Chapo Trap House - MM15 - Save Your Servants!: Barker, Blatty & Writers In Hell

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

[Note: these Movie Mindset Horrortober Season 1 episodes were already unlocked for free this year over on the Patreon feed, just adding them to the public feed to make them more widely available. To get every Movie Mindset episode, subscribe at patreon.com/chapotraphouse.] Brendan James returns to take on two triumphant works from writers-turned-directors: Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” (1987) and William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist III” (1990). Both films feature visions of Hell’s intrusion onto earth; two competing and complementary visions of evil, one from a gay British man and the second from a devout American Catholic. Will, Hesse and Brendan go deep on these films, highlighting in Hellraiser some of the most ghoulish practical effects ever put to screen, and in Exorcist III dissecting one of the most infamous jump-scares in film history.

I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready Let's all go to the lobby Let's all go to the lobby Let's all go to the lobby To get ourselves a drink To get ourselves a drink

Delicious things to eat Delicious things to eat Sparkling candy beans Sparkling drinks such as standing Sparkling drinks such as standing Chocolate powers and a candy Welcome back boys and ghouls to Ghoul V Screamset Horrortober. On today's episode, we will be discussing Clive Barker's Hellraiser from 1987 and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist III from 1990. These are two singular visions of evil that are united both in their thematic content,

but they are also paired together because they are both directed by the authors of the source material. And they are both amazingly assured and perfectly executed films by two men who are primarily writers and in Barker's case had never directed a movie before. Their competing visions of evil and damnation, one of them comes from a gay British man and the other a devout American Catholic. And I think we will have quite a bit of fun appealing back the veil on just what that entails in these two authors and directors

visions of satanic otherworldly evil. And without further ado, joining us on today's episode is Gullvyscreamsets returning champion from season one of Movie Mindset. It is the co-host of Blowback, Brendan James. Hey, everybody. Yes. Brendan, it's so good to have you back on the show. You were on the season one to talk about Kyoshi Kurosawa, and now you and I both are both confirmed horror movie heads. We gotta come on to talk about Hellraiser and Exorcist III,

two movies that we are both obsessed with. Yes, we talked a little bit about Exorcist III. We couldn't help but talk about it even on our Cure episode that we did, because it's always seeping into the the membrane of you went when I'm when I'm talking about the spooky side of Films and this is also you did an episode on exorcist three I think for the sleazoid show and I did an episode with them on the ninth configuration the only other movie that William Peter Blatty directed

So I actually a fun fact is when I was going on sleazoids The first thing I asked was can I do exorcist 3 and they said will actually did exorcist 3? Like a couple of it happened ago when I was like fuck a shout out shout out to sleazoids But Hesse you will finally get to do Exorcist 3. Yes. First, we're going to talk about, we're going to go chronological. First, we're going to talk about Hellraiser, but I guess the thing that strikes me about both of these movies is going back to that they are both the products of the writers of the source material.

Because Clyde Barker had never directed a movie before and William Peter Blatty had only directed one other movie before tackling like his premier franchise after a Widely considered terrible exorcist sequel Exorcist 2 heretic but the thing is like This gets into like why I'm fascinated with the horror genre as kind of like elemental Filmmaking as like stripping down to the bare essentials of like how to provoke a reaction in an audience, how to get your audience to feel something. And in this case, like the fact that these are two primarily authors directing these movies, I think you can see in both of them like, and how perfectly executed these movies are,

like a real test case for like the horror genre and just like filmmaking as like its essential like power in these movies. Yes. Absolutely. filmmaking as its essential power in these movies. Yes, absolutely. And from the sound design to the editing to the gore effects and just like, it's astonishing that these aren't directed by two masters like William Friedkin or John Carpenter or something. Yeah, I actually would go as far as to say I like Exorcist 3 more than Exorcist 1,

which is a bold statement, but... Well, once again, we get back into the Halloween 1 versus Halloween 3 dichotomy and these triptychs of films. It's so hard. I mean, the original Exorcist, Friedkin's Exorcist, is a complete masterpiece. It is such a brilliant movie. But something about Exorcist 3 is like, it's the better horror movie. And I think it because it has like a more earnest grappling with true evil. Like and I think like in Blatty is really like struggling with his own pessimism and faith over the existence of evil in the world. And like it Exorcist really really goes to 11. But let's start with Hellraiser which is

basically a writer Instead of dealing with his pessimism and doubts about faith. It's really him dealing with his sadomasochistic kinks and perversions I have seen the future of horror His name is Clive Barker. Hellraiser. Beyond any terror you have imagined, a nightmare, unlike anything you have witnessed, is born. Because within these walls, the unholy is unleashed. Hellraiser, a film by Clive Barker, will tear your soul apart. What I love about Hellraiser, which is based on the Clive Barker novella, The Hellbound Heart, is that like, okay, the Hellraiser, it's one of those movies that's like when

you were a kid was just like beckoning to you with pure malevolent intent from the horror section of the VHS store. It was Pinhead holding that box on the cover. We have such sights to show you that I was just like, oh, man. And then, like for me as a kid, I don't know about you guys, but like if you were hardcore enough, like if you had passed the Stephen King test in terms of like reading horror fiction, then like then you might be twisted enough for Clive Barker because he like his writing just introduces like sex on like a level that Stephen King never really touches. And it's just like both reading Clive Barker's like short stories and horror fiction and then then seeing Hellraiser for the first time.

I was just like, oh, there are pleasures better than sex tell me more watching watching this for the first time since I was like a kid probably and Like I was like oh, this is like one of the gayest horror movies. I've ever seen in my life. This is truly like so so from the eyes of a homosexual man. And like there are scenes like where Frank first shows up and it's the flashback and Frank shows up drenched

in like water wearing, looks like wearing eyeliner, wearing a leather coat. And he's just like, mind if I come in? It's me, Frank, mind if I come in? It's so fucking gay. And every, there's so much of that in in this and I can't wait to talk about it So unlike unlike King Clive Barker sort of incorporated to say the least incorporated sex into his visions of horror whereas King is sort of you know there are sex scenes

Happen in King books, but they're always very awkward and sort of land like a lead balloon in the middle. Yes. Yeah, the word pound cake. Short hand. Well, so Barker is a little bit different. Yeah, no, Stephen King is like he's the school teacher from Maine, who would like get get yacked up and just pound out books on his typewriter. But like Stephen King, God bless him, kind of a dork. Clyde Barker was working as a male escort when he was 18 and 19 years old in London, or somewhere in England. Just think about what that entails and how that may have colored his

rather, I don't know, decadent and sort of expressionistic worldview of pain and pleasure. If you took the sex out of Hellraiser, it would be a couple at divorce proceedings. And then the credits would roll. Yeah, well, when we were watching it last night, Catherine came in and she started watching it. And she said, well, I had no idea Hellraiser was so horny. And we were like, oh, it's the horniest movie ever. Yes. Yeah, it's so like, there's a part where like a wall opens to hell

and there's literal like mucus as it's opening. Oh, yeah. And those like little special effects details are why I think like, why this movie works so well. I mean, there's other things that we'll talk about, I guess, when we get to like the kills and everything. But the effects are just, when we get to, like, the kills and everything, but... The effects are just... We can get into them later,

but, I mean, they hold up probably better than even some of the great, like, classic examples that people rattle off. I thought that the effects in Hellraiser, on my whatever umpteenth viewing this was, just still so impressive and so fun. And it's also, like, with all of the gore and the centibites viewing this was just still so impressive and so fun. And it's also like with all of the gore and the centibytes and like the character design and the design of the box, the lament configuration, it's also like for the time, 1987, blindingly

original and like really effective. Now the thing about Hellraiser is that it did inaugurate, like, a character that is on par with, let's say, like, Freddy or Jason or Michael Myers in Pinhead and the whole Cenobites and, like, the lore around them is these kind of, like, archangels of sadomasochistic delight who take you to hell. But the thing is, people always, like, foreground the Cenobites and Hellraiser is all about pinhead and the centibytes. But like rewatching this movie or if you watch it for the first time, you may be surprised that like the centibytes and pinhead are kind of an afterthought to what is because it's written and directed by Barker, basically the template of a classic British Gothic horror

story about a desiccated, a desiccated house, an evil stepmother and uncle, a cuckolded father and a cuckolded husband and father, and like a naive young woman on the cusp of adulthood, like a naive girl on the cusp of her womanhood. It really goes back to what you were saying last week, Will, of like an American ghost story. It's like the background radiation of America is just horror. And in a British ghost story, it's kind of contained in this house, the trauma of one family. And in this case, like the, this gay, this gay perv who lives in their family, who is part of the family. I would describe Frank as a, like a dark sex warlock. He's doing evil, there's sex people in,

he's a sex person and he's not to be trusted. In the middle of us watching it, when Julia's bringing back all the guys, I just thought, well what if one of the guys she brought back was Alan Partridge and she's trying to go to the moon. They literally are. Yeah.

They're not that far off. So many random like incidental British people in this movie. Yeah. But I totally agree that one thing I really enjoy about the film, because it's 1987. So by now, there's been The Shining. Certainly, there's been The Exorcist.

There's sort of the ghost story or the haunted house movie. At that point in the late 80s had been freed a bit from the more traditional gothic, you know cobwebs and and Creeks in the attic and stuff like that and there have been more modern takes on it But this movie really fuses and marries the more classic the more classic goth Gothic gothic is what I meant to say. It's kind of goth too, but the gothic atmosphere and themes with a modern feel with BDSM demons and stuff. Yeah. No, it's like it makes the subtext of the gothic British horror just entirely textual with the introduction of the BDSM sex demons.

But it does that without taking out that little sliver, that like mystery, which is so that's the sleight of hand, the true magic of this movie, which is like if if anyone else were to try and make the subtext of like a Gothic, like haunted house story text, there would be no mystery to it. There would be no, but the way Barker does it, the sex is explicit and it's right there on the surface for you just have to dig one inch down,

but there's still these hints at this, but there's still like this these hints at this like You know Dark Souls ass like lore of like what is this hallway? I mean we find out later in hellraiser 2 that that's hell the the hell dimension and like But like it's like what's this weird creature? Who are these guys like what is going on? What are the rules like and Brennan like we Brendan, to sort of explain the Cenobites, the fascinating thing to me about Barker's conception of hell and damnation and evil in this movie is how essentially divorced from morality it is.

The Cenobites are not evil entities. They simply are, as you described them, Brendan, the dungeon masters or rule enforcers of like a system that they are only incidentally a part of. And that they don't just like torture people and take them to hell. You seek out the centibytes because in the case of Frank, you are a sex warlock attempting to unlock heretofore unexperienced types of pleasure and erotic intensity. Which is an old, which could be perceived as an older trope of, you know, the Faustian deal, like, you know, the demon or the devil is just playing fair, you know, technically speaking,

because you made a deal. But they announced themselves to, what's her name? Christy? Is that her name in the movie? Christy, yeah. They announced themselves to her as angels to some and demons to others, and they aren't the villains of the piece. We can talk or reference at the end maybe of this, you know, the many sequels. They're not villains, they're a force. They're like an implacable force of the universe, like gravity. But like what they do, it's like if you fall out of a window because you trip and go through a plate glass window

or whatever, gravity isn't evil. It just connects you with the floor at high velocity. And the center of the story is exactly like that. The evil in the movie is Julia and Frank. Yes. And they are simply collecting a debt that Frank owes them. He's supposed to be in hell forever and he slipped out

and that's why they're there. And Christie is possibly gonna be collateral damage but when she says, I can get you this guy you're looking for, they don't just say, oh, well, we're evil demons so we're gonna gobble you up. They go, okay, go get him for us and we'll spare you. Even more interesting, which I think that they are their own independent actors and they have their own ulterior motives, is that the one girl Cenobite says, what if we prefer

you instead? And it's this also like, overtones just injected in. And later on, when they finally get Frank, all the other Cenobites are in that room torturing him and, like, dragging him back to hell, and which we can assume is a very fun thing for Cenobites to do, but the girl Cenobite is outside and she's like, why don't you come with us too? And it's like, they are just bringing her because this girl Cenobite, they're she's like, why don't you come with us too? And it's like they are

just bringing her because this girl, they're just going to try to bring her because this girl Cenobite is like, has this like love fixation on her and wants to show her the pleasures and pain of the other dimension. Pinhead or lead Cenobite as he's credited in the first film, before he becomes more iconic, he has to kind of calm her down because she says, what if we prefer you? And he goes, look, anyway, we're talking about Frank. Anyways, we need to hear it from his voice. Let's keep it on topic.

I think another strong indication for a gay reading of Hellraiser is in the naming conventions of the Cenobites, where you've got Pinhead, who's lead Cenobite, but let's be honest, that's Pinhead. Then you've got the one with his lips peeled back, the Chatterer, the one whose teeth are clack clack clacking. And then there's the sort of Matt Nuglesius looking Cenobite, Butterball. Butterball.

Butterball. And then the lady Cenobite is just credited as female centipede. Just afterthought. Well, do you know that in the original book, Pinhead is explicitly a transgender woman. Yes. Which is crazy. Yeah, like in the book, in the novella it's based on, you find out that the centipedes are a religious sect in hell known as the Order of the Gash That have like all become like fully Androgynous or like

Transsexual in some way and they have like created like new orifices for the like Surgically to like alter their bodies and things like that. Well, they they definitely have some orifices on display The the female cinnamite has her neck opened up. A very vaginal throat injury. Yeah, which is great. And there's a great bit with that where everywhere she goes, there's like a kind of wheezing because her throat is fully opened up. And that's her sort of like signature, you know, tell. But yeah, I mean, the CinnBites are great. I love how restrained they're used in this movie. And as the sequels go on, I like 2 OK. I'd have to re-watch it.

But as the sequels go on, you know, and boy, there's just many, many sequels that come after this. And they're all pretty much terrible after, you know, 2. I know. I will correct you, Brendan. The most recent Hellraiser remake is good because there is a character named after me. Yes, that's true.

There's a character named Will Menicker. There's a character named Menicker in the new Hellraiser. It is actually a woman. It is the lawyer who, like, arranges for the sex pervert. She's the sex pervert's lawyer, and she's played by Logan Roy's wife from the succession. Oh my God. Oh yeah, Abbas, I'm Abbas, yeah.

