Blank Check with Griffin & David - Prince of Darkness with Keith Phipps

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

Every filmmaker gets one “Satan in a jar in a basement” movie and this is John Carpenter’s! Keith Phipps (The Next Picture Podcast) joins us to chat “the anti-God,” fictional British scientist Bernard Quatermass, and young David Sims’ humble beginnings as an “It’s Always Sunny” recapper at the AVClub. The boys also establish that Ben loves “wet evil” and that the special effects makeup artist on PRINCE OF DARKNESS also worked with Griffin on DRAFT DAY!  Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

This is not a dream. Not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a dream. Not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interface. You are receiving this podcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9. You are receiving this podcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness.

But this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of podcast. I put podcast in there three times. I was just waiting for it. I don't know. I didn't know what you were going to do. I don't know either. I don't know either.

Frankly, I don't know either. That's okay. You did great. If you'll let me be frank, I don't know either. I don't know either. Frankly, I don't know either. That's okay. You did great. If you'll let me be frank, I don't know either. No, it was good. It was good. It was really good. I don't know.

What if they opened the cylinder and Kevin Spacey came out in the apron and he said, let me be frank. Let me be frank. You said let me be frank. I had to invoke it. No, of course. Talking about the Prince of Darkness, after all. Exactly, right?

This movie is about anti-God, so we should mention Kevin Spacey as early on as possible. He has no involvement in this movie. None at all. It's clearly a carpenter trying to weigh in on the Spacey shit 25 years early. He's warning us about the future. What happens in 1999?

American Beauty. Oh, no. Keep it, you know, keep your third eye open. We give that guy a second Oscar. All hell will break loose. Is that post-K-Pax or pre-K-Pax? Pre. Okay.

K-Pax is his post-second Oscar. It was like, all right, Kevin, you can play a sunglasses-wearing alien. K-Pax is definitely the canister starting to drip. Right. K-Pax falls in line with this analogy it's on the ceiling so what's the like the final manifestation of of the evil then at that point well let me be frank okay yeah yeah no his his most evil film the first let me be frank i think right yeah probably i don't know beyond the sea that was pretty evil i'm trying to think of yeah let no but let me be frank is the final manifestation that's that's when satan has revealed himself well yes that's right exactly there's no pussyfooting around him

he is a manifesto hello right right right right oh what a terrible start to the episode. It's my fault. Yep. Yeah. Shouldn't have let you be Frank. Hello, everybody. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies. I'm going into full NPR mode right now for some reason. But it is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, and sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they slowly seep out of a giant

canister in the basement of a church. Baby. And this is a miniseries we've been doing on the films of John Carpenter. It is called The Podcast because I was outvoted. Oh, get over it. I won't. It's enough. I will Oh, get over it. I won't. That's enough.

I will not. Get over it. It's the better option. I mean, all right, just say it. Just tell our guests what you were thinking of calling the miniseries. I wanted to call the miniseries Podscape from Newcast. Terrible. As one does. As one does.

Not do. No. No. As one does. As one does. Not do. No. No. As one does. As one does. Guest, I will introduce you in a moment, but I would love to hear your opinion first. All right.

I listened to all these episodes that have aired so far. Okay. Actually, Griffin, I'm not trying to kiss up to you, but I actually kind of like that one. Yes! Yes! Oh, my God. Bad start. We are off to the wrong foot.

I'm sorry. We're going to have to stop recording and start over. It's fine. Our guest today is an esteemed film critic, a man of impeccable taste. Nary a wrong opinion. From the last picture show and numerous outlets, Keith Phipps. Hello, it's actually the next picture show and and numerous outlets keith phipps hello it's actually the next picture show god damn it yeah like i got it sorry well see but you still like i did the bogdanovich no i do i do i just thought about the movie you guys are riffing on rather than the riff

that you guys have done on that movie title one of the coolest things that resulted from that podcast by the way is someone who worked at the theater that they, you know, as that theater, put our podcast name up on their marquee. So it was like, yeah. That is cool. Keith, it's long overdue. Welcome.

Yeah. Oh, well, thank you. I'm a fan of the show. I'm happy to contribute in any way I can to this Carpenter commentary. And Keith, you are one of sort of the origin story figures for this show

in terms of breaking David Sims. Yeah, well, Emily Vanderwerf deserves credit for discovering David Sims. But we've given her a lot of credit. I'm trying to give you a little credit here. She sent him my way and I put him on the, as we were discussing... I wonder if I can find the email.

Yeah, we were discussing pre-taping uh we gave him the shows that nobody else wanted or were sick of or had toxic fandoms and kind of through through him keith and i were just talking about it's always sunny in philadelphia was that the first one do you remember what the that was my first one okay at what point when were you starting to recap that in the run of the show we're talking 2009 I found the email Tuesday September 15th 2009

hi David Emily suggested you'd be a good freelancer to cover it so he sent me your resume and clips I agree welcome aboard yeah that's me you don't know actually how tough it was at that point to get

in because i i was i really did not want to hire very many freelancers it was really key to like bringing in some more voices but i treated that place like a like a band with a set membership for a long time so uh you were you were part of this the second the expanded lineup i was part of the right emily's sort of you know uh tv freelancer kind of cabal that came in uh as the t the tv recap online recap sort of culture began right right around then that was sort of the start for better for worse we made our contribution to that yep uh and griff to answer your question that have been, I think it's the fourth or I think it's the fifth season of It's Always Sunny. So just to give you a sense of how fucking long that show's been on.

Yes, it's 16. Is the next season going to be 16 or 15? The next season is going to be 15. It's the longest running live action sitcom ever now, right? My entire paid career begins with It's Always Sunny, and I'm like, oh, it must have begun with season one. No! Season five! And it's still going. Can I fucking

sidebar here for a second? Yeah, of course you can. I was recently in Los Angeles, City of Stars. Sure. La La Land, yes. I went to get drinks with some friends. In fact, writers on Masters of the Universe Revelation, a very non-controversial show that everyone has come about online.

Tim Sheridan, Eric Carrasco, D'Amitra, great people. We were at this bar, and then it turned out it was a trivia night. Okay. Now, David, the cornerstone of our friendship is a trivia night. That's true. That's how we really became close pals, as we've discussed. Right. It was the second time we ever hung out.

Pyle of Viruit, another vet of AV Club, invites us to trivia. We become inseparable. Right. I get competitive about trivia. I take trivia very seriously. I have very particular tastes in terms of how trivia works. This was a general trivia night run by a man who, dare I say,

was a bit of a lightweight. Oh, dear. And we have we have specific tastes, I would say. Very. Trivia masters, yes.

Very specific tastes. He asked a question. It was the final round. We were either I think we were tied for first place at this point.

And his question was, name the top 10 longest running US shows currently in primetime. Top 10, oh, currently in primetime. Currently. Okay. So we start just working on fucking network, right? Assuming those are the confines of what he's putting before us and then like five minutes into the eight minutes you have to work on this question he's like just to clarify cable counts syndication counts oh boy syndication counts right so we're like what by syndicate are you saying anything that's in syndication are you saying just because things in reruns or what are you talking about currently airing or currently producing new

episodes so everything goes fucking caution the wind but then we realize okay well now we know three of the ones that have to fit in here always sunny in philadelphia the longest running comedy show period that must count then we're like Archer that's in season 12 that must count and Kirby Enthusiasm is it's up to season 10 okay so we put those three down none of them count in his

eyes oh boy this guy sounds like he blew it and this also is a classic Griff rant of like listen to this trivia screw up yeah yeah but always logic to this trivia screw up. Yeah. Yeah. But always logic to this or what was the explanation? What were the answers?

Someone went up to him and brought up curb. I mean, it was like the fucking things you think. Right. So it was like SVU, the Simpsons, NCIS. We didn't get NCIS LA. That was stupid. We thought it hadn't run that long uh blue bloods we missed and the third one we missed was chicago fire um uh bob's burgers counted family guy counted american dad counted even though it moved to tbs but apparently fx

doesn't yeah i don't think this and none of these shows are like syndication and only one of them is cable or whatever like this, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry, good sir. You are in an industry town. People are going to take the guidelines of this question very seriously. I'm forgetting what the other ones were, but it just drove me crazy. And someone went up to him and complained about him not including corporate enthusiasm. His response was, well, it's HBO.

It's not TV. It's in the tagline there, actually. But FX is TV. Anyway, today we're talking about a movie called Prince of Darkness. It's about a jar full of Satan. It's wet Satan. It's basically wet Satan. Yeah, John Carpenter's wet Satan.

Liquid devil. This movie is so good. This movie fucking rules. I could not believe. I need to say this right off the bat. Okay. I feel like I need to watch this movie like two more times. I felt very overwhelmed by this movie.

Why were you overwhelmed by this movie? This movie is dense in a lot of ways. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. Yeah. A lot of chat. It's a lot of chat.

It's a lot of dense text. You're dealing with metaphysics and with theology. The movie is primarily made up of academics debating how this could exist and what is happening.

Kind of horny, though, academics, right? I watched it this morning. I'm very burnt out. I was paranoid all of yesterday. I had COVID. I don't think I do. But I just I started watching this and I was like, my brain is already being pushed to the limits. I'd forgotten how long it takes before anything beyond discussion really happened. Very long time. It's long build up, so much foreboding detail. And then eventually all hell breaks loose, but it does take a while. Yeah, quite literally all hell breaks loose.

Yeah, it's true. I don't dislike this movie at all. I mean, I just find all Carpenter movies at this point, and perhaps I will eat my words when we get to the late 90s, but I find them all very comforting to watch for how unnerving they are. They are just so well made, so well crafted. But I had a hard time processing the actual meat of this movie beyond the visuals, which I love. I feel like this is the for dedicated fans, Carpenter.

This is like, you know, the equivalent of the album that's not the canonical album, but it's the one people really love it's like i don't i don't want to hear highway 61 or visit it i want to hear infidels or something like that uh you know this is this is that i absolutely believe i will come to love this movie but it was a movie and i have this sometimes where i put it on and i went man i can't wait to have seen this two more times prince of. David, it was your first time watching and you loved it because you're smarter than me. I'm not smarter than you. You are. You are. You're taller and you're smarter. But I do.

It's it's embarrassing that I didn't really know what this was about. For some reason, I had a completely different conception. I knew it was sort of set in one location and I knew that it was Pleasance as a priest. Right. Pleasance was different conception i knew it was sort of set in one location and i knew that it was pleasance as a priest right pleasance was in it and that it was about you know let's call him the prince of darkness essentially if you will in some form mr

beelzebub but everything you're describing where you're like yeah it's a lot of sort of like weird chat and kind of an odd stilted atmosphere and then like you know things go absolutely buck wild and there's this sort of weird sort of like crossing of science and mysticism and i'm like yeah that's exactly like that's i just wish more movies were like this it's your shit i i want to make it clear i don't dislike any of those things i just felt like i might not be in the headspace to process this properly right now i assume we'll talk a little quarter mass on this episode, which is not something I know well, obviously,

but I know is a huge influence on this movie and maybe really want to watch those quarter mass movies. I feel like I'm going to like, uh, Mr. Dr. Quarter mass. I feel like I'm going to be the pedant here,

but it's quite a massive. Quater mass. Sorry. Dr. Our mummy episode just came out yesterday on Patreon. And I saw someone on the Reddit complaining That we misspelled Misspelled, mispronounced

Frazier Because we're saying it like Frazier Crane But he's Frazier That's one of those things where I'm like I think the boat might have gone out on that one It's like everyone calls him Brendan Frazier Like, you know And it seems like we've been getting it wrong, I guess.

I don't know. He's Canadian, right? Or he's of Canadian descent. I don't know. But yeah, I don't know. Sorry. But if there's a more popular word that looks similar to the thing,

it's hard not to autocorrect in your brain like Quatermass, where you're like, well, quarter. I see the word quarter a lot. Yeah, but I still don't see the word quarter. It's Quatermass. Ben're like, well, quarter. I see the word quarter a lot. Yeah, but I still don't see the word quarter. It's Quatermass. Ben, cut it all out. Keep it in. Keep it in. Double it. Fraser.

Brendan Fraser. I don't see the word quarter a lot. Have you seen any of the Quatermass stuff, guys? Have you seen? I've only seen the 19, I want to say 67 67 movie, which is actually. Critter Mask in the Pit?

Yeah, which is great. And it's like. That is what I have seen. I saw it many years ago. Yeah, there were three TV serials. And then there were three movies. And this is a remake of the third TV serial, if I'm not mistaken. But the whole cast.

Anyway, it's really good. And I mean, we, you know, you can't really talk about this without talking about Nigel make it the third tvc if i'm not mistaken but holding cast anyway it's really good and and i mean we you know you can't really talk about this without talking about nigel neal in general and halloween three i don't know how deep you want to get in the weeds let's get in the weeds let's get in the weeds man whatever yeah oh i mean you can call me mary louise parker because i'm willing to go deep into weeds at this point is is was most famous for doing British television. And, you know, I think his fame over there is much higher than it is. His profile is much higher there than here.

I don't know if anyone can speak to this or not on this podcast. I don't think so. I can't check all four boxes. One, two, three, four. No, I don't think anyone can unless they want to butt in right now. call four boxes one two three four no i don't think anyone can unless they want to butt in right nigel neal it's one of those things where you know um there's these britain loves to reflect on its culture right and do constant like a shut up constant like documentaries and sort of talking head type you know pop, pop culture-y things, right? And it's always a bunch of comedians being like, oh, I love Quatermass.

