Too Scary; Didn't Watch - Bonus Episode: Cursed Films

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

For our first bonus episode of March we are talking about Cursed Films! Jay Cheel's 5 part documentary series takes a closer look at some of the most infamous cursed film sets (The Exorcist, The Omen, Poltergeist, The Crow, and The Twilight Zone: The Movie) and explores why we as audiences are so intrigued by the idea of a scary movie being cursed. But, are curses real? Follow the show: @TSDWpodcast on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. Check out our Patreon for bonus episodes and additional content! Rate Too Scary; Didn’t Watch 5 Stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Emily, Henley, and Sammy. Advertise on Too Scary; Didn't Watch via Gumball.fmSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is Emily, Henley, and Sammy, and you're listening to Too Scary, Didn't Watch. Hi everyone, welcome to Too Scary, Didn't Watch, a March bonus episode? That's right. March bonus episode number one. March Madness, baby. Here we are. It's March Madness. I'm feeling the March Madness.

Is that happening this year? No. Yeah, I think it is. Still basketball? It's happening on the TSDW Instagram. Oh, you better believe it. It's happening where it matters, Emily. You're right, you're right, you're right. As It's happening where it matters, Emily.

You're right, you're right, you're right. As our listeners know, we are huge, huge sports fans. All we talk about is sports most of the time. Most of the time. And we found a way to combine that with horror movies, our second love right after sports. Yep. Have we ever talked about sports once on the podcast, actually? Has it, like,

ever come up? I'm sure, like, once or twice. Probably once or it, like, ever come up? I'm sure, like, once or twice. Probably once or twice, yeah, but pretty rarely. As I like to call them, Sprots. I think that's a better name. Okay. Who are we? Should we say?

Oh, I guess. Sure. Yeah, I'm Emily. I'm Henley. I'm Sammy. I mostly just want to say that again. Tony couldn't make it. Oh, great.

We have, yes, exactly, yeah. And she sends her love. As always. I'm Sammy I mostly just want to say that again Tony couldn't make it yes exactly yeah and she sends her love as always to her inner circle and this bonus episode March bonus episode number one we are going to be talking about cursed films

which is written directed and edited by Jay Cheal and available on www.shudder.com. Shudder.com! I think because we were talking about demons last month and the omen curses, we decided we love when there's some cursed trivia,

so why not watch this documentary series that is all about cursed movies? Yeah, it was fascinating. I will say that, Sammy, you had texted us to avoid watching the final episode in this series because it was extremely distressing. And I did not watch it. So I'm excited to hear you i also did not yeah so that will be a surprise to hear i don't know what that could be but i will say even watching the first four so it's five episodes 30 minutes a piece easy breezy again maybe don't watch the fifth we'll find out but as they progressed like the fourth episode made me

pretty sad the fourth episode did also make me cry and the overall thing i mean we're going to talk about it and our curse is real and are these films curse and we'll get to some stuff that was honestly truly very funny and that made me laugh and was quite lighthearted but ultimately i was like no we should never say that that's true because it diminishes the tragedy of the like actual loss of life that has it been happening and that happens on sets sometimes and right and like to just lump it all in is like who is it a curse is like well people died and that sucks to um just trivialize yeah we'll talk about this in more detail but um it also seems to provide just like fodder for tabloids. And then as a result of that kind of destroys people's lives who are connected to the tragedy or the curse in any way.

And like makes their life worse afterwards because people then think that they're actually cursed for a variety of reasons. cursed for a variety of reasons and right it makes them very sad like in a lot of these interviews the people who are being interviewed are clearly very sad and traumatized because they've experienced yeah they've experienced trauma and some of these cases like really extreme trauma and then it's like do you believe in the curse like i believe that this has been terrible right that being said let's talk about curse films let's talk about it um it so it goes episode by episode is a different movie and it starts with the exorcist and i will say in each of these episodes it kind of blows through all of the things that happened that are like rumored to be curses pretty quickly and then kind of moves on to more

interviews with the people about like how they felt about that and then they bring in other experts. Oh man. Oh man. And I think the experts in the first, is it the first two? Oh yeah. It's the first two episodes

are the best we're going to get. And I'll just go ahead and say I was just listening to Game of Roses. So I'm very in on their like Creature of the Week. Yes, yes, yes. Jorge Moreno, Bystander of the Week. Oh, we've got some strong contenders in this first one. And my, I guess, interviewee of the week is in this first Exorcist episode. Oh, I texted you guys about it.

Boy, do I love him. Yeah, there's a lot of great people interviewed. So it like blows through the Exorcist. I guess the set caught fire early on and all of the set was burned down except for Reagan's room, which was mysteriously untouched. They brought in a priest to bless the set.

Quite a few people died kind of tangentially. Adjacent. Yeah. During filming people that were like kind of tangentially like related to crew members would die. They listed a few people that died. We've talked about before obviously

the Linda Blair injury when the thing that she strapped into that is supposed to kind of flip like flick her back and forth malfunctioned and fractured her spine. And like it makes me mad to even consider it part of a curse. Like I was going to say, a lot of the things about these are like the curses this is actors rights issues yeah a lot of these like was it a curse is like human error and negligence or capitalist greed that has like cut corn like it's like yeah the i mean i guess the curse is capitalism it always is um it's just like people cutting corners are like fucking up or not paying attention and then people get hurt because that's literally how people get hurt right and it's really

hard to watch they keep showing these clips that linda blair one oh and the documentaries you're watching of of linda blair and the the contraption on the bed and it's every time i'm like god damn i don't want to fucking watch this again she's like a child screaming in pain yeah well it shows it shows after cut and it shows like them running to her and her just sobbing which i had never seen before and was very awful upsetting to see um obviously ellen burstein we had talked about that before that. Yeah. The slap. She wasn't giving the reaction that they wanted. And so they decided to pull this harness that's supposed to fling her across

the room. They pulled it like way harder than the first take and broke her back too, I think. Right. Or something. Or she like slammed her head. She got injured somehow. And they should,

that's like, that's the clip that made it in the movie too oh yeah yeah you know what the other problem is men william william friedkin yeah it's it's a man being like i want more just hurt her who cares right yeah i mean i did find myself in all pretty much all of these getting really angry at the directors yeah because they're i mean and a lot of these talk about how obviously on set it's a, it's a group effort. There's a lot of people involved and kind of coordinating between different departments is hard.

