MM43 - Punks & Bad Boys

Let's all go to the lobby,

let's all go to the lobby,

let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat.

Delicious things to eat,

farm and candy meat,

sparkling drinks, such as dandy, the chocolate ice and the candy.

So let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat.

Let's all go to the body

to get ourselves a treat.

Period.

That's like the thing from like working with you and being friends with you that's like most affected my

just daily vocabulary from the way I talk.

Oh my god.

But

I can't really do it.

I can't really do it right.

You know, period.

Period.

Period.

Well, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Well, without any further ado, we're back, folks.

I don't know if you've noticed, but the leaves are beginning to change.

There is perhaps a chill in the air.

Not here in New York City, obviously.

It's still hot as shit and human.

Yeah.

But

it's that time of year when...

The veil that separates this world from the other side becomes more porous and the ghouls begin to seep into our reality and we make contact with the dead and with the other side that's right folks it's spooky season and to commemorate our our favorite time of year it's ghoul v scream set horror movie mindset is back at it again

there's something

there's something i like I felt like a kid again just there for a second when you were like, I got so excited.

I'm like, yes, it's October.

It's Halloween time it's halloween time you know what that means folks it's draculos it's frankenstein it's wolf men wolf walking skeletons yeah it's skeletons it's it's skeleton dancing skeletons walking skeletons

it's it's gonna be a month of non-stop monster mashing the serial killers the serial yeah yeah you know draculas frankenstein wolf men serial killers women

all the things that frighten and horrify us but but this is this is the beauty of this time of year we get to get a little little vicarious thrill, enjoying the things that are so evil and hateful, like skeletons.

There's nothing worse than seeing a skeleton.

Oh my God.

Could you imagine?

It's horrible.

It's horrible.

But the movies, folks, the movies, they're good.

The horror movies, they're good.

And we got...

We got five episodes of Goolvi Scream Set coming at you for this spooky season.

And Hessa and I are kicking off this Halloween season with a great horror movie double feature that I think you're really going to enjoy.

On today's episode, we will be discussing from 1985, Return of the Living Dead, and then from 1988, The Blob, The Blob Remake directed by Chuck Russell, and Return of the Living Dead, directed by Dan O'Bannon, who you might remember from such screenplays as Alien and Life Force.

And

being the guy who was going to do the effects in Yadorovsky's Dune.

Dodge the bullet on that one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love the part from the Jodorowski's Dune documentary where like it's a record, because Daniel Bennett had died by the time they made that, but they had a recording of him talking about meeting Jodorowski for the first time and having him pitch doing the special effects for this gigantic movie that like, by the way, his only film experience to that point.

was making John Carpenter's Dark Star and doing the special effects for that.

It's crazy.

A movie that famously featured a beach ball as an alien.

You know, Jodorowski, like, he's just one of those guys.

Even if you don't like his movies, you kind of gotta like the guy.

Yeah.

And Dan O'Bannon said, like, when they first met, he, like, goes in the hotel room and Jodorowski is like, Daniel Bannon, I have something very special for you.

I have some very special marijuana.

And then he just pulls out like a newspaper, unfolds it, breaks out, like, breaks out some weed, smokes him out.

And then, like, Daniel Bannon said, like it was like the strongest.

It was like, yeah, I guess from the 70s or whatever.

He went through a Stargate, and when he came out of it, he was like working on this movie and dedicated the next like three years of his life to doing the special effects from a movie that never got made.

Scopolamine

in the dark of the night,

something

strange is going on.

You see that movie?

Night of the Living Dead.

Shock nation's body.

Well, say hello.

The dead have risen from the grave.

Mr., there's a hundred of those things out there.

How many did you say?

A hundred?

And now, the question is: how do we get them back into the ground?

Bert,

Frank,

we have a little problem here.

Boyla!

Turn right!

No, hey no, it's difficult!

It's all over everything!

Stupid asshole!

Watch your tongue, boy, if you like this job!

Like this job!

It worked in the movie.

Well, it ain't working now.

Bring the movie live.

It's not a bad question, Bert.

It's not a bad question, Bert.

It's not a bad question, Bert.

The return of the living dead.

You know, I think it's a good place to begin with Return of the Living Dead because one of my favorite quotes from Dan O'Bannon is when he talked about he was like, so he wrote Darkstar and did the special effects for it.

And he said,

and Dark Star was sort of like this like stoner sci-fi comedy.

It was like essentially John Carpenter's student film, but it's still very good.

But it was, you know, it was a bomb at the box office.

It was a flop.

And Dan O'Bannon said he was like, you know, it was his first movie.

He felt kind of hurt by that.

And then he said, well, I guess if I can't make them laugh, I'll make them scream.

And that would go on.

He like took elements from the Darkstar screenplay and turned that into Alien, which became, you know,

one of the

successful movies of all time but i like that like his his first instinct was to make people laugh and that is what i love about return of the living dead i think it is one of the one of my favorite funny horror movies oh my god it is like it's one of the best howard hawks like uh films like sort of like very real bravo like it's got it's kind of like very few locations kind of a hangout movie it's a movie about how to be a punk and how to rebel against it how to like what are the proper ways to be a punk?

Because I see a lot of poser punks out there today.

And listeners, if you don't have a safety pin through your nose and have a name like Suicide, Trash, or Scabies, or even if you don't have Scabies, not even as a name, just as a infestation on your skin, you're not really a punk.

You're not really a punk.

Both of these movies are kind of about how you gotta like fuck authority into the system.

Yeah, The Blob is about how no matter what happens in a a small town, they always blame it on the cool kid who has a leather jacket and drives a motorcycle.

Yeah, and we'll get into it, wears what looks like a Civil War officer's shirt under his leather jacket.

But yeah, so Return of the Living Dead from 1985, written and directed by Dan O'Bannon.

And the movie immediately does one of my favorite things to be done in a movie, which is give you a title card that states, the events portrayed in this film are all true.

The names are real names of real people and real organizations.

I love when a movie that ends with Louisville being nuked tells you that every event in the movie actually happened.

That's all I know, it did.

I don't remember much from 1985.

You know, if you're from Louisville, you tell me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think like, right, like, right off the bat, this movie is so funny.

And like, because it also kind of has to be, because, like, the premise of it and the existential

premises that it brings up and introduces into this universe are so horrifying.

And, like, that they will send you into a spiral if you're not too busy laughing at, like, how goofy everything is that's going on, you know?

Yeah.

And it's got, this movie has some, some great, great gore effects, some great, great horror effects.

It also has one of my favorite horror movie soundtracks of all time.

Oh my god.

So good.

The fucking, the opening theme and the opening credits kick in is such a banger.

It goes so hard.

And

the other thing that's cool about this movie is that

it is kind of an unofficial sequel to Night of the Living Dead.

You know, I know we did Dawn of the Dead on last Goolvi screenset, which was the sequel, of course, to Night of the Living Dead.

But what I like about this movie is that the characters in the movie keep referring to the film Night of the Living Dead as if it was based on something that actually happened.

And that is the inciting incident that kicks off the zombie apocalypse in this movie is that the leftover detritus from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that apparently caused the actual Night of the Living Dead zombie holocaust to happen were basically bottled up by the U.S.

Corps of Army Engineers, lost in the mail, and shipped to a medical warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky.

Yeah, and I really love, like, because I think, didn't Russo, the producer of this and writer, didn't he, he had something to do with

Night of the Living Dead, right?

Wasn't he like one of the producers of it?

I'm not sure.

I wasn't familiar with that, but yeah, but this is sort of like official and unofficial lineage connected to Night of the Living Dead, which, of course, we have already covered on Goolvy Scream Set, Horror Movie Mindset.

Yeah, it's this movie's like companion piece, I guess, is the Romero's

the third piece of his original trilogy, which was Day of the Dead, which came out the same year.

And it's a very different movie from this because it's a lot more serious and

a lot slower,

a lot more focused on social,

you know, again, like in classic Romero fashion, it's more about the humans than the zombies.

Whereas this, it's about hammers and nails.

It's always hand me a hammer and give me the nails.

Any time in a zombie movie where you get a scene where people are frantically barricading doors and hammering nails into boards to cover the windows as arms are breaking through it.

Yeah.

It's just, you're eating good.

You're eating great.

And, you know, like

the humor and comedy and sort of satire of this movie makes for a good pair for like, with, I guess, like the more serious social criticism and satire that Romero does in the, the, you know, the, the real Night of the Living Dead, Down of the Dead, you know, the Night Day trilogy

that he did.

Another, like, a similarity between both of those movies is that the zombies are smarter now than they were in when they started.

Yeah, yeah,

which is maybe like,

you know,

a form of like social critique.

I was thinking maybe you would have like

a cool chopo political thing of like, yeah, you know, it's kind of saying that we, the like, people, are becoming the zombies or something.

I don't know.

Okay, let me stop.

Let me, okay,

I didn't have one prepared, Hussein, but let me put you on the spot.

Let me see if I can do one on the floor on the fly.

Hold on a second.

Okay, cool.

For the people at home, Will just smoked crap.

Oh, bro.

No, like, I remember talking about how in Dawn of the Dead, one of my favorite things is that all of, like, or all the Romero zombie movies, one of the things I like is that all of the zombies are still wearing the uniforms of what job they did during the day, be it Hare Krishna or gas station attendant.

So you just basically continue on into the unending, like not afterlife of living death, identified by what living death you occupied during your current life on the planet.

And in Return of the Living Dead, I think, you know, when you see the generations of dead people come back from the graveyard, including, you know, Confederate generals or whatever,

and the fact that the zombies in this movie are sort of sardonic and can talk.

They can say basic phrases like brains, more brains.

And

they need brains to get over the pain of being dead.

And I think ultimately

it's a more optimistic movie because it does posit that being alive is better than being dead.

Even though

in this movie also working a shitty job is still just a fact of life.

But it is still better than being dead, which is why this movie is a comedy and not a tragedy.

There you go.

That is Will Medeker, Chapo Shrapa, stoned movie analysis.

Period.

I think also, though, this movie is like, in ways, like

a thousand times more existentially terrifying because it kind of reveals that these zombies, once you become a zombie, one, you cannot die ever.

Two, you feel everything.

You feel yourself rotting.

Three, you're entirely conscious during that.

And four, like, there's

like,

yeah, that's, I mean, that's enough for me, I think.

Like, well, yeah, you're right.

You're right.

In the Romero zombie, and like, at one point in the movie, they're like,

what do we do with this zombie?

And they're like, well, what do they do in the movie?

In that movie, they said, you have to destroy the brain.

And then there's a scene where they pickaxe

the head of the cadaver into the floor, and it just keeps screaming.

And they're like, what the fuck do we do?

it didn't work right

i thought you said if we destroyed the brain it died it worked in the movie but it ain't working now

in the romero zombie movies yeah if you just blow their heads off they go back to being dead yeah in this it's like you could cut them into a million pieces and like your pinky finger is still twitching you've like every part of your body still feels pain even if your brain is destroyed.

So yeah, you're right.

That is far more existentially horrifying than just shambling around, moaning as some sort of walking cadaver waiting to get domed by

one of Romero's heroes or villains.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And

this movie also features a very wonderful, colorful cast of characters that

I have a kind of taxonomy of them, if I can.

Please, please.

Okay, so there's Chuck, who is a Rick Astley,

who is basically Rick Astley.

He wears a checkered suit.

He has goofy hair,

and he's kind of a nerd.

He has red suspenders, too.

Then there is Casey, who is kind of like the Cindy Lauper type character.

And then we have Spider, who's kind of like a twink Rick James.

He's got the curls.

He played by Miguel Nunez, who was Joanna Man, the famous movie about a man who pretends to be a woman to play in the UNBA.

Yes, yes.

And he's fantastic in this.

He's really good in this.

There's Scuzz, who is kind of like Johnny Rotten.

There's Trash, who is kind of like the Annie Lennox-type figure.

Yeah, because he has short hair.

Yeah.

There's Suicide, who is an adult that they're all friends with and explains.

The alpha punk.

Yeah, who is his car?

Who is Gigi Allen?

And then there is Tina, who is Mick Jagger in the Dancing in the Street Street music video, judging by your clothes.

But let us not also forget Bert, the head of UNITA Medical Supply Company.

And that is really where this movie begins.

We get another

date and time card, July 3rd, 1984, 5.30 p.m.

Eastern Daylight Time.

And we see

people

beginning their shift.

at a basically a medical device warehouse.

And there's Bert, played by Clue Gullager.

You might remember him from, like, he was in a lot of Westerns.

He was in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, but he's a great character actor.

Oh, yeah.

He kills it in this.

Yeah.

And then Frank, played by James Caron, and then Freddy, the young punk kid who's friends with all the punks.

Like, he's starting his first shift on

the evening shift at the medical supply warehouse.

Yeah.

I think like besides Linnea Quigley as trash, maybe

like Frank is my MVP for this movie.

He really reminds me of like Pa Sawyer from Texas Chainsaw 2.

Yeah.

And so it's 4th of July weekend.

You know, Bert is going home.

He's turning over the warehouse to Frank and the new kid.

And he's like, I hope nothing bad happens.

Well, I'll see you Sunday at the barbecue.

And, you know,

he begins to show him the ropes about like what they do.

And, you know, I appreciated this because I used to to work in a warehouse.

And I found this movie to be a very accurate depiction of what that job entails.

Yeah.

Just like grunt work, you know, mindless kind of.

Yeah, filling boxes.

In this case, they're filling.

They need female skeletons with perfect teeth to sell to

ship to like medical schools.

And apparently, all this, according to Frank, all the skeletons come from India, thanks to, quote, an international treaty, which I think is very funny.

And he says, I think they got skeleton farms over there there because they all have perfect teeth.

How many people you know die with a perfect set of chompers?

And then

a great piece of sort of medical ephemera that will come into play quite soon in the movie.

They have split dogs for veterinarians, veterinary schools, which is sort of like, I don't know, like

a dog perfectly split down the center of it.

Yeah, like the horse in the cell.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

But like the artist who puts like sharks and tanks and all that stuff.

