Creepshow
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In 1982, horror icons George Romero and Stephen King collaborated to kick off the first in a franchise of beloved horror anthologies. With a star-studded cast and tongue planted firmly in-cheek, Creepshow translates the iconic horror comics of the 50’s to the silver screen with glee. We loved chatting about this iconic and legendary film and film series in the horror pantheon. Enjoy!
Creepshow (1982)
Ep 356, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, this week I just decided to pick one that I kind of wanted to see. We were a little under the gun the way that we record these episodes. Sometimes we do several in advance, which gives me a little bit of a break.
Or Craig a little bit of a break when we need it. And because we needed that break these last couple weeks, it has been a good solid two weeks, I think. Since you’ve seen this movie, and we chose it, and I chose Creepshow. I just chose it because I was kind of under the gun to choose something. It had been on my list.
We hadn’t done it yet. We’ve done Creepshow 2. But this is a long time favorite movie of mine. So, I was really happy to go revisit it. I probably saw this a dozen times as a kid. The first time I saw it, I know my dad rented it for me and watched it with me. And I might have been… A little younger than I think I would be renting it for my son.
You know? I think part of the reason why this movie really sticks in my brain is I was so young when I saw it, and so there were elements of this movie that at that time were, were more shocking to me than they, you know, obviously are now. But, you know, it comes from a great pedigree. It’s Stephen King is the writer.
A couple of these are based on his short stories. Other ones he just wrote up whole cloth from it. It’s based on my favorite, we’ve talked about it before. The EC horror comics from the 50s, and collaboration with George Romero, and did really, really well at the box office. It was Warner Brothers top horror movie for that year.
Once it came out, it knocked Rambo First Blood off the top spot in the theaters. So yeah, pretty impressive. But yeah, I haven’t seen this, oh God, in probably 15, 20 years, so I was real happy to revisit it. I see, I think that you and
Craig: I had totally opposite experiences because I grew up watching Creepshow 2.
I saw that when I was a kid. I don’t remember how old I was. You know, old enough to ride my bike to the video store and… Rent an R rated movie at like, 12, cause you know, they would let us do that back in those days. But I, I, the good old days. Is that good or
Todd: bad? Yeah. Those days are gone, I thought.
Craig: I don’t know.
Seriously, like, me and my cousins, you know, probably 12, 13 years old, we would, You know, ride our bikes to Mr. Movie or, you know, some other, like, local video place and be like, Yeah, our dad said it was fine. They just hand it over. Yeah, no big deal. Who cares? But so I grew up watching that movie and I really like that movie.
I don’t think I saw Creepshow 1 until I was an adult. I mean, at least a teenager, if not. College. And I think probably college and I haven’t seen it as many times. And probably just because I grew up with part two, I think I like part two better, right? You know, I was thinking about it and there are only three stories in part two.
Is that right? And there are
Todd: five here. Correct. Yeah. They had to cut it down to three based on budget constraints. So yeah, I
Craig: don’t know, for whatever reason also, you know, just. It’s part two, so it was made later, so, not much later, I mean it’s still 80s, but I don’t know. Something about part two just feels a little bit more polished to me.
The thing about this one is because there are so many stories, they happen so fast, and I don’t dislike that, but… It’s difficult to get attached to any characters. I mean, they’re, they’re just really… I just, even like Machine Gun Fire, these, these stories come at you. They start, they happen, they’re done, moving on.
Which, you know, that, that could… For many people, I think, be a positive thing, but it just made it a little bit difficult for me to get invested in any of the
Todd: stories. I think the tone of the of the two films is very different. The tone of this movie is, I would almost say, half jokey. You know?
They’re, they’re kind of cheesing it off. Dark
Craig: humor, but definitely jokey,
Todd: yeah. Yeah, dark humor, definitely jokey. They’re leaning hard into the horror comics. Like, I would say being even more faithful to those old horror comics than than the second movie. It’s a little more straightforward horror. This movie goes as far as to have transitions that look like, you know, comic strips moving and Which I love!
Yeah. Yeah. It was cute and it was fun. You know, these old horror comics, I’m not going to go off on them like I’ve done several times before, but one of the things, you know, they did upset parents at the time they were pushing boundaries and they had ghastly artwork in these in these stories. And one of the ways that they sort of self censored the colorists at the at EC Comics when they were coloring the artwork deliberately would tone down The gruesomeness by just making things, like a panel would be all blue.
So maybe there was like gore and stuff in the panel, but they would just paint the whole thing blue. So it wasn’t, it didn’t look like a bloody mess. There is a bloody mess being drawn there, but the coloring somehow… Mutes it a little bit and this movie I thought was kind of cute how it would do that, like when the gory scary scenes came in, it would do that like free that framing around it sometimes where it looks like you’re in a comic strip or there’d be some kind of artwork around them.
They would do it with
Craig: lighting. That’s right. And like, and. Practical lighting, which I thought was really cool, like, Randomly, the one that pops into my head is, one of the stories is The Crate, and at the very, very end, When some ghastly stuff is happening, Hal Holbrook is just, like, standing in, like, a stairwell, And it goes from, Realistic lighting to just these red lights come up behind him.
Yeah,
Todd: like someone flipped a switch like in the same shot. Yeah, it’s really cool. But it, but it’s not,
Craig: it’s not really an effect. It’s just, they just changed the lighting. Yes. But it makes it look like. A comic book sell and it’s cool. I really like stuff like that. There’s a lot of good stuff going on in this movie.
I don’t, I don’t want to insinuate that I don’t like it cause I do. I think it’s fun. I think there’s a lot of good stuff going on so much in fact that we should probably talk about
Todd: just like a lot of anthology stories do. There is a wraparound story. And this is actually I thought one of the more disturbing parts of the whole film, really.
Like, like, straightforward disturbing. But the wraparound
Craig: for part two is kind of disturbing, too, you know, with that kid who’s bullied and then he gets his revenge on the bully. It’s pretty dark, but this one is dark, too. Like, it opens up with, you know, a classic house with a jack o lantern at night. And the score even sounds like Carpenter’s score from Halloween.
I don’t know if they did that on purpose. They surely did.
Todd: Seems like deliberate homage with that jack o lantern in the window that looks suspiciously like that jack o lantern in the opening credits for Halloween. But
Craig: we open on a scene of domestic abuse where, like, this dad is just… Like, he’s furious at his son for reading trash comics, which just is so funny and quaint to me.
Like, I would think that any parent today would celebrate their kid reading anything.
Todd: That’s where we’ve come, you know?
