Return to Silent Hill, with Steven Kostanski

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss return to Silent Hill.

[0:04] Hey guys, I think it's a perfect time to buy some property in Scary Town, USA.

[0:08] That's right, Silent Hill.

[0:10] Do you guys want to go in on a hype house in Silent Hill with me?

[0:14] We could record podcasts.

[0:15] Elliott could continue doing his OnlyFans, all those things.

[0:18] I don't want to breathe in that much ash.

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

[0:45] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:47] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:48] Oh, I'm Elliott Kaelin.

[0:50] And joining us, we have a very special guest today.

[0:54] Stuart, would you like to do the honors?

[0:55] He's a master of horror.

[0:57] He's a master of suspense.

[0:58] He's a master of special effects, the deadly art of illusion.

[1:02] That's right.

[1:03] Joining us is friend of the podcast, filmmaker Steve Kostanski.

[1:06] Hey Steve.

[1:08] Hey guys, thanks so much for having me on the pod to talk about what I'd argue is the

[1:12] best movie of 2026.

[1:14] Interesting.

[1:15] I'm sure you guys would agree.

[1:16] I'm eager to hear this argument.

[1:19] Yeah.

[1:21] Oh, there's a lot of movie in here.

[1:22] There's lots to unpack in Return to Silent Hill.

[1:26] In doing the summary for it, I found it challenging.

[1:30] Yeah.

[1:31] So as Dan usually says on this podcast, we talk about the best movies of 2026 and whether

[1:37] they deserve that title.

[1:39] So I'm raring to look at Return to Silent Hill and see if it belongs to the 2026 canon.

[1:45] Yeah, The Flophouse is named after a house that is built of great movies.

[1:49] And then at the very top, there's the best movie.

[1:51] And we see if it has to flop off the roof onto the ground.

[1:54] Okay.

[1:56] I thought it was, you know, a poker term.

[1:58] You know, this is the flop of the...

[2:01] Anyway.

[2:01] That's why Dan's wearing sunglasses.

[2:06] That's why Dan's wearing sunglasses and a snakeskin vest.

[2:11] And he keeps kind of looking at me and holding up a deck of cards and saying,

[2:14] want to try your hand?

[2:15] And I'm like, Dan, you don't talk like that.

[2:19] Dan, when did you get the four playing card

[2:24] suits tattooed on your knuckles?

[2:28] No, this is a podcast where we watch movies that were critically or commercially rejected

[2:35] by their various audiences, whether they be those critics or general audiences.

[2:40] And, oh boy, this is a picture.

[2:44] That's what I have to say about it.

[2:45] It's a picture.

[2:46] I saw the first couple of Silent Hills.

[2:48] Stuart, I know that you did your research.

[2:50] Yeah, so this is a franchise I was not familiar with outside of, you know,

[2:56] being aware of the name and the idea that it's a survival horror video game.

[3:00] And they made movies based on it.

[3:02] But I saw my pal Steve talking about it on social media.

[3:05] And I'm like, you know what?

[3:06] This is finally my chance to return for the first time to Silent Hill.

[3:11] So, Steve, what's your history with Silent Hill?

[3:14] I mean, I should point out this is the only time I've ever posted on social media

[3:18] about loving a movie.

[3:20] Coming out of the theater, I was just so blown away because it is...

[3:25] I won't get too deep into it, but it was really like exactly what I want in a bad movie.

[3:30] There's a lot of artful intent, very misguided, and just so much shit going on.

[3:37] Lots to unpack.

[3:38] But as far as my history with it, I mean, I played the games as a teenager.

[3:44] The first Silent Hill playing through that was one of the scariest experiences I've had

[3:48] with media ever.

[3:49] A terrifying game, really effective.

[3:52] And the second game is heralded as one of the best survival horror experiences ever made.

[4:00] And so this movie is a direct adaptation of Silent Hill 2.

[4:04] And yeah, big swing and a miss.

[4:08] No spoiler there.

[4:11] Yeah, as far as also my direct involvement with Silent Hill, I did work on Silent Hill

[4:18] Revelations 3D in the Paul Jones effects.

[4:21] Oh, you were the Pyramid Head, right?

[4:24] You were the guy in the Pyramid Head costume.

[4:26] I had to make some hooks that I think went into Pyramid Head's back.

[4:29] And I did steal, I have it here with me, one of his bolts off of his head.

[4:35] It found its way into the garbage, which then found its way into my backpack.

[4:39] It found its way into the garbage.

[4:41] Interesting.

[4:43] Yeah, and yeah, so what did I, the stuff I did on that movie, it was like pretty early

[4:48] in my effects career working professionally.

[4:51] So like, I had fun low-level jobs, like making a bunch of bondage gear for a bunch of suspended

[4:57] bodies.

[4:57] There's a sequence on a carousel where there's like bodies suspended, they have like kind

[5:02] of leather daddy outfits.

[5:04] And so I had to teach myself how to make leather corsets and things.

[5:09] Oh, wow.

[5:10] I also made the inside of, it's Malcolm McDowell's in that movie, right?

[5:15] As a character, when he turns into a monster, I made the inside of his body that the main

[5:21] character reaches into to grab an amulet for some reason.

[5:25] There's multiple amulets in that one.

[5:27] Actually, as kind of on Steve's urging, or maybe it was my own urging, I feel like I

[5:33] was just reaching out to Steve to be like, should I watch all of them?

[5:36] And he's like, I don't know, man.

[5:38] Go with God.

[5:39] So I watched the first two movies for the first time this week.

[5:44] And let's give a little bit of background here.

[5:47] The first Silent Hill movie came out in 2006.

[5:50] It was directed by Christoph Gans of Crying Freeman and Brotherhood of the Wolf fame.

[5:57] And it was written by Roger Avery of Pulp Fiction fame, which is great.

[6:03] I don't know why I find that.

[6:05] AI Heelfirm fame.

[6:07] Oh, he's done AI Heelfirm.

[6:08] Yeah.

[6:08] Oh, cool.

[6:09] Cool, dude.

[6:11] Okay.

[6:11] So yeah, from my understanding, that one is based loosely on the first game.

[6:17] Yes, it's kind of a rough interpretation of the first game.

[6:24] Dan, I must have watched that first Silent Hill movie at your house at one point.

[6:28] Really?

[6:29] I have a very strong memory of it, but all I remember is Pyramid Head and everything

[6:34] just being kind of gloomy.

[6:36] Yeah.

[6:36] But I thought it was for the Flophouse, but maybe it was one of those times when you showed

[6:40] like just a couple of horror movies at your house.

[6:42] Yeah, like every Halloween I do like usually like I do one that is a crowd pleaser that

[6:50] I actually like and I follow it up with, you know, a bad, at least in quotes, movie.

[6:56] Sickos only.

[6:58] Yeah, that probably was for that.

[6:59] And I, you know, I have some fondness for that first Silent Hill movie.

[7:02] It does not make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

[7:07] It's a big bag of hard to follow.

[7:09] Unlike Return to Silent Hill, which is a crackerjack puzzle box of a film.

[7:14] Once you get to the end, you're like, I got to watch it again to pick up the clues.

[7:17] Well, yeah, as one of the main characteristics of the Silent Hill series is difficulty to

[7:22] understand what the hell's going on.

[7:24] Well, in order to be able to write off this movie rent on my taxes, let me give a quick

[7:27] summary of the first movie.

[7:28] Sure.

[7:29] The first movie.

[7:30] Okay.

[7:31] Yeah, so a mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to her birth home, Silent Hill, and

[7:37] they get trapped in a like a foggy ash covered world.

[7:43] The there's like an evil cult operating there.

[7:45] It causes at certain points in the day it becomes like nightmare version and then it'll

[7:50] switch back and there's monsters running around.

[7:54] It's all because Sharon is like the good part of a girl who had been abused and became an

[8:00] evil demon, I think.

[8:03] And over the course of the movie, they help this evil girl get revenge on the cult.

[8:08] Mother gets trapped in the town.

[8:09] Father played by Sean Bean.

[8:11] That's right.

[8:11] The Bean Machine shows up with a very unbelievable American accent.

[8:15] It's great.

[8:15] He takes Sharon out of there.

[8:17] I do have to say that at one point he is aided by actor Kim Coates, who plays officer Thomas

[8:23] Gucci, which is one of my LOL moments of the movie.

[8:27] And there is a very there is one scene that I that stands out where Pyramid Head picks

[8:33] up a girl, rips off her like cult robes and then rips off her skin in the same manner.

[8:38] And I thought that was pretty great.

[8:40] But it felt very much accurate to the like a survivor, like a Japanese survival horror

[8:47] video game in that there's an evil cult.

[8:50] A lot of it is wandering around.

[8:52] Things don't make sense.

[8:53] And and yeah, and there's a lot of like weird exposition.

[8:57] Yeah.

[8:58] And I admire these movies commitment in a certain way to just providing vibes like it's just

[9:07] like, oh, here's a bunch of horror stuff that's happening.

[9:11] On the other hand, I do like I watch them like, well, I can tell that even though plot

[9:17] wise this isn't being you know, I've been told I haven't played the games.

[9:21] This isn't really that there's not a lot of fidelity to the plots of these, but it

[9:27] is the feeling of it, which is a lot of wandering around, which I would argue works better in

[9:32] a video game where you're controlling the wandering.

[9:36] Certainly, I think we'll find a spoiler for my thoughts on Return to Silent Hill.

[9:39] The feeling of sitting next to your friends while they play Silent Hill and they will

[9:43] not let you have a turn at the controller is not the most satisfying one for a film.

[9:47] You know, ironically, the same feeling I had watching 1917.

[9:51] So make that what you will.

[9:52] You know, yeah, this this is followed up six years later with Silent Hill Revelation 3D,

[9:59] which is written in.

[10:00] directed by M.J. Bassett, who is known more for TV work

[10:03] and the movie Solomon Cain, which I can't remember,

[10:05] did we do that for the podcast?

[10:06] Or did I just roll that in for large?

[10:07] No, we didn't do that for the podcast, yeah.

[10:09] I watched it for large.

[10:10] Which I'd argue is a pretty great movie.

[10:11] It's pretty great, okay.

[10:12] I'd like to point out, because Steve mentioned it before,

[10:15] this being the one he worked on,

[10:18] Silent Hill Revelations 3D is the second movie.

[10:20] I'm so used to 3D being the third movie in a series

[10:25] that I get confused every time I see the title.

[10:28] How often is that?

[10:31] Well, frequently.

[10:31] At least three times.

[10:32] At least three times.

[10:34] Most of life, not that much.

[10:35] It's not like most days,

[10:37] you'd suddenly encounter the Silent Hill 3D title.

[10:39] Preparing for this, yeah.

[10:42] This isn't a adaptation of any of the games.

[10:45] This is just a direct sequel

[10:46] to the events of the first movie.

[10:48] It could be argued it's taking the plot of the third game,

[10:52] which is a more direct follow-up to the first game.

[10:56] Silent Hill 2 is kind of a standalone thing.

[10:59] I think that's why people like it so much.

[11:00] It actually does away with most of the cult stuff

[11:02] that's featured in the first and the third game.

[11:05] So I think that's why Revelations 3D came second,

[11:08] because there's continuing characters

[11:11] from the first game and the first story.

[11:15] But yeah, just to make it extra confusing,

[11:18] it's like they jumped to three and then doubled back to two.

[11:21] Although, from my understanding,

[11:22] most of the monsters featured in the first movie

[11:26] were all taken from the second game.

[11:28] Yeah, all the big iconography that everyone latched onto

[11:33] comes from Silent Hill 2.

[11:34] Like Pyramid Head is specifically a Silent Hill 2 creature.

[11:39] And the creatures are all-

[11:40] James, describe Pyramid Head.

[11:41] Describe Pyramid Head.

[11:42] He's got a pyramid for a head.

[11:43] Perfect.

[11:44] All right, okay.

[11:45] Name checks out.

[11:46] He's got a muscly body, though.

[11:48] Yeah, yeah.

[11:49] And a little bit lean.

[11:51] He's pretty toned.

[11:52] He's a hot dude.

[11:53] Drop his nutrition routine in there, please.

[11:55] And if you watch the behind the scenes of the first movie,

[11:58] his apron is actually open in the back,

[12:01] so his ass is out the whole time,

[12:04] which is a weird choice, but yeah.

[12:06] Makes it scarier.

[12:07] What's scarier, a guy with a pyramid head

[12:09] chasing you with a big blade,

[12:10] or a guy with a pyramid head chasing you with a big blade

[12:12] and his butt is just out?

[12:13] That's actually a good point.

[12:14] Yeah, scary.

[12:15] He does not care.

[12:17] That guy doesn't play defense, is what I'm saying.

[12:19] He's not worried about that.

[12:20] Imagine how much less impactful

[12:22] the 28 Years Later movies would be

[12:24] if Samson didn't have his penis just swinging around

[12:26] through most of the movies.

[12:27] That's actually a good point.

[12:28] Good point.

[12:29] Yeah.

[12:30] Penises are scary.

[12:31] Penises and butts are scary.

[12:31] I'm just gonna say it right here.

[12:32] I'm going out of limb.

[12:33] I'll say it.

[12:34] The human body is a frightening thing.

[12:35] Oh, Ellen, I think that you start to unpack this

[12:37] with your therapist.

[12:38] I think...

[12:40] Oh, no, no.

[12:40] She said she couldn't handle it anymore.

[12:41] Bodies are beautiful, and et cetera.

[12:45] Silent Hill.

