Reel Talk: The Poughkeepsie Tapes

We're hello, every one, end, Welcome to another episode of Scary Stories We Tell. I am your host, Chris dash You and I am joined by a newcomer to this show, but not a newcomer to podcasting with me at least, and not a newcomer to podcasting in general. He is a film professor at Northwestern and a filmmaker. You have heard him on the Culture Cast before, but you're hearing him here now. You're a friend and mine.

Spencer Parsons. Hello, I'm glad to be in the scary place this time. You're ready to talk about some fucked up shit. Yo. It's the Morning Zoo with Christ and Spencer.

In the morning, we're talking about the book If You Change, the Scariest movie of two thousand and seven check my watch here, because this movie has been out for a long time and we're gonna be talking about it and it's inspirations and some of the people that inspired it, and some other adjacent things that Spencer brought to my attention. We were planning on doing us as a Culture Cast episode, but instead I figured, Hey, we do this format on Scary Story as we Tell, and this will allow us to talk more about the real stuff, less the movie, because I've already done an episode on this movie long ago. All right, interviewed John Eric Dowdell, Drew Dowdell, the directors of the movie, and then Stacy Shaboski, who is the wife of one of the two.

I forget which one. I believe John Eric Dowdell. So I spoke to the three of them on an interview if you want to go listen to that. So we're gonna be talking a little bit about on this episode of Scary Stories, we tell the Pokeepsie tapes and the inspiration behind it, and some other again kind of tangentially related things. So, Spencer, I want to know right here at the top, when did you first hear of the Poughkeepsie tapes and when did you first see it?

Yeah, I think it was about it was relatively recently for me, I want to say twenty eighteen. I think maybe twenty nineteen. You know, I fairly regularly teach a course in horror filmmaking at Northwestern and for various reasons, after doing it for a while, I just really felt like I needed to contend with um the found footage genre of horror, and so I was asking, I don't actually like found footage movies very much, but I was like, I'm going to take this seriously. I'm going to study this. I'm an academic.

I can I can work my way through. And so I was asking for a lot of recommendations about, um, you know, the best or the most teachable or the you know, the most kind of variety in um found footage horror. Uh you know, back a few years ago, and UM, it's funny. A really good friend of mine, um, uh Kelly Brown, uh, good friend from college. Um, she was recommending.

She recommended the Poughkeepsie tapes as being uh, you know, a really good one to check out. She recommended some other uh some other good ones to see. Uh, and UM. Part of what was interesting and remains funny to me about, you know, her recommendation as this is one where I came back to her where I was like, that was really fucked up, that was was really more And she she was like, oh, wow, you know, finally I find your limit because you know, normally, uh it goes the other way where I think just something that's like a little too a little too intense for her. So um, yeah, she kind of she found a thing that is at at my limit, and I found that to be very interesting.

I mean, I'll say right up front that, um, I've now watched this movie a number of times, both for you know, reference for class, and also in preparation to talk about it today, and I don't know that I really like it, but I'm still fascinated by it. And I and I don't know that this is an interesting thing because like, for the most part, as a as someone that really likes horror, UM, I'm not of the camp that if something is quote unquote too scary for me, that that's where I don't like something. And I know that that's the case for a lot of people, but this is this is kind of one of the few where I think it it's not necessarily that it's too scary, but it's how it's scary, that it's into a territory that I I kind of, yeah, find a limit And I'm, uh, maybe I don't totally like it because of how it scares me.

Um, but I find I find that to be a fascinating thing about this film. And I think it's I think it's really you know, on the whole I have I have some like you know, filmmaking critiques of it that I'm sure we'll get into at some point, but uh, like, conceptually, I think I think this is this is a really really tight, intense film, very very well executed, you know, on it's conceptual level, to reach certain kind of scare that I have not exactly experienced with with other stuff. This was kind of and you know, we talked about this privately, you know, off off air after we recorded last time, when we were time up Keepsie Tapes, and this movie was hard to find for a long time, and that and that kind of added to what I would say.

And I'm sure you would agree again as a as a not a student of film, mind you a professor film, I am. I was always a student, yes, yes, fair, as a student of film. You know that that as I am as well. We know that there is a certain amount of cache that comes with these kinds of things where it's like, oh my god, have you heard of this film the Poughkeepsie Tapes. Oh my god, that's the scariest movie I've ever seen.

And this movie like fed it was it was fed into that unintentionally because MGM didn't know what to do with it. It's never really been made clear why MGM kind of put it on the show. Even in the interview when I spoke with the doubt Old brothers, I don't remember them saying there seemed to be any one reason. But I mean again that that episode took place in twenty fifteen. It took another two years for this movie to finally come out from that point, and they were surprised that I had even seen it then, because again, I mean, it was supposed to be released in oh seven, doesn't get released, and that a version of it comes up at one point on a streaming service, and that wasn't like twenty fourteen, so that was like a year.

There was a year before I did my episode, So that was how I watched it was a torrented version of the movie that was effectively the best version of the movie, or the only version of the movie best I can tell. I mean again, I did my episode in a time where the movie existed in the form that I have watched it up until now having seen the Blu ray. But it's one of those things where that kind of adds to the and we're going to talk about another thing, the snuff aspect of this film, because this movie in a lot of ways is a bow snuff film, right right, It's a found footage movie with true crime elements and then a bow snuff film element, because there are for those of you that don't know what this is about, I would say, I would actually say, and I've never done this for this show, pause here and go watch it if you actually want to have frame of reference where while we're talking about because this is this, there's a lot going on here.

And so what this is is it's a found footage documentary about a fake serial killer who made tapes of his goings on, be it killing people or weird fetishistic behavior, and then seemingly allowed his footage to be found along with some other things and what we'll talk about the real life inspiration behind those other things. And then they made a doctor. This is the documentary that they're making about that serial killer, and so the Water Street Butcher as he's known. But so there's a kind of you kind of got to get over this hump first of what this is. And every time I put this on, my wife always ask is this real?

And I always have to be like, no, that's not real, and it's not because you know, is she just forgets because again it's so well presented that it's easy to forget. And again, I would like to live in a world where we forget that this is not real because that makes it work better, because there are parts of this that don't work because it is not real. Probably all of the talking heads are not the best performances, varying degrees of good and bad to say the least. But the conceitt at the center of this that there is a real serial killer named the Water Street Butcher whose tape collection has been found and they have used that footage along with footage of people talking about him. Allah all of these shows that you can find documentaries on YouTube and Discovery Plus and Netflix, and this is in Oh seven Man.

Like that's the thing. Like this movie came out so ahead of its time. I mean, we talk about other movies that come out ahead of their time that are true crime related. Another one that I stand by is Zodiac, same fucking thing. But this movie, if it came out now, and again like it more or less did come out now, it came out in the thrush of true crime stuff.

So it has found its audience, thankfully, and it even came out via a Ryan Pictures, which I always do appreciate because it is it's in that frame of those kinds of films, or at least that expectation, at least the style of that movie. But this is a movie that I'm with you is a long answer. I have a hard time getting this movie out of my head. Yeah, yeah, which is really something. I mean, it's given what it fucking is.

Yes, yes, it really is, Spencer that No, that's a that's a real achievement because, um, you know, for instance, in comparison to other found footage movies that I might even say that I enjoy more. Uh Like, for instance, I'll throw out that I'm I'm kind of a fan of The Last Exorcism. Uh, but but the Last Exorcism is a pretty that's a pretty easy piece of work going down, and the kind of a couple of times that I've seen it, you know, like when I've thought about teaching it in a class, or the first time I saw it in the in the theater. Um, it's it's ultimately like, you know, a kind of fun, clever horror experience. Uh.

That's that I find to be like really well constructed. But it does not sit with me after as uh as a disturbing thing. You know, It's not in the sort of tier of horror with you know, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Henry Portrait of a serial Killer or you know, we could list lots and lots of favorites that like kind of get into your brain afterwards and hit a serial killer. Yeah, and I think Henry Portrait of a serial Killer is a really important Uh, that's an important film in relationship to this one because of you know, key use of videotape by the killers. At one point in the film.

You know, Uh, Henry and Otis find video camera and they they record their their their murder of a suburban family. And it is it's the turning point in that film, Uh, from a movie that's kind of arty and kind of funny into something that's now crossed a line and is um, you know, morally much more questionable, becomes really really frightened. Uh in that moment, and for some viewers is the point at which Okay, I've had enough, I've done with this movie. I'm not going to watch any further. And um, you know, I've talked to John McNaughton a few different times over the years, and we've talked about that particular beat and uh, you know, so so in relation to Poughkeepsie tapes, which I think is drawing on the same kind of uh, you know, feeling that you can get from a um, a videotape object.

Uh. You know that that is a kind of snuff object. Um. What John said about that moment and Henry was that it was really important to him to break the audience relationship to the killings. That yes, Henry and and and otis you know, based on Henry Lee lucas an odist tool.

U can be funny, you know. When he talked about the the kind of um, what what he called the poetry of stupidity, you know, for them that the that there is there's a there's a side that's funny about how stupid and unimaginative, Uh, these characters are. UM, and and that there's a way in which the you know, their killings, UM, however disturbing, can still play as this kind of funny poetry of of stupidity, and that he felt it was really important morally for the film to cross a line into seriousness and outrage. And from that point forward, in the film, even if things were going to be funny again, they would hit very, very differently for the rest of the movie. And uh so, I think I think that, you know, Henry Portoit of a serial Killer is a really important forbear to this particular film and what they're drawing on, and in a way, they're laying out that much more of this.

And now you know, we can also talk about Hannibal Cannibal Holocaust, we can talk about Blair, which project, of course, you know, both of which I think have really big influences on this film. But I'm gonna say perhaps the biggest I don't know that it was the biggest conscious influence for the Doubles, but I do think that the biggest influence or you know, kind of previous text before this one, would be Henry Portrait of a serial Killer for the way that the video works. Yeah, no, I would, I would agree. And I think something else is also very much obviously a source of reference, and I think it's something much less exciting and one might even say boring or trite, but they recreate those mid two thousands talking heads serial killer documentaries really really, really well in a way that like they were sitting in clearly and again I again, when I spoke with them, they talk about the amount of material they were keeping in their house related to serial killers, which was not a healthy amount by any stretch of the imagination.

