The Horror Returns - THR - Ep. #537: Universal Soldier (1992) & Onslaught (2026)

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

It's enhanced soldier week. Cool of the week includes Motor City and Is God Is. Trailers are Below and Remain. We shine the podcast spotlight on Open Mic Night of the Dead. And we get feedback from Genichirou Browne, DTMLA, St Maria Way, Katie Afraidy, Pat Caruso, Xim Vader, PVD Horror, and Dakota Gorman. Thanks for listening!   

Regings victims, for those of you who delight and dread, who fantasize about fear, who glorify gore, welcome. You have found the place where the horror returns. Listeners beware. This podcast contains major plot spoilers. and the foulest of language. Join us in celebrating the old and the new, the best, and the worst in horror. Welcome back, everyone, to the horror returns.

You got Brian and Lance tonight. Super Soldier Week. It might be a little bit of a short one, but let's power through this thing. Brian, how are you doing, man? I'm doing fine. Let's just jump right into cool of the week. Sounds good.

Powering through Supernatural on season five, enjoying that so far. All right. Finished up Stephen King's Institute on MGM Plus. Looking forward to season two. All right. So I'm trying to figure how close that is to the book because I haven't seen it. So the main guy that stumbles under the institute is he, you know, kind of like a drifter a little bit. Like working on.

He gets a job as a night knocker. Yes. Okay. So it's probably pretty close to the book then. Is it, do you get vibes of the new mutants and stuff like that a little bit? Yes. Okay.

Yeah, that's the takeaway I had when I read the book. Yeah, they're essentially kidnapping these kids and taking them into this facility and experimenting on them, and trying to harness their powers so they can do nefarious. secret government things with them. Okay, so it sounds like step in the book then.

Yeah, I never read the book, but from what I understand, it seems pretty close to the book. So I enjoyed it. It's only eight episodes, less than an hour. Okay. Yeah, eight episodes, and then there is going to be a season two? Yeah, they're currently filming it, right now.

So they didn't, they didn't wrap everything up then, I guess. No. Okay. Well, that's going to be interesting. Um, because I could see eight episodes for the book, but they must be adding some stuff.

So I'll, I'll catch it, man. MGM plus, right? Yeah. You said there's a deal on that going on, correct? Uh, mine's expired or ended, but if you pay attention to Amazon crime,

they usually put MGM. Jam Plus, like, you can get it for 99 cents a month for like two or three months, and they usually roll that deal out every now and then. All right. I'll check it out. My Cool The Week will be a action thriller starring Jack Reacher himself, Alan Richmond, Richson, however you say his name, is Motor City. I don't know like I've heard of this.

I'd seen it Like the poster and stuff Didn't really watch the trailer So I didn't really have no desire to And I saw that it was available to rent So I checked it out And it is a unique Action thriller

Because I would Lance I would have to say there's probably Throughout the entire cast There's probably maybe 50 words of dialogue are you kidding me how do they pull that off it's mostly like somebody will say like a word

but it's mostly conveyed through like their actions or facial expressions okay and the story is basically Aaron Richardson who is Jack Reacher in the Reacher series he ends up messing with a

gangster's girl and the guy gets revenge on him, sets him up to go to prison, basically takes everything away from him. And he wants to give revenge. And there is literally like maybe 50 words of dialogue. And it was kind of cool. It's like, you remember that sci-fi movie? No one will hear you scream or whatever it was. yeah it sounds familiar where the girl was in the middle of an alien invasion and she did say anything through the entire movie okay yeah that's right

I forgot the name of the movie but that was on my top 10 that year I love that movie it's it's like that except every now and then somebody will say no or stop or okay I'm adding it to my list dude I'm looking at so Ben Foster is in it.

Pablo Schreiber. Pablo Schreiber, Hornstache, right? Shalen Woodley, Lionel voice. You know him from the bear. He plays Marcus, the Baker. Are you kidding me? So is he a totally different character here?

Is he not as soft-spoken? Okay, I got to say this. So 100% recommend this. I wasn't going to talk. I wasn't going to talk about Buddy and Colony, but me and Nes, we did a THR quick review. Yeah,

I'm going to listen to that, but I want to see Buddy first because you guys are doing spoilers, right? No, the quick review we put out for Buddy and Colony was a non-spoiler. Okay, I'll have to give that a listen to that first. All right, what you got, Lance?

So I saw a movie, man and I was kind of like, I saw the trailer for it and I thought, this kind of reminds me for a certain filmmaker, but I can't put my finger on it. And then I ended up watching the movie and it was like, okay, yeah, this is very quitting Tarantino-ish. Now, it's kind of a lower budget movie,

but it's, and so it's got a lot more dialogue. It's not as action-heavy maybe, but if you see this movie, I think you'll feel the Tarantino vibe, but it's called Is God Is? I've seen a trailer for that. Yeah, you haven't seen it yet?

Not yet. Oh, dude. Yeah, it's pretty good, man. And it's got a lot of, it's got a lot of actors that you're going to know from other stuff. And it's like, yeah, I think it's pretty low budget. It's definitely the, I looked up the writer and director, you know, to see if maybe they've worked on any Tarantino films or anybody in that group. And, you know, it didn't look like she have, but it looks like she's like a very first time writer and director. thing that I'd seen that A.J. would have known as she was in the new gossip girl series is like an actor.

