#listen. would I call this a horror film? no. It felt more like a religious sci-fi film which honestly I can't say I've ever seen before so

[babisawyer]

I don't know why the exorcist 2 pissed people off so badly that was your average italian horror film.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Heads Will Roll by Josh Winning

"'Listen,' she says, 'this is the best piece of advice I can give. As long as you're kind, and unprejudiced, and haven't hurt anybody: Refuse. To. Be. Ashamed. Wear your mistakes with pride. Look them in the eye and own your space on this Earth. Own it shamelessly, without regret, and no fucker has any power over you.'"

Year Read: 2024

Rating: 3/5

About: After a fateful Tweet that went viral in the worst way, Willow's life is falling apart. She's been fired from her sitcom, her fiancé's left, and the internet as a whole is calling for her head. A retreat to Camp Castaway, where adults who want to put their mistakes behind them and disconnect from their phones, comes at the perfect moment. But Camp Castaway hides a dark history, and when campers start to go missing, it's clear someone wants to cancel all of them… for good. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Penguin/Putnam. Trigger warnings: character death (on page, graphic), decapitation, child abuse, gore, cancer, severe injury, addiction, homophobia (countered), strong religious themes, bullying.

Thoughts: This is a perfectly fine adult slasher novel and a nice addition to the genre. Winning doesn't skimp on the gore or the body count, and, not surprisingly, the horror scenes were my favorite parts. They're nicely cinematic and well-paced, as well as a loving (bloody) homage to slasher films of days gone by. There are a couple of powerhouse Final Girls as well, and I especially loved Juniper as the aged, tough Final Girl who takes no shit and offers wisdom to the younger generation. It's harder to get a read on Willow since she's having a bit of an identity crisis, but she's a worthy heroine who always tries to help her fellow campers, even before the heads are rolling. There's also a sweet but complicated wlw romance, representation that still isn't as prevalent in horror as I'd hope.

One of my favorite things about horror and what basically cemented my love for George Romero movies in high school is horror's natural ability to be a vehicle for social commentary. Winning targets cancel culture with Head Will Roll, and one has the sense many influencers would rather be chased through the woods by an ax murderer than be "canceled" on Instagram. Not being much of a social media person myself, it's not an issue that particularly resonates with me, but it's nicely developed throughout the novel. Occasionally, I did feel like the issue was overshadowing the story and the horror a bit, but had I connected more to it, I might not have felt that way. All in all, it's fun, gruesome, and meaningful, as horror should be.

[wp-blaze]

Hosting a Graduation Party on a Tight Budget

Do you have a child graduating this year? Do you want to host a graduation party to celebrate but your budget is tight? Hosting a graduation party on a tight budget can still be memorable and fun! Consider the following tips for inspiration. Remember have fun! This is a celebration not a chore. With some … Continue reading “Hosting a Graduation Party on a Tight Budget”

[livvywritesworld]

A Fist in the Mouth | Overview & Analysis

For those who don’t know, I am a creative writing student in my first year of university. In my introduction to creative writing class this semester, I wrote a short story called ‘A Fist in the Mouth’ for our fiction unit. After a couple rounds of editing, I submitted this piece to my university’s literary magazine and was later accepted for publication.

This is my first ever publication acceptance so of course this story holds such a special place in my heart now, and I thought I might make a post about it just kind of sharing a couple of snippets and some of the inspiration and thought I put behind the story as a whole.

(please let it be known that I retain all rights to my original work and no plagiarism will be tolerated)

excerpts and analysis under the cut

‘A Fist in the Mouth’ began as a way for me to kind of reintroduce myself to short fiction after a period of not having written anything at all due to some health issues. I had all of these ideas for the short fiction piece that I needed to write for class and none of them were working out how I wanted them to while still fitting within the word limit. So, I decided to discovery write something while listening to one of my many Spotify playlists just to kind of get in the groove of writing once more and really just see what would happen.

As I was writing, the song “Modern Girl” by Sleater-Kinney came on shuffle and for those of you who have never heard the song, there’s a repeating lyric, “hunger makes me a modern girl.” This really sparked some inspiration in me and all of a sudden I was writing about a teenage runaway come riot grrrl serial concert goer experiencing the horrors of girlhood and ambition. 

‘A Fist in the Mouth’ begins like this:

There’s a difference between running from and running to. When I left home, I thought I was running towards. I didn’t think of it as me leaving my parents’ oppressive religious household, though that was a fact that I readily acknowledged as a girl. I only ever thought of it as me, freshly eighteen, running full speed at a future I thought I deserved. A future I knew never would have found me if I’d stayed in that town, in that house, with those people, spending my days on my knees praying to a god that didn’t see me as deserving of anything more than I’d already been given.

Now, I think all I was doing was running away from every facet of my life. I didn’t feel the same way about God as the rest of my family, was scared to death of them looking at me one day and suddenly seeing all of me. Back then, I felt like I didn’t have any other choice. And I probably didn’t.

The narrator is kind of inspired by the character Maxine in the film ‘X,’ which I had watched a couple of weeks before writing the story, as well as Ethel Cain’s discography. I really wanted to write from the perspective of a teenage girl fleeing a very religious household (religious trauma for the win) because she wants more out of life than what her parents have laid out for her.

As we move through the story and see how the narrator interacts with the 90s Seattle grunge & punk scene, we are introduced to the narrator’s insatiable hunger (her ambition, queerness, and dedicated yearning). I use a lot of motifs throughout the beginning and middle of the text to try and recreate this feeling for the reader.

I was nineteen and my presence felt both excessive and non-existent. I wasn’t eating as much as I should’ve been, couldn’t really afford three meals a day. Most of my money went towards rent and bills, any real food I got would be leftovers from the diner. The cook was a bit sweet on me, so he’d make me a sandwich every day, free of charge, whatever kind I wanted.

The thing was though, even if I did get enough to eat, I still never felt full. I’d look in the mirror and my mouth would be this gaping cavern, something that didn’t fit on my face. It didn’t matter how old I was, how much life I did or didn’t experience— in the mirror smiling back at me was a gape-toothed girl looking to swallow the whole world if given the chance.

Then, we meet the character of Magdalene Williams, who is the only character in the story that I’ve named. The inspiration for Magdalene was definitely Mary Magdalene— I kind of wanted this holy-like figure to come into the narrator’s life and really give her a taste of the life that she craves for herself.

Magdalene invites the narrator to an all non-men punk show on the edge of Seattle and the narrator feels her hunger clawing up out of her stomach and demanding to go. She is inherently drawn to Magdalene and has no idea why. So she accepts the invitation. 

The story kind of unravels from there, and we end with Magdalene coming onstage with her band and giving The Performance of a Lifetime and generally really disturbing the narrator. The narrator knows that something Is Not Right here, she’s been very active in the scene for the last year and has never heard of Magdalene yet the entire crowd is going wild over her, and once Magdalene starts singing she immediately knows that something is wrong. And yet. She just can’t look away.

In Magdalene, the narrator sees everything that she wants, everything that she is so hungry for, and it terrifies her. She’s also a little jealous, and a little horny but very much in a prophet/faithhealer x devotee kind of way. 

I wrote the entire story in past tense because I really wanted it to have a sort of confessional vibe, to really keep in tone with the religious themes and imagery. My professor suggested after workshop that I might try it in present tense but it just was not working. During our class workshop however, everyone said that they liked the choice of past tense because it was almost like the narrator was telling us, the reader, that she experienced such an intense period of wanting in her life and still made it out in the end.

I don’t know if it’s too much to share on here like word count-wise, but the last few paragraphs of the story are my absolute favorites and I’m so proud of them. They’ve remained mostly unchanged in my various rounds of edits and I’m so impressed with myself for being able to write like this after having literally not written anything substantial in around six months.

Before I left home, my whole life was like a sepia photograph of a sunny day. Over-exposed, parents with smiling faces and sons with square jaws, daughters with ribbons in their hair. Wooden crosses on the walls, simple and unornate because God doesn’t need to be loved in gold foil. Grass stains on white tights, Sunday kitten heels scuffed from being worn so often, deodorant powder refusing to wash off the baby pink dress Mama thought looked so nice with my brown eyes.

There’s a difference between running from and running to. At eighteen, I was running towards something. I’msure of that. I don’t think I ever had an idea of what that something was, or what I even wanted it to be, but I did know that I didn’t want to be some televangelist’s golden daughter proffered up to God like Icarus was to the sun.

I noticed things about myself the way my family noticed things about God and religion and theology. Studied myself in mirrors, in the dark, in the depths of my own mind. I noticed everything and remembered nothing. Blood never started to fill my mouth until I surrounded myself with idolatry of a different kind, the screams sounded too much like mine.

At nineteen, I was running from. That night, hunger attacked every fiber of my being, ate away at my organs, left behind teeth marks and blood. I saw that hunger reflected in Magdalene, her mouth an open wound as she screamed out her lyrics. I wasn’t scared, though. There’s nothing scary about hunger, what’s scary is the response hunger elicits from other people.

This, I noticed. All in real time. Learned it of myself.

I watched the crowd feed Magdalene, and consequently devour her whole. Sanctify her living and alive, right before my eyes. And I never wanted anything more than I did then. I craved it, would’ve let hordes of women and girls crucify me where I stood just to be in Magdalene’s position. She never could’ve been full, not with the way she sang, but at least she was well fed. Oh how I wanted to be kept in excess.

Have learned to become my own number one fan lol

[desideratm]

PROMPTS I’D LIKE TO RECEIVE, PART 1. // accepting !!

@inthcgartcn​ asked : 💛 👗🔮 for Curly!

[ 💛 ] how empathetic is your muse? how compassionate are they? is this something people expect from them, or are people surprised when they find out how compassionate or empathetic they actually are?

I think in terms of empathetic, Curly is the type to really just sit and listen to other’s when they have a problem, but he’s not really 100% good at giving advice. WELL, that’s what he says, but more often than not, he ends up saying something that can hold a lot of meaning. I think it can come off as a little surprising, especially since a lot of people think of Curly as nothing more than a GOOFBALL. I think people kinda expect him to be the type who says “damn that sucks dude.” I mean, that is true too though, but even when his friends are sad and he doesn’t know what to say, he likes being by their side if he can to help them feel better.

[ 👗 ] what is your muse’s fashion sense like? are they able to dress the way they want to? what would they wear in an ideal world?

OH BOY I love talking about Curly’s fashion sense. He’s very much what I would call grunge comfy nerd. Like, he wears those t-shirts with the slasher film posters on them, the sleeves rolled with a long sleeved undershirt on and cuffed jeans. He’s also a HUGE lover of the Hawaiian shirt tucked in style. His closet really just consists of Hawaiian shirts and horror movie shirts. He wears necklaces almost all the time too. Honestly, in an ideal world, I think he’d still dress like this LOL. I mean, his family has criticized him for his taste to no end but he tries to not let it get to him.

[ 🔮 ] what is your muse’s relationship with religion and spirituality? were they raised in a certain religion? have they stuck with the same set of spiritual beliefs all their life, or have they changed over time? are they settled in their spirituality now?

Curly was raised Catholic, though, most of it is mixed with Evangelical beliefs too. His mother is incredibly religious and was the type who always made them get up on Sunday to go to church, however, it was very much ‘once you hit a certain age and don’t want to go anymore, you don’t have to.’ Curly was baptized as a baby and has pictures of his baptism, but other then that, he’s never really been into the whole religious side of things like his mother and father are. Aside from praying whenever he felt threatened by a supernatural being or something, he really doesn’t know how to feel about God. He knows demons are real, since he has a long track record with them, but outside of that, God still remains the biggest cryptid mystery to him.

Also here’s a picrew reference of Curly’s style

[hacash]

tuactober #4 - prophet

(for the tuactober challenge; tagging @totallyevan as before)

-

It’s probably Luther’s fault for not listening to pop music more often.

It’s not as if he was particularly encouraged in this pursuit by a reclusive, potentially agoraphobic father for whom ‘self-expression’ was another word for ‘lunacy’. Also, he has to admit, pop isn’t exactly something that meshes with his personality. He enjoys eighties classic rock and the occasional soundtrack from Disney films, but that’s it.

So it starts about six months ago, washing glasses at the Carousel Club and listening to this girl spout off about some religious leader supposedly doing great things over in San Francisco. A real oddball from the sound of it; but Jack likes happy drinkers to stay happy, so what can he do?

“…found me after the break-up and just spoke to me!”

“He sounds like quite the fella.”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” the girl says earnestly. “It was as if he spoke into my soul! I’ll never forget it – he took my hand, looked deep into my eyes and asked if I believed in life after love. That he felt something inside him saying that he really didn’t think I was strong enough – and he was right! I couldn’t get through the pain on my own; I joined Destiny’s Children the next day!”

“It must be a great group,” Luther says absent-mindedly, dialling for a cab.

-

“I’m sorry, boss,” the man says, kneeling on the floor of the cellar in one of Jack’s less salubrious clubs. Luther can’t help but feel sorry for him. He’s a low-level thug for Jack, and until now one of his finest enforcers, but it seems the guy’s caught religion – and in a bad way. “I don’t have nothing against you, but this new wisdom’s just opened my eyes – really made me see my way clear. I know I gotta yield to the flow of the universe and embrace its love come what may, y’know?”

Jack huffs. “Sounds like a load of guff to me. You’re being taken in for a patsy by someone who’s never done a day’s work in his life.”

“No, really! This man opened my eyes to the truth: that we’re all in the same boat, just trying to make our way in this crazy world. He says we’re all strangers waiting up and down the boulevard, shadows searching in the night - streetlight people, living just to find emotion, hiding somewhere in the night! Ain’t that poetic?”

