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Overview
We continue with our season 02 visitations by visiting Ireland. Besides the great accent (at least for Americans) and the beautiful country – we have a monster. Big old tentacled beastie.
This movie is a wonderful homage to all the great monster movies from the 50’s through 80’s. It is full of every trope and reused scene you could imagine. If you like those type of movies, this is a fun one.
Like several of our past movies, this one is funded through a grant. What they did with the money is fantastic, even if it didn’t make as much money as it cost to produce. This also is one of the few movies we might recommend as a family horror movie. Very unique in our lists.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1525366/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grabbers
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Rhys: the corner of your eye huddled in the darkness. Shadows of imagination weights. Now is the time to face the fear. Welcome to horror, lasagna. The breeze with trepidation
[00:00:47] Stephen: Seasoned to grabbers, which is a wonderful title, I must
[00:00:50] Rhys: say. Yes, it is. And compared with our last film, it’s a great departure, which really should surprise
[00:00:59] Stephen: no one, bounce around a
[00:01:00] Rhys: bit. Yeah. Grabbers is a horror comedy. I classify it into one or two, two versions. It’s a horror comedy, but it’s also definitely a monster
[00:01:11] Stephen: movie.
Yeah. I, it was like light horror, light comedy. It’s a cross between Cloverfield and tremors,
[00:01:18] Rhys: right? Yeah. That’s a really good analogy. It was made in 2012 as a collaboration between the Irish Republic of Ireland and the UK, which at first I was like, that’s a really odd collaboration, but when you watch through the entire credits it’s Northern Ireland.
So it’s Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland working together. But Northern Ireland is technically part of the United Kingdom. So that’s where the money for this came from.
[00:01:49] Stephen: I made the comments that, oh another national lottery film. We seem to pick those.
[00:01:56] Rhys: We do.
[00:01:57] Stephen: And it was a good one. I met was very impressed.
It looked, if you wouldn’t have told me it was filmed in Ireland. I know everybody and it was pretty much Irish, but I would’ve said, oh, this looks like any other big Hollywood production. It really did. Yep. That’s pretty
[00:02:12] Rhys: much. This was written by a gay guy. This was written by a guy named Kevin Lehane.
And it was directed by John, right? John. Yeah, not John wrong. John Wright has 14 different titles too. His name is director and it’s some television, some short shorts, a couple of movies, none of which you’re going to know. Okay. And you’re going to hear that a lot when I’m doing the cast rundown here.
Richard coil plays, Garda Kiran, a Shea. He is in the upcoming fantastic beasts. The secret is Dumbledore. So he’ll be in that
[00:02:50] Stephen: who knows? Five years.
[00:02:53] Rhys: He was in prince of Persia. Okay. Annie was a voiceover artist for the fable video games. Okay.
[00:03:01] Stephen: And we all know that
[00:03:03] Rhys: he also has all kinds of television and movies has got 56 credits to his name.
But again, you’re not going to know too many of them. Ruth Bradley plays at Lisa Noland and If you’re not familiar with the terminology, Garda is Irish for policemen. I
[00:03:18] Stephen: figured that out. And I was like, oh, I never knew that. I was like, okay. So I did learn something today.
[00:03:25] Rhys: There you go. You actually probably learned more than,
[00:03:28] Stephen: yeah, that’s not hard.
[00:03:31] Rhys: Ruth Bradley has been in the ridiculously popular, which I’ve yet to see Ted lasso. I don’t know who she plays in that, but she was in a compilation horror movie that I really enjoyed called holidays. And it’s four or five different shorts and each one is based on a different holiday and she, of course is the St.
Patrick’s. Episode in that one.
[00:03:57] Stephen: Yeah. I did notice the lack of leprechauns in this movie.
[00:04:02] Rhys: Yes. Yes. Cause all the leprechauns came to America. If you’ve ever seen any of the leprechaun movies, they all take place here.
[00:04:10] Stephen: Or if you watched American gods all the leprechauns are like six and a half foot tall and beat you up in a pub.
[00:04:17] Rhys: That sounds about right.
[00:04:19] Stephen: She’s got 40 books. Sorry. If you’ve never read American gods by gaming, you should read. You’d love
[00:04:24] Rhys: it. Okay. I should. I’m a big Neil Gaiman fan. Yeah, and that brings up the whole sand band stuff. And I don’t want to get into that right now, but those are totally
[00:04:34] Stephen: different things.
Yeah.
[00:04:37] Rhys: Yes. She’s been in 42 different shows. Some of them are actually a Gaelic, which, you might think, oh, someone from Ireland speaking gay, like not a big deal. It actually is not everybody there does. And certainly not well enough to speak it in a film production of any kind. There is a character in here by the name of Patty Barrett, and he has played by Lalor Roddy who has been in 92 different things.
[00:05:02] Stephen: Tell me it was in a Darby Gil and the little people. No. Ah, I could have swore I, he was in
[00:05:11] Rhys: that one. He’s hit yet. That’s a little racist. No,
[00:05:15] Stephen: that was, it was love for cons. They were all speaking Irish.
[00:05:20] Rhys: He the vast majority of what he’s been in, you’ve not seen, but he was in game of Thrones. Oh, cool.
[00:05:26] Stephen: So his character, I was gonna say any Irish based movie, you always have that character. He’s like almost the stereotype pub in town, character.
[00:05:41] Rhys: Pseudo functional drunk,
[00:05:43] Stephen: right?
[00:05:44] Rhys: Fishermen. Yes. And then the guy who you’re most likely to know is a guy named Russell TOFI and he plays Dr. Adam Smith. He’s British and they make fun of him because of it in the movie. Basically, he’s been to 89 different shows including the tale of Dorian gray.
He’s been in super girl. He was in legends of tomorrow and the flash.
[00:06:04] Stephen: Okay. That’s why I recognized him
[00:06:06] Rhys: the good liar Muppets most wanted. He’s been on Sherlock, on doctor who miss Marple for row. The guy has been around for as young as he is. He’s been in a lot of stuff. The show got 11 nominations for awards internationally.
Three of them, they won four John Wright for his direction. And one of them Ruth Bradley, a one for her acting,
[00:06:34] Stephen: especially when she gets drunk later.
