Mother’s Day (1980)

Episode 170, 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: Well Craig, we’re coming up upon another holiday, Mother’s Day. Yay! And you know what that

Craig: means. It means happy Mother’s Day, Todd.

Todd: Happy Mother’s Day. We love them. They gave us life. That’s right. And then we, of course, because we’re big dorks, we love to do themed films, and we’ve gone a few years on this podcast without ever doing the extremely obvious film Mother’s Day. So we’re doing this now. And by the way, this is not the newer remake version, loose remake from what I hear of Mother’s Day. This is the original 1980 film directed by Charles Kaufman who, interesting fact, is the brother of Lloyd Kaufman from Trauma. So we’ve recently done Toxic Avenger so it’s kind of   cool that we’re doing this movie now. It’s not that Charles Kaufman has actually done a lot of stuff, but this movie was in a small way produced by Troma. 1980, we’re still kind of in the early days of Troma. Actually, Charles Kaufman, the writer-director of this film, is listed also as 1 of the 2 writers of Squeeze Play, which was 1 of Troma’s earlier successes, kind of a baseball-themed sex comedy. Then he went off to do this completely wacko movie, which is a little bit notorious, I guess. When it came out, it got banned, I think,   outright in a few countries, especially the UK. They just wouldn’t release it. It had to endure some cuts to be released in places like Germany. I think here, you know, obviously we’re in the United States and it’s pretty liberal and it’s green but it didn’t do very well although apparently in the meantime we hear it has gained a bit of a cult following as most things do in the age of the internet so here we are talking about Mother’s Day from 1980. I’d never seen this film before so this was kind of fun to be able   to watch it. It had been on my list. You know, this is 1 of those that I again had seen the cover art when you’re walking through the aisles of the video store back in the day. It’s kind of a take on Whistler’s mother with a crazy grinning woman, half of her face is a skull. Her 2 boys are standing behind her and the tagline is, I’m so proud of my boys, they never forget their mama. She’s holding a box with a head in it. So you know, I mean, you kind of know before you get   into it what you’re going to expect here And I felt like the movie pretty much delivered exactly what I expected. Yeah Do you have any history with this movie at all Craig?

Craig: Nope, I hadn’t seen it either and Just like you for me. The box art was very familiar It’s it’s 1 of those things and I’ve said this several times on the podcast, but the box art is so familiar that I’m really surprised that I haven’t seen it. Because I must have walked by it on the shelves a hundred times. I like watching as many horror movies as I can, so I’m surprised that I hadn’t seen it, but No, I never had. And going in, because I read a lot of stuff too. I read a lot of   horror websites and those types of things. I’d read about it, and so I kind of had an idea of what it was about, and I knew kind of what type of movie that it was. And when it boils down to it, to a large extent, it’s very much a rape revenge movie along the lines of I Spent on Your Grave or Last House on the Left. And that is not my favorite subgenre of horror films. Agreed. I’ve watched them, both of those that I just mentioned, I’ve watched them. I appreciate them for what they are, but   sexual violence just makes me very uncomfortable, which I assume it does for most people, or at least I would hope that it does.

Todd: It’s gotta be 1 of the most shocking things that you can put up on screen. Probably some of the most notorious horror films are those kind of films, right?

Craig: Yeah. It’s very difficult and very uncomfortable for me to watch. And so having read about this movie, I can’t say that I was super excited about going into it, but that being said, I didn’t find it as disturbing as those other movies that I’ve said. There is some sexual violence, but not nearly as much, and it’s not as gratuitous. It’s still gratuitous, but not as gratuitous as those movies. I don’t know. I think that I found myself enjoying this movie more than I thought that I would. I think that when it comes down to it, I   thought that this movie was more like a very, very dark comedy than those other movies, which were just gratuitously violent. I don’t know, again, maybe we’ll talk about 1 of those movies someday and we can talk about them in more depth. They’re so violent and so nasty that it’s really hard to watch. And there’s at least 1 scene here where there is sexual violence and it’s not easy to watch, but there’s less focus on that. And I think a little bit more of the very dark comedy that kind of pulled me into this more than I   expected it to.

Todd: Yeah, I’m 100% with you on that. You know, the 2 movies you mentioned, I spit on your grave and Last House on the Left, those are pretty brutal. And They’re supposed to be brutal. I would even put the hills have eyes Yeah, and the hills have eyes remake on that where it is so shocking and so gratuitous and so Serious, you know what happens to these women in these films that it just makes you ill and it’s yeah it’s really difficult to watch whereas this movie it didn’t really take itself terribly seriously it’s really obvious throughout   that this film is supposed to be like you said a very very dark comedy and Having reviewed a trauma film in the past. I you can’t really this is not a classic trauma film. No. This is not so wackadoodle out there as most trauma films are. It’s kind of vaguely on the fence of something in the similar ballpark in that it just has a goofiness level to it that, you know, allows you to really not get too worked up over even, you know, sort of the sexual violence aspect of it. Not to downplay that at all,   but, you know, it just didn’t feel, it didn’t hit you at that gut visceral level that as I too was expecting to get. In fact, I would say, and I’ve always said trauma movies I think are better made than people give them credit for, but there’s still an amateurishness about them that is pretty evident on the screen. Whereas in this movie, I actually felt like quite a bit of it was pretty well made. Yeah, there were some nice aspects to the cinematography. There were some clever transitions. It’s clear that the people that went into this movie,   you know, had a modicum of what they were doing. It wasn’t a cheap film like I thought it was going to be. I thought it was gonna be a cheap, drive-in, cash grab kind of movie, and I think, I mean, it kind of is, but at its heart, there’s actually some substance behind it, and it’s not really deep. No, no. And it’s not high art, but there’s art here, you know, I think