“Not particularly,” Jack says, stepping back to let his goons deliver the message in a much more emphatic manner. “But then I never was what you’d call poetical.”

-

“…And in other news…” the radio crackles into life, spluttering and wheezing like an old man, “our reporter brings us an exclusive insight into the shadowy world of the latest religious commune to sweep America, led by a reclusive mystic whose edicts to his followers includes appeals to ‘spice up your life’ and ‘search for the hero inside yourself’…”

“New Age hooey,” Luther grumbles, turning off the radio.

-

“No, see,” Luther says, bending over a map and attempting to tell this busload of tourists how to get out to the outskirts of Dallas. Apparently they’re trying to find some big fancy mansion up beyond the suburbs. “You take a left here, keep going along this main track until you get to the outlying farms, and then…”

The man who asked for directions beams at him. It’s slightly unsettling. “Thank you for this,” he says, “truly. You’ve no idea the importance of our trip – how vital it is we find our teacher again.”

“You sure this guy wants you to find him?” Luther asks. “You said he took off in a hurry.”

“The prophet would never abandon us,” a young bespectacled woman says sincerely. “It’s one of his edits. The first day I joined the group, he gave us one of his sayings – that he’s never going to give us up…never going to let us down, and never run around and hurt us…”

“Sounds nice,” Luther says, wrinkling up his nose.

He’s sure he’s heard those words before. Was that in a breakfast commercial?

-

“Go see,” Allison urged him. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever imagined.” So the morning after Five brought them all together Luther hitches a lift with a truck driver, heading out beyond the centre of Dallas until the suburbs thin down and the fields start to spread, and Luther is left gaping in perplexed amazement at the sheer size of the estate before him. Not house, estate. With gardens and a pool and…is that an orchard? Jesus, how did Klaus afford this?

 Thanking the driver, he makes his wary approach up the drive and towards the house. All around him people with blue robes and blissed-out expressions are milling around, stopping so often to wave at him rather airily and…Oh God. It’s Map Man.

“Brother!” the bald man exclaims, grasping hold of Luther somewhat enthusiastically. “I felt certain our paths would cross again. Have you come to experience the prophet’s wisdom?”

Luther has had plenty of experience with the prophet’s wisdom, starting with ‘hey, you know what happens if you mix vodka with angel dust?’ and working up from there. “Uh, no; not exactly. I just came to see him…outside his professional capacity, so to speak.”

“Suit yourself. But truly, you should listen to him. He’s a great, great man; he truly helped me understand – well, what it’s all about, you feel me?”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yes! The great shifting balance of the universe, each one of us intertwined and yet not so! As Klaus says: some of us fall by the wayside,” he says sincerely, “and some of us soar to the stars.”

Luther freezes.

“He told us, from the day we arrive on the planet,” the man says, to Luther’s dawning horror, “blinking, stepping into the sun. There’s more to be seen than can ever be seen; more to do than can ever be done…”

“Let me guess,” Luther says. “He called it the circle of life.”

“That’s right!” The guy chirps. “Have you met him before?”

-

“You are a terrible, terrible person,” Luther tells Klaus. “And a plagiarist of epic proportions.”

“I’ve been telling him that for three years,” Ben drawls. Klaus kicks him.

[nitewrighter]

Could we have a bit Tracily? Maybe in an au?

Oh hey! It’s Femslash February! (Is it still ‘slash’ if it’s canon??) I think I can manage something short with one of my favorite Tracer skins!

—-

Emily didn’t think of it as stalking, per se. Photographers were observers, after all. She was always looking for the right lighting, the right composition, but after the first few pieces showed up everyone was looking for the infamous street artist. A few people claimed to have seen entire murals going up in a blue flash, while others talked about seeing a figure running into an alley and then disappearing, leaving only that tag behind her—Bright yellow paint made brighter by white backing, with a streak of sky blue beneath it. It lit up any dark wall. “Tracer,” it read.This sparked some discussion over what the mysterious “Tracer’s” ultimate goal was—were their graffitis a message to another artist, perhaps? A plagiarist? Was the Tracer themselves meant to be a copycat of a handful of more obscure artists, or perhaps even a collective masquerading under the guise of a single artist? Or did the word itself have deeper meaning? What were they trying to trace? What were they trying to follow. Emily didn’t really know the answers to any of these questions—she just wanted to chronicle the pieces as they appeared. Every time a Tracer graffiti appeared in the city, Emily would grab her nicest camera and ride her moped out to it, taking the highest quality pictures she could before weathering and the grime of the city could make the art fade too badly, or, just as painful to watch, the property owners scrubbed it away.

Emily never forgot the first time she caught the Tracer in action. She remembered it because the paint was still drying–even running in places. It was in the little hours of the morning and Emily was shivering as she shuffled toward the nearest tube station after a night out with friends ran much later than anticipated, and then she saw it. It was a splash of color on the side of an ugly block of a building, the vividness of the color standing out even at night—partially thanks to the headlamp its artist was wearing. The “Tracer” themselves was suspended over the edge of the building, their chunky sneakers braced against the wall, spray paint can still in hand and a headlamp secured over her hoodie. Their face was completely obscured by a gas mask and they seemed completely focused on their piece. The mural itself was of a stylized woman’s silhouette suspended in lightning–or maybe blue flames–either way several shades of blue and white seemed to be shooting off from the silhouette in sharp, jagged lines. The mural was, in a word, striking. Emily had her camera on her–not her nicest camera, but nicer than a phone camera at least–and she pulled it out of its bag. It didn’t really occur to Emily to turn the flash off before she snapped the first picture–she didn’t even remember she had the flash on, and the figure on the wall froze with the click and the flash. They looked over their shoulder at her, and Emily felt very small down on the sidewalk. She gave a small, shy wave and suddenly there was a blue flash atop the building and just like that the Tracer was gone. Disappeared completely. Emily looked down at her boxy little camera and took one last photo of the mural before slipping the camera back into her bag and continuing on her way to the tube, trying to process what she had just seen. 

Emily hesitated at the stairway leading down into the tube. Maybe she should stick around, maybe the Tracer There was suddenly a warbling sound and a blue streak shot past Emily, kicking up leaves and litter in its wake and Emily felt a jerk on her shoulder as her red hair rifled in the speed-created breeze. Before she understood what was happening, she looked down to see her camera bag gone and then suddenly heard yells of “OW! OOF! OW!” and looked down the stairs to the tube to see a familiar figure in a blue hoodie bouncing down the tube stairs. Emily’s hand went over her mouth in horror as she saw the figure crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, curled around her camera bag.

“T-Tracer? Is that you? Are–are you all right?” Emily called down the stairs.

The figure groaned and then suddenly disappeared in another blue flash, reappearing teetering at the top of the stairs. On instinct, Emily seized the Tracer by their blue hoodie to keep them from falling down all over again. The Tracer rocked back on their chunky sneakers and stumbled away from the stairway, wrenching themselves from Emily’s grip and still gripping Emily’s camera bag. 

“That–that looked like it hurt–” Emily started but the Tracer was already rifling through the camera bag.

“It’s fine,” the Tracer’s voice was muffled by their (her?) gas mask. For some reason Emily had always imagined the Tracer having a mysterious, maybe even raspy voice, but this person’s voice was hight and bright. The Tracer pulled the camera from the bag.

“You–you were down there–and now you’re up here, but you were up on top of the building–but now you’re–Be careful with that!” Emily said on instinct as the Tracer pulled her camera from her bag.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re on about, Red!” said the Tracer, waving the camera at her, “Who’s paying you?”

“No one! No one’s paying me!” said Emily. She watched the Tracer’s eyes narrow from underneath the visor of the gas mask, “I just–I’m sorry, I just watched you fall down an entire flight of stairs. Are you okay?”

“I didn’t,” said the Tracer, turning the camera over in their hands.

“You did!” said Emily.

“Well I did, but then I didn’t,” said the Tracer, “I undid it.”

“Undid it?” said Emily. 

“I’m probably the only person in the world with an ‘Undo’ function for traditional art,” the Tracer muttered to themselves.

Emily glanced down at the odd harness glowing blue at the Tracer’s chest, “What is that?”

“You know it’s very rude to take people’s picture without asking,” said the Tracer, “So who’s paying you?”

“I just said, no one. I–I really am just taking pictures of it for myself…” said Emily, fidgeting with her hair a little, “Your art is beautiful. I try to get a good picture of it before it fades or the city scrubs it away…” her voice trailed off a little.

“I know the city doesn’t treat it like it’s permanent, that’s sort of the point,” said the Tracer, “People have to enjoy it in the moment.”

“I still have to save it, in my own way,” said Emily, “But the only photos I do for money tend to be studio shoots and portraits… no one ever really cares about my landscape or candid stuff…”

The Tracer’s shoulders slumped a little listening to that.

“If you come back to my place–” Emily went on and the Tracer shot her a skeptical glance, “Oh gosh, that does sound bad, doesn’t it–But if you come back to my place, I’ll show you.”

“No, no, that won’t work. I just want the memory card on this camera–” said the Tracer, fiddling with the camera’s panel.

“Oh–please don’t! It’s real film! I’ll lose the whole roll!” said Emily and the Tracer, miraculously, stopped. The Tracer looked down at the camera, then up at Emily. A few seconds passed.  Then finally the Tracer huffed and handed the camera and bag over. Emily quickly grabbed them.

“…the stuff I paint really means that much to you?” said the Tracer.

“Well–I–” Emily was redder than her hair at this point, “I mean the roll isn’t all you–your works–but—” she cleared her throat, “It means a lot to me–I mean to a lot of people! Isn’t that why you paint it?”

“…I paint it mostly for me,” said the Tracer, “And never took all that well to being told where I could and couldn’t paint so…”

“Well–it means a lot. It’s beautiful! It’s–” Emily glanced down, “…I can stop taking the pictures if you really want.”

The Tracer stood in front of her for a few seconds but said nothing, then they disappeared in another blue streak, leaving Emily alone holding her camera at the top of the tube stairs.

—

There was no sign of the Tracer for a week. No mysterious blue flashes around the city, no tags or walls being mysteriously painted. It was late in the day as Emily rode her moped home from her studio the following Friday, the entire city cast in orange and yellow light, and she couldn’t help feeling a rotten guilt in the pit of her stomach. No signs of the Tracer–had she scared them off? Maybe they took off to another city to avoid being compromised. Emily sighed as she stopped her moped at a stoplight, but then she noticed a group of people standing on a street corner looking upward. Emily followed their gaze and nearly got sideswiped by a car for all her staring. Cars honked at her as she quickly hung a hard turn on her moped to pull up next to that street corner and stumble off her moped onto the sidewalk. On the side of a crumbly depressing warehouse was a beautiful blaze of orange–a mucha-style portrait of a redheaded woman with a white halo around her head. Emily’s jaw dropped as she realized the complex pattern of circles of the halo were actually old camera flash bulbs, and the red-headed woman was holding a camera like it was an object of religious iconography.

It’s me, she thought, her eyes wide as she took off her helmet to get a better look.

“I like this one,” a familiar high, bright voice spoke up next to her and Emily whirled on her feet to see a woman with spikey black hair and a pair of round orange sunglasses. She was dressed casually with paper bag-waist pants and and a bulky bomber jacket. Emily’s eyes trailed down to see a familiar pair of chunky sneakers on the woman’s feet. “I really think the Tracer was starting to get into a rut with all those blues, you know?”

“You–!” Emily started but the woman gave her an impish little smile and put her finger to her own lips. Emily’s eyes flicked around at the group around them and then she looked back at the woman.

“T–” she started and then caught herself.

“Lena,” said the woman.

“Lena,” said Emily, “Um–Emily. I’m Emily.”

“I just hope she asked whoever she did the portrait of, honestly,” said Lena with a shrug.

“…it would be very rude to capture someone’s image without their permission,” Emily said with a quiet smile.

“Very rude,” Lena agreed, “You like coffee?”

“Oh–um… yes,” said Emily.

“Well come on, then,” said Lena, pivoting on her own heel.

“Oh–Wait–two seconds–” said Emily, rifling through her bag. She pulled out her camera.

“Ah, of course,” said Lena as Emily took a picture of the mural.

[ecoamerica]

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

[tentpoletrauma]

Transcript of our A Nightmare of Elm Street (2010) podcast

Unknown Speaker  0:10   Welcome to Tentpole Trauma, the podcast where we look at movies that came with hype and high hopes, but left with crushing disappointment, either critically at the box office are both. freed from the weight of expectations, we seek to examine these underperformers under a new light parsing through the good, the bad and everything in between with the hopes of gaining a better understanding as to why they failed to find their audience.

Unknown Speaker  0:41   Warning, there will be spoilers. So if you haven't seen the movie that we're discussing today, I suggest you stop the podcast and go watch it. Then when you come back and listen, you'll get more out of the discussion. This episode, we examine the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Unknown Speaker  1:39   When West Cravens A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in 1984. I was a teenager, and though I did not see it in the theater, so my horror obsessed friends did and their reaction to it was nothing short of ecstatic. I caught up in video and saw the next two sequels in the theater. And though Michael Myers was more my slasher soon I was a Freddy Krueger convert. I lost track of the dream demon over my 20s but enjoyed the monster mashup between him and Jason for he's in 2003 Freddy vs. Jason. By the time a remake was announced in the late aughts, I was back into horror in a big way and was ready for more Freddy. And when Jackie Earle Haley, an actor I loved was revealed to be taking over for the iconic Robert England, and that the film was getting a decent budget to realize its fantastical dream sequences, I was hyped. Some months before the release, a friend of mine scored tickets to a preview screening of the movie, which I was only too happy to accept. There had been rumors of a troubled production as video director Samuel bear had never done a feature. But I was still hopeful it would be good. But the film we saw that night was a mess. It's hard for me to remember now 10 years later, what was different in the preview as compared to the official release. But I do remember the original opening scene took place at a high school party, and that the climax featured out of place religious imagery, and that at one point Freddy showed up in monk's robes. It was weird to say the least. When the film was released to the public, I saw it again out of curiosity and thought that improvements had been made, and that the movie had some redeeming qualities overall, but that ultimately it felt inconsequential, and that Jackie Earle Haley fell far short of the great Robert England. critics and fans were far less kind to it than I was another film made a profit it pretty much shut down the Platinum dunes remake machine for good. No sequel was ever announced. And Fred has been absent from our dreams and from movie screens ever since. So what went wrong? That's what we're here to discuss on this episode of Tentpole Trauma, the 2010 remake of the Nightmare on Elm Street.

