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Bloodtide
Manage episode 441825620 series 98583
We lost a legend, folks: A young and strapping James Earl Jones stars in this loony folk-horror movie that hilariously fails to hit on almost every mark. So bad it’s good? You’d better believe it. And he’s not the only Oscar-winner in this. You’ll also be treated to performances by José Ferrer and Lila Kedrova, a young Martin Kove, former Miss USA Deborah Shelton, and some of the most gorgeous views of the Greek Isles you’ll see on film.
We can’t say enough good things about the iconic American treasure that is James Earl Jones, but we do our best to give an overview on his life as we marvel at his range and willingness to commit to a variety of projects.
Bloodtide (1982)
Episode 408, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, we come once again to a tribute episode for this year that we really needed to sneak in just because this actor has been Such a part of our history as, as people.
Craig: Yeah, this one, you know, sometimes every once in a while, we’ll, we’ll do one of these tribute episodes for somebody that may not be a huge star, but for whatever reason, you know, is near and dear to us for whatever reason, this guy.
is a legend and and I really think that his legacy will be sustained for a really really long time like he’s just so iconic and his voice if nothing else his voice I don’t think is going anywhere I mean people are going to recognize this voice
Todd: It’s almost like Orson Welles, right? In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we are talking about, uh, the legendary James Earl Jones, who passed away, I would say ripe old age, he, he lived to be 93.
93? Yeah. That’s pretty good, yeah, that’s pretty good. I mean, I hope I live to be 93.
Craig: I know, I read some clickbait headline that was like, the James Earl Jones tragedy, the, his unexpected death, something, something. It’s like, unexpected? Like, he’s 93.
Todd: You
Craig: lived to 93. If you’re not expecting it at 93.
Todd: I’d be looking over my shoulder every
Craig: day if I was 93.
I know, right? Here we go. You tell me about James Earl Jones. Here’s what I know about him. He’s a damn fine actor. He’s been in a lot of things that were big touchstones for us growing up. For us in particular, I think it’s Star Wars, of course.
Todd: Oh, yes.
Craig: Darth Vader is one of the most well known and and popular characters in pop culture around the world period the end
Todd: Yeah,
Craig: and james earle jones did the voice acting for that and and we associate him with that and it’s it’s huge I mean he he was he was still doing it up until a few years ago
Todd: Yeah
Craig: that and then of course mufasa and the lion king again one of the biggest movies of all time and and he’s uh Well known for that among many, many, many other things.
He did, you know, he did film, he did television. I assume he did stage. Oh yeah. Was he an EGOT? Yes, he was. So yeah, he did everything. He did it all huge, huge, huge star. And from everything that I ever saw him in, in terms of interviews, he seemed very humble and very down to earth. He was willing to make fun of himself.
He did a hilarious episode of. Will and Grace, where he played one of Jack’s acting students, and of course, Jack is a terrible actor, and here he is giving James Earl Jones acting lessons, and they performed together, I think, a scene out of Sex and the City. Oh God. Jack, Jack, they like, He, Jack had to teach James Earl Jones to like, go up higher in his register and say like, Jimmy Choos!
When I heard that he passed away, I was sad, of course, but you know, to see that he lived to be 93, he had just in the last, I don’t know, I have no concept of time, but it’s been within like the last five years that the live action. Lion King came out from Disney and I’m pretty sure that he was the only performer that they asked to reprise his role.
And he did. Look
James Earl Jones: Simba, everything the light touches is our kingdom. A king’s time as ruler rises and falls like the sun. One day Simba, the sun will set on my time here and will rise with you as the new king.
Craig: His voice is one of those like, if he’s still available, who else do you get to do it? You don’t get more iconic than James Earl Jones.
So it’s, it’s sad that he’s gone, but damn, what an amazing, amazing career.
Todd: You’re absolutely right. And you know, you mentioned Humble. He famously didn’t get to do it. on screen credit for the first two Star Wars movies. He refused. He did not. He said, I didn’t play that big of a role in the film. So I don’t deserve a credit.
He finally acquiesced by the third movie. That’s just a testament to how, uh, you know, compared to Orson Wells, for example, who was notoriously, uh, cocky and arrogant. This guy had to know what an icon he was and remained humble. And. I think one of the cool things about him is that he was willing to do almost anything.
I mean, a guy of this stature doesn’t need to be in low budget movies, doesn’t need to make little appearances here and there. And yet, even throughout his career, all the way back to the early days, you know, he would be performing in Movies like we’re going to review today, you know, alongside big important films.
And that’s also, I think, a Testament to his, his humility, you know, nothing, not no project seemed beneath him as long as it interested him. And I think a lot of that comes from his. Childhood and his upbringing because he stumbled into acting kind of by accident as a high school student now as a voice actor and an Aspiring voice actor for much longer than that many years ago.
I read I think I was the height I think I might have been in high school myself It was either a biography or a mini biography an article about James Earl Jones interestingly enough He had a terrible stutter, huh? In fact, he was mute He had such trouble with his stutter that he did not speak. And he said that his muteness started, uh, the first day of his first grade of school, and continued until he started high school.
Wow. He just didn’t talk because he was so embarrassed by his stutter, and got made fun of, and just couldn’t talk. How ironic is that, you know? To the day he died, he said, He still had to think very carefully about everything he was going to say before he said it, in order to overcome that stutter. And the first thing that got him going down that road was his high school English teacher, who noticed that he really liked to write poetry, and used this as a way to encourage him to speak in front of the class.
And then he decided he could take acting lessons in order to help him. Overcome the stutter as well. So, uh, that is really how we got into acting was as a very practical way of overcoming this debilitating, this debilitating hindrance that really, really kept him quiet and closeted, you know, as a child.
And then he goes on to have this deep baritone voice.
All of these roles that we know him for. It’s pretty interesting.
Craig: I feel like anything that needed voiceover narration. For the past 30 years, they’re like, can we get James Earl Jones? No. All right. Helen Mirren. Call her. It’s fine.
Todd: It’s true. George Lucas actually picked Orson Welles initially for the voice of Darth Vader, but at the end of the day, thought that his voice was just a little too recognizable. To do it, so. Oh, man. He was actually a pre med major in college, and he was even in the army during the Korean War. And this was all before he started pursuing an actual career in acting, but while he was waiting for his orders, he was already taking acting classes and acting on stage, and he was working, I think, as a janitor for that theater in order to pay for the classes.
His father was an actor.
Craig: Yeah, his father was in sleepaway camp. You Yeah, he was a cook. He
Todd: was the cook who got the boiling water on
Craig: him. I don’t remember if he was the one that got the boiling water, maybe he was, but he was definitely a cook in Sleepaway Camp. Oh
Todd: my gosh, you’re absolutely right. Well, his father like left the family when he was very young and apparently they were estranged for quite a while, but then they did end up acting together at least in one or two plays.
So they supposedly made amends. I don’t think there’s a lot really known about that whole relationship, but yeah, I He started working on stage, just kind of like you suspected, and uh, from there moved on to movies. His film debut was in Dr. Strangelove.
Craig: Did
Todd: he study?
Craig: Does it say anything
Todd: about Yeah, he studied acting.
Yeah.
Craig: He seems like somebody who’s studied. You
Todd: can tell. He has a very theatrical presentation in everything he does. He does. For better or for worse, really, because I’m sure. There are some roles Obviously film requires a different style of acting, and sometimes he works In a movie and sometimes he Doesn’t I think based on that
Craig: I can’t think of anything that I haven’t enjoyed a minute Actually, i’m just sitting here and trying to think of the things that he’s done and I remembered coming to america He was so funny coming to america.
Oh, that was great. Yes, like he’s he can be he seems like a very Serious actor and he is and he can be but he can be really funny too.
Todd: Oh, yeah
Craig: Gosh, I just love people like that. He just seemed like an all around really gifted guy
Todd: We’ve talked about him before on this podcast at least once when we reviewed The exorcist part two and that’s probably the movie We I would imagine we would have jumped to if we hadn’t already done it as a probably
Craig: I don’t remember him in that at all.
Todd: Oh, he was the, he comes in kind of midway towards the end when they go to Africa and go to that tribe, and he’s a researcher.
Craig: A researcher? Did he have like lots of bugs or something?
Todd: Yeah,
Craig: yeah,
Todd: that’s the one about the locusts and things. Yeah. Yeah, okay, alright. That movie, I think, came out around the same time that he, oh, that Star Wars came out, the same year.
Craig: What year did Star Wars come out?
Todd: It’s 1977, yeah, 77.
Craig: It’s too bad that he had to continue doing, apparently, movies like this one.
Todd: Oh my god, you sent me three that you had looked up, and when I, I looked at all three and I have to say this one kind of jumped out to me as the one that probably he’s in the most. Yeah. And that’s what we usually strive for, you know, for better or for worse. We’ve done tribute episodes where a character came in for a scene and then left.
I think Christine was that with, um, Kelly Preston. But, no, he is 100 percent in this movie. He’s one of the two main characters, I would say, in this one. And so, I was like, let’s do that one. And then, when I saw that, Cobra Kai man himself, Martin Kove. Yep, yep, the star. I’m like, dude, we gotta do this. So, uh, even though I had never heard of it before, we did 1981’s Blood Tide.
Have you heard of this before?
Craig: I don’t think so. I mean, the title is kind of generic, so I may have heard of it, but I’ve certainly never seen it, didn’t know anything about it. I’m not surprised.
Todd: Yeah, I know. I’m not surprised at all that this has languished in obscurity. Although, I was surprised at the sheer star power for its time anyway in this movie.
I just couldn’t believe. You’ve got Martin Kove. You’ve got James Earl Jones. We have a former Miss USA in here.
Craig: Which one was she? The dumb one or the less dumb one?
Todd: Oh, I’m not sure which one you’re talking about. She’s the spacey one. She’s the spacey one who’s kind of the object of everything.
Craig: Okay.
Todd: Restoring patience.
Craig: Not, not Martin Kove’s wife. They’re married. Aren’t they? They’re on their honeymoon, right?
Todd: Yeah, yeah, they’re on their honeymoon. Martin Kove’s wife was Mary Louise Weller. Mary Louise Weller, well, we’ve seen her in The Evil. Remember? We saw that one recently. The one about the haunted house, it was really cheesy.
Electrical wires, electrocuted people. Oh, yeah. Uh huh. She was the main character in that one. The
Craig: psychic one?
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Nobody cares.
Todd: Including us. Her biggest role was in Animal House. She was Mandy in Animal House. She was
Craig: Both of the women in this were in Animal House, I think.
Todd: Yeah, most of them were.
Craig: So, there’s her, and then there’s Babs.
Her name’s Barbara. Do they call her Babs, or did I just call her that? I don’t remember.
Todd: No, they say that she, uh, I’m Barbara, but you can call me Babs. That’s what everyone calls me. And then I don’t think they ever call her Babs again.
Craig: Yeah, I know, right? Was she the Miss USA? No, she wasn’t.
Todd: Madeline. Yeah, Madeline.
Deborah Shelton. Yeah, she was Miss USA in 1970. Well, she’s
Craig: very beautiful, but they’re all pretty.
Todd: After Miss USA, she started getting into acting, and I think she did a lot of television. She’s got that face. She’s got that 80s television face, totally. She starred in Brian De Palma’s Body Double in 1984.
Brian De Palma didn’t like her voice, the way she talked in that one, so actually she was dubbed by another actress. Helen Shaver. So, uh, you can see her in there, but you’re not going to hear her in there.
Craig: Well, she barely talks in this movie. She doesn’t really have much to do except like stare. She’s weird.
I’m just, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna let the cat out of the bag. This movie sucks.
Todd: Oh, this movie is so bad.
Craig: I did not enjoy it. It’s laughable and like, like laughably bad, but not in a like, Oh, isn’t this fun? No, I didn’t think it was fun at all.
Todd: I just thought it was terrible. I don’t know. Maybe if you had someone sitting next to you while you watched it who, where you could laugh at how bad it was, you would’ve had more fun.
Craig: Maybe? I do. I wasn’t surprised, and in fact, I actually appreciated the movie more when I read, I think one of the actresses in, I think it was one of the actresses, and an interview said something like. The only purpose of the movie was to move money around.
Todd: Yeah. Currency transfers.
Craig: You’ve talked about this stuff before.
Is this like, I don’t know, is this like tax shelters or is this, I don’t understand what’s, I mean, I get it in general, nobody cares about the movie. It’s just a means to an end financially.
Todd: She was talking about different currencies, right? Like currency transfers and stuff. Cause there was like, this was filmed in Greece and there was something else, you know, obviously like, um, American production and.
Greek production, some American actors, something like that. I don’t, I don’t know. I’m not clear on that. But, uh,
Craig: she just said she was surprised that they were able to cut it together into a finished product at all. So it sounded to me like they were maybe just shooting stuff because they needed to like they did.
Well, I got the impression that they didn’t really care about the movie and that’s what it seems like. I was kind of surprised that they can cut it all together too, because it’s wild. I’m sorry. I’ll let you, I’ll let you talk about it, but it’s just a re it’s a really bad version of the wicker man.
