Chapo Trap House - Movie Mindset 12 - Road Trip! Horrifying Rides of Romero & Hooper

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Will & Hesse bring you Horrotober Ghoulvie Screamset, a selection of Horror film bangers for this October. We start with two all-time classics of the genre: George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974). Both films redefined the genre into heightened levels of gruesome nihilism, creating vivid reflections of charnel-house America while serving up ghouls galore for your puerile titillation. As always, the first episode of this miniseries is free for all to listen, all subsequent episodes will be for subscribers only at: www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse

Music Greetings boys and goals and welcome to Movie Mindset's horror spectacular for this month of October, or horror tober brought to you by Gool v. Screamset, which is what this program will be referred to for the remainder of this, the spookiest of all months. Where we are going to bring you five episodes of blood curdling, spine-shilling, horror, horror, and most importantly, ghouls. There will be plenty of ghouls this month. Hessa, welcome back to Movie Mindset,

and welcome to the Halloween, the spooky season. Booty you, and Booty the listeners as well, and I'm excited to dive in and talk about the things that go bump in the night, the spooky scary in the world. And just to be clear, you were saying boo to the listeners as a sort of like boo to frighten them, not boo to the listeners. Yes, cheers to them for the dumb things. I'm trying to scare them.

I'm trying to scare them. Okay. Well, to kick things off today, we have selected two horror movies for you that I regard as sort of the pinnacle of the genre in terms of what the modern horror genre is capable of. Two movies that assault not just your psyche, but in my opinion, the very concept of language, meaning, and art altogether.

But before we get into our two films today, I want to ask, what's your favorite thing about the horror genre? What is the horror genre hit for you? And what does it mean to you? It's just so spooky. I mean, I, like, I'm so, I'm so, I'm so, I'm so, I'm so scared of it. I think like the whole reason I became into films,

because my dad would show me like all like the VHS that he had for Halloween and be like this movie's more messed up than yours like dumb six-year-old brain Can probably even imagine and I was like does a baby get cut now for the chainsaw and there's a long pause and he was like It's actually much worse than that and I was like what the fuck? I can't go anywhere's than that. There's nothing worse than a baby getting cut and cut. I know. But he's coming back down. But he couldn't back down.

Well, unlike you, I had, I had parents that were very sensitive to what they call the gratuitous violence. And would not let me see the movies with, you know, that level of depravity and horror. And I would always just be sort of, I would always be smooked by the horror movies, and I'd be walking around the, like, the video store. And I would, like, test myself by walking down the horror aisle and looking at all the amazing VHS box art for, like, you know, like, like, like Peter Jackson's dead alive for, like, the woman's mouth is being opened up with the skull inside. The silence of the lamp. John Frank and Humber's prophecy, oh, this sounds the lambs one.

But to me, as I disensitize myself to violence and grotesqueery of all kinds, as I got older, to me horror movies are great because they represent the possibilities of cinema to get people to feel things. And to like, to pull off, like a perfectly executed scare, or even better to pull off a movie that really gets under your skin and frightens you after you see it,

to me is like, all that, like that's movie magic. Like it's like, how do you, how do you, how do you use like the art and techniques of film to like really pack a punch, to really hurt your audience? Or, in many cases, make them laugh, because the older I get, the less frightened I am by horror movies, and the more I find horror movies hilarious, like, as to me, pulling off a good scare

and pulling off a good joke in a movie is just about timing. And to elicit an involuntary response from me in the viewer is like whether it is an extreme fright or an extreme laugh, like I find myself laughing. Maybe it's out of nervousness. But to me, the two movies we're going to talk about today are, in my opinion, both genuinely upsetting and frightening, but also in a very sixth sense, very funny. Yeah, absolutely. So without further ado, let's let's begin Let's talk about like the two movies we've chosen and you know season one of movie mindset

We got a lot of comments that you know why are you choosing all these obscure movies that I haven't seen Well listen or you will be disciplined for that But we thought we thought you started off easy for horror, horror, trooper, goofy screams to choose two of the most well-known horror movies of all time. I'm talking, of course, about 1968's Night of Living Dead by George Romero and 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Toby Hooper. Yes. I said that both these movies, I think they make, they inform each other very well, because I think like George Romero really, he cracked open the door and walked,

so Texas changed so on Massacre could really run. And they're only separated by about six, six, seven years. That's crazy, Amy. I mean, when I realized that watching them, I was like, what the fuck? That's insane. Night of the living dead, the dead who live on living flesh. The dead whose haunted souls hunt the living. The living whose bodies are the only food for these. Ungodly creatures. Creature.

Night of the living dead. This our adventuring fear. An experience in shock. More shattering than your strangest nightmare. Night of the living dead. A night with the dead. Who cannot die. A night of total terror. Night. Of the living dead.

We'll talk about a night living dead first because it comes's talk about Night Living Dead first, because it comes, you know, first chronologically, but like, what was so fascinating to me about, like, and I've seen this movie so many times now, but what was fascinating to me watching it this time, was how much it feels of a different era, like kind of like this,

the serialized entertainments of the 1950s, while introducing like genuinely nihilistic horror and horror and creating a really other, with a really totally sparse budget and really what seems like a student film, creating a really otherworldly and unpleasant vision that really was totally groundbreaking considering the time it was made in.

Yeah, this movie is like really fucked up. And it's like crazy because when you think of like Old black and white like when you think of black and white horror movies You think of like fifties like yeah or Universal yeah, or you know fifties sci-fi movies and it's very jarring to see like a fifties movie where like Like a daughter eats her father's hand Yeah, he's her her father's hand. Eats are dying father's arm off.

And it's really, and then gets, has to get domed by a guy with a lever action rifle. It's really like kind of crazy. And it's like, didn't they invent the rating system because of this movie or is that something that is that just like apocryphal? I mean they might have I mean like it from a certain light you watch night living dead and it does seem very dated in certain contexts however if you pay close attention the level of gore that they put in this movie and not just like and the gore really only lands because of what it portrays is this purely American nightmare

of total social apocalypse and the upending of every conceivable social taboo the movie has heavy themes of incest, in addition to cannibalism. And then we will talk about, of course, the very ever-present racial dynamic that's... I play in a very interesting way in Night of Living Dead. The true horror of this movie is that white people are useless. They're not for anything.

Well, yeah, and to me, like, you know, this was like, there had been zombie movies made before Night of Living Dead, but they were like, zombie in the kind of like Caribbean voodoo context. Like I was at white time years. I walked with the zombie. And like, you know, and that context, the zombie was very much about Voodoo ritual and kind of, but still, you know, like a obvious metaphor for like the legacy of slavery in the West Indies

and Caribbean. But the Romero Night Living Dead, like this is the first modern zombie movie that establishes all of like the modern rules of like how a zombie apocalypse unfolds. And the zombie genre is just so played out now. Like, I have no interest in anything zombie anymore, but the original Romero movies, I don't think they can be judged by how much bad imitation they've spawned.

But truly groundbreaking, it is a source of horror that is like, not ever really fully explained, but it's not super natural. This is like non-gothic horror. It's a replacement of the kind of the Dracula or the mummy or these, where horror could be embodied in sort of like a vaguely foreign other figure. Whereas in this, the horror is just America eating itself alive.

And like, it's just normal looking people. I completely forgot. I've seen this movie so many times and I always forget that there's a part where they say like, oh, the zombies are actually coming back to life because of radiation from a space probe. Yeah. It's like what? Well, I mean, you can read that as like, that's an explanation that they're giving on the TV.

But like, to me, like, my reading with a movie is that it doesn't, it's not, it's not explicitly stated that that's the reason why. I think that's just like their best explanation for what could be going on. Yeah, and it's, it will talk about it, but like the world of what's going on in the TV versus what's going on in the movie is so disconnected and so like separate, it's so like crazy and I think that's like uh and like you know obviously like the radio has been used to great effects like for instance in the uh

the the thing from another world the the Howard Hawks producer version of that you know like the radio is used to great effect them that but like in this like I like that that juxtaposition between the world of the media and then this like this keyhole glimpse of the apocalypse and that's a concept that I love so much in movies or fiction is like not not not narratives about the end of the world and this is certainly about the end of the world, but ones that just like give you just a very limited individual's perspective on like the entire world ending And you never really know what's going on outside of this very limited scope. Save for the intervention of things like radio and television.

And I think that's a very modern, or postmodern technique that Romero uses to great effect in that living dead. Yeah, absolutely. And like for instance, when the movie opens, and honestly, both of these movies could be accurately summed up with a nice country drive ruined. Yes.

Yes. It is what both of these movies are about. But you know, it's a nice country drive in Western Pennsylvania to visit a graveyard. Also, both movies begin in a graveyard. Yeah. The dead are speaking to us in both of these films. And what do they have to say?

I don't know. We'll figure it out. There should be a dead. But do you notice in the beginning with Barbara and Johnny, the brother and sister, who are, they've taken a three hour drive out into the sticks to visit their father's grave. And the brother is very annoyed and he's kind of creeped.

But I sympathize with the Johnny character because I wouldn't want to spend a six hour round trip to visit a grave and that's it. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. But you notice like when they arrive in the cemetery, as they're getting out of the car, like the radio is still on in the car and they're like, we're just coming back on air now,

like reports coming in and the brother just turns off the radio before I, so it's, from the first frame of the movie, the world is already over. Like the world has already ended. They just don't know it yet. Yeah, I just, I love that feeling of, and same with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which has like the John Lerichette red monologue

about like this is a true story of a woman, it's just a woman and her invalid brother. They are dead, like everything you're about to see is true. But just the palpable sense of just doom that sort of stifles every moment in every frame of this movie. Yeah, it's bleak. It's bleak.

But what do you make of the relationship? Like, we only see a little bit of it. And it's the first, the character is you're introduced to in this movie. But what do we make of the relationship between Barbara and Johnny? Like, the most famous line from Night of Living Dead is they're coming for your Bob, huh? Coming for your Bob, huh? That's look, that's one of them now. But like, I did you read the same like sort of overtones of incest in this relationship that I do like? Absolutely. The older

brother is like slightly sadistic and like he likes he likes winding up his sister, but there's this like, I'm a kind of a virgin type almost. Yeah. Yeah. But he's definitely a weird, there's something off about him. There's something not quite right. His pocket protector and his driving gloves that he puts on after he stops driving. Yes, I remember that.

Another thing I love about Night Living Dead is just how like totally unholy what it is because like this was all, everyone involved in this movie was from Pittsburgh. Every, like the money, the director, the actor is like at every level, this just like, you know, from the look of it, like it is an astonishing achievement from like how effective and how tight everything is within the cons of the budget,

but just how sparse, but so brutally and perfectly effective, like everything in this movie is from the plot, just how simple everything is from the plot, to the gore effects, to just the brutal simplicity of the concept, of just being in an empty farmhouse that's besieged by goals. Yeah, and they never even say zombie. of just being in an empty farmhouse that's besieged by ghouls.

