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SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: Josh and Chuck's List of Horror Movies that Changed the Genre · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, their friends. Welcome back to the playlist. This episode
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: is our list of horror movies that change the genre.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's from back in twenty seventeen, and it's as timely
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: today as it was back then. Horror is probably my
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: favorite genre of all films, and I hope you guys
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: like it too, even if you're not into horror movies.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And even if you're not into horror movies, I hope
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: you guys will like this episode two. It's just that interesting.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Welcome to stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant Towdy, middle names Wayne, my middle names Malcolm.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: There we have I always.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Forget about that. Malcolm.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Wayne named after Wayne Cooin.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Right, Uh no, John, Wayne, and you were named after
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Malcolm in the middle.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: That's right, right. Frankie Munis is my namesake. I hope
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: he's okay.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Early, Brian Kranston too. I used to love that show.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's a great show. I watched it like within
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the last couple of months. I was cleaning the house
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: and put it on Netflix and still great. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: it's really it is. A good show.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: So you clean your house, you put on your VR
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: goggles and just cue up Malcolm in the Middle. No,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I just walk around and bump into things and right exactly.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: But I put on like a huge feather duster suit.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're just cleaning and bumping into things.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: That's right, That's how I do it. Wow, Yeah, it
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: works kind of.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Well, someone's gonna take that idea, yeah.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Like the Sharknado.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but they should just they should sell that suit
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: with a purple drink.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I think you just get one spot on the floor,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: really really clean.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: What are you going to title this one, by the way,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: because this is your pick and we title our own
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: shows episodes.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Some horror films that change the genre, all right, and.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: You should add this aka how could you guys forget blank?
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, we should say like this. First of all,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: this is a Grabster article, so it's Grabster's list. Sure,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and he knows what he's talking about. If you look
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: at some of the entries, some don't even have source tags. Whoa,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: he's just like, I just know.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: He should just trust grabs her.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: But we even took his list and carved some out
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and put some in. Sure, so this is how about this?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: This is Josh and Chuck's idea of some horror films
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that change the genre, featuring the mind of the Grabster.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, in other words, it is not a complete list
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: of every horror film that changed the genre. Yes, because
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I would argue that well, and actually I see Grabster
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: put Texas Chainsaw Masacre in there.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: He said that if this were a top fifteen list,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: that would be in there. So would Alien.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he has that Alien ring Goo and the US
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: remake Ring and I would lobby for Well, Psycho didn't
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: make it onto his list, which but we're going to
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: put that in. And there was one more. Oh, even
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: though I didn't really think it was that great, the
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: movie Saw, I think kind of changed horror films. And
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: that's what this list is. Not best horror films, but
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: things that kind of changed the game. Yeah, it seems
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: like Saw kind of kicked off that.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: That torture porn, Yeah, didn't it. I can't remember if
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it was that or Hostile, one of the two. It
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: was definitely one of the two.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: For a subgenre.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Well, it's pretty accurate, actually it is.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: But most of these are movies that either were the
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: first of its kind and maybe did start a subject
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: or movies that were so popular that they just, you know,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: kind of rewrote how people view horror movies. Some of
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: them because of marketing, some because they were really good movies,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: some because of box office, but all of these I
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: don't think anyone could argue did not change the genre.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: How about that?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I think that's well put, dude. And before we
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: get started speaking of horror, I want to give a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: plug too my friend Toby's movie that's coming out. He's
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a producer on a movie coming out call The Ghost Story.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Toby. When we met Toby, well you knew Toby
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: before me, of course, because he's your friend and I
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: know him through you me, so really yeah, but he
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: was he was small time, doing short films and stuff.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: And since that time, and this has been within the
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: last like since we've been doing this podcast, he's now
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: big time.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They did Pete's Dragon, Yeah, and then yeah they
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: have this. They did an'th them. Body Saints was I
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: think the one that they kind of broke out.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: With, which I love that movie, and then.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: This one definitely kind of falls into that same look
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and mood and feel, which it's called the Ghost Story,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: and I think it comes out in July, and I
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: think it's labeled a drama rather than horror or even
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: supernatural or thriller. But the reason I tie it into
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: horror is because A twenty four is releasing it and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: A twenty four is killing it with horror movies lately.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good that's a good outfit.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: They did The Witch, they did The Black Coat's Daughter.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Have you seen that? No, it's on Amazon Prime. It's
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: on Amazon Prime right now. No, it's not it, dude.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: It's one of the best horror movies I've seen in
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: a while. I think The Witch is probably my favorite
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, Black Coat's Daughter is a close second.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And then last night I saw it Comes at Night
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: in the theater and it Comes at Night actually upset
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: my stomach the ending? Did it?
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Was?
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: It was that rough?
