Intruder (1989)

Episode 119, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Today’s film, I happened upon online. I, was reading an article on a favorite site of mine that deals with eighties nostalgia, and this guy likes to write about things like, old action figures and breakfast cereals. And, he was referencing a movie that I had never heard of, and it turned out Craig had never heard of either called Intruder. And the more he talked about it, the more I got interested in him. It is a 1989 slasher film, and it turns out to have a considerable amount of people that we know and love involved in it.  True. But the film itself seems to have passed into a bit of obscurity maybe for good reason. So Craig, you’d never heard of this before either. Right?

Craig:  No. No. I’ve never heard of it, and that’s really I don’t know. It seems bizarre to me because I try to keep up on these things, but it was it was completely unknown to me before this.

Todd:  Yet, the director is, Scott Spiegel, and the writer is Lawrence Bender. Scott Spiegel, has been acting a number of movies. He is a friend of Sam Raimi’s. He’s, directed quite a few horror movies. He he directed Hostel part 3. Let’s put it that way. Not a whole lot. Has a lot of acting credits, to his name.  But Lawrence Bender is a pretty famous producer. Lawrence Bender has produced most of Quentin Tarantino’s stuff. Good Will Hunting, From Dusk till Dawn, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, you know, all the Kill Bill movies and all of these things. An Inconvenient Truth, he produced that. This was his very first producing job, and it I don’t think this skyrocketed him into anything, but I think it was a Reservoir Dogs with Quentin Tarantino that that got him going along that run. But all of these people are basically friends of Sam Raimi. I mean, almost everybody involved in this movie in one way or another. In fact, Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan have roles in the film.  It’s another one of these productions. We even see a little bit of Bruce Campbell at the very end, which I wasn’t expecting because, I guess, I didn’t pay much attention to the credits.

Clip:  And I was really pleased to see him pop in there at the

Craig:  very end. Did you say Ivan? Isn’t it Ted Ramey?

Todd:  You’re right. Ted Ramey. Ivan Ramey’s a whole other guy. You’re right. Ted Raimi was produce Joe. Yeah. Produce Joe. Oh my gosh.  What a movie. This you know, I’m really shocked that we hadn’t heard of this movie before quite honestly. Because it really has because of all the people involved and it’s a pretty standard slasher film. I mean, it’s definitely well filmed and the acting is kind of here and kind of there. But the writing is just terrible, and it does plot along a little bit. I don’t know. I You know, my feeling about this movie is I enjoyed it, a lot more than I suspect you did, Craig. Am I right?

Craig:  Yeah. It’s funny because you said something, you you told me not to look into it before I watched it, so I didn’t. And and the reason that you said don’t look into it too much is because the VHS box cover art and even the trailer apparently reveal who the killer is, and that’s, like, the big mystery of the whole movie. I have no idea what they were thinking with their marketing because it really spoils the whole thing if you see the box cover art or if you watch the trailer. Okay. So I watched it and then I texted you and said, wow, there’s a reason that we have never heard of this. And then I started looking around online and it’s got almost entirely really favorable reviews It does. Both from both critics and fans.  Like, I kept reading things like it’s one of the last great slashers of the eighties and I I don’t get it. I know. I honestly don’t

Todd:  get it either. It doesn’t work very well.

Craig:  No. I mean, I I don’t know. I mean, I guess the concept is kind of fun. I mean, it’s it was originally titled The Night Crew, I think. Yeah, The Night Craig. And that’s what it’s about. It’s about this night crew of grocery store workers who work in a grocery store that is not a 24 hour grocery store. It closes at night and they have to stay at night and, like, stock the shelves and stuff.  And so once closing time comes, then people start getting hack and slashed. And now I read various accounts of this. One of the accounts I read said they filmed it in a functional grocery store and they filmed it after hours in this functional grocery store. The other account that I read is that it was an abandoned grocery store that they had to stock themselves and that they went through a company that specialized in damaged goods, damaged food goods, and they bought all of these damaged goods and and Todd the shelves and filmed it themselves. I don’t know which of those is true. Did What did what did you hear?

Todd:  Yeah. I kept hearing more about the about the stock the shelves with the, expired goods than anything else.

Craig:  Well, anyway, the the grocery store itself is I mean, it’s it’s just kind of a fun setting, I think, really only because it’s so nostalgic. Like, all of the products on the shelves are legit products that you’re familiar with seeing on your grocery store shelves. And Yeah. Because it was, you know, the eighties, you know, I remember the frosted flake flakes box from the eighties. You know, like

Clip:  so it it was kind of fun to

Craig:  see all these old products from my childhood, and and that part of it was cool.

Todd:  But As dumb as it sounds, that was a bit of a joy in the movie. Like, I remember seeing, like, obscure cereals in the background. Like, I don’t know why, but it seems like the most shots we get of products happen to be in the cereal aisle. And I saw one called ice cream cone cereal and a few others. Yeah. I distinctly remember getting, you know. It was really kinda cool.

Craig:  Yeah. And and so that part of it is fun. But then really, once the store closes it’s I don’t know. I mean, I can talk about the characters and we will or whatever, but really what it comes down to is the grocery store closes for the night. The co owners bring all the crew together and say Well,

Clip:  Bill and I, well, we’ve agreed to sell the store to the city and your jobs will end about the first of next month. However, however, look, Bill and I want you all to know we appreciate the years that you’ve been loyal to  us and  you’ll find a nice bonus check from us.  Don’t need it.  It’s a token of our appreciation.  And and if any of you kids need any kind of a recommendation, you know, we’ll give you the best best one in

Todd:  the world. Right.

