The Flop House - Wuthering Heights

Episode Date: June 27, 2026

Emerald Fennell took one of the classic works of literature most beloved by horny youth and said, "But what if I took out the subtlety?" It actually made quite a lot of money at the box office, but did it work for the Flop House? Guess you'll have to listen to find out. (See, Emerald? That's how you TEASE.) Stay updated on all things Flop House, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets! Wikipedia page for Wuthering Heights Recommended in this episode: Dan: Communion (1989) Stu: Obsession (2026) Elliott: 52 Pickup (1986) Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinflop

On this episode, we discuss Wuthering Heights. Wrong, Dan. You forgot the quotation marks. Do it again. Hey, everyone. And welcome to the flop house. And I'm Elliot Kaelin. Well, there's something a little different about Elliot today.

I can't put my finger on it. Or perhaps maybe if I talk slightly more, you understand what's different about me today. I think it's because Elliot is drawing attention to the fact that when this episode releases, Stuart is going to be floating down the Danube River, which crosses Germany. I actually didn't know that. I'm just trying to acclimate Stewart to what he's going to hear when he's in Europe. Yeah, because they all talk a little like this, very coy. Oh, I have a little secret or surprise.

Well, it's good to know. And I'd hate to look like an idiot over there. And of course, what's more what's more Wuthering Heights than German? That's slightly sinister German accent. What could be more? Hey, hey everyone who's listening. This is the Flop House. It's a podcast where we watch, we used to say a bad movie, a movie that critics or audiences

is rejected. This is an interesting case because this was a huge financial success, actually. A bit, especially for a movie like this nowadays. This was a huge hit. It was. And polarizing critically. Let's say that. I would say the pre-release press was very positive,

a lot of which turned out to be paid advertisement. Oh, really? Now, I would say, though, that the success of this movie would point me towards an appetite for this kind of movie that is so not being met by Hollywood that whenever a movie comes out like this,

I think it will do well for a while until people get tired of them. Because I don't think, because I know a lot of people who went to see this movie opening weekend, and then when I talk to them right afterwards, we're not satisfied with it. We're not really happy with it.

There are a lot of appetites not being met by Hollywood right now. It would seem that appetites for most kinds of films are not being met. That's unusual. An industry dedicated to not making stuff. I mean, it was a bad thing when the Hollywood studios realized

they could probably make more money if they made fewer movies as much to more movies for more people. Yeah, exactly. But it is especially because, and we'll get into it, like this is the kind of movie that Hollywood used to excel at.

Nobody could make this kind of movie as well as the Hollywood Dream Factory. Big budget, costume drama, big stars, big passions, big screen, a big guy, Jacob, Ballardee is tall. He's a very tall man.

I started calling, I was writing this to my wife and we started calling him Timothy Ptolemy because he looks like if Timothy Chalamee was kind of stretched out on a rack.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you took a mouse and put him on a stretcher. Exactly, yeah, don't do that, please, don't do that, yeah. Don't, not even for science. No. What would you be learning?

Oh, mice don't survive. Yeah, well, I think we can figure that out. Yeah, it's a stretchability of mice. Have you guys... I'm not studying the elastability of mice. This is what you're studying? Oh, yeah. That's what my PhD is on.

The varying levels of elasticity in mice. What have you found? There is none. But I got to keep testing just in case. Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, you know. They're actually pretty good at squeezing into gaps that are much smaller than you would expect them to. That's very true. That's true.

And I have some kind of gross stories I can tell you. I'll tell you about off-off episode. Yeah, I don't know if I wanted about what gaps you didn't think a mouse would squeeze into. You suddenly found a mouse in. So, Elliot, let me, I just say you an email, don't open it in front of your children. Okay, you got it. Before we start, I want to say that...

Dan, we're only five minutes in. Well, before we start actually talking about... Oh, about those heights that weathering heights. I recently read the novel for the first time, in part because... The novelization by Alan Dean Foster. No, no, the Bronte novel. Oh, Bronte Soros. Yep.

in part because I knew that we were thinking about doing this and I'm like, Stuart can't be the only one who does homework for this, you know? He watched all those Silent Hills. I'm going to read. Thank you. I'm going to read Wuthering Heights. You're going to do the similar levels of commitment.

The literary equivalent of the Silent Hill movies, Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. Actually, I, and this is important because I, this is a gap in my, my knowledge. I have not read Wuthering Heights. I'm more of a Jane Eyre guy, but that's a different Bronte. That's a different Bronte. I had read Jane Eyre by different Bronteosaurus. That's by Charlotte Apatosaurus.

Elliot, had you read Wethering Heights? No, I have not read Wethering Heights. My wife has read it more than once. And so I was watching this letter and she was pointing out to me all the stuff that was different. She was the Leonardo Caprio meme. So I felt like she was my Sherpa through this. It is wildly different.

It is, as Stuart pointed out in a part of the intro that may or may not have made it in, there are quotation marks. Oh, you did, you said it. That was the whole intro. Yeah, like the quotation marks are huge in this. It is, quote, Wuthering Heights. It is a version. It should have been called Wuthering Heights-ish.

That would have been a great name for it, to be honest. Because I think this movie, well, we'll get to it in our final judgment some more time. Like this movie is looking to explode and kind of like extremify weathering heights in that Emerald Fennell style. And I find that it consistently does not achieve that in a way that made an impact on me, to be honest. Yeah. But at the same time, got to admit, it looks great. This was, it's not, I don't love it as a movie, but it would be a great magazine spread. Those outfits that day.

Yes. There's a reason why this trailer was a huge success. And also why the movie, I would say in large part, why the movie was a huge success. was that you have, like, maximalist imagery, you have two big stars, and you have a soundtrack dominated by one of the premier pop stars of the age, who's also a huge cinephile. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. So I can see why the trailer would, like, is super successful.

And the trailer is great. Like, it got me excited for it. But then as you see that the content from that trailer, like, drawn out into a larger film, not to spoil things, I don't think it totally works. Now, I do have to... Yeah, go on. Sorry, I didn't mean to... I was just going to say, before I go into the summary, I do have to point out that I am in the...

I'm starting the recovery stage of a case of strep throat. So you may find my voice a little bit sexy. And if you find people that are very sick sexy, maybe this movie's for you. So if you're listening to this in a public place and you feel the urge to masturbate to Stuart's voice, please find get off the bus or subway you're on. Find a private place to do it.

Find some heights that are weathering. And you just find a private place, just weather those heights. Just weather. Yeah, go. Find yourself a blasted wall. A blasted heath. Find yourself a blasted heath and blast on it. Uh-huh.

Was that a blasted heath? It is now. Yeah. It is now, yeah. Please. Yeah, the hound of the blasterville. Oh, man. There's got to be a futuristic Sherlock Holmes in space

called the Hound of the Blastervills, right? If there isn't, somebody make that right now. Somebody's fucking up. Space lock homes in the hound of the best of the blasterville. Dan, stop the podcast, Dan, you go write this shit. Do it. Actually, airlock homes. That was what I was.

Airlock homes. You should be airlock homes in the hound of the blastervills. Dan, this is what you need to be working on next. Yeah. Okay. And Watson is a robot. Oh, yeah. It's an actor.

We just give from that shit. Yeah, Watson is like this. It's like wireless android serving, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can't do that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you don't have to do everything. Dan can madly harass the shit. You do the work.

Okay, come on. I'm not going to do the work for you. Okay. So the movie, a movie about romance and passion, of course, opens with the hanging of a criminal. Yep.

Yeah. This is when the movie, the movie is making a real strong case that this is not your daddies or your granddaddies Wuthering Heights. And this is a, I would say this scene is a statement of purpose.

And once you've seen it, I feel like you maybe don't need to see the rest of the movie. Like, this scene is basically doing the rest of the movie wants to. Because what's going on when they're hanging the criminal, Stuart? Well, we have a blank screen, and we are hearing the sounds of, like, taught fabric and grunts and, like, rustling. There was nearly 30-od foot of grunt that I had. And you're like, what are you going to do with all that grunt?

What's that even going to go ahead and inside your... I mean, you're not even going to use most of that grunts. It's just going to sit around in your garage for years. Yeah. Well, so it very... It very much you, the movie begins and you're like, are there people fucking or is somebody dying? And of course, there's a person being hung. But the look on the faces of the crowd, it could be either.

They're really into it. Yeah. And one of the people that's really into it. And one of the people in the crowd just start having sex right in the town square, you know. It's like Ken Russell's the devil. You might have flipped the channels. So, and this is where we start meeting our. characters. So I'm going to kind of jump ahead here to the idea that we

are going to meet the people who populate Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights is the name of a dilapidated manor house. And one of the people that is currently watching this hanging is Kathy, a young girl who is very into watching a guy die. Her father is Mr. Earnshaw, who is a drunk and a gambler and kind of a lout who who is driven by very, he has some impulse control issues. Played by Doc Martin himself, you and Mitchell.

Oh, right. Oh, right. By a pair of shoes? No, Doc Martin himself, Martin Clunis. I suddenly glanced the wrong name in the letters. Do you guys know the show, Doc Martin, where he's like a grumpy doctor in a seaside town? My parents love it.