Oh, what's his name?

Damien Hurst.

Damien Hurst.

That's who I'm thinking of.

Damien Hearst.

So Frank, sort of the older guy, is showing the Young Gun around the medical supply warehouse, including they have a walk-in freezer where they keep fresh cadavers to also sell to medicals, both to medical schools and the U.S.

Army for ballistic tests,

which is

a real thing.

It's crazy.

It's so crazy.

But as like during the course of this,

Fred asks Frank, what's the craziest thing you ever seen in here?

And Frank does not disappoint with his answer.

He basically tells him, have you ever seen the movie Night of the Living Dead?

Well, that's real.

And we have it in the basement in a big tank, in a bunch of big tanks.

Well, yeah, basically he said the movie was based on an incident that happened at a VA hospital in Pittsburgh in 1969.

There was a medical spill that made dead bodies come to life.

And like, I like the detail he says that the chemical that caused the disaster was invented to be sprayed on marijuana crops.

Yes, yes.

And he said, the guy who directed that movie, you know, he changed all the facts around to avoid getting sued.

And the U.S.

Army shipped.

the contaminated dirt and dead bodies and they shipped it out and they kept it secret and frank knows that because they shipped the bodies to this very medical supply warehouse and they are down in the basement.

Yeah.

And then, of course, because this is a horror movie and everyone's an idiot, Frank is like, let's go check them out.

You want to go see them?

And,

you know, when lo and behold, they have these like sort of barrels or tanks or cylinders down in the basement.

And they say, property of the army.

In case of emergency, call.

And then it has a nice 1-800 number, which will come into play later

very later in the movie.

Yeah.

But so oh, also, um, also, I just uh checked it, and the the guy who wrote this movie and like produced it was um the writer of Night of the Living Dead with George Romero, and they both agreed to do separate sequels in their own directions.

And uh, John Russo said, like, they agreed that he would retain the knight of the living Night of the Living Dead like name structure, and uh

that george romero would just keep like blank of the dead which is pretty cool yeah

um

so like uh frank opens up like the top of one of the one of the barrels like wipes off like some some you know grease off the top of it and like in the in the fucking barrel you see like a mummified body pretty creepy and then of course uh

Freddie, the young punk, is like,

do any of these barrels leak?

And Frank goes, leak?

Hell no.

These things are made by the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers.

And then he hits the side of it, it bursts open, showering them with chemical gas.

Yeah.

Opening credits hit, and that slamming, opening, like main title theme of Return of the Living Dead is so fucking fire.

Oh my God.

It's like a justice song.

It's like crazy.

Yeah, like, yeah, so good.

So

the chemical gas from Light of the Living Dead from Pittsburgh leaks into the warehouse, like it goes into the ventilation system, and the cadaver in the freezer comes to life and starts jerking around.

But it's like it's being held by its head on, like, these big, like, tongs, like, hanging from the ceiling, and the body just starts jerking around and screaming.

Yeah, yeah.

And the, like, they are freaking out because this is happening, and they're like, what do we do?

Should we call the police?

And he's like, hell no, I don't want to get fired.

No, no, he says something so funny.

Let me find the quote.

um

listen I don't guess we better tell Bert about this it makes us look stupid or something

they're like let's deal with it ourselves let's not worry too much about it

eventually they do elect to call Bert over the phone number that is on the barrels or the police which obviously they should have called.

They should have just called the phone number on the barrels as soon as they got them.

It's kind of funny that they didn't.

They're just such idiots.

But yeah, so Bert and Freddie are like passed out in the basement after getting a face full of zombie gas.

And then we cut to an American flag and like another date and time like card location where it says 4 p.m.

Pacific time.

And we see a sort of like an army officer come home to his like very nice house overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

And then is immediately like, he has his like very classic like 1950s style husband and wife arrangement where he comes home and his wife is like in a nightgown and has like perfectly set out dinner.

And she's like, oh, honey, I'm so glad you're home from work.

I made your favorite lamb chops.

And he's just miserable.

And he's like, yeah, I had lamb for lunch.

And then just like walks into his study to like slug scotch and check in with the U.S.

Army zombie command.

So you find out that this officer has been charged to be like, he says, oh, honey, you know, they have to be able to reach me 24 hours a day wherever I am.

And this is the Army officer who's like in charge of tracking down and find, like, is responsible responsible for the missing barrels that are in the basement of this Louisville medical supply warehouse.

Yeah, and the plan for tracking them down is just waiting for someone to call a number, apparently.

I also love that when the wife, when he tells the wife, I had lamb chops for dinner, there's an airplane-style zoom in on her face, and it might as well have like a voiceover.

Like, that's strange.

The colonel never has lamb chops for lunch when he's home.

But yeah,

he's very mean to his wife.

And like, you know, we don't see this Army Colonel again until the very end of the movie.

And I really like the long setup on the gag that's perpetrated at the end of this movie.

Yeah.

But then it cuts back to it's,

you know, it's 7 p.m.

on the West Coast, but like,

it's 7 p.m.

out here on the East Coast in Louisville.

And Freddy's friends, the punk gang that you've already ably given a taxonomy of, they're out driving around and they're going to pick up Freddy from work.

And they're unlike, what do punks want want to do?

They want to party.

Yeah.

They want to party.

You know, they got their leather jackets, they got their spikes, they got, you know, safety colored hairs.

Yeah.

They got crazy hair and mohawks.

And then they're like, well, where are we going to, where are we going to party?

Like, Freddy always knows where some were to go to party.

And then they're, of course, let's go to the cemetery.

And then one of them says, I just want to go look around a graveyard.

I've never seen one before.

Yeah, I wrote that down too.

Like, what kind of life did this person live that he's never seen a graveyard before in his life?

I mean, that's crazy.

I love seeing graveyards.

Every new place I go, I go to check out the graveyard.

See how old all the dead people are.

Oh, yeah.

And

it's so cool.

Like,

they're chilling in the graveyard.

Linnea Quigley is so hot with her Annie Lennox style hair.

And she is wearing clothes for about

10 seconds in this movie?

10 seconds of screen time before she decides I'm gonna take she gets she says do you ever fantasize

about being killed

never

do you ever wonder about all the different ways of dying

you know violently

and wonder like

what would be the most horrible way to die

try not to think about dying too much

well for me

the worst way

would be for a bunch of old men

to get around me

and start fighting and eating me alive.

I see.

And there's like a pause, and Spider, who is sitting next to her, just goes, I see.

Which I thought was a really great line.

And then she immediately takes off her clothes and starts dancing around.

And does her like the dance of the dead on top of like a a big grave.

And she starts doing her punk sex dance.

And she's like, look, they just want to party.

Okay.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, Frank and Freddie wake up in the basement after being exposed to zombie fumes.

And the body that they saw in the barrel is missing.

They go back upstairs.

They're a bit dazed.

And they hear a dog barking.

And they're like, what the hell is that?

And then they go over to find the perfectly split into dog carcass for veterinary purposes.

Both halves of it are barking yeah

which is a great a really funny and like grisly little uh twist here but i love when they like they like he's like oh what the hell is this like frank is like what the hell is this and he starts hitting it with a crutch and you can hear the dog whimpering like

And like, this is where the dialogue really becomes kind of like his girl Friday between them.

It's really the closest thing I can think of.

It's like,

it's so like, or like the thing from another world, more like.

Right, right.

Yeah, where it's like overlapping, just the end of each line is overlapping.

There's a great part where he's, uh, where Frank tells Fred, like, um, watch your tongue, boy, if you like this job.

And Fred's like, like this job.

I like the scene where, like, um, Freddie is just like, what do we do?

Like, why don't we call the cops?

And then Frank is like, we can't call the cops.

Think of my reputation.

And it's like, what reputation?

You know, like, fucking warehouse jerk like just yeah

you're working the evening ship and i'm loading skeletons into a box to ship to medical schools yeah but uh one of my favorite gags is that when the cadaver wakes up and like he's just screaming from the freezer yeah

And really, it's horrifying.

Like the scream coming out and just banging on the door.

It's like, whoa, this is really.

And

one of them says, like,

what's happening to him in there?

And he's like, sounds like he's sore.

It's so funny.

So, like, uh, Frank and Freddie, uh, they know they can't call the cops, but they do have to call their boss.

So, they get, they get Burt back to the warehouse, and he shows up, and he's pissed, right?

This is like his weekend is ruined.

Going to the Fourth of July, he has to deal with these, these numbskulls, his stupid employees who have basically breached containment on the zombie gas that they've just been keeping in their basement for the last 10 or 20 years.

Yeah.

And so they're like, well, what do we do?

We can't call the cops because, like, I could lose my business.

Hell, I could go to jail.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He also mentions the name of the chemical company who made the containers, and it's the Darrow Chemical Company.

And I don't think it's any coincidence that with a southern accent, when you say, Darrow Chemical Company, it sounds kind of like you're saying Dow Chemical Company.

Good point.

Good point.

I didn't realize that.

So, like,

they get the idea that they need to destroy the evidence and just keep their mouth shut.

And they keep referencing Night of the Living Dead.

And I love the scene where they're like, okay, they're like, he's like,

are you sure that there's a cadaver that's like come back to life in the freezer?

And they're like, well, I guess we've got to open the door and check it out.

I love it.

They open the door, and immediately,

a naked man who is entirely yellow runs out and attacks Bert.

Yeah, it's screaming brains.

And I love, like, even before that happens, there's a great comedic beat where

the, like, Fred asks Frank, like, what do doctors use to crack skulls with?

Surgical drills.

And as he's saying that, Bert is walking in with a pickaxe, hands it to Frank and says, here, hold this.

And to be clear, the cadaver has been turned yellow because like the gas itself that was released from the barrels is yellow.

So it's like stained the skin of this cadaver.

And it's like, it's like, imagine opening a door and having naked Homer Simpson run at you and attack you screaming, brains.

See, I was thinking of the guy who gets his dick cut off in Sin City.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Nick Stahl character.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And like I said, they're like, okay, we have to destroy the brain because we saw it in the George Romero movie.

And Bert pickaxes

the cadaver's head

to the floor, just runs a pickaxe through it.

And it was like, one of my favorite comedic beats in the movie, they're like, all right,

this should stop it, right?

They put a pickaxe through the skull and like stake it into the ground, and the guy just keeps screaming.

It didn't work.

It's such a funny beat.

Yeah.

And then they go to plan B where they saw off the head.

And then the body immediately gets up because only the head is like staked to the ground.

And it starts running around, wreaking havoc.

They tie the body down and they're like, okay, this is, that didn't work.

Then they decide Bert has a great idea.

Who is Bert's best friend historically in the world?

Bert and Ernie, of course, we all know the dynamic duo.

So Bert, of course, thinks of his good friend, Ernie Kaltenberger, the mortician who lives 100 feet away from the

Yeah, like he lives next to the graveyard and runs a mortuary and crematorium across the street.

And they're like, okay, we got to get rid of the evidence.

But like

they've hacked up the body into like

dozens of different parts, and they put it in garbage bags that are all still moving around.

And they're like, we'll use the crematorium.

We'll just, we'll burn the body entirely, and then we'll be off the hook, right?

Yeah.

So

let's talk about Ernie the Mortician.

Yeah,

there's something going on with him.

I remember reading that in the first version of this screenplay.

It was made more abundantly clear than just this movie does that Ernie is a Nazi war criminal hiding in America America.

Because for whatever, in the movie, what we see, Ernie the mortician is, shall we say, Nazi-coated.

And by that, I mean when we first, his character is first introduced, he's like filling a body with embalming fluid.

He's like, yeah, working late and listening to German opera on his Walkman, smoking a huge pipe like Hans Landa.

And then later, it turns out that he's doing all this while he has a loaded Luger, like side pistol, just on his side.

Yeah.

Just in a holster.

He has a picture of Eva Braun in his morgue.

I didn't notice that.

There's also a caricature of Hitler next to the door, which is funny.

But yeah, he's like, it's this.

He's like a chill Nazi.

They kept all the elements of him being a Nazi, but they made him more...

relaxed.

And he's like, I guess like, if I were to describe him, I would say he's like Nazi Rodney Dangerfield because he looks a lot like Rodney Dangerfield.

He's not as funny as Rodney Dangerfield.

He's more serious, but he is a chill guy, you know?

He's like, oh, the right can't get no respect.

Meanwhile, over in the graveyard, it's now 9.16 p.m.

Eastern Daylight Time.

And Trash, the punk chick, is still naked in the graveyard.

I really, I think we need to return to tradition, return to a strong tradition of movies from the 1980s.

Extended sequences of just gratuitous nudity.

Absolutely.

There's no reason for it to be in the movie.

It doesn't advance the plot.

It's just, here's a naked woman.

Yeah.

This is the price of it.

This is what you paid for.

This is what you paid to see.

Every movie, if you saw an action movie or a horror movie in the 80s, it was like, it was a handshake that that purchase of a ticket would guarantee that you would see at least one set of boobs.

This movie does not disappoint because they stick around.

Yeah.

And you see,

well, there's like some kind of flesh-colored cover over it, so it's kind of mannequin-like, but you do see pussy in this, too.

You see a mannequin pussy, yeah, she's supposed to be bottomless, but she's clearly wearing some sort of flesh-colored uh underwear uh, to not go full nudity, but like it is full nudity-coated, yeah.

You know, you see full cheeks, you see full boob, it's it's everything but the but the hole, if you will.

Uh, uh, so like then they begin to

try to enlist Ernie in their plan to dispose of the reanimated cadaver.

And I love their explanation to him when they show, like they wheel in this like cart with

several garbage bags that are all moving.

And they're like, oh, Ernie, you see, we got some rabid weasels

in the mail.

And we'd like to use your crematorium to burn them.

And he's like, burn them?

Like, that's so cruel.

And then he takes out his luger and says, at least let me take them out to the parking lot and put them out of their misery.

And they're like, Bert's like, okay, well, we got to just, we got to tell him what

actually is going on.

I don't think that's going to work.

We got to be honest with you.

If they just let them put the plastic, the garbage bags in the cream in the oven, you know, with no questions asked, they maybe wouldn't have had to give him the whole story.

