0:00

I'm Jeffrey Craner and my friend

0:02

Cecil Baldwin loves horror movies and

0:04

he's helping make this genre more

0:06

approachable for me and hopefully for

0:08

you too. One film at a

0:10

time in a random order. Are

0:12

you squeamish about horror movies? Don't

0:14

worry, we will tell you what

0:16

happens. Do you adore horror movies?

0:18

Well, that's great. Watch along with

0:20

us each week. As always, check

0:22

the show notes for content warnings

0:24

about this week's episode discussion and

0:26

film. This week, we randomly rolled

0:28

a two for end of the

0:30

world, and a two for procedural. Here

0:33

is episode 264.

0:59

Spoiler's ahead. One

1:04

of the weirdest feelings for me, maybe

1:06

uncomfortable feelings, is listening to music with other

1:08

people. Like, not broadly speaking. Like, if

1:10

we're at a concert, great, or if there's

1:12

just music playing at a party, then

1:14

yeah, that's normal and fine. But

1:16

when somebody's like, hey, have you heard this

1:19

band? No. Well, you should. here listen to this

1:21

song with me right now and then for

1:23

like three and a half minutes i have to

1:25

listen to this song and i'm not in

1:27

the headspace to enjoy it because it's now some

1:29

kind of homework assignment and i know it's

1:31

important to you so i'll use the part of

1:33

my brain that understands why things are enjoyable

1:35

rather than the part of my brain that actually

1:37

enjoys things This is a

1:39

me problem, not a you problem. I'm a

1:41

people pleaser. I put a lot of pressure

1:44

on myself to see the world in ways

1:46

other people see it. I want to understand.

1:48

I want to have empathy. And I think

1:50

I'm pretty good at this sort of thing.

1:52

But empathy is still a big step removed

1:54

from sympathy, from actual feelings of relation to

1:56

a thing. So when people tell me the

1:58

things they love the most, I really want

2:00

to understand. And even more, I want to

2:02

participate in that joy to feel the same

2:04

thing they did. But this isn't always possible.

2:06

Just like with the, let's listen to this

2:08

song. together right now example sometimes I can

2:11

only muster yeah I get why you like

2:13

this cool and I hope when I do

2:15

that I'm very convincing because I wouldn't say

2:17

it if it weren't true if I thought

2:19

that band you liked was garbage well well we

2:21

could have that conversation I mean

2:23

believe you me I find Elvis

2:25

Costello unlistenable personally so if that's

2:27

your thing good on you anyway

2:29

the point I'm trying to make is that it's

2:31

a real feat when I can open myself up to

2:33

something to not just

2:35

academically comprehend a piece of art's

2:38

love ability, but to truly allow myself

2:40

to be wowed, moved, shook, or

2:42

maybe even disgusted or bored by

2:44

whatever that thing is. It's really hard

2:46

being vulnerable. My film, or

2:48

Lit Crit Side, protects me from these emotions,

2:50

good and bad. This week, we

2:52

polled in the mouth of Madness, and

2:55

Cecil was very excited about this movie, said

2:57

it was one of his favorites, and he

2:59

really wanted to get to

3:01

this movie for the show, and I saw

3:03

that the meta scores for this film are

3:05

very low to mid. But

3:07

it's one of my friend's favorite movies.

3:10

And I respect that, so I poured myself

3:12

a glass of wine, I sat back

3:14

out on the couch, and turned the

3:17

lights off, and I watched this movie with

3:19

an open heart, Cecil. And holy shit,

3:21

I fucking loved it. Hi, hi Cecil. Hi

3:23

Jeffrey. Hey, speaking of Charlton

3:25

Heston. Uh huh, sure. Is

3:27

there something in your life, a possession,

3:29

an item, or something, a

3:31

theory of yours, that you

3:33

would have to use the phrase, when

3:35

they pry it from my

3:37

cold, dead hands? My

3:40

dick. Just

3:45

an army of people trying to pry

3:47

that from your cold, dead hands. I

3:50

want to know how you died is

3:52

actually the question have. He died doing

3:54

what he loved. Um,

3:58

uh, do I have a,

4:00

do I have a singular

4:02

possession that, uh, no, no.

4:05

I mean, oh, my

4:07

passport. Oh, Like I

4:09

really, I love one. It's like

4:11

just the passport, but then also like

4:13

I've had the same sort of passport case

4:15

for like 20 years. And it's this,

4:17

I don't know. I don't know where I

4:20

found it. It's like a faux leather. Little

4:23

billfold that is the perfect

4:25

size for a passport and I've

4:27

collected like all of my

4:29

back before smartphones and shit when

4:31

it got really advanced like

4:33

my New York City travel card

4:35

my Chicago CTA card my

4:38

London oyster card my you know

4:40

like a kind of and

4:42

it's I Love this because it's

4:44

the perfect like meeting a

4:46

form and function I have

4:48

like a little tiny pen that I can like

4:50

put inside of it so that way I'm never

4:52

without a pen when I have to sign documents

4:54

when I'm traveling. I fucking love

4:56

this thing. Oh, that's a

4:58

good one. Yeah, because the

5:01

passport is extremely useful. And also,

5:03

I mean, it sort of represents your connection

5:05

to the rest of the world. Yeah.

5:07

Like I look at it like a like

5:10

a diary, like when I flip through

5:12

my passport, which. I don't often do, but

5:14

when I have it out, I'm like,

5:16

oh, I remember that. Oh, that

5:18

stamp is really cool. And I

5:20

get actively angry if coming into a

5:22

country, they don't stamp my passport. Yeah,

5:25

especially in Europe, they've kind of gotten

5:27

away from that. Yeah, everything's kind of

5:29

digital. So they're like, we know we have your

5:31

face on camera of the Chilean times. When

5:34

we travel overseas for tour.

5:37

We have to get it stamped because we

5:39

have work visas to be there. Yeah. And

5:41

they always write down the like, and I'm

5:43

like, oh, look, I was, it's always like

5:45

a little addendum. It's not just your normal

5:47

one. It's like, you know, the event time

5:49

and space and like all that sort of

5:51

stuff. It usually means we have to hang

5:53

at the airport like 45 minutes longer than

5:55

we should, but at the same time, we

5:57

do get the stamps. I had to renew

6:00

my passport this past year because it was

6:02

expired in 2025. So I got a new

6:04

passport. And I'm so

6:06

bummed because I haven't used it

6:08

yet. And so my

6:10

passport is nice. It's all like

6:12

tidy. It's not frayed at the edges.

6:15

It's neat. I actually like my

6:17

passport picture, but it's so

6:19

empty. And I just sort of, I

6:21

miss the kind of beat upness of my

6:23

old passport. You got to rough it up.

6:25

Yeah. What about you? What would, what

6:27

would we be prying out of your cold, dead

6:29

hands, Jeffrey? Honestly, right now it'd

6:31

be Robert. It'd be my cat.

6:33

Oh, yeah, Robert when you pry

6:35

him from my cold dead And

6:37

he's just like squirming like cats

6:40

do yeah, I don't like love

6:42

and he would be in my

6:44

cold dead hands because I would

6:46

have died strangling him I had

6:48

no idea what to expect of

6:50

in the mouth of madness John

6:52

Carpenter for me is is a

6:54

real coin flip. I love whatever

6:56

he does. I know

6:58

early on we covered Prince of Darkness for the

7:00

show and I was not a huge fan

7:02

of Prince of Darkness. But you loved to hate

7:04

it though, didn't you? I did kind of

7:06

like picking on it a little bit because I

7:08

thought some of the choices were wild, but

7:10

I think that's what I love about John Carpenter.

7:13

He is a truly like independent

7:15

mind even if he's making studio

7:17

films. So I knew

7:19

Lovecraft. There we go. I was

7:21

waiting for Lovecraftian horror, and that's

7:23

what we got. This is all

7:25

cosmic horror. Yeah. There's some blood

7:28

and some gloopy glop in this

7:30

movie. Yeah, sure. Some fantastic brief

7:32

shots of fantastic creatures. Oh,

7:34

the creature effects, the

7:36

practical effects. Absolutely. But,

7:38

you know, in the same year that

7:41

we have lost David Lynch, it's

7:43

really nice to find a truly Lynchian

7:45

film. Yeah. Yeah. It

7:47

was great. And I loved it, by

7:50

the way, that whenever I pulled this

7:52

up to stream it, the other suggestions

7:54

that gave me when I did a

7:56

search for it was Jacob's Ladder. And

7:58

you can obviously see the similarities. I

8:00

can see that. Like, it's dark horror

8:02

that is psychological. I

8:05

think, you know, this movie, it didn't have

8:07

like a huge impact on my life or

8:09

anything like that, but it's, you know, I

8:12

was definitely a teenager of the 90s. And

8:14

so I think I kind of bonded to

8:16

this movie. for a couple

8:18

reasons. One is that like

8:20

it was like lovecraftian horror

8:22

was not embraced until the

8:24

post 2000s, the way it

8:26

is now. Yeah. You know,

8:29

like it was hard to

8:31

find a good quote, Lovecraftian

8:33

horror film. Yeah. Like they

8:35

were usually kind of schlocky.

8:37

Listen, I love the Dunwich

8:39

horror. It's so much fun.

8:41

But it's it's pretty schlocky.

8:44

Day gone. Watch that

8:46

on the show. A lot

8:48

of fun kind of schlocky. Yeah,

8:50

and this was the that

8:52

like I was like, oh without

8:54

saying quote Lovecraft even though

8:56

they literally legit read Lovecraft quotes

8:58

from his books without saying

9:01

it it kind of freed it

9:03

up to Reimagine Lovecraft and

9:05

I found that really fucking fascinating.

9:07

It's so interesting to me

9:09

that that we did in the

9:11

2000s, it felt like to

9:13

me that we started having more

9:16

of a mainstream awareness of

9:18

HP Lovecraft, that you can actually

9:20

say Lovecraftian horror to people

9:22

who didn't grow up reading a

9:24

lot of horror. And

9:26

they kind of understand what you mean. And

9:29

I always thought of Lovecraft. He

9:31

was in the same part of

9:33

my brain as EC Comics, right?

9:35

These were the kind of horror,

9:37

schlocky, schlocky horror comic books that

9:39

people like Stephen King very much

9:41

praised. E .C. Comics growing

9:43

up and there's a lot of

9:45

artists that do art crime and

9:47

people like that as well. You

9:49

can see their influence from these

9:51

early comics. But we're

9:53

not out here making comics

9:55

or making movies from E .C.

9:58

Comics. I mean, we're inspired by

10:00

them. There's elements of those

10:02

things. And there's always been elements

10:04

of Lovecraftian horror. But Lovecraft

10:06

really is... own brand of horror,

10:09

like its own

10:11

subgenre. And it's kind

10:13

of nice to see more of

10:15

it because I think it

10:17

is Lynchian at its core. David

10:19

Lynch is very Lovecraftian in

10:21

his horror. Other universes, other parallel

10:23

dimensions, you know,

10:25

like it just seems really fascinating.

10:27

And I think this without naming

10:29

Lovecraft and then also even though

10:31

they kind of name tag. Stephen

10:33

King is also playing on the

10:36

like when Stephen King was at

10:38

his heyday. Like, man, the 90s

10:40

there was like a Stephen King movie

10:42

of the week coming out like every third

10:44

month, it seems. And I

10:46

watch them all and I

10:48

love them all, even the Langoliers,

10:50

which is not a great

10:52

film. So

10:54

I love that about this movie. The

10:57

other thing I loved about this movie that

10:59

I think I really bonded was Sam Neill. This

11:02

was this is like

11:05

a non -traditional male

11:07

lead performance to me. Like

11:09

he's not Snake Plisken.

11:12

He's not like, you know, banging

11:14

on his chest, guns

11:16

ablazing kind of male

11:19

protagonist. And Sam Neill,

11:21

I felt, brought this.

11:24

real depth and maturity and Vulnerability

11:26

and yeah, there's some like this

11:28

we get into some weird shit

11:30

with like him and Linda Styles

11:32

in the middle bit but I

11:34

felt like just by casting Sam

11:36

Neil and His performance in this

11:38

like made me so much more

11:40

interested in this movie that would

11:42

have been like very Be great

11:44

if it had not been him

11:46

There's some great like character

11:48

actors in this movie, too. We

11:51

have to mention David Warner, who's hardly in

11:53

this film. And Charlton Heston, too, was great

11:55

in this movie. I

11:57

mean, John Glover. Listen, John Glover is

11:59

one of those, like, if you recognize his

12:01

face, if he's

12:03

just so good

12:06

at being that weird

12:08

character actor. I

12:10

mean, Francis Bay is Miss Pikmin.

