31 (2016)

Episode 146, 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 Craig

Todd: Craig. Happy Halloween everybody. Halloween 2018. We are stoked to be bringing you our final in our yearly Halloween series this year and today we decided to do apropos, 31. 31 is, stands for the day of Halloween and so therefore this movie by Rob Zombie which came out 2016 takes place on Halloween which makes it perfect for our Halloween episode today. Yep. I have to admit, Craig, this is the very first time I’ve ever seen a Rob Zombie movie. Isn’t that weird? That’s crazy. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. You know what? You didn’t even see the Halloween remakes or anything?

Todd: Oh, you’re right. Okay. Never mind. I did see the the Halloween remake. I saw the first Oh, okay. Halloween remake and Gotcha. But I don’t I mean, that’s not typical of his films, is it?

Craig: I don’t know. I mean, it’s definitely got some of his typical stuff. I mean, I guess, first and foremost that Sherry Moon Zombie is in it because she’s in all of his movies. That’s his wife. Right? Yeah. It’s his wife and and she’s in I don’t know. I think I’ve seen all of his movies. No. That’s a lie because I haven’t seen Lords of Salem, but she, yeah. She he he always casts her, which is kinda cute and sweet and romantic.

Todd: Yeah. Yes. I mean, you you do what you wanna do when you’re making the movie. Right? Right. But, you know, I mean, is she a better actress in some of the other movies? I don’t remember her in Halloween.

Craig: No. Not really. She played she played Michael Myers’ mom in, the in both in in both his Halloween movies. It’s funny, you know, every time I talk to anybody about, Rob Zombie’s movies, I always bring up the fact that he always casts his wife, and she’s not gonna win any awards for her acting. She’s a beautiful woman. She’s she’s gorgeous, and I understand. And and, like, I think it’s really cute. They’ve been together for a super long time, and they’ve been married for a long time, and, I think it’s sweet that he always, cast her. She’s she’s not an amazing actress and she’s always a little bit the same in all of the movies that he cast her in, but I don’t know. I get it. She’s she’s got a charm about her, and and I actually like her. Again, she’s not she’s not gonna win any awards, I don’t think. But No. She she does she she does a good job.

Todd: I always felt, like, right before every shot with her, it’s like, you could just tell that the director was like, okay. Look scared in 3, 2, 1.

Clip: You’re doing

Todd: great, honey. You’re doing just fine.

Craig: Oh, she holds her own. She’s not terrible.

Todd: No. She’s not horrible.

Craig: We we can no. We can joke, but she’s she’s really not a bad actress. She’s a fine actress, and, I liked her. I I liked her in this movie. I I was I was rooting for

Todd: her. Yeah. There’s much worse acting in this movie than hers. I didn’t think most of the acting in this movie was was very good with the exception of the people where it counted. Really impressed to see, Malcolm McDowell in this

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: As playing father murder,

Craig: which Well, and that’s that’s kind of something else that I like about Rob Zombie, like, he has an ensemble and and he draws people in and once he’s got them in, he uses them. And, Malcolm McDowell played the Loomis role in the Halloween remakes, and zombie got him back for this and he’s a very fine respectable actor and and he plays kind of a a cameo role in this movie, really. I mean, I I can only imagine that he didn’t have to shoot much. Yeah. You know?

Todd: They they were to work for this guy.

Craig: And and, you know, he doesn’t have a whole lot to do, but he’s got a commanding presence, and and he’s good.

Clip: Tonight, we are going to play 31. What is 31, pray teller? Well, 31 is war. And as the old saying goes, war is hell.

Craig: It kinda gives, zombies movies, I don’t know. It’s not like a theater feel, but it’s that kind of community where you you work with people and you like them and, so you continue to work with them, and and I I like that. I think it’s neat.

Todd: Kind of like Christopher Guest and those movies that he always puts together. Except those are more in the comedy role. And and then of course we had, we had Meg Foster in this and I was surprised to see her there too. Is she in his other films as well?

Craig: She did I haven’t seen Lords of Salem, but she did Lords of Salem, and she’s cool. We’ve talked about her before. She was in Jeepers Creepers 3, which was, I don’t know, kind of a crap movie, I thought.

Todd: But Yeah.

Craig: And we also talked about she was in They Live, and and back in her heyday, back in the seventies eighties, she was just stunningly gorgeous. And and now she, you know, she’s she’s older. Yeah. She’s older and she’s a little weathered, but I found her endearing, in this movie. I liked her. I was rooting for her. Spoiler alert, she doesn’t make it.

Todd: Not many people do. No.

Craig: And I I was kind of bummed, you know, because she was cool. And and the thing that I like about her in this movie is that it centers around this troop of carnies really. They’re rough around the edges, but they’re like a family and they’ve got each other’s backs, and she’s kind of the mother figure in this little ragtag group, and I liked her. I thought she did a good job. She looks she looks good. I mean, she looks her age which is kind of different for women in Hollywood these days, but

Todd: Imagine Carney is a little rough around the edges, you know? Right. Figure.

Clip: Well, and

Craig: that’s the other thing that’s the other thing about Rob Zombie’s movies. They’re gritty, and and it’s not about Hollywood glamour, you know. He’s not just casting a bunch of gorgeous 20 somethings in his movies. He’s casting people that, you know, I don’t know, they’re they’re not necessarily people that I would hang out with, but, you know, they’re they’re raw, gritty characters. And Yeah. And that’s kinda nice, you know. It’s a it’s a nice difference from your your standard pretty twenty somethings that are getting knocked off, you know. These are interesting characters.

Todd: I was getting shades of, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Totally. And especially, you know, the the movies shot in almost entirely in sepia tones. When it’s daytime anyway. And when it’s nighttime, it’s all just blues, blues and and and that’s about it. So he has a definite style style to his film. And I that must be something that carries through the other movies as well. Right? I’ve I’ve seen stills and things for the Devil’s Rejects and whatnot. And it seems to be probably very much a similar style.