Yeah, it's a thing that my parents have watched. My mom loves it. It's pretty good. It's a pretty fun show. It was very fun. And in that show, he is the guy who's like, oh, he's like kind of a grump and he's like, doesn't like all these other characters.

So it was very funny to see him as the, the guy sliding into decadence and just being a disgusting gremlin of a man, you know, in this way. I liked his performance a lot. It's very, like, it's very Klaus Kinski, you know. We also have, we also have Nelly, who is kind of like a ladies maid

who has, like, who has been taken him by the family to look after Kathy. Yeah, well, in this, So in this version, she's a companion to Kathy. Yep. She was more a straight up housekeeper in the book. She's not the, like, bastard child of anyone. Here she's supposed to be, like, actually, like, the daughter of someone important who has been, like, kind of disowned or what, like, that doesn't really figure into anything.

There's also, like, this weird implication that maybe she's in love with Kathy that doesn't really get explored. There's a little bit of that. Yeah, in the movie, there's a little bit of that. there's also a little bit of an idea that she kind of is struggling, struggling for, to maintain her station or better to survive outside, to like her namesake, be like a bird. She wants to fly away her namesake, of course. To be clear, I'm saying. That's what the character was named after, yeah.

To be clear, I'm saying that the film appears to add a tiny bit of lesbian subtext. There's none of that in the book. I did not pick up on that, but I did pick up on the idea that Nelly kind of like feels a sense of possessiveness over Kathy. Maybe if only because if Kathy, without Kathy she has, she will slip out of this station and just be on her own poor and, you know,

out and about. And as we know from every other thing set in 19th century England, if you had, if you did not have money, you were essentially living in slime like a serpent, you know, and your teeth fell out. And you just were, the best job you could get would be taking

orphaned babies and slamming their heads against walls. Like that was, that was, that was what it was like in England at the time if you didn't have money. Yeah. One person we will not be meeting is Kathy's brother who has died in this version. He is a big character in the book, mostly because the book, like, there's a whole second half of the book that's about the children of various characters and how they're caught up in, like, Catherine Heathcliff's doomed love after Catherine has died.

Like, she dies. Spoiler. Like a little bit more than, earlier than Midway through the book. book, but most of the adaptations just, like, focus on the first half, because I guess they're just like, this is what people are here for, this love story. And also, and also the story gets complicated, and the story gets weirder after that part, from what, from what I know of it. And that's the, you know, this is a book that I always hear about it, and if I want to hear about,

it's like a progenitor or a part of gothic literature. And, like, I think the gothic aspect of, of that is usually removed from the stories. Like, this stuff about, I mean, eventually in the book, Heathcliff is digging up Kathy's body at night, right, to spend time with it. And, like, he talks about how he's done that a couple times. And they, they, I don't know that how many adaptations include that stuff in it. They don't want to see the dissolute, kind of weird Heathcliff.

They want to see the young, hot Heathcliff, you know. Also, maybe that was implied in ways I didn't catch. I did know that he would go and lie by her grave. But Heathcliff, he is no good and terrorizes the neighborhood. Uh-huh. But we, and it's important you bring up Heathcliff, because he is the last major character that is. that lives in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is a waif who was, I guess, assisting his father as like a

great, like a corpse picker or something. I don't know what it was. But he's the only person at the hanging who does not have a smile plaster on his face. And then later that evening, Kathy's father finds him being kicked by his father and adopts him and brings him to Wuthering Heights to be part of the family. So he is kind of Kathy's adoptive brother. Now, this character, from my understanding in the book, is described as not a tall, handsome white guy, right? He's described as being like... It is unclear exactly what his ethnicity is, but he is described as being darker. Like, he might be Romani.

It's not clear. But there was a whitewashing controversy over Jacob Allorty being Heathcliff. And the, I mean, it's, it was not as bad as him playing in Frankenstein, a person of color, that color being blue. You know, but the, I mean, he's a whole one. He's a man of many colors. That's a dumb joke. The, I think they do, one of the things they do in this one is that my understanding of the Weather and Hyde story is that Heathcloth really has to feel like an outcast, right? Like, there has to be something like so passionately charismatic about him, but you know that, but Kathy knows if she's in a relationship with him, it is unacceptable.

It will, it will drag her down. And I feel like this movie, there are times where I'm like, I don't know, why doesn't Kathy just marry Heathcliff? They live by themselves in this weird old house. They don't seem to interact with anybody else. Who gives his shit? Like, just marry him. I don't know. Just seems like a dude. I don't know. Just do it.

Who cares? And he also seems much nicer in this. He is a real fucking asshole in the book in a way that, like, I found very entertaining. He's no good. He terrorizes the neighborhood. Yeah. I found very entertaining. But I'm like, this is the romantic hero that all the ladies are swooning for?

Okay. He's a bad boy. just want to reform him, you know, tape him. Yeah. Then this one, he's not that bad, a bad boy. Kathy is like a kind of like, like, um, like a real pouty kind of like, you know, like difficult.

She is a classic brat. Yeah, she's a brat, exactly. And Heathcliff seems to be the one who often is like, Kathy, don't do that. But also this is, and I think this is something that we should just get out of the way that Margarabi, I think she's a great actress. I think she's really wonderful.

I can see why they cast her in this. She is not right for this part, though. She's like, you don't believe that she is an impressionable young woman. I don't believe that either of these characters. Margot, Keith Cliff or Kathy have not had sex before. Like I did, and it's,

and that's something I feel like you need to buy from these characters is that they are young and excited by passions they don't understand, you know, and I just didn't, I couldn't believe that from them. Yeah, I mean, Margot Robbie is, like, this is a crazy thing to say,

but I think for this specific role, she is too old. It's crazy because she's not, she's not an old, she's not too old for most roles. But when you're, if she's playing character who's supposed to be in her late teens, basically, like she just carries herself like a woman and why wouldn't she? She is incredibly successful.

She knows what she's doing. She produced the biggest movie of, and starred in the biggest movie of what last year or the year before, whenever Barbie came out. Like, the, she kind of... It's great in most things. It's great in most things. She kind of has too much...

One of the few things in Babylon that I think works is her performance, you know? That was just like, slight dig at Dan's love of the event. You know, I feel so, you know, abused about it at this point that anything positive you say about Babylon is just... I've negged you so hard on Babylon that those few months... moments where I give you a little bit of sugar on it. It's going to be wild when I watch Babylon. I'm like, Elliot, Dan was right.

But I think both of them... It'd be wilder if you're just like, oh, whatever. You know, I'm in the middle. If you're like, yeah, I don't have a feeling about it either way. Turn your brain off. You know, popcorn movie. Forget about it. I think, but I think both of the leads in this movie are just not cast, right, and it really

hurts the movie in a big way, you know, and they're trying their best. I think they're both... And this was another one of those movies where part of the promotional tour was, how can we make it seem like Jacob Lorty and Margo Robbie were fucking while making this movie, even though they are both in relation, or like, she was married with a kid. Which also, like, implies,

I'm just going to say it here, we'll talk about it more than later, like, a hotter movie than this movie. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, we can get into the story. So, the Earnshaw's adopt Heathcliff, basically. He comes to live with them. He,

a dynamic is immediately set up, which is, Kathy treats him like he is a pet or like a toy and he will do anything to protect her even if it includes even if it means sacrificing himself so he like will even if she does something that would get her in trouble he takes the blame for it and thus the the physical punishment from her drunkard of a father um and they have by the way i don't i mean i don't want to keep like doing this too much because you know whatever it's got quotation marks around it but the dad in the dad in the book is

It's just kind of like a dad. Eventually he gets sick and dies. He's not like the drunkenest... They've kind of conflated his character with the son who has been written out of this movie. Like later, he loses Wuthering Heights to Heathcliff because he has been gambling so much. They've just combined that. I think about those quotes, the quotes around the title. The thing that I've seen it described as was that Emerald Fennell was trying to do something like,

this is what it feels like. like to be a young girl and reading this book for the first time. Like it's more a vibe of the book than anything else. So that's, I saw like, I'm willing to buy all the changes from the story and things like that. But it's, but I just, anyway, we'll get to our founder. But does the movie work?

Let's get to that. Does it really? Exactly. So they, with that dynamic established, there's already an intense connection that the movie makes you immediately aware of and you know this is, they are in love. Like, there's no question.

There's no moment like, do they kind of like each other? Do they like each other more than friends? No, immediately you're like, they are into it. Yeah. Okay. Flash forward. It is an unnumbered amount of years later. I think they have to-futely-based.

Long enough for Marco Robbie to be very grown-up and Jacob Lurdy to be still pretty grown-up. I think they have to flush the fact. And Nelly is also very grown-up. Yes, they're all very, and Nelly is now played by Hong Chow, who I just saw in. Who is, again, Hong Chow is great. I was great in things. This is probably her least, her like most thankless role next to the whale,

which is a piece of shit of a movie. There was, I thought, I saw this and then I saw the sheep detectives, which she's a supporting character. And I was like, I really like her performance in the sheep detectives. Like,

I wish that he gave her more to do in, and she's in a lot of this movie, but they just don't, they don't give her a lot to do other than kind of look disdainfully or disapprovingly at things, you know? Like, she's so great in, like, the menu.