12:12

Oh, yes, of course. Holy

12:15

cow. She scared the shit out of me

12:17

when I saw this movie the first time.

12:19

She's amazing. I'm trying to,

12:22

what other horror movies have I seen her in?

12:25

She was in, she was in Twin

12:27

Peaks, right? Oh, that's right. Yeah,

12:29

of course. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Firewalk with

12:31

me. She's, uh, yeah. Cause I

12:33

just rewatched that. in Blue Velvet. I

12:35

mean. Why there horror movies? I

12:37

mean, like, you know, she's she did

12:39

like, and it's a lot of

12:41

like fortune teller roles or, you know,

12:43

like weird stuff. She was in

12:45

a lot of comedies, actually, because I

12:47

think she's that sort of like

12:49

she's so adorable, but then has something

12:51

very strange about her. So we

12:53

open with John Carpenter's rock and roll.

12:56

That is definitely,

12:58

absolutely, totally

13:01

not. Metallica

13:03

and I promise you this

13:05

is not Metallica. Uh -huh.

13:07

This is definitely absolutely

13:09

positively not intersand band. And

13:12

this is not Stephen

13:14

King being printed on

13:16

the printing presses. No,

13:18

no, no, no, not

13:21

the graphic raised shiny

13:23

glossy paperback covers. No,

13:26

not Salem's lot or Kujo.

13:28

No. So yeah, we have

13:30

at the center of our mystery

13:32

here, we have Sutter Cain. What a

13:34

great, what a great name for

13:36

a horror character. And

13:38

he is the famous,

13:41

famous novelist of many, many

13:43

horror novels that take

13:45

place in Hobbs End, New

13:47

Hampshire, which is not

13:49

Derry Mane. Totally not Derry

13:51

Mane. Absolutely. And

13:54

not Arkham. New

13:56

Hampshire. Yes. Isn't that where Lovecraft is?

13:58

I think so. Hampshire, right? I

14:00

think so. He may be

14:02

Massachusetts. I can't remember. It's been while. I don't

14:04

know. What are those two? So

14:07

we're gonna start at the

14:09

ending. I love that. I

14:11

love a good wraparound story. Sure. We've

14:14

got this this giant

14:16

medical facility on the on

14:18

the on the coast.

14:21

of somewhere. And

14:23

being brought to them in a

14:25

straight jacket is John Trent,

14:27

played by Sam Neal, who is

14:29

an insurance investigator based in

14:31

New York City. And

14:34

we're going to about to learn more about him in a

14:36

second. But all we know now is we are Taking

14:39

the straightjacketed crazy man who

14:41

is attacking the security. Yes,

14:43

like his hair is like

14:45

all plastered and matted to

14:47

his head and you know

14:49

You love anybody that's being

14:51

dragged into a medical facility

14:53

screaming. I'm not crazy. I'm

14:56

not crazy You're like oh,

14:58

okay already. I'm into yes

15:00

situation is It's you that's

15:02

crazy. I'm not crazy the

15:04

world. That's crazy So he

15:06

gets thrown into a padded

15:08

cell. I

15:11

like Carpenter because

15:13

he, in his writing, he's

15:15

just got these really funny, every movie of

15:17

his that I've seen has some element

15:19

of humor in the dialogue to it. Oh,

15:21

sure. And so as the security guards

15:23

are throwing him into the cell, he shouts

15:25

at them like, I'm sorry about the

15:28

balls, it was a lucky shot was all.

15:30

See, he's conscious

15:32

enough that you're like,

15:34

oh, he's probably not crazy.

15:36

Yeah. You know, it's, you know,

15:39

it's crazy though, Jeffrey. What's that?

15:41

Is how he managed to draw

15:43

all those crosses on a 20

15:45

foot padded cell with a single

15:47

crayon. That's crazy. Yeah.

15:52

So in, in the, uh, in

15:54

the facility, we're going to meet

15:56

Saperstein and we are also going

15:58

to meet, uh, Dr. Ren. Dr.

16:00

Ren, we get the set. Saperstein

16:02

is John Glover. Uh, Dr.

16:04

Ren is David Warner. We get

16:06

the sense that David Warner

16:08

is maybe higher up the

16:10

the medical ladder Yeah, or

16:12

like works for the government

16:14

and yeah, like undisclosed sort

16:16

of way like FBI CIA

16:18

kind of vibes. Yeah and

16:20

Warner just wants to talk

16:23

to dr. Ren and as

16:25

we sort of figure out

16:27

from this course of this

16:29

movie that whatever Evil shit

16:31

is happening to Dr. Trent

16:33

is not limited to Dr.

16:35

or Dr. Trent to John

16:37

Trent. It's not limited to

16:39

him. It is something spreading in

16:41

the world. And I love that. Yeah.

16:43

And I think like it's so

16:45

like, you know, we got to this

16:47

through end of the world. And,

16:49

you know, this is very non traditional

16:51

end of the world story. And

16:54

I love that. Because it's like something

16:56

bad like we're only gonna get little hints

16:58

at it like when John Trent says

17:00

Oh, it must be really bad out there.

17:02

Things are getting really bad out there

17:04

if they sent you to me. I was

17:06

like, what does that mean? So

17:11

we've one we've we'd now see the

17:13

inside of his cell I don't know

17:15

how long he's been in the cell

17:17

but he has drawn crosses all over

17:19

the walls and his face and his

17:21

straight and his clothes like he's no

17:23

longer in the straight jacket, of course,

17:25

but like all over his scrubs or

17:27

whatever they have in them. This

17:30

is where he's gonna give

17:32

Dr. Ren the flashback into

17:34

where he got. But

17:36

he does have this like

17:38

dream sequence in between these two

17:40

moments where there's like a

17:42

hand knocking at the window. It's

17:44

so weird looking. And I don't

17:46

know why. It's like, it's the angle

17:48

at which it like. the

17:51

angle in because it's like why

17:53

is this person on the floor? Yeah,

17:55

because it forces you to imagine

17:57

the position of the rest of the

17:59

body Again or and humor both

18:01

are about hiding information from you to

18:03

make you feel away and the

18:05

way that hand I think it's like

18:07

a right hand Comes in like

18:09

not left side from our point of

18:11

view and tap tap tap and

18:13

it's Yeah, it's it's the shape of

18:15

it is very strange There's

18:18

also a shadow that appears behind him in

18:20

the street and saying, this is not the

18:22

end. You haven't read that yet. Again,

18:25

we already are set

18:27

up. There's shit going on

18:29

in the outside world

18:31

and there is a thin

18:34

veil protecting fiction from

18:36

nonfiction. Yes. We have

18:38

a couple of like flashbacks of somebody

18:40

with an axe and people go crazy. A

18:43

crazy looking church. Um,

18:45

yeah, blood, blood, love of

18:47

bloody acts, swinging down just

18:49

for like, uh, uh, weird

18:52

little tentacles under a door, a

18:55

preview of what's to come. John

18:57

now is kind of in his

18:59

accepted crazy status and he's telling

19:01

Dr. Ren, you want to hear

19:03

about my them, don't you? That's

19:05

what all paranoid schizophrenics have. They have

19:07

a them that tells them things and you

19:09

want to hear about my them, right? Dr.

19:12

Ren's like, all right. Go

19:15

on. Yeah, but first give me one of

19:17

the cigarettes. That's right. Oh, yeah, he does

19:19

get a he does get a free cigarette

19:21

out of this. He says the

19:23

disappearance of Sutter Kane is where it

19:25

all started when I was freelance insurance

19:27

investigator in New York City and we

19:29

flash back. We're going to see John's

19:31

life to this point now for the

19:33

rest of the film. It's so like

19:35

the Maltese Falcon meets the cabinet of

19:37

Dr. Caligari. Yeah. Of like, why am

19:39

I in this institution? Let me tell

19:41

you my story. And, you

19:43

know, the other way we got to

19:46

this was procedural and like, what better way

19:48

than having like a sort of hard

19:50

nose. private detective who's like, I've seen

19:52

it all. Everything's a scam. Yeah.

19:54

This is a scam. It must be

19:56

a scam. You know, there's the subgenre

19:58

of detective fiction. You have noir and

20:00

then below that you have like New

20:02

York City noir and you have Chicago

20:04

noir. You have LA noir and this

20:06

is like Black Lodge noir. Yeah.

20:08

Oh, that's great. That's a great term.

20:11

Like the when someone who's

20:13

a hard realist. who is

20:15

seen the best and the

20:17

worst of humanity is seen

20:20

every, you know, the

20:22

unthinkable. I think they even say

20:24

they're like one of his taglines

20:26

is like, you know, don't don't

20:28

underestimate what people are capable of.

20:30

Even the nicest person is capable

20:32

of anything vile, deceitful, the worst

20:35

of humanity. And then

20:37

you when watching that person

20:39

realize there's a psychic

20:41

or mystic layer underneath all

20:43

that. Ooh, it's so creepy

20:45

and I love it. Yeah. Carpenter

20:47

really does explore that notion of like,

20:49

when you are skeptical or cynical

20:51

about something, which if you're a detective,

20:53

you have to be. This opening

20:55

scene in New York City, it's him

20:57

breaking down this guy who is

21:00

committing insurance fraud. Like the guy thinks

21:02

he's a McLeer. But

21:04

he really breaks it down and really

21:07

shows how he found out that he

21:09

set his own fire and whatever else.

21:11

But it is funny that that cynicism

21:13

only extends into the realm of reality.

21:16

Like when, as you just said,

21:18

right, like when you cross that

21:20

line, when you seep out of

21:22

the membrane into whatever universe lies

21:24

beyond, you really can't

21:26

fathom it. And so

21:28

his cynicism really stops him,

21:31

or I'm sorry, his His

21:34

logic stops his cynicism from understanding

21:36

that there's something beyond the world

21:38

you understand and he holds on

21:40

to that for much of this

21:42

movie Oh, he really does and

21:44

he doesn't see a lot of

21:46

it like I think styles like

21:48

Linda styles sees Much more than

21:50

he does which is why I

21:53

think she kind of gets absorbed

21:55

into the story that much quicker

21:57

Oh, God, we'll get to her in

21:59

just a second. This is my favorite

22:02

character intro in this movie. Well,

22:04

after busting this insurance fraud guy, he

22:06

and his boss are sitting at this

22:08

diner. They're like, good job. You're the

22:10

best. I wish I had 10 of

22:12

you. Yeah, and the boss

22:14

is setting up his next gig,

22:16

which is I want you to

22:18

go to the Publishing House Arcane,

22:21

talk to the publisher. They have

22:23

Sutter Cain, the famous novelist, is

22:25

missing. But at

22:27

this moment in the background

22:29

they're sitting at the big picture

22:31

window and in the background

22:33

we see a man emerging From

22:35

a crowd wild -eyed holding an

22:37

axe and people are just

22:39

clearing out I fucking love this

22:41

like we've talked about this

22:43

on on the podcast like one

22:45

of the scariest things that

22:47

a horror film can do is

22:49

is And this is very

22:51

David Lynch. If you know that

22:54

the Bob scene from Twin

22:56

Peaks is something very far away,

22:58

walking directly into super

23:01

close up. And

23:03

then it's it's a slow build,

23:05

whether it's characters, other characters are

23:07

aware of it, but there's often

23:09

like people are running away from

23:11

him on the street. And

23:13

meanwhile, in the foreground, we just

23:15

have two dudes having a nice normal

23:17

conversation, but we are so intensely

23:20

aware. that danger is en

23:22

route. And this man smashes

23:24

through the window with his axe

23:26

and is coming for John

23:28

Trent here and he leans in

23:30

close and he asks, John,

23:33

do you read Sutter Cane? And

23:35

John sees that he has

23:37

not only dilated pupils, but they're

23:39

like double pupils in his

23:41

eye. Yeah, like a goat. Oh,

23:44

I have a better

23:46

question. Uh -huh. Can you

23:48

read Sutter Cane? It's a

23:50

good question. With those

23:52

eyes, does he need like glasses?

23:54

know, right? Do you need like

23:56

quadrophocals? Or

24:00

do you read Sutton

24:02

Foster? I

24:06

wish this was a movie about Sutton

24:08

Foster has gone missing and she's running

24:10

a church somewhere. Yeah, that's it. She's

24:12

running like a tap dance church somewhere.

