Sweet 16

Sweet 16

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If you’re looking for the perfect “so bad, it’s good” movie to watch with your buddies, few films are sweeter than Sweet 16.

Though it boasts a cast that is way too good on paper to crank out such a schlockfest, at least it has one thing going for it: A memorable theme song. Repeated over and over.

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Sweet 16 (1983)

Episode 16, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Craig: I’m Greg.

Todd: And happy new year, everybody. It is 2016 or it is in order to kick off the new year. I thought we try the movie. Sweet 16. This was my choice this time, right Greg? Yeah. 

Craig: Very clever 16, sweet 16. Here we are. 

Todd: Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

Yeah. This is a film that I didn’t know anything about. Uh, Craig didn’t know anything about it. Neither of us had really heard of it until I started looking for movies with 16 in the title full disclosure. But, uh, I did online happened to notice that it had a slight cult following had been released to DVD.

Somehow despite its oddness, but I think the original negatives were lost. There was a little disclaimer at the beginning that said that due to the fact that the original negatives were lost, we apologize for the quality of this film. We’ve used the best quality one we could get from the licenser. So that’s, it was interesting.

Craig: Yeah. And it definitely looked like a transfer from like a VHS or something. It was. There are some places where the editing was a little choppy and it’s, I don’t know. You could tell that the disclaimer was probably a good idea. Yes. 

Todd: Luckily, you know, this, this fine film would have been lost to time had it right for somebody rescuing it, make a couple bucks on DVD.

So the thing that drew me to this movie and made me think this was one we might want to watch was simply the cast. The cast of this film is pretty interesting. We have a bow Hopkins who plays a sheriff in this film. He was in the wild bunch, American graffiti. Midnight express lots and lots of TV in the seventies and eighties.

And honestly, I thought he was one of the strongest actors. Okay. Not a high bar to cross, but okay. Craig doesn’t agree. We have Patrick McNee who played John Melissa’s father in this film. Now this guy has a totally recognizable face. So he was from the howling of view to a kill. He was in this, a spinal tap, again, a lot of TV all the way from the fifties through the eighties, he actually.

Stood in for Leslie Nielsen who was originally supposed to be cast in that role and then had to bow out at the last minute. I suppose this being a 1983 film prom night with Jamie Lee Curtis came out what like 1980, I think. And Leslie Nielsen was a, it was a star in that maybe he was at the time kind of doing a few more, uh, horror, slasher films.

He might’ve been a go-to guy 

Craig: for a little while. Yeah. I read that too. That, uh, he had originally been cast and I was. When I heard that my immediate thought was well, is, is supposed to be funny, you know? Cause that’s, that’s how I think of Leslie Nelson. I think of him as naked gun and, and that kind of stuff.

But I do know that earlier in his career, he took on a lot of serious roles too. In fact, wasn’t he in not creep show, but the other one, he wasn’t creep show to 

Todd: creep show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was in forbidden planet, you know, that’s the one I really remember him from way back in the day. Uh, Billy, who is a kind of a redneck cowboy guy in here who just causes trouble.

Isn’t Don Stroud, who actually was in Django Unchained. Really? Yeah. From the Amityville horror, he was also in a James Bond film, licensed to kill again, tons of TV work during the seventies and eighties, Marcy, which was the sister. Uh, we’ll get into all these characters later. She’s the Sheriff’s 

Craig: daughter, his daughter, Dana 

Todd: Kimmel.

Uh, she shortly. Before shortly after this film was in Friday, the 13th 

Craig: part three, I saw that. And that must be where I really recognized her from, because her face really was familiar. I imagine she probably popped up here and there in the eighties, I saw that she, uh, did a stint on days of our lives. And, uh, that was my mom’s show.

Oh yeah. So I, maybe I recognize her from there too, but you’re right. Lots of recognizable faces. Who was the kid that played her brother. Hey. Hank Hank, his name. He looks so familiar. I, I, he looked so familiar, so I looked him up and he was Troy from the Goonies. He was, of course the jerky Troy. And in this, I really liked him in that movie.

I thought he played that character really well. And then in this movie, I dunno, I guess he didn’t really have much to work with. He was just kind of the All-American kid, but a little flat. I 

Todd: think that was the problem with a lot of these people. It just, it seemed like all of them were pulled out of television, soap, operas.

They were starting to get their film filmography down. And, uh, this was not a good vehicle for them. It really wasn’t just to name two more Don shanks who plays Jason, who is the Indian yeah. Younger Indian guy in this. So he was in dumb and dumber. Uh, he was in a, an angry film. I really enjoy a ride with the devil.

He was uncredited and silent night, deadly night. He was one of the Santas climbing in the window. Interesting. He’s not as big of a name as some of these other people were, but still. He’s no slouch as far as what he’s done before and since, and then Henry Wilcox and we’ll play gray feather, the older Indian character in this, and this was his last film and he’s probably the most seasoned of all of them.

