The Ben Maynard Program
"Tell Your Story". Everyone has a story. Not just the famous. This is a guest driven program but when we are "guest free", It's just YOU and ME! I love music and we will talk a lot about it. Enjoy the ride!
#podcast #benmaynardprogram #music #tellyourstory #music #spotify #maynard #videopodcast #thebenmaynardprogram@buzzsprout.com #socialmedia #journey
The Ben Maynard Program
EP. 108 IT'S HALLOWEEN! Our Top 10 Halloween Movies: From Classics To Cult Favorites
Three longtime friends sit down to build the ultimate Halloween watchlist—and accidentally write a love letter to the entire horror genre. We start with a simple premise: the best movies to watch in October don’t need jack-o’-lanterns on screen, they just need that unmistakable fall feeling. From Universal monsters to modern slashers, from moody thrillers to cult parodies, we mix personal favorites with film craft insights and the kind of late-night stories only movie nerds can tell.
We dig into what actually makes a film scary. Is it the gore, or the restraint? Halloween (1978) becomes our North Star: a tiny budget, an unforgettable synth theme, and a shape that rises when the frame goes quiet. Friday the 13th gets credit for a perfect twist and inventive kills, while Scream earns its place as a meta reset that taught an entire generation to spot tropes. Poltergeist blends suburban comfort with spectral chaos, and Fright Night slyly weaves faith, folklore, and teenage panic. Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula shows how practical effects and novel fidelity can still feel lush and dangerous, and The Shining turns isolation into a pressure cooker where sound is the real knife.
We also roam the deeper stacks. Vincent Price and The Raven prove horror can grin while it chills. Jaws and Duel show how music and editing transform everyday spaces into threat zones. Phantasm’s tall man and silver sphere highlight indie ambition and dream logic. The Purge pushes into social horror, where the monster looks a lot like us. And at the foundation sits Frankenstein (1931), the blueprint for American gothic: iconic makeup, towering sets, and a creature that taught generations how to stage tragedy and menace.
Expect spirited debate, production lore (yes, Michael Myers wears a repainted Captain Kirk mask), and the occasional tangent about midnight screenings and wired theater seats. Most of all, expect a watchlist that respects mood, myth, and meaning as much as body count. If you love October for its atmosphere and stories that linger, you’re in the right place.
Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe, leave a five-star review, and drop your top three Halloween must-watches in the comments. Share it with a friend who thinks they’ve seen it all—what did we miss?
Thanks for listening! Follow me on Instagram: benmaynardprogram
and subscribe to my YouTube channel: THE BEN MAYNARD PROGRAM
I also welcome your comments. email: pl8blocker@aol.com
Hey there. I know you gotta hear what's going on behind the scenes here. Welcome into the Ben Maynor program. Thanks for being here. Uh look, it's gonna be a fun one today, I'll tell you that. I'll just start with that. But before we get into it, a little bit of housekeeping to take care of. As you know, this program is available wherever you get your podcasts. Doesn't matter what streaming service you use, wherever you get them, just search the Ben Maynard program. Boom, it's right there. Go with it. Um, but do me a favor, subscribe to it, okay? Subscribe to it, and uh you'll get notifications anytime a new episode is published. Uh, but as I said, today's a special one, and look, I got my buddies here, all right? So if you can't resist this, or maybe a little bit of this, or maybe a little that over there, yeah. Then uh you're watching us on YouTube and it's gonna be fun. Thanks for doing that. But you have to do something for me. Again, subscribe to the channel, give me a thumbs up, and leave a comment. I dig your comments and I reply to all of them, as you guys know. Uh, but you also have to tell a thousand of your family and friends, all right? Hey, I used to say ten thousand, okay? How about just two? Tell two and ask them to tell two. No, no, no. Tell a thousand of your family and friends. Okay. All right. Uh, and then last but not least, follow me on Instagram, simply Ben Maynard program, all one word, or on the TikTok, and that is the Ben Maynard program. All right. So plenty of ways to take in this show for your dancing and listening pleasure. Is it is it the TikTok now? Well, I just say that because I'm an old guy. Oh you're not that old. And and if you and look, as you can see, I got my buddies, I got my buddy Spaz right here. You guys know Spaz. And I got my buddy Matt. You guys know Matt. And if if for the new the new members out there, the new the new audience, uh, yeah, the new audience members, if you're not aware of these guys, you'll get to know them before the end of the program. I'll just tell you that. Um, we go back a long way. Uh, so listen, where we're going with this. It is uh it's we're in the month of October. We're running right up on Halloween, and I thought that uh there would be no two better guys right here than Matt and Spaz to uh join the program and go over our top 10 Halloween movies. Okay. Now let me let me clear something up. These movies don't have to necessarily be about Halloween, but but movies that that you know, during the Halloween season, you just want to sit down and watch and have you know, it just reminds you of Halloween or the season itself, and you just have a good time. Some of them can be funny, some can be lighthearted, some can be scary, some can be downright slasher-esque, whatever. Okay, there's it's just a it just runs the gamut. So there's nothing specific that needs to be on these lists. And you guys can put your own list together and leave them in the comments. As a matter of fact, let me hit this one right here. Uh start with that. There we go. And um, yeah, so we're gonna do that and and go over our movies. As you can see, these guys came ready. I I first off, I knew it. I knew it without a shadow of a doubt that these guys are gonna be ready. We got Matt over here with his universal monsters shirt on. You got you got you got everywhere, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Frankenstein, Karlov. We got the creature, invisible man.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's all right there. And you get you got Spaz over here with his with his bad coffee. This is what happens. This is what Spaz turns into when he has a bad cup of coffee. Michael Myers. For those that don't know who Spaz is, my name's Anthony, but Spaz is a good enough. That is true. That is true. Yes, I you know, we get we get new audience members all the time. People need to know more or less so yeah, so Spaz it it yes, his name is Anthony, okay, but he's been Spass for the last nearly 50 years, okay? Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I think I was the only one that used to call you Anthony. Everybody else used to call you.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you never saw the best of Spaz as well.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, I guess it was yeah, it came in at uh freshman year.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So look, these guys, we go back a long way. We go back a long way. So uh we're gonna have some fun, and I know that these guys are gonna bring some insights that I just you know, honest, honest, it's just it's gonna be a ton of fun. And you guys are gonna you guys can get involved yourselves with your lists uh in the comments, and some of the stuff that comes up, you're gonna be oh wow, I never thought of that one. I gotta check that one out. So, all right. Um, so before we get into it, what's going on, Matt?
SPEAKER_03:I'm living life at the best I can. I can't complain. Yeah, yeah, God's in control.
SPEAKER_04:There you go.
SPEAKER_03:And uh working most days. Uh just started working four days a week a couple months ago. So my Hallelujah! My boss says uh really good about that, and um been uh doing some writing, doing a lot of uh uh writing. In fact, I'm working on a Christian horror novel. I got six chapters of that done. Wow. And uh I'm working on some other stuff, theology stuff. So I want to get uh I'd like to start some sort of a podcast and start talking about theology. That'd be great. I'd watch. Yeah, I'm on Facebook. You can find me Matt Davis. I'm friends with this guy, and so if you know him and you're friends with him, you can you can sign up with me. And uh I just wrote like three pieces on horror because when we started talking about this, I just was I you know horror is not something I think of as what do I watch around Halloween, although every Halloween I probably am attracted to, you know, sit down and watch Frankenstein or maybe watch Bell Lagosi and Dracula or something. But I have other movies that I really like that are of the same horror genre, and uh and horror genre the horror genre in and of itself really fascinates me because it really is a reflection of the current sociological paranoia, if you will, of the day. And we see that today in the films that are coming out, we and we saw it in the past, and so that's for me is is one of the ways that I think about horror in general, along with drama and everything else, yeah. Except maybe musicals. Musicals are their own animal, right? So um you see a lot of uh uh blending in more recent musicals with uh like rent and things like that, even the new uh I'm gonna say Wizard of Oz, but it's not wicked, you know. So we get this kind of storytelling that's a lot different, but it comes right off of Broadway, and so we we get to see the movie magic that's done with that. But a lot of the the things that are going to horror are, you know, it doesn't it's so inexpensive to make, you know, unless you're you know uh Garamo and uh you know he spends a lot of money on his stuff. But um the the stuff that we're talking about, like old movies that not on my list is in I'd hope not it may not or may be on one of yours is Phantasm. If you remember that movie, yeah, I do. I do remember that was that was pretty creepy. They shot it for like$70,000 and it grossed millions.
SPEAKER_00:I thought it was like$70. The flying ball to scare anybody.
SPEAKER_03:The tinfoil flying ball, yeah. So that's like a low budget movie, but uh, but it had so many great elements to it, you know, those little creepy moments that are that you know, and uh but you know, I'm happy to be here. That's uh I've been thinking a lot about horror, wrote a couple pieces, put them on Facebook. Yeah, you're always from a theological perspective on my part, that's just who I am.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you are a um you're definitely a very cerebral guy. Unfortunately, yeah, you always have an enthusiast too. Ever since we were kids. And and just a little bit of a little bit more background on you before I turn the microphone over to you, Seth. From the time, what are you doing? It's see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, have no fun, or is that what that is? More or less, yeah. But but from I always get worried when you start to talk about me.
SPEAKER_03:No, no, no, no. I never know what you're gonna say.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no, no, I would never like throw you under the bus over you.
SPEAKER_03:I never wore ladies' lingerie, okay?
SPEAKER_00:No, can't say that. I are you sure? I don't know for a fact, but I don't believe so, and I have no photos and I have seen them.
SPEAKER_03:Well, if you if you have photos, I need to see them, okay.
SPEAKER_00:So here's here's the thing though. But like since day one when we met, you first off, you are one of the most nocturnal people, if not the most nocturnal person that I know.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, me and my wife.
SPEAKER_00:And you were always watching it for for those who who don't live in Southern California area, our one of our local channels, it was uh, believe it was channel five or channel nine, used to have the saying movies till dawn, and it would start at like 11 o'clock or uh at night, and it would run until about five or six in the morning, and it would just be whatever three or four movies back to back to back, and it was every single night, and you were up watching all I mean, constantly watching movies till dawn, and then you would tell me about these all these movies that you were watching, and and not only that, but when we were kids, I mean the the the three of us, so we used to, you know, in in in high school, we were constantly going to the movies, and of course, we liked going to see our slasher films and and that kind of stuff. So yeah, you've you've always been into movies, and that's that's why I knew that when we were gonna do this, um that you were gonna you were gonna come from a completely different angle, and you were gonna get majorly in depth. And and I and I like that. I like it for the audience. So what's going on with you, Spaz? Absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_01:But I will say that you know I'm so here, I'm healthy. Yeah, you are. Well, not 100% healthy, but I'm healthy. And my my list, I want to tell you right now, it's so modernized, it's it's it's real simple. I'm not well not like our two gentlemen here, but this it's not it's not as deep. Mine, it's just too simple. I didn't put enough, I didn't put enough thought into it.
SPEAKER_00:I I know no way. I promise you right now, I as as we're sitting here this morning, I promise you right now, the audience is gonna be the most disappointed with my list. Then they are probably things, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:So no, I I don't think that's fair. I think when it comes to the horror genre, that there's something for everybody. True. Most people, like Daniela says off often, I don't want to see anything horror, right? But then but then she'll go for intense thrillers, right? So it might just be the gore that she doesn't like, right? You know, so and that's that's one thing. So you talk about slasher films, and people are like, I don't want to see slasher films, yeah. But they're but they may be willing to sit down and watch uh what the real life murder investigations with all kinds of autopsy information. And it's more it's more real, yeah. It's more real, but she doesn't like the fake, you know, for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, and I'm like, you watch true crime, why you can't watch online exactly, exactly. Now, okay, so just to be specific now, remember if you're gonna include a list in the comments, it doesn't have to be horror-based. If your movie is not horror-based, that's fine. It's just what you're gonna, you know, the stuff that makes you think about Halloween and and and uh makes you think about this time of season. Okay, that that's all it really is. So it could be it could run the gamut on all kinds of stuff. Oh, and you know what? I noticed you uh you trimmed your beard quite a bit. Yeah, you cut a lot of it off.
SPEAKER_03:Yep, you're the first person to notice. In fact, my wife still hasn't noticed, and I did it like three days ago. So one of the first things I'm waiting I'm waiting for her to go, when did you trim your beard? And I'm gonna go like two weeks ago. Last year.
SPEAKER_00:It's one of the first things I actually noticed, but I was gonna wait till we were on camera to see.
SPEAKER_03:I it was starting, it it for whatever reason it doesn't grow straight. It's like I, you know, it's just really kinky hair, and uh and it just was getting too much on the side. So you had it all out here. I had it down, I had it down to about here at one point. Yeah, and so I just said, I'm gonna trim it up and let it grow back to you. Why didn't you just braid it? I you know, I actually thought I actually have been thinking about doing something where I get some sort of a uh a clamp to put in right here so I can let this grow out. And uh, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Whatever. I'm just glad my eyebrows don't grow out like that.
SPEAKER_00:All right, listen, let's get this party started right now. And uh, you know what? How about if we go? How about if we start with you, Spaz?
SPEAKER_01:You always start with me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but you know what? We'll come to me next, and we'll just come right across this way here. Okay, so we'll start with you, and then there's no drum roll.