24:20

Okay, so

24:23

this man's about to bring

24:25

the axe down on John's head

24:27

and the cops shoot the

24:29

man dead We see shots later

24:31

that evening John watching television

24:33

and the news reports about riots

24:35

at bookstores about the shortage

24:37

of Like the new book isn't

24:40

out yet from Sutter Kane So

24:42

it's that this confuses me a little

24:44

bit even when I watch it this time.

24:46

And I think I've kind of sorted

24:48

it out. It's because in the mouth of

24:50

madness is the name of the next

24:52

book. But Hobbes and horror

24:55

is the one that is

24:57

his current book. And that's and

24:59

even that is driving like

25:01

when the bookstores are running out,

25:03

people are rioting. And, you

25:05

know, again, We love

25:07

a John Carpenter like motif, which

25:09

is like when the when

25:11

the mob rises up, you know,

25:14

and we see, you know,

25:16

shots on the nine o 'clock

25:18

news of like a police with,

25:20

you know, the the barricades

25:22

and people are throwing shit through

25:24

windows. And it's that idea

25:26

of like when every day people

25:28

are now rising or the

25:30

rising tide of the masses is

25:32

such a brilliant John Carpenter. thing

25:35

that you find throughout his

25:37

films. So now we're gonna

25:39

go see Jackson Harglow, the

25:41

publisher. I love it. Played

25:43

by Charlton Heston in a three -piece

25:45

suit with a watch fob. Yeah. Now, Jeffrey,

25:48

you're a writer. a published author.

25:50

Sure. Was this what it was like

25:52

going to work with your publisher?

25:54

Oh my god, yeah. I It

25:58

was definitely like an old

26:00

tycoon looking man. Yes, absolutely.

26:02

The early 1900s. 1900s. Railroad tycoon.

26:04

Yep. Yep. He was

26:06

Nick Gatsby's, what was that?

26:08

Nick Gatsby's dad, basically. And

26:12

yeah, and my command, commanding

26:15

an army of assistants by

26:17

cell. Yes. You get me

26:19

coffee, send condolences. Yes. And

26:21

my, my editor was definitely

26:23

sexy businesswoman fetish. A sexy

26:25

business woman with her hair

26:27

up and the glasses so

26:30

we can't tell that she's

26:32

super sexy underneath. But

26:34

we we get a hint of it

26:36

because every time she spoke to me

26:38

to talk about my novel, she would

26:40

take her glasses off and then fold

26:42

them in with her teeth. Yeah.

26:44

Oh, my God. It's

26:46

like that is so I

26:48

love it. It's so

26:50

not subtle. No, it's

26:52

like the least subtle subtle. Oh,

26:56

I love it, though. It's it's

26:58

I mean, it's pretty cheesy, but it's

27:00

so fucking delightful. And especially

27:02

because she's very she's very like, she kind

27:04

of sneaks into the scene. Like, you know,

27:06

so Jackson Harglow kind of is like, all

27:08

my assistants out of here, I got to

27:10

talk to this guy. Give him

27:12

five minutes of my busy time because

27:14

it's so important that we find

27:16

Sutter Cane. And Linda sounds kind of

27:18

sneaks in the back door, which

27:20

automatically is like, oh, she's got power.

27:23

in this structural organization. She is

27:25

not a minion. And she

27:27

kind of sneaks up on John

27:29

Trent, which I think is like,

27:31

there's an element of mystery to

27:33

her because of that. She's it's

27:35

so film noir. She's the femme

27:38

fatale of this movie. We

27:40

don't know. We trust her, don't trust

27:42

her, love her, hate her. We're just

27:44

waiting on her to like, she's

27:46

a woman of secrets. When she

27:48

was introduced in the scene, I very

27:50

much laughed out loud and I was enjoying

27:52

it, but I also thought it was

27:54

silly. By the end of

27:56

the movie, I understood why these scenes

27:59

are like this because it makes you

28:01

question, are you in a novel?

28:03

Yeah. Are you in

28:05

a Dashel Hammett novel? Yeah.

28:07

A Dashel Hammett meets

28:10

Stephen King meets Lovecraft. Are

28:12

you a character archetype? And and

28:14

and of course that makes sense

28:16

that that we have this noir

28:18

style archetype here because Who knows

28:20

what is even real could this

28:22

person be a real person? I'm

28:24

sure it's existed Why not I've

28:26

I've not been published through Simon

28:28

and Schuster or Penguin, but uh

28:30

You know Harper Collins had their

28:33

own ways so you know maybe

28:35

maybe this woman exists at one

28:37

of those other pub tour Who

28:39

knows I don't know what goes

28:41

on at Publisher Sexy

28:43

agent sexy literary agent and

28:45

also we need to say

28:47

that her name is Linda

28:49

Styles Another just like like

28:51

ripped straight out of like

28:53

in 1930s LA detective novel

28:55

totally Yeah, it definitely has

28:58

that kind of like fast

29:00

-talking stuff even as they're

29:02

like leaving this meeting about

29:04

the missing Sutter Kane He

29:06

definitely doesn't believe them. He thinks

29:08

this is all publicity stunt. And

29:11

she's trying to convince him. She's standing

29:13

by the elevator about, you know, taking

29:15

this seriously. And he kind of leans in

29:17

close to her. He's like, well, why don't

29:19

we do this over dinner tonight? You can

29:21

show me your notes. Like that sort of

29:23

level of femme fatale hitting on this woman

29:25

noir. she can handle it. She's like, get

29:28

the fuck out of my face. Yeah. And

29:30

the story is that. So this

29:32

guy, Cedric, he's a he's an

29:34

eccentric genius. And

29:37

she they have publishers, they have

29:39

kind of no direct contact with

29:41

him. It's all through his agent.

29:45

And he sent in like two or three

29:47

chapters of his newest book in the

29:49

mouth of madness, but then he just sort

29:51

of disappeared and all they want. And

29:53

like, I think, you know, Jackson Arglot kind

29:55

of like puts a pin on it

29:57

and he's like, listen, all you want to

29:59

know is is he alive? And can

30:01

we get the rest of our book or

30:03

is he dead? And we can cut

30:05

our losses and move the fuck on. But

30:07

she's like, you've met Sutter Kane's agent.

30:09

He's like, what the fuck are you talking

30:11

about? He's like, we saw the news.

30:13

You were attacked by that crazy man with

30:15

the ax. That was his agent. You'd

30:19

think a guy who outsells Stephen King

30:21

could find better representation. Is your

30:23

agent like that? Yeah. Oh, my God. The

30:25

number of times Jody has attacked me with

30:27

an ax. It's crazy. So

30:32

yeah, so now he's off to figure

30:34

out this Sutter Kane thing. But

30:36

it's later that she also,

30:38

oh, I should mention Linda

30:40

also tells him, hey, you

30:42

should try reading Kane stuff.

30:45

You know, it's very clear

30:47

that you don't read

30:49

a lot of books. So

30:51

just give it a

30:53

go and you'll better understand

30:55

his mind. And this

30:57

is a very kind of

30:59

like 80s 90s sort

31:01

of. idea, the idea that

31:03

a lesser genre like

31:05

horror could be more than

31:07

its reputation. Just read it.

31:10

Just give it a try. I mean,

31:12

this is the era of like, you know,

31:14

like Tipper Gore being like, you know,

31:16

like these metal records are destroying our children.

31:18

Like have you ever actually listened to

31:20

any of this music or you just like

31:22

grandstanding on something that you just don't

31:24

like the look of it? Yeah, you've been

31:26

told over and over that this is

31:28

bad, but you didn't actually go experience it

31:30

for yourself. So

31:33

that night Trent is in

31:35

an alleyway and there's like on

31:37

his way home. Boy, this

31:39

is such crazy dystopian view here.

31:41

But one, there's there's a

31:43

whole wall covered in posters. Commercialism,

31:46

another delightful John Carpenter light motif.

31:48

And he kind of is examining

31:50

the, it's, and the poster for

31:52

the new novel is just the

31:55

cover of the new novel, The

31:57

Hobbes and Horrors. And he's

31:59

kind of examining how it's

32:01

peeled away and kind of looking

32:03

at closely. But meanwhile, down

32:05

the alley, there is a cop

32:07

beating the shit out of

32:09

some unhoused man or whoever in

32:11

it. He's a spray paint. Oh,

32:14

yeah graffiti artists. Okay. You kind

32:16

of only got like one letter

32:18

out. Oh, okay I didn't make

32:20

that connection because he he had

32:22

spray painted on the wall the

32:24

word I and then see yeah,

32:26

or see I Didn't connect that

32:28

that's what that man was doing.

32:31

Okay. There we go and the

32:33

cop Sees Trent and turns around

32:35

and says you want some too,

32:37

buddy. Oh, but he's also in

32:39

a bookstore buying He

32:41

goes to a bookstore to buy some

32:43

Sutter Cane novels. He's like, all

32:45

right, all right, I'm going to actually,

32:47

again, love a hard -boiled detective character,

32:50

like a protagonist that actually does

32:52

the research. And a man in the

32:54

bookstore just approaches him and says,

32:56

I can see. He sees

32:58

you. Well,

33:00

if you, well, tell him I said

33:02

hi. Yeah. Did you have a petition

33:05

I need to sign? I know. Are

33:07

you with Green Energy? What's happening here?

33:09

And I think it's very much like

33:11

it's a younger white dude and he's

33:13

got like, again, we're going to notice

33:15

this like the effect of the the

33:17

the end of the world virus, which

33:20

is more of a mental thing. So

33:22

how do you portray that visually? And

33:24

it's this like kind of red under

33:26

the eyes like you've been up all

33:28

night reading the books obsessively. And I

33:30

think that's such a great and we're

33:32

going to see this over and over

33:34

and over again as people. get

33:37

more possessed by this end of

33:39

the world virus. And I think

33:41

what a great visual way of

33:43

representing something that's very intellectual and

33:45

abstract. So then the next.

33:47

So then we get to like, we go

33:49

back to this vision of this alleyway. It

33:51

feels like a dream sequence. And it

33:53

is going to be one of my

33:55

favorite things is the double fake wake up.

33:57

Oh, yep. We've seen it. We've

33:59

seen so many of these. And they're and

34:02

you know, they're always pretty good. I guess

34:04

that they always kind of get me. They

34:06

really do. It's a really simple, simple thing.

34:08

It's like a chocolate chip cookie. Really

34:10

simple. Yeah. But always

34:12

I'm impressed because it's

34:14

delicious. In this dream

34:16

now, when the cop turns around, though,

34:18

that cop is now like zombified. Yeah.

34:22

And then there's now

34:24

a group of

34:27

people with axes kind

34:29

of led by

34:31

the Agent. Yeah. With

34:33

his axe. And the

34:35

agent says to John, he sees

34:37

you and the others gather around the

34:39

agent and then just chop him

34:41

up and eat strips of his flesh.

34:43

This to me is like one

34:45

of the scariest things in this movie

34:47

or at least like not like

34:50

one of the things that scare me

34:52

the most, but just something that

34:54

is not often seen in horror films

34:56

that I think is one of

34:58

the scariest things, which is the. Death

35:00

by stoning with a smile on

35:02

your face. Mm -hmm. You know,

35:04

like because you think, oh my

35:07

gosh, they're gonna attack our protagonist

35:09

because usually that's what happens when

35:11

there's a mob of people with

35:13

X's they are going to attack.

35:15

But then when they turn and

35:17

circle the agent and he's very

35:19

like, unto thee I commend my

35:21

soul, my lord. That

35:23

is, that's fucking terrifying. That's like

35:25

next level terrifying to me.

35:28

I agree. Yeah, I think. Inexplicable

35:31

horror is top -notch. It's one of

35:33

my favorite things. It's it's one

35:35

of the most unsettling freaky things and

35:37

I Also was unsettled by the

35:39

fact that they then when they step

35:41

forward I'm waiting for the attack

35:43

on him. Yeah, but just the fact

35:45

that they all turned on the

35:48

agent really threw me for a loop.

35:50

Yeah, and yeah, you're left without

35:52

answers as to The most basic question

35:54

is what the fuck is going

35:56

on here? So

35:58

then he wakes up this

36:00

moment and then he turns and

36:03

looks and next to him

36:05

on the couch is that cop

36:07

I mean, it's very you

36:09

know, we've seen this in American

36:11

werewolf in London I mean

36:13

quite a few other I carry

36:15

he's got one of these

36:17

But then he's so he's sitting

36:20

around Great procedural stuff

36:22

here. Love the procedural thing.

