All Hallows’ Eve (2013)

Episode 193, 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:  Happy Halloween, Craig. Happy Halloween, bro.

Craig:  Yes, buddy.

Todd:  We made it through.

Craig:  We did.

Todd:  What are your plans for this, this Halloween evening?

Craig:  Oh, man. I don’t know.

Todd:  You don’t even try anymore. What’s what’s wrong with you?

Craig:  Yeah. I don’t know. III don’t do the whole sugar treater thing because my dogs freak out. So I’ll probably just, throw on a scary movie and make my partner watch it with me and

Todd:  A nice romantic Halloween at home. Yeah. Eat a bunch of candy.

Craig:  Maybe. Maybe.

Todd:  We’re gonna sit in China and pretend that Halloween doesn’t exist because ghosts and anything supernatural doesn’t exist. Basically, that’s that’s the official, motto over here. So, we just did not lose things. We’ll find something to do, some way to celebrate. Last year, last couple of years, actually, we’ve taken my son out in costume for 1 event or another. Usually, there’s a group of expats here throwing together some party. Hopefully, we’ll be able to attend 1 or 2. And I’m hoping this year to convince my wife that it’s okay to do the, chestburster alien thing, where I can just string him up around my neck and put a hole in my shirt and some blood around it, and he can be the alien coming out of my chest.  Although, he’s getting a little heavy for that now. That’s the problem. It it worked out a lot better when he was would have worked out a lot better when he was a baby.

Craig:  Yeah. I’m gonna need to see pictures.

Todd:  See if I can pull it off. Otherwise, I don’t know. It’s like some bunny ears because we have those.

Craig:  A sheet with a couple of holes in the

Todd:  Basically, yeah. Apparently, it used to be a thing in China at 1 point where a bunch of expats would actually go out, you know, and and dressed up. And the problem was they’d get on the subway and scare people to death because nobody had ever seen anything like this before. And they pretty much put a band to any funky costumes or anything on the subway that could scare people.

Craig:  Dang.

Todd:  So that that ended up you can’t even go from 1 place to another with a Halloween costume on, basically, if you’re gonna ride public transportation. But, anyway, enough about China. Let’s talk about America and Halloween. And we chose, I think, pretty appropriate, movie for this 1. It’s called All Hallows’ Eve. It came out in 2013. And, honestly, it really had not been on my radar. Although, when I look at the cover art for it, I think that’s popped up once or twice on my Netflix queue.  Always looked to me like 1 of these sort of low budget straight to video productions, which in fact it is. Yeah. However, it has gained a bit of a cult following and has, boosted the career to a certain extent of its writer director, Damien Leone. So much so that he’s busy at work on other movies. In fact, 1 of the main characters from this film, spawned, a film of its own. And then, that film is getting a sequel right now that’s currently in production. So Yep. We’ll see.  We may have another horror icon on our hands like Jason or Freddie. Maybe. Yeah. So, All Hallows Eve, I had never seen it before. How about you?

Craig:  Yeah. I had. I went, on a working vacation. It wasn’t working for me, but my my mom, had a working vacation to Denver. And, I tagged along because it was in the summer and I have summers off, and Denver was a lovely city. I really enjoyed it. But we shared a hotel room, which I guess some people might think weird, a 40 year old guy sharing a hotel room with his mom, but, you know, we it’s not like we’re in the same bed.

Todd:  Call me down, Craig. You’re you’re you’re okay. I think we’re fine with this 1.

Craig:  And, she had to work, every day. So she would go to bed pretty early about 10 o’clock, and I would stay up and, get on my dad’s Amazon account and, see what was going on. And, this movie popped up and so I watched it. And, it was late at night, and it was dark in a quiet hotel room. It made for a pretty good ambiance, to watch it. And, initially, that first time I watched it, I thought it was kind of pretty freaky.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  So I thought it’d be good for us to look at today.

Todd:  Yeah. It was a great pick, I think. And thank you for picking it. I I kind of agree with you. I had some nice ambiance for this. I mean, I was sitting in a chair, with all the lights on, my son playing on the floor just before bedtime, which is not the ideal way to watch a horror movie but nonetheless, this 1 had a pretty good effect on me actually. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie that has scared me a bit but I have to admit it didn’t start out that way. The movie started out for me as, kind of a groaner rolling my eyes.  Really? Am I gonna have to sit through this? And, by the end of it, I was pretty glued to the screen. And, yeah, my heart was racing a little bit, you know? That that’s a pretty big accomplishment for somebody like me who watches and you, right, who watch these movies day in and day out.

Craig:  Right. Yeah. And, you know, going back and watching it again for the podcast, I I think that I watched it with a much more critical eye this time. And and it it’s not a perfect movie. It is low budget and it shows, but there are some good ideas and there’s some pretty freaky stuff going on in some of them. It’s an anthology film, I guess we should say. It started out this Damien Leone guy had made There are 3 shorts and a wrap around story, in the movie. 2 of the shorts had already been filmed and produced, and had premiered at some film festivals and had, even won some awards and things.  But, I guess the producer of the movie found 1 of the shorts, online. III think it ended up being the the final short of the film. It it was called Terrifier, which is also the name of the standalone movie that this character gets later on. But he saw it online and he liked it and he approached the director and asked him if he would be interested in including his short in an anthology with shorts, directed by other directors. And Damien Leone, the director, was very much interested, but he convinced the producer, you know, let me do it all by myself. Let me use all my own shorts. And so he used his 2 previously shot shorts as the beginning 1 and the end 1, and then he created a new 1 for the middle 1. And, put them all together, filmed a wrap around, and that’s what we get.  You know, the 3 shorts I think have various levels of success. I think that, the first 1 is maybe the most interesting. I think the last 1 is probably the strongest. The middle 1II don’t know. It’s okay. But I don’t think it’s great.

Todd:  You think the first one’s pretty interesting, I have to say, as I was watching it well, of course, the low budget aspect of it shows. It’s interesting how he gets around some of this, by the way. I mean, these are 3 shorts that were filmed within years of each other. Yeah. With by different crew and different directors of photography on different mediums. You know?

