Unknown Speaker  0:02  
My name ain't baby. It's Janet.

Unknown Speaker  1:23  
Hello, and welcome to the rule of scary podcast. I'm brother Jay. And I'm brother Andrew. And we are happy to be back for what is this our sixth?

Unknown Speaker  1:36  
It's like that thing you do in the beginning of the pandemic where puzzles seemed like a fun idea. And then sort of like towards the end you're like, Oh, so another we got to do another one.

Unknown Speaker  1:46  
Oh, she's got it. Got it. I can't keep going. Here we go. Jesus. We watched them all. They watched all the scary movies. God damn it.

Unknown Speaker  1:57  
So, Andrew,

Unknown Speaker  2:00  
what are you drinking? Um, you know, I thought of the sad story all day about how I was going to tell you I wasn't drinking because it's a school night. We don't usually do this on a school night. But you know, we have to we got to make it work, baby. Here we are Monday night and then inspiration struck at the last minute. I took a cocktail that I had ingredients for which is step one, usually. And then it was called something I didn't like so I called it something else. Just so that it applies to the film. So tonight I'm drinking something called London after midnight. Can't the director Jennifer kinte said that the man and the beaver hat from the 1927 last film London after midnight was an inspiration for the design of the Baba Duke. So I looked into that looked into some of those pictures. They're pretty amazing. And it's I could see that I can see the connection there. Maybe. I don't know. Anyway, I didn't know London after midnight was also marked as the hypnotist. It is a lost 1927 American silent mystery film with horror overtones, directed and co produced and, you know started by a bunch of people that we don't know about, but what it is made of is one and a half ounces of tequila, half ounce of Campari, half ounce of sweet vermouth, half ounce of dry vermouth a dash of Angostura bitters. Orange twist for garnish. I'm using grapefruit. Step one stir all ingredients except the orange twist with ice in a cocktail shaker. Step two strain into a chilled coupe

Unknown Speaker  3:31  
COO, coo coo coo

Unknown Speaker  3:34  
glass and garnish with an orange twist and like I already told you, I'm using grapefruit. And as I was coming downstairs to do this podcast my wife said don't you break my coops

Unknown Speaker  3:51  
so be kind to the coops.

Unknown Speaker  3:53  
Goddamnit there's a lot of room for error in this thing. It has a very large opening at the top much like a martini glass. Yeah, so it was a little treacherous just getting here. I'm lucky to be alive.

Unknown Speaker  4:03  
Yeah, I mean, like praise Him.

Unknown Speaker  4:11  
Anyways, so for those of you who have not figured it out, we reviewed the film. The Baba duck.

Unknown Speaker  4:20  
Not yet.

Unknown Speaker  4:22  
We were going to we watched the film The Baba Duke reviewed it with our eyes. Oh, with our eyeballs. You reviewed it. I reviewed it now we're going to review the fucking thing together. Say it out loud. We're gonna save words.

Unknown Speaker  4:38  
I mean, America is waiting. So that's

Unknown Speaker  4:40  
true. I mean, God dammit, we just can't keep him waiting any longer. So let's, let's fucking let's do this thing, man. I'm excited. I really really liked this film on a lot of levels. And I know that you are gonna have many, many words to say about this. So I'm kind of excited to dig in because it's got all your favorite things. Right. It's got a shithead kid, you know, God, it's got a lot of screaming. And it's got things that go bump in the night like all your favorite things.

Unknown Speaker  5:09  
Yeah, all of my absolute favorite things in terms of scary movies, like the shit that like keeps you up at night and you know, the weird noises while you're sleeping and the things that look over you while you're sleeping. That always kind of freaks me out. That's kind of my Achilles heel. In terms of scary movies, but yeah, the kid kid was a problem from the beginning. Lots of screaming, you know, I don't want to jump too far ahead. But uh, I kind of love this kid. I love this kid. He does this great dance at the end, that just makes it all worth it. I love everything about him now, but I'll talk about that. I'll get into that. Okay. All right. So what's happening? This is a movie Baba Duke. I've been putting this off. We were supposed to do this last week. I was reluctant. Just because I didn't want to watch it at night and then have to go to bed. I didn't want to watch it before this three days overnight. camping trip I went on and have to sleep out in the woods and think about this shit. So I watched it. Sunday, light of day, which was the right choice. What do we have we open with the scene of what we have a million who's played by se Davis is really the main protagonist. Right? Right. She does a great job of kind of playing both jack nicholson and Shelley Duvall and shining in this piece. You know, she kind of a two for one. But she's breathing. You don't really know what's happening. I'll just say this once. And maybe every time I say it again, you drink the art direction in this film is great. she's she's breathing, there's all sorts of things happening. There's car lights, and then there's like, glass that breaks and just weird sort of floating around. Like you kind of feel like you're in a car that's maybe flipping or something. It's really bizarre. And then it cuts to this image of her floating down into her own bed. So that was super cool. I like that.