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think we're we've we're at a place with
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: horror movies that we haven't been in a long time,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: like a really genuine good spot. Yeah, like the whole
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: torture porn sort of era is over and the found
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: footage thing is so played.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Oh man.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: But I think we like with movies like The Witch.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: I think we've really like, there are some really creative
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: uh it follows. Did you see that one? Yeah, like
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: some just really creative ways of bringing scares that I
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: haven't seen before.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Get Out.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: That was amazing to get Man, I haven't seen it.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: You're gonna love it. I'm envious of you. It's really
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: it's great movie, Chuck, you love it.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: I don't get to the movies much anymore, and the
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: only time I could was a couple of weeks ago
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: and I elected to see Wonder Woman.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not a good choice.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: So long way of saying congratulations to Toby and his new.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Film, well it's funny. We also need to congratulate Toby too,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: because Toby just got married. Toby Nnell are now married,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: so congratulations to them as well.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: So this is this new movie with his directing partner
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: David Lowry, Yeah.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Rooney Mara. Yeah, they definitely do. So it's
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: gonna be good. I'm looking forward to it.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, So let's get started. Thanks for indulging that.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Thank you everybody.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: So the first, the first movie on our list is
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: what's widely considered the first horror movie, and it's a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty movie, out of Germany that basically was the
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: first film that undertook what's the artistic movement known as
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: German expressionism. Yeah, it's called The Cabinet of Doctor Kalighari.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean some say, like you said, it was
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: the first horror movie. Some say it was the first
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: cult film. It. Well, just you may not be able
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: to get to the whole thing if you're not into
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: silent movies, but you should queue up a little bit
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: of it and watch a little bit of it because
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: it's hugely impactful and still to this day like very
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: disconcerting to look at because of it how ominous and
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: weird it looked. Yeah, just physically looked.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like the sets that they built are obviously constructive manufactured.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: They were not in any way, shape or form going
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: for realism. They were going for surrealism for sure.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And so like the staircases are at crazy weird curves
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and angles, and like everything from the house, the house's
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: rooftops to the blades of grass are super pointy and sharp,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and the shadows that they employed were just perfect. You've
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: never seen a better use of shadows than this. They
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: didn't get in the way, they just created this mood,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and it was the first movie to really kind of
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: do that, to just take to use the camera for
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: something other than capturing realism. And for that reason it's
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: considered the first horror movie because that's such a standard
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: part of horror, whether large like in large part like
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in a Tim Burton movie, or in small part you
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: know where you're using small spaces to create claustrophobia. The
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: idea of using the set to mess with the viewer's mind,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I think is born in doctor Caligary's cabinet.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like they took a child and gave
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: them construction paper and said cut out scary things, right,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: And then like that movie The Baba Duke, I think
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: the actual book within the Baba Duke was hugely inspired
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: by this. The actual movie itself. The plot is about
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: a side show operator, a hypnotist who has a patient
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: that he takes around to the side shows with a
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: sleep disorder. Supposedly he's been asleep his entire life, and
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: he uses this patient to commit murder.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Right, he's like a sleepwalker, yeah, somnambulist.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: So that in itself is a pretty frightening plot, and
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: to think about that being cooked up in nineteen twenty
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: when there were really not such things that you think
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: of as horror movies. Is pretty impressive.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: And then some of the deeper critiques I've seen of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: it was like the explanation for why the filmmakers chose
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: like these weird odd angles to kind of depict insanity
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: or that kind of thing. Yeah, was rooted in World
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: War One. The horrors of World War One had just
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: been seen and revealed and recently taken place, and it
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: upended Europe in general and especially Germany as well. And
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: that the idea is that they might not have had
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: this idea, They might not have had this desire, this
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: drive to create this this weird set, and in fact
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: this weird movie had World War One not happened.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this writer, Jeff Saparito who kind of put
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: it this way about German expressionism because I wasn't exactly
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: sure how to define it, but you're kind of right
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: on the money. He said. Germany was largely isolated from
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: the rest of the world following World War One, so
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: expressionism therefore became confined to the country. Refers to a
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: number of creative movements from World War One through the
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: nineteen twenties, expressionist works examined the current and future state
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: of the culture through bold and artistic creations of creativity,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: and often explored topics of madness, betrayal, and other intellectual concepts.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: And nothing encapsulates these ideas more than the Cabinet of
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Doctor Caligi.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: That's basically what I said.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah you did you read that or were you just that?
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I read that one or not.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: It sounded kind of familiar.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, just say you came up with that.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: So the idea of the set just creating like a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: creepy tone in tech shoot everything that was Doctor Calgary.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: That's how it changed the genre.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Tim Burton say thank you.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you seen Coraline? No?
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: But I know it.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: It's they did that to very good effect.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: You know, I think Hodgman does a voice in that,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: doesn't he He does?
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: He does the dad. He did a spectacular job because
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: you actually forget it's Hodgman while you're watching it. That's impossible,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: all right, Chuck, Moving on, that was nineteen twenty. We're
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: going to fast forward all the way to what nineteen sixty.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty three. If you're talking about Blood.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Feast, Well, I wasn't bot lets.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Simon Abrams of Roger Ebert dot Com says, this Bloodfeast
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: is a terrible film, and a historically important one too. Yep,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: And I think that's sort of the deal with Blood Feast.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: It is not good by any accounts.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Did you watch any of it? Yeah, sure, it's not good.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: No, it's not good. It's terrible. It was written basis
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: on a fourteen page outline, didn't even have a script.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: It's got the same cloying technic color of like an
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: early Hawaii five zero episode.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Directed by Herschel, Gordon Lewis and producer
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: David F. Friedman. And basically the idea was this, these
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: guys did not see films as art. They saw them
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: as a business and thought you were foolish if you
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: thought it was anything else. So they sat around they
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: brainstormed movies that they thought no one else would make.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because they started out making like Porky's esque type movies. Yeah,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and they were doing fine with that. But apparently they
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: were successful enough with it that there started to be
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: imitators and the market was crowded, so they said, where
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: can we go make movies that no one else is
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: gonna make.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because we want to shock people essentially. So a
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: couple of ideas they had that did not make the
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: list was con Man Evangelist and Nazi Torture, which.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Were later made.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And they finally said, you know what no
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: one's really done yet is hardcore gore. Yep, Like everyone
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: always cuts away when the knife comes, and you're like,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: what if we showed the grossest glorious stuff imaginable on screen?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And even still they didn't show so like one
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: of the first murder a woman stabbed through the eye
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and then the murderer hacked their legs off of the machete, right,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: and they didn't show the knife penetrate the eye. They
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: didn't show the machete making contact with the skin. But
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: what they did in blood Feasts and what made blood
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Feast the first of its kind, was they would show
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the what came after that. They would show the brains
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: on the ground. Yeah, they would show the entrails like
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: on the knife. They would show the leg being you know,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: that had been dismembered, being put into a bag, and
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: like the wound that was left by Yeah, like that
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: this was huge. No one had ever done anything like
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that on film BEFO four No.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: And it paid off. They depending on who you ask,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: the budget was anywhere from like twenty to thirty grand
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: and it made between seven and thirty million dollars, Like
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: I said, depending on where you get your info. But
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: by all accounts, it was a huge financial success, yeah,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: compared to what they paid to make it.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And they shot it in I think six days
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: or something down in Miami. Yeah, based on a fourteen
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: page outline. There wasn't even a script. It as an outline.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Basically it was like murderer goes and kills this girl. Yeah,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: next girl, murderer comes in, kills girl, cuts off leg
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah. I mean, if it matters the movies about
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: a serial killer caterer.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. There's your plot right there.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: But the it was just such a revolutionary movie that
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the censors at the time there wasn't such a thing
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: as the MPAA hadn't been formed yet, and there was
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: basically no one except for local censors overseeing movies.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: So you know, you could be playing in one town
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: to all audiences and then the next town over it
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: could be banned, but the sensors had never seen anything
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: like it and they didn't know what to do with it.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it was hugely successful commercially too.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And another big impact it had was it inspired
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: a generation of special effects. But basically, let's be honest,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: young boys who were doing this on their own Super
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: eight films right and said, wait, I can get a
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: job doing this.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Yep. So, including Tom Savini, I think was inspired by it,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't he? Or was he inspired by Yeah? I think
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: he was inspired by Blood Feast?
