QAA Podcast - Premium Episode 229: The Ritual Killer (2023) Movie Night (Sample)

Episode Date: September 30, 2023

A murderous "witch doctor" from South Africa and the ritual killing of teenagers and children. Basically the perfect script for Italian Americans to write. Jake, Julian and Liv tackle a listener submission: 2023's The Ritual Killer. The film has an inexplicably stacked cast: Morgan Freeman, Cole Hauser, Vernon Davis, Peter Stormare... and guess what? It's a masterpiece. No idea why it bombed. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Liv Agar: http://livagar.com / http://linktr.ee/livagar Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz. http://qanonanonymous.com

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to Premium Chapter 229 of the QAA podcast, The Ritual Killer Movie Night episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Fields, and Liv Egar. Hello, everybody.

This week, we've successful. scared Travis off with a movie so good, so quality that his tiny brain could not appreciate it. We've got Liv and Jake. How are you guys doing? Fantastic. The funny thing about this this whole Travis scenario is that he did watch the movie. He watched the movie and then decided not to come on the show. Yeah. That's an amazing achievement. So here's a scenario where Travis fully planned on being in this episode. He then watched it. He then watched the movie, imagined what an episode might look like, discussing the film, and decided, hmm, you know what, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do it.

Well, it was because essentially, like, what was going to happen was us jabbering, having fun, having our goofs, having our gaffs, and then him at the end being like, um, you know, and in university, the, uh, the bell doesn't actually go off. That's, uh, I mean, realistic. Which he's right about to give him credit. He would be correct. He's always correct. That university scene that this movie opens with, I also have to say at some point, at some point in films, and I know this because in my day job, let's say, you know, where I work, you know, with independent films.

Jake is employed full-time by us. It became, it became okay to send ADR, to have actors record ADR on their phones and send it into an audio technician who tries to make it sound good. I think half of it, like the kid who's asking the questions, I think all of his dialogue is ADR, and it sounds like it was recorded on a phone. ADR has just cut in audio from outside the shot. Yeah. I do think it's him, but it's him. Such bad delivery. It's so funny.

Oh, yeah. It's, you'd have to make an effort to, I think, honestly, and we'll get into this, you know, first of all, welcome to the episode. I hope you're doing well, listener. Yeah. It's us. So here we are. So lives here. So the movie, it's a 2023 movie, brand new.

And Spank and New, it is produced by Red Box Media. Now, these are the boxes that you see outside of your 7-Eleven. You know, they now produce movies. But that's not the original money, by the way. They are funding. I'm going to get into the original funding. Okay, I can't wait for that. I think they just got that as the distributor, basically, because they couldn't get it to movies.

This is a Red Box movie. Red Box, you know, this was supposed to revolutionize the home DVD industry. And now these machines, you know, they've been abandoned. They look like you could put a couple dollars in. You might as well be called Blockbuster. Maybe get, you know, maybe get like a baggie of crack out of the little, you know, out of the little drawer at the bottom. You can?

The film stars. Crack? Morgan Freeman and Cole Houser. What debt is Morgan Freeman in? Like, oh, no, no, no. It's not that. I'm almost certain there's like money laundering stuff going on. He's definitely been doing a series of movies.

Some of them with the same gang of Italians. Let's just put it that way. So, yeah, let's get into it. Okay, okay. Go ahead. I've got things to say, but... Yeah, of course you do. And we'll have plenty of time for that.

We've got, you know, lots of clips. It's a masterpiece. It's a real piece of shit, folks. No, no, no, it's very good. This was sent in by Christopher Hawley. Congratulations. And thank you for what you did to all of us. Yeah, you're great.

