City of the Living Dead (1980)

Episode 201, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, this week we decided to do a movie that I had to put on this list a long time ago. So this is a movie that when I was walking through the video stores, the cover always tempted me. It had a green looking zombie head on the front cover coming up from the ground, and there was a Misty city behind it, some more figures, and it was called the Gates of hell.

That’s how I remembered it anyway. And it’s very promising on the back about how somehow the Gates of hell open and somebody’s got to go close them. In the meantime, things wander out. So, uh, I, I’m been wanting to see it for awhile. It’s a F Lucio full G masterpiece, the first of his trilogy of Gates of hell.

I think people call it the Gates of hell trilogy. I don’t think they are. Actually conceived as a trilogy. I think they’re just three movies that he made back to back that are more or less really gross with zombie-like creatures wandering around and killing people. I’m really selling this one. Uh, it’s city of the living dead, 1980.

Oh man. Um. So a Lucio folchi. We’ve seen his movies here before. And uh, we’ve watched some Dario Argento films. We watched a really crappy Umberto Lenzie movie along similar lines, but we really, at least, I remember really enjoying full cheese, a film zombie too, which is the one that he did just before this one.

And, uh, I really liked it. And then a couple of years later he did this one, and then he did the beyond, which is. Quite well-regarded apparently, and then the house by the cemetery, which is also a little better regarded than this one, but this movie is just. Bad shit. Crazy. I don’t know what else to say about it, Craig.

I assume you’d never seen this before. You don’t really put these movies on your lists. No. 

Craig: No, not really. But that’s one of the things that I like about doing this with you is that you introduced me to movies that I wouldn’t put on myself. Um, this isn’t something that I would have. Chosen to watch, but, uh, gosh, I don’t know.

I mean, I hate to put the cart before the horse, but this movie was dumb 

Todd: really. How many times do we end up saying that? I mean, come on. What percentage of films do we basically, by the end of the episode go, yeah, this movie is pretty dumb. Fairly high percentage there. 

Craig: Okay. So there are a couple of major things that I had issues with in this movie, 

Todd: and 

Craig: they’re related.

I think one of them is that there were way too many characters. 

Todd: Yeah. Like 

Craig: there was so much going on that it just seemed super not focused. I didn’t even know who the main characters were supposed to be. Like I didn’t really know what I was supposed to care about and it wasn’t really until the end, like the last 30 minutes or so that some of the characters.

Started coming together. Um, but even then it was just really loose connections. And, um, I, I didn’t feel particularly connected to any of the characters. I didn’t really care what happened in any of them. I didn’t feel like I knew any of them well enough to care. 

Todd: So 

Craig: it was just kind of boring. Like, I don’t know, you know, zombies.

Pop up every once a while. I mean, there, there was some fun like. Gross moments like that was kind of cool, I guess, but I square it like I was so bored. I was so bored. The old thing, like I was like the movies playing on my computer. I’m like looking at Facebook on my phone. I’m like, Oh, 

Todd: here’s the zombie.

Yay.

Craig: Here’s, here’s a some weird guy. 

Todd: It 

Craig: finds a blow up sex doll fun. 

Todd: That was fun. The blow of this text, all the blows up mysteriously by itself, but at that point it doesn’t matter. It’s like, Hey, if it’s ready and willing. 

Craig: I don’t know. It was late. Like you said, it’s just kind of all over the place. And 

Todd: you know, we’ve said this before, um, or I’ve said this before in that, uh, especially when, when we do the giallo films is that the coherence coherence of plot does not seem to be a major concern for some of these Italian exploitation directors.

Um, they, they really go in for style. Uh, and some of them have better style than others. And in some cases like this one, it feels like, um, I don’t know. I feel like there’s a style here. I mean, there’s definitely some inventive camera work and some closeups and some interesting things happening, but it almost feels like it’s more centered around a shock, gross, gory shock scenes peppered amongst nonsense.

But I, I couldn’t follow whatever this was supposed to be. This plot, uh, I mean, it starts out really creepy and atmospheric with this priest walking around in a graveyard. It’s perfect Halloween type stuff. Inner cutting with a, uh, group of people at a seance, uh, and the woman’s like getting disturbed at the sands at the same time.