[12:46] Even Pyramid Head's body, Dan?

[12:48] I mean, people are horny for Pyramid Head.

[12:50] I guess the body, yes.

[12:51] I guess the body, not the head as much, yeah.

[12:55] This movie continues the tradition of accent work

[12:57] because this features a performance by Jon Snow,

[13:00] Kit Harington doing a questionable American accent,

[13:03] and there is a monster in it that I enjoyed,

[13:05] the spider mannequin monster

[13:07] that I thought was pretty cool.

[13:09] Do you remember that, Steve?

[13:10] Did you work on that?

[13:11] Yeah, that was mostly CG,

[13:13] so that wasn't really in our department.

[13:15] I don't think we built anything practical for that,

[13:18] and I feel like in Return to Silent Hill,

[13:21] there is a spider monster

[13:23] that's sort of an approximation of that,

[13:25] just not mannequin-centric.

[13:28] I will say, Return to Silent Hill,

[13:30] to get it to the movie that we're talking about today.

[13:32] I'm all queued up.

[13:33] I'm all ready to go.

[13:34] It really delivers on the promise

[13:36] of a different monster in every scene,

[13:39] and if you like one of those monsters,

[13:41] sorry, you're probably not gonna see it again.

[13:43] That monster scene is done.

[13:44] Time for another monster,

[13:45] and so even as I was finding myself

[13:48] feeling like I was sinking in quicksand

[13:51] while watching the entire movie,

[13:52] I did like that it was constantly

[13:53] throwing new monsters at me, you know?

[13:55] And with those monsters, though,

[13:57] as much as I, I don't know,

[14:00] I haven't played the games,

[14:01] I get the feeling that it's not like

[14:04] they're built to not totally make sense.

[14:06] They have their own dream logic or whatever, but...

[14:10] Yeah, they're all supposed to be manifestations

[14:13] of James's psyche in some way.

[14:15] Well, that's what I'm saying.

[14:17] Formatted psyche.

[14:18] I feel like the fact that these monsters

[14:20] have been so mixed and matched

[14:22] from the games to these movies

[14:25] means that whatever thematic resonance

[14:29] maybe these monsters had for what was going on

[14:31] has been lost along the way.

[14:33] Yes.

[14:34] Because it's my understanding, for instance,

[14:35] that, I don't know, they included nurse monsters

[14:38] in one of them where it wasn't the place

[14:40] where they would have been in the games,

[14:43] where there's a hospital, et cetera, so...

[14:46] Yeah, like Pyramid Head being in the first movie

[14:48] doesn't really make any sense,

[14:51] because he's so tied to James specifically,

[14:52] but it's clearly just a case of like...

[14:53] Pyramid Head in the first movie.

[14:54] He looks amazing, he's got that great butt.

[14:56] Come on.

[14:57] Yeah, yeah.

[14:58] I feel like the director was asked about that

[15:02] when making the first movie, and he's like,

[15:03] I don't know, I feel like Pyramid Head

[15:05] is just like a force of anger or whatever,

[15:09] and the director of the Silent Hill 2 video game's like,

[15:12] that's wrong.

[15:13] And then in the case of Silent Hill Revelations 3D,

[15:17] he kind of becomes the good guy at one point.

[15:21] That's the nature of slasher baddies,

[15:23] is they eventually become the good guy, yeah.

[15:25] To fight a worse monster.

[15:27] Yeah, exactly.

[15:27] The Blade 2 syndrome.

[15:29] No matter who wins, we lose, yep.

[15:30] Exactly, yeah, it's what happened to Godzilla,

[15:32] what's happened, it happens to all the best,

[15:33] you know, eventually.

[15:34] Yeah, so let's get into this.

[15:37] 20 years after the first Silent Hill,

[15:39] we return to Silent Hill with Return to Silent Hill 2026.

[15:43] They should have called it Silent Hill 20 Year Anniversary,

[15:45] or 20 Year Reunion, and it's the characters

[15:47] from the first Silent Hill have to come back to Silent Hill

[15:49] just for a social event, and everything goes wrong.

[15:52] Yeah, one last, yeah, it's right before they retire.

[15:54] American Silent Hill.

[15:56] Now this was written and directed by Christophe Gans

[15:58] of the first film, and as Steve mentioned,

[16:01] it's, from what I understand,

[16:03] an adaptation of the second video game.

[16:06] Movie opens, we meet artist James Sunderland,

[16:09] who's hot-dogging around with a very believable wig,

[16:12] driving his convertible, and he almost runs into Mary Crane,

[16:17] who is waiting at a bus stop to take a bus

[16:19] away from her hometown of Silent Hill.

[16:22] In the process, he accidentally messes up her luggage.

[16:26] He can't get her luggage together in time,

[16:29] and she just has the bus leave.

[16:30] Even though she seems to own four shirts,

[16:32] they can't get the suitcase packed in front of her,

[16:34] and this is the least patient bus driver I've ever seen.

[16:36] He's waiting for, I think, 10 seconds

[16:38] before she waves him away and says,

[16:40] no, just go, just go.

[16:41] I mean, I would understand that

[16:43] with, say, a New York City bus driver,

[16:45] but this bus is stopping in the middle of nowhere.

[16:50] For one person.

[16:51] They're stopping at a rest stop, too.

[16:54] You think that bus driver's gonna be like,

[16:55] don't worry, I gotta take a whiz anyway,

[16:56] would get out, get me my suitcase.

[16:57] Yeah, I feel like that's a scenic view

[16:59] stop along the bus route.

[17:01] People go and stretch their legs and take pics, but.

[17:04] I think it's worth flagging, too,

[17:07] when James is ripping around in his car,

[17:10] the song that's playing on the radio.

[17:11] I don't know if you guys caught any of those awesome lyrics.

[17:16] But at one point, I copied the lyrics here.

[17:19] One point it goes, well, once again,

[17:21] I'm running, running from my past.

[17:23] Reality comes crashing down,

[17:25] while glass rains down as ash.

[17:28] So, I mean, could be a little more on the nose,

[17:32] but it all shows how the whole story

[17:36] is all just a reflection of his tortured psyche.

[17:39] Let me look at verse two.

[17:40] Verse two, it says, I'm being chased by a pyramid head.

[17:43] Oh, wait, that's actually me.

[17:45] When I'm wearing my pyramid head,

[17:46] I'm afraid that I can't see.

[17:47] Oh, okay, well, it's really on the nose there.

[17:49] Don't forget, we get to the chorus, it goes,

[17:51] Panama, Panama, uh-uh.

[17:55] Yeah, yeah.

[17:56] Insert scat here, yeah.

[17:58] Yeah.

[17:59] Do you think that's what the lyric sheet said for Panama?

[18:00] It just said insert scat here.

[18:02] Yes.

[18:03] He'll know what to do.

[18:04] Yeah, yeah.

[18:06] Yeah, yeah, DLR's got this one.

[18:08] Okay, so this still is a bit of a meet-cute.

[18:13] They seem to hit it off.

[18:15] They end up talking, and then they go back

[18:17] to visit her hometown of Silent Hill,

[18:20] and from what we understand,

[18:21] they fall in love and stay there years later.

[18:24] I find it to be such a funny turn of events,

[18:26] because she's like, oh, I was trying to get out

[18:28] of Silent Hill to get to the city,

[18:29] and he's on his way somewhere,

[18:32] but it's clearly not Silent Hill.

[18:33] So the idea that he's like, well, you know what?

[18:35] I'll just bring you back to the place

[18:36] you were clearly running from,

[18:38] and we'll just settle down and start a family there.

[18:40] It's like the kind of thing that you see in,

[18:42] I guess, like a 19th century novel

[18:44] when it was harder to get from one place to another,

[18:46] but it's like, you've got a car, dude.

[18:47] Just drive her to the city.

[18:48] I think you're going there anyway.

[18:49] Yeah, the next bus won't be through in a while.

[18:52] Yeah, it's a break-a-doon bus.

[18:54] Every 100 years, a bus comes through, yeah, yeah.

[18:56] Yeah.

[18:58] So years later, we catch up with James.

[19:00] He seems to be living in a city.

[19:01] Mary's nowhere to be found.

[19:03] He is a drunk being thrown out of bars,

[19:07] and he stumbles home to find a letter.

[19:10] Yeah, thrown out of bars is a weird POV shot,

[19:13] I should find.

[19:13] Yes. Oh, weird?

[19:14] And also that he was thrown out of a bar for maybe,

[19:18] he's like politely trying to get up

[19:20] and knocks a table over, and he goes,

[19:21] oops, that's on me, and they're like,

[19:23] get the fuck out of here,

[19:24] and they try to beat him up and throw him out,

[19:25] and I'm like, he has been nothing but polite

[19:27] to everybody in the bar.

[19:28] Like, I don't understand why you're so eager

[19:30] to throw him out.

[19:31] I don't get it, you know, but maybe that's-

[19:32] I mean, they asked him to leave because he was sleeping,

[19:34] which you're not supposed to have him sleeping there.

[19:35] No, that's true, but he seems very eager

[19:37] to follow their directive.

[19:39] He's trying to leave the bar,

[19:40] but I guess it's not fast enough.

[19:42] Yeah, I mean, the bouncer's not doing a very good job.

[19:45] So when he gets home, he finds a letter from Mary

[19:48] urging him, begging him to return to Silent Hill.

[19:52] That's the title of the movie.

[19:53] Oh.

[19:54] He has a conversation over the phone

[19:56] with the psychologist who seems to be treating him.

[20:00] and she does not think this is a good idea at all.

[20:02] She does not want him to follow that choice.

[20:05] Can we just talk about his like psychologist

[20:10] who is always framed through this fractured glass table?

[20:14] I'm sure you guys thought in every time we cut to her

[20:17] that, oh, clearly this is setting up

[20:19] that she's like maybe a figment of his imagination

[20:22] or it's a very villainous way of framing someone.

[20:27] I don't know what the reason was.

[20:28] Maybe they didn't have a location, they just had a table,

[20:31] but it was an odd choice.

[20:33] But even the way that she's directed,

[20:35] she's directed to be a negative character,

[20:37] a character who seems like she's an antagonist.

[20:41] To be honest, when she came back later-

[20:43] She's giving great advice.

[20:44] She gives good advice.

[20:45] Don't go back to the place that traumatized you.

[20:46] Don't do it.

[20:47] No, no, no.

[20:48] Go back to, like, as we talked before the podcast,

[20:50] I think you guys all say the trick

[20:53] to beating Silent Hill is not go there.

[20:55] I'd say the other way.

[20:56] No, no.

[20:56] This makes me imagine a different movie

[20:59] where she takes his advice.

[21:00] It's called Don't Return to Silent Hill.

[21:03] He just doesn't.

[21:04] He just has a nice life somewhere else.

[21:06] He's still kind of a mess,

[21:07] but he's a safe living mess who's not being chased

[21:09] by monsters that vomit blood out of their stomach

[21:12] or spider women, you know?

[21:14] But then she shows up later and I was like,

[21:17] wait, so now I think maybe she's not a real character.

[21:20] It was very hard to know if she was actually supposed

[21:21] to be an actual human or like you're saying,

[21:24] a figment of his imagination or what.

[21:26] I don't know.

[21:27] Yeah.

[21:28] So he packs up his,

[21:30] he packs up his now more beat up convertible

[21:32] and drives to Silent Hill.

[21:34] He can't just drive into town.

[21:36] The road is closed.

[21:37] So he parks at the same overlook he originally met Mary

[21:40] and he takes it on foot.

[21:42] The town is closed off.

[21:45] There seems to have been some kind of mysterious illness.

[21:49] It's raining ash.

[21:50] It's super foggy.

[21:52] And flooding, apparently.

[21:55] Paul Schaeffer's song.

[21:58] Hallelujah, Silent Hill's raining ash.

[22:01] Yeah, Paul Schaeffer wrote that song.

[22:03] Oh, did he?

[22:03] Yeah, yeah.

[22:04] I didn't know that.

[22:05] Yeah, yeah.

[22:06] Yeah, and he did all the vocals too, right?

[22:07] Yeah, they just pitched him up.

[22:08] They just pitched him up.

[22:09] Yeah, it was like the chipmunks.

[22:12] Yeah, exactly.

[22:12] While he's, when he arrives,

[22:14] he meets a woman mourner, something or other,

[22:18] named Angela who doesn't really give him much information.

[22:23] She does seem to not encourage him to go further into town,

[22:26] but he's like, I gotta go meet my baby.

[22:28] I mean, here's the thing about returning to Silent Hill.

[22:30] I know that he's gotten a letter from his ex

[22:35] and he's still hung up on her.

[22:37] So he has a motivation to go there,

[22:39] but then the fact that he continues to walk around

[22:42] Silent Hill when it is abandoned and gray from ash.

[22:46] Yeah.

[22:47] I think, so there are a couple of red flags

[22:49] that he fails to follow.

[22:50] One is it's abandoned and ashes raining down from the sky.

[22:53] The other one is that-

[22:54] This became a relationship podcast so fast.

[22:56] Yeah, the other is that monsters begin chasing him

[22:59] and he's convinced, again, this is,

[23:02] Bison's notion more that this is a dream

[23:04] more than a reality, this movie,

[23:05] that even though monsters are chasing him

[23:07] and the town seems to have been abandoned years ago,

[23:10] he's like, gotta find Mary.

[23:11] She must be at the hospital.

[23:13] And it's like, this is not a functioning town.

[23:15] Like, she is dead or gone.

[23:16] You know, this is not happening.

