Prison (1987)

Episode 479, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week I pulled something out of the ether for us. It- this just came across one of my Facebook… Are, are you in any of these, like, Facebook fan pages or anything about, like, horror in general, horror fans, or anything like that?

Craig: Maybe a little. I don’t know. I mean, I try to keep up with stuff, but yeah, I see some of those posts. 

Todd: Yeah, I get these posts, and a, a couple of these pages I’m part of anyway, they’ll pull up some of these old movies and s- show about 10 little screenshots of them and have a little write-up about it, and oftentimes it’s stuff that I haven’t ever heard of before, just very, very obscure films.

And a few days before we were trying to decide what to do, this came across my feed. It is 1987’s Prison, and a few things about it stood out, not the least of which that it was directed by Renny Harlin, and it was directed by Renny Harlin just, like, a year or so before he did Nightmare on Elm Street 4.

And so that perked my interest, and then I saw that w- one of the guys who’s credited as a writer on here, even though I… Does– looks like he had the story more than actually did the actual writing, is, uh, Irwin Yablans, who was a producer for John Carpenter. He produced, uh, the original, the, the Halloween movies, basically.

Tourist Trap, and some of these movies that we’ve done. And, uh, so that, that, that piqued my interest. And then I went through the cast list after looking it up on IMDb, and I was like, “Oh my God. How have I never heard of this movie before?” So, I, yeah, I s- I said, “Craig, we gotta do this this week,” and you were like, “Cool, let’s do 

Craig: it.”

Yeah, I had, I had never heard of it either. And- 

Todd: Right? 

Craig: I don’t know if I’m really surprised by that because- 

Todd: I 

Craig: mean, I, I, I mean, ultimately, like, it’s nothing to be super excited about. It’s fine. 

Todd: Sure. 

Craig: But there are tons of people who would go on to be big stars, and then also just a lot of people that you’ve seen in everything.

Todd: So many. Yeah. So many. It was nuts. Again, Viggo Mortensen- 

Craig: Mm … 

Todd: one of his first roles, and he’s looking fricking hot in this movie. 

Craig: It- I mean, come on. God. 

Todd: To 

Craig: be, to be… Look, I never, I, I, I’ve never been, like, an exercise guy. I’ve never been, like, a fitness guy. But even just to be, like, in your 20s again and just- Uh-huh

like, your body’s the best that it’s ever gonna be, and that’s what he looks like in this movie, and it’s amazing. Right? And he looks like he is an exercise guy. 

Todd: He does. He’s just as chiseled as he’s ever been. Yeah. That jawline and the hair- Oh, boy … that is always perfect. The 

Craig: eyes, 

Todd: everything. This guy. And, and he’s playing it to a T.

He’s a prisoner in this prison, and all he does is, like, broodingly look around- Broods … and 

Craig: stare off. That’s all he does. All he does in the whole movie is brood. 

Todd: Right? 

Craig: And then in the end, he kind of fights and stuff. But, like- Yeah. … there’s not really any acting going on here. 

Todd: No. It’s- 

Craig: And that’s fine. 

Todd: Yeah.

He doesn’t need to do any more. 

Craig: BTW, he is in his underwear or naked for, like, 85% of the movie. 

Todd: Yeah, pretty much. Oh. And 

Craig: that, and that’s 

Todd: okay. It’s something else. Yeah, it, I don- I mean, who would complain about that? This guy’s a specimen of a man, this guy. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s 

Todd: great. And this is how many years before…

You know, I, I don’t know if anybody was really paying that much attention to him before Lord of the Rings, right? Lord of the Rings was kind of his biggest… He was doing shit before that. 

Craig: He was. 

Todd: Was he in TV? Was he in soap operas and things? I don’t 

Craig: know. I think so. I don’t remember. What I do remember is that he barely got that part.

Somebody else got cast in it and did… You know, you know, they met in New Zealand months before they even started filming to, like- 

Todd: Mm … 

Craig: do stuff. I don’t know. And somebody else was cast in the role. And then just days before they started shooting, whoever they cast in that role wasn’t working, and they called him in.

Todd: Mm. 

Craig: And he came in and did it without any of that. That’s- 

Todd: And if I remember correctly, this was a thing that he was even kind of back and forth about, and one of his kids or somebody had said, “Oh my God, Lord of the Rings dad, y- you’ve got to be in this show,” ’cause he didn’t really know that much about it.

I may be conflating this with another story, but I could swear that it was one of his kids who kind of pushed him over the edge to, to kinda go ahead and accept it and little, little would he know. But I’m looking back. He was in Carlito’s Way, which I know in ’93 got lots of Academy Awards. I don’t, I don’t know what role he had in that.

And then he was in Crimson Tide as well. That was a big one. So he was in a few things. He was in G.I. Jane and the remake of Psycho in ’98. So yeah, I guess he did- He did a handful of, uh, pretty big movies before that. But I mean, I don- I, I mean after that 

Craig: He’s very, very handsome, and he’s a good actor, so- 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: good for him. I’m, I’m glad. Yeah. It, it’s, it’s funny to see him in this. It’s funny to see him in this because he really doesn’t have a whole lot to do. 

Todd: No, surprisingly. 

Craig: He’s kind of the hero of the movie, but really all he has to do in this movie is be very handsome. Like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: that’s, that’s kind of it. The, the movie ultimately ends up being so convoluted that I can’t even handle it.

Todd: Yeah. It’s like there is no hero in this movie. You’re right, he’s, like, the closest thing we’ve got, but the movie doesn’t really focus around… It doesn’t have a clear-cut protag- I mean, I guess he’s the closest thing. The protagonist is kinda the antagonist, although the antagonist is kind of a ghost, I suppose.

But wh- what would you say? 

Craig: I, I would say that Burke, Viggo Mortensen, is kind of the protagonist by accident because… And I guess you could say that of any kind of haunted house movie, which I suppose this is. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: It’s just, it’s a haunted prison. 

Todd: And 

Craig: it’s all very silly. It starts in the past. Does it?

Todd: Yeah, and this is one of my criticisms of the movie, is that it does set us up, but it doesn’t do a very good job. Because normally a movie like this where there’s some ghost or something that’s gonna be coming back and haunting people, you get a setup, right? Like a flashback to the past so that you have at least some idea.

You might not have all the pieces. You might not know their name. You might not know all the motivations, but you get something kind of like a clear wrong that has been committed or something like that, that this ghost is gonna come back and take vengeance on. And again, you might not know exactly what it is, but- 

Craig: Right

Todd: that’s sort of the responsibility, I think, of the setup, is to make a clear incident. And our setup is just a guy getting executed. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: And everybody is creeped out by it. It doesn’t explain anything more than that. And so the whole movie, when it becomes clear that whoever this guy was who got executed, whi- which by the way, we never see his face.

