The Flop House - FH Mini 102 - The Films of Larry Cohen

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

Inspired by his recent trip with Dan to catch The Ambulance at a local rep screening (part of the Ridiculous/Sublime series programmed by our old pal Cristina) Stuart runs through a brief installment of Missed That Movie (tm) before leading a discussion of the works of low-middle-budget maestro Larry Cohen, he of the grabby premise and wild performances. There's much discussion of trailers to Cohen's films, so if you wanna watch, check the show notes below!If you missed the premiere of our SPEED 2 live show, fear not! You can watch (or rewatch) until Sunday, May 19 at 11:59PM ET! And if you happen to prefer your live shows really live, we’ve got shows for you, in Oxford, England! As well as one just announced, in Boston!Links for LARRY COHEN TRAILERS! Everything discussed in this episode, plus some bonus ones!The AmbulanceIt's AliveIt Lives AgainIt's Alive III: Island of the AliveGod Told Me ToQ: The Winged SerpentFull Moon HighThe StuffA Return To Salem's LotManiac CopManiac Cop 2Masters of Horror: Pick Me UpPhone BoothCellularMessages DeletedGet 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code FLOP at Manscaped.com.Listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $30-off plus free shipping on their best-selling frame. Use code FLOP  at checkout.

Hey there, floppers. This is Elliott speaking. Before we begin this week's, let's be nice and call it nonsense. I just wanted to make sure you knew about the live show stuff we have coming up, in case you miss it later in the episode or just can't wait to hear about it. We are still in the streaming window for the Flophouse Sinks Speed 2, our virtual online video event. Just go to stagepilot.com slash speed and you'll be able to see that whole show with exclusive footage that the in-theater audience didn be able to see that whole show with exclusive footage that the in theater audience

didn't get to see through May 19th. After May 19th, of course, it goes back to the Flophouse vault where it will never be seen again for a long time. Then on May 24th, we will be in Oxford, England as part of the St. Audio Podcast Festival. We're doing two shows in one night, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Two totally different shows, totally different movies,

totally different presentations, totally different questions. It'll be great. And then for something even more completely different, on July 26th, we will be in Boston in person at WBUR City Space. We don't know what movie we're doing yet, but it'll be a fun show. It's gonna be all new stuff.

You're gonna love it. So that's the Flophouse Sings Speed 2, streaming now in Oxford May 24th and in Boston, July 26th. And now on with our regular nonsense. Hey there, folks. Welcome to another Flophouse Mini. That's a mini episode of the Flophouse Podcast, a podcast where we watch a bad movie and talk about it. And though normally on a mini, we just kind of do whatever we want today, we're going to be doing something a little bit

different. We're going to be talking about a movie we watch do something different than whatever we want. That implies forcing us to do that. That that is actually kind of what's happening because I'm forcing Dan and Elliott to talk about the thing I want to talk about today, which is we are opening up the old movie minute mailbag and pulling out the first Flophouse Mini.

I believe the first Flophouse Mini we did was a Miss That Movie. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was a Miss That Movie. And that's kind of what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about a movie that we did not cover for the podcast, but in a way we are going to be kind of covering it for the podcast. But before we get to that, I'd like to introduce myself.

My name is Stuart Wellington. I'm one of the hosts and joining me are... I'm Jay McCoy here wondering why mailbag was in there other than to be another M word. And I'm Elliot Kalin, and you're right, McCoy could have been the other M word. Oh, God, just put it, Alex, go back, swipe out mailbag and put in McCoy.

Anytime I said mailbag, just swap it out for McCoy like a Madlib. Madlib starts with M too. Wow, what doesn't start with M? Well, the movie we're going to be talking about. We're talking about a movie that starts with M. Well, it kind of does start with an M. M is the second letter. It's the runner up to the main word in the title. Jesus Christ. Okay. Jesus Christ doesn't start with an M. You're right, Dan. You're right. Wait, wait,

wait. I can salvage this, guys. Okay. Impossible. No need to start over. We can just look back at the rails. Okay, this is fine. Okay, thanks again for listening if this is your first episode Your first episode throw your phone in the ground bury it never tell anybody but what happened So before I talk about what we're gonna do on this episode, let's give a little back Okay, please Taking a page from me. So a couple weeks ago, I went out for a movie date with my favorite movie date in the world.

That's right, Dan McCoy. And we went out to a screening at the Nighthawk, part of their Ridiculous Sublime screening series that's hosted by our friend, Christina Cacioppo, longtime friend of the Flophouse And this is a what a monthly screening series they do. I believe so and It's been Bangers so far. I hope it keeps going on forever. It's a great series bangers all the way down

I think a previous recommendation prison was part of that see ya series and don't tell her it's me Uh, I don't was that I, I think it must have been because- No, I'm asking you, Dan, should I tell her it's me? Oh. Oh. Just kidding, that's a movie that is also known as The Boyfriend School. Yeah, I just, just because you brought it up,

I have to say that like, so Stuart and I- Do you have to say it? Stuart and I and our friends Matt and Ksenia introduced a screening of The Boyfriend School at the Nighthawk Cinema, which is in part kind of a weird like anniversary screening of the fact that one of the first things that the Flophouse ever screened was programmed by Christina and we watched

Don't Tell Her It's Me. So we all came back together. It wasn't even like a big, it was like the 11th anniversary. It wasn't like a round number or anything. But we were hosting the screening. And before that, there was a trailer for Prison. And we had friends in the audience. Not the thing.

Yeah, not the thing, the movie. We had pals in the audience coming out to see us do this screening. And there was like this huge reaction to this trailer for Prison, the next film in the audience coming out to see us do this screening, and there was like this huge reaction to this trailer for Prison, the next film in the series, and so, so many of those people came back for that movie, and then before Prison, there was a trailer for The Ambulance, what Stewart's about to talk about,

and there was such a huge reaction to that trailer, bunch of people came back. They're really selling these movies based on like good old trailers for these things. So Dan and I went and saw The Ambulance, written and directed by Larry Cohen, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna talk a little bit about that movie,

but Elliot, I have a feeling you haven't seen The Ambulance in quite a while. Yes, I saw it years, years ago, but I've not seen it in a long time, so I don't really, I remember kind of stuff about the basic premise, but I don't really remember the movie very well. So maybe What we're gonna do is we're gonna take a second. We're gonna watch the trailer I think over the course of this episode will probably reference a couple of trailers

There are those will maybe be linked in the show notes And if not, you might just have to use all your own if you want to follow along with the flomp house Just use your googling skills to watch some of these movie trailers. So we're gonna start with the ambulance starring Eric Roberts written and directed by Larry Cohen so why don't we why don't we roll this first trailer. The ambulance if you call for help you're dead. So that's the exact same trailer they played before prison. So you can see why the audience got all worked up and had to show up for the next screening.

Oh yeah, you need to see it. It was a right of spring style riot. The very specific, like the very last line. First off, I don't know, that trailer just reminds me so much of how much I miss the trailer guy voice, you know, who like coaches you through what's gonna happen in the movie. To be honest, I think a lot of trailers nowadays

are not very good, and through no fault of the people making them because they're not allowed to use, or the style went out for using voiceover narration. I think having a voiceover that can just kind of fill in gaps in an exciting way adds so much to trailer. Like trailers would be much better if you had someone who could just tell you a little bit of the story. And honestly, I wonder, I mean maybe I'm wrong,

I wonder if it has made screenplays dumber in a way where like they insist on having a few lines that could just be pulled out in the trailer to explain things. Maybe, yeah, it's possible. Yeah, some moments of exposition they can throw in there. So, the Ambulance is a movie from 1990 written and directed by Larry Cohen.

