Season 06 Episode 03 – Censor

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Overview

Ever wanted to watch a movie about watching movies? Well, buckle up buttercup, because Censor is here to give you the most meta horror experience since Scream taught us all to fear landlines.

Meet Enid, Britain’s most uptight film censor in the 1980s, who spends her days watching gore-soaked “video nasties” and wielding her red pen like a sword of moral justice. And by the way – Rhys has watched most of those video nasties, so watch for appetizer reviews.

When Enid stumbles upon a disturbing film that seems to recreate her long-lost sister’s disappearance, she does what any rational person would do: completely lose her grip on reality and descend into a neon-soaked nightmare that blurs the line between fiction and memory. Because therapy is expensive, but unraveling psychologically is free!

Tune in to Horror Lasagna as we dissect this delightfully unhinged descent into madness!

IMDB – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10329614

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censor_(2021_film)

Trailer

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Transcript

00:02:39.10
Stephen Schneider
All right, so as we were just talking, welcome to a wonderful fall 85 degree day, Reese. Let’s talk horror movies. This time, we’ve got Censor.

00:02:49.38
Rhys
Sensor. Yeah. Um,

00:02:51.47
Stephen Schneider
It’s I was wondering about this one because if you’re a censor and you’re censoring videos, are are we going to see some of that? And are they going censor their own video? That was my big question.

00:03:03.29
Rhys
i Most of the movies um that you get little clips of in here, you can find on Tubi to this day.

00:03:11.21
Stephen Schneider
Awesome. So let’s talk about the movie that’s going to inspire everybody to jump on Tubi.

00:03:12.55
Rhys
Yep.

00:03:16.72
Rhys
There you go.

00:03:18.53
Stephen Schneider
All right. So sensor, this is season six. What is this episode? Three, I believe.

00:03:22.82
Rhys
Four?

00:03:22.94
Stephen Schneider
Um, it were on four already. Wow.

00:03:25.42
Rhys
Yep.

00:03:25.52
Stephen Schneider
Time moves fast. Um, and it’s another, uh, directed by a woman. And I really feel this one feels different than the other ones. So,

00:03:35.89
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I thought when I, uh, was picking them and at the end, we’ll talk more about it, but I was, I thought when we were picking this, this was kind of like a Steve kind of thing. Is this, is there anything actually happening here? Is someone just losing their mind?

00:03:54.02
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:03:54.86
Rhys
Yeah.

00:03:55.32
Stephen Schneider
That comes up. Definitely.

00:03:57.73
Rhys
This is a British film from 2021. It, debuted Sundance. they’re um total box office on this was like 364,000 or so.

00:04:09.56
Stephen Schneider
ah Yeah.

00:04:10.23
Rhys
Cause it didn’t have some huge box office tour. This was a, this was a, this was a trade show darling. So

00:04:16.82
Stephen Schneider
Wasn’t it like ah shutter? So they put it in a couple theaters and then it went right onto the shutter streaming. Was this a shutter one or is that something else?

00:04:24.61
Rhys
no, this wasn’t, this wasn’t shutter. This is one of your favorite British lottery funded

00:04:30.10
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Right.

00:04:31.09
Rhys
once

00:04:31.26
Stephen Schneider
You know, it’s funny. We watch so many movies that are, you know, the, the film festival or they got some grant or so we watched so many of those.

00:04:42.03
Stephen Schneider
It used to be, it be like, Oh, this should be pretty good because you know, those people get a grant or something. They really put their heart and soul into it as opposed to just, Hey, we have a lot of money. um But we see so many of those that I realized it doesn’t even make me go, Oh, this ought to be good and get all excited anymore.

00:04:58.79
Stephen Schneider
Cause like, Well, that’s all I ever watch anymore.

00:05:01.12
Rhys
that’s yeah that’s Yeah, it’s getting old hat.

00:05:04.30
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, they need to do something else like the the International Galaxy, the Universal Awards.

00:05:04.57
Rhys
um

00:05:10.51
Stephen Schneider
Then, then you know, that’ll impress us.

00:05:12.48
Rhys
Multidimensional cable.

00:05:14.07
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah, that would be great.

00:05:15.32
Rhys
Yeah. um This is a period piece. um And by period, I mean the mid-1980s in Great Britain period piece.

00:05:23.27
Stephen Schneider
Yes. And i I even made the comment about that, especially when Thatcher got on the screen. um i was I said, you know, this is definitely set a couple decades past, past period.

00:05:37.32
Stephen Schneider
It looks, I guess, I mean, we had limited sets, so it looked okay. I wouldn’t have guessed the time period just from anything else. But… But unlike Ty West, it didn’t feel like 80s.

00:05:52.39
Stephen Schneider
He wanted it to be like it was filmed in the 70s and looked like the seventy s extremely.

00:05:54.45
Rhys
Yes.

00:05:58.00
Stephen Schneider
This was, yeah, I guess it’s the 80s. They gave us some hints and I guess it’s 80s clothes, but it felt like it was filmed a couple of years ago. You know, that’s ah that’s a subjective thing.

00:06:08.35
Stephen Schneider
I understand that. But difference in how people did it.

00:06:10.11
Rhys
Yeah. It was more of a setting than a tone for this piece.

00:06:14.37
Stephen Schneider
Yes, that’s it. That’s the perfect choice there.

00:06:17.56
Rhys
um It got 36 nominations and won five of those in all the various shows that it appeared in. um, it was ran runs an hour and 24 minutes, which is.

00:06:29.37
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, it’s a little short.

00:06:30.89
Rhys
Yep. And, uh, the little tagline they have on the, uh, posters was you can’t edit reality.

00:06:37.98
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:06:39.02
Rhys
Yeah.

00:06:39.80
Stephen Schneider
I was waiting for that, too. i was like, are we going to see, like, is she really in a movie? And this is a dream sequence thing. But it’s it’s a little more intense and than just some gimmick like that.

00:06:51.98
Rhys
Yeah. Um, And the basis around which this is built is ah Great Britain’s insane censorship laws of the 1980s.

00:07:04.72
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:07:05.57
Rhys
And so we’re going to talk about the video nasties and how they came about and um censorship in Great Britain at the time. um There is

00:07:15.76
Stephen Schneider
Well, considering how some of the crowd reacts later, i can almost understand. you know i We got the same thing here with stuff, but yeah you know.

00:07:24.29
Rhys
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. This is this is um media hype taking to the extreme.

00:07:29.80
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:07:29.80
Rhys
And in the States, we had kind of similar things with music, um you know, which…

00:07:35.72
Stephen Schneider
Satanic panic.

00:07:36.88
Rhys
Right. And it’s the same thing here. It’s just this went way further than what we experienced here in the States.

00:07:43.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. Which is interesting because the, we think of the Brits as being a little looser on many things that offend us, but you know this shows some things that it’s like, I mean, they we’ll talk about it. We’ll talk about it.

00:07:58.27
Rhys
Yeah. um There is a group in Great Britain called the British Board of Film Classification or the BBFC. They are the ones who rate the movies for how old you can be.

00:08:11.44
Rhys
They also do things like say, hey, this little 30 second thing you’ve got in here, this is too extreme. You’ve got to remove this altogether.

00:08:19.76
Stephen Schneider
Right. We got some of that. It’s like, you know, this, this three second clip needs short and it gets a little too graphic. I’m like, oh my gosh, that would, that would kill watching movies for me completely.

00:08:25.54
Rhys
Right.

00:08:31.35
Rhys
So because of the way the law is written ah in the eighties, it did not cover videotapes because it was a new technology.

00:08:40.79
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:08:40.90
Rhys
And so all of these movie makers would send their, what is essentially the director’s cut ah to the Island and VHS tape. And you could watch that. And it wasn’t, so it wasn’t labeled. It wasn’t, there was no controls on it or anything.

00:08:56.83
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:08:57.44
Rhys
And of course that is going to, um

00:08:57.62
Stephen Schneider
Very underground.

00:09:01.91
Rhys
cause all kinds of people to be upset by this. And so, well, there was, there’s a group, ah the national viewers and listeners association, and they were ah like a purient group.

00:09:07.69
Stephen Schneider
That’s crazy that people react that way.

00:09:18.78
Rhys
They were there saying, Oh, this is too extreme or people shouldn’t be seeing this. And they pushed the director of public prosecutions to start to charge people.

00:09:29.84
Rhys
in Great Britain under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, saying that these these images are obscene, um they haven’t been classified, and what ended up happening was um the Director of Public Prosecutions, the DPP, they basically left it up to, like, our equivalent, the sheriff of every county, to enforce as you will.

00:09:57.72
Rhys
And so they would. Like, a very famous one. There was a guy in Manchester who was like this devout Christian who went into video shops all around Manchester and would just take anything that he thought was bad. And one of the ones that he had had seized was best little whorehouse in Texas because he thought for sure it was a porn.

00:10:18.47
Rhys
And it’s like, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

00:10:21.16
Stephen Schneider
Right. Porky’s is kind of more of a porn in many ways. so

00:10:24.41
Rhys
Yes. Um, so because of all the confusion, they decided to pass a law and in 1984, they passed the video recordings act.

00:10:34.43
Stephen Schneider
Right before videos, videotapes disappeared. and We got other formats.

00:10:39.14
Rhys
Well, you know, we did in the States, they were still a little behind us technologically. um So basically you had these, this group that would sit down and watch every, every time if you had a movie, you had to send it to these people as well as the BBFC.

00:10:57.46
Rhys
And these people would go through it and they would rate it and they’d say, this is how old you have to be. And this part has to be cut out or this part has to be removed. And it was to the point that if you owned a video store and you had raw video that was not classified or edited according to what they said, they could confiscate the material and they could criminally prosecute you if it ended up in the hands of anybody who was under the age of what it said it should be.

00:11:28.52
Rhys
And so people were, yeah, people were going to jail for this, which is just ridiculous.

00:11:28.78
Stephen Schneider
And that comes up.

00:11:35.80
Rhys
And the movie industry started playing on it. So there is a ah really bad exploitation film from the eighties called driller killer.

00:11:47.80
Stephen Schneider
Oh, I remember that.

00:11:48.01
Rhys
It’s yeah.

00:11:48.88
Stephen Schneider
and I didn’t see it, but I remember the name.

00:11:51.20
Rhys
Yep. They took out in a trade mag, this very graphic advertisement, full page ad. um And those people from the NVA ALA were like, this is horrible.

00:12:06.71
Rhys
You know, we can’t have this publication out there. And so anytime that the industry would push a bit, You’d have groups like the NVALA pushing back to the point that when um the distributors for Cannibal Holocaust were coming to Great Britain, they called ahead and complained to the NVALA about themselves.

00:12:27.91
Rhys
So they would get all worked up they would get a lot of mentions in the news and push more people to see their movie.

00:12:34.46
Stephen Schneider
Any publicity is good publicity, right?

00:12:38.90
Rhys
Right. And so what you end up having is you have the government cracking down on this, which adds hype to it, making the young people want to see it more. So it’s much more underground causing the government to crack down harder on it.

00:12:51.95
Rhys
Um, it was just, it was just this giant mess. And to this day, they still are very restrictive in what content can be seen over there. They had ended up with three separate lists.

00:13:05.31
Rhys
Um, They had the final 39, which are 39 films that were successfully prosecuted and remain banned to this day unless it’s the edited version.