And they hip him to the case of the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineer zombie dirt and body barrels that have breached containment.

And Ernie reluctantly agrees to let them use the crematorium to incinerate the twitching remains of Homer Simpson.

Folks, this is just about the worst thing they could have done.

Yeah,

this is exactly what we didn't want to happen.

And listener, if you ever find yourself in a scenario like this, and I pray to God you never do.

But please try to remember, it seems like a good idea, but incinerating the chemically infected cadaver will merely turn the chemical into smoke, which then travels through the chimney of the crematorium, into the atmosphere, right into a rainstorm that then blankets the entire surrounding area, including the graveyard, with zombie chemicals.

Yes.

And

speaking of

did the, like, speaking of British television with the brass eye reference, I really think that the,

like, when it says 9.16 p.m.

Eastern Standard Time on the screen, I really think they're copying threads, which does the exact same thing,

even in the same font as it's going on.

Yeah, um, a considerably less funny movie than Return of the Spirit.

Yes, yes, yes, a little bit, a little bit more

heavier than this.

Yes,

um, but it does contain this does also contain a nuclear explosion, spoiler alert.

Yeah,

so the smoke from the crematorium billows out into the clouds, it rains on the graveyard, and then like, of course, Bert is like, we're home free.

But he's saying this while Frank and Freddie begin to look worse and worse and worse.

Just keep in mind, like,

they were sweating more.

Like, like, now their skin has gone like a total, like, completely white.

They've got like, they're under their eyes are like deeply purple and red.

They look like shit.

Yeah.

They're throwing up and they're like, we're home free.

And then they, and then they have to deal with with Frank and Freddie.

They don't know what's going on with them, so

they have to call the paramedics.

They call an ambulance to take Frank and Freddie to a hospital.

The punks are still in the graveyard.

Like I said, the ground of the cemetery has been saturated with the rain that's been infused with the zombie chemicals.

And the bodies start coming out of the graves.

They start crawling out of the ground.

Before that even happens, the kids, they try to run for cover in their car, which they're like, roll up the windows, and Suicide, whose car it is, is like the Gigi Allen type is like, I can't, I busted them all down, I busted them all.

Being angry.

Yeah, and poor Linnea Quigley is fully nude.

Like literally fully nude.

Yeah, and she's like, it burns.

The rain burns.

And

so like...

Freddy's girlfriend, who's like, how did you describe Freddy's girlfriend in the punk taxonomy?

Well, I jokingly referred to her as Mick Jagger in the Dancing in the Street music video, but she's more like Molly Ringwald or like, you know, Brooke Shields type.

She's sort of the odd one out in the group of punks.

She's a bit of a preppy.

She goes over to the medical, the warehouse to look for Freddy because

he was supposed to meet them after work.

And of course, she goes down into the basement to look for him and finds the iconic horror character of this movie.

Oh, my God.

Referred to as Tower Man.

And now this is the body that was in the barrel that

kicked everything off.

Yeah.

And it basically is just like,

how would you describe it, Hesse?

Like a big grinning skeleton with big ass eyes that's like covered in tar.

Yeah, that moves like a dark crystal character.

Like it moves like a Jim Henson like scary from a scary Jim Henson movie kind of is how it moves.

And it is so fucking cool.

It's so fucking cool.

Yeah.

And

by Tarman, some of you might be picturing George Miller and the character he portrays in the video game Death Stranding 2.

But we are not talking about that Tarman.

We are talking about a totally different Tarman.

So get that out of your mind.

Tarman corners Molly Ringwald in this closet.

But the punks looking for shelter get in there just in time for Suicide to go down there.

Get the

zombie says in a great comedic line, the zombie goes, brains, and then eats suicide's brains as they watch helplessly.

And they're like, what the fuck?

And then it stops, gets up, looks around for a beat, and says, more brains and charges at them.

They barely escape, lock it into the basement.

This is when all hell really starts to break loose because Fred and Frank are getting

like

disastrously ill at this point.

Yeah.

They are not going to make it.

Yeah.

The paramedics, the paramedics arrive and they're like, they check their, yeah, they check their vitals and they're like, um,

well, uh,

obviously, you know, you're sitting here talking to us, but at the same time, you have zero blood pressure, no pulse, and both of your body's temperature is 70 degrees.

Yeah.

Which other than the fact that you're sitting here talking is, for all intents and purposes, medically dead.

Yeah, yeah.

And

at this point, the kids in fear have fled the warehouse and they are in the cemetery.

And this is when we get the amazing needle drop where the skeleton rises from the grave and opens its eyes and you just hear, do you want a party?

Yes.

As the zombies flood in hundreds of them from different

yes, it's so cool.

All the bodies come out of the ground you know and like yes and and like indeed they they start their zombie parties and then beginning with trash who gets her sort of sex and death wish fulfilled as she is eaten by a group of old men on the ground covered in mud yeah yeah and it is uh you know which i was very disappointed about because she's she's so beautiful you know beautiful girls as columbo said in the uh in one episode it's so it's even sadder when when a beautiful girl dies you know

but

if only Columbo knew that sometimes beautiful punk rock girls they die and sometimes they come back oh they party they party and they punk rock even harder after they're dead oh absolutely and we will get to that and um i i really love um the paramedics go outside they the the recurring the recurring gag yeah yeah just like more and more city workers from like two ambulances and then like a squad car and then like 50 squad cars keep getting sent to the graveyard to like, you know, hey, like, someone check on that missing ambulance.

They keep, they keep showing up to the graveyard and getting immediately mobbed by like dozens of zombies, just immediately taken out.

Yeah, I, um, and I love the kids.

Um, so the

like at this point, the uh first two paramedics, they're marked and the zombies are eating them for the time being so they're like and there's a great scene of like just dipping one of the zombies just like dipping into one of the the skull of one of the ambulance one of the paramedics and just scooping out his brains and eating it like like fucking ice cream yeah it's it's gruesome and um then the kids arrive and there's a great line They arrive at the mortuary, except for Rick Astley and Cindy Lauper, who are in the, they are still in the warehouse, but the other kids are in the mortuary.

And the Molly Ringworld character says, quote, they're horrible and they scream, and you've got to do something about it.

I like when they show up, like they're banging on the door of the mortuary, and Ernie comes out with his luger and opens the door.

And he's like, Are you crazy?

Are you on PCB?

Yeah, yeah.

And I also love...

Just in case we forget to mention it,

when, like, right next to the barrel in the basement of the warehouse, there's um a crumpled nixon agnew poster right next to oh wow i didn't even notice that

yes um which like

pretty much obligatory for all 80s movies to do something like that this is where the we get the the montage of them boarding everything up the first issuance of the oft issued line grab me a hammer and nails quick

yeah as the mortuary is now under siege from the graveyard ghoul gang yeah.

And um, my maybe my favorite line of the movie or second favorite happens here where it cuts back to the zombies outside feasting on these paramedics.

And you hear from inside the ambulance, uh, this is dispatch.

Uh, do can we get a six on your situation?

And one of the zombies gets up, walks it over to the ambulance, answers the line, and goes, I'm in discussion,

send

more

paramedics.

And then another ambulance shows up and gets mobbed by zombies immediately.

Yeah, in a very, very funny, it's made so funny because they're watching from out the window and you just see from a distance these two guys coming out and they're like, watch out.

And then a thousand zombies flood in and just fucking kill them instantly.

It's so, it's so cool.

Like in the midst of their

barricading the doors and windows, like, you know, all these arms are busting in like through the through the boards.

They're frantically trying to nail.

And the sort of Sid Vicious style punk gets sort of pulled through the window,

gets his brain eaten, and his like body pulled through into the zombie apocalypse.

And by the end, but like as they, as they pull him back into the building, like the old lady zombie corpse, I call her old blue eyes, is still attached to him.

It's like half a corpse.

It's just a torso, arms, and this like desiccated head and face.

But these striking blue eyes

have still not out of for some reason the eyes have not rotted out of this corpse, and they're still quite beautiful and striking.

Yeah, it seems to be a theme in this movie that the eyes are, you know, they're gonna need those eyes to find brains to eat.

And

they strap this half corpse down.

It also is moving like a Jim Henson creation.

And

the zombie, they interrogate this zombie.

Or this one half of a zombie.

The zombie informs them,

I can feel everything.

I can feel my body rotting.

Brains are the only thing that

alleviates the pain.

Like, when you're dead, you can feel everything, and there's no end to it.

And it's just eternal pain as you feel your body rotting away.

And it's like, okay, now that's- Now, Hasi, do you interpret that to be that, like, when you die, you feel everything?

Or is this only once you are reanimated by the zombie gas?

See, that is one of the big kind of existential questions posed by this movies, uh, by this movie.

and i think i think it's the gas honestly because it's just too horrible to imagine anything other than that yeah

it's crazy yeah just lying in a box feeling every molecule in your body decay and just being like god this is boring and painful Yeah, yeah.

And I love another great detail that I love is that as this woman is talking, her spine is like flopping around like a fish's tail and spinal fluid starts coming out of the edge.

Oh, yeah.

There are so many great details like that in this movie.

Yeah, like in when the gas first gets released and you see all these butterflies pinned to a board flapping their wings

in the warehouse.

Basically,

call it, call this Nightmare on Elm Street 6 because Freddy's dead.

He's gone.

Okay.

You know, they're like,

we got to lock Freddy and Frank in the chapel so that they don't, you know, eat us.

And the Molly Ringwell Wald type character whose name I should probably just be saying, honestly, Tina, Tina keeps, is like, I'm going to stay here with him because I'm stupid.

And

then, yeah, he's like, he's like, it hurts, it hurts, Tina.

And then like at some point, he transitions over, he crosses over and go and goes full brains mode.

And he attacks his girlfriend in the chapel.

And they're like, what do we do?

And Ernie comes up with the genius idea of, they're like, well, acid can dissolve everything.

And he just just has one jar of acid and then he throws it in Ernie's face and that's it.

Yeah.

Like, again, like, I love the comedy of just, he just throws acid in this guy's face.

And there's like, just like, you see all the smoke rising off his face.

And it's, ah, ah, then he just keeps running around, but like, is angry.

And then for the rest of the movie, like, his eyes are like fucking, like, melted out of his skull.

Yeah.

Like, there's just two, like, large red lumps where his eyes used to be.

It's very grisly, but also quite funny.

Because the acid effectively does nothing.

It just makes the zombie, it makes Freddy the zombie even more hyped up.

Yeah, and then we get a very,

then this is when trash rises and makes her grand return.

And we see a homeless guy pushing a card around.

And in one of these movies, if you see a homeless guy pushing a card around, he's done.

Okay.

This happens in the blob, too.

Yes, every town.

Every town has a local tramp, a local hobo, a local sort of can man, and they're always one of the first to go.

Absolutely.

They're always they're done for.

And

people,

I really think people must have been so afraid of Annie Lennox for some reason in the 80s, because between this and Ghostbusters,

the prevalence of like a sexy, hard-bodied,

like basically naked woman with short red hair.

is it's it's too it happens i think there must be more examples but even two is a lot of something like that happening.

Certainly made an impression on me.

Oh, absolutely.

No more.

I love you.

I love any lyrics, by the way.

Oh, yeah, me too.

Absolutely.

And there's a great, another great comedic beat where it cuts to Cindy Lauper and Rick Astley in the

aka Chuck in the

warehouse.

And they're like, you know, barricaded.

They're scared.

And

Chuck clearly has a thing for for her, and she says to him, Chuck, I never did like you, but please hold me.

Like, I just love like the inversion of what that beat would be in any other movie of like Chuck.

Yeah,

it's like, I still don't like you at all, it's never gonna happen for you, but I need someone to hold me right now.

She maintains her punk bona fides until the very end.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

Because loving someone, that's not punk rock.

Hating someone, that's punk rock.

Yeah, absolutely.

And

then we get like an amazing,

this is my favorite line in the movie when the cops arrive.

And they, of course, they get

brain mobbed immediately.

Yeah, yeah.

One of them says, stop.

Ringing the dinner bell.

Yeah.

Stop or I'll blow your brains out.

As like

60 zombies are rushing toward him.

And then as the zombies are eating the cops, a Confederate soldier kind of gets up from the scrum, goes over to

the squad car, picks up the radio, and says,

And I love that this Confederate soldier knows the word cops and knows how a police radio works.

I'm a bit peckish for brains, you see.

Send the bombies.

So basically, yeah, like it's now all out war in the streets.

The cops set up barricades.

It's all going to shit.

At this point, Bert and Spider, they're like, we need to make a break for the cop car because the cop car is still idling.

Like the keys are in the ignition.

They can run outside.

They can get to the cop car.

They sort of fight their way to the cop car.

They peel out.

Like, they're supposed to go back for Ernie and Tina, but like, there's too many zombies.

So they have to like leave.

And then they immediately like crash into the warehouse just because like there's there's too many zombies.

You can't even make a turn without, you know, running over some zombies.

They're like,

they scramble, they're back in the warehouse.

Uh, Burt knocks Tarman's head off.

Yeah.

Because they need to use the phone.

They need to call the police.

Well, they can't call the police.

They're finally good.

Then they finally figure they're going to call the number on the barrel.

They get to the basement.

And at this point,

Ernie and Tina are like, have, have, like, they've gone into the attic.

Before we get to this, we have to, we would be remiss not mentioning Frank's noble end.

Oh, my God.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Because

Freddie dies a little bit before Frank, and Frank is about to go.

He's about to become a bloodthirsty zombie, and

he does not want that to happen.

So he takes off his wedding ring.

He turns on the crematorium, the machine.

He preheats it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He sets it to broil.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Takes off his wedding ring, puts it on the switch to the oven and climbs in.

Basically.

Climbs in the oven and then like shuts the door behind him.

And then you just hear him go, ah, like as if as he's burnt.

But it has to, like, in such a funny movie, and this is a funny scene.

I just like, there's something about him taking off his wedding ring that I find so touching.

Because like, it's so sad.

Cause like, yeah, this guy's a boob and a dunce, but like.

