Chapo Trap House - Movie Mindset 14 - Halloween Sex God: A Tom Atkins Double Feature

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

[Note: these Movie Mindset Horrortober Season 1 episodes were already unlocked for free this year over on the Patreon feed, just adding them to the public feed to make them more widely available. To get every Movie Mindset episode, subscribe at patreon.com/chapotraphouse.] Will & Hesse look at two starring God Tom Atkins: John Carpenter’s “The Fog” (1980) & Tommy Lee Wallace’s “Halloween III: Season of the Witch”. Also a Carpenter double feature of sorts, one from the director himself, and one continuing from his iconic Halloween (1978) film as he intended the franchise to be, an anthology. The Fog is a true American ghost story wrestling with monstrous crimes of our past, and Halloween III is an outrageous gorefest with one of the most infamously ludicrous plots in all horror cinema. Tom Atkins plays an everyman sex symbol in both, laying pipe as he’s terrorized by ghosts & robots through anonymous northern California towns. Note: Will promised we’d timestamp the Tom Atkins Ass Shot in the description. I do not have time to do that this evening. Sorry.

Let's all go to the lobby. Let's all go to the lobby. Let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat. Delicious things to eat, the popcorn and candy peeps. Sparkling drinks such as dandy, chocolate pies and a candy.

So let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat. Candy beans. Sparkling drinks are just dandy. Chocolate pies and a candy. So let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat. Let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat. applause Welcome back, Ghoul Gang, to the third episode of Ghoul V Screamset, Horrortober. Hesse and I are back again, and for the first time, well not the first time ever in Movie

Mindset because we did do that screening of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, but for the first time on the official run of the show, we finally get to God, John Carpenter. The Don Diva. And by way of introducing the two movies that we have selected from the Carpenter verse for you today, I will just say that these are the two movies from this run of Gull V Screamset that we will be screening for you at the Roxy Hotel and Cinema on October 30th So if you're in the New York City area and would like to come and see either the fog from 1981 or Halloween to Halloween 3 season of the witch from 1982

Please come by the Roxy Hotel and Cinema. I think one of the screenings is already sold out I think it's the fog. Yeah, you're not screenings is already sold out. I think it's The Fog, but you're not going to want to miss. Sold out, but Halloween 3 is one of, it's so good. I mean, we'll get to it, but. Yeah. If you have not seen Halloween 3 already and then you listen to this episode of us describing what actually takes place in Halloween 3, you are not going to want to miss seeing that on the big screen. So these movies are united by a number of different themes and sort of personalities behind the production of it. There's John Carpenter, of course,

who directed The Fog and produced Halloween III. There is Dean Cundy, the director or photographer of most of John Carpenter's early films, who is the director of cinematography most of John Carpenter's early films, who is the director of the cinema photography on both of these movies and they are also united by the presence of the presence and sexual charisma and magnetism of one Tom Atkins The coolest like friend's dad who lets you drink beers when you're at his house

the coolest like friend's dad who lets you drink beers when you're at his house. Tom Atkins, he was in John Carpenter. This is his first movie with John Carpenter. He is also in Escape from New York. He is, you know, he was in Lethal Weapon. He is in Creepshow and in the prologue and epilogue of Creepshow. He's in Monster Squad. I mean, he's a guy, he's like a sort of a horror and kind of action thriller mainstay.

But like, I love Tom Atkins because it's just his presence as a leading man in both of these movies is so funny to me and speaks of like a bygone era in which regular dudes could break into Hollywood and have like successful careers. He is just like driving... I mean, we'll get to it, but in The Fog, he's having sex with Jamie Lee Curtis within two scenes of him showing up. Yeah, like a 19-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis. He just picks up hitchhiking.

And in Halloween 3, he has sex with every woman in that movie. It's so... Halloween 3 will get to it, but it's literally about how he's the man with having the most affairs of anyone in the world. There will be a secretary that he needs something from, like a receptionist at the hospital, and he'll be like, hey there, Janet, and like put his hand around her in like a weird way and like wink at her and she's like, oh, it's so funny. He's just fucking everyone.

So yeah, like we've dedicated this episode of Goolvy Screamset to Tom Atkins, the great Tom Atkins. Hesse, you described him as your friend's dad who would let you drink beer in their house. Yes. Like, I... that's very much how I see him. I would also describe him as the friend's dad who smells like cigarettes. Yes. Why don't you have a mom? I don't need a mom. We have a big Buckhunter machine in my basement.

I would place some kind of wager on the likelihood that Tom Atkins actually has a big Buckhunter machine in his house. Yes, absolutely. We talked about on the first episode about George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and how Romero and most of the people involved in the production of that movie were all from Pittsburgh. And I have to shout out, you know, the Steel City for Tom Atkins, a true son, a true Yinser, a true son of Pittsburgh who has made good in Hollywood.

And we love to see it. But let's begin with The Fog. Where's the fog now? It should be right outside my door now. Oh, there's something different about this fog. Dan, stay away from the door! Someone listen to me! Get inside and lock your doors. Close your doors.

Close your windows. There's something in the fog. No! No! No! Stay away from the fog. From the creator of Halloween, the ultimate experience in terror and suspense. John Carpenter's The Fog, starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Houseman, Janet Leigh as Cathy Williams, and Hal Holbrook as Father Malone. The Fog. What you can't see won't hurt you, it will kill you.

Between midnight and 1, it't hurt you. It will kill you. Between midnight and one it will find you. So the two movies today, there are ghouls in the fog. There are sea ghouls. Sea ghouls, yes. A wonderful term. There are not really ghouls in Halloween 3. This would be like the first movie we've highlighted that actually doesn't have ghouls in it. Instead of ghouls, it's Irish people.

Yes. We will get to... I mean, if anything, the hardest thing about talking about The Fog is just assuring you, the listener, that we will get to Halloween 3. Yes, we will. Because we will keep alluding to things that happen to it, and it won't make any sense unless you see in the movie. But I will just begin by saying in the fog the source of unnatural, like the sort of, the source of supernatural evil is the weather and or the weather as way of an excuse of a punishment for stealing gold from lepers. Yes.

And in Halloween 3 season of The Witch the source of otherworldly horror is, of course, the Irish. The Irish who have stolen part of Stonehenge. And but yeah, the fog, I really love the fact that it's the weather. And not only is it like the weather, but it's like light. You know, like every time they talk about how the fog glows. And so it always happens at night but it'll suddenly be like blindingly bright and there will be like just the outlines

of seagulls approaching and it's very much like, it's very Spielberg-esque, the fear of the light, you know? Don't go into the light, especially if it's light contained in a fog bank that's moving against the wind to consume your fishing vessel of drunk, corny men. So on our last episode with Theda when we discussed Roger Corman's Mask of the Red Death, and the opening of that movie in which the sort of, the red death is like a figure in red who bleeds out of his open palm onto a white rose that turns red and then says a day of reckoning is at hand. I really like the way Theda talks about how she appreciates movies that sort of announce

that they're fables. Movies that sort of like bookend what you're about to see by reminding you that it's a story. But what I particularly like about in horror films is that like the idea that through our imaginations and through storytelling is where we begin to like sort of crack open the door to the other side and let a kind of supernatural reality sort of permeate the membrane that separates

the borders of our two worlds between reality and Fiction the mindset it can become it can make things that aren't real real it can it can really bring you know, it makes the emotions real and that can make the The horrors real the dreams if you will And hey this movie begins Edgar Allan Poe, he's back again. You maybe thought you maybe thought we were done with Edgar Allan Poe with The Mask of the Red Death, but no, he is right back in the mix of John Carpenter's The Fog. The first thing we see, the title card of the movie is Poe's famous line,

is that we see or is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream, which is a great quote to begin a movie about a ghost story. And it is also a quote that begins Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, another very strange and otherworldly tale that begins by announcing that perhaps the reality that is being depicted or the reality that you're living in is perhaps the counterfeit in some way. Yes. It's a simulation The fog is like the architect in the matrix and the seagulls are like the agents It's like agent Smith that they sent out to terrorize this fake Northern California town of Antonio Bay. Yeah, and I'm like the plot of The Fog is very simple and it can be summed up as such.

It is basically a movie. It's a purely American ghost story in that it is very much concerned with the centennial, the history of American towns and a town coming together to celebrate its centennial and to celebrate the founding of this town and the return of repressed evil and a disgusting truth about the birth of small town America and America itself. Yeah, and it's that every single town in America is buried on, like, is built on 100,000 massacred Native American bodies

and like bodies of like, you know, anyone that doesn't fit into the small town type, such as lepers, you know, or. Yeah. In this case, specifically lepers. You know, in The Shining and The Poltergeist, it's of course the Indian burial ground is Is a trope or the idea that like the headstones, but not yeah

Yeah that like the the land itself is haunted by you know our history of genocide and expropriation of land and whatnot the fog a little bit different because this time the source of Ghoulish revenge are of course lepers. I think this movie can be summed up as town of Antonio Bay, world is a shit, fuck them all, one million dead lepers. And I really love the when they find the diary in the wall in the church that explains why they're being hunted by the seagulls and they they're breeding it. And basically what's being described is that there was a guy named Blake who showed up in the town and was like, Hey, I have like a billion dollars worth of gold

and all these like all these lepers that have like horrible leprosy. Do you guys mind if we like build a colony like right next to you? The town basically unanimously decides like, no, let's just fucking kill them and take the gold. And it is that heinous act that is coming back to literally haunt this town on its 100th birthday. And apparently the incident, the Blake incident that is fictionalized in this movie is based on the real intentional wreckage of a ship that took place off the coast of California

in the 19th century near, yeah, no, it's an accident. The wrecking of the Frolic, it was a ship that was intentionally wrecked Killing all aboard that took place in the 19th century near the town of Goleta, California. Oh my god and Has so the movie so the movie begins like in pure fable mode because the first thing we see on screen is a timepiece Just sort of hanging in the in the darkness of night and you hear it piece just sort of hanging in the in the darkness of night and you hear it ticking and then you see that timepiece belongs to a grizzled old sea captain a

sea dog a salty sea dog a salty a salty old dog and he's got the sort of the Greek fisherman's cap he's got the the salt and pepper beard and he's got a great voice yeah he goes just like time enough almost time almost the clock is almost about to strike midnight Time enough for one more story to keep us warm by the fire And then we just see the eyes of all these children assembled. It's like Antonio Bay It's a deceptively nice town despite all the leper murder It's such a nice thing that you can let your kids hang out on the beach at midnight with the old sea captain Yeah with the sea dog

hang out on the beach at midnight with the old sea captain. Yeah, with the sea dog. He's not like other spooky stories. You know, nowadays you can't even lock your door, let alone let your kids hang out with the sea dog. He's going to tell them the sea dog nowadays will tell your kids like some really bad stuff about, you know, politics, vaccines.

But I really love like this opening, like, kind of not even really, it's like a pseudo framing device kind of that kind of beckons you to put yourself in that kind of childhood mindset of being terrified by a story around a fire. And it kind of yeah, I the first time I saw this movie, I was like really young. I think this is the first John Carpenter movie I ever saw. And I saw it on like AMC or something. But the opening after this part, the of all the spooky stuff happening in town because of the fog, I had like never been more scared

watching a movie. And I was like, so so, yeah, watching this beginning really brought me kind of back there, being the scared kid next to the fire listening to the salty sea dog. And I don't know about you, Hesu, but to me, an old sea captain telling a spooky story is like ASMR. I feel the hair stand up

I can feel this sort of like the tingling climb up my spine but like the the opening scene of this movie of the ghost story being told around the campfire really like and and a good deal of this movie is sort of seen through the eyes of Adrian Barbos son and Like there there is a kind of child's perspective on the adult world in this movie and on the adult world like on horror itself and I don't know like I did you ever get this way of like being sort of like sort of like overly enthralled in the habit or like in the work or language or just a communication of an adult who wasn't your parents I remember like being like we had an electrician come to our house and I remember being enthralled as he told me how he was doing his job when I was like seven or eight years old six

five six seven I guess. Like I don't know like there's there's something about like just being enthralled with adults and like who seem like they have you know like lives and jobs and things that they do that aren't your parents it's like an introduction to the world outside of it. Yeah a whole different world and like a whole yeah I'm sure like there's stuff like that like I used to watch like interviews with you know filmmakers on YouTube and like behind the scenes videos and just like especially like Martin Scorsese listening to his voice oh yeah I was like this guy is the shit.

