225: Black Devil Car

And three, two, one, make a good podcast. We should do that as a cheer. We should all put our hands together each week. Yeah! Three, two, one, make a good podcast.

You're gonna burn in hell. I'm Dee Snider from Twisted Sister, writer, star of Strangeland, radio, TV, you know me. And you're listening to Movie Meltdown. Yeah. I'm burning hell.

I'm burning hell. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. It's showtime, folks. Enjoy the show.

Our nuclear reactor, pumping out one million kilowatts of power. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian. I'm Philip. I'm Christian.

I'm Ben. I'm Lucy. I'm Beau. I'm Greg. I'm Alan.

And we are once again coming to you live via digital recording from the Dreamland Film Center. I feel guilty for something right now, and I don't know why. You should. It's because it was a church. I was raised Catholic, so there you go.

The good news is the car will never make it in here. I know. We're safe. We are safe. Is it hallowed?

I like that. I like to see how she already roped us in. It's the only reason we're safe this week. So, for our little intro geek activity here, it does sort of tie in. In previous weeks, I have watched, and it was actually in this very room right here, The Cars That Ate Paris.

Is anyone familiar with it? Have you actually seen it? Early Peter Weir. Yeah. Have you seen it?

I like it a lot. It's not as much fun as, I mean, for me, in the way of early Aussie stuff, I really like the last. Wave of all of his early things. And I mean, that works well as a companion piece to Picnic Hanging Rock. But I mean, it's stupid fun for an early directorial effort.

It was at the end for me. The beginning is just like confusing. Like they really, like it gets midway in before you're like, wait, okay, so they're, okay, this guy's doing what? It really is just sort of, they just throw you into this mess. And eventually you start to piece something together.

A lot of it was, like, after the fact for me. I was like, oh, okay, so I guess the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of weirdness going on, but not the kind. Like, again, I think just based on the title, you would assume this is, like, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or something. But it's far from that type of movie.

Right off the bat, I didn't get what I, you know, originally was expecting. And then in recent years, I knew that wasn't it, and it was Peter Weir, but I still didn't know what to expect. But still, if you compare it to, like, his later stuff, it's almost like an anomaly. Oh, yeah. You can tell that he was kind of caught up.

In that wave of just low budgetry that sort of kicked off in Australia. I think it was Wake and Fright in 1972 that started all that. And so I'm sure that kind of got him going in that direction until he sort of really set the standard for what could be produced in Australia at the time with Picnic. I think that's the one that kind of put the whole nation on the map in the way of filmmaking. I don't know.

It's just so strange in that middle portion. And then the end comes along and it's very normal, crazy, Aussie stuff. The wrap-up to me seems like it's something that came about in the same time period and area of Mad Max. So to me, yeah, it all sort of makes sense by the end. But the whole beginning, I'm just like, what is this movie?

It really is just a weird. Set of circumstances and you think they're sort of examining something they're trying to be like a serious movie and it's sometimes it's not that serious anymore so it's it's very strange. How it all comes together stupid fun is how i would pretty much. Describe just the end though like the first two-thirds to me aren't really. It is kind of labored at times yeah it's well and.

It's it's like takes itself very seriously in that beginning like you you really start to totally like go along with them selling it as a drama, and then by the end, all the rules go out the window, and it's kind of silly, but yeah, I don't know, it's kind of a rough getting through that first half and realizing what you're actually kind of getting yourself into, but I'm glad I've seen it, and it does have a fun finale, and for no other reason, it's got one in particular kick-ass custom car, and if you've seen it, you know which one, but there's a bunch of cars, there's only one that's really kind of awesome, but Yeah, I don't know why the rest of them got shafted on their cars. You're talking about the spiky slug bug?

It's awesome. It's why I don't have one of those right now, except I don't have any money. But other than that, I would be driving that around every day of my life. When I wasn't driving the DeLorean, but whatever. Do we think that will take care of our intro?

Because if we let anybody else go, it'll be four hours from now. So should we just get into the car from this point? All right, then we will take a break, and when we come back, we will get into this week's feature. Here in my. Car, I'm the safest of all.

I can lock all my doors. It's the only way to live in cars. Here in my car. I can only receive. I can listen to you in case we stay before.

I die in cars. Commission time. If leaving, please replace your in-a-car speaker before releasing brakes or starting motor. Do not back out. Drive to the aisle in front of you and exit.

And now, for those remaining... We saw somebody murdered! Some sort of ritual across the river. A girl got stabbed. Two men witness an unspeakable evil and get trapped in an unbelievable nightmare.

Ah! 20th Century Fox presents Race with the Devil, starring Peter Fonda and Warren Oates. They're trying to screw with our brains. So what are we going to do about it? There was nowhere they could hide.

They've seen us. There was no one they could trust. Did anybody hear anything? Didn't anybody see anything? There was nothing they could do but run and fight and race with the devil.

When you race with the devil, you'd better be faster than hell. Peter Fonda and Warren Oates in Race with the Devil. Rated PG. Parental guidance suggested. Hey guys, look what I've got.

Check out these awesome earbuds I'm using right now. Look at that. That's wood right there. That's actual wood. Why would you use wood to make technology?

Because they're... It's like... They're steam. Is steampunk really wood? I thought it was more of a brass thing.

Well, you got to work the wood in to hold the brass together. These are the fancy high-end steampunk versions with a mic built in, mind you. But yeah, where would I get these you wonder? Tweaked Audio. Way to pitch.

You want to hear more, you say? TweakedAudio.com. Hey, they are available in three styles and seven colors only. And they sound pretty damn good. I kind of forgot because I hadn't had my old pair in a while and I was using the knockoff crappy ones I bought at the store.

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You should really get a smartphone, not a dumb phone. But So anyway, the basic rundown here, if you need yourself some earbuds, tweakedaudio.com. And if you go there, there's a deal. There's a Meltdown deal. If you go, there's a discount code, and you put in Meltdown, you get 33% off and free shipping.

You guys are excited, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. As well you should be. tweakedaudio.com. Use the Meltdown code.

That's all I'm saying. Dave, I do not get superheroes. Oh my god, I don't get you. What don't you get? Towerbot here.

Well, the. Meatbags were going to say that if you're a geek and like podcasts, then you could try Tower of Technobabble at www.toweroftechnobabble.com. Then this started. Well, it's up to you. I'm gonna get my taser and put a stop to this.

Towerbot out. Okay, monkeys. It's knock time. Want some music for your ears? Doo-Wop Shop makes it easy to rent for any event, business meeting, or special occasion.

From PA systems to karaoke machines to just about anything that makes noise, you can rent it from the Doo-Wop Shop. In Louisville, find them either at their Highland Store at 1587 Bardstown Road or in the East End at 2915 South Hurstburn Parkway. And look for them online at DooWopShop.com Doo-Wop Shop. We're serious about music. Hi, this is Doug Bradley, pinhead from the Hellraiser Films.

You're listening to Movie Meltdown. You better keep listening to Movie Meltdown or I will tear your soul apart. It's time for Sofa Theater. Evil has visited the earth in many forms. Now it returns as the car.

Sofa Theater There was no driver. In the car. The car possessed. I know why he didn't go into the cemetery. The ground was hallowed.

Nothing can stop the car. This is Wade. We can't let him through no matter what. Stay in close. He'll have to stop.

There's nowhere to turn. The car, he's in here. Nowhere to hide. No way to stop the car. I think I hear the engine of that car.

It's around here somewhere. Wait, I'm scared. No, I promise you I won't go out. Tell me what to do, baby. What evil force drives the car?

Thank you. I live an evil life, so you say, but I'll run from the devil on the judgment day. Move hard, ride, move me. Move hard, ride, move me. Move hard, ride, move me on down the line.

Yeah, me and the devil sitting at a stoplight. He started rolling on the. Side by side. Move hard, ride, move me. Move hard, ride, move me.

Move hard, ride, move me on down the line. We'll be right back. Alright, we are back, and welcome to this week's Sofa Theater. The movie of the week is The Car, or as Greg likes to call it, E.T. Do we need to go back?

