Hey, Leo. Welcome back, Steven. How are you? I miss the old days of the show when we would do a two-parter and we would do some kind of cool, funny little sketch instead of talking about why you picked the movie because we already talked about it in the last part. That's fair. That's fair. I remember those. That was fun. They were fun and the audience thought they were hilarious. We just got a message. We got a message after message after message saying these sketches exist and we recognize that they are there. That's probably exactly how that went. I'll agree with that. We had some good ones, though. Remember we did some ones that were a little old timesy? Like, "Hey, that's what happened last week." We did a thing for Green Inferno that was like an old UNICEF ad which nobody fucking commented on and it was a lot of work. I remember enjoying making them and I remember enjoying being glad I didn't have to edit them together again because that was a lot of work for people to not give a shit. Well, Leo, I just have an ask. Just for this episode, can we go back in time and do a little sketch before we jump into the second part of Nightbreed? Sure. Do you want me to just go back and grab that footage and clip it in here? Hey, we've done it before, right? Nobody heard me. Nobody knew. Nobody figured it out. Nobody heard the Green Inferno UNICEF ad last time, so we'll just put it in this time. Well, thank you, Leo, for humoring me. Okay. Welcome, everybody, to spoils of horror. My name is Stephen. I am Leo. And this is episode number 143. You said that, like, short circuit. No, this is a demo. This is episode 143. Nightbreed, the director's cut, part two. We have an excellent day for an exercise, huh? ♪♪ Look at me, Daniel! It's all for you! I'm our number one fan. I hope they are watching. They're sick, they're sick, and they don't know. Clear your minds. You know what's going on. I'm scared to close my eyes. I'm scared to open up. Whatever you do. Don't fall asleep. Hello, scream box. This is Stephen and Leo from spoils of horror. We understand that you've been recently sending out screamers, screamers, screamers. Screamers. They're a delight, too. Not for the neighbors. The neighbors don't like them one bit. You've been sending out screamers for new movies to some of our friends over a dissect that film and give me back my action movies. Well, let me tell you a secret. I'm glad that they're promoting your movies, but those guys are chumps. They don't deserve them. You don't need their two listeners a month hearing about your movies. You need us, the big podcasters. We should be promoting your movies. You should be sending us the screeners. Yeah, and by big, I mean wide, like, gut wide, so big. Like, we have no idea how big and we all know how neck beardy fans can get. So that's a relation that you can make to your audience that only we can provide. Little known fact, I have very wide shoulders. I have a big head. Now that's true. Yes. I have a big head. I'm going to make a case here as to why you want spoils of horror to be promoting your show. I mean, we're a show that in 150 episodes, many obscure references to a bicocket joke that happened once in episode number 35 that nobody listened to. So it's gold. It's comedy gold. You're not even paying attention. We are the podcast that has the least amount of downloads for one of the most popular movies ever, and that's impressive. We are a podcast that dedicated at least 20 minutes to an elf saying a homophobic slur that nobody gives a shit about in a Christmas movie talking of which we are the only podcast that does holiday special the way we do it as nasty and horrible, not even Christmas related as you're ever going to get. Nobody else can challenge us. Yeah, if you want to show that is willing to use poetry and sing songy material to describe horrific murders and rape scenes in a cannibal movie, we are your guys. That's it. Passing on a golden opportunity with us. I'm just saying. At least we not forget the copious amount of fat jokes, bisexual jokes, and mental health jokes that are made at our own expense. We have interns and other characters that we don't pay to come in here and do shit for us that makes no sense and probably isn't funny at all, but we do it anyway, because what the fuck? Why not? We do love our pizza boy joke. No one has ever commented on it. So if you want this and other obscure references talking about your movie getting far too close to very impolitically correct jokes, laughing hysterically when I describe a vampires rib cage is looking like my own stomach at the beach. Go back and look at our catalog out of 147 movies. You'll probably find three or four you recognize. There's something for everyone. Everyone just doesn't know it because we don't advertise well enough to be known. And if none of this has convinced you that we are the right dudes for the gig, I can always bribe you with a fresh thong. That is true. And by fresh, I mean fresh, wink, wink, wink, right off the body. All right, so screen box. That's our pitch to you, but most importantly dissect that film and give me back my action movies are chops. Lori wakes in the catacombs of Midian and a woman named Rachel shares the origins of the night breed that the remaining races of shapeshifters, monsters and various supernatural creatures hunted and killed by mankind. Each has different powers and vulnerabilities. After seeing horrible visions of the inquisitions which led to the night breeds genocide, she demands to know where Aaron is. That reads exactly how it's going to correct you, but then I'm like, no, that's right. She goes on an odyssey to Baphomet's lair, passing by various breeds of horrors, monsters and oddities until she finds Aaron standing in reverence to the old god. Soon after, they are exiled from Midian for leading outsiders to their secret home. Decker works with a sadistic, self-absorbed local police chief named Eagerman, while simultaneously killing several people at a local hotel and framing Aaron for the murders. After several deaths and a few bloody reveals, Aaron is arrested and dragged off to prison. Others search Midian for the night breed, killing one when it's accidentally exposed to sunlight. This starts a montage of local police enlisting every redneck with a pickup truck to go to war against the monsters. They're arming themselves with an improbable arsenal of garret wires, shotguns, rifles, grenades and rocket launchers. Meanwhile, Rachel and Narcissus finds Lori and uses their supernatural powers to break Aaron out of prison. For I think after all this time, this is only the second moment where I don't really have an accurate piffy thing to start with because everything you just read is crazy enough that it was really difficult for me to pin one moment and go, "That's the thing to make fun of. That's the thing to talk about." This whole sequence is equally amazing and idiotic, but in all the right ways. I'm not saying this is an insult, I'm saying they blended everything together so well. Somebody brought a rocket launcher to a fight that was already one-sided because the monsters had no fucking weapons. That's nuts. There's so much that happens in this third of the film or this quarter of the film. And it starts off with a scene that I hate to start on a negative, but there's something that really bothers me about this movie and it's something to do with Lori's character. And it happens at this moment. She wakes up and there's this woman named Rachel and this Rachel woman is the woman that had the baby that was, they brought into the crib earlier on. She has a really, really cool power where she can turn herself into mist and float through keyholes and kill people with it and things like that. She's a really, really cool power. She's got a cool look to her. She looks kind of like a psychic, like a medium. She's got flowing robes over her because if you turn into mist, you can't be wearing like a snow suit and shit. You got to have-- Good. It doesn't want to do anything. You got to have clothes you can easily take off because it doesn't affect her clothes just her body. She explains the story of what got the night breed together. And I really love Clive Barker's imagination here. The night breed is not a race in and of itself. It is a multitude of supernatural races that all came together to work together because they basically, a religious inquisition, which is heavily implied to be Christianity, committed genocide and killed the ball. Clive Barker does love his allegories of heaven and hell and he represents them very well in his work. This scene where you see the inquisition is so incredibly well shot and so incredibly well done. I've seen a lot of cool gore effects and the costumes are amazing the way they look. These inquisitors look as just horrifying in their sort of black outfits with the white bibles with the big red cross on the front. You're seeing all this, these people being tortured and you're seeing all these creatures having these cruel fates. But what I really love about it is it doesn't just play up on the gore. It plays upon the cruelty. I actually found my heart sinking every time I watched this scene because you're basically watching not only utter annihilation, but utter devastation. You're literally watching people scream as their loved ones are beheaded. These are all creatures and monsters, but it still works the same way. You're basically watching the heroes of this war that was fought against these inquisitors all be tortured and killed and have their heads cut off. I mean this not jokingly. It would be like if Lord of the Rings ended with you seeing the severed heads of the four hobbits, it really is just defeating to watch, but it's so well put together. It's not going to surprise anybody at this point in the film to learn that there's a huge underlying story about who is the real monster here quote unquote is given away pretty fucking quickly in the movie actually we haven't talked about it till now because it wasn't relevant till now, but it's been there all along. It leads to some interesting allegories I suppose about people's perception of the film and who is the real monster and what does that mean and which part of social life does that refer to and which group gets to hold on to it and all that sort of stuff, which is equally fascinating and frustrating to me at the same time. I totally agree with you and that's really where