AMITYVILLE DOLLHOUSE!

AMITYVILLE DOLLHOUSE!
We proudly present the next film in our Amityille series! This one has zombie dads, giant wasps, incest, and, of course, a dollhouse fashioned inexplicably like everyone's favorite haunted house! Guest Michael DaBronzo pops his Amityville cherry on this one, the last sequel from the original franchise.

Transcript

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Oh, Mother of God, I'm coming apart. She was shot in the head the Amityville Horror possession 3d silenced harvest. Strange eons. Radio presents The Amityville Horror Picture Show. This is our very first Amityville Horror Picture Show as a zoom episode. And Michael the Bronzo, I'm so happy that you have decided to be a guinea pig for this. If this doesn't work, then we will blame it on you. Let me get into Mike. Let me get into my spiel. First. That's Eric. I'm Kelly, and we are your hosts on this bizarre, strange journey of the Amityville film franchise, of which there are nearly 60 entries as of this recording. There are so many because the Amityville murders of 1974 are public fact and there is no copyright on the name of Amityville. Each episode features a revolving door of guest hosts, and today I am thrilled to introduce Michael the Bronzo as our Amityville dollhouse guest host. You us. I'm tired of moving Dad, I'm gonna stay right here. Promise. I promise. Wow. Look at this neat box. I bucks, that's your fireplace. Does your dad build a house in this burnt down lot with the program? Boy, you're gonna really scare me, dad. I'm killing Jim. For some reason, I fell right at home in this house. This sounds gives me the creeps. Go ahead, do something. Glad to see I still excite you. Claire, she's pushing seen it too. It's bad. Why did you want to know. Could have gotten to you. I would die to have a family like yours. You Michael, can you take 30 seconds and brag about yourself? Not really, but I'll give it a shot. My name is Mike the Bronzo. Obviously. I work in architecture. I'm an artist. I'm actually a panelist on the Lovecraft easine Now again, live 6pm eastern on YouTube. Check us out. That's, that's kind of about it. And I'm in a right now squatting in a toy store. So that'll be, that'll be nothing to everybody else. Don't worry, you own kind of sort of close enough, right? It is a pretty impressive, uh, man cave you've got down there. You gave us a little personalized tour before we started recording. I want an ocean sickness probably a quick note about Toronto, long term time. Listeners of strange eons will know that he continually tried to challenge me with really shitty films, but his tastes in shitty films is actually pretty good. So thank you. Thank you for the recommendations. I pretty much enjoyed all of them. My we paid him back by making him watch an Amityville movie. I'm sorry, go ahead. First of all, I like calling you to Bronzo. Is that okay? Yeah, absolutely okay. Hopefully not, okay, the Bronzo, you're over there on the East Coast. You're in Jersey, yeah, New Jersey, I have to know, and you're about our age, I have to know your Amityville origin story. What was, what was your feelings on this, growing up, being so. Close to when it was going up. Yeah, you know, it's funny, because I know, you know, from listening to you guys, I know this question was going to come up, so I've been thinking about it since, you know, we decided I was going to do this, and I'm like, Did I see the movie first, or did I read the book? Because I and just take a step back, you know, growing up, we had, like, we're all around the same age. So it was like we had in search of Bigfoot was big in the news, the Loch Ness monster, you name it. And it was just like when you're a little kid, all is in the news because it kind of legitimizes it. You know, it's on TV, could be real. And the same thing with Amityville. I remember hearing about it. Eventually, I can't figure out what age I was, but I couldn't see the movie yet came out. What 79 is that about? Right? 7980 so I probably read the book like, 8384 because that's what I get my hands on. I read this book and I'm like, Wow, this shits crazy. You know? It's like, everything in the kitchen sink is in that fucking book, you know. And then I watched the movie, and I'm like, Wow, this kind of sucks, you know, except for Rod Sager and get out, like, 90% of the bullshit in the book is not bullshit in the movie, so, but it was just like, you know, it still kind of scared me a little bit, because it was just like, one of those things, one of those things, like you had the exorcist come out, which, and I was raised a Catholic, so there's that little bit in the back your head, you know, you've had drilled in your head, and like the exorcist scared the shit out of me. And even though, like, the movie for Amityville was even like, the Get out part, really got to me. So, yeah, and, I mean, and they actually filmed, you know, by coincidence, in Tom's River, New Jersey down there the shore. That's the house they used for the movie. And I think for the second one too, right? And that's still there a lot of this. I mean, you guys, I think you already went over this, but like a lot of the original sites that were used in the movie for the first one, the original one were in Tom's River, right? So it was just like something I found out later, though, but, you know, as years went by and you're like, could be real, could be real. Like, oh, could be complete bullshit. Because, you know, like that doc that uh, Tony K was talking about. I told you, I actually, I looked it up, and I sat down and and I watched all I didn't know if I was gonna, I was might be, like, whatever it's got, like, the production values, like 1990 A and E specials, you know. But like, if you get past the fake beards and the horrible, horrendous wigs and the acting there's like, you know, there's something there. And it's like, I don't know how many hours, and it focuses on the defeos, not the Amityville Horror, right? So I kind of found it fascinating. But dollhouse is a different case. Let's see. So how, how old were you? Let's see the murders. No, the Amityville Horror took place in 77 or eight. Yeah, I was, I was, how old I was born in 73 okay, so you were probably not aware of anything going on in the news at the time then now, it's just like, I don't know if I'm I think you know, after the fact, trying to look back however many decades I knew I was kind of aware of it, but maybe didn't understand it. And I can't remember if, in search of had an episode on it, because if they did, then I was, because I watched that every Sunday, right, with your host of mine. Leonard Nimoy, absolutely, but Well, yeah, as you alluded to, we are talking about Amityville dollhouse this episode. And sorry, buddy, this was the movie that your name came up on. This is the eighth entry into the Amityville franchise, and it is the last real official sequel before the reboot with Ryan Reynolds, like a nine year break there or something like that, isn't it? Yeah, which is interesting, because they had to have been wondering, you know, what can we do with this? This is, unfortunately, a franchise, much like the howling or what else, where they just kind of fucking sequel that to death. And so there's almost no, no way they can dig themselves out of the shithole they have put themselves in. It's just diminishing returns for something that wasn't that great to begin with. The movie was awful, right? I'm glad that you agree that that first movie, it made money, it made money, tons of money, but that doesn't equal it's a good fucking movie. Absolutely not. But they were no but, you know. It. It's like any franchise. It's like we made money on this. So we're just going to keep milking it until there's nothing left. Yeah, and there wasn't a lot left to begin. But go ahead, I'm sorry. I mean to cut you off. No, no. Well, let's just dive into this story. We're talking about the Amity, exciting dollhouse from 1996 So already we're what is that? 17 years now, after the original film, I could find no budget or box office information, although it did have a very limited theatrical release someplace. I'll get into that in my trivia. Yeah, I did find that English speaking, Oh, you did, yeah, an article or a review I read, or someone said it initially had a million dollar budget, but went over, so the director waived his fee on that. I did see that, yeah, it wasn't under she already how this is gonna go, man, got a cruel guest host. I, I did. I there's parts of this that I actually really enjoyed. I'm not cruel. I'm just, you know, direct, no, no real rotten tomatoes on this, but the audience has it at 17% feels about right to me, yeah, yeah, but yeah. Now it's uh, it's directed by Steve White. This is his only directing credit, but he is linked to ambyville, four, five and six as an executive producer, and has kept working as late as 2019, I think it's really interesting that this is Amityville eight, and he is not listed as an exec producer on seven, which was, was that time? No, the artist retreat, yeah. The artist one, yeah. So that's interesting. It was written by Joshua Michael Stern, who has 11 credits, mostly TV stuff, including 2020, episodes of graves, which I've never heard of, but must have some money. It's got Nick Nolte as an ex US president who's trying to do stuff. Have you heard of this movie or this series? I know never the same way, the same way you did. I was looking through the guy's credits. I'm like, that looks weird. When did this come out? You know, listen to Bronzo. I asked the questions here. Okay, I just want to say, before we go any further, when there's no room left in hell, another enemy appears on Earth. I just want to throw that out there. It was 2016 for that TV show, graves. Okay, yeah, okay, we hadn't gone through the hell that we've all been going through for the last several years. This stars Robin Thomas, who has 139 credits. Very familiar character actor, although, if you were to ask me, what else I knew him from, no idea. It's just one. He's that guy, right? I saw that. He's got tons of television straight to video stuff, 24 episodes of the mommies, which is not a show that I watch, but