He was a favorite of Cecil, B DeMille. And so he was in, he was in the 10 commandments. He was in the greatest show on earth. Lot of Cecil B DeMille, his films. And then after Cecil B DeMille died, he didn’t actually get a whole lot of work, but he also played a number of Andean characters in television. And he was a caddy, huh?

Craig: As well. So yeah, he looked really familiar to me, but I was afraid that that was my mind just being stereotypical because you know, he was kind of your stereotypical older native American guy. So I don’t know if I really recognized him or if just the character was. You know, so kind of 

Todd: generic and will sadly, he didn’t have a lot to do in this movie either.

He had like, what two lines and you didn’t even see all that much of him. He came and went, although he’s a bit of a figure in the plot. Yeah. Well that was 

Craig: one of the 

Todd: plot. 

Craig: I mean, that was, I don’t know. We’ll, we’ll talk about how we feel about it overall. I’m sure at some point, but going through like, I have so much of the time.

I felt like I had absolutely no idea what was going on. There are so many characters introduced and none of them seemed particularly significant. It was like they were trying to establish as many red herrings as they possibly could. And so I, I had, I was just lost for most of the time. And then at the end, when the mystery starts to get pieced together, Some of the pieces fell into place.

It was like, okay, that kind of makes sense. But there was so much else going on that I was a little bit 

Todd: lost. It’s it’s kind of a mystery. It’s not your slasher film in the sense that there’s a. Sort of a supernatural character running around or somebody we already know, like a Jason or a Michael Myers or whatever that they’re just trying to catch.

It’s seriously a case of, we really don’t know who is doing these things. All we see it’s all stabbing murders and all we see is just a hand very quickly. You can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman can barely tell what the knife looks like. And people just get picked off one by one. And this is a very small town.

Well must be Texas, Austin, Texas, Texas, I think somewhere near it’s a small town. It’s not Austin. 

Craig: Yeah. And the, the plots, the movie starts out. I mean, you know exactly what kind of movie it’s going to be from the beginning, because the very first shot is of this. Fully nude, full frontal nudity, a young girl who is Melissa, who is really not the main character, but who things kind of revolve around throughout the 

Todd: course or, yeah, that’s a strange thing.

I mean, the movie’s called sweet 16 and eventually it ends up pers her 16th birthday happens in the middle of this at a party. The movie keeps coming back to her over and over again, but she doesn’t seem like any more of a significant character than anybody else in the film. No, 

Craig: the whole thing felt to me, first of all, it felt a little bit made for TV, um, in, in the quality of it.

And then. It kind of felt like that kind of flock to, you know, more of a, uh, a thriller mystery than straight up for it. Actually, it kind of reminded me of like a young adult novel by like Christopher pike or those, and it would have been, you know, titled like there’s something about that Alyssa and the mystery kind of.

Surrounds her, even though eventually you find out that she’s really only kind of tangentially connected to what’s going on, but, um, it just felt very much like that. You’ve got that. You’ve got the sheriff who, after the first murder. Okay. So we have Melissa naked. Great. You get along. Nice long. Look at Melissa showering naked with lots of makeup on meanwhile, this girl, I guess it’s not established yet, but it’s established very soon that she’s supposed to be 15, so weird that it would open with a full frontal nude shot of her.

I don’t believe for a second. This actress was absolutely bad. She didn’t look 

Todd: anything like nobody here looks like their ages anywhere. 

Craig: No. Um, there was. There’s a funeral scene at one point and Melissa, the girl who’s supposed to be turning 16 or whatever. I thought they could’ve put her in a different dress and a little bit more makeup and she could have played these other young people’s moms.

Like not look anything near what her age is supposed to be, but so she and her family are new in town. And, uh, because her dad is an archeologist who was on a dig and, uh, she’s a bad girl. And so immediately she goes out to a bar and she’s looking for a good time. And she said, her shoe broke. And again, we’re getting introduced to all these characters.

You know, we cut from her naked scene to this bar where you’ve got the hillbilly, Billy who, uh, that’s right drunk and jackass and around. And then these two native at first, this older native American guy comes in and gray feather, gray, feather, and, uh, that. Billy and his Lackey, ER, you know, overtly racist.

Well man,

get your ass outta here.

yeah. Loosen up these little cap. And then I younger guy, native American guy, Jason Long shadow comes in and you know, they, they, the hillbillies and the natives, uh, tussle, and then the bartender throws the natives out. Of course, totally unfairly. They didn’t do anything wrong. And when they go out there, there’s Melissa and she’s tries to hit on Jason Long shadow and he’s kind of shoes her away.

