Trick or Treats (1982)

Episode 145, 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: Every year around this time, we scour the Internet to find Halloween themed movies to bring to you. And, every year it gets a little bit harder and harder. You know, there just aren’t as many Halloween I think, we say the same thing over and over again, every single year. There just aren’t as many Halloween themed horror movies as you might expect. And so we find horror movies Todd take place on Halloween. We try to find horror movies that at least conjure up the spirit, that are tangentially related to Halloween. In this case, something that flew under our radar for at least a little bit is the more obviously titled Trick or Treats from 1982. Not to be confused with trick our treat, which we have reviewed before and absolutely loved, or trick or treat, which was the they rocking, Thor. Remember Thor from Trick or Treat? Oh, boy. That was fun. That movie was at least entertaining. But then we have this film. And, wow. So, it does check all the boxes. It, is a horror film. At least it claims to be. It takes place on Halloween and there’s a lot of Halloween stuff in it. And I had just had this sort of feeling that at the end of this, podcast you were not gonna do your standard. You know, if you’re having a Halloween party and you wanna have something on the background, it’d be a fun thing to do, you know? Pop in and out, have a few beers, a few laughs.

Craig: Yeah. Probably not.

Todd: Oh, boy. The the box everything everything about this movie is a sham. From the, box art that has a bag with a torn blood coming out of it and the head inside of it, to the description on the back of the box, to the pictures on the back of the box. Everything about this movie is not what it seems.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of a bummer. You know, I again, I think this is one of the ones that I recommended just because, you know, it is

Todd: Well, the title.

Craig: Yeah. The title really, and and and we hadn’t seen it. And I like watching movies every once in a while that neither of us have seen so that we can kinda get a fresh take on it or whatever. But, yeah, it’s it’s disappointing. I mean, it’s it’s it’s evident that they are trying to do the kind of paint by numbers, slasher here. You know, there’s there’s shades of Carpenter’s Halloween. There’s shades of, you know, tons of other slashers that you’ve seen, but ultimately it I don’t know. It feels like something that could have played in prime time as a made for TV movie around Halloween and not a good one. Like, it’s it’s it I don’t I don’t know. I mean, the okay. I 2 major issues that I have with it is that it’s billed as a slasher, and there’s exactly one kill Yeah. Then there’s an implied one also. But there’s only really one kill, and it doesn’t happen until 20 minutes until the end of the movie. And that’s boring. And then secondly secondly, I feel like this movie has no idea what it’s trying to be. Like Yeah. At at some points, it seems like it’s kind of typical slasher. And then at some points, it seems like it’s really trying to hit the the comedy really hard

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But just in parts and, like, those parts are kind of funny just because they’re so ridiculous, but I I’m just sitting here watching it thinking, wait, is this supposed to be a horror comedy? Like, because it’s

Todd: I know.

Craig: It’s so sparse and it just happens every once in a while and when it happens, it’s so over the top and ludicrous that it just feels entirely out of place in the rest of the movie, and I just don’t I don’t even know what to make of it, really.

Todd: Yeah. You’re right. I don’t either. And I thought, okay, maybe maybe they’re trying to play it off as a horror comedy, but there’s nothing about that online. There’s really no indication. And, certainly, the way the movie was marketed is absolutely nothing like that. If you look at the history of the writer director of this movie, Gary Graver, he is a very very interesting guy.

Craig: Well, yeah. I mean, he’s certainly prolific.

Todd: Well, yeah. I mean, if you just go and count the number of of movies that he’s done.

Craig: Of 100. Yeah.

Todd: It’s like over over 200 except most of them are porn. Right.

Craig: Like, I was I was looking at all the titles and they’re all ridiculous. Like, you can tell they’re all porn. I was like, one of them was, like, flesh and boner. I’m like, okay. So I clicked on it, and, like, of course, there’s nothing about it on because it’s porn. Like Yeah.

Todd: Peaches and Craig, indecent exposure. I want to be bad. He did a whole series of Susie Superstar. I was just noticing on there that, in 1982, around the time he was doing that, he had to squeeze this in between his two other important projects. Society Affairs and Center Spread Girls. Yeah. He must be busy. I’m sure he was doing this one at night. And he was. Yeah. Actually, he was. He was shooting this movie, from 6 PM till midnight over the course of 3 weeks, which would seem like a major achievement except once you watch the movie, you’re like, well, yeah, of course.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Like, you’ll kinda surprised it took that long. Right.

Todd: It was even shot in the house of one of the cast members, Carrie Snodgrass, who’s one of the few actually recognizable actresses in this movie.

Craig: There’s a few of them, which also surprised me. I I wondered what connections he must have had to get a few of these cameos because, like, David Carradine is in it for a little while.

Todd: So weird.

Craig: Yeah. And and I don’t know. There were there were other recognizable faces, people that I’ve seen pop up in other horror movies. So I don’t know. You know, the guy worked, as a cinematographer a lot, and, he directed a lot too. And so even though most of the stuff that he was doing was porn or softcore porn, I can only imagine that he must have had some connections and was able to, you know, call in maybe some favors favors from some of these, you know, b list, celebrities. It’s not like David Carradine is, like, some huge amazing star, but he did some big movies. He was a big name for a while.

Clip: You you

Craig: I mean, David Carradine’s gone now. Right? Like, I think he’s passed away. So we can’t ask him. But you just you just have to wonder, like, how did you get suckered into this movie?

Todd: A lot of fake names, fake script, fake titles. Yeah. Maybe he just gave him the pages he needed to do.

Craig: Yeah. Maybe.