you think by the title I would 11 episodes of the division and seven episodes of mystery 101, which seems like the least interesting mystery series to watch. It also stars, ironically, star and drief, who has 30 credits, including ghoulies two, the terror within scanner, cop, club, vampire and she has grown up. I don't want to say she's grown up. That was me. She is now a Canadian TV producer. She's the wife in this I think that she saw which way the wind was blowing, and was just like, Look, if I'm going to continue showing up in movies like scanner, cop and club vampire, maybe I should become a producer instead. It also stars and Cutler, yeah. 27 credits, mostly TV. Eight episodes of the division, two episodes of justified he is the teenage son Rachel Duncan who has 21 credits, including Rumpelstiltskin and what women want. She's the little girl and Jared Lennon, who has 71 credits, including Highway to Hell, servants of Twilight. She's all that. And he is that very odd looking little kid, the youngest son, who's a weirdo. He kind of looks like the love child of Mo Howard. Yes, yes. A very bad haircut, and needs to get a little more sleep. I should just say this if you haven't watched Amityville dollhouse and you feel like you will. You might want to stop this, because we're going to talk all about it and spoil the shit out of it here. Yeah, so I don't know about you guys, I watched this film four times in preparation for this to Bronzo, you and I have sent some text back. I know that you've watched it a couple of times, and have copious notes. Eric, how many times did you watch this movie? This one, considering what I got going on right now. I watched it one time. Oh, you fucking pussy. I got lots of notes. You know how much fucking movies I've watched in the last two weeks? I do a lot more than you. I can guarantee you that Eric's getting ready for crypticon, and so he's doing the film festival there, and has been stuck watching films that are much better than Amityville dollhouse. Not all of them are some, but yeah, about 100 movies over the last three weeks. That's it. Jeez. Come on now toughen up, damn it. This could have been 101 or nine two. I'm just going to start going through the things that I liked about this and and both, you just kind of chime in when you've got something to say. Okay, so right off the bat, the credits, I thought were pretty fucking cool, because they wind through the dollhouse, which is a pretty cool dollhouse. Yes, as far as props go, for the last few movies we've watched, you know, yeah, professional and a lamp, and now this house pretty damn cool. And you Well, overall, they did set it like you guys have mentioned this before they set a theme, you know, kind of like the Friday the 13th series, where it's like, you know, they're using objects that are associated with the house rather, right? Because they blew up the house in what three once we get into about time, all of that stuff kind of is out the window, because we know that this no longer, it no longer adheres to the physics of the real world. We're now in Amityville, yeah. So then we meet this new mixed family that's coming to this house that the dad has built. It's the father, Bill and his son, Todd, and a mother, clear Claire and her weirdo son, Jimmy, I guess it's his daughter, but it's tough to say at the beginning, because Todd, his son, says something about Claire being cool, but Jimmy being a weirdo, and I was just super confused with all of this stuff. But yes, it turns out she's the dad's daughter and and very early on, the two sons from different families should be getting along fantastic, because they're both fucking assholes, yes, and it does harken back to earlier amityvilles, with the family driving up to the house to start the Movie out, as opposed to buying the lamp at a garage sale or something like sale with the house in the background. By the way, you guys, I'm drinking. You'll be happy to know I'm drinking less so far than I was when I watched this movie The Last time. Sure. Unfortunately, I watched this sober both times. So we've got some pretty standard stereotypes with this family. Todd is the older jock son, the Jimmy kid is like the goth weirdo son who's fucking creepy and going to grow up to be a serial killer, but he has a magnophobia. And then the daughter, who's kind of like the the only person you like in this movie, and Eric, I don't want to be creepy about anything, but did you notice that this little girl looks like your wife would have looked at that age? Did you get any of that? I can see where you're coming with that. Yeah, I did not just like, did Dina somehow show up in this movie at nine years old? I I thought 90s. In all fairness, would she really tell you? If she did, I don't know she was in her 20s, so no, oh, well, she looks just like her. She's posted pictures on Facebook as a child, and I was like, this is this little girl, right picture of her in the bar when she's like, six or seven fits this. Well, wait a second. In the bar, what's going on with this family? There is some pretty fucking heavy handed dialog between Todd and Bill about Todd's mom. So Bill is the dad, Todd is the older son, and apparently the mom has fucked off and she doesn't call. All shouldn't do anything, but there's, there's this weird kind of undercurrent of, if you live in America, you know how weird it is for the dad to get custody to the kids. So the mom has gotta be a real fucking piece of work. I was just gonna say bill's about his vanilla sitcom, Viagra salesman. As you get like, I just one of the things I wrote was like, he has a future in commercials, but obviously he had more than that. I see that, you know what, Bill is given a nice save the cat moment. Unfortunately, the cat is the ex wife, because he's defending the ex wife to his oldest son for some reason, and saying, no, no, she's just busy. That's the reason she hasn't called and all that. And I just thought it was a really interesting kind of approach to this character, this, this is all just very, very basic. The writer is trying to put some kind of character development into this. It doesn't quite work, but I appreciated it. I was like, because somebody was thinking of something, there was, she could have been dead, right? Yeah, yeah, that had been the easy layup. Yes. It doesn't really factor in too much of the movie, other than in this kind of way that you're describing this, this one scene is literally the only way it happens, although there is a phone call at some point to the girl, yeah, and she talks to the mom, and then hangs up before the Son can talk to her. And I guess it's just to give him a little bit of angst, an angsty scene for so he can act, yeah. I don't know it's yeah. Anyways, yeah. So then we go and we meet the oldest son's girlfriend, I guess, which makes me wonder, what's actually going on here. What is the setup for this fucking thing? Did they build a new home right in the neighborhood they already lived in? Why does the kid have a girlfriend at this neighborhood already, and we never see the neighborhood. It's like it could be out in the middle of the boondocks, and we never see her drive up. You never see her, right? She's just there. That's what it looked like. Middle of nowhere. Looks like it's in the middle of fucking desert. Yeah, I thought of the scene the other, I think the other Amityville, where the guy's running from the dog and the dogs attacks him, yeah, looks like that area. Looks like they say, Yeah, let's build the house here. We'll just use this again. We already know that was, that was Amityville. It's about time. I would like you to show a little respect to these films if we're gonna No, no, no, I'm good. But I do remember the the actress Lisa Robin Kelly, has stuck in my brain from The X Files. She did a girlfriend, yeah, she did an episode of The X Files where her and a friend of hers give the plants planets align, and they get, uh, telekinetic powers, and it's a big Satanic Panic in the town that they live in. And she was one of those two girls. Were they at all after it's done, they just kind of everything goes back to normal, yeah? That sounds right. And they're saying weird stuff, like, hated him, love him, like, weird, like that, yeah, I kind of remember that one, yeah. All right. Well, that was an interesting yeah, find out on our X Files podcast. Still, I am, I am really kind of bumped by this fact that the dad has built this house. Everybody acts like it's the first time they've seen it. Ed, the kid has a girlfriend in the neighborhood. Yeah, I feel like chunks of this script were just like torn out at the I don't know if you guys know the story of debranza. You've, you've heard these episodes, so, you know, we go off on wild tangents. But I don't know if you guys, if you guys, have heard the story of the original Oceans 11, where it was Frank Dean and Sammy record, you know, making this film, but they were also playing the casinos every night and all this shit. And at one point, the director pulls Frank aside, and he says, we are 10 pages behind on this. I need you guys to fucking do something. And Frank just opens the script to halfway, pulls out 10 pages and throws it out and says, now we're back on schedule. I feel like that's what happened in this movie. Yeah, when everybody goes to bed that night, the Amityville dollhouse comes alive and smokestacks coming from the chimney like they've chosen a new Pope or something, no offense. But that seems to be like the thing. The the theme of this is that whatever is happening in the dollhouse is now going to happen in this house. This would have been way cooler if it was the original Amityville house, so that it all was a one to one comparison. Yeah. Chat. But I'm just like, with all of these, I wonder, was this originally an Amityville story? Was this a script that got, you know, repurposed as an Amityville film? Yeah, that's what it feels like. The really only connection is if, if the model is the model, it looks like the house they never mentioned it or connected back to Amityville. It's kind of legal. They never say, they never say Amityville in the movie, and they don't even say that the house, the dollhouse, was