2 Guys And A Chainsaw

In what has to be one of our most contentious episodes yet, Todd and Craig spar over the final film in Lucio Fulci’s “Gates of Hell Trilogy”, 1981’s The House By The Cemetery. Is this a hidden gem? Or just a dumb schlocky mess? Listen and pick a side, then let us know YOUR feelings in the comments!

Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript

The House By The Cemetery (1981)

Episode 361, 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: Well, if you remember from last week, well, I guess if you were a patron, uh, you can hear us, uh, sort of spill over into our conversations after. The podcast is over, and uh, last week, well, most of our conversations after the podcast are over often revolve around, what are we gonna do next time?

Or at least they get to that point. It was my turn to pick this week, and I knew that I just was in the mood for something not particularly modern, something old school, something that might even be silly, something that might even be dumb, or even European. And so I knew Craig might hate whatever I proposed.

And so I was like, yeah, Craig, I’m probably gonna pick something you hate. And so Craig said, well, Please, could you just choose four of them and put them up to our patrons and let them decide? So, I picked four. In case you’re not a patron, you’re interested in the four that I picked. They were Neon Maniacs from 1986, where teenagers discover a band of homicidal monsters living under the Golden Gate Bridge, which I ran across fairly recently, 80s cheese.

Shock Waves from 1977, which is a Nazi zombie one that I’d been wanting to do for a while, starring Peter Cushing and John Carradine. I Drink Your Blood from 1970. Which is about devil worshipping hippies who get rabies after eating meat pies filled with dog blood. This is a grind Hehehehe This is a grindhouse classic.

I mean, I’ve seen the title everywhere, the poster and everything like that. I’ve been wanting to watch that for a while. And, uh, The House by the Cemetery. 1981. Lucio Fulci’s… Haunted house classic the third in his series of gates of hell his gates of hell trilogy I pretty sure that Craig would never pick any of these on his own So I put it up to the patrons and guess which one won the house by the cemetery 1981 by a pretty wide margin Craig, had you ever seen this before?

Craig: No, why would I watch this? 

Todd: No, by the way, was I wrong about any of these? Would you have ever chosen any of these? Or were you in any way hoping that somebody would pick one over another? No, they all sounded awful 

Craig: and I’m sure they all are. I don’t know why you are so fascinated. Oh God. 

Todd: Oh, I love awful movies. Notorious, awful movies.

Craig: Yeah, apparently like, uh, geez. 

Todd: They lead to some of our better episodes, I think. We’ll see. Alright, so I’m just gonna come right out of the gate, and I’m gonna say this is the second time I’ve seen this movie. I watched it for the first time fairly recently. I wanna say last year, and so this is the second time watching it, and I have to say, I enjoyed it more the second time than even the first time, and I’m just gonna go on record to say.

I actually really enjoyed this film.

Craig: I can’t imagine how you inspired yourself to watch this a second time. This was one of the most painfully boring movies I’ve ever seen. It didn’t make any sense. Like, it’s not even that it didn’t make sense, it’s just… Who, like, there’s nothing to it. It’s so stupid.

Like, every, every part of it is dumb. Like, you put all the parts together, and they make a movie, but… Come on. 

Todd: I actually thought this is one of the more straightforward of the Fulci movies we’ve seen, so far. Let me summarize 

Craig: this movie in ten seconds. A family moves into a house by a cemetery, A baby cries.

There’s a… A killer. It kills people. The end. That’s it. Like, it’s so stupid. Dr. Freudenstein, I feel like I need to talk quietly. I feel like now I’m… You, you may, you’re gonna have to explain to people why we’re talking quietly. 

Todd: Quietly right now because I’m afraid my, we’re recording this rather late, and I’m afraid my neighbors are going to complain if I laugh too loudly or I speak too loudly.

It’s like… close to midnight here, so I’ve got to be quiet about it. So I’m gonna try to restrain my laughter. I’m gonna try to speak slowly and seductively like this. If you’re an ASMR fan, you might enjoy this episode even more than usual. This is 

Craig: our ASMR episode. Yeah, okay. I wanted to hurt myself by the end.

From all that f ing crying. You know what I’m talking about, like, the incessant child crying through the whole movie. 

Todd: In the soundtrack? In, 

Craig: in the movie! Like, what movie did you watch? Through the whole movie.

Through the whole thing. 

Todd: Did you have some other YouTube video on loop in the background or something while you were watching this? No! 

Craig: Todd, I, I almost called you Alan. Alan, it was in the whole movie! Like, it was a thing. They commented about it at one point. Somebody said something about the, the crying.

And it happened the whole 

Todd: time. Well, I guess I was blissfully unaware of it. Maybe my old ears, or maybe because my television, because I actually watch it on television and I don’t have the headphones in, so maybe some of these, like, uh, more subtle sounds, uh, escaped me. I, you 

Craig: have, I’m gonna make you watch it again with earbuds so that you can be driven insane.

It’s incessant in the background. I can’t believe you, well, that, that’s my whole thing that I wanted to talk about. So maybe I 

Todd: just thought my neighbor’s baby was, you know, particularly colicky or something while I was watching this. Okay. 

Craig: So, so here are my notes. Okay. So here, yeah, I can’t like, that’s literally.

The biggest thing that I took away from this movie, so I don’t know what we’re going to talk about now. The movie 

Todd: opens. Craig, I’m so disappointed. Go on. That I didn’t like this? Are 

Craig: you kidding? 

Todd: I thought it was terrible. I thought it was terrible. It’s not fantastic, but you don’t go to a Fulci movie to looking for Hollywood level polish or anything like that.

I mean, you know what you were getting into, right, when we sat down to watch this? Fair enough, but 

Craig: you knew what I was getting into, and I don’t like these movies! I try to be nice about it. I try to find something good in them, and I just couldn’t. No, nothing. Like, okay, so we open. On a house by a cemetery.

Todd: There’s a house, and a cemetery, and then boobs. 

Craig: That’s what I thought. You stole my joke. Okay, so, house by, we open on a house by a cemetery. Tits McGee is looking for Steve. Steve? Steve? Steve running with her tits out. She finds Steve scalped and pinned to the door with a pair of sewing scissors. M’kay. And then the killer stabs Tits McGee through the head and the knife comes out of her mouth.

And it zooms in on her ring, because it’s gonna show up later, for no reason, it makes no difference, but we see it. And we see that like, the killer’s hands are messed up, and the killer drags Tits McGee out of the room, and into a door. 

Todd: Into a door in the kitchen, 

Craig: which then closes the door. It’s, it’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Leatherface lives in the basement, uh, and then it’s day, credits, title.

Those are my notes. This is the 

Todd: first You just stopped taking notes after that. This is the first, this is the first three minutes of the movie. Without going any further, don’t tell me that you didn’t find this intriguing. No, not really like you got tits you got your house by your cemetery So, you know that checks by the title and then a person gets murdered quite brutally Right in the beginning and dragged into the cellar.

Don’t you want to know? Alone, 

Craig: no that alone. Oh my 

Todd: god. No I what? Do you wanna have a horror movie anymore? Jesus . God, 

Craig: honestly, like I put the movie on and then Alan started talking to me. So I paused it and I like, you know, I took my headphones off and he walks over. I don’t remember. He was doing something behind me and he’s like, podcast movie?

And I was like, yeah. And it was Tits McGee. And he was like, Todd’s pick? I was like, uh huh.

Todd: Wait, what makes this any different? What makes this so far any worse than any other slasher movie we’ve seen? What makes this any worse? Your, your whole summary of this movie is exact, could be used for every Haunted House movie we’ve ever watched. Absolutely, absolutely. Or every slasher movie we’ve ever watched.

But this is 

Craig: boring, there’s nothing, like, it’s not clever, it’s not funny, 

Todd: it’s not Okay, wait a minute, no, I, I disagree. I disagree with you 100%. Okay, after this happens, a little girl looks out a window, and it turns into a black and white photo on a wall in New York. There’s this girl peering out this window of this black and white photo of this house that we’ve just seen, and now there’s a kid who’s just staring at it.