Craig: Yeah. I forgot that the Devil’s Rejects was a a Halloween movie too. And if I had remembered that, I probably would have suggested that knowing that you hadn’t seen, many or any of his movies. Mhmm. Maybe we’ll get around to it someday. It’s wild. It’s crazy. It’s funny, you know, I hadn’t seen this, and that’s why I wanted to do it. This was my choice. I wanted to do this because I hadn’t seen it and I’d been really interested. And watching it, like, I was I was into it. It was good. It was scary. It was gritty. I don’t know. It’s scary. I wasn’t, like, scared. I wasn’t, like, peeing my pants or anything, but it was brutal. And, I don’t know. I I assume you’ve seen this movie. You know, when I was talking about it to my partner last night, he would have hated it as your wife would have.

Clip: I know.

Todd: Yeah. No way she is.

Craig: Yeah. But I told him, they they could have titled this The Running Man 2. Yeah. And it would have been a totally apropos title because that’s what it is. It’s the exact same premise, really.

Todd: I was thinking the exact same thing. It’s basically these carnies without a carnival who are driving down the road and they run into some stuff set up in the middle of the road at night which caught catches them off guard. And once they get out of the truck, they get them the they get ambushed. And as soon as they wake up, they’re in what I guess, and you know, I had to read the plot synopsis later to get the names of all these people and all these places because they’re not even referenced or or talked about in the movie.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Charlie, she’s the cherry moon. And then you have a guy named Roscoe Pepper who’s who’s Jeff Phillips, he’s the bearded guy. You have a guy named Panda, who’s, one of the 2 black guys we have here. We have Panda and we have LaVonne Wally. He’s played by a guy named Kevin Jackson. I think he’s he’s affecting, like, a Jamaican accent.

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: But it doesn’t come off. I don’t know. It sounds

Craig: It was funny because it it’s really thick in the beginning in the opening scenes. And those opening scenes, they’re driving around in their van, like, their carny van. And that was very Texas chainsaw to me. Just all of these people, you know, they’re they’re smoking weed and they’re having fun and they’re joking around and they’ve got a couple of girls on the bus, with them who are, you know, just groupies or whatever and, it’s just kind of establishing who they are and and that totally gave me Texas chainsaw vibe. Yes. And then they put they pull up to this gas station. Mhmm. Of course, you know, how many movies have we watched where you pull up to this gas

Todd: station in the

Craig: middle of nowhere. Right? And, while they’re there, Roscoe is is filling up the van. This lady pops up and and kind of flirts with them a little bit. Like, it seems like she wants to get a ride with them or whatever. But it’s E. G. Daily. And do you recognize her? Like, I love EG Daily. No.

Todd: I don’t recognize her. What she what what

Craig: Oh my god. You would recognize her from a million things. She the first thing that I know her from is Pee wee’s Big Adventure. She was the girl that had a crush on Pee wee and that he was always, like, pushing away.

Todd: Oh my gosh. No way.

Craig: Yes. Yes. And Wow. She’s like she’s like the one who’s always like, hey, Pee wee. You wanna go to the drive in? Like, okay. So that’s her. And she was also, on Friends. She played, Phoebe’s old, singing partner and she stole smelly cat from Phoebe, like and she’s a singer. She she’s been in a million things.

Todd: She was in loverboy and Dutch and bad dreams. Oh, my word.

Craig: Yes. Oh, I just she’s great. I I love her and she shows up and she flirts a little bit. And I knew she was in this, so I was watching for her and and Todd be fair, I knew what her role was. So when she showed up and it was funny, you know, it’s it’s just a very simple scene where she’s kind of flirting with him, but she keeps talking about, like, she keeps saying,

Clip: Y’all headed up Jack some way, go hunting? No. We’re just plowing straight on through the Harleyville. Planning on doing some hunting? No. Why are you so concerned with me going hunting? Oh, just wondering. You got that domineering Craig, black, hunter vibe. Yeah. It just comes natural.

Craig: And and and it’s because she’s fishing. She wants to know if they have weapons Mhmm. On board, and they don’t. And then she disappears, and then she shows up later. But it it in the grand scheme of things, it makes sense. You know, she’s she’s scouting these guys out to make sure that they don’t have guns. After they leave the gas station and they’re driving down the road and they come across these, It it looks like scarecrows, but when they get out and they look at them, the Jamaican guy is like, no, man. It’s voodoo.

Todd: Dude, his accent is horrible in this movie. It is absolutely as good as mine. Laugh. I feel like I’m watching a cartoon whenever he talks. Oh my gosh.

Clip: Hey, look a boy. This monster break out here in the ass and in no way, you’re gonna get your Todd ass out there, and you’re gonna push with the bumper up your ass.

Todd: True Rastafarian here. I actually I think the acting was pretty poor with most of the people who get killed off pretty early on. The driver of the van and all that, the 2 girls that were in there were just terrible actresses. Terrible. I don’t mean to help them, but it was just I I I’ll have to say at the beginning of the movie, I wasn’t really getting into it because I found that so distracting. And I also found the writing to be kinda lame. And and maybe in the hands of a different director or maybe in the hands of different actors and actresses, it would have come across a little better. But I felt like all of their little banter and everything that they did back and forth in the van seemed really for seemed really written. It seemed really written and really forced to me. I don’t know.

Craig: I imagine that they had a skeleton of what they wanted to do and what they were doing. But I I have a feeling that much of it was improvised. Like, they they sing these made up songs in the beginning. You know, it’s it’s road trippy and they’re stoned and they’re, you know, having fun or whatever. I know that Cherry Moon Zombie and the guy who plays, whatever, panda or whoever the Jamaican guy is, they, you know, they make up these songs, and I know that they made them up themselves. I read that. So I have a feeling that some of it was probably, ad libs.

Clip: So what exactly is the name of the show of yours? Okay. Dig this. Professor Gouldini’s mad gorilla monster show. Oh, I’d go see that show. The name’s Madison Gray, but you’re still minus 1 jungle girl. Oh, I could be a jungle girl. I took a acting class before I left high school.

Todd: Yeah. She shut the fuck up for 2 seconds.

Clip: That’s where Charlie girl comes from.

