177. I Still Will Always Know What You Did the Summer of '97

We are you weak media in the summertime, when the wind who was high? You can trust? Manage this guy. When the window's mine. You got women, You got women on your mind.

Have a drink a job god, and see. What you give. Welcome to another episode of the Feminine Critique. I'm Emily and I am Christine, and we will always know what you did that summer there. Okay, I've said it.

This has bothered me for now? What how many years? Twenty something years, thirty years almost, twenty six, twenty four, twenty five, twenty six, twenty six years? Is that how long ago I was? We just keep doing this, Let's just keep Let's just.

Spend an hour working through. Math two twenty five. Yeah, the first one came out in Oh wait, are you talking about the first one or the second one? The second one came that ninety eight, right, thirty eight? Okay, what is ninety eight to twenty six years?

I got it. I did get it on my second try. I got it. You had it? Okay, Yeah, so we are today doing something very special, Christine, tell the people what we're doing.

Oh, we're talking about all three? Yes, there are three. I know what you did last summer movies. Yes, the first one, nineteen ninety eight. I Know what You Did Last Summer makes sense right as the title.

It's a great title too. I think it's actually one of the reasons I think this movie did was so popular was that it did have a great title. Yeah, I Know what you did last summer. So that it comes back one year later with I still which it did last summer, which is weird because now we're talking about two summers ago. But it works.

Still, No, it doesn't. No, No, it should have been. Want you want to know. I'm gonna fix it. I still know what you did that summer?

Bam done. But what if they're referencing last summer, but everybody knows what they did last summer because a bunch of people died and then everybody knew about it. They still don't know what they did the summer before, Like, that's still the thing. But Julie is the way at college, so it's arguable that the people that she might be interacting with. Wouldn't know what But it's no, because it's still referencing.

The heart of it is the thing that happened in the summer of nineteen ninety six, not the thing that happened in the summer of nineteen ninety seven, ninety ninety eight, not ninety nine. You know what I'm saying, Yes, indeed, and then lastly, I always I'll always what you did. But summer arguably the best of the tree. This is going to be a ride for those of you playing along at home. I believe the first two movies are streaming on Paramount Plus.

However, all three movies are available in one box on three separate DVDs Current Land, Amazon for ten bucks. A steal. It's a steal. It is a good deal. Actually, I think all of them have a common I didn't get to listen to it, but I believe all three have a director commentary.

I've watched the special features for the third one. I'm sure you have. They're not that great memory. I mean, I get why, but like I, for me, I wish there was more robust features for that one. Okay, I have questions.

It's basically fairly Okay, Well, we're going to dive into a lot. Okay, before we do, let's let's set the table a little bit more. Because we are going to talk about all three. We are going to spoil all three. We will probably we'll go in order, but there's gonna be a lot that ties into one to the other, so you really kind of you should just watch all three if you don't want to be spoiled on them.

The there is there are two other no maybe three now other bits of properties in this universe that we should reference or mention. There was a television series for Amazon Prime. Uh, what was it? Twenty twenty? I think it was.

I think it was COVID Years Heavy, COVID Years. Did you watch that at all? I tried? Excuse me, I'm very I guess I'm choked up by all this summer talk. I tried.

I think we got maybe two three episodes in. I didn't get it. That tends to be one of my favorite genres though, like TV teams, Slashers. It seems like that's where we put the type of movie that like Scream and I know you did last summer, and even like Final Destination to a degree, that's so like the Scream TV show, the new Pretty Little Liars like there, I feel like it's good and it works, except this one didn't, which is disappointing because I have a deep and mysterious love for this franch. For those whole property.

Yeah, I never watched it and never got around to it. And then the last thing we should we should mention this franchise is based on a piece of. Literature which I did read, The Lowest dunk In book. Yeah, I love. I am a huge, huge fan of Lowis Dunkin.

If you've never read a Lowest book, you should. Everything you like is based on those books. So I was not a big lowesst Duncan. I don't know that I'd ever read anything by her, which is odd, but maybe not because I know for me and you and I are the same age. We both grew up probably reading in parallel worlds, had the same library cards, but also very different.

I just never, for whatever reason, didn't read Lois Duncan. I read I feel like she was usually on the same shelf with Christopher Pike and Erlstein. I didn't read that many of those books because I kind of went from the like young adult straight to like VC Andrews and Stephen King. So I would kind of read like Christopher Pike book really quickly here and there in between things. But I just never, I think because I thought of Lois Duncan as not as much a horror writer as and I don't I guess she really wasn't right.

No she I don't think she thought she that's what she was doing, right. So I didn't read those books as a child at all. I was like in my late thirties and I just was like, hey, this is great. So I think I've read all of them, like the standard fiction like Summer Fear Killing, not Missus Tangle, There's a Guy I don't remember the real title, but like, I read all those because I mean, it's kind of undeniable how they have informed that like kind of nineties slasher genre. But yeah, I don't think she if I've read about her.

She kind of had an interesting in tragic life. She also wrote Hotel for Dogs, so she I don't think she thought that. I think she thought she was telling morality. She was telling morality tales. But I don't think that she really classified them as like schlocky or or like exploitative.

I think they were really supposed to give you a sense of what it was like to be a teenager during those times, and like the struggles that you would deal with, which sadly I think is missing from the majority of the adaptations they go fully into like what happens if all my friends die, which isn't really necessarily what the thrust of those books are. So they're interesting companion pieces, but like the movies, I think, are their own things. Oh in this case, definitely, Oh for sure. Yeah. So I read the book this week.

I just finished it last name. I haven't read it for years. Well, here's what's really really neat about it, because I remember when this the first movie came out, I had read Christopher Pike's Letter, and I thought this movie was ripping that off at first, because if anybody out there has read chain Letter, you will understand why I'm saying that, because it's also about teenagers who hit somebody with their car and drive away, and a year later they're being you know, taunted by somebody who knows what they did. And then I very quickly, I even remember when this movie came out, being Mad and then immediately the first thing I read was based on a book by Lois Duncan, so I was like, okay, something did that?

So wait, Christopher Pike probably ripped off Yeah, I know that summer and the book, so something that Lows Duncan apparently did, which is really cool is in I guess more recent years and she passed away I think twenty sixteen. But something she would do when like they were going to reissue her books is she would go in and make some updates, you would update it. So I was reading God Gallows Hill, I think, and the girl had a cell phone, and yet thinking like, how does she have a cell phone? And then I had to do a little digging and be like, oh no, they totally got updated. And it makes for this kind of weird, like like wholesome snapshot of an unrealistic modern theme.

Yes, because there's an aspect of it that, well, the people are young. People do interact communicate differently today because of you know, access to cell phones than they did twenty years ago, thirty years ago. And I guess the book was seventy three, which I thought it was later, but that's very early. But I think what's really neat about it because so the the reissue of I Know What You Did was I think was twenty ten. So characters have cell phones.

They there's mention of the internet, they can text. What I think is great about that is how it it's so easy to watch horror movies today that were made in the seventies, eighties, nineties and say like, oh, this will all would have been averted if they had cell phones. Yeah, if only they had the Internet, they could have figured this out. And you're you're reading this book, which again is very different in the movie, but even with that being said, you're like, oh, yeah, they make no difference whatsoever, like and that speaks well, I think to your storytelling that when you place it in a modern time, somewhat modern time, it still works in exactly the way it does a because your story was strong, But I think more importantly, you crafted very clear characters in what you were doing.

Because the book gives all four points of views, which is again I was not expecting reading it. I just assumed it was going to be Julie's point of view, but the book actually you get Barry, you get Helen, and they are so what is great about it? And this is somewhat to the movies, but I think is kind of a kernel of the book that I think is lacking elsewhere is how selfish the characters are and how they are called out on it in a way that it is a morality tell and you're reading it thinking fuck these people, But so is the book. And yeah, it's very different the book. It is they hit a child, not a grown man.

They are something that I think is and we'll dive into the plot of the movie in a second, but in the book they all are kind of thriving a year later or doing well enough a year later. It is not the way the movie takes that in a very different direction. And it's again, it's not a killer per se. It is not a slasher, but it is really interesting companion piece. So you can get it from your library.

It's out there. Yeah, and I also recommend killing mister Griffith as well, which is what Teaching Missus Tingle is based on, but not at all. It's completely different. And talk about burying the morality of a story. That's probably my favorite book because a teacher really does die and it's this really gray, ambiguous, like I made a mistake?

Now, what kind of thing like this story? Yeah, but like when in the film adaptation, which came out at a really bad time and they had to change so much. Yeah, it was white post column mine. It was very much a I mean, the movie was definitely edited to hell, but also, I don't I don't know how good it would have been before them. No, it's just it's some things I don't feel like maybe are are good for adaptation, and that's one of them.

But that's my recommendation if you want to read one that's so different from what it became, what you might be more familiar with. Yep, well, yeah it's and re definitely read I know what you did less emmer because you'll see the like you see them on the page and you can see how they translated to these characters, but there is some different kind of harder nuance to them on the page. Even though the book is like one hundred and ninety pages, like it is a ya novel, you know, not written in like grand complexity, but there's some some neat things going on there. So the year is nineteen ninety eight. We had had in ninety s Oh no, I'm sorry, the years nineteen ninety seven.

