Silent Night Deadly Night 4: The Initiation

Ep 280, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Craig: Happy holidays. This is Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Craig.

Todd: And I’m Todd.

Craig: And here we are in week two of, uh, our holiday season. You know, we do this every year, uh, and we make jokes about it every year, but honestly, I love doing these a holiday horror movies. I don’t know. It’s just a lot of fun. And when we were talking about.

This year, you know, now that we’ve been doing this for 400 years, um, you know, we, we talk about this leading up and, and today’s movie is actually one that I saw sometime during this past year. Uh, randomly, I I’ve said on the podcast many times that on days when I have lots and lots of grading to do, I’ll just put on that schlocky, horror movies in the background that I don’t really have to pay much attention to, but that keeps me entertained and motivated to keep working.

And this is one of those. Um, but I w you know, like the movie was playing and I was kind of halfing attention. And then. It got more into it. And like, I just kept getting drawn into it. And by the end, like, especially by the last half hour, I had just completely abandoned the grading altogether. And it was just like, what am I, 

Todd: what is 

Craig: this.

Uh, what we’re doing today is Silent Night, Deadly Night: Initiation. The Silent Night, Deadly Night series is infamous. Of course, you know, the first one caused a huge. Uh, I don’t know, outcry amongst parents and things. And, uh, people were just mortified that anybody would have the audacity to tarnish the sanctity of Christmas and Santa Claus.

It was crazy huge protests got pulled out of theaters after just like a week or two or whatever, but that also of course, uh, raised interest, uh, and the film got a big cult following. And then they did a second one, which was trash. Like people have requested that we do the second one. We haven’t done it.

Have we? No, we haven’t. And part of the reason that we haven’t is because. I think something like 80% of the second one is just flashbacks to the first one. And there are some like campy icon. Moments in the second one, but we haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe someday. Um, the third one I’ve seen again, a direct continuation of the original story.

And then we get to Silent Night, Deadly Night 4, which is basically the Halloween 3 in the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise. Because up until that point, they had all been about killer Santas. And this one is not. 

Todd: You’re definitely not, 

Craig: not at all this, this movie doesn’t really have, it has a very tenuous, maybe connection, uh, to the earlier movies in that Clint Howard is in this movie and he plays a character named Ricky, who is one of the central characters of all of the first three movies.

It’s unclear if he’s intended to be. Same character or not, but there’s at least the name, connection. This movie is just bad. Shit. Crazy. Yes. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself with the review, but I’m just going to go ahead and say it. This isn’t a good movie. But you should definitely watch it.

Todd: I mean, there’s something slightly more charming. I don’t know if Charming’s really the right word. Charming is not the right word. There’s definitely something a little more intriguing about this movie as a bad movie than for example, what we reviewed last week. Yes. What we reviewed last week was just bad, bad, bad, and not even in a fun.

Right, right. Not much in a fun way. This movie, just your jaw is on the floor. I don’t know, it’s not necessarily like my jaw was on my floor, but I think I just burned a hole in my head from scratching it so much because I could not for the life of me, figure out what was going on throughout. Most of it also, my God talk about slow.

Pacing, not just the plot was slow. The scenes were slow and not just the scenes were slow, but like the lions were slow. The space between the lines were slow. If I were to go in here and re-edit this film, I don’t think I’d even be an hour just to make it move at a pace that doesn’t feel my grandma in her Walker, but it adds a very surreal quality to it as the movie was going on.

I was thinking, Hmm. Is this a little smarter than I’m giving it credit for? Are they playing with me a little bit and trying to evoke a certain kind of surreal, unreal quality with this movie? And that’s why everything is so odd and stilted because. Like the acting isn’t. So there’s a different kind of bad acting, right?

There’s a hammy bad acting, which like the, which board series, right. Has this hammy over the top terrible community theater type acting. This movie has good actors. This movie has pussy galore is in this movie. 

Craig: Yes, no, no, no. It’s not pussy galore. It’s octopus, the 

Todd: octopus octopus 

Craig: season, maybe my favorite bond name ever.

And that 

Todd: one girl who just always plays the mousy kind of secretary 

Craig: lighting from moonlighting. She’s in. 

Todd: And the older woman is in a, a billion things, you know, and it a long standing well loved actress. It’s hard to believe that all these people. It could be invited to be in this film, let alone act the way they do.

And so I just thought it was, I was thinking back to society, right. Because, and, and you didn’t, you didn’t even need to tell me that the people involved in this movie also made society because it’s the same surreal kind of stilted acting, state, same style of special effects, screaming, mad, George, same kind of weirdness.

Like you don’t know what the hell is going on. But in society, we reviewed that and we, we thought it was a little genius, right? Yeah. We thought that all of that really served the purpose of the story. Uh, they were purposely going for the surreal quality, which, which fed the theme of the movie and made it a little more unreal and, and just really drew us in, in that way.

And then the payoff at the end was, was fantastic. 

Craig: This movie feels much more like a spiritual sequel to society than it does. To silent night, deadly night. Um, it’s the same director, Brian yes-no who directed society, which again is such a, maybe one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen, but like, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it.

And, and this, this one isn’t quite as wild. Like that one goes way over the top. And apparently a society was made first. And then he has an, a made this movie, but I guess this movie was released in the states like two years before society was released in the states, but Yasmina like, yeah, he did society and he did some of the ReAnimator SQLs, but he also was like a major player in the honey.

I shrunk the kids franchise so crazy. It is it’s. Um, and, and this movie, uh, is nuts too, but like you said, it, I had forgotten that there were so many recognizable people in this. I mean, you’ve already mentioned some of them and all of those people, like, you know, that, that woman that you mentioned, uh, Alice Beasley, who is this mousy kind of squeaky voice woman, she was never like a huge star, but she was around a lot in the late eighties, early nineties.