Craig:  But we need you here tonight to, go around and mark down all this stuff 50% in to prepare for closing. And then that happens and then I guess the main character, her name is Jen, she’s played by Elizabeth Cox who I don’t really recognize. Apparently, she was in Night of the Creeps, which we’ve watched, but I didn’t recognize her from that. Her ex boyfriend, Craig, shows up, and he’s, you know, this typical eighties bad boy, you know, looks like he would ride a motorcycle. Black leather jacket. Black leather jacket, kinda spiky hair, 5 o’clock shadow, blue jeans. He shows up and he’s menacing.

Clip:  Craig, I’m sorry about what happened. I really am. But as far as you and I are concerned, it’s over and it’s been over for a year now.  Now listen to me. I’ve kept it alive for a long time.  Well, I haven’t. And if you can’t see why my telling you is not gonna make any difference Jennifer. Please, Craig have to get back to work. You owe me a dollar 35 for the cigarette.  You owe me an expiration?  Not listening to me.

Craig:  Listen to your driveway.

Clip:  You’re hurting me. Just leave her alone.

Craig:  He smacks her around a little bit, which leads to this big fight. You know, like, all of the guys in the grocery store, like, come to her aid and fight this guy. And, and then he and then he runs out, but then he just kinda keeps lurking. Like, you just keep seeing him, like, lurking in windows and lurking in aisles and watching them and stuff. And then people start getting killed, and that’s it. It’s just one after another, all the rest of these people in the grocery store getting killed in ways that I feel like they thought were creative and imaginative, but I just found them to be pretty ho and, you know, it’s just some dark figure in a shadow with a really freaking big knife that just kind of, you know, people people they’ll hear something like, hey, what’s that? And they’ll go look around. They’ll be like, oh, quit messing around with me, Joe the produce guy, and then they’ll get stabbed. And then they’re dead.

Todd:  If I were to wager a guess, I would imagine that the genesis of this movie went as follows. I bet a grocery store would be an interesting place to have a slasher movie.

Craig:  I wonder what

Todd:  are all the different perils in a grocery store that we could possibly kill somebody with. Somebody made a list, and then they just, like, laid out a bunch of pages. And they said, okay. The first will be this one, the second one will be this one, the third one will be this one. Let’s see. There’s a meat department. Okay. So we could do a couple scenes in there.  So there’s, like, a scroll saw meat machine that we can do. Right? There’ll be a meat slicer. Let’s see. Somebody will be cutting produce. There’s a knife involved. We’ll do that. We’ll cut them there.

Craig:  There’ll be meat hooks around somewhere.

Todd:  Right. And then and then even one of my favorite kills well, I don’t know if it’s my favorite, but one of the kills I thought was most interesting was the owner upstairs in the office who has one of those spikes that you put receipts on, and he gets, you know, his eye impaled on that, which I sort of feel like is an everyday peril. Like, those spikes were just a bad idea from the beginning. And I don’t know why

Clip:  that those even are allowed to exist in offices.

Craig:  It’s funny to me because for me that the most tense scene in the movie was when that guy was, like, filling out receipts and he kept slapping them down on that spike. And I was like, you’re gonna stab your hand. Be careful. That that was the most tense scene of the movie for me.

Todd:  I was shocked that we didn’t get broken bottles. You know, we there were broken bottles, but nobody actually got stabbed with a broken bottle. That was a little disappointing.

Craig:  But, you know, you get dismembered body parts in the lobster tank, and,

Todd:  it it tries a little too hard. You but one nice thing about it, and we watched the uncut version. The guy who did the special effects for this is Greg Nicotero. And Greg Nicotero is just the one of the go to guys, kind of along with Savini, for basically special makeup effects. And right now, he’s the primary guy leading all of the effects and makeup for the Walking Dead series. So this is one of his earlier efforts, and I would say that it’s really good work, except the camera lingers a little too long and a little too close and a little too clear on everything. So what you get is very nice made, but obvious prosthetics. Yeah.  Like when the heads get smashed, they’re a little rubbery, but there is a lot of blood. I mean, if you if you wanna see gore and you wanna see these gore effects, I mean, they’re done and they’re done pretty well, and they’re they’re certainly not done in a, what I would say, cheap way.

Craig:  Right. Yeah. I I would agree with that. I think that the effects are pretty good, but that’s, you know, that’s another thing. Like, the the reviews kept talking about, oh, if you’re a gorehound, you’ll be totally satisfied. I just don’t remember it being that particularly gory. No. We’re gory.  There were certain things, and again, this is in praise of the special effects, like, Jen’s love interest. I don’t remember what his name was. The nice guy. He gets his head sawed through in, like, the meat slicer or whatever. And so then when you see him again, his head is kind of, like, half connected, half disconnected, and it’s askew, like, at his jaw. And it looks good. It looks cool. I liked it, but, I don’t it just seemed like so much I don’t know.  And maybe it was because they were keeping the killer in the shadows so much. It just seemed like everything was kind of happening in the dark, and I didn’t find it that gory. I swear what I as I was watching it the whole time, I was thinking this would be a a great movie for USA Up All Night. You know? This is except for there are no boobs in it, which it was, like, a requirement for USA Up All Night. Yeah.