Craig: Right. 

Todd: Right? 

Craig: Yes, we do. Yes. 

Todd: It’s POV for most of it, right? In the beginning. 

Craig: Right, right, right. It- I mean, when you say never, eventually we do. 

Todd: Yeah, well, like- 

Craig: This is supposed to be the big mystery. Ah. It’s not even a mystery. It’s just silly, and I don’t even feel bad for just blowing it right out of the gate This guy that gets electrocuted in the very beginning who you don’t see because his face is covered with, like, a handkerchief or something- 

Todd: Uh-huh

Craig: looks just like Viggo Mortensen. 

Todd: Uh? 

Craig: Stuff… You don’t remember that? 

Todd: No. Okay. 

Craig: I feel like you missed a big part of the plot. 

Todd: I must have. 

Craig: Later on, when Katherine, there’s a lady named Katherine. I don’t know. She audits prisons or something. I don’t know. Yeah. What does she do? She’s just around. 

Todd: Yeah, she’s there, uh, d- doing w- office work.

Yeah. 

Craig: She audits prisons or something. I don’t know. She’s around. She’s the o- I think the only woman in the movie. But later on she does research, and she goes to the library, and she looks at newspapers, and she sees the guy that was executed, and it looks just like Viggo Mortensen. 

Todd: Oh, by coincidence. Right?

Craig: Is it? I don’t know. Like, the movie doesn’t explain it. That’s what frustrates me because… Gosh, I feel like I’m blowing everything. I don’t know how to talk about- 

Todd: It’s okay … 

Craig: this movie. 

Todd: W- No, I think we need to get out what we know about it because I think what we’re mostly gonna be talking about is what happens.

But there’s no m- mystery unraveling as the movie unfolds. It’s just a bunch of ghostly things. 

Craig: It’s all just prison and dead lights and… 

Todd: Yeah, yeah. Ugh. Well, my understanding is that, say, like, in the beginning when we have this very dramatic, by the way, very well shot sequence- The 

Craig: whole movie is very well shot.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I will give it that. And I like Renny Harlin. I really do. Renny Harlin makes entertaining movies. They may not be amazing, but they’re always entertaining. 

Todd: Yeah, Cliffhanger. 

Craig: Big fan of Renny Harlin. 

Todd: Uh, Nightmare on Elm Street 4 was shortly after this. Uh, he did Cutthroat Island, which, you know, wasn’t a, a big success, but it was- 

Craig: Did he do The Last Kiss Goodnight or- 

Todd: Yes.

Craig: I ******* love that movie 

Todd: Yeah, everybody loves that movie 

Craig: With Geena Davis. Oh, it’s so good 

Todd: It’s just a huge action fest of crazy- 

Craig: So good. 

Todd: He lived in China for a while and was shooting movies here. 

Craig: I know. I feel like there was a very brief moment in time where there was a slim opportunity that we might have been able to talk to him, and we missed it.

Todd: It wasn’t even slim, it was just, like, we, we didn’t… We, we had a mutual friend, basically. I knew a guy through the mom groups, and another family basically that had kids around, you know, was having a baby around the same time we were having a baby, so we were connected to them. And I met up with this guy.

He was, uh, from Australia, or was it New Zealand? Can’t remember which. And he’s a VFX artist, and he was a good, close, personal family friend of Renny Harlin, and they, we all lived in China. And he, he was like, “Yeah, he’s great, man. We hang out all the time, and he always calls me in to do VFX on his movies here, and my kids play with his kids and stuff.”

And I said, “It would be awesome to have him on the show to do Nightmare on Elm Street 4,” and he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll ask him.” And then he asked him, and he’s like, “Yeah, he’d love to do it. We’ll just have to set it up.” And then COVID kind of happened more or less, I think. Oh, 

Craig: man. 

Todd: He left and- 

Craig: I can’t believe we dropped the ball on that one.

Todd: Yeah Fucking bummer If I had just, if I had just pushed it, you know, just a little bit, but I didn’t wanna be that guy, you know? So- 

Craig: I know, I know, I know … 

Todd: whatever. Maybe, maybe in the future. Renny, if you’re listening to this, we’ve done another one of your movies. We’ve said this before. Give us another chance, please.

Craig: Huge fan. Huge- 

Todd: Huge- … 

Craig: fan … 

Todd: fans. We love you. Deep Blue Sea. 

Craig: Did he do Deep Blue Sea? 

Todd: Oh, probably. Yeah. Loved that movie too. Every great movie. He, he did The Shining, didn’t he? 

Craig: I’m 

Todd: sure he did The Shining. Yeah, I 

Craig: don’t know. Anyway, you- Yeah … I’m sorry. I, I, I interrupted you. You mentioned something that made me- 

Todd: Oh, it needed to be said.

The movie is very well shot and very well directed. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: In fact, Renny Harlin took this movie not because he was a fan of the script. Apparently, he was not a fan of the script, but he was kind of an up-and-coming dude, and Irwin Yablans liked to recognize early talent like he did with John Carpenter and kinda grabbed them while they were cheap.

And he saw something in Renny, and he was like, “You know, I want you to do this.” And again, he didn’t really care for the script, but he wanted to do this kind of… He wanted the drama of the prison movie. He liked the idea of doing a haunted house kind of movie in a prison, and he thought he could wring out, you know, some interesting stuff.

I would say maybe a little too much. But, uh, anyway, for what it is, interestingly well shot opening sequence where we don’t really see this guy’s face, and he’s executed, and it’s really well done, and it, it looks gross. I mean, I don’t know what a, I don’t know what electrocution looks like, but probably doesn’t look nearly as dramatic as the movies, but man, this makes it look like the most horrible way to die.

And I was just thinking to myself as we were watching this, like, “Whose idea was this to execute people with an electric chair?” It just looks very inhumane Anyway, that happens, but we’re not the only people freaked out by this. There is a w- prison guard, I guess, warden, somebody who- Warden … they’re sweating bullets.

He’s a warden at the time, right? And he is sweating bullets. 

Craig: Did you recognize him? He was so- Yeah … familiar to me. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Uh, Lane Smith is his name, and I had to look back at what he was in on IMDb. And honestly, nothing, like, super stood out to me. As you all know, I’m an English teacher, and decades ago, I used to teach a play called Inherit the Wind.

Todd: Ah. 

Craig: And it was a lovely play, and he- … he was in one of the film adaptations, a later film adaptation of it. I think it was made for TV. And that’s definitely what I remembered him from, but he was just so familiar. Like, as soon- Yeah … as I saw him, I thought, “This guy was in everything in the ’80s.” 

Todd: Yeah. He’s one of those guys.

Well, he was in Dark Night of the Scarecrow. We did that. 