I'm like, wow, what the fuck is he talking about with all these movies? Yeah, you're like 11 years old. You're like, Rocco and his brothers? Life and death of Colonel Blimp? I don't know what any of this means, but man, it sounds interesting. Remind me to tell you a story of the fan letter I wrote Martin Scorsese in sixth grade. Well, we can compose a fan letter to him when our Killers of the Flower Moon episode comes up.

Yes, absolutely. But yeah, this is all by way of saying, I was so bereft of adult attention that I was fascinated by an electrician rewiring the house. But if I could have been exposed to, like I said, a grizzled old sea captain full of spooky stories of the sea and all of the lives it's claimed, who knows how it would have turned out? Well nowadays kids can just go on YouTube and type in sea captain stories 10 hours looped To study and relax to Lo-fi sea captain stories.

But Hesse, you mentioned that when you first saw this movie, and now this was Carpenter's follow-up to Halloween, and this was also he was married to Adrienne Barbeau at the time, who is the female lead of this movie. She plays, Absolutely dime. Yeah, she is gorgeous and would go on to become like something of a scream queen herself. And actually sort of the sister movie to The Fog, I realized as I was watching this because it contains basically the exact same cast, is George Romero's Creep Show, which I know we talked about in the first episode

talking about Night of the Living Dead. But Creep Show has, along with The Fog, Tom Atkins, Adrian Barbeau and Hal Holbrook. Yes, Hal Holbrook. Do you remember Adrian Barbeau and Hal Holbrook in Creepshow? I don't. The only thing I remember from Creepshow, my friend actually texted me last night and told me he was watching Creepshow and I was like embarrassed that the only thing I could remember was the Stephen King section of it.

Yes, yes. Where he, the alien like moss consumes him. The lonesome death of something something. I forget the title of that one. But the Hal Holbrook, Adrian Barbeau segment in Creepshow is probably my favorite. And it concerns a henpecked college professor played by Hal Holbrook who conspires to have his bitch drunk wife played by Adrienne Barbeau killed by a monster that's sent to the university in like a crate like the darkest jungles of Borneo or whatever that's so cool that's like an Outer Limits episode yeah yeah but yeah in

this movie Adrienne Barbeau playsau plays the hottest woman in the town of Antonio Bay, until of course, hitchhiker Jamie Lee Curtis arrives. She is the sort of single mom and the voice of the night. She's the owner and sole DJ of the local radio station KAB, Antonio Bay, which operates out of a beautiful lighthouse on the Pacific coast. The coolest radio station in the world. It's literally the top of a lighthouse overlooking the sea. Like amazing, amazing digs. And she's playing what could be described as like elevator music, I guess.

Yes. Yeah. She's on for the witching hour every night, you know, for the alcoholics, angry loners, the unemployables. She's staying up late at night, to KAB, Antonio Bay, playing the jazziest elevator music. Keep me turned on and I'll try to do the same for you.

And it's so funny, like Tom Atkins is driving, listening to it. And I'm like, I would fall asleep so fast if I was driving at night, like listening to elevator music. You say that, Hesse, but Tom Atkins is, of course, driving listening to Stevie Wynn, just downing a beer to keep him up. Oh, yeah, he's-

To keep his attention focused on the road. He's gotta stay sharp. I wanna get into the further, talk a little bit more about the cast of Antonio Bay and the various sort of factions that are unite, are in classic John Carpenter stat, in classic John Carpenter style. It's a movie about a small town or small group of people that are sort of put under pressure

and have to kind of reform and deal with the presence of a kind of siege by an outside threat, in this case, seagulls, the ghosts of lepers who want their gold back. Yes. But Hesse, you talked about the opening credits of this movie, which take place as like the clock strikes midnight on like the 100th anniversary of Antonio Bay.

And we, like we said, as all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream. At the witching hour, like the sort of the boundaries between the ghost and the real world in this town begin to sort of permeate. And the creaking of doors, the shaking of bottles, there's just like these little indications that the town is being touched by an otherworldly presence.

And we get these ghostly sort of encounters among people. There's a really good scene with a clerk at a grocery store who's mopping up late at night and then just drinks orange juice out of one of the bottles. Yes. I like that scene. But then like, you know. I really love, it's so tense,

because you're like, this guy's definitely gonna get murdered. Every new cut, it's like, oh, this is something that's definitely about to go bad. There's one where a gas pump at a gas station flies out of the handle and starts pouring gasoline everywhere. And you're like, okay, this gas station is gonna explode,

but it doesn't. And like, it's all these like very tension building like events that are just piling on top of each other as like the credits are still rolling. It's like completely like nerve wracking. And like in this film, the literal physical fog is what sort of shrouds and contains the ghouls and sort of like spits them into our reality.

But you know, even untouched by fog, the town is experiencing a lot of poltergeist style events, like chairs being moved on their own, car alarms going off, dogs barking, things like that. But the point I wanna make about this scene of very banal but also unbearably tense and dreadful portents, I'm thinking about something,

I watched this movie once again with Chris and Catherine to prepare for today's episode, and there's something Chris said about John Carpenter's style that I thought was very smart and on point and like really I think helps understand this movie. In this movie as in all of Carpenter's movies, and this is also very similar to Howard Hawks, a member in a Rio Bravo episode, Carpenter has what can at times seem like a kind of, it seems like his films are sort of bereft of detail. You know, like there's something very

general. American generic. Yes. About like the settings and looks of his movies. And I think it's that, as I described about Howard Hawks, that kind of economy of style and that the lack of detail that I think the sort of the non-specific nature of the general Americana of it is what allows

like when he introduces elements of terror, violence and the other worldly and the supernatural into that canvas. I think it's what allows your mind to like, it lets it seep deeper into your mind when you're like less focused on the kind of like the specific, the hyper specifics of a time and place. Yes, I think like the best example of that is like Halloween where it's like really impossible now to grasp how like the look and feel of Halloween is so like that and so generic,

partially like and it's partially been like exponentially amplified by the fact that every single slasher movie ever made from Halloween until now is just doing Halloween is like completely ripping off not only the like concept, but like the style and the because like there were slasher movies before Halloween, like Black Christmas, but the style of Halloween is so immaculate and it's so of its time and so 80s. So quintessentially, it's like the most 80s movie ever made in both look and feel and like everything. And it's like that kind of blanket of vagueness and generality

that gets like penetrated by like the sharp edge of things like Michael Myers' mask being like a William Shatner mask that's painted white. It's kind of like a blade cutting through that and like coming for you, kind of. It's really crazy. It's like, it's the banal details of everyday America that become like inverted and become the sources of real horror and pressure.

And like, you know, like I said, they become elements in these locked boxes that he creates that like, that just ratchet the tension up even more. And you say Halloween is like the perfect 80s movie, it's that vague sense of like time and place. Halloween was made in 1978, but like you think back on it and it feels like the 80s. I'll say this about the setting of Halloween. Halloween is of course supposed to take place in Haddonfield, Illinois. Just this past week, I was walking down the very streets where Halloween was filmed and even stood, walked out of the hedge, the famous hedge that Michael Myers appears behind.

That is all of course in Pasadena, California, a suburb of LA that is so perfect because palm trees aside, it looks like any town in America. It looks like the perfect American town, but it is basically just in the middle of Los Angeles. Yeah, suburbia USA. So yeah, I did pay tribute to the God of Halloween. The Halloween hedge, it's really funny.

There is a divot in the lawn of whoever's house it currently belongs to. There is a divot in the lawn right at the edge of the hedge from how many people have re-staged in the moment in the movie of stepping out from behind the edge. That's so funny. That's like Carrie's apartment from Sexton City in New York. There's like a rope roping it off,

and it's like, people live here, stop it. Like a sign that says that. Oh, the Halloween hedge, also a little bit of movie magic is also about two blocks away from Pee Wee's Fun at Pee Wee's Playhouse, the house in which Pee Wee Herman's show is supposed to take place inside. So yeah Pasadena is one of those towns that like so many movies are filmed there because it is such a good amalgamation of like anywhere USA. Yeah. So yeah like it's that specific American-ness

and like I said, how indebted he is to Howard Hawks in the simplicity of his, the way he frames shots, the way he edits them, and the way he doesn't like over, he doesn't lard up his movies with too much, with any unnecessary shit. And I think that really is why he is the master. Is cause there's not, in any of his movies, there's not a second wasted.

There's not a single cut that's unnecessary. There's not a single time the music hits that's like, he does not overuse anything so that when he does use these effects that play really well for him, like his use of an original score, and when he like cuts to create like a scare to create a scare, there's no fat. So it really is effective every single time. Yeah, and going back to what Theda was saying

about Mask of the Red Death, it's like all these characters are almost like archetypes, kind of, like the- The fisherman, the tramp, fisherman yeah tramp the DJ the child the alcoholic yeah yeah the annoying lady the annoying city council woman yes yeah um but yeah I want to talk about these these archetypes these Canterbury tales style archetypes that exist in the fog and in the town of Antonio pay but I want to get back to this idea of like,

that this is a purely American ghost story. And what I mean by that is like, it seems like to me, like at least the British are really the culture that kind of invented the modern ghost story with like, I don't know whether it's like the turn of the screw or the work of M.R. James. The idea of ghosts and a haunted house

is a very British thing that we inherited from them. And I think in British fiction and film, the haunted house and the ghost story is always about, obviously, the return of a repressed or traumatic memory that is playing itself out within the space in which that trauma occurred. And for the British, it's usually like incest of some kind or the fact that the wife is like kept upstairs in an attic

because she went insane or something like that. But the point is that like when you inhabit the physical space in which a trauma has taken place, it sort of like it stains the space itself and you begin in your own mind to relive the events that gave rise to like the murder of a child or yeah like some horrible taboo has taken place and stained the walls itself and like people even uninvolved with that trauma begin like sort of yeah like I said like a record skipping.

Yeah. And I think that works great for England because of all you know how haunted they are and all the dead people and fucking you know To-boo breaking incest and things like that But in America the haunted house and this is why poltergeist is like the other perfect American ghost story is the idea is It's not the house. It's the whole fucking country Everything in America is haunted. There's no there's no way you can escape it like it's like it's the land There's no way you can escape it. Like, it's the land itself is stained in some way.

And the trauma is, like for the town of Antonio Bay at a microcosm, is the founding of our country itself. Yes. It's like in England, it's like the psychic echoes of trauma get captured by the house and like bounce around in there. But in America, it's just like, there's so much, there's so many psychic echoes that it is like the background noise that the entire country exists upon that we just all try to tune out and ignore.

Yeah, it's like radiation. It just exists here. It's just, it is just, you know, the last ghost-free land in America, that's been bought up years ago. And since then, it's become infested with ghosts. There's really no protection from ghosts in this country. And as you're talking about America, I do have to talk about what I think is probably

the greatest feature of The Fog, the most amazing part of this movie, is the Northern California Pacific Coast. Yes. And the way Carpenter films it, I think this is truly, I wanted to include this one in our sort of horror movie run for this Halloween, as opposed to other, not as opposed to other John Carpenter movies, but why I wanted to choose this one,

is I truly think it's his most beautiful film. It's his movie that looks frame to frame, like the most one perfect shot, if you want to think of it in those terms. But it's like, it is largely the atmospheric quality and the stark, stark powerful beauty of the Pacific Coast in Northern California is really what makes this movie. And it's the contrast between the beauty of it and the horror, like, underneath it, or like the myth behind the beauty of it. And I'm always struck by the Pacific Coast and California, because to me it is the most striking landscape in America and the most gorgeous to look at.

