The Flop House - Feardotcom

Episode Date: April 25, 2026

We're in the swing of Max Fun Drive 2026, and for "Dan's pick" of our 3 special MFD episodes, he's taking us back to 2002 when the internet felt new and we were all logging on to FEARDOTCOM, or -- more accurately -- feardotcom.com (just listen to the episode). Join us as we surf the fear-web! MAX FUN DRIVE literally keeps this show going. If you love listening and think it's worth supporting creators, please consider becoming a sustaining member (or upgrading/boosting) at maximumfun.org/join! Stay updated on all things Flop House, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets! Wikipedia page for Feardotcom Recommended in this episode: Dan: Gumby: the Movie (1995) Stu: Mother Mary (2026) Elliott: The Ghost Goes West (1935) Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinflop

On this episode, we discuss fear.com. But not fear.org, a charitable organization that scares people. That's pretty good. Hey, everyone, and welcome to the flop house. I'm Dan McCoy. Dang, Dan, you made that sound great. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin, and I want to interrupt these compliments for a moment because I've got an important message.

We're in the middle of this year's Maximum Fun Pledge Drive. That's when we ask you, our listeners, to have. help us, the flop house, keep this show going another year by pledging cash a dollars to maximum fun. As part of the maximum fund worker-owned cooperative network, we don't have some big fancy company paying us salaries or buying us equipment. That means we get to do and say whatever we think will make the best show, or sometimes just whatever pops into our head at the moment. But it also means we rely on your support to make this show possible. There will be more drive talk later in the episode, but for now, why wait for that? Why not go to maximum fund.org slash join right now,

today, right now, this moment, and make your pledge of as little as $5 per month to keep this show going. Will you please become a max fund member? It takes less time to do it than it took me to tell you all this. And I'll take more time telling you about it later in the episode. Dan, what do we do on this podcast? Yeah, if you do it now, you get to skip all the other discussions of it later. You just hit that sweet button. And you can't skip it if you don't do it.

You can't do it. It's illegal. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This is a podcast where we watch movies that were critical or commercial flops. And then we talk about it. See what we think of these pictures. We're the judges and the executioners. Guilty or innocent.

Of course, as people who listen to our max fun bonus content will know, even if you're innocent, they'll still send you into the pit of the Sharktacons. So, guys, that's one for the bonus content listeners. Dan, but what do we do? Well, I said that part What's special about our Max Fun episode? Yes, exactly. I'm getting there.

We have been picking... Not fast enough for us. No, put your foot on the gas, Dan. Go on pedal to the metal. Jesus. We've been each picking a movie to bring to the table. There's three Max Fun Drive episodes for us. There's three Flop House hosts.

It was a no-brainer. We each get to pick one. And considering, I think I suggested, that Dan is basically saying I have no brains, which I'm not necessarily arguing with. No, I'm saying I did not have to use my brain to say yes to that idea. I think we can all agree, Stuart, that you have the rudimentary nervous system equivalent to at the very least a sea cucumber or a peacock shrimp. You can feel pain. You can feel pain. You can move your limbs around.

You can detect when food is floating by. You certainly can, yeah. Flooding by at the pool bar. You know, floating by food hates to see me coming. Uh-oh, that guy can detect us. But this is my turn. I'm in the driver's seat this time around, and I chose Fear.com.

Stewart, take the wheel. Take the keys away from Dan. No. Dan's not drunk enough. Fear.com. So, Dan, what made you want to... This is from 2002. Is that what? Am I remembering that correctly?

Yeah. Yeah. So what made you want you to choose... What made you want to choose 2002's Fear.com? Um, it is a well-known bad movie of the era. Uh, it was like shortly before we started the podcast, which was 2007, so we never did this one. Mm-hmm. Uh, and I have a real fondness for, uh, dumb horror or thrillers from the beginning of the internet era when they're, when everyone's like, we're scared of this.

It's new. We're scared of it. We don't, like, and, you know, as Elliot, uh, suggested in one of the many possible openings to the show. I don't know which one got picked. You know, we were right to be scared of the internet, but not for the reasons that horror movies postulated. It was not going to be because ghosts and serial killers would take advantage of this new technology

to lure us into their web of death. It is because it is the greatest form of radicalization and misinformation of young people and the elderly that has ever existed. All in service of capitalism, which is grinding us all to dust. Yeah, it's worked out great. I was thinking the other day I was like, are things, could you say they're net better because of the internet? Well, this show exists only because of the internet.

So that's something. That's a good part. Yeah. The, yeah, just the general idea of like, there used to be fucking websites with animated menus that we could go to. Yeah, with scalples. Now there's only social media sites that sell us stuff. Perhaps designed by Parker Bennett,

our friend who co-wrote the Super Mario movie and then became a designer of websites. He wrote in recently to tell us, perhaps he worked on Fear.com. Maybe. Parker right in. We know you worked on the Master of Disguise website. Yeah, I like that stuff.

And I also, over the years, have grown fond of this dumb era and horror, this new metal style that I hated at the time. But now I'm like, yeah. Take me back. Send me to a Ramstein video, please. There's something about the thing. things that you hated as a youth that then become cherished items when you're older.

There's so much music that I despise when I was young. And now we hear it, I'm like, this is fine. You know what? This takes me back. You know. Yeah. And, you know, in keeping with my places. Inkeeping.

Is that what you're doing for a living now, Dan? Is you an innkeeper? You actually, you joke. I think Dan would be a great innkeeper. Like a Newhart style. I think he'd be a great basil faulty style, irritated innkeeper who does not like dealing with the guests. Dan, what would be the name of your inn where you are a,

annoyed by the guests, but you still, people still show up. It's like a little place. It's going to be like a little bed and breakfast, like Newhart, yeah. Uh, uh, why would you pit me out like this? Something like, uh, something like, uh, something like the, like a hammer and sickle or the sword and cross or something like. Yeah, yeah. The slaughtered lamb. Like, it's not, it's not a medieval pub.

Like, it's, yeah, we'll figure it out what your, it would be like, I imagine it'd be called like, the sleepy arms or something like that. Dan and breakfast. The sighing man. The sighing man. There you go. And the image is a green man rolling his eyes. Yeah.

Yeah. But sort of in keeping with my place is arguably the most... Oh, you're an innkeeper now? Dan, find a different phrase. God damn it. So, Dan, as the host who... As arguably the most soft-hearted member of the flop house, I didn't opt to punish quite in the exit to Eden or 40 days and 40 nights level.

I picked a thing that I thought might be fun to talk about. It was, but I will say, pretty unpleasant to watch. It was, it punished me. Ironically, it didn't punish me as much as a recent horror movie that we have coming up after we're done with the Pledge Drive. Okay. No spoilers. No spoilers. But the, but I will say that I did find this movie incredibly unpleasant.

So we can talk about it, you know. Yeah, that's the point. Anyway, let's go. Let's get into it. Let's get into this thing. So, real quick, had either of you guys seen Fear.com before we watched it? This is the third time I've seen it. Yeah, I definitely saw it in the theater.

I remember seeing in the theater. And being kind of, like, I do have to point out this era of time, like, this is a movie that came out, what, two or three years after the Blair Witch Project? Yes. So I feel like in a post-Blair Witch Project world, it's like, movie, do you, like, you know what people find scary now, right? It's not necessarily this. For an early 2000s movie, it feels very 90s to me, very early 90s. I mean, which makes sense. The early 2000s are like the hangover of the 90s.

but it definitely has a 90s sense of style, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's get into it. It starts in a rainy subway station. It's abandoned. Like, it seems like trains still come through here, but it's filled with so much garbage and stuff. It's one of these cities, and Roger Ebert talks about this. Before Bloomberg cleaned up New York. Roger Eber has a surprisingly positive review in some ways for this movie. But he talks about how the setting of the movie feels like the whole city is falling apart. and disgusting.

Even people's apartments seem to be like grimy and full of broken glass. But like the, yeah, the subway station, it seems like, it seems like some, everyone left the city

and forgot to tell Udo Kier that there's no one living there anymore. And he's just like, where's this train going to show up? It's nothing but slime and grime in this subway. And that,

and that description by Roger Ebert, I think is actually pretty fitting, but I wish that that was played into more of the idea of like, well, this world sucks. Yeah. So people are, looking for solace or connection or something on this new internet.

But they don't really like, they don't really like. No, they just want it to look creepy and spooky. No, the internet. Success. It's creepy. It's very dark. It's more treated as like, oh, people are on this thing. Wow. What a coincidence that they're all on the internet.