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Oh wow?
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And then we should also give a mention to the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Grand gug y'all? Is that how you think it's pronounced? Sure,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Granguien y'all. It was a theater in Paris, I believe,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: from the late nineteen century on to I think nineteen
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: sixty two, so the year before Blood Feast came out,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: it had closed up, but it used to do this
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: stuff on stage. It was like a gore fest and
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: there was lots of like blood and sex and like
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: depraved themes in the plays that were put on at
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: this theater. People loved it, they were crazy for it,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: and this was kind of like the Grand Guignol tradition
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: put onto film for the first time, and who ray
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: for that? You want to take a break, Yeah, let's
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: do it, all right, Charles, we're back. So nineteen sixty
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: or nineteen sixty, not eight.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: I've got nineteen sixty eight in front of my face, okay,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And that could be no other movie. The Night of
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: the Living Dead classic George Romero film. Romero was a
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: TV director, making TV commercials commercial director.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Rather, he was also making short films for Mister Rogers
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: neighborhood at the time.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was young.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know how old he was, but he
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: was pretty young guy still, I get.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I think when he made Shot and That Is the
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Living Dead, he was like twenty six or twenty seven.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: So yeah, by any standard, that's still pretty young, unless
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: you're twenty three.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: So he had He and his buddies were like, let's
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: make a horror movie, but let's not make a stupid
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: horror movie. Let's make one with like an actual plot
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: that explores like deep themes too, like a good movie.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Let's let's make the first good horror movie.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, so, and we'll delve into that little more.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: But that was definitely a different thing. At the time.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: And the other different thing was that all the horror
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: movies up to that point they were called the Universal
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: monsters from Universal Studios, you know, all the kind of
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: the classic Frankenstein and Dracula and Creature from the Black
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Lagoon and the Werewolf, and that was where that was
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: mainstream horror. And George Romero comes along and says, how
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: about zombies? And everyone said, what in the world's a zombie?
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: And he said, well, let me define that for every
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: future generation of movie and TV goers and lovers.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And there had been zombie movies before, but they
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: had been things like like doctor Kaligari's Cabinet, somebody who
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: was under the control of something someone else or something
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: like that, there was a hypnotist or this was like
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the first time what we think of as zombies wherever
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: introduced like flesh eating ghouls who were dead and come
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: back to life. Yeah, just what you think of as
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a zombie. This guy started that genre, like you said.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they shot it outside in Pittsburgh on about one
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifteen thousand dollars budget, ended up grossing twelve
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: million domestic not bad, and I think close to twenty worldwide,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: and was eventually selected by the Library of Congress for
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: preservation in the National Film Registry.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: It's a good movie.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: It's a very good movie. They shot it in black
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: and white to save on cost, even though color was
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: the standard by that point, and black and white is
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: also a little more forgiving for rudimentary special effects. And
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: one of the revolutionary things he did was cast a
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: black actor as the lead, and for no other reason
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: than hey, this guy Dwayne Jones is really.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Good, exactly right. Like he didn't go back and go, oh, well,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: you know, our hero is black, so we need to
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: make the whole thing of meditation on race and have
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: them confront racism. It was just here's the script, and
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: then the guy playing the lead just happens to be black.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Right, And he was the best guy in the auditions.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: And you know, in nineteen sixty eight, this didn't really happen.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: You didn't just cast a black guy as a lead
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: actor for no with no like ulterior motive, basically right.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: So I read this review from the time from nineteen
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: sixty nine, the year after it came out, Young Roger
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Ebert went and watched it and wrote a review, and
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: he wrote a pretty pretty interesting review, which is basically
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: it was about the reaction of the audience. And he
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: went to a Saturday matinee that was populated almost entirely
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: by ten eleven year olds. Oh wow, and they were
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: used to seeing the Creature from the Black Lagoon or
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Frankenstein or you know, just movies that any kid could
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: handle and could enjoy watching, and you know, fun, scary
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Yeah, and he said, that's how that
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: that was how the crowd reacted for the first half
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: of the movie. But then about the point where and
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: here's here comes spoilers. Everybody, if you haven't seen Nither
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: of Living Dead, to hit yourself in the knee with
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a hammer. You the the the teenage couple go to
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: get gas and when their car blows up and is
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: engulfs and flames, they die. They're burned to death. He said,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Right about that time, the tone, the mood of the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: theater changed and there was no like gleeful screaming anymore.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Kids were starting to like not move and we're afraid
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: to like move in their seats, and some were quietly
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: crying to themselves. And from that the whole, the whole
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: point on, it just got worse and worse for these
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: little kids watching this movie.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: So it was a huge impact on horror movies a it.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Like you said earlier, it was kind of the first
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: one to really sort of delve into other issues like
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: if you look up, like significance of not of the
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Living Dead or meaning of nighted living Dead or something
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: like that. There are scores of articles that have been
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: written over the years of how it was a metaphor
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: for the Vietnam War, or an allegory about distrust of
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: authority or the collapse of traditional family. And I think
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Romero said, like I didn't necessarily mean all these things,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: but you can certainly find it in the movie.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: That is art. Like one of the great revelations of
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: my adult life is that the artist, the writer, the songwriter,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the author rarely intends to imbue as much meaning into
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: their work as people take from it. That that's part
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: of art as interpretation. Isn't that neat? Like you don't
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: if you're a writer, if you're a young writer right
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: now who's just sitting there racking your brain for how
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: to insert metaphor and meaning into this, just write your
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: story and people are going to find it for themselves. Yeah, agreed,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: I wish somebody had told me that.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: When I was younger, I had teachers that said stuff
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: like that, Oh I didn't like good college professors in
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: English that would when students would argue like, I think
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: he means this, he would say like, you know, he
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: may or she may not have meant anything.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Right I had.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: That's the revelation.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I had teachers that would just go wrong.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: The other thing about Night Living Dead is it spawned, obviously,
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: the zombie genre and sequels, Don of the Dead, Day
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, the Walking
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Dead remakes.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Shout out Stephen Yune. Yeah right, why not?
