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Episode 69: Creepshow 2 featuring Trevor Henderson
59 Plays21 days ago
Trevor Henderson, author of Scarewaves: Beyond the Grave and creator of Sirenhead, is sitting down with Chris and Anna to access a nostalgic pick, Creepshow 2 (1987). George Romero and Stephen King have smaller, behind the scenes roles in this anthology horror film sequel than it's predecessor. It also had fewer stories, included some terrible animations and had Tom Savini appears in a mask, so you can’t tell it’s him. Despite all of questionable choices, everyone agrees that one section is one of the strongest pieces of horror cinema every recorded. Tune in to hear all about it!
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Transcript
Introduction & Hosts
00:00:40
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to your favorite bad movie podcast. It's the only podcast that's brave enough to ask the question, if this movie's so bad, why do you like it so much?
00:00:52
Speaker
We're your hosts. My name is Chris Anderson and bad news to the Greg heads out there. ah We do not have Greg in the show, but we do have, I am happy to announce with the marvels of technology, the fantastic Gregotron 5000. Don't we Gregotron 5000?
00:01:11
Speaker
Gedzooks.
00:01:15
Speaker
Fantastic. Glad to see him. And of course, Uh, Animaniacs, rejoice. We do have Anna here this week. The Martha to my Ray. How are you doing, my love?
00:01:27
Speaker
Hooray! i don't mind being compared to Dorothy L'Amour. No, you're just as glamorous and wonderful, my heart. For sure. And... Of course, we have with us a very special
Guest Introduction: Trevor Henderson
00:01:40
Speaker
guest. You might know him as an illustrator. You might know him as an author of the new book, Scarewaves Beyond the Grave.
00:01:49
Speaker
And his work is certainly creepy enough that I feel comfortable calling him our own personal creep. It's Trevor Henderson. Hell yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And yeah, being the personal creep of the show is is a high honor.
00:02:03
Speaker
Well, the big shoes to fill, obviously. Yes. But you chose our movie this week, Creepshow 2. And any listeners who haven't heard Creepshow 2, here's a brief summary to hold in your mind.
Overview of Creepshow 2
00:02:23
Speaker
a very creepy periodical delivery driver, tells us three tales of terror about assorted jerks being killed by assorted monsters.
00:02:33
Speaker
Specifically, an animated cigar store Indian, a carnivorous pond scum, and an undead hitchhiker.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, succinct. Thank you. I'm telling you, I should have gotten that job writing the two-sentence movie write-ups for TV Guide.
Trevor's Favorite Bad Movie Discussion
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, we killed it i Now, ah Trevor, why did you choose Creepshow 2 as your favorite bad movie?
00:03:01
Speaker
So I was actually conflicted because like the more I was thinking about it, like, you know, there's so much I find so entertaining, but this movie doesn't even qualify. But like, it's just a movie that is absolutely not like the sum of its parts.
00:03:13
Speaker
um And I think a lot of that is budgetary. And a lot of that is feeling like the first film you had George Romero's deft hand at the wheel. ah This time he's not, I believe he wrote the screenplay, but he did not direct. So so you do feel that.
00:03:28
Speaker
um And then just, you know, the the first film has a ah full wraparound and then five stories and all these great effects to make it feel like a comic book. This one has three ah and an animated wraparound. That's maybe like one of the worst.
00:03:42
Speaker
t The animation's terrible. It looks like shit. It's not, um it's not good. and two of the stories are fine and one story is so good it's like one of the best anthologized horror segments of all time the other ones it's just it doesn't it's a big it's a real jalopy patchwork kind of thing so but it is still kind of weird and cozy and fun to watch so i am conflicted a little bit i don't know i think it is bad it's not it's not good but like i'll back you up on that one i still really like it i don't know you know and also following up Creepshow is a masterpiece, in my opinion. And I think that just following that up and I have not, you know, in falling short in all these different ways, it's going to it's going to look worse than if it was just a standalone.
00:04:24
Speaker
That's true. Now, do you remember when you first encountered Creepshow 2?
Personal Anecdotes & Film Impact
00:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, usually when I come on a podcast and i talk about horror movies, specifically like 80s horror movies, um those were movies that I watched with my dad on VHS.
00:04:38
Speaker
ah Okay. It was a real bonding exercise but for me and my dad. He's always loved horror movies. He still loves horror movies, but he would like kind of show me all his favorite stuff when I was when i was growing up, when I was really young.
00:04:50
Speaker
And Creepshow 2 was one we rented, and I remember being terrified by my favorite segment now, The Raft. Um, and I'd actually read that segment because our household was a big King, Stephen King household. So I had access to skeleton crew, which has the short story version of that story. It's the only segment, um, in creep show two, that is a short story, um, not specifically written for the film.
00:05:14
Speaker
Uh, okay. So yeah, I watched it when i was really young with my dad. Um, probably after I saw a creep show the first, the first one. Um, and, uh, you know, I just wanted to follow up and see to see the next one.
00:05:26
Speaker
Fair enough. Yeah. Did you ever get around to creep show three? Uh, I, I don't think that exists. I don't think that we, yeah, fair enough. I think,
00:05:37
Speaker
no, that one was, um, creep show three was basically made, to my understanding, through a ah weird like loophole, like rights loophole, that kind of like... Yeah, nobody was involved. Nobody, and were actively you know hostile hostile to the the whole production.
00:05:53
Speaker
It's a real piece of shit. I mean, Creepshow 2 is like a flawed, weird, bad movie. Creepshow 3 is like a cynical piece of shit, where they were just trying to cash in, like they didn't give a fuck about the...
00:06:04
Speaker
About anything, i haven't seen it. It's just everything I've seen from it is and everything I hear about it, it's just like a nightmare scenario. So, yeah. yeah The real Creepshow 3, mind you, is Tales from the Dark Side, of the movie, which is good.
00:06:17
Speaker
Okay. You should see that. It's good movie. I'm pretty sure I've seen that one. Yeah, that one. Sorry, go ahead. but Oh, no problem. Anna, had you ah seen Creepshow 2 before?
00:06:28
Speaker
No, I had not. i i I'm actually, think I'm still catching up. on 80s horror yeah because I did not grow up in a horror household. I grew up in very much... I think that my parents don't like being scared.
00:06:47
Speaker
I know my mom doesn't like being scared. I remember in my 20s trying to watch Scream with her being like, it's funny, Mom! it's really and But she could not get through Drew Barrymore's death. It was just too intense. I think my dad liked deals with being scared by being like, I don't really like this.
00:07:08
Speaker
So, so I haven't, didn't watch a lot of horror movies growing up. And, um, most horror movies made, and they a made before, like, like 1995 when I hit high school and started, you know, watching some on my own.
00:07:24
Speaker
um Yeah. I'm still catching up on and creep show was just way down the list. I, and I haven't seen that. I didn't get up early enough on Saturday to watch the first one with you, Chris. So still only seen. two If you circle back on yeah on the first one is it's, it's really good.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It has a lot of charms to it. It also both of these films draw a lot of imagery from fifty s horror comics, which I'm a big fan of.
00:07:55
Speaker
um me too. and it's it's such a great visual language to draw from. And so many great little punchy short stories that would be an anthologized when they were in a comic. And so this is definitely just the filmic version of that.
00:08:07
Speaker
And Creepshow one also had like a lot of really fun lighting techniques that was very sort of expressionistic. And Creepshow two is lacking a lot of that visual flair.
00:08:19
Speaker
I remember this was one that I would have watched when I was at Kim's video. And ah the only thing that I remembered about it was that the raft was good. The raft is everything else I had completely drowned out, but the raft is good.
00:08:32
Speaker
And watching it this time again, i still think the raft is good. I i think it was better than good. Yeah. ah I would even say the the last segment's pretty good too. The hitchhiker one.
00:08:44
Speaker
um Yeah. The last. It's not as good as the raft, but. Yeah. well well We'll get into into more of my thoughts on it later. ah Do you guys want to hear about the the research on the context I found out about Creepshow too?
00:08:58
Speaker
Please do. All right.
00:09:01
Speaker
hope you'll be on the numbers, Trevor, because we've got a lot of them. I love it.
00:09:11
Speaker
I wish I had some context About the background of the film Script, director, actors on set What was going on
Film Background & Production Challenges
00:09:21
Speaker
on screen? wanna hear some details Gossips can do all that shit Can imagine all the time
00:09:40
Speaker
So Creepshow 2 came out May 1st, 1987. Mayday. Director Michael Gornick.