this is all going to come up, but just from a writing perspective, Laurie really bothers me here. I've not mentioned much about her other than the fact that she is a catalyst for us to follow in the story earlier on, but this is also a fantasy movie, not just a horror movie, and she has this scene where she holds a child's hand and the child uses their magical powers to put in her mind this horrific genocide where millions of supernatural creatures have been killed and her almost immediate sentence that comes out of her mouth is where is Aaron I need to find him. And then she goes on this odyssey where she goes through Midian and it's quite long. It's a long sequence where she goes through and she goes across bridges and through tunnels and down catacombs and different things like that and meets all the different creatures inside of this actual city. Great sequence. I adore it. What I want to focus on is Laurie first because then she goes through that sequence. She finds Boone down at Baphomet, a god, a god that is down inside of these caverns. And when she pulls him out and pulls him to the crypt, what does she have to say to Boone? As Boone is now struggling with whether to leave or whether to stay, whether he's part of the night breed, whether he's not. What does she say? She says, I'm the only thing that matters. They don't need you. Only I need you. This is why I called her codependent. I hate I hate this character so much. I have never seen the such a sad female character and female characters always get this like they get this character that has nothing on their mind in the world other than their boyfriend. Yeah. And I really understand and really sympathize with the women that you and I know in our lives that just talk about poorly written female characters. It's not to say that there is one type of female character that is good or bad and everybody agrees and disagrees on that shit. But this kind of character showed up over and over and over again. And I get why this character is frustrating. I find her frustrating. I can't believe that this part of the story centers so heavily on her and we are centered on a person that can't drum up an ounce of empathy for these people, for these creatures that have had their entire lives destroyed and that there's no hero's journey for her at all. I don't mind in the earlier part of the film that all she cares about is Boone. I actually think that's good because there's an opportunity as most people do when they grow up for her to grow and realize that this world is not all about her and what she wants. And the movie completely misses this and just has her continually focused on them leaving as to create some kind of tension for Boone as to whether he should leave with her or stay with the night breed. You know that there's a such thing as writing fucking letters, right? Like you know that there's like a phone. You know that you don't have to choose in life whether to just be one thing or another. Or I don't know, give her some fucking growth and give her an opportunity to realize that these creatures are things worth actually caring about and that they might have their own needs and desires and that maybe it could be an opportunity for her to question what she finds grotesque and not grotesque. Are you following me here as I get up on my soapbox? I really hated this character. I think you're touching on some important points where the story of falters, some probably through no fault of its own but some actually deliberately through the writing. One problem exists in what you said where this sort of character happens over and over again. It would be one thing for this one character in this one film to act like this because we all know people who are like this, let's be real. They do exist. They're out there. We're talking about a timeline in Hollywood more so than now even though now is not that greatly improved where this sort of character existed constantly and it became such a trope and it became such a vibe that everyone had no choice but to get sick of it because it's not a fair representation and frankly it's not a good story arc for the people involved. Like you say, the world isn't all about her and they missed a really strong story option here by giving her that character arc where she redeemed herself by exploring Midian and learning about these creatures and seeing the genocide and saving the little girl to make her go fuck, I need to not be self-centered. I need to help these people. I need to help Boone, it's comparable, this is a quick analogy to Harry Potter. There was, god what, I forget which the second third book, anyway it's the one that had the big school dance in it. Books versus film, we were talking about this in the first episode. Big difference, they have to take liberties, they have to make choices. When it came to the movie, they focused entirely on this school dance and the little romances that all the characters were having in their preteen years so that the preteen audiences could go and fall in love with it like Twilight and it was all fucking garbage. Because there was a stronger story in the book about Hermione Granger doing an uprising of the house elves that were being mistreated which was actually a really interesting story and they chose to get rid of all of that in the movie in favor of this romance and school bullshit and drama that nobody fucking cared about. I feel like that's what they're doing here is they had the chance to give her a really good character arc, a really strong personality of redemption and they've fucked it away for where's my boyfriend, I need him to be with me. Can you imagine, and this is gonna sound like I'm making a joke, can you imagine if in the first Ninja Turtles movie, if April O'Neill found the turtles and was like, but where's my boyfriend? Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it slipped us into any great film. The reason why, and this is gonna sound so bizarre, but I actually think that they did a really great job on that first Turtles film is that April is a good character and she actually changes in the story because of her meeting with all these sort of like other worldly, not otherworldly, but you get these mutations in this weird world of ninjas and things that she didn't know was out there, she learns from it, she changes, she becomes a different person. But also, I think it's just insidious the way that not only does Laurie only care about her boyfriend, but fucking uses the nightbreed every single chance that she gets because she needs someone to save Boone. And that fucking frustrates me. There's nothing I can't stand more than these characters that only care about the sort of like the weirdos when it is to their benefit. You see this sometimes in like bad fantasy stories where the girlfriend or the boyfriend or whatnot will go to this other army of people and be like, I need your help saving my princess or my prince, but then they're just fodder, like they're just fodder for this other storyline. And look, there's sometimes where you need that, you know, there's Fury Road has an army of like grandma's that, you know, show up at just the right moment. And that actually works in that film, I'm totally fine with it. But there's just something, I think the word is insidious, like there's just something I find so selfish and so frustrating about the way that she, I do feel like she kind of uses the night breed. Like she uses them to save her when it matters and to, and she doesn't do anything for them. Like she doesn't do anything other than these few scenes with this little kid. So the best that they can give her is like maternal instincts. That's it. She's this close to baking pies and singing somewhere that's green. How many times did we hear it in this film where Lori is like, I saved that child? Doesn't that owe me something? She doesn't say, doesn't that count for something? She says, doesn't that get me something, doesn't that, doesn't it, don't I deserve something for that? What a great point. What a great point. Because that's exactly who she is. And I mentioned before, we all know somebody like this, these people do exist. We know that person who is going to act like a self entitled Karen and then come to you when they need something, but then when they get the thing from you, they walk away and act like a self entitled bitch again. And we just never get a scene where she actually learns to give a shit. We just never get that scene. And it frustrates me so much when she walks out of those fucking catacombs. She's like, they don't need you. Only I need you. Only I need you is what psycho girlfriends say. That's what psycho girlfriends say. And and it's just so frustrating because it's not like you can't have your cake and eat too. You can have a boyfriend and love him and also care about other people. And again, the redemption story arc, she could have found Boone because the first part of the story was, I am sad that he's dead. I need closure. I need to find him. I need to figure this out. And that's pretty good. She finds him. And then she's, oh my God, there's this whole world here. And oh my God, I've been wrong and oh my God, these people aren't monsters after all. I need to do my part. I need to help. I need to change my ways. This is fucking Han Solo going from all I care about is the money to coming back and helping him win the fucking war. This is what we need from a character. Yes. Exactly. There could have been a great scene with her in the end of the movie where she comes back and she's like, no, the night breed are my people too. I'm part of this tribe. I'm I'm I'm you could have had the cops. Any one of those cops could have been like come here and miss when they have their big war and the cops are fighting the night breed. Any one of those cops could have been like, Hey, you lady who is in trouble and you know, why don't you come on our side will protect you and she's like, no, I'm one of them. Yeah. I'm going to stand with the night breed. Yeah. That's all it was. Oh, especially because at the end of the film, we see her and Boone as the prophesized couple that is supposed to rebuild Midian and take him off to his next glory. If she's going to be all that, if that's who she's meant to be in the story, then she should give a shit about these people. And I'm sorry, we don't normally talk about the entire arc of something, but I just want to stay on her character