Craig: Charlie hardly looks like

Clip: the wild woman before now. And besides, you know that she is my main hustle in this early show. Okay. We dumped the whole Barnio shit. Okay? We work a new angle. The yokels have burnt out on that yarn 10 years ago. What’s a yokel? Angle. The yokels have burnt out on that yarn 10 years ago. What’s a yokel?

Craig: Frankly, it really didn’t bother me. Yeah. The 2 girls who just serve the purpose of kind of being annoying and showing that these guys have groupies or whatever

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: They’re the first to go. You know, as soon as they come across these figures in the road and they get out to try to move them away, they get attacked. And, the 2 girls get killed and and the the main core group of people gets hijacked, kidnapped I guess, and they take them into gosh, I couldn’t tell. Was it like an old church? It’s what it looked like.

Todd: It was either a church or a theater. Yeah. It was hard to tell. Well, some churches look like theaters. It’s, you know, it’s a really old old looking, you know, renaissance style kind of place and goth. Not not really got a little gothic, I guess. But, that’s when Malcolm McDowell pops out. Right. He’s up on a balcony above them, and he’s in full regalia. He’s got a big tall poofy powdered wig. They all look like, you know, they’re from, they’re all about to lose their heads in the French Revolution,

Craig: Right. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah. Heavy bourgeois looking French. It’s very odd. You know, you can tell that I think these decisions were clearly made. I don’t know, man. Not necessarily in service to the story, but just to give you some something cool. Like, it’s trying to be cool. It’s trying to be different. It’s trying to be so out there in all of these characters. And I have to say that’s the second thing that kinda bothered me about this movie. I felt overall this movie was trying really too hard to be cool that sometimes it came across as rather silly.

Craig: Yeah. I think that may be zombie style.

Todd: Is that the way he is?

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know. And I don’t know that it’s necessarily him trying to be cool, but, yeah, he he he’s big on the visuals, and and that’s fine. I mean, I I’d rather see something interesting than something boring. It was neat to see them in those. The French Revolution is exactly what it looks like. You know, they’re in the powdered wigs and the white, makeup, and it’s it’s him. It’s Malcolm McDowell McDowell and then several older ladies. And what it turns out to be is that they are these super wealthy people who every year they set up this game where they kidnap a bunch of people, throw them in this old warehouse factory. I go. Something dark.

Todd: It’s like, it’s like the boiler room in Nightmare on Elm Street. Now it’s like a big, it’s almost like a big oil refinery. I got the sense, at least from the exteriors, you know, you just get all these pipes going everywhere and huge tanks and whatnot. And then the inside is all very industrial feeling. Yes. Tunnels and and and more pipes.

Craig: Steam coming out of pipes. Right. That kind of deal. It it’s basically a stay alive for 12 hours contest and they have all of these goons who they refer to as the heads who they send in to try to kill them and there’s oh, gosh. I don’t even know who all the heads are. There’s the first one is sick head, and he’s played by a little person, named Poncho Moller. He was my favorite of all the heads. He was hilarious. I agree. He completely agree. He was funny. He was funny, but he was also menacing. Like, I was scared of him and he’s like he’s like a Nazi, like he’s got a big swastika. They’re they’re all painted. All these heads are like clowns, and he’s got a big swastika on his chest and That’s the breakdown of the movie is that they release these heads on these people and the people either, you know, it’s fight to the death, basically. Mhmm. And that’s why it’s so much like the running man. I liked the movie overall. I really did. But the thing that bothered me about the movie was they would be pitted against these various villains, but the villains would toy with them so much that I was, like, really, like, just freaking kill them, like Mhmm. And there would seriously be sometimes when the villain would appear and be, like, I’m so scary. Okay. Literally, like, alright. Go run around for 20 minutes.

Clip: Exactly. I’m

Craig: gonna find you. Exactly.

Todd: Especially toward the end, it gets kinda ridiculous. He just pops in like the last guy pops in and says something and like, all right, I’m gonna let you guys like hang for a while and just walk out and walk around for a little bit. And that begs the question too with these people. I’m sorry, Craig. I didn’t like this movie.

Craig: I’m okay. I didn’t make it.

Todd: I shouldn’t apologize for disagreeing with you. Heaven knows we do plenty of that. But True. No. I just the whole premise to me, it seemed kind of dumb in a way that, like I said, I think it was trying so hard to be cool, but it didn’t really have itself anchored in a strong foundation of backstory. I had all these questions. I’m, like, okay. So these people, okay, I can get behind. It’s Halloween, so they’ll dress up in these French wigs or whatever, and they’ll set these people loose. And as soon as they tell these people what’s going on, these people get knocked out. And they all wake up in different areas of this complex. Far flung areas of this complex. Yeah. And so I’m asking myself from the very beginning, are there like hidden cameras around here? How are these 3 people who are running this game getting off on it? You know? How are they witnessing and seeing what’s going on? Everything we see is just them in this this this big theater place, which, you know, that’s the only place we ever see them. We never see them looking at video cameras. We never see any sense of their monitors or anything in there. Plus, this is 1976. Yeah. We had video in 1976, but it wasn’t that sophisticated. Todd know, the cameras would have been big. They would have been obvious. They would have been around and maybe in black and white and what not. These kind of closed circuit systems. I just I just couldn’t understand how these people would be able to watch all of this play out. At least the movie never showed us how these people would watch all this be played out. Totally true. You know, they they run around, and there’s all this stuff that happens in these little passageways and all these places. And like you said, they go and they toy with them, and then they let them run around some more. They come and toy with them and then let them run around some more. And then Todd be completely honest, the way that these people die, like the villains is pretty let down. I mean, every single one of them just does something stupid like they’re not looking behind them. Or they charge in on one guy when there’s another person standing there. Yeah. And so it’s it’s little anticlimactic when they get it. You know, whereas like in the running man, like each of these people, they have their strengths and their their stick, you know, and and it’s the electric electricity guy, you know, he comes after you with electricity and that ends up kind of being his downfall, like somebody throws a pipe at him or something. And I don’t remember exactly how it goes, but, you know, short circuits him out and he falls. And I was kind of hoping that each of these people would kind of get it in the way that they got it. And just the chainsaw people do. The second group of people come along are 2 2 clowns. Right? Well, they’re all clowns. But these are 2 Yeah.

