The Big Picture - ‘Hubie Halloween’ and 25 Horror Movies Classics

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

In the terrifying year of 2020, we needed our horror correspondent to weigh in on the state of the genre, so Chris Ryan joins Sean to talk about the new Adam Sandler Netflix vehicle ‘Hubie Halloween,’ the best horror flicks of the year so far, and 20 underrated scary movie classics. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's almost time, kids. The clock is ticking. Be in front of your TV sets for the Horror-Thon. 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. I'm Sean Fennessey and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about horror movies. It's almost Halloween and so I had to bring in our horror correspondent. It's Spooky Chris Ryan. What's up, Chris? Sean Fennessey! On today's show, we're going to be talking about horror movies in the terrifying year

of 2020, the new Adam Sandler Netflix vehicle, Hubie Halloween, and 20 underrated scary movie classics. It's all coming up on The Big Picture. CR, thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you, man. Of course, man. This is our favorite time of year in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think last year we had a conversation like this too, right? Maybe around the release of Midsommar about what's going on with horror movies, what are horror movies now.

The world has gotten certainly more horrifying in the last 12 months since we had a conversation like this. But before we get into lists and the Adam Sandler movie, I kind of wanted to take your temperature on where you think the genre is at right now. Well, I don't know that we can say for sure because I'm not sure what horror movies we're not getting, right? I don't know what movies maybe are getting delayed release that didn't get the festival bump that they needed from South by or any of the summer festivals that might have happened. So it's hard to say.

But I would say that I find my appetite for horror pretty much the same as it was any other year. I don't necessarily find it as festive outside. You know, I don't know that for one thing in Los Angeles, it's 90 degrees. So it doesn't really feel like Halloween. But for another, I just, everybody's inside. So I don't think the decorations have really started to go up yet. I don't know that. I don't really spend a lot of time in the candy aisle at my Rite Aid. You know what I mean? What do you think? Well, I know you're a big costume guy. I know you like to

dress up just on any old Wednesday. So this must be strange for you to not be able to dress up as a giant clown and run through the streets on October 31st. Yes, sexy pharaoh. That's me. Yeah, I agree. I think it's a little bit strange to not feel the Halloween in the Halloween season. But I don't necessarily associate horror just with Halloween.een it's definitely a 12 month a year genre for me um and it's a 12 month a year i think for the industry too halloween is when we are allowed to watch nothing but horror for like a month and not seem like we should be committed yes i appreciate my wife creating a dispensation for me to be able to watch some of the most vile things imaginable on film for several consecutive days um I'm on quite a run right now, catching up on stuff, seeing stuff for the first time.

A lot of it is very gross or very disturbing. And you're right. There's like, we psychologically grant ourselves the right to do this at this period, which is pretty weird. Come on, honey. It's early October. Let's watch this person get torn to pieces. Yeah. Anyhow, what about from the year so far in terms of the movies that have been released? Have there been any that you've actually liked from this genre? Yeah, I've seen a couple of things on demand

that I thought were pretty cool. Some of them were like late 19 things that finally got released this year. I think that you and I were really looking forward to seeing a bunch of stuff in Texas at South By, which was the, Oh, maybe we'll go to Austin, right? Like right as quarantine was starting to become really apparent. And as the magnitude of the situation was dawning on us. So I, I really don't know. Have you seen anything

in 2020 that you think is like really stellar? You know, I wanted to ask from hosts really, right? Right. So I think that that's, I think that's where we should take this conversation, which is a couple of years ago, I did this horror Oscars gimmick on the site where I picked my favorite, what I thought was the best horror movie of every year since 1979. And I liked the idea of kind of continuing to hand out that award every year. And so looking at kind of what would be the five contenders from each year. But as you say, most of the movies of that are sort of noisy studio movies have been pushed back. Candyman, for example, Nia DaCosta's remake reimagining of that classic is not coming out now until next year. That's a bummer. I think

a lot of people were looking forward to it. I was looking forward to it. We got a few things, you know, we got, we got the invisible man, we got relic. Um, there've been a couple of movies on shutter, like shutter originals, one of which I'll talk about later in the show, but like blood We got The Invisible Man. We got Relic. There have been a couple of movies on Shudder, like Shudder Originals, one of which I'll talk about later in the show. But like Blood Quantum, which I talked about on this show, Z, The Beach House,

that I think are all worth recommending, but I wouldn't say are on the order of hereditary or something like that. You know, we haven't had a movie like that that feels like it's a little bit of a moment, a little bit of a movement, announces a new filmmaker in a loud and noisy way. I don't know. Host is really interesting. I think the last time the show was just you and I, we talked about Host. And it kind of feels like it has the belt for horror movies in 2020, if only by circumstance.

Yeah. I think that you mentioned all those other, like Invisible Man, et cetera. I would throw The Lodge in there. I would throw The Rental in there. There were some pretty solid doubles to left, but The Host was the one where I was just like, I'll watch it again. I'm going to recommend it to all my friends.

I'm going to try and get people who don't ordinarily watch horror movies to check it out. And especially if we're talking about 2020 horror movies, it is a movie that could only have been made this year. Do you think that that's a movie that's going to stand the test of time or is only resonating with people because we're all looking at screens all day? No, I think it will. I think it's going to be a good time capsule movie for sure. But I think that there are some things that it does. And you talked about this with Alex Ross Perry, which was an amazing conversation if people haven't checked it out. And I think some of the stuff he said towards the end of your

conversation will influence what we're about to talk about today. But I think that you guys talked a little bit about the technology and the storytelling that it employs and how it seems to be a step forward, like an evolution in what could we do with the collective psychology of what's going on with people. And that's, what's awesome about horror movies is that I feel like unlike any other genre, it really taps into how people are feeling at any given time about certain things, you know, it has at least that capacity. Yeah. I I'm thinking about how I've been beating myself up with these kinds of movies over the last 20 days or so. Um, you know, one of the big movies that was released this month that I haven't had a chance to talk

about on the show yet is called Possessor, which is the second film from Brandon Cronenberg, who is, of course, David Cronenberg's son, who makes arguably an even more extreme version of body horror than his father. And Possessor is available in some films and in some drive-ins and movie theaters right now, but I think it's coming to VOD in november i talked to brandon last week about his movie it's kind of an amazing but deeply disturbing movie and it kind of raises the question of kind of what you want from this genre you know do you want extremity do you want chills you know the kind of classic universal horror monster movie chills do you want some comedy like the wolf of snow hollow just came out the jim cummings i really like that yeah it was

fun um it was you know for uh i wrote about thunder road a couple of years ago which was uh jim's directorial debut and a movie he wrote and starred in and um was really kind of an indie hit um speaking of south by southwest and this is sort of a sequel follow-up. The character has a lot in common with the character from Thunder Road. And it's kind of a riff on monster movies and it's kind of a riff on small town movies. You know, what did you like about it?

I thought the sense of humor, he just has a very unique voice. And while some people might be like, oh, it seems like this is essentially Thunder Road Part 2. It almost feels like, I don't know, I kind of wish this movie had come out

15 months or 18 months after Thunder Road rather than, I think, what is it, two years? Two or three years? So, but it has a sensibility that is just a very unique way of interpreting the world around you and the way of writing characters,

especially the main character that Jim plays. So if you had to choose, what do you think is the winner of the horror Oscar this year? Oh, it's Host. Yeah, I don't think it's really much of a debate. The thing is, though, I mean, you talk about why you're doing this to yourself and these vile, demented movies that we're watching. But don't you think part of the fun about horror is that it's such a big tent? I think it's unfairly... Actually, it doesn't get enough credit for being able to encompass so many different things. When I looked at the list of movies that I'm going to recommend to you and to our listeners, I was thinking about how many are horror in name only sometimes.