He's my favorite character.

He's still, he's still, there's still love inside of him.

And Hesse, here's something, here's something great about this scene of Frank crawling in an oven and incinerating himself.

The actor who portrays Frank, James Caron, despite how old he looks in this movie, he died fairly recently.

Oh, wow.

And when he, and when he died, he made it into the Academy Awards in Memoriam Montage.

The scene that they used to commemorate him in the Academy Awards in Memorial Montage was him crawling into the oven in the turf flood of living dead.

That's sick, honestly.

That's awesome.

I'm sure he would have appreciated that.

I mean, it's an iconic moment.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, because I was reading something else, too, that he would come to set on days when he wasn't like, when he wasn't called

just to like encourage the other actors and be like, what a cool thing is great scene.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And by the way, like the reason Ernie Kant

couldn't run out to the cop car with everyone else is because he broke his foot in the funniest way possible.

Where they were just moving a bench to barricade a door, and they just moved it over his foot.

He was like, oh, guess that's it for me.

So him and Tina have to go into the crawl space in the attic and hide there.

As Freddy tries to get at them and is like, Tina, like, how could you do this to me?

I just want to eat your brains.

Yeah, there's a great, he goes, Tina, you made me hurt myself again.

This time you made me break my hand completely off, Tina.

But I don't care.

i love you and you have to let me eat your brains

it's so cool it's about getting brain yeah yeah um they call the cops and they're on the phone with the cop and the cop is like what the heck is going and then immediately every single like all 100 cops in louisville uh are mobbed and killed by the zombie mob um

And yeah, this is when they call the number.

And this is the return of the colonel.

Yeah, the army man that we saw at the very beginning of this movie in like a one-off scene that like, you know, you're like, I wonder how this is going to pay off.

So they call the number on the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineer barrels.

And they're like, yes, I see.

All right, we're putting you through now.

And like, Colonel Glover has a like, a sort of like a communication station in his study.

And he like.

Or he like, he gets called in the middle of the night.

And they're like, and you only hear, you only hear from Colonel Glover's side of the conversation.

And he goes, oh, really?

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

And how long ago did this happen?

How many acres is the cemetery?

And you didn't call the number.

Okay, I see.

That's understandable.

Yeah, I love that line.

Where are they now?

And how many acres is this cemetery?

How many?

I see.

I see.

Of course.

All right, I'm going to transfer you back to

the other line.

We'll take care of this right away.

And then he like, he like he hangs up, calls his superiors, and he goes, General, Louisville, Kentucky.

Those missing Easter eggs, it appears the eggs have hatched.

Yeah.

And then, like, the survivors are with like, like, Clue Gullager, Bert, and the other survivors.

They're like, what's going on?

And Bert goes, don't worry.

He says, the army said they have a contingency plan to deal with this.

And then we get the great gag at the end of this movie.

They just nuke Louisville.

Yeah.

Contingency, as they call it.

And like, one of my favorite things is like one of those gigantic cannons that are like mounted on like a railway car.

Yeah, like two rail, two rails, basically, one for each side of this giant car.

And it just like adjusts itself.

And like an enormous cannon.

And they basically fire like

a shell, but that's like a nuclear bomb at Louisville.

And they nuke the city.

Yeah.

I love when they're all in the basement and you just hear

and

like Bert is like, do you guys hear that?

And then,

and it happens right when,

right as Freddy bursts into the crawl space, and it's showing like all the disparate people.

I also love that Ernie is

about to Lenny from Isabel.

He's about to of mice and mice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's got a gun to Tina's head.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like, well, the situation isn't that dire yet.

He's like, already thinking, I'm going to have to put this beautiful girl out of her misery.

It's just like, well, we'll just hold off for a little bit yeah his nazi instincts are kicking in yeah

i one of the great lines at the end is the colonel on the phone with someone else again you can only hear his side of the conversation and he's like yeah that was great um it was pretty damn near close to center of the target

yeah that's uh 20 square city blocks uh 4 000 it seems like uh it's been uh well contained and then he goes uh don't worry the rain will wash everything away tomorrow the president's visiting louisville yeah i understand.

It's going to be tough.

But, like, and then you just see, like, obviously the nuclear bomb is just a bigger version of the crematorium.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just spreads, obviously, the chemicals everywhere now.

And at the end of the movie, you can be, you can rest assured that the rest of America is going down with Louisville.

Yeah, yeah.

It shows this great shot of

the rain clouds coming in, that score, that thumping dope-ass score kicks back in.

And then

as the rain comes down it goes the camera pans down to the ground you see the cemetery and then it goes into the into the ground into the ground water and you can see it keeps going down through all these layers of dirt and then that's the the the conclusory like note of this movie it's it's fantastic but yeah it's just the uh i don't know it's just sort of i i really like the kind of

i love i love any horror movie where there's only a couple locations and i really like that about this movie is it's like it's the warehouse it's the mortuary it's the graveyard and that's pretty much it and it's just like a bunch of people in a pressure cooker awesome punk rock music awesome punk rock party music and then just like

a fair amount of like non-stop mayhem and grisly hilarity Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

We didn't mention every time they say, give me a hammer and nails, but it does happen a lot, trust me.

And

yeah, it's so, there's so many funny lines in this movie um that we didn't even get to like mention like when the second ambulance calls up and spider's like what is that and the ernie's like it's an ambulance

um another one um

the uh wet right before suicide dies um or no right before the rain starts falling suicide is like no one takes me seriously this isn't just a costume you know it's a way of life

it's a lifestyle.

Yeah, and it's so fucking funny.

There's so many fucking, like,

it's literally every line in this movie has

a tinge of like horror and like existential dread and sadness to it, but is also just so, so funny and delivered at breakneck pace.

And I really love Clue Gullagher as Bert.

I think he's so funny.

He's got this like members only jacket he's wearing the whole movie.

And like, I love that in the face of this, like, his primary instinct is like, I don't want to lose my business.

He's like, I can find by the city.

And like, he, like, there's something very like paternalistic about him in the midst of all of the horror.

Like, even at the end, when he's like, don't worry, the army has a contingency plan.

Yeah, yeah.

I, um, I really love also like his relationship with Ernie and how like they're so close.

Like, I love, like, right before he runs out to go to the police car, um, earlier in the movie, Ernie says, you're going to owe me a big favor for this one right before he burns the body.

And

like, as before Bert runs outside, Ernie's like, remember that favor you owe me?

And Bert's like, yep.

And he's like, be careful out there.

And I just love that.

So sweet.

You know, from a Nazi war criminal, no.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's also, in one scene, he's wearing like a like a Wehrmacht

trench coat when he goes out to check on the ambulance.

It's so funny.

But despite all his Nazi regalia, he's wearing a marooned Velour tracksuit and new balanced sneakers.

Yes.

A track suit.

A maroon Velour tracksuit with one leg cut off.

Because the zombie grabs it at one point.

He loses half of the leg of one of his pants.

But it's a good outfit.

It's a good look for him.

Oh, it's so cool.

The costumes in this are amazing.

I also read that Tina's outfit was an an actual, like, was Miguel Nunez's outfit like an outfit that he just had in his closet that he brought.

And yeah, like all the costumes are so sick.

I love like all the different kind of subculture archetypes of like punks and outcasts that are in this.

This movie reminds me of RepoMan in a lot of ways.

It's just punks versus authority, punks versus zombies.

And the fact that the punks themselves are all kind of like just shitheads.

Like they like, they're just like,

Yeah, I mean, like, they suicide, the big tough one, is dies instantly.

Like, literally, because he walks up to the zombie and he's like, What the hell are you?

Reminds me of like Miguel Sandoval's character in Repo Man when he gets shot and dies at the end, and he's like talking to Milio Estevez, and he's like, I blame society.

It's so cool.

Yeah, and I just love this, like the, how this plays fast and loose with reality and with,

you know, like

suspension of disbelief and like all of that kind of stuff.

And it does it so well.

It's like truly

such a watchable movie.

I watched this like three times this week.

Oh, it's in preparation.

It's so much fun.

Yeah, it's just fun from start to finish.

And I cannot emphasize enough when that fucking Return of the Living Dead score hits in this movie, in this scene where the zombies are spreading everywhere, the smoke is coming out through the chimney, and you just hear that thumping fucking like zombie soundtrack.

It's just, oh, it's so good.

Yeah, the like Georgie Roder.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

As like bubba bubba bubba.

Yeah.

It's so fucking sick.

Oh, I just remember Clue Gullagar.

I remember one more movie he's in.

He was in Don Siegel's The Killers opposite Ronald Reagan.

Oh, period.

I know we've discussed it before, but we should do a Killers episode with Don Segel's The Killers.

What's the other big one?

There's one more that's really good.

And it was

the, well, The Other The Killers, which stars Lee Marvin, I think, right?

I think so, yeah.

And

then there's also Andre Turkovsky made a student film of the killers when he was in film school

and the criterion box that has all three of them on there.

So it would be fun to do a little three-way where we compare them, but yeah, but not this month because it is

all horror movies.

It's horror.

It's all horror time.

All right.

Let's take a little break and then we'll be back with the blob.

If it had a mind, you could reason with it.

If it had a body,

you could shoot it.

If it had a heart, you could kill it.

Now, man is no longer the supreme being on this planet.

The organism is growing at a geometric rate.

By all accounts, it's at least a thousand times its original mass.

Nobody believes me about what happened tonight.

What did happen?

You were there, you saw.

Pass me a life form that hunts its prey.

Predator.

I want that organism alive.

I think you ticked it off.

The Blob.

Terror has no shape.

All right, we are back, and now we turn our attention to 1988's The Blob, directed by Chuck Russell.

Now, this is a remake of the original sort of drive-in horror sci-fi classic, The Blob, starring Steve McQueen as a high schooler.

Yes.

I'll never forget the first time I watched that movie when I was a kid.

I had, I was high.

And about 40 minutes into the movie, Steve McQueen goes to try to report the blob at a police station.

And the police officer's like, that's it.

That's it, mister.

I'm calling your dad.

I was like, I was was like I thought he was the dad I was like what the fuck what the fuck because there's no indication that he's in high school up to that point and but from that point on like he goes into a bar at one point and he's like we don't serve minors in here get out of here kid

like come on

um but yeah that is a truly a classic movie and I honestly think the

the acid jar scene um in Return of the Living Dead might have been kind of an homage to that, to a part in the blob where the doctor's like, throw that acid on the blob.

Like,

that'll take care of it.

And it's the kind of acid they use to treat like genital warts.

She just dumps it on it and it doesn't do anything.

And

this is a remake, and it was co-written by Frank Darabont.

who you might remember from The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist

And The Walking Dead.

Oh, yeah, that as well.

The Mist, I like a lot.

That's a very good thing.

Oh, The Mist is awesome.

But

it's like, and Chuck Russell,

you know,

not someone who's usually of movie mindset caliber because his other films include The Mask starring Jim Carrey and

Key Racer starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Look, I mean, like, those are good movies, but, you know,

look, look, you're, not everyone has to be like a god-level auteur to get into movie mindset because this movie is brilliant.

It is so well done.

It is fantastic.

It is scary.

And the blob effects in this movie are so fucking

unbelievable.

There were parts where I was like, I got to rewind that because they really just had a blob.

Like, there's no way they're going to have done this if they didn't.

I'm like, are we sure they didn't have a blob?

This is sort of

Verite filmmaker.

You know, it's like Jean-Luc Godard.

It's like, all you need is a camera, a girl, and a blob.

Just get out there and make your movie.

Who cares about form or convention or anything?

Just get a blob and start filming it.

Watch it run amok and wreak havoc as it absorbs everything in a small town in America.

Yeah, the small town of Dante's Peak, where this takes place.

This sound is very Dante's Peak-esque.

Yeah, yeah.

And And it's like, you know, sort of I, at one point, the, um, the sheriff played by Jeffrey DeMun, who's sort of like a Frank Darabont regular, he says, like, could you get that body to Sacramento?

I want those results by morning.

So I'm assuming that this town is sort of like a Northern California ski town, somewhere in the

Sierra Nevadas or something.

Somewhere in like the California, Oregon, Washington area, kind of.

Yeah.

But

it's a small town that's a ski town.

It's sort of a winter town that relies on skiing and sort of winter sports to keep it going.

But it's sort of a sleepy, quiet town.

And that's how this movie begins.

We see Earth from space, and then we sort of zoom in into this sort of small and strangely empty town.

Like as the opening credits run, it's sort of this eerie scenes of like this town with no people in it.

You know, it's like leaves are blown around the street.

It's just like the streets, everything is empty.

You just see a cat.

And then it's like sort of jarring because like as the credits end, the camera pans over from this like weird, like, negative, this, like, town that's just like negative space.

It's been, like, denuded of people.

And then the camera pans over, and it's just like a high school football game.

And they're like, oh, everyone's, everyone's going out to cheer for their high school.

Because, like, as the movie begins, it like gives you the sense that like the blob has already like taken everyone in the town and killed them.

But then, like, oh, they're like, oh, oh, no, it's just, thank God, it's just a regular American town.

It's Friday night.

Everyone's at the high school football game.

Everyone's been taken by something worse than the blob, which is

football.

Which is fascist.

You know, I'm getting in my life this week.

I've got my Jan Horicks.

Football is fascism.

Fascist.

And

we see like the sort of the captain of the football team.

He's out there.

He's playing.

And the head cheerleader.

The captain of the football team, Paul Taylor, is played by Donovan Leach.

And the

cheerleader is played by Shawnee Smith.

Now, Donovan Leach is like, he's a guy whose face I maybe remember from a couple movies, but none of them spring to mind.

Yeah.

However, in researching this episode, I did find out that he, one thing of note about him, he is the son of the folk pop singer Donovan, responsible for meman and Atlantis.

You know, like that guy, Donovan.

He looks kind of like Donovan now that I think about it.

Shawnee Smith, it was bothering me so much, like the whole movie, because I'm like, she looks so familiar, but I can't.

All the saw movies.

All saw movies.

Yeah, but I don't even.

And by the way, she has not aged at all between this and the Saw movies.