[23:17] It's also probably worth pointing out

[23:19] that in the game, when James gets this letter,

[23:23] Mary has been dead for three years.

[23:26] And so that's like a good spooky hook of like,

[23:29] how am I getting a letter from my dead wife?

[23:32] That, like, I feel like it just builds way more mystery

[23:34] than just, oh, I guess she lived in this scary town.

[23:37] Well, and that's treated as a reveal later, right?

[23:41] Yeah, it's an insane choice.

[23:43] His therapist is just like, Mary's dead.

[23:44] You know that, right, James?

[23:45] And it's like, eh, I'm still looking for her.

[23:47] It's like, oh, okay, I guess that wasn't that important

[23:49] because he just kind of chopped it off.

[23:50] I mean, I feel like at that point,

[23:51] he had experienced enough weird stuff

[23:52] that he's like, I gotta figure this mystery out, Doc.

[23:54] See you laters.

[23:56] And I will say, you know, I know that like,

[23:58] a lot of this can't be taken as literally as I'm taking it.

[24:01] It was like, why do you keep walking around Silent Hill?

[24:03] Because it does.

[24:05] Those aren't good walking around Silent Hill shoots.

[24:07] No, no.

[24:07] It does operate.

[24:08] You're gonna hurt his feet.

[24:09] He has blisters.

[24:11] It does operate on dream logic.

[24:13] But it is one of these things where,

[24:14] if the movie was working for me more in other ways,

[24:17] I wouldn't be thinking this way.

[24:18] Well, it reminds me a little bit

[24:20] of what we did for Fear.com recently.

[24:22] How like, that movie starts out in a sort of nightmare world

[24:25] where everyone lives in apartments

[24:27] full of broken glass and driven water.

[24:28] And so later on when the characters

[24:30] are kind of losing their minds,

[24:32] it doesn't change very much.

[24:34] You know, it doesn't make a difference.

[24:35] Whereas here, it's similar.

[24:36] Once he gets to Silent Hill,

[24:37] it is automatically such a nightmarish,

[24:40] like, apocalyptic landscape

[24:41] that when things change at night, I'm like,

[24:43] they didn't change that much.

[24:45] Like, it's not that noticeable.

[24:46] The difference between daytime Silent Hill

[24:48] and nighttime is not huge.

[24:50] No.

[24:50] I mean, the one bar closes, I guess.

[24:52] Like, that's it, you know?

[24:53] It is a horrible night to have a curse, though.

[24:55] So, actually, I do have a question for you, Steve.

[24:58] Now, in the Silent Hill games, is there combat?

[25:01] Does he get to, do you get to fight these monsters?

[25:03] Yeah, I mean.

[25:04] Or do you like run around them?

[25:05] I mean, it's very late 90s, early 2000s

[25:09] survival horror combat where it's very clunky.

[25:12] The goal is to avoid fighting the monsters,

[25:15] and when you are fighting them,

[25:16] you're just beating them with a pipe, which,

[25:18] in this, the most we get is,

[25:20] I think he throws a pipe at a monster,

[25:22] and then it scurries down a manhole.

[25:24] That's when Steve pointed to the screen,

[25:26] and he's like, that's just like the game.

[25:27] I like that throwing a pipe part,

[25:29] but maybe that's just because

[25:30] in my current storyline in Harley Quinn,

[25:32] she doesn't have Batarang, so she's become Bat Quinn,

[25:34] so she just writes Batarang on pipes

[25:36] and throws them at people.

[25:37] That's pretty good.

[25:38] Yeah.

[25:39] I mean, pipes are an underused weapon, for sure.

[25:42] Except in Clue, in which case they are overused.

[25:44] Yeah, too much.

[25:45] Yeah.

[25:46] So he explores the town of Silent Hill.

[25:48] It is as we have described.

[25:50] He bumps into a weird vagrant who hollers at him,

[25:52] and he kind of walks away from the guy.

[25:55] He finds a club that seems to still

[25:57] have a flickering neon sign, and he goes in,

[26:00] and though the club is in ruins,

[26:02] it does trigger a flashback memory of his

[26:05] of visiting this same club with Mary

[26:08] when they lived in Silent Hill,

[26:09] and meeting all her weird family friends.

[26:13] Yeah, this weird, like, Rosemary's Baby

[26:15] kind of subplot that the movie has

[26:17] feels like Christoph Ganz is doubling down

[26:20] on the cult angle of the first movie,

[26:22] even though it doesn't really fit this narrative.

[26:25] It feels like he's like,

[26:26] no, no, I think the cult stuff was good,

[26:27] so I'm gonna squeeze this into this movie, too.

[26:30] It was 100% not a surprise to me

[26:33] when I went to the Wikipedia page

[26:34] and I learned that the cult stuff

[26:36] was not in the game that this was based on.

[26:40] It's completely unnecessary?

[26:41] Yeah.

[26:42] Yeah, the game is way simpler

[26:44] than what this movie is presenting.

[26:46] It's overstuffed with stuff, which is strange,

[26:48] because I feel like it could be a very simple,

[26:51] straightforward horror experience

[26:54] of just a guy wandering through a town

[26:55] looking for who he thought was dead wife

[26:58] and encountering monsters along the way.

[27:00] But now we've got the layers.

[27:02] I think, sorry to interrupt,

[27:04] but I was wondering while watching it,

[27:05] I'm like, why is this not doing it?

[27:07] Because I wouldn't mind,

[27:08] I've seen movies where it's people exploring

[27:10] and it's scary and like,

[27:11] why is this one not functioning properly?

[27:13] And I think part of it might be,

[27:14] you're right, there's too much stuff in it.

[27:16] It's not clear and simple enough.

[27:18] And if it was like, he's trapped in this town

[27:20] and there's a monster after him

[27:22] and he's gotta try to get away from it

[27:24] and you don't need all this explanation.

[27:25] Maybe he's a tall guy in a trench coat and a little hat.

[27:27] Maybe, yeah.

[27:28] Like the tyrant or nemesis.

[27:30] Yeah.

[27:31] But there's just so much,

[27:33] all that backstory is no good

[27:35] and the characters are so clearly evil,

[27:37] like from moment one.

[27:38] Yeah.

[27:39] Even though it's a small town,

[27:40] they're coded as like city sophisticates.

[27:43] You know, like they're all kind of artists

[27:44] who love the devil.

[27:46] A real hellfire club.

[27:47] Yeah.

[27:48] And then there's like two,

[27:49] there's twins that speak in unison.

[27:52] Yeah.

[27:53] Club scene, like over Twilight Lodge.

[27:55] There's a scene, not to get ahead,

[27:56] there's a scene later on where he sees across the street

[27:59] as this cult shows up and ushers his wife away,

[28:01] clearly unhappily,

[28:02] and he just watches it happen

[28:04] and then he's kind of suspicious of his wife afterwards

[28:06] and I'm like,

[28:06] dude, you needed to go over there and defend your wife.

[28:09] What are you doing?

[28:09] I don't understand.

[28:10] If my wife was,

[28:11] if I was running errands

[28:12] and I saw my wife across the street,

[28:13] first thing I'd do is go,

[28:14] hey, and I'd cross the street and go talk to her.

[28:16] But if I saw that a crowd of people

[28:17] that I know she doesn't like to be around,

[28:19] ushered her into what seems like an abandoned building,

[28:21] I would not wait to see where they were going.

[28:23] I'd just be running across and be like,

[28:24] stop that, what's going on?

[28:25] Not to leap too far ahead in the plot,

[28:27] but later on,

[28:28] after he-

[28:29] Because we're going slow.

[28:30] After he has seen his wife,

[28:33] like in the cult ritual,

[28:37] like having her like skin be peeled off.

[28:39] Yes, they can take her blood out, yeah.

[28:41] Yeah, like afterwards,

[28:43] he seems mad at her for lying to him.

[28:46] Yeah, it's because,

[28:47] it's a thing called post-nut clarity, Dan.

[28:50] I mean, I could see it,

[28:51] if this was a better movie,

[28:53] I could see it being a metaphor

[28:54] for a guy whose wife has been abused

[28:57] or assaulted in some way,

[28:58] who blames his wife

[28:59] and can't quite believe

[29:00] that she wasn't responsible in some way

[29:02] because of his own problems.

[29:04] But it's not that good a movie.

[29:05] I mean, that felt very much to me.

[29:07] Yeah, but I feel like this is not a,

[29:08] this movie is not swimming in emotions that deep.

[29:10] So instead, it just comes off as like,

[29:12] why are you mad at your wife

[29:13] for all these people taking her blood?

[29:15] I feel like the headline here, dude.

[29:17] Okay, so like the plot of the movie-

[29:18] It seems like the main headline would be,

[29:19] let's leave,

[29:21] let's get out of town.

[29:22] Yeah.

[29:22] Now I understand why you're trying-

[29:23] A very simple solution.

[29:24] Yeah, now I understand why you're trying to leave town

[29:25] when I met you, you know?

[29:27] So like the plot of the movie,

[29:28] we stop that digression

[29:30] and return to the main story line,

[29:33] where James, once again-

[29:34] The main story is wandering around?

[29:36] Back in modern Silent Hill,

[29:38] is wandering around the town

[29:40] and he is attacked by this armless creature

[29:44] that spits acid out of its chest.

[29:46] Oh, it's acid.

[29:47] He hits it with a pipe and then it climbs,

[29:48] it's like acid blood.

[29:49] Oh, okay.

[29:50] It can be two things at once.

[29:52] He hits it with a pipe

[29:53] and then it crawls,

[29:53] it shimmies down a manhole.

[29:55] And then we get this alarm sound

[29:58] and the whole town-

[30:00] to nightmare version of town which again those nightmarish is not that much worse

[30:06] than basic Silent Hill yeah in fact I don't link fence yeah I'll be honest I

[30:11] don't think I noticed that there yeah he now gets attacked by a tidal wave of

[30:20] monster roaches which he runs from luckily these monster roaches seem

[30:25] deterred by things like chain-link fences yeah yeah and he runs from this

[30:29] tidal wave and eventually is able to take take he can hide in the woodside

[30:35] apartment building which is an apartment complex that he lived with with Mary

[30:40] just to draw some attention to those little bugs they do a gimmick that I

[30:45] love to do which is they cut the close-ups of the bugs and show their

[30:48] little goober faces yeah it's just a nice little detail that I appreciated

[30:54] it's always fun it's fun when creatures have weird little faces yeah it made it

[30:58] even more exciting we had more of a tie to them for the next time we see the

[31:01] bugs checking oh never again oh okay never they don't show up again yeah so

[31:06] he wanders this like ruined apartment building having flashbacks to when he

[31:10] and Mary lived here and then he when he finds their apartment he has this

[31:14] flashback where he kind of interrupts Mary hanging out with her weird coven of

[31:19] friends who seem to be talking about something suspicious and they all he

[31:24] also finds this weird altar to Mary's father who was the leader of this church

[31:30] yeah there's a lot of moths flying around he he decides to ask no questions

[31:35] about no thanks I like the army men traditionally aren't known for asking a

[31:40] lot of questions no but I feel like these are the kinds of mark Maron you

[31:44] know yeah mark Mariner Joe Rogan they're just a Joe Rogan's just asking questions

[31:48] guys come on yeah but like it's interesting to me the structure of that

[31:53] scene if he walks in the cult is sitting around talking they just get up

[31:58] and leave he like he comes in pleasant enough and says like hello and they just

[32:03] up and go and no explanation no anything yeah maybe later on when he sees them

[32:07] doing their cult stuff he doesn't interrupt it because he's like I wonder

[32:10] if they're just talking shit about me sneak up and listen in and yeah they're

[32:15] talking let me wait and find out what they're saying about me and they're like

[32:18] ripping blood out of his maybe they don't like my artwork because he's an

[32:22] and I mean I bump on all this cult stuff but I do love the weird altar in the

[32:29] closet with the little metal gates and the like paper mache head that opens up

[32:33] yeah because it goes like kind of unacknowledged like they don't really

[32:38] give any explanation it's just a weird visual and yeah I kind of loved it I

[32:43] mean this movie functions best as a collection of weird visually a better

[32:47] video installation than it is a story so wandering around the apartment

[32:53] complex he does find a person who seems to live there Eddie who seems diseased

[32:59] and also happy that no one's around and potentially violent and he seems to know

[33:06] who Mary is and I think he suggests that she's at the Brookhaven Church or a

[33:12] Brookhaven Hospital and now by this point I was still trying to follow this

[33:16] movie according to regular storytelling rules so I'm like oh now he's gonna have

[33:19] to work with Eddie or like Eddie's gonna come back or no I guess just a reference

[33:23] to something in the game probably you know yeah so this is a very confusing

[33:26] choice because the idea is that Silent Hill draws people like people with

[33:32] guilty consciences to the town people that are you know like like struggling

[33:38] with some internal torment and Eddie is one of these characters this movie would

[33:42] have made so much more sense if someone had said that sentence because there's

[33:50] some choices made later on where certain characters are kind of meshed together

[33:54] into one character that then basically renders Eddie pointless because there

[34:02] are other characters that show up that are just random people who end up in the

[34:05] town that James encounters and they're people that are struggling with their

[34:08] own internal torment but the way it is in this movie Eddie's just a guy that's

[34:14] there and then he leaves and that's it and there's really like if that scene

[34:19] was lifted from the movie it would have made no difference

[34:22] not a friend of the director me not only would that clarify things if someone

[34:28] just said that but also that would be so much more interesting to me if we saw

[34:33] like oh there are a couple of different people he comes across and they're