Craig: well and it is a cheap movie I mean they shot it for just over a hundred thousand dollars and they shot it on you know actual locations like the house that is the central location of the movie was an actual abandoned house in the woods that actually has, you know, we read about these things online, you know, this house that they shot in and had its own history and that the previous owner of the house, I believe, had been murdered. And in addition to that, before shooting, I think a dead body had been found in the   house. And it’s mostly just shot in this house and in the woods surrounding it. And it is inexpensive in the way that it was filmed. But you’re right. It’s not of low quality. Even the acting, I was surprised by. You know, these folks are playing heightened characters, so it’s over-the-top But it’s not poorly acted in fact. I thought it was pretty well-acted.

Todd: I completely agree with you I don’t honestly like I was especially taken by 1 of the brothers, his name is Ike, and he

Craig: is- Is he the tall 1?

Todd: He’s the 1, yeah, with the weird eye.

Craig: Yeah, I was too, what the heck?

Todd: He was fantastic. Like, yeah. And he comes on the screen and he’s got like a weird eye. It’s kind of clouded over and he has these teeth.

Craig: And he’s wearing like these fake teeth that are gross.

Todd: He’s supposed to be very hillbilly. And at first he comes on the screen. It’s just like so freaking over the top. You’re like, OK, yeah. But the more you watch him, he’s actually quite good at it. And even his character has like kind of a little bit of depth you know for a comedic sort of role and I went and looked him up this guy’s name is Frederick Coffin he died in 2003 but he has quite a few credits to his name. He was in like 99 films under Siege, a ton of TV like LA Law,   Walker, Texas Ranger, MacGyver and stuff. It’s really quite impressive actually and makes sense because he was in Dallas dude. This guy was in 6 episodes of Dallas. We’re all talking 1980s stuff here. But you know he was working right up until he died. He was an identity. That was the last movie he did, which is not a horror movie, but it’s kind of a thriller. You could maybe call it a horror. I don’t know. Mr. I liked that movie, actually.

Craig: 1 of the bits of trivia that I read was that there are 3 young women who are kind of our central characters and they are tormented by this family of a mother and 2 sons. And I read that 1 of the women and 1 of the actors who portrayed the tormentors began kind of a romantic relationship. And I can understand why because the younger, I guess, of the 2, the shorter, the smaller 1, he’s a nice looking young man. And the guy that you were just talking about, take out that contact lens that he’s wearing in   1 eye and take off his fake teeth. I’m sure he was a very attractive young man also. And these young ladies are all attracted to you. I can totally understand where they would hook up. But I guess that this kind of romantic thing started to happen and the director asked them to please postpone their relationship until after the movie had shot because he was afraid that it would affect the relationship on screen. He didn’t think that the young lady would be adequately terrorized by this guy if they were in real life in a romantic relationship. But   I just thought that that was interesting. You know, having done a tiny bit of nothing acting myself, you know, you do, you get put in these circumstances with people where you’re together all the time, and you’re working together, and you’re playing together, and you’re spending so much time together, romantic and sexual things happen.

Todd: Oh, do tell, Craig.

Craig: Oh, come on. You know, college is college. Romantic and sexual things happen all the time. It happens with fans, too. But no, I just thought that was really, I read that before I watched the movie and then I was watching it and I’m like, oh, I can totally see that. These guys, as horrible as they are in the movie, they had, I hate to say it, it’s kind of gross to say, but they kind of had a certain charm about

Todd: them. Yeah, you know? You’re right, like they didn’t come across as all that sinister. I think there were moments, and of course you don’t want to downplay the fact that they’re doing horrible things and they’re supposed to be these backwoods type characters who are, I mean the gist of it is there’s this mother and there are these 2 guys and they’re her sons and what they do is they kidnap women and then they rape and torture them and eventually kill them for the mother’s pleasure. She likes to watch this go on and she encourages it. She’s   even taught them basically how to do it. And that on its face sounds horrible. And of course it’s horrible. But when you watch the movie, it doesn’t seem as horrible as your mind conjures up before you watch it because it’s done so comedically. It’s done with kind of a little bit of satire, a little bit of whatever. It’s not to say they don’t do these things and that’s not terrible, but then you get these long scenes where they’re like goofing around and squirting cheese whiz in their mouths. It’s like if you took the scene from Texas   Chainsaw Massacre where they’re all sitting around the table, this total dysfunctional family, but you made it more of a sitcom. Right. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That’s what you get here. It’s almost a parody or satire of that. And so it feels a little lighter, and somehow that really tampens down the uncomfortable parts of the movie to the extent where I think it actually works against the movie’s favor because I never really felt a strong sense of suspense even when the girls are running for their lives or 1 of them gets killed and they’re kind of going through   the woods and they’re trying to get away from these guys, like, it all just seemed a little goofy and I just couldn’t get that real visceral feeling like, oh my God, I hope they make it. I just was always aware, 100%, that I was watching a movie.