SPEAKER_01:There's no comp there's no complaints. You guys can't see no one. Let's do this. All right. My 10th. My 10th. Um we're gonna go from 10 to 10. My 10th. We're going to 10 to 1. We're not doing number one. Number one is a drum roll. Count it down 10 to 1. Yeah. So my number 10 was the Friday the 13th series. And all the movies, you know, that they have some scariness, but nothing ever scares me. So you also find out in my list that none of these movies scared me, but when I was a kid, it was different. Scared me when maybe I wasn't a kid, but now not as a grown adult. But Friday the 13th and the series. Now, there's a series that they made too, um, that was pretty good. They they focused a lot of uh finding artifacts, but it was a good series, so that that arrived pretty good from the Friday the 13th movies.
SPEAKER_00:Where were where were when did this series?
SPEAKER_01:It was back back in the 80s and 90s, I believe. Look it up.
SPEAKER_03:It was a TV series, it was a TV series, yes. Yes, huh? Yeah, well, I think it was only one season, though.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh yeah, one or two.
SPEAKER_00:I don't even remember that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, then you need to check it out.
SPEAKER_00:So you just threw in the whole series, right? Yeah, do everything. You know, uh my favorite is Friday the 13th, part nine. You know, Jason goes to hell. He doesn't even he doesn't pass go now, he just goes straight to hell.
SPEAKER_01:It took him a while to get there, though. Yeah, well, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And for those of you who don't remember that one, that that one that one had a uh a uh concerned onlooker role from my radio heroes, Mark and Brian. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. Oh, that's why that's why that's why you watched it.
SPEAKER_03:That's why he watched it. Okay, so for Friday the 13th, I think I saw that on base in um Camp Del Mar when I was stationed there, god, whatever year it came out, because I saw it on the base. Came out in the 80. The first one, the first one. Yeah, so and that was uh Kevin Bacon was in that one. That's true, yeah. Yeah, and I remember thinking, wow, that's some really original stuff, like uh the spirit through his chest under the bed and stuff like that. And uh, and of course, it followed the the trope that is most common in all these is that the the you know they were all getting killed off because they were having sex. Yeah, yeah, and it was at summer camp, right? Summer camp, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Summer camp, and they were going to straighten up the camp and get it prepared for the kids who were coming next week. Well, and they were smoking the marijuana and having sex, pupping the jumba, having premarital.
SPEAKER_01:That is not the reason I like the series, okay, but it it added to it.
SPEAKER_03:Oh no, I have to be honest here, and I'm a born-again Christian, I've I've preached the word on a regular basis, but you know, hey, at that time of my life, little TNA, that was a reason to go see a movie, right? Everybody said that. I remember asking my dad when he came home from seeing Alien, saying, and he said, You have to see this movie. And I was, and I wasn't even, I was like 15 or 16 at the time. Yeah, and my first question was, was there any nudity in it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And he goes, and he seriously thinks about it, and he goes, maybe a crack of a ass, he says to me, Well, you know, speak speaking of alien, and then we'll get back on topic. But speaking of alien, there is that uh there is the one scene that every 15-year-old boy can't wait to can't wait to get a look at, and that's when uh um that's when uh Sigourney Weaver, yeah, she's uh she gets into the she gets into the pot. She gets ready to get a chance. She's wearing a wife beater and with no bra and she's wearing a little tiny coat of panties. And I mean, you don't see anything, but every 15-year-old boy. If you were a boy, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, definitely.
unknown:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Now going back to the topic, we should go back to there was also one one big part of the thing where where the old man comes with a little back and says, You're all dude. That was like one of my favorites, uh my one of my favorite saints here.
SPEAKER_00:All right, so number 10, you lumped in the whole Freddy 13th series. Okay, Matt. Oh, that's right, I'm not on second. He's all he's all crooked today. So you need a teleprompter. I'm sitting in a different you know what? Speaking of teleprompters, no. If I had the whole script, I would I could have a teleprompter service, I could put it right here on the screen.
SPEAKER_01:He'd mess it up anyway. I wouldn't mess it up. Yeah, you wouldn't go out.
SPEAKER_03:You have to have the manual advance button if you have a teleprompter. You could do the Joe Biden. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Stop. And let's get the way from the politics. Let's let's just get back to our show.
SPEAKER_03:No, I don't care what side you're on, dude. There's no way you can deny that's the I'm it's so sad. All right, all right. That's another show we can.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so my number 10, because I absolutely love this. I love this one so much, and I loved it as a kid, and I love it now, and it's only 25 minutes long, but it's the great pumpkin Charlie Brown. Oh I love that.
SPEAKER_03:I love it. Oh I'd have you know who can argue? I know, come on. Who can argue?
SPEAKER_00:What did you get? I got a I got uh an apple. What'd you get? I got popcorn ball, what'd you get? I got a rock. Come on.
SPEAKER_03:But Linus' disappointment is really what that is all about, right? Linus's disappointment in that. I mean a lot of fun and everything else, but the but the fact that it's not real, that idea, you know, same thing uh with the Charlie Brown Christmas, you know. Yeah, why should I be happy? And then he learns the meaning of Christmas, you know.
SPEAKER_00:And yes, and it's like, give me a blue light right here, give me a spotlight right here, and then he tells the whole room what Christmas is all about.
SPEAKER_03:And Linus has that same moment when he learned that that Halloween is just about commercial, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, it's not about the great pumpkin showing up. He waited and waited and waited, and the great pumpkin let him down. Yeah, so then that's when that's that was the turn right there.
SPEAKER_03:So either Linus was early schizophrenic, somebody lied to him about the great pumpkin, yeah, yeah. Or he was schizophrenic and somebody still lied to him. And he had this ideation, yeah. But uh, no, it's a it's it's a wonderful, yeah. If you talk if you're thinking about that, uh Halloween for sure. Yeah, and you know, uh being a father, and uh we're all fathers there. Uh, you know, my daughter always uh wanted to watch Hocus Pocus, you know, once it once that had come out, and that's something we probably Daniela likes to watch, and they've what did two or three um sequels to it now, yeah. And then you know, who can Bet Midler? I mean, I've always been a fan of Bet Midler ever since The Rose, and uh just a fabulous actress. But uh my top 10, number 10, is a movie called Frankenstein Unbound. So it's uh it's a 1990 film by uh Roger Corman. It's his final film and it stalls uh Rawl Julia. Yeah. Um uh oh what's her name? Jane Fonda, not Jane Fonda, um gosh, I can't think of her name. Um she was uh she's one of the Peter Fonda's daughters. Oh, Bridget Fonda. Bridget Fonda God, she's 61 years old. It's a game show now, right? Rawl Julia, Bridget Fonda, and uh I think it's William Hurt. Okay, and they it's uh basically it's a modern take on science fiction version of Frankenstein, in which the characters are from from one of the characters, the primary characters from the future, and he ends up being sucked through a time portal into the past and to the period of Mary Shelley, and Mary Shelley's actually riding um who's it, Jason Patrick plays uh Percy Shelley, and uh she's actually riding Frankenstein based on actual events that are happening, and Roll Julia is the is the Frankenstein character, right? And then he's got the there's another guy, Nick Brimley, I believe, played the monster. And it is a completely unique take on the Frankenstein genre. It blends time travel with science fiction. I remember there was this this aluminum car that basically drives autonomously, and there's uh one scene where after he's been transported to the past, he tells the car, where are we? And the car goes, There is no GPS satellites online. And uh this is 1990. This this was this was uh the film, and then he's all he's all cursing at the car, Jesus age Christ, he says, and then the car goes, There's no record of Jesus Christ not being the middle middle initial. Uh but it's just a really interesting take on on it. Um Roger Corman, the fact that it was his final film, yeah um, was uh you know, he he did so much. In fact, I have an another one on on my list here that he did is uh one of my favorites. So, but you know, deals with the political intrigue, deals with all the things that have to do with uh Frankenstein in general, morality, the creating life. Uh do we have the right then to take that life if we've created it, and so on and so forth. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00:See, I knew we're only on number 10, and I knew we would get this kind of stuff, so it's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, that's good, it's good insight. It's nothing wrong with that. My my my number nine is a scream series. Every, every every looking a series for everything. Well, all seven, you can't put down top ten and put number one. All of them were really good, okay. Uh actually it's scream six, three seven will be out in February next year. But all the series, I mean, they they weren't scary, but they're very gory. And sometimes I like to watch gory during Halloween. You know, it's a it's a mood thing, but I love the Scream series. They had a lot of great actors, and they're you know, going um, you know, from one to from one to six. They've all had different actresses and actors, they're really good. It wasn't always the same kids. It was well, there was a couple that were the same, but for the most part, the kids, I guess the kids that were the ones that were kidding kills were all different.
SPEAKER_00:I can tell you this I haven't seen any of the screen movies. Well, it's too bad. Really? Not even one. No, not even the first one. I haven't seen one of them. So it it's not it's not by choice or anything. I don't have a block on it. I just haven't seen any of them. So um I the only I I can only speak to what anyone else has to say about it. Yeah, fair enough. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:But so for me, I mean I saw the first one and uh it was a chuckle. I mean that's what that's what it was intended to be. I mean, so uh and I think this is true of any genre or any um any particular um drama or any particular idea or storyline like Slasher or A Haunted House or just a horror movie in general, is that you reach your epitome um uh it and then basically people start making fun of it, right? And so you end up with these films that make that make fun, the parodies, and then um and people make tons of money doing that.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I remember uh one of the early ones was I think was Saturday the 14th. Saturday 14th and the guys the guy picks a paperclip as his killing weapon, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, um Richard Richard Benjamin was the star in that one.
SPEAKER_03:Saturday the 14th, yeah. I don't even remember that, but um yeah, I mean so for me, Scream was uh was really interesting and it played not. I mean, you could I'm sure there are whole podcasts just on the film and breaking it all down. Of course, but the idea the ideas that are in it and uh turning it on its head where people are going, like, oh no, you can't leave the room because if you leave the room by yourself, yeah, you would get killed if this was a horror shooting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the first one centered centered on all the kids out there partying, they were watching Halloween, and they're all I will be back and come back. Well, so it's it was interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Well, see, it's so funny. That's where we get into my number nine. Student bodies. I'm so kidding, man.
SPEAKER_01:I'm so kidding. It's on my list, it's on my list.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so kidding.
SPEAKER_01:That's a great movie, though. That was a great charity movie. Student bodies.
SPEAKER_00:And uh you remember Student Bodies? I don't know if I've seen that one. I think I only saw it the one time.
SPEAKER_01:I've seen it, I can see it once a week if I want to.
SPEAKER_00:I I but I've told you before, I want to see it again because it had like the I don't remember the actor's name, but he was known as like the human stick man because that was man, that guy was thin as a rail. I mean, not even a rail, he was like a pencil, not even Nelson, right?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, way skinnier than Nelson.
SPEAKER_00:And uh and his knees went, his knees folded both ways. They bent both ways crazy, crazy, crazy. Anyway, he played the uh he played the goofy custodian in the movie that everyone thought was the killer, and you know, they thought he was psycho, and he was kind of and kept naming the bodies every time somebody died at one, two, three.
SPEAKER_01:It's hilarious.
SPEAKER_00:It was absolutely hilarious. All right, so my number nine. Oh, that wasn't your number nine, no, no, that was a joke.
SPEAKER_01:Cheater.
SPEAKER_00:My my number nine, and an extra one is uh the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And it just because it's it's a it's it's a it it's a Halloween-esque movie, okay? It's certainly not horror at all. It's it's a musical. Um but but it always reminds me of Halloween.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. If that was the real world that we lived in, it'd be pretty horrible. Yeah, it actually would be fun.
SPEAKER_00:But but I remember as kids, I remember we would go see the midnight showing at um at Pointy Hills, Pointy Hills Mall, yeah, at the movie theater there. And there was the whole thing, okay, they're gonna search us. And I remember one time, I don't remember how many times we went to go see it, and and we weren't even of age at the time, but we we got in at midnight, and they would search you because there are for those of you who may not know, in the movie theaters when it would show, there were there would be parts in the movie where the audience would participate. There's a wedding scene at the beginning of the movie, and people would throw rice and in the movie theater during the opening credits, there were people who would come dressed as some of the character. You didn't have to go to Hollywood for this. This was right here.
SPEAKER_01:Weirdest at the weirdest thing.
SPEAKER_00:And and they would they would go up and and do a whole bit to the opening credits of the movie. And and there was a scene where it was raining, and people would have squirt guns and shooting squirt guns. So we would sneak stuff in, but they would search us. And I remember one time Matt's wearing this long, long coat, and he's got like toast in his and and I I don't I you may have had rice. I don't remember if you have it, but I remember you had toast and you had you had um um uh something on the other side, and we were sneaking in with a deck of cards, and we're sneaking in water pistols and all that kind of stuff. Rice and it was just it was a lot of fun to go do it, and of course, being teenagers and high schoolers like we were, you know, it was great to be seeing a movie that starts at midnight, you know? And uh it was our curfew slash yeah, I don't know curfew.