Clip:  For

Craig:  sure. Beyond that, it really that’s what it felt like to me. Or even and this may be going a little far. It may not be that bad. But, like, Mystery Science Theater, I feel like those guys would have a blast with Yeah. This movie. Well,

Todd:  it was shades of shop shopping mall in a way, and maybe that was just the setting, but it it kinda felt similarly silly. I I think you have a problem here. The the, on its face, if you’re just sitting around a table and you’re thinking, oh, yeah, let’s do it in a supermarket, it sounds cool. You know, you got these aisles people can hide in. You have these areas, like the meat processing room or whatever, and maybe the office up there. But when you get right down to it, it’s not a very big place. No. And it’s also a very quiet place.  And for some odd reason, they they they work in the dark. There’s there’s no good reason. I mean, there are a lot of problems with this, and maybe because especially for me, I actually worked in a supermarket. One of my very first jobs was in high school was was I was the a sacker. Boy, there’s a job that they don’t have anymore. I was a sacker at a at a supermarket, but I you know, it was a small one just just about this size, and we had a little meat processing room and and all that with the cutters, and I had to clean those. And then we had a back room, of course, where we broke down boxes, and we had another room where we did cut produce. I mean, there were all those things, but it’s not huge.  You know, it’s not that big. Yeah. And you could just have a conversation in one corner of the store, and if it’s nighttime and there are only a few employees in there, you can still hear it in the meat room. Right. And that’s ultimately their that’s one of the big problems with this movie that just kinda makes it a bit of a groaner, and that is that all of these crazy things are happening in all of these little areas of this rather small supermarket, presumably without without people coming in contact with each other that often, without anybody hearing it. It’s just pretty silly.

Craig:  Yeah. That’s what I thought Todd. Like, how are people not hearing these murders going on all around? Because we’re not talking about, like, a Walmart Supercenter. We’re talking about, like, a small town eighties grocery store, which in its entirety is maybe the size of a football field. Maybe. It’s maybe Maybe not even that big.

Todd:  I think I counted like 12 or 13 aisles.

Craig:  Right. And I think that I don’t know, you know, I’m not a cinematographer. I don’t I’m just talking out of my butt. But, like, it seemed to me that they were doing a lot of shooting from up high Mhmm. Which just made it look even smaller. Yeah. Because you because you could see the entirety of the whole store. You know, like, yeah, there’s aisles, but it’s not like they’re floor to ceiling.  You know? Like Yeah. It’s just a big it’s just a big open room, really. And, you know, even the part that I talked about, you know, after Craig smacks Jen up a little bit and they fight, then, like, he goes off running. And then they’re like, oh, well, now we have to search for him. And they all goes, like, creeping slowly through the aisle searching for him. Like, where do you think he’s gonna be hiding? Like

Todd:  It’s only, like, 3 places. And if it’s not in this giant room You could,

Craig:  like, you could literally just start at aisle 1 and just run down Todd aisle 12 and see. You know? Like, he’d he’d have to

Todd:  be in there somewhere. And there’s no need to creep around. My god. You could stand at

Clip:  the end of the aisle and look down it and then move to the next aisle. You don’t have to slowly walk through each aisle looking left and right. You’re just gonna see boxes of food. Right.  Ass. You practically scared me to death. What?  I’m sorry.

Craig:  I’ve been helping.

Clip:  Hey. What what happened? Did you see did you see me in

Craig:  the No.

Clip:  It’s just Tim staring me.  You are such a dick, Tim. Jack asked me. No. This is so typical of you, Tim. Quit screwing around. Damn it. This is serious. I think I think I know where Craig might be hiding.  Where? The attic. The attic. Shut up. Up there where I caught you guys smoking that wacky tabacky? Oh, come on, bub. Let’s check it out. Me? Yeah, you. Come on, dammit.

Todd:  And there are silly things Todd, like, toward the end when she is running from the real killer when our final girl, Jen, is, they have some interaction in one aisle, and she escapes him, and she runs, like, 2 aisles down, and then she’s pulled into the aisle by another character who then starts a conversation with her as they slowly walk down the aisle. Like, the guy you just ran from is 2 aisles away. Right. You know? Like, I was he just sitting on the floor for a while, catching his breath before he decided to come back after her? They have this, like, 5 minute conversation 2 aisles away. And and it a conversation the guy could hear. You know? It’s so dumb. And so there are these things you just have to kinda go with, I think, if you’re gonna watch this film. But it’s hard to get over.

Craig:  And I think the the fact that they filmed it in a actual grocery store like, I feel like they tried really hard to take advantage of the things that were available to them. Like, they would have characters, like, ride in, like, produce elevator or I don’t you know, the the box elevator or whatever it is. Or they would have people come up and down the, like, conveyor belts that you would ship the meat up and down on or whatever. And, like, so they tried to make use of these set pieces that were at their disposal, but, ultimately, it didn’t really go anywhere. Like, there were there were no, like, amazing cool kills in any of those locales. I mean, yeah, some people got killed in those places, and there were some neat jump scares with, like, the elevator every once in a while or something. But, they’re just I I don’t know. Like you said, it’s like, woah.  Maybe it would be a neat idea to do this in a grocery store. And then ultimately, no, not really. Like when you when you talk about shopping mall, you know, a mall is a much better

Todd:  It’s big.

Craig:  Set because you’ve got all kinds of opportunities to go into different stores and, like, it’s a big place where people could legitimately hide and run and and the grocery store just it just doesn’t offer that.

