The Initiation (1984)

Episode 348, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, it’s about time to do another request, and as always, we put the requests to our patrons. Every time we get a request from somewhere, we put it into a big long request list. Then we, uh, make a little poll. We grab a few of ’em, and we send ’em to our patrons and we say, which would you guys like us to do?

And then they vote on them and we do those. Well, this time the, there was a. A dead tie between two. We were gonna break the tie, but then I just thought, why don’t we just do both of them? Why not? People are equally interested in hearing us do the Toby Hooper directed The Funhouse and, uh, this movie that we’re doing today.

The first one is The Initiation from 1984. I, I do need to mention that, uh, Leeia originally requested this, um, and uh, also a loyal listener and Patron Gary has, uh, requested it a couple times as well. So they’re the ones for, uh, responsible for initially bringing it to our attention. But, uh, I was excited to see it because I remember the box art from being a kid.

And, uh, also it’s stars, Daphne Zuniga in her very first, uh, starring role. Really. The, yeah. She only did one other movie before this, and that was, um, when she was still in college and it was kind of a student pick that was sort of put together, uh, called The Dorm that Dripped Blood and we Oh yeah. Reviewed that as well, remember?

Yeah. And that was interesting. But, uh, it was okay. Yeah, it wasn’t, it wasn’t bad for sure. It was definitely a low budget. Uh, you could tell labor of love for a bunch of college students. Didn’t she get her head run over 

Craig: in that movie? Was that somebody else? 

Todd: She died really early on. Yeah, I think she had her head run over.

Yeah. So that was disappointing. But here you get to see her through the whole thing. Yeah. And then what, like a couple years after this, she went on to do space balls, I think just a couple years thus began her career. And I think she’s still steadily working. Uh, both so in television and in movies. So anyway, I had not actually seen this before, uh, tonight.

So, uh, how about you, Craig? Do you have any history with The Initiation? 

Craig: No, I remember the box art too. Um, God, I can just picture it in my head. It’s like, you know, a, a woman as a like taper candle. When you said, let’s think about doing this one, I honestly would’ve bet you $5 that we had already done it. I just had it in my mind that we had already done it.

Yeah, I think I was thinking of the house on sorority row for some reason. Yeah. I don’t know. I, I 

Todd: agree. I, I kind of felt like, um, The, the box art’s not too dissimilar. It’s just, just, and that it’s got a kind of a woman’s scantily dressed on it. Of course, this one, she’s a candle and that one she’s not. I don’t know.

There’s something about the two movies too that feel here. I don’t know. They’re kind of in the same, yeah, they’re both sorority 

Craig: movies. Mm-hmm. Both of them kind of deal with, you know, typical Greek prank hijinks gone awry. But, well, they’re not the same movie. No. As a, as a, as big as a surprise as it was to me, they’re not.

Um, and I know that probably I sound like a broken record because I feel like I say this all the time, but I can’t believe I haven’t seen this before. Right. I don’t know how it slipped through the cracks for me. I like, it’s streams everywhere. Like I’ve seen, I, I just think that I had convinced myself that I had seen it, so I never, I never clicked on it because I thought that I had already.

Seen it. Yeah. But no, I hadn’t, this was the first time I didn’t really know anything about it. I just sat down, uh, in my living room and watched it yesterday. The only thing that I knew about it was that it had something to do with like a sorority initiation. Um, and that Daphne Zuniga was in it. And the fact that Daphne Zuniga was in it was enough for me.

Cuz I just, I don’t know, it’s not like I’m going to start the Daphne Zenga fan club or anything, but I just really like her. She’s cute and yeah, she’s more than cute. She’s really pretty. She has great hair

That’s in my notes somewhere. Daphne Zuniga has great hair and she’s, she’s fun and she’s, she’s very, very young and fresh faced in this and yeah, just very beautiful and, and very easy to get on board with as a scream queen. 

Todd: Honestly, she is cuz she just got that girl next door. Sort of look, but, but yeah, probably prettier than most of the girls live next door to me.

And, you know, I don’t know. It’s just like she’s got, I will, I will not say she’s the best actress in the world. Yeah. Um, but I, I don’t mind, uh, what she does, like what she does, her shtick, her thing is, is totally great. I mean, she’s just that girl next door. She’s kind of plucky, kind of a vanilla, you know, you could just kind of put anything on top of her really, you know?

And I think that, 

Craig: well, she’s so young here. I mean, you have to kind of. Curb your expectations. I mean, she’s a child, you know? Yeah. Like, this is, this is the very beginning of her career. Now, to be fair, I haven’t really kept up with her career. What I do know is that she is hilarious in Spaceballs. Like, oh yeah, God, yes.

It will forever live rent free. In my mind, her singing, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen in that deep baritone in a jail cell. That is one of the funniest scenes ever. Yeah. It’s funny.

So I’m, I’m a fan. Anyway, she’s in this movie. It, and, you know, as far as the movie is concerned, eh, it was all right. Yeah. I don’t know, like, no, nothing really to write home about. 

Todd: I’m not gonna be too critical of this movie. It is very same samey with a lot of the other 80 slashers that we’ve done. But then there’s like this sort of, uh, sort of a subgenre of the paint by numbers 80 slashers that.

Seem to care a little bit more about characterization and story, or at least trying to, even if they didn’t really, and a mystery, you know, like this movie. I kind of think the script is a mess, honestly. And I don’t think the script is very good, but, um, they’re trying, like, you can tell they’re trying to be a little more dramatic.

It reminded me a little bit of, but will The House on Sorority Row really? Curtains, Pieces? Pieces? Yeah, maybe a little bit of, um, I, I don’t know. It’s just, what, what is it I’m looking for? It’s, it’s, I don’t know, it’s, there’s like a soap opera quality to it 

Craig: because Right, there are several tropes, you know, you know, one of the tropes of, um, of horror period is, Opening the movie with a traumatic childhood event.

Like we, we definitely get that 

Todd: Usually involving sex. Yes. 

Craig: Sex and death. Some combination of the two. Uh, you see it all the time and we get it here. This, this, it’s a, it’s a stormy night. Gosh. Used to be. But you said stuff about the script and, and I agree with you. I think that there’s, I don’t know it, I don’t know if it’s overwritten or what, but first of all, the, the first thing that I always look at when I look to see these movies is how long they are and, right.

And I, you know, Alan was sitting behind me doing a puzzle and I went, oh man, it’s over an hour and a half. 

Todd: By, by what? Seven minutes? By like, 

Craig: by like seven minutes. But. I think that was at least seven minutes too much. Oh yeah. Like I think that they could have trimmed this down to a slim one 20 and it would’ve been 

Todd: fine.

I was definitely looking at my watch through, I was like, God, it’s not over yet. Why is this still going on? It felt like a two hour movie. It did. 

Craig: And, and there were some scenes that I was rolling my eyes and like, why is this conversation happening? Yeah. Like this is the weirdest thing to bring up three way, three quarters of the way into the movie.

Like this wo this woman like trauma dumps on all of her friends. Oh my God. What? 

Todd: Almost immediately I was thinking like, um, like a gremlins. You remember how sudden there was that really odd moment in gremlins where, where she just like talks about this horrible thing that happened to her when she was a kid and it just feels very out of place.

Well, I know, 

Craig: but I feel like in that movie it’s intentional. And Phoebe Kates and you know, Richard Donna, the director, whoever, they played it super, super straight. Yeah, so that it would be funny. Yeah. In this movie it’s played super, super straight, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny and it’s not.