I mean again, given that you have to like throw yourself into this ghoulish nightmare, is shit constantly. But you know, again, I mean the other I mean there's you know, the influences here, like you've mentioned. It's just that, you know, I remember watching it was like an early two thousand documentary or maybe like late nineties about BTK. And this is before he got caught, right, So I remember watching that. So it's like late enough where he's kind of a memory because right, because with BTK he kind of went underground for a while.

He sat in his recliner and was squeezing his little ball in front of the TV like a fucking freak the entire time. Because Dennis Dennis Raider just like what a what a fucking loser? Like god, dude, like, if you want to cross Jess, just fucking cross dress. No. But I mean I guess people care.

I guess people care now, but or people shouldn't care now. But the problem is Dennis Raiders shouldn't have cared then, you know, clowning on his stupid ass. Aside, it's weird to watch something like that where it's removed from when it happened, but yet he still hasn't been caught, and we know he's going to be caught, and yet they're taught. It's like, it's like, we don't know the BTK killer maybe watching this now. It was kind of like that same thing where it like it didn't do what the movie did, which is very the tangler, right.

I mean, it's like he might be in the Thesia beIN knew. It's a lot of that at the end of this movie, and in those documentaries they don't do that because that's not the intention of those, but it is that same thing where it's like he could be watching this now and and like that that kind of thing. And again, like I don't know if they saw that specific one, but they really capture that late nineties early two thousand serial killer documentary vibe. And again, maybe that's why the talking heads are some bad or maybe they're just bad. I mean some of them are fine.

I think the FBI dudes are fine. I think the one dude who's like I know three of you will be gone by the I love that speech. I love the amount. Like everything about this movie that I love is how hard it leans into your expectations on this kind of stuff because they, again, for as black as this is, because this is pitch black, they do revel in it, right, Like they revel in it like more or less, which I appreciate because reveling in it means you understand what this is. You're not making any bones about what this is.

The audience can take it however they're gonna take it. They're gonna be a wide spectrum of people with something that's polarizing, but they know what they're making here, and they literally incorporate everything but eating corpses. I mean really like they go further than that, which is the fucking hilarious part. Like when you think of someone like Dahmer and the like that's the top end of the serial killer spectrum, it's like, no, this guy goes further, because this guy goes further because nobody in real life is actually like this, Thank god, right, Yeah, well, and that's that's part of that's what they can pull off with fiction that you know. Thomas Harris for instance, is so good at is taking Um.

Yeah, and this is also self conscious in this movie because they mentioned it like this, but that one serial killer is not going to do all these different things for uh, you know, because one person is not going to do all these different things because the reasons why people are serial killers are are you know, very personal and back to Henry portrait of a serial killer, frankly stupid, you know, like a sub intellectual kind of you know, this is this is what the horrible thing my body is telling me to do. Is more the vibe with a lot of serial killers. So you do not find the claimed he was possessed by the beast the demon back to Bactly, Yeah, they always claim at something. I mean not always. I mean sometimes they claim it's their neighbor's dug, which is just as much bullshit.

But I mean again they there. There is often with serial killers a underlying reason that is not easily sussed out that that's right and um and is not is not a highly intellectualized, you know sort of reason. I think you know, it's it's um. It's not as if all serial killers are are dumb, but they are. They're not the kind of super genius that we get an idea of, and in a way, the super genius is a comforting thought.

Um, I know that's something strange and when we're talking about serial killers, but thinking of a serial killer as a super genius is comforting in a way because that makes sense to us when it turns out that the serial killer is you know, a gibbering idiot with like an IQ of about eighty who is um, you know, harming themselves as much as anybody else, and it just has these like sort of horrible uh, you know, physical and psychological urges driving them. There's there's something like deeply frightening about that when they are not caught for a long time. You know, like one of the things that's comforting about the super genius is that you can, uh, you can understand how they outwit the cops for a long time, and that that is like one of the things going into uh, you know, this particular version of a serial killer and this movie is that he outwits the cops for a really long time because he's very smart and because he changes emo and he's he is this protean kind of combo of different kinds of serial killers, but in so many cases again, back to Henry Lee Lucas, this is someone who was really of of you know, very limited intelligence in real life and was not caught for a long time.

And this is the case with a lot of serial killers that is deeply disturbing because it has a lot to say about our law enforcement. But then it's also harder to understand their motivations. They're not going to be articulate and be able to tell you their motivations. And even the case in the case of like one of the quote unquote smarter serial killers like Ted Bundy, by the time he was caught, he was clearly just at the mercy of horrific urges that made him sloppy and made it he was easy to catch by the cops at the end when he was just on his last kind of rampage in Florida, because he was sloppy, he wasn't thinking, and he really you know, there was an interview with him years later where they asked, you know, why did you do this, and he blamed pornography, and it was just very clear that he was he didn't have anything interesting to say, He did not have a reason that he could articulate that he you know why he did what he did that that remained like so impossible to understand to people.

He's just getting attention, you know. At the end, um uh, he got you know, fundamentalist Christians to kind of uh embrace uh the idea that the porn could turn you into a serial killer by by doing uh, you know this this final interview, the way that that he did, and that's one of your smarter serial killers. So there's there is a side, you know, within this mythology that I guess it's kind of it's funny because this is, as we've talked about pitch black and extremely disturbing, but there there's an artifice to what he is that yes, is very is very frightening, but is maybe a little bit we could like. The thing that I think is really interesting here is it doesn't the movie doesn't make it possible to understand him and what he's doing, but it does sort of keep us going with a notion that this is a thoughtful enough killer who's like working out all these points and has this kind of intellectual cat and mouse game going with the cops that like, one of the things pulling us along is that anticipation that there could be an answer at the end of this that you could talk to this person and he could articulate what he's after, um and uh, that it doesn't answer.

That is then part of the part of the fear factor and the ooga booga of the story that I think is like pretty well worked out well and that and that, for me, I think is the thing about it. You know, that ultimately does make it stand out more than other things like this that I've seen, is it's refusal to back down on any of this like and that's again like that takes a special kind of filmmakers, really, and I'm not saying that the doubtles haven't come to this level since I actually really like the Waco TV series. I think the Waco TV series was really good. I don't know if you know this. There was a sequel series coming out soon in response to the original series with their producers, and it has Michael Shannon in it, replaying his FBI and to go, yeah, I didn't even know.

That's how good of a job Showtime does it advertising things. But I like that they don't back down from saying like, like you said, I mean, this guy is so unrealistically smart that he is literally a batman villain. He is a super villain, like this is a super villain, to the point where it is more about him interacting with the police and what he's doing to Cheryl, and it's like it's about him, but we it's weird. It's about him, but we never like you said, I mean, he's not He's there, but he's not there in a lot of ways. Yeah, And the sort of you know, opening near the beginning with the footage of him digging up Cheryl's grave and we don't understand what it means yet, um, but that coming near the beginning, and then uh, sorry spoilers to all of you.

You were warned. But I think that this is part of part of the smart stuff that they do, is they they present things that you don't understand at the beginning. Then they allow you to understand what it is by the end. But understanding what it is doesn't explain anything, does not give you the comfort of saying, uh, you know, the comfort of the ending of Psycho that that Hitchcock had to do, um, which you know, sort of famously as he put it, uh to to them, to the screenwriter, uh Stefano, Hitchcock said, you just you just saved this movie because it meant the difference that explanation to sort of put a bow on the end of Psycho and we can all make fun of it now. Uh, that was really necessary in order for the film to get you know, released under the production code.

Um, that kind of comfort of here's what the here's here's what the the psychotic Killer was really up to, here's what he thought. Uh and um, you know, sort of bringing it to this sense of closure of understanding because while the movie isn't presenting any kind of solution to it, it makes it feel like something that that that the world could control or that the world can correct for if we understand it. And uh, and this like some other work, you know, like the Blair Witch Project. The way that that ending plays, Um, you know, it's repeating an image that is discussed in relationships to the Blair mythology, but it and so we understand that it's part of that mythology, but we don't understand what it's doing or why, and leaving us with these big questions about you know, the why and the how, um you know, really really make it a particularly uh frightening um you know kind of story.

And I think this is one level on which, um, it breaks with the true crime documentary frame. The true crime documentary frame is going to have a narrator or one of the people come in and like really sum up what does all this mean? Even when it's unsolved, you know, like unsolved mysteries, you have Robert Stack kind of come in and he says a few words at the end to put a kind of bow on it. Um. But this this is the place where um, you know, both with the post credits scene, which is really awful to send you away from the thing at the very end, it doesn't let us do it doesn't it doesn't let up, and it actually breaks with its convention in that in that that kind of crime documentary really would grasp at some kind of straw to explain, and it just doesn't.

Yeah, And I do find that I do find that bit a little odd because in my mind it's the one thing that they don't do. And I feel like they don't do it because they have all the footage of the killer. That's what makes this the better version of those because it has the thing that those would never have, which is you getting to see what they're talking about. I mean the thing. The thing I will say about the merging of those two mediums is I guess the finalist version of this in a lot of ways.

Have you seen the WNUF Halloween Special. No, I haven't. I've heard of it. Tell me more so. It's a it's a supposed lost Halloween special from a like Northeastern Radio or like broadcasting station from like the mid eighties, where a news broadcaster, like a news personality like a Morton Downey Junior type, goes into a haunted house with a camera crew.

And I'm not going to spoil it, but let's just say, as one might expect, things don't go the way that you would expect, similarly to the Morton Downey Junior episode of Tales from the Crypt. Coincidentally, but the thing that makes WNUF Halloween Special interesting is it's presented in the format of a eighties Halloween special on on like a locally broadcast TV. So the director Chris la Martine created a bunch of like had his like friends create fake ads that are really like tongue in cheek and it's just it plays. It does what it does. The furthest thing that this doesn't do.

This doesn't tell us why would you put the footage of the killer doing this into this documentary? Because yeah, no, there are that's that's exactly right. There are some breaks from the convention in that. Um. Okay, so if you were making this for television, then we really go off the reservation.