Craig: Sure, yeah, I totally agree with what you’re saying. Now there is 1 scene that is very difficult to watch, but beyond that, it’s more just the bad guy chasing the girls through the woods. It’s not all that disturbing. These guys, even though they’re playing hillbilly kind of and goofy and whatever, I don’t want to call them endearing because they’re violent and horrible, but they’re kind of endearing to a certain extent. I mean, beyond the fact that they are, you know, brutal rapists, and there is 1 scene that’s brutal and uncomfortable to watch. But beyond that, it’s   not like you’re rooting for them. You’re still rooting for the girls, but the guys, you know, They’re interesting characters. They’re not just these nasty violent forces. As in, in The Hills Have Eyes, the villains are just monstrously evil and you’re terrified of them throughout. And they’re just absolutely horrible. And in this movie, it’s not like you wanna grab a beer with these guys, but you kind of, you almost sympathize with them a little bit because ultimately, they’re being manipulated by their mother.

Todd: Yeah, and that’s made very obvious in the film.

Craig: Yeah, and they are a product of their upbringing. Right. You know, like this is the way that she has raised them to be. And so, I don’t know, I guess, I guess I had a little bit of empathy for them, I suppose, a little bit.

Todd: No, I totally understand what you’re saying. And that’s kind of nice, actually. It cuts, again, and you know, we’ve just seen so many films like this, that this, it’s kind of nice to watch a movie where it doesn’t cut so hard you know it’s not so brutal it’s not so nasty right and you’re right the characters of these people is what saved the movie and The other thing that this film does that a lot of movies, and I mean, I would call this an exploitation film. It was made to shock, obviously, but 1 thing that this   exploitation film does that a lot of them don’t even bother to do is it really takes its time in the beginning to set the characters of these girls. Yes. And I was totally shocked by that. I mean, like half an hour of the movie and it’s not the most interesting stuff I’ve seen but it’s certainly more interesting than a lot of stuff I’ve seen does that

Craig: make sense?

Todd: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: Like, oh yeah. It wasn’t

Todd: boring. No, it wasn’t boring. Like these 3 girls, well, first you get a scene that just sets up, I mean, it’s almost obligatory. You gotta show some scene that shows you how dangerous everybody is and what’s going on. There’s a quick scene where there’s a woman who attends this An old woman and the mother

Craig: against self-help. Yeah. Yeah the mother

Todd: in this is played by Beatrice Ponce Now she looks super familiar to me anyway, because she has this, I don’t know, just this aspect to her that’s kind of hard to miss. You know, she looks a lot like Dota Denny, who was in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Mm-hmm. The mother, you know what I’m talking about? Absolutely no relation, but she still has that same look. But she was in Car 54, Where Are You? The like 1960s TV series, and not like I was alive then, but I used to watch a lot of Nick and   Night when I was a kid, and I watched a lot of that, and I remembered her from that totally. So it was weird for me to read in the trivia that she was so excited to play this role that she did it under an assumed name so she wouldn’t get in trouble from the Screen Actors Guild. Like who reads a script like this? You know? And it’s like oh my god I need to play the sadistic mother who cheers on her sons while they’re, you know, raping and killing people and this is clearly just gonna play   in drive.

Clip: Darling, you have made your mother very proud.

Todd: She lends an interesting element to this as well. And again, as satire it really works. She attends a self-help seminar and these 2 total hippie people come home with her. And it’s a really interesting dynamic in that first scene where they’re really playing with you. At first she just volunteers to give them a ride because the girl mentions that they don’t have their car or something like that. And then you get the sense as the car is going along that they want to kill her.

Craig: Yeah, it’s a total bait and switch. Yeah, it’s a bait

Todd: and switch thing. And he’s got like a rope in the back and then the car breaks down and she gets out of the car and goes to the hood and lifts it up. In the meantime, the girl moves to the driver’s seat and it looks like she’s going to step on the gas and I guess restart it somehow and run over the mother but actually she’s just turning on the music. It really plays with you in an interesting way. It was a bit suspenseful even though I kind of figured I knew what was gonna happen. It   was suspenseful. It was clever and it was actually well done. And at the end of it, You know, obviously the mother is psycho.

Craig: The sons show up and they decapitate the guy. They almost rape the girl, but they don’t. But then the mother strangles the girl. And it sets it up in this early scene that this messed up family works together. I thought it was great. I thought that it was a great way to kind of establish what was going on. And then it cuts to this kind of weird montage thing where like we see a slideshow and we hear these 3 girls talking like they’re reminiscing about their college days.

