332 WHAT DID WE WATCH??

332 WHAT DID WE WATCH??

Vanessa and Eric return for another movie chat. This time, we’re having a blast discussing a wild film. We hope you enjoy this short bonus episode and tune in for our regular show next week. 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Unknown: 0:03

Oh, I'm sorry, did I break your concentration somewhere between science and superstition, we have such sights to show you strange eons. Welcome to strange eons. Radio. This is Eric here and Vanessa. Vanessa is here just the two of us. Kelly is still living his life in a grandiose and fabulous way of which all of us are deeply jealous. Yes, he's doing things. He's got places to be, people to meet, stories to write, yep, exactly, exactly, this gigantic thing. That's right, so he got published in forbidden futures. Is it a magazine? It's big book, yes, but lots of amazing writers are in it. You've got fukashi And with this guy named young Lovecraft, good fellow, Mike dubich, doing drawings. And, I mean, it's just wall to wall quality. Oh, I'm so excited. I just ordered mine from Barnes and Noble. So I had to pick out some extra stuff to get the free shipping. So that took me a minute that I am Mine is in the mail. Knowing the price of that, you must have to spend a lot to get another, like, 10 or 20 bucks worth of stuff in my car. It wasn't too bad now, yeah, yeah, be forewarned, if you go look for that, it ain't cheap, but it's pretty, pretty damn cool. Yeah, it's a neat object, for sure. Let's see. And this weekend is the before, before recording this. I guess it little weird, but Lovecraft film festivals this weekend, and they're going to be replaying as part of their 30th anniversary, the Lovecraft and the package, which you can see both of at strange eons radio or strange TV and YouTube, yeah, both of those shorts. Ooh. So that's cool. That's so cool. I'm really excited. How many days long is that festival? Is it both? Is it Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Saturday? Yeah, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Yeah? I think it's the 30th anniversary of the festival. I think I've been to 25 of them. It seems Kelly's been to a few more, but pretty close to a lot of them. You guys, I've been to two, and I'm like, I feel like I've been to a couple at least. It's a fun Festival. It's a great theater. I love Hollywood theater. And you get to catch up with friends, and there's just cool. I loved the art, the art that they have there, and they've got the different readings going on, so it's not just movies, but they do have the whole scope of festival going on. Yeah, it's fun. Well, to do, we'll do like an encapsulated version of our usual show here. So we'll start off with, have you seen anything recently that you're excited about or particularly appalled by? Yeah, I would love to talk about, I just went and saw a movie on Saturday night. I went to the long walk, which is the new Did you do the treadmill theater? Long ways the theater I go to is in a Federal Way. Oh, man, yeah, that was, uh, you know, I think that they the movie was really good, but I think it does suffer from the same thing. Every movie that tries to adapt a story suffers from in that book. Writing is just a different beast than film writing. So they did a great job with some of the characterizations, some of the sort of animosities, a little bit of the inner struggles, but you just didn't quite feel like you earned some of the characters who, of course, are going to pass away, pass away along the walk. You didn't really always feel connected or like you felt like the relationships they were trying to say they had, that they had. It's just, it's tough when there's a lot of interiority in books and in films. It's exterior. But yeah, there was some some gross stuff in there, not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but not not. They don't fully hold back in any particular way. So I think most people will be happy. I think overall, they did do a pretty good job. The leads in that film are great. I. A lot of great young male actors. And of course, it's always a joy to see Luke Skywalker as a daddy. Yeah, that's true. He's fun that way. He was having the time of his life. He was just hamming it up. So yeah, the Joker showed he can certainly, at least vocally do that, but visually too. Yeah? I mean, throw a pair of sunglasses on him and just have him stand at the back of a truck and fatigues and like he doesn't even have to do anything. All he has to do is do voices. And it's, it's all there. So excellent. Yeah, I saw one of the big ones of this here as well. Weapons. Oh, man, follow. Like, I think I liked it more than barbarian. And I was a little surprised to find that Zach Krieger is the guy from, I did not realize he was one of the original whitest kids, you know, comedy troupe from Canada, yeah. I was