Todd: Yeah.
It’s trying to be a folk hero movie, but it’s also trying to be a couple other movies, and it gets really, it’s very tonally off from time to time. You know, at one point it’s getting kind of mysterious and almost artsy in cutting together all these different disparate shots and closeups on things and giving us cuts to people who we haven’t met yet and won’t meet for a while doing weird things, but then It gets like 80s horror when we get a girl sitting on the beach with a boombox who starts exercising And then takes her top off and dives into the into the water It’s like what why is this in this movie all of a sudden and yeah, so sometimes it’s funny Funny.
Sometimes it’s that, and sometimes it’s dead serious to the point where it’s overdramatic and melodramatic. It doesn’t have that same consistency of tone or emotional through line.
Craig: Yeah. Really nothing. And I mean, the plot is really thin and we’ve seen it a million times before. You said, you know, it seems like it’s trying to be a lot of different movies.
It is. What is that? Again, we’ve done it. I can’t remember the name of it. The fish people
Todd: movie. Oh yeah, um, Humanoids from the Deep?
Craig: Yeah, it’s that, kind of. It also has the feel of any of those movies where, you know, Americans go to a foreign village and, you know, everything seems shady and everyone seems shady and there’s some dark history.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: We’ve seen it a million times. It’s just, this one is boring and it doesn’t make any sense. Like, I, it’s not like it doesn’t make sense. I get it’s basically kind of the same thing as Wicker Man, this Martin Cove and his wife are newly married and they’ve come to Greece. And this does look, they shot it on location and the location is stunning.
Todd: Oh yeah.
Craig: That’s the one thing that I’ll give. I mean, I, I read that it was miserable to film there, but it looks. Amazing.
Todd: The photography is really beautiful. And when I say that, I just mean literally, the photography is beautiful. It’s not that the shots are stylistic, you know, or unique or masterful.
They’re quite plain. But you just freeze the frame and look, and I, you know, it looks like your vacation photo is on some exotic beach somewhere. It’s just beautiful. It’s gorgeous.
Craig: Yeah, it looks like more rustic Mamma Mia. Like, it’s like, you know, the, the Greek Isles, you know, right on the shore, it’s, it’s really beautiful.
I, I guess it was so hot, like, I, I, like 120 degrees or something. I’ve never even experienced that kind of heat, I don’t think, but I can’t imagine working in it, but you could tell because they were all covered in sweat at all times.
Todd: That’s true. Martin Kove’s sweaty chest, and it felt like the movie was really a vehicle for Martin Kove’s chest.
I loved how in almost every scene he had his shirt off, even though it didn’t seem to make sense.
Craig: He was a beefcake. He had his shirt off, and his hairy chest, and then little shorty shorts just running around.
Todd: Yeah. He looks
Craig: good.
Todd: It
Craig: was difficult for me to accept him in a hero role, because he’s, in my head, he’s a villain.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: He’s that bad guy from Karate Kid, so it’s difficult for me to reconcile him as anything else. But he does fine. He does fine in this movie. He doesn’t have a whole lot to do. Nobody has a whole lot to do.
Todd: I have to say, first off, like, that was part of the joy that kept my eyes glued to the screen. I just was fascinated by the idea of seeing this young Martin Kove, like you said, as a hero, with these two, three, gorgeous, absolutely way too gorgeous to have three men this gorgeous in one place, in one small town.
That’s how, you know, it’s Hollywood because this would not happen, but these three stunningly beautiful women on screen,
Craig: and I feel like the only other women in the movie are nuns.
Todd: Direct contrast, but one of those nuns is an Oscar winner. We have three Oscar winners in this movie. Really? We have James Earl Jones with Lila Kedrova.
She’s Russian. She won an Oscar for her role in. Zorba the Greek in 1964. She played Madam Hortense. I know I saw that a really long time ago, but I don’t remember. And then there is a mayor of this community. You know, it’s just like the Wicker Man. They show up, they land, they’re wandering around this town and the mayor pops out.
Craig: And they’re looking for someone. Neil, Martin Cove’s sister was here because she’s an art student or something. But. They, they haven’t heard from her in a really long time. But it’s the same thing, like, he was looking for a kid or whatever. This, this guy’s looking for his sister. And of course she’s kind of floating around ethereally staring at people from cliffs.
Todd: It’s so corny. It is so. Corny, and there’s also little children running be like popping out and running away and like barely visible as they flit around the corner But then there’s a cat
One of the kids throw like they just look up and a cat is coming down at them and I mean somebody threw a cat threw a cat, like, I can just imagine this cameraman laying on the ground, aimed the sky, and somebody way up high just chucks a cat over at him, because this cat is coming out like a flying squirrel, all four legs extended, falling straight to the camera.
Craig: I laughed so hard, I don’t even remember where that is, I know I took a note on it somewhere, but wouldn’t that have, who, they, the kids threw it at. Martin Kove and his wife when they first get there, is that right? Yeah, that’s Neil. Neil and Sherry, yeah. I think that I heard the cat, like, scream, like, a split second before I saw it.
And so I was like, oh, cats care. You know, that’s regular. But no, it’s like, these people just Shut this cat. Oh my God. It was hilarious. And it scares them and it made them jump. Oh God. It was really funny. That was probably the best part of the movie, I would say.
Todd: Oh, it’s one of the This movie, I think, is filled with little nuggets of gold.
I can’t wait to mine them. I was just gonna say, though, that the mayor pops out and brings them into his house, and like you said, this is when he explains, when they explain to him that, you know, have you seen this woman? Shows the picture, and of course he’s like, nope, nope, have never seen her before, never at all.
And the mayor is, uh, is played by a veteran actor, Jose Ferrer. And he’s the other guy who’s an Oscar winner. He What an Oscar for his leading role in the 1950, I believe, version of Cyrano de Bergerac.
Craig: Huh. Okay. I can, yeah.
Todd: Yeah. And God, this guy’s been in tons of movies. The Greatest Show on Earth, and Greatest Story Ever Told.
He was Herod. That was 1965. And, and lots of television, and movies and television all the way up until the, the day he died in 1992. So.
Craig: Wow. I recognized his name. I didn’t recognize him, but when you said Cyrano de Bergerac, I can see it. I can see. White and that and he’s the shady mayor because everybody’s shady.
Like when they first arrived, it seems deserted and people are like peeking around corners and stuff. And, and the mayor basically says. People don’t visit here often and you should leave. Get out. We’ll make you up a room and then you can leave first thing in the morning.
Todd: Yep. Oh boy. The dialogue in this movie is so bad.
It is so laugh out loud, funny, bad. Because then, coming into the room, there’s this crazy guy who’s just, uh, talking to himself and cackling the whole time and doesn’t speak a lick of English.
Craig: Yeah, he’s like Igor. Yeah. I don’t know why he’s there. We keep referencing all these other movies, but that’s because it’s, it’s so basic.
It’s cobbled together from other movies. Transylvania 6500, wasn’t there like a, uh, Murderous basement dweller basically that was just like this guy like an Igor character. I don’t know the point is Trope after trope after trope like just sewn together in a in a not Really creative way. Oh, no. I was not impressed
Todd: Yeah I love it that she just says like he calls the guy over to like fill their glasses or something and he calls him Dionysi and she pipes up Sherry.
Clip: Did you call him Dionysus?
Todd: Dionysus.
Clip: But it’s like Dionysus, the god of wine and theater. That’s really neat to have an innkeeper called Dionysus who sells wine. How greek.
Craig: Yeah, but see, we’ve done a lot of movies, and even some recently, where the dialogue is so bad it’s funny, but I feel like that’s almost more tongue in cheek.
This is played so straight. Like, there isn’t a wink, I don’t think, of intentional humor. They’re not trying
Todd: to be funny. I
Craig: don’t even think the cat scare was intentionally. I don’t think that was meant to be funny. I think that was really meant to scare you.
Todd: Yeah, you’re right.
Craig: And this, yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but no, she just played that just straight as a wire.
Todd: Almost all of the acting in this movie is quite bad, but I don’t necessarily fault the actors. The lines they’re reading are pretty ridiculous. They’re poorly written. The situations are kind of silly. Characters suddenly jump from one thing to another, which we’ll talk about in a minute. And, uh, I also probably fault the directing, you know, I just can see where, you know, scene by scene, these actors were directed to go a certain way and so then they played it up, but then it doesn’t cut well with the rest of the scene or the scenes that come before or follow, I just really got that sense of a movie that was.
It’s all cobbled together. Absolutely. Yeah, from a bunch of different shots and scenes that not a lot of thought was put into making them consistent and coherent, you know? That’s what I mean, like, no emotional through line.
Craig: It is all cobbled together, and it’s not as though throughout it I was confused, but I, nothing is happening, like, there’s just vague suggestions of things, like, Madeline, he finally finds Madeline.
Who at various times is like catatonic and then other times, okay. And like, she just, she just kind of wanders away to stare wistfully a lot or like hide behind things. And it’s, it’s super weird. So we’ve seen her a couple of times already staring and now she is with James Earl Jones. Here’s how bad the writing is.
James Earl Jones, pretty much. Only just quotes Othello through the whole thing, like, they, like, I guess they just couldn’t even really be bothered to write lines for him.
Todd: He does initially, and then he, he quotes Othello, unless he doesn’t, and then when he doesn’t, He doesn’t seem like the same guy. It’s weird.
So, the guy, Dionysus, you know, stumbles when he sees the photo of the girl. So, they know that they’re hiding something. But, you know how it is, they gotta stay in town and figure it out. So then they go out on a night exploration, this couple. And that’s when they find James Earl Jones. Right away. Extremely dramatic conversation with him.
Well, you’re right, he just quotes Othello, and he just seems like a total loon.
Craig: He seems like a lunatic, and he seems really menacing, and like he holds a knife to Neil’s throat. And I thought immediately, like, he must be a bad guy, but then I guess Madeline’s like, no, it’s cool. And Then they’re all just cool.
No,
Todd: not only, I mean, it’s this real dramatic scene where he’s like, he’s holding a knife to his throat and she talks him down. He’s like, okay. And he sits in the corner and he’s angry and he’s quoting Othello.
James Earl Jones: Rude am I in my speech, and little blessed with a soft phrase of peace.
Clip: Cut it out, Frye.
James Earl Jones: Okay. Okay.
You weren’t expected. And the natives here aren’t exactly friendly.
Todd: And she’s all spacey and weird and they’re exchanging weird glances and they’re kind of saying some cryptic things to each other. But she kind of seems to be a little pissed off at him for some reason and she starts to walk out of the room.
And then, who pops in but this Bubbly, blonde girl in skimpy clothes, and Hi, I’m Barbara, but you can call me Babs! And just sits down next to him, practically in his lap, and just like, So, what are you guys doing? Why are you here? I’m like, What? Where did this come from? The whole scene was so weird, it This scene is like a microcosm of the tone of the whole movie.
Like, the whole movie’s like this. Yeah. It’s so crazy.
Craig: I never got a handle on what was going on.
Todd: Between those three?
Craig: Well, just in general, like, what was he doing? We left out the very, very beginning of the movie. is set in like, I don’t know, ancient times. And there’s a voiceover, a really annoying voiceover that talks about the struggle between good and evil and they have to placate the power in the sea with a virgin sacrifice.
And it kind of shows this, like the marking a woman, like marking her head and like carrying her on a platform and delivering her to this, this, ancient looking archway or door underground. Now, when we come to our actual story, James Earl Jones is Like exploring these caves and apparently has been for a long time and knows what’s down there like he’s found The door because after they all talk they also just casually mentioned that scuba diving is forbidden for some reason I don’t remember why
Todd: I think it’s cuz um, they don’t want people bringing artifacts up from the floor
Craig: So is that what he’s doing?
Is he like is he in Indiana Jones? Is he trying to steal ancient artifacts?
Todd: It took me forever to sort this out and I think I did by the end of it. So what we see in that opening that you’re talking about is that they put a woman on a raft and they kind of carry her to the water and set it down in the water.
They mark her on the forehead with this distinctive mark that looks like a kind of an upside down, um, ribbon that you’d wear. Yeah, I was just gonna say that. We might as well be blunt. Yeah, breast cancer awareness, whatever. Yeah,
Craig: right.
Todd: But then they give her a coin. And so she has a coin in her hand or they put it in her mouth or something as they sent her into this cave.
So, I guess in ancient times you didn’t have to dive under the water to get to this cave. Like you do now. Anyway, they send her into this cave, and there’s this gate that looks like it’s out of the video game, Myst.
Craig: Yes.
Todd: You know, with that same symbol over the top of it, and something happens to her, you know, she kind of falls off the raft, there’s a howling or whatever, and there’s a big struggle in the water, and blood comes up, and so you, you get there’s a monster.
She’s, they sacrificed her to this monster. I
Craig: get that, but what is James, so James Earl Jones is just trying to get, uh, So yeah, stealing he’s
Todd: yeah, well what I guess over time those coins have accumulated down there And so it seems like he’s been going down there and gathering those coins So he doesn’t necessarily know all about the monster, but he’s weird because we see him down there And he’s got explosives with him.
