Blood Beat

2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

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Psychic ghost samurai summoned to a family gathering in a Wisconsin farmhouse to start murdering people and turn everything glowing blue? Sounds like Christmas to me.

This whacked-out 1983 movie is our unlikely favorite holiday pick of the month so far. Kind of lost until it was re-released properly by Vinegar Syndrome, this visual wonder was thrown together by a bunch of amateur filmmakers and non-actors. And they accomplished something so bizarre and nonsensical that we couldn’t take our eyes off the screen. Enjoy!

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Blood Beat (1983)

Episode 373, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Here we are into week three of our Christmas Horror Marathon, our annual tradition that I always love. I have to say, the first two, if you listened to those episodes, I wasn’t too wild about So, Especially the last one we did.

Not very good. Yeah, so, um, we have something picked for Christmas, uh, week that we’re both pretty excited about. Yeah. It’s a new horror film. Uh, so, this week I was like, why don’t we go back to something that I think we’ll both At least have some fun with. I went back through some old notes and I noticed that we had this thing marked down as a Christmas horror movie.

And I think you and I had exchanged a message about it at one point. You might have even sent it to me saying, This looks wacky, we should do it sometime. And so I dug that out and I sent it to you and you didn’t object. And so Here we are, doing the absolutely insane 1983 Blood Beat, written and directed by, how’s

Craig: your French, Craig?

I’m not, I have no French. I have

Todd: no French either. Fabrice Ang Zafiratos. Okay. Zafiratos doesn’t really sound French, but, uh, what do I know? I don’t know French, so. Alright, so, um, I’ve never seen this movie before, and, uh, my understanding is it was one of these kind of lost VHS type movies that had gone to video, mostly, and, uh, was most, more or less forgotten, and then got picked up by Vinegar Syndrome not too long ago, and It’s just so much fun.

How about you, Craig? You ever seen this before?

Craig: No. I don’t recall ever hearing about this. I don’t recall reading about it. You sent it to me and I had a couple of other movies in mind, but nothing that I was like dying to do. And when I read the description, I’m like, okay, that sounds bananas, like surely it will at least be.

Fun to talk about. I don’t know. This is one of the most bonkers movies I have ever seen. Like, it’s just, it defies everything. Like, I, honest to God, I have no idea. What was happening in this movie, or why? Nnnnnno idea. Oh yeah,

Todd: but I have to tell you, I was in trance the whole time. I don’t know what your feeling is, but me watching this, I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen, it was totally bonkers, I was confused, I didn’t care.

It was at times hilarious, at times surreal, at times laughably bad, like acting wise and things. But man, it had heart. It had something. Somebody put a lot into this movie, let’s just put it that way. And the cinematography at times is really, really inventive. And then there are like, whack a doodle visual effects.

Oh boy. Screams 80s. I don’t know.

Craig: No, I don’t know much of anything about it. I meant to go back and review the trivia, and I forgot. I know there’s not very much. Like, I think they filmed it in the filmmaker’s house or something. I don’t remember. Oh yeah, that’s true. This is one of those times where it’s really unfortunate that we live so far apart and can’t watch these movies together and talk about them immediately afterwards like we used to.

Because immediately after this movie I could have talked about it all day. Right? So many things to say, but now it’s been like a week, uh, over a week maybe. No, that’s not true. I just watched it a few days ago, but I don’t really remember much of it. I just remember it being crazy. I can’t recall ever watching.

A movie before and so many times saying, What? What? I had no idea

Todd: what was happening. You’re right about the IMDb summary being pretty nuts. A young woman accompanies her boyfriend to his family’s rural Wisconsin home for Christmas. Where the spirit of a Japanese samurai begins wreaking havoc on them.

What? Why?

Craig: So

Todd: many questions. I know. I would add, uh, that the samurai somehow has some psychic connection with this woman who masturbates a lot.

Craig: Oh boy, there’s all kinds of weird things going on here. It’s so strange.

Todd: So, the movie started out as the brainchild of this writer director, Fabrice Ange Zaffaritos.

I’m just gonna call him Zaffaritos. Okay, sounds good to me. For short. God, it sounds like a Greek name, but wh whatever, whatever. We’re a multicultural world now. Anyway, he is most definitely French, and he was, uh, studying in the U. S. at the time, and, uh, he had a girlfriend. She was from Wisconsin, they were living around there, he had this idea while he was out walking with her to make this movie, and he had a filmmaker father back home and was able to secure financing for it to shoot it on 35mm Panavision.

Hired a really, uh, A good cinematographer. The cinematographer unfortunately thought that this was going to be straight to video, and so he deliberately shot it in a four by three aspect instead of taking full advantage of the four of the widescreen of the 35 millimeter. Ah-Huh? It looks, it has the idea, it has the impression of a movie that is just made up as you went along

Um, it’s certainly with stars, many non-actors. Uh, I was not surprised to hear that the older couple in the movie, Kathy and Gary, whose home this takes place at, are a real life couple. Uh, and Kathy actually painted those paintings. She’s a bit of a painter, and she painted the paintings based on inspiration from the script.

Which is totally whack a doodle, and the director himself admits doesn’t make much sense, and he didn’t really care. He was going for visual poetry. One could say that’s a very European sensibility. And although he admits that he and his girlfriend were high when they came up with the idea for the movie, both he and the cinematographer have interviews on the special edition of this, uh, the DVD version of this that Vinegar Syndrome put out.

They talk at length about the planning. Uh, and storyboarding that went into this. So, although you might find some people online that claim that the director says he was high the whole time he was shooting this, uh, the director and cinematographer very much, uh, claim otherwise. That this was carefully planned out, and they both admit it doesn’t make much sense.

And in that respect, it kind of reminds me a little bit of a Giallo movie, you know? Sometimes we just watch these and we just get a general feeling and there’s no plot or it’s a little nonsensical and, uh, But, but there’s so much style and you just kind of roll with it. But this is like, you take that and you mix it with an 80s slasher that, you know, God low budget weird terrible acting crazy special effects.