in the original house. There's literally no tie, and then it wasn't. You have to wonder this dollhouse, it looks like this Murder House. And do they do more of them? Because I would love to have this dollhouse. Yes, I left it in this random shed that this guy happened to not destroy. Well, I mean, I there's the it, the lamp was tenuous. This is non existent. There's no connection for why this house, dollhouse has anything to do with amitabelle. The whole time that he's this house is being built because we know it's built around the fireplace. Yeah, right. Bill, who I have thoughts about his contracting skills, is just never decides to pop this baby open. It's just it the Chainsaw Massacre shack sitting there, not one bit of curiosity till the day they move in. It's a fucking point that he had built this house on this property and then just left this shed there and not bothered to even, you know, you'd think that if he was going to do this, he'd at least say, Let's knock that fucker down also and get that eyesore out of the way. You know, you know who'd love this, my son, Todd. I'm going to save this and share opening this moment with my son, Todd, right, right? So the house has a real problem that night with the temperature change, which I, agree, is a callback to the original Amityville, right? It's and a couple of the legit sequels too, but this time, it's too hot instead of being too cold. So I was like, look at that. Look at that. I feel like the writer was talking to somebody. He's brainstorming. He's like, look, we know temperature changes happen in these movies, but what if, instead of being too cold, hold on, hear me out, they're too hot. Wow, yes, exactly. Okay, so anyhow, it's the haunted electric fireplace. I don't know if you guys have ever had an electric fireplace I have, and it is fucking impossible to get these things to put out any kind of heat, much less too much heat. They're fucking worthless. Yeah, they usually have to have, like a blow system that, you know, it's covered behind glass, and then it blows. The they certainly blow. Also, while this is happening, the, this is what, this is what makes these movies so fucking difficult, because you're like, all of these demons are clearly just fucking assholes, because all they do is asshole shit like the truck in the garage moves forward and runs over the little girl's bike. And you're like, Okay, this is an inconvenience. But if we were to extrapolate this out and say, This is a demonic force doing this, you're like, Well, what is He? Is he just a secret asshole or something? Why is he doing stuff like this? Shots great, because it just slowly in camera, just like at a snail's pace, and he's just like, fuck that bike and fuck your birthday, right? I got something for you. I mean, I understand how storytelling works, and you have to ratchet it up. But as the writer, you should be going, what if, after they've seen the movie, they look at the stuff I've written and they actually decide to say, Well, why would, now that we've seen these three demons at the end spoiler, why would these guys put this truck into gear to run over her bike? Okay, I've just answered my own question this. This is how the Amityville dollhouse gets put into play, because the gift, which is the bike for the girl's birthday gets destroyed, and they have to bring the dollhouse in as a impromptu gift. So, okay, you know what? I apologize. What was this guy's name? I don't know. Three times, and you just now realize that, who are we talking about? We talking about the father. Is that the. One second I was talking about the writer. I was talking about the writer, Joshua. Michael Stern, I feel bad for for, for second guessing his his reasoning here, but now it makes complete sense. Oh, good. So yeah, she gets the murder dollhouse as a gift also in this scene, in the same scene, it's intercut, but it's the same scene we get the the weirdo kid with the with his pet mouse, and he's kissing his mouse, and all I could think was, this kid definitely fucks that mouse. Oh, is he a future Jerry pentacle. Only time will tell. But Jimmy, by the way, that would be Jimmy, yeah, who is, is training for, like you said, a few features a serial killer. I just looked at, like, when he has the mouse and the maze. I'm like, Okay, this is Jigsaw's origin story. He's just working one day, you son of bitches, and he is killed. We're gonna find out that that mouse was a real asshole at some point, and he deserved all of this, but at this point, all we know is that Jimmy is definitely stroking that mouse and his cock at the same time I wrote, you just, I wrote a note, Jimmy is not winning any personality contest. Getting laid is not in his adult future. No, that was, that was my thought at a certain point in this movie, yeah, no, I don't know if you guys looked up his IMDB page, and I feel, I feel horrible Jared Lennon, but he grew up to look just like the adult you think that kid would grow up to look like? And it is. It's unfortunate sort of acting, though. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, he's got a career. I'm not saying anything like that, but here's the thing, the girl's birthday party starts, and the new aunt and uncle show up on a motorcycle, and we're gonna find out they're into some weird occult shit. Now you know that they're into orgies. They're into everything once we start figuring out what's going on with them. And I'm kind of into it, because she's kind of hot, and he is weird. Yeah, he's, he's one of the more interesting actors in the movie, too. And he's not saying, you know, we're talking degrees here, but in the franchise, Eric, the the he grabs the uncle, he grabs a wasp out of the air and holds it in his hand to tell the guy he's got wasps, and it is clearly not a wasp for two reasons. One, it doesn't sting the shit out of him. And B, it doesn't look like a fucking wasp. But I love that. He's just totally into it. And he's like, you know, flexing in front of his brother in law. And he's just like, he got wasps, yeah? For those following at home, this is the character named Tobias. Tobias. I actually wrote their damn names down so I could keep it straight. I've got Tobias listed at some point. Yeah, he kind of reminds me. Remember that, that dude that did, like, oh shit. I haven't hear someone in the notes. He was a naval Navy SEAL. Was like, he wrote The Autobiography Rogue Warrior. Oh, and he has, like, the slick back hair and the beard. I'm like, Yeah, whole time. Who's this fucking guy? Remind me of it's SEAL Team seance. It's like, this dude. I'm like, and he's looking, and the way he looks now he could probably still play that character, you know, writer show up. Oh, look at that. Wow. Not well, but yeah, he's got that nice little beard, framed goatee. Now, rogue, a cult warrior. You know what it's like when I rewatched it today because I wanted to be fresh in my head. I'm like, they're kind of like the warden stand ins, oh yeah. I hate myself, so I punished myself. I'm like, there was a moment at the party that I thought Amityville was going to come into it, because she opened the dollhouse gift and he kind of gives his wife. They give the aunt and uncle give each other a look. No, just no. It feels evil. Comes up later on. But I was like, oh, man, opportunity lost. Yeah, I've got in my notes here that the girl loves her dollhouse gift, but the new aunt and uncle are weirded out by it, almost like they already know something's wrong with it. Yeah, exactly. It says putting out a smoky, horrible smell, and then reveals a box of what looks like voodoo dolls. This reminded me. Eric of the the haunted cosmetic case I bought, you know, gave off the awful smell, yeah, and so I appreciated that. But this, this little trunk that they open like, Okay, this is clearly some satanic bullshit here. And anybody who opened this trunk and saw these little dolls in there would have immediately said, You know what, I already feel bad about giving you this gift, and I am taking it back, and I'm going to stop whatever is going to happen. But no, not, not this, Dad, this is also the party that the older son puts a fake spider into the pinata in the hopes of freaking out the younger son, Jimmy. And of course, when it gets broken, it ends up being a real tarantula, which is okay, because then Tobias squashes it under his foot and kicks it off the deck, and Jimmy kneecaps the older son with a baseball bat. What this? I don't I don't know that this this fucking movie. Look, if you're listening at home and you haven't watched this movie, it is as fucking bizarre as it sounds right now, watching this, I was like, there's already way too much happening in this film. Yeah, like you said, the kids aren't likable. They're pricks, and their pricks are 99% of the movie. This is the people we're supposed to supposed to worry about, what's going to happen to them. I'm like, what's going on? The only one who is likable is the youngest daughter. But I don't know if I've got this coming up now, but I'll just say this, everybody the the daughter is what? What what do you say? She is eight, nine years old? Yeah, probably so. So she's got the whole thing that happens in horror movies where it's like, we're not going to trust anything a kid says, right? But the aunt Tobias is wife and Bill's sister. She has actually, literally seen the house attack her and bloody her, and she's just like, Okay, do me a favor, little girl, write down some fucking notes. I don't mind that this house sits in the bedroom with you. Just take some notes on this fucking thing. And I'm totally fine with all of this happening. You think she could talk to her brother and say, Hey, there's some really serious shit going on here. Yeah, no, no, maybe put this back in the shed, right? Yeah. Am I going to be fine, auntie, you'll be you'll be good. Yeah, it'll be just write this down on the pen. It'll all be all right. That's right, right. Make sure you write this down, because if you die, I still need a record of what's happening in this so, yeah, so the daughter has gotten sick from breathing in the fumes of whatever is going on in the damn de vildo house. And this movie has some I write down