There’s Nothing Out There (1991)

Episode 179, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  Craig and I have been doing, some fairly serious, some modern horror movies, and, we decided last week that we needed to throw things back a little bit to some of that cheesy eighty nineties schlock that, you all love so much. So, I had dug up this movie that I had seen a while back. I think I originally saw it on cable. And then, at one point, I wanted to show it to a friend of mine, so I went out and rented it. And, it’s called There’s Nothing Out There, out in 1991. And it has been twenty years probably since I’ve seen this movie. And so, it was really interesting to come back and revisit it. What I remembered it being was not a great film, a pretty low budget, somewhat amateurish effort, but that’s something that had a little bit of heart to it.  And, I enjoyed watching nonetheless and had kind of an interesting twist to it. So I selected for us to watch this week, and we did. And so here we are talking about it. Craig, had you ever heard anything about this movie before?

Craig:  No. Nothing. I had never heard of it. Going in and looking it up and then watching it, nothing. It was completely off my radar.

Todd:  Well, it has a really interesting, history behind it. The director, Rolf Kaniewski, the writer director of this film, has actually is very prolific. He’s written a ton of screenplays. He’s, produced a number of movies, directed a number of movies. A lot of them were, like, straight to video things. He’s bounced in between horror and, like, softcore type stuff for, like, cinematics and things like that, but always working and always always moving. But he pretty much grew up in the industry. His father was an editor.  A film editor had his own independent film editing company. And, actually, fun fact, his father was the editor for Bloodsucking Freaks, which is a pretty notorious horror film from the seventies. And then his mother, an actress on Broadway. So, I mean, he he comes from this background where when he was a kid, even in high school, he knew he wanted to be in film, and he was running around shooting movies on video and stuff like that and writing screenplays. I mean, he wrote the screenplay for this movie, actually, when he was 16, along with a number of others. And then by the time he was graduating from high school, he said he and his parents sort of decided, well, now it’s time for you to make your movie. Have a look at what you’ve written and, what of it looks the best to start out with? What would be your good directorial debut? Looking at the scripts that he had done, this one stood out because it was a horror movie, and horror movies at the time were really big. This would have been 1989.  You know, there was, you know, Jason and Freddie were still in the theaters.

Craig:  Wait. Is that right? I thought it was, like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Just kidding. I was thinking it was earlier. But no, that’s right.  Because it came out, actually, I think, what, 9091,

Todd:  something like that? Yeah. It was finished in ’90, came out in ’91. Yeah. So, it had a bit, you know, a bit of a delay, obviously, in getting it all out there.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  But in the middle of that time, between ’89 and ’91, horror took a bit of a nosedive. Tremors came out and it is a great movie, but it didn’t do too well on in the box office. Clive Barker’s Nightbreed came out, and they they didn’t really know how to market that. And that one was a bit of a failure. You know, in the middle there, the horror market briefly dried up a bit. And the director, Rolfe, says what kind of saved his movie is it’s it’s actually as much comedy as it is anything else. And when he was writing the script, he went out and watched a whole bunch of horror movies. He just went to the video store, he said, and just rented a whole bunch.  And he said that after a while, he just got tired of noticing that they were all pretty much the same, that they all had followed the same cliches and things. Mhmm. So he’s about three or four pages into writing the script, and he said, you know, why don’t I just make this movie kind of about that? And so he put a character in there, which he said is kind of basically me, who’s very self aware, who’s who’s pointing out the fact that this is like a horror movie, that the situation they’re in is like a horror movie. And then flat out, there’s some fourth wall breaking in here, you know, some talking directly about the situations that are that are going on. And all of this predates Scream by about five years. So it it’s really unknown whether Kevin Williamson had seen this when he was writing Scream or this was any influence on him and Wes Craven, but, there are some parallels to be made. It’s a very different kind of movie from Scream.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  But the movie ended up getting sold to, like, HBO. So, basically, just to to video and cable markets after doing some, circuits on the festivals. I even read that he said that Robert Zemeckis saw the movie. Somehow, through a friend of a friend or whatever, he got it in front of Robert Zemeckis who watched it. And he said he wasn’t blown away by it, but he liked it. And he basically told him, well, this proves that you know how to make a movie. So write a script that’s really, really good that everybody wants to do, and then say that you wanna direct it, and then show them this movie to prove that you can direct. So this movie did get him into the business, and he’s been working really, really hard and pretty steadily ever since.  So he is about the only thing to come out of this movie. Most of the other actors and actresses in the film didn’t move on to do anything else.

Craig:  Yeah. I didn’t recognize anybody. I didn’t even bother to write people’s names down because I didn’t think that it would be anybody that anybody would recognize. Mhmm. Gosh. I don’t know. I I don’t wanna be a Debbie Downer, but it it’s, you know, he made it when he was a kid. Yeah.

Todd:  He’s 20. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. And, wrote it when he was even younger than that, and it feels like that to some extent. It does. However, I mean, for being a first effort and and the fact that he was literally a kid when he wrote it and and arguably still a kid when he directed it, it’s not bad. But it it does, definitely have that kind of amateurish feel Yeah. A little bit. And, of course, you know, being his first outing and and him not having, you know, a name to fall back on, it’s low budget and it shows. Yeah.  But, you know, there’s there are some clever things going on. Really, I almost felt like the self referential stuff was I mean, I think it it it’s supposed to be silly. You know, it’s it’s clearly intended to be a comedy. It doesn’t take itself seriously at all. When it comes down to it, it’s a monster movie. Mhmm. The monster is, to to put it nicely, a practical effect. Really, basically, what it looked like to me was some sort of puppet that somebody constructed, and they just kind of shook around.  And and really, like, literally, at some points, somebody off screen was clearly just kinda throwing this puppet at them. Yeah. They

Todd:  they clearly had to get really creative shooting around the puppet. And and, actually, I think they do a better job than many, of these low budget movies do at least of of not exposing it too much on the screen at least Todd Yeah. Toward the end. And he said, actually, when he was writing this and decided to make a monster movie, he purposely chose to make this small creature because anything bigger that gets kind of humanoid, it always just looks like a guy in a rubber suit. He said, especially at the at the level I’m gonna be working. So he thought he’d hedge his bets and get a smaller little tentacled creature going with it. And, I think it was Image Works studio, put that together for him. So, yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting little creature.  And like you said, it’s also one of those that kinda breaks the laws of physics in a way. Just like when we were doing puppet master and some of these other movies, we talk about how you could just kick these puppets across the room. Right. This creature, like, once it’s up on you, like, there’s no wrestling with it. Right? You should be able to just toss it off you. So, there are just moments of that where you’re right. It looks like somebody just chucked the creature through the air. Yeah.  But that’s part of the charm, I think, you know. Honestly, I think it’s part of the charm of the movie.

