The Dorm That Dripped Blood

The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982)

Episode 214, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: and I’m Craig.

Todd: Continuing with our request this week, we often get requests that come down the pipe that were movies that we had earmarked. Like, ah, that would be interesting to do something we read about online. And then later on somebody suggests it and we go, Oh, well that gives us an extra excuse to get to that a little earlier.

And that is the case with this movie, The Dorm That Dripped Blood from 1982, graciously requested by Freddy or one of our long time listeners. So thank you Freddy for this request. I’m really looking forward to talking about this one. This is one of those movies that I had seen on the shelf. Never got a, but it has this, you know, delicious title, the dorm that dripped blood.

And I think over the years I’ve been confusing this with another movie called The House That Dripped Blood, which was another title that, uh, had always screamed to me from the shelves. And one of those Halloweens when I went and watched a whole bunch of movies, I made sure to see that. And that’s like a British Amicus movie that’s kind of along the lines of a whore, a hammer horror movie.

Uh, and it is a, an anthology film. And actually it’s pretty good. I think we should watch it sometime. This is definitely not that movie. This is a movie that was shot in and on and around the UCLA campus by a bunch of film students. And back in the day when you could shoot a movie on 16 millimeter, and uh, as long as it was a slasher horror movie, you could probably get it sold and distributed.

That’s exactly what happened to this movie. So for better, for worse, this is the movie that we have. And I think it’s worth talking about. Oh, there’s some notorious things about it. And you can see the whole thing on YouTube, which is where we, uh, picked it up. You can rent it. Also. In fact, there’s an unrated director’s cut.

There’s a director’s cut out there as a BluRay transfer. Uh, we watched, I think, the original release in very, very. Dim and grainy video on YouTube for free. Yup. So anyway, I had never, I had never seen this movie before. How about you, Craig?

Craig: Nope, I’d never even heard of it. I guess, you know, that drifts blood.

You know, I, I guess I’d heard that before this movie went. Through several titles, I guess, before it landed on this. And I guess that it landed on the dorm, that drift blood to try to kind of capitalize on the name recognition of The House That Dripped Blood, even though they have really nothing to do with one another.

Um, other than, you know, presumably both being horror films. But no, I, I had never heard of it. I don’t remember having read anything about it or anything, which is fairly rare cause I kinda try to keep up on those things. But, um, yeah, this was totally new for me.

Todd: I was really excited. See this. I’m clearly the one that put it on the list.

So it’s another one of those cases where the box art and the poster art have almost nothing to do with the actual movie. The dorm on there looks like this old Gothic like dorms you might find on the campus of Boston or something, but the dorm here is a very modern looking almost really. Crappy rundown.

I couldn’t believe, actually as I was watching this movie, one of the things that was running through my mind is just how dingy and dirty and crappy this entire building is. Like. I can’t believe people live in this place, let alone, but I guess the premise of the movie. Is that during the break a bunch of people are going home and another group of students who live there are staying back and they’re helping to clear out this dorm.

It’s going to be demolished or something like that. So

Craig: they’re turning it into an apartment complex, but they have to get all of the old furniture out and get it cleaned up and all that kind of stuff.

Todd: Cause I thought that the police at the end of the movie made a comment that made it sound like the place was going to get demolished.

Craig: Oh, they did. Well, maybe make that, you’re right. Maybe they were going to build a car, I don’t know,

Todd: demolished us. Extremely shitty building. And uh,

I think it was filmed not at a dorm in UCLA, but some of it was the UCLA film school building and other parts of it, UCLA co-op building or whatever. They even make some mention in there about it being a co-op when they’re doing some cleaning early on. We funny thing about it is. For what these people are supposed to be doing.

They do precious little of it throughout the whole movie, right? They don’t spend, they spend all, but maybe two scenes in the beginning of the movie moving furniture and stuff around, and the rest of the time they’re just hanging out, playing pool and getting murdered. So

I was, I was really looking forward to some serious furniture moving or like really anything going on in this movie. It’s like a standard slasher film, right? I mean, it is bare bones, generic slasher. It’s got a little bit of heart to it just because it’s got a few corks in it, but the thing that I just found that took it down a couple notches was just nothing interesting has happened.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: The people in the movie are not doing interesting things, and it made me sort of pined for Friday the 13th you know, I’m not a huge Friday, the 13th guy, but at least in that movie, people do stuff right. They go on walks right, swim, and they take their clothes off and have sex. Like I didn’t get to see anybody.

To have sex in this movie.

Craig: No.

Todd: That’s why horror films have these scenes. They gotta have something interesting to fill the time. And this movie didn’t.

Craig: Yeah, really not. I mean, it was the, the movie was inspired by Friday the 13th and I think that’s pretty obvious. I mean, from the score to the cinematography.

Felt very much like a Friday the 13th movie, except you’re right. Kind of boring like this killer that just kind of ambles around and you only see his or her feet and lots of killer POV shots. Slap a burlap sack on the killer’s head or a hockey mask, and it virtually could be a Friday, the 13th movie right up until the end.

And that’s, you know, I try not to read too much about these things if I don’t know anything about them already. I try not to read much about it, about them before going in the headlines of, of, uh, of a couple of reviews. And, um, one of them said something like, uh, pretty much mediocre slasher that is. Saved by an interesting twist at the end, and so I was like, Oh, good.

Like, you know, the whole time I was watching it, I’m looking at my watch and I’m like, okay, surely the twist is coming. Okay, here it comes. Here comes

Todd: and you’re waiting a while, weren’t you?

Craig: Yeah. And there, I mean, there is a twist at the end, but it’s not like it comes all the way out of left field. I think it was somewhat easy to call and maybe because I knew there was going to be a twist that.