Todd:  And while we’re ragging on it, I also had to take a little beef with I I I really wonder what these people’s jobs are because they closed the this place, and then they do work there, what, for several hours? Right. This just doesn’t seem like any grocery store. Well, certainly not the one I worked at. You would close the place, and then we would spend about an hour mopping it. It’s basically mopping it and cleaning the meat room while the cashiers, you know, cashed out the drawers, and the customer service guy checked everything, and then we were out of there. And it was just, I mean, it’s it’s like 3 or 4 people. And this this seems to require, like, 10 people to hang out including the the owner. Yeah.  The owners, they’re really they’re gonna stick around way way way into the night after the store is closed every day to do paperwork. No. They do that. Right. They do all this stuff during the day, and they certainly turn on all the lights when they do it. Yeah. Just because the store is closed, if you’re stocking shelves, you don’t do it in the dark.

Clip:  Well

Craig:  and that was the other thing. You know, just from a practical perspective but also in terms of moviemaking, there were too many of them. There were, like, I don’t even know how many people were there, like, 8 of them or something in this small grocery store. And there’s the 2, like, front checker girls, and it seems like their job is to, like, wipe down the registers. Like, how long does that take? And then, you know, I I you know, there are some people restocking shelves. Fine. I get that. They they’ve got the premise that they have to mark everything down.  So we get lots of shots of them using, like, the sticker gun to mark down products or whatever. That was classic. But it just seemed like, you know, there were so many of them there. And a lot of the time, it just seemed like they were mostly kinda just hanging out.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And, and And eating and drinking the the product. Yeah. Now I I would only imagine that that’s legit. Like, surely, I didn’t work at a grocery store, but I did work in fast food. And I am sure that I ate 1,000 of dollars of free

Todd:  food. It’s a little different in a grocery store. You’re not you’re not like like, I I just had to laugh because this guy’s wandering. It was it was toward the beginning of the movie, and one of the characters was creeping down the aisle like we were saying. And then he just kinda stops. He looks around. He’s like, I’m gonna take a break, and he reaches in and, like, opens up a package of Little Debbie’s and starts eating snack cakes.

Craig:  And then puts the package back.

Todd:  Maybe it was supposed to be funny, but no. You know? And the people stocking the beer do not just sit in the back and drink 4, you know, 4 or 5 cans of beer while they’re on their break. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s kinda dumb.

Craig:  I don’t know. You know, like you said, the acting isn’t terrible. As far as acting is concerned, the biggest failure, and not because she’s terrible, but just because she’s not really special in any way is the main girl, Jen. Yeah. You know, Elizabeth Cox. With the final girl, you know, you want her to be somebody that you’re rooting for. And it’s not like I wanted this girl to die. It’s not like she was that annoying, but she was just kinda, you know, like Yeah.  Stupid okay, Jen. Whatever. And she’s all she’s all conflicted about this abusive boyfriend and, like, okay, blah blah. The other the other actors, I actually really kind of enjoyed. The only other girl in the movie is one of the front checker girls and her name is Linda. She was played by Renee Estevez, who is, you know, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez’s little sister, which I didn’t know, fun bit of trivia there. And, she also played Betty Finn in Heathers and Heathers is one of my absolute favorite movies, from the eighties. And and she does a good job.  She’s endearing. I wish that she would have been the final girl, but instead, she’s the first to get A tie. Killed. Right? The Raimi brothers are funny.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  They’re funny guys. They’re kinda they’re kinda goofy looking. I mean, they’re not, like, hideously ugly or anything, but they look like, you know, average Joe guys that you would work at the grocery store with. And they’re funny. So I I enjoyed them. Everybody else was just, you know, kind of bland, generic Yes. Characters.

Clip:  Craig used to be really quite cool. You know? I don’t know why he went nuts. I I figured it’s because his old man died. That must have really freaked him out. After that, he started acting really weird.  Weird?  Yeah. He started stealing money from me, and then he needed more money to buy drugs. I mean, like, very serious drugs. He he was dealing them and then he became addicted. He he started treating Jennifer like shit. He and I got into it one night and, I swear to Todd if my brother hadn’t hit him in the head repeatedly with a blender, he would have killed me.  A blender?  Yeah. A Hamilton Beach blender.

Craig:  Aside from the Raimi Brothers, the other guys, I really couldn’t even distinguish between them. Like, I didn’t even I couldn’t either. I wasn’t sure I wasn’t sure who was who. Like, there was the one nice guy who Jen makes out with for a while, and there was a really weird part. And maybe my mind maybe my mind just goes to the gutter. What was the the cute guy’s name? Dave. Dave was the nice guy who likes Jen. There’s one point where he’s, like, comforting her.  You you know, everything’s gonna be okay. You don’t have to worry about your scummy boyfriend or whatever. And she’s like, but aren’t you still dating so and so? And he’s like, no. And I feel like they decide to have a date. And then they meet, like, 5 minutes later, and they start making out, like, on the conveyor belt, like, at the front of the store. But while they’re making out Yes. I don’t remember who this was, but one of the guys from the back is, like, looking at them through the milk cooler. Yes.  And was he jerking off back there? I thought because it looked like it for a second.

Clip:  I thought the same thing.

Todd:  I thought absolutely the same thing. But then he comes out from behind there at some point. Right. He’s standing at the end of the aisle, like, peeking around it, like he’s watching them. Again, kind of like he’s getting off on it or something.