So after they go, yeah, Then two younger guys from inside, um, just pop out, right Johnny and, and the Sheriff’s kid, right? Yeah. The sheriff came back and they come out and Johnny’s kind of flirting with her and he’s really a big jerk, but she just. Wanting to get some action. I guess she’s 

Todd: like the town slot is 

Craig: what it is.

She, you know, she’s bad. She smokes pot and yeah, she’s the bad girl or whatever. 

Todd: And I like how he introduces himself. Maybe you’d like to 

Craig: go for a ride

named Johnny. This is my truck. Just the beginning of what is a total smorgasbord of eighties cheese throughout this 

Todd: dialogue. That’s right. So they did tank and, uh, the two of them drive out to this spot in the desert and start making out in the back of his truck. But Melissa just sits up for no really good reason, no established reason and says she gets a weird feeling about where they are.

And he says, well, This is an ancient Indian burial grounds.

I think we both lost it. There it’s so clumsy because there’s no motivation for it. And that, Oh, she gets up and she says, Oh, we need to leave. We need to leave. He’s like, okay. Okay. And they start to get in the car and suddenly you get that point of view, camera 

Craig: shot, like classic killer point of view, walking 

Todd: towards them, which we didn’t get before.

And it’s like kind of walking towards their door and then they just sort of drive off and it’s not established well enough for you to get the sense that there’s this killer that’s been out there waiting for them, or there’s this killer prowling. Did she hear a twig snap? We don’t know because we never saw it, heard it.

It was all very 

Craig: strange. They leave, you know, uh, and, and they, he drives her home and she’s all worried about her dad catching her stoned and, uh, the dad does catch them in the car, the door. And he’s kind of ominous. Did he have like a weird accent or does he just, 

Todd: I think he just talks funny, but yeah, he’s a very proper, it’s got an Ascot on and everything.

His name was, uh, 

Craig: Johnny, right? John. We’ve got John. See, that’s another thing. Dammit. Movies. Don’t give multiple characters. I know to keep track. 

Todd: Well, and this, this movie, all the names, it felt like I was watching an episode of the Waltons. You, you got like. Hank and John and Johnny Dan Frank, Tommy, Kathy Joanie, um, Billy, there was hardly a name that didn’t have a wire, right.

It sound like, you know, But yeah, that was, uh, that was actually Patrick McNeese character. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. They, uh, so you know, the dad is angry and he shoes the young guy away and the young guy’s drunk and he, his car conveniently run. His truck runs out of gas, right back at the ancient Indian burial ground place.

And, uh, He’s stumbling through very melodramatically and, uh, somebody comes up behind him and stabs him and he’s dead. And that, uh, sets in motion, this small series of murders. So then we kind of follow throughout and that’s the central mystery who is doing 

Todd: this. It turns out that Hank who had to walk home apparently from the bar, from Earl’s that night, uh, is the son of the sheriff.

And so. If it revolves around anybody it’s really revolving around the sheriff and his little family. Um, the sheriff, uh, whose name was Dan, Dan he’s divorced or something. We’re not sure what’s quite the mom’s 

Craig: out of the picture. It never 

Todd: explained anything. And he has these two dogs, these two kids, Marcy and Hank, and 

Craig: they’re like, One of the Hardy boys and Nancy drew, like 

Todd: right.

When she first introduced to her, she’s actually reading a book called murder myths, called murder 

Craig: mystery. And she’s sitting there reading it at the breakfast table and she goes, yeah, I knew it. The Gardner did it with the rake. Would you put that book away? It’s not supposed to be your rake. How did he kill somebody with a rake?

And she is this, you know, she’s her daddy’s little sleuth. And, and I get the feeling that the brother Hank was kind of supposed to be that too, but they just didn’t play it up as much, but it’s hilarious because they’re like his little investigative team. Like he gets the call that Johnny never made it home last night.

So he goes out to investigate and he just takes his teenage kids with him to wherever the, you know, they find the truck and, 

Todd: uh, And she’s always inserting her opinions into this. And he’s like, well, I think I’ll be the one doing the investigation here and okay, daddy, I’ll just run off and it’s not like she’s right.

Most of the time either, but it’s just so 

Craig: funny and so silly. Like she throws around terms like Tod. Time of death. Like she’s like explaining them to people, to the audience. Uh, she’s this? Oh God, it’s so funny. She’s just, she’s she’s Nancy drew. 

Todd: Well, you know that though, they never really follow through with that thread so much either.

It’s like she pops in as a Nancy drew character sometimes, but for a good majority of the movie, she’s either not there or tagging, just tagging, tagging along, or it doesn’t really have anything valuable to contribute, you know, it’s, it’s weird. It’s like, A half written character here. That’s never quite fleshed out, but she’s clearly the, the 

Craig: nicer, right.

She’s the good girl. You know, she wears colors that come all the way up to her neck and she has her hair and, you know, very modest styles. 