Yeah. And they never even say zombie. Nope. They call them ghouls. They call them ghouls and ghouls. I think we need to go back to ghoul, return. Yeah. It's a great return. It's such a fun word to say. Yeah. It's a hilarious word.

Ghouls. So like from the very beginning, like the brother is annoyed that they're going to pay respects to their dead father. There's these like strange intimations of intensity and sadism in their relationship. But I think the important thing to me is that like beginning in the graveyard and then they're kind of like the brother and sister to mostly the brother is like kind of disrespect for the dead and you know He like when she goes to pray. He's like he's like come on Barbara like you know church was yesterday or something like that Well, he's like yeah, yeah, outside's for walking not for praying

But you know like I said this and in a movie that is about you know the dead rising Rising from their graves to cannibalize the living, there are these minor rehearsals of like, like I said, the upending of social norms be it like, you know, like the disrespect of the children for a dead parent and then like the weird sexual overtones in the relationship between Barbara and Johnny, there are these kind of rehearsals of like solid facts are like what we expect from our culture, like just these kind of rehearsals of like solid facts or like what we expect from our culture, like just being kind of at first subtly and then violently overthrown. Yeah.

And like Barbara is truly even in the first scene before Johnny gets like killed in front of her, they like she is at like fully acting like someone with PTSD. Oh my God, yeah. Then like it goes into overdrive when she gets into the house and it's literally, it becomes Ben and like, well, we'll talk about it when we get to the house, but it's an interesting dynamic of the group of survivors. Well, I mean, it's like an interesting subversion

of traditional kind of like narrative architecture and that like Barbara is introduced and like something, you know, traumatic happens to her when like her and her brother are assaulted by the first of many ghouls and she sees her brother. But basically she runs away from her brother like and doesn't even really know what happens to him but she, she basically leaves him

and then she is in a, she is in a catatonic state for the rest of the movie. Yeah, literally. She never recovers from the horror at the very beginning of the movie until she is saved by Ben played by Dwayne Jones. But before we get into the house and our handsome charismatic hero in the film,

I do wanna talk about the use of sound and score in this movie. I find very interesting, both because to me, what makes a movie frightening is 30% what you're seeing and probably 70% to 80% what you're hearing. Yeah. And like, you know, if you've ever, if you're ever frightened watching a movie,

just put it on mute and shock yourself at how not frightening it becomes. Yeah. And I think the interesting thing about this movie is like I said, this mix of a soundtrack, like an original score that is literally from a different era and a different movie. I just have a little note here that says,

the filmmakers couldn't afford original music so the distinctive score was created from a stock music library. You can also hear some of the same tracks in other schlocky sci-fi films of the 50s, including the hideous sun demon and teenagers from outer space. It's also in SpongeBob. They use it in SpongeBob.

Yeah, but it's a music of a different era of like teleports. Like the ghoul staggers towards Barbara and you're like, dun dun dun dun. different era of like teleports like the the the the ghoul staggers towards Barbara and you're like Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, but at the same time Romero uses these like really violent and jarring sound effects and then cuts them out entirely. Like when they're outside there's this horrific buzzing noise of like cicadas or something and then like when in the initial ghoul attack they're these like almost kind of underwater. And like this seems where we see the ghouls chowing down on entrails. There's this almost like bubbling underwater noise. So it's this mix of like old-fashioned original score and these really kind of jarring, frightening sort of very modern industrial kind of sound

effects. It's like really interesting. There's also like, when later in the movie, like when the mother, I forgot her name, gets killed by her daughter, the scream that she lets out, there's this insane echo effect on it. And it's just like, I mean, you can see that also mirrored in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was something that happens toward the end of that movie,

but I'm jumping around too much, I guess, but. But no, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre seems depraved in otherworldly from the first frame of the movie. And you never have any escape from the stultifying atmosphere of just madness and depravity. Whereas because half of Night Living Dead seems in another era, it's like

it's sometimes almost more disturbing when it crosses over into being something totally different than a schlocky genre horror feature. Yeah, exactly. Barbara and Johnny are assaulted in the cemetery. Barbara manages to get away and runs into the abandoned country home, which will basically feature for the rest of the film. He finds a corpse upstairs and is like freaked out and runs outside into the headlights of a truck where she is saved by the protagonist of the film Ben,

played by, as I said, Dwayne Jones, who was also starting Gondja and Hess, which is another sort of like 70s, already horror movie. Yeah, another amazing movie. From there, it's basically like a one-man show with Ben. And like, I love how simple, like just him going around the house and like, boarding up the windows

and just like, you see how influential this was on the Resident Evil games, because there's so much like inventory management and crafting in this movie. This is where it all comes from. Literally every zombie trope, everything, just comes straight from this movie. And it's so like crazy to see it happening.

Like Barbara's sitting on the couch with her insane weave and being like, you know, just staring straight ahead with the thousand-yard stare and Ben being like, you know, just staring straight ahead with the thousand-yeard stare and then being like, hey, listen, babe, I know you're real traumatized, but we've really got to get these windows pointed up. We're going to get in here. Prior to entering the film, I think he has already figured out that the ghouls are afraid of and susceptible to fire. So like, you know, he crafts a torch out of the legs of one of a table and like a, you know, one of the some of the drapes. And also like Barbara is just his like NPC escort mission. Yeah. For the rest of the movie,

she is just a meal stone around his neck. And as we meet like more of the characters in this movie, it's just like Ben is the character. And this is like the funnest part about the zombie genre, is that like, I think it's popular because it's the easiest to imagine yourself in. Yeah. And easiest to imagine yourself in, not so, like, but like facing an opponent that is not just like, if you're imagining yourself an alien, for instance, you just be like, well, I'd be dead. Yeah, I would kill myself.

The second I'd say that, I'd like, there's no hope. There's no hope. Like I wouldn't do anything cool. Whereas because especially the Romero era zombies are sort of these like shambling, slow moving cadabras. You sort of think like, yeah, like I could do that. Like I could get by. Like I could spend the night in that house.

Maybe I couldn't take a zombie, but I could take a couple dozen ghouls. Not the 28 days later, fast moving ghouls. I could take a zombie, but I could take a couple dozen ghouls. Not the 28 days later, fast moving ghouls. I could take a ghoul. The classic old-style American ghoul probably overrate to begin with. That also is reflected on TV when someone, the one guy, the newscaster asked the police chief. He's like, you know, so if I'm surrounded by eight or nine of these, am I in trouble? And the guy's like, no, you'll be fine, you know. He's a gone shoot him in the head.

Shoot him in the head. If you don't have a gun, you's a club, then burn him. You know, he'll be all right. And like, no, but like the Ben character, I'm like, here we get into like the, the never meant, the never mentioned, but like brilliantly ever present racial dynamic of the living dead, is that the only competent person in this entire scenario is Ben, and he's the one black guy in the house full of hysterical white people. But he's immediately, and they always have to like kind of dominate and

cajole into saving their own lives. Yeah, one, like it's, and every other person in the house is a different type of useless. Like, the least useless, I guess, is like probably Tom and Judy who are trying to help, at least they're trying. But they saw, they bungled the gas mission so badly. They bungled the gas mission fail spectacularly.

The critical failure. gas mission so badly they bungled the gas mission failed spectacularly critical But no like I can't tell you like you know that this this movie meant a lot to me in like high school in college And like I can't tell you the fun I had about fantasizing about like Being in that situation and like making Molotov cocktails and my friends and trying to ward off You know a field full of goals. And we thought, would we have what it takes? But I think Ben in the living dead, maybe one of the first black heroes of a movie and any movie in American movie ever made,

I mean, that's probably an exaggeration. And Romero claims that it really was a totally blind casting and he just went with the best actor. I mean, it's probably an exaggeration. And Romero claims that it really was a totally blind casting and he just went with the best actor. I mean, it's a little hard to mistake because of just how perfectly it works, especially given the cultural climate of 1968 and the ending of the movie that this wasn't. It was crazy.

The ending is, that's in the movie. Like, the movie was disturbing and horrific for 1968, but the ending of the movie is what truly pushes this into absolute darker than black nihilism. Yes. But, I mean, just how, whether you believe or not that this all was just truly race-blind casting,

the important part is that the fact that everyone who's watching this movie even today in 2023 is aware of the like, Roverl, Pennsylvania, racial dynamic between Ben and these other characters. But that like, unlike for instance, a movie made today, which would make all of that subtext just literally textual,

where like, you know, Ben would be talking about, you know, bodies and spaces and shit like that. Yeah. The fact that it's never mentioned, but like the audience is allowed to feel it totally and feel both like for I guess for the white audience at the time feel the horror of that situation. I.e. being like having your authority displaced by like a black man who in a survival situation,

you fear would be more competent than you are. Yeah, and the way that Harry looks at him, the whole movie is crazy. And you're just waiting for him to like call in the end word or something and he just never done it's never said but it's like oh this guy's racist as hell because he keeps trying to kill Ben for like almost no reason like except that he's just I don't even know why he wants to it's just he's in complete it's him or me mode about every single person in the world, I guess. Well, yeah, I mean, eventually they discover

the five other people who have been hiding out in this house while almost half of the movie is played out with just almost like Ben is the only character as he just kind of upgrades materials in the house and the person is very strange in this movie. Because again, it's like the first movie to ever do this. So it's like, they really spend like most of the movie where it's just been like porting off windows.

But then the drama when the other characters emerge from the seller is truly there's the there's the young couple and then there's this family. Yeah, led by you know father knows worst the character name Harry But I think this is you know once again this is for Mara was kind of like you know not so subtle social commentary about like the nuclear family and sort of For lack of a better term white patriarchal authority in the 1960s. Yeah, in that like It's like whether Ben is black is one thing, but it's another thing it's like it's it's another person who like because the young the young guy basically defers the Harry's authority because he's just a guy who seems like his dad probably. Yeah, and when like and when some sort of like you know Horseshoe pattern baldness asshole is just barking orders at you just sort of like

You sort of default to like adolescent mode or something. Yeah. Whereas like the idea that like his authority and authority and hair-brained ideas would be questioned by anyone, like, you know, he's such a tyrant in his own family. But like in any kind of real situation, all that goes out the window and he like violently isn't able to handle not being in control, not having total authority over the people under his roof. And the funny thing is, is not even his house.

You're just hiding, they're just hiding out there like everyone else. But you know, but in Harry's behavior, he acts like it's his house, yeah. It's crazy. They find a radio upstairs and it's like the, first they listen to the radio and then they upgrade to watch the TV.

The life inside this farmhouse is just a series of upgrades, basically. It takes a while, Ben crafts a torch, and then he finds the repeating rifle in the closet. The, yeah. They keep trying to make plans, but all of their plans are like,

it's like Quest failed, Quest failed. They keep failing these side quests before they even begin, because they're like, oh, you know, maybe we could go to Beakman's diner, you know. And it was like, no, they already took Beakman's diner. They're just talking about like, it also seems like none of them really know the area very well because they have, they really don't have a lay of the land. Ben keeps asking them, like, how far away are your cars?