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And it’s clear that the first 1 was pretty much shot on video. And so, the way that he gets around this through the wrap around story is that there’s this babysitter and her 2 kids that she’s babysitting, Tia and Timmy, who are sitting around at Halloween watching, of course, Night of the Living Dead on TV because this is the default movie. Well, it’s

Craig:  public domain who wants

Clip:  to pay for it.

Todd:  Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. It’s a default classic. I mean, according to horror movies that take place on Halloween, everybody is sitting at home watching Night of the Living Dead on Halloween. It’s just what we all do because it’s free. Anyway, they’re watching that and, as little Timmy, dumps out his candy, he somebody has dropped a VHS tape in there. And I had to just double check when this movie was made. Because I’m like Right.  VHS tape and they know what it is.

Clip:  Right. And they have a working VCR.

Todd:  Already already plugged into the TV and ready to go. Like, all you gotta do is hit power, turn on the you don’t even have to switch the inputs on this thing, apparently. It just pops up over whatever is showing on TV. So, I don’t know. It’s it’s a clearly, 21st, century VCR, for sure. Because mine never worked that way. Anyway, yeah. So they pop this tape in like it’s not a tape, like it’s nothing.  Right? And, and start watching it. At first, the babysitter, of course, is smart and realistic, and she tells them we’re not just gonna put this in, So you guys go into the other room. I’ll watch a little bit of it and see if it’s appropriate for you guys. After watching the first few minutes, like any good American, she goes, oh, there’s no sex and boobs in here, only violence, so it should be okay. Alright. And the kids come back in and they start watching. And, and so, yeah. So, what we’re seeing with these shorts are basically shorts on this tape.  And they all have a slight connecting thread through it, which is good, I guess, of this clown character, that is, we we find out I’m not sure if it’s ever said in the movie, but apparently, you know, if you read it online, his name is Art. Art the clown.

Craig:  Yeah. His his name gets painted in blood at the very very end on the wall.

Todd:  Oh, okay.

Craig:  Because that’s the only reference. Yeah. And I I just wanted to say, you know, about this wrap around, like, I don’t know who these actors are. I’ll the only 1 I even looked up was the babysitter because she looks slightly familiar, but it ended up that I didn’t recognize anything she was from.

Todd:  She had this slight, Jenna Fischer look to her. I think that’s where the familiarity came from.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. And it’s not that she’s a bad actress. I don’t think that she’s a bad actress. She’s just very low key. Yeah. A

Todd:  little too low key.

Craig:  Yeah. And and not I don’t wanna say flat, but very, like, even. Like, she doesn’t have a whole lot of emotional range. I don’t know what I’m expecting out of her. She’s just babysitting these kids. She’s just doing a favor for a friend or whatever. And the kids are, I think, effectively obnoxious and annoying.

Todd:  Yeah. Pretty much. Like most kids.

Craig:  I would have sent them to bed hours before she did.

Todd:  Me too. Oh, my gosh. She’s like negotiating with them and I’m like, oh come on. I would just send those kids up to bed.

Craig:  But but I also like, you know, the when they pop the tape in, it’s not like it’s like an anthology film that somebody bought at the store and dropped in the bag. It’s like this grainy kind of it almost seems homemade and I feel like that’s kind of what it’s supposed to be. After watching the first 1, the babysitter talks to a friend on the phone and she’s like, I don’t know, it’s like some weird art film short or something. And that’s kind of what it feels like.

Todd:  Doctor. Yeah.

Craig:  Doctor. And 1 of the things that I like about it is that they’re constantly reminding us that they’re watching a movie. Yeah. You know? So it’s not like we’re getting lost in this new world and we stay there with each 1. Like they’re constantly cutting back to the babysitter and the kids watching it just to remind us they’re watching this. This is a movie. And, the director does a lot, especially in the third 1, but throughout, of making the film grainy and you know, like it’s an old VHS tape. The kids today won’t know what we’re talking about.  But our favorite VHS tapes, once you had watched them, you know, a dozen times, they started to get really grainy and you had to mess tracking and, you know, all that kind of stuff. They wore out. These shorts have that feel about them Todd. And and I I liked that. I thought it was kinda nostalgic and

Todd:  cool. It was also smart for him to cut out to people because it also cut down a little bit of that low budget, you know, feel to it. I mean, again, it gives this this excuse for these films to look kinda low rent because it’s this weird video. You don’t know what you’re watching. Instead of this movie that I just rented from Netflix and am interested in seeing, you know. Especially, this first 1. Because this first 1, I’m sorry. I thought it was just horrible.  It starts out with this woman who’s just sitting in a bus Todd. I guess or at a subway. I think station.

Craig:  Subway. Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. And there’s there’s this weird clown that shows up across from her. It just starts kind of playing with her a little bit. Now, he doesn’t talk. The clown is more like a mime really. He’s like a mime Mhmm. With mimish clown makeup. Just totally black and white.  And what I was I watched a couple interviews with the director and he said, you know, he explicitly wanted to do something with the clown that hadn’t been done before. I’m not sure he really did, but at least he gave the clown his own spin. And he wanted to make it as far away from Pennywise as possible. So instead of, you know, Pennywise is very colorful and has hair, this clown has no hair and is black and white. Pennywise talks up a storm and this clown says Oh, yeah. Nothing. And so, you know, in that way, he does give this clown its own, character that’s very unique, I think, to other clowns we’ve seen in other horror movies.

Craig:  He’s really creepy. The makeup is just really effective. And it’s also interesting. He pops up in all 3 of the shorts. He he features prominently in the first 1 and the last 1, but he pops up a little bit in, the second 1. And something that I noticed this time watching it was his character design because the fur the ones that he features prominently in the first 1 and the last 1, these were independent shorts that this guy had already made. It’s the same clown, but the character design is slightly different. In the the first 1, in this first 1, he looks very much like a man in a clown suit.