And it does, it is, it's not always like one person's fault when something happens, but the director is in charge of all of these things. And when people on set are saying like, William Friedkin just like kept trying to up the ante and was like, ah, like sounds like he was just like a personality type. That's like taking these big risks with other people's safety for the sake of the movie and of the art. And we love him for that. What a genius. And I think it made people miserable. One of the people they interviewed was a woman named Eileen Dietz who I'd never heard of before, but

I guess she plays a double to Linda Blair in a bunch of the scenes because they didn't want to have an 11-year-old masturbating or whatever. I think she must be the woman that chain-smoked cigarettes and did her voice, right, when she's possessed by Pazuzu?

I think so. Eileen Dietz got to do all those fun scenes but one of her lines when she's being interviewed she was like it was horrible all of us were like who do you have to fuck to get off this movie like that's right it was not fun for anyone cod you hate to hear it You hate to hear it. You hate to hear it. I mean, so I don't know. We can't go into like we've also talked about a lot of these like accidents that have happened when we covered a lot of these movies. But the thing that became very obvious to me that they did touch on and starting with this one is like it's really good publicity for a movie like this when there is a mythology about it being cursed or evil because that's the same people who are going to want to

see a scary movie they want to up the ante and like so a lot of this was manipulated these stories and like tied together to make people want to see the movie and like yeah it did have really detrimental effects in Linda Blair's life she was a kid

and people like thought she was the devil and she stopped acting. The fucking back fracture might have something to do with that, too. film the literal like film squares of the exorcist so every time a theater played it the devil was like there which honestly i'm like billy you just fucking sold that movie harder than like you idiot like that's like that's not gonna it's gonna keep your people away they weren't seeing the exorcist anyway man like that's the hardest promo you could fucking give. I bet the studio was like, yes, did you see what Billy Graham said? But then they do in this episode give us, is this time for me to talk about my bystander of the week? Oh, yeah. An interview with a real life exorcist.

His name is Vincent Bauhaus. I don't know where he's from. He has an accent that I couldn't quite place. I'm not very good at that. He is an interesting man. He was really making me laugh. Okay, so I also think he's kind of bad. I mean, I think he believes it maybe, but he's taking people's money.

Right. Yeah, which is not great. Like vulnerable people taking their money. What? But he does introduce a guy. He gives us three examples of people he's going to we're going to see him exercise. One is a woman who, I don't know, feels cursed. One is a guy who's had like trauma since his dad left, which is like so sad.

And then the third, he says he played with a ouija board every day for four years like what wait what's happening and he exercises all of them and it's nasty they all like vomit and convulse and like and then this doctor a scientist or whoever i remember who they interviewed talks about this theory that i wish i'd written down the name of it of like, basically, like the more images and information you're given on how something goes, the more likely you are to like literally recreate that one. And if it happens to you. So like the fact that people act this way when exorcisms happen has so much more to do with the fact that their brains are being like, Oh, you know how this goes rather than it's like, it's like the way they act. Isn't proof that an exorcism is real.

The fact that they've seen an exorcism is what makes them act. Exorcism. It's just, it's fascinating mimicking without even like consciously realizing it. I think it's just like your body, you want to believe it. And you go into this, like,

this is how it goes. And you just start like, I mean, like this woman literally vomited. Yeah, man. And it showed the vomit too close. Oh, it really did. Too close for me.

It was nasty, but fascinating. Yeah, I was deeply uncomfortable during this segment. Very much so, yeah. Because, yeah, I also felt like Vincent Bauhaus was a grifter, probably. I don't know. I didn't trust him personally. But just all these people were clearly very vulnerable and he was almost like taking advantage of their vulnerability. However, you know, if it does help them, if afterwards they do feel better and they do feel like they've had some kind of release and like maybe gone through like something, you know, who am I to say it's not not worth everyone's time?

Hey, man, I saw past lives medium. I do terror. Like, you know, we all decide what works for us. But the last guy, the Ouija board. No, the family trauma guy was like, you know, I don't have an apartment. My money comes in, my money comes out. He's like just tossing down bills to this fucking exorcist. Also, a problem I've had with exorcisms and demons, we've talked about this in past episodes, is like, what, Jesus is the only religious truth? That's what exorcisms decide? It's like, what you

need is Jesus. And it's like, well, wait, like, it's just so Eurocentric. I don't know. I don't love it. He also says exorcisms prove that there is evil. These exorcisms prove that there is evil. Evil proves that there's the devil and the devil proves that there is God. And he says it so confidently. And I was like, oh, wow. OK, that's pretty easy. That's pretty easy. that's kind of how that one ends right i feel like that's pretty much it yeah we get we get those exorcisms and we're sort of like all right on to the omen to hear the rest of this episode where we talk about the omen poltergeist, The Crow, and Twilight Zone, the movie, head on over to patreon.com slash TSDW podcast and join us in Tony fucking Collette's inner circle.

Or we will see you here on Wednesday for your regularly scheduled programming where we will be recapping Misery. We love you and we will talk to you soon. Goodbye.