This week we're talking about Paul Verhoeven, Krull, anime in the US, Ghost In The Shell, and The Deadly Spawn. Show music by HeartBeatHero and OGRE. Support the show!
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It's Friday, July 12th, 2024. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Alright, let's start off as we always do with our emotional segment. Where I tell you very, very simply, then if you'd like to support our show, you can go to supportourshow.com and browse from our wide selection of support options. And as far as I know, the code OZONE, Ozone, will still get you two months free on Libson. If you would like to jump into the exciting and profitable world of podcasting. That'd be me, come on. Alright, look, I'm sure someone can still make money at it, and maybe the person using that code will be that person. It could be the next Joe Rogan, but hopefully not Mike Joe Rogan. So, you know, who knows, stuff can go right, people can make unlikely successes when you thought they could. So, feel free, get two free months of it, and maybe you'll get, you know, hooked on it, and maybe your particular show will cover some niche that somebody somehow at this point hasn't managed to. We'd like to think that there are no niches left to cover, but of course. Oh, I don't like that. There are always niches to cover. Well, the general, it's kind of like the thing where there's only seven stories to tell, you know, about that idea. There's an 11 story thing, everything plays off of that, yeah. And it's largely true, but of course, there are always the exceptions, so you never know. You could be the person. Go ahead. Somebody should make money at doing this. So, why not you? Go ahead. Take two months free and do it. Seriously, why not? Yeah. Outside of that, I'll lay the groundwork for this early, even though it won't come out until August, but there is going to be a new TV double feature with myself and Dr. Doug Bealmeyer. We're going to do some sequels. We're doing Robocop 2 and Predator 2, but I gave myself a long stretch to edit them. That's a funny, yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, we've already recorded the Robocop side. Oh, yeah, those two, you know, those two lend themselves to each other very well. They do. They really do. I'm an absurdity of Robocop 2 and then the absurdity of Predator 2. Well, I think I said this in the Robocop one. I said, number one, the first thing that you have to give at least some measure of respect for is... Now, today it would be different, but at that time, sequels were made to try to do something as opposed to just recycling the first. A lot of people say the second Robocop is the first one over with, again, and I think that's bullshit. I don't believe that's true. Oh, no, all the shit with the drugs and the drug bot and all that stuff. Yeah, no, it's the same right. The same right doesn't show up to the third one, which is a blasphemy, right? Oh, yeah. We actually specifically said we are not discussing. The third one doesn't exist because Peter was not in it, so who cares? Yeah. The weirdest part of the second one is when they try to change Robocop and make him all friendly. Yes, and he's like, "No, don't do that, Jimmy." And that humor does work. There are legitimately very funny parts. Well, no, because listen, that sounds like something a corporation would do. Yeah. Well, that, and I think a lot of people forget, to some degree you understand it, forget that they actually manage to... Because, look, to some degree you'll hear this again, you can't place Verhoeven. You can't. Not having Verhoeven and not having Basil, I always mispronounce his name, the guy who did the score. Yes, immediately it's a step down. There's no getting around that. Verhoeven is a singular type of director who has his specific concessions. And he has sort of a sarcastic, ironic tinge to his directing that people tend to miss because they are too caught up with the sex and the violence. But there is this very sort of... There's a lot of social commentary in his work. Well, it's actually very clever because it distracts you from the very, very specific harsh points he's making. You know, you don't necessarily pick up on the subtext of it being anti-corporateism, anti-capitalism. Yeah, this is the starship troopers thing, where you can watch starship troopers as an absurd movie. Which it is, right? Or you can watch starship troopers as a message about what happens when fascism takes over. And then it's less funny. Over the years, starship troopers have become less and less funny to me. Well, it not only has it become less... I still enjoy the movie. Now, I think I got lucky with that one because I didn't see that one in theaters and I had read something that said, "No, no, no. Be very aware of what this movie is talking about." So, when I watched it, I had the subtext fully in front. Yeah, and when doogie-houser comes out dressed as a Nazi at the end, you're like, "What?" Well, but even before that, I had read something where they actually had... They said, "Go watch some of this footage of Nazi propaganda stuff and then watch the movie." Yeah. And so, I had that mind. So, my first viewing of starship troopers was radically different than I think people who went in not knowing what it was. I have to tell you, though, there is one scene in that movie that I, for some reason, I think, is geniously done, which is... And I think it's a way to use the music. There's a sequence where the Marines and the Navy all have a fight in like the... Well, that's because he runs into the guy who's been promoting who's with What's Her Face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure. And Verhoeven chose Mazzy Star as the music, which is a very sort of like melancholy, sad music. And like, it's very easy for a director to try to turn a fight sequence like that into something that's like either very funny or like, you know, to spice it up in any number of ways. Because that's what you use music in movies to do. I mean, using it to enhance the experience. So the fact that Verhoeven chose to make it sort of more melancholy and sentimental says a lot about that movie. You know, the different choices made. So, yeah, the loss of Verhoeven. I mean, listen, Verhoeven is the only reason that you should watch... Oh, fuck, what's that one with the dancers? Oh, showgirls? Showgirls, yeah. Sure. Verhoeven, and I never remember the actress's name, but I also remember just... Oh, Elizabeth Berkley. Elizabeth Berkley, yes. So, Elizabeth Berkley being naked constantly is the other reason to that movie because I think she's attractive. But the other reason is that... Well, I was going for Gina Gershawn, but, you know, he has their own taste. There you go. But Paul Verhoeven and the way he directs that movie, like, it is, his movies can be throwaway movies on the... ...surface, but then if you just stop and watch them, and like I said, try to ignore the nudity and the violence. There is a fuck ton of social commentary in there. Yeah, the real shame of showgirls is that Elizabeth Berkley wasn't aware of Verhoeven's kind of whole thing. Oh, did she not know? So she took it dead serious and everybody else... If you watch it, you notice, everybody else is camping it up. Yeah. You know what I mean? Gina Gershawn is aware of the movie she's in. She knows what this is. Elizabeth Berkley thinks that this was going to launch her serious career, that she thought this would be the movie that got her out of, say, by the bell, and there ain't no air from that. This would be a serious drama, like an adult one. I think at one point she said she thought it might be something that could be Oscar-worthy. I'm pretty sure I remember an interview where she said reading the script because, you know, the script doesn't necessarily always tell you what the movie is... You've toned it. By the way, did you know there's a new documentary coming out about Robocop with Peter Weller? Yeah, it's the same people. I've backed a bunch of those people's documentaries. They're the same ones who were doing the Aliens Expanded Documentary. They did In Search of Darkness, In Search of Tomorrow, FPS, which I've backed all three of those. Yeah, I'll be honest. I'll watch it at some point when it hits some type of service, which it inevitably will. Their documentaries, I prefer them when they're more broadly covered, you know, when they're covering more than one topic. Not that I don't think they're good, but they're more easily revisited when you're kind of going through a whole genre of things. Like FPS is a great documentary about first-person shooters because it covers the entire growth of it. You get all these different aspects of different ones. There's a lot of variety. Same thing with In Search of Darkness and In Search of Tomorrow, because those are about the genres that they're horror and sci-fi specifically. So you see all different interviews, you kind of see the evolution of the way movies were made. Whereas if it's one, you get great stories, but if you're going to watch that again, you're going to be watching Robocop documentary, which is fine, but you'll know all the information. Taking it back to what we were talking about showgirls. Apparently, Verhoeven is one of the few directors who showed up at the Razzie Awards and accepted the worst director or worst picture award for showgirls. Why not? You know what he was making? Yeah, he did. You know what? I've never seen any of his pre-mainstream movies. Really? His non-US movies. You've never seen like flesh and blood in those movies? Oh, no, no. I've seen flesh and blood. I'm saying like the non-English speaking movies. Oh, he's really early stuff. Yeah, because I'd be curious. I mean, I don't even remember if I saw Turkish delight. A while ago, I watched the one with Rucker Howard, the World War II one. Oh, God. Oh, Soldier of Orange? Is that what it's called? I just know Rucker Howard is World War II. No, it's the one where he's in the camp. Yeah, it's... No, no, I'm saying the one I saw was Rucker Howard, World War II. I don't know what it was called. Yeah, there's one where it's Rucker Howard, he's in the camp. I can't remember what it's called. Soldier of Orange. Yeah, that's it. Okay, there you go. Yes. I have seen that one. Yeah, I... I've had so much. I don't really remember it. His first movie for me was that I saw with flesh and blood. No, movie or phrase that. The first movie he has I saw was Robocop, but the earliest movie of his I've really seen. I think I saw Soldier of once I didn't remember it, but I've seen flesh and blood a few times. And that movie greatly encapsulates, you know, a broken approach, which is it's like, that movie is... I'm pretty sure that movie is well known because was it Jennifer Jason Lee was not 18? No. She said she was, but she wasn't. Yeah, yeah. And she is naked all over that movie. But since it's European, I don't think it matters. It's not... It isn't restricted the same way. Yeah. I mean, and you've got Roger Hauer and, you know, the good guys and the bad guys are kind of unsure who's who. Yeah. Oh, then he did... I forgot he did a hitchhiker. I always forget he did hitchhiker, which is another... That one became a series, didn't it? I think. Oh, no, he did episodes of the hitchhiker. Yeah, I was going to say, I think you're talking about the show. Oh, yeah, that was already an episode. Oh, man, you know, I need to go back and find those episodes. I'd be curious to see if you could feel it. It's him. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, there's such a number of movies. Like, I mean, Robocop, Total Recall... Well, and the other thing is, he's another one that's kind of a... He works with Rucker Hauer a lot. Yeah. Basil Pazadorus did a lot of his scores. Like, he clearly... And people who work with him... Well, his last... They get it. They understand what his thing is. And he's apparently, you know... His last movie was Benedetta, and I... Yeah, I want to see that. I want to see it. Yeah, so for those of you who don't know... Because the movie... Have you seen the book that it's based on the title? Is it about... It's based on a book... It's based on a book... You know, the book's the title, though. I know, but I know, but I know, my little Monera did a version of this story as well. Well, no kidding, and here's why. Here's the title. Yeah. This is the full title. In Modest Acts, Colin, the life of a lesbian nun in Renaissance Italy. Yeah. That's Monera Beta if I've ever seen one. So, a 17th century nun in Italy suffers from a disturbing religious and erotic vision. She is assisted by a companion, and the relationship between the two women develops into a romantic love affair. Sure. Which... Which... The Devil's. Except different. Except the same. And you know, she'll be punished for it, you know, because... No, no, no, no. Christian. I don't, I don't... But I mean, it's got a great cast, too. Is it Charlotte Rampling? Isn't it? Oh, there's Marshall. Lambert Wilson. Yeah. And for Hoven's, one of those names. He is one of those names. But I think that was his last movie. So far, yeah. I don't think he's done any else. He might have retired. He's not young. So... No, he's not. He's not young. But, uh... Yeah, look at that. That might be his last one. That is one of those sad things. A lot of these directors now are getting to the point where it's like, okay, they're probably not going to make any more. Yeah. I know. I mean, a couple have bet all his chips on Megalopolis because he basically said... I want to say that. I'm too old. I'm going to die and I can't take my money with me. So fuck it. Here it is. Yeah, I want to see that. For all this weirdness. Yeah, I'll see it. It's not going to be a hit in theaters. No, but you know what? I'm coming to realize that a lot of the movies I love, we're not. Oh, that's not a complaint. It's just one of those things where people don't get it. And it's like, yeah, if you read what he's saying, he's basically saying, I'm not going to be alive for much longer. I want to make the movie I want to make. And that's it. My daughter asked me the day what my favorite movie growing up was. And I couldn't remember because there were a lot of movies I liked. Yeah, but there's no one movie I loved. I loved a lot of movies. The other thing is I could tell you that there was one book series I loved when I was a kid. That was 36 books and then as I got older, I started adding kind of my list of favorites. I never let stuff go. I just added to it. So in the realm of movies, I kind of just said, you know what? I liked fantasy and sci-fi. And that was what I grew up. And what I realized is that a lot of these fantasy and sci-fi movies that I adored that shaped me were culturally considered box office flops. You know, Blade Runner was not a big hit. Eliminators was not a big hit. I mean, I don't even know if people remember that movie. Big Trauma Little China was not like a blockbuster. You know, a lot of these movies were low key or often flops. Like the, you know, the thing was the thing of flop when it came out. I don't know that it was a flop. I don't think it made a bunch of money. That's