He goes out in the middle of the night with Babs, right? And they go rowing and he puts on his scuba gears and he dives so that he can get into the cave. You have to dive to get into the cave. He services inside and lights up the lights that he’s put in there and gathers up the coins for some reason. He brings the bag of coins with him and is, has plastic explosives that he opens up.
And this whole time he’s just. Talking to himself, but in very very dramatic ways like quotes I just figured he knew what he was getting into and he chose today to blow open the seal on this this gate So back in the early times this gate was just a big opening and now it’s it’s been Deliberately bricked up and so he mounts his plastic explosives on there and blows it up The explosion is so big that it causes waves to rock boats and splash water in the windows Everybody in town wakes up and hears it You see all these clips of that.
When we come back to the cave, we see that he’s blown out four bricks, very neatly punched out of this, this opening and, uh, smoke ominously. Yeah, fog
Craig: pours out all over the surface of the water.
Todd: And then it’s morning,
Craig: like, I have in my notes Big Monster. I feel like we get a glimpse of something like this.
We do,
Todd: but I guess, but he doesn’t, right? Like, he just leaves. He doesn’t go inside.
Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. That’s why I didn’t understand what he was doing. I didn’t either. Because I don’t understand a lot of it, like, Like, right after that, Madeline dreams of being sacrificed with that symbol on her head. We see, like, a flash in her dream of, like, a painting of a demon with a boner.
Yeah. All right. And that comes back later, but I have such random notes. The next scene, Babs, Barbara, comes over to her boyfriend, James Earl Jones, Fry, and he says, I thought I told you to get me a melon and a loaf of bread. And she says, Ugh. And she runs off. And then she comes back and gives him a melon and a loaf of bread.
What? He sets it down. And then, and then he says, he says, I didn’t tell you to bring a knife.
Todd: He says nobody cuts a watermelon with a knife and then he
Craig: punches it open
Todd: and eats watermelon like no person ever ate watermelon ever By like what the fuck is happening? The pieces of watermelon is the biggest mess in his head and that he just like reaches his fingers in and I don’t know I don’t know how you eat watermelon that way But I guarantee you, Mr.
James Earl Jones, Everybody cuts watermelon with a knife, Because your way is really stupid. They’re on the beach, by the way. They’re hanging on the beach! They’re just all hanging on the beach!
Craig: They’re just chillin right. Madeline is just lounging on a rock, staring, As she is playing. Prone to do, and Sherry walks up in Lake tries and makes small talk with her, and it’s like,
Clip: hi, you know you don’t have any strap marks at all, right?
Meditating TM Zen. I try to meditate for a while, but I kept, you know, finding myself thinking about where my khaki pants were, whether they went to the laundry or the cleaners, something.
Craig: Here we got you a present. Like, you must have had a bunch of birthdays, so here’s a birthday present. And she hands her, she hands her a wrapped present, and Madeline opens it.
Like, I don’t understand. It’s like when she is in this state that she’s never been a person before, like she, she doesn’t know anything. So, she opens it up and it’s perfume, and she opens it and smells it, and Sherry’s saying, Yeah, we didn’t know what you’d like, so we just got the most expensive one. And as soon as she says that, Madeline takes the bottle of perfume and just starts pouring it all over herself, like all over her face.
Face and shoulders and Sherry’s like, uh, that was expensive. What is happening? I don’t understand what is happening. What she steps out into the
Todd: water and then starts like touching herself. She’s like, uh, rubbing her chest and like, almost like she’s in ecstasy. And then Sherry is like, well, that was weird.
Just walks away. Neil, your sister’s acting a little strange. I mean, why are they all, why are they all hanging out on the beach? This is what I don’t understand. Well,
Craig: I mean, I guess Neil and Sherry are on vacation. Everything’s
Todd: cool now, like the guy, they hold his knife up. Yes, they found her. The dude blew open the ancient tomb and may or may not have seen a glimpse of a monster, and now it’s just the next day and well, you know, we gotta hang.
They’re all,
Craig: yeah. Well then, and then they go, they, and then they go boating, and they hit something. Oh God. James Earl Jones jumps in the water and like, finds some, like, guck on the propeller or whatever. But then he comes up and he’s like, yeah, we hit something. And Martin Kove’s like, we couldn’t have hit something.
My depth finder says we’re at like, 300 feet. We have just seen under the water, and we’ve seen the ocean floor. You need to have your depth finder checked, because you are max like 15 feet.
Todd: Yeah, you were maybe, maybe 12 feet, and that’s generous. James Earl Jones could almost have stood up next to the boat, and it would have touched the top of his head.
I thought he was gonna come back and say, no, you’re wrong, but he didn’t. I think that was just a big mistake. Oh, so funny. Now see, I was so into the movie at this point, because I could not believe how bad it was. That I was just rolling at all this stuff. And I couldn’t wait to see where it was going and absolutely was not disappointed.
So I don’t know, I just, I mean, I agree with you. The movie is stupid as hell. It doesn’t make any sense. But, for me, firmly in the, so head scratchingly bad, it’s good. And that the fact that these people are in this movie, like, Amplified that ten times for me. I just, I couldn’t wait. That’s fair. I couldn’t wait to see what was gonna come out of their mouths next.
And how it was gonna come out. And in what context. Cause the context keeps changing. Like why are these guys all friends all of a sudden? I, I just didn’t get it. I don’t know. It just, it sapped all of that mystery that they were supposedly building for the previous twenty minutes or so.
Craig: And it, again, I’ve said it a million times and I’ll keep saying it until we, I guess, but what is going on with Madeline?
I don’t understand. I don’t like she’s there because She’s an artist and she’s like restoring a painting or something and she tells the nun why why are there nuns? What? They just popped in suddenly. Yeah, there’s just there’s just randomly a
Todd: Monastery a
Craig: nunnery.
Todd: Yeah,
Craig: but she’s like Restoring this painting and she tells the nun well the first layer was just all fireplace soot But they thought that the image disappearing was a miracle, but no it was just fireplace soot, so I took that off She’s like but then I realized there was another layer underneath it And it was something else and then I realized there was another layer underneath that and it was something else all this builds I’m jumping around but I This was the part of the movie that killed me the most.
Eventually, she gets to the bottom lair. But she does so by peeling the ancient plastic film off of the painting. As though discovering that there was another lair meant that she was peeing. Peeling another plastic layer off of it. It’s
Todd: very clearly plastic.
Craig: I don’t know how they thought they were gonna get away with it.
Oh my
Todd: god The clear plastic edges are sticking out a little spatula tool slips right between those little plastic bits And she peels
Craig: it off like it’s like a film like a plastic film to reveal below it the demon with a boner and a Chicks sitting right in front of him like yeah, so she’s gonna have to blow this team and I think
Todd: I Couldn’t wait I was obvious I couldn’t wait cuz we knew the movie was gonna go there because it’s very cavalier and weird about nudity like I said earlier Then we get the scene with Babs where she goes to the beach and she just hangs By herself, and she’s got a boombox, and she sets it down, and she’s in 80s clothes, a crop top, got a lot of underboob there.
And, uh, she just starts exercising. Like, doing Jane Fonda’s workout on the beach. Leg lifts and things. Yeah, that’s weird. And pretty soon she turns it off and decides she’s gonna peel her top off. And I was like, is this really this kind of movie? The first 20 minutes, I wouldn’t have imagined this was this kind of movie.
But now, I just think this movie can be whatever movie it wants to be. Cause she peels her top off, and dives into the water. While a few of the townies from the, you know, from the cliffs up above come out and just stare. And she turns around and says, Pervert! Dirty
Clip: old Thought you gratefully liked little boys!
Oh my god.
Craig: Uh huh. Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. But she, she was one of my favorites. She was very pretty and she was bubbly and funny. Yes. I enjoyed her and I enjoyed her energy. She
Todd: didn’t even belong in this movie, but yeah.
Craig: No, she did not belong in this movie. Not at all. And then, you know, she takes her top off and then it’s Jaws for about a minute.
Yes. And I actually thought, I thought that looks great. The underwater photography. All of it. Looked really, really good. Loved it. And, and she was filmed, you know, from like Monster or Shark POV from quite a distance. Like the camera was pretty deep in the water and she was some distance away and it was very clear.
The water there must be amazing. But I loved the underwater stuff, but she basically gets attacked, I think, kind of. And you kind of see it, I don’t remember. And then they find a dead girl, but the first dead girl they find isn’t even her, I think? Oh, it’s
Todd: so weird. They come back to town. This is so convoluted and strange.
The rest of them are on a boat while she’s been doing her thing. Because they just hang out on boats now. And they come back into the dock, and the mayor is there with a bunch of his guys. And the mayor tells them that a girl who went swimming has not returned. It’s And they were like, you’re not implying that the thing we hit with our boat was that girl.
And he’s like, all I’m telling you is that no boats are going to leave this dock. So now they are stranded on the island until this mystery gets solved. And then, yeah, like you said, uh, it turns out that they find a body, and it’s The woman that went missing, that went swimming.
Craig: But then they also immediately find Babs.
Yeah. Chopped up in pieces. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t get it. The monster just
Todd: bit her a few times and then let her wash up on you.
Craig: Yeah, like, like chomped her feet off and spit them out. Ha, ha, ha,
Todd: ha, ha, ha, ha. The kids are all surrounding it, just staring at it until an adult comes by. Cause that’s what, that’s what kids do in movies like this.
And so then they do a funeral procession and they bury them and You know, as the procession goes through, there are these two wooden coffins, and they sit down, and the nuns are there saying their prayers, and whatever, and then the mayor comes stomping in with his guys, and he starts prying open a coffin, and that upsets the nuns, but they don’t intervene, and he insists on putting a coin in that woman’s mouth, and Some herbs or something over her.
And then he goes to do the same to the other coffin, which pisses off James Earl Jones character, who lunges at him, and he’s like, You keep your voodoo to your own people. But, he says this is important, you know, for Charon to, for her to have safe passage to the, the next world. This is What we do on the island.
We are like an hour into the movie now. It’s only an hour and a half. And I’m like, ugh. There’s no real mystery right now? Yeah, okay, there’s a monster. It’s been set loose. It killed these girls. And these islanders have their rituals, you know, which were from before, to protect them. So I’m just waiting for something to happen.
I mean, not that these girls getting attacked wasn’t something, but god, it’s an hour into the movie. And then what? Is it just gonna be more Jaws? Like, just people keep going out of the water, keep getting eaten? Like, James Earl Jones apparently doesn’t know about the monster. The only person who seems to know about the monster is Loony Madeline, who’s just staring off into space all the time.
Craig: I don’t get it! What is happening? Like, is Okay, so James Earl Jones just casually mentions at some point that she’s a virgin. How and why he would know that, I have no idea. She’s acting all weird. Are we supposed to think that she’s, like, drawn to this Monster or something? It, it, it doesn’t make any kind of sense.
Todd: The next thing that happens is that they’re back out on the boat again, and James Earl Jones decides to go diving while Neil and Sherry are hanging on the boat. And Neil’s saying, you know, I’m gonna go after him, and Sherry’s like, you know what they said about diving? Like, who the f cares? This guy’s been diving three or four times since we’ve joined them, right?
But he’s like, no, I’m gonna do it anyway. So he dives after James Earl Jones. I keep calling him that because we never really find out his name. He’s like Mr. It’s Fry. Fry? Yeah. So he goes in to the cave and they have a very bizarre confrontation.
Craig: What the hell? I did not James Earl Jones like holds a spear up to his Neck or something.
I have in my notes. Why is he mad? I thought they were friends. What is happening? He tells him he says Madeline brought him there And he tells Neil that he and Sherry should leave because something got to Madeline and I don’t have any ideas So they go to the convent to look for her and I have in my notes So, why does Martin Kove wear a string as a belt?
Both laugh. It bothered me. His belt is a shoestring.
Todd: It seemed very hot there. I wanted to know why suddenly he was wearing jeans but no t shirt. I thought maybe he should at least be in shorts or something.
Craig: My notes don’t even make sense. I say they look for Madeline at the convent, but a nun tells them they have to leave because Madeline has entered something?
And then they, they go outside and they’re calling her name and she’s hiding behind a rock, but she doesn’t answer. The camera
Todd: pans over dramatically and she’s like on the next mountaintop, almost like she’s curled up hiding, but also spaced out just laying there. And I, It’s so laugh out loud funny. And then they, it seems like they kind of stopped looking for her for a while, because now Madeline is no longer a concern.
We get some kids who are on some rocks by the waterside, who are playing their game. This is the same group of kids we’ve been seeing over and over again. And one of them draws that symbol on the girl’s forehead. I don’t know, how old are they? They’re like, ranged from Twelve, I don’t know. And they do some skipping.
In a circle around on those rocks, which already looks pretty dangerous. I think it’s the girl’s mother just pops in. It just happens to be a few rocks away all of a sudden and calls out to her. And it’s like, no, no, I don’t know. It’s not English, but she’s yelling out at them and she starts to make her way across the rocks to them.
