Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Josh and Chuck's List of Horror Movies that Changed the Genre

Transcript

Josh and Chuck's List of Horror Movies that Changed the Genre · Stuff You Should Know

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