It's got that grimy New York feel. It stars Eric Roberts, who plays a cartoonist working for Marvel Comics. So we get to see- He's a comic artist. We get to see Stan Lee himself. That's the part I remember. Yeah, playing himself.

It was his first acting role in a movie, I believe. And one of his largest parts. Yeah. Yeah. We get to see the inside of Marvel Studios, which apparently is very inaccurate for actual Marvel Studios at the time. And so the premise of the movie is like,

Eric Roberts has an amazing mullet and he wears a lot of great suit jackets. Wait, that's the premise? Yeah. Yeah. And he becomes obsessed with a woman he sees whenever he takes his lunch break. Of course, it's Janine Turner.

So it makes sense that he's obsessed with her because there was a period of time where she was the hottest woman on the planet. You may remember her as the female lead in Northern Exposure, a show that has just come to Amazon Prime. So we've started re-watching it, or Audrey for the first time.

Uh-huh. You might also know that she's in the movie, Cliffhanger, which rules. Yep. And he becomes obsessed with her only to follow her around, and then she collapses in the street

and is picked up by a mysterious ambulance that whisks her away. And when he tries to track her down, he is unable to. Is this mysterious ambulance a murder machine? It could be that he tried, the problem might be that he tries to track her down by showing around this drawing that he has done of her that looks more like a nagel painting than it does of Jeanine Turner.

Which is like, I feel like I'm not the best artist in the world and I certainly don't work for Marvel Comics. Don't put yourself down, Stuart. I think you are. I feel like... You're in the conversation for best artist. You're certainly in the top three. Yep, thank you. Elliot is being the voice of my therapist.

I guess my best. I shouldn't minimize myself in front of the audience. But I think that I could probably do a quicker sketch of Janine Turner. Yeah, more accurate version, certainly. He's like shopping around this sketch of her with a word bubble That says like have you seen me? I think it's very good He he luckily doing the

Walking around with this drawing he manages to bump into her roommate somehow and he buys her the largest pina colada I've ever seen in my life You're not I're a bartender. You're a professional. I'm a bartender. I've seen plenty of piña coladas. This is a lot of piña colada. Am I right?

Along the way, he runs afoul of the police. Yep. I'm sorry. Okay, hold on. We got a pause. I steamrolled over your joke. Yeah. Okay.

It's okay. We haven't been working together that long. Yeah. Along the way, way he runs a file the police and we are introduced to James Earl Jones who plays a police detective Dan, how do you so Eric Roberts performance is a little big right? Yeah A Man who is not afraid to go big has gone big for this What could have been played as a utterly normal leading man role, but he decides to put a goofball.

That's not what Eric Roberts does. Eric Roberts does not play normal people. And meanwhile. Now does James Earl Jones bring the gravitas he usually brings to his performances? If you want to see James Earl Jones cut loose, if you're like, sure, respected actor James Earl Jones, as you say, brings the gravitas, if you wanna see him instead,

do sort of like his gum chewing spin on a, you know, a cop, a police chief in an old Superman serial, say, then that's kind of what he's bringing to the table here. Now, Elliot, having watched the trailer, do you's kind of what he's bringing to the table here. Now, Elliot, having watched the trailer, do you remember any of the movie or is this like a- I'm remembering more of it than I thought. I had forgotten, I'd remember that it was like

the ambulance takes people to a place where they die. I can't really remember why or what, but there's scenes in it that I remember now. Like when he's, I had forgotten the part where he's he's strapped to a host, to like a gurney bed in the back of the ambulance and kind of wills himself out of the back of the ambulance. Yeah.

Through the power of shaking slightly, that part I had forgotten, but now it's coming back to me. So Larry Cohen, I would- Do you remember, does Academy Award winner Red Buttons, how does he come off in the movie? Oh my God. Red Buttons is, there's a period in this, in the middle of this movie that turns into an Eric Roberts

Red Buttons buddy detective movie. A team up you never in a million years would have thought you needed, but it's great. It's like all of a sudden Red Buttons comes on and just grabs the steering wheel and he's like, we're going where I want to go from now on. And I mean, I feel like Larry Cohen is a specific type of like schlockmeister who puts out some really great junk, like really great, very entertaining junk.

And I feel like so much of his work and we're're gonna be talking about some of his other movies later, but so much of his work is based on him like seeing something normal and being like, what if that thing was scary? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, very much so. And I feel like the ambulance is very much a like, what if instead of an ambulance came to pick you up

for safety, it picked you up for bad things? Yeah. Larry Cohen is so known for, as you say, these high concept, grabby premises, like this, you got It's Alive with like a Monster Baby. We'll get into some of them, but I think that what's interesting to me is he actually doesn't sort of rest on his laurels with those premises.

I think a lot of actual big budget blockbusters are like, okay, we got a great idea, done. Whereas he's like, no, the audience has to be entertained at all moments. And what struck me about the ambulance is the movie is perfectly happy to waste time on characters acting weird or doing funny bits of business or stuff. Red buttons is doing funny bits.

Yeah. And in the meantime, stuff that normally would be in a normal movie, characters sort of getting to know each other and relationships developing, or the plot mechanics needed to get you to one place to the next, he strips that down to the bone. And he's like, yeah, you've seen a movie before, you get it, and it's really entertaining. They're like, yeah, you've seen a movie before, you get it, you know? And it's really entertaining.

They're like, oh, the people that are all missing, they all have diabetes. And then like a woman gets strangled as a way for the bad guys to get to Eric Roberts. And they're like, that woman who just died, she also has diabetes. Yeah, it's like, wait, how's that figure? And you killed her.

Doesn't make any sense. Why did that have to happen? He's someone, Larry Cohen is one of these guys who I think is a, he exists kind of halfway between the schlock world and the respectable world, his work. And like he's someone who gets more respect than your average schlockmeister.

But yeah, you watch his stuff and you're like, this is someone who knows how a movie works and is deciding at different points, but we're not gonna do it that way this time. Like we're gonna, yeah, it's all, it's I'm gonna do the most out of things. There's nothing exciting about that. Yeah, in each scene, it feels like they're like,

we could block it out and have choreography, like choreograph this fight sequence, or these guys can just wrestle on camera for a minute and we'll see how it shakes out. There's like car chases where James Earl Jones is chasing the ambulance and he's chewing gum the whole time and seeming kind of bored, but then they'll cut to shots of like cars whizzing through the rainy,

mean streets of New York, it's great. Over the course of the movie, we discover, yeah, that this ambulance is picking up people so that they can test drugs on them And then eventually dispose of their bodies and they're doing this in What like the second floor of apartment buildings above dance clubs? Yeah He eventually, you know, he tracks the it goes back and forth where he gets taken away by a different ambulance. You're worried about these guys coming after him.

The whole premise is that like, he, it could lean into the idea that Eric Roberts doesn't know if he's like imagining things or not, but that is not the case. He is 100% correct. This ambulance is bad. The cops eventually side with him, but it does become this weird buddy comedy. And then of course there's a big showdown in a dance club that features the ambulance, the titular ambulance is parked in the club in the center of the club, and then the bad

guy drives it around inside before driving through a wall or a doorway. Yeah. Why is this why is this kitschy interesting club decoration gassed up and ready to go? Turns out it's a killer ambulance. It's just it's it's this wild thing of like it. The one thing that I love about the movie is that it's constantly like coming up with new ways to be interesting, even if that doesn't necessarily relate to what was going on before. And of course, like Eric Roberts is giving one of those like career all time performances where you're like,

this guy's a pro, he knows what this movie needs, is a lot of life and energy and he brings it, it's great. Yeah, this is a movie that no one is acting normally in this film. No one is acting like sort of your basic model human. It's a movie where Larry Cohen was like, well, what if everyone was really weird in some way and they exhibited it in most scenes.