A coincidence? Well, that's how it's treated. I think it's early enough that people are like, huh, all these people had computers. weird. It's like, I love the early internet pre-smartphone era is such an interesting time because smartphones are when the internet became less cool. Yeah. But it is a, that's true, Dan, you're right, that like, it takes a while for the police

officers to realize that maybe the fact that all of their computers were set to the same website might be related to their mysterious murderers, these characters. But Udo Kier, he's waiting for a train and what does he see? Uter Kier's here. He's doing something, you know, probably not scared. Udo Kier is never up to anything weird. There's a white ball that bounces out of nowhere, and a spooky little girl chases that ball onto the tracks,

and he follows her, because he's dumb, and is splatted. It's so funny, the police come and they're like, from the look on his face, it looks like he saw something terrifying before he died, and it's like, well, he was hit by a train. That qualifies, I think, as being terrifying, is seeing a train coming towards you. Yeah. Maybe somebody had, like, a really scary, like, Tasmanian Devil,

bumper sticker on the train. It was super scary. Also, I think that he's hit by a subway train and they're like, the look on his face is that he's terrified. I'm like, I don't know there be enough of his face left to see what the expression would be. This was not a particularly rough train accident, you know. Yeah. Briefly, before we

get the cops looking at him, we are introduced to Natasha McElhone, who's waking up. She's part of the Department of Health. She's going to figure in later. But we return to the crime scene. Mike Riley, detective with NYPD, played by Stephen Dorff is investigating.

As Elliot says, Keir is frozen in this like horrific death mask and his eyes are bleeding. Yeah. And they're like, what caused us fear.com? Well, cut to surfing someone,

cut to surfing, someone's surfing a site. Cut to surfing. Cut to Yeah. Endless summer. We got in footage from the documentary. No,

someone's on a site. Steven Dorf is shooting the two. as part of his detective work. Yeah. No, they're on a site with way too much Flash animation for the internet speed of the day. Yeah. And it seemed like...

That was the main issue with the movie. Yeah. I do love that this like haunted website has like... Still uses Flash. Yeah. It's so... There's a... There's a lot of funny stuff.

When we... It's like, Mozart's Ghost. Yeah, it feels so... After we say more of the movie, maybe we can talk about this website. There's so little about it that makes any... sense whatsoever. And you have to put so much effort into unlocking this website to get to get to the scary stuff. And it's always like, do you want to hurt me? And it's like, not probably not.

Like, I don't know. You know, it's, it's, anyway, it's a hilarious website. Well, up front. Yeah. Up front, it looks like it sells distressed furniture. But if you click around enough, you can get to some sort of creepy show. And anyway, no. I don't know if you could only access. Yeah, you have to get a modern shutter subscription of access to creep show. Mike is going over the evidence for an old case, a serial killer called The Doctor. And in that scene, we get the entrance of Jeffrey Combs

as Stiles, his jaded partner, I guess. Sykes. Sykes. I think of it. Sykes, yeah. I can put Stiles down. You were thinking of Stiles. Because he thinks he's with dick nose or whatever. But Jeffrey Combs is, I'm just going to say right now, not a surprise, my favorite part of this whole movie.

He plays his character as such a scumbag. And it's so funny, I'm like, I wish he was the hero of the movie. I would love to see this scumbag cop who could not care less having to investigate this murder website would be amazing. One of the things about Jeffrey Combs, you know, a little guy I like to call J.C. Is that he... You go, hey, I can tell you about someone radical with their initials JC who had an interesting message for the world. Not everyone understood what he was, the message he was bringing. His body was a roadmap of...

His name is Jeffrey Combs, and you may know him as Brunt from the Star Trek universe. Is that Jeffrey Combs is, I would say, a rare character actor who can really bring it in these small roles. But also, if he's tasked to be the lead in a movie, he's also great in that. Like, he's good in everything. Yeah, he's great. I mean, yeah. This will, you know, show the depths of my own sickness. After watching this movie, I watched William Ballone's next movie, the director of this, called Parasomnia.

And Jeffrey Combs also plays a scummy cop in that one, which was a delight. That makes perfect sense. He's like, this crushed, let's do this. Bring it back. The one thing everyone liked about fear.com. So while he's looking at these files, a man's brought in for processing, he's screaming in German and also bleeding from his eyes. And for a second, I thought he was like speaking some like, unspeakable tongue, like Lovecraftian tongue.

And I'm like, nah, it's just German. But they act as if this is a crazy life. They're like, they're like, if you can get anyone who understands what he's saying, it's like, well, German. Like, I can understand these cops don't speak German, but it's a recognizable language. Yeah. I, unlike Stewart, do not speak German, but I was like, oh, German.

But Mike asks for someone from the different. He wasn't speaking French, like actor French, Stuart, who of course is. only speaks in French, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mike wants someone from the Department of Health to check in because eye bleeding seems like, I don't know, maybe that's a symptom of something. Who knows?

Could be. It's not a normal thing for eyes to do. That healthy eyes don't routinely bleed. Yeah. And so they go to this German guy's place, which is your, like, typical post-7 squalid apartment. Yeah. Where they find a...

Where it looks like they set up, like, floodlights just outside the apartment. And they're like, okay, we need more curtains in this thing. Have just water dripping from somewhere? Just like stacks of stuff coming up from the floor. Like nothing's arranged. Every apartment in this movie looks like it was abandoned about three weeks ago that construction is going on at night outside the apartment. And so it's very brightly lit.

And yeah, there's all sorts of water and moisture damage. I mean, I'm a big fan of like no normal like recessed overhead lighting. It's all lamps or whatever. I mean, you could say that. as an interior designer. I'm a fan. Yeah. I mean, you could say that it's all probably converted loft space,

and that's one of the reasons it's more industrial. But I like to call these shoes-on apartments that you see a lot in these movies. Because I just always imagine, like, if you lived here, you'd walk around with your shoes off and you'd just get glass and splinters in your feet all the time. You got to wear shoes. Like, I imagine them getting out of the shower with shoes still on and walking around, you know. Yeah, it feels like at a minimum, it's going to feel like you're walking around on Rice Krispies, you know. At a minimum.

Minimum. And I don't know about you, but that's not a sensation that I find particularly pleasurable. It's like a little bit hard and then it crumbles. Yes, exactly. Things shouldn't be like that.

To be honest, it reminds me of my house where no matter where my foot lands, it happens to land on the one place where there is a crumb, a piece of rice, or a toy. And so, and I'll look, and the floor will be devoid of those items

except for the one place that I stepped. There's always something. And the amount of time I step on like little sprigs of broccoli or whatever that my children and dropped on the ground. It's disgusting, yeah. This is a very, like, Final Destination style setup.

Yeah, exactly. Although, often it's just rubber bands. Often it's like they'll take the rubber band off a bag of chips and they left it on the floor and I step on it. And then you hop around on one foot and you're like, owie, owly, a rubber band. And I need to use tweezers to remove the rubber band because it's embedded itself in my skin.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We use barbed wire rubber bands over here to keep the elves, to keep the elves out of our snacks. The thing is it was a branded item for the barbed wire movie. It's an Italian product. When me and Matt Singer went and got the Denny's barbed wire brunch.

We had to eat it all. Then you've got to pick the barbed wire out of your teeth because it's in the pancakes. Yeah. They put it in the batter. So many lawsuits. They called it barb batter. It was, yeah. Anyway, we had to go right away because we knew they were going to shut it down pretty quick.

Yeah. In this apartment, they find a smashed computer and there's a naked dead woman in the tub. And, glad he lists them in order of importance. Well, like they kind of are in the order of importance of fear.com, a movie about a killer website.

I know. I know. I thought you about to say Fear.com, a movie about a killer whale. And I'd be like, did I watch the right movie? But,

Fier dot Willie? Natasha Mcalone, Terry from the Department of Health, shows up. She's, and you might know her from Ronin the movie. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

You might know her as Sherlock Colcombe's mom from the new guy, new guy Richie young Sherlock series. Not the nude guy richie Sherlock. No. For second, I was like, wait a minute. He directs the whole movie just completely starker, so I understand. Guys, we haven't talked about it. It makes me feel more comfortable on set.

That's how I assume he sounds. So guys, I brought up Ronan in like a man of a dad age. I got to say, Ronan's pretty awesome. Ronin's pretty great. I mean, I've been a fan of Ronan since it came out, since I saw it in the theaters. That was the thing. That was when we knew we were dads in the Macon. Yep.

I remember in the making. You've got to finish that process. You're still in the pupil stage, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a pupil. The, yeah, I just, I remember seeing, I probably told this story before, but I was in the theater. The tale of seeing Ronan. With seeing, well.

Gather around children, Stuart doesn't have. Much like how Ethan Hawke has said that he remembers the experience of seeing every movie he's seen in the theater. Like that whole experience, and he forgets the ones he sees at home. I remember the experience of going to the theater in college to see Ronan with my roommate at the time, Casey Crow. And they show a beautiful French city. And my roommate goes, nice. And then it says niece France. And I'm like, and be like cheered in the theater is awesome.

So they go back to the station. The German guys died. He's written murderer and 48 on the wall in blood. and there's one part where Mike sees some hazmat suits and is like, should we be wearing one? And Terry says, we're probably already infected. And he yells at her, what is it with you people? You let this shit run wild.