I’m at a

Craig: loss Yeah, I’m at a loss. I don’t know what to say about it. Everything about it is weird We could talk about how weird the score is like it starts. I like the

Todd: score, but it’s

Craig: weird Well, it starts out with this weird synth score. Yeah, and then throughout the music there is just a Classical music blaring at you to the point where you can really only hear about half the thing any of the people say.

Yeah. There are some scenes that I, I had to turn on the subtitles. Yeah. Um, there was a scene particularly at the end, it was like the climactic scene, like, where I’m expecting To be told what is happening! And still, no? I’m like, oh well, I just can’t hear it. I’ll, I’ll turn it up, and I, like, so I’ve got it blaring in my ears.

I still can’t make out what they’re saying. And so then I put on the subtitles, and I’m reading the subtitles, and they kind of are like, In English, but I don’t really understand what’s happening. And it seemed to me that whoever did the subtitles couldn’t really catch it all either. So like, it was just kind of bits and pieces.

Oh my God. It’s so weird. Okay. So you’re right. So it’s Gary and Kathy and they live in the country and he is a very like mountain man kind of guy. He’s. He’s always in coveralls. He’s got a big scruffy beard, but you know, he just seems like a normal kind of country guy. Then he’s married to Kathy who is weird.

Like this, this woman is just straight up weird from the beginning to the end. I’ve known people like this. And like, things are revealed kind of about her, but just so casually, like off handedly. Like, she’s just acting really, really weird for a while, and then somebody just casually mentions her psychic powers.

What? She has psychic powers? What? It’s so

Todd: bizarre. Yeah. But she also paints. She also has a

Craig: studio. And I, I’m impressed that she painted that stuff. I mean, I mean, it’s, it’s weird. I mean, even her paintings are weird. They’re, they’re just like, just big kind of swaths of color on these big canvases. But I mean, they look good.

They look better than something that, that I could do. Gary’s hunting this family. Loves hunting. Yeah. Hunting is their favorite. What they talk about. And they go hunting at one point in the movie and they take their hunting so seriously. Like I used to hunt and I haven’t for a long time, but I used to deer hunt, which is what they are doing here.

And I never did it like that. It wasn’t like some kind of fricking tactical maneuver. It was when you deer hunt, you go and you sit under or in a tree until a deer happens upon. Yeah. You’re not like army crawling through the forest. No.

Todd: Ridiculous. You’re not shooting a deer that are running full speed in front of you across the way,

Craig: right?

Well, you’re right. No, typically not. I mean, sometimes, but gosh. I’ve also never been in a hunting party that includes people with both bow and arrows and shotguns. Those are different seasons. Somebody’s breaking the law.

Todd: How’s that gonna work anyway? Oh,

Craig: God. Anyway. So there, uh, it’s Christmas. That’s the only Christmassy thing about this movie is that it happens to be. Christmas. Their kids, actually they’re not, it’s not their kids. Uh, it’s Kathy’s kids. I don’t know where their dad is, but Gary’s not their dad. He’s just her boyfriend.

And it seems like, maybe she goes through boyfriends a lot? Like, she like, She seems like the type. Uses them until they’re annoying and then she sends them on their way? Or something? I don’t know, but it seems like this guy’s been around a lot. But in the very beginning he proposes to her and she’s like, No!

No! No, I will never marry again. Yeah. It’s very dramatic, and then that’s Forgot about that. Okay, well, whatever. I don’t even remember, it’s so stupid. He’s full of consternation. Yeah. So, their kids, Dolly, a girl, and Ted, a boy, show up. And Ted, without having forewarned them, brings home his girlfriend, Sarah.

As they’re walking past Kathy to get into the house, Kathy and Sarah have like Just a weird moment. Like they stop and like stare at each other, like they’re both intensely. It’s really weird. Like strange closeups on their eyes and Kathy’s almost like squinting at her, like staring her down. Super strange.

It was like

Todd: house by the cemetery style. I

Craig: closeups. Wasn’t it? And then, like, my next note is, why is Kathy so weird? Like, she does these Oh, uh, the boy, Ted, is like showing, uh, Sarah around, and she, she’s like, Ooh, all these paintings are neat, or something, and he’s like, Yeah, my mom does them, and they’re everywhere, like, they’re all over the house.

He says, she paints, uh, like she’s hypnotized. Mm hmm. And then Kathy, I don’t remember who she’s talking to, but she says that she knew Sarah was coming. Right. Mind you, this is a person she didn’t know existed. Yeah. But she knew she was coming, and she has a weird vision that, like, you’re gonna have to tell me what this is called.

I feel like it’s like when they reverse the negative or something. Yep, yep. So it’s like a reverse, like, the colors are all funky and weird, and she hears a baby cry. Oh God, I don’t even know. And then, and then Sarah’s talking to Pete, like this is, or Ted, her boyfriend. This is all happening, you know, in minutes, but she’s like, They’re in the bedroom.

Yeah, they’re in the bedroom. And he, he starts making out and like feeling her boobs and like gets her boobs out. And she’s like, no, no. And he keeps going and eventually she pushes him off. Mom, how do you

Todd: feel, huh?

Craig: I don’t know, I just feel kind of weird. What do you mean? Well, I feel like she, she knows everything that goes on inside of my head.

I don’t know. She reads everything in my mind. She scrutinizes me. Scrutinizes you? I’m sorry. It’s stupid. I must be tired.

It’s like I feel she’s in the room right now. In the room with us. Oh, come on, Sarah. She’s downstairs in her studio painting. I just feel it, Ted. I don’t know. Now apparently we find out later that at least the daughter knows that the mother can read minds. Are we to believe that Ted doesn’t know that?

Because he tells her she’s acting crazy. Yeah.

Todd: I’m not sure. That’s really never explained. There’s just a lot of classical music going on. Lots of close ups on mom’s paintings and Buddha statues. And mom is in the And

Craig: samurais. Were they all Buddha

Todd: statues or were they I don’t think there was a single samurai in that whole bit.

