The Rule of Scary
The Rule of Scary
3 Phantasm, Why Did You Make Me Watch This?
Andrew and Jason discuss Phantasm (1979). It only pissed Andrew off a little.
Hello and welcome to the rule of scary. I am brother Jay.
Andrew Richmond :I'm Andrew and boy, I love the energy you bring to this right out of the gate.
Unknown Speaker :I have plenty of energy to go around. People ask me if they can borrow it and I say this. No, no, you can't really yeah, you can do a lot a lot. They try and plug in to my energy and I'm like, No, get away. Fucking vampire get away. So, Andrew, let's just get this out of the way. What are you drinking today?
Unknown Speaker :Okay, um Today since we're talking about Phantasm, I'm drinking Deus Ex to beer. Because halfway through I was like, how many product shots of dose akise am I am I seeing here? So I was gonna do silver bullet course, but I think they changed your branding. And then obviously once I discovered that sex was in the film, that was a no brainer. And it's just fun to drink a beer because last week, last time, we did this, I had mother's ruin punch, and I drink that whole picture. And that was a weird day. But I am prepared and I have more on this. I have a cooler so you'll hear some beer bottle clinging sound effects, but I mean, we won't there's not going to get me very far. Anyway. Why am I drinking this? The film had a promotion with the Moctezuma Brewing Company, and coscarelli. Am I saying that right, the director, yeah, so he remembers going to his production manager house and seen a 50 to 100 cases of koseki in the garage. There were times he says Were the cast and crew would drink the lager for breakfast. And that's kind of where I'm I'm at right now anyway, you know,
Unknown Speaker :so I love it. Are you a drink 100 cases today, huh? I understand that you have something in the pipeline.
Unknown Speaker :Yep. I want to try something which is always a fun thing to say like put your helmet on I want to try something. Before we dive right in which we usually do. I want to do some sort of upfront discussion. It's not throat clearing. I have a purpose for this. But I want to ask you a question. And without giving too much away, because we're still going to walk through all the things. Why did you make me much this?
Unknown Speaker :Truth be told about this movie. I've been thinking about this a lot. This is one from my way, way back past. So this may have been one of the first three or four horror movies that I ever saw where horror was kind of a cool thing to me. Like as I was coming out of, you know where everything was. To me, bugs were scary and scary movies were scary and witches were scary and all of that shit. This may have been one of the first movies that I that I saw. As a matter of fact, I can I can name them there was there was alien, there was Phantasm there was Friday the 13th part too as weird as that sounds, those movies kind of put into perspective. This is something that I'm interested in because there's there's like so many different weird facets, you know, two things that people think are scary that I may not necessarily think are scary, but this was this was an old one man like a throwback from a million years ago and it was just something that I thought because I love this movie. I love this movie intensely. And the fact of the matter is it's it's super polarizing, because you have people who are super fans of this movie, and then you have people who are not fans of this movie.
Unknown Speaker :I started out as a very non fan and I you know, I think I did an Instagram post where I was like brother Jay Why did you make me watch this movie? Because, you know, it's easy to look at it on the surface, but what I'm finding this quarter third episode, like I write notes while watching this stuff, just so I can kind of follow what's happening, I just sort of regurgitate like what I'm seeing, and how it seems to me at the time, but every time I start doing a little research on these things, like it's, I really I start to understand it, right? And isn't that the point of understanding and like, how, you know, if you just try to understand then things will make sense. And you can see the point of view. I like doing the show, because like, I get to hang out with it, right. And we get to explore and talk about, you know, this scene and that and, you know, when we talk about the sort of environment or this horror community that I don't really know a lot about, and being critical of these films is definitely part of the ship, right. I'm going to say some things about Phantasm that will probably come from a place of misunderstanding, but that's part of the process. In my experience watching these films. That's, I just want to get that out there. When I watched Phantasm a second time, I just wanted to ask you Why did you make me watch this film right? This morning learning more and more like I can't be mean about this film. When I first started the film, I thought, No way. Does this make sense? No way. Do I not rip this apart and I mean, I will for the sake of the conversation, but even after watching it again, my opinion didn't really change. There were like hints of sincerity in certain scenes. For instance, there's this one weird scene where Jodi's drinking a beer, Mike sorry, all the way, by the way, I will get these names wrong, this whole thing because it's Tommy, Reggie, Jodi and my co I've started calling Mikey just so everybody ends with a Y, you know, there's a scene where Mike's drinking beer, he says, they got Suzy and Sally, you know, and it's like a really underage kid. And they kind of had this really sweet like outsiders moment. And so I'm like, well, what's going on? And then you start the