Near Dark w/ Erica Henderson
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[00:00:22] Jeremy: Good evening, and welcome to Progressively Horrified the podcast where we hold horror to progressive standards that never agreed to. Tonight, we're talking about the vampire western Near Dark.

I am your host, Jeremy Whitley, and with me tonight, I have a panel of cinephiles and cenobites. First: they’re here to invade your house and find queer content in all of your favorite movies, my co-host and comic writer, Ben Kahn. Ben, how are you tonight?

[00:01:02] Ben: So, who do you think would win in a fight: Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton in Aliens? Or Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton in Near Dark?

[00:01:09] Emily: Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton in Near Dark.

[00:01:12] Jeremy: We picked her up from the spooky crossroads of anime and sexy monster media, it's co-host and comic book artist, Emily Martin! How are you, Emily?

[00:01:20] Emily: I love this vibe. I'm not going to call it a movie, but the only thing that I can say right now, because I'll say a lot more later, is Tangerine Dream.

[00:01:34] Jeremy: Sure. And our special guest tonight: an Eisner winning comic artist, the artist of comics like Dracula, Motherfucker, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Assassin Nation, and Jughead - it’s Erica Henderson! How are you Erica?

[00:01:47] Erica: Oh, I'm feeling bleak and alienated. And I'll let you decide if that's 2022 or this movie.

[00:01:56] Jeremy: Yeah, it could easily be either. That's the vibe of both. Just a little bit of the basics on this going in: it is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who a lot of people will probably know for Zero Dark 30 and for winning an Oscar for The Hurt Locker, she also co-wrote it with Eric Reed. It stars Adrian Pasdar Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jeannette Goldstein, and Joshua John Miller. And, uh, a special note here – uh, future husband, James Cameron suggested to Bigelow that she use the ready-made ensemble cast from the recent hit Aliens, and thus Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jeanette Goldstein all appear in this movie as well.

[00:02:35] Michael Bean was asked to come on, but, uh, he didn't like the script, so he didn't come.

[00:02:40] IMDb, their description of this movie is: “A small town farmer's son, reluctantly joins a traveling group of vampires after he is bitten by a beautiful drifter.”

[00:02:49] That's more accurate than most of the IMDb descriptions that we get on here.

[00:02:52] Ben: Um, what I like about this description is that it doesn't explicitly say that the drifter was a vampire. So, it's just, “Got bit by a drifter. Now I'm traveling with some vampires!”

[00:03:04] Erica: Yeah, it’s very much like a “officer involved shooting” description of this movie, for, like, there's nothing attributed to anyone.

[00:03:13] It's just “things happened”.

[00:03:14] Emily: Well, there's something to be said about Kathryn Bigelow's interest in Cowboys here.

[00:03:21] Ben: There's something to be said for the extended scene of Adrian Pasdar's lean, muscular, body being lovingly bathed in slow motion for several minutes.

[00:03:32] Emily: And every silhouette he cuts in his cowboy outfit against steam or smoke.

[00:03:39] Jeremy: I was struck by just how like 80s hot, both Jenny Wright and Adrian Pasdar are. Like neither of them are particularly curvy or muscular or anything. They just both- they both look like they weigh about 90 pounds and they're both wearing equally tight [00:04:00] jeans and, uh, you know, various cowboy hats throughout. Like it's, it's very, it's very strange looking at it.

[00:04:09] Erica: Am I remembering correctly? Is the first shot in the movie? His butt?
Ben: Yes.

Emily: Yes. After the mosquito.

[00:04:17] Ben: We focus on him being a sexy, smoking, cowboy man who then spies traveling, sexy girl, eating ice cream, and then just let them be hot and not have particularly great chemistry with each other.

[00:04:38] Emily: It's basically the boring version of the opening scene from natural born killers.

[00:04:42] Jeremy: The intro I wrote of this for the beginning is: Meet Caleb Colton, Adrian Pasdar. Who I said I’d refer to as Peter Petrelli’s brother the whole time, because, uh, Heroes…

[00:04:53] Emily: Nathan – it’s Nathan is the name of the character…

[00:04:53] Jeremy: Who is the quintessential Oklahoma Fuckboy. He drives a beat-up pickup. He's too aggressive with girls - he [00:05:00] doesn't know - and wears a cowboy hat in the middle of the night.

[00:05:02] Emily: Of course, you got to keep the sun off.

[00:05:07] Jeremy: Yeah. And he- he meets May, played by Jenny Wright - which I guess is what Daisy Duke would look like if she was created in the 80s, who asked for a ride back to her trailer park where she's staying and he takes her everywhere but that. They stare at stars and then she freaks out a horse.

[00:05:11] Erica: I liked how little time we spent with his life before this gets going. Like, it's literally, we see him sitting around and then there's two of his redneck friends. And they see a hot girl. He's like, “I'm gonna talk to her,” and that's it. That's all we see of him in his life.

[00:05:28] Ben: I was shocked when he turned out to actually be the main character, because I thought, I thought was a character who just dies in like, the first seven minutes. And that's when you're like, “Oh shit, vampires going on!”

[00:05:43] Jeremy: I just feel bad for the people that care about him
[00:05:44] Ben: I just feel bad for the next person who shows up, who will be the real main character.

[00:05:44] Emily: Right.

[00:05:49] Ben: But I got to say, as fuckboy, as it is, if I'm Mae and Caleb takes me to that horse farm? Shit, that might work. I, like, that’d probably work on me.

[00:05:59] Emily: And the interesting thing about Mae is that she's the kind of person who's like, “Okay, we gotta go look at the night.” You know? She's like, “Let's go Netflix and Chill,” and then it's not a euphemism for anything. She's like, “No, I want to Netflix and chill. I want to look at the night and talk about it.”

[00:06:15] Ben: I do appreciate Adrian Pasdar’s Oklahoma accent in this movie.

[00:06:20] Erica: That was part of what I love about the scene, and part of what sets up, how like, sad and desperate it is for me, because before the horse thing, she takes him out to- or she tells him to stop the car to like, look at the night and she starts going on about how, like, I'm not like any girl, you know, because, uh, you see that star? Er, the light from that star will take a billion years to get here. And I'm different from all the girls, you know, because I'll still be here when the light from that star gets here in a billion years. And he's just trying to make out and like, doesn't know what she's saying. He's like, “Yeah, it sounds cool.” And I feel like it's a real sign that she is desperate for any attention that isn't from her psycho family, because she still decides that she wants to hang out with this guy for eternity.

[00:07:04] Jeremy: They're incredibly dense. He doesn't pick up on her, like, literal metaphors for being a vampire that she drops for like, the first half hour of this movie. And that she thinks that being a vampire she'll be alive in a billion years.

[00:07:21] Erica: I just love the she- she's clearly getting into some goth shit and he's like “You know what she's going to like? Horses. I know what girls are into…

[00:07:30] Jeremy: “Girls like horses…”
[00:07:32] Ben: he's got one move and it's be a sexy cowboy, which again, gets your real far into Kathryn Bigelow movie. Apparently.

[00:07:40] Emily: Absolutely. And I mean, he's cute. And he did show her the horse. And I think that's cute. I do like Ben, you are a hundred percent, right. Like if he was like, “Hey look, let's look at the horse.” And he also opened the car door and went “ma’am” which…

[00:07:52] Ben: if I'm already in the car with the handsome cowboy/fuckboy? If I'm al- if I've already made it that far in? Yeah! The horse? that's sealing the deal absolutely!

[00:08:04] Erica: Sure… But like you're. You didn't go out there to meet a handsome boy. You went out there to like, eat someone, which I think is the difference here. You have to like, think about what her motive was.

[00:08:15] Ben: Yes. I think in this scenario, I'm also not a vampire.

[00:08:18] Jeremy: It’s like if you decided to take the lasagna home and marry it, like…

[00:08:24] Ben: That's what this movie is. Imagine like, sending like a family member out for takeout and they say that like, they're in love with the chicken parm.

[00:08:34] Emily: I mean, some chicken parm looks really good, like aesthetically?

[00:08:37] Jeremy: I gotta say, you guys are a lot easier on Caleb that I am, cause, I only wrote one note during the movie - I typed in like the outline as I was doing it - but the one note that I actually wrote down on paper is: “Caleb deserves whatever he gets.”

[00:8:51] Erica: Literally she is freaking out, cause she needs to go - I guess this happens next – but, she's freaking out because she needs to go home to the sun's coming up. He doesn't know this, but he does know that she's freaking out and is like screaming to go home. And then he's like, “I'll only take you home if you kiss me.” And it's like, you should just eat him now. Yeah. That's your cue to eat him.

[00:09:09] Jeremy: Eat him. And then use his body to cover you in the car during daylight.

[00:09:14] Ben: I’ve never seen so much of a movie that takes place at 5:30 AM.

[00:09:20] Emily: this just a very, very long sunrise. I mean, and the sun and other scenes came up, like it was fucking Gandalf was there.

[00:09:] Ben: night is so short in this movie

[00:09:] Emily: at sometimes. Sometimes it's like a fucking lifetime.

[00:09:33] Ben: They are both not picking up on each other's red flags, like she is saying crazy things. And he's just being like, “Yeah, I'll live with you to be a billion years, but first we'll make out. Right. Let's just do that. Then we'll worry about the billion years.”

[00:10:14] Jeremy: Yeah, he literally pulls the like, “My car broke down on the side of the road until you make out with me” deal. And then it does actually break down, which is my favorite. He cannot chase after her because his car really does break down.

[00:10:26] Ben: And then she takes him at his clearly not serious word. They are both not picking up on just how hard- on just all the red flags, each other are laying down.

[00:10:39] Emily: Also, she has been a vampire for like a couple years?

[00:10:44] Erica: It's clearly like any one of these relationships is probably gross except for maybe, uh, Lance Henriksen and, uh, Janine Gold…stein?

[00:10:56] Ben: Diamond back. According to the uh -

[00:10:59] Emily: Oh. Her name is Diamondback?

Ben: Yes.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Ben: According to the Wikipedia page.