00:13:14.56
Stephen Schneider
but

00:13:17.21
Rhys
um They have the dropped 33, which were 33 films which had been successfully prosecuted, but over time and appeals, the prosecution had been overturned.

00:13:30.41
Rhys
And if you have any of the final 39 unedited, they can seize your material and you’re criminally liable for having it. If you have any of the dropped 33, they can take it, but you’re not going to be prosecuted for it. They can they can take it.

00:13:46.75
Rhys
And the third list is what’s called Section 3, it has 82 different titles on it. They were never successfully prosecuted, but if you’re caught with unsanctioned versions, they will take those away as well.

00:14:00.00
Rhys
And you can find these lists anywhere online. And again, was going through and probably 80% of them Tubi. Yeah. on tobi

00:14:08.73
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I was going say, the the funny thing is that it’s easy to get this stuff and that nowadays compared to back then. But some of the times it’s just because they haven’t gone back and adjusted the laws because it’s irrelevant. and Who’s going waste their time? This is 40-year-old law.

00:14:26.37
Stephen Schneider
We still have laws in the U.S., like in certain counties in, you know, Arkansas, you can’t spit on the sidewalk, you know, and and just these stupid little laws that people laugh at, but there was a reason for it at the time, but that time’s passed and nobody bothers to just change anything.

00:14:34.26
Rhys
yeah

00:14:44.26
Rhys
And, you know, nobody bothers. There’s not a movie on those lists that didn’t come out before 1985.

00:14:50.63
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:14:51.84
Rhys
And of the films are still banned in Great Britain because the holders of the film never bothered to send it back in to get it reclassified. They were like, yeah.

00:15:00.23
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, once you know time has passed, and look like you said, well, it’s on Tubi now.

00:15:03.15
Rhys
yeah

00:15:04.82
Stephen Schneider
Things have changed.

00:15:05.90
Rhys
Right.

00:15:06.68
Stephen Schneider
And, and yeah I’ll say is since it is, you know, censorship and all that I’ve never approved, obviously when I was 15, I didn’t approve of censorship. Oh, I want to see all this stuff. But even now, know, we both have kids. We didn’t limit very much what they did, saw, read, listened to, ah you know, and, and they’re mostly adjusted, but but I’ve never agreed with the censorship because it’s like, well, how, why can you tell me what I can, can’t watch what I should watch and and stuff.

00:15:37.33
Stephen Schneider
Let me choose. But then you got the argument. Well, you get these people that have screwed up brains anyway. They watch this stuff and they go act it out. You know, we were keeping it from that.

00:15:48.23
Stephen Schneider
And, you know, I get all the arguments and stuff, but I don’t know. I’m not big on censoring. And I do like nowadays it’s like, okay, well, this is PG 13, but we do have an R rated version.

00:16:00.78
Stephen Schneider
And later we’re going to give you the unrated director’s cut, you know, and you know, it’s labeled and I’m okay with that. Great. Put it the theater. Everybody can see it or whatever, but I may make the choice to see that director’s cut later myself.

00:16:13.25
Rhys
Now you’re talking exactly like Prano Bailey Bond, who is the writer and director of this movie. um Again, there’s not a lot on her, so I was looking up interviews and things with her and listening to her talk about it. This is the era that she decided she was going to do this.

00:16:29.32
Rhys
um She came at the project from the concept that these films were so bad, and made people do horrible things, that what would happen to the sensors who had to watch them day in and day out and look at the unedited footage and you know, what kind of dark corners of their brain is this going to send them in?

00:16:51.12
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, and she does a good job throughout the film with that, showing multiple personalities and how they’re handling it.

00:16:54.01
Rhys
Yes.

00:16:57.64
Rhys
Yep. She was, uh, she’s born in 82. So she doesn’t personally really remember this. I’m sure.

00:17:03.71
Stephen Schneider
ah I was watching that at four years old.

00:17:04.82
Rhys
ah She’s a Welsh director. She was nam ah yeah was

00:17:09.43
Stephen Schneider
ah you can’t trust Welsh directors.

00:17:12.58
Rhys
ah nominated for 29 pieces. She won 11 of them. They’re not all this, but this was her first major motion picture.

00:17:19.94
Stephen Schneider
Oh, wow.

00:17:20.15
Rhys
um

00:17:20.57
Stephen Schneider
Nice.

00:17:20.64
Rhys
Everything else were mostly shorts.

00:17:23.38
Stephen Schneider
which Which, you know what? You say that and thinking back, I can see that in the the movie, the way the transitions are between scenes and how long scenes are and stuff.

00:17:34.53
Stephen Schneider
I can see the feel of the short movie clip.

00:17:38.28
Rhys
Yeah.

00:17:38.46
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:17:39.57
Rhys
So the short that she did before this had a male protagonist and I can’t remember. I think it was just called nasty. um And again, not unlike Baskin, it was, it wasn’t a proof of concept. It was, Hey, this is a short that did really well. I bet it would make a good full length film, but then she didn’t want the main character to be male because she didn’t want any kind of sexualization in the take.

00:18:07.17
Rhys
And by switching it to female, she thought she could eliminate that, which I think worked really well.

00:18:12.50
Stephen Schneider
Okay.

00:18:14.48
Rhys
It’s not like it’s not like you anticipate Enid doing any of this because of any kind of sexual bias to it all.

00:18:22.01
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah. And I think it, it were, it did work very well with a woman. Cause like her one partner, I loved him. He was hilarious. Oh, wow. That’s horrible. Yeah. Let’s pass it through. Yeah. Let’s pass it through.

00:18:34.54
Stephen Schneider
ah You know, but ah I think the sensibilities of maybe a woman, especially in the eighties, gave it a different feel. I liked it. It was good.

00:18:43.70
Rhys
Yeah, she was in an interview and this guy was asking her about censorship. And she was saying, you know, I watched all of these i watched all these movies getting ready for this. And I just thought the whole thing was ridiculous back in the 80s and the censorship.

00:18:56.87
Rhys
She’s like, and then I got a hold of a Serbian film. And I was like, yeah, I can kind of see where you need to draw a line. And she’s like, but what I realized was that that’s where my line is.

00:19:12.50
Rhys
But the line for you could be way back behind that. And in the 80s, the line was even further back then.

00:19:16.14
Stephen Schneider
Well, I have.

00:19:19.23
Rhys
So it becomes a question of who gets to draw the line. And she found the whole thing a very interesting concept for conversation.

00:19:28.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I agreed. And that’s, you know, the other problem with censorship is who’s deciding what is offensive and what’s not. And, and then how far, like you said, you know, I, I kind of push the issue with people sometimes when they’re like, Oh, we need to ban this. We need to ban, you the books, the comics that have been trying to, you know, we need to ban this. We need to ban this. It talks about this. It’s like, but it talks about the, the drunk father bully because that it,

00:19:56.50
Stephen Schneider
and This book isn’t focused on being a drunk father bully. you know You have the character. No, no character should ever have that. It’s like, yeah, well, you know maybe they should, but you get people’s personal agendas with the power.

00:20:09.23
Stephen Schneider
and I’m like, okay, fine. Give me the censorship. We’re to cut football off a TV because it offends me that they’re hitting each other on purpose and teaching boys the answer is to beat each other up and blah, blah, blah.

00:20:19.97
Stephen Schneider
People are like, that’s crazy. That’s kind of my point. he yeah Why can’t you decide and I can’t?

00:20:24.06
Rhys
Yeah.

00:20:26.31
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:20:26.94
Rhys
Well, and especially Great Britain, she found it to be a classist kind of conversation because what she found was that the censors were all highly educated, upper middle class to wealthy individuals.

00:20:40.86
Rhys
And it was okay for them to see this stuff, but the lower class imbeciles would obviously go insane and start killing each other.

00:20:48.15
Stephen Schneider
Right, right.

00:20:49.42
Rhys
yeah. And it’s also really important to note that every time they point to like a rise in crime rates or something, because and they blame it on this, it’s never this.

00:20:59.36
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:20:59.38
Rhys
And the crime rates might not even be going up. They’re just saying, look, there was a murder just the other day after this movie. And they actually address that specific that specific case in this movie.

00:21:11.11
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Very extreme too.

00:21:11.42
Rhys
yeah. Yeah.

00:21:13.24
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. We’ve lived through it. You know, the ah satanic panic kiss. Oh my God. It’s going to corrupt them all. I’m like, have you really listened to kiss? It’s really not that that bad.

00:21:22.57
Rhys
No.

00:21:22.80
Stephen Schneider
ah You know,

00:21:23.08
Rhys
Yeah,

00:21:24.03
Stephen Schneider
And movies and then Doom came out with the video games, ah you know, and so, yeah, we’ve we’ve seen a lot of that through our life as everything changes. But the funny thing is, oh, at this time, it’s horrible.

00:21:36.08
Stephen Schneider
Well, Doom still exists and it’s no longer a focus of it’s going to derange everybody. Kiss music is streamable.

00:21:41.32
Rhys
man.

00:21:42.87
Stephen Schneider
It reaches more people and it’s not causing them to say, well, it’s got to be Kiss anymore. Which kind of shows the stupidity of these, like, oh, we’ve got to ban this because it’s ruining our our country, our world.

00:21:55.97
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. I’m always saying it’s not, it’s not worse. It’s just different.

00:22:01.04
Stephen Schneider
ah yeah and

00:22:01.22
Rhys
Whenever, like one of the things that drives me nuts is people sitting there. Oh, this new math, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah but Well, yeah, that’s what your kids are learning. And it’s not what you knew and it’s not worse. It’s just different.

00:22:15.02
Rhys
It’s still math.

00:22:15.16
Stephen Schneider
right

00:22:15.99
Rhys
They still get to the end result. It’s just, you don’t understand how they got there.

00:22:18.36
Stephen Schneider
Sometime.

00:22:20.86
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:22:22.20
Rhys
You know what? My mom couldn’t program a VCR back in the 80s, but yeah we managed. So it was something she didn’t understand.

00:22:28.76
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:22:30.05
Rhys
It didn’t make VCRs evil. It was just different is the thing.

00:22:34.10
Stephen Schneider
No, you just got to watch the right movie to get evil VCRs.

00:22:38.04
Rhys
That’s right. Yes. um She personally loves Lucio Fulci films, and you can kind of see that.

00:22:44.81
Stephen Schneider
wait

00:22:45.61
Rhys
She has that kind of Italian Gio-esque look to her film.

00:22:49.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah.

00:22:53.64
Rhys
And ah Black Swan and The Machinist were inspirations for her and staying in the mind of pert somebody as they go, as they unravel, um which both of those movies do a really good job of that.

00:23:03.63
Stephen Schneider
Oh, interesting.

00:23:06.43
Rhys
The Machinist and Black Swan.

00:23:06.59
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:23:08.74
Rhys
And she is a huge fan of David Lynch. She said, he makes, yeah, he makes me think film can be art.

00:23:12.20
Stephen Schneider
Oh, that’s crazy.

00:23:18.07
Rhys
And I was like, wow. Okay. If that’s how far you have to go before you hit art is David Lynch levels. I’m, you know, everything else must be what just period crap, I guess, but yeah.

00:23:29.00
Stephen Schneider
well something to you know aspire to i mean David Lynch definitely you know gets you talking when you watch anything you know good bad or whatever yay

00:23:35.59
Rhys
Oh, sure. Yeah. We’ll, uh, we’ll look at that next season.

