296 Pizza is You

296 PIZZA IS YOU!

Vanessa never disappoints, and the gang talks about the passing of Tony Todd before getting into their picks for NoTohovember.

Also discussed: DRACULA magazine, Red Rooms, Arcane.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

It's one of my favorite beers. It's from MC minimons. Oh, sure, I like MC minimons. I don't I'm also not much of a beer drinker. But what kind of beer is it? Is it like IPA or Ruby Ale, which is generally there, if you've seen them, they're kind of reddish, usually, and it's got a little bit of a sweetness to him. Oh, I have never heard of that. Wow, cool. It's, uh, Dina's favorite, nice, favorite beer, period. I was always, like, a really wussy beer drinker, because I just drank, like watered down, like Corona or like the what's the one with H high, whatever, Heineken, that shit just like this blue ribbon. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration? Somewhere between science and superstition. We have such sites to show you strange eons. Welcome to strangeeons radio. That is Eric over there somewhere. Hello, and that is Vanessa over there somewhere. Hello, and I am Kelly. You guys were zooming again, but maybe this will be the last one for a little bit. I know that we're planning on getting together in person next time. Right? Think we have one more. Hi, Master, everybody, just cancel everything. I said radio, we're zooming for another couple episodes. You guys, we lost a titan in the horror world. Yeah. Tony Todd passed away, probably most famous for Candyman movies. I know that he was a guest at cryptocom, but shocker, I was probably in the bar any chance that I could have met him at but I wonder if you guys had a chance to talk with him at all. Oh, yeah, I had that first one. You know, it's kind of a show that's nobody knew what anybody was doing. So I ended up being like, he was late, and I had to run down and get him and bring him up to the room. Oh, he was actually cool, kind of intense for that, but in the right way though. You know, it was like, I should be on time, but I can't believe I'm not going to be on time for this and all that stuff. And really neat guy came up. We had him several times. He's one of what I would call the grand masters of doing conventions. Yeah, there's his setup was great. And the way he you could see everything easily had, like racks and stuff, and then his interactions with people was, were always amazing. There's some great photos of him on the crypto con Seattle page where he's like, messing with somebody in a Xenomorph costume and a few other good things. So he was, yeah, he was a great guest. Really cool. Yeah, Cracker I was lucky enough to also, well, technically, I didn't meet him pizza. Met him, yes, of course, so, and they had a nice, long conversation about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because he saw pizza, and he was immediately like, Ninja Turtles. And then he told me, like, a really weird story about how he was almost cast as Shredder, but not it was, he was, like, angry, kind of like, angry about it. And I was like, okay, cool. So it was a strange interaction, but he was a really cool dude. Just it was really nice. He took a picture. I don't even think that I paid him or anything. He was just really nice and friendly and open. So Wasn't he in Star Trek as well? He was in a lot of Star Trek in several different roles. Yes, he was. He played multiple Klingons. He played somebody who I'm not going to spoil from Deep Space Nine. Yeah, he's, he's one of those guys that kept popping up the currently running Deep Space Nine. Hey, if somebody goes through Deep Space Nine, this is one of the top five episodes, and I do not want to ruin it, because it's a really good, really good up, very nice and candy man too, which we talked about on the show and I he was so good in it, like that was a weird movie, but he was so good. He's one of those presence actors, you know. Well, that voice, yeah. So. So, yeah, he will be missed. Also, very young. 69 seems way too young to be dying anymore. Yeah, I'm kidding. Do we know, especially as I creep closer to that, how many years no one can go anywhere? Oh, my God, please, please, please. Do we know what he passed away from? I did not see, yeah, haven't heard anything. So I'm guessing it's something simple, like a heart or stroke or something like something that's not going to get click headlines, right? Vanessa, can we talk about something even weirder to me, and that is you referring to pizza as they when pizza is, in fact, you wearing a pizza costume. Technically, pizza is not me. Pizza. Pizza her own entity. She has her own thing. She's a centine slice of pizza from a planet far, far away, called Pizza Planet, and she her mission is to spread the joy and love of pizza from planet to planet. She's a little bit zealot about it, but also very positive, wasn't it the Toy Story pizza place? I think it was first one. Yeah, I think it was weird. Maybe they got inspired by her story. No, look, I wasn't allowed to break through the character line for like, several years, so it's still in there. It's still in there for me. So was this not a character that you created? Yes, yeah. And she was actually going to be in a video game that I was writing at the time, which was part of it, and she had a whole segment of the game. And then she did end up as little characters and few other video games as like, yeah, as