Craig:  I was just gonna say the same thing. I mean, there there is something charming about that. And there is also something charming about people coming together and putting together something on a shoestring budget, and it looks like they had a good time. But it it it also looks like some college kids

Todd:  Pooled their money together.

Craig:  For scouting. Yeah. I know. I mean, like

Clip:  It is.

Craig:  And and there’s there’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody’s gotta get their start somewhere. And, you know, I I know that in one of your many incarnations that you have been a filmmaker and that you have done virtually the same thing. I mean, maybe not

Todd:  Exactly the same thing. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you pull together your friends and and people who are willing to you know, all of these actors worked on deferred payment. I I don’t know how much, if anything, any of them were paid. It really is more just, a labor of love than anything else. You know, it’s it’s for the love of filmmaking and for the love of these types of movies. And, I I can’t imagine that they expected much to come of it. And and not a whole lot did, and that’s alright.  But, you gotta appreciate it when people take their passions and and really try to do something with them. Because I can sit behind a computer screen all day and and rag on movies, but I’ve never made a movie. Yeah.

Todd:  You know? So Well, you have to start somewhere. Right?

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And, you’re you’re lucky if the thing that you start with, it doesn’t just, you know, sit on nowadays. It doesn’t just sit on your computer and nobody else sees it. You know? I mean Yeah. At least, with this, it was shot on film. It’s been shown on cable, it and it’s been on video. It, later on got picked up by Troma and redistributed as a two DVD box set for,

Craig:  you know,

Todd:  its twentieth anniversary. I don’t know what they filled those two DVDs with.

Craig:  I have no idea.

Todd:  But, you know, I mean, it’s it’s not bad. I mean, it’s it’s bad, but it’s not it’s got some charm to it. That’s what I remembered about it. And so when I went back and watched it again, I really wasn’t if anything, I was a little pleasantly surprised at, how clever I thought it was in some places. They’re like, the cinematography in this movie is really either one direction or the other. Either it’s really bland and boring, especially when it gets Todd, like, fight sequences and things like that. I mean, it’s clear that nobody here is a stuntman, and, they don’t really know how to stage these fight scenes. And so the cuts are really rather jarring and a little confusing to try to kinda hide the fact that they couldn’t really throw this guy across the room into a wall.  You know, stuff like that. But then transitions between scenes, some of the POV photography with that creature going through, very reminiscent of Evil Dead. Uh-huh. It’s surely a reference there. And then these crane shots. Like, there are a lot of these, especially toward the beginning of this movie, these big swooping, which gives the movie at least at first a little bit of a bigger budget feel. And it turns out I was reading that that, this was another one of those deals. Like, there was a guy with a 19 foot Craig, happened to be nearby in the town where they were filming this and allowed them to use it as long as they he could just keep it on their set for a few weeks.  So they just kinda Craig together these resources to get what they could.

Craig:  Well, and then, you know, of course, then there are also some rookie mistakes too. You know, there are I I noticed at least a couple of times, there are scenes where you can see the crew in Oh, reflection. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, whatever happens even in big budget movies. But it’s just one of those things that I’m sure a new filmmaker, you learn from your mistakes. You know, you talked about, breaking the fourth wall and and there is. I I almost wish that it had been a little bit more decisive and whoever is making these decisions, the the director, whomever it was, I wish that it had been a little bit more decisive.  Like, if if you’re gonna break the fourth wall, just do it. Just do it all the time.

Todd:  Make it a thing.

Craig:  Yeah. Like, it it it was a little bit jarring to me. There’s one point at the end where one guy’s running around, running away from the monster, and it’s like he can’t figure out how he’s gonna get away. So he jumps up and swings off of the boom mic.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s like he jumps up and the boom mic is suddenly in the Craig, and he looks at it for a second and swings off of it, and there’s sort of an Indiana Jones type sound effect for it.

Craig:  Yeah. And and, like, that was funny, but it only happens once. You know? I I feel like if you’re gonna do that, go for it. Make that make that a gimmick.

Todd:  It’s a very Mel Brooks thing to do. But you’re right. Like, Mel Brooks has a consistency where he’s gonna do that two or three times. You know? You expect it. Mhmm.

Craig:  In that it only happened once, I don’t know. It it it just felt almost a little bit out of place. But again, I’m I I don’t wanna be too critical because it’s it’s not a masterpiece and and that that’s not what they were going for. So, you know, okay. Cool. So you you had an idea in the moment and you went ahead and decided to play with the boom mic and and fine. You know? Yeah. It it was a funny gag in the moment.  So great. Whatever.

Todd:  Well, I and speaking of good moments, I thought it started off really strong.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I loved that opening scene. That was probably frankly, that was probably my favorite part even though I found it to be kind of confusing and ultimately, like, it it it seems kind of like it like it’s tagged on.