Like, she's great in things. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, flash forward, everybody's a little bit grown up. Mr. Earnshaw has left Wuthering Heights a ruin. He is a horrible drunk who has let everything fall apart. Nellie is older, a little bit bitter at her situation.

Kathy is braddier than ever. She just, well, the problem is Kathy keeps trying on bathing suits and not liking the way she looks at them going, Yeah, that is a problem. Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. And Heathcliff is like... What other comic strips can we pull into this one? What if it really was, they were like,

it's Wuthering Heights and quotes, and it is the comic strip character Kathy and the comic strip character Heathcliff the cat in a relationship. Would that be better? Maybe a little bit. And then they had a happy ending, you know, for the kids. Exactly, exactly, yeah. And then their neighbor moves in,

Dagwood Bumstead. They are always thinking over. When he's trying to take a nap, Kathy bothers him. Okay, so, and Heathcliff at this point is like a rugged mountain man with a crazy beard and super long hair. Yeah. And a tall body covered in ropey muscles. If this was a romance novel, it would be described as he has a body that was built from hard work, not bought at the gym. I mean, this is a...

Like, bitch, that's hard work. Yeah, why are we... Why are we denigrating any kind of effort? Yeah. But you could say that this is not a romance novel, but a romantic novel in the old sense of romanticism. So there's kind of like that, yeah. Okay, so again, the previously established... So, Dan, in the original book, does Emily Bronte say he had the kind of body that was earned by work, not bought at the gym?

Uh-huh. Well, I mean, she, like, had a real thing against Crunch Fitness. She wanted to take it down. So, yeah. Take it. No judgments. That's fucked up. Okay.

So, and again, the established dynamic between Heathcliff and Kathy seems to have only extended. Like, they are very clearly into each other. And they spent a lot of time, like, running around on the Moors, like, picking each other up and doing shit like that. You know, romance stuff. I mean, to be fair to them, it is. is a kind of shorthand for romance that's very old-fashioned but they don't do much but on the same look where they live there's nothing but moors there's nothing to do but climb up a crag yeah like so are you like are you telling me these two people haven't experimented yet

there's nothing to do and there's nobody around yeah come see there's a new thistle that was what they did so it's i think it's is it around this point where i actually don't have this part in my notes where Kathy gets mad. When they go to space? Is this where Kathy gets mad at Heathcliff? And goes, she gets mad at Heathcliff and she goes at night. She storms over to the barn that has holes in its roof that he lives in.

And she goes up to yell at him and she is interrupted by what, one of the maids and the stable master having aggressive BDSM sex. Aggressive. Horse-based sex. Yeah. Horse play. He is whipping her. And he puts a bridle in her mouth.

Yeah. And Kathy, like, watches through, like, a knot hole from the ceiling. And I'm like... Oh, it's not a hole. I thought it was. What is... This movie has stopped being inspired by Wuthering Heights and it started being inspired by the adaptation of the Scarlet Letter at this point.

Yeah. And this should be a really transgressive, sexy scene, right? Uh-huh. But it just, like, doesn't. It, like, can't quite get there. It's like, you get the idea. Well, first of all, there's very little patience involved. I feel like this movie suffers from a total lack of patience.

Like, there is no, there's not a single moment of foreplay in this movie. And I, yeah, I feel, and I feel, and even with pornography, I would argue, not that I'm a porn expert, but I've had experiences with it. Oh, okay. That, like, the anticipation of what's going to happen is often more arousing than the actual thing, right? This pizza delivery man doing here. But even just like the first, the first, you see this in movies all the time. I mean, certainly as in, the sexiest part of a love scene in a movie is often, in a real movie, not just one way, is often the characters making those first tentative steps towards each other in an intimate way. And then once you get to the actual scenes where it's fake thrusting against each other, you're like, all right, I know what this is.

Certainly as an older man more in touch with my emotions, I'm like, what's the story here? I need to know what's going on. I can't just see bodies. What's the scenario? What did his stepmom get stuck in? Yeah, that's what Dan is wondering. But, like, no, it is, you say it has no patience, but the thing that baffles me about this movie

and apologize for jumping ahead a little bit in terms of... Is something about the end credits? No, I'm just like giving an opinion. You're like the mid-credit scene where she joins the Avengers. It's crazy that they gave Jacob Allorty's stunt double second billing in the credits. What did he even do? I don't even recall any stuff.

No, I mean, like this movie's two hours and 20 minutes long. As I said, it adapts half of the novel, which is like not much of a story because it's just like, okay, these two people are in love, but they don't get married. And then one of them gets mad about it. And then she dies. And it's like there's so much just like, this movie dragged so much for me. Yes, it seems like. Well, I think in a better version of the movie, it would be like in the mood for love, which is an amazing movie. But we're like...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In a better version, it would be an amazing movie. But that is a movie that moves slowly because it's building such a thick atmosphere. It's such a feeling. Like, the feeling of it is so strong and so tactile and, like, you're living in it. You're living in the atmosphere of that movie.

You're soaking in it. You're soaking it. And here I think there, that's the goal, but you're not really... The air is so thin. Like, the atmosphere is so thin. Like, you're not... It's taking its time as if you are luxurating in this sweat,

for lack of a better word of the movie, but it's not there. the sweat's not there, you know. I would say it's too dry, but everyone's wet all the time. There's too much weathering up there. Like all that wind? It's more like dithering heights, am I right? Just kiss her already.

So while she's watching this through a knot hole, yes, it's still a hole. Heathcliff climbs on top of her and puts a hand over her mouth and over her eyes initially so she can't scream out. And then I guess to like keep her from seeing it so she can just hear the sounds of horse sex. Not with that. It's horse play.

The sounds of horse sex. But it's not horseplay like when kids are horse playing around in a pool or something like that. I fucking hope not. So, and then, of course, this will establish a fetish for Kathy later. What's the fetish sex?

Or her having her mouth covered? Yeah. Because it's like she's not into horseplay. I have a crazy fetish. Sex. Well, it's like there's that old Indian article. It really turns me on. I don't know what about it.

There's that old Indian article, the local man has naked lady fetish and just about what a purve he is that he just loves to see women without their clothes. Like he'll even see women in real life and imagine what they look like without their clothes. Now part of the reason, this is the moment where after this,

this has opened up a whole new world of pleasure for Kathy. She starts thinking, she starts seeing sex in all things, whether it's somebody needing dough. She's imagining, I don't know, hands needing her dough. She sits up, she like, the reason she is mad at Heathcliff

is she sits down on her bed. You should be writing romance novels. I can't, I think one of the instigating elements between them, like, fighting is that one of the, I think she puts eggs in his bed. And he sits on it.

And like, when he reveals the eggs, like, it's like all yoke. It's like the thickest yokes you've ever seen. And he runs his fingers through it. Yeah. And I'm like, as an, as an egg, Egg enthusiast. I'm like, damn, give me some of them eggs.

Well, where do you think all those muscles are coming from? You're just slurping up that yolk. Yeah, just slurping up that eggs. Yeah. Okay, so there's a lot of moments of like close-ups of things like that to indicate sexiness, but there isn't, it isn't actually like. Like a slug. There's a slug.

There's a slug. Not since that Ben Affleck Slug snail movie. Have we used to have slugs been so sexy? Yeah. A movie that I would say sexier than this one. I would, that movie certainly creates a torrid atmosphere in a way this doesn't. This one, it's a lot. It's like, there's all these close-up...

This grade is a torpid. So, but things in Wuthering Heights aren't going to be normal much longer because they get some new neighbors in the form of Edgar Linton and his ward, Isabella. Edgar, what is like a super rich dude? I don't remember exactly what he does for money.

They're just rich people, yeah. What's the name of his... Because back then, like your fancy house has a name. His name is something like something Grange or something? Is she... Thrusch cross Grange. Yeah. Thrusch cross Grange.

Not as cool as cool as Wuthering Heights, but it's still pretty cool. Not as cool. Equally nonsensical. Is that what you said? Described as his war. Okay, because they're just brother and sister in the book. I thought they were, I think they're brother and sister or two, but she's like under his. Oh, okay.

It's just, yeah, like he's the guy. Yeah. Okay, so Kathy is spying on these, her new neighbors, and she falls and she twists her ankle, and Edgar goes outside of their very fancy guards. to see Kathy, he is immediately in love. At no point is he not in love with her. He's in the middle of 19th century England and he meets Margo Robbie.

I have to assume he would fall in love with her instantly. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. He looks at her and he's like, this bitch has seen an iPhone before. There's not a lot of other hot singles in his area, too. That's true. Yeah, that's actually true.

And I'm honestly like, Isabella, who is probably my favorite character in the movie, is she's like very into ribbons and I'd be like, get me someone else to talk to. I think Isabel, I think is the one character in the movie where I'm like, this is getting into the territory I want this movie to get into. Like this character has things going on inside of her

that are out of the ordinary. And that actress, I don't remember the actress's name, but she was also in, she was really good on that show, Task where she plays a character with a much different accent. This is Allison Oliver, is her name. I'm not familiar with her. at all from other stuff. But I really liked your performance in this.