No one knows except for him, because his car's right out there, or Tom's car's right out there. But yeah, it really is very hectic and no one is prepared for this situation. And you mentioned the TV and radio broadcasts. And I think they work so well as a plot device because they provide you the

Exposition that the characters are slowly realizing on their own Like because you know when the movie starts it's just one guy attacks this brother and sister in a cemetery And then and then like outside this and then when they're in the farmhouse when they first get there There's like, you know, there's other people milling around outside and you know sort of mid you know you know, there's other people milling around outside and, you know, sort of, you know, attacking them in the same way. But they don't know if this is like a localized phenomenon. They don't know what's going on.

This could just be like, hey, some people in this Western Pennsylvania town have just decided to kill everyone. Yeah. And then like, and then finding out when Ben finds the gun and they're like trying to come in through the window and he shoots that one ghoul in the chest like two or three times before firing into its forehead.

And you see it collapse and there's like a bullet hole in the forehead. But like learning that like you can't, like these are not just human beings that these are, like learning that you have to, like put them down with a headshot or burn the corpse and then learning through the TV that they're eating the flesh of their victims just bit by bit.

And then learning that if you get bit by one, you become one. And that in all cases, everyone who dies will rise from the dead and begin eating the flesh of their victims is like to establish the rules of this universe through television, I think, is a really fun and interesting way to advance the plot. Yeah, and seeing the character's reactions to hearing this information is very, you know, and also the way that they try to like, coot this in the trappings of, or like, you know, deliver this information in the trappings of TV when they get the TV on and it's like, you know, like a crossfire, but I'm still talking about like the, you know, debates.

They're like, um, yeah, you know, they're partially devouring their victims. This is a great, the McLaughlin group, you know, Tony Blakely, should the botch, should the families of the victims will go to dubious comforts of a funeral to burn the bodies. start it like they go out of the lift. We'll get to you in a second. And the TV is also used so brilliantly in the sequel Dawn of the Dead, which we might as well talk about as well, because in a lot of ways I think maybe Dawn of the Dead is my favorite of the trilogy because it's so much more expansive and generous. But I think that living dead makes for a better pairing with Texas chainsaw massacre. And it's still so good and effective.

But I love the part in Don of the Dead where they're watching that guy with the eye patch on TV. And he's calling the TV studio on his dummies. He keeps calling them dummies dummies. Rationality is the only thing that can save us. And he's talking about dropping nuclear bombs on every American city to deal with the Google infestation.

God, that movie, that movie reps. But I mean, once again, we go back to the context of this movie being released in 1968 and feeling, at one hand, it has one foot in the 1950s. And on the other hand, it has this foot in this totally like Terra incognita, an undiscovered continent of like true horror and American apocalypse. And like I think like where Mara was like his his his sort of sly like a subversive attitude

and his like his his sense of humor and showing that like all all sources of traditional authority, totally and completely breaking down. From the patriarchal, potter, familiar, as Harry to all of these knitwits on the TV and on the news who have no fucking clue what to do. Yeah, and the Sheridan. Except when they call us around, basically just forming a lynch mob.

That is the response to what's going on. To where they can just kill every single thing that moves. But within 100 mile radius. Hesav, you've seen Georgia Meros the crazies. I was just about to say the crazies. This reminded me more of the crazies even than Don of the dead. Because like, the crazies is just like, if he had a bigger budget.

Oh, it's so good. It's so good. It's so fucking good. Because the crazies is like the same concept, but if he had like a much bigger budget, and the crazies is like the same concept, but if he had like a much bigger budget and the and the crazies is an E because you know, Vietnam was still raging in 1968 and again, like it's the themes of that are ever present in terms of like cannibalization and the destruct the kind of like wholesale destruction of the human body, but by 1974 the crazies is a fascinating movie because it really is is 74, the crazies is a fascinating movie because it really is about the total collapse in morale of the American military and just like at every level in that movie, like their

attempts to enforce a quarantine on this like Yinsertown in Western Pennsylvania. And like it's a political thriller basically. It's like really crazy. It's like, it's crazy. Yeah, but it's over the top, like it is over the top broad and how stupid and incompetent everyone is. Yeah, it's like, I can't remember exactly how it ends, but I remember it's like a very funny movie

until the end and then the ending is like, like a gut shot. Yeah. But the last scene of the movie is very hilarious because it's like the head of the quarantine just being evacuated by being pulled up just his body like in a sling by a helicopter. Oh yeah, I've been lifted off the ground. The absolute horror and carnage that he self-cars like a dog that fell into a river or something.

I mean, not living dead is just we see it. You know, it's like I said this keyhole glimpse of the apocalypse. We just see it through one farmhouse and the crazies is way more about like the Because the cause is it's like it's an American military bio weapon that like a plane crash is and it infects the water supply at this small town And exposure to it leads to like permanent insanity and violence, but In the crazies, it's like also kind of vague as to which which what violence is being caused by people's natural panicking reaction to pressure and fear of death and what is them being driven insane by this bioagent? Yeah, it's a Romero specialty. It's just like the wholesale slaughter of everyday Americans by their neighbors and friends. Yes, exactly.

But yeah, back to Bechton Night Living Dead. So the TV says that they should try to get to a rescue station. And this is when the Demisons of the Farmhouse try to unite for their best attempt at the gas mission, which fails so spectacularly. The gas mission of the first cyclist. Yeah, the first cyclist they try to do.

And I feel so bad for them, because they've managed their inventory so well. They know, they have this, you could plan. Yeah. They distributed the medicine. They, oh, we should also probably mention the daughter has, um, is been, has, is unconscious the entire movie because she's been bitten and, um, she's like in the seller basically, um, being cared for by the mom. So I hope nothing bad comes of that.

I also, uh, back to, back to Father Knows' worst. It's also, after he bitches out, Ben upstairs, being like, this guy's crazy. This guy's crazy. Let's all just be in the basement, where there's no exits. You can just sellers, let's see his place. Yeah. But as soon as he gets back down to the seller,

his wife's like, they have a radio upstairs Oh god like she just begins nagging the shit out of him about his incompetent decision to stay Colleistered in the basement and then when he gets upstairs and starts looking at like you know in the very short amount of time He's had to do it the very impressive work Ben has done barricading every window and door in the house and he's like Look at this ridiculous there. There are gaps in our defenses everywhere, it's like, thanks, asshole, you didn't do anything to help. But yeah, the idea is that they craft a Molotov cocktails which they're gonna be used

to distract the ghouls outside the house. And then they're gonna run to Ben's pickup truck out front and drive it to like the, there's a very small gas station down the road and they're gonna like unlock the pump, fill up the gas tank and then like, you know, away to safety or to help to the rescue center. Yeah, but this is basically undone because the girlfriend character freaks out and like she runs outside to help him with his mission. And then the dad guy like locks her out the second she walks outside. Yeah, she tries to turn around and is like she can't. So she gets in the car and then the guy,

it really is the guy that fucks it up big time because he, he, um, Ben puts the torch on the ground. Right next to the pickup truck. Right next to the pickup truck and shoots the lock off the gas pump. And then the guy is freaking out. It's so far so good. Everything is going according to plan. He grabs the gas pump. Everything's going well. He pulls it out.

He squeezes it a little too early, but that's okay. He could just get it, put it into the car. Oh no, it's all over the car. It hit the torch. The whole car is on fire. And it's leading in a trail back to the the torch. The whole car is on fire. And it's leading in a trail back to the gas pump. And then what do I have this girlfriend do get in the car and drive off? And then she's like, I'm stuck like they stopped and

you're like, you have to get out of here. I'm stuck. And then I get a stop. It just it just explodes. I mean, like him and that gas pump are like those like, sort of like only seen on TV commercials. We're like, there's got and that gas pump are like those, like, sort of, like, only seen on TV commercials or like, there's got to be a better way. He's like pouring, it's like Zoolander. They're shooting gas, everyone. Literally. But then, well, there are, there are,

there are fiery depths in the automobile explosion. It does make for, sort of like, you know, a Batchy-style dinner for all the ghouls who pull their charred remains out of the driver's seat and begin to have a, you know, a bachi-style dinner for all the ghouls who pull their charred remains out of the driver's seat and begin to have a, like, I have a cookout, you know, they invited to the cookout. But like, it's a really disturbing scene

where it's just them like eating like raw liver and like entral, like fighting over entrales, ripping the flesh off of bones and like, it's really good nasty stuff. And I think it was like, you know, like to the Pittsburgh quality as to the people who made this movie. It was like, I think somebody worked on the film like a relative owned, like a meat warehouse and he was like, yeah, I just donated some spoiled meat

to the production. So like all those entrails and livers and like big like fever bones that they're knowing on, that was all, that was all real are all real spoiled meat yeah when you know that you say it's Pittsburgh I it really makes sense because one of my notes is there's a lot of square heads in this movie you know George Romero and all of his movies are western Pennsylvania excellence but um so like after the gas uh debacle I mean like they're you know uh they they they bungalow that so badly that it's basically like it's at this point it's pretty much over.

They go back into the house and the ghouls start breaking through the barricades and it's real bad. And it really all starts to fall apart. The mother starts getting, like, starts really trying to get grabbed by arms. It really seems like that are coming through the wall. Randomly Harry tries to do a coup and like take the gun from Ben and like fails. He tries this twice and Ben kind of lets him off the hook the first time and the second time he's like, no, that's.

Yeah. Well, we want to shave on you. Yeah, he just, so he kills Harry who then staggers down to the basement. But then like at this point, Barbara has like, as the goals are pounded, they've broken down the door and they're all coming through and Barbara is trying to hold the door shut and then sees the shambling cadaver of Johnny, her, you know, sadistic, probably incestuous older brother, and then is basically

consumed by him. Like, he's just sort of like, is pushed into a sea of arms and is reunited with her brother in like, you know, a scene of some of not too subtle like sexual implications of like her being grabbed and thrown into this. Her final law. Yeah. Her arc comes full circle with her being thrown into her brother's arms. And I really do think they based the, I really think they based the design of Mason Verger

and the Hannibal TV show on Johnny in this scene specifically. Yeah. Because his hair is going like straight up. He has the driving gloves. He has this like, I never thought of that before. Yeah, Michael Pitt, Michael Pitt is Mason Verger. I think that was a lot of,

they're coming for you, Barbara. Yes, exactly. There's a lot of the coming for you, Bob, right? Yes, exactly. There's a lot of that in there. Well, we shouldn't be so much guy go by without talking about the news footage. They see of the Lynch mob, which of course plays, plays very heavily into the end of this movie. But I just like the like, it seems like they have things pretty well under control. And it's just basically like a militia. And I think this is so funny because when we're recording this, I mean,

you're going to listen to this in October, but Western Pennsylvania just went through something where that like five foot tall Venezuelan guys came from prison. And I'm like, half of the state was like, troopsing through the woods with guns, trying to track them down. That was like George and Merrill portrayed that first in Night of Living Dead, where I was just like, these fucking, these, these Yinser shitheads with like, bandaliers of fucking bullets on them, just chopping a cigar, walking around going, yeah.