And it's sort of like, the most beautiful part of America is the very fucking end of it. Yes. The absolute limits of the American project and consciousness when it hits that Pacific Coast and rolls back, it's sort of like the fog and the return of the seagulls is like you can only get so far away from America before, you know, the theft of leopard gold pulls you back in. All right, let's talk about the characters in this movie and some of the cast. There's sort of, like I mentioned, there's like three or four different factions that sort of each for themselves kind of piece by piece figure out what's going on, what's

happening in the town of Antonio Bay as the ghost front moves in. But let's begin with the god of the episode, Tom Atkins and Jamie Lee Curtis. Yes. One of the most, like, one of the most imbalanced pairings of people who hook up in a movie I've ever seen. He could be playing her dad in this. Yeah.

It's really, it's awesome. So Tom Atkins like rolls into town, picks up Hitchhiking Jamie Lee Curtis, and they say like five words to each other. She's like, are you weird? And he's like, yeah. And she's like, thank God. The last guy I hitchhiked with wasn't weird at all. She's like trying to get, I forget where she's trying to get. She's trying to get like... She's just trying to get away from where she's from in Southern California. It's just to go elsewhere.

Yeah. And she's a rich girl who's run away from home and is having sex with fishermen who could be her father. Yeah. Like next, the literal very next scene is like them fucking. It's them, they just finished having sex and they're smoking a joint in bed. And it's incredible. But they Tom Atkins is kind of the the hero

sort of of or one of the heroes of this movie. He basically goes around and is one of the first people to realize like something's up because his three fishermen friends are the first people to be killed by the ghouls. And he's like, you know, they discover their boat and it's everything's rusted. It seems like the boat's been underwater for 100 years. And him and Jamie Lee Curtis, their arc kind of is like saving this this kid and all these other people from the horrors of the ghouls. Yeah, like Tom Atkins, he's he's the working class Joe of this town.

He's the salt of the earth of Antonio Bay. He's a fisherman. His dad was a fisherman. And you know, like, he just wants to drive his pickup truck, get drunk, pick up hitchhikers and have sex with them. And not be, you know, a hassle by any of these by these friggin ghouls and I don't know has said there's something that will always just be so charming to me about the hookup in this movie between Tom Atkins and Jamie Lee Curtis because once again imagine your best

friend in high school imagine if his dad started hooking up with Denise Richards in the 90s you know that's what it feels like in the 90s, you know? That's what it feels like. Yes. You know, Jamie Lee Curtis, and actually, when I was reading about the production of this movie, Carpenter wrote her character into the movie pretty late in the production,

because he wanted to just create a role for her, because apparently he felt bad that her star turn in Halloween did not net her at that point many follow-up roles from Hollywood. So he just sort of like put, he was the second movie she did basically. And he just put her in there because he was like, hey, it's, it's Jamie Lee. She's my muse. Got to have her.

She's my girl. Yeah. That was nice of him. And Jamie Lee Curtis, of course, gorgeous as always, like one of the hottest women of all time. Like for me growing up, it was a fish called Wanda and True lies basically that's how I learned about sex was from those two movies Yeah, true lies like the hottest so thank you one of the hottest any woman has ever looked in a movie truly and and in every movie

slower more sexy Okay, well the the inclusion of Jamie Lee Curtis in this movie is Doubly interesting because of the casting of another character in this movie as we move on to like one of the other You know the wife of bath type figures in the town of Antonio Bay Annoying is she the mayor or a city councilwoman? I I never remember in this movie I think she's a local town muckety muck a big wig. Yeah, I think she's a city councilwoman and she's planning the town's Jebediah Springfield parade. Yes, that, yes. Basically, they're like, you know, preparing for this big parade. She has this statue that sucks.

She keeps talking about the amazing statue. And when we see this statue, it's really funny because they can cover it with like a pillowcase, basically. And yeah, they're having their there are towns that have like a sundial next to a gazebo that's like more high class than visible. They're coming out with in the Antonio Bay for their centennial celebration. Like you could put this statue on a mantelpiece, but it's on like a concrete like dais. Obelisk of some kind.

Yeah. And she's basically they're planning this big centenny or this big anniversary centennial like party that they're going to do to unveil the statue. And yeah, she has her much put upon assistant character also. Played by Nancy Loomis, who was also one of Jamie Lee Curtis's slut friends in Halloween. Yeah, she was the cool one that smokes weed. She was like the kind of girl that like if I lived if I lived in Haddonfield slash Pasadena, California,

I'd be like, damn, I want her to be my girlfriend. Yes, exactly. And but the city councilwoman is played by Janet Lee. Janet Lee, who, you know, if you have a movie mindset, you will have already keyed in on why Janet Lee being in a movie with Jamie Lee Curtis is fun and cool because it is a mother and daughter on screen together. And they did not have a single scene together in this movie. They never meet each other.

And I like to think that's because, like, in some sense, reality and fiction, as is all that we see and seem, but just movies within movies? Yes, is the answer to that. I like to think that it is reality sort of interceding on fiction because she just doesn't want to have anything to do with her daughter, her real-life daughter, who in this movie is is fucking fisherman who were like 30 years older than her. Yes

What is and what is Tony what does Tony think of all this that's what I want to know exactly What is Tony? Where was Tony? Where's Tony and he's having sex with some guy somewhere But yeah, like Jamie Lee Curtis ran away from Antonio Bay and because this, the world of this movie is like a Flintstone style loop, she is just hitchhiking back into Antonio Bay over and over again. Just like in In the Mouth of Madness, they try to leave the town of, what is it? Oh God. I forget the name of the town.

Cutters End or something forget something yes something like that yeah Hobbs end yeah I guess like then there is Stevie Wayne played by Adrian Barbeau the radio DJ that all I can think of every scene with Adrian Barbeau in this movie and her beautiful lighthouse radio station just makes me think of the song I want to marry a lighthouse keeper and blah blah blah. Yes, I wanna marry a lighthouse keeper, I wanna marry a Stevie Wayne, as do all the men in the town of Antonio Bay. It is her and her son, who is one of the boys

listening wide-eyed to the story at the beginning of the movie. And their babysitter, the ill-fated Mrs. Cobrits. Yes, poor Mrs. Cobrits. I will say, another fun thing about this movie for Carpenter heads is that all of the characters in this movie are named after people that John Carpenter worked with on previous projects.

So for instance, the horny weatherman who is trying to hit on Stevie Wayne, the name of his character is Dan O'Bannon, the famous screenwriter who did Alien and Carpenter's first movie, Dark Star, which is also so good. Yeah, great movie. I think Atkins' character in this movie is named Nick Castle, who is the actor who plays Michael Myers in Halloween Tommy Wallace is the name of another character who is the editor and sound designer on this movie and will be the director of Halloween 3

But you know Carpenter's having a little fun fun with the characters in this movie like when I was looking at IMDB Like for like just trying to get like a sense of the cast of this movie I kept thinking Dan O'Bannon's in this movie, but no it's not Dan O'Bannon. It's merely Charles Seifers playing Dan O'Bannon. Yes. You know they had a laugh over a beer about that with him and the boys. Also and the last group of people who endure the the on Ghul-Sinq 13 is the drunken local priest, Father Malone, played by the great Hal Holbrook. But his, like the one other guy that we get in the church, is of course the man himself,

John Carpenter, in his small cameo at the very beginning of this movie. Hesse, what is John Carpenter's line in this movie? He's the drunken priest, Hal Holbrook. His one line is, hey, when am I gonna get paid? Yeah, yeah. John Carpenter in the very beginning of this movie plays the church handyman who's just there to do little fixer-uppers

for a priest who's seven scotches deep. Yes. And then he's getting ready to go home for the day, and it's just Hal Holbrook who's already seven scotches deep. Yes. And then like, he's getting ready to go home for the day. And it's just Hal Holbrook who's like, you know, like already slurring his words. He's like, father, when can I get paid? And then Hal Holbrook's like, my son, why don't you come in at four

and I'll make it six tomorrow. Yeah. I'll need you. And then he just sort of like shrugs and just sort of like- He cuts his hours. Yeah, all right. Yeah. But I love Carpenter's rare speaking role just sort of like shrugs and just hours. But I love Carpenter is a rare speaking role.

Yes, movies and Father, can I get paid? Which really to me sums up his whole career. And all these people, all these people asking when is Carpenter going to do another movie? Yeah. Oh, to them, I got to say, when can father get paid? That's what I'm going to get paid. It's so funny because like also he looks like I was like is that John Carpenter he because he has such a distinct look Yeah, it looks like a roadie for like Metallica or some yes a roadie for Led Zeppelin

No, he's a he doesn't have the white hair in this movie. Yeah, it's a little bit a little bit You may have to look twice But yeah that you will see John Carpenter in the very, very like the first two minutes of this movie. So yeah, like these are the factions that sort of like through the radio and through circumstance, like begin to try to like figure out, you know, Father Malone finds his grandfather's diary in the wall of the church as sort of one of the spooky events in the opening credits sort of dislodges a brick spits it out and reveals the secret diary of his grandfather the priest who conspired with like the kind of town fathers to Intentionally wreck a ship full of lepers and steal their gold rather than allow them to form a leper colony a

Mile just sort of outside of town. Yes. So that's like the original sin of Antonio Bay. Hal Holbrook is so funny in this movie. Yes, he's incredible. He is so funny in this movie. And you know, like every American town that's done something horrible in its past,

you gotta have a drunken priest and a church built with the money that you fleeced from lepers. Yeah, literally in the walls of the church, quite literally, which is a very funny twist to the, you know, a very funny and loaded twist to... You know all those accounts that are like trad architecture accounts that will just show photos of like Montpelier Or like I don't know some town in Vermont and be like why can't American towns look like this anymore? Yeah, well, we've run out of luck. We've run out of lepers to kill. Okay. Yes. There's no more leper guys with

boat full of lepers and gold That we can melt down. It's just not economically feasible anymore to build beautiful old churches without some sort of you know Leopard fleecing we need some leather imports. We need to up the leopard imports to America In Civ Civ six, it's really OP if you farm lepers It's a really a really easy way to get gold early on. I think they're patching it. And Tony O'Bai got in before the patch, the leper patch for American civilization,

made that impossible to do. But yeah, the lesson of the movie is, if you want to have a beautiful American town, you're going to need some evil in the past. Yes, absolutely. But eventually the bill is going to come due. And this movie is about the bill coming due as like literally as the fog rolls into this community and brings with it the apparitions, the physical manifestations of these dead

lepers who like in this movie are sort of like, I don't know, like rag covered figures. They're supposed to be like, you know, at the bottom of the ocean, the sea has like disgorged its dead and they hack away at their victims with like fish hooks, cleavers and like an old like military saber. It's like sort of, they're very old timey. They have the ship that was sunk. The Elizabeth Dane is sort of spat out by the ocean and sort of

arrives in this kind of, encased in this fog as they seek, like six for six. They're trying to get like six bodies to fill in for a century later, the six conspirators that sunk the Elizabeth Dane and stole their leper crypto. Yes, and I- Their leper coins. This is the second hook kill that we've seen behind Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I guess the second through like fifth or sixth, I guess,

because many of them are done, many of the kills are done with hooks, but it won't be the last hook killing, we see, yes. I guess because many of them are done many of the kills are done with hooks, but The it won't be the last hook. I will not be the last hook related kill on this run of movie mindset But as long as we're talking about the kills Why don't we talk about some of these signature kills in the fog has said you have one that's on your mind I mean my favorite is the first one because of just like how how spooky it is. And these guys just hanging out, chilling and, you know, goofing off in their boat.