Todd:  It’s like a red herring kinda thing. Yeah. It it it I think it was. I think they shot that later. In fact, I think the original script just opened up with this girl driving down, in a car and just, kind of blanking out and and crashing herself. This gives kind of a reason why she’s crashed. It gives her kind of a daydream or whatever that she spaced out on, which is there’s a girl working in a video a woman working in a video store. Somebody kind of comes in, but she don’t see who it is.  But he’s dressed in black, and she doesn’t really notice him. But then Fangoria’s weekend of horrors gets slapped down on the counter, and she turns around, but she doesn’t see anybody there. And she goes to find the tape, and then an arm reaches out and grabs her. And pretty soon, she’s getting chased for the video store, and she ends up cornered in the horror section. And it’s so cool. Like, first of all, for us, right, we’re totally geeking out. Like, there are all these real covers of real horror movies that are so familiar to us. But it’s also like they’re tormenting her, these covers.  It’ll get shots of of the covers real close-up. Like, she’s turning left. She’s turning right. All she’s seeing are these things, and there’s sound effects and screams and and all that as she’s being backed and backed and backed away. And then the killer, like, starts tossing, like, the tapes at her, like, literally, like, the tape out of the tape. Uh-huh. So she’s covered in tape, like, you’d be covered in, like, a film reel or something and and backs out through a door, which is, I guess, on the Second Floor. I don’t know.  It’s all kind of weird. And and as she falls out, the tape gets caught in the door and kind of hangs her, but then she wakes up and she’s in a car. Driving. Driving. And then, like, crashes into a a tree. But that scene was so awesome.

Craig:  It was. I mean, and and I I knew, you know, watching it, I knew that you and I were gonna feel the same way about it because it’s so nostalgic. I mean, those are exactly the video stores that we grew up with. You know, these local video stores where they just had, you know, the VHS boxes on the shelves, and you would just have to browse the covers, and and you find the one that you want, and you would take it up to the counter, and they would have the the actual videotapes behind the counter or in a room behind the counter, almost like a library, and they would go pull the very generic plastic box with the actual videotape in it and give it to you. It it totally just took me back to my childhood. And the fact that most, if not all, of those videos in in the store were four actual movies

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  From the eighties that we grew up with and loved and

Todd:  And then some of them we’ve done on the

Craig:  show here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was just a really kind of fun way to to start it out. And I felt like it did a good job of establishing the atmosphere, you know, like Yeah. This is gonna be one of those movies that you would just randomly see on the shelf and know nothing about, but it looks interesting and you pull it off and and you take it home and watch it. And you have no idea what you’re getting into, but, yeah, it it was a lot of fun.  So she she crashes her car and then a weird sucky I didn’t even know what

Todd:  A big green glowing orb comes down from the heavens. And, this is another one of those sweeping camera angles, you know, where it kinda goes through her crash, sweeps up to the sky. This big green orb comes down, and it sweeps across that, and and it goes down into a puddle of mud. And, she looks out her window, and you’re right. These big sucky things. Tentacles come up on the it’s very typical. I mean, it’s a very reminiscent of, like, a fifties b movie at this point.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. Except for a little bit smaller in scale. You know, in those fifties and sixties b movies, this thing would be the size of a car. But here, it’s it’s more the size of, like, a medium sized dog. Yeah.  And and it it it’s hard to describe this thing. I mean, we don’t see it in its entirety right away. We see that it’s kinda got these, like, tentacles with, like, suckers on the end. Ultimately, when it’s revealed, it’s hard to describe. It reminds me of kind of, like, when we were kids, they’re just for a little bit, they would market these toys, like, these monster toys. Like, I feel like they were called, like, Boglins or

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Something like that.

Todd:  You put your fingers through them, and, they’d have these rubbery arms that would bounce around, and you could make it open and close. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That’s a good way of putting it, actually.

Craig:  That’s exactly what it reminded me of. You know, it’s got kind of a small squat body, almost kinda like a toad or something. It looks

Todd:  like a frog.

Craig:  Long arms.

Todd:  It looks like a frog with a big wide mouth, and a lot of teeth, and then these arms. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s kind of inexplicable how it moves around. Like, it doesn’t even look like it has any legs or anything.

Todd:  At one point, it pulls itself across the kitchen floor with its tentacles as you would expect this thing to do. But by that point, we’ve seen this thing for in POV shots and stuff, like, just literally flying through the air. The thing is a camera. It’s just flying through the air. It’s like sweeping up staircases and, like, flying into doorways. It just Yeah.

Craig:  We never we don’t really see what happens to this girl. She kinda gets attacked. But before we actually see well, her car gets attacked, I guess, is a better way of putting it. And then it cuts to this scene in a high school, in an English class, which is so hilarious to me because the the the kids in the class look older than the teacher.

Todd:  Oh, yeah. I was thinking the same thing. I thought maybe one of them was volunteering to teach the class that day. That’s exactly what it looks like. Typical for these movies.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s very typical. You know, the the teacher can’t get the kids to engage at all, and they’re all just sitting there staring at the clock. And, she’s like, I bet you know when spring break starts, and they’re all like, thirty seconds. And the bell rings, and it’s like, you know, Greece. When the bell rings at the end, they all run out like, yay.

Todd:  I know I know this is exactly how your last day of school was, right, this year? That’s pretty much how it goes. You all stand sit and stare at the clock, and then when the bell rings and everybody springs out of their seats, you roll your eyes.

Craig:  You learn. You learn. You learn, when you get into the teaching profession that the teachers are watching that clock just as closely, if not more so than the students. And the teachers are out of there just as fast and just as excitedly.

Todd:  Yeah. Do they yeah. They need to one in one of these movies show the shot of the back of the school where the teachers are bursting out of the back door. Yeah. Running to their cars in the staff parking lot.

Craig:  Yeah. And, so then we’re introduced to this group of kids that are gonna go off to one of their parents’ cabin in the woods, literally.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And there there are seven of them and, you know, we probably name them as we go along, but it’s just your typical group. You know? You’ve got

Todd:  David the smart one because he

Craig:  had glasses. The the nerd one because he’s got glasses. Janet, the Brazilian foreign exchange student,

Todd:  which I

Craig:  thought was hilarious. Doreen, who’s like the hot blonde. Nick, it’s his parents’ cabin, and he’s kinda it’s like the all American boy. Then there’s Jim, who’s like the hunky one, who is hooked up with Doreen. And Stacy is the only brunette, and she’s with Nick. And then there’s the horror movie guy, Mike.

Todd:  Mike the mouth.

Craig:  Yep. Yep. Exactly. And he’s us. You know, he’s the the goofy guy who makes lots of jokes and knows all of these horror movie references. So they head out there, and the first thing that happens is they pass by that car wreck, and Mike immediately thinks, oh my gosh.