That is cool, and I haven't seen the remake, but all those like Hellraiser in space and Hellraiser blood line or whatever, the endless sequels, that's when they kind of, you know, are cheapened to the point of being, you know, franchise mascots. But in this one, yeah, I totally agree. It's wonderful how they're sort of amoral and apolitical

concerning the proceedings, you know. I'll tell you both. The scene in this movie, when I first saw it, that like rendered my mind with like the shock of the image, and like how uncomfortable it made me feel, but also enthralled by like, just how original a vision of horror and monstrosity and kind of hell this movie was presenting, like just like how I never really experienced something like that before. It's in the very

beginning of the movie, where like after Frank has been torn apart by the Cenobites, he opened the box and is just shredded by them. And we see in the house, it takes you up the staircase into the attic where his body has been rendered into bits. And it shows you the filth and the decay of this house with roaches and just the disgusting like cigarette butts

and rotten food and rats, yeah. And then it gets up to the attic and you see like all of the hooks dangling from the ceiling and then the floor is just covered with like, it's like a slaughterhouse. And it's the image of like, in addition to all the hooks in like the centerpiece of the room, there is like an obelisk of black

obsidian hanging from the ceiling. And on it are nailed just different chunks of his body. And it was that image that I found so singularly upsetting, but also fascinating and kind of beautiful that this movie, I knew I was on a different level with this movie. It's so good. And some of his body parts are like still moving a little bit like twitching. It's like, oh, he's still alive during the it's like fuck. And that kind of forces you to think of like, what would that feel like to just be a body parts

like completely separated. And that's like something that the Cenobites, they always say like, what they're going for is like, you know, boundless pleasure and pain and like, you know, beyond what exists in our realm. So it's like feelings that go beyond, you know, what's possible for humans. And we see a lot of the pain, but like it's that S and M, like, you know, melding of like pain and pleasure

that really lies at the heart of the movie. And it's why like, if you took all the sex out of this movie, the, they would just be like nothing, because it would be like a blank screen, because like it's the sex is the, like, you know, the harm and the killing and the torture and maiming and like S&M elements. Which is why I think it's like really at its core,

you could see this movie as a movie about a gay man who enthralls this woman to bring him men to have sex with. Like, yeah, bring him men to like fuck and kill. Because it's at once a cuckolding narrative. It is also a cautionary tale in the Julia character of what good dick will do to you Like the like like the limit like what you what you will do to yourself in the name of get to getting good dick Is is a cautionary tale in this movie? But but has like you also said the scenes where Julia starts bringing home men For skinless Frank to reconstitute his body with is so funny to me because like okay It's like the classic cuckolding thing

He like Frank's is even watching from the closet But then like after she kills them with a hammer he like sticks his hands like his fingers in their throats And he sucks their shit dry He's like don't turn around watch don't look don't look this isn't for you Come to daddy I and like in connection with that, that's why I think that is like the most explicit, the scene that really makes this the most explicit is the scene where Christie catches him. And it's like first this strange man who is a drained corpse, like comes out of this doorway. And then he and then skinless Frank

comes out and he's like, Christie, it's me, Frank, it's your uncle Frank. And it's basically like a girl catching her uncle having gay sex. He's like, don't worry. It's just me, your uncle. Yeah. And then like after that, it cuts to her wandering the streets, completely traumatized. It's so one-to-one and crazy. It's so amazing. I love it. And then just, we're papering over the other element, which is there's a giant penis demon as well in the crevice of the hospital.

Oh, yes. Of course. It is the most phallic-looking demon phallic looking demon you've ever seen in a chase. And you know, it has a curve in everything. Yeah. It's got veins. It's angry. So it's like whether it's the cock monster chasing Christie through the like bowels of

hell that like is just, you know, sort of opens in the hallway. Sorry, the in the wall of the hospital. Or in Julia, like I think in like the there's a like a sort of Gothic doubling or contrast between Kirsty and Julia, like Kirsty, and like I interpret that she loses her virginity in this movie. And there's like, there's that very beautiful dream sequence where she's like in some sort of church sepulcher and sees like a body shrouded in white and everything's covered in like feathers and down in the air.

And then right, like starting at the crotch of the body, it begins to like soak up blood and like the white shroud becomes soaked in blood and she wakes up from that nightmare. I interpret that as like the anxiety dream she has after losing her virginity. So we have her- And the most like edible part too

is that she pulls the sheet up and it's her dad. Deformed, maimed, dead father. Yeah. And she wakes up and like calls her dad to make sure he's okay. And so like in Kirsty, you have like, you know, she's, she's sort of the heroine of the movie. She's the innocent young girl, but becoming a woman in this movie. And then in Julia, you have at the kind of monstrous

Feminine the kind of like a woman whose sexuality has curdled into something terrible and evil. Yes But let's talk about let's look at the two stars of this movie, which are Julia and Larry Julia played by Claire Higgins and Larry by one of Brendan and I's one of our guys You know like you know like if you're like us part of movie mindset is like movies are kind of like sports If you're a nerd and you got the guys you root for you know their number you know all their stats and for me The cuckold the cuck of the year if you look up cuckold in a dictionary They should give you a picture of Larry Cotton, played by the great Andrew Robinson,

who fans of Movie Mindset might remember as the Scorpio Killer from Don Siegel's Dirty Harry. He's also in Don Siegel's Charlie Varick. He's in Sylvester Stallone's Cobra. He's just one of these guys that's in a ton of, a lot of 80s and 90s, like 90s movies, usually playing a villain. But for me, he will always be the one, the only Elim Garrick

from Deep Space Nine, the simple Cardassian tailor. Yeah, the the they are brutal to this character. It's really incredible. From the very beginning, he he is just so pathetic, earns no respect, clearly his wife is long ago lost interest, but he's sort of like this aw shucks, kind of like, we can pick up the pieces if we buy this house, you know, buying a house to save the marriage or whatever. And then- At least it's better than Brooklyn.

They shit on Brooklyn like multiple times in this movie. They're like, well, I'd rather be in the gash dimension than Brooklyn. But in the very beginning, he's moving with the movers who are openly ogling his wife in front of him. Yes, and they're also gay guys. Clearly, one of them is so gay. He has the earring on the gay ear.

Yeah, he does. But they're moving a mattress, and I actually really, it always gets me as kind of a nasty, a nasty, if small piece of violence, where he, talk about Gash, he gashes his hand on the, on a nail that's poking out of

the staircase. Yeah, like tears his hand open. He tears it open, and so he has to, and so you're like, okay, he's, you know, you think you're gonna come back to him. He's wrapping it up. But no, the next time you see him, he's covered in blood stumbling toward his wife going, help me, I cut my hand, you know me in blood. wandering towards his wife with his face turned away in his eyes like Mr. Burns if he cut his hands It's a Smithers basically It's what it reminded me of He's kind of both Smithers and Mr. Burns Yes, he really is And Andy Robinson is just like the biggest like chump beta in this movie

and like before he gashes his hand open on the nail sticking out from the staircase It's like the movers are there they're ogling his wife They have like not even attempted to move this mattress up the stairs and they're like, Oh, can I get a beer? And then his wife is like, sure. Have some of our beer and then looks at him and then Larry just goes, sure. I guess I'll get it. And then he comes back. He's like, here guys, here's your beer. And then they're like, is that your daughter? They're like, they just like... They're there for literally, it implies that they've been there for like an hour just standing

there with a mattress because then his daughter shows up and is like, hey dad, what's with the mattress on the stairs? And he's like, oh, I'm just waiting for these guys. And they start hitting on the daughter too. And they're just like totally cucking him on all fronts. He's fighting a two front cucking war He's like the Hitler of being cucked You pointed this out will though that it's it's great casting because Andrew Robinson does have an undercurrent of rage to him

Oh, yeah, you can see in his eyes in this movie But there's a very deliberate moment that I forgot about where at this point Julia has become immune to the violence she was initially squeamish about because she's murdered like three guys so that Frank could suck them off. And so now they're watching boxing. I love that scene.

I love that part. And he says to her like, I thought you always hated this stuff. You didn't like watching this stuff. And now she's like, I've seen worse. But he, there's a moment where he gets up and he's kind of like, He's like pantomime in boxing. He's going like, yeah, yeah. Because he does have. The movie is, it's not incidental. the movie is making it clear. He's repressing a lot of, you know, probably anger and shame and self-loathing

because he knows he's a loser and that his wife thinks he sucks. Yeah, another thing about Larry that I think is very interesting and explicit is at the very beginning, when he first gets to the house with Julie, she's like, the house is decorated with hundreds of religious statues covered in Christmas lights. And it's very gaudy and tacky and very, I don't know,

not, I think it's like this idea of like, it's like a symbol of Frank living there is like a kind of crazy, like on the edge guy. And then what they do is they're like, they take all that shit out and like throw it away. And then the next like big centerpiece home decor that you see over and over and over again throughout the movie is one of those posters. You can get it like Pier One for like a William Carlos Williams like thing in Chicago or something that is just like hung on the stairs. And it's like, it's, it's this like replacement of like, you know, crazy, like statues of saints and martyrs with their like eyes carved out and covered in Christmas lights. And like they replaced that with the Mablandis fucking home decor. One bread home decor.

And before that, it's really funny, they're looking at the absolute detritus and filth that Frank has left in this house of all this spooky religious stuff and just roaches coursing through some rotten turkey carcass or something. And then he's saying to Julia He's going like we've got to let Kirsty see this she'll she was really gonna love this place like referring to his do a thing To it until Kirsty sees that like he's referring to the his insane brothers like fuck and torture dungeon that he just inherited And you know actually like inheritance is another huge like trope in British Gothic horror It's like inheriting the family estate. And in this movie, it's like their grandmother's

house that Frank like, you know, it looks like a shooting gallery, but he's doing it for a centabyte stuff instead of drugs. Something something about where they they're like, Oh, I guess this is where he slept. And it's just rancid looking pillow and sheets with, you know, the kind of the indentation of where Frank would always sleep. But it's just inside of the indentation. It's all brown and it like really living spaces. That's what I said last night. He just needed like to have like a TV and like a PlayStation set up on like a milk crate right at the at the

But I love the reason that the brother knows that it's Frank's like place cuz the Julie immediately is like squatters and the brother sees this weird like porcelain kind of like Seems like a parody of one of those precious moments. What's the yeah, precious moments like dolls. Yeah, a humble thing of like a man like fucking a Wogman doggy style. Yeah, someone fucking someone in the ass and he's like, oh, no, it's Frank. That's our Frank.

Yeah. Now, speaking of ass fucking, I seem to remember from the novella that like the Julia character is like this like frigid prude until she meets Frank. And then like Frank essentially like turns her into his sex slave by sodomizing her. And like he just turns her out instantly. And so you brought it up. I love the visual contrast between Frank and Larry as brothers. Like in the flashbacks where Julia's remembering how she started her affair with Frank, as you mentioned,

like she opens the door and it's raining out and he's just like, he's just there wet going, hi, I'm Frank. And he's got like, he's just like, he is the dictionary definition if you look up dark and like dark, sexy bad boy. And his brother is the beta bish made cook. Yep.

He's like, if you look up gay hustler in the dictionary, he would be like, literally, it's like, you would see him in a restaurant with like a woman who's like, you know, a hundred years old and he would be like winking at the waiter or something. Literally. And it's so funny. It's so beautiful.

Him like going into this house and he's just so horny and so sex insane, but that he gets into the house and he's like the flashback scene where it's like Julia meeting him. I mentioned it before, but he it's like the opening of a gay porn when he's at the door with his arm up like, Hey, I'm here to clean the pool. I'm the, I'm the brother. Do you mind if I come in? A toast to the happy couple. And then he like holds up his bottle, like five words in he's like, she's ready to fuck because he's so like, I'm your new step brother. And the yes.

We actually, we only see him and it's important to understand why she was mesmerized by him with those flashbacks. But for the rest of the movie, he is a skull-faced, you know, weak skeleton basically in the corner. In what I had forgotten was just excellent makeup where he's not quite a skeleton because that would look sort of corny. He's got like sinew and muscles and he keeps getting a little bit he keeps you know glowing up throughout the movie but but basically and he starts wearing like suits over his bleeding skin but he's but but he's but he's basically you know he looks like a horrible monster. And it makes it even more kind of bizarre

and nightmare-like that she's so crazy about this, you know, ghoul sauntering around. Mucous muscle man. Yes, an actual monster. She's in love with an actual monster. I think it should be noted that sexy, gay rent boy Frank and skinless Frank are portrayed by two different actors.

Normal Frank is portrayed by Sean Chapman and skinless Frank and Frank the monster is played by Oliver Smith. And they're both both really great performances. But I actually incredible. Another detail I love is this is that the family is the cotton family. And I just like to imagine Senator Tom Cotton is actually a blood and cum homunculus made out of the seed of all the operators who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. RIP, bless them.

They're in the gash dimension now. That actually tracks because the very first thing in the movie is a hilarious portmanteau of two incredible cliches where it is a Eastern-style, Chinese-style salesman a la Gremlins inside of a Middle Eastern style bazaar, a la Exorcist 1. And it's like so, the idea of both of those things, like the confluence is so funny. This is where you can drop the Simpsons clip of Homer haggling for the monkey pod. Yeah, what is this thing?

It is a monkey's pod, dating back to a lullaby in afterlives It has the power to grant wishes to its owner Oh yeah? But I had to say that that very first opening scene of Frank purchasing the lament configuration from the Middle Eastern slash Asian salesman Is like, of them doing the transaction, you see two men with the dirtiest fingernails I have ever seen. That's what I mean is that this movie like it's just foregrounds filth and disgust from the very first shot of the movie like their fingernails are so gross it drives me insane.

And detail attention to detail also I knew you would pick up on that. I've heard you mention dirty fingernails before and I was like. mean, I don't have a thing about the cuticle cleanliness or whatever But man, it's just like it's just the dirt and grime under there It's just like black rins on every one of their fucking fingers It looks like it's on purpose like you could it looks like you literally couldn't have fingernails They just like ran a pencil under each nail, you know and just let Absolutely, let the entirety be become dark and black So we I talked about the the prospect of Senator Tom Cotton being a homunculus

Constituted under the blood and jizz of our fallen service members But we got to talk about the Frank body Reconstituting itself seen out of the floor of the attic. Oh my god. Because this is truly, again, one of those singular, spectacular moments in both just a gore set piece and practical effects in a horror movie. This is a true masterpiece. That scene, the birth scene is just so... It's totally original and it's also strangely beautiful and harrowing at the same time.

Yes, the presence of the clear, not just blood, but the clear viscous fluid is really something that has always stuck with me for so long. You can almost smell it through the TV. It's disgusting. For me, it's the shark, because you see his rib cage and his arms, which is great. The first thing you see are two arms come out of the floorboards. But for me, it's this really smooth sphere that you start to realize is his skull. And then you just see little folds of the brain starting to come in and then you see like a full brain. And I don't know, it just feels like it's treating, it's treating the like the idea

of an actual, you know, muscular and skeletal reconfiguration about as, as literally as possible. But, but those effects just, they just cannot be beat. You feel it and it's tactile and it sells it completely. Yeah, it's real as fuck. And I think like the closest analog to the makeup effects in this movie, I would say like an American werewolf in London, is the transformation is very much akin to the Griffin Dunn character in that movie. He's like slow decay, the more he's talked to because there's also like the little touches

that you always that you recognize is like the little space inside Frank's throat is the same as you can see that it's the same as the space inside of the female Cenobite's throat because that's just what like the inside of a throat looks like and you know the the shininess and like mucus kind of hanging off his body and like the the nerves when he first it's like his second incarnation. It's so much detail and so much like loving attention to detail of this like insane like skull man who this woman is like weirdly in love with because he's so sexy even as a crazy gore monster. We should we should shout out that the the the person who did the makeup was a guy named Bob Keen and he was as they all were in his mid-20s when he did all this somehow like the guy

Fucking Orson Welles this shit. Yeah, but he he had worked on Jim Henson stuff And Star Wars and things like that, which it actually does make sense because the Jim Henson stuff You know, it's like quite advanced puppeteering and you know and design but then of course he went on to use it for perverted sex-demon stuff. I mean, yeah, in many such cases, honestly. He had a special effects team doing the makeup and effects, but the beauty of how spectacularly that scene comes off, it just stresses again that Clive Barker was a complete amateur when he made this movie.