Elliot, if you want to see primarily English and Australian actors doing Delco accents, you gotta check out Task, buddy. It's so funny. They're like they're leaning, they're putting so much sauce on that shit. It's amazing. Very specific recommendation. It's awesome.

It's a good show. It's really fun. My movie recommendation today is going to be partly because of a specific accent that's in the movie. So Stewart knows exactly who to talk to. So I know exactly. Like, I got to tell you, check out Task and it's the preceding show. mayor of Easttown. Uh-huh.

Okay. So, Kathy spends what we come to learn is like a month or something at Threshcross Grange healing. And in that time, Edgar's love has only deepened. He's obsessed with her. And he asks for her hand in marriage. Kathy returns to Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is pissed.

For short, yeah. Um, Kathy, uh, reveals to Nellie that, uh, Edgar has proposed to her and that, uh, you know, and Nellie steers the conversation, fearing that she will be left alone here in Wuthering Heights to, uh, to, to, to, in squalor and garbage. Um, and we should mention also Wuthering Heights is a weird looking house. Like these sets are not realistic sets. They're weirdly designed. It was like, throughout it, I was like, it's like, it's like, they bought the sets from an unmade Terry Gilliam version of Wuthering Heights

and then just were like these are already made. We'll just use them. It's a weird looking building. I do like that the entryway you walk through the place they slaughter pigs. Yes. The entryway is right is the slaughter alley and it's like there's one side of the house and another side of the house and they're connected. It's like it's designed like a tie fighter, you know.

Dan, is the book, do they describe it as looking like a tie fighter? Well, I do want to say like certainly in the book, the Lentons are more well off than, you know, Kathy and her father. They're in Shaw's. But, like, here it is to a ridiculous degree where, you know, as soon as you go to the Lenton's place, like we're in Marie Antoinette, you know. And the other thing is, so the Lenton, so I kept expecting them to draw some parallel that, like, Wuthering Heights is a dark, gloomy place.

But the Linton House is something she can aspire to where it's not weird. Their house is also very weird. Like they have that fireplace that's made out of plaster casts of human hands. Every wall has a human hands coming out of it holding a flower or a candle or something. Kathy's rooms covered in her skin. Yeah, that happens a little bit later. In the words of another podcast, he made it weird by making her room his skin. But like Audrey pointed out that maybe those hands were meant to evoke the Cacto Beauty and the Beast in the sense that she's sort of like not a prisoner in the same way,

like she doesn't necessarily want to be there. I think that's a really astute connection, and I bet that's accurate, but I would say like, but the Earnshaw's, or the, his Edgar's house should not remind us of the beast's house.

Even if it's the idea that she's like a prisoner there, like it just doesn't fill the same role in the story. Like those characters are not, she's not in the house of a monster who is keeping her prisoner and she's going to have to find the magic within it. No, she's clearly a prisoner of her own desires. Yes.

So she. Stuart, that's the name of your romance novel, Prisoner of Her Desires. You got it. Dan, you're writing this Airlock Holmes book. Stuart, you're writing prisoner of her desires. She's like, I'm not a number. You are number 69.

See, it's a hot book. It's a hot book, yeah, yeah. In this conversation. Be fucking you. That's what they say at the end of each conversation. She ends up arguing with Nellie and tells Nellie that she doesn't understand. She's never been loved. or will love anybody.

And Nellie steers the conversation in a way so that she has to admit that she is going to accept Edgar's proposal because she can't marry Heathcliff. It's beneath her station. She says it would degrade her. And Nellie has seen, because of the shadow under the door, that she knows Heathcliff is listening. Heathcliff can hear this, you know.

Uh-huh. And we know, based on last parts of the movie, Heathcliff's a freak who likes to peep, you know. He's a real castle peep. Yeah, Heathcliff hears this shit, and he ain't having it. So he takes a horse, and he goes riding off into a very interesting, like a very non-English sunset to me. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, the sun does set there, so I don't know exactly.

I heard that the sun never sets. Yeah, that's a good point. On the empire, yeah, that's true. I'm so foggy, you can't even tell, you know. Yeah. So Heathcliff leaves. They thought that the sun never sat in the empire. It's just the fog.

Just the fog, yeah. And all those pirate ghosts were coming out and bothering them when the sun was setting and they get distracted and miss it. Yeah. But that's, you know, it's okay. The DJ made it out alive, right? Yeah, finally, yeah. Thank God. So, uh...

DJ Tanner from the whole house. We're just reassociating now. Yeah, Kathy wakes up. She's like, oh, wait, I made a big mistake. I think I love Heathcliff. And it's like, no fucking shit, idiot. You knew that already. You knew that.

That wasn't a new information. like I shouldn't have accepted this guy's proposal or whatever. And then she finds out, oh wait, Heathcliff dipped. He already left. What? And he took one of the horses. So she spends a whole year of longing. And you know what happened to that horse barn?

You know what he's doing with that horse, yeah. Yeah. So she spends a year of longing waiting for him to come back. This is when she gets married. Edgar upholsters her bedroom in walls meant to look like her skin, including the veins. But she waits a whole year before getting married. Oh, that's true. That's true.

And then, yeah. then they get married. They have one of these weddings where she's wearing all black. You know, one of those normal weddings. And, yeah, he upholsters her bedroom walls to look like her skin, including her beauty marks. Which is funny because it's like...

And he should do that... Yes, and so he should do that for his room. It doesn't make sense for her room to be like that. Yeah. She's not attracted to her own skin as far as I can tell, but he is. So, anyway. So we get a little bit of a montage of wedded bliss,

which is basically just... like goofing around the house. It really, it really looks like they are just hanging, they're just having a staycation over winter break or something like that. And Isabella, Isabella has like given up her ribbon room so that Kathy can have a room. And like, Isabella is very much. And also that house must be enormous.

Like there's plenty of rooms. They can both have rooms, you know. And Isabella is, has almost like a childlike mind. She is very naive and she brings a naivete that like, You kind of would think that the Kathy character would also have to some extent. I don't know. Yeah.

Kathy goes back to check. She gives her like the book she made of all the different like things that Kathy looked at or pointed at that Isabella obviously. Yeah. The second character I'm like so are, is everyone in love with Kathy? Like is that what's going on? It's Margo Robbie, Dan. It's Margo Robbie. No, I get it.

It's just, it's interesting that like I feel like that is laid into the movie without really. it meaning anything, you know? But it is the thing where people seem to love her or be obsessed with her without her doing anything. Yes. I will say that there's a, so right now I'm reading The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. And the main character in that, she is this kind of woman where she's so beautiful and she has such grace and elegance that just her presence, people become very obsessed with her, but in a way that ultimately hurts her in the long run. But like the, but it's just like people are so drawn to her that they all seem to want to be a her or be close to her.

And I would kind of, if that's what they were going for at this, I would buy it. But I'm like, I feel like they don't go. Again, with a lot of things in the movies, they don't go quite far enough. For a movie that's supposed to be like shocking and like tidalating, I feel like they don't go far enough in that idea of like, she's just so charismatic that everyone's drawn to her

and wants to be involved with her in some way, you know. I'm just laughing you say it hurts her in the long run. I'm like, oh, did an Edith Wharton book turn out sadly? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now, around now. some mistakes. She makes some mistakes. Sure, sure. Everyone.

Yeah. Kathy goes to check in on her dad, who is become like a weird little Gallum, Gremlin, who is begging for... I mean, not literally, but... I mean, almost literally. Like, his teeth are rotting. He's just sitting in a corner drunk going, he-he-he-he-he, ooh. And he's begging for money, and when she throws some money on the ground, he's like, no, don't go. You've got to watch me pick it up. He goes, it's my punishment. Does you have to watch me pick up every penny?

And like, but he's essentially turning into the leprechaun from the leprechaun movies. That's where he is right now. But also like there seem to still be people working at the house. So it's not like he still has a couple servants and yet he's still somehow turning into a bog gremlin. And yeah, I mean that's a classic English folk tale, right, about a guy who turns into a bog gremlin. Okay, so happy news though, everybody. Kathy's pregnant. She probably got pregnant when she has sex with Edgar and she makes him cover her eyes

and mouth like Heathcliff did. Sure. And he was like, that was crazy, Bay. So, of course, those happy tidings are brought along by a return of Heathcliff. Heathcliff's back. And this time, guess what, guys, he's hot now. And he's rich. He's shaved his beard.

He's always hot. No way. He's hot now. He's got a little gold tooth. He's got his hair. He was hot in like a caveman way, whereas now he's hot in like a dignified gentleman way. Sure, sure.

He wears those A dignified gentleman with an earring. What? Yeah, and he's got frilly cuffs that, like, I love the cuffs on his shirts. They're so frilly. It's great. Yeah.

I mean, that was, guys, he looks cool. Yeah. He looks like Lynch from Team 7. You know what, Stu? I didn't even think about it. He does look like Lynch from Team 7.