And so I'm thinking for a first time director, this is a pretty goddamn good movie, man. And it's a revenge movie. Gotta love those revenge movies. It's a road trip movie. So that's two for me. And then thirdly, it's got a whole, it's got a cast of characters and like an ensemble cast. And it's people that you've seen in other stuff. And like there's this one particular character that they call the monster. That is the one that they're kind of going after for revenge for themselves and also their

mother. And you've never seen this particular actor in a role like this. It's Sterling K. Brown. And he usually plays like the good guy. He was kind of an asshole in that not Terminator movie. Predator movie. You remember that?

Yeah. He shows up in supernatural and he's a fucking asshole in that show. Okay, so maybe he does play a jerk more. But, I mean, he's just pure evil in this one, dude, like almost demonic, if you catch what I'm saying.

It's not supernatural. It's just kind of a basic revenge movie, but, yeah, I recommend it to anybody. The dialogue is really snappy, too. It's really, really well-written dialogue, and it kind of like reminded me of Diablo Cody a little bit.

Oh, okay. I would check it out. It's not quite as, I don't know, you'll have to watch it, how much you think. It's, it's not quite as, like, cute as some of her dialogue gets, sometimes where it's almost like, makes your eyes roll. But it's very intelligently written, I'm going to say. And it doesn't disappoint, you know, it doesn't have as much action. It's not super big budget, but it's got its fair share. So, yeah, check out is got it.

Brian, you'll like it. All right. you know what I'll have it watched by the next episode yeah I want to know what you think about especially about a couple of the characters we'll go into that later all right

so it's twin sisters it's always like a good family movie yeah one of them's like horribly scarred from burns well the twist is that they kind of both are but one of them's on the face and the other one her face is still beautiful right

but like her arm is all. I don't want to say too much. Just check it out. Tell me what you think. Okay. It has a lot to say. All right. Moving on.

Horror headlines. Brought to you by Brian. I am skimming through real quick. I don't think I think we'll be out of horror news real quick because Indy Navaretti from Obsession. She has a movie from Alice. apples. That's coming out. I'm trying to find it.

The Waffle House Index? Yeah. Yeah, that looks like a trip, dude. Yeah, it's supposed to have aliens, a storm, crocodiles. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and predict right now that it takes place in Florida. Yeah, I think it does. Oh, she's going to hope Saturday, live on Halloween night.

Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, so Halloween's on to Saturday this year, right? That should be fun. Yeah, I'm staying home. I don't know. I might try to, I'm not going to

make it to horror nights or anything like that because I'm going there this weekend with my granddaughter, and we like to get there before the crowds are crazy, but yeah, I think we'll just stay home, hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, watch some movies, dude. That's going to be too cuckoo out there for me.

Okay, here's something. Zach Craigger is no longer writing the weapons prequel Gladys. That's fine, right? He probably picked somebody for it, you think? Yeah, I'm assuming so. As long as they go by what

basically the guidelines he put down and just expanded on that. Right, right. Not do a Ryan Johnson. do his own Star Wars thing. Oh, you pay, huh? He cut a lot of heat for that one.

And Zach Kruger also says he'll never make another franchise movie after Resident Evil because of all the hate he's getting from all the, I'm doing air quotes, diehard game fans. That's unfortunate, dude, because you and I both heard great things about the movie. Yeah, they're just so mad. I mean, he's saying the first game does exist. It's just he's doing a story that's happening in that universe. And people are apparently upset.

Man, that's terrible. So, yeah, we're talking about him. He's getting hate. We just talked about Indy Deveread. She's getting hate. Come on. What's wrong with these people, man? Just chill out.

Nobody can ever be happy. Okay, well, you know what we ought to do, those people that are complaining, send them the fuck back to 1975 or 1980 when we didn't get all these awesome movies. Yeah, or even as not too long ago, the pandemic era when we wasn't getting shit. Yeah, let him go live there for eternity, man.

But, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's unfortunate. People would react that way. I'm going to, I'm going to watch everything they're both in. I'm going to love it. I'm going to go to the movies twice. just give them more of my money. How about that, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's it for news. There's nothing really. Oh, Kane Parsons. Well, this isn't a surprise. Kane Parsons is back to direct backrooms, too.

So we kind of figured that was going to happen with the amount of money it made. Not a huge shocker there, huh? Yeah, but it's been officially announced. So, backrooms too, coming. All right. Well, I'm going to do a trailer. watching real time, dude, because I haven't watched the trailers. But Brian is about to take us down to the trailer park and bring us the big, the small, and the very, very weird. What's the first one you have me to open here and watch while we talk, Brian?

The first one is a new limited series from Netflix called Below. All right. From what I understand it is a sea creature feature. Ah, all right. for creators Jesse McCowan. This stars Josh Hardin and McKenzie Davis, Bruzy Stokes. I see him there right now.

I'll do a quick synopsis for everybody while Lance watches the trailer. Below is about when a mysterious sea creature terrorizes a remote town. A fisherman must fight to protect his family and his community and his way of life. Like what I'm seeing. it's definitely got some

I don't know if that's a real iceberg I doubt it right I'm sure that's CGI but it's definitely got kind of like a kind of like a big feature film look to it yeah it's got some money behind it I would say so I think it's a good reason to go ahead and keep

Netflix and I don't know about you Brian but they actually haven't raised my price at least the last eight months or so which is like unprecedented with Netflix Yeah, Prime has raised their price. Have they? See, I don't have to pay for that, dude, because A.J. uses Amazon for her work. So they pay for her prime account.