I mean, there's a story, he wanted to direct it because he was not satisfied with how previous TV and film adaptations of his work had turned out. And when they wanted to option the hellbound heart, he was like, okay, I'll do it if you let me direct. And they were like, the studio was like, okay, like, have you ever directed a movie? Do you know how to direct a movie? And he was like, yeah, sure. And like, he just bluffed his way through it. And they believed him and gave him the money. And there's a famous story about him going out that same day after the meeting, going

to a bookstore and buying a book like how to make movies for dummies. What is a camera? How does it work? Another big point of difference between him and Stephen King. Sorry, I have to say. Oh my god. Clive went out there and winged it and made one of the greatest horror films of all time on his first try. And Stephen King not only wouldn't shut the fuck up about The Shining being bad,

but then made a horrible six hour miniseries or wrote it. He didn't direct it, but when he did direct something, it was Maxim Overdrive. And you know, that's not a story. That was Cocaine the Movie. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he managed to do Night of the Living Dead with cars instead of people, and he did manage to blind his director of photography in one of the famous movie accidents on set. Maybe he should have read the directing for Dummies. He read the lawnmower reveal that had a MowTube manual.

Talk about the lawnmower man. He's not the lawnmower reveal that has a Mow2 manual. Talk about the lawnmower man. He's not the lawnmower man, I'll tell you that. But yeah, and I just want to say, Maximum Overdrive, terrible movie, but has possibly one of the funniest opening five to 10 minutes of a movie ever. It's fun. Oh my God, yeah. Absolutely.

But just on the point of the Frank scene, but then as a general point as well, the soundtrack, the score by Christopher Young is something I definitely wanted to mention because it is, I love a minimal horror score. We all love our John Carpenter and our Goblin or whatever. There's great stuff that happened in the 80s around the more kind of synthesizer or minimalist driven scores, but Christopher Young's Wings for the Fences, it's that lush, almost traditional,

like we said before, kind of gothic haunted theme. I think it's fun. Gothic romantic. Very romantic style. It's very sweeping and lush. Yeah, and it just, it fits the movie perfectly, and it actually clarified for me, we can talk about this in our Exorcist 3 section, but two very different approaches.

Whereas William Peter Blatty opted for almost no music in his film, his adaptation of his own work. Clive Barker, I think had a very, and that works great. Clive Barker had the opposite approach that also was perfect for this movie, which was a really muscular and strong score with a theme and with, like you said, Will, kind of like a neo-romantic flavor to it that sells the kind of Lovecraftian atmosphere of the Hellraiser stuff. My favorite part in the score is there's one part where it's slightly different from the rest of the score,

where the music kind of takes the back seat and it is just like one scary kind of orchestral like mode kind of just being repeated. And it's the part where Kersi opens up the lament configuration after she's run through the hallway, been chased by the penis monster and comes back into the hospital room. And it's, I think, maybe my favorite scene in the movie because it's the first time you see

like an accounting of all the Cenobites, but the atmosphere in that scene, it cuts from like the bricks in the wall, the spaces between the bricks, this like yellow light and smoke just starts like pouring out between them. And it shows like an IV bag and it's getting back. Yeah. Blood until it explodes. Like simple but terrifying image of the blood working its way back up

through the IV into the fucking like the catheter the bag the IV bag Yes, and then it shows like a TV and it's like You know hours blue TV is showing time lapses of flowers blooming and it's so beautiful but between the time lapses there's this like static and Whenever it's static. There's this almost like this synthesizer type sound of just like, it sounds like a bird being killed or something, like dozens of birds being killed. And it in combination with this like pulsing, like very simple part of the score that's

like just the base part of the score. It just combines to form this almost avant-garde singular moment that I think really doesn't lose any of the romanticism, but also is a perfect introductory salvo to the arrival of the Cenobites for the first time in full company. And I think what we were just talking about with like this kind of lush romantic, very more traditional horror score, it's like the marriage of that is like,

it's similar to like the marriage of these other elements that we're talking is that like, it preserves the, yeah, like the Gothic romance and mystery of an earlier era of horror films while just directly showing you like things that you've never seen before, like surgically created orifices and latex leather, S&M horror on a level that's never been made explicit in a movie before.

But it does that with this very old-fashioned backdrop to everything. So the characters, the plot itself, and this kind of, yeah, like the sweeping emotion of the lushness of the score Really underscores like as I think you put it perfectly like the mystery of this movie is I think what makes it So fascinating and so powerful and and I also don't think I mean it's it's not to say that I Mean we would know definitively but I think the movie needed that kind of classiness to it in the form of the score because it sort of legitimizes, you know, music can actually,

for a lot of people, if they hear like a really well done score in the opening moments of a film, it's almost like they can buy in immediately because it sounds like what they expect to hear. And I think if they had gone the more minimal 80s route, it would have been harder to get people to stay for this pretty original vision. So he sort of knew that much. You gotta wow them a little bit with the classic Hollywood score.

That's part of why I think a lot of Cronenberg movies work as well as they do. Oh yeah, all the Howard Shore original scores that are so like, sort of melancholy and beautiful and heartbreaking, yeah. And no, it's that marriage, like I said, of a gothic horror that was like, existed in a world governed by Christian morality.

And it's marriage to a modern world depicted by Clive Barker in which like Christian morality is replaced by like beyond good and evil. Like there is no good and evil. There is only experience and the circumstance which gives rise to them and that like pleasure and pain. Yeah, exactly. That there are two sides of the same coin. And it is that like, yeah, it's that marriage of this like the old and new horror that comes together so beautifully in this movie. And that's why this movie is like, still works. People still think about Pinhead, like they're still remaking Hellraiser movies.

The power of this movie is like, hits just as hard now from 30 years later. We've said Beyond a couple times and I have to think of From Beyond as a similar... It's a goofier... It's a funny version of Hellraiser. It basically is because they go away to a dimension in which there is only pain and pleasure and delights of the debauched flesh or whatever. And that's what, what is his name?

Dr. Praetorius? Dr. Praetorius, yeah. That's the message. What are you gonna do from Beyond? Oh, you got it, oh, from, well, that next year, next year we're gonna do the Stuart Gordon Lovecraft movies. Do a do a Stuart Gordon reanimator from beyond double feature, because it's especially from beyond. It's dealing with was from beyond before or after probably before Hellraiser, don't you think, Will? Let me look.

Because it's just. Oh, Brian Usna. Yeah. Yeah. It's the. Yeah, it's before one year. 1986, one year before. It's 1986, one year before, wow. That's why I think of Hellraiser as kind of a Lovecraftian, you know, flavored piece is because as we've been talking about, it says that there's gods out there that are not operating on the morality that we ascribe to gods, you know.

And so From Beyond is a more slapstickstick but also really good version of that story Also, some of the best gore ever done is from beyond the Brian. Yes I suppose we should talk. I do want to talk about Claire Higgins as Julia. I mean like it's cuz she to me is really like the the heart of the movie like she is Both like a hero and villain in a way. I mean, she's the protagonist for the first half. Yeah, for the first half of the movie, she is the main character.

I would say even more that like for most of the movie, she really is like, it really, the structure is, that's another very, you know, romantic era, like literature thing about the structure is that the protagonist are like, you know, romantic era, like literature thing about the structure is that the the protagonists Yes are like, you know, the protagonist isn't the good guy necessarily It's just someone in love and then there's another protagonist who is younger Who's acting out of love of a different way who is acting out of love for her father more innocent more innocent person. Yes

Yeah Exactly. And you know is acting out of love for her father. More innocent, more innocent person. Yes. Exactly. And you know, there is a tragic nature to Julia's character. And like, Clare Higgins' performance is just as good as Andrew Robinson's. Oh yeah. And like, Andrew Robinson gets to have

a little bit more fun with it, especially when Frank takes his skin and he gets to switch and finally be a villain, which is what Andy Robinson, that's why you hire Andy Robinson. And he's slayed. He is the guy. Oh my God. The scene is- Even scar even scarier than normal for me where she comes in and she's like dad

I was so worried about you, and he's like it'll be all right Kirsty I love you see the flesh on his face like I'd like the edges like peeling off his fucking skull Yeah, well when he finally when he says come to come to daddy, in her dad's skin, that is fucked up as he gets. And when she like, she's so horrifying. And similar to American Werewolf in London, another great gore effect I love in that movie is when Kirsty claws his face and then like it gouges out like claw marks in his like recently pressed on flesh and you see the ribbons of skin hanging off his cheek, dangling off his cheek. Yes, Griffin done in the movie theater when it's dangling from his neck.

Claw, yeah. Also, it's very simple and it's really not even an effect, it's just really good sound design, but when she leaves the room and he looks in the mirror and he just kind of pokes his eye around a little bit, because all he needs's back in place. You can do that right now, you know, like yourself, but the sound that they put in the the squelching that they put into suggests that like something's not right in there is

just really effective. And it's a great little time. It's amazing. But in terms of Claire Higgins, as portraying this kind of the monstrous feminine, to use like a grad school terminology to discuss this. But there is definitely a tragic dimension to her character because she turns to evil out of love, out of a love

and obsession with Frank. But Frank really disses her. And look, Julia is evil. She kills people. She's going to try to kill Kirsty at the end of the movie. But like, when it really comes down to it, Frank sells her out and just he sucks her shit to get to get to get right again. Yep. He's gay. He doesn't care about her. She has said that that is the thing is like, I mean, you know, I'm sure Frank defies categorization ultimately, but I mean, he's definitely not just a typical, like, you know, hot, hot straight guy brother that you know, is operating on that level. He, he ditches her immediately as soon as he's either chasing Kirsty up the stairs or he wants to go get a little pinhead dick or,

you know, the menu. Accidentally stabs her when trying to stab Kirstie and she's like, not me, and he's like, does not even flinch. He's just like, sorry baby. I think he says it's nothing personal or something like that. He's just like, well, I mean, now that the knife's in you, I'm just gonna take your I'm gonna take your your bones or your your blood now Okay, I'm looking to see if I wrote it down instead I have in my notes Frank kills Julia because he is gay I guess like as a movie like work movie, it works to its unforgettable climax

with Andy Robinson delivering the shortest sentence in the Bible. A little trivia fact for you. But what I want to talk about is, OK, we mentioned earlier in the movie, Larry tears his hand open on a nail that's sticking out of the staircase as they attempt to move the mattress up into the bedroom. There is of course Pinhead, whose entire head is just like a latticework of nails stuck

into his head. There is the scene where the skinless Frank crucifies rats in the attic by nailing them to the wall. There is a repeated invocation of nails in this movie and I think that works on a number of levels because one there's the obvious Christ reference to the you know like the the torments of Christ on the cross being crucified. Also the body parts nailed to the obsidian thing. Yes. But to me I think like in back to like back to Barker and this like the movies, sadomasochistic

gay perversion to me like the imagery of the nail is just all about penetration. And it actually brings to mind something that the Gemini killer says in Exorcist Three, when he says, you don't understand in this reality, we have to we have to touch each other through bodies and nervous systems. Like on this side, we need bodies to connect each other through bodies and nervous systems. Like on this side we need bodies to connect with other people and to experience what they feel like. And to me like the imagery of the nail or a nail being driven in or a nail tearing apart flesh is just you know like once again the subtext being made textual and the pinhead himself is like the

Sennhebites are like kind of gods of the penetrative acts the the violence the pleasure and pain of sex of having your body Sort of yeah be penetrated by another person's body like to feel someone else inside you Yes, and then get your entire body ripped by 800 chains all at the same time So that you explode yeah in front of your knees. We just talked about- It's such, wait, before we move on very quickly, it's like this thing that I think is like one of my favorite lines in this entire movie

in which I think Frank is describing like having gay sex for the first time to Kirsty and it's just like, sometimes you have to endure the pain to get to the pleasure. Yes. It's like, truly like, oh my God. Because you take that, that makes it all the... This is crazy.

Yeah. You got to commit. You got to commit one way or the other. Yeah. This is definitely an example of horror allowing for things that would not normally be allowed to be explored in a mainstream film because of the Sheen of of you know mystical genre stuff It's the edge case of our times I think and like it used to be film noir

But now right that permission now that movies are more permissive. It's it has to be You know horror. Yep, I think so the beautiful denouement of this movie is that like, you know, horror, I think. So the beautiful denouement of this movie is that like, you know, Kirsty has become aware. And I suppose I should talk about Kirsty for a second. Kirsty is played by Ashley Lawrence. This is her first and hopefully last movie. But Kirsty, I mean, like it's it's just kind of an afterthought. Her character works because she is a beautiful young teenage girl that like represents

innocence and kind of is the heroine of the movie, but also, but like, you know, she's there to be the the hot woman who is terrified. Like, because that's, horror movies promise you seeing a hot woman in torment or in peril. Horror movies, they have to, when they end, a woman has to be traumatized for the rest of her life. Yes. I mean, I'll say this, there are a couple moments where the strings are showing a bit with her with her performance. But I will say, there are others where I'm actually pretty impressed at how she is selling the particular like the scene with the cinnabites I think she's actually pretty good at you know successfully portraying

someone who is accepted that this is all real but as she says at one point she says something like oh come on you know when she's trying to like get out of the I actually think that she's she's not she's not in the league of Andrew Robinson or or Claire Higgins, but she's definitely solid enough for the movie to work. And I like her. I like her. I think, unfortunately, they bring her back in Hellraiser 18, and it's kind of a sad paycheck, maybe.

But in this one, she definitely does the job. So the denouement of the film is that Kirsty has encountered the Cenobites, and they want to take her to hell. But she's like, no, it's actually my Uncle Frank you want. He cheated you out of his soul or whatever. And I can deliver him to you.

And then, like, Frank kills Julia, he pursues her to the attic, and then, like, the Cenobites are waiting for him there. And he tries to attack Kirsty, but their hooks shoot out and grasp every bit of his flesh. Hessa, I wasn't even, I totally forgot about this, but this is yet another hook-based kill. I mean, the humble fish and meat hook is really the MVP of this season of School V Scream set, that's for sure.

Yes, when we do the awards, that has to be, we have to give a hook. Make sure to do the movie Hook by Steven Spielberg. Yes, absolutely. Hook's all over that one. It's a joke, We have to just do... A children's movie that has no hooks actually. Completely tear hook apart because no one gets killed by a hook in it. But yeah, Frank is like every corner of his flesh is being pulled apart by hooks and like

it zooms in on his face. Another incredible gore effect as Andrew Robinson's face is like stretched and pulled to the breaking point. And it's like his face is so wet, and he's just like spitting out of his mouth, but like he's not shrieking in pain. He licks his lips. He licks his lips.