Why do I keep thinking it's ninety eight, right, nineteen ninety seven? The first one, Yeah, the first one's ninety seven, and then the next one's ninety eight, and then there's a big long break for the third line. Yeah, the nineteen ninety seven it comes out. I know exactly where I was when it came out, because I went to see it in the theaters. It was like October of ninety seven, and my friend and I were supposed to go to like Spirit Night at high school, and instead we're like, now, let's go to the movies.

Let's see that new horror movie. And we were so mad because we didn't like it, and also I was like, man, we would have had more fun at Spirit Night. I don't remember seeing it. I did not like it for the longest time. For the longest time.

The only thing I did like about it is that it opens with the typo negative cover of Summer Breeze and Blink, and you miss it because when it was playing on TV, oftentimes that would play while the other thing was ending. So if you didn't click over, like five minutes beforehand, you just fully missed the opening, ah, which was weird. And I was like, well, the opening is the only reason I'm here because I want to hear this song. But I didn't like it. I don't I'm loath to admit I am a brown haired woman that has had a problem with Jennifer Love Hewett that I've never been able to articulate, Oh, there's dozens of us.

No, it's a very common thing for just to just not like a woman for no reason. Maybe society said I shouldn't like her. Mainly, everybody was just making fun of her so hard that I was like, well, she must suck. Years ago, not that long ago, a year or two ago, we talked about heartbreakers, and I think we both like kind of had a I know, for me, I can understand zag what you're saying as a brown haired woman who was a young teenager in an era when a lot of the boys I had rushing on like they were crushing on Jennifer love Hewitt, Natalie Portman, and I think, like I tie the two of them together in a certain way because I think there was this they sort of in both kind of represent this this type of dream girl who's like a little bit more of the thinking man's dream girl.

But with Jennifer love Hewitt, I think in particular, Oh, but she is also has a very particular figure in shape where because she's a brunette, and because she has brown eyes, and because she has bangs, like a lot of times, I think she is like positioned as the smart girl and but also like has a great body that most filmmakers or men do great things with visually. And so I think there was always like that little sense of me thinking, I don't know how good you and ano an actor you are. I think like people just like looking at you. But I've come around. I have some of that I think was me being kind of jealous Speck in the day.

I've seen her do some good work. She's been on a couple of SVU episodes. She's good, and I actually think I'm gonna say the best thing about this movie is I think the women in it. I think her and Sarah Michelle Geller are the best parts of this movie. So I cannot co sign that I still don't like her in these movies.

It's not her, it's I just don't. I don't like the Julie character. And in either of them. Actually it's better in this in the second one, I think it's just in the first one there are these like little explosions of like what I guess you would call agency, but it doesn't seem to actually drive her character. It just seems to like pop out of nowhere.

Sometimes. So for me, Helen, the Sarah Michelle Geller character is the best character. Like, I think that Julie is just kind of there, and I don't like that she's the moral compass. And when she's being the moral compass, it seems like she's just like a drip that nobody wants to deal with. Yeah, and then like when she's activated, it's like it's not consistent.

I don't know. I struggle to explain it. But I don't think that's Jennifer. That's not Jennifer Love to Hewitt's problem. That's not her fault.

No, I agree, and I can see what you mean. I think if you do map her actions in the movie, you're right. I think the big one of the biggest flaws, because I think this movie has a lot of flaws. Although I did enjoy watching it, one of the biggest problems is that it feels beholden to you know, a slasher template and end in nine, very ninety slasher template where your main girl had to be smart, Brunette had to live at the end usually her boyfriend had to live at the end with her. But also it's like, oh, here's your final girl, except she kind of does nothing to the extent that there is a moment towards the end when it is down to Freddy Prince Junior and her and the Fisherman Killer, where like, you know, it's kind of like one's fighting him, the other one's fighting him, and she runs and Fisherman is fighting Freddy Prinn's and Julie just screams like no even though nothing's happening.

And what the it does is it makes Freddy Prince Junior look at her and stop and then get stabbed. He lives again spoiler alert. But it's like this moment of like, oh god, you can't even do that right, Like, what are you doing just screaming right now? All you're doing is distracting him. You're not helping him in the least.

It really, it's a it's she's not I guess, to boil it down, Yeah, she's not a great final girl like yah metric for these things, and I guess inadvertently that is our metric, whether we're watching it that way or not, because it's hard to not compare this to something like Scream. Well, especially in this case, because there's I think an even more important layer to it, which is you have to get behind you have you want to in any Slasher. You're never there to see the people like, yes, you're there to see cool death and so on, but you have to be invested in this person's survival in order to care. And this movie opens with a really particular thing that happens, which is for people who we are supposed to be following and to domaring levels, hit a man with their car and don't just drive away.

They hit a man with their car and then realize they also need to dump him in the water, but also while in the water, they need to hold him down. Like, it's not just eat him with their car and drove away like no, no, no, They actively then do kill him like and at one point later on she's like, because again, the actual story of this movie is so fucking complicated, and I didn't understand it when I was, Oh, it's ridiculous. It's needlessly convoluted. It's like, it's not complicated though, but it feels like a hall of mirrors. Well, because they throw in the big red herring is that they have killed this man.

They they don't know anything about him. One of them peaks at his wallets. They know they do. They pick it as wallet, they don't pick it as wallet. I don't remember that part one.

If they kill this guy, right, they do, they can say they didn't they fucking kill them. They hit him with their car, they drown him in the water. He comes alive in the water and they like kick him and swim away, so it's like, yeah, no, no, he's dead. Sometime later they know from the news that a man has washed up ashore and they say, oh, that's who we killed. His name was Ben.

He was a young guy. They do research a year before his girlfriend died in a car accident. Oh, he must have been sad, so everybody thought he killed himself, which in the opening of the movie gives us a character that looks like he is about to jump off a cliff. And then later, through a lot of complications and early internet, we find out kind of sort of and it took me years to figure it out. Oh no, they didn't kill that guy.

They killed this guy's dead girlfriend's father who killed the guy. So they're good guys because they killed a killer. No, you still killed the guy and left him for dead. You're still a bad person. And I think, while all of that is true, I don't think if that was our I if that was the way that we absolved these kids.

Yep, it was never clear enough. No, no, it was. Not which and then you throw in and maybe I'm jumping to this too soon. You throw in the Anne Hash stuff, and now it's really convoluted and so much. Yeah, it's one more red herring.

It's she's there to just be creepy kind. Of yes, yeah, And I don't dislike that character or that like relationship. So like Anne Hash is the is the kid who actually die? It's sister right, yes, I'm wrong about Nope, you got that. And and like Ray, Freddy Prince Junior has like this secret like interaction with her because he feels so guilty about.

Because he is the one driving the car and in the book that's different. In the book it is Ryan Philippi who was driving. Yeah yeah yeah, And like so that's actually interesting and it gives like the Ray character like more depth, like he's been struggling with this, which you. Need because Freddy Prince is such a blank slate. I think he's he's great.

I think he's very cute, and I get casting him because he's like heart throbby and very likable. But like in my like is he supposed to be a writer. Is he supposed to be like going to New York to be a writer? Or did I make that up in my head? There's just nothing to him, I find no he.

No that is watching it this time when they're all on the beach, the four kids are on the beach, it really does go like why are they why are they here? Why are they friends? Why are these people friends with each other? Don't they seem to just not fit at all? Yeah, So my assumption is like that Julie and Helen are friends and they just have these boyfriends, and now by virtue of that, they all get thrust together, these like four people that really shouldn't be interacting, as you know.

I guess. But but yeah, it's just some of these things when you have it's such a simple story, and I think that by trying to overcomplicate it or by doing what they did, it over complicated it and it didn't make it better or more satisfying. It just made it confusing. And it you know too. The other part of it is like the movie is very different from the book, but there it's also like that there is a sister character in the book and it almost feels like that like that kind of thing where it's like, oh, hey, no, but I have a template, so I do want to follow the template.

And I don't think we said it. But this is written by Kevin Williamson. He wrote it before he wrote Scream. It feels since one of the things that to me is both charming and obnoxious in how like of its error. It is like there's when there's a moment when they're going I think it's when they're actually going to the Anne Haitch house and Helen who like is you know kind of it's supposed to be the sort of like surfacey, pretty girl, beauty queen doesn't go to college, but like probably had no like just thought she was going to graduate and be pretty and become famous that way, Like it seems kind of although again it's Sarah Michelle Geller, and she makes this character you care about her, and I think there's moments that like where somebody really pokes out of that.

But anyway, there's they're walking to the house and they start talking making like references, and the references are like I feel like Jodie Foster in Silence the Lambs, I feel like Angela Lansbery and there's something about that that's like you're saying Angela Lansbery and not murder. She wrote, like, would Sarah Michelle Geller's character really like have a reference to Angela Lansbery as a seventeen year old in nineteen ninety seven? Like it just felt very like, oh, right, this is Kevin Williamson putting his words in characters' mouths when they don't. And I know that was his thing and many people loved it. That's why Duson's Group was a hit.