And it might go under the horror genre classification in a streaming service, or it might be on Shudder. But it actually has more in common with a domestic drama, or a kind of 80s adventure movie, or something like that. And that's one of my favorite parts of horror, is that you can get these movies made because you call it a horror movie, and maybe you have a slasher, or a monster, or something hiding under the bed, or a vampire, but you can do all sorts of different stuff for this genre. Yeah. And I think, I mean, for me personally, I think this is true for you too. I like all of them. I like all of the iterations. You know, there are some people who only like slasher movies. There's some people, you know, Bill, obviously when we talk about horror movies is obsessed with that, there's something wrong with the house movies. You know, that's a,

he's a big from hell guy too yeah yes yes and those movies are good but they're no more good than found footage movies than movies that are about ancient you know spirits from foreign countries they're no better than you know the the sort of quote-unquote elevated horror which is not a phrase that i like but i like those movies just as much as i like cannibal holocaust just as much as I like Cannibal Holocaust, just as much as I like The Wolf of Snow Hollow. I think all of that stuff is effective. And part of it is because what you're saying, it's like there's more flexibility in this genre than in virtually any genre that we have right now, which is kind of fascinating. It's principally because you can get these movies made. Because if you go and you say,

hey, I need $3 million or $2 million to make this, but it is going to be able to be sold as a horror movie. And weirdos like us, when we're looking in different carousels of streaming services or on iTunes, or even if we just find out that there's something coming out briefly theatrically, we'll just say like, oh, is it a horror movie? I'll just check it out. Yeah. No, I agree with that. And you're sort of the signal figure in my life who just is willing to try anything. You're just willing to turn on anything on VOD. Yeah, me and my wife Phoebe and I will watch almost any horror movie. And especially if it's on one of the streaming services we have a subscription to, we'll just give it a chance. And you can pretty

much tell within five to 10 minutes whether or not it's just an unwatchable, whether it's unwatchable or not. And it's usually down to the performances of the writing or it just looks like a bunch of people who are on below deck Mediterranean, but are for some reason snowboarding and getting attacked. But if it's not that, chances are that it's going to be a pretty interesting 90 minutes, at least in terms of just like stimulating certain, you know, parts of your brain. Yeah. I'm fond of saying that I'm completely dead inside and this is a way to make me feel something. Um, it's a little bit unfair, I think for us to, to give out the horror Oscar officially before the year is out. Cause there are a few more movies coming out that I'm, you know,

looking forward to talking about that. I don't know. I don't think you've had a chance to see these, but Justin Simeon has a movie who you've talked to on the watch before, actually, Dear White People Creator. Yeah. He's got a movie called Bad Hair that debuted at Sundance that's coming to Hulu this week. I think actually when this episode goes live, that is very fun and very clearly very influenced by 70s and 80s horror and is also very good social critique or obviously in a wave kind of post get out of social critique appearing in horror movies which is another added benefit of the genre and then justin benson and aaron moorehead i do you like their movies love their movies okay so their new one is really interesting um i think it

premiered at tiff last year it's called synchronic stars anthony mackie and your boy jamie dornan um yeah it's two cops and there is a kind of time travel element to it it's more hard science fiction than it is horror but it has some horrifying elements so it sounds a little bit more like they made a movie called endless that has elements of like that horror sci-fi like what's happening in this world right now very much in the same vein they're they're kind of sister movies and then i think for the real heads the the horror movie event of the year is going to be uh brian bertino's the dark and the wicked which i've already got i've already gotten a note from your wife about this film that she she would like to see this so that's how that's how i know that it we're all

it's it's it's operating it's percolating in a serious way uh this. So that's how I know that it's operating, it's percolating in a serious way. This is just one of the most depraved movies I've seen in a long time. Brian Bertino, for those of you who don't know, made The Strangers, which might be the most upsetting horror movie of the 21st century. One of the most fuck-me-up movies ever.

Yes. So, for some reason, that movie is not coming out until the first or second week of november and in a way it almost feels like it feels like a fuck you to nerds who are like it's time to watch horror movies in october it's like cool you think we're done with horror movies this month we're not happy thanksgiving yeah yeah exactly um and it is a domestic drama in a way that that explores uh the pain of memory in a family. So what's better for Thanksgiving time than that? So that's The Dark and the Wicked.

Maybe you can come back, Chris, and just talk about how that scooped out your soul. Probably peeling my wife off the ceiling by that point. Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about Hubie Halloween. Yeah. You ready to talk about it? Sure.

Sure. I watched it? Sure. Sure. I watched it last day. I don't know if there are any living humans who are not familiar with Hubie Halloween at this point. This is the latest Adam Sandler Netflix comedy. It's directed by Stephen Brill, who's responsible for some of the goofier Adam Sandler movies, the little Nickies of the world. I see this movie as a return to form. I don't know if that's a compliment necessarily, but I will say that I really, really enjoyed it because I felt as if one, I watched it thinking I was never going to talk about it on a podcast.

Two, I needed a breather on a Friday night yeah three i i wanted that feeling that you were describing of people running through the streets wearing costumes on halloween night and uh this movie delivers in that respect and for adam sandler is a god to me so um i found this to be while very stupid a very charming movie but that also felt like it was seven hours long what did you think of Hubie Halloween? I thought I was on mushrooms while I was watching this. So I think because of the casting, there is seriously every single person in Hollywood is in this movie for 27 seconds. And you're like, wait, is this a character or is this a walk-on?

And most of them are walk-ons, but they are walk-ons that seem to have little to no relationship with one another. So they are part of a tapestry of characters that are living in contemporary Salem where Hubie is kind of a, I don't know, like a bullied but lovable guy who lives with his mom and loves Halloween, but is mostly like a big rule follower

and is kind of always looking out for everybody else and is inexplicably the apple of Julie Bowen's eye. That is the most curious part of this movie, how much,

how horny Julie Bowen is for QB Halloween. The most curious part of this movie is what Ray Liotta is doing in it. And whether or not Ray Liotta is doing in it. And whether or not Ray Liotta is going to

come up on charges from an Italian-American association for what he does in this film. I choose to see QB Halloween as part of the

extended Goodfellas universe and that this is Ray. This is where Henry Hill randomly wound up. Yes, he's reprising Henry Hill. This is when he got sent yes he's reprising henry hill this is when when he got sent to witness protection he got sent to this small massachusetts town

where hubie is the uh halloween volunteer safety coordinator and um for some reason henry hill just just does not appreciate hubie there's so many moments where like a pretty famous person or a great actor like there's a steve buscemi walks on the screen and you're just like, holy shit, Steve Buscemi's in this movie and he just makes a fart joke immediately. And you're just like, okay. But yeah, it's very sweet. It is very autumnal. They actually did a pretty good job creating this fall New England town vibe. I'm sure they shot it in Culver city but it looks it looks really good and i i i'm not like a huge adam sandler guy

so i can't speak to its return to form or not but uh yeah it does feel very long what's up with that um i mean the more the merrier can you can you tell me about uh june squibb's t-shirts how you felt about what she was rocking in this movie boner donor just some incredible sight gags of june squibb who plays hubie's mother uh june squibb who's like 90 years old and still crushing it she has appeared in the two biggest comedies of 2020 i'm talking of course about palm springs and hubie halloween yeah and she wears a t-shirt that says boner donor this. This is, what a time we're living in. You know, some things about 2020

have been horrible and some of them have been wonderful. Do you think that this is a popular film, right? Well, we only have the Netflix metrics

to base it on, but I presume a lot of people are watching it, yes. Yeah, me too. Why do you ask that? I couldn't tell, like, I just, it seems like

these movies are a little tossed off, the Adam Sandler Netflix ones. But at the same time, I feel like it's not like he took Netflix's money to make a Fellini movie. He's just like, what is the PG fart joke? All of my friends get a check. We come through.

We knock this one out in six weeks. We did a mailbag last week on the show and someone asked us who's, which actor's career and life would we most want to have? And I thought hard about it and tried to have some sort of sophisticated, like, you know, generous to the world idea. Yeah. And I was like, Paul Newman, you know, Paul Newman, great actor, good looking guy, great salad dressing, stable marriage. But yeah, but also like Paul Newman you know Paul Newman great actor good looking guy great salad dressing stable marriage um but yeah but also like you know he created all of these great charities and and he gives all this money away based on this this wonderful salad dressing company that he created um and Amanda was like Adam Sandler and she was right that was the right answer because

Adam Sandler um just makes projects that either interest him intellectually or that give him an opportunity. And this is, these, these happen more frequently, give him an opportunity to hang out with his friends and family, spend a global corporation's money and make fart jokes and have basketball courts built on set so that he can just shoot hoops while he makes you be Halloween.