00:23:43.58
Rhys
um The movie stars Irish active actress Niamh Algar. She plays Enid Baines. um She puts a lot of thought as to what’s on the screen.

00:23:56.77
Rhys
She immersed herself in video nasties, which is the term for all those movies on those lists. ah She immersed herself in video nasties for a month before shooting, which resulted in, as she said, some messed up dreams.

00:24:09.43
Rhys
So

00:24:09.76
Stephen Schneider
but Well, she shouldn’t have been dropping some acid while she did it.

00:24:13.51
Rhys
I guess.

00:24:14.61
Stephen Schneider
no I just said that. Don’t take it out context, folks. It’s a joke.

00:24:17.96
Rhys
Um, she’d been involved in 36 projects, a decent number of those, um, being medium to long runs on television shows, BBC shows more likely that we are not aware of.

00:24:30.19
Rhys
Uh, she was in the wrath of man and 17 episode run on Ridley Scott’s associated max series raised by wolves.

00:24:39.42
Stephen Schneider
okay

00:24:40.35
Rhys
Uh, she’s got two upcoming titles, mooring and the Irish affair. so

00:24:47.61
Rhys
ah Michael Smiley is in this. He plays Doug Smart, the producer. We covered him extensively on Kill List and also in The Nun. This is, I think, the third one we’ve got of him in our titles.

00:24:58.58
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:25:00.97
Rhys
So I’m not going to go over. I’m not going to rehash his stuff. Irish actor.

00:25:04.07
Stephen Schneider
Go listen to old episodes. There you go.

00:25:06.50
Rhys
That’s right. He does have four upcoming projects, so I will mention those. He’s in a film called Unfiltered, Skintown, Nostalgy, and he’s in an episode of Blue Lights.

00:25:19.63
Stephen Schneider
Hmm.

00:25:19.92
Rhys
so So keep an eye out for those.

00:25:20.05
Stephen Schneider
Okay.

00:25:23.89
Rhys
Adrian Schiller plays Frederick North, who is the director of the film. um He was a character actor. He was born in London in 64, and he died last year, April 2024.

00:25:37.93
Rhys
He had 85 pieces on his resume, lots of BBC television programs, including long runs on a series called Victoria and the Last last Kingdom.

00:25:39.52
Stephen Schneider
Oh. Wow.

00:25:50.49
Rhys
um As far as films he was in that we would know, he was in ah video version of The Crucible film. Victor Frankenstein, a Cure for Wellness, Beauty in the beast tolkikeen and the and the 2025 Red Sonja movie.

00:26:08.53
Stephen Schneider
Oh yeah. Colin’s excited to want to see that. It was very limited. He missed it in the theater.

00:26:13.35
Rhys
Yeah. He also did tons of voiceover on video games. um Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, Castlevania, Lord of Shadows,

00:26:18.29
Stephen Schneider
Wow. let’s

00:26:22.76
Rhys
ah Fable 3, Goldeneye, Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed 3, Assassin’s Creed 4, Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Raid, World War two So he worked a lot before he, i think think he had a stroke is what they said happened to him.

00:26:26.94
Stephen Schneider
but um back

00:26:39.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:26:43.89
Stephen Schneider
That sucks.

00:26:45.28
Rhys
ah The last guy who’s getting a, ah last actor who’s getting a a call out Bacchus. Guils-Semay Delaunay. He plays the beast master.

00:26:54.91
Stephen Schneider
Oh, yeah.

00:26:55.00
Rhys
um He’s a French actor who was born in 75 in Vendee. He’s six foot nine.

00:27:01.37
Stephen Schneider
i was I was like, okay, this guy, he sounds like Andre is the Giant a lot. And I’m like, how much is his looks from makeup and prosthetics and how much of it is him naturally? 6’9″.

00:27:15.04
Stephen Schneider
That’s crazy.

00:27:16.00
Rhys
Yeah. ah He’s been in

00:27:17.45
Stephen Schneider
Doug Jones there.

00:27:18.83
Rhys
he’s been in 41 films, um, and some titles we’ll know Stonehurst Asylum, uh, Victor Frankenstein, uh, Pinocchio and Craven, the Hunter. He was in the Craven movie.

00:27:32.19
Stephen Schneider
Oh, oh, okay. Now I can see. Okay. I got that.

00:27:36.40
Rhys
Yeah. So I think now, uh, we’ll just go ahead and start talking about the movie.

00:27:44.41
Stephen Schneider
Drink time. Okay. Let’s go.

00:27:46.72
Rhys
So, the director does two things kind of sneaky and director like that I’ll point out as we come, ah as we come across them.

00:27:59.08
Stephen Schneider
Okay.

00:28:00.47
Rhys
But um one of the things that she does, that’s kind of sneaky and director like happens right in the opening credits for starters. This is a magnet distributed film and magnet are the ones who did triangle when you go through magnets catalog, there’s a lot of films on it that we have seen and discussed and enjoy.

00:28:19.54
Rhys
So then there’s, yeah.

00:28:20.63
Stephen Schneider
Oh, nice. Didn’t realize that, but I know, I mean, I know magnet. That’s pretty cool though.

00:28:26.31
Rhys
um Then there’s all of the ah logos for the British companies that come up and BFI and film for both have been around long enough.

00:28:36.59
Rhys
She used their actual logos from the eighties when they came through.

00:28:39.94
Stephen Schneider
Oh, that’s cool. Did she have to get permission to do that? Cause I know when they change, they redo copyrights and crap.

00:28:46.66
Rhys
More than likely, but so the first little trick that she does, she plays with the screen ratio in this film.

00:28:47.78
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:28:58.65
Stephen Schneider
Yes. And I had to check to make sure I was like, wait a minute. Is this right? Is she doing this on purpose?

00:29:04.21
Rhys
Yeah.

00:29:05.48
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:29:06.02
Rhys
So it gets really subtle at one point in the film where she actually takes the screen ratio and just slowly shrinks it down over a period of time from 2.35.

00:29:16.14
Rhys
to 1.33 and it’s solidly 1.33 until it jumps back out again.

00:29:23.65
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:29:23.82
Rhys
The movie starts with a 1.33 shot, but that’s because they’re watching something that is filmed in 1.33 and you can still see the sides of the wall on and the other side.

00:29:34.04
Rhys
So it’s being projected.

00:29:34.21
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:29:35.96
Rhys
So it’s not actually true 1.33 one. It’s an actual 2.35 to one. just, you’re only seeing that chunk. So, it’s just you’re only seeing that chunk

00:29:44.63
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:29:44.88
Rhys
so

00:29:45.79
Stephen Schneider
It was, it was a little shocking than like to look at it. I mean, I caught on right away. oh that’s cool that what she’s doing.

00:29:52.79
Rhys
It’s not something a lot of directors play with a whole lot, you know, usually.

00:29:55.92
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Not anymore.

00:29:57.07
Rhys
yeah Um, you have this.

00:30:02.44
Stephen Schneider
Oh, I was just going to jump in, you know, for all the kiddies. Yes, that was what we watch pretty much at home. That was it a square and it was small. And, you know that’s I’m like, that’s, you know simulating what she’s trying to give another hint as to the time period, too.

00:30:18.05
Rhys
yeah You have this hyper saturated handheld camera with a crying girl and she’s running away and she falls down and gets drug off. And, um, that’s the other game that she plays in this a lot.

00:30:32.93
Rhys
She’ll play with her color palette.

00:30:35.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I noticed that.

00:30:35.63
Rhys
So the vast majority of the world that she exists in, in this movie is shot in earth tones, grays, browns, and if anything, a little blue or green.

00:30:47.22
Rhys
And the one thing that I thought was really interesting is that I was like, why green? And I was like, because in the eighties, everything was lit with fluorescence and fluorescence don’t have red spectrum in them.

00:31:02.23
Stephen Schneider
we Yeah, we got the neon eighty s

00:31:04.62
Rhys
So when you photographed or film, you know, videotaped in those, not videotapes cause they could calibrate those. But when you were taking actual film photographs, You had put a filter on your lens or else everything would just come out washed out green because there was no red light coming from the fluorescent lights.

00:31:21.49
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:31:22.04
Rhys
um So that’s her normal world. When she enters like either films or when she starts to lose it, he starts to introduce this kind of red or this purple into the thing.

00:31:34.63
Rhys
Those are like when she’s dreaming or having a hallucination. But then towards the end of the movie, when like all the wheels are off the cart,

00:31:43.14
Stephen Schneider
And,

00:31:43.61
Rhys
even in the real world, you’ve got those Hughes showing up. So like her entire view of the world has changed, which I thought that was really subtle and well done.

00:31:48.12
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:31:53.70
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, and we like looking at what directors do when they do stuff like that, because they appreciate when people notice it. But, you know, I bet a lot of people don’t notice those things. Their overall thing was, and I felt most of the clips from videos they showed were more gory and graphic than what was going on in the the real life of the movie.

00:32:16.49
Rhys
Yeah.

00:32:16.57
Stephen Schneider
And it was almost like she it was censored.

00:32:16.64
Rhys
Yeah.

00:32:18.85
Stephen Schneider
And I thought that was a subtle statement ah she was making on ah on her own doing that. But even then, it wasn’t that bad in most of those. that She cut it, and you heard things or whatever or hinted at it a lot.

00:32:29.47
Rhys
yeah

00:32:32.57
Rhys
By the time I should have said this in the beginning, but by the time you’re to this point in the podcast, I’m assuming you’ve already seen it, but really the videos that she references and uses clips of are far worse than the actual movie itself.

00:32:47.51
Rhys
So

00:32:47.83
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. Another subtle nod.

00:32:51.72
Rhys
yeah. So, um, she’s sitting there with Sanderson who was played by Nicholas Burns. Um, and they’re making film notes and, um, She’s like, it needs more cuts. And he’s like, why? And he goes through this whole thing about Shakespeare, because the guy gets his eye taken out in the film.

00:33:09.50
Rhys
He’s like, look, Shakespeare with King Lear. And he lists all these famous people who like have lost their eye. And she’s like… No, look, I let you do that. I’ll let you keep the tug of war with the entrails.

00:33:21.50
Rhys
Um, it just took a little, and all the screwdriver stuff and just took a little bit off the genitalia. But, um, you know, some things need left to the imagination.

00:33:32.12
Rhys
she’s like, you lost this argument. As soon as you brought Shakespeare in the room, um, he’s like,

00:33:35.75
Stephen Schneider
but And his his whole attitude the whole time is just like, I really don’t care. Just pass it through.

00:33:41.87
Rhys
Yes.

00:33:42.61
Stephen Schneider
no who cares?

00:33:42.88
Rhys
Yeah. He just wants to get through. She’s like, I want to get it right. We can’t afford to make mistakes. She takes this job very, very seriously.

00:33:51.43
Stephen Schneider
Yes, she does. And another small thing I noticed is he is smoking in almost every scene, which was an 80s thing. And you really don’t see it now.

00:33:59.36
Rhys
Oh yeah.

00:34:00.32
Stephen Schneider
So she probably had to fight some censorship ah to get him smoking in every scene. I don’t know if he actually takes a puff, but…

00:34:09.41
Rhys
um You get shots from various movies now. You get shots from Driller, Killer, um Dreams of a Deranged Mind, I think is the other one that she uses a lot in here. um Then you have a voiceover, and it’s just news hyping up violence and the hysteria and how everything’s going to hell.

