Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Spooky Season, 2024, part 2

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Spooky Season, 2024, part 2 · Pick Up and Deliver

0:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast where I
0:05
Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as a step out of
0:07
Speaker 1: the library and deliver an episode to you while I
0:10
Speaker 1: walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's
0:22
Speaker 1: a rainy day here previously rainy day here in suburb
0:26
Speaker 1: in Chicago. The streets are wet and the cars are
0:27
Speaker 1: making lots of noise. I'm on my way home from
0:30
Speaker 1: the library, and I'm happy to be talking with you
0:32
Speaker 1: about the movies that I've watched recently. This is the
0:36
Speaker 1: second of my two part Scary Movies I Watched in
0:39
Speaker 1: October series, which is actually about scary movies I watched
0:43
Speaker 1: in September and October. Last time, you'll recall I talked
0:46
Speaker 1: about Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, Long Legs, The
0:50
Speaker 1: Dead Zone, The Host, New Nightmare, Ghostbusters, Frozen Empire, Curse
0:54
Speaker 1: of the Cat People, Godzilla Minus One, Talk to Me,
0:57
Speaker 1: Gon GM, Haunted Asylum, nos Fratu, The Vampire and Vampire
1:01
Speaker 1: Hunter D. This time, I continue my conversation about creepy movies,
1:07
Speaker 1: and I forgot to mention one of the things that
1:09
Speaker 1: they that this version of the horror film of the
1:15
Speaker 1: screaming through Horror, Slashing through Horror playlist geak List had
1:20
Speaker 1: this year is the idea that we're supposed to try
1:22
Speaker 1: to watch one movie from each decade from when horror
1:26
Speaker 1: movies began. So I did actually try to do that
1:28
Speaker 1: as well. You'll notice in the second half a bunch
1:30
Speaker 1: of older movies that hit different decades. I did not
1:34
Speaker 1: hit every decade, but I got real close. I don't
1:36
Speaker 1: think I got one from the nineteen thirties, but I
1:40
Speaker 1: did get almost every other decade. Well, we can job
1:43
Speaker 1: about that at the end, but I thought I would.
1:46
Speaker 1: Let's get started, get going. So next up is The
1:50
Speaker 1: Fly from nineteen fifty eight. This is the original movie
1:53
Speaker 1: starring Vincent Price, which is about a scientist who creates
1:58
Speaker 1: a teleporter and accidentally inshes himself with a fly and
2:02
Speaker 1: when he gets teleported, part of his body ends up
2:04
Speaker 1: on the fly, and part of the fly ends up
2:06
Speaker 1: on his body. It's super creepy. It's cheesy and the
2:10
Speaker 1: old way that movies like this were, but it's also
2:12
Speaker 1: full of pathos and good character development. It's not as
2:15
Speaker 1: good as the David Cronenberg The Fly from the late
2:18
Speaker 1: eighties with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. But it is
2:22
Speaker 1: very good for an old horror movie. I think it
2:25
Speaker 1: is very good. If you haven't seen The Fly, I
2:27
Speaker 1: definitely recommend checking it out. It's a nice creepy one.
2:30
Speaker 1: There's a guy who has a fly head and a
2:33
Speaker 1: fly hand, and it's creepy. You should check it out.
2:37
Speaker 1: It's The Fly in nineteen fifty eight, except we have
2:39
Speaker 1: Jennifer's body. Now, this is a movie I've heard about
2:41
Speaker 1: for years. It's written by Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno
2:45
Speaker 1: and is well known for writing interesting films. I don't
2:48
Speaker 1: remember who the director is, but it's also somebody of note.
2:51
Speaker 1: And this is a movie that got a lot of
2:53
Speaker 1: has gotten a lot of praise over the years as
2:55
Speaker 1: being a really interesting feminist take on the sort of
2:59
Speaker 1: horror movie. But it was terribly marketed because it was
3:03
Speaker 1: marketed basically trying to tantalize teen boys undergoing to the
3:06
Speaker 1: movies with the idea that we might get to see
3:09
Speaker 1: some of Megan Fox's body, and in fact that's not
3:13
Speaker 1: really the point. The point instead is that she's killing
3:17
Speaker 1: other people through a sort of supernatural hunger. It's a
3:21
Speaker 1: pretty good movie. I really enjoyed it. Well made creepy.