Unknown Speaker  6:52  
That fucking scene. I gotta say, we've watched some pretty artsy pigs. And I gotta say, that was the right choice for like, the transition from dream sequence into real life. Because it was like, here, she's crashing down. She's crashing in the vehicle. She's crashing down to the bed. And then she's awake. fuckin right decision.

Unknown Speaker  7:16  
Yep. And you really have no idea what's going on, or why that happened or whatever. There are a few instances where, you know, she used to sort of in this dream state, and then, you know, comes out of the dream state, and they'll do a time lapse to get you to the morning like, quickly, you know, and I thought that was really cool. So there's a mention of I had the dream again. And then we're introduced to Samuel the Son, and he says, I'll kill the monster when it comes. I'll smash its head in love this kid. He's six years old, when he was in this movie. Some of the more fascinating facts about this movies, the care they took to make this around him as to not absolutely like mess him up. And kind of the readings that they did with him or not around. Basically, they go through these weird sleeping rituals with Amelia and Samuel Miller, the mom Samuels, son, we're showing the routine that Samuel and Emilio go through with bedtime, they check the closet, they check onto the bed, the corners of his room for any monsters, and then they read a bedtime story.

Unknown Speaker  8:10  
Yeah, I basically have exactly the same rituals.

Unknown Speaker  8:13  
I think the first book they read is something about a big bad wolf. This kid is weird. I don't mean that in a bad way. He's just He's different. He's really annoying for the first part of the film. You know, he's the sort of inventor this magician. Magic is a big theme in this film. You know, the whole film kind of feels like a magic trick, you know, I felt at the beginning like Oh, great. Here we have a kid who is kind of problematic and disturbed. And you know, he he's probably gonna have access to this demonic dimension. But you know, as soon as the Baba do creeps into their home, like, we start to understand that he is not the monster and it's actually not his game, you know, and it's very much tied to Amelia. So I thought that was cool trick of just along the magic theme. Something weird happened. And I didn't go back to figure out what it was. But he hugs the mom. And then the mom pushes him away very quickly and says screams kind of yells don't do that. I don't know why. Maybe it was the hugging. I don't know. It was weird.

Unknown Speaker  9:12  
I think I think and this because I thought on that too. Because he's holding her all through the the the time where, like he's on her lap while they're reading the story while they're checking the closets. He's holding her around the middle. So I don't know if it was just like that direct physical contact, that she kind of pushed him away. But it was the first crack in the egg. Which was was pretty cool. Because this whole story kind of pinions on cracks in the A i don't i didn't get it either. There's another thing too later on. Hopefully, I hope you have an answer for because there's another thing that just kind of didn't make sense. And I did zero research. I'm going to be honest with you. I did. I'm proud of you. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  9:54  
I literally did nothing. Just do the fucking minimum.

Unknown Speaker  9:57  
Just Yeah, I mean like I literally did nothing. I watched the movie and even that, let's be honest, it was like eating through it half the time I was facing you

Unknown Speaker  10:08  
didn't have so much editing to do, I would say, this is a pretty sweet gig for you, but you have hell to deal with on the backside of this, you have to cut out like the 1000 times I say, kind of in the arms and like the meat drinking and stuff. So and I'll

Unknown Speaker  10:22  
tell you something else we both do, and I'm just gonna do it. We both do that, like a fucking million times. We'll do that. Like when there's not words, we'll just be like, so.

Unknown Speaker  10:36  
Anyway.