SPEAKER_03:Let's see, uh the I still don't the Brad Mall Theater used to show midnight horror movies occasionally. In fact, that's where I saw Phantasm was uh at that theater. But oh yeah, I mean Rocky Horror, Tim Curry. Um uh yeah, I considered a movie that he was in that you know sort of is uh got some evil theme to it, and that's the movie Legend. Yeah. And uh he just does a phenomenal, phenomenal acting job. I mean, he's totally covered in makeup, but the the enunciation of his voice and um and the characterization that he plays of evil uh versus light is just a really uh really cool, and he did the whole unicorn horn thing and everything. Yeah. But yeah, but that's uh we used to go, yeah, for sure. I even went when I was in the core, I remember going places where they let people bring everything in, and it would be crazy be covering your head with a piece of newspaper because hot dogs, rice, squirt guns, everything.
SPEAKER_01:You have to feel sorry for the ushers.
SPEAKER_00:When when when Frankenberger he's he's gonna he has everybody in for dinner and he's at him at the table, and and he stands up before the food's presented and he says, a toast, and then people are trying to try pieces of toast. Stuff like that. You know, Tim Curry he he he didn't do a lot, at least not on the screen. He didn't do a lot, he may have done a lot on stage um you know during that time, and uh, but but he was he was a wonderful actor. I I think he's still alive. I think he's still alive. Um wonderful actor. And for those of you who the Rocky Horror was Rocky Horror show, it was actually a play before it was a movie. And and for me, that was one of my first albums. I bought the soundtrack to the play. Yeah, it was one of the first albums I bought with my own money. And the sound of that is so much better. The songs, the performances are so much better on that soundtrack than the soundtrack to the movie. When I saw that was the one thing that I had a hard time getting adjusted to was the the the soundtrack because it was different actors in the movie than were in the play um outside of Tim Curry. Tim Curry was the one constant, and I think um Richard O'Brien also, except he completely dressed differently in the movie than he did in the play. But uh so um anyway, yeah, good stuff, but um that's my number nine, so it's up to you.
SPEAKER_03:So probably another one that nobody gives a synopsis, we'll we'll get through it. So um so I want to add something here. So Ben mentioned I was always watching movies Sudan. Well, the thing is is that as a kid, I would sleep for three or four hours and I would be awake. And this went on for most of my adult life, too. It's not true anymore, but um, I I can get by on three or four hours if I need to, but I used to just sleep four hours. I would go do if I went to bed at 12, I'd wake up at four, so I would go to bed at two, so I could wake up at six, and that's just when my body worked. And so my parents gave me a black and white TV when I was like in the fifth or sixth grade and said, my dad said, stay in your room and watch TV. What else was I gonna do? So that's why I saw all these movies. Yeah, but um, this movie is uh 1972, it's a it's a it's a slasher genre changer because it's a vampire movie, but most people will have never heard of it. It's called Grave of the Vampire. Brave of Grave. Oh, Grave of the Vampire. The opening sequence of this film is a vampire um is in a graveyard, and he takes this woman away from the guy that he's uh her boyfriend, apparently, and rapes her in a grave, an open grave, and she ends up having having a baby that essentially requires blood from her, and he grows up and becomes a professor. Okay, and he's played by um I always forget this guy's name, William Smith, who was a fairly well-known character actor. He did Rich Man, Poor Man, and uh Um Any Which Way You Can or Every Which Way You Can, the one where Clinton. Or any Which Way But Loose. Uh that's the first one. That's the first one. There's one where he does an all-out brawl through a town. William Way. William Smith is the is the character that he boxes in that. Yeah, now I remember. And he's a good, he's a good looking, handsome actor. He just never made it all the way, but he's he's one of the main stars in this film. And he's he's just hates his father, and he wants to kill his father. And so he he basically hunts down his father at the end of the film, and he finally ends up killing him, only for the spirit of the vampire to enter into him, then.
SPEAKER_04:Interesting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's a great, it's a great film. It's it's uh like I said, a lot of people haven't seen it. There are there are some great visuals in it. One of the ones that I remember the most is that this this young girl in a montage, she's having to feed the baby, so she's in the bathroom drawing her own blood so that she can feed this baby blood. And uh, yeah, so it's uh and it's also cautionary because it it blended the lines between the lore of vampire, say from Bella Legosi or um uh I can't think of the name. Uh uh Christopher Lee played uh him. Oh, yeah, but there's a couple of other actors that played various you know roles of the vampire over the years, but this was one that was kind of gritty because it mixed the idea of vampire into modern day society and how they could interact differently than we might necessarily think. Here, he was raping this woman, he was able to produce a child, kind of a thing. So uh you know, kind of interesting, and it it crossed over the kinds of things that women could generally be afraid of, and also uh men, you that paternal idea that we hate our fathers, you know, that's common in society. And uh if you go to see any shrink, that he's gonna be sure to tell you, well, you hate your father. Uh so but that sort of plays into the the movie trope as well. So and that's my number 10. No, number nine. Oh, number nine, sorry. Hey, number two. Yeah, I gotta keep you straight. Well, uh, because my I made my list and I didn't put them in one through ten until I got here today.
SPEAKER_00:So oh, gotcha. Okay. All right, you're up with number eight, Spaz.
SPEAKER_01:The perch series.
SPEAKER_00:Again, I applaud you.
SPEAKER_01:I applaud you. Hey, look, they all have the same premise, and they all they're all surprising the way the way they work. It's not a scary movie, but it's just the way it's made.
SPEAKER_00:You know, they are scary movies. They are scary movies. Not scary in the jump scare type of way or a horror way, but it's scary in the fact that this is what in the movie, this is where society has gone. And this is how we're gonna be able to do that. This is what we talked about earlier about about you know and that that so that is scary when you're talking about you know governments getting involved and and that type of thing.
SPEAKER_03:So, yeah, that can actually be good thinking, yeah. Civil war that recently came out. Kirsten Dunce was uh no, not yet, but the photojournalist great film, very purge uh oriented, yeah. Planned scene. And uh it's it's really good, and it plays on that idea that what are we afraid of today? Yeah, you know, if you look at modern horror, it's really it's not about monsters anymore. We're the monsters, it's in the head, it's in the head. Yeah, we were talking a little bit off camera before we started, and I was saying, you were saying, what really scares you? And I said, I guess maybe going crazy, not knowing who I am anymore. Yeah, and uh uh if you see that movie I was just mentioning earlier, I don't know if it was on camera or not, with um Dakota Fanning. It's called Vicious. Yeah, I just watched it. I was like, wow, this is very, very moody, and it's the kind of thing where it this particular kind of horror is all about my personal experience, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting, yeah. That's that's a good that's something I never thought about. But yeah, movies today are like are amazing. You can you can have uh the things can happen.
SPEAKER_03:You can have a pure pure horror movie without the blood and guts. I'll give you an example. This I considered this for my list and it didn't make it, but yeah, there was a horror series that came out that's based on uh Stephen King novel called Storm of the Century. And uh, have you seen that?
SPEAKER_01:I've heard it, but I haven't seen it though.
SPEAKER_03:So it I mean the the basically it breaks down to a force of evil comes and it says to a group of people on an island that you have to give me one of your children.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And that's the that's the deal. Otherwise, I'm gonna kill all of you. Or you can give me a child voluntarily. So they're forced into doing this. And the the the scary thing about that is that I you I as a father I could sympathize with one of the main characters because he doesn't want to give his child away. I don't think anybody does. And then and then everybody in the island turns against him and says, No, your child's gonna participate too. And so it was it's that kind of things, those are the kinds of things that could really scare you, you know. There are people out there think like that. Yeah, because if a serial killer came into your home and said, Choose, like uh Richard Ramirez did to some of his victims, right?
SPEAKER_01:Right, right, right, right.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, that's some scary stuff, and that happens in the real world. So but yeah, I mean, these are the kinds of things this is that's why I like horror because it's it expresses so many different things. You know, it can have a good dramatic core to it, it can have strong female or male leads. And then when we talk about slasher films, typically, you know, we're we're not looking at that kind of stuff. Yeah, but as we see, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:We're not looking at it from the human aspect of it or the psychological aspect of it, we're looking at we're looking at it just from the from the gore aspect of it and from the jump scares and that type of stuff. Yeah, that's why it's a lot of we like it.
SPEAKER_03:That's why I think a lot of the horror that's coming out now is very mature in the way that it's looking at things.
SPEAKER_01:Modernized. That's that's what this list is about.
SPEAKER_00:And then whenever, whenever those two aspects are combined, where you're getting into the the gore, the jump scare, and all the psychology in it, where it really makes you think then you got something, you know, a robang of sure. Yeah. Um, okay, so my number eight, my number eight is from 1999, and it is Leapy Hollow, starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci. I really, really enjoyed that movie, and and Christopher Walken played a wonderful um um I don't want to call him Pumpkin Head, but he was um doggone it. What's the uh what's the I mean you're asking the wrong person? What's the key? And don't ask me. If I didn't have notes, I wouldn't remember my name. Yeah, but Christopher Walken did a great job in that movie. And that guy's a really good actor. Crazy guys, yeah. I just really liked it, and and I liked the way it was filmed. It was uh dark and foggy and and all that stuff. It had a lot of good elements. There wasn't a it wasn't like a whole bunch of gore or anything like that. Yeah, there's you know, there's almost always gonna be a little bit of blood in in a horror movie, but you know, people losing their heads and that that kind of thing. Uh it just was it was good. I got a real good uh I got a real, I don't want to say good scare, but it was just a good for me, like Halloween.
SPEAKER_01:It didn't scare you there. No, but it was I mean it doesn't matter, but it was I enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_00:I enjoyed it a lot. And Johnny Depp, he did uh he did a fine job, did a really, really good job in it. So yeah. So that one's that one's my number eight.
unknown:Number eight.
SPEAKER_03:Number eight. So my number eight is uh 1992's Francis Ford Coppola's Braun Strokers Dracula. Ah yeah, beautiful movie. Um it's uh he refused to use any special effects, modern special effects. He he did uh double exposures and a lot of other things that he tried to keep true to vintage film. Uh, one of the things people don't know is that it's reported, and you know, I wasn't there, but I can just tell you what I've read about it, is that um he required the cast to actually read out their parts out loud from the novel prior to filming it, and it's one of the most faithful to the novel productions of Dracula. Um, so not all of it is, he takes a lot of license as well. Um, but what he really does is he brings the idea of Dracula into the liturgy of religion amongst in humanity. And I don't know what religion copla is, but uh the opening of that movie, Gary Oldman, who's another fabulous actor, yeah. Um he's you know, he goes out to war, he comes back, his love has died, his his Mina, and uh and he curses God as a result, and the altar starts bleeding, and he's cursed, and he becomes Vlad, the impaler of Dracula. And so it mixes the historical characterization with the with the Braun Stroker, because in Stroker, I don't know if you've ever read it, um, that's one of the things is that you end up with more human connection in the in the novel than you do with a lot of the Hollywood productions. And one of the things I really enjoyed about this particular version, uh Coppola's version, was that it tried to reintroduce that humanity, the relationship, um, that what Jonathan went through when he was separated from her. And there's this one iconic scene where he goes into the one of the rooms where he's not supposed to go, and this was Keanu Reeves, a very young Keanu Reeves. Yeah, and he goes in, and these um Seekebuses, the female of the vampires, are coming out from the ceiling and their their bodies are all contorted and twisted. It's just a fabulous, fabulous uh scene. And just it does a lot of things for the genre. It basically reinvigorates it. We end up seeing more vampires uh movies after that film comes out. Although vampire movies have been common throughout since uh what 1930. I want to say 31, but I could be wrong on on uh Bella Legosi's performance. Right. But it just uh you know so much you can do with the vampire ideology and the uh just the the mystery, the mystique. So and it I think I got another vampire one on here still. Maybe not. Yep, nope, one more to come.
SPEAKER_01:Well, one at a time.
SPEAKER_03:Well, you know, um but hey, I didn't pick a series, okay?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think I think to what you said though.
SPEAKER_03:I did, then I'll do it again.
SPEAKER_00:But I think it was that that whole early 90s when you Bromst uh uh Brahmstoker's Dracula, and you saw a lot of that kind of you saw the vampire genre really kind of make a uh a return to the screen. And uh you know, you know, there's there was um what's the the Ann Rice one? Uh Diarya was it Diary of the Vampire with the Vampire Vampire, yeah, uh you know, stuff like that. I mean, we saw a little bit of it in the late 80s, like Lost Boys and that kind of thing. But um, I think it it really, really started to to come about and be become uh much more popular again after after Brahm Stoker's movie. But uh uh okay, you're up, but what number seven, right?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What's new this time? Considering this final destination. How about that? All all the final destinations were very, very interesting. How would these people think about about what could happen to you if you're not paying attention?
SPEAKER_03:That's the thing. That's the that's the thing uh about the horror genres that what could happen to you. You know, I could die on a roller coaster, I could die because you have some bus hits me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you're on a bus and be murdered.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you know, so yeah, I mean that's uh those are the things.
SPEAKER_01:And going back to thinking, I mean psychiatry and yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Well, it's like it's so the final destination is like essentially multiple episodes of the film um with death.
SPEAKER_01:It's not on my list, but I should have put it on because I've seen all those two.
SPEAKER_03:The last house on the left. I mean that's a crazy movie, you're right, right? Yeah, but then you just have all these individual perspectives with this craziness happening to these people. Yeah, yeah. I haven't seen the most recent ones. I kind of I've been curious to see where did they what are they doing with the modern update or whatever. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I haven't seen a new one, but the old one was pretty good.