He’s got blue as hell eyes. Okay, he’s annoying. I’m gonna murder 

Craig: that child. I hate him. I hate. Him. His name is Bob. Who names are Kid 

Todd: fucking Bob? That’s, you know, the writer of the movie named his kid Bob. The kid’s real name is Giovanni Reza . That’s better. 

Craig: But the thing that infuriated me about this kid is anytime he opened his mouth, because this whole movie is dubbed fine, I’m used to these Italian movies being dubbed.

Not a problem. This is clearly an adult. Affecting a child’s voice. Mommy, 

Todd: what’s the matter? Mommy? Why does that girl keep telling me I shouldn’t go there? What girl? Mom. The one standing at the window in that house. Ah, I guess she had something to do. Let’s just say you never saw her in the first place, right?

Yes, I did. I saw her face, she was waving and I could read her mouth. And did she say anything to you? Yep. She said that I shouldn’t go over there. 

Craig: Why did you say that, Mommy? 

Todd: Fuck 

Craig: you, kid! I wanted to kill him. I wish he 

Todd: would die. All right, fair enough. He stares at the photo, and he says, Mommy, why does that girl keep telling me that I shouldn’t go in there?

And she’s like, what are you talking about? And he’s like, the girl in the picture, in the window. And the mom looks at the picture, and the girl is not there. You don’t think this is creepy? 

Craig: I’m not gonna let you talk me into appreciating this. You don’t think 

Todd: there’s no intrigue here? No, 

Craig: if I did, which I’m not sure that I do or not, it would just make me even more angry because nothing pays off.

Like, I guess you can, you can conjecture about what is going on here, but you never really know. Well, that’s the point. The other thing that infuriates me. Okay. So as it turns out, Bob’s dad, Norman. Is taking a new job where he’s taking over for some scientists who was studying suicide. What? I don’t know. I thought at some point they said he was studying suicide and that was ironic because then he committed suicide.

Like. 

Todd: Like a murder suicide. He slaughtered his mistress and then 

Craig: killed himself. Right. So he’s taking over. And so you re in like the dumb, annoying kid is like, Mommy, the girl says we shouldn’t go there. And the mom’s like, Oh no, but we’re going to go there anyway. It’s fine. Like it’s stupid. And so then.

Todd: The girl’s name is Lucy. Norman and Lucy and their kid Bob pack up their station wagon and they leave New York City to go to some little town in New England. They’ve rented this very same house in order for them to stay there while he picks up the pieces and tries to figure out what’s going on. It’s, it’s tenuous.

You don’t really understand. What exactly he’s supposed to be researching, but he’s 

Craig: fine. I don’t really care that it doesn’t matter. We know we have to get them to the scary house and that’s fine. Uh, it’s the exact same. Well, not exactly, but pretty much the same premise as burn offerings. Like, okay, you know, there’s a scary house.

We got to get this family and they’re fine. Don’t have a problem with that. And then we get to a new place that yeah. We need to talk about the girls and the mannequins, which I also, but the thing that bothered me the most was multiple times in the movie, somebody says to the dad, you’ve been here before I’ve seen you.

And he was like, no, I haven’t. Nope. Uh, no, not with me. And that never pays off. Like I have no idea why multiple people. Had seen him there before at some point I thought, Oh, okay. Well, that other doctor was out here having an affair. Like maybe this is like the mistress house and maybe that’s why he’s being shady about it, but they never explained that.

Do they? 

Todd: You’re right. This has never been 

Craig: like, they draw attention to it multiple times. Like, it seems like it should be central to the mystery, 

Todd: and it never pays off. At one point, one of the characters even says to him, Dr. Boyle, you will pardon my indiscretion, please. What was he so eager to, um, discuss with you back then?

Back when? When you came to visit him with your daughter, don’t you remember? Last October, I think it was. I never paid a visit to Dr. Peterson. In fact, this is the first time that I’ve set foot in this town. Are you sure? Yes, of course, positive. And then, I have a son, not a daughter. 

Craig: Easy mistake. That boy could be a girl.

Todd: It’s true. I mean, he’s clearly voiced by a girl. An adult girl. So, okay. So, yes. There are a lot of loose threads in this movie. A lot, Todd. They’re all 

Craig: loose threads. Nothing adds up. It bothers me because then, that stupid little girl. What’s that little girl? Her name is Mae. First of all, she speaks to Bob psychically.

From Boston to New York. And, and then as soon as they leave New York, we cut immediately to her standing with some woman in front of a store looking at mannequins and then one of the mannequins heads falls off, but 

Todd: striking green eyes. Yeah, almost looks, it’s a very odd looking mannequin. It looks like it’s, like, halfway realistic.

And then, you’re right, the head falls off, and it’s a bloody stump under there, and it rolls forward, and the girl screams. Todd. 

Craig: It drives me crazy. And then she 

Todd: just says, Wait, wait, wait a minute. I know that this 

Craig: pays off, but it, Grrrr! 

Todd: At this point in the movie, you’re frustrated? Or are you not intrigued?

At this point in the movie, not knowing what’s coming, were you frustrated or intrigued? I don’t know. I didn’t like it, Todd. I don’t know what to tell you. You didn’t like it? Because you needed to have every You’re not the kind of guy who has to have everything spelled out for him right in the beginning.

This is building mystery. Who is this girl? What is the deal with this house? Why do people think he’s been there before? What are they gonna find when they get there? And why is this girl warning him, the boy, not to go to the house? Which, of course, the kids don’t believe, and she’s communicating with them psychically.

Like, this is an interesting story. 

Craig: We’re making it sound more interesting than it was. It was just boring. It was just random cuts to random scenes of people that we don’t know. And like, oh, it’s artsy. 

Todd: Oh my God. 

Craig: It not. This happens all the time. It’s lazy. It’s lazy. This happens 

Todd: all the time in movies, Craig.

Of course, it’s not lazy. You don’t know what, what these people are. You don’t know their relationships. But later on the movie starts to piece the, put the pieces together. No, it doesn’t. That is the problem. 

Craig: No, it doesn not, it does not start together. Sometimes it doesn’t together. No, it doesn’t. . So they, so the random mannequin scene and then the, they arrive.

Todd: I can’t believe I’m gonna have to explain all this to you. Alright, go on. Oh my god. 

Craig: Like, I get the gist of it, but so much of it doesn’t make any sense. So they, they park, like, in the town square or something, and the parents leave the kid alone in the car. Which.

It’s a little jarring today, but I was left in the car alone with the doors unlocked many times, right? It was a busy street 

Todd: in a sleepy town. Yeah, but 

Craig: then the girl talks to him psychically again from down the street. And when the parents kind of, I actually kind of liked that shot, like the long shot. Of her.

It’s creepy as hell standing way down at the end of the street. I what 

Todd: want that? He’s, he’s sitting in the car and we just have a closeup on him and we hear this girl’s voice like it’s in the seat behind him, which would be creepy enough. He turns around and instead looks through the rear of the car and this girl is all the way across the street, but she still sounds like she’s right there next to him.

I thought that was creepy as fuck. 

Craig: I liked that. Shot. I liked the long shot of her down the street, but then the parents come out and he’s not in the car and they panic for a second and there are intense closeups because this is full. She just a huge fan of like intense face closeups because this movie is full of them.

Um, and like 

Todd: gentle, both. Maybe Fulci goes a little overboard with it. Well, I don’t know. I don’t remember. He thought it was cool once or twice, but then he kind of like, he’s like the guy who takes a joke a little too far. I 

Craig: don’t remember. I get them mixed up. But I feel like either or both of them do, and Like those really intense face close ups in really, but in really intense moments, like in moments where the spear is coming right at your eye, like that’s crazy.