00:09:48
Speaker
It had five taglines. Here they are. Five? One. Yeah. I think in different contexts, like one's on the VHS tape, one's on the poster, one's in a trailer, that sort of thing.
00:10:01
Speaker
When the curtain goes up, the terror begins. Okay. Straightforward. Not bad. Not bad. bad. Good to the Last Gasp. Weird to make a Maxwell House reference. little confusing. It's not a beverage, really.
00:10:16
Speaker
So, yeah I don't know. Three blood-curdling tales of horror. I mean, that's what yeah's what it says on the tin, yeah. And that that's the classic appeal of the anthology. Yeah, it's true. You're getting multiple movies in one.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:34
Speaker
Tales of horror that will make your skin crawl.
00:10:40
Speaker
a little generic little bit doesn't not very punchy no uh and the one that's probably the biggest stretch i want to say the masters of the macabre stephen king and george a romero welcome you to creep show two and think welcoming you was about all they did for them yeah they didn't that's yeah pretty much ah none of those are real winners in my opinion i don't know a little generic a little uh No, I think Curtain Goes Up, Terror Begins, and Three Blood-Curdling Tales of Terror are going your best bet. But even like ah Three Blood-Curdling Tales of Terror or whatever, it's like, if you saw the first one, there were five, so it's a downgrade. i don't really, yeah it's not making me as excited.
00:11:24
Speaker
ah So Creepshow 2 is the only feature film ever directed by Michael Gornick. And if you try to look him up on Wikipedia, he only has a webpage, a Wikipedia page in the Italian Wikipedia.
00:11:37
Speaker
Huh? Uh, well, they're big horror heads out there and they're big, you know, night of the living dead and dawn of the dead fans. So, uh, so he grew up in a transferred Pennsylvania,
00:11:51
Speaker
ah He was drafted in the Vietnam War and served as a cameraman ah stationed at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, which is largely a training facility. So I imagine he was making training films for the Air Force.
00:12:02
Speaker
Huh. Okay. And I think he's not our first Air Force. I think Joseph V. Michele, the director of the Atomic Brain, was also in ah the Air Force filmmaking program. Okay.
00:12:14
Speaker
Now, while he was stationed there, he went to see a little movie called the Night of the Living Dead and was so blown away that he promised himself that he would look up Romero when he got back to Pennsylvania. And he did.
00:12:26
Speaker
And he was able to get himself a job as an audio technician on Romero's 1973 film, The Crazies. o Never got around to The Crazies, but I've heard good stuff. Yeah, I feel like the lesser Romeros can get kind of lesser.
00:12:42
Speaker
The crazies is like whatever, but Martin is amazing. Just as a side note. well He was the DP on Martin. And from there he would go on to shoot four more Romero movies.
00:12:54
Speaker
Dawn of the Dead. okay Night Riders. The original Creepshow. And Day of the Dead. Damn. or That's a pretty solid DP. That's good. Yeah. Okay.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah. ah Now, the original Creepshow came out in 1982 and was decently successful, pulling in $21 million on an $8 million dollars budget, based mostly on the fact that was written by Stephen King and directed by George Romero.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, yeah, those those are bankable names, I'm going to say, by 1982. Yeah, yeah. Those still pull, especially Cam. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
00:13:30
Speaker
And, you know, if somebody came out with an unreleased Romero film, I'd go check it out. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Now, ah eventually, time came to make a creep show, too.
00:13:42
Speaker
Both Romero and King were less interested this time around, and also the budget was smaller. yeah So King let them use two of his stories for the script, The Raft and Old Chief Woodenhead.
00:13:54
Speaker
The third segment, The Hitchhiker, was based on a radio play written for Orson Welles by Lucille Fletcher. Wow. Okay. Yeah, and I could see that being an interesting radio play. I bet the radio play is probably really good.
00:14:09
Speaker
Now, Romero wrote the screenplay, and he suggested his loyal cameraman, Michael Gornick, for the director's chair. Gornick at this point had directed a couple of television shows, a few episodes of Tales from the Dark Side, amongst others.
00:14:24
Speaker
ah But this was his first feature film, and also his last. He did run into some trouble butting heads with special effects makeup artist Ed French.
00:14:35
Speaker
I've heard about this. Yeah. Yeah. French ended up walking off the film partway through production. I believe he was replaced by Howard Berger. um Yeah.
00:14:47
Speaker
One of those K&B guys. I'm not sure which one. So... French was also going to play the host of the film, The Creep, I guess, because he was in the makeup department all the time and the job just had him in makeup. He didn't have to talk or anything.
00:15:02
Speaker
ah But when French left, they brought on special effects master Tom Savini to take on the role, but they didn't have him do any makeup near as I could tell. It's so funny to have Tom Savini on just to act.
00:15:17
Speaker
We don't need to tell Maybe they couldn't afford him. i want to say. Oh, maybe. Yeah, that could be it. Yeah, that's really funny. That's true. He's probably a much cheaper actor. but Yeah. At that point in his career. Yeah. I think Tom Savini might have been a bit of a pull for special effects makeup.
00:15:34
Speaker
and And I'm sure also just having him as an actor, getting his name on the poster, that'll probably so help you sell a couple more tickets. Yeah. You know. ah Now, Tom Savini was not the only thing they couldn't afford.
00:15:48
Speaker
ah There had initially been two more segments to the film. Yes, I know. ah Two, they were cut for budgetary concerns. One, The Cat from Hell is about a hitman hired to kill a kitty cat.
00:16:01
Speaker
And that is in Tales from the Dark Side, of the movie. It's real good. so you know, I've seen Tales from the Dark Side, the movie, because I...
00:16:12
Speaker
feel like I remember that ah remember that segment. Yeah. The one with Steve Buscemi is the one that's an Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation, the ah the one with the mummy, where Steve is like sickening the mummy on people. and The one with the cat from hell, though, ah it has that one actor who's the old man in A Million Things.
00:16:33
Speaker
He's in National On Food's Christmas Day. Not Abe Vigoda, but he's like this, he just made like a whole career to playing like decrepit old man, old men and later in life. I know him if I saw him. um You know him if you saw him, I forget his name. But but that segment, honestly, all the segments in Tales the dark Side are better than like 95% of Creepshow 2.
00:16:52
Speaker
That's fair. I'm just to look up this guy's name really quick or it'll drive me crazy. Yeah, right? Sorry. and No, no, no problem. this is I got a second monitor recently so that I could do this during the show more easily.
00:17:05
Speaker
And I'm getting closer to successfully doing that. Yeah, he's a national investigation.
00:17:13
Speaker
um'm I'm getting so much closer. I've got to now go to the all- God damn it, I went to the show. Forget it. Forget it. It's done. We'll figure it out later. only thing you need note to know about that movie is that has Halle... Or not Halle... God, forget it. Blondie's in it. It's a witch that eats children.
00:17:31
Speaker
Oh, yes! Debbie Harry. Debbie Harry. I was going to say Halle Berry. I'm like, that's not Halle Berry. It's Debbie Harry. God. No, that's like an obscurerism. Yeah.
00:17:42
Speaker
Sorry. Go on. No problem. The other segment that was cut from Creepshow 2 was Pinfall, which was about a ah bowling team rising from the dead to take revenge on their rivals.
00:17:54
Speaker
It was apparently there was a kickstart for it yeah in 2014. I don't know if it actually got made. Also, if you buy like the fancy $80 Arrow but boutique Blu-ray set, they have a little comic book version of that story in it. Okay.
00:18:07
Speaker
And it would have it would have been great. It would have really elevated the whole movie. it would have added a whole half hour to the to the runtime, too. It was going to be a long segment. would have been good. Yeah. I imagine when you're looking at the budget and you say, well, yeah, let's lose the bowling alley one.
00:18:21
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I, and I, you know, I don't complain about a horror movie clocking in at a tight 92 minutes. That's perfect for me. But you're going to I would I would have lost old chief wooden head in a second.
00:18:32
Speaker
gotta say that yeah yeah chief wooden head is rough it's not great now uh creep show 2 was eventually released and pulled in 14 million dollars on its four million dollar budget all right uh which was yeah sounds good to me but it was considered enough of disappointment with diminishing returns that they're like you know what we're gonna hang it yeah uh Credits didn't much care for it.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yep. Creepshow 3 was made roughly 20 years later with no involvement from Stephen King or George Romero and is largely considered garbage. It is. Other horror films of 1987. A great year for horror films.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah. Just to put a thing in its place. You got Evil Dead 2. Oh my god, yeah. Come on. You got The Lost Boys. Good movie.