And I'd even forgotten there's a whole sequence where James Earl Jones is what, assistant? The other police, the police, the other, the police woman. Becomes more important, yeah. Who like shows up in uniform initially to mainly remind James Earl Jones about his schedule. She then spends the rest of the movie helping Eric Roberts track down this ambulance,

but she's not in uniform anymore, and they kind of fall in love, and there's a lot of scenes where you're like, are they gonna try and do like a love scene, but they kind of don't? It's very fascinating. I wish I remembered more of the movie because honestly I was fucking wasted.

Wow, this is a real twist in the end of the ambulance here. Not what I expected, wow. Yeah, no, I love the way that woman who eventually becomes sort of the female lead is introduced where she's reminding James Earl Jones about his dentist appointment and he yells at her like mad that she's reminding James Earl Jones about his dentist appointment, and he yells at her, like mad that she's in his business, mad that she knows his schedule,

and then she reminds him for something else, and he's like, get out! And then he gives this little sly smile where you're like, he likes it. It's so weird, and then of course, he has a death scene that is one of the strangest things I've ever seen. See, I don't remember that part.

What happens to him? So he's playing chicken with the ambulance. Yes, he's trying to shoot the ambulance, right? And he eventually, the ambulance runs him over. It hits him. It hits him, and he's chewing gum at the time, and then he rolls over on his back and he's still chewing gum as he dies.

Yeah, but becomes a sort of mechanical, like, you know, death blows, like, yeah, chewing. And he does it in this like, death-like, rictus grin of chewing. And the ambulance is not, there's nothing supernatural, right? No. No, it's like a... It's the idea, so the movie, the problem is really not the ambulance is not, there's nothing supernatural, right? No. No, it's like a... It's the idea, so the movie,

the problem is really not the ambulance so much as the people driving the ambulance. Yes, it's not like the ambulance is a character. It's not like Christine or something. Yeah, I mean, it is literally a car. I'm not gonna name the names of... It's true, it is a car, that's true. I'm not gonna name the names of the other movies

because then it would be spoilers for those movies, but it's one of those like the medical profession is You know stealing people for tests and such kind of you know one of those kind of movies now Measures is or whatever. Yeah now eventually they track down That's the one that's the one that that we all promised on our I apologize, I shouldn't have. That's the one that we all promised on the souls of our parents never to reveal what was going on in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, when we went to go see Extreme Measures, we're like, I wonder how these measures are.

You think they're normal? I remember when Michael Apted came out after the screening and said, please, don't ever reveal the twist of what's happening in extreme measures. And I was like, are you gonna do any more of those movies? And he goes, I have to wait seven years in between them. I wish I had given them a different name so I didn't have to wait so much time between them.

Anyway. So one of the fascinating things about this movie is that Eric Roberts' character is obsessed with Janine Turner and his driving forces that he wants to try and find this woman and save her. This woman he believes is in danger. A woman he has only seen from afar and then had one conversation with her in the street.

That's all, and he knows she's diabetic. Eventually he tracks her down. That's his cake, yeah. Yep, he tracks her down in this like weird medical ward above a dance club And and they're like rescuing all the people who were patient prisoners of the ambulance operation And he finally gets to have a conversation with her and she's obviously overjoyed that she's been saved and she's like Can you can you call my boyfriend and tell him I'm okay and Eric Roberts walks away so sad Boyfriend what a bitch.

It's like such a like a Matt Berry, that like Matt Berry snuff box bit where he's like. As soon as each woman mentions a boyfriend, he just like smashes. He's like carrying a fish tank for one of them things, like, let me help you with that, m'lady. And then she's his boyfriend and he just drops it a Brilliant turn by the movie because like when you He's our hero and he does eventually help a bunch of people

But we are introduced to him being like a real pest Jean Turner And so it is a funny turnabout for her to be like, yeah, I have a boyfriend That's why I was trying to brush you off like you didn't have to like go through all this You know, she didn't even just you that she's just like yeah. Yeah, just tell my boyfriend. I'm okay, but it's a good Antidote to movies that are like well, you know the guy rescued her so now they're together I guess guys if you're enough of a pest to the point that you will defeat a criminal organization Yeah, no, it's a wild, funny, fun movie. So that was the ambulance.

Now Larry Cohen, as we mentioned, has a pretty big career as both a writer and a director. And I want to talk a little bit about some of these movies, both primarily focusing on things that he's written, but ideally things that he's both written and directed. And I've collected a collection of trailers kind of going through his career. Now I think one of the big ones is the It's Alive series.

Now, have you guys seen any of the It's Alive movies? I've seen It's Alive. I've not seen any sequels to It's Alive. I've seen It's Alive and the two sequels, but strangely, actually maybe I've never seen the second one. I remember It's Alive I know very well, and It's Alive and the two sequels, but I strangely actually maybe I've never seen the second one I remember it's alive. I know very well and it's alive three Island of the alive I remember very well, but it's alive. It lives again the second one. Maybe I haven't seen it actually now Oh, I don't know

But why is the third one probably whatever was showing on monster vision? Obviously the premise of this one is what if a baby but scary right? and Obviously the premise of this one is what if a baby but scary right? and Also, I gotta say this is a perfect example of how I feel like Larry Cohen's movies also all have banger posters Why yes, this is a poster poster Yeah, the poster for it's alive and then the poster for it's alive 3 island of the alive Which is the same baby bassinet just sitting on a beach Not a visual medium perhaps you can say what the poster is that's what I just said

It's a bat a baby bassinet shot from behind. It's the exact same one. That's in the on the cover of the original It's a live movie Well, we didn't even clarify that First one so the first movie there's a baby bassinet and there's kind of like a claw coming out of it. And it's got one of the all-time great movie taglines. There's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. And then at the bottom, it's alive. Like, what a great...

There's only one thing wrong with it. It's not... It's literally that it's alive because it's a monster. But... It's a perfect movie poster because it raises just as many questions as the answers. Yeah, like what is it? Yeah, what is it? Okay, so why don't we- A baby.

Oh, okay, yeah. So why don't we fire up some of these trailers. If you guys are familiar with the first, it's alive. We don't necessarily need to see that trailer. Okay. It's great, but it is mainly clips from the movie. The next two trailers are actually much shorter. Let's just do the second or third one just because you got a lot of trailers here. Okay.

The It's Alive baby is back again. Only now there are three of them. It's Alive Part Three. Island of the Al the alive don't see it alone. Okay guys so that's that's a lot so that it's alive again that it lives again trailer is it's a work of art it was it was that's maybe the most perfunctory trailer I've ever seen yeah remember the it's Alive baby? Well, there's three of them now. It lives again, the movie. Go see it.

And then you see a cake with a little claw footprint in it. I love that. And then, so, but I love It's Alive 3, the trailer, because I had no idea this is where the series went. It starts off with, hey, remember those babies? I mean, again, it's like, hey, those babies, where we put them? We put them on an island.

Because the crazy thing about that movie is, so the babies are growing up, they're older now, and they're on this island, but they still look like giant babies. They don't become grownups. Interesting. They're still baby monsters. And so, just real quick, the premise're still, you know, they don't become grownups. Interesting. You know, they're still baby monsters. And so just real quick, the premise of It's Alive

is that it's a, that like medical, like medical experimentation has been causing babies to be born monsters, right? Okay. I'm trying to remember. I'm trying to remember. I don't. I think, I thought it was waste of some kind. I thought it was like, it was, I can't remember. I remember that they go down to like,

they're in the sewers or viaducts or something. Well, the baby's using the sewers to travel around the city. Yes, because the baby, even though the baby is a newborn, it has an intense understanding of public municipal infrastructure. The baby has claws and sharp teeth. And what I like in that movie is that the dad is like, we got to kill this thing. But then when he's confronted with it, he's like, this is my child, you know.