There would be points at which, yes, it would show some of the tape, but there would be a special warning about this is going to be really terrible, turn it off if you can't take it, and even then would probably blur things, um would cut away at the key moment. But but so then this is this puts us a little bit more in the realm of uh like a theatrical true crime documentary that would be r rated. Uh So like um a thin blue line, you know kind of thing where you're you're doing this for a theatrical audience. But even then, UM, the tape, the tape that they show goes another step further. And and there's one moment in this where UM, this I feel I feel like, um, you know whatever, I don't I don't care about their intention.

I also don't I don't really care about like enumerating flaws. UM, but I will say that there's a kind of there's a moment where the moral relationship to the material becomes troubled in a way that UM is is unpleasant to the point of being kind of bad for me. Where the sound design and music really kicks in during this one home invasion UH murder, which is really really disturbing UM. In the film and the sound design, you feel the filmmakers laying it on a little thicker to make this situation more horrific than it would well, I don't know, more horrific, but there's it's horrific. It is I think it would actually part of part of my reaction is I think it would be actually just as frightening, if not more frightening to UM keep playing the tape without extra sound work and putting in these low tones of you know, now things have gotten very serious and it's very dark.

Indeed, as they're about to murder the boyfriend of the the girl who he's going to kidnap, you know that that sequence in the sound design goes into this world of a traditional horror film where the address to the audience in our sense of UH empathy for the characters works UH differently, and it is it is this moment that feels like it's going all over the line where the filmmakers are um kind of you know, uh in league with the with with the killer um, which you know, that puts it in some of the territory of like Man Bites Dog, which is um, you know, a similar kind of uh serial killer, uh mockumentary. Uh not exactly found footage uh kind of movie, but you know, Man Bites Dog is another another one that we could you know, refer to here.

And and so this this particular moment that goes this extra bit farther with the artifice starts to feel uh really really gross uh in terms of filmmaker intentions. But then again, maybe they're implicating themselves, you know, in the whole thing. I don't you know, like I kind of feel like including your wife in the movie implicates you in the movie. Yes, yeah, I mean it's it's meta textual. But it always makes me laugh because the three of them were like the sweetest people, and I think I'm even still friends with Stacy Shabaski on Facebook.

Sweet lady, super nice. But like like that I feel like is the biggest like we're kind of in league with all of this because again, like I'm letting my wife be again fake but as much as fake and this stuff can be. At this point, because she is getting her head dunked in the water, she is like again she's getting fake hit, but she's still tied up, I mean again, like she's still having to do all of these things. So I feel like that's maybe the I don't know, that's kind of the ounce of flesh, as it were, of like we're going to do this, like we have to really put ourselves into it, and do something that maybe makes us even feel a little uncomfortable, as in including my wife as the slave of the serial killer who takes takes abuse in the form that like again, this frankly is the part of the movie that doesn't go far enough because in real life now we know that there are people that are like even more abused than this, Yeah, in in ways that are even worse to talk about that you don't even want to mention out loud, that's how bad they are.

Yeah. Well, and her performance is the best in the in the film. Uh. She and the guy who we mostly hear from off screen, but he also is masked, you know, the serial killer. I think his performance is really amazing.

And I think it's amazing because it is he really sounds and in the way he carries himself on screen, looks like some dude who you could you know, meet at any ordinary like midwestern bar or I guess in this case upstate New York kind of bar very ordinary, like a norm core killer, but who happens to have this mask and uh and and is like a super villain uh with within all this. His performance I think is also quite good because of how ordinary it is. But the interview that she gives at the end um and you're you're hinting at something that I want to get out eventually with a metal level to this this whole film, in the way that she's cast um and and how her performances is used. Uh. She is heartbreaking in that interview at the end, where all she can say is what do you want me to say?

And she's kind of she's she's sort of broken by the mere notion of freedom to tell her own story at the end of at the end of the film, and that is um at once really sad. She she carries the performance in her whole body. She seems like this real person who's been through something truly awful Um. And the freeze frame on her at the end of the interview when they tell you, oh, two weeks later she committed suicide. That freeze frame is indelible and sticks out in my head.

Her performance is just incredible in this film. She is the most real, the most fully invested h And Um, you know that turn for me. I think you're exactly right. It could go so much farther in a way. We know of stories one of the ones, for instance, that I think was a source for for this film, or you know, a model for this particular killer, UM who had you know, kept kept this woman Um captive for so many years you know, in real life, in real life, it is so much worse, um than even all the things that they talk about or say that they don't want to talk about in terms of her treatment in this film.

But her performance and the way in which she's kind of broken and has gone over to being in love with the killer is really the scariest thing in the movie. Well, and you know you mentioned people that have been taken hostage like this. I mean even just someone like Bob Burdella alone is worse than this, Like and that's the thing like I appreciate. I appreciate that, and maybe they do hold back on this, But at the same time, I don't know somebody who made something like this now, wouldn't If I were making this now, I wouldn't. Wouldn't would you?

I mean, what would be the point are we trying to Are we trying to show what this is for what it is? Or are we trying to sugarcoat it? And in a little ways like sugarcoating it? I get the point, but I don't know, like that is the only part of this movie that kind of feels a little quaint is the torture of her, only because again we'd know now, like you've mentioned, and even then at the time, like these kinds of things just like just like keeping people hostage or just any of this is just so icky. But it's ickier than this.

And again, like this is the we don't see a lot of it, so it's a lot of it is also implied obviously, which I do appreciate that they do imply a lot, but they go really far in other aspects of this narrative, and it's it's it's the one spot that they do kind of maybe go a half step back, just a half step, but a half step in this regard is a lot. Yes, well, and that's that's part of the interesting balance of this one. And one of the things that I like about the mockumentary format that has rescued the tapes versus the found footage format of they just kept the camera running for hours and hours and some I don't know, shadowy cabal has edited the together by the end. I mean, I always this is this is one of my problems with found footage, um, that they've gotten around.

But also that is I think very clever for the nature of this kind of thing, which is to leave certain stuff like deliberately off screen, and um, you know that that you can only be presented with a certain amount of information that's that's available. And this killer you know, while yes, he's he's left the camera rolling through a lot of really horrific things, he he has controlled it in that we're only going to see certain horrific things. And then the mockumentary is only going to show us certain horrific things, which then get get things going in our imaginations to feel you know, even even bigger and more horrible. Uh like. So so for instance, um, you know, this also comes out of the moment of torture porn and I think in a certain way this movie is more sort of torture pornographic, uh than like Hostile or saw.

Um. It is really focused on torture for long periods of time, and it is really focused on the effect of the emotional effect of the victim and just and rather than having you know, cutting and selection and special effects and all this stuff, it is just a camera dead eyed watching someone you know, tortured and gibbering with fear for minutes at a time, which which is um, you know, really really disturbing. I mean, it's fucked up, like justestie, and yet and yet you and I clearly resonate with it. What I don't, I don't what does that say about me and you? I guess, I guess Here's what it says about me.

I guess what it says about me is I'm willing to go this far if it's in the context of unreality, if it's in the context of fiction. I my limits. This is not my limits. I mean, there are things worse than this, and I'm sure we'll delve into that once we get further down the road in this conversation, because I know it will come up given the one of the other things that's adjacent to this is worse than this is. Frankly, these are these are my limits for the These are close to, if not my limits for this kind of narrative like a presented to me as fake because it is fake, this is not real.

This may be my limit, And that, I think is what it says about me is I'm willing. My limits are pretty far, but I'm willing to give them a rather wide berth as long as we're talking about unreality well right, and it is. It's really playing on in what it withholds from us. It's really playing on some of the qualities of actual reality as we know it, where we reach limits of understanding. Um uh you know, obviously I mean to start going down that dark road.

This is clearly a film that is playing on the urban mythology of uh snuff movies and the mythology that there are movies out there made by serial killers, which um, you know. The so the myth of snuff films is that like uh, there's um, there's an overlap uh with with pornography, a kind of pornography that's about watching someone actually get killed for the sake of selling um, you know the video or film, so that someone can derive sexual pleasure from that. That is that's that's that's the mythology of of the snuff film. And there is you know, very there's a little to no evidence that such things exist. You know, there's a there's a a Finlay movie you know from the nineteen seventies, UM that got kind of like used as a bloody shirt in the Wars over Pornography as an example of a snuff film, and it was very clearly a fake, um uh snuff film.

So I mean, if it's a fake, it's not snuff. UM. There's the mythology has represented like in Joel Schumacher is a millimeter UM. There's Uh. Then there's the question of of like back to Henry portrait of a serial killer, and this might be the thing that is more likely to exist out in the world.

UM are their tapes by uh you know, real serial killers UM torturing and killing their victims that um are are sort of traded or seen on a black market or gray market. UM. But there's also the you know, there's there's the attention UM to the nightly news broadcast, UM, where Christine Chubbuck shot herself. UM. And that would not be you know, for the sake of commerce, and that would not be for the sake of uh, you know, not filmed for the sake of somebody, um, you know, sexually getting off on it.

Um. But nevertheless, UM. There have now been a couple of movies about Christine Chubbuck and about this particular incident, and there's a lot of online chatter about you know, ken it does does the does the actual tape of of her suicide on the air exist? And it seems that it does, but that it has been successfully kept under wraps by the TV station um and by the by her family. Or then there's the example, and this is this is something I have actually seen.

There was the broadcast of of a press conference by Bud Dwyer when he shot himself. Don't do it, Bud, don't. I saw that shit in college, man, same same way a man, I shout, I will say, yeah, I saw it. I will say that I deliberately wanted to see it. It was something that in at that point in my life, I was interested in seeking out and then once I saw it, I was like, okay, I've seen that.

I never need to seek out such a thing again. It is too horrible. I would not want to. I would not want to represent you know, I make films and I make violent films. I would not want to represent violence in that kind of way that is you know, captured for on that tape, because it it does you know, that's this is this is sort of true transgression.

It does go to too far. And so for instance, when al Qaeda and ISIS started posting beheading videos and execution videos online as part of you know, um terrorist action. Uh, that's the kind of thing that perhaps, if had I not seen the Bud Dwyer video, I might have said, well, maybe this is something to see because it exists and it's dealing with a real experience in life that you know, certainly all kinds of people have experienced. And uh, And I was like, nope, nope, I've already seen something like this. I have no interest.