like, I think they're Canadian. And I was like, Oh well, that explains the odd moments of humor that happen in weapons. Like, okay, this makes sense. I gotta say, I loved the way this story was told. Oh yeah, the way it unfolded and then did a different thing, unfolded in a different way. It's like, I love that kind of storytelling. Yeah, you've seen it too, right? I have, yeah, yeah. I thought the structure was such a treat, especially as an editor like, you know, you're looking at that sense of like how to do a different way of storytelling. It was so fulfilling and interesting to each chapter get, not only a different perspective, but of course, then new pieces of information and what's essentially a giant mystery. Yeah, it, yeah, it was, it was incredible movie. I loved it. I loved the whole thing. So you say I really, really enjoyed it. I thought it was, it's hard to say it was grisly, but it was violent at times. Had some pretty rough moments, for sure, I looked away at least once. I was like, I cannot. I'm not gonna watch this part. I just can't, yeah, it's not as bad as a knife on a kitchen table thing, but still, like you. So yes, I would say that the reputation for that one is well done. And I, I was with barbarians. I thought was good, but the hype was so huge. But when I saw it late enough. I was like, I thought it was really good, but I'm like, okay, but this one I really loved, and James Brolin and all the it's like, oh, okay, that's cool. Or Josh Brolin, I mean, this one and Julia Gardner both were like, damn, yeah. So so good, such good talent, and just, I'm glad you, I'm glad you checked it out. And it is tough when you get a lot of hype around a film. Like, I didn't know anything about barbarian before I went in, like, I'd seen the movie poster and that was it. So I was fortunate in that way. And I think it's tough, especially with horror, when people hype stuff. Because there have been tons of stuff that I've seen where I'm like, I don't know why everybody loves this movie. This is not interesting at all. It's like, boring or dumb, or like, obvious or has a stupid twist or a bad actor, you know? So it's, it's hard to get all the pieces right for genre. And I think that they, I really feel like they nailed it, like, for me, it's probably, probably my favorite film of the year. But I Yeah, it's, it's a, I mean, crazy, crazy, weird year, because sinners came out this year too. Yeah, so there's a lot, there's a lot of good stuff. And I really liked, uh, maybe talk about on the next show, or some I really like, 28 years later. Oh yeah, that was crazy. One. There's just, yeah, it's been such a such a good year. I'm so glad people realize that, um, it has been this way for a little bit now, but that people will go see horror movies and you can profit off them, so it's okay to go ahead and finance them, put them on screen. Doesn't have to be a$200 million superhero movie, mid tier, mid tier lives, please. Yeah. I was little surprised to read the other day terrifier Three was like a $2 million budget. I kind of thought it'd be still be less than that, even though the terrify two did so well, I figured they'd be a lot still be less or be a lot more, but there's two mil. They did a lot with two milk, at least a lot of cuts. Well, should we do our nice little break? And I'll find some weird, God knows what commercial we'll talk about. Do it the. Convent, and why we're talking about the convent. Here come the wild ones. Turn up the Daredevil challenge, screaming demons up the ramp, round and round. You control the speed through the wall of fire. Screaming demons tearing up the road race them to win the Daredevil challenge race. Set speed, control ramps, timer and a screaming demon Hey there. Welcome back. We're talking about the convent today. This must be where it all happened. There's a scandal that closed this place down. The last surgery ever performed here. Get the hell out of here. Do what he says every five years or so, you stupid kids think it'd be great fun to break into the convent and see where it all happened. Then when all hell breaks loose, you come looking for the chick who started not this time you person? No, I'm Orlando. My brother's gonna be the new antichrist, afraid so mom's gonna be bitch. We got some demons to kill. I'm sorry this is not going well. You foreign why are we talking about this particular movie? Vanessa, yeah, well, we got a donation from a listener. One Micah guy gave us a really kind donation. Thank you so much for that. And the request was for the film The convent from 2000 and I wish we got into it a little bit sooner, but this is when we were able to squeeze it in. So again, thank you, Micah. And if anyone else is interested in donating a certain amount of money, it's, I guess it's kind of up to you what you think is a big old chunk of change in order to get us to talk about