Craig: They’re all clowns. Yeah.

Todd: They’re called they’re called schizo head, psycho head. And actually, they were fun to watch. But they come in in this weird scene. And again, like I said, I I feel like, oh my gosh, man. I was just kinda trying too hard. There’s so much like sexual innuendo in here. Yeah. Every time these guys come in, there’s either like somebody banging somebody or they’re like making all these sexual references to people or they’re teasing people in these sexual ways. And then this moment, you know, they’re walking down this passageway and it’s got this big, like, women’s legs painted across the sides. And then the entryway is like her vagina. And they walked in and there they are. It’s so over. I mean,

Craig: it’s like it’s like a club or, like, it looks like it’s set up to be like a club or whatever, and it’s called the wet kitty. Yeah.

Todd: It’s funny. And, you know, when that’s a shtick in and of itself, when it’s like in, from Dust till Dawn, you know, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino kind of do this, but they do it every now and then. It’s not like the it’s constantly revisited time and time again through this movie where it kinda kinda get old to me, you know. Again, it felt like it was trying too hard to be shocking in this way, that by the time the 4th guy gets called in because he’s apparently the only guy who can finish them off. He’s like banging some girl, you know, like that’s the scene that we get with her. I mean, I’m not opposed to any of this. I know I I get it. They’re supposed to be nasty people and blah blah blah. And maybe they’re all kind of obsessed with sex, but it’s just like every other thing is like this. And it got old. Yeah. It’s got so old that it just felt to me like they were just trying too hard.

Clip: You know what I’m talking about?

Craig: I get what you’re saying. I’m glad that you brought up Robert Rodriguez because I feel like his style is somewhat similar, not the same, but somewhat similar.

Todd: Yeah. It was more sophisticated Todd.

Craig: Well, they’re they’re they’re going for gritty, and I and I think that they are going for, this is a side of society, for lack of a better word, that’s not represented in film. And and they are, you know, they’re they’re carnies, you know, they’re they’re rough people. So the sexual innuendo the scene that you were talking about with Doomhead, banging the girl. I mean, it was it was certainly gratuitous, and like he’s hardcore banging this girl while they’re watching Nosferatu, like he’s getting off on that. Okay. Whatever. And yeah, I mean that that seems like it’s for shock value, but some of the other sexual innuendo, it it’s verbal, you know, like there it’s thrown around like insults and like taunting and not that anybody that I know is really like that, but something that I appreciated was that it was indiscriminate. Like, they it wasn’t just misogynistic, like it was they were just throwing it around all over the place. Like, at one point, one of the scary people is coming at Roscoe. It’s Doomhead at the end. And for no apparent reason, he starts, Doomhead starts taking off his shirt, like, before he’s gonna kill this guy. And the guy is like, are you trying to kill me or fuck me? And and, and that wasn’t the only time that there was that kind of banter between not just male and female characters, but between male characters Todd. And it it made it so Todd me that it wasn’t so much like sexual innuendo or or sexual banter, but just vulgar, you know, just they were throwing vulgarities at each other indiscriminately. And it’s not like I was like, oh, yeah. Good one. But I at least appreciated that it was indiscriminate. They could have gone to a darker place with the women and I’m glad they didn’t. And in fact, Sherry Moon Zombie and Meg Foster totally hold their own, you know. And if if anything, they turn out to be tougher than the guys and they last longer than most of the guys. And I liked that.

Todd: That’s true. I I just think like like by the time it got to doom head, right, and he gets the phone call and he’s being all tough like, oh, I’ve I’ve gotta get this. This is business. She’s like, don’t you stop. He’s like, I’m gonna get it. He gets it. Right? She’s kind of leaves her there and he’s like, I gotta go. And it’s like that classic scene. Right? Oh, he’s got to leave the woman because what he his his work is way more important than sex. And then as he’s leaving, they have this exchange which it just seems so Hollywood. You know, I could predict every line he was saying

Craig: to her.

Todd: You know?

Clip: Yeah. Well, what the am I supposed to do? Well, you can stick your fingers in your dripping twat and finish yourself off or get the out. For anything, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Craig: You know, pretty full of yourself. Nobody messes with mister big shot. Well, you.

Clip: Bitch, when you run a perfect game day after day, ain’t luck, cunt. Skill.

Todd: Can I

Clip: at least take a shower before I go? Negative. Take that stinking ass and hit the bricks.

Todd: You know, it’s just, it is just felt it’s well, not just nasty, but it just, I it was so predictable and it felt so written that, okay, we’re supposed Todd you’re supposed to be telling me how tough this guy is, but it’s so cliche that the way you’re doing it, there’s nothing new there.

Craig: Well, you’re right. I agree with you on that and it and it is nasty because basically, they call in all these people and this was you have kind of already alluded to it, but it’s a little anticlimactic and that they keep bringing in these new people and they’re supposed to be scary and like the way that they’re introduced is usually scary and then when they actually face off with our heroes for lack of a better word, like they’re just people and it really isn’t all that difficult for these people to fight back and dispatch them. Like it usually takes a couple of minutes. Yeah. It’s not even hard.

Todd: Because it’s always like it’s like 4 or 5 people on 1 or, you know, 4 or 5 people on 2. I mean, at some point, it’s easier to get the jump on them because they’re facing the opposite direction. Somebody else comes up from behind, you know, and they’re sloppy. They they just allow that to happen, you know.

Craig: And they the characters even talk about that at some point, like, they have a conversation where one of them wants to just find a place and barricade themselves in and just hold it down because it’s all based on time. It’s 12 hours. They’ve got to survive these 12 hours. But there’s at that point, there’s 4 of them left and they vote and Sherry Moon Zombie is the last vote and she says, let’s find these MFers and slit their throats. And so that’s what they do. They just stick together and they kinda wait these peep wait until these people show up or they kinda, you know, actively pursue them, whatever, and then they fight them as a group and they win most of the time. And there there are there are stupid contrivances where they split them up Yes. Sometimes. And it’s dumb, like, just out of nowhere a cage door will fall and so, like, oh, no. We’re split up.