And this movie came out in 19. And it feels like perfectly 1990. Like you still got shades of the eighties, but I feel like, you know, things are taken a little bit of a turn into kind of some more nineties territory. Uh, it’s a great product of. Somebody you didn’t mention Reggie banisters in this 

Todd: movie from, um, from Phantasm.

Craig: Yeah, from the whole fantasm franchise. Uh, Hugh Fink is a guy who has a little tiny supporting role in this. Uh, but I recognized him. He was on SNL and in many other things and the guy that plays the male love interest. Hank, his name is Tommy Hinckley and it only took me a second to place him. I think I don’t, I didn’t even look at his page because in my mind I placed him.

He was in one of my very favorite eighties movie. Back to the beach with a net food of jello and Frankie, Avalon love that movie, but just tons of people that you’re going to recognize. And yet it is so surreal. Kafka ESC crazy town, but you’re right. It takes its time. It takes its time and there’s a lot of buildup, but then the last half hour, like it’s just such a, a big payoff and it’s crazy.

Like, honestly, your jaw is on the floor. Like what. Happening and 

Todd: why. 

Craig: Yeah. And there’s not, it’s not that nothing happens in the first hour. Things are constantly happening and there are little hints at very strange, bizarre stuff going on, but it’s really in the. Half hour, then it smacks you in the 

Todd: face.

The movie kind of ignores the typical three-act structure in most movies. The, the problem, the core problem that we’re going to be faced be facing, and that the character has to solve is well-established a third of the way in there will be some twists and things in act two, there will be the compounding difficulties and.

But at least by the first 30 minutes of an hour and a half movie of which this is, we should have a good idea of, oh, these are the stakes, this is what’s going on. And this is not the case in this movie in the first half hour. And you’re still meeting people and there’s sort of this, it’s this reporter and she’s investigating a story, a spontaneous combustion, and you’re meeting more people and there’s some weird ladies.

Even an hour in you’re finally suddenly getting a notion of what might be happening, but nothing’s really solidified. So I thought that that was what made me so impatient about it and you’re right. Things keep happening, but they keep happening at such a slow pace. I mean, that scene for scene, the scenes are just drawn out to a ridiculous degree.

Craig: Now that you say that I see it. I didn’t know. Think about it when I was watching the movie though, because there were enough thing now to be fair, I will say that, you know, once things kind of started to happen, it was a little repetitive. Like this woman, Kim, once things kind of start happening with her, it gets a little.

Repetitive like, you know, something’s going on, but it’s kind of the same stuff for awhile, but I was never bored. There was always something going on. Gosh, before we jump into the plot, um, I told you, I said, don’t look in, look at anything. I don’t read anything. I don’t watch good because I went into it totally blind to, and I expected it to be typical.

I like, I’m pretty sure that I watched silent night, deadly night, three, which is fine. Lane doesn’t 

Todd: have a killer Santa in it. The third one. 

Craig: Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s nuts. Um, bill Mosley, I think is the killer Santa. And if I remember he’s the killer Santa from part two, but they have him in a hospital and like his brain is in like a glass dome on top of his head.

Um, but that’s what I was expecting. I was just expecting another silly slasher and this is totally different. And honestly, this all takes place at Christmas and there is some Christmas stuff going on. It’s not the most Christmasy movie. Done. I don’t care. Uh, it’s still fun, but you’re right. It doesn’t follow the typical structure in this movie.

Like the main complication happens in the first minute we see this bum who ends up being Clint, Howard, who I thought was just going to be like a cameo turns out he actually played. A big role in this movie. And I like Clint Howard, and I appreciate the Clint. Howard knows that he’s a weird looking man and embraces it and plays these nutty characters.

But even at points in this movie, There are times when he’s almost charming. Like he’s, he’s not a good guy really in this movie, but ultimately in the end, you almost kind of feel like he’s being manipulated and used to. And, um, you see a little bit of humanity in him, but he’s just, you know, just naturally as a person, he’s kind of crazy.

I. 

Todd: Yeah. He often kind of has this sort of vacant stare on his face, right? Like, like things are happening to him and around him and he’s trying to take it all in, but his brain doesn’t move fast enough. You know, it’s kinda like that, that seems to be his character in a lot of these horror 

Craig: movies. Yeah. And I’ve seen him interviewed with his brother, of course, you know, very famous director.

Ron Howard. I I’ve seen them, um, interviewed together and they’re both very charming and, you know, Clint, Howard seems like an intelligent, charming man, but he plays these, you know, off the wall characters and, and that’s what he’s doing here. Like, so we just see him. He’s a bum on the street. And he’s like eating garbage that he finds on the street and stuff, but he hears a commotion up high and he looks up and on the roof of this building, he sees a woman and she seems to be in distress, but you can’t really tell what’s going on.

You like, you hear her say no, or like, I’m not going to do it or something like that. And then she bursts into flames and falls off the building and he, and he runs away as, you know, the first responders. Show up and then you get the title credits, which I thought were really good kind of artistic and yeah.

Yeah, they were, but it, well, it was, but the imagery was imagery that recurs throughout like it’s significant imagery and I thought it was pretty good. And then the very next scene is very in keeping with the silent night, deadly night tone, where you have a attractive, naked couple. Having aggressive, 

Todd: fun, looking at

Craig: the kind of sex you have when you’re really young and in shape 

Todd: your back is still good. Yes.