Craig: The dad, he’s
Todd: like, I never saw such rotten crap in my life. Where do you get this shit? Who sells it to you? I’m talking to you young man. You want to answer me when i’m talking to you?
You remember who puts the freaking bread on the table around here,
Craig: don’t you? And then he goes on to kind of like summarize the stories that we’re going to be seeing. Yeah, and the kid Who, by the way, is played by Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son. Watching it this time around and looking into it, this is the first time that I realized that.
Even though, in retrospect, I’m pretty sure that in one of Joe Hill’s books, he talks about this. The filming of this movie and how you know, Romero was… And, of course, his own dad, but, you know, a real hero of his and really, you know, he respected… And admired and tried to emulate their storytelling.
And Joe Hill’s a great author, friends. If you haven’t read his stuff, read it. It’s fantastic. But the dad hits him,
Todd: right? Like, backhands him. The dad’s played by Tom Atkins. And yeah, he, he backhands on my, he, I think he whacks him with the comic book. And I read in the trivia that Stephen King was on set for this and he was kind of nervous about the whole thing.
And so was Romero. So I guess if you look really closely and pay attention, Joe is actually hitting himself and it was just such a quick shot that they cut away that you don’t quite notice it. So it’s so funny where even in the filming of this, they were a little nervous about the domestic violence bit because this is so typical King, right?
Oh yeah. Like. Every parent in the Stephen King story is, like, a horrible, abusive parent.
Craig: I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of more of a Wes Craven thing, but yeah, Stephen, Stephen King has it too. Oh yeah. The kid, the kid yells at his dad, I hope you rot in
Todd: hell! Oh my god, the dad’s cursing and swearing at him.
It’s crazy. It’s crazy.
Craig: And then, what I call the creep, what would you call it, the, the, Crypt Keeper type dude, whatever, he appears outside the window and in this iteration, It’s animated, right? God, it’s been like two weeks since I’ve seen this.
Todd: Well, at first, he appears outside the window as an actual, like effect.
Tom Savini did all the effects. Right,
Craig: Tom Savini did the effects, and that’s, you know, you don’t have to tell me much more than that about a movie. I’m, I’m down. He’s, he’s a math. So yeah, it’s a practical thing, but in part two, Tom Savini plays the creep and it’s very clearly, you know, a guy in a costume and in this it’s not, it’s more just like kind of a Halloween prop looking thing, which is what they went back to for the series that just came out on Shudder.
A couple of years ago, which maybe we’ll have time to talk about later. I don’t know, we’ll see. But then it we get the title, and it cuts into the first story, which is Father’s
Todd: Day. This is one that, that stuck with me for some reason. And I think just because as a kid I was sort of obsessed with thriller.
And this is very much like, you know, a corpse coming out of the ground kind of story. You’re in this elegant, beautiful, old family mansion. Out in the middle of the woods, and all of these nasty, horrible people.
Craig: Oh yeah, I have a family of snobs.
Todd: And and Ed Harris is a bit of an outsider here. I think he’s the husband of one of the women in this.
I don’t know all their names. There’s like Bedelia, Sylvia, Ed Harris plays a guy named Hank, another dude named Richard. But anyway, they’re, they’re there and it’s Father’s Day and they are… Awaiting the arrival of this woman Bedelia, I believe it’s her name. Ants Bedelia, yeah. And she’s a bit of a loony but there’s a good reason for it.
She
Craig: Pfft. that’s the thing. These stories are so simple. Like, there’s no nuance to them. No. Which is
Todd: Which is fine. They jump right in.
Craig: I mean, that’s what these Which I love. These comic book stories were like that. You tell an interesting story in three pages. There’s not a lot to it. But it’s That It’s still fun.
This
Todd: is actually the thing, you know, that the HBO Tales from the Crypt series changed, I think, you know, like, like most anthology movies are like this, right? If the movie’s only an hour and a half, and you’re gonna be telling four or five stories, Right! Those stories are relatively short, you get to the point quickly, and so did the comics, you know, it’s the same deal.
There’d be like five stories in one… Thin little comic book. Yeah, yeah. You know, plus a page of letters to the editor and pages with ads and stuff in it. And so, you know, they had to be short and quick and to the point, which I think is part of their skill. And this movie’s no different. It just, it has to be that way, whereas, like, the Tales from the Crypt TV show, and I think also this is why the sequel, it takes a little more time with the story, so you get a little bit more.
I mean, like, maybe three more minutes, more time with each story, but still, you get a little more connection, a little more involved in each of the characters. They seem more real, and just not so… Here’s the plot. It’s more of a plot thing than a character thing. But yeah, so all these people, like you said, are stereotypical, terrible people, and the older woman, I guess it’s…
The other aunt or the grandmother, I don’t know, is retelling a story. Her name is
Craig: Sylvia. Yeah. I think that she and Bedelia are sisters and their dad. Yeah, that’s it. Their dad, I have here, the father had had Bedelia’s lover killed. So Bedelia killed him.
Todd: Oh, really? Yeah.
Craig: I mean, if my notes are to be
Todd: believed…
As many times as I have seen this movie, all of that escapes me. Maybe because I just revert to what I took in as a kid. And I was like, there’s this horrible father, who’s super old and senile, who’s a dick to everybody, and all he does is… pound his cane on the table and say, I want my cake.
Craig: Oh my God.
That’s hilarious.
Todd: And for a brief minute, I thought that that was played. I looked at it three times before I realized it was not played by one of our favorite actors. Yeah. Right. You know who I mean? I think
Craig: so. The guy from creep show
Todd: two. Is that what you’re talking about? Yeah. Could have sworn it was him, but then I went to the IMDB and no, it’s just a guy who looks a lot like him in that hair and makeup.
But, you know,
Craig: it’s funny. The mom, Sylvia, is like the definition of like a wasp. I mean, she’s so waspy. Her name is Carrie Nye. And I was like, I know this woman and, and the thing that I’ve seen her in before, she was so waspy. What did I, and I finally figured it out. And this is so random, but sometimes I drop these little random nuggets and then people are like, Oh, I’ve seen that too.
Did you ever see the movie? Hello, again with Shelly Long.
Todd: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. My mom loved that movie. I love that
Craig: movie. I love Shelly Long, period. The end stop. But, like, that movie I loved so much. And this woman was in it playing a WASP y character just like she is in this one. She was, like, the hospital administrator’s wife or something.