Clip:  Well, this was a fun vacation, Nick. Too bad we have to go home now. Come on. You’re not gonna let a little thing like that scare you, are you? Yeah. Well, not bad. Can we please go home? We’ll take the wheel. Rotate it. Forget, man.  We’ve gone this far. We’re going all the way. You don’t understand. We just went through a warning. Don’t forget, I have rented out every single horror film on video tape and what we just went through is called a warning stage.

Craig:  Come on. None of us girls are scared. Are you?

Clip:  What is this? Peer pressure? Is that what we’re talking about now? Really, Mike. It’s logically stupid for you to be worried by this. Logically stupid? Is that what you said, logically stupid? Is this the person representing brilliance on

Craig:  our time? Come on. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go.

Todd:  Mistake number one.

Craig:  And and these guys show up in these movies all the time. Like, in in the actual film, the, the Cabin in the Woods, you know, there’s one of these guys. And and in Scream, there’s the guy that knows all about the horror movies. And and it’s clever, you know, because they they do know so many references. And the shtick, of course, is that nobody believes them and, oh, stupid Mike, you’re always thinking it’s a horror movie or whatever. When, of course, it’s true. Yeah. They are in a horror movie.  I don’t know. This guy, they all end up getting annoyed with them.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And I think I would have too.

Todd:  Oh, I was annoyed with them. Much. I was annoyed with them by the time they made it to the house. I mean, you know, they’re outside talking about how they’re all gonna go off to this cabin in the woods, and, of course, there are gonna be no adults there, and they’re, like, five bedrooms. And Mike’s like, cabin in the woods. Cabin in the woods. Are you crazy? What’s going on? And but he ends up going. And then it’s like, oh, this

Craig:  is mistake number one.

Todd:  Can you believe it’s mistake number one? And they’re like, okay, Mike. Alright. Shut up. And then they get into the house and they’re like, are you crazy? We’re in the house now. We gotta lock the doors. We gotta close the things. It’s like broad daylight. And and everyone’s looking at him, and I’m thinking, oh my god.  Get get this guy out of here.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Why is he even there? You know? Like but it’s funny because I would have attributed it to really lousy writing. And it’s not great writing, you know, but he’s just he’s just a little too on about this all the time. Uh-huh. I mean, he really is.

Craig:  The whole movie. Yeah.

Todd:  But the fact that all of the other characters in the movie are just as annoyed with him as we are, you know, they’re not just Todd silly Mike or whatever. They’re just like, alright, dude, like, fucking shut up. You know? Right. Yeah. You’re you’re killing our vibe here. It it’s cool. I mean, I was like, okay. Yeah.  I’m I’m with you all on this. Mike is an annoying character and I’m glad we all recognize that. Yeah.

Craig:  And and then, you know, it just it hits all the notes, you know. There are a bunch of horny teenagers, you know, out in the woods by themselves, and so they they start hooking up and

Todd:  I I love the bit where where, you know, one of the things he’s riffing on is, like, now, what are we gonna do? Are we all gonna take walks in the woods? Are we all gonna go skinny dipping or whatever? And then, like, the next scene, this van inexplicably pulls up. Eight guys and ladies leap out of the back of this van. And as the van opens up, there’s, like, smoke pouring out of it. Like, they’ve all been high. They all stripped out and leap into this, this Todd, river pond thing right next to the house and just have a skinny dipping party. And just just just out of nowhere.

Craig:  There’s lots of nudity in the movie.

Todd:  There is.

Clip:  So if if you came to the show

Craig:  for the boobies, you are in luck.

Todd:  And usually, this is the part where all the bad people show up at the movie, and then they join the group and, you know, you just have more people to off.

Craig:  But Right.

Todd:  It’s like they lean out and they’re like, where are you guys? And they’re like, this isn’t the lake of blah blah blah or whatever, and they’re kinda going back and forth. And then they just okay. And they just leave. And they pile in their van and they leave, and we never see them again.

Craig:  They’re like, wait. Isn’t this the camp by the lake? And the guy’s like, no. It’s the house by the pond. And he was like, oh, sorry. We thought it was the camp by the lake. And so they splash around a little more, and then they leave, and they never see them again.

Todd:  That’s so funny.

Craig:  It’s it was I mean, it’s silly, but, yeah, it it was funny.

Todd:  Well and then, like, how many other times in this movie did the did the rest of them ended up skinny dipping? I mean, it’s there’s at least two more scenes of skinny dipping. Mhmm. Like, they can’t stay away from there.

Craig:  Well and and it’s just it’s it’s just silly little stuff. Like, I feel like I can’t really explain the vibe of the movie. You just kinda have to see it. But, like, even when they first get there, I don’t even know what has set, you know, Mike off aside from the car wreck or whatever. But even when they first get there, they’re just they get out of the car and they’re just standing there and he’s going on, oh, I don’t know. We we better be careful. It’s the horror movie or whatever. And the bushes behind him just shake.  It’s even in the credits, somebody’s credited as the bush shaker. Yeah. Like, like, they just shake and he kinda catches it out of the corner of his eye and he kinda looks back and he says something and then he looks back and it shakes again. You know, it’s just these these silly, silly little

Todd:  It’s it’s like he’s Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

Craig:  He is. Exactly. To be fair, these are things that happen in legit horror movies. Mhmm. But when you place them in this context, it just seems so goofy.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And it is, I guess, ultimately.