Yeah. I mean, Chris, who among us, like who I'm, I'm not above a fart Yeah. I mean, Chris, who among us? Like, I'm not above a fart joke if I could have that lifestyle, you know? So, you know, respect to Hubie Halloween and all of the complete weirdness that comes with it. Should we take a quick break and then get to some recommendations?

Sure. Chris, we're back. We're going to recommend to the listeners a gang of horror movies. And we're going to try to do this in a coherent way. Now, if you want to hear about movies that are well understood, if you want to hear about Get Out, we did a Rewatchables on that.

If you want to hear about The Conjuring, we did a Rewatchables on that. We've talked about some classics. We're going to have a classic on the rewatchables coming up later this month that i'm excited to talk with you and bill about but these are a little bit more under the fingernails these movies that we're going to talk about they they're not they're not utterly obscure but in order to understand like why people should watch them you came up with a i thought was a great idea for pitching these movies. So what's the premise here? Well, my favorite part of horror movies is the setup. My favorite

part is the way in which they introduce the people who are going to go through these terrible experiences nine times out of 10. So what we're going to do is recommend movies based on their situations, their premises, their setups. Okay. So for example, if I was going to recommend Hubie Halloween with this structure, I would say that nerd from high school that we all knew wasn't so bad. Maybe I should see what he's up to. Yes. Can we say- That is basically what Hubie Halloween is. Yes, absolutely. Now, I just want to say a little bit about my list. And I don't know if you have any opening remarks about yours. And I'm not going to spoil anything about the movies i picked but like you said

not picking exorcist not picking you know anything that where it's like this is not a list of what we think are the greatest horror movies ever made i specifically wanted to do something special for this pod because you know a lot of my movies are pulled from essentially the 2005, 2008 to 2018, 19, 20, our current moment. And the reason why I chose that specific moment or that time span is because that's right when video stores collapsed. At the beginning of that is when people stop really going to video stores for the most part you get the netflix deliveries and then right around 2010 11 we start pretty much using streaming whether it's itunes or netflix or what have you and now we're living in a moment where we have streaming services entirely dedicated to horror movies and hulu

has like a pretty huge vertical of horror films but i do think that there is sort of an absence of the curatorial voice there's an absence of the weird guy at the video store who's like hey I see you rent these movies all the time would you you should check this one out and a lot you know you talked to Alex Ross Perry last last week I think about this you know independent film is in very sadly collapsing in a lot of ways and the joy of independent film is to find these things that just aren't in your theaters, that aren't in the multiplexes, that maybe not a lot of people know about, but still appeal to your basest movie-loving instincts. A lot of independent

films that you and I like are gangster movies, are rom-coms, are horror movies. It's just that they were made for really low budgets and made really out of love on a DIY basis. And so a lot of the movies that I picked are smaller, indie fare, pretty much only made it to VOD, but I think people would really enjoy if they haven't seen them already. I love that as a premise. I tried to do something similar in spirit, but different in execution, which is I wanted to try to capture the gamut as much as I could of horror movies over the last 70,

60 years with a focus really on the last 40 years. And I wanted to also just point out that there are so many places to go and find these movies and that that curation, it frankly takes a lot of work so each movie that i chose is available in a different destination so there'll be 10 different places you

can go to check out these movies for at most 390 299 and at least free so there's tons of access to this stuff that is you know many of which is forgotten um that i think people should be checking out and probably wouldn't be disappointed by if they don't want to check out The Exorcist for the 10th time. Right.

So do you want to go with your number 10? Okay. Maybe read the setup and then give us the movie. How does that sound? Yeah. Okay.

My number 10 is me and my boys decided to drive an RV across Texas searching for extreme haunted houses. This is a film I just watched this week called The Houses October Built. So on Wednesday night, I was sitting around. This is always like a really weird thing when this happens.

But Wednesday is not like a horror movie night typically in the Ryan household household but you know it's not a lot going on so is it more of like a bickram yoga night like what are you doing on wednesdays no it's like let's watch borgen and and eat popcorn but it's it's not like i don't think it's like a moment to be terrified it's hump day you know what i mean usually it's more that's more of like a friday saturday kind of thing but we we were you know it's it's october we're both big horror movie fans so i said you know i just found this like on on hulu it's on hulu um it got like weird reviews but it sounds kind of cool it's this movie called the house is october built came out in um 2014 directed by a guy named bobby row it is a found footage horror movie and you and and Alex Ross-Perry were talking about found footage horror movies.

I'm trying to go in my bag on this list for my found footage. There is something about the found footage genre that I think brings out really naturalistic performances from the actors involved, even if you've never heard of them and never hear from them again.

You remember back when we saw Blair Witch, I mean, you just really did think Heather was a real person. You know what I mean? You really just believed that you were watching something that someone found. How's this October, Bill? How's some mixed reviews? But I have to say that on Wednesday night at midnight when this movie finished, it gave me a similar feeling to the way I felt the first time I saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's about a group of friends who decide to make a kind of road documentary. They rent an RV and they drive across Texas looking for extreme haunted houses. And it's a mixture of the doc footage that they shoot, which I think is really pulled from interviews

with people who work at haunted houses. And this story of them looking for this secret underground haunted house that you have to have like a password for that winds up they eventually find um and it keeps getting more and more intense and the scares are so they feel so real because there's something about like i think think driving is specifically across Texas. I mean, this is even something that gets kind of captured in Nocturnal Animals, but like that feeling of like, nobody really knows where we are

and no one knows we're out here and no one knows to like check on us and just anything can happen. And the movie just basically continues to ratchet up the sort of dread and tension and scares until it kind of has almost unbearable last 30 minutes in terms of how scary it is.

So if people are wanting to just absolutely knock their own heads off, I would start here. I have never heard of this movie. I've certainly never seen it. I've never heard of anybody in the cast.

Yep. It feels like it came out of nowhere. Did you make this movie yourself so you could recommend it? Well, this is the thing is that sometimes when you hear about the premises for these movies you're like why did i think of that you know what i mean because you couldn't make a hollywood film based on this necessarily but like this is something that people do like you know especially in california you have a lot of like uh the movie business out here so i think that there's a lot of resources

in terms of special effects and obviously performers out here. So you see like there are some pretty advanced, elegant haunted houses and haunting experiences that they do out here, or at least they did when there wasn't COVID. So I'm familiar with like them, put people pushing boundaries on this,

but the idea of like, what's it like in West Texas or East Texas when they do this, it's fucking messed up. But I really recommend this movie if you're looking for something pretty hard. I'm surprised you haven't recommended this to me before because you've been hosting

Extreme Haunted House Hunters on TLC for a decade. So I would have thought this might have come up. I know, The Ringer's just my day job. That's a good one. I'll have to check that out. And that's the thing is like, maybe we'll recommend something to each other that we should both see because we're not always sharing what works. And frankly, our taste is a little bit different. Yeah. You know, like I think we don't necessarily have the exact same taste. I think I realized this as

I was making my list and I was thinking about what the premises or the pitches are for my list. And they're a little bit more political than I was expecting. And maybe I'm completely poisoned by the moment and what we're going through in the country right now. But you just watch dueling town halls like a G, man. You know, I feel I feel great about having skipped both of those town halls. That was one of the best things I did for myself. You know that you had two flat screens, one for each eyeball, and you were just like, Savannah Guthrie, you go get them.

That is not true, Chris. There have been times when I have had that kind of engagement with our political process, but last night was not one of them. However, speaking of the political process, the movie I'm going to recommend is a 2020 release. It's available on Shudder right now here's the premise protest matters here's why the movie is called La

Llorona this is not the curse of La Llorona which was a 2019 Warner Brothers spin-off from the Conjuring Universe that movie is okay this movie is a little different this is a Guatemalan movie this is a movie that speaks to the La Llorona mythology,

but wends in the historical genocidal actions of certain figures in Guatemala's history. And it's a very disturbing, quiet, and beautifully made movie. And essentially it captures the story of a woman who is um and her family who are killed uh by the guatemalan military and then very quickly fast forwards 30 years into the future where the general who was responsible for the genocide is put on trial and we start to see on the trial that the sort of the ghosts of Guatemala's past and the people that this general killed unjustly start to haunt him and his family.