We get some fire on that body over there. I got to shoot again. Yeah, yeah. And my favorite moment is when the, like, the TV reporter is asking like the local sheriff, like, hey, how's things going with this cannibal holocaust being carried out here? And he's like, well, pretty good. He goes, he goes, the men are taken to it pretty well.

And I thought that was the most disturbing line in the movie, because the men are taken to, because it's like literally Christmas for them. Yeah, just like killing what used to be your neighbors and throwing their body on a giant funeral pyre. Yeah, they're taking it to it pretty well. And this is what I mean about 1968, the assassination of Martin Luther King, what the Tet Offensive, the Vietnam War,

raging in high gear, and then a series of very violent riots all over the country following the assassination of Martin Luther King. and high gear, and then a series of very violent riots all over the country following the assassination of Martin Luther King. And then the racial and cultural lines in which the country was tearing itself apart. And I think in Romero's kind of like nasty, subversive sense of humor, I think the point of this is that the meta-taking

to it so well because it's been primed for this for so long. We want nothing more than to just kill everyone else around us. Kill yourself and everyone around you as someone wants to. Exactly. And I also, before they even turn on the TV, it's really funny that like, they're all sitting in the house. And I think it's before they fail the gas, the gas side quest. And they're like sitting and they're just like sitting around

and just waiting for three o'clock because they're like, oh, the news is gonna be on at three o'clock. We gotta watch the news. And they're like, oh, it's gonna be on in 10 minutes. And they're just killing the fucking time until they can watch the news. And then they turn on the news and it's like, yep, everything's going great.

Like the power goes out. It's like, it's so funny. But I really love the TV broadcast. It's one of my favorite parts of this. We go now to a live report of the hunt for the marauding ghouls. And I was like, I have like, I go, kill the brain and you kill the ghoul.

Yeah. Tips you can use. And the crossfire guy's being like, yeah, I mean, it's just dead flesh. You could, you just have to burn it, you know, forgo any traditional burial, no matter what your creed might be, but it's just so, it's so ghoulish.

It's like they're the ghouls on TV as well. You know, if you, please engage the brain of the ghoul in the kinetic style penetration. Yeah. There's also a very funny scene of like a general and some like White House chief of staff being like escorted out of some like high level meeting. And that's where we hear the idea that it was like the explosion of a probe from Venus that like showered the planet with radiation or something.

But while one, like while the scientists is giving that line, the general's like, well, I wouldn't know if we, I don't think we can say that at this point. They're bickering with each other about what they can and can't say or what the explanation for the Google Holocaust really is. And then believe it or not, it cuts to that Burger King Whopper commercial, the plate after tomorrow, and we got it. played after tomorrow, I got it. But I think it's also telling that Don of a dead begins very abruptly in a TV studio as everything is going to shit. Yeah, it's kind of like a payback of that moment because they

everyone gets murked in there. Yeah. And like, you know, we see like, you know, like half of the staff are just leaving. They're just walking out the door and the others like, no, we have to give we have to keep giving people the news. But basically, their paper is just being thrown up everywhere. They're trying to communicate the gravity of this horror,

but basically everyone is running for the exits at the same time. But the portrayal of the media in George or Mayor of the movies are always really funny. But basically, Ben is the final survivor. Everyone else dies. And not before the daughter, the daughter in the basement comes back to life, eats the flesh of her dead father

and then kills her mother with a trowel. Yeah, just like stabs her with a trowel. And then Ben has to hide in the basement as the house is overtaken. He barricades himself in there, but not before having learned from the news to kill the brain, kill the ghoul, kill the husband and like the wife and husband over again.

Yeah, he like double taps them both. Yeah. So he lives through the night. He emerges the next day as the Western Pennsylvania cleanup crew. I'm bad, like, you know, approaches the house and cleans up the various remaining ghouls outside. A very evocative image of a bunch of police officers holding, foaming at the mouth, German shepherds who were like chomping at the bit to get, to get like some blood. It's like, oh, what does that remind me of?

Yes. Oh my God. I didn't see this move in a while, but I totally forgot about that. And like the first thing you see of the next morning are these cops. Yeah. Like taking these canine units, these vicious German shepherds out of the back of a truck. And they're like, you know, bang for blood. They're holding them back.

And again, the connections here to any, to what Americans had been seeing on the news over the last couple of years in the 1960s is unmistakable. And it's like, yeah, this lynch mob, who's just like, you know, very nonchalantly just doming like the remaining ghouls outside, Ben is in the living room, he's about to be helped by them, but they just see movement inside the house and they just shoot him kill him. They just shoot him right between the eyes from outside. They just shoot him in the living room, he's about to be helped by them, but they just see a movement inside the house and they just shoot him kill him.

They just shoot him right between the eyes from outside. They just shoot him in the head and he's walking towards the window with a gun in his hands. So it's like, and then they literally, it's so unceremonious, they just like, pff, nice shot, he's down. And fucking the last line of the movie

is the head of the lynchimab, the sheriff says, good shot, he goes, okay, the sheriff says, good shot. He goes, okay, he's dead. That's another one for the fire. And then the movie ends like the credits roll in such a fucking nightmarish way that is like so modern and really like it takes the movie out of being straddling these two worlds and sends it into the total abyss. Yeah.

And the credits to the movie play out in a series of still images of Ben's body being carried by meat hooks and thrown on a fire. Yeah, it's so upsetting and like disturbing. And it's like, yeah, these like black and white like you could see like the grain of the images. It just feels so real and upsetting and crazy. The police uniforms and it's all very, it's all very icky and there's no music at the end. It's all silent. It's all silent.

The thing is, it wouldn't have been effective if they had just tried to portray it. It just regularly infilled with motion of the meat hooks ripping into the body. Because then you'd have to show a certain amount of artifice to portray that kind of gorn. It would take you out of it, I think, to a certain degree. Whereas these grainy still images of our hero and the black man being killed

and then having his body disposed of trash by these like hick fucking Lynch mob is so upsetting. And this has got to be like one of the first movies that like hits you that hard with like the charismatic competent protagonist, the handsome hero of the movie surviving and then being killed for no reason.

Like there's no hope, there's no escape. Yeah, it was like even like in the 50s, like a lot of like those sci-fi movies, there's no real like equivalent of that, you know, I guess like, you know, planet of the apes kind of. I think maybe like Psycho is like the first one to really do that with Janet Leigh where you think she's the main character and then she's just brutally murdered in like the first one to really do that with Janet Lee where you think she's the Make actor and then she's just brutally murdered in like the first third of the movie. Yeah, a spoiler alert Yes, the boiler super psycho. I actually didn't know that happened the first time I watched psycho

Oh, well, I knew she died, but I didn't know that it was he dressed as the mother and the mother was dead. Oh god A lot of illusions to psycho in Texas chainsaw massacre as well. Yeah. Get into that. But I guess just like the ending of night living dead is really what's what for me elevates it from being like a really effective horror movie to like I think a real work of art and like a real masterpiece and it's just like how willing to be utter how utterly bleak and nihilistic the ending of the movie is and how utterly bereft of hope or meaning in that like all human meaning and relationships are just obliterated on the funeral pyre like once the brain is destroyed, kill the goal

like and it's just that's another one for the fire like at that line just always sticks with me. Yeah, the men are taking to it. What about some other Georgia Mrow movies we can talk about they just recommend because I mean there's there's a I I'm so charmed by his entire body of work. I think he's like you know I mean one of the greatest hard directors, but he's just he's just a damn fun director He's one of our greatest. Yeah, absolutely. I mean the crazies is my favorite by far one of my favorite movies of the 70s Honestly, it's like so it's so crazy and it's even... It's last year than Ned Living Dead.

Yeah, it has a sheen to it that's like really wonderful. The, what's the one with, uh, fucking Stephen King? Creep show. Creep show. Yeah, Creep show is fantastic. If you're looking for a fun Halloween based movie, like, or just sort of like a fun, like, the definition of a spooky fun movie. It's like, you know, it's the kind of like, crit keeper anthology series. It's like

three short films. All of them are great based on that kind of like, easy horror comics of where like these sort of, these sort of gory ironic endings and like you know like a yeah gruesome oh Henry stories basically yeah they're goofy and silly and they're so much fun that's one of my favorite Halloween like go-to movies when I'm just looking for something fun to watch like that like a reanimator um that's not him actually, but that's just like a classic fun Hollywood movie. Yeah, fun. Just fun. Yeah, nothing but fun.

Nothing but more and fun. Day of the Dead. Oh, have you seen Monkey Shines? Yes, Monkey Shines is great too. It's a really good one. And then like, you know, his original zombie trilogy, you know, Night of, Dawn of, and day of the dead are all fucking masterpieces. He then, you know, in the George W. Bush era, like people sort of got a

yen for the like the George Romero American apocalypse again. I don't know why. I mean, it seems like a lot of time. It's not a lot of time for Romero to become a devote again. And then he did like a new trilogy. I think he made four additional zombie movies that are of sort of like depreciating value, but there's still, I think definitely worse,

a land of the dead I think is excellent. They get, like I said, they're of depreciating value by the time you get to island of the dead. But, you know, he didn't make die- He was watching that, right? No, he made die- He made die- Oh, I like die-

I like die- There's some cool stuff in that. I like the Men and Night Guy in that movie. Yes. The Hour of the Amish Guy. Again, once again, Pennsylvania. And then I guess the last year's Romero movie, I'll recommend is a movie called Season of the Witch, which is kind of like 70s, kind of like feminists,

like horror, like a narrative about kind of a board housewife who gets into witchcraft. like it's sort of like vague Is the weather like oh is there really an element of the occult here or does she just want to murder her stupid husband? Oh my god. I've been meaning to watch this. I actually haven't seen it. Definitely worth checking out I think that does it for Romero and they're living dead which will I think if you watch these movies back to back it It informs Texas Chainsaw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre brilliantly. I mean, both movies are basically about houses

where bad things happen. But as I said, Romero walks a Toby who could run in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is truly, I think, the bleakest and most nihilistic movie ever made. I think this might be the best movie ever made. I was watching it last night and I was like,

this is for real, there's no movie that's better than this. It's top three for me for sure, all time, maybe number one. And I really think it's the best movie ever. You knew Elzorgar's Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the greatest movies ever made? Who? French actress Isabel Huper. Oh Like Queen. Who instead of it, it's just a beautiful movie. It's just a beautiful movie. She's so right. She couldn't be more right. Alright, we are back.