So the movie was directed by George Gallo. Now, he wrote Midnight Run, which is 1988 film. He came up with a story for bad boys 1995. Seen, scene. But it says he came up with his story, so clearly they took the script away from him and he did not direct, which is why it ended up good, probably. He's a real premise guy. Yeah, he's a story. Look, A, he's one of two

cops and they're black. He's like, Hey, yo, you think my friend's a screenwriter, not true. He's a story by guy. Yeah, he's definitely a story by guy of some sort. He wrote and directed Middleman, 2009, starring Luke Wilson. I've not seen that. I don't know if you have, Jake. No, no. I remember seeing, like, the posters in the preview. Not my, not my thing. He also has some fantastic movies I've never heard of. Like, he directed and wrote 2008's My Mom's New Boyfriend. In 2001, he was the writer on C-Spot Run, a children's book. And... Well, the Triltern's book then adapted for the screen and turned into like a 30-rock-style comedy

movie. What's a Triltern? A Triltern? That's a trillion children And in 2007 he penned Codename the Cleaner starring Cedric the Entertainer Which looks like an attempt at like a A kind of spy spoof where he also like Gets pussy I guess because it's just like him

In front of like two stripper looking girls And he's like I gotta go out of Seventry The Entertainer is like a very funny person To try to build a movie around Anyways so let's just say he has some sort of rapport with Morgan Freeman, including 2021's Vanquish, which I had not heard of before. Me neither.

Has a 3.0 out of 10 on IMDB, and Gallo seems to have just a very long history of very mediocre movies. Like, that's his IMDB. It's just like, at best, he's hitting like a six. You know? Get movies made. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Jake's a solid. I'm like a 42. I'm like a 42, yeah.

4.2, 4.2. 420. He's a solid 420. I'm like a 45. I'm like a Trump presidency rated. Whereas my art films would definitely hit 69. All right. The ritual killer, 2023. Originally, they tried to name it Muti, which is like, I'm sure that the studios were like, guys, it's already bad, okay?

Can you at least give it a name that the dumb people would be able to get their little brains around? They're like, hey, we see the movies with Killer in the title. Killer. Ritual. We could talk to the people, you know, that have gone crazy after January 6th. We know there's a lot of them. Maybe they think about the rituals all day and night. Maybe we get them in on this.

The basic premise of this film is like, what if John Wick was a pedophile, I think? Like, what if he worshipped Moloch and sacrificed children? Something like that. Yeah, kind of. Or it's kind of like, and I know you sort of brought this up in the chat, live, but like, it's kind of like seven. But if Morgan Freeman only showed up to the crime scenes in seven, and then was inexplicably absent for, like, the rest of the movie. It's seven if you asked Morgan Freeman today in his mental state today to tell you what the movie's plot is while eating French fries.

That's what it is. It has garnered, it's a masterpiece, obviously. It's garnered an unfair 4.2 on IMDB, which nice. 11% on Rotten Tomatoes with an audience score of 20%. So not the critics nor the audience are into this. I don't understand. The critics are wrong. The audience is wrong, too, Jake.

Critics, 10%. Audience, 20%. They like it a little bit more. There's only one thing dumber than the audience, Jake. It's the critics. They're disgusting. They're stupid. They're vermin.

I see a lot of green splats on the screen, okay? I see a lot of ripe-looking... I don't see too many ripe-looking tomatoes, but I do see a lot of green splats, all right? Nobody likes to get slimed when they're talking about the movie, okay? Funnily enough, the, like, approach to color correction on this movie did result in greens and reds being out of control. I've never seen such a terrible job. It is very much what happens when you let, like, older Italian guys who don't know anything about anything, like oversee color correction because they're like, make it pop, make it pop. They're like, I saw a movie once.

It was all in sepia. Yeah. They think, I think in their brains, they were like, this looks like Scorsese in the 70s. Yeah. And it's like, no, it doesn't. It looks like you shot it on digital, turned the fucking saturation up way too high. and the contrast up a little too high as well. Inexplicable camera angles that start like below the ground, you know, below the ground or in the grass.