here. This movie has some ideas, but they are really, dumb ideas. Yeah, so the aunt the uncle now they they come back to their occult bookshop, and that's when you're just like, Oh, all right, these people are into some freaky shit. I could hang with these people. They start doing some research on the dollhouse. But this kind of stuff is really stupid, but not unprecedented, because in the first movie, we've got the girlfriend of the business partner who is also psychic. So I'm just like, okay, they're pulling on stuff from the original movies, and I appreciate that. It's just, it's, listen, this may sound sexist, and anyone who knows me knows that I'm extremely sexist, but it's so much easier to take this bullshit from a woman than a dude, even a dude with a ponytail. It's, it's off putting when he starts saying, you know, yeah, yeah, there's some bad juju going on here, going on price. Buddy. Also. Listener, if you haven't listened to any of these episodes before you, you must know that I don't buy into much of this shit, if any of it. So, so when I see people buying into it, I automatically go, it's funny when they're in the shop and they're doing the thing where they've got the poppet or the doll in the middle, and yeah, shit starts moving around, yeah, and you see the wife get clocked on the head with, like, a Webster dictionary and a case. He's just kind of like looking at her like that looks like that hurts that. And then, like, five minutes later, honey, you okay. He doesn't even run. She just kind of like Shambles over, like, you're gonna make it. She's like, just get the out of here. Go take care of it. You're jumping ahead. But you're absolutely right. I'm just excited. This is a delicate story. It needs to be carefully massaged. Yeah, yeah, we haven't. We haven't gotten to the part where they perform a full on exorcism on the doll that the voodoo doll that the My apologies, listeners, I apologize. Right? Both you and Eric need to start showing some respect to this source material. I'll try. So the dollhouse seems to be somehow linked to this new house, and that the dollhouse window opens and a window in the new house then also suddenly opens. I kind of like this idea, but I don't think they do enough with it. And when I say that, what I mean is what they do with it is extremely stupid. The dad is yelling at the daughter about something, and she sees the dollhouse window fly open, and then the window next to the dad flies open, and suddenly all these leaves are coming in. But I don't know about you guys, we all looked at the same fucking house. They live in a desert. There's no trees anywhere for these leaves to start blowing in from true. So it's literally a dirt lot. It is a sand lot. It's, I mean, they're surrounded by a desert. Where are the neighbors? I don't I don't think there are names. Maybe they just the girlfriend of the of the Sun is in this I think she just squats in the woods. Honestly, I don't think she has a home because she gives a story later, not because I'm jumping ahead again. And she's like, Yeah, my parents don't give a shit about me. Yeah, just in the woods. She's dog Jimmy, or whatever that or whatever his name is. It's like, yeah. Later, yeah, Todd, give him respect what I'm going to say this about you. To Bronzo, we texted back and forth on various things. I know you're you're a Marvel Comics kid from the 80s, and what you're doing right now is called no prize work. You're trying to explain a fucked up situation that the writers didn't care enough about to explain, and I'm not going to let you get away with it. So how are we going to talk about the rest of the movie? Then, if we can't do that, well, let's just start with this, the youngest daughter, or the daughter is seeing that the house is starting to do stuff and seems to be totally fine with it. In fact, when everything happens like it shocks her, or something magical literally happens. The fireplace bursts into flame somehow in this dollhouse, you'd think that anybody would be like, Well, I don't know what would have burned in this dollhouse fireplace, but it's working. She's just like, she goes and sits on her bed and she's like, rule number one, don't do this with this dollhouse. I'm like, fucking throw a blanket over the dollhouse or anything, so that you don't have to deal with the dollhouse. They all do it, though. I'm not gonna get I don't want to jump ahead. But they all know, sell any weird shit that happens, just like, This can't be happening. Yeah, you know, completely normal. That's a really good point. That is something that doesn't happen in the Amityville Horror, the the shit that happens, they all kind of acknowledge that it happens, and we understand that they're they don't have anywhere to go if they leave this house. That's the whole idea is. That's what makes the original so shocking, is that they left after 29 days and left all of their worldly belongings in this house and everything in this one and this is part of my problem with this film. There's things happening to every single member of this family. Not one of them talks to each other about any of this stuff, and so there's no cohesiveness to this film. Yeah, the only time they come close to doing that is when mom and dad go on a date and they're out at dinner and they go, Oh, I haven't felt this normal in a long time. This is nice. I remember why we love each other, right? Apologies to Joshua. Michael Stern, I don't want to tell you how to write your scripts, and clearly you got a movie made and 10 others. But okay, so, yeah, okay, anyway, the boy's mouse dies. Max, yeah, Max the mouse, yeah, Max the mouse. It just dies big. This is, it's an accident, because now, God, this is where the movie all. Mouse gets interesting. The mouse gets into the dollhouse, and suddenly there's a gigantic mouse under the bed of the girl. And I was like, this is where we're gonna start seeing some cool shit happen. The older brother comes in Todd he accidentally knocks over the dollhouse, which kills the mouse somehow. And I'm like, this is a pretty fucking fragile mouse, but whatever, and that kills the gigantic mouse under the bed and dissolves it, I guess. But for a minute, I was like, man, if we could have got a gigantic mouse scene under the bed, that would have been pretty fucking great. What we did get was like a big, long rubber tail. And I would have been totally fine with seeing the rest of the big, long rubber mouse under there, but I was just like, Okay, now we're getting into something. Something goes into the dollhouse, and a bigger version of it goes, you know, this would have made that tarantula really fucking scary. At some point I get the budget of that and all that, and it's kind of like Jody the pig when he looks underneath. Yeah, two bike refund, just, but yeah, it was kind of like Jody, right, right. Christmas, ice. So, but what this does do is Jimmy, who's distraught over losing his only friend, Max the mouse, he goes back to his room, and that's when we are introduced to Jimmy's dead father. We get a zombie deadbeat dad in this movie, and I guess this. It sounds ridiculous. It's still the best part of the movie. This zombie showing up in this movie is absolutely the best part of this movie. It takes on a weird, creepy thing because he can. He continues to dissolve him fall apart further and further. As we see him, the makeup is the only good effect in the movie, yeah? Surprisingly well done. That's good. Makeup looks good. He's always on fire. It's like he's smoking, right? Yeah, well, but he's got, like a, he's got like a big bloody hole in the back of his head. And I was like, did the dad kill himself? I had to do research on the film to find out that the dad was military. Yeah. Oh, I couldn't tell that. Okay. I thought he was I never paid attention to but I was like, did he get shot in the head, or did he kill himself? It after four dozens, I still can't tell. Yeah, I would say he killed himself, because if he got shot in the back of the head, the front of his face wouldn't be there. Well, I don't know if he got shot in the back of the head or he put a, you know, a gun, yeah, no, I wouldn't think it was right, because that's what it looked like. But they never, they never go further into that. But that's sort of the point where we were talking about earlier. It's like, was this a script that they decided to move to Amityville, because the the dad, the living dad in Amityville history, should be the one losing his shit, but he's not. And this guy shows up to He's listed in IMDb as Jimmy's father. Not even a name, nope. You just gave me an excellent title for another short film though, Eric, The Return of the Living dad. Yeah, yeah. Put that together from clips from this movie. Sure. I have to, I have to just say though that this feels almost more like it could have been a house sequel instead of an Amityville, because all of those movies, they don't tie into each other either, but the dad has, like, one liners and weird jokes and stuff. And I was like, now all of a sudden, there's this weird, kind of humorous line going through the story, and I don't know I, I was like, you know, sitting up and finally paying attention to the film again. So I appreciate it. Yeah, it takes the movie, takes a while for you to get something where you're like, okay, like you said, you have my attention. Like, the first half hour kind of like, All right, yeah. Then he kind of shows up and he just like, not the best thing is, like, Jimmy doesn't sell that his dead, smoking zombie dad has magically appeared in his talking to him. He's like, Dad, what are you doing here? I've missed you. I. Doesn't creep him out at all. I'm like, Okay, I see a theme running through. People are used to this shit. But like, yeah, like you said, there's like he just as the movie progresses, he gets like, more jokes and does crazier shit, like the thumbs up when he's digging the grave for Bill, he just kind of does one of these up to the window. I'm like, All right, that's good. It's also one of the the coolest parts of the film, because I thought this had to all be in the kid's head. And then, you know, we, as we get into the third act, we find out that everybody