He's like, he's, he should, Jacob already should start in the young Lynch adventures. Yeah. Yeah, he looks like, he looks like he should. be, he could play Sebastian Shaw in the Hellfire Club with this get-up. Yes.

I mean, yeah. Okay, finally a reference I know. Finally, a comic book reference that Dan's familiar with. Yeah, yeah. From the 80s instead of the 90s, yeah. So, and, and he comes back. He would be, he would be great casting for Sebastian Shaw. To be honest, like, if it was a younger Sebastian Shaw, he would be great in it.

Yeah, yeah. And he is, he's back. He is rich from some mysterious means. He never kind of reveals it. Dan, in the book, do they ever explain what's... No. He just shows up and he's rich now. But the assumption is he did something bad.

Yeah, right? Like, there's no way he... Elliot, anytime somebody becomes rich, they did something bad. Yeah. Well, not always. Not always. There's one or two people who got rich not doing bad things. George Lucas.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Heathcliff returns. He and Kathy, you know, they still have a will. They won't they. they're clearly still very much into each other. And meanwhile, Heathcliff buys Wuthering Heights from her father, probably tricks him out to, like, ease his gambling debts.

I mean, I think at this point, he's sunken so far. He just has to throw some money on the floor. And he probably like, hey, ho, ooh, yes, I'll sell the house. Me coins, me coins. Shortly after the dad dies. Oh, hobbits want to buy me house. Yeah, exactly. Kathy goes to his house to find him lying on his back in a room with like mountains of bottles in the corners.

Bottle of framing him. Like some of the extravagant stuff, I'm like, come on. Again, this I like. Some of the others really work. And that one works. When it's taking something that makes sense in the story and like exaggerating it to a grotesque degree. I'm like that. I really like that.

when it's just doing strange things for atmosphere, but they're not really connect to what's happening. Yeah, when they go to what the other side or whatever, upside down? Yeah, I hate that shit. Yeah, the whole dream sequence where it's the 1930s all of a sudden and they're just Lindy hopping all over the place. Yeah, that's that different way.

Like, wait, I got to go to a play to understand this? Not for me. JK, you should go to the play. My neighbor's in it and I want to support her. This is what the Stranger Things play? Yeah, yeah, she's in the Stranger Things play. It would be so funny. It would be so funny.

Halfway through this movie, halfway through this movie, Asoka turned up. And it was like, wait, I had to watch Asoka to understand the Wuthering Heights adaptation. Oh, man. Okay. There's also, when Kathy is raging over her father's death,

she initially seems sad about it. And then out of anger, she starts kicking him, and she kicks him in the head, and his teeth come flying out. Yeah, that's good. I like that. That's protest. Okay.

So when consoling her, after at the funeral, Heathcliff consoles Kathy, and that immediately starts, uh, turns to them hooking up. And again, you would think we are this late in the movie. You would think that this is the moment where like, they are going to connect and they are giving into their passions.

This is like, give me some fucking Zalman King shit here. No dice. They just start hooking up and you're like, okay, I guess they're hooking up now. Like there's no like built, it doesn't feel like a payoff. It doesn't feel like an eruption, you know.

It's just kind of like a montage of them having sex in different places. and it's, I think it's supposed to have that feeling of like, oh, they unleashed. Oh, wow. Like the flood walls, the flood is knocked down the walls. Like it's, but it's, yeah, it just doesn't, you don't feel that, that overcome with emotion. You don't feel that release or that, that, like, finally, you know, it's, you know, it's just not, it's not quite there, unfortunately. Okay.

So. It's not like the moment when Peewee finally gets his bike back in Peewee's big adventure where you're suddenly like, oh, man, now these two are together again. Oh, boy. No, lock up your sons. So Nelly, Nellie is aware of this affair going on. Kathy is not adept enough at sneaking. And Nellie is, and Nellie, Nellie's not happy about it.

She's a little stressed. Later on, she gets even more mad. And similar to the Nellie Furtado song, Pramiscuous. She's sick of, you know, she's sick of this promiscuous girl. I know where you are, et cetera. etc. Primiscus boy, you know. Yeah, but she doesn't have the passion of,

she doesn't have the passion of the man-eater from the Nellie for title song, man. Thank you, Ellie. You get one going forward to. But she saw Kathy turn out the lights and she knows what's going on. Okay, so she, Kathy is sick in Nellie,

and she decides to banish it her and kick her out. And Nellie is like, where am I going to go? and Kathy's like, I don't give a shit. And so Nelly goes to Edgar and basically says, yeah, she's been having an affair with Heathcliff, which Edgar does the thing, the normal thing, which he says, you can't have Heathcliff over anymore. Of course, like, I don't want you hanging out with Heathcliff, which I feel like at this time,

most gentlemen would not be super happy with their wives spending unsupervised time with rakes, right? Right? Probably not. What kind of rakes? But I guess this rake is her adoptive brother. Wait, wait, let Dan play this out. Let Dan play this out. Like the wide ones with like kind of the flexible end or like the ones that are, you know, more like a hoe.

I mean, this rake is kind of a is kind of a ho. Like you just giving it up to Kathy whenever, wherever, you know. I zoned out. Do we talk about like, has the weird like bondage stuff with Isabella happened yet? We're about to do that now. It hasn't happened yet. Kathy and Kathy and Heathcliff are hooking up. She reveals that she's pregnant and Heathcliff seems fine with it.

But then when they're hooking up, he, while they're doing it, sorry, he's like. I just thought of some gross bed talk. He could have gotten into it. By all means. Let's have it. I'm going to squirt that baby in the face. Oh, man.

If he would have said that, I would have been like Wuthering Heights. I got to give you credit for being gross. You know. I can only assume. Elliot's based this off of his real life experiences as a father. Sure, yeah, of course. Not at all. Heathcliff seems fine with it, but then while they're, part of his like dirty talk is he's

like, yeah, I'll go kill Edgar. Like, I'll just go up and kill him right now. Is my fake dirty talk that I just did any weird with him being like, yeah, I'm just going to kill your husband. I'm going to lick his blood up. He's going to kill him right now. I don't know. Don't make me choose.

Yeah, okay. So, Kathy obviously, still. you know, still is into it in the time. But during her post nut clarity, she's like, yo, wait, that would cross the line. Maybe don't do this no more. Yeah, don't do that.

Yeah, don't do this. And she's like, I can't see anymore. We're done. And Heathcliff's like, yeah, whatever, you said that last time. But she seems to mean it. So he's like, okay, fuck this. Immediately goes over to Isabella,

who is clearly infatuated with him. Yes. And he's like, I'm going to be a piece of shit to you. I'm going to treat you like crap. I am never going to love you. Do you want to get married? And she's like, yep. And like this is one of the few, again,

the Isabella stuff is one of the rare points of the movie where I'm like, this movie is getting into the kind of like stranger passions that it wants again to. We're like, he's undressing her piece by piece. And he keeps going to be terrible to you. I'm never going to treat U.S. I'm only going to marry you so I can get at Catholic. Do you want me to keep going? She goes, yes.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to be abominable. Like, I'm going to do all these bad things. You can go? Yes. And that's a, and so they get married. But like, I like the way that that scene is structured where it is not, I'm going to trick Isabella into loving me.

So he's just like, look, I know you're so desperate for anything that you're going to take this. But maybe you like it too. And she's like, yeah, maybe I do like it. Like that's the, it's an interesting place to go. Yeah. It's a certain amount of modern, like, sub-dom, well, that's. Yeah. Yeah.

They engage in a full sub-dom relationship, which is, even though, it is like, like textually. Now, by subdom you mean submissive and dominant, not submarine sandwich Dom Deloese, which is a different relationship. Yeah. Well,

there's a certain amount of eating in both, but different types of eating. But I, it's just like this is a part where like, you know, textually it's kind of unpleasant because you know like how little he cares for her. But it does,

it is like one of the few things that comes close to being kind of thing. But it's also kind of like a shitty thing to do. She's a book character, Isabella, who like, in the book, it's not, you know, he just is abusive towards her. And she is, like, the one character who kind of gets out of there. She's like, I'm not having this. I'm going to escape.

You know, she goes off and has, like, part of a life in London. You know, like, she eventually dies within the span of the book. Sure. They'll do, yeah. Offscreen free of these weirdos. And, like, to a certain degree, I'm like, well, this is. unfair to this. This is unfair to this character.

I shouldn't be bringing outside stuff, but it's like you're making her so pathetic here versus kind of like... I don't know. I don't know about that because I think that the thing that changes that for me is the scene also when Nellie goes to visit and he's treating her like a dog for real. And she, at least the way that Alson Oliver is playing it, she seems to genuinely be into this. No, she's into it.

And I'm like, this gives this character a set... Because, you know, in a DOM sub relationship, not the, I only know it academically, but like, in a doms relationship, the sub has a certain amount of power. You did your PhD on it. I did, yeah. It was that and the elasticity of mice. The elasticity of mice in a subdom relationship. But like the sub has a certain amount of power because they are essentially setting the rules of limits and things like that. Right.