Todd: Well, Gary Graver did this weird thing earlier on in his career, and he just flat out wrote to Orson Welles and said, hey. I wanna work with you. And Orson Welles wrote back and said, you know what? You’re only one of 2 cinematographers who’s ever asked to work with me. And from that, they ended up getting this weird friendship. They they hit it off, and they were together, and Orson Welles needed a cinematographer to work on this movie that he was producing. And now this was this was in the seventies, and this was past Orson Welles’, you know, prime. This was at the time he was getting really, really fat. He was going on a bunch of talk shows on TV. He’d done some good movies, you know, but, he he was kind of ostracized by Hollywood. His success, he’s he was kind of ruined by success and not all his own fault. But people thought he was arrogant. People didn’t appreciate this outsider from the theater coming in and trying to teach everybody how it’s done. And so, the very innovative things that he did in film, it was just basically jealousy by a lot of the Hollywood community. And even though he won, one Academy Award for Citizen Kane, which, you know, many people recognize as one of the best films ever made, at least it was a certainly a breakthrough film at the time. Tons of innovative techniques. Things that they were not ever doing in film before then. He he did on that movie and it’s also a fantastic movie. He won one award for that. Only one, for screenwriting. And he didn’t even show up to accept it. That’s how much disdain he had for the academy at that point. Well, this guy, Gary Graber, got a hold of him while he was trying to shoot this movie. And this was this pet project that he had going on in his later years of his life, where he was travelling around from South America Todd Spain to all these different places in the world, and just, shooting here and shooting there over the course of a couple decades, this unfinished film that he never got to to finish before he died, called The Other Side of the Wind. And this was to be his sort of final swan song, take on Hollywood, and the Hollywood scene and and and basically poo pooing the whole thing in the seventies. He never finished it. And if you read any biography of Orson Welles, and I I I was pretty fascinated with him at the time. I thought, what a shame. You know, that this guy’s last movie. It just seemed like like this hobby thing that he was working on and this Gary Graver, believe it or not, was the cinematographer for him throughout that entire time.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. He worked this guy, Graver worked so much in cinematography. Based on experience alone, you would think that, you know, he must have had some skill. And and if Orson Welles had confidence in him, I I believe that that was probably well founded. And as far as cinematography goes in this movie, it’s fine. It’s it’s it’s nothing that would stand out to me as being particularly interesting or unique, but it’s competent and

Todd: Well, you know, he gets the flesh tones. Right? Right? Yeah. Sure. That’s a joke.

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s I mean, it’s alright. It just it it it’s just not good. Like, it’s it’s so hard to you’re right. I’m not gonna be able to do a lot of fishing and say, well, yeah, but at least this was good. Well, no, not really. I mean, it’s all pretty lame.

Todd: I thought even some of the shooting was pretty bad. He loves to do the slow zoom. That was kind of popular earlier on there, but but you’re right. It’s not like it’s all in a wash and darkness and you can’t see what’s going on. Right. But it’s it’s not particularly inspired.

Craig: No. It’s not.

Todd: Yeah. It looks like something that was shot kind of at the end of a long day for 5 hours a night before everybody decided to go to sleep.

Craig: Right. Right. And it, you know, it was low budget. I think it shot on a budget of, like, what, $50,000 or something like that. And he raised some money himself, and he did, you know, like, he begged, borrowed, and stole to, you know, even get that small budget. And like you said, they shot the the vast majority of it in an existing house, which is fine. I mean, it looks good. It Todd doesn’t look like they were too constrained by space or or anything like that. But then there you know, anything that didn’t happen in the house. Like, there are some scenes that take place in a loony bin, and that’s the best way to describe it because it’s so stereotypical and stupid. Like, it doesn’t look like a medical facility at all. Oh, yeah. In in fact, it looks like they shot it on a bare sound stage. Like Yes. Like, there’s nothing there. Like, just gray floor, gray walls.

Todd: It does. It looks like they went to the high school the local high school and set up a bunch of tables and chairs on the sound stage. And just lit the the the scrim behind them. It’s so nuts. And they’re supposed to be nuts. And, again, it’s another one of those cases where everybody acts so ridiculously insane. Everybody’s got some weird quirk. And, it’s like a cartoon idea of what insane people would be.

Craig: Yes. Exactly. It’s it’s Mhmm. It’s stupid. There’s just no getting around that it’s tough. I don’t know. I mean, the premise in theory, the premise sounds like, well, okay. That could be interesting. Okay. So you we we open up on this couple eating outside, and it looks like a scene pulled directly out of Heather’s when Winona Ryder’s parents were constantly sitting outside, like, eating breakfast. It looks exactly like that. It looks just like the same house. And this couple is eating breakfast and it’s like, you know, this kind of twitchy middle aged wife and the husband who just seems to be totally closed off. Like, I she talks to him. I don’t even think he says anything to her. Like, he just gives her dirty looks. And then the doorbell rings, and she goes and picks she goes and answers it. And it’s were the okay. So it’s 2 orderlies. Were they supposed to be twins, or did they just look oddly alike? You know,

Todd: it was the early eighties. Everybody had a curly bushy hair and a big handlebar mustache. And remember, this guy did come from porn, so I’m sure he pulled just a couple of his extras.

Craig: That could very well be. Well, these 2 big burly guys who look identical to one or the other come in, and as it and they they grab, the husband whose name is Malcolm. And, as it turns out, Joan somehow has arranged to have him committed. And it there’s a long scene, like

Todd: Oh my

Craig: gosh. There are several of these. It takes forever of him, like, the the husband, like, running around. And they’re just, like, running around this pool, so they don’t even really have anywhere to go. And so it’s just the husband, like, kind of bouncing back and forth between the 2 guys. And, like, he throws 1 in the pool, and then that one gets out of the pool. Then he throws the one in the pool, and then they all end up in the pool. Like, they’re trying to get, handcuffs on him, and then they eventually get him into a straight jacket. But it goes on forever. Like, it’s the longest struggle ever.

Todd: And it’s not even interesting. Right? No. It’s not well, Well, we don’t know. The thing is, we don’t even know, really what’s happening. Is she doing this? Are these people legit? Is this guy really insane? You know, what’s her motivation? Maybe it’s supposed to be a bit of a mystery, but, in any case, it doesn’t really turn out to be much of anything. We’re just supposed to believe that this guy was insane and she just had him committed. It’s a strange place to open up a movie.