Craig: Oh, right, right. 

Todd: He was, um, the mayor in Red Dawn. You know, he was in the, the TV show V. And like you said, he’s been in a lot of stuff, like, like episodes of The Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories, a lot of TV. Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Murder, She Wrote.

You know, uh, he, he was just everywhere. He really was. But you’re right, like, there’s not, like, one thing where he got his star moment, but he’s totally recognizable. 

Craig: And he’s funny because, uh, y- you know, he plays the warden in this early scene. Like, he oversees this execution. And I don’t know, it, it, it’s all of a minute long maybe, and right before the guy dies, he, like, pulls a cross necklace off of him- Mm-hmm

Todd: and 

Craig: just takes it. No explanation. Doesn’t matter. Whatever. And then they, they electrocute the prisoner, and then he wakes up as though it was a nightmare, very dramatically. You know? 

Todd: Mm-hmm. Sweating bullets. 

Craig: Yes, sweating bullets. Now I, I legitimately think that this actor, Lane Smith, is probably a very good actor, but I feel that he was directed to be so melodramatic in this movie.

Yes. It’s insane. 

Todd: So melodramatic. 

Craig: Yeah. It’s crazy. 

Todd: He d- You’re right. And it’s in his face for a lot of it, right? Like, we… He, he’s this tough-as-nails dude, and, and there’s several scenes early on in the movie that are, are painting this picture for us. Now, what isn’t explained, and is supposed to be the big reveal later, is…

And, and correct me if I’m wrong about this, Craig, is that he set this guy up. 

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: That he murdered someone. I don’t know who. I don’t know how. Right. 

Craig: I don’t either. 

Todd: Nothing is ever alluded to or whatever, but he… It’s just one character’s line at a late moment in the movie- That says that he set this guy up to take the fall for him.

That’s it. Like, it’s a one line later in the movie. Yeah. So, so there’s no mystery build unless I missed something. There’s no, like, anybody discovering something or any hints at this. 

Craig: It feels, it feels like there’s a story there, but we don’t know what it is. Like, 

Todd: We never get… Yeah, we’re never clued in. 

Craig: Oh, gosh.

Ugh. 

Todd: Frustrating. 

Craig: And it’s so, it’s so fr- it is frustrating because now I want to tell our listeners, like, I wanna frame the story of how this gets revealed because that’s the whole movie. The whole… Ugh. But yes, the reveal is, we’ll go back and we’ll set it up, but the reveal is that the warden, I don’t know if he was the warden at that time, but he killed somebody, and he framed another prisoner who looked just like Viggo Mortensen- Yeah

and also enlisted another prisoner to help him frame him and set him up, and it was successful, and then that guy that was framed was the guy that was electrocuted- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: in this weird, tiny electrocution chamber. And, and, and- Oh, God … and, and that’s the guy that somehow has been sealed up in that electric chamber- 

Todd: How?

What? … 

Craig: but gets out. 

Todd: How? 

Craig: I don’t know. What did they 

Todd: do? I don’t know. Okay. Are we to believe that after this guy was electrocuted, with his body inside, they just closed up this chamber, sealed it up, and then bricked it up afterwards? L- 

Craig: It’s not even bricked. It’s like, it’s like, like they poured concrete all around it-

or something. It’s weird. It doesn’t make any sense. 

Todd: It makes 

Craig: no sense. It’s weird. It doesn’t make any sense. But the setup is, I don’t know if that’s why that prison closed. Like, I, I don’t know, but that prison closed. 

Todd: Uh-huh. 

Craig: But they need to open it now because there’s a surplus of prisoners. And though it is dilapidated and in terrible condition, they need to move a bunch of prisoners in there, and they’re going to.

And they’re going to make this guy, this Warden Sharp, Lane Smith, they’re going to make him, though he has been retired for a long time- … because seemingly he is unwell They are going to make him the warden of the prison 

Todd: Oh, man 

Craig: And Katherine, the prison auditor apparently, goes in there with him, and it is, like, it, it’s a mess.

Like, it, it- … it’s totally destroyed. And she’s like, “This is a mess. You’re gonna clean it up, right?” And he’s like, “No. The prisoners will be here in an hour. They’ll clean it up.” 

Todd: It’s so absurd. What’s also absurd is Katherine is the one who just insists he needs to be the guy to run the prison, right? No, no, no, no.

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: Was she, was she arguing against him or for him? 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: I- I don’t know … yeah, for some reason I have it in my mind that she was the one who insisted that he needed to be the run- one to run the prison, but then, like, she spends the rest of the movie pretty pissed off that he’s the one running the prison.

Oh my God, it’s crazy. And this was filmed in the actual Wyoming State Penitentiary, which had been slated for demolition. I don’t think this was the only movie that was filmed there during this time, but they were able to just basically have carte blanche, run of the mill- run of the place, destroy things if they wanted.

There was no attempt to preserve anything here. So I guess they took advantage of that. Like, the, the prison walls didn’t even have a gate in them, or at least not a big dramatic gate, and so they carved out, and so obviously too, carved out a giant chunk of the wall to create a gate so that, you know, they can move people in and out here and, and, and make some dramatic scenes around it.

And that’s one of the first things we get, right? So once the prisoners show up- 

Craig: In a bus, and Viggo Mortensen is one of them, and then a couple of prisoners try to escape in a bus. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I don’t know. Like, the- It’s 

Todd: a very big dramatic scene … 

Craig: it, it’s a very dramatic scene. And, and, and I feel like though I have a full page of notes, I don’t really remember a ton of things that happen.

I do remember this big bus chase where one character, he ends up being impor- important. What is his name? 

Todd: Oh, the guy who was, 

Craig: um- Glasses. The guy who wears glasses. 

Todd: Rabbit was his name. 

Craig: Rabbit. 

Todd: Played by Tom Everett, yeah, who’s been in a lot of stuff. 

Craig: Yes. And I, I didn’t know in this moment that he was gonna be important, but whatever.

Like, the bus that they came in on, the guards get off and they’re, you know, escorting everybody off, but he steals it with another guy who, who has no part of it, like no plan of stealing it And just drives it around the yard. Like, he tries to get out, but they close the gate and it’s all kind of stupid, but they end up getting thrown in solitary- 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: which apparently is in a basement that is flooded. Which apparently also was real. Like- 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I just couldn’t believe that they were gonna throw these guys in solitary in a place that was flooded. Now, when they actually get into their cells, their cells aren’t flooded. 

Todd: Oddly. 

Craig: But before I saw that, when, like when they were escorting them in there and everything was flooded, like ankle-deep, I was like, “Man, that really would be torture.”

Todd: Right? 