No, it’s just weird, like, Okay. Thanks for that little 

Todd: story of your youth. What I was thinking is you’ve had about an hour and 15 minutes of what is essentially just a whole bunch of drama events happening between people and supposed character building, which doesn’t really work. And then, you know, before we even get to much of the killing, by then, three people are dead that we don’t even know very well or care too much about.

And it’s like, was this supposed to be a slasher movie? And then you realize it’s, oh, it’s like it’s gonna be within the last 20 minutes that everybody’s together in what is, uh, supposed to be a department store. Yeah. And, uh, they all get cut up. And so once you realize that’s happening, you’re like, all right, well the movie must be ending soon.

And now suddenly, like you said, this, Character is suddenly telling her life story. Like, I, you had an hour to do that. Right? I mean, why are you doing it now? I’m ready for the movie to be done. Yeah. And for people to get killed. So, um, you should be killing her, not telling us her backstory. Yeah. 

Craig: The, I, I have several problems with the writing and one of them is the end, which obviously we will spoil, but it’s a little early for that.

Oh, it’s very twisty. The other big. Well, okay. Aside from the childhood trauma, which I’ll get back to a second, the other big trope is I know you love a movie set in the mall, so I figured that this would be like Right. A really good thing in your book, like check in a mall. It’s 

Todd: awesome. Yeah, I, I mean, that was a consolation for me.

That’s what it was. I was like, oh, at least we’re gonna be in a mall for the last part of this movie that is 

Craig: like the biggest, weirdest mall I’ve ever, I’ve never been in a mall like that. Well, it’s not, it looks more like a convention center or a hotel C like it is. It was what like, I don’t know, six or 

Todd: eight stories.

You know, it’s the Dallas Market Center, and the crazy thing is I looked all this up afterwards, but watching this movie and seeing this. They, they are calling it the buil, uh, the Pruit building or whatever. I can’t remember what, no, not Pruitt. Whatever the guy’s last name is. Last name, yeah. Building. And so it’s her father’s building and they keep talking about, early on in the movie, they’re talking about how they’re gonna do the leg, their senior prank there because she has the keys to the building and so they want her to help them all the, the pledges sneak in and they’re gonna steal the uniform of the security guard, which is bizarre.

I dunno how they thought they were gonna do that. Then. It’s called a department store. But when you walk in No, it’s the, it’s, it looks like an, it’s a giant atrium. Yeah. Huge atrium with floors. You know what, 20 floors with marble 

Craig: floors? Well, yeah, it’s, yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It’s enormous. I mean, I have, I have been in buildings like that, like I’ve been in hotels like that.

They’re all centered around a huge atrium, but I’ve never. Been in a mall like that and Right. They call it, they call it a department store. No, that’s not a apartment store. No apartment store’s like a JCPenney or a Marshalls or something like this is clearly a mall. But they do spend the majority of their time, like in housewares.

Todd: Right. 

Craig: The bed store. This movie could have taken place. Oh God. See. And it was like chopping mall in that way too. Like, oh God. They spent a lot of time in housewares and chopping mall in the beginning too. 

Todd: That’s true. But that cuz that’s where you lay down sleep and bang. Right, right. But, but this was, um, that was a legit mall.

This was not a mall. This is the, like you, it was actually a convention center. It’s a wholesale place. It’s called the Dallas Market Center. And they have lots of events there, but then they also have, you can’t get into this place unless you’re a wholesale buyer, basically. Gotcha. And so I think that’s what all those quote unquote shops are.

They’re not really shops. They’re like offices and showrooms. Okay. But what I saw it, I was like, I think this movie was shot in Texas, because I lived in Texas for six years of my childhood. And I remember just, uh, the way that the flooring was in there and the big atrium thing and all that. I’m like, oh my God, this is so Texas.

And sure enough, yeah, I looked it up. It’s, it was in Dallas. In fact, most of this was shot there. And then on the campus of Southwest Baptist University, I guess. Gotcha. Southern Baptist University and uh, yeah, I think it’s in Fort Worth. So it’s actually 

Craig: a great set piece. Like Oh it is? Yeah. It looks really cool.

Um, and it looks like a real environment. Like it doesn’t look like a set most of the time, um, because it is a real environment, obviously. Right. But they can, they can do some kind of cool. Things with, you know, seeing people at a distance on different levels or seeing people, because this atrium is so big, you know, you can have right somebody in a, a shot, you know, right up close and then way, way behind them you can see somebody you know, on the floors above or in an elevator above.

So it’s got that going for it, but 

Todd: it has that. Inherent shopping mall problem in horror movies because it, it’s always an abandoned shopping mall. And even though it’s a very, very large space, if there are only like six people in it, if some small noise happens anywhere in there, right, it’s gonna reverberate through the whole space, especially 

Craig: by the nature of this one, because it’s literally like one enormous room.

Yeah, basically. 

Todd: But the way you know the movie plays out is the way these movies often play out. I, I think, what was it? It was the one, uh, that takes place in a grocery store that we were most critical of where it was like, come on, intruder. Yeah, yeah. Intruder. A guy on aisle L five is screaming and certainly you’re gonna hear it way back in the meat room, you know?

Yeah. That was a 

Craig: great movie. That was better than this movie. 

Todd: Yeah, for sure. Oh, I would re-watch that. I would not re-watch this. Yeah, for sure. Alright, 

Craig: well we gotta get to the trauma because it’s at the center of the whole thing. Like true too, too much. So like, yeah, you could almost take this whole thing out and just make it somebody killing them in the mall, and that would almost be more interesting.

But we have to have the childhood trauma, so it’s a stormy night for. Inexplicable reasons we’re panning through this room of a child. But all of the doll’s heads are ripped off, which is never, it’s brought up again later, but never explained. I think I know. Okay. All right, well you can tell me later. And then this little girl walks down this long, creepy hallway.

And in my notes, here’s what I said. Little girl walks down, hall sees mom Some guy stabs him. Dad comes in, catches fire. Like that’s what I thought happened. So she sees mom with this guy, you know, they’re banging and then another man clothed comes in. But before that, she stabs the naked guy, like right with scissors in the leg or something.

And then the cloth guy comes in and the naked guy and the cloth guy get in a fight. And the guy who’s wearing a coat like falls to the ground in front of the fireplace and his clothes catch on fire and he burns. And then Daphne Zuniga grown young adult Daphne Zuniga wakes up surrounded by sorority sisters, and that’s when we get into the hole.

This is pledge week pledges. Kelly, Beth, Marsha, and Allison do hereby swear that in this last week of your pledge period, you will complete your sacred duties to the best of your ability, that you’ll obey your older and wiser active sisters, and that you will do anything they ask no matter what the consequences.

So help you God, I swear. Then rise pledges and let this night be heralded as the official commencement of your hell. Week prank night is gonna be on Saturday, and this is what the prank is gonna be. Be because your dad owns this big building. You’ll get us inside, blah, blah, blah. Okay? We’ve already set all that up, but yeah.

So that’s what I saw from the opening scene. But then later, like Z Daphne Zuniga is haunted by this. Like she keeps having this dream, but when she tells somebody about it, she says, A strange man came in and I stabbed my dad. And I’m like, what? What are you talking 

Todd: about? Yeah. You don’t understand what happened here, do you?

Well, either she doesn’t or I 

Craig: don’t. She, yeah. Right. Well, that’s what that’s, but that’s what I’m saying. That’s what am, am I stupid or Yeah. 

Todd: Are you stupid thinking the same thing? Yeah. I was like, what? But she, so 

Craig: anyway, that’s that whole backstory. Then there’s the sorority thing. Then there’s also, oh my god, this is so random.