It's crazy.

Yeah, she's in like all she's like, her and Tobin Bell are in like all the saw movies.

Yeah, she like takes takes over for him and becomes Jigsaw.

Yeah, she's like the, she's like Jigsaw's acolyte.

You know, she's the, she was the girl who had like the bear trap

trap, saw trap in in the first one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm a huge.

Oh, and isn't she the girl that gets thrown into the pool, the swimming pool full of dirty needles?

Yes, of course.

She's also in the X-Files episode Firewalker, if anyone remembers that one.

A lot of X-Files regulars in this.

Yeah.

But yeah, there's we at this football game, we hear the first line

when Donovan Leach's skeezy friend on the bench tells him, Come, look at her, man.

Look at at her.

I think she wants your body.

And

if that ain't the blob down to a T,

the blob wants your body.

Yep.

It wants everyone's bodies.

But he's like, hey, when are you going to ask her out, man?

And he's like, I'm waiting till the timing's right.

And then like, oh, like the defense, like, you know, like they get fourth, it's fourth down.

You know, they punt, the offense comes back, and he's like, all right, cool.

Like, they run a play.

And, you know, Donovan

Paul, i'm gonna just call him paul uh you know he he makes a catch and he gets tackled like into the gator into like the gatorade table and he's like slightly concussed and you know uh shawnee smith meg the cheerleader is like standing over him and she's like are you okay and he's like oh

what are you doing tonight and he's like you know he asks her out while suffering a mild concussion it's very it's very cute and and there's like i'll get to the second one but like This is the first example in this movie of like

a nice and small and budding romance that in many movies, in most movies, when you see characters introduced like this, you think this is going to pay off later.

Like this is like,

we're going to get to know these characters and they're going to like get together by the end of the movie.

We'll see how that develops.

So everyone who's like on the on the straight and narrow in this small town, they're at the high school football game.

Yeah.

But not the hero of the movie.

Enter Kevin Dylan.

The beautiful boy, Johnny Drama himself.

Johnny motherfucking drama.

Looking young as shit.

Looking young as hell.

Yeah.

Young and beautiful.

And

beautiful.

And he's got a leather jacket.

He's got like a pirate style button.

A Civil War shirt.

Literally.

Civil War.

Yeah.

He's got jeans.

He's got motorcycle boots.

And yeah, he's got a motorcycle.

You think he's watching football?

No.

He's too busy smoking cigs, drinking beer, wearing a leather jacket, and trying to jump his motorcycle over a collapsed bridge.

That's what cool bad boys are up to on Friday night in small-town America.

Absolutely.

And his hair is unbelievable.

His hair is crazy.

Like, he's a bad boy, but he goes and gets a blowout every morning.

The town.

Since 1988, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

So, like,

he revs up his bike and he's, like I said, he's trying to jump this like collapsed bridge over ravine But like the engine, you know sort of like

you know taps out on him he bungles the jump he like slides it into the ravine like you know barely gets away with his life This is all witnessed by you know the an indelible character in small town America.

We already mentioned it in return of the living dead the local tramp

the local sort of can man why no stumble bum you know

and he has and he has to have a dog with him you know and he's like sort of gives him the thumbs up and you think you think when you see this, you're like, okay, now I know that Kevin Dylan, later in the movie, he's going to have to jump over this bridge for real and make it this time.

And it's going to be a character moment.

And there's going to be some kind of moment with Donovan Leach where he has to do like a football style thing that he has to, you know, complete that arc because he got, you know, wrecked in the opening scene.

So you're like, you know what, movie, I've got your number.

I know how movies go.

So yeah, you know, it's like, it's like, it's already happened in my mind.

I can see it, you know, like,

why even watch the rest of the movie?

And like, and for, and for another example of that, what has to, okay, we've got, we've got the high school football team.

We got the cap, we've got the captain of the football team, we've got the cheerleaders, we've got the whole town cheering them on.

We've got the town bad boy who smokes cigarettes and rides a motorcycle and wears a leather jacket.

You've got the town sort of tramp and his dog.

But it has to like, there are still two more sort of iconic figures that to like sort of bring this Norman Rockwell

vision of small-town America to life, to animate it.

There are two more sort of institutions, figures, roles that need to be filled.

Beginning with, of course, the kindly town sheriff.

Yeah.

Played by Jeffrey DeMun.

Like I said, he is in the mist as well.

He's sort of a Frank Darabont mainstay.

You might remember him as Chuck Rhodes Sr.

from the TV show Billions.

He plays Paul Giamatti's father on that show.

Oh, damn.

And he is wonderful on Billions.

But one more character, the kindly, like the small town sheriff, who's sort of like keeping an eye on the kids, you know, keeping everyone on the straight and narrow, sort of like got the cowboy hat, sort of tipping it, ma'am.

But he's tipping it to the kindly diner waitress.

Every small town needs a diner.

And of course, it needs to be presided over by like a sort of matronly, but still quite attractive, sort of middle-aged woman who's like, everyone's sort of like, everyone, like, if you're of a, if you're a dad, you got kind of got a crush on her.

And if you're a kid, she's sort of like the town mom.

She takes care of everyone.

Norma.

She's nice.

Yeah.

Norma, exactly.

By the way, and then Jack Nance shows up in this movie as the doctor.

It's the same casting director as Twin Peaks.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know,

they're having their little Mi-Cue.

Also, I didn't look this up, but the actress playing the diner waitress, I think she is Vincent D'Anofrio's wife in Men in Black in the opening scene, who's like, Edgar, you're acting weird.

No, no, no.

Fran is played by Candy Clark.

I know the opening in Men in Black, but that is not her.

Okay, okay.

Candy Clark, who is in The Man Who Fell to Earth and American Graffiti.

And Blue Thunder, another movie written by Dan O'Bannon.

I'm going to leave that in just to let our listeners know that it doesn't happen often, but even us movie mindset experts make mistakes.

Folks, when you're right 99% of the time, you're wrong the other 1% of the time.

It's true.

It's true.

I apologize for my co-host.

I've never made an error on this show,

such as 10 minutes ago when I referred to Miguel Sandoval's character in Repo Man, but knowing full well that wasn't Miguel Sandoval, but it was just the name that came to mind.

It was one of the other punks who dies and blames society.

But I love this.

So we get the kindly sheriff, the kindly town sheriff, the diner lady Fran.

And we get this nice moment of like sort of like almost like a Jackie Brown style moment of like two people sort of past middle age in life who are sort of like flirting with each other.

The sheriff sort of gets up his courage and asks her out if she'd like to see some country music with him tonight.

She's like, oh, I don't know.

You know, I'm going to be here all night.

The game gets out.

We're going to be pretty slammed.

But he's like, okay, well, if you get free, just let me know.

And he's like, is that my check?

And she hands him the check.

And on the bottom of the check, she's written, I get off at 11 p.m.

And he smiles to himself.

And it's like

a nice moment.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, you know, it's kind of probably been having a will they, won't they thing going on for a lot of long time.

Both of them are probably married.

Maybe one of their spouses has died tragically.

But now, the point being is they're free now.

They're free to pursue this flirtation to its logical end point.

And then we get the first subversion of this small-town idyllic kind of vision where

the sheriff drives by Kevin Dylan, who's now in town after

he's had to hitchhike back to town.

His bike's

wrecked in the woods.

And the sheriff drives by and goes, hey, Kevin Dylan.

Brian Flag is the character's name.

But he's like,

hey, Flag.

Heard you got a birthday coming up.

No more Jewie for you.

Can't wait to lock you up for good.

And it's like, oh, that's a little crazy to say to such a beautiful boy.

He's like, got a birthday coming up.

You're going to be 18.

You know what that means?

I can finally ask you out on a date.

You're riding on your motorcycle, boy.

And he's like, he's like, yeah, he's like, no more juvie for you.

If you screw, you know, if you get busted this time, you're going to the big leagues, going to the big house.

And like, you know, he's just like, he's hassling them just for being cool.

You know, and that's the kind of, that's the kind of prejudice and sort of small-minded bigotry that plagues small-town America, is that they just don't like people who don't fit in.

People who are cool and wear leather jackets, smoke cigarettes, and ride motorcycles.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And like,

just as a digression, when is there ever going to be a town just for cool people?

Where if you're like a square, they're like, keep on driving, square.

This is a town for people with motorcycles.

Well, that's why they do Burning Man once a year.

Oh, yeah, all the cool people.

Yeah, yeah.

All the coolest people in America.

Go to Burning Man.

Getting my steampunk gear ready to go.

I wish the fucking Bob would go there.

Jesus.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yes.

Oh, my God.

Brace is reporting from the ground.

So he's like, yeah, no more, no more juveniles, no more, no more juvenile juvie for you for being cool.

This time

you're going to real prison for being cool.

Going to the big house.

Yeah.

And then

we see basically the,

I think what happens next is the pharmacy scene, which is a great.

No, no, we know we get, no, before the pharmacy scene, which is a great bit of horror movie comedy,

we see a meteorite lands up in the mountains outside the bum.

And once again, witnessed by the local tramp and his dog.

And he's like, well, you know, like, you know, sort of like rubs his eyes theatrically after drinking like, you know, Mad Dogs 2020, drinking like fortified wine.

And he's just like, yeah, okay, time to go check this out.

So, but, like, so, so that's going on.

And then the football bros, they go to the the drugstore to get condoms.

And you've got like Paul Taylor, Donovan Jr., he's like the good one, and he's going on a date with Meg tonight.

But his skeezy buddy, no, no, his buddy's like, I need to go buy condoms because I'm looking to get lucky tonight or whatever.

And, like, you know, and then runs into the Reverend while buying condoms.

You know, we've all been there.

Classic.

Yeah, yeah, classic premise.

And the Reverend looks like

a famous mad TV character named The Molester, basically.

The Reverend Reverend Meeker is played by the character actor Del Close.

Yeah.

Who is like, you know, sort of a classic weirdo character actor.

He's been in a number of Brian DePalma movies.

Yeah, I, okay.

The Untouchables and the Black Dahlia.

Okay, because I

clocked him instantly and I said, that is the killer that's shown for three seconds at the beginning of blowout in the fake movie.

And my friend was like, I just looked it up.

It's not.

And I'm like, that can't be true.

I still think it's him.

I still fully think it's him because now that, especially now that I know he's in a ton of De Palma films, I'm like, that's got to be him.

But if someone can check on, no, actually, don't.

Don't check on it.

Don't comment about it.

Do not let us know if we're right or wrong about this.

Yeah, I will stand on business.

that he was in the untouchables and the black delia.

Yeah.

So,

and like, you know, this is another downside of living in a small town and not being allowed where no one's allowed to be cool.

When you go to buy condoms, you're buying condoms.

Like the pharmacist who has to sell you the condoms is like the dad of the girl you're going to see.

And the skeezy friend sort of like to get out of the awkwardness of like talking to the reverend while like the guy's like, you want ribbed or regular?

And he's like, ribbed, I guess.

And he's like,

Jason, he's like, I haven't seen you at Sunday services.

You know, have you been too busy?

And then like, he's just like, no, just buying rubbers, but for my friend over there.

And he's like, he points at Donovan Jr.

and is just like, yeah, he's about to, he's going out to deflower some, you know, naive young girl tonight.

And I just, I'm, he's so irresponsible.

Like, I made him get some rubbers or whatever.

So it's like, he blames it all on his

much more virtuous friend.

Yeah.

And then Donovan is like, come on, hurry up.

And the pharmacist, of course, is looking at him with complete disdain.

The pharmacist, who I called in my notes,

Jon Favreau, Richard Kind.

He's played by by Art LaFleur.

Yeah.

He's in Field of Dreams.

He's in the sand lot.

He's just one of those like that guy actors.

He's just in tons of movies.

And then we get,

we're back to the bum, and he's checking out the scene at this meteor crash site.

And we see the

kind of this meteor split down the middle, glowing on the inside, and him and his dog are like, whoa, this is a crazy thing that's going on.

And

he takes a stick and pokes it into the center of the meteor.

And this is where we first catch sight of the blob.

And the blob is

crazy-looking.

At this point, it's sort of like a miniature blob.

It's just like pulsing pink, like sort of ball of goo.

It's like the size of a loaf of bread, basically.

Like a tennis ball.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a mini blob.

But like, it immediately just sort of scoots up the stick and attaches itself to the hand of this hobo.

And it's a great smash cut from like this pink blob of goo consuming the hand of this poor vagrant.

And it's a smash cut to a kid slurping red jello directly off of a plate.

He's

putting his face into the plate and just slurping up a big like sort of cube of jello.

And it's like

it's Meg's younger brother.

and his friend and they're planning on going to the movies tonight.

And now, of course, if you've seen the original The Blob, you will know that the movie theater is like a major,

is like a major set piece of The Blob.

So if you're going to do a Blob remake, you're going to have to have a scene in a movie theater.

Oh, yeah.

So like that, that's foreshadowing of what that's happening.

And I really like

the two younger, the two younger boys talking to like one of the kids' moms.

And they're like, oh, like, we're going to the massacre movie fest tonight, mom.

And she's like, oh, like,

he says of the movie they're going to see, you know, it's your average slice and dice.

A guy with a hockey mask chops up a bunch of teenagers.

But don't worry, mom.

There's no sex in it.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I love it.

It's not the kid talking to his mom.

It's the kid's friend who is completely fucking this up for them.

Yeah, physically like.

He's like, and the mom's like, but they won't let you into a movie like that.

And he's like, don't worry, my brother is the usher.

He'll let us in.

He lets us into R-rated movies all the time.

Yeah.

Like, the one kid is like...

He's trying to keep it cool.

And then the other kid's just spilling everything.

He's like, shut up, shut up, shut up.

And the kid's like, yeah, we're going to see

Garden Tool Massacre is the name of the movie.

And

the, yeah, the,

obviously, this kid

has some trouble at home.

He's bringing this shit up.

But yeah, the mom is like, forbids him from going.

And he's like, okay, fine.

And in my notes here, I wrote down that

this is one of those movies that takes place in...

a kind of 1950s version of the 80s.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah,

because they're.

very...