a single film, you're always welcome to put that on the table. And we would love to check out what you guys want us to see. So that's right, that's how we got around to seeing the convent from the year 2000 so we usually do five minutes per person. So since there's two of us talking about it. Let's do 1010, minutes. I've got to watch. I don't have a fancy little go. I'll just count seconds in my head. Well, I'll go ahead and start us off by talking about the director. So this is directed by Mike Mendes, who has 11 credits. Probably would have heard of tales of Halloween, satanic Hispanics, big ass spider. Laval, he did an episode, or he did a segment for masters of horror and bimbo movie bash. He also has acted in like 16 things, so, yeah, but I think the big ass spider and lava lanchal, those might be a silent picks. There's, they're definitely like mock busters. I've seen Laval, believe it or not, and big ass spiders, their big ass spiders, a little different. It seems to be a little more to it. But Laval is definitely an asylum style film. Oh, sure. So the writers on this, writer on this is chanting Anderson, who's wrote with the director, but he's best known for skate land and rare exports, oh, which is a really good film. So that's pretty cool. That is super cool, yeah, but anybody also has a dark, weird sense of humor, who is in this, in this movie, you know, we've got a couple of different people, a lot of people that don't pop up very often, like Joanna Canton, but we do have Adrian Barbeau, 170 credits, including the fog Escape from New York. Someone's watching me, Swamp Thing, creep show. And those are just things we've talked about. On our show. Also Carol in mod, which is great, and a lot of voices she does. Spider Man two, video game, Demolition Man computer, the thing the computer. So lots of computer voices. And did you catch a particular actor in this who maybe was surprising? A couple of them. They both played cops. Yes, Coolio and Bill Moseley, that's right, Coolio and Bill Mose Moseley. Coolio is Officer Starkey and who's Bill Moseley. Again, he's in everything. Horror actors been in absolutely everything. He's a regular on the festival or the convention circuit as well. You can see him at, I'm sure, at least five conventions a year, every year, and he's great. He is a phenomenal guest. He's been crypto on Seattle at least twice, maybe more, and he's just excellent. So I definitely recognized him from Texas Chainsaw Massacre too. I was like, I know you. You're the brother that was one of those movies I watched with. However, I was dating at the time, and that got to that scene, and he freaked her out so much. He's like, I'm done watching this movie. Oh my gosh, I did like the name of one of Joanne cantons films. Who the f is, buddy Apple bomb. Oh gosh, that's pretty good. I mostly found just TV stuff for her, and then Empire records. She was girl number two, and she was in the face on the milk carton, which I had to read in middle school. So, yeah, I don't know that one, the girl who discovers she was adopted by seeing her face on a milk carton in middle school. I have pause. Can you still hear me? I can hear you. Kind of pause and came back again. Anyway. So would you like to say what you thought of the film? Oh, my God, what I thought of the film? Or you want to talk a little bit about what happened first, let's talk maybe a little bit about what happens in this thing. It's got a real gentle beginning. Eases you into the film. Oh yeah. Really slow start to it. We see a school girl enter a Catholic church service and kill the priests, the nuns, everybody. I think she's got, what, a shotgun, and then she sets the place on fire and walks out, just like, cool as fuck. Oh, and she's got like a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. And I did appreciate the ability to smoke a cigarette and drink directly from a Jack Daniels bottle at the same time. Well done. Pretty impressive, all while being the tender age of probably what, like 1617, yeah. And then we jump into normal times, where we meet two, two kind of no longer friends. We've got Mo and Clarissa. Clarissa is desperate to go to or wait no. Mo, the golf kid, is desperate to go hang out with her. No longer friend. Clarissa, who's one of the cool kids who's gonna go to an annual night where, like, all the high schoolers go and hang out in this convent. That is where we just saw all these snap all closed down. It's very night of the demon. Yes, I that's exactly what I was thinking when I watched it too. Is it has that real vibe to it? She is like, Hey, man, I really want to go for reasons. And Clarissa is like, Heck, no, I can't have you hanging around me. And then she pulls out the I've got a photo of you in alt gear next to me card. I'm happy to show it to your new besties anytime. So they all head over to the convent, where, of