But occasionally it also really stands out as like, that's not this person. This person doesn't talk like that. Yeah, I think it's not that. That actually might be something that I have an issue with the with the Julie character, And maybe I don't clock it as much with Sarah Michelle Geller because she just handles sheet diologue like she there is so much weed and dialogue that just makes your eyes want to roll out of your head, and she she managed it so like she she can do it and and she and I and it really does. Now that you're saying that, it makes me wonder, like how much of that like pathos and like engaging kind of stuff was on the page and how much of it actually just is Sarah Michelle Geller because like that Helen character, she is one of my favorite characters in a slasher ever like period end of story.

I heard her stupid dress, that teal tealish seafoam dress on, and her on that dumb float that lives rent free. In my mind, I think about. Her all the time. Yep. And and it's only her in that movie.

And it seems if that char why is that character so much better than our what is essentially our hero. And it is performance is not the actual writing of her that on paper, that character is, you know, the the sexier girl who dies first. I don't know that I ever realized that before this moment. Yeah, yeah, she's so fucking good. I think I think we all underestimated Sarah Michelle Geller, oh for a very long time.

Go back and look at Scream too. Yeah, see she again? And that is like, well, why are you sure she died? Isn't she can't remember her back? Because I really want more of her, please?

Yes? The something another thing about this? So this is something I actually think. I don't think this is intentional, but is really clear in all three movies something they all do much better than a lot of movies of their milk. All three of them have really specific settings and do a lot with that.

And I mean, in the third one, it's Colorado, and the second one it's resort in Bahamas. In this one it's you know, coastal fishing town. I think, I guess it's supposed to be North Carolina. Yeah, and it like there's a lot to that as far as it being you know, there's boats, there's a crap parade or like whatever the Queen of the frog people, whatever the crown she gets to wear is. But the one thing about this that is also a problem is that you're in North Carolina, which is the South.

So it makes sense that a lot of people have Southern accents. It's weird that everybody but our pretty leads have Southern accents. You know. I don't know that I ever realized that, but you're right. Yeah, And like it is entirely true anywhere you live that has a and everywhere has a regional accent, and there's always a spectrum of people that have a very strong one and people that don't.

But like, this is one of those things that you just feel like, oh nobody, because they filmed in North Carolina. This is like that same area where they were filming all of the WB stuff. So I'm sure a lot of the local actors who have smaller parts are local, so they're talking the way they probably you know, are supposed to be for this town. But yet of course, even like Ryan Philippy, who is a dumb, mean jock who is not supposed to be somebody like well educated, speaks like you know, Julia are a trained actor. It's really annoying.

It bothered me this time. No, You're completely right. I don't know that I've ever really noticed that because as much as like obviously part yes, part of the appeal modern appeal of it is the setting because like, not only is it like a great I love coastal Town. Little Coastal Town is a great setting, but also, like with more modern movies, often we don't actually film where we are or like like if we're on the water, maybe we never see it, maybe we're never actually at the coast. So it's it's very cool to be here, and I think that does give it a lot more bang than yes, then it might have.

Like there's a part I think when Julie gets. It's like the next year and Julie comes into town for the first time and she's looking for Helen and she pull like Helen's family owns a department like a little local department store, and that like when she pulls up that little like area of town and the place is called Shivers and it's there's a sign and you're like, wow, this feels like a real place. It feels like a tangible place in time. And that goes a long way to establish the tension, I guess, because when you boil it down and at one point Ryan Philippy's character yells it it's a guy in a slicker. It's just a guy in a slicker.

Like it's not even really that scary. But I think the setting really adds to it, Like there's this like built in mystery of like, oh, creepy coastal town and this this madman with a hook and a slicker on. Yeah, in some ways, I think this is a This is probably a better directed film than it is a written film. Uh. It's director is John Jim Gillespie, who did I did Venom, which I did not see, I See You, which you had talked about last time, and I was gonna say joy Ride, but it's not that joy Ride.

That's it's a different short film joy Ride that was kind of his big stuff. I mean, he's done TV after that, but this does feel to me like a I think some of the chase scenes, some of the scenes of violence are done pretty well. I think the finale is kind of dumb. You're on a boat, It's just silly. But the the I mean the Sarah Michelle Geller scene, which again is partially it's because of her.

If anybody knew how to run and kind of be in an action scary scene, well and sell that it is, you know, it is Buffy to Sara Michelle Geller. But I also think I think that scene is directed well. I think you've got cool mannequin stuff going on there. But there's like, there's other things that are odd, like the when Barry Ryan Phillippy kind of the first big act of violence or maybe aside from the one that they clearly threw in after realizing their movie wasn't long enough for they didn't have enough kills, and they threw in John Glecki dying, But when Barry gets attacked, when he's like walking down the street in a car and he gets hit by a car? What is going on there?

Like the car hits him, or like it cuts as if it was cutting to commercial and then he's like in a hospital dead? What what was that? Did that throw you off? Too? Not really but probably I feel like there's but but I think maybe it speaks to what had you know.

The first couple of times I saw it kept it from working for me is because there are when you say that what springs to mind for me is like when when there's crabs and Julie's trunk yep, and then like not, there's so many things that seem inconsequential or like don't have the weight that they would if this was happening in the real world. And I guess to your point, like that is another thing, like well that doesn't feel real. It feels like we've just missed a big part of everybody dealing with this, or like Ryan Phillippy dealing with this, or I don't know, I don't I love this movie. I don't love it, but I will say I really enjoyed watching it this week. I did not love it in nineteen ninety seven.

I don't know that I ever revisited it in all that time. I think it was one of those movies that like made a strong enough impression that I remembered almost everything about it without ever having to go back to it. But rewatching it, you know, twenty six years later, it felt two things. One was like, Okay, this is a better made movie than I probably gave it credit for all these years. I think I thought this was not a good movie.

I think this is a very effective movie in some ways at what it's doing. The other part of this was just boy weird thing nostalgia is because this is so much fun and experience to watch as a forty two year old who saw this when I was fifteen or sixteen fifteen. I guess because it I remember where I was and who I was when I saw it, and it is so of its time in so many ways, and that's charming and comforting and all of those other things. And it just makes you think a lot of that time period and like why was this what we were interested in? And I think a lot of it was the sort of teenagers who are kind of their charting their own destiny in a way, right, Like that was the big thing with nine or two and zero was that it was the first show about teenagers that was written for teenagers, as if it was written by teenagers.

And this is a few years later, but it feels very much like right, this felt even though Kevin Williams and was probably in his late twenties maybe early thirties when he was writing this, it feels like, oh, but he's he's writing characters he respects. Even though again I have problems with a lot of the writing of this. Yeah, I can I can co sign that. I mean, for me, the nostalgia maybe isn't even as specific as like what you're laying out it. Maybe a lot of times I'll look at movies from around this time period and it'll just be like, boy, we didn't know what we had.

Yeah, And that's really for me with this one and the second one, what it kind of boils down to is like, you know, for all its faults and how persnickety I may have been about it in the past, like I mean, I can't, I can't. I can't muster those same complaints the same feelings now. I could not agree more with that in terms of the when we watch bad horror movies today, even the acturally released bad horror films. There is a sense of like laziness and resignation sometimes and you watch this and you're like, Sarah Michelle Geller is a fucking star in this movie and she dies, you know, fifteen minutes in, Like there is something about that that does feel like, oh, this is such higher quality than it would have had ten years ago, especially in the early two thousands, mid two thousand, the aughts, when you had a real sense of laziness about horror, and especially about teen horror.

M Yeah, it's definitely. It makes it hard to talk about things without that sheen for me of like, well, I know how bad it gets, so like I'm actually super jazz if this exists. Yeah, but I yes, I can acknowledge at the time it fell it fell flat for me because another thing is and I think maybe we could just talk about this across all the movies, not the third one, but I guess the first two is that our killer, and we're in a time where kind of killers matter still, I mean, Freddy Jason, Mike, I know that like we weren't hitting those heights arguably at the time, but like still the killer was important and I cannot express that this killer not just visually falls flat, his motivation is muddled and confusing who he even is, and that continues into the second one.

You are completely right, and I think that was for me. It was the big thing I hated back in ninety seven when I saw this. I remember walking out of the theater with my friend Jass and we both didn't like it and were mad. It was like, yeah, I mean, it wasn't like at the time, I remember saying, it wasn't even the guy they hit with the car because I didn't get it the first time I saw that, like, oh no, because I thought they hit the kid, And then this was the guy who just mad at the kid anyway and wanted to kill these kids, And I never understood it because I'm like, why did he even care about these kids? They actually like he could have framed them instead.

But then like watching this one, I'm like, oh, no, they actually hit the guy, but what who is this guy? And it yeah, it's it's such a a poorly executed choice. And now I think you want to move into part two. Yeah, let's do it, because I think what I one of the funniest things about I still know to me is how when they do the killer reveal in this one, and spoiler alert, we're going to tell you who does it is the way they have to spell it out so specifically in dialogue to make sure you understand who these people are and why they're doing this. Yes, so I actually like the second one, I on paper, I think better than the first one.