research a little bit and you quickly learn that this was a locally financed independent film. And the cast and the crew were mostly amateurs and aspiring actors and actresses, right. So then all of a sudden, like, why am I being critical of this? I mean, these are people making a cool thing. On no budget. It's like a locally produced in In the film, like they were using power from people's house, hey, I kind of toned down some of the rhetoric like I get it a little bit more. Definitely a labor of love. You know, I learned the Phantasm. I'm just gonna read this because there's a commentary that was really helpful for me. It says Phantasm was shot over the course of a year with casting crew members getting together only on weekends to shoot straight through the three days, right? They only got together on weekends. They had no permits, and they had to tap into local resident homes for power. We made a movie once you made a movie, I just showed up and said some stuff. But like, that was really fun. This was probably like a really fun, you could tell it these guys had just a it was a really bonding moment and a labor of love for these guys, and I'll say mostly men, I kind of made me like it. Whereas before I was like, This is so stupid. From my
Unknown Speaker :perspective. Of course, that is really kind of what the, like what the fucking point of the podcast is, is, you know, we were here to talk about it because you don't like them and I do like them and, you know, to kind of get a better understanding of where it Each of us are coming from. And part of the reason that I chose Phantasm. I just like the movie, but on top of that, again, it's a super polarizing movie like, you either love this fucking movie or you don't like it at all. I happen to live with a human being who does not like this movie. She thinks this is the stupidest movie ever made in the history of stupid movies. And I mean, you can't fault her for that. There are definitely it's an independent movie. And there are definitely places in the movie where you're like, wow, continuity, just fuck continuity. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker :And that's one of my big problems with this thing is the loop. I'm like, especially towards the end. I'm like, we already did this. How many times they go back and forth from the house to the mortuary? Why are you coming back and I want to talk about like this whole like, it's just a sense of adventure right there. Curiosity is the thing that like keeps propelling this whole storyline forward. Like when evil chases you and you escape it. You just keep going you don't go back. But they always go back. They always go a little further. They're going through the window. They're opening the ice truck. Like just walk away, man.
Unknown Speaker :A great, great. I'm glad I will say this about this movie. I've probably seen this movie. I watched this fucking thing three times this past week, just because I really liked this movie. But I have probably over the course of my life have seen this movie 100 times. And I am so glad that you are going to be able to put a timeline on it because even me seeing this movie as many times as I've seen it. I probably couldn't say like, we go from this scene to this scene to this scene, because it is a little bit all over the place.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, it was hard. I watched it twice. Probably both times, you know, under the influence a little bit. I was on some vacation. So I don't think that helped. But even like writing like transcribing my notes into like typing them out today. I was really confused about some things. I'm like, why? And that's another thing like there's supposed to be this psychic link between Jody and Mike, that you don't really get, but that's something they were trying for. So that's why a lot of times there's a duality of them both sort of on their own adventures and they'll do like weird glances and looks and stuff especially Jody, there's you're supposed to get the sense that like they're connected. There's all sorts of shit to unpack on this thing. Let's get going. Let's get going with this. Right away good music. You know, this theme was only used in the opening and closing credits originally, because girlie felt it got to the tone of the whole film, so he just used it throughout, which is cool. All three of these movies we've watched so far. All good openings, really cool openings, good openings with these horror films. This one is sex in the cemetery. Right? What good scary movie doesn't start without a cemetery. Right. Tommy, Tommy? There's a shot of the mortuary the lady in lavender. Right? That's an interesting thing. The actress who did that she wasn't comfortable with that. Hector even let alone not being you know, being naked and stuff. So there was a double for her. So like the legs, I think you get two shots of the legs sticking out behind the tombstone and like, I don't even think they know whose legs those are like they just I don't know. But the actress who said I'm not doing nude scenes was very adamant about the stunt actor getting a credit so that's why there's like double lavender in the credits. Tommy Tommy Tommy gets stamped by the lady in lavender. And then we're introduced to Jodi and Reggie Jody is the older brother and Reggie is a friend. Hold Hold your horses there, Mister lady in lavender. And then all of a sudden, it's not the fucking lady in lavender. It's the tall man. All right. So we're introduced to Jodi and Reggie they say some things Tommy's gone, man. I can't believe Tommy's gone. So Tommy, they believe that he died by suicide,
Unknown Speaker :Grace because everybody commits suicide by stabbing themselves in the chest.