00:34:27.84
Rhys
And the credits are going over top of these old films, and then you have Censor and big red letters over the color palette, which in the background is just cool blues and stuff like that.

00:34:37.94
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:34:38.28
Rhys
Yeah.

00:34:40.50
Rhys
um There’s a cuts to a scene of a syringe to the eye. um and then you have the whole staff sitting there. They’re debating about whether or not this should be rejected or not. um And everyone seems to want to reject it except for Sanderson. And then they turn to Enid for her vote and then they cut.

00:34:58.14
Rhys
So we don’t really know how she voted. And I think, shoot, what was that? Cannibal. It was Cannibal. Something was the name of the movie they were talking about.

00:35:07.16
Stephen Schneider
Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:35:08.96
Rhys
It comes up later.

00:35:09.21
Stephen Schneider
i I did like these first two scenes. they She did a really good job of giving you all the information you needed about the setup for the movie without hitting you over the head and explicitly dumping it in in stupid conversations.

00:35:25.27
Stephen Schneider
You know, those, well, you know, as you know, we typically go there on a Tuesday. You know, none of that. It was it was very much… ah The way she acted, the responses they of what they were talking about with being very, ah just beat you over the head with information. So I really appreciated the first couple of scenes.

00:35:42.19
Rhys
It is so subtle. I’m a guy who makes notes during movies. I’m also a guy who’s horrible with names.

00:35:51.32
Rhys
They never actually just come right out and say their names, which is something they will do.

00:35:54.65
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:35:55.16
Rhys
And like they would have been, so if this was American, she and Sanderson would have been sitting in there and he would have said something. She would have come back with, oh, that’s silly Sanderson.

00:36:05.36
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:36:05.48
Rhys
It would have at least said his name. So you know what it was.

00:36:06.93
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:36:08.06
Rhys
You don’t find out what his name is until like halfway through the movie. Cause it’s just not really how people talk is you and I sitting in a room and I’m going to be like, oh, Steve, you know, it’s not going to be something.

00:36:13.90
Stephen Schneider
right

00:36:22.31
Rhys
Um, so she and Annie are finishing up watching a film. And at one point in time, they do mention Annie’s name in this scene. Um, she’s going to her sister’s birthday party and she wonders if Enid would mind doing her notes for her.

00:36:36.67
Rhys
Um, and she’s like, sure, I’ll do your notes for you. So she’s going to type up her notes and it gets to leave early.

00:36:42.89
Stephen Schneider
She’s Enid’s the mousy little ah the nerd that does everything for everybody. But Annie struck me as she’s newer and, and it’s affecting her a lot.

00:36:53.85
Stephen Schneider
ah Some of this.

00:36:55.42
Rhys
She also strikes me as more of a mother um because, you know, she, takes she takes this to heart as in, why would anybody want to watch this?

00:36:58.00
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:37:04.73
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:37:05.21
Rhys
Enid takes it to heart because she thinks she’s like the last bastion before the downfall of civilization.

00:37:05.36
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:37:11.31
Rhys
Like she has to do the censorship stuff, right?

00:37:11.81
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:37:15.09
Rhys
Because if she doesn’t, the world’s ending.

00:37:17.32
Stephen Schneider
And Sanderson’s like, you know, they pay me either way.

00:37:21.28
Rhys
Yeah. Right. Yeah. um So she leaves and she’s walking through these tunnels as she’s going to the tube. And I can’t, there’s like two movies I know you haven’t seen yet, but um absentia is one and irreversible is the other. And both of them have like these urban tunnels. People walk through and bad, bad, bad things happen in these tunnels.

00:37:47.35
Stephen Schneider
yeah yeah You know, was going to say, people talk about certain things in America because they it’s shown that way always in a movie.

00:37:48.25
Rhys
Never happens here.

00:37:55.80
Stephen Schneider
And we’re like, yeah, it’s not really like that. I don’t know if I’d ever want go in the tunnels in London because that’s where they always show. That’s where the werewolves came. And, you know, that’s where all this stuff happens. The monsters are.

00:38:07.01
Rhys
Yeah, but nothing happens in this really. She walks through the tunnels. She sees a lady in front of her with red hair. And she’s like, excuse me, excuse me. And the lady turns around kind of annoyed. And she’s like, oh, nevermind. I thought I knew who you were. And then she goes about her day. And that’s, that’s her walking through these tunnels.

00:38:22.67
Stephen Schneider
And again, that’s another, why did she do that? Who is this person she thinks of? Because an American movie would have been hitting you over the head. So when she had that scene, you’d know exactly who she, but here it’s like, well, who was that supposed to be?

00:38:37.06
Rhys
Yeah, there would have been frame framed pictures and like notes on calendars about anniversaries and all kinds nonsense they would have thrown in there.

00:38:37.29
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. It’s not Annie.

00:38:41.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:38:44.55
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yes.

00:38:47.48
Rhys
ah We cut to the Iron Dragon bitching about the working man. and you know There she is up there, the great British Ronald Reagan with a dress.

00:38:56.86
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah. and That, that hairstyle was the most eighties thing throughout the whole movie, I think, or in the video rental.

00:39:03.60
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. Enid is doing ah her weekly crossword at home. There’s a phone call and her answering machine picks up and it’s her mother. um They’re going out to dinner and could she please come? And one of the criticisms that I ran across somebody was like, those types of answering machines weren’t used quite as commonly in the mid eighty s yeah okay

00:39:26.88
Stephen Schneider
Oh, man. And I must say she lives in a bachelor pad. I mean, she like has three bricks holding her TV up and she sits on the floor. It’s like, you know, it is sparse.

00:39:36.31
Rhys
Absolutely.

00:39:37.43
Stephen Schneider
Oh,

00:39:37.82
Rhys
My, my kind of decoration.

00:39:40.55
Stephen Schneider
yeah.

00:39:41.84
Rhys
Um, sure. Parents, she goes out to eat with her parents. They’re sitting across from her. reminded me of American Gothic because the guy’s tall.

00:39:48.70
Stephen Schneider
oh yeah

00:39:50.02
Rhys
She’s short. They’re just sitting like this, like perfectly framed. If you put a pitchfork in his hand, it would have been perfect.

00:39:56.10
Stephen Schneider
ah

00:39:57.35
Rhys
Um, and they’re making some small talk. They’ve presented Enid with a death certificate. And she’s like, it’s a death certificate. And they’re like, it’s been a very long time.

00:40:09.97
Rhys
And we’re just going to accept that she has deceased. Again, no name.

00:40:16.42
Stephen Schneider
No.

00:40:17.87
Rhys
And just for our ease, the name is Nina. And Nina was Enid’s sister, which we’ll find out in a bit. But they never even say this during this whole dinner thing. It’s like, we’re just going to say that she’s dead and move on. And Enid has a problem with that. She’s like, we don’t know if she’s dead.

00:40:35.02
Rhys
And they’re like, just, we don’t want to keep beating ourselves up over this. Let’s just accept it and move on.

00:40:42.51
Stephen Schneider
Right. And again, you know, just enough information, but it all ties together as you go on. But you have to, you know, you can’t run to the restroom. You’re going to miss something.

00:40:52.74
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. She sits there and she’s playing with her thumb. Like she, she’s picking at her cuticle and her dad kind of busts her and she like puts her hands down. So we know this is like a nervous habit that she’s had for a long time.

00:41:05.95
Rhys
And then her mom asks her if she’s seen anything at work she would recommend. She’s like, it’s not entertainment, mom. So ah horror movies are not entertaining to her, apparently.

00:41:17.97
Stephen Schneider
But it also definitely fit the the parents. There’s something going on. Someone, obviously, the parents are trying to normalize life again. And Enid stuck.

00:41:30.01
Stephen Schneider
You know, that that was very much that.

00:41:30.29
Rhys
Yeah.

00:41:31.96
Stephen Schneider
So let’s have some chit chat. And you it was just very awkward.

00:41:33.79
Rhys
Yeah.

00:41:36.31
Rhys
And here’s where you finally get some some clickage. She goes home. have the death certificate sitting on top of a box. She opens the box. It’s full of mementos. There is a photograph of two young girls standing by the seaside. And then there’s a news clay newspaper clipping about a young girl going missing. So you’re like, oh, that’s Enid and her sister. Again, I’m just saying her name’s Nina.

00:41:59.94
Rhys
And ah you know her sister went missing a long time ago.

00:42:04.29
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And spirals down from there.

00:42:06.40
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:42:08.70
Stephen Schneider
And and

00:42:08.75
Rhys
um

00:42:10.33
Stephen Schneider
about this time and this kept going on in the whole movie, we talk about horror definition of horror and horrific and all that. This movie made me feel very creeped out and creepy, like through the whole thing, especially the, the scenes with her flashback memories, very stylistic.

00:42:29.95
Stephen Schneider
ah But then you know everything she did, that her actions were just a little off and it just really gave you a shiver up your spine feel for an hour and 20 minutes.

00:42:43.76
Rhys
Yeah, it’s there’s nothing overt about what’s going on that you’re like, oh, that’s chilling. It’s just everything is disquieting.

00:42:53.88
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:42:54.39
Rhys
And when it’s disquieting for an hour and 20 minutes, it builds up.

00:42:59.23
Stephen Schneider
It does. and It’s hard to sustain. and I think it did a really good job of that build up and sustaining it rather than getting some doldrum area and boring area. Every scene built and got more intense without being able to pinpoint how it got intense or what made it intense, you know?

00:43:17.48
Rhys
So that’s the funny thing about this movie is you’ll sit there and you’ll watch it and you’re completely engaged the entire time and it finishes and you’re like, wow.

00:43:28.22
Rhys
And then you stop and think, you’re like, what did I just watch really?

00:43:32.47
Stephen Schneider
why That’s almost exactly what I wrote in my notes.

00:43:36.27
Rhys
And it’s not one of those, what did I just watch? Like housewife where you’re like, what’s going on? You know, what’s happening. It’s just, you’re sitting there and like, how did she suck me in like that for the entire time?

00:43:49.63
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:43:50.11
Rhys
Now I’m thinking about it logically. i don’t get it, but she does.

00:43:53.50
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. That’s almost exactly what I put Yeah.

00:43:56.71
Rhys
Yeah. um She has a dream of her and Nina walking in the woods on a foggy day. It’s very short. The dream sequences that she has, they’re little snippets and they get a little bit longer each time.

00:44:10.60
Rhys
So you get a little more information.

00:44:11.19
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:44:12.16
Rhys
You just, you know, they’re happening because there’s a little hint of red on the edge of the frame. um Everything’s kind of stylistic, kind of Jai-o-esque. um

00:44:22.13
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:44:22.95
Rhys
And so she’s having this dream cut to her being on the tube. And I,

00:44:27.70
Stephen Schneider
And she starts having like hallucinations in her dreams. That was the weirdest thing. I’m like, wait a minute. Where are we in this movie?

00:44:37.79
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, again, we’re not talking Yen Evernol where it’s like, there’s all these worlds happen. No, it’s not that. It’s just, again, disquieting.

00:44:47.94
Rhys
It’s not confusing. You know what’s going on, but she’s on the tube.