Now in discussing that living dead, I said that it's a movie with sort of like one foot in each era and that like over the course of watching the movie and Certainly by that horrific credit sequence of Ben's body being tossed onto a fire with meat hooks. I think it like midwives a kind of a new kind of cinema like a new kind of feeling In the horror genre of that of total apocalypse and nihilism. By 1974, when the Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out, I mean, to use a cliche, America was now post-Vietnam, post-Watergate,

post-Oil Crisis, like America was fully doom-pilled. So Toby Hooper with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he creates a movie in the room that like, George Amara opened the door to this room to this undiscovered continent of like America's nightmare. And Toby Hupor would check his chance on massacre makes a movie that is like hermetically sealed in that room of horror that like George Merrill created in Night Living Dead. Like from

the like the last shots of Night Living Dead are where every second of Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes place in America that is a slaughterhouse. That we are all just meat on the way to the fucking, on the way to having our heads bashed in with a sledgehammer. Yeah. What happened was true. The most bizarre and brutal series of crimes in America. So, here's something. Stop! Stop!

This is the movie that is just as real. Just as real. Just as close. Just as terrifying as being there. Even if one of them survives, what will be left? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. After you stop screaming, you'll start talking about it. And like, the way that it opens to, because it opens with the, there's the voiceover where it's like...

John Laraket. John Laraket's true story. Yeah. Yeah. John Laraket's beautiful voice. I mean, we'll get into the, the character of the brother, which I have a lot of feelings about. Yeah. But like, John Larket is like, this is the true story of a girl and her invalid brother. This is his invalid brother. They really treat Franklin that poorly in this movie, poor Franklin.

It is, okay, listen, listen, it's a part of his content warning for ableism. Because he portrayal of Franklin in this movie, the disabled brother is just about the worst depiction of a disabled person ever put to the... This movie, this movie, you know, midwife, not just like true American nihilism and horror, this movie also created ableism.

Yeah, it's this evidence. It's truly, it blazed the trail for ableism. And we thank him for that. Yes, we salute him. And there are like funny parts in this movie, but it's like so evil. The opposite is so evil. It's so real too.

Like my younger brother, Jack, if you're listening, hijack, he hates movies that were made before like 2005. He thinks they're old and doesn't want to watch them. All movies were for the Matrix or Crouch It. Yeah, he doesn't even like the Matrix. Like it's long. Oh my God. I showed him this movie when we were in high school

and he was like, this goes so hard. He was like, this movie rocks. This is one of those movies that, to quote the great Lex G, contains true evil, trademark Lex G. Like I just have like such a palpable feeling of, it's not complete revolution or disgust because it is actually very beautiful at times as well.

But like this movie just, it gets under your skin so deeply and it is so deeply upsetting. Despite being not all that gory or violent. Like most of the most of the true horror in this movie is kind of implied like if you compare this to Texas chance on master two by Toby Hooper which is I think another masterpiece that really sequel ever made yeah is that movie is just a slaughterhouse from start to finish like the goren entrails in that movie are out of control my

favorite line delivery in any movie ever is in that movie when out of control. My favorite line delivery in any movie ever is in that movie when Dennis Hopper says, no, you're probably right. You probably cut his own head off with a chainsawed, going 80 miles an hour. And then of course, Bill Mosley as Choptop in Texas Chansoom, Ascord, is probably my favorite horror movie performance.

My favorite horror movie character of all time is the great Choptop who unfortunately is not featured in the original. But I think it's so amazing that Toby Hooper made probably one of the most disturbing movies of all time. And then decided to do a sequel that just like absolutely slams but play everything for laughs. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like in many ways I'm a million times more revolting and at least visually disgusting than Texas Chainsaw Masker, the original.

But the original is so spiritually disgusting. And it's just, this movie infects you. It stains your soul when you watch it. And the thing is, I think the most common thing people say about this movie, is that it feels like a snuff film. Yes, it really does. It feels like they just took a 16 millimeter camera

and just like filmed some depraved hillbilly's murdering some college kids. Literally. I think that kind of, I think that doesn't give enough credit to what a brilliant director Toby Hooper is and the kind of like the lush colors in this movie, the blues of the skies and like the reds of their clothes,

the red of that door in the Sawyer household, and then those long, shots from below, tracking shots. The best ending ever in the history of movies, like absolutely breathtaking and insane. One of the most chilling cuts to black, like ever. Cause it doesn't look like low fire amateur, it should all. Like it has a real, a queasy realism to it, but I think like the snuff film quality has come across

because of the kind of hyper-realist aspects of what Toby Hoberer is doing here. This kind of like, you know, like we've talked about this a lot before and like someone like the Great Ways that cinema can create something, a feeling of reality by sort of like transcending reality and creating a kind of dream reality. Like, you know, when you dream of a place

that you grew up or a location that's very well known to you, but in your dream, it's always a little different. It's never quite exactly what you remember or what you'd experienced. It's like, it's something is standing in for that, or it's playing the part of the house you grew up in, or the school you went to, or whatever. And I think Toby Hooper uses that same kind of like,

like the lushness of the colors and the repeated motif of the sun and the moon, just like bearing like a kind of silent witness to the absolute depra- and like a pitiless indifference to the absolute depravity of humanity. And like, the sun and the moon also goes with the opening title card, which looks like a close up of like

an alien hell planet. Yes. Is this crazy, like black and red, like fluid, like diffusion thing? Yeah, like the opening, and then like, as you hear, like similar to Romero, the use of the radio and like these little snippets you get of the outside world, like that pierce the, like oppressive suffocating environment of the movie. And one of the first things you hear in the movie

is about a Texas oil refinery explosion. Yeah. And the first thing you see is these little... A desecrated corpse. Yeah, and the way it's done is these flashes of a camera because someone has dug up a course in it. Yeah, it's taking pictures. But the sound design on that moment is the scariest sound

I've ever heard in a movie. Maybe it's like the weird like, like I can't even describe it, but you know, I mean, like we talked about in Night of Living Dead, like the the racket that plays outside, like the sound like this buzzing sound that you hear, this horrible buzzing, and then when Ben throws Barbara in the house and slams the door,

everything inside the house is completely silent. And the contrast between oppressively violent noise and then no noise is really effective. Toby Hooper, the sound design in this movie, is incredible. It's one of the best sound effects and use, one of the most effective uses of sound ever in a movie. And he plays the jarring, discordant noises and ambient sounds. He plays that to the hilt and it is so dreadful and effective in this movie.

You'll never ever forget the sound of leather faces hammer coming down on the guy's head for the first time. And like, let's talk about that scene. I mean, like, we could go just join in the plot. But like, yeah, one of the most, like, the scene where a Kirk is slaughtered, the first one of them to be like, because like, one by one, they just sort of wander into the fucking Sawyer Household

and are butchered by leather fizz. Yeah. But Kirk is the first one. And it's the absence of sound or any kind of like technique to like heightened the fear in that moment is so incredible because like it's the opposite of a jump scare. Keep in mind, from the John Larricat monologue, like from the opening crawl of the movie,

tells you similar to the Cohen Brothers in Fargo. They, they, they, Mr. Tudam Cap, they tell you this movie tells you, similar to the co-enbrothers in Fargo, they Mr. 2 Damned Cap, they tell you, this movie is real, everything happened. It is presented exactly as it occurred, like which is complete bullshit. I mean, it even begins in the date, when is it like August 18th, 1973? It's like, yeah, a date that's in a place,

it's like, this is real, this really happened. And of course, it didn't, but you know, I want to believe. So from the opening frame of the movie, similar to Night of Living Dead, the world is already over, or at least the world of these young people. You know, you know that they're going to meet an unspeakable end. And like the way it just lets that play with like almost nothing happening for a long time, like when they pick up the hitchhiker, it gets worse and worse. But about halfway through the movie, you begin wondering, like, oh, when's the horrible stuff going to start happening? And then it does.

And then it really doesn't let up from there. But what I mean is that the scene with Kirk, the first killing in the movie, there's no sound and there's no like there's no editing either. It's just he wanders into the house Walks through the most sinister looking door I've ever seen Yes kind of slips quickly like slips on some gore or viscera on the floor of their solar house I think it's just the carpet. Yeah, it literally slips on like a cheap carpet. That's just in the middle of the floor It just happens so quickly. There's no sound the middle of the floor. And then it just happens so quickly. There's no sound.

Leather face is body. The first time you see him just moves into the frame of the door and just wax him in the head twice with a hammer. And then you see his body like his leg shaking as he like in this pazons of his death. Him shaking on the floor is so scary and crazy. And Leather face just dragging him in

and then slamming the metal door shot behind him. Compared that to the next kill, which is his girlfriend, who goes into the house to look for him and how he plays up, like he uses every director's trick to like foreshadow, heightened, like that's one of the most foreshadowed kills ever in a movie. When like, it follows her like, you know,

the tracking shot that is very reminiscent of Janet Lee's sister approaching the house above the base Bates Motel in psycho Yeah, it's like shot from below and it like follows her into the house And then she like collapses into the kitchen full of like just bone sculptures and feathers one of the most it's Helen scenes ever in a movie. Yeah cover cover in like bird down and like feathers. And it's like, okay, you can like smell the room like from your living room. And then leather faces slam the metal door

to like the slaughterhouse part of the country home. But then when she comes out, the door opens and it's leather face there. And like then you hear that sound and like it's just like, it uses sound to make the scare. But like I just, the contrast between the first killing, which is the most disturbing one probably, which has no bells and whistles at all, it just happens.

Yeah, and you don't even really know what's happening. Because like, without the soundtrack or any kind of like hard edit or angles, like it does, like you almost like, you almost like, don't know what's happening. And you're like, your brain takes a second to catch up with the horror of what you just seen. And that's really effective.

And then he does the traditional scare with when he grabs the girl and pulls her into the house and then puts her on a meat hook. Oh, God. Puts her hooks her back into a fucking meat hook and she's just screaming and struggling. It's like so upsetting. Let's go back a little bit to the movie

because we need to talk about the scene where they pick up the hitchhiker. Yes. And to me, the most important thing about this movie is that what is Texas about, they love cattle and leading cattle to slaughter. I mean, because that's what you do with cattle. It's a state based on cattle.