Craig:  Like, why?

Todd:  I don’t know. It was weird. They’re they’re just they’re just fooling around on the yeah. It was pretty dumb. Oh my gosh. It Well, it was just it and that’s the thing. It was just an excuse to get him out, so then we could have a POV of the killer from where he just was. You know? Right.  And, that we’d get a lot of these POV killer shots in here, and sometimes there’s heavy breathing behind them. And that, of course, is to disguise who who the killer is. Because, first, it sets it up that it’s going to be Craig, this jerk, and the minute that you see this guy is super jerky and they have to fight him off and and send him away and call the police, you know it’s not gonna be him.

Craig:  Well, right. But that’s the thing. They play it so heavy handed. Like, it like, he’s, he’s constantly lurking around, like, where you know, behind people, and they’re just doing their thing. And he’s just very creepily standing behind them and watching. Or, you know, Jen will be doing something. Like, I feel like at one point, she’s in the bathroom, and, like, you can just kind of see over her shoulder that he’s, like, peering in the window at her in the bathroom. And so yeah.  I mean, it’s obvious it’s clearly not going to be him. Yeah. That would be way too obvious. So then and the other thing, I say this sarcastically, but my favorite thing about the movie was the music. It was the most dramatic music I’ve ever heard in my life. Like, it was literally, like, every time they would pan to, you know, Craig, like, creepily hanging out in the background, be like, Todd, dun, dun. Like

Todd:  Right. Violins and everything. I mean, it was pretty it’s not and it’s not like a like a synth score, you know, like, like you would expect in a movie like this, but it’s full on musical instruments, violins, and things. Actually, it it did remind me a little bit of the same, style of music that the original Evil Dead movie had.

Craig:  It it it was very, very dramatic. Like, it it it I don’t know. It it felt like, you know, almost like the music from a silent movie or something. Like, we have to really, really establish mood here. This is the scary part.

Todd:  And the other thing is the direct, the cinematography. I feel like this director is trying really, really hard to the point where it’s obvious after a while that he’s trying to get creative shots in. Yeah. I appreciated that about the movie, but at some point, sometimes it’s it’s a little bit like the music too. It’s just a little too heavy, a little too heavy handed, a little too obvious. I mean, I’m thinking specifically about, a moment. I mean, there’s a moment where she calls the police, and we get a shot from, like, what’s, I guess, the inside of the rotary phone. It’s like you can see the holes in the dial, and that’s what we’re looking out through.  And, you know, some of this is actually pretty clever. Like, when she’s sweeping the floor, we get a nice transition where it’s like a literal sweep, like a literal wipe, where we are the floor looking up at her sweeping for a little bit, and there’s stuff on us, you know, that she’s sweeping away. And then when it moves to the next scene, she sweeps that away, and that sweeps the the shot aside. I mean, all of these things individually are pretty clever and really cool, but when you pile so many of them together in the movie, it draws so much attention to itself that it kind of I don’t know. It kind of works against it. It’s it’s it just feels like they’re he’s like, the director’s really trying too hard. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Craig:  In in unnecessary ways. I I get what you’re saying, that ultimately it just doesn’t work that well. But I I appreciated the fact that the director was was attempting something with style. You know? Like, it would have been easy to just not do those things and, you know, keep everything very straightforward. It it felt like he was trying to kind of, you know, leave an artistic mark on it a little bit. And the director, Spiegel, he was high school buddies with, the Ramey brothers. Right?

Todd:  Yep.

Craig:  And I think that he didn’t he work with them? Like, did he cowrite Evil Dead or Evil Dead 2, something like that?

Todd:  Evil Dead 2, he wrote it. Yes. Just before this movie.

Craig:  I see a little bit of Raimi’s early style in this guy’s style. The odd perspective shots, especially, you know, in Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, where you would just kind of get these odd perspective shots. And, like, this this guy, you know, would shoot things, like there was one scene, I think, in the boss’s office that was shot almost entirely through a glass bottle. Now what was the purpose of that? I don’t know, but it looked kind of neat. At least it was different.

Todd:  I think the purpose of that was just to shield the identity of the killer.

Craig:  Okay.

Todd:  I mean, it wasn’t I’m not saying it that those things weren’t appreciated and weren’t so good. I’m just saying that somehow it just felt a little more organic in the Evil Dead movies, and maybe Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah. And this it just felt like it it was the only way he could spice up some rather dull what would have otherwise been dull spots. And, yeah, who can fall him for that? You know, really? As it just there’s not a consistency or, it just doesn’t work as well in this film, I think.

Craig:  Well, and with this was this his first movie? Yeah. The director?

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  I mean, we should I mean, we gotta cut the guy a little bit of slack. I mean, for for a first effort, it’s not it’s not terrible. Yeah. One of my notes, they’re like, why is there an eyeball in the olives?

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  Just those random things.

Todd:  At the beginning, when they have their fight scene that punches and things, the fight scene was a little was a little not so good. You know, it’s just like the staging of things in the supermarket. It felt like they just had a limited amount of space, and limited ability to really do things, and so it kinda cramped their style. And so even the fight scenes seem overly staged and not terribly realistic. Here is the Craig. Alright? It’s the first bit where he and Jennifer are having their altercation. It starts to get a little too physical with her, and she yells. And suddenly, previously, there was nobody here, And they’ve been loud, and they’ve been, you know, arguing, and he’s been forcing himself on her, and she’s been pushing him away, while his while her girlfriend is just sort of standing over, in the other, cashier’s place going, alright.  Is everything okay? Are you sure everything’s okay? And then suddenly, you know, 6 people suddenly come out of nowhere and descend on them for this fight scene. They as you said, he runs off and they have to creep through and find him. At one point, they do end up finding him, and they drag him to the front, and we get fantastic lines like,

Clip:  you have more than a deal with the police than a deal with me. Understand? And you better hope that the cops get you, you go to office.