like, Kickstarter reward tier stuff, so you can select, like, a pizza costume and like a dinosaur video game and then super Tony land she's in that that's cool. Yeah, there's like, art of her out there that, like she's her own thing. Vanessa, you are a delight. I'm glad that's the word you went with Jake. Just endless amounts of of information. Whenever I say, hey, Vanessa, why don't you tell me about this? I am never disappointed. Layers, man, layers. I think it's because, you know, like, I don't tell everyone everything, because it's crazy. So you know, if you ask me something, I'll tell you it's often going to be weird. I love it. Speaking of weird Vanessa, I watched Agatha all along okay, while I thought that there were some nice moments in there. It is nowhere near my favorite of the group. It doesn't, it doesn't touch Loki. Really doesn't even touch Falcon in the Winter Soldier, if I'm being honest. But, but I thought it was much better than She Hulk, so I can never guess your taste. Kelly, every time I think I've got you pegged, nope, I just you throw me a curve ball. I really liked the couple reveals that we had in it, and it really brought the whole thing home for me. And it made it feel like some of the hokiness dissolved, because I was like, oh, everything has meaning and purpose, and I like where they'll go, and I like the characters. One of the reveals. Sorry Tom, but we're going to get into this. One of the reveals was interesting and made sense to me, and then I'm just going to come out and spoil this. So if you've been hanging on your seats for the last two weeks and you haven't finished Agatha all along, she dies at the end and in a sacrifice that kind of redeems her character, which is then thrown out the window because she returns as a ghost. That was weird as a as a ghost, I guess, helped this kid continue his quest. But I was like, All right, this is storytelling 101, the death means nothing if it's not really a death. Yeah, no, I didn't like that at all, and that was weird. But I like everything up until then, so it's horrible. Does everybody really die? Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to say that Eric is rubbing off on me, but please don't I'm I'm going to say, I don't want to say that Eric's rubbing one off on me. But I, I do agree with him that I'm just a little tired of this nonsense, I would like a return to something I don't I don't know exactly what, but there's literally 70 years of of comic book stories with all of these characters to pull from, and maybe they don't want to give those original writers any more royalty lawsuits and all out. But, I mean, at least we're going to jump into Fantastic Four pretty soon. So that's going to be refreshing, hopefully. And then, you know, DC is getting taken over for by James Gunn, as everybody knows, so maybe there will be some really cool surprises in there. It sounds like we've got some really interesting content coming from that. I hope. I hope so. I hope too. Deadpool and Wolverine, that was a hoot. Blessed, of course, yeah, I just would like to see. I don't, I don't know. I can only say that, you know, I like just about everybody in this series. And at the end of the series, I was like, this should have been much, much better, considering all of the talent involved. So, but I do appreciate Disney trying to do some spooky stuff around the spooky season. So, yeah, that was very nice. Thanks for like, the Watchtower episode, I I found things to like in every episode, okay, but, but for the most part, I was kind of like, I get it. I get it. Everybody's got a trial, I get it. Oh, my God. Well, if that's the hang up, I can't help you so well. Thank you for trying. Thank you for checking out. I'm I'm thrilled that you, you gave it a go. Are you? I am? What about So, yeah, speaking of stuff that we've watched, so arcane two came out, Arcane Season Two. Do you guys remember this? It's animated we all, we all loved it a lot. It's the animated series following, oh my God, what's the League of Legends characters, right? Oh yeah, I did like that one. Yeah, it's, it's cool. So yeah, I It's been a while since Season One ended. So they have a, like, five minute long recap thing, and I was still like, Man, I should have just re watched season one again. I don't remember squat of this, but saw the first few episodes. I think the first three are currently out on Netflix, and really solid, really good. I'm excited to see where they go with it. They are going to end it after this season, at least, this The Jinx and vive storyline, so interesting. What I recall about this is it had that really, really gorgeous animation, yes, yeah, that looked like, I don't even know what it looked like. It just looked so different. Yeah, it's like, not quite watercolor, but it's like, right? Yeah, it's not like traditional pen and ink either. So yeah, it's, it's very cool, looking arcane. That's on Netflix. Another one for Kelly to think moderately of, as I'm diving through all my catch ups, the Rings of Power. I'm seven episodes in one left, season one, or this new, season two, season toca. I only made it a couple episodes, so I'm curious the first three, maybe even four. Well, it's like reading the similar alien, really slow, fade, dry. Yeah, it's very dry, but it gets pretty good. The Seventh One has a really good battle, a lot of stuff going on. I like it. I partially because I like the world it inhabits. You know, I