And it's kind of goofy and silly. But the second one, I don't think I have seen, but there's more of them. And they do have, I think the later ones have Michael Moriarty. Or is he in the first one, I don't think I have seen, but there's more of them. Is it from? And they do have, I think the later ones have Michael Moriarty, or is he in the first one as well? I mean, he seems to be a Larry Cohen. He's a Larry Cohen special. He's in a lot of Larry, he's in Q,

he's in a lot of Larry Cohen stuff. Yeah, apologies. What I was gonna say is it's the doctor who prescribed the contraceptive pills, I'm reading off the Wikipedia right now, is contacted by an executive of a pharmaceutical company who acknowledges that the Davis's child's mutation may have been caused by the drugs.

Yeah, so again, we have some regular Larry Cohen touchstones. We have a seemingly normal thing is now scary, but also the element of like big business or whatever is conspiring against you. There's this conspiracy element. He does a lot of stuff like, he likes having a satirical bent to things, or to take on stuff like The Stuff is another one of his

that's pretty much like that. Maybe we'll talk about that later. I don't know. Yeah, of course. Now, yeah. So that's Hits Alive. I feel like that was one of his earlier movie, one of his early hits. Yes, I think that was his first one that was like a big hit.

And the, oh no, you know what? I wonder if Black Caesar was his first big hit. But yeah, Black Caesar was before It's Alive. Yeah, because he started more of Black Splatation stuff. But It's Alive, the crazy thing about it is that Bernard Herrmann does the score for it. And it's one of his last scores, and you listen to it, and there's so much in it that sounds like the taxi driver's score, which was his last score,

which he did pretty much right afterwards, and there's part of me that's like, how did he, like, how did Larry Cohen get Bernard Herrmann to do the score for it? It's like, well, you worked with Hitchcock, you're one of the all-time greats, you're getting towards the end of your life, do you want to do this killer baby movie?

I got this killer baby. Said that, I'm imagining Larry Cohen hanging out outside the recording studio being like, hey, if you got any casts off from Taxi Driver, any tracks you're not going to use, we'll just put it in It's Alive. I mean, that's my theory, is I don't know the timeline of it,

but I wonder if he was already doing Taxi Driver, and he was like, yeah, I'll take this other job, why not? Here's some stuff I did for Taxi Driver, you can use it now. Okay, so we're gonna move on. Oh, and we should mention that The Baby was created by Rick Baker, so there's a lot of good stuff working on this,

a lot of good people working on It's Alive. I wanna go to one of his next movies, this is a movie called God Told Me To. This is a nice short little trailer. This is what I've heard a lot about, but I've never seen it. And I've been meaning to watch it for a while. But I just, I got to mention again, if anyone's going to see that short trailer for It Lives Again, it's just totally worth it for the read of the voiceover guy,

which is like, hey, there's three of them now. And it's so funny because it. Like, it's the best. Well, and it's so funny, because it begins, like it shows a birthday cake, Monster Claw slaps the shit out of that cake. Then we get the voiceover, we see the bassinets, and then the camera just pans back down to that birthday cake, and it's like,

what do you expect? I, like, this is like an early version of like James Cameron walking in and adding an S to alien. What if there's three It's Alive babies? I mean, they should have called it It's Alives. That would have been great. I mean, They're Alive I feel like is too thoughtful.

Yeah, yeah. Implies too much work, yeah. Okay, so should we watch this next trailer? Yeah, let's fire up God Told. Yeah. Okay. So should we watch this next trailer? Yeah, let's fire up. God told me to. Okay. God told me to. Whoa. I told him to.

Now, Stuart, I do him to. Now, Stuart, I do want to point out it was released in some theatrical markets as Demon. Okay. I have seen God told me to, but rewatching that trailer right now, I was like, I don't remember any of this. I don't remember. I can't even remember. I think the ultimate solution is, I don't think God is actually telling them to,

but I forget the details. No, there's somewhere, it's aliens are involved somehow. Yeah. Spoiler. This was one that, yeah, I really wanted to see this one in particular, because to me, that's such a creepy idea. In Larry Cohen's book of great ideas, killers who are all just like God told me to.

That's alarming because it puts such a, I mean, I don't know, you don't see in movies that sort of distrust of religion because there's too much fear of telling that story. You want a wide appeal thing, you're gonna offend a big group of people maybe doing it that way. And I don't know, I find that a very effective idea.

Well, especially because it puts it in the title. Yeah. Now, I feel like this is an element of tying tying in with a like a rip from the headlines fear of mass shootings and and killer and like serial killers who are motivated by religion. I love that it's more like grimy New York crap. I feel like I feel like we lost a little something. We don't have as many grimy New York movies. I mean, New York is less grimy, certainly. So that's why there's less grimy New York movies. Maybe you're not going to the good parts. There are fewer, I think, movies, at least at this level, that are shooting,

you know, on location too. There used to be. That's true. And in this period too, it was also very easy to shoot a movie in New York. Like the city made it very easy to do so, which meant that a lower budget production like this could do it, could shoot in New York much more easily. And they're also like the, so Larry Cohen was on Gilbert Gottfried's

Amazing Colossal podcast at least once. And he would talk about how they would just go do stuff. You know, they just like, if there's a scene with a sniper, they're not, they don't worry about, especially the way he did it, they would just go and like shoot this scene in Times Square or whatever, and not really worry about permits or things like that.

And just let normal people deal with the fact that this was going on. Yeah, is this the one where they stole a bunch of parade footage or is that Q, like one of them, they like shot in the middle of a parade and they were just like, yeah, we're here, it's fine. Like, yeah, that was the way it used to be. It's great.

Looking at Wikipedia right now, I didn't realize that Bernard Herrmann almost scored this movie as well, but he died before he could. God told him to come home. According to Wikipedia, Cohen then asked composer Miklos Rosa to score the film. Rosa turned it down saying,

God told me not to. Amazing. That's a good bit. I feel like this is the perfect time to take a little break and have a word from the Flophouse sponsors. Who's first? You are. Oh, perfect. And one of those sponsors is our friends over at Manscaped.

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And I also cannot stress enough how useful it is to have a shaver for down there that has a built-in flashlight. It's very useful. You wouldn't expect it to be the case. I was not aware that was a feature, but that makes sense. In case you're doing it under the covers in the bed? I feel like... I don't know about you, but... Yeah, my stuff generates some shadow. Okay. some shadow. OK. So what and the latest lawnmower 5.0 features multiple razor

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Nothing like a little spring cleaning in your pants. And now for some tonal whiplash with these ads, Mother's Day is coming up. Dan, Dan, a properly groomed man's body is not a bad present for some mothers. Yeah, a gift for some mothers from their spouses, not from progeny, come on, get your mind out of, anyway. You said it, not me.

We should probably, uh. I was just thinking people in a relationship, but sure. Yeah, anyway, Mother's Day's coming up, everyone. You wanna win your mother's day? I don't know why you have to turn it into a competition between you and your siblings for your mother's love, but sometimes perhaps that's the way it is. There's only so much love, Dan.