36:24

He's staring at all these book

36:26

covers and there's these weird

36:28

lines drawn in the artwork of

36:30

each one and so he

36:32

Starts cutting around he tears off

36:34

the covers and starts cutting

36:36

around those lines And then he

36:38

pieces them together like a

36:40

puzzle and it forms the shape

36:42

of New Hampshire This to

36:44

me is really fascinating like the

36:46

parallel scene to this to

36:48

me and it's like So

36:51

good is is in Rosemary's

36:53

baby when Rosemary is like

36:55

taking out all the scrabble

36:57

tiles. Yes. And

36:59

it's like, she's like, ah, something's

37:01

like, I love this idea that

37:03

there's inspiration in order to solve

37:05

something very rationally. There is always

37:07

a leap of irrationality in which

37:09

you know, some you're like, I

37:12

can't figure out what it is,

37:14

but something is a clue and

37:16

I can't. And it's there's that

37:18

moment in which. You

37:20

trying to solve a rational problem

37:22

have to do something that is comes

37:24

from the land of inspiration, which

37:27

is a subconscious thing. I can't put

37:29

my finger on it, but why

37:31

do these covers all have this? They're

37:33

a fucking map. It's a puzzle.

37:35

I think it's so hard to get

37:37

procedural downright. And really what it

37:39

comes down to is having these kind

37:42

of visual moments that really connect

37:44

the platform. We still haven't gotten the

37:46

long legs yet, which I'm really

37:48

excited to cover for this show. But

37:51

that was the example of a movie that

37:53

did not have a procedural element to it

37:55

and then was added later. And

37:57

you can kind of see where...

37:59

happens when procedural elements don't connect to

38:01

the overall plot of what's happening?

38:04

Long legs is the opposite where it's

38:06

like the procedure is all subconscious

38:08

psychic Yeah, as opposed to like a

38:10

leads to be leads to see

38:12

it's like a leads to f leads

38:14

to the number three leads to

38:16

a triangle Totally

38:20

oh, I see you're working on solving

38:22

that code here. I solved it for

38:24

you the end This is not a

38:26

episode about long legs No, we will

38:28

get to that at a future date,

38:30

but I couldn't help but to think

38:32

about that movie watching this last night

38:35

So he goes John goes to tell

38:37

Harglow and Styles about what he finds

38:39

that I think this is a map

38:41

to I keep saying Hobbs and

38:43

it's Dobbs and isn't it or is it?

38:45

I think it's okay because actually I found

38:47

some note that saying that like Hobb is

38:49

an old -fashioned word for I think the

38:51

devil. Oh, yeah Like it was

38:53

like, you know, like lose Lucifer like,

38:55

you know Louis cipher. It's like one

38:57

of the many many many names We've

38:59

given the devil over the years without

39:01

having to actually save the devil. Of

39:04

course old scratch and all that. Yeah.

39:06

Yeah, okay Hobbs it Yeah, and so

39:08

he's saying like this dot in the

39:10

middle of all of this is I

39:12

think where Hobbs and his and he

39:14

tells them that he still thinks this

39:16

is a publicity stunt but it looks

39:18

like what he's done is map us

39:20

to Hobbs and New Hampshire and they're

39:22

like well you realize of course that's

39:24

not a real town and he's like

39:26

theoretically you know who knows could be

39:28

could be a tiny little town you

39:30

don't know how towns are made you

39:32

know there's tons of towns across America

39:34

that have kind of up and dried

39:36

up like hey let's take a road

39:38

trip to Silent Hill You know, just

39:40

for a lark. It

39:45

used to be a town. Yeah. then

39:47

everybody went, no, fuck this place. Yeah. The

39:49

bridge don't go there. No more. No,

39:51

I don't. Every

39:54

harbinger is from Maine. Harglow

39:56

tells him, all right,

39:58

well, I'm sending you up there. You don't trust

40:00

us. I don't trust you. So honestly, I'm going

40:03

to send one of my own with you. Linda

40:05

Stiles is going along with you to

40:07

Hobbs End. Which makes no sense. It makes

40:09

zero sense other than we need to

40:11

put we need we need a lady in

40:14

this film. He is

40:16

not interested in being

40:18

a charming male to this

40:20

beautiful female. Their

40:22

relationship is wackadoo. I don't

40:24

understand straight people. I

40:27

don't understand what straight people. Why

40:29

does he have a bicycle

40:31

horn in the glove compartment

40:34

of his car? That's

40:36

not normal. It's

40:38

really not. Like, you

40:41

see, is the fucking moonlighting

40:43

as bozo on the weekend? And

40:46

also, so they're driving from New York

40:49

City to New Hampshire, which, by the way,

40:51

is going to be like a three

40:53

hour drive. Four and

40:55

a half. Probably four and a half. Sure.

40:58

So there's a lot of traffic. But

41:00

they're driving all night, like they're

41:02

fucking driving to like Indiana or something.

41:05

Good Lord if we drive to

41:07

Vancouver, I don't understand and they

41:09

anyways the the thing I truly

41:11

didn't understand is She's asleep in

41:13

the car. Oh, and he could

41:16

just turn on the radio But

41:18

he doesn't so he starts singing

41:20

little bits and pieces of like

41:22

American anthems like a beautiful yeah,

41:24

yeah Well, I think he's bored.

41:26

He's bored totally I get that

41:29

and he's and we kind of

41:31

got to give him like a

41:33

mercurial Like, yeah, he's a hard -nosed

41:35

detective, but he's also kind of playful. Yeah,

41:38

but also probably has very

41:40

little boundaries. He has no boundaries.

41:43

And he's got to wake her up. You

41:45

can't stand that she gets

41:47

to sleep. So he takes out

41:49

this bike horn and is

41:52

like right in her ear. She

41:54

beats him with a bag

41:56

of chips. Love it. So eventually

41:58

we're driving late at night.

42:00

Like, this is your first tip

42:03

that New Hampshire is not

42:05

that far from New York City.

42:07

And also New Hampshire is

42:09

not. Doesn't like have fields and

42:11

fields of corn flat is

42:14

not how I would kind of

42:16

describe the the northeast of

42:18

United States of America No No,

42:20

it's really interesting anyways like

42:22

windmills Did you mean Gary, Indiana?

42:25

I've spent very little time in

42:27

New Hampshire, but yeah, I am

42:29

a little I did have some

42:31

questions about the landscape there sure

42:34

But late at night, there's a

42:36

cyclist on the highway. Love these.

42:38

One of the most indelible

42:40

visuals in any movie I've ever

42:42

seen is from Pee Wee's Big

42:44

Adventure when they arrive at the

42:46

dinosaurs. Yes. And there's

42:49

something about the blackness

42:51

of everything but the dinosaurs.

42:53

Yeah. There's something really scary but

42:55

cozy about that to let

42:58

you know that you're all alone.

43:00

This is the only thing

43:02

in the world. the velvet darkness.

43:04

Yeah, it's so beautiful and

43:06

it's calling you and scary. And

43:09

here at this moment where all

43:11

we can see are lines on the

43:13

road and then just in the

43:15

middle of nowhere is this young man

43:17

on a bicycle kid on a

43:19

bike peddling in the middle of the

43:21

night down a dark highway. This

43:23

to me is where we get our

43:26

blend of Stephen King into it.

43:28

Because, you know, Stephen King, I think

43:30

really is a truly

43:32

American author. I think maybe one

43:34

of the most American authors

43:36

that we've ever produced, because I

43:38

think in a time where

43:40

he wanted to talk about America,

43:42

small town America, the way

43:44

it truly is, rather than the

43:46

way we romanticize it, you

43:48

know, it's not it's a wonderful

43:51

life. It's more like, you know,

43:53

dairy main. Yeah. And

43:55

and so the idea

43:57

of like the kids on

43:59

their bikes with the

44:01

the. Bicycle with the the

44:03

playing cards put into

44:05

the bicycle spokes is such

44:08

if it's not cribbed

44:10

exactly from Stephen King, it

44:12

evokes it. It evokes

44:14

Salem's lot. It evokes the

44:16

that kind of Americana. And

44:18

it's fucked up that it's happening at like

44:21

two o 'clock in the morning, which lets you

44:23

know you're in a horror movie. When

44:26

she passes this kid, I'm waiting for

44:28

the scariest moment possible I'm waiting for

44:30

the biggest jump scare and they pass

44:33

this kid on the highway and he

44:35

just turns and looks at them He

44:37

looks kind of like he looks a

44:39

little like help he gives me help

44:41

me eyes, but they just pass him

44:43

and then keep driving ahead and She's

44:46

this is at the point where she's

44:48

driving now, but then driving. Yeah, and

44:50

and because because Trent is asleep. So

44:52

Trent sees Well, he sees none of

44:54

this this whole section. No But then

44:56

she sees another cyclist coming the other

44:58

way on the highway, and this is

45:01

the jump scare, because it happens very

45:03

suddenly, and it is a person with

45:05

long white hair and old age makeup,

45:08

just pedaling quickly past, and they

45:10

also shoot a glance at her

45:12

as they're passing. And

45:14

then just out of nowhere, that thing comes

45:16

right back at her again, and she

45:18

plows right into it. Like right onto the

45:20

windshield. I laughed so this

45:23

scare is so good, but it's also

45:25

so funny as well because there's

45:27

a you know They go to check

45:29

out the cyclist and it's old -age

45:31

makeup long white hair And he's

45:33

talking and he says I can't get

45:35

out. He won't let me out,

45:37

but it is in a young man's

45:39

voice Uncanny Valley. Do you remember

45:41

that scene in Invasion of the Body

45:43

Snatchers where that dog had that

45:46

weird head on it? Yes. Yes,

45:48

it's like that where you're just like this My

45:50

this hurts my brain But the

45:52

funny part is out of nowhere So

45:54

she's talking to John and then out

45:57

of nowhere from behind we see that

45:59

cyclists get up grab their bike hop

46:01

on and leave and the whole time

46:03

they're just kind of like Staring

46:05

they're in the distance background kind of

46:07

staring at the camera and grinning like

46:09

see you later And it's and I

46:11

love the way he shot this because

46:13

you don't like you see it's

46:15

like a low shot of like the

46:17

bike the person on the ground, he

46:20

says, he won't let me out. The

46:22

camera comes up to show styles. Trent

46:24

has gone off to get like a

46:26

defibrillator from the trunk or who knows

46:29

fucking what. But you.

46:31

But from the opposite end

46:33

of the frame, you don't

46:35

see the bike get up. You

46:37

don't see the purse, the bike, like

46:39

the mechanics of it makes zero

46:41

logical sense. And he just sort of

46:43

sails on by from a completely

46:45

different direction. That makes

46:48

no logic. And

46:50

I fucking love it. So

46:52

good. Ghostly. So more

46:54

late night driving and the lines on

46:56

the road disappear. Linda rolls

46:58

down the driver's side window

47:00

and peers out of the window

47:02

while still driving and looks

47:04

down and below them is only

47:06

clouds. And she's like,

47:08

what the fuck? And then

47:10

suddenly she's in a covered bridge

47:13

style tunnel. Clackety clackety

47:15

clack. And strobe strobe warnings is

47:17

one of our triggers for this

47:19

film. I mean, it's great, but

47:21

it is like flash, flash, flash,

47:23

flash, flash. And it's a really

47:25

awesome transition sequence. The flashing is

47:27

disorienting, but then you realize it's the

47:29

sunlight through the slats and the bridge,

47:31

the wood slats and this bridge coming

47:33

through and. We are suddenly in daylight

47:35

and she emerges into the town of

47:38

Hobbs and you see the welcome sign

47:40

in the background. And she is staring

47:42

around like it was just like two

47:44

a .m. in the morning. Now it's

47:46

2 p .m. And they arrived at Madison

47:48

County. It's totally it.

47:51

And John wakes up and is like, oh, wow,

47:53

thanks for driving. I must have slept through

47:55

the whole night. And she looks at him like

47:57

you did not. The look on her face

47:59

is. fucking amazing she's

48:01

like like because she's in this

48:04

state of shock like what

48:06

the fuck just happened oh

48:08

i guess we're here okay they

48:10

go through the center of

48:12

town he's all like uh that's

48:14

just it's a forgotten part

48:17

of america just uh american village

48:19

town usa this little place

48:21

so cute and quaint and

48:23

she's like do you see those

48:25

children The freaky face is

48:27

chasing that dog. He's like, no. Anyways,

48:30

go find a hotel. All right.