I think they raised it $2, $3. That adds up month after month. Yeah. Yeah, this is getting a little out there, dude. You know what this almost looks like to me? and I'm not, you know, I'm assuming it's American. It's got heartened in it, but this feels like one of those British or Irish folk horror type movies a little bit.

Yeah. You know, the fishing. All right, I just finished it. Yeah, I'm on board, dude. I'm loving it. This looks like a lot of fun. Looking at more of the cast, Natasha Hensridge, Charlie Heaton from Stranger Things.

Okay. It's got a pretty solid cast. So, yeah, I'm all on board, too. I'm all about a good creature feature. Do we have a release date? October 8th. Oh, dude, that's right around the corner, a couple of weeks. October is going to be busy, Lance, for a series.

We got also on October A, we got new Carrie series from Mike Flanagan. I'm so excited. I saw the trailer for that last night. And I think a week after that or two weeks after that, Crystal Lake. I'm excited for that too So lots to watch in October I would say so But we were going to finish up trailer park

With our only movie trailer And I picked this one for you Lance Okay Because I think it's something Maybe you can watch with AJ And that is remain I'm getting that vibe From M Night Shalaman

Are you fucking kidding me? and written by Nicholas Sparks, writer of The Notebook. Oh, God. What the fuck is... What is this? What am I watching right now? This stars Jake Gyllenhaal. Yes.

Phoebe DeNever. Sure. And while you watch it, I'll give the synopsis. A grieving architect moves to Cape Cod for work, after leaving a psychiatric facility. While staying at a historic B&B, he meets a mysterious woman who makes him question

and his rational beliefs about life and loss. That's pretty open-ended description. So is she gaslighting him? Is that what we're looking at here? I'll wait until you finish the trailer because... All right. Yeah, there must be a big shock at the end or something because all it looks like so far is a fucking love letter.

Remain. Valentine's Day, of course. Okay. All right. What are you thinking this is going to be, man? I think BB DeNever, I don't even know if I'm saying her name right.

I think she's dead. I think she's a ghost. Ghost story. Okay. Yeah. I can picture that. She's either a ghost or the fact that I just read in the synopsis that he just came from a psychiatric facility. Yes.

Maybe it's psychological and it's all in his head. I could picture either thing being impossible. But then again, you just never know with M-night. And he usually does that M-night twist, but he's done a couple of movies that didn't have the M-night twist, right? Yeah, and I noticed there usually when he, doesn't write the movie and Nicholas Sparks wrote this movie? Right. Well, I'm seeing he's also a writer in it, so maybe they collabed.

So maybe he snuck in a twist in there. Maybe he snuck in a twist. Yeah, that's certainly possible. I don't know, Jake Jellon Hall. Obviously, we're going to watch it. I just don't know how much horror it's going to be. Like, if it's a ghost, but it's just a love story, I mean, you wouldn't consider ghost a horror movie, would you?

Horror adjacent. Oh, yeah, the dude on the subway. It was kind of creepy, right? Yeah, I'm looking at IMDB. It's listed as psychological thriller, supernatural fantasy, suspense, mystery. I think your ghost thing is spot on, right? I think it is.

But since he came out of a psych word, he's going to question things, right? Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, my first thought was from the description. Maybe, you know, maybe since he's out of a psych ward, she's going to, like, gaslight him into believing things are happening that aren't. And that could be part of it, too.

I don't know. It's hard to tell with M. Knight these days, you know. Didn't he do that terrible trap? Speaking of Josh Hartnett? Yeah. Jesus Christ, dude. And then his, his. daughter did that horrendous one that we saw.

Or did she do that one? I wouldn't take credit for it either if I directed that movie, you know? Well, I kind of felt like it was too much like his father. Right, right. And I know he was an executive producer, so he possibly was on set. Kind of like Stephen Spielberg, mentoring Toby Hooper with with his movie, huh? Yeah, because didn't you say she did a good job on that series on Apple?

I really enjoyed the series on Apple, man. A lot of people think it went too long, you know? And he has another daughter that was singing in it. She's got a pretty good voice, you know? Yeah. Oh, I guess she's the one that was in that Tramp movie, right? Yeah. Stay singing, sweetie.

Stay away from acting. All right. Remain is coming to theaters, February 5th. All right. And that is it for the trailers. Little ways away. All right. Let's see.

We've got listener feedback. All right. This week, podcast Spotlight Shines on Open Mic Night. of the Living Dead. A horror movie podcast hosted by Rachel and John. Okay, now this, I wish Pedro was on. You remember how Pedro was kind of like

bashing our podcast spotlights a little insane? Yeah, I know this schick. It's going to be the same thing. One likes horror, one doesn't like horror, yada, yada. You remember when he did that? Yeah. He won't say that about this one, dude. That's why I wish he was on with us. So get this, Brian, a horror movie podcast

hosted by Rachel and John where every episode ends with two original live songs inspired by the film disgust. Now I guarantee you that's an original dude. I got to check this one out. Two original live songs. Have you ever heard

this one, Brian? No, I meant to listen to it before. But when I found it and I read the description, I was like, that's a pretty cool. idea. Right. All right. I'm looking for it right now so I can add it to my, add it to my rotation, or at least listen to an episode. Now, they may be really bad, really bad songs, you know. But I guess we're going to find out together if you're listening to. All right. So now here's somebody that might be attacking one of your top tens that you've already guaranteed would be, Brian, Pinocchio and Strung. Didn't you make that guarantee? to us last week? I didn't say top 10.

I said it's fun. Oh, you said 10 on 10, right? Hella good? That was Niz. Okay. All right. Ganesh Rue Brown says, I want my two hours back. You said it wasn't even two hours, Brian.