00:44:51.05
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:44:53.80
Rhys
There’s people arguing. There’s a guy reading a paper about how everything in England’s gone to hell. And like, he sees her look reading his newspaper and he’s like, well, um you know, it’s just like this perfect little sample of how screwed up the world was in great Britain in the eighties.

00:45:07.89
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right. And just FYI for all you like closeted Americans here, the tube is the underground rail system, not, not to be or something.

00:45:16.16
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s their subway.

00:45:18.86
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. ah yeah we’re We’re in another part of the world.

00:45:19.56
Rhys
It’s the subway in London.

00:45:21.39
Stephen Schneider
There are other parts of the world, folks.

00:45:24.79
Rhys
Uh, Enid and Anne are watching a film called Extreme Coda. And about the only reason to bring it up is one, um the name comes up a couple times.

00:45:35.83
Rhys
And two, there’s a rape scene that takes place in an office, like a home office. And we come back to that scene again later. Otherwise, it’s just a scene of her and Anne sitting there watching watching this thing.

00:45:44.80
Stephen Schneider
right

00:45:49.31
Rhys
They’re having a conversation. And this is where Anne’s like, I don’t know why anyone would make a movie like this. And even it’s like male inadequacy, revenge, catharsis. Like, wow. Okay.

00:46:01.96
Rhys
um

00:46:02.08
Stephen Schneider
You really do take your job seriously.

00:46:04.12
Rhys
She does. And that’s her explanation for why directors do this. She’s just so focused on getting everything right.

00:46:12.24
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:46:13.57
Rhys
And, because she is what happens next. She’s the worst person for this to happen to. She and Sanderson get called into Frazier’s office. And this is the first we hear their boss’s name, Frazier. We’ve seen him in another scene way back at the start.

00:46:28.09
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:46:28.36
Rhys
This is the first we get his name. His name’s Frazier. He was played by Vincent Franklin. Um, it’s serious. They’re supposed to close the door.

00:46:34.97
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, he’s he’s closing the blinds.

00:46:38.08
Rhys
Yeah. Um, so there’s a movie and, um, It was called deranged. That was the name of the movie. And in the movie, a serial killer eats someone’s face.

00:46:51.88
Stephen Schneider
Kind like Florida Man with Bath Salts.

00:46:52.05
Rhys
And yes, yes. And there’s a man in Brighouse who killed his wife, removed her face, and then killed both of their sons.

00:47:03.48
Rhys
um And he was, the press is saying he was influenced by the movie deranged. um And the journalists, one of the journalists happens to know that it was Sanderson Enid who did the review for that movie, which is really weird.

00:47:24.18
Rhys
And they never really addressed that.

00:47:24.51
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:47:25.66
Rhys
Like, how did the press find out about this?

00:47:30.05
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. They didn’t address it and it’s not really known. I mean, I don’t know it’s probably on the records, but that’s about it. So did the, the cranky lady at the desk tournament? I don’t think so.

00:47:44.39
Stephen Schneider
I wondered if Enid did it herself subconsciously without even knowing.

00:47:50.41
Rhys
Sanderson accuses her of it in his conversation later with Gordon. He’s like, I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned us in.

00:47:54.56
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:47:57.28
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Considering all the end of the movie, but again, it’s not, you know, spoiler alert. They don’t really address it. Answer the question. It’s open.

00:48:05.03
Rhys
Yeah. ah The press are calling him the amnesia the amnesia killer because he doesn’t remember what happened. He has no idea what happened. It just did. Um, that’s, which is not unlike Enid with her sister.

00:48:17.35
Rhys
Enid has no idea what happened to her sister.

00:48:17.74
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:48:19.07
Rhys
She was with her on that day. um Frazier’s sitting there arguing his point. Sanders ze is arguing with him and Enid just kind of, she’s like daydreaming. She comes out of a reverie and she’s just apologizes.

00:48:34.67
Rhys
She’s just really sorry this happened. Um, Frazier wants them to talk through why they decided to approve the film. And if you’re ever in doubt, just refuse, just reject the film.

00:48:47.53
Rhys
And it’s like, well, it’s the whole argument against censorship, right? Like this had nothing to do with the two of them. This was an insane person in his house, losing his mind.

00:49:00.21
Stephen Schneider
how How many things happen every day from some crazy person, some mad deranged person, whatever that no one’s like, Oh, it was this movie. It was this movie. It was a, there’s a hundred things before you get that one, you know, it’s a big world.

00:49:12.93
Rhys
yeah

00:49:14.01
Stephen Schneider
You’re going to get a coincidence once in a while, you know?

00:49:17.36
Rhys
And the general populace in the media feeds into this is always looking for some sort of tied up in a bow. Neat reason.

00:49:24.17
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:49:24.58
Rhys
Some kind of excuse to blame this on.

00:49:24.95
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:49:27.26
Rhys
It might have nothing to do with any of the things you’re thinking. So.

00:49:30.49
Stephen Schneider
Right, exactly. and yeah But you know this was the 80s. It’s a good thing that that doesn’t happen anymore. Yes.

00:49:35.66
Rhys
Yes. Nice to see we’ve moved past that as a society.

00:49:38.91
Stephen Schneider
yes

00:49:39.64
Rhys
Enid is in her own office. News is going on about the amnesia killer. and this is her office at home and her phone rings and she answers it.

00:49:50.94
Rhys
And it’s somebody yelling at her about it how horrible she is that she approved this. And she seems so shocked that she’s getting these. She’s essentially been doxxed in modern terminology.

00:50:01.36
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. moderner But she keeps listening to it.

00:50:04.64
Rhys
It’s a lot harder.

00:50:06.02
Stephen Schneider
She like doesn’t even hang it up. Yeah.

00:50:07.93
Rhys
Yeah. A lot harder to do back then, by the way.

00:50:11.19
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:50:11.91
Rhys
Nowadays, if you’re willing to pay 50 bucks, you can get pretty much any information you want on anybody, but,

00:50:16.91
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:50:18.53
Rhys
um So we cut to a young a scene of a young Enid. She’s playing with her finger. So we know that that’s her because she’s doing that same cuticle thing. Her father asks where Nina is.

00:50:29.95
Rhys
She doesn’t say anything. And now she’s cuts to adult Enid riding the tube at night, reading a newspaper. And the front of it says, are the censors to blame?

00:50:40.67
Rhys
Which, you know, of course, it’s got to be somebody.

00:50:42.80
Stephen Schneider
Right. Exactly. yeah We can’t blame, you know, the deranged person that did Right.

00:50:48.70
Rhys
Yeah. ah She gets to work and there’s a throng of reporters. You know, we have our thing with paparazzi, but didn’t the news, I think the news is a little more intense as far as ground floor reporters in England.

00:51:03.96
Rhys
They’re not afraid to get in your face.

00:51:06.09
Stephen Schneider
Right.

00:51:06.93
Rhys
um Inside, she’s distracted while she’s trying to do her work. um And in comes Doug. And this is ah Michael Smiley. He’s kind of walking in in this slick sleaze bag, used car salesman looking suit.

00:51:22.64
Rhys
He kind of gives her this look as he walks by. They slow the camera down. So he’s doing it in slow motion. um he heads into Frazier’s office. And this, you know, he’s a producer.

00:51:33.52
Rhys
And he brings Frazier a bottle of scotch as a gift. You know, if that’s not a bribe, I don’t know what is And here’s where you can hear Sanderson in the other room bitching to Gordon about how he wouldn’t be surprised if Enid was the one who leaked that it was them who did this.

00:51:49.02
Rhys
um And he could have moved into academia and, you know, he insults Enid again and she hears that and opens the door and he like just leaves.

00:51:58.44
Stephen Schneider
Right. Which leaves the other guy to very awkwardly try and cover it up.

00:51:58.64
Rhys
Yeah. Well,

00:52:02.02
Stephen Schneider
And he does so very humorously.

00:52:04.20
Rhys
Oh yeah. He’s like, Oh, it’s bad luck. It could have happened to anyone. And she’s like, we’re here to make decisions. It can’t be about luck. It’s like, okay.

00:52:13.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:52:15.68
Rhys
Um, Doug’s bought Frazier a bottle scotch. He takes note of eat it on his way out. He’s very slimy. And he is like, Hey, if you ever get bored of, ah banning my films, I could get you a job on the big screen.

00:52:28.99
Rhys
And here’s the interesting thing. She replies, I’m not sure I’d, how much I’d like the idea of being raped and cut into pieces on camera. And he says, no, but I’m sure the public would love it.

00:52:40.78
Stephen Schneider
yeah i’ He’s a class act. I love him

00:52:43.49
Rhys
He is. And he specifically requests her to look at his latest Frederick North film. And Frazier says it’s already on her schedule. And I think this is another theme that um people who don’t get something like horror ah or for this matter, porn or sex work always just assume that like the people doing it,

00:53:09.53
Rhys
are insane or like imprisoned and forced to do it. They like never consider that this is a viable option for people and they don’t hate their jobs.

00:53:14.70
Stephen Schneider
but

00:53:20.73
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:53:21.45
Rhys
Which is is’s just really weird. Enid does the same thing here. She just assumes that, you know, oh, well, if I’m starring and in horror films, I’m going to be raped on set and stuff like that. I he watch those um scary sleepovers with Adam Green.

00:53:37.67
Rhys
All those female co-stars who are on there there, they love what they do for a living. You know what I mean?

00:53:43.09
Stephen Schneider
but But, you know, this this is talking more about the 70s exploitation films, which was a total different you know thing back then. You don’t see hardly at all like that anymore.

00:53:54.03
Rhys
It is. And on, ah you know, in one of the interviews where she was talking about it, Prana was talking about it. She brings up The Shining and she’s like, you know, was Stanley Kubrick just a genius director or was he somebody who basically imprisoned and tortured Shelley Duvall until she gave him the performance he wanted?

00:54:12.05
Rhys
You know, you you really get a good look at that at the end of this film.

00:54:19.18
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:54:19.98
Rhys
Come to think of it. Don’t go in the church is the next film that ah she has to review. um She’s sitting there with Perkins. It’s the two of them.

00:54:31.01
Rhys
ah She writes on the top of her page, don’t go in church. And underneath that, she writes Frederick North. um And then Perkins notes that the titles are silent. and o That’s less’s different.

00:54:41.70
Stephen Schneider
yeah

00:54:42.75
Rhys
um And the film starts and you have two girls walking in the woods, one leading the other and the other not wanting to go. And this is like an obvious analogy to Enid and Nina, because these are

00:54:53.85
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. I mean, it was like her dreams exactly on film.

00:54:57.56
Rhys
these are the things that Enid does remember about that day. She remembers going with Nina outside this creepy old building and making Nina spin around in circles and then go in the building by herself. um The exact same thing happens in this film.

00:55:12.82
Rhys
And, um, in is having flashbacks to the day that she was with Nina and it went missing in the film. the big sister grabs an ax, goes in and proceeds to hack her sister into pieces parts.

00:55:28.16
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

00:55:30.05
Rhys
Um, and it’s so striking to Enid that like, she’s ends up throwing up in the bathroom. She’s just vomiting.

00:55:41.58
Stephen Schneider
Right. in And so now, know, I’m sitting there going, okay, so did we just see what happened to her sister? And I almost wondered, was that what the film really was? Or was that just what her brain was seeing? Cause they, they were flashing between the film and her thoughts and which is very stylized. So, you know, don’t blink too much. Cause there’s a lot that goes on here.