Todd: And we’re in a cage.

Craig: Yeah. Ultimately, it doesn’t amount Todd any I mean, they just fight these people and and they win. Where I was going to get back to your criticism of the nastiness, you were talking about how Doomhead is banging that girl or whatever and then he has to go to work and then eventually he corners Venus. He, like, he grabs her by the throat and puts her up against the wall and then he sticks his hands down his pants and holds his fingers up to her nose. It’s like, do you smell that? Like, just nasty stuff like that. It is nasty and Rob Zombie is not afraid to go for the nasty. It’s really not my cup of tea, but I feel like he’s going for gritty and that’s fine. I’m not gonna be critical of it. I get it. I just feel like

Todd: and I’m not I’m not opposed to that either. And, you know, far be it for me. But but it’s just if if if it just Todd a little more judiciously used, it would have been more effective when it’s sort of in your face overused all that. I would say overused in this movie. Yeah. It just seems like he’s trying a little too hard to be nasty. You know, it’s Yeah. Todd doesn’t even come in at spots where it makes sense or it’s clever, you know, or it’s or it’s funny or whatnot. It just it’s just there. And after a while, I feel like I’m watching a written story, you know, and not real people. That’s just that that’s that’s why it really bothered me. Not not not the content, just the amount of it and the way it was all delivered.

Craig: Yeah. It’s really weird. You know, this movie, I I wanted to see it. I’ve seen most of Rob Zombie’s other movies, and the reason that I wanted to see this one and and really ultimately save it for our, you know, final Halloween episode is because I do appreciate that zombie, kind of throws back to those gritty movies of the seventies. He’s got a very seventies feel. It’s very Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You know, it it’s For sure. It’s it’s gritty. It’s it’s dark. It’s violent. And some of his other movies like, House of a 1000 Corpses, it’s not even, you know, on the list of my favorite movies, but it really unsettled me. Like, it was so violent and so gratuitous that it, you know, it almost kinda made me sick, like and I don’t wanna say in a good way, but Mhmm. It was effective in in what it did, and I and I appreciated that. And, then the sequel to that, The Devil’s Rejects was it amped it up even more like it was just even more and there’s violence and rape and and just all this terrible stuff that you see. And so going into this one, I had read that Rob Zombie had said this was his most brutal movie to date and after I watched it, I was, like, has Rob Zombie seen his other movies? Because

Todd: I didn’t think it was that brutal.

Craig: It wasn’t really and I just didn’t think that it was gosh, I hate to be critical because I like the guy and I think that he’s a cool voice in the world of horror, but I just didn’t think that it was as good as some of his other efforts.

Todd: It’s not his best work.

Craig: No. And he wrote it and he directed it. It was crowdfunded, like, I feel like it was funded by, like, Kickstarter or something.

Todd: Yeah. Two times. Like, he had he had to go back and raise more money or something.

Craig: Yeah. And and the dude lied, like like, he people were clamoring for another sequel to, House of a 1000 Corpses, which I think we’re getting. I think that’s coming soon, even even though they all died or supposedly died at the end of The Devil’s Rejects. I think that we’re getting in another one of those. But he lied and said that the studio owned all the rights to those characters, and then the studio was, like, no, dude. You own the rights. Do whatever you want. But, Like, he he clearly wanted to make this movie and, you know, on its own, I thought it was fine. I know you didn’t like it and that’s fine. I didn’t think it was great. I thought it was alright, but just in comparison even to his Halloween remakes which are very much, I I don’t know, like, people in the horror community, you know, I read all these blogs and stuff. Yeah. People really come down on those remakes. I watched them. I thought they were good. I thought, you know, if we’re talking about a franchise that now has, like, 10 movies. I was I appreciated that he at least, you know, took it in a different direction and took it dark and I I like that. Just in comparison to his body of work, I Todd didn’t think this one really stood up and I and I was a little disappointed.

Todd: It just didn’t bring anything new to the game, you know. It it I don’t think it was very original. We kinda went through some of it already. Okay. A group of wealthy people wanna get, you know, some people together.

Clip: Right.

Todd: Sic some other people on them to kill. Okay. Most dangerous game.

Craig: So the purge. Right?

Todd: The purge, most dangerous game, you know, that’s been around forever. Mhmm. So these people get together. Right? And then all these, like, running man, you said, all these different villains are are released on them. Then these villains, they kind of are different. Like, 2 of them are clowns with chainsaws. 1 of them is that Nazi clown guy. The other guy they end up calling in is like a big jerky. Oh, Oh, and then there’s a tall guy and a and the short woman who’s the woman that we saw earlier in the gas station. Yeah.

Clip: And they

Craig: Oh, god. And and I have Todd, like, when they brought in those 2, it was, I think, death head. Right? And

Todd: Death head and sex.

Craig: And sex head. And and it was e g daily doing her very best Harley Quinn. Yes. And and, literally, I love her and I was so excited to see her and I I enjoyed watching her, but that the whole thing, you know, they they hype up. Oh, we’re gonna send in death head and sex head and death head is like our, you know, our last resort because he’s definitely gonna get things done. And then they come in and they, you know, he’s this huge guy and she’s this tiny girl and the the visual of them together is is you kind of a striking visual. But then they split up and then they just both get killed like Yeah. Like it’s just over.

Todd: They’re the weakest. They’re the weakest of, actually, honestly, the minute they were both walking down that passage, I was like, okay. This isn’t gonna last long. No. Like, they’re gonna have to pull out some special, like, electricity from their fingertips or something to impress me. He just had a bat with some spikes on it, and she was just dancing around.

Craig: Yeah. And singing like they and she And they’re singing

Todd: a German song or something like that.

Clip: Todd on wood. Stock on wood. Stock on wood. State on wood.