because I really like night breed and I don't want to focus on this the whole time because I just want to focus on the parts that I like going forward. The fact that at the end of this movie, all is done. And the two of them are standing on this hilltop and he says, okay, we've what has happened has happened. I have to go go and fulfill my prophecy. And then she says, well, I want to come with you because you're mine and that's literally all my lady brain can think of is that I want to be with you, which is again, how she's written, not certainly how we think, but how she's written. He says we can't be because you're not night breed. What'd she do? She fucking stabs herself. Like she stabs herself and is like, now you got no choice psycho girlfriend. Yeah, 100%. If I can't have you, no one will rather than kill you, I kill myself. Now we're both undead. We're both living in Midian forever. And what are you going to do about it? You can't get rid of me. That is on the level of if you don't come home from work an hour early, I'm going to blow my brains out. That's what psychos do. Yeah, it's rough. It's rough writing to your point, not against the actress. She did the word for what she had in the script. She acts the role at all. Yeah. It's about they wrote the character poorly. Oh, 100% it's honestly, it's it's that bad that I don't mind saying that. Yeah. You know, this is such a stereotype and it's just, look, there are sometimes when a stereo kept typical character, I kind of defend, or, you know, if it's like, that's a little politically correct or oh, it's a different time. I don't think there was ever a time that we thought that female characters cared about nothing and couldn't find a single ounce of empathy for this horrific genocide that these people have experienced and go, oh, you know what, I maybe I can be part of the solution here or maybe I can try to prevent this from happening again. Or maybe I can just help these people and care, not just immediately go into, well, sorry, you just shared that all of your friends and relatives are dead. But I really need to find my boyfriend right now. It's too bad though, because the scene where she travels through Midian is awesome. Yeah. This is the chance for them to show off the characters that they have created for this world because up until now, we've met five of them and we've seen 10 of them because there's some background ones that we didn't actually get introduced to. And then there's the lead profit guy, the porcupine chick, the guy with the dreadlocks, blah, blah, blah. Right. So now she's traveling through the underground layer and she gets to pass by all these different rooms and see all these different creatures and characters. And again, we don't get to really know any of them, but we get to see how expansive the world is and how absolutely astonishing the practical effects in this movie were for creating all of these myriad of magical and mystical creatures. And you know what I love is that the creatures are challenging. They're actually monsters. And so it's not just like beautiful blue women with wings, you know, it's not things that everybody would look at go, I want to be that, so that's fine. It's it's gory, nasty monsters. It's boned wing and birds. It's things that are eating people. It's things. It's overweight torso with a face out of its stomach and tiny little hands coming up off like ears. There's one that's just a pile of muscle and bone and heads. I mean, they're grotesque. And what I love about it is it's actually challenging. If they had given her a better story arc, it actually does challenge you to ask yourself your own judgments on these creatures that actually really aren't doing anything wrong. Right. They just disgust us. Yeah. They're trying to live. They're trying to survive. And this is going to be a questionable comparison. But I've learned in my life, growing up in the projects, I've seen people and how they approach that lifestyle, how they look at people from that area. And more well off people, I'm not going to go into a race card or whatever else. But people who don't understand that the ghetto, the neighborhood, whatever, you know, like this is just people who are low income doing their best to fucking survive. Sure. We're trying to have a normal life. We're trying to just be regular people as best we can given this shitty circumstance that we've been dealt dot dot dot. And that's really where these monsters are, so that people are looking at them and being, oh, they're horrible, they're hideous. We can't get past the surface level. We can't see beyond what's happening here. And meanwhile, they're literally just people who look different trying to have the best life possible. And you and I had a private conversation before about how sometimes artsy fartsy theory talk just sucks the energy out of the room, even if you agree with some of it. So I think that the metaphor, that the monsters of Midian are very much like the gay community or any other community, I think is totally valid. I think it's especially valid for that community because you can make the argument that the argument in favor of the monsters is the same that would have been for the gay community in the 80s and 90s when this movie was made, which is that you are seeing something that disgusts you, but you're not they're not doing anything wrong. And so I think that that's a really good metaphor. I also think there's some other metaphors that are really good that maybe other people would not bring up, which is that just because communities form doesn't mean that they all form around the same values. And it doesn't mean that all the people in them are good. And what I really love is that the monsters are also not all lovable. Some of them are gross and the couple of them threatened to rape Lori, you know, a couple of them threatened to eat her. And then some of them are insanely likable and fun and people that are just different and that you would want to know that you would want to know in your life or defend and it makes the argument that just because a community forms, it doesn't necessarily form. It's not necessarily that every single person in there is perfect and every single a single person, you know, has all the same values. So I think the metaphor like you were talking about with people that are have don't have as much and have suffered, I think the metaphor is true for the gay community as well and Clive Barker's gay. He's got lots of gay characters in his stories, it works. But I also think that sometimes it goes a little too far when people talk about it. To start with, I think you touched on something that makes what we said at the end of the first episode here a little more relevant, where even though this is the best cut of this film, it's still a little confusing at times. For example, we are meant to have sympathy for the monsters because the humans are the real monsters and the monsters are the good guys, but the monsters are being monstrous and that doesn't help us have any sympathy for them. So it doesn't all jive quite as well as it should in some areas. It doesn't make it a bad film. I'm just pointing out as a matter of being fair in my assessment of the movie, some shit don't work. I actually think it's a strength. I actually think it's a strength of the movie that the creatures aren't perfect. And from what you said there, I didn't think of it from that angle, and that puts a different light on it. And it brings me back to something else you said about when we were talking about the face under our face. I have seen a lot of reviews and talk and stuff around this movie now claiming it as a allegory for gay and lesbian and LGBT and all that. And I'm not denying it. I'm not of the community, as I've said in previous episodes, so I can't have too strong of a voice to it, I suppose. However, he says that in every episode. Because I'm not gay. I love the idea that you say it in every episode, whether he said it all throughout reptilicus. It was weird. But I'm trying to be respectful of a community of people that I don't belong to and all of that. At the same time, I find it fascinating. The difference between what is actually intended versus how we interpret a thing to paint it for our own narrative. Because I come at this film and I talk about living in the projects and being ostracized in that way. I can talk about who's the real monster here and all that of the stuff. For me, it's also a touch on our mental health, our face below our face, that's people with mental health struggles who are putting a mask on to go to work, to function, to get out of bed. I know if I work in customer service, I have to go and smile at people and I have to go and pretend to be happy, even if I feel like I want to put a bullet through my fucking head. But that's the mask I have to wear. So for me, I read it from a point of view that has nothing to do with my sexuality. And other people are claiming that to be the thing because Clive Barker's gay also. And I think the overarching message is being, I don't want to say lost, but I find it interesting how people are assigning it to their own narrative of their own world and their own struggle, which speaks to the larger question of all of us feeling ostracized and needing a place to belong. Yeah, I think that there is a great metaphor here of the other. People who have been othered have to form a community, but that community is never perfect. Like, I mean, there are plenty of goths that are assholes and for sure, you know, there are, you know, plenty of metalheads that are dickheads, you know, so that's what I like about it. I like that it's imperfect. Look, you and I talked to this to death in the Nightmare in Elm Street, two episode, which is that it's not that there's anything wrong with a metaphor of the gay and lesbian community. I fully support that. I like metaphors and movies. I like lots of different kinds of metaphors and movies. And I am of those communities myself and I want, I like stories that can talk about the pain and the suffering and the successes and the failures that have been experienced around those stories. But there is just something about certain writers that when they talk about certain subjects, it's a brainworm in their skull that they can't talk about anything else. And there is this element to it that I just find sometimes insulting, especially because I see this with Clive Barker