a good question though. But I think it was, I think it reviewed well because of the effects. Yeah. And do me wrong. I also love, you know, aliens and was it a fun? Well, the budget was 15. It made 20, but I don't know if that would. See, that's what I mean. It made money. But I don't think it made enough that it would be considered a hit because it was marketing and the rest of it. He was probably at the, he was probably the Kevin Smith of his day where he'd make a movie for just, just enough money that if he made just enough, the studio would be like, okay, you can make it enough. Oh, well, Poltergeist had come out a month earlier, so that didn't help. Yeah. But I like movie like Total Recall, which was a huge hit. I love him. I love Robocop. I love the big hits as well. But there's a lot of movies that I loved, really loved that are not considered like popular mainstream movies. Okay. And it's like, it made me realize where, you know, you're, you're lucky to get these movies, right? At all. You're lucky to get them. And you are counterculture because where, as you look at that movie and say, this is, this movie is a huge hit to me. There's a lot of people that are like, you know, I don't like it. I don't get it. What's the point? You know, I mean, what is it? It was a 24. A 24 is built around making movies that are not mainstream. That are not going to get mainstream glory. In fact, I just read the other day that was at the New Beetlejuice is going to be opening the Venice Film Fair. Mm-hmm. And I'm kind of sitting there going, okay. That seems to be really good or really bad. So, yeah. Okay. This is, this is what I thought. So reading it. And I sort of remember this. Yeah. That E.T. was what everybody was kind of big on. So the thing is the anti-E.T. Oh, is it so? So there was a screening of E.T. where the thing trailer played and the theater was dead silent. The executive producer went and as soon as he saw that nobody reacted, he came out and said, we're done. We're dead. Yeah. A lot of people are like, this is, this is very much against the optimism of E.T. That's not the people that I would be directing that movie. Well, no. But the acting, excellent. Everybody liked it. The special effects, excellent. Everybody liked it. They hated the movie because it was the summer of E.T. It was E.T. Not only that, the thing is one of those movies where the endings doesn't even give you a culmination of winning. Oh, that's interesting timing of a comment because here's a quote from Carpenter. Carpenter said he went to a screening and asked the audience about their thoughts. And one audience member asked, quote, well, what happened in the very end? Which one was the thing? Carpenter responded that it's up to your imagination. The audience member said, oh, God, I hate that. Yep. Whereas I remember, was it, Keith David, I think, was the one who said an interview that he thinks that it was child's that was the alien. And he says that because he says, when you see the movie, yeah, he says, if you look at the movie and he goes, it wasn't intended. But there's no, you don't see any breath coming from it. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people got fixated on that. And it wasn't, you know, it was just an accident. No. Oh, I know that. But this is the whole thing. Once the movie is out of your hands, it's up for the interpretation of the audience. And the audience looks at that and goes, yeah, we think that's enough of a reason that it could be him. Sometimes it's up to them, then yeah. Personally, I don't know. I think the whole ending of that movie is a no-win situation. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't matter what it is. Kurt Russell's not getting out. Do you know what I mean? Of course. Like, and that's, and that's the thing. I personally, I hate those no way out movies, but I love that movie. You know? Well, I think it's like everything else. You know, once in a while, I mean, look, I saw a TV glow was that it's a bummer of a movie. I don't really like bumbers of movies, but when they're well done. It's a very well done movie. Yeah. Actually, my movie tonight is a bummer of a movie, but it's not what he came about. Code 46. Code 46. Tim Robbins, I think Samantha sits at Samantha. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a more than a man. It's a beautifully done movie. Very low budget. It was never intended to be a big hit, right? But it's incredibly well done. And it is a fucking bummer of an ending. Yeah. You know what I mean? Nobody dies per se, but it's not good what happens to the people. And it is very unfair. That movie angered the hell out of my life. Did you ever see that with your wife? No, I don't know if that would be her kind of movie. Oh, my God. So for those who don't know, I guess this is the spoiler. The movie Code 46 is this future where I think there's overpopulation and there's kind of these... I don't know if they're like an AI or if there's just like a control over everything who leaves and comes to the city. Like there's almost like areas that are controlled where things are balanced. And then there's kind of like the wastelands outside the city where the things are imbalanced. And they keep track of everything that's going on in the city to keep it balanced. So everything kind of works. And they send this investigator to find out who's making fake papers, I think, is what it is, to give people clearance to leave. And it's like that's the health documents are basically how you get in. They're like, you know, they're like Nazi papers, you know, papers. And he meets this woman who, I mean, he's a married guy with a kid and whatnot, but he meets this woman and he instantly has this strange connection to her, really overwhelmed connection. And they proceed to have an affair, right? And then once they have the affair, there is some kind of weird, like, auto biochemical coding that goes off in her head that she reports immediately to some like office. And that basically what it is is that if you, genetically, if you copulate genetically with somebody who is too close to the genetics of your body, right? Yeah, I think, I think didn't say that she's related to him somehow and someone or something. Yeah, so she has, so something, I can't remember, it's been a while since I saw this. I can't remember, it's not that they are related like they are like family, but it's that she has genetic material, enough so that it is considered incest. Ah, got it, that's it. And in this world to maintain that they don't have any kind of genetic abnormality, people are all coded to basically like once this gets set off in your body. There's a lot of grace science here. But the final result of the movie is that the powers that be basically say, well, Tim Robbins' character is more important to us because he's a seasoned investigator. So they erase his memory and send him home and they kick her and her pregnancy out of the city. And so at the end of the movie, he's like basically leaving the city to head back to his own city. And you see her kind of like on the outskirts of the city in the wasteland, pregnant. And my wife is really annoyed because she was like, well, shit, she's like, they fucked her and they let him get away with it. And it's like, yeah, you're right. It is cheap, but their logic was he's a seasoned investigator. He's more, he is monetarily more valuable to us than this person. So we're going to take the one that's more valuable, which is the man. It really pissed her off. It is a really well done movie. I'll have to see it again at some point because I guess I forget a lot of the scientific details, like the McGuffins that they use. It is a great flick. And again, low budget flick. I like those future movies where they just make it future enough and they don't really give you any kind of weird technology. It's more so about the situational, the future situations that can happen. I don't think there's any other movies like that. Is it Gatica basically that type? Gatica's like that as well, yeah. And I adore Gatica, but I don't think Gatica was a pig hit. I think Gatica made even. I don't know if it was a big hit, was it? I think it was reviewed well. I don't like it, but... Why don't you like it? Because I adore that movie. I don't know. It bored me to death. I have to be honest. Really? Gatica bored you. It's fascinating to me, because you and I sometimes have very different DNA in this. I think it did bad. Oh, no. Did you very bad? Good, although it wasn't Esperanto, which I adore. Yeah, the budget was 36. It made 12.6. Yeah, and the thing is, I do love that movie. See, that doesn't shock me, because that's... No, it's a high concept. That's an intellectual flick. Like, yeah. That's not a Michael Bay film. No, it's not. You have to have people in the right mood to see a movie like that. But this is what I mean, that there's these movies that were huge flops, yet culturally have affected me far more than any of this other stuff that they're kind of just churning out, you know? So... Yeah? Okay. Let me clear. I think it was a bad movie. No, it's just not your thing. Yeah, that's all. But recently... It's terrible. Recently, I went to see my tattooist and went for a huge marathon of tattooing, which was crawl again with my tattooist, because he loves that movie as well. And, you know, that movie was a huge flop when it came out. And I was telling Joe, I only recently realized that Lady Jessica is the madam of the web. Yeah. Man, I never realized that. The amount of people who are in that movie that you don't realize. Yeah. You know, it's like Liam Neeson. I'm the other guy who played Hagrid's in there. Yeah. Yeah, that's... There are a bunch of people in that movie. But, like, that movie was a big flop. And yet, I saw that when I was a kid, and I thought that movie was fucking awesome. I still think that movie's awesome. You know what I realized? For me, the key moment in that movie... Yeah. ...as a kid and still as an adult. Yeah. I wonder if this'll... Yeah, I'd curse if you and I are in the same book. Go ahead. Okay. So, when he throws the glaive and he kills the creature, right? Yes. And the creature falls. Yes. And he goes to pull it back. Yeah. And he moves, and it doesn't come to him. And he looks so good. Yes. It's like he lost his pet. Yes. It's like his dog had killed something and he realized his dog. And I... Yeah. And she comes over to him, and I sits in my tattoo. I was like, "This is the moment where the prince goes." Ah, man. I don't know. I don't want... I might leave the girl for the glaive here. Come on, guys. Yeah. I would. And he even goes to try... I always forget that he goes to try to get it. Yes. And when the creature's like, "Fuck you, I'm keeping this." Yeah. The hand comes up. Look. Yes. But that moment. Number one, yes. I have come almost to tears in that moment. I still do. Because you're right. The expression reaches out with his hand. He's like, "Come on. Come back." And you see the thing tugging. It wants to come back. Yeah. And I know that he becomes a human flamethrower after that. But it's not the same thing. Well, and see, this is where, as much as I love Crow... Yeah. And I do love Crow. I think it's a... I've watched it almost annually for years. Many times. Yeah. At least annually. There have been times where I've watched it more than once. But I recognize watching it that it has weak points. Oh, it does. Yes. The ending is very anticlimactic in many ways. Even I get irritated every single time by how little the glaive is used for how much it's built up. In fact, if I was going to make a sequel, that's the thing. You go and get it out of the body of the beast. Budgetry-wise. It was the most expensive thing. I understand. Yeah. And that's the way they did it. Technical stuff, though. Some of that you have to say, "I don't give a shit," because as a person watching it, you have a special. Oh, it's story-wise. Yeah. Listen, story-wise... I guess the argument that they used was it's not going... The glaive is its own personality. It has its own mind to some degree. And the whole idea is it's not going to activate until it thinks you need it. But the... Yeah. Okay. And I actually... And I have an argument for this. At the end, it doesn't come back to him, because I think that it stays there to keep it dead. I think the glaive... I have my theory is that the glaive knows that if it leaves that thing's body, that thing will get up. As evident by the fact that when the guy goes to reach for it, the creature is still somewhat alive. Okay. Then you have to establish that. Oh, I know. Listen, there are things about the movie that bother me. If I was going to rewrite... If I was going to rewrite the movie, there's a lot of little things that I would put in there. The movie would be like a half hour longer. But the world that's already there is so rich and has so many elements that you could use... It just needs to be fleshed out more. I mean, you know how you're always like, that movie needs a remake. Crawl absolutely needs some... You know what? I'll be honest. I wouldn't remake it. I would just make a sequel. I would make a sequel. We've talked... Oh, you know what? We've talked about this. We've totally talked about making a Crawl sequel. Or many series. I think this is a case where a sequel makes more sense. That glaive is stuck there. And what's his name? Colwin? Colwin. Colwin is the old man. It's so easy. You just shift him into the old man role. Oh, yeah. The other part about this is, I don't know why, but I was watching the movie and I talked to myself. Wouldn't it be fascinating if Crawl and Dark Crystal were in the same universe? Because you'll always forget Dark Crystal. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because then Dark Crystal, they come from out of space. Oh, no. Even the design of the world, what do you call it? What's it called? The Black Castle? The Dark Castle? Whatever it's called. It looks like the castle in Dark Crystal. I mean, they look like they're from the same kind of... It would be neat. It wouldn't have to take care of it. I love it when you link things together in your own headcanon. Where you're like, yeah, these are in the same universe. Well, no, but I mean, you are correct. Because even the... What are those things called? What are the crab things called? They start with a G, don't they? The crab things in Dark Crystal feel related to the slayers. Oh, the go-off thing? No, not the go-off thing. Yeah, I think you're right. It's like go-off thing. Or whatever they're called. Anyway, the crab people seem like they are related to the slayers when they get their heads cracked open and something comes out. Yeah. Would grow into a crab creature. Yeah. Because they're both fantasy and they do both feel unreal. But they play with sci-fi. They like kind of dabble it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I realize we haven't got it. I mean, they both have a wise character with one eye. It's what you're facing me, and then it's the Cyclops. So, you know... Yeah, the Cyclops is... I mean, you could see the Cyclops and Orgra hanging out. Or she'd just be constantly making fun of them for riding a... Why don't you ride a fireman more? All right. I'm not meant to. I can see them out. Ah, what good is that? I have a planetarium. You know. They would be great as a couple. Like, that's your odd couple of the fantasy universes, the two of them together. Where she's wild and just... Dark Crystal. You know, dark Crystal. He's cleaning the planetarium all the time. And he's like, well... Didn't make a ton of money either, right? No, that was... that was a huge, I think, psychic wound to... Yeah. To Hanson because he really believed that that would be what told people that Muppets could be for adults. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. There are these movies of my youth that are culturally... Like, so... They are the monuments of my youth, and yet... Like, they are so counter-culture. The culture didn't want them. They were flops. And yet, they are to me. Well, they were appreciated by pockets of people who saw the artistry. That's what it is. Because it's not as if these, like, the thing... Dark Crystal is a work of art. It is. And many people recognize that as far if you understood what was being done. But as a movie, the biggest problem with Dark Crystal... Oh, yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people point this out, and they're correct to a degree. I think it's overblown, but I understand that... Is that they hung the movie on their least successful puppets. Which are the Gelflings. They have the least expression. Their faces are very plasticine. They don't have a lot of emotion compared to everything else. When you look at the Skecces and even the Mystics. The Skecces, you remember. Or Orgros. Orgros is so much more expressive in her small amount of scenes compared to Jen... That it is almost funny. Yeah. He is literally wooden, even though he's not made of wood. Yeah, if they just done a little more work with the faces. Yeah. But he wanted something that was like an elf human analog. Well, here's a very good analogy, and I don't remember who made this, but as soon as they made it, I went, "Yes, that's exactly right." The Gelflings were Henson's Jar Jar Binks. In that, he was convinced that those would be lifelike to people. He was so believed in that those puppets could bridge the gap. And of course, when people saw them, they knew immediately they were puppets. Because they are, if they had been next to humans, or something less expressive, maybe. But when surrounded by especially the Skecces, who every single one has a personality, and has such a distinctive performance... That's a huge amount of personality. But Jen, and what's the female Gelflings? Here, Jen and Kira at times, you could swap them out and people wouldn't notice. Because they're designed very, very similarly. They don't look very distinct. Or do they call them ancient? So what do they call them? The mystics. The mystics are incredible. Yes. With those sad faces. Yeah. And all of it, that's the problem is the Gelflings are the most pedestrian in a world of wonders. And so the problem is when the home movie revolves around them, it's not to people like us. We saw it and were entranced. Like Dark Crystal was seared into my brain the first time I saw it. It's an absolute work of art. And this is before I understood any of what the work was. Just the whole world. Because I saw it pretty young, just like I'm sure you did. I didn't understand what they were doing. I wasn't interested in the puppetry. And honestly, when you first watched it, you're not even aware of the fact what a fucking puppet is. That's what I'm saying, is I had no more appreciation. Yeah, it's kind of like Akira when I first saw it. And then later realized what animation involved to get that movie to where it was. Like, oh, I didn't know any of that. I didn't realize that that is a profession that will make you want to jump in front of a train. Because it is so difficult. Listen, as a kid, still to this day, the best part of Akira for me is the beginning. When those fucking headlights are streaking as they're driving to the city. That is one of the coolest sequences in an animated movie. Period for me. That whole opening sequence with them. But the music, like it's perfect. The music. That's great. And there's the riots in the city. When he's revving the thing and the electricity is on it, they take off and those bleeds are there. Perfect. The taillights. Honestly, it's so good that the rest of the movie there, the rest of the movie is weaker to me. Because there's a lot of power in that opening. When the dog gets shot with the window and you realize, "Oh, wow, this is an adult film." I was always hoping that when I first watched that movie, I was always hoping that at some point later in the movie, we would get a sequence that kind of harkened back to that kind of energy. But the movie kind of went off in such a different direction. We do, but it's very brief compared to the opening, which is when they're fighting in the stadium. The stadium fight, but it's so brief. Because there's that part where the whole Akira's pod comes out of the ground and those giant things. And it's got this huge scale to it where you understand how big this is and how powerful he is to drag this thing up. And then when he does the thing where he dives into the ground and the ground splits and canada's bike goes, that is my favorite sequence of the whole movie. That is when Tetsuo comes flying down and breaks the ground into a V and canada's bike comes flying off it. That is, without a doubt, my favorite thing. I've watched that one sequence so many times because you don't get, you have these moments of Tetsuo's power, but they're very quick. Like when he stops the tank shell and then it blows up, like stuff like that. But it's over very quickly because they were condensing a huge amount of story down to two hours. Like six volumes. Yeah, and not only that, but even that, when you understand what animation is and how difficult it is and what the amount of work to make this type of it at this level, that is mind-searingly difficult. So it's amazing to me they made a two-hour film and it looks this good and performs this well. It was a huge hit in Japan, right? Oh yeah, and that and Ghost in the Shell launched it over, launched Japanese animation here. They were both received very well here because everything here was Disney or Saturday morning, which is junk. Let's be honest, it's junk. It's not good animation. It's very, very low quality. Go back and watch Transformers in G.I. Joe. It's so bad. You know, did Matt Cross make it over here before Akira? Yes, RoboCop, RoboCop, RoboCop, what's the other name for it? RoboCop, RoboCop, RoboCop, yeah, that's what I was watching. RoboCop was what, because I think when they brought it over here it was edited at first, but it was well received because it was all around the same time. All that stuff kind of came here roughly within the same five-year period. All this stuff came in and then it really got huge, but really it was Ghost in the Shell and it came with it. I'm trying to see if somebody's got a list of the first anime movies to get to the US. Yeah, it depends on what they consider history of anime in the United States. Here we go. Yeah, because see, you can go back way back and they have, but that's not the big stuff. Let's see. Galaxy Sprint. Yeah, that's 1981. I wouldn't agree with that here. Oh, Speed Racer. Yeah, I watched Speed Racer. Yeah, but I don't think that's- Battle of the Planets. Okay, here you go. Yeah, see, I watched Battle of the Planets. That came to the US, but that was obscure. Yeah. And Astro Boy, again, very obscure if you could even find it on TV. Right. Let's see. No, I never saw that. Marine Boy never heard of it. Speed Racer, I did watch Speed Racer. I watched a lot of Speed Racer. You know what? You know what the success is attributed to? I actually thought this might be one of them. Rama 1/2. Rama 1/2 was brought to the US and was distributed on BHS and did big business. Oh, man, I've never watched those. I read them all and watched them. Oh, they're very, they're very fun. Those are, those are some of the most hilarious books I've ever read. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Oh, yeah, Akira was not, oh, this is interesting. So Akira was released in very limited releases, so it did not achieve the broadband success that Rama did. Rama was put everywhere. Yeah. Okay, and that makes sense because I remember going to comic book stores and they had all the Rama tapes. I remember that very clearly. Whereas Akira, I first saw on a TV in a corner of a comic book shop, but they didn't even have, they did not have a copy for sale. I just had it. So I couldn't even get it for a couple years. Yeah, I had it. Yeah, and that's the thing is a lot of those, a lot of these movies as well. I think the other fascinating thing is a lot of these weird movies that flopped or were counterculture. You never experienced them. You never experienced the bulk of them in theaters. You experienced a lot of them on BHS at home privately. I mean, only anime film I distinctly remember seeing in a theater, except for the rerelease of the Cure, but that was already, you know, that was, yeah, years and years later. I mean, yeah, I already had more. I mean, the rerelease of Ghost of the Shell as well, but years and years later. Innocence. Innocence I saw in a theater in one of the few U.S. showings it had. It was in subtitle. Oh, yeah, I did. I went to San Francisco. I didn't see that with you. No, no, no. I saw this in a small, weird theater in San Francisco that may have been a porn theater at one time. I don't know, but it was all Egyptian. It was weird. It's okay. It's okay. It was important theater as long as you're playing anime at that point. I don't care. It wasn't when I was there, at least not for me. I don't know what other people in the theater were doing, but I remember seeing Innocence and it was, I mean, it was a small theater. There were maybe 40 people? Maybe? No, I can't even be that man. Maybe it was 30. I saw the Pioneer rerelease of the Cure, but thanks. We saw that. No, we saw that. Yes, we saw that. Yes. Yes. This city, New York City. Because, yeah, that was a big deal. We were like, "Oh, no, we have to see that." Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing is that when you start to, if you had to make a road map of the media that has aided you in your evolution, right? And, you know, I saw one of these maps recently. You know what I do? Those maps were like the word "use the most" and the largest, and then there's like the smaller words. The word clouds. Word clouds, yeah. I saw that used recently with emojis. The emojis used most of a certain year, right? That's interesting, okay. Yeah. If you had to create sort of a map of like, and it'd be difficult to do, right? But if you could somehow kind of go back through your history and create a map of the movies that most affected you year by year. I mean, it'd be hard because you'd have to look at everything that came out. Oh, year by year? Yeah. Yeah. If you made a map year by year of the movies that most affected you, right? And pick the top five that most affected you. And not that were the best, not that were the most amazing, but the ones that most affected you. That had the most lasting effect on you and the way you are, the way you think, the way you behave, and go back to the years. It'd be interesting to see just how, like, subculture your upbringing could be. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I don't, but the years thing, I don't think really is the right way to do it, because a lot of the stuff that most influenced me was either made well before I was capable of understanding it. No, but it isn't, but it's the year that you, well, I guess that's the year that you experienced it. Yeah, that's the thing is because, I mean, I remember my dad watching Superman with me before I even understood really what it was. I mean, I was watching that before I understood movies. But I mean, that's why it's difficult, because the year you experienced, especially subculture movies, is never usually when they came out. Right. And so when did it really start to affect me? I don't know. Yeah, but if you think about it, like the movies that actually really affect you, and even the books, I mean, the books that really affect you as well, I mean, I never read books when they come out. I read them much later on, but it's like, and there's always that weird effect. I don't know if you get this. Do you ever get this thing sometimes where like, you see a book, you read a book, you see a movie, and you think to yourself, wow, this got to me at just the right time. What have you ever had that? Oh, sure. Yeah. It's like a weird serendipity. No, ghost in the shell was like that. I saw ghost in the shell at the exact right time to really, I was just in the right headspace to completely watch it and be into it. I mean, I remember everything about watching that movie, which, which the situation I watched in would not be one you think would be ideal. We were on vacation in, I want to say North Carolina, which I don't particularly enjoy because it's hot and humid there, and it was like, the place we were staying was a friend of ours condo on a golf course because my dad was a golfer at that point. And everybody was doing something else, and I happened to have the tape of it, and I hadn't watched it yet, and there was no one around, and it was, they had a big CRT. I mean, this was a two T back then, but they had a big nice TV, and I watched it, and it was, I was completely locked in. Yeah, that's kind of like me and my first time I actually read all six volumes of Akira. And, weirdly, I also, that was when, wait, down on the upside was the sound guard now. Down the upside had just come out of recent, wait, when was down on the upside? Hold on a minute, because I listened to that, and it was, I was blown away by that album too, because I was very into sound guard at that. It was like, I had two big experiences, one, yeah, because down the upside was '96, the ghost of the show was '95, so by VHS was the next year. Yeah, this all lines up, that's what I thought. Yeah, so I watched that movie, and then these people in their house, which this was at the time, a wild thing, at least for me. They had a throughout-the-house intercom system that was tied into their stereo system. Oh, geez, you could have music follow you. Nobody was there, so I put it on and cranked it through the whole plate, which probably the neighbors must love that. So I watched a movie that I thought was amazing, then I listened to this album that I thought every song was amazing, so it was like, wow, this is the perfect day. It had nothing to do with anybody else, or the vacation. It was just, yeah, it was just the media. It's just already hitting you. Right, and so that's an example of right place, because I got to hear sound guard, and essentially, like, I don't know what the double of quadger phonics sound would be, because the whole place was a theater. Or an amphitheater, it was great. I was in Spain on a family trip, and I had never been able to