Clip: Oh God, look at your face, Jack! My God, the rubber spider, that 1 was so great. Look at her,

Todd: she’s sleeping

Clip: with her mouth open.

Todd: I had an

Clip: exam the next morning at 9, you know. Oh boy, what a strange spider! I’m not surprised how immature you 2 can

Craig: be. They’re best friends, and their thing is they play tricks on each other and they play pranks on other people But their best friends they’re the rat pack and they’re gonna be the rat pack forever And it’s really quick.

Todd: What’s the opening credits basically?

Craig: Yeah with this photo montage and then it cuts to 10 years later and we catch up with all the girls. Another thing that I liked about this movie was that they gave each of these what ultimately become the victims, they gave all of them really distinct personalities. Trina is the blonde 1, and she ends up being like a rich Beverly Hills socialite. Jackie lives in Chicago, but she’s got like this actor loser boyfriend who steals money from her and stuff and then Abby is kind of the meekest of them all. Abby you know What we see   in her life is that she has to care for her ailing mother, who we only hear. And if I remember correctly, did I read that Charles Kaufman was the voice of the mother?

Todd: Oh, I didn’t catch that.

Craig: I think so. But the mom’s like,

Clip: It’s about time you got home slut. You’re out whoring around with it. All I have to say is I feel the same. Don’t tell me where you’ve been.

Todd: Like, you’re out whoring around.

Craig: That bit was hilarious. But they all have these really distinctive personalities and the premise is that they were great friends in college and they promised each other that they would stay great friends and they would keep getting together. They get together every year and every year it’s a surprise and each 1 of them, like they rotate, so each 1 of them takes a turn planning the trip or whatever. This year is Jackie’s turn and she takes them out into the woods for a camping trip. As I was watching it, I couldn’t wait to talk to you   about the gas station scene.

Clip: Because we have talked so many times about these gas station scenes

Craig: where they stop at a gas station and some creepy gas station attendant tells them, don’t go out there. You’re going to get what you deserve, you liberal Lesbos.

Todd: Les… Les beans, I think is what he calls them. That was hilarious. And I felt like they were directly parodying the gas station scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre here.

Craig: I don’t know where it started, but these gas station scenes, we’ve talked about them a million times.

Todd: Hilarious. It’s hilarious because then the girls come in, like, like, of course, it’s the creepy gas station tent who’s warning them not to go to Deep Barrens, which is where they’re heading. And, you know, she’s shopping. She doesn’t even care. She could care less, like, okay, whatever. She’s picking up an apple and she’s picking up a bunch of beer and whatnot and then the other girls come stumbling in with bags over their heads like they’re all half drunk and they just start knocking over all of the crap in the store and they hustle on out and   then you know like you said he chases after them.

Clip: You get what you deserve and empty burns and lesbians? You won’t be causing no 1 no trouble no more.

Todd: You know it starts out as that kind of scene and it devolves into this total joke. You know? Yeah.

Craig: Which is cool. They get to their destination and they’re just camping. They don’t even have a tent or anything. They’re just sleeping out in sleeping bags. In their underwear? Yeah. And they’re playing gags on 1 another. They’re all sitting around getting stoned and all of a sudden Jackie disappears and she comes back and it looks like she has a knife in her back but really it’s just tucked under her arm. And so like this is, that’s their shtick. Like they, that’s what they do. They goof on 1 another.

Todd: Well, there’s even a flashback to a scene in college when the 1 with the terrible boyfriend comes in and he wants to do her in the middle of the baseball field and she takes off and then they flip on all the lights and come across the intercom and whatnot. I think it was funny that while they were going out to the camping site, they were leaving a literal trail of beer cans behind them. Yeah. Like, evenly spaced, upright. It’s so silly.

Craig: That scene with, okay, so it was Jackie who was dating this douche of a guy and they humiliate him. Now I thought, you know, he gets naked and they turn on all the lights and he runs off. I mean, it’s really just the 3 of them there. It’s not like they publicly exposed him or whatever, but they humiliate him. And I thought that that was going to be important. And I guess that it is Because when it comes back from the flashback scene, they say something like, oh Jackie, you’re so unlucky in love, or like men   always crap on you, or something like that. It led me to believe that Jackie was going to be the final girl.

Todd: Me too.

Craig: Especially since Trina is really kind of vapid. And Trina says in these early things, oh my gosh, Why are we still doing this? Aren’t we getting a little old? I don’t even know if I’m gonna come next year and and They’re like, oh no, God, we have to do this Abby is kind of set up as the 1 like she’s needy like she’s the 1 who has this Mother this demanding mother at home And she just keeps saying how important this is to her. And at 1 point she just thanks them like, thank you. Thank you   so much for always being here for me. And I, you know, I need you, yada yada. But I was convinced. First of all, I thought Trina was going to go first and I thought that Jackie was going to be the final girl and the movie subverted all of that because you know after they’ve had you know their fun lady time, all the while we know that they’re being watched by the brothers. We get some POV shots, we get some things where we see the weeds rustling or whatever. Obviously somebody’s watching them. And eventually the brothers attack   and they tie them all up in their sleeping bags and drag them home to mom. And that’s where the nastiness begins. I don’t know, I’ll let you talk about that.