Craig: And this is Hank and Kim who are our main characters. And honestly like this is the only kind of. I don’t know, like for the most part, I feel like you could sh you, anybody could show this movie on basic cable and be fine. This opening sex scene is not terribly graphic graphic. Aside from the fact that the actors are clearly nude.

Like, yeah. I don’t know how all that movie magic works. I know there are. Sox and 

Todd: other little barriers for, yeah. 

Craig: But seriously, when I see this type of thing, I just don’t understand how actors do it. Like, I can’t imagine it’s very impressing that naked and like, they are literally joined at the pelvis.

For this whole scene. I don’t know. I don’t think I could do it anyways. So they’re, they’re banging in a motel and they see a report on this dead woman. And it turns out that they both work at a newspaper and Kim is low on the ladder. She does like the calendar and she does the classifieds, the classifieds.

But she wants to do this story, but as soon as she brings it up to her editor, Eli played by Reggie Bannister. Um, he just totally disregards her. This would make a great story on Tania’s combustion. Yeah. This sort of thing has been documented. It’s kind of bizarre. Some good material there. Maybe we should do something.

I was thinking, Hey, why don’t you jump on it? I, it could be a lead on. For peace, you know, like, uh, incredible unexplained mysteries, you know,

bullshit Kim, uh, classifies. Um, if you got them posted today. Yes. Good, good, good job. Come on and go. Listen, I’ve been working real hard around, I haven’t seen her anybody in work. Their first month

maybe. Um, could you make some fresh coffee, please? It’s supposed to be like commentary on sexism in the workplace and, and the whole movie kind of has that undercurrent of that social message 

Todd: you say is it’s kind of heavy handed in a very amateurish way. Like the dialogue in this. Pretty bad. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s all right on the nose to the point.

None of it’s very clever, fairly economical. Hank is also discouraging her. He’s like, ah, no, probably not. And then they’re supposed to have this relationship, but he doesn’t really care at this point that right in front of him. The story that she wanted, he was given and he didn’t even fight about it and just was like, okay, well, you know, and then the boss comes out right at the end.

I was like, oh, by the way, can you get me some coffee? You know? I mean, there’s this, this is so typical. Okay. We get it. She’s the woman she’s feeling. Oppressed and, and, you know, feminism, you know, I think Mariah is trying this and don’t get me wrong. That’s great. I appreciate that. Um, it’s a good message, but it’s all very, ham-fisted.

Craig: It is. It’s very, heavy-handed again, like you said, not to say that these aren’t real issues that women face and have faced for a very long time, but it is very heavy handed, but I do think the movie is trying very hard to break. A feminist agenda. Again, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it does seem like.

Poorly well on the other, I don’t ha I honestly, I didn’t expect this to be a good movie, so I didn’t have any high expectations, but they really cast the lead. Kim, nice hunter is her name and she really didn’t do a lot. And I’m really not surprised because though she’s very beautiful. She is not a very good actress as the lead.

She’s probably the weakest at. In the movie. And I thought that her performance got better as the movie went on and comparatively, you know, if we look at other movies that we’ve reviewed, she could win awards for this, from some of the performances that we’ve seen. I don’t know, she’s just a little wet behind the ears, I think, whatever.

Anyway, so a Janice, Alice Beasley works in the office. I’m not sure what she does. She’s sitting at a desk. I don’t know. She gives Kim a lead and tells her, uh, what street all this happened on. So Kim goes to the scene and starts asking questions and she talks to a butcher and the butcher. I mean, yeah. Do you want to talk about the butcher 

Todd: he’s he’s like, uh, he supposed to, I don’t know.

I don’t, I don’t know if they were going for comedy. Some of it was supposed to be comedy. Some of it’s just roll your eyes. I mean, it’s not as bad as Mickey Rooney in breakfast at Tiffany’s cause this guy actually is Chinese. Right. But he’s this big overweight Chinese butcher coming out of a shop and he speaks, he clearly is.

Chinese American like speaks perfect English probably, but he’s being forced to effect a fake broken English accent. It’s so fake that it just made me roll. You see 

Craig: what happened last night? The girl who jumped, did you see that? And I’d help, but see it live upstairs too much. Noise sirens, police, reporter

scorch, real good, nothing 

Todd: left. And the whole time he’s chatting with her. And the same time she’s trying to get peanuts. One of the little peanut dispensers, which she says no work at the same time, he’s chatting with her. He bangs the peanut dispenser a little bit, gets a bunch of these peanuts out in his hands, which are grubby and absolutely covered with blood.

Like, okay, this is how butchers are. Right. They just walk around all day with blood all over their hands, all over their shirt and everything. Right. And then hands those blood, those peanuts over to her. And that was. Cute and funny, 

Craig: but, well, it’s funny, like he he’s barely worth mentioning, but, and again, you know, spoilers galore, but he does come in later.

One of the things that I like about this movie is that ultimately. Everybody’s in on it. 

Todd: I thought you were going to say it it’s subverts your expectations and every seat, 

Craig: I don’t know about that, but like I, and it’s not even like that they play major roles, but really pretty much everybody, she meets outside of her own circle.

And even some of the people in her own circle know what’s going on. And are actively part of it. And this, this book. Ultimately is 

Todd: which worked for society, because that was kind of the point of the movie for this film. It it’s just dumb. I don’t know. I thought it was funny. Well, it’s funny, but I mean, it’s like, well, I guess they could only afford to get the actors who are going to have significant roles right there.

Aren’t many extras in here. It’s a very small cast. And, and the other thing about the movie. Which is another reason why stylistically it’s so close to society. And I think this is how Brian using a tends to direct his movies anyway, is that the whole film is lit almost like a television sitcom. It’s very brightly lit all the indoor scenes and outdoor scenes.