And she broke the scandal, you know. Watch Hello Again. It’s a great flick. Anyway So Aunt Bedelia, Aunt Bedelia comes back, but like, and, she’s eccentric, I don’t know, she looks like, it’s so stereotypical that it’s difficult to describe, like one of those old lady characters who like wears everything she owns, like she,
Todd: she’s got like, John Lennon glasses on, huh, and
Craig: a hat and a shawl and like Tons of jewelry and like, it’s just ridiculous.
And she doesn’t even come inside. She just stumbles out to the dad’s grave and has colorful flashbacks about her horrible father, who on every father’s day would demand, where’s my cake, Bedelia?
Todd: And eventually, she picks up a, a marble ashtray and whacks him over the head with it and kills him. Yeah. And then, you know, as this story is being told to Ed Harris character, Hank, because he’s new to the family apparently, the other guy, I think his name is Nathan, who’s played by John Lormer.
Picks up the actual well, he says this is it. It’s rumored to be this one, right? It’s an actual marble ashtray, which we will go on to notice in each of the stories thereafter Oh, no, you won’t.
Craig: No, you won’t not unless you’ve read the trivia. No, Craig
Todd: you noticed I did. Oh my god. I would have never done this.
I did not read the trivia, I have seen this movie so many times and this was the first time ever that I was like, oh wait. The ashtray’s there, next to Stephen King. And then, I started looking for it. Cuz I was like, does this appear in every single one? Yeah, yeah. I I
Craig: knew about it and I had to look for it.
Cuz it’s blinking, you miss it. But yeah, it’s in that stupid ashtray.
Todd: It’s in every Give me some credit for this one, man. I know, I I was really proud for noticing that. Well, you should
Craig: be, cuz it it is You really have to look for it. But anyway, Crazy Aunt Bedelia is out at her father’s grave, and she’s drinking some whiskey, and she pours some whiskey on the grave.
Which causes the dad, apparently, to reanimate, and he comes out of the grave. Thriller style saying, where’s my cake, Bedelia? And then he kills Bedelia. I have it in my notes, but not before I have in my notes, Ed Harris and his wife dance like idiots.
Todd: It’s is that it’s that typical eighties dance party that every horror movie has, you know, kids, but
Craig: funny, like I can’t imagine. I don’t remember. Maybe people dance like that in the eighties. I was. Maybe I was too young. I don’t know, but like, it just looks, they just look so stupid. I also imagine in my mind, you know, in the making of these movies that they probably haven’t secured.
Any music rights, so they, they’re just
Todd: dancing to nothing, nothing
Craig: like idiots and it’s hilarious, but he goes out to smoke or something and he’s in the spooky graveyard and he finds dead Aunt Bedelia
Todd: and then he kind of falls down and then does nothing he’s, he lays
Craig: there and watches while a headstone slowly Tips over and
Todd: falls on him.
I don’t know why he didn’t move at all. I don’t know if he felt like if he moved he was gonna cause the headstone to fall faster or something. It’s pretty silly how he just sort of sits there and lets, lets that headstone fall on his head. But indeed it does. The bad guy stumbles off.
Craig: And he looks great, by the way, like he’s totally zombified and,
Todd: oh, really good.
Classic zombie, like, earthy, skeletal.
Craig: Like, moss hanging off,
Todd: like. Oh, I love this, love this. The
Craig: make up and effects, the make up and effects in this movie are, are great. Yeah. It’s like, super fun, like, to, like, throwback and very much in keeping with the tone and style of the character. comics. Like it looks fantastic.
Super, super fun to watch. But zombie dad then, you know, gets in the house and breaks into the kitchen. He breaks waspy Sylvia’s neck. And then the next thing, like the kids, her kids are like looking for her and, and they go, they open a door like to the kitchen or whatever. And the zombie guy is standing there with Sylvia’s head.
Frosted like a cake on a
Todd: platter. With candles and everything. I got
Craig: my cake! I got my cake! And then… And then it goes like that, that, you know, freeze frames and turns into an animated cell, which moves us on
Todd: to the next story. When I was a kid, this made an impression on me. I thought that was the creepiest, freakiest, most gruesome thing you could imagine.
The Father’s Day one? Yeah, and that last image of him with the head on the platter done up like a cake was yeah You know as an adult now, it’s it’s silly and it’s supposed to be you know, it’s it’s it’s the darkly humorous thing Stylistically, it’s probably
Craig: I would say probably the best one and and and the one that’s the nicest to look at like it’s It looks great.
You mean,
Todd: You mean, of the stories, you mean like cinematography
Craig: and everything? Yeah, cinematography and, and just the style, it, because, you know, it’s so, it’s, it’s dark, you know, it’s a dark, spooky mansion and graveyard, and it, it, it looks really good. The rest are more based. kind of in a reality. I mean, this, this feels like they’re not as gothic, right?
Gothic.
Todd: That’s, that’s it. I think what I like about this one is how varied the stories are because the second one, the lonesome death of Geordie Verrill, which stars Stephen King. And if I’m not mistaken, I think this is the most acting Stephen King has done in one movie, right? Like his biggest role. Yeah, it has to be.
Because usually he just pops in, he does these little cameos here and there. He’s a truck driver, he’s a priest or something. Gravedigger, right, yeah. Yeah, but in this, he is the only guy in this entire segment. And he is hamming it up. Like,
Craig: constantly. in the back of my mind, I have this fear that somehow Stephen King will listen to this podcast and he’ll hear me say things about him that I wouldn’t want him to hear me say because I have, like, I admire this man so much.
Like, I just think he’s an absolute genius. And beyond that, like, he’s just a great guy. He’s a really good guy. Oh my God. He is a terrible actor. Just
Todd: awful. He really is.
Awful.
Craig: Like, I get the, I get the novelty of putting him in cameos in his own movies, and I get the novelty of putting him in this role.
It’s hilarious, but he is just god awful. Yeah.
Todd: I mean, I give him a pass here, just because. I mean, I, I think they were intending to go way over the top with this character. Yeah, he was
Craig: directed this way. I, I fully believe. You know, and that’s another thing that we didn’t say before. Like, he and Romero just had such mutual admiration for one another that they just really wanted to work together.
Yeah. This was their opportunity to work together. And, and I really feel like… think that they, you know, really relished in this opportunity. And, and so here I think that they’re having fun. I think that Romero, you know, I, I read, you know, who knows if any of the things that we read are true, but I read that Romero directed him to play it like Wile E.
Coyote and he does like just, just big eyed and, and I mean, it is, it’s cartoonish and, and stupid, but. But funny. I thought it was
Todd: funny. I liked this one. This one is tonally just so different from even all the others. It is so over the top silly. It’s your classic meteor strikes in the woods, and it just happens to be by this total redneck cabin.