Todd:  Yes.

Craig:  I mean, you can you can see, you know, his flesh tone, you know, normal human skin under his mask, in this version. Like you can see his neck and you can see his hands. In the last 1, it seems like they went more out of their way to make him seem not inhuman, but they hid the more human aspects of him. Like you don’t it it still could be a guy in a mask or it could be some kind of supernatural creeper. And I thought that was really interesting. But either way, he’s a scary clown.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  I I you know, my partner, I’ve I’ve said before in October, he’ll watch stuff with me. And he said, Alright. So what are we watching this week for your podcast? And I said, I’m not gonna make you watch this because he is scared of clowns.

Todd:  Oh, really?

Craig:  Yeah. And I pulled up the picture of Art the clown and I was like, This clown and is it it? And he’s like, Yeah, no, I’m not watching So, III and I do think that this clown might become kind of an iconic horror figure, in his own right. And I’m cool with it because he’s scary.

Todd:  Yeah. I am too. I think, I think he’s got a good look. He’s he’s full on prosthetic, especially in that third 1. Well, definitely in that third 1. And I think in the in the the ones to follow. Actually, apparently, the actor changes from these this first movie into the second 1. And I saw, some clips from the full on movie that, you know, that comes after this Terrifier.  Yeah. Terrifier. And I also saw a whole interview with, the director and the guy who plays the new 1. And he’s quite good. I mean, the the actor for the really pulls it off. I mean, I haven’t seen terrifier, but from the clips I saw and from the the interview with this this actor he just he really clearly gives this guy an edge and he has an edge in this movie too. He’s got just a really sadistic, edge. There’s nothing really funny about him.  He’s No. That’s the difference, really. Maybe if you’re looking for it a little bit of black humor, but it’s just more full on, I just wanna dismember you. And I’m smiling while I’m doing it.

Craig:  Very violent and yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  And and to his credit, that was totally intentional. I mean, the the the director stated for this movie and some other movies that he’s done, he recently did a straight to video version of of Frankenstein versus The Mummy that apparently got terrible reviews. But, in any case, he said, you know, I’m really not interested in the winking and the nodding to the audience and putting in the humor and stuff like that. He said, I feel like horror movies the whole point of horror movies is this is a genre that’s supposed to up the ante and show you things you haven’t seen before, and really push boundaries. And so, I just really wanna make my films totally serious. And so, that’s kinda what he’s accomplished here. And sometimes it works in in this movie and sometimes it seems a little silly and pretentious.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  But, you know, he’s that’s what he’s going for and that’s what he has in this character, I think. And that’s the thing that’s probably gonna set this character apart from other horror clowns is he’s not even trying to be winking and funny and and cute at all. No. Right.

Craig:  Right. Right. And this this first segment was, I I think originally titled the 9th circle. And I think that there are some interesting ideas going on here, but it’s kind of all over the place. Like you said, this girl is sitting in the subway station and this clown just shows up. And he’s freaky looking, she tries to ignore him, but then he starts kinda messing with her. Like he honks a horn at her and when she just tells him to knock it off, he comes over and sits by her and then he pulls out a flower, you know, like 1 of those clown flowers or whatever. And hands it to her and it’s almost like she’s a little bit won over, but then he’s laughing.  And like you said, he is like a mime. He doesn’t vocalize, but he’s silently like laughing and pointing at her. And she looks down into the flower, and there’s a big cockroach in it, so she throws it on the ground. And then, he grabs her and injects something into her neck.

Todd:  Oh, hand eye.

Craig:  Yeah. Or what, yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. Okay.

Craig:  And she she right. I I mean, it’s it’s very sudden and it’s very violent and kind of unexpected. And then she wakes up in what seems like maybe, a back tunnel of the subway or something. And, she’s chained up and she’s chained up down there with 2 other women. And they have to these 2 other women have apparently been down there for some time.

Clip:  What’s happening to us? This is where he keeps us. There were 3 of us. There was another girl. What happened to her? She was dragged down into that tunnel. They’re pulling us down by our chains 1 at a time. Why are you 2 just sitting there? Why are you trying to escape? We’ve tried everything. There’s no way out.

Todd:  So 1 girl gets yanked down the hallway again, and the other 2 decide, well, heck. We’re just gonna go down the hallway while we still have slack in our chains and see if we can figure things out. Mhmm. And they end up, in this kind of midst of a satanic cult thing. Some it’s just a random botch of special effects. It’s practical effects. Excuse me. And to be fair, once again, I read what the director, had said about this short, and he said, I this is the first thing I ever made.  This was gonna be, like, my calling card as a director. And he’s a guy just like, you know, we did, Dead Alive a couple weeks ago. Right? With Peter Jackson. He’s another 1 of these guys who got into horror through the, interest in these, you know, makeup effects and and and practical effects. So this guy grew up like we did in the same era watching, like, the making of Michael Jackson’s thriller. He had a VHS tape that had, like, Tom Savini screen time or whatever on that and that showed how Tom Savini did all of his effects and so he really was interested in the effects side of the movies. And so, he decided he was gonna throw everything he could into this short to showcase what he’s capable of and use that to go around and raise money for his next picture,

Craig:  which

Todd:  didn’t really work. And you can kinda see why, like the effects, they’re really not that great.

Craig:  They’re okay.

Todd:  They’re okay. They’re serviceable. We’ve seen worse, but

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s a lot of masks and you can tell that they’re masks and And, and,

Todd:  1 freaky person after another pops out and jumps on a girl 1 guy jumps out who’s just completely deformed from head to toe and starts chopping up the 1 girl with a cleaver, and the other girl’s trying to break her chains and the guy comes after her and somehow his cleaver cuts her Craig so she’s able to be free and she runs around and just bounces from down the corridor, from person to person, into freaky looking people who eventually knock her out.