And as she walks out of the door of the attic, he looks at Kirsty and says, "'My favorite line in the movie.' Of course, he looks at her. And this is why you hire Andrew Robinson, I must stress, this is all about Andrew Robinson, the delivery of Jesus wept and then boom, the hooks shred, it just, he explodes and it is one of the most satisfying endings and like climaxes of a horror movie ever. Well, that's the thing is if I, if there is a criticism, I would say I think the movie probably should have ended there. Like, you know, that she could have delivered him to the demons

or the the cinnabites and then, you know, see this horrible site and then have some kind of, you know, little tinkly music happen and then she walks out traumatized or whatever. But I think studio or Hollywood pressure means there has to be like a chase and something else happen at the very end. So you know, then the then the cenobites kind of inexplicably go after her, I guess because Julia wished before she died, wished on the lament configuration, and then the penis monster shows up again. The Butterball Cenobite is felled by a falling two by four.

Yeah, they don't even need the lament configuration to get rid of the fat Cenobite. He had a coronary, he had a massive coronary. Well, I would push back on this just a touch, because I do love, I love, one of my very favorite things about the movie is that the female Cenobite is like obsessed with Kirsty and tries to chase her down. And I do think that I am happy at the destruction of the house after. I think that the house being destroyed. But I think beyond that, the penis monster, I think,

is very unnecessary. Because I think of in a movie where every special effect works so well, I think the very worst special effect is the penis monster, where when you first see it, you can see literally the person pushing it on a dolly in the background. But only if you've seen this movie a couple times and are looking for it.

But I really am yeah I do agree that it and like and the centibytes are so perfect and original that like the penis monster looks like it could be Another gooey scary snarling thing and a lot of different horror movies. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, the the lament configuration could have just like zapped the house out of existence after Kirstie ran out or something, something like that. And then I'm kind of agnostic on the homeless guy being a winged demon. Yeah, there's a homeless guy throughout the movie that at one scene in a hilarious moment, literally it peeks at them out of a boxcar that is just in the middle of the city, I guess. Yeah, and

Yeah, he he turns out to be a bone dragon is the only way I can just Reminded me will Will and I recently watched Demon Knight and he's a lot like Billy Zane at the end of Demon Knight when he reveals his true form he's a bone dragon Demon's got the way tales from the of Demon Knight when he reveals his true form, he's a bone dragon. Demon's Knight, by the way, Tales from the Crypt, Demon Knight absolutely slays. Throw that on your fucking Halloween must watch list as well. It's so much fun. But yes, I mean, that's a very small criticism. I think I actually kind of have a similar issue with Exorcist 3. Horror movies are tough to wrap up because audiences want a big explosion.

But, I mean, still, I mean, it's got to be a 10-bagger or a five-bagger hell raiser because everything in the film, it just works so wonderfully. Five bags of popcorn and a large cup of sadomastochistic perversion and sodomy on the side. And then some hooks in the popcorn just thrown in to hook you. Oh, I was going to mention my favorite special effect in this movie is it relates to when Frank gets ripped apart. And they're so detailed and so detail oriented, the special effects in this movie, that not only is Frank getting ripped apart and torn apart by these hooks, but his teeth, all of a sudden, and just in the last shot, are completely fucked up and rotted out.

And the attention to detail given, paid to the teeth of everyone in this movie is completely incredible. Like, the Butterball Cenobite has the sideways teeth where they're just like slightly at like an 80 degree angle kind of in a line and like the, my favorite special effect and I think the most horrifying special effect and the special effect that the first time I saw this

as a kid really stuck with me more than anything is the special effect of the... I think it's the second guy that she kills. The second or the first guy that she kills. The second time she hits him with the hammer, he's begging and he's like, please, please. And his teeth and lower jaw are so fucked up and it would have been so easy to just like... You're saying they made it... ...blood on his face.

You're saying they made it very accurate for the fact that it takes place in England, is what you're saying. Yes. No, but it's the generosity of detail in the gore that truly puts it on another level. That's why people remember this movie. Is it like there's not a single cockroach or like lump of meat missing. And you're right, like when she hits that guy in the face of the hammer

and he's begging for his life, his teeth and lips are hanging off his face because of like the way she hit him in the jaw. It's so horrifying. And you know, the chittering of rats in the background of every scene in that attic room. And like, yeah, it's just so. It's a perfect movie. Ten out of ten. It's sort of it'd be interesting if listeners haven't seen it and they like it. They should obviously have watched it before listening to this.

But the sequel is is worth checking out, I would say. I have a feeling. I love to. I have a feeling if I watch it again, it is very cool. Yeah, I have a feeling if I watched it again. Leviathan is very cool. Yeah, I have a feeling if I watched it again, I probably wouldn't like it as much maybe, because I do think the more you say about the Cenobites, the less intriguing they become. Obviously, you can look at it

the exact opposite way, of course, but I like them in this as no backstory, no origin story, they just are. And I think, of course, then when you get into three, it becomes kind of goofy, but you also get bites with CD players in their skulls or whatever. So, you know, probably don't go past three because then it just gets really bad.

It's almost like Halloween where the better the initial movie, the worse the franchise is as a whole. You know, like the Friday, the worse the franchise is as a whole. The Friday, the 13th movies, the franchise as a whole was kind of greater than the sum of its parts, and the original was just okay. And then- I would say that about Child's Play

is the one I think of as the most consistent franchise. You and I are completely on the same page about Child's Play. I think Child's Play is the best franchise overall. Like I think, and that's another Brad Dorif, you know. Yes. Not one, but seven. He actually says the words Child's Play

in Exorcist 3, and I'm like, he said the line. But I guess there seems to be a rule about how, if the original movie is sort of in a class of its own, the franchise itself is not gonna be that great yeah I think that's the case with Hellraiser at least well we can we will wait this is a perfect segue because now we enter the Dorif realm he has taken possession a boy been crucified his web widens I've just never seen anything like this in 20 years. Inside this cell, the killer drove an ingot into each of his eyes and cut off his head.

Inside a man. Who are you? I am the one. A man we thought had died 17 years ago. He is inside with us. He will never get away. We turn now to William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist 3. I mentioned before that I think that this is like in a lot of ways a much scarier movie than The Exorcist, which I recently rewatched. And again, this takes nothing away from The Exorcist. It's one of my favorite movies. The first 20 minutes with Father Marin in Northern Iraq is like a perfect short film

on its own. Just unbearably full of views with dread. Yeah. Yeah. But as the movie goes on, I gotta say all the stuff with Reagan and the exorcism is like unbelievably funny to me. At least now in this point in my life. Yes. Fuck me. Stick your cock up her ass, Merritt. You faggot. There's a real, There's a real phenomenon of like, you know, everyone's... I think everyone of my generation, their parents always tell them the scariest movie of all time is The Exorcist. It's a victim of its own success there, yeah. Yeah.

Well, we watch it and we're like, you know, this is kind of sick, but it's kind of funny. Like when she tells the father, like your mother sucks cocks in hell. It's so funny. That's such a good line. Great burn. The line that I've been saying to myself, like for days now after rewatching The Exorcist is when like the doctor comes in to look at her and she jumps up to the bed, slaps his ass down and goes keep away

The child was mine Clap So it's just comedy. It's a it's just you gotta love you gotta love stuff like that As as bread dorif says in this movie a little bit of slap It's the little things you got to smile that keep us going. Yep. Yes so It's got a smile that keeps us going. Yep. So like, Exorcist 3 is like, you know, it's the sequel everyone wanted from the Exorcist. Exorcist 2 Heretic takes this wild excursion

into Africa and locusts. And it's just like, what the fuck's going on with that? Ezreken said, the people who made this piece of shit are in the movie theater now. Yeah, it's like a sci-fi movie almost. It's Zardoss. It's like a medical. John Borman.

Yeah, what are you going to do? Borman, real hit, either a hit or one of the craziest Mrs. of all time. Yeah, but the original Exorcist, obviously, it's like the the the the collaboration between William Friedkin You know like sort of like tough guy Jewish kid from Chicago and William Peter Blatty Who's you know like a devout American Catholic and now we get to Exorcist 3 which is just the pure uncut blat

It's just it's it's blatty up and down and this is a movie... It's blat from, you know, guts cigarters. Yeah. And this is a movie that is uniquely terrifying in a way that could only be the product of, at every level of execution, a devout American Catholic. And now, I'm glad we have you on the show, someone who is raised Catholic, to sort of clue us into all of the evil Catholic magic in this movie. Because this is just every frame of this movie. One of the first things you see in this movie is a statue of Jesus Christ opening its eyes as like a gale force wind blows debris and paper into a church. This I think is honest to God. Like this might be or not might be. This is my second favorite horror movie of all time besides Texas chainsainsaw Massacre. I think this movie

is so beautiful and the way it's shot, the only things I can really compare it to are these absolute flash in the bag masterpieces of cinematography of the master or like like clute, you know, it's it's so like brilliantly and thoughtfully like framed and written and it's so like I don't know it's it's very much like a Night of the Hunter type scenario with William Peter Blatty. Oh yeah it's like Charles Lawton yeah like I did one movie and it's like the best movie ever made. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Like, and Hesse, you talk about like the care and the detail and like,

one of the things that stuns me every time I watch this movie is his use of foreshadowing. And we're going to get the the famous hallway scare and I talked in last week's episode about the the locker scare in the fog and how so much of what like a good effective scare in horror movies is this like creative misdirection and building attention by showing you what you think you know is coming and then hitting you with like no it's not the thing you're actually supposed to be afraid of what bloody Blatty does, yeah, it's way worse. What Blatty does in this movie in terms of like the way he builds the foreshadowing in

the first half of the movie in terms of like the how he frames George C. Scott, like he's showing you what is going to happen later in the movie thematically, visually, sound editing wise, he is all brilliantly foregrounding shots that only make sense once you've seen the entire movie. The matching of certain moments and shots from beginning and end of this movie is so expertly done. And just the confidence with which he directs every level of this movie is stunning to me.

Yeah, it is staggering how good it is from someone who, I know the theme of this episode is you know, an author's turn directors. But the fact that John Borman, who had made many more films, made such a stinker. Deliverance, Excalibur, like Zardas. And William Peter Blatty, who had made one very low budget film in Hungary with money from the Coca-Cola company and the communist Hungarian government working together on a project is the ninth configuration.

The fact that that was his only venture into directing and then he did this, which could have been a huge disaster for his own legacy, his own work. And he, as you said, Will, the confidence is sort of hard to comprehend. But thankfully he nailed it. It's not untainted by, you know, certain studio meddling and aspects, which I'm sure we will. You know, if you watch this movie completely with no context for it and you have certain problems with it, and then you like, you know, I feel like if you, you voice those problems, you'll find that they line up exactly to the changes that the studio

kind of forced upon this movie. But I think, and Brendan recently watched the director's cut, which I haven't watched in a while, so I can't speak definitively on, but I'm excited to hear his takes of the differences between the director's cut, which is just called Legion, and this. But yeah, there's, I think even without the director's cut, even the theatrical cut stands alone as one of the most beautiful and like visually stunning and snappiest, like funniest and scariest like horror movies ever made. Definitely. And it's like, I said, this is the true sequel to The Exorcist because it begins.

It is Georgetown, 1990, 15 years have passed since the events of the first movie. And this movie picks up like basically in the exact same staircase where the first movie ends, the famous Exorcist Staircase. And it centers on both

characters are recast. But the like the beginning of the movie focuses on the relationship between Detective Kinderman who is played by Lee J Cobb in the original now played Beautifully and even like a like honestly better casting like George She George C Scott is better than Lee J Cobb George C Scott is one of the best actors who's ever lived. And he brings it in this movie. Because when you see George C. Scott in a movie, you are guaranteed at least one moment of sheer meltdown,

of sheer rage and anxiety-induced meltdown. And Boy, does he grow so many of us. Maybe this is the moment, context-free. What is your favorite George C. Scott snapping moment? Because there's about like three or four in the movie. What is the one that stands out to you? It's me. Because I can, okay go ahead.

It's the first one where he's like, the hospital lawyer is like, have you ever heard of a malpractice suit? And like, it's just this din of noise and he's trying to patiently calmly explain. That's my favorite scene in the movie. The Gemini killings to them. And you can just see the rage building in him

until he just goes, Gemini, just shut your mouth! And then he's like, and then he catches himself and he's like crying and he goes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And then there's of course, it is not in the file. It's not in the file is great. It is not in the file, it is not.

My favorite is Underlooked. Because it happens before both of those. It's when he's file is great. It is not in the file. It is not. My favorite is Underlooked, because it happens before both of those. It's when he's visiting Father Dyer initially in the hospital, and a nurse comes in, and she goes, everyone OK? And he goes, we're fine. We're fine. We're fine. It peaks the microphone.

The microphone never had another day of its life. Yeah, they had to throw it away. You can hear the gain in the recording. So yeah, it's got wonderful George G. Scott freakouts in this too. And just like an actor of his caliber and the lead role in this like, you know, intense, scary horror movie is so impressive to me because he won best actor.

I mean, this guy is a fucking, a grand slam heavy hitter for like leading men in a movie. And holy goddamn like it's George C. Scott as kinderman in this movie is one of my favorite performances matched only by Brad Dorif as the Gemini killer. Yes, Brad Dorif is the Gemini killer. There was a point where I was taking notes and I was like, I cannot keep pausing and writing down every single line out of Brad Dorif's mouth because I was like, the scenes between Brad Dorif and George C. Scott in this movie are honest to God, like

some of the best acting. I don't know what William Peter Blatty did to get these scenes out of them, to get this like brilliant, like, I mean, it's mostly Dorif in those scenes, like, you know, monologuing, hamming it up, but every time it cuts back to George C. Scott, it really is like two titans interacting, it's so amazing and incredible. I mean, both George C. Scott and Dorif, they open the throttle in this movie, they get it up to 11.

And what I love, what I appreciate so much about the performances that they bring to this movie is that there are like, it's a short list of actors that can go that hard and not have it be ridiculous. And Brad Dorif and George C. Scott are near the top of the list of the guys who can do it. And when they do it in this movie, it is stunning. I also though want to pipe up for Ed Flanders. Yes, as Father Dyer. Father Dyer, as you said, he's recast. And I agree with you well that George C. Scott is right and perfect for Kinderman in this movie. I think it's interesting though, and it works that in the original movie, that's a different time in Kinderman's life. And I think it's interesting though, and it works that in the original movie, that's a different

time in Kinderman's life. And I think Lee Jacob works great in that movie in a way that Scott maybe wouldn't have unless he played it very differently. Because part of why Kinderman is so, so sad and miserable throughout this entire film is those good days are gone. You know, he used to be friends with Damien Karras. He used to be friends with obviously Father Dyer up until a few days before. And even then he was still pretty cranky. So it's a really great recasting for that reason. Lee

J Cobb in the original is more kind of like a gentle grandfatherly like guy. And in this one, George C. Scott is just like a quite bitter cantankerous, as you said, almost exhausted man, husk of a man. But he's counterbalanced by Ed Flanders, who's also in the ninth configuration. And here is maybe where I'll just, I wanted to say a word about the humor of the film, because it really does come from chiefly their banter and I don't know if I mean maybe if listeners don't know William Peter Blatty actually began his writing career after serving in the US Information Agency in Lebanon by the way because he's Lebanese he began he began his career as a comic writer, and he wrote comic novels and things like that. And I'm actually rereading the Exorcist, the original Exorcist book right now for the season.