So she randomly mentions to one of her pledge sisters that she’s interested in like the psychology of dreams. So then, yeah, she goes and talks to this ta, I think named Peter. 

Todd: No, I think it’s a professor. 

Craig: Well, he’s, he’s for sure a grad student. I don’t, yes. I’m telling you. I know this. Um, he, okay. All right.

But he does teach, I think that’s why I say he’s a TA because he does teach classes and grade papers. 

Todd: Oh, so that’s where they kind of, okay. Yeah. Try to make her, and 

Craig: like, at first he’s mad at her. Uh, why Dreams and nightmares. It’s a fascinating 

Todd: subject. Excuse me. But it wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m writing my doctoral thesis on dream analysis, would it?

No. I mean, I didn’t know. You didn’t know. I have my own reasons. Mr. Adams. I’m sorry. I do get a lot of freshmen coming in here trying to brown nose their way through, you know? Oh, that’s so dumb. Yeah. She’s like, I didn’t 

Craig: even know that you were into 

Todd: dream. And so it’s supposed to be this instant connection moment between them.

But the, the idea that TA or Professor take your pick is gonna be mad because a student is doing a paper on what happens to be their specialty is basically the opposite of how life works. A professor would be thrilled for a student to do a topic on something that their life’s work or study or whatever is in, I mean, it’s, it’s exactly what they want more or less.

So that was dumb. 

Craig: Well, and then also, like I know that this happens in real life all the time, but he is a grown ass adult and she is a. Infant. Yes. 

Todd: But he’s immediately, they’re too close 

Craig: immediately. And then like they are just openly Yeah, a couple. I, I mean, not like a couple, but dating or seeing each other, whatever.

And even if he is just a TA that would still put him at like, I don’t know, 22. Uh, I don’t know. I guess it’s not that big a difference. It was kind of jarring seeing them together on screen because he looks significantly older. Like he could, he does maybe have played her dad. Yeah. And she looks really young, and he was super familiar to me because he’s on Days of our 

Todd: Lives.

Oh, 

Craig: I knew you could, but I didn’t, I didn’t know that. That’s actually not why I, because he’s obviously 40 years older now. He looks significantly different. He’s still a handsome man, but he looks significantly different. What I actually recognized him from, uh, he was Barbara Hershey’s cheating husband. In Beaches.

Todd: Oh 

Craig: no. Another great movie. We should do that movie. So, 

Todd: just kidding. Oh God, that’s a horror movie in a different way. That’s a great movie. 

Craig: Yeah. Okay, so, oh, so the whole, the, the whole thing. So she meets up with him and then he’s like, oh, well I have a closet. That’s not what he says. Obviously. He, he’s like, I do, I, I’m doing dream studies in this little, what looks like a closet back stock room or something, and he’s like, I hook you up to an eeg.

And then, I don’t know, 

Todd: like I rem sleep and all that stuff. To 

Craig: what end? I don’t really know. 

Todd: It’s so funny because like you said, it’s so written, this movie, because, I mean, one thing you have to say about it is it plunges you into this quite quickly. Now she’s down in his closet, you know, he’s showing her all the equipment and then boom, who happened to be, I don’t know, under a desk for some reason, this grad student, you know, uh, assistant Heidi or whatever, I guess that he says, pops up her name is, uh, Heidi.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, he immediately makes a crack about her appearance, which I thought was, uh, was hilarious. Um, oh, I didn’t even notice that. Yo, he’s like, oh, she’s not very feminine, is she? Or something like that. Uh uh Anyway, yeah. And they, they introduce themselves and then Daphne Zuniga, whose name is Kelly, right?

Yeah, yeah. Starts, starts fondling the equipment. Yeah. She’s kinda running her hands along the dials and things on the stuff, and I was like, What is she doing? And she kind of goes off into Lala land for a second and then sees her face in the mirror. And then I, I don’t know, I was like, is she possessed now?

What’s going on? 

Craig: I had no idea what was going on. Like, they’re making a big deal out of mirrors the whole time. Yeah. Too much. Yeah, too much. And, and not even just mirrors, but any reflection. And any time, maybe you can, uh, enlighten me on this. Any time they were showing her, like looking into a mirror.

There was something uncanny about it, like it didn’t really look like they were shooting Daphne Zuniga in front of a mirror. It almost looked like two. Do you know what I’m talking about? It, it, it not really. No. 

Todd: It, 

Craig: it looked like she was standing across from a video screen of herself. Yeah. Rather than looking into a mirror.

Todd: I think I know what you mean because this movie didn’t follow the kind of typical mirror. She was literally looking into a very clean, nice square mirror every single time, no matter what mirror she was looking in. And it would just, her face would just kind of fill the whole thing or her body like, yeah.

Yeah. And it was just, it was weird because a lot of times in movies, you know, when people are looking in the mirrors, they leave a little gap around there. And also they’re showing a little bit of the background. Um, and, and oftentimes, you know, they’re trying to show something else in the background. Well also, 

Craig: usually when you have somebody looking into a mirror, you’re looking, we, the audience are usually looking at the back of their head and seeing and seeing their face reflected back at us.

But in this, every single time, you see, yeah, she, I guess she’s supposed to be in profile because you see her face basically full on. On in both. Yeah. Like you’re actually seeing her and seeing her reflection. It’s a stupid point. It just stood out to me as 

Todd: being weird. The reason it looks weird is because that, that doesn’t happen in real life.

Like, uh, if she was staring into a mirror and she was in profile, you would see her profile in there. But they, they purposely angled the mirror for movie purposes to show more of her face, right? Mm-hmm. So I think that’s why it looks uncanny. It’s just because that’s not how mirrors work, unless they’re angled for the purpose of showing more of that person’s face in the camera.

You’re right. It doesn’t look right for that reason. That, I guess, I, I can see what you’re talking about now. Yeah. We need to 

Craig: get back to, okay. So like immediately he’s like, do you wanna do a dream study? And she’s like, I don’t know. And then five seconds later, she’s in the chair and Yeah. And we have some, and there we are.

Like, like she goes to the bathroom. Looks into a mirror, sees a reflection of her child’s self. Like with blood, like, like from the, the scene, from the original scene. Mm-hmm. But we also skipped something because Yeah. Right after the, an introduction to the sorority girls, we also go to a typical movie, insane Asylum, where people are just acting ridiculous, talk about tropes, and there’s, and there’s a whole scene that makes absolutely no difference because all we need to know is that people broke out and we also need to be introduced to, again, I was confused.

As it turns out, this man that we’re introduced to, he’s burned, um, he’s got burn scars on his hands and face. As it turns out, he’s an inmate, but he’s also the groundskeeper. But that was not clear to me at all. Like Correct. I thought he was one or the other and I was very confused. As to what 

Todd: was happening.

I thought he was the groundskeeper, cuz they don’t refer to him as anything else. In fact, the, the inmates are all locked up and he’s outside tilling the, the ground with his three-pronged instrument thing. I thought 

Craig: later when the cops are talk or somebody’s talking about it, they’re like, including the inmate groundskeeper.

Yes, but I, I, 

Todd: yes. No, that was thrown in at the end, at the very end. Okay. So you’re right. We didn’t 

Craig: know this. We don’t know. But, uh, I mean, I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me maybe five, 10 minutes to remember that her da or or whoever that was, that guy that I thought was her dad in the original scene had been burned up.

Like, oh, I should have remembered that immediate like, It happened literally three minutes ago and here we are being introduced to another character covered in Burn Scars. And it took me far too long to put two and two together. 

Todd: Oh, okay. I mean, I saw it right away cuz the burn scars were so freaking obvious.