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: I'm still into the Walking Dead.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: You Yeah, we talked about this, yes, yes, okte Une listens.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Anyway, Zombies are I think still hot and we can
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: so hot. We owe that all to mister Romero, master
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: of the genre.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Yep, chuck. One more thing too that Naya Living Dead
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: did that they weren't the first, but very famously Romero
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: did was kill off his hero senselessly and shockingly.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah at the end, good point.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks man. Okay, So let's move on. Like I said
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, yes day after Christmas.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: If you've ever been in Washington, d C. At the
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: end of M Street. You might have noticed very during
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: the daytime, ordinary set of stairs. At nighttime, maybe they
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: look creepy to you because those are the Exorcist stairs.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm trying to conjure the music in my head,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: but all I'm coming up with is the unsolved mysteries music.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: It wasn't quite right, so close, but it's not. I'm
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: so unsatisfied right now.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: So The Exorcist was based on a book by William
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Peter Bladdie who wrote this in nineteen seventy one, and
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: then in seventy three the movie was made. And there's
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: I think I referenced not too long ago a great
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Mark Marin interview with William Friedkin where he talks about
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: the audition process for Linda Blair. So you should go
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: listen to that because it was pretty insightful. But The
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Exorcists really kind of changed the game in that it
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: was a It spawned a bit of a subgenre of
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: demonic movies.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Sure I were like religious based.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even though I guess Rosemary's Baby was before that.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: But the Exorcist was such a mega hit and it
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: was nominated for Best Picture the first horror movie to
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: be nominated for that, so it was just like it
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: was a big deal.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: It was. It sold six million tickets in about two months.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: This is a horror movie, right, and it came out
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: in nowhere. Apparently the effect they had on audiences was
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: extremely pronounced. There was a woman in Boston who had
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: to be carried from the theater and she goes it
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: cost me four dollars, but I only lasted twenty minutes.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So we're like, that's the stories of that got around
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: and people wanted to see, you know, this movie can't
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: be that scary, and they went and they were like,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: oh my god, that movie is that scary.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it holds up too. I mean, special effects
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: are they'd never quite hold up. But it's still a
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: very creepy movie. Very famously, Linda Blair played the little
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: girl who was possessed by a demon, and the the
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: heavy hitters were called in the two Exercises Demon, including
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: a Max van Seadao who was only forty four when
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: he was played. This guy in his easily in his seventies.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is he Benjamin Button?
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Well no, they made him up.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Wow, they did a great job.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which I don't see why they felt the need
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: to do that. I know they God, who else did
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: they almost cast? Oh? Brando? They almost cast Brando, but.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: That would have been a colossal mistake.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Well, Friedkin said, you know what, as soon as you
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: do that, it's a Marlon Brando movie. Yeah, and I
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: think he said, picture a Brando picture. Sure, that's what
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: they said. And he'd wanted to be a Brando picture.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: He wanted to be the.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Exorcist, So you said. It was based on a book
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: from two years before by William Peter Bladdie. He apparently
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: was known as a comedy writer and he wanted to
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: do something different.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: He said, Hey, wouldn't it be funny if the little
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: girl's head spun around and she keeps green bile?