Todd: And she says what? She doesn’t know how to wear makeup. Apparently Melissa does. It seems like she does a pretty good job of putting her makeup on, Oh God. 

Craig: You know, it’s, it’s difficult to describe the plot because I feel like it’s so convoluted and they kind of try to take you off into all these different places and clues, just keep getting dropped.

So clunkily like, um, at one point Melissa’s mother said, you know, is talking to somebody and the so-and-so says, how’s your sister. And she’s like, fine. Like just these little things. Oh, okay. Well, I’m sure that’s not going to come back up later. Um, it’s overall it’s clunky when it gets right down to it.

This is a bad movie. It’s a, it’s a really bad movie, but, and we kind of talked about this before. This is one of those that’s almost so bad. It’s good. Oh yeah. I mean, we were sitting here eating pizza, drinking beer, and laughing our asses off because it is so. Unintentionally funny. I mean, we were, we were really, really cracking up through a good portion of the movie just because it’s so silly 

Todd: and ridiculous.

And you don’t really know what they’re trying to do. The director of this film, Jim Soto’s is short for like Dimitri SOTA Slafsky or something like that. So, and accord, I looked him up on EMTB and according to his bio, That he wrote himself, he’s directed hundreds of music, videos, and hundreds of TV commercials.

And then he has very little in the way of film in his name after this one in particular. But it’s, it does not feel like the kind of movie that would be shot by a guy with a lot of experience in shooting. Music videos and commercials, unless all the experience cat came after this, it’s not stylized in any way shape.

It has no style at all. Why you say, when you say, if you feels like you’re watching a TV movie, it’s so pedestrian in a way that it’s shot, it’s too dark. And I mean, it could be a function of the print and things, but it’s, it’s really dark and places. It’s. Framed up just, just a bare minimum of how you’d frame up the characters.

The locations are not that interesting. 

Craig: No. And the, like the only kind of different thing they did with the cinematography was those. They had a few of those POV shots, like killer POV shots, and then they had these weird out of nowhere. Slow motion sequences that I don’t understand what they were going for.

Like, it was just bizarre, like just out of nowhere, there would just be a, a slow motion shot of Melissa or whoever, and, you know, lots of like exploitive body shots and stuff. Like she’s totally nude and for a good. I would say minute and a half or so in the beginning for just in the shower, nothing to do with the plot at all.

And then she’s constantly just kind of wearing these skimpy 

Todd: outfits, no bra 

Craig: like just, or just like a camisole and panties or something. And she’ll just be staring at herself in the mirror and the camera will do a really, really slow pan shot up her body, like linger on her panty area. Like it’s just.

Todd: It’s odd. It’s strange. And what stranger is that inserts these at the oddest moments? It’s like, we need to show the passage of time or we need to just, we haven’t seen Melissa in a while. I sort of feel like it was just inserted to keep Melissa as a thread throughout this movie because she actually doesn’t play a big role in it, but she’s built on the front.

It’s called sweet 16. There’s a picture of her provocative on the poster, but you’re right. It’s extremely exploitive her. They’re just long lingering scenes of her looking at herself in the mirror, her changing her clothes and staring at herself and her walking by a mirror in a skimpy outfit and stopping and turning braking it.

Oh. And then the muse, the theme song comes in. 

Craig: Yeah. And I feel like that was one of those weird moments where it’s just it’s. Okay. So after the first murder, all of the teenagers go to school to high school. Where it seems like they hang out for like five minutes a day and then follow their parents around all the rest of it.

Yeah. 

Todd: Um, you think it was summer except they’re still going 

Craig: to school. Cool. Right. So there’s the, you know, there’s the new girl and she’s sitting by herself kind of, I guess, like on the lawn during lunch or whatever. Uh, and the, there’s just kind of a long shot of her and this. Lovely. Melody comes up.

You with us. That was God. And it goes 

Todd: on and on. It’s like a narrating the movie for us. So 

Craig: funny. And I was waiting for it too, because in the opening credits, which also feel very cheap and pedestrian, it feels very much like an eighties TV movie there that, you know, that was build right there at the beginning music by so-and-so and Melissa written by.

So I was just waiting for the Melissa theme song and I was not disappointed at a very odd place. Yeah. And then they repeated it several times. 

Todd: Usually what she’s staring at herself in the mirror. Jeez. That’s crazy. Well, she meets Tommy Jackson. She’s still a bad girl. Tommy Jackson is a football player.

She decides to meet him afterwards at this bar behind the bar and everything. You know, the bars, the only other place in town. Apparently the high school kids can even, and, uh, he ends up dead, but she in looking for him, stumbles across gray feather back there, who is. It’s like he discovered the body or he’s standing over the body or something scares her.