48:32

No discussion had. We

48:35

should get off the street again. There's

48:37

a very like children of the corn kind

48:39

of vibe to all this, which is

48:41

why we have the corn in the corn

48:43

fields, even though do they grow a

48:45

lot of corn in New Hampshire? I

48:48

got to think. I mean, corn is a

48:50

thing in New England. It grows most places, but

48:52

not in. Yeah, it's not. Yeah. That

48:54

was very like Indiana looking

48:57

to use. Yeah. Yeah. But

48:59

this town does have

49:01

very it's like cobblestone streets.

49:03

It's very, you know,

49:05

like sees, you know, like

49:07

little, little tiny, tiny

49:09

village, which is its own

49:11

kind of Americana horror. You

49:14

know, back when America was really

49:16

old and really small and people kind

49:18

of kept to themselves. And if

49:20

you leave the village. You're

49:22

in the witch. So

49:25

they get to

49:28

the Pikmin Hotel. Fuck

49:30

yes. I also want

49:32

to note that that car, the car

49:34

they're in looks like shit, this

49:37

old Cadillac. I mean, it's in fine

49:39

shape, but it is just covered

49:41

in dust, which I thought was a

49:43

really interesting detail. Like they've been

49:45

driving for hours. But when they

49:47

get into the Pikmin Hotel, she

49:49

starts saying. This

49:51

is from the books. He's like,

49:53

well, he probably named the hotel

49:55

and the books after this hotel

49:58

of this town he lives in.

50:00

She's like, no, I mean, I know

50:02

every detail of this place. I

50:05

think the books happened and then this

50:07

place happened. Like there's a painting

50:09

right behind me. There's a squeaky floorboard

50:11

under, you know, it's all kind

50:13

of happening simultaneously in a very kind

50:15

of like, she's prescient sort

50:18

of way. Yeah. Let's talk about

50:20

this painting for a second. Do

50:23

you remember in the

50:25

80s, at

50:27

your local holiday

50:29

inn, there would come

50:31

the art fair, would come through

50:33

town? No! Did

50:36

you not get this? No, it was like, I

50:38

mean, we may have and I just we weren't

50:40

like an arty household. Oh, no,

50:42

no, no, it was like it

50:44

would be on TV for like the

50:46

commercials would come on TV and

50:48

they'd be like for one weekend only

50:50

at the Holiday Inn on Kingston

50:52

Pike. We've got the art fair and

50:54

it was like hotel art. The

50:57

like the landscapes, the this,

50:59

you know, anything that you

51:02

would associate with like. Old

51:04

style hotels had this kind

51:06

of hotel style art and

51:08

this is playing on that.

51:11

And it's a couple, a

51:13

man and a woman walking by

51:15

a riverbank in this style of

51:17

like old school hotel art. And

51:20

this this painting goes through a couple

51:22

of different iterations. It

51:24

does. It does. So when

51:27

she points out the painting, he looks

51:29

over and he's like, oh, neat painting.

51:31

But then there is as the clerk. arrives

51:36

as Mrs. Pikman

51:38

arrives to check them

51:40

in. You know, he's

51:42

talking to her about Sutter Cane. He's like,

51:44

well, we came here because of Sutter Cane. He's

51:46

a very famous person. We're looking for this

51:48

man. And she's like, I've never heard of

51:51

a Cane. No, it doesn't ring a bell. I

51:53

think that's why that's why like, she's so

51:55

scary to me is that it's like, it's

51:57

kind of our fear of old people of like,

52:00

is she forgetful? Is

52:03

she distracted or is

52:05

she malicious? Well,

52:07

she's gonna go through all of those

52:09

phases right now. She's just a

52:11

sweet old lady. She's just like, well,

52:13

just I'll be under your room

52:15

I don't think I've ever heard of

52:18

us. I don't know a cane

52:20

and we've been here for 25 years

52:22

Linda turns around to look back

52:24

at that painting and now the face

52:26

of the woman is turned to

52:28

look down the barrel of the camera

52:31

as it were yeah, well, of

52:33

course like any two business strangers on

52:35

a road trip together. We got

52:37

to share a room with one bed.

52:39

Yeah, that's totally normal. You

52:44

know, he's like, we're not in

52:46

a Sutter King novel. Look, he

52:48

said that out one window is

52:51

this, you know, old church with

52:53

the onion domes and gold trim

52:55

and look, it's just an old

52:57

bar and she's like, that's the

52:59

east window. He said it's out

53:01

the west window. Look, and she

53:03

opens the window and there's this

53:05

crazy looking church. Oops, I love

53:07

this church because it looks it's

53:09

Byzantine, right? It's this it's yeah,

53:11

it's like Russian Orthodox Byzantine. Yeah,

53:13

yeah, and it's But it's standing

53:15

in the middle of a cornfield.

53:17

It looks like yeah It's very

53:19

pastoral and it just fully out

53:21

of place in this environment So

53:23

they go to the church again.

53:25

She sees the running dog and

53:27

the children These

53:29

kids are fucking creepy, man. They

53:32

get to the front doors of

53:34

the church and they see like

53:36

the battle of heaven of Angel

53:38

Michael versus the devils or something.

53:40

All of them. And they've got

53:42

the like they've like and they

53:44

make a comment. They're like, we're

53:46

reading this fucking horror book like

53:48

it's a travel guide and how

53:50

they're like, Jesus Christ, like how

53:52

ironic that is. And they're kind

53:54

of reading out lines from it

53:56

and it's totally cribbed straight from.

53:59

H .B. Lovecraft, it's like, you know,

54:01

they're this ancient, the spot of

54:03

ancient evil that they built a

54:05

church over top of. And now

54:07

the evil has come to reclaim

54:09

the church. And and, you know,

54:11

it does kind of point out

54:13

some of the mystical violence that

54:15

is inherent in Christian religion, Judeo

54:17

-Christian religion of like, there's demons, there's

54:20

angels. That's what there

54:22

is. That's what we believe.

54:25

And she's like, well, doesn't

54:27

it kind of make sense

54:29

that if demons were to come

54:31

attack us that, you know,

54:33

like, what if there's some truth

54:36

to all this? And

54:38

she's a step ahead of him

54:40

because she is already well into the

54:42

belief that we are in his

54:44

novel. They're in booktown. They're in

54:46

booktown and a bunch of cars are

54:48

racing up to the church and

54:50

she Tells John we

54:52

have to get out of here

54:54

because they're gonna have guns

54:57

like she knows the scene Yes,

54:59

that's about to transpire and

55:01

he can't stop turning around to

55:03

the stairs. She's like would

55:05

you just fucking come let's go

55:07

Yeah, these men all arrive

55:09

shouting at the church. They're like

55:11

Kane Give him back They're

55:13

holding these rifles and the doors

55:16

open revealing a child Standing

55:18

in the doorway so innocent so

55:20

blonde The shotgun man refers

55:22

to him as Johnny Boy, Johnny

55:24

Boy. And it's Vigo the Carpathian. Basically.

55:28

No, that's not who that is. That's

55:30

yeah. Oh. Yeah,

55:32

it's Vigo. Vigo. I

55:36

just remember the Bobby Brown song

55:38

from Ghostbusters 2. Too

55:40

hot to handle, too cold to

55:43

hold. The Ghostbusters and they're in

55:45

control. Snaps. Yeah, so shotgun man

55:47

Vigo the Carpathian is shouting. At

55:49

this church that opens up

55:51

revealing a boy closes opens again.

55:54

It keeps opening and closing revealing

55:56

this boy in different states of

55:58

Emotion on his face. Well, it's

56:00

very like it It's really reminiscent

56:02

of fire starter, you know

56:04

like Drew Barrymore in the movie

56:06

would get like her fire starter

56:08

You know and it's like the

56:11

wind out of nowhere the youthful

56:13

child That's like maybe evil or

56:15

how you know like supernatural

56:17

child trope Totally fire starter love

56:19

this visual and then the very

56:21

last door opening is Sutter Kane

56:23

himself standing fine. Oh, we see

56:26

there's okay So he's he's a

56:28

man. He is a person

56:30

then those doors close and a

56:32

bunch of dobermans appear and They

56:34

attack all these men with their

56:36

guns and these are such good

56:38

good doggies they're They're

56:40

so well trained to attack these

56:43

stuntmen with armor on their legs

56:45

and hands. Although apparently not. Really?

56:47

Apparently. Apparently like a lot of

56:49

these stunt people had to go

56:51

to the hospital. Oh

56:53

no. Like I just found

56:55

like one note on that but there

56:57

were like there were some injuries made in

57:00

the making of this. Oh no. Well,

57:04

bad dog. Their method. They

57:06

are method they are the

57:08

Jeremy strong of Doberman pinchers

57:11

Out by the car where

57:13

Linda and John are There's

57:15

a little girl zombified little

57:17

girl standing there She just

57:19

says to them I see

57:21

This this is my favorite.

57:24

This is my favorite moment

57:26

of this film and just

57:28

like, you know, you are

57:30

Your mummy, you know

57:32

what day it is? No, that's not the

57:34

end. We're not there yet, but that's so

57:36

good. That's my favorite scene. It's

57:38

just so

57:40

hammy. Yes, like it's

57:43

it feels like a line from

57:45

a book or a movie like

57:47

it's and it's you know, it's

57:49

the gross makeup is like fucking

57:51

awesome on this kid and she's

57:53

got like the it's very pet

57:55

cemetery to me. Yeah, totally. But

57:57

it's also the way this kid

57:59

just said, it's mommy's day. It

58:01

just racks me the fuck up. It's

58:03

so good. Yeah, we get that

58:05

towards the end. But here it's just

58:07

really starting to devolve. shit goes

58:10

crazy. But right now, the little girl

58:12

is just looking at them being

58:14

like, basically, we see you. Yeah. And

58:16

that's creepy. Please stop. Uh -oh. Please

58:18

stop knowing I'm here. Please

58:20

do not conceive me.

58:23

Stop conceiving me. Glinda

58:25

admits to John. You

58:28

were partially right. This

58:30

was a publicity stunt.

58:32

Oh, a confession. This

58:34

is such a Film Noir kind

58:36

of thing. Yeah, you know the

58:38

like I wasn't I wasn't telling

58:40

the whole truth. Yeah, it's a

58:42

it's kind of half a half

58:44

a red herring sort of thing.

58:46

Yeah But she's like we sent

58:48

Kane away to make this publicity

58:51

sound like oh no the famous

58:53

horror author is missing. We

58:55

didn't think he would come here and

58:57

we certainly were not supposed to show

58:59

up here. Like we just told him

59:01

to go on retreat somewhere and write

59:04

a new book and we'd be like

59:06

oh no Sutter Cane in seclusion where'd

59:08

he go? But this whole Hobbes end

59:10

is not real. But it is now

59:12

and she says the shit that's happening

59:14

here this is all real and his

59:16

I don't know but his books are

59:19

come to life and It's the new

59:21

book we need to find Because if

59:23

we can just read out It's a

59:25

the new book is going to be

59:27

about the end of the world though

59:29

in the mouth of madness and oh

59:31

if we could just you know Get

59:33

a hold of the manuscript and see

59:36

how to defeat like the mouth to

59:38

the end Leave the rat like read

59:40

the last chapter to they also said

59:42

that like whatever is taking over the

59:44

town according to his lore That

59:47

it starts with the children

59:49

and works its way up

59:51

through the adults. Oh, that's so

59:53

Stephen King so good then

59:55

again another moment where I Got

59:57

really off by what they're

1:00:00

doing with the screenplay here She

1:00:02

grabs him and starts like

1:00:04

kissing him. Yeah, and I

1:00:06

thought y 'all need to let

1:00:08

this femme fatale thing go Yeah,

1:00:10

and even like it's out

1:00:12

of nowhere like their relationship

1:00:15

has been Not that

1:00:17

no, there's no sexual chemistry here

1:00:19

There's no inclination that either is

1:00:21

like attracted to the other like

1:00:23

even when he hits on her

1:00:25

at the office It feels more

1:00:27

like a power move rather than

1:00:29

yeah, yeah, actually interested in meeting

1:00:31

getting to know her and He's

1:00:33

like I'm fucking out of here.