I don't need to subject myself to it. I will say that the the ISIS videos did, just in the still frames that were posted online, go a kind of extra step in horror for me, and that they frankly the ISIS people seemed to have esthetic sensibilities where they were creating interesting composition, color, and production values. That the production values were actually quite high, and that was something that I found deeply disturbing just to see as still that was not you know, it was not bloody, was not some beheaded body or anything, but just the still of you know what they posted in the moments before somebody gets killed, and it's, um, it's horrifying, but you know that said, um, let's let's mention that The Monkeys movie Head has real footage of an execution in Vietnam at a couple of points in the film.

You know, this was going around at the time, and The Monkeys movie Head is g rated, that went out with a G rating, and there is there. It's not snuff, but there is a literal death on screen that happens because of the found footage that they used in that movie as part of a larger protest against the Vietnam War. So there's a there is there's an interesting history of the existence of this work and people's you know, sort of moral relationships to it. But then yeah, this choice to track down something I mean, I gotta say as a title, the Pokeepsie Tapes is at once very mild mannered, you know, Pokeepsie. It's almost funny.

It's got a P and a K in it, you know, like the old Uh I think it's it's like a mel Brooks thing about how to make jokes. You know, you got a P and a K in a word, and it's it's comedy. So you know, the Poughkeepsie Tapes sounds kind of funny. Uh. And and yet you know that the tapes and the idea that this could be um, you know, uh, real really serious horror um is uh it is it.

It's very well thought out, you know in in the kind of going with the every day. I mean even even like the Blair Witch Project, which project sort of suggests something uh that that is uh you know, um like an art project or a student film project or something, even though it's got Witch in the title, is kind of uh playing playing down the horror just a little bit, you know, versus uh say, Cannibal Holocaust, which is playing up the horror within the title. But the Pokeepsie Tapes is really you know, playing on this sense of it being out of the every day and out of a place that we would not consider horror or that we wouldn't write as horror because you know the name of the town, Pokeepsie is kind of funny.

Um, And they didn't They didn't live in Pokeepsie at the time, so they they they this is a true choice. Um, they didn't shoot anywhere near Poughkeepsie when they made the film. Um, they didn't live near there. They created this mythology sort of based on some things that had actually happened in in that area. But but I think that's another interesting and uh, you know, smart choice that these guys have made well and and just to speak to a lot of the points, um or to break them down.

I think for me to think about, you know, something like the way the way that this, like you mentioned it approaches this in such a way where the you know, the snuff the snuff the snuff film aspect of this, I feel like because I was going to ask you, like which of the things that you see is the most off putting, because that goes to like the snuff film aspect of it, of like what would be the thing you would not want to see happening to a real person, And like all I mean, there's terrible things that happened in this movie, including but not limited to corpse's fingers being clipped off trying like there's a lot of like corpse kind of mutilation, in a lot of like really quick, weird montage, a montage of corpse mutilation.

As one might say, um, but I think the thing that that sticks with me the most from this movie that's the most upsetting for me is where he just is filming the woman in the back of the cop car, right because he because he says a line something to the effect of like you're like, You're probably gonna want to be dead for what I'm gonna do to you. So it's like it's like with just that line. But again it's like this is I can't help but chuckle because it's like so fucked up. It's like you can't help but laugh because you know that they were sitting there thinking them so I was like, what is the worst thing that we could do? And and in a lot of ways, the the movie that is almost like the complimentary piece to this one, and one might even say it's like, Okay, well, here's the movie about the tapes that they found.

Let's talk about the movie of the guy at the center of it. The house that Jack the house that Jack built, could just be the this that could be the movie that he is telling about himself, and this is the movie that they're telling about him, because they're the same some of the same beats. Even in that movie, like you know, the whole oh I'm not a you know, like what if I was a serial killer? Because they have that scene in the house that Jack bill where and this one doesn't have that. Shockingly, it kind of does in that scene with the woman in the back of the car, but she never says like, oh, well, like thank god, you're not a serial killer or anything, but they do it in the house that Jack built.

And it's like that movie and this movie are kind of one A and one B. And that's why I understand why people don't like that movie either, because it is the same as this movie. It is presenting this. I'm not saying that there isn't style in this movie, and you've kind of touched on it already, but the absence of style is the style. They are shooting this as if this is real and in the house that Jack built, they're trying to tell you this is you're seeing this, and this is just what this guy is doing.

And it's not stylized. It's very realistic in its portrayal, Like is it a little kind of like maybe it's a little played up, but not in any more of some of the things that some of these real people actually do, some of the bullshit that they hoops that they go through to make some of this stuff happen. Because we've heard, I mean, Dahmer and all kinds of people were doing all kinds of wild things that it's just like, oh, he took a mannequin home, like fucking why, like what, Like it's just like but those things viewed externally don't make any sense, but if you hear the character explaining it to you, it makes perfect sense, which is why like this in the house that Jack built, Like I kind of want to go back and rewatch that movie, but I kind also dread rewatching it because it's it's like this, but the more fiction, it's like the narrative version of this really yeah.

Well, and when you're when you're mentioning one of the most horrifying moments of the film is, uh, is that abduction where the woman is sitting in the back and the camera just you know, the camera only has one angle and just stares at her in the back seat. Um, I think this is this is like one of the things that they did cinematically that is the most disturbing at various points in the film. Uh. It certainly is disturbing to see the killer using the camera, uh and carrying the camera when he um, when he gets that couple, or when he gets the little girl at the you know, near the beginning of all this, we didn't even mention how fucking terrible that is. But hey, that's that's that's but that's a Bundy.

That's the that's that's Bundy. That's like they what I what I actually frankly love about this movie is they go, hey, let's recreate the one real thing that we want to recreate one for one and but let's one one up ourselves from then on, because if you can make it through that scene with the girl, which is one I mean again, like it's terrible, but in the scheme of the movie, well it's just warming up, right. Yeah. It's what would be one of the worst transgressions for a lot of other films is where this movie's kind of just getting started. Uh, and and he's hand holding the camera and it's deeply creepy.

But there's something about when the camera gets set down or when it's on a tripod um that the movie gets like more horrific. And and this is like one of the things that I think is is really interesting about this as a found footage horror film, because a lot of found footage horror is sort of predicated on and this is one reason why don't like a lot of found footage horror. It's predicated on using a kind of sloppiness and what you can't see in order to get away with uh, you know, poor special effects, poor acting, you know, poor layout of of suspense effects and all these kinds of things, um and and it's it's all to sort of make it feel more real, you know, because the camera's jiggling and it's not it's not well done and all this stuff.

But this is a case to those found footage movies, like I would say clover Field is probably up there. Like even in those movies, they can't they can't get away from it. They can't. It's like it's it's so hard to get out of It's like it's almost impossible to escape the orbit of that with found footage, it's almost impossible. Well, and the Doutals can't quite get away from it, for instance, in their movie Quarantine.

So like the same filmmaking team doing found footage again, Quarantine does not have the same level of just really terrifying kind of quality to the idea of footage that has been found or that is like somebody's real experience that they've been through. It is not nearly as as schilling as when the camera in this movie sits on a tripod or sits on the floor, uh, and and watches something horrible happen, and that the you know, the quote unquote filmmakers, the documentarians that have put all this together, uh do not flinch, They do not jump cut, they do not look away for some of these really awful moments. Um. You know, there's there's there's one near the end that's like so theatrically heightened where he's got the mask on top of his head and he's walking on all fours, uh, you know, to come up to this woman.

Um. But then at the end, and there's there's a level where I'm kind of like, Okay, that is really gnarly and creepy, but it's heightened in this way that seems almost sort of silly. But then when he appears at the end of it and the camera just does not blink as he inserts these needles into her neck, no blinking whatsoever. I could even tell you how the special effect is done, but the fact that there's no cutting, no blinking, any of that kind of thing, and that it's just a dead eyed camera, not even being run by a person anymore. It's just this machine recording something going down.

It's actually like deeply scary. Is much more horrifying than the camera getting knocked around by a monster. Is more horrifying than the sort of point of view of the killer, you know kind of things. And I find that to be like really fascinating because these are shots that go on for a long time. Some of them are kind of well composed, others are not.

It's a place where the performances could start to fall apart, but where for me, the performances end up working. Because like when this guy in in this this ridiculous like long nosed plague doctor mask is just screaming at this woman who's tied up on the floor. His screaming is small and petty, um and not impressive, and it's not Hannibal lecter Um. It's not even like Henry and Reportrait of a serial killer. There's something just again back to that kind of flecked up norm core quality.

This could be some guy that lives down the street from you and he's just like kind of out of control, screaming at this woman who he's tied up. It's it's much more awful. It's it's awful um because of the way it's not mediated and it doesn't look away and it doesn't have artifice to it. So let me ask you something because I'm curious because I've been going through in my mind because this is the kind of thing I would like to make, like you know what I mean, Like I would like to make something like this. I would I would like to make this, so you know, and I'm thinking here, just thinking to myself as a as a from one creative type to another, if you were to make this now, how would you make this now?

Oh? Boy? Right? Because like that's the thing, like this, this kind of thing and this kind of show that I'm doing with this true crime, like this is this was a thing. It's always been a thing, but it's like more of a thing now and this movie is good, but it does feel like a little outdated.

So if you were making this now for like the for what we're expecting from serial killer things now or true crime things now, how do you make this now? Do you amp up the gore? Do you make it? Like? What?

What do you what do you do to make this something now that's different from what they were making then, but again still in that same milieu of like a serial killer mockumentary. Right? Oh boy, Uh, I don't know. That's a really interesting question. I like, I actually this is a case where, for sure, I think you still need some makeup effects and stuff, but I don't know that amping the gore is necessarily to the point.

Um, you know the moment that I described just a moment ago where he's, um, you know, got this this like blank mask on top of his head and he's walking on all fours and looks like some kind of alien in the background. Um, and then ultimately puts these, um, these needles into this this woman's mouth and her mouth is taped and then she starts to spit out blood at the same time as the special effects needles release some blood on her neck um this is this is actually fairly traditional kind of stuff that becomes of the way that it's presented is like, you know, really really terrifying. I guess like the biggest thing that if if one was to revisit this, I don't know that you necessarily have to amp up the effects so much as maybe maybe adapt the wrap around story a little bit to have some of the kind of effects that we're looking for, the sort of post like you're doing it as visual, so it's not it's not a sound thing obviously, but the like post true crime podcast sort of mode of address toward the audience thinking about how journalism has changed over time, and also how the kind of journalistic performance has changed.