Unknown Speaker  4:02   All right, I'm Sebastian and I'm here with Jennifer. Hello. And Rodney from the pod forsaken podcast. Hey,

Unknown Speaker  4:10   everyone. Hello,

Unknown Speaker  4:12   Ronnie. Why haven't you called? Have you ever thought of rebranding the podcast to rod forsaken?

Unknown Speaker  4:18   You know, I bring that up to my co hosts every episode before we record. And because there's two of them, they always outvote me. But I I'm with you maybe you want to have a word with them.

Unknown Speaker  4:28   This is why you kill your other hosts.

Unknown Speaker  4:31   Oh, is is that why there were seven hosts here at 10

Unknown Speaker  4:34   years to be more hosts for Tentpole Trauma, but they are gone now. They died in their dreams. Tell us a little bit about your podcast.

Unknown Speaker  4:43   Piper Sagan horror podcast is a horror podcast where we kind of do the opposite. I think of what you guys do. We specifically pick horror movies that most people have never seen or maybe never even heard of. And then we watch them. We tell you about them. We usually do a format where First, the beginning of the episode, we watch the trailer for the movie we're going to do next week, so that you can, you know, you can watch the trailer and decide if this movie is for you. And then, you know, we talked about the movie with no spoilers give you kind of a review, and then we dive in and just spoil the shit out of it. But the whole point is that like, as we were all horror fans, obviously, and after a certain point, you have to start digging deep to find good stuff, right? Like theatrical, hollywood movies kind of start leaving a bad taste in your mouth. And so we started the podcast to help horror fans find the really good shit that's either foreign or like independently made that you might not know about. It's just a passion project that I do with some friends. And we've had a very good response so far. Although no one's probably gonna look me in the eyes and say, I hate your fucking podcast, but you're welcome to.

Unknown Speaker  5:55   Well, I've been meaning to tell you.

Unknown Speaker  5:57   Now is your moment.

Unknown Speaker  5:58   No, no, I love your podcasts. Awesome. Well, that's great. We're talking about the 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street remake directed by Samuel bear. And the reason why I chose it is not because it was a huge financial disaster because it actually wasn't it actually cost about $46 million or something and made three times that worldwide so it's not a financial disaster, but I do believe that it effectively the fan and Critical response for it was pretty much toxic. And it pretty much stopped the whole Platinum dunes remake trend dead in its tracks and there hasn't been any more they didn't do any more. Friday the 13th they didn't do another Texas Chainsaw at all. They shut down Platinum dunes Michael Bay's production horror remake company. So I consider it a you know, Tentpole Trauma because it wrecked the party, so to speak. Let's talk a little bit about your own personal history with the franchise. Jennifer, what what is your history with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise?

Unknown Speaker  7:11   Well, I saw the first Nightmare on Elm Street, pretty young, I saw a lot of are probably way younger than I should have seen the pattern. But I was just really into it. And I most likely saw it on I know there's no way I didn't know but didn't have a cool enough parents to take me to the theater to see it. But I did probably catch it either on VHS or on, you know, HBO or something like that. Not you know, whenever it became available, but I first you know, heard about it through friends who had seen it older friends, you know, so I already had an idea of who Freddy was. And, you know, like how kids do you know, you're talking it up and then this happens. And he's got knives for fingers and then he says this and so you know, that was all amped up and then I saw it and I liked it. I thought it was scary. And did you see the first film first? Yes, the original Nightmare on Elm Street. You saw that first? Yes, I have the the films of the franchise that I've seen the most are the first and the third. I've seen the dream warriors. That was on TV a lot. And I really I appreciate the first one I love the first one but I probably like especially when I was younger was more into three right? But yeah, that was that was my you know an initial history with the franchise. I it's not my favorite of the horror franchise. I mean, I do like Freddy, but it's not my go to you know, there's, it's for me, it's not as consistent as some other franchises are, as far as like having a number of films that I like to go back to and enjoy. There's some that are kind of tough to get through in this one. In my opinion. Rodney, how about you? How what's your history with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise?

Unknown Speaker  9:02   Never seen any of them?

Unknown Speaker  9:08   Was I supposed to watch?

Unknown Speaker  9:11   Actually, I wanted to say first of all, thank you guys for having me on. I didn't say that. And I think your show is really great. And it's like I'm really pumped to be here and jazzed to talk about this. I'm we're pumped to have

Unknown Speaker  9:22   you run. Yeah, I can tell from my voice. This is my pumped voice.

Unknown Speaker  9:26   I can tell that you are really jazzed. I'm sort of like we're Jenna's. I, I don't remember what my first one was. I feel like at a sleep over. Someone showed me part three. I had parents who were very lenient. I remember seeing part four by myself in a theater. I think my dad would like take me to the theater. He bought me the ticket. And then like once I went in, he'd like, go to a bar and have a drink and be like, I'll see when it's over. Right? I've never like I like them. But Jen's right. These movies are so all over the map. There are really great ones. And they're ones that are so low that like I, they're barely movies to me. But in general, they have really creative kills. And Freddy Krueger is like one of the most iconic villains of all time. It's just that there's no consistency between the movies. That's my biggest problem, right? Like, I was showing my wife them, and we just skipped over part two. I was like, you don't need part two. It's not canon watch.

Unknown Speaker  10:23   Part two is amazing.

Unknown Speaker  10:24   No, part two is you

Unknown Speaker  10:25   can't get over it. No,

Unknown Speaker  10:27   part two. I did. Part two is amazing. Ronnie, I'm sorry. Wait, I've got it. I can't let you think that I don't enjoy part two. Okay, well, let's not go down the rabbit hole.

Unknown Speaker  10:36   Fair enough. Fair enough. But look, I I enjoy all of the Friday 13th movies. I've seen them all now multiple times. So, uh, I you know, I? I've always been a Jason guy. I hope that's not a problem. But Freddie's probably my number two. No, that's not true. He's my number three. Chucky would be number two.

Unknown Speaker  10:57   I'm a Michael Meyers guy myself, and he has some of the worst movies. So it's not really about who's got the best movies, just Who's your guy? You know, I will say about the nightmare series. What I do appreciate about it is generally speaking, even the terrible ones have a certain amount of imagination. Just the premise in itself is inherently imaginative. And I kind of have to give it to Freddie for that. There's always something even in the most terrible of them. There's always some crazy interesting nightmare scenario that makes either makes me laugh, or I really enjoy. But let's move on to the subject of remakes in general, because this movie was sort of the final nail in the coffin in some ways of the whole remake trend of the 20 Arts, the early aughts. So Jen, what is your feeling on remakes in general? Like, I know, you're a big Texas Chainsaw fan, and you're not a fan of the Platinum dunes, Texas Chainsaw remake, which sort of kicked off this trend. What is your general feeling on remakes?

Unknown Speaker  12:01   Well, with remakes I kind of feel like you know, I love horror. So I'm always gonna give it a shot. And my expectations are pretty low. When I'm when I'm watching these like I have nowhere to go. But up. Texas Chainsaw I'm just so particularly protective of because it's just, there's nothing like the first Texas Chainsaw where you don't really like the franchise you just like the first movie in the second one. I mean, I pretty much do. Yeah, that's that's a fact. I mean, I appreciate I mean three is okay. And I appreciate for for being you know, the weird version that it is. But yeah, that that's not one of my favorite remakes. I did like the Friday the 13th remake. I've seen I've saw that in the theater. And I've seen that several times sense. There's Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's there's none that are really standing out that I'm like, Oh, this is you know, I've never once been like this was better than the first one.

Unknown Speaker  12:58   Look, there are remakes that I think are really good. I'll point to the ring. And the ring is an excellent remake. Agreed. I actually, I think it comes down to how much do you care about the original film and if you saw it, for example, I've and I know this might get me kicked off. But I've never been a big Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan. Like, I just never I saw it growing up and it never, it never impacted me the way that it impacts a lot of people. So when I saw the Platinum dunes remake, I was like, Hey, this is pretty good, right? Because I have no emotional attachment to it. But when I saw the Friday the 13th one or like the recent Child's Play remake, the Friday 13th one is okay. It's got some cool shit. But like in general, remakes just anger me because they're so clearly a cash grab, right? It's just like, yo, let's just capitalize on this thing. For money sake, when the original thing was actually a thing of passion. And every once in a while the remake is done by someone who is passionate, and you end up with something good, but it's rare. I mean, you point to like, Ocean's 11 as another great example. And that movie is fucking awesome. And that's a remake. But in general, if I see it's a remake, it's probably bad and I don't care.

Unknown Speaker  14:05   I am sort of weirdly optimistic about these things. I feel I'm in a sort of strange position there as a horror fan because I feel most horror fans are not like that. But I get kind of excited with with Texas Chainsaw I was I found I was very skeptical about that one because I feel that the original is such a specific thing that you can't recapture that you can't recapture that in the 2000s you can't recreate the 70s and the grime and just the atmosphere of the time that is so inherent in that film. Were something like Freddy Krueger or Nightmare on Elm Street. As much as I love the West Craven original and I love the West Craven original I like Part Two for its craziness horse. I love dream warriors. I generally think that's probably the most fun of all of them. You know, when when they announced that they were doing the Nightmare on Elm Street remake or reboot or whatever, they were pitching it as I was actually kind of excited at the idea of it because I thought, well, there's an idea that you could do now, it would still be just as relevant now. And with modern special effects, you might be able to really take it somewhere really crazy. So I was game for it. And, you know, I felt that most horror fans were definitely not.

Unknown Speaker  15:31   Yeah, I was I was up for it. I saw it in the theater. It was again, though, the way that I like I said, I approach remakes in general, where I didn't have the the optimism that you did. I was just kind of like, well, let's, you know, let's see what they're gonna do with it. Because I'm just, like I said, happy to get another horror movie. And, you know, it's, I do like, Friday a lot. And I want and I do like, Jackie Earle, Haley. And let's, let's see what's going to happen.

Unknown Speaker  15:59   So Jackie Earle Haley is Freddie was a draw was sort of a draw for you.

Unknown Speaker  16:03   Sort of because because I'm definitely a fan. Like, I like him a lot. I mean, there's several of his films. And he was this is when he was, you know, starting to make a comeback and do more stuff. And yeah, I was I was I was game.

Unknown Speaker  16:18   You know, it's funny. I'm with you, Sebastian. On this one. I was excited. I remember thinking, hey, platinum dunes has pretty much delivered above average contents to me so far, and it was rated R, and hey, they got Jackie Earle Haley, and he's done some great shit. I was jazz. I thought this was going to be a pretty good time, you know? So yeah, I saw that. I think opening weekend Jackie Earle

Unknown Speaker  16:41   Haley was sort of coming off of watchmen at the time playing roar shack, which, you know, has some similarities to Freddy Krueger. So I think people were excited to see him take on the role. If they were excited about it. They were excited to see him take it on because of horshack. And because of the other stuff he had done, he had done little children or something like that before, which had a sort of similar type of icky character in it. So it seemed pretty promising. Now the film is directed by Samuel Bayer. Do you guys know what his claim to fame is?

Unknown Speaker  17:17   Yes, I do now, but only because I looked it up.

Unknown Speaker  17:20   He directed the the Smells Like Teen Spirit video from Nirvana. And he also directed the bee girl video for Blind Melon. So you know, no rain. He's a guy who looked clearly has some visual talent. The weird thing and I remember thinking this at the time is, why isn't he directed any feature film until now, this was his first feature film, as a director, you would have thought coming out of you know, the 90s when Fincher and other guys who were video directors were sort of becoming big directors, you would have thought that this guy would have gotten his shot way before 2010 and Nightmare on Elm Street remake. But this was his first movie, I don't think most people knew that his of his pedigree going in. So I don't think it really made much of a difference to most people. You know, we get our sort of opening scene. You know, the movie sort of starts off I think like most horror movies of the era with a kind of creepy credit sequence where we get some flashes of little kids playing hopscotch and stuff. And then we get our sort of opening sequence, which takes place in the diner. We have the Twilight's Kellan Lutz as this tormented teen, and he sort of wandering around in the kitchen looking, you know, he clearly has gone into sort of a dream sequence and there's like, you know, hog heads and stuff. And we sort of get a glimpse of Rooney Mara as Nancy. Freddy shows up, and he wakes up. And Katie Cassidy, who's playing, I believe her name is Chris, but she's clearly modeled after the Tina character in the original. She was also in the show arrow, she shows up and they have this sort of conversation. He's initially just like, asking for coffee and normal serve them. So he's like being ignored. And you don't know at first, but he's dreaming. But then when he goes back into the kitchen, and it seems like he's in a boiler room, yeah.