Unknown Speaker :Absolutely. So what's happening. God is going through the mortuary I guess the mausoleum at this point that really cool black and white, Muslim with the grades and stuff in the very echoey effect, and he's dressed very nicely. But there are weird noises in the vault already like little snickering, I'll call it the red white black color scheme going on. A lot of it's really beautiful. I have a note in here about parents. Is he supposed to are we supposed to know that his parents are in there at this point? And like dad, yeah,
Unknown Speaker :I think I think at this point in time, it's just kind of implied that the reason that it's just the two of them is because the parents have passed on. Okay,
Unknown Speaker :so he's walking around in the vault and you know, I'm just realizing this at the time then they cut to Mikey this kid. I don't even think that give him a name until like a few minutes and he's always just referred to as this little brother or that little kid or that poor fella. But he's just riding a motorbike for the cemetery bucking motorbike, and we're introduced to a goblin I'm calling them goblins. With the capes, scurrying around behind tombstones. We go back to the ball. There's more snickering in the vault. That's what When you get the big hand you know on Jodi's shoulder it says the funerals about him again, sir and then that's our intro to the tall man. That impersonation was crap. But no,
Unknown Speaker :that was actually does a pretty pretty spot on man. I didn't put a lot behind it. I know and that's the beautiful thing. So introduction to the tall man played by Angus Grimm amazing. I mean, like, what an imposing character already.
Unknown Speaker :Well, he's, I mean, he's famous, you know, he explains he was asked by Don coscarelli to do the film in Costa Rica and we told him he would be playing an alien to which scram thought which country the character would be from and what accent he would have to perfect he didn't really understand he would be like a real alien, which I guess he did.
Unknown Speaker :Oh, I love it.
Unknown Speaker :I love it. And what's funny about the alien thing is that you know, when you hear Costco really talk about this movie, he refers to them as aliens. He refers to him as an interdimensional being, yeah. And then Tolman as as kind of a monster. We go back to the unified theory, because casca really thinks of those things being all the same thing, which is amazing. We'll talk more about the unified theory later. No, not probably during this episode, but we could talk about it later. But I love that I love the fact that he kind of those things are used interchangeably. Really, even the guy wrote the damn movie doesn't know Is he one of these things are all of these things. And I never just because of his affiliation with death, it never occurred to me that he was an alien. I knew there was a portal to another like planet, a slave planet, but I just thought he was sort of the mastermind behind that and was just sort of this ghoulish. You know, mortician thing with yellow blood. I didn't know that he was in a raid.
Unknown Speaker :So great. You know, there's the scene where they have to explain they got some splainin to do they didn't think you know, he says he didn't think he could handle it after mom and dad. You know, I don't know how they died. We don't know. But he's describing why the little kid the little brother Mike was not at the funeral. The brother sticks around in the cemetery and he sees the casket loaded back into the Hearst by the tall man, right? And he mutters What the fuck which I think is fantastic. In fact, we see this scene twice just in case we missed it the first time but yeah, this cool thing about the budget of this like you know, they didn't have very much time to shoot it a couple years but the the casket was made out of like paper machete or something. And then like it fell apart the first time they tried to put it in the back of the hearse. It took 310 right.