It’s the blob,
Craig: but moss.
Todd: Yeah! It’s the blob but green. It’s so true! Clearly they’re trying hard not to be the blob. But that’s exactly what it is. He walks out there, he looks at it, and All that’s missing really is the dog, y’know? The dog’s not there. But, he touches this meteor, and then immediately he gets these visions of how much he can sell this meteor for to the Department of Meteors at the local university.
In this utterly cartoonish flashba sort of dream sequences that he has. Right.
Craig: And when you say cartoonish, I I assume you mean much like… The style of the comics and I talked about this in, in addition, of course, to just being outlandish, but I talked about this when we did part two, there are parts of this movie that are shot so that it looks like a comic frame, right?
I mean, you, you feel when you’re watching this one in particular, you feel like you are reading one of those comics. It looks like it and, and the, the flash Not flashback, but like the, the fantasy sequences or the dream sequences, like it’s, it’s shot so that the camera is shooting from. A high angle, so it’s kind of
Todd: looking down.
And it’s cantilevered, and yeah, different angles and things. Right. Yeah,
Craig: you’re right. Right. And it looks, it looks very much like a cell from a comic, which I’m impressed. I mean, points for style. And, and those, those flashbacks, I keep saying flashbacks, they’re not flashbacks. The, the fantasy sequences where he’s You know, thinking about how much his life will change if he can sell this meteor for 200.
Todd: Yeah, 200. And, and
Craig: then, and then in real life, in real time, when he tries to get it and he breaks it and it, it opens up and all this ooze comes out or whatever. And then there’s the whole fantasy sequence about him, you know, being. With his tail between his legs trying to sell this broken meteor and, and being so disappointed.
It’s cute. And, and that’s, like, Stephen King plays it cute. He plays this guy, well, his name’s Jordy Verrill, it’s right there in the title. But he’s just like this simple country bumpkin. Yeah, not very bright. Who seems to be like the, the last of his clan. You know, he’s all alone in this little shack. In the middle of nowhere.
Yeah. He’s likeable. I liked him. Oh, you done it now, Geordie Barrel! You num
Todd: cat! Barrel luck’s always in. You spell that
Craig: kind of luck B
Todd: A D.
Craig: Still, I got to try. And I felt bad when he started to get covered in sores and, and, and mold.
Todd: As a kid, this one bothered me too, because one of the hallmarks really of these stories is generally speaking.
The bad guy gets what’s coming to them. Yeah, somebody will get murdered, but then the person who arranged the murder is gonna get an ironic comeuppance. And this story, this guy just did nothing wrong. He just stumbled across the meteor, he reached out and touched it, and then as he sits and watches TV, he’s sucking on his finger and he notices then that…
That there’s green growing on his finger, where he was, had touched a meteor. And he looks in the mirror and sees his tongue is turning green, where in, And then, of course, it just keeps going back to the outside. And we see that more and more green, There’s like a path of green growing from where the meteor was to his house.
And every time it cuts between what’s going on with him and the, what it looks like outside, it’s just, green is just overtaking everything. And it’s overtaking him. He doesn’t call the hospital. He initially calls the tries to call the hospital. But then he gets another one of his thoughts. Which is that if he goes there, the doctor’s gonna say, Oh, you’re gonna have to lose the fingers.
And he’s gonna cut off his fingers. And so, literally, the rest of the show is just watching him get more and more green until he’s a big mossy mess. Sadly, the last thing he does is shoot his head blow his head off with a shotgun. Yeah. It’s pretty dark. It is. And it’s and it’s
Craig: sad. Like, you’re right. This one does very much break the mold.
It’s usually bad people. I’ve said this a bazillion times. Not only do you not feel bad for them, but you relish in it. You know, you relish in them getting what’s coming to them. And, and this guy is a likable empathetic character. And so to All but see him blow his head off with a shotgun. Yeah. But we, we, you know, here we’re talking about like, Oh, isn’t that sad?
No, it’s, it’s comedy. No. It’s goofy. It’s
Todd: really ridiculous. Yeah. It’s goofy. And, and again, like the playing it like Wile E. Coyote tempers that, right? Yes. It makes it silly and ridiculous. You know, there’s a lot going on with the sound design in this one as well. The television is kind of on constantly, but of course we’re seeing different moments and so sometimes it’s a different show or whatever and so as Jordy’s walking around or we see what he’s doing, we can hear the soundtrack and oftentimes the dialogue of what’s being said in the show, either directly or indirectly, kind of references what’s happening in real life, and it’s just kind of cute.
I mean, it’s not That important, but it’s really smart. The way that that, that was all edited together and I really like that. And then the last bit of it, the ironic twist at the, at the end or whatever you want to call it, is just that we see that this green is going to be going way, way out and basically taking over the world because it’s going down the street.
All the way to Castle Rock. While the guy on the TV says something apropos.
Craig: Yeah. The next one is called Something to Tide You Over, and for whatever reason, this is the one that stands out to me. Like, this is the one that I remember the most vividly, and maybe it’s because it stars Two of the most recognizable people for me.
Ted Danson…
Todd: Mm hmm. It’s, it’s so…
Craig: Like, it’s so weird to
Todd: see Ted Danson… In a role like this? Yeah, I guess.
Craig: Serious? I don’t know. Like, Ted Danson is the guy from Cheers to Me. That’s who he is. To everybody.
Todd: Yeah. I don’t know. What else did he really do besides a
Craig: little bit here and then he was in, then he was in like the three men and a baby movies.
Yeah. Like, in those movies. He was just that guy from Cheers. Ha
Todd: ha ha ha ha ha.
Craig: Exactly. Reading about this and reading about some other things, I’ve, I’ve heard that everything I read just paints Ted Danson to be just this great guy. Like this is really funny guy that everybody likes and everybody likes working with.
But anyway, here he’s, he’s young and in his swanky apartment and, and somebody knocks on the door and he opens it and it’s Leslie Nielsen. Mm. Who is also great. And. He, he plays against type. Sort of. At least based on what I know him from here. Like, the, the stuff that I know Leslie Nielsen from is the Naked Gun stuff.
Yeah.
Todd: He’ll forever be known for doing these Frank Drebin comedic things. And he did a lot of comedic stuff later in life, but because my dad was obsessed with science fiction, old science fiction movies and things, I grew up watching Forbidden Planet. And he is One of the stars of Forbidden Planet, and he, in his younger years, and the guy was in his 70s or 80s when he was playing Frank Drebin, I mean, Yeah.