And like, they talk about it, right? You know, and then you cut to this guy who's this just, I mean, Nigel Neal, he's so cool. But it's like this old guy in a suit is like, yeah, you know, I worked at the BBC and I thought it was all a bit of fun. And he's just like, it's always the funniest to finally see the mind behind like the twisted sci-fi that that changed a generation in britain and it's this sort of sweet grumpy man anyway nigel neal yes revered in england yeah and his only real significant foray into hollywood was his uncredited work on halloween 3 which he you know apparently he came over to work on creature from the black lagoon for john landis and that never happened and i guess joe dante put in the direction of john carpenter for halloween 3 but if you if you see

that movie uh he took his name off of it because he didn't like the direction it went in and he and carpenter probably got quite grumpy with one another but um you know it is kind of in the line with a lot of what else he did which is is common you know combining science and um you know the supernatural um you know ultimately equator mass and the pit is about how what we think of the devil is just ancient memories of aliens that formed us or something like that and and i think probably most relevant i haven't seen a lot of this stuff but i did watch and to prepare for this i watched the stone tape maybe anyone's seen that it was like 1972 tv movie that's one of his big like bbc specials that is not quite like

along with what's it called the sex olympics yeah the year the year of the year of the sex i've not seen but the title is very intriguing i've never seen either i know it mostly because of its title it's also but it is a very famous in britain you know very highly regarded piece of tv um which is set in like a sort of orwellian future where uh the government controls mass media and blah blah you know like it sounds very cool i have not seen it i have also not seen the stone tape which is like it's kind of like a ghost story right or like a haunted house thing well it's very much like prince of darkness where it is about a um a recording company if i remember correctly uh that's trying to try out a new recording equipment in an old house because that's what you do when

you're when you're a 70s british scientist uh you go to an old an old manor uh house and what the gist of it is basically that what they think of as ghosts is actually the the house recording old events but the deeper they investigate to find out that what they're recording the evil actually predates the house itself which is another kind of equator mess in the pit thing which is also another halloween three thing where it's like this ancient lore being tied to science in some way. So, you know,

the homage, uh, is pretty direct with Prince of darkness. Um, that's cool. Now I have to watch it cause it sounds awesome. Not, not,

not the sidetrack, but what's your take on the Halloween three? Do you guys like that movie? I love Halloween three. Griffin, have you seen Halloween three? No no we keep on going over this i've only seen the oldest and the most recent halloween movies you're you're you're you're a twin poles right halloween 3 is the best reason for us to ever like do those commentaries because it's such a cool weird movie but you know halloween 3 griff like you know the man i do you know some of the sort of imagery of it. It's the one I find most enticing,

and I've been meaning to dig in and watch all of them now. Because, I mean, tis the season. Tis the season. I should mention that tis is the season. I recently did... The Atlantic likes me to do these sort of, like, weird underrated movies lists that I do occasionally. And I threw Halloween 3 on there,

and that got the most pushback. People really still, as much as it's now a beloved cult object, it's more polarizing than most. Well, I think people still feel tricked by it because it's not, you know, you show up for Halloween 3 and there's no Michael Myers in it. Oh yeah, I've realized we all have the most important detail of all, which is that Prince of Darkness is credited to a screenwriter named Martin Quatermass, which is, of course, John is credited to a screenwriter named martin quatermass which is of course john carpenter doesn't exist now obviously aside from the the cuteness of the

homage of that pen name do we know why he didn't take the credit himself on this it is bizarre is it just that he wanted to do that homage i guess i can i can tell you griff it's in our uh research um basically he decided he did not want the public to know he wrote the script i don't know why that is right that's my central question right uh and he but he did want to pay tribute to nigel neal so he thought it would be cute to you know use this pen name and then he wrote a fictional biography for martin quatermass right in the press kit right uh that said like he was a rocket scientist from the british 1950s uh and he graduated from quote neil university yeah uh you know so like he was being cute and on the film's commentary apparently he's like i heard quater mass retired i think he's an alcoholic no one wants to read

what he writes anymore like he so he's having a little fun but i don't know why he was suddenly in his head about that's right that's my question getting screenwriting credits i don't know yeah that's funny though because if you go back and read the reviews most critics didn't seem to get it and like i didn't seem to get it. And, like, I didn't know there was a press kit because I thought one who did was Michael Phillips of the L.A. Times who wrote something like he's the cousin of the British astrophysicist Bernard Quatermass. I thought it was like a little wink thing, but maybe that's what Carpenter was putting out there as a as a fact at the time. I think. Yeah, I think you I think it was. What's what's the the name of

the very real person who wrote uh logan lucky where they created a fake biography for her as well uh yes and that movie was probably just written by uh jules asner right right most people think jules as Rebecca Blunt is the fake name interesting Rebecca Blunt okay uh is the fake name. Interesting. Rebecca Blunt. Okay. Is the fake name. But yes. Jules Asner is the writer. Yeah. Prince of Darkness. Yeah. So.

Keith. Do you know. How this movie got made. Because I didn't. Until our researchers dug into it. And it's so cool. It's kind of fascinating. Yeah.

A little bit. Because it was his. Four picture deal. With Alive Films. Right. Right. Which comes off of the back. Of him doing four

big budget quote-unquote studio movies in a row so it's like thing his ultimate blank check then christine is him trying to recover from the flop of uh thing uh starman him shifting genre a little bit and then big trouble in little, which I think was like another, like we gave you this much money again, and you did something this weird again. Like he had just sort of built himself back up. And he at that point is even more disillusioned with the film industry than he ever had been before.

And it's just like, I'm fucking done. I don't want to play this game. I don't want to work within this system. I'm out. It's also funny that there's this quote from him where he's like i need to take time off i needed like a long break i uh had made too many movies i want a vacation i want to cool it he had done 11 movies in 15 years which is crazy which is crazy but his break does not last long but right but also like an 11 movie run that is

you know pretty creatively unparalleled yes you know like you know and work intense those are not easy films to make it's not like knocking off a quiet little drama no none of them are uh you know um big budget i mean like even his biggest budget movie the thing like even that you know it was a huge pain in the ass to make like he's never comfortable and yet at the same time all these interviews he's basically like look i always wanted to work in the studio system and then i did and i realized they suck now john carpenter always comes off as an ornery grump like in every interview god love him a full respect to the man he he's right to be grumpy but uh it is that funny kind of careful what you wish for thing where he's like well you know i did

everything myself and that was a pain and then i finally got the money to have other people do it but then they were asking me all these questions these jerks like they don't trust me everything's bad i just feel like every time Nick and JJ put the dossier together for us, there's a quote from John Carpenter saying like, after making this movie, I realized I didn't like this industry. It makes no sense to me. I don't want to be part of it. He just

like keeps coming to that realization over and over again. But yes, he's got this fucking quote where he's like, I need to take a vacation. I need to cool. I've been burning the candle at both ends. I've made fucking 11 movies in 15 years. Prince of Darkness comes out the year after Big Trouble. And not only that, it's the first film,

as you said, Keith, in a four-picture deal he signed to make four movies in five years. Like, he's right away re-upping and getting right back into the deep end. But the terms of his deal with Alive were, all he needed to submit was a synopsis, like a one sentence synopsis. And if they like the synopsis, he gets $3 million complete creative

control. So the budget's never going to go over three. He has to design something that can fit into $3 million. But all he has to do is give them like the one liner pitch and there he's off. This thing is crazy for $3 million. I know it's set in one location and that's how he's saving money, but in 1987, this is a tiny budget for a movie with this kind of

makeup and effects. Yeah. It's impressive. It does seem like that with this and They Live, you make whatever you want as long as you make it in the parts of Los Angeles that nobody wants to film it. I think that's a big part of it. I think it's like the name guy in this movie is Pleasance, his main dude, but not like a fucking A-list movie star, you know, a big genre guy at this point. He's got the cachet from being the through line on Halloween.

Right. He's got the guy from Simon and Simon. The lesser of the two Simons. Right. Right. The shittier Simon. Lowercase Simon. It is not a hot cast of up-and-coming stars or anything like that even.

It's a lot of workaday types. No offense to them. Yeah, I think he's just a guy who knew how to use his budget incredibly well at this point and stretch it and understand how if 75% of the movie is intellectual conversations, you could really make the remaining 25% sing in terms of visual effects. But like the idea that he just wrote this was the sense of something like the devil is buried under a Los Angeles church and graduate students come to fight him right period and they were like yeah three million dollars someone print out the check i'll i'll have it ready for you you know it's not like that log line isn't cool

i want to hear more sure i would probably want to hear more you don't think universal's not signing up on on that pitch you know well graduate I assume, is where many of an executive would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, graduate students? Come on. Yeah. We can't zazz that up? But that's right. That's the big thing is that Alive has a distribution deal

with Universal, and Universal's going to handle TV and home video. So it's like the movie has a security net, but he doesn't have to get the approval of Universal. He doesn't have to go through that bureaucracy. He's left to his own devices. So, Alive Entertainment.

This is the... Sorry, Alive Films. I'm sorry. Apology accepted. What are some other... They did Kiss of the Spider-Woman. Yeah, they did Alan Rudolph's films for a while. I think they did Betty Blue. So, they were big in's films for a while. I think they did Betty Blue.

So they were big in the 80s art house stuff for a little while there. But the deal falls apart eventually. I don't know if you want to get into this podcast or not. Right, he gets up to the second film, right? They Live is the second out of what was supposed to be four. And then, right. The other two could have been El Diablo

there's he had some film about his fucking unmade masterpiece yeah every single time it's El Diablo right and then he the other pitches were apparently something about Vietnam helicopter pilots which I don't know how you do that on a three million dollar budget no something called

let me find this here because is that victory out of time yes that's one yeah all anyone ever knows about about it apparently in a tweet in No. Something called, let me find this here. Is that Victory Out of Time? Yes. That's one, yeah. All anyone ever knows about it, apparently in a tweet in 2011, he put out something. Someone asked him about it. He says, like, he just tweeted back, different take on time travel. So it would have been a different take on time travel, apparently.

I will say, I would not be looking in the late 80s to make a time traveling vietnam helicopter movie when the twilight zone is in the recent memory like i understand why i think there was two different movies but yes i understand i understand i'm just saying that's happened in 1983 if i was a studio i would go john get this the fuck out of our office how dare you even say time travel vietnam helicopter yeah well also time travel right after back to the future. You know, it's sort of. But I do feel like he's in this science. Like he's very intrigued suddenly by, you know, breakthroughs in technology.

Right. And he he's and he likes combining that with more classic genre stuff of his youth. Like that's that's where a lot of this feels like right this was like he was getting into theoretical physics physics and then decided to reverse engineer a movie around what interested him there so it was like can i take everything i'm interested in the actual hard science of of this shit in the theory and then uh marry it to supernatural so that i can get it made. How do you just get into quantum physics?

He's John Carpenter. How does he get into Fallout 76? That is a weird thing to just be like, I'm a hobbyist of quantum physics. I mean, I don't know for sure, but it seems like maybe that was the 80s, what like Chaos Siri was to the 90s where suddenly it was turning up not just in jurassic park with some other you know other

popular bits of entertainment as well interesting look he he just wanted to do his own research ben got it he also was allowed to do per this deal a a big budget studio film within the years of this deal, which was supposed to be Escape from L.A. Oh, interesting. That gives you an idea of how long it actually took Escape from L.A. to happen. That in the mid-80s, they're like, yes. But anyway, Andre Blais is the executive producer here. He's one of the live guys.

And he's like the king of VHS, I feel like. Yes. This is right. This is... And Nick and JJ are researchers. Gave us... It's funny to think about this because now we take home video for granted or whatever.

But he's one of those guys who went to Fox in 1977 and was like, can I buy the video rights to your movies like mash the French connection? Right. You're like and they were like, what? Okay. Well, who fucking cares? And he gave them like 300 grand.

Right. And like some royalties, obviously, or whatever, and made a fortune. Right. You know, like and a few years years later fox bought him out because they were like you're a genius come run our video thing but it's just like how netflix you know discovered streaming video almost by accident where they were like yeah i guess that could be an option let's put that on our website you know we're a dvd by mail company but like what if you could just like watch it on your laptop and then like five years later that's their entire model and similarly

netflix had three years where literally everything was on their site and only their site and they got all of it for like three hundred thousand dollars combined um and it fucked up uh consumer uh expectations for ever it also looked bad at first i remember i was like i don't want combined. And it fucked up consumer expectations forever. It also looked bad at first. I remember I was like, I don't want to watch this on streaming. This looks terrible. Bad quality. It did. It looked very bad. I mean, there's just, I feel

like I brought this up before, but it is weird how little this is discussed. But the fact that Netflix is big foot in the door with streaming was they signed a deal with stars. And that meant that anything stars had the rights to Netflix had the rights to. And so all the studios that had made deals with stars did not have to renegotiate deals with Netflix. And Netflix for four years just had all every movie that stars had in rotation.

And they and they made that deal for like what less than a million dollar i mean it was like insane it was kind of like that that early bit of youtube too where everything was on youtube everything that was a video was on youtube until like yes copyright discovery disney had some first look deal with stars so every disney movie was on netflix like immediately it was bizarre bizarre bizarre bizarre it fucked everything up forever. You have to imagine Alive just crunched the numbers and was like, there is no way we put a video box with John Carpenter's name on it on the shelves, and it does not make significantly more than $3 million. Like, this movie can underperform the box office, and it's a wash.

The stats must have been there that this guy, like, works on home video, because obviously that's a lot of where Carpenter's legendary status grew. It makes sense for them to make this deal. Yeah, it's funny you should bring up VHS. I remember, I think Alex Ross Perry is right and what you're reiterating here is true that VHS is big for Carpenter.

But I also feel like there's a second wave of appreciation, especially for the second tier films, but I also feel like there's a second wave of appreciation, especially for the second tier films, when widescreen home video becomes a thing. Because I think, I know I watched this on VHS and back whenever and didn't really think that much of it, but I think it's a revelation like a lot of Carpenter films when you see it in widescreen.