Unknown Speaker :I love it. Because you watch that seems super close in the movie. You can see the ropes on the back. Yes,
Unknown Speaker :there's a rope on the other side. The handles were made out of Styrofoam cups. Right? And scram says it wasn't heavy. It was just really cumbersome,
Unknown Speaker :right? I mean, like well, and you'd have to be super careful with it. Because if you really put any force behind the grip on it You just crumble the whole thing. And then of course with a no budget picture that's a whole day lost, or you're having to put the damn casket back together to reshoot that
Unknown Speaker :scene. The production notes on this thing are just great like there was a stop sign and one of the shots and it was ruining the shot of the morning side gates. So I have one of the like, grips or something gotten to the van and like said it was an accident, but just like plowed through the stop sign, like in reverse or something, and it was like and then we have the perfect shot. Like
Unknown Speaker :oops, not Yes, I doubt.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah,
Unknown Speaker :worked out great for us. We really needed that stop sign gun, so Oh my gosh, truly, like truly guerilla filmmaking before. guerilla filmmaking was a thing, you know, I mean, like, that's why I like this movie. You know, I was so hard
Unknown Speaker :on it for like, a week. And then, you know, just digging into the commentary by these people. I'm like, I wish I had been on I wish I had been a part of that. It seemed like they had so much fun. we're introduced to grandmother the psychic. Why? Don't know.
Unknown Speaker :Okay, so a couple of things that I'm gonna say about grandmother's psychic Are you do you have more to say about that scene? That particular scene? No that's
Unknown Speaker :I say why why why so
Unknown Speaker :Okay, so here you show up. There's literally no foreshadowing you don't ever meet these characters the granddaughter and the grandmother. Prior to this moment, knock knock knock on the door. Hi. Is your grandmother here? I need to tell her Oh, yes, grandmother.
Unknown Speaker :See what I'm saying? Oh, I know. It's I don't know this kid's name. I cannot remember. He
Unknown Speaker :Mike is here to see you. She comes in the grandmother says nothing the entire time right. Put your hand in this box. grandmothers already said not to fear and I saw something scary. I get it. This is an easy way to spit out a whole bunch of kind of exposition for the plot of the movie. You know, he's afraid that Joe He's leaving, he saw something scary at Morningside here. Those are the two really the two emotional motivators throughout, if you could call it emotional motivators that are going to kind of carry you through. But I have used this term once I will use it again ham handed.
Unknown Speaker :Do you see my hand on my head like this? So for those of you listening, we have this way that we can see each other when we do this, which is really nice, because otherwise it's just me talking into a dog pillow. My hand was on my hip because this is where we talked about some of the sequencing that is really confusing. There's a monologue or you know, Jerry's like I don't get off on funerals, man and you know, monologue and leaving the kid.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, that's that that's the next scene, buddy. Buddy rolls up, because he's in it for the funeral.
Unknown Speaker :But he's still talking to the psychic. I don't know that. It's weird because he goes, I saw something. He goes, there's something of the tall man knocks him off the bike somehow. And then he sees the torment load. The casket goes to the psychic. Then we loop back to seeing the tall man load the casket again. Then it gets knocked off the bike then hand in the box, the old lady laughs the box disappears. So we got to see him motor like what the fuck rice. So I was just really confused about some of that sequencing, right?
Unknown Speaker :I think that the only excuse I can make for the way that that scene is built is that that is to give you kind of context for what he's saying, even though we just saw that scene, the back and forth between here's at the funeral, or the you know, the mourning side where he gets knocked off the bike and then he sees the, you know, sees the tall man loading the casket and all of that. I think that that reason we revisit that is so that you can have context for that when really truly we just saw that scene two minutes before and it's not necessary. If you're looking at a book on how to make movies that that exact thing is in there if you have to use a flashback you know, Again, a little a little ham handed in there that that scene certainly did seem to wedged, you know, kind of wedged in there. The whole the entire psychic scene, honestly, because at this point in time, I don't know if he just didn't trust that we would get the fact that Mike is afraid that Jodi's leaving, and that he's afraid that he saw the tall man loading that, like,
Unknown Speaker :That's right, there are two very revealing parts about visiting the psychic one is afraid of God leaving. And that's why we get the dialogue about he's going to take off. And by the way, Mike is just obsessed with this, right. I don't know if it's abandonment, or you know, separation anxiety, but like he's constantly following him around. And so I think we need to move on to the jam session.
Unknown Speaker :Oh, it's, I knew that it was really good.
