, I feel like children's entertainment these days, like everyone

[1:18:14] has an idea of what it has to be, you know. People are like, we figured it out,

[1:18:18] it has to be this kind of thing. Whereas in the old days, you could just give like

[1:18:21] a weirdo some clay. I mean, Art Clokey is, I think because Gumby is not as cool as

[1:18:28] the Muppets, I think he doesn't get the same credit as Jim Henson, but like

[1:18:31] they're cut out of similar cloth in a lot of ways, where it's just like, I'm

[1:18:34] gonna do what I want with this clay. I mean, Jim Henson's made out of felt, of

[1:18:39] course. But, and there was a couple years ago, I had a meeting about these

[1:18:44] people wanted to remake, wanted to reboot Gumby. And I watched some old Gumby

[1:18:49] cartoons and they are so fun because like you're saying, it's just a stream

[1:18:53] of consciousness almost. There's one where Gumby and

[1:18:56] Pokey are running like a lemonade stand and they're just selling lemonade to

[1:19:00] people and then a continental soldier from the Revolutionary War comes by for

[1:19:03] some lemonade and they go and join him and they fight alongside George

[1:19:07] Washington in the Revolutionary War. He's like, wait, so hold on a second. What

[1:19:10] century is this story taking place in? There's no time machine or anything. They

[1:19:13] just walk over to the Revolutionary War. Like, it's a, yeah. I haven't seen the Gumby

[1:19:17] movie, but I bet it's fun. Yeah. Do you have another Gumby-related thing? I'm tossing. Okay, so

[1:19:25] because this is the MaxFunDrive, I'm pulling out all the stops, baby, and I'm

[1:19:28] making two recommendations. The first is the thing that I probably watched the

[1:19:32] most in the last couple weeks and gotten the most pleasure out of. It's a

[1:19:36] very short film. It's available on YouTube. I am recommending this as a huge

[1:19:41] fan of the band Queensryche, so I'm recommending this to other fans of the

[1:19:46] band Queensryche or anybody who likes dorky rock stars in general, especially

[1:19:51] like dorky aging rock stars. Go over to YouTube and look up GT space EPK to