Like I think, I think one of the things that's interesting about this movie and that maybe is um less a thing that's objectively bad about the performances in the like wrap around document tree and is maybe more dated, and I think that I think it's still not great, but I think like one of the things is there this is a documentary done with a lot of voices of authority trying to speak kind of authoritatively, and this is a thing that's really been broken down by a lot of contemporary practice in true crime in particular like Serial where yes, Sarah Kanig is a voice of authority. She has a good, you know, sort of presentation for radio. She's very professional and everything, but she's also revealing a lot of like small personal kind of stuff along the way.

She's revealing of her place in the storytelling and how she's a character in the evolving story, and the interactions that she has, for instance, with her research assistant when they go out and about. That sort of changes the game a little bit. And I've started to notice that we get a little bit more of this uh personalization of of the documentarians, you know, in in in a lot of work that we're seeing now, especially you know, kind of in the in the true crime space. Um but I don't know this this simple thing the founds tapes themselves. I think I think in a way, if there's if there's any any capacity for um even kind of amping up the kind of, um, the different kinds of media that you could use.

I mean, obviously people have so many cell phones now that like the glimpses of the killer from somebody's cell phone at an at a major event. I mean we've already started to kind of go down that road, uh, mixing in, mixing in that kind of stuff. In this movie, there's a great bit with a uh with a surveillance camera at a gas station where he uh he signed the location where they're going to find the next body, uh to to the the gas station uh CCTV camera. Um and that that's Uh that is a you know, quite um creepy and uh and fascinating moment, especially as it's revealed that because he is, you know, the he is a super villain serial killer, He's he is giving the sign he's signing the location of the body hours before he's even found his victims and killed them.

He's like planned it all so well. Uh that that that he uh, he can he can do this kind of signing to um the gas station CCTV and uh and and know that at some point the cops will find it. Um. That's that's that's kind of outrageous. But it is also really spooky, and I think it speaks to how um you know this is something with with YouTube and I guess a point that I want to come back to about the like mechanical dead eye of the camera.

Uh. You go on YouTube and there's a lot of surveillance cam ghost stuff, you know, a ghost or a chupacabra or a gremlin or something. Uh that that was you know, captured on like a deer cam or that's what you're talking. Yeah, which I mean again, like I don't think it owes to this, but it's in my mind, I think it's very close. Something like skinnamer Rink is kind of in this weird can and it skinnamer Rink shares some DNA with this in terms of the use of I mean, skinner Rink is more about subliminal space use than this is.

But but that use of liminal space, the use of liminal space in this movie, there are times where they use it rather well. Uh you mentioned the scene with the needles in the neck um and that's and that's one of them. But there's also I mean there's an i mean, one of the great scenes of this movie, and they have it and some of the stills is Stacy's Shabasky with that mask on, with the camera just in her face. But again there's stuff going on behind her, and there's things going on behind her that you're not seeing that you're just hearing. The noises, and that speaks to the point that you were talking about, which is what I've been you know, running through my head for something like this, is you're completely right.

The way you would do this now is you would have it where they do have an audio only aspect of it, where it's they really lean on part of it, or or or to your point, I mean now that everybody has an iPhone, you have it where the guy just has his camera on him at all times, which is pretty much what we're seeing here, but he's like uploading it somewhere or something to that effect, where you get that same aspect of the back and forth interplay and the ability to see what's going on, the inability to stop it. Because that's the thing ultimately about this, right is the way that this is being presented is there's nothing that anyone could do a because he's the super villain, which is ultimately why nobody can do anything, which is we didn't mention the I think the ultimate super brain, like the universe brain of the character in the Poughkeepsie tapes, the Edward Carver, which is the best fucking fake name and Carver or the water Street butcher.

Is he somehow manages to he changes his modus operandi to essentially the Green River Killer where he just starts killing sex workers. And Gary Ridgeway didn't pose as a cop, I don't think, but maybe he did talk about a guy who's a moron, like an actual moron outwitting the cops. But again they really draw from that in this aspect of the movie. But you essentially have the killer in this movie killing prostitutes and then plant the DNA of a cop on the prostitute to the point where this cop goes down for all of it, all of it being all of the Water Street Butcher's murders, including the little girl, including Cheryl Dempsey, and then the day he gets executed, because of course he gets executed, even though they are essentially saying, well, he's not going to get executed, but then he does get executed.

The day after he gets executed is September tenth, two thousand and one, September twelfth. They find out that he's exonerated of the murders three days after he's dead. But it all gets forgotten because of nine to eleven. It's like literally Universe Brain, It's so hilarious. I mean again, it's hilarious.

It's not, it's hilarious. Like I don't know how else to interpret it. But like the amount of like the amount of bullshit that I just had to describe should should strike you as somewhat funny, which you chuckled, so it clearly did. But I'm more speaking to you listener, But it's like so ridiculous. But this guy is like literally universe brain.

He is a super villain and he's imagine Moriarty if Moriarty was on some sort of you know, um like consciousness expanding drug, that he could control the universe around him. Like that's what we're talking about here. Well, and I think that this gets at um, you know, something that I think that comes up with a lot of found footage horror, but that I think is leaned into here is the is the supernatural quality to it is that, yes, a serial killer is a natural thing. This is a real person within the fictional universe of the film. But there's also this level of as you say that like universe brain, that goes beyond into something where uh, you know between the kind of dead eyed machine recording of a reality uh that that that it comes from this camera that doesn't even have like a person behind it.

Yes, it's controlled by the killer on one level, but on another, once he leaves it there and gets in front of it, there's something grotesque and uncanny about that kind of surveillance cam quality. And then that he can also pull off this like universe brain thing there is there is a sort of like much bigger than much bigger than anything happens that that happens in this film, Uh, you know, larger forces at work. That is a kind of like um, people talk about lovecrafty and horror a bunch these days, but I do think that this is in that that zone of the love crafty and um where the horror is is like ultimately bigger than what you can comprehend, while giving you just enough to grasp on to to half comprehend it and know how awful it is.

You know, this is this is a kind of love crafty and serial killer at the end. And I'm I know I'm being one pretentious and two you know very much of the moment, but I think I think that this does truly get into that kind of zone of of of like, uh, what what arrives to us as supernatural? Because it is beyond our understanding, because it's it's beyond our our everyday experience, and the everyday experience that's that's uh presented here is just that little bit of evidence, you know, the tip of of a much bigger iceberg for reality. Well, and and I wanted to mention this because you had mentioned the interview that Stacy Shubasky does in the movie as Cheryl, and it's one of the few scenes I think it's the is it the I think it's the only scene in the movie that shot by the filmmakers at as the same way the serial killer would shoot her, right and so and so, in my mind, this draws into what you were just talking about by giving us enough to grasp onto but again ultimately understanding that this evil it lurks in the corner of the room, but you don't understand that corner is gone and now there's just avoid behind it left.

Because this darkness is really that bad, you're just you're not. You can't stare it in the eye, because to stare it in the eye is to go mad. And that is what happens to Cheryl Dempsey. Ultimately at the end of the movie, she she dies the way a character in a lovecrafty a horror dies by, you know, killing herself from madness ultimately, and she's driven mad. But at the same time, it also feels like, and again I don't know if this was I don't know if this was the intent of it, but this is the way I'm taking it now, because again, with the changing way of presenting these narratives, it would be something that you'd have to be more cognizant of if you wanted to.

But ultimately, I don't think it matters in true crime the way it's presented in these kinds of documentaries. Who are the people that always get forgotten are the victims and their stories are never told, And so it's kind of telling that when they put the camera on Cheryl, whose story has already effectively been told by everybody else but her, she goes, I don't know what you want me to say, Like, I don't know what to say, And it's like, any of these people that are victims of or are family members of victims, what is there left to say anymore, like my family member died or I was tortured by this person, Like what do you want me to say? What is there to say? And it's I don't know how intentional that was, but it's pretty meta textual.

Now given again how hard the victims families and the victims themselves seem to try to have to fight to get remembered, because again, we now live in a post dam or the TV shows you know universe where that happened, and they said, well, well we didn't talk to the whatever, and it's like great, Like again, I don't care, it's fucking entertainment. Watch it if you will. It was pretty grotesque in the way that this is pretty grotesque. Frankly like and again, like Dahmer, I can't pretend like they didn't watch this because that has a similar thing that was on Netflix. There's no reason that they couldn't show Evan Peters doing some really gross stuff.

There's literally nothing holding them back. They are not beholden to anyone. It's a literal streaming show. And yet they didn't show those things. Why Because there's no way to stylize a dude eating a penis, to make it, to make that character ever come off as sympathetic.

There's a but B. It's always more I think impactful to not show it, and an audience's mind to go wild because there's a scene in Dahmer where they redo one of the murders but you don't hear, you don't see it. You hear it and they play please don't Go, and it's like, Okay, you fucking ruin that song that I actually like forever, thank you very much, but like you just hear the song, you hear the drill and like that, and you just hear it, but you're not even hearing it. You're hearing it through the vent that someone else is hearing it. And that is more impactful than showing Evan Peters doing anything, because again you don't if you know, you know about Dahmers, so you know what actually happened, so you know what the outcome is and they don't need to show it.

And in a lot of ways, like this doesn't show everything it could, it shows more than most do, but I appreciate that it takes a stand of like, nope, we want to really give you something that you've and again like they give you something that nobody else has really ever done. Like all these things that we're talking about, either pre or post this, they are versions of this, but nobody else has done anything remotely close to this since this is that is the one thing about this that reminds me of skinn, of marink and other things, and this probably is one of the reasons that lodges in my brain. There's nothing else like this, And if I want to watch something like this, I either watch this or I go watch the real thing, right, Like, that's those are my options.

This which is fake or that BTK documentary I was talking about. Are so many of other of those documentaries that are for free on YouTube. But again, like I don't like sitting in the world of the reel so long because it becomes too much, Like you can sit in the fake world for a lot longer. Maybe not forever, but a lot longer because again, like this is ultimately crafted by two people who have a vision, and I think the vision comes through very clear. Is it everybody's cup of tea?