SPEAKER_03:What new ways to die did they come up with? Or you know, how did they how so often what'll happen is how does this become generational, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Uh so how does so I believe the newer ones, and I'm I could be completely wrong here because again, I haven't seen or read anything about them, but I think what I've seen based on the uh trailers and stuff is that it's somehow it's related generationally now. Yeah, some people the previous movies they're they're they're older now and their kids are now inheriting from them kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_00:They're they've inherited the bad luck. Yeah, more or less. Who's gonna die now?
SPEAKER_01:Like uh and in order.
SPEAKER_03:Ongoing the fog.
SPEAKER_00:Another good play. And you know what? I'll say it's not on my list, but it almost made it. Almost that's it. That's a good movie. But it didn't make it.
SPEAKER_01:That is it. There's no almost either it did or it didn't. All right.
SPEAKER_00:So my my number seven. My number seven is from 1981, and it is the evil dead. Great movie. Yeah, yeah, that was a really, really good movie. Almost made my list. You and I saw that one together. We saw it at the Whittier Theater.
SPEAKER_01:Man, that was a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's 40 years. And I remember when we walked out of that, we were like, whoa, this is really, really good. It was a trippy movie, you know, having to do with again Sam Raimi. Yeah, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell was the star. And it was two couples going to this cabin way off in the woods, and they were gonna spend the weekend at this cabin, and somebody dug up in the basement of this cabin, this old book, opened the thing up, and it was all over from that point on. And uh yeah, it was. I just remember it was a it was it was it was a it was a real thriller of a movie, a real scary movie. Uh, did have some gore aspect to it as well, but it was um, you know, uh in the end, in the end, we thought, we thought the star Bruce Campbell, we thought that he he that he was gonna get he got it in the end, but uh of course they had like two, three sequels after that, so we know it wasn't the true wasn't the case.
SPEAKER_01:Did you see all of them?
SPEAKER_00:Or did you just think that's the only one I saw, and I'll be honest with you, too. That's the only time I saw it was with you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, people did. Uh I thought that it uh did a really good job of uh like close order, uh close camera. There were some close camera uh yeah uh aspects of it that sort of changed up the way that we were looking at things on the screen. And I well, I'm always a fan of that. Uh try and see, especially when you're seeing it at the theater. You know, it's not as impactful when you're watching on the big screen TV, you know, even if you got a 70-inch at home, but uh having that surround and always the music. That's another thing about horror genres in general, is the the the music tempo when you can really carry when you know you're gonna get it, it comes on.
SPEAKER_01:We all know the we all know what's gonna happen when the music comes on.
SPEAKER_03:Sorry about that, Matt. Well, you got number seven. My number seven, and this is another old one going back to 1968, is Rosemary's Baby. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a classic. I as a kid always had a crush on me, throw. She's just she's my type, if you will. What about there? What about there? You know, I just always was attracted to uh pale, short-haired, petite girls.
SPEAKER_01:So you like Sissy SpaceX then, right?
SPEAKER_03:Sissy SpaceX, yes. I like Sissy SpaceX. Go on. I'm sorry, go ahead. Anyways, anyways, um well she's a redhead though, too. So yeah, I think for redheads what can I say? Um, but uh the the you know John Cassavetti's in that film, um he he's just really creepy. The the the realism and the surrealism, they really mix together. Uh I mean Mia's performance. Uh I mean there are moments in there where you just believe she's completely terrified. And if what I've read is true, she had some reason during some of the shooting for for the her compelling performance. Um, and but uh yeah, I mean I remember that's uh having a deep sense of wow, this is really creepy um in that film is is probably what carries it through for me. And it's just had an impact on me early because I was born in 64, so I'm seeing this as a rerun, yeah. And so that's uh that's why it makes my list.
SPEAKER_01:That was a good, very good click. It's been a while since I've seen it, but yeah, it was pretty darn good, interesting.
SPEAKER_00:All right, so you're up with uh what number six?
SPEAKER_01:Number six, the series. The o the omen. Especially the first one. Okay, all right.
SPEAKER_03:I'll give you I'll give you actual points. Who was the main star of the original Omen? Um that's right, Rhett Rippack. And who and who played his wife? Rhett Rippack. Uh, I don't know. I believe it was Lee Remick. I'd have to double check. Yeah, it was Lee Remick.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, obviously, Omen didn't make your list. Mainline. No, it did not.
SPEAKER_01:Um you know, Damien, this is for you. That's the scary part back in that day. That was like, what the hell are you doing?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it just goes in, it goes back to your head. Yeah. Okay. That's a no. All right. That's a no. Wow. Numbers to numbers.
SPEAKER_00:So do you go the whole series or just yeah, all three of them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:There's more than three.
SPEAKER_01:I think there's four.
SPEAKER_03:There's three originals. Look, I've seen three. Okay. In the last few years, there's been at least two or three more. Yeah, there is. You're right.
SPEAKER_01:I've only seen three.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, I think there's a reboot everything.
SPEAKER_03:That's the other thing. That's how you that's how you can tell that the this is one of the things I have to throw in here. All right. There is nothing new under the sun. Yeah. So says Ecclesiastes. Yeah. So you see the same things coming up over and over again. And we see that like we were talking about scream earlier, we see certain fresh aspects when they produce things and they start to make fun of itself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um, and one of the most originals, like, and this is not mindless either, is uh Death Day. Happy Death Day to you. Oh I watched, I actually watched the first one, and I was like surprisingly finding myself laughing uh throughout. And I typically don't watch uh these because I had watched most of the scary movies and it I had just gotten tired of it.
SPEAKER_00:You know, after the first or second one, it was just like uh kind of like uh like groundhog day for the horror genre. Yeah, it was great.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it was it was fresh, it was new, it played it brought all the tropes in, which was great, and it did it in a new way.
SPEAKER_00:So all right, so my number six is from 1931, and it is the original Frankenstein, and um, you know, for some people, um they can probably go with the top ten of all the universal horror monsters, you know, the universal monsters, you know. And everybody says Frankenstein, he's not Frankenstein, he's the monster, but nonetheless, but just for just so that everyone knows Frankenstein, Dracula, the werewolf, the mummy, creature from the black lagoon, uh, the invisible man. Um, what am I missing there? I don't know if you missed anything. But oh, the bride of Frankenstein. Well, yes, the bride of Frankenstein. I said, I thought I said the mummy.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe I did not know whatever.
SPEAKER_00:We're old. So it, you know, um, so yeah, some people could just go and have all universal monsters on there, but are you okay? Are you okay? He's loving what he's doing. But um, so um, but but that was just it's such a it's such a not only an iconic story itself, but that movie itself, and you know, I actually really should go back and watch it again. Oh, I'll tell you the one thing that I remember from it clearly and freaked me out the first time I saw actually I may have only seen it one time, was when the monster, when he first comes to life and he goes out for his like his night out on the town, and he sees a little girl there by a well, and he picks her up and throws her in the well. It's like, whoa, he this this kills kills a little tiny girl. That's I mean, that's a trip. So it wasn't it wasn't a well, it wasn't night. It wasn't night, right? What do you mean it wasn't a well? It wasn't a well, I thought it was a well.
SPEAKER_03:No, what was it?
SPEAKER_00:A lake. Was it okay close enough? Great movie, though. Yeah, yeah. And uh the the sequel to it, Young Frankenstein, was even better. You're a funny guy, yeah. Albert, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, uh, but but just yeah, that's that's that's my number six.
SPEAKER_03:Alright. So you know, I have to say I already mentioned uh Frankenstein Unbound, and you know, it's an iconic movie for sure, Frankenstein. It is, yeah, of course. Um uh I'll I'll reserve my comments for a little later in the show on on that. Well, when it's over, we'll probably my number six is another Roger Corman film who was uh who worked on it also with Richard Matheson, and uh that is The Raven. Oh yeah. Okay, so there's a couple different movies of Raven. This one stars Vincent Price, uh Peter Laurie, and Boris Karloff. It's actually one of the movies that Carloff does later in his career. Um, and there's I I mean there's so much icon uh history about the genre in the 60s and what Corman's doing in this particular film. There are other scenes shot from other films because Corman has he has the set for the scenes for so many days and they finish shooting, and he's he's like, I can shoot for two more days on the set, and so he shoots other scenes for other films. Um but uh so one of my favorite parts is the duel between Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, which is just it's for its time, it is just a fantastic piece of animation. Um, it's a great little story. It I mean, it's not overly uh frightening. You can show this to younger children, you know, wouldn't wouldn't say too young, maybe eight to ten. Right. Um, and it just it it pokes fun at the genre, and again, it's the it's one of those transitional films where if you look before it, you have all this gothic horror, including the the stuff from Universal coming out of the 30s into the 40s and the 50s, and then when you get to the 60s, they're looking back and they're making fun of these tropes, and that's it was done in a very sophisticated way. It was done in a way that um if you were if you if the idea of like Merlin uh appeals to you, um You're going to find elements of that in here, along with the elements of witchcraft and stuff. I think there's a scene in the movie where um Peter Laurie's been transformed into the Raven. And he goes and he is looking for the Vincent Price character. And I don't remember what his name is off the top of my head, but he tells him, you know, I need to be transformed back, and they go and they need certain elements. And he's telling him to look for these different elements, and he needs the hair of a dead man. So he goes down into the crypt and they are looking at all these different things, and he finds like a box of shebis and stuff like this. Yeah, it's just a great, it's a great little film.
SPEAKER_00:And for those of you who are a little on who are a little on the younger side, Vincent Price, wow.
SPEAKER_04:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That guy was just tremendous, tremendous, and and and known for bringing it just in his acting, he was he he he had a creep factor that he brought with him. And he was the original fly um before Jeff Goldblum in 1980 in the original sequel. But yeah, no, I mean, but yeah, he was in the fly.
SPEAKER_03:And he was actually in the sequel to that film, which was a black and white, which most people don't know. It's uh that's it that yeah. Don't get me going.
SPEAKER_00:But now it's okay, man. Now all of you that are our age, you know this. For the younger ones out there, did you know? Or I'll even put it this way, that you didn't know. Yeah. The song Thriller from Michael Jackson, Vincent Price does the spoken word portion at the end of the song, and that is his laugh. He was known for that creepy laugh. I remember that. And so many actors coming after Vincent Price have tried to emulate that laugh. It was Vincent Price, he was the one that, I mean, that was him. That was him. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Are you sure?
unknown:Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01:That was that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that was a great, great one. Great one. No, I'm glad you brought that up because you know, um, you know, Michael Jackson produced a really high quality music video, and he had went to Vincent Price, uh, had a lot of respect for Vincent Price, and and uh yeah, that's uh what uh yeah, definitely something that uh crosses over. We're all Gen Xers here, right? Yeah, yeah, so I'm I know I'm on the cusp.
SPEAKER_00:We they changed it. We actually, honestly, probably 20 years ago, we were actually on the back end of the baby boomers, and somehow they changed the they changed the formula on that, and now they made it Gen Xers. So whatever. I don't care boomers. But but last last point on on Vincent Price. When he did that bit for uh Michael Jackson on Thriller, he was given the option of getting a one-lump sum payment to do it or getting points on the record. Well, he just thought I'm doing this, you know, one-minute thing here uh at the end of this record. It's uh, you know, Michael, but whatever, no big deal. Uh points. What's points? I who knows what's gonna happen with this thing. So he took the one lump sum payment. I think it was like$20,000 or$30,000, something like that. Can you imagine if he took a half a point? How much money that would have paid his estate? Yeah oh my goodness, they'd still be making money on that. They still are millions upon millions upon millions of dollars. Anyway, yeah, crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. Okay, so what are we up to? Five? We're we're in the top five. We're rolling, we're rolling. Yeah, we're we're not rolling fast enough.
SPEAKER_01:More, more here, there's more uh more series here. Jaws.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, all right, all right, Jaws one, two, three. I'll tell you this right now. Forget about the the sequels. Jaws is the first one, yeah. That first one there, forget about it. Forget about it. Yeah, forget it. I mean, nobody wanted to put no nobody wanted to go into the light day anymore. For like a solid year, so the beaches were empty, nobody went to the walk except for the crazy that were half stoned. But yeah, that's a that that's a good one.
SPEAKER_01:The music, especially the music at the beginning, and then yeah, you brought up music. That soundtrack to that that makes it scary.
SPEAKER_00:That soundtrack is absolutely it scared me when I was in 74.
SPEAKER_01:Doesn't scare me now, it makes me laugh now. It's a little different when you're a kid at 74 seen the movie in 1974.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we saw that at the Rosecrans. Oh, 76, I think. Rosecrans driving, yeah. And uh my Uncle Daniel, my mom took us, and my dad was a trucker, he was out of town. I remember he was really upset that my he my mom had taken us. He had been in the navy, so he was he was like, That was so real. And uh yeah, I remember I remember uh I remember one time being with my sister, and uh she threw a bucket into the little bow harbor we were at, and we were on vacation somewhere, and I jumped in the water and started swimming towards it, and then I remember Jaws and I started to the block and I got up, and then so then so then we went back. You ran on water swimming back, so then I went back to the thing where I was like, we shall lost the bucket, you know, he fell into the thing, and and and he's like, Well, why are you all away? I said, Well, I jumped in to get in there. Well, why did you come back? I said, Because I got uh and I was a good swimmer too, so it was just all in my head. You know, I'll tell you something, Jaws almost made my list, but uh uh I was just thinking of Spielberg, uh uh also Close Encounter of the Third Curry almost made my list. Yeah, yeah, and then uh uh beyond that, going back to TV and Richard Matheson, he wrote this script, but everybody who knows Spielberg usually knows this. What was the iconic TV movie that he did, which Dennis Weaver duel, yeah, yeah now see now here's where here's where we go.