Craig: Like, if you really wanted, if you really wanted to torture somebody, put them in a solitary confinement in a room full of just, like, ankle-deep water because- 

Todd: Right … 

Craig: what do you do? Like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: you can’t lay down, you can’t sleep. That would be terrible. But that was just my random feelings. And that, that, it comes up again later, uh, but I don’t know.

There’s also… I don’t know, we, this is where we kind of get introduced to everybody. Do, do you wanna introduce everybody? 

Todd: Oh, God. I c- I don’t think I can because I don’t really know their names. I was not- 

Craig: Okay … 

Todd: spending a lot of time, yeah, sorting out their names. 

Craig: I tried to write them down. Burke, who is our main guy, Lord of the Rings- Mm-hmm

Viggo Mortensen, he makes friends with a guy named Lasagna. 

Todd: Yep. 

Craig: And they’re good friends throughout, um, and that’s important. We meet, I guess, who’s kind of supposed to be a secondary bad guy named Rhino, who is this big, scary, ginger-looking guy. And did I read that he was actually a convict? Like, a lot of these guys in the prison are actually convicts.

I don’t know, it is weird, but I mean- I guess … why not? I mean, they’re just people. I, I don’t know. 

Todd: I 

Craig: know- And 

Todd: this 

Craig: guy- … 

Todd: but I’m just like, you’d think it would kinda disrupt their, you 

Craig: know- 

Todd: I know. 

Craig: Yeah, right … also- I get it. I get it … cause 

Todd: some issues, like security. I don’t know, you know. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s surprising.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s surprising. But I actually thought that, uh, he was very intimidating. I was scared of him. 

Todd: He was. 

Craig: The way that we meet him is that they all get paired up with their cellmates or whatever, and he’s huge, and he gets paired up with this little, tiny 19-year-old guy. Mm. And he makes a point of basically telling him, “You’re my bitch.”

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And then throughout the rest of the movie, that guy just is kind of his silent bitch. That was weird 

Todd: That was so weird. He’s following him around with, like, a stereo playing music for him and shit. Like, what was that? 

Craig: But while… Gosh, I, I, I don’t remember if that kid, that young, young kid ever speaks at all, but, like, he seems terrified- Yeah

when Rhino basically says, “You’re gonna be my bitch.” But then after that, while he is the bitch, like, he is glued to Rhino’s side. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And he reacts in such a way that, like, “Yeah, that’s my man.” Like, it’s weird. Oh, gosh. 

Todd: I see where you’re going. 

Craig: It’s weird. Yeah. Lasagna’s cellmate is named Tiny, played by, I don’t know his real name, but he went by Tiny Lister.

Todd: Yeah, Tom Lister. Yeah. 

Craig: I, I know him from Friday, and of course a bazillion other things, but- 

Todd: I know him from No Holds Barred with Hulk Hogan. Do you remember? 

Craig: No. I don’t 

Todd: know if I’ve ever seen that. That was the big wrestling movie. Yeah, that was the big wrestling movie. That was, uh… God, so much. He was Hulk Hogan’s, uh, nemesis in that.

What a big, scary guy that, that guy is. 

Craig: Oh, yeah. He, he- 

Todd: Didn’t he die fairly recently? 

Craig: Did he? Oh, man. I don’t know. 

Todd: Yeah, 2020. 

Craig: Oh, man. I didn’t know that. That’s a bummer. He’s, he’s a huge, muscular Black guy, the, uh, bald and… But the thing that I always associate with him is that he’s got, like, wonky eyes. 

Todd: Yeah, he does.

Craig: Which for some people I think might have hindered their career, but I think for him it only added to his threatening nature. And I don’t know anything about him in real life. I’m sure he was a lovely, lovely person, but he plays these threatening characters. 

Todd: Does. Does it well. 

Craig: And, and that’s what he is here, and he, and, and he only has a small part, but I was excited to see him.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: You said that you were surprised that you hadn’t heard of this movie. I’m not surprised that I haven’t heard of it, but I am glad that I have seen it now because it’s a, it’s such a great throwback. Like, there are so many- 

Todd: Oh, yeah … 

Craig: so many people who pop up in this movie that you know. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And it’s, uh, you know, again, again, we, we’ve been doing this for over 10 years, and we’ve seen virtually anything, like, everything.

It, it’s, it’s hard for us to unearth things that we haven’t seen. And to see something like this with so many familiar people in it, it’s a lot of fun- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: on that level if, if nothing else. 

Todd: This is a linchpin film for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Like, if you’re gonna play that game, you need to know this movie.

You know, again, not, not, like, big names necessarily. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: Even Kane Hodder’s in this. 

Craig: He apparently 

Todd: plays the, the executed guy, 

Craig: I think Charles Forsythe. Was that, uh- At the end? Was that him at the very end? 

Todd: Yeah, at the end. 

Craig: Oh. Yeah, ’cause I, I think that I saw that he was in it, but I never- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: found him.

But that makes sense, that s- that silly, silly ending. I mean, what do we say? I mean, it’s a, it’s a haunted prison movie, so I don’t know what to jump to. 

Todd: I would say what happens for the first, God, for too long I thought, at least a half an hour, is just regular prison shit. It’s like prison movie stuff. We meet these people.

This guy’s quirky. These guys are silly. They’re, these guys are fighting a little bit. These guys, uh, have an issue with each other. Viggo Mortensen’s character has to kinda prove that he’s tough. He grabs the balls of that one dude you were talking about who was the- … you know, the big hulking dude. Right.

Who himself clearly isn’t very tough, ’cause he just stands there and lets him grip his sack until he lets go. Like, what? You know, like, some of these scenes were really ridiculous. Do you remember, 

Craig: the only other time that I recall seeing that exact same scene, do you remember… Oh, shit. 

Todd: Oh, 

Craig: yeah. What movie was that?

What was it called? That, that dinosaur movie. Yes, um, 

Todd: he, him and the T-Rex. 

Craig: Tam- Tammy and the T-Rex. 

Todd: Yep. Where, did- And it was the same deal, right? Tho- those guys grabbed each other’s balls. Yeah. Like, the idea is that once your balls have been grabbed and squeezed, you can do absolutely nothing but- Yeah

stand there- Right … in agony. When I’m telling you- … an arm is gonna swing over, I will be in agony, but I will be moving something to get out of the way. 

Craig: But 

Todd: I don’t know. It’s never happened to me before. Maybe I’m wrong. It was not the way it goes. 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: Yeah. Uh, so there’s all this shit going down, and, uh, there was, there’s just a point where I’m like, “Are we gonna get to some spooky stuff, or is this just gonna be kind of a prison drama?”

And I feel like Renny Harlin really just wa- kinda wanted more than anything to make a bit of a prison drama here, ’cause a lot of it is this. But then when the kill scenes come, they are good. They’re really good. 