Craig:  It’s like a coven of witches. Right? And and but some of them have, like, bird like faces. Like, it it it’s kinda like, you know, everything in the kitchen sink.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  It makes a lot more sense now that you’re telling me that he wanted to show what he could do because it really looked like he was like, oh, look at this. Look what I can do. Oh, look at this. Look at this. Yeah. Eventually, you’ve got, like, a witchy woman, like, stirring a cauldron.

Todd:  Yeah. Literally.

Craig:  Yeah. Right. And she they they catch her, I guess, and they have her chained down or held down to a table and she sees these witches cut a fetus out of a pregnant woman. And I couldn’t tell if that pregnant woman was supposed to be 1 of the girls that she’d been with before or a different girl. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. Yeah. And, so she sees that happen, and then Satan shows up.  And I thought he looks pretty good. I thought the Satan design was kinda hot, actually.

Todd:  Oh. Double entendre there. That’s great. Yeah.

Craig:  And, And she gets liked by him.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Basically. And and you don’t see that, you know. You there it’s there’s not a gratuitous rape scene, but it’s certainly implied that, I guess, these witches are capturing women for Satan to impregnate in the subway. Yeah.

Todd:  I guess there’s really not much to explain after this because at this point the babysitter, again, like any true American decides all of this stuff that came before is no problem for you. But, the minute some, you know, Satan comes in here and rapes a woman, we’re gonna have to shut it off. So Right. Right. She does. She shuts it off. And that’s the end of it. And and that’s why it is an anthology series.  Right? Supposedly. But even this 1 and even the second 1, it’s not really. It’s just part of the same movie, I think, because there’s no good ending to this. It’s a story that has really no plot and leads nowhere. Usually and again, I’m not saying everything. It always has to follow this formula. But usually with an anthology series, you get these little self contained stories that have some kind of twist at the end or some kind of satisfying resolution. You know? Yeah.  And none of the stories in here have that. In this case, these women, they get taken, and then they get axed up, and 1 of them gets raped by Satan. The end.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s it.

Todd:  And, and so then she sends them up, you know, to the upstairs and they’re gonna have trouble sleeping, of course, after this. And there’s a little bit of her getting on the phone and calling people and whatnot. And a little bit of her being a little freaked out by some noises around the house, but somebody’s egging the house because it’s Halloween and whatever.

Craig:  I I thought it was a funny joke that, like, the friend that she’s talking to on the phone is, like, are you dead yet? She’s, like, what are you talking about? Sitting on Halloween.

Todd:  True. Right? It’s a bad idea all around. We’ve seen Todd many movies. Yeah.

Craig:  And eventually, she just she watches a little bit more of Night of the Living Dead, but then she gets curious and she puts the tape back on. And again, it’s, you know, static and grainy and then it cuts into the next segment. Even the first time I saw this, the the second segment kinda pissed me off because it it it it fell out of place to me. I I Yeah. I don’t know. Okay. So you’ve got this woman, I think her name is Caroline or something like that, doesn’t matter. She is alone in this new country house that she and her husband or fiance or boyfriend or whatever have just bought, and she’s talking on the phone to a friend about how much she loves it.  It’s so much better than the city. It’s so nice and quiet, and there’s not an ambulance every minute or whatever. And the friend says, Oh, well, I hope John’s career is doing well or something. And she’s like, Oh yeah, his art career is going great, but I really wish that you would buy his most recent painting because it freaks me out. And it’s just this face, and he doesn’t even remember painting it. He just had this horrible nightmare and he woke up in kind of a trance state and there it was. And eventually, spoiler alert, at the end of the segment, it’s revealed that it’s a portrait of Art the clown. And that is the only connection that this 1 has to the other ones, and that just felt cheap to me.  Yeah. Like

Todd:  It had no bearing on the story whatsoever. Yeah.

Craig:  I mean, just Todd don’t connect it. Like, it’s it’s stupid. And I kinda, I don’t know. It was alright. You know, what happens is Not really. Yeah. The lights flash and something crashes near their house and then she starts hearing these weird noises. Eventually it turns out that it’s aliens.  I don’t even know about the alien design. Like I read that he had intended to use puppetry to do it but then the budget didn’t allow for that or something. And so it’s just a guy in a suit and it looks like a guy in a suit. In fact, it just kinda looks like a guy dressed up like an alien. Like it doesn’t Todd doesn’t even look that really alien.

Todd:  It’s like a costume, isn’t it? More than a Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Craig:  Even, like, the the face is that typical image that you see of aliens. It’s kind of like light bulb shaped with the great big eyeball, like, the big black eyeballs.

Todd:  Right. Which is I guess, like, a mask on him. Yeah?

Craig:  It’s a mask. Mhmm. Yeah. Like like an op like, I I suppose probably not an oxygen mask because if they breathed oxygen they wouldn’t need a mask. But like they have to

Todd:  Some gas.

Craig:  Like they’re space explorers, right, or whatever. And that’s it. I mean it chases her around the house, she talks to her fiance or husband or whatever on the phone for a while.

Todd:  Her idiot fiance slash husband, whatever, who’ll stay on the phone with her for 10 minutes while she’s saying, I’m freaked out. I’m freaked out. And he’s like There’s

Clip:  somebody in the house.

Todd:  There’s somebody in the house. Oh, well, you need to call the police. Well, I’m afraid if I get off the phone with you, you know, it it then then because the phone just started working and it might stop again. And he’s like, well, you know, you should still call the police. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry. Just tell her not to worry. And then finally, he’s like, well, maybe I’ll call the police.  And I’m like, yeah, you dumbass. Why don’t you just call the police? Like, you don’t have to make this difficult, and then maybe you should get your ass in a car and drive down here. You know what I’m saying?

Craig:  Like Well, he’s supposedly on his way. But you can also tell that the 2 halves of this conversation were filmed totally separately. Yeah. It doesn’t really sound like they’re talking to each other. It sounds like they’re saying their lines into a dead phone. You know what I mean?

Todd:  For sure.

Craig:  And so then the phone cuts out again. The alien chases her around. She just, she pulls like 1 of the vacuum o’ses,

Todd:  which is

Craig:  what it looks like, like out of the mask and it freaks out for a second, and she runs and hides in Harry Potter’s bedroom,

Todd:  through the stairs. Under the stairs.