Unknown Speaker :Well, and I knew this was coming. I knew this was coming because again, it seems like a super strange superfluids thing. To go into this movie, but the idea of it and they set it at Morningside was, I guess we are not a trio any longer. We're a duo. So the idea of the music is there because Tommy was their third. So this is kind of Let's sit down and have this little homage to Tommy because this takes place kind of directly after the funeral at Morningside.
Unknown Speaker :It was really good I wondered if part of Joe's contract was like I'll be in your movie but you should know I have this band right? Like this buddy musical called Reggie.
Unknown Speaker :Reggie Bannister the guy who PayPal obviously played Reggie he actually was a musician and that's that's where and i don't know i don't want to get into the fun facts because I don't want to I don't want to step all of your your jam there but that is actually how Don coscarelli met Reggie Bannister was that Reggie Bannister was playing in a bar and Don coscarelli, who was only 18 At the time shows up at this bar and 20 something Reggie Bannister buys Don coscarelli a fucking beer. That's how they became friends and that's ultimately how Reggie Bannister ended up in this movie was because he went to see him at this bar and so anyways, fun fact a fucking love that
Unknown Speaker :that is fantastic. Everybody's pretty young. Costco is 23 when he races he was 25 when it came out next thing we're at Dukes canteen, it's the bar that kind of keeps popping up. God meets the girl. Kid cannot stop stalking like pervert brother, right? Um, weird thing. The first time I watched this movie was on a 4k television. Not mine. I don't I don't I don't do that. And it looked like a stage play. So like the quality of the stuff was really weird. A lot of like the sort of vintage kind of stuff was lost. You know, it just looked like a stage play. It looked really weird. Yeah, but I watched it the second time on my crappy TV. It looked great.
Unknown Speaker :So anyway, this is one scene that looked really weird on that sort of definition. You know me, I'm a student of the media, whatever. But here's what I'm going to say. You know, at this point in time, we have evolved technology to a point where the things that looked beautiful before no longer fucking look beautiful. I am not a fan of 4k, not a fan. So for any of you listeners out there who are inventing new technologies, the MC six K or whatever it's going to be fuck you stop it. Knock it off.
Unknown Speaker :Well, we've never had a technology we didn't use So yeah, I guess that's true.
Unknown Speaker :That's Well, I'm not me, not me.
Unknown Speaker :I'm just kidding. Anyway, there's sex in the cemetery. Right? So okay, so sex boobs. growling. Goblin screams Mike has a hard time with a goblin in the woods or something. He runs past God having relations with the lady in lavender, right? It's not just a girl. And then they finally catch up and he's trying to explain to Jodi He saw and he says it was little in brown and low to the ground. And I thought that was a great way to describe the goblins.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I do too. Two of my favorite lines. Number one, that's one of them. And then the other one is as as Mike is like, just peeling through the cemetery screaming. He says to the lady in lavender, he says, Wait here, that's my brother. I think having Yeah, kind of problem. I just like a quick
Unknown Speaker :look. There's a lot there. I'm just in that scene alone is another 20 minutes.
Unknown Speaker :How did you know it was your brother? Why do you anticipate that it's your brother? Why is it your brother watching you? I think he has some kind of problem. It's just a lot. There's the first dream of tall man, you know, so we already have this sort of weird horror thing going on. But there's also these mind games that are sort of blurring the line between waking and dreaming. And anytime a dream is introduced into a thing, I'm like, well, that's awfully convenient, you know, which is a real pain in the ass for me in this movie, but who has the dream is it? It's Yeah, it's the kid, right? It's my kid has the right Yeah, got it. Okay. Yeah, the zombie arms come up around the bed or whatever. And he's sort of standing behind the bed, which was shot so well, that kind of became the movie poster for this for this, I think initially, right? Correct. So Mike sees the tall man, the tall man stops and sniffs Reggie's ice cream truck. One thing I like about this scene while he's walking on these, you know, busy streets, his shoes echo like he's still in the mausoleum, which I thought was a really neat effect, like really spooky. So that was cool.