Craig: They are good. And, and what instigates it is that Burke, our main character, and I have another name, Burton, I don’t know who that is, but they’re assigned to excavate- 

Todd: Yes

Craig: the death chamber. 

Todd: Yes. What, uh, this is- 

Craig: None of this was, none of this is ever explained. Like, this- 

Todd: At the warden’s request, though. 

Craig: At the warden’s request. Like, so ultimately you can infer, I suppose, what’s going on. But you cannot infer why this, quote-unquote, “death chamber” has been encased in some kind of- Magma?

Like, it doesn’t 

Todd: make any sense. You’re right. It’s hilarious. By the way, did you not see this coming a mile away, though? Not that bit, but as soon as they… Uh, ’cause I was like, “Where is this movie going? What is gonna happen here? I have no idea what is gonna be the instigating point.” And when they handed these two characters, our main character, a pickax, and sent him downstairs, I was like, “Oh, he’s gonna open the hidden chamber.”

I at that point didn’t even know what the hidden chamber was, ’cause there was no indication that this had been sealed up. But as soon as they start pecking away at a wall, I’m like, “Okay, this released the ghosts.” And you’re right, the wall they’re pecking at is not… It’s a doorway. It’s a doorway to a hallway of pipes and things that leads to that death chamber.

Like, nobody designs this shit like this. You imagine this prison has this execution chamber that is in a fucking basement, that you access through a hallway that is narrow enough th- for one person to walk through, but they’ve gotta, like, walk between pipes and things on this grate to get to it. A- and at the end of it is this, uh, apparently it was actually the gas chamber- 

Craig: Right

Todd: of this penitentiary that they, uh, retrofitted. This little, tiny little tube that fits a person in a chair and nothing else, with four windows around it for people to peer in on. Th- this, this, it’s just, that in itself is absurd, and then the idea that for some reason they had to seal it up. They didn’t just brick over this wall.

They didn’t just, like, nail boards over it or just, like, weld the door shut. They, I don’t know, they’re chopping through a lot of shit to get to it. It’s like a mine. 

Craig: And it, at one point, like, so the warden takes them down there and he’s like, “Here you go, boys. It’s gonna take you a while.” And when they first started picking at it, I thought that, “Oh, it does kinda look like, and it’s, it’s gonna take them a while.”

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But it doesn’t. No. It takes them all of five seconds- … to chop a little hole in it. And I say a little hole, a fist-sized hole in it, Viggo Mortensen does, and this blinding blue light comes out of it. I, you know, we watch these movies. And I don’t, I don’t care. Like, I don’t really need a big explanation really.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But, but what the f- 

Todd: I know. Like, 

Craig: what is happening? And I don’t understand what is happening. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And the, like, it, it comes out and, like, it, not only is it super bright, like, it, like, he puts his face down to try to look into it- And he immediately pulls away as though it’s blinding him 

Todd: I thought he was gonna get possessed.

That’s what I thought was happening. 

Craig: I thought so too. Mm-hmm. That’s what… And, and I think maybe we’ve seen that movie before. Right. Like, you, you know, you open the sealed up thing and you let the thing out, and then it possesses you. And since he was kind of, it seemed like they were setting him up to be the main character, I was like, “Oh, he’s gonna get possessed.”

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: No. But that light, like, I don’t even know what is happening from now on. Okay, because he looks into it and it, he’s like, “Ah,” and, and moves away, but that’s it. But later it, like, fries people and burns enormous holes through people’s bodies. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s a powerful light it, that just comes from anywhere there’s a hole in the wall, basically.

And he… And it, it tries to suck him in. This is like a whole vortex, right? Like- Yeah, 

Craig: I forgot about that. 

Todd: Oh, my God What was that? Like, they’re, they’re pulling on his legs and they’re trying to pull him back in, and then suddenly it just kinda ends, and they just sit there and they’re like, “Well, that was weird.”

Craig: I 

Todd: know. “What? Why are you still down there?” They stare into the hole and they kinda stand up. 

Craig: They keep doing that for the rest of the movie, like, “That was weird.” Like, something is clearly happening. And 

Todd: then they just go upstairs, right? Like, I mean- 

Craig: Yes … ‘

Todd: cause what happens next? And again, I, I’m thinking, well, all right, if he’s not possessed, this has unleashed it- 

Craig: Yeah

Todd: right? Because the electricity goes past them and it goes up the- Well, but 

Craig: that’s 

Todd: the- … 

Craig: the staircase I know, but that’s the other thing. Like, it’s not just a… Like, sometimes it’s a bright blue light, but it can also be electricity- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: that can go through anything at any time whenever it feels like it, and it does sometimes, and it doesn’t sometimes.

Like- 

Todd: Right. Yeah … what 

Craig: is happening? I don’t understand. 

Todd: It gets out, and then that’s it. I don’t think it’s… Maybe it’s immediately, it’s fairly immediately after that when those two guys in the, in solitary, the light comes out of the, the little hole that they slide the food in. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: This was a cool sequence.

I, again, I loved all of the kill sequences in this movie. I also thought they were very creative and most, for the most part, pretty unique. This was cool for no reason except it just needed to happen. The blinding blue light comes in and blinds him for a while, and then the door lights up to be bright orange like it’s super, super hot, and he goes to touch it and he blisters his hands, and it’s starting to get hot in the room.

And the walls themselves are so hot that the metal’s starting to warp and jiggle a little bit, and that’s freaking out the guy in the cell next to him And everybody runs downstairs and they’re screaming, and nobody will do anything. Nobody wants to go in and do anything. But Viggo Mortensen’s character, for no discernible reason except he’s supposed to be the hero, decides he’s gonna go do something.

And he runs in and grabs a key from somebody and manages to unlock one of the doors, and it falls open, and the one dude’s fried, and he m- manages to get to the other door and get the other dude out, but he’s kind of incapacitated, I think, for the rest of the movie, right? 

Craig: No, no, no. The- 

Todd: Or does he become the- 

Craig: One guy gets cooked in there.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I- it- it’s like they, both of those cells, one after the other, one becomes like an oven that totally cooks that one guy in there. Yeah. And he didn’t do anything. Like- No, 

Todd: no … 

Craig: he, he didn’t try to steal the bus. He was just some random guy, and he gets, he gets cooked, cooked in there. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And th- the guy in the other cell is Rabbit, the guy that tried to steal the bus.

Todd: Mm. 

Craig: And Viggo Mortensen pulls him out right at the last minute, and he’s okay. But then immediately after that, Rabbit comes to him and is like, “I’m, I’m gonna break out. Do you guys, you know, want in on it or whatever?” And I don’t know. They’re like, “I don’t know, maybe,” whatever. But when he tries to break out, like you said, the evil can be electrical randomly, and I feel like at some point it shuts all the electricity down, and so Rabbit is able to sneak out before they do lockdown, and then people kinda cover for him or whatever, so he’s trying to escape.