There’s a backlight kind of glowing around the back edge of their hair. And I mean, Everything is starkly lit very beautifully, not at all, what you typically see in a horror movie. So it kind of adds to the unreal nature of it a little bit, but also kind of makes it look very fake and movie like yeah, the movie very much takes place in like New York, I think is it’s supposed to be New York city.

It’s kind of all very urban. Urban generic city setting. We get on rooftops and we’re down busy city streets and, uh, in the PA you know, the central park type area and whatnot, but it doesn’t have a gritty feeling to it at all. It almost feels like. The city shot as the suburbs 

Craig: kind of. Yeah. And it’s all, it’s all, it’s, it’s mostly very bright.

It mostly happens during the day or in well lit areas. Yeah, it’s true. I mean, there is some stuff later that takes place in interiors that has some interesting lighting, but most of it, my favorite part about this is when she’s doing her investigation, she walks by the scene and the chalk outline of the.

It’s still there, but like they didn’t even finish the chalk outline because the lower half of her body had like burned the sidewalk. So there was like an Ash outline for the bottom half. Like they didn’t even bother with the oh God call areas. And so she runs into, she goes into this bookstore that I guess is where.

You know, right outside where this woman jumped or whatever. And she runs into that bum Ricky, and he wiped something on her coat. Like, I didn’t know, like if he was wiping a booger or if he was marking 

Todd: her or something. Yeah. He touched a body earlier. Cause the body, you know, when the Bharti body was, was burning up, he kind of touched it and got burned and seemed.

Surprised by that. For some reason, I don’t know. It seemed like it was the same Ash or whatever on his fingertips that he was smearing on her, but I don’t 

Craig: know. So it was weird, but she freaked, she freaks out and then she meets a FEMA. The bookstore owner who’s played by Maude Adams who was Octopussy and.

Again, this woman is middle-aged at this point later, middle-aged probably still strikingly 

Todd: beautiful, but looks like a former supermodel. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It looks like a former bond girl, so it looks great. She owns it. She’s a little older. She owns the books. She has a, like a huge bowl of like figs or dates on her counter.

And she gives Kim one and Ken’s like, oh yes, thank you. I didn’t have any breakfast or something. And then like Kim spits the pit out into her hand and the woman’s like, oh, let me get that. Like, it’s just so dot. 

Todd: But, and it’s like, we concentrate on this to the point where I thought it would might be significant.

And I guess maybe 

Craig: kind of is, I think there’s kind of a suggestion that the dates are drugged or like magically infused because after this Kim starts feeling kind of woozy and lightheaded, but. This woman just offer these to all of her customers here have one of my magical 

Todd: acid dates. Yeah,

she has. And she doesn’t just have one bowl. She has three bowls of these white guys to each other on the counter. I wasn’t 

Craig: sure. And she acts weird from the beginning. Like. Forces like Kim wants to buy a book on an explained phenomenon because of the spontaneous combustion or whatever. But this woman, FEMA forces her to take another book.

That’s titled Trichy aviation of the Virgin goddess and, and they’ve just met. And she invites her to a picnic and kisses her and like Kim doesn’t even like, act like 

Todd: this is weird. No, I thought, oh God, is this, are they gonna make out? Because Kim’s kind of looking at her and she’s got like a Glint gleam in her eye.

And that’s when I was like, okay, well the dates must. There must be like some effects from the dates or something. I don’t know. But then Kim goes to the rooftop, right. And goes though, I mean, part of her investigation, it’s so cute, right? Like what the police didn’t look at any of this and like, you’re going to find anything up there.

You know, she walks over to the edge and she’s stupidly stands on the edge of the roof. I don’t know. She’s trying to get into the mind of the purse. I don’t know how this helps the news reporter get to the bottom of the story, 

Craig: but anyway, really, since she’s clearly feeling dizzy, maybe don’t step up onto the ledge of the building when you’re out to pass out.

Todd: But then Ricky is up there too. And I guess we later find out he kind of maybe lives up there cause there’s like a tent with some things in it and a guy character mix. But anyway, he’s up there too. And he kind of walks around with her for a little bit and you know, it’s just so awkward because normal people in a situation like this, she just gets off the roof.

She’s kind of dizzy. Weird guy who has been weird to her downstairs is suddenly has followed her up there. She be getting the hell out. Right. She’d be freaked out, but she’s not really, she just kind of. Looks at them and kind of backs up while he goes to the vent pipe. That’s sticking up on the roof, reaches inside.

There are a whole bunch of bugs on his hand and on his head, all of a sudden. And suddenly she has bugs on her hand that she pushes off and he pulls out this long slug, like 

Craig: creature. I call it that slug too, but it’s not. Cause it’s got, it’s got like, it’s more like, yeah, it has legs. And later you see it.

It’s kind of. T it’s gross and it’s enormous clicking, right? 

Todd: I think actually, cause cause um, those, the SQL this one silent night, deadly night, five, the toy maker or whatever, I swear it’s the same slug. Right? There’s like a, except as a toy. Yeah, we version of this same thing and, and it’s, it’s, it’s actually, I think using it had something to do with that and definitely screaming, mad, George, the did the special effects for that one too.

Anyway. Yeah. He just should shoves this in her face and in our face as the camera and we’re all supposed to go, Ooh, gross. What the hell? And then she leaves 

Craig: and goes back to her apartment, which is all of a sudden. Infested with bugs. This is also random. Like eventually there’s kind of explanations for all of this, but it just feels so random.