[34:36] clearly like sort of like half interacting with him but like dealing

[34:41] with their own trauma explains the morning that he comes across early on

[34:45] otherwise I don't understand what she's doing it yes oh you'll find out yeah

[34:49] that's exactly what that Angela character is the same situation as Eddie

[34:53] in the game where it's somebody that is just dealing with their own shit that's

[34:57] in Silent Hill that you encounter and makes way more sense than what we're

[35:01] given in this movie speaking of encountering other characters Eddie and

[35:05] James find Laura a little girl who carries around a dolly and Salvador

[35:12] Dolly film dolly yeah not a bit she's not lugging around a huge time maybe

[35:17] more like common reference she doesn't have the Dalai Lama with her and he's

[35:24] not like what I have to be the spiritual leader for millions what's going on

[35:27] well you picked the spoon I'm sorry monsters start to show up Laura and

[35:39] Eddie both run off James is trying to find his way out through this maze of

[35:44] apartment building there is not a giant peach to be found for James to hide in

[35:47] or use as a convenience a creature in this case a mannequin that turns into a

[35:53] spider Mike and James in the giant peach right there's a spider and he runs

[35:58] away from that and yeah things are looking grim for him when our old pal

[36:03] pyramid head shows up and beats the crap out of this mannequin spider so I just

[36:09] want to just want to pause on this moment for a second because this is a

[36:13] pretty important moment in the game and where where James hides in a closet he

[36:19] watches pyramid head doing something to some weird mannequin monster and there's

[36:25] it's very like sexual connotations to it but it's very ambiguous and so it was

[36:30] interesting to me that in the movie the choice was to just have pyramid head

[36:35] punch the spider monster repeatedly in the gut but I feel like that moment

[36:44] really encapsulates what this movie is doing wrong where it's like any

[36:47] ambiguity any suggestiveness just pulled out completely and it's like well

[36:51] what if he just beats the monster like it's just finding a literal path that

[36:56] makes it more confusing somehow yeah I mean that's it's that's both

[37:01] disappointing and interesting to hear I have to admit I couldn't get over the

[37:05] fact that James is trying to hide in the closet but he does not turn off his

[37:07] fucking flashlight the entire time that's the first thing you would do if

[37:10] you were hiding right it's not literally have a beacon shining out to the room

[37:14] showing where you are but you won't do it yeah now we've passed the like

[37:18] armless white mummies with those shapely butts like what all the monsters seem to

[37:26] have shapely butts yeah looking up trace calling a real estate agent yeah I want

[37:33] to look at a yeah I went I did I did a timeshare on Monster Island and I was

[37:46] real disappointed in the butts that I found there the monsters were not as

[37:53] advertised stupid thick okay so they must all be using all those monsters

[38:01] using cuz I got a filter on their Instagram cuz what I saw in person did

[38:03] not match up with the pictures yeah it's a lot of positioning and angles um yeah

[38:08] so also when my wife asks can you tell her that's not the reason I want to move

[38:13] to Silent Hill that it's cuz it's like water just for the silence I want just

[38:16] the silence I want to the calm rural living the small-town living not because

[38:20] of that you know the butt thing yeah the hills referring to the butt yeah my

[38:24] wife knows who she married yeah the conversation everyone knows that butts

[38:28] are not silent hills depending on what you're eating I guess our episode on

[38:34] Dreamcatcher later we are recording an episode on the loudest hills much more

[38:40] about the sounds that a butt can make yeah so pyramid head confront is it

[38:44] creeps up on James James not a very good hider as we've addressed pyramid heads

[38:49] about to might as well be going don't come in here I'm hiding to the parents

[38:52] pyramid head yeah pyramid heads about to smash him when the alarm goes off uh-oh

[38:56] and when when James kind of comes to Silent Hill is returned to normal Silent

[39:04] Hill State as opposed to nightmare Silent Hill State pyramids nowhere to be

[39:08] found he bumps into Angela the two of them try and sneak down the street

[39:13] that's filled with those armless acid-spinning monsters James bumps into

[39:19] little Laura again and he has to chase her around she leads him into a maze

[39:25] where he loses her but he finds another person Maria who looks exactly like Mary

[39:32] but kind of like the cool edgy version of Mary and also just like standing there

[39:37] it really to me felt like standing there waiting for the scene to start like

[39:42] very effective at feeling like a ps2 cutscene from the wall exactly like a

[39:49] video game NPC yes similar to the way that uh that Viggo Mortensen in what's

[39:54] uh what's the crimes of the future is always squatting down like he's a like a

[39:58] video game merchant

[40:00] Oh, yeah.

[40:01] OK, so they have a conversation.

[40:05] You know, it's kind of boring.

[40:07] And they decide to, like, team up together and go to Brookhaven Hospital.

[40:11] And she's trying to get him to leave Silent Hill.

[40:14] She's like, we could go.

[40:16] We could just go.

[40:16] Full quote for the poster, by the way.

[40:18] It's kind of boring.

[40:19] I mean, these are like that's the thing is a lot of these interactions

[40:23] do feel like video game cut scenes.

[40:25] And I have been playing video games long enough

[40:27] that my brain's like, tune it out, get me to the action.

[40:30] Yeah. Show me. I don't care.

[40:31] Yeah. So while they're on their way to the hospital,

[40:34] we see some more cut scenes, including the the one the memory of

[40:38] of this cult ritual where James sees

[40:43] Mary being like seemingly drugged and like

[40:47] like manhandled by this cult and they drink her blood and stuff.

[40:51] He he confronts her in their apartment and he's like, yo, this is crazy.

[40:55] And she's like, that's just what I'm like, dude.

[40:57] Yeah. Signed up for.

[40:59] But even though I wanted to leave, like I was making an effort to leave.

[41:03] Still fine with it, I guess.

[41:05] Yeah. Doesn't doesn't lead with. Are you OK?

[41:08] No, she's not.

[41:10] He's not the most empathetic character and she's not the most consistent

[41:13] character in her viewpoints on things.

[41:15] Yeah. Well, it's in many ways.

[41:17] Her representation in this film is split into many forms.

[41:21] So yeah, that's a that's a little teaser.

[41:24] That's the most obvious thing in the movie that the movie holds up

[41:28] on as long as possible. Yeah.

[41:29] So this is the idea.

[41:30] This is where they broke up and James left Silent Hill at the hospital.

[41:35] James and Maria find a cassette recording that explains

[41:40] that Mary has been poisoned repeatedly by her father and the cult

[41:45] and that this poisoning has caused like permanent damage and injury to her.

[41:49] And she has been hospitalized.

[41:52] This is when the alarm goes off again

[41:54] and we are once again taken to Nightmare Silent Hill.

[41:58] Halloween town. Yeah, they they bump into a group

[42:02] of kind of dancing nurses, right, with knives.

[42:05] Right. Like like stop motion dancing nurses.

[42:08] I mean, they're kind of like they kind of do like jitter.

[42:10] It's a little bit like a scary version of the backup dancers

[42:13] from the Simply Irresistible and Addicted to Love videos.

[42:15] But they're nurses. Yeah.

[42:16] But also they like fall down, they shatter.

[42:19] Yeah. When when you fight them, they break apart into pieces. Yeah.

[42:22] Yeah. Yeah.

[42:22] It's a bit of a bit of a tweak from the previous iterations of these nurses

[42:26] where they're a little more organic.

[42:28] I did like that.

[42:29] They made them these like weird porcelain things.

[42:32] And there's faces. Yeah.

[42:34] This is definitely in the game. Right, Steve?

[42:36] Yeah. I find it weird, though.

[42:38] All the movies, all three of the movies have a nurse scene where it's like

[42:42] they feel like they have to have the nurses in the movie.

[42:45] So they just cram them all into one hallway.

[42:47] Whereas, you know, in the game, it's a little more subtle.

[42:50] There's like one or two floating around random hallways here and there.

[42:55] But the movies always treat it like, OK, it's got to be this scene

[42:58] where they have to run through like 50 nurses

[43:00] and then there's no nurses ever again.

[43:02] And it just feels like we got to put them somewhere.

[43:05] So here's the scene with the nurses.

[43:07] And the nurses seem to function by like movie ninja rules,

[43:09] where if there's one of them terrifying, if there's a lot of them,

[43:12] you can just push them over and they're easy to defeat. Yeah.

[43:15] Yeah. And they're like activated by sound or something.

[43:19] There's always like some gimmick.

[43:20] They're like Trix's.

[43:22] Yeah, I feel like the nurses.

[43:23] It's funny because they were they're supposed to be so inhuman

[43:25] and their movements are supposed to be inhuman.

[43:27] But because their movements are so stylized, all I could see was dancers.

[43:32] Yeah, I could see the fact they're being played by dancers.

[43:34] And so I'm like, it's really breaking the illusion.

[43:36] The flash mob.

[43:36] Now all I think about is the people who have been cast in these roles, you know.

[43:39] But they were good. They're good.

[43:41] No, they do a good job.

[43:42] It's if anything, they are there.

[43:43] It's it's that like it really showed up with that.

[43:46] The other monsters are mostly CGI that these ones were.

[43:49] Yeah, they felt like they were played by humans when they're not shattering.

[43:52] You know, they didn't shatter real people for the movie.

[43:54] They didn't use nitrous or something like that to make to freeze them and shatter them.

[43:57] That'd be crazy.

[43:58] You know, no one take that job.

[43:59] Don't take that job.

[44:00] If you get a I don't know, it's tough to get a job in Hollywood.

[44:03] I feel like more than one movie has suggested

[44:06] that people would be willing to get shattered in something

[44:08] that either thought of or dreamed of.

[44:10] And I can't remember.

[44:10] And I may have talked about the flop house for I'm not is the idea of a

[44:14] a stunt man doing or no, it's the star of a movie does all his own stunts.

[44:17] And they're like, we saved this stunt for the last

[44:19] because you have to die while you're doing it.

[44:21] It's like, oh, I don't want to do that.

[44:22] You know, it's fine. It's fine because we shot everything else.

[44:24] But for this, you have to actually die while you're doing it.

[44:26] And the actor being like, I guess to finish the movie, I guess I have to.

[44:30] You know, that was a bit we did on our previous episode.

[44:32] So that was a flop house flashback.

[44:34] I couldn't remember if it was a bit we did or something that came to me

[44:37] in a mystic haze. Yeah, yeah.

[44:39] Now we wake back up and we're in Silent Hill again.

[44:41] I'm sorry we're not back in that flashback.

[44:43] Oh, man, it's so much better.

[44:44] So we want you to cut out me misremembering if that was the thing that we did.

[44:47] Oh, you know, loop it.

[44:50] So in the while trying to get away from the nurses, Maria gets stabbed

[44:54] seemingly fatally.

[44:57] James is James is

[45:00] sees Laura, the little girl again, and she lures him into a hospital room

[45:05] like Laura and then and then locks the door behind her.

[45:09] And he is confronted by this like hospital bed moth monster creature.

[45:14] Yeah. Yeah.

[45:14] Who stuffs her arm down his throat and he awakens in the hospital

[45:19] in a conversation with his psychologist.

[45:22] Could I just take a moment to talk about that moment in that hospital room,

[45:27] the dark hospital room with the bed on the ceiling?

[45:29] The thing about this movie that keeps bringing me back to is that

[45:33] there are occasional moments of like really effective horror imagery.

[45:38] And I think the shot of him looking with his flashlight

[45:41] and then looking up and seeing a bed on the ceiling

[45:44] is it kind of screeches towards them like that's a great shot.

[45:47] Yeah. Yeah.

[45:48] That moment is really effective, surrounded by lots of stupid.

[45:51] But occasionally there's just like flashes of brilliance where I'm like,

[45:56] why wasn't with the brain that thought up this shot?

[45:58] Why couldn't everything around it be this effective?

[46:01] Because I find this moment like as far as just like horror imagery,

[46:04] like really satisfying and true to the case.

[46:07] Well, that was like a certain amount of ADHD almost where they're like,

[46:11] there's so many good ideas, but they don't want to take all the time

[46:14] to like prep you for that or like they just want to throw more ideas at you.

[46:19] I looked it up and that was actually shot on Take Your Daughter to Work Day.

[46:21] So that was actually Kristoff Ganz's child.

[46:23] Daughter came up with that idea and she just had school.

[46:25] She couldn't be there every day.

[46:27] So the great ideas were when she was there. Yeah.

[46:30] That tracks. Yeah.

[46:30] She's like, what if there's a bed on the ceiling, Papa?

[46:33] And he's like, brilliant. Put it in the movie. Put it in the movie.

[46:36] Let's do it. We're taking all the suggestions.

[46:39] So this movie, this does feel like a movie that was made via suggestion box.

[46:43] They were like, crew members, if you've got a weird horror visual,

[46:46] just write on a piece of paper, slip it in the box.

[46:48] We'll do all of them.

[46:49] We will not judge them on quality.

[46:51] And so in the order of them being read.

[46:56] Yeah, it's just the key and peel gremlins to sketch.

[47:00] Here we go.

[47:02] What are we shooting today?

[47:04] And they'd shake the box and then pull out a card.

[47:06] Ah, nurse mob. OK, get me some nurses.

[47:10] Oh, could they be porcelain, too? Yeah.

[47:12] Oh, wait, wait. Another.

[47:13] I need a suggestion for the audience.

[47:15] Another. This paper just says porcelain.

[47:17] Yeah, we'll do it. We'll do them both today. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

[47:20] So his psychologist, who I guess has made the trip to Silent Hill,

[47:24] is that Brookhaven Hospital where he's recovered?