3:25
Speaker 1: It's a good high school scary story. I don't know.
3:28
Speaker 1: The imagery did not feel exploitative to me. I felt
3:32
Speaker 1: like it walked the line pretty well. It is not
3:35
Speaker 1: a tame movie. There is. It is somewhat sexy. It's
3:38
Speaker 1: meant to be, but it's sort of sexy in the
3:42
Speaker 1: service of Jennifer. The Jennifer character is seducing teen boys
3:45
Speaker 1: because they're stupid and they think with their pants and
3:49
Speaker 1: then they get eaten. It's pretty good that way and entertaining.
3:52
Speaker 1: So if you had a chance to check out Jennifer's
3:55
Speaker 1: body from two thousand and nine, it's not a bad miss.
3:58
Speaker 1: As I mentioned in the last episode, I am trying
4:00
Speaker 1: to think of games to go with these, but a
4:02
Speaker 1: lot of these movies don't have games that go with them.
4:04
Speaker 1: I don't think, for instance, I don't know that there's
4:08
Speaker 1: a movie about a serial killing monster, a monster that's
4:11
Speaker 1: killing a bunch of people, or a game that sort
4:13
Speaker 1: of trades on that story very well. So probably a
4:16
Speaker 1: role playing game Monster of the Week might work, or
4:20
Speaker 1: Monster Hearts. Even Monster Hearts there you go. It's a
4:23
Speaker 1: role playing game about playing monsters in high school and
4:26
Speaker 1: your teens that have all sorts of dramatic monstrous malformities.
4:30
Speaker 1: So there you go, Monster Hearts. Next up, we have
4:33
Speaker 1: Late Night with the Devil from twenty twenty three. This
4:35
Speaker 1: is a movie that got a lot of buzz when
4:36
Speaker 1: it came out. It got some negative buzz because it
4:39
Speaker 1: turned out that some of the intertitles they used they
4:42
Speaker 1: created with AI art rather than just having an artists
4:45
Speaker 1: make them, which is a bummer because they were pretty
4:47
Speaker 1: pretty generic as far as art goes. I mean, it's
4:50
Speaker 1: an indie film, so I'm sure they saved a couple
4:52
Speaker 1: hundred or thousand dollars on not having an artist create
4:55
Speaker 1: these title cards, but I think that the lost good
4:59
Speaker 1: will far outweighed the money they saved in that choice. Overall,
5:03
Speaker 1: I thought was pretty good movie. It's very well made.
5:05
Speaker 1: It's creepy, but it's all been done before. Like I
5:09
Speaker 1: almost wish I didn't know that it had been done before.
5:11
Speaker 1: A friend, Paul, Hey Paul, I don't think he listens,
5:14
Speaker 1: but Hey Paul told me when I described this movie.
5:17
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, it's just like I think it's
5:19
Speaker 1: called ghost Watch from the BBC in the late eighties
5:23
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's totally just ghost Watch again. So, having
5:26
Speaker 1: then watched ghost Watch on his recommendation, then when Late
5:30
Speaker 1: Night with the Devil came out, I was like, oh, okay, yeah,
5:32
Speaker 1: it's doing that again. Pretty good, but you know, same
5:36
Speaker 1: kind of deal. I thought. Davis David mass Delcian or
5:39
Speaker 1: whatever his name is did a nice job as the
5:42
Speaker 1: scary as the host being menaced by these things, and
5:46
Speaker 1: the premise that there's a sort of see the underbelly
5:50
Speaker 1: to it all works really well. I think there's a
5:53
Speaker 1: lot to be enjoyed about this movie and it's well
5:56
Speaker 1: worth taking a look, but ultimately it was a little
5:58
Speaker 1: disappointing for me. Next up, we have A Quiet Place
6:01
Speaker 1: Day one. This is a movie in the Quiet Place
6:04
Speaker 1: storyline in which a character is in New York when
6:08
Speaker 1: the Quiet Place aliens invade. It's pretty good. It really
6:12
Speaker 1: made me just think about how ridiculous it is that
6:15
Speaker 1: these monsters are able to take over the whole world. Yeah,
6:18
Speaker 1: so I know that part I found a little frustrating,
6:21
Speaker 1: but the story is well told. The monsters are still creepy.