And, uh, he sees the dead body and she runs off and reports it. That gets the rednecks thinking that we got to get up in arms around these in, and they even call a town meeting. Right. Um, there’s another character, the mayor type care, the town chairman who comes in and he 

Craig: wants to call a 

Todd: meeting. And I guess it was to provide another red herring in that, at this town meeting, Billy and his.

Lacking or trying to get the crowd riled up, that this is the fault of the native Americans.

I don’t think we mentioned that Melissa’s father, the archeologist is digging in this ancient Indian burial. Rightly it all ties together very neatly, but not, I 

Craig: mean, they it’s like, they’re trying to make all these connections, but most of them don’t even matter. No. Her dad, they could have completely erased that character out of the movie.

He was, there was no purpose, I guess. Okay. So he’s doing this dig and, and like, like Todd said, everything is, you know, intricately woven together. He’s doing this dig on the Indian reservation. Apparently because he wants to excavate the artifacts so that he can sell them so he can do more excavators so that he can do more excavating on the land.

And then one of his workers just happens to be Jason Long shadow, the young native American. And it’s just, it’s so 

Todd: convoluted. It’s weird because they try to throw Jason Long shadow is a suspect because he was the last person because he was angry at Melissa. Um, shortly before Melissa ran off with, with, uh, John with, uh, Johnny, with Johnny.

And so he becomes a person of interest. Uh, did he kill Johnny then? Of course, gray feather was the last one seen at that crime. And so gray feathers, a person of interest. But when the cop goes to, when the sheriff goes to question gray feather, after this, he finds them hanging and they invent. Uh, well, he even alludes, like they’ve invented the suicide story.

They’ve told the press and they’ve told the public and they’ve put in the records that it was a suicide, even though the sheriff knows damn well that it was those rednecks that went and killed him, 

Craig: which makes no sense. It doesn’t make any sense. And like, we’re, it’s never explained what. He was doing there at the crime scene.

Like, yeah. There’s no explanation for that at all. I feel like when Melissa run bumps into him, literally bumps into him at the crime scene, he says, run is run. So did he know who the killer was? I don’t know. And then right. And then he ends up hanged and it’s suggested to us that he was hanged by Billy and the other.

Hillbilly guy, but that’s really never confirmed. Like everything is, everything’s just kind of left up in 

Todd: the air. That’s really lovely up in the air. What I want to know is really that, uh, John. His worker, helping him dig into an ancient Indian burial site is a native 

Craig: American man. Well, and see that that’s again, more convoluted plot.

So then the, the dad who is doing the excavating, he comes to the cop Dan and says, I fired, uh, Jason, and I want you to arrest him because things have gone missing. Oh, well, what was it that went missing? This is my work, those on guest artifacts. To me, they’re more than that.

Those knives alone could bring me enough financial support to excavate the on top area. Now

I never seen nothing like it. Five exquisite basis, better with the chiefs, the sacred knives. I mean, I’m trying, Oh my gosh. They were killed with knives. Right? Lots of thought to maybe mention that before, because again, this guy, the dad has gone around, like investigating with the cop. Apparently the cop just takes whoever’s handy around to like, be as deputy or something.

I don’t. Yeah. So it’s 

Todd: so strange and it’s weird. Well, he finds the nut. He breaks into the, he essentially breaks into every house. He goes into the cop, the cop, uh, knock, knock nobody’s home. So he just opens the door and start searching. 

Craig: Right. And he finds the first one. He does that too. He finds great father, father hanged.

Well, then he’s suspicious of, uh, Jason. So he goes to his house again, no answer. So he just goes in and not only does he just go in, but he starts going through his stuff. And 

Todd: then like he, of course 

Craig: he opens one trunk and pulls back one blanket and there is this whole stack of tribal knives, which apparently 

Todd: he’s actually stolen right from the Dick.

So he gets arrested and put in jail while the cop goes on his investigation. And he’s teamed up with this other girl. It’s maybe my favorite character in the whole thing, Kathy. I have 

Craig: no idea who she is. What does she, where does she work? She works in records. 

Todd: Must be it. They have one computer cords this 1981 computer.

So it’s going to take her a while. So he just decides he’s going to go through the microfilm himself. Um, and they go. And the thing about Kathy is that she’s constantly trying to, she’s the comic relief of this whole thing. She’s constantly she’s tension. She’s intense. She’s hitting on Dan. Uh, it seems like 

Craig: I got the sense that they were like in a relationship.

Right, right. Is that, or no, I 

Todd: know you got the sense that she wanted a relationship and he just flirted with her to get what he wanted. He wasn’t really interested. Maybe. I don’t know. I just put, the girl does 

Craig: bring it up. Yeah. The girl says maybe, maybe you should propose to the daughter, you know why maybe you should propose to her.

So, and he says, I’m not in any hurry to get. Uh, to get married again, but, well, it becomes 

Todd: very clear why you wouldn’t propose to this woman. She’s funny. 