I think the first time I really got, I liked Halloween, but the first time I really got Halloween was I think I watched watched on widescreen VHS back when that was briefly a thing before DVD. Especially because Carpenter's like such a widescreen guy is like always shooting with like Panavision lenses or anamorphic or things like that. You're not getting the full idea. I don't know if you saw this in the dossier, David, but the other person who sold Carpenter on making this sort of deal was Charles Band, at that time the head of Empire Pictures, who had released Reanimator and stuff like that, and broke down from the model of you keep this low enough, you make a profit on VHS, the film lives on there, All of that. You get whatever limited theatrical release. Charles Band later, I believe his next company is Full Moon Pictures, which then, of course, creates my beloved Puppet Master franchise. Charles Band, father of Puppet Masters. Oh, right. Have you watched any more Puppet Masters since? No, the last time we recorded, then I went on trip for two weeks and i didn't watch

anything i'm up to three i'm gonna get through all the puppet masters i swear i'm gonna push through the nazi ones i don't you can't push through them because i don't think they've stopped no i'm gonna keep pushing i'm gonna keep pushing i'm gonna keep pushing until they stop what was the most recent revival well there was uh littlest reich written by uh s craig zahler and then there is there's a spin-off blade movie that's also about uh nazis i think is like a boys in brazil type where did the nazis go movie right right yeah littlest reich was uh is repellent i don't i mean i don't know why uh it really is one of the most repellent movies i've seen to the point where i know i need to check out zahler's other films and people i respect love his stuff but this was my first

exposure to the mind of s craig zahler and i was i think i went out of the mind of s craig zahler i mean is that not part of his appeal that he is his films are repellent you're trying to figure out how much he is repellent i i will yes i mean keep that yes i agree he he is somewhat repellent or whatever the stories he's telling are at least um but uh i imagine the ones that he directs he did not direct the littlest reich have did not they they are you know visually enchanting enough uh to at least uh guide you through the repellents whereas i'm not i don't want to speak ill of the littittlest Reich, but my guess is it is a little more bare bones. Maybe not. Maybe it's

an absolute aesthetic masterpiece. I couldn't tell you. I mean, I think it was a bit of a budget pump-up from the previous Nazi trilogy, which of course is Axis of Evil, Axis Rising, and Axis Termination. That's the other thing. Like, you're saying how repellent Little's Reich is, Keith. The people who go

deep on Puppet Master are like, Little's Reich, finally, they lighten up here. Like, the three Nazi movies before it were apparently worse. And then, right, the Blade one is called Blade the Iron Cross. They gotta get out of this fucking Nazi cul-de-sac. Get back

to, like, the fucking puppets just being puppets uh yeah it's weird that puppet master is the one that got uh taken over by nazis like that's not like an automatic you're like well you know i enjoy this movie but i can just tell where this is going it's definitely going to turn into a nazi franchise by the 21st century it's just gonna be all nazi puppets all the time all the time yeah i mean i think the there's like the the tulan the puppeteer is getting like he gets chased by nazis in the like there's a little bit he was on the run from the nazis the nazis were the bad guys at some point the puppets become nazis anyway this is an episode on prince of

darkness yes uh but it is it's it is crucial not to talk about puppet master but right to just acknowledge the sort of the boom of vhs that's happening at the time that's why i'm bringing this up because you have things like puppet master which start around this time where it's like a franchise that goes on for 12 entries and never gets released to theaters like keith you're you're a little older than me. Like, did you, I assume you didn't see Prince of Darkness in theaters, but like, did you see it?

I don't know, you know, on home video, like more around when it came out or was it something you dug up later? I'm going to say probably like I had friends who hung out in the high school. We watched a lot of horror films. So it might've been in the mix at some point there or possibly when I was working at a video store later in life.

But I think the first time it really caught, the first time it really worked for me was when I watched it on DVD or Blu-ray or whatever form I saw it in. This one is also so dark that I feel like the worse the transfer is you're watching, the harder it is to process anything that is happening. Yeah. And it's just such a,

it's not, I think like surgery, Leonie movies are basically incomprehensible in pan and scan. I don't think there's quite that, but you're not, there's so much atmosphere that you lose if you're, if you're watching it in pan and scan. He's a guy who very consciously uses every single inch of the frame.

And yeah, the more you're, you're cropping that uh the the less you're under the spell of his mood you're gonna lose you know half the maggots from a frame if you if you crop this movie yeah you're only gonna get a few dozen bugs not he's got so many bugs um yeah uh some other context on it right so we're talking halloween three how he was carpenter was asked to make halloween four um which came out i want to say 88 which is of course the return of michael myers uh 88 yes he had no interest in going back to myers right like he would have kept doing them if they had kept them as anthology. Possibly. But yes,

he very much sold the sequel rights to someone else and was kind of like in 87, there's this interview in Starlog he gives where he's like, I am happy to be rid of Halloween. Like, I don't want, you know, if other people want to make money off of it,

fine. But like, I don't want to be involved anymore. I don't know where that fatigue is coming from but obviously it would be hard to keep topping yourself and he's um you know he he's got a lot of other ideas like it but it is too bad that halloween 3 which they just never should have called halloween 3 they should have just called it halloween colon something right like halloween colon this like calling it halloween 3 was it was an objectively stupid decision because that

makes it sound like it's the third entry in a specific story like I mean can I throw out a theory do you think it would have worked had it been Halloween two maybe I mean yes doing Halloween two doesn't help of course because right like right then you have said you do the

very literal starting right after sequel that gives people exactly what they think they want and then to go like, never mind, it's just about different things that happen on this one night. And also you have Friday the 13th doing the numbered sequels. So it's like, there's the expectation of like, the masked killer will be back.

No, I think in theory you might be right, but it's kind of unprecedented. I can't think of another film series that works that way. But maybe it would have been a huge breakthrough. Who knows? No, I mean, the only example of anything that's even close to this is like when you get the fucking like Bourne Legacy thing where you're just like, can we make it without the star? Never mind. We're going back to the star where you make sort of a sideways sequel.

But that's very much in the same continuity, in the same universe, sharing supporting characters, building on the legacy. This idea of just like, it's a fucking whole new thing. Yeah, Halloween 3 actually takes place in a universe in which Halloween is a film that people watch on television. So it's not connected at all. Right. That's wild. But I

mean, I just remember hearing that as a kid and thinking that was so cool that like, oh fuck, there's a movie that doesn't have Myers in it at all. He just took the idea of Halloween as like, that's the fucking bucket that we're putting movies into. Ben, have you seen Halloween 3? You haven't, I'm assuming. I did a long time ago and I have not revisited.

You know, I just know that you like Hacker Witches. It's sort of about hacker druids. So it's just kind of got... Sure, sure. What, you know, something that you might be intrigued by. That's also like, you know, microchips, but also druids. Hold on. That sounds extremely my shit.

Fuck. I don't want to spoil Halloween 3 too much, but I just want to tell you that the microchips are made out of Stonehenge that's all so i'm gonna actually i have to go um the other thing that carpenter was asked to do by abc was to do a horror anthology series i guess a sort of more extreme twilight zone thing and i just want to read his quote because johnny you're absolutely right when you say they wanted me to commit to one hour every week for whatever I wanted to do but it doesn't mean anything to me who wants to

produce TV it's brain damage time man it's tough you have to come up with a new story every week I don't want to work that hard what year was that like mid 87 87 because that was like one amazing stories and Alfred Hitchcock presents the anthology series were briefly a thing.

Here's another Carpenter quote that is haunting to read today. This is from Starlog Magazine. He said, The studios aren't like they used to be. The executives really don't know much about moviemaking. In the old days, the moguls loved making movies. Today, that responsibility has shifted to the agents. The studio heads don't develop their own projects anymore. Instead, they call agents and ask,

what have you got? What package can you put together? That quote's from 1987. Packages. Scary. Scary.

this is the thing. He's just sort of sniffing this stuff out and he's like, you know, I don't want to be a content provider, essentially.

Yeah. I'll package Plaisance and Wong And Parker Grad students Cylinders of evil Come on Dude Alice Cooper in this movie Who he met at Wrestlemania 3

That is how He casts Alice Cooper. They were hanging out. Alice Cooper apparently was part of a match between Jake, the snake and Jake, the snake Roberts and the honky tonk man. Of course, Carpenter was just there vibing,

having fun at WrestleMania three, enjoying a, you know, a professional wrestling entertainment package. And he got backstage passes and he hung out with Alice and he was like, oh, this guy's cool. And he just put him in this movie.

Right. Then Shep Gordon negotiated for him to write a song for it. I believe that's also how he met Roddy Piper. I think that's why Roddy Piper's in that. And they used some of Alice Cooper's onstage devices for this movie.

I think that's another way they kept the budget down. The impaling thing is apparently from his show. Right. Which I don't necessarily get because it's not like he invented impaling. But I guess the way the gag is executed was from his stage

show. And I think they're literally reusing the devices and stuff. Yeah. So, like, all good. But I just... What's the closest close is Blumhouse sort of the closest thing to this now where it's just like with a few million dollars and a sort of basic concept, you can rub some sticks together and maybe, you know, have a hit on your hands, I guess. But like correct. And I feel like Blumhouse has a similar thing where they're just like, well, if this movie

doesn't work, we'll like sell it to streaming like what low risk there's there are buyers for this right whatever but like the idea that he's just been like reading a lot of scientific American and like is interested in particle physics all of a sudden and it's like yeah I can

I can make all this work right how is this a movie I don't know the particles are turn into Satan like God is anti-God. Right. I like it. I do too. To be clear. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, and he's also with this, I feel like he's kind of going against the trend of horror in the seventies and eighties where it's like not, there's no teams, there's no like hot coeds or, you know, like,

you know, all these movies that are about like where it's like not only are they teen-ish or in their early 20s but like everyone in those movies is like a type like there's a jock and there's a skater and there's a band geek or whatever and this is just like about a bunch of grown-ups you know kind of doing some research who are very sort of nondescript in a good way. I mean, it feels like the lead student having that fucking mustache is a real statement in that way, too. Yes.

This is an adult. That's such a fucking honking stache. It's wild. It's bordering on Brimley, but the fact that it's so robust in color. Yeah. My friend Josh Rothcockopf wrote about this movie for a site called Musings.

Yeah, yeah. Great guy. And his whole take on it was basically this is the closest he came to inserting himself into a film. That character, like sort of this mustachioed, because he shot at USC where he went to school, and there's that element to it as well.

And it's not the most flattering depiction, if it is kind of autobiographical, because he's kind of a jerk, and he gets called out on being a sexist jerk, which in touch I wasn't necessarily expecting in this film, you know, a film from this era. Not specific details, but they do seem similar in temperament carpenter in this character yeah carpenter is also good about giving you know women uh letting them push back against sexist jerks which was uh cool to see right i mean that's

another you talk about him going against the trends of horror movies at this time the one sex scene happens in like the first 10 minutes and they cut over it. This is another movie also where I feel like the opening credits don't end until like minute 10. They keep getting interrupted by scenes. Right. We failed to comment on this in

the Fog episode, which is one of my favorite elements of the Fog, is that you keep on thinking the opening credits are over and then they still go on. Block in. yeah this right i love in fog they're just super imposed over the image but there'll be like a minute in between each credit so you forget they're still happening it's the slow seeping feeling with this it's the classic carpenter like white text on black so you keep on thinking they're done and there'll be another insert of opening credits. It does lend an ominous vibe, especially because so many of his themes, his own scores are so relentless.

They're just sort of one droning pattern happening over and over and over again. The fact that the credits also don't stop, it does build this dread. It's like we haven't even started yet. You know, the real movie is still coming. And there's going to be this great, really freaky motif of this dream you can't shake that's sort of like being projected into your head. And I don't know. Yes, great atmosphere,

especially since, yes, this is a slow start. But I think slow start horror is usually my preferred approach. Oh, same here. Same here. Yeah. I like a sort of like, even if you're going to take an hour to really get to the bananas stuff and then, you know, probably have a pretty wild last half hour, right?

You know, like that's cool. As long as I'm, you know, engaged like by the first hour. Yeah. Versus sort of balls to the wall, thrills, thrills, thrills. You know, that can be fun. I tend to agree with you. This movie is weirdly long by Carpenter standards in that

it's an hour 45 rather than like 90 and out. Yeah. A lot of theory to unpack with this one, I think. Yes. Yes. So we've got Victor Wong, like you said, who we'd worked with in Big Trouble in Little China.

And he just loves that this guy can like... I mean, I love the way this guy handles jargon. Me too. It's just like, he just seems very into it, I guess. Versus just that he's just downloading information. He does genuinely

feel like a professor rather than an expository device like i feel like people either get tripped up on dialogue like this or they put too much mustard on it and make it too dramatic and he's just a guy who loves talking about this shit has been talking about this shit every day for decades and he and place odds are both actors who you believe what they're saying like they can you know they have the authority and conviction and it's like you who you believe what they're saying like they can you know they have the authority and conviction and it's like you know you step back it's like this is absolute nonsense but you know while they're talking it's like sure the devil's in a jar in the basement that that's that makes sense right pleasant sells it more through the sort of like mad-eyed terror

of everything you know the sort of severity of everything. But yeah, I just Wong kind of just like lets the stuff just sort of like roll off. Is it embarrassing that the thing I know him best from is Three Ninjas? Obviously, I know he's in Big Trouble in Little China, but I didn't see him in The Last Emperor. But I didn't see those until later.

But like when I was a kid, I saw at least three Three Ninja movies. I think I fell off with You didn't see High Noon and Mega Mountain I never saw High Noon and Mega Mountain That's the one with Hulk Hogan Yeah Knuckle Up is the third one Knuckle Up is the third one

Mega Mountain is the fourth There's four It's a tetralogy I guess I didn't realize that he started so Later in life. I guess, isn't Dim Sum basically his first film of any note? Yes. Yeah, he was like sort of a local theater guy

and doesn't, right, does not make it all the way to movie work. I think he mostly did like San Francisco theater until Dim Sum, which is right. That's 85. Right. And Wayne Wang was a San Francisco guy. It makes sense that he would have found him there. But yeah, he's born in 27.

Yeah. Right. So he's almost 60 by the time he breaks out. And yet, look, Jesus, like hit the ground running. Dim Sum, you're the dragon same year, right? Then following year, Big Trouble in Little China, Shanghai Surprise, which is a disaster, but a high profile disaster.