He had had a long career of playing the dashing leading man well before he jumped into being the older, comedic guy. Yeah. But yeah, but right here… He’s the older Leslie Nielsen, but he’s playing a very straight role. The older,
Craig: but like, the older, younger. Yeah. Like, he’s probably what, in his like, 50s, maybe early 60s here, and he’s still…
One of the things, I mean, even in the Naked Gun movies when he’s older, this guy is really handsome. And… He’s insanely handsome. And has like… Like, this guy has star power, like, leading man power. And he, he’s not playing it funny here, even though, I mean, the tone of this piece is pretty dark and pretty serious.
I guess he was really, you know, like, he really hammed it up on set. Like, he was, you know, playing jokes and goofing around all the time. And, what, did he have, like, a, like a, fart machine or something that he would set off like right before Romero would say action and crack Ted Danson up. I like, I just, I have these fantasies in my mind of these guys just having such a great time making this.
But anyway, Ted Danson is having an affair with Leslie Nielsen’s wife and Leslie Nielsen knows about it. You know, you ought to be grateful to
Todd: us. You know that? I mean, if you ever loved her, you don’t now. There won’t be any alimony, none of that community property shit. She just wants out. Well, I don’t know whether I ever loved you or not, Harry.
That doesn’t matter. The point is, I keep what is mine. No exception to that rule ever. No exceptions Harry.
Craig: And so he plays this recording of his wife begging Ted Danson for help, and Leslie Nelson’s like, well, you have to come with me if you want to savor. And then he takes him to the beach.
Todd: He’s got a beach house, apparently. And there’s a hole there. And a shovel. And he says, I want you to kneel in that hole and cover yourself with sand. And he’s like, What are you talking about? I’m not gonna do that. And he says, Oh, yes you are. He pulls a gun on him. And he says, I promise you, And I’m a man of my word, Once you do this, you can see.
Her. Yeah. Oh, was it Becky? Yeah, yeah. So he begrudgingly does this, and ends up buried up to his neck, basically, in sand. Only his head has popped out. Of the sand. And in the meantime, Leslie Nielsen leaves him there, comes right back with a long cord. It’s so cute, this old 80s technology. Oh my god.
Anyway, it must be from his house, I guess. Like, way
Craig: the hell up the street. His house,
Todd: yeah, like a giant spool of cable so that he can Bring in a television, plop it down in front of him and turn it on. And it is this Becky. Also buried with her neck up to her neck in water, but she, the tide is coming in and so the water is starting to splash in her face and it’s looking pretty dangerous.
And he says, this isn’t a recording, I’m recording it for later, but this is a live feed and you can see if she’ll be able to make her way out of it. And so he leaves him there. And he says you know, if you’re lucky, you just need to hold your breath really, really well and maybe the tide will free you instead of bury you.
And then he leaves and eventually the tide comes in and it shorts out the TV and then Ted Danson holds on as much as he can. There’s this really awesome shot where the water comes over him fully and we see this underwater shot and He’s, I don’t know, God, it’s like at least 10 seconds of him struggling and obviously he’s going to drown.
That
Craig: made me very anxious. I have no idea how they shot that because all you see is, you know, Ted Danson’s head above the sand. Underwater. But, but like the, the tide coming in and hitting his face. Face like, Oh yeah. Right. Like that. Gosh, it just, I mean, even putting myself in the shoes of an actor, that would make me so anxious, just filming that even knowing I was safe, just something, you know, the water rushing at your face and covering your mouth and nose, it would make me very, it made me think of
Todd: waterboarding.
Yeah. It was worse,
Craig: but Leslie Nielsen just gleefully watches them
Todd: die. Yeah. From from the safety of his house where he’s got this almost James Bond villain. Yeah Pushes a button a painting slides up and he’s got six monitors there each trained a different security camera on his house and he just flips two of them so that he can watch both of Them go right because he’s got a camera set up on him as well.
Yeah
Craig: Yeah. The last thing that Ted Danson says before he dies is I’m going to get you Richard. But then Leslie Nielsen goes out there. Richard is Leslie Nielsen, obviously. Leslie Nielsen goes out there the next day and Harry’s body is gone. And then he’s back at his bond pad. He hears a noise. He I’m like, Ooh,
Todd: Leslie
Craig: Nielsen getting
Todd: God, I was laughing so hard. Oh god, that I
Craig: didn’t even think, like, I totally noticed it like, Oh, I guess he’s just not going to like wash his hair. And like, obviously, I’m sure that was done for cinema. Like don’t get your hair wet. Cause we’re going to, we’re going to have to do more than one take. And
Todd: I’m not sure.
Leslie Nielsen looks is dashing with a mop of gray,
Craig: like a drowned rat. Right? No. So here’s the noise we see. I think before he sees anything, we see like these lumbering shadows, but as it turns out. It is the Drowned Zombies of Harry and Becky and they look like drowned zombies. They’re like, they got seaweed and they’re all bloated and gross and it’s great makeup.
It’s pretty awesome
Todd: actually. Yeah, it looks
Craig: fantastic. And he’s trying to shoot them and Teddias says, You can’t shoot us, cause we’re already dead. Yeah.
Todd: That was a little disappointing. Oh, I think it’s so funny,
Craig: cause I can just picture it, I can picture the cell and that written down
Todd: below. Well, I love the effect that when he shoots…
them. It’s like a burst of seawater comes pouring out. That’s funny, I forgot about that. I love that bit. Oh man, when I was a kid, that, that really sold the whole thing for
Craig: me. And the very end of it is that we see him buried up to his neck in the sand and the tide coming in, but him saying, I can hold my breath for a really long time.
And apparently there was Like I don’t remember. I think they filmed it. Did you read this? There was an alternate ending to this one where when the zombies came, he called the cops and the cops came and of course didn’t find any zombies. And he’s like, but wait, I have it on tape. And he puts in the tapes, but it’s not tapes of the zombies.
It’s tapes of the people being murdered. And so they take him off to jail and it ended with him in the gas. Chamber saying I can hold my breath a really long time.
Todd: That’s cute.
Craig: It’s cute. I like this. I prefer this. This is simpler. I like the visual of people being buried up to their neck in sand.
Todd: It’s more fun.
Ted
Danson actually talked about how they filmed him underwater because I was super curious about that. And they just had a little aquarium tank. And a yoke, you know, they just put this over his head, basically. And the top of this yoke, you know, is filled with sand or whatever. He’s in a wetsuit. And then they just filled it up with water, and they had a guy with a breathing tube.
Reach it down in there, and then, you know, call action. Pull the tube out. And then he could do as much as he could stand. of being underwater. That would still feel really… I know!