You know, I got the Buddha stuff. Mom seemed like the type of person who’s gonna light incense and have Buddha statues around, uh, wear big shawls and paint. And there’s a lot of her doing that. And we get random cuts throughout the whole movie. In odd places of the Buddha statues with like lights flickering on them and stuff like that.

And I’m not even sure where the Buddha statues are. I think there might be one in her bedroom. There is one in her bedroom. And there might be one or two in mom’s studio. And for a little bit I kind of thought maybe there was some connection between, like, like this was some sort of like mystical telephone, you know, that mom was It’s about channeling through the Buddha statues

Craig: like a baby monitor.

Yeah,

Todd: exactly like a baby monitor.

Craig: Oh boy. I don’t know. But Uncle Pete arrives. Okay, let’s just throw in another character who’s here for like ten minutes and then leave. But Uncle Pete arrives and all of them except Kathy. Go hunting, and it’s really strange. This

Todd: was so cool, like there’s this great shot of the four, of four horses being ridden.

You know, they’re riding horseback, coming over the hill like the Magnificent Seven. Yeah. I did not expect that kind of grand shot there, and this beautiful score behind it that kind of works. And then, I realized after they stopped and hitched up the horses, they had four horses for five people. Where did that fifth person get

Craig: that?

I mean, especially if they’re small. Do you think it was

Todd: Ted? Maybe Sarah was writing with Ted or something like that. Anyway, Sarah says to Ted, Are you still mad at me? And he’s like, Nah, it doesn’t matter. And, I guess, Ted is like The most chill dude. Like, throughout this whole thing, Ted is the guy who’s just like, Eh, it doesn’t matter.

Eh, don’t worry

Craig: about it. Eh, man. Mom, it’s nothing. He’s just running around in his tube socks like, it’s fine. Even, even when strange shit starts happening, he’s like, yeah, I’m gonna play Monopoly. That’s

Todd: right. I do though, I do wonder why they bring Sarah hunting though. I mean, she is obviously Uncomfortable with the guns.

She’s uncomfortable seeing the deer carcass that, uh Gary had been carving out in front. She said something about guns earlier. As they’re going through the woods, she seems to be kind of expressing her displeasure about the whole idea of what they’re doing. Anyway, it goes about how you’d expect. Like you said, they’re going through Rambo style.

Especially Dolly, who looks pretty badass with her, uh Headband on, tearing through there. She was one of them who had the, uh, the bow and arrow, right? I don’t know. Which was fully notched as they were climbing around and crawling through the woods. Anyway, uh, you know, they kind of come up to a deer and it’s sort of running in front of them.

And it looks like they’re all about to shoot it. Right, like

Craig: four of you are going to shoot it? There won’t be anything left. Oh god, it’s so weird. Like, I don’t know, like are they going to call it? Like, got it. Oh boy. You know, we didn’t even talk about that deer hanging on a tree in the front yard. And it’s funny to me because that was so unsettling for her.

I guess she must be a city girl. Oh, for sure. That feels like home to me. During deer season in my town, you’ll just see them strung up around town. It’s like Christmas decorations or something. But anyway, so, uh, Sarah at the last minute, and of course this is, we can’t describe it. It’s all shot very strangely with really weird angles and strange close ups and really weird cuts and But as the deer runs by and they’re all fixing to shoot it, she screams to scare, she’s like, and scares the deer away and then she starts running.

Where is she going? What is she running from? Is she afraid they’re going to shoot her? Because she scared the deer away? I don’t understand. So she just runs and Ted’s chasing her. And then she runs into a bloody man who is like bleeding from his chest or

Todd: abdomen. Yeah, there’s like guts hanging out of his

Craig: stomach.

And he immediately falls dead. But either he or the director made the wrong choice to have him fall dead with his eyes open because he continues to blink. They’re laying there talking about him being dead. So they go back and Sarah asks Ted to take the paintings out of her room, cause, uh, they make her feel weird or something.

And Kathy tells Ted that she doesn’t think she can live with Gary anymore. Who cares? Why are you telling your son this?

Todd: I love Gary, but I love my work. I really don’t know what to do. And then,

Craig: and then she says, and that girl you’re with, I don’t, I don’t know, there’s something weird about her. I’ve seen her before.

And she’s like, I’ve seen her before. I know her. What? Yeah. And then there, there had also been something when Ted first showed Sarah her room, she was drawn to a picture of a young girl. Yes. Spoiler alert, this is never explained. I have no but it, it means something because it comes back later. I was convinced And I feel like this would have been a better story because it would have been super gross.

I was convinced that she was like a long lost daughter. Oh! Like, Kathy had had another kid. Or something. But that wouldn’t make sense because she and Ted are about the same age. I don’t know. Yeah. And I have no idea what that was a picture of. Okay.

So then, Kathy is painting, and she has a weird Spasm. Yeah. Like, her hand, with the paintbrush in it, starts shaking as though she is fighting for control of it. Yeah.

Todd: Like. And horrified by it at the same time. Mm. Horrified, but

Craig: not. shocked? Like, maybe this happens sometimes? And meanwhile, Sarah is up in her room, and it’s in bed, it’s like, she’s lit by moonlight, and she looks over the side of her bed, and there’s a big trunk there, and she opens it, and it is full of samurai stuff.

Like, a samurai outfit, and a sword. I knew that she would cut herself on it, which she does, and bleeds, and then there, she has like a flash of an image of a little girl with the

Todd: sword also cutting herself Was the same little girl from the picture? I think so. I think it was the same girl from

Craig: the picture.

Then, all of a sudden, there’s a POV shot coming towards the house. And I think that this is Samurai POV, but I don’t know. Cathy is still, like, freak painting. Ehh. And Gary and Cathy have a fight, and then they’re all together in the living room, and they’re like, they’re worried about Uncle Pete. Because he went to get some beer, but he hasn’t come back and they’re all like, Oh, no, he’s fine.