course, a guy is sure he's gonna get into Moe's pants, so he's excited about that. And everybody starts pairing up and disappearing into different parts of the convent to make out and do what they will. And I would say the cliches run strong in this film very strong. But the more you watch it, the more you realize, oh, this is not unintentional. This is not just writing cliches because you don't know what to write, yeah, what were some of the things that surprised you in it? Coolio and Bill being very fun and goofy in their appearance. Not that I didn't expect them to be good. I kind of thought it was very okay, until it got to the first demon. And as it builds and gets crazier and you realize, oh, this is more of a comedy. Yeah. And then it first is kind of, is it supposed to be funny? But then it got, I thought it got really funny. And then Adrian Barbeau came in, and it just went, I spent a lot of time just being like, what the is happening right now? Like, it definitely had a, I think, from around the time that Mo is about to get sacrificed, she ends up, we'll see how that goes. Left Behind. Well, she chooses to stay behind. When the cops come and break everybody up, they leave and she hides out, and some Satanists are also there for reasons, and they capture her and knock her out. She wakes up, she's about to be sacrificed, and she just starts dissing on them. And I think that that was the moment where I was like, Oh, wow, okay, we're this is kind of funny, because she's like, Hey, yo, I know you from Dairy Queen. And the guy's like, I'm the son of Satan. And they're like, No, you, you are not the son of Satan. They said, Actually, something kind of funny there, because obviously, for copyright, he's he works at Dairy cream. That's what it was. That's great. I remember it was something different, but I didn't write it down. But I thought his character was a lot of fun. The super fun. The faux head of the satanic group was just like, but the neon blood, I thought was, well, this was some good decision making, remastered and released by synapse, like it's still available very recently, into like a 4k and blu ray and all that. So it looked good. I don't remember where I watched it. I rented it, I think from primer. I think I rented it from Prime, yeah, something like that. And it looked really nice. Yeah, did you have any WHAT DID YOU OKAY, humor. How are you at the humor element? It was fine, you know, I don't know, like, it really did remind me so much of night, of the demons that I was like that part. I didn't care for Adrian barboa. I love Adrian baraboa, but it didn't quite hit me, I don't know, a lot of the humor, I could appreciate that they were trying, and I think that they did do some kind of fun, wacky stuff. But my favorite character was Mo and then she became instantly a demon, and then all demon in hell breaks loose in this place. And so you kind of lose that wit in that character. And we really end up spending the rest of the film with Clarissa. And I was like, I don't really care for Clarissa that much. I mean, luckily you add in Adrian barboa as like the returned school girl here to kick some ass. But it wasn't really my I wasn't having the best time with this. Again. I appreciate it. I love the the way they did the effects, the way they did the blood, the sense of humor and the attempt at, you know, writing something a little different. But for me, it didn't quite land. What about you? Just kidding. Well, we'll, you know, talk a little longer, of course. Before I watched the film, I read a little bit about that. It debuted at Sundance and, like, midnight screening, and was a giant hit by for part of the way through my really, it was, but that got to the end, oh yeah, this would be a hell of a midnight movie with a big, giant crowd, you know, just, I think it would have, would have loved to have seen it at like Sif, when they still did midnight movies at the Egyptian. I think it would have been a lot of fun. It's kind of like, you know, you know, I'm an insane DVD buyer and stuff like that. And I saw, Oh, synapse, cool. I don't know if I'd buy this one. It was a lot of fun, and I had no problem with watching it. I enjoyed it by the end, but, you know, maybe watch it again sometime in the future, but I don't feel the need to add it to the collection. Yeah, for sure, I think that is a cool cult movie. Find that, but but I don't know there's something about the fact that it's in the year 2000 but it does not feel quite like that era of movie. So it feels like lost in time to me, like I'm not quite sure where I would place it in the canon of low budget horror films. There's a lot of 80s to it, and there's some underground 90s, or to it, but yeah, not, it's definitely not like scream or, I Know What You Did Last Summer, or any of those big horror films from the 90s, um, dragged me to hell. You know, like