Todd:  Yeah. I mean, there’s something about it that works, but it doesn’t quite work. Like, I bet the script is smarter than the movie ended up being. You know? Yeah. I think if you had taken the script and put it in the hands of, not all amateur people, it probably would have gotten a little higher caliber of everything out of it. It probably would have come across a little smart. Maybe a little bit of rewriting, of course, especially some of the dialogue. That’s a lot of the dialogue does kinda feel like I was written by an 18 year old Right.  To be completely honest, who’s trying a little too hard. A lot of Mike’s dial a lot of Mike’s jokes and the stuff that he says is completely inappropriate to the situation. Mhmm. Like, what they just finished running from a monster and then they they come back into the room and they shut it off. Or or or my favorite one is when, they’re in the basement. This basement, which I feel like they keep acting like it’s this huge basement, but it’s a room almost the size of a walk in closet. At one point later in the movie, Mike is down in there with Stacy, and they know this creature’s out running around, and he has to leave to go do something inexplicably. So he leaves Stacy down there by herself, and she’s freaking out because there’s a mouse and backing up against an open window.  He ends up coming through the open window. He reaches his hand out and grabs her shoulder, and she goes, ah. And he says,

Clip:  so I’m paying you to stand in front of an open window, or is that your own idea? Yeah. There’s some razor blades in the corner you can play with next. Would you like to do that? Look. Let’s get this window boarded up first. Like,

Todd:  he goes on and on like a person who thinks they’re funny, but then they they’re, like, supremely annoying. And it’s like they their version of humor is just to point out stupid things that other people are doing and say that it’s stupid.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. And and I I agree with you. I think I I have to give Ralph Kanievsky credit because he was a kid when he wrote it. So I’m not expecting any real level of sophistication, but like you said, in somebody else’s hands. Like, you put this in Joss Whedon’s hands or or or somebody else who is a little bit more mature and who has refined their talents a little bit more. It could have been really funny, but some of the writing is just laughably bad. Like, at one point, the hot girl Doreen falls down and somebody says to her, oh, I think you broke your head.  Like, it’s just just just silly lines like that. Todd. I I

Todd:  What was that bit when they’re standing out? It’s when they first get there or whatever, and, one guy looks out and says, hey. What is that? And, the guy who owns it, Nick, says, oh, that’s an Indian sweat lodge. And then and then, somebody else pops into nerd. Oh, it’s the nerd who pops into Steve.

Craig:  Steve, it’s like

Todd:  Is that an ancient Indian sweat lodge?

Craig:  Yeah. Somebody told me the Indians used to use those to the male Indians used to use those to increase their sexual virility. Care if I check it out? Like,

Todd:  sure. Go ahead. And I thought that that would be, like, a part of the movie. Like, that would

Craig:  be deployed later. I thought surely something would go down in the ancient Indian sweat lodge, but, no, they just have one.

Todd:  That’s the last you see of it or hear of it. Yeah.

Craig:  So, you know, as happens in these movies, eventually, they start splitting off from one another. And the first people to go out are David the nerd, Janet the foreign exchange student, who they’re apparently a couple. I read that, initially, she in the script was written as the female nerd counterpart, for David. But when they cast this girl and she was from Brazil, they’re like, okay. We’ll make her the foreign exchange student.

Todd:  We’ll we’ll we’ll work with it. Whatever. I think they cast the girls primarily for their looks. I think most of them were models at the time.

Craig:  Yeah. I mean, it would make sense.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  You know, they’re they’re all buxom young beauties. Gosh. I don’t know. I mean, they they go out and

Todd:  Well and she’s, like, talking about a scene in a horror movie that she saw that basically mim mimics what they’re doing. Oh, and this couple, they go out into the woods all alone and then they start making

Craig:  That was really on the nose. Yeah. Like like, it was okay. Alright. I get it.

Todd:  He gets attacked by the monster. This is the first time we see a little bit more of the monster, and there’s a bit of blood and gore. And she gets her pants ripped off by the monster.

Craig:  Yeah. Like, it it it attacks him and, like, immediately starts to eat him, but real quick, it snatches her skirt off. Mhmm. He like so then she has to run around in her panties just because.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And and then she like, it does it’s it’s eating him, and it doesn’t even chase her. She just runs face first into a tree.

Todd:  And then we don’t see her for a while.

Craig:  No. Yeah. But I knew, you know, she she’s clearly knocked out. And I’m like, oh, well, alright. She’ll be out for a while, but she’ll show back up later.

Todd:  And, of

Craig:  course, she does. Even before that happened, they had dinner. They heard a noise inside. They went inside, and and a pan had just fallen down, but it had this Mhmm. Even, you know, even some of these smaller things like that, you suspend your disbelief when you’re watching these types of movies, but that would give me pause. Like, like, something clearly happened. And the girl who made, the dinner, Stacy, she’s like, well, that’s where all the leftover chicken was. And instead of them being like, oh, that’s weird, they’re like, oh, hearty r.  Well, then that makes sense. I thought that chicken tasted kinda off. And she’s, like, hey.

Todd:  That is, like, the level that we’re working with here, to be quite honest, in in much of this movie.

Craig:  Yeah. The acting is not great.

Todd:  And then Mike is, like, oh, it just proves that we gotta barricade the doors and lock

Clip:  the windows. And I’m thinking, but this means it’s inside.

Todd:  Yeah. You know? Whatever you think it is. And then he’s oh, I know it’s got it’s either gonna be an alien or oh, how about the shower scene? That this girl gets, strips down and steps into the shower and gets wet, but all we see is, like, her face and her stomach for a while. I thought that was kinda kinda weird.

Craig:  I thought it was kinda weird. It’s funny that you describe it the way that you do because I thought it was, like, you know, you see naked girls in showers in these horror movies all the time, but, like, I felt like they made a point of, like, doo doo doo. Okay. I’m washing my vagina now. Washing my hair? Yeah. Like, usually the girls just Todd in the shower and let the water cascade over them, but this she was cleaning up.

Todd:  She left. She she gets this the the shampoo out and lathers up her hair that you don’t usually see. But I just thought it was funny how, like, they were show I thought, oh, this must be the actress who had in her contract that she wasn’t gonna go Todd us for this movie. Nope. Not at all. Just not in this exploitive shower scene where they going to, I guess maybe they just didn’t wanna reveal the goods too soon.

Craig:  Yeah. I I and and at some point, I mean, it’s it’s hard to talk about the plot because, really, through the bulk of this middle part, they realize that there’s a monster. It exposes itself to them and they know. And so they’re really just kind of running around a lot. Yeah. You know, running to different rooms of the house, running outside, running back inside. At some point before the monster is completely revealed, even though I feel like Mike, our main guy, maybe he’s seen it, but

Todd:  Doreen sees it first because she’s making out with Jim, and she looks over and sees these green eyes staring at her, and they zap her.