Golden Child's a big hit. You're that last emperor prince of darkness uh then he does eat a bowl of tea with wang again tremors and then and then he fucking gets stuck in the three ninjas corridor i do imagine if you asked the guy he'd be like three ninjas once i got stuck there i never got out right because then you're the kindly Asian grandpa. Right, and it's like, yeah, yeah. And he's in the widely beloved film Jade as well. Yes, yes.

Mr. Wong in Jade. He is, uh... Yeah, there's also this... He died a day after September 11th. Did you read this? Yeah, it's weird. Upon learning of the events of September 11th, 2001,

Wong and his wife Rose spent the day trying to get news of Wong sons who lived in New York City they were unharmed after Rose went to sleep Wong stayed up to continue following the news he died of a heart attack at some point during the morning of September 12 2001 weird I mean he was not a young man but 74 is still too young to be

you know but literally like his heart was broken by 9-11 that sucks I really like him that and I too young to be, you know, his heart was broken by 9-11. That sucks. I really like him that and I really like him in this. This is this is I feel like one of his most sort of, you know, maybe interesting little roles. Yes. In

film. I have seen The Last Emperor, which is a great movie, but I couldn't tell you like the actors in it almost, you know what I mean? Like, of course, I've never seen it. Yeah, it's it's good. It actors in it almost you know what I mean like of course I've never seen it yeah it's it's good it is good but you know it's a visual feast I don't know Keith are you anti Last Emperor I feel like you know

you know I have not seen that since I watched it on VHS so I can't really terrible format to see it sure I liked it at the time I've got the disc somewhere I should dig it out and watch it one of these days now can I say I don't really understand Dennis Dunn's performance in this. And he, of course, is in Big Trouble.

He shares most of credits for this run of years with Wong, where he's also in Year of the Dragon, Last Emperor. I like him a lot in Big Trouble. I don't know if it's just this character is so bizarre. He's very over the top. Is that your problem? He's really broad. Yeah, in a way that feels more in line with most horror film performances of the era, but I have found very refreshing that they are absent from the Carpenter films.

Like, it sort of feels like he's giving a Friday the 13th performance. Yeah, he's near to it, I think, it sort of feels like he's giving a Friday the 13th performance. Hmm. Yeah, he's... He's an irritant, I think, for most of the film. He's the irritant, and he's the irritant in a way that I feel like Carpenter

usually has well-observed humans with somewhat recognizable behavior so that you get more invested in them. And he feels like the irritant in like a teen slasher movie where you're like when are they gonna fucking kill this guy you know right that's it's actually crazy that he doesn't die he's one of the four survivors but part of the problem is that so much of his screen time in the you know back half of the movie is where he's stuck in the closet. And he just is sort of yelling like, oh, my God, she looks even crazier. This is getting worse.

And we like I've talked about the thing I think Carpenter does so well, which is like most people faced with true horror go silent. They go into shock. They don't scream and run away, you know. go into shock they don't scream and run away you know um and this is like the one character who kind of functions like once again just sort of like a dumb slasher movie character which i love dumb slashers like i don't mind this kind of performance in that it just feels totally off from what every other actor is doing no i don't disagree with that i think that mostly the people he's cast here are sort of in line with what you're talking about with their you know getting to basically play real people yeah and they are

not straying too far outside the lines of what you know like no one is sort of trying to steal the show with some kind of you know big charactery performance but i guess because walter's kind of the wisecracker right he's like he gets to pitch it up a little bit. He's also so aggro, though. Like, I feel like he is so prickly where he's not like a fun wisecracker. I bet you can guess who my favorite

is. Dirk Blocker. I was about to say, it has to be Dirk Blocker, right? Just look and vibe alone. Yeah. My second guess was Peter Jason as Dr. Leahy, a carpenter guy. Right. This is his first pairing with him before he then becomes a stock company player for the next 10 plus years.

And, you know, Dirk Blocker, a long career, right? You know, we love him. But he's also like, this guy's a scientist. Yeah. Well, he's got... That's what I like. You know, there is that kind of scientist, right? The kind of Hawaiian shirt scientist. That's what I like, that he's not a movie scientist. He's the real

kind of scientist you meet when you're like, huh, I guess so. Blocker was a cop in Starman, right? We just saw him in that. Let me... Yes, we did. We were just talking about it. Yes, he's a cop in Starman, right? We just saw him in that. Let me... Yes, we did. We were just talking about it. Yes, he's a cop in Starman. Did he do another... Maybe not. Maybe he didn't do another

carpenter. No, I'm not seeing one. Obviously, everyone knows him from Brooklyn Nine-Nine now, I imagine. But yeah. Yeah. He's a predictable Griffin fave. You're right. Yes.

And then you have Lisa Blount, who's coming off of Officer and a Gentleman. Yeah, who's... Right. You know, a name, I guess. You know, closer to a name for this kind of project. But she's also done a bunch of TV at the time. And, you know, I guess she's been sort of bouncing around. I don't know that anyone

who says i want to go see the new lisa blount movie though is it is a uh it is a it is a fairly anonymous cast after the first couple of names it is and and you know yeah susan blanchard who is mostly sort of a soap star she'd done all my children uh she was the second mary martin on all my children i love i do love that in soaps where there's sort of like there's different actors who have their own distinct fans and like long sort of tenures on soap operas but like lisa blount got a very very meaningful like promising star of tomorrow golden globe nomination for officer new gentleman she feels like the only person who was even like arguably kind of being tipped for stardom even

if she didn't become a big star why don't they do that anymore they should do that they should bring that i know piazzadora killed it dead or whatever but they should bring it back that was the most fun award they had they should bring that that the fuck back. I mean, I guess we should just... If they have the Globes anymore, are they done? I was about to say. I guess the Globes are dead. Yeah.

I also just want to mention Jesse Lawrence Ferguson, who plays Calder in this, who, of course, we recently covered as Officer Self-Hatred in Boys in the Hood. Right. He's the angry, racist black officer.

Yeah. He's got a good death in this movie. I got to say. One of the most impactful. He's the, you know, like the watching someone kill themselves, even in a shitty movie like The Happening, which I know some people.

I was thinking the same thing. The fucking self-harm sequences in that movie are very effective. He's also got a lot of good post-death screen time. You know? Yeah. That must be so fucking annoying. Yeah.

He just is like, lie there. Don't move. Like, all that. God. It must be such a pain in the ass. So, yeah. Look. There's a quantum physicist played by Victor Wong. Just to give you a note look, there's a quantum physicist

played by Victor Wong, just to give you a note. And there's a Catholic priest played by Donald Pleasant, who we do not know the name. He's just the priest, right? He doesn't have a name. Yeah, no, his character name is Priest. Yes, correct. And he's like, yeah, you know, come check out this monastery

in LA where I guess the monks used to talk to each other through dreams. There's a mysterious cylinder. Let's see what's going on. My answer to that would be no. Absolutely not. I'll be getting myself a nice meal and going to bed

safe and warm. I'm still not entirely sure how this becomes a scientific study. And the like linguists and physicists or what they're hoping to prove what the outcome is supposed to be here but whatever I would just go with it

it's so fun you have this abrupt heart opening with what is his title Pleasance is Superior the old man who dies with the little chest and the, and his journal. Uh,

yeah, I don't know his title. Uh, whatever. He's, you know, uh, chief monk.

I don't know. Chief monk? I don't know. But that sort of starts the, the, the spiral, right?

Uh, for Pleasance. Digging into what exactly is going on here. Um, I, I just. I'm a fucking moron. The notion here is that they have been preserving this canister because they thought it was holy? I think so.

It's been there since the 15th century, which is probably as old as anything a Catholic church can be in Los Angeles. In America, yes. How it got there, I'm not sure we ever hear, though. There's the scene with Wong where he's kind of outraged at the fact

that they were not told what they were protecting and why. I am always drawn to that premise which is essentially there's this thing that's mysterious that's been there a long time we should check it out and then realizing at some point oh they were trying to you know keep it locked away like you know you know this sort of flip where it's like oh i understand we weren't supposed to find it we were supposed to never find it that's why it's hidden and and he's like angry that he was it was not explained to him that they were not given directions and understanding

of everything but wong's sort of defense is like they didn't have the technology to make sense of it they were trying to make sense in theological ways of what we can now discern with hard data, which is that God exists, but in a mirror universe. And we're in the universe where we got Satan in a canister. I think so. That, that I think that's correct. The anti-God,

right? The anti-God. I mean, anti-God is a great term. Uh, a much better term than devil. And I like devil. I like Satan.

That's fine. But anti-God, you know, I love that. I I like devil. I like Satan. That's fine. But anti-God, you know, I love the devil. I love Satan. Those are all great. But yeah, I agree.

Not too loudly. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Um, but right there, part of a monastery called the brotherhood of sleep that is based around communal dreaming.

Yeah. Pretty cool. But again, that's where I'm like, yeah, no, thank you. I'm not coming. Like, I won't. It's like, well, what's the deal with the monastery that it's in?

Apparently, like, the monks used to talk to each other in dreams. I'm like, okay, well, that sounds creepy. So I won't be investigating their cylinder under any circumstances. I love sleeping. It is my respite from the living i don't want to share nightmares with other people um and yes so right it's like if if it's the it's the sort of like

what if faith and science were two halves of one thing right like rather than disparate things so yes to christians yes maybe there's god and satan but just like you know how in science there's like matter and anti-matter what if there's you know god and anti-god right that's sort of the idea is like there is a binding force that is behind the construction of our reality uh on a cellular level but all matter has anti-matter and the anti-matter wants to destroy everything yeah that's that's a very equator mass thing too it's like what if you figured out the secret of the universe and it was awful you know we were doomed but hey at least you figured it out absolutely the ultimate truth is

essentially that you know humanity wants will be wiped out in a plague the thing in this canister is not gonna come out and be like hey I've got all the answers for you it's just gonna you know turn you into zombies or whatever turn you into zombies for some reason right we never really figured out what the game

plan is Sarah do we no I mean there's just like yeah I don't I don't know what the point of the bugs or the zombification or the the possessed homeless people gathering like is except to bring about the you know this guy the anti-god coming out of the canister right like coming out of the mirror or whatever well sure but that's like this is a big recurring

carpenter thing is he is just like fascinated by the notion of pure evil that has no motivation no explanation no clear game plan whether it's a fucking car or a dude in a shatner mask or a giant tube of goo it's just like there is fundamental evil that exists and if you let it loose it will cause chaos these these forces that cannot be reasoned with in any way and this is a movie where there's as you said griffin a lot of chat a lot of pleasance and wong especially kind of holding forth on quantum physics and matters of faith and kind of just it's a a lot of chat a lot it's like a lot well there's a once again i was i was gonna say there's one other about how they were on a bbc series where they debated each other and it kind of feels like

this is another installment of that series up to a certain point yeah yeah which all of which i like both in theory and in practice i just think perhaps i needed to have three cups of coffee before watching this three three i don't. You might be pretty jacked up by the time Satan is appearing, but yes, okay. Right, so Pleasance goes to Wong almost immediately. He senses something's wrong.

Wong recruits all of his students. It does not tell them what they're doing. Why they're going to an ancient church basement. It doesn't give them a lot of choice either. It's like, this is your extra credit aside, but it's mandatory. Please show up. No. Why they're going to an ancient church basement. It doesn't give them a lot of choice either. It's like, this is your extra credit aside, but it's mandatory. Please show up. Right. It doesn't give a lot of choice. Everyone

does it. Acknowledges the fact that they don't know what's going on. They are not that worried about it. They're more annoyed than anything else. It's like, oh, I'm going to do one of these things. Yeah. And by the way, no one's really keeping an eye on it that that i say was their biggest you know they should be noticing by the time the liquid

is pooling on the ceiling or whatever right like i feel like that is happening for a while before anyone really checks in i get pleasance just wanting to be like okay time for some answers let's get to work i'm not idly uh guarding this thing anymore. But also, when your whole life has been devoted to the idea that your monastery guards this thing, maybe make sure one person is guarding it. Right. Someone just should have eyes on it. Instead, they have computers.

Computers that are running sort of formulas on the many kind of encrypted books and stuff like that. That's great. Do that work, but get one PA to do Firewatch on the evil tube.

Ben, you liked the old computers spitting out numbers? Oh man, it fucking ruled. Come on. That shit was great. I'm not surprised. What's the I live, I live, I live, I live, I live, I live? That shit's pretty cool. That's creepy. Once I get that first dream, I'm not surprised. What's the I live, I live, I live, I live, I live, I live? That shit's pretty cool. That's creepy.

Once I get that first dream, I'm out. I know I'm being, you know, I'm repeating myself here. But, you know, it's such a thing in scary movies involving the supernatural where people love to be like, it's just a dream. You know, they love to dismiss dreams. Never dismiss dreams if you're dealing with the supernatural. Dreams are very important. Dreams are warnings.

I like this movie, but I just want to say, I think that's a slight issue with it, where I feel like Carpenter is usually very, very good at justifying why people stay or how they behave, and you don't have people succumbing to stupid behavior. But part of the idea that this is this sort of, like, faith versus science debate, you have these hard science people

who are sticking around when shit's getting really bad as opposed to being, like, driven by the need to get answers to these things because it's just like, this is some fucking assignment we don't care about. I am with you where, like, at the first sign of anything going gooey, I'm walking out of there.

I'm going to a sandwich shop. I'm getting it to go. I'm sitting in a park. I'm never going back to that block ever again. When we talked about Prometheus, say, you know, we've had these conversations now where we're like, look, there's plenty of evidence that people, you know, do kind of ignore things in the face of danger.