And I'm like, what? It's very funny to me that he's blaming her for a possible virus outbreak. But also, if they are infected, shouldn't they quarantine at this point? It's pretty loosey-goosey and fear. I mean, over in horror city, like, They're just ready for this kind of stuff to happen. They're okay with it. Now, I know my brother's probably listening to this, and he goes, 48,

does this mean that Mets pitcher Jacob de Grom is the killer in this movie? Probably. That's what he's implying. You're going to be disappointed, David. I'm sorry to tell you. Yeah. But they discover from the test results, it's not a virus. What is it?

Let's leave that cliffhanger going and toss back to my friend Elliot Katelyn for some Max Fun Drive talk. That's right. Let's leave you wondering if it's a virus. It's not. It's a killer website. And I'll talk about another killer website, but killer in a cool way, not in a it will kill you way. And that's maximum fun.org slash join.

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please become a Maxfund member? All you have to do is head to maximum fund.org slash join, put in your information, pick what shows you want to support. For as little as $5 a month, you get all the bonus content that I will tell you about later in the show. For $10 a month, you get access to our ad-free feed. You can be done in less than a minute, and you will noticeably improve our lives and yours. So go do it right now. Do it. Dan, what's going on on Fear.com?

On Fear.com, some creepy weirdo is videotaping a lady in the cafe. And when she knows it, when she knows he's just like, sorry, you're just a perfect leading lady for this film I'm making and gives his card. And somehow she seems actually interested and doesn't immediately just drop it and run far away from this thing that's happening. Why would, there's no reason for her to drop it unless say this guy has a really weird, creepy, strange American accent that doesn't sound quite right, right? Well, there's that, sure. And also just the fact that he's a guy with a video, VHS, like a recorder, videotaping a woman in public.

A guy who most likely, I'm assuming, is licking his lips a lot. Yeah. It's not his fault if he has, if he has dry lips, you know? This was 2002. a time when there were limited chapstick options. Exactly. Is he the bad guy or just some innocent bystander? Who knows?

No way to tell you. Well, the movie is called Fear.com that has videos of people being heard. So probably the guy with the video camera is not good. Meanwhile, Terry and Mike are on the case. They're watching a videotape that the German victims had made of themselves. We see them sort of frolicing in the park, getting naked back home. And then seeing something.

Got some real strange days vibes. They see something on the computer that freaks them out. And then there's taped flashed them looking sicker over time, descending into madness. What's going on? The cafe lady goes to the theater and is not dissuaded by the big, empty, scary place filled with flickering lights. And she's grabbed. Because that's just what life is like in horror city. That's what you have to deal with that kind of stuff.

This is how I get a big role. This is how I make my big break. Yeah. She's grabbed by this mysterious man who, like, straps her like he's like the German industrial music starts playing and Ramstein.

And he like yeah he straps her in. There's like I don't know a bunch of TV monitors and camcorders like a million camcorders which is crazy. This guy's a real sliver. Carly Carly live stream that right with a bunch of camcorders. I mean maybe if he's got some kind of way to

mix the video on the fly like a sitcom director as he's broadcasting the stream or something. He's got someone in the back calling out. Camera one. Camera five. Camera two. Yeah. It's just like the Oscars.

Anyway. Yeah, he's got Gil Cates back there doing all this. Yeah. Terry reports to her weird supervisor who has to be updated on the case. This guy is. This guy is like I'm not sure if they were trying to, they're like, we need a red herring to see if there's,

because it's so obvious who the bad guy is. But it is like they went for the strangest. possible performance that they could have, like the most... Other than Terry, everyone in this movie is weird and diseased. And they specifically are talking about this guy later, and she's like, no, there's no way he's done anything illegal ever in his life.

I'm like, that's impossible. There's no way. He seems like such a... He is a Dorian Gray painting walking around. He is doing bureaucrat, working for the German government in an Indiana Jones movie type performing. Yeah, yeah. And his computer is mysteriously missing.

Uh-oh. Cut to him in an abandoned train yard just hanging out. No explanation for why he's there, right? He sees that weird white ball girl. Uh-oh. His nose starts bleeding. He's startled by the girl and he drops his cigarette, which starts a fire in his car. And the car starts driving on his own and slams him into a wall.

It's a real final destination. Yeah. Yeah. And the timing is good. And as we later learned, he was afraid of car crashes. Yeah. Terry's... Like most people.

Most people are like, bring it on, dude. It means I'm going to get laid. That's what David Cronenberg says. Yeah. Stick something in a gash. That would be very ironic for someone to watch Crash an impressionable age. And then that becomes their kink. Yeah.

And now it's like that Anaconda movie. Now they want to make their version of crash. So they go into the... jungle with their best friend Jack Black. Uh-oh, trouble comes along. Jack Black has been in a, I would say, a disturbing lack of erotic thrillers. No, you're disturbed by it. Four sex on legs, Jack Black, I think it's fucked up that he's not in a bunch of erotic

thrillers. I mean, I would, to be honest, I think he would be great in one of them. He would be great. Yeah. I mean, the fact, Jack Black does sound like the name of an actor who would be in a movie like that. Yeah. And he has that, like, devil-eval. look in his eye where you're like, I don't trust this guy.

I'm totally by him as a guy. He is a low-rent detective who gets hired for the wrong case, gets pulled into a web of deceit. You know, and seduction. And seduction. Yeah, of course. Yeah. He's really more, he could do more rom-coms.

He's in like one, I think. Was he in the other ones? Shell House, not really a rom-com, right? Yeah, Shell-House kind of a rom-com, I guess. The holiday is, yeah, that's huge. Yeah. Sleepless in Seattle, too. This guy's still sleeping.

I mean the opposite, right? No, no, that was the twist. The twist on the second one was that he's sleeping too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. While you were sleeping too, wide awake, again, the twist was that he's not sleeping in the second one, yeah. Eyes white shut, can't see nothing. That was the sequel he did. Direct a video, yeah.

Basic instinct three, very complicated instinct. Exactly. Because you want to twist it. You want to tweak it for the sequel. God, damn. You're going to reverse it. Yeah, we saw this. What's the opposite?

See, Elliot's been working with all these high-powered executives. He knows what entertainment people. Can't come to, mini-garillas. And it's just like there's lots of little gorillas. Like there's one big gorilla in the first one. But then there's like a lot of tiny ones.

A lot of tiny ones. They're getting in all your stuff. Yeah, exactly. And they're mischievous little devils. Small gorillas. They can like form into one big one and then fall down and split into a bunch like in that scene in the gate. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. The gate two. No gate. Exactly. That's already Gate closed Gate closed

Gate to Just a wall I think Having the sequel Just be like No the thing Is like anaconda two No anacondent

That's not saying That's not like that Yeah That's not That's against the rules Counselors Who says you can't do What would be law

I don't understand Is Is it? It's gonna take me to title jail Um Shawshank Redemption

Two No redemption Yeah So the audience has surely forgotten right now that Terry's supervisor just got... Terry's supervisor just crashed into a wall. So Terry is at the autopsy of the German woman and the supervisor's body arrives and he's got the same scared death mask, bloody eyes. So she goes with Mike to see his widow and they take his computer to check it out. And we go back to the weirder with the camera.

His widow's like he was always using the computer. Yeah. Yeah. It's very unusual. This is 2002. E-commerce is in its infancy. Yeah. We go back to the weirdo with the camera and we finally get a look at his face and that's when I'm like, oh, that's Stephen Ray. So he's, you know, he's waxing poetic about shooting this snuff movie that he's going to do with the cafe lady. It's such kind of, it's such kind of serial killer movie, movie serial killer path where it's like, I believe, death. should be intimate.

It should not have a distance. By bringing death to the masses, it's like not crazy enough. It feels like you're like, I feel like you're just doing a monologue, buddy. Yeah, it's not crazy enough where you're like, oh, I'm dealing with a genuine, like, wild person who's like, you know, like, you know, like, you want them to...

The tap into your dark instincts to it to give us a monologue. Yeah, yeah, give us one, suit, yeah. I mean, like, you want it to be something like, yeah, I need to slice open your skin to reveal the secret alien civilization that lives inside of you. Exactly. Gross. Colum caps on this guy.

This is one of these things. I guess this is an ancillary to my, or a corollary to my distaste for movie hitmen, where hitmen in the movies are always depicted as kind of swath, smooth operators when in reality hitmen are fuck-ups. Like, you're not doing that job unless your life has fallen apart. But the serial killers in real life are, again, losers. Like, there are people with mental issues that cause a kind of a sexual perversion

that involves pain or murder or something like that. Whereas in the movies, they always have elaborate philosophies that they are trying to communicate through death. And it's the kind of one of these things where, again, the movies are creating a glamour around something that there is no glamour around. There's just sort of squalid. Yeah.

