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Episode 005 - The Gooey Decimal System
8 Plays1 year ago
In this episode we start our discussion around the sub-genres of horror
Sifting through decades’ worth of mass media consumption, my friend and fellow cinemaphile Scrumpy joins me in discussions on film from the low to high brow
CREDITS:
Intro scene from Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980) from The Producer Circle Company, Peregrine Productions, Hawk Films (distributed by Warner Bros)
Opening music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-116199/
Closing music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-11176/
Two Oceans is a creation of Siouxfire & Scrumpy in association with SiouxWIRE
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Two Oceans Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Two oceans. Two oceans will begin. Mr. Grady. You were the caretaker here. I recognize you. I saw your picture in the newspapers. You, uh...
00:00:36
Speaker
chopped your wife and daughter up in your little bits and then you blew your brains out. That's strange, sir. I don't have any recollection of that at all. Mr. Grady,
00:01:05
Speaker
You were the caretaker here. I'm sorry to differ with you, sir. But you are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker.
00:01:34
Speaker
Welcome to the Two Oceans Podcast, where myself, Sufire, along with my friend and notorious colleague, Scrumpy, discuss film and other media through a decades-long lens of mass media consumption. In this episode, we'll be continuing our Halloween horror series and beginning our walkthrough of horror genres. This is the Two Oceans Podcast, and so check who's at the door and let the right one in as we begin Episode 5.
00:02:03
Speaker
Here we go.
Halloween Horror Series: Apocalyptic Genres
00:02:04
Speaker
Episode five. Five? Five. Five's alive. Level five. Level five. That'll be another podcast. Actors that show up in movies where they have no good damn right to be.
00:02:22
Speaker
That's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to work our way through the different sub genres of horror according to puzzle box horror. Um, so we may as well get started with a, uh, apocalyptic. And yeah, when we were talking about this, we, we talked about that. You, you brought this one up.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we did talk about it. I wasn't thinking it in the context of horror. Right, let me see what the... Yeah, see that's usually on the horror side. That's usually where apocalyptic comes in, right? End of the world is usually, not always, usually something horror related or religious related, right? Yeah, yeah. Unless it's zombies. Overrunning the entire earth. Things like World War Z.
00:03:14
Speaker
convention. I am legend, but that still works. Yeah, no. Well, you could go to the, uh, the last man on earth or something, the Vincent Price version or, or a make a man, you know, that's also, that's a, that's a good one. Um, the different iterations of it.
00:03:31
Speaker
Just follow the link that Puzzle Box had to the best of this genre. Yeah. It's got children and men. I wouldn't consider that a horror. No, I would not either. No. And take shelters more, I think more thriller or substitute, not necessarily, but there is, you know,
00:03:51
Speaker
or element to it. I don't know if you've seen that one. I've not seen that one. Worth watching? Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain? Yeah, he thinks he sees something and we don't know if you really, the way they play it really well
Film Recommendations: Take Shelter
00:04:05
Speaker
is you don't know if it's there or not.
00:04:07
Speaker
Nice you want to believe him because he's so earnest about it. But by the same time it's You're not really sure that there's like, you know the family and the kids involved in that and you're just like, okay We're getting into some some loose territory here, you know
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, or it reminds me of 10 Cloverfield Lane as well. There's a bit of a question, at least until the end, around, you know, is this really, really happening? Hmm.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. What's legit out there and what? Yeah. I'll have to check out Take Shelter. When did that come out? 2011 is what I'm saying. There was also a good one. Now I'm spacing the name of it with Reeves Ahmed in it where he kidnaps his two boys. Yes. That's a good one. I forget the title of that. I've only just seen it this year as well. Yeah. Yeah. That is really good. Totally surprising.
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah.
Unreliable Narrators in Horror Storytelling
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah. Don't want to spoil it, but yeah, it's the way they work with that premise. Again, the same thing where you're taking in your narrative, your narrator for granted, then realizing maybe you shouldn't. Yeah. It's this unreliable narrator ones or the, you know, the, the supernatural ones where it could all be in the mind of a single person. Um, I think the others starts that way. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. The turn of the screw kind of thing. Yeah.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. On to the next
28 Days Later Sequel & Horror Tropes
00:05:40
Speaker
one. For your fellow countrymen there, 28 days later. 28 days later. Yeah. We're meant to be having 28 months later, but that seems to be on constant hiatus. Yeah. Well, I'd rather they take their time, I suppose. That has a great opening, by the way, that one. Yes. Yes, it does.
00:06:06
Speaker
And it's sequel. I enjoyed up to a point, except for the fact that it's like, it's that, and it's not just a horror movie trope. It's like in every movie and show trope is that kids are the worst and they will screw something up and ruin everything. And so that's what you have to blame. You know, in the first one, you're like, we don't know where this came from. Oh yeah, it came from crazy monkeys and you know, that sort of thing. But the second one is like, it's basically, it's the kid's fault that it gets out of containment.
00:06:33
Speaker
And you're like, oh great, I spent this whole movie open for these kids and then they're just stupid. That was great. Well, that happens a lot in horror. Yeah, right? That could be a whole other one.
00:06:50
Speaker
Movies are great until they blew the fucking ending. The kids fuck it up. Next week's episode.
Future Podcast Episode Ideas
00:06:57
Speaker
Looking at your weak blood. Looking your way, blood quantum. Good premise. Terrible execution at the end. Good thing. You know, getting in with characters do something stupid that they wouldn't do. And then, uh, anyway. Yeah. Anyway. They completely go out of character. Uh, yep. Um, right. The next one is a little bit interesting.