[00:11:04] Emily: The fact that Mae is has been a vampire for a few years and it hasn't occurred to her to get a watch. Like she's like looking at the-

[00:11:12] Jeremy: Or a…parasol or, you know, anything…

[00:11:15] Emily: around with a backpack with like, I dunno, tarp.

[00:11:18] Ben: They don’t have “tarp”, they have “tape”. They put tape on their windows. No tarps.

[00:11:23] Jeremy: Yeah they are all very ill prepared vampires – which, uh, we're about to meet them. So, Caleb decides to take a stroll back to his house and is slowly, slowly burning and steaming a little bit as he has been bitten by a vampire and he doesn't know what the hell is going on. He's in the sunlight and he's, he's just burning chunks his sister – surprise, he has a sister and a father - see him coming. They also then witness a Renegade Winnebago drive by him and somebody snatched him into the Winnebago and take off.

[00:11:52] Erica: I love this part because it's really his sister that sees him and she's like, “Dad, something's wrong with Caleb.” And he's like, “Yeah? Fuck you. Whatever.” Which is why I put dad in the, like maybe he also sucks too category. She's really concerned about him. Cause he's like almost on fire.

[00:12:08] Emily: Yeah. He's like stumbling across the field and shit. It's like fucking Monty Python where he's been stumbling for an hour towards them. And so, they're like, “Look at Caleb. Doesn't look so hot. Keeps falling down. Also, look's very hot. Cause he's on fire.” And the dad's like…

Erica: The dad refuses to turn his head two degrees. He will not do it.

[00:12:34] Ben: At first I thought, oh, they're coming. They brought their car/van and they're coming to pick him up cause he’s clearly dying and on fire. And then it was like, nope, vampire kidnapping, which they were coordinated with. They… No mistakes were made. They- they- that was a perfectly executed grab and go operation on the part of the Winnebago vampires.

[00:12:55] Erica: What's interesting to me about the scene is that Bill Paxton, says that, like Caleb did something to Mae and now he's going to murder him. I was like, how quickly did she… what did he tell them about this guy? Like, she didn't tell them yet that he, she had turned him. Just that like-

Emily: -he kept her out all night.

Erica: Because he harassed her?

Emily: I mean he did…

Jeremy: He knows they're vampire? They don't specify why they're going to kill Caleb, just that they’re going to kill Caleb. And then Caleb is like- or Mae is throws herself on top of Caleb and is like, “He's- I bit him, but he hasn't, fed yet. So, he's, he's really a vampire.” And they're like, “Ah, fuck, we can't kill a vampire, I guess.” Which is the whole thing is weird, but they're, they're driving around in their black- their electrical taped Winnebago. It’s just got black tape all over the parts of the sun would go through. So, we meet, in addition to Mae, we have Jesse, played by Lance Henriksen, Severen, who's played by Bill Paxton, Diamondback as played by Janet Goldstein, and Homer who's Joshua John Miller, the obligatory young child turned into a vampire who never grows up because these movies have to have that.

[00:14:07] Ben: Now, how are we to, how are we guessing that Bill Paxton's character got the name Severen? Does he actually come from some sort of crazy fancy Baron Severin family and he is centuries old? Or is he just like, look, I'm “severin’” heads! Call me that!

[00:14:28] Jeremy: we have Jesse and Mae two people's names and then Severin and Diamondback, and God knows which of those columns Homer goes into.

Ben: Well, she looks like a Diamondback.

[00:14:38] Emily: She was to definitely working for uh, Bill, at some point. But the-

[00:14:42] Jeremy: It was just Diamondback Wilson? Like that was just her first name?

[00:14:46] Emily: I mean, she's also Oklahoma. Who knows?

[00:14:48] Erica: I guess. I don't think Severen’s that old comparatively and even like, Jesse's not that old for vampire terms. Like he's old for a person.

Emily: Yeah.

Erica: We find out later approximately how old he is.

Emily: Yeah.

Erica: I think he turned Severen. Severen is just, like, is one of those dicks, like chose his own name.

Emily: Uh, absolutely.

[00:15:09] Ben: In the grand scheme of things, civil war, like he would be the youngest member of the Old Guard if this was the Old Guard franchise.

[00:15:16] Emily: Yeah. Like baby compared to all of the vampires on Staten Island

[00:15:21] Ben: Yeah. Like most of the cast of what we do in the shadows is older than him. Yeah.

[00:15:26] Emily: Um, actually the baby-

[00:15:28] Jeremy: Somebody just got really stoned and accidentally bit him. And that's how he ended up as part of the crew. Like he, he's just the wild card in this group.

[00:15:35] Emily: He's so fun though. Like he's the best. And if you're, if you haven't seen this movie, all you have to do to see Bill Paxton is go to your local game shop and look at any White Wolf stuff with illustrations by Tim Bradstreet, because I'm pretty sure that it's just Bill Paxton from this movie.

[00:15:55] Ben: He's wonderful in this movie. He's so much fun.

[00:15:58] Emily: In this movie. He is eating, he's chewing the shit out of the scenery. He's eating everything and everyone. he's like licking people.

[00:16:07] Erica: What I like about him and Lance Henricksen is that like, they're two different forms of violent male power where he's just like, “I'm young and powerful. I can do whatever I want, because I know that I have those strength and ability!” and Lance Henricksen just knows that he has control. And so, he doesn't have to be loud. He just stands in the back. And you're like, I hope that guy doesn't say anything. This is one of those guys who were like, oh, I don't want him coming over here. I'm going to leave the room because he's on the other side of it.

Ben: There’s that line that Lance Henriksen has after Severen dies and it's a line that I've heard of more than a few times in things, but I always love it. He says, “I taught him everything. He knows, but I didn't teach him everything. I know.”

[00:16:54] Emily: So good.

Erica: But like the way he says it. Like just that *grrr* he's so good at like being terrified.

[00:17:04] Jeremy: Yeah. This dynamic that you see a lot in, like Yukuza stuff or Mafia stuff that’s like, there's the Sonny Corleone - the loud brash guy that you know is going to go out and he's going to cause problems. And then there's Vito, the guy you really don't want to mess with.

[00:17:20] Emily: Yeah, also Lance Henriksen has a rattail-

[00:17:22] Erica: he has an exceptional rattail!

[00:17:25] Emily: He has an exceptional rattail, but his fashion is fucking on point. Like He's got that duster jacket. And like, I don't even know what he's wearing under there. Everyone's wearing like tight ass pants and belts and spurs and shit.

[00:17:37] Erica: I know what he's wearing because I actually recently used his outfit in something. He's got a shorter brown jacket on top of like an incredibly disgusting white Henley. And then on top of that is the duster. And he's got these like huge brown work boots that are like, not- nowhere near laced.
They're just like that they create that shape, when boots are like huge and floppy and open shaped…

[00:18:01] Emily: That’s how I roll. Uh, well, I used to roll with my Doc Martens because I was too lazy to tie them.

[00:18:06] Jeremy: They all decide together that they're going to give him a week to become one of them to prove that he's worthy of being - they don't say the V word ever in this movie they don't ever say the vampire once. The Winnebago has been spotted. They can't keep that anymore. So, they stop at the side of the road and burn that and then steal a car. The dad and the sister go to the cops, but the cops are in a horror movie. So, they suck even more than usual cops.

[00:18:31] Emily: One thing, bit of dialogue, so they they'd set the Winnebago on fire to get rid of it, which is sad, because that thing was rad-

[00:18:40] Jeremy: Then they imply that they started the Chicago Fire?

Emily: Yeah! I’m like, “OK guys…”

Jeremy: “Remember that fire we started in Chicago?” It's like, weird thing to drop in.

[00:18:50] Erica: It's interesting. This movie tries really hard not to do the usual vampire tropes of like, “Oh yes, I was at the fall of Rome, and I watched this thing and I saw this event and I- you know, I was there at every single important thing that you've ever read in a textbook.” And like, it really doesn't do that because we're really trying to do, like, these are dirt bags.

They've never had money. Like there's no way they can go anywhere except in like, a shitty Winnebago. And so, it was just very funny to me to just drop in like, oh yeah, they did the Chicago Fire.

Jeremy: It's funny to me that you point out like all the like, oh yeah, they were in Rome and Egypt and all this stuff that's in all those vampire movies, because this movie takes place across Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. That's the furthest out they get.

[00:19:42] Ben: To the point where they stop at a random ass motel in the middle of nowhere. And the guy's like, “I recognize you. You've been here before.” They're reusing spots in Oklahoma!
[00:19:54] Emily: Yeah. Guys, why don’t you go back to Chicago? Or did the vampires there throw you out… because you’re filthy?

[00:20:00] Ben: Turns out vampires just hate the cold.

Emily: Yeah!

[00:20:03] Erica: Yeah but, can these people afford Chicago?

Emily: Well, no, but there’s places in Chicago. You can hole up. I mean, they could put their fucking… I guess they’re, well they're dumb vampires.

[00:20:15] Jeremy: They're not as dumb as Caleb who decides that he's just going to stumble home from wherever they've ended up. He stumbles to a bus station to go home.

Erica: I mean, to be fair, he hasn't seen any vampire stuff yet. He just got really uncomfortable after someone literally bit him. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that like, he doesn't know what's going on because like, someone bit him he's been up all night.

[00:20:38] Emily: Yeah. He's suddenly very sensitive to the light. And this is like this weird bit where Mae’s like, “Go, I guess… run and go home.”

[00:20:45] Jeremy: Yeah, you need to kill somebody if you're gonna, you know, be a vampire. And he's like, God, I don't want to do that. I just want to go home. Bye. And she's like, “Okay. That's going to work great for you,” and just lets him go.

[00:20:57] He goes to this bus station and doesn’t have enough money to buy a ticket; tries to eat food from a gas station – or from a vending machine, which tastes terrible to him because vampires. And then there's a cop there who is like, “What kind of junk ya on kid?” Then eventually gives him the couple of extra dollars he needs to buy a bus ticket - which he immediately then jumps off because he's still sick.