There are no serial killers who are like, I'm trying to reveal the truth about our feted world. Like, it's always something. I think part of it is to try and, like, trying to take something that's horrible and try to make it, like, add something. thing, like some meaning to it, I guess, where it's like, oh, no, these crimes weren't committed by some, like, lame-o piece of shit monster.

It's by, like, a monster that has some kind of higher call on. Yeah, but the flip side of that is that then serial killers come off as super geniuses. Like, once you get to a certain level of genius, you have to kill, which is not true. That's the part that bothers me. The fact that they're, like, depicted as these super geniuses. The stuff about their, like, monologues or whatever, I can accept that as like, oh, these guys are trying to rationalize their baser instincts and like turn them in, like pretend that it means more.

Whereas like it really genuinely, I'm like, these are not like Moriarty style like super cram. No, there's only one super genius and that's Wiley Coyote who is not a serial killer. He's just looking for some food. But there's two kind of serial killers, I guess. There's the super genius Moriarty ones, the Hannibal Lecters. And then there's the ones who are like, punish me, mommy. Mommy, do you love me?

Like the child brain serial killers are in. movies too when in real life serial killers aren't neither of those things they're just they're messed up people who do terrible things you know but there's they're not they're not they're not fun I guess that's what I'm saying you know but uh in the investigation Mike and Terry finally realized they don't have you know they don't have like the you know they have the juice you know they don't have a cue factor what they don't have a lot of Riz John Winkasey was had limited Riz let's just say that you know throwing confetti around their crime scenes or something you know well except for making their party

Why am I forgetting the name of the comedian Who would throw confetti all over the place Rip Taylor? When Rip Taylor was killing people They called him the Ripper I mean he did throw confetti The victims had been Their guts had been ripped out

And their abdomens filled with confetti They're like damn it Rip Taylor's got another one Yeah yeah And their knees have been slapped off This one Rip Taylor's been here His sides have literally split

And his knees have been slapped into dust They've busted guts I have to tell you The first time I saw Rip Taylor Do his like bang on something. I'm like, what is this? I laughed so hard. I'm like, what is this guy? I love it.

Telling terrible jokes and throwing confetti at people, and he seemed so happy about this. This is horrifying to hear, because this could have been the end of Dan. Luckily, he survived his encounter with Rip Taylor. He was one of the lucky ones that escaped. Rip Taylor led him out of his car, and he just went home covered in confetti, and his mother saw that and was horrified and said, what

happened to you? Oh, yeah, this guy gave me a ride in his car and he threw a lot of confetti. He was so funny. He's so funny And she was like Just fell to her knees And prayed for thanks to the Lord That Dan had been spared Yeah I'm looking for an it parody

That's called Rip So a kid sees Taylor in a drain In a sewer drain And he's throwing confetti out Come on kid Come on over Yeah I would love to see that

The town of Derry Has a legend about Rip Except the thing is At the end They've got to do like a joke telling contest Right And they're gonna lose Because Rip Taylor's hilarious

Yeah He's a funny guy Look him up So Mike and Terry have realized, oh, they all have Burt computers. So they call this forensic programmer named Denise. Okay. And alone that night, she finds a site on their computers. Is it Fear.com?

No, my friends. It is Fear.com. Because the makers of the film were not able to secure Fear.com the site for their movie. Guys, you could not write a funnier joke than this. It's really funny. Once you notice it, it is really funny. I have to give it to them on a certain level because your brain just sees fear.com.com and reads it as

fear.com unless you are really looking at what's going on. I don't think they let the camera linger on the URL for exactly that reason. But this fear.com, so it's like a lot of flash animations, but then there's also a fairly primitive chat gbt type function where you can type it. The computer's communicating with you and you're typing into a text box, you know. You're communicating with the ghost and the machine.

In this case, we're going to find out that's a real ghost. Yeah, we see her log on. There's a bunch of creepy shit on it that freaks her out, and this woman appears and says, hello, Denise, do you want to play with me? Do you want to hurt me? And then we get like a flash of a bunch of random scary stuff zipping into Denise's eyes into her brain.

She's got the fear.com.com download. That's how I feel every morning when I wake up and look at my phone. Meanwhile, around here, Terry realizes from the time code on the German's computer that he died 48 hours after seeing whatever was scaring them on the computer, and that's what the 48 means. Guys, can I interrupt real quick? I think there is a well above zero chance that people involved in making this film saw Ringu or The Ring, because it came out in Japan in 1998, which is a couple of years before this, which explains why a number of the ideas, probably the ideas that might work the best. are cribbed from the ring, right? I mean the story, not to spoil it too much since Dan's giving the summary, but the story of a dead girl's ghost that is using electronics to trap whoever encounters it

into dying in a certain amount of time unless they accomplish a very specific task, that that might have something in common with Ringu? I think so. I think so, yeah. This is a safe space. I'm just throwing this idea out there. If I'm way off, you guys, please tell me. If anyone who is involved in the makingoffear.com is listening,

please let us know if you were influenced by ring you. We're going to some movie detective work here. Now, wait, oh, so looking up, actually. The American Ring also came out this same year as Fear.com a couple months later. So they, on top of the existence of the Japanese one, they probably knew that the ring was in production. Yes, I'm sure. We got to get this out.

We got a rush into production. It's great. It is genuinely great. The American Ring, I think, is really good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Now, how would you guys think this movie was different? According to Wikipedia, this was originally developed as an erotic horror film intended for Zalman King to direct. How do you think this movie would have been different as a Zalman King film? A lot more fluttering curtains. Ponytails. Yeah, yeah. There would certainly be more candles in the bedrooms.

Yeah. There would be more red shoe diaries involved. Saxophone music. Yeah, there'd be a lot more all that stuff, yeah. Pardon me while I Burp a little bit I feel like there might have been a role for George Hamilton in it Whoa George Hamilton Yeah interesting

So Denise shows up It lets them know that the victims were all connected To Fear.com.com And Mike's like But he wouldn't use the same site twice Because apparently the doctor's M.O was to put on live stream death shows He's made the connection to the doctor

Meanwhile, Denise is acting hilariously weird because she has been infected with the Fear.com.com mind virus. And Terry takes Mike to find the author of the book that Udo Kier died while clutching, who is this drunk guy in a black fedora, the uniform of the male weirdo. I kind of love this scene of a guy who's like, yeah, he just lives in this bar, I guess. Yeah. What I do like this, though, is also they're going, this is the scene where you go to the expert who tells you, oh, no, you've found something terrifying.

But he is like, I don't believe in any of that stuff anymore. Like, he's the expert who is, like, also dismissive of the things he's telling them, which I think is a funny twist on that. No, yeah, he's like, oh, everything in point in that book was bullshit. I just needed to write a book. But, uh... And it would have been funny if, like, while they're talking to him, Jeffrey Combs comes out of the bathroom, and he was like, yeah, I was just hanging out

with them because they're both the same level of scummy. They are, that's true. Neither of these guys owns a functioning razor. It works sometimes, but not all the time, yeah. But the general idea was that having all these computers linked could create a neural network that could receive and spit out psychic energy. How? Who knows?

But Urukir's character believed in it and came to believe he knew where the sort of like locus of it, the site that could do these things was. Meanwhile, Denise, our forensic whatever isn't doing so hot. she's seeing cockroaches everywhere. Her apartment has turned into a Joe's apartment. No. Her fear is specifically Joe's apartment. Yeah.

Seeing it again, no. There are cockroaches everywhere, and I'd be like, this is obviously, you know, the thing that she's afraid of that Fear.com is bringing out of her. It's also like, well, maybe you shouldn't live in squalor. Like, if you don't want cockroaches, maybe your apartment should look like. It's a choice that people bake. It's a switch dumb.

Watch fucking creep show. Like, even if you. clean everything. I mean, you're still going to get bugs. I mean, you're still going to get bugs even in a clean house. But because, because humans create spaces that are particularly welcoming for other vermin, humans being alpha vermin species and the others being beta vermin.

But the idea that she's like... Wasn't that a Spider-Man villain or something? Alpha-vermin? Just vermin. Alpha vermin is my own term. But the idea that she's like, how are these bugs getting in here? It's like, I don't know. Everyone's windows are shattered and they have crap all over the floors.

and wet wood everywhere. Of course you're going to get these. But anyway, you live in Seventown. You're going to get this stuff. Yeah. But she's so freaked out by this. She jumps out the window. Denise doesn't fit the 48 hours pattern, though,

which leads Terry to make some leaps that are like huge logic leaps. But not as big as a leap that Denise took out. No, no, no, not that big. But she says, maybe dying was better than whatever scared her. And she reveals that her supervisor

was terrified of car crashes and the German girl was scared of drowning and she died in water. He died in a bathtub, yeah. Mike points out that doesn't make sense. What was the guy who died in prison frightened of? Dying in prison? I guess prisons, yeah.