there was, there was some stuff in there that, um. Um, it got very stylized around that time. And this is, I don't know it's, it's making a lot with practical, which works pretty well, but it also is not, I don't know. Yeah, it's not gonna be added to my collection, that's for sure. All right. Well, any last thoughts, yeah, did you find any interesting trivia about it, other than the fantastic fuss? Okay, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. If I'd known about the synopsy Earlier, I just found that out very recently, I would have looked a little bit see if I'd find some from that. But how about you? So I know that this was shot in LA and 99 had a budget of half a million, and it was shot in 18 days. The leftover sets from leprechaun five in the hood were used to film scenes inside the convent. Adrian barboa used the same wig that she wore in Swamp Thing. They could only that was quite a fuse later. I know, right? I was like, that stood the test of time. I guess she just had it waiting for just the right film. They could only afford one set of fluorescent contact lenses, so the whole cast had to share the same pair. Oh, I know that's horrible. Is so horrible they use fluorescent paint for demon blood because it was cheaper than the fake blood. The dog was only available for two days of shooting, which is why he appears very sporadically throughout the film. That just sounds funny. We like to hire your dog. I'm sorry. You can only have it for two days. He's got four other projects in the rose. I know like it was harder to get a dog than it was to get Coolio. Speaking of Coolio, Joanna Canton, who played Clarissa, met Coolio when he walked into her trailer and asked if her TV was better than his, because he was looking for a place to hook up his Playstation. Sure. Why not? I thought was pretty good. And for people who check out this film there, the director did get critics who asked him openly about the homosexual character. It's one of the state Satanists who everyone seems to be afraid of. And then they talk about him becoming the Antichrist, and they're kind of wondering if there was something deeper in there. Mendez responded that the critic was looking too deeply into it, and there is no message. So any, any of the questions you might have about like, hey, let's are we? Is this okay? I don't know. I definitely had a few moments with a gay guy where I was like, are we, I don't know if we're being really, like, forward thinking or kind of backwards thinking. Progressive, progressive, yeah, yeah. It's really tough, because he has a cool character, but then they do have the whole like, Oh, get off me. Sex with you. Yeah? It was kind of an era of its time. We're a little bit further. Yeah, there's no way they would happen, because it'd be way too progressive. A little bit earlier probably been very obvious. They're making fun of him, if it made like five or six years earlier, I still remember watching Miss Congeniality, not that long ago, go in, holy smokes. We were in a different era where, yeah, if you think, if you think that that movie in that time, we were at all woke we had a long way to go. Trivia, I ran into very cool so Well, thanks, Mike. I think we both at least enjoyed watching it. It wasn't like it was he's made me sit through, I think, GI Joe, animated movie. I was okay with GI Joe. It was whatever, something in the girls. I can't remember the name of that movie, but like Pookie and the girls or Dumbo and the girls, something in the girls, that movie that was horrible. So this is better than that, at least. Oh, good, probably. Well, thank you for joining us for this special brief episode of, yeah, this mini episode. Thanks, radio. We will have a regular episode next week Reality Bites, so that that'll be fun, because, you know, there's some cool movies we can talk about, very exciting. I don't have the number in front of us, but if you go to our website, change hands, radio.com, you can email us, or look to do this with one of your movies. You can even say, you know, man, make Kelly talk about it. You too far that. And you know, put that in your message and put a donation, and we will talk about that and make it fun. Or, you know, if you want the two of us to talk about it, great, we'll keep doing. Some of these episodes every once in a while, absolutely, absolutely, it's fun. It is. It is all right. Well, see ya. I'll leave the other stuff to Kelly. So yeah, okay, thanks everybody. We will see you in a couple weeks. Yeah, bye, 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. Guests of strange eons radio stay at econo lodge Everett. It's an easy stop on the road. Strange eons radio is recorded live in front of a studio audience. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a positive review on your favorite podcast, sit Ubu. Sit, I feel like I've been to a couple at least. I.