Unknown Speaker  10:38  
It's fucking amazing. And you will, I mean, like, you would be amazed at how many times I just trim that like, little like to, to just trim it right out. So I've gotten to where I can just visually on the waveform, I can fucking pick them out and

Unknown Speaker  10:54  
be like, there's a there's a pause. And then there's a weird, like, tick in the levels. And you're like, yeah, I can see it a mile away. Let's get it out.

Unknown Speaker  11:02  
It's just one little spike. Boop. And I'm like that bitches going. Gone. Gone. Gone. I don't know what it is. No, yeah, it's kind of go.

Unknown Speaker  11:11  
Alright, we're already behind schedule. We learned that mom is a caretaker. I don't really know what she's in, like a facility were introduced to Robbie. Robbie is sort of this really sweet guy. He's kind of right away as interested in her. He's the love interest. I think he's well meaning, but he's just way too forward and borderline creepy. You know, usually when when I'm introduced to that person, I'm like, well, that guy dies. But you know, that never really happens. So she's called the school she has to meet with the school. She's meeting with a couple of kind of, I don't know prudes, what are they? There's just a lot of really unrelatable characters in this. And that's kind of what's fucked up. Like, you know, the characters are. Like, everything is secondary. The character in this film, like the meaning of the dramas and media is growing resentment and the grief that threatens to tear what's left to the family apart. Right. Right. But seems like everyone else is just sort of this kind of assholes, you know, and but a lot of it's intentional. But anyway, she's at the school, they say, Oh, they say Samuel has significant behavioral problems. They refer to him as the boy which Amelia hates and says his name is Samuel and which I introduced myself. My name a baby. It's Janet. Just cuz it made me think of that. Like, he's not the boys. All right, they're leaving. She says, Don't tell Auntie Claire. I don't know what that means. We are at the store. We learn about the crash from the first scene as Samuel was talking to a stranger about how his father died in a car accident driving my mom to the hospital to have me. So there's no filter on this kid. I'm into that. I like that. And right, you know, it's steady, and it plays through all the way to the end. That's fine. So we learn a little backstory here. We understand what that first scene was about with the car crash and stuff that in fact, you know, her husband died while driving to the hospital to have Samuel so you know, Samuel could be born.

Unknown Speaker  13:08  
Right? Okay, I got two things. I want to say real quick. Number one, fuck those fucking school administrators. Man. I'm telling you what I've been in both his position and her position talking to administrators exactly like that. There's no fucking in the world. There's just no feeling like that feeling when you get called into the fucking school office of a Catholic school that you paid gajillion dollars a month more, just to have them say, guess what? We're kicking him the fuck out. And guess what? I said? Well, fuck you guys.

Unknown Speaker  13:47  
Yeah, she basically did that, like we'll go somewhere else. And what surprised me because it seemed like they wanted to get rid of them. Like he was gonna have like a follower or something, you know, that really just sort of, like separates him from the rest of the population. Right? And she just wasn't and she was like, well, we're just going to go somewhere else. I'm like, Oh, God, let's not jump to conclusions. Let's not get carried away which surprised me because I'm like, don't you just kind of want rid of him anyway, right so there's a great example of tension and the next scene and that's Amelia arguing with Auntie Claire about simultaneous birthdays. They're at this playground this park I don't know what Claire's daughter's name is but they share birthdays and the reason they share birthdays and it took me a while to put this together. Let's get it out of the way this entire film is about nothing but grief. Alright, so she can't she can't have you know and I didn't want to be like God didn't we just do the grief thing with hereditary you know right when he only had a you know yet five episodes you're gonna run into some of the same stuff. But yeah. So she basically can't have birthday parties for Samuel on our own cuz that's too difficult. So she's kind of partnered up with and declares kid to have their birthdays together. Right. So she learns in the park talking to Claire that you know, her kid wants to have I really wish I knew her name is gonna piss me off. Maybe you could look it up on the Amer she wants to have her own party she's gonna have a princess party. And so there's this great tension happening between Amelia arguing with Claire about the simultaneous birthdays. And Sam is yelling for attention. He's saying mom Look at me. And then their argument is increasing like it's getting more tense. And then there's this back and forth as he climbs higher and higher. Mom Mom looked at me like he's needing her attention until they finally like at the height of the argument, look at the swings and there is Samuels standing on the very top crossbar, like hands out. And then it just cuts to like this crazy amount of screaming on the drive home. Those drive homes with the screaming, I was just like, holy shit, you know, like, this kid goes to a place, you know, and that obviously weighs on her. And you know, the internet calls it and the struggles of being a single parent. I'm like, Fuck that. There's more going on here. You know,