Unknown Speaker  19:23   And then the all the gross like, animal heads and stuff, but not good. And then we see the glove swipe Adam, and then he then then we see him wake up, and his hand is cut. And so yeah, you know, it's 100% clear. That's what's going on. He was dreaming. And then he's talking with Chris, and she was also in some other remakes as well. She was in when a stranger calls and the, I think the black Christmas remake to where you see Nancy and she's talking to the guy from Jennifer's body, and there's like that's going on in question. Quintin Kyle gallon I think his name is Yeah. And yeah, so then we were that's all going on and then Dean has passed out again and then we get the him with the steak knife. And yeah, it's I don't know, I thought like, okay, we're starting off good here like this is like, I didn't see that coming Fred shows up and basically makes him stab himself in the neck with a steak knife. Yeah. And I thought that was I thought we were starting off strong.

Unknown Speaker  20:29   Overall, there's something weird about the scene, the way the movie starts. And maybe it's intentional that like, they want you to, they want to throw you off your foot right from the start because you're in a dream. But there's something about that whole opening scene where they just like they're cramming every character in the movie into this one diner. And the, the, the guy who kills himself, Dean, he's doing that thing in horror movies, where like, he can't just put a sentence together to explain what's going on. Right? He's just like, he's a mess. And he's like, Ah, man, don't close. Don't go to sleep, man. Don't you can't sleep. I'm like, explain to her why. And she's like, oh, you're just imagining things and, and like the hogs heads boiling in the in the pots and shit. This is going to be a recurring thing I'm going to talk about which is that the dream sequences in this movie are so lame and unimaginative. And I will give credit that when he stabs himself in the neck. That was awesome. It looks really good. Yeah. I also want to point out, did you guys catch that? I don't think went back because I went back and watch the trailer. This is clearly not the original opening they shot. He does in the trailer.

Unknown Speaker  21:33   Not only am I aware of that, but I saw an advanced screening of this movie. Oh, shit, yes. And it had a completely different opening sequence that this whole diner sequence was a reshoot the original scene that I saw an advanced screening it took place at a party. They were just they were just at a house party.

Unknown Speaker  21:55   That's what you see in the trailer. And so this diner scene feels like a reshoot.

Unknown Speaker  22:00   It totally is. 100%. That explains it. Yeah. So and I agree with what you're saying. It's, it seems like they're like, well, we got to get all the characters set up in the scene. And I think one of the drawbacks of this film, in terms of just its narrative is that it really sort of accelerates everything so that you can tell they're just like, Okay, we got to get the kids set up, you got to know who the kids are. And, you know, they're all having these dreams. And we got to know about the dreams and you know, like by the second scene, we're at a funeral. And now Chris is having more is having another sort of dream was that she sees her little self in front of the, in front of the coffin and for the Fred's glove comes out and slashes are. So you know, we're getting, we're getting thrown right into it. And we're learning about the gang and their dreams. And we're meeting Connie Britton and Clancy Brown as the parents. So yeah, I feel like there's definitely a sort of sweat Enos to the setup of the film where they're like, okay, we just got to get this thing going, like, let's go, let's go, let's go. This

Unknown Speaker  23:05   movie has no chill. That's what it comes down to. It's constantly, it's constantly trying to insist how cool and scary it is in every moment. And therefore it never has any dread. Again, there's, you know, the shooting of the diner scene, like, I like the lighting of it. I thought that was cool. I think

Unknown Speaker  23:21   it looks good.

Unknown Speaker  23:23   Visually, it looks good. Which I would expect from a music video director.

Unknown Speaker  23:26   Absolutely. Right. It's got a slickness to it. That is sort of in line with the Platinum dunes remakes in general. But I do think I think my primary disappointment in a lot of the dream sequences is really that they're just kind of rehashing what happened in the original film. And in some cases, they're doing it way worse. Yeah, like the porn Fred comes out of the wall. It's really underwhelming because it just looks like this CGI blob, peeling off the wall, where in the original Freddie? New notice I'm differentiating between Fred and Freddie. And that's because Jennifer and I own a Fred Krueger, action figure, his name? Krueger, and it's Jackie Earle Haley in his like gardener uniform.

Unknown Speaker  24:17   So you're the one who bought that.

Unknown Speaker  24:19   Yes. We go to Nancy's house and she's chillin with her iPod. She's doing like creepy drawings because she's a, you know, disturbed artist. That's when we get Freddie coming through the wall, which looks terrible. I think it looks so bad. And as I was saying, in the original, the effect is so cheap. It's just some tarp or something covered with paint. And in there, there's somebody pushing through the tarp. But it looks so much better than this CGI nonsense, which I'm sure was a lot more expensive. And just to put it out there. I'm not the you know, practical effects are always He's better guy. I'm just not I I like both things. I love a great practical effect. And I love a well done CGI effect. So I, you know, I'm up for them using state of the art computer imagery to accentuate Freddy and his powers. But this is just terrible. And it really sort of sets a bad taste in your mouth early on,

Unknown Speaker  25:24   right? But it's also like in the original there's like a creepiness the way it's slowly the wall slowly pushes in, right? Yeah. And this one is really like a blob that goes, ah, like as though they're trying to make a jumpscare out of it is the combination of the goofiness of the gras mixed with it's literally like the worst CG I've ever seen. It's tear it's like langdell lirs level in this one moment.

Unknown Speaker  25:45   Yeah, it's it's really bad. Well,

Unknown Speaker  25:47   I think also, it's it's not only is it doesn't look good, it's like it's such a forgettable moment. Whereas in the original it's, it's a memorable moment. Like this is it happens. So like you said, it's like rod happens so fast that it's like, if I would not have made a note of this. I would have forgotten it. Yeah, like that. That's and I've seen this movie multiple times. Now. Why? I don't know. But I have. Yeah, I don't know. I just think it's some it's it's such a blip on the radar. It's like really quick with her. She's like sketching this like Fred blobs out and then cut to where it Chris next where Chris like talking about to her mom about the photos. Like why doesn't she remember being in these photos? Because they had photos at the funeral? And where are more photos? Like I don't know. How do I know? You know, she's she's having the whole issue that she didn't think she met Dean until high school. Yeah. So like, how is she in these high kid photos? And mom's been super cagey about it. Yeah. So yeah, but it feels like that's that's how quickly it happens. Is this like blob with Nancy? Hey, Chris. Chris has questions.

Unknown Speaker  26:57   Yeah, it sort of plays into rod nice. This has no, this movie has no chill.

Unknown Speaker  27:01   There's so many, like, very forced, and sudden jumpscares you know, and like to be like when I was watching it. I genuinely was trying to watch it as though I've never seen A Nightmare on Elm Street film before I was trying to judge it as though it's just a movie called The nightmare killer. Right? And even under those criteria, it's so forced, you know, it's just like, there's so many moments of these just like a sudden CUT TO Freddy Krueger jumping out of the shadows with the loudest Stinger in the world. And then the scene moves on. Again, if I if I had if I use let me talk for an hour, I would just talk about how you shouldn't be allowed to make a horror movie unless you love horror movies. And if I'm sure you've done your research, but apparently Michael Bay offered this movie to Samuel Bayer twice and he turned it down twice. He basically had to convince him What a financial windfall, it would be for him. Right? And I gotta tell you, if you're a director, and someone offers you a smash, imagine someone said you can direct the next Freddy Krueger movie, would you

Unknown Speaker  28:04   say no, I would pop a million boners

Unknown Speaker  28:08   there's no say this. This guy said no. Thank you twice. So this guy doesn't deserve to be directing a Freddy Krueger movie. And that's what you end up getting is a movie that comes from someone who doesn't get what makes Freddy Krueger cool. And what makes movies scary, huh?

Unknown Speaker  28:23   Yeah, I mean, I mostly agree with that. But I do sometimes think we put too much of a premium on filmmakers being fans of things like, oh, if they're not a fan, they shouldn't do it. I don't really care if somebody is a fan of the movie or the property or not. If they can make a good movie, they can make a good movie. I would be more concerned about the fact that Samuel Baird never made a movie in general. Sure, let's add

Unknown Speaker  28:51   that on the pie like

Unknown Speaker  28:52   that. I would be more as from a producing standpoint that would give me pause more. But one thing I think he did a pretty okay job with is a cast. I think the cast is mostly pretty good.

Unknown Speaker  29:05   I like the cast. I like all of the kids. I'm like I said I recognized you know, a couple from other horror movies. And then of course, the like the adults like they've got some heavy hitters. I mean, Connie Britton's, a great actor, and so was Clancy Brown. I mean, those are the the two most recognizable to me. And of course, Jackie Earle, Haley.

Unknown Speaker  29:27   I did miss the drunken mom from the original

Unknown Speaker  29:30   Nancy's drunken mom. Yeah, I know this mom Connie Britton had it way more together. She was way more on top of things. She should have been into pills or

Unknown Speaker  29:37   something. You know, they should have had gotten her into oxy. Just to modernize it.

Unknown Speaker  29:43   Yeah. Missed up missed opportunity. I think

Unknown Speaker  29:46   weirdly, Rooney Mara kind of comes off the worst, which is too bad because she's our Nancy. I feel like the other quote unquote teens do pretty well. I like Kyle gulnur I actually like the actress who plays Chris. I think she does a pretty good job. But Rooney seems a little lost. She seems like she doesn't know what she's supposed to be doing. You know, her characters kind of supposed to be the dark one, I guess, because she does dark drawings. But she works at the diner, and she's kind of got, you know, a little sass to her. So it's kind of hard to get a bead on her. I think, you know, I think she's done some pretty good work over the years. But this, I feel like she seems a little a little lost here.

Unknown Speaker  30:37   You know, I see where you're coming from. I quit the whole time. I couldn't decide how I thought about Rooney Mara, for me. I think overall, she works because like, I believe she's in high school, and she's got a kind of a young face. And I yeah, I don't really know her as a character. But I get that she's like, she's tired and sad. And then she draws sad pictures, right? Yeah. For me. The problem for me, it is Chris. And it's not because of her performance. It's because she looks like she's 45 years old. And I did not believe for one second. She's in high school. Like, literally when she's like talking to her mom, I thought they were like friends, like at wine book club or something. I expected a scene for her to go pick up kids. And I couldn't understand why you would cat like she's clearly like 29 to 32 years old, and she made this movie. And I was like, why can't they just get actual, like 18 year old people to play 18 year old people. Having said that, if you can look past that. Yeah, she's okay. I don't think anyone in this movie is doing what I would call a good job. Everyone's doing a, an okay, job. If I had to give an acting award out. I'd give it to Clinton. I liked his performance the best.

Unknown Speaker  31:43   Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's fair. But I also think that when you look back at pretty much any horror franchise cast, there are very few where you say, these are all award worthy performances. A lot of times the actors acquit themselves well, but it's not like I felt that these, this was all on par. They were all doing what they were asked to do and doing it. Well, but the big question is, Jackie Earle, Haley. Okay. Oh, boy, we are all pretty excited about Jackie, as Freddy or Fred, as it were. I remember seeing, you know, production stills of his makeup and I was like, Well, okay, I see what they're doing. They're going for like a legit burn victim look here rather than the stylized look of of Robert Anglin. And let's just get it out of the way. You know, Robert, England is iconic is Freddy Krueger, there's, you know, there's no way that anybody's ever going to play this character and not be compared unfavorably to to Robert England. It's his role, but I appreciated Well, they're going sort of a different direction here. They're trying to make it look more realistic. And you know, I did like his little tic where he he rubs his knives together. I thought that was a the one kind of cool thing he did. But I have to say, overall, I was fun kind of let down. One of my big problems is and this is not his fault. But he's a short man. And you can tell he's a short man. And a lot of the scenes, you know, you're, you're like, are we watching leprechaun? Is he? What are we doing leprechaun here? I mean, you know, he's just not a big guy. And it's kind of hard to make this little dude. be super scary. I think he has the attitude. He hasn't. I mean, he I wouldn't say he has the Freddie attitude, but he has an attitude. He has a very scary voice and a scary presence. But overall, I just found his stature and his look to be a little off putting.

Unknown Speaker  34:03   I had high hopes. Because I am such a fan. It's just it's this really, it just doesn't really work for me. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker  34:12   don't have to apologize.

Unknown Speaker  34:15   I mean, but but I really wanted it to you know, and it's like even the semoran I was like, I don't know, it's just and i think it's it's just because Robert England is so iconic. I just that's who Freddie is to me and I know this is Fred Krueger cuz that's what we're referring to him is in the remake. And you know, I appreciate them trying to do something different and it's not his acting or anything like that. It's just I don't know, it's this the the character looks it just looks he looks strange. It's not scary. It's just it's not even like it's it's hard to look at or off putting or anything like that. It just doesn't I don't know. It just doesn't work for me,

Unknown Speaker  34:59   either. I'm totally with you, Jen. It's just wrong. And, and I am, again, trying to let go of the fact that he can't be Robert England, right? Like, you can't live up to that. So I kind of expected him to do something really different with the roll. And I'm with you, Subash. And the cool thing he does is when he like, rubs his fingers together, and they make that blade sound as like, yeah, that's cool. But that's it. I think the look of him. He looks stupid. Like, it's like, he's got these weird like, kind of buck teeth that make them look kind of dorky, right? And I know they're going for like a burn look, but like, he doesn't look disgusting. And he looks kind of gross, but he's not scary looking. And on top of that, what they do with his voice is like, he never sounds like he's in the scene. All of his his his dialogue has been recorded in ADR? Yes. And it's just like, it's like floating digitally on top of the scene. Yes. So it, I know that that's a choice to like, make it cool and creepy. But the whole time I was sitting there, I was like, why does this not work? Like, why is this not cool? And I was like, I don't know. He's just, he's just not cool. He's like, slow moving. His lines aren't very good. His delivery isn't really good. bad job, bad job. I was gonna say maybe you shouldn't hire famous actors. I'd rather just have no buddies playing my monsters. I remember reading a little bit about the production. And I think that the reason why his lines are so heavily ADR is because they rewrote a lot of his dialogue. They weren't happy with whatever the initial stuff was. And so they just kind of kept redoing it in post. And I feel like you can kind of hear a little bit of annoyance in Jackie Earle Haley, his voice, like, I've got to know, what's this line?