Avant-Garde Horror: Japanese Cinema and Style
00:07:16
Speaker
Avant-garde. Yeah.
00:07:18
Speaker
And looking at what they they use to prop that up, there's a lot of comics that they use instead. Because yeah, when you when you think of film, like, you know, I think of like, there's some Japanese stuff that I think of obviously Hausu being the main one, right? Oh, totally, totally. That that's gonna
00:07:41
Speaker
foot in this camp for sure. Uh, but, um, uh, well, it's like, uh, beyond the black rainbow. I don't know if you've seen that one. I mean, that's more trippy sci-fi, but avant-garde could certainly come to find it. The guy that did also did Mandy and, um,
00:08:00
Speaker
which that one also, I could argue, moves into avant-garde just because of its refusal to define, even though it's straight forward. The story is straight forward, right?
Cosmic Horror & Lovecraftian Themes
00:08:13
Speaker
At its core, you know, just a revenge movie. But how it plays out, how it's done, how it's shown, it works. I think it can work like, overall, I think the movie gets a little bit more credit than it deserves, but I still liked it. It was the color out of space.
00:08:29
Speaker
Ooh, no, no, I think that that's a really well done cosmic horror. Yeah, the cosmic horror, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if they call that a separate thing here, you know, but I think to me, all my guard sticks in and like, oh, that's how you could, how do you define the undefinable? How do you quantify the unquantifiable? Especially when you're talking Lovecraft kind of stuff, right?
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah. To take the best out of Lovecraft. Put his little race, put his racism aside. Well, you've got to do that, don't you? Well, that's the thing is they actually bypass that in that movie as well. You know, there was a multicultural casting. You had Nicholas Cage in the lead.
00:09:13
Speaker
You know you never It wasn't you never really saw the threat Which is the only way that you can do cosmic her because apparently it's so unmanageably horrible that if you saw it you'd go mad Exactly. Oh, yeah
00:09:29
Speaker
I'm just one more thing on avant-garde is I think just like straight avant-garde art house cinema there there are films that would fall into horror I think in my mind I don't know if you've saw Bergman's hour the wolf oh yeah but yeah that's I would say that's horror oh definitely yeah Bergman doing a horror film hell yeah I'm all over that
Folk Horror & Cultural Influences
00:09:56
Speaker
David Lynch, you know, earlier films. Yeah. Well, there's a, there's a thread, right? Most of us said there's, there's some kind of horror thread of how well he does the creepy and unknown, but manifesting it so personally and so close. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Well, avant-garde could describe David Lynch.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, okay. We're burning our way through these next one. It'll be one name that comes up on this one. Body horror. David Cronenberg. Yeah. Yeah. Easy. Uh, but, uh, you know, there's, uh, there's other stuff too, like,
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, like call out like a human centipede series. Yeah. And I suppose, yeah, the thing, the thing, yeah. The thing is body, but the thing's not well, I mean, it is body work because it's taking over bodies, right? But it's not in that same way that carpenter that
00:10:55
Speaker
No, I said it. It's not central to it. Is it? It's the concept of the creature, but it's not it's not a body horror movie. The things more about identity and social constructs and how easily they can break down. Yeah. And and that sort of thing versus body horror to me is embracing the unclean.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah, what we define is what we have defined as disreputable or, you know, and that becoming so the horror isn't the horror is how it interacts with the world, but also, you know, going there. Did you see even going there? Kernenburg's dead ringers. Oh, yeah. With Jeremy Irons. Yeah, that that's
00:11:40
Speaker
tonally, that's quite different from a lot of his other movies. I went to see that several times when it came out. And it was kind of a hard one to, you know, Oh, what are you gonna go see? So get some popcorn and what this gynecologist who's got a twin and it's kind of hard to explain. He makes tools for deformed women. And I have not seen the newest one.
00:12:11
Speaker
It's on my list for this October, because I tend to save the horror movies to watch this month. So I've got our great big list of movies to be watching. So yeah, I probably missed out on some of these. And maybe at the end of the month, because I think you do something similar, is we can actually kind of go back through movies that are new to us that we've seen this year, and which one stood out.
00:12:36
Speaker
Cool. Also under under body horror, it kind of just before we go into the next one, it kind of relates into that or some of the more low to budget stuff, but like the you the Frank Hanenlotter's brain dead. Or yeah, Franken hooker, even may. I don't know if you saw that one. May remind me I the mousey girl that basically becomes it becomes a Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein kind of story by the end.
00:13:03
Speaker
Oh, no, no. Yeah, that's that one's outstanding. Okay, right. But it is a bit of the body horror just because she's not the popular good looking girl she wants to be. But then how that manifests becomes something more so speaking of Jennifer's body.
00:13:22
Speaker
I wonder if that that I wouldn't think of it as body order, to be honest. But the reason one of the other couple of films that I have on the list are from the same director. And it was as a woman who directed it. I'm forgetting her name at the moment, but she's done a couple of other movies, but there's been like a 12 or 15 year gaps. And she did a couple of additional a straight horror a few years back.
00:13:51
Speaker
And she's done some psychological horrors, which have been really well received, which is another topic we could talk about or sort of under sung horror directors. Right. Anyhow, the next one, Camp Horror.
00:14:09
Speaker
or quiche horror. So this also, and how Sue's the first one that comes to mind on this one as well. Yeah, romantic acting cliches out of context and storylines that drive critics insane. Well, and that, you know, bring up Frank Henlutter on the other with the brain dead and basket case and those things, which are definitely body horror, but they're definitely camp. They're definitely camp. Yeah, there's no, no question about that.