[00:06:37] Rhys: Yes. This was a 4 million pound budget for this film. Wow. And it grossed $427,000. It took a bit of a beating,
[00:06:50] Stephen: but that’s weird because I enjoyed the film and the movie and the way it looked.
And I was really impressed overall with the special effects. I don’t know if it was practical or CG or a combination, but the monsters looked really good. JJ Abrams and Cloverfield good. Which is why I was thinking about that. And they don’t, I think part of it is they don’t overdo it. It’s not the monster in every other scene.
I loved it, because of the.
[00:07:20] Rhys: Yeah. This was shot in county Donegal near in a show when, which if you’re familiar with Ireland is in the Northwest corner of the country. The Irish Republic is the Southern part of Ireland. And then it wraps around on the west side and that’s Donegal.
And then Northern Ireland is right next to it. Some of the areas were shot in Northern Ireland, around Moyle and Rathlin island, but I think the majority of it was shot in Donegal. This movie has all kinds of nods to classic horror sci-fi monster films throughout the entire movie. And so we’ll be pointing those out as we go along.
[00:08:03] Stephen: It’s almost a tongue in cheek parody of itself. In some ways it is tremors was like that.
[00:08:13] Rhys: And my very last note that I have on this whole thing is that this movie is a love note to monster movies of the past, the guy really just, yeah. You can tell from the way that he’s placed things in here and all the different references he puts in there, he really enjoyed monster movies himself.
[00:08:31] Stephen: Yeah. Definitely fit into one of those midnight hammer house of horrors or Roger Corman,
[00:08:37] Rhys: yeah. Marathon maybe could do with a few more beheadings if they’re going to go that route, but yeah, not too many more.
So Lehane, the writer came up with a concept while he was backpacking near the equator and he was contemplating this urban legend that mosquitoes don’t like people who eat Marmite, the high vitamin B in the Marmite makes the mosquitoes don’t like it. So he was wondering. If you’re drunk and a mosquito bites, you does the alcohol effect, the mosquito, and that was the seed from which he made this movie.
[00:09:15] Stephen: Excellent. That’s some of the best stuff right there. Yeah. Stories are made,
[00:09:21] Rhys: The production for this was actually very difficult because they shot it in the winter. And that was the worst winter Ireland had seen in over a hundred years
[00:09:31] Stephen: or
[00:09:32] Rhys: so. It was super cold, super windy, precipitating, constantly. The right.
Took Bradley and coil out before shooting and filmed them getting drunk and being drunk and then showed them the footage back, which the actors used to. Methodized how they acted in this movie.
[00:09:57] Stephen: Excellent. Cause I’ve heard of actors who are doing a, a switching body thing where they, work on acting like each other.
This is great. You’re acting like yourself. Yes,
[00:10:07] Rhys: this is the Irish equivalent of a Marvel movie where you like drink a lot of water and then dehydrate yourself. So you get shredded here. You’re going to just drink a lot of whiskey and then take a look at yourself and then they go, okay, that’s what I do.
[00:10:21] Stephen: The, the approach to acting in Ireland as well. First you have to get drunk. That’s step one, the step
[00:10:27] Rhys: one. Yes. That’s pretty much the production notes. There’s not a whole lot of production notes on this. And I think it’s mostly because it did not have this massive release. We just go on with
[00:10:41] Stephen: the, and overall, like you were saying, it’s a monster movie.
It’s a really good monster movie. There is nothing outrageously exceptional about it. It’s a good, solid monster movie, and it. A lot of the monster movies that are out there that we’ve seen, but a little bit better filming and quality wise looking wise, so if you like those types of movies, this is a good one.
[00:11:05] Rhys: Yeah. And I really enjoyed it. There was a time two, maybe three years ago. Shannon and I were actually looking at purchasing property in Donegal. So I had done a whole lot of like research into the area and all this stuff and seeing. Not as a still photograph fund, like some properties sites, people walking through it, it was really pleasant for me.
The movie opens with an aerial shot of the Celtic sea and you see the shooting star falling into the atmosphere as all good Saifai horror movie should start. It’s going to come down somewhere near cork, which is on the south side of Ireland, which I found really interesting because they filmed it on the complete opposite side of the island.
For some reason, production value probably.
[00:11:55] Stephen: The Seaway better.
[00:11:58] Rhys: I honestly think it’s because Northern Ireland and the county surrounding it, probably the cost of filming, there is a lot cheaper than in the south, I guess when you get down towards Dublin and, further south from there, it gets more expensive, but it also could have just been that they’re like, you know what?
Nobody has like the kind of coast we’re looking for, except for way up here, tucked in the north, who knows the camera then cuts to a, some fishermen on the deck of a small trawler and they see this object impact in the sea and they’re calling it into the Irish coast guard. And they’re like, it’s a signal flare.
And the one guy’s ah, I don’t think it was. So they head over to where it’s at. And this one guy has got a flashlight looking. Debris survivors. And then he promptly goes missing right over the rail. And the skipper goes out to find him only to end up killed. And the last of the crew who happens to be the skipper stud goes out and guess what?
He dies
[00:13:02] Stephen: too. Yeah. And it’s one of those, it’s a monster from space, that whatever, but they don’t show it. They should just write little technical and nothing else. So that’s always good. Always fun.
[00:13:14] Rhys: And then just to add a little authenticity to it, when the captain is killed, they use the Wilhelm scream when he dies.
I
[00:13:22] Stephen: noticed that. Yeah. Even over in Ireland.
[00:13:26] Rhys: Yes. And if you’re not familiar with the Wilhelm scream was the guy character named Wilhelm in a Western back in the fifties who was shot with a narrow. And that was his scream. And it’s been used in everything
[00:13:38] Stephen: star wars, stormtroopers in the star. When they go over into this Spielberg
[00:13:44] Rhys: seems to love it.
It’s in so many Raiders, the lost Ark things. It is everywhere, but I thought it was really cool. That little nod From there, the camera pans out and you see the ship on the left side of the screen, and then you see the sleepy little Irish town with the lights on the right. So you can draw a line between, oh, here’s the first victims.