[00:21:22] Ben: Well, I have a question about the vampires eating regular food. So based on that scene suddenly they can't eat regular food. So, are we meant to assume that Mae having ice cream in the beginning was purely to use as a prop to attract fuckboy prey?

[00:21:37] Erica: She never ate it.

[00:21:39] Emily: But you could also say like, you know, when you min-max, sometimes you can take the “eat food merit”, which allows you to eat food, but you have to regurgitate it later.

[00:21:48] Erica: Or…it's that thing where like, when you're sick, maybe eating the things that are bad for you is just going to make you feel worse as opposed to like, you know, like when you're okay, you can eat all the ice cream you want, but maybe like when you've got a stomach bug, that's just, it's not going to cut it.

[00:22:03] Emily: They do drink a lot of alcohol though. Bill Paxton knocks back several cups of stuff.

[00:22:09] Ben: I mean, if I drank alcohol, like Bill Paxton did in that scene, I would throw it up.

Emily: Yeah.

Ben: And I'm not a vampire, as far as I know.

[00:22:17] Emily: Yeah. I would throw it up.

[00:22:19] Ben: Maybe I’m a vampire. I've definitely read that one Goosebumps book where the plot twist is like “Your grandpa's a vampire. And so are you! Have fun! You’re vampire kids now!”

[00:22:29] Jeremy: Yeah. So, he stumbles off the bus and goes back to Mae. This is the one night in the movie that's extremely long because he can just walk back down from wherever he got to on this bus. And Mae is like “Here, eat some of my blood that I’ve got in here…” After he eats from her Mae rants more about the night. She really likes the night and then presumably they go have sex.

[00:22:49] Ben: They're not happy for him to be here. They're not happy that he's a vampire. They kidnap him not knowing that he's a vampire… What did they think he was? Like, didn't he- did they just think he was someone that didn't have any more blood and was going to die from not having the blood?

[00:23:06] Erica: They had only seen him for like five seconds at that point.

[00:23:10] Jeremy: I guess I must have said like, oh, he knows I'm a vampire. They're like, well, we gotta kill him.

[00:23:16] Ben: Except he clearly doesn't know that she's a vampire at this point. At this point, he has completely failed to put two and two together.

[00:23:23] Erica: I think when they, so when they kidnapped him, Bill Paxton, he yelled something about like Caleb having done something to Mae. So she either mentioned that he's the reasons and she almost burned to death because she had to like go home on foot. Or she mentioned like the weird you have to kiss me thing, which I guess is part of the same thing. They all suck and they're not good for each other, but they do protect one another.

[00:23:48] Ben: They say he's been bit but not bled. And I don't fully understand that. I guess that's being like he’s been vampire bit, but we didn't kill him. So, he'll be a vampire? I guess they're going with that version of the rules.

[00:24:01] Jeremy: Movie’s not terribly interested in explaining the rules.

[00:24:03] Emily: Yeah.

Erica: No, I think it just hasn't like eaten anyone yet. I know bled means it has to bleed, but I think it's just means that he hasn't eaten.

[00:24:11] Emily: Yeah. He's bit, but he’s not bled dry.

[00:24:14] Ben: Rules? How do they work? Doesn't matter, moving on.

[00:24:19] Erica: I kinda like that they don't focus on any of the mythology cause it sort of reduces vampires to what they are which is just murderers. They're just fucking murderers. There's nothing fancy about it.

[00:24:32] Ben: I feel like them being total dirt bags adds to that, that they're just straight up murderers.

[00:24:36] Erica: And I think it's always funny how like, vampires are always depicted as fancy for some reason, even though they're just cannibals.

[00:24:43] Emily: Yeah.

Erica: Essentially

[00:24:44] Emily: They can turn into bats sometimes that's pretty fancy. These ones… turn into fuck all. She talks about the night and it's so bright and I assume they have sex where she just talks about the night, the whole time. [00:25:00]

[00:25:00] Jeremy: Who knows. Might be the same thing for her.

Emily: I’m going to be real-

[00:25:01] Ben: I mean, I've heard the night belongs to lovers, but who knows these days?

[00:25:05] Emily: -while I haven't talked to people about the night, I've certainly talked to them about vampires and like anime for a while. And-

[00:25:13] Jeremy: Mm-hm. Just go sit on the car hood and look at the sky and talk about anime.

[00:25:19] Emily: That's my ideal, like, hang out.

[00:25:21] Jeremy: You didn't really have to answer. Like I know the answer.

[00:25:27] Ben: So, I do feel like those scenes go differently if it’s like, Adrian Pasdar-Caleb Fuckboy being like “Let me tell you about the night and darkness and why that's cool. Come experience that night.” Different vibe.

[00:25:41] Jeremy: He would just explain to her how the earth is flat and that's why …

[00:25:46] Emily: He would just talk about like when the horses are an estrus.

[00:25:49] Ben: Caleb’s like, “I've never left Oklahoma. I've never seen a hill in my goddamn life. I don't believe in curves. I've never seen one. You can't tell me it's real. Earth’s flat.”

[00:25:59] Jeremy: This is the point where maybe it's another day? It's unclear on the time here, but they're all setting up ways to eat people. Severen gets picked up hitchhiking by a pair of black girls who, I don't know any black girls, especially not who would be living in Oklahoma or Texas who would possibly pick this man up. Like, you would see this guy in his weird, like white shirt and clearly a giant pistol on his hip and be like, oh no. That is a white boy I do not want to deal with.

[00:26:27] Emily: So yeah, maybe it’s his hypnotism.

[00:26:30] Erica: I guess the idea is that he's cleaned up to a point where he looks like he's like gonna go to whatever counts as a club.

[00:26:37] Ben: If I ever pick up a hitchhiker, my big worry, it'd be like, what if they secretly have a gun. He's just waving around a gun, trying to get picked up.

[00:26:46] Emily: it's Oklahoma.

[00:26:47] Erica: Yeah, it's true. It's like, he's not pretending and it's a fancy gun. He's got like a real shiny silver pistol on his hip.

[00:26:53] Ben: that might just be this Connecticut NB not understanding how Oklahoma works

[00:26:59] Erica: It looks like he’s going to go host a junior rodeo, to be honest. Cause he puts on this like really friendly air, but he's got like the fancy cowboy clothes and the big shiny silver revolver. So, it really looks like he's doing one of those types of events.

[00:27:14] Emily: “Potayto-Potahto” really.

[00:27:17] Jeremy: uh, Jessie and Diamondback, try to pick up a hitchhiker who thinks they're going to surprise them and carjack them that presumably doesn't go well for them. I'm really surprised they cut away when they did in this scene, because you would think they show these assholes getting murdered, but they just they cut him turning up the radio and that's the last we see of it.

[00:27:36] Emily: yeah. we get one guitar riff and that's it. We don’t even like- it's all “waaaah” and then cut.

[00:27:42] Ben: The image of the gun barrel going down the blouse. I was glad the scene was already approaching it from a standpoint of like, yeah, they're just digging their own graves. Yeah.

[00:27:54] Erica: I feel like what makes that not terribly uncomfortable is just the way that like Diamondback and Jessie are both like, so unphased, even as this guy's like, it wants to feel her up. She’s just like smile. She has the biggest smile on her face. Like she's going to get it, destroy him. And I think that's what makes it terrifying.

Jeremy: Yeah, they look at each other like “Oh God, this is going to be so good.”

[00:28:19] Ben: We, the audience knows what's coming next and they, the characters know what they're about to do next. It gives you something like you don't want to see, but it does so in the context of you already knowing you are getting your catharsis for it, like within seconds.

[00:28:34] Erica: Yeah. And I, I think it's smart that we don't see it. One because we know what's going to happen. And two, because like know that these guys deserve it because they’re car-jackers and rapists. But also, the scene in the bar later is so intense and crazy. I'm glad that like, they just saved it up. They were just like, there's a lot of implied murder or. Uh, not exciting murder and that we're about to see with Caleb and May.

[00:28:56] Jeremy: Yeah. So, it's going to say, you know, who doesn't deserve it is the nicest truck driver in the world who Caleb and May decide they're going to like, get in this guy's truck and then kill him. And he starts teaching Caleb how to drive the truck and they just have a great conversation. And you're like, man, this guy is great. You don't want to eat him. And Caleb agrees. But, uh, he does like get so- get so sick he has to run out of the truck and then, uh, poor guy decides to go check on him.

[00:29:27] Erica: I love that because we just cut away from this scene where like Jesse and Davin back are so excited to like murder a rapist. And then it's like, oh, now let's see who Caleb has to kill. The nicest man in the world who is so friendly and doing everything he can for these two kids, he founded the side of the road.

[00:29:49] Emily: And it's, interesting because you have this like huge power shift where, Lance Henriksen, Jesse and Diamondback. They are supposed to be the victims and they're like, well, we're in control. And then in this case, uh, in the truck with Caleb and bay, this truck driver is totally in control of the entire situation. Like Mae’s sitting there, like twiddling her thumbs while she's like, “Caleb, you’re supposed to kill the guy… ‘swhy we got in the truck… We gotta kill the guy… the further we get away from home base the more we're going to have to race the sun home…” and there's this like really awkward, bit where Caleb just keeps leaning towards the truck driver. And the truck driver is like, are you okay? Like, are you really okay? Like, are you okay painful?

[00:30:34] Jeremy: For a movie that doesn't have a ton of diversity this black truck driver is the nicest person in the whole movie. Like he seems like a genuinely good dude.

[00:30:43] Ben: So, you have him and Caleb’s sister, they're the best people in this movie.

[00:30:47] Emily: Yeah. Caleb’s sister? Queen.

[00:30:50] Jeremy: I get the strong feeling that Caleb’s sister would murder Homer in a second though. She-

[00:30:56] Erica: Yeah, but like it's justified.

[00:30:59] Emily: [00:31:00] Yes, we didn't mention the part where Homer is basically like, baiting this dude to like help him on the side of the road. Like this old man is like, are you okay? And then Homer kills the shit out of him.