Craig: Yeah. And and the ultimately, we never really know, like, because it it it seems like she has him set up. Yeah. But then once then once he gets in there, like, he is crazy. So Yeah. Are we meant to believe that he was crazy all along or just the fact that he’s been, you know, unrightly committed that and has been around all these crazy people that that drove him mad, like, I don’t know. It’s so muddy.

Todd: She plays it quite a bit uneven too because, you know, it keeps shooting. It keep the shots keep cutting between them struggling in the pool and her looking on and just watching it happen. And at times, she looks like she’s, like, smiling deliciously, you know, like she, like you said, like, she’s pulling some trick on him, or, you know, she’s getting the upper hand in an unfair way, but, like you said, it turns out he is crazy and so, you know, whatever. And then, later on, her interactions are also quite quirky. She’s, she’s, she’s as, she’s a quirky character for a while.

Craig: Yeah. And this this actress, I didn’t write her name down, but she was in a lot of things too. Like, if you look at her credits, I really didn’t recognize her from anything in particular, but she worked a lot.

Todd: Carrie Snodgrass. Yeah. She worked in a ton of things and a lot of TV, a lot of movies, and this was her house. It was it was filmed in. Yeah. And, also, while we’re talking actors and actresses, one of the 2 orderlies who came, I also recognized right away because he was one of the 2 heavies in one of my all time favorite childhood movies, cloak and dagger.

Craig: Oh, yeah. You’ve talked about that before.

Todd: I I was all excited and this movie, there’s really very little to get excited about this movie. So you gotta take it where you can get it.

Craig: Yeah. Gosh. Okay. And so then all that happens, and then you just get, you know, a card several years later. And it cuts to, you know, a buxom blonde in the shower. Coming from a guy who did so much porn, you would have expected there to be more nudity in this movie, but there’s not yeah. I mean There’s none. She’s behind a a semitransparent but ultimately opaque curtain, so you can’t really see her. But it just cracked me up. Like, she’s showering, and then the phone rings. And, of course, this is 1982, so, you know, it’s a landline. And she, like, it’s she reaches out. Like, she’s got the phone, like, sitting right next to the tub, and she reaches out and answers the phone and is talking on her landline in the shower. Like, who does that?

Todd: He in the shower with water going down on her everything. Right?

Craig: It doesn’t even make any sense. And her name is Linda, and, apparently, she’s getting a call from an agency. It must be like a a babysitting or nanny agency or something. Like, again, it goes on forever. Can you talk

Clip: louder? Oh. Tonight? Well, you’re gonna need me. Yeah. But, well, my boyfriend, he’s opening a play tonight, and I was planning on well, son. Well, do you think maybe you could get somebody else? Uh-huh. Yeah. I know. I know. How about if I came a little later? No. I can’t take the address down now. I’m in the shower. So I I’ll call you by back. Okay? Yeah. Thanks. Bye.

Craig: So she calls her boyfriend, Brett, and is like, oh, I’m really sorry. I can’t come to your play. I have to babysit, and he’s all upset. And she’s like, well, the agency said they’ll fire me if I don’t do it, and I have to have these babysitting jobs if I wanna be able to do my acting in the daytime. And Brett is like, when else are you gonna get to see me play Othello? And I like, what?

Todd: Is this a one night only?

Craig: Well, not only that, but he’s this I I think they’re supposed to be young, though they don’t look young at all. And he’s white. And, like

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I I realized that in 1982, Anthony Hopkins did Othello in blackface back in the day. So maybe in 1982, they were still doing that. I don’t know. But or maybe it was supposed to be a joke. I just didn’t get it. Like I

Todd: think I think, honestly, I don’t think the producers or writer of this movie had any idea what who Othello was. I think it just pulled up random play. I think that’s the most likely explanation when you consider all the rest of the writing in this movie.

Craig: Oh, god. Yeah. And so whatever. She says, well, I have to go, but they’re gonna be gone all night, so maybe you can come over later. And that’s just another thing. You know, these things there are some things that just bother me about movies like this when you have a subplot that is just entirely unnecessary and amounts to nothing.

Todd: This guy could have been cut out of the whole movie. It made no difference. There are phone calls with him that she has throughout the evening. Give us no new information, do not advance the plot in any way, and, are totally useless. They’re just chewing chewing time.

Craig: They are. And I, you know, I at least figured that he would show up, you know, at the end when she was in peril and maybe try to help her or maybe just show up and get killed or something. But, no, she just talks to him on the phone several times and that’s it. Like

Todd: Yes. And they’re boring conversations. They mean nothing. They amount to nothing.

Craig: Oh, god. So alright. Okay. So Joan, the wife, has remarried Richard played by David Carradine who is just chewing up the scenery. Like, he doesn’t have anything to do, and, like, I don’t even know. They’re dressed, like, in tuxedos. I don’t know what they’re supposed to be. And they’re going they’re going out for the night, and they’re gonna be gone all night, and they’re going to a Halloween party. But they talk about she’s like, do you have the plane tickets? I’m, like, you’re flying to a party tonight, and you’re gonna be back in the morning? Like, I don’t even understand what’s happening.

Todd: It’s so stupid. I know. And I love it when the babysitter comes over and, they’re packing. So the babysitter’s there and they’re packing up and they’re they’re it’s like they’re almost getting out the door. And she says, why don’t you go downstairs and fix us a drink? I’m like, really? It looks like you’re almost ready to leave. Yeah. You’re gonna go down and get a drink first. And when the babysitter shows up, which is, you know, which is, of course, Linda. She comes to the door, and it’s I mean, you know, they’re we’re we’ve got this Halloween theme going on. The sum total of the Halloween decorations on the outside of this house are all these cheap, like, paper, cartoony, Halloween decorations like a witch’s head and a pumpkin and a skeleton or whatever just taped randomly to the door?