And that’s intense. And I really dig that. But this, like all of these intense closeups, it’s just like dramatic chipmunk. It’s like, yeah. Yeah. Like, they are, like, all the time having these intense reactions. Like, calm down. I’m like, Take a sec, take a breath. Look around. He’s right there. But that’s, so, okay, so, The kid’s not in the car, and then, And then, surprise chipmunk, GASP And then they look across, like, he’s right there, like, he’s just sitting in the grass, right outside the car, but 

Todd: he has 

Craig: this big doll, and the doll looks like me, and now, I’m like, okay, now, this is getting interesting, because, that girl, Like she’s going to be his friend, but she’s really the doll and the parents aren’t going.

No, no, no, thank you. We never see that doll again. Like the mom looks it over at some point. Like, she’s just like fondling it. Her and the dad are talking. She’s like fondling the dog and the dog, the doll. And, uh, out of nowhere, for no reason, she freaks out and like throws it down. And like, Bob is always bringing home this trash.

Todd: What? What are you 

Craig: talking 

Todd: about? Okay, you’re right. This is also There’s weirdness. That is weird. But what Mae says to him is sinister. She’s like, I’m Mae, and I’ve been waiting for you. You shouldn’t have come, Bob. Bob is stroking this doll. At this point, I’m thinking Mae’s a ghost. That’s what Me Too, I’m thinking, but that’s all she ever says.

Craig: Every time she shows up, that’s all. No, no, don’t do it. Don’t go in there. She says other stuff. 

Todd: No, she does not. No, she says other. Oh, okay. Oh, I’m about to tell you some stuff that she says Fine. But first she shows up and when they show up at the house, um, Lucy, who is. Norman’s wife is unsettled that it looks exactly like the photo on the wall in his apartment, and he totally dismisses it.

Um, he’s just like, all these houses, they all look the same, blah, blah, blah. That’s interesting, right? Like, why would No, 

Craig: it is not interesting! Be That’s exactly why it’s not interesting, because there’s no answer to that question! 

Todd: Hmm, maybe not. 

Craig: Listen, if there’s an answer, just tell me now. I don’t care if it’s a spoiler or not.

Like why is he so shady about it? Why does everybody keep saying they’ve seen him there before? I feel like at some point in time that was part of the story, but it got cut out and I think you might be 

Todd: right. It makes no sense. Because this, this script went through multiple rewrites by multiple authors.

Um, Fulci himself, like, wasn’t happy with the script that he got initially. He thought it was too derivative of another movie that had come out years before. And so, like, yeah, it has been through different writers, and I think there are trace lingerings of… Lingering traces, of, um, I 

Craig: like that trace lingering.

You like that? Yeah. That’s fun. I’m gonna trace, linger 

Todd: using that . I think I coined a new phrase. I like it. Anyway, go ahead. I wanna hear, once I hear it in a movie, uh, I’ll, I’ll know it came from me. . Anyway. Yeah. Um, I agree with you. I, and I also think that Fci, along with Argento, along with a lot of these Italian guys, they put creepy shit into the movie just to be creepy, even though.

Ultimately, it makes no sense, or it has no payoff, or the best you can say is, well, It was a dream, it was a vision, or maybe there’s some backstory that we’re never going to get. I feel like there was probably something more. 

Craig: That’s why I say it’s cheap, it’s because it’s nitpicking like, ooh, creepy little kid, let’s put that, ooh, creepy doll, ooh, creepy this, creepy that, but nothing comes of it.

No, it’s not. Yes, things come of it. 

Todd: No, now you’re just picking little things that definitely nothing comes of it. And you’re saying the whole movie is full of this. What comes of that doll? No, nothing comes of the doll, but it’s weird. 

Craig: What comes of him dismissing her when she says, Oh, there was this picture on our wall.

What comes of that? I told you. 

Todd: I think it’s lingering from another script, but you’re dismissing the whole movie. You’re saying nothing comes of anything. That’s not true. But yes, nothing comes of these two things. Oh my goodness. Fine, this is almost painful for me. All 

Craig: right, here we go. I’m sick of doing all the work.

You’ve summarized it. 

Todd: Wow. It’s a good thing this is our ASMR episode. Okay, 

Craig: alright, in my notes, I’m up to mom freaks out about doll for no reason. Norman tells her to take her pills. And then, I guess I’ll be doing 

Todd: it then. They come in the door. And they see the kitchen, and they see that door, which has been boarded shut.

Who boarded that door shut? That’s creepy. It’s subtle in the background, like they don’t, they make no mention of it. That’s true, 

Craig: I didn’t notice it was boarded up. I didn’t notice it was boarded up until… Oh my god, Todd. I am just so infuriated about all of this, because 

Todd: then… The woman is hearing things in the house.

Craig: Yeah, they’re all hearing things. Crying. I can’t, I am still blown away. Seriously, you have to put, you have to put this movie back on, and put in earbuds, and just listen to any part where they’re in the house, because there is, there’s constant crying. Like, I don’t understand how you didn’t hear it, because several times, they thought it was Bob, and went looking for, 

Todd: like, Oh, there are moments when it happens.

There are moments when it happens I remember moments when it happens I don’t remember it happening all the time like a constant You make it sound like it’s a constant, uh, in the back of the soundtrack No it’s there, it’s just Oh, it’s only there when it needs to be there 

Craig: Well, it’s a lot and it’s the exact same like they recorded some adult going UuuuUuU UuuUuuU for for ten seconds and then repeated it over and over again Since 

Todd: when did the cheapness of a movie bother us?

I 

Craig: don’t mind it. Ugh, I don’t mind it if there’s something good to grab on to, but there’s not, except for random people who just show up at their house. This lady. Do you want to talk about her? We have to get to the fact that this crazy random person 

Todd: just shows up at their house. The babysitter. The babysitter.

Craig: Like, okay, let me ask you a question. If you were just at home and somebody knocked on the door or just walked in, no, not knocked on the door, walked into your house and startled you. And you’re like, Hey, what’s up? And she’s like, Oh, I’m the babysitter. What would your next step be? 

Todd: She said mrs. Gittleson sent me over so the idea is that she Mrs.

Gittleson was the realtor you there in the real estate office Laurie Gittleson was the realtor and she had that male real estate agent Harold who we see you also So apparently she asked mrs. Gittleson to refer a babysitter and and shows up and says mrs. Gittleson sent me over I know, but that’s the implication when you say Mrs.

Giddleson sent me over and she says I’m Anne the babysitter and Lucy goes, oh, okay, then if Lucy’s not bothered, I’m not bothered. 

Craig: Okay, random lady who just showed up at my house. Oh, come on. As she’s being introduced, it keeps flash cutting back to the decapitated mannequin. Just to make it very clear.

With the green 

Todd: eyes. She has the same green eyes. Todd yes, it’s Todd. It’s artsy and it’s striking. Who is this woman? She’s the babysitter. Her name’s Anne Why 

Craig: is she there? What role does she play in this? 

Todd: Mrs. Giddleson sent her over her role as the babysitter Thinking too hard about this. Why are you thinking so deeply about this?

Because they 

Craig: go out of their way to make her shady and mysterious. Like, she, she won’t, like, she just shows up. The, every time, every time the camera is on her, it is an intense close up of her eyes. 

Todd: Yes, and she’s doing shady shit. Right, 

Craig: is she hypnotizing them, and like, and she’s being super shady, uh, and At one point, at one point the mom comes in and is talking to her and is like, You disappeared for a couple days, where were you?

And she’s like, uh I would see my parents and then the mom asks her a bunch of other questions that she just doesn’t answer like The the girl just stands there silently like she just looks at her like it just intense close ups of her eyes Just staring and the wife the wife walks in to another room where the husband is.

She’s like that girl’s weird 

Todd: Yeah, she doesn’t talk She never answers my questions . Oh, well she’s weird. But you know what? It’s never The people that my parents had explain, had babysitting me in the eighties, like you wouldn’t believe, like, uh, they were like, you know, 12 year old kids babysitting like, you know, eight year old kids.

It was, it was a different 

Craig: time. Oh, yeah. You know, you know, I grew up in a college town, so my parents would just leave with like 

Todd: random, like from the local fraternity, take somebody off of the 

Craig: street like, hey, , 

Todd: but apparently that’s how he spoke for too. But no, let him in the door, handed him a six pack and said Ab Adam.