Unknown Speaker :That is cool, because you don't really hear anything but that. Yeah, and that really is that's kind of one of those great haunting moments of this movie. I mean, there's plenty of scares in the movie, but it's one of those ones that work like kind of on a psychological level a little deeper, which This movie as much as I'd love I love this movie did not have a lot of those super deep psychological scares. It was a little more out front, you know, but, but that is one of those moments in this movie that I'm like,
Unknown Speaker :yeah, yeah. Yeah. When he's sniffing Is he in pain? Is he an ecstasy? He's just really taken it in this ice cream. I maybe likes ice cream. I don't know,
Unknown Speaker :even on watching this movie this this week. I had that same question like, and we don't need to get into this now but it's very hot and high pressure in the other place and the other world. So is it good? Is it bad? You never really know they never address it.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, that makes sense to me though, because that red planet was seemed like a really hot place. Mike is now fixing a car. It's kind of a cool kid right with a motorbikes and fixing these cool cars. I think that was like a barracuda right. In fact, after this movie came out like the sale of black barracudas like skyrocketed, people want That car. Interesting enough, the actor learn how to pretty much drive on the set of Phantasm and driving that car. He rolls out from underneath the car which is nice. That was nice. He was able to do that bonks God on the toe with a hammer we have the shot of like those seconds on the ground God is wearing another Rolling Stones t shirt. So we already know this about God has multiple Rolling Stones t shirts and is in a jam band. We go back to Morningside we're in the cemetery again the mortuary shot Mike breaks the window right so Mike is a fucking mystery at this point. Like he's just going around breaking windows riding motorbikes tear gas through graveyards, breaking windows just on paper, because he's troubled right? We're in the funeral parlor The door opens and enters the caretaker who looks a little bit like Neil Young sort of two tropes now at this point first the dream secrets and sequence now curiosity so kind of curiosity is a trope is the thing that sort of probably don't go back. Don't go away. They're right. That's kind of what we're doing. They're constantly going in there. Right? we're introduced to this ball. You heard about this heard about the ball? Yeah. The sphere, the ball thing. I don't what controls the ball? I don't know. It's just an introduction to a strange thing. Are we on board with this ball? I don't know. It just appears right? And all these movies, you're sort of introduced to a thing where you're like,
Unknown Speaker :yeah, sure, this movie probably more than any other. Like, the suspension of disbelief has to be immediate, because you are not getting a fucking explanation. You know? I mean, like, it's not until the third movie that they introduce, what the fuck are these spheres? Like, what are they? So you have to watch three goddamn movies in order to even know what they are.
Unknown Speaker :I left ball was only supposed to appear at that time, but because they pull it off and they thought it worked so well. It became a thing they wanted to do again, which is why you see it later. So they're exploring like the use of this as they're making the movie. I love it. love it because a man again, if that isn't independent filmmaking, I just write in the fucking thing is you go. Yeah, that's pretty brilliant. There's a lot of the shit. They were supposed to be an aunt, but um, the actress who was going to play the aunt ended up playing the second grandmother because the lady couldn't make it to set. So like they just sort of riding changing the script as they go. It's neat. This ball embeds itself into the forehead of the caretaker. There's a blood that comes out all the blood in this movie is super red, like corn syrup. It's really weird. There's a thing and I'll read when the caretakers killed in the Mozley and by the sphere, you can see a trail of urine coming out of his pant leg when he falls coscarelli mentions this was something you could barely see in the early video transfers. He notes the fact that you can't see the urine is one of the reasons they were able to get an R rating as opposed to an X rating because
Unknown Speaker :I think the original cut of this movie landed them an X rating. And right yeah, and then of course, like kind of waiting it down a little bit. They They managed to pull off in our rating. So, of course, we could talk about that for a million years. But Motion Picture Association of America, there is no rules. Even still now, for what like the ratings that they give. I could talk about this for 10 years. All I'm saying is fuck that whole process because they change the rules. You know, depending on you know what the picture is, or depending on the context of you know, I mean, like, you could be doing the same gag one movie to another movie.
Unknown Speaker :I'm assuming it's related to money. The the tall man appears behind Mike chasing says, Hannah gets caught in the door and yellow juice is the tall man's blue, all
Unknown Speaker :the little fingers. Now let me ask you this. This is a tough scene because this scene kind of spreads out all over the place. Right? So are they still in the mausoleum at this point in time?