Just go back. It's somewhere in the last year. Yeah, we were at... It might have been Taxi Driver. It was one of the ones at the theater.

Zardoz. I think Zardoz is where I put it on. And you were showing The Car in the lobby on the TVs. And we watched. probably only 30 seconds of it. And as Brian and I were walking in, we were trying to identify the movie.

And I just saw the little girl at the beginning there. And it was only watching this time. Oh, we were right at the beginning of the movie. It was them standing in the driveway. And I saw the one little girl.

I'm like, oh, it's Escape from Witch Mountain. Because that is the same. So that's why I was like, oh, look. And then the other, and then it's like the Brolin dude comes along. I'm like, wait a minute.

He's not in Escape. That's not the rock. Oh, wait, that's the wrong Escape. But either way, I was like, that's not Escape from Witch Mountain. So then we were trying to decide what it actually was.

Right. And at that point. It's. It was E.T. It was the beginning of E.T.

That's what we decided. I think you're lying. And so from that point on, the car is now E.T. The point was there were two yokels walking up next to us that were also trying to decide. What it was.

Yes, that's right. They were. They yelled out. Oh, that's E.T. No, I think they were much younger than we were and probably not alive when the original E.T.

Came out. Or the car. Or the car. Well, obviously. I'm kind of perplexed about the remake of Escape from Witch Mountain because I haven't seen it, but you at least infer that you maybe have.

I just know The Rock's in it. And that would almost be the reason for me to watch it. So in this modern day and age, The Rock replaces Eddie Albert? Yes. Is that?

They're kind of the same I mean look at the build that Eddie Albert build I mean. You know he did get kind of buff working on Green Acres he was originally so is it is it two I could look this up but is it two Witch Mountain or from Witch Mountain two they're going escape escape two because that's the destination that's where they're meeting Remeland's corpse. Is in that one too. But I think people always say from. I think people always say from.

But people are stupid. But they're escaping from Raven Land to go to Witch Mountain. Escaping from New York to get to Witch Mountain. To get to Witch Mountain. And then afterwards it's return to Witch Mountain with Christopher Lee and Betty Davis, I think.

Isn't that right? That sounds right, yeah. I'm pretty sure it is. It's those two, they're working together and. They've got some weird mind control device that's controlling one of the kids into destroying.

I'm trying to remember this from fragments of what I saw when I was eight. I'll just say that they're trying to destroy industry in the United States. All of those Disney shows that they showed on Sunday nights, that I always happen to be at my grandma's house, they all kind of morph into one. Yeah, it's like I can't tell the difference between Return to Witch Mountain or Condor Man or any of the love bug movies. But, you know, not just because she was in this, but it did have kind of.

One of our dinosaurs is missing. Other than the car and the death and the cursing. It did have a Disney... Did it have an old school Disney feel to it a little bit? Like it was like Disney does horror.

Yeah, kind of like Freaky Friday. Yeah. I can get behind that. I don't know if that was the way it was shot, but the whole time I just expected. I could see that.

It's just very much just sort of that. If anything, it's just for a... low-budget horror movie from the 70s, it doesn't look that low-budget. I'll give it that. That's what I always kind of liked about it. Have you told people what this movie is you're talking about?

Are we talking about the car now? No, we didn't finish that because we got distracted. I was making sure that we weren't talking about a love bug movie. We're still talking about E.T. So ever since then, we refer to it as E.T.

Right. And we're stupid. Kirby only kills people for good, whereas the car kills people for bad? Yeah. The actual movie is The Car.

The year is 1977. Director Elliot Silverstein. The plot, according to IMDb, a sleek, possessed black car terrorizes everyone it comes in contact with in a small town in Utah. Spoiler alert. That's pretty much how it's going to go.

It doesn't terrorize everyone. It's veered around the one guy. Just that. Everyone but one guy in Utah. So why was he spared?

Because he's evil. It's R.G. Armstrong. R.G. Armstrong is to me what Harry Dean Stanton is to Lucy.

It's like I have my man crush on him. That's why I even suggested doing a take because he died last year. He was at almost 96. And today would have been his birthday, his 96th birthday. And he lived to see it.

Happy birthday. Happy birthday, Archie. We're going to talk about you as a wife beater. Among other things. He was a character actor that typically played assholes.

You go back and look at his track record. That was good. There's a lot of people that tap into that, Mark. Yeah. When you get typecast, that's pretty much what you end up in.

You know, the whole time I was watching this, it's Christine. I mean, Stephen King saw this and said, I'm going to write a book. Because I remember when we did the Christine episode. I would say more like Jaws. If I had to compare it to a pre-existing movie.

It made me realize how many movies wanted to be Jaws. We won't do a shark, but we still got to make our Jaws. It can be a car. With its own soundtrack. It can be a bear or it can be a giant lizard.

But we got to make our Jaws. To me, more than Jaws, it was Duel. which is the exact same guy making the same story, only better the second time around. But to me, it had a– like, especially that very beginning before we realize exactly what it is and what's going on, if we ever do. But, yeah, that whole first half seems like it's very similar to the feeling you get in Duel. Yeah, I don't know.

I just like the open landscape of Utah that they chose. I mean, there's just a lot of really cool wide shots that they go with, even like this slow opening– sequence even the music in and of itself i can't remember who did the score for but it has i. Remember thinking it has a similar ring to the the planet of the apes movies but it's not the same composer. I think they reworked it somehow yeah i think it was a pre-existing score that they kind of reworked and worked it back in there but yeah i don't know to me it's like a mixture of Both of those, at least, like, again, now after the fact, you're like, oh, yeah, this is a lot like Christine. But, yeah, this predates it.

Because I remember on the Christine episodes, like, trying to backtrack and figure out, like, what other stuff, you know, how other things had started ripping off Christine. I don't think at the time I'd even seen New of the Car. So, like, I don't think I realized how much Christine the novel was ripping off this movie. Yeah, not only that, but I mean, there's a lot of killer car movies. It's like a subgenre of horror because you've got the hearse.

And Maximum Overdrive. You could even go with like Killdozer, The Wraith. I mean, there's a lot of those that sort of fall into that realm, which it's actually sad that it is a subgenre. I feel like the car is the best one because I like the car more than Christine. I don't know if that's going to sound sacrilegious possibly, but I don't know.

I just think it's more fun. I was pretty entertained with the Wraith, let me tell you. It's bad, but man, it's entertaining. Is this our third killer car movie, then? We'll have to keep, I don't know.

We need to keep score, I suppose. It felt like it, like it definitely, like the guy who made it was definitely a fan of Spielberg. Like he was trying to make a hybrid of Duel and Jaws. Like the opening scene is basically the scene at the beginning of Jaws where the woman gets attacked. We see the POV of the shark.

You know, you see the POV of the car, like looking out the brown windshield. You know, it kills the young couple. Cut to, you know, the protagonist laying in his bed. His wife wakes him up. How does A connect to B?

Well, it's just like it turns into kind of Jaws. Like that's the Chief Brody character that comes in as James Brolin. So it kind of felt like an interesting hybrid of those two in a way. At least from the first half. Like what I got from that.

Again, like you were saying, there were so many that fell into that trap in the next ten years. And I don't know, since then. They're still doing them, really. But it became such a big trend to try to tap into that version of it. So, yeah, this, I guess, was one of the first ones.

So that's something. I wonder if you could even argue that Jaws kind of set the precedent for patterns within horror. Because as he's mentioning, you look at the car in Jaws, it has that same pattern. Of the initial victim. introduce the characters, secondary victim, then the involvement of characters. I mean, think of how many horror films that have that.

I mean, Halloween does that, Friday the 13th. I mean, so many horror films start off with that initial murder or death, introduction of characters, second murder, and then the involvement. It's like, but you try to think back further into earlier horror, I start struggling pre-Jaws to find something that fits into that realm. Jaws is definitely structure-wise one of the most influential movies ever. It is funny how many things sort of borrow from that even without realizing it at this point.

And they do use explosives in Jaws. That's true. Yeah. It's like, you know, I. Can't remember, did the semi-truck blow up at the end of the door or did it just crash?