He’s fine. Pete knows these roads like the back of his hand. Meanwhile, when we had seen Pete coming, he was flying down that highway. Didn’t his truck take air

Todd: at one point? I think so. And then later we see Uncle Pete’s car by the side of the road and I guess his tire blew out. Is that, is that what’s supposed to be, supposed to have happened?

Craig: I thought that he ran off. The road mm hmm, which wouldn’t surprise me the way that he drive that we’ve seen that he drives And I think they had already been drinking. I don’t know about that, but I do know that he was going to get more booze Yeah, so anyway, so he got in a wreck and he’s trying to call Gary on the CB but he can’t get him and then there’s a POV behind him and Somebody approaches him and he sees the person approach him and he just goes He is very quiet.

His throat is very quietly slashed and he falls down and he’s dead.

Todd: Well, that’s all the kills in this movie. They’re all very quiet kills. Yeah. Oh, I

Craig: thought you meant that was the only one. I was like, no, it’s not. Cause then we cut to some random couple on a water bed. And I was like, what is happening?

Who

Todd: are these people? But you, you skipped one of my favorite parts. First of all, they told Sarah. That she couldn’t have found samurai gear or any trunk because there is no trunk in her room, so that’s weird.

Craig: And then, and she’s like, yes, huh, it’s right over there, and he’s like, uh, look, and she’s like That’s weird.

Todd: I want to think this was And then they just forget about it. I want to think this was part of a dream. I want to think that Sarah had a dream about a samurai that manifested itself. I’m not sure why she was

Craig: dreaming about it make? What difference does it make whether it’s real or not? It doesn’t make any sense either

Todd: way.

But when Gary comes home, Kathy is like totally in a state of consternation in her studio. And Gary comes into It’s funny how her studio alternately is a place where she doesn’t want anybody to come into. Or is a place where people can just wander in through the door and she’ll be like, Oh, hey, hi. How are you doing?

And he comes in to comfort her. Puts his arms around her, holds her, says, uh, Is everything okay? Are you doing all right? And then suddenly starts berating her. Kathy, what’s the matter? I

Craig: need help here. Wait, wait, wait. What’s the matter? What the hell is going on around here? Now tell me. Tell me, what’s going on?

I can’t tell you. I can’t. Dammit, Kathy, will you wake up? What do you think I am anyway? Some kind of a piece of plastic that you can just push around and then dispose of me when I’m all finished? Oh, I know that you’re very bright, and you’re very talented, and you’re very full of visions. But I’m not, Kathy.

I’m just a simple man. I need some attention, and I need some affection. All right, you don’t want to marry me? That’s fine. That’s fine! But don’t you treat me like some kind of a damn doll waiting for a bone, okay? Gary, don’t talk like that. You don’t understand. Understand? What am I supposed to understand, anyway?

For the last four or five months, I’ve done everything I can for you. Everything I can. But it’s your paint, and your brushes, and your damn visions. Well, I’m fed up with it. That’s right, even the good old boys get fed up. If you got the message, sweetheart, have a

Todd: nice night, okay? And then he storms out of the room.

Yeah, the plight of men. Uh, I love it.

Craig: Oh, God. And then, I Okay, so Yes, we’ve, we cut to this random strange, these people that we’ve never met before, in bed. But we’re also cutting back to the family. And right after the deer hunting incident, Sarah had gone upstairs. That’s When that happened and she found the samurai stuff and all that.

Then she comes back down for a while, and they’re all sitting together. I swear to God, for the, like, from 10 minutes ago where we are now until the next 30 or 40 minutes, the brother and sister are playing Monopoly on the floor. They’ll get up to, like, check on people and Sporadically, but like Sarah is clearly not well and he is not concerned about it at all.

Well,

Todd: you know Monopoly

Craig: takes a while. She, well it takes a really long time. She comes, Sarah comes down and they’re all sitting together. But Sarah’s acting weird and like Cathy keeps kind of staring at her. And it’s, she’s obviously uncomfortable. And then We cut back to these people, who are, the man is obnoxious, and he’s ordering his wife around, and they’re, they’re on a waterbed.

Todd: Hey, you’re the waterbed

Craig: guy. I know, it’s so funny. And she, you know, the wife is like, grumbling and talking to herself, cause the husband’s just ordering her around, like, get my tea. Oh, you forgot my orange juice. Tea and orange juice before bed? I’d never heard of that. What? Ha ha ha ha God. And so then we see samurai, we haven’t seen the samurai yet, and we won’t for a while, but we see the POV outside, and it comes in, and silently stabs the wife in the kitchen, through the gut, and she immediately falls down dead.

Now, at the same time, we are cutting back to Sarah, and something is happening. Ha ha ha ha And I hadn’t read about this movie yet. So I didn’t know what was happening. It becomes evident later that she’s coming. She is sitting on the couch with her boyfriend’s mother having an orgasm. Mm hmm. Yeah. And so obviously, there’s not much she can do in that moment, but as soon as it’s over, she gets up and excuses herself

Todd: upstairs.

Well, I think When she’s on the sofa and coming, I think is when Uncle Pete gets killed. Is it? During this whole sequence, when those two get killed, she’s on the bed in the dreamlike state, and she’s really going at it. Like, she’s like, hips in the air. Oh my

Craig: god, like, the director did not direct her to put her hands near her genital area.

So you can tell that she’s not masturbating with her hands. Now there is uh, like a blanket between her legs, and she is when we say thrusting, like if you were on a bed on your back and put your feet down and pushed up as far and as hard as you possibly could, like you’re getting a good one or two feet Off the bed, this is what she’s doing, and she is just writhing in what looks like sexual ecstasy that she almost can’t even handle.

Yeah. And that continues to happen. Did you say it was hot? It was not hot. There was nothing hot about this movie. Um, and it continues to happen, like the, so the obnoxious, uh, waterbed guy finds his wife dead, and then he sees the samurai, I think. I think this is the first time we see it. That’s when we see him, yep.