Craig:  And, then apparently, like, the alien’s like, oh, I guess she’s gone. So it goes rummaging through her house like it’s in a garage sale. Like, what is it looking for? Like, it’s like looking at candles, like, oh. Yeah. This is nice.

Todd:  It uses, like, a little thing on its, chest to, like, send out some kind of ultrasonic signal which bothers her ears and then

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  I don’t know. But it’s just funny because, like, that’s it. I mean, you could summarize this in 1 sentence. Alien comes to house, chases her around, and then pulls her away.

Clip:  It gets her the end. That’s exactly what I said to my partner. Like,  you can summarize it 1 sentence. Aliens come, they chase her around, and they get

Craig:  her the end. And I realized that wasn’t 1 sentence, but, I mean, that’s you that’s it.

Todd:  Well, you don’t know what’s happened to her. You don’t know what they’re getting her for. In fact, all you see is her dragged away. And as she’s being dragged away, she yanks that sheet. She grabs that sheet and it comes off of the painting. And the clown’s face

Craig:  is there. Right. And At 1 at 1 point, it looks like it tried to put, like, a slug in her mouth or something.

Todd:  Oh.

Craig:  I it it it actually it looked like an octopus tentacle.

Todd:  Tentacle thing or I thought that was supposed to be, like, from his hands or something. I don’t know. You’re right.

Craig:  Oh, I don’t know.

Todd:  Hard to tell because it kind of went by so fast. It was in close-up. Yeah. It was pretty weak dude. And once again, just like the first 1, there’s no resolution here, and it’s not even an interesting story. It’s like, aliens come and there she goes. Which the babysitter turns off, and then, she gets she’s starting to feel a little more freaked out and she thinks she sees something poking out from around the corner of the hallway and we see a glimpse of it. It doesn’t look quite natural.

Craig:  That was a good jump scare. I have to admit.

Todd:  It was.

Craig:  That that made me jump a little bit.

Todd:  And she goes up to see the kids and the kids are like, you know, still sleeping in the beds and whatever and,

Craig:  Well, they’re they’re in 1 bed now because the girl got scared.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  But another thing that happens right there when she checks on them, she’s like, I saw you downstairs. And I’m like, what are you talking about? We’re sleeping. And she’s like, oh, so I suppose that was somebody else’s little foot that I saw scurrying around. And they’re like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And she says, well, go to sleep. And the boy says, well we could go to sleep much easier if you’d stop checking on us every 5 minutes. And she’s like, what are you talking about? And he’s like, we can hear you out there behind the door turning the handle and stuff. And I thought that was kinda creepy too.

Todd:  It was.

Craig:  Like, there’s somebody else in the house.

Todd:  I don’t know. Todd which the babysitter is like, oh, well, okay. Shuts the door, goes goes downstairs and pops the tape in again. TV. She deserved it. She deserved what she got.

Craig:  Well, that’s another thing Todd. Like, when she talked to her friend okay. So she told the kids that their parents should be home around 1 AM. And then she talks to her friend. I was thinking this girl was probably in her thirties. I don’t know. It’s hard to judge people’s ages the older I get, but I was thinking she’s in her thirties. But she talked to this her friend on the phone and she’s like, do you wanna meet me for a drink after this? And I’m like, meet you for a drink after 1 AM? Like, I will have been in bed for 4 hours.

Todd:  We’re too Todd. We’re we’re too old to relate to any of this.

Craig:  I know. But yeah. She goes down to watch the last 1 and and I thought the last 1 was pretty scary.

Todd:  The last one’s solid and it’s clear that this is the movie, you know, that this is this is his swan song. This is the thing that’s this is the this is this the short that did quite well apparently at a bunch of film festivals that the producer approached him about including in

Craig:  the anthology.

Todd:  And again, it’s also quite simple, but it’s just more your typical slasher thing with this evil clown character. And what’s really good about it? I think it’s just it’s relentless brutality. It’s like I said, it’s not funny at all. And it has that sort of grind house feel. And it’s clear he was going for it too because he had added a lot of scratches and things to the film and had given the what’s, you know, was probably shot on video this thing, but, had given it that

Craig:  I I think I read that it was filmed on 8 millimeter. Does that that doesn’t mean anything to me. Does it mean anything to you?

Todd:  Maybe 35 millimeter. Definitely not 8 millimeter. Maybe 35 millimeter or for sure, definitely not 8. But, but yeah. Maybe it was filmed on film, but then he did a lot more to it as well, to kinda wash out the colors a little bit and give it and that was interesting because that 1 also set this apart from the other movies. It was instantly noticeable, you know, how different it was.

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  And that’s fine. It was

Craig:  very Craig.

Todd:  I mean, that’s fine because, again, these 3 things can show up on this video tape and who knows, you know, where they come from or what they are. And it also give you know, it’s it’s it’s fine. Each 1 could have their own character.

Craig:  And it it made it feel gritty. It it had a very, like,

Todd:  Drive in.

Craig:  Last house on the left. Ugh. I spit on your grave kind of feel to it.

Todd:  It did. It’s just this this woman on Halloween, you know, driving down the street in in the dark, night, and she’s a little lost and her gas tank is low. So she pulls into the last chance gas station. And as she pulls out in, she’s looking to get in for some reason. Was she going to the bathroom or is she just looking for No.

Craig:  III she honks her horn from the attendant. I guess she expects this to be full service or whatever, but nobody comes out. And then she gets out of her car and goes up to the door, but I feel like before she can even knock on the door, over on the side of the building, the attendant is kind of violently throwing Art the clown out.

Clip:  Seriously, you think this is funny? You think you just piss all over the place and smear your shit on the walls? What the fuck is wrong with you? We have a new 10 seconds or I’m gonna call the cops.