Craig: Right. Like decorations that you would see like in the hallway of an elementary school. Yeah. And she looks at them ominously like Yeah. Like, this place is kinda spooky. Like, she’s She looked really uncomfortable

Todd: kinda she kinda taps it. And then, of course, then the camera gives us multiple shots of these things as though they are really scary. It’s like witch, pumpkin, skeleton, spider, then her face.

Craig: Right. Oh, man. It’s so dumb. Oh, god. And and the we get introduced to the kid whose name is Christopher, and he’s this little fat kid. And and then it cuts to a a shot, an outside shot of this big building with a sign in front of it that says Western State Hospital, home to the insane. And that’s when we see that Malcolm is now in this insane asylum. And it’s just terrible acting. Like you said, like, it’s like if you told high school students to do the most over the Todd, ridiculous impersonation of what they would imagine a insane asylum to be like. Like, it’s it’s just terrible. You know, people with ridiculous twitches and I can’t even describe it. It’s so bad. I mean, just imagine

Todd: Guys jumping around like monkeys in the background.

Craig: Like, eating their checkers, you know, pieces. Like, it’s just stupid. It’s so terrible. And so we know that he’s there and he’s kind of talking and he’s mad that he’s there. And he talks to the doctor and he’s like, when am I going to get out of here, doctor? And the doctor’s like, oh, soon. Don’t worry. And he’s like, that’s what you said yesterday, doctor. And then

Todd: and then the doctor

Craig: and the nurse walk away, and the nurse is like,

Clip: now why did you say that to him? You know he’s as mad as a hatter. You have to humor these people, nurse Reeves. They’re crazy.

Craig: Like, it’s just it’s terrible it’s terrible dialogue. It’s delivered terribly. It’s awful. You know why you know why? It’s probably because there’s

Todd: an alternate version of this where the nurse turns back to him and says, you know, doctor, it seems like lately you’ve been under a lot of stress.

Clip: It it’s it felt like it definitely could have gone

Craig: in that direction, which Sure. Which could have gone in that direction, which which leads perfectly into the next scene where we go back to the house and Richard, the husband, like, is flirting with this babysitter in the most over the top ridiculous manner. And not only is his flirtation so ridiculous and over the top, but it’s also ridiculous that she, like, coyly plays along. Like, he’s so lecherous and disgusting and she’s like

Todd: You must be Linda.

Clip: Yes. Mister Adams?

Todd: Please call me Richard.

Clip: Okay.

Todd: Would you, like a glass of brandy, Linda?

Clip: No. No. Thank you.

Craig: Are you sure? Mhmm.

Todd: Not even a little sick.

Clip: No. Come on. No.

Craig: And then he backs her up against the door and she’s wearing, like, this jumper. Like, I also have in my notes, like, what the freak is she wearing? Like, she’s wearing, like, this white jumper. Like, she’s, like, a race car driver or something, but it’s, like, shorts. And then she’s got these, like, these black stockings pulled up to her knees, like

Todd: At first, I thought she was in a costume. Like, she was in some kind of sexy well, not even sexy, but just like some kind of nurse costume or something when she first came in.

Craig: I don’t know. But anyway, she’s wearing this tight little number and he Richard, like, backs her up against the wall and unzips her whole top, like, down to her navel. And she’s just like It’s hilarious. Meanwhile, his wife, is in the

Todd: other room. Of course, she pops in, and she doesn’t seem that disturbed by it Yeah, it’s like oh she’s willing to dismiss it very quickly

Craig: silly boys

Todd: So dumb Oh, god.

Craig: And so then, whatever. He gives her the ring.

Todd: At this moment, you know, the again, Joan is acting really both Richard and Joan are playing off each other like they’re kind of weird people. Like, they’ve got something up their sleeve, that they’re just a little off, maybe they’re a little high society, maybe they’re planning something sinister. That is the impression. I don’t know if you got that impression, but that was sort of the impression I felt like they were playing each other like these are not trustworthy people.

Craig: I guess. I think I think you’re giving it too much credit. I think it was just terrible acting.

Todd: Terrible acting.

Craig: Yeah. I, and and, like, just so many silly like, the babysitter even says something to the mom, like, aren’t you gonna introduce me to the kid? And the mom’s, like, oh, you’ll find him eventually or he’ll find you. Like,

Todd: so dumb.

Craig: And then they just leave. And then you meet the kid and then really the whole the next 40 minutes or so is just kind of this cat and mouse thing that just really gets so annoying after a while. Like, this kid okay. So his room is all done up in, like, Houdini posters, and he’s got all these, like, magic trick props and a ventriloquist dummy. So, like, he’s big time into magic or whatever. Coincidentally, he has a working guillotine in his room. Mhmm. So, like, we see that he demonstrates that it actually works first just so we’re sure. And then, when the babysitter comes in to meet him, he is in the guillotine with his head in it, and he pulls it and he spits blood out, but it was just a gag. And she is not amused at all. And the thing that I found that most unintentionally funny about this movie is how obnoxious this kid is. Like, he’s just freaking rotten. Like, he’s not charming at all. No. He’s just horrible. And she immediately just hates him. Like like, I hate you. Stop doing this. And she’s so grouchy and so mean, like, from the get go. Like, you would expect, like, oh, Hardyhar, Christopher, like, that’s really funny.

Todd: Some arc here. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. There might be some build. Like, I could understand, like, you know, after a while, it gets old because it does get old really fast. But no, just from the beginning, she’s like, oh, Christopher. I you’re terrible. Like, it’s just awful.

Todd: Every single time and and it’s just like you said 40 minutes of exactly the same thing.

Craig: Yeah. Prank after prank after prank.