And then his death is… I mean, I liked this character, and the, the fact that he was trying to escape, I was wishing the best for him, and I certainly didn’t anticipate what was going to happen to him. The death scenes in this movie, the kills in this movie, and now, you know, thinking about it, I, I don’t even necessarily remember a lot of the ones that come after.

But the cooking in the cell was scary, and this one I thought was pretty great, too. 

Todd: Yeah. It was, it was reminiscent of… You could see somebody watching this and being like, “Oh, this guy needs to direct the next Nightmare on Elm Street,” right? 

Craig: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. ‘

Todd: Cause it’s almost like one of those Freddy dream sequences where he’s crawling through that same…

Now, I’m not sure. I guess he thought he could get out through the basement or whatever, ’cause I’m pretty sure this is that same passageway that they unearthed downstairs, right? No, it’s not, because it’s below the w- Oh, God I think- He’s 

Craig: just, he’s cr- he’s crawling through- 

Todd: Some random passageway … I don’t know if it’s ventilation.

I swear- Yeah … it, it looked just like that passageway where… ‘Cause, ’cause the same deal, like, the lights come up from below him, right? As he’s walking through here, there, it’s like a grated floor. 

Craig: The dead lights. I wanna talk about that because I’ve already said it once, but when I say that, I’m making reference to Stephen King’s It, and specifically the first film adaptation, the, the made-for-TV movie one.

Yeah. Because any time those lights were approaching characters, they were always coming up, like, through grates or, you know- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: it’s e- it’s exact- It’s 

Todd: like an approach, yeah. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s an approach of lights, but it’s not just… It’s not the light of a train coming right at you. It’s always through something.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: So it’s always, you know, broken by grates and, and getting closer and closer. And the first time I saw it, I thought, “Oh, that’s funny. It reminds me of It.” 

Todd: It, right. 

Craig: But then they kept doing it over and over again. 

Todd: Right. It’s, 

Craig: it’s the- 

Todd: They 

Craig: did it through the 

Todd: cells … 

Craig: it- it’s the dead lights. And I, I- Yeah

Todd: yeah, 

Craig: and I, yeah, and I just started referring to, “Oh, the dead lights got him.” Because they keep, they keep getting people. 

Todd: It’s true. And the way they get him here is as he’s crawling through th- there’s more and more pipes, and they seem to be moving behind him, and coming down from the ceiling to block his way, and coming in from the sides to block his way until he’s completely trapped in this web of pipes, and then one comes straight into his forehead and is, like, slowly burrowing in, you know, through his skull.

And I… God, that was good. 

Craig: It looks really good. The effects in this movie are very good, yeah. 

Todd: Uh, but you know, again, I, I just wasn’t clear on the geometry of everything and how everything worked because he ends up falling through the ceiling. Yeah. Like- 

Craig: The next morning, right, the next morning they’re all at breakfast and they’re like, “I wonder if he got out,” and blood is dripping onto their food and they don’t even notice, and then his whole mutilated body just falls onto the table.

Todd: Yeah, which was awesome and gross. 

Craig: It, it, it, look- It was so good … it was awesome and gross, but honestly at this point in the movie, my… I, I was asking myself, “What is happening?” Like- 

Todd: Yeah, yeah … 

Craig: what is the point? Like- 

Todd: Right. What is the s- monster doing? What is this ghost’s purpose? Well, right? Right. Is it just randomly killing people?

Because it kinda seems like it is. It kills a guard later who is threatening some people out in the yard and is told, uh, by the warden to go take a break. 

Craig: Well, because the warden- The warden is insane, first 

Todd: of all Yeah, he really is. 

Craig: He is clearly clinically insane. And he’s also paranoid. Uh-huh. Like, he’s not wrong, but he thinks something up is going on in the prison.

It is. 

Todd: Yep. 

Craig: But he’s also insane, and so he’s insisting that somebody confess to this murder. “Okay. All right, prisoners, somebody confess to putting this guy up in the ceiling and mutilating him with- Pipes … boards and tubes- … and I know it was one of you.” 

Todd: I know one 

Craig: of you did it. “Somebody confess.” Oh my God.

So he forces, he forces his subordinates to drag them all out into the yard in the middle of the night, burn their mattresses- 

Todd: Yeah, that was cruel … 

Craig: strip them to all but naked, and then make them stand out there. And they do. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And it’s only in the morning that Burke’s, that’s his name, right? Yeah, Burke’s roommate, who is this older Black guy, who we’ve seen and we’ve talked to or whatever, but he collapses and Burke tries to protect him, and the guard harasses him.

But ultimately somebody, a captain steps in or something and tells the guard, “It’s been a long night. Go on break.” And then this guard goes on break, and he’s killed in a ridiculous fashion, too. 

Todd: Yeah. Oh my God. 

Craig: It’s ridiculous. And people, the… Another guy sees it happen. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s, he walks in on it. 

Craig: Yeah, yeah.

Todd: He guard- another guard walks in on it, but it’s cool. 

Craig: It’s very cool. 

Todd: He goes to a shed, sits down in a chair, and then starts flipping through a girly magazine, and doesn’t notice that all this barbed wire is coming around. And I’m thinking, “Okay, yeah, you know, we’ve seen this before, but it’s fun.” It’s moving across the floor.

It’s gonna coil around his legs. It’s gonna coil around his arms. It’s gonna do something like that, right? 

Craig: What I loved about it, I mean, aside from the fact that the barbed wire was just snaking around like a literal snake, like that was fun, but it was a long sequence- 

Todd: Yes … 

Craig: where this barbed wire was setting up a Rube Goldberg trap.

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: Like, it was, it was so Final Destination or Saw. I loved it. 

Todd: It was so good. And oh, th- this barbed wire had, uh, sentience, you know? It was like, it, it was so cool because it grabs… And I, I’ve gotta give them credit for even filming the sequence with the gun because it was very elaborate the way this barbed wire coiled itself around this rifle Set it up into position, pulled the trigger to shoot at this guy.

It was super good. And it doesn’t hit him, it hits a hole in the wall behind him so that the Deadlights can come through and I guess- 

Craig: Mm-hmm … 

Todd: finish the job? I don’t know. Like, I mean, the c- the stuff’s already coiling. I mean, we didn’t need the Deadlights, right? We know the supernatural shit’s going on. But anyway, it comes through and then it coils around him, his wrists, his arms, his legs, all around his neck.

It’s- Yeah, 

Craig: I have in my notes that it Hellraisers him to the chair. 