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Hey everybody, hey listeners. We also wanna promote some Flophouse stuff when this episode is released, which is right now. We'll still be in the streaming window, which we are right now, for our current streaming video release, the Flophouse Sync Speed 2. This is our online live video release of a live show that we did. It operates like our Battlefield Earth show from last year. You buy a ticket. You can watch this show at your leisure, as many times as you want until May 19th That's when it goes away back to the Grey Havens only to be enjoyed by elves and so forth It's a super fun show stand through and I did all new presentations for it. We talked about speed 2 which is a super fun movie

It's just a movie. It's a movie that just It does not work, but should work but kind of works But doesn't work and we had a lot of fun talking about it. Go to stagepilot.com slash speed. You can see the trailers to see for yourself. You can buy tickets for the show. You can buy a Flophouse VIP experience. We get to talk to us through your computer,

or you can buy exclusive Flophouse merchandise that's only available from StagePilot during the streaming window. And if you saw the show when we performed it live last year, there's footage in this video that you didn't see. How is that possible? You'll have to go to stagepilot.com slash speed to find out, but you only got until May 19th to see it. So don't miss your chance.

Hey, something else you don't want to miss? That's also in May. Next month. Next, Dan, do you not know? I'll tell you. I got so wrapped up. Dan, how would you like telling me. Dan, do you not know? I'll tell you. I got so wrapped up. Dan, how would you like it if the Flophouse went to England?

I would love it. As a member of the Flophouse, I would love to go to England. Well, guess what, Dan? Cause you're going. Cause we're doing two shows on the night of May 24th in Oxford, England as part of the St. Audio Podcast Festival.

Dan, were you aware of this or is this a surprise to you? You know what? I like to live every moment in the moment, and the past and the future are sort of a gauzy haze. Yeah, it all kind of becomes one, right? Like, you don't know, time is different for Dan. That's true, time is different for Dan. He's kind of like the aliens from Arrival.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, Dan is experiencing all moments at once and no moments at once. And he communicates with inkblots, like the fireworks from Dune II. Mm-hmm. Well, Dan, on May 24th, we'll be in Oxford, England, doing two shows at 7 p.m. We're talking about The Avengers, starring them with Herman Ray Fiennes from the 90s. And at 9 p.m. we'll be talking Spice World. And we're doing new presentations. It's going to be really fun.

Question and answer session, all the stuff you see in a Flophouse live show. But this time it's in England and we're gonna do our best to use the right words. We're gonna say Lori instead of truck. We're gonna say bin instead of garbage can. We're gonna say England instead of America. All the words that we're supposed to say

for different things. For tickets and more information, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events and then then scroll down slightly to the Oxford show listing, and then click on more info that will take you right to the ticket links for each individual show. D. You know, speaking of Dune, Arrakis is kind of a Spice World. D. Yeah, yeah, no kidding. D. Yeah, pretty much.

D. That's all. D. Thanks. D. I feel like I- D. It's a Spice, Spice, Spice, Spice world, Dan. Thanks. I mean, I haven't seen the movie Spice World yet, but I'm assuming the stars, the Spice Girls make reference to Arrakis quite a bit. Yeah, probably.

I think it's all about how Baby Spice can fold space. Oh, that's how she can do it. Girl-pop abilities from the Spice Malone. Exactly. Uh-huh. Hey guys, guess what? We're also doing another live show this summer. Yay!

What? In July, that's right, the month when both America and France celebrate their independence from things. Okay. We're going to be in Boston, Massachusetts. That's right. Just a few weeks after Independence Day, we'll be in the cradle of independence itself, Boston, Massachusetts at the WBUR city space,

courtesy of WBR radio. We have not decided as of this recording, what movie it's gonna be, but it's gonna be something exciting and something bad that we can make some jokes about. It's gonna be super fun. We went to Boston years ago. We did some really fun shows there

and we're really glad to be back all these years later. I hear the Goodwill hunting is especially good this season the goodwill population is really Exploded because it has no natural predators. So they've stopped enforcing the limits on how much goodwill you can bag I'm looking forward to taking them some goodwill pelts after the show. Give them to my family. It'll be great So go hunting for that goodwill for tickets. You can either go to WBUR org slash events slash nine events slash 931089 slash the dash flop dash house dash live or Google the flop house and WBUR or perhaps maybe by the time this episode is up, Dan will have put a listing for it on flop house podcast.com slash events.

I bet he will. Yeah. Three great, three great ways to see the flop house. Go to stage pilot.com slash speed to see us online on your computer or go to Oxford England, May 24th, or go to Boston, Massachusetts, America, July 26th. Go to flophousepodcast.com slash events

for all the information on all of those shows. ["The Big Bang"] Hi, this is Biz, and this is the final season of One Bad Mother, a comedy podcast about parenting. This is going to be a year of celebrating all that makes this podcast and this community magical. I'm so glad that I found your podcast. I just cannot thank you enough for just being the voice of reason

as I'm trying to figure all of this out. Thank you and cheers to your incredible show and the vision you had to provide this space for all of us. This is still a show about life after giving life. And yes, there will be swears. You can find us on maximumfun.org. And as always, you are doing a great job. All right, class.

Tomorrow's exam will cover the science of cosmic rays, the morals of art forgery, and whether or not fish can drown. Any questions? Yes, you in the back. Uh, what is this? It's the podcast, Let's Learn Everything. Where we learn about science and a bit of everything else.

My name's Tom, I study cognitive and computer science, but I'll also be your teacher for intermediate emojis. My name's Caroline, and I did my masters in biodiversity conservation, and I'll be teaching you Intro to Things the British Museum Stole. My name's Ella, I did a PhD in stem cell biology, so obviously I'll be teaching you the history of fanfiction. Class meets every other Thursday on Maximum Fun. So do I still get credit for this?

No. No. Obviously not. No. It's a podcast. And now back to our show with your host, Stuart Wellington. Hey, this is Stuart Wellington and we are talking about the films of schlockmeister, Larry Cohen. We've talked about a couple of good ones. Now we're gonna talk a little bit about

Cue the Winged Serpent. Now I feel like you guys are both familiar with this movie, right? I've seen this one, yeah. I feel like we almost don't need to pull up the trailer, although if you haven't seen it yet, you should check out the trailer at home, folks. So Cue the Winged Serpent, this is stars Acharidine.

Which one? Well, it stars Michael Moriarty, basically, right? Yeah. But like one of the things that I love about the trailer is it highlights the Carradieness of it. Oh, does it? Yes. Well, David Carradine is in it. Yeah. Yeah. Who is, I think at the time, probably a bigger star than Michael Moriarty. Am I being an asshole saying that?

Oh, for sure. No, no. David Carradine had been the star of a television show. Yeah, for sure. probably a bigger star than Michael Moriarty. Am I being an asshole saying that? No, no, David Carradine had been the star of a television show, yeah. And the premise is that a giant flying dinosaur thing is flying around eating people in New York. That was summoned by a cult, right? Is that the- Oh, that Carradine, okay.

There's so many Carradines running around. There's only the three Carradines. So yes, this is David Carradine, brother of Keith, son of John. Yeah, there's, what I always found funny about this movie is so there's a giant dragon that was brought to, brought into existence because of an Aztec cult, right? Yeah, Q stands for Quetzalcoatl, or however you-

But Quetzalcoatl is, I believe, a feathered serpent, and the monster in Q has no feathers. He's very much a reptilian dragon type, which I think shows you how accurate the movie is striving to be at all times. But this is a, it's such a, it's such a, it's a weird combination of movie because it's a very schlocky,

kind of cheap looking monster movie. I mean, there's great, there's stop motion effects that I love in it. Yeah. But it is a, but in the middle of it, Michael Moriarty's performance, he is taking it so seriously at all times. Like he is really performing the hell out of this movie

when he really doesn't have to. And it feels so often as if you are ping ponging between two movies, one about kind of like a low level crime figure with nowhere to run. And one about a stop motion dragon that is biting people's heads off. You know, was this a Samuel Arkov production or whatever? Yes, it was, yeah.