00:14:39
Speaker
What repo man Would that fit in here? It's been a while since I've seen that one. Yeah, cuz there is kind of a horror Aspect to it of just this thing that's loose Yeah in the world, but by the end of what it becomes at the end is not something You know, you're going to check the movies the chucky movies, you know, especially bride of chucky. I
00:15:05
Speaker
I do enjoy those movies, by the way. I get a real kick out of those, not the remakes. See, you know, I think you can use the remake that they made for Child's Play.
00:15:21
Speaker
as just people who just don't get what the movie was about. You know, it was meant to be silly. And camp, right? And then they went and said, okay, we're gonna have this doll that has an AI that goes out of control. And you got rid of the supernatural element. And
00:15:43
Speaker
that kind of got rid of everything that really made, you know, that would be great. And that's also something, a movie that people who I know aren't into horror have quite enjoyed as well. And they can cope with that.
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's plenty of, you know, you look at, you can look at like the Charles band stuff, you know, the, when you had, you know, foremost in the franchises he has in the puppet master series.
00:16:19
Speaker
But then there's demonic dolls, there's doll man, there's... I mean, it's a clearly kid, but they're still, you know, still playing within the... I think they're still definite, especially like the first couple...
00:16:34
Speaker
A pop of master film says a real nastiness to him yeah coming out of that eighties nastiness idea more than anything but you look at the series right camp or because you know you could leprechaun movies yeah right right because you can watch a shark nato.
00:16:54
Speaker
Sharknado. Well, Dollman definitely is completely in camp horror. That movie is just ridiculous. Or Toxic Avenger, the Troma movies, right? Anywhere there's a series of either sequels that are just like the same story just hashing it out over and over.
00:17:11
Speaker
uh in a in a horror genre or uh or there's the endless knockoffs that are just more and more ridiculous you know like velocipastor and lamageddon you know shit like this it's clearly they're just like uh thanks killing you know they're clearly just having a ball even if
00:17:32
Speaker
you know, the, uh, uh, it's that old, not Corbin thing, maybe more of a Bill Castle kind of thing, more of the title to get, just to get the viewership rate. I mean, that's an interesting one. You mentioned about the sequels because there are some series that started off as, as, as, as serious and wouldn't have been camp horror.
00:17:54
Speaker
but eventually started straying into that area, like Friday the 13th, eventually morphed into camp horror. Yeah. Nightmare on Elm Street. Nightmare on Elm Street. Yeah, both icons just become a joke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have a versus movie that gets thrown in. Yeah, versus each other, exactly. Right. Yeah.
00:18:17
Speaker
which comes the next one, which is comedy horror. Yeah, which is different. Camp is, you know, obviously there's less attention to detail, I think, than maybe comedy horror. You know, it seems a little more low budget freewheeling thing, even though, you know, you can hold up, you know, Evil Dead 2 is comedy horror, I think. Yeah, I think so. But it's definitely,
00:18:43
Speaker
The laughs are definitely what they're going for in amongst the horror that's going on. But to do it well, you shouldn't let up in the horror element that you need to be earnest in that. I think these sort of spoof movies that have come out just are not funny anyhow and they're not scary. There's hardly any point to them, but yeah.
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, the Evil Dead series and the Cornetto trilogy as well, you know, with Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. And what was the third one? Here's the Alien one. The End of the World. End of the World, yeah. Yeah, well, that's in, that's, you know, horror, action, and sci-fi, right? All in one trilogy.
00:19:35
Speaker
Right right but you know they call it your Tucker versus Dale's Eevee easy one that's another good horror adjacent I think yeah yeah that is just cuz of the way they the comedy and that is fantastic I think to me that's the one that like really gets it.
00:19:54
Speaker
So there's a British one called Severance, you know, not the TV series that came out recently, but it came out around 2006, somewhere around there. And the humor in that is
00:20:08
Speaker
Because it could have been played as a straight horror movie, you know, this company has this sort of camp where they take their employees for this sort of, you know, some morale building kind of thing, you know, the real corporate stuff, but it's got an edge to it that's more sort of battle royale.
00:20:27
Speaker
And the lead character in it, the humor just comes from him just suffering. Just like with Ash, yeah. He just plays it so well that you just kind of, you don't want him to die, but you kind of want him to get into more and more situations because his reaction to it, you can completely get. It's a good one. Yeah, you should check that one out.
00:20:56
Speaker
Um, next one, dark fantasy. We got cosmic horror.
00:21:04
Speaker
Oh, did I miss? Oh, I miss Cosmic Core. Cosmic Core. Cosmic Core. Well, we go back to the color out of space again. I'm not quite agreeing with him here on some of these, like the shape of water, I wouldn't say is Cosmic Core. No, it's a monster movie. Well, it's a romance more than anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of a gothic romance. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't call it out of Cosmic Horror.
00:21:33
Speaker
Shadow over Innsmouth and all that other stuff that those those stories of course the cosmic core. I mean, that's where it came from, you know What does it say it's got a link here for best cosmic horror movies color out of space the very top there we go mm-hmm, yeah and 2001 a space Odyssey interesting. No, no Yeah Yeah, it's
00:22:02
Speaker
with a horror that he, uh, yeah, that's, you know, it's a horror of Kubrick's, you know, worldview, right? That there is no hell with that, which we make ourselves, you know, that kind of idea. Yeah. Uh, pushing ourselves beyond our limits and to test those limits. And then what we can see coming back is.