[47:26] Yeah, I recommend it.

[47:27] And she says she's like, yo, dude, Mary's been dead for a while.

[47:31] You trying to save her and her.

[47:33] This is all delusion, yada, yada, yada.

[47:35] And he's like, no, thanks. Boring.

[47:37] And so he goes down into the basement of the hospital,

[47:40] which is now a kind of like a nightmare gallery

[47:42] filled with paintings that he is made of Mary.

[47:46] Maria approaches and is like begging him to stop his quest.

[47:51] This is when he then it kind of summons Pyramid Head, who kills me.

[47:56] Mayor Maria, he's like, I don't need you anymore.

[47:59] And in this moment, we also see kind of through Pyramid Head's helmet

[48:03] that inside it's James's face.

[48:06] Yeah. Is he Pyramid Head? Maybe.

[48:10] The visuals would certainly seem to be saying that

[48:13] this causes a flashback where he's in his

[48:17] he's in his whatchamacallit, his studio, making, making paintings.

[48:22] And then great art.

[48:24] Yeah, making making some sick ass art.

[48:26] The his the floor tilts and he slides down and lands in a lake

[48:31] only to awaken on the shores of the lake in Silent Hill

[48:37] in right by the Lakeview Hotel that is now on fire.

[48:41] And the Lakeview Hotel had been mentioned previously.

[48:44] It's a place that he and Mary like to go.

[48:45] And it also had the best view in all of Silent Hill.

[48:48] Everything in this movie has has horror town names.

[48:51] It's and it's always kind of says Silent Hill, the Woodside Apartment,

[48:54] Brookhaven Hospital, Lakeview Hotel, Myrtle Lake.

[48:58] They all sound like places you would find in a horror movie. Yeah.

[49:02] So he bumps into little Laura again at some point.

[49:05] I don't know if he was here, but at some point we find out

[49:07] that the doll she's carrying is actually like a little like dead baby thing.

[49:11] Yeah. The weird monster baby. Yeah, I'm not mad at it.

[49:15] No, I'm mad.

[49:16] Whoever slipped that in the suggestion box should have gotten a bonus.

[49:18] Yeah, it's a pretty my baby.

[49:21] You ever see one? Creep me out.

[49:25] That's what the tiny group of people remember.

[49:28] Pick me up.

[49:29] The Larry Cohen's Master of War. That's great.

[49:33] OK, so this is where Laura drops,

[49:36] drops some serious, serious truth bombs, spills the tea, if you will.

[49:40] And that's where she explains.

[49:42] Yo, yo, yo, dude, don't you remember?

[49:45] Laura, Angela, Maria, Mary, we're all married, dude.

[49:49] A little bit.

[49:50] The Laura is the same we see at her tombstone and her tombstone,

[49:56] which is not a pizza, don't make any fucking pizza jokes.

[49:59] He's standing at.

[50:00] tombstone pizza and instead of pepperonis there's like a million names on there that are you know

[50:05] Laura, Mary, Angela, Maria, Crane. Laura, Mary. Insane. Insane choice. It's an interesting choice.

[50:15] It's very funny to me that I as an audience member very early on was like oh they're all

[50:19] different versions of Mary right but he who knew Mary's full name having been married to her

[50:24] did not put two and two together. Well he's forgotten some things as we all know.

[50:28] Yeah this expectation that the audience is going to accept that he's just like repressed all of

[50:33] this so much is like just a crazy, crazy wish from the filmmaker. Thankfully his psyche was

[50:40] smart enough to ask the dream uh like tombstone maker I guess to like carve all the different

[50:46] names in there so later on he could remember. I would have bought this more if they had shown

[50:51] him getting hit really hard in the head right before he went to Silent Hill. Yeah yeah yeah

[50:55] that like yeah he walked under a coconut tree yeah um so he he then runs into Angela who is

[51:01] being attacked by this like bed monster and just like Angela from Who's the Boss the bed

[51:08] has like hands that are groping her and drags her and him. Does that happen in Who's the Boss?

[51:13] Yeah. Elliot have you been bonked on the head you don't remember? I don't remember. It's a very

[51:19] special episode. I don't remember the body horror elements of Who's the Boss. Well they get dragged

[51:23] down into this weird hell pit where Angela you're being dragged into a hell pit yeah I remember it

[51:28] now I remember that. Angela's like body morphed with either a bed or a book I can't quite tell

[51:34] it's like a big mattress monster. Yeah well it's an interpretation of a creature from the second

[51:40] game that's called Abstract Daddy uh which is uh. Abstract Daddy sounds like a band that would

[51:46] have opened for Oingo Boingo in like 1987. I like to think of myself as kind of an abstract daddy

[51:51] but uh like yeah this creature is supposed to be a representation of

[51:57] now what now now baby before we get busy I just want to let you know my penis is a little

[52:01] out of the ordinary I'm kind of an abstract daddy. It's a little cubist it's a little yeah yeah

[52:09] my abstract dad bod. I mean I'm surprised that they went to the lengths to build this set and

[52:16] have this creature like it clearly built a practical creature for just for this moment

[52:21] just to have which I'm not mad at I think it's weird it doesn't make sense it's a weird image

[52:25] what I liked about it the room the like the pistons going in and out of meat holes like

[52:30] you can interpret that all you want uh but it very much seems to be a representation of Mary's

[52:37] abuse and his like and so and he manages to overcome this monster encounter by apologizing

[52:45] to her which is like I don't know dude which I don't know I love that I love instead of fighting

[52:51] monsters he just looks them in the eyes and goes I'm sorry I just yeah you're not gonna get that

[52:56] in any other movie just in this one yeah I mean I'm not mad at it I think it's uh okay I think

[53:01] it's sorry I have to say it's funny that you're talking about how you like the apologizing

[53:05] when like your most Canadian accent comes out I'm sorry it's like as a Canadian I love

[53:13] it I was actually thinking about that earlier because I was going to bring up the apologizing

[53:17] and I was like sorry is when it really comes out in my accent and I was like are they gonna flag

[53:22] that so I'm glad you Dan certainly is yeah the only thing you would have liked more is he was

[53:26] like there's only one way to settle this on the ice and they just strap on their skates and they

[53:30] get out there well you know I mean that I know it's not a rivalry episode it's not true silent

[53:35] return to silent ill-heated rivalry yeah yeah our American stereotype is of course how nice

[53:40] Canadians are so that seems like a thing that uh would appeal what are you talking about

[53:45] probably Tim Hortons now now you're pandering now you're pandering yeah

[53:50] yeah I gotta go get my timmies down go for a rip for some timmies uh so they uh so this

[53:57] encounter's over he is left with a pile of ashes in place of Angela he climbs to the roof not a

[54:03] great deal not a great trade what am I gonna do with these remember he is walking around a hotel

[54:07] that is on fire so he makes his way to the roof it's a regular Barton Fink situation he finds

[54:13] Mary's body on a gurney and this triggers a final flashback where we learn that he before sometime

[54:21] after the breakup uh he returned to Silent Hill oh this time with the most believable fake beard

[54:29] I've ever seen in a movie this beard is so hilarious and unnecessary I love if this whole

[54:36] thing is part of his imagination I love that he imagines himself with a crazy beard

[54:43] like always men assume that their beard looks cooler than it does and he's like no this looks

[54:48] like dog shit except for Dan's beard which is great yeah um but I'm saying that Dan's beard

[54:54] looks great in our eyes in his mind it's gotta look crazy oh yeah in his mind it's got lightning

[54:59] bolts in it uh yeah you can it just produces food whenever he wants it's a beard from Greek myth

[55:05] yeah um ringlets yes um so uh in this in this flashback Mary has been hospitalized due to the

[55:14] repeated cult poisonings um she's like apparently consumptive or something so we're asked to believe

[55:20] that like the cult poisonings were real that was not part of his psychic trauma coming through

[55:26] she really was in a cult that poisoned her and that was taking her blood okay yeah um and it

[55:32] has trapped her in this kind of like living hell where she won't die but she also can't live and

[55:37] it's she's in constant pain so she begs him to end her life which sounds like 26 guys

[55:48] so he uh he euthanizes her and um that she's like I can't die and he smothers her with a pillow it's

[55:55] like oh I guess you can't and then we are back on the rooftop the gurney floats up and morphs into

[56:06] she is now this like floating moth monster that we had seen previously uh the as the hotel kind of

[56:13] crumbles around them she lifts him up into the air where he once again apologizes what does that

[56:19] sound like steve oh i'm so sorry yay and that of course morphs this moth monster back into a mary

[56:28] corpse wrapped up in a shroud he's not a great not a great trade-off like you want a moth monster you

[56:34] want a dead body come on he stuffs her into the passenger seat of his convertible and he drives

[56:41] it off the pier into the lake and they sink like a stone this is where we get a sick pov shot oh

[56:47] yeah where he's underwater he looks at her he looks at himself in the rearview mirror and it's

[56:51] just like hell yeah and that's when in a flash he is back on the highway it is the beginning of the

[56:58] movie again he almost runs her over and smashes her stuff you gotta watch the whole thing guys

[57:03] he hit reset on the ps2 and he's starting over yeah he is doing a new game plus on this thing

[57:09] yeah uh with all the retained experience which will make the adventure even more exciting um

[57:15] and yet he can now make other choices get a different ending maybe uh which is literally

[57:20] what he's trying to do exactly what he does yeah he's trying to do a different ending where he they

[57:24] of course missed the bus but they still hit it off and he offers what he should have offered

[57:28] in the first place yo let's not go to science that's what we were suggesting from the beginning

[57:33] yeah see we were right you know let me do the most obvious thing in this situation rather than

[57:38] the dumbest thing in this situation but it took having to go through all that to teach a lesson

[57:43] some guys some guys they'd rather they'd rather apologize to a moth monster in a

[57:46] burbling hospital than go to therapy am i right you know i mean he's not a very good therapy

[57:51] attendee when this like hard reset happened when i saw this the second time in the theater when i

[57:57] dragged all my effects friends to go see it my friend scott like across the aisle audibly just

[58:04] went no like just loudly to the theater because it made so little sense to him and uh yeah made

[58:11] shortly before your special frex friends hoisted you on their shoulders to carry you out of the

[58:15] theater as thanks oh they were they were so mad it was probably tough because the theater was

[58:22] packed wall-to-wall with human being no there was there was one other guy that wandered in like 20

[58:28] minutes into the movie and so the whole time we're like is does he even understand i mean it's hard

[58:32] enough to understand it starting at the beginning but missing the opening but yeah that guy seemed

[58:38] into it so he probably didn't understand why everyone was freaking out at the end yeah they

[58:43] were like no it makes sense to me yeah yeah maybe he's like me and he's seeing it multiple times

[58:48] because yeah yeah yeah yeah it was christophe collins yeah well that's the perfect uh segue

[58:56] the idea that steve saw this uh multiple times to go into our judgments on this film our final

[59:03] judgments whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or movie we kind of liked i i saw

[59:09] steve's uh posts about this on social media and i messaged him being like should i see this movie

[59:15] because you know at the time i uh you know i'm in the business of watching movies uh i had a uh

[59:23] i had a pass to see you know as many movies as i like so and business is booming maybe i'm a little

[59:30] sure you know when i when i have one of those passes maybe i'm a little less discerning about

[59:36] what i see and i had liked the first uh silent hill movie i i watched the second one uh recently

[59:43] i also enjoyed that not quite as much but i like both of them you know like i like the vibe i don't

[59:49] care if i follow the movie uh that said i'm glad i didn't follow steve's uh advice to go see the

[59:56] movie if i if i'm in this kind of thing he wasn't

[1:00:00] qualified. He's like, well, you know, it depends on how you, but, uh, yeah, watching this movie

[1:00:06] at home, I was largely bored, uh, bored enough that I think that my brain slipped off at

[1:00:13] a little bit. And, uh, Stuart was telling me some things in his recap. I'm like, oh,

[1:00:18] that happened. Oh, interesting. Um, damn crazy if true. So I'm gonna give it a, uh, a bad

[1:00:26] bet, even though the first two are movies I kind of liked. I think this is a weird one

[1:00:30] because I think the more I talk about it, the more it's kind of grown on me. Like this

[1:00:34] is a movie that I don't think it's good. And I think it does not, it, it doesn't understand

[1:00:41] the, like the right lessons for making a good movie, but I imagine that it has enough similarities

[1:00:48] to the video game that it might feel like a somewhat faithful adaptation. I don't know.

[1:00:54] Um, but it certainly felt like an adaptation of this kind of a survival horror video game.

[1:01:00] Uh, I, you know, I'm a fan of survival horror games. I think the last one that I really

[1:01:04] liked was a game called Outlast two, which was, I only bring it up because it was a game

[1:01:09] where you don't fight at all. You only have a flashlight that you can turn on and off.

[1:01:14] So like any monster encounter, I was always like, well, I can't like beat it. So the whole

[1:01:19] thing is like, what's the whole, uh, what's the healthcare plan around here in monster

[1:01:27] Vania. Um, but, uh, I feel like I was, I was always more of a resident evil guy. Um, Steve,

[1:01:34] are you, uh, if you were going to live in raccoon city or silent hill, where, where

[1:01:38] are you going to, where are you going to live? I mean, you didn't name your son after a resident

[1:01:42] of raccoon.