The city of Dallas is a city because it was like the railroad destination where you could like offload these huge strings of cattle and then send them to the stockyards in Chicago to be slaughtered or elsewhere. But like, the repeated invocation of meat in this movie. And the scene where they pick up this gr- other- okay, also has the use of grotesques in this movie. Yes, it's so cool this this guy is

like he's clearly a blueprint that chop top will be built upon yes the same kind of mannerisms they have a similar James Franco style look to them they um a wine colored uh birthmark on his face yeah birthmark or a burn or something on his face when they visit the graveyard and there's just that old drunk who sort of lies down and starts talking to one of the characters, like upside down, just jabbering nonsense. Like, it's just such a profound sense of unease from every corner of this movie. Yeah, and eventually when she finds the guy at the like rest stop and asks him for help and it's like you really can't trust anyone in Texas They're all they're all in on this crazy

slaughter conspiracy Texas is just one big slaughterhouse like the the true horror of these movies is it's is it's location Honestly, yeah, like when they when they pick up the hitchhiker, the first thing that happens while they're heading to pick them up is everyone in the van goes like, oh, what's that horrible smell? That's like, so man stinks. And then Franklin is like, hey, look guys,

there's a slaughterhouse. Because they're passing the slaughterhouse and it's almost as if like they've entered into noxious territory. They've entered like... Have you ever been in a car that driven past like a major industrial slaughterhouse? No. It is appalling. Oh my god. If you've ever been, if you've ever, if any listener, if you've ever driven up the mid, like just like the central valley of California, the most cursed stretch of highway on the planet, the most apocalyptic view from a car you could possibly get.

There is about like almost an hour of that drive that goes right past one of the biggest industrial beef processing facilities in the country. It's known affectionately as cow schwits by California residents. But like the smell of shit and blood, like even if every window in your car is rolled up and like the fans are turned off, if you don't have the AC on, gets in your pores. Oh my God. Estonishingly, it is so horrifying.

It is enough to like make you consider becoming a vegetarian, honestly. Yeah. But like the hitchhiker and the whole Sawyer family and their relation to the beef industry is really the most fascinating part about this movie because one of the conversations they have with the hitchhiker, this absolute freak grotesque they never should have picked up. Yeah, they're all crowded in the front of the van to stay as far away from him as possible.

And of course the fucking invalid brother, the gimp idiot, has to engage him in conversation about killing the best way to he's like, like he starts telling the best way to kill cattle is with a sledgehammer. And then he's like, Oh, I thought they just use a gun now. They got everything. I don't think the Anton Shiger gun. Yeah, I thought they do Anton Shiger to the cows. And then like, and then he just starts like, you know, mumbling and muttering about how

the sledgehammer is much better. And he like, and then he just starts like, you know, mumbling and muttering about how the sledgehammer is much better. And he says, line, my family's always been in beef, which I always love. And then in the car, Toby Hooper starts intercutting images of just cows in a stall. And like, we're waiting for a sledgehammer to hit this,

like a real cow. Like, that to me is like among the most disturbing parts of the movie is because like, it comes out of nowhere and he's just like foreshadowing. These people are meat. They are fucking meat. They are cows to the slaughter. And like, I love when he says like,

my granddaddy used to be able to do 200 cows in a day with that sledgehammer. And it's like, that's insane. Like the, just the image of this like guy. And then when you meet the grandpa, it's like, that's insane, like it'd be just the image of this guy. And then when you meet the grandpa, it's insanely disturbing because it's like, oh, this is guy. The cook played by Jim Sido, the father, the father, when you just start talking to that, like, oh, don't be worried.

It just don't take him more than one lick to put down them, steerers, you know, like, oh, God. And but also crucially that like the solar family has been sort of displaced from the, like they've been displaced from the cattle industry with the advent of the pressurized air guns slaughter technique. Because it's sort of like, yeah, they're old school and there's no We're used for a guy who can kill 60 cows in five minutes with a hammer

So like what did they do? They do what they've always done, which is like And look there's a certain reading of this movie about like sort of for black Of a better word the white working class in the neoliberal turn in the 70s because like as we off-shore Manufacturing and just get rid of the need for large swaths of the American population, rural white people left their own devices, sort of shorn from any economic or governmental concern or use will perhaps resort to cannibalism. Yeah, absolutely. And there are like, it's really like, yeah, there's a stagnation that you can feel in,

like their house is like one of the scariest houses in like the history of movies for real. It's like so fucking crazy. And the way it's escalated in text change on Asker 2 is like, it's like a derelict theme park that they say, it's a derelict theme park called Texas Battle Land. It is a theme park dedicated to the like, to Texas' uniquely blood soaked history.

Like there's a scene where Dennis Hopper kicks, there's like a mural of Davey Crockett at the Alamo and Dennis Hopper kicks the Davey Crockett figure and like he kicks through the David Crockett figure and like he kicks through the wall and like a fucking like a eight like the like the the overla Cotels is fucking elevator doors open and entrails just spill out of the side of this wall. And then he starts screaming, derit down and chainsawing every support beanie Z's and running through it.

It's that's also really you should use it all see Texas Chainsaw Massacre too, if you haven't. It's amazing. Night of Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, like basically, you need to watch the series now. And not many of the shitty remakes Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one and two, and then Night of, Dawn of, and Day of the Death.

Yeah. Did you also catch, when Franklin compares the hitchhiker to Dracula? I'll miss that. He calls him like a Dracula, and then I think like, the hitchhiker says a family full of Dracula's at one point. And I think like, it's a little quotes like that, because Dracula is a figure of European aristocracy that, of course, basically, each people kind of cannibalizes people for his

own livelihood in life. Whereas the solar family are like, there's no no no pretensions of European or nobility. I'm not living a Romanian castle or whatever. These are just like nobility. Yeah, exactly. A champion of the chili cook out in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Yeah, in Texas, Texas, Texas,

I'm a massacre too. What's your secret ingredient? I love the cook, Pa, Soiro, and Texas Janssen on Massacre 2 goes, that's what I've always loved about Dallas. This is a city that loves its prime meats. And here it's just like, okay, like living off people or living off peasantry to survive. And like now this is like a family like shorn from the culture and the economy who has developed their own kind of tribalistic religion based on

all their bone artwork and crafts projects that they're doing in their house. Yeah. And the way that the Hitchhiker defends the sledgehammer it kind of goes into that because he's like, no, they died better that way. It's like, by better, do you mean their head's fucking exploded?

Like, why is that better? It's better because they just love it. They just love it. Yeah, they're resisting the modern neoliberalization of the American economy. Yeah, the replacing the folkization of the American economy. Yeah. The replacing like the folk religion of like blood and gourd and murder. That is the folk religion of Texas. It's just wholesale slaughter.

Yeah. The scene where they hitchhiker takes a photo of Franklin and then demands money for it and then burns it in the car. So after slicing his own hand with Franklin's shitty pocket knife and then burns it in the car is so fucking, after slicing his own hand with Franklin shitty pocket knife and then breaking out a straight razor and then like burning his photo, shrieking and then grabbing Franklin's arm and slicing it. Yeah, and before that even he's like,

he shows Franklin, he's like, check out these pictures and like he's showing him like pictures of naked ladies or something. No, it's pictures of meat. It's pictures of meat in the sloth. It's like carcasses and shit. After watching the movie, you realize you're just photos of his victims. And that's why he's taking Franklin's photo.

And then the first shot of the movie is the grave being dispoiled and the camera flash bulb going off in the little wee, like wine of it as the flash charges the second time. Yeah, and you realize him taking the photos him in leather face is beautiful brother. And truly one of the great brother relationships in cinema is leather face and the brother. Yes. And when the Hitchhiker takes Franklin's photo

and the fact that photos are like a big part of their ritual MO here, I think is very interesting because we started talking about this movie. Midwife sits own kind of new American horror, like a true American apocalypse informed by Night Living Dead. And I think like capturing his victim is on film is like an interesting part of the ritual because it's like, and then the references to Dracula, the references to psycho. Like I think Toby Hooper is kind of creating and destroying the idea of a horror

film in this movie. Yes, exactly. And there's one really interesting detail about the very last scene of the movie that I'll get to that I think speaks to this. But I want to talk now about, we talked about earlier, the invalid brother, Franklin, and how evil and like, the use and abuse of his character in this movie is so interesting because, kind of similar to Shelley Duval in the shining, where like, she is so harried

and like frightened by the end of that movie that like, in kind of annoying, that you are considering killing her. So when Jack Nicholon goes totally insane, Franklin in this movie, the wheelchair brother, I wanted to murder him from like the first minutes of this movie. He is such an annoying shithead.

He is so, I was just like, in my notes, I just keep writing, fuck this guy over and over again. I felt so bad for when they- No, I know. There's no ramp and no one cares. And they're all okay. He was having a good time. And he just goes.

Yes, he's disgusting meltdown where he like those raspberries. And the way Toby Hooper just makes him into such an unlikeable grotesque. Yeah, he's so meat is so easy. And pretty. No, yeah, he's he's sausage coming out of his mouth, it looks like a finger for like a good 20 minutes of the movie. Yeah, well, that's, I was like thinking like, do you think they got that at the corn,

at the, because they stopped at the rest stop that the cook. Yes. So he's probably eating human meat, right? Yep. No, no, it's very clear when he first bites into the sausage that something's off about it. Yeah. But he still keeps eating it because like, again, like, it's very clear when he first bites into the sausage that something's off about it. But he still keeps eating it because, like, again, just how unpleasant they make his character is, like, a fat disabled person.

It's like, it's so evil. Yeah, they really play it up. They ham it up. The point I want to make is, like, okay, Kirk and his girlfriend have already been slaughtered at this point. And, and then also, like, the other guy who's driving the car, he's been killed as well. So it's now just, it's just like the final girl,

do you remember her name? Shit, I forgot, Sally. Sally, yeah, Sally and her brother. And like, he has been a pain in their ass all day. And like, it's nighttime now, and it's like, he's like, he needs her to push him in his chair. And like, at this point in the movie, like we get into like the final stretch of it.

And like there's this back and forth between him where Franklin just keeps muleing and going, come on Sally, come on Sally, Sally, Sally. And she's like just trying to like explain to him and like she pushes him towards the the Sawyer house All the other face comes out of nowhere and just like, you know, Saw them in half, saw them in half of the chin, which is very interesting seeing because there's no blood in that scene Yeah, you just see him shrieking like but you're it's sort of like it's it's shocking

But also we're relieved because like I said I'd been fantasizing about killing him for quite some time But that's what I mean like like the movie enlists you. It like it indicts you in its own depravity and evilness. Like you're looking at the pictures, you're looking, you're literally looking at the pictures that Toby Hooper is handing you much like the hitchhiker. But what I mean is like the lead up to that

and just like his muleing. And like the inability for him and his sister to communicate is like right before it gets into like really launches into like the true climax of the movie. It is sort of already demonstrating to you that language has lost all meaning. Yeah. Like that that the horror like the unspeakable atrocities of this already happened in this film and that are going to happen essentially like obliterate language and meaning and has a every time I watch this movie I'm struck by it and like how they managed to pull it off based on like the very weird pacing of the movie Yeah, like there's the fact that there's no exposition or backstory to any of these characters or very very very little like

We don't even know why Franklin is in the wheelchair And again, it's evil because you start thinking like oh, is is he born that way or did his dumbass do it to himself? They're I can feel less bad for him. Yeah. But the last 30 to 40 minutes of this movie are nonstop. Are just like language is rendered away and it's language. It's like it is just it is shrieking gutter roll, animal noises and just the guttering of a chainsaw. That's all you hear. And then like the Sawyer family communicate with each other, but not in any like human way.