Yeah, sure. 

Craig: Right. Uh, I don’t know, it just like it seems, it seems like she’s supposed to have something to do with the overall plot, but she doesn’t, the only thing that she has to do with it is that like that mannequin scene was just, Foreshadowing. Like, Why? No. Creepy foreshadow. I’m not okay with it. I’m not okay with it.

I don’t, 

Todd: Craig, I think you’re taking it all too literally. I mean, I don’t think that mannequin scene really happened in real life. The girl’s a ghost. The ghost girl’s standing outside this mannequin thing. The girl, the ghost girl’s trying to warn the boy about what’s going on. And, and she sees this thing happen.

So the ghost girl gets a supernatural foreshadowing of the woman’s going to be decapitated later. And sure enough it happens. That’s fine. So it all works. That’s fine. It alls together. It’s not nonsensical. 

But 

Craig: then why is the babysitter Mrs. Baylock, when she should just be Lori Strode? I don’t get it. Why is she, why is she creepy and suspicious?

There’s no reason for it. She’s 

Todd: not in on it. ’cause she knows about, she knows about the house, she knows about the house’s history. How do you know that? Because she’s a local so she’s just looking for an 

Craig: explanation She’s just a local goth girl who wants to hang out. 

Todd: She’s worried out. I would say she’s worried about the family But her worry about the family without her willingness to actually worry the family by speaking up about it Because that’s just what people do in these movies, right?

You’re writing your own 

Craig: movie in your head man 

Todd: Look if everybody in these movies Because they never do, because it would never be an interesting story, just flat out said why they’re there and what their motivation is, and, uh, told all the details and backstory to everybody that everybody needed to know, then it wouldn’t be a movie!

This is so typical of these ghost stories! It’s a lot of mysterious people coming in, who are cagey about why they’re there, and who seem suspicious and whatnot, and this is just another one of those girls! That’s just how these stories go. 

Craig: This is how every ghost story goes. No it isn’t! Oh my god, what do you watch?

Not every ghost story is full of red herrings that are just left unexplained. They’re just not. 

Todd: Many of them are. Well, here’s my explanation for her. All you need to know is, she’s a local girl, she was sent by the real estate agent to be their babysitter. But she, along with everybody else in the town, because we hear that pretty much everybody else in the town knows that this house is effed up.

But nobody’s really You have to 

Craig: is stop, is this not between the lines? 

Todd: It’s a hundred percent in your face. Everybody talks about how fucked up the house is. Everybody says, there’s a whole scene 

Craig: between the two Oh, I just called you Alan again. Listen, 

Todd: don’t interrupt me. This is the intensity of our 

Craig: argument that I’m calling you my partner’s name.

Todd: That’s okay. There was a whole scene between the two realtors that comes up shortly after this. Freudstein House. 

Craig: It was inevitable. What? 

Todd: That they’d want to leave the Freudstein property. Oak Mansion, Harold. How many times do I have to tell you that house is now called Oak Mansion? Yeah, give the bad product a new label.

Well, call it what you will, but it’s always been Freudstein’s house. They imply that nobody wants to be in there, nobody does the thing. Every townsperson they encounter when they talk about Freudstein, it’s like, Oh, he’s not buried here, oh, no, this, there’s all kinds of gossip, yada yada yada. Alright? But of course, they don’t tell the family, because that’s what happens.

When the guys from, you know, move into the Amityville house, nobody tells them the backstory of the house. When the people move into the Poltergeist house, nobody tells them it was built on an ancient Indian burial ground. If they did, the movie would be over, and it wouldn’t be interesting. So this is what’s happening.

So my story here is that Anne, of course, is the babysitter. And of course she knows more about the history of the house than she’s willing to let on, but she’s trying to, I don’t want to say trying to protect them, but she herself is curious. And so in the middle of the night, they hear voices, they hear noises, and eventually, uh, Norman comes downstairs and he finds Anne trying to pry up the boards.

Away from the door that leads to the basement and that’s creepy as fuck 

Craig: intensely for five seconds and then he walks away 

Todd: Yeah, now that’s weird. But, why is she trying to go down in the basement? You think it’s sinister, right? She obviously knows something’s down there. We know something’s going on down there because we saw a body get dragged in there and it’s really shady that the door’s been boarded over and now it’s especially shady that she’s trying to open it.

What, is she trying to release what’s in there? Or is she trying to assure herself? Is she trying to purify, cleanse the house? You know what, I mean, it’s just like she can’t necessarily be in this house and be comfortable until she investigates and figures out. If this is actually true what she might suspect about the house or not, so she goes down there I’m, not saying that’s the reading i’m saying it’s a perfectly acceptable reading at the end of the day once you’ve watched the whole movie Sure.

Craig: Okay. 

Todd: But my point is, it’s all creepy as fuck, and I think it was creepy. I think it gets the point across. Like, at this point in the movie, you got this creepy babysitter who’s trying to open this basement that we know is something horrible is down there. There’s this weird ghost girl who’s warning Bob, don’t go in the house, they’re in the house now.

There’s this weird accident that happened in there, and so next we have, you know, Norman, and he’s with Mr. Wheatley at the university, and they’re discussing Dr. Peterson, who was the guy who did the murder suicide thing in the house. Then there’s this weird in, um, I don’t know, I guess he’s like a grad student named Daniel

Yeah. Who comes in and he’s like, here you go. Here are all the medical reports, death certificates, lists of missing persons that Dr. Peterson had requested. He was kind 

Craig: of funny. Like, I, I kind of feel like he understood the assignment. Like, if you’re gonna just mm-hmm. , I don’t know. I think that it needs to be funny because it’s so.

Silly and over the top, but it is 100 percent straight. Like every single person is playing this straight as a razor. And that I think just doesn’t work for me. Like if you’re going to be, if you’re going to introduce this stupid babysitter character, like make her just crazy pants over the top shady. And this guy gets it, like he has, he is, he is, is insignificant.

He has nothing to do with anything at all, but he’s in several scenes. And he’s like. Igor, like, walk this way. Like, he’s so over the top. You’re like, bug eyed, creepy. 

Todd: I think he’s almost excited. He’s trying to be a professional, you know, sort of scholar type person, but he’s excited at the salaciousness of all this drama that’s been going on and the fact that this new guy’s here in town to investigate it.

But he’s trying not to get in his way too much and trying not to kind of let that on. But he can’t help it because it’s painted all over his face. At the end of the scene he goes, Hey, you wanna know where he hanged himself? There, from that railing. 

Craig: And he comes back later like the norm. Or Norman, or whatever his name is, comes back to the library, like, when it’s closed on the weekend or something, and Daniel, like, pops in, like, What are you doing here?

Like, like, he’s either been caught doing something, or he’s supposed to be guarding the books or something, But again, like, I appreciate this guy, because he’s kind of over the top creepy, but nothing comes of it. Nothing. That’s okay. 

Todd: It doesn’t have to. You know, just like, what comes of Igor? He’s just there.

It would be 

Craig: okay if anything came of anything, but nothing does, except for the fact that Norman finds a book that says, like, Dr. Freudstein on the front, and then Bob is like, out exploring the graveyard, and he finds the grave of Mrs. Freudstein. Bob 

Todd: is, like, playing with this girl. It’s like his imaginary friend.

It’s like he’s playing with a ghost. And that’s interesting and creepy. And they run across this gravestone with Mr. Mary Freudstein on it. And May comes up behind him and says, Oh, that’s the wife of Dr. Freudstein. Only it’s all a lie. She’s not really buried there. She’s not very 

Craig: dead. Like, I, I, fine, creepy, I get it, they’re ghosts, whatever.

Yeah. And they never, like, this, this woman that is escorting Mae around every once in a while, they never show her face, so you know it’s obviously Mrs. Freudstein or whatever. Mm hmm, mm hmm. Um, I, I’m not sure what they were going for with the name. Like, is this supposed to be a, a play on Frankenstein? Yeah.