I could see that. Yeah, I so you had kind of mentioned it, but they it's all like on a on an island, but in a very shining kind of way. It's the end of the season, so like they're they're you know, alone, essentially cut off in the cast on this one. My gosh, this cast so so. Jeffrey Combs is in this movie.

Brandy's in this movie. Makai Pfeiffer is in this movie. Jack Black is in this movie. Oh my god, Jack Black is this movie. Baby John Hawks is in this movie.

John Hawks. This movie honestly has a lot of identity vibes to it too. Oh I could see that, Yeah, not just because of Baby John Hawks. No, but there's like a dry raining. There's a dryer.

Oh my god, you're right, there's there's a body part in the dryer. It's pouring rain. They're in a hospitality space that is empty. Yeah, it's a good companion if you look at compairson movies. I just I gotta say, but so like the cast hits, the location hits, but then again it all and then even so, the reveal of who the bad guy is feels very scream not to like put too fine a point on it.

And particularly scream three. So it ends up spoiler everybody. One of the bad guys ends up being like her new love and Juli's new love interest, which isn't shocking because like you know, there's only. So many people on this island now, so and again this is something we'll get into part three. But like your suspect, count keeps getting slimmer and slimmer because they all keep dying and not in fake ways.

It's like no, no, no, we've seen them stabbed in away where they couldn't have been taking their death. So wait, it can't be this guy now, can't be this guy now? Okay, it's very obviously this guy because he ran away and we didn't find his body, and this seems weird and but it is. It's it is very scream three, just in terms of the relation and such, but it what's something I like about it too? And I don't.

I don't know if this is intentional. This must have been written very quickly because it comes out a year after that. I think that needs, you know, you need to really think about that because that that turnaround, it's like saw. Around very much and this is not. And again I I will say I enjoyed watching this one and thought this was a better movie than I ever did before this this go around.

Watching it this way, I was like, oh, no, there's there's a lot here. There are a lot of problems in this movie, but there is a lot that's done really well, and just and thinking of the speed to market of it. See, what I'm wondering is if they did go to the book and pull something because in the book spoiler alert to the book, the person that knows what they did last summer is the brother of the little of the little boy they've killed, who is dating Julie, who has kind of crafted this like other identity, and there's a little bit of that that I was like, Oh, I wonder if that inspired it in any way because they had to write very quickly, so who knows. That's interesting. I don't know that I would have made that connection, but no, no, but I mean it's yeah, for a jumping off point, it's a it's a good way to kind of frame this style of story, as I guess as a summer movie.

I don't, I don't. It's fine, but like I like it as its own movie, Like I almost wish that it was a little bit more divorced from that story because it it hits some really classic slasher and like ninety slasher stuff. It's I don't know. And then so I have to talk about this because it's my favorite thing about this movie, and I mentioned it to anybody who will listen to me. But this is how I know the capital of Brazil.

So yep, the whole thing hinges on. So Brandy and Jennifer off Hewitt are roommates and which again very scream too. But she they get a phone call from like a radio and they're like, okay, answer this question. You get a trip. And the question is what's the capital of Brazil?

And Brandy says Rio de Janeiro and it's like whoa. And then in one of my favorite movie moments, period of all time. I will stand by this. She's just randomly at the resort looking at a globe and sees that the capital of Mihi is Brazilia, and it's like, and that's when we know all of this has been set up. Well, here's so fucking good.

Other part to that is if you're watching this movie and I remember the first time I watched this movie, I did know that the capitol was not Rio, and you're watching this the entire time, you're sitting there fuming because you're like, what the fuck that's not the fucking capitol. You couldn't even come on, there's a library and it's like lapedia. You couldn't fact check that you have your Oh how stupid. These characters got to Harvard and nobody's calling them out on this and they still won. And on one hand, if you're like me, thinking you're so smart and you're smarter than these characters, you then realize how dumb you are because you're like, oh, duh, why didn't you figure out that this was a that the contest didn't matter and you should have known that at that point.

But yes, I kind of like the long con of it that a movie has to like trust itself of like, look if there's somebody out there that knows the capitol. Maybe they'll know then that this was obviously, you know, a trick, or maybe they're gonna be really mad at this movie for the next hour and twenty minutes until they figure out that we knew too. I respect that. I I think that it's Yeah, it's gotta be a different experience, like knowing versus not knowing. And I don't even know if like I didn't I guess I didn't care, Like it wasn't like I didn't know.

I was just like, yeah, whatever, this is what the movie's doing, and I think that's like what it wants you to do. Yeah, I be like, yeah, this is the narrative of the film, and I'm not going to question it. So when like it is revealed like we all should have been questioning, that's like you did Yep. No, I was just bad because I thought I was smart. I think that was the problem.

But no, but I think like had somebody around had that that feeling, you would have been like, well, wait a second, how did we win this? Because we were very wrong? This is it's I don't know why I like it so much. No, I I'm going to say like, I the problems I had. I'm going to say, there probably there's a again, I'm like there's one.

No, there's two, there's like seven. Okay, fine, there's a few issues with this movie. I don't know what Jack Black is doing here. I don't know what that is credited. No, so we don't even like something happened and I guess and he wasn't, like he was fairly unknown at this point.

There's a weird like I'm watching this movie and I paused at one point because like it was one of the things that I had to say out loud. I'm like, look, because Brandon wasn't watching it, but I had to pause it and like shout at him. I'm like, hey, hey, thank goodness that we have black characters in this movie who are like positioned as actual characters, and that one of them lives, because otherwise this movie kills like three characters of color in a row in a way that felt really like, ooh, I'm feeling uncomfortable watching this. Well, there was like a disposability to it. Yeah, that was like you have a maid and a boat captain and like one other like random character walking by that all die one, two, three, and there's something very like, oh, this is not a great look.

But okay, well one of our main characters, two of our main characters are black. Okay, we kind of you know. And I don't think they were written that way. I think they were cast when they realized they were they could get Brandy and then uh turn this into something like a little bit different but on paper otherwise like ooh, that would have been an ugly look for a film. So there's that.

I think you're the The overall diversity in casting really really helps it from from feeling like that. Yeah, which is which is another reason why I like it. There's a lot Brandy is an active participant in the story. Yeah, they're good to stop to not continuously equate it to Scream. I mean in Scream there is a is a as a black friend character who really isn't as present.

Yeah, so it does that better. I think it's it's an actual character, not just like a my my black friend, which is. A trope, yes, which very much. It's is just like, hey, she should be a whole person if she's going to be there, I guess, and she is in this movie. Like not to say that Brandy and MacKaye Pfiffer's characters actually get to do anything, but like they're they're characters that are there and they're.

Pind so good. I think, I mean, is a very good actor, Like he's had a long career for a very good reason. He I mean again, he'd I think you should have had a bigger career. I think he is incredible charisma, He's very good looking, like he a yeah, I'm sure he's you know, has good money and has a good agent. But he should have been like the lead of an action franchise at some point in his career.

But the two of them, I think, like they're really good. They you want to watch them, Like they have a real like charisma and kind of naturalness on camera that just helps this feel more like a movie than I think a lot of movies like this often do. I I agree, I it's so weird, I do. I think I might have more problems with this one than the first one, But I also think I like this one more, maybe because I'm asking more of it, Like if I feel like if it had just tweaked a couple things, it could have like been like really fantastic. And maybe that's why I'm being harder on it.

So what do you think it could have done differently? I do. I while Makai is great, I think that his character is extremely one note. Yes, he is very funny, but what his character has to say isn't. His character is there to say things to have other characters act on or react to.

There is nothing to him as a person. Yeah, and I like there are a lot of red herrings in this I mean that's like a a part of the franchise at this point, Like, yes, because we get it in the first one, and I think it works better in this one. There's a lot of characters where you almost you're like, I don't think it's that person, but the movie is so committed to trying to make you think it is that person. Yep, that's it's kind of fun in like a Scooby Doo way. Yes, it's so very Scooby Doo.

And I think that the end, what it actually turns out being, isn't as fun of as all the red herrings were. Well, so let's talk about the ending. So Will who is a gossip girl dad and he is there to be the kind of boring nice guy that because there's a whole. We haven't, like, we haven't gotten into the plot of the see Christ know the plots with you, so we're not going to. But he's there to be like the alternate Freddy Prince Junior.

And there's something too like just boring white boy after boring white boy. But when he who really has again not much presence, it doesn't do much and then it then reveals himself to be didn't you get it? Will Benson Ben Ben's son as in the Sun of Ben, the guy that you killed last year or the year before that and then killed again. Yes, I am his son. It's very funny.

It it's because it comes out of nowhere. It's dumb. It's so dumb. But and it's I guess to a degree, like how how do you do a good reveal? I don't know.

I'm not gonna claim that I know all the ways that but it just as a viewer, it's like, I don't if you need to pause, stop down, remind me of a bunch of stuff and tell me why this person's important, then maybe something was missing. Well. I think they looked at the audience notes after the first film and realize, oh, our ending was confusing. The identity. Very Killer was confusing, so we have to make sure we're really clear about it in this one.

That's a really good point. And to circle back about endings, both of these movies have really wild cliffhangers that don't mean any day. We fa they're so stupid, both of them. If I hate that shit, I don't like the And again, it can be done well. Carrie does it well.