Todd: Yes. It does. And then I guess this shed thing that he’s in is actually just below the warden’s office because it shoots the chair up through the floor into the warden’s office, who is terrified at what he sees in front of him, and walks towards it, and sees that in this guy’s hand is this, uh- 

Craig: The necklace

Todd: it’s like a crucifix. Yeah, the necklace that he- It’s 

Craig: the necklace that he took off the guy that they executed in the very 

Todd: beginning, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ugh. So it’s, uh… And you know, just like these movies are, right? Some shit like that goes down, there’s no coming back from that. You know, you don’t just start going on with your day after this happens.

But they, they kind of do. But they do. But they do. It’s just- Yeah, the, the ward- … 

Craig: more prison shit … the warden’s… Yeah, the warden’s just like, “Lock down.” Yeah.

Like, “Who did this?” God. 

Todd: And 

Craig: e- yeah, not only that. Okay, eh, so then Burke’s cellmate, the older Black guy, somehow inexplicably gets one of the guard’s rifles. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: How 

Todd: did- That happens off-scene. 

Craig: Off-scene. We have no idea, but he has it, and he’s pointing at them. And he says, you know, sort of kind of accusatory things about the warden.

He’s like, “Uh, you killed a man and I saw it,” or something. I don’t know. But then he shoots himself in the foot to be able to be taken to the hospital. Hmm. And for some reason, Burke is locked stark naked- 

Todd: Hmm … 

Craig: in, like, a small solitary cell. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I don’t know. And then later when he comes back, we, when we come back to him, he has underwear.

So I guess- Yeah … somebody passed him some tighty whities at some point. Somehow. I don’t know. 

Todd: I noticed that, too. That was, uh… I, I couldn’t explain that one. I 

Craig: don’t 

Todd: know. Uh, I thought he was gonna come running out of there naked. By the way, I do wanna point out that the, the man we were talking about earlier, the cellmate, Lincoln Kilpatrick, has been in some significant movies.

I don’t know about you, I was a big- 

Craig: Is this the cellmate? 

Todd: Who- Yeah, yeah. The Black guy 

Craig: Did 

Todd: you ever see The Omega Man with Charlton Heston? 

Craig: No. 

Todd: God, I loved that as a kid. It freaked me the hell out. And, uh, he was Zachary, a pretty significant guy, um, one of the bad guys in Omega Man. I just wanted to point that out.

He was also in Soylent Green and, and some other movies earlier on. I f- I feel like he was one of the better actors in this entire film. He- 

Craig: Oh, he’s good. 

Todd: Yeah … he, he was really good. He did a great job in that. Yeah, so that happens, right? And we get another kill sequence, too, with one of the other guards. By the way, who was this guy?

Was his name Hershey, who’s kind of like a voodoo dude who- I 

Craig: don’t know … 

Todd: is setting up like… Like, I feel like we, we don’t really see him at all. 

Craig: There’s- 

Todd: And then suddenly halfway through the movie we’re start, we start seeing scenes of this guy suddenly setting up a little voodoo shrine and- Yeah … doing little rituals in his cell.

Craig: But that’s only, that’s only after there’s this weird m- like, sequence of exposition where Catherine, the auditor, does some, like, research because she’s supernaturally prompted to do so. Like- 

Todd: Oh, yeah. … 

Craig: all, like, there, like, there’s, there’s all this, like, weird electricity going off and on and, like, her computer is flashing 1964 and, and, like, it’s printing out 1964 so she goes to the library and-

then, I don’t know, she, she finds stuff about 1964 and she sees a picture of the guy that was executed, and it looks just like Viggo Mortensen and so she knows something’s going on. And who knows? Mm-hmm. But then we cut back to the prison where you’re right, that one guy, w- when he was being interned, I guess, at the prison, the guard tried to take his necklace and he was like, “No, you’re fucking with my religion.”

So we know that he’s religious or whatever, but then he’s like, “I know what’s going on. There is some kind of demon, and- … we have to summon something to stop it.” 

Todd: Yeah. Ugh. I, I- And 

Craig: so he does. Oh. It’s so weird. He has to conjure some spirit to make it stop. I don’t 

Todd: know. Right. Right. And he, so he does this little ritual, and it involves carving his chest, which was pretty- A circle 

Craig: into his chest

Todd: gross. 

Craig: Yeah, it was gross. 

Todd: I wanna know how he got all this stuff in his cell. Didn’t they, didn’t they confiscate everything from their cells? Right. How does he still have all this and a broken piece of mirror and everything like that? I don’t know. But you’re right, he carves this thing into his chest, and he goes through this whole sequence of conjuring the demon or whatnot, and, uh, on cue a hole in the wall appears, and the dead light comes through.

Mm-hmm. And it starts to aim directly at that hole in his chest, which starts to pulse. And I’m like, “Okay, is this gonna, like, rip his heart out? Like, what’s gonna go on here?” It blasts a hole through him. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Oh, it was so good. It was so- 

Craig: And what is this? W- 

Todd: Who 

Craig: knows? Is what- Is what he’s doing even doing anything?

Todd: Right? I- 

Craig: I mean, this light has been around the whole time. Like, I… Does it just get pissed off that he’s… Who knows. It’s so stupid. And, and then the electricity starts going through all of the bars and killing the guards, and- Mm-hmm … they had handcuffed everybody to their beds because they couldn’t lock down because the electricity had been out.

But then the electricity magically breaks everybody’s handcuffs. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: So- One 

Todd: at a time. 

Craig: Yeah. And then, and then Burke gets himself out of prison, and Catherine shows up. Or like, she gets a message on her printer- 

Todd: Yeah. That 

Craig: says- “The 

Todd: prison dies tonight” … “The prison 

Craig: dies tonight.” What a 

Todd: stupid message. Oh, 

Craig: gosh.

Oh, my 

Todd: God. 

Craig: Oh. And why is this prison spirit emailing her? Like- Who cares? She doesn’t have anything to do with this. 

Todd: And why is she compelled to go back and deal with it? I, I didn’t get that either. 

Craig: And all, and all the prisoners are trying to get out, and there’s a nervous guard who’s trying to keep order.

And Tiny Lister is really trying to keep everybody calm, and being like, “Bro,” like- 

Todd: Mm-hmm … “

Craig: this shit is haunted. We all have to get out of here. Like, we’re not against you.” And that guy shoots him right in the abdomen with, I don’t know, what looks like a shotgun. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And then Tiny Lister acts like he slapped him or something.

Yeah. And 

Todd: he- He acts like it gave him energy. He then gets up 

Craig: and- Oh, my God. 

Todd: Oh, 

Craig: man. And lifts him. And I’m sure it’s just because the actor could do this, and kudos. I mean, if you’ve got an actor that can do things, great. But like, he just grabs the guard, lifts him up above his head, and then drops him to the ground, which apparently kills him.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Oh, God. I don’t know. 