No, But I don't expect everybody's cup of tea is going to be you know, smoked oolong tea that has some sort of weird thing that like is I get it, Like, not everything is for everybody, but this is this found an audience and this resonated with me and you Yeah, well, and I think you know. Um, you mentioned a meta level. This is something I wanted to get back to because I think it. I think it speaks to what I responds to, and I it also bothers me and makes me feel like I got to hold this a little bit at arm's length, uh in terms of you know, because because like one of the things that fiction does is um, you know, fiction isn't just a way of making stuff up. It's the purpose of making things up is to give you know, shape and uh uh impart ideas of meaning and uh and aspects of our experience that you can't just capture, uh you know by straightforwardly representing something.

But there is this like meta level that goes on in this In this fiction where the killer is um, the killer is very much driven by frightening in his victims. That that's like the thing that holds together all of his difference ms that he's cobbled together from different serial killers, and that help him to keep the police at bay, that they'll never catch up with him. U. He is determined to frighten his victims in very much the style of like the Golden State Killer, who would uh you know, put put dishes on the pile up dishes on the back of one of his victims, you know, tied up and say, if if I hear those dishes fall off of you, I'm going to murder you. And then he would murder this person anyway, you know.

The You know then what's crazy to me is like to speak to that we watched you and I you know, you mentioned to me the snuff movie and you brought up snuff movies once already, And I think it ties into what you're, what you're, what you're about to get to, like we used to that snuff movie is pretty subversive in and of itself with the things that it presents. Those Leonard Lake and Charles Ing tapes are now being You can watch a documentary series on that on Peacock on Peacock that shows more of those tapes than that did. And I think it like it, like it's mind boggling to me because now we're at a point I also think where like people want like like to to the to the point of like people want to be scared more now, they want to see more of the like with like the Golden State Killer.

Like people are okay with hearing about all this now they really didn't used to be right well, and within this the idea of a killing that's done, I mean the way that the idea ends up being played out, you know, both for scaring the victims and scaring people terror rising people. Um, you know. In a larger way, there's that killing where the husband's head is removed and then embedded in his wife's body, and she she's woken up to like for the purpose of registering this just moments before then she's going to be murdered, and then her body will be presented I'm you know, presented. It's a performance that's being created, like this kind of horrifying work of art where her body is going to be found with a head inside it.

Where that then the authorities have to discover, oh wait, this is a this is a man's head and a woman's body. Um, that's that's beheaded and then far far away her head and hands are presented, um, you know, to authorities elsewhere as as a kind of you know, uh, intense extra frightening um kind of thing. And on a certain level that's also obviously this is where it gets really meta. So within the movie, it's it's meant to frighten authorities. It's meant to frighten the victims in this extreme and utterly horrifying way, but then it is also to frighten us.

And I guess like one of the things that makes me a little bit uneasy with this film is that, um, while I take away from a movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which has you know, real torture and horror and screaming and has you know it's worth seen, is the transgressive kind of dinner at the end where um, you know, Sally is in pain and just screaming and all the Chainsaw family mock her pain and you know ultimately they're planning to kill her. But it's you know, very much, you know, frightening there. There is a way in which the Texas Chainsaw Massacre as an art object is up to some things that are that are more purposeful in their scares. This is a kind of movie where I try to latch onto something more purposeful than that.

The Doubles are just trying to scare the shit out of me with this. You know, this is story of a serial killer and these tapes, and I'm not sure that there's anything more to it than that. And even as a horror fan. That is that is extremely uneasy to me, especially given that this is a story about, you know, like in Peeping Tom, a killer who was deliberately being as frightening as possible. And again, you know, Peeping Tom also seems to have this like, you know, larger sense of what this meta level is about and questioning cinema and the treatment of women in cinema and all all this kind of stuff.

The Petipsie Tapes also has just like really grotesque level of you know, misogynistic violence because that's the nature of the killer. And so it's not as if you know, this stuff should be uh, you know, cleaned up, um for the for the sake of um, you know, keeping feminist. Please. It is that that the the there can be I don't know that within this movie this is the case, and this is part of what I feel uneasy about. But um, there can be uh you know, reason for depicting um, misogynistic violence as as a real occurrence.

But that again back to this sort of dead eyed quality of the mechanical device of the camera just recording all this stuff. There's also right up into the end a kind of dead eyed quality to the storytelling where as I said earlier, I think it's kind of amazing that the killer sort of gets away at the end and his and his um identity has never discovered, uh, and that the true crime documentary wrap around sort of breaks with convention by not providing any kind of explanation or reason or sort of moral wrap up or whatever. So I admire it on one level, But then there's another level that I'm just left with, like what is what is my purpose for participating in such a foul thing? And I don't know that I have a very good answer, you know, other than a kind of common, basic meta commentary on cinematic horror.

And I suppose on some level that's enough. And we're having this, you know, we're having a long conversation. We've already talked for longer than the length of the movie about what's going on in this film and its relationship to other kinds of objects. But it is it does come back to this thing of like, very much as as as I am not interested in watching a kind of real death on camera, post seeing Bud Dwyer, I have real questions about, you know, why do I watch this? And I know there are other people who have you know, limits that are, you know, much much less intense than my own limits.

But I do end up asking that kind of question that I've heard, for instance, from family members about like why would you watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? And I can come back with like, oh my god, it's this amazing art object and it's it's so beautiful, and there's a kind of vegetarian commentary, and it tells us about America's relationship to the Vietnam War, and there's a whole class element to it. You know, there's all kinds of stuff going on in that, and there's all kinds of stuff going on here, but the larger it's that sense of a larger purpose where I kind of get the void staring back. And I'm not sure why I do this to myself of other than going, oh, yeah, it's the most fucked up movie I've ever seen.

It's on that YouTube list of the ten most fucked up movies ever. I've got to see this fucked up thing. I don't know, I don't know that I have a better answer than that. Sorry to rant so long on it, but it really obviously it been dabbles me a little bit, and that's that is a power that this, this very strange film has well. And I was gonna say the same thing because this movie, I don't, you know, Like it's not that this movie doesn't show up on those lists, but there are things cinema things that are worse than this that I think for other people.

And it's not for other people that are worse than this, but the way that those other things are presented as fictional, I mean there's something like, you know, again, we could go back and forth like you know, fucking A and B, C and D like Serbian film or solo or you know, oh my god, I mean again like Cannible. I mean, Cannibal Holocaust is on that list for forever um. But I'm fascinated with Cannibal Holocaust and I might never see it again, but I'm really fascinated with I genuinely think it's a good film. But I don't, I don't know that that's something I need in my life again, right, But like, the thing is like when you talk about those kinds of movies, you're again, like the point is like what pushing your limit as a film watcher?

Those are all fiction? They all all ultimately feel like fiction. What's weird about this? Is it just there is you know, there was that I don't remember what it was called. It was on shutter like cursed Tapes, is that what it was called.

And it was like it was talking about like cursed films, and it was talking about you know, you know the obviously like the easy ones like the Twilight Zone movie and you know, other things like that where they capture things or certain things happen and you know, unexplained like this, I think is more in line with it, Like you've mentioned already, a thing that ends up becoming very much a thing like a year or two later on YouTube where it's just like this is really like a creepy pasta in a lot of ways, right, Like it kind of is it has that just because those often have that unsettling quality that you really can't like put your finger on it, just there's an allusiveness to it. And this, Yeah, this is one of those movies that I think about fairly often.

I remember, you know where I live in the Midwest, you know, we were both Midwest livers. There is a a and I've thought about it. I don't know why I haven't bought it, And now I want to go and buy it. There's a antique store here that has an original poster for the movie. Oh fifteen bucks.

Oh, and it's like an original big and like it's like weird to me that like that exists somewhere like I live, because like why why who else is that for? Right? You know? Again, like that's the thing about this movie. It's weird, Like it speaks to me in a weird way.

And again I feel like it's just maybe it speaks to me in a way that's like these kinds of things are just so it's not that they're not talked about, but they're never talked about like this. And since this is really the only way that anyone's ever talked about this this way, it makes it so much more enticing that every time I want it, every time I watch it, I always want there to be more, but there never is, you know, because again, there's nothing else like this, Like even with something like Henry Portrait of a serial Killer, Like there is a sequel to that, but it's it's there's not any more of Henry Portrait of a serial Killer the way it is, and it doesn't have the same effect on me. But I'm assuming for you it similarly does, right, Like it's a similar like feeling of a movie.

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting like Henry Ports of a Serial Killers has a much sort of you know, as as gnarly as it is, it has a much clearer kind of moral center and a kind of you know what it's trying to draw out of the audience. And this and I don't I don't want to. I don't want to play as if it's only the void staring back. But it is a lot of the void staring back. But that also makes me think of uh, you know, both the Zodiac killer for real.

Uh and and that's that's um, you know, a model for a killer who changes up uh m o um over the different haunts the cops. I mean, as I mean, this is again, like that's the thing about this that is fun. It's like it's what they did, but dialed up to the way that like they they only wished they could have done. That's right, right, Like Zodiac wishes he could have pinned it on somebody else so he could have been like and I got away with it too, like the Zodiac technically never got I mean, Zodiac got away with it. But like this to do.

What this guy does is like that's like that's like you're that's like the purest Danum of all time, like and now I'm free. Like yeah, well, and I think I think, for instance, what Fincher did with with the incidence of the Fincher and Vanderbilt, you know, I think that screenplay deserves a ton of credit in terms of, you know, figuring out what to do you know, with with the Zodiac Killer and why that film is so up to me is incredibly fascinating. It's by far, you know, like by a mile, you know, Fincher's best film. Uh gray Man speaking to my language brother and you. But but I think it's a I think actually, like this is an interesting thing about Zodiac, and maybe the Poughkeepsie Tapes is slightly in this zone.

Um, So I think I think that Zodiac is actually a film about God. I think it's a deeply religious film about the you know, a relationship to this like larger force that you can't possibly understand and you can't quite grasp and every time you think you've got it, it kind of falls away. And there's this this kind of um wrestling with the numinous in that in that film, UM, and that that that speaks to the kind of obsession you know that the characters have for trying to solve this thing that's unsolvable UM. And it works a lot like, you know, to get really pretentious here, I'm gonna say that movie works a lot like Beckett's Waiting for Godo. You know that that that there is there's a way of of of using an absurd kind of situation, uh, to sort of you know, wrestle with our relationship to the true, uh enormous quality of the universe that we have only the tiniest understanding of.