That seems like they just went out to the sea just so they could like drink beer without their their bitch wives bothering them without literally without generally bothering them because she's the wife of one of them. But yeah, these guys just go out in the sea and then they I really love that kill because you get to see the Elizabeth Dane in the fog like are part of it. And it's these these fishermen are like they can't believe their eyes because in this glowing white fog, they see like this old ghost ship. And then you get your first sight of the sea ghouls who are like,

you know, not only the ghosts really of the. Not only really the ghosts of the lepers, but like the spirit of the sea itself coming to kind of claim revenge on these. And it's the irony should not be lost that it's kind of like these ghosts of the sea killing fishermen with hooks, which is what they use to catch and kill fish, basically. And yeah, they just got, you know, from, you know, gooch to gullet. They just kind of rip these guys apart.

Yeah, the three fishermen on the seagrass, which are Tom Atkins' friends that begin his investigation of the ghoul situation. Yeah, like, that scene is fantastic because, like, you know, like, they're looking out the window of the boat, and, like, Stevie Wayne is telling them on the radio about a fog bank that's headed towards them.

And like they're all like, there ain't no fog out there. This guy's like looking out the window and it's very quiet. And he goes, there ain't no fog bank out there. And then he goes, shh, wait, there's a fog bank out there. And it rolls in and you can see their breath. It makes everything cold. And they see this like, this ghost ship, this huge clipper ship pass by

they're like I don't know like 30 foot you know fishing vessel and they're like they're out on the deck and they're like there's someone out there and then you see these ethereal figures just sort of come out of the fog on the deck and as they're looking at them then this guy like it's very quiet and then you see this guy shot from below and then just a sword goes straight through his chest. Yeah. You hear him go, like you see him, like the life just sort of

be snatched out of his lungs. Yeah, that's like a signature move too of the Sea Ghouls is that they'll, you'll be looking at them and then one will appear behind you and just murk you. And then like the third guy on the seagrass who's like, didn't go out on deck to be hooked or stabbed. He's just like trying to like talk on the seagrass who's like didn't go out on deck to be hooked or stabbed he's just like trying to like talk on the radio and he's like hey guys like where are you whatever ghoul walks in and turns around and then he uses like I

don't know like a cleat of some kind I think is what it is like a cleat and he just shoves it in both of his eyes it's just one two gouges out this guy's eyes and then we get I think like think, it's not a kill, but the best scare in the movie comes later, when Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Atkins have discovered the seagrass. Nobody's on board it, they can't find any bodies, but it's just an empty ship.

And there's a great moment with a locker that I think really sums up how so much of horror of an effective scare is sort of showing you and telling you the audience this is exactly what's going to happen and you sort of fixates your attention on the thing that you know is coming and then completely subverts that by showing you the thing you know is coming but then being like aha it actually wasn't the thing that you were supposed to be afraid of. And in this scene, it's Atkins and Jamie Lee Curtis

are on this boat, and a locker has been knocked over. And Tom Atkins begins telling Jamie Lee Curtis this spooky story of his dad and his career as a fisherman, in which they discovered some ghost ship, and it had a Spanish doubloon on it. And when he took it home, it like turned into sand or something, you know, something spooky like that. And then the whole time you're looking more and more

at this locker that's right in between the two of them. It's like leaning up against a wall, kind of like it could fall open at any moment and the body will fall out is what, it's really drawing your attention to it in that kind of, so you could think that. And like, and then you begin to see the catch on the locker begin to shake or sort of jostle itself open and you're just waiting like something is gonna come out of that locker and then it delays it for so long

and then of course the locker door slams open and a bunch of stuff falls out of it on Jamie Lee Curtis and she goes ah and she's spooked but in her being spooked and her like, you know, or like the jerk of her body, she dislodges the eyeless corpse of the last guy on the boat that just falls out over her eyes. Just huge divots where his fucking eyes used to be. Just the black hollow gaping caves of his skull.

And that is the true scare. Yes, yes. Complete one, two punch, like misdirection from the goat. It's so good. And then of course, there's the other scare in the morgue, where the eyeless body comes back to life to carve three onto the floor. And they just leave Jamie Lee Curtis alone again. And again, she is supposed to be just in transit. But she's hooked up with a fisherman and chosen instead to spend the day with him

discovering his dead, drowned friends. And then at the morgue with him again, she's like, maybe I should just move on here. Yes, she's like, I might get out of town. And another little addition to the carpenter verse in this movie that I love is that the coroner is played by Darwin Jostin, who played the great Napoleon Wilson

in Assault on Precinct 13, which every time I watch it, just like I has to like grow higher in my esteem of like, could this be Carpenter's best movie? I mean, there are so many that can begin in that conversation, but for me, Assault on Precinct 13 is such a perfect movie, and I love the character of Napoleon Wilson so much.

I just think he's like the most badass guy ever to be in a movie. Yeah, proto-snake-plisskin. Proto-snake-plisskin, yeah. I love Darwin, and it's good to see him in another Carpenter movie, because he was like one of those guys, like, I wish I could see him in, I wish he was in more stuff. And the next kill that I also love is the kill of Dan O'Bannon, the horny weatherman. Yes.

Who is, Stevie Wayne calls. Calls Dan O'Bannon and is like, hey, over at the weather station, do you have any fog? And he's like, yep, rolling in right now. This fog is covering up my place. It's totally fine. I'm writing underneath the door. Yeah, he's like she's like, hey, get get out of there. Can you please get out of there?

He's like, hang on. Someone's knocking at the door. And then he opens the door. There's like a wall of glowing of there. Can you please get out of there? He's like, hang on. Someone's knocking at the door. And then he opens the door. There's like a wall of glowing fog there. And he's like, oh, just some kids playing a practical joke. And she's like, get out of there, please get out of there right now. And he's like, don't worry, it's just some kids playing a joke. I also like right before that, we're Steve's like desperately trying to communicate to him

that there are lights in the fog It's not normal fog. You'll have to get out of there He thinks that like he's like, oh I get what's going on You're having a bit of stimulant induced madness, right every couple pills to stay up on air. I see I know It's so yeah while he's trying to get in her pants, you know Yeah, it's like I know what it's like working late nights at the weather station or having to talk all day on the radio. Yeah, sometimes we'll need a couple

of those red devils to keep you up. Yeah. And yeah, your field of vision begins to see lights in the fog outside your lighthouse. It happens. And I guess we should talk about the fog itself, which is really like the star of this movie, like the fog effects are so fucking, it's so simple and so cool.

Like when you see like these like cascading pillars of smoke just kind of like reach out to you down the down the sort of the the lit streets of this town at night. Yes, it's in like they do this like crazy, like I don't know if it's like fast motion and reversing it or something, but the fog kind of just billows out and like really has, it can sometimes has this like definition to it that is really fantastic. Like when it's filling the streets outside

or it can be just completely like very thin and mostly relegated to like floating along the ground. when it's filling the streets outside, or it can be just completely like very thin and mostly relegated to like floating along the ground. It really has like a bunch of different modes of making scenes look really beautiful. My one of my favorites is like when people are in a house that is being assailed by the evil fog, the windows go from being like pitch black outside to just pure snow white, like glowing white out of outside every window,

which is just such a scary prospect to me of like, you know, it's supposed to be nighttime, but it's just completely illuminated. It's so it's it's like such a good effect. He makes such a good use of the fog. And you know, like in one sense, this is an evil fog. But I think like this movie is sort of stands apart from a lot of John Carpenter's other movies which feature people under siege from some horrible, implacable outside forest, be it like the street gangs in Assault on Precinct 13, the liquid goo Antichrist, the Prince of Darkness, or the biological entity in The Thing.

Whereas in this movie, it's very much the same format, but I really think that there's a real sympathy. There's sympathy for the ghoul in this movie, because are they really the bad guys? Isn't there something deeply tragic the the monsters in this movie? Yeah, the good guy of the movie the the real actual good guy of the movie was killed 100 years ago when he was And he is kind of returned and is like he it really his his asks are pretty reasonable You know he just wants to kill six people, only six people. Yes. Hundreds died on that fucking ship.

Literally hundreds. And it's really not that much to ask. And, you know, there's a little fake out at the end where he, you know, finds where they they find this cross made of gold in the walls of the church because they read the rest of the diary and realize that, you know, the priest felt so bad about stealing the gold that he told all the other, like, father, all the other fathers of the town, like, oh, there was no gold, it was lost at sea.

And then he like hid it in a golden cross in kind of in the church. He melted it all down to make the world's largest cross. Yes, yes. Which must weigh 100,000 pounds. Yes. The scene of Hal Holbrook carrying the golden cross out to Blake and his ghouls being like, Blake, I've got your gold here.

You can even see in the performance how Holbrooke is struggling to carry this. He weighs 10,000 pounds. It's literally, it looks like a challenge from one of those World's Strongest Man competitions. Yeah, Kelvin Jumpstone. Yes. Yeah.

And it's also funny because Janet Lee's reaction He it's also funny because like the like Janet Lee's like reaction to the cross is she's It's kind of like damn we could have built a good statue And has so like there's a scene towards the end of the movie where it's like after they've had their little Generally knows her husband is dead. She's beginning to be aware of the horrible ghoul curse that is plaguing this town. But it's like the end of their little centennial celebration and she's like, now everyone,

there's still time to look at the statue. Just file a single file, take your time. You can still see the statue. And everyone's just so bored. And another thing I really love about this movie is that it's really only about seven or eight people in Antonio Bay that's aware of anything as it's happening. Everyone else in this town is totally oblivious to the ghoul assault. Well, we don't know that actually because

Stevie Wayne is screaming on the radio the whole time about how the fog is so evil and it's like it's must be terrifying for anyone at home but they might just think it's like you know Orson Welles like War of the Worlds style like they probably just they're like I wish you would she go back to playing some music I don't like when she gets all political. I hate when she gets political like this. I hate when she gets political about this. It was he gets political about the fog She's like I cannot stress this enough if you were near the fog get out of it You have to get out of town the fog will kill you and they're just like man I saw her in the supermarket was she's a real she was down. She was a dime, dude

I saw her in the supermarket she asked that she got a bunch of Snickers bar and asked the guy to scan them individually because of electrical infederates. The there it's funny to imagine that there's another gas, not a gas station, another radio station in town where it's like a right wing DJ and he's like three three fishermen were found dead and it is confirmed that they were waxed. and it is confirmed that they were vaxxed. So please. Yeah. But Antonio Bay's right wing talk radio station,

fog on loan from God, you're listening. We're taking your calls about the fog right now. It's like, I think Harp is probably responsible for the fog and they're using it to trigger the vaccine. I think that's probably pretty reasonable. I think that makes sense to me. I think it's time to send these uh these democrats back to the ocean where they belong. We've got to build a wall along the Pacific coast to stop the fog.

Of course we got to keep the leopards out you know. Okay now I'm imagining that there are four wind power off the coast of California, but only to blow the fog banks away from the town and keep just saying we're never paying back that gold. Okay. Yeah. When he's been gone, it's been spent. Sorry. We just don't have it in our budget to keep everyone safe from fog ghoul attacks.

Yes. Yeah. I think that does it for the fog. I guess I'd just like to leave it with Hesse what you said. An American ghost story, because the only ghosts in America are the good people that we killed a century ago. Yes. We're the bad guys, and the ghosts attempting to haunt us are like, they're the good guys

in this movie. Yes, literally. But yeah, this is just perfect, perfect early carpenter. Like I said, just perfect economy of style. Normal people under extraordinary pressure, just losing it and having that John Carpenter soundtrack just ramp up. Yeah, like your arms are coming through a window trying to pull you out. Fog is fucking rolling into town.