And in that, and also in films like Ninth Configuration, the comic stuff is on full display. And I would say in this one, too, his dialogue is always in some way colored by a really cheeky sense of humor and and this movie is not completely joyless at least for the first bit because Kinderman and Dyer it's one of my favorite double acts Yeah in movies There's there's a real melancholy underscoring the whole movie, but the scenes where they're together are really like

underscoring the whole movie, but the scenes where they're together are really like The spark of joy comes forward. They have this old married couple dynamic because you know Dyer was friends with Karras and then like Kinderman met Karras through the initial investigation into the Reagan household in the original movie but like there's a great a great bit where they're like First it shows father Dyer and he's like, oh, I gotta hang out with Kinderman today. He gets depressed on this day. And then it cuts to the next scene, it's Kinderman, and he's telling his wife like,

oh, I gotta hang out with Father Dyer today. He always gets depressed on this day. They both think they're doing each other a favor to be nice to each other on the day that they're all sad. They just love each other. They just love each other and love hanging out with each other and don't want to admit it. And they're right about each other on the day that they're all sad. They just love each other. They just love each other and love hanging out with each other and don't want to admit it. And they're right about each other.

Yes. And the day in question is the 15th anniversary of Damien Karras's death slash sacrifice that ended the first Exorcist movie. Him saying, take me and jumping out of the window with the demon inside of him. But like you mentioned that there is joy in this movie, it is not just pure evil. And I think the fact that there is joy and friendship and love makes the evil aspects of

this movie even all the more vivid. But like in I think contained in the dire kinderman relationship, because like as the movie opens, like you said, Brendan, this is now 15 years on from the original exorcist. kinderman knows that something extraordinary happened there, but like can't quite metabolize it. He doesn't really know how to deal with it. But he has spent the last 15 years just being a homicide detective and seeing the absolute worst that human beings are capable of doing each other

and sort of resigning himself to the bureaucratic and societal apathy of people being aware of cruelty, you know cruelty and and evil on an almost unimaginable level but everyone just kind of goes along with their day. The machine still keeps going on and he's just there to kind of clean up the mess and he's become, like you said, he's almost a husk of a man as this movie begins. Like he is, like in the book Kinderman is Jewish and represents like kind of a secular point of view. And like, I think like he did, but he knows that evil exists, but he's beginning to doubt whether good or grace are possible in a world where such evil takes place.

Well, one of my, it's one of the funny but also points directly tying into what you're saying, where he's describing, before he describes the really gnarly murder to Dyer, he goes, would a God who's good at death, would a God who's good invent something like that? It's a lousy idea, Father. It's not popular. It's not a winner. And when Father Dyer says, when Father Dyer says, and of course, Scott's performance elevates the funny dialogue as well. But when Father Dyer says, Bill, it all works out right. And Kiderman goes, when? He goes, at the end of time.

And George C. Scott just goes, that soon. That soon, yeah. And I love... Excellent. Father Dyer's answer is one of the best delivered lines in the movie, I think, where he takes a drag of his cigarette and just like plays with his food a little bit with his fork and then goes without even making eye contact with him just says, we're going to be there. We're going to live forever, Bill. We're spirits. Yeah. And he

seems, it seems like he doesn't even believe that anymore. He's just fucking saying it because he's like, just has to repeat it to himself because he's like if it's not true then what the fuck have I been doing for my entire life basically but it it really seems like he's not convinced by the way larry king is in that diner uh there's a very quick shot where i don't know if that's another amazing cameos coming up in this movie can we go through we talk about can we go through the cameos very quickly i think well actually actually all the cameos very quickly? I think, well, actually, actually, I think- All the cameos take place in the dream sequence.

So let's just like- In the Hagia Sophia, the most beautiful building ever built by humans, I think. Easily. Do you have any insight into this, Brendan, of like, do they film the on the ground sequences somewhere else? Because I can't imagine that they flew like,

Patrick Ewing and Fabio to Istanbul. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't know that much about this, about the specific like shoot of the dream sequence, but I mean, they had a decent budget that might've allowed them to, I mean, I don't even know if like,

these were pure favors done by the people we're about to shout out as the cameos either, if that was in the budget either. Yes, oh my god. This is one of the most cameo-rich movies of all time. Which is weird, but true. Yes. Before I get to probably my favorite dream sequence ever featured in a movie, and my favorite depiction of heaven ever featured in a movie,

I just want to return to Dyer and Kinderman on their little date, where they go see It's a Wonderful Life. They go to the pictures every year on the anniversary. But in the Dyer-Kinderman relationship, I think, I read into that the push and pull in Blatty's own soul, between someone who accepts the evil of the push and pull in Blatty's own soul between like someone who accepts the like the evil of the world and has a kind of a joyful and faithful outlook on it. Like he believes that God's plan will bear out in the end, that at the end of time all scales will be balanced and that we are

spirits that will live forever. But like, and he has a very witty, funny, and sardonic view of the world. Like he's like, he tells a parishioner that like God loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole. He's just like, he reads women's wear daily. He's just got this very like, like funny, like wry outlook on the world. Whereas Kinderman is worn down by the cynicism and evil of the world. And he's just like, ah, God damn it. Fuck it. And it's just like the despair of Kinderman and his pessimism about evil, I think is like, I think it reflects Blatty's own sensibility. But also, I want to talk about the foreshadowing again of that scene at the

restaurant where Dyer and Kinderman are having kind of a philosophical debate. I think that is great foreshadowing for like the three confrontations that Kinderman has after after dire is murdered with Legion slash Gemini killer slash Damien Karras Yes, but like just to foreground as we talk of this dream sequence where heaven is depicted It's like to get to their like I mean just details the plot is that kinder man is investigating a horrific murder of like a teenage black kid in DC, who as he describes to Dyer, has had like ingots

driven into his eyes, decapitated, had his body crucified with rowing oars, and his head replaced with the statue of Christ painted in blackface to look like a minstrel show. And, Yes. Listener, yes, you do see that in the movie at one point. Yes. But just the description of that level of like, absolute blasphemy and evil, unlike every level of like religious, racial, it's a kid, like, it's just, this movie truly tries to confront and deal with like the unimaginable, unspeakable evil.

Yes. And it really is. I think part of the brilliance of this movie is that most of it actually is a police procedural until it completely falls apart at the end, like the Blues Brothers car after they park in that one scene. But kind of over the course of 20 minutes or so, apart at the end like you know like the is just to shoot him in the fucking head inside of his padded cell, kind of. And this is not an original observation, but every kind of pillar, expected pillar, of society is corrupted in the film. The police, the hospital is infected by it. Yes, where you want to feel safe,

where you think you're safe. Like the places you think you're the safest are completely bullshit. Including, you know, in some cases, including religion. And so- Yes, your own home. Yeah, and that's where the confrontation with like Blatty's working through his own stuff,

I think is interesting. Yeah, Pete Kinderman. Both of these movies today are authors slash directors working through some shit. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I think Clive Barker had worked through his shit by the time he made it.

He worked through it, yeah. He was like, that was your turn. Everyone else worked through your shit. That's just so brilliant about Hellraiser is that it makes you into a pervert when you watch it. Cause you're like, Oh gee, do I have these thoughts and feelings inside of me? Whereas exercise has a, has a, has a different effect, which is, I don't know if it's like spiritually despairing. But I mean, like I said, there is there is goodness in this movie, but like, well, it's it's interesting to hear that the like George C. Scott character was Jewish in the book.

He's also Jewish in the director's cut that is included in the film. Oh my God. Because, well, I thought his wife was Jewish in the theatrical cut. You get it's very clear. The one thing that is clear is that his wife is Jewish because she makes a comment about it when he first sees her. But he reminds me a bit of his character in The Hospital. Oh my god, I was going to say like most of this movie takes place in a hospital. I know. And the way like if you want to see George C. Scott melting down in a hospital setting, you've got two movies that you got two great ones you got yeah the exorcist three and then Patty Chayefsky is the hospital um and now yes the hospital in

which like okay he goes to visit father Dyer who's having some routine procedure in a hospital and then father Dyer is murdered and he has murdered in the same horrific unspeakable way as like several the the the teenager at the beginning of the movie then another priest has been killed and now Father Dyer in his hospital bed all seem to have been killed by the same serial killer who is that has the exact same unique MO as this the Gemini killer who which is a guy a serial killer that has been executed by the start of this movie. So like that that that is a mystery that the first half of the movie is attempting to solve

Yes, and if for some reason you're listening to this before you watch the movie the Gemini killer is Brad Dourif and we will see you know Brad Dourif later in cell 11 in the hospital, but he the the there's an incredible scene where the connections between the murders are elucidated and George C. Scott tells everyone who is yelling at him and screaming at him for separate reasons that this has to be the Gemini killer who was executed. The Gemini killer, we put in the press that it was the middle finger on the left hand

that was cut off, but it was the index finger on the right hand. And we put in the press that he carved the Gemini symbol into somewhere, but really it was carved into their back and really it was carved into their yeah into their back and really it was carved into their hand and he's like these all these murders have been done by the Gemini killer they're all have the original MO the original like sign and this like the gravity with which he delivers these lines are like my favorite truly are like my favorite

Truly one of my favorite moments in the entire as I said It was my favorite George C Scott meltdown but like it's the way he's trying to contain himself and Calmly relate these very complicated details to these idiots around him And then he just can't do it anymore and he breaks down and then literally starts crying Because of how annoyed he is. Well, what's- Yes, he's so, he's so me. I'm like, yeah. What's exhilarating about it, especially, you know,

as a movie connected with the original Exorcist, is that, you know, it's a guy who's trying to take the rational approach, just professionally, he has to connect clues and evidence and things, and he's coming up against something that that's probably going to be impossible. So that's that's what's so interesting about it and why I I don't want to talk about the new Exorcist that much.

But just if you're going to do as bloody well-known, if you're going to do a sequel to the Exorcist, you don't have to do another movie about a girl who is possessed. That's not the point of what the first one was really about. And it doesn't need to be a series of movies about girls who are possessed. Blatty goes a completely different place with it. And this movie is, as you both said, a procedural. It's a completely different context and a completely different struggle. But the theme of testing faith or discovering what may or may not exist because of extreme evil in the world, that stays the same.

But he was smart enough not to know, well, I'm going to do another exorcist and it's going to be two little girls this time who are possessed. That's why people will come see it. It's a totally different movie. But I suppose now we should get to the the dream sequence and the cameo made in trip to heaven. This is right before Father Dyer is murdered. Kinderman has a dream that I said is one of my favorite dream sequences in movies. It's one of the funniest like out of nowhere sequences in this movie. But also it is actually like in a very touching way.

It is actually like my favorite depiction of the afterlife in a movie, because he depicts heaven as a physical transitory space. It is an amalgam of, as you already mentioned, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which has that like the ring of windows in which light points in it, across like sort of bisecting angles. And it's the the famous dome of the Hagia Sophia. But the floor level of heaven is Grand Central Station. And it's all these different people like departing and arriving. There are scenes of people like on radios trying to contact other people.

And then we get a parade of cameos, beginning with Samuel L. Jackson. I don't know if you caught... As the blind man. As a blind man who screams like... Sorry, where is it? The living or deaf or something like that. I think he says something like that. But his voice is overdubbed. So it is not Sam Jackson's voice, which may throw people off when they see him, but it's like someone completely different that they dubbed over for whatever reason.

But it's like someone completely different that they dubbed over for whatever reason. A kinderman sees the murder victim, the teenage boy in heaven, and he goes, oh, hi, it's good to see you again. I'm sorry that you got murdered. And he's like, it's all right. Yeah. And then we get to see a perfect cameo of Fabio as an angel. A quick cameo of Fabio as an angel. Yes, Fabio the most angelic, one of the most angelic men of all time. Truly, as said in Zoolander, one of the great actors slash models.

And then, he did not get any lines in the scene. And then for me, maybe my favorite out of left field cameo in a movie history ever depicts in this movie, basketball star Patrick Ewing as the angel of death who is playing, who's doing tarot cards for Father Dyer. And he approaches, like, is you Patrick Ewing sitting there in long flowing white robes with these huge black wings on his back and Kinderman approaches dire and looks at him sort of quizzically sort of funnily and says like one of the chances We're both dreaming this at the same time and dire looks at him and says I'm not dreaming

You know and then it's everything starts to escalate as the dream comes to an end in this like You know bladdy Flexing his director muscle in a way that is so rare for someone who's not an experienced director to do so well of like everything escalates, like the jazz, the big brass, like jazz band playing, it like zooms into them and they start playing faster and faster and faster. And the creepy old ladies at the piano. Yeah and faster. The creepy old ladies at the piano.

Yeah, it cuts to the old ladies at the piano and like they all have like different like they look like they're straight out of the movie Brazil and it like Patrick Ewing starts putting down in fast motion like the hanged man over and over and over again. And then George C Scott wakes up and gets the call that Father Dyer has been killed at the hospital. I just love that moment in the dream when he says, like, you know, I'm thinking, were we both dreaming the same thing at the same time?

And his friend in the dream says, Bill, I'm not dreaming because he's already dead. He's dead, like he's encountering his soul in heaven. And again, like that's another optimistic part about that move about this movie Is that dire is in heaven, but I have to speak to the the Patrick Ewing cameo I don't know how they pulled Fabio But the Patrick Ewing cameo in this movie means one thing and one thing only The Georgetown setting and that bladdy was a Georgetown guy and Ewing of course famously was a Hoya

Before being drafted to the Knicks. So I love a little bit of a little Georgetown connection just to got Patrick Ewing in film appearance, he would later go on to be featured in the Whoopi Goldberg movie Eddie, and Marlon Waynes, the Waynes Brothers movie, The Sixth Man. And Space Jam, of course, in 1996. Oh, yeah, how could I forget Space Jam? Well, I don't think it's heaven that they're in. I think it's purgatory because they're waiting.