It's barely, it's like an hour and a half. They must have thought it was two hours. if they hated it that much. All right. Regarding original Halloween's 1 through 3 in theaters, did you know about this? They're going to put them in theaters?

Yeah, I think they've already came to theaters. It's supposed to be early this month. All right. That should be fun. Well, here's somebody that agrees, Ditblah, if that's how you say it, seeing season of the witch in theaters is going to be life-changing. I don't think I've ever seen

Season the Witch in a theater of you Brian? I've only seen the first one or out of those original three I've only seen the first one it was like a re-release yeah I was about to say you're not old enough to have seen

the first one it was out I don't think yeah that'd be fun man to go to go check out Halloween with a crowd the first three movies all right regarding the horror returns. All right, here's something about us.

And St. Maria Way says all the good and humble topics. Are we humble, right? We can be. We can be. Not all the time. Okay. All right. Well, appreciate that St. Marie Way.

Got some interesting names tonight. All right. For our post on her podcast, I guess we posted her podcast. Oh, Katie Afraidy, dude. She said thank you, right? You are definitely welcome. And we're listening. I've listened a couple episodes.

Damn, dude, I feel like we're full circle now. Very nice to hear that from Katie, Afraidy. All right. Regarding they live, uh-oh, St. Maria's Way is back, Brian. You ready for this one? Regarding John Carpenter's they live, she said, it's giving me migraines and I can relate. I'm assuming she's talking about the effects of taking the glasses off.

Okay, that does make sense. I don't think it's a dig at the movie. Well, maybe she can tell us for sure. All right. As usual, who do you think's chiming in, Brian? Who shimes in every week? Pat. Pat Caruso, watch the new mummy.

Didn't feel like a mummy movie as much as a possession flick. more of an exorcist super gory didn't feel like two hours and 15 minutes I'll give it an eight that that could change damn he loved it yeah I really enjoyed it I rewatched it

I added in my evil dead rewatch because to me it's a evil dead movie and it's pretty solid yeah I agree evil dead movie so I was listening to you and Nez talk about it

and I was out mowing the art and I had to keep stopping and like yelling at you, even though y'all couldn't hear me because I wanted so much to talk about the mythos of the evil dead and how prevalent it was in this movie because I think it was a lot more prevalent even than, you know, the basic Easter eggs. Because like the entire Evil Dead, you know, mythology, I think,

probably started like in ancient Egypt or something like that, if I remember my... Yeah, there is a... there is a theory that the book that this movie is based on is like an even older book than the original

movie. That would make a lot of sense. I like that. So it goes back and it like repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats, right? Yeah. Like they've always been around and they'll always be around.

I like it. All right. I don't know if I go, I don't know if I went eight on ten, I can't remember what you guys gave it. I'm sure NAS gave it a pretty solid score, right? I think I was a seven or an eight. I was somewhere around there. Yeah, that's reasonable.

Strong seven for sure, for me. All right. Regarding our goal to reach 4,000 followers, I guess, on Insta. Our friend Zim Vader, come on, Zam, give us some of our feedback, brother. We haven't heard from you in a while. Okay, our friend Zim Vader says, you deserve four million. All right.

Well, that's all we need to hear for three or four more episodes, right, Brian? Absolutely. And we are almost at our goal on Instagram. All right. So let's try to push it now to 5,000.

Makes sense to me. I got another thanks. PVD horror thanked us for posting their podcast. Okay, regarding our post of Dakota Gorman. she said, ah, this is beyond kind.

Thank you. Do you remember that post, Brian? Yeah, weekly I post about an actress or actor or director, basically in support of them, you know, putting links to their social medias and IMDB. Right, right. And I liked her performance in that movie Hellcat, so I put her in as that week's shout out,

and she thanked us for it. and you are definitely welcome. Yeah, that's awesome, dude. So Hellcat, is that streaming anywhere? Shutter. All right, I'm adding it to the list. So again, yeah, make it more of an interactive show, right? Like, people give us feedback, and we definitely want to check out their work.

So, well, nice. Thank you, Dakota. Appreciate that a lot. And that's it for feedback. If you would like to help the show, please consider becoming a Patreon patron. And now it's time to get our action on.

I know where I got that. All right. Let's start with Universal Soldier from 1992. All right. Description. Soldiers who were killed in action are brought back to life in a top secret military experiment that

creates superhuman warriors. Is that a good description, Brian? Yeah. it'll work right it's serviceable all right director

Roland Emmerich also known for Independence Day and Godzilla from 1998 was that the one with Matthew Broderick yeah

when Godzilla they make Godzilla just look like a regular dinosaur yeah Godzilla's a female laying eggs around New York

right yeah who did the theme song to that was that like Led Zeppelin was it? I was going to think, I was going to guess maybe

Herbie Hancock or something. Let's see, let's look it up. Who did the Godzilla 1998 theme song? And it was Pea-Daddy, man.

Sampling is P. Diddy's sampling, Led Zeppelin? So you're half right? It was close. It featured English guitarist Jimmy Page. Of course, from Let's SEP. Okay. The song samples the famous

1975 Led Zeppin's song, Kashmir. So there you go. P. Diddy's doing it again. I hope he did he's doing too much all right I guess you can say so Roland Emory man he's had a he's had quite a career

like they give him money money but they throw money in him I think his movies make a lot of money too though don't they Brian? Yeah they're good like popcorn theater flicks right summer blockbuster type movies

yeah didn't he do that one with John Cusack in it. What was it called? No, 2012. Yeah, he started doing like disaster movies, like 2012. The day after tomorrow? Day after tomorrow.