I don’t know, whatever. I think so. Who cares? Norm, I call him Norm because we’re friends, um, Norm reads about Dr. Freudstein losing his medical license because he was like doing unconventional experiments or something. And then Lucy is cleaning the house and pulls away a rug to sweep or vacuum and finds Dr.

Freudstein’s tomb under their living 

Todd: room floor. Yes! 

Craig: An inch of dust. What? That’s awesome. Nobody has moved that rug in a century.

Oh god. I mean, if you’re willing to just read it, like, if you’re willing to read it as a scary story to tell in the dark. But that’s what it is. That just is like, ooh, there’s a tomb under the 

Todd: floor. But that’s what this it’s just a more literal version of, this house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground.

Right, but it’s, like, 

Craig: it’s so stupid. But they don’t even consider, first, first of all, like, she barely even… is affected by it, 

Todd: and… No, she’s freaked out by it. She says something 

Craig: to her husband, or she… Somebody just explains it away, like, People used to do that. Oh, it was 

Todd: hilarious. He says, This ain’t New York.

Most of the old houses in the neighborhood have tombs in them. I was like, no they don’t. This isn’t Italian writing about America. This doesn’t happen. The other thing 

Craig: that they don’t even take into consideration for a second is that they have a full… Basement, like, what is, what are you, And then it turns out that like, literally, it’s just a tomb covering over a stairwell to the basement.

Yes. Which doesn’t make any sense, but is funny nonetheless. 

Todd: It is entirely possible that there could be a body buried between the floor upstairs and the ceiling of the basement. But there’s not. There is. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I think that’s interesting when we learn that, too. But, I guess you don’t.

Here’s the other thing. Lucy herself, um, it’s been kind of established that she’s taking pills. And she’s worried that the pills have been giving her hallucinations. So again, this is another one of those typical haunted house tropes where the person’s hearing things, but they’re not even sure they trust themselves.

So, there’s a lot of her. hearing voices, especially after she uncovers the tomb, you know, she hears noises and all kinds of stuff, and there’s this really cool shot here. And you gotta say, this, this cinematography in there is pretty damn good. I don’t gotta say that. It’s fine. Well. I’m going to say it.

There’s a lot of sweeping camera angles. There’s a lot of one take shots that take that track through the whole house or track upstairs and downstairs. This sweeps around her and comes up over her head as she’s just surrounded by these sounds and they get louder and louder and she just sort of screams.

And Norman comes home to find her cowering in the corner. And then we get a shot of the pills, then pan down to her on the bed. And now she’s fine. It’s like he’s finally convinced her to take her pills. And this seems to be She seems to be feeling better. The lighting here is great and you know, he’s playing a great husband.

He’s like, okay, look, this ain’t New York. All the houses around here have tombs in them. Now we’re gonna go solve the cellar door mystery. Mm hmm. And so he goes down there with her and they’ve got a skeleton key to open it, but the key doesn’t work and eventually… They use a knife. This is kind of stupid.

It’s like it doesn’t turn, right? It’s like the door hasn’t been open in a long time or something And so he uses a knife kind of as a pry through the key to finally open it And there’s this awesome shot on the other side. I know 

Craig: why that’s just my favorite part of the movie, right? It’s like this this part where he’s unlocking the door and there are no stakes really like nobody knows What’s down there?

Well, and to see it from the other side, and to see it just kind of slowly, like, jostling open, 

Todd: And the dust kind of coming off of it. Oh. 

Craig: That was the most suspenseful part of the movie to me. It’s brilliant. Or, like, the lock, getting the lock open. I also thought, surely, this happens twice. Uh, the first time this happened, I was like, he’s gonna break that key.

Like, he’s prying it with a, a knife. I thought for sure he was going to break it, and then I also thought, and he’s also going to cut his own throat, like, that knife is going to slip and come out and kill him. So it was a very tense scene. Yeah, it was. I agree, but, anyway, what, they, I mean, they get in there, right?

But, like, do they even go down? 

Todd: He creeps down the stairs, he finds that woman’s ring. He finds 

Craig: Tits McGee’s ring. Uh, on the 

Todd: stairs. So we know that, yeah, that this is the place, and that she was down there. Um, and then a bat attacks him, and holy shit, this bat. That’s right! 

Craig: Okay, I kinda like this part too.

This is 

Todd: so great. This bat starts attacking her, and then he, he whacks it away from her and then it attacks him, and then it latches onto his hand. I liked it because it was 

Craig: so stupid. Oh, it Like, it latches onto his hand and he can’t get it, like, he’s trying so hard to rip it 

Todd: off. He runs upstairs, there’s blood, he’s shaking his hand to try to get the bat off and blood is going all over Bob’s 

Craig: face.

Oh, that’s hilarious. 

Todd: He stabs it and digs the knife into it, and still that bat’s alive, but like, you know, three times his body weight and blood is pouring 

Craig: out. I love when he stabbed the bat in the middle of its back, and like, five wounds opened all over the back of the bat. And it started bleeding! That was hilarious.

Todd: Just a little G on the back, he’s like… And all enough blood. And they’re like, but, it’s just coming No Well, okay, I guess we could just put a few more wounds in there. And he’s like, no, make them six. It’s 

Craig: so funny, cause in my, in my notes I have, Norm stabs hand bat. One of the dumbest scenes I’ve ever seen.

But now thinking back on it, I’m like, that was funny. That, 

Todd: that scene was funny. Oh, it was so entertaining. 

Craig: So the bat, the bat is the last straw. So they tell the realtor, or the guy at the realtor’s office that they want to move. And then you just see a random shot of Mae, again, the girl saying, don’t go inside, don’t go inside.

And then you see the… Realtor lady, go 

Todd: inside. It’s interesting because Mae is in there. It’s another house, it’s like a bedroom, but she’s surrounded by dolls. And, um, this woman, again, we know it’s Mrs. Freudstein by now, but it could be her mother, we don’t know. And she says, Mae, what were you doing at the window?

And she says, watching the house is all. And she says, oh, you know you can’t see it from here. And then she screams, don’t go inside. So anyway, Lori. The realtor comes into the house now, looking for the family. It’s late, and nobody’s home. But this is so creepy, this scene. Lori sees shadows passing across the window.

She walks through the house. She steps on that tomb, which breaks open, and her foot slips into it, and now her foot is caught. The lights go out. There’s a POV of that hand. Now we got like, again, that killer POV like we saw in the beginning. Grabbing a poker and, uh, from the fireplace and approaching her.

And there is a very slow, extremely bloody and cruel stabbing scene. Uh, stabs her in the chest twice, twists it around, then in her neck. This scene goes on for like two minutes. Of her just screaming while she’s being slowly stabbed. Blood gushing out of her neck, blood gushing out of the wounds. This is gory, and my understanding is that Fulci had to cut.

Quite a bit of this scene and I think it’s all been restored for us because this I can’t imagine this being any longer No, 

Craig: it hasn’t because initially it Included eye gouging because then once she’s dead and you see her get dragged away She’s in far worse shape than when 

Todd: we last saw her. I, I wondered about that.

Her face and head 

Craig: is messed up. Um, yeah, they asked him, I think it was, you know, I don’t know if this was released first in America or Italy, but the equivalent of the MPAA told him he needed to cut like the eye gouging and stuff, which he did willingly because he wasn’t satisfied with the effects anyway.

Todd: Yeah, right. It sounds like him. Ah, well, I didn’t like the effects anyway. So then, no. But it’s super gross. It’s super bloody. I liked that scene. 

Craig: It was good, and, uh, I liked the effects. But… Then the killer drags her into the cellar, and the next thing that we see is Anne cleaning up the blood. And Lucy comes in and sees her cleaning up the blood, and they don’t…

Talk about it. 

Todd: What? You know why? You know what I think it is? Why? Cause she thinks it’s the blood from the bat. 