00:22:22
Speaker
But at the end, it's not horrific. Like, I don't know. No, I wouldn't say so. No, I don't. They have the thing is next what they list on it. And there you go. I mean, there's your textbook. Exactly. And the thing cosmic or if you want to go that route, that's sci fi or cosmic. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's that's a good one. The thing because you never really know what it is. And it does have that
00:22:49
Speaker
a feature that I think comes from Lovecraft around the form of cosmic horror. It's constantly changing, so you never know what it is, but it's horrifying in whatever state it's in. And then they've got in the mouth of madness here,
00:23:10
Speaker
Well, it's again, it's the Lovecraft, how you approach Lovecraft, right? And that's really cosmic horror, like is his, like, you know, he's, he's the one who point to as primary, right? For creation or at least popularization.
00:23:25
Speaker
I think of the term. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm just hopping through the list here and I'm cherry picking because some of these, I think they kind of fall outside it for me, but the mist definitely, definitely cosmic horror.
00:23:44
Speaker
When they get down, they finally call out the ones I've been watching been my favorite recently are the Benson Moorhead movies. The Endless being on one of those, but they did a bunch of them. They did
00:23:57
Speaker
Spring and resolution and synchronic and I haven't seen the others. I've seen the endless and enjoyed that Have you seen the void? It's the one that just proceeds that that's That's a really good one. That's a really good one kind of low-budget all practical effects nearest that I think where where it's difficult is it's quite
00:24:24
Speaker
The nearest thing I can think of is a thing But it has cultists. It has an isolated location It the story kicks off almost immediately Strangers together who don't know if they can trust each other. It's really good Yeah, no, that's that's that's that's a big recommendation there. It's it was a big surprise So the void life really
00:24:55
Speaker
Oh, no. Yeah. No. Well, some of these are like they're sending out of space. Airport's cosmic. No, no. Yeah. No. Hang on. Okay. Once I'd give them in a cosmic or annihilation. Yes. Absolutely. But as a, which is fantastic as a remake of, uh, of Tarkovsky stalker, which is definitely a sci-fi movie, not, not horror really in much of any way.
00:25:21
Speaker
It is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it has that constant menace to Stalker though. Yes. Because as you are almost waiting for it to turn into a full blown horror movie. Yeah. It's always out of frame. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:40
Speaker
Cool. Um, right. What do we have next? The one I jumped to before, uh, dark fantasy. Okay. Um, yeah. I'm not picking on any, not something I would probably even watch, but
00:26:01
Speaker
They contain fantasy elements like magic, strange creatures. You know, I guess you could throw the underworld series into that because it is really
00:26:13
Speaker
You know the vampires and werewolves and all the things in there have a you know, there's a Like a lore to them and it's almost like a fantasy book, right? where you have these different classes of different races and Within them what they're trying to do and and such so, you know, maybe maybe that would throw in there They are dark. They're all look like they're all in blue. So
00:26:38
Speaker
I am trying to remember there was a horror movie and it had a great performance in it from Mr. Cronenberg that I would think you would call dark fantasy. Oh, Nightbreed? Nightbreed, yeah. I think that might fit in dark fantasy. Or Pan's Labyrinth.
00:27:00
Speaker
Maybe. Yes, definitely. By the way, did you see the the trailer that came out? Oh, my God. You already know what I'm going to say. Oh, for Kevin Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. Absolutely. Him stepping into that Hitchcock role of the host that knows more than he should think. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was I was just yeah. What's what's your line? You start gobsmacked.
00:27:30
Speaker
We're going to have to have a episode devoted to him and that series when it comes out, because, yeah, there's going to be a lot to talk about. OK, right. Let's knock Dark Fantasy on its head. I think we did pretty well to actually come up with examples, because Puzzle Box couldn't. OK, experimental horror. Now, we've had avant-garde.
00:27:58
Speaker
by its very nature is hard to find off extreme and generally controversial experimental horror pushes boundaries in the genre. Well, I can think of movies that push the boundaries. So, you know, going back to like Exorcist or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and then I suppose Blair Witch sort of brought in that sort of found footage concept.
00:28:26
Speaker
And then there's that period of like torture porn in the late 90s. God, yeah, I got a bit too much of that. Not too much, although I will still stand up for the first two hostile movies. No, no, no, no. No, me too. But there's a lot of crap that came out of me.
00:28:47
Speaker
There's there there's yeah, and those were genuinely scary movies, you know, experimental horror though, I would put human centipede more in this, maybe than even body horror, because it is body horror, but they've intentionally and with each subsequent film, push it so much further.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that it becomes, yeah, it becomes like the third. I don't know if you've watched the series, I haven't, I'm not recommending. I haven't gone past the second one. Basically, I've made it through. Yeah, because the third one, they're going back and looking at
00:29:26
Speaker
And so it's someone who's obsessed with it. So they go meta, right? They break the wall. Gotcha. And it's someone who's obsessed with the human centipede movies and wants to do it on their own. And so they get an actor from the first one to come out and she's part, it becomes part of it for real or, you know, it's this kind of in terms of pushing that, you know, it's not just another ready sequel. It's like, no, we're moving this into
00:29:52
Speaker
another another level Another one like that where it's it takes things that you take for granted and kind of throws them out or something like that It's terms more to me. That's more like experimental, you know, we're talking about good good art recently at this like You know trampling on narrative and tropes and things like that You could look at and some movie I did not like but funny games the original I never saw the room but the fact that really that
00:30:21
Speaker
The way there's no spoilers, there's one point where this chain where it's like, oh, we're still, oh, oh, we're doing something different now. We're breaking all connections. We're going there, you know, that's, that's something like that.