I know it ramped off a cliff. I know the car ramped off a cliff at the end of the car. And it blew up. If I recall correctly on Duel, the car that the semi-truck hits blows up because it had already kind of caught on. Fire because it overheated.

If I recall, I don't think the actual semi-truck itself blows up. Even though it is like some sort of gasoline tankard or something like that, I don't recall it blowing up. Yeah, I couldn't really remember. So I thought maybe that could be like, you know, maybe they're thinking... Like, this is our duel moment.

It's like the car finally ramps off and it's going to finally be destroyed. And then we're going to blow it up like Jaws. And we get that movie in there also. But I don't know. But you could almost argue then that basically Spielberg just rehashed a lot of the motifs that he created in Duel for Jaws.

Exactly. Yeah. And massively improved. Everybody still loves Duel. I think Duel is way too long.

I think Duel... is a great setup and it's sort of a fun, like half of a movie, but it, to me, it just drags on where it's like he learned what he needed to with duel and then like perfected it with jaw. And Spielberg's really, really big on bringing back a lot of different scenes that worked in earlier films into later films. I mean, that was my whole issue when I saw the war of the world to remake is early on. It's like a really fun film, but like in the second half, by the time they got into the farmhouse, It slowed down to a halt, and then with the whole machine in the basement, I'm like, this is just the velociraptors in the kitchen with the kids. They even do the trick with the mayor and all that.

It's just he's rehashing his bag of. Tricks at that point. A lot of directors end up doing as they go on. So I guess as many movies as he's made, I don't know. Do you run out of stuff, do you think?

Do you have to start going over stuff you've already done? Well, they would call it a callback. They wouldn't call it. This is my style I'm going to show you what I. And that's a legitimate question it's like what's the difference between like an homage to your earlier works and what's and then what's ripping them off I guess it just is entirely measured by whether you liked it or.

Not yeah especially especially the scene where Oscar Schindler shoots Hitler and he's like smile you son of a bitch and he blows up like that was just kind. Of It's the special cut that you saw, right? Yeah. No, it's on that Criterion Edition. Yeah, it's in the alternate.

Disc 3. Yeah. Which then, when Tarantino did that in Glorious Bastards, is that an homage to Schindler's List or is it a rip-off? Hey, hey, hey. Tarantino does never borrow from any.

Pre-existing... None at all. I'm sorry. My bad. So this one, I mean, again, you start to question what's going on, but I guess, I mean, if we want to go before anything even hits the screen, that quote that we get.

Yeah, Anton LaVey. Anton LaVey. Any movie that starts off with a quote from Anton LaVey, I mean, that kind of says a lot, doesn't it? There is no question about what's driving the car at that point, right? I guess.

Again, by the end, I'm still kind of like, so that's what we're supposed to say? Like, this is one of those, and again, this was a very 70s thing where you really didn't have to answer any questions. Like, by the 80s, you had to follow through with everything. You had to iron out all the details for people or they'd start being pissy about it. But the 70s, they just didn't care.

And I think that's a problem, too, at least when it comes to horror, is the more that you know, the more you can rationalize away. Just because even with Jaws, it's an animal attack film to where they explain essentially why it's behaving the way it does, even if it's just in the beast's nature. It essentially is sort of that, you know, it's Moby Dick reworked to a certain extent. But if you go all the way back to Hitchcock's The Birds, he doesn't tell you why they act that way. And that's the whole thing is what makes it terrifying is you don't know.

Because as soon as you know that reason, it's like, yeah, that's pushing it. Or you can try, you know, rationalizing your mind. I just recently saw Sinister. And I stopped it after the first hour because I was like, this is going good. I like where this is going.

And I know it's going to tell me too much in the end and ruin itself. And son of a bitch, it did. And I was like, fuck you, movie. Because you had so much going for you, so much. And you got greedy.

It's the same when I like saw paranormal activity it gives you too much horror films work so so much better whenever they are minimalist and that's something where american audiences become obsessed with having to know that answer at least foreign horror films avoid that pitfall anytime there's like a American remake of a foreign horror film, they make the ending clear cut and typically the protagonist wins. Whereas if you go back and watch the original, oftentimes it's left ambiguous and the protagonist loses. It's a very Americanized mentality when it comes to horror that's arisen since like the 70s. Yeah. Well, I've many times referenced this version, which is the Michael Myers.

Mm-hmm. That's why he's so amazing in that first one. There's no reason. I mean, he's crazy as a child. He's crazy as an adult.

You don't know why he's unstoppable. He just is. He's the boogeyman, and that's why he's scary. This stupid backstory we get in the remake is just like, okay, now he's just white trash. Why do I care?

Why do I give a rat's ass about this guy? Well, even with the original series on Halloween, when you get to part two and Loomis starts explaining it, and then it will skip to part four, they explain it a little bit more. And it takes everything away from him. It takes all of his... Like you said, why is he doing this?

Well, it doesn't matter why he's doing it. He's just doing it. He's just evil. He was the embodiment of evil, which the car is. It is just pure evil, and that's it.

But then he becomes truly supernatural and superpower. He turns from just a man into. A supervillain, too, because he. Which Michael Myers? Yeah.

Because he always kind of had that for me. They just didn't show you a million different examples, but you kind of got that sense of why is that? Why is it he always seems to come out ahead and still get up afterwards? It just gets beaten to death over the sequels, but I think he always kind of had that element. Well, and it's also left ambiguous in the first one, too, whether it is just a really... tough guy who just got out of an insane asylum and he doesn't care that you're inflicting pain on him, he's going to kill you.

He's not very reactionary towards that. And so it works either way. But again, it's like as soon as you start humanizing him, he loses. That fear factor. And that's why I like that first one so much.

And that's why I still put it way above any of the sequels. And that's a decent series. But that first one stands alone because of that. Just because it leaves... everything, you know, to you, to make up your mind what you think about it, which I guess is kind of the strength of the car. It doesn't really spell anything out.

It's just like, well, look at this car killing people. have fun with this. It doesn't ever really give you any, you know, the most we get is the hallowed ground thing. It's like that's the closest thing we get to piecing it together, to even the people involved piecing it together. Yeah, but you never really know what sparks that initial event that caused it to come there. I feel like if it were remade today, they'd have to explain to you, you know, these Indian burial grounds are desecrated or they would give you some rational explanation as to.

Why it's there, why that town, why those people. Well, that's what I wondered was, did it exist before that? Had it always been killing people somewhere else and it just showed up here? Or was it just, you know, created because of something in this town and it never left that little area? I don't know.

Again, they don't spell that out and it's probably better that they don't. It would have gotten weighed down too much. I think it would have been less interesting. I don't like an over-explanation of hardly anything when it comes to that. I mean, when you say, okay, it's supernatural, then okay, stop there and stop asking questions and let's just have fun with it.

It's like, okay, hold the show. Where's the science behind this car that's driving itself? Right. I have to know. I did appreciate also that they were, the characters wouldn't even call into question whether it was supernatural until they were forced to confront that it was.

It was still a guy until the very end, almost the very end of the film. Oh, I, I prefer that because now, like you said, if they remade it now, it would be in the first 10 minutes, they would know that it was possessed. I don't know the question that anybody would even come to that conclusion at the point they came to it. Like, I don't know. It's still questionable for you.

Well, I mean, it's like if, if, if some random killer car was going around killing everybody, it would take a lot more for me to decide, Oh yes, this is possessed by the incarnation of evil. Um, That's the first thing I jumped on. You could even argue, too, that James Brolin never ends up believing that. Because, like, the Ronnie Cox, you know, the weepy cop character. The most put-together drunkard ever.

Yeah. Even at the end, he's like, you saw that face, like, it's over. It's just like, he pretty much doesn't give a shit why it happened. What matters to him, from his point of view, is that the incident is over. See, what I wondered is, is it over?

Because then you see it driving away in the end credits. Well, you know, they actually talked about doing a sequel to it for a while. But, I mean, they'd originally, from what I researched, they'd plan on doing one, but it just didn't do the money they thought it would. It's going to the city. It's car two, car in the city.