Here’s the next set. Then we have this scene and this is going to happen a lot. You’re going to get contrasts between Caitlin O’Shea and Liz Nolan, the two police officers, because they’re very different and that’s how it starts. It starts with those Shea on his couch, obviously hung over the alcohol bottles all around him, as opposed to Garda Nolan, who is on the ferry Brighton early.
Looking majestically at the land she’s coming to. She’s checking her hat, making sure everything’s all buttoned up and perfect. And O’Shea’s pulling a half empty bottle out of the trash and Downing that before he decides to go out and get in his car,
[00:14:49] Stephen: it could have been a lethal weapon movie right there.
[00:14:51] Rhys: It could have yes. If Danny Glover and Neil Gibson fell in love at the
[00:14:56] Stephen: end, right? Yeah. Okay. It’s not quite lethal weapon, but it’s a tip. It seems like a typical cop that you got the two, the good cop, bad cop thing and the rookie that’s all peppy. Yeah. Again, there’s nothing in the movie that we haven’t seen before.
It’s just done really well. A nice, smooth, it takes a lot from other things.
[00:15:18] Rhys: And I think for some reason the way they do it, it feels like an homage. Not a
[00:15:24] Stephen: stereotype. And I think because of humor was very light. It wasn’t like Chuck Lee out over the
[00:15:31] Rhys: top. Yeah.
[00:15:32] Stephen: Yes. And if it had been more over the top, it all would’ve felt like more of a parody, so I can totally see that.
Yeah.
[00:15:42] Rhys: She comes in, she’s on a ferry. The name of the ferry is the Cana. I was trying to see if there was any kind of significance to that. The Canada is actually a Lily. And it really doesn’t have a whole lot of significance aside from the fact that it’s a very popular landscape. I think the only thing you could possibly, if you really want to stretch, it can a Lilly’s working in landscaping for so long.
Can a Lily’s will continue to bloom for as long as you keep cutting them. They’re, they are very. They propagate very easily, as long
[00:16:14] Stephen: as they’re well cared for, they need lots of water.
[00:16:19] Rhys: They’ll do better with a lot of water in
[00:16:22] Stephen: sunlight. It may have just been, the cannon was the only boat they could get for the price.
[00:16:28] Rhys: That’s what I say. I’m stretching on that, but the fairy lands and there’s tons of people getting off the ferry and just a few, there’s tons of people leaving the island and just a few people getting off a ferry onto the island, including Garda Nolan. There is a welcome to Erin island sign that she stops.
And she’s pulling out this map to look at. I honestly think the whole scene with the map is just a, to get her from the landing base to the. Car and also to draw attention to the fact that the welcome to Aaron island sign is an exact replica of the welcome to Amedee sign in
[00:17:09] Stephen: jaws. I was going to mention that.
Yeah, so that right there it’s, those are the things that are funny and humorous throughout the movie and their background and very subtle. They’re not in your face over the top.
[00:17:22] Rhys: She drops the map and it goes fluttering away and she puts her foot on it and stops it and looks up. And there is guard O’Shea in this car looking miserable.
She very cheerly introduces herself to him. And he’s the last thing he wants to see is Ms. Chipper and brighten the. She’s I’ve got a bag. He’s put it in the boot. So he’s not getting out of the car. He’s not giving her a hand. Mr. Is hospitality. Yeah. So she comes into the car with him and off they go as a riding along he’s sitting there having your typical kind of hangover pains and things and colluding the occasional burp.
And she can obviously smell the alcohol on his breath and she offers him a mint and he’s no, no thanks. So yeah, he’s pretty well set in his ways. She’s pretty well offended
[00:18:17] Stephen: by it. Oh
[00:18:20] Rhys: yeah. Legitimately he wouldn’t have had to act enjoyable. So their car drives off through the scenery and the camera goes on to show you more of the absolute stunning scenery there as this guy is walking along, it turns out he’s.
Town doctor you find out later, but he’s out walking his dog and he gets to the beach and there’s just pilot whales, dead all along the beach. And he seems distressed by this as
[00:18:49] Stephen: you know who wouldn’t be. You
[00:18:51] Rhys: should be. Then the guard I guard, I is plural for Garda. The guard I arrived at. Curtis’s yes.
And walk in and we find out why a garden Olin is there. It turns out that the head of the police is going away on vacation for two weeks. And she is there just to fill in so that there’s not just O’Shea because let’s face, it just O’Shea is probably not going to cut it. This becomes an issue because O’Shea and the chief like have words over it and he’s he didn’t have to break her.
And he’s yeah, I did. But just to show you how Rudy is. She comes in, she meets the captain, she’s all bubbly. They’re happy to see each other. He shows her where to sit and OSHA is like, ah, coffee. And she’s oh great. I’d love some pulls out her own cup out of nowhere, hands it to him. So he’s filling it up and he’s like milk.
And she’s what kind? And he rolls his eyes and he’s like cow. And she’s no, just black. Thanks. So then he just absolutely fills it to the top with milk and gives it back to her, which is
[00:20:01] Stephen: A nice
[00:20:02] Rhys: way of saying, if you then we get the scene where we’re out on the docks and there’s two gentlemen on the dock. And they’re lobstermen, they’re pulling in their traps. And one of them is Patty. And just looking at Patty, you can be like, eh, you know what? I’m going to bet that he’s altered right now while he’s here pulling lobsters out.
He finds something in his trap, which is not a lobster. And it sprays water all over the other guy’s face. Patty thinks it’s hilarious. He doesn’t know what it is. He’s curious. So he picks up the trap and takes it with him.
[00:20:41] Stephen: Like you would. Yeah. He didn’t see the meteor.
[00:20:48] Rhys: Yes. He must not have seen the meteor.
I don’t know if it would’ve made a whole lot of difference if he had really. Yeah.
[00:20:56] Stephen: None of these type of movies that would have ever made a difference.
[00:21:00] Rhys: Yeah. Oh, we cut to O’Shea and no one in the car and they’re driving along and I have this thing in my notes. It just keeps repeating. I’m like odd couple.
And like every time it’s like odd couple in car, odd couple in car, odd couple in the bar. And that’s exactly what these are. They’re two completely opposite people.