[1:01:43] Yeah. He is named after Leon Kennedy. Everybody's favorite, uh, resident evil cop. If I had

[1:01:51] to live in one or the other, I would live in resident evil because at least it makes

[1:01:55] sense. Like in terms of what you're fighting silent hill, it's just your internal torments

[1:02:01] manifesting as monsters. You don't need to go anywhere for that. Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah.

[1:02:06] I feel like that's, yeah, that's my waking life. So I don't need to go to a town. I'll

[1:02:10] see in my waking life. I talked to a series of people and kind of like, not, there's not

[1:02:14] really a story so much, but I just kind of talked to people about philosophy or whatever.

[1:02:17] And it's all rotoscoped. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'm going to say, I'm going to say weirdly,

[1:02:23] I'm going to say this is a movie. I can't recommend it. I'm going to jump in here. I'm

[1:02:28] going to jump in here and reassert sanity on this, on this episode. This is a bad, bad

[1:02:32] movie. I think you want to see like a super cut on YouTube of like all the monsters and

[1:02:37] return to silent hill. Go ahead and do that. But I think it is a, it is an unsatisfying

[1:02:42] experience and I did find myself more bored watching this movie than I think I have been

[1:02:48] in a long time with any movie that I've, I've seen, let alone flop house movies, especially,

[1:02:52] but like it's, it's just very, it really did feel like I was sitting there watching my

[1:02:55] friend play a video game and he was not talking to me and he was not letting me play and I

[1:03:00] couldn't leave because my mom. That sounds like a silent hill game right there. My mom,

[1:03:04] I knew my mom wasn't coming back for another hour and a half. This is when I would start

[1:03:08] being like, can I walk the seven miles to my house from, from my friend's house? So

[1:03:12] I would say bad, bad movie. I really didn't like it. But now Steve, be the deciding vote.

[1:03:17] Okay. Well first I want to ask though, because this movie to me, you brought up watching

[1:03:22] fear.com. Uh, this movie to me feels like a mid two thousands dark castle movie. Yeah.

[1:03:29] If you were presented with the choice of return to silent hill or fear.com, Dan and Elliot,

[1:03:35] which would you ultimately land on? I think I'd probably live in or if you had to watch

[1:03:41] one again, just to watch, I would do my best to break out of the trunk of that car and

[1:03:45] just run away. I don't care if my hands are tied. I don't care if there's a hood on my

[1:03:47] hand. I'm just running into a sequence and I saw the devil, right? I mean, I admitted

[1:03:53] in the fear.com episode that it was my third time watching fear.com. So I have to out myself

[1:03:58] as that kind of sicko because that movie I think moves, uh, at least, uh, in a way that

[1:04:04] this one I found, I think when there weren't monsters on screen, though, that the emotional

[1:04:10] climax of this movie features the worst beard you've ever seen. But I think I would also

[1:04:15] watch fear.com only because there's like scenes in it. There's like scenes and dialogue as

[1:04:19] opposed to here. It feels very much like you're just, you're just following this dude and

[1:04:24] he's just every now and then he bumps into a monster and the whole time about that though,

[1:04:28] that it like reminds me so much of playing one of these videos. I just find it fascinating.

[1:04:35] I'm not like, I don't know. It's hardest. It's the only thing I can imagine. It's like

[1:04:39] if you, if I love the game Tetris, but I was like, yeah, let me watch the Tetris movie.

[1:04:43] It's just two hours of blocks falling from the sky. You know, I don't, I'd be like, I'll

[1:04:47] just watch the game. I don't mind. I don't care. But by the end of those two hours, those

[1:04:49] blocks are falling fast as hell. They're falling so fast. It's like a safety brothers movie

[1:04:55] at that point. Tetris is the safety brothers movie of video games because one bad mistake

[1:05:03] screws you up so much and all you can do after that point is make more bad mistakes. Yeah.

[1:05:06] Or maybe Dr. Mario cause the soundtracks better, but yeah. Uh, I, the soundtrack of Tetris

[1:05:12] is great even though it's just basically the two songs. Yeah. I'm going to argue the soundtrack

[1:05:16] of Dr. Mario is better than the soundtrack of Tetris. We can have this argument. They're

[1:05:20] great soundtracks. Listeners weigh in. Are you a hero or a fever? Or are you a Dr. Mario

[1:05:28] or a Tetris? Like these are the, are you a Carrie or a Miranda personalities? Steve,

[1:05:35] I don't think, did you give your final judgment? I think that we know the world's number one

[1:05:38] fan. It's pretty obvious that this is a movie I kind of liked, but like I said in my social

[1:05:44] media post that, uh, most people seem to ignore this part. I said, it is a terrible movie.

[1:05:50] It's a bad movie. Uh, but I just find it fascinating to me. It's someone with real artistic intent

[1:05:58] making this film. This is not a cynical movie. This is a movie where, uh, Christophe Gans

[1:06:03] is trying to adapt Silent Hill two and he's succumbing to maybe his worst instincts. One

[1:06:10] of which is committing to the cult angle and he's over complicating a very simple story.

[1:06:15] Like in the game, essentially the plot is just, you get a letter from your dead wife

[1:06:20] who died of a terminal illness three years prior telling you to come back to Silent Hill,

[1:06:26] a town that you had vacationed at, uh, you know, when she was still alive and you were

[1:06:30] together. It was a very like kind of simple setup, a lot of like ambiguous elements that

[1:06:37] were very effective. It's a very effective horror story. And I'd argue Silent Hill two,

[1:06:41] the game is one of the best bits of horror media out there. So for me, this movie being

[1:06:46] such a swing and a miss is just a really interesting thing to dissect and watch. I'm not saying

[1:06:53] that I like enjoy it and think that it like you're going to have a good time watching

[1:06:58] it, but as a weird oddity that I want to like put in a glass case and be like, look at this

[1:07:03] weird thing that exists. Uh, I really appreciate it. And for me, it's funny that you guys say

[1:07:08] that you're bored by it. Cause I felt like this felt like a speed run to me of a game

[1:07:13] where every scene something was happening, whether it was clunky dialogue or a weird

[1:07:19] monster or just weird transitions between scenes or like with the therapist looking

[1:07:24] through the glass table, like stuff like there's just choices that I, every scene has a choice

[1:07:29] I'm trying to unpack. And for me as a filmmaker, I think I find that, uh, endlessly fascinating

[1:07:34] and entertaining.

[1:07:35] I've definitely felt this sort of like fascination that you're talking about with movies that

[1:07:40] I would never like try and sell to another person. But to me, they're like such an interesting

[1:07:44] object. I think part of it must have to do with familiarity because like, yes, it makes

[1:07:50] sense to me that Stuart and you, uh, Steve are like the ones who have, if not played

[1:07:57] Silent Hill in Stuart's case, played similar types of games, uh, with, you know, like regularly

[1:08:03] at least or with some, you some degree of familiarity. Whereas I'm making that assumption

[1:08:09] about Elliot, but I don't think he has. And I know I haven't, so I've never played them.

[1:08:13] Well, it's like, yeah, the video game connection certainly helps, but also I have a real nostalgia

[1:08:18] for the early two thousands, uh, style of horror movie. Like this movie, you can shoot

[1:08:25] on it all you want, but it effectively is, it is a, uh, it is a throwback to 2006 filmmaking.

[1:08:33] Like it feels like guns made the first Silent Hill and then immediately made this move.

[1:08:40] Yeah. Like, and it's even just, it's cinematography is so of that era. Uh, there's very like rich

[1:08:46] colors. The, it has actual shadows in it, which is a thing that a lot of horror movies don't have

[1:08:52] because of the current style of color grading. Like the blacks are black and the whites are

[1:08:58] very white. And I find that just on a cinematography level, that's very interesting,

[1:09:04] makes for interesting visuals. So I don't know, there's just like a lot of things in there that,

[1:09:08] uh, are interesting to me. Uh, even if the movie is an absolute mess and a disaster.

[1:09:15] And that's the stuff that I also like, cause I have a similar fondness, uh,

[1:09:19] just to me, I feel like the perfect way to watch this movie would be on mute at a party.

[1:09:25] Yes. Great background noise. It's a really good background. When I think in some ways,

[1:09:30] I think I might enjoy watching it more a second time because I know what I'm in for,

[1:09:35] as opposed to the first time where I'm like, what, like what what's like, there's nothing,

[1:09:39] I mean, there's stuff happening, but there's nothing really happening. And it really started

[1:09:42] to bother me that, um, maybe just cause I saw the same thing in the super Mario galaxy movie,

[1:09:47] where in action scenes, the character just doesn't react vocally in any way whatsoever.

[1:09:54] Like he'll come across something and he won't even go like, what? Or like,

[1:09:57] oh, he just kind of, it's all in the, it was like, this.

[1:10:00] It's an asylum movie, he can make sounds, you know, and things like that.

[1:10:02] Like, there was like one moment early on where I think James goes like,

[1:10:05] this is crazy, and then he doesn't acknowledge anything for the rest of the movie.

[1:10:09] He's like, I said it already. I said this was crazy.

[1:10:12] I only need to say one.

[1:10:14] I will say that too. Yeah, yeah.

[1:10:15] That's what it felt like. They're like, well, we got that out of the way,

[1:10:17] so now he can act like everything's normal.

[1:10:19] Which, another insane choice on a pile of insane choices.

[1:10:23] Yeah, a lot of funny choices made in this one.

[1:10:26] All right, so, yeah, movie of the year.

[1:10:27] 2026. Yep.

[1:10:28] Just give out the Oscars now, you know.

[1:10:36] Thank you to all the MaxFund members who supported us during MaxFundrive.

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[1:11:47] Say, what's the trivia show where dreams come true?

[1:11:50] It's gotta be Go Fact Yourself.

[1:11:53] Legend in the house.

[1:11:55] We quiz celebrity contestants about topics they love.

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[1:12:02] And then finally, tell us why you know and love the lyrics to the song

[1:12:04] Knockin' Boots by Candyman.

[1:12:06] Joining us tonight is a rapper and producer.

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[1:12:22] Here on Maximum Fun.

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[1:15:56] Now what do we do on the podcast, Dan?

[1:15:58] Let's answer some letters from listeners.

[1:16:01] Listeners like you.

[1:16:03] This first one is from David, last name withheld.

[1:16:06] My brother?

[1:16:07] Not Elliot's brother.

[1:16:08] I'm sorry, Elliot.

[1:16:10] I don't know why I apologize.

[1:16:11] I think there's a wave of relief every time I confirm.

[1:16:13] Is my brother okay?

[1:16:16] I'll just assume it's David Duchovny.

[1:16:18] Yeah, yeah.

[1:16:19] He's got a red shoe diary he wants to read.

[1:16:21] I feel like David Duchovny.

[1:16:22] Have you seen David Duchovny lately?

[1:16:24] He's kind of morphing into a Walter Matthau.

[1:16:26] Is he old?

[1:16:26] Oh, really?

[1:16:27] Is he old?

[1:16:28] I mean, that's not a bad result.

[1:16:29] It's not bad results.

[1:16:31] But I could see that.

[1:16:32] I could see his face in Walter Matthau.

[1:16:34] He's like, when he was young, he was like handsome Walter Matthau.

[1:16:36] Yeah.

[1:16:38] But although I love-

[1:16:39] Which is the same as Walter Matthau.

[1:16:41] Still in like Charlie Varick years, he's like killing it with the ladies.

[1:16:46] Walter Matthau.

[1:16:47] Because Walter Matthau's got charisma, Dan.

[1:16:49] He's got riz.

[1:16:50] He does.

[1:16:51] He does.

[1:16:53] He's the Rizzly Bear.

[1:16:54] Come on.

[1:16:55] Here we go.

[1:16:56] As many have said before, your podcast has gotten me through the-

[1:16:58] He's Rizzing and evil.

[1:16:59] Go on.

[1:17:01] Thank you for permitting.

[1:17:04] As many have said before, your podcast has gotten me through the horrors of the last 10 years.

[1:17:08] I have the unfortunate luck to live in downtown Washington, D.C.

[1:17:11] So I've had a front row seat to pretty much everything our big wet president has done

[1:17:15] to my hometown.

[1:17:16] Enjoy your new reflecting pool that looks like a swimming pool.

[1:17:20] Enjoy it.

[1:17:20] I was actually listening to your episode on Primal while the January 6th insurrection

[1:17:25] was happening outside my apartment.

[1:17:27] Yikes.

[1:17:27] Your friendship has been an island of stability in a chaotic time.

[1:17:31] So thank you.

[1:17:33] You know what?

[1:17:33] I'm going to say something.

[1:17:34] I'm not to interrupt the letter.

[1:17:35] I am heartened by the lack of Flophouse listeners that I believe were caught in the net of arrests

[1:17:40] after January 6th.

[1:17:42] Nowhere did I see that someone was listening to Flophouse while taking part in the insurrection

[1:17:46] on January 6th.

[1:17:47] And that makes me feel really good about our audience.

[1:17:48] So thank you, audience.

[1:17:48] Yeah, there's nobody doing like a house cat row-row while on the set floor.

[1:17:52] That would be the worst.

[1:17:53] Wait, someone's getting arrested by the police and goes, wait, what?

[1:17:56] Come on.

[1:17:57] That would be bad.

[1:17:59] The guy carrying the podium away.

[1:18:01] Wasn't he doing the house cat sound?

[1:18:04] Doing the house cat.

[1:18:05] What is that dance?

[1:18:06] We got to figure it out.

[1:18:08] No, I mean, I think our frequently expressed personal views have probably weeded out.

[1:18:12] I sure hope so.

[1:18:13] I sure hope so.