And Terry's like just promised. Was Udochir afraid of trains? Yeah, probably. Because he put himself in the train station. He didn't have to be there, you know. I think everyone's so discombobulated by their, like, fear brain. Maybe he's running from some other feet. I mean, one of the most disappointing things about this movie

was realizing fairly early in that Udo Kier would not have a larger role in the movie. Just one and done, you know. Terry says to Mike, just promise me you won't visit that site. And then Mike hugs her and cradles her head. And I'm like, did they just met? Like, what kind of relationship to that?

It's pretty great. This was one of the weird things about this movie. This movie is really weird in many ways. But one of the weirdest things was Terry and Mike, they seem to treat every moment they're with together as if it's a potential date. The minute they're first introduced is like you're going to be working together on this case. They're already acting like this is a potential romantic situation. When you meet Stephen Dorff, you know, like immediately.

I mean, even in Bridehart, as far as the brides, didn't run off with him. It's like huge like workwife, work husband energy, right? Yes, for people who have just met. Yeah. But so cut to Mike watching Terry sleep and then he goes off with one of the computers and immediately logs on. appear.com. She ignores for wishes. She can't tell me what to do.

I'm my own man. Yeah, yeah. Her desperate plea, please don't visit that site is the same feeling I experienced when my dad was talking to me on the phone and he made a reference to fans only. And I'm like, dear God, dad, please, I beg of you.

Don't follow this rabbit. Do not go down this. Well, I'm a fan. No. I'm a fan of onlies. So, Dan, but here's the thing. I can understand if Mike was like, well, I'm a cop.

I'm investigating a case that seems to be linked to the site. I've got to look at the site. He doesn't make that argument. He just tells her, sure, and then goes and looks at it anyway. Just out of curiosity, I guess. Yeah. But, I mean, I guess good thing he does, because when he logs on, he recognizes the mysterious woman right away as Jeannie, one of the doctor's, like, first victims.

And she tells me, what? Dan, did he use protection? Did he use a VPN? So that the ghost can't kill him? We're not sponsored by one right now. You don't have to... She says, Find me, you have 48 hours.

And he types in, what do I win? And she says, me. And he asks, what if I lose? And she says, you die. So Mike plays the game, I guess. He gets a brain download of ring style creepy images. Everything looks like it's in a fun house mirror now. He starts getting visions of the white ball,

including a part where the ball tries to chase him into the elevator. Mm-hmm. where there's this creepy, glamorous lady putting on lipstick, and she drops her glove and turns into a monster, and that freaks as being a bit. His being is pretty freaked, yeah. He's taken away by paramedics, and while he's being loaded into the ambulance,

he tells Terry that the woman is Jeannie Richardson, and she's not just psychic energy, but she can live in objects. And Terry's like, uh, what? Love it. And he's like, you're like, yeah, there's like 45 hours left. You got to save my ass.

So to get answers, she does the one thing you're never supposed to do. Log on to fear.com.com. Gotta go. Gotta do it. And she sees some like snuff happening. It's a funny little game, guys. Yeah. She gets the...

The only way to win is not to play. She gets the Fear download. There's a naked lady crawling down the hall, vomiting blood. Now, the director was talking about making this movie, and he said that, you know, the script. didn't really make much sense. So he just wanted to make a bunch of cool looking imagery. And I would argue he's kind of successful.

I think he, I mean, if this was the script he was handed to work with, that was probably the right call. Yeah, if he was like, I'm just going to be, it's going to be nonstop being freaking. Yeah. Does it. I'm just going to put, I'm just going to put some strange stuff on screen. And I mean, by the end of the movie, it is a visual phantasmagoria. We'll get to that point where the visuals are fully just leading the way and the story

has fallen into nothingness, you know. Terry wakes up the next morning. She's got this internet hangover. Yeah. Yes, late into the summary, you're confused about who I'm talking about. I thought you were talking about Terry Zweigoff this whole time. I'm like, why isn't he directing Crum? What's going on?

Yeah, yeah. She asked Sykes if she can look at the doctor files. Bill Sykes? Yeah, from all her twist. Yep. The villain Bill Sykes. You know what it really is? I'm overdoing the names now because when

Stewart talked about fans only, I was just a little too slow to mention Jerry only from the misfits. And I'm like, oh, man, I didn't mention a name fast enough. My dad's a huge fan of Jerry only. That's why I figured, yeah. It's like, what if a skeleton was ripped? Yeah.

But Terry's, you know, asking Sykes if she can look at the doctor files, and he's like, his objection is the feds are covering it now, not that she's part of the fucking department of health, which no one has mentioned for a long time. Like they've just been bunny cops for a while. Once they know it's not a disease that's doing this, she has no jurisdiction.

She should not be involved. We'll see ya. She sees some old photos of Jeannie. She starts nose bleeding all over the files, and then the files themselves start bleeding. And she goes to visit Jeannie's mom, and there's kind of a funny bit where she sees the little girl bouncing a ball in a photo album, like it's a living photo.

Hell yeah. She learned that Jeannie was a hemofeet. Which I guess is while the bleeding happens with everybody. And the mom also identifies an address where Jeannie used to play. So Terry goes to check that out. Being a hemophiliac made Jeannie's greatest fear being sliced apart by knives, something that normal people are not frightened. Right. I mean, it is funny that most of the fears in this are things that anyone would be afraid of.

But that's the point of the... I mean, if you made Fear.com and the fears were not common fears, it was like, I'm pregnant of food that's too moist. Exactly. I hate lots of little holes. Okay, well, how do we turn that into a scary scene for a general audience? So on her trip, she finds an old blind unhoused lady who seems to be expecting her and says, where is she? And the old lady points to a pool of murky water. And Terry's like, cool, no problem.

She like ran into a Dark Souls NPC. Immediately. Certainly how it feels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Immediately Terry's like, yeah, sure, I'll dive into that. goes for a night swim in this gross runoff water where she finds the corpse of Jeannie. And at Mike's Hospital, where she's going to visit. Was it, you think the woman, it was just like, she was like, now the curse has been lifted,

I no longer have to be sentinel over this corpse. And she went off on her own, I don't know. Terry gets a call from Jeannie. This is that Mike's Hospital? Yeah. Where you can get Mike's hard one made. And Mike's hot honey? That's mostly what's in the IVs, yeah.

Terry gets a call from Jeannie who says, time is running out, find me. And it's like, what? You did find you. But Terry starts to hallucinate, goes to the hospital's horror basement, wanders around talking to Jeannie saying, stuff like I did find your body.

But the ghost just keeps saying like, find me. Let's hang some more plastic sheets. I think a better movie, a more sophisticated version of this movie, would have shown that like the woman she sees at the dark pool and stuff like that, that you would start to question, are these things really existing?

where she hallucinating as she entered some kind of strange psychic space where she's seeing these selves. But the movie has been so sinister and creepy looking all the way up to here that it just seems like more stuff in Harrow Town. You know, oh yeah, Hard Town. There's always some blind women just keeping watch over pools of corpse water, you know. That's what you're going to get that in Horror Town, you know. They don't have good drainage. Oh, yeah. Go talk to the blind Sentinel down there. Well, oh, no, you can't get to the corpse pool from here.

You got to take a right at the blind Sentinel. That's going to get you there. Yeah, yeah. Okay, thanks. And at a gas station? Yeah, yeah, I'm a cannibal. Okay, cool. Not me?

No, I died 10 years ago. No, no, no. You're going to come back and I'm not going to be here. So pay for that gas now. Unlike usual, when I allow you to run a tab. You used to be able to do that until Donald Trump. Yeah, until Donald Trump ruined it. Yeah.

Around here, we trust. our neighbors. We trust them to skin us. Okay, can I leave now? So. No, no. I have more foxy wisdom to give you. More folksy horror sayings. After this horrific odyssey, Terry like passes out and then she wakes up and goes, oh my God, what time is it? Which, you know, I get because of the deadline, but it's very funny. And Mike's at her apartment. I overslept and missed my death. Oh, no. Mike's at her apartment asking, why did you log on? which is hypocritical and they go to... Yeah, the gender roles in this movie are fucked.

They go to the morgue to look at a genie's corpse, like, why didn't this end the curse? And the examiner mentions that the body had a previous autopsy, like before her death and Mike's like, oh, he cut her up her wall, she was still alive. Which I don't think you can call an autopsy. No. Yeah. And inside the body, they find this lipstick container

with a message, a note inside that says, the guilty must be punished. And Terry says, she didn't want a burial. She wanted revenge. And I'm like, what are the rules that say, like, she can say, find me. She can say find me, but she can't specify that, like, the specifics of what she needs have to be delivered

via gut lipstick note. Yeah. This is just, I have a theory that. There's the problem with communication, these guys. I have a theory that in these types of stories, death is a form of extreme forgetting. First, you forget how to be alive. and then as you pass farther and farther

into death stages, you forget how to communicate, how to be clear. And so that's why ghosts are always like, do the thing. And it's like, if you just told me what the thing was, you wanted me to do, we could be done with this right. The guilty must be punished.