00:19:24
Speaker
You got Monster Squad. Pretty good. Which was never never one of my movies, but I know a lot of people like Monster Squad. Yeah, it's got great monsters. It's got Tom Noonan as Frankenstein.
00:19:35
Speaker
Can't beat that. But you do have one of my favorites. My Best Friend is a Vampire. I'm a real sucker for my best friend. Oh my God. It's got Sean William Scott as a vampire and Renee Obergin. Not Sean William Scott. No.
00:19:51
Speaker
Robert Sean Leonard, honey. Robert. I always confuse him and Sean Patrick Flannery. All three of those guys. Okay. I'll read it down. Yeah. And it's like, vampirism as a metaphor for homosexuality but it's like the thinnest layer in that his parents the whole time instead of thinking he's a vampire think that he's gay oh it's it's really fun be like a good double with uh the original fright night maybe there's some there's a little subtext to that one or or a teen wolf it's got a lot in common with the teen wolf okay good to know also 1987 blood diner blood diner
00:20:26
Speaker
i like blood diner And on an international level, down in the Southern Hemisphere, you got Bad Taste. ah Peter Jackson's start.
00:20:37
Speaker
And you also got Slumber Party Massacre 2 that year. ah So much fun. So a great year for And ah with that, let's let's dive into the plot of Creepshow 2.
00:20:49
Speaker
Let's hit Hell yeah.
00:21:09
Speaker
Plot bumper, listen to me. I'm gonna give you the plot summary. Come on, baby. Here's the synopsis.
00:21:21
Speaker
Plot bumper, plot bumper.
00:21:33
Speaker
Those are a delight. I got to say, those are just, I love that. Oh, thank you so much. So we open on a rainy town in Maine and that's how we know that Stephen King is involved in this movie.
Creepshow 2 Story Introductions
00:21:45
Speaker
A young boy bicycles up to a delivery truck and meets the creep, our humble narrator played by Tom Savini in latex, but he doesn't do the voice voiced by some other guy for some reason.
00:21:56
Speaker
yeah Now, uh, he tosses the kid a stack of creep show comic books and the film becomes animated.
00:22:08
Speaker
Not great. Not the worst animation I've ever seen. It doesn't have a low frame rate. I'll give it that. It's not like one of those things where it's somebody standing still the whole time and just their mouth is moving. This is true. There is some motion to it.
00:22:22
Speaker
Uh, But it is all very ah poor line drawings. I will say that. It's unappealing to look at. It's not great. Yeah. Now, ah Billy, the young boy, he flips through the book and we see bits of the segments to come as credits roll before the now animated creep who may or may not be dressed as a delivery man anymore. He might be dressed sort of vaguely wizardy.
00:22:48
Speaker
And he introduces our first story. Our first story is unfortunately, old chief wooden head. What a start. Oh, isn't the, it's the longest one too, right? It's like 30 minutes, 30, 40 minutes long of the movie.
00:23:04
Speaker
It, I wouldn't be surprised. I bet they go into, it feels like kind figure you could, you could never sell this to cable because as soon as somebody puts on old chief wooden head, you're going to change a channel.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yes. No, it definitely scares everybody off right away. Yeah. Yeah. So Old Chief Woodenhead takes place in a small, dusty southwestern town. On the main street, we see Spruce's General Store, owned by the aging Ray and Martha Spruce, played by George Kennedy and Dorothy Lemoore.
00:23:37
Speaker
And ah this is part of the Creepshow tradition of hiring old-timey film actors. getting like The previous one, it had Hal Holbrook. It had a bunch of guys from...
00:23:48
Speaker
Oh yeah. He's great in it. oh So good. And that, I think that's part of a larger tradition of horror of sort of extending your budget by hiring a name actor from like 30 to 40 years ago to come in and play the old scientist.
00:24:01
Speaker
Well, that's, uh, American horror story, uh, with Jessica Lane. Oh yeah. Yeah. True. ah And others, but her in particular. Yeah, a proud tradition that continues to this day.
00:24:15
Speaker
ah Now, Martha tries to convince Ray that the town is dying and that it's time to close up shop while Ray touches up the paint on his beloved wooden Indian, Chief Woodenhead.
00:24:29
Speaker
Now, Woodenhead isn't the only Indian chief the Spruces know, however. ah They also know Benjamin Whitemoon. who may or may not be a chief, but he is an important member of the local native community.
00:24:43
Speaker
He's come by the general store to offer up some turquoise jewelry that he's collected from the local families as collateral for the store credit that the Kennedys have already extended them. Or the the spruces, rather, have already extended them.
00:24:56
Speaker
This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, both in terms of economics or as a gesture. No. And it doesn't make a lot of sense to Ray either. And he tries to refuse. But White Moon insists that it's a matter of honor.
00:25:10
Speaker
Mrs. Spruce is very happy because she's like, boy, we haven't taken in any money in a month. Now, of a sudden, we're sitting on $10,000 worth of jewelry. yeah I'm not going to complain. Yeah. and she really thinks a lot of Benjamin. And they both look at each other as like, you are the noble member of your grace.
00:25:27
Speaker
God. Christ. And don't worry, it gets worse. Sure does. ah Now, on his way out, Ben White Moon offers both the Spruces and Old Chief Woodenhead ah friendly Akko-Ane.
00:25:52
Speaker
Now, unfortunately, when the Spruces walk back inside, there's a trio of armed robbers inside. They're led by one Sam Whitemoon, Benjamin's nephew. Sam is a narcissist obsessed with moving to Hollywood and cashing in on his long, beautiful hair.
00:26:09
Speaker
He's a Native American played by a white guy, Holt McElhaney, and his hair is played by a very bad wig.
00:26:19
Speaker
Both those things really undercut what's going on Really just put a pox on the whole production right there, unfortunately. ah No matter what. Yeah.
00:26:30
Speaker
Like, you couldn't have even done this then. And looking at it now, it's not ten times as bad. It's not great. And listeners, if you don't know who Holt McElhinney is, he was the guy that played the other FBI agent in the Netflix show Mindhunter.
00:26:46
Speaker
Yeah. so Just a very white dude. A very white man. I thought you said Mindhunters and I didn't remember which one he was in that.
00:26:58
Speaker
but Oh yeah yeah. No. Listeners, check out Mindhunters. Good show. Yeah. Well, and also check out Mindhunters, the Rennie Harlan film. Have you seen that one? I've not seen Mindhunters.
00:27:11
Speaker
It's seven profilers go to an island, but one of them is a serial killer and they need to profile the profilers. So it's like a, like an Agatha Christie kind of thing, but yeah stupid.
00:27:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. yeah got awesome yeah yeah got Johnny Lee Miller. You got ah Christian Slater, Val Kilmer, and LL Cool J. You can't beat it.
00:27:34
Speaker
Perfect. ah But, yeah. Anyway, there's some red face, and it's horrible. We all hate it. Sam and his two buddies, Kavanaugh and Fat Stuff.
00:27:46
Speaker
Also, fatphobia kind of shitty. Not that Sam's an admirable character, but he does keep on calling this guy Fat Stuff. And Fat Stuff does constantly eat. Yeah. That is a Stephen King. That's Stephen King-ism, for sure. so weird about fat people. He's incredibly weird about fat people. He's incredibly weird about a lot of different types of people, um but but definitely fat people, yes.
00:28:10
Speaker
Well, the three of them, they're ransacking the general store, looking for cash and supplies for their planned trip to Hollywood. Sam sees that they have a pouch of turquoise and demands that Ray turn it over.
00:28:22
Speaker
Ray clucks his tongue and insists that these treasures belong to his people. So Sam shoots Ray and Dorothy with a shotgun. This prompts fat stuff to throw up.
00:28:36
Speaker
ah They then take the turquoise and Sam shoots Chief Woodenhead in the chest with the shotgun and then they peel out. Before leaving for Hollywood, though, they decide they're all going to go home and get their assorted stuff. They didn't really play it that far ahead.
00:28:52
Speaker
but No. listen's Yeah, none of that tracks.
00:28:56
Speaker
So in their assorted homes, they are all now killed one by one by a living, animate chief wooden head who has come for revenge. Fat Stuff gets shot with a bunch of arrows, including one going through the middle of his baseball cap, which just has the word bullshit embroidered on it with a turd falling out. It's the most amazing one I've ever seen.
00:29:17
Speaker
Kind funny. Kind pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. If I had to choose one piece of costumery from the movie to take off, would be the bullshit ad. Kavanaugh gets tomahawk chopped, and then Sam gets his beautiful hair scalped clean off his head.