Todd:  You’ve already got him.

Clip:  What did

Craig:  you do?

Todd:  He’s right there in your hands. I mean, what kind of a threat is that? The writing in in this movie could’ve, could’ve used up some polish. Let’s just put it that way.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. When people did talk, and it wasn’t that often, it was really pretty silly.

Craig:  It was. I mean, in the whole thing, you know, like we said, how are these 6 or 7 people gonna get murdered in this small confined space without anybody hearing? And nobody ever does. Nobody ever hears anybody else getting killed. Every time it’s time for somebody new to get killed, like I said, it’s like, oh, they hear something or they see something and they kinda creep off somewhere, and then the killer pops out and and kills them. And then we get to the end when everybody else is dead except Jennifer, at least we think, and and then there’s just a whole montage where she runs around the whole store finding them all. Like like, it’s it’s like, I don’t know, a minute and a half that she just runs her out. Ah, there’s another one. Ah,

Clip:  there’s another one.

Craig:  And, she gets up. I feel like maybe she gets back to the front of the store and Craig is there. And does she she thinks he’s the killer, right, or something?

Todd:  So she she swings around. She’s got a hook in her hand, and, she swings around and and gets him with the hook, which which somehow knocks him out. I guess I don’t know why. We’re I think we’re supposed to think that he he was killed by her. Yeah. She hooks him in

Clip:  the shoulder.

Craig:  It looked to me like it looked to me like the hook went into his neck. I thought that he was dead, but then he pops up in a few minutes and he’s fine. Yeah.

Todd:  There’s a lot of that too.

Craig:  But anyway, the the assistant manager, Bill shows back up and he’s like, oh, don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Craig, you know, I found Craig in the back. He was peering in at you at the bathroom window, which is true. And he says, and he knocked me out, and I’ve been unconscious back there the whole time, but it’s okay. And he gives her a hug, and then he goes to call the police. And then she sees, like, blood on her clothes or on her hands or something. And then it the camera cuts back to him and he’s on the phone, but his hands are all bloody and he he sees her looking and he looks and he’s like, oh, guess you caught me.

Clip:  And she’s like, why?

Craig:  Yeah. I just I I just love his his his explanation.

Clip:  Danny was always a big boss. He always called the shots on every business deal till now. I couldn’t let that son of a bitch take this store away for me. Store’s my whole life. I had to kill him.  The night crew had nothing to do with it.  I couldn’t let anybody stop me. I guess I just got a little carried away.  You’re sick.  Don’t you see? I’m just crazy about this store. Yeah.

Craig:  And he couldn’t let it be sold off, so he had to kill the boss. So I killed him, and then I guess I just got a little carried away and killed everybody else too. Like, that’s his ex explanation. I just got a little carried away.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s really dumb. And this is like so at this point, we’re, like, 30 minutes away from the end.

Craig:  Yeah. There was still so much left. I was like, wait. What?

Todd:  I really I I checked the time because, I mean, it felt like a long movie up to that point. It did. And and I checked the time. I was like, oh my gosh. You’re kidding me. Oh, well, first of all, I thought that I I thought I saw Phil coming a mile away. He was there was nobody else with any motivation whatsoever, and he made such a huge deal at the beginning But, hey. Now, I didn’t really wanna be the selling, you know, I I tried to get Danny not to sell it, but the thing is he owns 51%, and I own 49, so there’s nothing I could do.  And he’s Right. Constantly apologizing throughout the movie for it. So I thought, well, shoot. If anybody’s gonna be running around with some beef, it’s gotta be him. Nobody else that’s the thing. There’s no reason to suspect anyone else No. At all. And we already know Craig

Craig:  said no. Unless you’re gonna right. Unless you’re gonna fall for that major Craig red herring, which is so obvious. Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. Yeah. I didn’t I didn’t know who it was gonna be.  I kind of forgot about Bill. I kind because he does get knocked out, I guess, at least for a second behind the dumpster. Yep. And and I just kinda forgot about him. That’s that’s how memorable these characters are. Now, obviously, when he showed back up, I’m like, oh, well, obviously. But, I don’t know. I kind of half expected it to be and and maybe I would have liked it better if it had just been some rando.  You know? Yeah. I don’t know. You know, some disgruntled old lady who didn’t get her double coupons or something. But, no, it’s Bill. And so then he chases her around the store for a long, long time. This just goes on for ages. She hides behind a popcorn display. I love that.  She hides behind this popcorn display just so that and she keeps okay. So Craig hits her in the very beginning of the movie, and then she’s got this recurring bloody nose. Like, this girl must be a hemophiliac because her nose will not stop bleeding. And when she’s hiding behind this popcorn stand, for some reason there’s water on the ground, on the floor, and, like, Herb knows is bleeding enough that it’s, like, dripping into the water and, like, spills out into the aisle so that the killer can see her. And then he just takes his huge I mean, we’re talking, like, a good 10 inch, 12 inch blade knife. He takes his huge knife and just starts hacking away at these giant bags of popcorn, and popcorn is flying. And she just kind of slips out. Yeah.  Like like like, he’s busy hacking up the popcorn, and

Clip:  she just kinda like, okay. I’ll see you later.