And then it becomes a kind of haunted house movie in which protest is like the haunting. And so the general is found guilty, but then for some technical reason, he gets off, he's acquitted. And his home is surrounded by protesters who are protesting his acquittal. And there's this combination of this ghostly presence in the house and these protesters surrounding the house and hearing in the far distance their protests that creates like a new kind of haunted house that I'd never really seen before in a movie. It's made by this guy named Jairo Bustamente. I hope I'm getting the pronunciation of his name correct.

But it's available on Shudder. I think it premiered at TIFF last year. Certainly one of the most artful horror films I've seen in the last five years. It's a little bit, it's not going to be quite as scare a minute as everything else that we're going to talk about here. It's a very meticulously made and in some respects, slow film, but so good. So, so well done. I just watched it and I'm excited that I got a chance to talk about it here. Have you seen that one yet? No, I can't wait. I have it on my list for Shudder, but I haven't checked it out yet.

It's very good. I've sung Shudder's praises over and over again on this show, but they do such a good job, especially with new horror films. They have great taste curating new stuff. So that's number 10. What's number nine for you? I have a movie that's streaming on Netflix. The premise is the guidebook says you can't miss the Paris catacombs, but I don't think this is what they meant by that. It's as above, so below. Yeah, I know this one. This one is just like, I really like there's something wrong underground movies. Love the descent.

This is not maybe on the level of that. I think Neil Marshall's descent is one of the great horror movies probably of the century, but this is not that. This is not as good as that but it is a nice combination of exorcist mysticism with kind of uh and i would say alien like in terms of aliens but in terms i mean in terms of the aesthetic of like being trapped somewhere with you know an evil being and it's just basically about these uh people who for reasons that are far

too complicated to get into decide to they need to go look looking for this uh artifact in the paris catacombs like the sewer system underneath paris and um the graves that are underneath paris and that is actually like usually a tourist attraction you can do those tours but uh this was like this gets really really really intense uh in the last hour of it and i it's on netflix and it's like a it's like a really good c plus scare like horror movie i i remember liking that movie i remember liking the premise i remember thinking it was like kind of exactly what it said on the label which is that's the other thing about horror movies is you need them to you need them to live up to their their low stakes yeah and i think um a lot of horror is is location based and is even if you can't necessarily shoot a horror film um

you know outside of the empire state building or something i think that the uh the idea that there are these two people and they're Americans living in Paris for various reasons and that you get a lot of atmosphere out of the Parisian scene from this movie. So it's really quite fun. That's a good one. My next recommendation, here's the premise. I've got unfinished business in my hometown.

I should go back and explore a traumatic event from my childhood. This is every movie. This is something I would not recommend anyone do. I'm talking, of course, about Salem's Lot, which is technically a miniseries, but I think is best experienced as a movie, a three-hour mega movie directed by Toby Hooper, who, of course course is the man behind Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist, a number of other horror classics. It's not often cited among his work because it originally aired on television. It's an adaptation of the book that

Stephen King has called his favorite novel that he's written. And it's a vampire classic and features, I think, probably the single scariest moment that has ever appeared on broadcast television, which is the sort of the big reveal at the window in this movie. I don't want to say any more for spoiling it for people who haven't seen it. I think for some people, this will be a very known quantity and other people, it will be like a hidden gem. It's available for $2.99. You can get it on Apple right now. It's well worth it given the length and scope of the story.

And given the fact that it's like, everyone is very overqualified here. You know, James Mason and Bonnie Bedelia and David Soule. It's a lot of people who are like, at that time were, if not very successful, had achieved a lot.

And it's not utterly faithful to the book. Is this pre-Die Hard or post-Die Hard Bedelia? I believe it's pre. I want the book. Is this pre Die Hard or post Die Hard Bedelia? I believe it's pre. I want to say this is 79. Okay. So pre Holly Gennaro. Yes. Pre Holly Gennaro.

Bonnie Bedelia when she was more in her ingenue phase before she had moved on to mom phase. Gotcha. And this is a really good companion with what we do in the shadows. Oh, good call. It's a, it's a story about a vampire and his familiar. And the idea of the familiar, I think became clear to me when I was watching Salem's lot as a kid.

And this is a really scary, really well done, really down the middle Stephen King thing. There's so many Stephen King things now, and there are only going to be more in the future, as we know, in the aftermath of it and castle Rock and everything that's happened in the last five years.

But I still think this is one of the best. And it also has a kind of, it has the kind of dark core that I think you don't usually get a chance to see. And there've been so many miniseries adaptations of his works over the years. Some are good. Some are less good.

I have a fondness for the stand, for example, the Gary Sinise The Stand. But this is actually a really well-made movie by a gifted filmmaker. So, Salem's Lot. Are you looking forward

to the CBS All Access reboot of The Stand? Yes, although the new mutants from Josh Boone has me slightly concerned. Just the reception

of that film. I am looking forward to the Salem's Lot remake, which I think is happening in 2022. We'll see if, I think that's going to come from some of the folks who were responsible for the Conjuring universe. Oh, cool. So hopefully that will be something to look forward to.

Okay. What's next for you? Okay. The zombie revolution will be heard over talk radio uh this is uh this is pontypool uh this is a 2008 canadian film that is uh a really amazing example of what you can do with very little with a horror movie and they basically embrace the low budget um aspects of this movie it's about about a Don Imus-esque radio DJ in rural Canada

who's on the air the morning that a strange, I guess it's kind of like a linguistic oral virus starts to spread that is very zombie-like, although the director of the film, Bruce McDonald,

has stressed that it's not zombies. It's supposed to be like a pandemic. An oral virus, you say? AU. When you hear these certain words, basically, it triggers a brain chemistry response that makes you into a zombie. So not crabs? No. We're not talking about Michael Douglas.

So it has, the writer of the script and the book that it was based on, Tony Burgess, specifically, I think, did base it kind of off of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds and the idea of hearing about this rather than seeing it. And a lot of what you wind up being able to see is only from these three characters

who are stuck inside of this small radio station in rural Canada. And it's just fucking awesome. It's such a great movie. And it's one of those that I think if you had done it in... If this had been Harrison Ford and it was a small town in Wyoming

and Zemeckis had made it, I think it could have been a huge movie. But it is really cool the way they did it. you know, uh, Harrison Ford and it was a small town in Wyoming and, you know, Zemeckis had made it. I think it could have been like a huge movie, but it is really cool the way they did it. Steven McHattie plays the, uh, the radio DJ. I don't know.

Have you ever seen Pontypool? I have seen it. Um, not since, you know, Oh nine, 2010. It was a movie that I think was on Netflix for a long time.

Yeah. I think that's when I originally saw it. Yeah. So it's on Apple. Now you can just get it for a couple bucks. That's a great one. Okay, I think that's when I originally saw it. Yeah, so it's on Apple now. You can just get it for a couple bucks. That's a great one. Okay, Chris, number eight. More politics.

It sure seems like the 2020 election is a witch hunt. How does it compare to the past? I'm recommending 1968's Witchfinder General. Witchfinder General?

Are you familiar with this film? No, it sounds like a poster that should be in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Well, I have some news to share with you. One, we've changed your title at The Ringer to Witchfinder General. This is your new post and your job is to hunt and hang witches because that is what the Witchfinder General in this film does. That figure is played by the late, great Vincent Price. This

is not quite in the Roger Corman-style Richard Vincent Price kind of a film. It's a bit more English. It's a bit more not staid necessarily, but it's certainly autumnal and intense, and it's quite violent and features a lot of shrieking women throughout it. It's essentially about the people who were emboldened during the conflict between the English monarchy and Oliver Cromwell and the unrest in England. And I want to say it's the 1600s.