UM. And perhaps if I mean, zodiac Is is extremely scary, UM has kind of strange, dead eyed moments to it. One of the things that zodiac this was the you know, zodiac Is is like a great Internet film in a way because even though the Internet is not part of it, one of the things that happens when you watch that film is there's all this research going on and all these documents and trying to uncover, you know, the nature of the mystery. And so Robert, they pay Robert Graysmith, as one might say, the og armchair detective. I feel so I mean, I don't know if that's entirely deserved, because again, you could get into their issues, Robert Gray's investigation.

I would love to do a Zodiac We've never done one, but like that, like to say, like, oh, you want to do a Zodiac episode, you got to read gray Smith's books, and then you got to go read essentially everything else too, because because like gray Smith's stuff is um problematic. Yeah, I would say problematic when you pick one person and you go after that person and it's that person and you make everything fit for that person. I'm not saying it wasn't that person, but I don't know if it was that person. But the DNA cleared the person, right yeah, yes, um well, and I think I think that's actually one of the things that's better about I mean, the movie of Zodiac is so much better than the gray Smith book, but the one movie of Zodiac is better than the real life of Zodiac because the movie more or less is like it's Arthur Lee Allen and the real life is like it's not, so get that out of your head real quick.

I mean that's the thing, Like Zodiac is not a story about real life, Like Zodiac's a story about like just like the Pokeepsie tapes. Pokepsie Takes is about obsession. This guy's obsession was with Cheryl Dempsey. It's a different kind of obsession, but it's an obsession worth killing for clearly well, and and our obsession with this material and so well, I don't I am not going to compare this to Zodiac on um a kind of uh, a qualitative level, because I think Zodiac is a much better film, uh, And I think there's there's more to dig into in that relationship to the Numinis. I do think that this is a film that is tapping into the same kind of UM.

I wouldn't say religious, I'm not. I'm not sure quite goes there, but the obsessive uh, and the attempt to understand and the bedeviling the audience with something that is bigger than what they can understand. I think it's related to a film like Zodiac in in that in that way, and and so you know, I got my problems. I come back to, like why did I watch this? Why have I seen this as many times as I have?

Why am I having this long conversation about it? But there is there is something, There is something in this the like wrestling with the true sense of the unknown and wrestling with the unknown on the basis of actual evidence. I mean, that's the gag. The gag is that you see this like mile long line of tapes and they it's like so many hours, and they talk about how like watching all these tapes after a certain point was like deeply disturbing and traumatizing and everything like, so you have there's actually like all this evidence, and yet there isn't an explanation. There isn't a way of understanding.

In the case of the Zodiac killer, there's a lot of evidence, but the evidence does not add up to anybody. And even in the case of you know Zodiac in the movie, which sticks with the Graysmith story, I kind of love how it rides this line of like yep, Arthur Lee Allen until this like one final you know, title card over Black, which is like, wow, they tested Arthur Lee Allen's DNA and it didn't seem to match. So there you go. Well, and to be fair, the smartest thing the Zodiac does and it's the smart It's like, it's so smart. And we we talked about this privately, the fact that every time Zodiac is in that movie, it's a different actor, which which is the movie?

Even then taking itself meta textually as a stand to say, like, again, what what it was? It? The who knows? Who knows? It could have been all the same person, and I think that's more or less the assumption.

But again, there are all these suspects, and yet it doesn't add up to anything. So why don't we just have four different actors plays Zodiac? Four distinct you know, one of them John Lacy, I spoke with when I did that episode so many years ago. But like he and like the other three dudes that plays Zodiac are all different. He played Zodiac when he picks up Kathleen John's on the freeway, he's the he's the he's a Zodiac probably gets the most like dialogue time in the movie.

But uh, yeah, you know that's I don't know, but Gepsie tapes, Yeah, it does. It feels like they captured a little a little something, a little too real, you know, And sometimes movies do that, they just they they poke through to reality and they take a little bit back with them. And like it's like sometimes when a movie does that, it's just there's there's nothing, there's nothing about it that it like you can't replicate that that just happens. And you know, when I spoke with the Doubtles, they talked about the amount of research that they were doing and they threw themselves into it, and they were looking at photos and reading stories, and again, like when you hear the amount of work that they did and knowing that, it's like like it's like they it's like they conjured up like a dream demon or something something that they like contained within this movie.

That like good that it stays there and not out in the world. Like and again, like we have enough darkness in the world that maybe by making something like this where it is someone too perfect to be caught who could kill you and make it look like your neighbor did it or whatever, like by capturing it on film, maybe I've done humanity a service by hopefully keeping that energy elsewhere and not out in the world. Yeah. Well, and that's get really to get really pretensious. Yeah, yeah, I Gentlin, that's but that's the point of this show.

That's why I wanted to do our episode here and not on the Culture Cast, because again, these are the kind of conversations that you have about these kind of things that when you watch it it makes you feel really uncomfortable. I mean, it's like, you know, I know that that alien autopsy footage on Fox that they showed in the nineties is I know it's fake, man, but every time I watch it. Every time I watch it, it makes me feel like it is real, like I'm watching something that it has that quality that just there's something about it. Maybe it's the quality of the puppets being shitty enough to look good filmed that low quality. Maybe it's just I don't know what it is.

But ultimately, when I think about something like that, I think about something like this, where it's like you've captured just enough because that's fake. That's just as fake as this. That's faker than this. Frankly, because that pretended to be real in his fake. This never pretended to be real.

I guess. I guess if you don't understand how movies work, you could assume this is real. But again, I think by two thousand and seven or twenty seventeen, people were smart enough to know this is not real. That the Doubtles killed their wife like they're none as none of that. I mean, they didn't go to court like Diodato did for fucking Cannibal Holocaust.

Well or like you know, Heather O'donnahue, she has a fascinating she now goes by another name that I'm not remembering offhand, but who's you know Heather? And in the blair Witch Project. She she really you know, she had a career at once launched and totally ruined by the same film because of the like weird, sort of magical power of the fiction getting into people's heads as a thing that was sort of more real even once it was it was revealed, because like Pookeepsie Tapes has a similar kind of origin story in a way to the blair Witch Project, and that the blair Witch Project was being passed around as a videotape of a real thing for a certain amount of time before it was put into theaters. Like, uh, you know, there wasn't as much reporting that was getting to ordinary people about like the Sundance Film Festival and stuff in ninety nine.

I know that seems impossible, but it was like really you know, film heads that were paying attention, but um, you know, folks like my brother who came across a tape of the Blair Witch Project and saw it well before it came out in theaters and had questions. You know, he asked me, is this is this for real or what? U? And I was like, no, No, it played at Sundance and U and I know people involved making it and uh and putting it out in the world. It's definitely fake, but it's a really interesting kind of film.

Similarly, the Poughkeepsie Takes, because of the distributor fumbling the ball for a while, had this like shadow existence that made it more real. And this does get into you know, we're on your we're on your weird scarity show. But this gets into how um, you know, artworks can function. And like before, I'm going to preface this and say I am not terribly woo woo. This is more of a psychological and kind of mass psychological effect, but they do function.

You know, there are works of art that function as kind of magical workings. They cause people to think and feel differently. They bring out a sense of you know, the numinis or they make people notice all manner of you know, coincidences and things in their lives that there are factors that sort of of our that that become imbued with magic. Uh. You know, psychologically and um.

On the one hand, you know, I'm sort of backing off and getting materialist here and and putting it on psychology. But on the other I do want to emphasize that we still do not understand the nature of consciousness. There's so much we don't understand about how the mind works. So when when I'm referring to this kind of psychological effect that I could bring down to like what is what's for real about the magic here that it's in people's minds that is still enormous, Like what's in our minds is huge, and uh to just kind of play arm armchair scientist or psychiatrist, uh and do the skepticism game of like, oh, that's that's just what's in people's minds. It's kind of like, yeah, that's just what's in people's minds, which is enormous and uh and and is in so many ways our reality.

So so I think the kind of mass psychological effect that movies like this have, you know, to go back to your your point earlier, that yeah, that there is almost like a capturing of an eggregor if you want to go to another level of like pretentious like magical talk here you know, sort of capturing an egg or you know whatever within within a movie. Um, I do think that there's I think that there's at least like a psychological and mass psychological Uh part of that is true. You know that we we all put a lot of mental energy into these things, and we don't truly understand the degree to which we are at once connected and disconnected to other people's consciousness. So uh yeah, you know, these works of art can do um, pretty remarkable things.

And and I guess I would consider the Poughkeepsie Takes a more sort of evil or molefic kind of work of art, But nevertheless that can be an important thing to come in contact with. And I guess then, just maybe to start wrapping up, I do want to ask you what your take is on why do we why do we sneaky? Why do we have you know, creepy pasta and urban legends about snuff that go back so far. I mean there are urban legends and theories about like the Black Dahlia Killer having made a snuff film of her death. You know, so there's like sort of famous legends of that kind.

But like, why are we attracted to this idea of snuff, because I think it goes beyond anyone who is sort of sick and disturbed enough to genuinely want to receive sexual gratification from watching somebody die. What is it in our you know, what is it in our desires that that that sort of brings that out? Why? Why? Why?

Why are we attracted to this kind of thing? Even to then, you know, as I told a story about watching the Buddewier tape to ultimately reject it, why why is it something you're interested in? Well? And that's you know again, because I think that is a massive component of this movie. Because again, so much of this is if you were to take it out of the context of this film and just present it to someone like that scene where that woman is in the back of his car, like again, like, if you present that to someone without the trappings of this and tell them, like, I found this, this is real.

Would people watch it? Would people watch it and be like, you know, is that real? Like? Did I just watch somebody? Like?

And I don't know if people would even be into it or be interested by it. But if you frame it in such a way where it's behind glass, you can't touch it, It can't get to you like again, like you know. Uh, to put it in a good example for something that is at times both terrifying in its presentation but ultimately bullshit. Za Zach Vegans has a haunted museum in Las Vegas. Oh, yes, I've been twice.

I've been two times. A friend of mine used to work there actually as the head tour guide. Um and uh I went and um. You know, they have all kinds of stuff. They have boat, they have wood from Natalie Wood's boat.