And there's a whole obvious sort of HIV metaphor at work in Prince of Darkness obviously like in any 80s movie where a virus is spreading or what right like it's sort of hard to ignore and so yeah it's sort of like right life is going on even though like slowly they're getting picked off in this very

grisly way this is true it also kind of establishes you can't I guess they don't they don't know that the one guy gets impaled By Alice Cooper's bicycle or whatever No The movie at least lets us know that leaving is not really an option For them Sure

If they ever try it's true Only one of them really tries The anti-god The liquid Getting squirted is very simple and very effective and very unsettling. There's an effect that costs you $10 and I am sort of squirming in my seat the second I see it. Right. Someone with a super soaker off camera, just, yeah.

I mean, the other effect that is very simple and very effective is the goo pooling on the ceiling. The kind of reverse, like, yeah, yeah. That's so cool. That's always good. Liquid is great. Shoot liquid at any speed in any direction. Yeah. That horrifying, that wet evil, Ben Hosley's new favorite subgenre.

evil, Ben Hosley's new favorite subgenre, that dummy where the green liquid is just like projectile shooting out of the eye sockets and mouth is also very effective. So to give you some idea, right. Dean Cundy obviously had worked with him on

Big Trouble in Little China. They had reunited. But he doesn't hire him here because he says he's too expensive and he was making who framed roger rabbit and basically carpenter's like he costs too much i helped price dean out of my own category is how he puts it he promotes gary kibbe who is his guy for the rest of his career pretty much hundy starts being the guy you hire if you go we want to do something really challenging that no one's ever done before and he's going to be paid handsomely to do that whereas carpenter is getting smaller in his movies right carpenter he

can't get the a team makeup guys anymore either he you know he's sort of cutting corners on that but it's good like it's good he knows he's doing yeah it looks good i think in a blind taste test i could tell i would i would might guess that kandi shot this because it has that kind of you know slick down wet uh you know a pavement kind of look to it and the way he lights the you know the night and exteriors it it's very much like a kundi kundi film gary kibbe i hope i'm saying his name right uh had been like camera operator on big troll my guess is he was kind of like ready to step up right he had worked with kundi he kind of you know understood the vibes um but yeah it's just i you know it's just this movie looks very very slick and impressive for the budget it's at and

it's a boring observation about carpenter but you know the man could stretch a dollar and at this point he could do it better pretty much than anyone else. He'd gone to the bigger budgets. He's coming back and he knows he's not really losing a step. I kind of wish he had done four of these instead of two because the two he did are good.

And then him going back to Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Look, I haven't seen it yet, but no one has come to me with, you know, I have a defense of Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Like no one has come to me with you know i have a defense of in bad marks of an invisible man like no one's i've not heard one i've not heard what lex g might be the only person who has like a strongly i'm just guessing i don't even know that for a fact it's it's rough it's a rough set i find even you know later weaker carpenter films

uh pretty easy to watch but the words of invisible man is, it's a, well, you'll get to it, but it's a, but it's, it's the one no one sticks up for, basically. It's just sensibilities that don't go together

and Carpenter very much doing it and work for higher mode, which is not his best, you know, way to be. Look, I mean,

we have a great guest for that episode and I'm looking forward to doing it, but I should also forewarn that that guest was like, I'd really like to be on a Carpenter.

And we're like, hey, if you want to be on a Carpenter that badly, how about you do Memoirs of Invisible Man? No, no, no, it also forewarn that that guest was like, I'd really like to be on a carpenter. And we're like, hey, if you want to be on a carpenter that badly, how about you do memoirs of Invisible Man? No, no, no. It didn't even go that way. He was like, I'd love to do an episode of Carpenter. Here are the five movies, I think, that I

remember well. And I was like, you fool. You said memoirs of an Invisible Man. You said four good ones, and you said, guess who isn't saying memoirs? Anyone else. Absolutely. Can I call another interesting figure who we have not mentioned yet at this point in the miniseries, I believe. But Larry Franco, who gets like the first title card in this whole movie, right? I think is a Larry Franco production.

He is a producer on this. He started as producer, escaped from New York, Starman, Big Trouble, Prince of Darkness up until They Live. He was also the first assistant director going back to Elvis, The Fog. He was married to Jill Russell, sister of

Kurt Russell. It's true. And then after this, or I'm sorry sorry They Live is his last assistant director movie and then he just becomes a fucking mega producer and he

does like Batman Begins Mars Attacks Jurassic Park 3 Hulk Anonymous White House David he even produced your own The Nutcracker and The Four Realms. Right. Yeah, he did do that. We collabed on that one.

Sleepy Hollow, Jumanji, The Rocketeer, Batman Returns. He is a consulting producer on Jungle Cruise. But just, we're bringing up Jungle Cruise again somehow. Jungle Cruise. It's not a bad track record, really. I don't like those later. No, I take that back.

White House Down is the only Roland Emmerich film I do like, but, you know, some good titles in there. It seems like he did 2012 and Anonymous as well, so he had a run with Emmerich, I guess. And obviously, yeah, he's got Jurassic Park 3 and Batman. He did Three Burtons. I don't know how these things work but yeah he I yeah it's funny he's

and he's uncredited in Apocalypse Now as a soldier clinging to helicopter so that's the second AD on that as well yeah it is funny how people sort of rise to being I want to be a producer that sounds fun you just like take a bunch of meetings and then you're a millionaire.

Do not want to be a producer. I definitely don't. It's really annoying, right? Like you have to do all this bullshit, deal with all these egotistical jerks. Yeah. Anyway,

um, uh, White House down is good. Prince of darkness is good. Prince of darkness. So, okay. To go through,

you know, to continue the plot Sure Cylinder starts dripping Susan Upwards Stripping upwards Wrong direction

Susan played by Ann Howard She's the first to go And she starts You know Killing other people off There's a mass Of homeless people Who surround the building

To stop anyone escaping Standing there like zombies I don't know why Anyone's not like Calling the cops I guess it's the middle Of the night Right Mass of homeless people who surround the building to stop anyone escaping. Standing there like zombies. I don't know why anyone's not like calling the cops. I guess it's the middle of the night, right? It's all happening in one night. And this seems like a pretty abandoned corner of Los Angeles, too. And the survivors are all getting a weird dream that is, I think, one of Carpenter's most disturbing and profound images. The way it's presented, the weird kind of VHS creepiness of it,

the figure in the doorway, the weird stilted dialogue you're hearing. It's my background. It's just the kind of creepy that really, really pushes my button. Do you know how they achieved that effect? How? He just shot a television. I think he was playing a screens became HD because you used to be able to do interesting things with the

differing picture quality in movies. People watching surveillance cameras and things like that. But yeah, I think he filmed this on video, put it on a TV, filmed the TV on film. It's cool. This is not a dream, of course. They're dreaming, but it is not a dream.

It's a message from the year 1999. It's the same way The Ring really gets me. Just that sort of notion of fairly mundane images belying utter creepiness. Well, I think a big part of it is, I mean, we're talking about... The hidden, the Hanukkah movie, you know, like that. But Keith, you were saying how this was a movie

you didn't really appreciate until you saw it in widescreen you saw it in like a good enough resolution there is something creepy and i did i do think this is a reason why horror and comedy played better on vhs for a long time right like the movies that had like huge vhs second lives tended to be in those two genres because a comedy is like broad, it's verbal, you know, you're not losing a lot in translation perhaps. And with VHS and horror, I think some of the abstraction that happened in the limitations of the format and the loss of detail lended this other worldliness to movies. You know, its ability or inability, rather, to fully showcase

fine detail and shadows and things like that. You get these weird abstracted images like this, like The Ring, where something that's creepy about it is that you can't see what's happening very clearly. I can buy that, yeah. I'll have to think about that for a while, but that makes sense.

Yeah, you know, it helps you fill in the gaps with your imagination freak yourself out even more maybe you know i can see that it's crazy to think that we watch stuff on vhs no i think it's madness to go back to it though i keep thinking of that scene and uh while we're young where they watched the howling on vhs like you don't have to do that look i mean this is is how fucking Alex does it yeah yeah I didn't know he was evangelizing so much nostalgia for the VHS era I worked at

a video store like it gives me like a Proustian tingle to handle a VHS tape but no I'm gonna watch a blu-ray no way I'm watching VHS if I don't have to someone in the reddit I think posted a picture of like their sort of stack of carpenter VHS's and you, you know, they're

all a little worn and it's those cardboard sleeves. And I like I looked upon that with great nostalgia and owning Carpenter VHS is a perfect, you know, I'm sure a great match of. But come on, I I whatever. I can't go that far to actually want to watch it in that format. I, I, I, whatever. I can't go that far to, to actually want to watch it in that format. It's, it's that thing. Like when, when the sunshine theater in New York, RIP had their every, every weekend, midnight movie, right?

Every weekend there was a Friday, Saturday, midnight movie. That was some revival thing. And it would always be a print and you would go there and it would be a grab bag as to what quality the print was in. Cause they were not dealing with like newly remastered newly struck prints and sometimes you would get something that was just like beaten to hell and it's not like that improves the movie but it does give you a certain specific vibe you know and it is the difference between going to a rep screening where the vibe is oh fuck this print has been in like someone's basement since this movie was in first run theaters 40 years ago versus like someone took time and care and effort to make this look as good

as it did when it came out. I always prefer to see the accurate representation, but sometimes there's a nice vibe given by watching something in a weird form. Yeah, I had the reverse experience exactly once we did the screening where um uh where alex winter came uh to and we watched they screened death wish three and it was a like pristine print like maybe it had been screened once when it was first released it was it was the most amazing uh experience i mean it's it's you know obviously it's a not the prettiest movie and very many you know in ways both visual and thematic

but it was strange to it was like a time machine yeah i mean anytime i i feel like i go to a fucking rep theater and a print starts and it's that good i feel like i've won the lottery but there's certain movies you would want to see in a grainy, grimy like, you know, this got played a hundred times. Like Death Wish 3. Probably Death Wish 3, for example. I mean, I watched the Fort Griff. Do you have the 4K? I assume

it's one of the Shout Factories. I can't remember. I do. Yeah, I have that. Yeah. And I want to listen to the commentary. Those packages are all very well done. Yeah, the commentary is great. I mean, it is in some ways awful because Carpenter is not, he does not want to give you a whole lot about his movies,

but it's basically Peter Jason remembering the plot of the movie better than Carpenter does. Like Carpenter's like, I don't know, something happened here. And he's like, no, what happened is they go to this room and look at this book. And then, you know, it's fun. The man made a lot of movies okay you can't keep it all straight and this is the one i guess that never got revisited no one ever tried to remake it no one turned it into a video game no i'm sure that there are horror conventions to celebrate but you know what i mean like this is not the one with this long a tail so he probably does not think about it as much yeah i i wonder where this sort of sits in his personal rankings especially just because i feel like increasingly uh since we've started this mini series i've been

hearing people say like you haven't watched that yet that's like secretly the best one or that's like sure the masterpiece that no one talks about like I feel like it's being reclaimed and put towards the top of the pile for him well when Vulture did a ranking in John Carpenter films written by oh who did that oh yeah me oh I believe

I put it let's see I'm checking now number 12 so above Elvis but below Christine and Starman, which I think if I do it again, maybe I put it above Christine at least. I would not should above those two. I would have it below the fog,

which you have above it, you know, and escape from New York, big trouble, you know? Yeah. I would have it below pretty much everything else you have it below, but yeah,

I think I would put it over, um, Christine and Starman, which are both movies I like a lot, but I guess this is just more specific. This is more of a Carpenter film. It is more of a Carpenter film. And Christina and

Starman are really good versions of movies I can get elsewhere. I don't know where else I'm getting Prince of Darkness. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. That's well said. I like seeing Carpenter's take that that's well said i like seeing carpenter's take on a stephen king i like seeing carpenter's take on a more you know family et type you know but like yeah what the hell where did this come from like it's it's wonderful i don't

even know how you remake it in the sense that is you know it has a premise but it's not one that is you know i don't know how you reboot it or rethink it it just you kind of have to do satan is a jar in a basement which is uh i think you only get to do that once really yeah every filmmaker gets one satan in a jar in a basement movie satan in a jar that sounds like some weird folk song that like someone plays on a banjo absolutely Satan in a jar yeah I don't know someone will now try to remake it now that we have spoken this into existence I can only

imagine right it'll be announced five minutes from now that you know Warner Brothers is going to do a Prince of Darkness movie and a spin-off TV show on HBO Max and it'll buffer five times when you try and watch it absolutely can't wait. I could see this being an awful miniseries.

It's like 10 episodes. The jar doesn't even open for the first three. Keith. The cosmic sigh that caused me. I like the Mike Flanagan shows, right? And those are slow. The new one's good, too.

Flanagan's good. I can't wait to watch the new one. Midnight Mass, right? That those are slow. The new one's good, too. Flanagan's good. I can't wait to watch the new one. Midnight Mass, right? That's what it's called. But I did, you know, read a review today where they're like, yeah, you know, you don't really know what's going on until episode four. And I was like, I can't believe that we're allowed to get away with this, you know what I mean?

Even when it's good. I reviewed that, and the please do not spoil these details list is hilarious because I won't spoil it, but it's like the first item the please do not spoil these details list is hilarious because I won't spoil it. But it's like the first item is please do not spoil the basic premise of the show. Don't reveal the title. You know what I really like? I like when Mike Flanagan makes movies.

Well, I do too. No disrespect to TV shows, but movies are fucking cool. Yeah, movies are cool but the man has made a fair amount of movies in the last 10 years so you know you know at least he pumps them out no he i i he is one of those people i do not understand the how he's space time dynamics of play that allow him to make this much stuff, especially because his stuff is long and intricate. Long, intricate, and largely good. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Not easy. But anyway, I do need to watch it. But it's good, Keith. You like it? Yeah. Very much recommended.

I'm a Hamish Linklater fan. Yeah. It is a revelatory Hamish Linklater performance. I've always liked him, but this is... Everyone's good's everyone's good it's a good cast you know his rep players are good and and uh zach gilford from friday night lights it's a nice part for him but but link later is uh amazing in this in this uh i love him i am such a new adventures of old christine was like the best assemblage of acting talent, you know, in a sitcom almost by mistake in the 21st century. Dreyfus, Sykes, Linklater.