get a copy, this is pre-internet, right, so I'd never had a copy of Akira. Never been able to get a copy of Akira, because you can only get it if it was in a store, right? Yeah. And so I'd never physically read, I think I'd read maybe one or two issues, but never like volumes. And when I was in Spain, I was wandering the capital myself, and I wandered into a bookstore, and I found all six volumes of Akira in hardcover, and immediately bought them, and read them in Spanish. And I always think it's very funny that my first experience reading, actually reading Akira was in Spanish. It's a very different experience in that respect. But yeah, and it was so perfect, I was so happy. And they were colored, too. I don't know if you remember, they were colored all the way through. Epic is the one who colored on my remember, because they had the big epic logo. Oh yeah, I still have some of those. I still have the colorized ones, which a lot of people think are bastardizations of it. No, I love the color ones. You know why I think, because if you remember, well, you'll remember, they're early computers, there's a lot of banding. You can see the lines where the color transitions, so I think that's why a lot of people don't like them, is it was an early attempt at digital coloring. Oh, I enjoy the black, I bought the black and white in English when it came out finally. Oh sure. But I mean, but listen, the internet has changed your ability to get hold of media as well. There was a time before the internet where you actually didn't patent Oswald write something about this, about how the internet killed geeked them, because before the internet, you had to look for these things, you had to dig for them, you had to luck on them. You had to be given that VHS of that movie, whereas what now? Or you had to stumble across it. Yeah, whereas now, in the age of internet, anyone can become an expert on anything, given a couple hours. Well, I do understand, the one side of that I think I do tend to agree with, which is, there is a, there is a different nature to discovery of something, that's completely outside of what you knew now, than there used to be. It used to be that you would stumble into it and you felt something different because you genuinely stumbled into it. We found it, yeah. Whereas now, I mean, and don't be wrong, this is a great thing, so there's two sides to it. I get things sent to me by people in Discord where I'm like, I would never know about this, and I'm like, this is great. I've had many things like that. Yeah, but here's the thing, this is why I disagree with Asphalt because, yes, the internet is there. And the internet makes it very easy to go find all six volumes of a cure and order them, right? But listen, there are still books I can't get my hands on because they're out of print. Nobody has them that I know of, even on the internet. There are movies that I've never heard of that we only discover because we start digging through links. And we've done this, you and I talking, and we start jumping through links on IMDB, and all of a sudden we're like, you ever heard of this? And you're like, no, I don't know anybody who has. And then you go and you find this movie. I think what's happened is that under the surface kind of subculture level that Patton Oswill is talking about, I just think it's harder to get to. I think it's still there, I just think that it's harder to get to. But, on the other hand, making media more accessible to the individual, especially when there are people that you would never be able to get to. Do you mean, like, I can't see this as a bad thing? This is what I mean about, I see it from both sides of it. On the one hand, there were things, I remember the first time I came across, like when MTV had Liquid Television, which I just did a five on, not that long ago, because I said, you know, if you've never seen this, but, you know, I don't, today, would that hit the same way? No, because animation is everywhere, you have access to YouTube and everything else. At that time, that stuff was not around, you didn't see. No, Aon Flux, man, when Aon Flux first came on, you were like, what? Not even just Aon Flux, but this was experimental short filmmaking and animation, which, yes, if you went to festivals, if you lived in, like, San Francisco, New York City, yes, there was Spike in my facility. If you were plugged into that, sure, but if you were living in the suburbs in, like, the normal world. Yeah, whereas MTV was, at that time, at the height of its power, so it was everywhere. This gets into that kind of, I saw the TV glow territory. Yes, and that's what I mean about, you can find that type of, and better quality animation, the tools to make it are far better, there's far more access, far more outlets, far more ability for people to find audiences. That stuff's all great, but what's different is, it doesn't feel like it has that singular discovery value. It's not the Wild West anymore. Well, not even just the Wild West, but where you felt like, I might be one of only 20 people who understands what this is. That stuff's gone. I mean, look at television, it was in millions of households, so it was always sort of a force. But that feeling was always fake, though, because, I mean, it wasn't 500. It was like, I'm one of maybe 20,000 people, is really what it was. Yes. You know what I mean? However, you didn't immediately find a community of a million people who all felt the same way. You wondered for a while whether anybody else saw it the same way as you. Yeah, you felt unique. You felt special. You felt lucky that you had found something that you connected to. And here's the thing that some people may think is, I'm not in my mind when I say this, but I do believe there is something to this. That sound garden story, I just told, right? Yeah. There's something about that experience that can never be replicated, just can't be. And I don't know how to exactly, not just because, you know, it's not a house with an intercom, and I'm not feeling it. It can't be replicated for you, or it couldn't be replicated for an individual. Well, okay. I can't say, I can't say nobody else could ever have that, but I would say that the percentage of people having experiences like that now is less because we swim in so much media. There are so many communities, and this is not bad. I'm not saying this is a negative, but there's something about the fact that I didn't have a phone that I immediately texted somebody and they said, oh, yeah, that album was great. I just immersed myself in that, and there were no interruptions, and I experienced it purely. Going on a trip, I was trying to explain to my wife this the other day, is that I used to spend the most every summer in Florida in like the Cuban, you know, kind of the Spanish ghettoy part of... Well, I wasn't in the Spanish ghetto, but I spent a lot of time in Florida, too. No, no, I know, but what I was saying is I spent a lot of time in kind of the Spanish ghetto of Florida, because that's where a lot of my family was. They stayed in kind of the, what is considered the Spanish, the Spanish ghetto part of Tampa. That's what you're supposed to say. I didn't even know that Tampa had a nice part until I went down there with my wife. I mean, we were dating at that point. We went down and she was like, hey, let's go to this part, and I was like, what's over there? And I remember we drove over there, and I was like, holy shit. I was like, all this stuff is here? I was like, I didn't even know this stuff was here. I had no idea very much so, right? I didn't know that there was a white part of Tampa, that apparently all the money had gone to. So when I used to go down to Florida, I was very isolated, and this is like, you know, this is pre-cell phones. You know, this is like, this is, you know, adolescent years, late adolescent years, there's no cell phones. Long distance was still expensive. You couldn't be on the phone with friends. There was no fucking internet, right? So whatever media you had, you either brought down with you, but remember how the further you used to get from New York, the harder it used to get to get like, like kind of pop culture stuff. It was like you were at the end of the line sometimes it felt like, right? Yes, no, absolutely. So like, I used to go down there and feel very isolated, and every now and then I would discover weird graphic novels in kind of these weird book shops, these weird comic shops that I had down there that I went to. There used to be this one comic shop I went to called The Green Shift. It was, the front room was a record store, and the back room was like a dilapidated, forgotten treasure trove of comics and graphic novels. And everything was in a box, and you had to dig through the boxes to find what you wanted. It was like an afterthought of a comic book shop, and yet they had some of the most amazing shit, it's amazing. That's where I started reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You know, the fact that I started reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles long before there was ever even a movie or a cartoon, and then suddenly there was a cartoon, and I was like, where the fuck did this come from? I just started reading this book like two, three years ago. Also, it's a radical departure from the original comics, so you read it. Oh yeah, it was different. This is not what I was reading. Exactly. But this too, this is also part of it, is that the geek stuff, you didn't go around telling people that you read comic books. Not when I was young. You just, that wasn't as common. You and I differ, friend. Well, I'm talking about, it was not permeated through the culture. No, no, but yeah, but I was... Of course, my friends. Yeah, of course. I was a nerd. I think Dragonlance did a lot of good and bad for me, which is that I just became that guy who always read Dragonlance, and the librarians always pointed out. You know when you were in middle school and used to go, and they'd ask everybody what they were reading, right? Oh sure. Like, my librarians knew that I was like a prolific Dragonlance reader, that I was like digging through the series. So it became this kind of big joke for them to be like, "Well, you're reading Dragonlance?" So it became a thing that like, everyone in my grade knew. So like, I was the fantasy Dragonlance guy. You know what I mean? So like, there was no getting, there was no getting away from that. That was, that was kind of grown up in the air. Well, but yes, the D&D side of fantasy, there was a ton of. But there weren't Marvel movies right now. But the thing is we don't get cut off the way we used to. And that's what you're talking about, is the fact that you got cut off and you marinated and ghosted in the shell and sound garden. Right. Right. And you had no one to share it with, sharing wasn't easy. It was just yours to fucking soak it up, interpret it, feel it, be part of it. End of the video, I'm glad it's not like that anymore. It is great that people can go find it. Oh, you know what? That's fantastic. I know, I like, it makes me sad that there aren't places like that anymore that you can go to voluntarily. Do you know what I mean? Okay, yes, yes. The loss of an immersive space. Yeah, like it used to be, it used to be that when you traveled, for me, when I used to travel overseas, there was no service for my cell phones. I was more cut off and I felt more present. Right. And that's what I'm talking about with this place. There was nobody there. There weren't cell phones. You were fully there. Yeah. No computers. That place had no computers and we didn't have, we did not, we had one computer at home at that point. I didn't have a laptop. Jesus, lucky you, we didn't have a computer. I didn't have a computer until I had to get one for college. Okay, well, I'm pretty sure the only reason I had one is because... Thucker, I've said this before. My dad was dealing with less than reputable people. I'm pretty sure for crushing a car he got a computer. I'm pretty sure I stopped. I started out a typewriter. This is what my wife turns around and tells me that her dad was an early coder. So she grew up with computers, so she was so not impressed with the computer culture because she was like... Oh, you wouldn't be. Yeah. But when I started out a typewriter, when I got a computer, when I went to college, it was being in the movie hackers. I was like, "Whoa!" Oh, man. It was amazing, right? Well, I remember T1 was like, "Whoa, whoops, B-T1!" I had a Fujitsu Monte Carlo. Fujitsu doesn't even make fucking computers anymore. The other day, I saw their name on an air conditioning unit and I laughed my fucking ass off. Right now. But it's the whole... You used to be capable of being more cut off. Today, if I go overseas, I have auto-enrollment and international calling and you're never really cut off the same way. Well, it takes a long time. You would have to cut yourself off on purpose. Yeah, and also, we both have adult responsibilities now. You wouldn't want to be cut off from your wife and kids. Oh, no, no, but you're like, "I don't give a shit if nobody knows where I am all week!" Listen, the closest I've had to feeling like that of late is being in the backcountry of Iceland because... No, sure, that's right. No, no, actually, but that's the fucked up part. There is service. There is service enough to make phone calls, right? So, like, if you're in a jam, you can make a call, right? At least in most of the places I've been. But there isn't... It's not like you have clear service. Do you know what I mean? Like, I can't sit there and surf the web on my phone. Like, you are out there and there's not a lot of people. And it's pretty barren. And you've got glaciers and mountains all around you. And you feel pretty out there, right? But in the summer, there's enough people coming and going that if you got stuck out there, someone would find you in a couple of hours. Especially if you don't venture too far off the beaten paths that they've kind of said. But that's the furthest... that's the most I felt kind of cut off. But, like, then you get back to the edge of the island where there's Wi-Fi everywhere, and then the signal's good, and you're plugged right in. You're plugged right back into the Matrix, man. Cyber space is upon you. So, yeah, it is strange. And I wonder, I think my counter-culture-ness as a parent is kind of rubbing off of my kids. Or, like, I'm showing them a lot of stuff that the mainstream... the mainstream streaming services aren't necessarily going to algorithm at them. You know? So, we'll see what becomes of that. I mean, I was never looking for counter-culture. So, you know, there's people who are, like, who like a movie because it's not popular, right? But the only thing they seem to like about the movie is that nobody liked it, and then they felt cool for me, the person who liked it. And then, you know, I'm not looking at it. And, you know, I don't know. I'm not looking at it all the time, but I was younger. I was never like that. I like stuff that, for some reason, it just clicked with me. And I love Cyberpunk. I love future stuff. I love sci-fi. And I love fantasy. You