It’s always lit, really weird, like In reds and blues. Yeah. It’s kinda hazy.

Todd: Kind of glowing. Glowing. Yeah.

Craig: Sometimes there’s a The glowing isn’t right. I mean, it like, it’s, it’s supposed to be like it’s glowing. But it’s obviously an after effect. Like, it doesn’t look like it’s really glowing at all. Yeah. It reminds me of those, like, computer effects from like, The Lady in White.

Or we’ve seen, uh, we’ve seen these types of effects elsewhere. I assume They’re relatively inexpensive, and that’s why they get used because they don’t really look good. I suppose you could call it stylistic, but the execution doesn’t look great. Yeah. It looks pretty amateurish, I would say.

Todd: Yeah, it’s true.

It’s, it’s like a blue pulsing light. It’s like an, a blue glowing outline around him that has like four frames that cycles through. Yeah. That kind of pulse out and then pop back in, then pulse out, then pop back in. And then Uh, when it shows somebody else is like staring at them or the rest of the room or whatever, they do cast the room in like a blue light that’s kind of flickering, so.

They did make an effort. It’s kind of, I mean, it’s obvious that they were planning to do something like that in post, because they did make an effort when they were filming it to get all that blue in there. In the image sure it must have took a lot of storyboarding and effort, but what I can’t understand It’s a samurai who’s been stabbing everybody with the sword all this time Why does he back him into the sofa pull up a bow and arrow and shoot him?

Craig: I don’t remember the guy

Todd: gets away. He goes to the first gas station. There’s nobody there tries

Craig: to make a phone He’s in his car, but apparently the samurai can Chase him? Apparate? I don’t know. Because it follows him there and he sees it again and he gets back in his truck and he drives to the families that we know, their house.

And Cathy, she’s, what does she say? She’s like, I sense something horrible. And then the samurai shoots the man just outside their house. Like at their front door and like he bangs into the front door. They go and they see him and Dolly freaks out. The fireplace fire shoots up and this is what is happening.

Yeah, it’s poltergeist. The house starts to shake, the doors slam, the lights flash, the phone catches on fire.

Todd: Gary’s trapped in the kitchen. And food is flying at him? Yeah, it was like tourist trap. And

Craig: then knives are flying at him and he dodges the knives. This confused me so much. He dodges the knives, but then he gets hit with like a can of spaghetti or something and he falls down.

I was like. Did he just get killed by food? It turns out he’s not dead. He comes back later, but he’s out for the count for a minute. And they run up to Sarah’s room and her whole, the whole hallway outside her room is glowing electric blue. Um, when Ted tries to open the door, he gets like thrown back against the wall.

So he and Dahlia are huddled in a corner. And, like, apparently the samurai is still outside because then the sword comes through a window right in front of them. I don’t remember if they lock themselves in a closet or they get

Todd: locked They get locked. Yeah, they retreat to a closet and end up getting locked in.

And

Craig: then, Kathy is standing in the middle of her painting room, which nobody else is allowed in, and she gets really pissed off every time somebody walks in. Gary, I didn’t tell you you could come in here! And, like, somebody will knock on the door. Can I come in? No!

Oh my God. So she’s in that room and she is talking, like trying to communicate with the Samurai. And she’s like, Who are you? What do you want here? Answer me. Answer me! Answer me! What do you want? What do you want? Answer me! Don’t dare touch my kids!

My time isn’t over! Get out of here! Leave us alone! And the samurai, like, sticks his sword through the closet door, but then Cathy’s hands start glowing red. Yeah! They’re like sparking red. And then the whole house is glowing blue, and then everything just stops.

Todd: Yeah. Without explanation. I wondered if mom sent it away with her red hand magic or something.

I was having a blast during this whole thing. I thought this was just fantastic.

Craig: I get it. But like, I’ve seen this before. You know, you said like, it’s like a poltergeist. That’s basically what it’s like. We’ve seen this before. We’ve seen the house start shaking. We’ve seen food flying out of cabinets. I’ve seen it before, but without any explanation for what’s going on.

Even if it came later, but it doesn’t. I don’t have any idea what’s happening.

Todd: The implication is that it seems like Kathy kind of knows, but she’s completely unwilling to tell anybody. They all gather around her and around Gary in the kitchen and pick him up. And what’s going on here? Everything went crazy.

And Kathy’s like, I guess she won’t talk about it. I can’t talk about it. I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. Ted, I’m

Craig: your mother. And I think Dolly says, Mama, you don’t mean Yes. And that’s just it! Says it I have it in my notes. You don’t mean what?!

Todd: Says it three times. Mama, you don’t mean Mama, you don’t mean You don’t mean But she does You don’t mean what?!

She says, Ted, I’m your mother. He wouldn’t take me away from you and he would never take you and Dolly away from me. Who? Who?!

Craig: I was thinking, maybe their dad? But then, like, she, she, no I don’t think that’s right, I just feel like I’m running through the possibilities in my mind, and I don’t know, but it seems like, you’re right, it seems like she knows, and it seems like she at least thinks that Ted should

Todd: know. I think, at the very least, this is some spirit that, that uh, Cathy has had some run in with in the past.

And it keeps coming back to haunt her, or something like that, or it’s haunting her again after so long, maybe when she was a girl, maybe that’s her picture? As a girl, in that room, and her cutting her finger on the samurai sword when Sarah, you know, it could be a case of where this is like a loop type thing, where Cathy had the same experience Sarah had, right, of uh, coming across the samurai stuff, and as soon as she opened the box, she started having this psychic connection with the samurai, and the orgasms and all that thing, and maybe it awakened like the psychicness of her mind, and then somehow she put it away, and now it’s back.

And And it’s done exactly the same thing to Sarah.

Craig: Okay, you have put a lot more thought into this than the writers did. Oh, boy. But, but, okay, so, meanwhile, you know, they checked on Gary or whatever, but nobody has bothered to check on Sarah. She’s still up in the room that was glowing and they couldn’t get into it.