This priest just decides to hang himself from the tree. And this woman who screams at this point dies a fright. During the seance, and this is a New York, this the seance. Anyway, the priest is supposedly in this place called Dunwich, which is a fictitious place, but it’s supposedly according to the movie, built on the ruins of Salem.

Where are the Salem, Massachusetts, where the witches used to be, but I don’t think Salem is really in ruins. Salem, Massachusetts is still around. Right. 

Craig: And like, I meant to look it up and I totally just forgot. You know, I, there’s, um, isn’t it? It’s Lovecraft, right? Who wrote the Dunwich horror? Yes. And I wondered if there was some.

Connection there. I don’t even know. I’ve read a little bit of Lovecraft and not a whole lot. I don’t remember if I read the Dunwich horror. If I have, I don’t remember it. I, so do you know, is there any kind of connection there or is it just, 

Todd: I don’t, I mean, I saw the Lovecraft was credited as a co-writer light now of clearly not a co-writer, but like a.

One of the writers as though it was inspired by him, but I can’t imagine what, you know what came out of this movie. I thought the Dunwich horror actually takes place at a university. I don’t remember. It’s weird because, so then this happens and then you get the hard-boiled police detective who comes in and his self purpose is to kind of wander around the room and explain what everybody’s name is and give a little bit of exposition.

And the woman who is leading the Sans and older woman basically says that a, this is all following the book of Enoch. According to you, this poor girl is dead because of a 

Craig: book that was written 4,000 years ago. Correct. That’s right. 

Todd: I would find such an unusual paradox of 

Craig: tremendous appeal, cannabis stimulating.

If I were a Snoop, 

Todd: the explanation in every 

Craig: detail of a crime before it’s been committed, 

Todd: lady. 

Craig: You’re idle grass. Are you pulling my leg? 

Todd: No, 

Craig: the problem is in your mind, it can’t 

Todd: accept the truth, but I’ll help you. Just the same in the book of Enoch, the killer 

Craig: is 

Todd: book of Enoch, whatever it is. I read, uh, some trivia that said that this is actually a non-canonical.

Jewish text  but who knows? It just says something about how the, the Gates of hell will be open to the dead, will rise, blah, blah, blah. 

Craig: They’re trying to set up some intrigue or something. Okay, so this girl who died, her name is Mary. When this other lady, I don’t know, she’s this older lady. I don’t even know who she is.

Uh, she says to the detective, or whatever the killer is, and then she gets interrupted. Like that’s supposed to be some kind of big lead or, or something. But it never really comes up again. Like, I don’t, I don’t know. So this priest, father Thomas, yeah. Hangs himself in this graveyard, and then immediately the dead start to rise.

Uh, like immediately, and they start to emerge from apparently the centimeters of dirt that they are buried on. And it just, I don’t know, you know, when I’m watching the, I’ve said before, zombie, the zombie genre is not my favorite. I’ll watch them fine, whatever. But there’s just really no explanations. Like, okay, a priest killed themselves, so the dead are rising.

That’s it. Uh, and, and apparently like the Gates of hell have opened or whatever. But that’s the explanation. But it’s just 

Todd: like a zombie movie. Just a few people focused around these people. It’s not like the whole city’s getting overrun. There’s supposed to be this impression. Um, I think as the movie goes on, you occasionally hear some news report.

All citizens are requested to stay in their homes, do not panic. But. People are just wandering around doing their thing anyway. The only stuff that we really see happening revolves around this small group of people and how they end up dying and then coming back to life. So it doesn’t even have that. It doesn’t even have that sense.

Like in the movies zombie too. When he, you know, at the very end, you remember, it’s like the dead or dead. Coming into New York after coming over on that boat and I, it just has a little bit more of an Epic feel to it than this movie, which supposedly, maybe it’s supposed to be kind of Epic, but it still feels very small and very constrained.