Yeah, pretty good actually. Yeah, it was pretty good. Yeah. Nice makeup or whatever on it. But 

Craig: which one of these guys, is it him? Is it the burned guy or is it the other guy who’s played by Klu Go Lagger. And why do I know him? We’ve seen him in a bunch of movies, right? Yeah. Klu Go. Was he that Evil 

Todd: Cat movie?

Yeah, he, he was that kind of drunk, weird guy in the Evil Cat movie. Remember that? Uh, It’s like drunk half the time and trying to steer the boat. Yeah. The uninvited, right? Yeah. He was like a child actor in the forties. I mean, he’s been all over television. Uh, I think we chatted a little bit about him when we were doing that cat movie, but, uh, mostly like cowboy roles and things like that, but he actually played her stepfather, although, well, it’s a, doesn’t, doesn’t know, right?

Oh, 

Craig: God. I, I feel like it’s, I feel like it’s easy. For the audience to put together what’s going on. And it even like when she throws that out, when she says, I stabbed my dad. And then this weird guy came in, like immediately it was like, I am confused because that is not how I read that situation at all.

Yeah. But as the movie goes on, it becomes pretty clear that we were right. And for whatever reason she doesn’t remember that. Right. Yeah. Her stepdad, Dwight is played by Clue Go Lager, and her mother is played by Vera Miles, who was in Psycho and Psycho 

Todd: too. Uh, and The Searchers. And uh, I mean, yeah, she is a, it’s a classic Hollywood gal and yeah.

And she brought a nice classic Hollywood feel to her role. I mean, she really 

did. 

Craig: I really liked her. I did 

Todd: too. And he was fine too. I mean, he, I honestly, the, the two parents, they might have been two of the most convincing sort of normal feeling. You know, movie parents I’ve seen in a horror movie in a while except for they were living this again, this sort of trophy, I don’t know what it is, uh, about these eighties films and especially these eighties horror movies.

And it always ends up being the final girls’ parents where they live in this very opulent house and they’re super rich. And the reason why we know they’re rich and opulent is they walk around wearing clothes that nobody would wear. That’s exactly 

Craig: what I was just gonna say. Like, who 

Todd: does that? They eat at dinner tables with like, fine China.

She’s pouring tea out of like a silvered, uh, tea kettle. And, uh, they’re lit candles on the table and yeah, they’re sitting, you know, way far apart from each other, you know, like all on the same side of the table. I mean, it’s just, It’s just so silly, but it’s a thing. 

Craig: Well, and the dad’s stepdad is like smarmy and off talking to his mistress on the phone and, 

Todd: and she overhears it, but then great, but then doesn’t do anything about it.

Craig: Okay. Except for people. When do people start getting killed? I don’t even remember. Like, oh, no. Well, has nobody been killed yet? My god, we’ve been talking for half an 

Todd: hour. So much happens. Well, here’s the pro here’s part of the issue, and, and I meant to say this in the beginning, but I didn’t, we, we keep talking about the writing.

The guy who wrote this as Charles Pratt Jr. He’s a soap opera writer. He was writing soaps, he was writing General Hospital, and then later the young and the Restless and stuff like hundreds, hundreds and thousands of episodes. And he was asked by New World Pictures to do a, a script for a horror script for them.

And so that’s why this movie is so soapy is because he was doing that kind of thing. 

Craig: And so that makes a lot of sense to me actually. Mm-hmm. There’s too much story that makes sense. Like that’s, that’s what soaps are all about. Soaps are all about intrigue and drama. And you don’t need that in a slasher movie at all.

Todd: Overly dramatic. Yeah, exactly. But, but we’re, we’re sitting here going, when is anyone gonna die? And the first person who dies, I think is the nurse Yeah. At the inmate asylum, which, you know, we see her for one thing, and then she’s, she’s killed in the process of leaving and she’s killed by that same garden implement.

Exactly. 

Craig: I, I, I Googled. What is a garden fork called?

Todd: Let me guess. A garden fork? It’s called a garden 

Craig: fork.

Todd: Thanks for looking that upsided 

Craig: down too. I dunno what that shit’s called, but that’s, he, it’s like a garden fork, like a three timed fork, you know, for digging or whatever. And this is what we had seen the burn guy working with. Mm-hmm. It’s, it’s, I don’t know if it’s, uh, it feels yolo to me that because you see Yeah.

His hands and, and forearms all the time, or whoever it is. You see their hands and 

Todd: forearms. He even has gloves on. They’re just plastic see-through, not plastic. Plastic, see-through gloves, 

Craig: but also like the gray long sleeves of a workman’s uniform that we had seen that guy in. Yeah. And we know this guy escaped.

Yeah. So on the one hand, it seems like they’re being obvious about who it is without showing the face, but. On at the same time, trying to be coy about it, fly about it. Like I, I, yeah. I, it was difficult for me to figure out. And so the whole time I’m thinking, well, it’s, it’s too, it can’t be that guy. That’s too obvious.

Yeah. It can’t be him. If, if they were gonna be that obvious about it, they would just show his faith. Yeah. And so I didn’t know what was going on. And that one is not really explained, but they, they do, God, I don’t remember A bunch of people get killed, like 11 people or something, 

Todd: uh, by the end of it. But it takes a while for, before anyone we know gets killed.

Right, right. 

Craig: Like, I think, I don’t know if it’s next, uh, but 

Todd: is the father Oh, that’s 

Craig: right. Because we also get killer POV 

Todd: shots. Mm-hmm. Throughout, which were good. I liked 

Craig: those. It was fine. I mean it was, it was very standard Halloween stuff, but the dad or stepdad or whoever called he, he’s going to meet his mistress and he leaves in his car and while he goes to get in his car and he gets stabbed in the neck and then gets beheaded, I think with a machete again, the only time we see a machete.

Yeah. 

Todd: I love it that he’s outside walking to his car and we get that killer pov and he goes, who’s out there? Anyone out there? And then as part of the crickets chirping and things, there’s an actual shot of an owl hooting. That was so hilarious. I wasn’t paying that close attention. An insert shot of an hooting.

I was like, is this the Wizard of Oz? Are we the kids movie that you’re gonna tell? You’re gonna show us that? You know, the woods are spooky and scary at night by showing us an owl. 

Craig: Weird. I feel like he gets weird beheaded in silhouette now that you say it. Uh, I don’t know. You see some stabbings and stuff.

There’s some blood. It’s not super go though. 

Todd: No, it’s all right. It’s stabbing in blood. That’s all it is. Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. He gets his head cut off, I think, in silhouette, and then it cuts back into his wife and she notices that he is left his glasses behind. She walks out onto the porch to see the car driving away, and she goes, sometimes I think that man would forget his head if it wasn’t attached.

Yes. Oh my God. 

Todd: Oh, you didn’t appreciate that. 

Craig: I thought that was so stupid. I mean, it’s funny. I guess it’s a little too obvious. Yeah, right. It’s pretty dumb. Right. The only other thing before they get to the mall, uh, she does that dream study and Peter comes up with like five words. Do you? I don’t even remember what they were.

It was like, this is so much 

Todd: gobbledy 

Craig: gook. I don’t even remember. Do you, did you write anything down about that? Because it was like, it was like he had figured out the. Key to her. 

Todd: Psychosis or something. He’s like, it’s like scissors, mirror, father, mother, something else. Something else. And he’s all there talking about it to her and it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo stuff.

And then his grad assistant springs in says, no, I disagree because there, if you look clearly it here, she wasn’t in REM sleep. Are you suggesting it’s some psychic manifestation? Yes, I believe that’s what it was. Oh, that’s garbage. You know, that’s not very scientific. Yada yada. Well, how else do you explain it?