6:24
Speaker 1: The idea of having to be very quiet to avoid
6:26
Speaker 1: the monsters getting you works really well. I think Lupita
6:31
Speaker 1: and Nyongo. I think is her name is the main character,
6:35
Speaker 1: and she did a great job. She's very enjoyable in this.
6:38
Speaker 1: It's a good movie all around, while worth watching if
6:41
Speaker 1: you get a chance, and if you like the quiet
6:42
Speaker 1: Place stories, it's a good addition to that. That's a
6:46
Speaker 1: quiet place. Haunt is a movie about a bunch of
6:48
Speaker 1: teens who go or college students who go to a
6:51
Speaker 1: terrifying haunted house only discover that it's actually terrifying, not
6:55
Speaker 1: pretend terrifying. That's kind of the premise. It's pretty good,
6:59
Speaker 1: well made, not unrealistic. The characters make reasonably good choices,
7:03
Speaker 1: but they still get into lots of trouble. The villains
7:07
Speaker 1: are reasonably creepy. It feels like they sort of were
7:10
Speaker 1: borrowed from a rob zombie movie. The villains have a
7:13
Speaker 1: kind of rob zombie aesthetic to them, grungy, psychotic, makes
7:21
Speaker 1: you wonder how this person could have survived this long
7:24
Speaker 1: to be able to do the thing they're doing now.
7:26
Speaker 1: But pretty entertaining and a fun movie altogether. That's Haunt
7:31
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen well worth a look if you think that
7:35
Speaker 1: sounds interesting. I can't think of a movie I don't
7:37
Speaker 1: think there's a movie again. Maybe Betrailert House in the
7:39
Speaker 1: Hill would be an interesting one to play alongside this,
7:42
Speaker 1: because again it's about going into a haunted house. Next
7:46
Speaker 1: up is the twenty fifteen movie The Final Girls. This
7:49
Speaker 1: is another in the genre of like time traveling horror
7:52
Speaker 1: movie where you end up going back in time to
7:55
Speaker 1: face off against some sort of evil. In this case,
7:59
Speaker 1: the characters get sucked into a horror movie where one
8:04
Speaker 1: because one of the main characters, her mother was a
8:08
Speaker 1: actor in this horror movie and she had passed away,
8:12
Speaker 1: and so this girl had been invited to the screening,
8:16
Speaker 1: and so she's going to see this horror movie with
8:18
Speaker 1: her mom in it. And then there's a dramatic twist
8:22
Speaker 1: in there in the horror movie is the gimmick of course,
8:25
Speaker 1: then the premise is much like Scream or other meta movies,
8:30
Speaker 1: the idea that you have to that if you know
8:32
Speaker 1: how the movie works, you can learn from it. I like,
8:36
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of twists that work really well, very entertaining.
8:40
Speaker 1: This is a really top notch horror movie. I thought
8:42
Speaker 1: it was very fun. It's a little on the silly side,
8:44
Speaker 1: not as gory as you might hope, but really good.
8:48
Speaker 1: If you like your horror with a heavy dose of comedy,
8:51
Speaker 1: you can't go much worse than The Final Girls. Also,
8:55
Speaker 1: it's got Thomas middle Ditch in it, which is never
8:58
Speaker 1: a bad thing. This one, like I said, it's from
9:01
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. Well I'll still have to say about it. Oh,
9:05
Speaker 1: if you were going to play this one with a
9:07
Speaker 1: movie or with a game, I would think the game
9:09
Speaker 1: is Tragedy Looper. The thing about this one in particular
9:14
Speaker 1: is that the idea that the movie loops and plays
9:16
Speaker 1: over and over again is crucial to the story, and
9:19
Speaker 1: so the idea that you can go through over and
9:21
Speaker 1: over again and try to influence what happens works pretty well.