Carrie is the first film to do it in a you know, not maybe not the first, but the first kind of notable film to do it in a way of you know, our movie is over, we know who lived, we know who died. Here's our final gotcha moment and is it real? And you know with both of these, the first one ends with everything's great. Oh my god, I love college. I'm so smart, I'm doing great.

I'm on the honor roll. You're great too, I love you. Oh god, I know what you did last summer. Somebody jumps at me. And then this one ends with we're both great.

We own a home now a year later. That's how good you do at Harvard. You just graduate and you can buy house. Uh, electric toothbrushes, they're great. Freddie Prince Junior doesn't know how to brush his teeth with them.

He's brushing way too hard. You let the toothbrush do the work. But I interrupt myself. And then also, I don't know, last summer it's dumb. It's so they're doing a direct legacy sequel to this film, and oh, I really really really wish that they would just open at that.

Like the n's that's a very I also the movie there was that like the first of that shot ending a movie, because I feel like we had so many of those in subsequent years of the woman being pulled away as she like tries to grab that she's grabbing the ground but it's aimed right at the camera, so's just trying to grab the camera and then gets pulled away and let's go out. This is ninety eight has early and early because like before then, we couldn't drag cameras like that. No, no, we couldn't do shit like that. So yeah, it has to be I didn't actually think of that. It has to be an early one look trendsetter.

Hey, hey, there's something I do like that. Another thing about the ending that I think works much better is that they again, whether they learn their lesson or just figured well, we got to do, you know, swap things around. Is that in the first film, it is Freddy Prince Junior who does who like finishes him if you will, And in this one it is not Freddy Prince Junior gets knocked out pretty quickly and it's Julie who actually gets to kind of do the final stabbing or whatever they do. It pushes them in a grave and I don't remember how they kill them, but that's that's important, I think. And that's another reason I think we circled around it, and we were talking about Julie as a final girl.

Why she's unsatisfying in the first film. Not only does she like not really redeem herself morally, but also like she doesn't even do anything to actually fight, and in this one she does. Actually she is the one who issues the final blow. Yeah. I think as a final girl she she is more effective here definitely, which is strange.

I don't know that. I I don't know that I thought that until I actively thought that. There's so in the first one there's the very like come get me, yeah, and then there's the same scene in this I like it in this one, and there's an argument to be made that she is hyper sexualized in this one more so than in the first one, and I could agree with that, but she looks really pretty in that in that button down share, so I'm want to let it go. So oh, That's the other thing I forgot to mention was in the first one, how we get like like happy Julie and then sad Julie. And you know she's sad because her hair is flat and her bangs are now sad.

That's true. Her hair, her hair is so bouncy and the opening scene of that first movie that was a panting ad right there. But in this one, the I think I can't. That's the other thing about Jennifer love Hewett that you and I both read like interviews with her around the Heartbreaker's time where she really talked about this of like she because of her build, because she was a petite woman with a you know, slim waist and happened to have a very large chest. She's the kind of it's the kind of body that you it's very no matter how you dress it.

Basically, yeah. Yeah, And I was gonna say, like, as somebody who has large breasts, I deal with this all the time. It's either you're showing them or you're hiding them. And it's so you have a costume designer and a director looking at her in this movie saying like, yeah, let's go make the tank tap a little lower, a little lower, and no matter what you do, her body is going to kind of, you know, do what it does to a lot of people. But this movie, I think does it chooses very specific outfits for her to look very sexy.

And it's raining. So now we've got what shirts and all that stuff, and you know it's it's not and yet and yet the other thing the note I wrote here, there's a scene where because Brandy and Okay I fight for our couple, and so they're sharing a bedroom and like you hear the like loud sounds of a bed moving back and forth, and then it cuts to them and they're just jumping on the bed, which is really cute. And I laughed because I'm like, oh, that's actually a really funny reveal. But then also immediately I was like, oh, right, because we couldn't have sex in the nineties movies, but yet we can sexualize our lead but we can't actually like have sex. It's a very weird time.

It is. It is a very weird time. Yeah. I don't know. I think I like this movie.

I did. I actually did like this a lot more than I thought I would. It has problems, it really does. We mentioned a lot of them. Yeah, but it's entertaining.

It's the setting something I love they do. They when they get to the Bahamas, it is a party, it is busy, it is pretty, it is there are people outside, there's a fountain, all that, and then by the next day everybody had left but them, and now it is gray and it is empty and it is raining. And I think that was again it's like, oh, you've made what could have been a boring sequel. Immediately you visually made it interesting, right you made it rain. You're on an island.

That's cool, right right away? Yep, that setting is the first the first win. Wow. The fact that they took it out of that town, which would have just been the movie again because. It's and they're already relying on really the formula of the first movie in terms of we've got four cat we've got two girls and two guys, and you know, one's the jock, one's this Like they're already doing that, which you kind of Again, if you're making a sequel less than a year after you've released your first film, you have to do that to an extent because you don't have scripts laying around that you can pull from.

But so you you know, there's a formulaic aspect. But then they found ways to make this interesting. Yeah, I'm I cannot wait to hear what you think about the I know. Okay, okay, one more thing about this one before we pause and go to the third one can because I want to peel back again to talk about the actual story of Will was the Fisherman And oh no, I'm sorry. Ben was the Fisherman and again he killed his daughter's boyfriend, and then he was killed by the kids, and then he came back to life and then killed a bunch of them and came back and so on and all through this time he has a son who the son then for the last year has been befriending Julie and inserting himself into her life in order to get her to this island and kill her and kill freda France Junior or whatever.

Else Where did where did the Ben meet Julie? How did they meet? Do you remember in this movie, Like, how do they know each other? Her boyfriend? No, the boy?

The boy, yeah, the Ben's son. They were just in like a class together, right, Yeah. Where does Julie take classes at a college at? Like? What college?

Do you remember what college she's going to? She's very smart. I don't, I don't. Did you already say it? No?

Maybe I did. I don't know, but I believe Julie and Brandy are students at Harvard. Oh okay, maybe that sounds right. Yeah, okay, So but like it's just a good coincidence. He was already like was like.

This, So Ben, like Ben or will whoever? This fisherman who you know? Because we met Anne Hash we met No, that's not his sister. Okay, we met other people from the town, like Ben has spent I guess I'm trying to figure out where the planning started. Was it like when Ben was thirteen and Dad was like, Okay, look, you need to go to Harvard because at some point in life you've got to be in the same place as the girl who's gonna kill your sister.

You know. You know what, I would have loved if he just was just on campus. It would have made more sense. And then he was clearly a student. Yeah, and then there was like a reveal that he or even like if it was a throwaway right line, that he was never revealed like enrolled, like even something like you know, they just let anybody walk around those campuses.

Yeah, that would have been it would have been great. Yeah, because otherwise it just it's that's a very big coincidence because it's. Not like I never thought of that. It's never like the one of the hardest colleges to get into, Like it's not like so, oh yeah, you know if I just happened to sneak up on you at uh you know, North Carolina Community College, like I could have bought that, but instead it's like, oh no, we're in the most difficult law school to get into, and what do you know, what a great I'm here too. They could have just met at like work, that club did they go to, Yeah, it's just been like a club that they go to a lot, and he worked.

There are other ways to do it, for sure. Yeah, it would have involved like a level of commitment to this plan that then if then I want the movie to be about that, Yeah, I want. Like uh an in between movie, like a prequel movie where it's been like taking his LSATs over and over again to try to get into Harvard. Because that's some saw shit, right, Oh. Yes, totally, yeah, where you are collectively, Yeah, there's a lot of planning that goes into that.

Ye who wrote his letters of recommendation, I'd like to know it's a lot. Most interesting part of this movie. I kid because I actually did find it interesting, but that really stuck with me. Yeah. The last thing was that Freddy Prince Junior runs weird.

I don't know if we I didn't notice. I wish he was in this movie more. It's not he's not really. I don't know that I wanted more. I just I find him.

I love that him and Sarah Mitchell Geller have seemed to have built a lovely life and they met on this this is the first film, and that's wonderful. But I just he seems like a good guy. I just don't find him interesting on camera. I I I agree, I can't agree. I think he's cute and I good looking back good looking.

That goes a long way. I don't know. I don't like sideline in him. If he's in the middle, let him all right, Well, how about we take a quick break so I can go baste my roast. And is that a euphemism?

No, I actually have to baste my my Uh. I got some slow cooker. No, it's on the slow cooker. It's in the oven. And that's a complicated part.

But yes, I have some pork that I have to go most moisten up a little bit most your pork. All right, we're gonna be back to talk about the thrilling conclusion of the I know when when is half of me? I've gotta be genarrow. I don't know why then I don't do the song. But now I'm not the kada person.

We're the fashion that first vision or dancer or romance. But I gave it to the rhythm and the beata. Whoa when we are eagerly back because it is time to talk about a movie that has I think, Christine, is this is this your identity? I have put a lot of myself into this movie for some reason. Tell me about the first time you encountered I'll always know what you did last summer from two thousand and six.