Erica: I forgot about that.

[00:31:10] Jeremy: Homer has pretended to wreck his bicycle and eats, eats the guy who comes by to help him. So yeah, Homer's terrible.

[00:31:18] Emily: And that was right around the scene where Mae is like, oh wow. We get to live forever and do whatever we want. It's so cool. And Caleb's like, cool. I guess. Cool. Yeah. Let's fuck. And she's like, first you gotta learn how to kill. And he's like, whoa, wait, what? She was like, you know, you gotta kill like, like there's Homer, he's eating an old man.

[00:31:42] Erica: Yeah. That's why, like I looked at a bunch of like eighties reviews of this movie and so many like old white men call this a romance that I'm like, but at what point did these two characters ever line up? Like at what point are their interests ever on the same wavelength except for like occasionally being horny.

Jeremy: The immediate horniness anytime that Caleb drinks from Mae is like the only time they ever seem to be lining up, which is what we get here. Cause, uh, Nathan Petrelli can't kill this truck driver, but Mae sure can. So, she drinks from him and then he drinks from her. And we get, the weird metaphor of the oil pumps in the background here. It looks like it's on a weird soundstage, but it's probably just that it's Texas and there's like nothing around anyway.

[00:32:46] Emily: It's totally arbitrary, but it's just so cool looking and I'm like, I see what you did there. Good job.

[00:32:51] Jeremy: Yeah, it can't help, but make me think of Fast and Furious and Dom standing in front of an oil pump for some reason, watching a funeral.

[00:33:01] Emily: Yeah. I had a memory of that. That was one of our- the movies we watched, but I can't remember which one. Was that like, is that a horror movie? Because-

[00:33:08] Erica: Yeah. That feels like it was less of a specific choice that references the themes of the movie and more just like, oh, hey, look at that. Let’s uh, let's put Dom Toretto right here.

[00:33:22] Jeremy: Yeah. Vin Diesel was like, “I wanna stand in front of this cool oil pump. That'd be nice. Can we do that? Why not? This is an oil pump right next to the cemetery. That makes sense.” Sure.

Erica: Yeah. That's for funerals happen right here.

Jeremy: We’re burying Letty in front of her favorite thing. An oil pump. The rest of the crew is really irritated about Caleb, not killing people in literally mooching off of Mae who is worried that he's going to kill her if he drinks too much blood from her, he does not seem at all concerned by this.

Erica: And yeah, let's talk about this because like, he could have drunk off that truck driver and he does not.

Emily: No!

Erica: He's like eating off of her and doing a “No Homo”.

[00:34:06] Emily: Yeah! She's like if she eats the truck driver, because she's like, oh, okay, fine. Fuck it. And then, she's all flushed.

Jeremy: Like a baby bird.

Emily: Yeah, exactly. And then she's like, oh my God, stop. And he's sitting there with his shit-eating grin on the ground, being like *hur hur hur* “I’m horny now… blood.” It's like, can you understand, Caleb, the relationship between the thing you need to eat and the thing you have to do to get it. But I guess, old white dudes think its romance.

[00:34:36] Jeremy: I liked the reading of it that Caleb just can't bring himself to bite another man and that's why he's going to die. It's just the “no homo” is so strong in him that he's just going to die for it.

[00:34:46] Emily: So, they get- they’re in a train car and they're pissed off about Caleb being stupid. And then they're like, okay, well, if you don't kill tonight, then we're going to kill you.

[00:34:58] Jeremy: So, they take him into a cool bar.

[00:34:59] Emily: Yeah. They take him into a pool bar and Bill Paxton fucking pops off for real. It's shitkicker heaven. He's licking everybody except for the woman, um…

[00:35:12] Jeremy: It’s like the Michael Madsen scene in Reservoir Dogs, but he does it to like a dozen people.
[00:35:16] Erica: What I also love about the scene because like in the background you often see Adrian Pasdar watching this. Like you see everyone else watching them too. And they're like having a good time, but like, if you were a normal, good person and this was happening, like, even though, even if you know what the situation is, you’d be like, I am uncomfortable here.

[00:35:37] Emily: I'd be like edging out the door.,

[00:35:39] Erica: but he's having a good time. He's enjoying, like being on the bully side, like shit, like he's watching jackass or something, but like, no, one's in on the joke.

[00:35:50] Emily: Severen taunts the shit out of this dude. And it's like going back and forth and be like, hey, you're all right, I'm going to buy you a drink. Now you're going to pay for it. Ha ha. I'm putting my tongue all over you and your drinks and I'm going to drink your drink. And then the guy's like, oh, I'm going to get mad and punch you. And he straight up puts, um, fucking Nathan Petrelli as a human shield, like, like get him again.

[00:36:17] Erica: But I liked that it's not even like he quickly pulled him in front with vampire speed. He literally slowly grabs him and then tells the guy, well, you're going to have to beat up this guy.

[00:36:30] Ben: it's a wonderful physical comedy and, God, Bill Paxton and this whole bar scene shine. Shine like Cullen sibling like in the sun, in the Seattle sun.

[00:36:45] Emily: Yeah, oh my God. And this is also where we hear the first attempt of Lance Henriksen to laugh. And I think whoever was his coach that day was like, I guess this is what we're getting. It is one of the most forced, I mean, I know he can act, I've seen him act. I've seen him act all over the place and he's like, ha ha,

[00:37:14] Jeremy: This scene where he is tormenting the, this lady that is serving them and like he's taking his time and being creepy and sexual about it. And Diamondback is like, fuck this, no, no flirting with other girls. I'm going to just slit her throat and put it in a cup for you.

[00:37:29] Emily: And she says that her skin is as soft as a preacher’s belly, which I'm like-

[00:37:35] Ben: Is that a saying?! How are people aware of the softness of preacher's belly? Look, I'm Jewish. I want to know too much about Christianity is knowing like the consistency of a preacher's belly, a big part of it?

[00:37:48] Emily: I, it begs a lot of questions that I do not want to answer.

[00:37:52] Erica: I desperately want to know who wrote that line? Like, is that one where they just filmed it a hundred times? And Lance Hendriksen said something different each time. Or did it come from- who's the other writer? Eric Reed. Yes. Who wrote the hatred? Which is like, absolutely horrifying. It's just one of those lines where it's like, wait, hold on. What did you just say?

[00:38:15] Emily: So, they kill the waitress and everybody else in the bar just stands there. Like there are five people in this bar. Everybody's just standing there and then like the fucking sunglasses guy pulls out a knife and Bill Paxton is like, Nope, got to lick you first.

[00:38:30] Jeremy: the way in which he swats away this guy’s knife. The guy presents the knife. And he's like “nope.” Like just hits his hand.

[00:38:39] Ben: I don't know. I'm a big fan of Bill Paxton into this scene, pretending that he is being choked by this man.

[00:38:46] Emily: he drinks his blood and he comes up and he says, “I hate it when they ain’t been shaved.” This is so good. And I also want to say that this whole scene, it's pretty fun to watch, but they just like, let the playlist on the jukebox run and let the songs just run their full, like running time together. So, it's like huge mood shifts between songs.

[00:39:13] Jeremy: Yeah. It such a weird decision. Because eventually everybody gets massacred except for this one guy who was standing in the corner, very meekly, not moving and hoping that they won't notice him and another baby cowboy. And Mae is like, come dance with me. And you know, it was dancing with him and setting him up as much as possible for Caleb to come eat him.

[00:39:34] Erica: She's trying to do what Jessie and Diamondback did, which was like their weird little fucked up sex game where he's flirting with a girl and she kills her. He's like doing the exact same thing, but like Caleb is not Diamondback.

[00:39:50] Jeremy: Caleb’s like, ah, no I'm gonna, and then the guy turns around and does a header out the window. He just runs straight through the window and then stuntman dives out of it.

[00:39:59] Emily: Cause I think a Jesse's in front of the door now. Like Jesse has actually trapped them and then the-

[00:40:05] Erica: Earlier on people can't leave because he's closed the door.

[00:40:09] Emily: Yeah. And then the bartender has tried to shoot them with the gun and did, but then it didn't do anything cause they're vampires. But like this bartender certainly took his sweet time.

[00:40:21] Jeremy: He did not pull out the gun and threaten anybody when his waitress was being slowly tortured and he just, he went ahead and let her die before he even considered wasting any bullets.

[00:40:33] Not a great bartender. And he I mean, he bites it as well,

[00:40:37] Ben: Takes him so long to load that gun.

[00:40:39] Jeremy: And they started pulling people onto the bar and breaking a- breaking bottles over them. They waste so much liquor in this scene. I was like, I know it's cheap liquor out in the country, but like, that's a lot of liquor. You guys are breaking over this bar just to set it on fire.

[00:40:55] Ben: How much fun must that have been for the actors on set, filming that day where it's like, what are we doing now? We're just throwing a shit load of bottles across this set, like

[00:41:08] Jeremy: throw a lot of bottles around and set this set on fire.

[00:41:11] Emily: I'm hoping that Bill Paxton didn't have very many lines and just ad-libbed that shit where he's like “finger licking good.” If you watch any of this movie, just, if you can just watch that scene, like the rest of the movie, you could watch

[00:41:24] Erica: that scene is absolutely on YouTube.

[00:41:27] Jeremy: Yeah. The bar scene is easily the best part of this movie followed by Caleb, like chasing this guy down into the field and catching him and then refusing to bite him, letting him go. And eventually, sealing all of their fates here shortly because he doesn't still doesn't manage to go with this guy. This one guy who desperately wants to die. He's very careful.

[00:41:50] Ben: Nothing to do with the plot. Did you know that Paxton and Henriksen were also in Terminator?

[00:41:56] Erica: Yes, yes. Yeah. It’s also Cameron

[00:41:59] Ben:] yeah, they just get brought on for the Cameron ride, but I do love that this pair just seems to keep popping up.

[00:42:05] Jeremy: Well, that shot of Paxton with the shotgun over his shoulder looks so much like the same side of sports and anger in a Terminator and maybe cooler because you know, he's a fucking vampire with sunglass.