Todd: Well, I mean they drag them home and they live in this house and it’s this is where the movie starts to feel a little cheap. It’s not like like a movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre where the house where these people live is this horrible dungeon and it’s got all these bones and all, it’s just really, really sick. It’s like somebody came into this house and just started spray painting stuff everywhere and just threw a bunch of garbage in. It’s like they live in filth and they kind of live in squalor. But they have a weightlifting room.   They have a gym on the second floor. And so they take these girls and they tie, I think it’s Trina gets tied to the machine where you pull your arms together and then Abby gets tied to I don’t know something and then Jackie eventually gets taken away. Mom’s cackling and Mom is encouraging them and they’re grabbing them and they’re messing with them and they take Jackie down outside. It’s funny, actually what I kind of liked about this was that it really kept it up in the air as to what was going to be going on. It   really did unexpected things and that was what was good about the scene anyway. But they sit the mother in a rocking chair on the lawn and they pull her out and they’re like, oh, let’s do the park bench scene.

Craig: Yeah, it’s a role playing thing. Yeah. Which is very different than the other kinds of movies that I’ve seen. The mother has trained them specifically to do these things for her entertainment. Right. And that’s how it plays out. Like it’s gross, but it’s very different than just, oh I found you and now I’m going to beat you up and rape you. Yeah, yeah. It’s weird. It sets itself apart from those other Movies and it’s so weird and in a way it’s so I mean

Todd: comical That it takes a lot of the edge off of it. I think because it’s hard to take the movie seriously. Yeah. You know what I mean? When you’re watching it, like I said earlier, I feel like I’m watching a movie and actors doing something. And so when, you know, this scene where they’ve got her propped up and they’re like, all right, now you’re on a park bench and you’re reading this thing and they shove this thing in front of her and they come around and they they you know leap over and like they’re gonna kill   her but then at the end of the day they lay her down and and it’s like he’s gonna get on top of her and then they switch to a new scene by the end of the whole thing I think she ends up getting raped by 1 of the guys. But even that is done, you see it from the second story window of the house, which is

Craig: a bit of a distance. Where the other girls, at least Trina, can see.

Todd: Yeah, so they’re looking down on it and it sounds really sinister and it is. I mean they’re looking down on what could be their fate and they see their friend, you know, this happened to their friend. But it’s not nearly as gratuitous as it could have been. And I was really surprised by that. That’s kind of how the whole movie is really. And that’s really about it for the rape, right?

Craig: Yeah, yeah. And There’s no minimizing the horror of sexual assault. I mean, that’s, it’s disgusting. But you know, you see something- But we’re comparing.

Todd: Right, right,

Craig: right, right. That’s what I’m saying. You see something like the original Last house on the left. I mean, I was just physically ill watching that movie. Like it was just, even thinking back on it just almost makes me sick. It was so violent and so, It was just awful. It was just awful. And this is awful too. Sexual assault is awful in any form, but there’s less focus on it and the perspective, even the way that it was shot is different. I mean, yes, you see the male actors naked, but as he’s laying on top of   her between her legs, you know, there’s there’s no question what’s happening. But It’s not as gratuitous as some of those other exploitation films, which thank God, because that’s what I was expecting. And it wasn’t as stomach churning here. I mean, it’s still upsetting. You still know what’s happening, but there’s not so much focus on it. So thank you Mother’s Day, because I really didn’t have the stomach for it.

Todd: Yeah, you could tell we were both a little, you know, we were both gearing up for the worst for this film. We don’t really enjoy watching this stuff. And, you know, we review these movies because they’re movies and they’re horror films. And this 1 was mother’s day theme, but we knew what we were getting into, but we were not expecting to, have a comfortable viewing. And this was, this at least subverted our expectations in that way too. So that’s comforting, that’s comforting. You wouldn’t have to cut out much at all for this to be pretty tame,   actually.

Craig: No, You could cut out those 3 to 5 seconds and it would still be suggested, but you wouldn’t have to see it. This happens over the course of several days. And they all go to bed and then the next day when they get up the 2 boys come down for breakfast and it’s comical you know like they’ve got all this silly breakfast food on the table and like 1 of the boys like walks over the table to get to his seat and like steps on a big old platter of donuts and like not only do they   have breakfast food on the table but there’s cat food on the table like do they eat cat food like where are the cats

Todd: Oh,

Clip: I’m feeling so good this morning, I don’t want you to be coming down.

Todd: Uh-uh. Which

Craig: is, you know, gross and uncomfortable, but nonetheless. And so then they just kind of go about their day. And then there’s an exercise montage.

Todd: Yes. Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha. That exercise slash training montage, right?