Y all of a sudden now are there bugs everywhere? It’s weird. So she initially is going, she’s supposed to go over to Hanks parent’s house for like a Christmas dinner. And initially she’s going to stand them up. The bugs are all over her apartment. She’s looking at the weird book. The lady gave her. And one of the pages of the book has a spiral and it says that the spiral is the symbol of women’s power.

And she does, she looks at the spaghetti that she’s made and it’s, you know, shaped in a spiral and there’s bugs everywhere. And so I guess, because there’s bugs in her dinner, she goes, she decides to go, um, to hangs parents. And then there’s a really weird scene of her at Hanks parents’ house. And I mean, I guess it’s just exposition for later, but we meet Hanks.

Got a little brother. Who’s a CA I mean, Hank is a grown man, but his little brother is probably supposed to be like, I dunno, 12, 13, little brother. So weird little brother is played by a useless, I assume. I don’t know, they have the same last name. So I assume they’re related to something maybe who knows.

And yeah, well, I mean, he’s a kid and he’s a kid actor and he’s fine. He doesn’t have a whole lot to do cute kid whatever. And then like, again, Hammering a nail. The dad goes off on this big sexist. Well, I think a woman’s place is in the home raising a family, you know, woman was made from the rib of man. I, I think that’s in your Bible too.

Dad, that’s a myth. It’s an allegory. It’s all relative. You know, that’s the trouble with you kids today, you know, you think everything is relative. Well, let me tell you something about. It is God damned real and you had better believe it. Nobody cares. Right. And, uh, Kim Lee, I mean, she’s polite that she eventually finds a way to get out of there and they go.

And she’s pissed at him because he didn’t stand up for her for the story that she wanted. And like, they kind of start kissing and he starts pulling it, like putting his hand up, her skirt, like right there in the street, right there, 

Todd: outside in front of the house, in front of his 

Craig: parents’ house, like rose calm down.

And, and she gets mad at him, but like, she’s like, why are you always trying to get on top of me? Which, you know, it looked like they had good sex. And apparently like later. What’s her name? The weird lady FEMA says out of the blue is like your boyfriend, Hank. I bet you guys have really good sex. Right. And she’s like, yeah.

Okay. But still, are you going to Mount me in the street right outside your parents’ house? Like cool off. So she gets pissed and she goes back home and she looks at the book more and she sees something about. The fire of Lilith and she sees an image, just a drawing of a woman who is. On fire from like the waist down.

Yeah. It’s 

Todd: very evocative of, I mean, it, one thing about this body that we saw, this mannequin that we saw charring, you know, burning on the ground in the very beginning of the movie is that the did seem to be a lot of fire on the bottom half. Right? Like her, her stomach, her way seemed to be kind of gutted by the fire.

So I still don’t really get that. I don’t get any of that. No. I mean, You’d only gets 

Craig: weirder. It doesn’t only get rid of, I do understand the story. I mean, right after that, there’s an enormous like dog sized cockroach under her bed. And she’s like chasing it around, tearing up her apartment does. I mean, it seems freaked out.

Like there’s a bug, but not as freaked out as I would be. If there was a dog sized cockroach running around my house, it’s 

Todd: kind of like, Her friend comes over, right. 

Craig: Checks on her in the morning, Janice. Yeah. Cause she didn’t go to 

Todd: work and you know, she kind of walks in, oh man, these scenes are just so awkward.

Cause there’s just so much standing around staring. She just kind of walks in and kind of helps her flip things over. And um, the 

Craig: whole, yeah, the whole apartment is destroyed. But like what? I don’t know what Kim says. She’s like, oh, it must’ve been something I ate. It must’ve been something you ate your entire apartment.

Janice doesn’t even 

Todd: bad night starts 

Craig: writing furniture like loud. Okay. Kim goes to FEMA’s picnic, where she’s introduced to a couple of other ladies, this old lady, Catherine, who describes herself as an old crone. Um, and then this other girl, Jane, um, and they start talking about the woman who died. And Kim is like, I wonder what happened to her.

And Jane says she wasn’t strong. FEMA tells Kim the story of Lilith, which I believe is a true story of Hebrew tradition. She was Adam’s first wife. She was made from the same dirt, but she wouldn’t lay on top of her. She left Adam consorted with power of night. She was the serpent that tempted Eve spirit of all the pros.

So that explains all the creepy crawly bugs and stuff. I noticed this time. I don’t think I noticed last time, but did you notice that FEMA had that spiral on her? 

Todd: Yeah, I did. I was surprised the other two did. I was expecting them to be like wearing uniforms. 

Craig: Yeah. Right. Cause I mean, 

Todd: it’s pretty clear, you know, that these three women are kind of like, they’ve got some kind of odd women’s group, but, but we’re watching a horror movie.

So we know it’s a cult of some kind. I 

Craig: just automatically assumed that it was some sort of. Um, and I guess in a way it kind of is, I mean, they never explicitly refer to themselves as witches, but they are a congregation of women who do these weird things. So I think coven is fitting. 

Todd: At this point, Hank finds her.

He just shows up, Hey, I found you, uh, I’m going to, and 

Craig: he, after, after FEMA kisses her on the mouth. Oh yeah, yeah. 

Todd: Weird. I wondered if they had drugged the wine cause she kind of laid back down and then Hank immediately shows up. It’s like, Hey, why weren’t you at work? I’m taking you back. So he brings her into work.

And now the boss, instead of being pissed off that she’s gone suddenly. It’s like, all right, well, you know what, I’ll go ahead and give this story to you after. 

Craig: Well, you can work with Hank on it and 

Todd: then kind of turns around and says, no, I’ll just let you take the lead. Right. He’s going to follow around as the photographers.