And the girl who again, probably about 12. I
Craig: couldn’t figure that out. I think that she was going in the water. You think she jumped? No, I think the boys pushed her. I don’t know if she was in or not. Maybe she was. But I think the boys pushed her. intended her to go in the water. I think this, this was a sacrifice.
It’s the same symbol that they used the sacrifice
Todd: before. That’s what I was thinking.
Craig: Maybe they’re playacting it, I guess.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But I didn’t think it was an accident. I mean, why would the mom be freaking out?
Todd: Maybe. Well, I mean, you’d be, you’d be freaking out if your kid slipped. If your
Craig: kid was playing on a cliff, I guess.
Todd: But what freaked me out was the girl falls into the water and there’s an underwater shot of like, Her boobs. Oh, I didn’t notice that you didn’t notice that. I was like what why do we have child nudity in this movie? I mean, it was only about two seconds long which made it all the more unnecessary. It was just like her top was half off What I don’t need to see this 12 year old girl’s boobs and then she surfaces and her shirts back on and I thought Did they insert a shot here?
Maybe. Did they like I honestly
Craig: missed it.
Todd: Oh, we needed to put some more boobs in here somewhere, so we’re gonna choose the 12 year old? I don’t know, cause it was, it was shocking. I can’t believe you missed it, dude.
Craig: Well, I’m not upset that I Like, that’s fine. But somehow, James Earl Jones is there, and he jumps in and saves the girl.
From the underwater demon, that we get a full shot of at this point, this is, I think, there’s one point for like one second that you get a full shot of it. And it just looks like a guy in a creature from the Black Lagoon type suit. And it seems like Fry sees it, but he never says anything about it.
Todd: Well he does, because the mother leaps in as well, or falls in, I can’t remember which.
Craig: Yeah, it gets the mom.
Todd: It gets the mom, it chomps her. Actually, that’s You know, again, it’s like an underwater, kind of like a brief chomp on her. It’s got jaws, right? But at times it looks like a horse’s mouth, at other times it looks kind of more demonic with fangs, and I feel like it changed from time to time, but I don’t know.
Craig: You didn’t see much of it. I
Todd: thought Fry saw it get the mom. I was, I was positive of that.
Craig: I don’t know. I remember blood in the water. The mayor threatens James Earl Jones, and then James Earl Jones gets He’s about to tell them about the demon, I think, and then he passes out.
Todd: Well, this is at this happy festival.
Like, suddenly, after all this stuff went down, and all this ominous shit, Now it’s that stereotypical, Oh, look, the old folk village is having their happy festival. And I’m like, guys, somebody’s mother just died. This was literally the next day. And they’re just having this happy festival like nothing happened?
As opposed to that funeral that they had a while back when the last person died? Yeah, and he pops down and he says some really bad dialogue. You know, we should probably talk about James Earl Jones a little bit while we go through this.
Craig: Well, he’s fine. He just doesn’t have much to do. What’s, what was interesting to me is I don’t know that I had ever seen him in anything at this age.
And I always think of him as being a portly man, a big guy. And he is. He’s kind of barrel chested. He’s a big guy. But he’s younger and
Todd: Surprisingly fit in this movie.
Craig: Yeah, leaner. And I don’t think that I had ever noticed, and I don’t know, this may be colorization or something, but he’s got, in this movie, these beautiful blue eyes.
And it was just He’s one of those guys that ever since I remember him. He’s old. He’s always been an older guy. Yeah, so to see him Younger it was cool. It was cool to see him at a different stage of his life Yeah, it was
Todd: fun. And you’re right. I think his theatrical training comes through here again Maybe you know being an earlier film or something like that But it just feels a little too Presentational for the close ups that we get on him and the long shots of him in these conversations Transcribed And I could tell, too, not not just with him, but with all the actors, I could tell they were cutting around performances quite a bit.
Craig: Oh yeah.
Todd: There’s an awful lot of off screen delivered dialogue, you know, where two characters are talking and the camera’s always on the person who’s listening. But yeah, this he’s drunk, and he He doesn’t quite tell them what’s going on. By the way, these two are no longer interested in looking for their sister, apparently.
They just want to sit and enjoy the festival and have fun.
Craig: And it’s, the festival is just shady, and like, the, the boner demon, somebody dressed as the boner demon shows up, and like, that, the little girl that was thrown in as part of the, the ceremony, and, It’s all just very shady. It feels like the end of the Wicker Man, but I feel like we just need to get to the end because all of this is inconsequential.
Like, I didn’t get it. We cut back to the nuns. Are the nuns worshipping the demon? Are they scared of the demon? Does the demon attack them? Because then a bloody nun stumbles into town. Then they go to the convent and there’s a bunch of dead nuns and that black goo is all around. So I guess
Todd: That was so hilarious, by the way.
The nun massacre. I just
Craig: couldn’t get over
Todd: how silly it was. Like, they’re literally, like, one’s slumped over a chair, one seems to be stuck to the wall somehow, the other one’s laying on the floor.
Craig: And then, who says this? I have in my notes, in quotes, So, little virgin’s finally gonna give up herself. What?
Who says that? That sounds like something James Earl Jones would say.
Todd: Yeah, I think he said it.
Craig: And, okay, and so then Madeline somehow is on a boat, underwater, in the cave, with the symbol on her forehead, and then she lays on the rock slab, puts a coin in her mouth, and starts just f ing
herself just writhing in ecstasy
Todd: Oh, I thought the demon was there boning her but then later you just oh, I
Craig: I thought first No, I thought for sure she was getting eaten out for sure Only in her mind. Oh my God. It was insane. Oh God. And then Neil is like, shows up in some scuba gear looking for her and he gets to her and she screams like, I don’t know.
Todd: Suddenly it’s raining inside the cave.
Craig: Oh my God.
Todd: Dude. I could not contain myself. I was. On the floor at this point, I was having so much fun with this movie. So yeah, there’s a big battle kind of thing. And Frye, I guess it’s like, go, go, you must go. And he’s got a big wad of his plastic explosives. Yeah.
That he had put together to come in and they swim out. Neil saves his sister. They swim out and then he gets attacked by the demon. And did the demon chomp his crotch?
Craig: I don’t know. I just have the demon chomps Frye, but it looks so bad. Like. It looks like a cheap Halloween mask, um, in this shot, like you can almost see the plastic of the neck like flapping.
Todd: But just for a split second. Yeah,
Craig: just for, it’s very, very brief. You barely see the demon at all. And so then he blows up the cave and
Todd: And himself and himself
Craig: in it, right. Which And Neil and Sherry and Madeline leave, and Neil has that bag of coins, I guess, and he just jumps them in the ocean and then that’s it.
No, no,
Todd: no, no, no. That’s the end of it. No, no, no, no, no. Right after that. Right after that, before they take off, Neil and his sister embrace and have a moment on the boat where she leans in and kisses him a little too passionately for a brother.
Craig: I must have been looking at the clock. Because I don’t remember that.
Todd: Yeah, that was weird. I did a double take. And it almost seemed like Martin Cove also did a double take because there’s this weird look on his face when she goes by. And then it cuts to the next morning. When, like you said, they take off on a boat away from the island. He dumps the coins into the ocean, and everything’s fine, which takes a little bit of the fun and mystery out of an ancient demon when all anyone ever needed to do is get down there and blow it up.
I guess it’s not so supernatural. Oh,
Craig: yeah, I mean, I just, I, I couldn’t find anything really to enjoy. Honestly, James Earl Jones in it. I Felt like what why are you here? Yes You are too good to be in this movie, but I get it. That’s another thing that I respect about him. He was I said before he was humble.
He was also a working actor. Like he did commercials and he did document like he, the man worked. And so this is early in his career. I’m he’s
Todd: in a lot of stuff
Craig: and he has done a lot of stuff. He’s done voice for animation and video games and all kinds of stuff. And. So I, whether, you know, maybe this was just for a check and if it was just for a check, that’s great.
Or whether it was just for the opportunity, just for the opportunity to do what it appears that he really loved to do and was really good at.
Todd: It’s early in his career, too.
Craig: Yeah, either way, good for you. If you want to get nostalgic about James Earl Jones, watch one of his good movies. Don’t watch
Todd: this. I don’t know, man.
I would say, If you want to see a young, fit James Earl Jones, early in his career,
Craig: Yeah, it’s true. I don’t think
Todd: you’re gonna find a movie with so much of him in it. And he’s shirtless in a lot of it too. I mean, it’s Right. That’s true. And it’s in a beautiful location. It’s not an ugly movie to watch. I don’t know, man.
I’m I kind of had a very different feel of the movie than you did. I thought this was so bad it was good. Every bit of it As the longer it went on, the less sense it made, and the more silly it was. But I still loved watching these people kind of do their thing as ridiculous as their thing that they ended up doing was.
If they had been unknown actors, I might have felt differently. You know? But we’re talking Three Oscar winners Of former Miss USA Beautiful people in a beautiful location in a whack a doodle movie true. I think it’s worth the watch I think you should seek it out and the guy who Produced this and co wrote it.
His name is Nico Mastarakis. Have you ever heard that name? I don’t know. I don’t think so. This is like a blind spot in horror history for me But this is an independent producer who’s greek who’s done a lot of things You Like, I think he’s a bit of a self promoter, so, you know, take that for what it’s worth, but he has his name splashed over a lot of out there, independent films that I think are very cult and a lot of people like.
And I feel like we’re going to be returning back to this guy at some point. with one of his other movies, and I’m kind of surprised we haven’t hit them yet. He, back in 1974, watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and apparently was so taken by it and its popularity that he’s like, well, I’m just gonna make another movie that’s more violent and more disgusting so I can make a bunch of money.
And he shot a movie called Island of Death on another Greek island, and I guess it’s notorious. I don’t know about it, but the more I was reading about it, the more I thought, you know, We should probably put this in a rotation somewhere and visit a little bit more of this guy’s movies. Cause, for what they’re worth, you know, they’re kind of interesting.
The fact that you could get all these actors in this movie is kind of surprising and says something, I guess. But uh, man, I have notes about the song over the credit sequence, but I guess you probably just shut it off by then, huh? Or you weren’t paying attention? I
Craig: actually, well, I, no, I did turn it off, but I did hear the first part of it and I’m like, oh, that sounds like a good song.
And it, and it, it sounded kind of familiar, I thought maybe, but. No, I slammed the computer shut.
Todd: I, I listened to it and I was listening to the lyrics and I was like, Oh my god, it’s kind of like the movie. It’s, it’s like a pastiche of early 80s songs that you would expect to hear, but not necessarily in a movie like this, something a little more poppy, but then the words are so lame.
You know, they’re like something about the past, something about the future. And I want to sail with you to our next destination forever. It
Clip: sounded catchy, but at the same time,
Craig: it seemed tonally completely off. Like, Oh yeah. Yeah. Completely. I think you put this at the end of
Todd: the wrong movie. Yes! Exactly!
That’s why I loved it. And I found out information about it. It was written by Shuki Levy, who, if you don’t know who this guy is, he wrote thousands of theme songs for children’s cartoons. And scores for them. So we’re talking He Man, She Ra, the World Ghostbusters, Inspector Gadget, Power Rangers. He’s the guy behind the music in most of those.
Nice. Nice. And he was married, at the time, to Debra Shelton, who played Madeline.
Craig: Oh.
Todd: And she’s the one singing.
Craig: Oh! I didn’t know that either.
Todd: But James Earl Jones, man, what more can you say?
Craig: No, again, you know, we’ve done this so many times, I say the same thing every single time, but He’s gone, that’s sad, but Him, even more so than a lot of the people that we’ve talked about.
This guy is, his legacy is cemented. He, he, he’s a legend. He’s a John Wayne. He’s an Elvis Presley. He’s James Dean. People are going to know his name for a really, really, really long time. What more can you hope for really?
Todd: Never had a controversy, never had a bout with drugs and alcohol, never was difficult to work with or anything like that, just everybody spoke glowingly about him.
And, and, you know, that’s how he came across on the screen, too. Just, uh, an actor very serious about his craft, but also having fun with it, and, uh, just seemed like a genuinely nice person that the world’s gonna miss. Well, thank you for joining us again for another tribute episode here on Two Guys in a Chainsaw.
We have our Halloween October season coming up, and we have a lineup that we think you’re really gonna enjoy. Please stick around for that. If you have friends who are into horror or who endure Halloween, or should I give a little preview if you have kids and are looking for a horror movies for your kids, we’re going to be covered more than a couple of those.
So, uh, if you know anybody like this, send them word of our podcast. You can send them to ChainsawHorror. com or just have them type in Two guys and a chainsaw podcast so that they can subscribe to us on their favorite podcasting platform Because we’re really looking forward to, uh, to Halloween this year.
Also, uh, for our patrons behind the scenes, we’re going to have a few extra special minisodes for the Halloween season, as we usually do. If you’re interested in joining the crowd, go to patreon. com slash ChainsawPodcast and look to sign up. Five bucks a month gets you access to all those minisodes, our Christopher Pike book club, the mini reviews we do, conversation with us behind the scenes.
and also influence over which requests we will do on the show. Patreon. com slash Chainsaw Podcast. Until next time, I’m Todd. And
Craig: I’m Craig.
Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.
418 episod
Manage episode 441825620 series 98583
We lost a legend, folks: A young and strapping James Earl Jones stars in this loony folk-horror movie that hilariously fails to hit on almost every mark. So bad it’s good? You’d better believe it. And he’s not the only Oscar-winner in this. You’ll also be treated to performances by José Ferrer and Lila Kedrova, a young Martin Kove, former Miss USA Deborah Shelton, and some of the most gorgeous views of the Greek Isles you’ll see on film.
We can’t say enough good things about the iconic American treasure that is James Earl Jones, but we do our best to give an overview on his life as we marvel at his range and willingness to commit to a variety of projects.
Bloodtide (1982)
Episode 408, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, we come once again to a tribute episode for this year that we really needed to sneak in just because this actor has been Such a part of our history as, as people.
Craig: Yeah, this one, you know, sometimes every once in a while, we’ll, we’ll do one of these tribute episodes for somebody that may not be a huge star, but for whatever reason, you know, is near and dear to us for whatever reason, this guy.
is a legend and and I really think that his legacy will be sustained for a really really long time like he’s just so iconic and his voice if nothing else his voice I don’t think is going anywhere I mean people are going to recognize this voice
Todd: It’s almost like Orson Welles, right? In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we are talking about, uh, the legendary James Earl Jones, who passed away, I would say ripe old age, he, he lived to be 93.
93? Yeah. That’s pretty good, yeah, that’s pretty good. I mean, I hope I live to be 93.
Craig: I know, I read some clickbait headline that was like, the James Earl Jones tragedy, the, his unexpected death, something, something. It’s like, unexpected? Like, he’s 93.
Todd: You
Craig: lived to 93. If you’re not expecting it at 93.
Todd: I’d be looking over my shoulder every
Craig: day if I was 93.
I know, right? Here we go. You tell me about James Earl Jones. Here’s what I know about him. He’s a damn fine actor. He’s been in a lot of things that were big touchstones for us growing up. For us in particular, I think it’s Star Wars, of course.
Todd: Oh, yes.
Craig: Darth Vader is one of the most well known and and popular characters in pop culture around the world period the end
Todd: Yeah,
Craig: and james earle jones did the voice acting for that and and we associate him with that and it’s it’s huge I mean he he was he was still doing it up until a few years ago
Todd: Yeah
Craig: that and then of course mufasa and the lion king again one of the biggest movies of all time and and he’s uh Well known for that among many, many, many other things.
He did, you know, he did film, he did television. I assume he did stage. Oh yeah. Was he an EGOT? Yes, he was. So yeah, he did everything. He did it all huge, huge, huge star. And from everything that I ever saw him in, in terms of interviews, he seemed very humble and very down to earth. He was willing to make fun of himself.
He did a hilarious episode of. Will and Grace, where he played one of Jack’s acting students, and of course, Jack is a terrible actor, and here he is giving James Earl Jones acting lessons, and they performed together, I think, a scene out of Sex and the City. Oh God. Jack, Jack, they like, He, Jack had to teach James Earl Jones to like, go up higher in his register and say like, Jimmy Choos!
When I heard that he passed away, I was sad, of course, but you know, to see that he lived to be 93, he had just in the last, I don’t know, I have no concept of time, but it’s been within like the last five years that the live action. Lion King came out from Disney and I’m pretty sure that he was the only performer that they asked to reprise his role.
And he did. Look
James Earl Jones: Simba, everything the light touches is our kingdom. A king’s time as ruler rises and falls like the sun. One day Simba, the sun will set on my time here and will rise with you as the new king.
Craig: His voice is one of those like, if he’s still available, who else do you get to do it? You don’t get more iconic than James Earl Jones.
So it’s, it’s sad that he’s gone, but damn, what an amazing, amazing career.
Todd: You’re absolutely right. And you know, you mentioned Humble. He famously didn’t get to do it. on screen credit for the first two Star Wars movies. He refused. He did not. He said, I didn’t play that big of a role in the film. So I don’t deserve a credit.
He finally acquiesced by the third movie. That’s just a testament to how, uh, you know, compared to Orson Wells, for example, who was notoriously, uh, cocky and arrogant. This guy had to know what an icon he was and remained humble. And. I think one of the cool things about him is that he was willing to do almost anything.
I mean, a guy of this stature doesn’t need to be in low budget movies, doesn’t need to make little appearances here and there. And yet, even throughout his career, all the way back to the early days, you know, he would be performing in Movies like we’re going to review today, you know, alongside big important films.
And that’s also, I think, a Testament to his, his humility, you know, nothing, not no project seemed beneath him as long as it interested him. And I think a lot of that comes from his. Childhood and his upbringing because he stumbled into acting kind of by accident as a high school student now as a voice actor and an Aspiring voice actor for much longer than that many years ago.
I read I think I was the height I think I might have been in high school myself It was either a biography or a mini biography an article about James Earl Jones interestingly enough He had a terrible stutter, huh? In fact, he was mute He had such trouble with his stutter that he did not speak. And he said that his muteness started, uh, the first day of his first grade of school, and continued until he started high school.
Wow. He just didn’t talk because he was so embarrassed by his stutter, and got made fun of, and just couldn’t talk. How ironic is that, you know? To the day he died, he said, He still had to think very carefully about everything he was going to say before he said it, in order to overcome that stutter. And the first thing that got him going down that road was his high school English teacher, who noticed that he really liked to write poetry, and used this as a way to encourage him to speak in front of the class.
And then he decided he could take acting lessons in order to help him. Overcome the stutter as well. So, uh, that is really how we got into acting was as a very practical way of overcoming this debilitating, this debilitating hindrance that really, really kept him quiet and closeted, you know, as a child.
And then he goes on to have this deep baritone voice.
All of these roles that we know him for. It’s pretty interesting.
Craig: I feel like anything that needed voiceover narration. For the past 30 years, they’re like, can we get James Earl Jones? No. All right. Helen Mirren. Call her. It’s fine.
Todd: It’s true. George Lucas actually picked Orson Welles initially for the voice of Darth Vader, but at the end of the day, thought that his voice was just a little too recognizable. To do it, so. Oh, man. He was actually a pre med major in college, and he was even in the army during the Korean War. And this was all before he started pursuing an actual career in acting, but while he was waiting for his orders, he was already taking acting classes and acting on stage, and he was working, I think, as a janitor for that theater in order to pay for the classes.
His father was an actor.
Craig: Yeah, his father was in sleepaway camp. You Yeah, he was a cook. He
Todd: was the cook who got the boiling water on
Craig: him. I don’t remember if he was the one that got the boiling water, maybe he was, but he was definitely a cook in Sleepaway Camp. Oh
Todd: my gosh, you’re absolutely right. Well, his father like left the family when he was very young and apparently they were estranged for quite a while, but then they did end up acting together at least in one or two plays.
So they supposedly made amends. I don’t think there’s a lot really known about that whole relationship, but yeah, I He started working on stage, just kind of like you suspected, and uh, from there moved on to movies. His film debut was in Dr. Strangelove.
Craig: Did
Todd: he study?
Craig: Does it say anything
Todd: about Yeah, he studied acting.
Yeah.
Craig: He seems like somebody who’s studied. You
Todd: can tell. He has a very theatrical presentation in everything he does. He does. For better or for worse, really, because I’m sure. There are some roles Obviously film requires a different style of acting, and sometimes he works In a movie and sometimes he Doesn’t I think based on that
Craig: I can’t think of anything that I haven’t enjoyed a minute Actually, i’m just sitting here and trying to think of the things that he’s done and I remembered coming to america He was so funny coming to america.
Oh, that was great. Yes, like he’s he can be he seems like a very Serious actor and he is and he can be but he can be really funny too.
Todd: Oh, yeah
Craig: Gosh, I just love people like that. He just seemed like an all around really gifted guy
Todd: We’ve talked about him before on this podcast at least once when we reviewed The exorcist part two and that’s probably the movie We I would imagine we would have jumped to if we hadn’t already done it as a probably
Craig: I don’t remember him in that at all.
Todd: Oh, he was the, he comes in kind of midway towards the end when they go to Africa and go to that tribe, and he’s a researcher.
Craig: A researcher? Did he have like lots of bugs or something?
Todd: Yeah,
Craig: yeah,
Todd: that’s the one about the locusts and things. Yeah. Yeah, okay, alright. That movie, I think, came out around the same time that he, oh, that Star Wars came out, the same year.
Craig: What year did Star Wars come out?
Todd: It’s 1977, yeah, 77.
Craig: It’s too bad that he had to continue doing, apparently, movies like this one.
Todd: Oh my god, you sent me three that you had looked up, and when I, I looked at all three and I have to say this one kind of jumped out to me as the one that probably he’s in the most. Yeah. And that’s what we usually strive for, you know, for better or for worse. We’ve done tribute episodes where a character came in for a scene and then left.
I think Christine was that with, um, Kelly Preston. But, no, he is 100 percent in this movie. He’s one of the two main characters, I would say, in this one. And so, I was like, let’s do that one. And then, when I saw that, Cobra Kai man himself, Martin Kove. Yep, yep, the star. I’m like, dude, we gotta do this. So, uh, even though I had never heard of it before, we did 1981’s Blood Tide.
Have you heard of this before?
Craig: I don’t think so. I mean, the title is kind of generic, so I may have heard of it, but I’ve certainly never seen it, didn’t know anything about it. I’m not surprised.
Todd: Yeah, I know. I’m not surprised at all that this has languished in obscurity. Although, I was surprised at the sheer star power for its time anyway in this movie.
I just couldn’t believe. You’ve got Martin Kove. You’ve got James Earl Jones. We have a former Miss USA in here.
Craig: Which one was she? The dumb one or the less dumb one?
Todd: Oh, I’m not sure which one you’re talking about. She’s the spacey one. She’s the spacey one who’s kind of the object of everything.
Craig: Okay.
Todd: Restoring patience.
Craig: Not, not Martin Kove’s wife. They’re married. Aren’t they? They’re on their honeymoon, right?
Todd: Yeah, yeah, they’re on their honeymoon. Martin Kove’s wife was Mary Louise Weller. Mary Louise Weller, well, we’ve seen her in The Evil. Remember? We saw that one recently. The one about the haunted house, it was really cheesy.
Electrical wires, electrocuted people. Oh, yeah. Uh huh. She was the main character in that one. The
Craig: psychic one?
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Nobody cares.
Todd: Including us. Her biggest role was in Animal House. She was Mandy in Animal House. She was
Craig: Both of the women in this were in Animal House, I think.
Todd: Yeah, most of them were.
Craig: So, there’s her, and then there’s Babs.
Her name’s Barbara. Do they call her Babs, or did I just call her that? I don’t remember.
Todd: No, they say that she, uh, I’m Barbara, but you can call me Babs. That’s what everyone calls me. And then I don’t think they ever call her Babs again.
Craig: Yeah, I know, right? Was she the Miss USA? No, she wasn’t.
Todd: Madeline. Yeah, Madeline.
Deborah Shelton. Yeah, she was Miss USA in 1970. Well, she’s
Craig: very beautiful, but they’re all pretty.
Todd: After Miss USA, she started getting into acting, and I think she did a lot of television. She’s got that face. She’s got that 80s television face, totally. She starred in Brian De Palma’s Body Double in 1984.
Brian De Palma didn’t like her voice, the way she talked in that one, so actually she was dubbed by another actress. Helen Shaver. So, uh, you can see her in there, but you’re not going to hear her in there.
Craig: Well, she barely talks in this movie. She doesn’t really have much to do except like stare. She’s weird.
I’m just, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna let the cat out of the bag. This movie sucks.
Todd: Oh, this movie is so bad.
Craig: I did not enjoy it. It’s laughable and like, like laughably bad, but not in a like, Oh, isn’t this fun? No, I didn’t think it was fun at all.
Todd: I just thought it was terrible. I don’t know. Maybe if you had someone sitting next to you while you watched it who, where you could laugh at how bad it was, you would’ve had more fun.
Craig: Maybe? I do. I wasn’t surprised, and in fact, I actually appreciated the movie more when I read, I think one of the actresses in, I think it was one of the actresses, and an interview said something like. The only purpose of the movie was to move money around.
Todd: Yeah. Currency transfers.
Craig: You’ve talked about this stuff before.
Is this like, I don’t know, is this like tax shelters or is this, I don’t understand what’s, I mean, I get it in general, nobody cares about the movie. It’s just a means to an end financially.
Todd: She was talking about different currencies, right? Like currency transfers and stuff. Cause there was like, this was filmed in Greece and there was something else, you know, obviously like, um, American production and.
Greek production, some American actors, something like that. I don’t, I don’t know. I’m not clear on that. But, uh,
Craig: she just said she was surprised that they were able to cut it together into a finished product at all. So it sounded to me like they were maybe just shooting stuff because they needed to like they did.
Well, I got the impression that they didn’t really care about the movie and that’s what it seems like. I was kind of surprised that they can cut it all together too, because it’s wild. I’m sorry. I’ll let you, I’ll let you talk about it, but it’s just a re it’s a really bad version of the wicker man.