Following the Bay structure. It felt like there was going to be a sequel. Universal pumped a lot of money into it. And, I mean, they did release it as a summer blockbuster, but the problem was they. Released it in May of 1977.

1977. And people are going to see something else at the time. I don't know what you're talking about. They chose poorly. And the only people that.

Ended up seeing it were people that couldn't get into the other movie. Probably half the grosses that went towards the car were people buying tickets to the car so that way they could sneak into Star Wars. It's like, no, I got a ticket for a movie in here. I'll pass on Star Wars and see the car to Lost in New York. Sounds like a winner.

Now, I would watch that if it killed Macalor Culkin, and you wouldn't. Don't deny. That. Speaking of which, I know this is going to be a complete tangent. I just recently saw Skyfall.

How is that not Home Alone in the last ten minutes? It is. It's close. Judy Dench and all have set up all that little goofy stuff. I got more of a Straw Dogs vibe from that than Home Alone.

No, I got more. Well, she didn't have micro-machines, but they had micro-machines. I got that vibe, yeah. What am I watching here? I don't know, because everyone put Skyfall so high ranked above these.

I forgot to say that Casino Royale is still the superior of the Daniel Craig's for me. But I've always said, and everybody likes to credit that to Home Alone, I've always said Home Alone totally ripped off Nightmare on Elm Street. Because she totally booby traps the house, gets books on it, sets up an entire elaborate booby trap my own house scheme. He's just supernatural. Which actually, as you all were just mentioning, that's essentially Straw Dogs when he's having to protect.

We should see how far we can take that. That's where all of these seem to go. It's like, well, who ripped off who? Let's keep going back. Or homage.

Again, it's all whether you like it or not. So there you go. That's true. I didn't like it, so rip off with him alone. You didn't like Home Alone?

Oh, you didn't like Skyfall. I like Skyfall, it's just that part I felt was unnecessary. That part was, I was conflicted on that part, really, because that was, in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways, that was the most exciting sequence of the movie, but at the same time, it just so was not James Bond. And prior to that, is this an homage or a ripoff of Silence of the Lambs before this? I don't know.

Yeah. And not only that, but James Bond has his own Alfred movie. That he left for like 30 years. Longer than that. How long was that?

He just disappeared. Didn't know where he went. Never really checked in. That was a huge span of time. I don't know.

It's basically the end of the movie is just James Bond crying like, I want to go home. It's weird how he decides to like, you know, when the shit really hits the fan at the end of the movie. Like, you know, they don't know. Like the first place he thinks to go to is his childhood home. Like, you know, as the perfect fortress.

It's like, okay. I don't know about that. It's strawdaws. Maybe it's Home Alone. But anyway, back to the car.

As I was saying, the guy that likes his custom cars, James Bond, this car, that was my thing the whole time sitting there. I'm just like, what the hell kind of car is that? Because it does look pretty damned evil. It's a Lincoln. It's some sort of modified Lincoln.

Yeah, a Mark III black coupe. So yeah, it's an evil fucking car. Which they made, I think they made six of them. Six of the custom cars, which apparently one still exists. They said, yeah.

I read one of them they sell to a collector in Europe, I think. Yeah, that's where it's at, the one that exists. Three of the six were destroyed in the whole barrel roll thing. Even if you slow it down, you can tell the two different angles. And then two of them were destroyed when it goes off the canyon.

And that, I think, was the knockoff version. I thought they said they had one that they, like, slapped together over a Thunderbird and made it kind of look like that so they didn't have to build another one. Like, I'm sure that cost a fortune to do custom. So, since they knew they were going to drive it off a cliff, they just kind of made it look pretty close. And you really only get an undershot anyway, really, so.

Jesus! Mother Christ! Magruder, look! There it is! Come on, stay in close!

He'll have to stop! He can't take us both! He'll turn off and we got him! The scene, like Greg was saying, when it barrel rolls over the two cop cars, that's at the point when it sold me the first time I ever saw the movie. Okay, this has gotten to the level of silly that I.

No, I love the chasing the parade. The one guy gets trampled by the horse, and it's really an actor getting trampled by a horse. You can't recreate that stuff. I just like that the guys on horses were trying to distract it, so all of a sudden it became, at that point I was like, The car's just a bull. It's a rodeo.

It was a rodeo. Yeah, when the guy tucked and rolled, he was like, he looks like a rodeo clown right now. They probably used rodeo clowns. Probably. Did anybody else feel like the horses were multiplying?

Because I swear there were only like two at first. Yeah, they were like 85 by the end of the scene. It's like a whole stampede. Well, it's the Southwest. Horses are everywhere.

They were just roaming free. Waiting for the parade. Those kids, you only saw two cars there. Most of those kids rode their horses to school. I see.

Which is the one thing I'll give the car. It does take care of most of the annoying characters in the movie. Most horror films, they usually leave that one or two annoying characters you're supposed to find endearing or funny or something. No, this one kills most of them all. I guess that'd be your guy.

Because he survives. I like him. He's like the jerk of the movie. I found the French horn player to be endearing and funny, personally. I'm glad when he dies.

I mean, he needed to die. I'm not going to argue that. Anybody have whistles and birds? Come on. I enjoyed his scene.

He's the kind of guy that would turn up in every Friday the 13th from then on. You're like, oh, that guy's asking for it. What did really. Annoy me, and this seems to happen a lot, and it always bugs me, is the very first scene when the car is chasing... the bikers and they're all screaming like crazy because this car is right behind them. At no point do they think to like veer their bike to the left.

Like they just stay right in the path. And this seems to happen a lot, like in movies or TV shows where people are getting chased by cars, especially on foot. They'll just, stay in the path and then get run over somebody else at. That point they were on that canyon road where you really didn't have much of a shoulder. Right but they were in a straightaway and like he kept hitting the back the back of his wheel and he never just.

Veered that was when they were on the bridge. Yeah but there was a whole lane there was there. Was a there was also a turnoff at one point when the girl was being chased that was pretty that was pretty blatant well like. I signed with the car at one point. I said, hit your brakes, and then he's going to pass right by you.

That seems like an effective strategy. Go ahead, get the guy. I'll go the other way. Yeah, that was the top one. Which actually, wouldn't that be an interesting story to be like, so are you still dating so-and-so?

No. Devil car ran him off into a canyon. It happens. It's the damnedest thing. Literally.

Kind of happened to the last boyfriend, too. I kind of wish the movie had been allowed to be gorier as well, because when he slams her into the wall there, I just really wanted to see what that did to her legs. Wow. I don't know. And maybe that's...

I don't know. And PG was badly bruised. I feel like they got away with a little bit more in the pre-PG-13 days, like Jaws got away with a little bit more. But at the same time, maybe just Universal and Spielberg had... It was the same film, dude.

I didn't even think about that. Maybe they just wanted to remake Jaws over and over. Keep cashing in on the same damn thing. It was still PG, though. It was PG.

I was surprised, yeah. But I guess that's why. The description of it, it said, maybe, I think it said, maybe unsettling for pre-teens. It was a blue and white bar, which I'd never seen that. And I'm like, I'm going to read this.

And it said, maybe unsettling for pre-teens. That's when I was watching all this. Right. So if you're 13, watch it. Definitely.

It'll unsettle you. You know, was. Anybody else bothered? I mean, I don't mind that the bad guy, the evil guy, I guess the only real evil human in it. You're talking about Amos?

Yeah, that he lived. I'm okay with that, but he was almost redeemed in it. He was kind of like, he helped save everybody. He helped solve the problem and he was standing there side by side with him and they're all smiling at each other, I might have turned and punched him. Even if he helped me kill the car, I might have still turned and punched him because he He wasn't very nice to him.

He was a son of a bitch. What was that guy's job, though? He had all this access to dynamite? He ran a demolitions company. Did we know that before the dynamite?

Yeah. Oh, I totally missed that. He was on his truck. Yeah, I was going to say. You were busy watching the guy listening to birds.

You missed the truck. Yeah, I just didn't like that he was... Okay, he's okay now. He's one of us. He helped us kill the devil car.