It made me kind of predict it. Yeah. In terms of mystery, like you know who done it, I figured it wasn’t going to be obvious, and so I kind of eliminated the obvious suspects and that didn’t leave many people to choose from because by the end. Pretty much everybody’s dead except for a couple of people.

And so, you know, it’s gotta be one of them unless somebody you’ve never seen before, just captains to pop in. But that seemed pretty unlikely and it wasn’t the case. So anyway, yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t even know where to really start talking about this because literally so little happens. I mean, it opens up.

Just randomly with a bunch of guys in the back of a truck, like yelling and chanting, like coming down the road. And I think that the whole purpose of that scene was just so that we could see the sign for like the dorm complex cause nothing else comes of it. And then we see some guy who we don’t know running in the dark, um, from somebody, apparently any.

Stops and crouches down in some bushes and is, is apparently hiding from somebody when all of a sudden somebody reaches out from behind him and grabs him, strangles him, and also stabs a knife into his hand and kind of rips through his hand.

Todd: That was weird, wasn’t it?

Craig: It was. I mean, it was a nice little practice.

Gold effect with the hand cutting and everything, but, and then it just jumps to this college party and we have no idea who that initial guy was. Still don’t, we have no idea. Yeah. We have no idea why he was being chased or why he got killed. And you never find out. And then it kind of picks up with, uh, the main character whose name is Joanne and she is at a party with her boyfriend.

Tim, Tim is going on a ski trip with some of his buddies and he’s kind of trying to convince you and to go with him, but she says that she can’t, and it seems like they’ve also been talking about like maybe moving into with one another, but, uh, she can’t commit or something. There’s all this relationship stuff, which you think must be significant in some way, but then Tim leaves and goes.

Skiing with his buddies and you never see him again. So like, yeah, all this set up is set up for nothing. Like that scene could have been cut entirely.

Todd: I feel like it was set up because they had an extra actor and they wanted to give a part to them and they’re like, Hey, let’s get this guy in the movie.

We’ll call him Tim and we’ll give you guys a little something to do to Pat out the time.

Craig: And I was thinking maybe either it was a red herring or. Somehow Tim was going to show up again, like Tim was going to maybe show up and be the killer, or maybe we would find out that Tim never actually got, you know, maybe he never actually left.

Maybe he got killed before he left, but no. He’s just there and then he leaves and then that’s it.

Todd: We get to see that, uh, Daphne Zuniga is in this. That was fun.

I had to do a double take. I didn’t even read the cast list before I, uh, and I was probably only half paying attention during the credits and when she popped up on screen, I was like, wait a minute. That’s not, Oh my God. It is.

Craig: Yep. Yep. Very, very young and fresh faced.

Todd: She was the princess in Spaceballs and a bunch of other stuff since then.

But uh, yeah, very her very first film as well. So that was interesting to see. And I was really excited cause I thought, Oh well we get to see her through most of the movie too. I thought maybe she’d be the final girl. No, no, no, no.

Craig: Absolutely not. The bulk of the movie. You know, I took a whole page of notes.

I don’t know why nothing happens. Um, but the, the whole bulk of the movie is, so there’s Joanne and then she’s got like this. Everybody else is going away on Christmas break. You know, I read just the synopsis and it said on Christmas break, these students stay behind. And I was like, Oh, it’s a Christmas movie.

Maybe we should save it. And I’m glad that we didn’t save it because. It’s not Christmassy at all

Todd: of Christmas in here. No, it’s not a single string of Garland, not a single ornament, nothing.

Craig: There is one scene in the kitchen where there’s some Christmas lights. Yeah. What is it? The one character Patty says, ha, Merry Christmas.

That’s it. That’s the the only reference really.

Todd: You know, honestly, that flew right by me because it’s pretty typical in dorms for there to be Christmas lights hanging up in rooms. I just assumed that that’s what that was. And I thought she was making a joke. Yeah.

Craig: Well, and to be fair, it’s in California where it’s not like they get a whole lot of snow there.

Things. So it’s not like, you know, I should have been expecting some heavily atmospheric Christmas movie, but whatever. So they’re staying there, uh, over Christmas break, this small group of them, it’s Joanne and another girl named Patty, a couple of guys named Craig, and. Brian. Yep. And they’re the main ones that are staying.

And then there’s, uh, Daphne’s a nega who plays Debbie. And she was going to stay, but at the last minute, her parents called and said that she had to come home because her grandma was sick or something, and they wanted her to spend, uh, the holidays with them. So that’s it. I mean, it’s just this group of kids, I think that all of them are students, but Joanne like runs.

This co-op, like that’s her job, I guess. I guess they must all work there in some capacity since they’re staying back and helping.

Todd: I mean, they help for about five minutes. They cleaned some tables. I think they haul a couple picnic tables out. Joanne makes a phone call to somebody who’s like, are you going to get the tables?

Oh, you said you wanted the tables. She’s making arrangements for the tables and then they play pool and. Walk around for a while. I mean, that’s the rest of the movie, basically. Pretty much.

Craig: Debbie definitely is a got, by the way, I didn’t write down anybody, any of the other actors names because I didn’t recognize any of them.

Um, very few of them even have headshots on I am DB and the ones that do, uh, Joanne, the main girl. Has a head shot, but this is her only movie. So the first, I guess, thing that happens is Debbie’s there for that one day and she helps out that one day and then the next day she is leaving. Hi, I’m Gwen downs just with my parents now.

And I just want to stop by and say, so I’ve had Pam to help. That’s okay. Debbie will manage. Where are you going? Well, my grandmother’s in the hospital so wrong and go back East for the holidays. Sorry to hear. That was something that serious, but my mother really wants me to go, well, I guess it’s an Explorer some time.