00:29:33
Speaker
The next day, Benjamin White Moon wakes up in bed with the turquoise pouch. He drives out to the general store to see it in shambles and Woodenhead holding Sam's long, beautiful hair in his hand.
00:29:47
Speaker
White Moon reaches up to Woodenhead and tells him that he's earned a rest. And our first segment is over. And then he leaves without checking to see if anything happened to Martha and which is very funny to me.
00:30:02
Speaker
It's very important to to to clarify that like all the lead up to the cool animated statue shit is like 20 minutes. It takes forever. It feels like 40 minutes. it just It goes on and on.
00:30:14
Speaker
This racist crap. And then all the fun stuff that you're supposed to actually have wanted to to see, all the killings, take like three minutes. like It's boom, boom, boom. And it's over. And there's not even any fun gore or anything. They cut away.
00:30:25
Speaker
Or it's done in shadow. lot of times it's silhouette. yeah It's a silhouette. The only one you see is when Fat Stuff gets like an arrow. in his chest or whatever it's an arrow gag or whatnot whatever but like everything else is just um yeah they they cut away and they don't show you any any the gore which is ostensibly why you're there i guess otherwise i don't know why you're there at all in this particular segment but um yeah it's it's disappointing i mean i know as a fan of michael gornick Michael Dornick got it.
00:30:54
Speaker
It's Dvor right in the name. That's what I'm looking That's what I came that's why i came for. The statues kind of, the the living statue effect is like a rubber suit. It's all right, I guess, if I'm being generous, but that's kind of it. It kind of just really stinks across the board.
00:31:11
Speaker
I don't know. yeah Yeah. i can't I can't think of it. The the hat was cool. That's kind of it. They should have just done a segment about the hat.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, if the if this movie had the the killer bowling alley zombies or whatever, that would be way better. Yeah. is the first I will say it is it's always nice to hear ah native language spoken in a movie. This was Dine Navajo.
00:31:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was cool. and And the guy that played White Moon was a native dude. They at least cast a native dude. I hope he got a paycheck for that. I hope so, too. Decent paycheck.
00:31:49
Speaker
So then we're back to our cartoon framing device.
Story Analysis: 'The Raft'
00:31:52
Speaker
And young Billy, he picks up a package from the post office. Love to see the post office in a movie. Shout
00:32:00
Speaker
And it contains a Venus fly trap bulb that he ordered from a comic book. The creep pops up back behind the counter. We don't allow creeps behind the counter of the post office. I'm going to clear that right now.
00:32:13
Speaker
And he introduces our next terrifying tale, The Raft. Fucking finally. We get to watch Raft. The the real meat and potatoes of the whole shebang, I gotta say.
00:32:25
Speaker
Also, I could be totally wrong, but I did hear that initially when they had a bigger budget, um the animated segments were going to be like a live action wraparound, which would have been awesome.
00:32:36
Speaker
Would have been really good, but again, no money. And it seems very, well, I guess that would save you money on your giant Venus flytrap. But in general, I consider animation to be much more expensive than live action.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah. but i Yeah. I don't know. Maybe that's a nonsense rumor. I don't know. I would like to have seen it in live action. I think it would have worked better. Yeah. ah Because it wouldn't have been ugly to look at.
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah. general ah So the raft starts with four college students driving along a wooded back road in a yellow, I believe, Camaro.
00:33:09
Speaker
It's pretty sure it's Camaro. So they're your classic quartet of two couples, one horny one and one prudish one. and And already you're like, thank God I'm grounded in familiar horror territory.
00:33:23
Speaker
The nerds and the jocks. but Yes. So they're planning to spend the afternoon hanging out on a raft in the middle of a remote pond, smoking joints and fooling around. Sounds fantastic. As one does. Yeah.
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah. I'd love to make love on a raft 10 feet away from another couple. Unfortunately,
00:33:48
Speaker
Unfortunately, this plan runs into trouble when our prudish boy, ironically named Randy, ah spots a large black mass that looks eerily like a contractor bag floating along the surface of the pond towards the raft.
00:34:01
Speaker
This was apparently when French quit was when they were trying to work out how to make the floating blob. Yeah. And after he left, it was probably Berger was like, let's just use a contractor bag.
00:34:12
Speaker
It will just look like a big black nothing. so Hey, it worked. Yeah, I think it worked. It doesn't work, I think. Yeah. It just looks like this skin, you know, the skin of a strangely shaped animal.
00:34:26
Speaker
They put like a like a gray kind of goop on top of the bag, so at least has like sort of a ah texture that's interesting, I guess. And it's the sort of thing that you can't clock, and the monster's always scarier when you can't see it. You never get like a super good idea of what this blob like. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
00:34:46
Speaker
Now, yeah, Randy is freaked out about this thing. The others laugh it off. But the laughingstock... The other guy is like, I don't believe in oil slicks.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah. Which guess this is a very 80s thing to say? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. but One thing that I did like about our male jock, that he was smart enough to bring a waterproof capsule that he tied to his bathing suit that he could put his joints in to take them out to the raft. I'm like, this guy came so prepared.
00:35:18
Speaker
That is next level. Not his first rodeo. You know, he's, he's, he has swum out to various ah watery locales with joints and he he's been burned before. now he has a specially made capsule of some kind.
00:35:31
Speaker
This way i can wait to smoke till I'm on the raft. So Rachel, our prudish gal, she reaches down and she pokes at the blob and it reaches up and grabs her, yanking her underwater with a gooey pseudopod.
00:35:48
Speaker
And as we see her struggling, we get the one moment that for me, the scariest moment in this what locks in the rest of it is her saying, help It hurts. It's it's yeah pretty horrible. Yeah, it's yeah quite gnarly.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, like the pain being her main concern, because what's going on already looks so freakishly horrifying. You know she's covered in this black goo. She's getting thrown around.
00:36:15
Speaker
But the fact that it's also very painful is just so frightening. Yeah. So this site is so horrific that it makes Randy puke off the side of the raft. Our second and final death related vomit of the film.
00:36:28
Speaker
I wish they had carried it across all three segments.
00:36:34
Speaker
It would have been a great runner, but they they missed it. So Deke, our horny male, he argues that they should swim for it when the blob floats under the raft.
00:36:45
Speaker
But before he can, it reaches up between the slats and pulls him straight through. yeah All of a sudden, our one safe spot we don't feel safe in anymore.
00:36:56
Speaker
Randy and Laverne, our horny lady, are the only two left. They spend the night standing on the slats with their feet not going over any of the gaps until it sort of floats out and then they take turns on watch.
00:37:11
Speaker
They end up passed out in each other's arms, either for warmth or for comfort or just to support each other in an upright position. The sun rises and Randy lays Laverne down on the raft and lifts up her shirt and starts kissing on her.
00:37:27
Speaker
It's a real classy guy. Yeah. Now, whether this is due to the horniness that ah comes with proximity to death, the horniness that comes from clasping a bikini-clad coed in your arms for several hours, or just the inherent horniness young men unleashed in this miniature societal collapse, who can say?
00:37:49
Speaker
It's inappropriate. It's deeply... yeah It adds to the sort of disturbingness of the scene of, like... Randy knowing that he's going to die. And so if he's going to die, he's going to do what he wants.
00:38:03
Speaker
And this is what he wants to do. Because you can sort of hear Laverne mumbling protestations. But then she turns her head and we see that the blob has grabbed her by the face.
00:38:15
Speaker
And that has got her much more concerned than Randy's delicate kisses.
00:38:21
Speaker
The blob begins to digest her. And ah Randy makes a break for sure. When he reaches the land, he turns around and tells the blob, I beat you.
00:38:32
Speaker
And that's when the blob wells itself up into a wave and crashes down onto him and drags him into the pond with a faint belch. yeah So just a little comic relief to break because this has been like 20 minutes of solid tension.
00:38:50
Speaker
Yeah. So final thoughts on the raft. What do you guys think about the raft? I think it's one of the best. Yeah, it's really good. It's one of the best horror anthology segments ever, I think.
00:39:02
Speaker
Part of that might be because it's one of my favorites from the book, Skeleton Crew, where I first read it. But it's like a really faithful adaptation. They just changed... The ending in the story is like... even it's It's somehow bleaker.
00:39:14
Speaker
um It just kind of leaves them ambiguously like... on the, on the raft waiting to die. And it's really horrible. So at least was kind of like yeah more of an easy kind of a easy comics punchline with the, the title wave in the end of belching and whatnot.
00:39:29
Speaker
But I really like it. I like siege stuff where people are like trapped to one location with like kind of an outside threat and how, like you said, you can yeah see mini societal collapse um happening with the jocks and the nerds. And this one hunk of wood.