Craig: She is annoying, but she’s funny. I mean, she’s everything out of her mouth as a hint, like, you know, let’s go take me out to a nice steak dinner. Ooh. I sure do love baked potatoes.

Todd: Here’s what I would 

Craig: eat it, but what’s even funnier about that is. Yeah, there’s I couldn’t for the life of me, figure out what about him was appealing to her? Like you just totally brushes her off at every turn and, you know, shows absolutely no interest in her whatsoever. And she just keeps laying yeah.

Laying it on. It’s 

Todd: funny. Yeah. It is funny. Well, they go on their investigation and that’s where he is looking up previous murders in the town, which is an odd thing to do. I think. I know it’s sort of typical. Let’s see what the history of this town is and dive in. But usually that’s when the murder has some sort of historical basis, right?

Like it’s part of a very, it’s not just some people been getting stabbed. It’s some people have been dying in a very unusual way that maybe points to an event that happened earlier or an artifact or, or something about the town 

Craig: hasn’t came to that conclusion. No sense to me because all of these murders appear to be about Melissa in some way, and she’s only 16 and she’s new in town.

So, you know, how could that, that doesn’t make any sense, except for that. Another one of those little nuggets of exposition that just gets dropped in there. Melissa’s mother who looked a lot like Carrie Fisher, didn’t you think? 

Todd: Yes, she did. Anyway, you’ve got to say Melissa’s mother is Susan Strausberg. Uh, she is the daughter of Lee Strasberg, the very famous acting coach of the actor studio who really brought method acting to the United States based on Stanislavski’s, um, acting techniques.

They could have used 

Craig: his 

Todd: help. Yeah, they really could have. And I feel like she probably is a very good actress. And maybe many of these people are good actors. They just were given such terrible material and terrible 

Craig: direction. Yeah. Seems that way. But she drops a little nugget of information that, Oh, I used to live here a long time ago, but I had to leave.

Because my dad had to take a job or something and what we’re back now or something. And again, it’s another one of those. Oh, like, I can’t imagine that will be important later. And that scene where you’re talking about, um, with Hank and cath, is it no, Dan, Dan, the cop and, uh, Kathy doing the investigating.

You get the sense that that’s the point where they’re putting things together and we’re supposed to put things together too, but you’re just getting these shots of. Text on the microfiche and I still don’t get it. I still don’t get it. It was like, there were, there were, it seemed at first, like it was significant that there were murders every couple of years.

And then the last one, he sees the one that’s like the aha moment or whatever says local girl found dead in institution. Um, and then if you look at the text of the girl’s name was Joan plat, which is Melissa’s mothers. 

Todd: Maiden name. Yes. And that is something you could have missed if you picked up on it. I, I gave up trying to read these things cause I couldn’t see any connection, but you’re the one that said, Oh, isn’t that Melissa’s mother.

Okay. Ah, but if she’s dead, okay. Now we start, you know, figuring out that it might be Jones’ mother in some way shape, form, and 

Craig: that’s kind of, and at that point, you know, the reveal doesn’t come right away. I mean, they, they figure out who it is. Or the dad does Dan, uh, seemingly I mean, cause he hightails it out of there and his is booking it towards the sweet 16 party, which was where everybody is.

Now. Everybody in town 

Todd: was invited to the suite. It’s got everybody in small 

Craig: town. Right. It seems like there’s like 20 people in the whole town. Um, and uh, the parties, you know, Going well, everything’s fine. Um, Melissa and the sun Hank go off on a walk together where they end up swimming in the pond. Again, Melissa, totally topless and exposed, uh, to the camera.

And then you get the POV shots again. We already know there was a scene at some point where Jason, the native American guy was in jail, but he broke out. So we know he’s on the loose. So again, there’s all these red herrings. 

Todd: And then this is sort of the convergence of all of the suspects, essentially.

They’re there in the water and through the woods, Billy and his, uh, the red and red Mac friend, and they’re taking a whiz, they have accord. They happen to be taken a whiz at the same place and they notice them at the same time. Then we see the Jason, the Indian who’s just broken out of jail coming into the woods.

Looks like maybe he’s following the kids and not the guys. And then there’s a big interaction where Jason comes upon the rednecks and he’s like, I know you killed a great father. What did he ever do to you? There’s a tussle there where they knock him out. You think they’ve killed them, but they haven’t quite Melissa 

Craig: leads Hank into the water and they frolic for a little while and then she just gets out and starts walking away.

And he’s like, where are you going? And she doesn’t answer. She just keeps walking away. And she comes upon the rednecks. You start to rough her up. And that scene made me really uncomfortable. Very strange. It felt like you’re kind of going to get into, like I spit on your grave or the last house on the left territory there, but then not 

Todd: at all.