It is just a wretched, like a capering of the damned. It has like, God, why does this movie work so well? Why is this movie get under your skin so fucking hard? It goes so fucking hard. Because there's this slow build up, like a roller coaster going up to the peaks of the drop. Yeah, and the thing about the finale that is like, because Franklin gets chainsawed

and then Sally spends a long time running from leather face. And it's a very conventional, you know, it's kind of a conventional horror. It's like a girl with big jumps running through the woods, screaming and then like a monster is chasing her. And then goes, yeah, goes into the house and in the house things kind of start to change.

Like she goes to the gas station. But they're at her there. Well, she goes to the gas station and she's like, oh, she goes to the house first, yeah, sorry. Yeah, she goes to the house first. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, she goes to the house first. She sees the grandpa in the attic, who looks like the mother. Yeah, the grandpa looks like a corpse.

The grandpa is so disturbing to me because he really looks like a real, like, actual dead person that is just somehow blinking and like breathing. And it's like so like upsetting. And they have this like shrine to their mother's bones or whatever yeah, and it's like Then she runs runs to the gas station and she gets to the gas station and there's the guy there that they saw earlier He's like oh don't worry. Oh, she's like hysterical. She's like, please need to call the police and she's like

Don't worry. I'll get help. You wait right here. And like, it leaves. And then comes back with a rope and burlap bag to be like, now, missy, if you just don't give a city trouble, it won't be no problem. Yeah, well, the horrifying moment is she's sitting there and then she turns and looks and there's a meat roasting

and like this. And you can totally tell that like, oven. That like one of the things on the hook in the fucking barbecue pit Is just like a human torso. Yeah, and she's just staring and slowly slowly It starts to like she starts to realize it and like the calm on her face completely disappears And then the guy shows back up with the burlapsack and the rope and he just completely Unsair moniously walks in with them and he's like, now come on.

Now, to me, in my most evil soul, this to me is the story of family is the genuinely funny part of the movie. Yes, I love Pawsoyer cook, cook, soyer, so much. And he's so funny in Texas James Hall, Massacre 2. But truly, he goes goes full dad gum it. Yeah, I love it. He's complaining about how regulation in Texas is a stifle and honest trade, which is his is a murdering, murdering young people and feeding it to Texas is chilly slop. But the most evil scene in the movie is when Pa Sawyer drives her back to the Sawyer house

in a burlap bag and just keeps poking her with a broom handle. Yes, it's so unnecessary and cruel. And just keep stabbing her with this broom handle and laughing. Yes, it's like just for fun, just because he fucking is a psycho. It's like so crazy.

And like you see his like horrible teeth and it's like shot from below, and you see like the lights as he passes like driving, like sort of illuminate his horrible, his horrible scarecrow face, and he keeps going like, and she's just whimpering, and he's just going stop. Why are you escaping her whenever,

and he just keeps hitting her with this broom? It's all, oh god, it's so evil. And then of course, as they pull up to the house, the hitchhiker is right there walking home, because of course, he is related to these psychos. I mean, how else could anything else be the case? And then they just prepare Sally for a nice Sawyer family dinner.

That is the best part of the movie. And this is surely the most memorable, memorable scene in the movie, more of the most memorable scenes in any movie. Because this is where it really is. Because if you see this scene, you will not forget it. It's... this is like where it truly elevates the movie from a level of like an amazing horror film

to like a transcendently good like, to, in my opinion, like maybe the best movie ever made. Because like, the horror on her face as the family is like cackling and like laughing at her and she's strapped to this chair and the camera suddenly switches to a lens that is I would I could only describe it as like uncomfortably like insanely close to her face to her the shots of her eyes where you can see the blood vessels in her eyes her eye looks like an alien planet It truly is like so horrifying.

Yes, yes. And it's just this montage of her screaming as it keeps cutting to different angles on her face. And everything is completely gone. Like, even if she escapes, she is insane because there's nothing left in her head but screams. Like, there's nothing left in her but screaming. That is a feeling that the movie kindles in the viewer.

Like of just having every ounce of your soul just wrenched out of your body by just absolute horror and madness. Yeah. That like there aren't a words left. There is no meaning left in reality other than like the meaning of like the bucket that they put under you to collect the blood after they smash your head open. Yeah, when the grandpa, the grandpa scene is... They cut her finger. Yeah. And give it to the grandpa as a little appetizer.

And he just, the scene where he's just like, this corpse is sucking on her finger. It's so upsetting and sexual. And like, it's like, it's literally like the grandpa can't move at all except blinking X unless he gets like a little bit of blood and then he can like kind of move his arms a little more like move his mouth. He really is like a vampire. And they get the idea to let grandpa be the one to slaughter a Sally and they like bring her over and they keep trying to put a hammer in his hand as he like can't can't they keep talking about how he killed 60

60 cows in under five minutes with a sledgehammer and they're like and the way like the the the the cooks Pazoyer keeps trying to control Sally by being like don't you worry it won't hurt nothing It all takes them is one lick and that's we put them steers down and then he keeps telling her he's like he's like now One lick and that's how you put them steers down. And then he keeps telling her, he's like, he's like, now, just, you know, now, we all gotta do things. We don't wanna do, but we still gotta do him. And like talking about it, like, he's talking, he's talking to a seven year old,

who doesn't want to investibles. It's crazy. But it's back to like, you know, like, it's just, it's just my job. Yeah. But it's there attempt to get the grandfather in on the action that that gives Sally like like a moments respite She's a wrestler self-free from the the slaughter bucket and then just for the second time in the movie run straight through a window Yeah, and also when the grandpa is trying to hit her with the hammer. That's what we picture

Jimmy Carter Doing those habitat for humanity houses. Can I bring a nail into the side of those? We'll actually. We'll actually. Speaking of political figures, throughout the entire movie, Franklin,

and the beginning of the movie were Frank, the first scene of the movie that we see of the not-desecrated corpse is the sort of Scooby-Doo gang. And I think the parallels between the young people in this movie and Scooby-Doo are got to be intentional. Yeah, absolutely. They're rolling out into Van and like Franklin is the dog, basically, like he's Scooby.

And the first thing in the movie is them, like wheeling him out of the van and then like letting him go to the side of the road to take a piss on the side of the road. And then as like as he's peeing a truck driver just whips a fucking can at him, it's him in the head. And then he's like, Oh, he's down the hill, falls down. I was singing of that, and of course,

how Franklin ends up with leather face, that like, you know, in the context of a, totally not real fantasy movie, that this is what should happen to Greg Abbott. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, in fact, I would like to do a remake of Texas Janssen Maskier, starring Greg Abbott. Yeah, we're gonna, the most groundbreaking special effects

you've ever seen. It's gonna look real. It's gonna look real. It's gonna see GI earphones. I simply must say, once again, in Minecraft, in a video game for the purposes of comedy amusement in your mind. Don't be.

parody, parody, parody. But before we get to the very last scene, I said that like the murder victims in this movie I think have to have been at least in some way borrowed from Scooby-Dooer that he was trying to make Some sort of psychic resonance in the minds of the viewers of this like happy van full of cool fun young people You know go to investigate a mystery at a weird old house. Yeah, cuz it's literally two guys two girls and Franklin It's a scary gang. Yeah because it's literally two guys, two girls and Franklin. And that's, it's the beginning. Yeah.

I also think that in the Sawyer household and the interplay between the Sawyer family members, the between the hitchhiker, leather face, and Paws Sawyer, they totally remind me of this three stuages. Yes, absolutely. And like individually, we see them and they're like horrific and disgusting. But together, they're capering.

It's like, I kept expecting them all to try to go through the same door at the same time and just be caught. Which I think might actually happen in Texas James Lovasca or two at the same time. But like, and the absolute depravity of it and like mixed with their kind of slapstick capering makes it just as another level of how utterly disturbing

and horrifying this movie is. Less they all say though, they have their mom's bones upstairs, but like in the dinner table scene, they put makeup on leather faces skin mask and like sort of, they place leather face in the role of like a female gendered domestic labor. Yes. They make him the mother figure. He's this hulking man who's like this, you know, like 70s. He says, but he cowers and he cowers in front of both his brother and father.

They boss him around and beat him up. Yeah, it's, and into, they're really, they give leather face a transgender arc into, which is really, they give, like, leather face a transgender kind of arc into, which is really crazy and interesting. And you see, like, the seeds of that here. And yeah, it's very funny, but like, yeah, they never really explain why the, it's just there, you have to kind of put it

to piece it together with context clues. So, like, the first time you see this movie, you're going to be like, why does leather face have blush on? You have like a worse makeup of all time. And I'm like, previously he had like the slaughterhouse apron on. But in the dinner scene, he has the kind of like 50s homemaker kitchen apron on. Yes. Yeah. of like 50s homemaker kitchen apron on. Yes. Yeah, I love that.

She jumps out the window and it's daytime out and she runs toward the street. And leather face, we have the reprise, the great, the reprise of leather face chasing her with the chainsaw in front of the house. But she makes it to the highway. And there's a semi-truck that she manages to flag down. And this dude runs over the hitchhiker. Yes, it runs over the hitchhiker. And the guy in the semi-truck is this poor guy.

It just has no clue what he just stumbled into. And he gets out of the truck, right? We never see what happens to him. We don't see him die, but the last we see of him, he's just running away. Yeah, he kind of, like, so that is closed off to her as an escape option because leather face is now chasing her and this guy, like separately,

but like mostly her. And she, coming the other direction of pickup truck passes, and she jumps in the back seat, and it drives away, or done the back seat in the truck bed. In the bed, truck bed. Yeah. And it's the greatest two shots of a movie ending ever, is her in the truck bed bed screaming and her screams slowly turn

to like the most after the most horrifying laugh you've ever heard and she's drenched in blood just covered in blood and just like as the sun is like just coming up and then it cuts back to leather face who isface who is doing a little dance. He does a dance and he's just literally swinging his chainsaw around. In the morning sunlight, so he's almost like, he's obscured by a darkness and it's just this figure sort of pirouetting and spinning with his chainsaw, just spewing exhaust and guttering through itself. And that's the only sound that you hear is just his chainsaw, like, you know, spewing exhaust and guttering through itself, yeah.

Yeah, and that's the only sound that you hear is just the chainsaw. It's completely drowned out everything else as the pickup truck disappears in the very far background, completely blurry because it's shot with such like a, like long lens that only leather faces in focus. And he's just like, you know, dancing,

twirling around with the chainsaw. And then it just cuts to black. And that's the end of the movie. Yeah, it reminds you of the last line of Blood Meridian, which is like they say the judges dancing. Like he is dancing still. He is dancing still. The thing I wanted to bring about the last year of the movie and again, like, similar to that living dead, the final two shots of this movie, I mean, the 30 minutes leading up to it, but that final image is just like life, humanity gone. Madness, madness has been induced, like,

meaning obliterated, gone. Chaos reigns, chaos reigns. The thing I wanted to bring up is the semi-truck that Pancake's Hitchhiker and seems to like sort of the Deus Ex-Machina that kind of intervenes to save the final girl. Do you remember the name of the truck, the name on the side of the door? Oh my god, I don't. Okay, the name of the truck, it's written on the cab door, is black Mariah. This is very significant.