Todd:  It’s so convoluted, but there was one nice thing about this. There’s a point at which she’s okay. So then this happens, and it’s like this big thing, and then she runs 2 aisles over, and everything’s quiet again. Right. So then she’s, you know, creeping down the aisle, and she’s got her back against the aisle. It’s like, just go to the door, you know. Yeah. Anyway, she’s she’s got her back against, I think, this this re another recurring gag through the whole thing is this box of laundry detergent that keeps getting popped off the shelf.  And she picks it up, and she puts it back. And then he reaches through from the other aisle and grabs her and starts to pull her through. And somehow, she reaches down, and she grabs a thing of wheat germ. And Uh-huh. She smashes it over her her head. And at that point, I was thinking, wow. Craig, I think this is the second movie that we’ve reviewed on this podcast where wheat germ has a pretty significant

Craig:  role. Oh my god. That’s so funny. I thought the same thing. What was that other one? It was terrible. It was, the

Todd:  other one was, Zombie nightmare.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  Who knew that wheat germ was a thing in the world of horror?

Todd:  Oh, it is. If I ever make a horror movie, I am gonna put wheat germ in it somehow. Mark my words.

Craig:  That’s good. Well, so Craig hooks back up with her and he’s like, oh, it’s okay. I’m gonna help you and they run around. There’s there’s some point where she does run to the front door. I feel like Craig gets knocked out or killed again. No. He’s not dead because he shows up again at the end. But they keep getting separated somehow, and she ends up at the front Todd.  And the the, like, the bread delivery guy shows up, which also makes no sense.

Todd:  No. It’s not the bread delivery.

Craig:  Is it the morning guy?

Todd:  It’s always the morning.

Craig:  All night?

Todd:  No. I mean, it’s supposed to be the morning. That’s when the bread delivery guy normally comes. What what are you gonna deliver bread in at late at night while it can sit on the shelf and get stale?

Craig:  But that’s what I’m saying. Like, seriously, like, they they worked, oh, like, they worked their shift and worked at the grocery store, and then they stayed all night.

Clip:  Like, it doesn’t even make any sense.

Craig:  And so, like, the bread delivery guy comes up to the door, and she’s beating on it. I don’t know why the front door is locked and she can’t get out. Like, I’m pretty sure that you can open those things from the inside. But the bread delivery guy gets stabbed up against the door. That was the other thing. Like, you kept you said, just run for the door. Like, it’s not even just run for the door. I mean, this is a grocery store.  Like, yeah, there are gonna be huge doors at the front. Okay. Let’s say for a second that maybe somehow he managed to lock those whatever. Grocery stores have doors all over the place. Like yes. Like, in the in the back, there would be, like, a freaking loading dock. Like, surely, there would be some way to get out of this building. But and then I guess, eventually, they do.  She and Craig get out. Oh, they go out the bathroom window. Craig’s like, I got in through the bathroom window, and that’s how we’re getting out of here.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  So they do, and they go out the bathroom window. But then they get confronted again by Bill and there’s more fighting. And Craig just keeps like, I can’t even remember what happens to him because I feel like he just keeps getting incapacitated. And then she’s fighting, Bill, Jen is, and, somehow she, like, tries to run to her car and she’s, like, fiddling with the keys and somehow, I don’t understand how, but somehow he grabs her from underneath the car from the other side.

Todd:  Yeah. Why didn’t he just run around to the side of the car? But apparently, he crawled under the car so that he could grab her legs and pull her out to the other side.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  And somehow I’d again, I missed it, like I don’t know if Bill dropped his knife or what, but somehow she gets a Todd of the big knife and when he pulls her out, she stabs him and then there’s more fighting, like, she stabs him and then she runs to the phone booth and she

Todd:  Let’s let’s let’s get this point clear, though. She stabs him in the chest. He falls backwards with the knife in his chest, and against all laws of physics, as he hits the ground, the knife flies upward into the air and lands next to him, like in some dramatic moment that made absolutely no sense. I couldn’t figure that out for the that was so distracting. I couldn’t get over that part.

Craig:  Todd. I don’t know. At this part, I must have just kind of been zoned out because I don’t even really she she she runs to the

Todd:  She’s inside the phone booth. Yep.

Craig:  Yeah. And she’s calling 911, and she gets 911, and and she tells them where she is, I think. And then Bill is still alive and starts attacking her from outside and, like, he’s, like, beating the phone booth and, like, breaking it and, like, he tips it over. And then he ends up getting what? Like, a cleaver to the neck or something? I think a cleaver

Todd:  to the head.

Craig:  Get him?

Todd:  Yeah. Craig gets him from behind with a cleaver to the neck finally.

Craig:  Right. So then he falls into the phone booth, and Jen gets out, and the cops arrive. And one of the cops is Sam Raimi. I feel like the other cop is the director of the movie, isn’t it?

Todd:  Yeah. May yeah.