Craig:  The clown very kind of scarily turns his head and stares at the girl for a while, but then the attendant kinda I don’t know, doesn’t chase him off, but insists that he leaves and then

Todd:  Sues him away. Yeah. Right. And the clown dutifully turns his back and and walks away. He’s got a big garbage bag full of something over his, shoulder.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And they’re like, well, that was weird. And she just explains to him, yeah, that she’s lost, and, she would appreciate some directions back to the road. You know, at this point, I was thinking, is this supposed to be period? You know, is this supposed to be, like, a seventies type thing? Although, the car she was driving seemed a little newer. But then later Yeah. She she has a cell phone. So I guess this was maybe pre GPS, but pre smartphone, but, yeah. That was probably it. So, yeah.  She’s got a Motorola flip phone. He gasses up her car and then he goes in for something. Right?

Craig:  Well, they they hear a noise

Todd:  That’s it.

Craig:  Inside. She says, you know, what’ll you do if he comes back? And he’s he’s like, oh, I’ve got plenty of blunt objects I can beat him with or whatever. But then they hear a noise inside and he goes back in. And he says, hold like he’s in the middle of giving her directions. He’s like, Todd on a second I’ll be right back. Well, he doesn’t come right back. So she goes in there and she hears a noise behind the door and it’s a sawing noise. I mean, I don’t know if she realizes that but I did right away.  And she opens the door to find the clown dismembering this guy with a hacksaw.

Todd:  Oh, it’s horrifying. Shocking. Yes. Absolutely shocking and gritty and horrifying and the clown just looks up at her, doesn’t miss a beat, keeps sawing away and just gives her that sort of smile, grin. The only look he has really and of course, she freaks out and runs away. And I’m Well,

Craig:  and I think that that’s another another reason that the clown’s design is smart because he is entirely black and white including his clothes. So then when you cover him in gore, like the blood just sticks out. Like it’s like it it’s just so red and and shocking against the black and white. And it’s spooky as heck to look at.

Todd:  It’s freaky. And like you said about his design, this is where you get a really good close-up shot on him. And and, his face is a little bony, almost skull like in some ways. His cheekbones really pop out and he’s got this this kind of hook nose, that when he turns profile, he’s almost even scarier. It’s like, oh my Todd. You know? When he turns and looks at her as she leaves, and she runs out to the car and I thought for sure, oh, the car is not gonna start blah blah blah. But sure enough, the car starts and she peels out of there. And she gets on the phone while she’s driving and she’s crying and she looks up at the road and there’s that clown there holding a sign that says circus and waving at her as she goes by.  And she’s like, that’s impossible. And I’m like, yeah. That’s impossible. And I’m like, finally, this is getting interesting. You know? Yeah. And, and, yeah, she she almost hits a van, which causes her to swerve off the road and stop. And, of course, like, you know what’s coming. Right? Yeah.  Suddenly, the clown bangs on the wall on the window and tries to get in. And then she manages to take off from there. And at some point, the clown ends up in the car. It’s just like supernatural clown. Right? We don’t really know why he and how he can keep popping up in these places, but it doesn’t make sense, but he can. Which makes it even scarier. And he pulls a bag over her face. And once again, I mean, this is really interesting to me because he’s not a clown with a machete.  You know. He’s a clown with this garbage bag full of tricks, basically. Mhmm. It’s it’s very different. It’s very different from Pennywise or even, you know, a lot of the other horror slasher people that we see. Mhmm. Yep. So that was cool.  And, you know, she kinda manages to fend him off and and, slams on the brakes and ends up hitting a tree, which kinda knocks the clown out seemingly a little bit. Although, you know, it’s not gonna work. I feel like at some point, she runs ahead and there’s another car in front of her. I don’t remember when that happened.

Craig:  Yeah. She did. There I think it was before he popped up in the back seat, but, she sees another car with its hazard lights on the side of the road and there’s, it it looks maybe like a woman, like, leaning forward and sleeping on her steering wheel, but she opens the door and she pushes the woman back, and she’s been totally disfigured. And her hands cut off. Yeah. Her hands cut off and she’s her face is mutilated Todd it just it’s it’s a nightmare. I think she gets back in the car and that’s when he tries to suffocate her, but she slams on the brakes and he gets kinda knocked out or whatever. And so she gets out and runs.  And she finds, like, a workshed or something. Mhmm. And she locks herself in there. Like, she locks herself in the shed first. It’s it’s like a a double door or whatever, and and she uses a metal rod to lock it or whatever. The clown comes and tries to get in but can’t get in. And so then the movie makes it seem like some time has passed. Like she’s in there and she’s tired and she’s almost falling asleep, but we see the earth.  It’s just a a dirt floor. We see it start to move. And the next time she looks up, she sees him coming up out of the ground. Like he’s dug in there.

Todd:  That’s cool.

Craig:  It’s scary. It’s very scary. And he’s got a chain with, like, all kinds of sharp stuff in it, like syringes and knives and things. Yeah. And he whips her a few times and causes some damage. But I guess a scalpel falls off the chain and she grabs the scalpel and stabs him in the eyeball with it and then she, when he’s, you know, messing with his eye, she also grabs a knife and stabs him in the back. And that’s when she then runs out and flags down this car with this guy in it, and this guy picks her up.

Todd:  Yeah. And as soon as she as soon as she hops in the car, we see a shot of the clown just sitting right back up.

Craig:  Yep.

Todd:  So, I mean, we’ve got a total supernatural clown on our hands. There’s no ones about it. And but he’s not using supernatural means to hurt people. He is sawing them up and he’s got all these weapons that he uses and it’s brutal. It’s just brutal. And they’re driving down the road and another car comes up beside them and guess who’s driving it? And this was

Craig:  With the clown.

Todd:  This okay. Thank you for guessing, Craig. Yeah. You win the prize.

Craig:  I saw it.

Todd:  Well, that’s no fair. You can’t win. This was the phone a friend version.

Craig:  The thing that we left out and I think it’s important is before this well, speaking of phone a friend, she at some point called 91. We heard her side of the 911 conversation.