Yeah, I don’t know where I’m going to be living, but I’m sure I’ll run into you on campus. Okay, well, good luck in the next few days. And Joanne’s like, Oh, did you make that supply list? And she’s like, yeah, I did. It’s up in the supply room, and Joanne’s like, that’s all right. I can get it later. And she’s like, no, no, no.

My parents aren’t here yet at all. I’ll run up there and get it. And so she goes up to this very, very dark supply room where you can’t even see anything that’s happening until she finally turns the light on and you see her parents pull up because apparently the supply room is on like. In like a shed on the roof.

So she hears her parents honking, so she leans over the roof and he’s like, I’ll be right down. But the mom gets anxious, I guess, and sends the data to get her and on his way up the stairs, which by the way, this dorm is like, I w I would say at least eight stories high, and I guess it doesn’t have an elevator.

So this, so this, you know, heavyset, old dad is climbing these eight stories of stairs and he’s met in the stairwell by someone wearing Keds and jeans

Todd: and,

Craig: and wielding a baseball bat with nails in the end of it. And he gets bludgeoned with. The bat and is apparently dead. Then the next thing we see is the mom’s sitting in the car, and I kind of liked this shot, how it’s shot from the outside of the car on the passenger side, so it’s shooting past her, but beyond her on the other side, you can see the killer reach into the open window very quietly and unlock the back door, um, and then gets in the back door.

Apparently. Because he strangles the mom. Meanwhile, Debbie comes down the stairs, finds her dead, dad runs screaming out to the car where she opens the passenger door and her mom falls out. Not only strangled, but her throat also cut from the wire. So there’s blood and stuff, and this is hilarious. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen this happen in a horror movie before from the fright.

She passes out

and then the killer. Then the killer grabs her by the arms and pulls her back behind the car and backs over.

Todd: It’s creative.

Craig: It was creative. I just thought it was so funny that she just passed out and then he just dragged her under there and ran her over. Um, I was reading the Wikipedia summary afterwards and it said that the killer. Uh, ran over her head and her like head exploded. I didn’t see that. I have no idea what edit we saw.

Like you said, um, it was one of the British video nasties, and so they ended up having to cut quite a bit of the Gore. I mean, I don’t think that as far as time is concerned that it. Was any significant amount of time, but, uh, you don’t see a whole lot in these no kill shots for the most part. You just see the aftermath and not much of it at that

Todd: I found a, a shot, a site where they, um, did a comparison of the scenes that were cut and most of what was added back into the director’s cut is just little extensions on otherwise, um, just kind of unimportant scenes.

But then a few of these killings did have more Gore and more blood in them that were excised, like you said, of the bat. One was one of them. He got a couple more whacks with the bat and there was a bit more of a better lit and more graphic kind of depiction of the side of his head as the bat was coming away from it at one point.

But as far as I, I didn’t see that the. Car. Actually the carpet actually showed rolling over her head. What it does, I think is kind of neat and clever cause we’ve all had this experience, is that a, it just shows the back of the car lift up and go down as he backs up so you can see it’s run over something.

So I thought that was clever actually. I thought these first few killings really showed some promise for the movie because they were really brutal. And I knew that this was a sort of low budget film and I felt like they didn’t pull too many punches in that, especially the strangulation. And I don’t know what it is for me about strangulation.

Maybe it’s just something that’s more real to all of us as a possibility, or we can just imagine it so easily what that would be like. But to me, those are some of the most horribly brutal killings that you can see, like in a movie, especially when it’s done with a wire like these are, and that guy reaches over and he gets that wire around her, this woman’s neck, which conveniently like has a scarf around it.

You know, this is all pretty low budget, but it gets that wire around her neck and she’s being strangled for a good, I don’t know, it could be eight to 10 seconds. It’s uncomfortable long. And then the blood underneath the, uh, scarf, you know, starts to kind of seep through. So it starts to show itself and see through.

So you can see that it’s cutting. And I realized, Oh, they’re just giving more time for the effective. Kick in, right? That’s probably why that was so long, but actually it had the effect of a pretty brutal killing. And then the idea that he ran over this girl, I saw these first three killings, one right after the other, and I thought, wow, okay, this movie’s got a little bit of game.

Craig: Yeah, I thought so too. And that, that was it. Like, I think it was not just the brutality and strangulation, I think is, you know, so uncomfortable because it’s slow. You know, you get hit in the head with a bat, you’re out, you get shot, you’re out, you get a machete to the face, you’re out. But like you have time to think about it when you’re getting strangled to death.

Um, and. That’s pretty scary. Uh, but yeah, the, the brutality and the fact that they happen in such quick succession, I’m like, Oh, man. I mean this, it felt ambitious, but then after that, it just slowed to a snail’s pace, really. And it was quite a while before anybody else died, and the next kill just seemed like.

Oh, we have to have somebody to kill, so we will. And also, like you said, it’s just a lot of them like playing pool and walking around and talking, and the stakes just don’t even seem that high. And then another thing that irritated me a little bit, even though it shouldn’t, because it’s very par for the course, for these kinds of movies where there were lots of setups that ended up being fake scares, like, Oh, I hear something.

Something bad’s going to happen. Oh, Nope. It’s just the custodian that happens so many times and like, the music is swelling and the people are scared and it’s like, Oh, hi. It’s just me. I was just, um, cleaning the bathroom.

Todd: Yeah. Or like two people will go investigate something and they’ll split up and you’re like, okay, we know what’s going to happen here now.