think overall, they've created a really good Middle Earth. So, like the first three, though you're right, man, I was like, Boy, oh no. I'm glad that you brought this up. I ended up really. Enjoying the second season by the end of it, but it was, it felt like a real effort. I think I sat on it for several weeks after it had ended, just because I was like, I guess I've got nothing else to do. I'll watch the last four episodes, and then those turned out to be pretty dang good. Yeah, it works a little easier the way I'm watching it. Because, you know, my all my spare time watching right now is the catch up stuff. So I've watched, like, all of them in about a week and a half or something, all the one so you don't have to sit there. And I did after the first couple I was like, maybe I'll watch. I did. I did go and watch Vox Machina in the middle of that. Like, okay, I go back, and I'm glad I did. It's, they're really looking forward to the last episode. That's, yeah, that's very heartening, because, yeah, I'm stuck somewhere on episode two or three, maybe three, and I'm just like, oh, we have to keep going. It does suffer a little bit from so many known characters, you know, like some shit goes wrong for Elrond. You're like, well, he's not gonna die. And ultimately, I know who's gonna win in this storyline. I think that is it. I think that is it, like knowing kind of where it's all going to end up, makes the stakes just not as high. So it's all the characters that I don't know anything about that I'm most interested in. They bring in some good, solid side drama stuff with this, like some stuff going on with the dwarves and the rings being introduced adds a lot to that of hell, because you don't really get the distribution of those in the modern movies, the Lord of the Rings series. So it's a sentence. They do a sentence the rings. It's funny. I'd for a minute. It's funny. You mentioned that because I then went and watched, I don't know why, but the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings, and then followed it with the rank and bass Return of the King. And the Bakshi, one does have kind of an extended, I don't know what kind of art you call that when it's just silhouettes, but they had an extended story where they were talking about the rings being distributed and everything and and saw on learning how to craft a ring and all that. And I was like, Oh, I guess they are kind of following this story pretty well in Rings of Power. Yeah, it's been a little bit since I read somewhere early on, it was not a stick with you kind of story. Yeah. Okay, let's see. Then. The other thing I want to talk about then, which is kind of groovy I came across. I was offered a well, as you can tell, I collect magazines, especially magazines from the 70s and 80s. And then something came floating across my email with a friend of ours, James Beach, who said, Kelly, would you be interested in Dracula magazine? Oh, and I was like, Dracula magazine, Tuma, Dracula. I've pretty much got all those. And he goes, No, no, Dracula magazine, 1971 British. And he starts sending me these pictures. And I was like, the fuck is this? And I was like, I don't even know what this is. Make me a very cool deal on it. And yes, I'll take him. So for 13 issues in 1971 there was something called Dracula magazine. But it is not about Dracula? Oh, the title of the magazine is Dracula, much like if I were to have a magazine called Planet Lovecraft, not necessarily everything Lovecraft in there, right? So, but this art is just spectacular and really cool, and it's, it's all different stories. It really made me want to, you know, I hate saying this, don't listen, Rick, it really made me want to get strangeeons magazine back up, because this is all just one artist doing all these different stories, and then they repeat, or they don't repeat. They continue through every issue, and it's got these gorgeous painted covers sometimes or sometimes same artist, these gorgeous comic book style covers. Oh, fun and, wow, yeah, I just, I just fell in love with this thing. I just like Dracula magazine from 1971 only 13 issues. I have them all amazing, and I can't wait to actually have a snowy day where I can light a fire and just be like, All right, everybody, fuck off. I'm I'm reading Dracula magazine all day. So live in the. So big thanks to James Beach, who is cleaning out, I guess, his father's garage. His father was big in the fandom, and so I have picked up an awful lot of magazines that I probably will never get the chance to read, but he's made me too good of a deal on all of them. So I don't know about collecting something you may never read or watch or whatever. What is that like? Yeah. Anyway, that was Dracula magazine. Awesome. Well, I have started watching penguin. I'm not all the way caught up, but I think I'm over halfway, probably, I don't know it's interesting, because I think I'm at the point now where I don't want penguin to win, because I like the female character more and like I just want to follow her story. She's way interesting. So I saw the episode that has her whole backstory and how she Yeah, and that's cool. That's so cool. And then I saw the episode after that, and so he's now got his he's just decided on his layer. So yeah, we'll see how the rest of this thing goes. But, yeah, it's interesting. I'm glad I've I'm glad I'm checking it out, because I was not excited about it at first. So nor I. I love it. I'm