And then she storms off mad and so they have a disagreement. I know they have that whole fight 

Craig: about, oh, it must be psychic activity. Once again, never mentioned again, like no so many random things just that are just throwaways. Like, well, oh, she, she must be like psychic or something. Okay, well we will never speak of it 

Todd: now.

That is how I interpreted that. But I do wonder if it’s just a mistake of terminology, because I think ultimately what we later learned is that he believes it’s a dream and she believes that it’s an actual memory. And so I think that’s what they were kind of fighting about. But when you throw that word psychic in there, that’s all we think about is it’s like she’s psychic.

Like she can read minds or see the future or 

Craig: something like that. Well, something to do later on. Something to do. Again, we’re kind of jumping around cuz it jumps back to these people periodically while the girls and guys are in the mall. But eventually they determine that because. Of mirrors? Yes. That Kelly has multiple personalities and is schizophrenic.

What? Like this is so dumb. These grad students. Doing a dream study, figure out that because she dreams of mirrors, she has multiple 

Todd: personalities with the touch of schizophrenia. And it’s because Kelly, uh, has been chatting with her mom or over the dinner table that she’s in this dream study. And for whatever reason, her mom is like upset by it.

She’s like, no, you shouldn’t be revisiting this. I want you to stop it at once. And she’s like, I will study. I will go out with whoever I want to go out with and I’ll study whatever I want to do. You don’t tell me what to do. And she storms out. So at some point she’s back doing this dream study thing, but he’s decided to hypnotize her this time.

So they’re back in the closet on campus. Meanwhile, there are shots of mom who’s driving to the campus looking for her, and I’ve no idea number one, why mom has driven to the campus to look for her. Except I thought, well, maybe because her, her husband hasn’t shown up, you know, the next day. And so maybe she’s just looking for her in general.

And then she somehow manages to find the closet that they’re doing this hypnosis thing in Uhhuh. And when she walks in on them, how on they’re doing it. This girl’s reliving her memory of this night and she’s like, dolls? Dolls with the heads, you know, broken off. And the guy’s like, did you break the heads off the dolls?

And she’s like, no, no, not me. And then she kind of says a bunch of other things and then she seems very upset. And that’s when the mom burston is like, what are you doing? And it seems like he’s trying to pull her out of the dream by calling her name, but she’s not coming out of this hypnotic state, Uhhuh.

And her mom just goes, It’s, uh, Kelly Randall, not Fairchild. Oh my God. 

Craig: That is such a soap opera moment now that, now that I know that this was written by a soap opera guy that is such like the reveal. She’s not responding because that’s not her real name, right? Like, she’s not who you think she is. Oh my God, that’s hilarious.

So she says that he 

Todd: wakes her up, she’s upset, she runs out, and the mom has words with the guy and the guy’s like, why did you call her Randall? And the mom’s just like, I’m not gonna tell you. And just walks out. I’m like, yeah, what? This is a major point here that we’re just gonna drop until later when it’s convenient to bring it up again 

Craig: when Heidi does research.

Yeah. Heidi. The, oh my gosh, Heidi eventually, like when it’s far too late, Heidi, uh, they just put it all together. Like they just, they just put the whole story together from like newspaper clippings and stuff, and they realize that. Kelly’s dad was the inmate gardener or whatever, and so he’s out and they, they think she must be in danger or something.

Oh, God. Yeah. I, I did wanna say that hypnosis part, Daphne Zuniga was surprisingly good in that. Part, I thought, like she seemed to me, the way that she was talking when she was under it was so different than, I don’t know, it felt childlike and sleepy and it was a, 

Todd: yeah. Contrast. 

Craig: Yeah. I, I, I really enjoyed her in that moment, even though it’s really stupid, like this guy, this, uh, Peter, the TA or whatever, not only does he study dreams, but he’s also a hypnotist.

Todd: Like what I know, right? It’s all, it’s all perfect. And I love, 

Craig: you know, I, I’m not gonna pretend like I know a lot about hypnotism, but in these movies, they just pretend like they act like it’s just, oh, let’s just hypnotize somebody. Like, 

Todd: right. Close your eyes. Now I’m just gonna talk to you. And then, yeah, you’re 

Craig: feeling very sleepy, right?

And you’re gonna, you’re gonna explore all of your most traumatic childhood experiences. But I’m sure it’ll be fine. Me a ta, you know, I know what I’m doing. It’ll be okay. 

Todd: Now, we’ve passed by the party. Yeah, 

Craig: why not? Aside from the fact that it was fun because it was a costume party, does anything of consequence happen there?

Todd: No, it just sort of introduces suddenly some new male characters that later on we’re gonna need to remember that they exist. That’s really Well, very good part. 

Craig: They’re, they’re just fodder. I mean, they, they do, they, I mean, they as, as much as they try to give these young people, the vast majority of this movie takes place on a mall, and we haven’t even started talking about that yet.

But there’s really not a whole lot to talk about. No, because at the 

Todd: party that’s majority, this movie does not take place in the mall, I don’t think gets in the mall until about an hour in, oh my God. 

Craig: Maybe it just, maybe the mall part just felt so long. 

Todd: It dragged so long, but really like, it was like an hour and 10 minutes into this movie before I was like, oh my god.

When is this initiation gonna happen? Because I’m waiting for initiation stuff in the beginning. You know, they have all the thing with the candles and they’re telling them that they’re gonna have this prank, and then it’s not until the last 30 minutes or so that they do this prank. Right. And get into the mall.

Craig: Right. And it’s, it’s the three, there were four initiates, but one of them mouthed off to the leader girl. Yeah. And, and so she, she ended up going home. So, uh, three initiates the 35 year old sorority girl. That girl looked, I swear to God, like I thought she was surely their house mother. But no, she was supposed to be a, around their age, I guess.

Todd: Do you mean their pledge trainer? Megan? Do 

Craig: you mean Beth? Yes. Their pledge. Oh, not Beth. Megan was their pledger. Yeah, Megan, sorry. Yeah. Beth was the one who went back to. Her room. 

Todd: Beth. Beth, who like suddenly out of nowhere, they’re in the middle of getting ready for this thing. This girl who we’ve barely seen suddenly objects to absolutely everything that’s happened to her in her life at Patel.

That moment with this sorority, this is crazy. 

Craig: We’ve gone too far, Megan. I didn’t come to 

Todd: college for this Girl Scout shit. We’re grown women. Look at US candles, preview ascent songs. We should be doing something constructive, something positive. I know God not breaking into a stupid department store and storms often quits, and I’m like, Is this gonna be important?

Why? No, I didn’t. No. You know, 

Craig: she needs to be, it’s very important that she be back at the dorms to take a phone call later. That is the The 

only 

Todd: reason. That’s the reason. Yeah. 

Craig: They could’ve cut her entire character is entirely unnecessary. Uh, God, it’s so silly. I mean, I expected her to go off on by herself and die.

No. Mm-hmm. The rest of them. Mm-hmm. Okay. So for every girl, there’s also a male counterpart except for, for Kelly, cuz her guy is Peter and he’s not there. But the rest of them all have these doofy, like three stooges. Cartoon guys, um, that they’re 

Todd: there with. It’s another trope for these movies. I mean, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna really complain too much about that because that’s kind of what I watch these slashers for.

Craig: Right. That’s actually kind of the fun part. Like that’s what, yeah. Oh God. But they do, they, they tried to overwrite the characters. I didn’t care. I don’t know. On, on the one hand, I felt like they tried to overwrite them. On the other hand, I didn’t even know who they were. It took me forever. Like all the guys looked exactly the same.