Moonfall. Moonfall. I haven't even seen that one. That looked just silly. You saw it, didn't you? Yeah, I saw it. What'd you think? It's not as best, definitely.

Not his best. Okay. All right. So who wrote this one? Let's see. It was written by Richard Rothstein, Christopher Leach, and Dean Devlin. So it took three writers to do this one. I try to find some interesting trivia, Brian.

You ready for this? I'm ready. Okay, both John Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren attended the 1992 Cannes Film Festival in order to promote this film. just outside the festival hall, Van Dam and Lundgren were shown having an argument and then pushing and threatening each other. Wow. Before security guards intervened and stopped them. This brawl between the two became a talking point for the media and was recorded on many news channels.

However, years later, Lundgren revealed in an interview that it was all staged to garner publicity for this movie. And Van Dam also confirmed this on a five-dain. Do you believe that, Roy? Great promotion. No, I don't believe it. Because I've heard stories of Van Damme getting into it with other actors and celebrities. Not that he's an asshole, but he's got a little bit of ego. Yeah, we're going to get into that talking about this movie because I got a few things to say about that.

But I don't know, man, Universal Soldier. it is an absolute classic, right? Like it's considered an absolute classic action movie. But I, this dude, this was the first time watch for me, Brian. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. But it was awesome, dude, because I was watching it. And I just, I felt like I was in the room with you and NAS, dude,

because this felt so much like doing an action returns podcast with you guys. Nice. What were your, what do you think about this? I'll bet this is one of your. favorites, right? Over the years. From Van Dam, it's one of those Van Dam

classics. Like when you bring up his filmography, you have to talk about Universal Soldier and Dolph London. Because outside of Ivan Drago, I think of Universal Soldier. That makes sense.

He is the real star of this movie because he is hamming it up as the bad guy. A little bit. Because he's just so animated and wacky. Right. I showed my daughter this, my youngest daughter. This was her first time watching because she's not really too familiar with Van Dam.

So I was like, well, let's check this one out. It's got the guy from Rocky Four is the villain. And she was like, okay, so we're watching it. And she's watching his performance. And she was like, what is going on? He caught it right away, huh? Yeah. And I was like, this is a guy that's clearly having fun with his role.

Because he's sadistic. He's wacky. He's wearing a necklace of ears he's made of his victims. Right, right. And then you got Van Dam doing his van, doing Van Dam things, because he's not the best actor, but playing like a regenerated soldier brought back to life. I think he kind of nails it. Maybe it's his bad acting that kind of services the role.

You think so? But one thing I didn't realize until I rewatch it, he doesn't do the Van Damned spin kick in this movie. He does a lot of kicks, but he doesn't do it. He does a lot of roundhouse kicks. Yeah, Roundhouse, but the jumping spin kick, he doesn't do it. And I swear he did it. Maybe it's just me remembering other movies,

but the scene where he kills Dolf Lundran and puts him on that, I don't even know what that machine's for, that farming equipment, it tears him up. I swear he did a jumping spin kick. Maybe he did, dude. Maybe he did in the Mandela universe,

you know, where you and I used to live. But the story is pretty straightforward. It's easy to follow. There's a lot of action. The love interest, I guess it's his love interest. she was detective stall or agent stall and son's anarchy. Oh, is that who that was? Yeah, and I can't.

She played that role so well, so when I see her and other things, I just instantly hate her character. Yeah, I can picture that. I kind of didn't recognize her when I saw her, but I haven't seen sons of anarchy in quite a while. It's been like 12 or 14 years, hasn't it? Yeah, she's the one that was a response. Spoiler.

for Opie's wife dying but overall super fun movie, great rewatch you get some Van Dam ass and this as typical in his movies what'd you think? Right, right

All right, well I got a question for you dude. Have you ever noticed that I'm going to kind of go on a little bit of a rant here. So you ever notice that every time that London would pick up those ears, right? Like the, he would take the needle and push it through an ear and pull it down onto the string, right? So you'd have like ears all the way around.

You ever noticed in the middle of it? Unless I saw something that wasn't there, there was one dog tag, right? In the middle? Yeah. But wasn't it only one dog tag? I don't know. I've got to go back and look at it again. The only reason I ask is because every time he shook the ears, it would jangle,

like make a jangling noise. So if you know anything about, like, physics and how, you know, ocular, how your ocular lobes scent sound and stuff like that, you've got to have two things rubbing together to make a jangle sound. It's kind of like that old saying, imagine the sound of one hand clapping. which is basically kind of like a meditation thing that people use to kind of chill out. Maybe one of the ears had a earring. That's a great point, dude.

I think you just knocked my argument out of the water. But I'm going to say one other thing. And it's like it has to do with this, Brian. Have ever noticed any time you see somebody grab a sword and pull it toward them? It can be pulling it out of a body, which is like nothing but gelatinous skin and flesh and blood. and muscle, or it could be like pulling it out of the sand, or it could just be like swinging it. You ever noticed in Hollywood they always give that sound of sneak-snick,

like two pieces of metal scraping against each other? You ever paid attention to that, man? Yeah, I've noticed it. That always takes me out. Kind of like when you have a space scene, like you're in outer space and you hear like explosions and stuff like that when in space noise doesn't travel. Like what's up with that?

that, man. I just can't believe filmmakers haven't figured this shit out. I'm going on a rant at this point. I'm going after the SFX guys, I guess. I'll definitely, so we're going back to what you were saying about Van Dam being maybe kind of full of himself a little

bit. This was definitely, in my opinion, this was definitely a vanity project for Van Dam because they have that slow camera come up with a the calves and then the legs and then the thighs. You know where I'm going here, right?