an episode behind right now. But clearly this story is penguin against her, and she's Carmine Falco's daughter, right? Yes, or is she the other one? Oh, shoot, Falco. I think Carmine Falco is the guy another family, yeah, who's been in prison. It's but it is. I am really loving how they're tying all of this stuff. If you're an old Batman reader, all of these things were in the old stories, but actually seeing them updated with a sopranos twist to it all has been really, really interesting. I've been kind of loving it. Is she in any of the previous like in the comics at all? She's in the comics, but yeah, that character that they were calling her Hangman, that was, that was her, but she was definitely a super villain in the comics. So I'm really loving it, Eric, you have started or not started, or that's next on my catch up list. Say they burn through the ones like Tulsa King. Now I'm waiting for the next episodes to come out. Yeah, lower decks. Waiting for the next one. Yes. Lower decks, yeah. So doing Ring of Power, and then I'm gonna do penguin. You're caught up on lower decks, yeah. This is not a show I watch, but somebody told me that there is a a, what would you call it? I guess, a deep dive, reference to the Micronauts in the last episode. Let me check, make sure I've watched all of them. I know they come out. Was there some kind of Saturday or Sunday microscopic planet or something that they dealt with, is a spaceship that shows up at the start of the episode. That's like, super teeny, teeny, tiny, yes, and it is called, huh? I'll have to check that again, man, I think I missed it. The name of the ship is supposedly the endeavor. So which is, of course, the micro dots ship. Oh, sure, that is what I've heard. Some of my some of my nerd friends, told me that that's what the name of the ship was. I wouldn't know that. Eric, yeah, that went right over my head. I was like, this is a reference to something, God knows what, the way the show works. Yeah, yeah. So I'm back to I've got a movie, red rooms here. It's a movie, I think it's British, about a model that's obsessed with a high profile murder trial. Large portion of it takes place in a well, it starts out taking place in a court, and they're her and a character who's kind of one of those people you read about that's like, obsessed with a certain serial killer or a certain person they think may or may not be guilty. And she go. They both go to the trial every day, and it's a rough watch, but it is a really, really done, well done film, and there's just Weird Darkness in the characters and courtrooms interesting because you. It's conducted very differently from a US court. So that's kind of neat, but highly recommended. This one's on Apple and Amazon, and it just is really, really smart and disturbing. It's called Red rooms. Yeah, and Brandon was that brand new or Yes, yes, this year. Okay, I'm not even heard of this one. Yeah, yeah. It's a little more probably, because it's, you know, born, not, not a US made. So I don't think it had any kind of a theatrical release or here or anything, right? Well, cool. Okay, how about we take a little break. I will look and see what I'm missing on the foreign TV series, and then when we come back, we are continuing with no tohovember, you row Rowan Kent sage inside the only defense against the invasion of the evil dynasty, this small band of freedom fighters summoned the Mysterious Samurai forces to power form into battle ready. Ronan warriors, encased in their incredible modular battle armor, really spray into power correlation, dealing the dynasty a crushing blow. Ronan warriors, you and we have returned. We are in no tohove Ember, which means we're still talking about Asian cinema, but it cannot be from Toho studios. So Eric, yes. How would you like to go first this time I will dive in with a truly bizarre one. Let me give you five minutes. Thank you. Perfect. 2000 and fives, strange circus. Doug yo I was So Bucha, story. You might recognize this one, Kelly, if you but well, this is another one of those zero ones on Rotten but the what's the popcorn meter has it at 80. Directed by, I believe Scion sono. Think that you say his name be directed tag. Oh, okay, and Tokyo vampire hotel, right? He also wrote this one. And I like I also like that. Why? Why don't you play in hell? That sounds like an interesting one starring Masumi Miyazaki, who is returned from a 10 year hiatus of films to do this movie, which kind of makes me judge her just a little. But she's in a promised place, a watcher in the attic, sensitive samurai. Oh is he Ishida, who's in Flowers for Algernon lipstick, which is a Japanese version of the that movie, that story, kind of curious there. So. Ri kuana, who is also in Tokyo vampire hotel and jellyfish. So movie starts out, and it's kind of a circus looking thing, but it's performed on a stage. I don't know if the Japanese do stages instead of tense or if that's just a choice they made because budget or something, but it's group of performers, and they have a guillotine, and they bring up this young girl, she looks like pre teen or very young teen, and ask her, are you afraid to die? As they put her in guillotine. So she's the main character of the movie, and kind of indicates not so much. So the next shot, they go into the school where she's kind of spacey, gets in a little bit of trouble for one of those, like, why are you sending her to or Why is she being called to