Craig: I love, I, I love, I love the water. I, I love being in the water, but being out of control, you know, being, your
Todd: life in someone else’s hands.
Yeah,
Craig: put your, yeah, I was gonna say at the mercy of, but yeah, putting your life in somebody else’s hands, that would make me very nervous.
Todd: Yeah. For sure. Well, I think the only thing that would make me feel good is, I’m pretty sure even if you kneeled down and pulled the sand in around you, you could probably free yourself pretty frickin easily from that sand.
Yeah. Your arms are not deep enough in this sand for you to not be able to pull them up and… I don’t know.
Craig: Sand’s pretty heavy. I don’t know. Anyway, alright, the next one, I would guess, is maybe the most famous of these. Like, I feel like, when people talk about this movie, this is the one they talk about. Mm hmm.
It’s
Todd: called The Crate. Oh, God. This was my favorite one, up until today. I saw it again today, like, again, for years. This one was my favorite one, and it’s not anymore. But it’s a close second. Why? Oh, I love it. Don’t get me wrong. I love it. But actually, you’re gonna laugh at me. I thought the last story just spoke to me a little better now as an adult.
Oh my god. Than than this one. And as a kid, I thought the last story was, like, dumb. I still
Craig: think it. I mean, it’s not, it’s not dumb. It’s just boring. But no, talk about, talk about the
Todd: crate. Oh, God. This Adrienne Barbeau is the most annoying, brash woman possible, and she’s got this husband who is played by Hal Holbrook.
Yes, God. And he, he barely talks because he can’t get a word in edgewise. And he’s long ago, stopped trying. He’s clearly this sort of loveless marriage and they are university professors and they’re having a little party at this university grounds or whatnot. And the guy who’s playing the other professor is Fritz Weaver, who was the university professor and re animator.
Right. Oh gosh, probably, I don’t know. Yeah anyway, they’re having this chat, and so you kind of get to see her character, and obviously the takeaway here is that her character is really, really mean and annoying. She embarrasses him at the party, she embarrasses everybody else, everybody’s embarrassed for him.
And if Dex Stanley hadn’t had his teeth capped, he’d have been out on his ass years ago. So when Parker told me that I was out of line, I told him he oughta get laid. I mean, Parker, I said. If you just have your ashes hauled, you wouldn’t have to spend all this time playing Emily Vanderbilt. Or, Emily Van Buren.
Whoever that etiquette crotch is. And he is having fantasies throughout this segment of killing her, but then he snaps to reality again. It’s kind of cute. It’s one of those fake out moments, you know, where she’s putting him down and he whips out a gun and he shoots her in the forehead and you’re like, holy shit, and then you realize it’s his fantasy.
In the meantime, while this is going on, there’s a night watchman, or janitor I should say, inside the university who is cleaning up and is flipping a coin, and it falls and rolls underneath this stairwell that’s kind of caged up, like the under part of the stairwell. And so he kind of pries this cage up and sees that there’s a crate inside.
That’s, like, dated from 1850 something or 60 something. And it says, Arctic Expedition on it, shipped to such and such university. It’s chained up, and it’s nailed up, and like, I mean, it’s a find, right? Yeah,
Craig: I think that it said, shipped to the Arctic, care of somebody. Carpenter, which, which was, which was a nod to John Carpenter’s The Thing, and John Carpenter was married to Adrienne Barbeau
Todd: at this time.
Oh! I didn’t realize that.
Craig: Yes. And I want you to carry on, but I just wanted to interject to say that Adrienne Barbeau is fantastic in this segment. She’s
Todd: always fantastic. She is so good. Adrienne Barbeau, you know, it’s, it’s like, it’s her as you hadn’t really seen her, right? Like, she’s just annoying.
Usually she’s kind of hot and bombshell y and sexy and stuff. And here, she is annoying and crass. And she’s great at it. Oh, she’s
Craig: so good. I just thought she was fantastic. Shrew isn’t the right word because she’s, she’s obnoxious. She’s loud. I, I think the reason that it’s so effective is because you believe this is a person that you would meet.
Who is so oblivious. To how obnoxious she, I mean, like she thinks she’s hilarious. She thinks that everybody is amused by her, humiliating her husband all the time. Mm-hmm. , like, she’s just completely unaware of. The fact that everybody else is viewing her in such a negative way, and she just totally goes for it.
I thought she was great. And Hal Holbrook is great. It’s weird to see, like, I don’t even know. I think Hal Holbrook just kind of has this southern gentility that I’m surprised to see him in a movie like that. Like, why aren’t you like in Gone with the Wind? What are you doing
Todd: in this movie? What are you doing in this silly horror movie?
But he’s
Craig: good, I mean, and he does a good job playing the beaten down
Todd: husband. I mean, they’re obviously cartoonish versions of them, but I know people who are just two steps away from this. I know couples like this. It’s really believable that this guy is just, I mean, they’ve probably been married for decades.
Right. You know, they’re just in a rut, and he’s about had it with her, and everybody kinda knows it, but what are you gonna do? You know? Divorce? Who’s gonna bother to do that? Not in the movies! We don’t divorce in the movies. We kill each other. Right.
Craig: So it’s ve it’s convenient for him that this janitor finds this crate underneath the staircase.
that has a century year old monster. Right. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Todd: who really just wants to go back to his crate. Which is the funny thing about it. I know. Leave that guy alone, he was fine!
Craig: He wasn’t bothering anybody. He was just napping.
Todd: Come on! The janitor calls Dexter. Not Henry, but the other guy. Who is…
Flirting a little bit with some of his students at the party, which I thought was a little funny. This very old, very old guy! Flirting with these cute little girls who seem to be coming on to him, which was kind of funny. Anyway, he goes and and they together pull out the crate. Him and the janitor, and they start to open it up.
It’s real tense, I just It’s
Craig: tense, but it was also like painfully slow. Like, it does not take this long to open a crate. Like, just, just do it. Like, like, quit screwing around. Just do it.
Todd: Right. They pry it open by like a half an inch, and then they close it again, so that they can pop the nails up and pry up every nail from it.
Like, yeah, it’s hilarious. But… I just love the way this is structured, because you know there’s gonna be something bad in this crate. And there is indeed something bad in this crate. There’s they look inside, they can see the monster’s eyes. The janitor reaches his arm inside the crate before the top is even completely open.
And immediately something’s chomping on his arm, which he falls on the floor, and the crate kind of tips over on the table with him, so it’s… It’s still, like, the lid’s not off of it yet, but it’s kind of ajar. And that’s facing the, the ground, whereas he’s kind of sitting here with his arm up in it.