Craig: Well, and they act like I marry this girl who dies, gets buried. Well, they start to bury her. But they’re on union hours so they don’t finish. And this is he a detective? I mean, who is this guy? Peter? 

Todd: Wait a minute. Yeah, he was a journalist. I think now what he’s investigating, I don’t really know. And why he’s hanging around the cemetery.

I don’t really know. He seemed. Interested in the fact that this woman died, but I mean, why are you going to go to the cemetery that there’s no information to get there? So he’s just hanging, and luckily he hears some screaming and some banging from. This coffin because it turns out Mary is very much alive now.

She’s not a zombie. She didn’t arise like the dead were arise. She just kind of arose like a person who they didn’t check her pulse before they put her in the coffin. There’s this interesting scene where he leaps on top of the coffin in the, mostly. Shallow grave and instead of just brushing the dirt away from the top and opening it up or whatever, he takes a pick ax to it and almost kills her in the process.

Craig: meters from her face. I’m like, well, thanks for helping, bro. Can you maybe not pick ax?

Todd: But it does lead to a really cool image, and that is this great, um, close up shot of this hole in the casket and her face through it, and she’s just screaming and she’s bloody, and the movie’s got nothing. If it doesn’t have these. Really striking images from time to time. Don’t get me wrong, there are some other images in here they’re supposed to be striking that are just dumb or poor makeup, or, yeah, just don’t, they’re not, they’re not high art.

None of this is really high art, but there are some moments that are genuinely creepy and crazy. So there’s that. So this happens. And then Peter, there’s these other three people. 

Craig: We say, we say this happens, but there’s also all kinds of other things going on too, and you have no idea how any of them are connected.

Like you don’t even know who these people are. Like we see a scene of this young kind of odd looking guy. Who goes into an abandoned house and you know, I already mentioned like he pulls out what looks like a mask from under a bed, and then he throws it off to the side and it immediately inflates into the sex doll.

And he goes and he like, starts like fondling the sex doll, but then he looks to his. Right or left or something and sees like a rotting baby corpse and then it just cuts away and like, who was that? What is happening? And then there’s a bunch of guys in a bar and they’re just sitting there chatting and all of a sudden.

A mirror shatters and they kind of get spooked and one of them says, you forget who our ancestors were. Like this is supposed to be some big clue or something, but it’s not really, and like then the walls split open and. The guys all freak out and leave except for the bar owner. And he’s like, Aw, I’ll never get my money back for this building.

So random. And then there’s this lady named Sandra who’s in therapy, and her therapist is Jerry. And like, we’re being introduced to all these characters in the most random ways. And I have no idea how they’re connected because really they’re not. 

Todd: No, I. I thought maybe one was the mother, one was the father, or some of them are our lovers, and it’s hard to say because Jerry has a sort of kiss later with Sandra, but she’s supposed to be as patient.

I wasn’t sure what all that was all about. And then Emily’s is the younger girl who comes inside and she ends up kissing him on the way out. And so he must be her father. 

Craig: I think, I think he’s her boyfriend. I think he’s Emily’s boyfriend, but the 

Todd: dialogue that they have in the scene, she says, well, I’m going to go see Bob again.

And he’s like, Oh, should I be worried about Bob? You see him an awful lot. She’s like, Oh, you know, just like whatever. I know what people think of him, but blah, blah, blah. It turns out that Bob is this creepy guy in the abandoned place who was playing around with the sex doll, and then later on there are all these comments made about Bob being this pedophile.

Everybody knows it. And when she goes to find him in this house, it’s, he’s like in the basement and he’s got like a mattress and pinups of like cut out from porno magazines on the wall and he’s freaked out of his mind and we’re not really sure why was it that corpse or whatever, I don’t know. But she’s like, Oh, Bob, Bob, Bob.

And then. Something comes out and gets him if there’s like a corpse or something that kills him or 

Craig: no, he’s not, it doesn’t kill him. He likes sees something and he takes off running 

Todd: and she gets killed. 

Craig: Yeah. And this all happens in seconds, like you have no idea what their relationship is like. I guess.