Then they just come back together again and end up back up full rope. But you’re right, like the music is extremely aggressive in this movie and this movie would, I think. Wouldn’t even be as good as it is without the music. The music is really the only thing. In many ways, the only thing really adding tension to these scenes because the cinematography is nothing good.

It’s too dark. Most of the time. It’s pretty uninspired. It really has that feel of some guys who were just like shooting this thing on weekends and evenings who probably did a lot of it in one take or didn’t have a lot of film to burn, you know? So I mean. That’s kind of uninspired, but with this music track underneath it, I was really impressed with the music itself.

So I went back and I looked up, did you look up the composer? This movie? No. Christopher Young is huge. In Hollywood as a composer, and this was one of his very, very first pro. This was basically the second project he ever did in 1982 and his first project was in 1968 and from 1982 on, he was composing four or five movies a year.

Listen to this, he did the music for Hellraiser invaders from Mars flowers in the attic. Okay. If the fly to Hellraiser to barbarian queen too, you know, he kind of did a lot of it, of the dark half tales from the hood species, virtuosity copycat that movie with um,

Craig: Sony Weaver and Harry Connick jr

Todd: and Harry kind jr.

Yeah. Unforgettable hush rounders. Entrapment. This guy is big. He’s done a ton of big blockbuster movies as well as a bunch of, you know, small kind of nothing movies, and he’s continuously dipped into the horror genre. So he did the music to the remake of the grudge and the exorcism of Emily Rose. He was the composer for Spiderman three.

Wow. I’m not going to rattle off all of these, but a lot of the movie

Craig: you already did,

Todd: if you would like.

Well, the new pet cemetery, he did the music to that too, and I’m going to stop there, but let’s just say there are like 128 composer credits on B, and the guy’s still going,

Craig: keep going. We don’t have anything else to talk about.

Todd: A little closer to home for me. There’s a series of movies here in China called the monkey King that were big hits here, and I don’t think anybody else has heard of them in America, but they’re huge. Blockbuster hits here and they’re still going with the series, and he did the music for the first two.

And that’s kind of weird to have an American composer doing that. So yeah, a great music for a movie like this that is more or less pretty shitty. I could not believe the music was so good.

Craig: It was very, I mean, Friday the 13th kind of has its own, I don’t want to say its own score, and it, it doesn’t remain consistent throughout the whole series, even though there are.

Suggestions of, you know, similar themes and things in the music throughout the whole series. But, um, this. It reminded me of the score of a Friday the 13th in the way that it helps to establish tension. And I do like the Friday, the 13th movies. I know that a lot of them are bad, but I still think that they’re fun to watch.

And I think music is used effectively in those, and I think that it is here too. I just think that the reason that it’s more effective in the Friday, the 13th movies is that there’s in those movies. There’s more of a payoff. Like it just felt kind of cheap here to keep building the tension, only to have it fizzle because nothing happens.

Um, like you said, there are, so there’s this guy. It’s only supposed to be the five of them there apparently, but they keep seeing this other guy named John Hemet, and Patty in particular is very frightened of him because he’s quote, a weird guy with fuzzy hair like that. Apparently weird guys with fuzzy hair are to be stayed away from.

And they’re scary. Uh, he looks like I’m Garfunkel. He looks like art dark, like,

Todd: that’s good,

Craig: but he’s this, he’s this weird guy and he’s kind of creeping around and he keeps kind of popping up and like, Joanne. Um, goes to his apartment and like leaves him a note. But then he keeps popping up. And like you said before, like they’ll go out looking for him at night. And not only do they keep splitting up.

Okay. So like they’ll split up two and two, nothing will happen. So they’ll all come back together and then they’ll split up in a different way and go off. And it’s, you keep thinking and, and then so like. There’ll be in pairs and there’ll be off away from one another, and then the pairs will be like, well, I think we better split up too, which is always a great idea.

And so of course, what you’re thinking is, Oh, Oh, they made the Cardinal sin of splitting up. They’re gonna get killed. But like you said, you know, Oh, the music’s getting scary, the music’s getting scary, but then they’ll just scare each other. Like they run into each other around a corner or they won’t even scare each other.

Like they’ll just come back up. Nope. Didn’t find him like happens two or three times, like for 20 minutes. It’s pretty boring.

Todd: My favorite one of these is when Joanne is stuck in the elevator, there is an elevator in this dorm and they use it a couple times. Joanne gets into the elevator. This is one of those, well, let’s split up.

You go in the elevator, I’ll walk up the stairs. It’s so stupid and we’ll meet at the top. Anyway, she gets in the elevator, presses the button, and after a few seconds all the lights go out and the power has been hit and then. Almost immediately she hears this banging and and movement above her in the elevator and it’s building the music and it’s building the music and it’s showing us this trap door and the elevator above her.

The trap door opens and pushes aside and a flashlight comes in. And it’s bill, the maintenance man who happened to be in his office and he says, Oh, I just, you know, I saw the power went out and I heard the elevator grind to a halt. So I thought I would come in here and check it out. Bill has split second timing to be able to get from his office.

Into the elevator shaft and lower him down to the elevator. However, he had to do that to be able to get to Joanne in about 20 seconds. That felt particularly cheap to me. We know the reason, the only reason Bill’s in this movie, it’s if you can see it a mile away as he’s, cause he could be a body that doesn’t have any stakes.

Uh, and he early on complaints that his drill is missing. Which again, Oh, wow. I wonder if we’re going to see that again. Bill’s missing drill leads to one of probably the most notorious scenes from this movie, which is an honest to goodness drill killing. This is the next one. It’s been 38 minutes into the movie and like you said, nothing’s happened and a whole bunch of fake scares.