Todd: Yeah.
It’s trying to be a folk hero movie, but it’s also trying to be a couple other movies, and it gets really, it’s very tonally off from time to time. You know, at one point it’s getting kind of mysterious and almost artsy in cutting together all these different disparate shots and closeups on things and giving us cuts to people who we haven’t met yet and won’t meet for a while doing weird things, but then It gets like 80s horror when we get a girl sitting on the beach with a boombox who starts exercising And then takes her top off and dives into the into the water It’s like what why is this in this movie all of a sudden and yeah, so sometimes it’s funny Funny.
Sometimes it’s that, and sometimes it’s dead serious to the point where it’s overdramatic and melodramatic. It doesn’t have that same consistency of tone or emotional through line.
Craig: Yeah. Really nothing. And I mean, the plot is really thin and we’ve seen it a million times before. You said, you know, it seems like it’s trying to be a lot of different movies.
It is. What is that? Again, we’ve done it. I can’t remember the name of it. The fish people
Todd: movie. Oh yeah, um, Humanoids from the Deep?
Craig: Yeah, it’s that, kind of. It also has the feel of any of those movies where, you know, Americans go to a foreign village and, you know, everything seems shady and everyone seems shady and there’s some dark history.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: We’ve seen it a million times. It’s just, this one is boring and it doesn’t make any sense. Like, I, it’s not like it doesn’t make sense. I get it’s basically kind of the same thing as Wicker Man, this Martin Cove and his wife are newly married and they’ve come to Greece. And this does look, they shot it on location and the location is stunning.
Todd: Oh yeah.
Craig: That’s the one thing that I’ll give. I mean, I, I read that it was miserable to film there, but it looks. Amazing.
Todd: The photography is really beautiful. And when I say that, I just mean literally, the photography is beautiful. It’s not that the shots are stylistic, you know, or unique or masterful.
They’re quite plain. But you just freeze the frame and look, and I, you know, it looks like your vacation photo is on some exotic beach somewhere. It’s just beautiful. It’s gorgeous.
Craig: Yeah, it looks like more rustic Mamma Mia. Like, it’s like, you know, the, the Greek Isles, you know, right on the shore, it’s, it’s really beautiful.
I, I guess it was so hot, like, I, I, like 120 degrees or something. I’ve never even experienced that kind of heat, I don’t think, but I can’t imagine working in it, but you could tell because they were all covered in sweat at all times.
Todd: That’s true. Martin Kove’s sweaty chest, and it felt like the movie was really a vehicle for Martin Kove’s chest.
I loved how in almost every scene he had his shirt off, even though it didn’t seem to make sense.
Craig: He was a beefcake. He had his shirt off, and his hairy chest, and then little shorty shorts just running around.
Todd: Yeah. He looks
Craig: good.
Todd: It
Craig: was difficult for me to accept him in a hero role, because he’s, in my head, he’s a villain.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: He’s that bad guy from Karate Kid, so it’s difficult for me to reconcile him as anything else. But he does fine. He does fine in this movie. He doesn’t have a whole lot to do. Nobody has a whole lot to do.
Todd: I have to say, first off, like, that was part of the joy that kept my eyes glued to the screen. I just was fascinated by the idea of seeing this young Martin Kove, like you said, as a hero, with these two, three, gorgeous, absolutely way too gorgeous to have three men this gorgeous in one place, in one small town.
That’s how, you know, it’s Hollywood because this would not happen, but these three stunningly beautiful women on screen,
Craig: and I feel like the only other women in the movie are nuns.
Todd: Direct contrast, but one of those nuns is an Oscar winner. We have three Oscar winners in this movie. Really? We have James Earl Jones with Lila Kedrova.
She’s Russian. She won an Oscar for her role in. Zorba the Greek in 1964. She played Madam Hortense. I know I saw that a really long time ago, but I don’t remember. And then there is a mayor of this community. You know, it’s just like the Wicker Man. They show up, they land, they’re wandering around this town and the mayor pops out.
Craig: And they’re looking for someone. Neil, Martin Cove’s sister was here because she’s an art student or something. But. They, they haven’t heard from her in a really long time. But it’s the same thing, like, he was looking for a kid or whatever. This, this guy’s looking for his sister. And of course she’s kind of floating around ethereally staring at people from cliffs.
Todd: It’s so corny. It is so. Corny, and there’s also little children running be like popping out and running away and like barely visible as they flit around the corner But then there’s a cat
One of the kids throw like they just look up and a cat is coming down at them and I mean somebody threw a cat threw a cat, like, I can just imagine this cameraman laying on the ground, aimed the sky, and somebody way up high just chucks a cat over at him, because this cat is coming out like a flying squirrel, all four legs extended, falling straight to the camera.
Craig: I laughed so hard, I don’t even remember where that is, I know I took a note on it somewhere, but wouldn’t that have, who, they, the kids threw it at. Martin Kove and his wife when they first get there, is that right? Yeah, that’s Neil. Neil and Sherry, yeah. I think that I heard the cat, like, scream, like, a split second before I saw it.
And so I was like, oh, cats care. You know, that’s regular. But no, it’s like, these people just Shut this cat. Oh my God. It was hilarious. And it scares them and it made them jump. Oh God. It was really funny. That was probably the best part of the movie, I would say.
Todd: Oh, it’s one of the This movie, I think, is filled with little nuggets of gold.
I can’t wait to mine them. I was just gonna say, though, that the mayor pops out and brings them into his house, and like you said, this is when he explains, when they explain to him that, you know, have you seen this woman? Shows the picture, and of course he’s like, nope, nope, have never seen her before, never at all.
And the mayor is, uh, is played by a veteran actor, Jose Ferrer. And he’s the other guy who’s an Oscar winner. He What an Oscar for his leading role in the 1950, I believe, version of Cyrano de Bergerac.
Craig: Huh. Okay. I can, yeah.
Todd: Yeah. And God, this guy’s been in tons of movies. The Greatest Show on Earth, and Greatest Story Ever Told.
He was Herod. That was 1965. And, and lots of television, and movies and television all the way up until the, the day he died in 1992. So.
Craig: Wow. I recognized his name. I didn’t recognize him, but when you said Cyrano de Bergerac, I can see it. I can see. White and that and he’s the shady mayor because everybody’s shady.
Like when they first arrived, it seems deserted and people are like peeking around corners and stuff. And, and the mayor basically says. People don’t visit here often and you should leave. Get out. We’ll make you up a room and then you can leave first thing in the morning.
Todd: Yep. Oh boy. The dialogue in this movie is so bad.
It is so laugh out loud, funny, bad. Because then, coming into the room, there’s this crazy guy who’s just, uh, talking to himself and cackling the whole time and doesn’t speak a lick of English.
Craig: Yeah, he’s like Igor. Yeah. I don’t know why he’s there. We keep referencing all these other movies, but that’s because it’s, it’s so basic.
It’s cobbled together from other movies. Transylvania 6500, wasn’t there like a, uh, Murderous basement dweller basically that was just like this guy like an Igor character. I don’t know the point is Trope after trope after trope like just sewn together in a in a not Really creative way. Oh, no. I was not impressed
Todd: Yeah I love it that she just says like he calls the guy over to like fill their glasses or something and he calls him Dionysi and she pipes up Sherry.
Clip: Did you call him Dionysus?
Todd: Dionysus.
Clip: But it’s like Dionysus, the god of wine and theater. That’s really neat to have an innkeeper called Dionysus who sells wine. How greek.
Craig: Yeah, but see, we’ve done a lot of movies, and even some recently, where the dialogue is so bad it’s funny, but I feel like that’s almost more tongue in cheek.
This is played so straight. Like, there isn’t a wink, I don’t think, of intentional humor. They’re not trying
Todd: to be funny. I
Craig: don’t even think the cat scare was intentionally. I don’t think that was meant to be funny. I think that was really meant to scare you.
Todd: Yeah, you’re right.
Craig: And this, yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but no, she just played that just straight as a wire.
Todd: Almost all of the acting in this movie is quite bad, but I don’t necessarily fault the actors. The lines they’re reading are pretty ridiculous. They’re poorly written. The situations are kind of silly. Characters suddenly jump from one thing to another, which we’ll talk about in a minute. And, uh, I also probably fault the directing, you know, I just can see where, you know, scene by scene, these actors were directed to go a certain way and so then they played it up, but then it doesn’t cut well with the rest of the scene or the scenes that come before or follow, I just really got that sense of a movie that was.
It’s all cobbled together. Absolutely. Yeah, from a bunch of different shots and scenes that not a lot of thought was put into making them consistent and coherent, you know? That’s what I mean, like, no emotional through line.
Craig: It is all cobbled together, and it’s not as though throughout it I was confused, but I, nothing is happening, like, there’s just vague suggestions of things, like, Madeline, he finally finds Madeline.
Who at various times is like catatonic and then other times, okay. And like, she just, she just kind of wanders away to stare wistfully a lot or like hide behind things. And it’s, it’s super weird. So we’ve seen her a couple of times already staring and now she is with James Earl Jones. Here’s how bad the writing is.
James Earl Jones, pretty much. Only just quotes Othello through the whole thing, like, they, like, I guess they just couldn’t even really be bothered to write lines for him.
Todd: He does initially, and then he, he quotes Othello, unless he doesn’t, and then when he doesn’t, He doesn’t seem like the same guy. It’s weird.
So, the guy, Dionysus, you know, stumbles when he sees the photo of the girl. So, they know that they’re hiding something. But, you know how it is, they gotta stay in town and figure it out. So then they go out on a night exploration, this couple. And that’s when they find James Earl Jones. Right away. Extremely dramatic conversation with him.
Well, you’re right, he just quotes Othello, and he just seems like a total loon.
Craig: He seems like a lunatic, and he seems really menacing, and like he holds a knife to Neil’s throat. And I thought immediately, like, he must be a bad guy, but then I guess Madeline’s like, no, it’s cool. And Then they’re all just cool.
No,
Todd: not only, I mean, it’s this real dramatic scene where he’s like, he’s holding a knife to his throat and she talks him down. He’s like, okay. And he sits in the corner and he’s angry and he’s quoting Othello.
James Earl Jones: Rude am I in my speech, and little blessed with a soft phrase of peace.
Clip: Cut it out, Frye.
James Earl Jones: Okay. Okay.
You weren’t expected. And the natives here aren’t exactly friendly.
Todd: And she’s all spacey and weird and they’re exchanging weird glances and they’re kind of saying some cryptic things to each other. But she kind of seems to be a little pissed off at him for some reason and she starts to walk out of the room.
And then, who pops in but this Bubbly, blonde girl in skimpy clothes, and Hi, I’m Barbara, but you can call me Babs! And just sits down next to him, practically in his lap, and just like, So, what are you guys doing? Why are you here? I’m like, What? Where did this come from? The whole scene was so weird, it This scene is like a microcosm of the tone of the whole movie.
Like, the whole movie’s like this. Yeah. It’s so crazy.
Craig: I never got a handle on what was going on.
Todd: Between those three?
Craig: Well, just in general, like, what was he doing? We left out the very, very beginning of the movie. is set in like, I don’t know, ancient times. And there’s a voiceover, a really annoying voiceover that talks about the struggle between good and evil and they have to placate the power in the sea with a virgin sacrifice.
And it kind of shows this, like the marking a woman, like marking her head and like carrying her on a platform and delivering her to this, this, ancient looking archway or door underground. Now, when we come to our actual story, James Earl Jones is Like exploring these caves and apparently has been for a long time and knows what’s down there like he’s found The door because after they all talk they also just casually mentioned that scuba diving is forbidden for some reason I don’t remember why
Todd: I think it’s cuz um, they don’t want people bringing artifacts up from the floor
Craig: So is that what he’s doing?
Is he like is he in Indiana Jones? Is he trying to steal ancient artifacts?
Todd: It took me forever to sort this out and I think I did by the end of it. So what we see in that opening that you’re talking about is that they put a woman on a raft and they kind of carry her to the water and set it down in the water.
They mark her on the forehead with this distinctive mark that looks like a kind of an upside down, um, ribbon that you’d wear. Yeah, I was just gonna say that. We might as well be blunt. Yeah, breast cancer awareness, whatever. Yeah,
Craig: right.
Todd: But then they give her a coin. And so she has a coin in her hand or they put it in her mouth or something as they sent her into this cave.
So, I guess in ancient times you didn’t have to dive under the water to get to this cave. Like you do now. Anyway, they send her into this cave, and there’s this gate that looks like it’s out of the video game, Myst.
Craig: Yes.
Todd: You know, with that same symbol over the top of it, and something happens to her, you know, she kind of falls off the raft, there’s a howling or whatever, and there’s a big struggle in the water, and blood comes up, and so you, you get there’s a monster.
She’s, they sacrificed her to this monster. I
Craig: get that, but what is James, so James Earl Jones is just trying to get, uh, So yeah, stealing he’s
Todd: yeah, well what I guess over time those coins have accumulated down there And so it seems like he’s been going down there and gathering those coins So he doesn’t necessarily know all about the monster, but he’s weird because we see him down there And he’s got explosives with him.