Yeah, I do. Yeah, I think that was, and I'll tell you something else, there was one scene where he was like inside that cooling chamber that they would have inside that truck or whatever it was, that mobile home on wheels or whatever they called it. But you notice that the dude was probably like twice his size, but the way the camera angle was, they made Van Dam look taller and bigger

in the chair. So, yeah, I'm thinking this was a vanity project of sorts, you know? But the big question is, did I enjoy the movie? Because this was a first time watch. So I'm going to say that this movie completely took me back to my, kind of like my high school and college days, early adult years, I guess. Because by 92, I was kind of like just kind of get down into the workforce.

I hadn't quite met AJ yet. I would meet her about a year after that. But this definitely had that. I have more of an 80s look to it, didn't you think? Yeah, I mean, it's 92, so that's early 90s. That's still trying to figure out what it's trying to be. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

But I was just kind of like pull back into a bunch of memories when I saw this because like I really enjoyed like staying up late to watch these kind of movies back in the day. So this was definitely on the USA Network or TNT or TBS, one of those channels. Absolutely. They're probably all of them at some point, right? Oh, definitely. And maybe Gilbert Godfried or Rhonda Shears announcing it, you know, on Up All Night or something like that. You remember that USA up all night?

Yeah, definitely. I was always staying up late to watch that. Especially Rhonda Shears, huh? Yeah, she's still doing the show. I think it's online. That's pretty cool, man. I'll have to check that out then. That was a good time.

That went in Night Flight. I think that was a little early for you, right? You didn't catch Night Flight? No, that was a little before me. Okay. Yeah, it was night flight and then up all night after that, if I recall. But yeah, I had a lot of fun watching it. I mean, so I would say it was like a really fun movie and a really nostalgic movie.

But I can't say it was a good film because it was kind of silly in parts. I'll give you an example. There was one part where he's starting to heat up and he says, ice, ice. and so she goes and starts grabbing all these bags of ice and like you know putting ice in the in the bathtub and all that before the people attacked them in the hotel when they were on the run and then there was another scene where they went to that gas station right and um they have a big fight scene and then he's like ice ice okay brian how come i understand why there was ice all in the in the trunk that he was hiding in in the one car right that makes perfect sense why did the other two people, why were the other two people both also sitting in huge stacks of ice in the backs of the other cars?

So the heat sensing detection devices won't find them. Well, fuck, dude, you just solved the movie for me then. Okay, all right, thanks for, thanks for explaining it. I missed that part. But to me, it just felt like a dumb sight gag, especially when the one guy said, I'll never get that cold again. What did the guy say?

I don't even remember. I can't remember. It's kind of, kind of corny, right? But yeah, this was a great movie to go up against our next one for several reasons. One of which was that ice thing, once they start running after an hour or so, they kind of start overheating and problems come up. But we'll get into that in the other movie. Yeah, dude, a lot of fun, a lot of nostalgia. you have anything else to say about this one?

I mean, it kind of is what it is, right? No, we can get into scores. You go out first, right? Yeah, I'm out of seven and a half. It's, like I said, it's one that's brought up in his filmography, but it's not my favorite Van Damme movie. It's not my second favorite. Okay.

So it's a strong seven and a half, and most of that is Dolph London Yeah The hamminess I got a I got a shout out Devo

was also one of the Oh yes Soldiers Tiny Lister Jr. Yeah What'd you think? Oh,

I'm going to go six dude I enjoyed it Six Six is a good score because it's definitely more good

than bad I definitely had fun, but I don't know, man. There was something missing for me. Like, it felt long for some reason to me. Like, it kind of started dragging toward the end, and they went to, like, one, too many locations, I thought. But, um, so, man, it was, to me, it was like a perfectly-paced movie, but it was fun, especially seeing Dolph, Lundrum, you know?

Yeah. And even that scene in the beginning, right, when he was, he was wanting Van Dam to shoot the innocent lady in the head it's like oh man all right but we both recommend it then right oh absolutely all right so moving on

we've got the we got the feature here for the week we've got onslaught when a rogue squad of genetically engineered super soldiers break loose in the desert I'm hearing a lot of similarities.

A badass army sniper must unleash hell to protect her young daughter. Director was Adam Wingard, also known for Your Next and Godzilla versus Kong. Writer is Simon Barrett. It is basically his writing partner. I think he writes everything they both do. Here's the trivia. After making two big-budget blockbuster Godzilla X-Cong film, Adam Wingard made this film out of his desire to turn away from IP driven.

There you go, just like Zach Greger, turned away from IP driven production, stating, I felt like I needed to do a story that solidified what my style was as a filmmaker and this is it. Well spoken. I like that. I like that. On a slide, Brian, what do you think? I had fun with this one. Yeah. But I did have some problems with it. And the main problem is

it was sold to me as a quasi sequel to the guest set in the same universe. But if the director didn't, if he wouldn't have told me that it's in that universe, I wouldn't even figure that it was. Because I rewatched the guest. It's kind of hinted that maybe he was in the experience. experiments as one of these super soldiers. Right.