[1:19:59] watch the

[1:20:00] electronic press kit for the form or I guess current or

[1:20:03] former lead singer of Queen's Reich Jeff Tate. It's very

[1:20:06] special. You will get a lot of enjoyment out of it and then

[1:20:10] I'm also going to recommend a new movie. I don't know if

[1:20:13] it's actually been fully released yet, but I saw an

[1:20:14] early screening of Mother Mary the David Lowry movie starring

[1:20:20] Anne Hathaway and Michaela Cole. It is David Lowry has

[1:20:26] kind of had a career of making like like like an artsy movie

[1:20:31] for himself and then a Disney movie and then you know back

[1:20:34] and forth a little bit and this is in the this is to me. It

[1:20:37] feels very much like the two halves of his creative brain

[1:20:41] kind of having a conversation with itself. It is on the

[1:20:45] surface about a pop diva who is going through a crisis and

[1:20:51] turns to an old friend and former costume designer played

[1:20:54] by Michaela Cole to help her with her project and kind of

[1:21:00] reestablish her identity and it goes in very strange directions

[1:21:05] and I found it to be really beautiful. It's very has like

[1:21:09] really big theater kid energy and there's some really

[1:21:12] interesting staging. It feels like it's it's clearly inspired

[1:21:16] by theater and large stage productions and I think it's

[1:21:20] really beautiful and it has these big emotions, yet it's

[1:21:24] also kind of small and it's the the sets are gorgeous and

[1:21:28] the costumes are great and of course Anne Hathaway and

[1:21:31] Michaela Cole are incredible and it's so fun to watch them

[1:21:34] together. So mother Mary, I am going to recommend an old

[1:21:39] movie. Oh, get ready. Get ready. So this fear.com is a

[1:21:46] real spooky movie around a ghost. So I decided I'm going

[1:21:48] to recommend a ghost movie. I saw recently and that's the

[1:21:51] Ghost Goes West. This is a 1935 movie directed by Rene

[1:21:54] Claire, who I'm sure you guys know best as the director of

[1:21:57] News La Liberté, I Married a Witch, etcetera, etcetera, but

[1:22:01] this is a movie starring Robert Donut and Jean Parker, who I

[1:22:04] kept thinking was Jean Arthur because she's very similar to

[1:22:06] Jean Arthur, but and Eugene Pallet's in it. One of one of

[1:22:10] the great croaky boys in real life at a right wing nut

[1:22:14] actress there was and it is about Robert Donut is he plays

[1:22:19] both a modern Scottish guy who has to sell his family castle

[1:22:23] because he's out of money and also his ancestor, a Scottish

[1:22:27] Highlander who was who died in a moment of cowardice and now

[1:22:31] is a ghost haunting the castle until he can find the last

[1:22:35] surviving member of the clan that his clan hated and get

[1:22:38] them to admit how great his clan is and Robert Donut has to

[1:22:42] sell the castle to a rich family and he's falling in love

[1:22:46] with the daughter of the rich family and they move it to

[1:22:48] Florida and the ghost comes with it and it's a really silly

[1:22:51] movie. It's I thought it was really funny and Robert Donut

[1:22:54] is so charming in it and it's much more of a romantic comedy

[1:22:58] than it is with full of misunderstandings than it is a

[1:23:01] ghost movie, but there's good ghost stuff in it too and it's

[1:23:03] just like the kind of light really silly like fun, but in a

[1:23:09] way heartfelt romantic comedies that they used to just seem to

[1:23:12] churn out in the in the 30s and which they don't really

[1:23:16] remember how to make anymore and I really enjoyed it. So

[1:23:19] that's the ghost goes west. Well, that is this episode of

[1:23:27] the podcast, but wait hold on hold on before we go Elliot.

[1:23:33] What's up? What's going on? So before we go, thank you Dan. I

[1:23:40] want to remind you one more time to go to maximum fun.org

[1:23:43] slash join and become a maximum fun member by doing so

[1:23:46] you're keeping the show alive by doing so you get access to

[1:23:49] all of the hours of our exclusive bonus content and our

[1:23:52] ad free feed if you join or upgrade at the $10 per month

[1:23:54] level, but by doing so even more, you're also telling the

[1:23:57] world that you don't want to live in a media landscape of

[1:24:00] mediocre corporate owned AI IP slop. You're telling the world

[1:24:03] that you want to live in a media landscape of original artist

[1:24:06] owned personal and authentic slop. So would you please go to

[1:24:09] maximum fun.org slash join and join or upgrade your membership

[1:24:13] and while you do that the only thing left for me to say is

[1:24:15] thank you. Thank you for joining and supporting us. Thank

[1:24:18] you for all the members who've supported our show over the

[1:24:20] years and continue to support our show. It means so much to

[1:24:23] us that we get to make this podcast and that you enjoy it

[1:24:26] and that you're able to show that with money. The ultimate

[1:24:30] sign of love and appreciation in this crooked fallen world that

[1:24:33] we live in. We really do appreciate it that being said

[1:24:36] from the bottom of our hearts. So if you want some of that

[1:24:39] heart bottom appreciation, please go to maximum fun.org

[1:24:42] slash join and become a maximum fun member today. It means a

[1:24:46] lot to us that the show means a lot to you and this is the

[1:24:50] agreement that we've made that you will help us keep it going.

[1:24:52] So thank you. We appreciate that very much. I appreciate a

[1:24:55] heart bottom anyway. Oh my heart bottom girls. You make the

[1:25:01] Demi go round as long as we're uh tossing thank yous around.

[1:25:06] Thank you to our get on your heart and ride anyway. Yeah.

[1:25:09] Thank you to our producer Alex Smith. He goes by the name

[1:25:11] Howl Dottie. You can find his uh Twitch streams and music and

[1:25:16] uh podcasts on the internet. Uh look him up. He does great

[1:25:21] work. Uh but for this episode of the Flop House, I've been Dan

[1:25:24] McCoy. I've been Stewart Wellington. And I've been

[1:25:27] Elliot saying one last time. Elliot Kalin is saying one last

[1:25:30] time. Please, if you could go to Maximum Fun.org slash join and

[1:25:34] join us and become a member to support this show and keep it

[1:25:37] chugging along. Thank you. Bye.

[1:25:49] I love going to concerts with my boy Al Smith. Al Smith,

[1:25:53] former governor of New York. Kind of. He's uh a musician

[1:25:58] based out of Louisville. We saw ACDC together or Akadaka for

[1:26:02] our Australian listeners. Uh we saw Def Leppard together that

[1:26:05] **** ruled. We saw Nick Cave together. I feel like we've

[1:26:09] seen a million other bands together. Nick Cage. Yeah, we

[1:26:12] saw Nick Cage together. Nick Cage in the bad seats. Just put

[1:26:18] me in this mercy seat. Yeah, it was right. Red right hand.

[1:26:24] Second one is. Yeah. Name a second one, Elliot. Uh he's got

[1:26:29] what's the one where it's like um I mean I'm trying to think

[1:26:31] of his other murder songs but. Yeah. Uh I think there's that

[1:26:35] one that goes. Yeah. Or there's that Nick Cave song.

[1:26:41] Hey, soul sister. Hey there, mister mister. You remember

[1:26:45] that that Nick Cave song goes, hey, yeah, what's going on?

[1:26:50] Yeah. Uh. I love that song's called What's Up? Not What's

[1:26:55] Going On. Well, there's another song called What's Going On.

[1:26:58] What's Going On. Maximum Fun. A Worker Owned Network. Of

[1:27:03] Artists Owned Shows. Supported. Directly. By you.

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