Craig: Oh, okay. You think, you think Anne thinks it’s the blood 

Todd: from the bat? Yeah. I think Anne thinks it’s the blood from the bat too. It is very clear. 

Craig: It leaves, he drags the body that leaves. A blood trail.

Like, clearly a body has been dragged 

Todd: away. But Norman ran up the I mean, he must have left a huge blood trail when dragging that bat all the way upstairs and into the I think you’re right that we’re not meant to think that. I think it’s easily explained away knowing what we know now about Lucy. But at the time, the filmmaker is very definitely casting more suspicion on Lucy because Anne’s like, Hey, what a shame you didn’t come with us to the restaurant last night.

And we get more close up eyes, you know? Now, it’s like we’re supposed to suspect Anne stabbed Laurie and is cleaning up the mess. So, now we get a scene, uh, that Peterson is reading up about Dr. Freudstein, um, who had a penchant for doing illegal experiments. Norman tells Lucy that she he needs to go to New York to follow up on a hunch that his suicide was not connected to his research.

Craig: Doesn’t he say he needs to go? I felt like he said, he’s like, I need to go, he’s like, I need to go to New York. And she’s like, today? And, yeah, I got to. And then the next thing we see, he just goes to the library. The library’s not in New York. I 

Todd: don’t get it. He stops by there on the way. He doesn’t make it.

Norman’s at the library. Creepy Daniel pops in, being creepy. Suddenly, Bob is being chased, POV, through the woods, but it turns out it’s May. They’re just playing in the cemetery again. And she tells him again. She’s like, Don’t go in the house, Bob. And 

Craig: he says, I’m just gonna go in for a second, and then I’ll come back out.

Liar. He just goes in there and 

Todd: just stays! It’s so creepy though, it’s like burnt, in a way it’s kind of like burnt offerings. I’m on the edge of my seat for Bob here, because it’s like, you know, you’ve pressed your luck too much, and now you’re going back into the house, something really bad is gonna happen.

I 

Craig: hate Bob, so I wish something bad would 

Todd: happen to him. You wanted something bad. He 

Craig: is a cute kid. He actually looks like, like, an appearance. I can’t tolerate his voiceover, but an appearance. He’s a very cute little blonde haired, blue eyed kid. He reminds me of, uh… Kid of a friend of ours. We can talk about that later.

Aww. 

Todd: He was in several of these movies, like Manhattan Baby, which is another Fulci movie that came the year after this. He was in a movie before this. 

Craig: He’s only eight. As far as kid actors goes, he’s fine. He’s whatever. 

Todd: He was in Demons. You remember doing Demons? Uh, 

Craig: no. 

Todd: We loved it. It was, you know, the theater gets locked up and the woman turns into a demon.

Yeah. 

Craig: Yes, yes. I, I always get it and Night of the Demons mixed up. But yeah, I do remember the theater one. It was good. It 

Todd: was good. Norman’s doing research. He re Oh, he finds, 

Craig: right. And he finds a cassette tape. Yeah. It says Peterson Personal. What does that mean? Who is Peterson? 

Todd: Peterson is the guy. Oh, the doctor.

Yeah, the doctor. The doctor. Okay. Okay. It’s so typical. It’s like, oh, I lost all critical perspective. The signs, the warnings of this house. It draws me like an internal magnet and frightens me. It’s the, 

Craig: it’s the recording from Evil Dead. It is. It’s, I like that part. 

Todd: While he’s listening to this, we get this tracking shot through the house.

And it goes through the house, and it goes into the basement, we’re hearing his voice, and blood starts pouring over the tomb, which… Is magically back together again. Mm hmm. Body parts are strung all over the floor, on a table. We’re talking in the basement now. We’re seeing parts of the basement we’ve never seen before.

Mm hmm. It’s all very lurid and very, you know, very Fulci 

Craig: esque. Yeah, just dismembered bodies everywhere, including children, I 

Todd: think. It zooms in on a corpse that looks just like Bob. At the same point in which he says, on the tape, No, no, not the children! And then it cuts back to Bob. And I’m thinking, was this in Norman’s imagination?

Did Norman get a vision here? Or is this just for us, the viewer? I don’t 

Craig: know. I think that he was just envisioning what he was hearing. On the 

Todd: tape. But one of those is unmistakably Bob. Then he burns the tape! Yeah, then he burns the tape. I don’t know why the hell he burned the tape. That makes no sense.

No, it doesn’t make any sense. He has no need to cover this up. Except, perhaps, he’s being driven by the forces of the house to cover up the evidence so that the house can continue to keep doing what it’s doing. God, 

Craig: I don’t know. So much random stuff happens as Anne wanders around staring at stuff. Um, and then, I made a note of this because it just, I just cracked up when I saw it.

Somebody… is on the street for some reason and you see traffic going by and one of the cars is a station wagon with a big sign on the top that said school bus and that was the most amusing thing that I had ever seen. Oh my gosh, so funny. Um, but then Bob finds the cellar door open and his car, the car that he always has with him is missing and then it cuts away from that and then Anne can’t find Bob, but hears that crying from the cellar, so she starts to go down to the 

Todd: cellar.

But this is really jarring, because Anne seems like a totally different person now. Like, she’s no longer creepy Anne, who barely talks. Now she just seems like a normal girl investigating the basement. True. You know, like any teenager in any slasher movie we’ve ever seen. I found that really jarring.

Except… I think it tracks with my earlier explanations that Anne isn’t really creepy. The movie is just sort of sending us this red herrings that she is. But she goes into the basement, she hears the sobbing. I did hear sobbing, I made a note here. But now she doesn’t seem so sinister, right? The door closes behind her, and of course she’s trapped.

And now we have a POV of that same hand holding a knife coming up the stairs. And we see that Bob suddenly… Is on the other side in the kitchen, like Anne’s calling for him, and suddenly it’s Bob, but he’s not anywhere in the basement at all. Right. So he picks up a monkey doll and a plastic gun and says, Okay, Yogi, we’re gonna go rescue Anne.

I thought that was super cute. Oh, I didn’t 

Craig: see that at all. That’s 

Todd: funny. But too late. On the other side, Anne gets sliced really brutally on both sides of the neck, and then that knife just saws through it. This is, again, very Fulci esque, but up close and just gross. 

Craig: Yeah. I like, the practical effect looked good.

It was good. The practical effects throughout are, are pretty good. I mean, you know, stylistic in the way that they typically are in these movies. Uh, 

Todd: but I like it. 

Craig: I liked it. Right, then silence and then Bob goes down to the cellar and like he walks all the way down the stairs and then Well the 

Todd: door opens behind him.

Bob walks into the, the kitchen and he’s standing there kind of looking around for Anne and behind him the door slowly kind of creaks open. Yeah. And he turns and stares at it. I mean, this is so creepy. I’m thinking Bob’s gonna die. He walks down the stairs, he calls, calls for Anne. And as he gets to the bottom, he turns around, hears a noise, and he sees her head roll down the stairs.

Runs up the stairs and makes it out just as the door almost closes, but his hand gets stuck. So this door, you know, like, I guess is being supernaturally controlled. There’s a P. O. V. again coming after him slowly, but he gets out just in time. And then Lucy comes home and finds Bob crying in the room, and he tells her what happened and she doesn’t believe it.

So they go back to 

Craig: the cellar together. I’m like, 

Todd: why? You were the worst mom in the world. Your son has been traumatized by this horrible thing happening in the basement. Now you’re going to take him down there with you while you investigate? Well, 

Craig: they don’t, they don’t find anything except for, like, Bob briefly sees a pair of glowing eyes.

So they just go back upstairs. And then Norm is in a different cemetery looking for Freud’s tomb. Yeah, which makes no sense because it’s in his living room and he knows that And it also makes no sense because the cemetery manager comes and talks to him and is like we’re closed You’re closed on Sunday afternoon.

When is the cemetery open? So f ing stupid. Even what the sense. Oh 

Todd: you two

Well, you’re not the first. Look, friend, I came over 200 miles to see this tomb, and I want to see it. Well, you shouldn’t have bothered. There’s no Dr. Freudstein here. But, according to the official records, he was buried here. The official records don’t mean a thing. It’s a lot of bunk that Freudstein’s buried here.