But if, like I said, if I wasn't told, I wouldn't even thought that this was part of that. I agree. It was kind of like it was just sort of an afterthought, right? And my other problem was, at times, I wanted the movie to kind of take it to the extreme. And at times it did, but then there was a lot of times it didn't. Like, it kind of held back. I don't know if they edited some of this stuff to get the rating it needed for theaters. Right, right.

When you say hell back, Brian, is this something we're going to have to wait discussing spoilers? Just some of the kills and the gore. Okay. Because the gore was pretty decent, I thought. Yeah, but there was just times when it just kind of seemed like some scenes, it would be more excessive. than other scenes I kind of felt like

they kind of held back yeah or things kind of would go off camera yeah the actual yeah a little bit

I get it and I don't know how to say her name or how to pronounce her name Adria or Orona I don't care how you pronounce it

she's gorgeous I remember her I remember her from Emerald City that it only lasted one season but she basically was Dorothy. Yep.

Yeah, I've seen that. And she might be our new Wonder Woman. She'd be a good one. Hopefully she wouldn't be as kill kill because I think Wonder Woman's a little more pacifist than that. Yeah, I thought she did a great job in this one.

Michael Bean, original Val Johnson, from Family Matters. shows up in this movie. Right. Dan Stevens has a role in this movie. Rebecca Halls. I didn't see that was.

Dan Stevens and who else, Brian, did you say? Rebecca Hall. Oh, that's right. She was Thrawline. And one of the Super Soldiers was Alex Pereira. The main one was Alex Pereira. He's a two-division.

and UFC champ. Well, that tracks. That makes sense. But overall, I had a lot of fun with it. Okay. A little disappointed in some of the action and gore.

I like the main actresses' performance because she plays kind of a not neglectful mother, but she kind of towed that line of good mother and neglectful mother. Yeah, it was kind of real. Yeah, I thought she kind of played that pretty good.

And her trauma, her PTSD, I thought that she played pretty good in that too. Right. But not a top 10 of the year for me. Okay, but you enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's your basic takeaway without spoilers then. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, it was a little different that I thought it was going to be. You know, like there were a couple of characters that I thought should have been in the movie a lot longer because they were just so phenomenal in their acting. And of course, that would be Dan Stevens and Michael Bean, right? Yeah. Yeah, they were both perfect, spot on for what they were doing. But they weren't in the movie as much as I would have liked to have seen him.

Dan Stevens, dude, for me, Brian, he has totally redeemed himself from the piccolo. I will never make fun of the Dan Stevens piccolo playing ever again, dude. This might have been my favorite performance he's ever done. This was just not what I was expecting at all. And it was kind of artsy at the beginning, didn't you think? Like, they made it look like, like, literally a 70s grindhouse movie, like with the way they filmed the beginning part, everything. Did you get that? With the opening credits, credits with the imagery.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really like that. And then you got all the Nazi symbolism. And then it shows the Nazi flag. And then it kind of morphs into the American flag on the dollar bill. The American Eagle. It's like, oh, the Nazi Eagle and the American Eagle. in the American Eagle. Maybe they are connected. Philip would have had a heyday with this one, dude,

going down the rabbit hole on the conspiracy shit, you know? Yeah. But I thought the setup was awesome. Like, I was really thinking this may be a top 10. I probably like up through the first act, okay? But I'm with you, man. They definitely held back some. They definitely did some stuff off-screen.

I thought there were going to be a whole bunch of super soldiers that she had to fight. It was fucking, it was three of them. I thought it was going to be like a battalion. So I was a little bit disappointed with that. Speaking to the same things that you mentioned that you were kind of disappointed about, we're kind of lockstep on that. I think we both got the same exact takeaway from this movie.

So it's going to be interesting to see, you know, what both of our scores are. But I think probably the best part of this movie for me, Brian, was set and setting. So I did see this Tuesday night. with the Rowdy group at the local theater here that always shows up every Tuesday night, Brian? It added a lot. It added a lot to the movie.

It added a lot to the experience. If you remember, I told you I had a blast when I went to see a movie that was like my worst of the year that I know what you did last summer. Yeah. Well, the same crew was there, man. And like I'm starting to kind of get to know some of them and hang out with them now during the movie. and I don't know it's not as bad as like when you like who are that

what are those guys is Tom Servo the robot all that that watch movies and make fun of them um is there's theater 3000 yes it's not that bad it's not like they're yelling shit out through the whole movie but it's pretty fucking hilarious

to be able to laugh laugh with them and you know like there's a big kill and somebody goes oh so that added to it I had fun. I had a good time. I don't want to say too much without spoilers. Stores?

Yeah. You want me to go first this time? Yeah, go ahead. I'm seven. I'm strong seven. I'm right there with you. This is definitely a strong seven. Not a top ten for me, but it's very entertaining. Okay, cool.

All right, a few quick spoilers then. Yeah. This is a motherfucking spoiler alert. You've been fucking warned. This is a motherfucking spoiler alert. You've been fucking warned. This is a motherfucking spoiler alert. You've been fucking warned.

Like I said, I had a problem with the continuity of Dan's. Why have Dan Stevens in this movie? If you're not going to connect his character to this movie. You know what? Like I said, I rewatch the guest. He's spoilers for anybody who hasn't seen the guest. It's alluded to military experiments. So I connected it as like maybe early super soldier experiment.

Yeah, I did too. I get the same impression when I saw the guest. And he survives at the end of the guest. Right. And you bring Dan Stevens back to be this Nazi. scientists working for the United States government. I know. I know.