00:56:03.63
Rhys
Yeah.

00:56:03.69
Stephen Schneider
And I’m like, so is she a psycho and this just triggered her to start, you know, going off again or something like that? or was she really goody two shoes, but the net watching all these movies and now watching this, it’s close to her sister.

00:56:20.68
Stephen Schneider
Now it turned her into a psycho. i mean, you know, it really, it really was a very intense, very intense scene.

00:56:23.36
Rhys
yeah

00:56:29.55
Rhys
I, I think that the video she was watching was legit. What she was watching Perkins mentions it. And again, the color palette, which is our key to when like things are starting to slide, it was still normal in this.

00:56:42.28
Rhys
It was still the earth tones and things like that.

00:56:44.54
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:56:45.31
Rhys
Even the video itself was very earth Tony. Um,

00:56:48.77
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. looking Looking back after watching the whole thing, looking back on this scene, you could are almost say, well, maybe she contacted the director and told him this story and he used that to make the movie because of some of the stuff that happens later too.

00:57:05.79
Stephen Schneider
It’s another one of those that you could throw out several ah theories and none of them are wrong with enough arguments from what goes on.

00:57:13.67
Rhys
Right, because she never she never does actually solidify how this whole ball started rolling.

00:57:17.93
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right.

00:57:20.43
Rhys
We never even really know what actually happened to Nina.

00:57:24.81
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yep.

00:57:25.97
Rhys
So,

00:57:26.81
Stephen Schneider
You’d think that would be the answer and it’s not.

00:57:29.18
Rhys
nope. Perkins checks in on her and he’s like, you can talk to me if you want to. And I think this is something that women have to put up with a lot at work.

00:57:40.30
Rhys
Like she’s having a hard time. He’s being nice, which is cool. um They have some conversation. And then in the end, he’s like, hey, if you want to go out and get drinks sometime, like just because you’re interacting with each other as coworkers and being nice to each other doesn’t mean that she wants to go out with you.

00:57:59.31
Rhys
You know what I mean?

00:57:59.92
Stephen Schneider
Right. Right. But I also took this as maybe he had a crush on her, but he’s the shy little nerd guy and he’d never gotten up enough gumption to ask her.

00:58:08.39
Rhys
This was the chance.

00:58:09.91
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And it was very awkward and didn’t work out for him.

00:58:13.54
Rhys
No, he.

00:58:13.59
Stephen Schneider
So he probably went and blew his brains out. I think that’s in, you know an off scene.

00:58:17.87
Rhys
He does have the important line. She’s like, why don’t you think that the amnesiac killer can remember anything? And he’s like, I used to work in psychology and you’d be surprised what the human brain can edit out when it can’t handle the truth.

00:58:31.16
Stephen Schneider
that That was a good thing to you know hear that. that’s

00:58:34.94
Rhys
Yep.

00:58:36.04
Stephen Schneider
There’s a lot of things that could be explored right there.

00:58:39.34
Rhys
Yeah. ah She’s walking down that tunnel again to get to the tube. She hears like someone crying and sobbing and she like turns to where that’s going. And like the tunnel just gets black and she walks down there.

00:58:54.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, sure.

00:58:55.94
Rhys
And I, for me,

00:58:56.50
Stephen Schneider
No one told her she was in a horror movie.

00:58:59.47
Rhys
Well, for me, this is the point where she’s she’s like embracing it now. she’s She’s losing her mind and, okay, fine, I’m just going to go into the darkness and we’ll we’ll move on from there.

00:59:05.72
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

00:59:13.02
Stephen Schneider
It does get questionable. Occasionally is is she imagining this or is it really happening from here on out?

00:59:21.08
Rhys
Yeah, right. Because everything up to now has been pretty straightforward.

00:59:24.68
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

00:59:25.00
Rhys
But now she’s… She’s on the phone with her mom. She’s telling her mom about the the film, don’t go into the church. Um, and her mom’s like, look, it’s just a job. And so she’s trying to like poo poo it.

00:59:39.05
Rhys
Um, so you can see she’s been journaling and I suppose if I really, I really should have paused it and tried to read what she had written, but, um, She seems to have fallen asleep on her chair.

00:59:52.74
Rhys
There’s the, and now we’re entering into like a long form of her dream here. There’s a staticky screen. Um, she’s walking around her house. If you have any question about whether or not it’s a dream, now you have that sharp red tinge on the edge of the frame.

01:00:08.91
Rhys
Um, there’s static on the television in the room. It’s kind of ring esque in a way. Cause it’s just the TV in the middle of the room by itself with static. Um, now you’re in the forest in the dark and there’s this wind chime with what almost looks like a death space, like a skull from the stuff hanging there.

01:00:26.34
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, i like I saw that. And I thought that was a pretty cool to go that in depth, something that people may miss, but if you catch it

01:00:34.22
Rhys
Yeah. um She’s outside this house calling for Nina. Everything slows down. There’s some growling in the woods behind her. And I just say it’s the beast man because I assume they use the same actor for all of it.

01:00:47.81
Rhys
um But he’s walking through the woods behind her, not like creeping up on her, just like walking through the trees, like in a dream.

01:00:54.33
Stephen Schneider
Like Bigfoot.

01:00:55.54
Rhys
Yeah. um In her hand is some red hair and a crumpled piece of paper, which she uncrumples. And it says, don’t go into the church. And it says Frank North. It’s from her notebook.

01:01:07.37
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:01:08.69
Rhys
um Now it’s back to her point of view in her house. um She turns away from the television and she hears crying and there’s her mother and her mother turns around and screams at her. It’s all your fault.

01:01:22.52
Stephen Schneider
Which was one of the biggest jump scares we’ve watched in a while, really.

01:01:26.83
Rhys
Yeah, especially in this film, which does not doesn’t purport to like base it on that kind of thing.

01:01:29.50
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, exactly.

01:01:34.19
Stephen Schneider
And it was the old mother, you know, and it it wasn’t an axe-wielding maniac. So it was very well done. I mean, I appreciated it for being like the only jump scare in this whole movie, and you wouldn’t have expected it.

01:01:46.22
Stephen Schneider
It almost doesn’t fit, but it, you know, I love that.

01:01:50.67
Rhys
Yeah. There’s a quick cut to her in Perkins watching this cartoon. There’s a cat on a conveyor belt driven by mice and there’s a guillotine getting ready to cut its head off. um Enid’s flipping through a book and she comes across that same page with don’t go in the church and ah Frank’s name on it.

01:02:09.33
Rhys
So she heads down to the secretary and this is what life was like before computer people. um She walks down and she’s like, do you have any information on Frederick North? And she’s like, you have a list of his films? And she’s like, no. She’s like, without a list of films, that would take a week.

01:02:26.22
Rhys
um She doesn’t even offer to do it. She’s just like, that would take too long. You’re on your own.

01:02:31.19
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Too bad.

01:02:34.17
Rhys
So she heads back to her desk and she’s packing her stuff up and everyone notes that she’s leaving like at the end of her day, which is weird. She never does that. um And this next scene is what it was like to try and get video nasties back in good old mid eighties Britain.

01:02:51.85
Rhys
She goes to a video rental place and there’s ah poster of beast man on the door um who she just had a dream about. And this kid comes running out with his brother. He’s like, beast man’s going to get Yep.

01:03:03.28
Stephen Schneider
which I loved because it very subtly showed they went through all this censorship stuff. And here’s this like eight year old kid getting this horrific movie to watch.

01:03:13.31
Rhys
yeah Um, she walks in and she grabs this video. She’s, she’s just kind of milling about it. She’s trying to decide how to do this. She gets, picks up a video. She looks at the cover of it and it’s an exact replica.

01:03:25.38
Rhys
Basically at the end of the film, there’s a house, there’s a mom and a dad and a little kid and a rainbow and everything looks happy.

01:03:27.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.

01:03:32.89
Stephen Schneider
It was ah what ah the day the earth began or something like that. And I said, wow, that’s the scariest thing we’ve seen in this movie yet.

01:03:42.30
Rhys
This woman comes in, she’s returning a movie um and it’s kind of hush hush under, the under low breath. And the guy takes the movie and puts it under the counter. um And then she comes over and she’s like, Hey, I’m looking to see if you have any of a shoot. What was his name?

01:04:01.50
Rhys
Frank.

01:04:05.02
Rhys
Frederick North.

01:04:05.16
Stephen Schneider
North yeah

01:04:06.30
Rhys
you have any Frederick North films? And the guy instantly gets cagey. And the whole thing is like this spy movie feel. ah And she’s like, look, you.

01:04:15.57
Stephen Schneider
awkward spy movie though

01:04:18.50
Rhys
I know you have ah unlicensed version of cannibal carnage that, you know, you just have returned to you. And it’s been banned. And the guy’s like, why do you even want to see this? And then she like pulls out the names of some really nasty films. She’s like, I saw this. I saw this. I loved this scene where they tore the guy’s stomach open with scissors and then stapled it back together again. And the guy’s like, okay. And he gives her this film called a sunder.

01:04:48.40
Rhys
Um, what she doesn’t know is that the press saw her going in and took a picture of her going into the store.

01:04:51.95
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And I love how this one is in the closet. It’s not even under the counter or anything.

01:04:59.26
Rhys
Yeah.

01:04:59.63
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:04:59.89
Rhys
Yeah. It’s in the back.

01:05:03.28
Rhys
Ketu are sitting in her living room. She’s watching the movie and it feels very much like an evil dead ripoff, which is you know pretty appropriate for the time.

01:05:09.06
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:05:12.05
Rhys
But in this case, I think it’s more of an homage than a ripoff, right? It’s her paying tribute to Sam Raimi’s.

01:05:19.17
Stephen Schneider
yeah

01:05:20.31
Rhys
There’s a red redheaded actress on screen. Her name is Alice Lee. She was played by Sophia Laporta. Um, Alice is shrieking loudly on the video. You get audio, but no real video of that.

01:05:33.91
Rhys
um and something clicks with Enid. So she goes to see her mother and she, and her father, You look at her father sitting there over his shoulder as a picture of the two girls standing side by side.

01:05:47.45
Rhys
Her mom’s giving her local gossip. Has she found a nice fella? And she’s like, no, I think I found Nina. She’s an actress named Alice Lee and her parents don’t want to hear anything about it.

01:05:58.94
Rhys
They’re like, this is why we gave you the death certificate. It’s done. It’s over.

01:06:04.90
Stephen Schneider
So that really struck me as they’ve had to deal with this with her before that Enid’s done this type of thing.

01:06:10.28
Rhys
Yes.

01:06:11.86
Stephen Schneider
She’s never accepted it. She keeps having these crazy theories or whatever, but she can’t really remember what happened, which makes it very suspicious anyway.

01:06:20.65
Rhys
Yeah, it does. um She’s driving back in the dark in her car. She’s weeping. And then she’s passed out on her couch and there’s static on the television legitimately because the TV was on. She fell asleep.

01:06:31.86
Stephen Schneider
But nobody crawls out of it at that point. So it’s not…

01:06:34.08
Rhys
They do not. ah But we do get a palate shift and we have Nina spinning around in the woods by this creepy house, which is all lit up. And Alice is watching from a good distance away. And Nina’s changing from a little girl into the actress, Alice Lee.