She’s just a nice lady who’s nice to Bob because everybody else treats him bad cause he’s kind of weird. Like I read that he was written as a hunchback, but the author, the actor just decided he wasn’t going to wear the prosthetic humpback. And so instead, uh, he just kind of walks funny. Like I, I guess he’s just kind of set up to be this town scapegoat.

Like when things start going weird, then everybody’s like, Oh, it must be Bob, you know, crazy Bob. And, and eventually, and this is just jumping around, but then eventually, like he’s just running around and he, he sleeps in somebody’s garage. And the girl who apparently lives there, it’s like, Oh, Bob, why are you sleeping in my dad’s car?

And he’s like, well, I couldn’t find any real sleep. She’s like, okay, we’ll just smoke a joint with me real quick, and then you better go. And then her dad comes out and he’s like, Bob, what are you trying to do to my daughter? And he takes him and he puts his head on this big table drill and drills through his head like 

Todd: that was what, that was something he becomes so murderous toward this guy.

I just had to do a double take during the scene because I thought, wait a minute, what is he a zombie? Like this is like a zombie murdering scene. This isn’t just like a guy pissed off at Bob murdering him. Scene. And then the next time we see them, do we ever see them again? They’re just their bodies after this, like something happens to them.

I don’t even know. I don’t know. I’m not going to try to parse it out. Then there’s this couple, this teenage couple who are sitting in a truck. This was, this is a leading up to one of the most notorious scenes in this film. There are two. The drill scene is one of them and it’s pretty gory and shocking.

This scene, uh, they’re making out in a car, in the, in the truck. And of course the girl says, Oh, I hear something, something’s going on. And she looks out the window. And suddenly the priest who appears everywhere in front of everyone at some point appears. 

Craig: And when you say appears literally like it, like just like pop, like, like.

Here I am. 

Todd: It’s like a jump cut. Not, not big special effects here 

Craig: because they’re not, that’s the thing too, like they are corporeal I guess, cause they can hurt people, but they can also just like flash bulb into existence wherever they want to be, which is weird. I mean, it’s almost like dreamlike. I. I can’t explain it.

I don’t know. Yeah, go ahead. This scene, I mean, this scene is, I guess, worth something.

Todd: Uh, there’s a lot of closeups on eyes in this movie. Full two loves to do closeups on eyes. Anyway. Um, so, so the priest is, we get closeups on his eyes and he’s staring at the girl and the girl was staring at him, and you get the sense that maybe she’s in some kind of . Transfer spell while the boyfriend just sits there screaming for a good five minutes.

And during this whole sequence, it’s bouncing between their two sets of eyes and the girl’s eyes start bleeding 

Craig: like she’s crying, blood 

Todd: pouring out of these eyes at some points. Pretty, pretty good effect actually. And then she starts foaming at her mouth and bloody foam starts coming out of her mouth.

And then you realize. That she’s vomiting up her guts. Yeah. And it’s pretty gross. And this is, this is a apparently even more gross when you realize how they did it. She actually swallows some end trails and, and, and vomit it up. Oh. And yeah. Then there’s clearly some more closeup shots that are just a dummy head and where they’re just dumping the stuff out, you know?

But it’s, it’s an odd. An odd scene and you know, this scene along with several others in this movie, put this on the video, nasty list forever in a number of countries. Couldn’t even be seen until like just the last, you know, 20 years or so in some countries. So it’s gross, you know, I mean, and this is pretty standard, full chief fair.

He does like to do this kind of thing. Zombie too, had that awesome scene of that woman getting slowly impaled on her eye on that, on that. But that one was better. I don’t know. There’s something about that was just more suspenseful than this. This was just weird. Just weird. And this isn’t like this priests emo.

Uh, he does seem to stare at people and their eyes start to bleed, or at least threatened to start to bleed. But it’s not like everybody stares at vomits out their guts. What really is the Mo of the zombies of this movie is grabbing the back of people’s skull, uh, and squeezing their brains out, which is also unique.

Craig: Yeah. It’s unique. Except for they do it like 14 times. Yeah. 

Todd: Oh, it’s their emo. It’s the only way they do it. 