It's like a station that you're stuck in. It seems that way. It's like being stuck in the airport of the afterlife. There's two things that I think of with that sequence or that I'm thinking to bring up. One is that I always really love how Blatty, because I think, because he is so actually devout and has spent his whole life thinking about what eternity might be like and what all of these words and ideas, you know, how they're

essentially incomprehensible to people, he almost just doesn't even try to show you what the glory of heaven would actually be. So he has a much more kind of, I would again say, kind of tongue in cheek presentation of like a kind of schlubby heaven or purgatory or whatever it is, where he doesn't even bother. He just makes it kind of like a joke, you know, where there's bolts on his neck because they had to put his head back on, you know, where there's bolts on his neck because he had to put his head back on, you know, and there's all these kind of weird cameos and there's old ladies playing piano. Like, that's not a very glorified, you know,

sentimental idea. Sentimental version of the afterlife. Of heaven, because he just doesn't care. I think he's like, well, that would be beyond what anyone could show. So I'm gonna talk in like, I'm gonna talk in sort of metaphors and jokes, really. And that makes it creepier

Yes, that that God in the unseen in the afterlife would be like unknowable or on like the reality of it You can process through like human eyes so that like his experience of it in the dream is like made legible By making it a train station. Yeah, I mean like to lay onto that Like I think another element of it is that he doesn't need to depict hell either Because the point of the movie is that we already know what hell looks like and it's like the disease Degradation and cruelty of the world we currently live in yeah as a contrast to hell raiser the other thing This is a decent is enough time to bring it up is Music in the film when we were watching it

Well, I kind of forgot, I don't know how, because I love this movie as much as you both, I forgot how little score there is in the film. There's a lot of sound design, really wonderful, effective sound design. Sound design in this movie is immaculate. It is the scariest part of the movie.

It is unreal. I think like in, just quickly, like the first scene, a piece, like a newspaper is flying up those stairs that Father Keras dies on. And when it bumps into the stairs on its way up, like a couple times, and like the way, the sound of it bumping into it like shakes your bones,

kind of, because it's so like deep and like, and I don't know. When you hear at various points the growling of the demon and these like this ambient wall of just like, like ominous sound. In the, in the, in the initial moments on the stairs, you get a two or three second bit of tubular bells, and then it's just washed away by the low groaning. And almost like he's saying, okay, this is something different. You know, again, maybe take some notes,

anyone who happens to be making new Exorcist films. As soon as this movie starts, he's like, yeah, we all know that, we've done that. So it's not tubular bells. And then you just get the sound design. But in this dream sequence, it's really one of the first moments you you hear music and it's this tacky Musac happening in purgatory or heaven or whatever it is, but in general

There's no theme. There's no consistent, you know score. I can only think of a couple moments where music is really pumping They're like stink. Yeah, and of course the the famous scene There's a great sting, but it's not really musical so much as a kind of sound cue. But all of the quietude really, unlike Hellraiser where the score lifted it up, Blatty knew where that was the opposite should happen. And this movie is so quiet, which the original Exorcist is too, to be fair, but this is so quiet, it really is, it becomes disturbing. And it makes you feel on edge at every moment. Like a faucet dripping, the door creaking, papers rustling. The great example of that, particularly is when Kinderman is talking to the university

president and the little whispers in the papers. I remember when I first saw it, that was actually the scariest scene in this movie. That was the scariest scene to me because it's so quiet that, and there is no real, I guess there's a jump scare at the very end when the lady says, here's the speech, you know, and you're like, the lady jumps at him and like dives at him and screams as loud as she can and says, you scared me, huh? But that scene, and I also love that university president, by the way, he's in it more in the director's cut, but in the beginning when Dyer says,

my favorite movie is, it's A Wonderful Life, what's yours? And with this severe like hiss, the guy just goes, the fly, like that. And something about the Georgetown. Cronenberg's or the original? I mean, I like imagining it's Cronenberg's, I think that about the Georgetown. Cronenberg's are the original. I mean, I think I like imagining it's Cronenberg's. I think that's the joke. Absolutely.

This guy's a total thicco. I mean, there's so many, there are references to a lot of 80s movies in this. Like there's a part where he says, where Father Dyer tells the nurse, like, may the Schwartz be with you before she leaves the room. Yes. There's also a great bit. I'll talk about the Legion versus Exorcist 3 thing at the end maybe, but there is a great cut line in this where on their date, Kinderman and Dyer, Kinderman, I think it starts the scene in that version where he goes, he's saying if

it's a wonderful life, which they've just seen, You know, it's just it's such a tender movie, you know, just so heartfelt. And I go as well, Billy said the same thing about a racer head. Another another awesome line, another great little bit of banter. But I want to talk about the scene you reference, Brendan, which to me is like when this movie opens up a new chamber and when like the supernatural begins to intrude on this movie heavily. And like it's sort of like it marks a departure from like the first third or so of the movie, the first half. And it's when Kinderman goes to see the university president after Father Dyer's murder. It's like Dyer's boss at the, you know, the church slash Georgetown University.

And he goes to his office. And like, this this is like the way the way this is all set up is it is like as we'll see later in the hallway Scene is a real microcosm It's just like as a stand-in for like a structural device that is used throughout the entire movie that you realize when you watch it Is that like he sets it like he cuts hard? From like someone will finish a line of dialogue and it will cut hard immediately after the word ends like it doesn't give you any space to react and it will cut to either an exterior or an interior that you haven't seen before and your mind takes a little like you don't really know where you are who's in this scene and your mind doesn't really know what it's looking at

but he he creates these establishing shots of interior spaces and then begins to fill them with people. And then he will set up another shot, like for instance, where the university president and the kindermen are talking. And it's the university president is the first person in this movie to reference the possession

that took place in the first movie. It's a thing that everyone watching the movie is aware of, but no one in the movie, as mentioned, they've been dancing around it. And he starts talking about Reagan McNeil and the possession in which Damien Karras lost his life doing it. And then in the office, what does he have? A huge grandfather clock. Where does that clock do? It stops, just like the sequence with Father Merrin in Northern

Iraq in the very beginning of the exorcist. And then you begin to hear sort of like the wailing of an old woman. You get the overlaid with chanting in Latin and a door creaks open and you see an individual sheet of paper. An individual sheet of paper just lift up on its own and just sort of crinkle and go back down. And then he'd already previously shown you a statue right outside the office door. That's like a statue of a saint or something. The lights go out, he shows you the same interior space that he showed you before, but with shadows moving through it.

The lights go out and then he shows you the statue again, but the face is like demonic. It's the Joker. It's the Joker, yeah. It's the Joker. It's Jokerfied. Yeah, he has a really good, there's a lot of, I can just rifle through them now,

there's a lot of great subtle touches in this film. Like in the very beginning, which I didn't notice the first, maybe two times I saw it, in the beginning with that, I think it might be a POV shot, you know, basically of walking through Georgetown. The dream. The dream that both Karras and Father Dyer describe of, I had a dream of roses and...

I forgot what the other thing is. I was falling down a flight of stairs. But yeah, roses and then falling down a flight of stairs. But as the camera's pushing in in the first moment, if you look in the distance, you see a figure in a black robe running down the street. And I think that is maybe supposed to be whoever just committed the murder

under the Gemini or whatever. But I didn't see that the first couple of times because it's not in the center of the frame. It's way like in the distance and far back, but it's totally silent and you just see this cloaked figure running and it looks like incredibly satanic and evil, although it's just this very subtle detail.

Yes, and there's no music. And there's no music. It's totally silent, it's just the wind and the credits are rolling. There's no music playing during the credits, which is so rare. Well, the other the the other scene that is less I mean, what's happening is more extraordinary, but he still treats very like everything else except for that one moment in the middle where it kind of peaks is when the old lady, it's now, it's iconic. I mean, he kind of invented, you know, people crawling on the ceiling like demon

like. Yes. But when the little old lady is crawling, it's completely silent. It's not like, yeah, there's not a big dumb ass conjuring sting or anything like that. And it's all what's scary about it is that no one sees it happening and it's completely quiet. And he has that restraint that again, as like basically a first time director, second time director is pretty amazing. He didn't rely on anything else except the disturbing visual. And and Brendan, like in your description of that, like of how he uses quiet and like the patience and foreshadowing, I think it's like a good shorthand for what is good horror versus bad horror whereas like the scares in a bad horror movie just beat you over the head and like it's just like you have

it's like you know it's authoritarian you have no choice but to react 13 ghosts from like movies telling you like you have no choice yeah whereas like what he does in this movie is that he shows you in a couple Truly like jolting jump scares in this movie But like so much of it like it's everything that surrounds it is so quiet and patient when it happens It's almost like like I said Your mind isn't really quite sure what it's seeing right and you have to like you have to figure out what you've seen after Like the scare has taken place and it has a really much more unnerving uncanny effect. Yep.

I mean, can we can we talk about the hospital? The famed because there's so much in that that I think relates to what we're talking about right now. And it's basically most of this scene where what has happened is basically Father Dyer is killed in the hospital. And then George C. Scott kind of goes to the locked down wing with my favorite character in the movie, Scott, Dr. Temple. Scott Wilson as Dr. Temple.

He is my personal MVP. I love him in this. Yes. My favorite character in the entire movie. He's the head of one scene later. He's the head of the shut up and eat ward, which presides over the catatonic. And what I love about the Dr. Temple character is that there is something instantly off putting about him.

Yes. Yes. I mean, my favorite scene besides the George C. Scott, I think the funniest scene in the movie is there's a scene where it cuts to dr Temple's office and his his character trait is that he like obsessively smoked cigarettes but the entire movie basically is from the besides the kills are from the point of view of George C. Scott, but in this one moment we see Father Temple, or Dr. Temple, I'm sorry, and he keeps talking like he's like saying like, that man that I showed you earlier in the in the psych ward.

He actually funny thing about him. We found him and then he keeps starting over and he's rehearsing. You're like, who's he talking to? Yeah, because it keeps cutting to like different things in his office, including a big poster of the hanged man card from the town. And a big portrait of himself, which is awesome. Yes.

And also nudie pinups, which is very professional for a doctor to have in his office. Yes. And I think like one of the greatest bits of acting business of anything, like any movie I can think of that I think I'm like, this is so brilliant is he keeps rehearsing and his cigarette is in his left hand and he's like smoking his cigarette compulsively as he's reading his lines off this little sheet of like yellow legal paper and Then George C Scott comes in he takes his lines and puts them in his desk

but his cigarette is out so he takes another cigarette in his right hand and lights it with the old one and George C Scott like makes fun of him and is like Wow, you got a lot of papers in your room in your your office, huh? Like, must be a paper drive. And he's like, I haven't gotten around to reading them yet. The science articles are very good. Yeah. And then he leans back, and he's holding his cigarette in his right hand, but because he's rehearsed so many times

with it in his left hand, he's holding his hands up like he has two cigarettes, two cigarettes flanking his head. And he's just like that man that we brought you in. And George C. Scott is like, what the fuck is he doing with his hands? It's so amazing. People should definitely have watched it already. But the the the Gemini has told him to say this to George C. Scott. Yeah. And so or else he'll do something horrible to him.

So he is being he's been blackmailed by a demon or not a demon but by a but by a by a formerly chem catatonic amnesia patient that's been a resurrected serial killer to say go go say these lines to the detective and get it right or else I'm going to fucking kill you. And so he's just really nervous. Yeah. Yeah, you will experience horrors unlike anything anyone's ever imagined. And the funny thing is that later on when Brad Dorff is describing this, he's like, the poor sucker actually believed me.

Yeah, Scott Wilson is great. He's great in this. Scott Wilson, you might remember him from his brief appearance at the beginning of Bong Joon Ho's The Host. He was also in In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier. He's also in... He's the star of... Or the most important character in The Ninth Configuration. So, he's great in that. Yes, he's in The Ninth Configuration. Also Marge Helgenberger's father on CSI.

Nice. So like all of this is foreshadowing to like where the hospital, of course the Catholic hospital, has become basically the centerpiece of this movie. And this is all foreground for the infamous hallway scare scene in this movie, which is one of the most, I say again,

singular moments in horror history is this scare. of the most, I say again, singular moments in horror history is this scare. In movie history, I would say. It's so incredible. I don't know, like, cancel Brendan, you want to like, like set this up? Like, how does this, how does this scene work? And like, what is so extraordinary about it? The beginning, the, the setup of this scene is that George C. Scott has gone into that guy's cell to visit

with him and sees that it is literally actually Damian Carus, like the dead priest from his friend who died in the exorcist. Played by, of course, the good Jason Miller. The bad Jason Miller will, let's just say. Yes, there are two Jason Millers and this is the good one. Let's just say the bad Jason Miller will be, he'll be quite an experiment for the Cenobites when his time comes.

Yes, absolutely. He goes in, sees that it is literally Father Charis in there and Father Charis is telling him like, ah ha ha, like, I killed like so many people, like I, you know, I've been taught by the master and then we see that it becomes Brad Dorif. This is who is really inhabiting this body. George C. Scott is like, we need to lock down this hospital.

I need two officers in every wing with rotations like every 12 hours, every like eight hours or something. Like I need them to be patrolling. Everything needs to be completely secure. And so you as a viewer are like, okay, when it cuts to the hospital and you literally see like a police officer sitting in a chair

and a nurse at the front desk and another police officer in the hallway behind him pacing back and forth. The immediate thought is safety. There's two police officers, we're totally safe. And the one police officer leaves for a second and the other police officer walks away and then the nurse goes to check on a noise she heard

down the hall, like upstage basically, towards the camera. We should make clear that about a minute and thirty seconds have progressed with absolutely a single static shock. No sound. Totally one shot. There's like ambient sound, like it's like them chattering, but there's no dialogue that's being delivered. Yeah, no dialogue, just background chatter, footsteps, total silence. And then you hear the strange crackling and you're like, what the hell is that? And then like the nurse like looks down the hall indicating, oh, she's hearing it too. And then eventually she goes to check it out and she sees a glass of water. It's impossible

to stress that like this takes place over like three minutes and it's so stressful. And she slowly opens the door and sees that it's just a glass of water with ice that's melting, that's making this noise, which, and then this guy like wakes up from the bed next to the glass of water and is like, ah, it screams at her. That is a really effective like like that'll jolt you out of your seat if you're not ready for it. That jumpscare is incredible. But it is a misdirection. It is the false fright because then it goes right back out to that same shot of the hallway. And the scene continues for like another two minutes.

Yes. And the best part, she goes back out into the hallway, the police officer, she goes immediately behind the desk and starts rummaging through papers and it is as loud as the jump scare, which is my favorite part of the whole scene, because it's like kind of being like, okay, you not only do you not have to be worried because all tension was diffused a second ago, but only do you not have to be worried because all tension was

diffused a second ago, but like you don't have to be worried because like the noise is like you're desensitized to the noise because she's opening and closing drawers so loudly that it's just like, and then the police officer comes back in and you're like, okay, now we're completely safe. And then she sees room 411, which is the room father Dyer died in. And there's like a weird sound, like a very slight sound coming from it. And she gets up to go look. And as she's walking into the room, the other police officer comes out and takes the other like calls the other police officer out. And it's like, so both police officers are gone. And she goes into the room, nothing

happens totally silent. She closes the door and walks away and like this figure, like speed walks out of the room with these like garden shears and just cuts her fucking head off in like one second and it zooms in so fast. It is. And this incredible music sting. Oh God, it is such a violent, like just shocking, cause like you know what's coming, you know something bad is gonna happen, but you're still not prepared for when it happens.