Just tell me who killed you and where they are and I'll deal with it. That's a cool idea that I wish one of these movies would actually... Something maybe I'll be able get a chance to use at some point. I think the idea that like a ghost is kind of losing its memory

of what's going on. It doesn't lose the intensity of desire or the motivation. Yeah. But now the ghost, through this clue, is finally being very helpful because the lipstick note has a specific address. So they go there. Things haven't changed. Do you think that she was being cut up by a serial killer and then he left to answer the phone? And she hurriedly wrote this note and tucked it into her gut for it to be found in the future.

Yeah. I mean, good thinking, I guess. There's a, in Roger Abrams review, he talks about how the website seems to be this ghost revenge, but it also seems to be operated and run by the serial killer who the ghost wants revenge on, which is a plot hole, I feel like the movie does not square particularly, yeah.

But they go there. Mike, of course, is nearing the end of his 48 hours, so he's getting weirder. I do like that before they go there, they call up Jeffrey Combs, and he's playing cards in a bar, and he's got a fucking straight flush in his hand. Well, they actually, like, when they go to the

address, they find a picture of an old nuclear cooling tower. Yes, that's right. which matches one of her fear visions. And she's like, oh, that must be where there are, which is so wild. They're like, oh, his lair is this nuclear cooling tower. This is also supposed to be taking place in New York City. This movie, it doesn't look like New York at all. But the fact they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, one of New York's old abandoned nuclear cooling towers,

we'll go into one of those. It's like, you might as well just put a pyramid in the city. Yeah, they don't have those. As Stewart says, yeah, they call Sykes for backup. And when they get there. But he's a criminal. When they get there and Mike puts the gun on a doctor and they have a standoff, the doctor reveals that Sykes has already arrived and he's had time to cut him up.

We put him up at the wall. I will say nothing about Jeffrey Combs' character would indicate to me that he would be early. No, not at all. More than he went to shoot first. That is not on them. They must have assumed he would show up later. They're like Sykes isn't going to get here for a while. Let's take the scenic route.

Set the directions to avoid freeways. Like, let's just get there slow and steady. Yeah, surface roads. We can run a couple errands before we get there because Sykes is going to be way past the time, yeah. Yeah, just like cleaning all the empty cans and bottles out of his car will take forever. Terry distracts the doctor by holding up Jeannie's lipstick

just long enough for Mike to shoot him in the leg. And the doctor shoots Mike back with what looks like a luger. It's definitely a luger. The gun of villains. There's a cut to the dog. doctor's live stream. There's a reason for that. Yes.

His live stream. Villains and Han Solo. Subscriber count is immediately climbing upon this. And I'm like, how? How? Like, people are like, you get shot. Hey, hey, hey. Guys, you got to see this.

You know, there's more fighting. The doctor stabs her with syringe. The nude victim wanders off, which is convenient because then the strap thing is free for him to strap terrian there. Yeah. But Mike logs on to Fear.com as he's dying, Fear.com.com. And he downloads Jeannie into the doctor's brain.

And then inside his mind, he's confronted with all these decaying corpse ghosts of his victims who judge him guilty for the crime of Fear.com. And he gets ripped apart like a bag of cockroaches and ash. And sadly, Mike doesn't get to enjoy his heroism because he's dead. And then... The Ultimate Fear.com. Cut to Terry's apartment sometimes later.

She answers a ringing phone only to get ghostly static. And she pets her cat for comfort. We haven't talked enough about this cat character, who I loved. Character? Favorite character is that cat actor. What's the name of this character? I don't know, like Mr. Fitzroy or something. What a great name.

You're right, you're right, yeah. And that's Fear.com, guys. You know what I learned watching this movie? I think there's a thing I don't like in movies and it is seeing nude women attached to harnesses where they are then attacked with scalples. Call me a prude.

It's not something I'm into. Go out and I'll end with that one. You know, this movie and the movie were going to be talking about too soon for my liking. Kind of both came out in 2002 and both featured way more nudity than the majority of movies that we cover.

And there was a time where a young steward had been like, hooray, nudity, but I'm like, this is horrible. I hate this. Yeah, context matters. Yeah, context matters. Thank you. Well, let's give our final judgment.

Nudity is one of the things where context really matters. It does. You're right. Yeah. And just to be, I'm an equal opportunity nudity and joyer. Give me all nudity. As long as it's within the right context. So, Fear.com.

Is this a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of, like Elliot, earlier you mentioned Ebert's review for this picture. And as coincidentally, I have a quote here that I pulled from the review that I wanted to read, which is him saying, do I recommend the film? Not for the majority of filmgoers who will listen to the dialogue and will expect a plot and will be angered by the film's sins against logic. But that was in the context of him saying like, and yet this movie has something. It has like a visual flare that makes it interesting, particularly, as you said, in the last section of the movie where it just turns into almost a non-narrative phantasmagoria of images.

And I don't know whether I've been Stockholm syndromeed into it or what. I've now seen this movie, like I said, too many times for someone to have seen Fear.com. But I think I kind of like this movie. You don't. it doesn't make any sense if you walk into it being aware that it's not going to hang together and like a lot of it

is silly and a lot of it is dumb there is something to enjoy here there's something in the look and feel of it that I like but I agree with Ebert that I could not recommend it for the majority of viewers

only for weirdos I love to hear Roger Ebert like doing a thing where he's like, you know what, normal's, stay away. Sickos, this is for you. Bad movie freaks, enjoyed. Soup's on.

I'm going to say, yeah, I feel like I, I mean, I think is a weird thing to say, but I think time has been kinder on this movie. I remember seeing it originally being like this, is dog shit, I hate it. But watching it again recently, I do have a greater affection for that era of, like,

like weird cyber cinema. And yeah, it doesn't make sense. It's not like good, but there's things that I enjoy about it. So I'm going to say this is like almost a movie I kind of like. I'm going to call it a bad, bad movie. Fair. But more out of, I think it's a personal taste thing.

It's that like there as I do, there is something very nostalgic and comforting in a weird way about the like new metal visuals. And like I think the movie excels. in many ways on a visual level where it's creating like a nightmare world in every form. And the few times when you see Terry's apartment

which just looks like a normal apartment, it's kind of disappointing, you know, that it's like, oh, she just has a regular bed with blanket signet or whatever and a cat. Yeah, where's the gothic candelabra? Exactly. Her bedroom should be full of doves from the open windows

that are constantly blowing ragged curtains into the room. Yeah, why is her last name like not Inokentie or something? Yeah, but I found the, But I found the story is so unpleasant to me. And the overall feel to me was so unpleasant. And I do not like torture movies. And I don't like movies where there's like this sicko is going to cut up this nude women. Like I just, I don't, it's just something I don't like.

And so I'm going to give it a bad, bad movie because it is not a well done movie. And the plot is dumb. But I could see if you guys, I could see, like these guys are saying, if you enjoy this type of movie, then you might enjoy it. And there's some really cool visuals in it. There are some really cool, like, weird visuals in it. And so the movie is kind of at odds with itself where there are visual ideas in it that are more, that deserve a better movie to be in, you know.

But there's a ceiling to how much I can enjoy a movie where a woman is nude on a metal cross and is being cut up by a guy who's talking about, what we have to do is make death a part of our understanding. That kind of stuff. I will defend the movie and say, there's not actually that much cutting, though. No, that's true.

It's more implied cutting than I think. I mean, there's a lot of cutting in the editing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cut like a late Liam Mason action sequence. Or they're trying to hide the limitations of certain things, yeah. And I mentioned the director's follow-up to this movie. It's even more a movie that, like, I could not in good conscience recommend it because, like, there are some deeply, like, problematic elements, like the hero is.

as a guy who's like, oh, I've fallen in love with this girl at the hospital who's asleep all the time. And I'm going to kidnap her to protect her. I'm like, no, you're the villain. But it is also like, it gets even weirder in a way that like, I don't know, if this is the kind of thing you're into, it might be a good, bad movie to watch. Yeah, all the maniacs out there, here's another thing for you to eat. Yeah. But, but not a movie whose point of view I approve of. Let me say.

But Dan, Dan likes to feel bad sometimes. He likes to feel a little naughty and nasty sometimes. Yeah. Didn't say that. But Elliot, I believe maybe you've got some more chatter to talk about. Speaking about enjoying feeling naughty and nasty,

I know what you're thinking. Isn't it time for another max fun pledge drive info segment? Yes, it is time for one of those. So here it is. Now, as I've already told you, we need your support to keep our show alive. And I've told you how important it is to us that your support allows us to stay independent

and dumb. We can go out there and recommend Fear.com to the maniacs and the sickos in the audience because we don't have

anyone telling us we're not allowed to do that. And I mentioned how all you have to do to become a member is go to maximum fund.org

slash join. But I also mentioned a thing called bonus content. You may be wondering exactly what the hell am I talking about. Let me explain.