They're, they're about ready to kill Caleb. They all take off to get to a hotel so they can, you know, get somewhere before the sun comes up because they do not plan. And they are awoken from their nap by the sudden sound of police banging on the door. And there's one guy who survived has brought all of the police. He's brought all over the police, which they do not have the budget to show. So, they keep just cutting to a couple of police looking like there are a lot of police and like calling, through this megaphone.

[00:42:48] Ben: I really love this concept of vampires in a shootout where every shot they fire and is fired at them, then provides them inherently less cover. And let's say more sunlight, the longer the gunfight goes on and being in the room becomes more dangerous. And like, that's just a really cool concept for a vampire action scene.

[00:43:13] Emily: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:15] Jeremy: This movie feels like the bar scene and this shootout scene where the first things anybody came up with, and then they just built the rest of the movie around that because these two scenes are fantastic. Everything else is good. It's fine. It's-
[00:43:29] Erica: it feels like it's not dissimilar in pace to the Hitcher or it just sort of builds and builds in dread and so like, several awful things happen and everything goes nuts. I think that's like the same kind of thing where like, all right. All right. All right, vampires. Okay. And the bar happens and then the shootout happens and then truck explodes.

[00:43:53] Ben: Yeah. And based off, this is the scene where a truck drives through a building. I think it's also fair to say this is the scene where
a good chunk of the budget went.

[00:44:04] Emily: Yeah. Well, they

[00:44:06] Erica: also burn a lot of shit in this movie

[00:44:08] Emily: Yeah. Want us to just show was on fire and then the stuff that wasn't on fire that was supposed to look like was on fire also really did look like it was on fire. So that was, I mean, there was some good money spent on these effects. I, I have to mention two things. One: Homer got that bathtub, what the fuck. Two: their, like, their vampire battle outfits where they like wearing the goggles and shit.

[00:44:33] Erica: So, they could look out the window. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:37] Emily: Oh my God. Like they're all in fucking welding goggles. And I'm just like *grrrrrrgurugurugh*!

[00:44:43] Jeremy: they thought of all of this, apparently though nobody and this entire vampire coven, whatever had thought of a blanket. Because Caleb puts the blanket on to go to the car and like runs out there. Like, cause they're all like, he's like, “I'm going to the car” and they're like, “You'll never make it. You idiot.” He's like, “No, I've got. Oh blanket.”

[00:45:07] Emily: So, they get this like dope black van that with the windows blacked out and he like, Kool-Aid mans into the front of the room and they all pile in and cheese it.

[00:45:17] Jeremy: The cops apparently do not chase them. They are uninterested. It's like, oh, they got away. We don't have any cop cars in this town.

[00:45:25] Emily: I mean, one of those cops straight on exploded from the shot gun. So maybe they're like, there's only two of us. I mean, the entire police force…

[00:45:34] Jeremy: That’s the county line over there, somebody else's problem now.

[00:45:37] Emily: Not my jurisdiction just, uh, call me when they have Henry's wake.

[00:45:41] Jeremy: Yeah. So, they, they make it to a, an actual motel as opposed to a bungalow.

[00:45:46] Ben: I love Lance Henriksen calling it a bungalow and there's motel workers, complete bewilderment hearing the word bungalow.

[00:45:55] Emily: Hello, sir. I would like to give you some of my coin. [00:46:00] Do you take pieces of eight?

[00:46:02] Erica: Yeah. So, this isn't a part where like the other vampires actually start to like Caleb, cause he bailed them out. But like, even at this point, they're like, you've bought yourself some sometime. So, they're still like, we're going to kill you if you don't figure this shit out. And this is what we find out that Jesse Hooker fought for The South. And, uh, Adrian Pasdar seems on board. Yeah.

[00:46:24] Emily: He's like, huh? Huh? I don't think that's cool. I don't think he got it.

[00:46:29] Erica: That's just true. That's true. Because when Caleb asks how old he is and Jesse's just like, let's just say I fought for the south and then Caleb doesn't really respond. And then he's like, and we lost.

Jeremy: In Vietnam?

[00:46:45] Emily: Vietnam. So, Vietnam!

[00:46:46] Ben: Caleb’s probably thinking “Like south Oklahoma?”

[00:46:50] Erica: maybe depending on like, whether he stayed of school long enough to get to this part or not, he learned it as like the between the states. And he's like, wait, what's the, what are we calling this?

[00:47:04] Ben: I liked the idea that Caleb has never learned about the Civil War.

[00:47:08] Erica: Yeah. He only knows about horses.

[00:47:12] Ben: He knows how to be fuckboy, lie, and horses. That's it. He's a modern gen X millennial.

[00:47:20] Jeremy: He’s just starting to learn about the night. He’s not really educated on that yet.

[00:47:23] Emily: I mean, he's nodding and smiling through a lot of this dialogue.

[00:47:27] Erica: I love it. I love how much this movie wants you to know. He sucks.

[00:47:35] Jeremy: And this movie seems to have contempt for Caleb, despite him being the main character

[00:47:40] Ben: Vampirism being real is as much understood by Caleb as it takes time for light to travel through space. Both of those are concepts he finds physically impossible.

[00:47:51] Jeremy: Although the wildest thing is the conclusion of this movie, which we'll get to in a minute when Caleb was proved to be the smartest fucking person in the world. So, they're there at the hotel and it just turns out that they've managed to stop at the same hotel as his father and sister who were looking for him are and good old creepy Homer finds his sister in the middle of a Coke commercial, and brings her back to the rest of the group. Caleb spots her and is like, oh, so glad to see you. She's like, where the fuck have you been? Um,

[00:48:26] Emily: She’s like “I oughta punch yer lights out.”

[00:48:27] Erica: Although I do like that, even the vampires are like, why are you out at 2:00 AM little girl, like, you know, it's bad when Jessie's like, why? Why are you out now? Why are you here,

[00:48:41] Emily: Homer? Where'd you find this young lady and Homer's interest in this girl and he's like gonna turn her there's a lot to unpack.

[00:48:50] Erica: Oh, it's so creepy. It's so pretty for that. Everyone's on board. Uh, it's so creepy that as soon as this girl shows up, Diamondback is reveling in playing Mom. She's just like, hi, young lady. What? Like, what are you doing here? Like, she loves it. She wants to be mom so bad.

[00:49:07] Emily: Because Homer's like, so he's like, they call him old man. You know, like he's an adult in a child's body. And then he goes after this kid.

[00:49:16] Erica: The implication is that like he turned Mae for himself, but like Mae being, a teenager body was not interested in a 10- or 11-year-old boy. And so, he's like, okay, I know who will have sex with me is someone who uh, looks my age, which is still whatever.

[00:49:35] Emily: I get it. It is, it there's like so many levels of horror to it. And also, the fact that like, he hates doing it. He hates being a kid forever, but he's like, I just want someone to share my misery.

[00:49:46] Erica: I was just thinking, you know, like the clear comparison is like Interview with a Vampire and I just find this so much creepier because in that one, like he kind of stays their child. Like she gets pissy, but like, she definitely has no power whatsoever. And Homer doesn’t compare to them, but like they still talk to him. Like he's an old man. Yeah. And so, it's like such a creepy situation.

[00:50:09] Ben: Yeah, the possessiveness he has over the sister instantly is so disturbing.

[00:50:16] Emily: And it's totally caused a whole change in his demeanor.

[00:50:19] Jeremy: They call the dad in, too, which dad doesn't seem to know why he's coming there or what's going on, but he's just coming along.

[00:50:27] Erica: I mean Diamondback asks like who the sister was with. And like they said, the dad, and I assume it's like the tie up loose because they know that like, Homer's either going to turn to eat this girl. All right. We're going to clean up your shit.

[00:50:43] Ben: Yeah. Some preemptive shit show covering.

[00:50:45] Erica: And I'm sure a little bit of planning, a tiny bit of planning.

Emily: The tiniest bit,

[00:50:51] Emily: Bill Paxton, I'm sure it goes to the, uh, the dad's room and it's like, oh, we found your daughter worried about *blah blah blah* and fishes him in that way.

[00:51:00] Jeremy: So, I do want to say at this point, uh, what time did they just establish that it was,

[00:51:05] Emily: Like 5:00 AM or whatever.

[00:51:07] Jeremy: Yeah. And so, shit starts to go down and they get in a fight. The little sister is the only one who has a bright idea, which is to go open the door and let the sunlight in it is like mid-day outside.

[00:51:17] Emily: Yeah. I like, apparently this conversation just took four hours.

[00:51:23] Jeremy: It goes from being in the middle of the night to the middle of the day as, uh, the family runs to the truck and jumps in and drives off, Nathan Petrelli has been catching fire in the sun and is sitting in the back and his little blanket.

[00:51:36] And this is, this was when we finally find out that he doesn't know about vampires are cause his dad asks what happened to him and he's like, I don't know what I am. I don't know what's going on, but I have an idea…

[00:51:45] Erica: I like that his dad seems to know what vampires are. That's the part I really enjoy. Yeah, just-

Emily: We, I can't gloss over the bit where the dad shoots Lance Henriksen and then Lance Henriksen spits out the bullet that was just shot in him and then puts it in his pocket.

Ben: Amazing. Incredible.

Emily: So, they go back home to Caleb's dad's place…

[00:52:08] Jeremy: He also has an idea while he's in the back of his dad's truck that I guess he uses as- he's a rancher, I guess he's a veterinarian.

[00:52:18] And you know, for his own cattle, maybe everybody else's, it's hard to tell, but he definitely knows stuff about animals. And he sees all the stuff in the back of his dad's veterinary truck, and his like, Dad, have you ever given a blood transfusion to humans? They go home and his, his dad pulls out a bunch of his own blood and gives it into him and that cures him of being a vampire, a totally curable thing in this movie, apparently.

[00:52:46] Emily: it's like I’m pretty sure you're going to need more than 125% of dad's blood to replace the blood in your entire body. But…

[00:52:54] Jeremy: you need a moderately sized blood transfusion apparently enough that, the person can get up and walk around afterwards and it will just cure you of being a vampire.