And the cool thing is there are these huge, it's basically like shears that are designed to remove the heads from cadavers for like medical schools. And this like, the figure comes out with these shears and it zooms in really quickly, but it doesn't actually show the decapitation. What it does is another one of these hard smash cuts to a still image of the decapitated statue of Christ that we saw earlier in the movie. And another jarring moment as Kinderman goes into an elevator. This was like an hour earlier in the movie, and that's what I mean about these matched shots

that have an hour separating them, but only become legible as you experience them. It's true, it's God-level filmmaking. I think that there's an unstated, everyone kind of got together and ripped off so much from this movie. I mean, clearly much was ripped off about much from this movie. I mean, clearly much was ripped off about The Exorcist. You had all kinds of, I mean, there was that film

Abbey, the black exploitation version that was literally just The Exorcist again, but kind of lower production value. But as far as conception, what's that? The Blexorcist. Yes. But some of the staples of what now is almost like kind of canned horror stuff, possessed old people, people crawling on, on, on the ceiling, like, like spiders and stuff. Because the spider walk with the spider walk, everyone thinks of the exorcist that was not in the exorcist until the DVD in 2000. So really the first like version of that was in this movie. And then it's not really a nun, but it looks like a kind of cloaked nun like religious figure who is barreling

out of that room about to cut her head off. And now there's like, you know, the fucking nun too or whatever. There's an obvious like cashing in. But Blatty has all of that in one film and he doesn't milk any of it. It's all just used incredibly like we've already said deliberately. But the one thing no one has ever, I think, tried to like steal because you really can't do it twice is something like that long, long, long, long shot that we've been discussing. I don't maybe someone has done it, but I don't think anyone has ever even tried to do that again

it's it's in it's really difficult to stress that this scene is like six or seven minutes long like maybe six minutes long and like the entire like maybe 80% of it is this one shot of the hallway and it just zooms in once at the very very end It's pretty good just the confidence that it takes zooms in once at the very very end. It's brilliantly done. The confidence that it takes to pull that off is incredible. We kind of were getting into the Dorif zone there about his meeting. I think we should conclusively enter the Dorif realm because he to me is the heart of this movie for me.

The first two thirds of this movie or so, like I said, are eerily foreshadowing the evil that Kinderman will encounter. And like I said, these three confrontations that are really almost filmed like confessionals each time, because they're like two men in profile sitting on benches in this cell that are like, they're two windows and each of them are sort of like have Shafts of light highlighting each of the parties in in this padded cell where he you know, he comes he Realizes that the man in this padded cell is literally Damien Karras And he originally starts talking to him and he's played by Jason Miller as in the original movie

Who's also very good in this? but at some point when he starts telling him the details of the Gemini killings, and George C. Scott says, the Gemini killer is dead. And then it cuts to Brad Doreff's face, screaming, No, I am not I am alive. I go on I breathe. And it's just like immediately Doreff just like I said, at 11 11 and then from from that point on every time he is encountering the demon it is in the guise of Brad Dorif who you know honestly I could have just spent this whole episode talking about Brad Dorif he would be on probably my top five favorite actors of all time

here I mean like one of the greatest TV actors of all time he basically reprises this role in one of the best X-Files episodes of all time. He basically reprises this role in one of the best X-Files episodes of all time, Beyond the Sea. Him as Doc Cochran. One of the funniest. Yes, exactly. Hazel, Hazel Motes in Blood. Wise Blood.

John Huston's Wise Blood. Yes, the southern gothic. That's the same cinematographer as this movie, by the way, Wise Blood. Oh, shit. His name is Jairus Fisher. But yeah, as you said, by the way, Wise Blood. Oh, shit. Oh, his name is. But yeah, but yeah, as you said, Doc Cochran in Deadwood, I mean, it goes on and on like he was nominated for best.

Chuckie. Yes, he is the voice of Chuckie nominated for best supporting actor in his first movie ever, which was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which ironically sort of overshadows the ninth configuration, which is like very much a similar movie. A better version, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. Yes. If Brad Dourif were a ninth configuration, it would have to be like the best movie. Now we're talking.

Yeah. But Dourif in this movie is just like, he represents and plays to the hilt true evil. And man oh man, is it effective. So here's the way I thought about this when thinking about our discussion about two authors who ended up directing great horror films. There's a real difference in this moment between Friedkin and Blatty. And I think that Friedkin, obviously the first film, the realism that Friedkin imbued to

it, what everyone talks about how it feels like a documentary, that's something that almost no one else could have successfully done. So there's tons of work and like scaffolding that made sure a movie like this could work directed by Blatty. But now that Blatty has it, in the original Exorcist, there is a scene that is in the, I'll call it the 2000 version, the quote unquote version you've never seen, which is not a director's cut, it's the Blatty cut. It's scenes that Blatty told Friedkin to put back in that Friedkin never thought were necessary. And there's a scene in there,

and that cut is very good. I don't think it's better, but it's good. There's a scene that Friedkin cut, which was a long conversation, not as long as the back and forth with Dorif, but a long conversation between Karras and Father Maren about what the demon is doing in there, the nature of evil, the point of this possession, and it's very well written and it's very well acted. But Friedkin cut it all out,

because for him, it wasn't necessary. Film is a visual medium and for him it was like, you can see all that on the screen. I don't need to show a conversation about it. But here in this movie, Blatty is in control. Religious patriots are in control. And he's an author. He's a writer. The American Catholic League has taken control. He's a writer and he's like, no, I'm putting in my monologues. This is my thing. And so this whole confrontation just on a craft level with Blatty being in charge, I

think is like, no, no, no, we're getting some monologues in to this exorcist because I've got him. I've got him in my back pocket. So that's like the, I think, a unique thing about him making this even possible for Dorif to do in the first place, you know? And I think the movie that I keep bringing up is the big, or I've brought up once, is the big, you know,

parallel movie to this as the master, as the easiest comparison as far as the beauty of the shots and the thoughtfulness of the composition also stands true as the whole movie being pinned around these incredible performances between one actor who is kind of a pilgrim in the world of, in this world he's not familiar with, and this charismatic monologue delivering, you know, megalomaniac. The master. The master, which is, and Dora refers to the demon as the master many times in these exchanges. Yes. I've been taught by the master. Yes. When he first growls like that, he's like, I do that rather well, don't you think? I've been taught by the master.

This is something that I was thinking about on a recent rewatch of this movie. And I think it's part of this, like his Catholic Christian conception of evil. The Bl cut is called legion, and legion is a demon referred to in the New Testament. In Dora's dialogues, with the Geminides dialogues with Kinderman, he refers to the master. Like, as your friend was slipping away, the master was slipping me in, as he describes how, like, Karras's body was hijacked by the demon driven out of Reagan McNeil in the first movie. He refers to the master, but he refers to my friends, the cruel ones. And then he goes back to saying, no, there's the one, the only one. And this reminds me of the original movie, where Karras tries to describe to Marin, he's like, I've kept a running note of like some of

the different personalities that are inhabiting Reagan. And Marin goes, No, there's only one. There's only one. Yeah, the demon is a liar. And it's this idea of the demon legion that we are many, but we are one. And it's like, I was just struck by this movie's depiction of evil, is that it is both many and one at the same time that like, the evil that that men do that we the cruelty is the horrors of this time. The evil that men do, the cruelty, the horrors of this world, they're done by individuals and it seems like there are different personalities maybe inspiring them to do it,

but there is both many and one and there is only the master. And he is the master of our hearts and our fallen nature that lead us to corruption and evil. And I think it really is an American, and especially in the modern era of an especially American phenomena of, you know, and I think part of why this all takes place in Georgetown, obviously, because, I mean, Blatty is a Georgetown, you know, alum, but like, this taking place

in DC, the center of America is like this idea of like, you know, the famous 70s and 80s wave of American serial killers who you think like, oh my God, how can such evil exist in so many separate little, like in so many separate forms and this idea of like, no, what if they're just one? Like what if it's all one, you know, uniting like evil? It's in a way easier to digest in that way. And Hesse, I'm glad you brought up serial killers because this is like a discrete phenomenon of the 60s, 70s and 80s in America.

And as we get to see like popular culture begin to metabolize the serial killer as this like stock villain I would really put this movie as before Silence of the Lambs which really like inaugurated the modern serial killer movie this was the first like Henry portrait of a serial killer had already come out which if by the way if you haven't seen one of the most nauseating horrifying movies ever made yeah but it is very different Lee Lucas I think is yeah quite explicitly based on him, mostly. Yeah, but also Will Manhunter, you know, Red Dragon had come out in 84.

But those aren't really horror movies. No. Those are like procedural thrillers. What I mean is that this movie is really one of the first to take the popular conception of the serial killer and put it in an imaginative context in which there are all these kind of like Decadent artistic theatrical geniuses. Yeah, which is kind of like an evil thought because Henry portrait of a serial killer Which is why that no one talks about that movie is because it's the most realistic depiction of a serial killer where he is Just like a basically a sub mental shithead. Yes, Like it's like a not extraordinary or insightful in any way.

Like he's just like, yeah, such a disturbing movie. But like in the Gemini Killer, in Dora's performance, he like, he references Shakespeare and he considers himself an artist. But like it's that modern Hannibal Lecter thing of having a really, really significant MO, a really unique technique and style of killing people that I think Americans got obsessed with as the serial killer grew in our consciousness.

But this movie is really ahead of its time in its fetishization of the serial killer as this uniquely demonic figure and also uniquely intelligent and gifted. One of my favorite parts of the entire monologue is when he's describing how he drained all the blood from Father Dire and he's like, you insert a tube into the inferior vena cava or superior vena cava. It's a matter of taste, don't you think? And then you pulled up the legs and squeezed and every once in a while he has these escalations these like abs and By the way, I feel like Heath Ledger really jacked a lot of his Joker performance from this movie but but the the the other great touch of this whole scene as I think you know, it's probably been remarked on before is is the

fluctuation of his voice that is post-production Where yeah Brad Dorif's normal range is he's kind of got a not a post-production where Brad Dorof's normal range, he's kind of got a, not a high-pitched voice, but he's in the middle range. But throughout this, Blatty, or I assume it's from Blatty's direction, they alter so that sometimes he's really quite guttural and low and baritone, and then they never make him

like helium-inflected, but he, except actually maybe when he's singing as the, he's singing the little. Oh yeah, the alternate falsetto. Yeah, the falsetto voice. But it's just this thing that's keeping you somewhat like, on sort of on the back foot. You can't quite even place what register

this guy's voice is in, which is a nice subtle touch that makes him creepier and makes him more forbidding. And one of my favorite little touches of that is that when there are the flashbacks where George C. Scott is remembering the things that Brad Dwarf said to him, he's remembering them in just Brad Dwarf's unfiltered regular voice. Whereas when we heard those things earlier, they were like an octave or two deeper. And sometimes so much like echo. And sometimes it's Jason Miller's voice coming out of bread Doris mouth or being remembered

by, by kinder man. And you know, like the voice pitching, my probably my favorite moment in the movie is in one of bread Doris manic monologues, where he's describing that like, the demon chose Karras specifically as revenge for the exorcism. And he chose Karras because he wanted the body of a priest and his soul trapped inside it to be carrying out and witnessing these insane degradations. And then Brad Dorif, he gets more and more jacked up

and he goes, and he'll be in here while I rip and mutilate the innocent. He is inside with us. He will never get away. His pain will never end. And then he just stops and goes, oh, gracious me. He goes, was I ranting? Yeah.

Was I ranting? Oh, I'll calm down now. Was I ranting again? Was I ranting again? That's one of my favorite deliveries is when he's, the sound design is also building up again where there's this big rumbling happening and he stands up and he screams, he is inside with us.

That is like a sort of one of those bone chilling, you really can't replicate that. Although, oddly enough, Brad Dorif had to give this performance twice because they re-shot everything for Exorcist III, not Legion, because they couldn't replicate the room in the exact same way. So he had to do over this entire monologue. And it's actually a little bit different in Legion.

The goat. But he's actually, one of my favorite details of these scenes is That the entire time like someone in the midst of a religious ecstasy Or any other kind of ecstasy Brad dwarf is sobbing the whole time like tears Streaming down his face. Yes, and literally also coming out of his nose too, which is a signal that it's not fake. They didn't use fake tears.

It's just like he's actually crying and like, um, cause you can't fake it coming out of both... Like snot coming out of your nose and stuff. Yes, your eyes and your nose. Like it's, um... It could mean a bunch of different things, but I thought that that kind of, a cool way you could read that is that the body of Karras is crying.

Yes, of Karras, yes. Yes, is so, you know, because he's trapped. Is so distraught by this happening to him, because that really is like the great horror of this movie, is the idea that someone as good a person as Karras, who was just trying to save a little girl, could be subjected to like this much like actual torture, like pure torture and hell.

Well, this is just for no reason other than because the devil wanted to fuck with this is where I really like again, the different approach that Blatty took where, you know, there's this school of thought, you know, don't try to literalize too much. And I agree with that, that, you know, that that can become tedious. But I also sometimes get annoyed when people pretend there is no offered like story or genuine plot. And I think the movie, certainly the book is, the movie is pretty clear. This is not a demon. This is a serial killer who has been placed back to life inside of a carous by demons

or the devil as a way to get back at, you know, the faithful. But it's a very different performance. Like Reagan's Demon, Pazuzu, in the first one, it's a lot of tricks and like talking in riddles and just there's, it's not really- Fuck me! Fuck me! Yeah, I mean, and knowing stuff about your history and shit. Yeah, pure evil, you know, kind of distilled. But in this, it is a very human person that Brad Dorff is playing. And he may have learned, you know, references to Shakespeare, and he's talking about hanging out with the demons on the other side. But he's very emotional,

and he talks about his dad even more so in the director's cut. But Kinderman says he kills people who have K's in their name because his father's name was Carl. So it's again, this isn't even really, which is why I think the ending is as fun as it is, it kind of fucks up the movie because this is not a possession in the sense of a demon. And it's a more, it's something that I think Dorif could sink his teeth into more than just being what Linda Blair was in the first one, which is kind of a wonderful achievement of like Special effects and voiceover.

Well, Mercedes-Burke Cambridge is amazing as that voice in the first one, but this is just Dorif and he's playing a human being. He is. Yes, and I think it also relates back to like the mask of the Red Death. When we talked about how the Red Death was, the reason he, the Red Death, looks for, you know, doesn't care about, you know, the number, the sheer number of deaths is because he's a theater kid and like loves the theatricality. And I think that that also is like, Brad Dourif's character is completely theatrical and just is like the perfect idea of a human serial killer

who is so, you know, cause a character like that can only exist in fiction because when it happens in real life, you get someone like Dennis Rader who would kill a whole family and then leave a bowl of cereal out because he's a serial killer. And that's his idea of being clever and smart and cool. That's what actual serial killers are like. I should make a note though that speaking of serial killers, this movie has quite a bit

of lore as it relates to real-life serial killers famously This was Jeffrey Dahmer's favorite movie and he watched it nearly every day So, you know if you are like Jeffrey and that this movie means a lot to you. You may also be gay Well as we as we I guess because it kind of goes from the confrontation with yet another old person that the Gemini has had access to, you get to that, what was the original climax of the film, which is that it follows Kindermann home, then you get the giant exorcist scene, the giant exorcism at the end. And I actually-

Featuring another exorcist that like, just Father Morning, who we saw like a tiny bit, and then he's just back to do this exorcism at the end. And I actually will- Featuring another exorcist that like, just Father Morning who we saw like a tiny bit and then he's just back to do this exorcism. Look, it's just, I think the studio was like, look, it's called The Exorcist, you gotta have an exorcism in the movie. Well, Will- Yes, that is literally exactly what happened. And not only that, but Will, check this out.