But, but then, Ted goes up there. What? Like, the whole house was just possessed by some kind of spirit. They were just being chased around by a samurai. He takes off his clothes and gets in bed. And has sex with her. Yeah.

Todd: What?! Oh, it’s so good. I love this part though. Cause I kind of almost saw what was coming.

And it’s really stylishly shot. And

Craig: to be fair, I said there was no, nothing was hot about this movie. This sex scene is kind of hot. It’s super hot. Mostly because of the way it’s lit. It’s kind of backlit. Yeah. So they’re kind of in silhouette.

Todd: It reminded me a little bit, if I got it right in my mind, that scene in Top Gun with Tom Cruise and what’s her name?

Is that similarly lit?

Craig: I can’t remember. Kind of. Yeah. It wasn’t nearly that artful. No. That’s true. Um, it was, it was kind of a, a single shot, you know, with their bodies horizontal, totally in frame. I feel like the talk about saying there were lots of different cuts and angles and stuff.

Todd: This is her sitting up on him.

So she’s kind of riding him basically. And we’ve got some guys playing harmonica by a fire out in a field. I love this, you know, the old harmonica trope, whenever you’re out in the American Midwest sitting around a campfire, someone’s gotten out a harmonica.

Craig: The guy, because they were playing harmonicas, I thought that they were going to be like stereotypical bums.

Yeah, me too. We’re, we’re just, we’re just the bums who live in the woods and get drunk and play the harmonica. Yeah. But, it dawned on me, they’re hunters. Like, they’re, they’re hunters, they’re camping. Right.

Todd: And once again, it’s kind of like the other two kills, where we, one goes to P, and we see this POV shot that’s clearly the samurai, and he approaches them, and then in some shots he starts to approach them, and we actually see him from behind, and they kind of back away and silently all get murdered, and every time one of them gets killed.

Kathy is like, aah, screaming on top of a, on top of a thing. Not Kathy, that’d be

Craig: terrible. No, sorry.

Todd: I’d put a whole new dimension to this

Craig: movie. But yeah, like, like, yeah, she orgasms every time the samurai kills one. Okay. It’s awesome. Next morning. Gary throws the human body in the truck. Like, they didn’t think that they should have taken care of that yesterday.

I kinda thought. Like, it’s not Oh my god, so he throws the human body in the back of the truck, but the truck won’t start, so he’s gonna have to take the horse. Where? Where is

Todd: he going? I don’t know, what’s he doing? Because he can’t he doesn’t bring the body with him. He leaves

Craig: without the body, and then he’s gone for a while, and then he just comes back.

No comment. About where he was, or what he was doing. And he comes back quickly. Doesn’t come back with anyone. Nope. Doesn’t come back with anything. Just leaves and comes back. And then, Dolly and Kathy have a weird convo. Like, Dolly walks into the room and Kathy’s staring at her and Dolly says, Don’t come into my mind.

And then they have a weird stare off. Yes! Oh, God. Like, like, Dolly is actively trying to keep Kathy from getting in her head. Yeah. So obviously she knows that she can. It’s

Todd: hilarious, this thing. They’re just staring at each other like, Oh, getting. More and more tense and their heads are shaking and it’s just the close ups between the two of them and their eyes and odd facial expressions.

I just loved it. It was so funny. It was

Craig: bizarre. I will give it that. I feel like if I had been enhanced chemically, I might have enjoyed it more. I was just, you know, stone cold sober on a Saturday morning.

Todd: If you’d been watching it with me, you would’ve enjoyed it more, I think.

Craig: Right, I think so. I think we would’ve laughed and talked and it would’ve been fun.

But Dolly tells Kathy, you need to tell Ted. But Kathy says, that’s up to you now. What? What are you talking about? You have to let us in. We don’t know. So then Dolly goes walking through the Technicolor woods. Again, it’s like reverse negative. And not even very good, like it’s so, it’s so, you can hardly tell

Todd: what’s happening.

Yeah, there’s no depth to it, it’s either red, completely red, or completely blue. It’s like that Predator POV type thing, except with less, um, uh, with less granularity. Just, uh, flat red, flat blue, nothing in between, so it’s kinda, probably the cheapest effect they could get, I’d imagine.

Craig: Right, so she walks into the Technicolor woods, and then, Ted is in the woods crying?

Why? What is he crying

Todd: about? I’m not sure, but there’s this chill rock music kinda going on behind them. At first I thought Dolly was being stalked, but like the music just completely doesn’t hint at that. Whereas before, the music was getting kinda cool. Like whenever the samurai was stalking somebody, there’d be this heartbeat.

Ba bum, ba bum, ba bum, ba bum, ba bum, ba bum. That was going on and on and on and on and on. Along with this great synth y type music, but not super synth y. Oh, I really like the soundtrack of this movie. But it does go all over the

Craig: place. It was interesting. Yeah, but it does go all over the place. But it was, I mean, it was interesting.

I’ll give it that. Dolly Runs into the samurai in the woods, and it speaks to her and says, again, you can barely hear it or understand what it’s saying. It says, come to me. And then Gary’s back. I don’t know where he was. He hears Dolly scream and runs into the woods looking for her. And all three of them, Gary, Ted, and Dolly, find each other and see the samurai.

And then the samurai disappears. And then it’s approaching them from the back. And then Gary hacks off its head with an axe. But it

Todd: It’s just clothes. Yeah, he just jumps up and swings his axe around blindly, which hits the samurai, but it’s just clothes. And the clothes collapse, and they look at the clothes, and And Dolly

Craig: says, Mom was right.

About what?! This answers nothing!

Todd: That there is a samurai? I don’t know.

Craig: I guess. Well, then we see that what the mom has been painting all this time is A samurai. Mm hmm. And it’s kinda cool. I liked it.

Todd: I wanted to know, Sarah should have been orgasming when they were getting approached by that samurai. Maybe the samurai

Craig: Maybe she was and we just didn’t see.