Todd: Oh my gosh. Come on. We already had the Nazi guy earlier. Are we really gonna go back in and, oh, German is scary. Right? It wasn’t enough. And, yeah, they get killed so quickly. She leaps on what’s his name, thinking that he’s more incapacitated, and he’s not. And so he just, like, stabs her a bunch of Todd, and she’s dead. And then as soon as he sees her, you know, dead, he just stands there and flips out while somebody else comes up from behind him and, like, hits him several times with the bit. Oh, it it was, that was the first time that Carly killed somebody. Right? Charlie killed somebody. Right?

Craig: Maybe. I don’t know. No. She she killed somebody earlier too. I liked that about her, and I liked it about both of the women characters that I saw or read that Sherry Moon Zombie was interviewed about this and and she talked about how this girl that she’s playing, Charlie, is just a victim in this whole thing, but it just goes to show that when you are put in a life or death situation even normal people can resort to their most primal survival instincts And I liked that, you know, they are tough, especially the 2 ladies. They are they’re tough. And Nick Foster kicks ass in this movie. I I wanna give her

Todd: She does.

Craig: Props because I really liked her. In fact, she may have been my favorite part about the movie.

Todd: But, you know, it’s it’s not a new concept. I mean, you know

Craig: No. And No. The final girl? No. It’s not

Todd: a Final girl. And also, like, you know, The Hills Have Eyes. I’m thinking, you know, that’s kind of the whole point of that film. But even if you compare the 2, you know, say The Hills Have Eyes or even something like Straw Dogs, If you’ve ever seen that with Dustin Hoffman, like these are like normal sort of suburban everyday people who are put in these extraordinary situations and suddenly have to become as savage as the people attacking them in order to defend themselves. But in this case, they’re presented as kind of not normal everyday people. They’re rough. You know, they’re already kind of everybody, and this is rough around the edges. So even that kind of falls a little flat for me.

Craig: I guess.

Todd: I didn’t fall in love with any of these characters, you know, in the very beginning. So when they when these rough people are get coming across even rougher people, not that they were presented as bad people in the beginning, it just it didn’t hold a lot of emotional pathos for me as much as it would have been, you know, otherwise, like I said. Like, something like Saw, you know, where you get these poor folks who are, yeah, maybe they did something awful, but they certainly didn’t deserve their treatment,

Craig: you know, pulled

Todd: out of some suburban neighborhood or their office building and then put in this horrendous trap sort of situation, this grimy nasty dungeon and, it’s not the same.

Craig: Well, I’m gonna disagree with you just a little bit there because these people are presented as being imperfect and rough and not opposed to taking advantage of people and and that kind of stuff, but I actually did feel for them when they all got thrown in there. What I liked about it, especially there are some scenes early I don’t know. I mean, they don’t even really get thrown in there until, like, a half an hour into the movie. But then once they do, one guy gets killed and they’re sad about it. Okay. Fine. But they’re all separated, but they come back together very quickly. And I I really did get a sense of these people being like family and Yes. They they wanted desperately not just to protect themselves, but to protect one another.

Todd: Very good point.

Craig: And they were really upset when one of them would fall and you know, like the first guy that I I think it’s Levon is the first one that gets killed. And they sit around and cry and and Panda is like, that guy was my very best friend. And and, like, I I felt it, you know. I felt like they were like this kind of thrown together family and they did care about each other. And I very much got the sense that Venus, you know, was the was the mother of the group and she was looking out for all of them and that was that kind of ended up being her demise was because she woke up like she took like a 5 minute nap or whatever and she wakes up and Charlie is gone and, she she scolds, Roscoe, I can’t believe you let her go, and she goes out looking for her and then when Doomhead finds her, she says, please please just let them live. She doesn’t beg for her own life, she begs for their lives and and I bought that. I I thought that they did a good job with that. And so, you know, there are things that I do appreciate appreciate about it. There I do wanna say though that there were other things about the movie that drove me absolutely crazy because they made absolutely no sense. Like the first guy that dies is Levon, I think. And then literally, like, a minute later, the aristocrats or whatever you wanna call them set up this big dinner scene for them. Yes. And and it’s beautiful. I mean, the cinematography looks fantastic for this scene.

Todd: It it kinda looks like they filmed the whole movie at a haunted house at times. Yeah.

Clip: Right?

Todd: Yeah. Everything it’s like smoky and the lights are in all the right places and things. Right. Yeah. It’s it’s gorgeous.

Craig: And they kind of have a debate about should we eat or not. And one of the guys is, like, look, you know, if we’re gonna be fighting for our lives, we have to eat or whatever. And they sit down and and some of them start eating and then Charlie’s like, wait wait Todd eating. And she wipes the table clean and underneath it is the guy that just died as though they’ve been fed this guy who we just saw die a minute ago. Like Yeah. How did that happen?

Todd: How did they cook and eat of this thing?

Craig: And there Yeah.

Todd: I agree.

Craig: When when sex head, EG Daily’s character is fighting, Roscoe, she stabs him multiple times. Now Todd be fair, there was a strobe effect going on and so it was difficult to see exactly what was going on. But there were also sound effects and it sounded to me like she stabbed him like up under his ribs like 4 or 5 times at least and I wrote in my notes, okay, so sex had killed Roscoe. And then in the next scene, he’s there and beat up, but pretty much

Todd: okay. Around. Yeah. It wasn’t the first It wasn’t the first time. Even the Nazi guy in the beginning gets a huge whack from Charlie off the bat right across the face. And you hear this pop, and you think, okay. Like, she snapped his neck. She hit him or whatever. He’s dead. And he just brings up later, like, there’s like, nothing had happened. I thought that was odd. In fact, this sort of thing was happening so much in this movie that I really thought we were gonna get some twist where

Craig: there was some It was a dream or something. Yeah. Right.

Todd: Yeah. And there was even a dream bit in there, which I saw was I saw coming a mile away.

Craig: It was

Clip: a dream,

Todd: but I was like, please, God, let this not be a dream. Let this not be a dream because then this movie is gonna finally start getting interesting for me. It’s when Meg, falls, Meg Foster’s character, Venus, falls asleep, and she dreams that the clowns that they had just killed pretty, pretty brutally. One of them had his head taken off or there.