It's like a police car rolls up. They'll open on a shot like super close in on somebody with somebody out of focus in the background. The focus will then change, which in normal movies would reveal something in the background, but nothing is there. I mean, the editing is unbelievable. I mean, however, an hour and a half, Jake. Let's give them some props that the... I agree. The joy of such a good movie being so tight and perfectly woven into an hour and a half.

It's crazy how little happens in that hour and a half. I was in like an hour and 10 in. And I looked at the time and it was like there's 20 minutes like it feels like it's barely started. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no plot development here. Absolutely. And when it does develop, it's a special kind of development. Let's put it that way.

So, yeah, this is basically what happens when a giant pile of Italian Americans write a script about African black magic. So you can really imagine what we're about to get into. The original writers were Joe Lemon with two M's. Francesco Cincomani. No, no, you're fucking it up. You're fucking it up. Francesco Cinquemani. No.

Francesco Cinquemani. Francesco Cinquemani. He's an actor years ago he was, and he reinvented himself as a writer and has only written badly rated stuff. And Georgia Lemone. No, Georgia Iianone. Georgia Ianone. Oh, my God.

God, who fucking let this Jew try to come in here and tell us our names? Get him out of here! Amerigon! String a mob, ritual killing! Georgie Anone has no other credits. King. I believe she is somehow related to somebody involved in this project, potentially. And she does, however, have someone with that name on Instagram, and that person is probably not the same person, but has a very big.

So you've been listening to another episode of this is not that. This is not that. But in this case, this has big titties. Yeah. She is not her. And that is just has no IMDB credits to her day. You know some pieces. Well, I guess you in this case was like, I really like this movie.

I want to go follow all the writers on their socials. Oh, Georgia. Hello. Whoa, sweetie pie. Whoa, this good a writer and that good a rack, my own. Let's be clear. I'm being rude, obviously. That's, you know, it's wrong of me.

I atone in advance. But she's, like, one of those, like, influencers who spends all her time on vacation. Good for her. Taking photos of her beautiful assets. Okay, moving on. Then a bunch more people came on to rewrite the script or improve on it, including the original three. I can't imagine the piece of shit they picked up. Like, what is supposed to be original state.

We have Jennifer Lemons. So related to Joe, and usually a set designer before this. Okay. Luca Giliberto, which I don't, not much going on there. I don't, like, a couple of, I think there's like a couple of things, but all badly rated. Ferdinando de loombo, usually a production designer. You'll notice Jake has given up on the names because he's just, I've never seen a man fuck up Italian names that bad. Holy hell.

We're leaving it all in, by the way. Fine. And then the only non-Italian who is seven. 76 years old and called Robert T. Bower Sox, which, which, I don't know that. Hey, we need to, we need to fucking get a mick. We need to get a mic on this thing. Hey, I know Robbie, Robbie will come in. At the premiere of this when they do the, you know, sort of like panel afterwards and they're like, can you, can you tell us a little about the, um, the sort of hiring process? You know, you have a lot of writers working on the film and how did you go about, uh, selecting, you know, these, these people? And they're like, well, I, I was minding my own business and a van pulled up. The door slid open. Three guys with mask jumped out. They threw me in. Next thing I knew, I was in a writer's room. Yeah, no, it is unclear how this was done. And I tried to look into the money and try to understand because at the beginning, they, like, open up with like, Yervolino and Lady Bacardi Productions. And I was like,

okay, what the fuck is this? So I looked into it. They're like, brought to you by camel cigarette. we're bringing Hey you know what we should have a movie Bring him back Joe to Camel Yeah they took him out They fucking whacked him At least part of the money Comes from Lady Monica Bacardi

The heir to a Cuban rum dynasty Who has done a ton of plastic surgery And this younger guy Who started a company with her Andrea Yervolino And he is some sort of investor Italian playboy With like a weird network of businesses

And films he's produced in Italy And a lawsuit for sexual battery, which was dismissed, maybe an informal out of court settlement, or maybe something more sinister. We do not know, and we got to move on. Oh, we are so, we are so getting whacked for this episode. Oh, absolutely.