Unknown Speaker  15:54  
right? Right. Right, Ruby. I think maybe the name wasn't it Ruby? No idea. I know. She says it only about 500 times, but she's a bitch

Unknown Speaker  16:03  
that I don't want to listen. I don't want to know I don't care. She says the nastiest things you could possibly imagine saying a senior before like, she gets hers.

Unknown Speaker  16:12  
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  16:14  
Same kind of tension comes up again at the birthday party. Right. So they're arguing with Claire's tempers flare and then Samuels erratic behavior escalates again. But we'll get to that later. we're introduced to this lady grace. Grace is the neighbor. She's nice.

Unknown Speaker  16:27  
Yeah, she's pretty nice.

Unknown Speaker  16:29  
I always wanted an old lady neighbor. I had a bunch of old lady neighbors growing up, and they are really awesome. Grace represents, you know, constant reminder of the caring person that Amelia was, and that she's sort of at risk of losing all together. So having grace, there's sort of this foundation is great. And I think a lot of films, you'd be like, Well, here's the nice old lady neighbor, she's gonna die in a horrific way. That doesn't happen in rain. So I just like that, sort of on that level. They do the nightly ritual again, every time it's nighttime, like shit gets real. So this is the first introduction to Baba Duke. The first book, like I said earlier was the big bad wolf kind of story. As they read this, there's this strange hissing sound. In fact, I kept pausing the movie because I'm like, is that my making this sound? Does that sound coming from the house, but it was just so subtle, and it was just kind of creepy, do a great job with the audio and stuff.

Unknown Speaker  17:23  
It's a movie. It's pretty great. And I will say something that I love here in particular, is where did it come from? It came from fucking nowhere. She says, Where did you get this? He says, it was on the shelf. So it came from nowhere,

Unknown Speaker  17:36  
does it not? It just manifests right itself? Because I mean, the bat the Bible, Duke is, you know, a metaphor for for her grief. Right? Right. Correct. It just, it's sort of just come to the surface, and it has appeared and we can no longer ignore it. So every time they mentioned her husband's name, she's like, recoils, you know, right, and that happens. So if it is, you know, a symbol for grief, and yeah, sure, it just appears you know, you can't you can't push that shit down forever. Well, they're looking if it's in a word or an ellipse, you can get rid of the Baba, dude. This was really fun. I'll wager with you. I'll make you a bet. The more you deny the stronger I get the Baba Duke is growing right under your skin. Sam goes into a fit because he's already terrified of monsters. He has this obsession already. He passes out, basically from fear and she's sort of cradling him. The next scene mom is reading the book again. But she's alone this time. And you can tell that it's captivating her until she gets to the weird blank pages in the back. And then she kind of gets freaked out and she hides the book. The next thing she does is this thing she does often where she is up all night watching TV. This is her thing. She can't sleep.

Unknown Speaker  18:40  
And all I got to say about that is welcome to the fucking club lady. Welcome to the club.

Unknown Speaker  18:45  
She can't sleep. She just she can't sleep. This is what she does. She watches TV. And it becomes like, as we sort of go further and further into the descent of madness, the role of the TV playing in the middle of night like plays like a larger role. I pause it at this point. We're only 15 minutes. All right, mom's doing a thing. She's having some private time. Fun.