has to deal with zombie deadbeat dad. Okay, so here's my notes here, we have to assume that the Amityville dollhouse has made this guy appear the dad, right? And by the way, he's got a big bloody hole in the back of his head, so I assume he's blown his brains out. But when you start thinking about how every item from this Amityville house is so much stronger than anything in the original Amityville house, it all starts to fall apart. Why is the dollhouse able to bring back the dead father? What is the tie to the dead father and this house and the dead Wasp, nope. And the dead, there's no, that's, there's yeah, there's no, like, rules. It's just Okay, we'll do this, right, like, you know, it's just kind of, this will look good. And he just kind of appears. Is it, you know, I couldn't figure out, is it the house feeding on the kid and creating a version of his dad, or is it really the spirit of his dad that's splitting hairs? But I'm like, Well, which one is it? So that that's already a better idea and would have been easily conveyed if we could have seen something else, like the kids fear of spiders, created this spider. That would have been interesting. We could have kind of played on that, and we could have centered this around Jimmy, but we don't do that at all. No, you know, there's some. There could have been some really good ideas in here, like fleshed out, and just, I don't know, it's just it, it's kind of, it kind of plays flat. Yeah, I guess it goes back. It goes back to it. Why is this an Amityville film? There's a lot in here. I think the house sequel's a great idea. It would have been really good in that universe would have been really good. It would have been much better, right? It would make more sense, definitely, right? It's interesting. You said that there were no rules the Bronzo because there are some films where there are no rules, and it's totally fine. Hellraiser. You know, the rules are just kind of fucking out the window, and you just go along with it because it's so stylistic and it it all just kind of winds up the way you think it should. But this director isn't strong enough, or something. I'm so curious about why this is his only directing. What like it feels like he had to take this. It's like, oh shit, I produced this, and I don't have a fucking director, so I guess I'm directing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with what you said. It's just like some things, the ambiguity, Oh God, I murdered that. But being ambiguous is not a bad thing if it works in the movie. You know, I don't need everything spelled out for me if it's catching my attention. And, you know, it makes sense and services the story. This is just, you know, let's throw this over here, and this is over that, and let's see what happens. And, yeah, I mean, we're comparing apples and oranges here. So right? And as I said, you in a in a text earlier, we have, we have put way more thought into this than anybody involved in this film has. Oh, yeah, true. So although I will say this, and I know that I'm always looking for symbolism and shit like this zombie dad makes some threatening remarks about Bill and how he's gonna kill him and all that stuff, and then decides to fuck off in the kid's closet. And I was just like, I would love to have seen some kind of gay subtext or something with him always being in the closet there and and I was just like, this is this is right here for all of us to figure out, and nobody did anything. I even had her note in here. It's like, it's okay if your dad comes out of the closet, kid. So it's not just me. No, you guys, we get to my favorite scene of the movie, which, of course, is the sex scene the parents. Fucking in the bedroom, and all of a sudden, for no reason, the wife starts having some kind of sexual fantasy about her stepson. I love that they have gone this way with the film. I don't know why I love weird sex, but I do, and this is so stupid it's uncomfortable in all the wrong reasons, like, if she could have, like, been envisioning that she was actually holding onto the sun in a scene or something. But no, she's looking at a photo of him on desk, and the photo keeps changing. At one point he's doing this in the Yeah, that was great. This is my favorite part of this movie. I actually started my balls off and rewound it. Yeah, first first round. Like, what fuck that you say? Yeah. It is so fucking bizarre. Now it is not unprecedented. We've seen some weird, incestuous stiff in Amityville. So I'm, I'm totally fine with that. And this is not even that bad. It's, it's, you know, a stepmother. And listen, if you guys get on the Pornhub, you're gonna find that is a very popular search right now. Not that I would know, but it's just so funny. The thing is, they they go, Listen, I don't want to tell Joshua. I don't want to tell Joshua Michael CERN how to write his movie, but, but she's gonna seem like this in your movie. You can't have her so disgusted by it that she stops having sex. If you want to put something uncomfortable like this in here, she has to climax. Thinking about this the I thought she did, did no bill. Oh, I thought she's right. No, I thought he said, What did I do wrong? Oh, I probably heard it wrong, man. I thought it was the other one. I think he said. I thought he said, right, too, like he'd been surprised. Okay, well, you know what? That's on me. Then I wanted it to be a little little grosser. I wanted to be made uncomfortable by this. And I wasn't. I was just like, you know, this is so silly that it's hard to feel grossed out by it. I say it also has the problem of they keep going to this well, of her looking at him and thinking about him, even to the point where she's like, Ooh, look at that sexy basketball roll on the bathroom floor. Sounds like this is too much. All the interesting shit you guys did, like the mouse. Go further with that one. This thing, I know, doesn't cost any budget to do this too long, but it was like, like you, you nailed it fairly well, though, with her still trying to battle, is she really being taken over and being attracted to him? Because then she shouldn't give a shit about being attracted to him, right? Or, you know, it's just it, yeah, it didn't. There's too much and not enough time. Yeah, too much. Is Amityville, too the sister gets naked, and we find out they're fucking. That is so uncomfortable. This is laughable the way it's shot, and it's just, you know, it's Steve White is not a very good director. I mean, that's the that's the real reason he's got one directing credit. The question isn't, why didn't he direct more? It's, why did he direct this? We need to find out why he was stuck directing this, because that's clearly not what he wanted to do. I wonder, did they do it for for the laughs, or was it supposed to be taken seriously when she's looking at the picture? It had to be that 10. That picture has to be for the laughs. I missed it the first time when I watched it today. I'm like, Oh, he's got this going on, yes. And for anybody at home that hasn't seen this, it's like there's a It's not like a picture, like of him in, I don't know, graduating high school or anything like that. He's shirtless on a beach or some shit like that. And for the first three times she looks over, because he keeps coming back and forth. It's just like he's got this big, stupid smile. This chest is pumped out, and he's getting closer as a big grin. It just goes from all that to it looks like, I don't know what the fuck you described that, like the eyes are rolled back, and it's just so weird, creepy. I'm like, this. This is ridiculous. This. I would say the problem is this kid, he actually looks like. A teenager, kid, you know, if this movie was made right now, this actor would have a ridiculous six pack and all that stuff. But I would have, I would have made that picture a lot more uncomfortable in that it goes down and he's got those weird fucking V muscles that Brad Pitt has, the the fuck muscles right above your dick. You know, I don't have those. No, no man I know has those, but I do understand that they exist. If you work out a lot, but it would, I would admit it, so that the kid was somehow sexy in that picture, so that you could understand that, yeah, okay, she's getting into this. But it's almost like is she just into fucking bros. Yeah, Bill, my favorite scene in the movie, and I love where they've gone with it. Yeah. So my notes here, that's going to be a recurring theme through the rest of the film, is her bumping into the stepson of various moments and checking him out and feeling weird about it. It never goes as far as it should, which should be either her coming on to him and him being horrified, or worse, her coming on to him and him being totally into it. So because neither of those happens, it's a useless supplier. So instead, the kid's girlfriend shows up. They sneak into the shed to drink and fuck around. But what they find out is a news clipping of the original house that sat in this space, and that house burned down, and the House that the dad is built is built on the original foundation. I kind of like this idea. You can get away with a lot. You can build a basic an entirely new house, as long as you keep the real foundation, and you can call it a remodel, at least here in Washington. I don't know if that's the same everywhere, but it cuts down on all sorts of expenses and permits. The thing is, if you look at this critically. You're like, what fucking permit would he need in the fucking desert? He's nowhere near a property line of any kind that we can see. There's no fences. There's nothing around this fucking house. So why wouldn't you just start you know, completely fresh. What that gives us, though, is a reason for this place to be haunted. So something happened in this place, and people died in the area. But why is the Amityville dollhouse there no idea. Why are there wasps and weird Wasp monsters in this why has this haunting taken the shape that it has, yeah, that is a good point, because it's Yeah. Let me think about that. Because that the house, there was the deaths in it, and I guess so no one jump ahead, but I don't know. I'm gonna let that go. Let me let that gestate. Well, yeah, wasps