No. Cause one of them slaps or knocks routes and they get really upset that they’ve knocked her out. So it’s like, They have, they have no trouble roughing her up, but they would never go so far as to knock her out or do weird things to her. It’s kind of questionable. What in the world were they hoping for?

Right. Why were they roughing her up right first 

Craig: place? Um, yeah. But anyway, so they, the other one, the Lackey, he’s the one that knocks her out. Then Billy is like, why would you do that? And go get some water. And so he goes down to get some water, I guess, to splash on her face. I don’t know. And then while he’s down there, Billy gets killed and then the Lackey comes back and he’s like, Oh no.

And then he gets killed. And then hate comes out of the water and then he gets stabbed like in 

Todd: the, or the shoulder or 

Craig: something they had, I guess the rednecks had kind of knocked him out too. Like he had tried to come to Melissa’s aid or something like that. They was around, he woke up and the killer stabbed him in the arm.

And the cinematography is so jumbled. You can’t even really tell what’s going on, but like he, he gets up and runs away and like it’s nothing. And then the 

Todd: movie just. And yeah, the cop, the it’s Oh, no. What happens is the girl. Comes across the sisters are Marcy Marcy. Who’s been looking for them. Cut stumbles across this whole scene of dead bodies of dead bodies and sees them Melissa’s mother sort of poised over her, sitting on the ground, poised over 

Craig: her.

She’s got blood on her. Dress 

Todd: and she’s has a knife in her hand. And as Marcy gets closer, she raises the knife like from about three or four feet away. She could never stab her, but raise the knife as though she’s going to stab her. And then from out of nowhere, the father, Dan, the sheriff dives in, in another one of those weird.

Slow Mo scenes where, you know, they were just watching the footage and said, boy, this looks like utter crap. Right? We better like at least slow Mo this up or something comes dives and drives her out of the way and then starts this deal where they’re talking down the mom. And so it turns out that the mom, this is where you start to finally figure out that it’s supposed to be the mom.

And you’re trying to 

Craig: figure out why. Well, and it’s all very calm. Like he, like the Dan tackles, his daughter gets her out of the way. And then he’s like just kind of talking to her, the killer. He knows the lady with the knife is just. Sitting there, you know, going crazy to Melissa or whatever. Um, let me have the knife.

Nobody’s going to hurt you.

Is just kind of Sydney, like literally just sitting in the background, just like in the back of the shot, he’s not doing anything. They’re just hanging out chill, you know, killers, whatever. Um, and so then the dad that Dan starts trying to kind of talk down the mother whose name we thought was Joan, but the way that it is explained, and she’s kind of babbling.

She’s she’s talking to Melissa, but she’s referring to Melissa as Joan. And, uh, she’s saying we got to get away. He’s coming. We gotta get away. And then she freaks out. It’s like, no, daddy stopped. Don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt her. Um, so. Apparently. And, and after they do finally well after she subdued and we’ll get there in a second, but there’s a scene where Dan is talking to, uh, Melissa’s dad and explaining what had happened, 

Todd: which they absolutely have 

Craig: to do.

And it’s hilarious because what, okay. The way that the, the mother is subdued, the sheriff reaches for the knife. He’s like, give me the knife. I promise nobody’s going to hurt you. I promise nobody’s going to hurt Melissa. And she just takes the knife and plunges it into her chest. For no apparent reason.

And then Dan is explaining to her husband. Mind you, his wife is now dead and has been responsible for murdering a bunch of people. It’s like, they’re chatting over coffee. He 

Todd: has the same calm effect on his face that he’s had throughout everything in this movie. Right? Oh, well, like I always knew that she was a, uh, I didn’t realize she was so troubled, I guess that really shook her up.

She, yeah, 

Craig: she talked about her sister, but I never really paid it any mind. 

Todd: It’s too busy with my archeological digs. Apparently 

Craig: what happened is there were two sisters, there was Joni and Tricia. And the dad abused Joanie. It’s never really specifically said hat, how you get the suggestion that it was like sexual.

Um, but I guess Tricia killed the dad and Joanie went insane. And had to be institutionalized and then she killed herself. And when Joanie killed herself, Trisha took on her identity and move back 

Todd: to the town to get kind of, to completely fulfill her identity and start murdering people. 

Craig: Well, right, because now.

She’s projected this need to protect somebody on to Melissa. And so anybody that gets close to Melissa potentially causes the threats of Melissa. She takes them out. I mean, I guess it kind of makes sense, but it seems like it comes so far out of left field. Like they’ve given you so much misdirection that when you get to the end, you just kinda have to shrug your shoulders and go, okay, 

Todd: well, what’s the problem with these sort of hacky things?

Is that it. Leaves a whole heck of a lot, unexplained, a lot of plot holes as to how could she be in these different places? Uh, undetected. How could she be following them? Yeah, one 

Craig: of the murders takes place and then like the very next scene, Hank and Marcy, you’re walking down the road and the mom like picks them up.