It's like if the two timelines in Back to the Future existed simultaneously.

Yes, yeah, totally, totally.

And I really love that.

The first indication that, I mean, the cars, there's a lot of stuff that should have been obvious, an obvious tip-off to me, but I'm stupid.

So the first time I noticed it is when a character takes a battery-powered mixer out of his trunk and uses it.

And I'm like, wow, they didn't have those in the 50s.

Oh, this is the 80s.

I'm an idiot.

Well, another example of this sort of 50s, 80s crossover is when Downevan Jr.

shows up to take out Meg on a date.

And she's like, oh, like, come in.

Like, you know, he's very polite.

He's a very polite young man.

And she's like, okay, before we go out, I just want to meet my father.

And they go in the living room.

And like the dad is obscured because like he's got his legs crossed and he's just sitting in his like in the dad chair reading a newspaper.

And like, there's something about like a dad, it's like, it's like eight o'clock at night, like reading a newspaper at night after you get home from work and you got your slippers and you're like sort of house cardigan on that to me is very 1950s coded oh absolutely because tv exists in the 80s why the fuck are you reading a newspaper at night

i mean this this is a this is an old-fashioned kind of uh you know an old-fashioned if not if not impotent dad uh he's well because the newspaper comes down and it reveals that meg's dad is the pharmacist yeah

He was just slandered as like having condoms bought for him so that he can deflower his naive young daughter.

And the dad just looks at him and says, ribbed.

Yeah, I love that.

And then basically, like, the kids are being ushered out.

The kids also get ushered out and the one kid's zipper gets stuck on his jacket, which

the mom makes him wear the jacket because she's like, mom, it's hot out.

You know, it's a, it's a, it's an Indian summer.

It's very hot out it's october but she's like it's october it's fall if you're going out at night you're wearing your jacket so she makes him put on a jacket oh as as always the parents are wrong

authority figures are always wrong yes so then we uh we cut to uh kevin dylan who has gone back up to where his motorcycle is sort of up in the mountains and he's like borrowed a set of ratchets from like his friend who works at the garage who you know fixes stuff for the ski like the the ski resort including their snowmobiles and crucially snow machines.

Yeah.

So he borrows some ratchets from him and he's like fixing his bike that like he like wrecked after failing to do the jump.

And then this is where like, and then he's still like, like, the, like, the bum, like, with the blob on his hand, like, emerges and he's like, ah, and he tries to cut his hand off with a hatchet, but, like, it doesn't work.

Yeah, because Kevin Dylan stops him and is like, whoa, man, what the fuck are you doing?

And as Kevin Dylan then pursues this, uh, this,

you know, why no through the woods and into the road where Donovan hits, I'm just going to call him Donovan.

We will refer to him as Donovan or Donovan Jr.

for the rest of the video.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Donovan

hits the old man with his car, and

he,

like, not super bad.

I mean, the real problem with this old man is that the blob is on his hand.

It's the pink gook slowly consuming his hand.

Yeah.

And, you know, they have a little argument.

It's kind of the,

you know, the clash of a jock and a cool, you know?

Jock and a biker, jock and skater, you know, like they're, they're, they're, this is an art, this is a sort of Jungian archetype that works it throughout, works its way throughout high schools, throughout all of history.

Yeah.

And something that jumped out to me here is that when Donovan Jr.

is next to Kevin Dylan, they're the same height, even though Donovan Jr.

looks

like he would be shorter, and which made me remember society.

And

Brian in that movie is

like also looks very short.

I mean, he is short, but I think something about the outfit of like a Letterman jacket and like blue jeans that are a little too long and a little too wide just makes guys look short.

So that's my costume talk about

this part of the movie.

Well,

Donovan, Meg, and Brian, they all take the wino to the hospital.

And they're like, oh, like, you have to come with, like, you know, they make Brian come with them because they're like, there's going to be a lot of explaining to do.

And, like, you're a part of this.

And he's like, oh, all right.

Like, you know, you're probably going to blame it on me.

So I'm going to come with you so that you don't do that.

So they show up at the hospital and hand off the wino.

to the uh town doctor played by jack nance from twin peaks yes there's a blob in the percolator

Yes, exactly.

And like he's in this movie for like three seconds.

He has like four lines.

He has like two lines.

But you know, if if you're if you're if you're a true head, you'll just be like, Jack Nance, you'll be pointing at the screen.

Absolutely.

And, you know, the Donovan Jr.

goes to check on this wino and notices that he is being,

there's some blob action going on with him.

This guy's, it's no longer just his hand.

Like now he's in, like, he's in, he's like under sheets and it's like things are moving around there.

And like he pulls the sheets back and like half of his body has just been consumed and melted away by the blob.

Yes.

And,

you know, he calls Jack Nance and

they go in and the blob is gone.

The blob is

completely missing and he runs into the office and what does he do?

He makes he tries to call the sheriff.

Yes, he makes a fatal mistake of going to authority for help,

which in this movie is not a good idea.

And it is proven in one of the craziest death scenes I've ever seen.

It's

wild.

And like,

I love this because like, this is where the movie really turns a corner.

And it's just like, you're like, okay, like.

this is some horror.

This is some horrific shit.

Like, this is, this is like, this blob is like next level.

Because I love that the movie, like, the whole first half hour of the movie really sets up Donovan as like the main character.

Yes.

As like the hero.

He's a star of the football team.

He's going on a date tonight.

And it's just like,

in other movies, like this character would be portrayed as something of like maybe a cad or disrespectful to Meg or sort of a jerk, right?

But like everything he does in like the setting, like going on the date or whatever, is that he's just like, his friend is the skeevy, like nasty one we'll get to that but like donovan is like he's just like a nice young man he's good looking he's like well liked in the community and crucially he's like respectful of his date and goes out of his way to help like uh someone in need like the the the the vagrant the homeless guy yeah yeah and

like all for like everything would lead you to believe that this guy is gonna live through the movie But like out of nowhere, he tries to call the sheriff to get help, do the responsible thing.

And it's just like, as he's on the phone, little droplets of acid are hitting the desk.

He notices the second one, looks up, and now there is like a basically like a man-size blob on the ceiling in this office in the hospital.

It just drops on him like a blanket and consumes him right as Meg like walks into the room and like sees his face.

dissolving as his like one arm reaches out from the blob and she tries to pull his body out of the blob, and his arm is pulled off.

And she's looking at his face dissolve into this, like, pink mass of goo.

Yeah, it is like literally, if that happened to anyone on the planet, if they saw that happen, they would be in a psych ward for the rest of their life.

Like, they would be all sanity points gone, yeah, never to return.

But this is this is my favorite little joke in the entire movie, is that why

is Meg blessed with not being killed by the blob?

It's because, you know, this movie is about like subverting the norms and subverting expectations.

And in the first conversation that

Donovan Jr.

and his friend have, they mentioned that Meg has a boyfriend.

And you never see this boyfriend, but he's brought up like twice or three times.

And

right after Donovan Jr.

dies, Meg just moves on to uh Kevin Dylan as kind of the object of affection and the like the reason the way that Meg is kind of uh you know deviant in this like society this like goody two-shoes girl is because she's kind of a hoe she's like just looking for dick wherever she can get it sort of like a classic Paul Verhoeven uh female uh sort of protagonist And she always has to have like two guys.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And like like other movies would judge uh like any female character for having two boyfriends at the same time as being sort of like a harlot or like a fallen evil woman who's like i remember like paul verhoven talking about how sort of shocked he was at how like the audience reaction to denise richards character and starship troopers for like quote unquote betraying casper van dyne where it's just like it's cool like she's just like she's in high school and she's going to college like what are you talking about

and she's obviously, like, smart and ambitious, and he's a fucking dunce.

Like, what do you think is going to happen?

Like, is she supposed to fucking keep a candle burning for him when she

goes to fleet command?

I don't think so.

Yeah.

It's so, it's, like,

truly like, and this movie really doesn't even call attention to it.

You could miss that she has a boyfriend from the beginning because he never shows up in the movie at all at any point.

Yeah, the blob doesn't even get him.

He's just like non-entity.

He's jacking off at home.

He's a gooner.

He's gooning.

Yeah.

Never go to the authorities.

Never go outside.

Stay gooning.

That's

goon on.

Stay calm and goon on.

Just keep going.

You can do it.

Don't give up.

Keep gooning.

Keep blobbing.

Keep blobbing.

Keep gooning.

And I would like to stress again that the blob effects in this movie are so good.

And then just like Paul's screaming face as like with his last conscious thoughts, he tries to reach for this like this girl that he wants to be his girlfriend as his like as he's like his screams are muffled by like pink acid.

And then you see his like face and skull dissolve as she pulls his arm out of like like off his body and out of the pink goo.

Yeah.

Incredible.

And then she passes out from fear.

And

fortunately, the blob has other plans, does not eat her.

And then

we see.

Well, the blob absorbs

all of Donovan.

Yeah.

And then abscond elsewhere.

And then, of course, the sheriff shows up.

And also, we get to meet the sheriff's deputy, who is played by, speaking of Paul McCrane.

Paul McCrane.

He's played by Paul McCrane, who was Emile in RoboCop, another victim of goo and melting.

Yes,

his body has been horribly affected by

illicit substances and multiple, like RoboCop, the X-Files episode, where he.

Oh, I was just going to say the X-Files episode where, like, he can, he's the EMS worker that can't die and like regrows his head.

Yeah.

Great episode.

Um,

so we get, we get a meal from RoboCop, but like, the blob is gone and, like, Taylor is missing.

And, like, like, any small town sheriff's department, who are they going to point the finger at?

The kid with the leather jacket.

Yeah.

I, in my notes at this point, I wrote, Johnny Drama is so beautiful.

He really is.

But meanwhile, as this is going on, we got to check in with Taylor's friend.

You'll remember him from earlier in the movie where he tries to jacket his friend with a reputation of the kind of guy who would buy condoms.

You know, a sick, fucked-up pervert.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

But, but, in fact, it is, it is the friend character who is

the man of low moral character because, uh, listener, how shall I put put this?

This is a movie made in the 1980s.

So, the chances that you are going to get what is essentially date rape portrayed as something other than like horrific is pretty high.

Yeah.

So, like, he's got a girl in his car that he's like slowly trying to get as drunk as possible just to do some light sexual assault to her.

The girl in the car is played by, what's her name?

Erica Alaniak, who was also abused by Steven Seagal on the set of Underground.

Oh, my God.

Oh, no.

no.

Oh no.

But to be fair to this movie, he does get his

well yeah.

I mean the movie like

it's not totally immoral, but like, you know, it's the 80s.

Like, there are so many scenes in 80s movies or 80s comedies or 80s horror movies where like a girl is passed out and a guy's just like, yoink, time to cop a feel.

Yeah, let's go.

And it's just like...

And it's like, it's not like, oh, this is good or normal, but like, it's always played for laughs in a way that's like,

boys.

Yeah.

In a way that like is just, you know, like let's just say like hasn't age particularly well.

Yeah.

For sure.

This guy, he's got a bar in the trunk of his car.

This has a, this is where he has like a little like

the battery-powered mixer.

The battery-powered mixer.

And he doesn't even need to, like, he just pours like vodka into like fucking like

cranberry juice.

Yeah.

And then he's just like, oh, time to shake this quite vigorously to get the intended effect.

So like he like his girlfriend is like, she's like, no, I don't want another.

Like I've had too much of your cherry coolers or whatever.

And he's like, nah, babe, you've never had enough.

So he like goes behind the car into the trunk to like fix them two more drinks as the blob approaches the car and the open door.

So like while he's mixing the drinks, he comes back around.

And he's like,

two more drinks for you, my lady.

And the girl appears to be passed out.

So he's like, mm-hmm.

Well, time to cop a feel.

And he's like, wow, it's pretty hot in this car.

Why don't I just unbutton one of these?

And then, oh,

no?

All right, one more.

And he like unbuttons her blouse and like cops a feel.

Just like sticks his hand under her shirt, under the bra,

gives her a squeeze.

But the tits squeeze back.

Yes.

Her body has already been consumed from the inside out by the blob.

And like right when he squeezes her tits, like its tentacles just like consume him.

Yeah, her face caves in.

And

great effect.

A great effect.

As he screams and, you know, kicks out the window.

And he's like yelling her name.

Buddy, she is no longer alive.

She is not there.

And this, um, this is the first of a few like real indications in this movie that this is a blob.

This isn't the same type of blob blob from the 50s movie.

This blob is, uh,

can

it has like signs of intelligence and like sets traps for people and like um

you know is kind of like a kind of a fucker, you know?

It's like, let me, this is gonna be funny if I do this to this guy, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and I, and a detail that I love, like, and just like a little bit after he, like, the blob consumes, like, the, the, the, the friend and the girl in the car is that, like, okay, like, the they're they're both football players and there's a scene where he goes in the trunk of his car like he's wearing like his like his like varsity ring and he's got a whole bunch of rings in the trunk of his car and then they're like as the blob sort of like congeals and it's like sort of oozing its way towards town you see like in the pink goo there's a fucking high school varsity ring inside the goo so it like dissolves all organic matter but like like the the brass ring is like still in the goo like because like all the flesh around it has been melted into the blob.

So

a great detail.

So many good little details in this.

There's just like this all the

tritus that the blob has like absorbed that is inorganic is still like sort of coursing around in this giant pink sort of goo pile.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And it's like, you know, it's, it's shedding it as it goes.

And then it's like, it's, it's, it's a connoisseur, this blob.

It's, it's a bit of a gourmand you know it'll spit some out it sometimes it'll keep shit in its mouth for a long time sometimes it'll turn people into uh kind of half blob half human um still living uh people like melt half a person and then leave them alive torture them a little bit toy with them yeah this blob's a fucker yeah that's what i mean when i say this blob's a fucker like the 50s one it'll just like you know it's like a virus just on a brain

yeah yeah yeah just a standard blob standard blob this This blob's a little bit different.

It's a little bit worse.

As this is going on, like the sheriff and Emil from RoboCop are sort of like putting the screws to Kevin Dylan because they're like, well, we don't have any other suspects.