Craig:  They well, they That’s when

Todd:  we find out the monster has eye lasers.

Craig:  They don’t zap her yet. She does see, the green eyes. But then they end up some this for some reason, they end up in a basement, and a cat falls out of the sky.

Todd:  And Yes. This was my

Craig:  favorite scene. I just thought it

Todd:  was really It’s a cat scare.

Craig:  Yeah. Right. And it was funny because, again, it’s very on the nose. But in this case, it’s funny that it gets called out

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  Because this does happen all the time in these in these movies. Like, literally, a cat falls out of the sky.

Todd:  Yeah. He just looks up, and he’s like

Clip:  Where did it come from? There’s nothing up there but ceiling. I love how these animals just fall out of nowhere right into your hands. And what they do, just hang up there by their claws and wait for people to pass

Craig:  by. Right. But Doreen where? So is I don’t know. Somebody says something like, oh, it’s a cat with beautiful green eyes. And Dorian’s like, oh, I did see something with green eyes. And they’re like, oh, well, they have to be a cat. Okay.

Todd:  Oh, please. These were glowing green eyes that you saw.

Craig:  And and so they’re pissed at Mike at this point. And so they lock him in the basement for the night. Mhmm. And all of this, you know, is in between semi graphic sex scenes. I I don’t even know, you know, how to, you know, chronologically put them in order, but just be aware that every five to ten minutes, you’re going to get a relatively graphic sex scene in the first forty five minutes of this movie.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  Which again, you know, that’s what you get when you have a 16, 18 year old kid writing a horror movie and a 20 year old then that same 20 year old kid producing and and making the horror movie. Heck, yeah.

Todd:  Dude, this must have been, like, his favorite thing ever. Can you imagine?

Craig:  Oh my god. All these beautiful girls. Okay. Well, I think you should probably be naked now.

Todd:  And Yeah. And then halfway through the movie, you’re just gonna spend the rest of the movie in your bikini. Yeah. Because that’s what happens to Stacy. Yeah. And you see other people, like, they come out of water and they put clothes on or they throw jackets on. She’s still running around next to them in her bikini. Uh-huh.  It’s it’s great.

Craig:  The whole last part.

Todd:  And I wasn’t complaining. No. It’s totally Oh,

Craig:  no. She’s she’s really pretty. I her acting

Todd:  By the

Craig:  way Yeah.

Todd:  No. Her acting’s fit is is terrible, but she, is one of the other few people who went on to do something, but not in the acting realm. This is her only movie, but her name is Bonnie Bowers. And I I looked her up, and she was a model at this time. She was on the Howard Stern show. Remember when Howard Stern back in the early nineties, late eighties had, like, a TV show? Yeah. And he’d always bring on women and bikinis Yeah. Just to be there and to joke around with.  She was on there. There’s a clip on YouTube you can find. But now, since this movie, she has been a bass guitarist for a reggae band and apparently very accomplished because she’s got tons of clips up on YouTube. She’s still touring. She’s got her own website and, makes a living putting out albums of reggae.

Craig:  Yeah. I should

Todd:  Quite interesting.

Craig:  I should have looked. Because I I didn’t even click on any of them. You know? I I looked at their cast the cast list online, and I didn’t even click on any of them because most of them didn’t even have a headshot on there. Like

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  So that that She’s

Todd:  one of the few.

Craig:  Yeah. That indicates that they haven’t done much when they don’t even have a headshot on there. And and she was one of the few that did, but I didn’t check her out. But Mike has to the the creature attacks him in the basement, and he breaks a a piece of pipe. So when they wake up in the morning, the water doesn’t work, and the basement is flooded. So Nick, whose parents own the house, he leaves, and takes their only car to go get a plumber. And then he’s gone for a while, and then that’s when the creature attacks. Everybody sees it.  Yes. Doreen gets shot in the eyes with these lasers, which looked I mean, it just it’s funny because it looks bad, but it does I mean, it just looks dumb. And it’s like, pew pew. You know, like

Todd:  Yeah. Literally.

Craig:  Like, these silly green lasers. And, of course, I knew that it had to be something, you know. Like, it’s not like nothing’s gonna come of it. And and apparently, when these people get, hit with the lasers, then they are mind controlled or possessed or something. And so Doreen attacks them eventually, and people start dying. The the hunky one, whatever his name is, Jim, gets attacked by the creature, and it, like, splooges on his face.

Todd:  Nice one. Okay.

Craig:  Well, it does. And then, his face melts off.

Todd:  Yeah. That was just a gratuitous scene to have in there so that you they could do this face melting effect. Because it kept cutting back to that over and over and over again.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Look, his face is melting a little more. Don’t forget, this guy’s face is melting. And Mike is sitting there just staring at it while this creature’s running around downstairs terrorizing everybody else. And then, Doreen, when she gets possessed or whatever and starts going after them, eventually, there’s this whole sequence. Was it before this? Was it was it when he and Jim are fighting? He and Jim have this almost Three Stooges esque kind of battle in the living room because Jim is pissed at Mike for something. Yeah.

Craig:  I don’t remember what it was. I actually thought the fight was not bad, and and I read that they all they did their own stunts. And so for these amateurs to choreograph, it went on for a while, and they were throwing each other around. And I didn’t think it was terrible.

Todd:  Yeah. No. It wasn’t terrible, but some of it didn’t make sense. Like, they jump on this cart, and then this cart flies across the room, and then inexplicably is out on the deck and careens towards the stairwell where it just suddenly stops. You know, I mean, again, it all could make sense, but the way it was shot, just some of it, the physics didn’t quite work.

Craig:  Well, it’s slapsticky. And and I think Well, yeah.

Todd:  But I don’t mean in a way

Craig:  that Right? Don’t didn’t you get that? You I mean, you said Three Stooges.

Todd:  I mean, it’s meant to be slapsticky, but even the Three Stooges, I mean, it makes sense. He swings a board around it whacks his guy.

Craig:  You know?