01:06:50.35
Rhys
And then she smiles and Beastman comes to the door. Edith is terrified as Alice Lee walks up the steps and she tries to stop her. but that means she has to go inside. And when she does, the screen bleeds to white.

01:07:05.39
Stephen Schneider
Because they didn’t want to show the axe murder again.

01:07:08.07
Rhys
Yes, I guess.

01:07:10.34
Stephen Schneider
yeah We don’t know. So make a guess.

01:07:13.05
Rhys
So now Enid is in the office, but that color palette has followed her to the office now. Now the world is being tinged by her delusions.

01:07:21.96
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

01:07:22.64
Rhys
um She’s going through reels of film. She finds the reel for Don’t Go to Church and copies the address for the the producer down on her hand. We’re going to get to go see Doug.

01:07:31.97
Stephen Schneider
And I liked it was film, the reels, you know, that she was digging through for that that stuff.

01:07:32.01
Rhys
um

01:07:35.75
Rhys
Oh yeah.

01:07:38.83
Rhys
um She walks down the hall and then it seamlessly cuts to her walking down the street in this ah suburban neighborhood.

01:07:45.03
Stephen Schneider
Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.

01:07:46.90
Rhys
Yeah. um She goes to Doug’s house, which is not house number 13.

01:07:54.47
Rhys
She rings the doorbell. He comes to the door with a crowbar He’s been having some trouble of late. It seems people don’t appreciate his films.

01:08:02.50
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, imagine that.

01:08:04.48
Rhys
She reminds him of who she is. And she was in the area. Could she come in and talk? And he’s like, sure. And he’s got in his head, oh, this is like some sort of booty call that’s happening right now. That’s what he’s thinking.

01:08:17.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:08:18.49
Rhys
He invites her.

01:08:18.73
Stephen Schneider
very obvious. and he’s ah He’s like a silk smoking jacket, you know.

01:08:21.95
Rhys
Oh, yeah, he is. He’s as sleazy as he was in the store. He invites her in and she asks if he lives alone, which just feeds into his whole, yeah, I’m getting lucky now.

01:08:35.32
Rhys
um And then she goes in and his office is the office of that rape scene in that film, Extreme Coda, which she was reviewing earlier on with Sanderson.

01:08:42.76
Stephen Schneider
yeah

01:08:46.46
Stephen Schneider
And fangirls it almost. oh yeah, I recognize it.

01:08:48.77
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. um He has a scotch. He gives her one. He’s like, I got a trophy for that movie. I went to the United States. I go to the United States a lot. He has this trophy. It’s got an ax on it. And he like sets it down on his table is a picture of Alice Lee.

01:09:04.97
Rhys
And she points out that, don’t you think we look similar? And he’s like, huh? Well, now you mentioned that you do. Can I take your wet coat?

01:09:14.32
Stephen Schneider
this

01:09:14.93
Rhys
um She asked about Frederick and Doug says he’s a provocateur and a genius. Um, Frederick was the one who requested that she review his movie because he wanted a woman’s eye on the film.

01:09:29.63
Rhys
ah at that moment, he tells her that Frederick is filming a sequel out in the woods where he had done the old one for don’t go into the church. And she asked if Alice Lee is in it. He’s like, yeah, it’ll be her last film.

01:09:42.71
Rhys
She’s coming to the end of her shelf life. Now his words have his meaning and what she hears.

01:09:49.72
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

01:09:50.55
Rhys
His meaning is she’s just too old to keep doing this. You know, you need young, nubile women to play in these things. But Enid is like, they’re going to kill her because, you know, that’s what they do in horror movies to people.

01:10:03.25
Rhys
They just kill them and and rape them. And, you know.

01:10:05.68
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. She’s definitely psychotic at this. She’s lost touch.

01:10:09.74
Rhys
Yep. And now he goes to make his move. He like puts his hand on her. She’s like, don’t touch me.

01:10:15.41
Stephen Schneider
Before this, though, she completely slams that scotch. ah It was very impressive.

01:10:19.74
Rhys
oh yeah.

01:10:20.60
Stephen Schneider
It was like, it was, you know, it’s half full and she’s just, hold on, gulp it.

01:10:21.01
Rhys
She pounds it.

01:10:25.41
Stephen Schneider
He kind of looks like, wow, okay.

01:10:27.37
Rhys
Yeah. She’s like, what’s going to happen to Alice? He’s like, uh, well, I can’t tell you. And he’s like, I can abduct you. And that’s when he touches her and she recoils.

01:10:39.64
Rhys
He accuses her of being a prick tease. They start to fight. He falls backwards onto his trophy, which goes right through the back of his head.

01:10:47.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that was pretty gruesome.

01:10:47.66
Rhys
And he chokes on his own blood. Yeah.

01:10:49.58
Stephen Schneider
That was the most one of the most gruesome things in the whole movie right there.

01:10:52.47
Rhys
Yeah, it really was.

01:10:52.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Oh, it is not slow. He’s choking for a couple minutes.

01:10:56.39
Rhys
oh yeah, they linger on it. She straightens herself up, thanks him for the whiskey, and heads back out into the night. um She goes home, takes a shower, gets another prank call, only this one is saying things specifically from conversations from the past throughout with other people from the movie.

01:11:14.82
Rhys
And the camera pushes into the static on the TV, and we see Enid walking down the hall at work. The camera’s all canted and the colors are off. um She walks in and Sanderson and Anna reviewing a new beast master film. And Ann Lee is on Alice Lee is on the screen.

01:11:33.63
Rhys
And she’s like, help save me, please. you know, like she’s asking Enid to save her. Enid apologizes and leaves the room. Goes into the secretary’s office and starts rifling through her shit, which you want to upset a secretary.

01:11:50.83
Rhys
You start doing that crap.

01:11:52.62
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:11:52.84
Rhys
um She pulls a folder and the secretary is like, you don’t have clearance to see that or whatever. um And gets the address for Frederick North and tells Valerie everything’s under control and leaves with the file.

01:12:05.59
Rhys
Now you’re for sure on the secretary shit list.

01:12:05.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:12:08.35
Stephen Schneider
yeah Well, I don’t think it matters, but okay.

01:12:11.20
Rhys
Yeah, that’s the least of her concerns right now. Um, she leaves Sanderson and Anna are talking about how the amnesia killer had never even seen the movie. And so he’s like, I got in trouble for nothing.

01:12:24.10
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:12:25.05
Rhys
um just as it like a, a passing thing as she’s walking by, she goes out of the office. There’s a throng of people, reporters waiting for it. She goes right past them. And then we have this series of quick cuts of horror movie shots and her house In the hallway, in the tunnel, and it all resolves with her driving her car in the woods.

01:12:45.66
Rhys
It’s just like bang, bang, bang, bang. bang Boom.

01:12:48.34
Stephen Schneider
right

01:12:49.69
Rhys
On her face, she seems vaguely confused at first, and right now is when the screen ratio starts slowly collapse in

01:12:56.59
Stephen Schneider
Come in. Yeah. And I think all those shots are, yeah know, she is a little psychotic at this point and she’s like the amnesiac killer. She doesn’t remember.

01:13:07.22
Stephen Schneider
so I think that she did a good job portraying that the director.

01:13:07.46
Rhys
Yeah.

01:13:11.02
Rhys
Yeah. And the color palette is completely shifted. Now she stops her car outside of this trailer. She gets out and, um, she’s approaching the trailer and there’s an analogy between this trailer and the shack of her dreams, right?

01:13:24.75
Rhys
They looked very similar. Someone out in the woods screams and she looks back at the trailer and there’s this woman heavily made up smoking a cigarette, looking at her. The woman’s coming out needed like, Oh, she grabs a rock.

01:13:38.04
Rhys
And the woman comes out and she’s like, oh, well, I’m busted and just drops the rock. And she’s like, is this film, is Alice Lee filming? And she’s like, you’re late.

01:13:50.20
Rhys
And obviously the lady does not know who she is. Her name’s Debbie. And she’s there to do her makeup. um She’s like, you don’t look anything like your picture, which makes sense because she’s not who she thinks she is.

01:14:02.28
Stephen Schneider
Right.

01:14:04.21
Rhys
um So she sticks her in a white dress.

01:14:06.95
Stephen Schneider
Which we got the obligatory girl loses her shirt scene. So there you go.

01:14:11.23
Rhys
Yeah, she was wearing a bra, so don’t get too excited to anybody, but…

01:14:13.48
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. You don’t see much except shoulders up, but you know, I, I caught that as a ah horror movie nod.

01:14:16.84
Rhys
Yes.

01:14:22.15
Rhys
As she’s getting her ready, there’s a picture of her going to the video store on the front page of the newspaper. Again, this is not going to be a big deal for her in about 15 minutes.

01:14:32.48
Stephen Schneider
right

01:14:32.79
Rhys
But, you know, ordinarily that would be a big deal. One of the aides comes down and says, hey, the director’s getting impatient. Um, and says the producer’s not here. That’s Doug.

01:14:43.74
Rhys
And Debbie’s like, Oh, that’s really weird. Cause Doug loves the gory kill scenes in a movie.

01:14:49.64
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, he just had a really good one.

01:14:52.44
Rhys
So then she, yeah, yeah. He started it.

01:14:55.18
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:14:56.25
Rhys
Uh, Debbie takes her out and has her stand in the woods and is just splashing red paint on her for blood. They do it.

01:15:02.50
Stephen Schneider
Which is probably much more close to the truth of what happens than people may realize.

01:15:06.74
Rhys
Oh yeah, for sure. But it is, it’s kind of like this, you were normal and you’ve been going crazy. And here’s like this baptism before we just send you out in the world to do horrible things.

01:15:19.76
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, white dress and everything.

01:15:21.34
Rhys
Yep. Enid walks through the forest and she comes to a lit circle on the forest floor. And Frederick is there sitting against a tree in the shadows saying, I’ve been waiting. And he makes her stand into the light and not unlike Stanley Kubrick, he basically psychologically berates her until she gets into a headspace that he thinks will make a good shot.

01:15:44.96
Stephen Schneider
It’s a lot like ah the more modern Whiplash, that same type of thing.

01:15:49.00
Rhys
Yes. Yeah. It’s that same kind of deal where I’m, I’m going to kind of basically bully you until you give me the performance I want.

01:15:56.38
Stephen Schneider
or or Or a middle middle school band.

01:16:01.08
Rhys
I was thinking it, but I didn’t say it.

01:16:02.85
Stephen Schneider
I said it

01:16:05.60
Rhys
Um, so she’s sitting there talking about it and he’s like, um, She’s like, where did this story for Don’t Go Into the Church come from? And he’s like, it’s based on a real story. All my movies are.

01:16:21.25
Rhys
And he’s like, horror. And this reminded me of Baskin so much. Horror is already out there in all of us. It’s in you. And she’s like, no, it’s not. And he’s like, don’t be so naive.

01:16:34.68
Rhys
So he wants her to access her darkest impulses. She’s like, she doesn’t have any. He insists that she does. He wants her to improvise and she recuses. And he’s like, just get out of here. And she’s like, no, no. She basically begs to see her little sister. And he thinks she’s method acting.

01:16:51.56
Rhys
He’s like, all right, we can work with that.