Time to rend up the bad kid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the sheriff is like, he's not a bad guy.

And he knows that they can't really hold him because they have no motive.

There's no blood on him.

They have nothing to hold him on.

So they turn him loose.

And like, and they have to turn him loose.

And like, he's in town.

And then Meg, who's supposed to be asleep, she's still obviously traumatized by what she saw.

The fact that Donovan, her would-be boyfriend, is like missing.

And she's the only one who knows he's dead.

And she heads to town and she needs to talk to Brian.

And she goes to town to bail him out, but he's already been left out, already been let out.

And they go to the diner to like talk and get something to eat.

And like, you know, like they, and the thing is, Kevin Dylan still hasn't seen the blob.

So he's still kind of skeptical.

And like, he doesn't, yeah.

Like, Meg is the only one who's really seen it, like, face to face.

Yeah.

Kevin Dylan just saw like a flash of this weird thing on this guy's hand.

And he like has no clue what it is.

And like they sit down.

It's a beautiful scene because like all the lights are off.

And, you know, the town mom,

you know,

Fran is like makes a sandwich and some chips for him, like a kid, you know.

And

as they're sitting down, um,

they start like, you know, they start rapping and she's trying to convince convince Kevin Dylan, like, look, we've got a blob in town that we got to deal with.

And he's like, that's crazy.

And she's like, you're not even, you're not even counterculture at all.

You're just like a caricature of counterculture.

You're something an old man who made the original blob movie would think is,

but,

you know, Kevin Dylan.

puts that idea to rest by listening to her and they start to bond a little bit.

Now they're kind of on a date.

Yeah, and less than two hours ago, she saw maybe the worst thing that's ever been seen.

The worst thing that anyone's ever seen.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And then like, as this is going on, we cut back to the sheriff and he's worried, of course, about Fran because like they're weird, he knows there's something up going on.

There's something not right happening.

And he's like, you know, like the

secretary at the sheriff's department, she's like, he's like, yeah, he's like, I'm worried about everyone tonight.

I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to head over to the diner and check on Fran.

Yeah, and when the sheriff's on the phone in the background on the wall behind him are a bunch of old black and white pictures of like men of distinction, you know, aka authority figures,

which might give a little hint as to the direction this movie's going.

Like, look, he's concerned.

Like, you know, like, they were supposed to go on a date tonight, but, like, there's something not right in this town.

And he's going to go check in on Fran, the nice diner lady, and his crush.

So

at this point, I think

Meg and Brian have left the diner and you know Fran is left to close up with her cook.

But like, wouldn't you know it, in the kitchen, the sink is backed up and she's trying to unclog it with a plunger and the cook is like, don't worry, like Fran, you can take off.

Like, you know, I'll take care of it.

And he tries to plunge it and it's just not working.

And then he reaches his arm into the drain.

Will, this is like my least favorite thing that ever happens in a horror movie.

Whenever this, whenever someone does this, or like another is like like if a window is completely dark and someone slowly looks out it and the the music cuts out it's that and reaching your hand down a drain are insufferable to me i'm like no no no don't do that please don't do that please don't do that and like this shit is great like you and you think like it's gonna pull it's gonna pull him into the drain through his arm But like, he's just like,

but he takes his arm out and there's like some weird like slime on it.

And he's like, what the hell?

And then that's when the blob fully just shoots shoots out through the drain grabs him by the face and then pulls his entire body into the drain through the drain and you see like and like fran comes in and you see like like his legs bouncing up and down in the sink and blood pouring out of the drain pipes below the fucking uh the sink yeah as they like as they like bulge out with his yeah but like the blob has so much force that it can pull an entire body through the space the size of a kitchen drain.

Yeah, this is one of those special effects where I was like, genuinely, how the fuck did they do that?

Because they do, like, it shows his whole head getting pulled down the drain.

And it's like, I don't, like,

it really doesn't look like the drain stretches.

It doesn't look like the head, like, shrinks.

It's like magic, kind of.

And it's, like, so crazy.

And, um, oh, Kevin, Kevin Dylan and Shawnee Smith haven't left yet because they also run in.

Oh, right.

Yeah, I forgot.

And then, like, it, like it blobs out of the sink.

It's like, like, now Kevin Dylan sees it, and they run into the walk-in freezer.

And they, like, they, they shut the door, and you see the blob coming under the door, but it stops.

Aha, it doesn't like the cold.

Important.

Also, when it comes out of the sink, the effect there is so fucking cool.

It like blasts out onto the ceiling.

Kevin Dylan and Shoni Smith, like they're, they're, they're, like, they're trapped in the freezer, but they've sort of like protected themselves because they've, they've learned a crucial vulnerability of the blob is that it does not like the cold now we get to my favorite scene in oh my god this is my this is also my favorite this is the most brutal like the most brutal scene in this movie yeah so fran the diner lady she's she's of course seen this too she runs outside in a panic and runs to the phone booth to call herb the sheriff for help to call her friend and sort of crush the sheriff for help.

She like

puts a coin into the thing and she's like trying to call panic, like trying to call the sheriff's department and as she's doing this the blob just sort of comes down and like consumes the entire phone booth with her in it and you see like the glass of the fucking phone booth like it's just that the pink slime just runs down it yeah and like she's now it's totally like the blob is like she's like she's she's still like it hasn't got in the phone booth so she's just like yeah she's completely panicked she keeps trying to dial and then like she finally gets through like the so the phone booth has been completely consumed.

And she finally gets through the sheriff's department.

She talks to the secretary.

And she's like, I need to, like, I'm trying to get Herb.

Like, where's Herb?

Get me Herb.

And, like, the secretary goes, oh, he went down to the diner.

And as she says that, she looks at the glass and then sort of just floating past the glass is fucking Jeffrey McKay

is the sheriff's body.

His face pressed up against the glass and his eye coming out of its socket.

Yeah.

Just like, it's like his dead face being sort of pressed against the glass and then sort of like sliding up the fucking phone booth as she sees the face of her would-be lover.

Half-dissolved face.

And

his eye is moving back and forth.

Like he can, like, he's still alive a little.

And he gets to see as the blob.

Like the blob is showing them both.

Like, I got you both.

And then, and then poor friend is in the phone booth.

And we get a shot, like, shot from above as the glass shatters and like her body in the phone booth, as all of the goose floods in and just like smashes her.

And it is one of the most

effective brutal.

It's because, like, these two nice characters, once again, like Donovan Jr., that you think like the kindly sheriff, the nice diner lady, they're going to get together in this movie.

They're going to be the heroes of this movie.

They're going to make it through this movie.

But, like, no, it just introduced their characters and gave them that little backstory, that little pathos, that little bit of unrequited love, just to show you that scene.

It's so effective.

It's so good.

And I can't tell you like how fucking, like, how sick it is when you see the sheriff's face, fucking Jeffrey DeMun's face, fucking like slide up the glass of this fucking phone booth as it like is consumed and digested by this giant pink goo.

Yeah, and like Candy Clark gives an unreal performance.

and like the blob busting into the phone booth is the part where I was like, they must have had a real blob and a real person for this because it's one of the craziest special effects I've ever seen.

It just looks real.

It looks like

it literally looks like a snuff film, but with a blob.

It's like almost, it's so upsetting to watch.

It's like a real car crash video in slow motion.

And it's like so,

it's so brutal and then um we get um at this point kevin dylan and shawnee smith emerge from the uh emerge from the freezer and kevin dylan has gone full pirate mode because he is wearing his uh civil war top and he has a hook a meat hook from the uh

like from the

freezer and

you know they emerge they're kind of like going around And then we also see the priest coming down the street.

And he witnesses the blob.

And of course, because he's a priest and

another authority figure in this film, he is like, oh, a blob.

Awesome.

This means that a great prophecy is being fulfilled.

It's been prophesied.

It's like the end is nigh.

And he just sees this giant blob.

sort of like go into the sewer.

But then like he goes into the diner that's been like ruined and abandoned.

and he notices that there is still

a piece of the blob that is separate from the sort of the blob prime that's frozen slightly.

And he puts it in a jar and takes it with him.

Yeah, and that'll come back.

That's a little foreshadowing, perhaps.

Meanwhile, Brian and Meg head back into the mountains to look for the deputy.

And there they run into the greatest authority figure of all, the U.S.

government.

Helicopters, guys in hazmat suits, and we meet Dr.

Meadows, played by John Seneca.

Kindly.

Who's like, yeah, Joe, Joe Seneca, sorry, yeah, who seems kindly at first.

He seems like a kindly government scientist who says that they are there with a government-sanctioned biological containment team.

We're microbe hunters.

Yeah, we're microbe hunters.

Yeah, you're like, okay.

He's like, man, I don't know if this is a microbe, but if it is, it's the biggest goddamn one you've ever seen in your life

macrobe if you will yeah yeah um

go ahead then we get then we get the like the movie within the movie of the garden tool massacre where you think this is like another scene of like young people making out before they die but it's just we realize that it's the two the two boys from earlier in the movie are in the in the movie theaters They're in the movie theater watching this like slasher film and there's this like dumb asshole behind them who like keeps saying what's going to happen right before it does where he's like, oh, now she's going to get killed with garden shears and they're like stop ruining the movie yeah the kids are pissed um and the girl that he's with doesn't care because girls don't care about movies and um the um then it cuts to inside the

period and it cuts to inside the projectionist's booth and if you know anything about the original blob you know that um the on-screen deaths in the original blob are you know you've got of course the the bomb at the beginning um you've got the mechanic, which we've seen a mechanic in this, Moss, who's,

you know, Kevin Dylan's friend.

And, you know, you've got

the, but we haven't seen him die yet.

He's, you know,

and the projectionist in the movie theater who gets blobbed bad.

He gets blobbed but bad in the original.

And now we...

are seeing this and we know, you know, it's over for this guy.

It's over.

The projectionist played by Frank Collison, who's another classic, like, weird guy actor.

Yeah, another little.

He was in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou.

He's in The Happening with Mark Walver, the M Night Shyamalan movie.

Again, he's in The Village.

He's in a number of Shyamalan movies.

He's in The Last Boy Scout.

He's another one of those faces that you've seen a dozen times in movies, but he's always like the weird-looking guy.

Yeah, he's like the West Virginia Appalachian, like inbred-looking guy is kind of his.

Yeah, I think that's what his agent would say if you call him.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

He also sounds kind of like Adam Driver, much like the zombie in Return of the Living Dead who calls the more paramedics.

It's like,

we've got a problem.

It's really hot up here.

Can you check the AC?

And why don't you head to the club?

Go back to the club.

Go back to the club.

Go back to the club.

And

do you want me to read it back to you, Mr.

Lincoln?

But yeah, the projectionist is on the phone.

He's like, it's hot as fuck.

And the guy on the other line is like, well, the AC's on full blast.

So, no, it's not.

And he's like, come up here and see for yourself.

And then before

he can even

blink his eyes, the blob is on him and it's attacking him.

And we see the guy he just called up coming up the stairs.

And when he gets up there, he's greeted with a pretty horrifying sight.

And it's the man, the blob is on the ceiling, and the projectionist is like

basically just like a big stomach, like with eyes and a mouth and arms, and is like

screaming silently as he is now, like it's like the blob is trying a new way of killing someone where they become like all gross in a different way, you know?

Yeah.

So as the blob begins its assault on the movie theater, back

like outside of town where Brian and Meg have run into the mobile biological containment unit.

They're like, don't worry, everything's going to be fine.

Like, just get into the quarantine van, you know?

But Brian, he's smart enough because he has a leather jacket and rides a motorcycle.

He doesn't trust authorities.

He doesn't trust the man.

And he's like, I don't know.

But of course, Meg being the good girl, despite being a bit of a

bit fast, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, yeah.

She's like, oh, I just want to go back to town.

Like, you can be fast and be good, you know, but and that's what this movie shows.

But it's actually very woke in that regard.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're just bad enough to avoid the blob's wrath, honestly.

Yeah, that's it's just that little thing that puts you over the edge.

Um,

and yeah, they, you know, have an argument, and Kevin Dylan's like, you can get in the van, I'm not going to get in the van.

And

they

like pretty much try try to force them into the van, but Kevin Dylan leaves.

She gets in the van.

He's able to escape from the van using the ratchet that he

had earlier from his friend at the garage.

Yeah,

even though the men in hazmat suits force them into the van, Shawnee Smith is still like, I don't know, I think they're helping us.

Yeah, Kevin Dylan picks the lock, like the cool guy he is, and like gets out.

And then is basically like a cheerleader flag.

God damn it.

Like,

he can't believe he fell for a cheerleader.

And

then it cuts back to the movie, and there's a hilarious line right here in the movie.

I mean, the fake movie inside the movie, Garden Tool Massacre.

And the line is

10, it's like two women talking to each other, and one says,

Did you know that 10 years ago tonight there was a horrible murder in this house?

No, no way.

And

like, it's like they're watching the stupidest movie and they have no idea.

It's a classic horror movie dialogue.

Yeah, they have no idea they're about to watch the blob and whether they like it or not.

Well, then the blob shows up in the movie theater and goes blob mode in like a theater full of people.

And it's just like, it's absolute chaos.

It's blobbing everywhere.

Yeah,

these people do not stand a chance.

It is like...

complete and total havoc.

The two kids are in there, you know, watching the movie.

And Shawnee Smith at this point, the van has dropped her off and she's being hoarded into like a containment area with everyone else in town, but she manages to slip out so she can go find her brother at the movie theater.

I love her dad, the pharmacist, as like when the government guys in like, who have like M16s and like full biohazard, like level four biohazard fucking suits on, he's like,

Don't tell me to be quiet.

I'm a taxpayer.

I pay your salary and you're finding my son right now, mister.

And they're like, all right, shut up and get in the the death

just get on the train to the fucking blob concentration camp, daddy.

I love

the like also the dad's

another funny like little show of his impotence is that she still goes Shawnee Smith still goes on the date with the guy who she he thinks is like ready to deflower a rapist basically yeah yeah and he just does not protest very much um

and he just says ribbed.