Unknown Speaker :They're like in a parlor, right? So this mortuary has all this. It has everything. It has a cemetery. It has, you know, a place for it. coffins yeah the mortuary as a mausoleum, right. You know it's got a lot going on. It's all connected. The cemetery was a park, they rented tombstones for 20 Century Fox. So it was very easy to make a cemetery. They think I think they had three days to shoot at the mortuary just like exterior scenes. So that's why the shots of the building all are the same kind of glad to repurpose those. The Muslim was a set that they built and they didn't really know how to build shit or so they built like a real mausoleum. They didn't do like a fake set or anything like it was built to last. us great. God makes it home he loses a shoe. He's falling asleep on the stairway.
Unknown Speaker :Wait, God, you're Michael
Unknown Speaker :Michael. Mike see this one talking about? Mike makes it home. He's asleep on the steps. He's holding a shotgun. God comes down he empties the shotgun. There's a finger of Tom his fingers in a box moving around with the yellow blood and Jody says I believe you Michaels upstairs opens the box. The finger is now a fly In his hair, the finger becomes a fly. I mean, the finger becomes a very strong fly.
Unknown Speaker :It's another one of those things, though, as an independent picture. You're like, what shock and awe Can I put in here? Like, what scary thing can we do in this scene that really isn't very scary. So again, that may have been one of those things. I mean, obviously, there's an effect there, but that may have been one of those things don't on the fly.
Unknown Speaker :Okay. Oh,
Unknown Speaker :you know, I mean, like something just to add a little bit of like a little bit of spice to that scene.
Unknown Speaker :And not for long they wrap it in a towel, you know, I think that direction probably was now just jerk all around maniacally in the house, like this towel has super strength, you know, because they're just like this towels giving them the business. They put it in the garbage disposal. Mike is back. No, not Mike is back. Reggie comes in, I think. Yeah. And then the fight comes back. So Reggie is introduced to the fly. They put it in the garbage disposal again. Next, they're in the living room, and they're talking to Jody's given Mike some gun advice, which is really funny to me, um, no warning shots and then he's also the like and shoot to kill.
Unknown Speaker :God goes back to Morningside right to check out what Mike saw because
Unknown Speaker :I believe you you know like that Yeah, went back to Morningside and really officially This is only the second time that Jodie has been there there was first funeral and then second now his trip to Morningside where Mike seems to just live at Morningside you know, he's just gonna move move in and put a little
Unknown Speaker :does doesn't take long before the goblins attack him somehow. God does not shoot off his own head with that gun trying to shoot the Goblin. And then he's chased by the hearse which reminded me of Christine, right, like ghost driven cars kind of stuff. I was curious there. Mike shows up in Jodi's car, the Barracuda. He's driving, they get in and out. Mike says God pumps in the backseat. So they're driving and shooting this thing fun thing. coscarelli was actually in the trunk of the car getting those shots while he was shooting over his head. And what they didn't know was that even though it's blanks, like a close range that there are still projectiles and it can kill you, right? Just kind of speaking of learning on the fly there. I'm so lost, uh, you know, there's just a level of curiosity in this film. I don't quite buy like if you know, like I said, if you know, an evil thing exists and it's after you and you get away, like why do you always go back or look further, but this is what they do. You know, at this point, they're having a real adventure. They turn around after shooting the Hearst and it crashes, right? And then they open the door and they find Goblin Tommy, and they say look at what they did him. So they do some explaining there. They say I think he says pushing bodies down to half size or something.
Unknown Speaker :So you kind of get a little bit of the introduction to the fact that what they've been doing with the bodies Where are the bodies going? What are they becoming while they're becoming the goblins? So this is really the first kind of revelation that you have that the goblins were once the fucking town. You know, so kind of gives you an idea of a little bit of the evil of the tall man cuz everybody's a minion.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, he has him. He's got him Got him. Um, I don't know what the kid is now in an antique store with these two random ladies. He finds a photograph of the tall man and like driving a, I don't know, it's like a horse drawn carriage. It's kind of it's old, right? It's an old photo. He's still very much a mortician. But then the photograph becomes animated. And then the tall man turns and looks and has a scowl on his face.