Like it is based and it's not like they're not being, when they're being punished or whatever being submissive is because they're getting pleasure out of it. They're driving it in that way. And so I think by giving this, making this a pleasurable thing for her. it makes her character much more powerful and has much more agency than she might have been if it was just, oh, it's another victim of Heathcliff's, you know, horrible.

Well, if it was just victimization, sure. I'm talking about how she specifically is like, you know what, fuck this. I'm out of the book. She's going to actually leave. But what this also means, though, is at the end of this movie when Nellie comes and, like, rescues Isabella,

it doesn't really make total sense to me. Because Isabella, it seems to be, again, super into this moment. Maybe it's just, maybe it's Stockholm syndrome. Maybe it's just she's just putting up a show, I don't know, but it's, but it feels like I was like, again, the only other scene where I was like, now this movie is getting into like

interesting sexual waters, you know, which is where it wants to be. The most interesting sexual waters, of course, me, John Waters. But the movie doesn't get into that, you know? Oh, fascinating. You're right in H.D. on that. Yeah, the elesticity of John Waters in mice, you know. And I think it a little bit

does a disservice to the Heathcliff character because it effectively absolves him of any wrongdoing here. I think that's true too. Yeah, that's, which is not right. Yeah. Because that is definitely true of this movie in general. Like everyone is absolved of wrongdoing in a way where the book is just like, this is kind of a nest of viper. Strangely, the one character that seems to be not absolved of wrongdoing is Edgar.

The character who is on the surface doing the least amount of anything to anybody. Like he meets a woman, he falls in love with her, he marries her, he has the expectation she's not going to have an affair. Like, that's pretty much it, you know, for the most part. I don't know. But the movie seems to treat him as like, ugh, why is he standing in the way of Heathcliff and Kathy? And it's like, well, she didn't, I mean, she's the one who's not treating him right, you know. So the one weird thing he does is that skin room, you know.

Yeah. Okay. So, as we said, Heathcliff and Isabella get married. They have this relationship. And this, when Kathy finds out, she begs them to stop. but clearly Isabella's into it, and Heathcliff likes to torment Kathy with it.

Kathy gets depressed. She stays at home. She doesn't leave her room. Heathcliff feels bad. Like Heathcliff still wants Kathy in his life, even though she can't, you know, even though he wants to torment her, it's only worth it if she's involved still.

So he's writing her letters, but whenever those letters show up, Nellie just burns them again. So Kathy loses the child. This causes sepsis and she sickens. They don't catch it until it's far too late. Her legs are all gross and she's all sick. She's dying.

So Nellie rushes to Heathcliff and frees Isabella. Heathcliff rushes over, but it's too late. Kathy's already toast. and she bleeds out in a massive spreading pool of blood. I mean, the thing is also when a woman gives birth, there is a lot of blood. There is, so it's like there's a, there's a lot of blood in that scene, but I was like, I mean, like a regular birth,

there's a fair amount of blood coming out too. So I guess this is dramatic, you know, but it's not, if it was a successful birth, it would not have been blood-free. Births are very messy. Yeah, yeah. And again, you know, there's some gross, exciting images here, but, you know, whatever. And...

Nothing is... You know what? We did go over... We slid over one of my favorite weird things in it, which is the prawns in Aspick that they're serving at one of the meals. There's just huge blocks of Aspik with prawns in them. And I just kept thinking about,

so they boil the prawns first and then put them in the Aspick? And for people not familiar with weird foods of olden days, that we don't really eat that much anymore, it's like a gelatin mold, essentially. Yeah, it's like a big gelatin. block full of prawns. It's a savory gelatin thing. Yeah.

And she like sticks her finger into it. She just pokes her finger all the way through like into a prawn's mouth or something like that. But anyways. That's sexy. I want to say that Kathy's death here, you know, the fact that it's related to her miscarriage is a lot more sort of like a reason is given more than in the book where in the book she's actually mad at her husband. seemingly not caring that she is in hysterics. And like she starves herself for a long time. And what I remember about Wuthering Heights most sort of enduringly is that every 30 pages

or so, someone would get so emotional that they would fall sick with undisclosed illness. And sometimes they would die of it. Sometimes they would recover and be like weaker forever. But that was that was what was going on. I mean, they live in a really damp place. Got sick, guys. Because I was really upset. You're so emotional.

You guys, yeah, you guys weren't complimenting my, my latest haircut. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, no, it looks good. That's great. You're not fixing. I'm dead already. Oh, no. Speaking of dead already, Kathy's dead.

And Heathcliff is like, no, haunt me. Come back as a ghost. You know, I never, I always want to think of you forever, you know. And that's the end of the movie. And that's the end of the movie. Just him howling in anguish. And that's it. Yeah.

Yeah. Tragedy. doesn't really, like, I feel like in this version, the, like, haunt me as a ghost stuff doesn't really land that much because it doesn't connect to anything, like in the book and presumably in other adaptations and in Kate Bush's Wuthering Hight Song,

it is about Kathy actually showing up at a certain point and, like, it's like, oh, is this actually a ghost? Is this really not? A better adaptation, the Kate Bush Wuthering Hight's song. Because he does believe she's haunting. him, right in the book? Well, he wishes for it. He's like, he hangs around kind of waiting for her to haunt him.

And she actually, like, shows up, like, the narrator of the book who is cut for obvious reasons. He's, like, totally unnecessary. He goes and he sleeps the night at Wuthering Heights and sees Kathy outside the window. And Heathcliff is so, like, mad that, like, he missed it. He didn't get the haunting. And then later at the end, he finally sees her. But anyway, spoilers for the book. Yeah, yeah, he wants to screw turned.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yep. This is the part where we do our final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like. And I want to say, I walked into this, you know, all prepared to like it just fine.

I, you know, Emerald Finnell is a, polarizing writer-director but I have enjoyed her previous work mostly and you know I also like

I mentioned Marie Antoinette earlier I like movies that take big swings with like maybe we're going to have some anachronistic elements here maybe we're going to have like huge stylish visuals

but I would argue that something like Marie Antoinette does that in service of making a point about the material, whereas here in Wuthering Heights, like, I see what she was saying about, like, oh, the feeling of reading it, but I think that for the most part, a lot of the big swings kind of fights the material.

It doesn't actually feel like it's saying anything about the original, and I just found it so slow that I have to say bad bad. I just didn't really enjoy watching this at all. Yeah, for something that's dealing with big passions, I find it to be kind of dull and a bit lifeless. I feel like there's no buildup. It feels very, yeah, it feels, and most of the choices feel so obvious. Yeah, just I, as well, I'm a bit of an Emerald Fennell Apologist with the previous movies, but this one doesn't work.

And I was also disappointed that, like, I generally. like Charlie X-E-X stuff when utilized in movies. And I feel like even the soundtrack was a little bit weak. So I'm going to say Bad Bad. I feel like, for me, it doesn't quite fit into our categories exactly. Of all of them, it would be Bad, bad, I guess, because I did find it, like you guys described, a little lifeless and kind of disappointing less in that like, well, this isn't the story of Wuthering Heights, but instead, I'm not a Dan McCoy.

But instead, more... I really wouldn't have cared if the movie worked. It's only that it didn't That I'm like, well, you've replaced the stuff That I enjoyed with dumb stuff If you replaced it with stuff I enjoyed as well, that would be fine. I hope you're hungry for nothing. I think the, going into it,

I think I expected it to be more shocking And more out there and kind of like pushing buttons And I was really disappointed that it wasn't. And I think the if the things that like, I think you're right that that some of the stylistic things are fighting what's actually going on in the story and what these characters are doing. But if those things had been so, like, such big swings, then I might have been like,

you know what? It feels like she is laying another movie on top of that story. And she's at least using it as an opportunity to do really big, really memorable things. And I wish that there was more, it was like, there's so many good people who worked on this and there's so much good little pieces in it. Like, there's pieces of the art design, pieces of the wardrobe, pieces of the, like, some of the performances, like some of the moments that I like, and it looks beautiful. It's a beautiful looking movie.

But it just, I wish it either worked better dramatically or it was a more out there thing. Like if it was, if I was watching it in every couple minutes, I was like, really? Oh, okay. Like if it was- In this economy? Yeah, if it was challenging me more with the things it was doing, but instead it felt a little, like, I hate to say it, but it feels like a safe version of an, of an, like, taboo Busting movie. Exactly. And like I was saying, at the beginning of the movie, you see someone get hung and everyone's pointing

out how he has an erection. And then you see people just start making out and mounting each other in the town square. And I'm like, well, she did it. That's the move. Like, there's nothing more that she can reach. There's nowhere to build from there. Like, this is already a society suffused in death and sex. And there's no, there's no subtext to it.

And there's no, once you've done that, it was hard for her to top that in terms of, like, outrageousness. I wish it was a more outrageous movie, basically, you know. Like Jim? Yeah. So what? Truly outrageous. Like which one? Jim?

The musician, Jim. No, she's truly outrageous. Truly, truly outrageous. I think reached the limits of my frame of reference culturally. But I think I've been pondering a Jim many because I've watched so much Jim and become so weirdly into it. Oh, this is Gem and the holograms? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay.