I'm sure a lot of it's just relief at that moment. Plus, they just saw this weird fire demon in the sky. I still would have liked that. I like how they wear a tutu where it's just, we need you. It's not, you can redeem yourself or that we like you.

It's just, fuck, we need you. God damn it. Just do this, you jerk. So, if the car spared him because he was evil, the James Brolin character, the car just kind of teased him. So, is he like maybe semi-evil and we just don't know it?

What happened to his wife? Well, his girlfriend. That's a good question. Oh, his wife. Maybe that's why.

I'll tell you what he was, though. Now, based on that first scene, when the kids are waiting for him out front, which, first of all, I thought he made him go out and put helmets on to play hopscotch. I was like, wow, that is an overprotective father. And then he came off the motorcycle. I was like, oh, well, now it makes more sense.

I was just like, wow, he is really protective. But then I was like, okay, he wheels out on the motorcycle, sitting back behind there. A dune buggy. I'm like, this is the coolest dad ever. Why didn't they take the dune buggy to school instead of cramming three people on the road?

Which seems really unsafe. I think the car recognized him as a fellow... polluter of the environment. I don't know maybe you got a doom buggy you know maybe i don't. Know when no country for old men was written but maybe this was the inspiration for cormac mccarthy because if you think about it the car and all the incidents none of themselves maybe it's just as i want to say immaterial but um it's akin to all the stuff that's going on with anton sugar and um the Josh Brolin character. It's like, really, it's the movie, it's Tommy Lee Jones' story.

When you get right down to it, maybe. This is all about just this cop, because his dad was killed in the line of duty. So maybe it's all about him having to come to terms with that big challenge in his life or something along that line. Is that stretching it too much? I'm trying to see them working that in.

Stretch the bullshittery of it. I think it can be done here. It didn't get killed because it would have been fun if then in the next movie he's like, remember when your dad got killed by that evil car? But you don't know what happened to his dad. But within this movie we see.

So we don't know what happens in car two. We've done Hoover and the car now, you know, 70s manly. Lead roles. With mustaches. What's that?

With mustaches. I think Brolin might out man. Well he's not completely ridiculous i mean burt reynolds is pretty ridiculous and i think was very self-aware of how silly his you know he was perceived and just went with it that was his selling. Point except for the um uh the the painted portrait of him in the girlfriend's i. Was gonna mention that because i was like.

Why don't i have that yeah it was it You know, the absurdity of her having it is not one thing, but it's that him sitting and posing for it. Some guy that manly for that length of time, I don't think he would have put up with it. Maybe if he had a photograph or something. Just from memory, because if I recall, it wasn't very good. I was like, now I really want it because it's a bad painting.

But then he was in there after the car had gone through it. It was still sitting there. I was like, Dude, take it with you. Put it over your mantle. Come on.

I thought that has to still exist somewhere. Somebody's got it. I hope Josh has it in the house somewhere. Maybe it's hanging somewhere with the painting from the end of Ghostbusters 2. One can hope.

Oh, yeah. Not the Vigo one, but the one where like... With the Ghostbusters. With the Ghostbusters with maybe that shitty, shitty. Shitty painting that's at the end of that movie.

It undoes all the coolness of the Vigo painting. That's old master right there. Come on, man. That is classy material. But I don't know.

I mean, why didn't James Brolin take off? He just sort of disappeared. That's what I was thinking. Well, I blame his wife for that. There's a lot of TV, you know?

Well, that's the thing, though. As I was watching, I was like, he was kind of at that point. Like, he was a big star right around here. He, at least in his world, he sort of solidified himself as a leading man and was kind of getting bigger roles. And then I was like, Josh is a way bigger star now.

Like, he totally, like, if you think Brolin now. And Josh started out smaller. Yeah. And it took a long time for Josh. Whereas James, it seemed to be like it was right off the bat that became, like, the, you know, fire in the pan hit that he was.

And then it's just like, what happened to him? It's like, he suddenly became big in the early 70s as sort of the sex symbol and then he was getting roles very much akin to Burt Reynolds and then just I. Think he hit the pinnacle once he got to Pee Wee's Big Adventure it was all downhill from there. And even by then that was almost just sort of like a gag cameo I don't think. It's impossible that talent plays into that to some degree I'm just going to jump out there with.

That one I mean, that's true, but, I mean, he didn't have the strongest track record in a way of, like, roles that he went with. I don't know. I mean, Josh Brolin doesn't have the strongest track record if you look at him, like, really pre-milking that. You know, he did a lot of, like, cheesy stuff as well, even starting off with the Goonies. Goonies is cheesy.

So it's like, I don't know. I don't know why he never really took off or eventually got that role that really, like, He had the opportunity to. Well, wasn't it Hotel he was on? Yes. I feel like that was the turning point.

I think all of a sudden that became sort of, not really a hit, but it became very recognizable on TV. And at that point, he was like a TV star. I think he had changed gears, whether he knowingly did it or not. I think everyone then associated him with that show, and then he got sort of downgraded to TV star. And at that point, I don't remember any big leading roles coming along after that.

It seemed like that was... That was the dividing line is then he became TV-sized, and that's how it went for him here on out. That seems to be a way that people just disappear. It's like they start doing TV. It's just like, what happened to them?

It used to be. You don't have that anymore. You can kind of cross over now. There was that period, though, in the 80s and early 90s where that would be. Nowadays, yeah, now that you've got so many TV shows that are, taking notes between Mad Men or just all the stuff they do on AMC or Showtime or any of those shows.

It's not so much the case as it used to be. I don't think it was ever a choice that people made. It's not like James Brolin said, I feel very passionately about this hotel project, and I'm going to go ahead and take a chance on this one. I mean, you got demoted is basically what happened. If you weren't making money as a film star, you're like, well, I'll make some money and do some TV, and it's kind of all over from here.

I think it changes in the executive minds. I think it changes in the public minds. The star may not have any idea what's going on until it's way too late. Well, it may have been Star Wars, too. This flopped.

And, well, we've got a TV role for you. Was there anything after this? Actually, after Star Wars, it could have been just, fuck James Berlin, we've got Harrison Ford. Let's keep everything to him. Awesome Indiana Jones, though.

Better than Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck. But really, I mean, Burt Reynolds would have disappeared if it weren't for the fact that Anderson used him in Boogie Nights. Well, I was going to say, he fell into that exact trap. Evening Shade.

And it's funny, nobody remembers that. That was probably, that's probably what paid for his museum that he built. Because, I mean, if you think about it, that's probably the most steady work he had. He was a big star, but you know, he blew all that 70s money. It's like the only thing that he's probably not living in a home right now is because Evening Shade was on for years and like was a pretty, I mean, it's a pretty cushy network job.

I'm sure that had a decent paycheck and like he just sort of flew under the radar. It's like that got a lot of viewers from people that were 60 and he cashed in on that for years and years there and then was, you know, again, totally out of the limelight until Boogie Nights brought him back. So he's a pretty good example of how that happens with TV. He got demoted completely to TV. Of course, I could see it to where suddenly he might...

I don't even know if James Brolin. Still is acting. But I could see it to where he might get roped into some project with some other offbeat director. You know, Wes Anderson or somebody to where they get him in for like a guest starring role and it kind of puts him back. Tarantino bringing him back.

Well, Tarantino keeps talking about wanting to do some sort of Warren Beatty project. He was even talking about that back when he was doing Kill Bill. He was going to be Bill. He was going to be Bill. And then I think he read David Carradine's autobiography and went with Carradine instead.

It's interesting whenever you have directors that will just grab someone and give them something to showcase with, like Anderson did with Burt Reynolds. which I think Reynolds was very, very pissed that he didn't win Best Supporting Actor. That was his only chance. Mark Wahlberg probably wouldn't have a career that he has now if it weren't for Boogie Nights. If it weren't for Boogie Nights. I mean, he was floundering too, and he really took off after that.

Now he's working with Michael Bay. Look where his career's gone. And he was in The Happening. Some of the finest movies. I remember when The.