He goes out in the middle of the night with Babs, right? And they go rowing and he puts on his scuba gears and he dives so that he can get into the cave. You have to dive to get into the cave. He services inside and lights up the lights that he’s put in there and gathers up the coins for some reason. He brings the bag of coins with him and is, has plastic explosives that he opens up.
And this whole time he’s just. Talking to himself, but in very very dramatic ways like quotes I just figured he knew what he was getting into and he chose today to blow open the seal on this this gate So back in the early times this gate was just a big opening and now it’s it’s been Deliberately bricked up and so he mounts his plastic explosives on there and blows it up The explosion is so big that it causes waves to rock boats and splash water in the windows Everybody in town wakes up and hears it You see all these clips of that.
When we come back to the cave, we see that he’s blown out four bricks, very neatly punched out of this, this opening and, uh, smoke ominously. Yeah, fog
Craig: pours out all over the surface of the water.
Todd: And then it’s morning,
Craig: like, I have in my notes Big Monster. I feel like we get a glimpse of something like this.
We do,
Todd: but I guess, but he doesn’t, right? Like, he just leaves. He doesn’t go inside.
Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. That’s why I didn’t understand what he was doing. I didn’t either. Because I don’t understand a lot of it, like, Like, right after that, Madeline dreams of being sacrificed with that symbol on her head. We see, like, a flash in her dream of, like, a painting of a demon with a boner.
Yeah. All right. And that comes back later, but I have such random notes. The next scene, Babs, Barbara, comes over to her boyfriend, James Earl Jones, Fry, and he says, I thought I told you to get me a melon and a loaf of bread. And she says, Ugh. And she runs off. And then she comes back and gives him a melon and a loaf of bread.
What? He sets it down. And then, and then he says, he says, I didn’t tell you to bring a knife.
Todd: He says nobody cuts a watermelon with a knife and then he
Craig: punches it open
Todd: and eats watermelon like no person ever ate watermelon ever By like what the fuck is happening? The pieces of watermelon is the biggest mess in his head and that he just like reaches his fingers in and I don’t know I don’t know how you eat watermelon that way But I guarantee you, Mr.
James Earl Jones, Everybody cuts watermelon with a knife, Because your way is really stupid. They’re on the beach, by the way. They’re hanging on the beach! They’re just all hanging on the beach!
Craig: They’re just chillin right. Madeline is just lounging on a rock, staring, As she is playing. Prone to do, and Sherry walks up in Lake tries and makes small talk with her, and it’s like,
Clip: hi, you know you don’t have any strap marks at all, right?
Meditating TM Zen. I try to meditate for a while, but I kept, you know, finding myself thinking about where my khaki pants were, whether they went to the laundry or the cleaners, something.
Craig: Here we got you a present. Like, you must have had a bunch of birthdays, so here’s a birthday present. And she hands her, she hands her a wrapped present, and Madeline opens it.
Like, I don’t understand. It’s like when she is in this state that she’s never been a person before, like she, she doesn’t know anything. So, she opens it up and it’s perfume, and she opens it and smells it, and Sherry’s saying, Yeah, we didn’t know what you’d like, so we just got the most expensive one. And as soon as she says that, Madeline takes the bottle of perfume and just starts pouring it all over herself, like all over her face.
Face and shoulders and Sherry’s like, uh, that was expensive. What is happening? I don’t understand what is happening. What she steps out into the
Todd: water and then starts like touching herself. She’s like, uh, rubbing her chest and like, almost like she’s in ecstasy. And then Sherry is like, well, that was weird.
Just walks away. Neil, your sister’s acting a little strange. I mean, why are they all, why are they all hanging out on the beach? This is what I don’t understand. Well,
Craig: I mean, I guess Neil and Sherry are on vacation. Everything’s
Todd: cool now, like the guy, they hold his knife up. Yes, they found her. The dude blew open the ancient tomb and may or may not have seen a glimpse of a monster, and now it’s just the next day and well, you know, we gotta hang.
They’re all,
Craig: yeah. Well then, and then they go, they, and then they go boating, and they hit something. Oh God. James Earl Jones jumps in the water and like, finds some, like, guck on the propeller or whatever. But then he comes up and he’s like, yeah, we hit something. And Martin Kove’s like, we couldn’t have hit something.
My depth finder says we’re at like, 300 feet. We have just seen under the water, and we’ve seen the ocean floor. You need to have your depth finder checked, because you are max like 15 feet.
Todd: Yeah, you were maybe, maybe 12 feet, and that’s generous. James Earl Jones could almost have stood up next to the boat, and it would have touched the top of his head.
I thought he was gonna come back and say, no, you’re wrong, but he didn’t. I think that was just a big mistake. Oh, so funny. Now see, I was so into the movie at this point, because I could not believe how bad it was. That I was just rolling at all this stuff. And I couldn’t wait to see where it was going and absolutely was not disappointed.
So I don’t know, I just, I mean, I agree with you. The movie is stupid as hell. It doesn’t make any sense. But, for me, firmly in the, so head scratchingly bad, it’s good. And that the fact that these people are in this movie, like, Amplified that ten times for me. I just, I couldn’t wait. That’s fair. I couldn’t wait to see what was gonna come out of their mouths next.
And how it was gonna come out. And in what context. Cause the context keeps changing. Like why are these guys all friends all of a sudden? I, I just didn’t get it. I don’t know. It just, it sapped all of that mystery that they were supposedly building for the previous twenty minutes or so.
Craig: And it, again, I’ve said it a million times and I’ll keep saying it until we, I guess, but what is going on with Madeline?
I don’t understand. I don’t like she’s there because She’s an artist and she’s like restoring a painting or something and she tells the nun why why are there nuns? What? They just popped in suddenly. Yeah, there’s just there’s just randomly a
Todd: Monastery a
Craig: nunnery.
Todd: Yeah,
Craig: but she’s like Restoring this painting and she tells the nun well the first layer was just all fireplace soot But they thought that the image disappearing was a miracle, but no it was just fireplace soot, so I took that off She’s like but then I realized there was another layer underneath it And it was something else and then I realized there was another layer underneath that and it was something else all this builds I’m jumping around but I This was the part of the movie that killed me the most.
Eventually, she gets to the bottom lair. But she does so by peeling the ancient plastic film off of the painting. As though discovering that there was another lair meant that she was peeing. Peeling another plastic layer off of it. It’s
Todd: very clearly plastic.
Craig: I don’t know how they thought they were gonna get away with it.
Oh my
Todd: god The clear plastic edges are sticking out a little spatula tool slips right between those little plastic bits And she peels
Craig: it off like it’s like a film like a plastic film to reveal below it the demon with a boner and a Chicks sitting right in front of him like yeah, so she’s gonna have to blow this team and I think
Todd: I Couldn’t wait I was obvious I couldn’t wait cuz we knew the movie was gonna go there because it’s very cavalier and weird about nudity like I said earlier Then we get the scene with Babs where she goes to the beach and she just hangs By herself, and she’s got a boombox, and she sets it down, and she’s in 80s clothes, a crop top, got a lot of underboob there.
And, uh, she just starts exercising. Like, doing Jane Fonda’s workout on the beach. Leg lifts and things. Yeah, that’s weird. And pretty soon she turns it off and decides she’s gonna peel her top off. And I was like, is this really this kind of movie? The first 20 minutes, I wouldn’t have imagined this was this kind of movie.
But now, I just think this movie can be whatever movie it wants to be. Cause she peels her top off, and dives into the water. While a few of the townies from the, you know, from the cliffs up above come out and just stare. And she turns around and says, Pervert! Dirty
Clip: old Thought you gratefully liked little boys!
Oh my god.
Craig: Uh huh. Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. But she, she was one of my favorites. She was very pretty and she was bubbly and funny. Yes. I enjoyed her and I enjoyed her energy. She
Todd: didn’t even belong in this movie, but yeah.
Craig: No, she did not belong in this movie. Not at all. And then, you know, she takes her top off and then it’s Jaws for about a minute.
Yes. And I actually thought, I thought that looks great. The underwater photography. All of it. Looked really, really good. Loved it. And, and she was filmed, you know, from like Monster or Shark POV from quite a distance. Like the camera was pretty deep in the water and she was some distance away and it was very clear.
The water there must be amazing. But I loved the underwater stuff, but she basically gets attacked, I think, kind of. And you kind of see it, I don’t remember. And then they find a dead girl, but the first dead girl they find isn’t even her, I think? Oh, it’s
Todd: so weird. They come back to town. This is so convoluted and strange.
The rest of them are on a boat while she’s been doing her thing. Because they just hang out on boats now. And they come back into the dock, and the mayor is there with a bunch of his guys. And the mayor tells them that a girl who went swimming has not returned. It’s And they were like, you’re not implying that the thing we hit with our boat was that girl.
And he’s like, all I’m telling you is that no boats are going to leave this dock. So now they are stranded on the island until this mystery gets solved. And then, yeah, like you said, uh, it turns out that they find a body, and it’s The woman that went missing, that went swimming.
Craig: But then they also immediately find Babs.
Yeah. Chopped up in pieces. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t get it. The monster just
Todd: bit her a few times and then let her wash up on you.
Craig: Yeah, like, like chomped her feet off and spit them out. Ha, ha, ha,
Todd: ha, ha, ha, ha. The kids are all surrounding it, just staring at it until an adult comes by. Cause that’s what, that’s what kids do in movies like this.
And so then they do a funeral procession and they bury them and You know, as the procession goes through, there are these two wooden coffins, and they sit down, and the nuns are there saying their prayers, and whatever, and then the mayor comes stomping in with his guys, and he starts prying open a coffin, and that upsets the nuns, but they don’t intervene, and he insists on putting a coin in that woman’s mouth, and Some herbs or something over her.
And then he goes to do the same to the other coffin, which pisses off James Earl Jones character, who lunges at him, and he’s like, You keep your voodoo to your own people. But, he says this is important, you know, for Charon to, for her to have safe passage to the, the next world. This is What we do on the island.
We are like an hour into the movie now. It’s only an hour and a half. And I’m like, ugh. There’s no real mystery right now? Yeah, okay, there’s a monster. It’s been set loose. It killed these girls. And these islanders have their rituals, you know, which were from before, to protect them. So I’m just waiting for something to happen.
I mean, not that these girls getting attacked wasn’t something, but god, it’s an hour into the movie. And then what? Is it just gonna be more Jaws? Like, just people keep going out of the water, keep getting eaten? Like, James Earl Jones apparently doesn’t know about the monster. The only person who seems to know about the monster is Loony Madeline, who’s just staring off into space all the time.
Craig: I don’t get it! What is happening? Like, is Okay, so James Earl Jones just casually mentions at some point that she’s a virgin. How and why he would know that, I have no idea. She’s acting all weird. Are we supposed to think that she’s, like, drawn to this Monster or something? It, it, it doesn’t make any kind of sense.
Todd: The next thing that happens is that they’re back out on the boat again, and James Earl Jones decides to go diving while Neil and Sherry are hanging on the boat. And Neil’s saying, you know, I’m gonna go after him, and Sherry’s like, you know what they said about diving? Like, who the f cares? This guy’s been diving three or four times since we’ve joined them, right?
But he’s like, no, I’m gonna do it anyway. So he dives after James Earl Jones. I keep calling him that because we never really find out his name. He’s like Mr. It’s Fry. Fry? Yeah. So he goes in to the cave and they have a very bizarre confrontation.
Craig: What the hell? I did not James Earl Jones like holds a spear up to his Neck or something.
I have in my notes. Why is he mad? I thought they were friends. What is happening? He tells him he says Madeline brought him there And he tells Neil that he and Sherry should leave because something got to Madeline and I don’t have any ideas So they go to the convent to look for her and I have in my notes So, why does Martin Kove wear a string as a belt?
Both laugh. It bothered me. His belt is a shoestring.
Todd: It seemed very hot there. I wanted to know why suddenly he was wearing jeans but no t shirt. I thought maybe he should at least be in shorts or something.
Craig: My notes don’t even make sense. I say they look for Madeline at the convent, but a nun tells them they have to leave because Madeline has entered something?
And then they, they go outside and they’re calling her name and she’s hiding behind a rock, but she doesn’t answer. The camera
Todd: pans over dramatically and she’s like on the next mountaintop, almost like she’s curled up hiding, but also spaced out just laying there. And I, It’s so laugh out loud funny. And then they, it seems like they kind of stopped looking for her for a while, because now Madeline is no longer a concern.
We get some kids who are on some rocks by the waterside, who are playing their game. This is the same group of kids we’ve been seeing over and over again. And one of them draws that symbol on the girl’s forehead. I don’t know, how old are they? They’re like, ranged from Twelve, I don’t know. And they do some skipping.
In a circle around on those rocks, which already looks pretty dangerous. I think it’s the girl’s mother just pops in. It just happens to be a few rocks away all of a sudden and calls out to her. And it’s like, no, no, I don’t know. It’s not English, but she’s yelling out at them and she starts to make her way across the rocks to them.