Craig: It gets boring after a while. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s shocking the first time. And then, you know, after that, what’s the point? No, I agree with you. So that happens. God, man, I don’t even want to go through the rest of this 

Craig: because there’s nothing, there’s just not anything to it.

Like I, I don’t, I don’t know who the priest was. I don’t know why he killed himself. I don’t know what him killing himself, heads do with any of this stuff happening. There’s just no explanation for anything. And. So then it’s just everybody running around for a while 

Todd: and teaming up for some reason, like I’m not even clear how they figure all this out.

There’s the, the girl had a vision, right? The girl who was dead and then came back to life, who at the seance had this vision of this pre, she’s the one that’s kind of just basically telling everybody the Gates of hell are open because this priest killed himself and they’re all like, Oh, okay, let’s team up and do something about it.

And. Basically, their plan is to go to the local morgue, and I’m not really sure why. I can’t remember what they were looking for, but bodies are coming up from this morgue at least. Right? So it gives them a more of a set pieces for them to go through and, and more bodies to spring to life. Then it, they, they go into a house and there a whole bunch of maggots that fly through the window, and that apparently was a scene done with real maggots, tons of actual maggots, and fanned them at.

This actor’s just pelted them with real maggots. Oh, 

Craig: it was disgusting. And when I read that it was real. I’m like, that is so gross. I can’t imagine like when you say tons, I mean seriously, like the, by the end of the scene, the floor is carpeted in maggots. Inches deep. Yeah. And they’re in there. Hair and everywhere.

It’s so disgusting. Uh, but again, why, like I don’t, is something trying to scare them away. I don’t know. And I guess then for a while also, you know, people just keep having zombie encounters like Sandra, the. Woman who was in therapy, a corpse shows up in her house and she freaks out and calls Jerry the therapist, and he comes over and she’s like, I just, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy.

And he’s like, no, you’re not crazy. There’s a corpse in there. And. Then they hear like a weird grumbling noise and they go and look again and it’s gone and they leave. But we see that the course, like we see its feet like it’s hiding behind a mirror and then there, then there’s this kid like the, the young girl who died, Emily.

Had a little brother zombie Emily like visits him and I feel like that’s the first time we see gross maggot infested zombie face. Now I think that’s the face on the box art and scares him and then somebody gets a phone call that says. It was John John on the phone. He, he just said that zombie Emily killed his parents, 

Todd: his parents, which.

Did we see this happen? I don’t think we did. I don’t think so did 

Craig: we? We just saw him like standing, staring in shock. I don’t even 

Todd: know. Yeah, there was blood dripping down from the ceiling and uh, and then two other characters end up over there and they pop out and they’re like, yep, they’re dead. That’s really disgusting.

They’d been eaten too. And I was like, did I miss a scene where that happened? That just seems like something he would have shown us. So anyway, they’re killed. And then, um, the bar P, the people at the bar get invaded by zombies and they’re killed as well. And then they decide that they need to go to this father Thomas’s family tomb.

Right? This is where it gets really weird again, I don’t really understand what’s going on here. He, he hung himself. So they’ve got to go to the family tomb. When they go down into this tomb, which is kind of an more of an underground catacomb type place, and they try to pry open the, the shelf that he’s on in the catacombs, they, they open it up and then they see that he’s not in there.

Not only is he, is he not in there, but it looks like the other end of, it’s open to like, he burst out the other way and they just go a little further into these catacombs and. Suddenly they’re be set by all these zombies. And many of them people that they knew or have already died. 

Craig: Well, and the one thing that surprised me about this movie is that main characters kept getting killed.

Like at, at this point, Sandra had taken John, John back. To her house. She got got her brain ripped out from behind, and then he got chased all around the city by appearing zombies. And I don’t even remember where he ends up. Like they just kind of keep meeting up these random people, but then when they go down into these catacombs or whatever, there’s, I feel like there’s three of them left.

There’s 

Todd: Jerry, Mary. 

Craig: Jerry Marian one Peter, um, and Peter has been, you know, I, I kind of felt like he was kind of the main character. Like he was doing all this investigating, well, when they’re down in the. Catacombs. Peter gets his brain ripped out from the back, so then it’s just Jerry and Mary and they’re looking around and they come to this room.