00:39:42
Speaker
ah Yeah, I do wish that they got Tom Savini to do some, like, really gnarly stuff with it, um if he was going to be there anyway. um They do pretty good, but, like, the story is... I think they're pretty good. Like, they're not as good as, like, the blob blob.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah. Like, 80s blob, but... I think there's still, like, you can still, when you see some of that red coming out in the goo and, you know, it's already starting to melt. You see, like, a prop skeleton pop up and everything all melted and everything.
00:40:11
Speaker
It's pretty good. yeah It's funny funny you brought up the blob, the 80s blob, too, because that also has a ah guy who sexually assaults a woman getting eaten by a blob. Yeah. It's, like I guess, a popular anxiety of the time.
00:40:24
Speaker
It's strange how much it pops up. you Somebody does something inappropriate with a woman and then a blob eats them. Yeah. Lesson is learned. you learn hope Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I also wrote down that ah the term siege horror, and i was trying to remember the name of that movie where they're like on top of that Aztec pyramid and the plants. Oh, the ruins. The ruins.
00:40:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has a lot of like the ruins vibe. Yeah. Yeah. Good book too. Yeah. And it, it, the raft also, It has like a very, very subtle environmentalist theme.
00:41:01
Speaker
o Like, very subtle. like just you know The fact that that this this idyllic raft you know in this lake that's just totally out in the middle of nowhere has this oily-looking, plasticky-looking... There are pieces of trash like embedded in it, and it's a combination of both. It looks like You know, it looks like the the the garbage patches in the ocean, which I don't think we're had even like really gotten going by 87. I mean, they were probably starting. but
00:41:38
Speaker
But it also reminds me of, like I don't know, some kind of giant animal ending up with yeah trash embedded in its its body because it's been... Totally.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah. and and
00:41:56
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I like that. It's a microcosm of, like, the Earth as a whole, and both jocks and nerds will be eaten by our own trash. Exactly. yeah
00:42:08
Speaker
Now, ah we're back now to our cartoon framing narrative. ah I guess. So it's it's blessedly brief. Little Billy gets stopped by some bullies who smush his Venus flytrap bulb and chase him out of town.
Story Analysis: 'The Hitchhiker'
00:42:25
Speaker
Then the creep introduces our final segment, The Hitchhiker. A middle-aged woman pays her gigolo before hopping into her Mercedes to drive home. She's worried that if she doesn't make it home before her husband, she'll be caught, so she's rushing.
00:42:40
Speaker
then she drops her cigarette on the car floor. And while that distracts her, she runs over a hitchhiker with a car. And then she drives off.
00:42:51
Speaker
Bing, bang, boom. Now, a couple of motorists, including Stephen King driving a big rig and a dude with a car phone, pull over to check on the hitchhiker. But it looks like it's too late.
00:43:03
Speaker
Indeed, it looks like our Mercedes driving Lady John will get away with no more than a repair bill for her car. When suddenly she passes by the same hitchhiker.
00:43:15
Speaker
Bum, bum, bum. Covered in blood. Yeah, he yes he's clearly been hit by a Mercedes, yes. Yeah.
00:43:25
Speaker
Now the next, I want to say 10 to 15 minutes is spent with the hitchhiker trying to climb in the car in different ways and while gasping, thanks for the ride lady.
00:43:36
Speaker
ah While our motorist tries to shake him off and or run him over. It's just sort of a prolonged action sequence. which I think in the hands of a more seasoned director, this could have been a more effective script, but I don't think he just is able to give it the impact that it needs.
00:43:57
Speaker
Or I think even if you had like, like when, She's ramming him into the tree. We had Tom Savini there with like some pig intestines and you see guts falling out and you saw him getting smeared. Yeah. It's just sort of an indecipherable red tempera paint smudge.
00:44:16
Speaker
You know, he does get blotched. He kind of just smeared out. Yeah. Yeah. I can't, don't know. I, I found it effective. Yeah. in a viscerally upsetting way to watch a white woman brutalize a black man over and over and over. Oh yeah.
00:44:33
Speaker
There is that. Yeah. And he, by the end too, when, when he, well, would wanted to jump ahead, but there's some effective of makeup at the very end that I thought was quite well done. Yeah. I think the, the race aspect to it does add something to it.
00:44:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think like it's it's it's not commented on at all, yeah but i think it's I think it actually does make it resonate more because it's it's you know, it the whole thing's told from her point of view, but yeah she's the one who is killing this man. He didn't do anything. She totally deserves everything that happened. She's, she's terrible as in the best of the old fifties comics. It's always like, here's an awful person.
00:45:19
Speaker
And that they are going to die in a gimmicky way. That's befitting of their terrible. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very classic in that way. And I think also, like you're saying from her perspective, um,
00:45:32
Speaker
That's probably why the issue of race never comes up in it. But you know that if this character ran over a white person, she would have handled it differently, you know, or at the very least, I can strongly suspect that.
00:45:45
Speaker
Yeah, I'd agree. Yeah, I mean, unless it was an old sea captain type like in I Know What you Did Last Summer. Yeah, you got to watch out for those sea captains on the road. and
00:45:58
Speaker
So every time she thinks she's gotten away, he pops up again. And finally she pins him up against a tree, but also bonks her head on the steering wheel and passes out. When she wakes up, the body's gone and she limps her poor Mercedes back home into the garage at her palatial estate.
00:46:17
Speaker
That's when the hitchhiker emerges from underneath the car and he's looking super fucked up. His eyes are falling out of his head. yeah and then he like, She's dead the next time we see her. So we assume that he killed her. All he does is sort of like throw her, ah his arms over her shoulder and be like, he goops all over. Yeah.
00:46:40
Speaker
Uh, and when her husband gets home, we find out that he was the motorist with the car phone the whole time. What a twist. Yeah.
00:46:52
Speaker
I actually didn't realize that until you said that. Yeah. Missed that. That's why he was home late. She's like, Oh, my husband isn't even home yet. Oh, wow. It adds absolutely nothing. Yeah. It's inconsequential.
00:47:07
Speaker
Isn't the garage like filled up with like smoke. So there's kind of the implication that if it was all in her head or if it was like a mental haunting, he just like, it looks like she committed suicide by running the car in the garage. Yeah.
00:47:18
Speaker
Or am I misremembering that? also has road sign. But she has the sign, too. Yeah, yeah, i never mind. Yeah, it's... it's The ending could use another draft, I feel like. Maybe. I mean, Creepshow 2, there's another tagline for you. Could have used another draft overall. Yeah. yeah But I think in general, like, in your average...
00:47:41
Speaker
anthology of almost anything. yeah. Looking for a ratio of one good, one okay, one bad. If that's the ratio you've gotten in anthology, then you're happy with it. And I think this is definitely, this exceeds okay. I'm going to put this at.
00:47:54
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say this is like definitely a step up even from okay. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. And if it had, like like we said, the Cat from Hell segment in there and like the Pinfall segment as well, or even just a little more money to do the wraparound in live action, anything like that would have pushed it up towards being maybe even close to the level the first one, i think.
00:48:14
Speaker
But it's not bad with those three. It's got one stinker, one great one, and like you said, yeah one one pretty okay one, I think. Yeah. um But we still have to finish up our wraparound. on Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah.
00:48:29
Speaker
So we've got our ah bullies. They continue to chase little Billy out of town, but he leads them to a remote forest where he has planted giant Venus fly traps, which promptly eat the bullies.
00:48:41
Speaker
The cartoon switches back to live action and the creep tosses us a copy of the creep show comic and the credits roll.
Overall Film Watchability & Rating
00:48:49
Speaker
And that's creep show. Yeah. So final thoughts, five star ratings on our watchability and weirdness scale. Anna, why don't you kick us off my heart?
00:48:59
Speaker
um i will give this a three and a half for watchability. it is um it is pretty fun, but it is unfortunate that it starts with the worst segment. You know what I mean?
00:49:15
Speaker
totally. You know, I'd almost like... it Almost like double back. Be like, oh let's watch The Raft first and double back. um As far as weirdness, I think I would also give it ah three and a half for that.
00:49:31
Speaker
um the The stories are all, they're all playing on fairly ah standard horror tropes, which I think is part of that. doing that EC Comics thing, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna be surprised, really, but, uh, but they they're narratively satisfying.
00:49:51
Speaker
All of them are, really, even though they're short, and that can be, that can be harder to do in a shorter span of time, for sure. True. Yeah, I agree. Well, I gave it a three and a half in watchability. I think ah Chief Woodenhead, obviously ah bummer, but the rest of it is more palatable and occasionally great.