9:24
Speaker 1: That's The Final Girls, which combined nicely with Tragedy Looper.
9:30
Speaker 1: Next up is a very short movie. I think it
9:32
Speaker 1: was like eight minutes long, The Haunted Castle from eighteen
9:35
Speaker 1: ninety six. This is obviously one of the very first
9:37
Speaker 1: horror movies. It is I believe George Milier. It is
9:41
Speaker 1: in the style of most of his movies, which is
9:43
Speaker 1: single camera, not moving, with a stage set in front,
9:47
Speaker 1: using the pause the camera and remove something to make
9:50
Speaker 1: it disappear trick which is at the heart of many
9:53
Speaker 1: of his movies. They also use things like a dissolve
9:57
Speaker 1: and a couple other early cinema tricks that really work
10:01
Speaker 1: well and make for interesting cinema moments. Loosely told, the
10:06
Speaker 1: story is a parable about a guy who gets stuck
10:09
Speaker 1: in a castle with a demon and he has to
10:11
Speaker 1: fight the demon or retempted by it or something. It's
10:14
Speaker 1: a little hard to follow the plot, but it's only
10:16
Speaker 1: eight minutes long. This is the Haunted Castle. Pretty good.
10:19
Speaker 1: It might also have another name as well. I feel
10:21
Speaker 1: like there were multiple names that I found for it.
10:23
Speaker 1: Next up is a nineteen fourteen movie called The Avenging Conscience.
10:27
Speaker 1: This is another early horror movie that involves ghosts. This
10:32
Speaker 1: one is kind of a parable or a retelling of
10:37
Speaker 1: The Telltale Heart by po except that the character seems
10:42
Speaker 1: to know the Telltale Heart, so there's an element of
10:44
Speaker 1: being aware of the story. It's a young man whose
10:48
Speaker 1: uncle is controlling of his life, and so he decides
10:51
Speaker 1: to kill the uncle to try to get his wealth.
10:54
Speaker 1: But then the uncle shows back up as a ghost,
10:56
Speaker 1: and all sorts of bad stuff happens. Of course, in
10:59
Speaker 1: order for those things happen, the sun has to be
11:01
Speaker 1: seeing him and other people don't see him. So it's,
11:04
Speaker 1: like I said, a classic retelling of the Telltale Heart again.
11:08
Speaker 1: This one. All three of these old old movies that
11:10
Speaker 1: I've watched, the first two and then the one I'm
11:12
Speaker 1: about to mention, are all available on YouTube, so you
11:14
Speaker 1: can just go watch him. It's great. The third really
11:16
Speaker 1: old movie I want to mention is The Red Specter.
11:18
Speaker 1: This is from nineteen oh seven. This is another very
11:22
Speaker 1: old movie that uses make things disappear and early stage
11:27
Speaker 1: effects as cinema effects and works really well. This one
11:31
Speaker 1: is sort of a retelling of Faust. You've got a
11:34
Speaker 1: guy who makes the deal with the devil, and then
11:36
Speaker 1: the devil torments him and he ends up being tormented
11:40
Speaker 1: out of his sanity. These stagecraft and costumes are all
11:43
Speaker 1: about what you'd expect if you ever see anyone do
11:45
Speaker 1: a stereotype of an early cinematic film with the devil
11:49
Speaker 1: in it. This is the movie they're making fun of.
11:51
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty well made, pretty interesting for the era,
11:57
Speaker 1: a little bit more fun than The Haunted Castle, but
12:00
Speaker 1: not dramatically so mostly watching it as an exercise in
12:04
Speaker 1: historicity more than entertainment. That's The Red Specter from nineteen
12:08
Speaker 1: oh seven. Next up, we have Lake Michigan Monster. Lake
12:11
Speaker 1: Michigan Monster is an independent film. Looks like it was
12:14
Speaker 1: edited on like an an eymovie or something. Not to
12:18
Speaker 1: say the editing is bad, it's just very I don't
12:21
Speaker 1: want to say amateurish, because that's not a fair that's
12:24
Speaker 1: not a fair depiction of it. It is very well
12:27
Speaker 1: made based on what it is. It just feels definitely
12:32
Speaker 1: like an independent movie. I was directed by Ryan Ryland
12:37
Speaker 1: Brickson and Cole Tews or maybe that's one person named
12:40
Speaker 1: Rylan Brooks and Cole twos. It's an excellent weird oh movie.