Who else was on that show? Clark Gregg is the other big one. Oh, obviously. Yes. Yes. Sorry. Emily Rutherford, who I think is really funny. And Trish O'Kelly, who's been around.

But like, it's really those four. It's sort of like, how did they get away with just like... They're all full-time. Anyway. Linklater is the wildest one because he plays kind of a doofus on that show. He's her dumb... Not dumb, but he's her sort of layabout brother.

And then I remember seeing him on stage a few years later and I was like, oh, that was like against type. I realize this guy more plays intellectual. Right. Yeah. Intellectual types like who wear a scarf and like kind of, you know, maybe our authority figures or something like that.

But then right. And anyway, I like Hamish Linklater. Come on the show. Hamish Linklater. He'd be good in the Prince of Darkness remake. Right. Whatever. In whatever part.

He could do the place. He could. He could play the priest yeah so okay so yeah the disease starts spreading they start killing each other i don't know what's what's there for us to talk about like i feel like it's more like specific little death set pieces at this point and like makeup jobs and things like that it becomes kind of a zombie version of salt and priest like that it becomes kind of a zombie version of salt and priesthood 13 which was itself kind of a zombie movie already right i i'm i'm i know i just have to uh pull this up okay you just saying david like i don't know there's a thing in the basement that kills people i don't know what is there to say um there was a uh post recently on the blank check subreddit that was...

Fuck, let me find this. They were writing parodies of the way you summarize movies exasperatedly. Yeah, alright. Can I read a couple of these? Because they're really good. Okay, so this was easy to remember cpl uh i don't know a kid keeps seeing scary ghosts until a psychiatrist tells them they aren't scary not a lot happens really that's david does the sixth sense here's another one guy doesn't remember his wife guy doesn't remember thing wife is dead he's got tattoos i think they're characters from the matrix and i don't know shit's all backwards and then that was a regret popular

997 zero these are really well like you could hear your voice in these the third and final one once again from easy to remember cpl i mean a guy runs a bar and his ex-girlfriend shows up he's kind of inter and i guess not because he runs off with her current guy. Some Nazis show up, too. I mean, I don't know. What do you want from me? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What is that?

Casablanca. Casablanca. I was like trying to think of shows, movies we've covered. No, the first two are in the third one. But the ending line of I don't know. What do you want from me? I do often say, what do you want from me i i do often say what do you want from me what do people want from me i guess they want an entertaining show that gets the world details up there they want the world yeah they want the world from me no i just

i can't organize the back half of this movie in my brain very well i can't because yeah it's kind of just like disconnected little set pieces which is fine well it's also it's sort of him going like boone well and just giving you fucking nightmares yeah and the right and the idea of course is that the sort of you know reality versus dream line is getting blurred anyway like where you know it's sort of hard to tell like what what is going on hey what do you want there's what do you you know what do you want i have a carpenter quote that's kind of the equivalent of what do you want from me please i'm speaking to the pittsburgh post gazette uh this is pittsburgh post gazette which which frames it in such a way as like these days uh at 40 he's a happy man

despite after walking away from the studio system which i days at 40 he's a happy man despite after walking away from the studio system which I don't carbon was never a happy man absolutely never the man is not happy it's an audience participation film it's very scary I will guarantee you one thing however it will get bad reviews it's too difficult for critics to support

something like Prince of Darkness they are loaves to praise a horror film but I always get bad reviews for my films. I've learned to live with it. He is not wrong, which is unfortunate. It is true. Yeah, he did get bad reviews. These 80s movies where he's pumping out

gold and people are like, I don't know, John. It's a little campy or it's a little derivative or it's a little cheesy. I don't know what critics wanted from genre movies like any look i think i think they didn't want them period i think this was a point in time where it just they were not allowed into the realm of respectability i think people who knew carpenter and had taste respected him but i don't think he really became a revered,

like canonical figure until the, until the aughts. No. And it's also this bizarre thing where you read these reviews and it's like, we're covering these. Most of these movies were not particularly well reviewed upon release. And then you get to something like Prince of Darkness and everyone's complaint is that it's not as good as early Carpenter movies.

Like it feels like he is being canonized as quickly as they are dismissing the movies that will then be canonized later but that's like that's what must have been very annoying for him where he's like you guys didn't like my old shit right and now you're acting like it you did because it turned

out that was you know that was very important and a huge hit and all that. And now you're like, eh, he's kind of rerunning the old shit or whatever. Jonathan Rosenbaum and Dave care gave a good reviews there. You know,

there are some good reviews you can find of it, but it does feel like largely it was dismissed. And I think partly also him going to a smaller budget was probably kind of viewed with disdain by some critics, you know, kind of like a, eh, all right. You know, he struck out in Hollywooddain by some critics, you know, kind of like, eh, alright, you know, he struck out in Hollywood, now he's making

you know, genre crap again, yeah. I think it also, a little footnote here is it came out of, not too long after a film called Black Moon Rising, which he wrote, and I think it was like kind of packaged as, I think it was an old script that got made, I don't know, I've never seen

it, but I think it kind of got packaged as John Carpenter's Black Moon Rising. And I don't think, I don't think it was a liked film. I think that was a film in the El Dorado Eyes of Laura Mars run where he was just trying to write stuff for hire. I just want to circle back to something quickly. You called out Frank Carasosa, who's the makeup head on this movie, who, you know, got promoted after all his people that he had... He'd been a crew guy, and he's getting to go to the top.

That name meant nothing to me, but then I was looking at the dossier. He now goes by Francesco X. Perez. Cool name. He was the makeup guy on Draft Day. I know him very well. He's an excellent dude. But it is fascinating because he is not primarily

like a special effects makeup guy, which I guess they called out that he was just meant to be the general makeup artist. And they were like, I don't know, can you do monsters and shit? He is like Costner's go-to guy. He has a couple of the stars he works with every time like that.

And a couple of times he's gotten called in to do like special effects he works with eastwood a lot as well he worked on almost every costume movie during like the glory run so he can gussy up a craggy star is what you're saying an eastwood or a costner or a newman well the crackiest of all yes and then he has like sprinkled in a couple ones where it's like oh he did the alien makeups on earth girls are easy you know he worked on avengers and gay or a lot of avengers actually it looks like yeah two yeah right excellent first class but those movies are so fucking big too

that like even a lot of makeup people right right because he was key makeup artist which makes me think one of the 87 cast members might have said, like, he's my guy. Like, he's a dude who primarily is a, I have my three actors I work with, I'll follow them anywhere kind of thing. But he does not strike you as someone who is a special effects makeup artist. But then every time he's been called in to do it, he fucking knocks it out of the park. The makeup in this is extraordinary. Yes, yes. time he's been called in to do it he fucking knocks it out of the park the makeup in this is extraordinary yes like and carpenter says like the guy basically gave him some sketches and for the big transformations and carpenter was like yeah you're you're you're in you're the guy

yeah it's well and he does they live too which obviously has iconic makeup and then uh yeah i don't know i think i think dances with wolves then pulls him into the like he is an a-list leading man he gets him man's man uh makeup guy but also Francesco S. Perez is fucking such a good name let's just call that out for a second I mean to be to be fair it's probably easier to do Costner than to do a they live alien it's probably something you know it possibly even pays better Keith I mean you haven't seen Costner at 5 a.m. it might more it looks like a native alien yeah um i just think it's yeah it must be i don't know i haven't like working with that like the weird sensitivity with those guys were like costner on dances with wolves versus costner on draft day absolutely extra work you have to do

and how you have to slowly introduce it probably right like you know hey i'm gonna do i'm gonna do this now right like you have to like do a new thing yeah yeah look i love hair and makeup people and i always fucking beeline for them when i'm working on anything well they got all the gossip but i also think they're they can become your like onset mother father sort of like home base sounding board right and you begin and end the day with them and whatever and like i i just i don't have any goss to spill here but we talked a lot about like his relate like he just has this very close personal relationship with costner for 30 plus years where it is like he to some degree has to function as a security blanket

for this guy you know not just in, like, tending to his emotional needs at the beginning and end of the day, but it's also just like this guy is very, you know, on guard about his self image, and I am the line of defense to preserve that and make sure he looks like Kevin Costner every moment. And then sometimes I design aliens.

Or fucking anti-God. Yeah. The servants of anti-god i guess but like when when one of the creatures is trying to i think it's it's kelly right it's susan blanchard is trying to like get him through the mirror and she's doing her little like makeup mirror right or whatever like the time i don't know what the hell is going on there no one's really explaining what's going on there i you know i guess that he can't fit through it i guess is that the problem right but like yeah a lot of the horror is fairly abstract in the sort of you know final uh act of the movie yeah

the mirror scene is awesome uh and it's done just it's it's it's done like john cocteau's or fey where it's so good the mirror is it's mercury and you Cocteau's Orphée. It's so good. The mirror is mercury, and you have to wear heavy protective material to reach through it. And Orphée is basically, you have to put on these special gloves before you go to the underworld, which is a very silly convention

that totally works in that film. And here, the imagery is just as striking here. Cocteau and Bunuel feel like the two guys he's cribbing from a lot once the goo gets loose. Did you see this additional fact that... The goo is loose. The goo is loose. The working title for this movie.

Did you see the additional fact JJ put in that there were 39,000 bugs used in this production? I want to actually, I want to give credit specifically to Nick because JJ, I remember, I just want to say, because JJ texted me being like, hey, the Prince of Darkness dossier is almost done.

Nick's just checking one thing about bugs. Wow. Okay. 6,000 stink beetles, 3,000 worms, and one Emma Stefanski salivating at this trivia fact. The bugs are unsettling. I don't like it.

Icky. Yeah. Yeah. The guy covered in bugs and then he disintegrates, essentially. I was going to say, that for me is the most upsetting image in the movie when bugs come out of a man and then the man crumbles and turns into bugs. In some ways, I think the ants on the television is one of the most disturbing images in the film as well. Because TVs aren't supposed to have ants

on them. That's just not right. No, absolutely not. You nailed it. That's how you know something is amiss. My TV never has ants crawling on it. And that's also how you know that Keith has a keen eye. Right. Most critics weren't able to put their finger on what's off-putting about that image.

Keith cracks open the notebook and he's like, ants on TV, unusual. And then underlines unusual. Wrong? Actually, it's question mark. Look up later. Yeah. Right. Check TV.

Does it have ants or no? Now I'm watching the bug guy disintegrate again a very simple effect it's really just an empty suit falling to the ground filled with bugs and then the bugs spill out of every and there's just so many bugs yeah god that moment

when the head just rolls off and bugs are spewing out of it yeah it just feels like it's like with your Halloweens, your Precinct 13s, you know, Carpenter's innovating. Like,

how can I figure out how to stretch a doll? Now he's coming back and he's like, yeah, I know what I'm doing. I know how to make like eight incredibly inventive scares

for nothing. Like, you know, he's the master of horror. The master of horror. This movie also has cool map paintings, apparently. Should we talk about the end of this movie?

Oh, sorry. The mood over the church is really cool. And, you know, it's only when you look at it, you realize it's a painting. Yeah. Yeah, the end of this movie. Okay, well, there's this big mirror. And they're trying to get anti-God out of it.

And he's got a big creepy bug hand i don't know how else to describe it right yeah uh yeah you know uh yeah it's it's kelly um uh susan blanchard mentioned i don't know she's all goopy uh she's trying to pull him out and uh and uh lisa blount does the sort of noble thing she she basically pushes everyone inside including herself it's cool I love all the mirror stuff again we don't really know what's going on but I get it

like right I sort of get the abstract it's another place in which I'd like to watch this movie a couple more times not that I think there are clean clear answers I will get from it but just to have my bearings on it a little more. Yeah. Keith, the ending. I mean,

I guess it's sort of interesting and surprising that so many people survive. Because I think, you know, Donald Pleasance, Victor Wong survive. What's his, you know, obviously the main guy, Simon and Simon survive. James DeParker. That's his name. Right. name. But we lose Blout.

We do. We do. We lose some people. There's some good deaths. There's a much higher body count. But yeah, that sort of noble sacrifice in the final twist we realized might have backfired after all. The payoff for the dream sequence is really cool.

And I love... I think it's, you know, whatever, like kind of incoherent visual madness, this film descends to, but the end, I think that having that through line of like, we're going to give you a little bit more of this dream sequence. Each time you see it is,

is a really brilliant way to keep people hooked. And it's a little different every time. Like there, there's a little subtle differences to it. It's, it's very, I want to rewatch it just for that and

you know every horror movie of the 80s has that ending of like well you thought it was over but you know right you have to have this sort of question mark ending right but this is a perfect way to do that I think this feels less cheap than a lot of those yeah then you know the sort of like oh wait the killer is still on the loose this is

this feels like it's kind of ties into the themes and the plot of the rest of the film i i do like the the quick moment where they they're watching the tom and jerry cartoon and you have like the fucking cat and the devil's suit with the horns and the trident just poking them and and he is it is carpenters kind of saying like that's pretty fucking goofy right that we thought about that now please redirect your attention to this vial of goo yeah just could have done with a pleasant death scene i mean the guy can sell a death scene you know what i mean like like just imagine him like finally going wild and you know whatever getting torn apart by zombies or transforming into a monster. That's the only thing I feel a little...

Does Carpenter ever kill Pleasence off? Pleasence is unkillable. He may not. He is kind of unkillable in The Carpenter. This is his last film with Carpenter, too, right? Yeah, it is. And, you know, he does three more Halloweens,

but he doesn't even die in the Halloweens. He dies offscreen in the Halloween six, but. Right, which is the one made after he died, right? It comes out after he dies. Okay, okay. He like wanders off at the end and then you hear him go like, ah! That is wild.

That's the Rudd one, right? Yeah, that's the Rudd one. That movie is wild to watch now because it's kind of like, if you see it as Paul Rudd giving a comedic performance, it becomes a very different film. It's very strange that Rudd is in it. It's like the same year as Clueless.