become a big thing because the next thing we get is a monster Wasp creature that attacks them while they're having sex in the shed, and it actually crawls into the boys here at one point. And and you said Toothless the Bronzo. And I have to absolutely agree, because nobody dies in this fucking movie, right? No. Well, inconvenience, none of the families. Spoiler, spoiler. Tobias sacrifices himself. But it would have been great to see the Wasp crawl through this boy's ear and then come out on the other side Star Trek two, or, you know, something like that style. But no, he crawls into the boy's ear. Maybe stings him. We don't know the mom and dad show up and they pour booze in the air. And I was like, does that work? I don't know if that works or not, but they pull out a pretty disgusting looking Wasp creature out of his ear. That was weird. I just want to find out, yeah, I just want to point out that bill, the guy that pours that into his son's ear, is also the guy in the beginning of the movie that is having trouble with the electricity, and his solution is take a big piece of metal and jam it into the box repeatedly. I question his credentials. It's a good point. It's a good point. I have to stop right now, though, because I just realized that we have a couple of friends in Nick gucker and Rick Tillman who had a band called Brain Hornet. And this made me think of this. I would love to have found out that the the wasps crawled in his ear and stung his brain. I don't know if that's possible, but it sounds amazing, doesn't it? And way better than anything else in this fucking movie. Okay, the. Dad has this weird dream of a red haired kid pounding spikes into his feet. And I suppose we are to infer that this kid is one of the people who was killed in the original house fire. Why is he pounding spikes into the dad's feet? Also, why does the devil show up in this house fire? I'm not sure the writer knows why those things happened. They just did. I know, pounding shit through your feet sounds painful. Let's do that. Was it religious symbolism? Was it supposed to be that it just, it's odd, just, or, or, I mean, I do like to, I do like to kind of examine dreams and everything and and somebody pounding something in your feet, you know, means that you can't move. Right? This is symbolism for and it usually means that you've, you've you've tucked yourself a little tight into the the bed, and so this is how it's coming out in your dream. But it's also symbolism for you feel like you're not moving. We find out the bill has been in a house fire. And I'm just like, okay, am I supposed to then infer that the this house that he's built on was the house that he was a kid in that was on fire? It's not clearly, but why is it brought up? Why is it connected? Who's he wasn't in the house fire, though, his family all died in a house fire. He had a dream that it was gonna happen, then at school the next day it happened. Yeah, right, and his sister apparently lived. Yeah, they they knew about it, because when the two go in to before the Wasp attacks him, she sees it on, pinned on the wall, and she goes, Oh, you built the house on this and whatever's name, I can't remember his name. He says, Yeah, yeah, got it for cheap. So if you if that bothered you, and traumatically, why would you build a house on a place where it burnt down? That's why I'm assuming it is not that house. His name is Todd, by the way. I'm sorry, right? And I will say this. This goes back to the the girlfriend who lives in the neighborhood is like, Oh, you built this house on this property that burned down. And it's like, yeah, don't you live here. You didn't know about this house burning down, and you didn't see us building this fucking house on this property. How are we seeing each other? Where did we meet? I don't need an origin story, but I'd like to know how the fuck he had a girlfriend before he moved into the neighborhood, same school district. Yeah, maybe she saw Bill putting this together and go, if I date this kid? Plumbing, indoor plumbing. Man. So good. Good point. Good point. Okay, so then the woo woo aunt shows up again. The daughter talks to her about all the magical things that the dollhouse is doing, and the aunt suggests that they get the dollhouse out of her room, and the dollhouse literally physically attacks her and bloodies her cheek, and that's her response is to tell the daughter, hey, just make a list of this stuff that this house is doing. If it attacks you, perhaps and bloodies, you just write that down. I'm not concerned with actually keeping you out of danger or anything like that. What aunt wouldn't go, Hey, how would you like to come and stay at my house for a week now that I've found out that your dollhouse is the literal incarnate of evil. You know, my brother has, like, some axes or big hammers I could borrow real quick, right? Let's just destroy the fuck out of this dollhouse right here in your bedroom. And if your dad comes in and says, What the fuck we'll go, Oh, we're fucking around. Nothing like that. She gets bloodied by this house, leaves her niece in the room with the house. Wouldn't you think she would if she was like, alright, the reason she's not telling them because she thinks that they're gonna think she's full of shit. Wouldn't she just go up to her brother and go, Hey, you know, say anything weird going on lately, like just anything, you know, just give me a line so it all makes sense, you know, but we don't get that. It's just like you said, just like you're on your own kid. Just write it down, even, or even, just walk out of the room and the brother go, the hell happened to your face? And she could go, Well, I tried to close the dollhouse, and it cut me. It fucking cut me because it is possessed by some kind of evil or or something. And then you bring the dad in, and you say, Oh, if you don't believe me, now, you try and move it. And. If it cuts him, then we can all just go, Okay, are we on the same page that this thing needs to go or something? There's nobody acts the way they should in this movie. I understand this a trope in every horror film, but at least in this franchise, in the Amityville original, they were stuck there. There's just no reason for them all to be going through this shit, especially when we find out they have family who lives in some place close enough that they could all just go, Hey, how about we just crash at their place until we figure this shit out? It's just infuriating to me, and I don't want to tell Joshua Michael CERN, how to write a script, but you got to think about this. What you going to do? Man, he was, Well, I'll tell you what the aunt does. She goes back to the bookstore, and she's stolen one of the booty dolls from dollhouse. And here's where we get to the bronzos Exorcism scene of they're going to exercise this voodoo doll, which sits up and shit starts happening. I was reminded of the Buffy episode with the actual size demon. Yes. Well, that's funny, because finally, after all the stuff that you talked about, the Bronzo with the the book smacking her in the head, and then the entire fucking bookshelf, it was just like one book, not enough to keep you down. Well, how about all our books, but her, well, Tobias, I don't want to just say her husband, Tobias, who carries, apparently, a Rambo bowie knife on his person, and she's this, and then fuck out of this movie doll, which bleeds all over the place and then produces A demon Wasp out of its body. I'm just like, I fucking love this, except why? What's, what's the Wasp connection? It's, it's, maybe they're writing it, making changes as they went along, like we got this one scene where the loss is going to come back alive. Let's do that shit again. We'll put it in the doll. I don't know. I don't I don't know if we're looking for things that are just simply not. We're not there during the creation of this movie. Well, as as horror fans, I do see, you know, correlation in everything that's also a big horror thing. And obviously in the shining, which is a haunted house story, there's a big Wasp scene. And I wonder if Joshua Michael Stern was a big fan of The Shining, and he was just like, I gotta have wasps in this or something like that, because otherwise it makes no fucking sense. The original movie has flies. All of the stuff with a wasp could have been done with flies and would have tied into the original movie. He could have stabbed the fuck out of that doll, and flies could have come out. The flies could have burrowed into the kids ear, and, you know, done something there. It's not like the wasps were running around stinging people or anything like that. No, in fact, these two scenes, they're not mentioned again, yeah. Oh, well, it's just, it's just disjointed. It's just, it matter. I don't have an explanation. I'm just going with it. That's okay. We get to the the other scene where the mom, Eric, you were talking about the mom coming home, and she's fantasizing and masturbating in front of the mirror, and she's fantasizing. The teenage son is behind her, and then the husband comes home. She comes and takes advantage of him. This is where she freaks out. She's looking at the picture again, and she doesn't have an orgasm. And I guess that's where he's like, what's going on here? The thing is, when you do that, then you've now told us that, as you guys said, he said, What did I do? Right in that first scene, right? That lays a foundation, right? If I please my woman, and she says. And then I say, What did I do? Right? That suggests that that has not been the common thing, right? Yes. So then you're like, okay, they're having some kind of sexual issues or something. She gets off on the boy. Why doesn't she get off on the boy? This time? She. Looking at the picture, and she she fights it this time. Dinner made her better. I don't know, I want this, yeah, I want this to turn way more disgusting. You know, if they're gonna bring this kind of storyline in, I'm just like, you can't just kind of half ass this kind of incestual storyline. If you're gonna bring this in, it's gotta be fucking horrific. It's like Amityville too light. It's, it's like, it's like Amityville too late. Yeah. I mean, you get parts