Yeah. They go bright back again to the street to take more pictures and look around, like, you know, if you’re going to be an investigative reporter, you need to kind of start going beyond the scene of the crime. Maybe talk to some more people 

Craig: and they go back to the roof and. We get aerial shots. So we see that that spiral.

Is, I don’t know if it’s painted or edge, whatever it’s on the floor of the roof, but they never say anything about it. I wonder if they even notice because like, it’s, it’s obvious, like it’s painfully obvious that this is like set up for some sort of ritual or something, but they never say anything. Like, I don’t even know if they notice that it’s there.

Yeah, but they reconcile. And after that Kim visits FEMA’s apartment and FEMA right in front of Kim. Like she doesn’t hide it at all. She puts something in her tea and then she just has this weird ass dialogue where she’s like, You remind me so much of my daughter, her name was Lily. No matter what I tried, you always resisted me, always ended up fighting, and then I bet you and Hank have great sex yet.

When it’s over, you feel like something is missing. You have to get rid of the parasitic power of men to reclaim your own power. Who are you and what are you talking 

Todd: about? Random jumble of ideas coming out of your mouth one right after the other it’s no. And Kim 

Craig: just never, like, she never acts like there’s anything weird going on.

Every time she’s around this woman, the woman gives her something to eat or drink that immediately makes her. But I guess it’s just a 

Todd: coincidence. And then she gives her a date. She’s like, oh, you’re feeling lightheaded, eat one of these. That’ll make you feel better. And she’s like, no, I really don’t want to.

She was like, no, no, you should eat it. Frankly forces her on it. She looks at it in her hand. Apparently either it looks like it to her, or it has actually changed into a cockroach and she eats it. 

Craig: Yeah. And FEMA’s like eight, eight. I thought she 

Todd: was going to, I thought she was going to like throw it across the room and discussed, but no, she just it’s like, oh, it’s a cockroach.

Nevermind. I’ll chop down on this sucker. 

Craig: And she does. And it crunches, like you hear it crunch. Yeah. And then, okay. So she continues to feel sick and she passes out and then she’s having weird visions and they’re like women standing over her, the women from the picnic are there, but there are also other women that we’ve never met before.

And they undress her and they mark her with like Ash and they draw that spiral on her stomach. Ricky is there. And he has one of those big gross slug things, and he puts it on her abdomen and then covers her up with a blanket. I was trying to do research there’s, there’s not a whole lot to read about this.

There are some interesting things that you can find, but not a whole lot, but just in reading the summer. I was reading a summary. It says, Ricky puts that slug on her abdomen and then they cover it up. And then it goes in her vagina.

Not what I, it’s not what I thought at all. I thought that it had crawled in through 

Todd: her Naval. And under her skin and up, and then, and then what they’re like yellow, she says to her, FEMA says to her, you have to cough it up. You have to spit out the, your fear, your fear, like what your fear of what your fear of men, your fear of, of being oppressed by men.

Like I didn’t get any of this shit. It’s it just plays like a very, very low rent Rosemary’s baby. It does, especially because it’s surreal without any surreal quality to the filmmaking whatsoever. It’s still being filmed like a fricking sit-com. I mean, the lights are a little are like now a little bluer and, and redder, but it’s still very well lit and just very matter of factly 

Craig: framed.

I will say my skin crawl because you see that thing crawling around under her skin. X look pretty good, but then she barfs it up. And like when she barfs it up, it’s twice the size that it was before. It’s huge. And they said they sacrifice a rat over her and drip, the blood all over her abdomen. But then Ricky takes the thing that she barfed up and he cuts it in half and now like, okay, this is a feminist movie, but.

Then Ricky uses that thing to just spook all over her face and yeah. And it looks like she’s really into it.

Todd: It. I mean, to be fair, it’s like 

Craig: honey, and it just, it looked like VAT, not vastly lube, like patrolling, it looks like loop. Yeah. All over. 

Todd: Well also a bunch of Milky liquid comes out of her vagina. Before that’s 

Craig: later that’s later. Cause they get her again. Yeah. I mean she waits, she wakes up, she’s fully clothed.

She’s alone for a minute, but then the women all come back and she’s like, what do you want from me? And FEMA’s like, I want my daughter back. And she runs away. She goes home. She finds Hank asleep in a long night shirt. Like he’s in like the night before Christmas, 

Todd: like it’s the 1940s. 

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know.

This part was very confusing. Like she’s mad at him for some reason. Fight and she’s acting really weird, but then all of a sudden it’s like, she comes back to her senses, but then she’s acting really strangely seductive. And she’s like, I like to touch you in your sleeping make you hard, like okay. 

Todd: But he just does nice.

Eventually just kind of submits to it. 

Craig: Yeah. And they they’re both. I mean, they’re, she’s rubbing all up on him. They’re laying in. And Ricky comes in and watches them for a little while. They’re totally oblivious. And then he sits down on the bed and turns the TV on. And what he’s watching on the TV is silent night, deadly night, three, and he’s crap like he’s laughing and he’s like killer Santa Claus.

But when they realize he’s there, they freak out. Hank tries to fight. But ends up getting killed, but it doesn’t seem like Ricky had any intention of killing Hank. He was just there to get her and Hank got in the way and was like beating on him. Fought back violently and ended up killing him. Eventually Janice, the friend calls and Kim is able to answer the phone long enough to say, call the police.

I’m being attacked. Well, then Janice shows up and it turns out she’s in on it. She tells Ricky to take Kim back to FEMA and she’ll stay there and clean everything up. And so that’s what happens. And that’s when we that’s, when. We get into just the crazy, crazy, and like, like it’s not already been crazy at this point.