Unknown Speaker  19:08  
Yes, she is. That's my favorite part of the old movie. One of my favorite things about this. Okay, so you kind of get a really, really good look at how truly lonely she is. Because as she's leaving work, she's having this moment where she's kind of noticing strangers, right? And she's had this like, interaction with this guy who she kind of likes at work. And he's like, being the cool guy. And then she goes out, she gets in her car. And she looks over and there's like two people making out right. Fast forward to getting home later. Outcomes the marital aid, as it were, and she's a joint you know, some some private time some some fancy

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
She's right on the edge man. And then that door creaks open and you know, it turns out it's just Samuel, of course, he rounds and jumps into the bed. He says he's going to protect you. She pulls the cover over the head, and then this cool sleeping time lapse until morning kind of happens again, great art direction and you can drink. Next thing you see, she's, uh, she's running a bingo game and she's just kind of being silly with it. Robbie, the guy I was talking about earlier, the weird kind of forward creepy guy takes her ship. So you know, she could take some time. I think she says Sam sick. She gets ice cream. She just kind of wanders around. She sits on a bench, checks her phone, she has 10 missed calls from Auntie Claire. Sam is freaked out the cousin with his talk of the bob Duke. She has to go get him and then leave Claire's just done sort of with Amelia. And like she's losing her support system. I feel like Claire was sort of like the last sort of, like Bastion for like for help, you know, right. And then and then later, there's some some promises of help, which, you know, takes two weeks and takes time. So like she's kind of alone in this

Unknown Speaker  21:07  
journey.

Unknown Speaker  21:09  
They're cooking, they're eating soup, and then there's glass and Amelia soup. And then Samuel is pretty keen to say, you know, this is, you know, it's Ababa, Duke. It's night again. I mean, you find scratched out faces and photos on her bed. She grabs him and runs the Samuels room. And he says that's his thing. He puts on this pack that he invented that like, does it catapult thing over his shoulder? And he pushes her he's really mad at her at this point. And he goes, did you want to die? And then he just takes off running. And then I think we do some sleeping. Sam approaches the dresser, which you just sort of, you know, the the Baba Duke is in there. And it falls over on to him. He screams she runs in and he's having he's in a fit. And he's saying over and over. Don't let it in. Don't let it in. Don't let it end. He says it three times. Most things happen three times in this film, by the way. Mom takes the book and rips pages from the book. And that's kind of that's where I'm at. At that point. Yeah. Did I miss anything? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  22:09  
Yeah, you didn't?

Unknown Speaker  22:12  
know you didn't know you're spot on. But I think this is kind of where the change starts to happen, where you would like you're talking about Samuel, Sam, little Sammy, you're talking about him. And this is really where you start to see that he doesn't have some kind of dissociation. This is real life. And he's just been dealing with it longer than she has, you know, so he's been dealing with her lack of dealing with it. And then on top of this, you throw in this kind of scary element, this is something that he's been prepping for is the showdown with the monster. And he's just trying to get there and know that he has, you know, a support system in that where she's thinking, Oh, it's a loony little kid, whatever. I love that you said that he's dealing with her lack of dealing with it, because that's really what this film is about, like our lack of dealing with grief. Right? But like this kid on has been dealing with it for profit for a long time, seven years, you know, so he said, because he's seven years old in the movie. It's his seventh birthday. And she's been carrying this thing around her neck for the entirety of his life. And so, can you imagine if at year seven, this is where they're at? You know, like, what would the the first the very formative years, those very first few, four or five years? What would that have been like, if you kind of read the subtext in this, like, the idea that she probably was even more distant than what you're seeing in this movie prior to this, so as a child, if there's any kid who ever deserved to have some kind of, you know, dissociation, it would be this kid. And that's really where the up till this point they kind of lead you to believe that they're headed was that this is right problems.

Unknown Speaker  24:03  
And that's the magic trick because you're introduced to you know, Amelia, who you think is like she doesn't just show up seven years later and is now just dealing with grief. But like you didn't you weren't thinking about that you weren't thinking about that angle. You were thinking like the easy thrills the the kid with the you know, with the ties to the demonic, you know, possession dimension bullshit, Rosemary's Baby shit, but like, really, it is her dealing with this. You just don't think about it out of the gate. You just don't you just assume it's the creepy kid with the behavior problem. Right?