Unknown Speaker  36:48   Yeah, his lines are weird. Like, they're trying to be funny. But they're not really funny, cuz they're in this really tough, tough position of trying to live up to Robert, England's sort of famous one lines and taunting. You know, I think the only one I really liked is when he says like, Why are you screaming? I haven't even cut you yet. That one I'm like, yeah, that's pretty good. You know, but you know, he, you know, most of them are kind of creepy in a bad way. They play up the sirt, the child molester angle of the character that was only really hinted at and wisely. So I believe in the original. And so, you know, his lines are sort of coming from this perverted place a lot of the time, and I really don't think that helps sell the lovability of

Unknown Speaker  37:43   Freddie. That's kind of like what's I think doesn't sit well, for myself and sounds like you and probably Rodney as well as it's like, because we just knew him, you know, originally as a child murderer, and which is implied, you know, we don't there wasn't just killing there was probably other things that were going on that were terrible as well. However, now, it's all about the yuck stuff. And it's like, that's just that can't be funny. You can't have like, one liners and like be like creepy like that. And it's like, you just don't know what to do with that more. yuck, yuck.

Unknown Speaker  38:19   And less yuck, I think is the problem.

Unknown Speaker  38:23   You know what I think it is? Original Freddy Krueger, he there's a certain gleeful pneus to the fact that he gets to kill people in dreams. Even in the first movie where he has very few lines. You can tell he enjoys what he's doing. But this version is more like a suffering burn victim who's like condemned to this hellish fate. And he's, you know, he wants revenge, but it doesn't seem like he really loves being the dream Master, if you will, or whatever I know. He's not the remaster is actually that other girl but whatever, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah. And that's not even touching all the child molesters stuff, which I assume we're gonna go into more depth. Because that's like a major change. We're we'll

Unknown Speaker  39:01   save that for the last act because that's when it really comes into play. But I feel that it's in there even in these you know, opening sequences. He sort of leaning into this being creepy in a weird sort of subtly sexual way.

Unknown Speaker  39:17   Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  39:18   I did kind of think just because it's so weird. We moved into the second act. We have Chris, she you know, she's kind of freaking out. She's sort of learning about this past the shared past that they all have in this preschool. And you know, she really knew all these her friends, but they didn't. They don't remember each other. And there's this sort of dream sequence where she goes out and she's like, cheers her dog barking which the dog it was a really cute dog, but she goes out and the dog is Rufus. Yes. And but Rufus is dead. Fred has killed Rufus only in the dream, I think. I don't think Rufus is dead in real life unless Rufus was dreaming and He killed Rufus and Rufus his dream, in which case they should have definitely have had a dog dream. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  40:05   I wanted to see the dog dream go into a nightmare like the dog running around the boiler room chasing bones that keep running away from him.

Unknown Speaker  40:13   I have a bone to pick with the boiler room, but let me get there in a second. I did kind of like it in an ironic way when she goes out to find Rufus and Rufus is dead and Fred's like, I was just petting him with his claws, I was like, you know, for this movie, that was a pretty good line. But really, you know, a lot of these things that happen in this second act build up are just sort of replays of what happened in the original

Unknown Speaker  40:44   one thing I think that was different was I don't recall I don't think I've seen the first one a million times I don't think that Broadcom to Nancy's house in the first one. Like is the guy Jesse? I don't think so. I mean, I only remember Glenn coming to her bedroom window.

Unknown Speaker  41:03   No, I don't think he does.

Unknown Speaker  41:05   I don't think so either. So that was something that was a little different as we get Jesse like stopping off at Nancy's right, like it covered in blood and all of that

Unknown Speaker  41:13   the suit only comes in through bedroom windows, he doesn't

Unknown Speaker  41:16   know what front doors are for. Not at all, just all about the windows. And one

Unknown Speaker  41:20   thing I want to say about the Chris murder scene is in the original, it was done with the old revolving room trick. And you see her kind of climbing the walls, because they've shot it with a stationary camera. But with a room that goes around in this, it's very clearly, they probably have a set with no real ceiling and they've got her on wires. And they're like throwing around the room and wires and then digitally erasing the wires in the ceiling and stuff and it's not bad looking. It looks it looks fine. But when you compare it to the ingenuity of the original, it once again comes up short

Unknown Speaker  42:01   you're spot on like it again, the the original is so much like it's so cool the way that original scene is shot. And this one she's flying around, and it's just not as powerful because it's not shot from the perspective of the guy on the floor. Her death is cool when she gets like split down the middle and blood wells up like it. It's a violent scene and I was like okay, yeah, but can we just briefly talk about how much time we spend with Chris as like the main character like yeah, we're on Chris for I didn't time it but it felt like 30 minutes before we actually like I know you we meet Rooney Mara, but it basically it tries to do the psycho thing where it's like, this blonde girl is the main character, but gotcha. And I'm like, but Ivor I know Rooney's the main character's name is Nancy, why are we wasting all this time?

Unknown Speaker  42:48   Yeah. Well, you know, I guess they're trying to fake out the younger crowd who is not familiar with the original, totally fair. But as somebody who is a fan of the series, it does sort of feel like they're being weirdly too slavish to the original, at least in that first half of the second act. Now, as the second act goes on, we, you know, we get things that are sort of new additions to the story, in the whole preschool backstory is not in the original, they have a vague sort of implication of stuff like that, and the original, but they really lean into it here. I don't mind that. I think it's, you know, it's I'm just glad that they're doing something kind of different, at least at that point.

Unknown Speaker  43:36   I will say that, out of all the things they could have named the preschool, they call it the bad ham squad. And I was like, Yeah, I know. It says bad, but that's bad ham. Yeah. Which is a really weird name. The name did anything. But the one the one thing I will give this movie some credit for, I mean, there's a couple others, but the fact that they all knew each other when they were kids, and they all went to the same school and interacted with Fred Krueger when he was alive. It makes more sense why the parents would be dismissive of their their nightmares, right? because they'd say your, your they would think you're having traumatic nightmares of that guy that molested you. That makes sense to me. As opposed to in the other vert in the original where it's like, That's funny. My daughter's dreaming of that man I murdered that she never met. Right? Yeah. So I and I do like the the idea of like, Rooney or Chris, whoever you want to say discovers it that like finding out that they're all connected and finding the photograph, and I do give credit for that because it does create like a breadcrumb trail for her to follow. Yeah, I didn't mind it at all.

Unknown Speaker  44:43   I actually also wanted to bring up there was something that I had forgotten about, and that I saw on this watch, which takes us to the bad ham school. It was that you know, Nancy's in the tub, and you know, you see Freddie's glove. Come on. But I'm like, and I was like, here we go, you know, we're just going to do what we did with that before. And they did a little differently, which I appreciated that. And also, they brought some technology into it because she had a cell phone alarm to wake her up now, which that wasn't available

Unknown Speaker  45:18   cell phones, which felt really outdated. Now they like they're super outdated 2010.

Unknown Speaker  45:24   Man, when I see outdated cell phones and movies.

Unknown Speaker  45:29   Those phones are so old.

Unknown Speaker  45:33   Anyway. Yeah. But yeah, I appreciated the addition of the school and that that whole thing, because I really did like that from the original as well, like in which they didn't go in as deep. But you know, just that it's a creepy, the creepy concept. So then after that,

Unknown Speaker  45:51   after that whole scene, like Quentin, basically, she wakes up in the tub, and Clinton calls and tells her Jesse is dead. Then we get this pre reg requisite scene and every horror movie where Quentin is researching. He's running low on his pharmaceutical speed, but he's researching on gigablast. All about dreams and stuff at the like coffee shop library. He and Nancy gigablast. The batum preschool. You know, how is fat ham? Bad? I mean, I'm like, maybe it's a reference to john batum, the director of Saturday Night Fever and the 1979 Dracula, but that's probably a stretch. And you know that I believe this is when they set up the idea of micro naps where you can you can just be so sort of fall asleep just for a few seconds. I have a feeling we might have saw an argument about this. So I'm excited. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  46:56   I feel it's growing.

Unknown Speaker  46:59   I feel the opposite of whatever you I

Unknown Speaker  47:02   kind of like the micro naps idea. What do you think about that? Rodney? Do you like my

Unknown Speaker  47:11   fuck micro naps, bro.

Unknown Speaker  47:13   I think this is the dumbest mugging thing in the entire movie. And from this point forward, it becomes such a laughingstock of a film because of the introduction of this concept. I I literally hate it. I it basically is an excuse to have non stop jumpscares from this point forward. Yeah, I do like them?

Unknown Speaker  47:36   Well, first of all, it ups the stakes a little bit. Because you know, we're not just waiting for them to get tired and fall asleep. Now things can kind of happen at the at like any moment. And at one point there, they're back at the high school, I think. And that's when we get Nancy seeing the Chris character in the body bag, which is another visual reference to something that happens and the original one, again, not done as well. I totally agree with you. And you definitely are right, that now they've got licensed to throw jumpscares at you at a dizzying pace. So I'll give you that, that that is a noxious byproduct of the micro naps. But I do think that there's some fun to be had with them. And it allows things to happen, like, you know, one character to walk down a hallway and see, you know, scary vision and, and whatever. And it also allows for Quentin to have a micro nap. As he's at his swim meet. I really appreciated how pasty or Kyle Kyle gulnar or whatever it was, he's like really pasty. And you can tell that he's probably doesn't swim. And he's looking really uncomfortable in his little Speedo suit. But you know, he has a micro nap. And he wakes up in like a pool in a warehouse district. Like he just wakes up in this pool. And it's like outside. I mean, I guess it's a dream, so whatever. But then we're sort of treated to the origin quote, unquote, of Fred, where the parents are chasing him into this warehouse room, and they throw Molotov cocktails in the room and burn him alive. And as he's burning alive, he rips off his jacket to expose the striped sweater. Which I felt was it was a real forced reveal of the sweater.

Unknown Speaker  49:44   I'm like, bro, I've been watching your movie for an hour. I already know what his sweater looks like. This is not a reveal. Obviously that's the bad guy. Wait, I need to park on this moment real quick because I know you want to talk about the origin but that swim meets is the worst scene I've seen in almost any horror movie and it The scene I referenced whenever I talk about this to anyone the guy falls asleep while swimming. He's in the middle of a swim meet and he falls asleep. Someone wrote that and they like put it in a movie. It makes no sense, guys, come on. It's

Unknown Speaker  50:16   it's a micro nap right

Unknown Speaker  50:18   now, he's he just nodded off for a second in the middle of swimming.

Unknown Speaker  50:24   That's how powerful they are.

Unknown Speaker  50:26   You know what I'm gonna stay awake for three days straight just to see I want to see if I can fall asleep while I'm making a sandwich and then just wake up with the sandwich in my mouth. That's actually way more believable than swimming. All right, I've said my piece about this.

Unknown Speaker  50:38   But you guys we didn't we we forgot to talk about this is right before we get into the how Fred was burned with the Molotov cocktails or whatever. We did have that flashback. And I think we would we have to take a moment for this. Where we get to see Fred Krueger as a gardener. Mm hmm. Yeah, he's not. He's not burned. No, Lacy's looks very, very nice. And I got it. He's got like a kind of a strange Southern accent. And he's he's, you know, living in the basement of the preschool. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  51:13   Nothing, nothing weird about that. I mean, you know,

Unknown Speaker  51:16   be there.

Unknown Speaker  51:18   And just the gardener. He lived in the basement of the preschool. And boy, he loved you kids.

Unknown Speaker  51:24   Kids were his life. And we see him just so happy with all the kids.

Unknown Speaker  51:29   You have a job get an apartment. Why are you living in the basement of the school? And how come everyone is okay with this?

Unknown Speaker  51:34   Right? Like, how why were any parents okay with sending their kids to a school where the weirdo gardener lives in the basement? And it's okay. And he he like, it's okay that they go down there and do like art projects with him or

Unknown Speaker  51:50   whatever. Honey, did you fill out that application for the bad ham school? You know, they have their own on premises gardener slash caretakers slash kid blodger. babysitter?

Unknown Speaker  52:04   Yeah. So yeah, it seems a little seems like, you know, Fred got caught doing some stuff. So so they burn him alive. There's a really sort of bad moment where he runs out of the burning building, and he's on fire. But here's, here's my real problem with all of this is, throughout this movie, both before and after this scene, we get boiler room imagery. There's no friggin boiler room in any of this origin. Like he's not in a boiler room. Is he supposed to be in a boiler room and they burn them all? I mean, in the original movie, they burn him alive in a boiler room. And that's why the boiler room is sort of his primary dream, hunting ground. Like that's why he's always drawing people into the boiler room is because that's where he died. This isn't a boiler room. It's like some sort of like relay room. There's like, it's not a boiler room. And this always really bugged me about the movie, like why does he bring children? Why does he bring these teenagers into his dream boiler room, he didn't die in one

Unknown Speaker  53:09   because when he was alive, he always wanted a boiler.

Unknown Speaker  53:15   Like one day, I'm gonna move out of this preschool basement, the boiler room and My dream is

Unknown Speaker  53:21   to a suite boiler room.

Unknown Speaker  53:24   And your parents denied me that I'm gonna kill you all.

Unknown Speaker  53:29   You're totally right, it I it makes no sense in this movie, because because the answer to your question anytime you have a question, it's because that's what happened in the original right, I'll just do it again. But I come back to the point that the director doesn't actually like the movie. So he doesn't care about answering these things with any detail.