Because, okay, because I remember reading, and perhaps you've read this anecdote too, like Roger Ebert talked about running into Arkov at like a film festival and being like, Q, what a surprise, like all that schlock, and in the middle this great method performance from Michael Moriarty, and Arkof said, the schlock was my idea.

Oh, that's great, yeah. So this, I feel like this is a fun one, and it's a super weird one, but it still has Larry Cohen's fingerprints all over it. Yeah. Yes, I feel like this is Larry Cohen when he's really doing what he does best, which is like throwing together a mess of a movie that is surprising you all the time.

You know, from moment to moment is not what you necessarily expect from it. Relentlessly desires to entertain you. Yes. Does everything in its power. Yeah. So the next movie I want to talk about is one I definitely haven't seen, but I had to watch the trailer for. It's called Full Moon High from 1981. I think he just wrote it. The next movie I want to talk about is one I definitely haven't seen, but I had to watch the trailer for.

It's called Full Moon High from 1981. I think he just wrote it. I don't think he directed this one. But this came out, I got to point out, came out four years before Teen Wolf. All right, interesting. I'll buy it. Yeah, I got to see this trailer too because I haven't seen it. I haven't seen, I don't know this movie. Full Moon High is not just another teenage werewolf movie.

It's a fight out on the town. So Full Moon High is clearly, yeah, it's like a comedy werewolf teen movie. Now this is years before Teen Wolf, but it is years after I like a comedy werewolf teen movie. Now, this is years before Teen Wolf, but it is years after I Was a Teenage Werewolf, which is the movie that Teen Wolf is also pulling from. But I will say Larry Cohen, sometimes ahead of his time, one of the things that, one of his legacies also is that he was one of the people that sued 20th Century Fox

and Alan Moore when League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came out saying that they had stolen from his script, which was called Cast of Characters, and then hired Alan Moore to write a comic series using that concept so that they could then base the movie on that. And the studio ended up settling, and Alan Moore was so pissed off about that,

that's one of the reasons he removed his name from that movie, was because he was, I mean, it's also a bad movie, but that he felt like he needed his day in court to prove that he would never be like a hired gun stealing someone else's idea. If he's gonna steal someone else's idea, he's gonna mention it in the comic,

just like he did in Watchmen when he ripped off that Outer Limits episode. He mentions the Outer Limits episode in the comic. So Larry Cohen got Alan Moore mad at him, which is not that hard. Yeah, I wanted to issue a correction too. I looked up, Larry Cohen got Alan Moore mad at him, which is not that hard. Yeah, I wanted to issue a correction to you. I looked it up. Larry Cohen did direct this as well as writing it.

Okay. This is a full Cohen. Which, now Larry Cohen doesn't do a lot of comedy, right? Well, yeah, not like straight comedy like this appears to be. Like this is really in the zany mode. Yeah, I mean, I would say most of his movies have a comic edge at some point or another.

Yeah, of course. I feel like he often couches comedy. Like there's comedy and then he also manages to get a little bit of, you know, like cultural critique satire in there. So here he's critiquing the high school reliance on werewolves to win sports games. Yeah, it looks very silly.

I thought it was, it felt like such an outlier when looking at his filmography that I'm like, we have to talk about this. I mean, I definitely like ran to my letterbox to see what people are saying about full moon high and like whether I should add this to my watch list. It's a lower rating, it's a 2.6 overall. And Letterboxd tends to be people like me

who are exuberant about movies, so it's a warning sign, but I'm still curious. I'm still curious. You should look up, Dan, I think you should look up the poster for Full Moon High if you haven't already. Is there a butt involved? Is it a full moon? And that's it?

No, no. Why are you telling me this particular? It's very much a Sub-Jack Davis caricatures chasing each other cover. Yeah, love it. Where it is a woman with a knife is chasing Adam Arkin as he turned into a wolf and he has I was a Teenage Werewolf written on his shirt. So they're reminding you of the other movie. But also not just a woman. She's wearing a halter top and Daisy Dukes, of course.

Sure, yes, of course. Because this is a sexy- And what I also like- And it even says on the tagline is, he's today's teenage werewolf. Only the rules have changed. I wonder if they're adapted. I wonder what the rules are.

I wonder what the rules are. What I like also is, at the corner, in this one at least, there are a couple of bats flying in the air, which doesn't make sense for a werewolf. That's not a werewolf thing. Yeah, that's not a werewolf thing. I guess it's just a spooky thing, you know, just to have bats. There's a leftover on the page, yeah.

Yeah. Look, we were making a poster for a Dracula movie. It just has a moon and bats on it. Just make it a werewolf. No one's going to ask about the bats. It's fine. So speaking of satires, I think the next movie we'll talk about is something I think we have all definitely seen, and that's the stuff, it's fine. So speaking of satires, I think the next movie we'll talk about is something I think we have all

definitely seen and that's the stuff, right? Yes. The stuff which is like full on kind of silly. Yeah, I would say that the ambulance, maybe I just had such a great time in the movies or whatever, but like that may have edged out the stuff, but the stuff was my previous favorite Larry Cohen movie that I'd seen.

Elliot, do you have any, do you have a history with The Stuff? Just, I mean, just having seen it, I wasn't involved in the making of it. I hadn't written any books about it. I mean, you also, you own stuff, and you've seen stuff around. I do own stuff.

I'm familiar with George Carlin's stuff routine, which is not about the movie The Stuff, but it's, I mean. Certain Oreos have double of it. That's stuff with one F, Dan, that's a different thing. That's stoof, that's a different thing. No, but I'm familiar with the stuff. One of the few film appearances by Clara Peller from the Wendy's commercials.

Now for our listeners who may not be familiar with this stuff, and we should clarify that the stuff is sort of a delicious goop that looks kind of like a cat way. It looks like marshmallow fluff, kind of, right? Yeah. Yeah, but it is insidious in some ways. It's an insidious thing that kills you, turns into a blob. Yeah, it turns into sort of a blob.

And then another great weird performance by Michael Moriarty in it. He goes up wearing a cowboy hat. And it was, is it the stuff where one of the taglines was enough is never enough at one point? Which, but they start selling this white stuff everywhere and people love it and then it's killing them. Oh, the white stuff, the movie of that, the first astronauts who sent stuff into space? They were very white, all of them, yeah.

Wasn't that a Weird Al parody as well? Oh, maybe. Based on the right stuff by New Kids on the Block? I don't know if that was a real Weird Al one or one that went around. Maybe it was, I don't know. About Oreos, right? Yes. Maybe it is.

Dan, you'll do it. Put our researchers on that. Yeah, get our researchers on that. I'm looking up the stuff poster. The thing that I find kind'm looking up the stuff. The thing that I find kind of fascinating about the stuff is that by the start of the movie, this stuff is already super popular, right?

I don't remember. I feel like it opens and the stuff is already this like popular everyday part of life that we learn as the movie goes on becomes more terrifying. But the best stuff about it, the best learn, as the movie goes on, becomes more terrifying. But the best stuff about it, the best parts are like the commercials and things like that, right? Yeah, that's great.

And also Paul Sorvino as the like, the anti-stuff militia leader. Yeah, that's great too. Well, and yeah, again, Michael Moriarty just doing weird shit. It's definitely a movie that I remember seeing the cover for and the, or the poster was very scary. A guy's face is all like melty off and stuff.