00:50:11
Speaker
And I think when you go, honestly, i would say if you just watched The Raft, You're also, that would be a fine way to spend your time.
00:50:22
Speaker
You could skip chief wooden head and probably even skip the hitchhiker and have a very great life and really enjoy this one segment of this movie. Yeah. Uh, for weirdness, I gave it two stars just because I think the, uh, jump between the first and segment segment first and second segment is so drastic that it does sort of throw you off. Uh,
00:50:46
Speaker
um and also the the shift in tone as well there's this sort of dread that builds up in raft maybe because you hit the premise so much earlier and you just sort of sit there with it whereas as chief wooden head it's just like like you said those like last three minutes where you just kill this guy kill that guy kill that guy story's over yeah um now uh what about you trevor where did you wind up in terms of watchability and weirdness ah For watchability, i would umm I'm going to say three and a half as well because I feel like, the like you said, the raft is the three stars.
00:51:19
Speaker
It's like that's the raft of this rating. And then the half stars, for for everything else that's palatable here, um you know there's no way that's a four-star movie. So half has to encompass like the hitchhiker and all that.
00:51:32
Speaker
um For weirdness, I'd say like a two and a half, but it's probably just because I'm super familiar with, you know I grew up reading Tales from the Crypt comics and all that. So they're all it's a comfortable horror movie to me more than anything else, which is a weird thing say when there's some really gnarly stuff in there. But it's, know, like you mentioned, the tropes are just really fun to see play out.
00:51:55
Speaker
um And ah yeah, it's just really comfortable. So not too weird. Two stars, but really watchable three and a half. All right. Well, there you have it, listeners.
00:52:06
Speaker
Lock that into your mind. Whenever you think about Creepshow 2, if you haven't seen it, think somewhere in the range of three and a half to two in watchability and awareness. With that, do you guys want to talk about some trends in film?
00:52:20
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Yes. Yes. Good, because that's what we're doing. We're going to be talking about some horror anthologies. Nice.
00:52:44
Speaker
Trends in film, they do happen, trends in film. Trends in film, that's the segment, trends in film.
00:53:09
Speaker
All right. So while a lot of different film genres do have anthology films, the two that have most success with the format have been horror films and hardcore pornography.
Horror Anthology Films Discussion
00:53:26
Speaker
ahll put comedy in a distant third.
00:53:30
Speaker
uh, the tradition, uh, I think part of this has to do with the tradition of horror short fiction. Uh, there's a, such a large, uh, library material there to adapt.
00:53:41
Speaker
It's a perfect way to tap into that great resource. And also, uh, horror fandom, I think has grown accustomed to it. You know what I mean? that Yeah. And yeah they've got the literacy for it. They understand how to approach that film.
00:53:55
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, So the oldest one that I was able to find out or find out about was called Unheimlich Geschichten or Eerie Tales from 1919, directed by Richard Oswald.
00:54:11
Speaker
Damn. Okay. I've not seen that one. There was also, i think there were two more horror anthologies from like this German expressionist era. I found them all on the, if you go to the Wikipedia page for horror anthology, that was a great resource for this segment. Yeah.
00:54:28
Speaker
yeah And then there was a ah global revival that started in the sixties with, ah with Roger Corman, if you can believe it, ah check out our episode of mask of the red death.
00:54:41
Speaker
o But oh yeah, it's a beautiful movie. But in 1962, he started off his post cycle with tales of terror where he did three short Poe adaptations.
00:54:52
Speaker
And then in 1963, Mario Bava did black Sabbath. Love Black Sabbath. I've never seen that one. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. oh Yes, absolutely.
00:55:04
Speaker
That's a four and a half star one. Okay. Okay. Black Sabbath. Put that one on the list. 1964. got Masaki Kobayashi's Kwai Don. Also incredible movie. Right.
00:55:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Then 1965, you got Freddie Francis's Dr. Terror's House of Horrors in the UK. so So now we've hit, like, I'm going to say the four major filmmaking countries that are four of the largest filmmaking countries in the world, at least in this time.
00:55:34
Speaker
And sort of at that point, you would see an average of one and or two anthology horror films coming out somewhere in the world every year. Like, after that, they just became a living, thriving genre.
00:55:49
Speaker
So I just wrote down a couple of other notable examples that I liked. Just to mention some of my faves. if you guys want to get ready to talk about some of your faves. 1972's Tales from the Crypt.
00:56:03
Speaker
Obviously pulling from the comic. If I remember right, that's the one where a guy gets a monkey's paw. Another guy gets trapped in a hallway filled with barbed wire at the yeah people's house. That's right. Yeah. you one that's ah That's a great one.
00:56:19
Speaker
1983, you got the Twilight Zone movie, which yeah unfortunate follows your hit-or-miss ratio. yeah Yeah. And obviously, ah ah bigger stories in the production. 1984, you got The Dungeon Master.
00:56:34
Speaker
Is that an anthology? seen the Dungeon Master? not, no. I didn't know that was anthology. I've heard about it and seen clips, but... It's sort of an anthology. It's like a backdoor anthology in that there is one plot, but it's broken up into like, you need to go to seven different worlds. Oh yeah. Gotcha.
00:56:55
Speaker
And the villain is Richard mall from night court. And he keeps on calling the protagonist excalibrate, which is the weirdest name you could call the antagonist. Okay.
00:57:08
Speaker
Okay. Then 1995 Tales from the Hood. I feel like it's, yeah, undersung. And I think you wouldn't have a lot of the great black American horror today if you didn't have, you know, Tales from the Hood laying that groundwork in the 90s.
00:57:28
Speaker
So what are what are some of y'all's favorite anthologies? What am I missing? Trevor, what? You're the expert. ah Well, I mean, you hit on a lot of the the classics there. Tales the Hood is amazing. I feel like ah that is criminally underseen and under known. Did you know if there's like four sequels that movie? I had no idea until I was just looking.
00:57:48
Speaker
There's like Tales in the Hood 4, 3 and 4. crazy. Oh yeah. I knew that there was bone, which was like the novel hosted by Snoop Dogg. That that's not an anthology, but that movie rules. That's directed by Ernest Dickerson, who also did a tailstone of the crypt demon night, which also completely rules.
00:58:05
Speaker
Um, and it's just like, yes, you know, it's got Snoop Dogg is like a killer ghost pimp, but it's played like deadly straight. And it's like so well-written and well done and well shot. It's actually a really good movie. you should watch it.
00:58:16
Speaker
But, um, Yeah, but for anthologies, I would have to, I'm going to reach back and say one that's not necessarily great, but it's one that traumatized me as a kid, is this movie called The Willys from 1990-something, I think, which is, I saw that way too young, and for whatever reason, it reached in and grabbed my brain and totally freaked me out.
00:58:39
Speaker
um it's got like a segment about this kid who loves pulling the ah wings off of flies and then like this scientist gives him like a grow potion and he accidentally spills it and the flies get really big and then they pull his arms and legs off and the end he's like okay bed with his arms and legs missing and it's totally gnarly um yeah i i don't know if that holds up i haven't seen it a long time but i remember that one really like really got me get good um But for like Tales the Dark Side, the movie is awesome.
00:59:08
Speaker
That's 1990 something, I think. something i think ah Debbie Harry is a cannibal witch. It's got ah a yeah there's killer mommy involved. It's funny. It actually redoes one of the stories from Qui-Don.
00:59:21
Speaker
But in okay instead of it being like a snow ghost in in Japan, it's like a gargoyle in New York City. um Yeah, it's just really good. It's awesome. And the effects are ah are are really, really good as well. And it has the Cat from Hell segment that was supposed to be in Creepshow 2 when they had money.
00:59:38
Speaker
They just... I finally got a chance to make it. They had plans for. Well, Creepshow 2 completionists. Yeah, exactly. You know, Romero has actually said, like, if they had the rights to the Creepshow name when they made Tales from the Dark Side the movie, it would have been called Creepshow 3.
00:59:53
Speaker
But they didn't, so it's not. But it is Creepshow 3 in every other possible way. Okay. Yeah. And it's unfortunate they had plans to do Tales from the Dark Side the movie part two, which would have adapted the Stephen King story Rainy Season from Nightmares and Dreamscapes, which is about a couple trapped in a house when it rains frogs, but they're like killer frogs that want to eat your flesh.
01:00:15
Speaker
It's good. Oh, geez. Yeah. So, yeah, anyway, this is all just to say that Tales from Dark Side the movie is good and should watch it. Tales from the Hood. You hit on a lot of the other really big ones.