Yeah, big Hilary Mantel energy there. Yes, although this is not quite Wolf Hall. This is a little bit more intense than that um although mark rylance would be a tremendous wishfinder general um but this is a movie that uh was made by a very young guy uh named michael reeves he was 25 years old when he made this movie and he died shortly after he made it and he had made a couple of horror movies and didn't really get a chance to go on to greatness after this. But this is a movie that

some of the best film critics of all time, Jay Hoberman and Robin Wood and Derek Malcolm have sung its praises of the sort of intensity and darkness and frankly, like cult-like nature, not just of the film itself, but of the story that is being told is so interesting to watch. I kind of couldn't believe how brutal it was it's really really brutal it's very it's a hard movie to find you can basically with some surreptitious youtube searching i think you'll

be able to track it down it's only 85 minutes the old uh pump up the volume style exactly i've got i've got a couple of recommendations like that. And I hope the makers of Witchfinder General from 60 years ago understand that I need to go to scurrilous means to suggest this movie. I wouldn't put it past them to get you from beyond the grave. So watch out. It's a good point. Well, these witches, they're stronger than ever. But it's a really cool and clearly influential movie. And if you've seen The Wicker man or if you've seen mitsumar like the people who made those movies saw this movie um and it's got it it's got a the weight of influence is very strong with this one that's my number eight great uh so my number seven i believe right yes i think we have an issue with the water i say as, as Sean Venice, he just takes a drink from a glass of water.

Sean, you know, I'm talking about Barry Levinson's 2012 found footage, horror jam, the Bay. What, what were we doing as underrated as a nation? When the guy who directed fucking diner and rain man made a found footage

horror movie with Jason Blum and Oren Peli. This is actually a really, really good JV Cloverfield. That's all I'm going to say. It basically, frankly, I think winds up like a bunch of 9-11 conspiracy and also anxiety that was around towns getting shut down, no go zones,

all that kind of stuff. And it's set in an area very near and dear to Levinson's heart, which is the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland and involves something happening to the water supply over a huge July 4th weekend celebration. So it's got elements of Jaws, which you know me and Sean love Jaws and kind of like the mayor from Jaws and no, I can't close the beaches sort of vibes. And then also brings in kind of like, what's FEMA doing here? Why did the military close this road? And is essentially garnered from camcorder footage, home video footage of people who are supposedly in this situation, and the work of a television journalist played by none other than Katharine Donahue, who would go on to kind of be more notable for You're the Worst a couple of years later.

So just a really wild moment where a great American director made a kind of trashy but awesome found footage horror movie. Shout out to barry levinson barry levinson has made probably five or six incredibly memorable american films that'll stand the test of time he also made a 30 for 30 he made a found footage horror movie yeah he's made what directed the pilot of homicide life on the street that's right it's sick of an influential figure in in the future of television he's made what feels like five hbo original films about canceled men of a different generation um and now he's making a movie about the making of the godfather yes so just a wild run from him.

Incredible. We got to have him on this show. I've never talked to him before. Just seems like a great vibe. Yeah, he seems like a good guy. Here's the thing. I like the Orioles and the Ravens and making movies. Yeah, and now his son is making Euphoria.

Yeah. What a world. Incredible. Great recommendation. I like this movie. I remember, I mean, this was really hot on the heels of the paranormal activity boom. And oran pelly's involvement in that obviously

is influential on how the movie is made but um i'm a fan and this is pretty you can get this on streaming uh like to pay for and then i think i have it via amazon via amc plus so if people have signed up for that to re-watch mad men or something like that there's a lot of really good movies in the amC Plus library. That's a good shout out. I don't have AMC Plus out there. Okay, my number seven. I really like horror franchises, but I'm also so, so sick of horror franchises.

Here is the movie for you. It's called Halloween 3, Season of the Witch. Absolutely. This is the third Halloween movie. This movie does not feature Michael Myers. That is why it is most notable. It's a completely spun off film. So listeners of Halloween Unmasked,

the podcast series that Amy Nicholson hosted for The Ringer a few years ago, will already be familiar with this story. It is fascinating. John Carpenter, when he conceived of the Halloween franchise originally, did not conceive of it being about just this one indestructible killing machine, but as more of an anthology and that it would

be about something that happened on Halloween night, a different event, a different occult incident, a different serial killer, a different monster. And Season of the Witch is, even though they felt that they had to make Halloween 2 to follow up on the incredible success and rise of Michael Myers, Halloween 3, Season of the incredible success and rise of Michael Myers. Halloween III, Season of the Witch, is more representative of where they wanted this series to go. Let's just say it did not work. This movie was not a big success. It is not necessarily fondly remembered, or it was not well-received at the time, and I would say is mostly not fondly remembered. But for the real heads, I think this is like one of the signal franchise movies. It is so strange that that that song you heard at the top of the show is the famous Silver Shamrock commercial that plays throughout this movie and kind of entrances the children who have been drawn into.

I don't want to spoil it. I don't want to spoil it. I don't want to spoil the story. It's directed by Tommy Lee Wallace who was a close consort of John Carpenter and Debra Hill who produced and wrote the original Halloween series. Stars Tom Atkins and like a classic 80s

adult man with a mustache trying to get shit done performance. Just really like bargain basement Tom Selleck shit from Tom Atkins. I was reminded of this movie because I watched that four and a half hour 80s shutter documentary

about all the 80s horror movies. I think it's called Into Darkness. And I just was reminded of how much I like this movie. It's very strange. Would you say that you have in totality, hits and misses, everything taken into account,

Halloween is the number one horror franchise? I was going to ask you about this. I'm glad you asked me. I will say, I used to think that it was, the power rankings for years was Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street,

and then Friday the 13th as the big three. I'm getting older. I'm revisiting. More of a Kruger guy? No. No, I'm revisiting the Friday the 13th movies

and kind of blown away by how much I like them. I used to think that they were kind of dingy and not very good. I think that especially those first few are, if you think of them more as like thrillers than horror movies,

I think in some ways, I'm still a Halloween guy. I even like, I'm like a big H2O fan. Like I actually really like the Josh Hartnett one. But yeah, Friday the 13th, not only are they, the Steve Miner ones are really good. Um, and that also is the series that I think got me into her in the first place and is probably the time when I felt most legitimately afraid of horror movies. You know, when I first watched the Friday, the 13th movies, and they were about people just a little bit older than me and they're, they're so illicit, you know what I mean? It's just, everything is like, if you have sex in those movies, you die.

And I don't know. I just have such an... Those movies are burned into my memory. Yeah, I think that Halloween obviously has the best original film. The first Halloween is one of the best movies ever made. I think that Nightmare on Elm Street has the best meta late period movie in New Nightmare.

And I think that Friday the 13th has the best pure immediate sequel. I think Friday the 13th Part 2 is my favorite and is really, really good and also really strange

and kind of fascinating to revisit, but we digress. Those movies hold up to me. I really, I still like the 80s slasher stuff.

What's your, what's your number six? All-time bad babysitting gig. It's House of the Devil. It's on Shudder. It's directed by Ty West. It is the thing. I don't know chronologically

whether it was the thing that set off the 80s horror revival, but it feels like it did. That first sort of film that brought in the Carpenter synths, the Carpenter font for the title sequence, 80s babysitter, just an absolutely amazing couple of scenes from Greta Gerwig

pre-going mainstream. And it's essentially about a babysitter who takes a job that is paying way too much money, but she really needs it. It's very suspicious. She's being brought to babysit the child of Tom Noonan, who Heat fans will recognize as the guy who just has all the plans out there. He's just sticking his hands out there, taking the plans from the internet. It's just so heavy on atmosphere. It features one of my favorite musical sequences

is the babysitter in House of the Devil dancing to One Thing Leads to Another. I think that's the fix, right? We'll listen to a walkman and shooting pool and just dancing around the house. And it's just a great time. And it's on Shudder. If you haven't seen this one,

I would definitely check it out. Love this movie. What's going on with Ty West? I don't know what's going on with Ty West. You know, I liked Sacrament. I liked, you know, he made a couple,

Innkeepers was cool, but I don't know why he is not making a great, cool horror movie every three years. Yeah, it's confusing. I've interviewed him a couple of times.