SPEAKER_00:We're talking Halloween, we're talking scary, we're talking horror, we're talking spooky, whatever, uh thriller, all this kind of stuff. And it depends on what you're looking for. But if you haven't seen that movie Duel, so great. And I think it was Spielberg's first movie.
SPEAKER_03:It was uh it was uh yeah, made for television.
SPEAKER_00:No, I believe it was ABC. 1972, I think it was 71, 72. Dennis Weaver was a TV actor at the time. Um and Spielberg Spielberg was an unknown at the time, and and the the the cool part about that was that nobody knew why the bad guy was coming after the good guy, exactly, and you never ever ever saw his face. You never saw the driver, never saw his face, saw his boots. That was it. You would see his feet, you saw his shoe hit the accelerator. That was about all you would see. Man, that that's a and that's a good movie. That's a good idea.
SPEAKER_03:No, and everything I bring it up is Richard Matheson is really an iconic author that a lot of people don't know about. If you if you haven't read his stuff, if you're a reader, I would encourage you to go out, get pick up Richard Matheson and read some of his stuff. He wrote stuff like I Am Legend, and uh he wrote a number of Twilight Zone and Night Gallery uh shorts for television, yeah. And he uh uh helped to adapt a lot of things, but yeah, just uh one of the iconic uh people in the industry, along with like uh Rod Sterling and even people like uh Gene Roddenberry and um what's the name of uh Ray Bradbury? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And something wicked this way come was another one I considered. I could make the list too. I could make the list also really didn't reflect the story, that's why it doesn't make my list.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, number, so we're number five, right? Yeah, so number five for me from 1982, poltergeist.
SPEAKER_03:Poltergeist. Well, you can make that a series. No, no, no, no, no. I won't no I'll I enjoyed watching them all. I'll standalone movies. Yeah, I was overseas and saw that in the theater overseas. That was crazy. It was a pretty it was a pretty wild ride, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It was a wild ride, it was it was intense, it was thriller, had a little bit of gore, had the creep, it had a lot of elements psychological as well.
SPEAKER_01:And in the little medium, yeah. Oh my goodness, she was great.
SPEAKER_00:And she'd come in and say how the house is clean, and then everything, all hell would break loose again. And um the acting was great, you know, Craig T. Nelson and Joe Beth Williams, yeah. Yep, uh, they were phenomenal in the movie. Uh they just did a great job of of just telling that story, and it was where they had no uh they had no clue why this was happening in in their home, and it was only their home. And I'm thinking, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking because it was revealed that because they were digging a swimming pool in their backyard, yeah, that that this was they this was like payback because their home was built on an old Indian burial ground or something along those lines.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, like a cemetery type.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. They had so the construction company had said that they were gonna move the bodies, but to save money, they didn't move them.
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_03:They just moved the headstone. Yes. Yeah, so it was spoiler alert! Of course, the whole show is a spoiler alert, yeah. Of course it is, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, that's so that I that that was.
SPEAKER_03:That's a good that that's a good flick, actually. It is so I wanna I'm gonna look up some of the notes on my six because this is I I think this is really important that people know about this particular movie, and um that is the tingler. This is your number five to my number five, 1959, William Castle. Now, William Castle's known uh basically in the horror genre for his vaudevillian performance in uh rigging up theaters. You may have heard about this where there would be theaters where they would premiere these movies, and the tingler was one of them. So the the plot of the movie is Vincent Price is the star is that if a person dies from fear, that what is it that can is killing them? And it's this parasite that becomes alive and grows along their spine and looks like a uh looks like a lobster without claws or legs, more or less. And uh so Vincent Price's character in researching this basically comes up with a way to kill a deaf mute who can't scream because if you scream, that destroys the tingler. And so he basically uh is brings her to the point of death, and then basically the this thing escapes and into the theater and stuff. And what they would do is they would rig some of the seats in the theater with buzzing mechanisms that were produced from World War II surplus. Now, according to these notes, and I didn't know this, this is just off of Wikipedia, is that the these perpepto, they called them the perpepto devices, um, they were repurposed airplane de icing machines or motors, and they wired them up to the seats and they would cause this buzzing, and it cost$250,000 at the time for him to it cost more than to make the film for him to wire up these theaters. And but it it uh it led to the iconic nature, and of course, later people didn't want him involved because he was known for overspending and stuff. And in fact, I think he's related to one of my other films. I think somebody pays homage to him, I don't remember. Okay. Um, but yeah, I mean that in and of itself, the idea of the tingler, the I remember the one scene that's was kind of really creepy, and it was black and white, but um is the there's a bathtub filled with blood, and then this hand is coming out of blood.
SPEAKER_01:Like carry.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so he was rigging up these theaters to freak out the moviegoers.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I've read I've read accounts of this, and you the the kids would find out that would they would go to the show, they would see which person jumped, and they would go and sit in that one for the rest of the day and watch the film. Totally sounds like something I was.
SPEAKER_00:Those were the days when you paid your you know buck and a half to go to the movie. Wow and it was a double feature. Oh, yeah. And we you we could sit there all day. We could sit there all day and watch the movie. 79.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I wasn't saying at 74, I paid 75 cents. 75 cents. But I'm talking about 74.
SPEAKER_00:I'm talking about when we were kids. Wow, you know, and um and we had our our old our old Whittier Theater classic, classic, old tiny building, and everything you all the rats were having to feed the monster kit and and and all that. It was just such a tremendously beautiful building that was not taken care of over the years, but it was run down. So they had to tear it down, yes. And then we had that that Whittier quake in 1987, and there was uh there was a preservation society trying to save that theater, and it just was beyond it, just unfortunately was beyond repair, but it was a gorgeous building. But anyway, uh yeah, we we go that was uh at the time, it was a 99 cent theater. We go and see pay 99 cents and get two movies. We get two movies, so the price of one, and we could sit there all day. Yeah, that was great. That was great.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it wasn't so great for the theater owners, though. No, they didn't make enough. They didn't quite make quite messes, they didn't make quite enough.
SPEAKER_01:All right, so what are we up to? Four? Number four. All right, number four, sir. We spoke about this earlier. Phantasm. Um that movie was uh, you know, back in the you know, back in the 80s, yeah. That little flying ball, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, that's I think that was 1980 when that was. There were a lot of great things about that film. Yeah, the tall man. Transdimensional tall man.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, okay, time out. But for you are gonna have to explain some of this stuff to me because it's not on my list. I considered it, I thought about it, it didn't make my list, but also, and I watched it, I just watched it um I recently within the last year. I watched it, and I I mean, I a lot of times I just want to stop it. I just because I was like, I don't, okay, whatever, I don't know what the fascination is.
SPEAKER_03:Well, so at the time when it came out, it basically was blending together a number of things. So you have you have the tall man, so this was this was a caretaker. This is a trope, right, that carries over from old gothic horror, and you could even see Frankenstein in this character, right? But what's his purpose, what's his meaning? Yeah, you know, but you don't really you never really get that. Uh you find out that there's this whole trans-dimensional thing that's going on, and the the the the kid is essentially the center of the story, and there's a scene where he goes to visit a um fortune teller of sorts, and he goes into the house, and she makes him stick his hand into a box, and he's freaking out. He's like, Oh, this really hurts, get it off, and then and the old lady doesn't talk at all. She she her niece or her daughter, whoever she is, talks, and she's all you don't fear, Michael, don't fear. Eventually he calms eventually he calms down, he puts his hand. Well, see, this is this is paying homage to to uh Frank Herbert's doom, okay, because the character there is forced to undergo every uh Jesuit priestess is forced to undergo uh putting their hand in a thing and and uh a test that they'll die from if they don't pass. And so um there's just this mystical element that's there that they never really fully developed. And I've seen a couple of the of the you know, you like this is another one you can make the series. Yeah, I mean he I don't think the sequel came out for like 10 years or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Uh so by then, you know, you have the the same author the same director and writer is or the same writer is looking to capture what he had lost and explain more, but I don't ever think they really fully explain why why were people you know they're they're taking people from their from from from their cemetery and sending them somewhere else, which was kind of creepy because I never understood that either. You're right. They were re-animating them, they were shrinking them down under the yeah. I'd never understood why were they doing that. What's the point of doing it? But that's a cool scene. Crazy thing.
SPEAKER_03:The silver ball, that's a that's a great that's what that's what gets to my attention. Um the um there's a scene where he cuts the guy's finger off and puts it in the box.
SPEAKER_01:And all the fingers are taken.
SPEAKER_03:And then he's all telling his brother, he's all telling his brother, he's all yeah, shrinking the box, and then he's all what? He's all he's all shows him the box and then he opens it up and he sees his finger, and he goes, Oh, and he claims okay, I believe you now. Yeah, and then and then later it turns into like some devil fly or something. Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00:So there was a lot of really interesting stuff that he did. Um, but maybe some of the stuff when I watched it, maybe some of it um and it's difficult, especially in a movie that's released in 1980, and it's like an hour and 29 minutes, maybe an hour and 30 minutes, which it maybe there wasn't enough time to kind of explain each of these things that were going on and why they were going on.
SPEAKER_01:Why were they doing that stuff?
SPEAKER_03:I also think it was an independent production. So it wasn't a real high budget movie, no, yeah, but it grossed the tongue based on how much uh you know. I mean, we're here, we're talking about it in you know 2025, yeah, 45 years later, and it saved a ton of money. Yeah, and it has a lot of those interesting uh ideas that are in it that just keep it perpetuating, you know, childhood fear because of that soul. That's something that uh you see a lot in Stephen King's horror. There's always a child's aspect of it, yeah, you know, and then you it and even in um oh gosh, what's the Disney Monsters Inc. Yeah, right? It even deals with that idea of childhood fears and things like that, you know. So interesting.
SPEAKER_00:All right, so my number four, I think it's my number, we are a number four, right? Yep, I would think so, sir.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, because you told me it was number four.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I'm kind of disappointed in myself because as we start talking, all these other movies start coming, and I'm going, man.
SPEAKER_01:That's excellent. That's just this is what it's all about, though.
SPEAKER_00:This is we should have made it the top 12. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_03:I mean it but but it's fine. We'll be broadcasting for the next 72 hours. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, get your popcorn and get your bathroom brace. It's gonna be a long night.
SPEAKER_00:So uh so my number four is from 1980, and we touched on it, we talked about it, you brought it up as well. Um the original Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_01:Ah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I do remember actually, I think I saw Friday the 13th, the original, after I had seen Friday the 13th, part two. Uh I don't think I saw the the original one first, I don't recall, but but um it was it was uh you know being a teenager and seeing that, and and you know, first off, teenage boys again, you get excited because you're seeing these these young girls going into the can oh and they're taking showers, and you know, there's the teenage nudity and all that kind of thing. So you're excited for that, but then um these murders in with violence, yeah. That's what we mean. Now these murders start happening, and one by one, very methodically, you're seeing the teenagers disappear and get killed, and sometimes it's when they're having sex, and sometimes it's in the shower, sometimes it's walking through the through the campground, whatever it might be, and you have no idea what's going on, you have no clue what's happening. And this is the first one. This is what's so so really kind of cool about this one is that you don't find out till the end, and spoiler alert, everybody, the movie is 45 years old.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_00:You now find out that it's this deranged woman who is committing all these murders, who's killing these kids. She's so upset because her son Jason, 10 years before then, went to this camp, and while the camp counselors were out having sex uh by the lakeside or in a rowboat or in wherever they were, they lost track of Jason, and Jason drowned in the lake there at Crystal Lake. And she's gonna pay them all back.
SPEAKER_03:And and then uh I just think she was pissed because she wasn't the one having sex.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe she wasn't the one.
SPEAKER_01:But she was an evil wound. Wow, scorn, but never scorn a woman like that.
SPEAKER_00:She was pretty creative in some of the stuff she did, that's for sure. The murders that she committed, she was pretty creative at it. But but uh, you know, I think throughout the whole genre, because that's when Jason's born, yeah, Jason's born at the end of the movie. There's one survivor at the end of that movie, and it carries over to part two, and that's when Jason's born. And one thing about Friday the 13th, that the whole entire series was there was there's some pretty unique killings in those movies. You know, just it it it it took it it took it took killings to an entirely new level, and uh yeah, just really cool stuff.
SPEAKER_01:So especially with part three came and they did 3D. I mean, seeing the arrow coming to your eye, I mean yet, yeah. I mean, at that time that was you know, it almost made my list and it didn't.
SPEAKER_00:And so if it's on one of your lists, I apologize, but but Friday the 13th, part six. Jason lives, yeah. I've seen all of them, and I think I I I think um, yeah, I mean, of course, we saw part two, part three, and three D, part four, part five. I don't, and I'll honestly I don't remember a whole lot about those, but I remember six. I remember six, and I think it it kind of ramped up a little bit more at that point, and then it kind of started to fall off again until, of course, Mark and Brian made their appearance in part nine. And then you know, Jason goes to outer space and all this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_03:And Jason X. I'm still waiting for Jason versus Bambi.