01:16:53.98
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. yeah

01:16:55.89
Rhys
So she gets up and she insists that he’s a bad person for making her be the bad person in the story. And that’s when he’s like, okay, go enter your story. So she gets up and starts walking towards this little shack.

01:17:10.65
Rhys
As she walks towards it, she grabs this ax. You have that same death head wind chime hanging over there in the corner. And inside she looks around and the beast man comes up to her and says, I’ve been waiting for you. And like gives her this hug.

01:17:25.35
Rhys
And in the end, while he’s giving her this whole exposition as he’s talking, she hugs him back. So it’s like, she’s, you know, embracing this beast inside her.

01:17:35.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. It was a weird scene.

01:17:39.35
Rhys
it is. um She turns around, she’s looking around and grabs the ax and turns back to the beast man And he turns around and he has Alice Lee by the hair.

01:17:52.00
Rhys
and um he’s like, there’s something rotten inside of you. Twist it up. It’s yeah something about secrets bottled up. Let it out.

01:18:03.51
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.

01:18:03.50
Rhys
And.

01:18:03.67
Stephen Schneider
Any last vits vestiges of sanity? They’re gone.

01:18:07.54
Rhys
Yep. She will approaches and all of a sudden the beast man’s face changed and he’s like, wait, that’s not in the script. And she buries her ax in his chest.

01:18:17.05
Stephen Schneider
yeah definitely. ah She’s chopping down a tree pretty much.

01:18:21.92
Rhys
Yeah. ah He falls backwards and his head goes through a television screen, which happens to be back there. She looks down at the gaping wound in his chest and suddenly his face appears in it.

01:18:34.37
Rhys
And it says, I am the horror. We all carry our horror inside us, right? And then she really takes the ax to him and just really starts to hack him up.

01:18:42.04
Stephen Schneider
yeah But again, they don’t really show it. but you know they that Most of it, you hear it, which is quite often in this movie.

01:18:46.70
Rhys
That’s right. Yep.

01:18:51.17
Rhys
Frederick comes in and yells, cut. And then the ratio goes back out. And i’m like, oh, he thought this was a good take. But the director’s not so sure of himself. Before, he was like psychologically bullying her. And he’s like, wait, what’s going on? And he just turns around and cuts his head off with an axe.

01:19:08.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. think it’s fun.

01:19:10.00
Rhys
ah you You’ve got the big sound guys over there throwing up in the corner.

01:19:15.56
Stephen Schneider
that was That was pretty funny.

01:19:17.42
Rhys
Yeah. As Alice Lee takes off. um she goes chasing after her and she’s like, I saved you. And she’s like, you killed Charles.

01:19:28.59
Rhys
he was my friend. And she’s like, no, he couldn’t have been. Everything I’ve done is to protect you. And she sets her ax down and she’s like, you’re my sister. And Alice is confused. She’s like, it wasn’t real, but in it, it says it has to be real because you have her eyes.

01:19:45.33
Rhys
And Alice says, i have a sister and it’s not you. Then Ena just sits there in the mud and begs her to be her sister.

01:19:55.94
Stephen Schneider
to To make sense of the reality.

01:19:56.13
Rhys
that

01:19:57.82
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. to you know yeah

01:20:00.45
Rhys
Now things get really weird because she just s lays there in the mud begging her to be her sister as Alice has left. And now she out of nowhere pulls out the video controller from work.

01:20:13.49
Rhys
And she starts messing with it. And the screen ratio goes back down to 1.33. The lighting comes back. And now there’s this fog and this white light. And Alice is walking back angelic.

01:20:25.83
Rhys
And shes she’s calling her Nina now. And she’s like, come on, let’s go home. And the two of them are holding hands, running off through the woods.

01:20:37.35
Rhys
And it’s amazing. There’s a news voiceover. There’s no more video nasties. There’s no more crime, no more unemployment. The streets of Britain are safe at last.

01:20:49.61
Rhys
nina’s driving or Alice is driving down the road, and you can see ah Nina sitting there with her face against the window. It’s Enid’s driving down the road and all of a sudden there’s like this abrupt cut as Alice Lee looks terrified as she’s sitting in this car with a crazy person.

01:21:08.52
Rhys
Then it goes back to everything’s great. And then we’re at the house and there’s a rainbow over the house and mom and dad are out there waving just like that video box.

01:21:14.91
Stephen Schneider
Just like the video…

01:21:19.42
Rhys
And Alice goes over to them. And then there’s this cut where they’re all looking horrified. And Alice Lee is like, save me. And then it goes back to every for a second, it goes to Enid’s face and she kind of sees that. And she’s like, wait. And then everything seems good again. And she smiles And then cut to a VHS player ejecting a videotape that says sensor and roll of credits.

01:21:42.98
Stephen Schneider
krista Yeah. You know, we get a lot of those movies where you have reality, but then you have the unreality breaking into it. This was almost the opposite. She lived in the unreality and reality kept trying to break through to it.

01:21:58.45
Stephen Schneider
And again, it was like you said, I’m like, wait, wait, that’s the end. Wait a minute. What? If you want a ah movie that, you know, gives you an ending with answers. Well, too bad.

01:22:08.48
Stephen Schneider
Keep moving. Cause this is not it.

01:22:09.37
Rhys
Yeah. And again, you’ll finish the movie. You’d be like, that was really good, but I don’t know why.

01:22:17.37
Stephen Schneider
Yes.

01:22:17.40
Rhys
i mean, because you’re sitting there going, well, there’s not like some sort of crazy gore. There’s not any really huge twist to it. There’s no, so no answers to the whole thing. And in the end, you’re just like, wow.

01:22:30.65
Rhys
And she held me that whole time.

01:22:33.97
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And as far as you can tell, it’s basically watching the slow progression of lunacy in Enid. But even arguably, you could argue that maybe that’s not what’s happening.

01:22:46.25
Rhys
Yeah.

01:22:46.30
Stephen Schneider
You know, there’s there’s possibilities. It’s a choose your own adventure movie.

01:22:50.49
Rhys
Now, one of the things ah Prano said when she was in this interview was once you start this movie, it’s a race because you want to get the movie done and out before somebody else has done something that’s similar.

01:23:02.39
Rhys
And then they’ll just be like, oh, this was a ripoff because you don’t know what all is going on out there.

01:23:05.14
Stephen Schneider
there.

01:23:07.63
Rhys
There was a movie that came out two years before this called Saint Maude. M-A-U-D is also by a female director whose name escapes me. um but they’re very similar films where you have a British woman who basically loses her mind by the end and Rose Glass is who directed St. Maude.

01:23:30.03
Rhys
It’s a very good piece. It’s an A24 film. I had debated between the two, of which one to use. And I decided to do sensor because it dealt with movies.

01:23:41.13
Rhys
And, you know, that’s what we talk about here. St.

01:23:44.09
Stephen Schneider
Okay.

01:23:44.30
Rhys
Maude though, is certainly worth a watch, especially if you enjoyed this because it’s very similar. It’s very similar in its story, the way the directors work and everything completely different.

01:23:56.29
Stephen Schneider
okay

01:24:00.68
Rhys
Like you had much more vibrant, intense stuff going on in this than you do in St. Maude. St. Maude takes more of a out of body kind of religious aspect to it that you don’t get with this.

01:24:15.53
Rhys
But, you know, if you enjoyed this, you will certainly enjoy that. And I would recommend it. But I thought I would mention it. It did predate this by two years. And it was something that Prana was concerned with.

01:24:27.71
Rhys
I don’t think she needed to be. They’re two radically different movies, just with very similar themes.

01:24:32.82
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And that happens quite a bit. You get movies that are very similar in a short time, you know, decades.

01:24:38.41
Rhys
Yeah, but come in a spate.

01:24:40.31
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. It’s weird.

01:24:41.38
Rhys
Yeah.

01:24:42.12
Stephen Schneider
um Something in society triggers the same thing in people sometimes.

01:24:46.34
Rhys
I guess, yeah’s yeah, that’d be an interesting sociological study there.

01:24:51.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Well, you know, it’s easily resolved by watching another horror movie because that’s a lot of psychological studies going on.

01:24:56.09
Rhys
yeah sure, for sure.

01:25:00.19
Rhys
Yeah.

01:25:01.78
Stephen Schneider
So yeah, it was an interesting interesting movie at the very least. You know, it’s one of those that, you know, certain people probably wouldn’t appreciate it so much, but you know if someone says something, I’m like, well, you can give censor a try.

01:25:05.65
Rhys
yeah

01:25:15.29
Rhys
Yeah.

01:25:15.49
Stephen Schneider
It’s not for everybody necessarily. And it’s a thinking one.

01:25:19.04
Rhys
I stumbled across it and was happy that I had, so.

01:25:22.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Censor.

01:25:25.13
Rhys
Yep.

01:25:26.12
Stephen Schneider
Do we know what’s next?

01:25:27.44
Rhys
We do.

01:25:27.54
Stephen Schneider
We’re getting halfway through the season.

01:25:28.90
Rhys
So after watching Censor, ah which took place in the 1980s, we’re going to the 1980s to watch what I’m sure would have been a video nasty at the time. We’re going to watch the Slumber Party Massacre.

01:25:41.38
Rhys
110%.

01:25:41.79
Stephen Schneider
Oh, slumber party there. That’s, you know, ah teens on the bedroom floor at midnight when parents are a asleep movie.

01:25:48.82
Rhys
82.

01:25:49.09
Stephen Schneider
There ever was one. That’s like 81 or something, right?

01:25:50.41
Rhys
yep eighty two

01:25:53.78
Stephen Schneider

82. Yeah.

01:25:54.00
Rhys
ye

01:25:54.99
Stephen Schneider
So, all right. So that’s coming up. And hey, quick side note, Colin finally watched The Battery and he called me and said, oh my God, you’re right. That was a ah wonderful movie. He’s like, it was fantastic all way. I’m like, well, Jeremy Gardner does have a few other ones out.

01:26:11.23
Stephen Schneider
So.

01:26:11.32
Rhys
So long and short of it is children, you know, we know what we’re talking about.

01:26:16.19
Stephen Schneider
yeah, we’re professionals here. Hey, I told you that.

01:26:18.49
Rhys
Listen to your dad once in a while.

01:26:20.76
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Well, that’s the point of the story, but I told you, you know, a couple of years ago, I said, dude, if you’ve watched 1200 horror movies, you’re now an expert. That just no way around that.

01:26:31.65
Stephen Schneider
So you, you put pot it, but I live by that assertion. so

01:26:36.82
Rhys
I appreciate that.

01:26:39.12
Stephen Schneider
All right. So there we go. Season six coming up. I’ve been started putting season six online. I got a little slow getting to it, but now we’ll probably get a couple here for Halloween. So people, ah by the time they get this one, Halloween will be over.

01:26:52.67
Stephen Schneider
It’ll be Christmas time to watch censor.

01:26:54.79
Rhys
Well, you know, the crazy thing is after Slumber Party Massacre, as far as recording goes, we’ll be halfway through the season. and

01:27:00.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. And I actually haven’t seen slumber party massacre. So it’ll be kind of good to delve back into the eighties style.

01:27:06.67
Rhys
Oh, yeah. yeah you’ll enjoy it. Yeah, we’ll talk about it.

01:27:11.43
Stephen Schneider
We’ll talk about it. All right. Later, man.

01:27:13.44
Rhys
See ya.