where, like, you see the the daughter in the fireplace, like Lutz salt DeFeo. There's like, I just, I think there was a hat and there was ideas in it. Everybody put your idea. We're going to pull one out today. Let's shoot that. That's my best guess for Joshua. Michael stern wasn't on the page. It was in the it was up here in the head. I wrote it down this time. Thank you. Also, the fantasy scene of her standing in front of the mirror. Now, I did watch this four times. Eric, you might not have noticed this, the Bronzo. You might have noticed this, but I noticed this. It is so strangely shot, where it's a close up of her breast being fondled, or a close up of her hand going down her pants that it absolutely looks like they must have used a body double for this. But why? Because nothing is shown. It's so poor shot. It's really just bad filmmaking. Her hand was so weird when she was between on the bra and the boot. I thought she was gonna I thought it was going to be like, her hand went into her chest or something weirdenberg style, yeah, but yeah, that yeah, thing we get is that her belly button is not very attractive. And I was like, listen, let's not show this scene. It's not flattering to you. She's a very pretty woman. Doesn't do anything for the movie, so absolutely not just roll that basketball again. Yes, Lord, how long am I going to talk about this? I'm so tired, I think you can skip through some man. It's all valuable in its own way, but let's go to the welcome mat to hell. The boyfriend sneaks his girlfriend into the house, and Jimmy discovers that his zombie dad is digging the grave in the backyard, presumably for Bill, and the zombie dad is probably the stupidest plot line in this movie, but still the best spot, yeah, absolutely. It kept giving me moments of, Oh, am I going to start to like this as a stupid kind of humorous movie? And then they it's going to let it drop. It's totally a house sub block. Oh, god yes. So it should have been, yeah. House movie, The girlfriend turns on the fireplace and then gets hypnotized by it, and that's when the fireplace attacks. Meanwhile, listen to this. You guys. Todd is how old do we think the older son is? Is he 17? Is he 18? Is he out of school? Is he 21 I don't think he's 21 right? No, he's, because at one point doesn't he say She just got her license, or he did. So he's got to be like, 1617, I would say, Yeah, all right. And she's right around that age. She tells him, you know, yeah, let's make some booze. And he goes into the kitchen to make. What? A vodka soda? Eric, no, a a bourbon and seven up the bronzer. No, all the things that you would make when you're a kid because you don't know how to make a drink. What does he make? He makes a fucking Margarita. Yeah, a super blended Margarita. He blends the margarita, he lines, he rims it, he's salting it. I was like, this kid went to bartending school or something nice going on. You got nothing to do in the middle of the desert, so you're gonna learn how to do your margaritas. This kid's first rodeo when, when I was a kid, we mixed vodka and seven up, or bourbon and seven up, or every kind of alcohol and seven up. But nobody ever once said to me at any of the underage parties I went to Margarita he's literally cut lime wedges, and he's rimming the edges of the glass. I'm like, What is going on with this movie? And because the blender is on high, he can't hear that. His girlfriend's head is caught on fire, yeah, screaming, screaming at the end. She's screaming at the top or long. He's just, yeah, it's a blender, not a 747, engine, right, right, but bloody murder in the room next door. And he's just like, what's that? I'll be there in a minute. And then he comes out with the drinks too. That was fantastic. That's the only, that's the only, that's the only thing that says her, because her head is on fire. He dumps the margarita on her. And I'm like, Okay, well, still that could have been any alcohol. And even though she survives, we do get a pretty brutal burn effect. And I was like, that's good. That's good. There were a lot of good makeup effects in this film, yeah. But this is the one thing where I start going. This is almost like a kids movie, because everything that's happening is happening to the underage kids in this film. And it's just like, you know what the fuck is going on until Right, right. Let's see. I'll skip ahead. The hauntings continue at the house with Jimmy's dad showing up again. He's definitely the high point of the movie. His makeup continues to deteriorate as he zombifies even further. But the weird thing about this movie is there's all these things happening to everybody in the house. Nobody's talking about it to each other, so none of it feels like it's connected. Probably because, and I don't want to tell Joshua Michael stern how to write a script, but if, if you have all these things happening and nobody says anything to each other, that's the only way you can justify the fact that they wouldn't all just go, Wait a second. It must be the house. Why are we all having the worst fucking things happen in the world to us, especially if the kid is just like, oh yeah. Also, dad is back. But I have something to tell you, right? It's like I said earlier, nobody sells the crazy shit that they see. It's just like they just saw a cat run by them. It's just like, dead dad's upstairs. What's amazing, they all seem pretty okay with all the adjusted. Yeah, not well adjusted, actually. Michael, I don't know what's going on in your life, that you think that's well. So the surprising scene is when Jimmy's dead, Dad attacks the family. I thought for sure that it was all in his head, but he's live in the flesh, and he's out to get everyone, I guess. And the dollhouse finally reveals its final plan by spinning in place in a very unterrifying way, and turning all of the doorknobs in the house into upside down crosses. Yes, subtle. Also, also, at some point, do you go, Okay, this is unusual, but I can still turn this fucking knob and get out of here. It's, it's boring. That's a bridge too far there. I love that they that the way you deal with the undead in this movie is fisticuffs. Oh for sure. Literally, Bill just hauls off and socks him with the special the sound effect you've heard on like, TJ hooker, you know, the same fist. And I'm like, they're gonna have smack. You're gonna have a fist fight, dead dad and fucking build the build the builder. And then, well, this is amazing, and Bill has teamed up with Tobias, and there is somehow a a life size, or not life size, a bigger voodoo doll that Jimmy gets a hold of, and by throwing that into the fireplace, Jimmy is able to destroy the zombie father. What that doll has to do with the zombie father is never explained, nor do I even want it. At this point, I'm I'm so tired of this movie. I just don't get anything that goes on. And I'm quite frankly offended that Eric all the scripts that we tried to get funded, and they were able to get this I would have turned any one of the vampire films or werewolf films I had made into an Amityville film, if it meant we could have made it so the parents, with the help of Tobias, gathered the kids, and we come to find out that the fireplace is some kind of portal into the demon world. You know what it is I said earlier, you know what is? It's the welcome mat to hell. Oh, okay, that's I thought you were gonna say, actually said in the movie? Yes, I thought you were gonna say it's like a Hot Tub Time Machine. Bill finds himself in the dollhouse, I guess, and we get some laughably bad rubber soup monsters coming out. After them. Finally, Tobias sacrifice to themselves so they can escape it and Bill Burns. See how many go dollhouse, which, of course, makes the real house explode. For some reason this movie is absolutely bonkers. It makes zero sense. Final notes, do we like this movie? Well, the end had some wonderful, cheesy finishing lines that just went, yeah, there were parts of it I found extremely amusing. Okay, as a whole, what I asked you did I would I go back and watch the movie a third time? I'm not quite sure I'm gonna go that route two times. I got some good laughs. And, you know, but the horror aspect of it does not there is a rift tracks version. Oh, have you watched it? I just saw they had that that would require us watching it one more time. And, yeah, I did have a weird little note about a making of thing. That scene, the 360 scene at the breakfast table, yeah, which was uncomfortably small looking. You know that that needed a much wider angle, but it was actually they cut a hole in a table, right? And the DP sat in the middle of it and twisted himself up in the wire. So much they only do, like, two takes before they had to tear it all apart. Like, you know, that sounds really cool. I read that before I saw the scene going, Oh, that sounds interesting. Let's watch. Yeah, yeah. It's a done without that. It's a poor man's version of the scene that happened in every episode of that 70 show while they were getting stoned in the basement. Yeah, and it doesn't, it doesn't work nearly as well. I gotta say, this is one of the first films that I would say I'd much rather watch the original Amityville Horror than this movie. Again, this movie is just so boring. Yeah, I is so bland. I just, I can't get into it. But I do have, I do have a few bits of trivia here. So, yeah, the film had a theatrical release in France, but I couldn't find any box office numbers for it was big in France. Okay, sorry, yes, we're big in Europe. Man, uh, Director Steve White explains the movie is not meant to take place on the grounds of the original house in Amityville. The only connection is that the dollhouse replica of the house had presumably been in the home in Amityville at some point and was infested with its evil though he admits this was not explained in the film itself. Yep, never even mentioned. Nobody says Amityville at any point. Yeah, not one goddamn time, according to Steve White Clayton Murray, who is the zombie dad, remained in character as the undead specter of Jimmy's father. Whenever he had the makeup on, even when the cameras were not rolling, he would crack various dark jokes around the set and what compared