where this is probably, I think, I think Clive Barker is one of the most intelligent people on the planet. I think enormously highly of him, there's never a moment that he is not saying something that I think is a value. And he has very thoughtful ideas about sex and pain and gore and horror and, you know, and goodness, he has very unique ideas about those things. But there are just some people that cannot, that are supportive of the gay and lesbian community, that cannot get over the fact that he's gay and cannot see anything else from any story that he has to tell. Does that make sense? So it does, and it's what I'm referring to, not to interrupt too heavily, but the idea that, oh, this man's gay, so everything he puts out must be a gay agenda or must have a gay influence or must have some terms or some conditions around that way of life as opposed to it just being a great analogy or a great story that might happen to fit that part of you. Well, and again, I think that he is unafraid to tell those stories. I mean, I've read Weave World and Weave World has a lot of gay characters and it should. And I like the fact that he brought a lot of gay characters into horror, you know, and I think that he actually, I think he did a lot of great things for people who are GLBT by being openly gay in the horror community and then putting his middle figure up in the air and being like, I am more horror than fucking anybody. Like, I mean, nobody can do what Clive Barker can do, nobody. But I just, I want, I think I just want a world where we can say, oh, this movie has a great metaphor for the GLBT community. And it also talks about other things too, you know, like, that's what I want, you know, and I'll tell you an example, just I'll tell you a quick example that frustrated me about this movie. Somebody made the argument that you can see this in the film, not by the way the night breed are treated or act because I totally agree with that. I totally agree that that is there in the night breed. But they said it's, it's the lovelessness between Laurie and Boone. And it's the fact that Decker is obsessed with Boone that underlie the homoerotic tones and whatnot. I think those two last points are ridiculous. I think that Boone is, that Decker is obsessed with Boone because of his own feelings about life and death. And I think that there's no problem with heat between Laurie and Aaron, like their relationship is fine. There's a scene early in the film where he's working at a, you know, at a, at a mechanic shop and she's making out with him. And I kept laughing because I kept thinking, there are other people working around you. I had no problems with heat. Yeah, no problems with heat. First time I've ever heard anyone mention some homoerotic thing between the two of them. And I, I think it was a scratch came from you or whatever. But I'm like thinking about it as he said it. What the fuck that relationship between Laurie and Boone was so sweet and so regular and so cute in its own way, sexual, sexual, sexual, weird, yeah, and sexual. And I don't know, it just seemed like a normal fucking relationship, the relationship he had with his doctor, there was not anything at any point in this movie that made me think either one of them wanted to fuck each other. And I know, I know that I'm not of that community, but I still didn't see it. It didn't, I saw them as, like you said, it's about life and death and everything else. And this, this is what I was getting to about how far do we go? How much is, I guess too much about us painting our own narrative, what we want to see on something that wasn't necessarily there to begin with? And we all do it. But I just think there's an opportunity here. Look, I think what I'd like to do, what I would like people's takeaway for my opinion on this to be is simply, I think the metaphor is there. I think it's actually really well done when Clive Barker is intending to do it where he's intending to do it with, which is, which is the night breed. But I would just really like if maybe the people that we need to blame for this kind of discussion is just bad fucking writers, just bad fucking writers that can't seem to write an article and say, Hey, night breed is about a lot of things. It's trying to do a lot of things. It's about prophecy, and it's about being othered, and it's about dreams and finding your place and finding out who you really are, and it's about all these things. And I think you're dead on. I think a great example, and I know you were just kidding of me and playful, but when you called on me about, Oh, he says this in every episode, because I'm prefacing what I want to say because I don't want to offend people. I'm on their side. I don't want to come across like some straight white male being a dick bag to fucking gay community or whatever. And it's weird to me because you know me well enough. I'm the sort of person. I just want to talk. I just want to have these conversations without leading up to it without the whole build up of, well, just so I don't offend blah, blah, blah. I just want to talk, but I feel like I have to cover my ass in a lot of these ways. And I'm not saying that every writer does that, but I'm just saying even with the best of intentions, I think the writing comes off bad because we're trying so in some cases so hard not to come across wrong. And in some cases, not even caring if we come across wrong. And in third cases, it's just wrong and they don't care. And I think that all needs to change. I think we all need to be better. First of all, it's still a total mystery to me. Why you kept saying, I'm not a part of the community in the misery episode. I just that one, I really don't understand. I'm just I'm not part of the sledgehammer community. Funny enough, also an offshoot of the of the gay community. Look, there is a type of writer. There is a type of writer that if you've got if you've sucked a dick once and you walk into a McDonald's, they're going to think that that has something to do with queer theory. So McDonald's is now a queer theory, right? Right. Now, if they walked into a big boy, I might disagree. Boy, now, that was an allegory, all that's own Jesus Christ. You're welcome. We walk into a big boy or push it with a big boy? I don't know. Even as down, talking of fantastical things and entering places and whatnot, where that was the weirdest. I was trying to create a segue and it failed fucking miserably. Yeah, after I just said that, after I just made that dirty joke about big boy, speaking of entering places, speaking of sliding right in down where the Baphomet character is. I say character because Baphomet in this story is their god. It is a god at the very least. And somebody said that Baphomet created Midian to protect all of these creatures and so forth. So I don't know what Boone's motivation was to be with Baphomet at this point, because he's already been accepted into the tribe and I don't remember the movie like spelling it out for one of a better term as to why he was down there. He was just there having a chat with this creature, which by the way, I thought was very well designed. The creature is amazing. So it's this multi armed, it's Baphomet, it's Baphomet, you know, it's this big bluish purple creature that is sometimes played by an actor when its mouth needs to moved and sometimes just a statue, but it looks amazing. And it is their god. It is not totally clear his role in the story other than one moment where he has to clarify a prophecy. And look, I understand that this group can have a god and it doesn't have to be explained, but Baphomet gets used quite a bit in the second half of this movie and there are some real cliffhangers that are around his character. So it is just a little odd what our hero is looking to get out of this god at this point in the film. I understand that this is supposed to serve as a moment where you're getting to know the culture of the night breed. That's what it really is. And we've followed Laurie through this, you know, this maze of, you know, of different like creatures and horrifying things that she has to contend with and that we have to contend with as an audience. And then we get down and we see Baphomet or we hear more about this prophecy. But it is just a little confusing about what is actually happening here and what Boone is looking to get out of this experience. I think obviously from a movie making point of view, it's literally just a excuse to get her to wander through a median so we can see all the cool shit. Just go from point A to point B. I'm not sure what conversation he was having because that's another problem I have with this film and I don't have very many problems with this movie. But it doesn't clarify the things that need to be clear. And if there is no reason for Boone standing in front of Baphomet to be clear, then why are we showing the scene in the first place? The script struggles with character motivations over and over and over again. It's just you really have to like put the pieces together because all you need, you need, he can be doing anything down there, anything at all. All that needs to be established is that Lori needs to go past all these creatures and these horrifying things called the berserkers that will come up later. She just needs to go past all these things to have her own journey into hell that we are questioning whether or not it's an actual hell or not, then he can be enjoying the time in midi and he can be taking a life drawing class. He can be in his own room masturbating. It doesn't really matter what he can be eating at the Midian Sabaro. Like he can be going to the big boy wink, wink, wink, right? Hey, yeah, you know, homo erotic undertones, there you go. He's a Midian big boy. You know, after midnight, that place gets closer. Do you have a man standing there with a big burger like this? Right. Right. Right. He's got the handkerchief in the right pocket just to indicate, just to send a message to the other male demons and to the other boys, yeah, to the other to the other gelatinous blobs and winged birds that have no skin on them. I'm available. There's a couple of parts that the Midian areas around and I thought that would be a great food court down there. Honestly, they deserve some. What are they feeding off of roots? There are so many questions that you could ask about how this culture works because I thought they'd be something I said, what do they steal all the stuff they're in the middle of nowhere? Where do they have aquariums? They have like books and where do they have all this stuff? There is a, there's a lot of lighting inside. There's a lot of like cool like colored lighting and there's a flashing light that is happening a blue light that is flashing the entire time that Lori is going through. Midian. I thought to myself, thank God that just outside of the graveyard, a Spencer's gifts closed down and they were able to raid all of the strobe lights and lava lamps inside. I don't know if it was like the secret or nim where they're just squirreling away shit that they find on the farm nearby. Yeah, they must have. That's shit. Yeah. It's like, where'd they get all this shit and of course the amount of that's relevant to the main plot. It's just fun to ponder. It's bombs on boats. It doesn't matter. But it's not, it's not fun to think about. Like, it's fun to think about, you know, like, what do the, what do the scarers do all things? They have school. Like the kids go to school. Like, is there some like tentacled creature with like their jaw down to their deck and like five tongs teaching them about, you know, like basic level algebra, but that brings up the question too. What are they learning? Are they learning how to fit into human society or are they learning whatever education they need to be monsters, like how to scare or whatever? Right. Like monster thing. That's right. History of Midian 101, 102, 103, 104. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. The rules of Midian seem pretty hard to fucking follow. They seem made up in the moment. So maybe they're following those. That's going to say most of the script has that same problem. So it's all good. Other than building bridges, they're play that place that they have has got 3000 bridges in it that is, you know, crossing, you know, as they go down into the, you know, down to the catacombs, or learning to be carpenters and engineers, that's what they're all like architects. They're going to really, they're going to really have a role in society when they're finally truly accepting the rich need blue collar people. But above Midian is Decker, who has now partnered with the police to take down. She's forming an angry mob. He opened a pitchfork store. He's trying to gather as many people as he can to fight the monsters, including the police chief of this small town who is arguably almost as bad as he is as far as villain status goes. Yeah. And I got to tell you, this is another thing that I hate in night breed. I bring in this police officer who's this sort of sadistic narcissist who only cares about his self image. I don't need this character to have a prominent role. I need this character to show up so that Decker is now in charge of the police force. That's it. That's why I need this character to show up so that Decker can manipulate him and be in charge of the police force. I hate the fact that villain screen time is divided now between this cop and Decker. Yeah. Because Decker is the superior villain by leaps and bounds. Oh, yeah. It's the Batman theory. When Batman Returns came out, you had Catwoman and Penguin. You had to divide the movie up into three people. It worked. A lot of people hate that movie. I don't give a shit. Fuck y'all. It worked and I think it was the right balance of those three characters. Sure. Compare that to Spider-Man, which followed the same theory. One villain in the first movie, two villains in the next movie. The third movie had 12 villains and it didn't work because there was too much divide. There were too many things going on. There was too many cross-contaminations between these fucking characters, too many stories and plot lines that you had to follow and it fucked it all up. You need to simplify. You got one bad villain. You can have a shitty cop who is racist and whatever else and thinks fuck these monsters, but you can't have him overshadow your main villain. That doesn't work. And all these cops are such fucking goobers. They're just such dorks and they get introduced into the plot and then they are putting together their arsenal of shotguns and machine guns and grenades. I know that this is supposed to be a joke and it's supposed to be a parody of Republican cops and, again, if it's into that, cops used to harass the GLBT community a lot. I get it. I get what they're going for here, but it's such a joke. Watching these characters arm themselves and then wrapping their lips around the ends of a garret wire and licking it and loving all these guns. And I just feel like tonally it's so off from the rest of the movie that I don't need these jokes about the types of things that a Trump supporter keeps in their shad, like I don't need it, like it's for a different movie. There are other horror movies that can have that kind of parody and that's fine, but bringing in parody here is just such a weird tonal choice for a movie that I really love a lot in. It's taking a movie that is somewhat serious up till now with great visuals and practicals and blah, blah, blah, and putting Ernest P. Worrell as the fucking chief of police. That is perfect. That is perfect. That's such a perfect way of describing it even though I love Jim Varney, but like that's perfect. Yeah. Because there's no need. There's no need because even Jim Varney not being a goober on screen is always going to be seen as one. It's like Jim Carrey in his early years when he was doing Fire Marshal Bill and Ace Ventura and shit like that. All anyone ever saw him was that goofy shit. Right. So when I tried to do anything even remotely serious, it was still people seeing him through that lens of being a goofball. And it just takes away from, because now you got this guy who's trying to be a better bad guy or a bigger bad guy than the bad guy and he's a goofball doing it. It just doesn't fuck it work. And it's too bad because Decker has some amazing scenes here. There is a whole setup with a motel where after Boone and Lori are basically, they're basically exiled from Midian because they brought people to them. They have to go and stay in this motel and the motel is a trap. And it's a wonderful setup. It's a wonderful trap, which is that Decker has shown up and killed everyone in there. And so it just allows for Decker to be able to call the police and say, "Hey, Boone is here. He's killed everybody. He's framing him again and the cops are going to come and arrest him." It's a great trap. And one thing this movie doesn't get credit for, the gore may not be necessarily the best I've ever seen for these kills. But the setups for these kills are great. They're so fun and they're so well done. And I said it earlier in our last episode about the family that gets killed, that scene is great. But so is the scene where there's a clerk working behind the desk at the hotel and she drops something on the ground. She looks up and she sees the shoes of Decker, finds it severed. I love all of this. I think this is all so, it's such a slasher trope, but the movie knows what it's doing and is doing it really well. I just thought this scene was great. The physics don't make fucking sense at all. No. One of those wonderful slasher moments where somehow she saw his shoes, when she saw, raised up and saw the severed head, he was gone and he managed to get all the way to the backroom behind her, somehow without her noticing quickly enough, etc. It's some Leslie Vernon, I do my cardio everyday type shit, where I'm somehow able to stay in front of you, drop a severed head, then run and do- Rise up behind you. Rise up behind you, do some kind of parkour out the window and then jump back in and appear behind you and kill you, but the shot, the composure of it, and just the setup, it works for me nonetheless, I really like it. Can I tell you, Leo, this scene in the hotel where Boone gets arrested and he kind of almost goes into nightbreed mode, is one of my favorite horror tropes that will just never not be funny to me, is the really handsome guy who changes into a monster and tells his girlfriend, "Don't look at me, I'm horrible," and is only marginally less handsome than he was earlier. For those who haven't seen the film, Boone, I guess in becoming a nightbreed, gains powers of the undead somehow, and his powers are he gets to yell a lot and he has these tribal tattoos on his face suddenly, and that's about it. He otherwise looks exactly the same and behaves exactly the same. Like almost every other nightbreed becomes some kind of horrible, again, like a gelatinous blob, or their entire face is exposed down to the bone, but he gets to be, he just gets to have face tattoos, and then the misty one is still, she gets to still be hot, like everybody else. It's like Casper, when he died, he was just this little boy ghost, and then he's partnered with three other ghosts called Fatso Stinky and Slim, who are parody versions of those three things in Ghost form, and like, what happened between here and here? Like, is it a couple thousand years later you take on one personality trait, you become that thing, or like right away you're fine, you just look like a normal kind of kid ghost, and then eventually you're going to become headache or whatever the fuck you're going to, I don't get why these horrible, horrific monsters exist unless they were born into that. There you go, somebody had some flipper babies like back in the 30s and threw them in a circus, and then here they are now in median, I don't know, I don't know. I'm just really happy that they weren't making fun of a gay ghost back then, because that name would not stand to the test of time. Got a little scarf around his neck. He looks like the two Jim rats and Dachshundt, you know, of course, you're the night breed from outside, and you get to still say, be this like handsome dude, and everybody else is like, my dick turned into five tentacles, like, I want to see night breed 2025, like a remake, where so many years have passed, and Boone and Laurie have aged to the point that they're now some sort of hideous creatures, and see what they've become. Right. Years later, they look like the vat of skeletal acid from psycho gourmet, I think the codependency is going to sink in, they'll just merge into one thing with two heads or whatever. You know what, I'll watch that movie. Decor, eager men, and their makeshift army begin their onslaught of median. It's total chaos. Aaron leads the night breed