[00:53:03] Emily: Yeah.

[00:53:04] Ben: Yeah. Which apparently you can just use any blood. Cause at first I was like, okay, yeah, you're using your dad's blood. There's a pretty decent chance you have the same blood type. And then they use it – spoilers - on Mae at the end. And it was just like, man, you have no idea. Okay. So, we're not even thinking about blood types, we're just throwing whatever we can find in her.

[00:53:23] Erica: Well, to be fair, they are taking in whatever blood all the time. Maybe when you're a vampire doesn't count anymore.

Emily: Yeah.

Ben: Fair. Fair.

[00:53:29] Emily: The way to not become a vampire is just do the opposite. Classic vampire, you get bitten by a vampire, then you drink their blood, then you become like full-fledged vampire. So, in this case, in order to cure the human, another human bites the vampire, and then the vampire drinks all of the human’s blood. But no, the human has to give the vampire the blood. It doesn't matter what kind, but it’s…

[00:54:03] Jeremy: Apparently it's just a point of entry thing. If it comes in through the mouth, still a vampire. Comes in through the arm, not a vampire anymore.

[00:54:10] Emily: Or maybe he's like a human he's a human vampire. He's like a vampire, but human. So, if he bites anybody, they become like his blood type

[00:54:19] Jeremy: He’s a “human-pire”.

[00:54:21] Emily: Yeah. Or if he bites a vampire, they become human.

[00:54:25] Jeremy: Wildest thing to me after this, is that he seems to assume that they're just done with vampires, those guys that they shot and run around, set on fire and left in a hotel room are not going to do anything about that. We're just going to live a normal life now. It's so great to be back on the farm.

Emily: Yeah.

Jeremy: ‘til he hears a weird squeaking from outside and he goes to go fix the swing and discovers Mae out there. Still does not catch on. Still thinks Mae is just hanging around outside of his house by himself. And Mae's like, whoa, you're like human now. That's weird.

[00:54:56] Erica: Yeah, I like that she hates it. I like the, she hates that he's human.

[00:55:02] Jeremy: “You’re warm. That's gross.”

[00:55:05] Emily: Yeah! Which makes what happens later fucking bananas to me.

[00:55:08] Erica: Well, yeah, that's part of him not getting it. I think that, like I saw some reviews about how like, oh, the ending's a cop out. It's like, they get to be together and I'm like, you did not watch the same movie I did.

[00:55:21] Yes. So, he, he loves this shit.

[00:55:24] Ben: That is a real mood killer for her. That he is alive. Yes.

[00:55:29] Emily: She runs away.

[00:55:31] Jeremy: And they discover- he discovers that his sister has been kidnapped. Big fucking surprise. They've already done that once. And of course, they're going to come after him. So, he takes off after, uh, them not knowing where the hell he's going.

[00:55:43] Emily: They slash all his tires, but he has something that no vampires can do and that is he can ride a horse. So, we watch him with a fucking lasso. Like he has a lasso with him, like he's gonna to lasso his sister back from these vampires in their truck.

[00:56:02] Ben: I love how it's set up like this heroic swelling scene. Like, oh, he's gonna run it on that horse and fight the vampires. And then as soon as they get- he gets close to the vampire, it's like, oh shit. Yeah. Right. Horses freak out as soon as they sense one. And then the horse immediately bolts the fuck away.

[00:56:17] Erica: I do like that visually it’s that kind of like hero riding up and there's mist, but it's still fucking Tangerine Dream. It's still discordant, like unpleasant.

Emily: Fucking love it. *deooowww deoooww*

[00:56:30] Jeremy: One thing about horses in this entire movie is that they don't fucking like vampires,

[00:56:36] Emily: Yeah!

Jeremy: He rides it right up with the vampires.

[00:56:37] Erica: He is… he is incapable of learning.

[00:56:41] Jeremy: Yeah, he gets thrown off the horse and decides that, uh, he's gonna steal this guy’s semi. The guy's like don't steal my semi and then he gets shot- and the guy gets shot in the face for just parking a semi there so it can be stolen.

[00:56:52] Emily: Bill Paxton shoots him in the head.

[00:56:54] Jeremy: Bill Paxton shoots him in the head for fun and giggles. And then, uh, Caleb was like, well, now I know how to drive a truck. This is the one thing I did bother to learn in this movie. I don't know anything about vampires or killing people or drinking blood, but I know how to drive a fucking truck.

[00:57:11] Ben: And so, our Chekov’s gun for this movie ended up being Chekhov's truck driving skills.

[00:57:16] Jeremy: He hits Severn with this thing, full speed, and Severn, of course, pulls himself up over the hood, mangled the missing half of his face and decides he's going to kill him anyway. And so, he says the valuable skill he's learned of Jackknifing, a truck, which I'm not, it's not exactly what happens in this scene. That truck doesn't Jackknife. It just- he just turns it sideways and it explodes

00:57:42] Emily: Well, Bill Paxton has been digging shit out of the hood of that truck. That's

[00:57:45] Jeremy: Bill Paxton is fucking fantastic in this movie because this scene where he's just like, reaching his clawed vampire fingers into the side of the hood and just pulling out pieces, throwing him to the side is fucking fantastic. What is this carburetor? That's not enough. Let's go some more.

[00:58:03] Erica: I don’t know how trucks are made, but I'm pretty sure you'd need this stuff, so.

Emily: I’m just gonna take it… *raaawwwrr ha ha ha* Just taking it out…

[00:58:12] Jeremy: He slowly parks the truck and then it explodes with Severin on it, just to discover that the rest of them are waiting in a car at the end of the road to, uh, kill him anyway.

Erica: With his sister.

Jeremy: With his sister, yeah. Both Jesse and Diamondback are there, but the sister is the one competent person in this movie. She manages to, like, beat up Homer in the backseat of the car and get out.

[00:58:36] Erica: Yes! She beats the vampire!

[00:58:39] Emily: Yeah. She fucking beans him with a flashlight and then gets out of there. And fucking Caleb is like, I guess I'll just run across the fields until the sun comes up. And so, he does, and then like they're running together trying to out run-

Ben: His sister is the real hero.

[00:58:55] Jeremy: Hold on. We've missed the one thing here, which is the point where Diamondback attempts to throw a knife at him and ends up hitting Lance Henriksen in the mouth.

[00:59:05] Emily: And he catches it at his teeth and he's like, so cool.

[00:59:08] Erica: Everything he does. He does with like a chilling stillness.

[00:59:15] Emily: Yeah. I mean, that's, that's Lance for us.

[00:59:19] Jeremy: So, he decides he's going to run away from the car full of vampires through a field and they chase him and predictably catch him and take his sister back. Mae is like, ah, fuck this. I'm- I'm not going to be part of this. Grabs the sister and herself pulls a header out of the car, into the sunlight rolling in the, in this blanket.

[00:59:39] Caleb decides to, protect her. He's just like sitting there with her under the blanket and, uh, his sister and Diamondback and Jesse slowly start driving this truck at them.

[00:59:51] Emily: Well Homer, Homer starts running after them and he catches fire and there's actually a really good fire effect. And then he fucking explodes. So now I think that's why the truck exploded because Bill Paxon exploded.

Jeremy: Hmmm.

[01:00:05] Erica: Yeah. Maybe if you're on fire enough as a vampire you explode. Well, it's just on fire enough.

[01:00:12] Ben: I think it's similar in principle to the rule of, if you stab a vampire through the heart with a wooden stake, it dies because that's not a weakness. That's just something that happens to anything. If you said, if you drive the wooden stake through, so maybe it's just like, if all of you is just totally on fire, you share the common biological weakness of being all fire.

[01:00:38] Jeremy: The only difference being that vampires’ hearts are filled with C4. So as soon as the,

[01:00:45] Ben: Yeah, I love this so hard every vampire explodes.

[01:00:51] Jeremy: It's just like fucking John carpenter's vampires. They're just like,

[01:00:55] Emily: Fuck that movie.

[01:00:57] Jeremy: Pieces flying everywhere

[01:00:58] Emily: Oh, it's funny. Exploding vampires are great, but fuck that fucking movie.

[01:01:03] Ben: They all look like they just got hit by a Megazord’s final attack.

[01:01:07] Emily: Yeah. Or they blast off again, like all vampires that die. They either explode or like become stars.

[01:01:18] Erica: I don't know when this line happens in this finale, but I just love that, like, I know what happens after Severen dies and Mae is yelling to Jesse. Jesse, let him come back. Like, she's still trying to make this happen. Like Caleb wants to be a vampire and like, she just has to bite him again. And it'll be fine, even though he's just killed someone and he wants to sister to not be a vampire. Just the sheer insane desperation of these two to like willfully misconstrue the other.

[01:01:51] Ben: To quote, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: This is not a “will they won't they.” This is, a “I know they won't and I don't want them to.”

[01:01:58] Emily: exactly.

Erica: Yeah.

Emily: So, Lance Henriksen and, uh, Diamondback explode in the car.

[01:02:07] Ben: I was trying to figure out if Caleb did something or if anything particular happened and from what I can tell, it's just like, they decide they're going to go out in a blaze of murderous glory and try to kill- and try to run over a Caleb before they explode. And they just fail and explode on the way.

[01:02:24] Erica: Everyone else was dead and there was no way out. So, they were like we may as well hold hands and murder this guy.

[01:02:31] Emily: But then the fact that they were, cinders kind of reduced the, uh, the pressure on the gas pedals. So, they were just like, yeah,

[01:02:39] Ben: I was all in on that plan. And then it just kind of took me aback, how not even close they get before they explode.

[01:02:46] Jeremy: Yeah. They're an extremely flammable Thelma and Louise. They just,

[01:02:49] Emily: yeah. Let’s just keep going.

[01:02:53] Ben: There's no tension that they are actually going to hit Caleb and sister and co. Like they're so far away when they explode.

[01:03:01] Jeremy: They might catch some shrapnel or something, you know?