[00:21:20] Stephen: Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, I was
[00:21:21] Rhys: just going to say she’s all upbeat and talkative and he is not,
[00:21:26] Stephen: An extreme stereotype for movies, there’s no subtle Dita personalities.
It’s boom, big, bright.
[00:21:36] Rhys: They are proudly representing their groups. There is a heads of foreshadow in their conversation and this section of the car, because she’s from Dublin and she’s seen all this stuff and he’s you’re not going to see any of that here. This is slow as shite. And that’s what you say.
Now come back and a half an hour. So they got called out to the beach where there’s all these pilot whales, and we are now introduced to the young doctor who is obviously very interested in Garda Nolan. O’Shea is not overly impressed with the fact that the fancy English doctor is interested in her.
Andy, he goes out of his way to make a Shea seem a little stupid a couple of times with his little snarky comments. So he says that the pilot whales died out of. And just washed up on the shore and they have these giant slices in them. And he’s that was probably the rocks as they were rolling in them surf, but O’Shea’s got this weird feeling about it and he’s standing there just staring out into, out at the sea, which, if that’s not reminiscent of the police chief from jaws, I don’t know what it is, but
[00:22:50] Stephen: okay.
And considering he’s basically a trunk alcoholic and then he suddenly gets us cop instinct in that cop look, it’s like a, yeah.
[00:22:59] Rhys: Yeah. So then they’re off the car, we’re doing another little odd couple bit where they’re going along and he does this really cute joke where he holds his hand with his fingers up.
And he’s what’s this? And she’s I don’t know. And he’s like a dead one of these in terms of his fingers over and wiggles them. And she’s I don’t get it. And he tries again and she’s just Nope, right over my head. I don’t get it.
Then we end up at a quarry and there’s a couple interesting things that happen here at the quarry. They interject to the quarry scene with shots of Patty and his new pet, but we’ll do the quarry scene first and then talk about the shots with Patty. The first thing is they get out in the mud and no one’s upset that our boots are muddy and these guys are over leaning and on the side and they see her in there laughing.
And one of them whistles at her and she’s all offended and she takes out her pad and walks over and she’s okay, what’s your name? And in typical Irish prank fashion, the guy spits out like 30 syllables of Gaelic. And then she’s okay, as you were, and they laugh because you know what, she was going to write that down.
The other thing that’s really interesting. The other two interesting things that happen here is there’s this whole tradition and it’s a small town thing. It’s not just Irish, but this was whole tradition of owing each other favors. And so the owner of the quarry obviously owes O’Shea a favor and O’Shea is I want you to get down to the beach and I want you to pick up these whales and get rid of them.
It’s off my plate and this is done. It’s not like an hour’s work, no big deal. The other funny part is that while he’s talking to him, no one is in the background. And she’s like looking at him, she’s like pissed because this conversation is happening at a low breath. And then he stops and look over at her and she stares off in the distance.
And then he goes back to this conversation and then she stares daggers at him again, which is just really funny how they set the whole thing up now in the middle of this whole scene, Patty his home with his lobster trap, he’s filling his bathtub and he’s going to put the lobster in it. A good idea. I don’t understand why in so many of these movies, if you have some monster or something going on the guys put on a welding mask, maybe can’t
[00:25:29] Stephen: see shit in a woman Maza yet, because that’s a common thing.
I thought putting it in the bathtub was pretty. Oh, that’s brilliant. Yeah. And I love the trap too. It’s not like a modern bought trap handmade and falling apart old man lobster trap.
[00:25:46] Rhys: Yeah. So he’s got that. The deal is made between O’Shea and the guys. The guys of the quarry come down with a bunch of gear, throw the whales up onto the trucks.
One of the guys forgets his shovel at the beach and his boss is like, Hey, don’t leave your crap liner on, go pick it up. So the guy walks back and he finds this six inch transparent or buried in the sand. And he’s oh, what’s this? And he like, digs it up and he’s holding it, looking at it. And bam, your first jump scare as the guy’s just flattened down under the sand and something’s got his leg and it’s pulling them out into the ocean
[00:26:32] Stephen: again, they haven’t really shown anything yet, so
[00:26:35] Rhys: right.
You don’t even see the technical one that has. You just see the guy getting drug
[00:26:39] Stephen: away. It helps keep the production down because you don’t have to pay for that in the shot. It’s true.
[00:26:44] Rhys: It’s just a cable right now. His boss is like, where the heck is that guy? And he leaves his car and wanders off of this flashlight looking for him.
And he can’t be sees the shovel, but he can’t find the guy and they leave it at that. They don’t say anything else. Just the guy walks off and he’s looking at it. See, and he’s like, where’d my guy go. And then they cut to O’Shea at the pub. My big question is what did they do with the whales?
[00:27:13] Stephen: I wondered that too.
Where are they? They load them
[00:27:15] Rhys: violent, dumping them in a hole in the quarry cause
[00:27:19] Stephen: or a big out Saturday night whale burgers.
[00:27:23] Rhys: Oh yeah.
So O’Shea is it. Looking miserable. I think it’s really funny that he’s sitting on one end of the pub and Patty’s sitting with him. Yeah. Like the two of them hang out all the time. You can see that considering how much alcohol they both drank. It makes sense. The no one shows up and she wants an iron, which of course the pub owner has behind the bar get
[00:27:49] Stephen: some kids, her and her apartments, like upstairs, above the pub.
Isn’t it correct? Yeah. It’s like the landlord. I’ve gone down to the desk and got a toothbrush
[00:27:58] Rhys: oh, that’s nice. Yeah. I said to them to give it to you. Yeah,
[00:28:03] Stephen: it sucked. But
[00:28:05] Rhys: she comes down and gets the iron and the guy like tells her, it’s hot, keep it moving. In case she doesn’t know how to use an iron.
His wife comes out and starts talking to O’Shea and She is like this super nosy kind of lady who is trying to hook O’Shea up with this new person who’s out there, but O’Shea’s yeah, nothing’s going to happen there. This is obviously a local pub and you can tell, cause the policemen is sitting right next to this drunk and lobster men and the barmaids, who’s standing there just throwing out advice to him on relationships.