It’s just amps it up to 

Todd: it’s crazy and baffling. And I love here. How Jay, all Janice has to do is say to Kim. Oh, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. You just go to Rick and suddenly Kim is cool with all this. I just say, okay. Oh, okay. Nevermind. Nevermind. The guy who just killed my boyfriend and chased me all over the apartment with.

You say he’s cool. No problem. Ricky throws 

Craig: her in a meat locker, which ends up being the butcher’s meat locker from when we saw before, oh boy, she goes to sleep and she wakes up being prepared. By these women. Then I had forgotten this part and you know how I feel about sexual assault and movies. I don’t like it in this movie.

Like everything is so weird. Like, I don’t know. It almost just didn’t even seem real. Ricky is apparently naked except for they put this huge fat. Mask on him. 

Todd: I know. And I was like, oh God, please don’t tell me, he’s going to, I know with this 

Craig: long nose. Yeah, it was disgusting. And, and Janice is there and it’s a ceremony.

And somebody says to her, it’s not easy to give birth to yourself. And then Ricky rapes are, and it is uncomfortable to watch, but the way it’s shot, it’s not terribly gratuitous. You don’t see anything below shoulder level, but. Happening, but it’s just so surreal, especially with Clint Howard, like his 

Todd: ass thrusting her.

Yeah. I didn’t need to see that. Yeah. 

Craig: Oh yeah. I guess you do see that. I forgot about that. So when that’s all over, she wakes up naked on the floor alone, and then all of a sudden. I still don’t know if this is actually happening. I think it is actually happening, but in the moment, I didn’t know if it was really happening or if she was hallucinating, her body starts contorting society style.

If you haven’t seen society, you don’t know what I mean, but like the body is just. Melding. And 

Todd: so yeah, her fingers start, she holds her hands up at her fingers, start going at all crazy different directions, which was actually really cool effect and pretty creepy. And then they like wrap up into themselves, like joined together and then her legs.

I don’t know if she becomes kind of this weird ass, um, mermaid for a minute and her feet are, are flipping backwards and everything’s bending on naturally and kind of melding together. And then it all kind of gets interrupted by the, uh, the butcher, right. He just suddenly storms in and you’re like, oh, okay.

He’s part of it as well. And, uh, all of that kind of stops. What does he say to her? 

Craig: Well, he says you have been initiated. You go now. And, and so she immediately goes to the bookstore, like these are the women that just did this to you. And she’s like, Ah, I think I must be hallucinating lady. And then when they tell her she’s not, she’s like, wait, does that mean Hanks?

Really dead? They’re like, oh, Hanks, just a man who cares. She’s not freaking out like freak out 

Todd: lady. She calls a detective to the, to the apartment and the detective is like, oh, there’s a crazy woman again, because everything is spotless. Everything’s been completely 

Craig: cleaned up. And we find out that the jumper.

From the beginning was FEMA’s daughter and FEMA says, you’ve come to take her place, blah, blah, blah. Alright, whatever Kim is confused and sad about Hank, and then they, the women tell her that for the final part of her initiation, she has to sacrifice a man. I don’t know. It has something to do with her fear.

And then they’re like, Didn’t Hank have a brother and she’s like Loni and they’re like, yeah, go get it.

But after she can’t convince the cop that anything’s going on, she runs out of her house I guess. And she sees Ricky waiting for her. So she runs to a motel and like sneaks in a room that a made left, open, and she’s hiding from him. But then she sees kin or. On the TV. Like you have to do it, you have to make the sacrifice.

And then there’s more weird body contortion stuff. And her feet start to burn, like, like she’s catching on fire. So she goes and jumps in the shower and Ricky comes in and he’s like, you have to do what she says, and then you’ll be okay. And she’s like, okay, fine. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. So Ricky drives her.

Kidnapper van to Hanks’ parents’ house to get Lonnie. And this part bothered me. Like I get why they did it, you know, it’s it’s silent night, deadly night. Okay. But she lures Lonnie out. They have. Done like great. Go on sacrificing. And instead Ricky goes into the house and strangles the parents with Christmas lights and sets the house on fire.

Yeah. So there. And so they end up back on the rooftop of the bookstore and they’re doing this ceremony and Lonnie is crying and begging, I thought this kid did a good job, a great job. He’s got a very limited role, but like, I felt bad for him. He doesn’t have any idea what’s going on. And then there are tons of those giant slugs around for unexplained reasons.

And the women are all like they hand Kim and I, and they’re like doing. But instead of stabbing Lonnie, instead she stabs a few. And untied Lonnie and tells him to run. And then FEMA starts to go after Kim, but Ricky gets in between them and, and says, no, you don’t hurt her. And so FEMA stabs him and he falls 

Todd: into the slug pit or something.

The slug suddenly there are tons of sludge of these giant slugs who were started just eating away. The stomach 

Craig: and then her hands fuse together. Kim’s hands fuse together again. And she starts to burn like her hands start to burn, but she takes her fuse together hands and plunges them into FEMA’s wound.

And FEMA burst into flames and jumps off the roof. And the plot summary I read, it said apparently thrusting that fire into FEMA transferred the curse of Lilith to. All right, whatever. She, she starts burning. Kim stops, burning. She falls off, and then there’s all the other women are just standing around.

Like they don’t know what to do. Like not angry, not upset, just. Uh, huh? 

Todd: Well, that happened. I mean, they’re pretty much standards for the audience at this point. I didn’t know what’s going on either. And that’s, that’s it right? The movie’s done well, except 

Craig: for, except for Kim walks over to Lani who she’s just kidding.

And they embrace and she says, don’t worry. It’s all over now. Your entire family is dead, but it’s fine.