1:00:35

He wants nothing to do with

1:00:38

this like kissing moment and he

1:00:40

goes back down to the What

1:00:42

doesn't she say she's like I

1:00:44

like he's writing me this way.

1:00:46

Yeah. Well, she yeah, she says

1:00:48

that Yeah, she says that a

1:00:50

little bit later here Okay, and

1:00:52

so they kind of reveal that

1:00:54

that the reason why all these

1:00:56

things have been happening is because

1:00:58

he wrote us here. Yeah Actually,

1:01:01

we are supposed to be here

1:01:03

because he fucking wrote us into

1:01:05

this That's why I'm fucking kid

1:01:07

and we're trying to resist the

1:01:09

story. Yeah And the fact that

1:01:11

she went to kiss him implies

1:01:13

she's falling more and more victim

1:01:15

to the fate of the rider. Which

1:01:18

is the idea of like this free

1:01:20

will of like, do we actually have

1:01:22

free will? Like if God is everything

1:01:24

and we're a part of God, then

1:01:26

are we just fingers doing what the

1:01:28

brain is telling us to do? Or

1:01:30

do we think that we're like independent?

1:01:33

It's just definitely like this idea

1:01:35

that has like broken into

1:01:37

like mainstream like Reddit

1:01:39

conspiracy people like the world is

1:01:42

a simulation type of shit. Yeah,

1:01:44

we're in like the only truly

1:01:46

programmed Yeah, the only truly sane

1:01:48

people are the insane people. Yeah,

1:01:50

because they see the truth and

1:01:52

it has made them mad and

1:01:54

That's kind of that's what Lovecraft

1:01:56

was always playing at too And

1:01:58

that's kind of what we're gonna

1:02:00

see in this movie because John

1:02:02

Trent is going to be the

1:02:04

mad one even though

1:02:06

he is the one who truly

1:02:09

understands what's happening by the end.

1:02:11

And I'd also like to rewind

1:02:13

to something that Stiles says when

1:02:15

they first meet and they're talking

1:02:17

about reality and, you know, crazy,

1:02:19

what is what is insane. And

1:02:21

she's like, can you imagine being

1:02:23

the only person at the end

1:02:25

of the world? Wouldn't that be

1:02:27

lonely? No. And we know

1:02:29

the dramatic irony is that we know

1:02:31

that's exactly how he's going to

1:02:33

end up railing against. everyone

1:02:35

else saying you're not, I'm not

1:02:38

the crazy one. The world is

1:02:40

crazy. But back in the lobby, Mrs.

1:02:43

Pigman is acting a

1:02:45

little more strangely. And she's

1:02:47

got the like creepy

1:02:49

red eyes now. There's

1:02:51

like a muffled from

1:02:54

underneath her desk. She keeps

1:02:56

seeming like stomping on

1:02:58

something. like kicking, just kicking

1:03:00

it. Just like shut

1:03:02

up. Can I help you?

1:03:05

With at the end of

1:03:07

the scene when the

1:03:09

camera pans down behind the

1:03:11

counter There is a

1:03:13

naked old man handcuffed to

1:03:15

her ankle lying on

1:03:17

the floor. Yep amazing Just

1:03:19

chef's kiss no notes.

1:03:21

Yeah But all during this

1:03:24

Gerald's game Gerald's game.

1:03:26

Oh, yeah Gerald's game. Yeah,

1:03:28

good reference All during

1:03:30

this in the background we

1:03:32

see We see Linda, like,

1:03:34

do the little evil burglar tiptoe

1:03:36

out the back. Sneak, sneak, sneak, sneak,

1:03:38

sneak. Like, where the fuck

1:03:40

is she going? And she has

1:03:42

the car keys and she takes that

1:03:44

car and runs up, races back

1:03:46

off to the church. She

1:03:48

didn't go very far because that church is

1:03:50

right outside the hotel window. I know. Yeah,

1:03:52

they walked there the last time. Yeah. Okay,

1:03:55

sure. Like, you can see it from the

1:03:57

hotel. She goes to the church. Well, he

1:03:59

goes to this hotel bar. Because he's like,

1:04:01

fuck it. I don't know. She's gone forever.

1:04:04

She drove the car five blocks. I'll never

1:04:06

see her again. I might

1:04:08

as well go get a beer. I don't

1:04:10

know who served this beer, how he

1:04:12

got the beer. I know. I thought about

1:04:14

that, too. Like it's which I love

1:04:16

the creepy, like to me, that is creepy.

1:04:18

Yeah, like there's so many restaurants that

1:04:20

I'm like, I would love to eat right

1:04:22

now, but I will not be the

1:04:24

only one in a restaurant. It's

1:04:26

not my favorite thing. No, it's not

1:04:28

my favorite. No, drinking in a bar.

1:04:30

where you're the only one there. And

1:04:32

what makes it creepy for me is

1:04:34

that it's just you and the bartender.

1:04:37

Yeah. If I

1:04:39

wanted to be alone, I'd be at

1:04:41

home. Yeah. But here I am with

1:04:43

you. But in this

1:04:45

part, there is no bartender.

1:04:47

It's just apocalypse bar. The

1:04:50

shotgun man comes in. It's

1:04:53

like, I think you need to be

1:04:55

taken the hint and you need to leave.

1:04:57

This is not a tourist town. Yeah.

1:04:59

He tells John that Cain did

1:05:01

something with that church. He let

1:05:03

something out of that church and

1:05:05

it started with the kids and

1:05:07

it's spreading through the town. And

1:05:09

he's like, see this? Wait,

1:05:11

does he have the scar on the face yet? It's

1:05:13

like see this girl. No, no,

1:05:16

I think that's later again. It's like

1:05:18

when should there's a couple levels

1:05:20

of this Yeah, there's a lot of

1:05:22

repetition of scenes in this movie

1:05:24

like everything builds on something kind of

1:05:26

like the boy in the church

1:05:28

door like it's a repetition of his

1:05:30

Visage, but each time is slightly

1:05:32

different Now it's nighttime Linda's at the

1:05:34

church. She is okay. Here's where

1:05:36

we she's surrounded by the kids You

1:05:38

know what today is it's got

1:05:40

those teeth And her

1:05:42

lips look torn off. It's

1:05:44

the yeah, I know it's

1:05:47

the like um Like you

1:05:49

know like the like Desert

1:05:51

Island lips. Yeah Today's mummies

1:05:53

day shut up She kind

1:05:55

of bales on these kids.

1:05:57

They don't they don't really

1:05:59

do much and the dog

1:06:01

is with them Yeah, but

1:06:03

missing a leg. Oh, I

1:06:05

did not clock the missing.

1:06:07

Yeah Like, like, it's

1:06:09

a three -legged dog with, like, kind

1:06:11

of a bloody stump. So, like,

1:06:13

these kids finally caught the dog,

1:06:15

which they've been chasing for the last

1:06:17

30 minutes, and they ripped its

1:06:19

leg off, and now it's just chilling

1:06:21

with them. I was just one of them.

1:06:25

Fuck. Oh, man, I'm so sorry

1:06:27

I visually missed that visual.

1:06:30

Goddamn. She goes to

1:06:32

the church and sees the sign

1:06:34

on the front that says, any

1:06:36

who dare enter this unholy site

1:06:38

be damned forever. That's

1:06:40

a weird. Are they Lutheran?

1:06:42

I don't know this denomination. Is

1:06:45

that Episcopalian? I

1:06:47

don't know. What is I think

1:06:49

it must be assembly of God. I

1:06:51

think that's really just laying it

1:06:53

out there. And then she walks in

1:06:55

and it's like all the crosses

1:06:57

are upside down. Uh -huh. Oh, we've

1:07:00

entered. the Prince of Darkness church. Yeah.

1:07:03

And she finds his typing room and

1:07:05

she gets like grabbed by a hand

1:07:07

that isn't his, just something from behind

1:07:09

the door and tugged into this room

1:07:12

where she gets to go. No, no,

1:07:14

it's like she opens the door and

1:07:16

it's like a normal ass room with

1:07:18

a with a typewriter, which she doesn't

1:07:20

investigate, which I think is kind of

1:07:22

dumb. But it's a setup because then

1:07:24

she goes over and she's kind of

1:07:27

like the church is like. sticky, shiny,

1:07:29

like the house that the house that

1:07:31

bleed that the walls that bleed kind

1:07:33

of vibes. And then a second

1:07:35

like all in one shot a second later, she

1:07:38

hears typing from the room. The

1:07:40

door opens and it's typewriter's

1:07:43

in the same place. Kane

1:07:45

is at the typewriter, but all

1:07:47

the walls are like bloody hell.

1:07:50

Right. The walls, which is my

1:07:52

favorite aesthetic. Yeah, meat

1:07:54

wall meat door. Me, I love

1:07:56

it. So good. Yeah.

1:07:58

And the door is like

1:08:01

pulsating and slimy. He's

1:08:03

in his power office. Uh -huh. And

1:08:05

the idea that there is like

1:08:08

a door that goes into like

1:08:10

a catacombs that is the the

1:08:12

veil between our world and the

1:08:14

world of the old ones that

1:08:16

is so strong, it bends wood

1:08:18

outward, which we all know we're

1:08:21

like, hmm. Nothing good is

1:08:23

going to come through a wall that is made of

1:08:25

wood that is bending. No, no

1:08:27

wood is not wood is

1:08:29

Very mildly flexible. Yeah, it

1:08:31

is It's a very durable

1:08:33

material, but it is not

1:08:35

one for heavy bending wood

1:08:37

does not like to bend

1:08:39

very far. Yeah, he says

1:08:41

Linda, it's nice to see

1:08:43

you can come see the

1:08:45

instrument of their homecoming The

1:08:47

new Bible that starts the

1:08:49

change and he opens up

1:08:51

the box and inside is

1:08:53

the manuscript. He shows her

1:08:55

the title page in the

1:08:57

mouth of madness by Sutter

1:08:59

Kane and just a whole

1:09:01

bunch of flashes of acts

1:09:03

and blood and weird Lovecraftian

1:09:05

creatures. Call it's very like

1:09:07

cult leader like oh And

1:09:09

then he's like slowly taking

1:09:11

her hair and wrapping it

1:09:13

up and puts his hand

1:09:15

behind her head and

1:09:18

shoves her head down to nose

1:09:20

to nose with the title

1:09:22

page. And the shot is kind of

1:09:24

like of a Xerox machine, like

1:09:26

the light that reveals to

1:09:28

her these images, these

1:09:30

horrific images that we've kind

1:09:32

of got a taste

1:09:34

of early on. This is

1:09:36

how Sarah Griffin showed me her.

1:09:38

book. You wrote just like by omniscient.

1:09:40

Yeah, I didn't like sit and read

1:09:43

it. She just shoved my head into

1:09:45

the title page. And then I absorbed

1:09:47

the entire novel all at once. it

1:09:49

VR? It's a VR book. Basically,

1:09:51

yeah. Eat the ones you

1:09:53

love out now wherever you get books by Sarah Griffin. Presented

1:09:56

in smell of vision. Yeah,

1:09:59

you just press your face to the cover and

1:10:01

you'll just have read the book. That's how it works

1:10:03

because it's about plants. So I imagine it's got

1:10:05

like a scratch and sniff plant like, you know, has

1:10:07

to. She needs to

1:10:10

request that from the publisher. So

1:10:13

she gets back, oh one, she's

1:10:15

now bleeding from the eyes when

1:10:17

she pops up and she like

1:10:19

embraces him and we see it

1:10:21

from behind his body and he's

1:10:23

got full malignant. Yeah, oh my

1:10:25

god, it's totally malignant, isn't it?

1:10:27

Like, like, quatto or whatever, like

1:10:29

recall. Like a demon is attached

1:10:31

to his body, he's

1:10:34

a demon, it's a cancer

1:10:36

demon, all the above.

1:10:38

And she's also kind of

1:10:40

like, oh, let

1:10:42

me feel all the parts

1:10:44

of it. Let me finger

1:10:46

your skeletal ribs, demon lover.