Unknown Speaker  53:47   Yeah, it really even when I first saw the movie, and I think I was a lot more forgiving on the movie than probably either view and move upon my first view. Well, no, actually, no, my first viewing I was not forgiving of it because I saw a test screening and it was pretty much resoundingly terrible. And we all gave it terrible marks. But then I saw it again, when it came out, however many months later, and I was like, Well, okay, they kind of improved it like, this is better, you know, good. I'm glad you took my notes.

Unknown Speaker  54:15   If I've learned anything from your from your podcast, it's that instead of just watching good movies, if I just watch the bad ones over and over, I'll start to like them.

Unknown Speaker  54:23   Yeah, I call it force feeding Rodney.

Unknown Speaker  54:27   Yeah, I've seen the Wolf Man 42 times now it's pretty good.

Unknown Speaker  54:32   It's It is hard in this movie. I'll give you that. We then we move on to Nancy watching a video blog because those were pretty hip back then. 2010 we get the Asian actor from the Friday the 13th remake I don't remember his name so I'm sorry.

Unknown Speaker  54:49   it's um it's it's an it well, I don't know what is his name in the I wrote down his name was Martin neon. I think that was his character names character that is Yeah. I don't know what his real name is off the top of my

Unknown Speaker  55:02   head. Anyway, he's in the Friday the 13th remake his main characters, and he's pretty good in that. You know?

Unknown Speaker  55:08   Yeah. No, he's He's good. He's like, kind of this kind of a stoner in that, right? Yes.

Unknown Speaker  55:13   Yeah, I think he's the dude, he gets the screwdriver. And

Unknown Speaker  55:16   here, he just talks into the screen. And then he's, you know, talking about how he can't sleep. And now he's being tormented by Friday. And then he like, smashes his head against the screen. So it's basically a snuff blog, because we are going to assume he's dead after that. And then we sort of get this, you know, Clinton comes back from his dream and he confronts Clancy Brown, who's his father, who is he a guidance counselor, he, he's a teacher at the school, but they never make it clear. There's

Unknown Speaker  55:49   I thought there was a line about him being the guidance counselor.

Unknown Speaker  55:52   That's what I thought, too. That was the only thing I could grasp on to for all i know, he was the principal, I'd have no idea. He and in Nancy confront dad about killing Fred. He says they might have made it up. This is also a frustrating moment in the movie, because at that point, I'm like, Oh, that's a good twist. Like they did it just didn't even happen. Like he was a he was a falsely accused. I feel like if they had gone in that direction, and I'm sure there is a draft of the script, where they did go in that direction, and then they chickened out. But I feel like that was a potentially a good twist that Freddy could have Fred could have been innocent.

Unknown Speaker  56:36   Even though I've seen this before. I'd forgotten that until when it popped up this time. And I was like, Oh, yeah, they're doing a whole like the McMartin trial, you know, type thing that what was that the preschool where you know, that the owners were accused of something? Yeah. Like, they were doing that the satanic panic stuff or whatever. Yeah. Which was all bullshit. So I yeah, I was like, oh, they're gonna do this now because that was the, you know, Quintin and Nancy were, you know, saying to Clancy Brown, we were just kids, we could have said anything, why didn't you go to the police? And I thought, okay, yeah, let's let's get this makes it even better that, you know, he wasn't a creep. Like he was unjustly murdered by the mob.

Unknown Speaker  57:17   Well, and it gives gives Fred a real reason to come after them, which I'd never really felt that he had even in the original film. He's like, why is he it never really made total sense to me. Why Fred is after the kids. And I felt like this cuz

Unknown Speaker  57:34   he's like, you guys totally stop my murder spree. And I'm pissed. So I'm gonna kill your kids. Like,

Unknown Speaker  57:41   I guess that's as good of a reason as any to come back from the dead.

Unknown Speaker  57:46   That's enough. That's sometimes that's all you need.

Unknown Speaker  57:48   Well, I yeah, I just think it would have been a nice layer two, you might have actually sympathized with Fred at that point that you know, when he's coming back for vengeance, because they really screwed him over. But they back out of that the climax, which is kind of lame. Okay, so now, here's where we're going to resume our fight about the micro naps because quainton has run out of his pharmaceutical speed. So they go to the pharmacy. And so that we had get this whole sort of set piece that takes place in the pharmacy where Quentin's trying to get his drugs, the pharmacist isn't going to let him have his drugs, Nancy's having micro naps in the car, and she burned, you know, she's got to burn herself with the car lighter, to stay awake. And then she goes into the pharmacy. And I think this is the best scene in the movie, for one reason, because it's not doing anything that was done in the original and doing it poorly. Because I think it's really cool despite the presence of the boiler room. I think it's really cool when she's sort of toggling in between. As Fred's coming down the the aisle and he's swiping in the dream and stuffs falling off the aisles shelves as he swiping. I feel like they really use the micro nap idea really effectively there to make a cool scene. Something we haven't seen before and A Nightmare on Elm Street film Rodney Tell me why I'm wrong.

Unknown Speaker  59:17   Because the scenes not really that good, because like, I like that she's attacked at the drugstore. But first of all, she knows she's being hunted by this like, vicious dream killer, but she keeps refusing any kind of drugs that will keep her awake, which is really weird. And then on top of that, he's like, I'm gonna go into the well lit drugstore. Do you want to come with me? She's like, now I'll just sit in the quiet dark car where I totally won't fall asleep. So it's already not making sense. But it also is when she gets attacked. Oh my god, how you know, like, it's the it's the way the editing is right? It's again, it's that opposite of being subtle. It's it's like cutting back and forth between the reality and the dream. Yeah, it's quality swipes and like knock some shit off the shelf. It's just like i don't know i think that i think the movie is so mediocre up to this point that you're just happy that Freddy Krueger slash nadder Are you

Unknown Speaker  1:00:10   saying me personally? Are you saying yes you know I honestly I honestly think there's some like clever filmmaking there I think it's a clever conceit it just i think it's it's got a level of ingenuity to it that I appreciate and so desperately craving in this movie.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:31   Well actually, I think I said to you when we were watching this I was like, Oh, I this is this is like the one thing that I remember from watching this before is because I remember the the scene I remember with the with the cigarette lighter in the car and everything. And I do also I have to tell you Rodney I was frustrated as hell the entire time with her not partaking in some sort of drugs of some sort. Because Yeah, thank you. Come on. Like Yeah, no that that was frustrating for me as well cuz I'm just like, I you know, I don't know what your deal is as to why you won't do this. And I trust me I get it. I come from a place of that as well. But we're dealing with Fred and micro naps. Well at least Nancy in the original she's like popping like no sleep or whatever like yeah

Unknown Speaker  1:01:17   oh don't know dose or whatever. All it's not on Naka. Nagas. Yes. Funny. Yeah, but I forget what it's called, like, no sleep or can't

Unknown Speaker  1:01:27   sleep. Yeah. Or something. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:28   So yeah, she should least be doing like five hour energy drinks like crazy or whatever. Isn't that what the kids like to do? Get all hopped up on those, like snort Red Bull. Yeah, they should have done that.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:41   You forgot to mention important thing, which is that they tell you if you if you if you don't sleep for like 70 hours, you'll go into a coma that lasts forever. And then that's important later,

Unknown Speaker  1:01:52   I totally forgot that I that's one of those things that is just glossed over me even though I've seen this movie more times than any human being should be legally allowed to see it. But it does come back later. But I did not read forever register that they set that up in there. It's

Unknown Speaker  1:02:09   like when they're doing all their research, right? Okay, when they're using when they're using gigablast.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:14   I was just so hyped up on gigablast and micro naps that I just went right over my head.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:19   I kind of want to do like a comprehensive listing of fake search engines for movies and like what's the best what's the what's the champion? It might be gigabit and

Unknown Speaker  1:02:28   then start it like may do it as a start up and beat Google become masters of the universe.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:34   To be fair, I don't want to shit all over this drugstore scene. I'm going to go back after this and just rewatch that part because like maybe it's maybe I'm being a little harsh on it. You both seem pretty, pretty excited. And there are parts in the movie that are cool. Maybe this is one of them. So I'll I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here. Even though I watched it last night and can't remember it. I appreciate

Unknown Speaker  1:02:52   that you're giving this movie any props at all, because I expected this to be a bloodbath. Or now we're down to our final two Quinten and Nancy, she gets cut and they so they go to the hospital. And did you did you recognize the nurse from the hospital do Did either of you recognize who this is?

Unknown Speaker  1:03:10   I had that moment of like she looks familiar, but no idea. She

Unknown Speaker  1:03:13   is the actress who played the original April O'Neil in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie that Oh, yeah, she was the original April how exciting. I wasn't, I wasn't a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles guy. But I did put those together. They go back to give Nancy pain meds because the mom signs as Connie Britton signs off on it. Right and let me ask you this, What is she saying? She's like signing her over to like a mental institution or something? Or is it just to give her pain meds?

Unknown Speaker  1:03:47   It didn't seem like that, because like, they kind of do like a long shot on the document that she's signing. And I was looking at it and I'm like, it just I don't know. I mean, if that's what they were implying is like we're going to let you commit her something right? It said, I hereby swear that I did not burn a man alive for molesting my daughter

Unknown Speaker  1:04:07   20 years ago.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:10   No, it is the top something like permission to administer medical care. Yeah, I assume it's basically like I hereby give permission for you to like forcibly inject my daughter with sleeping meds

Unknown Speaker  1:04:20   right which Why do we need to have a shot of the document there? It's so they put emphasis on the document which was strange because if that's all it is, then who cares? We don't need to see this document. But then we get the moment where former April O'Neil goes to injector and she lifts up her hand and knows she's got the Freddie claw. Which

Unknown Speaker  1:04:40   micro nap

Unknown Speaker  1:04:42   Yeah, we'll see good use of micro nap there. You don't get that without a micro nap. No serie Bob.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:49   Yeah, Quinten like, grab some adrenaline out of a drawer. And like, dude, I watched this movie like 24 hours ago, and I don't remember what happens. They like yeah, they run in the car. And he's like, no, they

Unknown Speaker  1:04:58   just didn't even show them right Now that just shows them in the car when they come back to the room Nancy's gone CUT TO they're in the car and Winton's busting out the adrenaline to shoot it up, right. Like we don't even know how they get out.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:09   It's one of those like, I don't worry about it. There's we just need to get to the next scene. They get away. Okay, yeah. Yeah. So he quit and juices up in the leg up. And of course, I mean, you guys picked up right? His name is Quentin Quentin Tarantino. Epic shot. I don't understand the reference. There's a director named Quentin Tarantino who directed some pretty famous films over the last 25 years or so. And one of them featured very prominently in adrenaline adrenaline shot sequence, you should check it out. It's called Pulp Fiction. It's pretty good.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:45   Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah. I'll put on the list. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:47   Yeah, yeah. So Clinton shoots up in his leg. They have their sort of tender moment where they're driving to the abandoned preschool in Quint Nasser out on a real date. And I liked this line, she sort of puts him off and he says, Well, why don't you sleep on it? And I was like, Alright, clever writing there. But then Fred shows up because they micro nap, I guess for a second and then they drive off the road. They've got to walk the rest of the way to the school.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:17   How did Quinten micro nap after he just shot himself up with adrenaline? Like, yeah, that was my one thing was I was like, I mean, maybe he's just that tired. I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to nitpick things. But I really, that was my honest thought was like, didn't he just take this adrenaline?

Unknown Speaker  1:06:34   Yeah, I'm gonna nitpick too, because the same thing happens when she burns herself with a lighter, like, your arm would hurt so bad that the whole point of doing it is so you can stay awake for like maybe 20 more minutes. So why go through all this? Like they get adrenaline in the injection his leg? If it doesn't have a purpose,

Unknown Speaker  1:06:49   fair enough. I think they're just trying to sort of set things up and then do reversals and then set things up. You know, I get it. It's definitely doesn't make total sense. But I also see they're trying to keep you engaged, like with things so but yeah, it doesn't really make sense. What also doesn't make sense is that this creepy fucking school is not been turned into like Kultury condos or something. It's still there. With the paint peeling off the wall and like creepy kid artwork all over the wall. You know, look, it's a horror movie. We need to have our climax take place in someplace creepy. You know, they set it up that this preschool was the place of you know, where all these terrible things happened, but it's sort of ridiculously art directed in that way that would never happen in real life. And then they find Fred's molesting cave, like they find his bedroom first, which still has his bed in it.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:48   Here's the thing that I don't understand, right? Because they make a big point about how they never went to the cops. And they just like, assumed he was molesting their kids. So the implication is that this place was closed down because you know of what Fred Krueger did. But from the perspective of reality, Fred Krueger just disappeared one day didn't come to work. So wouldn't have done the maintenance crew go downstairs and they like his like, his knife glove is still sitting on the table. Right? Right. It. It's literally like they're like, how can we run this place without good old Fred Krueger doing the lawn, close it down, just close it down? Shelly, they locked the front door and left,