00:30:33
Speaker
No, that's a movie I appreciate, but it's not one that I would revisit. And I think The Strangers pretty much repeated it, and I hate that movie. I just feel, one, it added nothing new, and two, it was just mean-spirited. I mean, it made me question the people who made it.
00:31:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that same. Yeah. Oh, you know, look at through other like this list for experimental hoarder. Things like Jacob's Ladder.
00:31:14
Speaker
And then I think of altered states even, which is more sci-fi, but leans in. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is pretty horrifying. Yeah. No altered states. I, and maybe that's because as, as I was quite young when I first seen that. Um, but yeah, no, no. And that probably also, that's another body horror one as well. Um, uh, altered states and, uh, let's see what they call it. Obviously video drum, but I think that still goes body horror.
00:31:42
Speaker
But they call it Peeping Tom in terms of experimental, which I'm like, okay, I get that. Yeah. Or a lot of the Hitchcock movies for their time. For their time, right. Yeah. Like Psycho was kick-started so much to this very day. Yeah. Okay. So the next one's quite a big one. Folk scenes. Especially where you are.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, we get some of it here. I think arts more falls under what gets termed a Southern Gothic. Right. Well, especially the part of the UK that I'm in, it is especially relevant. Yeah, you haven't started your wicker man yet.
00:32:26
Speaker
Well, do you know what? Like when I first moved into the dress that I'm at now, there's quite a community here just on my road. And I came home from work and there were maples and these guys in the sort of traditional costumes, bells on, dancing around them. Awesome. We came mid-summer instead. It was very mid-summer, yeah.
00:32:54
Speaker
Great. Just keep driving. Yeah. So, so yeah, this, you know, the granddaddy is, is wicker man, isn't it? For, for your folk or wicker man and like blood on Satan's claw, which I finally got to see. Shutter finally put that out. That's, that's excellent.
00:33:12
Speaker
Okay. I do enjoy, uh, this particular sub-genre folk horror. Um, I don't know like you aside if something like children of the corn would count. Yeah, no, I think so. No, no, no. I would say the witch as well. And, and, and, and the, um, uh, kill list. Have you seen that? Yeah.
00:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, so that's clearly folk horror as well. And I just think that was really well done, starting with a character who is a hit man. And you always know when you go into a horror movie like that, that if you have an amoral job or you're an amoral character,
00:34:03
Speaker
It's not going to go well for you. It's not going to go well for you. And this is where I think Robert Eggers strength is, right? So I enjoyed The Witch, and he brought Americans history and folklore to the screen in a way that I haven't seen before, aside from all the films that we mentioned that are British for folk horror.
00:34:29
Speaker
And then he did The Lighthouse, which again, in a different era, and again, he just nailed it, right? Got the language down, did his research, all of that. And where I think he completely fucked up was he got a big budget and instead of focusing on what he knows, and this is the thing about anyone who's creating anything,
00:34:54
Speaker
concentrate in what you know, right? And he went out to go do Vikings, all speaking English, with multiple accents from around the world. And I hated it, because my son really enjoyed his first two movies as well. And we came out of the cinema just laughing, because the audience actually
00:35:19
Speaker
To be fair we're pretty clued up because they burst out laughing at the same parts that we did where we just thought okay well this is unnecessary. And I hope for Eggers sake,
00:35:35
Speaker
that he returns to that kind of American historical folklore. It could be even modern, right? But I just think, yeah, he just stepped out of his specialist area and
00:35:53
Speaker
it didn't work. It's a bit like when a director who specializes in a genre tries something else, unless you're Kubrick. Kubrick could just do anything. But it doesn't work. A lot of white male directors in the 90s tried to direct movies about the Black experience. And it didn't work. Do what you know.
00:36:23
Speaker
Exactly. Stay in that lane. Versus, I think, other directors who have, modern directors who have folk horror down, as you already mentioned, Ben Wheatley. Ben Wheatley. The other one I would throw in there is a field in England.
00:36:41
Speaker
which is... Oh, do you know what? I've not seen that one yet because, yeah, yeah, I've got to add that to my list. But it is definitely, you know, there's basically, you know, give these guys LSD in a field and see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe that can go into the experimental category. I don't know. I've not seen it.
00:37:03
Speaker
I don't know. Another good folk one that I had my eye on for years and it finally showed up on Shudder was V. It's a Russian movie from the 60s. But this priest who gets, he has to, his young priest, he gets stuck with a job of watching over the body of this witch for three nights. But he has to contend with the ghosts and demons and everything that tries to, he's trying to take his soul.
00:37:31
Speaker
And it all takes place in this church, basically, once he gets there, you know, obviously there's some setup. It's fantastic, but it's very Slavic, and what do they call it, Evil Dead, by way of Andrew Tarkovsky. It's very good, and some of the imagery in it is brilliant.
00:37:52
Speaker
It's one of those things, you know, you could put into a sizzle reel of like, you know, horror film stuff, you know, you grab clips from Hausu or, you know, stuff like that, you know, the really pop. There's stuff in V that is, I mean, the main character gets really annoying, I'm not gonna lie, but, you know, you're not rooting against him per se. Yeah. Yeah, he's not that annoying.
00:38:17
Speaker
Well, that sounds like it'd be a great double feature with a 1965 Japanese horror I'd seen called Kwaidan. Yeah. And again, that does have a point where, you know, the priest has to stay overnight waiting for the, you know,
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah, whatever they are to come. The evil spirits. Wow, I'm going to have to check out V. I think I've read about it, but it's one of those films that is hard to sort of track down to track down. Yeah, same with another one that says the wailing.