Craig: I read. I wouldn’t even have recognized it. I read that they were trying to emulate the Rocky theme during this, but they were doing it in so much as they could and still not get sued for copyright. So if you know that going in and you listen you’re like oh yeah it’s kind of like the Rocky music. But the funny thing that I thought about that scene was like, they can’t possibly do this routine every day because they’re like destroying the house. Like they’re like busting out windows.

Todd: It’s a riot. And it’s also a little boring too. I mean, it’s not, again, I’m not, we seem to be heaping a bit of praise on this movie. It’s still not fantastic filmmaking. No. It’s just a cut, several cuts above you know what we normally see in these kind of films. But you know it’s these antics and it kind of mirrors in a way it’s it’s it’s almost a parallel of what the girls, what we got from the first half of the movie, where the girls are doing all these antics and things with each other. And   I think that’s what humanizes these guys a little bit is because we just sat through about 30 minutes of these 3 girls’ nice relationship where they goofed on each other and they played these pranks and they did this stuff and now we’ve got the brothers almost doing the same thing right and and so yeah it like you said they’re not total monsters but also it really cuts the edge off because it’s hard to take the movie seriously at this point right it’s really devolving into satire but then there’s just this odd bit which is just poor   Filmmaking honestly the 2 girls. I guess they go upstairs and they play around with the little 2 girls Oh, I think Trina is trying to escape by rubbing her rope against a nail on the wall But they get up there first and you think oh god, you know in any other movie like they get punished for this like, okay She’s the next to go but they just sort of like take her ropes off and take the ropes off the other girl and then just Leave and continue to do their stuff. Yes, And these girls are totally   unbound now. And I’m thinking, why are they even still upstairs? So what they do is, like 1 of the girls puts, oh, I think it’s Trina goes into a Sleeping bag. And this

Craig: is 1 of the things that they showed in their earlier montage. They’d done this before. Like somebody had to sneak out of their house or something. Oh yeah, I missed that. So they lowered her out in a sleeping bag. And they do this here. I actually, I don’t know, I feel like you were getting ready to disparage this scene. I actually thought that it was really tense. Like the boys are really like they’re play fighting. It’s like they’re little boys, you know, and in many ways they are because they’ve been coddled by their mother. They’ve been   totally secluded from the rest of the world. And so they fight like kids fight. And they, you know, they’re kinda fighting 1 another, whatever. Meanwhile, they put Trina in a sleeping bag and Abby is lowering her down. And maybe this is what you were getting at. It doesn’t make any sense. They tie her up with this like thin cord and supposedly Abby is single-handedly able to lower her down. Well now that is impossible. But the way that things go down is Abby starts to lower her down and then 1 of the boys trying to evade the   other 1 comes and stands right underneath where the sleeping bag is going down so Abby has to stop. Now the reason that I kind of interrupted you is because I thought this was 1 of the coolest parts of the movie. They do this what I thought was a great special effects shot where they show that the cord is almost literally cutting Abby’s hand off. Like it slices all through her skin, all the way around her hand. And I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that it looked real but it looked real   enough to make me yes like oh my god

Todd: that’s horrible I am absolutely not disparaging the scene I’m disparaging the result of this scene. So anyway, the guy goes away and they lower her down. To what end? She gets out of her sleeping bag, she walks back into the house and back up the stairs to the room.

Craig: I know, I thought the same thing And the only way that I could justify it in my mind was that the door must have been locked from the outside. OK, maybe. So she had to go up and open it from the outside to get Abby out, which she does. And then Abby’s hands are all messed up, so I feel like they kind of try to really quick wrap them up or whatever. And then they go looking for Jackie.

Todd: And it’s way too easy. You know, this is the thing. There’s no suspense here. There should be and maybe they think there is, but these guys are just out playing around, goofing off in the yard. They are freely able to roam around this house, make a ton of noise. Nothing really happens to them. And so it’s really hard to take the movie seriously at this point, but they wander into 1 of the guy’s rooms, I guess, and they open up 1 of the doors in their closets and there’s the body of the woman who we had   seen in the very first scene of the movie and then there’s the head of the guy. And then, I thought this was clever too, there’s a hand that comes out of a chest of drawers. And that’s where Jackie has been stuffed. And she’s barely alive at this point. And that’s pretty heart wrenching. But again, they’re able to pick her up, they’re able to take her all the way down these stairs and out.

Craig: Well, I don’t think they, they don’t get all the way out. They get almost all the way out and then the brothers attack them, but then the mother… Screams. Distracts them, which this was the weirdest part of the movie for me the mother screams and so even though they’re trying to apprehend these girls the mother screams and they both go running to her and She goes off on this thing about oh my god. I saw her it was Queenie. She was in the forest Yeah, and so then we get introduced to this idea of Queenie, which   just comes up and then goes away for a while, and then she talks more about it later. So because the boys have been distracted, the girls get away. They run into the forest, but Jackie is done. Like she’s out of it. She’s unconscious. They’re just dragging her along basically. And there comes a point where they realize they can’t do that anymore and so they lay Jackie down and they like cover her and leaves and Abby says I’ll stay with her, Trina will get help And so Trina goes off and she finds the car that they came   in but the boys have already sabotaged it and so then she runs around and she sees a cop car coming and So she waves it down, but it ends up being 1 of the guys the tall good-looking minus the bad eye and bad teeth 1. And I didn’t even understand that. Like, is he really like the town cop, or do they just have a cop car? I think

Todd: that’s what it’s supposed to be, is that he’s really the… Because why else would he have been out? I mean, none of it makes any sense.