Okay, so the first time I watched it was probably like twenty fourteen. I was living in Austin, and we rented this movie from I Believe Fulcan Video, which is one of the video stores at the time, just because it was like, oh, I didn't I don't even know that I knew this existed. I don't think anybody did. This went straight to DVD book because this wasn't even a time of streaming yet. Yeah, so it was like, okay, so we rented it, and it's obviously like very low budget, Like you can tell it's a low budget movie.

It's definitely more low budget than the other two, so you know, it kind of tells you what it is right away. But then it's so strange and like, like the setting is strange, yep, the way that the myth is realized in this film is strange. The way that the fishermen realized is strange. So then it became just this weird thing that didn't people didn't know about. And very rarely do I have one of those.

I don't feel like I'm the person that has the weird thing you don't know about. I'm the one you tell about the weird thing, and then I'm like, oh, that's cool and weird. Thanks. So back then we used to do movie nights, and we would you would have to bring a movie to the movie night, and it was a good idea to bring something that people hadn't seen. So I decided that I, this is the movie we're gonna bring for the movie night.

We're gonna make people watch this fucking movie. I cannot tell please watch this movie. Don't let us spoil it for you, because it is so weird and so shocking in some ways. But so I have these this group of people watching this movie, and please when that when it turns out that that Fisherman is now a ghost, no one understood what was happening. It was like, what, what, what's it?

Hold on? Did I miss something? Because that's the feeling when you're watching this is what did I miss? What is happening? It is such an abrupt, oddly executed reveal, and I loved it.

What this movie chooses to do and not do, Yes, look, I don't know. So that's my relationship with this movie. I couldn't. I think one of the really striking things about a lot of the those types of slashers in the nineties, like Scream like this, is that it was just a guy wearing a thing and it could be any guy rare in anything if they have a problem with you. Now, all of a sudden flash forward the two thousand and six, the Fisherman is like the representation of revenge and evil.

Yes, he's not even really a guy anymore. Nope, he is the manifestation of vengeance for unclaimed manslaughter. I do not understand how we got here. I don't feel like they properly set up us up for that. No, and all of that is kind of amazing.

It's just like, wait a second. So I recently wrote about this movie can't could not get get get my head around it. Basically, what happens is just to give you. And even though we're telling everybody watch this movie, but if if the people haven't, please just tell everybody what happens in it. So basically, it's set in Colorado, which couldn't be further away from the coastal town and then the tropical island.

So now we're in Colorado, but it's an off season, so that actually kind of works. And it's these kids who who want to do a prank, and in doing the prank, one of the kids dies and all the kids involved in the prank like have this guilt about it, which sounds extremely similar to what happens in the first movie, but like it becomes kind of meta in that the prank is a Fisherman's style prank because the Fishermen exists in their universe and they also have the original Fisherman's Hook, which is somehow like imbued with the spirit of vengeance. Now, yeah, I think, yeah, right, I think. I mean they said, so that was thirty five dollars on eBay to buy the Fisherman's Hook. Yeah, but I guess I think that there's like an intonation or at least like the idea that it's actually the original hook, in that it's maybe haunted.

But even if it's not, even if it's not pretend I made all that up, it doesn't matter. They still kill this kid by accident. He dies in this prank, and they all feel really bad, so the next year they all start dying. So the natural thinking would be like, oh, this kid's police officer dad or maybe his or maybe his I don't know, I'm making. Things, or your cousin or his the other police officer who's because everybody in this movie is in love with our final girl.

So it's like the police officer who has a crush on the final girl. Maybe it's him. Uh, it's like the roster of suspects. You're like, yeah, it's got to be that guy. It's got to be that guy's got Okay, who's left?

I guess it's that guy. Wait a minute, No, one's left. And and then people and because people like the second one, as we discussed, people are dying, red herrings consistently die, but then all of a sudden, dude is like blip it out of existence on the top of a ski lift, like yeah, and then his blood is black goo. Yeah, obviously, And the only way you can kill him is to stab him with the with the hook that is the haunted hook. But also you can then push him into a snowblower and people disintegrate.

I couldn't remember why I thought the hook was haunted, but it is because because the hook. Seems to be the only thing that can hurt him, So it's got to be a magic hook. Is it any hook? Oh? I don't know, because we only see that one hook.

I mean technically when she pushes until into like the turbine, that's kind of hooky, right, Like, is it just any metal sharp object, perhaps. So she ends up killing the ghost? Yes, snow, how do I think it's like a snowblower? I think Colorado? It's yeah, I guess what's supposed to be.

But yeah, it's like the thing that you know grinds up ghosts. Yeah, it's kind of like in or It's to me it's the same thing. And like a Children of the Corn movie that grinds up the corn. It's plow. It's a snowplow.

I don't know. We're we're not scientists, We're just movie watchers. What what was that choice to push him in there? To make him a ghost? So I I now, have you done any real like have you been able to learn anything about the man?

Me? Neither. I read the That's why I watched the features because I own this tv D. Of course I do. That's why I watched the features because I was like, I need to fucking know, right right, I promised you it never gets addressed.

So the director, the director seemed like a young hip dude, so it just like getting getting his feet wet in the industry, young hip dudes. I think he's French, right, yeah, yeah, and he's worked a lot since The only other like film he did was Stomp the Art, which I did not see but did well, and it, you know, was a very different movie from this, and it was a studio film. After that, he's done TV, but he's done like extensive TV, Like he's worked on every TV show he's he's clearly like well employed and probably jumped from show to show. So he's had a really good career. Just this, I think, is you know, one of only two of his feature films.

The writer is interesting. The writer is Michael uh Wise or Vice, who seems to be a specialist in sequels of franchises that have either gone long in the tooth or that nobody has certainly realized we're sequeling. I know, my god. So he wrote Butterfly Effect two, which is terrible, and and the screenplay, and again you never know on a writer, like how much of it is theirs and how much of it isn't. But Butterfly Effect three is actually great and weird.

Butterfly Effect three is kind of actually a kin Like if I was making a list of movies that I would put in a I'll always know what you did last summer grouping, I would put Butterfly Effect three in that grouping because it's a similar thing where it's like long in a franchise does something really new and really weird, so that but Butterfly Effect two is terrible and it's like like this movie about all white people being white and terrible. So there's that. He did Hostile three, which is not great, but again I don't know how much of that was the script, and he did The Scorpion King four. Many things I need to talk about here, and I apologize because we're here to talk about I'll Always Know What You Did last Summer?

But I need to address two parts about this one. Were you aware that there are at least four installments of The Scorpion King. I am funny that you mentioned it because those aforementioned movie nights that is a franchise we dug into. Okay, have you seen Part four? No?

I have not. Can you look at the cast on Part four? Scorpion King four, Quest for Power? This movie written by the writer of Always Know What You Did Last Summer. The cast includes Will Kemp, who's a Hallmark mainstay.

He's in all the Hallmark movies and he's actually pretty charming. Barry Botstwick, Michael Bean, m Emmett Walsh, Lou Farigno, and Rutger Hower. I don't know which one is the Scorpion King. I have no idea which one is the fourth of the Scorpion Kings. But I need to see this movie on that cast alone.

Do I need to see the first three because I've never actually seen any of them? No, so I have seen the first three, and that's why I haven't seen the fourth. I see it's a lot that if they famously have really. Bad c GI. Okay, okay, there's I don't think there is c g I in this movie.

This movie that would be very practical. Yes, oh is this one all talking? Maybe it's better. Oh no, I meant I'll always know what you did last summer. Oh no, I'm that man is a ghost?

Yeah, yeah, I think I'm thinking of Part two. Pert two was very practical. Yeah no, there's glowy eyes and bloody goo and yeah, I'm completely wrong. The first time I saw I was like it ended and we were like, was that man a ghost? And then he literally had to sit there and go like, well, he had glowy eyes, he could disappear.

He did have black blood, so I think he was real, and I think he was a ghost. You know, as you're saying all this, you're like, yeah, because there's no conversation about it. We get down to the last suspect, right, the last person that could possibly be the all no killer. It's the cop who seems like, yeah, he's a shifty cop. He clearly has things going on.

Gotta be him. No, it's not him, because there's there's Fisherman who just stabbed him and killed him. Okay, so now oh and now Fisherman just his eyes glowed. Now we know he's oh and you get shot right because you shoot him. The cop shoots him like put like two feet away with a shotgun and he doesn't do anything.

So that's when you're like, you can't there's no bulletproof ast for that. And then he realized, yeah, he's ghost spirit vengeance thing. So it's so strange. It really, it's really weird. It's weird, and I glove that it did that.

And now the other thing, I'm curious if you felt this at all. There was another movie franchise that I kept thinking of watching this one some for obvious reasons. Wait this, I'm watching this and it opens in a it's like this amusement park at the summer, there's a there's a prank, there's there's this happening, and immediately I'm like, this has like Final Destination three vibes about it. And then I'm watching him like this guy, that one guy looks a lot like the guy from Final Destination two. Oh, he is from Final Destination too, So the entire time I also had that going.