SPEAKER_00:Something like that, right? Yeah, so yeah, so Friday, Friday the 13th.
SPEAKER_01:The uh well, part five, part five had nothing to do with Jason or anybody. I don't remember. Yeah, it was just another guide. Wasn't wasn't part five like the second part of Hollywood three. That's called no, it's called a new beginning. It's starting to shut up, shut up. Okay, so giving away something's coming, okay. So that's that's that's that's my number four. Awesome, man. That's a good one.
SPEAKER_03:My number four goes back to 1954. Of course it has. Yeah, an old sci-fi film called them. Yeah, one I saw I saw on TV, black and white TV, and uh it's basically uh about giant ants uh taking over and killing in uh Los Angeles. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So of all places, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And so this basically plays on the uh the fear, the sociological fear at the time of radiation, right? Uh the second uh Cold Uh War, and we're you know post uh World War II, and so there's a lot of films that basically meet this giant spider, you know. Of course, you know, most of us would think more of Bruce Banner when it comes to radiation, but you know, we weren't raised at that period of time. And I mean, I barely remember duck and cover at school when I was like at the second grade, maybe. Yeah, but after that they stopped it. But if if if you think about that, uh all the generations before us, they were doing duck and cover every once a month, yeah. It was on a regular basis. That air raid horn played into it. Yeah, yeah, and so this was one of the first ones where they built uh animatronic ants that they actually filmed. It was it was actually slated to be in color, um, but it ended up being uh the they were having problems with the equipment, so um only the um titles are in color, and then the second part of the film is all black and white. But uh yeah, I mean it was uh it's a good film. Uh the idea I used to you know had do with the ants when I was a kid, my own homie farm type of thing. And here was this uh idea that uh wow, ants could be deadly, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Strongest animal in the world is the ant. So what did that tell you?
SPEAKER_00:There you go. You know, and you said them, and you said you saw it in black and white, and we're talking about movies till dawn. Well, one of our one of our local uh uh networks, network channels, especially when we were kids, was was ABC 7. And Monday through Friday they used to show the 330 movie special start at 330 and it went to five. It was nine, it was you know, whatever. I don't know if they edited it, but every movie was 90 minutes, and them was one of those movies that they showed on the 330 movie.
SPEAKER_01:They call it the after school special.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, but those were different, those were more geared for high school or for the kids and stuff. That was anyway. He showed the blob in the 330 movie, too.
SPEAKER_03:That was a good flick, too. Yeah, I remember Creature Feature Channel 11.
SPEAKER_00:Channel 11 with Creature Feature, it had like a spooky voice that was thunder and lightning outside and storming, and it's dark, and and there was just these big windows, and it there was a voice, it was it was almost like a Dracula-type voice.
SPEAKER_04:It was like breathing, like your way. That was Ben's favorite part, they had me breathing.
SPEAKER_02:So anyway, all right.
SPEAKER_03:So that was well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:You did a pretty good uh imitation.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, that I mean, Ben, I mean I think it's it's a that's uh that's something you know the uh sci-fi horror crossover. I mean, we see a lot of that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:We didn't they colorize that movie eventually, man?
SPEAKER_00:No, I've never seen it in color. I think there was another giant ant movie, and it was in color, and I think it came out in the 70s. I remember seeing, and it might have been uh I don't not a tackity. They did a because it wasn't that silly.
SPEAKER_01:They did a bunch of movies, you know. Yeah, I remember seeing some kind of a giant ant. They did snakes, they did um little anaconda, and all that kind of well. There's a one there's one that's called Sss. I saw that recently. It's oh but you know what? It entertained me for an hour and a half. You know, because yeah, it's uh it's uh hilarious. I actually have that in my I have that in my collection, so it's interesting.
SPEAKER_00:If if Godzilla could fight a giant moth, then why can't we? And then a bug.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, so we don't so that's a good thing. You bring up Godzilla because them really is sort of a corresponding uh film ideology to Japan's Godzilla, because Godzilla comes out for the second world war and it it idealizes radiation, right? Because he's awakened up by bombs and stuff, and he destroys the whole continent, yeah, more or less. And then here we have you know ant giant ants. You know, we were we we didn't have a monster, and that's uh that's one of the things we don't really have until um gosh, what's the name of that film that came out where people were saying it's the American Godzilla? Oh, uh Cloverfield. Cloverfield, yeah. There you go. Yeah, yeah. So we really don't have anything that's really identifies America as a giant monster type thing. Yeah, all those Mothra and everything comes from Rodan, yeah, and all that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01:That was great, though. You know, back in you know, back in our our war of the gargantua.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh man, that was so good.
SPEAKER_03:That was so good. I love that. There's a freaky part where he just picks the guy up and eats it. It was a freaky girl.
SPEAKER_00:It was a girl. She was at the airport, and um and there was the the green one was the bad one. He was the one that went nuts. And he picked up that girl on the runway of the airport because they were all running away and he picked her up, ate her, yeah, spit out the clothes. Like, yeah, that's pretty gruesome, man. It was actually pretty good. He was able to separate the body from the clothes and just spit the clothes out.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, you know, the clothes were chewy.
SPEAKER_00:So uh, all right, so we're in the number three, man.
SPEAKER_01:The exorcist is number three, and all and all of them, and there you go. They hit they had quite a few, but yeah, that that film was was real scary. It was, my opinion. And no you know, Linda Blair did a fantastic job in playing playing the way she played.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I totally I totally agree with you on that one. Um, you know, for me though, I I only saw the movie one time, and it didn't have an effect on me the same way it it seemed to have an effect on everyone else. And and I don't know, it was unedited, but I did see it on network television. It was unedited. It was a special they had one night because they would do it from time to time. Uh, this was way back when we were. When we were kids, it would be like election night. Well, no one's gonna watch anything on election night other than election results, so then so regular programming's out the window. And I think that I think that was because I remember one time we showed Deer Hunter, and now that's I think Exorcist was one of those times, and if it wasn't, it was still special on network television. And and I to me, the most chilling thing about that movie was Tubular Bells. That was the most chilling thing about that movie, was that was was the music, yeah. So I don't know. It didn't have the same effect on me.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it had an effect on other people like my brother. He wouldn't he would not eat guacamole for a month after he saw that all that spew coming out of her mouth. He would not eat guacamole for a month.
SPEAKER_03:I'm like, puking at all, right? So anytime you see a puking scene in a horror film that's going forth, you always think it's exorcist, right? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, but um people would make reference to it.
SPEAKER_00:Like you're if you're like really violently sick in your throat.
SPEAKER_03:No, I had like exorcists, and you see how horror impacts society, culture, yeah. Culture, yeah, yeah. So uh yeah, for for me, I you know, it was one of those films I didn't see. I never had a desire to see it. Yeah, and then I finally decided to watch it when I was an adult, and um, I could see why it was frightening to people. I mean, it really it really looks at the Catholic religion from a different perspective and it idealizes the the idea of ritual and liturgy in the Roman Catholic Church, which which they don't publicize a lot, but it does still is even ongoing today, um, where they will go and perform exorcisms and especially places like the Philippines and other outlying or what we would consider third world nations, uh, where they believe that that's still ongoing. So um, yeah, I can totally see why that's that's something that's well back in 73.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you know, I mean, yeah, you're talking now, yeah. Okay, I understand. But back in 73, when you're five or six years old, you're not somebody watching these movies, but you're watching it anyway, and you pay for that.
SPEAKER_00:You know, this was if we were in high school, I'd be dialing 911 on your boats.
SPEAKER_01:We're taking you to the movies back in so much trouble. You've only figured out a way to get in.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I don't, uh yeah, I don't uh it never was something I really wanted to watch. So I don't know why. It just wasn't.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe you know what I tell you, we from time to time we should just we whether we go to your house, your house, here, whatever it is, and we just put up on the big screen, we'll just pick a movie this night, and it's gonna be something off of our list here, you know, and watch this one and watch this one and and and see if we if it has the same effect we think, or we think differently about it after that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we should do that every once in a while.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's really cool.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. Anyway, that was my fourth.
SPEAKER_00:No, that was your number three. Was my third? I apologize. Okay. My my number three, my number three is from 2018, and it is Halloween. And um, it's the it's the version now. If you're unfamiliar, there's been like you know a hundred versions, yeah, like a hundred different Halloween.
SPEAKER_01:Rob Zombies, a done couple.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, this is this gets back to the story, and what it's supposed to do is supposed to go from Halloween, the night Halloween, and this is supposed to be like your sequel. Well, but eat well, yes, I guess it in some ways it could include Halloween too, but I don't think so. I think it goes from the end of Halloween, and then it fast forwards 45 years. No, and I'll explain. I'll explain. Because at the end of Halloween, and at the beginning of Halloween 2, because we we made tapes of this stuff. I we talked about this before. What are we talking about? The three guys in here, you know, and there was a good two or three other friends. Um, we make these cassette tapes in Matt's bedroom. Matt had this really cool stereo that had a dual cassette tape.
SPEAKER_01:Don't shake your head. We're doing special.
SPEAKER_00:I don't care what it was.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, Tagar.
SPEAKER_00:It had two a dual cassette deck, and he had two microphone jacks, and we plug the microphones in. We we could we could uh dub stuff and everything else. We just all did all kinds of crazy stuff. But we would take a movie and we would put our own spin. Of course, we put it, make it a comedic type thing, and we'd do these sketches. We all we said is okay, we know this right here, we know the beginning, we know the end, we know the important elements in the in between all that, and everything was improved. And and we did we did Halloween, we only got about halfway through that one, and I don't know, we'd stopped, but we did Halloween two first. And and here's here's your Dr. Loomis right here, Spaz. Here's your Dr. Loomis. I think I was Lori Strobe.
SPEAKER_01:And was he really a chick? He was a chick, I don't remember that.
SPEAKER_03:And uh we were pervs back in the day.
SPEAKER_00:But but here, okay. At the end of Halloween and the beginning of Halloween too, this is where I'm going with this, I know long row to hoe. Um Dr. Loomis, spoiler alert again, shoots Michael Myers six times, and Michael Myers falls out a bedroom window off of a balcony and onto the front of the room.
SPEAKER_01:Actually, he's hungry.
SPEAKER_00:And then, well, hold on, that's where I'm going.
SPEAKER_01:No, because he clicked his gun after. Well, but he should no, but he actually did because now.
SPEAKER_00:And we it's funny, we made fun of it in our tape, on our set that we made, too. So, so the beginning scene of Halloween 2 is the final scene of Halloween. Okay, they just redo the whole thing in Halloween 10. Now we saw this movie together. At the theater, we counted this thing multiple times. Dr. Loomis fired seven shots from a six shooter, a little snub nose 38. Okay, fired seven shots, not six, but he's screaming the whole time. I shot him six times, I shot him six times, I shot him six times.
SPEAKER_03:And anyway, so so I think on the tape we shot him 20 times.
SPEAKER_00:We shot him about 20 times, but we still claim he shot him six. And then and then the neighbor comes out, he's like, Yeah, what the hell's going on out there? You know, stuff like that. But but nonetheless, Halloween, it's it's it, and that's what we're talking. We're talking about Halloween here, the the the day, trick-or-treat, go out and get candy, dress up, you know, put your costume on, whatever, all that good stuff, have Halloween parties, play, play uh spooky music, that kind of thing. And and and Halloween 2018 was supposed to be like the original sequel to Halloween, but after Michael Myers he shows up, he I mean, Dr. Loomis goes to check on him after he shoots him six times, seven, and there's no Michael Myers. There's just a blood stain on the grass and an imprint of where his body laid. And what happened to Michael? Well, fast forward 40 40 years or 45 years or whatever it was, and Michael Myers is in an is is in an institution. He's institutionalized, he's bound and shackled, and all that kind of stuff, and it picks up from there. Some some doctors, psychologists, freaks really, who want to go and study him and all that. Podcasters. Yeah, there, yeah, there you go.
SPEAKER_01:They're talking about Hollowing the first one after later. Okay, I understand. 2018, 2018.
SPEAKER_00:So it uh it picks up there, and and Michael's on the he ends up busting out, and it's all the same stuff. But his sister, Lori, she's like, I I'm I'm never giving up on this. Yeah, Jamie Lee Curry matter. He's he'll one of these days he's coming for me, and I'm gonna be ready for him. And uh, she was just waiting and waiting and waiting for him. Yeah, it was great. And uh, it was great. I liked it.
SPEAKER_03:I do like the last couple that they did.
SPEAKER_00:I enjoyed the script, and uh, the acting was really good. Um, and I even liked the the the one point where the the the sheriff or the state troop or whatever got his head turned into a jack-o'-lantern. Um yeah, yeah, that was actually kind of cool. That was torchy in the movie. No eyes, no mouth, and there's a flashlight in his skull. You know, I was like, whoa, okay. But um, no, it was it was it was good. I did like that one. So that one's that was good. That was my number three.
SPEAKER_03:A worthy number three. It was worthy. Yeah, I I enjoyed it a great deal. So so on to me now. Yes, that's there. Uh my number three is 1985's right night. Yeah, I always really, really enjoyed this film. It has a Chris Suranin as a vampire. Um, it is a early cross uh end period where everything's done with um uh makeup and special effects, and so there's no um digit digital effects in the film at all. Yeah, no software.