[01:03:03] Emily: Mae doesn't explode because as we find out-

[01:03:08] Erica: Just an insane smash cut back to the farm.

[01:03:11] Emily: Apparently Nathan Petrelli has now given him- given her all his Petrelli and…

[01:03:19] Jeremy: Cures her of being a vampire. She seems excited about despite her entire character being that she’s not into that.
[01:03:30] Erica: I don't think she does!

[01:03:31] Emily: I don’t think she's excited. She’s scared.

[01:03:33] Ben: She stares into the sun. She's like, “No! Don’t want it!”

[01:03:35] Erica: Like he, he is holding her and she's kind of looking down and like letting herself be held.

Emily: Oh yeah. She's very, like,

Erica: I don’t think she knows what to make of the situation.

[01:03:46] Emily: She's like in shock,

[01:03:49] Jeremy: She’s crying but it's unclear whether it's like uh, relieved, crying, or like, oh, this isn't, this is not what I wanted. I liked being in a mortal vampire. Didn't you hear me talk about the dark and night and all these things that I love?

[01:04:00] Emily: Yeah. I don't think there was any moments that she was like, “maybe not” like this whole time, and then he didn't even ask her as far as we see.

Erica: No. Cause he assumed. They both just assumed.

[01:04:11] Jeremy: Yeah. And, and it ends with her saying I'm afraid and him saying, don't be, it's just the sun. And then a freeze frame. I was like, that's the end of this film?

[01:04:24] Emily: Yup! Well, wait, you do get that dope-ass theme from Tangerine Dream. And then it's like, *daaaaoooo chkkachk zeeeeooo-tsss*.

[01:04:32] Jeremy: apparently there was like a planned longer version of this ending where like, the sister starts to walk out with them and then the sister's hand catches fire implying, that she got bit by, uh-

Emily: Nah, fuck that.

Jeremy: By young boy back there. And it's like..
Erica: That doesn’t mean anything…

[01:04:48] Jeremy: Kathryn Bigelow pointed out that they won't make any sense.

Erica: Yeah. They know how to cure it.

[01:04:53] Ben: Yeah. There's no stakes for that. You're right. It's just like all that implies like, all right. Load it up. We gotta do the blood again.

[01:05:01] Jeremy: It's funny that we've related so much to Heroes because of Adrian Pasdar, but like, it's just like in Heroes when they just had a cure for death for a while. And it was just like, well, none of this matters. None of the stakes of this matter at all anymore.

[01:05:15] Jeremy: So, guys, uh, do, do we think does movies feminist?

[01:05:19] Emily: No.

Ben: Um…. No?

[01:05:21] Emily: I mean, it has a lot of female gaze. Let me tell you what.

Erica: Yeah. It's one of those things where it's really hard - because it has female gaze that it has a lot of like, you know what? These things are bad. Because that happened. But also, it's like- I never know what to say to that. Whenever a thing is always like, “Look at all this stuff that happens to women.” They're not good, but you're also never offered an alternative. You're just sort of like wallowing in it.

[01:05:54] Jeremy: The torture of the waitress has a distinctly like sexual flavor to it, which is not good.

[01:05:59] Emily: Yeah.

[01:05:59] Ben: So, I'm going to say there's a less sexual assault than
in most horror movies, but still some sexual violence.

[01:06:08] Emily: And Nathan Petrelli trying to keep the girl in the truck.

[01:06:15] Jeremy: Whether it’s feminist hinges on whether you think Caleb is meant to be awful in the movie or whether that's just our reading of it.

[01:06:22] Ben: I wasn't sure if that was just our understanding of consent in 1987. Which isn’t great.

[01:06:27] Emily: I mean, I think-

[01:06:29] Ben: Boy, am I judging this movie on one hell of a curve on aren’t I?

[01:06:36] Emily: I mean, we kind of have to judge 80s movies on a curve if we're going to be real.

[01:06:41] Erica: What Caleb does at the start of the movie is less sexual assault than most 80s comedies. So that's, let's put it that way. Yeah. I mean,

[01:06:50] Emily: it's, it's better than Sixteen Candles.

[01:06:54] Erica: It's like a hundred percent better than Revenge of the Nerds.

Emily: Yeah!

[01:06:59] Ben: Oh, Revenge of the Nerds. Now that's a horror movie.

[01:07:02] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. I just, I think the point in this movie where like, he'd already been working that direction to where like, I already wasn't liking him, but the point where they- he literally like strands her in the middle of the desert with the only alternative being to make out with him or not go home. I was like, ah, I hate this fucking guy.

[01:07:20] Erica: I feel like we're meant to, because like we know she's a vampire and she's going to die if she doesn't like, do a sexual favor for him.

[01:07:29] Jeremy: I think we already, uh, talked about the fact, there's not a lot of much of anything to say about racial and social justice in this movie. There's not many non-white people in this movie just as there aren't in Oklahoma.

[01:07:38] Erica: It feels like she makes a point of making all the black people very friendly, but like anyone who's not a vampire is a victim. The vampires are clearly, at least led by a racist, if not all racist.

[01:07:52] Yeah.

[01:07:53] Emily: Yeah.

[01:07:53] Erica: I feel like race is race is sort of a, not really addressed thing in this movie. It's not really, the point. And like the movie itself doesn't seem to be racist because like all the bad people are racist.

[01:08:06] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. And then the one black character who appears for more than three seconds is the nicest truck driver in the history of truck drivers. It's just super nice dude. And just teaches random, uh, teens he picked up on the side of the road, how to drive his truck.

[01:08:22] Emily: Yeah. Which is information that's knowledge that helps the Caleb, quote unquote save the day. So, let's pour one out for poor truck driver. He deserved better.

[01:08:35] Jeremy: We, we don't actually see- we don't actually see the two black girls that he goes off with die. Presumably they do because he kills everybody else in this movie that he meets.

[01:08:46] Ben: In terms of queer content, I'm just giving it up for bathing Adrian Pasdar scene.

[01:08:52] Emily: And Bill Paxton's character in general. Yeah.

[01:08:56] Erica: I mean everything about him, but the whole, like, I like them better when they’re shaved, whatever the line is. “I don't like it when they’re not shaved” – that’s it, like that line extremely gay.

[01:09:05] Ben: I also love that line cause it's like, yeah, that would be a practical aspect of living as a vampire.

[01:09:11] Jeremy: Just get, you know, five o'clock shadow in your teeth. It’s no good.

[01:09:16] Erica: Yeah. Just thinking about like eating corn that hasn’t been properly husked and it's just like *bluck ugh*

[01:09:24] Emily: With a great big bushy beard! And they're just like, Hmm. Ah, God, where’s the floss?

[01:09:33] Jeremy: You don't have to dig too hard for the queer content. There's nothing openly discussed in there. Which, you know, it's the eighties, that's pretty standard.

The class stuff is kind of interesting in this because there's a lot of times where vampires in movies are just magically rich, but these are poor scummy vampires that, they steal shit that they need, but generally like they're staying in rundown motels and shitty Winnebagos and everybody seems to be poor.

Emily: Yeah.

[01:09:57] Ben: So, I find myself unsure about the message. Me being unsure if things are okay or not what a surprise. Just because an aspect of this movie I like is that it strips that sophistication that felt like the richest, the opulence that we so associate with vampires and brings them down to back to their like way back roots of just being fucking murderous monsters who killed people to eat.

Having them be poor I guess like, you know, white trash could be a term for him, like vampires. Like what does it say that that was one of the methods of bringing them back to this monstrous murderous interpretation?

[01:10:46] Erica: I guess there are two things that I think about with that. And what is that like looking, and probably smelling, let's be honest, the way that they do, they don't have access to anything where they can get more- like they can't get to a rich person to take their shit, you know, like they're taking like $3 every so often and like just enough to get a hotel room for like six people.

[01:11:08] Ben: Yeah, it’s six people crammed in a not big looking Winnebago. That's a funky ass vampire den.

[01:11:16] Emily: They don't seem to be really into having possessions, um…

[01:11:20] Jeremy: Yeah, they burned just about everything in their Winnebago.

[01:11:22] Emily: So yeah. So, everything is just resources to be used up.

[01:11:27] Erica: Yeah. I think that's more part of it is that like, they don't value anything, including life. I don't think that they would at all enjoy doing the Only Lovers Left Alive vampire situation which let's be honest. They didn't either.

[01:11:46] Emily: Yeah. Sorry, Jim. I mean, that movie was cool, but yeah.

[01:11:49] Erica: Oh yeah. I mean, it was a movie about ennui that really got that feeling across. Absolutely. It's like you, you nailed it. You got me.

[01:12:00] Emily: Yeah.

[01:12:01] Jeremy: I mean, I wonder if being an eighties movie, if you know the vampires as social commentary, along with the sort of, we see the oil pumps and everything, they just feed off of everything. They're just constantly sucking the literal lifeblood out of everybody and everything and destroying everything as they go from bars to hotel rooms to Winnebagos. They just take and destroy all the time. So, I'm wondering if, that's meant to be the metaphor for vampires in this is they don't care and don't care about anything. And Caleb wants to go back to his, in his nice Okie family.

[01:12:38] Erica: Yeah. Like you said, we don't see anyone may be as poor as them, but there's no one in this movie who's like really of any type, like with any kind of station at all. Like not the cops, not his family, like they have horses, but like, I think being a country veterinarian puts you at a safe place, but not a great place

Emily: Where you're comfortable.

[01:12:57] Erica: Yeah.

[01:12:57] Jeremy: Even the one cop in the train station who is dressed sort of nicely, still as a weirdly bandaged up hand that they never explained a lot of emphasis that I'm having that I guess is like, he's earned, he's feeling this urge to drink blood, but they, uh, come back to that cop.

[01:13:15] Erica: Yeah. I feel like everyone's dirty in some way. Like even to his dad and sister are like dusty, you know, like, no, one's totally physically clean in this movie in a way that I think really works for it. And I think that's where like they managed to skirt the class thing where it's not like these guys are poor and therefore bed because like, they definitely victimized plenty of poor people.