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Wait? Wait'll you hear what I have he do with
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: a crucifix? So he actually wrote the book because he
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: wanted to scare America back to church. That was his
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: aim with the book.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: It may have worked.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: He believed that there was real evil going on in
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the world and that part of it was because of
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: a loss of eight or a loss of religion, I guess,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: And that's what he wanted to do with it. And
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: when the movie came out, there was a huge pushback
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: from religious authorities like Billy Graham said he believed the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: movie itself was possessed by a demon. I'm not sure
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: how that would happen, but that was like a huge
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: thing at the time, and a lot of a lot
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: of other religious establishment types were like, don't go see
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: that movie. It's evil. But there were some who who
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: were part of part of religion, major organized religion, who
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: kind of saw through it and said, no, no, this
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: is it's good that we're talking about this. That there
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: were telling people, you know, or people are seeing that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: there's such a thing as like good versus evil literally
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: combating on earth, you know, and people are talking about
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: this and thinking about it. And so in that sense,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the Exorcist like really kind of went to bat for
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: organized religion.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I saw another criticism of it though, that said one
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: of the themes of the movie that the book hadn't
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: really intended, but the movie picked up on and expounded on,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: was intergenerational conflict. That it was Reagan the child represented
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the younger generation who was at war with the establishment,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: and that it even goes so far as to where
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: her mother the actress. The movie that she's working on
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: is about campus takeover by young radicals. Huh. So that's
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: kind of a theme that was apparently part of the subtext,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: but was a major part of it in the movie
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: at least interesting. Yeah, I thought so too, because apparently,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, you think of intergenerational conflict now, Apparently in
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the late sixties and early seventies it was sharper than
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: it probably ever has been before or since.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The only other thing I got is that the
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: green stuff that she projectiles was Anderson's pup and a
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: little bit of oatmeal text.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Anderson's piece of Well, bet you can't get that anymore, Chuck,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Let's do Jaws and then we'll take a break. I
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: love talking about Jaws.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Jaws is on. You know. I did
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: my top favorite movies list at one point on our website,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: and I listed Jaws is my favorite movie favorite of
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: all time. Yeah, I mean that list changes, but it's
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Jaws is always in my top five. I can watch
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: it anytime it's on. It is one of the I've
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: often said it's a perfect movie, and what I mean
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: by that is there's just not a misstep, like the
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: casting was perfect. The acting was great, the script was great.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: It played out just perfectly throughout the film. He, like Spielberg,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: was just a master storyteller with that movie.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: You were talking about how young George Romero was in
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Night of the Living Dead. Spielberg was twenty six when
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: he made Jaws.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: He was thirteen years old.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: He and he was apparently scared to death when he
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: finished filming. The schedule had been for fifty five days.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: It went to one hundred and fifty nine. Yeah, he
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: had I think been allotted four million dollars. He ended
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: up spending twelve million on it.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, largely because a shooting on water is notoriously difficult,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: and b the shark mechanical shark they use was legendarily wonky,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: and how it are not wonky but wanky wonky.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: It didn't work.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: It rarely worked. So they spent a lot of time
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: and burnt a lot of hours trying to get this
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: shark to do its thing, and so much so that
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: it didn't even make that many appearances in the movie.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I think they even kind of scaled it back, and
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: that ended up being better for the movie because you
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: didn't get as much shark.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: I looked up the urban legend about the shark being
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: named after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce, and apparently it's true. Really, Yeah,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Bruce Rayner was the name of Spielberg's lawyer, and that
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: was the nickname for the mechanical shark on the set
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: was Bruce.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: That's pretty funny.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: So with Jaws, right, we're talking about horror movies that
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: changed the genre. Jaws not only changed the horror genre,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: it changed movie making to this day. Yeah, and in
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: multiple ways, multiple massive ways. It changed the entire film
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: industry almost single handedly.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was at the time there was no such thing.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: You take it for granted now, but there was no
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: such thing as a quote unquote summer release.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: No, a lot of theaters close down because ac wasn't
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: in every theater, and people then want to sit around
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: in a hot movie theater for two hours.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a summer release or a tent pole film or
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: a blockbuster feature like Jaws was the first one of
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: all those.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: What at the time, when Jaws came out, they used
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to release a movie on maybe one two screens in
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: say New York or LA for a week and then
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: did make its way to you know, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: for a few weeks, and then eventually it'd make it
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: to your small town six eight weeks later. Yeah, that
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: was how movies were released, not Jaws. Jaws was released
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: on four hundred and thirty five screens across the country,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: which is huge, which is part of the part of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the summer blockbuster release playbook now.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was also the first movie to spend
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: lots and lots of money on marketing, and so I
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: think the studios were like, wait a minute, you spend
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: some dough on marketing, you release this thing wide. You
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: can make a ton of money in the first month
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: that a movie's out, and you're kind of set. Like
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: after that, it's anything else's gravy. Yeah, and that's after
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: the first like week or two probably.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. Yeah, the whole point of blockbuster now
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: is to get that opening weekend, to make all your
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: money back in the opening weekend, and then everything else
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: is gravy on top of it. Right, Jaws was it
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: didn't make its I don't know, maybe it did make
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: its money back in the first weekend, because it hit
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars in like seventy eight days or something.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Incredible like that because it was the first movie to
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: hit one hundred million dollars and it did it in
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: just a couple months. Even.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it eventually went on to make to about two
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: hundred and sixty million dollars domestically, which is I mean,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: that's a great take now, Yeah, you know, much less
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: the mid nineteen seventies.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Sure for a twelve million dollars spend, for sure.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: My only beef here is that I would not consider
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Jaws a horror movie.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I think he's an adventure film. Yeah, I guess you're right,
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: with a scary antagonist. Yeah, but it's amazing how much
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: I quote that movie in my day to day life.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just just just show that's a great that's a classic.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: All Right, let's take a break. I'm gonna meditate on
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: that line, and we'll talk about a few other scary movies,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: including one that was originally titled scary movie.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, moving on to Halloween. Halloween Chuck nineteen seventy eight.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I believe Halloween.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, John Carpenter, the youngish John Carpenter, who originally titled
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: this movie The Babysitter Murders. No, A little on the nose,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: pretty terrifying title. I guess young Jamie Lee Curtis her
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: very first movie, was it really? Yeah?