01:00:27
Speaker
um And it's not a movie, but the Tales from the crypt HBO TV series from the nineties. Oh yeah. I recently went through and just did, I watched everything and like the hit rate on that hit rate on that show is so high.
01:00:40
Speaker
Like most of those good episodes are amazing. Even up until the last couple of seasons, um, yeah And it's so weird that it's not on HBO Max. It feels like that's a no-brainer to throw that out.
01:00:51
Speaker
Yeah, i I went out of my way to get the the the DVD box set, so i have all the episodes and everything, but yeah, cant cannot go wrong with that. It's really good.
01:01:01
Speaker
Anna, are there any that you want to throw out that has not come with? Oh, um ah well, I'll mention a couple of TV series. yeah First, the the American Horror Story, which I've watched Most of despite it, like, um like every season is diminishing returns, but yeah I watched almost all of them.
01:01:25
Speaker
Almost all the way through. um Ryan Murphy, what is your problem? He had me for a while. where I would just watch, I'd be like, oh, I kind of like the plot of this one. I'll watch the first couple episodes.
01:01:38
Speaker
And then three episodes in, i was like, this is dog shit. And then I would just don't get you keep doing it for like nine seasons. And then I eventually was like, I'm done. They did a companion series called American Horror Stories, which was a single episode.
01:01:55
Speaker
And those were better, I found, because they don't have as long to get into the exorcist. There was one, in fact, um One with Adrienne Barbeau running a drive-in movie theater that I remember as being particularly good. That one was good, yeah. um Yeah.
01:02:12
Speaker
And then, of course, it's season-long stories again, but there's Channel Zero. though I was about to bring up Channel Zero. I'm like one of the... I'm a super fan I'm obsessed with it. I think it's one of the best like works of horror television or film like in of the century. I think it's collectively, it's it's unbelievable.
01:02:34
Speaker
It's spectacular. it really is. Yeah, get it is. And though though last one I will mention because While neither of the movies I've seen in this anthology series were good, I would still totally watch more in this series.
VHS Series & Race Discussion
01:02:48
Speaker
And that's the VHS series. I'll watch every one. um I won't adjust to quality. just like the concept. I don't know. it's It's a series where there's usually at least one pretty good one, no matter the segment. Except for, I think, one came out a couple movies back. I think it was VHS 94. Yeah.
01:03:09
Speaker
Where like every segment was amazing. It's like the one one where... like That was the one, that's the the second one that I saw was, that was, yeah. Yeah, I love that one. I thought that one paid more attention to like the technical aspects of... Yeah.
01:03:24
Speaker
it's It's shocking how how few segments in that series are are, even try to look like VHS tape. in a Yeah!
01:03:33
Speaker
I think there's like one or two that are like actually feel like VHS segments and they are the best ones. My favorite one in that the entire franchise is the one which is about a like a white nationalist redneck group who has kidnapped a vampire to use its blood.
01:03:52
Speaker
which blows up in the sunlight as a dirty bomb to do a terrorist attack, which I think is like and um ah like a huge brain genius concept. Like that's so funny and weird and smart. um And it's the only one that actually looks like an old camcorder VHS tape. It's really good.
01:04:08
Speaker
Well, listeners, you've got your recommendations. ah Hopefully, if you watch Creepshow 2 and you like it, you'll check some of these out. And hopefully, you'll stick around first to hang out with us as we play a game. We're going to be playing a little wins going on.
01:04:37
Speaker
And I said, hey, hey, hey,
01:05:22
Speaker
So we're going doing When's Going On with the films of George Kennedy. He played Ray in Creepshow 2. Listeners probably know him best from the Naked Gun series of movies where he played ah ah Leslie Nielsen's boss.
01:05:37
Speaker
Yes. so He worked from 1961 to 2014. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a title of a film and a description.
01:05:49
Speaker
And I want you both to guess a year. If you are within five years, either way, you get one point. If you're within one year, you get two. And if you get it on the button, you get three points.
01:06:02
Speaker
Everybody ready? ready I will try. All right, here we go. Question number one. Dirty Dingus McGee.
01:06:13
Speaker
Dirty Dingus and his old rival, Hoke Birdsell, take turns at being either outlaw or lawman, rivals or partners in crime, depending on the circumstances.
01:06:26
Speaker
When do you guys think Dirty Dingus McGee came out? 1973. 1966. nineteen seventy three nineteen sixty All right. You both get a point. That one came out in 1970. Oh, okay.
01:06:39
Speaker
ah oo okay Nice. Okay. Dirty Dingus McGee played by ah Frank Sinatra. Wow. All right. All right. That feels like a seventies. That feels like a seventies.
01:06:50
Speaker
Seventies Western. Western. Yeah. western yeah little deconstructionist. Yeah. Question number two. Driving me crazy. An eccentric East German inventor travels to Los Angeles to sell a prototype revolutionary new car that runs on vegetables and produces no pollution.
01:07:10
Speaker
Driving me crazy. Oh, that sounds... You're not making these up, right? No, these are all 100% real. 1982. I to say... Okay, I'm going to say 19... Shit, I'm going to say 1985. Okay.
01:07:24
Speaker
shit i'm gonna say nineteen eighty five All right. That was 1991. Damn. It was either mid-80s or was mid-90s. No in-between. It was ah the the East German inventor was apparently played by like one of Germany's premier comedic actors trying to cross over to the States.
01:07:43
Speaker
Driving me crazy. don't worked out. Jesus Christ. Question number three. The Double McGuffin. Ooh. There's two of them this time.
01:07:54
Speaker
School kids accidentally stumble upon an assassination plot involving a briefcase and a body. And since the cops don't believe them, it's up to the kids to save the day.
01:08:05
Speaker
The double MacGuffin. Sucks. ah Sounds awful. 83. I'm going to say 83. Oh, no. it's 75. oh no anna seventy five All right. You both get a point again. That was 1979. 79. Okay. All right.
01:08:27
Speaker
Question number four. Island of the blue dolphins. Oh, a native American girl is abandoned on a tiny Island where she must fend for herself with the help of a friendly wild dog.
01:08:41
Speaker
This was a wonderful novel by Scott Odell that I read like 1500 times or something in elementary school. And also it's based on a true story.
01:08:53
Speaker
Damn. Okay. Okay. There really was a wild dog. i mean, there really was a young native American woman who ended up her, her, her tribe was, was leaving the islands where they lived to avoid like Russian fishermen, and she just ended up getting forgotten.
01:09:14
Speaker
And she she lived there by herself for years. The wild dog is circumspect. to Anyway, i will say that the movie is 1970. I'm go was 1964. I off.
01:09:30
Speaker
now both great yeses but it was nineteen sixty four i mean i was way off yeah It's all right. There's still plenty of game left to play. Score is still tied up. Question number five, the human factor. Human is in quotes.
01:09:47
Speaker
After his family is brutally murdered for no apparent reason, a computer engineer turns to the powers of technology to find those responsible. The human factor.
01:10:00
Speaker
Um, okay. I feel like this is an, not a super old George Kennedy. It's gotta be. Hmm.
01:10:15
Speaker
you guys, you got to split the difference. It was 1975. Okay. twenty five okay Yeah. The title's a very seventies title, isn't it? Shit. The human right factor.
01:10:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. If you go to our, uh, uh, blue sky page, you can see I posted the poster of that one. Cause it had that great seventies computer font. Of course. I know the one.
01:10:39
Speaker
Question number six. Demon warp. I knew you were going to talk about demon warp. I knew it. All right. Pressure's on then. Bill Crafton and his daughter, Julie, are attacked in the woods by what they believe to be a Bigfoot type of creature.
01:10:55
Speaker
However, they soon begin to suspect that they might have stumbled upon a nest of aliens in a hidden spacecraft. Whoa. Demon warp. I don't know precisely where this is, but I'm going to say 86.
01:11:09
Speaker
six All right, Anna? 96. 96.
01:11:15
Speaker
Well, Trevor gets a point. That was 1988. 88. Okay. I knew it was I knew it. Yes. All right. Question number seven.
01:11:26
Speaker
Mayumi, the virgin terrorist.
01:11:31
Speaker
Two North Korean terrorists posing as Japanese tourists blow up a Korean airline flight en route to Baghdad. When investigators catch up to them, they take suicide pills while one survives and must stand trial for her crimes.
01:11:45
Speaker
This is based on a true story and is a Korean movie, but George Kennedy is in it. 89. Anna? 2005.
01:11:55
Speaker
anna ah thousand five All right. Trevor gets two points. That was 1990. Oh, breaking out into a solid lead. I've never heard of that movie.