Patty, on the other hand, can’t keep a secret and he’s I know something you don’t. And Karen’s oh, what’s that Patty? And he’s I got to see monster it’s in my bathtub. And Karen’s okay, whatever, buddy.
It’s a really entertaining interaction between the two of them. And it’s even better that he just came out and told him about it. And then that he doesn’t believe him. So Kieren’s leaving, he gets up to leave the bar and the bartender says something and Patty’s he called geo Bolex and the bartender bands Patty’s come on.
I was just joking, cause who wants to get kicked out of their favorite eases
[00:29:30] Stephen: things all the time throughout the
[00:29:31] Rhys: main, he does probably the only bar. Now I think about it. Now, the guy, he was fishing with his, at home, sitting on his chair, watching TV, and he’s watching the living dead night of the living dead and his wife’s upstairs in a row.
She’s blowing her hair dry. There’s a knock on the door. He’s Hey, go get that. And she’s I’m in my robe. You moron, you go get it. He gets up to go get it and looks out. Okay. It’s the guy from the quarry and he’s standing there with his hands up and he’s oh, wobbly. And so he just assumes he’s drunk and dancing for some strange
[00:30:08] Stephen: reason.
Like this is an accepted common thing almost. But for those
[00:30:13] Rhys: of us to know, we realize now that this monster that seems to be in the water is actually probably pretty smart. It’s using the corpse of this guy as a lure to try and get people to come out. Yeah, it was
[00:30:28] Stephen: brilliant.
[00:30:29] Rhys: And sure enough, the one guy does go out and then disappears.
And then his wife’s like freaking out, running around. She runs over to the chimney and gets sucked up the chimney, leaving her slippers there at the base of the fireplace.
[00:30:44] Stephen: I did the very typical, good tablet at the chimney. And then her feet go, it’s
[00:30:48] Rhys: yeah O’Shea shows up at Nolan’s door, which is, a bad idea considering how much I’m sure he’s had to drink for the evening.
There’s more conversation between the two of them to highlight how different they are. He knocks a bunch of crap off of her desk. He’s completely hammered. She’s like, how are you getting home? And he falls asleep right on her door, jam
Patty on the other hand, throws on the old welding mask and goes back to the bathroom. And there’s nothing in the trap. And he’s like, where did it go? And he’s looking around and he takes his mask off and he’s looking around and there’s slime on the mirror. Then he looks up and in the corner is just this riving mass of like teal tentacles.
And he doesn’t run. He just, he doesn’t run screaming out.
[00:31:43] Stephen: Yeah. And it looks really good. It doesn’t look like bad CG or it doesn’t look like bad rubber technicals. It’s some, I don’t know whenever they did really good. I loved it.
[00:31:53] Rhys: Yeah. While he’s looking at it, this thing comes rocketing out and hits him in the neck.
And then he like grabs his neck and the thing falls off the wall where it’s hanging and he starts
[00:32:03] Stephen: stomping on it. Oh yeah. They love the stump. Everything they
[00:32:07] Rhys: do. They stumped the hell out of everything
the fall. Oh. Was saying that when he was designing these, he based the design of the smaller one on the face huggers for mainland. So there’s that kind of little nod right there. In the morning, Lisa is down there getting ready to leave. She’s talking and the barmaid is there and she’s pushing Kieron.
Lisa, like he, he’s a great guy and, especially he’s widower, his wife died and she’s oh, he never mentioned anything about that. And she’s oh, he wouldn’t, he’s very private. Okay.
[00:32:54] Stephen: The whole romance subplot is a little forced in there and it’s they don’t do a whole lot.
And then suddenly it’s evolved. So whatever. Yeah. It moves fast. It might, maybe that was part of the tongue in cheek. This too, can be fun. That type of thing. So
[00:33:11] Rhys: he wakes up in the drunk tank cause that’s where she put him. Cause he doesn’t know where he lived and he passed out in the hallway and they get called off to go see the scientist, the young British scientist who has this thing that Patty brought in, Patty’s calling it a grabber and insist that it’s called a grabber and he found it.
So he gets to name it and he wants the money.
[00:33:33] Stephen: Okay. And he goes, this is one of my favorite lines. Can you put it on the eBay? That was one of my favorite lines.
Oh, I know where I was thinking Patty is from he’s he’s the old caretaker guy that’s in every Scooby-Doo episode. That’s where that goes from.
Okay. And when you
[00:33:58] Rhys: Pull the tentacle off the monster, he’s underneath it saying the doctor won’t even look at O’Shea every time I even asked him a question, he answers Nolan right away. He has an, a, he finds an egg in the thing’s stomach. He can retract its tongue out. You can see it. So they’re looking at it and oh, Shay decides we’re gonna head out towards the beach and see if anyone’s seen anything.
Cause he knew those guys were going down there to get the whales and it gets there and the truck is there and nobody else. Yeah.
[00:34:38] Stephen: And then the keys are the whales. They left it in the damn trunk all this time.
[00:34:45] Rhys: The keys are in the truck. So he’s you couldn’t have gotten far. He looks up at the cottage, they go over to the cottage. They’re looking around the cottage. Things seem a little bit odd. There’s the belt of her bathrobe is hanging out of the chimney. And so no one climbs up to see what’s up there and she’s pulling down the bathrobe and a human head.
Her husband’s head comes rolling down and he basically headbutts O’Shea with a disembodied head. That’s gotta be a disturbing way to start your day.
[00:35:23] Stephen: These are they half drunk. So
[00:35:26] Rhys: that’s true. They take the head to the doctor. And he’s what killed them? Doctors like for want of a head he said, you bring me someone with a headache or a head cold and I could do something.
But if you just bring the head, you’re taking the piss. In other words, there’s no way you can tell obviously his head was removed. So that’s why he’s dead. We go back to the patties. The dogs are over here, wrestling. I don’t know if Mike’s picking that up, but
[00:35:55] Stephen: it’s a casual conversation. There you go.
[00:35:58] Rhys: They go back to patties and find that Patty’s house is missing a bathtub now because the bathtub has been pulled through the wall is like global.
It’s all global warming’s fault.