SPEAKER_00:I liked all that stuff.
SPEAKER_03:There's a great scene um where Chris Sarandon is uh he's wooing the uh boyfriend's girlfriend, I can't remember what her name is, Leslie or something like that. And uh they're they've they've gone into this dance club to try and get away from him, and um he comes up and he starts dancing with her, and and she's there's a scene where she's dancing and she sees all the mirrors on the wall, and there's nobody she's not dancing on the wall. Yeah, and um there the other great scene is um uh Ronnie McDowell plays uh Peter Vincent, and so they they named him Peter Vincent because they were looking at either getting Peter Cushing or getting uh Vincent Price to play the role, and so they actually named him because he plays a late-night um horror movie host, and so uh, and of course, the the it's just smartly done. Um, it it it it mixes the modern mythology of vampires in uh with high schoolers, but there's this one scene that it echoes something from Stephen King Salem's Law, which also didn't make my list, but was a top top contender. Um, and there's a scene where Peter Vincent decides to go back in or to goes in and he breaks out this giant cross and he holds it up to Peter Vincent and he says, Back, spun of Satan! And Chris Sarandi at first starts going like this, and then he goes, You have to have faith in this for it to work on me, and he grabs it and he grabs it. And that idea, yeah, that idea that faith was required to defeat the vampire is echoed in Stephen King's original novel and in the 1970 series with David Soul.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, they mean uh not David's. Oh, okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I can't remember the name of the kid that played in it. He was a James at 16 actor. He was in it too. Okay. Uh, but uh James Mason plays the um the proprietor who's just preparing things for Dracula. And the Dracula in that story is very Nazferatu. Yeah. Um, but uh there's a scene where the they go to the boy's house, uh, to one of the boys' house, and the proprietor says, the the vampire shows up and he the and the priest is there, Father Callahan has a cross, and he says, What do you say? He's got the boys. What do you say? That's the phase. I let the boy go. You throw away the cross, and we'll be faith against face. And this has always fascinated me, this idea of faith. Not the cross, the faith of the individual is what it takes to defeat them. Yeah, and so you um there's some there's some flavor of that in um in uh the book itself. I don't know if you've ever read Salem's Law. It's a great, it's a great read. Um, but also I think the Rob um the Rob uh Lowe version, which came out on TNT, reflects some of that too. Uh there's a scene where they put the they put a couple of those uh what do you call it, the things where you push your tongue down. Tongue depressor. The tongue depression together, and then they're doing like the Lord's Prayer over it, and it starts glowing, you know. Oh, true. But um good stuff. I thought it was a it's a great film. They did a remake, um, which was okay. It wasn't, I mean it was a lot different. Okay. But um this original, I I saw it's one, I I own it, it's I watch it on a fairly regular basis, at least probably once a year. And uh great.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's Frike Knight from 1985. Yeah, you know, I've seen that popping up on the uh home screen on my television much, but I've seen that one popping up in the last week. Maybe I should check it out.
SPEAKER_03:They did a sequel to it, which was a direct sequel to the film, yeah, which was okay. Um, but Chris Sarandon wasn't in it, and he brought a lot to that role. His his character uh brought a lot to that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, sometimes it's yeah, and you see you see uh visuals not having the original kind of this yeah, kind of well the Charlie Brewster character who was the high school kid, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Uh he he confronts Chris Sarandon's sister, who's very pissed that he's killed Chris Sarandon. So yeah, it's interesting. It's it's it it's okay. Uh it's not the original, but yeah, yeah, it's still worth the watch. It it fulfilled you.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Number two, number two. Yeah. The terrifier series. Did you guys you haven't seen it, man? Don't worry. It's you haven't seen it, Ben. One, two, three. It's gory. It's nothing. It's Ark the Clown. It's a clown. Oh, okay. It's a black and white clown with a big hat walking around killing people. Okay, good. It's really, really super gory.
SPEAKER_00:It's something you guys would not really watch. When like what um when did this series come out? When did it start?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I started it started with All Hells Leave, and then they had two parts of that, and then then the Terrifier series came out using Arctic Clown as the main person killing everybody. No, it's recent. Oh yeah. Terrifier 3 just came out last year. Oh, and Terrifier 2 came out the year before that.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And then back in 2018, the first Terrifier came out.
SPEAKER_00:Gotcha, gotcha. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but they're they're super, super gory. You really have to have a flavor of gore.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I mean Saw Gory.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yes.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I've never seen one Saw movie. Oh, I hear that.
SPEAKER_01:They didn't make my list, but those are great series.
SPEAKER_00:If you're gonna go see one, the first one's the one to see.
SPEAKER_01:No, but I'm kind of boring. I like this two, three, and four.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I like the first one a lot because it was, you know, it was different. It broke the mold uh for that series.
SPEAKER_01:It only said it on two people talking to each other in a room, and that's you know, at uh, you know, for me, yeah, but the second, third, fourth, then it got better. Okay, for me personally.
SPEAKER_03:All right, yeah, it was those sort of the usual suspects of horror movies. True.
SPEAKER_00:All right, so my number two, and I made a last second change on this because I had a brain cramp and completely forgot the movie and realized oh no, no, no, no. This one has to be on the list, it has to go, and it it sits perfect at number two, and that's from what year again? Oh, I don't remember the year. I think it's 1981. The Shining.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, Chapter Nickel Sun Pell.
SPEAKER_00:Damn the Kubrick, yeah. It's uh man, that's it's just a really, really good movie. Again, not a lot of gore, except the one scene where the elevator doors open and a big old wave of blood comes out. But aside from that, there's not a lot of gore at all, not a ton of blood. But man, does it play with your psyche? And you see how isolation can make someone really lose their mind. And uh especially you know, look, Jack, Jack Nicholson is the star if you haven't seen it, but you gotta go see it. You gotta you have to go see Shelly Duval plays a great, she does a great job. Shelly Duval never really like did a whole bunch. She's not known for a whole bunch. She's known for being a little on the quirky side and playing olive oil, yeah. And playing olive oil because she was perfect for olive oil because she was about as straight up and down. Yeah, but but nonetheless, um you know, she's kind of she's kind of quirky. Uh Jack Nicholson's a writer, and he's uh, you know, they're gonna go tend to this lodge in uh uh in Colorado for the winter. Uh they're gonna tend to it, they're gonna keep uh keep up with it, uh just mine the property basically uh until until spring arrives and the lodge opens back up, and and Jack figures this is a great opportunity to finish my book. I've got this book I'm working on, and I'm I'm I'm at a block right now, and I haven't been able to get going. But man, there's this huge uh uh I can't even remember where where it was he would sit down at his typewriter and go at it, but um you just see that that he gets lost in his writer's block and he gets lost in being isolated and isolating himself, and he just starts to lose, he just loses his mind, and he becomes this this uh this unrecognizable killer. Psycho. And uh, yeah, it's just it's really, really good. Like it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, uh, it's it's an unusual film. It's uh King himself is on record as saying it's not his favorite adaptation. Uh Kubrick always put his own spin on everything. Uh I mean, and he's a masterful director, so I want to take anything away from the Kubrick version, but um, for those of us that are King fans, uh that particular book was uh iconic uh when it was released. And yeah, it's really made more about the father character in the Kubrick version, although there are elements of the child's uh uh uh encounters, but the novel itself is really all about the kid, and that explains the sequel. Yeah, uh when you when you come to the sequel, um that is just Mr. Dr. Death. Uh no, was it Dr. Death? I'm not gonna remember the name of this. I can't remember the name. But it's got uh uh Ferguson, uh Rebecca Ferguson's in it, and it's um oh uh who played uh I never saw who played the the Jedi in uh I can't even think of his name. The Jedi in the first in the first film, episode one. Umgregor? Ian McGregor's in it, yeah. And he plays the boy growing up. Oh I actually really like it too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I heard and I never saw it, but I did hear it was was pretty dark. It is, it's it's a really good film because it it it it it told the story years later, you know, really picked up and it really it really is uh pretty great.
SPEAKER_03:I love uh what they do with it. I don't I and I don't want to spoil that one, it's a more recent film, it's a really good film, yeah. But uh I did consider the stand, but there's at least three versions that you would have to have seen to be able to really consider them all. And uh usually most King fans really like one of the TV-produced ones because it really focuses more on the on the boy. And I will say this there was no maze in the book. This was this is one of the things that Kubrick couldn't have produced because of special effects and stuff at the time. But in the book, there is a menagerie of of animals, and in the conclusion from the book, rather than anything happening in the maze, um, there's a character named Hallorin who's in the Kubrick movie. He's trying to get there to help Danny, and these bushes come to life, and they're finding him to keep him away from the overlook. Yeah, and so I've always been disappointed that they never did that. Okay, yeah, so that was kind of cool, but uh yeah, great movie.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, really, really, really, really liked it. And it it did it, it it was a last-minute call. I had to take two out and put that one right in. All right, so we're up to number one. No, we're up to oh no, no, number two on your part.
SPEAKER_03:My number two is 1978's Halloween.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So John Carpenter changes the genre. Um, he basically comes up with the formulation that almost all horror films follow after that. Um, uh, at least through the 80s, right? Um, where the single white girl is usually the survivor, she's a virgin, uh, the kids that are having sex are the ones that are getting knocked off. But there's some iconic moments in this film. Um, the score, of course, uh music. Yeah, John Carpenter comes up with it on his own over the course of three days to save money. It's a low-budget film. Um, but there's some scenes where Michael takes out a couple people where he sticks a guy up to the cabinet with a butcher knife, yeah, and they show the guy's toes going limp. Yep. And it was just like, wow, uh, that was that was pretty hardcore. Yeah, and there are other elements in there too. Bob was his name. Was his name, Bob?
SPEAKER_00:Bob, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I don't even remember his name. Yeah, I just remember as the foot guy. Uh, and a couple other shocker scenes, uh, the the uh the out-of-focus background, so she's in focus and then he's dead. She's just killed him for the second time, but then he rises up. This is the first time that this is happening on film, and it's something that basically shows the brilliance of John Carpenter. And I'm a big fan of all the directors we've been talking about. Um, but yeah, that's an iconic film, and it it hits my number two.
SPEAKER_01:All right, you can guess what number one is, right? Well, the Halloween series. The Halloween series, all of them.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just gonna say this since since Halloween is your number one, 1978's Halloween is my number one as well. So we can talk about that, and then we'll Matt let we'll let Matt get on with his number one. I'm disappointed it was number two, Matt.
SPEAKER_01:But but how started that's what started really the the slasher, I I think the slasher series. He's out there killing people, and it's like, you know, it's cycle, man. He didn't talk to nobody for 15 years in the movie. Yeah, I mean, that's not talking to no one. I mean, that how can I mean how can you how can you envision that? I couldn't possibly vision that I couldn't stop talking for two seconds, much more 15 years. Yeah, that's how you know in the movie itself. That's um even even with the Rob Zombie series, the parts one and two. I mean, they cover that a lot too. Um, but and it was good, but they were much more gory. So, did you see this on TV or did you see it only in the theater?
SPEAKER_03:No, I saw it in the theater, I saw TV, I saw it all, I saw it 30 times because the T because the TV version added elements about Michael's imprisonment.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, they did, uh, and him.
SPEAKER_03:They added some cut scenes, yeah. Yeah, some cutscenes, so explaining more. And so I think that uh those of us that are young enough to remember seeing that on TV at the time when they made the decision because they were cutting so much out of the film, yeah, because they had to add something, so they added these other that had been trimmed as a result of you know meeting a short you know 90-minute air time, which is so common in that era. It was, yeah. So and it's very formulatic. That's a good point. I mean, yeah, most core movies today are still 90 minutes long, yeah. Um, so am I announcing my number one? No, not yet.
SPEAKER_00:So so yeah, I mean, but but just just piggy piggybacking on what you were saying, Spaz, about Halloween and and and what you were saying for your number two, I just can't believe that. Whatever. Hey, so no, you know it takes this festive holiday when you're a kid, yeah, and totally put it just turns it on its head. Yeah, right. And obviously, if you start 13 years prior in 1965, when Michael is five years old, I think he was five or six, maybe it was 63. And I think it was 63. It was 63. It was 63, not 65, 63. Close enough. They checked his birth certificate. Yeah, and and and and Michael, you know, comes home from trick-or-treating and sees his older sister, you know, with her boyfriend at the time. She's a high schooler. There you go, teenagers again. And then, you know, the guy, the guy leaves, Michael's hiding behind the bush.
SPEAKER_03:No, no, no, wait, wait, you forgot a crucial part here. Oh, whatever. But they're all making out, and Michael sees them, and then they're like, let's go upstairs. Yeah. And by the time Michael goes around to the back of the house, the boyfriend's coming down, putting his clothes on. So the guy was like the you know, he was the 62nd guy, apparently. Maybe like 13 guy. Because I remember I remember going, like, man, that guy was like really fast. Yeah, and I guess when you're in high school, it could be like that. So the the refractory period is a lot shorter, too. So he's ready to go to the house. Yeah, I wonder why he was leaving, right? Yeah, so because her parents were coming home. Yeah. Actually, because it was written in the script.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So, but you know, yeah, you're right. You bring up a you bring up a really good point on that one.