in using their powers to defend themselves, but the officer's fire power is a force to be reckoned with. Enjoying the death around him, Decor kills an officer before donning his mask and trying to kill Laurie. When our heroes begin to lose, Aaron releases an unhinged horde of berserker abominations to slaughter the cogs and give the night breed a fighting chance. Meanwhile, Decor kills narcissists and engages our heroes in an epic faddle. Faddle. Faddle. Back to that big boy again. They were faddling all night. Meanwhile, Decor kills narcissists and engages our hero in an epic fight. They fall through a crack in the ground and battle across a series of bridges in the median underground chamber. After stabbing Aaron in the back, Decor is thrown from a cliff and killed. Aaron runs to the chamber of Baphomet, learns that he is prophesied to take the name Kabbal, save Baphomet, and find a new home for the remaining night breed. The survivors escape just as Midian explodes. This brings us to the end of our adventure. Laurie becomes night breed after stabbing herself for the knife like a fucking psychopath. Secretman is killed by a new villain forged in the rubble of Midian and their surviving monsters wait for their savior to return. The movie ends with a tapestry showing Aaron and Laurie embarking on their new journey to rescue Baphomet and protect the night breed. What do you think the plan was when all was said and done and this battle ended and Laurie and Boone are standing up on the hill together? Are they holding each other close, start talking about what do we do next, are you hungry, do you want some Chinese, should we clean up, get a broom, start sweeping, what was the plan here? I have no idea where they're going. So I have a lot to say about this final battle but when they get down into the chamber of Baphomet and Baphomet is like, hey, I'm destroying Midian and you are prophesied to save me and to save our race of people the night breed. I would have been, if I were Boone, I would have been like, before you go, I just have a couple of questions. A, save you from what? Yes. All the officers are dead. They're dead. Yeah. So A, A, B, I don't rents are terrible around Midian and I don't know if we can afford a commune for 300 creatures, some with wings, some that breathe fire and some that have no legs. We've got to build a whole atrium for some of them, we've got to get a swamp area. It's like everyone's got their own habitat. Yeah. So they need cages? Are you kidding? Nothing. You're a god. Could you just fucking snap your fingers and relocate us and call it good. Why am I doing this? Why aren't you doing this? I'm just a dude that barely transforms and has almost minimal powers. Let's talk here. We talked, we talked about this in, in our crawl episode with give you back by action or. Exactly. Yeah. Like all you have to do in a fantasy story is say a rule really loudly and with authority and it just is a rule. Yeah. You are prophesied to save me and also to save the people of the night breed. And it's like, well, wait a minute. Save you from what? Why do I have to do this? Is there a fucking comment heading to earth and it's heading straight for Baphomet's head? Like, and also why does he have to blow the place up? Why can't he just be like, Hey, this is still a good spot. We just got to sweep the rug because we got dead cop over it. Perfect Airbnb material. Right. Exactly. There's multiple robes as bridges. Oh, you could sell the shit out of this place. Chorus trap. Come see where the monsters live. You also your little Etsy shops inside your little cave holes. Are you kidding? This could be a tourist destination inside a crypt. Yeah. Yeah. What do you need all this for? They do vampire night here in Salem. That place there would track every fucking golf on the planet. Are you kidding me? Maybe that's why I wanted to blow it up. I just realized when I said that they'd have to build the Spencer's and nobody wants it. He's like, no, we already stole all the lights from Spencer's. We're not going down that road again. Blow this shit out. The hot topic so you can get your fucking name here before Christmas. It just comes off that Baphomet just wants to leave. He's done with all these people. He's done having to clean up the shit in the bird cages. He's done with dealing with gelatinous blobs of people. He's done with all these monsters. And he's like, you want prophesies to save me. And Boone is like, how do I save you in Baphomet? He's like, I can't hear you with all the rubble falling. Oh, no, my enemies are close. I got to go. I love the idea that it could have been anyone and Boone just happened to be the one that showed up. He's like, I did to you. You're the two. Oh, you're you are going to go places. Oh, the places you'll go. Here's a Dr. Seuss book to really to really think about that. Oh, the places you'll go. What an adventure. Anyway, see you later. I got to you. I got to go. But it all joking inside not to jump the shark and get ahead. I actually don't know where our heroes go at the end of this story. Yeah. Are we going to talk about this later? If you want, we can come back to it. But they make a big deal out of, you know, like we've got at Lori's, kills herself and she's like, I got to turn in night breed and she's got got to go with you on this journey. And he's like, great, we're going to go on this journey. We're going to save Baphomet. We're going to find a place for all of the night breed to live. And then it, I don't know, just cuts to them looking at apartments available in the next town over. Like, I can't imagine what the next stuff, what do they randomly walk out into the wilderness? Like, where do they go? I don't know. It doesn't matter. It's interesting because we reference back to all the murals that were on the walls at the beginning opening credits and even here with the two of them standing on the hill with each other, you see the mural that shows the two of them standing there on a hill together or whatever. Okay. Great. You're the prophesied couple. What the fuck ever? It's grand. But I don't know. Bombs on boats. You know, like, I'm trying not to overthink it, but it's just fascinating. When you think about why did you need to blow this shit up in the first place and then what the fuck do you expect them to do from here? I just find that fun to ponder and. But I will say I love everything about this ending battle. I love the battle. I love the beats and I love that it makes a really great choice. So again, imagine Guillermo Datoro direct this movie. I would expect that the creatures we get to this point, they're all very peaceful. I mean, it's not all of them are, but for the most part, they're peaceful. And now they have to use their powers. And so we are expecting a great series of just gory deaths with creatures, tentacles coming out and, you know, turning in a mist and doing all these different things to kill all of these police officers and Trump supporters who have shown up and decided that they don't like monsters, they don't like Kamala Harris and they've decided to destroy a median. We expect this, but what Clive Barker nails is that he makes the cops still deadly and the cops are forced to be reckoned with. They have flame throwers, which I think is ridiculous. They have rocket launchers. They, they have all this artillery, but they're still effective villains. They are still, they're killing a lot of them. And I actually liked the fact that they kill a lot of those. And I breathe by shooting them in the back of the head or shooting them as they're running. And I actually think that that's a good choice because it really, it doesn't make this battle feel cool, even though there is a lot of cool stuff in it. It makes it feel sad. This race is being annihilated still, you know, and so that really works. One of those classic hero stories where the people you're trying to protect are basically pacifists on the whole. Yeah. Teach them to fight or you got to encourage them to fight or give them something to fight for. Right. Rally is everyone and brings it. It's a nice story. It's old fashioned storytelling. It's good. I think they pull it off pretty well. Oh, but thank God. There's no speeches. This is what exactly I was leading up to is like, as long as they don't do some fucking brave heart shit, can you imagine a ratting a horse, but it's like a night breed horse. So it's like, it's got like eight legs. It's got a human face. His name is Gary here. It's a tarantula's ass. They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom like the half blue face. Seriously. And that's the thing is they know enough as the script may not be coherent at times and they might miss some beats here and there. They know enough to not add the hugely outrageous stereotypical tropes and bullshit to the end of this and make it as weird as it was a really fantastic fight to your point. I don't want to say the things you've already said, but I laughed earlier about them bringing a fucking rocket launcher here. They might as well have drove up a tank and started shooting how it's right fucking front door of the place. That's how ridiculous the cop side of it was. But yeah, you're dead on when you're talking about they were actually deadly 10 times out of a 10 you see a movie like this and the cops become bumbling fools once the monsters attack and learn to fight back. This time they're like, no, no, we're still going to shoot you in the face and you're still going to fucking die. And I think that was a very important choice. You and I have talked about this on other episodes when the villain loses their power. You know, it even this is going to sound like a weird reference, but like even in the movie that we covered also with give me back my action movies, which was hackers, there's a certain point where Fisher Stevens character loses his power and it really kind of like loses its way because he's such a fantastic villain in that movie, but it kind of loses its way when he looks weak. You have to keep your villain at top strength the whole time and and this movie nails that they nail it. They are able to do this ending without Decker or any of these cops losing their sense of threat. Exactly. And you don't just have to have some lame ass scene where they just kill all the cops and then Oh, Decker shows up and he puts the knife knife to somebody's throat, but they're all fucking monsters. So none of