You think he would be kind of like got the Mike Flanagan deal by now, right? Like maybe not as big, maybe not doing Shining sequels, but like able to make stuff here and there. There is a market for it. Did you watch Dr. Sleep yet?

No, and I have not watched the director's cut of Dr. Sleep yet. Dr. Sleep is good. Director's cut of Dr. is money and doctor sleep as a movie about q anon is the true money holy shit that's what yeah think about that i'm midway through bly manor right now so i haven't left mike this is a pro flanagan pod my number six me and my best friend love to go cruising for girls at this bar, but also we're having a crisis of faith. Okay.

This is 1990s Death by Temptation, a movie that I was not aware of. And shame on me for not being aware of it. I reached out to you, in fact, a couple of weeks ago. And I was like, have you seen this? Do you know about this movie? And you were like, yeah, but I haven't seen it in years. It had been very hard to find.

I was made aware of it because I was participating in the Nightstream Film Festival, which is a horror movie film festival that just wrapped up. They showed a ton of great stuff, mostly new stuff. This movie called Dinner in America that was great that just won the Audience Award. This movie Run that I've mentioned on the show a couple of times. The Obituary of Tunde Johnson. Handful good films a lot of films by a lot of diverse filmmakers and they did a revival screening of Death by Temptation which is written and directed and starring

a guy named James Bond III who was an actor who appeared in movies like School Days but has not made a movie since it also co-stars Kadeem Hardison it also co-stars a woman named Cynthiaynthia bond who has since gone on to become a quite successful author and and friend of oprah um you can find her on like oprah the oprah channel this character that she plays is wild it's like a true it's a demon

character it's a woman who uses her her looks to mask the ugliness inside and uh her desire for human flesh which she needs to um subsist but it's you know it's told in you know these are this is a black filmmaker it's an all-black cast um it's a film i think it's set in new york um it feels like it's the movie that like vampire in brooklyn wanted to be you know it's it's got like a very keen sense of humor it's got like a deep spirituality to it because james bond the third plays the son of a preacher who was played by samuel l jackson there's also there's an incredible cat bill nunn is in this movie there's a ton of people in this movie um the son of a preacher who was kind of haunted by his father's death and haunted by his relationship to spirituality so he goes to visit his buddy in new york played by Kadeem Hardison, to see, you know,

can he sow his wild oats? What is his real relationship to temptation? And he encounters this woman in this bar and things unfold. But really fascinating movie. And like you can see that it's an independent movie and made very cheaply some of the effect stuff is has not aged that well but the ideas and the cinematography it's shot by ernest dickerson who is spike lee's go-to cinematographer for many years directed one of my favorite movies ever juice um just an incredible relic uh as we look at you know jordan peele and what's going on with him and like how he has kind of changed horror filmmaking in the 21st century this is a super important. So I would recommend it to anybody who likes horror. So where can you find this one? You can get it on Amazon. $2.99. Very, very cheap.

And you know, whether it's the scariest movie ever made, I don't, I wouldn't say that, but I would say that Cynthia Bond is putting in an up there horror movie villain performance. Okay. Awesome. I'll check this out. Cause I haven't seen, I remember it being like at the, we had this video store in Philly called TLA. And I believe I, I,

this was one of these, like, as I referenced, like guy behind the counter being like, you should check this out. And so that's when I saw it, but I have very little recollection of it. Cause that is now fucking 30 years ago or whatever.

So it's crazy. It's also the only new Jack swing horror movie I can think of. Like the soundtrack is so like, it feels like Tony, Tony, Tony, and like Belbiv DeVoe. And like, that's just the energy that the movie has, which is unusual too. Okay. What's next for you? Me and the crew decided to take a shortcut to my uncle's cabin and a sick snowboarding spot, but then there was a witch. This is Witches in the Woods. It's probably the most recent movie I think I have here. It's from 2019. It's directed by a guy named Jordan Baker. Found this randomly a couple of weeks ago,

searching for horror movies out on the algorithms waves. And I think I mentioned to you that you can tell a movie is going to be bad within the first couple of minutes. You can kind of hit eject if you need to, but there's also the reverse of that, which is when you can tell that the movie is going to be good, and there is a shot early on in this movie that's a majority of this film

is these four or five teenagers or early college freshmen or sophomores stuck inside of their Jeep that they've taken to this mountain mountainside cabin that they're trying to find. And they, they try to take a shortcut and just everything goes wrong. And also there's this competing narrative about this, this part of the woods being haunted by a witch, but there is a shot inside the Jeep where all of a sudden, like, it's like a 360 pan of everything in the jeep and it's just like very inventive they obviously took you know either

shot it on a soundstage or took part of the jeep off so that they could go all the way around to all these kids realizing what's happening outside and you're just like oh this person's doing the most they can with what they've got and you know it's it's basically i mean one of my favorite for some reason sub genres of horror movies is like teenagers acting like fucking idiots um i don't know why i find going on a trip with your friends to be like routinely so so entertaining to watch in the horror genre but uh this this kind of ups it a notch so So I would recommend it. It's streaming on Showtime. If you've got Showtime, you can probably find it on demand there. So I would check it out. Were you an idiot teenager?

No, but Sean, I will remind you that you and I have gone on a couple of trips together. And we once went to Louisiana together right before we moved to Los Angeles. And that is probably the closest we've ever gotten to shit going sideways. You know, like when we, when we took our little trip outside of new Orleans that day. So I don't know. I mean, I think that's why it resonates. You know what I mean? There's something about being stuck in a car with your friends that tightens the screws of both on why you love them and why they drive you crazy. And then there's... I remember...

Yeah. Go ahead. No, no. Go ahead. I was just going to say that trip, it does make me think... That's all we could think about

when we were on that car ride was this is a horror movie. You know, being trapped in this place, running out of gas, being stuck at the Piggly Wiggly, this is a horror movie. Yeah.

I went into a Piggly Wiggly outside of New Orleans to get cigarettes and the guy in front of me was literally buying a pint of pig's blood and I was just like, this is, I am in a horror movie. It's incredible. Speaking of pig's blood,

number five, COVID-19 got me feeling fucked up. Talking about 1977's Rabid. number five, COVID-19 got me feeling fucked up. Talking about 1977's Rabid, which is not quite the directorial debut of David Cronenberg, but for all intents and purposes, it is. You can find this movie

if you have a library card on Canopy. You can also find it on the Criterion channel and a handful of other places. But for those of you who are not familiar with Canopy, incredible service. If you are a library card holder, there's tons of free movies available there. So, Rabid.

It's sort of a zombie movie, sort of a infectious disease movie. It stars Marilyn Chambers, who most people will know for her... Well, I don't know about most people, but Chris will definitely know from her work in hardcore pornography. As a historian, you know, it's a point. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, Chris was logging tapes of Marilyn's performances in Smut. And I was logging tapes of her performances in fine science fiction horror films like Cronenberg's movie. Just a very, like, cheaply but entertainingly and inventively made movie about what happens when an outbreak occurs in Canada in the late 70s and the way that society falls apart and starts to crumble.

These movies, and I'll talk a little bit more about a couple of other ones at the end of the show, are resonating heavy right now. On the Criterion channel, there's this whole wave of 70s horror movies and they're all kind of obsessed with what happens if an uncontrollable, invisible attack happens to our people. And, you know, I think we know now that the results are not good.

Yeah, we have a couple of these on this list and I bet a couple more to come, but The Bay, Pontypool, this one, we obviously have this on the mind covid brain you know covid brain is just just got us all feeling fucked up so uh if you haven't seen rabbit i would highly recommend you check it out i would you know check out shivers check out the

brood check out all of the 70s and early 80s cronenberg movies they're like among the best movies ever made in the genre but um this is one that I saw, I think, a year ago, and I clicked with a lot. I'll definitely check it out once I'm done annotating all 80s pornography for the Library of Congress. You want to do... Actually, let's just do sidetrack, like 30 minutes on your 80s porn hall of fame. Go. This isn't the rewatchables.