Well, Dexter looks on with horror as this guy gets his arm gets chomped on, and he gets pulled up into the crate and eaten by this monster. Now, You know, the physics of all this, we don’t even need to worry about, I mean. Even somebody mentions, I think later Henry mentions, Does the monster really eat all those guys?
Where do they go? I don’t know. So he gets eaten, so he is freaked out by this. And he runs out and there’s a student in the dark and… Callway of this closed building who happens to be wandering by who he grabs and the student’s like, oh Maybe you’re a little crazy And and maybe we don’t want to call the campus police just yet while you’re crazy so I’m gonna go down there and investigate too and he sees the smears of blood and They see that the crate is back underneath the staircase And so the student goes in to look at the crate, but the monster’s not in the crate He’s next to the crate and he leaps out and he gets the student as well Yeah, it’s been
Craig: so long that I frankly don’t remember but I have in my notes fun effects like so the effects The effects must have been good here.
I I do remember it like lots of blood and a lone foot
Todd: The student wanted to get that because the the sneaker or whatever the janitors was still there. It was the only thing left of him sitting outside the crate. And he’s like, I just want to get this so that we could measure the bite marks.
Craig: Well, and, and maybe, maybe this is, maybe I have fun effects because maybe this is the first time that we get a good look at the monster who they on set playfully nicknamed fluffy.
And it, it, it’s kind of got. Baboonish look to it, but like a monstrous baboon designed by Tom Savini. This was the first fully animatronic thing that Savini had ever made. And I really, I like it. Like in hindsight, like from a 2023 perspective, it’s. Potentially a little bit quaint, but it’s so, I want to say cute, but I don’t mean that in a derogatory way.
Like it’s a, it’s a fun little monster and you know, it rips
Todd: people apart. It’s like a 50 style Arctic monster. It’s just been amped up slightly, you know, for the 80s, I think. It’s got these ra just a long line of razor sharp teeth. Yeah. You don’t get really long, lingering shots of it, either. It’s all quite quick.
No, no, it’s quick. And so that helps. But I like it.
Craig: It’s, it’s, it’s cool. Like, it lives in a box. Yeah. It’s not like, you know, this huge monster. It’s something that can fit in a 3×3. Crate, but it’s funny. I, I liked it. Anyway, it kills Charlie and then professor num, number two runs off to Henry and tells him about it and like a light bulb goes off over Henry’s head.
So he drugs professor number two and then leaves a note for Wilma. That’s like professor number two got into some trouble and I’m trying to clean up after him. Meet me at the university. Of course, she’s all like, Oh, my stupid husband who can never do anything by himself. I guess I have to do everything.
But, you know, she’s like proud of herself for it. Like patting herself on the back. Oh,
Todd: and he also makes it very salacious. Like he, you know, he got in trouble with some student. Now she’s like crying and you’re really good at this. You can help. So she’s also likes, you know, loves the scandal of it all.
Craig: Right, right, right, right. And so he lures her there. He tells her that this girl. Is crying under the stairs. It’s such a weird scene because she is more concerned about berating him. Like, she doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about this girl. Or what has happened to her, or whatever. Of course, it’s all a big ruse.
And he pushes her under there and chains her to the crate. At which point, she continues to berate him for like, A minute. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a little… Just screaming at him.
Todd: It gets a little kooky here, a little unbelievable, a little what’s the word I’m looking for? Contrived. Like, he pushes her under there, you know, she can see there’s no girl there, but she doesn’t seem to care.
She just wants to yell at him, and she tells him everything from, you know, you’re worthless, you can’t do anything, to you can’t even get it up in bed. Oh, right, yeah. And then, boom, jump scare, which did get me. In the middle of berating him, the monster springs out of the crate behind her, and takes her in.
He very gingerly, in a bit of a tense scene as well, comes back and manages to chain the crate up. Get the locks back around the chains. Pull the crate out into his car and take it to a ravine that has, I guess, a pool of water at the bottom of it. And toss it off the ravine. Presumably drowning the monster inside the crate.
And leaving no trace of any of these bodies. So, I can keep a secret if you can, professor. And we’ll just play chess every day for the rest of our lives. But the last shot is of the monster underneath the water. And apparently he can breathe underwater because you see these eyes. Well, I was glad.
Craig: He, I didn’t want the
Todd: monster to die.
I didn’t either, poor little guy. Just wanted to be in his crate. Now he doesn’t even have a crate to be in. Jeez.
Craig: Jerks. Yeah, and then it comes to the last one, and you’re gonna have to explain to me the appeal of this one, because I don’t get it. It’s just one of the grandpas from National Lampoon’s…
Christmas vacation in his sterile, kind of futuristic apartment and he hates bugs and then his house is infested with bugs. That’s it.
Todd: He’s a Howard Hughes guy. You know, Howard Hughes famously kind of like lived out the rest of his days in a penthouse apartment, complete germaphobe, letting his fingernails grow long, wouldn’t let anybody touch him or anything like that, and kind of went a little nuts, right?
And this is basically that guy. He’s in this completely pure isle, white, sterile penthouse apartment with almost no furniture, but a lot of 80s futuristic stuff where… You know, he can talk to people on his phone on different lines and there’s an intercom there. There’s a little vacuum machine that every time he blows his nose or uses a napkin or whatever, he can just put it in this little hole, push a button, and it gets sucked away.
But, he found a bug, a big cockroach, and he has a little spray can, and he’s obsessed with getting the bugs out of his apartment. In the meantime, he’s also in the midst of having these conversations with people on the phone, and you realize he’s like a major douche. Like an evil Elon Musk, in a way. He’s talking about his stock prices and what he did there, and then there’s a man who died on one of his boards and he’s actually, he killed himself because of him somehow, and he’s actually pretty thrilled about it because then, you know, he’s kind of out of the way, and then his widow calls him and berates him for it, and he kind of taunts her, and is mean and nasty to her as well.
In the meantime, he’s walking around and these bugs are just showing up everywhere, and the reason I like this so much… I don’t know, I like that, like, slightly, like, classist thing about this. This guy is a arrogant, corporate, millionaire, billionaire dude who is holding himself up away from the world while he’s continuing to enact his mayhem down below on all these poor people.
Right. He’s afraid of the bugs, and the bugs are gonna do him in at the end. And I don’t know, I just, number one, I like that. And I think I appreciate that more as an adult than as I did as a kid. The other thing I thought… Was it from a pacing perspective? I thought this was the most masterfully paced and edited segment in the whole bit.
