Latest / Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage / Bonus Episode - Renfield

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Bonus Episode - Renfield · Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage

• 0:00
  Oh, God. Oh, my God.
• 0:13
  Oh, hey.
• 0:15
  Oh, matey.
• 0:17
  Welcome to a special episode of cage match, colon around about way of meeting Nicholas cage.
• 0:22
  We're recording, right? I'm not just talking to myself here.
• 0:24
  Yeah, you're not shooting this into the void.
• 0:25
  All right. Awesome. Yeah, this week and set.
• 0:27
  Well, he does that sometimes we'll just be standing around.
• 0:30
  I'll just I'll just go into this spiel.
• 0:33
  Yeah, I should start doing that.
• 0:34
  Somebody will enter the lion.
• 0:36
  Oh, hey, welcome to cage match.
• 0:39
  This special episode, we're talking about the film Renfield, which just came out.
• 0:43
  And we just went and saw at the weirdest movie theater.
• 0:48
  It's it's up there for weirdest I've ever been in.
• 0:51
  It's I mean, this isn't a review of the movie theater.
• 0:55
  It should be that we'll give them five minutes.
• 0:57
  So no urinals.
• 0:58
  I mean, there were that urinals, but now they're covered with trash bags.
• 1:01
  Yeah, they're thoroughly backed up.
• 1:02
  I don't think they're getting fixed anytime soon.
• 1:04
  But most importantly, the entire thing was sort of loosely nautical themed.
• 1:08
  Hence the ahoy. Yeah.
• 1:09
  Yeah. Theaters were all peers.
• 1:11
  We were in Pier three today. Yeah.
• 1:14
  The entrance to the much like real appears, the toilets were terrifying.
• 1:18
  Entrance was like from behind the screen.
• 1:21
  That was great. Oh, yeah.
• 1:23
  I'm glad I got in there before you guys,
• 1:24
  so I could see you guys do the same weird double take that I did.
• 1:28
  Yeah. And then I have to walk all the way in.
• 1:31
  And then we watched the movie with five other people.
• 1:33
  Yeah, I did like how the you know, it took them about seven minutes
• 1:38
  to realize the house lights were still on instead of the gentle downgrade.
• 1:42
  Instead of the dimmer switch, someone just like, I don't think this place
• 1:45
  has a dimmer switch. Almost certainly.
• 1:47
  I think they just retrofitted some fluorescence and put some LED lights
• 1:51
  in there and they're just like, OK.
• 1:53
  And then when the movie the lights did not come back on. Yeah.
• 1:57
  Well, they were they were also like servicing people at the concession stand.
• 2:00
  So those two guys can only do so much. It's true.
• 2:03
  OK, well, Renfield.
• 2:06
  Yeah. So I guess a fair warning, we might have some loose spoilers,
• 2:09
  but we're not going to like go scene by scene or anything like that.
• 2:12
  So just our initial thoughts and like our impressions of
• 2:16
  this new Nicolas Cage film.
• 2:20
  Slaps and fucks. I like it.
• 2:22
  I loved it. It was awesome.
• 2:25
  I thought it was a lot of fun.
• 2:26
  It was really, really enjoyable.
• 2:28
  And also the most creative violence I've seen since shoot them up.
• 2:32
  Yeah, that's fair. No, the violence in this is nutty.
• 2:37
  It's wacky. There's a lot of disarming.
• 2:41
  There's yeah, there are several disarming scenes.
• 2:44
  Very gruesome.
• 2:45
  I would say if you've seen the trailers, you have the general idea
• 2:49
  of the main beats of the story.
• 2:51
  Yeah, the trailers really did kind of lay out
• 2:53
  what you're going to get here pretty well.
• 2:55
  There's no big surprises. I don't think.
• 2:58
  I mean, ultimately, it's a movie about a breakup.
• 3:00
  Yeah. Renfield, being the familiar of Dracula,
• 3:04
  finds his their way into New Orleans
• 3:08
  as they're finding a new home for Dracula.
• 3:11
  And in an effort to bring him bodies,
• 3:16
  meets up with a support group, uses their sad sob stories
• 3:21
  to find victims, which solves their problems and his problems
• 3:27
  as he takes out the people who abuse them.
• 3:30
  And then things don't go well.
• 3:32
  Yeah, runs afoul of some less than savory characters.
• 3:36
  Hilarity ensues.
• 3:37
  That's pretty much the movie.
• 3:39
  That is kind of the entire thing. Great.
• 3:40
  I knew we could do this in under 40 minutes.
• 3:42
  I know we're good. We got five.
• 3:44
  I think we call it cool. See you next week, everybody.
• 3:47
  This is the easiest edit I'll have to do.
• 3:49
  I'm going to cut five into three. Bye bye. Yeah.