Todd: I couldn’t get their names. Me 

Craig: either. It took me forever. I had to keep going back and like filling in names as, and, and I would notice that they would say, Every time anybody spoke to Marsha, they addressed her by name. And then there’s another girl, a blonde girl, uh, who takes her top off. They just refused to say her name.

I’m like, come 

Todd: on, somebody. Which patents to us, since we’re trying to write down their names, it probably wouldn’t matter to you watching the movie, but it was, it, it’s glaring for us, right? Yeah. 

Craig: Right before they get into the mall, we see the mall security guard, the one. Mall security guard. Yeah. In this enormous building, he gets killed again, I think with the, the, the Garden Fork.

Todd: Yes. He’s the third person to get killed, and aside from the father. Okay. These are just random people, you know? Yeah. I mean, we’re, so far it’s not, A great slasher. There hasn’t been a lot of slashing and uh, it just hasn’t been, it’s just like, oh, here’s a person. Now they’re dead, uh, kind of situation. So.

Well, and that’s what I, 

but 

Craig: now they’re in the mall, right. And now they’re in the mall. And one of the infuriating things is that they, I, I guess they don’t have any real reason to be scared. But they just keep splitting up for seemingly no reason. Oh yeah. And you know, initially like the, the, when the three girls first go in, uh, Kelly’s like, you stay here at the security place and you go cause a diversion and I’m gonna go somewhere else to get a spare uniform and then we’ll all come back together.

I thought they might start getting picked off. Nope. No. Such luck. No, they just go off and do their things, come back together. Then the boys and, huh? What’s that dumb girl’s name? Megan come in to mess with them. Mm-hmm. And they do kind of mess with them for a while, but not really. No. By messing with them, I mean like jumping out at them with masks on or, and like rolling bowling balls down a hallway or something.

Todd: But they take their time with it, you know, one of two of them are banging. And again, everything that happens in here, Even if you just talked to another character in one of these hallways, it’s gonna be heard throughout the entire ball. So, um, it, it doesn’t really ring true and it doesn’t have a sense of urgency or place or what’s going on.

They’re just randomly chit chatting with each other and joining up and splitting up and joining up and splitting up. And the reason they don’t just leave right after they get the uniform of this guy, which they actually go to the guards lounge to get a spare uniform that they’re gonna leave is because, um, Kelly, no, uh, Megan or whatever has locked the door.

Yeah. Um, locked them in. So they’re trying to find her once they realize she’s there. They’re trying to find her to get the keys. And the boys are hijinks are happening. Right. But nothing really interesting. No. 

Craig: Megan and her guy Andy, are getting freaky on an enormous pile of rugs, which, That might be fun.

I never, I, it never occurred to me like an enormous pile of rugs that, that’d be cool. That’d be kind of cool. Yeah. But they’re, and then they start running around. I don’t remember how he gets killed. She gets, um, shot with a, uh, crossbow. Yeah. Because fortunately there’s a sporting s good store and the killer can get knives and cross 

Todd: bows and all the doors are open to all these stores.

Yeah. They don’t have any problem going in there. No, they’re not 

Craig: locked or anything. Yeah. So I don’t, they both get killed and then that’s when we have the Strange Breakfast Club confessional moment like that, that one girl, this one girl, they’ve been kind of teasing throughout the whole movie about the fact that she’s a virgin and in this weird moment where they’re all sitting around like a dining room table in a department store, she’s like, I’m not a virgin.

I don’t even 

Todd: wanna, I don’t even wanna say it. Roll the clip. 

Craig: Cause I don’t even wanna say it. It’s gross. And like why, why? Yeah. And, and she says at the end of it, and I’ve never told anybody about it, ever. Not even my mom. And then she immediately hops in bed with the goofy guy who’s been right. Throwing himself at her all night.

Like, because that all makes sense. 

Todd: That was 

Craig: weird. I mean, not like I care, but, and in fact, remove that weird, gross story and fine. Pop them in bed together. That’s great. I don’t care. But like coming right after this story about how she was like raped when she was 12. Ew. Yeah. That’s not sexy. That’s not like 

Todd: setting a mood.

It treats it kind of lightly, you know? I don’t mean treats it for comedy, I just mean there’s no real respect for. Reality here, the character or you know, any emotional reality. Yeah, because, uh, this woman who didn’t, this girl’s been teased this whole time. It’s kind of nice. I mean, she’s, you know, just sort of, yeah, she’s nice, a pleasant, nice girl, whatever.

Who gets teased a lot now reveals, no, she’s not a virgin. Cuz she was raped by her violin teacher when she was 12 and then, yeah, it’s 12. The guy next to her is like, oh, well I’ll, I like you or whatever. And then they go off and then they have sex and I mean, is this Yeah, the guy 

Craig: supposed, the guy who was her date, he was her date to the costume party and he literally, Was a big dick like that.

Yeah, he was his costume. Yeah. He tried to come onto to her by like, help saying he could ha like cure her of her virginity or something. Her virginity so gross. Like, so he’s set up as a gr like a creep anyway, and then they try to redeem him, like after they bang, he makes a joke and she’s like, yo, you sure have lots of jokes.

And he is like, well, that’s how I cover up my insecurities. And like the movie, the movie, the movie is trying to like, oh, look at these two sweet damaged people. Isn’t that sweet? And then he gets harpooned. Yeah. And I don’t remember what happens to her. 

Todd: She, no, she gets killed. Uh, it’s offscreen though. Yeah, no.

Um. She gets chased or whatever, and then the let, the next time we see her, we see her body being dragged around a 

Craig: corner. That’s right. And then Al then Allison has, and she has a guy and her guy goes off to take a piss or something, and she eventually finds him with his throat cut. And so now she knows that there are dead people.

She goes to tell Kelly and Kelly’s like, oh, okay, well I want to see 

Todd: Kelly goes and finds it, right. Kelly 

Craig: goes and she sees and finds it, okay. And so now we’re getting cl So she tells Allison, cause Allison doesn’t wanna go back and look at the bodies again. She’s like, all right, just go hang out at the security desk and I’ll come and get you.

Well, Allison goes to the security desk and gets slaughtered. Yeah. And then Kelly comes and like, just sees blood everywhere. She’s like, oh no. And then we start, she sees I, I think she, she’s the last 

Todd: one now. Wait a minute though. Yeah, but now in the meantime, it’s been cutting from this to Peter, stupid Peter, who is.

Trying to track him down her down, because once, um, once Heidi has come to him with all of her research, and then he realizes that, uh, her mo her father escaped from the mental institution. He’s trying to find her and he calls the sorority house and there’s no answer at the sorority house because Beth is in the shower.

Yeah. So then he is like, I’m gonna drive to her mom’s place. And he goes to her, he tries to call her mom, but her mom picks up the phone and just lays it down. Right? So now he’s gotta drive out to her mom’s place. So he drives out to her mom’s place and she’s just like, in this weird days, well, it’s 

Craig: because she just found out her husband’s dead.

Right. 

Todd: He just found his body right. But she opens the door, it’s very dramatic. Opens the door, brings them in. She’s just kind of there. He’s like, oh, you need to find, you know what’s going on. She says that he was dead, that he was found on the thing. He’s like, where’s Kelly? She says, I don’t know. She’s gotta be at the place.

Then he calls again from there, and finally Beth is out of the shower. So she’s able now to pick up the phone and say, oh, yeah, they were playing this prank over at, you know, her dad’s, uh, department store. 

Craig: That was the biggest waste of five minutes. He’s 

Todd: like, all right, well I gotta run over there and do that.

You need to call the police and make sure they meet me there. He tells the wife that, I don’t know why he didn’t just call the police real quick or why he 

Craig: just didn’t, 

Todd: that they were going to, he does. So then he leaves and, uh, is heading to the department store. So all this is going on as well. It’s trying to create this moment, I think, of tension where everything’s gonna converge in that store at this point now where Kelly is by herself.

By herself, 

Craig: but she’s also seen somebody dragging one of the bodies around. Mm-hmm. And we’ve seen that it’s that burned guy. Now she still doesn’t have any idea who that is supposedly, but, um, Peter knows that that’s her dad. Okay. Now, at this point, I didn’t know what to think because again, I’m sitting, I’m watching this in my living room.

Alan is sitting behind me, and early on in the movie, I said, I think Daphne Zika did it right? Because she’s never around when somebody gets killed. But she’s always immediately there in the aftermath, like the, like the very next scene she pops in every single time. Mm. And so I, I thought, I think she’s doing it.

She’s crazy. Especially since, uh, they said, She’s got multiple personalities, but then this guy is there and he’s dragging the bodies around. Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t know, I didn’t know what to think at this point. Yep. Is this, is this when we get to the big reveal that 

Todd: really Almost, almost. Okay. Alright.

They end up on the roof. They end up on the roof, and, uh oh. Right. This man, this burned up man is following her and she’s, uh, they’re kind of at the edge and she picks up a, uh, lead pipe and smacks him and he falls off the roof of this place, which had to be, I don’t know, 20 stories tall, really, really high, up into a bo bunch of cardboard boxes at this moment.

Peter pulls up, comes up, looks at this guy, sees who he is. The guy is still conscious in saying something. And then Peter just leaves him and goes inside. Yeah. God. So then he goes inside, so he’s inside looking for her, and so she comes down off the roof. She thinks that it’s over because she’s knocked this guy off the top.

Craig: Does she get hit or something? I don’t remember how it comes about. No, no. 

Todd: Peter. Peter comes in. Yeah, right. Oh, right, 

Craig: right. He comes in and he goes to her and he like embraces her and they’re like, oh, it’s over, or whatever. And then she stabs him and I was like, I knew it. Yeah. I knew it was her. It was crazy.

And then in my notes, I have. Wait, there’s two of them. Mm-hmm. Now, I don’t have any problem with a good evil twin story. That’s fine. But this pisses me off because there was nothing, nothing to suggest that we might, there are the 

Todd: barest of hints in retrospect. What? This is where the doll thing comes in.

Okay. I don’t get it. She didn’t tear the heads off her dolls. Her sister tore the heads off her dolls, and I think, I didn’t bother to do this, but they keep making this big deal about the mirrors or whatever. I suppose if you went back and looked at her dream uhhuh, you would see that she is looking in mirrors and instead of seeing herself, that’s actually her sister in the mirror.

Okay. Because she’s in the hallway and then suddenly she’s stabbing her dad. Okay. Okay. That was actually her sister. So I mean, but try to decode that. In the process, it’s never gonna happen. They’re not strong enough hints. And then her mom, at one point, like when, when, uh, Peter leaves her, uh, to go to the mall and she’s supposed to call the police, she makes a comment that says, It’s happening again.

Yeah. But that 

Craig: could be anything. It could be like, that could be diarrhea. Like

it could be, I mean, it’s a very ominous line you’re talking about. Right? I get it. Yeah. I get in retrospect that she’s talking about. Um, 

Todd: but I, I have so many questions though. They’re presumably still living in the same community. Like how do you keep all this hidden from the rest of the community? Oh, right, right.

How does anybody, you, you know, there’s this murder, there was this guy who was in the flames and he was put in a mental institution. All this shit’s reported in the paper. Her new husband, uh, who was the guy that, you know, she was banging that got stabbed right. Is like this super important guy who’s got this giant department store.

Suddenly they were able to concoct this story that she fell out of the treehouse and then she lost her memory and they just made her forget. She had a sister and nobody ever else ever brought this up to her. Yeah. Ever. Yeah. Like. What? It doesn’t make sense. So it’s, it turns out not only did this man escape from the mental institution, but her twin sister was there too.

And I think that woman who we never saw her face, who was staring down at the window at the man, remember who starts kind of pounding her fist against, uh, against her leg. Yeah. That inmate, I think that’s supposed to have been her twin sister. Oh. And yeah. But then back at the 

Craig: asylum, back, back at the asylum.

Yeah. Early, early on in the very first asylum scene. 

Todd: Yeah. I didn’t, it’s both of them, you know, escape from the asylum and, uh, she makes a comment to Daphne. Well, they’re both Daphne and Niga, by the way. She did a great job of playing both sides of this. Oh my God. 

Craig: The crazy one was, Hilarious. It was great.

It was hilarious. Well, it was 

Todd: hilarious. I mean, what do you expect from this movie though? 

Craig: It was really funny. I really, really enjoyed it. Uh, it was funny. And they got her made up funny, like, like Oh yeah. With bags under her eyes and her hair and little 

Todd: scraggly, I think she looks, looks different. 

Craig: You know?

Looks, yeah. They’ve like, boo ratified her. It’s funny. That’s right. Oh my God. But she explains, she’s like, I don’t even know what she says, but she’s like, daddy was cleaning up after me after like, oh my God. So, right. So like all of that killer, p o v, that was her, she was the killer. The dad was just trailing around behind her, like cleaning up the mess.

Which again, that’s so dumb. I know it is really stupid. No, no. It would make a lot more sense if the dad, I don’t know, maybe he was doing 

Todd: it for her or something. Right. 

Craig: Or right doing it for her, or if he were trying to get ahead of her Mm. To get to Kelly, that would make sense. To warn her or something, or, yeah.

But just trailing along behind her doesn’t really make any sense. Well, 

Todd: I just wanna know then, what was the dad’s motivation? What was his thing through this whole thing? I don’t know. So he’s escaped, but he’s cleaning up after his daughter, maybe because he loves her. He is trying to protect her. Okay. But then he’s also trying to maybe get ahead of her, at least when it comes to his other daughter and warn her.

Right. Are we supposed to, to think that when he was coming after her on the roof, he really wanted to warn her, or I guess, I guess there’s no way to 

Craig: know. Well, I mean, I guess you could, it kind of makes sense that he would. Be protective of the crazy one because the crazy one is the one who stabbed his like nemesis or whatever.

Yeah. They were so, they were kind of, they were kind of playing on the same team. And if I, this is so stupid, why are we speculating about this? The it, but like, and then if they had been in that asylum together, maybe he was watching out over her there too. 

Todd: Yeah. Maybe they were both just in cahoots and they both wanted her sister dead as well.

Maybe. And, and why? I don’t really know, I don’t know, really understand what their motivation was for going on this crazy killing spree of all of her friends and shit. Why weren’t they just cutting to the chase 

Craig: that, right. That doesn’t even make any sense. Like, okay, so her name is never mentioned in the movie, but she’s credited.

The evil one is credited as Terry and Terry says that her, what she’s gonna do, she’s gonna kill Kelly cuz she’s pissed off. Like Kelly got this great life. She was rich and had everything she ever wanted. And Terry says that she, I’m going to kill you and I’m gonna. Steal your identity basically. Right.

But if, if that was what wanted to do, right? Well, why would she kill all of her 

Todd: friends? Yeah. Either way you’ve got a body to get rid of, right? Like Yeah. It’s not a case of where, because she makes it sound like she’s, she’s setting her up. Well, she’s setting her dad up, is what she’s doing. Right? She’s like, now, yeah.