the principal's office? Turns out the principal is her dad, and her dad is watching a porn movie on his wall. So it's like, oh God, where is this movie going? It's going darker. It's going so much darker. So apparently, principals are incredibly well played in Japan, because this guy's house is, Wow, it's huge. And him and his wife are enjoying each other's company. And the daughter accidentally comes in the or walks in the door, but immediately leaves, and the dad comes out and kind of looks for her like, what happened here? So what does he do as a punishment or something? He gets a cello case, drills a hole in it, puts his daughter in the cello and puts it at the foot of the bed of her parents bed. Oh, and has her watch. And then for the true darkness of the movie, he makes them switch. Oh, like no. So thankfully, the, I mean, it's relatively, you know, graphic with the wife, but not with the kid. So I was like, Okay, thank you for cutting the fuck away from that, but it's still and the mother, instead of feeling bad, becomes jealous and abusive towards the kid. So it gets even darker, lovely, and then in part of it, the mother dies, sort of the child actors replaced with the adult immediately or intermittently. I mean, where they're back and forth, sometimes it looks like the kid, sometimes it looks like the mom, and then the kid tries to kill herself instead. Actually gets paradise. And we're 25 minutes into the movie. This is about a two hour film too. It is dark as hell. This is a really tough way. It is really well done. Some of the visuals are amazing. The transformation of the school when she's in a good place versus when she's in a bad place, is really well done. The acting is ridiculously good. I mean, honestly, the lady that came back after two two years, who plays the mom, is spectacular in the film. But Jesus man, this is what Bucha but after 10 years, but the continue the movie goes on, she grows up, grows up and becomes a famous writer. So she becomes pretty wealthy and is an awful person as an adult. Whoa, luckily, there's not a lot of information on this film, because, like I said, there's not even a professional Rotten Tomatoes review of it, which is strange, because this director is so well known. Yeah, but did you like this movie? Yeah, that's my question. No, it's not a re watch kind of film is it's for a weird movie, to watch a weird movie and think, Wow, this is really well done. I it is, you know, maybe the Bronzo or something along those lines, or some of our other darker movie fans might enjoy. Might like to check this out. But my conclusion after this, hearing your description of tag and seeing the suicide Suicide Club, yeah, I don't know how many of this guy's movies I'm going to search out anymore. Yeah, he's quickly becoming my least favorite. Uh. Japanese filmmaker, is, is the genre like horror, or is there, like, is it kind of fantasy or just thriller? Like, what? What kind of, sure, okay, I would maybe not thriller. There's probably a little bit of abstract fantasy. There's definitely some horror. It's really dark, not really much comedy, though there's a little bit. Yeah, this is not one I necessarily recommend, but it was, it was an interesting film to add to my catalog of views. What was the name of that? Again, strange circus so that we can avoid it like exactly, yes, my catalog watches, but it's not going to be added to my catalog physical media. Vanessa, I hope you saw something a little more lighthearted than this. I'm sure. I sure did. I sure did. All right? Um, so I saw magic cop from 1990 Oh. King, Hello, yeah, either of you. Nope, excellent. Oh, fantastic. So this is a Hong Kong film directed by we Tung, who only has four directing credits and 53 acting stunt credits, including Hard Boiled hero and the accidental spy. So not a typical director, but man, the action scenes in this film are top notch, so you can see the stunt work in there, starring Chingling lamb as Uncle Fang. He has 128 credits, including way of the dragon, fist of Furion, Mr. Vampire, and Michiko Nishiwaki as sorceress. And she has 30 credits, including some stunts. And she was actually in everything, everywhere, all, all at once, as the Kung Fu competitor, slash co star. She's also done stunt work in Mission, impossible, three, kill, Bill Two, collateral, all for Yeah. The story follows. Uncle Fang is a retired police officer who employs magical, spiritual techniques their Taoist in nature. There in order to solve crimes, he was notorious in the police for a remarkable track record of success, but also destruction. Everywhere he went, he left just a tornado of problems in his path, lots of broken stuff. We start with Uncle Fang attending a memorial ritual, some kind of annual thing where people are at grave sites and like honoring the dead, and he stops a ghost from attacking an old lady using some pretty weird but badass, magical maneuvers. They fight martial arts style. I should note, the go to ghost is entirely invisible. We're not seeing like a guy. They fight martial arts style in the street and break through a brick wall, and then he traps the ghost in a cloth and seals it into wax in a shrine. Meanwhile, two young cops are staking out a drug ring at a restaurant where they're undercover as waiters, and they try to intercept a woman with a briefcase who has Terminator like powers. She basically is super strong, bulldozes over them, totally unresponsive, and one