I had the same thing. I wish he had shown up in a dual role in this one. Yeah, definitely dual role because I liked his performance as the scientist. Yeah. But at least have him, his character, David, like being a cameo or something. I agree. What did you think about the dude that was on the MDMA the whole time? I wanted more of his character

I did too the government worker that was in the S&M palace at first and they interrupted him because he's definitely good at his job right because he tells him straight up I dose MDMA

but I'll be fine and they're like okay do your job and you can see at moments he's kind of zoning out for a second and then he snaps back into it yes so I was like they trust this guy so much

that they don't care if he's on MDMA. Yeah, that's a good point. At least he was honest with him, right? Yeah. So I wanted more from that character. I wanted more from Rebecca Hall because she's somebody important to the point that when her husband,

the scientist, got killed. They put her in charge of the project. So it seems like if this movie does well in the box office that you we will see more. Which I don't think it's doing great. I don't think so either. Yeah.

$15 million budget. It's only gross, 2.3 million. What's your favorite Adam Wingard movie? Probably you're next. I think so too, but let me look through here just a little bit because he kind of is in that, what do they call him, Splatterpunk

or whatever, like the new the new generation of horror directors. They were calling that, like, in the 90s. Yeah, oh, he did did Blair Witch. I kind of like that. I like the UFO angle on Blair Witch a little bit. Yeah, I think that one gets a bad rap. Yeah, other than that, he just did small stuff,

like VHS segments, ABCs of Death segments. Oh, there's some older stuff he did. I think that's not quite horror. I've never seen. I've always wanted to. One called Pop Skull. Have you heard of that one? I've wanted to watch it.

I just can't find it anywhere. Yeah, the story of Daniel, a young Alabama pill addict, as his efforts to cope with the trials of day-to-day life. And the movement was called mumblecore. Mumblecore. Thank you. Thank you. That's right.

What I say, splatterpump? That's a writing style, isn't it? Yeah. All right. And then there's autoerotic. Follow four interconnected Chicago couples. They explore the boundaries of self-pleasure and sexual exploration. Haven't seen that one, Brian.

I'm also going to go with your next. Oh, dude, he did death note. Jesus Christ. That's the movie. Okay. Which we all prefer the movie over the anime, which I know that's blasphemy. Because it's shorter.

Yeah, it's not 170 episodes. Yeah, that was a slog. I hope we'd ever do that again, man. But if you're listening, if you want to become a Patreon patron, this is your opportunity to force us to watch a 738 episode anime series. Just saying, the goblets been thrown, Brian. We need a Patreon patron. oh man

oh yeah I can't I can't really think of anything oh what did you think about the way

they died I didn't really like the pacing it's almost like they went out too easy yeah the only one that went out

violent was the butcher the main one he got see that's when that's when he died that's how I wanted the whole

movie to be because she right cut his leg off with a chainsaw to take him down and just went to work on him with a chainsaw and the blood was everywhere. That's how I wanted the movie to go. I mean, I can understand one of them getting killed when she used her sniper rifle because I like that scene because she was trying to get over her PTSD. And it did the flashback to when she was going to shoot somebody with her sniper rifle and she froze up and it cost people their lives.

Mm-hmm. I like that scene, but, yeah, there should have been more super soldiers than three. Well, yeah, and the one of them just kind of unceremoniously going through the front of a windshield of a car. Yeah, which they didn't even show. They showed the aftermath, not how it happened. I know. I know, man. All right, well, that's kind of cool, dude.

We had the same exact thoughts on this movie. It's almost like we were of one mind or something, you know? Yeah. super entertaining had some moments where they could have they need to fix but if they made a third movie

in this universe I would definitely watch it yeah I would too man I would too all right well as always we want to thank you guys for listening

to another episode of The Horror Returns we would love to hear your feedback and ideas reach out to us at the horror returns at gmail.com or better yet

just go to our website messages through there it's pretty easy It's thehorrorreturns.com. You can't mess that up. So next week, Brian, we're going to make up for this slightly shorter show. Because do you know what we are doing next week, Brian? Well, I know Steve's coming on, so that means the start of another franchise.

Yes, indeed. But it doesn't end there. Because next week, we're doing tremors-palooza, Brian. So get this. We got Steve. We got Pedro committed. I'm trying to move heaven and earth to get NAS on with us. We'll see how that goes.

And in addition to all that, we got somebody who's a fan favorite because I've had three or four people say they enjoyed it when he was on the March Madden show. But you remember Derek, Derek Rosenberg? Oh, yeah, he's great. Well, he's coming on. But guess what?

he's bringing a friend so co-host absolutely so from the third channel third channel podcast we're going to have Derek and PJ

so this ain't going to be a one hour show folks there's there's no way around that unless each of us has the amount of dialogue that's in the movie you were talking about

for your cool of the week I guess right no if we get all we assemble this Avengers team for next episode So there's not going to be a shortage of opinions on these movies.

Yeah. Dude, I'll tell you what, there's a lot of people that just love Trimmers, the first one. There's quite a few of them based off of that first one. Yep, there's quite a fan club. So it should be a good time, man. Oh, by the way, if you're just now... Well, I can't say that because we're doing the brief. real time thing, but I know we were a little late. I do want to apologize to the listeners. I

understand that we were just a little bit late getting this last week's episode edited and up, but the editor... Life happens. Life happens. The editor, that would be me, had a lot of shit come up. But we didn't fail you. We finally got to show up. So this one may be a lot, a lot, you know, sooner than seven days after, God willing. But thanks for hanging in there, everybody. And until the whore returns, guys, good night.