Craig: He’s in uniform, he’s got the cop car. Yeah. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. I mean, all of this, it’s probably like 20 minutes at least where they’re just running around the forest and he’s chasing her And she tricks him and she gets away Meanwhile Jackie dies. She just dies And Abby’s all upset and Trina having escaped the bad guy finds them and then That’s the point where it becomes a revenge Yeah, and and and it’s Abby who has been the meek and mild 1 all along who all of a sudden is now the badass like, we’re   gonna get them for this.

Todd: Well it’s cause she lost her glasses, you know.

Craig: Right. Yeah, right. And so they braid their hair and put on like, bandana headbands.

Todd: Of course.

Craig: And they go back for their revenge.

Todd: They drag Jackie’s body back to the house and prop her up against a tree because they’re like, she needs to see this.

Craig: And I’m racing through this for time, but some of it is really kind of poignant. Like, they, you know, they sit Jackie up.

Clip: Jackie, every way you turned in life, you got shit. Well, now we’ll do the fighting back for you.

Craig: And it’s gross, you know, like, that they’re setting up this wide-eyed corpse to watch this, but honestly, I was feeling like, you know what, that’s right. Let her see you kick their asses. I want her to see that. And then that’s basically what it becomes. And it really is pretty freaking easy for them. They go in and they kind of ambush the boys 1 at a time. How did they kill the first 1? I don’t remember. The younger 1, the shorter 1.

Todd: He got like a hammer to the groin or something and some spiky thing stuck through his eye or something. It was

Craig: really quick. An antenna. An antenna from the car.

Todd: An antenna

Craig: through his throat. And then they shoved a bunch of cloth down his throat and suffocated him. And it happens really fast and as soon as they get in there. And then the other 1, the taller, good-looking 1, they’re trying to drag the other one’s body out, which I don’t really even understand why, but the taller, better-looking 1 like dives through the window and pounces on them, you know, kind of has the advantage over them for a while, but eventually 1 of them pours Geraino down his throat and then they run back in the house and then   the other 1 like smashes a TV on top of his head and his whole head goes through the TV and he’s getting electrocuted.

Todd: And it doesn’t even look real. It’s so silly.

Craig: No. It’s clearly an emptied out television set. Like there’s no mechanism inside of it.

Todd: And the Drano thing even is, this is a classic trauma thing. It’s so classic that they put it in every movie just as a reference but 1 of the earliest quote-unquote special effects that Lloyd Kaufman found out was you could very easily fake foaming at the mouth by putting like Alka-Seltz or something in your mouth and then sipping a bunch of it. And so like they do that in almost every movie and I feel like this has got to be 1 of the first moments, you know, from 1 of the original moments where, you know, they   took some special effect like that. Like, they needed to do the Drano because they knew how to do this effect. It’s so silly how it all goes down, but, you know, it does. And you’re right, it’s way too quick.

Craig: And I skipped an important part because while the tall 1 is out like stalking the girls in the night, the other 1 is at home with the mom and she’s like playing board games with them and she’s like, come on, we’re having fun, you have to stay with me. And they have this talk about Queenie and Queenie apparently was the mom’s sister who was a psycho and tried to kill her The mom is wearing a neck brace through this whole thing and she says oh she broke my neck in the crib And the son’s like well   Grandma said she killed her after that. I think you just tell us that Queenie’s still out there to keep us here. And she’s like, no, I don’t. She’s really here. Swear you’ll stay forever. So we, the audience, of course, don’t know if this is really a story or if she’s just using it to keep the boys around or whatever.

Todd: Yeah, but it does have that effect. And again, this is another 1 of those scenes where I felt like the movie was a little better than it deserved to be because you see a little glimmer in his eye You see this sort of doubt, right? Yeah son of This realization in a way that his mother is manipulating him and has been all these years, right? But they’re not strong enough, you know, or whatever. It’s his mom. It’s his mom. And so, you know.

Craig: Well, and that’s kind of where the empathy comes in. Like, you feel bad for these boys. You know, who knows what they could have been had they not been in this scenario, but this psycho woman has kept them in the woods and trained them to be what they are. And so they’re kind of empathetic in a way.

Todd: Really, it’s true. So anyway, how do they do the mom-off? I forgot.

Craig: Oh, it’s hilarious. I can’t believe you would forget. Okay, so once both the boys are dead and Trina has a scuffle with Ike, he ends up dead. And then the mom is kind of sneaking around trying to get them, but they trick her. Abby tricks her with the same knife gag that Jackie had pulled earlier, but they get the better of her. And Abby grabs an inflatable plastic pillow in the shape of breasts and she shoves 1 of the breasts in her face and she starts talking to her as though it is her own mother. I   actually thought this was really funny. Yeah. Let me go!