Happening came out, and I haven't seen it since it came out, so I don't know how I feel about it now, but I was the only one who liked that movie. You may still be. The only one. I don't know. I kind of want to watch it.

Again to see if maybe I still like it or if I was just stupid back then. I'll defend The Village, but I won't defend it. See, The Village is the one that spurned me. I liked The Village more than most people. I liked The Village.

I don't know if I liked it or not. It was ruined for me before I saw it. Somebody just told me what happened. And that's the whole. Problem with his films is that they can be ruined because they are so built on that twist, that reveal, that aha.

And if you know the reveal ahead of time, suddenly whatever you're watching is just utterly implausible. Well, The Village I thought was interesting until you get to the punchline. And I mean, there's no way that you could go in there watching that movie and knowing that And still be able to have the impact of, you know, if you just went in blind. Yeah, like you say, all of his movies are like that. I still thought it was interesting, even if you know the reveal ahead of time.

I think the construction, it's almost like dog tooth. That people would be so convinced that this could, you know, they would convince themselves that things outside of their world didn't exist. Or they were lied to so much that they would believe these things. I don't know. I think.

That's just as interesting to me, actually more interesting than the twist. The twist, it's nothing to me. I still think the rest of it's what drives people to choose to do something like this is the interesting part of the story. I always get excited every time you mention Dogtooth. It comes up every so often.

I always get excited because I really loved that movie. I really related to it in a weird way. More than most people, probably. Yeah. I like that we've talked about the village and all these films and have never actually mentioned the name M.

Night Shyamalan. Like we're afraid to conjure him. Much like the cartoon. That guy disappears out of thin air. Hello.

Get out of here. He just flies your film. He reached that peak with Unbreakable and then just kind of stepped down each time. It's like Candyman. If you say his name three times, he'll make another bad movie.

So we have to keep that in check. I can defend... Was it The Woman in the Water? The Lady in the Water? The Lady in the Water.

I actually love that movie because it was hilarious. Okay. Well, I thought there were parts. The very idea that he would write himself a role as a super genius who knows he understands, who the critics hate because they don't understand how. Brilliant he is.

No, that is genius. The only thing I remember of that was the teaser that just had Paul Giamatti walking around polishing and cleaning the pool and all this stuff. I was like. aw, he didn't win the Oscar for Sideways and look at where he's gone. It's a mile. Well, the fact that he played a critic and then it's just like critic torture porn, it's kind of amazing.

Well, the critic is. He's saying, well, I can't die. I can't die here. You can't kill me. Last Airbender.

There were some redeeming things about it. I'm not going to defend it. Like I said, I'll defend the village. But therein... Of itself, it's like, is that the only movies that he's capable of making?

Or is it what studios expect of him and what audiences expect of him and that's all they'll let him do? Then that would be The Last Airbender. Well, The Last Airbender. That's an entirely different direction. That's true.

And there's not really a twist that I know. I still haven't watched it yet. I went in with a, because my kids would watch The Last Airbender show, the cartoon. Which is good. Yeah, it's really good.

I thought, okay, I'm going to go in this with no preconceived thoughts on this. I'm just going to watch it and see how it looks and how he adapted it. And it is boring. I've not seen a more boring film. You're like, this is exciting stuff.

You could take the whole series and cram it into one movie and have a fantastic movie. It's boring. To me, of what I've seen of it, it basically... That film to Shyamalan is what I feel like either Green Hornet is to Michel Gondry or what Planet of the Apes is to Tim Burton. Every now and then you'll have these kind.

Of artsy directors suddenly sneak out and try something that's mainstream. It's like, no. That was the best time for Burton and then he went down. Actually, Burton pulled off Batman, though, so I guess you can't knock him too much because he did actually... really set the precedent for what a lot of different action films and superhero films were after that but michelle gondry green hornet it's like what. He's not right anyway though i mean no he can turn out crap just as easily as he can turn.

It and like anyone could have directed that like you never got a sense of it he was directed by him like it could have been like you know the guy who did who's the guy that did Superbad. Like I would have believed it if you told me that guy did it or like Judd Apatow direct. Like because it was so much like the first half was so much of like the Seth Rogen kind of slacker Apatow comedy and then they just threw in a bunch of special effects and it just there was just no identity to it. I was like anyone could have really there's no identity to it. Get Harmony Corrine to do like a fantastic form wow just think about.

That so i don't know oh sorry did you have more like cool stuff you wanted to talk about because i kept taking note of things but they were very funny things to me so do we want to go. Yeah i laughed a lot yeah during the whole thing. Very much like all the ronnie cox stuff anytime he's on screen i was just like what the hell is this guy still doing employed right i It's like everyone just takes pity on him, and the whole department lets him work there. At least he still had a steady career of character bit roles, at least up through the 90s. I mean, kind of after Total Recall and that, he sort of disappeared.

Robocop. Yeah. Well, not great, but I remember that scene pretty well. Yeah, I mean, that became his role for years there. John Marley had had a solid career prior to that.

I mean, whether you look at his little bit role in Godfather, for me, my favorite John Marley role is in Faces, the Cassavetes film. He's fantastic in that. Wow, everyone in Faces, you know, Seymour Cassell was great in that, too. But, um. You know, Kathleen Lloyd, who plays James Brolin's girlfriend, she's the only one where I don't know what the hell she did before.

She's so weird. Or after. And she just looks. Yeah. She's just.

Well, just her behavior. Like, throughout the entire thing, it's just weird and doesn't seem to match anything going on. I loved that performance. I actually thought that the hitchhiker actually reminded me a lot of her. I think it was just the writing.

And I guess that has to do with there being three different writers or five different writers or how many different writers there are. But it was... a weird character with lots of very strange monologues. And I felt like she was just having fun with it and. Doing what she could because it was just so bizarre. I feel like everybody's having fun with this movie.

I don't watch it at any one point in time and think that somebody is just not having or is not. Able to sell it. I feel like everybody's able to sell these characters because they realize the whole thing's tongue-in-cheek to begin with. I mean, if it's a movie. About a car that is Satan incarnate going around picking off people in a desert town, how can you not have fun with it?

I mean, she's selling it. She just seems like she's from a different movie. Like, everybody else seems like they're in that town and they're pretty, you know, set in this movie. And then she's just doing her own thing. It's very strange.

She's very spunky. She is, but in a weird way. I felt like there was some sexual tension between her and the car, too. I don't know. The most memorable part of the movie is her telling him off.

I mean, even the girl, she was like, she was fantastic. Like, she's, you know, talking about the movie, like, giving her own review. This was the best part. Again, I wasn't really entirely clear. I mean.

At first, why she was just kind of doing this. She just looked at the woman next to her and they just kind of nodded at each other. And she gets up and starts cursing at the car. That's what I thought. She was creating a diversion.

They just nodded at each other. And it went on for so long again before the other one started running off. It was just very strange to me. You could have been out of town by now if you would have started running when I started confronting you. Yeah, I don't even think I realized that was all part of the same plan.

They both just seemed like they were doing random things at that point. I think what it was is they had this unspoken communication. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready. And I don't think the other woman knew that what she was doing was causing a distraction.

Oh, shit, I'm supposed to run. Also, it seemed really risky because at that point, I mean, obviously the car wasn't going into the graveyard at first, but they had no reason to think that he wouldn't if provoked enough. Like, they didn't realize about the hallowed ground thing or anything like that. They could have come in at any point. And she was trying to get him to come out of the car and then you'd have this man that she'd have to deal with stalking through the graveyard towards them to probably kill them.

And then he would have been attacked by 30 kids. With trombones. Yes. Deadly musical instruments. Well, of the other silly moments, like the other car, like the cop that gets like an inch away from him and then he just starts like tipping.

Why is it that like, As soon as it barely turned sideways, it burst into flames. It was just immediately on fire. And I'm like, don't get me wrong, I like when things are on fire. Because the car is the devil. I assumed it was just because the explosives went off early and we.

Only had that one shot. I was still enjoying it, but kind of for the wrong reasons at that moment. I like that little moment, though, where it just goes right up to the door and it's like he's trying to open it up and he realizes he can't get out. And the car just kind of slowly pushes it shut and he goes to sneak out the other. End and he realizes he's fucked either way.