And the other part of this is Final Destination three is not really it's a it's a sequel to one and two, but not really right, it's separate characters going through something identical to what characters in the first two films went through, but there's no repeating characters. But there is a mention at one point of like, oh, I was doing some Internet research and I found this weird thing that happened a couple of years ago in this other town where death was stalking them, which is kind of what happens in this one. Right, It's like, oh, yeah, you know ten years ago that that fish guy I was made up urban legend I was talking about, Wait, he did actually kill a bunch of kids who witnessed, who were part of a manslaughter who then this, so there was and again whether I can't not even sure what was made when, but it felt very like, oh, that's weird.

How how much those two kind of floated around each other in that way. That's really interesting. It's hard. This one's starts at like a carnival like. Yeah, which is how part the first part three opens.

And unfortunately that type of carnival fair amusement park stuff is rare, so when you see it, it's kind of like, it's so. Pleasing to the eye to watch a horror movie that has carnival miss to it. Yep. Definitely the redeeming feature of Child's Play three. It's did you know he was going to be a ghost or no?

Okay, no, I went into this knowing I knew how passionate you were about this movie. I knew that you had written about it, but that I wasn't supposed to read it until I watched this movie because it would give things away. So I'm watching this movie and I'm like, okay, I know it's gonna be there's there's got to be something to it. And I'm watching it. I'm like, okay, this is what was I mean, it's very two thousand and six, like the the fashion, the you know, the I'm a brunette so I'm a bad girl, like the little things about it that felt very of its time, but I'm not getting it yet, Like I'm not.

I'm like, Okay, you know this feels very of its time, but I don't know what you know, I wouldn't think an hour into this movie this is one of Christine's most fascinating movies. And then as soon as it happened, I was like, Okay, that makes sense. It doesn't make sense, but it kind of doesn't make sense in that way if if you're get what I'm saying. So it's like all of a sudden, if we all show up to the theater for Scream, Yeah, and then it's like, oh yeah, ghost Face is like a real ghost now. Yeah, but by the way, it's Abneyville horror.

Just go with it. Yeah, we're not going to talk about it that way. We'll clarify it. But he's totally a ghost because yeah, and it's something. The frustrating thing about this is like you, it makes it like you want to talk about it with other movies, but it's something you and I both have said, like we love when a movie does genre switch, Yes, but like you never want to tell somebody a movie does that, because then you're giving away.

And this one like imagine like really trying to convince somebody like no, sit down, please, I lent you this movie. I want you to watch it, and they're gonna get like seventy minutes into it and be like, this is just another shitty I know movie. What the wait? What? Oh it's over now?

What wait? What's it's wild? Very strange. I do wish maybe if we were just going like full supernatural with it, that maybe it could have started earlier, so like some of the other stuff could have maybe been more interesting or like or a part of me loves how out of nowhere it seems. But also like if if your killer is now not bound by the laws of physics and nature, then why.

Why was he ever abound by the laws of physics in nature? Why isn't it more fun? You know? Yeah, but there is a couple I will say, like there's a couple of decent things, like they are in this abandoned like resort ski lodge type thing yep, and all that stuff is really cool. There's like a kitchen thing, yeah, yeah, the the setting again like that this one is Colorado.

Again. Why Colorado? I have no idea. Maybe because it was close to Canada where they probably filmed it, but that it feels like in all three movies, the where they're taking place is such a big part of it. So you're in Colorado, so you get a lot of like shots of trees and shots of mountains and all that.

You get a ski lift, you get abandoned or empty resort because it's you know, off season in Colorado and a ski town. And that the final sequence where you are running through an empty big space that has like an industrial kitchens. There's different implements you could use. All of that is cool and it's just a weird coincidence, I think at this franchise, I can't imagine that was ever, Like in the line notes for something you have to do if you're making an I know movie is have a memorable setting. But it's funny how that really does come into play for all three.

Yeah, and it's like one of my favorite things about it, which I think elevate the franchise for me. It makes great use of its locations. Yeah, I don't know that we can say the same I keep comparing it to Scream. But I mean, yeah, Stream in New York City quote unquote, that was its own thing. Yeah, I know.

But even like I don't have a problem with it being perpetually set in Woodsboro or in college. But when these movies say they're doing something, they're doing it. It is a coastal town that plays into it. It is a resort that plays into it like it's fun and cool, good use of like an abandoned Colorado ski resort off Season two. Very much like you all this production value just because you're like in this big, weird place.

Yeah, and then you get again thinking of the era when spoiler alert. So let's talk about our favorite cast member here. Bad girl Brunette toy DeVito became Melyssa Hastings pretty you know what. She is such a mid two thousands like edgy badass. Yes she should.

She should be the poster child like if you're ever looking for like you know how we talk about like, oh, we love nineties goth girls and horror movies, but there is like this kind of like edgy scream o emo kind of like Hollywood. Girl, right, feel to be like we can't get a as a douchku, what's next next? She's thick bang like a big belt. Yeah, dark hair her. So her death scene when she because she's also a rock star and it's very like Eva Lavini rat.

So when she dies, you know, she falls off a big building. So her body is like splayed out in a weird little angle, and she's wearing like black leather are kind of like what I wear when I cook. Things that have oil that covers up from your wrist to your shoulder. She's got that, and she's got these like big chunky shoes, and the way she's positioned because she's fallen off of a big thing, I'm like, she's a brat stall Like she looks like somebody like like the director's daughter like dropped her brat's girl and he was like, oh, that that's my tableau right there. It's very strange.

That character is is very strange. Yeah. Well, also because you are back to like young people who are kind of assholes and have very little in this case even more so, I feel because like the the they all waffle right, like this thing happens and it's their friend who was in on it, like they were doing a very irresponsible prank. Right, did we talk about like they have somebody show up as the hook monster chase them in a big public space. So that and I thought like they were videotaping it, but nobody was videotaping it.

They just wanted their friend to do like a wild skateboard trick and he shock everybody at the fair, right, Like if it was a little bit more of like, oh, we're videotaping this and we're gonna send it in to whatever Ashton Kutcher show used to be, like, then may be something, but no, they just do it, which is weird, but that this happens. And the main thing is like they staged it and it was meant to be safe, but somebody moved the mattress. Right, They had a mattress for when the skateboard dude jumps off the cliff, he would land in a safe space and we never find out who moves it. Yeah, I mean the ghost? Right, So did the did like is that did the ghost?

Does he do this as a test? Does he set Oh my god, does he sacrifice somebody? So to test that somebody use white friends to see if they will do the right thing and come forward and say this is kind of our fault or they will hide it. And then he's like, yes, I have my summer of twenty six planned out. Now do you think it is a test?

The second that hook sells on eBay, he gets an alert and he's like, oh shit, the hook is on them. Oh he's inside the hook, so. He is a text So he's like watching it. You're right here, doesn't even need the Google alert. He's like, now front receipt.

It's like a like a genie in a lamp, like yeah, yeah, this works. So now they get the hook. He's like, Okay, what are they gonna do with the hook? Oh, it looks like they're gonna pay play a prank if this goes poorly, you know what, I'm bored. Why don't I move the thing?

Yeah? And then the kimbles and then I'll have something to do this summer. I like it. Yeah in Colorado. Nothing to do in Colorado in the summer.

So it kills the kids. It's so strange, it really is, but it's also kind of fun and like a time capsuley. Way very much. I mean again, the fashion, the the way like it's a weird because I mean they're like, there's one character who has a little a little bit more of pathos, but he dies first, right, And that's Roger the kid, who's kind of like the first one to be like, hey, maybe we should tell everybody, wait, we did something really bad. Because they never really seem to think they did anything that bad, which is another running theme of these movies.

Yeah, there's if they started out as like self reflective morality tales, they really don't end up going that way. It's kind of just like, how can we make make sure these characters aren't really on the hook? Well, And that's something that I think is very to go back to the original source material. Right. The book ends with the two characters who were remaining together saying, Okay, we're gonna tell like, like, we've gone through all this where our lives are safe, everybody knows who was going to kill us now, but now we have to go to Like it's not that clear, but it's very clear that they are saying at the end, we're gonna take responsibility for what we did last summer, and that never happens in these movies.

Nobody ever actually ultimately stands up and says, hey, by the way, because at the end of this one in particular, where now the pol the chief of police, his deputy. What is it like five other young people all dead, slaughtered like brutally slaughtered in weird ways now and you've got these two remaining young people who survive and like the you know, the last cop standing is like okay, well are you sure he's gone? They're like, yeah, he's gone, and like what what is the police report after that? And like it is very clear to me at the end of this because we see one year later and we get the same kind of cliff but one year later, like she's thriving. Sounds like he's thriving every but he's happy.

You wouldn't be happy if you one year later had like somehow had to pay for inadvertently causing the death of somebody two years earlier. So it's like the the main thing on this, like yeah, you'll get punished by having your friends killed, but you still don't ever have to actually come forward and admit what you did last summer or that summer or eight summers earlier. No, it's it is true. It does not really it never really focuses on that aspect. Yeah, it's okay, I mean when when the alternate is it also involves a demon fishman with glowing red eyes who bleeds black goo, and his only source of weakness is the hook with which he uses to kill others.