It's coming out of his eyes and things like that. I would like to read the tagline for the stuff, which is one of these old movie poster taglines. It's several paragraphs long, so bear with me. But it goes like this. If you see this stuff in stores, call the police. If you have it in your home, don't touch it, get out. The stuff is a product of nature, a deadly living organism.

It is addictive and destructive. It can overcome your mind and take over your body and nothing can stop it. The stuff. And the thing is- Which is so much information. It's so much information and it is not necessary because when you see the stuff and you see a guy

and there's goop coming out of his eyes and his mouth, you're like, I guess I got a pretty good idea of what the stuff is referring to, you know? Yeah, like I probably shouldn't touch it. Oh, that's the stuff, okay. Oh, that's the stuff, yeah. I mean, I don't know if seeing that picture will indicate that that is found in nature.

And it's an organism. You don't know it's a deadly living organism. But arguably that should be a reveal of some kind. Yeah, that should be a reveal. If the poster's telling you, maybe that's not cool. Okay. Oh, that's the other tagline was, are you eating it or is it eating you?

That was the other one, that's right, yeah. That's a good tagline. That's what you put on the poster, not this long epic poem about what the stuff is, you know. We'll skip over a return to Salem's Lot, considered to be kind of a wacky one. Yeah, I've never seen it. Honestly, I've not even seen the original Salem's Lot,

which everyone speaks well of, but has like, I tried to watch it, I'm like, this TV pacing of the time isn't working for me, I can't. So let's talk about the Maniac Cop series, which is, again, it's going on with Larry Cohen's idea, like with the stuff it's like, what if a marshmallow fluff was scary? In this case, he's like, what if a cop was a maniac?

And I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, Larry, but let me show you some statistics that are kind of disturbing. I figured this was gonna come up at some point, yeah. Stuart, I wanna push back just slightly on the idea that Larry Cohen's thing is, what if this but scary? Because that could describe many horror films. That's fair.

But I feel like he has a way of finding specific, like there's this specific close at hand innocuous thing that people would look for comfort. I think he's good at finding a nerve that can be hit. This is the scary thing that maybe you didn't expect. Yeah, that's true. Have you guys seen the Maniac Cop movies? I definitely have seen at least Maniac Cop.

I don't remember it that well, but I have seen it. Okay, well part two's the best one. You guys, why don't we fire up this trailer? For the first one? Do you guys want to watch either? The first Maniac Cop trailer's great. Okay. Maniac Cop.

No! Maniac Cop. Maniac Cop, now obviously I'm sure you guys notice it stars one of my favorite actors of all time, Tom Atkins. Yeah, well yes, we will address Tom Atkins, but also it stars Robert Zadar. There's a part at which the narrator says like, you don't remember his face or something like that.

What? The Maniac Cop is Robert Zadar. If there's one thing memorable, you will remember his face. He's a distinctive looking man. His face is his main thing. There's also the fact that they're like, in the trailer, no one knows his name. No one knows his face.

And I'm like, then how do they know he's a cop? Wait a minute. Yeah. Are his victims being, are they finding cop juice on the victims that he's behind? They check the scat. But I apologize. back to Tom Atkins Yeah, I'm at a top Tom Atkins. I love the guy, you know from Night of the Creeps from Halloween

3 season of the witch Yeah, he's just so fun. I love that guy. And of course, it's got Bruce Campbell in it Everybody looks at your baby face in it. He's a baby face, Bruce Campbell. You got Robert Zadar. I feel like Maniac Cop 2 gets a little bit crazier and also features another great Robert. That's right, Robert Davi. What a cavalcade of great genre performers. So many Roberts.

Yeah, Davi versus Zadar. Yeah. Yeah, Davi versus Zadar. Yeah, but again, this is, you know, it's Grimy New York. It's leaning into some classic, it's leaning into like corruption and the idea of a conspiracy like City Hall is like trying to, there's a certain amount of protection going around, protecting the identity of this maniac cop and then trying to find him. It's great. Thumbs up to Maniac Cop. So good they made three of them.

I like that we're getting kind of a unified theory of Larry Cohen throughout this thing. Yeah, we're seeing- I want to point out this is a slightly different Grimy New York too. So that's what's exciting about getting into the Maniac Cop era is that God told me and some of the other ones, those are 70s, Grimey New York. This is late 80s, early 90s, Grimey New York. So this is the very last days of Grimey New York and it's just got a different feel to it.

Yeah, the ambulance has kind of that same vibe. The ambulance came out in 1990. I think maniac cop was a year or two before that. Yeah, yeah. Maniac cop is 88 according to this. Yeah. I would have placed it earlier if I didn't know that it's as late as 88. Okay. Late as 88. That was the tagline. Maniac Cop. Late as 88. Didn't make much sense at the time, but now.

But now in retrospect for this conversation, it does make sense. Yeah. Again, I feel like of the Maniac Cop movies, I feel like Maniac Cop 2 is probably the most fun of them. Put it on my list. But we're going to start jumping ahead. So we've talked a little bit about that era of Larry Cohen. I want to talk about this is kind of a smaller one and this isn't a feature film. I want to talk about the episode of Masters of Horror, he directed the episode Pick Me Up, which was actually one of my

favorites and certainly my favorite. Again, it's a Larry Cohen thing, so it's got a big premise. But I think this premise is fucking great. Why don't we why don't we watch that trailer? You offer me a ride? That's the way it's supposed to go. Only questions which one of you is the bigger psycho. I'll tell you one thing I miss from that trailer.

It's a fun trailer. I miss I miss that voiceover narration already that we're now in the era when they don't do voiceovers in trailers as much. Yeah, and I feel like that would have punched it up. So the premise of this is that a woman is on a bus that breaks down Country Road and she ends up getting caught. And Country Road is not taking her home. No.

And she gets caught between two rival serial killers. You have Wheeler, played by Michael Moriarty, who is a truck driver who picks up people and kills them, and Walker, who is a hitchhiker who gets picked up and kills the people who picks him up. I think that's such a fun, silly program. Yes. Yeah, that's great.

I remember this well, of course, because we watched this back in the day and we were... That was like a regular Stuart and Dan weekly thing. Yeah, it's true. We would get together and watch episodes of Messer's of Horror as they came out. And there's a line reading in here that we reference a lot because it was so goofball where it's Michael Moriarty passing like, it's like an advertisement for like a sideshow or whatever, like it says Monster Babies

or like Baby Monster and he goes, It's an advertisement for like a sideshow or whatever like this monster babies or baby Baby monster he goes baby monster you ever see one Freak me out or creep me out something like that. It's a weird I guess a reference It's alive kind of to like yeah. Yeah Yeah, it's fun. I feel like that whole, I mean, there's, not to do a deep dive in Masters of Horror, which would be a completely different podcast mini, but there's definitely some gems that came out of there, and I like this one quite a bit.

And it's also, it came out pretty late, like this is pretty late career Larry Cohen, but I still think it's a lot of fun. And then I just want to wrap it up. The next three movies that we can talk about relatively quickly, I still think it's a lot of fun. And then I just want to wrap it up. The next three movies that we can talk about relatively quickly, I mainly think are funny because these are all movies that he wrote,

but you have Phone Booth starring Colin Farrell, of course, Cellular, and then a movie called Messages Deleted, and I feel like it's so funny that it's three movies in a row that are all about phones. I mean, it makes sense for an elderly man. At that point he was an aging man to be like, ugh, these phones, wait a minute,

there's something there, hold on. One of the things that's kind of great about Phone Booth is that it is set in New York, which is, again, this is a Larry Cohen thing. And also that it, from when he originally wrote the screenplay to when it was made, Phone Booths didn't exist anymore. So they had to make, they had to change the script to make it be like, this is the last Phone Booth in New York.