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Well, she went on to become known as the scream
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Queen for all the horror movies she was in.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Totally and this was shot in twenty days in South
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Pasadena as the Midwest, and it's credited as being birthing
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: the slasher genre.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it did, so there were slasher films before it.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: The Town That Dreaded, Sundown, good movies like based on
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: a true crime story actually in Texas, one called Black Christmas,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: The Grabster Sites from nineteen seventy four. I haven't heard
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: of that one. But the idea of a faceless almost
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: a like non entity entity coming at you and relentlessly
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: stalking you, being impervious to harm, as the Rabster puts it,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: and just coming at you again and again trying to
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: kill you. That that was. That was all established by Halloween,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: and it was done like to too great effect as well.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it holds up. It's still scary. Michael Myers,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: of course, was The Killer. The music that John Carpenter scored,
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Hi mean, he scores most of his movies himself, but
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: very iconic. Basic thing I think he only took a
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: couple of days to come up with it. But like
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: the Michael Myers character and the mask are so iconic,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: the music is so iconic. You know about the mask,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: right Chatner? Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I went and check that one out too to verify
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: that it was true. And it definitely is true that
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Michael Myers mask is actually a Captain Kirk star Trek
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: mask painted white.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: That is history yep.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: In the in the script when it came to the mask,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: it just said pale, neutral features of a man.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which makes the whole thing even creepier because he's
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: an implacid or is that the right word.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: He's just almost like just an emotionless killer.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: It made the fact that he was merciless, ruthless, pitiless
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: and arbitrarily killing people almost all the more pronounced because
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: his expression never changes.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Well, to me, the two things that were creepiest about
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Halloween was the expression never changed because of that mask,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: and he did not run, like oh yeah, he would
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: just walk, and you still got the feeling like you
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: can't outrun this guy even though he's walking.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: That was another creepy part about it. It follows with
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the walking aspect of it.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah for sure. Yeah.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in the same way that like twenty eight Days
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Later was freaky in that it took zombies and made
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: him run.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Or I remember when I saw Friday the thirteenth
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: and Freddy Krueger was running around, like, that's not what
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: scary dudes do.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, scary dudes don't trot.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Now, they walk very creepily toward you and still somehow
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: gain speed on you even though you're running full speed.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Well, Freddy scared me to death the first time I
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: saw that movie.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, first one was a pretty good one, but.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Halloween established this, Like you said, it established the slasher genre,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and everything about slasher films still today all rooted in
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Halloween John Carpenter's tropes.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, like you said, there were a couple
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: of other slasher films before, but none of them grossed
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: close to fifty million bucks.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Wow, is that how much Halloween made?
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, forty seven million domestic at about a three hundred
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars budget, so it you know, it's sort of
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: like with the Exorcists, like there were other movies that
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: sort of did this thing before. But when you have
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: a huge hit that does it is when it sort
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: of redefines the genre because it it's money. Yeah, and
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: that's all they met.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Everyone starts paying attention after that.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: All right, what's next?
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: What's next? My friend? Is a movie that came out
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: when I don't know, were you still in college? No,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: you must have just been out then.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: I was out a few years.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, regardless around our college era, this movie came out.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Because up to this point, everything's come out either when
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: we were little or before we were born. This one
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: was right in our wheelhouse. It was the Blair Witch Project,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: which came out in nineteen ninety eight.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And one of the big things that Blair Witch
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Project did well two things. Really, it established the found
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: footage genre or subgenre that is so overplayed now in
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: the viral marketing campaign. And that's how I came upon it.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: I remember very specifically being in the apartment of Scott
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: at Pallito, who you know, Sure he shot our TV show,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: one of my oldest friends, and I was sitting in
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: his apartment on Claremont Avenue Indicator and I happened upon
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: this and This was pre Facebook. I don't even know
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: how I found it, you know, before things were being
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: shared around, right, And it happened upon this website, the
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: very first Blair Witch Project website, and I was like, dude,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: come over here and check this out. This is the
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: scariest thing I've ever seen. Yeah, and I remember the
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: website set it up as if it was real, and
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: that this found footage thing, it's so overdone now it's
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: hard to go back in time and remember when it
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: was fresh. But I remember looking at and being like,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: did this happen? Did they really find this footage of
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: this murder in the woods? Like well, I got to
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: see this.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: That was the rumor that this was actually real, man.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: And this is, like you said, I mean, this is
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: before the found footage genre. So people were being exposed
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: to this concept for the first time, and we're kind
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: of falling for it. I mean, first all, huge, you're
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: either in college or you're just recently out of college,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: so you're maybe slightly more gullible than you are ten
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: years on.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: You're ready to believe it.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: You want to believe, right, So yeah, the idea that
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: this was actual found footage, it just made it all
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: the more enjoyable, and people were buying into it now.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: I think the other part of it was that the filmmakers,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: partly because they didn't have the budget for actual effects,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: left a lot of the scariest parts to your imagination.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Nor did they have the talent to make a
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: good narrative film.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I guess. I mean they worked on a sixty four
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: page script, which I was surprised that it was that
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: that big. But they shot it for eight days, and
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: originally they were going to make it like a documentary
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: about the found footage, right, And then one of them
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: had a flash of perspective. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: let's just release it like it's found footage. And that
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: was that. The rest was history.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm poking fun. That was not very nice
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: at all. Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrik or Merrick, the
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: co directors, they they should be credited with a truly
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: ingenious campaign and invention.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Well, they weren't the first to come up with found footage, right,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: there were some films before. I've never known how to
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: pronounce it, Mondo Kane or Mondo Caine. I think Kanye
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: It's from nineteen sixty two. And it was supposedly a
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: documentary about like some like weird tribal rituals. I think
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: there's head shrinking maybe involved, and it purported to be
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: like real footage. Same with Cannibal Holocaust with Man. If
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: you've never seen Campbell Holocaust, go out and watch it
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: right now. It's very disturbing. And it's so disturbing that
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: the director of the movie was charged with murder because
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: they believed that the actual murders depicted they were so realistic.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: They thought that it was a snuff film basically, but
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a documentary as well. So
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: there was an idea of like found footage or documentary
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: style horror movies that had come before, but nothing like
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: The Blair Witch, where it was just straight up these people.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: We found their old camera and this is what was
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: on it.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Well, and they were smart enough to to dig up
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: an old thing that never went huge. You know. They're like, hey, man,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: like these other movies, they never really hit it big,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: and they it was a timing thing. They they I mean,
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: hats off for them to them, Yeah, good for them,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: and to them.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Nice going all right, chuck scream.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah scream, I teased that it was originally titled scary movie.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I'm glad it wasn't because scary movie is awesome. I well,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: it's scary movie. Ever would have been called maybe it
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: would have never been made.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Or maybe they would have called that Scream.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I guess so.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: So Scream was a very big deal when it came out.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: The writer Kevin Williamson, and this is still the highest
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: growing slasher film of all time. Basically Scream one is.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: It was huge. I got Nev Campbell's haircut as a
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: result of it. Like it was a big, big pop
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: culture watermark.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: It was. And one of the big things about it,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: aside from the boatloads of money that it made, was
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: it spawned a subgenre called horror, which is even though
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: it had been done by no less than its own
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: director of Wes Craven with Wes Craven's New Nightmare two
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: years before Scream, it wasn't nearly as popular. But meta
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: horror is this idea, and if you've ever seen Scream,
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: you know they're constantly just referencing horror movies like this
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: is where you know, you don't go out and make
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: out in the car because that's where.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: You get killed. And then they would do that and
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: get killed, right.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Although I don't think that specific thing happened.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Like don't go back into the house.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like all the tropes of horror movies are addressed
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: in the movie, and.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: They're talking about them as the horror movie tropes.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, exactly, meta horror.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are plenty of other things that came
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: along meta horror examples like have you seen Tucker and
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Dale Versus Evil?