Is that the last original continuity movie? It is the last of the films that are going off of Halloween 2, yes. Right, right. Well, I mean, obviously, H2O is going off of 2,. Yes. Right. Right. Well, right. Well, I mean, obviously H2O is going off of two,

but it's ignoring. It's the last movie where Halloween four is. I don't fucking know anymore. Yeah. Every time we try to parse this, we get more confused. It's picking up, you know,

Halloween five ends with Michael Myers being freed from prison by a guy with a tattoo. And six is the one that's like, it's all part of a demonic cult let's explain and then that's never obviously revisited that is that is six six exclusive druids and that too

yeah so it does connect to Halloween three in a way right it does that's true it all comes back around and I'm sure you know David Gordon Green will wrap up his Halloween trilogy and then some other great director will swoop in and be like, I really wanted to make an homage to those middle Halloween movies with the druids and stuff. And it'll all come back. Well, they'll hate Halloween kills and Halloween ends and they'll be like, I want to make a proper sequel to David Gordon Green's Halloween, ignoring the other two David Gordon Green Halloween movies.

What if they're like at the beginning of movies now, it's just like where they're like, to explain the continuity, this movie is connected to Halloween, Rob Zombie's Halloween, David Gordon Green's Halloween, nothing else. You're like, wait,

how is it connected to all three? It just is, okay? I'm bringing it all together. Do you remember what a fucking like hurdle it was for Warner Brothers marketing to explain the Superman returns thing to people

and how now every movie is like you need to understand what is going on so it's not but this is it's sort of direct thematically it's more that and now like people in the general public talk about multiverses which is just something that comic book people came up with to explain how comic books had existed for so damn long and could like you know have a functional continuity it's not a good storytelling method it's just nonsense my daughter who is 10 who who loves comic books and loves the marvel stuff and like has a much better grasp of like you know different continuities and intellectual property and who owns the rights like i didn't understand any of that stuff at 10 i didn't have to but she she's got it it's a bummer that she

has to understand who owns the intellectual property rights though which is unfortunately very crucial yeah well and is now i mean it's fundamentally important if you want to keep track of what's on what streaming surface yeah because it's no longer about what aired where it's about who ended up retaining the rights. Can I gripe about something for one second off of this tangent? You're gonna gripe? Okay. I have seen people

who complain about the Masters of the Universe show I'm on and their complaint is, I would actually like it if it was a multiverse story.

It just bums me out that it's mainline continuity. To which I say, then it's a multiverse story. What do you mean? Who cares? Any of this stuff is whatever you want to be. You can make whatever multiverse you want

in your head, exactly. Also, that's how you should interpret everything, which is this is one group of people with their interpretation of how to do this thing and everything is going to be negated or retconned or re-established later by someone else like just think of everything as whatever it is this to have to worry about a large corporation telling you that something is canon or not at this point like it's okay make your own can canon. It's okay. Make your own canon. I know we're not the first people to say this,

obviously. If you like the thing more, if you don't think of it as being literally tied to the other thing, then that's how you should watch it. Watch it the way that you enjoy it the most. Box office game. Before we do the box office game, Keith, any other Prince of Darkness things you want to

hit? Anything we missed? I i had a list but i think i think we got through all of them uh has anyone ever seen a film with uh amanda place instead of oh no uh she's good she's a good actress but it's a straight and she it's a strange thing because she's a lovely woman who looks like donald place on sure it's it. Your brain can't quite process these two things at once. I'm seeing apparently she has a small role in Gangs of New York, Woman Accomplice. I know

that isn't she the one who liked Carpenter's Escape from New York? I think it was the other one because he had a daughter who was a musician who was part of a punk band. I think that's the other one. He had five kids. I just know right.

One of his daughters got him into trouble. He had three other ones that I'm ignoring. Yes. How dare you ignore them? Yeah, he actually had five girls. All daughters. Five kids, all daughters. Anyway.

It also looks like she currently works as a psychotherapist in London. That's cool. Good for her. She wanders around in a trench coat with a gun trying to seek out her past patients who she couldn't fix. Stand away, child! There's that one day we'll watch Halloween 2 in which Donald Pleasance murders someone really quickly without asking a lot of questions. He really gets really trigger happy in the later ones.

It's Michael Myers! Like, it's a lot of that. Anyway, box office game. This movie came out appropriately October 23rd, 1987. Came out right at scary time. Sure. And it was, you know, for, what, $3 million? It made $14 million.

Yeah. Who's mad, right? He's back and being, you know, thrifty, being able to turn a quick profit. He's not, right? He's back and being thrifty, being able to turn a quick profit. He's not lighting the world on fire, but everyone's happy. But number one at the box office, in its sixth week of release,

still number one, is it the highest grossing film of 1987? If not, it's right up there because it was a huge smash. It's the second highest grossing film because, of course, Three Men and a Baby was number one. Of course. We always have to acknowledge. This is a weird fucking year.

We always like to cite Three Men and a Baby as being the oddest number one of a box office year ever. Is this the movie that would have more conventionally been a number one and surprising that Three Men and a Baby beat it? Or is this a movie that also is surprising toally been a number one and surprising the three men and baby beat it? Or is this a movie that also is surprising to have become that much of a blockbuster? Well, it's an R-rated movie.

It's an adult thriller. You know, like, it's just surprising. Fatal Attraction? But it's Fatal Attraction. The number two highest grossing film of its year. It was a phenomenon beyond compare. Every grown-up in the world had to see Fatal Attraction. I think that's how that movie did it.

Do you know who was offered Fatal Attraction? Was John Carpenter offered? John Carpenter. That makes sense. That makes sense. I mean, he probably would have done a good job with it. I don't know. He would have done a job with it. I assume he just turned it down because whatever.

He was done with the studios at that point. Right, yeah. Fatal Attraction, number one. But also, Griffin, it's sixth week. And it's growing. You know what I mean? It's just crazy. Okay, number two is Prince of Darkness. Four and a half million dollars

as it's opening. Number three is another new movie. But look, he beat the entire budget opening weekend. Yeah, exactly. It's pure profit. That has to be a happy phone call, right? Right. That's why he makes another one. Okay. This is not a movie

I know. It's from Peter Yates, the director Peter Yates. Okay. I'm telling you that because I feel like you don't have Peter Yates' filmography on file in your brain. Sure, right.

You know, The Hot Rock, Friends of Eddie Coyle, but also like Krull, Breaking Away, you know. Right. It's a legal

thriller. Thriller, okay. It's got a major Oscar winning star, although maybe she won her Oscar this year. Yes, this is the year of her Oscar this year. Yes, this is the year of her Oscar win.

87. But not for this. And it's got this very bland title that is a title that I guess is appropriate for a legal thriller. The title ends in a T and the T is a gavel. I may know this if

Griffin doesn't know it. Fucking holy shit. It's not Jessica Lange. No, it's not Jessica Lange. I think of major stars who win their Oscar in the late 80s. I'm stumped here. Keith, what's your guess? It's Suspect starting to share,

right? Correct. The film is Suspect. I've never seen here. Keith, what's your guess? It's Suspect starting with Cher, right? Correct. The film is Suspect. I've never seen it. In 10,000 years. Cher, can you tell me the male lead? Can you tell me the male lead? Quaid? Dennis Quaid is the male lead. And Liam Neeson, a young Liam Neeson, is playing the suspect.

John Mahoney is the judge. John Mahoney is the judge. John Mahoney is the judge. Look. It sounds good. Fuck this cast. I mean, you have Joe Mantegna, Philip Bosco, Fred Milliman,

Bill Cobbs, Michael Beach. This is great. Gates is a homotopy. That's for sure. Yeah. But apparently, I don't know. People don't like it. I don't think it was a big hit. That's for sure. Yeah. But apparently, I don't know.

People don't like it. I don't think it was a big hit. And it's just funny to think that Cher made this the same year as Moonstruck. Yeah, that's wild. You don't think Cher is someone who was in a lot of movies, as much as she was a good actress. No, no. And especially like Moonstruck, they were like, fuck, I guess we finally got to give it to her. She's a movie star. But they were like, fuck, I guess we finally got to give it to her. She's a movie star. But they were like pushing against it so much.

But in 87, she did Suspect, Witches of Eastwick and Moonstruck. It's three big movies. It's kind of amazing because one thing that happened when she showed up in the trailer for Silkwood, audiences would laugh. And it would be great. I mean, that was just four years previous to this. Right, well, it's like, she does three movies... Who's laughing now, right? She does three movies in the 60s. She does nothing in the 70s.

And then it's Come Back to the Five and Dime in 82. Silkwood, 83, first Oscar nomination. She silences the critics. Mask, 85, and then 87, the three movies we cited. It's wild. then Mermaids 1990 and she pretty much does cameos

After that yeah Mermaids is Tea with Mussolini she did have tea with Mussolini She has tea with Mussolini and she has Burlesque I don't know if she drinks tea with Mussolini But that's like the player cameo Cameo Stuck on you playing herself zookeeper

She plays a fucking giraffe or something I'm sorry she's a lioness she's a lioness more appropriate for her to play a lioness her in Stallone and then of course she finally comes full circle with Mamma Mia Here We Go Again only other thing about suspect

written by Eric Roth a younger Eric Roth weird roles maybe it's good. Let's check it out. Number four at the box office is an enduring cult classic. A comedy fantasy adventure film that I think was a reasonable hit at the time

but has become a bigger beloved movie. Princess Bride? It's the Princess Bride. Which has never been one of my movies, but is obviously good. A film I find charming, and I'm still,

to this day, somewhat surprised that it has become like the thing. Oh, come on. I love that movie. I like it. I like it.

I got zero complaints. I think there's a lot of those 80s cult classics that I was a little too young for. I really like the Princess Bride, but like Stand By Me another Reiner movie Goonies right

I have no nostalgia for it it just was sort of already presented to me as a nostalgic movie Keith do you like the Princess Bride I do I was never I was I think might have been honestly might have been a little too old to fall in love with it but I do like it and I took my daughter to see it at like a you know a fathom I think might have been, I honestly might've been a little too old to fall in love with it, but I do like it. Um,

and I took my daughter to see it, uh, at like a, you know, a fathom screening or something. And, uh, uh, she liked it,

but she hated, she was younger then, but she, she was terrified of the sword fighting for some reason. Like the, the creatures didn't bother her, but, but the,

but the, uh, sword play sword fighting is, is pretty good too. It's pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I find sword fighting scary. I know I's pretty nice yeah yeah yeah yeah I find sword fighting scary I know we don't need to do that anymore you're out on sword fighting I get it I agree with your daughter why are we doing this number five at the box office on this October this

chilly October weekend is right is a film I don't know it all. Let's see. Let me look it up. It's a 1987 film, of course. Oh, no, I do know this film. Of course I know this film.

It is a body swap comedy. Oh, okay. So is it vice versa? No. Is it the George Burns one? No. We're exposing how many body swap comedies there are. Is it like Father Like Son?

It is like Father Like Son. Okay. Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron. I'm trying to remember which one it is. It might be vice versa, which is the Judge Reinhold Charlie Schlatter one. Is that right? There's one of the body swap movies from this era. Siskel and Ebert went to their graves contending was better than big they were perplexed that big was the one that

broke out and that whether it was either dudley moore or judge reinhold whoever played the adult gave a better performance let me tell you it wasn't uh like father like son because it's the wikipedia page will tell you ebert called it one of the most desperately bad comedies I've ever seen and Siskel went further and said it was a cheap marketing decision masquerading as a comedy

so Siskel did not play good cop he was he was angrier I think it was vice versa then maybe they must have loved vice versa I mean I don't know I think there's one that critics kind of went for, because it's all pretty big. And big puts them all, well, unless you're Cisco or Ebert or whatever, you put them all to shame.

But there's one that kind of got decent reviews. I couldn't tell you which one. I mean, it's also just bizarre where it's like, like Father Like Son, 87. 18 Again, 88. Vice Versa, 88. 88, right. It's all happening at once.

What's the one with the Hames in it? There's one with the Hames? Okay, well, 18 Again is the one that's Charlie Schlatter and Burns. Roger Ebert loved Vice Versa. Okay, thank you. He gave it three and a half out of four stars. And he says, like,

I know, I know, it's another body swap comedy and yet it's all so well done yeah the body language from reinhold and savage is wonderful i don't know it's not like he's saying like he has some sort of galaxy brain take on it he just seems to think it's a well-done version but part of his take was better than big reinhold better than hanks sorry i said the haames when I met the Corys. And the only thing I was thinking of is Dream a Little Dream. Sure. Although I'm not sure what the plot of it is.

I think it's a body swap thing. Dream a Little Dream with Jason Robards, Corey Feldman, and Piper Laurie. Yep, it is a body switch. I think between four characters. It's a four-way body switch. Well, that deep into the cycle, you had to up the ante, right? Yeah. Jason Robards?

What's the swapping? And then there's a Dream a Little Dream 2? There was a direct-to-video sequel featuring the Hames, the Corys, you know, from Feldman and Hame, but no one else. That has ordinary sunglasses that let someone manipulate the person wearing them. I don't know. Look, guys.

I don't fucking. Look, guys! We gotta pull out of this tailspin. It's just amazing that there were like five of these within three years. I think this is a Patreon series. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Other movies in the top ten, you've got Baby Boom, which we've discussed

the Nancy Meyers and Charles Shatner movie. Kind of nancy's breakout yeah well i guess no probably banjo ones happen i'm an idiot i'm a fucking moron go on you've got the sicilian you're not an idiot uh the michael cimino flop that's based on like a

lesser mario puso novel right that's kind of like you know italian godfather which is loosely connected to the godfather films i believe or at least the Godfather films, I believe. Or at least the book is. Well, Keith, I don't think so. I like to think of Sicilian as a multiverse story within the Godfather universe.