Todd:  They go into something and you know what I mean. It’s just, and then I think, at this point, in the middle of this, Doreen comes and attacks them both and whatever. And then she ends up face first through a window, the back window, and the pane of glass that hasn’t broken yet slides down on her and decapitates her, which was was one of the more gory shocking scenes in the movie that Oh, yeah.

Craig:  Decapitates her. I mean, it it looks entirely fake. It’s Oh, it does. It’s true. It’s a clear switch out from the actress to a mannequin.

Todd:  You only see the back of her head. So

Craig:  But, again, you know, good. Go for it. Mike comes back at some point. Like, like, they he’s not in the basement when they go to look for him the next day. But then after the attacks start happening, Stacy runs into him outside. And at this point, it’s almost like, told you so, and his dialogue gets even more sticky than it was before. But right when she runs into him, it is pretty funny. There’s there’s some, funny dialogue there.  And the creature tries to attack them, like, from behind a tree, and he, like, ties its arms around the tree. I mean, it’s it’s just goofy.

Todd:  Yeah. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s

Craig:  And then there’s one point where the creature okay. So it killed sexy Jim, and then it went after Stacy. Yeah. It’s just so funny the way that they shot it because part of it is POV from the creature’s perspective and part of it is not. But either way you’re looking at it, it’s very clear that the creature, rather than trying to, like, melt her face off, is trying to get in between her legs. Yeah. And somebody says it says something about how it hasn’t killed any of the girls. And he’s like and somebody says, well, maybe it wants them for some other purpose.  And they’re like, what? And Mike’s like, oh, maybe it wants to reproduce. And Stacy’s like, well, you know what? It did feel like it was trying to

Todd:  that’s some clever writing. That’s why I said moments of brilliance in this movie. The their comic timing was dead on with that one, I think.

Craig:  Yeah. It was pretty funny. And then at some point, Janet comes back. I don’t even remember what happens to her. Does she get killed again?

Todd:  She gets killed in the living room, but not before her shirt is torn open.

Craig:  Well, and and it

Todd:  I thought that was

Craig:  funny too. Tries to mate with her too. Mhmm. I think Doreen kills her, actually, before she’s decapitated.

Todd:  With a bat. That’s right. For the rest of the movie until somebody throws a a rug over her, every now and then, we see her just laying there with her boobs hanging out across the back of the sofa.

Craig:  Yes. Yes. And, and then Nick comes back, and immediately, the creature attacks him. So he throws the cat at it. That was there were so many funny things like that that I just thought were absolutely hilarious. Like Mhmm. You know, the creature attacks and and he looks around and all he sees is the cat. So he grabs the cat and throws the cat at the creature.  I thought that was so funny. The other thing and this is one of those things that it’s so stupid that it’s funny is that Mike’s main weapon against the creature is shaving Craig. Yeah. Because nobody likes a mouthful of shaving cream.

Todd:  That’s the line. Yep.

Craig:  And then he’s, like, armed with, like, multiple cans of shaving cream in these inner pockets of his jacket for the rest of the movie. And he keeps pulling them out and just shooting shaving cream around. Like, even when the creature’s not there, it’s I didn’t know if he was, like, marking territory or, like, oh, the creature most hate shaving Craig, so I’ll spray some right here. And then it will like, what? Like, what is even happening?

Todd:  It kinda boggles the mind. I read, you know, an interview with the director, and he was mentioning this part. And he said that that was kind of an LA thing that, like, when they were kids, they would and you can take, like, and heat up a pin and put it in the the sprayer of the shaving cream to, to open up that hole just a little wider so you can get a nice big spray and get some distance on it. And he said, like, during Halloween or whatever, they would run around and have shaving cream fights or whatever. Oh my gosh. Guess it’s a thing that he then decided, oh, I’ll throw that in the movie where it makes very little sense.

Clip:  It did.

Craig:  It it felt very trauma, which is fine, but it was just really goofy. And then so Nick is back and a bunch of them are dead. I don’t know. And they’re trying to run away, and I feel like they get in the car Mhmm. And Mike says, there are just a few rules. He says, don’t look in its eyes, avoid the green slime. And did I hear right? Did he say, and whatever you do, don’t try to kiss it? Is that what he said?

Todd:  That’s what he said. I didn’t know if he was referring to the reproduction part, and that was supposed to be a funny reference or what. But

Craig:  I didn’t get it at all. Like, wait. What? Okay. But whatever. So they they try to escape in the car, but the creature jumps on the hood and starts shooting lasers at them and

Todd:  Intensely.

Craig:  They end up intensely. Yeah. And they end up driving into the pond. And the plumber has shown up and he gets attacked and killed. So all the young uns get back to the house. And they set up some weird, like, Home Alone trap with mirrors and shaving Craig, and I didn’t really know what they were doing.

Todd:  We get a musical montage, and it’s like, Mike says, alright. Here’s the plan. Collect all the mirrors and all the light bulbs and all the flashlights that you can in the house. And the music kicks on and it’s all these scenes that run around tiny little light bulbs, the light bulb from, like, the refrigerator, the light bulb from the oven, the lights and all the lamps and things. I’m thinking, all these different sized light bulbs from all these different sized sockets, like Yeah. What purpose is this gonna serve? And it doesn’t seem to

Craig:  because I never understood what they did with them. Like, they just ran around and collected these tons of light bulbs. And then did they even do anything with them?

Todd:  She well, she had a handful of regular sized light bulbs, Stacy did. And she’s standing up on a chair on one end of the room. And then Mike is standing up on a chair in another part of the room. And Nick is standing up on a chair in another part of the room. And then they see the creature come in, and it’s all dark. And they’re using the flashlights to, like, like, somehow the creature’s attracted to light or something.

Craig:  They play with it like a cat. Yeah. Like a cat. Yeah.

Todd:  Like a laser pointer with a cat or something. And and they bring it towards a mirror. And I guess the idea was it thinks it’s going towards someone because it can see their reflection, but it’s really just the mirror. And so then it it bashes itself into the mirror, and then they turn on another light and do it. And then I’m thinking, what is she doing with the light bulbs? Right? She’s just throwing them on the ground so that they shatter. And that is the sound, I guess, it’s supposed to attract him to different parts of the room. But, again, there didn’t seem to be a master plan to all this. It was all kinda it’s all kind of bizarre.