That has to be somehow at surface level because there’s a light coming through the stained glass. Panels in the ceiling unless it’s some sort of magic light, I don’t know. But they get there and they’re being besieged by all these zombies. And then father Thomas shows up. And again, I feel like there’s some sort of backstory that they just never flush out.

Like they’ve been in a big hurry because it’s going to be. What is it all saints day or, yeah. Then they have to get it done by then. Otherwise it’ll be the apocalypse or something. Well, they don’t get it done by then. So then all the zombies are after them. And um, father Thomas shows up and like, he just stands there and stares at, at Mary for a while and she starts crying blood.

And then Jerry grabs some sort of. Long pokey thing. 

Todd: It’s like a large would splinter, you know, or something, and just stabs him in the, in the guts with it. In the guts it was, 

Craig: it looked more like he’s stabbed him in the crotch, but it just opens up this big Poland M and then father Thomas. Dies. 

Todd: Yeah.

Everybody burst into flames, basically. Him and all the other zombies, you know, you kill the boss, you’ve killed a ball. It’s like every video game. So yeah, he dies. The zombies die, and it was that easy. The guests, they’ve closed the Gates of hell now, 

Craig: I guess, 

Todd: but wherever they were in the first place, I don’t.

Craig: So Jerry and Mary come. Crawling out of this tomb and they see, like John John has a, like the cops have brought him there for an explicable reasons and they see him and he sees them and he gets all excited and he’s like Jerry Mary. And he starts running towards them and the camera kind of goes into like slow Mo.

Of him running and at first they’re excited to see him, but then it’s like something’s scary, like just based on the reactions of their face. And the camera cuts back to the kid running and then it just cuts to black and that’s it. Like I have no idea what that ending was supposed to mean. Yeah, 

Todd: it’s incomprehensible that that ending.

Craig: Now I read about it. I read that there was another ending shot, but somehow, you know, there are various accounts nobody really knows. Some, some people say that it got, uh, the, the original ending, the film got ruined in the labs somehow. Uh, I read somewhere that somebody spilled coffee on it and it was ruined and like, I don’t know if they didn’t have the funds or they didn’t have the time or they couldn’t get people back.

So they just never refilled the ending. So they just cut what they had. And this was the end. And if you read the trivia under the spoilers on IMDV, it says, Oh, well the kid is a zombie. Well, there’s nothing to indicate that in the movie. He doesn’t look like a zombie. He doesn’t look like he has any. Like mal-intent or anything.

He’s just running towards them smiling and they have like a horrified look on their face. It’s a mess.

Todd: It really is. It makes no sense. It’s all over the place. Too many characters, when you don’t know what’s going on there, the plot, whatever the plot is, it’s incomprehensible. Like you said, it’s really for that reason, it’s hard. It’s impossible to follow and therefore it makes it. Not a lot of fun to watch.

I mean, I would say that, you know, the zombie makeup is quite good and gross. Um, the scenes like the father, whatever his name getting stabbed through in the hole in his guts are sufficiently disgusting and, and whatever. It lulled some, most of the makeup effects are, are pretty good. 

Craig: I thought the makeup almost, it looked like Halloween makeup, 

Todd: like pasted on.

I don’t know. I mean. 

Craig: Yeah, I mean it, the 

Todd: times it did 

Craig: really, really good Halloween makeup, but makeup, like it didn’t look organic. Like I remember seeing a zombie from the back and, and just, people might not even pay attention to these things, but, you know, we’re. Watching because we have to talk about it and like, I just remember the back of this zombie’s neck.

I mean, it was clearly like Brown and gray and green, like stage makeup. It didn’t look like dirt and organic material. It was clearly makeup. Now. Yeah. When you’ve got the slime and, and. The maggots and all that Ooo and goo on their faces. It looks good, but I’ve seen better. 

Todd: Well, I’m not saying it’s the best, I’m just saying, I thought it was sufficiently shocking and 

Craig: you’re trying to say something nice.