Just gossip. Okay, first of all, if the official records say that… He was buried here. The official records are not gossip.

I don’t, I think this is baffling and there’s no good explanation for all this bullshit of his investigation. No, they should have 

Craig: cut that scene entirely. It doesn’t make any sense. 

Todd: No, it’s, it’s weird. Yeah, 

Craig: okay, so then Bob’s upset that Anne is dead, but Lucy’s like, Don’t worry, she’ll come back. So he goes, so he goes back to the cellar looking for her.

Yes, I love it. And the cellar door closes 

Todd: again. But he walks downstairs, he calls out to Anne, he says, Anne! Mommy says you’re not dead. Is that true? 

Craig: And he sees the glowing eyes again. And I really don’t understand what’s happening here because in a bunch of places, like, are we, I assume we’re to believe that because there’s only one.

Thing down there, right? 

Todd: Honestly. I’m sorry, I know this sounds like a cop out, but I think some of this is in Bob’s head. Okay. I do. It’s a dark basement, I’m seeing glowing eyes everywhere. I really do. Oh my god. 

Craig: Maybe it’s all in Bob’s head, okay? I don’t know. It’s the best I can 

Todd: do. 

Craig: So Bob runs back up and he’s banging on the door and he can’t get out and Lucy can’t open it.

How is it locked? 

Todd: Supernatural. This is the thing, the door, we’ve seen this happen five times before. You’re not surprised by, by the sixth time, are you? God, but it’s locked. 

Craig: And she tries to Jimmy the lock again. She just breaks the key. It’s so stupid. And I have in my notes. This isn’t tense. It’s just annoying.

Todd: Oh, I thought it was tense. 

Craig: Oh my God. It made me so angry. And so she, she breaks the key in the lock and then she tries to Jimmy the door open with a knife and she breaks the knife. Oh 

Todd: no. Okay. Let’s talk about this scene. Can I, can I narrate this? Bob. Okay. So Norman, there’s a shadow that passes through the behind her and comes over her and she spins around, but it’s Norman.

So he’s home. Yeah. And she’s like, He’s, he’s trapped in there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Norman says, Okay, uh, Bob, keep away from the door. He picks up an axe and he’s gonna axe through the door. Bob says, Okay, I will. And the instant he says that, that creepy hand, finally, grabs Bob’s head and slams it against the door, just as Bob sends the axe through it.

And it comes out right by his head. My God, dude. That 

Craig: was good. How do you think they filmed that? I don’t know, but 

Todd: holy shit, this was It all happened

so fast, that it’s like you, I literally screamed at the screen. It 

Craig: was, it was pretty cool, because it was really close, like, it just like shaved the tip of his nose. And then it happened again! It happens again, just 

Todd: hits the back of him, and of course, Norm on the other side is oblivious that Bob’s head is against the door right now being pressed by this hand, and I don’t know if it was the dad in me or what, but I was just like, oh my god, if this guy ends up axing his own kid’s head through the door trying to get him out of there, this would be like the most Horrible thing I’ve ever seen and I would respect the movie so much.

I know 

Craig: It would have been a whole different movie. I know. Okay, so then I say in my notes Norm knows that Freud’s seen killed Sheila 

Todd: God He’s suddenly exposition Norman he knows everything now about exactly what’s going on He needs human victims To renew his cells, it’s how he stays alive. Like, where the f did any of this come from?

Who is Sheila? Why do I, why 

Craig: do I have, I don’t know. 

Todd: I don’t have Sheila written. I don’t know. Maybe you misheard 

Craig: something. Norm Nosy killed her, I guess. Maybe he just made 

Todd: that up. I don’t know. Somehow, I think it was maybe when the axe came to the back half of the kid’s head. It’s very unclear, but Norm has chopped off this guy’s hand.

And so, um, what we now see as Freudstein stumbles down the stairs with a stump, which allows them to finish axing through the door and grab Bob. And 

Craig: it’s at this point… I mean, if we hadn’t figured this out already, we figure out that that childlike crying has been coming from him the whole time and he’s doing it again and it’s so weird and I hate it.

And he’s a weird zombie thing like, yeah, he’s 

Todd: like a mummified guy. I 

Craig: don’t have a point of comparison. Like I don’t know what’s compared. Yeah. It’s 

Todd: weird. It’s almost like a mummy in a way. Yeah. But it’s creepy. Yeah. Oh, it is. It 

Craig: is creepy. And may. From the ether, I guess. Screams, No! And then Bob screams, And then there are bodies.

It’s everywhere. 

Todd: Mhm. The bodies of the previous people, Anne and Laurie, are both hanging there. He sees Anne’s head on the floor. That’s when he explains 

Craig: the whole, he needs human victims to renew his cells, and that’s the only explanation you’re gonna get. Like, how he’s doing it, what that’s all about, who cares.

I don’t care. No, I don’t care either. That’s fine. But then, Norman fights him briefly, and then he reaches over, then he reaches over to the table of bloody knives,

and he grabs one of the bloody knives and stabs Freudstein with it. And what can only be described as shit and maggots pour out of the wound. Yeah! But then this surprised me, then. I, I have to say I was actually really kind of surprised by the end. I, I, uh, as much as I continue to hate this movie, the ending was kind of satisfying because it was unexpected to me.

Freudstein rips Norman’s throat 

Todd: out. Yeah. While Lucy and Bob cower in the corner and do absolutely nothing. 

Craig: Yeah. And then they run up the steps to the tombstone and she is trying so hard to move it as the killer is coming up behind… And I thought for sure she was going to, but she doesn’t. He pulls her down the stairs and then it fades to black briefly.

Oh man. And then you see her body on the floor. So I assume she’s dead. You don’t 

Todd: see her get killed. You see her head hitting every single stair on the way down. Again, Fulci, man. He just, he just wants you to see everything up really close. Like seriously. 12 hits of her head on the stairs, this camera patiently tracking close up to her head all the way down while Bob is screaming.

And I mean, look, it is a stupid movie, right? But even stupid movies like this can get to me at sometimes. And I, again, I don’t know if it’s the dad in me or whatever, but this poor kid has seen his dad’s throat get ripped out and now his mom is being dragged down the stairs. And yeah, he was annoying. Fine, 

Craig: I’ll give you that.

The ending is okay. It 

Todd: really upset me seeing the trauma that this poor kid was going through with his parents one by one being taken away by this thing and almost nothing he can do about it. He’s trapped. So Freudstein is now going after Bob and Bob struggles to get through the opening and he grabs Bob just as May’s hand comes into view from the other side, pulling that tomb apart and they pull Bob out through there and now suddenly…

He’s not being pursued anymore. Like everything kind of drops away. Suddenly they’re on the other side of the tomb, and everything’s quiet, and Mae and that woman, who again, I’m pretty sure is Mrs. Freudstein. Yeah, we see her face, 

Craig: and it for sure is her. This is the first time we see her face, and we had seen her face because there was a photograph on her tombstone, so it for sure is her.

Todd: And she says, Mae? Time to go home and remember your manners. Now that Bob is saying, show him you can act like a Freudstein, you know some other guest is surely destined to drop in. And the mom takes both of their hands and walks them both out down the street. And there’s a baffling quote at the end. Yeah.

From Henry James. No one will ever know whether children are monsters, or monsters are children. Whatever. I don’t know. Whatever. So, so Bob’s dead. Right Bob’s dead. Yeah, he never made it out and then you know his body what we saw You know in that earlier sort of premonition, that’s how he ended up. Okay, you know, that’s how I interpret that I think that was actually quite clever that we saw that earlier in the movie.

Yeah, and then Presumably Freud seems gonna keep doing what he’s doing and he’s got to be some kind of supernatural entity not just a guy because of all that stuff and I thought it honestly like All that satisfied me, you know, whatever weirdness as far as how did this guy know this and what are these townspeople talking about, whatever, like, whatever, like, it just kind of slipped away.