Craig:  It’s either the director or the writer. Anyway, they show up. And it’s funny. Bruce, Bruce Campbell, looks so young and handsome. He was such a young, handsome guy back in those days. He’s I still I I still love Bruce Campbell. He’s freaking hilarious. He’s such a funny, funny, funny guy, but he’s not the, the Strep Youngblood.  Todd he once was. But they show up. And, like, actually, this is probably fairly realistic. Like, the cops immediately grab these, because they see this dead guy in the phone booth, so they grab them. The the they grab Jen and Craig. And one of the cops goes in and he comes back out. He’s like, oh, it’s a bloodbath in there. There’s bodies all over.  So they think Jen and Craig did it, and they’re like, no. We didn’t do it. And then Bill wakes up in the phone booth just to say,

Clip:  they did it.

Craig:  So the cops so the cops handcuff both of them and they’re, like, arguing or whatever. And then the last shot is like it closes up on Bill’s face and he’s got his eyes closed again and then they pop open and then it cuts to Jin’s face and she just screams and then it cuts to black, which was kind of funny. I read that initially the intention for this final shot was for the camera somehow to zoom in on her screaming face, travel down her throat to see her heart, which would at that point stop beating And that would be the end of the movie, which sounds which sounds very ambitious. But had they been able to pull it off, might have been kinda cool. But, but instead, she just opens up and and screams out of nowhere, and, that’s the end. Todd. What a what a movie. I ain’t telling you.

Todd:  You know, to be honest, this is the kind of movie that I think would have been fun, to see in a group of people. It’s it’s a fun movie to make fun of because there are a lot of things in this movie to make fun of. The absurdity of it is really funny, And the kills are, you know, I mean, you said they’re not gory. I guess maybe there’s just not a lot of blood splattering, but you sure get a lot of close ups on heads getting smashed

Clip:  True.

Todd:  Heads getting cut in in half. There is one part where one of them gets stabbed. I can’t remember who it is. It’s, gets stabbed in the meat locker, and it seems like there’s a geyser of blood that comes out of his chest. But, you know, I mean, so there’s that aspect to it as well, and it is it’s got the creativity part. You know, it has the these really interesting camera angles, and the acting is fair to middling, but it just doesn’t work as a cohesive whole. You know? Mhmm. It it’s really hard to even take it seriously even as a comedy.  You know? It’s it’s it’s not really played for comedy. I mean, there are moments

Craig:  that are comedic. There are some funny parts. Like, there’s one guy in the back. I don’t even know who he is. I think his name is Bub or something, and he’s kinda like this. I’m and again, I had a really hard time distinguishing them from one another, so I may have him mixed up. But there’s this guy, this really doofy guy that was always just in the back by himself, and he had these headphones on. And every time you saw him, you could hear what he was listening to, and it was the same 8 beats of some song every single time.  And it sounded like the that Internet, like, keyboard cat. It was like like, it was just the it was like the silliest, goofiest. I don’t know if they were going for, like, electronica or what, but it was like the same 2 or 3 measures of the same song over and over and over again until he gets killed. And the way that he gets killed is he gets a meat cleaver through the top of his head through his headphones, and then it slows down. So it’s like every time that guy came on and it was that same corny music, I’ll that made me laugh. So there was there was some humor.

Todd:  There was. There was for sure. It it it wasn’t like Evil Dead where, you know, where there’s so much humor. It’s it’s obviously it just gets over the Todd, and it gets funny. These are just situations that are really not tenable, and there’s nothing really funny about that. It just seems like bad movie making.

Clip:  Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. I I I don’t know why it’s so highly rated. I really don’t. I don’t either.

Craig:  It’s hard to believe. Yeah. I I well, it like, when it said, you know, those reviews that I read, they’re, like, one of the last great slasher movies of the eighties. I just I don’t get it. Like and I I suppose if I were looking at something like Friday 13th with completely fresh eyes, like, if I knew nothing about it, if I knew nothing about the franchise and I just looked at that movie in 2018, maybe I would feel similarly. You know, there are similar things about it. You know, like, at the end of Friday 13th, there’s that whole montage where Alice runs around and finds all the dead people. You know, it’s it’s it’s Yeah.  Kind of the same thing in this movie. She you know, we get all everybody dies. We get to the end of the movie. The heroine runs around and screams when she finds all the dead people. There are certainly similarities. It certainly follows a lot of the same rules and tropes, of other slashers. I just didn’t find it to be particularly interesting. I I don’t know.  I just Yeah. I I you know, sorry folks out there if you’re a fan of this movie. If you are, come on our Facebook page and talk to us about it. Explain it. Todd us. Convince me. Yeah. Convince me that this movie is better than I think it is.  And I think that you’re right. If you sat down and watched this with a bunch of friends and the beer was flowing and you were talking through most of it and having a good time, then, yeah, like, you could just kinda tune in for when somebody’s getting their head sawed off in the meat slicer and you could laugh about that and that would be fun. But if you just sit down by yourself sober and

Clip:  try to watch this, It’s it’s a chore, frankly. It really is.

Todd:  Especially when you get an hour in, the killer is revealed, and you realize there’s still half an hour left to go. Yes. The I think what the best we can say about this movie is because it’s 1989, it is one of the last slasher movies of the eighties. Yeah. Maybe not the last best, but certainly one of the last. Yeah.

Craig:  And with that, I will agree.

Todd:  Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Google Play, iTunes, everywhere you can find your favorite podcasts. We also have that Facebook page. Please get on there and convince us why this movie is great. You can also find our website 2 guys dot redfortynet.com, where we post every Thursday a written review along with our regular podcast and all of our back episodes. Until next week, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig.  I’m with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.