Uh from. Yeah, They've got all kinds of stuff. They have a vote, you know, speaking to real life things of people in harrowing situations. They have polaroids that Bob Berdella took of his victims while he was keeping them captive. Uh.

They have the actual ones there that you can like see of like real people in like you know, in the throes of death or in the last moments of their life or mid being tortured. But those are all real things. The fake thing that they have that's essentially been more or less said fake by the person who created it. All this pomp and circumstance. You can you can forego the room and go around it.

You don't have to participate in this experience. You have to go and see the museum if you want to see the dibock Box, because the dipot box is there, right, and the dippick Box is fake, right like there have been, you know, the plenty of articles written online all about it. The guy who created the dimock Box's name escapes me. He said something to the effect of, if the dimick Box is real, I'll get it tattooed on my forehead that it's real. He was so confident in the fact that he had created the story, and then it had more or less proliferated more and more to the point where a movie is being made.

YadA YadA, YadA. Fine, all of that, but Bagan's presents it as real. But any presents it as real, and he builds it up to the point where you aren't terrified before you walk into the room. And then you walk into the room and the room is as as best I could explain it, it's like being in the middle of the a bombing in World War two, and like a bombed out building, but it's not like you're hearing bombs going off loudly, but they're like weird, creepy noises and then the dibit boxes in the center on a pedestal and it's in a box and it's surrounded by a ring of salt, and they say, oh, you know, when we originally put the salt around that, it was in a straight line, and look the salt is it's moved. Definitely not in like an area that gets tremors or anything, being near California.

But hey, hey, no, no, no no, don't talk about that in front of people. I look, I believe in all this shit implicitly, like I'm not a I am a I want to believe I'm like Fox Mulder and I think so many of us are. But I equate the Poughkeepsie tapes to a real life dibbit box because ultimately, I think people are drawn to the horrifying. And I think that people want to see snuff films and you can and again like you can, like it's not like like we're like we said before, like snuff films don't exist, but they do because Bud Bud Dwire is a good one. M that Kennedy super right, you know there's a Pfer film is like it's the snuff film of snuff films.

Right, Like the Challenger film is a snuff film if you want to get technical. And how many people saw that or have seen the image. I mean that's I think for a certain generation or certain generations with an s that's etched in a public consciousness, just like for me. I mean, I grew up with conspiracy theories about the JFK sassination. I can't tell you how many times they've seen as a pruder film.

It's I mean again, like it's a man having his head blown off for fuck's sake, Like is it HD quality? No? And if it were, nobody would would do what they've done. Like it has the same problem the Patterson Gimlin film does, which is if it were in high definition, I think we would all know what's going on, that it's a real big foot because I hashtag believe but believe gil Yes, I do. I do.

Uh interesting, Yeah, Are you gonna sell me? Are you gonna sell me some swamp swamp? No? No, I'm not gonna sell you anything. It's just like that's actually an example of one of those things I love and I want to believe.

But I've now also come across I thought you thought I was like a sucker. That's what I was getting it. Well, you know whatever Sucker's born every day. I mean, hey, I get it, like yeah, yeah, no, But that one's really that's actually a really interesting example because I've i have, you know, read enough stories about I'm forgetting whether it was Patterson or Gimlin who died and like deathbed confessions kind of stuff, and uh and uh you know believe that controversy. Yeah yeah, and I think, yeah, Gimblins still kicking around and he believes, and when he's been presented with you were tricked, he just will not he won't go.

There's her two words. Big foot breast. That's all I'm saying. Okay, that's all I'm saying, big foot breasts. That's the key here to belief is believing that that thing has breasts.

Okay, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean this is it's the best big foot footage around. I mean, if you're talking like but again, like in a lot of ways, like you know, to talk about snuff films and like there's a fucking z a Pruter film, Like it's the best snuff film out there because it's the one everybody's seen. I guess you could call nine to eleven, any of that footage snuff films too, like fucking watch a plane hit a building like yeah, or people jump, yeah, like any like all of that's terrible, Like that's all like why would what why do you need to watch one person dying when you've seen that? Like again, for a certain generation of people, nine to eleven is etched in their consciousness. Thankfully, there are plenty of children and teenagers and I guess probably at this point adults that weren't alive that didn't see it, that don't have the visions of that shit like I do, like you do at it actually happening.

So I don't know, but like, but again, like there are all the nine to eleven documentaries show all that footage. It's not like they're not showing it and it's just black screens with voiceovers. They still show all of it. So again, like it speaks to something like this, And it's kind of ironic that they mentioned nine to eleven in this because of all the tapes and tapes and tapes and tapes and tapes of stuff that we actually have of real people dying nine to eleven? Is it like in real life?

Like nothing may ever hope, hope, to fucking god, nothing ever comes close. But but again, like again, like if you again, it's it's that I don't know. But they, like I said, even in nine to eleven documentaries, they're always showing the planes hitting the buildings, and like at this point it just feels like theater. But you've got to remember those are real people in real buildings and real planes that it really happened to. And like that's why I would rather watch stuff like this which isn't real that I can feel safe because it's behind glass, but it is a painting.

It's not a picture of you know, a Cambodian or a Vietnamese being shot in the head, or a monk lighting himself on fire. It's not that. But it's as close as I can get. So that's my answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well I mean this is I mean, like you know, it's it's a lot of kids watch Faces of death.

I watched Faces of Death in college. Yeah. If it's fine, I mean, it's fine, it's fine. No, and we now know that most of it is fake. Um, but the desire that there is a sort of need that we have to contend with death that in a case of something like this, it gets really really tricky because it's like, oh, that's all there is.

And then there are also you know, questions of I mean, you know, in terms of the plot of this movie, you're dealing with a really horrifying and bottomless level of uh misogyny in the world that is being depicted and put into this and that corresponds absolutely with so many real life cases of serial killers that it's uh, you know, I'm not sure what interest is served exactly by saying that that's something that should be avoided in telling these stories. But it also then really raises uh, extremely serious questions about you know, yeah, again, why why would we why would we watch this? But I think I think that there there are there are these levels of needing to contend with, to get pretentious again, to down the Jungian kind of path, contend with the shadow, and by all means, this is the podcast where you can get pretentious and nobody cares like, okay, good, well, yea, this is that like that's what we're talking We're talking about highbrow.

I mean, it's not that we're not saying high brown culture casts, but this is this is higher level stuff. This is higher plane stuff. Right. Uh so yeah, you know, we have we have these we have these needs to contend with, you know, the ultimate reality for us. We all didn't exist at a time that we can't remember.

We cannot remember our own non existence, but we know that there's that coming down the pike. We are not going to exist all over again. We are we are going are we are going to be snuffed out at some point and what happens next after that is a mystery. But it's just as much a mystery to think about, like oh, where was I before I was born? And I don't want to get down into like political questions that are really horrible.

I'm talking about the more philosophical, like we all have to confront this this like fat you know, um and how we do it is? Um is a big question. Yeah. I guess that's what keeps us kind of coming back to this stuff. Um, that's what you're depending with it on different levels?

What's up? That's what art is? Yeah, I mean, I mean art allows us to experience what it is dying without dying, right, We can experience firsthand what it would be like to be a serial killer. I mean, honestly, is that not what this movie. The promise of this movie is that you get to be a serial killer and that the movie executes on that.

And if you don't say that out loud, then you're not saying the quiet part out loud with this. But that's what this is. Well, and there are real questions about how and why that can be an important thing to go through, and those those questions are very real, but it's also the experience and the need to contend with it is very real. Like do I do I want to just say it's always okay to engage with this kind of stuff when we know that there are well we know of cases where it wasn't even like you know, snuff adjacent or horror, but like, uh, you know, a guy read Catcher in the Rye and decided to murder John Lennon. So you know, art isn't just let off the hook.

We're not let off the hook for our relationship to art, but you know, certainly art like this is a much safer way of contending with with death and contending with the reality of people who deal death to us then going through the actual thing, right, I mean, there's no surprise as to why they redid the the Elijah Wood maniac in first person because again again like that, the people won't say it out loud, but there clearly is a want and there clearly is a need to push that further then you would want to go in real life, or way further than you would want to go and real life, but ultimately doing it in a quote safe, a not interactive, but safe quote unquote way. So yeah, you know, again, that's what art is.

That's what art again for all for everybody should hopefully skew more towards than taking it as fact or anything else. It's a way to have a conversation about things that you ultimately can't have a conversation about maybe any other way, or maybe not as a maybe not as interesting any other way, because some of the things they talk about in movies like that would be a pretty pedestrian conversation to have. But the movie does. The movie is entertaining in what it does and how it presents it. Yeah, and yeah, but this is rough.

This is not a movie for everybody. They're not trotting this one out to show to your family on a fucking weekend, So you keep it in the back pocket for certain people, And there are people that you know that would like it. And I've made that suggestion, as I'm sure you have. And it's always interesting to see who it resonates with and who it doesn't, because that's again, that's something like this. It is.

It's its own weird thing, that's captured its own weird thing. So yeah, oh man, well yeah, I guess. Uh, where can people find you on the internet, Spencer, when you're not here joining me talking about weird stuff? Maybe a better avenue for conversations in the future, who knows. Yeah, I guess, I guess we're right now.

I'm still on that sinking ship of Twitter at Spencer Underscore parsons Um and uh, you know, I teach at Northwestern University and you can probably find my email on that website. If if one should be so inclined or deranged to reach out by talking about this and you talk about derange Jesus just asking for it, just come on down and find me. You know where I am. I'm watching the most horrible shit you can possible. They're right, Jesus Christ, I need to see Visceres played across the screen, right God, Jesus.

As for me, you can find me at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where you can find this show and so many other shows. As for this show, big thanks always to maggoty On, Dustin Rutledge for the album, artwork for the show, and for the music. Our good friend Alex Malnac over at Blondo. You can find him on Spotify or kicking around the Midwest. If you go out to shows at bars and drink.

Hey, he might be playing at a city near you. Spencer, thank you so much for joining me. As always, this was fun. Yeah, thank you. I really really appreciate it.

It's been fun talking about this Uh, not exactly fun or precisely entertaining movie. No, no, probably yeah, probably wouldn't use those words to define it either, but we had a fun conversation. So note we'll let our good friend, the former host of Sightings, mister Tim White, lead us out. No mystery is closed to an open mine.