12:45
Speaker 1: It's a weird movie about a guy who's trying to
12:48
Speaker 1: hunt this Michigan. This monster in like Michigan that killed
12:50
Speaker 1: his father and there's a monster in the lake that's
12:53
Speaker 1: sort of bizarre and weird. He's got these people he
12:56
Speaker 1: hires to be on his crew, and they're all bizarre
12:58
Speaker 1: and weird. As an interesting movie, really strange and fun
13:02
Speaker 1: and worth watching if you like weird stuff. The guy
13:07
Speaker 1: who made it has got a lot of acclaim recently
13:10
Speaker 1: for a follow up movie he made called Hundreds of Beavers.
13:14
Speaker 1: That's about a person hunting or a person trying to
13:17
Speaker 1: capture beavers in the pre colonial North America, like Michigan
13:22
Speaker 1: area and all these beavers that come after him or something.
13:24
Speaker 1: I haven't watched that one yet, but it looks weird
13:27
Speaker 1: and wonderful. So this is definitely worth checking out if
13:30
Speaker 1: you have a hankering for strange movies. It does get
13:33
Speaker 1: a little long, and there are parts of it that
13:35
Speaker 1: are pretty boring, but big chunks of it are really interesting,
13:39
Speaker 1: and it's very well made and really sort of thoughtful
13:42
Speaker 1: about itself. As far as horror movies go. I don't know. Again,
13:46
Speaker 1: I don't know what I would watch with this. It's
13:49
Speaker 1: a weird movie and it doesn't pair easily with anything
13:53
Speaker 1: in particular. Maybe something like a one page RPG. There's
13:57
Speaker 1: got to be a one page RPG of a hunting
13:59
Speaker 1: seamond something like that would be probably what you want.
14:03
Speaker 1: That's Lake Michigan Monster. Next up, we've got The Whaling.
14:07
Speaker 1: The Whaling. This is Wai l i n g as
14:11
Speaker 1: in someone crying, not someone hunting a whale. The Whaling
14:16
Speaker 1: is a Korean movie about a town where a mysterious
14:22
Speaker 1: illness has appeared and the sort of evil that the
14:27
Speaker 1: town's reaction to this illness, and the idea that this
14:31
Speaker 1: Japanese man who has come to the area must have
14:34
Speaker 1: brought the illness with him. There's an element of a
14:36
Speaker 1: kind of witch hunt in which we watch the characters
14:41
Speaker 1: try to build up their courage and they menace this
14:43
Speaker 1: guy from out of town who seems like he's doing
14:45
Speaker 1: weird stuff, but we don't know exactly what he's doing.
14:48
Speaker 1: It's a real strange movie, but pretty good. The acting
14:52
Speaker 1: is very good. The creepy scenes are really creepy. You
14:56
Speaker 1: don't really understand what's going on for much of the movie,
14:59
Speaker 1: and the villain ends up being really pretty creepy. Yeah,
15:03
Speaker 1: if you get a chance to watch The Whaling, I
15:05
Speaker 1: recommend it's real weird. I don't know. I don't like
15:07
Speaker 1: it quite as much as Gonjam Haunted Asylum, which is
15:11
Speaker 1: the other movie that's not from the United States that
15:14
Speaker 1: I watched. I think that one is Korean. Also, it's
15:17
Speaker 1: very good. The Whiling reminds me of Hoko Anna, which
15:22
Speaker 1: again is a horror movie about a ghost, and it's
15:24
Speaker 1: in the style of like Japanese horror movies, so really creepy.