Oh, that’s hilarious because
Craig: I have like a quarter of a page of notes on this segment. I remember nothing about it I have no idea what my notes mean because I remember nothing about it. But the one note that I can understand is, segments should have been much shorter. No!
Todd: To be honest with you, like, I felt, you know, you had said earlier, oh, these things blow right through you.
I kind of felt that all of the ones up to this one were a little plotting. Like, if they had been done today, I think that shots would have been faster, things would have been a little more tight and we wouldn’t have dwelled so much in certain aspects that, you know, I thought it was a sort of old fashioned building of suspense, like, we do a little bit our job nowadays of it.
But this one, I felt just move, flew right along by. And it just gets you with this sterile white environment, him doing the thing with the bugs, the stuff that he’s talking about with these people on the machine, it’s like two different stories kind of playing out simultaneously. Him with the bugs and what he’s been doing with these people in the business world and how they’re reacting.
I don’t know man, I just, I just really liked it and I, and I think bugs are creepy. Yeah. And they’re real and this could theoretically happen whereas none of the other stuff could theoretically happen and it is so disgusting. Oh my god,
Craig: I suppose it could happen that Bazillions of cockroaches could infest your house all at once and kill you.
I suppose that could
Todd: happen Yeah, that could happen. What can’t happen is people coming out of the grave, you know Reanimated monsters in a crate for over 200 years. No, I think this one
Craig: is Comes closer than any of the others to having the tiniest shred of social commentary. Like, here’s this rich, powerful guy who sits up in his pristine palace in the sky and looks down upon the bugs of society.
Yeah.
Todd: It’s ham fisted, but it is nonetheless, you know, I liked that social commentary aspect. And I thought it was kind of prescient, honestly, because aren’t we all kind of bitching about this right now? So yeah, I liked seeing him get what was coming to him, and I thought this was the most gruesome of all of them.
I have
Craig: that. That’s my last note. Disgusting bug body shot. What is it? Did they just, like, eat him?
Todd: No, like, he kind of collapses. It’s like the bugs are getting into his clothes, and it looks like they’re maybe getting into his mouth. Ew. And he collapses as the room is literally filling up with bugs.
Almost like a pool will fill up with water. And he is laying down on the ground, and suddenly the bugs, like, you see, like, a little bladder effect in his, in his forehead. You see some bugs start to crawl out of his mouth. And then you see his chest expand. And you literally see from under his skin, the bugs bursting out.
Just en masse, and cooing everywhere. And it looks absolutely disgusting. It’s, it’s the most gruesome thing that we’ve seen so far. Even the crate Thing which had the potential to be really gory and had these close up scenes these people sort of getting eaten The reality is once that color washes over all of it And I think they deliberately made the blood a little bit more watery or something.
So it almost didn’t even show It’s just like something wet like those scenes They they’re not as gory as most movies that we watch are right, but this this sequence was In your face, bugs bursting out of someone’s skin. That was gross.
Craig: I found it fascinating that literally the bugs were the most expensive thing on this movie.
Right? The biggest part of the budget went to these Roaches. Hundreds of thousands of roaches at like 50 cents a pop or something like that? That’s
Todd: nuts.
Craig: Ridiculous! Crazy! Hundreds, I think over 100, 000 spent on roaches.
Todd: Wild! I loved this one. Again, I liked all the other ones as much, and I told you before the crate was…
My favorite one, and still is a, is a close second, but I think I’m just coming at things from a different angle nowadays, and I just really appreciated the pacing and the filmmaking and the everything about this last one. I thought it was the most skillfully done, even though it was definitely… the simplest.
All right. To be
Craig: fair, in case anybody’s interested in backstory, Todd sent me this movie and I watched it at, but it cut off right before this last segment. And so you then sent me the last segment later, but I watched it like in the middle of the night. Like I woke up in the middle of the night and I was, I was You know, I couldn’t sleep, so I was like, Well, I’ll just knock out that segment really quick.
And so I just, like, three in the morning, I just sat in my living room and watched it, and then went back to bed. So, I, I just, I have no memory of it.
Nor do I really have any memory of the end cap. What I have is We’re back to Billy’s house. Garbage men see the comic that the dad had thrown away in the trash. They see it and they see an ad for a voodoo doll.
Todd: Dad wakes up in the morning and he’s downstairs having breakfast. He’s like, Oh man, I had a hard time sleeping last night.
I got this stiff neck. And she’s like, Oh really? That’s, that’s strange. And then he goes, Ah, like there’s another wincing pain. And you see Billy upstairs with this. Maniacal smile and these wide eyes grinning from ear to ear as he is stabbing this voodoo doll over and over and his dad is like, in pain. I don’t know, you know, if he kills him, who knows?
I don’t know, it’s pretty dark. Dark as hell. As a kid, that stood out to me as well. How could this kid do this to his dad, you know? Especially, he’s a monster, you know, he’s so terrible, but… His dad was also a dick. Yeah, he was. I, I mean, I love this movie. I like it more than Creepshow 2, just because the variety of stories, I like the tone of it, I like the goofiness, the intentional goofiness of it.
It’s just got all these stars. It’s just star studded. And that’s fun, too. I mean, this super young Ed Harris, and this… This, this just striking Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen, like, it’s just awesome. I love Creepshow 2. I love it. I also, I saw it in high school for the first time, and I had the tape, and my friends and I would also watch that religiously.
But I just, I thought like, bang for the buck, I thought the first Creepshow resonated with me a little bit more. It’s good. I was real happy to revisit it, yeah. It’s
Craig: a good movie. And it’s, it’s, it’s fun to watch two guys who, you know, really are icons of the genre playing together. That’s just so much fun, like Romero and Stephen King just playing and having a good time.
And I think commercially this is the most successful anthology film ever. You know, it’s not like it’s pioneered the genre, but I think In the 80s, it kind of revived the genre a little bit. And so then of course we got Creepshow 2, and we got Cat’s Eye, and Tales from the Dark Side. And we’ve talked about a bunch of times how much we enjoy these anthology films.
And I honestly think that I just like Part 2 better because I saw it first, and I was young, and it made an impression on me. But this, this is a really good movie. And this, this is required reading.
Todd: For the court. Yeah.
The two guys in a chainsaw film studies class have this. This is in there somewhere, for sure. Well thank you again for listening to another episode, if you enjoyed it please share it with a friend. You can find us online just by googling Two Guys in a Chainsaw Podcast, find us in our social media pages or our website, just leave us a note, let us know what you thought of this episode and what you would like us to do in the future.
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