Bill goes into the bathroom and we get our killer POV shot and we see this guy, this, these hands plug a very, very long extension cord into the wall and pick up a drill. Then we see POV shot of this guy coming up behind bill who’s taking a really long time to wash his face. And then we see in the mirror this arm, grab, wrap around and grab bill, and then we see the same arm.

Pick up the drill again from the

Craig: Flory casually

Todd: like,

Craig: like, like apparently this guy’s arms fan is like six feet long because he’s supposedly like holding bill down in the sink with one hand and then just very comfortably and casually reaching down with his other hand and slowly picking up the drill.

Like

Todd: second time. It was the same hand to his right hand is around Bill’s mouth, and then his right hand is also somehow picking up the dirt. This guy had two right hands, I think is probably what it was, and he drills bill and I was so excited because of the brutality of the first bit, but in the cut that we saw, which I think is the original release.

Or at least what was eventually released on video in the eighties. Um, you just kind of see the drill, go towards his head for a minute, and then you see some blood splatter on the wall. Uh, and then the killer was holding the drill and breaks the radio with the drill that bill had set on the counter when he came in.

So there’s just a bit of blood. Now, if you go and you look at the cut scene. It’s a pretty gruesome actual, you can see the drill going into the head and brain matter splattering around everything.

Craig: Yeah. I think that we saw the British release because did you notice that the title was different? Uh,

Todd: was

Craig: pranks?

Uh, our title card was pranks, which was the title that it was initially released in the United States under, but didn’t perform well, so they changed it. So, I don’t know. It could be, like you said, the original. American cut. I don’t know. Um, but yeah, I was a little bit disappointed cause you didn’t really see anything.

Not, not that I care necessarily. You know, I don’t need a lot of Gore.

Todd: Not Gore hounds.

Craig: No, I don’t need a lot of that. If things are interesting, but without it in this case, it just wasn’t particularly interesting. This isn’t a character that you care about. We’ve only seen him twice. He showed up to complain about the drill being gone and then he showed up to scare her in the, uh, elevator.

And then here he is. You know, taking a bath in the sink, in the bathroom. I mean, that’s it. It’s just some random guy. And that was something else that kind of frustrated me about the movie too, was they like, okay, so you’ve already got that John Hemet, the weird, frizzy hair guy. Um, and then they introduce other people and like this guy who comes to buy desks, and his name’s Bobby Lee Trimble, and he’s just like this skeezy guy.

Who shows up to buy desks and creep on it.

Todd: Nice little base you folks through here the other night.

Craig: How’d you know about that? Oh, I come by here every once in a while. You’re all alone. I mean, is anybody else stepping yet? Yes. As a group. The best here? Alright, you take care now. Bye bye. He’s super creepy with her to the point where I’m like, Ugh.

Obviously this guy’s not the killer. That would be way too obvious. And I thought the same thing about, I thought the same thing about John too. Like I thought, well, I suppose that he could be, but it seems like they’re trying so hard to make him seem like the creepy guy. I can’t imagine that it is him.

And, and then there’s other things too. Like there’s, at one point we see, you know, somebody creeping around, but every time somebody gets killed. The, the person who we’ve seen creeping around is wearing blue jeans and like converse sneakers, and there’s another part where somebody creeping around and it ends up being John, but he’s wearing something totally different.

He’s wearing like workman’s pants and boots and so like, they don’t even, I don’t know, it just,

Todd: it’s not even effective as a red hair. No.

Craig: Yeah. And, and so they continue to just. Run around together. Like I, I’m trying to think. I’m like, how do we get to the next kill? Well, okay, so then there’s more running around.

Todd: No, but, but, but, but, but the, there’s a, there’s a dinner scene

Craig: and kind of, that’s it. That’s it.

Todd: Well, first of all, you got to mention, since you brought up Bobby, we see them a little bit at the beginning. 38 minutes into the movie. Shortly before this drill killing scene, we felt, we finally see Bobby again and he’s an, I don’t know if it’s like his apartment or a motel room or something, and he’s calling Joanne and saying he’s going to come over.

In the meantime, he’s got this woman he’s with or whatever. It’s like, who are you calling, who are you talking to? And she’s whatever in a negligee. And he goes to leave and she’s like, don’t, why don’t you just stay here with me in bed? And. She pulls down her top to try to entice him to stay. Uh, and he just like, yeah, whatever.

He’s a Dick, he’s a real jerk. And he’s like, ah, no, just go back to bed. So that we get bad as our TNA for the movie. And again, I don’t need to see TNA. We have to talk about it because it’s a horror movie and this is part of the genre. But like I said, like you said about the kill, like I was looking for something interesting.

And at this point I’m like. Where’s the TNA going to come in? Oh, that’s it. That’s it.

Craig: Like she just pulls her top down and stands there with her boobs hanging out. Like it’s not sexy. It’s, no, it’s not interesting.

Todd: Well lit or anything like that. It’s not very flattering for the actress either. So you’re just kind of like,

Craig: again, it’s not.

It’s not nice to objectify people, but she’s not even that good looking. So like it’s,

Todd: it’s not

Craig: like it’s exciting like woo, yay. Finally. No, I mean I did write down boobs, but that’s it. But he, he goes out to go for a drive, which is apparently a pretty long drive cause he doesn’t show up again until the last five minutes.

Todd: Minutes, but we know by that point he’s not the killer. Right. I mean, he’s gone as a red herring because now that he’s proven himself to be somewhere completely different the whole time, like, you know?

Yeah. But then they set up a meal and I just wrote down what was on the table because I loved it to hold big chickens, French fries. A large salad. I think a small bowl of tomato soup and big loaf of Italian bread.