I mean, I guess maybe it’s supposed to be suggested that she’s come directly from that murder. I don’t know. But there are tons of plot holes, like. In my mind, I can understand why Jason would have stolen the knives, but they never explained why. I mean, it’s just, it’s just for the purpose of being a red herring.

And there are so many of those, I mean, it’s just, it’s full of holes 

Todd: all over the place. Yeah. And, uh, and I love at the end too, where the Jason kind of comes in and they start talking with him too. And it’s like all, what all is forgiven? You stole the knives and then you broke out of prison. Uh, beat up the deputy, deputy, put him in the jail and locked him in there.

But, and then, you know, went down and actually threatened the, the redneck guys. I mean, he did whip out a knife on them, but I guess he’s cleared of all of that now. So I wonder the bridge. 

Craig: So that’s pretty much it, except then we go back to a scene kind of the, the party guests kind of there, I guess, kind of lingering or whatever.

And yeah, see it’s the, the shot is from behind Melissa. It’s kind of over her shoulder and she’s kind of wrapped up in a blanket, you know, traumatized, I guess, and over her shoulder, you can see that she’s talking to Marcy and Hank and Marcy kind of looks at her and says, are you okay? And she says, I’m fine.

And it was, I knew something weird was going on because it was perfectly clear that they were intentionally not showing her face. In fact, I, it, it looked to me like a stand-in it looked like somebody in a wig. I don’t know if it was, um, but it was pretty intentional that they weren’t. So I was wondering what they were going to reveal.

She gets up. To walk away and she walks in the house and the beautiful Melissa song starts playing again, slow Mo again, she gets to the door at which point, the point of view switches to the other side of the door. She opens. And again, like you said, slow Mo and she just walks in with like these wild, crazy eyes, like just this ridiculous look on her face.

And she drops the blanket and she’s holding the knife in her hand, Looney tune. And then, and then that’s it that’s so I guess. We’re supposed to take that this whole thing is traumatized her, and now she’s going to be a psycho knife killer. Like her mother, if they 

Todd: were setting it up for the sequel, it was never going to happen.

Oh my gosh. Thank God. Terribly enough to movie, uh, in almost every way. And I will give the actors a pass simply because. Their lines were terrible and the plot was hard to follow and the locations were bad and the direction was clearly bad. I know staging 

Craig: is work. It’s just so silly. I mean, there was such, and honestly I had a good time watching it with you.

Oh, absolutely. It was fun to say, you know, order a pizza. Grab a couple beers. If you’re a rebel, like, uh, the girl in the Melissa, you know, maybe light up a Doobie or something. And, uh, and, and if you’re looking for cheesy stuff, I think you could have, you could have a really good time with this movie. I had a good time watching it.

I mean, there was just so many, even things that we skipped over. There’s a scene in the graveyard after one of the younger boys. Death. And again, the graveyard is just like the same desert set that they’ve been on the whole time, but they just stuck white wooden crosses in the ground. And that’s the graveyard.

And they’re burying this kid and Marcy confronts Melissa, who at this point she’s never really met. Oh my God. And she like. Choose her ass for a minute. And then Melissa turns to walk away and she’s like, Oh wait, I’m sorry. We can still 

Todd: be friends. Start making up, like suddenly like that. I guess that wasn’t a good way for me to get off on the right track 

Craig: and they’re best friends.

And then in the next scene, the Marcy and Hank and Dan, or the family are all driving away and the guys are talking about how maybe Melissa is a subject or a suspect. And Marcy is like, no, no way. We’re best friends. You can never do anything like that. Oh, my God, so many cheesy parts and it really is laugh out funny.

Yeah. This is a 

Todd: movie to totally get the MST three K treatment. Absolutely. You’re there with your friends. Um, that’s really the only reason to watch it. Yeah. I don’t know. 

Craig: Final any other final thoughts? I am surprised we had as much to say about it as we did. I mean, I really kind of had no idea. I was left kind of speechless.

I was left dumbfounded. I mean, this is one of the most. Odd little horror movies I’ve ever seen. And there are times when you see movies that maybe don’t reach the potential that they could have. And this is not one of 

Todd: those times, this is a pure, but it is the Quintessa. And sometimes people say, Oh, well, that movie is so bad.

It’s, it’s funny. And it’s not, or it starts out that way. And then it just gets boring and this movie was anything but that, uh, it definitely. From beginning to the final scene has things for you to make fun of things for you to laugh at things for you to just to blow your mind pure 

Craig: cheese at its finest.

Todd: Well again, happy new year. Thank you for joining us. Uh, with Sweet 16, we hope to be bringing you more podcasts as the year goes on. If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend like us on Facebook. Book find us on Stitcher and on iTunes until next week on top. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

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