Right, exactly. You've got Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me, probably one of his least well-known movies, with Tom Berringer and Mimi Rogers. Can I just also call out, boiling hot take, Christopher Lambert, kind of weird casting for a Sicilian yeah Hollywood in the 80s really

had broad definitions on ethnicity on everything yeah yeah yeah you got a movie called no man's land which I've never heard of oh it's written by Dick Wolf with Charlie Sheen rookie pop movie you've got DB Sweeneyey and randy quaid guy investigating

a string of porsche thefts uh as two guys who have spent time in the in the tv review trenches were either of you aware of the third universe dick wolf currently has going of the fbi's no there are three FBI shows that are about to cross over in addition to his four Chicago shows and his Law and Order Universe. He has three fucking universes going. I've somehow seen about four episodes of

Dick Wolf television over the many years that it's been on. The three FBI's of course are FBI, FBI Most Wanted, and FBI International, which is sort of weird considering that I feel like FBI, the whole point is that they're not international. Absolutely. But I guess they have some international division. But it's just that thing where Dick Wolf is sitting in his chair and being like, I could use an extra $50 million.

And I don't know these shows, but I'm guessing they probably have actors who you'd rather see, really good actors who you'd rather see as something that's not an FBI. Love these actors. Missy Peregrine, Connie Nielsen, CeeLo Ward, fucking Jeremy Sisto, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Jesus Christ.

I mean, I'm glad they're earning. This is my thing. I got some fucking ad that was Dick Wolf saying, it's finally happening. All three FBI's are crossing over. And I was like, I didn't know there was one FBI motherfucker. And you're telling me finally all three? Just the sheer laziness, too, of CBS being like, we gave you like the extremely complex things like, you know, naval cops.

Right. But you know what? Now we're just doing the FBI. You ever heard of them? It's just called FBI. Really, my man? It's like, but you know what? Now we're just doing the FBI. You ever heard of them? It's just called FBI? Really, my man? It's called FBI. Really?

I also, I just like, the thing I read was that NBC passed on it. What is the line of thinking after Dick Wolf has created the Lawner universe and the Chicago universe, where he's like third universe, I don't know, FBI, and they're like,

Dick, we're going to pass on this one. We don't think there's any juice to it. Well, I mean, network television is doing so well right now. So well. Turner, you know, someone else had this shirt back. So well. I mean, maybe he was coming to them with like, I see three shows here. And they're like, Dick, we've got three of these fucking Chicago shows.

We don't have space. We don't have space. But I just like, if Dick Wolf came to me and was like, I don't know, here's the pitch. Cup of coffee. Cup of coffee. I'd be like, if Dick Wolf came to me and was like, I don't know, here's the pitch, a cup of coffee, cup of coffee. I'd be like, great, cup of coffee. And we'll have like cup of coffee, Louisiana on backup. They're just finally launching NCIS Hawaii. Cup of coffee, cyber division.

Yeah, I know that's not a Dick Wolf, but still. They've always got space for that. Always space. Anything else in the box office worth mentioning? Dirty Dancing. Oh, a big hit. Was this late? This is late in the run, right?

Very late in the run, but another massive, you know, word of mouth, played all year type movie. I'm forgetting the specifics and the names of the companies involved in this, but that movie was supposed to go to direct a video. There was a very cheap deal for it. Then they decided to give it a little theatrical run,

and then the people who had paid nothing for the video rights when they thought it was only going to be a video movie made like hundreds of millions of dollars and it just became one of the biggest VHS movies ever. Pretty cool. Dirty Dancing. Mm-hmm. Anyway, cool. Dirty Dancing.

Anyway, that's it. That is The Prince of Darkness. We can close the canister. They should have tried closing the canister, to be honest. They should have found the guy with the strongest wrists in the group and just said, do a reverse pickle jar on this bad boy. Keith,

thank you so much for being on the show. Long overdue. Oh, yeah, of course. Anytime. I've been meaning to ask you all episodes. You are wearing a Thing shirt right now, is that correct? I'm wearing a Thing shirt from the comic book artist Erica Henderson. Oh, very cool.

Who is best known for Squirrel Girl. It's Kurt Russell at the end of the thing. Nobody trusts anybody now. We're all very tired. I had to stop wearing this shirt for a while at the end of the thing. Nobody trusts anybody now. We're all very tired. I had to stop wearing this shirt for a while in the middle of the election because my wife said it depressed her too much. But I broke it out for this occasion. I will say

things really fucking been haunting me in the three weeks since we recorded it, where I just keep on going like, yep, that's the closest analogy to every single thing I feel on a daily basis. We're just living in a fucking Carpenter movie now. He knows. He knew.

Everyone listen to the next picture show. It's not the last picture show. It's the next one, and it's going to keep going forever and ever and ever. Can I do a quick plug, too? Please, any plug. Plug everything, Keith. Plug anything and everything.

Okay, well, I'm a freelance writer. I'm all over the place. You can find me at GQ and everything. Okay, well, I'm a freelance writer. I'm all over the place. You can find me at GQ and Vulture and TV Guys, sometimes at The Ringer. I'm on Twitter at KFips3000. It's always a pleasant surprise when a new Fips byline pops up under any tree. I'm always excited to read it.

I do my best to excite the fans. But this is actually good timing because by the time this episode airs, my longtime collaborator and friend uh scott tobias and i are launching a newsletter on substack called the reveal as the url will be the reveal.substack.com and it's kind of like our attempt to keep going with some of the stuff we used to do at the ab club and and uh the dissolve and kind of like just kind of follow our own instincts in terms of film criticism. So it'll be like reviews

and essays, historical deep dives, lists, that kind of stuff. If you like what we've done in the past, you should sign up for it. It's going to be fun. I just found out about this. I'm very excited. I will sign up. I mourn The Dissolve on a daily basis. Whenever I see another stupid fucking argument

going around based on clickbaity headlines, I'm like, I wish, I wish, I wish. It was nice, and I'm glad. We had a nice community there of people who were actually smart, and the comic section was good. And the archives remain up there. They occasionally disappear,

and I have sent out panicked emails to people at Condé Nast. At some point, I'm afraid they will disappear forever but it's there for now I both reread old dissolved pieces on a regular basis and discover old pieces I

had missed at the time it's always fucking worthwhile it was the best well we want to keep that spirit alive with the reveal hence the name a little bit so uh yeah yeah good

we should also mention your book Age of Cage is coming out early next year. Yeah. Did you guys get copies? You're supposed to get copies. We did. Okay, good.

I mean, I did. I did. Yeah. It was supposed to come out in October and then COVID production delays pushed it back. It's going to be March 29th. It is 40 years of Hollywood through the career of Nicolas Cage. So it's about Nicolas Cage movies and like big changes in Hollywood as reflected through his career. And I hope people like it. movies and like big changes in hollywood as reflected through his career and i hope it's

i hope people like it um if you like nicholas cage films i write about every single one of them to sometimes just a sentence but often a lot more so you you have watched every single one now i have except for that um christmas carol film from the early aughts but not the jim carrey one the other one that no yes yes the jimmy t murak. Murakami Christmas Carol, which Kate Winslet's in as well, has a weirdly stacked cast. Yep. Kate Winslet did a pop song for it that charted in Britain. Oh, wow. You know what? I need to stop the presses. I'm going to go back and do a whole chapter on this. But no, I watched everything else up through including all the Redbox era stuff.

So this is my fucking thing, Keith, is like 10 years ago, my friend and I tried to watch every single one for a magazine that went under before we got to publish our thing on it. And we watched, I watched at least all but five

up until 2011. Right. The Christmas Carol was one of the ones I hadn't seen. There's what's it called? The Boy in Blue. The like,

the fucking rowing drama. It is about, yep, it's about a famous Canadian rower. Right. It is not good. There's Firebirds I hadn't seen. Like is about, yep, it's about a famous Canadian rower. Right. It is not good. There's Firebirds I hadn't seen.

Firebirds is bad. There were only five. It was only five I hadn't seen out of what was like 40 at that time. So you saw, yeah, so you saw Zandali, you saw Northwest. Absolutely.

Zandali is incredible, yes. But I was, I had a near comprehensive view and the moment that ends is like the next month Seeking Justice comes out and it's like, now he's gonna do 12 movies a month and most of them go straight to fucking taxi

TV. Yep. And I watched them all kind of in a mad rush to finish the book. It's interesting though because there are some decent movies in there. This is my question. I want to ask you quickly not to cut off your stream here. Sure, sure. Of of the post 2011 Redbox run, right?

Discounting legitimate, quote unquote, legitimate films he's made in that time. What is the best and what is the worst, in your opinion? OK, well, is mom and dad too big a title for this uh i would say by a hair yeah so you know people well it's good it's actually quite good i like my dad yeah yeah it's good so the the best one um that you probably haven't seen is the trust which co-stars elijah wood yes yes i've heard good things about really stylish debut by this filmmaking team that I don't know that's done anything else.

But, you know, it's this Las Vegas heist film. It's really nasty. And Jerry Lewis plays Nicolas Cage's father for a scene, which is not like an amazing scene,

but it's just kind of cool to see that because, you know, Lewis is one of Cage's idols. And, yeah. So that's, but there's some other decent ones in there too.

The worst one is a film called Rage. Oh, yeah. So that's, but there's some other decent ones in there too. The worst one is a film called Rage. Oh, yeah. Yep. Did you see that one? I have not. I avoided that one. So you avoid that one.

It is the, you know, he does a lot of revenge movies because those are easy to make and, you know, easy to sell. But I refer to them as there's kind of like

a Mad Libs period where it's like, where is this revenge happening? Is he a cop or is he a gangster? And who's the bad guy? In this case, he's a former gangster in the budget-friendly location of Mobile, Alabama, the site of so many thrillers that you love. He doesn't really phone it in that often i know people say he phones it in but there's always like something to latch is usually something to latch on i think he

literally did not phone it in once until 2011 that's when like the financial troubles stack up and like two out of every eight movies are just sleepwalked it's rough watching his filmography just expand like yes a year by year five a time yeah yeah but i feel like that's really 2011 is when the sleepwalking happens and there's usually and like there's usually something going on in those later films and sometimes like i'm gonna make sure i get the title right there's so many of them uh but it was it was a film called no not not looking glass that's that's actually one of the better ones uh i feel called between worlds where he was obviously just giving full license

to do whatever he wants to including uh you know it's a fairly graphic love scenes for the first time in a while in nicholas cage's but interesting but there's including like at one point he's reading a book whose author is nicholas cage uh uh it doesn't necessarily hold together uh but it's a lot of fun uh that movie as fun as a movie in which uh choking plays a major role uh can be wow uh i just want to put a bow on this by saying keith uh you you questioned what the uh promising filmmakers behind the trust have done since then, the Brewer Brothers. And it seems like they have primarily done music videos for the Chainsmokers.

Sure, why not? Hey! If you have money, smoke those chains! I need to throw out also that Pig is amazing. I'm sure you've probably discussed it. Oh, Pig is incredible. Pig seems to suggest him emerging, possibly, from this dark phase. But he's had a couple, I mean, like, Mandy, he's emerging, possibly, from this dark phase.

But he's had a couple. I mean, like Mandy, he's had like every year he's had one movie where he's clearly giving a shit and working with an iconoclastic filmmaker. Right. Agreed. People like the Prisoners of the Ghost Land movie, but not universally. That one's sort of more of a tweener. Yeah, it's fun. I thought it kind of a little weary after a while.

But it's worth it. Is Willy's Wonderland worthwhile? It's worthwhile to watch Cage in it because it's a wordless performance and he really commits to it. It's a movie where it's basically a ripoff of Five Nights at Freddy's, best I can tell. Yeah, right, right. And it's a movie where they do not have a budget to make the movie they need to make. It seems to take place in two black rooms, you know, almost entirely. But he's fun at it.

He's trying a little too hard to be a cult classic right off the bat and doesn't quite get there. No take-in. And I'm very excited to rip in the book. And thank you so much for sending us copies. Enjoy. I actually, it's not, I need to, you know, I have a little extra time. So I'm going to write about Pig so that you're getting a rare. Oh,

a pig is a good button. Not final edition. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Clutters item. And, uh,

and next picture show, like you said, you guys take a new movie, you take an old movie that's thematically linked in some way, right? You pair them up. It's a lot of AV club and dissolve, right?

Yeah. It's me and Scott Tobias and Genevieve Kosky and Tasha Robinson and various guests. And we never had you guys on. Maybe we need to figure out the perfect episode and have you on.

Sure. Anytime. Happy to do it. And I gotta say, Keith, thank you for doing the show and thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media, Lane Montgomery, and the Great American Novel for our theme song, Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork, J.J. Birch, Nick Lariano

for our research, AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. Go to patreon.com slash blank check to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. Go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check

special features where we are now still doing the mummy. I believe so, yes. Still got plenty of mummy. We still got plenty of mummy left. I think we're getting ready to do the Tom Cruise mummy

up next. Is that possible? No, no, you get to the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor first and then the Tom Cruise one. Did you do the old Universal mummies? We would split that into its own thing,

because there are enough of them. That's one of the few Universal franchises that actually had multiple movies in one strict continuity. And it gets... Yeah, it does. It gets weird. It's kind of fun to watch them in order. Frankenstein and Mummy

are the two I'd really like to do. And I'm pushing very hard to do one of the, I say pushing hard, it makes it sound like David's resisting. He's not.

But it's a pet project of mine that I'd like to do one of the Universal Monster Series next year. And perhaps doing Modern Mummy as a prelude to that. Maybe, yeah,

maybe we do it at, right, at Halloween time again. I don't know. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be fun. Tune in next week for They Live, which they do. Yes, they live. They do live

and that's... The titular mode. It's going to be a good episode. It's going to be a good episode. It's going to be a good episode. We're not going to say the guesser, but it's going to be a good episode. And I did say guess... Plural. Right. Guess plural. good episode and I did say yes plural and I guess plural and yeah tune in and listen to our Patreon

and that's it we're done yeah take us away yeah that's that's it we're done and as always that's it I don't know what do you want from me