00:38:53
Speaker
which is South Korean one. Oh, that's a great one. Yeah, I enjoyed that. But I think it also gets into the, because it's about ghosts and specifically what's going on and, you know, again, more folk tying into local legends and such like that, right? Oh, that's true. Well, that's funny. Yeah. Yeah. Actually sort of thinking about it because as we're looking at, like, let's say folk horror from the perspective of Westerners, and I think we already touched on British and American folk.
00:39:22
Speaker
horror. But yeah, I think I would think that that that classifies as as as folk horror as well, just not focus as we usually think of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and just one thing on Ben Wheatley, I just think he's so good at sort of maintaining suspense and tone so consistently and anything he does. I don't know if you ever saw he did an episode of Doctor Who
00:39:51
Speaker
and it had the, I think it was the first one with Peter Capaldi, and he did it. You would not think, oh, I can't believe Ben Wheatley did this. You'd be like, this is a Ben Wheatley. He just chews on the medicine. It is worth watching if you
00:40:16
Speaker
you look that up. And then we got, oh, go ahead. The last one I would do in there, which is a lot more of a, almost informative for this to like, kind of build an education for it is Haxson. Haxson. Yeah, that was all the way out all the way back to the beginning. Yeah. And it's because it's it plays out more like an essay than just this, because then you get all these crazy different horror elements.
00:40:41
Speaker
Well, Haxson, I think, closed down a lot of doors for horror that it opened, right? But then the exorcist had to reopen, you know? Because you had that sort of hammer horror genre, giant monsters, you know, what happens after nuclear war stuff going on through the 40s, 50s, and the 60s.
00:41:08
Speaker
And then you had Exorcist saying, well, you know, let's go back to Haxon. Haxon's still pretty uncomfortable viewing, even now. Right. Okay. Found footage.
00:41:26
Speaker
mentioned it earlier Blair Witch Project started this off. I'm trying to think of some of the best found footage that I've seen. I enjoyed Cloverfield.
00:41:39
Speaker
I mean, I love giant monster movies when I was a kid. So to see it done that way in earnest. And I think it could have, because I was thinking, well, how are they going to maintain this sort of menace?
00:41:57
Speaker
and the immediacy of the horror and you know somewhere in the middle you find out that you know not only do you have a big monster it's got a freaking parasites all over it that you know size of Bulldogs that drop off it and I thought that was a great
00:42:14
Speaker
a great move. And it had all the zombie tropes as well. Yeah, really, really enjoyed that one. I'm trying to think of think of others. I mean, a lot of found footage movies can end up being quite mediocre, you know. Yeah.
00:42:31
Speaker
Of the one I would throw back to that I finally again, thank you to shutter. I only got to see again was Ghostwatch. Ghostwatch. No British shows the BBC when they showed on a Halloween night as if they were doing a live. It's kind of the. Oh, I might have seen it that night. Right. Yeah. They were doing the approach to a haunted house thing, but then the realize the spirit that they're chasing, they think they get in. They just kind of playing it up. It's like, oh, here's something spooky to do on Halloween. But it becomes much more menacing.
00:43:02
Speaker
and much more presence, and then it starts to, thanks to TV cameras, basically starts to spread. It's that whole abysmal horror thing that it goes down to. But it's definitely all like, here's a news crew and we're going through and doing this.
00:43:19
Speaker
Now it's interesting. I've just sort of looked up like the top found footage of movies and the top one sounds really interesting and I've not seen it. Um, it's called as beloved as, as above. So below below. Yeah. Have you seen that one either? No, I'm familiar with that. Yeah. Sounds good. Set, set in the Paris catacombs. Um, yeah, that's it. Um, and paranormal activity, obviously who would think would be the,
00:43:45
Speaker
because it's all security cam footage and such. Yeah. I think the first one worked for me, but then it just kept repeating. It didn't really add much to it. If anything, it sort of dwindled for me a little bit. Also, they actually kind of get better.
00:44:04
Speaker
Do they? The second one's kind of weak, but then the third one's actually, when they get back to the point that it's not, that it's the one that's the prequel, and they get to the point that it's not the house, it's the evil chasing them. You mentioned this before. Yeah. I'm going to have to check it out because I got to the second one and I thought, well, that's almost a repeat of the first one.
00:44:27
Speaker
It felt like a cash-in to me. Wreck. Wreck. Maybe my favorite found footage. And the way that they did the second one as well, which was kind of like the aliens to Alien. Yeah. No, I like how they transition between the movies. Yeah. And they overlap. Literally pick up where you left off.
00:44:52
Speaker
time-wise as well, because as the second one, pretty much starts at the same time as the first one. But yeah, but you're getting a different point of view, like, okay, the light, they're shining a light in the window. Well, I remember that bit in the first movie, and then they're firing in the window, and you know, you never saw who fired in the first window. Kind of like the Back to the Future kind of thing, but
00:45:18
Speaker
but better in my mind. And out of all the series, whatever happened to the directors between two and three, I don't know, but I have never been so disappointed as Rec. Three and I never bothered to go further than that.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah. Paranormal activity. Oh, man bites dog. Oof. Gosh. Yeah. That's a, that's a horrific. See, this is the thing. There's a difference between a horrific movie and a horror movie, right? Troll hunter.
00:45:55
Speaker
Oh yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. That's a good one. Um, host. I don't know if you've seen that. I I've seen it, uh, over lockdown and it was like one of these ideal lockdown movies where, uh, this group decide that they're going to do Ouija board thing, uh, through zoom during lockdown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. It was, it was really good better than it should have been.