him to an early version of Deadpool. Can we see that? Yeah, absolutely. I know that. I know, yeah. I mean, yeah, I do want to say prove it. There's a vinegar syndrome release of these last four Amityville movies. You know, that's an extra on this one that could be worth checking out. Not to disagree, I disagree. He went full. Daniel Day Lewis for Amityville dollhouse. That's commitment, yeah. So, so at the very end, you know, we get that weird scene in the dollhouse with the with the three demons, the three rubber suited demons there and here. In the trivia, I found the trio of demons in the climax were made by mixing and matching various pieces of props, costumes and makeup that soda FX had already created for earlier projects and still had lying around. Excuse me, due to the budgetary constraints, the original plan had been to simply use static cardboard cutouts shot in silhouette. Sure which I'm trying to figure out which one would have worked better. Well, here's the thing, the end of The Exorcist almost does that with Pazuzu, right? We just get that static shot of him and the light coming through and all that. And that's way creepier than these goblin thingies we saw kind of coming towards. Camera. So, yeah, I think that they made the wrong choice on this. But you had the cool laser fog light in that scene too. You know, the protective barrier. Yeah, that was amazing, worth the crap The Dark Side of the Moon, though I wrote that down. I'm like, Just fucking lasers, but the Dark Side of the Moon, and why did sobius not leave. They're like, come with this, no, and just stays and dies needlessly. You can just walk through the door, through the protective barrier too. They kill him through the protective barrier. I will put this out here. I think that maybe the reason his character had to die was so that there was one death scene in this which otherwise perfect sense, no death sin. It is very weird to have an Amityville named movie where the entire family lives. The family generally lives, but usually other people die, you know? And even in the first one, it's, it's the DeFeo family, you get that opening scene. So, yeah, you're right. I have, I have one last piece of trivia here, and it's my favorite. The film was featured in the 2010 book. And I love this title, 100 movies you should die before you see in which reviewer, Steve Miller wrote, don't bother asking why someone built a dollhouse replica of a place on Long Island, and don't ask how it ended up in a shack in the desert or how it became filled with evil. The writer and director barely gave any thought to the subject. The film is rendered even less scary by the fact that no one seems particularly distressed by the weird developments. That sounds like a recreated book. It does sound like a great book, doesn't it? We should probably get that one. Yeah, this one was just a look. All of these films have kind of been a slog to get through, but this one was harder for me than all of the others, even that shitty Canadian one, that shitty Canadian one, had actors that I could get angry at and scenes this was so fucking bland that I was just like, oh God. You know, it's no wonder that they took a 10 year break. This is how they went out. You gotta do, I don't know. It's like you guys said before, once you get past the first three, you know. It's, well, they're there, you know. So the problem is, they went down this road of, okay, this is what the franchise is. Now. It's items from the house, I guess, and right? And then you get further and further away from the source material. But there are all sorts of things. And I brought it up on all the other episodes that would have made so much more interesting films, like we got that hint of the the priest being possessed by the demon at the end of the possession. That story, following that story, would have been way cooler than anything we've seen. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess if you had to come up with an idea, like you said to okay, we're going to make more movies. We want to milk it as much as we can, I would have went the route that. It just wasn't that house in Amityville. There's something in Amityville. So at least you could come up with, you know, it's sure, yeah, maybe makes sense. Just anything. You could just move it out from, okay, we're stuck shooting in this one house all the time, so at least, like one or two movies. One of the things that drew me to the Amityville Horror as an adult was realizing this is this title. Is a rip off on Lovecraft stories, right? It's the, it sounds like a Lovecraft title, right? The Amityville Horror, the doom that came to Sarnath, that all that stuff, and you just hit on a brilliant idea, yes, let's make it witch haunted Amityville, or something like that, and that the town is the problem. It's not the house. And yeah, you could have, you could have done anything. Then with this hell, we could all we've brainstormed this far better than anybody else has in this franchise. We could do something like this. And you know, all of these titles that we're going to be eventually getting to Amityville, ripper and all of this stuff that actually makes sense if the town is first, yeah, yeah. Be interesting to see if somebody does that, some version of that. But I have my doubts. Yeah. Yeah, let's see final notes on this. Well, you know what I like to ask people, and you've kind of hinted at this to Bronzo, but Are you a believer? Have you? Have you experienced anything? And you said you were raised Catholic, so are you still Catholic? I'm basically, I didn't mean that to come out as snarky as it did. I sure did. Are you still a believer? I'm agnostic. I I want to believe that. I can't answer if there's something more, I'd like there to be something more. But, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm not religious. So what was the other part of the question? I'm blank, but no, it was, it was just that is, if you've experienced anything that, no, yeah, I know, yeah, I have the only, I mean, a couple times I got freaked out, but I think it was more my imagination than anything. Oh, and not really, you know, nothing like, what about you guys? Anything? Nothing. Yeah, I've got some weird shit, but I'm, I'm of the mind that I can talk myself out of anything weird that has happened and just go, Oh, something else was happening that night. Yeah, yeah. And that I also don't want to believe. Oh, I want to, I think it'd be great. Dina is very annoyed whenever she says something about ghosts. I'm like, wouldn't that be cool? No, cool. It's like, I think it'd be kind of fun. Here's our pros and here's our cons for that. Exactly, yes, well, the Bronzo, I can't thank you enough for joining us on this cinematic journey. Can you this has been my pleasure. Can you give yourself a plug on where people can find you? If you want them to find you, the only place you can really find me is, like I said earlier, look the Lovecraft easine. We're on Sundays live at six o'clock, or you could find us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, that's pretty much it, I gotta say, big, huge. Thanks to you. Not only have you been a supporter of my stuff with the with the serialized novel, but you were the first person to sign up for the serialized novel, of which the full novel is coming out shortly, by the time this releases, may already be out, who knows, but I've got a novel called The secret language of spiders coming out, and you can find all sorts of other information about me on written by kl young.com plus I do a weekly Podcast with Eric Margaret and Vanessa Williams, called strange eons radio. Yes, debranzo shows up on our strange eons radio Facebook page occasionally as well. Yes, I do. We do. I do have a short film that's going to hopefully start making the rounds. Started submitting it to some festivals and or our screening, or screened at bone bath was our world premiere. Who knows when, but it was a fun time had by all. Of course, we will just assume so. And Erica, you've got cryptocon coming up next month as we record this, which might be in the past, as it gets played. Well, yeah, I would think so, yeah, because that's only a few weeks away, and that's, that's a good point, and it's, it's a marathon for me right now for the next few weeks. So, yeah, crazy. Well, the next episode of this is going to be the Ryan Reynolds remake. So they the franchise takes a nine year break and then comes back with an interesting film. That's an interesting aspect for me is because when I first saw it, I really didn't like Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, I've now become quite a fan of Ryan Reynolds, so I'm curious if that's going to have any impact. Interesting. It's a good point. Well, I guess we will find out in 180 short days, or however long it takes for us to get to that film. Sounds good. Okay, so that's it. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Debra, thank you so much. I know that you're three hours ahead, four hours I had a bliss. Thank you so much for having me on absolutely and also, you know the. By accepting one invitation. Now you're roped into the regulars, so you've got some real shit coming ahead of you. Oh, bring it on. All right. All right. Thanks, brother. Thanks, everybody and guys on a regular strange radio upsets played George in the movie, and you did research this and worked on it and so forth. You smiled. Do you believe them? Do I yeah, when I'm sitting here with them? Yes, I do. And I've watched George and I've watched, you know you've been an actor David, and you kind of know how to watch for telltale signs when you're doing research and watching to people, and we also, well, you get an insight. And I, I can't say that, looking over the story, I believe the book as it's presented totally but sitting with his people, it's, it's hard to deny a lot of the facts, to give up a lot of money that he would make on the book. You know what I mean, why don't you keep up working on this? If it was terrifying and not not a pleasant experience, why do you why don't you just leave it behind you and forget it. Then move on to other things, the Amityville Horror, position 3d, saddle, harvest, you.