Craig: Huge. A huge loaf of Italian bread. Yeah, I think it was. I think it was Craig that brought in, I don’t know.

I got the guys mixed up.

Todd: It really completes the meal is what it does. He glad he brought it in,

Craig: right? But somehow like, okay, so he brings it in. He puts it on the table. He walks back to the kitchen to talk to Joanne. I think, who is. Cooking or something. And then he comes back out like I have in my notes.

Somebody stole the bread exclamation point. Like, Oh my God. Um, they see the door slowly closing. So the bread thief has just left. And so they, they run out after the bread thief. Um, the food is left alone and then. The killer, presumably because he still has his baseball bat with the spikes in it takes the bat and destroys all the food just to be mean, I guess

Todd: what is the point of this when first when they swipe the bread, I thought.

Are we going to get some kind of murder by bread coming

Craig: up now that I would have liked to have seen?

Todd: I was really hoping, but now it’s just a, this is one of those weird things and it turns out. Should I say it? I mean, spoiler alert, the person who took the bread wasn’t even the killer. Like literally a guy came in and needed some bread, took it as opposed to the chickens or the plate of fries.

Right. Tomato soup really wanted that giant ass loaf of bread.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I guess bread travels. Well, who knows? But, so anyway, so I guess now they’re worried about the bread thief for something. So again, they and, and they, every time they’re like. That darn old John Hemet, like he, you know, like he’s the crazy old guy out in the woods.

Oh, it must’ve been that old crazy coot stealing our, our bread. And so they split up to go look for him again, or the power goes out, whatever a bit stupid stuff happens, the power goes out. And so, um, they split up again. The girls are together, up in a room. They yelled down off. The balcony to Brian and they’re like, get up here because it’s dark and we’re scared, and he’s like, okay, I’m coming.

Then he’s coming up the stairs in the stairwell and he runs into somebody, not physically, but meet somebody and this person is shining a flashlight in his face so he can’t tell who it is, and then he just takes a machete to the shoulder. Is that, I guess because. Then we don’t see him again until we see his body later.

Todd: That was disappointing as well.

Craig: It was, I mean like, okay, machete, kill, that’s, that’s cool. But like he just takes one slice down the shoulder and falls down. Like that’s, that’s it. And so then the other guy, Craig. Meets the two girls in their room and Joanne’s like, one of us needs to stay here and wait for Brian, but the other two should try to go get the power on.

And Patty’s like, well, I’m not staying by myself. So Joanne’s like, okay, I’ll stay by myself. So Craig and Patty go down to the kitchen, I guess is where the fuse box is. Even though the power’s off, they hear like boiling water and she’s like, Oh, somebody must have left the pod on like. What, like over the fire, like I don’t, I don’t,

Todd: the

Craig: power is out.

I don’t get it. Craig goes off to the fuse box and leaves her standing in the middle of the kitchen. It’s so dark, but we see him like take a blow to the head and fall down and then she’s just standing there and that’s when like the Christmas lights are flashing and she’s like Hardy har Merry Christmas or whatever.

Then she gets grabbed from behind. Does he like choke her out or,

Todd: yeah, either chokes rotary knocks her over the head or something lame like that and drags her away. Yeah.

Craig: And then I thought it was hilarious. He carries her in his arms and puts her in a giant industrial pressure cooker that is boiling and, and you know, steaming away, but he puts her in there and there’s no reaction like.

I’m sorry, but even if you passed out from fright or something, if somebody dips you into boiling water, I think that would probably shock you awake. But no, not petty. But she does at the last minute, just kind of gingerly like try to reach out and get out

Todd: so gingerly. Like she’s taking her time with it.

It was so crazy because I expected to see this, like her

Craig: trying to leap out and

Todd: scream and he’s going to push her down or something like that. No, what a waste. She’d

Craig: be all blistered and gross. But no,

Todd: God, it would have been so good and it wouldn’t have taken that much money or effort,

Craig: but no, she just, she just kind of gingerly reaches her hand out and he just kind of gingerly pushes it back in and then close the lid.

So again, here we are. And now I’m looking at my watch and there’s still like 15 or 20 minutes of this movie left. And I’m like, what is going to happen? Like pretty much everybody is dead. At some point they had called the police, the police came and they were like, Oh, there’s this frizzy hair guy, and he’s scary.

And he’s like, Oh, well we picked up a frizzy haired guy earlier, so it’s probably him so. I’ll let you know. There must be like a whole gang of frizzy hair band. It’s like running this town.

Todd: And I’m like, what kind of a cop is this? Like they told him his name, his full name, like couldn’t he just get on his radio and be like, Hey, that guy that you picked up, was he John, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He’s apparently got to go to the station to find that out. So

Craig: now it’s just, um, Craig and Joanne left and somehow they’re like, they’re like looking around together. And this John Guy shows back up. And to be fair, he is weird, like he’s kind of wild eyed and odd, but he runs into Joanne and she’s like fighting him.

But then he starts saying things like, you’ve got to trust me. I’m trying to get you out of here. But. He’s also kind of pursuing her and like, she’s like, you know, closing doors and hiding behind doors, and he’s trying to get in. But what he’s saying is, I’m trying to help you. And at this point I’m like, surely he is, you know, like, I don’t.

I had no idea what was going on at this point, but she fights him for a while and then Craig shows up and fights him for a little while, and then somehow she gets separated again, and then she fights him again for a while, and then Craig gets him with a machete to the shoulder. That he’s okay for a little bit and eventually it’s Craig,

Todd: wait a minute.

Craig: Isn’t this right for you? My messed up.