it matters anyway, right, right. And I love the detail that the night breed can be killed, but because they're all different races and different supernatural beings. They all only can be killed in the way that that creature can be killed. So imagine if you had a war with a vampire and a werewolf, they and the blob, they can only be killed by their respective weaknesses. And the movie doesn't get into what they are, but I just love those details. Yeah. And I'm actually glad that they don't, to be very honest, when I talk about in our history of doing the show movies that don't need to give us too much. I don't care what their all specific weaknesses are. I don't need somebody to be like, be careful of the fire, Victor, you know you have a problem with fire. I don't write that. I just need the guy to go out there, somebody shoves fire in his face and he starts freaking out and dying because I'm like, Oh, okay, his weaknesses fire. Great. Got it. That's gonna be cool because the cops stay strong. The cops are still a threat, but the cops are also now a little bit confused because they're not sure like, Well, I shot that guy and he died. Why aren't bullets working on this guy? That doesn't make any fucking sense. Yes. And they have to figure out that it takes more to get to them like the different weapons and all the changes you have. It's a really strong choice in my opinion. Totally agree, it makes for a great fight with constantly changing dynamics, especially because you don't always know the nightbreeds powers to and there's and and the scene with the quill woman is awesome. It is just it's different than everybody else's, you know, you have nightbreed characters that just come out and they're like acrobats and they karate kick cops and they rip their heads off. You expect agility and strength, but you don't expect somebody to come out and use their sexuality to kind of like lure the cops towards them, which is funny because I mean, she's like covered in feathers and shit, but whatever, that's my thing. I'm not going to say she's an unattractive woman, but what I am going to say is if I'm out there and I'm fighting literal monsters, yeah, and some woman, whether her breasts are out or not is covered in quills and her face is a little fucked up and she's looking at me like, come fuck me, big boy, I'm not going over there. She looks like a horny owl from Winnie the Pooh, like it's, I don't know, it just it made me laugh every time where they're like, there's like five cops and they're all like, Oh, wow, look at her and then they'll die by quill. I know and I always love when these characters get turned on as a group. They're like, yeah, yeah, that's going to be a gang bang all the way right. They're like, Oh man, I've been looking for an excuse to fuck one lady with five guys. Can you imagine there's always that one person you work with that you don't like them, but you have to be professionally nice to them. And now suddenly you're in this like fivesome that you have to go professionally nice to somebody in a gang bang, you know, decorum at all. Like, well, just stay on the other side, Rob, I don't need just what's fine, I'll take care of this half. All right. Just stay over there. What does Ms. Manner say about when you don't like someone in the gang bang? What's the etiquette book? What is the etiquette around that I've always wondered when you're in a gang bang and you don't get along with your gang bang partner. Sometimes we just have different politics, but all joking aside, I really love this scene because again, it's just a different way of killing people. And that's sort of the part of the charm of this ending scene is that all the monsters kill people differently, but they're still the drama that they could be killed to because the police actually have a fighting chance. And so I love the fact that she sort of like pulls them in. I like to think that there's magic also involved and not just that these cops are, you know, really horny in the middle of a fight. God, how the shooting turns me on. Yeah. I always read it as she's putting out some sort of pheromone or something. Yeah, she has some kind of spell or something, but I love the way her quills work that she sort of like pulls her quills forward and just blasts, you know, 30 of them out of her body and kills a couple of the cops with it. They're also poisonous, so they will, you know, they'll knock people out. Like I just, I really enjoy the different power sets and the different abilities and the different vulnerabilities. And you know these stories well enough that you can kind of figure it out, that you can kind of be like, okay, like that one got shot and nothing happened, but the other one got hit with a flamethrower and then they died instantly. One of the original sketches for Pinhead and Hellraiser had him with quills all over him when they were designing the character. But because the budget and everything else at the time, they couldn't really do that. That's why he ended up in Nails all over him and became Pinhead. So they were able to actually make that happen for this character in this film. And it was really good to see that pay off. I think she looks wicked cool. I think that, yeah, she's one of my favorites of the night breed. I think she just looks really awesome. I don't know if you feel the same way, but I think the highlight of the fight is the thing that you mentioned people don't like. I think the final showdown between Decker and Boone is awesome. They hit all these epic notes. That's why I think that Clive Barker, he's too smart to just, you know, to just be all artsy-fartsy. He also just likes something visceral. He just likes something on its surface too. And this is just a good hero versus villain fight. And that's all it needs to be. Not faulting anybody for what they believe or what they take away or what they adhere to the film that helps them like it or whatever. But sometimes you just need the good guy to punch the bad guy and knock him off a bridge and call life good. I'm so glad you said that, by the way, because can I tell you, I did figure out that there is actually one vulnerability that all of the night breed have in this movie. This is one of them has the same vulnerability, a good right hook. That's right. No matter how many tendrils they have, one smack to the jaw. Yeah, every single time that Boone needs to fight off the nightbreed throughout the movie, if he just right hooks them, they go unconscious. It doesn't matter how big they are or how small they are or how many powers they have. If he right hooks them, they go out. But this fight is epic. Basically Decker knocks Boone into a crack in the ground, which forces them to fall into the center chamber of Midian that is covered in these wooden bridges. And these characters, you can remember the, I understand that there's a stunt double involved here, but this is a character played by David Cronenberg. So not the person that you expect a big action sequence with, but he, they are knocking each other around from bridge to bridge and quite frankly, it's a well paced fight in the sense that Decker can't really kill Boone, but he's killed other nightbreeds. So okay, the tension is rise, but at the same time, Boone is a better fighter. Sorry, Decker is a better fighter than Boone and has weapons. And so I don't know. I think this just cooks. I think that this is totally awesome. I think it's because it's evenly matched in a way to your point earlier, Clive Barker is a fan of comic books and video games and shit like that. So he's learned through those stories and reading those tales how to balance your hero and your villain together to make it work. And does it very well here. Yeah. Like you said, Decker already knows how to kill and he has weapons and he's not afraid to use them meanwhile Boone throughout the entire movie has always been just a nice guy. He's just a dude and he doesn't like it's not that he's not going to fight if he needs to defend somebody or protect himself, but he doesn't do it on a regular basis. He's not a douchebag or a do bro, you know, so getting him in there, getting him going and then having Boone win without actually murdering Decker without like slitting his throat or whatever else and becoming the bad guy and whatever else was also a great choice. Which also would have been perfectly satisfying. I would have totally been fine with him taking his knife and butchering the fuck out of him. I mean, he was a villain. I wanted to lose, which is a good villain, by the way, yes, I shouldn't want the villain to win. So good on them, but holy shit and just the levels that they use the I mean the bridge thing is so ingenious because every time that Decker or Boone gets knocked off of one bridge, they don't just fall on the other. The next one starts to break or a piece of it will break and then like dust will fly up. It's so visceral and it's a really, really awesome fight and it only makes me wish that they had been able to put in one of the things that they originally wanted to put in, which is that they were going to have Decker come back. They were going to have him come back to life and I would have been, I would have been all for that. I would have been totally fine. This is one of the few things that happened in the theatrical cut that I was like, I can dig this. It's hardly noticeable. There's a priest that shows up with the cops. He's trying to deal with the monsters by praying. It doesn't fucking work. He ends up becoming a monster himself. And at the end of the theatrical cut, he's got Decker's body up on a makeshift cross thing and he's sort of praying to him and then Decker springs back to life and the camera pans out and the movie's over. Okay. Standard slasher bullshit. It would have worked. They had done that and they had made a couple of sequels. It would have worked. And just for anybody who doesn't know, when I referenced in the narration, I said Eagerman is killed by a new villain forged in the rubble of Midian. It was that priest that I was talking about, but he's very inconsequential character. But basically he has this very short monologue at the end where everything being destroyed around him turns him into a monster. And he says, basically, Baphomet destroyed me, so I'm going to destroy everybody. And I'm like, okay, this is the comic book side of Clyde Barker. I get what we're doing here. We're setting up a new villain. We're