Unknown Speaker  24:33  
Right. Right. So I love this particular kind of turning point in the movie where you start to see the opposite side of the mirror, you're starting to realize that no, he has legitimate reason for feeling the way that he feels. Regardless of whether you know you're using the allegorical monster under the bed as a sign for for grief, or you're just taking it at face value and there's a fucking monster under the bed. There's Very definitely something happening that this kid is in tune with and that she is totally oblivious to. Yeah. So and this is kind of the first time in the film that you're getting to see that princess party. Princess party

Unknown Speaker  25:13  
now, right, the princess Portlock. Yeah. Mom lashes out because everyone is complaining about their perfect lives and treating her like a sad case. Amelia is completely defenseless against these. These assholes, the constant judgment and the pandering of those who couldn't possibly grasp what she's going through all kinds of standing around. They're all kind of lording over her. She's the only one seated finally she sort of lets them have it. You know, where the one is complaining about like, I hardly have time to even go to the gym. She's like, really poor thing. Like what must that be like? Meanwhile, Sam and the cousin are having a scene in the treehouse the cousin says you're not even good enough to have a dad she says a bunch of really mean shit. She has some other things then Sam finally has enough and pushes her out of the tree house. She falls on her face and breaks her nose in two places. I'm

Unknown Speaker  25:58  
gonna be honest with you let me stop you. Because God damn it never did I want to punch a six year old girl as bad as I wanted to in that fucking scene. She was the most hate I'm sure this is why she got cast there like me as mean as you can. And she just came with

Unknown Speaker  26:14  
Yeah. I mean, it's not a stretch for me to be like this kid. This kid like that was intentional. Right. You know, I mean, God they wrote the nastiest, meanest little kid in the world. They have to leave obviously. and declare says something about like, I don't know, she's just had it. She's had it with Amelia. They're in the car. This is kind of fucked up cuz Samuel sees the Baba Duke, which we can't see. And he's in the backseat and he appears you know, he's acting as if it's next to him and he starts screaming get out. And then he has this seizure. They get out. She's like, Can you help me? Can you help me in the next scene there and they're in the doctor's office. It's just a million the doctor and the doctor says the brain overheats, and asks for sedatives. He gives them to her reluctantly, we go back home we do another nighttime ritual, probably with the sedatives this time.

Unknown Speaker  27:01  
I will say this a practicing in particular, the shell cracking you can kind of see she is starting to unravel. It's like this beautiful unraveling, you know, again, our direction, you know, whatever it was quite, you know, I mean, it was quite intentional, the way that they did what they did where they would add lines to her face. So as you're watching the movie, she has more wrinkles in the middle of the movie that she does at the end of the movie that's really really intentional because they want her to look haggard and like she's kind of aged, you know, beyond her years and just this little amount of time

Unknown Speaker  27:34  
well and we're supposed to believe that she's just sleep deprived and she's dealing with a challenging kid when in fact there's a lot more going on right there at home. The nighttime again, these nighttime scenes are obviously very important. This is kind of where the Babu just kind of hangs out actually doesn't kind of shows up the daytime which is pretty ballsy and I think he doesn't hear some mom goes to bed. They you know Samuel is taken his sedatives she falls down and sort of lands like floating into the bed again then wakes up like she makes it through the night they make it through the night it's the first little bit of sleep they had their three knocks at the door she opens the door there's no one at the door she walks away then there are three knocks again and this time when she opens the door there's a book at the door and it's the the read the infamous read Mr. Baba doop book. This time the book says things like the harder you try to shut me out the stronger I get. And the pop ups show her strangling the dog. They show her strangling Samuel and they show her taking a knife to her own throat she burns the book this time she gets a phone call and it is the actual sound of the Baba ducks voice gross. I think he just says

Unknown Speaker  28:51  
did not need that you're welcome.

Unknown Speaker  28:53  
This is what this what's sleeping in my house is like all die.

Unknown Speaker  28:59  
Alright, see you tomorrow. All right from from this point the film enters into this uneasy haze basically mania struggles to sleep more than before and she becomes even more frustrated with Samuels behavior. Mom is changing here in front of us physically, mentally you can see it like she is going down and to the whole she goes to the police station and she reports it but then she's overcome by our own suspicion of the police believing that you know they are you know the police officers about a duck because there's like a hat and jacket on the coat rack

Unknown Speaker  29:34  
yes tricky tricky tricky with this one. So clever. The fucking hands are at the end of the jacket sleeves for people that didn't notice Yes, exactly. But you fucking did. That's why you could put that together is because there were the fingers like the long fingers with knife hands. Yeah, which are the feather knife hand things he's got it all man. Yeah, he's got it going on. And he's but it was subtle. It was very, very slick. subtle. And again, this is kind of that perfect kind of mix of art direction there. Because at first blush, it's a jacket and hat on a hook, you know, but it's still certainly disturbing, which I think is is. That's fun. That's just fun. Fun.