Todd: Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. You’re right. But I just wanted to point out one, one thing that just had me, I almost fell off of the sofa. It’s during this whole bit. It might be bef. I think it’s before John has dispatched, but, uh, Joanne and Craig are. Crouched down and they’re crawling through, almost like kind of sneaking through what looks to be like a little tunnel or something and they’re trying really hard to be quiet.

It’s supposed to be a very tense scene. And Craig like kicks a piece of metal with his foot and then he steps over it and his other foot kicks the piece of metal too. And then Joanne follows behind it. Kicks it again with her foot and kicks it a fourth time with her other foot, this piece of metal.

Neither of them can step over it to save their life. He just couldn’t get over that. I thought, are they trying to be funny here?

Craig: And in that same moment, we see them crouched down like in the entrance or exit of whatever it is that they’ve been in, and we see John’s legs walk. By right in front of them and a split second after it walks, after the legs walk by right in front of them.

Craig’s like, we have to take them out. Like just talking out loud, like he’s standing right there. He can hear you. But he convinces Joanne that they, you know, they’re never going to get out of there if they don’t, you know, take this guy out or whatever. So she goes to be a distraction. And when John is distracted by her, Craig attacks him and they tussle, but then Joanne hits him over the head.

With something and he falls down. Now I assumed that he was just knocked out and that he would be back, but no, apparently hitting him over the head with whatever she hit him over the head with killed him and so he’s dead now. So now there are only two people left.

Todd: This is, this is what I was expecting, like Tim to come back or something.

I mean, maybe the next thing would be like a ski pole, the head or something. I really couldn’t imagine that it was going to be either Craig or Joanne, but then. Craig just turns around and says to Joanne, literally out loud, this is the actual line. It’s been me the whole time.

Craig: Don’t you want to stand? It’s been me the whole time. I’m the one. Yeah, and then he just explains it. John Hemet knew like,

Todd: like this, this

Craig: the creepy frizzy hair guy has only been creeping around cause he knew Craig was a murderer apparently. And uh, he was just trying to protect them. Now he couldn’t have during the day, you know, come up and said, Hey, your friend killed a bunch of people and cities had to kind of creep around.

At night, you know, wait for an opportunity, I guess. I don’t know. Um, but then again, I looked down at my watch, there are still 15 minutes left. I’m like, what is going to happen for 15 minutes?

Todd: Oh, God,

Craig: not married. So he chases her around maniacally. Like now all of a sudden, he’s just crazy. Like he’s laughing like a lunatic.

And, um, yeah. Professing his

Todd: love Jack Torrance, and they do have a cool scene in here where he is. I mean, the scene is cool in this movie. It’s kind of absurd, but they’re in like this tunnel with pipes going down like a maintenance tunnel or something. She runs down and he’s coming after her and it’s got this great, I mean, for a movie that can’t seem to have a steady camera to save its life.

It’s somehow manages to get this pretty decent Dolly shot of him coming towards her passing, grabbing the poles on the post on the side and saying creepy things. I thought, Oh, this is a pretty slick shot. This, this one shot in the movie is quite good. It seems really silly because, Oh, it’s been proceeded by like eight minutes of him just running around with her maniacally laughing so

Craig: well.

What I thought was so funny about that. Like he had told her about the tunnel before, and so then she went in there and she goes a long way in, but then she gets to a place where it’s a dead end and there’s a sign that says, . Entrance to the street is sealed off or something. So she unscrews a light bulb or breaks a light bulb or something so that at the end of the tunnel is in darkness and he can’t see that it’s blocked off

Todd: like the last six feet.

Right.

Craig: Even though the rest of the tunnel is lit, you know that last six feet is pitch black. And so he starts coming towards her and it is, it’s kind of creepy, but then he gets to the end, he’s like. Ooh, it’s dark down here. Hold on a second. I’m going to go get my flashlight and he turns around and leave.

Todd: it was so dumb.

Oh no. My favorite part of this whole deal, because this extends on forever, is when he does grab her and he’s talking to her and stuff like that, and he’s like. Hey, Hey, you want to see Patty? And he opens up a door, uh, and there’s Patty, you know, like in pieces or whatever in the closet, and it closes that and he’s like, Hey, Hey, you want to see Debbie  like, like two lockers down and opens it up.

But he’s got Debbie’s body in there as well. Like they took the classic woman runs around and discovers all the body scenes and turned it into killer. Gives an a score to tour. Yes.

Craig: Yeah. It was pretty hilarious. Meanwhile, Bobby Lee has shown up apparently to dumpster dive, I guess, and uh, he hears her screaming and so he sees them down through a grate and comes running around to rescue her, I guess.

And so he runs inside and he’s kind of tussling with Craig and stuff. Meanwhile, a cop car shows up and it’s like a clown car full of cops. Like, I’ve never seen this before. Like one car shows up. And like 12 cops roll out of it. Like, I don’t know what that was all about, but Bobby Lee, Bobby Lee and Craig are fighting down in the, wherever they are.

It looks like a boiler room or something, and Bobby Lee punches Craig and Craig goes down on the ground. And of course right at that moment is when the. Please come in and they see, you know, these two men, both of them kind of beat up one standing over the other and Craig’s like, Oh, thank God you’re here.

He’s a killer. He’s a killer. Oh man. This part was so contrived.

Todd: That’s the twist. You were waiting for Craig. I

Craig: guess the cops are like, stand still, don’t move. Meanwhile, Craig’s down on the ground, grabs a knife from behind him. Apparently the cops who are 12 feet away. You can’t see this

Todd: or hear

Craig: it because Craig’s like got the knife and he’s like holding it.