I thought it was a new person named Jim. I think I didn't know that song because I don't. I think I haven't watched it. Jim and the holograms. This is why I got to explain Jim and the holograms to you guys. But I think you surely should. But I think it's a, yeah,

I guess it's a bad bad, but it's like not terrible. It's just not, it's just kind of a misfire, you know. Miss fire, you'll get caught up in the Miss Fire. It's the Crossfire song. Yeah, as we come flying out on,

I don't know. We'll hoverboards, yeah. Yeah. And a kid with fingerless leather gloves is going, yeah, yeah. What a commercial. Hey, it's John Moe, and I host Depresh Mode and Sleeping of Celebrities, and I'm here with Max Fun member of the month, Kara Barnett.

Hi, John. It's great to talk to you. We appreciate your support, Kara. How long have you been listening to the show? I've been listening to Depression Mode since the first promo came out with Pat and Oswald. I've been listening since the very first episode. Now, Kara, as our Max Fund member of the month, you'll be getting some prizes here, a $25 gift card to the maximum fun store, a special member of the month bumper sticker, and get this, a parking spot at Max Fun headquarters in Los Angeles,

just for you, just for a month or so. Well, that's so exciting, if only I lived in Los Angeles. But I got my eye on some stuff in the Max Fun Store. Kara Barnett, thank you for being a listener, and congratulations on being this month's member of the month. I hear the member of the month promos all the time. Uh-huh. And I can't wait for my friends who listen to Max Fun shows.

to hear me on the radio because I haven't told any of them. Support the shows you love, including this one. Check the show notes for a link, or go to Maximumfun.org slash join. Hello, this is Alden Ford. And Mujanzo Fagari. Two of the creators of Mission to Zix, your favorite improvised obsessively sound design sci-fi sitcom here on the Max Fun Network.

And the news is, we're back! With an all-new miniseries set in the Zix universe, the young old Durf Chronicles. Yeah. Well, DIRF, find his own. killer before it's too late. To find out how that question could possibly make sense, well, you just have to

tune in. And as always, it's ambitious and labor intensive to a frankly absurd degree. Indeed. So if you are looking for a little break from your own galaxy, we would love for you to check it out. That's the young old Durf Chronicles. Search Mission to Zix, Z-Y-XX and your podcast app. Or on maximum

fun.org. Keep it fresh. If you're anything like me, damn, a core of the flop house, you got trouble sleeping. Oh, man, you should see all the things I put on my body to sleep. I got a special pillow. I got a CPAP machine. Sometimes I wear a sleep headphones.

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flop. Before we move on, I wanted to take a moment to tell people that joke farming, how to write comedy and other nonsense, my joke writing book from the University of Chicago Press is now available in audiobook form. Let's say you don't want to read it with your eyes. Let's say you want to listen to my melifluous tones as they read the book to you while you do other things. Now you can do just that.

Joke farming, the audiobook, as read by me, the author, but I didn't read it that way, is available wherever you can buy and download audiobooks. Please do buy it, listen to it, share it. It is all of my joke writing wisdom in one place for you, and I hope you enjoy. Let's answer some letters from listeners. Before we get into the letters proper, I wanted to acknowledge an outpouring from several people who wrote or tweeted. not, you know, I'm not going to,

I'm not going to use a new word for tweeting even though I'm not on X anymore for a long time. Dan, Dan, what is, so what are we talking about? So, Dan, what are you? Many people contacted the podcast in many different ways to say how they were confused when listening to the 40 days and 40 nights episode because they had either confused that movie

with six days, seven nights. With Harrison Ford and Anne Hage, yeah. Or 30 days of night. which is also a Josh Hartnett. Also as Josh Hartnett, yeah. Yeah, more understandable to me. That's that movie where Danny Houston's always trying to do it, right? But I found this both amusing and it was just another sort of indication of like,

oh, I'm not like other humans because like I would never confuse these things. But that's because I'm too plugged into every dumb fucking movie that's been made. I remember what they are. But, yeah, several people were like, when are they going to start talking about the vampires? Dan, is it possible for you to be a professional movie trivia guy? Because I think you would be great at it. I think you would be great at it, yeah.

You should get on Colin Joe's. Unfortunately, beat the geeks is not still on. Pop Culture Jeopardy is kind of that. And I think you do pretty good. You just need a team up with somebody who doesn't do just movies. Like, you should find somebody who's like up on, I don't know, modern what like are you up on modern what what's your weak point in pop culture trivia uh i i mean i mean there's like a lot of like modern like internet personalities i would have no

context for yeah so team up with somebody who's into like youtube so team up with like an eight year old yeah like several aging would be hipsters i gave up on music about 10 years ago listeners if you know any eight year olds you should team up with dan for uh for pop culture jeopardy just Send them in. Yeah. I would go like, Dan, what are your pop culture weak points? He's like, anything after I was at 32 years old? Like, okay, that's just part of growing up, Dan.

I mean, yeah, to a large degree. I mean, other than, I mean, like, I'm still, I think, up on movies and TV. Sure, sure, yeah. Hey, let's get into the meaty letters, though. I just wanted to acknowledge how amused I was at how many people. Like, there were like seven or eight people who contacted with that, which means that, you know, sample size. There has to be like a hundred people.

We must have been at least a thousand people who thought we were going to talk about vampires. Yeah. Yeah. Or Harrison Ford. Or Harrison Ford. And Haitian, what, a plane crash somewhere? Yeah, that was the movie. That I saw it.

And the people came in after the movie being like, we're sorry that the movie theater flooded while you were watching this. Here have some free tickets. And my friend Matt and I were like, what? We like, look down and like, oh, there's, yeah, there's water on the floor. You were just so caught up in the movie. You're so transported by it. That's a mark of a good film.

This one's from Brian last name withheld this letter. Brian says it like this. Dan's mention of Time Bandits on the Gabby's Dollhouse episode reminded me that I've seen Time Bandits at least three times from start to finish. And the only things I can remember about it. The only things I can remember. What is that even? What is he?

What was that? I'm just bothering you. It's nothing. Literally meaningless. The only things I can remember about it are one, John Cleese is in it, and two, so are a bunch of little people. Are there any movies that you've watched multiple times and managed to retain almost no information about flop hard, Brian, last name with hell? That's interesting to me because time balance, I feel like has so many indelible images, like the giant ship on his head. Like the arm wrestling and the guy getting his arm ripped off in the arm wrestling match?

Does that happen? I mean, that happens, but that's in the Robin Rock. sequence, but that's pretty... Sean Connery is like a... It's like a Memon. No, I was thinking more of like, you know, like the... The cages hanging in a vast void that they have to swing across. Pure evil.

The parents exploding, yeah. Spitting, puffing up like a ball and spinning around and everything. That's a fucking sick move. Like, if I'm gonna, if I get caught in a, like, jumped in an alley by some tuffs, I'm gonna puff up like a big ball. Yeah. I don't know that there are movies that I've seen multiple times that I, you know, haven't, that I don't retain anything for. I have noticed since I've been doing letterboxed, you know, pretty religiously, like there have been a couple times when I start watching a movie or think about watching a movie and then I go to my own letterbox.

I'm like, oh, I saw this. Like, it has been erased from my mind, but I, you know, I've definitely, nothing is like. interesting as time bands. I don't mean to like make fun of the writer of this letter. But that's the closest you get to a momento situation is you check your letterbox and you're like, I saw this movie already. Yeah. What?

I think I have this experience with some movies that I watched as a kid. There's some movies I watched as a kid like Gremlins that just imprinted, or Robocop, that imprinted themselves in my mind and I remember them in such detail, even like super good movies. Yes. But then there's movies like, I know as a kid I watched Baby Secret of the Lost Legend. a lot because it has a dinosaur in it, I remember almost nothing about it and almost nothing that happens in it.

I bet if you watch it now, you would be like, I remember everything. Only one way to find out, Dan, cue it up. Fire it up? I mean, that would kind of be a good nostalgia pick for us, I think. Maybe, yeah. Actually, that could be a good flop TV season

is movies from our childhood that we don't remember that well. Yeah. I think otherwise there's movies I've seen like once. I know I've seen the movie stage fright, the Alfred Hitchcock movie, because I remember a couple moments from it, but otherwise I don't remember most of the movie.

And there's a few movies like that where I saw it once, and I just, I know I've seen it, and yet somehow I retain very little. But mostly it's movies I watched when I was young that were, that they just weren't, I guess, good enough to stick in my head, you know. But Stuart, do you, have any anything like that? I feel like there's like entries in large franchises

that I'm like, I've probably seen, I've probably only seen like one or two and I've actually seen all of them. But I can't, I can't think of anything specific here. But real quick, so if my, if my secret move is blowing up as a ball to defend myself, how would that, how would that compare to your move, Elliot, the, what, eradicator, the eliminator? The liberator. The liberator, we haven't talked about this in years. This is a move that I dreamed in a dream once, that a friend of the podcast, Brendan Hay and I in the dream, we're in a fist,

we're in a fight with two people. And I said to the person I was paired up with, have a taste of the liberator. And it was just a straight leg kick right up into the other person. crotch, kind of like in train spotting. There's a kick like that, but they don't call it the Liberator. So, yeah, I think being ppped, the two of us, I think we're in a fight. I'll be on offense. You'll be on defense. You'll be huff up into a big ball and I'll just straight leg kick everybody in the crotch.