Okay, what's next? This isn't the Bill Simmons podcast. Okay, next i've got i'm gonna go i'm gonna actually move this up so that we can talk about it in conjunction with rabid the walking dead but good and it's for steak land yeah yeah so jim mickle's 2010 movie which i think is now i think officially become like a cult classic I think if anybody who gets a chance to see this will just be like holy shit how is this

not like a really big deal it's basically about a group of survivors on a road trip across a decimated America after a vampire outbreak has just basically destroyed the country this movie we talked earlier about like the big after a vampire outbreak has just basically destroyed the country. This movie, we talked earlier about the big tent that horror can be.

And this movie is not very scary in the jump scare or monster's way. But it kind of confirms the promise of what I think Walking Dead had at the beginning, which is man's biggest fear being man itself. And that the the way people turn on each other in these circumstances can be as horrifying as the uh the actual the actual evil that's out there and this flick especially i don't know why i said flick i sound like kevin smith but this movie especially makes me remember 80s like amblin adventure movies in a way but it's way darker than that but it has that kind of rolling i don't know like b-movie adventure feel that kind of like oh this is such a cool experience and i i is definitely a rewatchable movie too even though there is some dark shit

that happens in it but i i i if you have like a if you ever wanted to know what like a really fucked up version of goonies would be like or really fucked up version of of those kinds of movies would be i think stake land kind of has a little bit of that in it i don't know i like it no you're you're you really you get in the in the grunge in the in the pits in the in, in the hole of despair before. I'm impressed. You're really a man of the people. Are you a Stakeland fan?

Yeah. I like his crime movies a little bit more. Jim Mickle. Cold in July, was that the movie that he made a handful of years ago? I think it was. That was my favorite thing he's done. The Don Johnson

picture. Okay. Number four for me. I want to watch a movie, but not a whole movie, but also a lot of movies. I'm recommending Tales from the Dark Side, the movie. Now, this is a film that I had not seen in probably 25 years until I returned to it this week. It's from 1990. It is the film adaptation of the long-running TV series, Tales from the Dark Side, which was created and run by George Romero in the aftermath of the Creepshow films. I really like the Creepshow movies, Creepshow and Creepshow 2. It's kind of unofficially Creepshow 3 and then it's a horror anthology movie. I would say that horror has,

definitely has the title of the most and best anthology movies of any genre. I originally wanted to do a whole episode about this with you, but then I thought that that might get a little bit samey where we were just kind of talking

about the same kind of movie over and over again. And there are, of course, so many great ones over the years. You know, I love most of them. I love the Mario Bava ones. I love the Roger Corman ones. I love the British Hammer films that have this format. I love Creepshow. Tales from the Dark Side though, hit at the right time. And I was blown away by who is all in this movie. So there's, you know, very familiar faces like William Hickey and your boy James Remar and Ray Don Chong and a lot of like 80s movie staples. RGC, man.

Yeah. But also this movie features Steve Buscemi. It features Julianne Moore. It features Christian Slater. In the wraparound segment, it features Deborah Harry of Blondie fame. And it has three really, really strong stories in the middle of it. And the people who wrote these stories are some of the best to ever do it. You've got Michael McDowell, who is one of the great kind of pulp, meta pulp writers of the 80s and 90s, who also created

Beetlejuice, adapting an Arthur Conan Doyle story. You've got George Romero adapting a Stephen King story. Um, and you've got this just brilliant collection of artisans. This, this features like one of the all time grossest monster transformations I've ever seen. And you never see it cited in the American werewolf in London conversation, or,

you know, those sort of famous, um, effects driven Tom Sav in London conversation or, you know, those sort of famous, um, effects driven Tom Savini conversations. Like, you know, he was a part of this movie. He helped work on it and, or maybe he just talks about it a lot. I can't recall, but it certainly feels like he worked on the transformation and, um, it's just a great anthology. And I think it's a little bit underrated in this, um, in this space. Uh, I'm going to go with an anthology to go with your anthology then nice so let me just say this movie is sure the tales from the dark side is free on pluto tv

so if you're not familiar you can just watch it for free right now oh awesome um i'm gonna go with an anthology that's a little bit more recent uh the premise would just basically be so you're gonna want to skip that road and it. And it's for Southbound, which was an anthology that came out, I believe in 2015, if I remember correctly. I don't have it in front of me, but it's set in and around a Texas highway and all the fucked up things that happened

on that Texas highway and the directors who contributed to the anthology include Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner. And it kind of has a really interesting generational snapshot of a bunch of independent directors who decided to do, or not decided to, but were making horror films around this time, about five, six, seven years ago, and brought a really edgy sensibility without ever forgetting

the fact that you're supposed to entertain people and make it. So David Bruckner is really good example. He directed a movie that came out on Netflix a year or two ago called the ritual. And his segment in southbound is this really disturbing twilight zoney, uh, episode. There's Roxanne Benjamins is about, uh, an all female band that whose van breaks down in the middle of texas the radio silence one is probably the best that's the one that leads it off that's just about these guys who are having these hallucinations while on this on this mysterious road trip uh just a really really creepy movie and the cool thing with the anthologies is that you can kind of get a sense whether or not you're into it and into the vibe of each segment pretty early on and if you

want to skip around and make it a shorter film, you can go ahead. And this one, I believe, is on Hulu. So knock yourself out. Big fan of that movie. Okay, number three. Quarantine has had me cooped up for eight months. I look forward to hitting the open seas soon.

This recommendation is available on Vudu for $2.99. It is a film that had been previously very hard to see. I caught it on the Criterion channel last year. My wife and I loved it. It's very short. It's very conquerable. It's 1943's The Ghost Ship. Technically, a psychological thriller.

Technically. But also one of the scariest movies I've ever seen in my life about what happens when you are trapped somewhere and what you think is happening around you. It's directed by Mark Robson. It's produced by the legendary Val Luton, who is a person that Martin Scorsese has sung the praises of over the last 10 or 20 years. But it is a fascinating document of 1940s sort of noir horror cinema colliding, really like in the shadows kind of a movie. Made for RKL.

Mark Robson at the time was probably best known as the assistant editor on two important movies, one in particular that's important in 2020. I'm talking about Citizen Kane. He worked on Citizen Kane. He also worked on The Magnificent Ambersons. Do you think he shows up in Mank? He might. He's a in 2020. I'm talking about Citizen Kane. He worked on Citizen Kane. He also worked on The Magnificent Ambersons. Do you think he shows up in Mank? He might.

He's a significant figure. And he also worked on I Walk With a Zombie and The Leopard Man, which were a couple of Val Lewton films. Cat People as well. And he directed two movies in 43,

shortly after Kane and Ambersons. The Seventh Victim and The Ghost Ship, both for Val Lewton. These movies are very short. They're very, they're clean and they're smooth

and they're really, really well staged and they're clearly made cheaply, but they're made really effectively. And I think if anybody is looking for kind of

the origins of where John Carpenter learned how to make movies, for example, who also similarly makes a kind of lean, not slick, but smooth kind of horror filmmaking i would recommend the ghost ship to anybody it was this remade with juliana margulies and gabriel burn it certainly was it's not that one's not good great ron eldard performs and go ship man what happened what happened to Eldar? I don't know, dude. He had it all lined up.

I guess, so I'm on number two, right? You're on number two. Does my brother have an alien trapped in his basement or is he just losing it again? So this is a very small movie called Pod that came out in 2015.

It's available on Shudder. Another that's kind of of this cohort of directors that was operating, that's been operating of this cohort of directors that was operating that's been operating over the last 10 years making these really micro budget indie horror movies this one's directed and written by a guy named um mickey keating but it is crucially i thought i would be remiss not to mention this guy larry pheasanton who is the producer of this movie and is something of a godfather i think to this loose movement of directors that we've seen over the last like 15,

20 years, kind of coming up out of small independent, often not in New York or LA, but making movies in these kind of in different places. Pheasanton works largely out of New York, but he appears in pod. It's a basically about a brother and a sister who get a call from a disturbed sibling, their other brother, who is a veteran who claims to have

trapped something in his basement. And that there is basically like he is on the forefront of an alien invasion. And they go to visit him fearing that he is having a psychotic break. And obviously, if it's a horror movie, you can imagine that that is not the case. There are a couple of really good twists. And one of the things I love about some of these smaller films with lesser-known actors, and I always think about, I think Quentin Tarantino talked about this a lot when he was talking about Pulp Fiction, but it was in relation to trying to remember the Stephen King adaptation he was talking about. Maybe it was Dead Zone.