[1:18:15] Anyway, anyway, the letter says earlier this week, I was able to catch last year's sci-fi

[1:18:21] horror flick Ash on streaming.

[1:18:24] And while I thought it was a little creaky in places, the atmosphere and creature effects

[1:18:27] were terrific.

[1:18:28] Like all movie sickos, I found myself thinking of the Letterboxd review I would write about

[1:18:32] this movie.

[1:18:33] Eventually settling on, R.I.P.

[1:18:35] Stuart Gordon, you would have loved Ash parentheses Flying Lotus 2025.

[1:18:40] My question to you is, what other movies have you seen?

[1:18:43] And immediately thought, man, I wish this legendary filmmaker were alive to see this.

[1:18:48] Some others that popped into my head, Buster Keaton would have died laughing at Police

[1:18:52] Story 3 Supercop.

[1:18:54] I bet Soviet new humanist master Mikhail Kolotsov would have loved Sean Baker's Anora.

[1:19:03] Excited to hear your thoughts and keep on keepin' on.

[1:19:06] David Lesney with Hell.

[1:19:09] That's the way you got to say it.

[1:19:10] Whenever anyone writes keep on keepin' on, you got to mosey on that dusty trail.

[1:19:16] Get along, doggies.

[1:19:18] That's the end of the letter.

[1:19:19] Now it's your turn.

[1:19:21] I have to admit, this is not anything I've ever thought after seeing a movie, but maybe

[1:19:24] you guys have had this experience.

[1:19:26] I'll try to think of some.

[1:19:27] I thought it was a cool idea, which is mostly why I wanted to read it, because I certainly

[1:19:34] don't have a great answer for it.

[1:19:37] I always wanted to say, I feel like every dead filmmaker just needs to watch Avengers

[1:19:42] Endgame, you know?

[1:19:43] The pinnacle of filmmaking.

[1:19:45] I was just going to say, I would love to sit in a theater with Kubrick watching Return

[1:19:50] to Silent Hill.

[1:19:51] I actually feel like he would probably get a lot out of it.

[1:19:54] That's what I mean.

[1:19:55] I think he would be...

[1:20:00] like, into it in a lot of ways and appreciate some of the artistry behind it, so that's

[1:20:05] my answer.

[1:20:06] Yeah.

[1:20:07] I mean, that's, I mean, that's a great answer because I think the things that I'm running

[1:20:10] up against are, it's just like, okay, well, what current artists do I think were influenced

[1:20:17] by previous artists, you know, and then that's not as interesting, like, is it going to be

[1:20:23] interesting to be like, sitting in a Wes Anderson movie with Hal Ashby next to you?

[1:20:28] I don't know.

[1:20:29] Not particularly, but I bet you, like, I could see watching Everything Everywhere All

[1:20:33] at Once with Frank Tashlin, and I could see Frank Tashlin really enjoying that movie for

[1:20:38] how kind of like elastic and plastic it is, you know, and not the kind of movie he would

[1:20:42] have made, but similarly living in a kind of almost animated universe, you know.

[1:20:49] Yeah.

[1:20:50] Yeah.

[1:20:51] Or the new Super Mario Brothers movie with David Lynch, that'd be great, he'd love that.

[1:20:56] What is happening?

[1:20:59] Whoa, Star Fox is in this?

[1:21:02] Nobody told me that.

[1:21:04] Who is that plumber?

[1:21:07] See, Dan, we're going in two different directions.

[1:21:09] In yours, David Lynch is not aware of it, whereas in mine, he's a terrible Nintendo

[1:21:12] Power fan.

[1:21:13] Yeah, exactly.

[1:21:16] Both are good options, you know.

[1:21:18] I feel like they didn't scratch, they barely scratched the surface of Rosabelle's potential.

[1:21:25] That's the name of that other princess, right?

[1:21:28] Rosalina?

[1:21:29] Rosalina.

[1:21:30] There's another princess?

[1:21:31] Bowser?

[1:21:32] There's like three, right?

[1:21:33] There's like Daisy and Princess Peach and Rosalina.

[1:21:36] Rosalina.

[1:21:37] You know what, I saw this movie and I can't even remember the names of the characters

[1:21:41] in it.

[1:21:42] These are characters I primarily know from Mario Kart, not from doing the various adventures.

[1:21:47] David Lynch is watching the movie and he goes, as soon as Yoshi shows up, you can tell that's

[1:21:51] Donald Glover doing Yoshi's voice.

[1:21:54] He lobbied for the role!

[1:21:57] The problem is that when you get up to leave, he's going to go, what are you doing?

[1:22:02] We're watching this again.

[1:22:03] Sit back down.

[1:22:04] Yeah.

[1:22:05] Okay.

[1:22:06] Would have been better shot on DV cameras, though.

[1:22:12] You think this was shot like on a film camera, David?

[1:22:16] Yeah.

[1:22:17] Lynch is imagining that these are little creatures running around and they're just...

[1:22:20] I gotta see if Toad is available for my next project.

[1:22:24] There's a psychosexual quality to him that I think could come in handy.

[1:22:29] This next letter is from Nika Lasting Withheld, who writes, I don't know if you've heard

[1:22:34] of her, but she's a great writer.

[1:22:36] She's a great writer.

[1:22:37] I think she's a great writer.

[1:22:46] This next letter is from Tom, who writes, I've been a fan of y'all since listening to

[1:22:49] your D&D episode on Taz, which I found hilarious.

[1:22:52] Thank you.

[1:22:53] Not to immediately discredit this, but I have almost no sense of humor.

[1:22:58] Wow.

[1:22:59] For a long time, I used to watch...

[1:23:02] This is an interesting person, and I want to hear more.

[1:23:05] Yeah.

[1:23:06] They love us, but have no sense of humor.

[1:23:08] For a long time, I used to watch stand-up or comedies and fake laugh with everyone else

[1:23:13] because I look like a psychopath if I don't.

[1:23:15] Now that I'm in my thirties, I've accepted that most comedies I've watched weren't actually

[1:23:19] funny to me.

[1:23:21] Examples are like Mrs. Doubtfire, Tommy Boy, Zoolander, Monty Python, Dumb and Dumber,

[1:23:26] Airplane Friday, honestly, most popular comedies.

[1:23:29] I mean, personally, there's like two in there that I would think are works of genius, and

[1:23:33] a bunch of ones I'm like, eh, it's fine.

[1:23:35] It's fine, exactly.

[1:23:36] But guess which two, listeners?

[1:23:38] I love the idea of somebody sitting stone-faced being like, well, the deal with airline food

[1:23:43] is that it's hard to prepare hot, fresh meals for people on a plane.

[1:23:47] That is the deal.

[1:23:48] They cannot make it out of the black box.

[1:23:50] The black box is too heavy.

[1:23:53] I sometimes hear a good joke...

[1:23:54] The peanuts have to be in a small bag because you have to have enough of them for everybody

[1:23:59] on the flight, and it has to be hard to open the bag because you don't want them spilling

[1:24:02] out during takeoff or landing.

[1:24:04] Yeah, yeah.

[1:24:06] Andy Kindler actually had a bit about that once.

[1:24:07] Right.

[1:24:08] It was about a...

[1:24:09] Diabetic candy.

[1:24:10] Diabetic...

[1:24:11] Yeah.

[1:24:12] Chocolate.

[1:24:13] Who's that for?

[1:24:14] What's that about?

[1:24:15] And he goes, diabetics.

[1:24:16] That's who that's for.

[1:24:17] The idea of any joke where they could have done like two minutes of research to answer

[1:24:20] the question.

[1:24:21] Yeah.

[1:24:22] Yeah.

[1:24:23] Continuing to the letter, I sometimes hear a good joke and think it's clever, but it

[1:24:28] still doesn't make me laugh out loud.

[1:24:30] Somebody's got a book to read, and that book is called Joke Farming by Elliot Kalin.

[1:24:33] Can you all recommend a comedy, maybe one that doesn't rely on physical humor, that

[1:24:38] is certain to bring a chuckle?

[1:24:40] Thanks, babes.

[1:24:42] Niko, last name withheld.

[1:24:44] Well, I like being called babe.

[1:24:47] Who wouldn't like that?

[1:24:49] Yeah.

[1:24:50] I mean, here's the thing.

[1:24:51] Like, it's hard.

[1:24:52] Like, comedy.

[1:24:53] I, you know, I'm breaking some real new ground here.

[1:24:56] It's subjective.

[1:24:58] Oh.

[1:25:00] Oh, yeah.

[1:25:01] It's hard to say.

[1:25:02] Oh, yeah.

[1:25:04] It's hard to say based on sort of the wide variety of different comedies that you said

[1:25:09] you didn't laugh at anything other than like, I don't know, like these are my favorite comedies

[1:25:15] and they may not work for you.

[1:25:18] Like, I, you know, any of the early Marx Brothers movies are some of my favorite comedies.

[1:25:24] I love The Jerk.

[1:25:27] I don't know.

[1:25:28] Like, these are movies that will always get a laugh out of me, even if I've seen them

[1:25:33] before.

[1:25:35] If you don't get at least like one chuckle out of Top Secret, I think there's something

[1:25:38] going.

[1:25:40] Oh, yeah.

[1:25:41] Yeah.

[1:25:42] But they didn't like Airplane.

[1:25:43] So it seems like those movies are totally different.

[1:25:45] There's nothing alike in any way.

[1:25:47] There's no underwater like tavern brawl in Airplane.

[1:25:50] Yeah.

[1:25:52] No backwards, backwards Swedish scene.

[1:25:54] Thank you.

[1:25:56] Or someone with a giant eye looking through a magnifying glass.

[1:25:58] Yeah.

[1:25:59] Yeah.

[1:26:01] I am going to recommend a television show rather than a movie.

[1:26:04] I know that's not the same thing, but it has does not have.

[1:26:08] Yeah.

[1:26:10] But I was a big fan of I'm a big fan of the Philomena Kunk stuff.

[1:26:15] So the show Kunk on Earth, which is a parody of those documentary shows that are like,

[1:26:20] where did we come from?

[1:26:22] What is human history?

[1:26:24] And it's just a joke delivery machine.

[1:26:26] It's just joke after joke after joke.

[1:26:28] And in that, if you don't like my Python, you might not like it because it's a similar

[1:26:30] sort of like British smart dumb comedy.

[1:26:32] You know, like you need a university degree to write the stupidest joke in the world.

[1:26:36] But but I think it's really funny.

[1:26:38] It's funny.

[1:26:40] Like, I feel like the letter writer because I tried to watch that thing.

[1:26:42] Like, this is going to be for me.

[1:26:44] And like, I can see that she's very funny.

[1:26:46] I can see in theory the material's funny.

[1:26:48] I just sat there being like, this is not working for me.

[1:26:50] She just gets stressed out because she's pretending to be very dumb in front of smart people.

[1:26:56] And like, there is a part of me that does not like that kind of fuckery and comedy.

[1:27:01] Like, it's like, I'm just going to mess with these people.

[1:27:03] Like, I don't know.

[1:27:04] Unless those people are evil like we did on The Daily Show, where it's like, oh, well,

[1:27:08] now I understand.

[1:27:10] Now I understand why I'm on your side.

[1:27:12] You know, I don't know.

[1:27:14] She's not trying to get anybody, though.

[1:27:16] Like, she's not trying to get.

[1:27:18] She's not trying to, like, get them to say something that will indict them in some way.

[1:27:22] She's just being dumb in front of people and kind of confusing them a little bit.

[1:27:25] I just don't like that.

[1:27:27] I think it's a very funny show.

[1:27:28] Anyone else want to toss their suggestions in the old comedy hat?

[1:27:35] I'm trying to think of something like that's out of left field that might shake it up a bit.

[1:27:39] It's all corner gas from this guy.

[1:27:42] Yeah, nothing but corner gas and Trailer Park Boys.

[1:27:45] I mean, I guess I could recommend Nirvana, the band, the show.

[1:27:48] And then Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie.

[1:27:51] This is a bit of like Canadian weird comedy.

[1:27:53] It does play into Dan's thing of not liking people getting fucked around with a little bit.

[1:27:59] Well, I think that that's very minimal in that movie.

[1:28:02] But, I mean, like, I already went.

[1:28:06] You worked on, what, the show?

[1:28:08] Yeah, I did.

[1:28:10] There's like a Halloween episode of the show where there's a werewolf transformation that I did.

[1:28:13] So I was on set for a few days and got to experience that insanity firsthand.

[1:28:18] There's a lot of running around parks in Toronto while this was happening.

[1:28:21] There's a lot of running around parks in Toronto while this werewolf guy interacted with people.

[1:28:25] And then PAs would come up after with, like, release forms to get them to, like, sign their likeness away.

[1:28:31] Magic of the movies, baby!

[1:28:33] Yeah, it was a real peek behind the curtain on how that kind of insanity plays out.

[1:28:38] Steve, this is a side question, but, you know, it really, like, kind of interests me.

[1:28:42] Like, to me, from the outside, like, werewolf transformation, like, that seems like, oh, man.

[1:28:48] Like, if I was a special effects person, like, oh, that'd be fun to, like, take my crack at that.

[1:28:53] Like, are there any, like, specific things, like, that you're like, oh, yeah, that's, like, what I want to do?

[1:29:00] I mean, I really like any kind of tokusatsu-adjacent stuff, which is pretty obvious at this point.

[1:29:10] Okay, you gotta explain what that is.

[1:29:11] Okay, well, like, Japanese, like, genre cinema or their style of special effects where it's, like,

[1:29:20] it's not really about realism as it is about theatricality and, you know, like, Power Rangers-style monsters

[1:29:28] where it's, like, this guy's got a big key for a head and this guy's made out of tires.