Unknown Speaker  30:16  
You know, Mr. Baba Duke, you know, if you will he you know he has these he has the oversized top hats the unnatural sort of possessed features when you do see him which you see him soon. He has the knife hands, the floor length trench coats and the sort of Bud Light movement. He's got it all like he's checked all the boxes on what is like a scary figure, right?

Unknown Speaker  30:43  
I like it.

Unknown Speaker  30:44  
Baba Duke inspiration. You ready? Yeah. Can't use stop motion effects with a monster and a large amount of smoothing was completed in post production can't explained. There's been some criticism of the lo fi approach the effects and that makes me laugh because it was always intentional. I wanted the film to be all in camera. She has also said that the man and the Bieber hat from the 1927 last film, London after midnight was an inspiration for the design of the bow at Duke. Hence the name of our drink we're having this evening.

Unknown Speaker  31:12  
I fucking love it. I love it. And I'll tell you why. Because I'm an old school movie guy. I fucking love the effects that are done in camera. Digital is great. Don't get me wrong. There's things that we couldn't even conceive of 40 years ago, that we're doing now with film that digital has made possible. But the idea of a in camera effect the idea of physically doing these these things, and they still have as much punches they've got to me is utterly fucking breathtaking, because that is storytelling in its purest form. So you know, you don't need, you know, a $50 million effects budget to do something in camera that just works.

Unknown Speaker  32:05  
Yeah, she didn't have that. Anyway, she pitched this idea of the Baba took through Kickstarter and raised $30,000 most of that budget was used to cultivate the art direction of this film. So it was all very sort of low budget from from the beginning.

Unknown Speaker  32:20  
So let me ask you this did did you in your research, did you come across the original short the monster? No. Oh my god. So the original short, which was hers written in and directed? I'm going to say every bit is fuckin frightening. Of course, there's no story development. There's no like really character arc or any of that kind of thing. But it still follows the same premise. You have a mother you have a son. The son is pretending to be a knight and he's fighting and there's a doll. Okay, it's like this creepy fucking doll. Right? So not doll in the Annabel sense of the word, but, like doll is in like a crocheted with hair. Oh, so not a scary dog. not scary. No. I mean, like, it doesn't look like a dummy. You know, I don't like scary dude. They're all scary. That was the, I mean, yeah, keep them coming near Mac.

Unknown Speaker  33:17  
So this is going to be a two hour long episode of an hour and a half film next on a very special rule of scary.

Unknown Speaker  33:25  
Um, so anyway, if you get a chance, check this fucking thing out. Because, again, some of you can definitely tell where the in camera effects came from, you can definitely tell that again, this person is a film purist, that what works works and the scary is scary, you know, no effects. But just kind of great cutting the editing and it was was brilliant. You know, it goes from being like this creepy fucking almost nearly macro may kind of style doll to being this like, full grown man that at one point in time grows and as fucking great. So it's about 10 minutes long. So if you get a chance to check it out, it's probably on YouTube. It's on the YouTubes

Unknown Speaker  34:15  
let's get back to Maya. She's um, obviously spiraling. Like the own suspicion of the police being this Baba do character. And she finds all these roaches coming out of the wall. She peels back the wallpaper. And then there are roaches everywhere. So she is starting to experience now paranoia, which up to this point. We've just sort of been like, well, she's just sad. But now she has paranoia, and it's really starting to weigh on her all of these things that are happening. what's real, what's not real. A lot of these movies we talked about this, at some point in the movie are like what is real and what's not real. And this actually happens here. The social workers show up and Samuel who delivers the funniest fucking lines throughout this entire movie. They look over him and he's on the couch and he's sitting there and he says, I'm really tired from the drugs mom. Gave me fucking hilarious. Just that's the thing you say when the social workers show up. Right? Right. And then she goes to show them the hole in the wall. It's just not even really there. Yeah, so just a bunch of ripped down wallpaper. Yeah, and there's groceries everywhere and this kid is always hungry because there aren't any groceries anymore. Anyway, she's looking to the window, washing dishes and she sees the Baba duck and Grace's window, the neighbor you know, in the same series, the the lights flicker That happens a lot. There's a weird moaning sound, there's scratches at the bedroom door. It's the dog, she closes the door, there's scratches at the door again, the door opens, we are introduced to this physical form or manifestation of the Babaji could he is on the ceiling doing this sort of critter like sort of movement stop animation that we talked about. He's on the ceiling Amelia looks. She pulls the covers overhead. She looks out from underneath the covers. And then this is weird. Sometimes we do a point of view from the Baba Duke. And we enter into sort of her the sort of the blood the darkness of her mouth as it is open. So basically, anybody you know, with their own salt understands that mom is basically possessed at this point. But