That’s true. Well, I think she only, like, came when somebody was killed. And none of them were killed. I guess. But Sarah watches them come back from her bedroom window, and Kathy tells Gary to burn a The samurai stuff. He’s like, I can’t burn it. It’s too important. I have to take it to the police first. Why?

What are the police going to do with a

Todd: samurai costume? Dolly’s like, Gary, mom is right. Burn it. It’s evil.

Craig: He’s like, no, I have to take, right. But then he’s like, I have to take it to the police. And they’re like, okay. And he starts to walk away and Dolly says, like she calls him back, Gary. And he comes back.

Bring me some candy bars. That’s it. It’s the best. What? Bring me some candy bars? Yeah. What is this

Todd: movie? But then, Sarah’s not there. Sarah’s up in her room, and uh, she stands up and walks around and uncovers the photo of the girl that was sitting on the desk, and her hand starts twitching over it. The music’s climbing in intensity.

You see her hand moving over this photo and suddenly the photo starts to burn. Mm hmm. What the hell? I have

Craig: no idea what that means. I have no idea, and Ted comes in and sees, and she looks at him like she got caught doing something, but she doesn’t stop doing it. Well,

Todd: she backs against a wall, eventually.

Well, he

Craig: comes towards her, I think, and she throws him across the room with blue light power. Yeah. And then this is where everything just goes f ing off the wall. Yeah. And I have no idea. I have no

Todd: idea. I have no idea either. It’s just a big mess. It’s like, big glue, like every other shot has that animated blue glowing effect in it.

Uh, it’s engulfing Ted. He starts glowing, everything builds, he flies back against the door. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or not. Right. Dad runs to the horse, I’m not sure why. But there’s lots of mumbling and voices coming from the door, so mom goes to check it out. And now Sarah’s in the armor, so I guess,

Craig: you know Sarah

Todd: is the samurai.

She is the samurai, so I suppose, like, the samurai wasn’t vanquished, uh, she’s Because of her psychic connection to it, when he swung that axe around, it just kind of jumped into her, I suppose. And maybe I think it was supposed

Craig: to be her all the time! Yeah, maybe Like, not corporally, but Yeah I mean, they had a connection.

They were clearly connected. It’s

Todd: like a spirit she awoke and could control. But she wasn’t controlling it, but she was kind of under the control of it at times, or at least.

Craig: But Cathy hears voices and sees, like, comes face to face with Sarah, and this was the part that I couldn’t hear at all, and I had to turn on the subtitles.

Here’s what I got from the subtitles. Kathy says, it’s you, or do you prefer dying this time? You chose hell, your youth, maybe health. You chose, again, I think that the, uh, people who are doing the closed captioning didn’t know either. You chose health, your youth, beauty. I took the oath. I know what you want, but you can’t destroy me.

It won’t work.

Todd: And at the same time, there are these like. Shots of like World War 2? Like flashbacks? Was it World War 2?

Craig: Or military? It totally looked like World War 2! Like airplanes and stuff! Yeah,

Todd: what was that? I don’t

Craig: know! It doesn’t make any sense! And, it’s something like I don’t even remember which one of them says this.

I think it’s still Kathy says, Well, Gary gets a bad headache. Pfft. Okay. And then, I think it’s still Kathy says, I don’t want you. Your power will protect you. No, this is the samurai. I don’t want you, your power will protect you. Then who does she want? What is I don’t understand. I don’t want you, your power will protect you.

You can’t destroy me, but she does? Uh huh. Like, Cathy just wins? Does she do something? What’s her glowing red hand power? Do they have like a glowing hand standoff?

Todd: That’s what it is. Well, she’s just kind of standing and convulsing in place with her hands out, and they’re glowing red, right? Against the glowing blue of the samurai.

I just assume that, yeah, she’s kind of pushing it back. Earlier, the Buddha’s, when we see the flickering of the Buddha statues, I remember at one point, the Buddha’s eyes were glowing red. So I wasn’t sure if the red, if it was kind of like this reversal, you know, normally red means evil. Maybe in this case, red was supposed to be the goodness and the blue was the evil of the samurai or whatever.

It appears

Craig: so, but it seems like, it seems like, I don’t even understand my notes now. It seems like they defeat it. And then, or Kathy defeats the samurai, and then Ted and Gary wake up, and there’s a huge choral score, and then the next note I have is the samurai kills Gary and Kathy. I don’t even remember that.

What happened? Did it just come back?

Todd: Well, the Carmina Burana bursts on, so it’s super dramatic, like you said. Gary runs in, and a sword flies out at him, and the samurai So like, it’s like the samurai tosses a sword at him, and I think kills him. And then the samurai has another sword that he pulls out. Ted is cowering against a wall,

Craig: and then But wait, when he when he kills when he kills Kathy She, like, falls down dead, and then the camera pans to her, and she’s Yeah,

Todd: crusty.

Frozen? Yeah, she looks, like, frozen or crusty, right? Like, maybe I don’t know, but very blue? I don’t know.

Craig: I don’t know! It was like she, it was like she was wearing, like, a clay mask, and it was, like, flaking off. It was really weird. Yeah.

Todd: Well, my favorite part here is as Ted is cowering against this wall, the door next to him slowly creaks open and Dolly wanders in like she just woke up.

Yeah. Then she kind of like, uh, what’s going on? Uh, you guys need any help? And then she kind of turns around and joins Ted and they both join hands and they’re both, you know, pulsing with this, I think it’s red, right? Is that the red?

Craig: Or is it blue? I think, yeah, no, it is red. In my notes, well first of all, it seems like Dolly kinda knows what she’s doing, but Ted doesn’t have any idea, so he just has this dumb look on his face, like, what is happening?

What am I doing now? And I don’t remember if they hold hands or what, but in my notes I have Ted and Dolly cross the streams. And that’s how they are able to defeat. I

Todd: guess they defeat the samurai with the combined power of their familial love or something like that.

Craig: I don’t know. And then they walk out.