00:46:21
Speaker
And they didn't, it was such a, you know, it built up so, you know, with such patience. Yeah. While using the glitches we were all familiar with, with trying to communicate over Zoom. Yeah. At the same time. It's like, oh yeah, that was far better than it should have been.
00:46:45
Speaker
Um, BHS, you know, the, uh, the horror anthology series. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Those are all found footage, but they also play with the, the found footage thing. And there's a new ones coming out, uh, this month. Uh, yeah. And I, I hear good word of mouth about it as well. Um, I I've enjoyed them all so far, but I've enjoyed most of the others. So yeah.
00:47:13
Speaker
Ooh, ooh, The Bay. Have you seen that? That's an OK one. It's a bit 80s, even though it was made in 2012. It's a Barry Levinson horror movie. And it is around this concept of there's a parasite and the fish. And it's starting to move into people. And it's pretty good. You could tell it's low budget.
00:47:42
Speaker
But I think it may be one of my favorite movies from him. So yeah, that's pretty good as well. OK, cool. So I think that we've done pretty well on the found footage. I wasn't expecting to talk about found footage that much. Next category they have is gore, sometimes labeled as the splatter film. OK, all right.
00:48:10
Speaker
not a big fan of these ones. I think we talked about this before is that horror movies tend to work a lot better when you hold back. Like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I think for some people would be considered a splatter film, but it works because they hold back. They still have a budget for this full splatter.
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And they leave the fact that they have to leave so much to your imagination makes it scarier. Calling this a sub genre, right, is almost like saying special effects is a sub genre because it should service the story. Right. But it's a unique thing, I would say, I would argue, though, for horror is that the special effects become front and center.
00:49:05
Speaker
And there's a definite and only, you know, sci-fi, you get that to an extent, but those just cost a lot more versus gore. You can do so much more better practically. That there is, I think it is a definite sub-genre on its own where there are films that that is purely what they're doing. You know, I think the first one, the problem of mine was Tokyo Gore Police.
00:49:27
Speaker
Or for me, Cannibal movies or the Jell-O films, which I don't like because they put the gore front and foremost. Yeah, that's all that's got going for it. This is the one with most horror fans where I
00:49:47
Speaker
Diverge mightily let's say what is a lot of what they like all these are great things are masters the crafts like there's nothing to it. Yeah score and i get the release for that the embrace for you know it's like either you know you've got you know texas chainsaw one hand where they didn't have the budget and couldn't do stuff versus evil didn't know the budget may just. Triple quadruple down.
00:50:09
Speaker
on the amount of core where it became funny it just became so right right right right buckets of blood and and evil dead too i don't know how many gallons of green and yeah to get around the nc-17 rating right they had to change it up
00:50:25
Speaker
And it's endless you know so so so you can use it to the point where you take it so far that it's funny but but it's almost a comment on it right you know but some of the the horror movies i've seen with the most memorable shocking gore.
00:50:42
Speaker
elements in them, left those particular moments in the movie. Or just a glance. Right. Movies I've seen recently that I can think of are, I don't know if you've seen the French movie, Raw. Oh, man. Oh, man. Yeah, I would say that. That's a watch. That's a pretty gory one. And that's fun. Yeah. Or if you think about audition, right?
00:51:11
Speaker
Mmhmm.
00:51:12
Speaker
And it's not even gore, but there is that moment toward the end of the movie where it is hard to keep your eyes on the screen, your eyes on the screen. But it's so much more effective than constantly showing too much. And that's a perfect movie where we get a glimpse in the middle of the movie of just a bag rustling.
00:51:42
Speaker
And, and, and, and then that suddenly notches things up, you know, to 11 in that movie that with that, that's pretty like, like, what is this? You know, up until that point, the weird thing too, to that of this me gay being restrained, right. It was normally quite the opposite. Yeah. Dead or alive movies come to mind or, you know, anything else he's done. But.
00:52:06
Speaker
But that's the thing is the actual sort of gore and what you show on the screen. You can have a drama with a lot of gore, right? You can have other genres that have a lot of gore. It doesn't have to be a war movie either. But yeah.
00:52:27
Speaker
Yeah. Anyhow, I think we're, we're, we're in agreement on, on, on the Gore bit. Yeah. Um, Gothic. Okay. Yeah. Del Toro for sure here. You see, he's our latest. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. By far. I mean, at Crimson Peak, right? That's, I mean, that's a Gothic love story more so lean new than a horror story.
00:52:48
Speaker
It's got more elements, but they prop up the sad love story rather than anything else. But all his stuff seems to have kind of a touch of more Gothic, more classical, more informed by universal pictures and hammer stuff.
00:53:07
Speaker
And you know those big things are just you know like as it's roughly same age as him you know it's an influence on all of us. I mean his movies are quite varied though you know. Thinking back to his like early movies like Chronos was.
00:53:25
Speaker
Or, you know, yeah, it did sort of harken back to those old movies, but in a foreign language. And then like Mimic was, I really enjoyed that. I thought that that's quite an interesting take and they made a cheap knockoff sequel.
00:53:44
Speaker
What's the other one that he did that was so you had crick crimson peak. Oh, the one I would seen this year nightmare alley, which maybe it's horror. Well,
00:53:59
Speaker
It's a particular type of war. Yeah, it's the American equivalent, really, of full quarter. The Southern Gothic War is really what dominates, I think, these shores for it. I would throw in the beguiled.
00:54:16
Speaker
Clint Eastwood movie. That's a good one. That's definitely a gothic horror. It gets there, kind of. Yeah, maybe like a psychological horror type thing. I think Nightmare Alley has a very similar arc to the old European... I forget that. It's terrible. I'm really bad with the names. I always have to look it up.