Yes, you're on top of the lighthouse. Climbing up the lighthouse, kicking as some as a fish hook snaps at you. Yeah. You just got that beautiful carpenter score just ding ding ding ding just hitting you in the head. And I there's one more thing I want to talk about, which is the speech Stevie Wayne gives at the very end where she's like on the radio and she's like, if what we if what we just experienced isn't a dream,

then it could happen again. And it's like this amazing, almost like 1950s horror movie, you know, framing device kind of speech that really brings it full circle from the Poe quote at the beginning and it's amazing. It's exactly like the end of the original Howard Hawks, the thing from Another World, where the guy gets on the radio at the end and he's just like the end of the original Howard Hawks, The Thing from Another World, where the guy gets on the radio at the end, and he's just like,

the events I've described are real. Watch the skies. Watch the skies. It's the same. It's like Stevie is doing a little PSA, but once again, getting a little more political than I'd like a music radio DJ to just play the hits the hits lady yeah where's bird back right yeah play royalty-free big band music number seven yeah all right we will take

a break and we'll be back with the truly extraordinary Halloween 3 season of the Halloween is almost here. You don't really know much about Halloween. Halloween, the barriers will be down between the real and the unreal. And the dead might be looking in. The last great one took place 3000 years ago when the hills ran red. Halloween the children. You happen to know anything about this Cochran? All I can tell you, mister, is watch out. He's watching you, friend, I guarantee you that.

Trick or treat, trick or treat. Hey, Mr. Cochran, just what is the final process? Fellas, I was just kidding! Witchcraft. To us, it was a way of controlling our environment. Hey! Where are they taking her? They're taking her to the factory.

I want a mask! Can I have a mask? Just what I had in mind for you, little buddy. Why, Cockers? Why? Do I need a reason? I've got nothing here to indicate there was ever a body at all. Operator this is an emergency. I do love a

good joke and this is the best ever. A joke on the children. I'm glad you'll be able to watch it. You've got to believe me. They're going to kill us. All of us. Stop it! Halloween. The world's going to change tonight, Doctor. Happy Halloween. Stop it!

Stop it! Halloween III, Season of the Witch, the night no one comes home. We are back and moving on from The Fog directed by John Carpenter to Halloween III, Season of the Witch, a movie merely produced by John Carpenter, but directed by the aforementioned Tommy Lee Wallace, who worked on The Fog and several other John Carpenter movies, and featuring the same director of photography, Dean Cundy. So Halloween III has the sort of, the semi-look or sheen of a John Carpenter movie,

but it is a departure in a number of interesting ways. Like for instance, the movie we just discussed, The Fog, is the textbook definition of like an atmospheric ghost story. Yes. Where it's hard to describe the plot. It's really just like, you have to drink in the scenery of the Northern California coast

and just like the feel of spookiness that that movie inculcates in the viewer. Literally and figuratively an atmospheric ghost story. Yeah. Whereas Halloween 3 is another movie that deals very much with stories and myth and it's a movie about the sort of the introduction and the danger of introducing the folk lores of the old world into a modern American context. But this is a horror movie that is entirely plot driven. Yes. And the details of the plot of Halloween three are so extraordinary that like it will

it will seem like a joke describing them. But I think that's truly what makes Halloween three, my favorite of the Halloween series. And I'll explain that by saying, look, I think John Carpenter's original Halloween, as you mentioned, Hesse, is one of those movies that's so good it breaks the entire genre as a movie. It's like a movie. You can't do, yeah. It's like so influential in its style that like it's impossible to do a slasher movie that is not in some way copying Halloween

I think halloween it's a masterpiece. It is a better movie than halloween three season of the witch but i've chosen halloween three season of the witch for movie mindset because it is it infinitely more gruesome and hilarious than halloween the original yes it's so funny. It's like, it's so amazing. And also like, if you... Like, a lot of people haven't seen this one because it kind of has a reputation of not being good. Which is baffling to me because it's so amazing. It's so good. It only has that reputation because Halloween 2 exists. Yes. And like I feel like

Halloween 3 is so good it makes me wish Halloween 2 doesn't exist because like Halloween 2 is I think like a good sequel. I like it but it's not as good as the original Halloween. But the problem with it is that it just introduced the expectation that a Halloween movie had to have Michael Myers in it. Yes. And I think Halloween III was the original, it was gonna be like the test case for what Carpenter originally wanted to do with Halloween,

which was have it be, as I think it always should have been, an anthology series in which every new entry in the movie is a discrete story, a discrete horror story centered around the holiday of Halloween. Yeah, and I think that would have been a lot. I want to know that alternate universe. I want to see what Halloweens we get.

Maybe Halloween 7 is really crazy, takes place in space or something. It might be fun. Well, as long as trick-or-treating is involved. Yes, absolutely. You can do almost anything. Or even having the same director, photographer, if Dean Cundy did all of them, then there could be a sort of,

you know, like a holistic style that you could at least bank on. Yes. But yeah, listener, do not let the absence of Michael Myers scare you away from this movie. Because what we lack in Michael Myers is made up for in something even more terrifying. Yes. The Irish.

The Irish. The Irish folks. It's really incredible. And I, it's so funny slowly realizing like, oh my God, this really, they really are, that really is the villain. It's an Irish trickster. Here's Trister. It's just like.

Yeah, we got to got to build that wall. We got to hold that one. We got to keep we got to keep the Irish and their folklore and their ancient child sacrifice practices out of America. We got to build a we got to build a Adrian's. I got to rebuild that shit. We gotta rebuild that shit. So, like I said, all of this sounds funny, but the reveal of how the plot develops in this movie

is truly extraordinary. But first I gotta begin with the unbelievably cool opening credits of this movie. Yes, they're so sick. first of all absolutely no epilepsy warning That's the actually the scariest part about this movie is if you have a condition in which strobing flashing lights may cause some problems for your brain then Consider this your epilepsy warning before turning on this movie Yeah, like after you see like the the studio the studio card, then it's just immediately completely assaulting

with strobing flashing lights. Scanline style, and the music is overlaid by the sounds of the scanlines going through. It's so cool. And it's that really old school 8-bit computer graphics. Yeah, Commodore 64. Each line is sort of rendering itself. And you're seeing like these like, you know, sort of digital lines of color assemble themselves and like flash at you as the credits play.

And then like when it finally says directed by you see like it's an entire like computer generated 8-bit graphic of a jack-o'-lantern, which is so cool. And the jack-o'-lantern is, of course, a very powerful symbol and image in this movie as it goes on. Yes, absolutely. So the movie opens. It just says, it tells you Northern California. Once again, we're back in Northern California.

It is October, Saturday the 23rd. You know what I realized? And we see it's night. The opening of this, it has the same beginning and ending bookends as Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Yes, yes, yes. That was the next line in my note.

It is exactly like the beginning and end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It is a man running frantically through the northern, California night pursued by some unseen Assailants, yeah, who is screaming desperately. They're coming to kill us. They're coming to kill us all and We're just like what's this guy talking about? But in this case he is pursued by what appear to be Mormons Mormon CIA Mormon FBI agents. This is after the Mormons took over the FBI. Yeah, Mormon FBI agents who were chasing this deranged man

who has a Halloween mask with him. And he runs into a gas station to get help. And he gets away from one, he crushes one of the Mormons in between two cars earlier in this movie like he's like being strangled by him and He like pulls the sort of stop for a third a gas station He pulls like the stop from like a car this and it's like a wedge

underneath the The front tires and he pulls that out and like the car moves forward and crushes this guy who doesn't seem to react at all Strangely odd. Yes, you know you know what you know Mormon FBI agents are like yeah buttoned up they're very robotic so like yeah we see this gas station and we get we get a great like little interjection to the television which is another very important part about this movie yes this movie is about the evil of the Irish, but it's also about the evil of television and advertising in particular Yes, absolutely. So we get to see a news report a Hilarious TV news report about the theft of a pillar of Stonehenge, which is just such a funny concept

Literally they did the oceans 13 like Al Pacino's casino. A pillar out of Stonehenge. David Holm's like trip hop playing. Stonehenge flies away. Now, if you were stealing a pillar of Stonehenge, would you take one of the pillars that's sticking up vertically out of the ground, or would you try to take the one that was horizontally prop on top of the two other pillars? No, you try to take the one that was horizontally prop on top of the two other pillars? You gotta take the one that's horizontally on top.

Yeah, I think that'd be easier. So yeah, they nicked Stonehenge, didn't it? That's what's on the news. And then we get, of course, the horrific dirge, which will be repeated over and over again in this movie. Oh my god. The commercial for Silver Shamrocks. Now listener, let me tell you, if you have not seen this movie and you watch it, probably

the most terrifying thing will be this song stuck in your head for approximately a week. Yes, it will not leave your head. It's such an earworm and they really do nail like those. You know, I used to love watching like compilations of scary old commercials, you know, scary, like haunted Kleenex commercial like, you know, on YouTube and. This really nails it because it's like, damn, no wonder kids of this generation are so fucked up. They had to watch.

This is what commercials were like to them and they loved them. It's like. Eight more days till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Very good. Silver shamrocks. Silver shamrocks. Yeah. Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, happy, happy Halloween, silver shambles. Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween,

Halloween, happy, happy Halloween. I mean, to me, this movie is very prophetic in a number of ways, but the conception of this movie that advertising will literally rot your brain and turn it into bugs, I think of this movie every time I hear that whopper, whopper, wh. I think of this movie every time I hear that whopper, whopper, whopper, whopper. Whenever I hear that jingle on TV,

I think of Silver Shamrocks, because BK is doing to my brain what Connell Cochran is doing to the children of the world in this film. If you watch that whopper commercial with the Burger King crown on your head, it turns your brain into charbroiled hamburger meat. Yes, literally.

Real flames. They use real flames. Yes. So, so like the mad man who has escaped the FBI Mormons. So like this year's hottest Halloween masks, all the kids got to have them. So he runs away to this gas station and he just says they're coming they're coming and then collapses Yes, and he is brought to a hospital and he's gripping a Halloween mask. Yeah. Yeah, and he is brought to the local hospital where the hero of the movie enter Tom Atkins now He's like I guess he's kind of the lead in the fog.

He's like, he's not really a lead though. There isn't really any lead character in the fog. Atkins is almost always a supporting character in movies or like, you know, playing someone's dad, like in Lethal Weapon or Creepshow or Monster Squad. Halloween III truly is the Tom Atkins movie. Like there's no movie that he's ever done that was ever more generous with his screen time

and with him as a leading man. Yes. Hesa, every time I watch this movie, I am so taken with how funny Tom Atkins is in this movie and how funny he's, how, just like his presence and how little it makes sense in every respect in this movie. Hesa, every time I watch this movie, I laugh harder and harder and harder

at this movie asking us to believe that Tom Atkins is a doctor. It's so funny, because like the first time you're watching this movie, it's like, did this guy steal a lab coat? This must be an assassin coming to kill this guy who stole a lab coat. But he's like, it's so it's the lab coat looks so crazy. And so like, yeah, like, the first time you see him, he's in he's in a white lab coat, he doesn't seem to have any identification on his shirt is like unbuttoned. You can see his like he's wearing like a he's wearing a white thermal like long sleeve shirt like a fucking lumberjack would

wear underneath the flannel shirt. And I swear to God, as a doctor, you can even see he has like a fucking lumberjack would wear underneath the flannel shirt, and I swear to God as a doctor You can even see he has like a carton of Marlboro's in his breast pocket It's so cool. It's so cool. Yeah, you look like you just got into a car accident Sneaking into the hospital in the fugitive It's like you you were just in a car wreck in this town in Northern, California You're like shit dog my doctor looks like this. I'm never walking again It's not just that he is like the most hilariously blue-collar looking doctor ever portrayed in a film He is also like the number one coxman of Northern California

He was also one of the absolutely the funniest things in this movie is the repeated invocation of his bitch wife, who is mostly in the movie, played by Nancy Loomis by the way. Yes. You see her once or twice, but he interacts with her so many times in this movie, and she pretty much only appears in the movie

as a disembodied voice on the other end of a telephone going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, as he's telling her like, no, I can't take care of the kids. only appears in the movie as a disembodied voice on the other end of a telephone going blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah need to take care of it. He literally like he his superpower is having a fair. It's literally like an X-Man whose superpower is that he has an affair with every single woman he meets in the world. And also he is a he is well lubricated throughout this entire movie. Oh yeah he's he's he's a doctor and there's scenes of this movie where he's just going to a liquor store to get one like pint of bourbon for himself

Cool he is like it's it's so cool and his his wife like is literally a wife from like There's this like weird thing it with in episodes of the outer limits I think I referenced it earlier where like so so many episodes of The Outer Limits are about how a scientist's bitch wife will ruin his laser experiment and like cause a huge disaster. Oh, I think I know which episode you're talking about. Yes, there's so, there's multiple and like it's so many episodes are just about like how like a guy's wife is a bitch and like it's what sucks for him. And he's trying to do something about it and gets like some kind of come up

and this this movie is about how Tom Atkins, his wife is just a bitch. And he, meanwhile, he is sleeping with like, you know, the the fifty five year old receptionist at the hospital that has like sexual chemistry with for some reason, if he says like five words to him. Like the nurse to some old lady, he's like patting her on the ass, he's like, coming up, he's like, squeezing her ass, like.