of them handcuffs themselves to her leg and gets dragged halfway down the street before she gets hit by a truck. Luckily, he's freed just in time, bang and his niece are sent to identify the body. That's where the movie intercepts um, and Fang notes that the woman was dead long before she was hit by the truck. Magic is a foot. So the Chief Inspector assigns one of the goofy, uh, young cops to team up with Fang to figure out what is going on with this underground drug ring which seems to be employing dead people to do the dirty work. From there, we get an odd couple buddy comedy cop movie with a lot of zany scenes, essentially going after a hot witch who's employing magic. And there's a few scenes that even feel like that wizard versus Witch and the sorcerer stone scene where they're just like, and I've got this Ba, ba, and I've got this ba ba, also his niece is in tow as a precocious young girl who half the time they have to save, and the other half the time is helping out. So just some thoughts on this movie. It is super insane. It is super fucking insane. It's also really funny. There are amazing action sequences in it. The acting is definitely over the top, a fair amount, but I feel like that makes sense for this kind of movie. It's, I don't know, a few I have to, I don't know how to dissect like and distill this film. Other than saying, here are a few things that happen. We have a man, a thug who's escapes from the gym, who's an animated dead guy, Jean wearing a jean jacket. We have freezing spells. We have black glitter ninja outfits. We have putting a spell in a microwave and boiling it to death. We have a rooftop fight that ends in a puff of smoke. We have a magic mirror animated rope that runs around chasing people and a pin cushion in someone's butt. So I just this film is really a treasure. Cool, not much trivia. There's really not that much info on it out there. It's just one of the many, many Hong Kong pictures that came out. Tagline, he's a modern day Devil Hunter. He's a master of the martial arts. He's Mr. Vampire, which makes no sense, because there's no vampires, but that's okay, wait a second, isn't there wasn't the director's other movie called Mr. Vampire, yeah. So I thought too. I was like, I was trying to figure that out, but there was not enough information to distill, because I was like, maybe there's an alternate title for this, but, yeah, maybe, maybe the tagline got an IMDB like, maybe it got mixed up with the wrong thing. Or, who knows, or maybe Mr. Vampires title for this, or it's a sequel, it could be. Oh, also, this guy's eyebrows are incredible. Like, I mean, you all know Egghead from Sonic, the hedgehog with the No, that's what you get. Nice. What did you watch this on? So I watched it initially on Blu ray a couple months ago, and then yesterday, I watched it on, oh my gosh. What's it called? Haya, the streaming service, so many of them. I know, magic cop. Magic cop sounds this sounds like a blast. Yeah, it's super fun. It's so fun I can't begin. It's like, it's insane and impossible to describe. Prop. Really, because it's so insane. But I'd recommend it, man, I love it. That's what these shows are supposed to be about. These episodes. I mean, not just horrors in the dark, well, getting abused, speaking of without that, I'm putting no five minutes, honest. I am talking about Juan, not The Grudge. Juan The curse. Oh, oh, have you guys seen Juan the curse? No, I saw the show and I saw the grudge the remake, but nothing else. Yeah, so the curse is the very first Juan movie. It was straight to video from the year 2000 It Was Written and directed by Takashi ishimitsu, who has 39 writer credits and 48 director credits, including Juan, the curse two, the grudge. The Grudge two, the American remakes of the grudge and the grudge two, excellent. Yes, he had an idea, and he fucking has rung every last bit out of it. This is starring Yuri yannagagi, who has 85 credits, including Ringo and ring two, ghost zombie and hell driver and Ryota kaioma was five credits. He plays Toshio in this the little boy he's been in Fireworks the curse two, paranormal surveillance camera nine. Okay, so this is kind of a hard story to talk about, because it is told in segments, much like the grudge, and it is not linear, so the whole story only becomes clear as you get to the end. Basically, what has happened is a man has discovered his wife has a deep and lifelong crush on an old college friend of hers, and because of this, he murders her their son, Toshio, and the family cash, and then deserts the house. But what that did was create edu on which is basically a karmic stain, or a curse that lives in this house. What's so creepy about this haunted house is that once you encounter The Evil Within, you have been infected by it. So escaping the house has no effect on the evil. It will fall you back to your house or to the library or to your work, and whoever else it comes into contact with is also stained by this evil. It is a terrifying concept that plays out as the man, a teacher of young Toshio, goes searching for him at his house after he's been absent for several days, he encounters the evil there, and we see in various segments how all of that transpires. Meanwhile, another family has moved into the house, and they experience evil that is Kayako and Toshio as well, and even get hunted in the school library. And finally, there is a police story that is winding through all these