I’ll be your mother now. 

Todd: So pick this apart for me. What does it mean? I still am completely lost. They did some ceremony on FEMA’s daughter. For some reason and she wasn’t strong enough to take it. So she ended up bursting into flames and falling off the roof. So now that FEMA’s, without a daughter, she needs a new person to somehow take her daughter’s place in some way, shape or form.

So they’ve chosen Kim for that. And that involve. Raping her and sticking slugs in her and telling her that she’s got to get something out of her. Some, the fear of man or the fear of, I don’t know what some kind of fear and to complete this, this, so she’s being initiated into what I’m not sure. Her daughter Innes.

And then her final step is that she has to murder a man, but her boyfriend wasn’t good enough. I mean, they did kill him. But I guess they’ve got a, 

Craig: I think she has to do 

Todd: it. She asked to, he’s got to stab him. And then what would happen? Would she like transform into this woman’s daughter? 

Craig: That part I’m not entirely sure that the, we did get a little bit of exposition about halfway through the movie where FEMA tells Kim that she and her daughter were estranged for a long time.

But then when the girl was an adult, they reconnected. And the way that I understood it was FEMA was trying to get her daughter into this coven that she was already. FEMA was already in. And I imagine that in order to do that, the daughter, Lily Lilith had to do the same ritual that they’re trying to get Kim to 

Todd: do.

Oh. And she wasn’t strong enough to stab 

Craig: well, they, they sit right. They say she wasn’t strong enough, but I imagine it was the same thing. Just like Kim. She didn’t want to kill somebody and that’s why she burst into flame and fell off. And so, yes, I think that FEMA was trying to replace her. What I don’t really understand is would Lilith spirit like come into Kim?

Cause that seemed like that was kind of suggested in that weird apartment scene with her and Hank when they were fighting. But ultimately I don’t understand that 

Todd: understand the thematic point. We’re trying to make, like we said earlier, you really got hit over the head with these sorta. Surface feminist ham-fisted feminist ideas of ma women’s role and trying to break free of man’s grip on them and control.

But I don’t really see how that played out in the whole notion of their, their little covet. Ritual. It was all very personal, just FEMA’s daughter kind of. 

Craig: I also, I gosh, every time, not every time, but a lot of times when we record these podcasts, I’m very much aware of the fact that we’re recording this and we’re going to put it out in the world.

And I want to make sure that people understand us. I think that you and I would both. Identify as feminists. We both love women. We both respect women. We both think that women deserve everything that men deserve. And more so when we say ham-fisted feminist stuff, 

Todd: we’re talking about the quality of the filmmaker, the skill of the writer.

I mean, these topics deserve better treatment. Then they’re getting here, you know, I mean, it’s clear to us that there’s, there’s the writer and producer of this film is attempting to make some kind of message along these lines, but it’s impossible for us to unpack it really, I think. Right. So it’s very, it’s very ineffective in that way.

I think it kind of falls flat. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as, as a message, you know, as a movie with a message. Work. Um, but 

Todd: it’s, it’s a wackadoodle ride. 

Craig: It is. It is. I’m just fascinated by it. Society ultimately is a better and even weirder. Yeah. 

Todd: Yes. But it’s more cohesive in, in, in its theme too. It’s just, it’s batshit crazy, but all in a great way.

I mean, 

Craig: but see, that’s a message movie too, that movie’s all about materialism and. Classism and all that stuff, but it does, it, it works better and it’s even crazier than this. But like I said, they’re basically spiritual siblings. I mean, there are so many similarities. And like I said, from the beginning, this is not a good movie, but.

I can’t. I really like, I don’t know. I mean, maybe now we we’ve, maybe now we’ve talked about it enough to tell that you really don’t need to, but I would encourage people who I know are horror fans to watch this. Cause I just think it’s it’s out there. It’s crazy. It’s uh, it’s, it’s an outlier. I understand that silent night, deadly night, five.

Was a little bit different too, but at least there, you know, Mickey Rooney in a Santa suit, trying to kill people by the end of the movie, you don’t get any of that. I mean, Christmas is secondary. This really 

isn’t 

Todd: much of a Christmas movie. It’s not going to put you in the holiday spirit. The movie we reviewed last week, don’t open till Christmas.

Had Christmas spirit throughout it, their Christmas trees and Christmas decorations and carols and things throughout the whole movie. Um, but it wasn’t nearly as entertaining, right. Oddly entertaining to watch. And I would, I would kind of preface, I would kind of tack onto what you said if you’re in doing.

Goofy horror, not the kind of horror that’s going to scare you right then. Yeah. This you’re going to love it. You’re going to love it better than don’t open till Christmas, which was just dumb. 

Craig: I was excited to watch it again, and I was excited to talk about it and I’m glad. That we did. Yeah. Thanks. Anyway, we still got a couple of holiday movies on the way.

I think, you know, we’ve got some ideas, but uh, if you want to get in touch with us here in the next week or so, and, and uh, if you give us a suggestion that trumps the things that we, uh, already have in mind, We are not at all opposed to changing our plans. We change our plans at the last minute all the time.

So, uh, shoot us a message. Let us know if you’ve seen this movie and you want to talk about it. Uh, leave a message on our Facebook page or. As always, you know, we love to spread the love and we hope that you do too. So if you want to share this with, uh, your friends, let them know. Um, if you enjoy the podcast, maybe they will too.

You can find this everywhere. You can find podcasts, Google it, Google it, Two Guys and a Chainsaw podcast. You’ll find this all. So we’ll be back next week with another holiday movie. But until then I’m Craig, and I’m Todd, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.