It's so crazy. We were watching this and Catherine was like, before socialized medicine, it was a lot funner to be a doctor. You could basically do anything you wanted because you were you were god of the hospital I think he's just like before they bring in the crazy guy from the gas station He's like, I'm just gonna be a go to my office and he's just like dead. He's asleep on his couch Wakes up with a hangover. They're like doctor come quickly wakes up with a hangover, they're like, Doctor, come quickly!

Oh, motherfucker. Jesus. And I love when you first see him, when he comes home to see his bitch wife and ungrateful brat children. It's like a Kelly cartoon in The Onion. It's just like, ungrateful kids. And he's brought them this shitty knockoff Halloween mask.

And the thing is, he's such a bad father. Like, he's a terrible so he's a terrible Once in the week that this movie takes place Like how busy could it be in a hospital in this tiny town in North Carolina He's there every night doing doing brain surgeries half of fucking three sheets to the wind He's like anything other than go a man's weekend starts Monday morning oh god basically like the only reason he's written as a doctor in this movie is because like they need an excuse to have him encounter a body yes literally he needs to be able to call the coroner and that

he's having an affair with and ask for ask her to like rush the can you brush this one top she goes can you brush this one for me doll just for me and have it not be like weird so basically what happens is like the the insane man who says they're coming they're coming like they you know they he comes in he's like oh give this guy a drink he needs some bourbon He's probably his fucking wife's probably hassling him. I've seen this before They're coming yeah, yeah, she's coming, buddy. Just sleep it off. It'll be okay Yeah, so then one of the the Mormon looking FBI agents shows up at the hospital and we get the first Great kill in this movie and like this movie is people forget the original Halloween there's actually no blood in it yes there's very there's like it's it's it's

scary but like there's it's it's very tame by the standards of like contemporary horror movies in terms of gore or the kills in the movie yeah not the case with this movie no not even close we get the first extraordinary kill in this movie with like the FBI agent looking guy comes into the room where this guy, this catatonic man, is in a hospital bed, and he takes his finger and pushes it through his skull, and then uses his hands to crush and reform this guy's face.

He crushes his nose entirely, and basically just crunches this guy's entire face like it's a Kleenex or something Yes, like he's crushing a beer can after drinking it. Yeah, it's so crazy it's then uh, we get a hilarious scene of Tom Atkins attempting to chase this guy down and he's like really struggling to run is All the scenes of Atkins running in this movie, you can hear how hard he's breathing. He doesn't get to the guy with any time at all.

Basically, he tries to chase this guy down and be like, hey, you can't kill people in the hospital. This is where we cure people, not kill them. That's down the road. You gotta go to the killing place. Hey, buddy, I don't care what your wife's doing at home. You can't be killing people in this hospital. So the FBI agent like is able to basically walk out of this hospital, get in his car. Walk, yeah.

And then calmly douse his entire body with gasoline and set himself in the car on fire. It explodes. Yes. And Tom Atkins is like, God, I bet that guy's wife was a real battle ass. Yes. But all ball and chain giving you trouble, huh? Yes, and Tom Atkins is like God. I bet that guy's wife was a real bad But all ball and chain giving you trouble, huh, I think next the next thing that happens after that we get the the introduction of the coroner character and Tom Atkins is very curious about this weird thing that just happened

He can't seem to get it out of his mind. Like, just seeing a guy set himself on fire after killing some guy for seemingly no reason. He's a little bit disturbed by this, but really, and it's funny, we keep getting cards that tell you it's like Wednesday the 29th, Thursday the, you know, it gets closer and closer to Halloween. And he's like, man, I'm disturbed by this. And then it's like Wednesday. And it just cuts to him at a bar, smoking an empty bar at like two o'clock in the afternoon. And he's just slugging a Scotch, smoking a cigarette. He's like, I got to figure this out.

It's so good. So, yeah, like then we have like the coroner or lab tech that he's also having an affair with. He's like, hey, put a rush on that, honey. And you're like, don't tell my wife and then and then the daughter of The the guy who was killed the guy from the very beginning of the movie the guy screaming that they're coming to kill you His daughter shows up to like you know identify the body

She comes in and like and like the like like the sheriff or whatever, she's like, is that my father? Let me see him. And they're like, oh ma'am, you really don't want to, you don't want to, you want to wait. And she's like, no, I demand it. And then they lift the sheet up and she just goes, oh wow, I really wish I didn't say, I was ready to see what his face looked like.

Oh boy, I was not prepared for that. She's also a dime. And so Tom Adkins immediately is like, oh boy, I was not prepared for that. She's also a dime. And so Tom Adkins immediately is like, oh, I'm curious about this case now, too. She is played by an actress named Stacey Nelken, who I've described as not overly burdened with talent. Yes. Not.

She's a great, great great gal great beautiful great beauty But you know she she she gets the job done She does what she can you know and by and by getting the job done. I mean having sex with Tom Adkins. Yes, literally So yeah, he meets she he meets the daughter of a murder victim Who's like also you know can't explain the death of her murder victim who's like also, you know, can't explain the death of her father and what's going on. And she knows something spooky is going on,

something not right is going on, and she like needs his help to investigate it. And again, what I love about Tom Atkins in this movie is that, yeah, he's playing a doctor and his wardrobe is essentially exactly the same as it was in the fog where he plays a fisherman. He definitely just brought his clothes from home. So funny. And another thing I love about the scene where he's just in the bar

being like oh something terrible has happened it's really bothering me and then it's just like two o'clock in the afternoon or weekday. The daughter comes in and she's like yeah the nurses said we could find you here. It's just like everybody knows that he's a drunk. I'll be in my office. It's literally when the door opens, you can see the sunlight just pour in this bar. It's like the fog or whatever.

And another incredibly funny moment in this is when he's at the bar and the news is playing some report about the killing at the hospital. And he's like, ah, turn the bar and like the news is playing some report about the killing at the hospital and he's like, ah, turn this off. I don't want to watch it. And they turn over to the other channel and they're playing Halloween classics and they're playing John Carpenter Halloween on TV in which the TV announcer describes it as the immortal classic Halloween. And I just love that like, it just, he's like, I just like in another context, that would be like so groan-worthy

to have that kind of like meta intrusion on the movie. I love that like in a John Carpenter produced movie, I mean like for instance, you saw the original Howard Hawks, The Thing from Another World plays on TV in Halloween, which is like his nod to like what inspired him. And in this movie, they're just playing his movie and it's just like, now the greatest movie ever made,

John Carpenter's Halloween. He's like, look, if if I'm producing this movie I'm gonna advertise my own shit all right so cool the daughter the daughter character is like oh her father was like of course a a toy store proprietor he's like one of these one of these toy star guys that's always going out of business because he like likes kids too much and gives him free toys and lets them play with the toys and ruin the toys. But he's just about a love of toys and a love of childhood wonderment and playtime. Yes. And she was like, they decide to go investigate this mask factory in the town of Santa Mira, which another, is that like, it's not a real town, is it?

Santa Mira? No, I think it's what it's, Santa Mira is sort of like the country of Val Verde, the like undamed South Central American dictatorship that's reused in like Commando and a number of different movies in the 80s, because they didn't just wanna say Nicaragua or something. Yeah.

So Santa Mira, yeah, is like one of these horror movie towns, but like never used to greater effect in this movie. So basically, yeah, is like one of these horror movie towns, but like never used a greater effect in this movie. So basically, yeah, they're like, oh, so there's something my father like disappeared after leaving the where he goes the town in California, where they manufacture all of the Silver Shamrock Halloween masks right after he visited that town. He seemed to have gone crazy and then someone murdered him. So she's like, you've got to help me go to the toy town and investigate the death of my father. And then we get my favorite part in the movie,

another phone call with the wife where he's like, no, no, I can't pick up the kids. You've got to understand. I'm going to the toy town with this young woman I just met at a bar. You've got to understand. It's so cool. It's so awesome.

He is like, the things he does make no sense. You've got to understand. It's so cool. It's so awesome. He is like the things he does make no set make it no sense for anyone else besides him. But when it's Tom Adkins doing them, it's like, oh, yeah, this guy is of course he's doing this. This is what he's got to be doing.

And I swear to God, like the town of Santa Mira and the town of Antonio Bay, I think they were probably filmed in the same location because they look pretty much identical. Yes. A lot of it when they're driving in. So what we, okay, this is when they reach the town of Santa Mira is truly when this movie opens up another gear. Yes.

Because what we know of this town, it's okay. It's the town that's like a company town for a Halloween novelty company that creates Halloween masks and like fake dog shit. Joy buzzers. Yeah, fake vomit. Like, yeah, it's like a hot topic of the town where all the hot topics are supplied by this one town in California that was founded by a man named Connell Cochran, who immigrated to America after World War II to fulfill his lifelong dream of creating a gag gift company in America, but staffed his factory with all Irish immigrants. So it's just like, listeners of Chopo might remember when we visited the town of Helen,

Georgia, outside of Atlanta, which is like a town that when the lumber industry ran away, they were like, well well we need a hook. So they just decided to like recreate the town as like a Bavarian sort of German style fun place with like sausages and dirndls and you know things like that. So Santa Mira is this town in New England, California that's just all filled with Irish people. And the scene where Atkins and Stacey Nelken drive in to the town of Santamaria is so funny to me, has it? Like I was I laughed so hard because it becomes so sinister as they grow

in this very bucolic American town. But in the diner, at the gas station, at the motel, everything is staffed by these like shifty beady-eyed mix who are just Again I was like when I first saw this movie I could not believe what I was seeing that like It introduces about a third away into the movie it introduces like a town of Irish stereotypes Like it's a town of Irish stereotypes. It's a supernatural source of horror. And boy oh boy is it.

They're literally like, oh no, do we have any alcohol in the car? They'll be able to smell it. And they stay at the local motel, which know presided over by a real fucking like oh Don't you know this is the right room for the right price? It's don't you it's pretty rooms are quite cozy to your accommodation. Oh, just please let us know whatever you want odd Oh, come mr. Cochran. He's a wonderful man a genius. We all love him in this town and his spooky masks And there's also the introduction of I like that I like in this movie And there's also the introduction of I like that I like in this movie

The original screenwriter or screenplay for this movie was written by the guy who did the quarter mass movies in England Are you familiar with those quarter mass in the pit? Oh, I very good really good. I are really good Recommended to me by Dan Beckner friend of the show But like say it's interesting that the original screenplay of this movie was written by a British guy. Yeah, it's very, it's telling. Yeah. Because you know, like the bog monsters that make up this town or something. But I like that they do include a stereotype of the world's worst American family in this movie. Like when the Winnebago pulls up and this just,

oh God, a mother, father, and their son of just oinking swine come out. And they were like the dumbest, rudest shitheads imaginable. Yes, they're literally, it's so funny because they're standing outside of their hotel room, their motel room, their new motel room, and like the rest of the cattle comes to the slaughter.