Todd: She’s in some random room of the house, and she decides to walk into another room. And there, Christopher has done some dumbass little prank on her, or she decides, for some reason, to go outside to the shed and walk around in the shed for a while. And Christopher is up on the second story of the shed and drops a rat on her hand, which for freaks her out. And, you know, I was actually looking at the box art for this movie and reading the writing on the back. And one of the descriptions says, Christopher is a master of mischievous pranks. And I’m like, absolutely not. None of these pranks are mischievous. They’re just stupid.

Craig: And mean. Like, at one point, he pretends to drown

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And she has to she has to jump in the pool and she pulls him out. And the another gross thing about the movie is he keeps making really lewd comments. Like, he’s supposed to be, what, maybe 10?

Clip: You stop it now or I’ll put you down bed. Now that’s the best soft fry I’ve had all day.

Craig: Like, gross.

Todd: Shut up. There’s a lot of stupid stuff like that. And they’re supposed to be clever, like, every one of these things ends with her storming out the room, and then a shot of him, and he’s supposed to be saying some witty clip at the end. But it’s not at all witty.

Clip: No. It’s

Todd: just really? It’s dumb.

Craig: It is dumb. And he he pretends to drown at one point. And, of course, she freaks out, and she jumps in the pool, and she pulls him out. And, of course, you see where this is going. Yeah. You know, she first and and, Todd. It just drove me absolutely insane that she pulls him out, and I’m, like, obviously, she’s gonna try to give him CPR and then it’s gonna be you kissed me or whatever. And I suppose that’s what it was supposed to be, but, apparently, this actress thinks that CPR is making out with somebody to get them to come back to life. Yes. I know. She’s not blowing in his mouth at all. She just, like, puts his mouth her mouth on his and, like, writhes around

Todd: a lot. French kissing him. It is disgusting. It is so barfy.

Clip: Thanks for the kiss, baby.

Todd: And then, after he’s done about 6 of these pranks, one of them happens on the staircase. And finally, she comes down. She says, Christopher, have you ever heard the story of the boy who little boy who cried wolf? And he’s like, no. And then, she sits down and actually tells him the entire story. Story.

Craig: Oh, and my favorite part of that was there was a part at the very, very end of it where she stumbled over a word, and they clearly just didn’t wanna do it again. Like, no. Good enough. It’s fine.

Todd: I didn’t want her to do it again for sure. No. If I’d been on that set, it wouldn’t have been any better. Seriously, it’s like a 5 minute long shot of her, like your mother, just sitting down off the cuff telling you the story of the little of the boy who cried wolf.

Craig: And she tells it like we’ve never heard it before.

Clip: Do you know the story about the boy who cried wolf? Are there any Indians in it? Look. Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived in a village, and his father gave him the job of watching the sheep. And he said, Son, if you ever see any wolves, you must yell, Wolf! Wolf! And all the villagers will come to protect you. So the first day the little boy is on the job, he gets very, very bored. And he says, I think I’ll play a joke. And he yells, Wolf! Wolf! And all the villagers come running with their weapons, only to have the little boy going, He was only playing a joke. So the next day, little boy’s back out there protecting the sheep. And what do you think he does? He gets bored again and he yells, wolf, Wolf! And the villagers come from all over, only to have the little boy laugh in the face. So the 3rd day, the wolf really came. And just when he was ready to pounce on our little boy, the little boy yelled, wolf, wolf. And none of the villagers came to help him. And the wolf ate the little boy. He the wolf ate the little boy all up. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? Yes. I understand, Linda.

Craig: Oh, Todd. So much of this. Awful.

Todd: I I really think so much of this is just to pad out the running time. You know, I really

Craig: Oh, yeah. Okay. So that’s going on forever. Meanwhile, trick or treaters keep coming, which is, I guess, the only kind of cute part. Like, I when the door when the doorbell would ring or somebody would knock or something, I’m really like, oh, good. At least we’re gonna get to see some cute kids in funny Halloween costumes. And, like, that’s all it is. Like, it just oh, hold on a second. I have to go to the door again. And she does, and she passes out some candy. Okay. We can resume the plot now. Like, it’s just

Todd: Let’s remind everybody this is Halloween. Yeah.

Craig: Oh, and there’s no sense in going over all of the gags. He just pulls a 1,000,000 gags on her. And okay. Now here is the part where I would I got so confused. Like, all this is happening. We’re also cutting back and forth to the insane asylum where Malcolm keeps saying that he’s gonna break out.

Todd: Mhmm.

Craig: And eventually, he does. And the way that he does that is, he attacks a nurse. And as he’s attacking her, he snatches her wig off. Like like, lucky for him, she just happens to wear this wig. And, also, Malcolm, the guy who plays Malcolm is a big guy. Like

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I don’t know. I mean, certainly, I I’m, like, 5 10. He’s certainly taller than me, 6 something probably, and big. Like, not a like a heavy fat guy, but like a big guy Yeah. That I wouldn’t wanna get into a fight with.

Clip: Mhmm.

Craig: And he he takes this nurse out. He doesn’t kill her, but he knocks her out or suffocates her momentarily or whatever. And then he puts on her clothes and escapes the mental institution in nurse drag with full with makeup and everything, and it it’s split up. It keeps, you know, jumping back and forth, but there’s this whole sequence where he’s running around the city and people keep cat calling him and Yeah. Hitting on him and calling him ma’am. Like, he is the butchest drag queen I’ve ever seen in my life, and they’re trying to play it off like he’s actually passing as a woman. Yeah. And he talks like this. It’s so dumb.

Todd: Yeah. It’s really bad. It’s really bad.

Craig: Eventually, he starts calling the house and, like, at first, he doesn’t say anything, and then he’s just kind of breathing heavy. And at one point, he says, I’m coming home, darling, or

Clip: I don’t know.

Craig: It’s so dumb. Whatever. And then It re yeah. It reminded me of New Year’s evil. Mhmm. I am evil.

Clip: Oh, god.

Todd: And then she just hangs up the phone.