[1:29:32] And they all kind of, like, they all do that one motion where they kind of rev up with their shoulders and arms

[1:29:36] Yeah, well, because typically the movement from, like, the head down is limited to just, like, your elbows.

[1:29:45] So you have to just go like this a bunch.

[1:29:47] I see, that makes sense.

[1:29:49] But, yeah, I don't typically get asked to do that kind of stuff, which is why my movies feature it so much

[1:29:54] because I just want to make weird monsters.

[1:29:57] But werewolf stuff does interest me.

[1:30:00] don't talk about though is that everybody loves werewolves everybody wants werewolf transformations

[1:30:04] they don't talk about how it's actually like one of the hardest things and most expensive things

[1:30:09] to execute uh and it's kind of an obvious reason but there's just so much hair work involved yeah

[1:30:17] and so many stages right it's kind of an obvious reason people don't look like wolves

[1:30:22] but like it like you have to somebody has to punch hair or lay the hair uh for all this this

[1:30:30] was one of the reasons why rick baker left uh the industry was because on wolfman they

[1:30:36] didn't want to pay for the hair for the werewolf in it like the wolfman in it and so he said well

[1:30:41] if you don't you don't have the wolf then it's just man you know like it's just a guy like so

[1:30:47] yeah it's dangerous based on his ponytail respects hair yeah i mean he could have just

[1:30:53] snipped that off and used it i guess he literally made harry and the hendersons right yeah this is

[1:30:59] true um so yeah i mean for nirvana the band the show doing that uh werewolf was fun and it was

[1:31:05] like a bit of a bucket list item but it's always the scenario of you don't have enough time money

[1:31:13] resources to do it and i find that's always the trap with werewolves because i get i'm always

[1:31:18] quoting on doing werewolf builds for stuff and when i give people the number they're like oh

[1:31:22] that's crazy and it's like well you just walk through what it takes to build a big hairy

[1:31:27] dude like yeah it's expensive you can see from the outside it's complex if you want to do it

[1:31:33] practically it's complex you just put a bunch of wigs on somebody don't just throw them on yeah

[1:31:38] yeah yeah exactly getting back to comedy it's the first half of banshees of an assurance is

[1:31:42] pretty funny it's true well i you know i was gonna go like a little more left fields if they

[1:31:47] don't like just like straight up comedy comedies i mean the coen brothers did like things that are

[1:31:54] comedy comedies but it comes at it from like a different angle of comedy than just like i don't

[1:32:00] know like it's a it's a funny character we're focused on or it's like a laugh a minute like

[1:32:05] just throw a bunch of jokes in that might be a route that is more different if you're looking

[1:32:11] for laughs i don't know i'm always looking for laughs thanks for all the advice guys okay well

[1:32:17] apparently stewart was the secret letter writer and we didn't know this whole time and i highly

[1:32:21] recommend my book joke farming from the university of chicago press how to write comedy other

[1:32:25] nonsense even if you don't want to write comedy which features hinterland's bar problem hinterland's

[1:32:30] bar is mentioned in it yeah and that's a that's a movie you're saying that's a movie that you

[1:32:34] would recommend yeah okay but i've heard they've optioned the rights yeah yeah like many how to

[1:32:41] write books it's been optioned by brett ratner oh yeah i was not happy about that yeah but the

[1:32:49] same way that a ridley scott uh you know how he optioned the elements of style a while back

[1:32:54] you know yeah he didn't really i'm just joking but he options a bunch oh that would have been

[1:32:57] too bad i think he would have crushed it remember at one point he was going to make a monopoly movie

[1:33:01] whatever oh yeah i was excited for that yeah it's a bummer it didn't happen yeah uh now is the time

[1:33:09] on the show where we make recommendations return to silent hills a day in the sun

[1:33:17] well you know i i'm looking through movies i watched recently uh i'm saddened that i didn't

[1:33:22] save strange brew uh for when we had you've gotten too excited over this workshop yeah exactly

[1:33:30] um great movie i i'm gonna recommend a movie that i think stewart actually recommended

[1:33:36] fairly recently maybe i'm wrong it was on a criterion channel collection recently i re-watched

[1:33:41] body double which oh when i was younger i was like sort of i guess maybe ashamed to count among

[1:33:49] my most favorite uh movies because it's one of the least respectable one is the one is one that

[1:33:54] goes like all out sleazy but but that's what you want with the palma you know in a certain way you

[1:34:02] want him you don't go to de palma for for uh dignified sense yeah yeah yeah i don't like

[1:34:08] you you're not seeing de palma's gosford park and also on rewatch i do want to see that now

[1:34:15] on rewatch i also like i feel like this time around realized like how much of a goof the movie

[1:34:24] is like how how much silly fun he's having like you can take it on surface level as like uh you

[1:34:31] know a guy gets entangled in a uh a web of sex and intrigue and violence or you can also realize that

[1:34:38] it's just like kind of ramping up all of the stuff that you find in jello and hitchcock uh to

[1:34:46] ridiculous levels um and it has like one of the dorkiest leads of all movies yes he is such a

[1:34:54] dorky weirdo like such a dorky perv creep and the whole this is dan and i were texting about this

[1:34:59] that part of the issue i had when i when i first saw that movie is i was like yeah if i was in the

[1:35:03] situation i would not get caught in a web of disease like a movie is about a regular person

[1:35:08] who gets caught up because their inner obsessions get get latched but like this is he's right from

[1:35:13] the start he's a weird guy he's doing weird things i'm not gonna follow my neighbor to the

[1:35:17] mall and take her panties out of the garbage and look at him like no i'm not gonna do that but

[1:35:21] that's the key i think that you're i mean like the fact that he does that is the key that you're like

[1:35:25] oh you're not supposed to take this guy as like you know he's not an audience sympathetic yeah

[1:35:31] there's i was texting because like i thought i found it very funny that literally in the middle

[1:35:37] of the movie there's a cop character who comes in it's like hey you creepy weirdo what have you

[1:35:41] been doing for the whole first half of the movie you did it all wrong uh anyway and shout out to

[1:35:47] front of the flop house barbara crampton yes in a small very brief but she's in there um i am

[1:35:52] going to recommend uh a movie that may have been mentioned a couple times on the podcast i recently

[1:35:57] went to a screening of a couple of short uh kiyoshi kurosawa movies at the ifc center i saw

[1:36:04] his most recent one chime and i saw the serpent's path but i'm actually going to recommend one of

[1:36:09] his more popular films cure uh which to me i feel like i feel like it's very applicable to the movie

[1:36:16] we watch today um and i watching it i only watch it recently and it's crazy to see how its

[1:36:23] fingerprints are all over uh you know it came out in what like 98 99 and like so much horror

[1:36:31] has been influenced by this guy's movie everything from uh everything from movies like uh like the

[1:36:39] ring um to something more out like weird like alan moore's providence comic book just the idea

[1:36:47] of this like spreading madness um and the uh the filmmaking techniques are really interesting

[1:36:53] it's just a really weird awesome vibey horror movie and it's great cure uh i am uh i was

[1:37:01] thinking i haven't seen a lot of movies recently because i've been watching all these flop house

[1:37:04] movies i haven't seen a lot of good movies recently but i was thinking watching return

[1:37:07] to silent hill i'm like what is a better movie where someone is wandering around in a in a spooky

[1:37:12] place and so it reminded me of a movie that i haven't seen in years but i really loved when i

[1:37:16] saw it years ago and that's house of the devil the ty west movie where um so much that movie is

[1:37:21] just the main character wandering around in a house by herself but the tension is so thick and

[1:37:25] the atmosphere is so great um and i and it really cast a spell of being in a in a spooky house on me

[1:37:32] so i'm gonna recommend the house of the devil uh steve do you have a recommendation for us

[1:37:36] yes i do uh you guys know me i love movies about weird freaks going on wacky adventures

[1:37:42] that's why that's why i'm gonna recommend 1973 is the last detail

[1:37:46] was that oh yeah was there enough bait in that switch for you

[1:37:51] i got whiplash hold on a second but uh yeah i don't know i'm trying to make an effort to

[1:37:57] watch more uh 70s and 80s and 60s cinema and in an effort to watch you know real good movies

[1:38:05] to offset stuff like return to silent hill and this movie it just really stuck with me

[1:38:10] i really love how low stakes it is um like almost like defiantly low stakes uh because it's just

[1:38:19] uh like two navy officers go uh escorting a another sailor to prison and they get in all

[1:38:25] sorts of weird side quests along the way uh direct by hal ashby and yeah i don't know i

[1:38:31] just it stuck in my brain and for a movie to do that nowadays is like a real achievement i mean

[1:38:38] when we ingest so much media all the time i find stuff just kind of like goes in one ear and out

[1:38:43] the other and this movie i just keep thinking about it i watched it a few weeks ago and i'm

[1:38:48] still ruminating on it just how effective it is so yeah highly recommend the last detail

[1:38:55] uh well we're winding down but before we go we should ask you steve if there's anything

[1:39:01] you'd like to plug i know death stalker is now on shutter just recently

[1:39:06] yep death stalker just hit shutter uh it was a month back uh so yeah that's my my latest film

[1:39:13] i highly recommend checking out steve's patreon yeah check out my patreon uh kostansky's crypt

[1:39:19] uh where it's just me noodling on stuff in my workshop i'm starting a new line of masks called

[1:39:25] slop cops uh that are just like weird freak cops that uh come out of a swamp and fight bad guys

[1:39:32] uh partially inspired by me marathoning the swamp thing cartoon uh that there's only five

[1:39:39] episodes but great great cartoon so yeah anyways check that out if you want to see what i'm

[1:39:44] sculpting and working on right now uh the last thing i want to say though uh just a random tidbit

[1:39:50] about silent hill i don't know if you guys knew this but the elementary school in those games

[1:39:55] that's featured is modeled after the elementary school from kindergarten cop for some reason

[1:40:00] Interesting. So yeah, think on that, why don't you?

[1:40:04] Okay, you just freaked our beans. I will.

[1:40:08] I'll think about it as I fall asleep.

[1:40:12] If you can fall asleep after a few minutes of sleeping like that.

[1:40:16] I feel like we've talked so much about Silent Hill and the video games, I think I'm

[1:40:20] probably going to, now that I've reached about 1,500 subscribers or followers

[1:40:24] on my Twitch, I think I'm finally going to play through Silent Hill 2.

[1:40:28] I'll do it next month or something if people want to watch me get

[1:40:32] freaked out on camera. If you want to see an on-camera bean freaking,

[1:40:36] go for it. And this mention of

[1:40:40] followers is a good chance to say we just came off the

[1:40:44] MaxFunDrive. Thank you to everyone who supports the show.

[1:40:48] Thank you to everyone who has supported the show consistently over the years.

[1:40:52] Folks who maybe don't get

[1:40:56] talked as much about as we're driving towards new members, but thank you to

[1:41:00] all of you for the support. And

[1:41:04] on a more personal support level, thank you to Alex Smith, our producer.

[1:41:08] He goes by the name HowlDotty on the internet. You can listen to his

[1:41:12] original music. You can check out his podcast,

[1:41:16] Big Howl and Possum. You can watch his Twitch streams after you're done

[1:41:20] watching Stuart's bean get freaked or whatever.

[1:41:24] I mean, he's the one who's going to help me get my bean freaked.

[1:41:28] As a good friend does. Yeah. Wind beneath my wings.

[1:41:32] Freak beneath your bean.

[1:41:36] Anyway, what am I doing? I'm signing off. For The Flophouse,

[1:41:40] I've been Dan McCoy. Hey, Dan McCoy, it's me, Stuart over here. Stuart

[1:41:44] Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin, not doing a voice, and we've been joined by

[1:41:48] I'm Steve Kostansky. Stay scared, everybody.

[1:41:52] What a good sign off. His sign off is so much

[1:41:56] better than any of ours. I stole it from George Romero.

[1:42:04] On this episode,

[1:42:08] we discuss Return to Silent Hill.

[1:42:12] You know, in some ways, I never left.

[1:42:16] That's sick, dude.

[1:42:20] That's pretty great.

[1:42:24] Are we talking to Christophe Gans right now?

[1:42:28] Return to Brotherhood of the Wolf.

[1:42:32] Wait, did he direct Brotherhood of the Wolf? Yeah, right?

[1:42:36] And Crying Freeman as well. And Crying Freeman as well?

[1:42:40] Yeah, some bangers in there. I had to show

[1:42:44] a scene from Brotherhood of the Wolf to the people I'm working with.

[1:42:48] I was talking about there's a monster that has a bone tail, and I'm like, oh, it could be kind of like that bone

[1:42:52] kind of nunchuck sword thing that the guy has at the end. And I showed them that scene, and watching it,

[1:42:56] I was like, this movie looks so much sillier than I remember.

[1:43:00] Oh, that bone sword, though. It's one of the best. And the best transition in movie history

[1:43:04] going up Monica Bellucci's body, and then her boobs turn into

[1:43:08] mountain peaks. It's great. It's incredible.

[1:43:12] Oh, man, we're wasting all this stuff. Okay, we've got to get into the actual...

[1:43:16] I thought we were recording it. Are we recording?

[1:43:20] Yes, we've been recording for a while now. I feel so disgusted.

[1:43:24] Okay, here we go.

[1:43:28] Maximum fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows.

[1:43:32] Supported directly by you.

Return to Silent Hill, with Steven Kostanski

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