I felt like this was the most coherent and, uh, in a way, logical of all of Fulci’s movies and it’s basically a very standard style Haunted House story. Like we’ve said several times in this description, almost every little thing in this happens in almost every Haunted House story. But this one, I thought, built good suspense, had a lot of intrigue, you know, opened up a lot of threads.

Some of them didn’t end up getting satisfactorily answered, but many of them did, I think. Had this ghost in the beginning warning Bob, you know, because this has happened to her, and it’s happened to Mrs. Freudstein. I don’t know how many times we’ve seen that. Before but I thought it was a creepy effective and super gory Uh and shocking and great cinematography.

I really liked it It’s not a modern masterpiece, but god, I just the second time I watched I enjoyed it even more Honestly, I thought way better than the first in this trilogy city of the living dead which was just like a mass chaos fever dream that made no sense and was just Bizarre. I don’t know why you hate it so much.

I really don’t. I 

Craig: don’t know, maybe I was just in a bad mood, but I don’t… I didn’t like it. Like, it was difficult for me to keep watching it. I had the movie going on one screen, and I was… I was looking at TMZ, and like… 

Todd: This isn’t even a slow burn, like, you know… I thought it was 

Craig: painfully, painfully boring.

It’s too many loose ends. for me. Too many. It, it, it makes me mad. It, it angers me. Like, you’re, you’re setting things up and then not paying that off. And I can forgive that. 

Todd: Which ones? 

Craig: Like, the 400 that I listed in the beginning! When I asked you, explain this, explain this, explain this, and you couldn’t.

Explain 

Todd: that doll? Yes! What? 

Craig: Who cares? Then why introduce it? Why make it seem like it’s gonna be a thing and then it’s not 

Todd: a thing? It’s a ghost, it’s a ghost girl’s doll that he brought home and that creeped out the mom. Boom. Done. Okay. What’s next? Yeah. What else can I explain 

Craig: for you? Why did multiple people…

See Norman there, and why was he cagey about having a photograph of that 

Todd: house? I don’t think he was cagey. I really don’t think he knew he had a photograph of that house. I think some of this is just fate type 

Craig: weird stuff. I’m telling you, you, you’re, I can understand, I can understand, no, I can understand why you like this movie because you’re writing it yourself.

That’s why you like it, because you’re writing it yourself. You are writing a movie that doesn’t exist. All, 

Todd: you’re filling in holes. Why can’t you accept this explanation? It’s… Why can’t you accept this explanation? Does it not make sense to you? No, I’ll accept 

Craig: your… Made up reasons, but you’re just making them up!

Like… 

Todd: Ha ha ha ha ha! Just because the movie doesn’t explicitly answer that question doesn’t mean that we can’t find an acceptable answer to it. 

Craig: I understand, I’m just saying, don’t establish mystery to then… Leave it hanging like that that that irritates me like don’t make it don’t make it seem like it’s well It’s 

Todd: like burnt offerings, you know, yes, that’s fine 

Craig: and I accept your interpretation of it But there’s nothing in the movie that tells us that that’s the case in the movie in burnt offerings We are 

Todd: told that we’re told what that the that the 

Craig: house is a vampire and that it lures people in and that it Like possesses them and sucks their life force and kills them and that’s how the house 

Todd: thrives We are told here here.

We are told that in the cassette tape. I’ve lost all critical perspective The signs the warnings of this house Freudstein’s house that anguish crying And Sheila smiles. What can I do to make her believe me? Maybe I’m insane. Yes. This is all unreal. Freudstein’s house draws me like an infernal magnet. And frightens me.

How many have wandered innocently into the waiting spiderweb? How many more are doomed to follow? This is just one of those things, it happens again and again and again. The house draws people in, they succumb to Dr. Feldstein, the mess gets cleaned up, and it just again and again and again keeps happening.

Craig: Okay, that, well, I can’t refute your cassette tape evidence. That is good evidence. I don’t know. I just, I didn’t like, that’s, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I really am. I, I, I didn’t, and I would not recommend it. Like, we, at the, at the end, we usually say, well, I might recommend it. No, I wouldn’t. 

Todd: I, I, Well, we could not dis, I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with you more about a movie.

In part, I’ve never been so shocked that you’ve been so unwilling to give, So many things have passed. There have been far worse movies that you’ve been waving away. Oh, it’s okay. It’s just a dumb movie. Oh, this is typical of these movies and oh, like whatever. It’s just a look like and I cannot believe that this movie which is so skillfully made and so intriguing in my opinion.

And is so typical. Like, it’s not even groundbreaking. It is so typical of a Haunted House movie. You’re not willing to wave those things away. It’s just so bizarre, Craig. I don’t see it. But I don’t know. We’ll keep our friendship. It’s fine. 

Craig: I guess. Maybe. Uh, no. Like, Again, I don’t recommend it because I, aside from you, I can’t think of anybody that I know that would like this movie.

Wow. But if you’ve seen it, or if you watch it, Take a side, because I’m sure I’m going to win. And let us know in the comments at one of our many places. 

Todd: I’ve gotta say to you, we’re gonna have to do one more of these, because City of the first, this is the third, the second one in the trilogy, the Beyond, is widely regarded as one of Fulci’s, like, masterpieces, by people who acknowledge that Fulci has made a lot of garbage, and a lot of baffling, weird shit, that the second one, the Beyond, is held in very high regard.

The first movie, you know, it’s called the Gates of Hell trilogy. The first movie, uh, we did here on the podcast. It’s called City of the Living Dead. It was released on videocassette in the U. S., uh, called the Gates of Hell. And, uh, it’s like, you know, a priest, uh, hangs himself, and a seance happens, and just, like, all the signs point to suddenly the Gates of Hell opening.

And then it culminates in, like, a tomb, where they’re literally closing the Gates of Hell, and it seems like they’re closed. Didn’t we do that? We did, yeah, yeah. We, we didn’t like the movie at all, we thought it was a bunch of… joking 

Craig: around nonsense. Oh! That doesn’t sound familiar at all! 

Todd: Oh my god. I think, I agree that movie was incoherent nonsense.

This movie is nothing like it. This movie is like frickin Steven Spielberg compared to that movie. The second movie in the series, The Beyond, is about some people who are in a house. It’s another sort of Hounded House story, but this house is built over the gates of hell. And of course they’re open again, or they never got closed in the first movie.

Interestingly enough, this third movie in it, I, I, I detected no gates. Or hell, in this entire movie, so it’s kind of weird that it’s the third in the trilogy. But he said that he wanted to do something Lovecraftian. This is actually, it’s what he said about all three of these movies. The first one, I want to do something Lovecraftian.

This third one, I want to do something Lovecraftian, but not in a typical way. And uh, I don’t know if I really see the Lovecraft in this, but you’re, you’ve probably read more of Lovecraft than I do. 

Craig: Well, mad scientist, yeah, trying to find eternal life, yeah, I mean, I say, yeah, I, I, I am not a Lovecraft scholar.

I like the idea of Lovecraft more than his actual work. He’s really hard to 

Todd: read. Well, anyway, this has been one of my favorite episodes so far. Oh, God. I’m glad we had this opportunity to battle it out. It’s grudge match. It’s like steel cage grudge match.

Uh, thank you patrons for selecting this movie to torture craig with I say mission accomplished I couldn’t thank you enough for picking the right movie If you listeners would like to join the party and become a patron as well Just go to patreon. com slash chainsaw podcast and that just five bucks a month or 10 if you’re feeling really generous gets you access to that and all this behind the scenes stuff that we’re relying more and more on our patrons to help us put this podcast together.

If you want to have that level of influence, please consider joining the crew. And also, uh, you’ll get our unedited phone calls, which are even more salacious. Yeah. Just controversial. Full of 

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Todd: of. Blood and gore. Yeah, everything the MPAA makes us cut out

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Craig: to something else! Listen 

Todd: to someone else’s lame ass podcast, you pansy. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.