Clip: How did you really think cutting my hair off

Craig: was gonna keep me down? Oh, I got that mother so back on the panto, and

Todd: I am feeling grooving.

Craig: Hey, super a weak human around here. And you learned shit yet?

Todd: I thought, oh, wouldn’t that be interesting if this movie went there? Because that would totally throw me for a loop. Yeah. But no, of course, it was indeed a dream, which I suspected. And, yeah. So that you’re right. It happens so much to both sides. Yeah. It’s unbelievable. You know, the other thing I found was so crazy was the fact that they were continuing, like you said earlier, that they decide, well, we’re just gonna keep going. We’re gonna keep walking through this crazy death trap maze place that has been set up for this very purpose to to torture us instead of just hunkering down and waiting for them to come to me. Like, that made no sense. And, and and yeah. So there’s, like, that tacit moment where they kind of try to explain it like, well, they’re just gonna decide to go kill these guys anyway. But then there’s this moment where they go into that. They go straight into the vagina, right? They’re into that that like really done up. It looks like an indoor circus, Right. And there’s a woman who’s been strapped down or that was just from a previous, you know, victim or whatever that they find. And this whole thing is completely done up. I think it’s one of the characters. Here’s the chainsaw and he’s like, shit, they found us. Well, of course, they found you.

Craig: Right.

Todd: You know, you weren’t hiding or running from anybody. You just walked down into the area, you know, that was set up for your benefit. I mean, clearly.

Craig: Right. Right.

Todd: Just this notion that they’re it’s not really like the running man. Right? Because they’re in this game that’s all been set up. And the running man, it’s kind of free freestyle. And here, everything’s set up for their purpose. So the fact that they’re just willingly walking through and, laying themselves out, these seem to be like they would be smarter people than this.

Craig: Right. You know, but they’re not. When, Venus wakes up from her dream and Charlie has gone off on her own and and and Venus scolds Roscoe for letting her go off on her own, like, yeah, she should scold him. Like, how stupid are you? Why would you go wandering off on your own? You know that the killers are out there. Like, what what is the point? And then she find like, it’s so random and stupid. Like, she finds this little, like, contrivance out of a music box, and she’s, like Oh my gosh. Like, spinning it and playing it. I’m like, are you trying to draw attention to yourself? Like, what is wrong with you?

Todd: He was just trying to be cool again. You know? Again, it’s like, oh, you wanted to put some music box, some creepy music box sound in here. And so you made the character pick it up and play it absentmindedly. It, yeah, that annoyed me. And and then some of the lines of this movie are really dumb. Like, when Doomhead’s finally called in and, he shows up, and he’s, you know, puts on his make up. There’s this whole scene. And he tells all of the guards. So we find out there are guards there too. There’s more to this company than just that, which brings up all other kinds of questions, but I’ll just sort of let those go for now. And he tells

Clip: them Jalen, take the rest of the night off. I’ll handle it from here. Murder School, is now in session.

Todd: My god.

Craig: Really? I remember that. Really? Oh. Well, and then he’s he’s, like, the big bad. Like, he’s the last one, their last resort. And the the aristocrats are, like, well, what happens if somebody lives? And Malcolm McDowell is, like, oh, that never happens. It’ll never happen, so we don’t have to worry about it. And, you know, the whole aristocrat, all of those scenes, you know, they’re just kind of plugged in. Mhmm. They they don’t really matter whatever, but then so as it turns out, Doomhead comes in. He kills Venus. He chases Roscoe and, Charlie. And at some point, Doomhead is like, oh, and by the way, the doors to the outside are open now. Good luck. Oh, okay. And so And then walks away.

Todd: Yeah. Walks away. Go out.

Craig: And then Roscoe and Charlie, like, they find some sort of of hatch and they

Clip: open it and and she goes

Craig: down, but he can’t because he’s too injured or whatever.

Clip: He stays back and

Craig: then he gets killed. And then she ends up in this tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel, it’s not gonna be and then she ends up in this tunnel and at the end of the tunnel is broad daylight and she goes out into the broad daylight and she’s just walking around outside and she sees this house and she goes in and it’s like this abandoned house and there’s, like, this marionette theater set up in there which we’ve already seen something similar earlier at the gas the gas station or whatever. But then Doom had I mean, I liked the marionettes. That’s fun.

Todd: They were it was cute and it was appropriately creepy, but what in the world was that all about? It was like just perpetually playing in the corner of this gas station when they first showed up. Then how did it end up back in this house? Was there supposed to be some kind of weird connection here?

Craig: Probably, but I didn’t get it.

Todd: Uh-huh moment? Yeah. It was again, just, like, trying to be creepy again. I mean, the way she wanders into that room, it seems like it has a huge impact on her. Like, my god.

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: Falls to her knees, you know.

Craig: Oh. But anyway, okay. So then she’s in this abandoned house and then Doomhead shows up right behind her and he brutally punches her right in the face to the point where she’s almost unconscious and then he goes off on a big soliloquy and just as he’s about to kill her, this big alarm goes off and you hear voices over some speakers somewhere. Weapons down, 31 is over and she’s won. And Yes. And Doomhead is is super mad, like, gosh darn it. Like, oh, I was just about to kill you. Now I’m super mad and I was excited and happy. I’m, like, oh, she made it. That’s awesome. And then they show, you know, the aristocrats just taking off their wigs and washing the makeup off their faces, putting on their regular clothes and just leaving, like, okay. Happy Halloween. That was fun. But the the last thing in the movie and it made me so mad. I know. Cherry Moon Zombie Sherry Moon Zombie is walking down the road. It’s totally, you know, Texas Chainsaw Massacre style or we’ve seen it in a 1000000 movies.

Todd: She’s Sun’s coming up. She’s walking down

Craig: the empty Todd. To an absolute pulp. She’s, you know, weak and limping and bloody, and she’s walking down the road and, this van pulls up behind her and Aerosmith’s dream on is playing in the background, which was there’s great seventies music in this movie if nothing else. And then, Doomhead gets out of the van and walks up behind her And honest to Todd, I thought that he was gonna offer her a ride. Yeah.

Todd: Me too. Me too.