Unknown Speaker  1:08:27   right, one of one of two things would have happened. One, people would have found out about these horrible things, and they would have torn the place down. or two, no one would have found out about these things. And they would have just kept the place running and turned his bedroom into another classroom or you know, it would still be a school. What wouldn't? It doesn't make sense that now it's the haunted town haunted house or whatever. It's not the Michael Meyers house, you know, I mean, it's like it shouldn't. That doesn't make sense. Because you're right, they don't go to the cops. So nobody should know that this was a horrible place.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:02   But I'll just assume that like they didn't pay their county taxes on time. And so the county just kicked them all out and chained it up.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:08   So they, they they find his bedroom, which still has his gross bed in it, which will actually come into play later. And then they find his creepy molesting cave, which is sort of another room in there. You know, and and just to put it out there, you know, we're making light a lot of this but we do are not making light of, you know, child abuse in any way. This is what makes the movie. I think, ultimately, no fun. I mean, I can deal with this in a horror movie context, if we're talking about something that's, you know, really hard and serious or whatever, but we're trying to have fun here with the thing about Freddy Krueger is that there's a fun element to him. And when you introduce this into it, like the fun is gone. Now he's just a disgusting creep, and I'm not on his side in any way, the way that you are with your favorite horror franchise characters where, you know, you secretly are on Jason's side and you're secretly with me at this point, you're just not on his side. And I think this is truly the tragic flaw of this film.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:16   I 100% had that same feeling and this is also your, your so you're possibly on his side, because only of what was mentioned earlier or alluded to that this was like, the kids had lied about it, right? Yeah. So then, like, at that point, you're like, fuck him up Friday. Like, you know, these kids lied like you were you were wrongly murdered by this mob. And then now, here's the like, the pitchers yuck, that are you know, he, he didn't do it. Like he's after them. Like the lion Clinton says, it's like, he's not after us. Because we lied. He's after us. Because we told the truth. And that just yeah, it's just that whatever you were hanging on to that this film was going somewhere, like, you just really feel like the wind just go right out of the sails. So it's like, and to make it even worse, Fred wants them to remember his abuse of them. Like that's specifically cited as his motivation that he wants him to remember. So it's sort of gross layer upon gross layer. So much gross. And just so like, just it's like there's nowhere to go. You can't go nowhere to go from here.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:32   A tiny detail earlier in that when you see the flashback of the Miss kids. There's like a shot of young Chris the blonde girl and you see that like her back has been like clawed and she's got scars on her back. So this this notion that like maybe they made it up is fucking nonsense cuz like she clearly came home with her back carved up, and you know, her dress torn up. So like, it's like the movies not even sure if it's trying to pull that joke on you or not. But Sebastian, you're totally right. I'm with Jason. I want to watch Jason murder a bunch of people, right? But like, it's hard to root for the dude that like raped a bunch of little kids. Like, that's messed up. And, and I'm a big fan of messed up content, like, give me the messed up stuff. But like, this movie just feels like it's going a little too far. And the fact that he keeps like bringing it up, it's just like, it makes it feel so icky. That you can no longer have fun. You're totally right.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:25   They have like a moment in one of the flashbacks where they show Jackie Earle Haley holding up gardener claw like that's where he got the idea to make the claw and I don't know or maybe he was climbing them with that not the knife hand but then they find the knife hand which is also not really set up in this movie. In the original movie. That's the weapon he used. And he right he put those in the furnace of the boiler room that he was burned in and they find you know, I think the mom still has them in the boiler room, their boiler at home or whatever so they really set up the knife hands whereas in this is Did he really have that knife hand glove in real life? Or is that just part of his dream persona and it was the gardening tool in real life? It's not made no

Unknown Speaker  1:13:21   because because when they go down into the basement Quinten and Rooney are sorry Nancy. On the on the table there's like one of the knife fingers as though he was like in the midst of assembling it like it was his life like he was like pretty soon my knife glove will be ready to go wherever those meddling at all.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:39   Right, so maybe he never got to finish his night knife glove project. And

Unknown Speaker  1:13:45   I think I think that's what it is.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:46   Okay, okay, well, that that tracks

Unknown Speaker  1:13:49   I think even in the original or I think it's the original though don't we actually see him making his

Unknown Speaker  1:13:54   glove? It's the opening looks like

Unknown Speaker  1:13:56   it's a whole thing. Yeah, that's what I remember with like the fire and he's like putting his glove together. Yes. So yeah, I see exactly. I mean, like there's so much care and detail going into like the glove history. Yeah. And the original that it's just to be so like brushed over now. And just yeah, it's it's it falls short to also mention more talking about the yuck going into once these Polaroids are found and that whole thing happens like the yuck gets dialed up so high, like all the up lines just start coming.

Unknown Speaker  1:14:30   Yeah, I emphasize that. It's hard to offend me. And this this scene really offended me like there's like multiple moments. I was like, that's gross like that. Take that out.

Unknown Speaker  1:14:40   Well, And to make matters worse, we go into the basic setup of the climax which is similar to the original, or Nancy, as you figured out earlier in the pharmacy. She pulled out a little piece of Fred's sweater, so she knows that she can bring some corporeal element of him out into reality. So she's going to go into sleep. Quentin is going to watch her. She's gonna grab Fred and pull him out. So she goes to his gross molester bed, goes to sleep. Quentin grabs a paper cutter blade off of an old paper cutter that's lying around to do some Fred killin. But of course, you know, it's stupid Clinton falls asleep. So we go into this big final dream sequence. We're both Nancy and Quentin are both sleeping. So they're sort of both dealing with the dream world. Quinn ends up in the boiler room that Fred never was burned alive in and he throws him around and he slashes them pretty bad in the chest. But then Nancy calls out and because Fred has kept telling her you have always been my favorite. You know, so he's really got a mad boner for so he goes chasing after and, you know, there's we get sort of a replay in some ways of the climax of the original film. At one point, she's in the original Nancy's running up the stairs and her feet sink into the stairs. And this time, she's running down a hallway and then she falls into like the rug and it's all bloody water, whatever.

Unknown Speaker  1:16:18   I like this part. Because Because Because he has one of the better lines here and he goes, how's that for a wet dream, right? And I was like, okay,

Unknown Speaker  1:16:26   that's one of the only lines that sound like an OTG Robert Anglin line, you know, that's something I could he would definitely have said. But so she falls into that falls into the water and falls through the floor and into her own bed at home. And now she's wearing the little girl out dress that she used to wear and this is where it really for me. This is where it gets really gross. No,

Unknown Speaker  1:16:54   I like the part where she falls through the ceiling too. It's a little CG. But this whole sequence with the bloody hallway while it's brief, I will give credit where credit's due I was like that part was well done.

Unknown Speaker  1:17:05   I also know I just was also I like the sequence with the hallway I like when she falls into her bed. I also appreciated that Quentin fashioned a weapon out of one of those giant paper cutters because those things have always anytime in an office or whatever. I'm like this thing is crazy. I'm just glad to see somebody using it as a weapon because it is and then totally like the Glenn before him. You know he did the Amash comes back again or you know that that'll happens. But I was here for all that it was fine. It was Nancy in the baby dress, where I just was like, I just can't, I can't and this is one more grow. Like, I actually took notes of the things because I was like, these are all so gross. Like, your mouth says no, but your body says yes. And I just wrote barf. Because it was just like, it's just so yuck. It's so yuck. And then he she, when she first runs into Friday, she says fuck you to him. And he says, that's a little fast for me. Why don't we just hang first and

Unknown Speaker  1:18:08   it's just like, and then he shows her bodies hanging on in the boiler room. That's just terrible. And I like it. And I like puns, you know, but this is just not it's not okay, none of this is okay. And he you know, he's running his one of his knife fingers like upwards skirt. And they it's it's really I won't say shocking, but it's it's surprising that this was a creative decision that they decided to go with because to rod knees point of director, whoever not really understanding the what people like about this series. You know, this is not what people like about the Nightmare on Elm Street series. This is not what they want to see Freddie doing.

Unknown Speaker  1:18:55   I think they really are just trying to be like, yo, let's like, we're gonna earn that our rating so hard, people are gonna love it. It just has aged really poorly. Also from like, I mean, this, why I brought up the coma thing is because the implication that he basically says here, right is like, I basically have kept you awake for all this time, specifically, so you would fall into a permanent coma. And I could just like, have you for eternity in your dream state? Yeah. Which is like, really creepy. But also, I have a I have a question I have to ask. That's a little icky. But like, if Fred Krueger is into kids, why is he into 18 year old Rooney Mara, right? Like, that doesn't really even make sense within the logic of the film.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:40   Yep. And that sort of occurred to me too, although I did, like I did. That was when he says that, about having her trapped there forever. That at least was a moment in the movie where I kind of got a little bit of like, Oh, you know, I mean, just because the idea I get sort of Things like that where I you know, concepts where people are going to be trapped like, find murder me stab me with a fucking machete cut off my head. It's all good. That's gonna be like two seconds and we're over but the idea of, you know keeping me in your dream world for forever and you know tormenting me is that that actually gives me kind of a bit of a chill. But yeah, it doesn't you're right it doesn't really track with the whole child molester idea that he be just as jazzed to do it to her now, I mean, they could have had her regress to a younger age in the dream like Why does she have to be that age and the dream but I I'm sure that was a bridge too far that they weren't even willing to go to go for

Unknown Speaker  1:20:47   even you hearing you describe it is making me uncomfortable. Yeah. Right. Like, well, there's maybe you should have directed there's no,

Unknown Speaker  1:20:54   there's just nowhere to go with that idea. Unfortunately, you know, I mean, I think they just they, it was a bad idea. They shouldn't have gone there at all.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:02   Like, I feel like if they thought that they were going to be edgy, or try to let you know, it's 2010 and we're just going to really, you know, earn their rating, like you said, or, you know, just try to have like a shock value. It just, it just came off dislike this. This this really poor taste like it just doesn't. It doesn't work. It doesn't work with what this film is.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:23   There's a little part of me that applauds them for trying to be gross. Yeah, they just fail at it.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:29   Yeah, it just doesn't work.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:30   I think that what they're what they misunderstand, and what a lot of people misunderstand about this slasher genre, especially when you're dealing with sort of supernatural characters, or supernatural adjacent characters like Freddy, Jason and Michael, is that it's more a fantasy thing in when you become a fan of these movies, you end up becoming a fan of the characters, even though they're reprehensible and horrible murderers. It's sort of similar to the way you feel about superheroes or you know, other fantasy characters. You don't want them to tethered due to the terrible horrible things that really happen in real life. It's fine for them to stab people and hack them apart. That's the craved part of us that is satisfied, but we don't want to see really horrible atrocities occur at the hands of these characters. They are in some weird way fantasy figures to us and we don't want to see that.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:34   Well said you some that are very well

Unknown Speaker  1:22:37   basically, you know, Nancy stabs Fred and then I with something but you know, he can't die in this world. If we do get the line. I'm, I'm your boyfriend now. Which you know, of course is a call back to the original question tries to wake her up, she won't wake up. So we get this scene where he shoots her in the heart with the adrenaline calling back to pulp fiction. This wakes her up and she drags Fred into reality. You know, they fight in reality, which is you know, pretty satisfying. At that point. She cuts off his hand with the paper cutter blade, and then slashes his throat and she says you're in my world now bitch. Which decent line I feel like that might have been said in one of the other movies but I'm not sure one of the other nightmare movies but I'm not sure yeah and that's basically it they burn the the creepy school and

Unknown Speaker  1:23:37   again Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  1:23:39   like learn from your fucking past. Also, why like they now have proof of like the burned dream killer that they fought in recount reality. Why don't they like take pictures call the cops be like, Look, we found Fred Krueger. Right? Like, it would help explain anything that they might need to explain right in case they're gonna be accused of murder. But they're like not let's just burn it all

Unknown Speaker  1:24:02   will not only So wait, so his body is still there right after they kill him.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:07   Yeah, she like cuts. She slashes his neck up and he like bleeds to death. And he's just dead body on the floor.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:13   Right. So like for the sequel? They should have not burned down the building. They should have called the police. They should have explained to them. Look, this is a guy that's been dead for. I don't know how many years? Like 15 years right? I guess there'd be no way to way to prove that because they never I guess found his body to begin with.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:33   They could do like carbon dating, I guess.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:35   But then you could do a whole sequel where like now we're dealing with a reality where you can like pull people out of dreams. Like what does that mean? Then you've got your dream warriors and all that. So yeah, missed opportunity there. But uh, so yeah, that's basically it until we get our Stinger seen where Nancy and mom returned home. And there's a mirror and Freddie's in the mirror. In the mirror, and he throws his claws out of the mirror and and they go right through mom's the back of mom's head out the front of her face. And her her eyeballs are on the tips of his fingers and it's really dumb. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  1:25:16   it's literally just like the movie ends with a sign that says fuck you go home. Like, so. It's so like, to be fair, I think most nightmare I know she'd films and with like, this ridiculous Stinger that sort of like non canon,

Unknown Speaker  1:25:29   you know, a first movie has a terrible one. It's terrible. Yeah. So I mean, it's no worse than that. If we're being brutally honest.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:39   The first one is now the one where she gets like, sucked through the door. No, that's when she gets in a car.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:43   Yes, yeah. Oh, right. Mom does

Unknown Speaker  1:25:46   right. She gets in the car. The car like is a convertible that closes up

Unknown Speaker  1:25:50   with that has dried in there. It's got Freddie's sweater painted on it basically, on right comfortable roof.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:57   And then mom gets sucked through the What do you call it like the people

Unknown Speaker  1:26:01   know, it's like the, it's like glam. And

Unknown Speaker  1:26:05   it's a fancy name. I don't know, the glass above the door. That's like super small. So it's like, it's not for a person to be pulled through.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:13   Yeah, she suddenly becomes like an inflatable sex doll. And then,

Unknown Speaker  1:26:17   yeah, yanked through the tiny window in the door. So it's not like they had a lot to live up to here, because that's pretty terrible. But this is terrible, too. And then we get dream by the Everly Brothers or whatever, for the end credits. And that's basically the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. So let's move on to closing thoughts. Let's start with the positives. I'm going to say that I think this movie looks decent. It's decently you know, the production values are good. We forgot to mention the scene where Chris is in the classroom. And she has her dream. It's mirroring a scene from the original, which is done more gritty and better. But you know, there's suddenly she's in this dolt, you know, dilapidated, post apocalyptic classroom. And that's when we first get a good look at Fred at the chalkboard, there are some moments of nice computer generated imagery, that sort of hint at the potential of what a movie like this could be. Just in terms of production, design and production values, I think it's fine. Although I do agree that none of the dream sequences are as good as they could be. I think the actors overall were good. I think the film looks good. There's, you know, it doesn't look like it was, you know, poorly made. I don't mind the callbacks to the original. I mean, they're, they're, you know, beat for beat there at some spots. But you know, it's, it's fine. It's a remake. It's not, I'm not upset about it. But that's, that's what they're doing. You know, that those are, those are the positives, there's the scenes that stood out, like the pharmacy scene. I do like the scene that you just mentioned, as well with when she's learning about Sparta and and in the classroom, and we get to see Fred for the first time and his fingers on the chalkboard and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I'll go into what I didn't like, but there definitely are things that I like about it,

Unknown Speaker  1:28:23   you know, I think it's a case of liking by default. Right? It there's nothing in this movie that I will like want to show to somebody and say you've got to see this scene or this moment or this shot, because there's nothing in the movie that rises to excellence. Right However, there are there are things that are not bad or need to be shit upon like it is shot very professionally, this is clearly a they had a budget they had a good dp. The director has a pretty good eye, I would say half of the movie, there's some good stylish shit like some of the boiler room sequences the way the framing in the framing is done. I thought the the partner she's in the bloody body bag look great. Some of the kills wealth too fast, are very gory and violent. And I applaud that because that's sort of the reason you come to these movies. Right? And, and again, there were a couple one liners that I liked and, and having Clancy Brown in your movie is a plus for me every time I've he literally can't be in a bad Well, he can be in a bad movie, but he's never bad. So I think on my second viewing this time, it was a lot less offensive than I remembered it being I can I can say that, you know, but again, I don't think there's anything about this movie except maybe the part of the dude cuts his throat at the beginning that I thought was truly badass.