Todd: Then he collapses for a, kind of a, a little melodramatic death scene, which I thought was funny in the midst of all 

Craig: this. He doesn’t really die. No. Lasagna’s like, “You’ll be okay. I’ll come back for you.” He 

Todd: just got shot in the chest by a shotgun. I don’t think this is gonna work.

Oh, man. 

Craig: And then the older Black guy tells the warden, “Charlie’s here. He’s come back to take us both for what we’d done to him. You knew as soon as you saw that guy, same as I did.” 

Todd: What? You know? 

Craig: What? Like, yes, they were both complicit in framing some guy who happens to look like Viggo Mortensen, but they never make that connection.

Like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: Viggo Mortensen, as far as we know, has nothing to do with that other guy. 

Todd: He’s just a dude. He’s just a dude. He 

Craig: just looks like him. 

Todd: Yeah. What’s the point of that? I don’t get it at all. 

Craig: I don’t get it at all either, but then Catherine shows up and she helps Viggo Mortensen and his cellmate, the older Black guy, break out, and they have the warden captive.

And there’s a great scene that is so stupid where Viggo Mortensen has to climb a woven rope of barbed wire- 

Todd: Oh, my God … 

Craig: over a wall. 

Todd: I think it w- the idea was a whole bunch of the barbed wire that’s usually along the top of the wall, ’cause you know usually there’s like six or seven lines of it, got torn up and was just all hanging down there in one big bunch.

And yeah, and he climbs over the wall. And it’s so funny too because he does this and gets to the other side just as the woman comes and just bursts through the gate with her car. I was just like m- 

Craig: No, no, he, he, that’s the whole reason that he’s climbing up there is so that he can get to the tower to open the gate.

Todd: Oh. 

Craig: And he, and he does. Okay. I didn’t catch that bit. He, he cranks it open. There’s still, there’s still like a wooden barrier or something, but he opens the big gate- Okay … and she drives through. That’s, that’s his whole purpose. They’re trying to escape, and he does it. But, and, and like, fine, that scene is badass and it’s supposed to be establishing him as a badass, and again, the effects are fantastic.

Like you see- 

Todd: Mm … 

Craig: like flaps of his skin, like his hand, like flayed off. But I’m sorry, that is impossible. Like- 

Todd: Yeah. Of course … 

Craig: and not only that, but he gets shot because the electricity is also controlling the gun towers and shooting at them. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And he gets shot in the leg, and he just keeps climbing, and then he jumps over, and then he runs to the car, and then- 

Todd: And then his hands are fine for the rest of the movie.

Craig: Whatever. He’s fine. As 

Todd: he typically is, yeah. 

Craig: I don’t know. They, you know, the warden, the, the, the older guy is pointing a gun at the warden in the car, but he realizes that the older guy is actually dead. And so he just takes the gun and he tries to shoot Burke, but he misses. And so the warden gets in the car and tries to drive away.

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: But a dead guy in an electric chair bursts out from under the ground- Yes … in front of the car- … in extraordinary fashion. 

Todd: Yeah. Like 

Craig: this is huge. 

Todd: It’s massive. 

Craig: Huge. 

Todd: Massive, yes. 

Craig: blows the entire car up. This makes no sense. Now, to be fair, I love it. 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. 

Craig: It looks fantastic, but it is ridiculous.

Ridiculous. We’ve never seen this spirit before. It is not Viggo Mortensen. It is some, like, weird old decrepit guy. 

Todd: And it’s in the d- wasn’t it also in that chamber thing? Didn’t that chamber thing burst out of the g- the ground, you know, blast open and then there was him in that chair- I don’t remember … 

Craig: in there?

Todd: Yeah, I mean, I thought what… Are we to believe that there was a body buried here in a ch- strapped to a chair? I 

Craig: don’t know. 

Todd: Or did the ghost somehow materialize in that thing that they unearth? But it was awesome. It was badass. 

Craig: It looks great. 

Todd: It looked fantastic. Like, it all… I’m telling you, all of the effects, all of the death scenes in this movie are fantastic.

Craig: Yeah, I mean- 

Todd: But none of it makes any sense at all. 

Craig: You sent me a link to this, I think, for YouTube. I, I, I think that I looked to see the, if it was available anywhere streaming because I didn’t want to have to deal with ads, and I don’t think it is. U- u- unless you want to, you know, be a pirate. Sure. I think the o- I think the only place that you can find this right now is on YouTube, but you can find it in its entirety.

And I would say that for the free price of admission- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: it’s worth seeing. 

Todd: It is. 

Craig: It’s not a good movie, but there’s some pretty awesome stuff that happens in it. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And just to see, you know, all these people that you’re gonna be surprised to see kind of. And Viggo Mortensen is 85% naked of it, in it in 85% of the movie 

Todd: and- Mm-hmm

Craig: he looks really good. 

Todd: We cannot, uh, wrap this up without mentioning that the girl, w- what was her name again? 

Craig: Katherine the auditor? 

Todd: Katherine the auditor. The woman playing her is Chelsea Field. And I was like, “Oh, she looks so familiar to me.” She was Teela in the Masters of the Universe, the 1987 Masters of the Universe movie.

Craig: That’s 

Todd: funny. Which we watched religiously when I was a kid. Oh, and then a couple years after that she was in Death Spa. 

Craig: Oh. 

Todd: One of my all-time favorite movies we’ve ever done. Mm-hmm. 

Craig: I 

Todd: love 

Craig: that movie. 

Todd: So good, that movie. And then we’ll probably end up doing The Dark Half at some point, and she was Annie Pangborn in that one.

So, um 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah, she’s got, and she’s in a couple episodes of Tales from the Crypt and stuff. You know, I just recognized her, so I kind of wanted to call her out. And noting that there is also a brand new Masters of the Universe movie long overdue coming out this year that I cannot wait to see that there are trailers for out right now.

It looks 

Craig: fun. Have you seen the trailer? 

Todd: I have. It looks like so much fun. It looks like the movie we wanted in the 80s that we didn’t get. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s, it’s, yeah, it looks fun. 

Todd: I’m super excited about it, so. This movie, yeah. What a ride this movie was. 

Craig: It’s wild. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Weird and wild. Yeah. 

Todd: Weird, wild, and fun.

Check it out on YouTube. There’s a really high quality version of it with a very low audio- Yeah … up on YouTube that you, you’ve gotta, you gotta see while it’s there anyway. Well, guys, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You know you can find us online, as I always say, chainsawhorror.com.

Go to our Patreon, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Drop us two bucks, and then you get our complete unedited episodes every week that we record them, as well as our book club out there and some minisodes and lots of other fun stuff, uh, that we’ve amassed there over the years. Yeah, go ahead and check that out, and, uh, thank you so much for your support, uh, this year.

As always, I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.