Every year, every maximum fun show produces extra bonus content that is exclusively for max fund members. Nobody else gets to hear it at all. members only.

If you ever saw someone with a jacket that said members only, they were talking about max fund bonus content. That is hundreds of hours of bonus content across all the max fund shows

that you get access to for a measly $5 a month. Since we've been doing this for years, the flop house alone has something like, I don't know, a couple dozen hours of bonus content.

Every year we get more ambitious for what we do. We've done extra episodes devoted to movies we wouldn't normally cover. We've done audio commentaries for movies. We've done multi-episode

role-playing game storylines Dan released an entire original fully produced radio play. We did six episodes of a role-playing game called SlopTales, where we are working at a seaside restaurant, and I legitimately think it is the funniest thing that we have ever done. I listen to it with my kids in the car a lot. It's very popular in my family. SlopTales is a joy, as is Fly Scraper, the audio play that Dan did,

as is our other role-playing stuff, as is our cats' audio commentary, et cetera, et cetera, as the three extra episodes we did devoted to which director was it? Graydon Clark. Graydon Clark, director of joysticks. Yeah, so this year we're going back to basics by giving you extra episodes of the show all centered around the Transformers movies. That's right.

We're giving you extra episodes about Transformers movies. We have committed ourselves to doing original 1986 Transformers the movie. That episode should be in the bonus feed right now as you're listening to this. And we're going to do one on the first Michael Bay Transformers movie. and we're going to do one on the recent animated prequel, Transformers 1. That's three new episodes of the show you can only listen to if you become a member. We've already released that, Transformers, the movie episode right now. So like I said, if you go to Maximumfund.org slash join right now and join,

you can listen to it right away and hear me talk about how much I love the song, Dare to Be Stupid by Weird Al, which is a big part of that movie. But the more new members who join this year, the more Transformers movies, we will subject ourselves to. If we hit 1,600, this 1,600 new and upgrading members, we will record two more episodes covering Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, and Transformers Dark of the Moon. But if we hit 2,000 new or upgrading members,

we will damn ourselves to recording four more episodes beyond that, covering Age of Extinction, the Last Night, Bumblebee, and Rise of the Beast. So you're already getting three bonus episodes if you join at all. If you're a member, you get three bonus episodes for $5 a month. But at 1,600 joins and upgrades, you will get five bonus episodes. And if 2,000 of you join or upgrade, you will get nine bonus episodes. Why would we do this to ourselves? Why?

Because your support is just that important to us. So that's a lot of new episodes of the show that you will only get if you become a member at maximum fund.org slash join. All you need to do is become a member or upgrade your membership to force us to produce an avalanche of new episodes of the show. you get to listen to all of them, like I said, for only $5 per month. And if you pledge $10 per month, you get all that bonus content and access to our ad-free feed for a regular show. So your member dollars will directly translate into less time spent listening to ads and more time spent listening to us talking about how grimlock of the dynobots is halfway decent idea. I wish he wasn't so dumb and why Walter Magnus is a total loser and the worst of all the leaders of the Autobots. So will you please become a Max Fund member and give yourself access to hundreds of hours.

of bonus content. It's so easy to do. You just visit maximum fund.org slash join. Pick which shows you want to support at just $5 a month or more. Just a few clicks and you're done and you get to hear us talk

about robots that turn into cars and dinosaurs and shit. Forever. Yeah, it was the train to shit? Yeah, that was Fisotron. That was kind of my description of devastating, honestly. Fisotron was the Autobot

and Coprobot was the Decepticon. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is like, they all run away. They're like, oh, gross. It works every time. Hey, let's, speaking of our wonderful listeners, let's answer a few questions from listeners. Sure.

You know, why not? We're opening the old mailbag. Zip. That was us unzipping the mail bag. Oh, thank God you. What? We're scooping out mail and stuffing it into our gobs. Yeah, don't, don't, don't.

That's us eating the mail. Oh, I. I'm just going to read that letter. Well, this other letter is from Samantha, parentheses, Sammy, last name withheld. Who writes? Hagar. Samantha Hagar? Sure, yeah.

I have two questions. First is for all three of you. Recently, I've started rewatching once upon a time. As a Disney adult, there are obvious reasons why I love the show, but sometimes it's so cheesy. It's painful to watch. This made me wonder if the Flop House decided to cover bad TV instead of movies. What show or season of a show Would You Like to cover?

Second question is directed toward Elliot. I have a three-year-old son Who has always liked Spidey and his amazing friends But recently he's been really into flipping Through my Marvel Encyclopedias And asking about all the heroes and villains he sees. He has some Spidey picture books And I don't think he's ready for comic books

So are there any Marvel children's chapter books that I could read to him to keep his interest growing. That's Sammy last name withheld. I'll answer the first question first. I don't know if you guys feel the same way, and this is a show that would not be of interest to most other people. But when you say, if you covered a season of a bad show, what show would you want it to be?

There's just one show that comes to mind. Dan, you might be thinking the same show. It's called Studio 60 on the sunset strip. It's behind the scenes of a late-night comedy variety show, and it is so fucking dumb. And it is Aaron Sorkin at his worst and all these talented performers being forced to do the dumbest things. And it's both not funny and incredibly inaccurate as to how television shows were.

It's so funny. It's, you know, it has that thing that the best, that a lot of the best bad movies do where it's like, okay, well, this is a simulacrum of like a good thing. Like, it has the elements there. It has talented people. If you looked at it with the sound turned off, you'd be like, this is probably a good show. Yeah. Yeah.

It is profoundly watchable because it is a bunch of good people trying to do a show that is ill-conceives. And not to do too much more Max Fund Drive, you know, like promotion, but we do have an episode of bonus content where we talk about an episode of Studio 16. Yeah, so you can imagine what that show would be like. Yeah, you did all of it. But I would want to do the whole season. Yeah. I don't know the exact season.

but I would, I feel like a current show that I would want to cover is the rookie that my wife, every time my wife is watching it, I'll be like painting something and looking up and it's the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life. There's an episode that features an unexpected home birth that I've rewound and watched like 10 times. Is that the Nathan Phillyan one? The Nathan Phillyan one, yeah. I watched the first couple of seasons of that because I like him so much. But it gets so bazonkers, Dan. Yeah, it's a silly show, it's hard. And to answer your second question, if we're ready for that,

there are Marvel chapter books. I know there's a series called The Mighty Marvel Chapter Books, but I'm not familiar with them. But there are three Spider-Man graphic novels that are really good for kids that are by Mike Mayhack. And I know you can get them as a set, but there's three of them. They're called Animals Assemble, Quantum Quest, and Cosmic Chaos.

and I know we have the Animals one for my younger son and my young niece, who is a big Spider-Man fan, really likes those books also. And so I think those are good entry Spider-Man graphic novel comics for little kids. I was a big fan. I feel like for little kids, I'd be a big fan of Spider-Man, the Torment story

just because Todd McFarlem's art is so sick. Yeah, so it's so extreme, and the writing is great. But I would recommend those. I think they're available in a box set called Spider-Man, a Mighty Marvel Team Up, And there's three books, but I think you can get them separately too. It's fine. You don't have to buy them all together.

And they're readily available. So I recommend those. The Mike Mayhack Spider-Man graphic novels. And this other letter comes from Eli Last Name Withheld. Lily. Who writes? Wow. I was greatly enjoying your Mercy episode and browsing the movie's IMDB page when I realized I had perpetrated my own injustice.

I thought the villain was played by David Dinman. Who I will always remember as Skip on Buffy because I'm old. When I realized it was another actor, I felt terrible. I hope no one else commits this calumny, and I'm sure glad that mercy court isn't real. Even though I never shared that incorrect casting with anyone, I still feel like I've wronged Mr. Dindman. I'm sorry, and if anyone else made that mistake,

please be sorry to Eli Lastain withheld. And I just, you know, some of these letters are questions and some of them are sort of like... Apologies for thought crimes. You know, I initially, when that actor first showed up, maybe I'd been, like, my eyes were blurry or something, and I also thought it might have been David Denman. But I, you know, there's a, you know, he's played a number of villains over the years,

but there's, his recent performance in Rebel Ridge taught me to not always trust my initial impression of David Denman's, you know. And also, as a public figure, you know. know that your words carry weights. You're not just going to go half-cocked, just assuming that one actor is another actor. I didn't pause the movie and run over to what's the social media platform that I should be making fun of? All of them?

They're all of them. I didn't go over to threads and write a scathing takedown of David Deadman and his performance. Let's recommend some movies. Movies that we saw recently. We've never done it before. Let's start. Yeah, we've enjoyed.

I'm going to recommend a movie that... Are you about to freak a bean? I love it when Dan says I'm about to recommend and then laughs to himself as if... These assholes have no idea what I'm about to do. I'm going to fucking do it to them. Yeah. I have mentioned my bad movie watching crew...