• 3:54
  So Nicholas Cage in this film,
• 3:57
  I know he was saying that he considers this like a direct sequel to the original.
• 4:02
  Yeah. Dracula.
• 4:03
  Universal Studios Dracula, which actually I want to talk about this.
• 4:06
  Nick, you watched that today.
• 4:07
  Yeah, I watched it before we went out today. So I.
• 4:10
  What are your thoughts on this being a direct sequel?
• 4:13
  Well, OK, so first of all, I don't think I had ever seen
• 4:16
  the 1930s Bella Lugosi Dracula film.
• 4:20
  And first of all, it was great.
• 4:23
  I highly recommend it.
• 4:24
  It's a it's a quick hour and 15 minutes.
• 4:27
  So if you're going to go out to go see Renfield, just slap this on beforehand.
• 4:32
  And I don't think you're going to regret it.
• 4:34
  It brings home a couple of jokes, especially when they do the recap of the movie.
• 4:40
  Cap of like what's been going on.
• 4:42
  It's really well put together the tie in between the two movies.
• 4:46
  As far as like how does it work as a direct sequel?
• 4:50
  I think it works well in the end of the 1931 film.
• 4:56
  You could say there's ambiguity in the fate of Dracula.
• 5:00
  Whatever happens, happens off screen.
• 5:02
  So it's plausible that he survived
• 5:07
  and continued with the help of his familiar Renfield.
• 5:11
  Lugosi isn't unhinged, but he's, you know, for a film in the 30s,
• 5:16
  he's got a very large presence.
• 5:21
  His actions are pretty big.
• 5:22
  They're not overwhelming, but it's something that I would write off as
• 5:28
  the shit storm that Dracula like goes through
• 5:32
  in constantly having people hunting him and what not.
• 5:36
  You know, you could say that that has probably taken a mental toll on him,
• 5:41
  despite being fairly immortal and fairly long lived at this point.
• 5:47
  Well, and having to like live in less than savory conditions.
• 5:51
  Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah.
• 5:53
  All the the running and the travelers taking a toll, as they say in the movie,
• 5:58
  on the coffers of Dracula's former wealth.
• 6:03
  And he looks like shit.
• 6:05
  Yeah, he's had a rough go.
• 6:07
  So finding it's always after somebody attacks them that they find their way
• 6:11
  to a new town and have to set up all over again.
• 6:15
  So he's recovering the makeup work on Nicolas Cage in this film
• 6:20
  and his various forms, shall we say, was gross and awesome.
• 6:26
  Yeah. Oh, the makeup in this was really well done.
• 6:29
  The visual effects were well put together.
• 6:33
  The prosthetics were good.
• 6:35
  So how do we think our boy, Nick Cage did?
• 6:38
  Oh, I think he did pretty well.
• 6:40
  It was it was an invigorating performance.
• 6:44
  Like he really had a lot of energy.
• 6:46
  Everything just kind of moved really well.
• 6:49
  It looked like he was having a really good time.
• 6:52
  He hands it up something fierce and it's just peak cage.
• 6:56
  Yeah. Everything he's doing is so big, but it's not outside of the world of the movie.
• 7:01
  Like it fits for how everybody else just sort of reacts to things.
• 7:06
  There's a tone to this movie that his performance just slides right into.
• 7:12
  And it's just complimented so well by Nick Holt and Awkwafina.
• 7:20
  I mean, it's a tight cast.
• 7:22
  Yeah. Cage was great.
• 7:24
  But everyone else, this whole supporting cast, I mean,
• 7:26
  it's really more of a Nicholas Holt film.
• 7:29
  Yeah. Nicholas Cage.
• 7:30
  Awkwafina and Ben Schwartz.
• 7:31
  Yeah. You're never not going to be John Raffaele.
• 7:34
  Oh, no. He I didn't notice his car in the beginning.
• 7:39
  I didn't notice till the end that it has like the wolf symbol.
• 7:42
  Oh, yeah. Snorting a line of coke.
• 7:45
  Yeah, that was pretty awesome.
• 7:47
  Beautiful. Why wouldn't it?
• 7:48
  I know I want to I want to rent this at some point
• 7:50
  and actually like freeze frame some of his tattoos.
• 7:52
  Yeah. No, those must be shitty.
• 7:54
  Oh, sure. I want to see.
• 7:56
  I want to get the DVD and like watch bonus features
• 7:59
  because the end credits have a lot of like still frames of stuff
• 8:02
  that's not in the movie.
• 8:03
  And I want to see those scenes.
• 8:05
  Yeah. Like there's a dance number at one point.
• 8:07
  They definitely had a really good time collecting B roll in the credits.
• 8:12
  And I'm sure just on on set and stuff.