Phone Booth is a movie that I remember, I haven't seen it since it was in the theaters, which is, you know, what, 10, 12 years ago now. But I remember, I remember like, oh yeah, it must be more than that. There was like- It was like 20 years ago. Oh, well, well, for the purpose of my self-esteem,

let's say it was five years ago. But I remember watching it and like, it's a, oh, it was like 20 years ago. It's a really, it's a well-constructed like, like thriller, you know? It's a, there's's a well constructed like thriller. You know, it's a, there's some parts in it that are super tense just because the character is so overwhelmed with stuff going on.

The motivation of the bad guy in it, I always thought was pretty weak. Like it's pretty, they're like, admit to your wife that you once had lustful thoughts for someone you work for. And it's like, wait, that's the crime he committed that justifies like his being tested by a psycho? I feel like that's similar, that reminds me of some of Larry Cohen's other work

in that it's like, there's a rock solid premise, but some of the motivation might not make the most sense, but that's okay. Well, you've seen movies before. I wanna- You're not really watching it to find out why the guy is being trapped in a phone booth. You just wanna see him get trapped in a phone before. I wanna. You know what, you're not really watching it to find out why the guy is being trapped in a phone booth. You just wanna see him get trapped in a phone booth.

Yeah, I wanna briefly shine. It's screenwriting, you get your guy trapped in a phone booth, you throw rocks at him, then you let him out of the phone booth. Also, I love the fact that this is a movie that posits a world where Colin Farrell could play a guy named Stu, you know? I wanna briefly shine a light on Cellular,

which was directed by David R. Ellis, who did Final Destination 2 and Snakes on a Plane, and a top-billed cast, listen to this, Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham, William H. Macy. And I remember it being pretty fun too. Like Phone Booth got the attention and then Cellular came out efforts and they're like, oh, phones again.

But I remember being like a fun little movie, but what is messages deleted? That is the one that I have no content for. I also want to point out that cellular was also, I think it's a, there's a remake that- Really? Yeah, there's a, it was a- Tuular.

Tuular? Like the bells? It was the sequel, Tuular, then there was three Yular and then Yeah, it's a movie called connected which I believe is I want to say it's Korean It's from Hong Kong. I'm going to Chinese the the IMDB synopsis for messages deleted a

The IMDB synopsis for messages deleted, a screenwriting teacher is forced to live out the plot of a screenplay idea he stole from a student who now seeks revenge. Love this. Love it. Seems like Larry Cohen was just like, what's something that I would relate to if I was in that situation? Like the idea of writing a movie

about a screenwriting teacher is very funny. And I do like it. It stars Matthew Lillard and Deborah Unger, and it's directed by a guy named Rob Cohen, which I'm like, is that Rob Cohen's B-movie alter ego? Yeah, I'm looking, this appears to be his only directorial credit. He's got other, he's like,

so the production assistant on Space Hunter Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, a writer of a few things. He's a second year director for a lot of stuff though. Okay, well maybe we'll have to track that down for a future Miss That movie. So we did a little career retrospective kind of with probably about as much attention as I.

I mean this is great, great stuff Stuart, sorry. I don't know why you interrupted your wrap up to say that. No, I like this sport, that's the thing. That's kind of why I came to you guys, is so that you guys can tell me that I'm great. You know, validation's really helpful guys. So, any final thoughts? Does this make, does looking through his career

make you want to revisit any of his older movies? Does it make you want to, does it make you miss things from older movies? I mean, for the listener at home, I'm not lying when I'm saying I'm adding stuff to my watch list. I have letterbox stuff. I'm looking at messages deleted, which has actually, you know, got a higher score than Full Moon High, so maybe that's worth checking out. Interesting.

Wait, got a higher score than Full Moon High? I know. Hold on. What's funny is until the end of that sentence, I thought it was going to be like a surprise. Like they got a higher rating than like Phone Booth or something. I'm like, oh, okay. It's actually at number one on the site and sound top 10 list. Message is deleted.

Amazing. I mean, I guess that- In the mood for love just came in right under it. Sorry, Wong. Not this time. I guess the thing it gives me nostalgia for is something that we've talked about already a lot is, there was, you know, like there was an earlier era

where there were these movies, these scrappy lower budget movies with clever premises that could be in movie theaters. Whereas now you just don't get stuff filmmaking at that level that goes out into movies a lot, unless it's in Andy that, you know, I don't know, picks up enough festival interest that some distributor will put it out.

I mean, at best, a movie like that would now end, the modern equivalent that will end up maybe on a streamer that you could possibly find if someone else recommends it to you or if you stumble on it. But yeah, the era when movie theaters, when towns had multiple movie theaters often, or in a city like New York, there were tons of them, and they needed movies to fill those screens.

And so you had not just the access to, but like the knowledge of these movies. Like you could open up the newspaper and see an ad, or at the very least a listing for like Maniac Cop or Cue the Winged Serpent or something like that, and then go to your movie theater and see it. And it's the stuff. You take the newspaper and you're like, I want this.

I want this one. The one with the bassinet. I want to see what's got that weird hand on that bassinet. But the it's like we tried before, like there's greater access to this type of stuff now, but it's some strangely harder to find. And it does make me wish that there was more of that world where the kind of, you have like that, let's say there's four tiers of movies. There's like your top big budget movies

that are meant to be big hits. Then there are the like smaller budget movies that studios make. Then there's like the high independence where often it's schlock, and that's where you've got like Roger Corman or maybe Larry Cohen. And then under that is grindhouse kind of crap, you know, like the sewage and

Well, that's a good movie to there. There are good movies. That's true. That's fair. But now it feels like those middle two levels don't really exist anymore. The kind of middle budget big studio movies and the higher budget kind of schlocky independence. You see either have, you're either watching Argyle or you're watching some snuff movie someone made

in their house that's supposed to look like found footage. And there's very little in between it feels like. Yeah, okay. Obviously what I'm saying is a huge generality and overstatement, it's not really fully true. It's just the way it feels at the moment. Yeah. Okay, well, I think this has been a lot of fun.

Thanks for going on this trip with me. Again, if you wanna watch any of the trailers of the movies we talked about, you can find most of them on IMDb. I will, of course, take these links and put them in the show notes for this to say, Ali, sorry, Stewart, I keep calling you by each other's names today. We're the same in a lot of ways.

Well, no, Stewart and I had a call me by your name situation, so it's okay, we call each other by each other's names. Yeah. Oh, man. No, I will- I haven't seen that movie yet. Fan art, fan art, please, fan art. I haven't seen it yet.

That's the one where they pee in a fountain and they switch bodies, right? There is a prominently placed fountain in one scene. What I was trying to say was Stewart, of course, compiled this list so the work has been done. I will just put these links in the show notes. Okay, so thanks again for joining us. This has been hopefully not too much of a pain to edit for Mr. Alexander Smith.

You can find him as Howell Gaudy on various social media. He's the best and he does a lot of great work for us here at the Flophouse. You can find us and other great shows over at MaximumFun.com. Maximum Fun is our network. They put out a lot of great comedy and culture podcasts. .org .org, my mistake. Sorry. I've been Stuart Wellington. I've been Dan McCoy, the.org, my mistake. Sorry. I've been Stuart Wellington.

I've been Dan McCoy, the.org corrector. I'm Elliot Kaelin, just amazed that Dan is still using his superpower of correcting.org.com mix-ups. I thought he said to me, I have this power now, I'm going to be a hero. And I said, what situations is that going to be useful in? And yet it continues to be useful all the time. I think you're mean dot pizza Whenever whenever whenever internet domain names are miss for that miss said miss spoken the dot org corrector swoops in okay

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