1:10:49

Classic Gemini. She

1:10:52

gets back to the hotel. I

1:10:54

love these lines. She gets

1:10:56

back to the hotel, grabs

1:10:58

John very suddenly. It's like,

1:11:01

help me, John. I saw

1:11:03

the book and I'm losing

1:11:05

me. I'm a fuck that's

1:11:07

so scary and it's kind

1:11:09

of glossed over a little

1:11:12

bit, but that is like

1:11:14

That's scary shit. Yeah So

1:11:16

now That painting is just

1:11:18

full on like Lovecraftian Cthulhu

1:11:20

monsters. They're like, yeah weird

1:11:23

log snake monster people And

1:11:25

John pursues this noise of

1:11:27

like groaning coming from the

1:11:29

basement space of the hotel

1:11:32

and he goes down there

1:11:34

and he finds Mrs. Pikman.

1:11:36

With several tentacles coming out

1:11:38

of her. Holding

1:11:41

an axe. Axe

1:11:43

plus tentacles just chopping

1:11:45

away at her husband.

1:11:49

And they kind of set this

1:11:51

up in the very big, like

1:11:53

when they first drive up to

1:11:55

the Pikmin hotel, they're like, oh,

1:11:57

look, man, everything's just

1:11:59

like how it is in

1:12:01

the book. Like there's the

1:12:03

greenhouse where apparently one of

1:12:05

the members of Hobbes N

1:12:08

saw some eldritch abomination with

1:12:10

snakes for arms and voila.

1:12:13

Here we got it. Snakes for arms,

1:12:16

under glass. When he

1:12:18

runs back up to the room,

1:12:20

he sees like the bathroom door.

1:12:22

It's kind of frosted glass glazed

1:12:24

glass. Yeah, and he's like styles

1:12:27

were going now, but In

1:12:29

her shadow behind the door like

1:12:31

tentacles are growing out of her and

1:12:33

coming out from below the door

1:12:35

And then she opens the door comes

1:12:37

through and she looks perfectly normal

1:12:39

just a big well smile looks euphoric

1:12:41

Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean

1:12:43

like she doesn't look like she has

1:12:45

tentacles, but she's got a psychotic

1:12:47

smile Yeah, the next thing we see

1:12:49

from the hallway. He is like

1:12:51

flying out of that room right like

1:12:53

getting tossed He gets in the

1:12:55

car. There's that tentacled monster in the

1:12:57

greenhouse There you go, check.

1:12:59

And now we're going to get this repetition

1:13:02

of he keeps driving, well, no matter

1:13:04

where he drives, he ends up back in the

1:13:06

middle of town. Yeah, it's like he

1:13:08

drives into town. Again,

1:13:10

mob of hatchet -wielding

1:13:12

small -town Americans.

1:13:14

Uh -huh. Love that.

1:13:17

And he's like, oh, this, I'm going to

1:13:19

back up and get out of here. And

1:13:22

he drives out of town. You know, we see the

1:13:24

covered bridge. And the lines on

1:13:26

the highway sort of like flins

1:13:28

flare. And he's back in front

1:13:30

of the mob. There's a there's also

1:13:32

a moment in here too, wherein

1:13:35

he is back at the bar

1:13:37

with the shotgun man again. What's

1:13:39

he OK? So he goes through a couple

1:13:41

of repetitions of trying to get out, being put

1:13:43

back, trying to get out, being put back.

1:13:45

And finally, he's like, fuck it.

1:13:48

I'm going to floor it and go straight into

1:13:50

the mob, like as opposed to backing away

1:13:52

to go the normal way. He's going to go,

1:13:54

you know, the only way out is through. And

1:13:56

he's like going in between people.

1:13:59

But then Linda Styles, who it's important

1:14:01

to note, has worn all white

1:14:03

on this entire adventure, which is not

1:14:05

what I'd recommend for travel clothing.

1:14:07

No, because guaranteed, if you wear white,

1:14:09

you're going to spill coffee or

1:14:11

Bloody Mary on it. Yeah. But her.

1:14:13

She appears in the middle of

1:14:15

the mob and he kind of swerves

1:14:17

to miss her. The car

1:14:20

gets all fucked up and he sort of

1:14:22

makes his way out of the car and

1:14:24

the nearest door is the bar. Right?

1:14:26

That's not the order that I have in

1:14:29

my notes. What I have is when he

1:14:31

leaves the hotel the first time he tries

1:14:33

to drive away, but then ends up in

1:14:35

the middle of town. There's an angry mob.

1:14:37

And then all I have next is he's

1:14:39

back on the bar. He meets the shotgun

1:14:41

man. He's

1:14:44

trying to get out of town. He's

1:14:46

like fuck this circular town. I'm gonna

1:14:48

have another drink the man shotgun man

1:14:50

says I can't remember what came first

1:14:52

us or the book I don't know

1:14:55

what reality is anymore. Are we the

1:14:57

simulation is the simulation us? He says

1:14:59

reality is not what it used to

1:15:01

be and he's got shotgun.

1:15:03

Yes and John is like

1:15:05

wait no no no no then

1:15:07

he says I have to

1:15:09

he wrote me this way. Yeah,

1:15:11

and then He gets he's

1:15:13

back out in the street and

1:15:15

Linda Comes at him and

1:15:17

punches him. Yeah, he decks her

1:15:19

back and then tosses her

1:15:21

into the car and it's like

1:15:24

we're getting out of here

1:15:26

and She takes out the car

1:15:28

keys that she has and

1:15:30

just swallows them and eats them

1:15:32

like a goldfish. Yeah laughing

1:15:34

the entire time. Yes. So then

1:15:36

he has a screwdriver in his

1:15:38

glove box, which makes more sense

1:15:41

than a bike horn. Uh -huh.

1:15:43

But he uses that screwdriver to

1:15:45

hotwire his own car. Hey,

1:15:47

listen, life

1:15:49

was wild before the invention

1:15:51

of computers, apparently. Now

1:15:53

we're on the road. We're trying to get out

1:15:55

of town. And this is where Linda says, Cain's

1:15:58

writing made me want to. kiss

1:16:00

you because it's good for the

1:16:02

book. And she starts trying to kiss

1:16:04

him while they're driving. And he's

1:16:06

nearly crashing the car out in

1:16:08

the middle of this fucking highway.

1:16:11

There's that old man from the

1:16:13

bicycle at a phone booth. Just like

1:16:15

calling home, I guess. I don't

1:16:17

know. Linda emerges from the car

1:16:19

in the middle of the highway. Twisted

1:16:22

upside down. I

1:16:25

love this. It's a person. Yeah,

1:16:27

it's the most reminiscent of

1:16:29

the thing like the kind

1:16:31

of the special effects that

1:16:33

we've come to love from

1:16:35

John Carpenter, because it's like

1:16:37

her white pants suited body,

1:16:39

but her neck is flipped

1:16:41

upside down. Yeah. And

1:16:44

she's walking on all fours, but with belly

1:16:46

in the air rather than back in

1:16:48

the air. Yeah, it's like the spider. It's

1:16:50

like the spider crawl in the extended

1:16:52

cut of the exorcist. Yes. Yes. So

1:16:54

John is like, fuck this, he just

1:16:56

gets in the car and leaves her. But

1:16:59

the road leads him right back to the angry mob. And

1:17:02

then he turns around, back

1:17:04

on the highway, there's Linda and

1:17:06

that old man riding the

1:17:08

bike together. And a little bit,

1:17:10

she's giving like windmill arms.

1:17:12

She's like, whee! Feel

1:17:15

the rain on your face. No

1:17:17

one else can feel the fire.

1:17:20

Then he's back at the angry

1:17:22

mob and I love this just

1:17:24

like with the kid in the

1:17:26

church doors like his face kept

1:17:29

falling right meaning that like the

1:17:31

the intensity of his expression kept

1:17:33

Yeah, less because he's because we're

1:17:35

showing he's he without having to

1:17:37

show you the same Steps over

1:17:39

and over we watch the toll

1:17:42

it's having again Sam Neil fucking

1:17:44

shit And when he keeps

1:17:46

driving back to this angry mob

1:17:48

each time they are less intense like

1:17:50

this last time he gets to

1:17:52

the mob They look almost bored by

1:17:54

this like Jesus Christ. We got

1:17:56

to do this fucking shit again And

1:17:58

it's I made me think of

1:18:00

the way if you're an actor Especially

1:18:02

in film where you have to

1:18:04

do multiple takes of something so you're

1:18:06

like fuck this guy get his

1:18:08

fucking lines right so we don't have

1:18:10

to take this for the 50th

1:18:12

time and I thought of these axe

1:18:14

-wielding, this axe -wielding mob is thinking

1:18:16

like, look, the script is already written.

1:18:18

Just do what the script says. Stop

1:18:20

fucking around, dickhead. They're crisis actors.

1:18:22

Yeah. Yep. And you're not getting your

1:18:24

lines right. He decides, I'm just

1:18:26

gonna, this is where we get to

1:18:28

the part where like, I'm just

1:18:30

gonna plow through you. Okay, gotcha. They

1:18:32

part and at the back is

1:18:34

Linda. He swerves, crashes his car

1:18:36

into a telephone pole and the next thing

1:18:38

we know, he's like, It's

1:18:40

an overhead shot of him in a

1:18:42

confessional booth. Uh -oh. Well,

1:18:45

that's weird. And he is trapped

1:18:47

in there. Yeah. Light pours

1:18:49

in through the, I don't know what

1:18:51

that, I'm not Catholic. Light pours in

1:18:53

through whatever the little window thing. Little

1:18:55

window screen. And then Kane appears and

1:18:57

he says, this is basically like, it's,

1:19:00

this is pretty cool, yo. Cause

1:19:02

no one's ever really believed a

1:19:04

religion enough to make it real.

1:19:06

But I have, we

1:19:08

did it. I've made a reality. Manifested.

1:19:12

He read the secret. That's

1:19:14

totally it. He made a dream board. He

1:19:16

made a vision board. Says

1:19:19

more people believe in my work

1:19:21

than even the Bible. John

1:19:23

goes, your books suck. How

1:19:27

dare you? You must try

1:19:29

reading my new one. It

1:19:32

will drive you absolutely mad.

1:19:34

Oh my God, arch eyebrow. We're

1:19:39

back in the typing room

1:19:41

The blood wall typing room and

1:19:44

he's completed his manuscript of

1:19:46

in the mouth of madness and

1:19:48

he hands it to John

1:19:50

He says you are what I

1:19:52

write like this town you

1:19:54

weren't here before I wrote it.

1:19:56

Oh That's weird because I

1:19:58

need a messenger. I can't listen.

1:20:00

I have I This

1:20:02

is my, this is my place. But

1:20:04

look, if you go through that airplane

1:20:06

hanger that has now suddenly appeared in

1:20:08

the wall, that will take you back

1:20:10

to your reality. Take this.

1:20:13

Have fun. Tata for now. You

1:20:15

know, he was like, he says, listen,

1:20:17

you're going to have to do this because,

1:20:19

you know, this, the other world basically

1:20:21

is starting to break open. I can't, that

1:20:23

door wood is not supposed to bend

1:20:25

as we covered earlier. I can't hold them

1:20:27

back any longer. And then Kane. Starts

1:20:30

tearing himself away like a paper

1:20:32

like a poster on a wall.

1:20:34

Yeah. Yeah, this is a really

1:20:36

cool effect Now this is kind

1:20:38

of interesting to me and so

1:20:40

apparently this movie had like a

1:20:42

like a five million dollar more

1:20:44

less budget than they had anticipated

1:20:47

So what was supposed to happen

1:20:49

was the town was supposed to

1:20:51

like sort of suck in on

1:20:53

itself into the void OK, but

1:20:55

they couldn't afford that. So the

1:20:57

special effects people kind of came

1:20:59

back with this idea. And I

1:21:01

kind of love it even more.

1:21:03

I do, too. He becomes paper

1:21:05

because we know everybody in this

1:21:08

fucking movie is just pulp fiction.

1:21:10

But what I love is

1:21:12

that Linda has got

1:21:14

a copy of the book

1:21:16

and she begins narrating

1:21:18

Trent's experience of looking into

1:21:21

the void. And he

1:21:23

can't close his eyes, as

1:21:25

she describes. He has

1:21:27

to see the hideous monsters

1:21:29

coming forth. And I love

1:21:31

this because, you know, in

1:21:33

Lovecraft, it's describing something as

1:21:35

indescribable is a fun little

1:21:37

trick. But I'm always like,

1:21:39

fuck you, at least try. Come

1:21:43

on, give us a little. And

1:21:46

what she's describing is, I think,

1:21:48

cribbed word for word from Lovecraft of

1:21:50

the idea of like, you know,

1:21:52

dark ziggurats on a distant planet and

1:21:54

blah, blah, blah, blah. But

1:21:56

again, we don't see it.