And it's these two. It's this family of this annoying, shitty little boy who might as well be like the little boy from the beginning of Pixar. So does who is like and his his doting like, you know, spoiling that mother who's really annoying and his father who won't talk and is talking about how he's like the big, you know, his big mask sales business.

He's the number one Halloween mask salesperson in the country. Yes. And it's literally like, it's yeah, this horrible, horrible family that is just this disgusting American stereotype of a family. And the other person that pulls up is a career woman who wants to have it all, who is somehow even more annoying. It's like... I hope nothing bad happens to these people.

Yeah, wow. I really hope nothing bad happens to these people. Yeah So I like I just love like like as it goes on this town like they keep showing you that there are like security cameras Everywhere there's like this big black car that drives around everyone's like there's Connell Cochran. Yeah, wave to him So like everything in this town is just indescribably sinister and nothing more so than the Irish stereotypes that populate all the NPCs are like have like, you know, like a newsboy cap and are smoking a pipe and wearing fucking, we're wearing the green. Okay, the scene with the town drunk is another incredible scene in this movie where it's like Atkins has just gone off by himself just to get a bottle to like, while away the rest of the day so his hands don't shake.

And he's just like, he encounters the one non-Irish person in the town who is like, in a real reversal of stereotypes, he's the town drunk. Yes, real, and he's this. He goes like, that bottle, sorry, just that bottle looks a little heavy. And he's like, I don't got diseases or nothing. Yeah, and he's like and he's like, why don't I get I don't got diseases or nothing Yeah, and he's like he is Like I don't know something about his mannerisms. He doesn't sound or seem drunk. He's just like hello

Yeah, nice to meet you. It's like you mind if I have a poll from that, sir It's like a I think it's a nod to HP Lovecraft's shadow over Innsmouth We're like he like, you know, like a guy visiting the town full of disgusting fish people finds like the one non fish person Who remembers what the town was like before the Irish slash fish people moved in? Yeah, and he like he tells him the story that like oh, I'll condol like everyone thinks he's so great I don't like him either. He won't get you know, the local boy like me turned me down for a job You know like but of course, this is all captured on the like closed circuit TV from Irish headquarters And yeah, like the FBI look

Jerry Adams just sends out his goons who literally twist this guy's head off like a Lego man He just pulled his head off his fucking neck So you're beginning to think hey these FBI looking guys. There's like something about them weird about them Yeah, they seem very emotional and strong and Atkins calls his like one of the several women he's having an affair with in this movie like the the lab tech It's a rush the autopsy of the guy in the car She's like yeah, like it's gonna take longer like all we found in the car were car parts Yeah, someone just like the this this pile of ashes someone gave me. It's just nothing but like weird like gears and gizmos. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what's going on with

that. Yeah. Um, so yeah, Atkins come back, it comes back to the hotel with yet another bottle and uh, the, the woman I, her name, it's funny. I was watching the movie, it's not until about like an hour and a half into this movie that I'm like, oh, her name's Ellie. Because she's such an afterthought. She's just young woman with Atkins. Yeah, a hot young girl of almost questionable age. He comes back to this hotel room drunk with another bottle in a paper bag, and then she just offers herself to him.

She comes onto him in the craziest way. He's coming out of the bathroom and she is naked and standing in front of him suddenly. Some people say I have daddy issues, but they'd be wrong. Yes. I love I love the erotic style of making in this movie. It's like so funny. They even have like the soft music, even though it's a horror movie. There's just soft music. And most of the scene, you just see Tom Atkins back. It's like an overhead shot of his back, like bearing down on this.

This way. Yes. And then meanwhile, it cuts to the next room It's like an overhead shot of his back like bearing down on this Yes Then meanwhile it cuts to the next room where the the woman who whose name is hilariously Marge I think is like She earlier was talking about how you know, oh these masks you got to watch out for this Cochran I got I got to tell him about these masks because they're defective You know this this the the trademark came right off. And it's like this little plastic coin. Yeah. With the silver Shamrock logo. And she's in her room laying in bed next door.

And she's like, huh? And then picks it up and notices there's a microchip on the back. And she's like looking at the microchip and she starts poking at it with like a screwdriver and this like crazy explosion happens and lightning shoots out at her face and like then it cuts back to the room next door and it's Tom Atkins having sex with this woman and she's like what was that? And he says who cares? Someone's bitch wife

And then it comes back to oh my god the horrifying horrible like oh This is we're truly at the moment like the gore in this movie is like another level This is truly one of the more like terrifying fucked up images in a hilarious movie. But this is one of the best kills, one of the scariest things. It's like a laser just blasted open this woman's face and the fucking, oh my God, the way they construct that dummy head

where like the lip is completely split open and like you can see the teeth and like it's just like her face has been split in two. Yeah, her no Yeah, no eyes no nose like mouth like peeled back like and the very the worst part is like her hands are like moving up like shaking and like touching her face like She's still alive and just like oh, it's so and then the best of all though in the like blasted ruin of her face a the best of all though in the like yeah lasted ruin of her face a

B a fucking B or like a like a locust or something. I think I'm scary bug Yeah, a giant scary bug just crawls out of like the laser blasted hole in her skull. Yes It's so crazy And like it comes out of nowhere and like nothing that's happening the movie up to that point is anywhere close to what that shit was So crazy, it's like it really truly out of nowhere and nothing that's happened in the movie up to that point is anywhere close to what that shit was. Yes, it's so crazy. It happens truly out of nowhere. But yeah, then you're like, oh, what was that about? I think the next scene is them taking their tour of the factory, right? Before we get to the factory tour scene, I do want to mention that the day after their love, or right after the woman's face gets blasted apart,

Atkins and Stacey Nelken are post-coital in bed, and they're sort of having pillow talk. Oh yes, yes, yes. And he goes, how old are you again? And I'm like, bro, bro, you already hit it. No point in asking at this point. In for a penny, in for a pound. How old are you again? Don't answer that, don already hit it. Like, no point in asking at this point. In for a penny, in for a pound. How old do you get? Don't answer that.

Actually, don't answer that question. Feel free to lie. How old are you again? Yeah, but like, she needs to fuck him again because he's just so hot. It's his doctor. You know, women are always after the doctors. Yep.

And also, the next morning you get, we do, I know you've been waiting, listener, yes, in this movie you do see Tom Atkins' ass. There is male nudity in this movie. Not full frontal male nudity, but you get to see like a real man's ass in this movie for a couple seconds. Yes, and it's beautiful. It's well sculpted, it's handsome.

Pause at a time mark, one hour, 0.3, 0.4, or 0.5. Yeah. Now, we'll timestamp the Atkins acts for you in the show description. Yes, we will. So yeah. Then we get the scene where they get to go on a factory tour. And we get the introduction.

Oh, like, well, the next day, they're carting the sort of Silver Shamrocks goons, the Irish Gestapo, as we've come to realize in the town of Santa Mira. Jerry Adams' Irish Gestapo comes and carts the laser blasted body of Marge out of her room. And Atkins is like, I'm a doctor, please let me through here.

And they're like, don't worry. She's going to the best doctor we have, the doctor in the toy factory. And they just cart her up in an ambulance and take her away and Atkins is like, okay We don't want to let on what's going on We don't want to like we just have to pretend that this is normal and then the big black limousine pulls up and out of its steps One of my favorite horror movie villains one of my favorite villains in any movie ever. Yes, Connell Cochran Who is in every way, shape, and form

the basis for Mr. Burns. Yes. He sounds like Mr. Burns. He looks like Mr. Burns. It is obvious that the Simpsons writers, I'm sure anyone can look this up. I would bet my life on it. It's based Mr. Burns on Connell Cochran. It's so like, it's so he's like, I would describe it as like a mixture between Mr. Burns and Hank Scorpio, because he's also when they first meet him, he's so he's like I would describe as like a mixture between Mr. Burns and Hank Scorpio Because he's also when they first meet him. He's so friendly and like ha ha ha I'm the benevolent good business owner. Nice to meet you And very quickly it devolves into just full. Mr. Burns of like yeah, he's played by dan o'herlihy who was um He's the head of ocp inCP in Robocop 1 and 2.

But he's one of these guys, he's got a great suit, not really a British accent, but not fully an American accent either, very similar to Vincent Price in that regard, where he just got this great evil enunciation of every word. And he presents himself as basically Walt Disney but for instead of beloved animated movies It's for like fake dog shit like whoopee cushions. Yeah. Yeah And he's just like this this benevolent all-father of the Halloween gag joke industry And he's like and like they get to go to the factory They're like asking about the order done by her father and then like the pig American families there and they get to go to the factory, they're asking about the order done by her father, and then the pig American family's there, and they get to go on the factory tour with Connell Cochran.

And he's like, everybody loves a good joke. It's me, Connell Cochran, the godfather of Halloween. And it's like, they take... One of them takes them into... There's a small museum to Connell Cochran's past glorious like inventions and the the father of the family is such a fucking kiss-ass and is like oh my god the the fake dog vomit this is like one of my favorite models of fake dog it's like literally so into it like the world of this movie is it like what is assumed or taken for granted in this movie is so funny Because at one point the the wife of the swinish american family says to tom atkins of condol cochran He's one of the richest men in the country. It's like you've never heard of

A member of the global billionaire class for making sticky toilet paper and fucking halloween masks that are only sold once a year and it's like my my favorite part of the tour is there they're going when they're going through and they're like. They're walking through and they're like, OK, here's where we do the here's where we make the masks, you know, real simple. We just melt down the masks. And then we have a very secret proprietary process and trade secrets, trade secrets.

And there's a huge door at the end of a hallway with huge red letters above it that says like, you know, like quality inspection or something do not enter. All right. I think we should just, at this point, just jump ahead and just explain the climax of this movie. Explain what's really going on in this film. Because like, okay, the girl gets kidnapped, Atkins gets chased around, he gets half-heartedly chased.

Like this one scenery is running and then he just literally like takes the momentum of his body to just fall straight face first and lie down in the shrubs. Yes He's like, I'm just gonna just go lie here for a second while the the Irish SS Patrolls the streets like this whole town is just like everything is under the control of this evil Irish toy toy manufacturer this this Willy Wonka like character who so like, where do you even begin here?

I mean, like his goons are robots. Yes, his goons are robots. Let's start with that. That's a great reveal because it's revealed because there's an old woman sitting in a chair, like knitting and Tom Adkins, when he sneaks into the factory, he's like, excuse me, ma'am. And like tries to shake her and her head falls off and reveals a bunch of gears.

And Connell Cochran is like, oh, that's a very rare piece you just destroyed. It's from fifteen hundred Germany. It's like, what is this real woman who's a robot has said? Do you interpret it as it like is it just the people who work in the toy factory or robots or all of the Irish people in the town? Of Santa Mira also robots. I think it's just like the the Gestapo is the robots and the the Wehrmacht and The Irish are our real people and you know, like before you get offended like there's yes

The Irish Gestapo did do war crimes in the sound of tantamera But there was also the clean Irish Wehrmacht who were just they were just soldiers. They were just doing their job. Yes, they are not. They remain untainted by Connell Cochrane's Samhain evil, evilry. Yes, they they they had to fight against the evil British who were living in that town. So, oh, yeah. Also, Connell Cochrane, um, like an ancient Irish wizard. Yeah, like thousands of years old. He's a warlock. He, you know, this movie promises

witches, but you know, it delivers them not in the stereotypical sort of female style crone you might imagine, but you know, men can be witches too. And in fact, they're some of the most evil witches, especially if they're Irish. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's revealed like, this hilarious setup they have in this room that is basically an empty concrete like chamber and that's set up with like living room accoutrements like a couch and a TV and yeah, yeah, and it's it's they're gonna demonstrate the plan to Tom Adkins trust the plan yes trust the plan a storm is coming one more day till Halloween get your popcorn ready and this is the most traumatic scene one of

the most traumatic scenes in any horror movie ever oh my god it's so good it's so easy what's so funny about this is like Connell Cochran just is loving it's a classic like movie villain moment where he really Like he just loves explaining for no reason his evil master plan to this alcoholic deadbeat doctor He's like someone's got to know how good this is because I mean I can't even contain myself I'm fucking on you ready for this really awesome. This is gonna be so why don't you explain? What what happens with the with the pig American family? OK, so yeah, he's like, check this out.