ready to go. Yep. Because that's why I would have been if that guy had taken Decker's mask or something and like held it up and been like, I don't know, the big thing that everyone thought Corey Feldman was going to be Jason, that kind of shit. And that would have worked too. I would have totally been into it at the same time. I'm kind of glad they never did a sequel because the movies, but it needs to be without having to carry it on much further. With all of that to be said, as the battle between the tribes of the moon and the sons of the free come to an end, I have to ask you, Stephen, what did you think of night breed? Every time we've gone on a cut above, one of the things that's come up is that sometimes the conversation can raise the score because of course, on their show, they actually rate the movies, you know, one to 10. I think zero is when they give that zero, it's that's like the highest trophy. It's usually when we're on. Yeah. Exactly. It's whatever. Not about the movie. It's a zero for us. Yeah. It's a zero for us. But the highest on the less. That's right. I understood how a conversation could change how you felt about a movie, but I don't think I'd ever really experienced it, like truly experienced it until this conversation. I had really planned on going into this very half and half on night breed, loving the highs and hating the lows. And I still feel that way, but the conversation brought out more of the highs than the lows because I got to give this movie credit. I never didn't want to watch it. I'll fucking watch it tonight. This is entertaining as fuck. This is an entertaining movie and it has a lot of heart. It really does capture this idea of the night breed and those who are lost and those who are forgotten or those who are other treated badly by society. And you feel a lot of empathy for them. They've been treated badly once and they're being treated badly again. This movie has a lot going for it. Let's get the bad shit out of the way. Sometimes the script doesn't make any sense. Sometimes there are whole pieces of this film that should be in the movie that are not. And quite frankly, I fucking hate Laurie's arc with every ounce of my soul. This is probably one of my least favorite female characters in a movie ever. You know, I just can't stand her. It sucks because Aaron's fine. He's fine. But again, nothing against those actors, the actors are fine. But there is so many other things to like the night breed of cool, they're fucking cool. And I like the fact that they're actual monsters and not just cute monsters or not just like Star Trek characters with different ridges on their heads. You know, they are gross to look at. Sometimes they're unnerving. Sometimes they're odd. And it makes me think I thought to myself, how would I react to a pile of torsos that is living with a head? Would I interact with sympathy with curiosity? Would I want to engage that thing as in a friendly way? I liked that the movie challenged me in that way. I liked that. And those creature designs are amazing. They're perfect. Great score by Danny Elfman. But the home run of this movie is David Cronenberg. David Cronenberg is one of my favorite fucking villains that we've ever covered on the show right up there with Rose the Hat and maybe one or two others, like just menacing and terrifying. And I like his performance. If his acting's a little hollow, I just think it fits the character perfectly. And I kind of got excited every time he was on screen. Not because I want him to win because I don't want him to win. In fact, actually, you could say that one of the things that hurts this movie is that the two main heroes are just not as cool as he is. And it's not like Phantasm 3 where I'm rooting for the heroes. I'm rooting against him, which is not the same. I'm rooting against him because he's such a fucking awful person and he's such an awful villain that I want him to lose just because he's so diabolical. It's so well acted and so well put together. And I like the nightbreeds. So of course, I want them to survive. I could go on and on and I feel like I could do in a whole other episode on Decker and the queer theory parts that I think are good and interesting and the set design and the music. I just feel like I could do this forever. So I'm going to hand it back to you. I think that nightbreed has really won me over. The director's cut. The director's cut. The director's cut. Clive Barker had a sort of infant filmmaker career in Hollywood. But even early on, he was more influential than many other directors at the time with dozens of films under their belt. He came out like a bad Adele. And this movie is a lot like Clive Barker's vision of toxic adventure. Boom, the victim of circumstance turned into legendary hero fighting for the oppressed. It's a great story. And in that comparison, it's a story that works in different ways of telling it. And I think the way that Clive Barker told it was masterfully done, although your opinion of this movie is going to change depending on which version you see. The theatrical cut was a sloppy slasher film that didn't make any fucking sense. The cabal cut frankly has too much in it and also didn't make any fucking sense in an entirely different way. The director's cut actually removed 25 minutes of the theatrical cut. But put 45 minutes of other footage in, which still gave us 20 more minutes of film and created as best as we can get the proper vision that Clive Barker was looking for. And that's why I promoted it. And I was thrilled when I went to do this movie that I saw that this version was available. I was like, thank God. Because I would have hated to cover the other one. I think it has all the right things going for it. I don't know. I don't want to beat my points into the ground that I've already made throughout two episodes. I'm still fascinated at the culture we live in of people assigning what they want onto a film versus what the film intended. We've covered it a couple of times already. And I think it will continue to still fascinate me. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with people doing that to an extent, but as with anything else, doing it for the wrong reason, doing it in the wrong ways or doing it way too often unnecessarily is what's going to kill it. And they're in kill the message that you're trying to create for it. And I think people really need to learn to be careful with that shit because it's not going to speak to you, your culture, or whatever you're looking for. If all you're going to do is destroy the message by being too intense around it. Just putting that out there. This movie does have the credit of having the most monsters on screen at one time earning a Guinness World record for that, which they held for a very, very long time. And I cannot remember the movie that beat them out for it, but good for them. It's a movie that has changed for me over the years. As I said in the opener, I am not weird little emo brat attached to it for some sad fucking reason anymore. And I can laugh at myself about having that back in the day. And if you're having that, have it own it, live with it, and then just know you're going to get over it and still enjoy this movie when you're done. Because I did. And I still do for entirely different reasons now, but I will recommend it till the day I die. It's a great film. Absolutely. No, I don't know. This one really charmed me. I have to walk away and realize that there is just so much more to like than not like. I don't want to get into alien Romulus spoilers, but there's a lot that's happened and that there's a few things that have happened that movie that people really don't like. And I just kind of blows my mind how you can not like one thing in a movie and then people can be like, it's garbage. And I'm like, I didn't like the thing that other people didn't like either. I actually hated it, but like the creature designs in the movie are amazing. The score is beautiful, like it's full of these like shots, you know, that are straight out of a Christopher Nolan movie of space and the emptiness of space and the cruelty of space. I'm like, you may not like everything about the story. I didn't like everything about the story, but there's a lot that's happening in this movie that is being done to the best of a creative's ability to do it. To me, it's kind of hard to say, well, this movie sucks because I didn't like one thing. Even it was a big fart in the movie because there's like a lot of, you know, it takes a lot to make a movie. And so I think that night breed just reminds me of that that, yeah, there's some scripting things I don't like mode of character motivation is this is clearly an author who probably wrote great backstories to all these characters and none of that shit shows up on the screen. But so much that shows up on the screen here is fantastic. Makes me wish we got more horror fantasies too. Yeah, there should be more of those out there. I think that. Yeah. Yeah. Leo and I have an idea for something that we're going to do in January that I won't reveal now, but this actually would have been a good horror fantasy for that, but but I don't know. A little hint of something planned for January, which leaves us the hint to the next thing coming up, which is Terrifier two. We got a two parter of Terrifier two. Actually, that's kind of fits horror fantasy too. So, you know, we got kind of a little theme going on here, so accidental theme. So yeah, oh man, I can't wait to watch Terrifier two again. I am very much looking forward to it and revisiting it and seeing what is now versus them. Yeah. Absolutely. Same for me too. You know, it's a movie that is, it's fascinating to see how they improved over Terrifier one, which I think we both agree on. And it's also fascinating to see, you know, those, those movies are so skillfully made technically, but also just, I mean, the culture around the conversation has changed. Yeah. It's, there's so many love letters in those movies to other horror stuff that that's fun to talk about. There's just so many cool things to talk about with that. So looking forward to it. Looking forward to it. All right, everybody. Well, we will see you next week for Terrifier two, part one. I hate when that happens, Terrifier two, one, two, one, three, six, five, I know. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. And I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one.