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: No, it's good.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Oh check it out man, All right, that's a good movie.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Zombie Land. Yeah, I did see that where he's rattling
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: off all of the things that you need to notice
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: survive a zombie apocalypse that he learned from zombie movies. Right.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: And then Cabin in the Woods. Did you see that? One?
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Great movie?
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: It was a great movie. I thought it was really good.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: I mean from beginning to end, it was a great movie.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: Did you like Scream?
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I love Scream. I liked all the Screams.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: I only saw the first two. The second one I
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: think might have been even better than the first to me,
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: and that the second was shot Emily worked on that
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: it was shut here at Agnascott College party.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Yeah? You have to go back
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: and watch it knowing that now I'll be like, oh,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I've driven past that place.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: So I got a few tidbits. Like I said, initial
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: title was Scary Movie Number two. The Weinstein brothers initially
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: offered it to George Romero and Sam Raimi. What else
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: do I have here? Drew Barrymore was originally supposed to
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: play Sydney, the lead character, and then she said, no,
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: how about if I just played that girl the which
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: kind of was a big thing because you see Drew
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Barrymore and it was a big shock when she died
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: in the first scene, right, you know.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: You can't kill off your heroin right away.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like, I remember, I remember that first scene
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: really really scaring me when I saw it the first
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: time in the theater.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It's a scary, gruesome, gory heart.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very well played. And then before he went to
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Nev Campbell, he went out to Alicia wit, Britney Murphy
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: and Reese Witherspoon.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: And then Campbell was your first choice.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: And then the mask, the iconic screen mask apparently wasn't
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: off the shelf mask.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Wow, that made that company's money.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Weinstein didn't like it. They were like,
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: I hate that mask. Everything else is fine, huh, But
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Wes Craven said, no, it's got to be the mask.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Don't be stupid, Bob.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: All right, we're going to finish up with our own edition.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Here finally, nineteen sixty.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, Psycho, I can't believe this wasn't in the list.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: I think ed kept this off the list to toy
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: with somebody he doesn't like specifically. That's the only explanation.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because Psycho changed everything.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it really did. I mean it was the you
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: could say that it was one of the first slasher flicks.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: It was an early psychological thriller.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: It was based on the real life story of ed Gean. Yeah,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I mean it doesn't exactly mirror ed Dean's life, but
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: the idea of being obsessed with your mother so much
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: that you will commit murder was definitely rooted in Agen's story.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with ed Gean, he not only
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: he was a I don't even know if he was
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: a serial killer. I think he only I think he
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: murdered one, maybe two people. But more than anything, he
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: was a grave robber. But he likes to dress up
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: in people's skin women's skin and pretend he was his
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: own mother. Which, man, that's a lot of years on
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: the couchworking that one out. Yeah, or you can just
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: die at the hands of cops one of the two.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And he also inspired leather Face from Texas Chainsaw.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: Massacre Yeah, and Buffalo Bill of course. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Sounds of the Lambs.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. One guy inspired all those guys.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: So I found this article Psycho colon the horror Movie
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: that Changed the Genre by Owen Glieberman or is it
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Gliberman Glieber Gleiberan. I think he wrote for a legendary critic,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: wrote for aw for years and years, and now writes
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: for a variety.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Oh he does.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but he put it best. He said, well, you know,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: the iconic shower scene, first of all, is hugely important
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: because it was Hitchcock really kind of ripped up the script,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: not literally, but the horror movie script when he kills
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: off Janet Lee halfway through the movie. You just didn't
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: do that at the time.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: No, we came out of nowhere, and we've seen that
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: come up later on, like at the end of Night
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: of Living Dead or Drew Barrymore in Scream. Hitchcock was
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: the first one to do that.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And Glieberman puts it this way. He said he
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: was also slicing through years, decades, centuries even of audience
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: expectation that the hero or heroine of a fictional work
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: would be shielded and protected or would at least die
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: usually the end in a way that made some sort
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: of moral dramatic sense. And Psycho the murder made no
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: sense at all, right, And he really kind of hits
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: it on the head there. It was like, if you've
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: never seen Psycho or heard of it, the movie's just
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: going along about this woman who steals some money from
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: her work and she's kind of on the lamb and
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: checks into this hotel, and you don't even know it's
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: a horror movie. You're thinking it's a movie about a
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: lady who steals money and is trying to get away
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: from getting caught, right, and then just out of nowhere,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: she's hacked up in a shower and at the time,
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: audiences and still, if you haven't seen it, it's shocking.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: The audiences were just like they didn't know what they'd seen.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Right exactly, So you're not not only is is the
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: hero no longer safe? That means maybe you're not either. Yeah,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: so it has a It had a really huge unsettling effect.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: And then Owen Glieberman points out that Hitchcock was so
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: smart that he even he even made a nod to
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: the the type of pat expected horror that the audience
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: was used to in the house that he used for
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Psycho The Bates House. Yeah, there was this huge, rambling
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Victorian mansion on a hill. There's lots of taxidermy, and
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: it was like over over decorated and just creepy. But
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: up to that point, like that was horror. That was
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: what a horror movie looked like and felt like. And
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: this was kind of Hitchcock's homage to that. But at
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: the same time he was also putting the heel of
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: his shoe on it as well.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that house was, I mean almost a character
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: in itself. Like if you've ever seen the recreation of
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: it in Los Angeles, I think it's a universal.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Did you see it? Oh yeah, I never did. The