SPEAKER_03:Um so for that short transgression.
SPEAKER_00:But but it takes it takes Halloween and it and and this scene here, I don't it it doesn't really explain why Michael kind of lost his mind as a five-year-old, but but you know, it starts with him killing his sister after she's had sex, and and and then you know, he's institutionalized and he doesn't speak for another 15, six, 16, 17 years, whatever it was, until 1978. And he ends up breaking out of the institution, and it's on it's the night before Halloween when that happens, and now it's Halloween, and he's gonna he's gonna rain hell on his town of Haddonfield, where he grew up. And he knows he's got a connection with somebody there, and he's gonna make sure he takes that person out. And there's just a lot of thriller in that. The music is phenomenal. The music, not just, not just that theme song, that very simple three or four notes that are played over and over and over again, but that whole it's almost Jaws-esque to go back to what you were saying. Anytime Michael is kind of done, done, done, and and it's like, oh man, something's coming. Yep, you're gonna be somebody, you know, that kind of thing. And so it's just so good, and and again, so good that that that you know, we as high schoolers, you know, we did our own com comedic take on it and and had a lot of fun with it. And um, I just remember seeing it for the first time in the theater, and I was like, this is the scariest movie I've ever seen, and there's not a lot of blood in it at all. Like, really, not hardly any.
SPEAKER_01:Hardly any.
SPEAKER_00:But man, there it there, it just it is a terrifying movie. And uh, I don't know if you guys know, but bet you didn't know that the Michael Myers mask, because this was a very low budget movie, was bought at a hardware store near the set, near where they were shooting. Actually, they were they were filming that in South Pasadena, not very far from where we are now. In South Pasadena, uh, in the springtime. So uh they had to actually go scoop up all these leaves and hang on to these so they could throw them down and and show you that it's fall. If you look at the trees, everything's green. This is supposed to be Haddenfield. This is in Illinois.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, with palm with palm trees that you're not supposed to notice.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, so so check that stuff out. But the Halloween mask, the Michael Myers mask, was bought at a hardware store for like five bucks. And it was a mask of Captain Kirk from Star Trek. They painted it white. Okay, and that's where you get Michael Myers from.
SPEAKER_01:And and in the movie. They'd said, Oh yeah, they stole a bunch of stuff from the hardware store.
SPEAKER_00:There's a scene in the yeah, exactly. There's a scene in the in the in the movie. Yeah, they hardware store breaking. But it's just a just a great movie. And I I just I love it. And I really I do like Halloween 2 as well, the the original sequel to it. I I really like that one as well. Um uh basically just taking place at the hospital the whole time, you know, everybody's getting systematically uh taken out by Michael in in his non-stop uh uh obsession with taking out Lori.
SPEAKER_03:Right, you know, because every murderer is in pursuit of her, he just happens to run into other characters. The scene in Halloween 2 where Loomis is there in the hospital and he's just shot him, like for the second or third time. Yeah, and then a a trooper comes in and go check Loomis is all no, stay away from him, he's still alive, his chest is moving.
SPEAKER_01:He goes, No, he's dead, and then of course he's dead.
SPEAKER_00:Slices he takes the scalpel and and and and slashes the throat. Good stuff, yeah, yeah, good stuff.
SPEAKER_01:It's just too bad Halloween three didn't didn't continue that route not to Halloween four.
SPEAKER_00:When you know on his own, Halloween three I thought was a pretty good movie, pretty good story, but if you're tying it in, if you're trying to tie it in with the the Halloween series, forget it.
SPEAKER_01:It's in the book though. I I read the Halloween three book, they put the shape as the shape in the book, but they never showed it in the movie, right? Which is kind of strange. Yeah, we read Halloween three. I read it. I actually read Halloween.
SPEAKER_03:When it comes to stuff like that, that's not uncommon because it's hard to it's hard to show a demonic presence and transfer that, which is what they were trying what they were trying to do in Halloween 3. So you see the same thing in the Dead Zone and Cujo. Yeah, that's okay. So the Dead Zone, uh the serial killer slits his neck from ear to ear. Yeah uh in the movie, he he uh eats a pair of scissors, and it's pretty grotesque. But in the book, he actually kills himself, and here's this really evil guy who basically became the boogeyman in Maine. And so Cujo starts out with the the talking about the spirit of this character, Frank. I can't think of what his last name was, and how Cujo essentially gets uh touched up.
SPEAKER_01:I can't really remember all that stuff. I gotta see that movie again.
SPEAKER_03:Cujo's it's not in the Cujo movies. Yeah, it's the only thing. It always seems the books are besides a rabbit dog. It's a rabbit dot. I think there's this whole possession aspect to it if you read it.
SPEAKER_01:The books are always better, it seems, right? I mean, it just why do you just stick with stick with the book, sticking with the movie and stick of the book? I mean, I mean it would be better. I'll come back. We'll talk about yeah, we gotta talk about your number one.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, we gotta get to your number.
SPEAKER_03:Number one to get on with your number one, 1931, uh Frankenstein. Yeah, and I mean it it has to be. It's uh we don't have these other horror movies. There is no shape or monster in Halloween if we don't have Frankenstein, yeah, right? Disembodied human figure, right? Doesn't talk, right? Yeah, doesn't talk in the movie Frankenstein, he doesn't talk. Now there's a departure in the movie from the book. If you've read Frankenstein, you know this. Um, and uh my favorite version of Frankenstein is actually uh I believe it's an ABC 73 production starring Michael Sarazan and Jane Seymour. And I think it was shown like in two parts, like a Sunday and Monday night type deal, and it was called the Frankenstein, the true story. And um the iconic thing I remember in that is they they combine Brider Frankenstein and Frankenstein, and Sarazan's character hates the Jane Seymour monster because she's so perfect and he's not. And there's a scene where he goes in and he rips her head off. Yeah, and it was on television, so it was uh one of my favorite ones that it that I remember just had a lot of uh of uh great visual impact on me as a as a younger kid because I saw it on TV at the time. But if you go and you watch Frankenstein, 1931, and you look at what James Whale is doing, he's bringing over this gothic image that basically from the 30s forward into the 40s, everything gothic is becomes from that set that Universal did that became Frankenstein. The prosthetics that he did that gave him the flat top head had never had never been done, and basically the guy cobbled it together himself as a makeup artist. Do you know? I'll give you bonus points if you know who was first considered for the role of Frankenstein. The original. The original.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, we're talking 1931.
SPEAKER_01:You're talking about a tall dude for one. Well, no, no, because they because they have platforms.
SPEAKER_03:They gave him nine-inch platforms that weighed like 11 pounds.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, you mean like the monsters?
SPEAKER_03:Like we're like what's the first more, you know. Well, I'm just telling you Bella Legosi. In fact, Lagosi's on record for saying that he sort of regrets turning down this film because he saw what it did to Boris Kov. And they were in competition for the same roles for many years.
SPEAKER_00:And so it's kind of a long cheney, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. But uh they I think they originally wanted um uh Claude Rains to play it. He was busy playing the Invisible Man or whatever, like that. Maybe it wasn't Claude Raines. You know what? I'm I'm not gonna, I don't want to go. Well, I know that their original person uh was the gentleman who played the Phantom in the 1922 silent. Oh but he passed away. And then their second choice was Bella Legosi. Legosi said, because he was a theatrical performer, he said he thought his talent would be wasted because the monster does it.
SPEAKER_00:Because he couldn't express himself, right? Right, right.
SPEAKER_03:But there are some you mentioned the the throwing of the girl into the well or in the lake. Yeah, um, yeah, that's one of the iconic things. And then the other one is when the father finds the the girl, there's an extended scene where he's carrying the body into the city and he's he's crying out about his daughter, and then that is what leads to them hunting down the monster, the village of God, right? And so it was uh, and if you're if you uh see that brutality, you know that he and he the thing is the monster did it innocently, too, because the little girl saw him and she wasn't afraid of him, and she was like, Do you want to play with me? And they were she was picking flowers and she was throwing flowers, she goes, What? She threw the flower and it floated, and then he threw one and it floated. So then he picked her up and threw her in and he didn't flow. Yeah, so um, but uh oh crazy. The uh the only thing about it is is because it's number one because it sets the standard for what's coming in the future of horror. It it's it tells us what American horror is going to be looking at, and it talks about an external monster, right? This was something that was very common in the literature. It's what we see in Braum Stroker, it's what we see in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and we see this emulated then. But in American cinema, we don't really see this kind of horror until 1931. And then after 1931, going into the 40s, you end up with changes in the horror genre where it's being emulated over and over again, the daughter of Frankenstein versus the wolf man. Yeah, you end up with you know Abbott and Costello, the three stooges meet Frankenstein, whatever you have to think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you see that happening, and all of that, if you think about it, does those kind of distractions, right, are occurring during the Second World War period. And so you have these films that are coming out, and and it's after the second world war that it stops being the monster and it starts being humanity that is the thing after we get past the radiation monsters and things like that. And so um, I mean, I could go on and on about this. I think that there's a lot of fascinating things, the reflections of our culture, social sociology that are embedded in horror films. Yeah, and we see it today, and we're gonna continue to see that. I mean, you see um you know serial rapist films, which might be more of a thriller, you know. I think um 10 minutes to midnight, James uh Charles Bronson's about a serial killer, right? Not a traditional horror film, Bronson's in it, it's more of a detective flick, yeah, but there's all these horror elements in it because we don't look at them as horror because we go like, well, it's more of a gritty crime thriller. But for any woman who's been raped, but they're yeah, you know, that's gotta they they couldn't really go see a film like that, it might be traumatic for them.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_03:And so when you're dealing with real elements like that, and that's I think the the entirety of horror is always dealing with the something that's situated in the mind of the people at the time, it reflects that back to us. And so weapons, this movie that just came out of the world. Yeah, I've seen it.
SPEAKER_00:I was just starting to watch it, and then Tess saw it, but I haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_03:So, I mean, it's it's an interesting take on the horror genre, and a lot of people it's very original. Um, they're already talking about course you know, doing a sequel now because it was so successful. Of course. Um when you do you talk about the Exorcist, as we have well, you have the whole um the whole series with the Annabelle and Codering and all that.
SPEAKER_01:Amityville had a series.
SPEAKER_03:I remember um I read Amityville when it came out, I think we all did at school. They read that book. Yeah, I totally freaked a lot of people who were walking around with that book. Yeah. And then, of course, when they did the J Josh James Brolin uh version, uh total disappointment over the book. The original Amityville horror movie. Yeah, yeah. And I was obsessed with that. I read everything about uh what was his name? Uh the David something? Develco or DeVacco? I can't remember. The the horror fans out there will know the the actual murder that occurred in the house where the uh the son killed the family, right? Which is where the whole mythology comes from for the Amineville horror. Yeah. But I mean, you know, we could talk about this all day.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Do you have all day? I don't wait.
SPEAKER_00:We probably almost have all day, but you guys don't have all day. No. And listen, I hope you've enjoyed this. I know this is a long episode, and you look, break it up into 10, 20 minute segments. And next thing you know, look, that's how I was told to read. Okay, if you don't have time to read, start reading 10 minutes at a time. And then next thing you know, you're reading 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and and now you've got the time. So, same thing with this one. If it's a little bit long for you, break it up into segments, watch it, listen to it, whatever it is. But we're gonna wrap it up right here. And with that, you guys know that this program is available wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, whatever streaming service you use, just search the Ben Maynard program, boom, it's right there. Go with it. Uh, but subscribe to it, that way you'll get notifications every time a new episode drops. You know what? You can even leave us a five-star review, okay? Because these guys deserve it. Um, and uh, but you know, if you're if you are watching here on YouTube, then we greatly appreciate it. And uh we've had a great time, but again, subscribe to the channel and then uh give uh give us a thumbs up and leave a comment. Leave your lists, you got a top 10, leave your lists, all right? Because I'll get into it and I'll share your comments with these guys.
SPEAKER_03:And uh if you like what I've been saying and you want to talk to me about Horror, hey, uh reach out, he'll forward it, and we'll talk on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00:So there you go. And uh uh so yeah, leave a comment and and you know I reply to all your comments anyway. Um last but not least, follow me on Instagram, Ben Maynard Program, all one word, or the TikTok, the Ben Maynard program. This has been a blast, guys. That was fun. I can't thank you guys enough for taking time the tick time.
SPEAKER_03:It's for fun.
SPEAKER_00:It was for fun. Uh but I can't thank you guys enough for taking.
SPEAKER_03:It used to be the Facebook, did you know that? Yeah. Then they changed it to just Facebook.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So um, look, we're done. All right. We'll let you go. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, one last thing though. Listen, if you're gonna go listen to this, download it, all right? Download the episode, all right. I get I get a little more credit when you download stuff than when you just listen to it. And then you know what? Also, last thing while we're wrapping up, share it. Share it. Even if you don't watch or listen to it, share it with your people.
SPEAKER_03:Or try just say, I've listened to these three idiots for an hour and a half, and I thought you should listen to them.
SPEAKER_01:Just make that two idiots because I'm not one.
SPEAKER_00:I'll put you. But but but share, share it with you people because that's how we spread the word. All right. So we're done. Thanks a lot, everyone. Uh greatly appreciate it. Let me get my screen going right here. This is the Ben Maynard program. Steve. Tell a friend.