Right. He’ll take the fuck. Everyone’s gonna think that daddy killed all these people and I’m gonna kill you and then hide you, I guess. And then I’m gonna take your place. Well, why didn’t you just go and kill her and take her place? Right. And that’s the easiest 

Craig: thing to do. Well, cuz she’s crazy. I don’t know.

It’s, yeah, that’s it. It’s funny. It would be, it would’ve been a much, much shorter movie if shorter movie. Right. Um, and that may have been okay. But anyway, so, so the crazy one’s got the pretty one, the crazy one. The crazy one’s got the pretty one down on the ground and it looks like she’s gonna kill her.

And then Terry is shot from behind and I didn’t know who this was gonna be, but it ends up being, The mother, which I actually kind of liked. Yeah, I liked that too. And then it seemed like maybe the mother and Kelly could I, I don’t know, repair their relationship 

Todd: and lives. She’s making things right. Right.

Craig: Making things right. Exactly. Yeah. But then it cuts outside to show us that Peter is still alive, even though he got stabbed in the gut with like a 12 inch knife. Um, and the dad is still alive now. I don’t think that that was a 20 story building, but I would say probably at least six or eight stories. And I am just, I, a movie is never gonna convince me that you can fall off an eight story building into a pile of trash and just be fine.

Like, right. It’s, I don’t believe it, but that’s the end. The end. Yeah. 

Todd: What a movie. It’s, oh, and then the end credits music was the same four bars repeated over and over again at different octaves. I thought, uh, I don’t know if it was as distracting for you as it was for me anyway. There were lots of things 

Craig: that were distracting.

One of the things that was distracting in this movie was that the, uh, opening credits were just white lettering on black background. And it went on for what felt like, oh yeah. A 

Todd: week. Felt like they were stretching for time more than anything. I know. And 

Craig: then another thing that bothered me is there were some scenes in the movie that were out of focus Oh yeah.

For a while. And, and other scenes where they were clearly just showing us a frame of Yeah. Something. And it was really telephone evidence or something. Mm-hmm. Well, and even like, um, one of the guys who died, who got his, uh, throat cut, you see him a couple of times, but it’s just a freeze frame. Of him. Yeah.

It calls itself out like Yeah, it’s obvious. Like if, if, if this was the only print you had of this scene where these two girls are talking about nothing important and you didn’t have it in focus, cut it out. Like Yeah, 

Todd: don’t the lack of focus just put it in several, more than, once more than once on something where, yeah, like you said, two people are right there in the foreground talking about something and they are out of focus the whole time.

It’s really surprising. The movie, I think it, it had two directors originally. There was a guy named Peter Crane, who’s a UK director who was brought in, uh, originally for the project and then he was kind of going over budget real, real fast and they said that he had this sort of European sensibility about him.

He was trying to do. Cool funky camera angles and things like that, and was just wasting a lot of time and money when they needed something that was just a little more pedestrian mainstream slasher formula. And that’s when they brought in, uh, Larry Stewart. Uh, yeah, but 

Craig: whoever they were, the producers or whoever made that decision, I think they made the wrong decision.

I think that, I think that this movie would’ve worked a lot better if it had been more like, Stylist, the Italian Slashers. Um, yes, I a 

Todd: hundred percent agree with you. In fact, I think, I think that was something that they had said was like, this is too diallo and we just needed to be more standard American.

And that’s when they booted him off. But they kept a lot of his stuff in there. And you can tell from what I read, the, the earlier stuff in the sorority house with the, you know, the estate and a lot of the POV stuff was from him. And yo you can tell it’s stylistically it’s very different from the rest of the movie.

You know, uh, it’s very different from shopping mall in that I think shopping mall is so fun because it gets right into the action. Yes, there’s a lot of people to kill off and they’re being pursued the whole time. Whereas this is just over an hour of soap opera storyline, A few random people get killed.

Uh, but. We don’t care about them and we don’t know what’s going on. We’re, and not in interesting ways. Well, and, and the effect the blood. There’s no good gore effects in here at all. 

Craig: Uh, what we saw didn’t bother me. I thought it looked fine. I mean, it was just blood. 

Todd: Well, that’s what I mean. There was no, you know, this is what these movies kind of like, that’s a box they often have to check.

Like we’ve got the Prowler, you know, which is a movie that doesn’t really have a lot going for it, except the gore effects are freaking amazing. So I just felt like, uh, a movie like this might have, uh, tried harder in that department. 

Craig: Right. I get it. And it was almost like, it was kind of like they tried to, to shake things up, but in just the most boring.

I don’t know, like nonsensical. Well, it, it like, okay, so his, his regular m mo the killer’s regular M mo is that Garden fork, but he can cut one guy’s head off with a machete that must have just been laying around in the driveway. And um, he can shoot somebody with a crossbo and he can shoot somebody with a harpoon and he can, is a gun, get somebody in the back with an ax and mm-hmm.

But it’s just like, grab bag it. Yeah. It doesn’t, there’s no. Sense to it. There’s no logic to it. It’s just, I guess because there’s a sporting good store in the mall. He has access to all these things, but it’s just, it’s not like I, I feel like they were maybe trying to make the kills more creative, but they’re not.

I, I’ve seen every single one of them before. It’s just a hodgepodge of things from other movies. 

Todd: Well, he must have been working in cahoots with her because there were definitely moments where there was a man there who was trying to grab the girls and who was killing them. For sure. Like he crawled into the elevator at one point, remember?

Yeah, vaguely. So, I mean, I don’t know. I was 

Craig: bored. Me too. I had it playing on one computer screen and I’m typing my notes on the other computer screen and you know, maybe. Flipping over to something else on my computer. Yeah. Like, cuz it just, it was, uh, it was all right. I don’t wanna dog it too much because it’s not terrible.

It’s, we’ve, we’ve seen worse. We’ve seen worse slashers, we’ve seen lazier films. Um, it’s, it’s just. Okay. It’s a very typical 1980s slasher. There’s really not much special about it except for that Daphne Sunga is in it, and she’s pretty and cute and I like her. But other than that, yeah, it’s ju it’s not memorable there.

It’s not at 

Todd: all. It’s boring. Memorable. Yeah. Boring. That’s the worst thing, right? If you’re an hour into the movie and you’re kind of bored and you’re like, I thought I was watching a slasher. When’s a slashing gonna happen? It’s not good when you’re watching your, when you’re checking your watch an hour in, and I sure was.

But uh, anyway, thank you very much for Leah and, uh, Gary, for recommending this to us. Thank you to all of our patrons for, uh, selecting it. It was definitely on our list. We, I was super excited. Had very high hopes for this movie. Still glad to have seen it. Still enjoyed watching Daphne Zuniga up there.

Yeah. I mean, as well as like, uh, Vera Miles, you know? Yeah. I liked her. It was cool to see her in there. So yeah, there’s, it had a few things just, but anyway, this is why we watch these and this is why we value requests from you guys as well, cuz we’ll often get to see movies we wouldn’t have picked out by ourselves.

And that means that next week we’re gonna be doing The Funhouse, which is directed by Toby Hooper. Another film I haven’t seen, but uh, has been on my list for quite a while and I’m really excited to watch it. So we’ll see how that turns out. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please share it with a friend.

Uh, you can find us online just by googling two guys in a chainsaw podcast. Join our patron community and, uh, help us pick out these movies so we have nice little conversations going on, uh, on our Patreon page, patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. I’ve actually started posting some little snippets, little previews that you can see of the minisodes that we do, uh, a few times a month.

Just just to give you a little taste and maybe, uh, convince you that maybe you need to, uh, to become a patron. Support us, uh, join the community and get access to those full episodes that we put out every month. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.