[01:13:38] Emily: Yeah. And then there's also an angle of it which can be read as vilifying drifters. They're essentially a drifter family that is trying to make ends meet and, they also happen to be vampires, but there's another version of this movie that could be really interesting, which is that they are trying to make ends meet. And they're not like psychotic killers that are, blowing up shitkicker heaven or whatever as fun as that is to watch.

[01:14:06] Erica: Yeah. I think there's something to be said that this is a movie about people who don't work at, or leeching off the America during Reagan’s rule.

[01:14:14] Emily: Yeah. And then, and maybe if we're looking at the, uh, more historical racial connotation, you have what-

[01:14:23] Jeremy: I was thinking we're, we're back to talking about how Regan shapes, horror movies, the last conversation we had about that was Child’s Play with the, when we talked to Daniel Kibblesmith about that, how there's so much like, Reagan, economics, and poverty and stuff in that movie has this sort of like a weird central thing, which of

[01:14:42] Ben: That’s a lethal weapon in Child’s Play.

[01:14:45] Emily: Yeah. Well, I was just saying like, especially with the exoticism of vampires and then the fact that these vampires are drifters were getting into, maybe some, derogatory views of Roma people.

[01:14:55] Erica: I've wondered about that with movies from, I guess not necessarily that period, because like, I guess the two big ones would be like Thinner and Drag Me to Hell, like, did America ever have a like, quote unquote problem with that?

Cause it's such a weird trope in American horror to be like, ah, we've got a problem with these roving bands. And it's like, what's that thing that happened here? Or did you just read a story somewhere and just like put it in Maine?

[01:15:25] Jeremy: I mean, we did have hobos, like that's, you know, that's different,

[01:15:29] Erica: But that’s not the Roma, you know? They always do like, these Eastern European groups of Throw little circuses and things, and it's like, that's the thing we ever…

[01:15:42] Jeremy: I think it's very, it's very big and like British and Irish cinema too, which, I mean, they have more

Erica: Well, they had travelers.

Jeremy: Yeah, travelers, I mean-

[01:15:49] Erica: Yeah, that’s a thing there.

[01:15:52] Jeremy: I think part of why it's so prevalent in American cinema is not that we ever had it, but that like Americans are so like into owning things, land and houses and things like that, that like the idea of these people who don't own anything and don't belong anywhere. It's just like, it's just an affront to you know, American capitalism.

[01:16:14] Emily: And then you have the opposite end where people are fetishizing it, yeah.

[01:16:20] Erica: Yeah. It was funny. Cause like we have like regular carnies and like, there's plenty of stuff about carnies being untrustworthy. So, it's just always funny to me to like add this racial aspect that is not a part of the American version of the thing.

[01:16:33] Emily: Yeah. People were settling and stuff, of course you had any number of people, but I don't think it was the same sort of thing. Everybody in America at that time that wasn't a native American was of a drifter and they were not even, in the land that they were from, they were just drifting around trying to like settle somewhere. Maybe the fact that they tried to settle it all, I don't know, but this is, it's an interesting conversation.

[01:16:57] We do have a lot of stories about like, you have, the, Something Wicked This Way Comes with the autumn people, who are supposed to be scary and magic. And that's also like such a big thing in the fifties when you had like fifties horror stories and stuff and all the, Twilight Zones.

[01:17:13] Jeremy: The one thing that I is interesting to me about this that I think is sort of unique to America and American horror and stuff like that is the sort of like wayside highway system, like series of crimes that make up this movie that like, there's just all these, little spots in the middle of nowhere where crazy shit happens.

[01:17:32] And, you know, nobody ever knows about it and this bar burns down and all these people die and nobody knows why. Um, because you know, it's, it's out in the middle of fucking nowhere off the highway. That's a very like unique thing to America, as far as, you know, horror stuff is concerned because we just have these long stretches of nothing where, you know, people disappear and things happen.

[01:17:54] Emily: Yeah. Truck routes and stuff. This shit happens out in the, the shipping lanes.

[01:17:59] Jeremy: That stuff's always interesting to me. Well, generally, what'd you guys say, would you recommend people check this movie out if they can find it?

[01:18:10] Emily: Yeah,

[01:18:10] Ben: Yeah it’s uh, you know, it's very fun. It's uh, if you're a fan of eighties movies, if you're into all vampire movies and all the fun they can provide, which again, Paxton and Henriksen bring in the fun in spades.

[01:18:24] Emily: Yes, absolutely.

[01:18:25] Jeremy: I think it makes a very interesting, counterpoint to Lost Boys because like Lost Boys is so coastal and California and like, even if they are bullies, but they are like fun for the most part in that. You want to go hang out with the cool kids that are vampires and these vampires not cool. They’re psychopaths. These are the fly over state vampires. But yeah, I definitely think it's worth watching. With that in mind, uh, is there anything we would recommend other than this, the people check out if they did enjoy this movie?

[01:18:58] Jeremy: Erica, is there anything you would recommend to people?

[01:19:01] Erica: In general, I feel like, I think a lot about there's like a specific type of like eighties movie that on the surface seems incredibly stupid. And then it just has this like crazy message, like Return of the Living Dead, which is all about like, oh, we could die at any moment because the fucking Cold War is going on. And like, nothing matters. And, the government doesn't give a shit about anybody, but mostly it's like teens running around, being topless. Or like The Stuff, which is ridiculous and about killer yogurt. But it's also about like, marketing and how companies don't give a shit. And they're willing to kill you to make a buck. Yeah, I feel like the big three Larry Cohen movies, like The Stuff, Gold Told Me To, and Q: The Winged Serpent are ones that like, I always want to bring up.

[01:19:47] Jeremy: Awesome. Emily, you got anything to recommend for this one?

[01:19:50] Emily: I would heartily recommend, also a vibe movie, one that we've covered before, which would be A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Uh, if you like a vampire movie with a vibe, but maybe a little bit more of a message and less of a disaster, definitely check that one out. Also has oil stuff., And, sort of middle of nowhere location. The movie is set in Iran, but it's filmed in Bakersfield. So, you know, comme ci comme ça. But yeah, it's a fantastic movie.

[01:20:23] Ben: It's set in Dark City.

[01:20:26] Emily: Or Bad City. Bad City, Iran.

[01:20:31] Ben: Oh yes, in Bad City. Which I swear, I wouldn't normally be this like anal retentive about just, I just love in that movie, how that whole city is just like this universe of just terribleness out unto itself where people should not be.

[01:20:44] Jeremy: Full of bodies in the front.

[01:20:46] Ben: There's just a pit full of dead bodies!

[01:20:49] Emily: Yeah. And you just, they built a bridge over it.

[01:20:51] Ben: It's an awesome movie though. Great recommendation. Y'all should definitely see it. And then listen to the episode we did on it.

[01:20:59] Jeremy: For sure. Ben, what would you recommend?

[01:21:02] Ben: So, if you want something, that's very eighties and still a little got like horror and action but with more of a coherent, consistent message, I'm going to recommend you check out They Live starring Rodney [sic] Piper and Keith David.

[01:21:21] Erica: Yay. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely one of those, like “I know writers who use subtexts and they're cowards!” movies.

[01:21:30] Jeremy: Yeah. That hour long fight scene between Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper is a cinematic masterpiece.

What I'm going to recommend is actually tangentially connected to this in that, uh, it is written by one of the, the stars of this movie, Joshua John Miller, who is a little kid in this, but he's continued to be an actor and a writer as well. Recently wrote an acted in a movie called, uh, The Final Girls, uh, which is a sort of horror pastiche, uh, which is about a, girl whose mom was scream queen girl in a very Friday the 13th-esque movie clearly not Friday the 13th for legally distinct reasons.

She gets sort of pulled along to this event where they're screening the movie. Her mom is dead and tragically gone and, you know, she is not sure about going to see her mom in this movie and through various machinations, they end up getting pulled into the movie. And so, they're sort of in this Friday the 13th movie where she is has this weird chance to reconnect with her mom as this character in the movie. And also there, you know, trying to figure out how to avoid dying at the hands of their, uh, legally, not-Jason stalker.

But it's a, it's a fun, like take on horror stuff that also has this weird emotional core. And it's also got a great cast. It's got a little Adam DeVine in there, you know, want to chuckle a bit and us to young actors too. Nobody doesn't like Adam DeVine.

On that note, let's go ahead and wrap this up.

Erica, can you let people know where they can find you and your work online or out in the world?

[01:23:06] Erica: Twitter, Instagram, Threadless, Patreon @EricaFails. I also actually, I also do a podcast with previous guests, Matt Wilson, and Benito Cereno called Friends ‘Till the End. We talked about the Chucky TV show and now we've started in on the movies. We actually also just did Child’s Play like last week.

[01:23:26] Did I say the name of the podcast? It is Friends ‘Till the End.

[01:23:32] Jeremy: This is the end friend. Best one liner in a horror movie. Uh, as for the rest of us, you can find Emily @ MegaMoth on Twitter @ Mega_Moth on Instagram, and at MegaMoth.net.

Ben is on twitter @ Ben the Kahn. And on their website at BenKahnComics.com where you can pick up all of their books, including the brand-new Immortals: Fenyx Rising graphic novels from Great Beginnings. And you can order the GLAAD award nominated Renegade Rule graphic novel.

And finally, from me - you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at my website@jeremywhitley.com, where you can check out everything. And of course, the podcast is on Patreon at Progressively Horrified. Our website, ProgressivelyHorrified.transistor.fm and on Twitter @ ProgHorrorPod, where you can come yell at us for all of our wonderful bashing of movies that you love or praising of movies that you hate.

And speaking of loving to hear from you, we would love for you to rate and review the podcast wherever you're listening to it now. It helps us reach new listeners. So, we would greatly appreciate that. And thank you again, Erica so much for joining us. It's been a ball

[01:24:36] Erica: This has been really fun.

[01:24:37] Jeremy: Yeah. And uh, thanks as always to Ben and Emily for joining me and thanks to all of you for listening and until next time stay horrified.