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: closest I came was, I think when different strokes went there.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: That's as closest you got to it.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Man, if you've ever seen this thing in person
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: likes it sends a chill up your back just seeing
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: the thing in like a sunny Los Angeles day. Still,
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: that's awesome. It's such an iconic house. It's like, oh, man,
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: there it is. That's where Norman Bates lives. He's the
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: most disturbed human of all time.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: So in the movie, of course, it was the mother
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: character who is sort of referenced throughout the movie, and
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: it is not until the end that you realize that
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: there is no mother. Mother's dead, right, there's just Norman
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Bates and all his rage and hang ups.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So all the monster movies about giant ants and
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: or the creature from the Black lagooner monsters, things that
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: were an other that a normal person had to do
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: battle with, that was gone.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: Ye.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Now the monster had been on screen the whole time,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: and you had noticed it. And now what do you
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: think about your neighbor who has seemed a little weird
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: from time to time before? Could he be a murderer
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: who thinks he is his mother? Who knows? Yeah, this
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: is what Hitchcock did to everybody back in nineteen sixty
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: And you almost get like, I think Owen Gliberman points
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: it out. Yeah, he does. At the beginning, he basically
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: says like, we probably didn't see Psycho. If you're reading this,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: you're probably too young to have seen Psycho in nineteen
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: sixty and we should all feel sad that we didn't
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: because it's so changed everything. We can't do anything but
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: take it for granted now, and everything that's come since
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: then has been trying to regain that and horror that
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: it instilled in audiences, and thus far, no one's actually
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: been able to do it.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the other thing, I remember when I saw
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: it when I was younger. I think I saw this
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: when I was like fourteenish, and I think it had
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: this impact on just about everyone. I don't think I
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: took a shower for a month. I was straight up
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: bathtub curtain open, doors, open, windows open.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: Making your mom watch she's keeping watch.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: No, that would have been full circle back to Sue.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I guess so. Yeah, you didn't even want
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: to have anything to do with your mom.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: No. Man, Like it changed the shower curtain industry for
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: a while after that. Yeah, but very good movie. And
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: there were a couple of Hitchcock movies in the last
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: few years, two different ones, one with Anthony Hopkins and
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: one with Toby Jones that were both really good, and
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: one was about the years that he was making Psycho.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: The other was about the years when he was making
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: The Birds, and they were both really really good movies,
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: and you should check those out too. You should repeat that.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: We just got a rich interjection from Nol, So go
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: ahead and say it again, Josh, in case it didn't
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: come through.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: So Noel just said that the director of the Black
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Coat's Daughter is Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Psycho's Son. Wow. He also did another movie now that
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Noel says that, thanks Nol. It's called The Pretty Little
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Thing that Lives in the House, which was another horror movie,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: a ghost story. It sounds that was his first one,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: and I think that might be on Netflix. It's great.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: It's a really great movie too.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: Man. This has got me fired up to see some
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: horror movies.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: It's a renaissance of horror.
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's tough though, because Emily doesn't really dig it,
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: so I have to just find alone time to do that.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Good to watch it in the bathroom. All right, Well,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about horror movies, go
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: watch horror movies.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: Go forth and let us know what we missed, for
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: God's sake.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want to check out grabs list, type
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: in horror movies on the search bar at Houseofworks dot
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: com and it'll bring up this fine, fine list that
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: you'll disagree with. And since I said disagree, it's time
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: for listener mail.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: This from Eric, and I'm gonna call it what he
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: called it, Schoolhouse Rock nostalgia theory. All right, I think
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: it's pretty right on. This just came in. Actually, there's
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: a hot take, hey, guys, in school House Rock. So
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: Josh made the statement that gen xers are most nostalgic
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: generation and attribute it to the success of Schoolhouse Rock.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: I'm going to offer my own theory. I propose that
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: gen x is nostalgic mostly for pop culture because of
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: the prolifera that word of child targeted advertisements and marketing
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: in the seventies and eighties.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Hummy, certainly something.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: We've talked about.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: His theories got legs.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: While our little impressionable brains were developing, were being taught
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: by those who were steering pop culture to long for
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: and find fulfillment in the toys and other products our
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: cartoons were pushing on us. Now, as adults those messages
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: are still deep in our psyche. We can't shake the
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: idea that we still really need those Star Wars action
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: figures to be happy, not because the toys and the
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: shows were so great, because we had been tricked into
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: believing we need them. I have nothing scientific to back
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: this up, just a hunch yet. What you mean there
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: hasn't been a study from MIT right on Star Wars toys.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of surprised by that as well. I thought
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: you were being facetious at first turn.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know which way is up at this point. Yeah,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: nothing scientific to back this up, but I'd love to
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: hear what you all think. See if anyone out there
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: is any respectable and informed input, do you. Eric? That
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: is from Eric Lewin and Eric. I think that's super valid.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah I do too, Eric. I think you've really hit
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: upon something here.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: And that's all I have to say about it.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: If you have a great theory, fan theory, real life theory, whatever,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: we want to hear them there, especially if it's interesting.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast or josh
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: am Clark. You can post it on Facebook, okay, at
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Stuff you Should Know. You
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: can send us an email The Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: dot com. As always joined us at our home on
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot com