The Flop House - Ep.#433 - Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders
Episode Date: September 14, 2024It's that time of year again! Smalltember (or Smallvember, if you're nasty)! For our kickoff "smaller" bad movie pick, we took a recommendation from our podcast network colleague, the esteemed Mr. Jus...tin McElroy, and watched Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders, starring Flop House recurring offender, Jon Voight. It's a mashup of Clue and Saw that takes a turn you will not be expecting with those reference points. Take a listen, and unravel the mystery!FlopTV is going strong! You can pop in for individual episodes, or get a price break with a season pass — more info (including the full line-up of films discussed) and tickets are available here! And hey, while you’re clicking on stuff, why not subscribe to our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets?!”This film has no Wikipedia page. Perhaps you can be the change you want to see in the world.Recommended in this episode:So Close (2002)Rebel Ridge (2024)Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)Go to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, go to https://www.squarespace.com/FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Transcript
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On this episode we discuss Dangerous Game, The Legacy Murders.
Have you ever wanted to watch a song movie directed by the Bratz director?
Well, here it is! Hey, everyone.
Welcome to the Flophouse.
I'm Dan McCoy.
I'm Stuart Wellington.
And I'm Elliot Kaelin riding a bicycle down some stairs.
Oh, that's what's happening.
For a second I thought he'd died. And I'm Elliot Kaelin riding a bicycle down some stairs.
That's what's happening.
For a second I thought he died.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
I feel like, is that what ghosts sound like that?
Because they are riding a bicycle down the stairs and then they die.
Exactly.
They all died riding bicycles downstairs and they continue to do so in the afterlife.
That actually makes sense.
Yeah, that's the Beetlejuice rules.
Yeah, and they're all penny farthings, so it's a lot of jiggling.
It's very painful.
Wait, penny farthing is the giant wheel and the little wheel?
Yep, bone shakers they used to call them.
Why do they call it a penny farthing?
Because one wheel is the size of a penny and one is the size of a farthing
in relation to each other, right?
That actually makes perfect sense. Okay.
I'm glad Elliot had the actual answer.
I thought I was going to be setting up some comedy bits.
Nope. This show is all about getting things right.
By all of our educational.
Welcome to strangely incredibly fascinating today bicycles.
Today terms for bicycles, not the bicycles themselves, just the words.
Did you know bicycle means to cycle?
Oh, thanks. Let me check your math on that. Yeah, you're right. Just the words did you know by cycle means to cycle. Oh
Okay, let me check your math on that. Yeah, you're right. It's not that fascinating
Some interesting I've got some interesting surprise information for you about tricycles. Oh
No, maybe save that for later. I'm already a little worked up. Yeah Hey, it's it's we're we're shading in Yeah
Hey, it's it's we're we're shading into the fall months, of course, we got a couple of theme months in the fall
You're at the flop house a podcast where we watch a bad sure and then talk about yeah, let's set up the premise It's that we watch a bad movie then we talk about it
And then should I say to just to complete just around the. It's that we watch a bad movie then we talk about it And then should I say it too just to complete just around the horn to yeah that we watch a bad movie
We talk about it on it. Yeah. There you go. Well, we watch a bad movie if we talk about it
This is a long flight of stairs
Amazing keep the microphone with you during this
Headset Mike. Oh
Yeah, we do that.
Because I'm on my way to a Ted Talk.
Yeah.
And you know, oftentimes, most of the year,
we watch bigger Hollywood pictures,
because why make fun of movies that people aren't really going to see anyway?
Why punch down? It would be like hitting a ferret.
But, you know, once a year...
Us being titans of podcasting.
Exactly.
Striding over the earth, stuffing villagers into our gaping maw.
Yeah. But once a year we get a dispensation from the bad movie pope to do some small movies.
It's called Small Timber or Small Vember, depending on, you know...
Whether you're right or wrong.
Yeah. or small Vember depending on you know whether you're right or wrong yeah and
for this one this was a movie we made reference to another max fun podcast
earlier let's let's do another max fun reference this was recommended by
Justin Mackerell of my brother my brother and me and the adventure zone he
said you gotta check the actual actual podcast Titan striding the earth
and stuffing villagers into his mall, unlike us.
Yeah.
I think he may have seen it on a plane,
Dan McCoy style, seems odd.
I don't know why they would have it on a plane.
Maybe I'm making that up, but anyway.
It's called-
The story, it stretches credibility, Dan.
Who would-
I thought you were gonna say-
There's too many holes in the idea
that he could watch this movie on a plane.
Oh, yes, yeah, one more thing, one more thing.
Planes, which are famous for only carrying
the crème de la crème of cinema
for your viewing entertainment.
I thought you were going to say,
like, the story has changed over the years.
It's in the retelling.
Yeah, originally it was watched on a stagecoach.
Yeah.
They updated it for the 21st century.
Yeah.
This is called, as we said, Dangerous Game, The Legacy Murders.
The biggest name here is John Voight.
You know, no stranger, certainly in the back half of his career to bad movies.
Yeah.
Directed by his guy, Sean McNamara, who did, as Stuart said, Bratz and a bunch
of Baby Genius's direct-to-video sequels. And I see Elliot wanting to say it, so why
don't you say it? He's in theaters. Oh, I thought you were going to say he's in theaters
now. A little movie called Reagan, directed by Sean McNamara of Bratz fame.
What I was going to say was...
It's a movie where they hired that huge musician to play Frank Sinatra.
Scott Stapp from the band Creed.
And I'm like, Woody Allen's son is right there. Just cast him.
Not to make light of a family that's been through a lot of turmoil.
But when Mia Farrow was like, actually, his father might be Frank Sinatra, and was like,
really?
The guy who shares a head with him?
The guy he looks just like?
I was going to say, Dan, that the movie also features one of the Brats, Skyler Shay.
Yes!
She was the athletic Brat in Brats.
Yeah, sporty Brat.
So when you were watching Brats, I'm sure Dan was like, I wonder what it would look
like if she had her guts ripped out.
Because that's what happens in this movie.
Dan's like, I'll never find out what that would be like if she had a dog whistle stuffed
into her gut and Jonathan Riesmeyer had to pull it out of her.
I'll never know.
Shockingly brutal for the people involved like the cover of the thing on,
like it looks like it's gonna be a clue.
Yeah, it looks like it's gonna be a drawing room
act of the Christie mystery,
but it is much more of a saw than anything else
in that we saw it.
We did see it.
And now let's talk about it.
When I put this movie on Paramount Plus.
On your top 10 list of the year? Yeah. When I put this movie on Paramount Plus.
On your top 10 list of the year?
Yeah.
When you put this movie on your site and sound top 10 list,
because Dan is like, now that I'm in the highest echelons of podcasting tight and dumb,
I'm going to send him my list of site and sound, but I'm going to put only bad movies on it.
Just to skew the results.
When I hit play on this movie, I forgot that I had actually skipped an ad for a second.
I'm like, oh, they didn't even want an ad to be on this.
But the movie jumps right in
without any production logos or anything.
It's shooting and I was like, is this the movie?
Did the movie start?
I was confused.
To be honest, I had the same thing.
I thought for a moment that there was a mistake
because it does feel like it has suddenly started,
not just in media res, like in the middle of an action,
but in the middle of a scene
that has not been set up properly.
What's going on, Dan?
In that scene, there's a redhead lady.
She's screaming for help.
She's in some sort of evidence dungeon
that also has a wall with video projections on it.
Like it's an art installation. It's pretty cool. Yeah
there's a voice that says welcome to the murder castle and she is
gassed and
Presumably dies on the floor later on we finally she does so I'm assuming Elliot immediately
Clocked one of the images in the evidence dungeon was
What H H Holmes this is exactly what I was going to ask you guys.
If I was alone, the minute he said Murder Castle,
I said, oh, this is related to H. H. Holmes in some way.
And I wondered if that was a tip off to you guys,
or if I'm the only one who read Devil in the White City.
No, I read that too.
Well, because isn't that written by Eric Larson?
And I'm like, oh, the Savage Dragon guy?
Yeah, there's three Eric Larson's,
and it's not the Savage Dragon guy who wrote that book. Also Disney animator Eric Larson and I'm like, oh, the Savage Dragon guy? Yeah, there's three Eric Larsons and it's not the Savage Dragon guy who wrote that book.
Also Disney animator Eric Larson.
But it is in Chicago, right? Just like Savage Dragon.
I mean, I don't know if Eric Larson, I stopped reading Savage Dragon at a certain point,
so I wonder if Eric Larson was ever like, I'll jump on this bandwagon into the Savage Dragon versus H.H. Holmes story.
But as soon as they said Murder Castle, I was like, okay, so this is related
to the Devil in the White City in some way.
Not only, I texted Elliot this,
like not only have I read Devil in the White City.
You guys have a separate group chat and I'm not in on it?
Yeah, don't worry, we only talk about you on it.
Oh, okay, that's fine.
I was like, out of Stuart and Elliot.
What are you saying?
You're so mean to me in the normal group chat.
No, we only say nice things in our separate one.
I like how you said a separate group chat.
It's just two people.
It's not really a group.
As if Stuart gets it worse than anyone else.
No, well, I said it to Elliot in part because I'm like, which of, like maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe you're a big Rick Geary fan.
I thought that Elliot might be more of a Rick Geary head.
I do like Rick Geary stuff also,
but to be honest, I had not read Rick Geary's H.H. Holmes one.
At a certain point, I stopped reading
the Treasure of Victorian Murder books
because they started to make me feel bad.
Well, yes, we got off track before explaining the reason.
I was saying to Elliot that not only,
yeah, on top of reading The Devil in the White City,
but I read Treasury of Victorian Murder
the day before I watched this movie.
Oh, okay.
And specifically the H.H. Holmes segment of it.
And so it was very wild to then have him, spoiler figure, more prominently in this film
than I would have.
You're like, wow, that's all anyone's talking about these days.
His name's on everybody's lips.
So hot.
Herlock, Herlock Holmes.
Yeah. This unseen movie, this comic that was written decades ago on everybody's lips. Hock. Herlock, Herlock Holmes. Yeah.
This unseen movie, this comic that was written decades ago, everybody's talking about him.
Dan, I mean, the scary thing is that Dan was like, does this mean I have to become a serial
killer with a murder castle?
Is that what the universe is telling me?
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work.
But at this point in the movie, the movie is banking on you not
being as familiar with the work of prolific 19th century serial
killer, H.H. Holmes as we were.
So I think you're supposed to be like, what?
What? Huh? You're not supposed to know what's going on.
Yeah.
But anyway, the scene's in.
We finally get the production info.
SP media probably stands for scary picture.
Suppressive person media.
It's a Scientology thing.
We get the credits over some evidence flashes and clue style board game pieces.
It is like this these opening credits are like not as nice as the credits for the Traders.
The like reality competition show my wife and I have been watching all the time.
That's basically like a reality competition show version of the game Werewolf.
Oh, okay.
So there's like it like flashes of like board game pieces, a flash of a knife.
Yeah, we're like, ooh, a mystery is afoot and we will be part of this dangerous game.
This full motion video adventure.
That too, the man you would expect in a murder mystery, Will Sasso.
I gotta say, Will Sasso puts in a pretty fun performance.
No, I mean, look, do I mostly associate Will Sasso with being Curly in the ill-fated Three
Stooges movie, personally?
Perhaps.
But, you know, he's an actor who's been around for a while.
He puts a spin on stuff.
He's been a lot of stuff.
He's been a lot of TV shows.
Yeah, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He seems to be having fun.
He's been, yeah.
He seems to be going for the level
that the movie is asking for.
Yeah, yes.
Which I always admire in an actor.
When an actor is like,
what this movie needs me to do, I am doing it. You know it you know yeah we see him he's in a plane with his wife Marie and teen daughter
Livy take it that right or is it reversed it doesn't know you're correct
you're correct okay ultimately though it doesn't matter
meanwhile his son and his and the son's girlfriend are arriving by boat to this
private island and are we supposed to pick up that the girlfriend
is way better than the sun should be?
She's much smarter and more competent
than him in every way?
I mean, that's true.
It's true.
We don't get to know the sun that much
other than like he's seen, like-
He seems like a real doof.
It takes him a long time to die.
It does seem, so maybe she's more into him for the fact that his genes give him greater
endurance in poisoning situations.
But yeah, they're on the way to a isolated private island owned by a rich person.
Always a good choice to do that.
Nothing's going to happen.
You're not going to be hunted for sports or.
Dan, name 35 bad things that could possibly happen
on a voyage to a rich person's private island.
Oh boy.
You might have to wear a vest with a chain attached to it.
The chain is attached to a thing in the basement
and you're not allowed to go into the room
of the person you're supposed to be watching.
It's normal stuff.
There's like, yeah, there's that.
There's, you might be in a dangerous game that. There might be a dangerous game situation.
There might be a blink twice situation.
Some sort of a menu might be happening.
You might be going to a sex trafficking pyramid.
There's all, I mean, never go to a private island.
Best case scenario, you're on a private island
and you stumble upon Richard Branson
using his outdoor toilet.
That's the best case scenario
on a rich person's private island.
You know, there's all sorts of family friction.
Of course, the these it's a rich family.
They hate all hate each other.
Who's the dad though?
Who's the, who's the patriarch?
Who's the daddy?
The daddy is John Voight.
He's in a, uh, yes.
You seem like you have more to say on that.
No, you're correct.
I was just confirming that Dan is right.
Thank you.
Put two points up on the board for Dan. I was just confirming that Dan is right. Thank you
On the board for day identified John Voight
In my John Voight watching
Journal I can put down a checkmark
He's in a wheelchair attended by his manservant Burnham
And Will sass is like I only wish mom was here to see your house and voices fuck her for running out on us
John boy gives also a weird
What's required what he was doing what's correct, but he is so he is portraying
He's trying to be Logan Roy Logan is that is the dad in succession, right?
He's trying to be a certain type of Logan Roy type old person like rich person who is Who doesn't trust their children and da da da and feels betrayed but at that but he's doing it without the
without the feeling of aristocracy that I feel like
They have on succession so he seems like a guy who like a guy who won the lottery and his in his family
Yes, the money and he's like she's a feral. Yeah
He feels feral something kind of weird and like,
not cultured about him.
Logan Roy has a quality that makes you want to call him sir.
Yes.
John Voight's character does not have that quality.
Well also-
John Voight, it wouldn't have surprised me
if the twist was that they had found a homeless man,
dressed him up in fancy clothes, and had presented him at,
he was the dad's double that they discovered,
and they have him impersonating the dad.
Voight plays this so villainously from the start.
From the beginning.
That I'm like, okay, well, it can't be him
that's like the bad guy.
And I guess it's the movie playing a double reverse
bluff on me, being like, oh, you're gonna think
that we're trying to fake you out with a red herring,
but no, he's gonna be a bad guy.
It's like there's like, you're gonna assume
that the bad guy can't be it,
and one of these people who's pretending to be nice is,
but it turns out, no, they actually are nice,
and he is a villain.
Yeah, there's a moment where I think his daughter-in-law
is like, I'm going to go to the bathroom,
and he's like, must be nice.
I'm like, what?
Because he's an old man who can't pee.
Yeah.
But we haven't assembled a full family yet.
It is, wait, here's something I will say
is realistic about this.
When you have a grandparent slash parent
who is elderly and is losing their mind
and is being very mean to everybody,
everyone has to kind of pretend that they're not
and pretend that things are normal. And I have been in that situation. So I was like, okay, has to kind of pretend that they're not and pretend that things are normal and I have been in that situation so I was like okay
that's kind of real that they wouldn't they wouldn't automatically be like dad
don't say that I'm leaving right now instead they're like haha well anyway
let's go into the house as he's like well oh shit oh god damn it. I won't get
into it here but later on we learned that one of the characters knows some
stuff that would suggest that like maybe they shouldn't have come to the first place or
Once once you look it up once you learn what the other characters know you're like
Well, this is it seems like this should have been dealt with a long time ago. Yeah
But anyway, let's talk about another character that is coming to the island
Another John Jonathan Reese Myers
That's right. Dear Pike himself from the Gorman guest miniseries
Reese Meyers. That's right, Steer Pike himself from the Gorman Guest miniseries.
The Tudor.
His best known role.
Okay.
Match point.
And then like Beckham.
And he was Dracula at one point, right?
Dracula.
Yes.
Also a-
From Paris with Love.
Viporous seeming gentleman.
His character's name is Kyle.
He's coming in with his fiance Joy via helicopter.
Joy played by one of the Brats.
Sporty Brat, yeah.
He's the other son of John Voight.
The family is here ready for some dangerous games,
ready for legacy murders.
I mean, they don't know that they're ready.
They don't know that they're for legacy murders.
I'm just saying that the cast has been assembled.
What if the invitation says,
you are invited to grandpa's birthday party for some legacy murders?
Would they still go?
Okay, I guess I gotta go.
You got to, right?
Yeah.
Maybe they misspelled legacy Mardi Gras, what they meant to say.
I thought it was funny.
Reese Meyers, like when he gets out of the helicopter, sort of takes a moment to explain
all of the relationships that have already been set up.
It would have been more helpful to have that seen earlier.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We learned that Voight blames him for stealing the family business from him.
And Reese Meyers is like, actually it as saving the failing empire that you fucked up.
You know.
What does he do?
What did they make money off of?
I don't.
Pharmacies, I think.
I think it, yeah.
I don't know.
They said something about how he opened his first pharmacy.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, they're a pharmaceutical company.
So again, they're already evil.
They're all evil people already. Also also this type of movie like throws so much shit at you that I feel like my brain has learned to blank out the stuff
That's not gonna be important. That's fair. There's not gonna be any clues towards the mystery that involved their family business. Yeah. Yeah
That's what makes Dan so good at solving dangerous game legacy murders. Mm-hmm
That's what makes Dan so good at solving Dangerous Game Legacy Murders. Yeah, if you're hosting a rich person Evil Island Dangerous Game Legacy Murder, do not
invite Dan.
He will solve it so fast.
He will annihilate it.
It'll just be like in Glass Onion, when what's his name?
Rupert Von Valentine, whatever Daniel Craig's character is called, when he just figures
it out right away.
I love that part.
So the movie is downhill from the moment that he that he that he calls BS a little bit.
But I like that one.
They snipe at each other a lot.
There's a part where the grandson throws a fish head into a sink, giving
a creepy smile like there's a cat established earlier.
Yeah, I gotta say, FYI, if anyone knows there's gonna be
a cat death in a movie, just give me a heads up before I watch it with my wife.
Yeah, I mean I didn't...
This is a particularly gruesome one too.
Yeah, it fucking sucked.
When I saw that there was a cat in the movie, I immediately stopped the movie for a moment
to Google to find out whether the movie, I immediately stopped the movie for a moment to Google to
find out whether the movie was going to anger me later, just so I was prepared. And the
movie does anger me. But I will say, I will say, I don't like any time that there's a
cat death in a movie, but this is so goofily presented. You don't actually see what's like
it all happens within the sink. You just see spurts of blood going up like
through the aftermath army of darkness you know cgi blood um yeah the the the the grandson
throws the this fish head in the sink which leads to this cat death which doesn't play
into anything it's yeah my guess is that it is supposed to be a literal red herring because
it's a fish head that maybe you think he's a
Bloodthirsty monster disease Lord the cat into the trash into the garage disposal unit
But it's just a it's and it's also they can't kill any of it any of that main cast characters yet
It's too early and they got to give you a little shock. So instead
You know it not a fan it is no, I'm not a fan of the death
I am a fan is the least it's the least funny of the deaths in the movie, probably.
And there are a couple,
there's some death violence moments
that are hilarious coming up.
Yeah.
I don't like that.
I do like the way Will Sasso,
like John Voight comes in and is like, what happened?
And Will Sasso in the most blase way says,
Cat died, Dad.
That was pretty good.
But so later on, the Gather Around the Fire,
Joy gives us some backstory about Voight's business career
that like does not matter.
You know, built an empire.
They give him his birthday present.
And I assume that is supposed to be the movie building
suspicion in you that she is a gold digger who's there to
kill people or in league with him or something.
I don't even know.
This movie is so clumsily written that I'm not even sure
what like the misdirects are supposed to be.
It makes no sense for the character who is new to the
family to be like, let me give you an info dump to everyone
here about your dad's history.
It's just very, a lot of, it's a clumsy way
to give out information.
Yeah.
They gave him his birthday gift.
It's a watch, which he tosses aside immediately.
Alec.
I mean, getting an old guy's shit fucking sucks
because old guys, like they want to be the one
to find the cool shit.
They don't want to watch.
Let's just say it, let's just say it.
Well, is that the issue?
Buying presents for a dad sucks.
Buying presents for your dad stinks. They don't know what they want. If just say it. Well, is that the issue? Buying presents for a dad sucks. Buying presents for your dad stinks.
They don't know what they want.
If you get them the thing they want the most,
they tell you this is fine.
So you'll just end up buying them books
that never read about history subjects
or something like that.
My issue is like, you know, like I,
you know, my dad is a lovely man.
He is not a John Voight, but like-
Oh no, I mean, I love my dad.
My dad's great, but it's just hard to buy him presents.
But he has been on the earth for a long time. He has a lot of stuff
He doesn't want more of it necessarily and you can only give him so many coupons for a free hug
Yeah, yeah
I mean basically all you can do is give if you're not giving him a grandchild
You got to give him like a shirt with his grandchild's face on it. They do like that. Yeah, that's true
shirt with his grandchild's face on it. They do like that.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
Anyway, respires.
Until that's all they're wearing.
Their wardrobe is entirely shirts
with their grandchild's face on it.
Like me in a Flophouse shirt.
Over the years, I've accrued so many.
Alec wants to leave.
He's like, I'm adding 5,000,
which starts everyone arguing with one another again.
But what, what, what's this? It's another gift
It's dangerous game from Parker Brothers
This is the most elaborately constructed board game for a murder. I've ever seen yeah
Stewart is some pretty
Constructed board games for a murder for the purpose of a murder? This is a bespoke, I have to assume,
just one copy version of this game.
But Stuart, I wanted to get your opinion.
That's like a really high up Kickstarter reward right there.
Stuart, I was wondering your opinion as a gamer
of this board game.
The game is that you just have to guess
where everyone's gonna die and with what weapon.
But also like the way the board's set up
and the individual pieces
and the way the puzzles are set up.
The game, yeah, I'm sorry to jump in on Stu's things, but like,
there's no clear rules to or objective.
It's like you open up a box and there's a bunch of stuff in it
and you got to figure out what to do with that stuff.
And then of what?
And then a scary voice starts telling you to play the game.
And it's like, are there instructions?
Like, yeah, what's going on?
Yeah, well, Dan, you always complain that you hate it
when somebody just sits there
and explains all the rules to a game.
It's not that I hate it.
So wouldn't you rather just like crack that thing open
and just start playing?
Right, well, that's the thing.
It's not that I hate it, it's that I can't learn that way.
Like someone reading instructions to me,
either I need to be able to like,
pour over it very carefully,
or I just need to play the game myself.
Yeah.
And so sure.
Well, what if somebody did it with like,
a really nice sounding voice,
and he's your friend Stuart?
Mm-hmm.
What's it like, you know, our good friend John,
who does the cassette animations and other animations
for our flop TV shows, like he's very patient about.
Yeah, yeah, but John also will teach people a game,
but he won't even have opened it or looked at the game yet.
And he'll be like, oh, let's just figure this out.
I'm like, this is insane.
That's just Stewart's specific objection.
Like, it's not a problem that I've had,
but that's because my attitude towards games is more like,
sure, let's play one
Like my part of my life. Yeah. Yeah, this is how I this is how I define my personality
Anyway, so this this board game has a bunch of like crime scene photos in it and
dossiers on the various members of the family and it has we will find later on
Play pieces little mini figs that are yeah related to the family members in some way or another I would rank the components pretty high. It's pretty highly quality
You get a lot of it's not I mean the fact that there's an entire murder journal with annotations right there in the game
Like yeah, I mean it looks nice like I feel like feel like it's not gonna hold up to multiple plays.
That's a downside.
Yes. Sure.
Well, most of the players are dead.
I don't think it's intended to, really, yeah.
Afterwards, it's the problem.
That's a great game, but you can only play it once.
Yeah, like the Daffy Duck swallowing explosives
in a Vaudeville Edition game, yeah.
Well, anyway, Void is too tired
for some murder shenanigans that night.
Joy manages to convince Alex to stay for the weekend.
It's very funny, as we learn later, he set up this whole thing.
It's very funny for him to introduce it and then be like,
well, I'm tired, goodbye.
Are you even going to go through with the murders that you're setting up?
Well, he also is the one that like,
Archie's knocking shit off the shelf.
The game shows up and everyone's like, that's weird. I don't want to play this weird game.
And he's the one guy who's like, oh, a game.
That sounds like a hoot. Let's play.
And then and then like and then like 10 minutes later, he's like,
I'm too tired. Let's play tomorrow morning. Yeah.
Anyway, Alec wanted to leave.
Joy convinces him to stay,
unconvincingly, I don't know why.
And Alec is Kyle, right?
Alec, what, Alec is Kyle?
No, but that's the name of the character.
No, no, no, so Alec is Will Sasso's character.
Oh, sorry.
And Kyle is Jonathan Rees-Lyons.
Kyle is the one who's convinced to stay.
Sorry, Alec and Kyle, to me-
And you should just refer to them by their actor's names, Dan.
Yeah, I know.
I don't think we need to say character orthodox on this one.
Okay.
I'm just going to be saying John Voight.
I'm not going to be saying Ellison Betts at any point.
No, I know.
I mean, definitely Voight and Sasso are in here.
I just felt like a certain point.
Okay.
I know, and you're worried that if you keep saying Jonathan Rees Myers, you're going to
say Jonathan Rees Davies.
Yes. Yes.
And that will confuse people.
If I say that three times, he'll appear and...
And why wouldn't you want that? I don't understand.
Yeah, that's true. He'll save me from eating some bad dates.
So that'll be good. But anyway...
And what if he was playing that part and we could just see him and John Voight
shouting at each other as loudly as possible?
Oh, that would be so much better. So much better.
Yeah.
Anyway, I don't know.
There's some like stuff that is like red herrings.
There's one point where Will Sasso walks in on his wife at the bath
and she's like doing something on her cell phone and like acts really
like suspicious about it.
That's nothing.
Except he I feel like he is very charming in this,
in this moment.
He comes in and he's like being kind of Florida with her
and she's like, you're drunk.
And he's like, you're drunk.
And she's, it's, there's, it felt like the one moment
of genuine people being people with each other
in the entire movie.
Yeah.
I mean, like there's another kind of red herring thing
where the grandson's girlfriend, Tara,
jokes that she's gonna kill them all.
You know, saying, watch out for the quiet ones.
Spoiler alert, she's not gonna kill anybody.
The opposite, she's going to help people.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, it's the night.
She's a veterinarian, which means she has a very ironic death later on.
Spoiler alert.
Oh!
Yeah, that's a... that was a rough scene.
That's a rough moment. I did not like it.
Anyway, I thought it was hilarious.
OK, we'll talk about it later.
It's like it's so silly.
It's silly.
Over the top. There's also like there's there's some there's some under
I felt like there's some maybe problematic aspects to the.
Oh, yeah. Right. You're right. Yeah, that's that's correct. I felt like there's some maybe problematic aspects to the industry that we're not thinking about too.
Yeah.
That's correct.
But also this movie is like so goofball,
but it's also so mean that I had a hard time enjoying
some of the goofiness.
It feels a little bit like a murder movie made
by a little kid who is trying their hardest
to be like extreme and rough,
but it's also pretty silly and the clash of those tones is very, is unpleasant, you know?
Anyway, so back to the, back to what goes on in this film,
which is that everyone is asleep and alarm goes off, red lights,
hurricane shutters come down over the windows,
a gate comes out of the front door.
They're trapped in the house.
Is this Abigail?
Yeah.
A saw voice. I'm just going to call this voice a sch're trapped in the house. Oh, is this Abigail? Yeah. A Saw voice, I'm just gonna call this voice a schmakeshma.
It says, the game has started,
everyone needs to go to the great room.
And here's the funniest thing about this Saw voice
is that I feel like Jigsaw, he traps you in a game
and you have no choice but to play it.
This voice spends so much of the movie being like,
so why don't you start playing the game now?
You're not playing the game.
You're not playing the game.
It becomes so petulant and powerless and it's killing them.
And it still feels like it is totally not in power
in the situation.
There's the game, I'd really suggest that you play it.
No, you're not abiding by the rules.
I kind of put together a whole game for you here.
It's hurting my feelings that you're showing
so little interest. I had to put together a whole game for you here. It's hurting my feelings that you're showing some little interest.
I had to corral uninterested game players before. I have sympathy for this boy.
Like, you'd rather die than play the game? I guess you will.
There's so much cool stuff I set up that you're never going to see. Don't do it that way.
You're doing it wrong. You know what? Why don't I leave wherever I am talking to you and just show you how to play the game?
Be helpful. I start playing
Oh, you don't think the game's cool. Well, check out board game geek. It has a really high rate
Like their games to be complicated, I guess you just want to play sorry or something
Burnham the man servantervant is missing.
You know, again, I thought like, oh, this is going to be red herring.
No, it's just a herring.
He's, he's involved, but you have to assume he's the one who's being
the voice this whole time.
Yeah.
So, you know, I have to clean up after your dad and now you're not even playing
my game, there's a ransom style note saying, wake up and play me on the dangerous game.
And trouble I went to having to cut out the magazine letters to make that note
for the game, the least you could do is try pretend that you're interested in
playing my game.
You guys aren't even trying to have fun.
Uh, Sassow tries to shut me for trying to liven up this family gathering.
Let's lose our bad emotions and a little bit of gameplay.
Maybe it'll bring us closer together, but I guess not.
Yeah.
Sasso does the-
I'm going to be in my room.
If anyone's looking for me, I'm just going to take the bottle of wine to my room.
The first obvious thing and tries to shut down the smart house, but the voice electrifies
a plate under his feet which shoots him back across from me into a glass table.
So the explosion is very funny.
It looks very fake.
And the noise he makes when he's exploded is very funny.
Two thumbs up.
When I saw that happen, I was like, is Wile E. Coyote the voice that's forcing him to play this game?
It is very funny.
Yeah, his leg's fucked up real bad.
They have to tourniquet him and cauterize the wound with an iron.
Yeah, when he's lying there and they're trying to figure out
how to like save his life, I guess, his wife is like,
like, yeah, do it, he can't die.
And I'm like, that is do it, he can't die.
And I'm like, that is a wild,
like a really kind of blase response
to your husband's foot getting basically blown off.
Yeah.
Inside a house, like, it's not like, I don't know.
He's not on a minefield, you know,
it's not a place you would expect it to happen.
You'd think it'd be a little bit more shock from her, yeah.
Unless she's the killer, which she's not.
I guess you're right.
Kyle immediately is like...
Do you always have to cauterize the wound?
Why are you asking me?
Cause Stuart, you took a battlefield medicine, right?
Yeah, that's true, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, usually, I mean, I learned it all from Rambo,
so yeah, you gotta stuff the wound with...
I mean, I don't think you have to.
I think it is a...
It's probably better. Well, in the case that you don't think you have to. I think it is a... It's probably better.
Well, in the case that you don't have proper cleaning supplies
and like proper surgery supplies, then yeah.
But it turns out they had all the proper supplies
just downstairs.
Yeah, that's true.
But it, because it seems like in that situation,
and they were doing this, I guess,
the most important thing is to stop the bleeding.
They almost immediately...
I think that's kind of the idea.
Yeah, they hold a metal, hot metal to his foot and he screams a lot
Mm-hmm
Jonathan Reese Myers, of course immediately is like dad. This is this is you and he's like no, it's not me
So but he runs off tries to with the grandson they're looking for Burnham
Meanwhile, everyone looks at the game. Like I said, it has all this very stuff,
but mostly it has a bunch of ciphers
that they have to figure out.
Lewis ciphers?
Mm-hmm.
Oh, shit.
They're letters from a soldier to his dad
describing people he killed
and information about nine women
who died between 1971 and 2015.
And they figure out the cipher with some nonsense
related to the names of the victims.
Meanwhile, grandson gets caught
in the video installation art piece.
Uh-huh, about the murder castle.
And Reese Meyers finds some blueprints to the house
that show that it's full of secret passages
and immediately gets punched by the man service
Yeah, who runs off into the depths of the mansion
and the first side for the then he code back in the
dangerous game gaming room is I was born with the devil in me which will Sasso
Identifies immediately as being from H.H. Holmes, the
serial killer, Murder Castle in Chicago, Devil in the White City, all that stuff.
For anyone who hasn't read Devil in the White City, it is about the twin events of the Columbian
Exposition, this huge fair that was in Chicago, it was called the White City, where Chicago
was kind of showing off, you know, it was kind of a World's Fair type expo.
And at the, at the, basically the same time,
this guy had turned his house into a murder dungeon
where he could trap and kill people.
And no one knows exactly how many people he killed.
Somewhere between 20 and a billion,
depending on who you talk to, you know.
Yeah. Yeah.
There are certain people who really enjoy inflating
the numbers of how many people.
I'm sure there's like plenty of true crime podcasts
who have some grisly episodes.
Yes, exactly.
I mean, Devil in the White City is a really good book.
It's a great book.
It's an interesting read.
The Colombian Exposition.
The fact that like they make the stuff
about the Columbia Exposition is more exciting
than the murdering.
I mean, it is objectively, I mean, maybe not actually.
To me, that stuff is much more interesting
than the serial killer stuff.
It feels like the serial killer stuff is to lure
in the people who are not as interested
in massive public expositions of arts and sciences as I am.
And then you get in there and you're like,
that's how they made a Ferris wheel?
Why don't we have these things anymore?
I want a World's Fair style exposition.
This would be great, but it isn't.
But you have to assume that Will Suss's character
just read the book recently,
because that he recognized the quote.
I assumed he's a middle-aged dad,
so he really loves historical series.
Every time, I mean, Eric Larson did have a new book
real recently, so maybe he rereads them all
in anticipation of the next one, MCU style.
Anyway, they all hear the grandson
pounding on the room where he's trapped.
He suddenly notices the corpse in the room with him, which apparently he didn't see before.
Classic Saw movie.
It's Aunt Virginia, the sister, the absent sister, and Cam starts getting gassed.
This is very funny.
Poison gas, not like he's having a great time.
Yeah, he's having a gas.
Jumping jack flash.
It is a gas, gas, gas, yeah.
Oh no, that's a different song.
Reese Meyers comes, no that's it.
Jumping jack flash, it's a gas, gas, gas.
Oh, that's right.
Reese Meyers comes in to accuse John Voight again,
and this is very funny to me.
He pushes some button on his wheelchair
that makes him sort of stand up
and then he tries to threaten Reese Meyers
with an electrified wire he just pulls
through his own chair but only succeeds
in nearly electrocuting himself.
It is a wild scene.
It's cool.
It's very cool.
There are two scenes, the exploding foot
and this one where this movie,
I'll spoil it for my final judges
a little bit, a lot of this movie I found kinda,
it's like humdrum for the most part,
but then a scene like this would happen,
I'd be like, movie, why are you hiding this from me?
Why aren't you doing more of this stuff?
Because this is bonkers.
I feel like basically every death scene
in this movie is really funny.
They're very, they're amateurishly put together.
They're funny in that they're over the top.
I find them too sadistic to...
Oh, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
I think they're funny to me in the way that they are
produced rather than in the concepts, yeah.
Yeah, I'm not like, oh, this is hilarious, but like...
No, no, I'm not accusing you of being a sociopath.
At least not on air.
Dan will talk about it in our private group, Chad.
That's just the two of us.
No!
Yeah, no, it's just my personal reaction.
They try and break in, but too late.
Cam, the grandson, is all gooey and covered in pus.
They get a little bit of morning before-
It happens to all of us guys.
Shmig-Sma says get back to the game. There's a line where like...
Have you guys forgotten about the game? I know it's pretty wild that your dad
slash grandpa just electrocuted himself but like the game, can we get back to it?
There's a line where the daughter says he's not who you think he is about the
John Voight and Reese Meyer says maybe none of us are who we think we are.
I'm like, what?
Yeah.
What a thing that only a character
in a movie would ever say.
Although actually, although I guess what he is,
although he is hinting at the thing he knows
that I guess the other ones don't know.
The thing that he should tell them,
but he's not telling them for some reason.
Yeah, we'll get to it and we'll all be angry about it eventually.
Everyone's playing by X-Men villain rules where it's a lot of like,
I know more about you than you know yourself.
Okay, well, tell me then, Mr. Sinister.
I don't know what power gives you to know this stuff and not tell me.
I don't understand.
Yeah, you're just so bored of like hiding in a fucking basement somewhere.
You just want to tell somebody what's happening.
Yeah.
Um, so Reese Meyers and, uh, the wife go off, uh, to break into a secret passage, uh, and
a trap door opens beneath him and she's briefly held at gunpoint by the manservant and, and
downstairs where, uh, Jonathan Reese Meyers has been dumped.
There's a great moment when Burnham pushes
Jonathan Rees Myers down the trap door
that it cuts to a shot of him falling
with a green screen backdrop behind him.
I think that was great.
Downstairs in this murder basement,
it turns out Joy never actually left the island
as he had thought she is on an operating table
Being punished for trying to leave the game
There's an incision in her chest that has been sewed up and she was trying to leave before the game started, right?
Yeah, yeah, so it's not even it's I feel like it's unfair to be like you tried to get out of the game
And she's like what game I had to get somewhere. I just came to meet people.
Yeah.
Good point.
I'm sure that, yeah, the murderous killer,
we should send that to him as a goof that he made.
Yeah, yeah, put it in the goof section
and the murders LinkedIn profile, I guess.
Do LinkedIn profiles have goofs?
Yep.
It was like someone's employment history,
but you can add one time this person farted in a meeting.
Yeah.
So we all called him toots behind his back.
And that's how toots and the Maytals got their name.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
This is LinkedIn history for being in a reggae band.
Anyway, she's downstairs, like I said, on this gurney,
and he is warned that there's an industrial oven
in the room that's gonna cook him alive in three minutes,
although it also reaches temperatures
that would have killed him, and he's alive for a while,
but nevermind.
Upstairs, the other people find a window
down into the basement,
they can see into the oven.
And the clue that is given to get out of there is,
search deep in your heart to find a way out.
So, uh-oh, whatever he needs is in Joy's chest.
And so-
Which has been gruesomely cut open
and sewed back together again.
Yeah, Saw style. Kind of Frankenstein's monster style.
Yeah, Saw Style.
Saw Style is when there's french fries and Russian dressing on the dog, right?
That's Saw Style.
And he's all like initially, like you think that these people are, you know, vipers who
hate each other, but he like, Reese Meyers is like, no, I can't do this.
I love you. I can't do this.
I, you know, and she's like, you gotta do it,
you gotta get out.
So he starts pulling all her guts out.
Yeah, this is very upsetting.
This is very gruesome and upsetting, I don't like it, yeah.
Like the, what he thinks is going to be a key
is not like just lying on top after he peels the skin back,
it is beneath, so he has to pull everything out.
And then like afterwards she like sits up briefly
to give us a little scare.
Man, I love this kind of crap.
But, I mean, he is essentially being forced to murder her.
He is the thing.
She's been mutilated and now he has to kill her to get out.
Yeah, exactly. It's similar to, yeah, it's the saw thing
where it's like, I didn't kill anyone, you killed him.
You did it, yeah, but I wasn't gonna do it
unless you put me in the situation, asshole.
Like, come on, that doesn't seem fair.
You say you love this kind of stuff.
Why are you hitting yourself?
You're taking my arm and using it
to hit me with my own hand, Jigsaw, come on.
Anyway, you're saying.
You say you love this kind of stuff,
and the thing is, in a different type of movie I might
Enjoy it like if it was Dan, that's even worse. Yeah, that's wild
Say that Dan a Stuart Gordon tone and I'm talking like reanimated Stuart Gordon
Not like Castle Freaks to Stuart Gordon like if it like there's a little like yeah
If there's sort of like lethal grossness to it,
but this seems to be maxed up. If Bruce Campbell was doing this in an Evil Dead movie,
you'd be like, oh boy, you know, but in the heroics.
Yeah, but this is pushing the sadism of it.
So yes, yeah.
My pushback here is when I say that I love it,
it's that when we watch a bad movie,
we, here at the Flophouse,
we often try to find things about it that give us joy.
Yes, that's fair.
I mean, this is literally giving us the character joy.
Yes, exactly.
I was waiting for somebody to pick up on that.
And so with this, it's like, yeah,
I mean, there's not much else here.
At least it has over-the-top, wild amounts of gore
and brutal crap that is done sloppily and amateurishly.
Yeah.
And so at least I find some joy in that like it's so silly.
I get what you're saying.
I'm not trying to indict you by saying how I feel about it.
I am just saying like the conditions under which
I would enjoy this more.
No, and I think I'm also trying to clarify
for the listeners who are like,
should I watch Dangerous King of Legacy Murders?
Is this for me?
I think I'm in the middle where I think I would have been able to enjoy the scene
on that level story if it didn't go on for as long as it does.
Like, he's pulling his guts out for a little.
They're like their skin's blistering and whatnot?
Yeah, it's a little too, it's just a little too gruesome for me.
But if it was the, if it was it was the, if the person was already,
if this was an Evil Dead, Army of Darkness type movie,
the person's already dead,
and Bruce Campbell has to keep digging through their guts
and is going, oh God, oh, oh God.
I would really enjoy this scene.
I do like when he, like multiple times,
so he pulls out what, like a dog whistle,
and multiple times characters have to like grab it,
and every time I'm like
just rinse it off.
Yeah, it must be so gross.
He gets a dog whistle out of her, not a key.
So he's still trapped and he's burning up and at least the silver lining is the brothers
finally reconcile and we see a flashback where Reese Meyers is hitting John Voight with a baseball bat
Presumably what put him in the wheelchair and there's the implication
This is to protect will Sasso in some way that perhaps we will Reese Meyers should have talked about
They've a weird
Brett, you know
Will Sasso supposed to be the younger brother, right?
and I think and it's I think he's supposed to be the younger brother, right? And I think he's supposed to be the younger brother,
but it's like the,
that what we're led to believe is that John Voight
was always just closer with Will Sasso,
and he would take Will Sasso to go do activities
that Jonathan Riesmeyer was not invited to come with.
And we learned that there's a sinister side to this,
but until basically this moment, there's part of me that's like, seems like kind of a slender
read for this movie to be arresting this bad relationship between the two brothers that
John Voight used to just take Will Sasso to go fishing and stuff like that and wouldn't
take Jonathan Rhys Myers.
But you know what?
All families are different.
When you're a kid, that stuff hits hard.
So then you learn the truth soon enough, which is, so decipher a clue that really like a like a John Irving novel
Or something. Yeah. Yes. Yes. They decipher a clue that relates to walk a mile in your moccasins
They take that to mean the distance of a mile
expressed in Roman numerals which
Allows them to turn some wheels on the thing to reveal misinterpreting the meaning of that phrase like why people would actually say it
But yeah, yeah, itting the meaning of that phrase. Like why people would actually say it, but yeah.
Yeah, it reveals the confession of H.H. Holmes,
the book with notes in the margin
from John Voight detailing all of the murders he did.
And so here's where the movie takes a wild historical turn
because up until this point, I'm like, oh, you know,
the H.H. Holmes stuff is essentially window dressing. You know, it'm like, oh, you know, the H.H. Holmes stuff
is essentially window dressing, you know?
It's like, oh, we're evoking this, but no.
And- It's very literal, Daniel.
Yeah. Very literal, yeah.
You can correct me if I get any of this wrong,
because it comes in like sort of this info dump thing,
but it turns out H.H. Holmes was actually Voight's grandfather
and William, H.H. Holmes' child, murdered Voight's grandfather and William H. H. Holm's child murdered Voight's mother.
And then Voight also himself killed Sasso's mom.
That was one of the women he killed.
Yes.
And the thing that Voight and Sasso would do is like,
Voight would take him out as a small child
on his murder sprees and like,
Will Sasso, child form, would be sleeping in the car
as he was killing these.
As John Williams murdering women.
And so he was taking out his son as cover
for why he would be out of the house murdering women.
And he's like, how can you suspect a man
who's out with his son?
And the part of it was like-
Yeah, it's not like they've seen Dexter before.
Yeah, and one part of it was like, well, I don't know why you wouldn't take, why you can't
just alternate sons if that's the issue, unless Will Sasso was just a dumber, sleepier kid.
So it was easier to get away with the murders. But also the idea that like, if a police officer
came upon him murdering a woman at night, he would be like, oh no, I'm just out with
my son. He's in the car sleeping. Everything's fine.
All of your story checks out there. Oh yes, it's so fine to see a father and a son
enjoying fine time together.
I wish my own papa had been so sociable and loving.
Have a good night to you, Tata.
And good night to you too, ma'am.
I hope you feel better.
I hope you.
Oh, you're just kippin' back, taking a nap in the road.
That's okay, you know, we don't always make our way
to the nice, noise-warm bed.
Now, if I would, now, if I was, would I just leave my son
in the car while I murdered a woman outside?
You might, rabbit, you might.
Yeah, that's a, they just had keystone cops back then
was the problem.
Yeah, yeah.
They lived in Max, Max sent it to Sylvania, yeah.
But anyway, Will Sas just is obviously disgusted by this revelation
And he hangs John Voight with a sheet
is
Guys, I know you guys keep pushing back but I found this to be objectively hilarious
He fashioned a noose while everybody's kind of standing around horrified and then he like drags him across the room and then up the stairs and then over to the balcony.
This is after his foot has also been blasted apart earlier.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is very funny that no one tries to stop him at any point in this long process.
Yeah.
But this is a wild reveal that John Voight is not just like inspired by H.H.
Holmes but is the illegitimate grandson of H.H.
Holmes and that there is a satanic bloodline.H. Holmes, but is the illegitimate grandson of H.H. Holmes and that there is a satanic bloodline
that he has been, he's the latest murderer in.
The kid says grandpa was a third generation murderer.
Yes, the film seems to posit that serial killism
is a genetic disorder that gets passed out.
Here's what really gets to me.
He's a self-made man when it comes to money,
but he's a total nepo-murder baby.
Look, it's like, oh, how did he know how to be a murderer?
How is he so good at it?
You know what, he had a leg up.
He had a leg up in his family.
And you look at all these murderers,
they're all the children and grandchildren of murderers.
It's unfair.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, you're right.
Yeah, so he hangs Voight, but the shmink-shmall voice
is like, that's just what he wanted
for you to carry on as a murder legacy.
You're a killer just like him.
Yeah. I'm like, I don't think it's the same thing, murder voice, but...
Look, I'm grasping at straws.
Nobody's really playing the game the way I intended them to.
Yeah, but the game's still going on and everyone's like,
we're not going to be H.H. Holm's grandson's posthumous murder victims.
So Tara sifts through the ashes and she gets the dog whistle
so they can escape the house without being eaten by dogs.
How does that work out?
They're guard dogs and earlier on we saw
that they can only be stopped by the dog whistle.
They're very cute.
Burnham shoots at them as they're escaping with a rifle
and he hits Will Sasso.
Yeah, it seems like he's doing it
to kind of corral them toward more game.
But I feel like he must feel like it's a failure
on his part that he's having to resort
to using a sniper rifle as opposed
to something a little bit wittier, you know.
Yeah, they all escape to a treehouse shed in the woods.
Tara runs to the water where she finds a rowboat and she shot in the leg.
A robot?
A rowboat, sorry.
Because that would be a wild twist if she found a robot and it was like,
I'm from the future.
I can help you, but only if you follow my instructions exactly.
It's like, I'm so sick of this crap.
The first thing you have to do is murder the rest of your family.
Wait a minute.
Yes, that's right. I'm a robot invented by the great-great-great is murder the rest of your family. Wait a minute.
Yes, that's right.
I'm a robot invented by the great-great-great-great-grandson of H.H. Holmes.
She shied the leg on the way back, sorry, and hides in a well from the dogs.
Big mistake.
Because Marie conveniently can't find the dog whistle
and the dogs follow her into the well
and we hear the noises of dogs eating and tearing apart.
Okay, so this is horrible,
the image of a woman of color being chased by dogs,
terrible, however.
It's a bad historical parallel to be drawing
to what is supposed to be a,
what's supposed to be ostensibly dumb fun, this movie.
Yeah.
But when she's hanging from the inside of the well
and the dogs are supposed to be like eating her fingers
so that she falls, it very clearly is them
licking her fingers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These vicious dogs are clearly like,
oh, let me lick up those fingers.
Yeah, it is.
Oh, that bacon grease you put on there.
It is silly in that way, yeah.
And here comes the big twist.
Unless they're licking the fingers
that they'll be slipperier, so she'll fall.
But you're right.
Oh, yeah.
It is something you see in bad-
You think this is cute, but it's evil.
It is something that you see in bad movies with dogs often
is that when they're supposed to be attacking someone,
they're clearly showing them affection.
Yeah.
Guys, we're at the twist, and that is that the they're supposed to be attacking someone, they're clearly showing them affection. Yeah. Guys, we're at the twist,
and that is that the daughter had the whistle the whole time.
She's the one who inherited the murder gene,
and she double stabs Will Sasso in the head with two knives,
and then eats one of his eyeballs.
This is incredible.
This is incredible.
And also, I don't think there's anything
in the HH Home
stories that involves cannibalism.
I could be wrong about that.
This is her new twist she's putting on this.
So when the twist is revealed,
Will Sasso is sitting down, it just goes, what?
Then she double stabs him and the face he is making
is so funny.
It is, this is very funny.
Yeah, it's so great.
Stuart, you say that, but someday when your daughter sitting behind you admits that
she's a murderer and then double stabs you, I bet you'll have a silly look on your face
too.
Oh man, I'll be so...
The silliest.
Like, oh, nobody film this, please.
This is embarrassing.
I hope nobody got that on tape.
Your last words are, I hope nobody got that on tape.
Yeah. Your last words are I hope nobody got that on tape. Yeah Uh, anyway, so she monologues about how uh, evil john voight was upset
that um
That right reese meyers didn't have the darkness in him that he just broke his back and took over the company when he found out
and this is the point which i'm like as he should have yeah, call me crazy, but
You know if you know what Reese Meyers knows,
maybe don't come to any further birthdays
of your serial killer father.
It does raise the question.
At the least, at the most tell the cops,
definitely once murders start happening,
tell your family what's going on.
Yeah, it raises the question of why he,
I mean, I could see
that maybe he hid this information because he didn't want the family to
live with the horror and the shame of knowing what had happened especially
his brother but and potential financial ruin yes it's certainly once the murder
game begins why are you hiding it you know why aren't you why aren't you
sharing this necessary data yeah yeah but, the point of the monologue is,
of course now, she's the true legacy.
She is the legacy murderer doing the legacy murders.
And she shoots her mom at a cheery song
about it being a perfect day plays.
Burnham picks her up in a limo,
congratulates her on winning.
And she makes a point of saying, Uncle Burnham,
and I'm like, wait a minute, does that mean Burnham is,
like is that just like a playful nickname,
or is he intended to be the son of his first wife?
Yes, I thought that they were getting across
that he is an unacknowledged son,
that maybe the others don't know that.
In which case, isn't he basically carrying on the legacy?
Cause he does some murdering, right?
Yeah.
But she does say, like, maybe next time he'll be, whatever, like, maybe next to legacy murders
and we all get together.
And then we get a little shot of him putting away the game pieces, taking care of them,
re-sleeving all the cards.
I don't know why you're resting the summary from me right at the end here.
I'll give it back.
Here you go, Dan.
So she drives off, music goes gloomy,
and then we get a montage of each of the corpses in turn
lying around as the pieces are put away,
including a noose for John Voight.
He was actually the noose, not the gas mask,
I guess this was earlier.
They had originally assigned pieces to everyone
based on what they thought their personalities were,
but it actually coincided with how they were going
to get murdered, which is wild.
Yeah.
Hey, it's an intricate plan.
When that montage was happening,
I was so mad that the movie was not over.
I was like, yeah, I got it.
Like, just be done.
I was like, I finished washing dishes five minutes ago
I mean that's part of it. I mean there was this I'm like can I I have five minutes left of washing dishes
Can I just watch a couple minutes of the young ones instead of this? You know?
How did he know he was gonna be killed by a noose like this is a psychic HH Holmes
grandson, I guess
Anyway, that's he's... He's just that good.
It's as great as weakness.
Yeah, being too good at murder.
I was going to say getting hung by the neck.
It's a flaw.
Unfortunately, he was vulnerable.
He had one weakness, all the things that would kill a normal person.
Just like Achilles. Dangerous game, the legacy murders.
Let's do final judgements, whether it's a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie.
I'm going to say, it is an edge case for me.
I'm going to go with bad bad movie because I found it too unpleasant in a lot of ways.
But part of that might just be like,
I was annoyed at having to like take notes
and all the dumb twists and turns.
The movie does go down easier
when you're not taking notes on it.
Yeah, when you're not doing homework.
I think if I'd seen it with like friends,
maybe I would have been more delighted by it.
Because it is, particularly the historical fiction turn
it takes was pretty wild and funny.
So, you know, it's borderline.
Yeah, I'm going to join you on that.
I think I'm going to say it's a bad, bad movie.
There's moments of it that I think could,
like I feel like depending on how nasty of a mood you're in,
because I think there's enough of it that's very sloppily
and shoddily done that make it pretty silly,
but it's really hard to get over a cat death for no reason.
Yeah, I think I'm in the same boat as Dan.
That it's like, I think I was watching- You and me, I'm in the same boat as you guys., it's like I think I was in the same boat as you guys
I'm in the same just two-person group chat as Dan
Where I would I agree I think if I was watching this with other people I think it might be a good bad
But by yourself, it's a it's a bad bad
It's just kind of unpleasant and the the funny parts are a little too far apart for me, you know
Yeah
But if you were with other people then you can kind of talk to them during those moments and maybe get another drink or something
Pops go pop some corn. Yeah. Yeah, why not? If you're gonna pop something when I was will make it corn
One thing we all have in common, we all have a mind.
It makes me so scared because I'm like, when is the bad thing going to happen?
And minds can be kind of unpredictable and eccentric.
Everybody wants to hear that they're not alone.
Everybody wants to hear that someone else has those same thoughts.
Depresh Mode with John Moe is about how interesting minds intersect with the lives
and work of the people who have them.
Comedians, authors, experts, all sorts of folks trying to make sense of their world.
It's not admitting something bad if you say, this is scary.
Depression Mode with John Moe.
Every Monday at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts.
Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts is a real podcast made up of fake podcasts like if you had a cupboard in your lower back what would you keep in it?
So I'm going to say mugs.
A little yoghurt and a spoon.
A small handkerchief that was given to me by my grandmother on her deathbed.
Maybe some spare honey.
I'd keep batteries in it.
I'd pretend to be a toy.
If I had a cupboard in my lower back, I'd probably fill it with spines.
If you had a cupboard in your lower back, what would you keep in it doesn't exist. We made it
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made up of hundreds of stupid podcasts. Listen and subscribe to Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts now.
Hey guys, why don't we take a few moments to honor the people that help make the Flophouse
possible. Mostly that's listeners like you, or members at MaximumFun.org. But also, we
have a couple of sponsors
and this week we're sponsored in part by Squarespace,
the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs
to stand out and succeed online.
You know, these days you gotta have a website
and whether you're just starting out
or you have a growing brand,
Squarespace makes it easy to make a website
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it's gonna help you engage with your audience,
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Let's be real.
So you can also make checkout seamless for your customers
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whatever, Squarespace has the tools you need
to start selling online.
So, go to squarespace.com for a free trial
and when you're ready to launch,
go to squarespace.com slash flop
to save 10% off your first purchase
of a website or domain.
Dan, I had an idea for a website
and I was wondering if Squarespace could help me with it.
Do you think they could?
Wow, it's been a while since we had one of these questions, probably.
Okay, it's called 23andRIP and it's where you can get a genetic analysis that's matched with the famous murderers of the past,
just to make sure you don't carry the deadly legacy inside you.
Do you think they'd be able to help me with that website?
You know, even though that is not scientifically backed by anything.
Oh, well, I've told our investors something different.
I think on the website side, you would be fine with Squarespace.
I think they would help you out.
I mean, your website would probably require a lot of functionality and drag and drop type stuff.
Is that available in Squarespace?
It's all available. You can drop as many dragons as you want.
What if I wanted people to look at it on their phones?
It's optimized for mobile.
Oh, wow.
Great.
Yeah.
Fantastic.
As soon as I figure out which gene is the murder gene.
That's how people use websites these days.
Yeah.
I think there's a Jumbotron, Stuart.
There is a Jumbotron!
Does your partner have interests?
Why?
Yeah. What are interests? What are they for?
I know they're a threat to me, but in what way?
Have you ever done a ninth grade level research project on
Chi truck crumple zones while in line at the bank?
Or tracked the evolutionary history of moles after seeing your neighbor post about blowing them up on Nextdoor.
Each episode, host Alex will investigate one of his wife, Ani's, browser tabs and demand answers.
Can he survive his journey into the heart of interests?
So listen to Close Other Tabs with Ani and Alex.
What a great premise for a show.
It is a great premise for a show. We should have done that 17 years ago.
Instead of having to curse ourselves.
The deadly legacy of our podcast.
Yeah, speaking of continuing the deadly legacy of our podcast,
the Flophouse has a very special thing going on right now.
We are recording this the next day after the premiere of FlopTV.
That's right, FlopTV is back for season two.
You may remember last year we did FlopTV.
It's kind of one hour live video broadcasts online of this show.
Yet last night we did our first episode, Robocop 2.
And if you missed it, that's fine.
The video is up online and it will stay up online through the end of February, right?
I hate to say it, but I think it was one of our best one of those
It was why you hate to say that I just hate to say, you know, it just hates
I think he hates to denigrate our previous season, but I think it was
Yeah, if you go to the flophouse.simpletix.com,
you can buy individual episode tickets
or a season pass that has a discount in it.
So the season pass gets you all six episodes
for the price of five episodes.
And your ticket or your season pass
gets you access to the show
even after we've already done it.
So we're going to be premiering the show
the first Saturday of every month,
doing live premieres online. But if to be premiering the show the first Saturday of every month, doing live premieres online.
But if you can't make it on the first Saturday
of every month at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern,
then that's okay.
You can watch the video at your leisure
as many times as you want through the end of February, 2025
when Flop TV will go back into the flop house vault.
Maybe to be released when we die.
Oh, hooray.
I mean, no, no, that's not great.
But we'll be doing six episodes once a month, first Saturday of every month.
It's all sequels this time.
The next one will be October 5th.
Breaking 2.
Electric Boogaloo.
A movie we've talked about a lot.
We've never done an episode on it.
It's going to be super fun.
And I think, Dan, you were going to break dance
live during the show?
I mean, no guarantees.
We'll see.
I mean, if I try to dance,
I probably will break at this age,
but we'll see what happens.
Dan, do we have time for me to mention
two personal promotions that I'd like to bring up?
We always have time for you, Elliot.
For you, Elliot, anything.
The world. That's wonderful. I would like to say up. We always have time for you Elliot. For you Elliot, anything. The world.
That's wonderful.
I would like to say, if you go to your local comic book store,
you will most likely find the most recent issue
of Hercules or Disney Hercules.
It could also be called my comic series
that I've written through Dynamite Comics.
It is the characters from the Hercules movie
plus some new characters based on old Greek mythology.
It starts out as a few individual adventures
and builds into a big epic storyline
that still has a satisfying story in each issue.
So that's Hercules from Dynamite Comics,
written by me in comic stores now.
And also, if you want to hear me talk about stuff
without Dan and Stuart, uh-oh.
What? Why?
I mean, that's a good question.
Well, if you want to hear me talk about civic
and municipal maintenance and management,
a subject Dan and Stuart are not as interested in.
Go to the 99% invisible feed where once a month
Roman Mars and I are breaking down the book,
The Power Broker by Robert Caro.
Speaking of world's fairs and expositions,
we are not there yet,
but we will be coming up to the chapters soon where Robert Moses is running the 1964 New York World's Fairs and Expositions. We are not there yet, but we will be coming up to the chapters soon
where Robert Moses is running the 1964 New York World's Fair.
So look forward to that in the 99% visible podcast feed,
but only do that after you listen
to all the Flophouse episodes.
Sounds good.
Hey, what's-
Hey.
Hey.
Hey.
What are you doing here?
Hey.
Hey, put that down.
Let's move along.
So letters from listeners. but that's my only weakness
Hearing letters from our devoted listeners
Here's one of them. This is from Dalton last name withheld
Trumbo who writes?
We're breaking the blacklist and reading his letter here on the air. I was inspired while listening to the hit podcast, The Chop House,
by the discussion of what dinosaurs tasted like.
And as a paleontologist, wanted to let you know that that is definitely something we discuss with each other.
There's even been some work on what prehistoric creatures may have been kosher.
Spoiler, not many.
Wow.
That's made it into the academic literature.
I guess that because reptiles are generally not kosher, I believe, right?
You're asking us?
Yeah, Dan, Dan, you're a kosher butcher, right?
Of the three of us.
Yeah, oh, moving on, sorry, the next paragraph starts like this and continues.
Thank you for easing us into it.
The host with the most was right on the money that we can't know for sure and to look at
birds for the closest comparison.
When we're looking to make educated inferences on things in the fossil record, we try to
bracket animals using their closest modern relatives. So with dinosaurs, we have birds on one side,
and alligators slash crocodiles on the other.
And as a certified alligator enjoyer,
I do find it lives up to its reputation
of tasting kind of like chicken.
So that-
Is that what a dragon would taste like?
One can only assume.
Well, I guess we can't,
because we don't know what the dragons might evolve into
over the years.
Yeah, or what they evolved from, yeah.
So that kind of vaguely birdish taste
with a bit more depth of flavor
is probably a safe guess for dinosaurs.
Diet definitely plays a role too.
Things that eat fish tend to taste fishy.
And I've heard that carnivores taste pretty bad.
So T-Rex might-
I've heard that too, to be honest.
If you let like, bear meat is supposed to not be very good.
Lion meat is supposed to not be very good.
Yeah, carnivores tend to not taste as good as herbivores.
Yeah, that's what I've heard.
I don't know that I've ever,
no, but I've eaten alligator.
What carnivores would we-
That's a carnivore.
What carnivores would you have eaten?
Alligators is one of the few, I think, right?
Yes.
And if you're ever going to eat polar bear, do not eat the liver.
It is toxic.
Oh, okay.
Cool.
I mean, I'm not planning on it.
Let me just open up a notes sack.
But you should probably keep that in mind all the time.
Just in case, yeah.
Arctic adventure.
Where was I?
You know, when you go beyond the mountains of madness. Yeah. Arctic adventure. Where was I?
When you go beyond the mountains of madness.
Yeah, well he's saying T-Rex might be out,
but I bet a hadrosaur shank would be good eats.
Now what science can't give us clues on
is the taste of fictional creatures.
So for that I turn to you.
What made up creature from a movie
would you most want to try?
Keep on chopping in the Chi world,
Dalton Lessesting with health.
We will continue chopping in Chi world.
I'd want to eat that giant thing that Anakin serves on
when they're in the second prequel.
Yeah, that kind of grazing mammal.
Yeah, yeah, I totally want to take a bite out of that.
Similarly, when Chewbacca is cooking up that porg,
I have to admit, it looks really good.
I mean, it looks kind of chicken.
I'm sad at the death of such a cute animal,
but it does, of the animals there are.
They believe in the cycle of life, Dan.
Yeah, I mean, my first impulse was to go to something
from like the dark crystal or something,
but they all seem sentient.
Like I don't know if I want to eat something.
Although that scene when the Skeksis are eating, I love it.
There's a lot of stuff that I would try.
Yeah, it's great.
Yeah.
I've talked about it extensively on this podcast.
Yeah.
There's a number of Dr. Seuss creatures that I bet would taste pretty good.
Like the Lorax?
Yeah.
Give me a Lorax haunt. Sure. Yeah. He does look well marbled. I Like the Lorax? Yeah. Give me the Lorax, Hans. Sure.
Yeah.
I mean, he does look well marbled.
I am the Lorax.
I speak for, hey, hey, what are you doing?
Hey, get your mouth off of me.
He already sort of looks like a ham with arms and legs.
Has Danny DeVito ever played the Lorax?
He did.
Yes, in the movie The Lorax.
He, in fact, did do that.
Yes.
Oh, God.
Oh, boy.
I saw some of that at my in-laws' house because there are kids around,
so I put the Lorax on and I was immediately dismayed by it.
I'm like, wow, you've really taken
one of the most distinct art styles for a kid's book
and genericked it up for this movie.
I mean, there's that- Is it live action like the Grinch? No, it's CGI. a kid's book and generics it up for this movie.
Is it live action like the Grinch?
No, it's CGI.
It's Illumination, the company that did the Despicable Me movies
and stuff like that.
And it looks like those.
Yeah.
So I guess that answers your question.
Anyway.
But Dan, weren't you excited to learn
about the Onceler's backstory?
Yeah, there's a lot of unnecessary complications added to that tale.
It's worth it because it gave people on Tumblr the ability to ship the Onceler and his evil self in erotic fan fiction.
I did look it up, the Lorax on Letterboxd while it was on, and I was like, oh, a lot of people horny for the Onceler now.
That's what the kids are up to.
If people online, they love tall, thin guys.
They want every male animation character
to be Jack Skellington, basically.
And he's got that messy hair, too.
Yeah, yeah, and messy hair, sure, yeah.
This is from Mark Lasting Withheld, who writes,
Mark Wahlbergeld who writes, do you ever?
Mark Wahlberg who writes,
hey, Flappless, I wanted to ask you a question about, yeah.
Yeah, Flappless Wahlberg.
Is it weird that I wake up at three in the morning
to play golf for 20 minutes?
He's got a much gentler sounding voice though,
is the weird, like he both sounds like a. He's like, oh, well, I was gonna tell him that all. Yeah, he does have a gentler sounding voice though is the weird like he both sounds like he's like
Oh, well, I was gonna tell him without all yeah, he does have a gentle sign with this. Yeah
I'm doing I was doing more of a Matt Damon. I guess yeah
This is another so I bought a zoo. Can you believe it?
Another chop house related letter you inspired. Oh wow a generation of letter writers. I may have to do another Chop House episode.
Mark writes, just pausing in the middle of your meat episode.
Yeah, how do you get this out?
Couldn't even finish it.
To tell you a story about the John Cusack classic Better Off Dead.
I'm a little older than you guys so I saw the film right before it came out while in
film school at USC.
In fact, director Savage Steve Holland came to a small press screening in one of the many
little screening rooms in the then brand new George Lucas Instructional Building, the brand
new George Lucas Instructional Building, which has since been torn down to make way for the monolithic stone film school
Most of us loved the insane comedy of the film and were thrilled by the presence of the director
But I'll never forget the QA
There was a grad student whose name I never knew but was a regular at all screenings always asking the most laborious
pedantic questions to every guest director
Here is what he asked Savage Steve Holland.
Note, imagine the voice of a larger Arnold Horschach
from Welcome Back Hotter.
Mr. Holland, I have a question.
When the main character has a date with the girl-
Please call me Savage Steve.
The main character has a date with a girl
his father set him up with.
He goes to pick her up at her house.
Now her name was Joanne Greenwald, a clearly Jewish name, and yet she had Christmas lights
on her house.
Oh.
At this point, Holland is nodding along and cuts him off.
Yes, yes, that's an excellent point.
We went back and forth.
People pointed out, if she's Jewish, should she have Christmas lights?
But the film takes place at Christmastime, and the fact is, when I was in high school,
I dated a girl named Joanne Greenwald,
and she had Christmas lights on her house, so fuck you!
And he stormed out of the room.
Really?
Well, hold on.
The PR person started to chase him in a panic,
and, but he was immediately totally cool, and said,
oh, I'll be right back, I just have to pee.
Ha ha ha! I've never enjoyed a director Q&A more.
Keep on chopping and flopping, your pal Mark.
Okay.
What a great story.
That's a great story.
That's exactly the way I want Savage Steve Holland
to be in the Q&A is, it seems like he's real crazy,
but then it turns out it's like,
hey, I'm just goofing, just having fun.
Yeah, we can all laugh.
Come on, we just gotta have a good laugh, you know?
Yeah.
He would be canceled for having to use the bathroom now
because we all have to be perfect and never have to empty our bladders.
Yeah, man.
Uh-huh.
Elliott speaks the truth, you know?
You know, you can't...
He says the things everyone else is too scared to say.
You know, back when they made Blazing Saddles,
people were using the bathroom all the time,
but you can't do that now.
You can't use the bathroom now.
L8 says the things that are too stupid for anyone else to say.
You know, oh, should I not breathe because I'm exhaling too much carbon dioxide?
Is that not woke enough that my body creates carbon dioxide?
That's bad for the climate.
Oh wow, L8's really lean into this Netflix special of his.
Well the problem is at a certain point,
my satirical version of this starts sounding like I mean it,
and I don't mean it.
No, we've confused listers on occasion.
That's all ironic.
Okay, so let's move on to the final segment.
What a funny way to use the bathroom,
to pretend to get mad and storm out of a room.
That's great.
I mean, ask someone who often needs to use the bathroom
but feels like a weird social pressure,
like I can't speak up.
Like weirdly, it would be the easiest way
would be to fake something like that.
The worst version of that,
I was once in a friend's house
and they had dog hair all over their furniture
and I was having an allergic reaction to it.
And I was with my wife and her college friends
in one of their apartments.
And I was like, I could feel my throat starting to close up
and I was like, I don't wanna be a jerk
and interrupt the conversation and be a buzzkill.
So I guess I'll just sit here and asphyxiate.
And then someone was like, hey, let's take a walk outside.
And I was like, oh, thank goodness.
So I did survive that time.
Glad you're still alive.
Yeah.
We're going to be sharing bathroom stories.
And I had a couple queued up.
But you know what?
I'll save those for a mini.
We should put those behind a paywall.
When we do the mini, the plop house, we're just telling bathroom stories.
Yeah.
Let us guys.
I may change my plans for what the mini was going to be that we were going to record.
Okay. Got to work on my fast. Let us guys I may change my plans for what the mini was gonna be that we were gonna record
Got to work on it fast
let us Do our recommendations of movies that might be a better use of your time than dangerous game the legacy murder
That's impossible. Okay, let me change mine. I
I'd like to recommend a movie I saw just recently
At a rep screening like so many. It's a Corey Yoon film who recently passed away, which we only learned apparently two
years after the fact.
It was not widely reported, but a rest in peace to both a kung fu actor and director.
But this is a film he directed from 2002 called So Close,
which is about a pair of,
like there's a female assassin and her sister,
who is more of like the tech person.
And then they are employed to assassinate someone,
and on their trail is a female cop,
so it's three ladies are our primary protagonists,
and there's a love interest,
but this is a very gay movie,
like they're constantly all giving, well not those two sisters,
but they're giving one another these glances
that suggest that any males in the area
are superfluous to the film.
But it's also just a very, it's a great,
silly action movie.
It has so many wild action sequences, wild fights,
but shot clearly and beautifully,
but also with sort of a turn of the century
like aesthetic of CGI that's not quite there yet
in a lot of places,
but stuff that would have bothered me at the time,
but now with Nostalgia Goggles,
I'm like, oh, look at this beautiful nonsense.
It's just a lot of fun.
You know, if you're just looking for something
purely enjoyable in the action area
that's a little sexy too, maybe, so close is good.
I'm going to recommend a movie
that just got released this weekend,
and I want to pump it up so it doesn't get lost
in the Netflix algorithm.
I'm gonna be recommending Rebel Ridge,
the new Jeremy Saulnier movie.
It's been a while since he made one,
and boy, it's good to have him back.
It's a kind of a modern day Western
about a outsider who shows up to a small town
and has to deal with the web of corruption,
specifically police corruption.
And it is shot beautifully.
It is super tense.
The score is great.
The soundtrack is great.
I mean, it's a movie that opens with
Number of the Beast playing, so it rules.
Oh, wow, yeah.
And yeah, I mean, and when it opens with
Number of the Beast, you're like,
man, the movie's gonna have a lot
to live up to, and it does.
And the kind of trailer made it seem like
it was gonna be a pretty straightforward actioner,
but I feel like it has a little bit more on its mind,
and the performances are all great,
the lead, Aaron Pierre, is incredible,
and has such pretty eyes, guys, it's amazing.
And it's just like the buildup to the first action sequence is so fucking satisfying
that when it happens, it's hard not to feel that rush and pump your fists in the air.
It's awesome.
Don Johnson's great as a villain. Yeah. Yeah. Thumbs up. Thumbs up. Check it out. Rebel Ridge.
I'm going to recommend an older film.
In fact, it is the 50th anniversary this year of this movie,
which is a total coincidence.
But this is one of the movies I think I've enjoyed the most
of all the movies that I have watched this year so far.
And it's a French movie from 1974 called
Celine and Julie Go Boating.
The full title is Celine and Julie Go Boating Phantom Ladies Over Paris.
That's the full French title.
But I mean, obviously that's, it's English.
That's a great title, right?
Yeah.
It is a, it's a French New Wave movie.
It is a, I know, mostly I'm all about Czech New Wave movies,
but sometimes I watch New Wave from other countries.
Yeah.
It is a long movie.
I'll warn you off the bat.
It's like three hours and change long.
But it is...
What is it, Terrifier 2?
Yeah, but I'll just say before I tell you a tiny bit
about the plot that I found it to be one of the kind of
lightest in some ways, kind of the most delightful
like funniest movies I've seen in a long time.
These two women, Celine and Julie,
they're both living in Paris, these two young women,
and they kind of meet somewhat by chance.
One of them drops something in front of the other one while she's sitting on a park bench
and she goes to such lengths to chase after her to give her back this thing.
And the two of them are kind of drawn together in a sort of fun, almost irrational way, but
they end up as roommates, they end up as best friends. And they discover that there is a house where whenever either one of them enter it,
they suddenly become the nurse in a melodramatic story
that involves a love triangle and a murdered child
that is replaying over and over again
whenever anyone enters that house.
And they decide that it is up to them to save that child
by going back in and changing the story
that is going on constantly in that house.
And it is a movie that is,
I guess you could call it kind of magical real estate.
You could call it kind of a movie about movies
and what it's like if you were able to enter a movie
and become part of it.
But more than anything-
Like Last Action Hero?
Yeah, I mean, to be honest,
in some ways it's kind of like the French new way version
of Last Action Hero in a sense.
It's less overtly about movies, you know,
but about entering a story and becoming part of a story.
And as the two women eventually decide
they're going to enter that story together
and change the way it goes, and they realize,
oh, we can kind of do whatever we want in this story.
And they go and they become silly with it.
But more than anything else,
it was one of these movies where like the two lead actors,
Juliette Berto and Dominique LeBorghier,
like were friends in real life and it feels like it.
It feels like you're watching friends make a movie
in a way that they are kind of making it up
as they go along in some ways.
And it's just really fun.
And like it has, I guess there are ominous moments,
but while watching it I was just like,
ugh, this is hitting so many notes of enjoyment for me
while I'm watching it, you know?
This is a movie I've wanted to see for a long time,
but I feel like it was difficult to see for a long time.
Where did you watch it?
It's on Criterion Channel right now.
So like the, it is a movie that,
the thing that was keeping me from watching it
for a long time was that it's long, it's three hours long. But but well, and I you know, I'm not gonna watch it all the way through
I never have the time to sit and watch a three-hour movie, but it certainly never felt to me
Like I'm sitting and watching a three hour long movie. It's a French New Wave movie. It's gonna take its time with things
There's not it's not a propulsive plot that's driving you from one scene to the next
But I feel like if you watch it in a couple of installments,
then there's some scenes that they're just so super fun.
And the lead characters I found so just delightful to be around, you know?
And it's a movie that captures the feeling of being a young adult in a friendship,
in a kind of magical way that I have not seen done as well in other movies.
So I really loved it.
So that's Celine and Julie Go Boating. way that I have not seen done as well in other movies. So I really loved it.
So that's Celine and Julie Go Boating.
I cannot recommend it highly enough if you are willing to
sit through a three hour long French New Wave movie.
You know what's great is just being able to sit and watch
an entire three hour movie.
It rules.
Stop rubbing it in our poor friends.
If you have the time, which I never do ever in my life,
then yeah.
I certainly miss the days when I could go
with my friend Brock to go to the Guggenheim
and watch the entire Craymaster cycle,
all seven and a half or whatever hours in one sitting.
Whoa.
Can't do that anymore.
Not only the time, but the attention span.
I think back on when I was in college
and there was a semester that we took in London and
a rep theater was playing La Dolce Vita and Eight and a Half back to back and I sit and
watched both of them back to back and now that's a feat that astounds me.
I mean, I think about their movies I watched as a kid.
I watched all the old Godzilla movies as a kid and the idea of sitting through like all
the talkie scenes
in those movies, now I'm like, how did I have the patience
for all those scenes of military generals
just sitting around being like, what do we do?
I don't know, you know, and scientists being like,
oh, here's some made up science nonsense
to explain why dinosaurs knocking over buildings, you know.
That's the way I feel about Pink Panther movies.
I thought they were so funny when I was a kid,
but now I'm like, if Peter Sellers or Herbert Lomb is not on screen, these things are dire.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, anyway, that's a scene of the show, I guess.
Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah.
On that weird note.
Yeah, that weird note of us hating sitting through movies now that we're all angry men.
Yeah.
No, I like it.
That's what I'm saying.
Put me in a movie theater with no distractions.
Maybe give me a little nosh.
Something to sip on.
Kick back? Man, that's life. That's living.
You're gonna write a song about it or something?
I feel like I already did with Alex on Alex's podcast. So this has been the Flophouse.
Thank you for listening.
We are a member of the Maximum Fun Network.
Go over to MaximumFun.org to check out other podcasts on the network.
Before mentioned, Alex Smith is our producer.
He goes by the name Howell Doddy for various other endeavors.
Boy, does he ever.
He's got a new album out.
He does Twitch streams.
You should check out all of the stuff that Alex has going on as well.
I guess that's it for this week.
Thank you for being with us.
For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.
I've been Stuart Wellington.
And I'm Elliott Kalin.
Bye.
And they're almost done applauding.
Okay.
["Cow Pokes"]
Well, it's just good to be back in the saddle, you know.
I'm a two cow pokes.
Yeah. Just poking cows, yep. Poking cows, you know. Yeah, that's just good to be back in the saddle, you know. My two cowpokes. Yep.
Just poking cows, yep.
Poking cows, you know.
Yeah, that's what they do.
They poke cows to say, get along.
Lil doggy.
That is what they say.
They say it.
As true today as it was then.
That's the thing.
You can't say that if it's not fucking true.
Yeah.
Well, you can't say it today or you'll get canceled.
No, you can't.
You can't say it today or you'll get canceled.
You can't say it today or you'll get canceled.
You can't say it today or you'll get canceled.
You can't say it today or you'll get canceled.
You can't say it today or you'll get canceled.
You can't say it today or you'll get canceled.
You can't say it today or you'll get canceled. You can't say it today or you'll get canceled. You can't say it today or you'll get canceled. You can't say it today or you'll get canceled, you can't say that if it's not fucking true.
Yeah, well you can't say it today or you'll get canceled.
No, I tried once. I tried and I got so canceled, guys.
You can't say doggies or cow pokes anymore. They won't let you.
No.
Just luckily my wife was there to hold my hand while I was being canceled.
But FX picked you up, so that was good.
I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm sure who we're talking about anymore who were veiled referencing.
No, no, I don't know was there someone being referenced? No, you know
sometimes I just like I kind of like create stories and like I build worlds and they seem so real that like LA it's like that's got to be based on a real person. Yeah, exactly. Turns out it wasn't.
No, it just sprang forth from my skull like Athena.
Okay, well we're sufficiently warmed up I think.