Craig: And she thinks it’s the kid somehow because one in one of the tricks, the kid threw his voice so that it looked like the dummy was talking. So and she even has to lay that out. She’s, like, I know it’s you because you can even manipulate your voice. Like Mhmm. We get it, lady. Yeah. We get it. And you would think

Todd: that this movie is well well, first of all, there’s absolutely nothing scary going on here. There’s no tension. There’s no drama. There’s no nothing. And you would think that, again, like, we’re talking, like, is this just supposed to be a horror comedy? Is this supposed be this kind of cute thing? Are we supposed to take it seriously? But, they keep punctuating this every now and then they’ll make some of these scenes fake scary. Like, there’s this moment where she goes up into his bedroom because she hears something and she thinks that something’s going on. And suddenly the music gets all creepy. The light to the bedroom doesn’t work. And so she’s inching around the walls and by this poster. And then, oh, there’s a skeleton. There’s a skull on top of his dresser. Freaks her out a little bit. And then, she walks by, and, oh, the guillotine falls down. Oh, you know, it just freaks her out. This room is a small bedroom. You can walk to the door, open it up, and see everything in front of you Mhmm. Without having to poke or prod anything at all. You don’t even need to flip the light on. The light coming in through the door should be able to show you everything that is in this bedroom.

Craig: You could walk the perimeter of the room in, like, 12 steps. Like, it’s not big.

Todd: There’s nothing like this and and why is she poking and prodding around here like it’s so scary all of a sudden? It’s just one of those things and that’s one of the things too that happens later on, when the killer finally comes home. You know, there’s just these alternate moments where he’s running after with a knife going nuts and other moments where everything suddenly gets quiet and calm and sneaky for no apparent reason.

Craig: Oh, gosh. That that’s jumping kind of ahead, but it it’s worth noting. I mean, there’s one point you already mentioned the shed. Like, she was in the shed at one point. In the end, when the killer shows up and we’ll go back because there’s a couple things I wanna talk about. But there’s one point where they’re in the shed together, and she literally sneaks right past him. Like, they are centimeters away from each other, and we’re supposed to believe that he doesn’t notice.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: That she is moving right like like, you could feel their breath on one another. Like, it’s so stupid. Oh, but what I was trying to get you before was, you know okay. So he’s running around as a nurse and then eventually he find some bums and he makes them get undressed. And that’s all again, it goes on forever. It takes way too long. And the bum’s like, are you going to rape me? Like, oh my god. And so he steals their clothes and then right after this, it cuts to a scene that I thought something had went wrong. I thought all of a sudden I was in a different movie. I’m like, what is happening? Like, all of a sudden we’re in an editing room where these 2 women are editing horror films and they go off on this huge long discussion about how horror films are really made in the editing room and the director really doesn’t have all that much to do with it.

Clip: These horror pictures give me the willies. It’s something a movie, Andrea. Look, Connie. I love movies. I love editing. I love making movies more than I love eating. But these horror movies, they make me scared to drive home alone at night. Oh, I know what you mean. They don’t exactly turn me on. Do you think people will ever get tired of these films? No. I think people are always interested in the latest monster that will pop up. Or how much more blood can be spilled or how many more guts can be ripped out. And the producers will keep pouring them out. Yep.

Craig: I was like, did my link get messed

Clip: up or something? Like

Todd: No. And are they trying to get real meta here all of a sudden? And then then it actually shows us a clip from the movie that they’re editing which is even cornier and cheesier than the movie that we’re watching.

Craig: It’s like a Doctor Frankenstein movie and this mad scientist is putting together this this Todd. And he’s, like, alright. Give me the heart. Okay. I’m putting it in now. And then he’s like, okay, nurse. Give me head. And the nurse the nurse looks at him and he’s like, the head nurse. Like, oh my god. Like, so bad. But I guess it turns out that these women are friends of Linda’s. Yeah. Because they don’t find that until 5 minutes into the scene. I Linda calls them and I guess it’s so dumb and, like, it just comes out of left field. She’s like, oh, I have to go to an audition tomorrow, and they wanna see that tape that you said you’d edit for me. Is it done? And the girl’s like, yeah. It’s done. You can come get it. And she’s like, oh, I can’t because I’m babysitting, but I’m in this particular neighborhood. And the lady’s like, oh, that’s okay because that’s where my hairdresser lives and I was going there anyway, so I’ll bring it to you. You were going to your hairdresser in the middle of the night on Halloween night? I know. I was thinking the same thing. I’m sitting here with an angry look on my face because it’s so, like, Todd, it’s so stupid.

Todd: And we’re about an hour into the movie at this point,

Craig: by the way. Yeah. I mean, it’s getting close to over, really. Mhmm. Then okay. So Linda gets some more trick or treaters, and then she ominously leaves the door partially open. Dun, dun, dun.

Todd: Well, she leaves a door open partially open, and then the door that is partially open that everybody sneaks into is a completely different door.

Craig: I don’t know. Yeah. It’s so stupid. And then she then she sees a report on the TV about Malcolm escaping, and it’s the nurse who he attacked being interviewed.

Clip: It was a vicious and savage attack, the work of a maniac. He jumped me as I leaned to tuck him in. He threw me on the bed and then jumped on top of me and put it in my mouth. Put the gag in your mouth, you mean? Yes. Yes. He put this in my mouth, and I couldn’t cry out. He he tied me up and took off all my clothes.

Craig: You why? Why are you trying to be funny at this point?

Todd: Like I’m telling you, I I really think that this movie had a dual purpose that if this didn’t work as a horror movie, he had an whole other plan for it.

Craig: Maybe maybe he should have gone that direction. I might have enjoyed it more.

Todd: It would have been way more fun. God. The worst porn would have been way more fun than this movie.

Craig: And okay. And so then there’s a bunch of stuff running around the house. I have in my notes, why is there an abacus in Joan’s room?