Craig:  Didn’t really get it.

Todd:  It does end up in the in the oven.

Craig:  In the oven. And and that made sense to me, kind of. Like, you know, if you just put one mirror in front of the oven, you know, like, Jurassic Park style, you know, like, you know, trick it into thinking you’re there or whatever. And and but that’s what eventually happens. And it so it ends up in the oven, and somebody’s holding it in there. And it’s very tense, like, it might get out or whatever. And at some point, like, it almost gets out, and it grabs Stacy and it shoots lasers in her eyes. So then she’s possessed and she attacks Nick, but somehow they keep it in there long enough that eventually it explodes, which I guess breaks its spell on Stacy.  And, they all take off in the plumber’s van.

Todd:  And then there’s this interesting bit that I thought was supposed to be funny, but I just thought, where they, the the girl who had crashed earlier in the movie Yeah. Flags them down. And they pull her into the into the van. And as they’re driving, they put two and two together who she is. They’re asking these questions. She says, oh, you know, my stomach hurts

Craig:  or whatever. And he’s like, really? Have you had have you had any kinky sex lately? Yeah. And then,

Todd:  like, they look at her eyes. Your eyes are green. She says, yeah. They’ve been green since birth. I was born with green eyes. And then, the next shot is they’ve kicked her out of their van. They can’t make you. The van keeps going.

Craig:  And that’s it. And that’s the end. I actually thought that gag at the end was kinda funny. I I didn’t really anticipate that girl coming back. I mean, we had heard that when they drove by, the cops said that they hadn’t found a Todd yet. So that should’ve been an indication, but, it was kind of a surprise to see her back. And I I did think that it was funny that, they just ultimately just threw her out of the van and Threw

Todd:  her out.

Craig:  Went on without her.

Todd:  We’re messing with this. Yeah.

Craig:  And and then that’s the end, and then there’s a cheesy eighties song over the credits.

Todd:  I actually thought the music in this was kind of nice. I I enjoyed the music. It had this kind of, new wave. I mean, it’s dated.

Craig:  Yo. Sure.

Todd:  But even the score when it wasn’t, you know, a song when the score was going on, I I thought it it was very I it’s not what I expected from a low budget film like this was to have, like, a legitimately legitimate score behind it. You know, it’s not all synth and Yeah. Stuff that you find in these sorts of things. And the title sequence was really impressive too.

Craig:  No. Wasn’t it looked like a screensaver? Oh, come on.

Todd:  This is the eighties.

Craig:  I used to know. And it looks like a screensaver from the eighties, like, on your Commodore 64 or whatever.

Todd:  It’s way better than that. It looked like 02/2001, man. Fancy eighties. It’s

Craig:  a little bit. Like the black hole. Yeah. Kinda. Yeah.

Todd:  Before we had computer generated.

Craig:  That’s true. That’s true. It was a long time ago. The movie even though the movie came out in 1991, it has a very eighties vibe.

Todd:  Oh, yeah.

Craig:  It’s classic eighties garb. Like, at one point, Nick is, like, in slouch socks. Like, it’s it’s it’s very eighties, which, you you know, I love. Well, it’s why

Todd:  we picked it.

Craig:  So that’s fun. You know, overall, for for a first effort, it’s serviceable. I I don’t think that and it’s probably because you saw it a long time ago and you kinda got some nostalgia for it. I I didn’t think it was great. I didn’t love it. I I I certainly wouldn’t watch it again. But and I’ve seen other movies that are kind of similar in nature that I think are better. Like, I think of, like, Basket Case. 

I I think that Basket Case is ultimately a better movie with a similar vibe. But it’s not bad, and it’s cute. It’s a fun little romp. It it is, you know, it’s the kind of thing that you would when you’re 11 year old me and you’re up at 02: 00 in the morning on a Saturday morning slash Sunday night and it it pops up on cable, you know, I would have sat and watched it and and probably have been amused. It it is amusing.

Todd:  The humor would have been a little more tailored to your taste at that point.

Craig:  Well, and and the boobies and, the guys running around in their jocks or their, you know, little tighty whities or whatever. Yeah. I I I could’ve got down with that. But, for the more sophisticated of you out there, I don’t think it’s gonna be something that you’re gonna, you know, rave about. But, you know, it’s it’s it’s just a a little corny movie and, you know, I I had never even heard of it. And it’s so rare for me to have not even heard of one of these movies that we do. So it was fun. I’m glad we did it.  I I didn’t love it, but it was fun.

Todd:  Well, I I know I probably enjoyed a little bit more than you did. But, again, like, it wasn’t just the nostalgia for it. It was going back and not having seen it in so long and Yeah. Kinda knowing that it wasn’t gonna be that great. And sort of being charmed by it in a way that I don’t even think I was charmed by it back then. You know? Maybe because my expectations were already lowered. Maybe. I was only I was punching up, you know, for for this.  But, yeah. I thought I I thought it was fun. And and if you’re gonna go and you’re gonna try to find one of these cheesy eighties horror movies that you can laugh at or live with in the case of this, there are much worse things out there. I mean, this is actually pretty fun. It’s got some heart. The acting’s not great, but it never is.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  The writing’s not fantastic, but it rarely is. It really does have flickers of brilliance in there, I think, of of originality, and that that there’s something to be said for that.

Craig:  And I’m like a broken record. I say this all the time. But, you know, like, you wanna sit around and and goof on a movie. This would be a good one. Or or for a date night where where you’re not really particularly interested in the movie. You know? Like, you just wanna kinda have something on in the background while you eat popcorn and talk and

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Do whatever you do. Is that what you

Todd:  do on date nights?

Clip:  Yep.

Todd:  Nowadays, yes. Alright. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook. Just search for two guys in a chainsaw. Leave us a message there. Let us know what you thought of this movie.  If you have good fond memories of it, you have some cool take on it that we didn’t get, we’d love to hear from you there or on our website, 2guys.red40net.com. Also, you can leave us some requests. We have a small pile of requests requests that we do get Todd, and, we love to hear the movies you want us to watch. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.