Clip: And that’s

Craig: what I wanted

Todd: to go there.

Craig: And that’s what I wanted to happen. Instead, she turns around and he pulls out his switch blades and opens them up and like smiles at her like I’m gonna get you and we see her like clench her fists like she’s gonna go down with a fight and and then it cuts away and that’s the end and it just cuts back to this 35 millimeter film of all of them from the beginning when they were happy and dancing and and it was fun. Mhmm. But that in it made me so mad. I was, like, not fair. You’re cheating.

Todd: She wanted to punch the screen. She won. She did.

Craig: She won.

Todd: Am I supposed to oh, god. Yeah. That was off. Actually, the whole Doom head thing was stupid. He’s played up and and we see him early in the movie. Actually, What we didn’t mention was the very first shot of the movie is him coming up and killing this priest. And he gives this long, long soliloquy into the cameras that we’re, you know, looking at him. And it’s, you know, it sets you up quite well for the movie. And you think, okay. This is the badass we’re gonna be dealing with in this movie. Well, he doesn’t come in toward the end. And he’s the one, right, that they’ve got Todd

Clip: call in

Todd: to fix everything.

Clip: And

Todd: what does he do? He ends up coming up behind Meg Foster when she’s looking through a window and stabs her in the back. Right. Okay. That didn’t take much. The second guy doesn’t even put up a fight.

Craig: No. Because he’s totally incapacitated anyway.

Todd: So he just stands there and says come at me, and he does and he stabs him and he doesn’t even move his arms. He just kills him. Right. And he comes up to her and oop, time’s up. Right. And then at the end, oh, yeah. I’m gonna kill you anyway on the on the middle of the road.

Craig: It made me mad. Like, I mean, I guess I get it. Like, he’s crazy and he’s a psycho so he’s going rogue and, like, he’s just doing it to satisfy himself or whatever, but it’s not fair. It was a game and there were rules and she won. It made me so mad.

Todd: And it just kinda makes the whole movie rather pointless, doesn’t it? I mean, what was the point? And we don’t know anything about these people. There was no I I kept thinking we’re gonna get some big reveal. We’re gonna have something here that’s gonna make me think, okay, this is cool. But no, it’s just like 3 random rich people who put on this game for who knows how long and who knows why and who knows.

Clip: Right.

Todd: They’ll probably do it again next year or whatever. They they just leave. This guy is gonna just kill this girl anyway. I mean and and I saw that Rob Zombie mentioned that, the thing that gave him the idea for this movie was that, he had read somewhere that they’re the most disappearances on the 31st October on Halloween for some reason. I don’t know if that’s actually true.

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: But he thought he would kind of base a movie around that idea. Well, this isn’t really even that. I mean, this would account for 4 disappearances, but it’s not like like he’s making a point that this is like some huge thing that happens all over the country, you know? I don’t know. And did they have these video cameras, all the way out in the middle of the desert and in that abandoned cabin and stuff, so they could see how all this panned out? -I don’t know. -No, man. No. I thought this movie was really stupid. And, rich gratuitous for no I don’t mind gratuitous as long as there’s a point. And I felt like not only was it gratuitous for no point, but I felt like it was so gratuitous that for no point that it just seemed like it was trying really really hard. And I could see right through it and it distracted me the whole time. I just I just couldn’t get into it.

Craig: Yeah. That’s and it’s fair. It’s cool, you know, I’m not gonna try to defend it too much because, I do think that zombies other movies are better, but I guess I just still I appreciate it because I appreciate that zombie has a style that is relatively unique in the world of horror today and I’m glad that there are people like him out there who really appreciate the genre and appreciate the history of the genre and wanna bring their own voice and and style to things. I think this was a, you know, you talk about hit, you know, a hit and a miss. I I think that this was a miss for him. I didn’t hate it. I thought I I in fact, I liked it more than I thought that I would. The very first time that I watched this, I put it on, like, when I was going to sleep. And I and I woke up and somebody was getting beaten to death and I’m like, oh, Todd. It’s gonna be another one of those gruesome zombie movies. And compared to his other movies, I actually thought this one was pretty tame. It was just it was too formulaic. It was too predictable. I didn’t hate it. I I wasn’t bored. I wouldn’t watch it again, but I mean, I I guess I’m I’m glad that I saw it because it satisfied my curiosity, but, yeah, I I feel you. I I didn’t I didn’t love it.

Todd: I read that when it was first present it was presented twice and got an NC 17 from the MPAA. And finally, he made enough cuts to get it to an r. And then he promised that he would have the uncut version available on the DVD or whatever. But that was never ended up being released. Like, the DVD was released, but he never had never released an uncut version. I can see where there’s a lot of potential for lots of blood and effects and things like that. But for me, there was this was my other problem with the movie was there was so much shaky cam and so many quick cuts that I couldn’t tell what was going on half the time. Well, I And I couldn’t appreciate any any of the brutality or whatever that was going on. And I wonder if that was just because of the cuts he had to make or if that was just his style too.

Craig: Well, and I read and I I don’t know if this is accurate or not, but I read that he conceptualized this as a franchise. Like, he planned

Todd: Oh, jeez.

Craig: He planned on doing more of them, but it it it didn’t do well at all. Like, I think it made, like, $800,000 or something, at the box office. It, mister zombie, I’m sure you’re not listening, but if you are, I have mad respect for you, but I love your music. Yeah. Let this one go. It was a good effort. It was a good effort. Appreciate it, but, move on.

Todd: I highly concur. And and we’ll have to do another one of his Todd because I I would like to see another one. You you tell me which one you think is his best, and we’ll do that one

Craig: Okay.

Todd: At a later date. Alright. Well, thanks again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. If you’re a big fan of Rob Zombie’s movies, why don’t you tell us which one we should do next time? You can find us on Facebook. You can send us a message there. You can also leave us a comment on our website. It’s 2 guys dot redfortynet.com. Just become a part of the conversation. We love hearing from you. And happy Halloween.

Clip: Happy Halloween.

Todd: We, of course, will continue the spirit of Halloween all the way through the next year. Until next time. I’m Todd, and I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.