It was a good setup. It was just funny that it immediately. Burst into flames. I don't know. Really, though, like.

It's a very silly film, but every so often there'd be little bits or little shots that I would just kind of be really satisfied that I thought this was really good. And that was one of them I thought that was really good. The other one when. Kathleen Lloyd's character gets hit and she just saw it on the phone and in the distance in the window you could see the light come up. And if it had not cut away to that other shot, that would have been just a perfect scene for me.

But they cut away and it just really killed it. Well, I was just like, did she live in the middle of a road? Because he went out the back and he was down, like he didn't go through a yard or somebody else's house, just right down the road. I was like, did they build her house in the middle of a road? The one cop kind of mentioned, you know, she was special because she cursed him.

It flew four feet off the ground. Like, just kind of acknowledging it didn't wrap up anything. It just kind of. But it was just me out in the back of. Her house and on a road.

Maybe the road curved around. I don't know. I just like how she was like, I can hear the engine. I can hear the engine. And she never looked out the window.

I liked when the car is coming towards the parade and twice you see the glint of. Yeah, that was another good one, too. Sun coming off of the car in the distance. Just kind of off in the distance. And he can't see it, and he's supposed to be looking for it.

I thought that was. Or there's just that one wide shot where you have this really long stretch of what's almost like the outskirts of Monument Valley, and you just see the dust trail, and that's it. You don't actually see the car in any of that shot. You just see the dust trail that's produced, and that's earlier on. They do set up that, especially with the horn.

When you hear it coming, you're like, oh, we're screwed. Once they know it's on the way, it's like somebody's dying in a minute. It's kind of like the fact that it wants to get people stirred up and afraid of it before it actually shows up. It wants to make its presence known before you even know what direction it's coming from. Like hearing a monster roaring in the woods sort of thing.

Again, that's probably my favorite part was those stupid kids. Because it does. It just busts in and 30 kids are running around. It's just complete insanity at that point. It doesn't get a single one of them.

That's kind of disappointing too. The only person who got killed was by a horse in that scene. One of the 80 horses that suddenly erupted. And I thought he was going to pick off the other teacher. She took off and I was like, you're leaving the graveyard.

You're going to get taken out. No. But even like. The different Native Americans they have working in the station with them. Because there's this one thing, if you don't listen for it, it's in passing when they're setting the scene.

And you have the really big guy talking on the phone with someone. It's not really in passing. It's pretty. dominant but basically they like infer that somebody over the phone is just like shouting out racial slurs at him he's just like and he's like very funny big guy you say something like that again and me come over there and shoot him up um he big arrow straight up your ass. It's like he just like throws an insult back and i was like that's kind of funny i like this. Character That's sort of a popular 70s trope was that sort of social justice Native American thing.

I'm like, who's making fun of Native Americans in Utah? Aren't there still a lot of... I don't know. Wouldn't you be kind of used to that? It's not like they moved into your neighborhood.

No. Kind of the other way around. Americans are racist by nature. That they are. Speaking of evil.

I found myself trying to decide to think. Extruded Americans. I'm sorry. I don't know. I found myself trying to figure out if any of the characters might be Mormons.

I decided they're not because they either drink or curse or flip people off or such, and Mormons don't do any of those things. Or that racy hopscotch. Which, again, I figured the only reason they chose Utah is so they could have those desert. Backdrops, which was, to me, just a cool decision. It probably was cheap, too, to shoot there.

I don't know, the other moment I thought, and again, it's always him edging up the things, but like, actually one that was really good, I liked the Brolin confronting him in the middle of the road. Like, that was kind of awesome. And like, he just gets off the bike and he's just like, okay, you've watched him mow people over several times. I'm like, this is kind of a cool little standoff here. But it gets kind of silly as he gets up to the door and he just smacks him in the head.

It's fun. Like, it works. But that's what I don't get is, like, then he just sort of knocks him over. Like, he doesn't really even, like, do any damage. And the next thing you know, he's in the hospital.

Like I said, why was he in the hospital? They're keeping him there overnight. Like, I don't know. I was like, didn't he just sort of knock him on the ground? Like, I don't even think it hit his head, did it?

It just, like, shoved him, really. I still don't know why he was spared. You know again that. That yeah at that point when the car just the car feels like because he took refuge in his shed and then just he wasn't going to kill him he just kept kind of teasing him he didn't want him to open the door but but. I like the fact that you don't know why he seems to have been chosen though this.

Is a reincarnation of his father Can we talk about the heroics of that doctor, though, to lose your daughter and the next day still report him to work? What a dude. He's a turper. Good doctor. My other favorite moment is the quietest hospital in the world, too.

It's like he's the only one there. It's a small town. Someone's got to run the building. I kind of want to know what town that was in Utah, in all honesty. I bet you they have the car days.

It's like up in Pennsylvania, they have blob days. I mean, there are all these little small towns that totally capitalize on the films that were shot there. Woodstock, Illinois still does a thing for the Groundhog because they didn't shoot Groundhog Day in Puxatawney whatsoever. So, I don't know. I would hope they do.

Somewhere there's like a car that doesn't look anything like that one because they can't afford that car. And they're just like, look, it's the car. It's a Beetle or something. Then you go back and it's just really, they've just erased themselves in the map. And just kids, once they get so long of an age, they have to walk down.

It's like the running of the bulls. It's like they just give you an instrument. You know that you're going to have, it's like if you don't kill guys, you get to survive onto adulthood. And then your children have to do this right of passage. The running of the cars.

You have to carry an instrument. My other favorite moment is when he's in the garage with it. And then the other teacher lady that was watching the kids is like, stay out of here, stay out of here. And then she goes back to take care of the kids, and he closes the door, and he latches. I'm like, okay, first of all, he can't fit through the door.

He's a car. And he drives through buildings. If he's going through there, door open or not, he's going through that wall. I assume he was latching him just so the kids wouldn't come out. Don't come running into this evil demon car.

I don't know. I just thought that was funny. He's like, don't you go. Through here, car. Like, that car's not going to fit through the door.

Well, it is. I mean, why else would his, it was his dad showing back up. He was saving it. You know, he didn't like the girlfriend. He wanted him to be the sheriff.

He took care of that. He wanted him to be a better sheriff. He took care of that. Protected his family. And his father, he picks up his father's badge and he keeps it in his pocket.

And that's when he's able to overcome the barring. It was his dad. I thought it was my mother, the car, not my mom. But again, see, there we go. It goes back to the whole thing.

Maybe we're interpreting it too literally. Like maybe the car really doesn't exist. Maybe it's just an allegory for just that challenge that you have to face within your career, at least in that situation, where you truly go up against evil and that's what either makes or breaks you in your life. You're giving it too much credit. I don't think so.

I don't know. I like the idea of it being as bad. It can work well i think it ties in again the fact that they set it out in the west somewhere is like it totally fits that that old like that ghost story goes on forever even if it wasn't satan it's just the ghost train stories the ghost riding a horse like that ghost out in the west thing has been going on since we got here you know since there was a west they've been telling some version of that story. And this, to me, was just some sort of an updating of, you know, and now it's a ghost car out in the West just driving around killing people because it can. I think I kind of see that.

I don't know. I'd still like to see a sequel. Now. Get Josh Brolin. And get James Beck.

Seriously. No, I really, I like that the whole city at the very end was Los Angeles. Ronnie Cox is still around. Yeah. Was that supposed to be the sequel that he was going to?

It has to have been. And like, yeah, think about the congestion on the freeways. It's like rubber, the end of rubber. We already mentioned that. It's showing up at the end.

Which that I think actually is the one thing about rubber I did not like. I liked it if it just had ended with it's in a tricycle now and the guy dies and like, that's it. The whole stuff where it goes on and on with him going down the road and recruiting stuff. I'm like, all right, I'm done. Speed this up.

I know we're just going. Please stop. I love Robert. Just do it. I don't know.