Yeah, yeah.

This is why the kids survive because their authority figures are bad parents.

Yes.

So Shawnee Smith enters the movie theater and witnesses even more horrors, even more unspeakable horrors beyond comprehension.

Yes.

And like there's a woman on the ground and she tries rolling her over and it's like half of her horror is gone.

Yeah, it's like a spent dog kind of just melted.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's a crazy strobe light effect that's going on that, like, will give you a headache if you,

you know, if you don't blink enough.

Um,

and she makes it out, she busts out and escapes with the two, uh, the two kids with her brother and her brother's friend.

And, um, but her brother's jacket gets stuck in the door and he's almost cooked.

Because, why?

Because he listened to his mom

when it's cold out, exactly.

Which it never do.

And

like,

and like they're they are chased by the blob into like the sewers underneath the town.

Yes.

And oh, this is also a really horrifying scene in this.

Yeah, but like, but but but back up, like, uh, Brian, Kevin Dylan, has escaped from the van, but like, he sort of like circles back to like where the government goons are, and he sees them like unearth the meteor.

But aha, it is, in fact, not a meteor, but a satellite.

And one of these classic, you know, thank God Trump has done away with all of this stupid government research into like disease or whatever.

We don't need any of that.

Oh, absolutely.

What were they doing?

What were they wasting our tax dollars on?

Hessea?

They were like, in the movie, they were like, well, yeah, like the satellite, we've had an accident, the satellite came up.

Our satellite program to test the effects of space on viruses and bacteria has unfortunately irradiated this organism and it's caused it to grow at an exponential geometric rate.

And all civilians are now expendable.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's it really like this movie really reminds me of Outbreak in a lot of ways.

Yeah, like the fact that it's a government germ warfare thing, the people in hazmat suits being like, we just gotta get rid of everyone in this town just in case, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Something very similar to the end of Return of the Living Dead.

Oh, absolutely.

Yes, yes.

He overhears this, and you know, Meadows, we find out Meadows is not so good a guy,

which big surprise.

Kevin Dylan is not surprised at all.

He's like, wow, like, I knew this

was going to happen.

And then we get,

like, another, just a really horrifying scene where

the blob kills a kid.

Yeah, that's how legit this movie is.

Yeah.

It straight up kills a kid, like,

the little brother's friend.

Yeah, not in a nice way either.

Yeah, like, just gets taken.

Like, you see him half dissolved, like, popping out of the blob, like reaching for help.

Yeah, like the blob is chasing them through this water, and like they try to like climb up these pipes to get away from it.

And then, like, the blob emerges and it's like huge.

It like fills this entire like underground sort of chamber and emerges basically looking like a giant asshole.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's very suggestive.

And um,

like, the this is when we get uh the grand return of Kevin Dylan, who uh

comes, saves the day, like pulls Shawnee Smith out of the sewer.

And, you know, the kid is able to escape.

And he does a cool motorcycle trick to escape the blob.

It's like

they're in the tunnels of this, like, under these aqueducts that run into the town.

And like, the aqueduct is like, it's like cylindrical.

And, like, the blob is like, is blocking their path.

And Kevin Dylan's like revs the motorcycle.

Somehow he's gotten the motorcycle into the sewer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wasn't clear on that part.

But he, like, he revs up the motorcycle and like he rides, like, he drives it like up the, up the, up the, like, the sides of the circuit.

He does an Italian job.

He does an Italian job to

the blob.

Yes, the Italian job move.

And then they, okay,

did you notice this cameo of the, of the government hazmat suit guy that they meet in the, in the sewer who's, like, injured and panicking?

Oh, who is it?

This is Bill Mosley.

Chop top from Texas

Oscar too shows up for like 10 seconds in this movie as one of the government goons who gets clowned on by the blob.

Oh my god, I didn't even notice that.

That's so fucking cool.

I love

this, like, he's not the guy that they're like hanging with and talking to.

Does he get killed like instantly, or is he the guy that like gives them the bazooka?

He's the guy who gives them the bazooka.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

I love that guy.

He's like,

he starts doing the Bill Paxton aliens thing where he's like, we're fucked.

We're fucked.

We're came over, man.

Game over.

Yeah, yeah.

And Meadows basically seals him in the...

So Meadows, yeah, seals them in the sewer to contain the blob.

And why he thinks that the blob will be restrained to the sewer is a complete mystery, especially because there are like dozens of manholes all over town that the blob has been more than able to escape from.

But like, the,

you know, Kevin Dylan gives a big fuck you to Meadows, who closes the manhole on them and then drives a truck over it by taking Chop Top's bazooka and just blasting that fucking truck to Kingdom Come.

Through the manhole.

Yeah, and escaping to the top.

And at the surface, there's a good old-fashioned Mexican standoff

between Paul McCrane, Meadows, and Kevin Dillon.

And Meadows is basically like, shoot these boys.

They're infected, you know?

Which another thing from Outbreak is pretending a guy you don't like is infected.

So you can kill him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Donald Sutherland style.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

And

I was like, you see that like Paul McCrane, Emil, the deputy, he's been really hard on Kevin Dillon the whole movie.

He's like, yeah, your mom's out with her friend, Johnny Walker Red, and whoever else will come home with her, right?

And you think he's like, he's like a typical mean Sheroux deputy, mean to the cool kid.

But in the Mexican standoff, like originally, Kevin Dylan has an M16, and he's like, they're all lying to you.

And, like, the deputy points his gun at Kevin Dillon.

He's like, Son, drop that gun, or I'll blow you out of your shoes.

But then, when like the government guys put their guns on Kevin Dillon, Emil switches over and puts the gun on them.

Yeah, and he's like, Put that gun down.

He's like, If anyone's gonna kill this cool kid, it's gonna be me.

Yeah, it's I've had to deal with his shit in this town.

No, we see he's actually not such a bad guy.

Yeah, in the in the outbreak comparison, he's like the Morgan Freeman to uh Meadows Donald Sutherland, yes, and um,

also,

when Paul McCrane calls Kevin Dylan boy, he says it in the most racist way for some reason.

It just sounds racist the way he says it.

Even though they're both white.

Yeah, yeah.

He's like, watch your mouth, boy.

Boy.

It's like, damn, dude.

I said, put it down.

I'll blow you out of your shoes, boy.

And then, like, the standoff is interrupted because the blob just like shoots out of the sewer, grabs Meadows' leg and pulls him into the sewer.

And then we get a great scene of, like, the army guys.

They're like,

the head army guy takes the hazmat, like the sort of the hood of the biohazard suit off.

And he's like, fuck this.

And he's like, men, on me.

And then they just go to the open manhole cover and just start firing bullets down into it.

Like that's going to do anything.

And then they giant, yeah.

They drop C4 down there, too.

And they're like, good riddance.

We got the blob.

Theatrically dusts off hands.

We won't be seeing that blob anymore.

And the blob just gets gets pissed and at this point the blob is like the size of a building and shoots out of the shoots out of the manhole um and is like like a ceaseless discharge type uh like just launches from the manhole um the army guy in a noble attempt to sacrifice himself to destroy the blob um pulls the two grenades off of his hazmat suit arms them and the blob crushes him with his with its arm and they do nothing you see like I really love the scene of the guy in the housemat suit.

They're like, all right,

we got to go to the backup plan.

He gets out the flamethrower.

Love to see a flamethrower in a movie.

He starts shooting flames at the blob.

The blob just flicks him away.

The fucking tank on his back blows up.

And we get, I've talked about this many times, especially on horror movie Gulvie's scream set.

I love any moment in a movie where we get a stunt man.

fully engulfed in flames, just running down the street, waving their arms in panic.

Oh, fuck, come on fire!

Just burning alive.

The Reverend

gets doused in flames as well.

But basically, like, it's like the town is under assault from the blob.

The blob is massive.

It's attacking the whole town.

All hell breaks loose.

And all, like, the dumb townsfolk, they run into the town hall and start barricading the door.

Because, you know, that's...

In sort of traditional 1950s slash 1980s America,

it's so important to have a town hall.

You know, whatever happened to town halls is where you go when the blob attacks you.

Yeah, it's it, you know, it's a sense, it's the center of the community.

It used to be cathedrals and churches were the biggest buildings in town.

Then it was town halls.

Now it's empty skyscrapers that billionaires buy condos in.

So

I guess that's where people would run nowadays if there was a blob attack and they would find the doors quadruple locked with like bio scanners and be unable to get in.

And

what I really love about the flamethrower scene is that the blob doesn't just flick the flames away, it bugs bunnies him and just puts

its finger down the barrel of the flames.

Stick your finger in the shotgun, and then Elmer Fudd pulls the trigger and it blows up in his face.

Turns into a banana on the

um, but um, Shawnee Smith during this scuffle, during this carnage, is um, like

sprays a fire extinguisher at the blob and realizes something she should have realized earlier in the movie when they were in the freezer, that the blob doesn't like the cold.

And they...

These assholes are trying to use a flamethrower.

Yeah, yeah.

It loves that.

It's a huge fan of that.

And, you know, everyone is in the town hall.

They're barricading it, you know.

The deputy is fucking pushing things into the, like to block the doors and then gets pulled.

This is another horror movie thing I love, is someone getting folded in half backwards down the middle.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it happens in the new Final Destination movie, which is it's a really cool part.

Um,

and yeah, also Wishmaster, where the guy fucks his own ass in that one scene.

Um, but after that happens, all hope seems totally lost.

And then, lo and behold, boom, Moss's garage, the garage door bursts open, and Kevin Dylan is driving the brand new snowmaker that just repaired by Moss

towards the blob at breakneck speeds.

And he is about to save the day by freezing this blob.

But the blob knocks the truck over and is trying to get at him.

And Shawnee Smith

goes over there and basically becomes Rambo, like takes M16 and is distracting the blob, trying to get it angry so that it attacks her over by the,

you know, the big giant tank of compressed snow

I'm not sure that's how snowmakers work I don't I'm not either but yeah it's like it's like a big tank of the same shit thatever whatever makes your refrigerator cold you know coolant something like that I look I'm not I'm you know I don't run a ski resort but I'm just saying it's a giant tank of cold Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think a snowmaker is literally just a mist machine that

there are different kinds.

I mean, like, there are different kinds of, like, essentially like, it's just like hoses that, like, spray it into the air.

And if it's cold enough outside, it'll turn into snow in the air.

Yeah, yeah,

a giant tank of like, you know, like Freon or something.

Freon, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, they're killing the blob and the ozone layer at the same time.

And then, and then Kevin Dylan's gonna huff it later because you can do a sick pie off of it.

Absolutely.

And, you know, Kevin Dylan, like, Shawnee Smith really kind of like saves the day,

but like gets stuck on this big canister of of snow stuff and Kevin Dylan saves her life at the last second and then boom a huge explosion the blob freezes solid

it is and we get in a you know an inverse kind of parallel to return of the living dead where per precipitation equals bad in this movie Precipitation equals good because it starts snowing and snowing blob snowing frozen blob pieces, but now safely neutralized, dead blob, and it's like a nice pink snow covering the town.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

And, you know, the um, and now they can reopen the town because the ski resort is um the ski season is coming up.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't, yeah, it's um, it's been unseasonably warm in for the winter in this town for the past like several years, they they say.

So now this is uh, you know, an omen of good hope that um the industry will come back to the town, the tourist industry.

But yeah, we see all the glistening, frozen pieces of blob, and then we get the epilogue.

Which is like,

at some point, like somewhere somewhere else in the country, some time has passed.

And then like, we see like a tent revival.

And it's just like, and it's the Reverend from earlier in the movie.

But he's now horribly burned and he's become this sort of like apocalyptic book of Revelations tent revival preacher.

And, you know, like he's talking about his congregation about like when the end of days happens, only the faithful will be saved.

Only the faithful.

His sermon is over.

He like goes into his little dressing room, takes off his like sunglasses, revealing even more of his like hideously burned face.

And this like old church lady like knocks on the door and she's like, Reverend, when,

when, Reverend?

And he says, what?

He says, the day of reckoning.

And he just says, soon,

soon.

Then he like goes into the, goes into his little like, you know, cabinet or dresser, and he pulls out his jar of frozen blob.

But now it's unfrozen, and it's just like a miniature piece of the blob still alive and pulsing in this glass jar.

And he says, the Lord will give me a sign.

Oh, and credits.

Yeah.

Chills, chills.

And you know what?

I was...

I've never been more disappointed in my life than when this movie decided not to end with the opening credits song from the original blob, which is a banger.

Yeah.

You know, it's, it's the blob.

It slimes.

It rhymes.

It's time because the blob is coming to rock your mind.

It's so fucking good.

By Burt Bacharak saying the original blob song.

Yeah, like

we should go out with the original blob song on this.

Absolutely.

I'll put it in right

here.

I'll fade it in.

And then

we need the Return of Living Dead theme in this episode, too.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And people can hear the greatness.

Yeah, and I'll put some of the crazy songs from that movie in as well.

Yeah.

You want a party?

Yeah.

Well,

movie fans, I hope you've enjoyed partying with Hess and I

to inaugurate this Halloween season.

We've got four more horror movie double features coming for you on this season of Goolvy Scream Set Horror Movie Mindset.

Yes, and something I didn't mention, there's foreshadowing in this as to one movie we're going to see

later, is that when they're watching Garden Tool Massacre,

the guy in the back says, watch this.

He's going to hair curler her to death.

And you might be asking, like, the joke there is, how do you hair curler someone to death?

Well, we are going to find out later in this season when it happens to someone.

Well, there will be more thrills, chills, ghouls, and gore coming this season on Google Screamset, Horror Movie Mindset.

But that does it for this episode.

That was Return of the Living Dead and the Bob Remake.

Happy Halloween, Esther.

Happy Halloween.

Beware of the blob.

It creeps and leaps and glides and slides across the floor, right through the door, and all around the wall, a splotch, a blotch, be careful of the ball.

Beware of the blob, it creeps and leaps and glides and slides across the floor, right through the door and all around the wall, a splotch, a blotch, be careful of the blob.