Like, Yeah, it's totally cool. What a ride, what a. True child ride. I am extremely excited about this new Yeah, if I hope it lives up to these previous three. I mean that's the thing is like now that we can look because I mean the so you had between ninety seven and two thousand and six, right, so a nine year spread of three movies, two of which were released so close, and then one that dripped out later without any involvement from anybody but within the universe.

So the as a franchise, Like, how do you look at this? What do you what is this comparable to? Where does it stand for you in the you know, echelon of all horror trios and franchises. Well, I mean I think it's really hard to compare to anything. Yeah, I think the amount of time in between is strange all all the way around the fact that it was like boom boom one, then the next and then like a huge stretch of time because like the Scream movies, I drink every time stands a screaming.

But I mean again, like it it is like you have you. There is no I know what you did last summer without scream and it's in there. It is a trilogy. And most franchise movies did not stop at three. Granted this is not stopping at three either, if we do get this this sequel, but that's also strange too.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm looking at the Cabin in the Woods, Cabin in the Woods, Cabin Fever DBD, and I'm like, is it like Cabin Fever. Yeah, I don't know that this has a counterpart, but it is I think the the concept right of like young people being involved in a situation in which they're responsible but not entirely responsible. Right, It's not like, oh I shot someone and my friends all covered it up. Like No, I was driving and I hit somebody, so it was dark out right, that's the first film, And in this case, it was we played a prank that went terribly wrong, which is every late seventies early slasher anyway.

So it's one of these like, Okay, so you've got young people who are being who made the wrong decision, but you can understand the decision right, and the first one in particular, where they all have very bright futures ahead of them, and that's what the first act of that movie is all about, establishing who's going to college, and who's going to who's won a beauty pageant and all that. So there's I think the frustrating thing for me and looking at all three is that, like what I was saying before, the films never contend with the fundamental wrongness of their action. They're punished, and the ones who survive and like emerge victorious still never have to ever deal with the fact that that what they did was really wrong.

So I would like for the next one, I really hope that is something that it actually takes into account, because I think these movies, as much as like, oh people die brutally, I think it lets the final girls off too easily in another. View, And truly I think maybe to echo that yeah some more, trying to live in the spirit of Lois's original creations, like yeah, I think maybe they need to learn a lesson or self reflect deal with the gray morality of the situation. Yeah, because like the dude, the dude is a murderer. They should have dealt with the fact that like, oh, I don't know how I feel about the fact that, like we kill the murderer, but nobody really. Even talks about and it had they gone back, that's the other part too.

And you think about it if you were to go back to the first one, if they had gone to the cops, right, if they hit this guy with their car and call the cops, or when Johnny Glecki's car drove by they said, look, you have to go get an ambulance here. Yeah, what happens. The ambulance picks up the body of this guy who is probably dying or who knows because apparently he's magic and it's not the good guy who died, so maybe that guy still lives, or now this guy comes to life and is like, oh, it's somehow tied to the death of this other guy who maybe he didn't very correctly, Like we don't know, but it's like them coming going to the cops for that dead body would not only have saved everybody down the line, but also like would have punished a murderer from the very beginning, like and it wouldn't have been pretty Prince Junior.

It's really interesting. I think that these movies might be a little bit more fun than people think. Yeah, especially now if you, like me, watched these in the nineties and we're like, oh, it wasn't very good. It was a scream rip off. Like yeah, back then it was give it another glance.

I'm telling you, they're fun in a weird way. And if you ever wanted to watch Jack Black Dye, you get to in. Part two wild Stuff. While yeah, it's so strange. Yeah, Zach had said something about Jennifer Love Hewitt being an executive producer.

This is just all something somebody else said to me, So I don't know if any it's true, but he expressed that it's his understanding that she likes to cast individual, interesting people, because she also did interesting casting on The Ghost Whisper. Okay, So I don't know how much of the interesting casting and the second one has to do directly with her, but I like to believe that it does because it's one of my favorite parts of the movie. I mean, Jeffery Colmes, man, what's Jeffery comes doing there? Everything. I like to believe that she is a cool, interesting person that wanted cool, interesting genre people in her movie.

Why not? Yeah, I'll buy it, and I think. That's rad if it's true. And the next one currently because it's gone through development hell for a while. At one point Mike Flanagan was attached to making a continuation, but now it is it's two ladies, which is cool.

Jennifer Oh, Caitlyn Robinson. Yeah, I don't know either of them, but both the writer and the director are two different women. I'm not familiar with either of their work, but one of them also was attached to a center Stage TV series, which would be very exciting for me. So already I'm like, okay, so I vibe with with her, you know, we get along with it. Just to talk about one other thing that I think we need to talk about before we go that I thought.

So I get my ten dollars DVD set from Amazon, and when I get to the third one and I put it in my DVD player, it's a two thousand and six DVD, So you know, you can picture what that means and what it means when you turn it on. The first thing that happens as a trailer plays, and it was only one trailer, one movie trailer, and then it went right to the menu. I don't know if you watched your DVD of this, But what was the trailer? Do you remember? I don't.

Oh, it is a Christine movie. And by Christine movie, I mean you are probably I mean I'm in this group too, but we are probably only one of the four hundred and thirty six people who have watched this movie. What is it? This movie that has a population for three six? Oh?

My god, you're right. Yeah, that's at the front of my DVD. Yes, and it just if anybody doesn't know Population for three six? Christine, do you want to talk about it? I know you've written and talked about.

It for Population for three six. Okay, so I've talked about it on a podcast. If you want to hear me talk about this on a podcast, Certified Forgotten podcast, you should just listen to that podcast. Anyways, it's good. I was on that podcast with my two friends Matt.

One of my friends named Matt said that he liked it better than Midsummer and I said, oh, yeah, it's a better movie than Midsummer. I don't know what we were doing. I don't know if I believe that, but. It's it's Fred Durst, isn't it. Everybody?

Fred Durst who was also in Uh, I saw the TV glove lymp biscuit. Oh he's Are you fucking kidding me? No, I am not. It's a small part. He's good.

Who knew. I'm convinced that myself and this filmmaker would be best friends if we just knew each other. I believe that. I do believe that, because come on, who else puts Fred Durst in their movie? Well?

Whoever? Well Michelle McLaren, who made Population for three six? That's true. Yeah, Population four three six not a good movie or better than Midsummer It's. A I like it.

I like that movie. I only watched it once, but it is for anybody who doesn't know. It is Jeremy Sisto and Fred Durst. Apparently, EDI is sort of like the Lotter of the lottery. Mimind me the lottery, But it has like Shirley Jackson vibes.

I'd say Shirley Jackson energy. Yeah, and it's about a census taker. So if you were like, I don't know, there aren't many horror films about a census census taking, then like, this is your one. So become one of the four hundred and thirty six people who have seen it. Yeah, I forgot it existed apparently up until five seconds ago.

Yes, I was just so happy when that played on the dvdats. I'm like, oh, this is everything about this is just screaming Christine. Now. Yeah, I don't know. I guess that was my time.

It was a good time. Two thousand and six, folks, Please, I think I feel like we've done a lot to get people to watch all three movies, but in particular I'll always know. It is you had to buy it, it's not it's not streaming. I don't think this one is streaming. I think it is rentable and like Apple or again, for ten bucks, you get all three movies on DVD.

I think I I think I got found the DVD at like Walmart. I definitely see that happening. Yeah, do you have any more to say about the I know series franchise. I don't think so. I really truly love it.

Any Any negative thing I said is just in the just for discussions sake. I would I would, I would hang up with you and watch them right now. I will definitely watch them again, and I never thought I would say that a few years ago. So yeah, they've aged, well they are they are they make choices. You know, they do things that you don't quite expect.

Again, especially the third one, but even in part two there you didn't have to make that movie to have made a quick sequel to the first movie. And I think they they there was some wild ideas here and there, and they come out and all three are executed well enough for what they're doing. I mean, that's all you can ask for, right, I would say, So. With that being said, everybody drive carefully, Okay, don't buy don't go on the eBay and buy like serial killer memorabilia and then play with it and then be irresponsible about I suppose like also like I don't, I just I hate pranks. I think we've also talked about that pranks are dangerous and bad and people die as you can see, and then more people die because you don't admit that you were stupid and pranks.

So just don't don't do any of those things. Yeah, And if a radio station calls you out of the blue and gives you a question and then tells you you're right, maybe just do a quick google quick make sure you really were right. It could save you a lot of problems. It couldn't because I was, you know, and you took the right lesson from that, because I was going to say, learn your geography, everybody practice your country capitals because it's important for Jeopardy and other trivia. But but that wouldn't have made any difference because then if they were right, then that wouldn't They still would have been slaughtered.

So they just they need they need to be more discriminating against who they accept free trips from. It's true, that's very true. That's the lesson we can all I think so, I think so, all right, everybody enjoy your summer. Yeah, hap, happy summer. Don't don't get hooked.

Ah, my friend ju thank you, Carlo. I was catching back good thinking I can know you. I got you found my side. Are you happy? And I spent so many nights thinking.

How you're doing me wrong. I'm be strong and I try to get along. Then best Roman face heaven I have passing by you with that bad look about your face. Absolutely passional way unity that unknown just wants leaking me. You be back to bother me.

Oh my god, every one of god damn s just don't know well