Clip: Don’t worry. Your daughter will take care of you. Oh! 0! You stay in bed, and you’ll get your clothes, and make your food and take care of everything. You stay in bed. Why? Because you’re a sick woman! I’ll take care of you. And you’ll never have to worry about anything ever again!

Craig: It’s so funny. And so she suffocates her with this plastic booby pillow. Yeah, it’s weird,

Todd: isn’t it? There’s some symbolism there somehow. I’m not going to try to unpack it, but yeah, sure.

Craig: Oh, I think it’s hilarious. I think it’s kind of obvious. This girl obviously, they didn’t make much of it throughout, except for that Abby was the timid 1 who was so grateful to have her time with her friends and that we just briefly saw that her home life was her just constantly being berated by her bedridden mother. And so now she kind of has the opportunity to take out that animosity on this mother.

Todd: Oh no, I get that part. I’m just talking about the clear plastic inflatable boob that gets shoved in the mother’s mouth. Yeah. Let’s unpack the symbolism there. A little taste of what you know.

Craig: The funny part is my grandparents had a pillow like that. You’re kidding me. It wasn’t plastic and inflatable, but it was pink and fuzzy and boobs. And at some point in college I stole it. Why wouldn’t you? Don’t listen, Grandpa. Because they always wondered where it went. It was me.

Todd: I stole it. Oh man, secrets are coming out tonight.

Craig: No, I don’t know whatever happened to it. It’s long gone.

Todd: Right, right, sure.

Craig: Oh gosh, and I forgot to mention this scene when they set up Jackie to watch. They have like this ritual that they do like rat pack forever and it’s kind of sad that they have to do it without her. It was kind of a touching moment for me. But anyway, at the very end, they bury her, which why? Like, get out of there, get the police. They bury her and then they’re like, but we made it. And Trina’s like, we made it because we’re strong and we’ve always been strong and we were destined to make it.   And Abby’s like, yeah, okay. And so then they turned to walk away And then I knew this was going to happen. Queenie, who the mom has been talking about through the whole thing, who is like this disfigured, horrible, backwoods, naked lady, jumps out and attacks them. And I mean, we don’t even, We just see her jump out. It’s like freeze frame. I totally knew it was going to happen. But that being said, I was satisfied that it did. With all of this talk about Queenie, I would have been disappointed if nothing came of it. And I   thought that it was kind of a funny, funny way to end the movie. Like they’re like, oh we totally deserve to make it. And then this crazy weirdo attacks them from behind the bushes. It was kind

Todd: of funny. It leaves up. Yeah, I agree with you. It’s that gotcha ending that a lot of horror movies just sort of have to have. And it works well actually here. It’s a goofy movie. You could edit it about any way and it would have been fine. Yeah. Yeah, I was really shocked actually. I, like you said, I was prepped for a really horrible experience and it turned out to be kind of fun. Yeah. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve seen by far. No. It wasn’t, but it was way more clever and way better thought out   way better written and even better acted Than a lot of stuff that we see in this realm and for that. I was really pleasantly surprised So I’m not gonna go watch it again But I really yeah, I enjoyed the experience more or less and And I could recommend it if this is your bag. It’s not going to be for everybody. But if you like drive-in fare, you like kind of exploitation films, and even the sort of goofy tongue and cheek stuff you probably enjoy watching this movie.

Craig: Oh gosh I couldn’t agree more like I would recommend this over something like Last House on the Left. Oh yeah. Because it’s not gonna make you feel like you need to go take a shower and throw up afterwards. Like those movies do. I didn’t love it either, but I expected to hate it. And I didn’t hate it. I thought it was alright. I I didn’t think it was a Chore to watch I’m not gonna say that I loved it and like you that I would watch it again But you know, it was it was alright

Todd: it kind of makes me wonder about the remake. I mean, I understand it’s a loose remake.

Craig: It is. And I’ve seen the remake. I really don’t remember anything about it, except for that Rebecca DeMornay plays the mother. And I think Rebecca DeMornay is great. And I remember that it takes it much more seriously. It’s darker. I’m sure it does. Yeah, it’s darker. And the mother is far more calculating and wicked. But it’s similar. The storyline is really, you know, it’s not a Backwoods family. I don’t know. I don’t remember enough about it to really say. And I don’t even remember really how I felt about it. But it is, it takes the same   concept, but it’s loose and it’s darker

Todd: maybe in another year or 2 if we’re still doing this we might dig that 1 up we’ll see

Craig: yeah maybe we’ll see there’s only so many Mother’s Day movies

Todd: I’m only aware of 2 yeah Well happy Mother’s Day to our moms out there and to your moms as well. And any mom out there, happy Mother’s Day.

Craig: And pet moms and non-moms and we appreciate you all.

Todd: Well thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. If you have any requests for us, you can find us on Facebook. Just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw, or you can go to our website, 2guys.red40net.com. Leave us a comment there, give us your request, and let us know what you thought of this film, as well as any other films you want us to cover. Until next time, I’m Todd – and I’m Craig – with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.