I was looking this up earlier and I know you know that John Carpenter was briefly attached to this and I just wanna read what he said about it later, which I'm not on the clock. I'm just going to use for my research here. It's Wikipedia. But he says, he explained his reasons. I would never do that for the show. What's that? I would never use Wikipedia as a source for this show. Yeah, I only use trustworthy sources such as IMDB trivia.

Yeah, the goof section of IMDB. Things my friends tell me secondhand. Carpenter said, I met with Blatty over the course of a week, perhaps a week and a half. This is from a book called Prince of Darkness. He had director approval, so he was testing and probing me to find out who I was and how smart I was and whether or not I should direct the film. I was ambivalent about the script, primarily because it didn't have an exorcism. Our time together was a lot of fun.

We talked about everything. I kept suggesting a third act exorcism and pushing the both of us to come up with some new exciting, grotesque devil gags. Blatty was resistant. He wanted to direct it and wanted to stay very close to his novel. I respected Blatty, figured out that he wanted badly to direct the picture, and felt that I couldn't get

what I needed, so I withdrew. So it might have been John Carpenter that gave the studios like, hey, well, you know, Carpenter was going to give us this big sexy exorcism at the end. What are you doing? Because Bladdy famously, that's what the director's cut is. The only thing I'll say about it, because I, you know, we mentioned I watched it today, is on a story level, I prefer Legion because it really is a non sequitur at the end. And suddenly there's the fucking devil inside of Charis. It's like, you know, it really doesn't non sequitur at the end, and suddenly there's the fucking devil inside of Charis. It's like, you know, it really doesn't make any sense.

But... Father Mourning comes out of nowhere. He's in scenes that actually feel injected with a turkey baser. Yeah, yeah. They sprinkle him in earlier, but I will say that... Also, there's a man with white hair who did an exorcism once in the Philippines. It's supposed to be, you know, Father Father Maren part two, you know, basically. Yeah.

But unfortunately, the director's cut is kind of hard to watch in that sense because it is dailies, like ripped from a VHS. So it doesn't really give you the power of some of the scenes that were originally shot. And it falls a little flat for those purely like presentation reasons. But if you put that aside and you just kind of embrace at the end that like, look, this

isn't really Blatty's like true vision. It is pretty fun that that final exorcism where George Eastwood- What I will say about the climax of this movie and the father mourning exorcism at the very end when he goes in, carousels to do the exorcism and save the world, is that I love what I love about Father Mourning, as opposed to Father Maron, is that Father Mourning gets owned immediately. Yeah, it's right away.

He gets through like the opening bars of the right for exorcism, and then the demon just like, like smashes his body onto the ceiling and rips all his skin off. Yes. Yes. And my also like, I think that I read that like they added another million dollars to the budget just for this scene. I think it was like four million. I think it was like four million dollars. Literally they like doubled the budget or something or they like added a significant

percentage to the budget or something, or they like added a significant percentage to the budget just for this one. Brad Dorif said, he said, it really bumped him out that they changed it. He said, the original version was a hell of a lot purer and I liked it much more. As it stands now, it's a mediocre film. Gotta disagree with Brad there.

Yeah, I disagree with the king. There are parts that have no right to be there. And meanwhile, a bladdy after complaining that a test screening was was attended by zombies from Haiti to watch the film, which is he said, you know, that basically they gave him an ultimatum, like, look, we're going to do this with with or without you. And so he said, you know, that basically they gave him an ultimatum like, look, we're going to do this with or without you. And so he said, I decided better. I should do it than anyone else. I foolishly thought I can do a good exorcism.

I'll turn this pig's ear into a silk purse. So I did it. So I mean, the Lily Wachowski matrix. Yes, very similar. But then also, sorry, one more thing from Brad Dourif. He said, we all felt really bad about it But bladdy tried to do his best under very difficult circumstances And I remember George C Scott saying that the folks would only be satisfied if Madonna came out and sang a song at the end

He really is he's just like kinder been in real life So cool He really is he's just like kinder in real life He is so cool He's so distance from it And I think if you kind of let it go a little bit it is a pretty fun sequence that he that he did do a good Job yes, he did do I mean who am I gonna blame they want Phil Rizuto to come out I? Mean it's cool when like the ground of the cell literally opens up as when kindermen comes in and defines the priest's body, he gets pressed up against the wall. And then like the floor opens up and you see these bodies come out of hell, including the crucified corpse of a teenage boy in blackface.

Yep. Oh, God damn it. And there's a really cool shot. Yeah, it's totally. And there's a really cool shot where it goes back to a wide shot of possessed carousel talking to a kinderman and it's just real snakes in the foreground. And you're kind of like they're almost like grass. Just there's so many cobras.

Yeah, they're cobras and there's fire after the snakes. There's like a wall of fire. It is. I mean, it's visually. And then. Yes, it's raining inside and then thunder strikes and that's how the floor gives out. And then like my favorite part of the scene is that, you know, Father Morning, who was totally useless and is a dud, basically is like, Damien, please fight back, please, please, please, please, please. And like holds up a cross. And then George sees Scott drops from the fucking ceiling and Damien is like, Bill,

now, shoot me now, kill me now. Before he can even finish. That is awesome. He airs him out. I love that part. Yeah. I mean, look, he's like, he's a family dog or something. He's a warrant.

Yeah. But for me, the scene works for me because once again, it goes back to Blatty's writing and the delivery of monologues. And the monologue that George C. Scott delivers as he's being crucified on the wall of this padded cell is just like, it's Scott opening up every fucking chamber he's got. And like earlier, the Gemini said, I will help you with your belief. And like, as the pits of hell open,

I will help you with your unbelief, yeah. And as the pits of hell, yes. And as the pits of hell open up, Kinderman just like goes full George C. Scott and he goes, I believe in death. I believe in disease. I believe in slime and every cruelty and infidelity and slime and stink of this putrid world. I believe in you, you son of a bitch. And he just goes, I believe in you. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. He's like, he's like George Costanza where he goes, I believe in God for the bad parts.

Yes, yes, exactly. That is literally his character. Because well, sorry, sorry. Well, I'll let you finish. No, but like, you know, but the movie, the movie ends that like they preserve, it carves out like, you know, as the original Exorcist kind of does, it carves out like some small preserve, be it the church or the hope of grace or like there's something in our souls that there is like, it preserves some small island of grace in this fucking ocean of shit and piss.

Well, I was walking home last night after we watched Hellraiser, but I knew we had to talk about Exorcist III again. And so I was thinking about it. And this is what I ultimately find really interesting after all the other stuff we talked about, is Bladie had a falling out, actually, with Friedkin for many years, according to Friedkin anyway. Maybe he's being dramatic. But he said they didn't talk for a really long time

over the theatrical cut because Blatty was always mad at Friedkin for cutting some of the stuff I already mentioned, including an ending that confirmed like really clearly the triumph of good over evil, which is a conversation between Kinderman and Dyer, which actually sets up, I don't know if Blatty was like already planning on it. They make their first movie date in the Exorcist director's guide. They make their first movie date, which is pretty awesome given that I don't even think Legion was written for many more years. But among other things, Friedkin disagreed with that, and there's a great video of them, I guess, being interviewed for the, eventually, Friedkin did him a favor, as he calls it, and made the 2000 version, which put that stuff back in.

And there's a great, talk about an old married couple, there's a great clip of them at the same table where Blatty is like sadly grumbling, like, I just don't want the audience to think the devil wins, Bill. And Friedkin's like, shut up, you moron. It doesn't need to be in the movie. But, so in the 2000, the version you've never seen, in addition to the more sensational things, he puts in the more hopeful stuff. Friedkin does. But in this film, the one that Blatty himself directed, and even more so in the Legion,

the one that without even any studio meddling, it's even grimmer than Exorcist III. I wouldn't say that good doesn't triumph over evil, Karras does get freed from the Gemini, he rests in peace, that's the last bit as they put his body back in the ground. But there's still a pretty sour taste in your mouth. And the ending is anything. It's not a happy ending at all. It's anything but an uplifting ending, which the original, even the theatrical original

cut, you know, Regan, she's recovering, she hugs the priest, she's starting a new life, they're leaving the house. This is just kind of a quiet, grim requiem. And so it's fascinating to me that when someone else was handling his work, Blatty wanted a clear as day resolution of the problem of evil. But in his own adaptation, he is far more, he's just far more subtle and, and maybe even like, Just sparing actually. Yeah, ambiguous about it. Yeah. It's very Catholic. It's very, very Catholic to be like, to someone else be like, which is why I think Father Dyer's character is like,

he tells him like, we're spirits Bill, we'll be there at the end of time. But then privately is just like, fuck, we're fucked. I always think about the conflict between Friedkin, like the tough Jewish kid from Chicago, and Blatty, the Lebanese Catholic American, over the ending of The Exorcist, where of course, like, Friedkin, like the legalistic Jewish perspective on faith, he thought it was ironic because Charis saves Reagan by committing suicide, which is a mortal sin. Yep. And Blatty, that drove him insane because he was like, no, you just don't, you don't

get it. This is grace. This is salvation. This is grace. This is salvation. This is sacrifice. This is Jesus Christ. You don't, you, you, chosen people, you Jews, you don't understand it. This is, this is, this is a real Christian shit. You don't understand.

And for his free kids, just like what I thought, I thought suicide was a sin. That's not in the rules. Bill, that's, and he's, I don't know if you've ever seen that, if you've ever seen that, that documentary, Leap of Faith, it's really good. It's just an interview with Friedkin talking about mostly the exorcist, but he, he says at the end of it, he's like, I don't think the end of the film works at all, actually. It's kind of amazing that he's like, Bill could never explain it to me. And I just love the idea of him torturing Bill Blatty for so many years over like, that doesn't, cause I'll be honest, I think he's right.

Like the, the supreme irony to me at the end of the exorcist one is that the exorcism didn't really work because it doesn't work. It doesn't work at all. It didn't work. And what works is he beats the shit out of her for a second and then goads the demon, which apparently the demon wants to do anyway, to come into him. And then he just tops himself so that he can nip it in the bud. That's not, that's not a successful exorcism in my opinion.

No, it's a fail. No, I think, I think that like the, the thing about an exorcism is that it, it, to believe in absolute pure, complete and total evil in the existence of complete and total evil, you have to like, I think the ending of the exorcist, what it really puts me in mind of is the Borges short story about the tale of, the Borges short story about Judas and about how there's this idea that Judas is actually the Messiah Yes, yes, because he did the most hardest thing

Yes, he knew that he had to do something that he had to make not only a one-time sacrifice of dying on the cross But he had to go to hell for ever for everyone else and like just and the idea that anyone would think of him as a messiah ever by even imagining or conceptualizing or even talking about the idea of him as a messiah is to completely discredit that sacrifice. To even think about that, like, it completely, like, negates that sacrifice, because you were not, um, because then it's not a sacrifice as much as it was. Is the sacrifice Jesus, like, otherwise?

Is the sacrifice Jesus, the Son of God, martyring himself on the cross to live, you know, to wash us in the blood of the Lamb and redeem our sins for eternity, but also to be brought back to life, and then get to go in heaven and live with his dad for the rest of time. Judas. And then be revered as a deity forever. Yeah, Judas is the fucking heel for the rest of eternity, but he was the one who had to betray his friend, like not, like, you know, taking on faith that he was the son of God and then damn his whole to hell for eternity so that we could have Christianity, so that

any of this would matter. And ironically, I think Borges, who I think was Jewish, was Borges Jewish? Let me check my Excel sheet. I'm usually not sure. But I think that's like the perfect example of why this works from a Catholic perspective is that, or the ending of the exorcist works is that it's, and it's literally the continuity is shown here in this movie where it's like,

oh no, Charis is not in heaven. He did not go to heaven for doing something good. He did something good to save another person, not because he wanted to go to heaven, because he is in hell. He has been experiencing hell for like, years. And this movie is kind of, I think, a redemption of and I think it really shows that that point that Father Dyer says it all shakes out at the end of time. And this is 15 years later, which to us is an insane amount of time to be in hell.

It's way too long. To be experiencing actual hell. But it is a blink. And it, you know, like, Charis does eventually get saved from hell. And there, you know, it is, I think, you know, at the end of time, it really all will shake out. And I think it's very Catholic in that sense. By the way, he was not Jewish. That was a rumor spread by our Argentine ultra nationalists, apparently. Research again, you're passing along information from friends who've seen movies spreading. You're passing along information from friends who have seen movies, and now you're passing

along information from fucking Argentinian fascists. My friend Ernesto Hitler told me that years ago. I really took him on his word for it. He did write an essay to address it, saying I, a Jew, and was talking about how he'd be proud to be Jewish, and he might have ancient Jewish ancestry. But some of my best friends are Jewish. Basically, it was that. Yeah. Again, I think that it's a shame that Blatty didn't get exactly what he wanted on camera, but I'll always love Exorcist 3. I would not agree with Saint Dorif that it is a mediocre film.

It is a wonderful film. Almost as good as the first one. The first one pretty much is perfect, even though it's about an exorcism that didn't work, as we just said. Should be called the failed exorcism. Yeah. But this one isn't quite perfect, but it is so good. And honestly, in certain ways nowadays, at least more influential because of the kind

of things it injects into the like horror vocabulary that maybe should get more credit. And God bless, God bless Blatty. It sucks that his daughter is apparently some kind of like CIA level psychological warfare person, but that's not his fault. Well, DC is the center of all evil in the universe. It is our modern... This reality is city of dis in hell. God, we're almost at three hours.

This is the longest episode of Movie Mindset ever. I think we should leave it there with these. I hope you enjoyed this trip through hell. Listener, I will leave there with these. I hope you enjoyed this trip through hell. Listener, I will leave you with this. Save your servant who trusts in you, my God. Let him find you and you, Lord, a fortified tower in the face of the enemy. Let this podcast be a fortified tower for you, listener, in the face of the enemy. And save us, your humble servants and podcasters. Amen. Until next time, everyone, bye-bye. Delicious things to eat For the father who can't be peaked Sparkling drinks such as dandy

Chocolate eyes and a candy So let's all go to the lobby To get ourselves a treat Let's all go to the lobby To get ourselves a treat Forget ourselves and shriek you you you you you you you you you you you you