• 8:17
  It must have been a lot of fun.
• 8:18
  It looked like these actors had a lot of fun making this movie.
• 8:22
  And goes to the clip.
• 8:23
  Yeah, it's an hour thirty three.
• 8:24
  Yeah. And it just it moves. It's fun.
• 8:27
  I really have really no major complaints about it.
• 8:31
  No, I mean, maybe one or two lines come off occasionally
• 8:35
  or like a a joke doesn't land.
• 8:37
  But those are mostly ones that you've seen in the trailers.
• 8:40
  Yeah. So well, sometimes stuff like that.
• 8:43
  It helps if you see it in a full movie theater,
• 8:46
  because sometimes a chuckle from somewhere can kind of trigger
• 8:48
  that reaction where some of those might have hit
• 8:51
  if we weren't with just five other random people.
• 8:54
  Yeah. I didn't know. Yeah, that's fair.
• 8:56
  And they don't seem to like laughing with me.
• 8:58
  No, they didn't laugh at almost anything. Yeah.
• 9:02
  Some people don't like fun.
• 9:04
  Yeah. Well, this movie is not for them.
• 9:05
  Yeah, because this movie is fun.
• 9:07
  But I'm glad they gave their money to it. Yeah.
• 9:09
  Because this movie really does need a little bit of a boost.
• 9:13
  Yeah. One thing to note, it did have a very poor opening weekend
• 9:19
  coming out against some real strong movies with Mario.
• 9:24
  John Wick for John Wick for and the Pope's Exorcist.
• 9:28
  Oh, that's right. So yeah, it's a competition in a hard space right now.
• 9:34
  Yeah, it's hard.
• 9:35
  I'm sure releasing a movie like a monster feature in April.
• 9:42
  I know October is also pretty stacked for Universal.
• 9:46
  So they've got some movies that they definitely don't want this to compete with.
• 9:51
  But unfortunately, this turned out to be not the best weekend
• 9:55
  to try to release something like this on such a wide scale.
• 10:01
  It had like a what I say, thirty three hundred theater release. Yeah.
• 10:04
  So fairly large release.
• 10:06
  Didn't quite pull enough people away from Mario.
• 10:09
  And I mean, if you're on the fence of watching it, definitely go watch it.
• 10:13
  Oh, it's a blast.
• 10:14
  Do a double feature. Watch John Wick afterwards. Yeah.
• 10:17
  Just get all your violence out now.
• 10:19
  And then you'll never be have violent thoughts again. Yeah.
• 10:23
  I had I had a question about speaking of violence.
• 10:27
  Nicholas Holt's character gains Dracula's powers.
• 10:31
  Yeah, to a degree.
• 10:31
  Being a bug.
• 10:33
  But I thought it was special bugs.
• 10:35
  And it's just bugs.
• 10:36
  But yeah, and that goes back even like it's shown in the 30s movie to true.
• 10:42
  Yeah, interesting.
• 10:44
  So and it's so fun because like all the like bugs and stuff
• 10:48
  in the old movie are just like little plastic things
• 10:50
  that you can see being like pulled on like a piece of monofilament or something.
• 10:54
  Like legs don't move.
• 10:55
  They just kind of move across.
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  Or like when Bella Lugosi would turn into a bat
• 11:01
  and he'd be like flying up to Mina's room
• 11:05
  and he'd just be like flying outside the door
• 11:08
  and he'd just be flapping his wings and flying in place right at the threshold.
• 11:13
  More great physical comedy from this podcast.
• 11:15
  Uh huh. So good. And thank you, Sean.
• 11:19
  They could hear the flapping. Yeah.
• 11:21
  So yeah, it's it's an established trait for Renfield.
• 11:27
  No, not special bugs.
• 11:28
  No, just bugs. Just bugs.
• 11:31
  In the original, Renfield is committed to a sanitarium
• 11:36
  because he's kind of wackadoodle once he gets to London.
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  And the guy who like the main orderly or whatever
• 11:44
  just calls him Mr. Flyator.
• 11:47
  Like the the tone of the movies is also kind of shockingly close
• 11:53
  in the amount of humor that's worked into the horror.
• 11:57
  So that's interesting.
• 11:58
  I mean, it's kind of surprising thinking about a movie that's
• 12:02
  fucking 90 years old.
• 12:03
  Yeah. Still being able to be kind of relevant and matching in tone.
• 12:08
  Yeah. I mean, it was just I'm really glad I back to back it.
• 12:12
  And it was a fun experience.
• 12:14
  I'm kind of jealous. I wish I would have done that today.
• 12:16
  Yeah. I think that would have really painted a bigger picture for me.
• 12:19
  Good cage. Good movie.
• 12:20
  I'm inclined to say yes.