Unknown Speaker  36:15  
possessed by what? Huh? Because again, if the Baba duck is a manifestation of grief, it's something she always had with her. Just throwing that shit out there. Do you think that

Unknown Speaker  36:30  
do you think people know that the Baba duck is this manifestation of grief at this point? Or do you think it's like, once the movie is over like, okay, that's what that

Unknown Speaker  36:39  
Yeah, and I think that's honestly I think that's, that's intentional. I think that this movie is a monster movie. Up until the fucking last scene, and then you're like, it's not a monster movie. You know? And I think it was designed that way. Very, very smartly made, but we're not there yet. And God Damn, yeah, you were right. I skipped way ahead. Sure.

Unknown Speaker  37:04  
Sure did. So at this point, I say to myself, what is Mom, what is she going to do? Right? There's no food for Samuel. She turns on Samuel, she's becoming this monster. Samuel is clearly afraid of her. She realizes that she's slipping into the sort of madness and she sort of breaks from it and says let's go to Wally's for ice cream, which is funny, they get there and it's just more kids screaming. But then they're in the car leaving Wally's in there, these roaches appearing in the car which appeared, you know, behind the wallpaper earlier, they crash into another car, then there's the scene of them at home. And the bathtub mom is now in the bathtub fully clothed, you really get the idea their support system is gone. There is no clear they mentioned it. There is no psychiatrist, the psychiatrist like we are the doctor was like, we'll get you to a psychiatrist in a couple weeks. Right? Who has a couple of weeks in the fucking context of like, what's happening right. And I think that's that has to be a reality that has to be a frustration like just being in the system and like needing help and needing support and and not being there not being available and not being timely. And I just thought that was a nice subtlety. And I'm glad that they addressed that. She lifts up Samuel one puts him in the tub with her he is also close that I'm like, please don't drown the kid.

Unknown Speaker  38:20  
It's very interesting because kind of the way her face reads in that particular scene is cool because she's playing with almost like an optimistic sadness. She's got this kind of whimsical half smile the whole time. Everything else about her is like, this is somebody who's completely fucking given up. I can't say enough about her. I mean, are you fucking kidding me?

Unknown Speaker  38:46  
But you also know that the Baba Duke has entered her body. We went in there together, right from the point of view of the Baba Duke. Right? So how bad is this going to get right? Who is she at this point? Right?

Unknown Speaker  38:56  
Are you do you have good mom? Or do you have Baba duck mom? Or do you have what do you what have you got? So I also love this scene in particular, because it comes in, I thought for sure that this would be the scene that would just fucking do you in because he just keeps going.

Unknown Speaker  39:10  
I'm really hungry. I know. It's hungry and like, I'm feel sick and the pills are making me sick. And I was caught. I think I wrote a couple notes. And like, a few times I made reference to the shining one in particular where she says she wants to bash his brains in, you know, against the brick wall. But another time when it reminded me like flowers in the attic a little bit like when a kid was being poisoned or kids were being poisoned or something. And, you know, we were just sort of dealing with that. So I wasn't really sure why he was always sick. I didn't really understand why, of course I understood why he's hungry. She sort of neglected some of her motherly duties, right. She clearly turn off the refrigerator turn off grocery right

Unknown Speaker  39:50  
but now I will say this also, I probably relate to her most in this scene because there's many times I want to spring up from a lying down position and just scream. Well, why don't you just eat shit? Yeah, brilliant.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai