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Overview
Another vampire movie, though Rhys CLAIMS to dislike horror movies. And this one is very similar and even came out the same year as another popular vampire movie. what do you think - is this one the superior of Lost Boys? Should more people watch this one?
It's a bit like an Aliens reunion also, multiple familiar faces in this one.
And if you like the ones with twists at the end, try this one. let's just say, interesting way to end a vampire flick.
And let's see what the next vampire movie is that Rhys DOESN'T like. 😉
Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Dark
Imdb - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093605
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Transcript
S06E09 Near Dark
Stephen: All right. Near Dark. So w- this is episode nine for Season 6, and I've been putting them up, but we've had some public domain side dishes. We've had some local cuisine, which by the way Morrigan is doing a hiatus from social media the day of that I was trying to contact her, so I don't know if we'll hear from her
Rhys: Okay
Stephen: cuisine.
But we'll see. So but we're we're getting done here with Season 6 and we-- Another surprise. I was not-- I didn't look ahead and see what this one was, and I'm like, "Wow, a vampire movie from Reese."
Rhys: Yep. And I think this is one where Steve and I are gonna come to blows a little bit
Stephen: Oh, okay. That'll be interesting. Let's come to blows. All right, let's go for it
Rhys: There you go. This is Near Dark. It was a movie, an American movie from 1987. It was dir- directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and she also shares a credit for writing it, so she was involved in the, this considerable amount
Stephen: Nice. And I'll, I give, again, credit, '80s women in horror movies did not seem like it was something people would be going for. So give everybody involved lots of credit just for that
Rhys: There you go. It runs 94 minutes. It had 10 nominations with one win. It was made on a $5 million budget, and it had a $3.4 million gross take at the gate.
Stephen: Hey, that's pretty good
Rhys: It certainly was. Entertainment Weekly ranks it as one of the 21 most scary films of all time. Now, I don't know if that's necessarily the case, but
Stephen: Wow. Okay. I, that I will co- I, I don't see that at all. I could probably easily come up with 21 much scarier movies. But for that time period, okay I guess maybe if they're, doing clickbait for the time period too, so okay.
Rhys: Yeah, it could be. If you just go through our past seasons, you're gonna hit over 21 that are scarier than
Stephen: Yeah, exactly. But they're probably looking at 21 of the scariest movies that you've actually heard of.
Rhys: That's true.
Stephen: All right. So we'll just let it go.
Rhys: it was shot in 47 days. 40 of those were night shots. And it was shot mostly in sequence, which she credits to them, you know, planning everything out very much so ahead of time so that it was very easy for them to just come in and start and keep going, so
Stephen: I cannot imagine some of the modern film that's two and a half hours, that has a scene every 30 seconds with a cast of 40 people, and they have A, B, and C teams out at different spots and they're refilming. And some of the stuff Lucas did where he called people back six months after filming to film new stuff.
I cannot picture that. It sounds chaotic, but I can picture something like this.
Rhys: Yeah. It was shot mostly in Texas. The opening sequence was shot in Coolidge, Arizona, which is just outside Phoenix, which is really kinda interesting to me 'cause if you've ever... Even in a plane, if you're flying from Arizona back east, you can see there's a definite difference between the look of Arizona versus Texas.
But
Stephen: Yeah. But if you know an area, it's easy to tell. If you don't, it-- you can hide it, g-get through some shots
Rhys: It was shot... It's set in the summer, but it was shot in the winter probably just so it would be actually bearable to be out there
Stephen: That makes sense considering the field at the beginning was totally barren that he was running through
Rhys: Yeah. This is another one of those vampire movies that never mentions the word vampire
Stephen: Good point. That's probably why it took a while for me to m- yeah, is this really a vampire
Rhys: Yeah. Let the Right One In, they mention it one time. It doesn't get mentioned here at all. And they're semi-traditional vampires, right? There's, we pick and choose what actually we- we're gonna use vampirism in here, so
Stephen: I do that it was portraying a, a new type of vampire, the trailer trash vampire. They- I was like, "Wow, these guys are just like hillbilly redneck trailer trash Pontiac on four blocks," and, dust and yeah
Rhys: This was the last movie produced and released by DEG, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group.
Stephen: Oh, I remember
Rhys: Yeah. So by the time this came out, the marketing department at DEG was gone, and there was no marketing support to actually properly promote this film
Stephen: Which is probably why I had no remembrance of this from '87
Rhys: Well, and here's the other part that's gonna lead to the fact that you don't remember this from '87, and here's where we're gonna come to blows.
This came out the same time as Lost Boys
Stephen: That's on my notes. That is right here on my notes
Rhys: And for those of you who don't know Lost Boys has gotta be one of Steve's top 10 movies of all time.
Stephen: It is a good one, partly because of the soundtrack, I'll give it that
Rhys: And it had a ridiculously star-studded cast as well.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah
Rhys: And I'm going to say I think I like this better.
Stephen: Really? My, my, my comment was did this or "Lost Boys" come out first? Because essentially the storylines are 80, 85% the same. It's following the same type of character, discovering being a vampire, fighting against it and leaving that, that life at the end, I think. And I'm like, wow, did-- were they like sitting in the, on the same train, one, one of them looking over each other's shoulders?
You like this one better. Okay, so why do you like this one better?
Rhys: I like this one better because the characters themselves are much more identifiable to me, as opposed to the guys from Lost Boys, which really just seemed like the brat pack surfboarders that is something I can't possibly connect myself to
Stephen: I, yeah, I could see that. But Lost Boys had a very cool soundtrack and comic books, so
Rhys: So there you go. That's the winning combination
Stephen: Yeah. Take what you like.
Rhys: It
Stephen: but you know what? Here's the thing though. Here's the argument, the philosophical. Let's say we saw "Near Dark" at 87 and had not seen "Lost Boys" until now. Would we think differently? Would that one be looked at better than now 'cause, "Oh, this is an old movie.
It was okay, I don't know why everyone's so hipped on it. I thought the other one was better." Partly could be the age and the time being seen.
Rhys: It could be. And to actually make a fair assessment, I should actually go back and watch Lost Boys, 'cause I don't think I've seen it since 1989 or something like that, so
Stephen: And this one didn't have a bad cast either.
Rhys: No, not at all
Stephen: the main guy, I watched him the whole time. I went, "Oh my God, that's what's-his-name from Heroes." It took me forever. And
Rhys: Petrelli
Stephen: yeah. And then what's-his-face, the main vampire dude I, I didn't write it down.
Rhys: Oh, I've got them all. We'll get to them
Stephen: Yeah, we'll get to it.
I was-- So there's some known, recognizable people in this one too. And it was fun because they were younger, and so it took me a minute to figure out who they were, and that makes it fun,
Rhys: Yeah. This was originally supposed to be a horror Western, which it actually ended up, but they wanted it originally to be more Western, but the genre was dying out at the time. So instead they made it modern time, just set in a Western setting
Stephen: To be fair, w- since the '60s, Westerns get really big and die out like every four years or so
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. The whole Yellowstone and everything like that, it'll peak and then...
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: But they included some stuff, like the traditional showdown on Main Street, you have that in this movie. It's just instead of shooting guns, you're running people over with semi-trucks kind of thing,
Stephen: yeah, no, it's all similar
Rhys: And just so that the cast got a feel for, what they were doing, everything that they were using, they were shooting blanks and using squibs, but she actually took the entire cast out to a shooting range to get used to firing the guns that they were holding in the movie itself, so
Stephen: So you're not shooting like a .357 Magnum with no kickback.
Rhys: Turning it sideways
Stephen: Yeah, you're bashing your own teeth in.
Rhys: So Kathryn Bigelow, she was born in '51 in California. She's a classically trained painter, and she worked in the fine arts world, for quite a while throughout the late '70s. She was in between projects and landed a scholarship for filmmaking in Columbia at Columbia University, and she went and just fell in love with the medium.
She was like, "This is a very alluring medium to work in." Which I get 'cause there's so many different factors you can do. It's not just canvas and color and texture and line. You have sound, and you have lighting and things like that
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. There, there's a good discussion, what type of medium's better, but we'll go on.
Rhys: She actually has work in the MoMA, hanging in the MoMA. She was like a legitimate fine artist at the time
Stephen: she has a better argument,
Rhys: yeah. She's been on both sides of this line.
Stephen: Yeah. I have a picture hanging on my fridge
Rhys: the producers loved this script, but they were really leery of having her direct it 'cause she was a woman.
Stephen: There we go
Rhys: so much so that producer Ed Feldman told her that if she didn't know what she was doing or she didn't look like she could handle it, she would be replaced in a heartbeat, and that was the kind of working environment she had to work through while making this film
Stephen: Wow. I can't imagine that. I'd almost be like fine. Screw you guys," and go somewhere
else. But, I guess at that time, being a woman she had to, so
Rhys: It was funny because I was watching an interview with her from back then, and they were bringing up the i- the fact that she was a woman who was directing, there's not a lot of women directors. And she was saying I can see a period. I'm glad that, you're seeing me as, as some pioneer, but I see a time in 10 years where it won't matter the gender of the director, it's just was it a good film or not?"
And I thought w- she was off. It certainly took longer than 10 years if we're even there now. But,
Stephen: it was, that's what everybody made a big deal about with Ms. Marvel Captain Marvel or whatever, 'cause it was a woman director. But after "Wonder Woman," they weren't as worried about it. "Oh, she did 'Wonder Woman,'"
Rhys: yeah. She was really big into having all of the vampires have a sympathetic backstory. So that as you watched it, if you're paying attention, you'll pick up on, the things that they did, with the exception of the vampire Severen, who she just wanted to be the perfect sociopathic vampire
Stephen: Okay
Rhys: Now she has a kind of close association with another filmmaker, a guy you might have heard of named James Cameron
Stephen: Hold on. Wait, let me think on that one.
Rhys: Yeah. In fact, she married him in '89. They were only married for two years, but they were married for a couple years. They were associates when this movie came out in '87. And he suggested to her that she take some members of the cast of Aliens, which he had just finished, because they had worked together so closely, and put them in this movie as a unit.
And so she did. Three of the vampires are three of the crewmates from Aliens
Stephen: Yeah, a- and I realize that. I'm like, what? Did they all just show up at the r- at the casting call and they went, "Oh, let's, we know what these guys look like"?
Rhys: Yeah. She was personally nominated for two Best Picture Oscars Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. And in t- 2010 she was up against James Cameron for The Hurt Locker, and that's the first time in history that's ever happened. And she won, making her the first woman in history to win a Best Picture.
So
Stephen: pretty cool. And those are pretty intense films
Rhys: Yeah. She was also the first woman to win a BAFTA for Best Director. And her total resume runs 23 pieces. It includes Blue Steel Point Break, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty Last Days, and her latest film was called A House of Dynamite
Stephen: Wow. No, some good films in there
Rhys: Oh, yeah, for sure. Adrien Pasdar plays Caleb. Johnny Depp and D.B. Sweeney both auditioned for that role, but Adrien Pasdar got the role.
Stephen: Wow, interesting. He did well. I can't imagine Depp doing it at, when he was young like this. That's good choices, I guess
Rhys: Yeah, I think he would've made a better vampire then.
Stephen: Probably. Or getting sucked into a mattress by a dream god.
Rhys: Yeah. Adrian was born in Massachusetts in '65, and like he was a big football player, got a debilitating knee injury, had to drop out of that. He was modeling for a time, and then ended up hurting himself somehow, so he had to
Stephen: wait. So first of all, he's not the biggest dude, so I don't imagine he was, like, blocking anyone. He was probably running, I'm
sure.
Rhys: Yeah,
Stephen: But wait, what's a modeling injury like? I'm sorry.
Rhys: I'm trying to think what the incident's... it wasn't like the modeling thing that injured him. He got injured. He was a model and the injury was like such that he had to take time out.
Stephen: Oh, got it. Got it. Okay
Rhys: so he decided that he was gonna get into acting and auditioned for his first movie at age 19, which was Top Gun, and he landed that role
Stephen: Wait, he, I didn't realize he was in Top Gun. Awesome. Now I'm gonna go find them.
Rhys: Yep. Near Dark was his fourth movie. He's also been in Carlito's Way. He had long-running runs on Mysterious Ways and Judging Amy and then 60 episodes as Nathan Petrelli in Heroes.
Stephen: That's what I remember him the most from
Rhys: sure. And if you count them up, he has played Iron Man in animated shows and video games more than
Stephen: robert
Rhys: Robert Downey Jr.
has. So he's done it 13 times, as well as been the voice of Hawkeye and Captain America at least once.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: So he does a lot of voiceover stuff, and apparently he's got the voice of a hero
Stephen: That he, that'd be a great name for a show. He should be on it
Rhys: A voice of a hero, yeah. Jenny Wright played May. She was born in '62, and she attended Strasbourg's Theatre Institute, which Pat Starr did too. In fact, a lot of the actors in this movie are, like, actually trained. They went to some sort of institute to learn how to act. She started modeling at 16.
She even worked as a model for Salvador Dali at some point
Stephen: Wow
Rhys: She landed an off-Broadway role in 1980 in a play with Kevin Bacon before she started her career on screen.
Stephen: Bacon's knows everybody, doesn't he?
Rhys: He does. There's your
Stephen: Six degrees going
Rhys: six degrees, yeah. She was in Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Stephen: Oh, wow.
Rhys: The wor-
Stephen: 287 in the back, right?
Rhys: something like that. No, she was an American groupie. She was in The World According to Garp, The Wild Life, St. Elmo's Fire, The Chocolate War, Twister, Young Guns II and The Lawnmower Man
Was the original one more, man, not the remake
Stephen: Okay. I figured
Rhys: Yeah. She was lumped in with the Brat Pack in the '80s, and she didn't like being part of that. So she moved from mainstream films to indie films, eventually leaving screen acting altogether in the '90s. And she's only appeared in one piece in 2007 in a short called Nadja Yet, which I haven't seen, but
Stephen: Okay
Rhys: of her where they were saying it was tragic because she got typecast as like this vixen early on, and she just couldn't really shake that. And they pointed out that like Near Dark was a departure from that. She plays the ingenue in Near Dark. But Near Dark didn't do well enough for that to carry over into further roles for her
Stephen: Yeah, didn't have enough cultural penetration. Yeah I can see that
Rhys: Bill Paxton played Severen.
Stephen: Probably recognize him
Rhys: Yes, he is the first of the three actors who were suggested to Bigelow from her future husband, James Cameron. And there's a scene in Near Dark where they are standing outside and there's the theater, and on the marquee it says Aliens
Stephen: Yeah. I'm, I put that down for notes
Rhys: Yeah. And Cameron was actually visiting the set one day. So there's a scene where Severen is out hitchhiking and someone drives past and flips him off. That's James Cameron in the car.
Stephen: Oh, that's pretty funny
Rhys: yeah. He was born in Texas in '55, and he studied acting under Stella Adler at NYU. He passed away in 2017. He had a stroke after a couple surgeries.
It was some sort of aneurysm.
Stephen: Yeah. T-take it too early. He I honestly like the, when he was in stuff, I like the, how he, his characters
Rhys: Yeah, he's... It's funny because a lot of times I see stuff that he's in and I don't care for his character, but he does a great job playing him. The over-the-top panicking guy in Aliens just drives me crazy, but I can see it as an actual character, and he does a great job. And it's same thing with Severin in this, is just such a loudmouth sociopath, but he's supposed to be a loudmouth sociopath it
Stephen: yeah. He, I always lump him and John Ritter together for some reason, and I'm not even sure why I do. It's just whenever I think of one, I think of the other. Their characters remind me of each other
Rhys: I was gonna say, did Ritter die in 2017?
Stephen: Maybe he did die early too, but I was lumping them together before that. Maybe it was my fault
Rhys: He had 100 credits to his name. He was in Stripes Reckless, Terminator, Weird Science, Commando, Aliens, Next of Kin, Predator 2, Tombstone, True Lies, Apollo 13, Twister, Titanic, Mighty Joe Young, Spy Kids 2 & 3, my kids loved those,
Stephen: Ja, mein du
Rhys: Agents of Shield Nightcrawler, and a 13-run on a police procedural series called Training Day. So
Stephen: Yeah. Oh, of course. From the '80s, that line from "Alien."
Rhys: Game over, man.
Stephen: yeah, that was classic,
Rhys: Yeah. Lance Henriksen plays Jesse. And the Confederate backstory he came up with. He- that was his contribution to the film. He would... I don't wanna say that he was, like, a method actor where he was, you know, solidly like this, but he would dress up like his character and then drive to downtown local places and just...
he picked up a hitchhiker once who got so freaked out by it that he had to stop and let the guy out of his car. And then he gave him 80 bucks and something else for being a good sport. But
Stephen: How come I haven't seen that on some list somewhere? Weird interactions I-- with actors,
Rhys: he was born in 1940. He studied in the Actor's Studio and began his career doing off-Broadway plays. He... The guy works. He's been in 268 pieces throughout his career. And it started in 1961 with the film The Outsider. Then he was in Dog Day Afternoon Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Damien: The Omen Part II, The Right Stuff, Terminator, Aliens, Pumpkinhead, House 2, The Last Samurai, Alien 3, Jennifer 8, Excessive Force, Super Mario Bros.,
The Color of Night, Dead Man, Powder. I forgot all about that movie.
Stephen: Oh yeah, I like that one
Rhys: A 60-plus run on a series called Millennium.
Stephen: Which was a spinoff of X-Files.
Rhys: Okay. Scr-
Stephen: character in X-Files and they spun that off into its own series
Rhys: Scream 3, The Mangler 2, Alien vs. Predator, Hellraiser, Hellworld, which, you know Alone in the Dark 2, the 2007 version of House, Jennifer Body- Jennifer's Body runs on The Legend of Korra and Tron: Uprising Gehenna: Where Death Lives. And then voiceover, like the guy did a lot of voiceover work.
Like he was in the whole Mass Effect series, Aliens vs. Predator, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Aliens: Colonial Marines. And he re- he plays the same character frequently. Like in all of these Tarzan pieces that came out throughout time, he plays Kerchak in like all of them, and he plays Ed Harley in like all of the Pumpkinhead stuff.
So he revisits his characters, but he has one upcoming piece that's called Awaken the Reaper, so
Stephen: interesting. "Watch Out for That" sounds good just by the title
Rhys: Yeah. Jeanette Goldstein plays Diamondback, which was probably one of the biggest flaws I saw with the film was that I-- If you're gonna have some sort of nicknamey thing, it should not be that many syllables,
Stephen: that's true.
Rhys: But she was born in LA in 1960 and studied acting in London and then New York. And the crazy thing about her is that she's virtually unrecognizable from role to role.
Stephen: I w- had l- I looked at her for a long time and I'm like, "Man, I know her from somewhere." And it's one of those I've seen her like 20 times, but I don't remember between each one. Yeah
Rhys: Yeah. She was, Her first film was Aliens, and Near Dark was her second
Stephen: and she w- I loved her in Aliens
Rhys: Oh, yeah. And again, if you put the two characters standing side by side, you'd never know that it was the same actress.
Stephen: Right
Rhys: Her she was also in The Presidio or Presidio, Termi- Terminator 2, Lethal Weapon 2. She was in Star Trek Generations, and funnily enough, they originally wanted her to be security. They based Tasha Yar's story off of her character from Aliens
Stephen: Oh, wow. Okay
Rhys: And originally wanted her for it, but she couldn't do it. So that's why we have the Tasha Yar that everyone seems to know and love,
Stephen: interesting
Rhys: Yeah. She was also in Titanic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Clockstoppers, and tons of appearances in television shows from 24, Alias, Medium, ER, LA Law, MacGyver, Max Headroom.
So
Stephen: Max Headroom. There's a show I haven't thought of for a
Rhys: Yeah
Stephen: while.
Rhys: The last actor we're gonna talk about now is Joshua Miller, who played Homer. He was a child at the time of shooting, and they had to take extraordinary steps to maintain his safety. Like, when anybody else-- When Caleb is walking through the field, having just been turned into a vampire, and he starts to smolder, there's a jacket he's wearing, and there's a set of chemicals that mix that come through hoses in the jacket and make this smoke coming off of him as he walks across.
The chemicals they used for that were considered too toxic to use with a child. So instead, they made a special rig with hoses, and they lit cigars, and that cigar smoke that's coming off of Caleb as he's walking around smoldering because the smoke from the tobacco was less carcinogenic than the smoke that they were using for the adults
Stephen: Awesome. Okay. That, that's "Yeah, you guys, we don't care about you. You signed the paper."
Rhys: Yeah, exactly. His father played Father Karras from The Exorcist
Stephen: Oh, okay
Rhys: And his stepbrother, Jason Patrick, was in Lost Boys
Stephen: Lost Boys. Yeah, I d-- that's interesting
Rhys: So the two of them were both in a vampire movie at the same time
Stephen: Interesting. I wonder if that caused any Thanksgiving arguments
Rhys: He started his career on an episode of The Greatest American Hero
Stephen: Which is coming back as a reboot, I hear
Rhys: Oh, no I loved the first show, but he also was he followed that up with Halloween III, and then all kinds of television shows with Family Ties, Tales from the Dark Side, Highway to Heaven, Tony on Jump Street, Cagney & Lacey, Growing Pains, The Wonder Years. His last film was The Exorcism which is a Russell Crowe Exorcist film from 2024. But the part that really shocked me, I didn't wanna say really shocked me, I was surprised to see he wrote and produced The Final Girls, which is a great little meta-horror, tongue and chunk- tongue in cheek kind of comedy that
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: I enjoyed a lot, so
Stephen: Interesting, yeah. I liked his character. "I'm a kid, I'm stuck, but I'm 200 years old. Ha."
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. And the, that's not the first time we've came across that, right? You can say Let The Right One In, but that was done 30 years later or something like that. Anne Rice did it. And those probably predated this movie, but
Stephen: Yeah, those were '70s, right?
Rhys: Yeah, I think so
Stephen: the '70s? Yeah
Rhys: So yeah, that's the pre-press notes if you wanna start talking about the movie itself
Stephen: Boom. Time for a drink. Except for Mike. Mike, don't take a shot while you're driving
Rhys: Yes, please. I was very surprised when the credits came up to see that StudioCanal is associated with this, and I assume that they are distributing it since DEG is no more. That'd be my guess
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: The movie s-
Stephen: I saw the name and I'm like, "Oh, I haven't seen that name in a while."
Rhys: Yeah. The movie starts with a whining sound of a mosquito, and there's this mosquito that lands on Caleb's hand and then he smacks it. That shot took six months to prepare because they had to home grow the mosquito to make sure that it had no kind of illness that it was carrying. So they took a mosquito, birthed it and used that to do that scene, which I thought, "Okay, the scene was good and I get the connection, but was it worth six months?"
I don't know.
Stephen: If nothing else, it makes for great trivia
Rhys: It does, yeah. And then the movie just had this real look of the late '70s, early '80s. Everybody thinks of the '80s and they're thinking of like glam bands and big hair and, Michael Jackson leather pants kind of thing. But there was still this kind of... in ur- in rural areas, this kind of cowboy leftover from the late '70s where you did wear boots and you had a cowboy hat, and you were listening to actual good country music.
And you had a pickup truck that didn't cost f- $150,000 and yeah, sometimes the starter motor went on it and you got stuck in the middle of nowhere. So it w- it was a nice nostalgic look at the '80s that was not a standard nostalgic look of the '80s
Stephen: I, the one thing I caught quick early was it had I'm gonna use this word, but not in the way we usually mean it, it had almost a punk feel to it. It was more raw and not so glossy if nothing else. Yeah like what you said. It looked real, you could say
Rhys: This was more Bryan Adams than Poison
Stephen: Yeah, exactly.
Rhys: Yeah
Stephen: Brian Adams, Adams did have a bit of hair sometimes, so
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, but,
Stephen: it was the '80s, what do you want?
Rhys: He is sitting Caleb's sitting in the back of his pickup truck smoking a cigarette. The sun's going down quickly. And they really make the most of their surroundings. Handheld cameras are driving across the countryside. It gives you that intimate feel, like you're actually in the vehicle.
And there's this kind of music that's playing in the background, but it's soft enough the foley of him opening his lighter you can hear it over the music, which I thought was a great idea. 'Cause a lot of times these movies start and the music's just blaring and, you couldn't hear anything else.
But He pulls up to some bar and his buddy gets out, and you have that kind of young guy thing where they're joking and pushing each other's buttons, and it's like bordering on it's either friendly or you're about to start fighting, and you don't know which is which
Stephen: And it could be both, just depending on the day
Rhys: Yeah. A third guy comes out and is "Oh my gosh, look over there," and you have May standing over there eating an ice cream cone by the gas station looking ridiculously like the '80s Short hair and like the, was it a, was like a denim vest
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. A- and I, at, see, at this point, I didn't know it was a vampire movie. Reflecting on it, all the things you just said, th- they're hitting all those points, the sun going down, the mosquito and the way these guys are and stuff. Everything is so vampire, you would almost think if you hadn't seen them in the sun that these guys were the vampire clique to start with until you saw May, and it's "Oh, there we go."
But I didn't even-- I was like, "Okay, I'm just watching it at this point," 'cause I didn't know it was a vampire movie.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, really subtly letting you know what you're into.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: He walks over. He's not very subtle. He wants a bite of her ice
Stephen: gets the girls. He doesn't have to worry about it. He's
a pretty boy
Rhys: Yes, he's got that face. That'll get him far. And something else that's really interesting is that there's no there's no fangs. There's no sharp edges on the teeth of these vampires at any point in time.
It's not like a girl walks home at night where they just snap out or anything like that. They're just-
Stephen: Which I actually swore when I saw it. I was like, "Oh!" 'Cause I did not expect it. Again. Which again, we've talked about this, you don't like vampire movies for the most part. It's nice to have one that has kind of typical vampires without showing all the typical vampire stuff. Again, they acted more s- a redneck trailer trash family than anything, the way they talked and acted and everything.
And, even right here at the beginning, it's like Lula Mae is out hitting on the boys again,
Rhys: yeah it almost feels like a cross between Texas Chainsaw Massacre and oh, what was that Woody Harrelson film? Natural Born Killers.
Stephen: born,
Rhys: Yeah it feels like a cross between that with his family.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: She mentions she's from Sweetwater, Texas, and the way he's talking about it, you can put two and two together and figure out they're in Oklahoma which i- is just a passing reference because it comes up at, a few other times throughout the story. He asks if she has a boyfriend, and she's she's staying with friends. She doesn't have a boyfriend right now, and she needs a ride home, so
Stephen: Quickly though
Rhys: And that's just it 'cause it's not quickly at the start.
Stephen: Right
Rhys: They're in the truck and he's really excited and she seems to be maybe a little nervous. And if you look at the movie if you look at the scene in hindsight, it seems like he was her mark.
She was just picking him up to feed on him, but the romanticism of the brightness and loudness of the night, got to her
Stephen: She had that feel, looking back again, of I am this and I've gotta do this, but I don't really want to. I know I have to
Rhys: And I really liked how she would describe the night. "It's blinding. Can you hear it?" Which is a really interesting way of putting those things together
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: So yeah, it seems more like she wants to make some sort of connection here, not just some quick meal. And
Stephen: you're thinking quick, quickie in the back
Rhys: Sure. He moves in for a kiss and she rebuffs him. And he's like, "You're not like any girl I've ever met." And she's like, "You're right. I'm not." She says she's not in a hurry, and that's what I mean. She's like, "Oh, I'm not in any hurry." So he turns on the radio and then Caleb decides to show her his horses, and the horse...
Stephen: euphemism.
Rhys: Correct. The horse wants nothing to do with her. And she's like, "Horses don't like me very much." And he's like, "Yeah. Okay, I get that he lassos her, and then there's this kind of tug of war, which she wins, and she points out how much stronger she is than he is. And he seems excited by that too, and he moves in for a kiss, and again, nope.
No kiss for you, sir
Stephen: Yeah, and I'm starting to get some-- I'm like, "This isn't a vampire movie, is it?" about this point.
Rhys: And right about now she asks about the time, and now she's in a hurry to get home. And he's convinced it's just 'cause her-- she's got a dad who's gonna yell at her. He'll just say his car broke down, which is ironic here in a bit. And she's like, "We gotta get home, we gotta get home." And he just decides he's gonna stop there, puts the car in park, and he's just sitting there and he's "I'll take you home if you give me a kiss."
Stephen: And this is what gives guys a bad reputation.
Rhys: Yeah, back in the '80s, that whole it was Saturday night, I guess it makes it all right to say maybe we ain't got enough gas. It's that... And you take that in today's parlance and you're like that's just almost assault."
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.
Different world
Rhys: yes. And then she goes ahead to give him a kiss and she takes a chunk out of his neck.
Stephen: Like you do when you're a vampire
Rhys: Yes, but it's not some huge, We've seen movies where people have taken real chunks out of people's necks. This is just like a little piece of skin.
Stephen: It's a love bite
Rhys: Yes. And then the music suddenly has this cool little bass riff that kicks in, letting you know that the movie's just shifted gears a little bit.
Stephen: Ja
Rhys: She gets out of the truck and runs off, and he gets out and he's like, "Oh." He doesn't know what's going on, so he gets back in his truck. The sun keeps rising. His starter's not starting it, so he's walking home is what it looks like. And as the sun gets higher, he gets sicker, and his body actually starts to smolder as he's walking across this field
Stephen: From carcinogenic smoke, I hear
Rhys: Yes.
And we get to meet his father Lloyd and his sister Sarah, 'cause they're working on animals. It looks like he's a vet or maybe not a vet, maybe he just takes care of his own animals from a veterinary standpoint. He's giving them injections and stuff
Stephen: Yeah, he had drugs and stuff. I thought he was a vet but yeah, his own animals, yeah
Rhys: His sister sees him first and she's like, "He looks sick."
And his dad looks up and just as, his face is starting to char and a Winnebago pulls up and they just, the door opens up and snatches him off the ground and drives off
Stephen: Yeah, I love that it was a Winnebago too. That was perfect.
Rhys: Yeah. Dad sees it happen and he goes running after them to no avail. And we are introduced into the whole vampire family here. Severen's being really the aggressive sociopath he is because he thinks that Mae just screwed up on a feeding. He's getting ready to just kill Caleb right there in the back, and Mae's like, "You can't 'cause he's turned."
And now everybody's mad that he's turned. "'Cause what do we need, another vampire running around with us? I don't think so. There's too many
Stephen: mouth to feed.
Rhys: That's right
Stephen: And it is interesting 'cause most of the time to turn somebody, you have to feed them back your blood, and this was just she bit him a little bit and he turned rather than draining him and killing him. So that was a, like a shortcut almost.
Rhys: Yeah. The soundtrack here definitely kicks into an '80s gear. And the Winnebago pulls into some sort of Quonset hut style barn, and Mae and Caleb curl up into one place, and Jesse and Diamondback take their own spots. It's like everybody has this little place to sleep, and that's what they're doing now
Stephen: I found that interesting, wondering in today's world with all the cameras and security and dogs and l- less abandoned spots, how much harder it would've been for them to be doing that in t- 2025, '26
Rhys: Oh, for sure. In a minute here, it definitely is gonna bring up that point. But back at the farm, Caleb's father's talking to the sheriff, and he's "Look at these tires, and if they're traveling at this speed and they hit the highway, they'd be out of the state by now." And the sheriff's like, "Oh we'll look into it."
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: Jesse says we'll give Caleb a week to become one of them, and they do that whole introduction thing. I'm never a fan of this, but they do it in so many movies where they just go around the room and they're stereotypically themselves, but, it is very common trope, so I can't really fault her for that, but
Stephen: It's a quick, easy way to get everybody into things. And I think this is one of the things when we discuss this, like other countries don't always do this, and they get the character aspects across in other ways, but you have to pay more attention. This makes it easy for the American mind to gasp at all, and there you go
Rhys: I think really one of the most difficult things about this is that you have this ensemble that was, what, five people already, and you've only got an hour and a half to do the whole movie. So y- you've gotta-- you can't take the time necessary to just subtly introduce them. You basically just have to come right out and do it
Stephen: Yeah, you got 30 seconds
Rhys: Yeah. The RV pulls out into the night, and here's where you were talking about the camera would be a big deal. They just stop at some used car place, and Severen goes out in the middle of the night and picks a station wagon and hot wires it, and that's their vehicle now. And it's yeah, today that wouldn't fly.
I wouldn't be surprised if all of those cars are chipped. They could just track them when they're stolen
Stephen: Right. Which, would just mean you have to abandon a new one every day. Get, but
Rhys: So they do take the RV and light it up, and Severan makes some joke to Jesse about that fire in Chicago, hinting back to the fact that the great Chicago Fire was lit by these guys
Stephen: And not a cow
Rhys: Yes. Yeah. And they start driving off in this, and as soon as they do, they start putting foil across the windows and stuff.
Catherine would actually make them run blackout drills. So they would be driving in a car, and it was like military precision. They could get it down to 30 seconds. They could have all the windows blacked out in a vehicle as they were riding along
Stephen: That's pretty cool. I like that. See, that's the fun stuff if I was gonna be an actor I'd wanna do. That'd be more important to me than being in the movie.
Rhys: Go. Mae and Caleb have this moment out on the railroad tracks. He's like I'm... I can't stay with you guys. I'm sorry, I gotta leave." And she's like, "Okay, you won't get very far." And he goes to the the bus station, and he's trying to get a ticket home to Oklahoma, and he's $3 short. And the guy in the terminal's like then you're $3 short."
He's not gonna help him out. $14 for a bus ticket too.
Stephen: I was like, "How far is he going? Three feet?"
Rhys: He went to the vending machines to try and get some food, and he runs into this plainclothes police officer who assumes he's a junkie strung out on stuff. He was played by Troy Evans. He's been in over 170 movies, and almost all of them he plays a cop
Stephen: Yeah, I was, I've seen him in tons of stuff
Rhys: Yep. He's really suspicious of him. Caleb's "I just gotta get home." And so he gives him $3 and tells him to go home and be a good boy
Stephen: Yeah, that, that was a little creepy weird, but okay.
Rhys: Yeah. Caleb gets on the bus. He's on the bus now, so he bought the ticket. And you're right, he really only goes three feet be- before he's too sick to keep riding. And he let, they let him off the bus, and he eventually makes his way back to Mae in the car
Stephen: And she expected it. She's waiting
Rhys: She's waiting for him, and so she just basically rips out a chunk of her wrist and let hi- lets him drink her blood which he does really greedily. There's a nice little foley of while he's doing it, you can hear a pulse.
Stephen: Yeah. A- and that, this right here is one of the things that is different between this and "Lost Boys," and it's what we always talk about. "Lost Boys," they had the Frog brothers explaining all of this stuff as it was, going on, hap- they explained all this. They never explained anything. It's just, y- you keep up or you don't.
You figure it out or you don't
Rhys: Yeah. And it, like he stands up at, after they're done and like you can see from his face he can see the night like she does now. But he never explicitly says that. It's just this kind of look of like young wonderment as he's looking around at everything with new eyes
Stephen: And we don't get vampire cam or something
Rhys: R- right. We cut to Lloyd and Sarah waking up in the morning, and they head to the police department and they find out that the Winnebago's been burnt up, so they assume that they've swapped cars and I don't know, Lloyd, your son might have fallen in with a bad crowd."
Stephen: That's an understatement.
Rhys: So Lloyd decides he's gonna get in his car and take Sarah, and they're just gonna travel around all of Texas looking for Caleb
Stephen: So this right here is where this could have been like a TV series. You follow the vampire crew going around, then you have this family trying to hunt them down throughout the series. That could have been a series right there
Rhys: It could have. I'm afraid it would become one of those series that I would hate because every week Caleb would be challenged to kill somebody, and every week he would say no, and every week Jesse would be like, "The next time."
Stephen: So they need, at that point they would've need to pitch to hi- to pick up a hitchhiking David Banner
Rhys: Yes. Caleb tries calling his house and his father and sister aren't there 'cause they're out looking for him. May finds him and he's, he admits he's scared. And he's like, what are we gonna do?" And she's like, "Anything we want till the end of time, but you have to learn to kill." And it's just something that he's not excited by
Stephen: And I thought that was interesting too, 'cause she really didn't wanna kill him, and she didn't. She turned him by just a little bite. Usually you get the vampires that are like, we don't have to expose ourselves by killing everybody. We can suck some blood and move on." And that's never even brought up here.
I thought that was a little weird, actually
Rhys: They do a really cool thing where they do these vignettes of all the other vampires feeding while they're focusing on Mae and Caleb. So Homer plays this... He's a kid lying down next to his bike, and some guy comes over to help him, and he just gets the guy, jumps on him. Severen's out hitchhiking.
He's all dressed up to the nines, and two girls pull over, and he's like, "Let's go get a drink." And they let him in. And Jesse and Diamondback, and this is more along the lines of Byzantium, they're driving along. They pick up a hitchhiker who decides they're gonna hold them up between two of them, and they're like, "All right, let's go."
And then they, of course, kill them both and eat them, so
Stephen: And those, I always enjoy those type of scenes. They're always humorous 'cause it's "Ah, tables are gonna be turned." This is, this... But done well, it's always humorous
Rhys: Yeah. Mae and Caleb are in a semi-truck and we get this lesson on how to drive one, which comes in very handy later. It's Chekhov semi-truck
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: About how they break differently. Caleb can't bring himself to kill the guy, and he's starting to get sick again 'cause he hasn't fed in so long, so he hops out of the truck, and the guy comes over and he's checking on him, and Mae just kills him.
And that was something that I thought was really weird too. I know it's not a serious vampire movie, but when we did Suck, you had the groupie who was laid out on the pool table, and you had three band members feeding off her at once, right?
Stephen: Right
Rhys: And then here you have Mae who kills this guy and feeds, and then Caleb feeds off of Mae again. Why wouldn't he just... he didn't have to kill the guy. She did the killing, but
Stephen: Yeah. Whatever. I, I, that we could, it needs to be a two-hour movie to delve deeper into his psyche
Rhys: It's true. Lloyd and his daughter call the police and they hear that they saw Kayla at this bus station.
Stephen: Couldn't even eat a Zagnut. That sucks
Rhys: Yes. Jesse isn't happy about the fact that Caleb isn't killing, and he's like, "You have to make a kill tonight." And so they cut to perhaps the most '80s-looking dive bar in the whole movie. I've been in that bar.
Stephen: We played in that bar.
Rhys: Where there's five people. Yeah. They actually built that bar from scratch because they knew it would have to be burnt down.
Stephen: Destroyed. Yeah. And it was, you're right. And it looked like somebody just put up a little shack behind their house is what it looked like
Rhys: Oh yeah, I could name four or five places easily that I've been to that were just like this
Stephen: Yeah, the Robin Hood's closed, gone, so
Rhys: Yes, it's gone. It was the most... It w- Yeah, for sure. It was the most complex scene and it took the longest to shoot
Stephen: There was a lot going on here for the scene that it is. It's the let, let's go into a public place and we're all going to do a big battle to kill people and stuff. It's expected in many times. But it w- I can see that why it was the most complicated of this film. Most of it's a lot of character dialogue things, and this one was very action
Rhys: Yeah. Severin really shows his sociopathic side here. And he's... Basically, what he's trying to do is he's trying to get this bar fight going so that Caleb will get engaged and kill somebody. And it just doesn't work And Caleb gets shot and he doesn't kill the bartender after that. He gets punched a couple times. He doesn't kill the guy who punched him. And in all honesty, they take the most innocent person there, and that's the one who's left for him, which I think was a strategic mistake
Stephen: Okay
Rhys: And the main reason that he actually acts like he's going to hurt this person is because Mae goes over and starts dancing with him and flirting him, flirting with him, making Caleb jealous. And by this time they've killed everyone else in the bar. And it's she could have done that to the aggressive guy who was hanging out by the jukebox or the biker guy who was sitting at the bar. Any of those would have worked, and those guys would have, wouldn't have been terrified.
You know what I mean?
Stephen: Right
Rhys: And that probably would have worked out for them, but it
Stephen: Yeah, choo- choose the scared little nerd guy who's the smartest one and jumps out the damn window and runs like hell
Rhys: He's just there to play some pool for crying out loud
Stephen: Yeah. Last time he does that
Rhys: Yeah, for sure, especially at that bar.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: So the rest of the vampires, after they've killed everybody else, they decide they're gonna burn the bar down. And Caleb is chased after this kid, and he catches up with him. And it's funny 'cause there's this billboard back there talking about hay. And there's graffiti on the billboard that says Bill plus Louise.
Bill Paxton's wife at the time was Louise Newbury, so
He put a little love note to his wife there on a passing shot.
Stephen: Nice
Rhys: Caleb catches up to the kid, but he just can't do it, and he lets the kid go, and Jesse's not very happy about that So they find themselves a motel. And it is cool 'cause of all the illegal stuff they do, like Jesse goes in to rent the room
And the guy behind the counter's like, "Hey, weren't you here several years ago?"
And Jesse's like, "I come through here about once every 50 years, so book a reservation for me
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah, that was a fun little
Rhys: Yeah. Everyone's sleeping in the hotel room and the law comes knocking
Stephen: I love the kid in the tub
Rhys: Yeah. And it's funny because the police come and they want let in, and of course a gun f- sh- shootout occurs, and all the cops' bullets are doing nothing to the vampires at all. But the hole that it leaves in the side of the building lets the sunlight in, and that's actively hurting them
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah, that was interesting watching him avoid all of that and cover it up and try and fight back and all that. Yeah, it was-- I thought that was nicely done
Rhys: Yeah. And then Caleb's "I'm gonna go get the van." And they're like, "Are you insane?" 'Cause it's daylight out there. So he throws himself under a blanket and starts running to the vehicle. He gets shot a couple times, but he's a vampire. That doesn't seem to bother them
Stephen: A- and it's funny 'cause I want... Oh, did I lose it? Said lost my connection,
Rhys: No.
Stephen: kinda
Rhys: so if I look down here, the little thing with your name has a yellow dot next to it.
Stephen: but you can hear me? Okay, there we go. It's funny 'cause I've, I watched this movie at about the same time I watched one of the "Tremor" movies, and there were the, the exploding, flying, farting tremors, and they were-- didn't want to be detected, so they were holding up mattresses and walking really slowly.
And then I saw this one at about the same time, and it was a similar thing. He's got the, the shield from the sun, but it's like, "Don't see me walking over here." It made me chuckle personally.
Rhys: Yeah. He is literally on fire when he gets into the vehicle. And man, those Ford Econoline's. He starts that thing up and he drives into the bungalow through the wall.
Stephen: And then backs up
Rhys: everybody comes in, then he goes through the other wall, hits a police car, and goes right through the police car, and then takes off.
Stephen: Yeah, that, that was '70s. How many times did you have the car chases where you run into the car, the cop cars all the time? That was, a trope of the time period too.
Rhys: Yep. And now they love him
Stephen: I was just gonna say, hey, he found his way to fit in his thing. It's not killing people, it's saving them when they can't get away
Rhys: They swap out vehicles for a station wagon. They head to some new hotel. Severin gives Caleb one of the spurs off of his boots for
Stephen: have done that
Rhys: a good job back there. And, everybody takes time to congratulate him on what he did there. And he asks Jesse how old he was, and he's "I fought for the s- I fought in the Civil War.
We lost." So he fought for the South, and we know that he was a Civil War soldier, so Caleb and Mae decide they're gonna go out and check out the night. And he asks her if she's, if she misses the sun, and it, we turn out, it turns out it was four years ago she was turned. Homer was the one who turned her. And even that story, Caleb's kind of chuckling at now.
He's like, "Oh, that, that Homer." Like he's, in his head he's part of them too
They're all sitting there playing poker, and it's funny 'cause they're playing poker and Jesse catches Kaleb cheating, and they pull out their guns. And for just a half a second there's this tension "Ooh, are they gonna shoot each other?"
And then all of a sudden you're like, "It doesn't matter, they're vampires. They can
Stephen: When you're--
Rhys: all they want."
Stephen: Yeah, and it sounds like it's something that happens a lot 'cause everyone's d- disgusted with the whole thing. "Oh, not again."
Rhys: Yeah. Homer folds 'cause he doesn't have a good hand and decides to go outside, and when he does, he runs into this girl who is about his age getting a soda. And the girl happens to be Caleb's little sister, Sarah. He do- Homer doesn't know that. I don't think it would've made any difference. We find out later that it wouldn't have made any difference.
He invites her back to his room to watch TV, and she's "Is it a color TV?"
Stephen: Which was a big deal still at that
Rhys: Welcome to the '80s, people
Stephen: But yeah, and she just goes back to some stranger's room. Welcome to the '80s.
Rhys: Yep. And she's like, "You guys are all up late." And they're like, "We keep odd hours."
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Just as she's trying to leave, Caleb is coming in and he's like, "Hey, this is my sister." Severin was sent back to their hotel room to get her father 'cause Sarah mentioned that her father was in hotel room number three or something.
So he comes in with Lloyd, and now you have Lloyd and Jesse in one room. You have the father of the day, who was Lloyd, and the father of the night, who was Jesse. And that's not just me talking about that. That was something that Kathryn had mentioned in an interview when she was saying that you have these two father figures for him representing the two different sides, light and darkness.
Stephen: Yeah
Rhys: It turns to this whole we can't let them go, we need to kill them. And there's this kind of showdown and Lloyd pulls out a gun, and Caleb's "Put it away, it won't do anything." And he shoots Jesse, and Jesse coughs the bullet up and then gives it back to him,
Stephen: Yeah, that,
Rhys: Cool
Stephen: that was really cool. It's the Wolverine thing there
Rhys: Yeah. But then Sarah slips Homer's grasp, opens the door, and the sun has risen, and sunlight just floods in. Caleb throws a blanket over himself and jumps into the back of the truck, and they drive off
Stephen: Yeah, and I, that was weird to me 'cause he changed his loyalties back so quickly. He acted like he was such a part of the family now, he was comfortable and enjoying it, but then his family shows up, he's like, "Oh, good, I can get out of here." It that, that character switch was a little abrupt
Rhys: So I think for me it was like He was miserable up until that night. And now he was accepted and he was all in. And I think if you had given him like another two weeks, he would have certainly been all in. Or I think if they would have said, okay, your dad and your sister can leave, he would have stayed with them because he told them, go home.
I'm staying here. He was all set to stay. But because Jesse was insistent that he, that they kill his dad and his sister, he just reverted right back.
Stephen: Yeah. It ju- it was a little, probably could've been done a little smoother maybe
Rhys: It was pretty quick. I do find this really interesting 'cause his dad's like, "We're gonna get you to the hospital." And Caleb actually convinces his father he's a vampire without using the word vampire, which is kinda crazy if you think about it
Stephen: Sounds like a creative writing assignment for your school
Rhys: Yes. Yeah. Or one of those memes like Tell me you're a Jets fan without telling me you're a Jets fan kinda deal?
Stephen: Maybe I'm gonna get some stills from this movie and do, do some memes here. Tell me you're a vampire without
Rhys: There you go and so he's "Hey, Daddy, have you ever transfused anybody?" And so you cut to the transfusion thing, and I'm like, this is a little goofy, but this was actually a Bram Stoker concept.
Stephen: Yes. Yeah
Rhys: So if you're gonna go back to the whole origin of vampires in the modern society, bring what they are, you have to go back to Stoker.
And honestly, they-- she just looked back at actual historic stuff where he was saying, "Hey, yeah, you could do this
Stephen: Yeah, so overload it with red blood cells and get them fighting off the vampiric lycanthrope cells or whatever, basically
Rhys: And this was back in the days when when you did transfusions with glass bottles. You did not have plastic bags.
Stephen: Which by the way... Go ahead
Rhys: I was just gonna say, there's a part of the scene where his dad's cleaning his body while he's laying there being transfused, and I was like, that's kinda like the whole ceremonial body cleaning that they do to the dead, before a funeral rite
Stephen: Yeah. A- and speaking of Dracula, that was one of the things with that book, how far ahead with science it was for the time. The transfusions, fingerprints, electric lighting in people's houses and things like that, it was all future sci-fi-like stuff for him to write about in there. So yeah, you're right.
It's cool that they brought it back from that
Rhys: Yeah. Sarah comes in the next morning, opens the door, and s- Caleb is no longer allergic to sunlight,
Stephen: If it was that easy, we'd never have, we'd never have any good vampire movies anymore
Rhys: I don't know. You have to find somebody who's willing to transfuse you.
Stephen: Ja
Rhys: And I think most vampires would just rather drink the bottle than get a needle jammed in them.
Stephen: Right
Rhys: Time passes. We don't exactly know how long, except fall is coming on, the days are getting longer. This is making Caleb nervous. And one night he goes outside and finds Mae sitting on the swings at his house.
And he seems a little scared of her at first, and she asks why he left, and they embrace and kiss, and I thought this was brilliant. She's like, "You're warm."
Stephen: Yeah, I like
Rhys: oh that's a good point, 'cause ordinarily you'd never know
Stephen: Which took away the question of did he really change or is he still a vampire? It's like he's good now. That was an easy way to answer that question
Rhys: And it seems to startle her, and she turns off, turns around and runs off into the night But of course, when he comes back inside, Sarah is gone and all of his tires are slashed. But save a horse, ride a cowboy. He's got a horse, so he hops on his horse and rides his horse into town for the showdown on Main Street scene
Stephen: Yes.
Rhys: And it's Caleb versus Severin.
And the horse rears up and Caleb falls off, and Severin's "I'd sell him." And then he reaches down to help him up, and Caleb calls him a son of a bitch, but still takes his hand. And then Caleb tosses him for f- or Severin tosses him for 15 feet
Stephen: Yeah, and you were mentioning, Bill Pullman's acting and his character stuff. He is so good at this part. This is like the, the, the climax of the film, and he was a part of the whole film, but now it's really kinda all him. He really stole this scene a lot
Rhys: Absolutely. He so clicked with this scene. It was like it was written specifically for him.
Stephen: Which it sounds like it was.
Rhys: Yeah. So there's some semi-truck driver riding down the, coming down the road. Caleb flags him down and then gets on the truck, and the guy's like, "I'll give you to the count of five to get off my truck."
And he goes one, two, and then skips three for some reason, and hits four
Stephen: What, that, what do you say about the intelligence of truck drivers?
Rhys: Someone's gonna cancel their subscription to our thing now
Stephen: I guess. Sorry, Mike and Brian, but Brian won't listen to us, so whatever.
Rhys: There you go. And then Severan shoots the guy through the windshield, so he's dead. Go back to Chekov's truck driving lesson, and Caleb gets in the truck and starts driving it, and he just hits Severan. But of course, that's not gonna kill him. He climbs up there. It definitely messed him up. His face is nowhere near as pretty now But he does, he punches right through the hood of the truck and just starts ripping p- components off the engine
Stephen: Yeah, which almost had a Transformers vibe to it with a vampire transformer ripping another transformer apart
Rhys: Yeah. But Caleb remembers the whole thing about jackknifing, and he causes the truck to start to jackknife, and it's not really how it works, but, it's a movie. So
Stephen: the rest of us, it's good enough
Rhys: it jackknifes and instantly bursts into flames. And apparently sun... Blunt force trauma does nothing to vampires, but sun and fire work just fine
Stephen: And as another aside, as an '80s kid, '80s movies, there's that fear after you start driving, if you grew up in the '80s, that you get in one accident and your cars go blow up, because we did not see a car crash without a blowup ever
Rhys: True. And aside from the Pinto, I don't really know that they were nearly as prevalent as Hollywood would tell us
Stephen: absolutely everything blew up with one little accident
Rhys: Caleb gets that second spur now, 'cause it got blasted right off of Severin during, in the explosion but then he looks up and there is Jesse and May, and he keeps saying, "Give me back Sarah." And Sarah's in the vehicle with Homer. And she hits him in the head with something, a bottle I think, and gets out of the truck just in time to warn Caleb because Diamondback is behind him with a knife she's gonna throw, and he steps out of the way just in time for her to throw it, and it hits Jesse right in the face.
Which of course doesn't, harm him, but I'm sure it doesn't tickle either But Sarah runs to Caleb and he picks him up, and all of a sudden you see that Diamondback's really not all about this, and she just tells him to run
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah, which was interesting with her character.
Rhys: I think m- there might be some sort of maternal thing because it was when he picks up his sister, and seeing that bond is what seemed to flip the switch for her
Stephen: Yeah. And she seemed a little done with things,
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Sever-, sh-, they just saw Severin die now it's kinda real, right? They've been i- impervious for so long. Jesse
Stephen: They're impervious, but we never really saw super strength, super speed. They didn't, show that they could see better at night or things so much. Like you said it didn't show a lot of that. So I wonder, not really skipping it over, but really sticking with a very core, the, the base model vampire without the accessories.
Rhys: They're really subtle about it, right? So Severin tosses Caleb 15 feet with one arm.
Stephen: Okay, so there's some strength
Rhys: Yeah, but it's not it's not... he also smashes through the hood of a truck. But
Stephen: yeah, very true
Rhys: I'm just, like to your point, there's not like something where he's fighting off five guys and he just picks them all up and throws them or anything like that.
It's...
Stephen: Yeah. And I like that. Not, we know what vampires can do. We've seen enough of them
Rhys: Yeah. You had the whole thing with Mae too about how bright it is at night, so obviously they're sensing things we can't. But again, they don't show it to us from her point of view, 'cause you don't have to. We'll just take her word for it
Stephen: We already saw Lost Boys, so we get it. Let's move on to this one.
Rhys: So Jesse goes to shoot him and Mae gets in the way, and he's just I'm fed up with you women. Get in the car." And so they all get in the car and they go chasing after Caleb and Sarah. And he falls and tells Sarah to keep running, and they drive around and snatch Sarah again So he saved her for half a second.
But as they're driving, the sun is up now at this point. Mae grabs Sarah and smashes out the back windshield and jumps out and runs towards Caleb.
Stephen: I thought that was pretty cool the way she did that
Rhys: And then Homer is really fixated on this little girl. He jumps out into the full sun and starts running after her, and he's just smoldering, and then he's on fire, and then he just explodes
Stephen: Yeah, goopy. Good sounds.
Rhys: Yeah. Caleb throws his jacket over Mace to try and reduce the smoldering there. And Jesse and Diamondback are just like, "You know what? We're just gonna put the pedal down and see what happens." And they end up burning up before they can actually get to him. So you have all the vampires dead with the exception of Mae
Stephen: Interesting.
Rhys: And we transfuse Mae, and you have a happy ending where you have Caleb and Mae as human people who are in love hanging out at his father's ranch
Stephen: And it's got sappy romance music at the
Rhys: While you're rolling the credits. Now interestingly enough, Caleb had proposed a different ending where they transfuse Mae, and there's a scene of Mae and Caleb holding hands with Sarah as they walk out of the barn into the sunlight, and Sarah starts to smolder, meaning that she had been bitten by Homer and turned
Stephen: Oh God, I would've loved that ending
Rhys: And they but she pointed out the cure is so easy, it seems pointless."
And so that's why they didn't do it.
Stephen: Yeah, good point. On any other non-transfusion movie though, but then they wouldn't have been walking out in the sun anyway
Rhys: Yes. So that is Near Dark
Stephen: The, the one thing I gotta note here, and I missed this when they were going to the bar we had the obligatory scene of them coming up over the hill with the fog lit behind them. Where'd the fog come from? Where did the light come from? Don't know. But we've got the vampires walking up over the hill with that behind them, which is if there was anything that made it look like "Lost Boys," that one scene right there was a "Lost Boys" scene.
Rhys: I was gonna say an '80s vampire movie, but yeah, for sure
Stephen: yeah, there we go. Near Dark
Rhys: Yes
Stephen: All right.
Next
Rhys: next we'll be watching a favorite of mine. It is called American Mary. It is a Canadian film, ironically enough
Stephen: course. It's shot in Switzerland, right?
Rhys: But it is a great movie. I can't wait to watch it,
Stephen: Are we going to be looking in a mirror at any point in this movie?
Rhys: Ah, I don't think so,
Stephen: Okay, so it's not that Mary
Rhys: No. This is just very disgruntled Mary,
Stephen: Oh. That's not as good of a name, so okay. A horror movie called Very Disgruntled Mayor.
Rhys: Yes
Stephen: I would see it just 'cause that, that makes me laugh of the name
Rhys: And that will be episode 10 when we do American Mary, and then we've got a bonus simmering on the back burner that we'll talk about then
Stephen: And I've got a bunch coming out. We're, we've got a bunch ready to go and, they've been doing really well. So thanks to everybody that's stuck with it, listens to the episodes, checks it out. Everybody's subscribing, having fun, hopefully everyone's enjoying it. And we're up. Hit us on social media if you got any suggestions.
That'd be great. So everything's Horror Lasagna on all the social medias.
Rhys: There you go
Stephen: Not many people got that one, so all right, Reece. We'll talk to you later, man.
Rhys: See you, Steve
Stephen: Oh God, it's not stopping