00:54:42
Speaker
Uh, the vanishing, the original vanishing, it had a similar arc to nightmare alley where you, you, you're following this character and, and, and in the last few minutes, there's a kind of a revelation, but it's too late. You know, um, in this, you know, literal Ken Russell's movie Gothic, you know, literally a movie made with that name. Well, you,
00:55:10
Speaker
Actually, that's a really good point. I would say Ken Russell falls into the camp horror that we were talking about earlier. Yeah, his definitely seemed to cross a lot, you know, between like, Lair of the White Worm, his folklore and horror comedy.
00:55:27
Speaker
Yeah, because it's not played straight, you know, but it is, you know, definitely it's very over the top, but then almost everything was in that, that era as well. When those were released, uh, the, uh, was it the devils, the devils. Yeah. You know, that's.
00:55:44
Speaker
And that would be experimental as well, because I think that pushed the boundaries. Well, yeah, certainly did. OK, cool. And then we come to Lovecraftian, which again, I think is cosmic horror. I don't think you can separate the two.
00:56:03
Speaker
reading At the Mountains of Madness. Well, if you're going to put At the Mountains of Madness under this, then I think Prometheus pretty much lifts that story. What did you think to that movie, Prometheus? Prometheus? I never bothered to watch it. Really? I couldn't bring myself to do it.
00:56:23
Speaker
I, I really liked it. Um, uh, it's, it's, it's not perfect. It could have done with some better editing, but, uh, uh, Naomi, I forget her name as the lead. She's very, very good. And she is.
00:56:41
Speaker
Yeah, she's put into situations that are kind of almost unimaginable. And, you know, where you're forced into this situation to do something quite unpleasant, and she has to just grit her teeth and do it. I
00:57:02
Speaker
I really liked that movie. I thought the tone was good. I thought the pacing was terrible. I think this is the irony of it is I think it could have been edited down, but then some of the other scenes could have had more time to breathe. Give them a little more. Yeah, because basically it is at the mountains of madness.
00:57:26
Speaker
that's what it is. Um, if you're going and expecting a, um, alien, uh, sequel, it's or prequel or whatever you want to call it. Um, no, not, not really. Um, but if you go in, uh, thinking of it as like a remake of at the mountains of madness, then, then it, then it, then it works. I think, um, yeah, it's, uh,
00:57:54
Speaker
Yeah, good effects. I mean, really, I think the person that you wanted to direct that would have been rather than Ridley Scott, you'd want to have Denis Villeneuve would have been perfect for it. I think he would have nailed it. And I think it would have been a fantastic movie and you wouldn't have had to recast anyone because I think everyone was perfect in it.
00:58:21
Speaker
um, but I think Ridley Scott is
00:58:26
Speaker
He's just not been reliable lately. I think it's one of these things when he direct well, yeah Post post 2000 post 1997 maybe Yeah gladiator But yeah it it it's
00:58:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting movie. It's better than most of its type. And if it wasn't sold as a prequel for Alien, I think it probably would have done better. Yeah, sure. If someone else edited it. But the other fur in terms of what's still on this one, and we might wrap up on that.
00:59:15
Speaker
this genre, pause on this one, the the Lovecraftian one, the it came out as called The Resurrected, but it was the curious case of Charles Dexter Ward. Short story. Yeah, Dan O'Bannon did it. And speaking of Alien, which he wrote, and then he also wrote and directed Return of the Living Dead. He did this one as a follow up, I think to that with what was his name? Yeah, Chris Sarandon. That's right. He shows up as the
00:59:45
Speaker
That's the thing, but it's the whole direct telling of that story just within a modern context. And it works pretty well. You know, you can hold up Stuart Gordon's stuff too with Re-Animator and From Beyond also being pretty much...
01:00:06
Speaker
There's a couple that stumble into the gore thing, but I think more because of when they were made rather than, and then trying to, you know, because again, when you're trying to show what's at the core of Lovecraftian, which is, you know, some kind of unimaginable horror,
01:00:26
Speaker
that you know if you see it you go mad right so it's like okay well let's just slap a lot of blood onto it or something like that instead right like hellraiser or something like that of you know what's implied and then oh yeah we're gonna show you as well uh kind of a notion that again to me feels more 80s because you could and everybody was trying to one up each other and thing you know until it got to a breaking point
01:00:51
Speaker
Where they pulled it in for a while but but also I think just in terms of like okay with your imagination it could be anything so let's make it like X Y Z whatever yeah and so this it's it's a genre that you know it's a thing it's that it's really tough to get right
01:01:11
Speaker
I saw one that was a, I think it was just a shadow over Innsmouth or it may have just been called Innsmouth, but it was, they made it this century, but probably 15 years ago at least at this point, but it was silent. So they treated that story as a silent black and white, but with modern techniques and such too. So it doesn't look as aged and that came off really well. I was surprised.
01:01:37
Speaker
uh, how good that, uh, that approach worked. Because again, it's kind of wide open with, with Lovecraft stuff, right? I mean, it's like how we, how the heck do you do this? Uh, how do you show this or how do you capture it in some way that makes sense? Right. Uh, because really his stuff so much about the reading. It is, it is. And, and, and, and yeah, describing something that's unimaginable. Oh, gorgeous. What's that?
01:02:11
Speaker
Dave Eggers approaching Lovecraft for his next movie. Much rather see him do that. Nolan?
01:02:38
Speaker
I'm sorry to differ with you, sir. But you are the caretaker.