other stories, an officer who's looking into the horrible stuff that has happened in the house, and he's soon dragged into all of this. And as the stories start to converge, you can tell where you are in the timeline of each of these stories, and that there is just no escape from this evil. This is a 2000 Japanese straight to video, and, man, it looks terrible. It's shot on video. Some really cheap angles, really bad TV, music, a really, really silly CGI moment, three, four aspect ratio. And yet there is something here. Still. It is genuinely creepy, very effective. And when you find out at the end with the original husband. Has done to his wife, you get a lovely negation of the negation moment where things somehow turn out to be even worse than you thought. Well, to say that I enjoyed this would be an incorrect phrase, but I was blown away by it, and I understand now why the series has seven race sequels. I then went on to watch the grudge which was excellent, and the grudge two, which was not but I'm planning to watch all of them now, even the American remakes, again, I just saw the grudge white ghost and the grudge black ghost. They are all up and down in their quality and scarce. A little bit of trivia, the strange vocal sounds you know it it's that was performed. By the director Takashi shimitsu. Awesome Toshio spirit is often heard meowing through the film. Not only does this imply that his spirit merged with his deceased cat, but it also relates to an old Japanese legend where the damned spirits of Lost Children become strays and, as a result, produce a cat's meow. How fucking terrifying is that the house used in the film was not a constructed set, but a real location which had to be rented for film production, and it is the same house in every fucking movie. It became a tourist attraction following the franchise's popularity, and was demolished in 2019 my buzzer is going to go off shortly. Kayako and Toshio are based on the Japanese legend of the onryo, a vengeful spirit that can physically manifest to attack and kill victims. They materialize with physical appearance and mobility when they are killed in a state of deep rage, leaving behind. Guess we don't get to know a curse. Let's see. I do have a couple of interesting things I want to say about this. Both this film and its sequel, Juan the curse two were actually shot together as a single feature film, only being divided for the home video release, as it was considered too long in its original form. Then instead of padding the run time for the second part with new footage to get it to feature length, the first 30 minutes are instead of recap of this film, which is fucking annoying, principal photography of this film and its second film, Juwan the curse two occurred in just Nine days total. The title of this film and its sequels translates roughly to curse of grudge. The curse manifested due to Kayako grudge against her husband Takeo for having murdered her. And finally, most interesting to me, a stage play adaptation of this film was developed in 2023 Whoa, yes, crazy. I would like to see that this was really good. It was so low budget, and I was still very creeped out by it. I was like, Oh, bravo this. I can see why this guy was immediately given money and told to turn it into a sequel. And the grudge film turns out being kind of a remake, but he references the events that happened in this. It's just that I never knew that these were real movies, so I just thought that was part of the story of the grudge. And so it's kind of neat to see that there's actually a backstory to the story he references. And even neater, to find out that before this, he made two short films that start off this series of the grudge and the person. So, yeah, this guy obviously loved this idea and and ran with it. Did you manage to see the short films? I could not find the short films anywhere, and in fact, I had to resort to nefarious means to find these as well, because these are not available to rent or anything. So I dug around until I found the curse. I was really surprised at how fucking shitty it looked. Yeah, clarification on this story is it is, was his story built off a living or legend from Japan, or was it original idea about the karmic thing? So he didn't, he didn't create that idea. That is, that Juan is a curse. And often they think of a if something horrible enough has happened in a place and you encounter that, you will then bring that stain back to where you live, and thus, you know, perpetuating the curse so well, not really cool. Yeah, it's, that's what's so terrifying about these movies. But what also, as I've been watching them, you kind of get, I want to say, bored, but you get used to the idea, because there's just no way. You can't do anything to stop the curse. So everybody dies at the end. Oh, yeah. And the way, the way this first one ends, is, like, I. Was like, wow, I am really surprised this was straight to video movie, and that they did say something like, well, let's just slap an X on this for horrific sequences. Okay, what year was it? Because that might have been like, they might not have Okay, yeah, I wonder if they realized yet the the absolute gold mine Japan was sat on. I think that so the ring was 98 so this was like the height of the Japanese horror boom, which Ringu set off? And it's very clear that there's some stuff going on here that I know that the black hair from from watching some of the other