Yeah. Okay, yeah, that's a good team. But what's the name of your puff move? That's a good call. I'm going to say the, I mean, the puffer fish would be super accurate, but it doesn't sound as cool. So I would say probably maximum defender. That's great.

I love it, yeah. Okay, and this next letter, I was trying to find the writer of it. I apologize. It seems to have not made its way into my document. Richard Bachman. It did arrive at your house in a bottle. Yeah, yeah.

This person says, I want to point out a flop house reference made by Jim Carrey in Sonic 3. In the moment where Grandpa Egghead used nanotech to create a giant mechanical hand, Egghead says, ooh, a nanofist. haven't seen that since I hate watched Green Lantern in 2011.

Now, this seems like a stretch. If you go back and listen to your episode on Green Lantern in 2011, it is mentioned that Dan got a Sonic game for his iPad. So I find this not to be coincidence, but the great Jim Carrey is shouting you guys out. Probably loving you guys. So, yeah, thank you for, you know, drawing those connections in red twine on the wall. I appreciate it.

But we should move on to recommendations, movies that perhaps would be a better use of your time than Wuthering Heights, which we were all at best mixed on. I'm going to recommend a movie that I saw at the most recent Ridiculous Sublime at the Nighthawk last night, Stewart was briefly intrigued by this one, but he's got a lot of travel. He's been sick.

He didn't make it. So, yeah. I'm just doing this to taunt you. Yeah, every time I see after a ridiculous blind screening, I see Dan post it out in the letterbox. I'm like, fuck, I was supposed to go to that. This is from 1989. It is the movie Communion based on the Blondeck.

of the same name. A Whitley Striber. Yeah, one that purports to be a true tale of his alien abduction, but was written by the man who wrote Wolfen and what was the other thing he wrote? It was a vampire. Oh, the hunger. So this is his... Oh, I forgot he wrote The Hunger.

Oh, yeah. He wrote those two books and he wrote Communion. He's like, no, no, but this one's real. I'm like, I don't think so. But it's... Nice try. An early-ish, you know, UFO abduction narrative. And this movie version of it stars Christopher Walken as a supposedly normal author before he gets abducted.

But he is totally Christopher Walkenning the whole time. Like, he is going nuts in this movie. If you want to see Unleashed Christopher Walken where he's like, I'm not going to say anything normal. He's great in it. a lot of fun. The movie's kind of weird how it like, it doesn't really go much of anywhere.

It's like Christopher Walken slowly realizes that he was abducted and probed and has memories about it. And that's pretty much it. That's pretty much it. You know, like there's a funny kind of half resolution at the end that I don't want to spoil for anyone because it's so silly.

But like this is like all of the ridiculous sublime movies, it's a, it walks the, line of like there's a lot in here that's funny because it's just like what what is going on this is a weird and a lot of it that kind of genuinely works even though i don't like it's grounded in supposed realism that is again thrown off kilter by christopher walkin's strangeness and then like all of the effects are goofy but goofy in a way that is really charming um so like i'm not recommending it as like movie that totally works like a normal movie would, but as a fun experience, it's really great. I think that would be a recommendation that doesn't hold up to scrutiny if you were recommending it

that way. Yeah. So communion, 1989. I mean, it's a movie that you're recommending that was screened as part of the Ridiculous Sublime series. Yes. I feel like that does most of the work. So since we're talking about like stories of like love stories of obsession and desire, I thought I'd talk about another love story that actually doesn't need my help at all because it's doing some Bafo B.

I'm talking about the movie Obsession, the horror movie from Curry Barker doing big old numbers. People are obsessed with it. And I think it's really great. It's really fun. The premise is a kind of cowardly, wimpy dude who's like a real nice guy, though, is obsessed with his... He's obsessed with a longtime friend of his in the friend group, and he wants to ask her out, but he doesn't have the guts. So he breaks a one-wish willow to allow him to get his wish for her to love him more than anyone else in the world.

And it immediately goes crazy. And it's great and it's weird. It ends up being way weirder than I thought it would be, because I feel like it's a fairly straightforward premise that they expand on in kind of interest. directions. And it's all anchored by just an incredible performance from the lead actress whose name, I can't remember, but she's so good in it. It's, yeah, it's really great. And so, and the lighting is incredible. Like, the lighting is really good in it. So if you haven't seen it yet, and you want to see something a little bit crazy, check it out.

I am going to recommend, so I, this is a, this is a, not, this is a semi-qualified recommendation. So I was thinking with Wuthering Heights, I wanted the movie to be sleazier a little bit, right? Like, it was still a little too respectable and dignified for what I think it was trying to do. Luckily, I happened to watch a movie recently, which I think is one of the sleaziest, like, professionally made movies I've seen,

maybe ever, but in a long time. And I was wondering, Dan, have you ever seen this movie? It's a 52 pickup with Roy Shider. Oh, yeah. And like, I was watching it and I was like, the whole time I was like, Dan would like this. This movie is a sleaze fest. But it's a,

Roy Shider plays a very unlikable rich guy who starts being blackmailed because of an affair he's having. His wife is about to run for city council in L.A. And he starts being blackmailed for having this affair. And the people blackmailing him are the sleazyest bunch of guys.

He's really sleazy. Like, and things just keep descending and getting worse for him. And he doesn't really know how to handle this. And the, but the bad guys in it are such fun characters. And the main, the lead bad guy is played by John Glover, who I will always be for me, Daniel Clamp from Ghostbusters 2.

Yeah, and Gremlins too. He is, sorry, what was I say? Gremlins too, I'm sorry. Ghostb Gremlins too. But in this one, he's playing this bad guy who also has a heavy Baltimore accent. Yeah. And it's such a funny choice. And he's such a, like, he's such a villain who is a total slime ball is not,

is very, like, articulate and thinks he's very charismatic, but is not, but is just a very off-puttings-leas-ball. And he's just so fun to watch in it. And he's such a horrible person in it. He's also a great villain, I think, because you immediately, like, see this guy and hear him talking. Like, this guy's an idiot. But, like, the problem is, like, you underestimate him at your peril. Like, he's like, he's not like a genius criminal or anything.

But he's, like, a lot wiler than this guy's prepared to deal with the lead. So it causes him more trouble. And, yeah, this is, like, John Frankenheimer directed this, right? John Frankenheimer directed it. And it's an albumer. Yeah, John Frankenstein directed it. So, John Frankenstein. It's based on Elmer Leonard,

and it's a Golden Globus movie, and apparently, or canon films, apparently they had made, they had adapted this Elmore Leonard movie, the Elmore Leonard book already into a movie called The Ambassador, which I have not seen, and they changed it so much that John Frankenheimer read the book and was like, I want to make a movie of this book, and they're like, we did already. He's like, well, let me do it again,

and I'll just be, I'll make it slightly more like the book. And it's a, so, and it speaks to the story about a rich guy who's blackmailed by a bunch of pornographers, and it's just the movie, like twisting in ways that are not necessarily like surprise shock twists but are ways where I'm like well it's not exactly the way

I thought this story was gonna go and the bad guys in there just really John Glover's performance is so funnett he's such a terrible person I can't remember if I've seen this one but I want to. It's not one to watch with your parents you know it's just like

you don't know my parents that's true but watching this right around the time I was watching Weathering Heights I was like I wish Wuthering Heights had more of this kind of like for lack of better word sleaze factor you know and so and john glover's performance i think the choice for him to do it with this accent makes everything his character says that much more fun and so i'm just if there is ever a movie the same way that um uh what's his face uh the superman who had the mustache uh and they had to blot

out his mustache henry cavil henry cavil that henry cavil's mustache in the mission impossible movie is the character choice that like helps make that movie i feel like john glover's accent in this movie helps make this movie into something a little better so it just a but it's a real slimy movie. So I would recommend that if you want a taste on a heaping dose of sleaze. There's 52 pickup. Who does it?

So yeah, that's it for this episode. Before we go, we should thank our producer, Alex Smith. Check out his work under the name Howl Dottie if you like podcast. And I think you do if you're listening to this one. And music,

Twitch streams. He does them all. Thank you to our network, Maximum Fun. If you go over to MaximumFun.org, there are a lot of great shows in the network. Check out at least one other one. Why don't you? See if you like it. But for the Flop House, which is this podcast, I have been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington.

And I'm Elliot Kalin. Bye. Let's go weather some heights, guys. Yeah. I'm recording here on the local. Oh, wow. You're doing a cool little furnace. This is what I mean, it's not really hard a heart song at all.

No, it's charming. It sounds like a lot of advice. It does not sound like him at all. Cartoon villain. Is this closer to maybe is it like the emceeing cabaret? No, it sounds more like the bad guy from Reacher or Jack Reacher, I guess. I feel like it's someone who'd be like, you know, would be like, oh, Indiana Jones, well. Maximum Fun.

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