Check this shit out. Turns on the TV and the American family is led into this like living room and they've seemingly seemingly been told nothing. And they're like, what the hell? Why are we in here? But like the the piggy Americans, they are they immediately the TV turns on and just on pure instinct, they move to the couch, sit down in front of the TV and the kids sits down right in front and starts watching.

And they're playing before Halloween, they're playing the the the final version of the of the silver shamrock Halloween mask commercial. And the commercials like put your masks on now. Time for the big giveaway. Put your masks on now. And this kid puts on his pumpkin mask and he's just watching like shaking his head back and forth.

And the family's like, don't sit so close to the TV. You'll hurt your eyes. Then immediately the kid like grabs his head and is just start starts like squirming and writhing. And the parents are like, Are you OK? And he like falls to the ground and his head pumpkin like breaks open like a rotten pumpkin full full of like like destroyed flesh and like thousands and thousands of bugs and snakes start oozing

out of his destroyed pumpkin head. Out of the mask, the eyes of the master, like snakes and locusts and roaches just spilling out of what used to be this child's head. A child! This kid is like seven or eight years old Yeah, we cannot touch enough This kid is like seven years old It's like Dennis the Menace getting killed in

And then his mother and father are killed by the snakes that come out of his head Yes, and they're just watching in horror as this happens And the craziest thing, they're more scared of those snakes than they are horrified of the death of their their son in this I mean they probably can't even process with just that they're like what is going on but has the the reveal of Connell's plan and what he unlike again this is a test run for the commercial that they're going to show the entire country and world we're like they've engineered with their brilliant masks that every kid has to have and there's a great montage of like

All over the country. They're like, you know, oh like in New York, California everywhere in between Yeah, it very clearly all just shot in one neighborhood in California It's this great like twilight moment of all these kids trooping off to trick-or-treat with their masks on and you just, oh, you know what's gonna happen. But the reveal of Connell Cochran's plan and turning that kid's head into bugs with the Silver Shamrock masks is one of the truly most evil things I've ever seen in a horror movie.

I know it's so evil because it is so funny. I can, like, it is one of the funniest scenes I've ever, it is so, like, it is so beyond what you're expecting in how crazy and, it is one of the funniest scenes I've ever, it is so, like it is so beyond what you're expecting in how crazy and insane it is, but also just how funny a concept it is. He shows this all to Atkins and in classic villain style, he lays out his entire evil plan to Atkins and then he's like, I'm just going to leave you

with this room tied up for a while. Enjoy yourself for the next couple hours while you're still alive. But as he says, Atkins is like, why? Why are you doing this? Oh, my God. This is why it's so funny. He goes, because I love jokes and this will be the best joke of all time. He's like, this is the best prank ever made. Yeah, it's it's a joke on the children.

It's so evil. It's literally the craziest, most disgusting and horrifying thing ever done. And he's like, this is going to this is going to be good for a larv. He's going to turn the like the children of America, if not the world, he's going to simultaneously turn all of their heads into bugs at nine o'clock on Halloween. He's just like, man man this I'm gonna go down to history of books for this one best joke ever Guinness Book of World Records best prank ever

most kids heads destroyed but then he gets serious and then it gets even cooler because like if he just said I'm doing this as a prank that would be funny and evil enough but no there's another layer to his evil plan because he's like no I'm doing this because I'm Irish and we have forgotten the old ways and by old ways I mean like before Christianity was even in Ireland when we would just throw kids into a bog for like for our religion yes like the in fact the entire holiday of Halloween is imported from the Celtic traditions. You never ask yourself, why do you dress your kids up and have them beg for candy?

It's like, no, this is the holiday of Sam Hain. This is a ritual of child sacrifice that we have brought from the old, old, old country to America, who has sort of commercialized it. Because America has kind of commercialized this and like because America has kind of like commercialized this pagan holiday he's like I'm gonna lean into that and sell you all the murder devices that are gonna like complete my mass child sacrifice ritual which by the way I am like the technology that enables me to do this is because I am making microchips out of little chippings of the Stonehenge pillar yeah that was me I do this is because I'm making microchips out of little chippings

of the Stonehenge pillar. Yeah, that was me. I stole it. What a friend. And it's revealed that you see this like a council, like a console with like 30 TV, not even like 10 TV set up in a big circle and right directly across from it is the huge rock from Stonehenge just standing straight up, like completely surrounded by like satellite dishes that are pointed at it and like scaffolding. And they're just like, it's so cool. They're using pieces of Stonehenge to destroy the heads of every child in the world. This is a movie about like the folklore of the old country coming to America and merging with our crass, consumerist, new culture.

It's how the wedding of advertising creates a pilot signal that can really, because of how omnipresent and how present it is in American culture, if you just, all you need to really do is throw a little Stonehenge in. Well, that Stonehenge magic, well, that Stonehenge fairy dust.

Yeah, and a little Irish, a little Irish life's magic. A little Irish, a little plucking with the Irish, just put that in with a little Stonehenge and you'll turn your your kids heads into bugs The kids they love it when the bugs crawl out of the kids eye sockets I remember Alan Moore telling me once that like Like his conception of like being a magician and like ritual magic Is that all magic is like the marriage of like symbol with intent and the magician or shaman?

The goal is to get a community of people or a large enough group of people thinking the same words at the same time and like that is how you marry like thought to action and intent and he said in the modern world advertising is the most powerful and evil way in which people are controlled ritualistically in a magic like faction through whopper whopperper, whopper, whopper, whopper, whopper. It is that we are being controlled by the dark magic of the old country, but just in the new guise of advertising. And that is what I truly,

what I think truly elevates this movie from like the actual very interesting and frightening ideas in a totally ludicrous and goofy movie. Yes, a totally insane execution that literally, I cannot stress this enough, is like, if you watch this as a child, it will ruin your life, like, because of the bug head scene. And it's like...

And like, this is of an era, like, I'm sure, like, were you going to have to have, like, your parents say, don't sit so close enough to the TV, it'll rot your brain, or it'll melt your eyes or something like that This movie like truly makes that literal in a way that is so fucking funny and yeah Yes, and the mom even says that like right before but like but Tom Atkins of course They they turn away from his TV that is monitoring him and oh wait the funniest part is that

the they turn on the TV and Halloween is playing. And he's like he they're like once Halloween is over, the the the start. Yeah, the giveaway starts and they put on them. They put a mask on him. And it's like a James Bond trap where the device that's going to kill him is Halloween. It's the movie Halloween. But yeah, he escapes, of course, and kind of like starts going ham on their console of TVs.

And he gets like he gets a box of the microchips and as the commercial's playing to set them off, he dumps them from the scaffolding over the Stonehenge laboratory. He dumps it and all the lasers go off and all the robots fritz out. And as the TV signal is going out, it's just like it disrupts the Irish signal.

Yes. Its the Irish signal. Yes. It counters the Irish frequency that's going to melt the heads of every child. And then there's a great moment of Connell looking up at him and just clapping, giving the Nancy Pelosi clap to him, as he sort of congratulates him on a job well done thwarting his evil Irish master plan. And then there's a hilarious thing

where Stonehenge overheats and turns into a beam of light. And just sort of like, Connell just becomes a marshmallow man and just sort of desiccates into whiteness. It's so weird. Yes, he gets blasted by Stonehenge, destroyed by his own Stonehenge. His own Celtic Druid region.

The hubris of the Irish is that they think they can control Stonehenge, but Stonehenge is far too powerful for them. The hubris of the Irish is that they think they could do all this while also working on computers and having that kind of job. It's like sick to being a cop, asshole. And then I guess the final reveal of the movie is that Ellie, the daughter, has been replaced by a Connell Cochran robot. Yes. Yeah. And he's like driving, driving out of the factory. And then the robot kind of runs his car off the road and he has to destroy the robot. And there's a few like, you know, the classic thing where it's just the arm grabs. Yeah. Very Evil Dead style.

Yes. And eventually he finds himself at the same. I love the ending of this movie because he finds himself at the same gas station from the very first scene. And. He is like, you know, where's your phone? Give me your phone. And the TV and the gas station is on and the commercial is still playing. And he's like, you know, on the phone with the TV place and he's like, do you have to you have to take it off the air?

You have to take it off the air. You don't understand. And like they actually listen to him and they take it off the air. And then but he checks Channel two. It's still on the air. And he's like, you have to take it off of Channel two. You have to. And like it gets turned off. Oh, it. But the best part and he's like, you have to take it off of channel two, you have to. And like, it gets turned off. Oh, but the best part is he takes it off channel one

and then it cuts to inside of a house where a child is watching TV. And the kid just reaches forward and changes the channel and it's on another channel. Once again, what I love about like the very last scene of this movie, Hester, is like once again, the absolutely preposterous things that this movie takes for granted a that Tom Atkins could call a TV channel screaming into the phone and get

them to stop running a commercial because it could kill someone then he's like the next channel he doesn't hang up and make another phone call he like literally calls the president of television or something and he's just like you've never heard of me I'm an alcoholic doctor I probably had an affair with your wife or daughter But I'm just trust me when I say this commercial is gonna kill everyone take it off the TV It's gonna get heads into bugs. Please turn off the commercial The president of TV is just like this guy's onto something

Let's take it off this channel this channel this channel does do get piecemeal one by one and the very last It does do get piecemeal one by one and the very last last scene of the movie is like It is very much implied that the commercial is still playing on at least one TV channel is Tom Atkins goes complete Complete mind-gone madness mode screaming into the phone going Scott and hardcore as the yeah, literally the the TV the light of the TV is flashing at it on his face like And he's just screaming turn it off turn it off turn it off Remember remember his kids have the silver shamrock mask. They're gonna watch that commercial So he's like, yeah, if my kids head gets turned into crickets, I'll never hear the end of it from my bitch wife But yes, very much a spooky ending of not a happy ending at all of this movie.

But certainly, yeah, the Irish win in the end. The Irish. Yes. The Irish always going to come out on top. As always. The Irish, you know, you can only keep them down so long. The Irish gonna get they're gonna get there They're gonna get their comeback. Yes as soon as they turn all those kids heads into bugs. We got United country 26 plus 6 equals 10 billion dead kids It's truly and the reason Tom Atkins is so upset probably at the end is cuz although why all the housewives he could have An affair with are getting killed by bugs and snakes

by their, from their kids' heads. He's just really torn up about that. Well, so yeah, that doesn't, for the Tom Atkins edition of Golvey Scream set, I just want to get, The Fog, such a beautiful movie, and Halloween III, such a fun movie. I mean, like, this is a movie, like, you gotta watch it with other people. It's a blast. It is so much fun. And I guess that would be my invite to you to come watch it with Hesse and I at the Roxy Hotel and Cinema on October 30th.

Devil's Night. Horror movie movie mindset double feature at the Roxy Hotel and Cinema. Links for tickets will be available in the show description. Yes. So that does it for us for this episode. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed it.

We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed it. double feature at the Roxy Hotel and Cinema. Links for tickets will be available in the show description. Yes. So that does it for us for this episode. Just once again, watch the fog and always be wary of the Irish. Yes, watch, you know, if this isn't a dream, then it means that this could happen again with the Irish. We gotta be careful, we gotta stay vigilant.

Is all that we see and seem nothing but a scream within a scream! Happy Halloween, Super Shama! Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! Happy Happy Halloween, Super Shama! It's almost time, kids. The clock is ticking. Be in front of your TV sets for the Horathon, and remember the big giveaway at 9. Don't miss it, and don't forget to wear your masks. The clock is ticking. it's almost time.

Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Happy Happy Halloween, Super Shamba. Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Happy Happy Halloween, Super Shamba. Thanks for watching!