I’m trying 

Todd: really hard. I’m trying to pull a Craig and go, but you know, with a couple beers and it’s Halloween. If you’ve got a party going on and you know. You’re dumb as rocks. No, 

Craig: I don’t even think a couple of years. Yeah. I think if you had a couple of beers, you would turn this movie off and then something else, 

Todd: like 

Craig: there aren’t even any boobs in it for Pete’s sake.

Todd: That was another major disappointment. I gimme gimme something to go on here. Give me something to watch. I have to agree with you, man. It just, it wasn’t that fun and I thought this movie would be fun and I more than. The two of us more I, out of the two of us am the one who really finds joy and pleasure in watching these old Italian films, no matter how bad they are or silly they are.

And I have to say it’s probably the first time I’ve been really disappointed. And that from a movie, from a director that we know is pretty shocking and notorious and has two extremely, um. Extremely notorious scenes in it. It just wasn’t enough to make the rest of the movie interesting enough to want to sit through.

Craig: Well, and I, I liked zombie too. I mean, these are not my, these are not my favorite types of movies. You know, I generally don’t intentionally seek out older stuff. I mean, there’s some older stuff that I grew up with it I have fondness for, and, and you know, a lot of these giallo films or, or. Full G like, like zombie too.

I probably wouldn’t have ever seen them had you not chosen them for us to watch and, and I’ve enjoyed them and appreciated them for what they are. And this. One just, it just felt like a, it just felt like a flop. Like it just didn’t work. God and I, I really think the biggest problem for me was that the scope was just far too broad.

There were way too many characters. There was very little focus. There was no. Clear understanding of why anything was happening. It wasn’t even really clear why any of these people were involved like this. Peter the investigator, why. Why was he even there? Like I guess he maybe initially he was investigating the death at a seance.

Okay, that makes sense. But then they’re like, Oh, you have to go to Dunwich to investigate. Why? Why would he even go like, no.

Well, 

Todd: but by comparison really zombie too was everything that this wasn’t zombie to had atmosphere. Uh, it had kind of a theme to it. Remember, was that voodoo. It took place on an Island. It had genuine suspense where people were being docked by zombies and they’re crusty zombies coming up through the ground.

And they were gross moments in it, but it wasn’t really all about that. It was a fun movie. And, and there was a plot that you could follow. It was a simple plot. Yeah. It was a little bit out there, but it was still a plot. And this is just teleporting zombies popping up left and right. There’s no real suspense to that.

Right. There’s nothing interesting about it. And so it, it’s just a one scene after another is somebody getting their brain pulled out and you know, somebody puking up their guts and whatever, but, but nothing linking it together. Nothing creating any sense of interest as to why these things are happening and any suspense leading up to it.

Agreed. So yeah, you can skip this one. Um, but I am kind of, I’m still interested in seeing the other two because of the beyond is supposed to be kind of his Swan song. 

Craig: Well, and I, I’ve, I’ve heard a lot about it’s, is it house by this cemetery? 

Todd: Yeah. Cause we watched, um, kind of a loosely based on that movie.

I’m more modern when, remember. It was where there was this creepy guys coming out of the basement, the creepy, um, with the white eyes and the black charred faces. And they were, 

Craig: Oh, we, we are, we are still here. Or something like that. You’re still here. 

Todd: Yeah. That was it. We are still here. 

Craig: Yeah. So I, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I, it’s not like I’m just going to say, I’ll never watch another one of this guy’s movies again. I just think that this happens to not be a good one, which is unfortunate. I mean, this is going to be a short episode. Maybe people will be glad. 

Todd: Yes, usually 

Craig: go on and on and on, but uh, 

Todd: yeah, we run a tight ship here, Craig.

All right, well, thank you so much for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this one, please share it with a friend. You can find us on. Facebook and all over the web. Just Google was two guys and a chainsaw. Find our website. Leave us a comment there. Let us know if we’re way off the Mark on, on this movie. And let us know what other movies you’d like to us to watch as well. We love hearing from our listeners. Until next time, I’m Todd with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.