You think there's a ton of podcasts out there that are discussing it? You think these guys don't have Google alerts set up for anybody mentioning the movie? They're going to be like, oh, my God, a podcast, famous, you know, successful podcast, did a full rundown of the movie. I can't wait to listen. You know what's going to happen? We're going to get black bagged and whacked. Well, they live in the neighborhood of

which is where you live and his name is Jake So find him and Un fucking believable. His full name is Jake's his address Avenue I guess. I mean, we're doing the whole thing But just listen, hey, if you're

in the mob, hit me up. I'll, I got you. I'll give you the uncensored version. I'm happy after my previous episode of where I'm obviously going to get whacked by like Wagner. Oh, yeah, you're going to, well, that's the, that's what you want, is Wagner and, like, and the, the mob, they meet at the door and they can't get through. They get, like, stuck in the doorway together and they end up killing each other.

It's like your version of home alone, but, like, the only traps you set up, like, are intended to, like, break their toes. I like that that would make the, who's the other guy? It's like only toe-breaking traps. Pesci's the mob, but the other guy, he would be Wagner. Daniel Stern. So we need Daniel Stern to be, like, a rough. Mirk.

He could do that. He could probably... He could definitely do that. He could pull that off. Okay. So the movie that seems to unite these people is the poison rose, which also sounds... Like, all of these sounds like the movie Christopher made in the Sopranos, the cleaver or whatever. I was just going to, you stole that joke for me.

I thought about that last night where I was like, oh, I'm going to make a joke on the episode where that I say that this screenplay feels like Christopher Maltesanti wrote it. But you've stolen this from me. Apologies. It's fine. Listen. Great minds think alike. You're not one of our people. I want to make it clear, okay?

That's another very badly rated film starring Travolta with an insane set of plugs. And Freeman, again. So this has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 20% audience scores. So it may somehow be worse than this one. And you know what? Maybe we'll have to watch that piece of shit too.

I mean, beautiful movie. I think they've got guns to the heads of the same 20%. You know, it's like... No, everyone's getting something here. Let me tell you. Yeah, it's like 20% for all our audience scores are all 20%. I found one reviewer musing about The Ritual Killer.

What sort of nutty compromises were reached to get financing here, there, and everywhere, and round up this cast. Did it start life as an Italian thriller or Mississippi Tax Incentive Project or both? Which is a good question. The cast is actually pretty stacked. We've got Vernon Davis, former NFL star, as Randoku, who's the bad guy. Detective Lucas Boyd, played by Cole Houser, who was in Yellowstone. You also would, you also, I recognize him as the, he's the police officer who's

escorting Riddick in pitch black, the first, the first Riddick movie. Copy that. And Morgan Freeman, of course, as Dr. Mackles, which I believe, like, it's so crazy because it sounds often like the actors are doing a first pass at the script while they're acting. So sometimes they'll fuck up a pronunciation and fix it. later in the movie. Like the same character will say the name wrong and then later right. So, yeah, this was definitely like a one take Jake type situation here.

And then we've got a few other people filling in. We got Muriel Iler as Detective Kirsch. You know, there's talent here, Giuseppe Zeno as Mario Lavazzi, which is very funny because you think Italians would come up with a better name than like a name that just sounds like one of the big coffee brands. Mario Wapolini. Hey, Frank Tortolini It's just pasta names

For the last names Also, continuing on this Lemon family thing The Lemon Kid was cast As that little boy Who's just like sniffling and crying That poor boy That poor boy, what did they do to him? I thought maybe they were going to shave him

But he ended up getting murdered They cut his dick off, folks The movie's mostly set in Clinton, Mississippi Which is just labeled Mississippi USA went on screen. I really think they think the viewer is. I looked up Clinton City and the Clinton City PD and the entire population of that town

is 27,000 people, basically. So, yeah, I don't know. I guess it makes sense to not focus on that or something. So we open on a parade going down the street, a bunch of people in the red costumes, noisy, we see a cop behind the wheel. It's Boyd, Houser. And Boyd is on his way somewhere.