What else? For me, it's just one of my favorite guilty pleasure films. It's like after you've. Made us watch, you know, Yeti and all this other stuff, it's like, I'm going to put my flag down for cheesy. These are group efforts.

If the rest of you aren't coming up with good stuff. So you, thank you for throwing one into the fire here. You're welcome. I really liked Yeti. I'm glad I've seen Yeti.

I'll put it that way. We sat there together and watched it as we watched it. I think that's what really helped. And that people could walk by and see it on the screen from the big picture window. Actually, someone mentioned it the other day.

He was like, what were you watching? I was like, yes! I don't know. I tried to explain it and then I was just like, you know what? You missed out.

Yeti's nipple goes erect. Yes. What are you watching? Wait, you're crazy. He'll kill us.

Oh, come on, no. Come on! No. Look at him. Look at him.

He thinks he's got us. Come on, wait. Wait. Not yet. No, not yet.

Now go! No! Well, on this one, what do you take from the big finale? I guess if we were wrapping it up here, obviously they're trying to destroy it, but in the fireball there, what do you think we're supposed to take from that? I was trying to determine something of a face or something.

I got that there was supposed to be something, but I just saw a big fireball. Like a snake head? It was like a cobra or something. It looked like there were shapes trying to form. But again, I kind of like that it's like looking at one of these people look at, you know, Mount St.

Helens erupts. It's like, you see a face there and there and there and there. I mean, it's even kind of left up at the end. And the World Trade Center. Ronnie Cox's character.

He's like, did you see that up in the fireball? And it's like, you don't know whether James Rowland saw it or not. I mean, I kind of infer that he might have, but almost that he doubts himself for it. He saw his father's face and he just didn't want to. Draw attention to it.

Nope, didn't see anything. Moving on. It's over. It's over. I said it's over.

The movie's over. Yeah, because... Ronnie Cox could have seen a drink. You never know. They never went down to find out who was in there or see or try to dig it out.

Or anything, did they? Well, maybe that follows. I don't think so because I think the car drove itself out of the rubble and has headed towards the city now for the sequel. I think it's just something where it's destroyed and just reappears. Maybe it just materialized.

Yeah, rematerializes. Because it almost is kind of inferred at the car. It's not whenever it's not killing people. I don't get the feeling that it exists. Right.

I almost feel like it just will suddenly materialize out in the desert and then just sort of make its way towards the victims. Yeah, I get that. After James Brolin gets hit in the head and the car kind of starts glowing, that's kind of what I thought was happening at first. And then it kind of turned into just a whiteout. But at first I thought it was...

Well, it might have been a little bit of both. A little bit of both, yeah. Just kind of he was disintegrating to reappear elsewhere. Then why does he have to drive to the city in the end credits? Why can't he just.

Well, he appears out in the desert and then drives. He's got to appear somewhere and make the trek in there. It's got to be dramatic. Yeah, you're right. That makes sense.

Do you think it's Satan? Or is it just evil? Or is it a ghost? James Brolin's dad. Is it Christine?

It's just evil. Let's go with evil. I thought Thelma and Louise were driving at the end there. It's just me. I do like that the girls finally....

Were endeared to the teacher when she started cursing at the car. That's pretty cool. You should have seen her. She's had this and this. I wish the score was available.

I wouldn't mind having a score to the film. I mean, it does sound very, very familiar, but at the same time, it's got its own unique elements to it. The little girls did wind up being Kyle and Kim Richards of, wait, what is that called? The Ah, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Oh, God.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so that's kind of in character.

Did you see her? Did you see her? Since I haven't watched that, I'm very thankful that I. Didn't know that. Not that I've seen it.

I did try to get a print of this for midnight, and not one exists, according to Universal, which is a shame. It just materialized. Maybe it never was in theaters. Do we have any proof? I don't know.

That would explain it bombing at the box office. It never actually appeared at the box office. All right. If that wraps up the car. Yeah, it didn't appear until that one day I was at Suncoast and Brian was like, you might like this movie.

Take this, weirdo. And then I bought it. Yeah, do it. Like a decade later, I was like, I like this movie enough. Let's talk about it.

And Brian's like, you know, I never would have thought this would come back to haunt me when I saw one copy of the car. I thought that was the best time I've seen it. It was on the 999 show. Yeah. The one that you pick it up and it's lighter than a normal box.

The evil leaves the car just possesses a VHS tape. That's EP. EP. I love EP. Yeah, exactly.

It's the majority of my movies from those days. I was like, Craig, I finally got rid of that movie, The Car. Wouldn't that be ironic if that's exactly how it happened? Because I don't think that's actually too much of a stretch. Because I did buy it at Suncoast.

I know that for a fact. And it was the one at St. Matthews. Then I would have been like, Dave, guess what I unloaded today? I was going to say, it was either you or Conover.

One of us. We've been turning that out for weeks trying. To get it. Maybe we teamed up and we're like, here he comes again. You sell him something.

I'm going to sell him the car. There were times at Suncoast where we would say, okay, you see if you can sell this tonight. And we'd... Ma'am. Let me tell you about Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things.

It's a classic and fun for the whole family. I mean, it says children right in the titles. I recommended movies that I'd never seen. I did everything. Children love Unico movies.

Unico and the Isle of Magic. Your child will love it. I was top in sales for a month once because it was right after tax season. And I guess people were getting back. And I had the whole monologue on how... disney would take things off of the vault take say put them in and like this is going then this is going in it's going to be eight years until then and your kid's not going to be able to say and people would walk out with 10 15 condo man yeah and and um It was even in the little Suncoast news that my name.

Was in there. Greg lied to a lot of customers this month. I sold a lot of movies. No one has sold more copies of The Happiest Millionaire this month than Greg Caulfield. And we got rid of the car.

As a company, we only had one copy. Some poor bastard bought it. Congratulations. To which he says, hot damn. And it worked.

But I'm not crazy enough to at least like it because they released that die-cast reproduction of the car about three, four years. Ago, which I'm not ashamed to admit that I have. I would have that, but it's a badass car. I'm pretty sure that as I was watching it, I remember the Hot Wheels that looked a lot like that one. I wonder.

I don't look up toys very often, but I wonder if you could find it. Hot Wheels, Satan Edition. I don't look up toys very often, but one in the morning. I feel like my brothers might have. Had that one.

I mean, it was. Based on a real car, they just modified the hell out of it. They actually lowered the window so it made it have narrow, creepy eyes, which I thought was kind of cool. I mean, it's modified just slightly where it has the lower top and the tinted red windows, and it doesn't have the door handles. I think the frame is pulled out a little bit, too.

And you can see that it's a Lincoln. Sponsored by Lincoln. And they made it a flat black as opposed to a gloss, which. I thought was pretty cool. In some shots, it looks like it was just spray paint, but, you know.

It's cool. That was because they were about to blow up that car, and they were like, whatever. All right. Well, if that is it for this one, then we did want to thank the Dreamland Film Center for letting us come loiter around here, and we'll see if we can keep Keep hanging out here as much as we can. So, again, they are at louisvillefilmsociety.org, and you can find out what they're putting together as far as upcoming shows for this theater.

So, we'll fire up the black devil car and get the hell out of here. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening.

I need a lot of juice I need some bread to use Let's burn this highway down I'm going from C to G When the ship ain't a B No solo, it just scrapes the ground Can't you see me undertaking All the while I'm salivating Won't you let me Push a little thrust at you She's. Fighting around In my black devil car I can't hear. The sound. She said, love, let me inside. Talking to all those.

Pretty girls that I meet around the world. Her name was Gina. She had seen her. She had the greenest eyes. And with those.

Endless eyes, I put my hair through some misdemeanors. Can't you see me? I'm not choosy. Drive up that machine and I think I'm groovy. Won't you let me take a little ride with you?

She said, love, let me inside. Thank you. In my black devil car. You know I can't hear a sound In my black devil car Yeah Baby, no You're such a time machine Now let me drive your dream Until your dick is dry. I can't hear the sound Thank you.

James Brolin in the car will return in a moment. Like I said, it's one of my favorite guilty pleasure horror films. It's just stupid fun. I like it a lot. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires.

For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!