Todd: A giant giant abacus on the table. It’s the

Craig: Is it just a is it just a decorative abacus or, like, does does Joan practice the art of abacus in her spare time? Oh, god. I don’t know.

Todd: Eventually, Malcolm returned to the house, and there’s lots of prowling going on.

Craig: And he prowls around the house for 5 minutes.

Todd: 5 minutes

Craig: room. And then then Linda’s friend, the video editor, shows up, and then she browse around the house for 10 minutes

Todd: In exactly the same way that he does. Each room in the same order, every shot for shot. It’s another one of those cases where hello? Is anybody here? Then you go to the bathroom. Hello? Is anybody here? Come on, Joan. Where are you? And then you just end up in the attic.

Craig: Yeah. Like, why? Like, even if even if she were home, like, are you really gonna go look for her in the attic? Like, leave the tape on the table at the door and go. But, no, she she looks through the whole house and, Malcolm is up in the attic and he stabs her, like, once in the back of the head. And then he she turns around and he’s like, wait a second. You’re not Joan.

Todd: Oh, my God. Oh, God. I couldn’t figure out why this movie is rated R for the life of me. I couldn’t No. I could not figure out. There’s language. There’s nothing like that. It’s not blood I mean, there’s some blood, but it’s not gory and in a sense that there’s any kind of gore effects. She falls he he stabs her from behind. You don’t see anything happen. You see her fall down. You see he’s holding a knife that has some blood on it and then you see a shot of her and her face has some blood splattered on it. That’s

Craig: Well, right. And he stabbed her in the back of the head and somehow that made blood splatter all over the front of her face and her boobs. Like, what? Yeah. But that but you’re absolutely right. That’s the only actual blood we see. There’s blood in other parts, but it’s fake and it’s intended to be fake because it’s it’s stupid, lame Christopher doing his dumb tricks, constantly biting on blood pellets and spitting out blood.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. I have no idea. Uh-huh. PG 13. Gosh. PG, it’s there there’s nothing to it. Mhmm. Okay. And so then it leads up to the end where Linda is in the house and Mal chases her for 5 minutes. And, like, it’s like he thinks that she’s Joan. And and at this moment, when when he first approaches her, he approaches her from behind, and she thinks it’s Christopher, you know, messing with his voice again or whatever. She starts to talk to him and he yells at her, don’t look at me. So she doesn’t for a while, And then he goes on this ridiculous monologue.

Todd: Clever of you, Joe. Very, very clever the way you put me out of the picture as soon as you were tired of me, except except I have a little punishment for you for what you’ve done to me.

Craig: Meanwhile, she gets out her compact and looks at him in the mirror and sees that it’s not the kid and just continues to sit there, like, get up, run, Like, there’s at least a couch between you. I mean, what are you waiting for?

Todd: Or, you know, at the very beginning, maybe say something like, I’m not Joan. Right. You know? Right. Like, act like a normal person would act in this situation. And their whole babysitter. The whole chase is just absolutely, also not inter interesting. You know, you’ve waited the whole movie for something like this to happen. And it is also insipid and boring. Yeah. He just runs after her. She runs out of the house, outside. And where does she go? She goes to the shed. And she runs into the shed, climbs up in the top of the shed. And somehow, in this tiny little shed, she’s able to lure him to the Todd, so she can jump down and she runs out of the shed. Okay. Again, she’s back outdoors and where does she go? She runs to the the car, which of course she gets into and the car won’t start. And he stands outside the car waving his knife around, saying a bunch of dumb things, but not actually doing anything until finally he tries to reach his hand in the window and, she gets out of the car and he comes through the car. So now, where does she run? Back into the frickin’ house. The minute she goes back into the house and runs upstairs, now, suddenly, he’s careful and quiet and cautious. And we get a good long 3 or 4 minute scene of him step by step, looking behind him and in front of him, creeping up the stairs.

Craig: My favorite part of this whole chase was that she had absolutely no concern for Christopher what whatsoever. I know. You’re on your own, kids. Sorry. Didn’t even

Todd: think about him. Didn’t even think about him.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, not that I would have I wouldn’t have cared either. I would have been throwing that kid in front of me that he’s just so obnoxious.

Todd: At some point, we’re supposed to believe that Christopher got got killed too because

Craig: Well, it’s a it’s a red it’s it’s a misleader. Yeah. Because he’s been so obnoxious all night and she’s been trying to get him to go to bed all night and he won’t. And then after Malcolm gets in the house, she finds him in bed and she’s like, oh, Hardyhar, you choked to death or something. And we’re and then we see that Malcolm was hiding in the shadows in his room. So we’re kind of led to believe that he’s been killed, but it’s not true. She ends up back in his room, and he wakes up and literally says, I must have dozed off. Is it still Halloween? Like and and she and she’s like, no. There’s a killer in the house, and he’s like, okay. And, oh, Todd, I don’t think that I have ever seen a more inept ending to a movie ever in my life. My word.

Todd: This was so bad.

Craig: They set up I don’t even know what their plan was. They’re they they set they, like, they pull the blade up on the guillotine, and she’s like, does this thing actually work? And he’s like, yeah. So they stand there. They she puts the guillotine between herself and the door. She holds up a fake gun pointing towards the door, like, through the guillotine, and eventually Malcolm starts, like, wriggling the doorknob and and is trying to get in, and they’re, like, waiting for him to get in. And stupid little Christopher is just standing there holding the rope on the guillotine with, like, a henchman’s mask on. And, eventually, the doorknob stops rattling and she says, wait a second. Where did he go? What happened? Where is he? He bursts in through the other door, which is on the other side of the room, and fully deliberately places his head in the guillotine. And they pull the blade, and it kills him. Yeah. What the fuck? Like

Todd: It was hilarious.

Craig: Oh my god. It was ridiculous.