Menacingly it’s like, I’m going to kill you and they kill you. And so I guess Bobby Willie moves and the police shoot him through the chest and kill him and he’s dead. Yeah. And they think that he was the killer because. He too has frizzy hair

Todd: seal. This one

Craig: up boys. He must be that guy that they called about before and, Oh God, just so inapt.

Craig’s like, Oh, you got to go help my friends. They’re upstairs and they’re like, okay, let’s go. And he’s like. Nice. I think I’m just going to stay here and be like, okay.

Todd: So

Craig: all the cops go away and leave him there, and he just very, you know, casually with very little concern goes and gets Joanne who he’s knocked out, picks her up, cradle her in his arms like. Uh, I have to do this. I didn’t want it to come to this. I love you, but you won’t feel any pain. And then he walks her up.

They’ve been in the basement this whole time, but apparently he walks her up to the roof. I don’t know. I don’t even know. But there’s somewhere outside where there’s an incinerator that’s raging and you see him standing with her in front of the incinerator and you kind of hear the cops. Kind of coming behind them and then it just cuts back down to the street with these cops and they’re like, Oh, thank goodness we got here.

You know that guy. Killed a bunch of people and they’re like, what is that smell?

And they look and there’s smoke coming out of like this little chimney, and they’re like, Oh, it must be the incinerator is this most? Is this supposed to smell that bad? And the other cops like, well, I don’t know, but they’re going to tear it down anyway, so who cares? The end. That’s it. So I guess the twist is that Craig.

Got away with it. In the end, he killed everybody. Totally got away with it.

Todd: Now, that was the sort of bleak ending. I wasn’t really exp. I don’t know. What was I really expecting from this movie? Not a whole heck of a lot, but as far as predictability goes, I thought we’d have a final girl and we didn’t. We had a final guy.

The fact that he got away with it was it was a nice touch. Yeah, it was one of the few truly. Original wish things about the movie than in the school, you know, bit less things I have to say about it. Yeah. And all. But I also have a spot in my heart for these movies back when you could do this, because the horror market was so lucrative.

Basically, college kids could get together, scrape up together enough money to buy enough film and just kind of use whatever they had available to them to throw something together, uh, and make. Something out of it. You know, it’s cool that we’re sitting here talking about it now, you know? And that it’s on the internet and it’s been released.

And blue, blue Ray. And I guess there’s a co a really nice commentary on there, which I actually, just because I’m interested in the filmmaking process and this sort of, you know, scrappy type story, I would love to listen to their commentary and them shoot the breeze about how when they were in college, they made this movie and here’s all the backstory behind it.

You know? That would be,

Craig: that would be, yeah, but they probably had a good time doing it, you know? They literally filmed it over a Christmas break. Um, I think, you know, over the course of like three weeks, uh, and with these movies, these slasher movies from the eighties, on the one hand, they’re a dime a dozen, but on the other hand, the ones that really took off, it wasn’t necessarily that the ones that got.

The most attention were all that much better than any of the rest of them. Just things came together for certain ones of them. You know, Friday the 13th found an audience and, and became a franchise. But if you go back and look at that first movie, it’s not really anything special. I like it. Um, and I think there’s a lot of clever things going on there, but you know, it became, you know, this huge.

Franchise. Meanwhile, you’ve got other movies like house on sorority row, which I thought was really good. You know, one of the better ones that we’ve seen, and it didn’t get all that much attention and it hasn’t been remembered as fondly. So I feel like everything just had to fall into place for these things to do.

Well. And this one, for whatever reason, just didn’t, it’s got, I think, a 0% rating on rotten tomatoes. Um, but, um, I think it’s also kind of got. A little bit, at least have a cult following too, and there are some charming things about it. Some, some cute little moments. And like you said, the score is good.

Daphne’s the Negus first movie. So if you watch tons of horror movies, like obviously we do, I don’t think it’s a waste of time, you know, it’s, as we say all the time, it’s really kind of a time capsule. Even watching it on YouTube, it kind of took me back. To the day of watching these movies on VHS and the quality would be so low.

And like in the dark scenes, you couldn’t even see what was going on. So it kind of felt like a throwback to me, and because I had never seen it before, it was kind of fun just to put myself back in that. Time and that that frame of mind. So for nostalgia purposes, it was all right. I didn’t think it was a great movie, but I’m not angry that I spent an hour and 20 minutes watching it.

It was fine.

Todd: We’ve seen much worse with bigger budgets and, and something did come up. I mean, Daphne’s unique, his first movie, you know, the writer and director really didn’t do anything after this. Most of the other people didn’t do much. After this, Christopher Young, the composer went on to. Huge Hollywood career as a composer is very well respected.

And the makeup effects artist, Matthew Mungle, who did the special makeup and prosthetics effects in this movie. This was one of his first projects, and he’s basically done every movie you’ve ever heard of. He’s been the special makeup effects artists for it. Like 249 credits, like frickin Schindler’s list, Jurassic park, the Los world.

Wow. Dream warriors. Oh, cool. Up to now, like one of his early latest credits is he did the prosthetic makeup for Robert DeNiro in the Irish men. So, you know, even these little projects that we laugh at and we make fun of, end up being a calling card of some kind for the people who are in it and somehow get them ahead.

So maybe that’s another reason why we’re still talking about this movie today.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Well, thank you so much for listening. And once again, thank you so much, Freddie, for recommending this movie to us. We’re continuing to do requests, so if you have requests, just look us up online, shoot us a message on our Facebook page, leave us a comment on our YouTube channel, or just go straight to our website, two guys that read 40 net.com so we’d love to hear from you guys and we also love to have you pass this along to other people.

To help expand our list if

Craig: you enjoyed.

Todd: Until next time, I’m Todd

Craig: and I’m Craig

Todd: with two guys and a chainsaw.