Unknown Speaker :I love the I love the idea. Number one. This is our first introduction to jebediah Morningside which we don't know that is here. him for another two movies. But
Unknown Speaker :what?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, that's his good news to me. Yeah. Well, I mean, like that would have been the tall man pre tall man. He was jebediah morning side. And that's why it's morning side cemetery. So with the with the coffin carts, so you get an idea of how old you know he is and you kind of have an idea that he was an old tall man back when he was driving a coffin cart that was pulled by horses. So the seat is is pretty interesting because it does set up the idea of kind of this is an ageless evil.
Unknown Speaker :And, you know, think about and thinking about it. It's it's also a bit about psychic connection, because at the next scene is Jodi has a dream of the tall man, you know, and so now we have two dreams. And I think we're sort of starting talk. I felt like there was a level of sleeplessness in this film, like a little bit of fatigue from this sort of all night adventure, right? That happens to Jodi. In the meantime, goblins attack Mike and the girls I guess the goblins just like to wrestle in Maine because what they're doing in that car is pretty funny. He the car drives away with the girls screaming and the goblins. Mike makes it out of the back, makes it home. He drinks a beer and says they got Sally and Susie which again is that sort of sweet outsider scene for me. They're mad as hell. They're gonna go back some someone's going back, but I guess he locks Mike in the room with a screwdriver, which I don't I don't know. Then there's a crazy shit. Okay, wait.
Unknown Speaker :Picture this Jason at age 13. Go and you can't fucking knock somebody into a room with the screwdriver. Oh, yes, you absolutely can. My poor sister. Who is what two years younger than I am. I managed to lock her in her room for about four and a half hours before my mother figured out that I had just used a screwdriver. Punch that baby right into the doorframe. Yeah, you absolutely can do that. So you not have access to a hammer
Unknown Speaker :a thumbtack and a shotgun. Did not not at that time get out of that situation head parent. That's right.
Unknown Speaker :Absolutely. You just blow the goddamn door handle completely.
Unknown Speaker :You know, when I saw this shithead kid do this. I was like, How many? How many kids try this at home? You know? I have a quote from Costco. He says to this day, I just think that no one ever tried to duplicate this or I've never heard about it happening about the exploding hammer. He says I'm sure people have tried it. They just aren't around anymore to tell anyone where they learned about
Unknown Speaker :yet not what I would call probably the most responsible.
Unknown Speaker :This was definitely a means to an end. They're like, well, we got him in here. I don't know how the hell we're gonna get him out like how, you know, like, fuck, fuck the old trope of breaking the window.
Unknown Speaker :No, we're keeping the door open. We've got a MacGyver this shit and almost kill yourself to get out of this bedroom, which you know is like one of those cheap like commercial grade doors or whatever. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker :just you could look Literally poke it with a pillow and it would just fall down. Yeah, yeah,
Unknown Speaker :he doesn't make it far he sees the tall man and tall man has his finger back, which is cool. I learned that the original idea was to have the tall man still missing the fingers that Mike had severed earlier. And they had made this long phony arm for scrim to where but it stuck out over like a foot behind his actual arm and it just looked really bad so they dropped it. And suddenly we right we're learning as we're going here while they're making this movie like Well, shit, the top man's ability to regenerate missing limbs was devised,
Unknown Speaker :which is beautiful. There's also this and I believe it's this scene where he takes him out of the house and he's gotten by like the scruff of his collar, they do this wonderful thing again, this is super low budget. They had a board they put fucking wheels on the board. And if you watch the scene, Angus grim grabs him by the by the scruff of his collar and does this like pick up and at the same time that he does the pick up mic steps up onto the board. And so it looks like he's got carrying him by the scruff of his collar, back to the hearse, but he's like just rolling him on this sport. It's what a great great, great kind of indie film thing to do. I just again just the the no budget aspect of this is so beautiful there there was another scene where a door goes flying or something, I can't remember where it occurred but I was looking into this and they didn't know how to make it. They took it off the hinges but didn't know how to make it project. So one of the grips basically just like ran at it and then ran with it. And it's funny because you can sort of see it bouncing, like someone's running with it,