Todd: It set aside the fact that none of it is convincing whatsoever. I mean, set set aside the fact that the the guillotine when it falls kinda bounces off of his neck. It doesn’t Yeah. Clearly not very heavy. It’s a magic trick.

Craig: Yeah. And he clear and he clearly has the same blood capsules that Christopher has and just bites on him and spits them out.

Todd: It’s not like his head falls off or we can see in, you know, anything like that. No. But but add to it the fact that he comes into the room and deliberately places his head onto that thing.

Craig: Well, like, I think that it would the blocking must have read you trip and fall into it. But no. Like, it it’s just he walks in and kind of pretends to stumble a little bit and then very carefully rests his head right in oh my god.

Todd: It is one for the books right there.

Clip: I’m sorry for what I did to you. I promise I won’t do it anymore. No more tricks. It’s alright. I have to call the police.

Todd: And we get this long shot of Christopher, and his face kind of changes.

Craig: Yeah. He picks up the knife.

Todd: Picks the knife up and kind of looks at it with a bit of a smile. The next shot is the same shot we’ve seen of her over and over again every time she’s talking on the phone. So, now, she’s crying and she has a gun next to her. And so, she has come downstairs, sat deliberately on the sofa, gotten a good cry in, so that and then, so she can reach over and pick up the phone to call the police. She’s like, hello, police. Christopher creeps up behind her and raises the knife and freeze frame. Yeah. Yeah. He stabs her in the back of the neck.

Craig: Are you kidding me? As well, it is are you kidding me, but I saw it coming a mile away. You know, like, as soon as he picks up the knife and smiles, I’m like, oh, okay. So, you know, just like his father, he’s a psychopath too. Alright. I mean, like, I don’t know, shades of Friday 13th, I guess, but it was I don’t know. Todd, it was just so dumb.

Todd: I mean, this is this kind of this one between this one and Don’t Go Into the Woods, you know, it’s hard for me.

Craig: I mean and and Don’t Go Into the Woods was a worse movie because it wasn’t even as well made. This movie as far as, shooting yeah. As far as shooting is concerned, it’s it’s far and away not the worst movie I’ve ever seen. But as far as plot and even the acting, like, oh, Todd. I I get I’ve seen worse acting to be sure, but it’s bad here and the the dialogue is bad, the premise is stupid. You know, a lot of the times I’ll say, you know, it’s it’s it’s dumb, but, you know, that can be fun. Bad movies can be fun. It’s not even fun. No. It’s boring. Yeah. It’s boring and pointless and, Todd, I was looking at my watch. I was looking at Facebook. I’m, like, Jesus, is this over yet? Come on. Don’t watch this movie. I watched it in 3 separate sessions over Oh, man.

Clip: I -I

Todd: was like, oh, Todd, I have to finish this movie. That’s how I was for the last half hour. I gotta finish this movie because we have to talk about it for a stupid podcast. Yeah. The sacrifices we make for our audience, you know.

Craig: I know. I mean Yeah. It’s a it’s a labor of love. So the only other interesting thing

Todd: I can say about this has nothing to do with the movie, but everything to do with Gary Graver. So the rest of the story is Gary Graver himself ended up with Orson Welles’ Oscar for Citizen Kane. He claims that Orson Welles gave it to him, and it was used as a prop in this last movie that he was shooting. And after they shot that scene, he just handed it to him and said, here, you hold on to this. And he took it as, he was giving it to me as a gift and as as part of payment, you know, for the working that he was doing on the movie. Later on, Orson Welles is, I think either widow or daughter, was was looking for the Oscar and couldn’t find it. She wrote to the Academy and got a replacement Oscar sent to her. And there are all these rules about how Oscars

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: Can and can’t be Todd.

Craig: Or Yeah. You can’t. I don’t I don’t think you can even give them away. No. If if you you have to return them to the academy if you’re getting rid of it.

Todd: Well, he tried to sell it. He put it up for for sale, and she found out about it. And they got in this big lawsuit, which he eventually lost. So he ended up having to give the Oscar back to her. And then later, like, a year later, she really needed money. She found some loophole in all this and she ended up selling the Oscar herself. And the reason she was able to do it was in all the agreement that they signed with the Academy, it all references the person who the Oscar is given to. And since she was not the person who actually the Oscar was given to, the judge in that case that the academy brought against her said, you know, your agreement doesn’t really work here. And so she was able to sell it. So this guy, you know, got wrapped up in all this. Really interesting bit of film history. And then, even though he died in 2004, what happened this year, but this film that Orson Welles did got made. The Other Side of the Wind. I was totally unaware of this. Some Kickstarter went up last year, some editor that I guess, had some relationship with Orson Welles or somehow, you know, everybody sort of felt would would be capable of finishing this movie, which Orson Welles had, I think he had edited 45 minutes of it and then left extensive notes and a 1000 hours of footage. They did this Kickstarter to get this movie finalized. The Kickstarter was successful. This guy went to work. And as of August on Netflix, it was released. And so you are able to see all of Gary Graver’s wonderful cinematography and Orson Welles’ vision. And they say it’s quite good and probably quite accurate to what he wanted, up on Netflix. So if you’re going to just go see a Gary Graver’s film, I would suggest one of 2 things. I would suggest go go see right now, go to Netflix and see The Other Side of the Wind, which is a serious piece of film history that we nobody ever thought they would ever see. Or, you could rent The Erotic Adventures of Annie Fanny. Yeah. Or, home, home but not alone. And I’m gonna make it a point. I’m gonna make it a point to go see all of them. Just to make sure.

Craig: Yeah. Well, you should. And you can report back to me things.

Todd: Well, thanks again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. We are 1 week away from Halloween, and we promise you that the next

Clip: week’s Halloween movie

Todd: hopefully won’t well, we promise you won’t be quite this inept. Even though we haven’t seen it, we know Rob Zombie makes some pretty good movies and Rob Zombies 31 is going to be our release on October 31st this year. So please stick around for that. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.