Todd:  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Craig:  We forgot to mention that and it’s important. So I just wanted to throw that in there. But the clown, yes, comes up and she’s like, It’s him. It’s him. And the clown pulls up next to them and whips out a frickin’ gun and shoots the driver in the head. Like, dang.

Todd:  Yeah. That was pretty crazy. And, apparently, he does this too in the terra fire movie. And there was some talk, apparently, people on the Internet getting up in arms about how the director broke the slasher code, which I didn’t know there was 1. But, apparently, the slasher code says the slashers can’t use a gun. Right? He’s got to have a knife or a machete or something like that. And here, this clown whips out a gun. But he said the director said, look, I’m trying to do something different.  So screw you. Yeah. And I thought that was

Craig:  And it is different.

Todd:  It is different. It’s totally unexpected. Blast the guy in the forehead, and he’s dead. And the car crashes into a tree. I guess. Right? And Yep. The clown comes out and comes at her and

Craig:  She wakes up and she’s like, it’s a just a close-up of her eyes. And she looks over and she sees the clown, you know, kinda covered in blood and laughing and pointing at her, and then she realizes that she has been completely dismembered. She has no limbs. She’s been cut, her limbs have been cut off at the joints, like at the knees and the elbows. He has, carved all these horrible, derogatory, profane things into her body. And again, this special effect, like, you can totally tell it’s a special effect. You can totally tell the actress is just sticking her face up through a hole in the table.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  But it’s still pretty shocking to look at.

Todd:  It’s it is. It’s gross, and it’s the end. And that’s it. Like, okay. Wow. You know? There’s nothing ironic about this. There’s nothing funny about this. That’s what happens.  And so, it fades out and, the the babysitter turns off. And I went to to watch the terrifier. Like, the terrifier does end I’m the original terrifier, the 1 that was the short that they pulled out Uh-huh. And made this. This is it. Shot for shot. In the short itself online, like, at the end, it zooms in on our face and the credits roll. That’s that’s it.  So

Craig:  Yeah. I looked at it too.

Todd:  Yeah. So, yeah. So the babysitter turns it off, then things get really interesting, I think. And this Todd me saved the movie. I mean, I thought, like I said, I thought that this the third seat that the first 2 were just a lead up to the 3rd and not very skillful or really interesting lead up. Just an excuse for us to watch the 3rd. And then I thought the way that he incorporated the wraparound story in it was quite satisfying and also really scary.

Craig:  Mhmm.

Todd:  The phone rings. It’s awful.

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  And the phone rings and she picks up the phone and on the other end of the phone is that girl’s 911 call from the car. How cool is that? And she’s responding like, what? Like, I don’t understand, like, where did you and just like in the in the short, So smart. And that just, like, chilled me. She hangs up the phone and she goes in. And then it’s this whole deal where the tape comes back on again.

Craig:  On its own.

Todd:  On its own. And, suddenly it’s a shot of, I guess, what’s either the clown’s lair or that, hallway from the first short that we saw. Whatever it is. Mhmm. And it gets

Craig:  It’s like a creepy basement or boiler room or something.

Todd:  Yeah. With pipes and things coming up and down. And it gets a little bit of the whole, The Ring kind of vibe to it. Right? Where the clown’s back there and he’s clearly looking at her, and he pops out from behind a pipe, and then he gets a little closer behind another pipe, and then he gets a little closer. And finally, he’s at the TV and he looks and and it’s cool because it’s a little mime ish as well. Right? He’s, like, touching the inside of the TV, like he’s trapped inside, and he’s rubbing it, and it’s making a squeaking sound and all that. Just like, this clown’s gonna burst out of the TV.

Craig:  Well, and he’s clearly looking right at her. Like, I actually thought this was really scary.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Like, you know, he he’s looking directly into camera, and then he gets up to the screen, and it really looks like he’s just in there, like it’s a box, and he’s in there. And he looks up at her, like looks her in the eye. And then, I don’t remember if she pushes a button, or if it just changes, but the screen changes perspective so that it’s like, she is seeing herself being taped through the screen?

Todd:  Yeah. It’s Yeah. It’s like if there were a camera in the screen. She’s seeing herself and the sofa behind her. Yeah.

Craig:  And and the clown is there.

Todd:  On the sofa.

Craig:  Right behind her. Yeah. Right behind her. And she turns around, and there’s nothing there. But every time she looks at the screen, he’s there. And he’s getting up, and he’s moving towards her.

Todd:  Oh, dude.

Craig:  I thought it was so spooky.

Todd:  Dude, that was really really scary. It’s spooky. And the only thing that stops it is that she finally manages to eject the tape, and it makes the whole screen go blank.

Craig:  And she right. And then she smashes it. Uh-huh. But then she hears screaming from upstairs, and she rounds the corner of the stairs. And I love what he did here Todd. He takes it from being this clean, crisp reality and fades it into the graininess of

Todd:  the the the

Craig:  movies that she’s been watching. Mhmm. So it’s like now she’s a part of the movie, or she is her own segment in this movie.

Todd:  Yes. Brilliant. It really is good. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. And she looks up the stairs and there he is covered in blood laughing.

Todd:  He just stepped out of the kid’s room. He’s covered in blood. He even points in there and points at her and laughs. She kind of closes her eyes and looks down. And when she looks back up, he’s gone. Mhmm. And she walks up and in, and you’re thinking, oh, okay. What’s what’s going on? She opens up the door to the kid’s bedroom and pops in.  And sure enough, they’re the 2 kids’ heads right there on the bed amidst just gore everywhere.

Craig:  Yep. That’s pretty much it. It is. Right.

Todd:  Like, I

Craig:  feel it cuts back to her horrified face, and then just like the rest of them, that’s it. We don’t really know what happens to her. And the credits start to roll, and then it gets real grainy, and it cuts back to that same kind of scene that Yeah. She had seen with the clown looking at her and coming towards the screen, but it’s like now it’s coming towards you.