• 12:22
  I think it was a good performance from Nick Cage.
• 12:25
  And if you're looking for an adult comedy,
• 12:31
  then this is a really fun movie.
• 12:35
  It's not going to win awards.
• 12:38
  I mean, there's a reason this isn't getting a release right before Oscar season.
• 12:44
  It's just not that movie.
• 12:46
  But it's not going to get a Razzie.
• 12:48
  So it's right in the middle.
• 12:50
  It's it's fun. It's a it's a good romp.
• 12:53
  I don't think anybody would regret seeing it now.
• 12:56
  And it has some. Unless they just hate Nick Cage. Right.
• 12:58
  Sorry. I do think it has some great.
• 13:00
  And why are you listening to our podcast?
• 13:02
  Don't listen to us.
• 13:03
  Fuck you, Bert. Get out of here.
• 13:04
  I think it has some great cage lines, too.
• 13:06
  I mean, we don't have quotes pulled up or anything,
• 13:08
  but like I really was amused by a lot of the shit that he said.
• 13:11
  And the way he delivers his lines is really excellent.
• 13:14
  Yeah. The way he's able to swap back and forth in his delivery
• 13:19
  in like that manipulative way to anger and like unfettered rage.
• 13:28
  It's a really, really good performance.
• 13:30
  And I'm wondering in the screenwriting process
• 13:34
  if they'd always thought Nick Cage,
• 13:36
  because it seems so perfect for him.
• 13:39
  Physically, I think Nick Cage and Nick Holt match well
• 13:44
  with the original actors of Bella Lugosi and Dwight.
• 13:48
  For playing, you know, an ancient dead guy, this is the most alive.
• 13:51
  I feel we've seen Nick Cage in recent films.
• 13:55
  Well, he definitely has, you know, talked about being inspired by Lugosi
• 13:58
  and, you know, creature features and all that kind of stuff.
• 14:01
  Oh, he's always loved like, yeah, that era of filmmaking.
• 14:03
  And I mean, going back to Vampire's Kiss,
• 14:06
  him talking about, you know, trying to recreate a silent movie monster
• 14:10
  in a talkie. Mm hmm.
• 14:13
  If you like shit storms, this movie.
• 14:16
  Yeah, this movie doesn't let up.
• 14:17
  It's 100% roller coaster.
• 14:19
  If that roller coaster is loops, I was going to say that roller
• 14:23
  that roller coaster is just the down bits,
• 14:26
  not down and bad, just the fun fast bits. Yeah.
• 14:30
  I also don't know what metaphors are.
• 14:31
  Mm hmm. Yeah.
• 14:34
  Yeah. Any closing thoughts?
• 14:36
  If you have the time, please go see it in theaters.
• 14:39
  Because something like this is really awesome.
• 14:42
  And I think Jumpstart Universal's plans for like a universal monster
• 14:47
  universe, like cinematic universe that they've talked about in the past
• 14:52
  would be really cool.
• 14:53
  And yet, like modern adaptations or modern follow ups of like classic
• 14:58
  mummy stories or swamp creature stories.
• 15:01
  Frankenstein's monster again.
• 15:03
  We need this movie to do well so we can maybe get a remake of Monster Squad
• 15:07
  with Nicolas Cage.
• 15:09
  Oh, that would be fucking awesome.
• 15:10
  That would be awesome.
• 15:12
  So do yourself a favor.
• 15:14
  Find an hour and a half this week to have fun.
• 15:18
  Yeah. I'm you know, I'm looking at my calendar and I think April 20th.
• 15:23
  It's right around the corner.
• 15:25
  That sounds like a great day to just get with some friends,
• 15:29
  have a sandwich and go.
• 15:32
  John, that's fucking great movie.
• 15:34
  Great action. Great comedy.
• 15:36
  Some of the best cage we've seen in a long time. Go see it.
• 15:39
  It was fresh. Yep.
• 15:41
  Fun flick. 10 out of 10 blood bags.
• 15:43
  Oh, also, I'm Sean.
• 15:45
  I'm here with my co-host Nick and our producer Peter.
• 15:48
  Hello. And that was cage match, everybody.
• 15:51
  Bye bye. Bye bye.
• 16:03
  I was going to try to pull up Nosferatu today, too,
• 16:06
  just to see if the performance, the physical performance
• 16:11
  had a lot of similarities.
• 16:14
  But just on my right, like memory of the movie and then watching this,
• 16:20
  I don't think that was as relevant.
• 16:23
  So this sentence can just get cut. Great.
• 16:28
  Fucking worthless statement.
• 16:31
  Cut it out.
• 16:34
  Unlike that time, I just fucking blasted ass while saying shit storm.
• 16:39
  We're keeping that in.