1:21:58

We just see a dark hole.

1:22:00

Yeah. And we're watching Trent's

1:22:02

reaction to what he's seeing. So

1:22:05

he goes running. The monsters

1:22:07

are following him through this

1:22:09

tunnel and they monster wall.

1:22:12

Again, who did? Listen, I

1:22:14

think the Senate this whoever

1:22:17

did the Cenobites did this

1:22:19

place and I want them

1:22:21

for my house. And after

1:22:23

all, you're my

1:22:25

monster wall. And

1:22:27

they're on him, but he wakes

1:22:29

up in the street in

1:22:31

the daytime. Yeah. And

1:22:34

it's you there, boy. What

1:22:36

time is it? You

1:22:38

there, boy. What day is it? It's

1:22:40

mummy's day. The

1:22:43

boy's like, hey, mister, you want

1:22:45

a paper? But he's very

1:22:47

like it's sunny. There's that weird,

1:22:49

you know, there's that there's that weird windmill

1:22:51

in New Hampshire, the only windmill in

1:22:53

New Hampshire. But it feels

1:22:55

he's entered norm normal time. And

1:22:58

he ran into Hayden Christensen

1:23:00

right here on the street. He's

1:23:03

like, you're going to go up to

1:23:05

be Lord Vader. Must I? Yes,

1:23:07

you must. You must. Which way is

1:23:09

the highway? Tis that way The kids

1:23:11

like were you in an accident you

1:23:13

need me to get somebody no no

1:23:15

no I'm good just show me the

1:23:18

highway and then uh Kid just like

1:23:20

rides off. It's like he realizes. Hey,

1:23:22

I'm back in normal town normal world

1:23:24

Yeah, oh even ask it. Hey kid

1:23:26

you ever hear of Hobbs End around

1:23:28

here and the kids like do not

1:23:30

know So he gets to some hotel

1:23:33

Sleeping it off clerk rings him's like

1:23:35

hey, I got a package for you

1:23:37

buddy and it is a Manuscript

1:23:39

of in the mouth of madness

1:23:41

and I love it just says John

1:23:43

Trent on Like on the outside

1:23:46

and he's like beat trying to beat

1:23:48

up this like 20 year old

1:23:50

motel clerk like who's who sent you

1:23:52

Yeah, who set the script and

1:23:54

some guy comes back. He's like I

1:23:56

was here and I didn't see

1:23:58

fucking shit. So fuck off Yeah, and

1:24:00

so John then is like well,

1:24:02

I'm gonna burn this page at a

1:24:04

time inside the bathroom sink Yeah I

1:24:07

correct. And he gets on a

1:24:09

bus, presumably heading back to the city.

1:24:12

There's this talkative woman next to

1:24:14

him. is my favorite. This pound

1:24:16

for pound, this sequence is what

1:24:18

makes this movie great. This three

1:24:20

minutes. And she's like, oh my

1:24:22

God, I lived in New York in the

1:24:24

30s. Oh, the Bowery was terrible. They used

1:24:27

to pile. But like, if you listen to

1:24:29

what she's saying, she's talking about

1:24:31

like bad, like. bad shit. Yeah.

1:24:33

But she's the way she says

1:24:35

it is so like, oh, like

1:24:37

conversational. Yeah, they used to

1:24:39

pile up the bodies and the stench was

1:24:41

horrible. And he's just sort of zoning

1:24:43

out like, oh, Jesus, this old bat won't

1:24:45

stop talking. Well,

1:24:47

suddenly, that

1:24:49

old bat turns into

1:24:52

Sutter Kane, who basically

1:24:54

tells him, quote,

1:24:57

I'm God now. Uh

1:24:59

oh. It's my new dating profile.

1:25:01

I'm God now. That's your tagline? Like,

1:25:04

Jeffrey Craner, I am God now.

1:25:06

And John just starts screaming and then

1:25:08

suddenly all the normal people on

1:25:10

the bus are around him like, dude,

1:25:12

it's just a bad dream, dude.

1:25:14

Just everybody chill. I

1:25:16

also there's this really funny scene where

1:25:18

he goes to like the Hall of

1:25:20

Records and Starts chewing them out that

1:25:22

there's no such town as Hobbs End

1:25:25

and she's like there I have looked

1:25:27

through every fucking thing and there is

1:25:29

no town called Hobbs and he's like

1:25:31

I want to see your supervisor and

1:25:33

he kind of like Pounds on the

1:25:35

dust and then realizes. Oh shit. I'm

1:25:37

being unreasonable. See back in the 90s

1:25:40

People realized when they were being unreasonable

1:25:42

in public and they stopped themselves. Uh

1:25:44

-huh. Rather than having to have someone

1:25:46

film you being unreasonable and then have

1:25:48

the entire internet come after you for

1:25:50

being unreasonable. It was it was a

1:25:52

different time. It was a different time.

1:25:55

I would argue that in the 90s

1:25:57

people didn't always stop themselves for being

1:25:59

unreasonable, having worked retail before. They

1:26:01

did not. Maybe they

1:26:03

found their Jesus Hours

1:26:05

later back at home, but I never

1:26:07

saw it. No, that's true. But back to

1:26:09

the bus. When Kane,

1:26:12

what I love about this is when

1:26:14

Kane is like, yeah, I'm God. You're

1:26:17

part of my story. And

1:26:19

John is like, I'm not part of

1:26:21

any kind of story. He's like, oh, yeah.

1:26:24

Did I ever tell you my favorite color is blue? And

1:26:27

he wakes up. Yes,

1:26:30

this dream. And

1:26:32

it's like. really subtle at

1:26:34

first, but it's the blue hour.

1:26:37

So at that time, before sunset

1:26:39

or after sunset or before

1:26:41

sunrise, when everything is like pitched

1:26:43

really blue and the camera

1:26:45

kind of pans over and every

1:26:47

single person in the bus,

1:26:50

all their exact same clothes except

1:26:52

indigo blue. Yeah. And that's

1:26:54

why he starts screaming. It

1:26:56

was something like that which seeing

1:26:58

this movie in the 90s, which was

1:27:00

kind of a horror was a

1:27:02

not a scalpel. It was a blunt

1:27:05

instrument. You know, like

1:27:07

we were kind of in the

1:27:09

era of like Freddie and Jason

1:27:11

seven or eight. Scream

1:27:14

was really witty, but

1:27:16

not a, you know, like

1:27:19

not exactly like existential. And

1:27:21

this idea of

1:27:23

like changing reality in

1:27:25

a. Really small

1:27:27

but extremely perceptible way just to

1:27:29

prove dominance That's a mind fuck.

1:27:32

It is a true mind fuck.

1:27:34

That's a flex That's where it

1:27:36

becomes absolutely clear because he just

1:27:38

called a shot basically. Oh,

1:27:40

and you realize When you see

1:27:42

the agent I think there's

1:27:44

another character that has like the

1:27:46

bifurcated is that the word

1:27:48

with the goat eyes? Yeah, they

1:27:50

all have blue eyes. Well,

1:27:52

John makes it back to arcane

1:27:54

publishing talks to Harglow again and

1:27:56

Harglow is like, I don't know

1:27:59

anyone here that works here named Linda

1:28:01

Styles. Like, I think that's a character from

1:28:03

one of his novels, basically. And

1:28:05

he's like, at this point,

1:28:07

Trent is giving, I'm

1:28:09

trying to keep my calm, but everything, I'm

1:28:11

not crazy. You're crazy. The world is crazy. And

1:28:14

this is where like Charlton Eston

1:28:16

is kind of worth the monies because

1:28:18

he's like, okay. So

1:28:22

explain it to I'm not going to

1:28:24

be I'm not going to use my

1:28:26

upset you voice. So

1:28:28

I sent you to

1:28:31

go get a book. But

1:28:33

you brought me

1:28:35

that book like

1:28:37

months ago. It's

1:28:40

been in the stores for

1:28:42

seven weeks. And Trent

1:28:44

is like because in the chronology because

1:28:46

we're following our protagonist, it feels. One

1:28:49

leads to another leads to another and no

1:28:51

very little time has passed. He's

1:28:53

like, no, man. It's

1:28:55

on the shelves. People are loving it.

1:28:57

And Trent's like, no, you got to

1:28:59

pull it. He's like, no, we can't

1:29:01

do that. The movie comes out next

1:29:03

week. Yeah. And then there

1:29:05

is we get like a

1:29:08

news montage of like epidemics of

1:29:10

epidemic of violence in the

1:29:12

world happening. And then John is

1:29:14

at a bookstore with a

1:29:16

lineup of people. trying

1:29:18

to buy this book which has

1:29:20

the glossy Stephen King cover that

1:29:22

has a character that looks very

1:29:25

much like him and he sees

1:29:27

one of the avid fans buying

1:29:29

this book and he sees those

1:29:31

eyes those blue eyes giant wide -ass

1:29:33

pupils and John pulls up an

1:29:35

axe and just chops him up

1:29:37

he's like do you like the

1:29:40

book he's like I love the

1:29:42

book he's like well then you

1:29:44

know what comes next And

1:29:49

now we're back in the

1:29:51

asylum full wrap around. And

1:29:53

you can see David Warner's

1:29:55

expression has changed, like which

1:29:57

I love the idea of

1:29:59

doing a like Rashomon, you

1:30:01

know, like a wrap around

1:30:03

story in which somebody like

1:30:05

the stories change people and

1:30:07

stories change your perception of

1:30:09

people. So what has been

1:30:12

presented to him as a

1:30:14

fantastical tale of phantasmagorical proportions.

1:30:17

It's less about what Trent is

1:30:19

saying, and it's more like

1:30:21

the subtlety on Dr. Wren's face

1:30:23

is like, he knows this

1:30:26

is the truth. Yeah.

1:30:28

Because he's whatever is

1:30:30

happening outside, you can

1:30:32

see he's a little shook. Uh

1:30:35

-huh. Like, oh fuck. I

1:30:37

think, again, just how Trent was in the

1:30:39

beginning of like, I'm a hard man of

1:30:41

science and reason, he's like, oh no. Okay,

1:30:43

I think our time is up. I'm

1:30:46

going to get out of here and

1:30:48

Saperstein meets him outside and he's like,

1:30:50

well, did you have anything interesting today?

1:30:52

And Dr. Ren is like, uh, yeah,

1:30:54

no, no, no, nothing to see here.

1:30:56

Everything's, I think it's good. Just kind

1:30:59

of, um, no question. No follow up

1:31:01

questions. That night, John

1:31:03

is disturbed by. Bad

1:31:05

dreams and screaming and a

1:31:07

thunderstorm outside, but then like

1:31:09

shadow shadow puppets on the

1:31:11

walls Yeah tentacles and shit.

1:31:13

Oh, this is a rabbit.

1:31:15

Oh, that's a little chicken.

1:31:17

It's Yeah, there's like visions

1:31:19

of like those same like

1:31:21

hands and axes like shattering

1:31:23

the window to his room

1:31:25

Yeah, and then suddenly it's

1:31:27

quiet. It's still and his

1:31:29

door is open and he

1:31:31

Comes outside the whole hospital

1:31:33

is empty, it looks destroyed,

1:31:36

wanders out through

1:31:38

the dilapidated halls. Front

1:31:41

desk is like covered in blood.

1:31:43

I know it's covered in blood scratches

1:31:45

through metal. And there's a

1:31:47

really like small detail that

1:31:49

I really like, which just shows

1:31:51

like just fucking awesome filmmaking

1:31:53

and that he takes kind of

1:31:55

a towel. That's

1:31:58

sitting on the front desk. Oh

1:32:00

and the the radio is

1:32:02

going saying like they're like, you

1:32:04

know That's gonna continue this

1:32:06

idea of like panic madness in

1:32:08

the streets New York City

1:32:10

is fallen. It's deserted. It goes

1:32:12

down But he takes this

1:32:14

towel and he just kind of

1:32:16

wipes all the the crosses

1:32:18

off his face this idea that

1:32:20

he is now Sub beginning

1:32:22

to submit to the fact that

1:32:24

He's part of the story.

1:32:26

Yeah Like witchcraft and superstition won't

1:32:28

save me. They use what

1:32:30

we consider, you know, the like

1:32:32

the usual tropes of like

1:32:34

quote -unquote crazy religious stuff to

1:32:36