01:12:10
Speaker
No, I, I imagine that it's not easy to find a question. Number eight. Wacko.
01:12:19
Speaker
Oh, I've heard of this movie. 13 years after the lawnmower killer killed her sister, high school student Mary Graves and obsessed detective Dick Harbinger are on the lookout for the killer during the annual Halloween pumpkin prom.
01:12:37
Speaker
Wacko. Dick Harbinger is a really good name. It is. You got to give it up for Dick Harbinger. The boom of slasher movies like that was like 82.
01:12:49
Speaker
So I think it was probably pretty close to that. so I'm going to say 84. Okay. totally wrong. I'll say 82.
01:13:00
Speaker
Well, Anna, you get three big points because it was 82. Trevor, you should have listened to your gut. Yeah. Shit. I thought they would have waited a little bit. I guess they were right on the heels of it. Okay. Okay. That's all right.
01:13:12
Speaker
We got question number nine. There's only one point differentiating you. Trevor is in the lead. It all comes down to this.
01:13:20
Speaker
Chattanooga Choo Choo.
01:13:23
Speaker
An unscrupulous football team owner will get $1 million in his father-in-law's will if and only if he can restore the father-in-law's favorite train and make a 24-hour run from Chattanooga to New York City.
01:13:39
Speaker
Chattanooga Choo Choo. and Nineteen fifty five. I'm going to tell you, I did mention the beginning of the game His career started in 1961. And you might want to reconsider that. OK, 1965.
01:13:51
Speaker
All right. You're both wrong. It was 1984. shit. takes home the W. Congratulations to Trevor.
01:14:02
Speaker
Thank you. I guess wildly about George Kennedy films, of which I've seen. I'd see any of those. You didn't see Demon Warp? No, I just heard about it. All right. I should track down Demon Warp because it sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty good. I know that, yeah, he does fist fight a Sam Squanch in that one.
01:14:22
Speaker
Goddamn. What more could you ask for? It's time for the Batty Awards.
01:14:33
Speaker
Now you're messing with a. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards.
01:14:43
Speaker
Now you're messing with the Batty Awards.
01:14:49
Speaker
Congratulations to all the nominees.
01:14:59
Speaker
That's right, it's the Batty Awards. The awards that we give to things ironically we think are good. Anna, do you have a bad ear word? Sure.
01:15:10
Speaker
I... Let's see. I'm going to give it to... To the beginning of The Raft for being the part of the road trip horror that I always love best.
01:15:25
Speaker
When everybody's piled in the car and the sun is shining and there's drugs in the car and there's music blasting And everything's perfect and it's going to be the best summer ever and nothing's going to go wrong.
01:15:41
Speaker
Yeah. I want to live my life like the first 10 minutes of that movie. We're never going to yeah something i haveve Something I've been doing recently is I've watched enjoyed watching a bunch of like international horror and some international yeah slashers.
01:15:57
Speaker
And it's fun to watch like that scene play out you know all over the world. Yeah. Hell yeah. Well, I will give, I'm going to give my baddie award to, ah for the most improved performance to Stephen King. Yeah. Stephen King in creep show one had an entire segment to himself where he was alone almost the entire time.
01:16:20
Speaker
And he plays a hick. His performance is very reminiscent of ah Neil Young's performance in human highway in that. He's just playing a straight up dork.
01:16:32
Speaker
And he just, he is not a very good comedic actor. My God, the man can write, but he cannot act funny for shit. And here he actually does a much better job. They also ask a lot less of him as the truck driver.
01:16:47
Speaker
So kudos to you, Steven. And, you know, I'll point out actually that it is his truck driver character who says about the hitchhiker looks like it was a black guy.
01:17:00
Speaker
oh He gives himself the only mention of race in that story, which I thought was interesting. Yeah. that's Well, he didn't give it to himself. He didn't write. Well, okay. Yeah.
01:17:11
Speaker
But still notable.
Batty Award & New Book 'Scarewaves'
01:17:14
Speaker
ah Trevor, do you have a Batty Award? I do. i have i have a couple things. What was I going to say? Well, the one thing, it's not necessarily a good thing, but like ah the cryp the creep and in every in the whole animated segment, I can't stop staring that he has a big ball sack hanging off of his chin. It's really noticeable.
01:17:34
Speaker
So that's there. I don't know if that's good or bad. That depends on who you are, I guess. But I would say...
01:17:42
Speaker
yeah Just a blob. It's just a good blob. You don't get too many filming blobs, you know? And I thought it was a ah really successful blob. So good on the raft for that.
01:17:52
Speaker
And the movie as a whole for having the raft in it, I guess.
01:17:57
Speaker
Congratulations to you, blob. Yeah. And congratulations to you, listeners. You've made it to the end of the show. And thank you so much for coming this week, Trevor. It's been great. coming up Thank you for choosing such a fun movie.
01:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely. Now I know you've got stuff to plug. First of all, tell me more about Scarewaves and your new Scarewaves book. Yeah, ah so Scare Waves is a middle grade book series. I wrote the first set, first installment a couple years back, and this is the second one.
01:18:25
Speaker
It just came out yesterday, actually, officially out. Okay. And it's kind of a ah Stephen King's It-esque, a bunch of kids in a small shitty town in the 90s, kind of going up against ah supernatural forces of various types. The first one involved a sort of haunted ah ah radio disc jock dis jockey who was maybe summoning monsters.
01:18:49
Speaker
And this one is very much like a love letter to like the thing and the, The Blob and Untremors, all these very slimy monster movie kind of ah touch points for myself. um So it's like a really goopy creature feature.
01:19:02
Speaker
um I think it's pretty fun. If you like slimy, gross creeps, ah there's there's that in there. They are in there. Nice. Yeah.
Trevor's Online Presence
01:19:12
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's aimed for middle grade audiences, but also ah hopefully you know older people will still find something to like.
01:19:19
Speaker
I do the, I wrote them and each book has like 20 different black and white interior illustrations. So it's fully illustrated. Yeah. Well, that sounds awesome. Now, if people want to follow you, where should they find you?
01:19:34
Speaker
Um, yeah, the best. I'm pretty active on Blue Sky. ah It's pretty irritating a lot of the time, but that is what I have to deal with because I'm not on Twitter anymore because of the problems. um but Yeah, so that and I'm on Slimy Swamp Ghost or Trevor Henderson on both Instagram and Blue Sky is probably the best way.
01:19:55
Speaker
All right, listeners, check it out. Give Trevor a follow.
Next Episode Preview
01:20:00
Speaker
Trevor, just promise me you'll come back sometime. Our door is always welcome. I'd love to. That'd be great, yeah. And listeners, if ah you like this one, if you like horror, if you like a bunch of different horror jammed into one movie, you'll want to come back next week when we'll be covering Terror in the Isles with the director of the In Search of Darkness series, David Winter.
01:20:24
Speaker
You should be a great episode. I'm very excited. And ah Trevor, when you're guest on podcasts, do you listen to your own recordings? When you do,
01:20:35
Speaker
Give us five stars. Give yourself five stars. Yeah, absolutely. I deserve it. I will. This is my new strategy and it's working. love it. It's going so great.
01:20:46
Speaker
I can't argue with that.
Show Wrap-up & Farewell
01:20:49
Speaker
Listeners, you see how easy it is to give five stars. You could be giving us five stars. You could also be telling your friends or sharing us on your socials or following the show. So you get a notification when a new one comes out, or you could find, uh, us on blue sky. You can find us on Instagram. You can find us on YouTube.
01:21:07
Speaker
You can also come join our discord, where every week we watch, right now we're still probably going through Tyler Perry's The Oval. We're probably getting close to the end of season one right now.
01:21:19
Speaker
Trevor, have you ever seen any of The Oval? I've never heard of this in my life. It's sort of a telenovela, but he shoots an entire season in a month and it's completely deranged. takes place in the White House.
01:21:31
Speaker
It takes place in the White House. You buried the lead there a little bit. Okay. Yeah. yeah It's like an upstairs downstairs in a mixed race couple in the white house. It's incredible.
01:21:43
Speaker
The Butler son has been on a crime wave that has been nonstop for the first five days of time. I got into this, but also we're doing screenings. We're doing two screenings a month now, and it's just look good crew to come hang out with.
01:21:59
Speaker
So ah check out the discord, come back next week. And ah until then, Be good. Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:22:10
Speaker
See
01:22:18
Speaker
Elijah was a wooden Indian standing by the door. He fell in love with an Indian maid over in the antique store. Elijah just stood there and never let it show.
01:22:35
Speaker
So she could never answer yes or no.