15:28
Speaker 1: I would say that is like a good pairing for
15:31
Speaker 1: this movie and would make a nice coupling if you
15:34
Speaker 1: wanted to have two to go together, So that might
15:38
Speaker 1: be what I would check out The Whaling from twenty
15:41
Speaker 1: sixteen if you wanted a pairing for that. Finally, the
15:46
Speaker 1: last movie that I wanted to mention is The Innocence
15:50
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty one. And this is innocent, like a
15:55
Speaker 1: child who is innocent. It is an innocent person more
15:58
Speaker 1: than one innocent. It's not the adjective, it's the noun.
16:03
Speaker 1: And it's about these children who live in this mansion
16:07
Speaker 1: and they're being haunted by this ghost of a previous
16:12
Speaker 1: nanny who had lived there, and their new nanny is
16:15
Speaker 1: finding it. Of course, this is based on the Henry
16:17
Speaker 1: James novel The Haunting or the Turn of the Screw,
16:21
Speaker 1: which was recently made into a Netflix show called The
16:23
Speaker 1: Haunting of Blind Manner, and I've been meaning to watch it.
16:26
Speaker 1: We watched like the first two episodes. I think it
16:28
Speaker 1: was pretty good, but it's a slow burn, and I
16:30
Speaker 1: didn't get through it. Been mean to you go back
16:32
Speaker 1: because it was pretty good, Like I said, slow burn,
16:36
Speaker 1: definitely something I want to watch again. But this movie
16:39
Speaker 1: is great. It's full of tension, full of great little
16:43
Speaker 1: moments of surprise. Pas or rural horror is always a
16:46
Speaker 1: good one. This is like genteel rural horror versus like
16:50
Speaker 1: creepy farm hands. This is like a creepy old mansion
16:54
Speaker 1: gothic horror. Maybe is the phrase I'm looking for, You know,
16:56
Speaker 1: it's reminiscent of something like Rebecca or Jane Eyre. But
17:00
Speaker 1: this one feels like it has a supernatural element to
17:03
Speaker 1: it that's really good, very creepy. The children are especially unsettling,
17:08
Speaker 1: and that's part of what makes it so good as
17:10
Speaker 1: a movie. I really like this one, definitely worth checking out.
17:14
Speaker 1: It is a little slow, but a good creepy story.
17:18
Speaker 1: Once again, I don't know what game would go with this.
17:20
Speaker 1: I feel like a moody horror board game would work,
17:24
Speaker 1: or maybe a horror RPG like similar Dread. Maybe Dread
17:28
Speaker 1: is the movie is the game to play with this
17:30
Speaker 1: one where you have a rising tension as the game
17:33
Speaker 1: goes along and creepy stuff starts happening. So yeah, I'll
17:35
Speaker 1: say Dread. Well, that brings me to the end of
17:38
Speaker 1: my walk and the end of my overview of the
17:41
Speaker 1: twenty four scary movies I watched between mid September and
17:44
Speaker 1: the end of October. I'm curious which of these movies
17:47
Speaker 1: you have seen. Head over to board game Geek guild
17:48
Speaker 1: three two six nine and share your thoughts in the forum.
17:52
Speaker 1: What movies did you watch during the horror season? Are
17:56
Speaker 1: there any particular that stand out to you? Are any
17:58
Speaker 1: of the ones that I watch movies really enjoy or
18:01
Speaker 1: are you adding them to your list? Are there any
18:03
Speaker 1: that I should put on my list for next year?
18:05
Speaker 1: We can share all that information over on board game
18:07
Speaker 1: Geek in guild three two sixty nine. I hope that
18:10
Speaker 1: you'll share it with me there, and I look forward
18:12
Speaker 1: to hearing from you. If you want to reach out
18:14
Speaker 1: to me directly, you could send me a message Wombat
18:16
Speaker 1: nine two nine on Board game Geek is the best
18:18
Speaker 1: way to get hold of me. You can also try
18:20
Speaker 1: emailing me Brendan that rattleboxgames dot com, though that is
18:23
Speaker 1: less reliable. Well, thanks for joining me On'm gonna walk today.
18:27
Speaker 1: I hope to your next block.
18:29
Speaker 2: All this in one go bye.
18:48
Speaker 1: Brought to you by rattle Box