Do do do do do. Like, uh, well, that was a nice visit.

Todd: So, so is Sarah dead now, I guess? Was she? I

Craig: guess? Who was Sarah? I, I mean, I, I will admit that. It was fun to watch because it was so weird. Like, just based on that, like, it is so odd. It is one of the most odd movies I’ve ever seen. So, as an oddity, it’s fun to watch.

Did I like it? I don’t know. I, uh, I don’t know. What I could say that I liked about it, aside from it was just so bizarre and strange. Would I recommend it? Yeah, sure. Like,

Todd: you kinda need to see it. Our listeners are gonna love this. We’re the kind of people who love this stuff. I’ll tell you what I loved about it.

I love the cinematography. I thought it was really impressive that this 25 year old cinematographer and this director, who was about the same age, gathered some money together and shot all this in W in Hyde, Wisconsin, out in the middle of nowhere, bringing together people who were non actors, who were just available.

Uh, there’s a stunt where, I think it was Gary or somebody flies out the window, and that was the director himself, who just literally just tossed himself out a window. They had no stunt

Craig: man. That was a dangerous

Todd: stunt. They had no yeah, right? They had no stunt man, they had nothing. Um, they just gathered together their resources, but they seem to, like I said, I think this movie has a very European sensibility to it, where things don’t necessarily need to make sense, they just need to give kind of an impression, have some style, there’s some theme there that I think He wants to do the old cop out thing, you know, where, well, you know, it just, there’s a lot of layers to it, but at the end of the day, just, you need to figure out what it means to you, you know, which I normally hate, but this movie doesn’t have, like, one central puzzle, you know, so it doesn’t feel like so much of a cop out.

The whole movie is, like, A whole bunch of different puzzle pieces that are from like 10 different puzzles, so they never quite connect. So, you can easily just throw your hands up in the air and go, You know what, I don’t care. I just thought it was a fun ride. And I was never bored through the whole thing.

I thought the music was great. I was also entertained by the amateurishness of some of the acting and a little bit of the production. But, uh, for what it is And compared to other things we’ve seen with similar backstories, the production value is surprisingly good. I think.

Craig: Yeah, uh, I guess. I mean, for I mean, it looks Kind of amateur, but I don’t know.

I’m not going to be overly critical. I’m sure they were working on a limited budget. You know, like you said, very limited crew and, you know, these are non actors for non actors, they weren’t really that bad. No, not really. The, the acting was really kind of fine. It was just very naturalistic. Kathy, I wonder if that woman is just a weirdo in real life because she was so weird in this movie.

Um, but it was, I mean, it was fine. The acting was fine, but. It’s, the oddity is, is what sells it for me. I, I don’t think I would need to watch it again. Even if somebody, even if a friend of mine wanted to watch it, I don’t think I’d be like, oh, I’ll watch it with you. I’d be like, oh, yeah, you should watch it and then we can talk about it.

I don’t think I need to see that again. Um, but I do think you’re right. I think that we have a lot of listeners. Uh, and you, our listeners are like us in that they, they enjoy finding something. That they didn’t know about, or, uh, had never heard of before. And I really enjoy that, too. So, I had never heard of this.

It was a huge surprise. It’s rare that I get to see a movie from this time period for the first time. And, you know, I love this time period. This was 1983. Um, the 80s were wacky. Yeah. I loved it, and I kinda miss it, frankly. Me too. So, so, yeah. I say for

Todd: sure, check it out. You know something else that just occurred to me?

This is the kind of movie that could so easily come off as pretentious, and it doesn’t at

Craig: all. No, I didn’t think it was pretentious. It just seemed like they were making a movie, you know what I mean? You know, and at the end, they did. They made a movie. They made a movie. It is. It is a movie. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It has characters who say lines. Um, it has special effects. It’s, it’s, it’s for sure a movie. So, but like, that’s what, that’s what I’m saying. Like, that’s what they wanted to do. They wanted to make a movie. They wanted to do this weird imagery. They had this weird idea for a story and they went for it. Good

Todd: for you.

Yeah. And it’s, it’s also a Christmas movie, right? It takes place during Christmas, the theme is

Craig: family. That’s true. Yeah, family coming home, coming together, fighting evil samurai with your psychic powers, as you do at Christmastime.

Todd: It’s sort of a shame that the, you know, the lights were not red and green instead of red and blue.

Then they could’ve really That would’ve been

Craig: nice. Hahaha! I, I will say, I don’t, what was the first Christmas movie we watched? I don’t remember, I had forgotten about all the creatures and I don’t remember what the first one was either. Black Friday. Black Friday. Black Friday. Mm. Yep. I will go on record as saying that this is my favorite so far.

Yes!

Todd: Me too. Me

Craig: too. But I’m really looking forward to next week, except I don’t want Christmas to be over. I

Todd: know, right? Gosh, it always

Craig: goes by so quickly. I know. But it’ll be good. You get to spend it with your family, which is nice. I get to spend it with my family, so. Anyway. One

Todd: more we. Yes. And hopefully we’ll go out with a bang.

Yeah, I hope so. Well, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. What a great Christmas gift to send someone over to our website and introduce them to our podcast, and they could search for their favorite horror movies. And, uh, see and listen to us blabber on and on about it.

We have a newsletter now you can join as well. For other people too. If you just go to our website, that’s ChainsawHorror. com, click on the link there, uh, to sign up. And uh, we just send out a little bit of weekly stuff, uh, some basic news, some thoughts about The movies that we’ve done and what’s coming up.

Also, if you want even more, become a patron, go to patreon. com slash Chainsaw Podcast. And, uh, for just five bucks a month, you can get behind the scenes with us. And there’s a lot more conversation about these movies and episodes happening there. Also on our public facing Facebook site, Twitter, and, uh, Instagram pages.

Find us at all those places, send us a message, let us know what you’re doing this Christmas and what horror movies you’re watching. Until next time, I’m Todd, and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

418 episódios

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2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

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