I can't remember. What was the Stephen King werewolf movie? Is there one? Silver Bullet. Yeah. I can't remember what happened, what it specifically is, but he's basically talking about how when you watch a horror movie or a movie like that with anybody

who's famous, you're just like, there are rules to what happens to this famous person. And there are rules of what's going to happen to this character because of this famous person. And when you get down to this sort of lower rung of independent horror films, those rules are out the window. There's no

reason why main characters can't go, why there can't be these enormous twists, why there can't be these massive tonal shifts, because they're not as adherent to, oh, this person who's a budding movie star needs to have their brand serviced in some ways. So I thought Pod was really a good example of that. And anybody who's into X-Files or was into Millennium, which was the sort of darker spinoff from X-Files, I think would really dig Pod. And that's available on Shudder as well.

Shout out Shudder. I think I have to check that one out. I don't know that movie. Yeah. You're always bringing the heat. My number two. Me and my producer are going to capture the work that first responders do in real time.

I'm talking, of about wreck the 2007 Spanish triumph, which Alex Ross Perry did mention and cited as the greatest found footage movie ever made. Um, this is, I thought that would be just an interesting topic for us to discuss. I think the less said about what happens in wreck, the better in terms of enjoying it.

The one thing I will say is that the versions that are available to rent in places like Amazon and iTunes are all dubbed. And so it's kind of hard to enjoy them. So if you are industrious, perhaps you will visit a site called Daily Motion to discover the subtitled version of this movie And see it as it is meant to be seen. For non-Spanish language speaking audiences. What an absolute fucking corker. Like a movie that I just do not know how they did it. And that is something that frequently surprises me. I feel pretty confident in understanding how many movies are made these days. And I just don't know how they did this one.

And they did not have a big budget. And I don't know how they got these actors to be so brilliant at this, but they are so brilliant in this movie. I've never seen any of these people ever again, except in other rec movies. Um, you know, I think obviously we point to the Blair witch project as the, the signature introduction to the found footage movement, but this is the movie that like took it to the next level. And I don't know took it to the next level. And I don't know if it can ever be topped. What do you think about rec?

Oh, Rex fucking incredible. And I'm so glad you brought it up because I, we didn't share our list with each other or the order we were going to go in, but my number one dovetails perfectly with rec. And that is, uh, the premise of my number one is,

um, me and my boys got a great deal on an abandoned upstate New York hotel where we can stage our haunted house. And it is another film that Alex talked about very lovingly. It's Hell House LLC, which is another found footage horror movie. I had never heard of it. I found it on Shudder a couple of weeks ago and I had no idea.

Sean, did you know this is a trilogy? I know now. Yeah. And that is just one of those things where you're like, it actually gives you a moment of like hope and inspiration to just keep being a fucking movie maniac

when you find out there's like a trilogy that I never heard of, of this guy just like created an entire, you know, world of narrative about this haunted just created an entire world of narrative about this haunted hotel in upstate New York

that sucks in victims, but actually has a three-film narrative rather than it just being like, here, I'm just going to repeat the same movie three times. And is another incredible found footage horror movie. I think Wreck is probably... Wreck is almost hard to watch. Wreck is

almost the way in which they tighten the screws in Wreck is almost like a I'll watch that once every five or six years thing. Hell House LLC has moments that are humorous. It has the characters who are like, this guy's definitely going to die first.

The loud mouth. The way they mix together news footage uh future documentaries going back to investigate the thing that they are actually playing out in real time in the movie and actually the characters in hell house llc are are just believable they are a bunch of guys from brooklyn who try to do these experiential horror things and um are running out of money so wind up taking on this abandoned hotel uh and um it's called the hotel abaddon and trying to stage a haunted house there and slowly like just things start getting weirder and weirder and we just decided to make a documentary about staging the haunted house.

So you get all this footage of them. And I think that there's something that, I said before, I find the performances in found footage movies to be very naturalistic. I don't know what they say to actors to just be like, you don't deliver your lines

and don't act the way you normally would. They must be a beast to edit but i also find that the way in which you can foreground and background information and you know little tells about like oh wait did something just move back there you know like those moments in found footage movies are just so sincerely terrifying yeah there's a moment in wreck when a figure moves near the very end of the movie that has grabbed your throat terrifying. Okay. So my last recommendation is kind of a cheat.

It's just an excuse to recommend a service. But I wanted to recommend Let's Scare Jessica to Death, which is a 1971 film directed by John Hancock, you know, who went on to make Bang the Drum Slowly and Baby Blue Marine, a couple of other movies. This is a psychological horror thriller in a lot of ways about a woman who believes she has led another woman into her house who is a vampire. So in some respects, it has some things in common with Salem's Lot. But really, it speaks to, I think, the premise of a bunch of movies that I want to recommend that are on the Criterion channel, which is, I sure do miss when my cultural and social paranoia dictated my horror movies. And there was a wave of these movies in the 1970s. Let's

Scare Jessica to Death is a very domestic version of this story but George Romero's the crazies and Philip Kaufman's invasion of the body snatchers and Wes Craven's the hills have eyes and um Ganja and Hess which is a film that has been revived quite a bit in recent years uh season of the witch all of these movies spoke to a moment, a kind of post or pre post Vietnam moment, a Watergate moment, a moment about during the gas crisis in the late seventies, where it felt like the social forces were encroaching upon people's everyday lives. And these movies with these outlandish premises meaningfully reflected what was going on. And that's obviously the biggest reason why Get Out and a few years ago struck such a chord. And I think while I do love the hell hell LLCs of the world, and I think they actually do have something to say about society and how

people start a business, for example, I'm a sucker for a mega social commentary. And there's like literally 25 of them on the Criterion channel right now. And you really can't go wrong with any of the ones that they've curated. Yeah, I love the fact that horror movies can be read subtextually and textually. And that you can look in the context of when a horror movie was released

and what was going on in the world. And most horror movies are pretty sharp about what's freaking people out right now. What is the thing? You know, sometimes you get like a conjuring where it's just like, look, man, fucking haunted houses work, and we can just make this movie over and over again. But I think that even something like Halloween had a certain, what can we do to literally pierce suburban bliss? You know what I mean? Like it was that idea that you were all safe if you had these perfectly manicured lawns and these white picket fences and stuff like that.

So it's a really good point. I love it when horror movies say something about where we are and what we're doing. Chris, what else should we say about where we are and what we're doing here in 2020? Well, I mean, I think you brought it up before about what kind of horror movies will be coming out in the next five years. You know what I mean? I'm very curious to see whether it plays

a lot on our fears about hygiene and our fears about spread and our fears about touching and our fears about distancing and how that kind of manifests in some of the horror films that wind up coming out over the next couple of years or whether this is something we want to like let's say like fucking Joe drops the vax next spring and we can just move on you

know what I mean like will we just like want to move past like I don't ever want to think about fucking contagion ever again that's so interesting I think that does

underline the fact that this genre is unlikely to ever die. No way. Yeah. There will be a time when superhero movies are not at the center of the culture. And just like erotic thrillers and courtroom dramas are no longer at the center of our movie culture. But horror movies are always going to be there. I don't think they're ever going to die. Horror movies are like driving fast. They elicit a feeling that is primal and that is visceral. And you don't have to... That can't be taken away. There's no pill

you can take. There's no way that this can move to TV. There's no way you could watch this once a week. You have to go to the dark. You have to watch it in a 90-minute, two-hour burst. It has to be... It's a pure cinematic experience. Chris, I know you've got a lot of work to do with your archival porn collection. So I'm going to let you get back to that now. The great work continues. Thank you to the homie, Chris Ryan. Thank you to Bobby Wagner. We will be back later this week on Big Picture talking about Amanda's favorite filmmaker, the great Sofia Coppola. We'll see you then.