And the girl who again, probably about 12. I
Craig: couldn’t figure that out. I think that she was going in the water. You think she jumped? No, I think the boys pushed her. I don’t know if she was in or not. Maybe she was. But I think the boys pushed her. intended her to go in the water. I think this, this was a sacrifice.
It’s the same symbol that they used the sacrifice
Todd: before. That’s what I was thinking.
Craig: Maybe they’re playacting it, I guess.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But I didn’t think it was an accident. I mean, why would the mom be freaking out?
Todd: Maybe. Well, I mean, you’d be, you’d be freaking out if your kid slipped. If your
Craig: kid was playing on a cliff, I guess.
Todd: But what freaked me out was the girl falls into the water and there’s an underwater shot of like, Her boobs. Oh, I didn’t notice that you didn’t notice that. I was like what why do we have child nudity in this movie? I mean, it was only about two seconds long which made it all the more unnecessary. It was just like her top was half off What I don’t need to see this 12 year old girl’s boobs and then she surfaces and her shirts back on and I thought Did they insert a shot here?
Maybe. Did they like I honestly
Craig: missed it.
Todd: Oh, we needed to put some more boobs in here somewhere, so we’re gonna choose the 12 year old? I don’t know, cause it was, it was shocking. I can’t believe you missed it, dude.
Craig: Well, I’m not upset that I Like, that’s fine. But somehow, James Earl Jones is there, and he jumps in and saves the girl.
From the underwater demon, that we get a full shot of at this point, this is, I think, there’s one point for like one second that you get a full shot of it. And it just looks like a guy in a creature from the Black Lagoon type suit. And it seems like Fry sees it, but he never says anything about it.
Todd: Well he does, because the mother leaps in as well, or falls in, I can’t remember which.
Craig: Yeah, it gets the mom.
Todd: It gets the mom, it chomps her. Actually, that’s You know, again, it’s like an underwater, kind of like a brief chomp on her. It’s got jaws, right? But at times it looks like a horse’s mouth, at other times it looks kind of more demonic with fangs, and I feel like it changed from time to time, but I don’t know.
Craig: You didn’t see much of it. I
Todd: thought Fry saw it get the mom. I was, I was positive of that.
Craig: I don’t know. I remember blood in the water. The mayor threatens James Earl Jones, and then James Earl Jones gets He’s about to tell them about the demon, I think, and then he passes out.
Todd: Well, this is at this happy festival.
Like, suddenly, after all this stuff went down, and all this ominous shit, Now it’s that stereotypical, Oh, look, the old folk village is having their happy festival. And I’m like, guys, somebody’s mother just died. This was literally the next day. And they’re just having this happy festival like nothing happened?
As opposed to that funeral that they had a while back when the last person died? Yeah, and he pops down and he says some really bad dialogue. You know, we should probably talk about James Earl Jones a little bit while we go through this.
Craig: Well, he’s fine. He just doesn’t have much to do. What’s, what was interesting to me is I don’t know that I had ever seen him in anything at this age.
And I always think of him as being a portly man, a big guy. And he is. He’s kind of barrel chested. He’s a big guy. But he’s younger and
Todd: Surprisingly fit in this movie.
Craig: Yeah, leaner. And I don’t think that I had ever noticed, and I don’t know, this may be colorization or something, but he’s got, in this movie, these beautiful blue eyes.
And it was just He’s one of those guys that ever since I remember him. He’s old. He’s always been an older guy. Yeah, so to see him Younger it was cool. It was cool to see him at a different stage of his life Yeah, it was
Todd: fun. And you’re right. I think his theatrical training comes through here again Maybe you know being an earlier film or something like that But it just feels a little too Presentational for the close ups that we get on him and the long shots of him in these conversations Transcribed And I could tell, too, not not just with him, but with all the actors, I could tell they were cutting around performances quite a bit.
Craig: Oh yeah.
Todd: There’s an awful lot of off screen delivered dialogue, you know, where two characters are talking and the camera’s always on the person who’s listening. But yeah, this he’s drunk, and he He doesn’t quite tell them what’s going on. By the way, these two are no longer interested in looking for their sister, apparently.
They just want to sit and enjoy the festival and have fun.
Craig: And it’s, the festival is just shady, and like, the, the boner demon, somebody dressed as the boner demon shows up, and like, that, the little girl that was thrown in as part of the, the ceremony, and, It’s all just very shady. It feels like the end of the Wicker Man, but I feel like we just need to get to the end because all of this is inconsequential.
Like, I didn’t get it. We cut back to the nuns. Are the nuns worshipping the demon? Are they scared of the demon? Does the demon attack them? Because then a bloody nun stumbles into town. Then they go to the convent and there’s a bunch of dead nuns and that black goo is all around. So I guess
Todd: That was so hilarious, by the way.
The nun massacre. I just
Craig: couldn’t get over
Todd: how silly it was. Like, they’re literally, like, one’s slumped over a chair, one seems to be stuck to the wall somehow, the other one’s laying on the floor.
Craig: And then, who says this? I have in my notes, in quotes, So, little virgin’s finally gonna give up herself. What?
Who says that? That sounds like something James Earl Jones would say.
Todd: Yeah, I think he said it.
Craig: And, okay, and so then Madeline somehow is on a boat, underwater, in the cave, with the symbol on her forehead, and then she lays on the rock slab, puts a coin in her mouth, and starts just f ing
herself just writhing in ecstasy
Todd: Oh, I thought the demon was there boning her but then later you just oh, I
Craig: I thought first No, I thought for sure she was getting eaten out for sure Only in her mind. Oh my God. It was insane. Oh God. And then Neil is like, shows up in some scuba gear looking for her and he gets to her and she screams like, I don’t know.
Todd: Suddenly it’s raining inside the cave.
Craig: Oh my God.
Todd: Dude. I could not contain myself. I was. On the floor at this point, I was having so much fun with this movie. So yeah, there’s a big battle kind of thing. And Frye, I guess it’s like, go, go, you must go. And he’s got a big wad of his plastic explosives. Yeah.
That he had put together to come in and they swim out. Neil saves his sister. They swim out and then he gets attacked by the demon. And did the demon chomp his crotch?
Craig: I don’t know. I just have the demon chomps Frye, but it looks so bad. Like. It looks like a cheap Halloween mask, um, in this shot, like you can almost see the plastic of the neck like flapping.
Todd: But just for a split second. Yeah,
Craig: just for, it’s very, very brief. You barely see the demon at all. And so then he blows up the cave and
Todd: And himself and himself
Craig: in it, right. Which And Neil and Sherry and Madeline leave, and Neil has that bag of coins, I guess, and he just jumps them in the ocean and then that’s it.
No, no,
Todd: no, no, no. That’s the end of it. No, no, no, no, no. Right after that. Right after that, before they take off, Neil and his sister embrace and have a moment on the boat where she leans in and kisses him a little too passionately for a brother.
Craig: I must have been looking at the clock. Because I don’t remember that.
Todd: Yeah, that was weird. I did a double take. And it almost seemed like Martin Cove also did a double take because there’s this weird look on his face when she goes by. And then it cuts to the next morning. When, like you said, they take off on a boat away from the island. He dumps the coins into the ocean, and everything’s fine, which takes a little bit of the fun and mystery out of an ancient demon when all anyone ever needed to do is get down there and blow it up.
I guess it’s not so supernatural. Oh,
Craig: yeah, I mean, I just, I, I couldn’t find anything really to enjoy. Honestly, James Earl Jones in it. I Felt like what why are you here? Yes You are too good to be in this movie, but I get it. That’s another thing that I respect about him. He was I said before he was humble.
He was also a working actor. Like he did commercials and he did document like he, the man worked. And so this is early in his career. I’m he’s
Todd: in a lot of stuff
Craig: and he has done a lot of stuff. He’s done voice for animation and video games and all kinds of stuff. And. So I, whether, you know, maybe this was just for a check and if it was just for a check, that’s great.
Or whether it was just for the opportunity, just for the opportunity to do what it appears that he really loved to do and was really good at.
Todd: It’s early in his career, too.
Craig: Yeah, either way, good for you. If you want to get nostalgic about James Earl Jones, watch one of his good movies. Don’t watch
Todd: this. I don’t know, man.
I would say, If you want to see a young, fit James Earl Jones, early in his career,
Craig: Yeah, it’s true. I don’t think
Todd: you’re gonna find a movie with so much of him in it. And he’s shirtless in a lot of it too. I mean, it’s Right. That’s true. And it’s in a beautiful location. It’s not an ugly movie to watch. I don’t know, man.
I’m I kind of had a very different feel of the movie than you did. I thought this was so bad it was good. Every bit of it As the longer it went on, the less sense it made, and the more silly it was. But I still loved watching these people kind of do their thing as ridiculous as their thing that they ended up doing was.
If they had been unknown actors, I might have felt differently. You know? But we’re talking Three Oscar winners Of former Miss USA Beautiful people in a beautiful location in a whack a doodle movie true. I think it’s worth the watch I think you should seek it out and the guy who Produced this and co wrote it.
His name is Nico Mastarakis. Have you ever heard that name? I don’t know. I don’t think so. This is like a blind spot in horror history for me But this is an independent producer who’s greek who’s done a lot of things You Like, I think he’s a bit of a self promoter, so, you know, take that for what it’s worth, but he has his name splashed over a lot of out there, independent films that I think are very cult and a lot of people like.
And I feel like we’re going to be returning back to this guy at some point. with one of his other movies, and I’m kind of surprised we haven’t hit them yet. He, back in 1974, watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and apparently was so taken by it and its popularity that he’s like, well, I’m just gonna make another movie that’s more violent and more disgusting so I can make a bunch of money.
And he shot a movie called Island of Death on another Greek island, and I guess it’s notorious. I don’t know about it, but the more I was reading about it, the more I thought, you know, We should probably put this in a rotation somewhere and visit a little bit more of this guy’s movies. Cause, for what they’re worth, you know, they’re kind of interesting.
The fact that you could get all these actors in this movie is kind of surprising and says something, I guess. But uh, man, I have notes about the song over the credit sequence, but I guess you probably just shut it off by then, huh? Or you weren’t paying attention? I
Craig: actually, well, I, no, I did turn it off, but I did hear the first part of it and I’m like, oh, that sounds like a good song.
And it, and it, it sounded kind of familiar, I thought maybe, but. No, I slammed the computer shut.
Todd: I, I listened to it and I was listening to the lyrics and I was like, Oh my god, it’s kind of like the movie. It’s, it’s like a pastiche of early 80s songs that you would expect to hear, but not necessarily in a movie like this, something a little more poppy, but then the words are so lame.
You know, they’re like something about the past, something about the future. And I want to sail with you to our next destination forever. It
Clip: sounded catchy, but at the same time,
Craig: it seemed tonally completely off. Like, Oh yeah. Yeah. Completely. I think you put this at the end of
Todd: the wrong movie. Yes! Exactly!
That’s why I loved it. And I found out information about it. It was written by Shuki Levy, who, if you don’t know who this guy is, he wrote thousands of theme songs for children’s cartoons. And scores for them. So we’re talking He Man, She Ra, the World Ghostbusters, Inspector Gadget, Power Rangers. He’s the guy behind the music in most of those.
Nice. Nice. And he was married, at the time, to Debra Shelton, who played Madeline.
Craig: Oh.
Todd: And she’s the one singing.
Craig: Oh! I didn’t know that either.
Todd: But James Earl Jones, man, what more can you say?
Craig: No, again, you know, we’ve done this so many times, I say the same thing every single time, but He’s gone, that’s sad, but Him, even more so than a lot of the people that we’ve talked about.
This guy is, his legacy is cemented. He, he, he’s a legend. He’s a John Wayne. He’s an Elvis Presley. He’s James Dean. People are going to know his name for a really, really, really long time. What more can you hope for really?
Todd: Never had a controversy, never had a bout with drugs and alcohol, never was difficult to work with or anything like that, just everybody spoke glowingly about him.
And, and, you know, that’s how he came across on the screen, too. Just, uh, an actor very serious about his craft, but also having fun with it, and, uh, just seemed like a genuinely nice person that the world’s gonna miss. Well, thank you for joining us again for another tribute episode here on Two Guys in a Chainsaw.
We have our Halloween October season coming up, and we have a lineup that we think you’re really gonna enjoy. Please stick around for that. If you have friends who are into horror or who endure Halloween, or should I give a little preview if you have kids and are looking for a horror movies for your kids, we’re going to be covered more than a couple of those.
So, uh, if you know anybody like this, send them word of our podcast. You can send them to ChainsawHorror. com or just have them type in Two guys and a chainsaw podcast so that they can subscribe to us on their favorite podcasting platform Because we’re really looking forward to, uh, to Halloween this year.
Also, uh, for our patrons behind the scenes, we’re going to have a few extra special minisodes for the Halloween season, as we usually do. If you’re interested in joining the crowd, go to patreon. com slash ChainsawPodcast and look to sign up. Five bucks a month gets you access to all those minisodes, our Christopher Pike book club, the mini reviews we do, conversation with us behind the scenes.
and also influence over which requests we will do on the show. Patreon. com slash Chainsaw Podcast. Until next time, I’m Todd. And
Craig: I’m Craig.
Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.
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