[00:36:12] Stephen: He goes, how am I going to wash myself? Yes.
[00:36:16] Rhys: This, he says the whole world is drowning and we don’t have the gills for it. So after seeing all of this the guard, I actually decided to go back to the office and they put on their uniforms. Other seal. Now they’ve just been walking around civilian clothes, but, we found it
[00:36:31] Stephen: right.
They said it was
[00:36:32] Rhys: Saturday or Sunday. I don’t remember which, but yeah. But yeah, we found a head and a bathtub and a sea monster. So I guess we should go get dressed.
[00:36:41] Stephen: They needed was like the really intense music and the montage showing them like thinking the weapons in pulling the vests on and,
[00:36:48] Rhys: yeah.
Have a little montage, Patty figures out. They know that the things like water, they gotta be kept wet. Pat is there’s this cave. So they decide they’re going to go check out that cave. So they get on their stuff. They head down to the cave and it’s one of those crazy dangerous sea caves. The kind that, when high tide comes in, it’s underwater,
[00:37:11] Stephen: what’s so dangerous.
[00:37:15] Rhys: Good point. So they go in and they’re looking around and you have them looking on the inside and Patti looking on the outside and on the inside, they find a raincoat belonging to one of the fishermen from the first scene of the movie on the outside, Patty finds a whole bunch more eggs, buried in the sand and he picks one up and something inside moves and he falls over there in the cave.
And O’Shea’s just hello? Hello. And. No. One’s what are you doing? And he’s what? There’s someone here we should call. And then out of the recesses of the cave, just a giant pile of tentacles, far bigger than anything that Patty had in his house. And so they go running out and they look back and the thing stops at the mouth of the cave because there’s no water.
Then they realize it’s supposed to rain that night.
[00:38:10] Stephen: So like how they say, oh, he can’t get us in that technical shoots that gets the hat.
[00:38:18] Rhys: They go back to the lab. And the very first thing they do is she takes a key thing, a gas, dumps it on top of the creature and lights it on fire. The doctor’s you’re really Irish. Aren’t you is one of my other
[00:38:29] Stephen: favorite lines. They’re like making fun of themselves. Like we do with American audiences for films.
We are Irish. Yeah, that was a good one.
[00:38:38] Rhys: So the sprinkler system goes off and the water basically resuscitates the. Yeah, exactly. And they’re all walking. Yeah. They’re all walking up to beat on it. And Lisa grabs some kind of weapon. And then the, I
[00:38:52] Stephen: picked up a chair he’s carrying it. And he keeps practices like thrusting it, like for practice, Lisa grabs a knife.
So Shay looks at him like, what the hell? And then Liza grabs a knife and he’s huh. And then
[00:39:05] Rhys: he grabs a magazine.
[00:39:09] Stephen: That dog that cracked me up. I’m like, oh, this is like the best weapon right here.
[00:39:14] Rhys: Yeah. They get close to the thing. And the thing just jumps on our Shay’s face, just like a face hugger and he’s wrestling with it. And it does not like his blood because. He still hung over from the night before. So they managed to get off of him and then they just stomp on it and keep stomping.
It’s dumping it and stopping it. Of
[00:39:36] Stephen: course it’s another trope, typical thing, they stop the thing moves. They start stomping it some more. I mean it, and it was that angle from down below, that’s in I, how many movies, Irish, British, whatever. Do you have the punks or whatever that do that, Blackstock and two
[00:39:55] Rhys: smoking barrels.
Jesus. If we got a traffic warden, he started stomping on a boondock, same camera angle. Yeah. So they make the connection to the alcohol must be toxic to them and. So they need to get people drunk and they need to test this theory. So they’re going to test it on Nolan. Who’s never drunk before. And they go into the pub, they enlist the pub owner the guy who works behind the bar and they’re like, look, this is a thing.
So you’ve got to help us with this. So she gets to sit there and drink. And 49 minutes into the movie, Lisa gets hammered and she will be for the entire rest of the movie until the very at the end, she drinks a lot. She’s pretty drunk. And then she’s trying to match what Patty had the night before, because Patty’s alcohol was toxic to them and she matches it from the pub.
But then pat has got a pooching, which is Irish moonshine that he brewed himself. And yeah, now we’re actually going to make his poutine she downs it almost faults.
They take her back. The doctor extracts some of her blood. They feed it to the thing that they’ve been stomping on this whole time. And it promptly dies. And as soon as it does everyone knows what’s gotta happen now. So the bartender’s we’ll have to do shots, probably tear the R side of it.
And she blows a point. She bows a point too, which is really drunk,
[00:41:36] Stephen: especially she’s not. Big.
[00:41:40] Rhys: So they run down. Where are you going to find everybody? You’re going to find everybody at mass and they go to mass and we’re all going to go to the pub. Now that you’re all done, it’s going to be good.
And nobody’s moving. And then the Shea is like a free bar and everybody gets up. Even the priests, they’re all like, let’s go
[00:41:54] Stephen: again, self deprecating humor, making fun of that smells.
[00:41:57] Rhys: I like it. And so many of these kinds of British Irish movies, a whole bunch of the scenes in the pub are really just scenes of people having a good time.
It’s just they’re all standing around singing. They’re all
[00:42:07] Stephen: drinking loud and boisterous.
[00:42:10] Rhys: Yes. Back in the kitchen where they’re being more serious, they’re dividing up weapons among themselves. There’s a flare gun. There’s a super soaker filled. Petrol. They have all these different things and they’re all doing shots except OSHA who has decided he’s going to be the sober one who runs this whole thing.
Yeah.
[00:42:31] Stephen: Now’s the night to decide to dry
[00:42:34] Rhys: up. Yes. Yeah. Picked a bad time to quit, quit heroin. And I
[00:42:38] Stephen: must say I love the supersoaker with the petrol because they put a candle on the end. I’m like, yes. I love that.
[00:42:45] Rhys: Perfect. Yes. Oh, and one of the weapons they have is a hurling stick, which is a it’s a distinctly Irish sport.
It’s like hockey. If, instead of keeping the ball on the ice, you keep it up in the air on this stick. So you know, everyone’s having a great time in the pub outside. You have this whole. Nod to every single seventies, horror movie ever, because you have the two cops in the car, there’s this romantic thing going on between them, but it’s dark and it’s rainy.
O’Shea’s I am not widowed. My wife just left me and no, one’s do you want me to sort her out for ya? They’re all having, a pretty nice night considering until this one guy decides he has to go pee and he goes outside to pee and he promptly ends up surrounded by bunches of these little wriggling, slug, like things with a giant mouth.
Yeah. And they’re after him. And so they like stomp a bunch of them and they’re like, you okay? And he’s yeah, like what are you doing outside? He’s I had to pee. And while he’s standing there, this giant pinnacle just picks him up, pops them into this giant monsters mouth. And it spits his head back out because apparently they don’t like the heads.
So Nolan and O’Shea are in their cruiser trying to fumble around and do something. They accidentally turned the lights on the thing. Doesn’t like the lights and starts to beat the hell out of the cruiser. They run away, they get into the kitchen and like your typical little Irish guy, the bartender’s I’m going to take this thing out.
And he grabs his thing with a squirt gun and walks out there and he’s got the candle lit. It took them forever to get the candle lit. He goes to shoot at the thing. And of course the candles out it’s pouring down rain.
[00:44:24] Stephen: It is the buckets of rain.
[00:44:28] Rhys: They do manage to save him. They managed to get him back inside.
Which is more than we can say for everybody else in this movie necessarily, somehow the word gets into the pub that there’s this monster outside everyone panics, they’re all gonna go upstairs to the rooms. And while they’re doing that, the British doctor decides he’s going to go out and take pictures of this thing.
He’s completely hammered. He’s got the camera, we know it. Doesn’t like flashing lights and it’s it’s just an animal. You just need to talk
[00:45:00] Stephen: to it. And it’s funny because that’s the. Everybody does when they’re drunk, it’s like the stupidest idea, this thing, why do you want pictures of this thing?
Yes.
[00:45:11] Rhys: God watches over children and drunk people.
[00:45:13] Stephen: And obviously
[00:45:14] Rhys: not the doctor, obviously not the doctor, because the thing just takes its tentacles and wipes them. And he goes flying yes. A very long way
[00:45:23] Stephen: but he could be alive and they just forget all about them.
[00:45:27] Rhys: That’s true. If we’re talking about things that have been omitted, I want to know where all the children are on this
[00:45:32] Stephen: island.
That’s true.
[00:45:34] Rhys: They didn’t. Cause all the adults are, they’re getting hammered. Where are the kids at home? So the doctor gets tossed way out there. So they’re sitting there and they’re talking about, what they’re going to do. No one comes up with the idea of, Hey, let’s go to the quarry and we could take one of those cranes and grab it and just hold it up in the air until it dries out, and then we can kill it.
And everyone thinks this is good idea,
[00:46:05] Stephen: full Brooks,
[00:46:07] Rhys: even though who’s supposed to be sober, thinks this is a good idea.
[00:46:12] Stephen: But but we’re talking about all these old monster movies. They really don’t have deep plots. So honestly, if you’re going to do an homage to old horror movies, you want something like this.
You want to kind of plot devices like roll eye, roll your eyes. And so honestly he may have done this completely on purpose, which makes him more of a genius. Actually
[00:46:38] Rhys: it could be a. Because again, it doesn’t feel forced, it feels right somehow as you’re watching it. Exactly. So she needs to get the keys to the truck so they can get out to the quarry.
The keys are downstairs, they arm her with a nail gun. She almost shoots somebody in the head with it puts a nail in the wall is anybody’s ever used a nail gun knows that’s not really how they work.
[00:47:05] Stephen: It is in every movie
[00:47:06] Rhys: though, in every movie. Yeah. So she’s walking around there and the little blood soccer things are all over the place.
Just having a good time in the bar. And she
[00:47:16] Stephen: reminded me of gremlins in the movie theater. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:47:21] Rhys: It’s crazy because I just watched that with price. The other day we watched gremlins and I was thinking about the scene in the bar. The girls they’re like serving them drinks and stuff. Cause these things are playing the jukebox and they’re like all over.
She takes the nail gun to one of them and just like nails it directly to the bar. Like five times heads into the back into the kitchen, grabs the keys. She finds Patty’s bottle of Puccini and she puts it inside her pocket in a letter, she grabs the lighter. Then. The technical smash in the door and come reaching for her.
And as a dragging or across, she grabs a butcher’s knife as she goes past the block and starts hacking on it and it lets her go and she’s sitting there looking worried.
[00:48:09] Stephen: She’s pretty good for being so drunk.
[00:48:12] Rhys: She absolutely is. However she does manage to accidentally catch the downstairs part of the bar on
[00:48:17] Stephen: fire.
She’s pretty good, not perfect.
[00:48:20] Rhys: They come to the conclusion that the main reason this thing is here is because a O’Shea still smells like the female. And so he’s what it’s after. So he climbs out a window trying to get out to save everybody in town. And from around the corner of the pub comes this flying pickup truck being driven by no other than the drunken guard, a Nolan.
And she does an amazing 180. He drops in the bed of the truck and they take off heading for the quarry and the monster pursues and the monster pursues in this amazing way. It just rolls, which makes all kinds of sense. It’s just a ball of tentacles, just roll along and it’s good. Yeah, it’s doing a good job.
Keeping up with the truck.
[00:49:04] Stephen: There was one thing in there somewhere O’Shea gets one of them stuck to him and he’s beating himself with a shovel. I marked that down. I liked smacking yourself in the face with the shovel. That’s another,
[00:49:15] Rhys: She drops him off. He jumps across this chasm. He’s over there next to the center shack.
And below them are giant barrels of explosives, like any video game, barrels, shoot them, they’re going to blow up and he’s standing there and he says, what are you waiting for? Come on, come and get me, which is an exact quote of Arnold. Schwartzenegger from predator,
[00:49:40] Stephen: like word for word.
And he’s almost in the same thing. He’s like laying there. Yeah.
[00:49:45] Rhys: He’s setting him, he’s setting this trap. He’s come on, come get me. He fails to remember it. This thing has a ton. They can shoot way out a very long distance, which it does it snags him and pulls him off the ledges on. And he falls down into the pit with the explosives.
He seems perfectly willing to blow himself up. If he could just get the thing down in the pit and here. Drunken garden Olin in an homage to aliens, to when Riley puts on the big hydraulic suit, she’s coming along with a backhoe and she just smashes into the thing and falls into the pit with the backhoe pinning the thing to the bottom of the pit.
[00:50:26] Stephen: If she had really done that. Can you imagine writing a backhoe over the cliff?
[00:50:30] Rhys: To be honest, if you’ve never worked with that gear, you can’t
[00:50:34] Stephen: even get them started. That’s true. Not
[00:50:37] Rhys: like he turned a key. You do turn a key, but there’s a lot of other stuff going on there. So the thing is pinned down there.
And. O’Shea gets up and climbs up and he climbs out and they’re having a moment between the two of them. And all of a sudden this tentacle comes up. It’s still pinned under the backhoe, but it’s got these tentacles. It grabs him by the leg and pulls him over dangling.
[00:51:02] Stephen: That’s another, like if you’re going to have this romantic moment, you want to kiss her?
Why do it two feet from the pit where you just trapped the beast, get the hell out of there. So
[00:51:12] Rhys: that’s kind of things. I think in the next movie, I’m yelling at the screen, clear the room before you do anything else, make sure you’re alone in the space, before you kiss the girl, make sure the beast is dead.
So he’s dangling over its mouth. She’s freaking out. And he pulls out the poutine, pops the lid off and pours it down. It’s. and the thing like frozen away, cause they can’t stand him. She gets up and pulls out the gun and flare gun and shoots the barrels. And the thing blows up. Lisa, the hero part three, she saved the day.
[00:51:56] Stephen: Yeah. Like I said, the whole storyline is almost contrived. It’s you know, the typical what’s been in a million other movies, but again, And it’s exactly what it needs. If they have done anything else, it wouldn’t have been as great.
[00:52:11] Rhys: Yeah. It’s an awash. It’s not a stereotype. You get to the Denny mall now and the bartender comes out.
He’s got a fire extinguisher in his hand. You can see this fire damaged the downstairs. He sits down next to Patty. It’s like fancy a drink in petty. So they’re going to go off and drink Patty’s poo chain and then no one I know, share walking back and they share a kiss and then walking through the lovely countryside.
And then of course you get a scene of the beach and the waves washing up and Hey, look, it’s more eggs. So
[00:52:41] Stephen: forgot all about those.
[00:52:43] Rhys: If you really wanted to make a sequel, he could, but considering how little he made off of the first one, I don’t know that he would, but. That was pretty much, that’s pretty much the movie for you.
Again, it was just this, a guy who loved old horror movies, and this is just the way that he tipped his hat to all of them. The music in this movie, almost all of it is performed by the same four Irish guys. They’re doing whiskey in the jar, they’re doing the Irish Rover zoo and all these famous, the only song that was not is Baba Lena, which is one on the jukebox and that’s performed by Ronnie self, but everything else.
Yeah.
[00:53:28] Stephen: It’s a nice change of pace to get that Irish folk tunes done with just the, the flute or tin whistle or whatever they’re using. It was nice to have something different like that.
[00:53:40] Rhys: And as far as visitors. I guess the knee-jerk reaction would be, this is an alien visitor.
But my whole thought was that the town visits the pub,
[00:53:48] Stephen: that’s true. Nolan’s visiting the town
[00:53:52] Rhys: and no one’s visiting the island. That’s right. This works on so many levels
[00:53:56] Stephen: because, we go for the
[00:53:57] Rhys: deep we do, sometimes we do, but this one was not at it was a very enjoyable, fun film. This is one of those kinds of movies, like I was saying, I’m going to go down and record a podcast with Steve.
And Brandon’s what are you doing? I’m like, grab her. She’s I don’t think I’ve seen that. I’m like, anytime you want to watch it, this is pretty much acceptable for just about
[00:54:17] Stephen: it. I was going to say the same thing. This is even, if you’re you got not super little kids, but kids interested in horror movies, this is not terrible.
Yeah. There’s some blood and gore little aliens might be a little scary. So judge for yourself. I probably would’ve sat down and watched this with my kids and seven, eight years old, maybe.
[00:54:35] Rhys: Yeah. You have what two heads get spit out over the course of the entire thing. You’d never see the bodies which is far more gruesome swear words are few and far between, and when they are, they’re either foreign or said with foreign accent, which makes them harder to
[00:54:52] Stephen: understand the whole movie has that lighthearted field.
So it doesn’t correct any of the violence and gore and stuff. So yeah,
[00:55:00] Rhys: you mentioned Gremlin’s When I rewatched it with Bryce the other day, I’m like, this is a really violent freaking movie. Like the mom goes into the kitchen and kills four of them like
[00:55:09] Stephen: outright. The dad died in the chimney and they talk about that too.
Yeah.
[00:55:16] Rhys: That’s a pretty dark movie. I don’t think this is that dark of a movie compared
[00:55:20] Stephen: to gremlin. When you have a movie based on let’s get drunk to kill the aliens, just that premise. You’re not going into it thinking it’s a Freddy Krueger movie, right?
[00:55:31] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:55:33] Stephen: That was grabbers. It has grabbers as a fun one.
Good one. So we’ll add that to the list of one for family favorites. Sure,
[00:55:43] Rhys: absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Even the other funny lighthearted ones from last season had objectionable stuff in them
[00:55:51] Stephen: a little bit more. So what’s the next one on the list? The
[00:55:55] Rhys: next one is the den and that is someone who visits a website.
A very different different take it falls into its own category of film. And it’s an American film. Everyone can get off me about only doing foreign films
[00:56:10] Stephen: because we’ve had it. So many people hammering
[00:56:13] Rhys: people, constantly yelling at me about this. I’m walking down the street.
They’re like do some American films,
[00:56:18] Stephen: something different so we can make fun of ourselves just like they were making fun of themselves in this movie. Exactly. All right, man. So there’s grabbers. Good. Another good one season two on its way.
[00:56:30] Rhys: Awesome.
The creature slips
will rise again. .
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