know? So, like, there's a lot of these movies that were just not big then, that, I mean, there's a lot more sci-fi and fantasy in the pop culture zyda guys than there ever was when I was a kid. You know? Sure. And that's good. But it doesn't mean you necessarily get better content. It means that you just get more content. You know? It's like there's a lot more fantasy movies that come out, but it doesn't mean they're all good. You know? Same with sci-fi. There's tons of sci-fi out there. But not every sci-fi show is a good show. There's a lot of crap shows. There's a lot of just, you know? And I think I think is when you were younger, you have these movies that were flops, and yet they were still something brilliant about them. You know? And you sit there and you go, "Jesus, why didn't people like this?" You know? And then you sit there and you say, "Why do I like this so much?" But listen, there's still people who watch Ghost in the Shell, the original anime, and don't get it. And that's why the Scarlett Johansson version is fascinating to me, because they tried really hard to make it accessible. I think they largely succeeded, to be honest. I think so. I think so. Because a lot more people, but there's still people who don't get that movie. We're like, you know, it's just not their thing. Well, there's that. There's always going to be that, because it is very unapologetically cyberpunk. That's the one. Oh, yeah. But also it has a couple of very serious flaws. You know what? You know? Go ahead, go ahead. No, sorry. I think the combination of those things, that was going to be a tricky needle to thread no matter what, because you can't, it's going to be, let's put it this way. There's three groups of people you have to target with that movie. OK? One is people who know the original. Yeah. Which one? The movie of the comic? It doesn't matter. The anime or the comic? No, no, I don't think it matters, because I think Ghost in the Shell outside of it. I think that particular IP has done an excellent job of establishing the Mad Max idea where, yeah, these are all different and it doesn't matter. Yeah, nice. People on the source material, that's group one. Right, source material people, whatever it is, doesn't matter. Because there are people who bitch that the animated one isn't the comic, which they're right, but who cares? So, source material people, mainstream audiences, and then a subset of mainstream audiences, which is sci-fi fans who don't know the source material. And I think they were heavily banking on what they were trying to aim for was the two niche and they were hoping that mainstream people would be dazzled by the visuals and the names, which is really scholarship. And that, you know, the source material people, they adapted too much of Storyline's people knew and then bungled it, which they were trying, like, I don't know, it's hard to explain it about doing a complete dissection of the movie. But the flaws were always going to drive away large amounts of the audience that they thought they might get. Then there's also the problem of having her be formerly a Japanese woman, which any buddy reasonable looks that goes, "Oh, what were you thinking?" They made it Scarlett Johansson, because she brought the money. Yes. And she brought a lot of people. And then making her be Mattoco, that was an attempt to nod towards the fans, but you can't win that? That's not going to work. That's like, no, but you literally just made a Japanese woman a white woman. Right. Yeah. Good. That is the biggest glaring problem with the movie. And that problem, by the way, transcends when we know the source material or not. That's the problem is that goes all over the place. Yeah. Because if you know the source material, you're like, no, come on. And if you don't, you're like, that's offensive. So either way, you've just fucked a bunch of people in the face. She was the money. She's the reason that movie got greenlit. Well, sure. But you could have just left that part out. You could have made it there. You could have had to be somebody else. You could have said that she was that she had been rescued. And you could infer that maybe she was, metoko, or maybe she was somebody else. Oh, leave as the inference. Yeah. But honestly, if it had just been that she was the major and now she was an American woman, I'm not saying people would have been upset, but it would have been a big issue because Bato is there. Well, and Togasa and Aramaki there, they are they are the representation of no, no, no, what I'm saying is though, if you just left out the name and you just made her the major. Yeah. A major. Right. And yeah, it's not that weird because you've got Bato there who's clearly not Japanese. Right. Right. And it doesn't seem weird that the major that a major would be a white woman. Correct. Whereas when you basically they try to shoehorn in the homotoko thing, you're like, okay. That's what I'm saying is it would have been smarter to just call her the major. I know. The fact that they did that not only offends the people who know the source material like, okay, you're really telling you couldn't find a Japanese actress for this? No, it should have been the girl from Pacific Rim. She was perfect. Right. But that's what I'm saying is if they just left that out, I know, I know, but they, but they screwed themselves on both sides of the knowledge base. And yet, the movie is stunning to look at. And I do enjoy it. And not toes. Perfect. Oh, visually. There's so much. Togas is great. They're all great. I know. Our maki is perfect. And I like Scarlett Johansson too. It's just the Matoko part that blows it. It's not her. It's the fact that they did that. I don't think she's. But they tried. Yeah. But you know what? She's got great actors, but she's not bad. She's good at action. She's fine. You know what? As I've gotten older, I'm more fond of Scarlett Johansson. And I just think it's that looks I'm aging with her. I think it's really. Yeah. No. Not every actress has to be Marilyn Streep for me to like what they do. This is a thing that people do. And I'm like, not everybody is at that level. It's fine. Keanu Reeves is not Anthony Hopkins. I still like the Matrix quite a bit. I still like a lot. I like giant mnemonic. I like these movies. But here's. So here's the thing is I find that sometimes also when they take these sci-fi properties, they try really hard to make them digestible, right, to like you said, to bring in a certain amount of the pop of the mainstream population, right? Yes. And this day, I am fucking angry with Altered Carbon, the TV series, right? But I now completely understand why they did it. It makes sense to me why they did it. I was recently talking to a group of very educated, we're going to call them like non-sci-fi-e people, right? Younger than me. They're mid-30s. Was that? Normies. Normies. Normies or the straits. I always like that. I used to call them straits. Guys, we're scaring the straits, okay? Yeah, but the problem is you say that and you're like, well, you don't know if they're gay or straight. I'm like, it's not that kind of straight. No, I know. That's why I said normies because that's more acceptable. But yes. You say what it's all right. Scaring the straits. Guys, scaring the straits. Okay. Talking about Altered Carbon. And they were talking, this group of guys, they were talking about how they loved the TV series, right? And that they really liked the way that the whole changing bodies thing and the tech thing. And I was saying how I can't watch the series because they changed it so much. None of these people had read the book, right? Yeah. So I started explaining to them what an envoy was in the books. And it made them uncomfortable. The entire idea of an envoy of being this kind of psycho spiritual violence ninja who's constantly figuring things out in the back of their head who are truly not human anymore and are absolutely dangerous, right? That essentially, it's almost like turning a human into like a great white shark of a predator. Sure. They didn't like it. They didn't like it at all. And like it actually put people off reading the book and I was like, okay, you know what? I get it now. They read the book that whoever wanted to make the show read the book saw these ideas and said, you know what, these are the ideas that people are going to enjoy. This is just going to fuck with them and we're going to scrap it. And that's the reason why the envoys are not the envoys in Altered Carbon because it's too much. It's that whole thing. We read something a while back where like you read when you read something about the future, you really only want like 20% future and then you have the 80 other 80% to be familiar. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yes. You don't want to change everything. You want to change little pieces. Yeah. And the concept of the envoy, I think is so different. It's so alien. It's not a normal thought process anymore. Like when you and I think is when you read the books, you are in Kobotch's head and you were seeing Kobotch's thought stream and at times it's like he's not even full control of how his brain is is gathering information and putting it together and presenting itself to him. Like, you know, he has been psychologically forged into something else. Right. And it's one of the things I love about the books is that there's something very alien about Takashi Kobotch and the envoys in general. The idea that they then could go on to become these kind of weird tech gods in the steel remains trilogy is dead on for me. I find that to be so cool, but it makes people uncomfortable. They don't quite get it. What do you mean they've been forged into something else? What do you mean they aren't quite, are they just like ninja? It's the whole why, why can I never get a version of Batman that I really want? Because the version of Batman I want is too fucking smart for most readers. And it would be boring because Batman wouldn't have to use all this fucking kung fu if he just sidestepped everybody and figured it out. And they do this somewhat and they're like, oh Batman's always got a plan for a plan. But did you realize his plan always ends up with him punching shit? That's the silly part of Batman and everyone's like, oh he's fucking brilliant. And I'm like, no, very often he is not portrayed brilliant. He is portrayed as a prepper. He's always got a prepper plan ready. He's got some sort of mech prepared. He's got some sort of special gloves with Kryptonite in them prepared. But he's not smart enough to head this shit off in the first place. In fact, one of my favorite Batman stories is the Tower of Babel story because he takes out his plans, take out the JLA and take them out very effectively, right? And he doesn't even have to be there for that, that shit just happens, it's fantastic. But it's too smart, it's too clever. And I think that when you make something that is just too smart, too clever, too different, too alien, it makes people uncomfortable. And a lot of sci-fi is playing with that discomfort. You know, and Nora Manser, case is uncomfortable with Winter Moot because Winter Moot is not alive. Winter Moot is an AI, is a true AI, not just a machine learning program that makes titties for you. Like this is a true thinking entity and it's got plans and he can't grasp what those plans are and it scares him, especially because he's locked into a deal with it. Like that's the kind of sci-fi I love. I don't know if they'll ever be able to make that into a proper movie for me. I think they'll lean into the heist and they'll forget all about the fact that Winter Moot is fucking scary, real scary. And you know, the envoys and altered carbon, I love the envoys because they're scary. There's something so sci-fi crazy about that. You know, 2001, a space odyssey, how is fascinating? Because when Hal goes, you know, he does go, he does go, he does go, but when he basically stops responding to their control, when he starts kind of thinking on his own, right, you're sitting there going, well, what is he going to do? Like that is for me what makes the movie, the fact that, you know, what is Hal going to do because Hal is not human, right? But you're not going to get that in pop culture because pop culture doesn't want it. It's too smart. It's too scary. It's too weird. It jumps the shark and that doesn't sell tickets. Just a second. Boys, boys, you're scaring the straights, okay? Is there any way we can do this tomorrow? There it is. Found it. Do somebody would have it? Yeah. I'll, when people have asked me about this type of thing, because I've had the same discussion with a lot of people on stuff when I suggest movies and they're a little bit out there and I say, well, one of the movies, and almost nobody in you and I both love this movie, but a lot of modern audiences probably have never even seen it and probably never heard of it. But I think one of the best examples of doing this correctly, except the movie just isn't real remembered, is Harley Davidson in the Marvel Man, which is a cyberpunk film, which is an utter, a sneaky cyberpunk film, everybody's named after a named brand. Right. And there's an advanced license plates or barcodes. Yeah, the advanced technology is destroying old neighborhoods, corporations are coming in with advanced bulletproof technology. There's a new drug on the street. But if you want to show that movie to people, I don't think most mainstream audiences would call it a science fiction film. It's weird. What is it? That's what they would say. They'd say, well, no, it's sort of an action film, I guess. It's just kind of strange. And they wouldn't get that. What the strangest is that it's, well, it's 15% cyberpunk and the rest is, yeah, kind of a modern Western, a gunslinger movie. But you could rewrite that movie and change it very little and make it full cyberpunk. In fact, no, if you just change the way people look slightly, throw a few more computers, greens, weird glasses, that movie could take place in cyberpunk, what is it, 2077? Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you gave people augments and you had some holograms on buildings and some of the vehicles had full H, you know, huds that had, you know, smart motorcycles, things like that. Yeah, yeah, the motorcycle, you didn't have to hold a handlebar as you could sit there like, you know, Tetsuo, on the biker and full throttle, and honestly, and the thing for me, if I was going to redo it, the marble man would be like half robotic, like he'd still dressed like a cowboy, but he'd have like a metal arm and a metal leg and yeah. Well, no, and his guns would be built into cybernetic legs like Robocop. He would just, you know, sling him out. His thighs would, flaps in the front of his thighs would open and he'd draw them out and fire. Yeah. Or he would just bend his arms back and fire the guns out of his elbows because that's the quickest way to draw is fuck your hands, just go bang, bring your arms up. You're done. Yeah. Or his fingers, I guess. But that is one of those movies that I don't even know if it was intended that way or it was kind of an unintentional, like, this is Cyberpunk, guys. Oh, no, that can't be accidental. No, that's, I think that that was, let's see, let me look at the thing. I'm pretty sure that was intentional. I don't think it was an accident. And for those who haven't seen this. Oh, it's considered a Neo Western biker film, okay? Oh, there you go. Neo, Neo. Yeah. So, yeah, if you haven't seen this, Harley Davidson, the marble man, it's got Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke. Mickey Rourke. And, yeah. I don't know. A lot of other people. There's lots of other people. Time size marks in it. Tea Carrera has a little thing. Yep. But it is a, and I think one of the, the bald ones is the bad guy. Daniel. It's where the team of bad guys. Daniel Baldwin. Yeah, but they have these ultra bulletproof suits that are awesome and they're after their drugs. But one of the best is a great line about, was it how he's got that one gun that fires his giant bullets that he can't fucking aim. And every bullet costs like $3.50 or something like that. And there's a whole argument about how like, you know, you fire a whole, you fire a whole cartridge of that shit and you spent like 12 something and you hit shit and goes, my bullets cost a buck 50 is like, I fire three of them and think I hit three people. And there's this, I just, yeah, the dialogue in that movie is great. That's a really fantastic movie that also, by the way, I'm pretty sure was a flop. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Man, it's just sad when you start to realize that so many of these epic movies from your past were shunned by society or shunned by the box office. And yet, and you're lucky that they got to be, I mean, that's a good looking movie with a lot of good people in it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes, it is very, it's a, it's a weird sort of backslides, sour punk movie. Yeah, I'm trying to see if there's any info, but that's like, I mean, Clive Barker, that's why Clive Barker, there's not a lot of movie versions of his, his work. Yeah. Like, you think they're going to make, they're going to make a magic of the great and secret show? Like, there's some heavy fucking concepts being thrown around there. Yeah. Yeah, it's like instead they did hell, he did Hellraiser and he tried to tone it down. Yeah. And honestly, I think he's more recent book than one that you read. I think that's his attempt to basically write a book that he can just make into a movie or that someone can make into a movie. Sure. Because you were saying how there's a lot of it that's very sort of toned down. It's more, it's not as weird as some of, as pretty stuff. Yeah. Yeah. The Scarlet Gospels. Yeah. There's Hellraiser movie that he did. Yeah. It's more simple. Yeah. It's more straightforward. Oh, yeah. No, the first movie, I mean, Pinhead's only in it for maybe four minutes or something. Yeah. It's more of a screenplay for a miniseries than it is for one of his weird, mind-sprawling books, you know? Yeah. Anyway. I can't find anything about where this movie came from. Anyway. Very curious. Where were we going with all this, by the way? Oh, no. It was the idea of, you know, the ghost of the shell film and how it was made and how we had to-- No, no, before that. 20% sci-fi movie. No, before that. Before that. We started with something. Oh, well, we were talking about when you saw stuff-- hold on, I'm not showing how it's hold on. We started off with Verhoe. We went to Crawl. Oh, Verhoe. That's where we started. That's where we started. Yeah, yeah. That's how we got there. He started Verhoe. Yeah. I did keep track somewhat of things. I'm glad you do. Yeah. I'm glad that they recorded counter. Well, the show title is right place, right time because really, that's where this came from. Was the idea of, you know-- You know what though? --experiences. I'm going to give you a right place, right time thing just to close this, though. So when I was getting my master's degree in writing popular fiction, I was in a-- so this particular program, you'd have to be there for like two weeks out of the year. And then otherwise, you'd do a lot of writing and banding stuff back and forth. And I was there for one of the weeks and I-- they had used in one of the classes there had been a VCR connected to an overhead projector for a class, right. Oh. And you know those things in a play where like if you see a gun in the first act, it better go off by the third, right? I remember seeing that thing and going, oh, that's pretty cool. And then forgetting about it. And then that was the week that the Cowboy Bebop movie came out in the US on VHS. And I managed to find the only copy in this kind of weird anime shop out in East Bumble Fucking Pennsylvania. You mean Cowboy Bebop knocking on Heaven's door? Yes. Because they couldn't just call it Cowboy Bebop the movie? I should have. Well, technically I think that is the title, but when it came here, I think they had to re-title because they thought Americans wouldn't get it. And I managed to sneak into one of the classrooms at night along with a few other anime fans. And we watched it on this big screen, like basically it was like the size of the chalkboard screen we got to watch Cowboy Bebop knocking on Heaven's door in subtitles because it first came out. And it was fantastic. It was so great to see it like that. And oddly, with people, I was friendly with these people, but they were program friends. There were people that I knew there. But so it was almost like a movie theater experience for that because we got to watch it. We got to watch it in the classroom where we weren't supposed to be using technology that wasn't ours. And it was great because we had this kind of good sound and it was just the right place, the right time. And I remember that that was there and I was like, "Oh, I'm watching this. I'm watching this tonight." By the way, just to make sure because I looked it up to verify I had this right. No, no, it was not re-titled because of dumb Americans. It was re-titled because Bob Dylan apparently threatened to sue over the name. So they had to change it from knocking on Heaven's door to the movie. To the movie. Got it. There you go. Yeah. Oh. Well, that's a shame. That's so flustered over that. Oh, well, so what have you got for me, Mr. Wizard? So I bring to you a rare example, well, maybe not. No. Yeah. Usually when I talk about low budget films that are somewhat niche, I say, well, you know, only if you're into this should you watch it. But I would actually recommend this for anybody to watch because I think it's an example of really good characters in a low budget film. So this is a movie from 1983 called The Deadly Spawn. I'd never heard of it. Hold on. What year is this? 83. 83. Never heard of it. Apparently the budget was around $25,000, which is pretty low. That's Len Kavacinski money, so that's low budget. And it was released. It kind of vanished and it was recently was shot in New Jersey, and you can tell because some of the accents are magnificent. Not all, but some. It does, it reminds me of like places I was when I was a kid, like it's got that feeling to it. And it was a movie that came out. I don't think it did much, it vanished. And then it was recently remastered and it was put on shutter, the horror streaming service, which I have. But you can also watch it on YouTube. The quality is far inferior to the shutter release because that's remastered, so be aware of that. I would try to watch this in better quality. Are you watching the trailer for it? I love the horror movie cliches they're using to not have to show the monster. Like I applaud them because they're like, okay, we don't have the budget for this. So let's use every trick in the book to kind of like imply. Well, yeah. So there's two reasons to watch this. It's not for the story, I'll just tell you right off that, it's not that. It's a very straightforward story as far as it's basically the blob and alien put together. Meteorite crashes and these things come out of it and start chewing on people. That's it. That's the whole story. But the effects, because it's all practical, of course, this is 83, are not only well done in terms of, you can tell they put a lot of work into making these things. But there was an effect early on and I'll be spoiling it for you because I couldn't work out what they were doing. There's a part where you see the tadpole versions of these creatures swimming in water and it looked so good that I thought that maybe they had taken, like, so kind of blast or something. Actual tadpoles or something? No, no, no. I thought they put it on like large goldfish. I thought they modeled something and then glued it to the heads, because don't forget, you know, I mean, people like this may not necessarily be as concerned with the, you know, the treatment of fish as some of this might be. So I thought because they moved so well. I just love the idea that they were able to glue it to fish. I'm sure you could do it or staple it. You know, whatever, that's a Scrooge reference to anybody that gets it. So I couldn't figure out how they did it and then I saw the behind the scenes and I saw what they did and it looks amazing. And all it is is they took a piece of wood and they cut kind of a meandering line through it and then they put a string in it. And so when you see it out of the water, it's wriggling and it looks alive. It looks very impressive. And so when you realize that the caliber of effects that are being done for almost no budget, that's one reason-- You're saying clever is what you're saying. Clever, well executed. I honestly, when I saw that effect, I was sitting there for a couple months trying to figure out, because it's not like it's quick. You see multiples of the moving at once because they built this whole board for it. And it's really good, really good to the point where I was thinking they used some kind of living creature for it because I couldn't figure it out. And then when I saw it, I went, oh yeah, this is what effects people do. They figure this stuff out. It looks magnificent. The larger creature, look, you can tell that it's a large rubber monster. Does it matter? No. It looks impressive. It looks threatening. It's got a bit of an Audrey II vibe to it where it's a bunch of big mouths and tentacles. It kind of reminded me of the-- Do you remember in the max, the little mouthy creatures, the is? Oh, yeah. Something to call? Yeah, it is. All teeth and legs. Yeah. Yes. It's all that because, you know, and there, look, the storytelling can be clunky at times, so I'm not going to pretend it is. This is a $25,000 monster film. So they basically shot in two houses, one which is the artist Tim Hildebrandt, who is a very well-known artist who's worked on comics and all kinds of stuff. One of the houses they shoot in is his, which is just a weird piece of interesting trip. Did he know them? Was he just like-- Oh, yeah. No, no, I think he helped him with some stuff like doing, like, promotional artwork. I don't know. He made them the poster, actually. Did he do their poster? It wouldn't shock me that artwork kind of looks like his thing. Who did the-- Did he post your artist better than the movie? Well, OK. I wouldn't say that because-- It could be. It could be Hildebrandt. Yeah. It could be. The movie is-- the other thing about the movie that is fascinating for what it is, is the characters are off the beaten path of what you would expect because this is only, I think Friday the 13th was 80 and Friday the 13th initiated a whole way to do monster films when it came to teenagers. Hold on. Hold on. The lead actor is Charles George Hildebrandt. Oh, well, there you go. OK. So that must be what it's called. So is that the artist or is he related to the artist? No, Tim Hildebrandt is the artist, so I'm assuming it's his brother relation. Yeah, it must be. I wonder if it's a relation. Well, Charles is pretty young. So maybe it's-- Well, I don't know. It's '83. I don't know how old Tim Hildebrandt is. Let's see. Does it say? Tim Sullivan. I'm looking to see what his family-- Oh, some of these-- yeah. So these people were like into art and stuff. So probably these are-- Well, his brother's Greg. What was the name of the main guy? Tim Hildebrandt. Charles. So Charles George Hildebrandt is the main guy. So but Tim Hildebrandt is the illustrator. Tim Hildebrandt was-- His brother-- Yeah, his brother-- Jesus, he's older. So he had to be older at this point. He did one of the famous Star Wars posters. Brother is Greg. OK. Oh, yeah. It could have been a-- Greg, Tim Hildebrandt. Yeah. So probably a son. It's probably a son. Yeah. Because that's right. The Hildebrandt brothers. That's right. There's two of them. So yeah. Let's see. Does it show any other-- I'm curious now. I'm curious if they did the-- It was a whole son. Paintings. Does it say-- Give me a name. They've done so much art that it's going to be impossible to figure this out too. That's the art thing they've done. They've been around for so long that probably Harry Potter, Magic the Gathering, pin-ups. Oh, yeah. I remember their pin-ups. They've done some really good ones. Well-- His son. It was his son. OK. It makes sense for the age. His son Charles, yeah. They can actually make sense. Oh, man. His brother. It was twin-brother Greg. Yeah, Greg and Tim. Yeah. And he realized they were twins. I didn't know they were twins, but I knew that they were both-- the last stuff had both their names. Yeah. Yeah. His son. His son was the lead actor. OK. So that-- Also, was he involved with making it as well? It says-- Because he was the lead actor, but he didn't-- It doesn't indicate that. I don't know. There's no information about him, so it's hard. I don't know. No, he was just-- It sounds like reading this. He was just the star. Yeah. Interesting. [LAUGHTER] He got his dad to do the poster. That's pretty funny. Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah. If his dad did it, it looks like it could be. It wouldn't shock me. It wouldn't shock me. No, it wouldn't. Yeah. So the other part is outside of the actual practical effects, which are at times excellent for the budget of this film. Like I said, when you see how they did some of them, it's really impressive. The other is the characters do not follow the typical dumb teenage mold that, again, Friday the 13th kind of ushered in. This idea that if you're going to have teenagers, they're going to have to be nude and stupid and boinking and they're going to get killed. That's how it would work. And this, they feel very real, that some of the dialogue is very organic and natural. They're all intelligent because they're going to be studying for biology and it so happens that one of the girls who's coming to study finds one of the tadpoles dead and brings it because she's like, what is this? I don't think this is, I think this might be a new creature and they think it's something amphibious. They're like, they're trying to dissecting it. They're trying to figure it out. They're applying the scientific method. And so it's very interesting because normally the teenagers in this, there's a lot of their dumb, you know, they do stupid things, they make dumb decisions. None of that happens with the core group of teenagers. And then the younger brother is basically the classic idea of the universal monster's nerd. He's got masks and he's into old 50s Frankenstein Dracula, the creature from Black Lagoon, the sort of archetype of that. And so he's got like special effects things like flash powder and things like that which will become later how he kills the monster. And so he's-- Yeah, like very monster squad. Yeah, he writes me a lot of data from the Goonies, but imagine instead of gadgets, it's universal stuff. Right? So you assume that he's going to be a liability, you know, he's going to be like the annoying part. And instead, he is actually the person who figures everything out because early on, their parents get killed right off the bat and they don't realize it because they left a note saying we're going out early, we'll be back. So the parents, they think are just out and they don't realize till almost the end of the movie that the parents are dead because they see the car on the garage and they realize, oh, they're gone. Which actually causes the older brother to have a psychotic break. Like, not psychotic, but he basically says, you know what, this isn't real. None of this is-- because he's seen a bunch of people die in front of them and he can't handle it. Which, again, is reasonable to see all this death in something that, you know, shouldn't exist. There's a monster in your house that is killing your friends and your family. Yeah, not everybody's going to be able to handle that. But the youngest one, the younger brother, kind of goes down to the basement at one point and he discovers the creature and realizes, very Jurassic Park style, that it can't see that it's doing things based on sound. So most people when they encounter it scream and it homes in on them. So he basically goes silent when he sees it. He's in shock and it just kind of sits around there and it doesn't really know what's going on. He knows something was there, but it doesn't know where it is. So then he starts figuring it out by like throwing stuff and watching it react and he starts to figure out, okay, if I'm quiet, then I can get away from this thing. But he spends a large part of the movie in the basement because nobody-- another thing I like about this is this is obviously pre-cell phones, pre-allow the stuff we have now. Nobody's really sure where anybody else is unless they were grouped together when things started going wrong. So the older brother isn't really sure if the younger brother is even in the house. He obviously doesn't know the parents are dead. So there's this real, well, at the time would have been a correct thing where if you don't know for sure where somebody is physically, you don't have a way to verify where they are unless you can see them. This is the whole being cut off thing we were talking about earlier. Yes, exactly. People are actually-- you can actually be cut off because you don't know. If you don't-- if you don't-- if you don't have the communication of a method to call each other or if they're near a phone, you know? Yes, a beautiful bit of symmetry here, which we did not plan but nonetheless works out. So yeah, there's this thing where nobody's really sure where anybody else is and they don't really know what's happening. They know people are missing. They're seeing these little-- they don't really see the full monster until well into the movie. They're seeing the little tadpole versions which are almost like they are able to bite you and harm you but they can't kill you. So for awhile, most of them are critters where there are little balls where they can shoot the spikes that can not kill you. Yes, yes, that's exactly what they are, yes, the crates, yeah. So that's kind of-- except the critters will kill you. They will-- they have a mouthful of razor teeth. These things are so small that they're kind of like big leeches where, yeah, if they really grip you and you rip them off, they'll take a chunk but they will kill you by themselves. The big one will or if a bunch of them come down on you at once but they're pretty spaced out. They're attacking. They're not coordinating. They're kind of all just independent little things. And so there's these scenes where-- there's one where a bunch of older women get attacked where it's really horrific because they're just screaming and screaming and they're all getting bitten and they're just trying to get out of the house and these things are just everywhere and they're just-- it's almost like being infested. So almost like the birds thing where you're caught outside and all the birds are just coming down on you. So there's all these little scenes that are really well done. Like I said, the effects are great especially if you see the behind the scenes and how they did it. And the characters react very naturally. They're not dummies. They don't do stupid things. They either get killed because they are just completely ignorant of what's going on or because they don't realize what-- where initially is for most of the movie is down in the basement in a corner where it's very dark and so it just kind of waits and it lets you come towards it. And then when you see it, you turn a light on, you put a flashlight, you scream, then it knows where you are and it gets you. So it's a somewhat intelligent monster. It's not portrayed as being particularly smart, but it's not a dummy either. It knows how to do things. And so the movie eventually comes up into the house and the girl who found the tadpole, her and the older brother are kind of maybe going to be romantically involved. They have a really quick brief kissing, they're talking about going to the movies. Well she gets her head bitten off and thrown out a window and he sees the body. Which point I think that's when he really just loses it. And they also do encounter his uncle in a room with his body basically gored out from the inside. Like he's got no eyes, the things are everywhere, they're eating him from the inside out. And so that's why his break makes a lot of sense. Because that's-- and he also sees the car and that I think-- he sees the car and then he sees the body of the girl and that's when he starts going, "You know what? No, no, this isn't really when he starts to try to leave the room." And the other two people that are with him have to basically knock him down and stop him and like throw him into a corner and punch him to knock him out. And up to this point he's been the most kind of stable and he was like, "No, no, there's a way to do this. We'll just do this carefully and methodically." And but there's this thing where, well, when too many barriers go down, there's nothing left of you. You can't rationale something like this anymore, it's just there's too much going on. And so ultimately the way the monster-- well, that you think, the monster-- there's kind of a light of the living deadness to the ending. So the big monster comes upstairs and little brother figures out that he can lure it by stuffing a bunch of explosive powder into one of his masks and making noise and having it bite the head. Kind of jaws style. And he's like, "Well, if it bites the head and I put an electrical wire in it and I plug it in, it'll ignite the flash powder, which is basically like black powder, and it'll blow it up." And so he-- There's only one of these. There's only one big one? There's only one big one that we see. But the little ones get big? Well, they will eventually, but we'll get there in a second. So we see a lot of the ones in the one big one, which progressively gets bigger as the movie goes on. The little ones that we see-- it was never clear to me. I got the feeling that the big one was spawning them. And some of them are getting killed. The kid sees one bite on an electrical thing and catch on fire, and that's what gives him the idea that fire can hurt it. And that's where he comes up with the bomb idea. So I mean, the little kid is clever. He's noticing things. He's observing things. And he's figuring stuff out that nobody else is figuring out because-- not really because he chose to be stuck with this thing for a long time, but he's done that basement for I would say two or three hours with this thing because he can't quite figure out how he can escape silently because the basement is full of water because it's been raining the whole movie up to the very end. And so the basement has water. You move. You make noise. Even if you're going really slowly, you could make ripples in the water. It could figure it out. So he has to be very careful when it happens. I think he actually-- the reason he can escape is because there's noise upstairs that destructs it, and it goes up to get who's in the house. And that's when he figures out, OK, now I can get out. And so he creates this mask bomb. He gets the thing to eat it. He blows it up. And then after that, we see a scene that's very similar to Night of the Living Dead where now the cops are there, they're chasing down, and they figured out they need to electrocute the creatures. So you see them going around with cattle prods, and they're catching them, and shocking them, and they're throwing them onto a fire, and the whole town is aware of what's going on. Oh, yeah. So the shock and awe of it has gone. Yeah. Now that they understand what's happening, and they know there's a weakness, now they're kind of killing the tadpoles before they can get bigger, and that type of thing. And so then we see that the older brother is basically traumatized, and in shock. So you see the paramedics come and they take him away, and they find a little brother, and they put him in a cop car, but he seems OK, because he's figured it out. Oh, man. I think Charles George Hildebrandt is the younger brother. Oh, then I've got them mixed up. OK. Oh, yeah. Peter's the older one. That's right. His name in the movie is Charles. Yeah. OK. So yeah, that's what I'm saying. So he wouldn't have to be the son, because he's a little... Oh, so he's basically the lead on a weird way. Well, unless he's the co-leader of the movie, yeah, he really is. So yes. So they take him away, but he seems to be OK, because I think he figured out how to combat the monsters. Like, that's the idea is that unlike the other ones who couldn't accept what these things were, did he make it into the movies? Did he never make it into the movie? He may not have. This might have been a one-and-done type of thing. This might have been like a special effects demo. I think they tried to make a sequel in 2022. No, they did. They did. Which I will watch, because it has more of a budget. Return to the spawning ground. No, it's called Metamorphosis the Alien Factor. It's got a great poster. That's the secret. Interesting. I don't think Hildebrandt's in that, though. No. Like I said, I think that's a better production overall. I don't know if the movies are any better, but I know it had more money and looks more like a real movie than this does. This looks like what it is, which is a bunch of people who knew each other made a movie. It doesn't look bad, but at no point would you mistake this for a well-budgeted independent feature. Let's put it like that. Yeah. This is very low budget. And so then we get to the end. But it seems very logical. It doesn't sound like they went for any of the traditional-- No, no, no. Look. No, that's what I'm saying. The movie's writing at times is much better than you would expect, especially how the characters act. They feel like real people. And the effects are well. Nothing-- there are some moments of convenience, as they're off an hour, narrative convenience points. You'll see them. They have them. Gee. Hold on. I just like this piece of trivia. Gene Simmons of the band Kiss currently owns the-- Oh, he has the head. --pre severed head of the kid's mother. Yeah. The kid sees that in the basement. Yeah. And this is what I mean. There's this interesting contrast, and I feel like the idea of it is similar to when Stephen King's it where children can fight it because their imaginations allow them to know what it is. Adults just don't see it. They don't know it's there because they've grown past the ability to imagine horrors that aren't realistic, that type of thing. And that feels like what this is, where the youngest kid is doing well because he's not questioning where this thing-- like, he's already in a world of monsters in his imagination. But there's this interesting part where the uncle, before he dies and gets eaten out from the inside. He sits the kid down because he's like, oh, I'm going to-- he's a psychiatrist, I think. He's going to a seminar on child psychology. He's like, you know, I'd like to ask you a couple questions just because I want some reference material, something to know. And he's asking these questions about monsters and whether he thinks monsters are real. And he's like, no, I don't think they're real. I just like monsters. He's like, do you ever dream or have nightmares? He's like, yeah. And he's like about monsters. He's like, no. In my dreams, it's usually that somebody's chasing me or something like that. It's not really a monster. So there's these things where you're realizing that he is able to enjoy the idea of monsters but doesn't really think they're real. But again, when he sees it, he has a moment or two of horror where he's scared. But then he starts to figure out that, OK, well, this thing is here and I have to figure out something that I can do instead of just panicking, screaming, and dying like everybody else has been down there is. Whereas the older kids, they're approaching it scientifically and when they can't work out a terrestrial explanation, the Peter, the older brother, basically cracks. When he can't work out what this is, it's too much for him. Whereas the younger brother's like, OK, I figured out that this thing has a vulnerability. What can I do to stop it? And I figured it out. So like I said, end of the movie, the big creature's been blown up, then the little ones are being chased down and hunted by the cops. We see all the remaining protagonists taking away in cop cars and then we cut to this long shot of the house and there's a hill behind it and the hill basically opens up and the hill is a giant monster. So it's been growing. There's been a bigger one underneath the ground the whole time where the meteorite embedded itself. And so the end is very much just like a giant monster and then it cuts to black. So the idea is, no, no, you didn't stop anything. You killed what to that thing is a tadpole. You killed the spawnlings. Yeah, the spawnlings. Whatever. Right. I can't believe it takes off from that or not. I don't read anything about it. But this is a very fun little movie. It's not going to blow you out of your socks in terms of narrative invention or, you know, it's not going to show you something that's just going to make you go, wow, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. But for a movie that was made for $25,000, that's basically in the locations of two houses and they built all this stuff and came up with all of it on their own, the story isn't insulting. Usually with movies like this, there's