Todd:  That was a a really nice touch. Really nice touch. I mean, to to me, I once again, if I had if I had sat down to watch this movie, I probably wouldn’t have gotten past the first 10 minutes. And then certainly, if I got past the first segment, said, oh, well, let’s see how the second segment is. I definitely wouldn’t have gone any further than the second segment. But if we were watching it for the pod since we were watching it for the podcast, you know, I had to watch it all the way through. And I’m really glad I did because I feel like just the last third of the movie really redeems it. And you might as well just cut it to that.

Craig:  I suppose.

Todd:  You know, I mean, honestly, I just didn’t like the other 2 sequences. They felt kind of maddening to watch and they felt really cheap, whereas the last third of the movie felt very polished and put together. And even though that last, you know, sequence in the anthology didn’t really have a resolution. Well, it did. It did kinda have a resolution but it wasn’t, like I said, kind of an ironic 1 or whatever. It’s just like, yeah, this bad thing happened to her. Now now it sucks. The whole movie as a whole did have a really nice satisfying ending to it, I thought.

Craig:  Yeah. I I agree. You know, the and and critics agreed with you. You know, most of the critics said, it’s not great. Most of them didn’t like it

Todd:  at all.

Craig:  Right. Right. Most of them didn’t like it at all. They they liked the character. The the clown character, they thought that it was very scary. But I think that they overall had kind of the same response, that we did. I read 1 of them said, you know, this guy clearly loves the genre and the spirit of Halloween and that comes through loud and clear. It may not be a good movie Todd, obviously there’s some passion.  And and they said if, I don’t know if it was the same Craig, it was probably a different Craig, said if as much passion had gone into the story as had gone into the imagery and the creation of this 1 really scary monster, then it would have been much better. And I agree, but this is this guy’s directorial debut. Yeah. I think there’s some promise here. I have seen Terrifier. I don’t remember much about it except for that it’s brutally violent. I mean, just brutally, brutally violent. I don’t remember disliking it, so it must have been alright.  And, I’ll I’ll watch, the new 1 when it comes out. III think that this guy has an interesting voice and an interesting style. He may not be there yet, but, I think he shows some promise.

Todd:  Well, I think, since you’ve seen Terrifier, you might be interested in this quote that I read. I I saw online that Terrifier 2, they they started shooting in April even though they hadn’t gotten all their funding. And I think within a month or 2, they had gotten all their funding. But they still, went to Indiegogo to fund a particular scene they wanted to include. Do you know about this? Uh-uh. Like, apparently, he had this I he has this idea for what, like, he called this, like, insane special effects sort of, like, shocking and epic kill sequence in Terrifier 2, like, as merciless no hills holds barred thing that would involve, like, mass mass quantities of people dying and things exploding and stuff that he wanted to put in the movie and thought it would be a climax of the movie, but they ran out of money to do that part. So he went to Indiegogo to raise a grand total of $50,000, which doesn’t sound like a lot of money to me. Right.  You know, to shoot this 1 epic scene, like, you really you’re only that short. But, they end up raising, like, $400. And so Wow. Yeah. And they promised people who contributed this that they could be in the movie, they could be killed by him. I from what I can see from the comments on the Indiegogo site, they haven’t even started shooting it yet, but they’re thinking as early as February, they might get that scene down and have to fly all those people in to do that. Pretty insane. But, anyway, I read this this, apparently, he appeared on another podcast, and he said, terrifier, the first 1, establishes art.  Now that we’ve established as what art is about, basically, we can start fleshing out the world around him and how he affects the world around him and that how that affects him as well. Yeah. Like, really? It’s a

Craig:  little deep there.

Todd:  I think I’ve kinda figured out already how art affects the world around him. Yeah. He’s

Craig:  scary clown. I got it. It’s a little bit interesting

Todd:  to see what they have in store for the second 1 if they have these grand ambitions for it, you know?

Craig:  Yeah. It will be. You know, the when I was watching this yesterday, the last thing I wanted to say about it is I think that this would make a really good date night movie, especially especially if, like, your girl or your guy or whoever, you know, it’s kind of that stereotype that you see where the girl has to kind of jump into the guy’s arms because she’s scared.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  I think there’s enough you know, scary stuff and gory stuff and shocking stuff going on here, that it would be a good excuse to get some cuddling going.

Todd:  I know exactly what you mean. If you haven’t I don’t know. If you haven’t completely driven him or her away by the subject matter, but

Clip:  if you’re Right. Right. Right.

Todd:  You’re a freak and I never wanna see you again.

Craig:  Yeah. That that just crossed my mind as I was watching it. I don’t know. I, I have to say, you know, despite its weaknesses, I enjoyed it overall. Do with that as you will listeners. If you haven’t seen it and you like horror and you’re as big a fan as we are, I say watch it. I I it’s only an hour and I think it says it’s like an hour and 23 minutes, but the 5 minutes are credits at the end, and they Oh, the

Todd:  credits go by so slowly.

Craig:  Yeah. So it’s really only about an hour and 15 minutes. You’re not wasting too much of your time.

Todd:  You could do much worse on Halloween, for sure.

Craig:  Definitely. Definitely.

Todd:  Well, happy Halloween, everybody, and thank you for joining us for another season of thrills and chills this October. We are so happy that you could join us. And if you enjoyed our podcast, please set it to a friend. We love getting new listeners, and we love hearing from you on our website. Our website is 2 guys dot redfortynet.com. We also have a Facebook page that’s, fairly active with our listeners, leaving us requests and such. You can go there and do that as well. We are gonna be getting a few more requests in in the next few weeks.  You can just search for 2 guys and a chainsaw and find us there on Facebook.

Craig:  And thank you to those of you who, recommended Halloween movies for us. If we didn’t get to your recommendations, we may have to wait until next year, or we may just do Halloween movies out of season. We’re not a

Todd:  Well, absolutely not. And and also, it’s not too late to get your Thanksgiving and Christmas horror film request in.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. The earlier, the better.

Todd:  Send those our way. Until next time. I’m Todd

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.