You're going to give them a little shout out here? You're going to give a little shout out? Yeah, I don't know. They all have cool nicknames. We call... Because of a movie... Of course, there's Dewey, Snottball, and The Beast. Don't get on the Beast's bad side.

Oh, no, but he's a big-hearted guy. It's because of a movie that I didn't see. Like, I missed a movie one week, and I came back, and all of a sudden everyone was calling the group Buttercreamers. I don't know why. But I guess shout out to the buttercreamers out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But one of the members, Phil, his selection was...

not a bad movie, a movie that we all ended up enjoying quite a bit. Everyone in the chat had a great time watching it. It is Gumby the Movie from 1995. And what is great about Gumby the movie? Well, there's many things, but one of the great things about Gumby the movie is like, despite being made in 1995, this is not some hip, modern update of Gumby from, you know, what, like, I know the 1990s. I know the 9095 is not modern anymore, but like what, the 60s or whenever? the original Gumby, like early 70s, maybe.

It is still art cloaky, the creator of Gumby, doing this, like him and, I don't know, maybe some other people, but mostly him, I think, doing the voices, these like flat voices of like, oh, no, Gumby, oh, holy Toledo. And it is bigger in the sense that it is longer and more stuff happens, but it is not like, Oh, we got to make this the Gumby event movie. It is just a long Gumby with everything that suggests, which is a bunch of shit happening that doesn't make sense. Like the narrative goes all over the place,

like a stream of consciousness clay dream. And it has a couple of rock songs, both about Gumby and who Gumby is and what his deal is. And it is just really fun. If you want something that just is bright and silly and weird stuff is constantly happening and it flows into each other. Gumbi is a fever dream of children's entertainment made back from the time when like, you know, I feel like children's entertainment these days. Like everyone has an idea of what it has to be. You know, people are like, we figured it out.

It has to be this kind of thing. Whereas in the old days you could just give like a weirdo some clay and you can make a thing. I mean, Art Clokey is, I think because God, Gumbie is not as cool as the Muppets. I think he doesn't get the same credit as Jim Henson, but like, they're cut out of similar cloth in a lot of ways where it's just like, I'm going to do what I want. Clay.

Yeah, Clay. It's clay. It's similar to clay. I mean, Jim Henson's made out of felt, of course. But, and there was a couple years ago, I had a meeting about these people wanted to remake, wanted to reboot Gumbie. And I watched some old Gumbie cartoons. And they are so fun because, like you're saying,

it's just stream of consciousness almost. Yeah. We started where there's one where Gumbie and Poki are running like a lemonade stand and they're just selling lemonade to people. And then a continental soldier from the Revolutionary War comes by for some lemonade. And they go and join him and they fight alongside George Washington in the Revolutionary War. And it's like, wait, so hold on a second. What century is this story taking place?

There's no time machine or anything. They just walk over to the Revolutionary War. Like, it's a, yeah. I haven't seen the Gumbie movie, but I bet it's fun. Yeah. Do you have another Gumbie-related thing? No, no. I'm tossing.

Okay, so because this is the Max Fun Drive, I'm pulling out all the stops, baby, and I'm making two recommendations. The first is the thing that I probably watched the most in the last couple of weeks and gotten the most pleasure out of. It's a very short film. It's available on YouTube. I am recommending this as a huge fan of the band Queensreich. So I'm recommending this to other fans of the band Queensreich or anybody who likes dorky rock stars in general, especially like dorky aging rock stars. go over to YouTube and look up G-T-Space EPK to watch the electronic press kit for the I guess current or former lead singer of Queens, like Jeff Tate. It's very special. You will get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

And then I'm also going to recommend a new movie. I don't know if it's actually been fully released yet, but I saw an early screening of Mother Mary, the David Lowry movie, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Cole. Uh, it is, uh, David Lowry has kind of had a career of making like, like, a, like an artsy-fartsy movie for himself and then a Disney movie and then, you know, back and forth a little bit. And this is in the, this is, to me, it feels very much like the two halves of his creative brain, kind of having a conversation with itself. Um, it is on the service

about a pop diva who is going through a crisis and, uh, turns to an old friend. and former costume designer, played by Michaela Cole, to help her with her project and kind of re-establish her identity. And it goes in very strange directions, and I found it to be really beautiful. It has, like, really big theater kid energy, and there's some really interesting staging. It feels like it's clearly inspired by theater and large stage productions.

And I think it's really beautiful, and it has these big emotions, yet it's also kind of small, and the sets are gorgeous, and the costumes are great, and of course, Anne Hathaway and Michaela Cole are incredible, and it's so fun to watch them together. So Mother Mary.

I am going to recommend an old movie. Oh! Get ready. Get ready. So this Fear.com is a real spooky movie around a ghost, so I decided I'm going to recommend a ghost movie I saw recently, And that's The Ghost Goes West. This is a 1935 movie directed by René Claire,

who I'm sure you guys know best as the director of A News La Liberte, LaMille, LeMillian, I married a witch, et cetera, et cetera. But this is a movie starring Robert Donut and Gene Parker, who I kept thinking was Gene Arthur, because she's very similar to Gene Arthur, and Eugene Pallets in it, one of the great crokey voiced in real life,

a right-wing nut actor's surfer was. And it is about Robert Donat is, he plays both, a modern Scottish guy who has to sell his family castle because he's out of money, and also his ancestor, a Scottish Highlander who died in a moment of cowardice and now is a ghost haunting the castle until he can find the last surviving member of the clan that his clan hated and get them to admit how great his clan is. And Robert Donut has to sell the castle to a rich family,

and he's falling in love with the daughter of the rich family, and they move it to Florida, and the ghost comes with it. And it's a really silly movie. I thought it was really funny. And Robert Donette is so charming in it. And it's much more of a romantic comedy than it is full of misunderstandings than it is a ghost movie,

but there's good ghost stuff in it too. And it's just like the kind of light, really silly, like fun, but in a way heartfelt romantic comedies that they used to just seem to churn out in the 30s and which they don't really remember how to make anymore. And I really enjoyed it.

So that's the ghost. Ghost goes west. Well, that is this episode of the podcast. But wait, hold on. Before we go, Elliot, what's up? What's going on? So before we go, thank you, Dan. I want to remind you one more time to go to maximum fun.org

and become a maximum fund member. By doing so, you're keeping this show alive. By doing so, you get access to all of the hours. of our exclusive bonus content and our ad-free feed if you join or upgrade at the $10 per month level. But by doing so, even more, you're also telling the world that you don't want to live in a media landscape of mediocre corporate-owned AI-IP slop.

You're telling the world that you want to live in a media landscape of original, artist-owned, personal, and authentic slop. So would you please go to maximum fund.org slash join and join or upgrade your membership? And while you do that, the only thing left for me to say is thank you. Thank you for joining and supporting us.

Thank you for all the members who've supported our show over the years and continue to support our show. It means so much to us that we get to make this podcast and that you enjoy it and that you're able to show that with money,

the ultimate sign of love and appreciation in this crooked fallen world that we live in. We really do appreciate it. That being said, from the bottom of our hearts. So if you want some of that heart bottom appreciation, please go to maximum fun.org

and become a maximum fun member today. It means a lot to us, that the show means a lot to you, and this is the agreement that we've made that you will help us keep it going. So thank you. We appreciate that very much. I appreciate a heart bottom.

Anyway. Oh, boy. Heart bottom girls, you make the Dan McCoy go round. As long as we're tossing thank you is around. Thank you to our producer. Get on your heart and ride. Anyway, yeah.

Thank you to our producer Alex Smith. He goes by the name Howl Doughty. You can find his Twitch streams and music and podcasts on the internet. look him up. He does great work. But for this episode of The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington. And I've been Elliot saying one last time, like Kaelan, that is saying one last time,

please, if you could, go to maximum fun.org slash join us and become a member to support this show and keep it chugging along. Thank you. Bye. See ya. I love going to concerts with my boy. Al Smith. Al Smith, former governor of New York?

Kind of. He's a musician based out of Louisville. We saw ACDC together, or ACDA, for our Australian listeners. We saw Def Leopard together, that fucking ruled. We saw Nick Cave together. I feel like we've seen a million other bands together. Nick Cage? Yeah, we saw Nick Cage together.

Nick Cage and the Bad Seeds. Just put me in this mercy seat. Wow. Red right hand. The color is the left hand is. Yeah, name a second one, Elliot. He's got, what's the one where it's like, I mean, I'm trying to think of his other murder songs.

Yeah. I think there's that one that goes, mbop doop do do da. Yeah. Or there's that Nick Cave song, Hey, soul sister. Hey there, Mr. Mr. You remember that Nick Cave song that goes,

Hey, yeah, yeah, what's going on? Yeah. I love that song's called What's Up, not what's going on. Well, there's another song called What's Going On. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.