We don't know yet. And then we cut to this middle-aged Italian man, kind of awkwardly making his way down a set of metal stairs. Like every action scene, you can see the physical awkwardness of the actors, as if they're trying to do this for the first time or just... They're tired. They're not cut out for this. Then he's sort of like hunched over as he scans these big warehouse rooms,

and he eventually runs into a dead woman in a pool of blood. And other cops coming in through another door, which seemed like he'd never, he didn't need to do any of the climbing because they're just coming in like seconds after him. And they're even closer to the woman. So her neck has been slid. And there's a bunch of, like, what I would describe as an Italian man as a voodoo-looking stuff around her. We're talking skulls.

We're talking pools of blood. Candles. In a circle. Candles. And all of this is in Rome, Italy. So the movie is split between Rome, Italy and Clinton, Mississippi. Like I said, the saturation has turned so high that you can see greens in skin tones. You can see every burst blood vessel in poor Mr. Hauser.

Who, by the way, looks like Stephen Seagall in this movie. He looks like. He also is heading towards Seagal because he spends a lot of the movies sitting down or getting into cars and grunting while he doesn't. I don't know if they told him like you've got to be put upon, but he's not even that old. He's not even 50.

No. Bro, I mean, all I have to say is, I hope to see you at the meetings, brother. That's all I have to say about the situation here with Hauser. So, okay, yeah, like the Mississippi River looks just straight up green. Like once Freeman comes on screen, his liver spots on his face are green.

Well, the movie was... A lot of things are green. The movie was graciously shot in 4K, which I was surprised was an option when I rented it. Yeah, and you want to see all those details of how badly they fucked up the color. So, yeah, so they did the fake grade and insane saturation approach

to try to get that 70s mob movie look. And so, okay, so first scene where we see something actually happening is Morgan Freeman. He is a college professor of African Studies at Millsap College. And his name is Dr. Mackles. And here is the opener of his lecture in which we are treated to this script.

There is an impossibly fine line between sanity and madness. And it's not always possible to know which side of that line we're standing on. The violence between disparate sides is not endemic to this culture. It is endemic to all. cultures. We are again tribes. But defining our tribe is not as simple as the black people

born under the sun or the white people born under the moon. Our division is wrong of us against right self. And this division does not rest simply on an unfamiliarity with a tribe other than our own, steeper than that. This is, it is very funny to make a, first of all, a very ailing and frail looking. Morgan Freeman reads such amazing shit as white people born into the southern black people, or the opposite white people weren't on the moon. It's so crazy. And right as he says tribes, they cut to an African American student in the audience.

This is like what the people who cut humanities funding think goes on in humanities classes. Is this what you guys are doing there? If you think about war, it always happens. And we always return back to our primitive, you know. It's almost like it's in our nature. If you think about white people, we're a nighttime people born under the moon. But the blacks is the sun. That's what turns them that way.

It's so funny. That is the opening line of the movie. And it's so patently insane that anybody. This is a 2023 film. I mean, amazing. This is interrupted by a Zoomer question as, like, what if a 60-year-old wrote what, like, a Zoomer college student would be like in a class, delivered with such enthusiasm.

Let's just put it that way. Here it is. Sir, yes. It's the 21st century, Dr. Mackles. With my phone, I can learn about any culture on the planet. I'm a Google search away from knowing everything about a belief system. in 20 minutes. You have been listening to a sample

of a premium episode of QAnon Anonymous. We don't run any advertising on the show and we'd like to keep it that way. For five bucks a month, you'll get access to this episode, a new one each week,

and our entire library of premium episodes. So head on over to patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous and subscribe. Thank you. Thanks. I love you.

Jake loves you. I don't know.