one of two things. Either the story's interesting and the effects suck or the effects are fantastic and the story's shit. And in this case, you have a better than it should be version of both sides, where the characters feel realistic and not stupid and not like they exist in the movie and the creature effects and especially some of the small effects are really, really impressive because you know, if you know that it doesn't have a budget, yeah, if you had $50 million, this would be terrible but for $25,000 to make the whole thing, yeah, this is pretty impressive that they built this thing that they, in fact, at one point, they had to, they made it too big because they were basing it on the basement. So when they had to move it upstairs, they basically had to cut it in half and reassemble it because it was too big. So, and again, if you watch the behind the scenes thing, which it's on YouTube, I don't think it has any sound, but you can see what they're doing, it makes the movie really interesting to watch because you realize they, and there's good camera placement, there's one thing where the kid, when he's down there, they reflect the water in the basement up into his face while he's terrified and it creates this really kind of surreal effect because you just see the water light bouncing on his face and he's scared and he's kind of just standing still because he doesn't know what to do. And there's stuff like that where you're like, okay, so not only is this a movie where I don't think the characters have the brain power of a yo-yo, but I like them and actually when the girl got killed, I was kind of like, oh shit, I like that girl. She was really rational and trying to figure it out and she was really the one who discovered the creature. It's just a scientist girl. Yeah, yeah. She gets decapitated or her head gets eaten off her body, so whatever you want to call that. I call it decapitation. Yeah, and then her body gets thrown out of the house and it's just laying there with no head, which is, you know, insult to injury, depending on how you look at it, they should just eat in their whole. And so it's like when the water's reflecting on the kid's face, there's all these interesting camera angles and you see that they actually put thought into, okay, we don't have a lot of money, so we have to project her through obscuring things, through using shadow. Yeah, and yeah, but you get the sense that they wanted to make as good a movie as they could. Yeah, it's clever deception. Good horror movies, if they don't have a ton of money or, you know, A-list people all over the place, you have to result to clever deception. Which is, okay, we can't show the back of this monster because it's guys standing behind it with, you know, arms that they're maneuvering. So we have to make sure they're in shadow. How do we do that in a way that doesn't look like we're hiding guys behind the thing? And so you have to figure out how to do that. And you know, when it's done badly, you can tell and it looks stupid or it's, you know, you can't see anything. I saw they have the mouth camera angle, too, where like, it's like the camera and there's a show of the mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, there's lots of, there's lots of really clever, interesting things where they figured out, okay, there's no way to show what we want to show here. So we'll do it through shadow where somebody's standing and you see them and then you see the shadows of what's coming towards them and we can make those look really big because you can project them. The actual things we see behind the scenes, it's just a little arm that's in front of a light. Well, it's not that big. It's maybe eight inches tall, but it looks immense because the shadow is coming towards somebody. So that's the kind of stuff where, you know, bad horror movies, they just shoot it flat and they don't bother to move the camera at all or they do it badly and like I said, there's a lot of movies that are so dark, you can't see what's happening and that's how they hide the effects and it's stupid. This is not a, we can show you the stuff that we made really well and we'll have to figure out how to hide the rest and we can do that in a lot of different ways and we can make it look interesting when we do it. So probably the only real weak point is there's no good. The soundtrack feels like it was made out of like a Casio, you know, if there's nothing to it. Well, I mean, come on. No, I'm just saying. I'm just saying, you know, I don't want to pretend that there aren't any signs of low budget. It's a low budget movie though. That's what it is. Yeah, and it doesn't hurt anything. You'll just go, okay, this isn't like some low budget movies where they somehow talk to somebody who would later become a great composer to do in the score. That happens a lot. You can find out these people who went on to make big, big movies, they started off in a small budget film and they made this really great soundtrack. It does happen more often than you would think. That's the only part of it where I go, yeah, okay, the soundtrack is forgettable. Everything else, it's definitely worth watching. The only part is I don't know. I know it's on Shutter and I know it's on YouTube, but the YouTube one is bad quality. I don't know if it's anywhere else to watch right now. So that's about the only bad thing is it indicates it's on anything else. Let me see. Now, see, I think the only places you can watch it right now are Shutter or YouTube, you know. So if you already have Shutter, then it's there. If you don't, the YouTube version isn't unwatchable, but it definitely looks a lot worse than the remastered version, which is a shame because you do see a lot more of it if you can see it more clearly. But still, if there's a point where you can see it, I would say note it down. If there's a point where it pops up on something, I would recommend it to, I mean obviously if you don't like horror movies, I don't think it's going to be for you. I can't get you past that hurdle, either like horror movies or you don't. But it's definitely more of a creature feature. The horror is there, but it's not, you know, it's not trying to be the thing or anything like that. The gore is, there are some gore, like that severed head does have, there's a part where the thing is ripping a woman's face off, and that's really interesting how they did that. They basically gave her a second layer of latex skin with blood underneath it. So you do see it tearing her face off. So the gore is not hidden. And you have to appreciate the cleverness of trying to create this gory thing. Oh, yeah, now this what I'm saying is, like that tadpole effect, which happens pretty early on, that right there stunned me and I went, no, okay, whatever goes on with the rest of this, I'm watching it because obviously the people involved could think in interesting and clever ways to get around, because you can tell it's low budget. And just in the way that it's in only a couple of houses, it's clearly actually filmed in their houses, you know, this isn't a set they built. So, you know, they clearly had to wait till it was raining because they're getting rained on and they look miserable. It looks like it is pouring on them. This is not a rain machine where they were able to walk out of it and put a blanket on them. No, no, no, it's pouring everywhere. So that's, that's all very clear. But like I said, when they're solving the effects problems in really convincing and clever ways and the characters don't feel like they are written by a dumb dumb, then I'm in. And so that's what I mean about, it's not going to necessarily surprise you as being a hidden gem. And yet it kind of is in that a lot of movies at this level trying to do this fail spectacular. They have maybe one good effect and everything else is shit. This has good effects throughout and good characters throughout. And so that overcomes any of its other problems and shown on 60 millimeters. So there's only so good it can look because 60 millimeter is not the best, 32 is what you want to go for if you can, but that's expensive. So, but I don't think any of that matters. I think once you. So what did any of these movie makers go on? Well, I think one of the people is like an effects person. So let me see. I'm always fascinated by what they went on to do. Did the director do anymore? Let's take a look. Director, nope, the director only did two things. Let's take a look at the story guys. The story, one of the writers did the sequel. Oh, he did night beast. Oh, that's a thing. Oh, he did fiend. I reviewed that movie. Oh, wow. Okay. So this guy did like low budget, local films. He was a school teacher. Ted A. Bohis. Douglas McKeean who directed it. Okay. So that's the teacher. The school teacher in the 70s, his students include magician David Copperfield, filmmaker Richard Wank, and the Animaniacs creator Tom Ruger. Okay. So the guy who did the special effects did some movies we've heard of, Poltergeist 3, not the best Poltergeist, but good effects, Ghostbusters 2. He did some severed heads apparently, there you go. And he didn't do a ton, but he did boomerang with Eddie Murphy, which is an interesting one. Actually, he made Grace Jones's corpse. That's his thing. Oh, for the commercial, she does that wild ass commercial where she keeps the perfume. Oh, yeah. Now he did do makeup on alien resurrection ex files, death becomes her, which is a great effects movie. That is a good one. Yeah. So okay. So that guy did some other things. So he went on to do some shifts. Yeah. The effects guy, which kind of makes sense. The effects guy did go on to do other things. Charles Hillebrandt only did this, Tom DeFranco did a couple of things here and there. So most of the people in this, I think only the effects guy went on to do a lot as far as I can tell. Yeah. But you know what? That's then that's probably what it was. It affects real for him to be able to say here, here's what I, you know, here's what I can do. And honestly, the fact that they executed these effects at that budget, I'm sure is why he got more work because they are very effective. Wow. The film was almost picked up for theatrical release by Paramount. That says a lot. In fact, it would be even close. I don't have trouble believing that because I, like I said, the effects are good. And the characters at times feel very, very realistic. They have the, especially the dialogue between them has this very natural quality to it. So I'm not surprised by that, but at the same time, yeah, I would have done any real theatrical business, maybe in, maybe in art houses, you know, but probably not. I'm trying to see if the sequel have any of the same characters. No, no, the sequel is trying to, apparently they, they had a much higher budget and they were trying to separate themselves. You see that poster with the head coming off the planet, like that's a good poster. It's simple, but it's striking. So I will watch that next and, but as far as this, like I said, the only shame of it is that the, the good version doesn't appear to be really easy to see unless you have shutter, which is a shame. Hopefully that will change in the next, you know, usually shutter stuff then comes to other services. I would imagine this will land on to be maybe by the end of the year. So I would say just keep an eye out for it if it sounds at all interesting. And like I said, it's, it's for people who like creature features, I think it'd be a lot of fun. It's relatively short. I think it's 80 minutes long, so it's not even an hour and a half. It's a quick watch and the effects are varied enough and you see enough different things. It's not like it's, some movies also have this problem. There's only one monster and you keep seeing it or you don't see it very often. And it's the only thing they made. That's not the case here. There's a lot of different versions of the creature. There's miniatures. So there's a couple of shots where they show the house is an establishing shot and it's very clearly like the, like, you know, a little miniature house on a hill, which at first I didn't get what the purpose of that was. And then when you get to the end and the hill becomes the monster, then you get, oh, that's the setup for that. Okay. Got it. Because in the rest of the movie, there's nothing like that. So you see this very clearly like little balsa wood house. I mean, it's perfectly serviceable, but you can tell it's not a real house. And so I was kind of like, why are they showing this because they show it two or three times. I'm like, what, why is this here? Then when you get to the end and the whole hill opens up and it's a giant monster mouth. They're like, oh, got it. That's what this was for. So it's a fun movie. I would say that anybody, again, who likes these kind of monster films and wants to see, you know, a little sprinkle of the blob with a little sprinkle of alien with a little sprinkle of Audrey too, you know, people who clearly like that kind of stuff, practical effects, that type of thing, you'll probably have a good time with it. Like I said, it's just shame that the only YouTube version I saw, there may be other ones I didn't find, appears to be what looks like a VHS rip. So it doesn't serve the effects very well because it's good to see them in their clearest quality because it makes them more impressive. It's the only bad thing. But like I said, note the name down if you have any interest. It will probably land on something, some type of free service, or maybe it'll be on Amazon for a couple bucks. I would absolutely say it's worth a two to four dollar rental because I do think that it's more clever than it could be at this point. That's a good question. I don't know who has that. I'm just curious. Like if you're going to pay for it, I just wonder who gets any of that. I would imagine it's either going to be the story, the guy who wrote it or the director. I don't. Well, let's say no, I guess it would be, let's see. Yeah, I wonder. The rights doesn't have issues. Because it was remastered, like it came out on Blu-ray. So whoever owns the rights gets the money. Let me take a look at who's got the Blu-ray because I know it came out. I don't know who did the Blu-ray for it. Okay. Here it is. It was done by, yeah, see the quality is so good on that Blu-ray. The Millennium Edition was done by who, let's give the company, oh here, here, here it is on Amazon for $150, Jesus, wow, I guess it's out of print. Yes, it is. It's $150, elite entertainment would be the company. Okay. There you go. So thank you, money. I guess that's who gets your money. Well, hey, they're keeping the movie out live. So it's worth the money. Yeah, yeah, I can't really complain because otherwise I don't know that this thing gets remastered. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go. Yep. So that was the only thing I had to talk about for this week and yeah, fun little movie for people. And on that note, whatever you decide to watch or enjoy or consume in isolation or otherwise, have a wonderful weekend and we will talk to you again next week. 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