I mean, this has to be intentional on part of the filmmaker. Black Mariah was the name of Thomas Edison's first ever in the world film studio in New Jersey, but black Mariah was the name of the studio on which in 1893, the very first motion pictures were ever filmed. Oh my God. So this movie's unreal. Yeah, and this to me is the Deus Ex Machina is film itself to kind of like preserve that one girl's life.

You know? It's like the one, I won't say hope, but the one thing that prevails over total annihilation. The introduction of a film itself is sort of reminding you that it's a movie, but not really. To me, it's not so much about that, but it is about herolding, as I think I said at the beginning, I think he is kind of trying to kill movies themselves with this movie.

The power of this movie is so intense that it... It's a madness ruin on the entirety of film as a whole. And it's almost like this film shouldn't have been made. Yes. This is what film has been led to. Like it's Doug, it's own grave and it is now desecrating it like the Sawyer family. Yes, exactly.

Because literally the first thing that you see is like a body desiccated and impaled on like a gravestone. And it looks like, this is a question I have. Do you think the body, do you think the gravestone at the beginning is going into that body's asshole? And like, because it looks kind of like that. Yeah, it's like an art, I mean, we know the solar family and their dedication to crafts, shall we say.

So yeah, like, it's a body, like the corpse that's been like, yeah, like propped up and sort of artfully arranged on this like, obelisk kind of. Yeah. Well, there's an obelisk right behind it, and I think the inclusion of like the obelisk and the sun once again goes back to this repeated motif

in this movie of astrology and horoscopes. Because remember, they have a long conversation about the book of horoscopes. They have the American book of horoscopes, and of course, their horoscope for that day is like, you will find yourself in a strange circumstance that may not be too fun. Yes.

And they're like, oh. And I think the joke here is the idea of like, oh, oh. And I think the joke here is like the idea that like, oh, like these celestial bodies light years away can like affect our behavior. It's like the joke is like, yeah, that is true. And it leads us to like, the gravity and murder. But I think like the the sicker joke is that like the idea that these celestial bodies

would affect our behavior is madness because like they don't care about our behavior or our life and death at all. Yeah. They just stare down at us and like into like pitty-less witness of just like yeah, as I said, our absolute madness and depravity. Yeah, we're just dancing. We're just dancing. They're not even looking like it's really, yeah, it's amazing. I think that like there's right before that like the 30 minute, the finale of Shrieking starts. I think at one point Franklin talks to Sally about like he's like,

you don't believe in all that horoscope stuff. Do you all that stuff about Saturn and retrograde? And Sally sort of like already defeated by her annoying brother and just like the frustration of the day, not even knowing that her friends are already dead. Just sort of residedly says, I guess everything means something. Yeah. And I think like the sit joke in this movie is that it's all about how that's completely not true. Nothing means anything. It doesn't mean anything.

It really doesn't mean anything. It just happens. And it's just like life and meaning are just obliterated by, yeah, depravity and madness. Can we talk really briefly about the house that they're going to stay in to? Yeah. Oh my God. The writhing mass of daddy long legs is one of the most disgusting shot in the entire movie. Yeah, it's really upsetting, it's really upsetting because also there's no furniture in it,

it's completely decrepit. And Franklin's like, wait till you all see this house, this is gonna be the best weekend ever. And they all get there and they're kind of like, you know, what the fuck? Why do we listen to this annoying ass all the guys? Why do we bring him with us? Yeah, and there's also this through line of like Franklin thinking they belong erroneously because like he keeps telling people like oh, yeah, that's our grandparents house the old like

Something place, you know that we're going we're going to stay there. That's our like that's our uncle's house or something and The guy at the gas stations like oh wow That's cool and is like it's truly like You know It's truly like, you know, they're not, they don't belong there. They might be from Texas, they might be from, they might even have like an uncle who used to live in that house. You're silly. Yeah.

You're silly kids. Yeah. No one lives there anymore, obviously. And they just don't belong in this like evil depved, backwater hell planet that they accidentally, this hell dimension that they traverse into. And this house is like, the idea that this house will protect them

or is like a house in any conventional way. It's like more like, you know, it's like. It's a mausoleum, it's disgusting. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, like the daddy long legs, all of the sort of like ritualistically arranged like animal bones and shit like that. There's just a sense of just like the, the obscenity of nature in this movie,

as a very nerf Herzog might describe it, like the overwhelming and collective mood of nature. Yes. Like nature and the earth itself and all the structures and cars and people in it are just shit. There's just like everything is just disgusting and soiled in such a profound way. Yeah, everything is built on a thin ice sheet

over the deepest, darkest, coldest lake in existence. And like one, if there's enough enough cracks it's all just gonna fucking fall through. I mean that is the lesson of both of these movies is like there's only one we all there's no multiverse there's only one universe and it's the hell universe and there's only one country and it's called the fourth Reich America there's no escape for any of us. And hey you better you so you know what why don't you just put some makeup on and dance around? Yeah, take leather faces example. Just make yourself a skin mask.

Yeah. Woo! Woo! Go! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!

You have to pack that house. Wait, wait, it's just having fun. You don't think to end without talking about a few other Toby Hooper movies for further investigation. I mean, him and Romero are like, you know, two of the gods of American horror. Hooper is seriously underrated. Like, so seriously underrated? Like, seriously, so seriously. Who per is so unresisted? Everyone's seen poltergeists, because like, that's the movie everyone saw

when they were a kid and scared. The shit out of them, poltergeists, still very good, very effective horror movie. I love poltergeists, but I really like some of Toby Hoopie's other movies, a life force. Life force.

Life force. Life force. Life force. A little movie called Life Force about a poor alien vampires which inaugurate another apocalypse. One of the horneest and weirdest movies ever made. Yeah, transgender themes abound.

It's life for us. Patrick Stewart isn't it? He's, you know, Steve Reils back. Yes. It's beautiful. It's sort of sci-fi horror, but yeah, it is strangely beautiful and very horny movie I would also highly recommend the fun house as well another classic. Yes, the fun house is amazing It's just like yeah also and the mangler or wait was that yeah, he did the mangler

I haven't seen the mangler. I was in Salem's lot Salem's lot. Salem's lot. Salem's lot is, there's some like James Mason is very good in it, but Salem's lot is made for TV series. It's like Stephen King and those like Mick Garrus, like the stand mini series. And Salem's lot is an earlier version of that. It's very faithful to the book.

There's some really good stuff in it, but to me like Salem's lot, it's, you know, it's like it's made for TV. It's kind of, it's not as horrifying as his other stuff. Yes. But the fun house is just fun. I mean, that's like some kids go to a carnival and get trapped in the spookhouse with a creature.

It's a blast. Yeah, it's fun house is a lot of fun. But yeah, Toby Hooper, super, super, super underrated horror director. Yes, Eaton Alive also, which is about a Louisiana bog, eating a live if you watch it, you're like, how is this not a gay man? Cause this is basically,

it's, there's a jump waters in like, bent to eat an alive, where like, his love of grotesques. Yes, it's like, the wigs that he picks are like, this is, if this is a straight man, he has like, incredible tastes and wigs is a straight man, he has like, incredible taste in wigs for a straight man. Like it's unbelievable.

And like, Eden the Life is about a guy who runs a bed and breakfast in the Louisiana swamp and he has like a swamp like bog out in the back that he keeps an alligator in, not a crocodile or no, a crocodile. A crocodile, not a alligator. Yeah, an alligator, yeah. An Egyptian giant man eating crocodile. And he like slowly throughout the film feeds like,

just it's new guests come and they're all like characters straight out of a John Waters movie and they all get fed to this alligator. It's really incredible. Crockenile. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like even if Toby Hooper had never done another movie other than Texas James Sautman or Sikker, he would have to be one of the goods because like I said, this movie, this movie

kills art. This movie kills cinema as a genre. Like it just, it puts it to bed. Nothing more need be said after this. Yes, which I think is why he picks the correct route with Texas Chainsaw Masker 2, which is just making it the goofiest, just a complete goofball fast. Texas Chainsaw Masker 2 is so much fun. It's so good.

It's like, because everything that made the first movie great, but it's just like, you know, let's have some fun with it. Yeah, now it's silly one. It's like when you're taking pictures of the family. It's got it. Yeah. Now it's silly one. It's got an amazing soundtrack featuring Oingo Bungo and to book three. The no one lives rather seen at the beginning of the movie is so fucking fun. There's a scene where leather face uses the chainsaw to dry hump woman over her pants over her shorts. There's a scene where these kids are driving through Texas shooting road signs and leather face attacks them with a corpse. The dance from the end of the first movie, which is reappropriated to the most horrifying thing like imaginable becomes like a silly like a fortnight dance. He has leather face does constantly throughout the movie.

It's just spoofs and cuffs and like the relationship among the Sawyer family is like even more, it's way more generous with the Sawyers. You get so much of Jim Sido as the cook and then I simply must stress again, Bill Mosley as Shocktop is one of the most revolting and hilarious characters in horror movie history. He is had is like replaced by like a metal plate. And he has this like this like stringy hair hanger. Yeah, he has again, his taste in wigs is like impeccable

because this is like the worst wig imaginable and it's so perfect. And when we first see Choptop, he's wearing like hippie love-child, like those little son, like John Lennon sunglasses. And he's burning the end of a coat hanger until it gets extra hot and then uses it to like scratch the scabs on his head around his metal plate. Absolutely disgusting. And like I said, just Bill Mosley's performance is so over the top and hilarious and disgusting. It has to be seen to be believed.

Yes. And Dennis and Dennis Hopper going complete psychomode. There's a scene where he goes to a chainsaw store. Yeah, it's like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Commando putting the bullet belts on and. Yeah, just tooling up before the assaults on the, he gets like four pound. He fills up his inventory, his weapon wheel. Like, literally. Yeah, I think that does it for the first two entries of a goal V-Screamset horror movie spectacular.

Yeah. And truly, these two movies are not optional. Yes, these are mandatory viewing. And I don't want any more complaints about how we're picking obscure or no one ever seen before movies, because if you haven't seen these two movies by now then that's on you That's on you. We're helping you. You should be thanking and use this as an excuse. Yes, absolutely All right, I have said until until next time I'll scream you later or go you to future date for our next entry in Goofy Scream set horror movie horror tober spectacular. Good evening and good night. I'm gonna take my revenge, I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win But you'll never get that, blah blah blah

I'm gonna take my revenge, I'm gonna take my revenge Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow Fix the shapes of my secret, fix the shapes of my secret Oh no, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah Oh no, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah Oh no, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-