stuff from the 60s that that still played into their mythology. But Kayoko looks a lot like Sadako in this film, and I'm even gonna have to hunt down, I guess, that peyoco versus Sadako movie, sure, there you go. Came out like four years ago tomorrow, winter one, yeah, who? Who's gonna, I don't get, I don't know, maybe that'll be my next movie, because we still have two more weeks of no tohove ember. No tohove vember, right? So I guess we don't even have to say that that's what we're doing next week, because that is what we know we're doing next week. I wanted to bring up something last week. I talked about a film that Vanessa, your friend Tom, who was a listener had requested that I watch, and I was a little curious why he had requested that. Well, he listened to the episode and he reached out, and he says your reading of it as a straight screwball comedy kind of clears things up for me. We found it in a film noir box set, and so spent at least the first half of the movie, completely bewildered by its tone and total lack of noir the opening two minutes aside, by the end, we were laughing out loud. But I still thought the film was perhaps curious than you did. The random bursts into song, the sudden shifts from comedy to mystery. Who done it and back again? I just thought it was a very odd film, and so I recommended it to you as a, I didn't have anyone else to share it with. And B, you seem like the oddest member of the gang. Yeah, what the fuck he says? I knew that as a compliment, but I know how fucking weird Vanessa and Eric are, so this is not a compliment. I read that and I went heard some of the movies that have been talked about on the show, so our own unique, weird buzz, yeah, so I was glad to see that that I was reading it the same way that Tom was. So it is still a movie worth watching. Deanna Durbin has a lovely voice, and she is made to sing. I don't know if I mentioned that she's made to sing twice in this movie because she finds herself in situations where she has to pretend to be a singer, and it's like they shoehorned this song in, because that's what she was known for prior to this was musicals. Anyway, thanks again Tom for requesting that, for throwing money at us and for reaching out afterwards. If you as a viewer would like to throw money at us, you can certainly do that through various means. We have PayPal things set up to take donations. We have buy us a pizza. You can thank Vanessa for that. And can you thank me? And you can even set up a recurring donation, if that's what you want to do. PayPal allows you to do that. You can say, hey, I want to give these guys a buck a week, or four bucks a month, or 10 bucks a month, or as many bucks a month as you like. That's right, and that's what we call value for value. We don't tell you how much this show is worth to you. You have to figure that out on your own right. And don't forget to trap a friend in a car or someplace where you're hanging out a while, and put this on so they can hear how much fun it is and why they should listen as well. Right? Absolutely. Also, if you want to call in, you can call in the strange eons radio hotline, which is a 253-237-4266, and you can interact with us very easily on the strange eons radio talk page on Facebook, which all three of us jump in pretty often and discuss film on along with everybody else on there. Yep, it's the only thing I do on Facebook. So I'm always excited to jump on and talk to people and hear. Your recommendations and share memes. Finally, I've got a novel out and a novella out that are available on Amazon, and I've talked about them to death. But the newest thing I had one last surprise before the end of the year, and Rob Corliss and I have come up with Anno Carcosa, yeah, one year under twin suns, this is a very slim volume, a chat book. You would call it. It is fully illustrated. Every page is full color, even the writing pages are full color. And it is a story of a man slowly going insane after a public televised reading of the king in yellow. So, yes, this is a king in yellow story, and it is going to be out when you hear this, probably in a week or so. One of the things about getting that Dracula magazine made me feel so good about this thing, because it feels good in the hand, and it's so weird that it's like hard to describe, but everybody who has a copy loves it. So if you want that, that'll be available exclusively on Amazon and only in print. Cool. That's all I've got. You guys. That's anything else. That's anything else to say. You don't want to write any more novels, novellas I just finished, just finished the new novel, which I'm hoping will come out in spring of next year. It is, it is at the editor, and she is pouring through it with a fine tooth comb. So okay, guys, I think that's about it. We've got two more episodes then of no tohove vember, at least one more as a zoom call, yeah, yeah, and then a little Thanksgiving surprise at the end, yeah, yeah. So with that, I think that that's it. We will see you next Thursday. Seven short days, we'll be back with no Toho member, transportation and other considerations for strange eons, radio, produced by Pan Am airlines. When you think of traveling, think of Pan Am. You can't beat the experience. Guess the strange eons. Radio, stay at econo lodge ever it's an easy stop on the road. Strangeeons radio is recorded live in front of a studio audience. 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