Unknown Speaker  1:29:41   What do you think went wrong here? creatively, I feel like I've sort of my main gripes with it creatively or the decision to back out of the idea that Fred is after them out of revenge because they lied. And then to go full child molester like, you know Go full child molester.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:01   I was thinking about was watching the movie. And I kept thinking I was trying to put my finger on. Why is this movie bad? And part of it falls under the category of like, just it's so bland. It's forgettable, right? But I, I now know what the problem is. And the problem is, in all the other Nightmare on Elm Street films, the dream sequences are these set pieces to themselves. They're like little short films, right? That you look forward to? Yeah, it's like, oh, you realize that person is dreaming. Some dread comes, Brady gets them turns into a fucking worm, or he like turns into a TV set. You know, like, the turns the one dude into a puppet with like, you know, the veins and shit. And that's why you come to the movie. But this version does away with that, because of the micro naps. It says we're not doing dream sequences. We're just here to have like, a scary guy with knives jump out of shadows. And so you are actually undoing the very thing that everybody wants. Right? Like, that's, that's all you actually want out of a Freddy Krueger movie. I don't care about his backstory, I don't even care about him killing people with the glove. I'd rather he doesn't kill anyone with the glove. And in this movie, it's the only way he kills anyone. And I think that's the biggest sin the movie makes is that it it takes the premise of a man who gets you in your dreams, and basically just turns him into a dude who stabs you with his hand in your dreams. Like, that's lame, guys. It's lame. What is our argue, I think in arguably the greatest horror movie killer premise of all time that a guy kills you in your dreams because that you can't not sleep. So there's, I mean, there I don't think there's ever been a better initial premise of a slasher movie. And I and I agree, I will maybe back down from the defense of the micro naps, just because you make a good point there. I think if they had done new dream sequences, and done the micro naps, I think there could have been something at least to make this stand out and be a little more memorable. Yeah. And, and again, I acknowledge, I acknowledge what you're saying that they put the micro naps in to try to up the ante and make it be like, Oh, he can come anytime I get that I just, I just think that they it's a missed opportunity. You know, like, you're gonna have a whole sequence in a swimming pool where the kid falls asleep. Let's make it a big sequence, you know, like really bad at it. But instead, it's over like that all the dream sequences start and then the person wakes up or they get killed. I understand that you want to recreate the first movie, but like, you're you're totally right, there is no better idea for a slasher film. Like, sooner or later, you're gonna fall asleep. And this guy is going to get you and going all the way back to the beginning this conversation when I said that all of the Freddy movies are like, up and down. And some of them are really bad, and some are really good. They all have really great death sequences. That's the thing. Even the worst of the movies have these nightmare scenes that you're like, Oh, that's twisted, you know? Yeah. And, and this movie is just like, I don't care about that part. I care more about telling you the backstory of how maybe this guy was a pedophile. But wink wink, he was so big shocker. Like, like, whether he's whether he was a pedophile or not. He's still murdering people from the beginning of this movie. So he's clearly the bad guy. So why are we making a mystery movie out of it? You

Unknown Speaker  1:33:30   know, if they announced, which I imagine one day they will, that they are going to try this again. I'm sure it won't be with Jackie Earle Haley or anything like that. Or Platinum dunes if they even exist anymore. Would you be interested in seeing it, Jennifer? Absolutely. Always. Neil got a hope for the best expect the worst and hope for the best. That's that's how I roll So yeah, I would totally go see reboot of this again in the theater. Absolutely. Give it a shot now. Just when they announced this movie, apparently he did. Screen tests with Kevin Bacon as Freddy Krueger before Jackie Earle Haley, which I actually think could work in a weird way at least Kevin Bacon has the sort of build and you know he's lanky and and you could do cool stuff with his makeup in his face. I also remember people banding around the name of Ben Foster, from you know, six feet under and he's actually in 30 days of night and stuff. I think he could have been he could be a good he's got a good creepy vibe. I think he could be a good Freddy Krueger. Rodney, would you be up for another attempt at this? Are you just gonna dig in your heels and say don't ever try to do this again?

Unknown Speaker  1:34:53   No as a like, Look, I I'm a horror fan. I I go see everything right like always Honestly, I have no idea why these large franchises don't just make make a new one every year. Like if I ran the studio, every fucking Halloween, maybe every 18 months, you would have a new fresh Nightmare on Elm Street film and a new fray a 13th. at like, like saw did it for like eight years in a row. Right? And like, Dude, it's not that hard. Like, I promise I'll come up, I'll come to your mediocre dream killer movie every fucking Halloween. Why is it take so long? Yeah, I'd like it to be a little better. But yeah, I will go to the next 10 remakes of this film franchise. I was

Unknown Speaker  1:35:34   just gonna say it is utterly baffling that they can't get these things. I mean, I think a lot in the case of the Friday the 13th series, it's because there's some sort of rights issues like going on. That's fair. I mean, that one's a no brainer. I put a guy in a hockey mask. I mean, what is the big deal?

Unknown Speaker  1:35:55   Three of us. If the three of us were arguing over the money, I'd be like, Look, guys, can we disagree every year that we argue we're not making any so how about we just split it three ways, right? We make we make one every year. Let's just churn them out. They act like everyone doesn't like Freddy Krueger, because they had a bad Critical response to this movie. Right? And it's like, No, we didn't like your movie. Try again. Do it again. Right? Yeah, you can start over be like Spider Man. Just keep starting over until you get it right again. Right. However I disagree with I read some articles about Kevin Bacon being interested in the role. And I gotta tell you, I think the misconception is that everyone thinks of Robert England is Freddy Krueger, but he became famous because of the role. Right? He wasn't a famous actor. And I think the minute you put a famous actor in the role of Freddy Krueger, the audience can't stop looking at him as the actor I kept seeing Jackie Earle Haley, just finally someone I don't know and make that the new Freddy Krueger and fill the rest of the cast with famous people.

Unknown Speaker  1:36:56   I think there's a sort of middle ground where you could get a character actor, somebody like Ben Foster, who most people don't really know who he is. I mean, Robert England was a character actor, he would been in other movies. It's not known. I mean, he's in, you know, a galaxy of terror and all sorts of stuff before he became Freddy Krueger. So I mean, I think Will anybody ever live up to Robert England? Probably not.

Unknown Speaker  1:37:21   That that's, that's the problem. It's it. They're, they're such big boots to fill, you know. And it's impossible to play that role without inviting everyone to compare you to Robert England.

Unknown Speaker  1:37:33   But but it I mean, I think it with the right person, it can be done where you can have, you know, both versions, both actors, you know, living in a world where you you can just enjoy both of them. Like I feel that way about having Bill skarsgard play Pennywise you know, it's like, first new Penny wises Tim Curry through the miniseries. And that's who just how I pictured him. And then here comes Bill skarsgard. And I'm like, I love him. And I think he also, you know, at least at that time, was probably toeing that line of not being, you know, super well known, but had done some notable things. And so he was able to slide into that and do his own take on it. And I am now you know, I like both versions. So I think it can be done. I think that that comparison is pretty good. But I also feel that, you know, there was only one attempted it before they made another one. Even though people were kind of hung up on Tim Curry's version. It wasn't like Nightmare on Elm Street where we got you know, six or seven whatever movies with one guy I think it's you know, the more more movies you make with one person, the harder it is for people to shake that I think people of our generation will never get over Robert England, I don't think there will there will ever be a version that will be able to compete with him. But I think it's such a strong idea that the temptation to not reenter introduce this character to a new generation is, you know, it's way too too much. You know, they're going to try it again. Because it's just such a good idea. And you know, I know those movies still exist and and young people can go and find them and watch them but like, Come on, let's let's be real. They don't want to do that.

Unknown Speaker  1:39:26   So there's money to be made in them Freddie and that Freddy sweater. That's basically what I'm saying.

Unknown Speaker  1:39:32   Yeah, I I'll back down on this, they easily could find a more well known actor who still just does a different version. I think you got to just get away from the Freddy Krueger. I'm so used to like I remember thinking, Heath Ledger was the worst idea ever to play.

Unknown Speaker  1:39:47   Oh, I did too. I was like, What?

Unknown Speaker  1:39:49   Really? Yep. And then we all saw the movie and we all went I apologize. I'm really sorry. You You're amazing. So I genuinely think someone out that maybe it is kevin bacon bacon. Maybe it is better. Foster well I guess we'll find out one day because they're gonna make another one that there's no way they just leave this where they left it.

Unknown Speaker  1:40:07   Well let's hope they do a better job but anyway thank you guys for being on this episode and I want to wish you both the sweetest of dreams.

Unknown Speaker  1:40:27   That about does it today for Tentpole Trauma. If you like what you heard, check out our social media presence on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Just look for Tentpole Trauma. That was easy, wasn't it? If you like us, hit subscribe, and leave us a sterling review on iTunes. If you dare. If you really like us, head over to patreon.com and get involved in one of our fabulous tears. You'll be glad you did. Want to communicate with Tentpole Trauma, send an email to Tentpole trauma@gmail.com we'd love to hear from you. And who knows, one day you may even get your email read on one of our shows.

Unknown Speaker  1:41:15   Thanks for listening, and we'll see you real soon.

[wahbegan]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Easter Eggs or References or Whatever You Wanna Call ‘Em

Several stories are flipped through without ever actually being read, all corresponding to actual stories in the books. These include: The Wendigo (guy dragged off into the sky by demonic wind spirit that calls his name and burns off his feet), The Attic (dude steps on a nail that’s literally it it’s a joke story), The Cat’s Paw (a dude shoots a cat who turns out to be his neighbor’s wife), Somebody Fell From Aloft (Actually a pretty good one, a mysterious corpse nobody recognizes drops from seemingly nowhere onto the deck of a ship in front of this shady crew member who panics and tries to heave the body over the side when it laughs and wraps its arms around him and drags him under too and yeah turns out it was the corpse of a guy he’d murdered on his last ship), The Hook (Oh fuck you you know what The Hook is), May I Carry Your Basket? (Dude offers to help hooded old lady carry her basket the basket says THANK YOU turns out yeah her severed head is in the basket and it like bites him or some shit idk), Strangers, (A dude on a bus is like I DONT BELIEVE IN GHOSTS and this woman next to him is like well eat my delicious ectoplasmic ass then and disappears into thin air), aaaand The Ghost with Bloody Fingers (another joke story, this hotel room can’t be rented because whenever someone tries a ghost with bloody fingers jumps out moaning about his bleeding fingers until this hippy dude checks in strumming his guitar and when the ghost tries to scare him he tells him to quit his whingeing and just put a fucking bandage on it)

Additionally, the story of uhhh STELLA’S that Ramon reads is Sam’s New Pet, also from one of the books, where a kid gets this ugly-ass dog and somehow doesn’t realize it’s just a giant sewer rat. Stephen Gammell, of course, decided “sewer rat” meant “unholy abomination in the eyes of God”, judging by his illustration

Tommy is named after Thomas, one of the farmers in the original Harold story, as is Ruth from The Red Spot

Speaking of Harold, in the original story he doesn’t JUST skin Thomas alive, when Alfred comes back he’s actually laid Thomas’ skin out on the roof and is drying it in the sun, like to turn it into leather. Some people take this to mean he’s gonna make a scarecrow out of Thomas, making the body horror transformation a more family-friendly version of the actual ending to the story

The teen’s deaths are all foreshadowed to one extent or another. Ruth’s arachnophobia and Tommy beating Harold are super obvious, but that’s not all. August, as part of his generally neurotic and anxious demeanor, is CONSTANTLY on people about what’s in the food they’re eating (that has animal body parts in it, the chemicals in that candy are giving our boys Hodgkins in ‘Nam, etc.).  Chuck I think by far has the subtlest, as he is seen before he leaves the house to have an overbearing religious mother who hugs him extremely tightly to herself, prompting him to say “don’t hug me like that” before he leaves, mirroring his death via Pale Lady. 

Speaking of The Pale Lady, the basic plot structure of him ending up in the EXACT place that The Pale Lady warned him not to go in his dreams due to his efforts to avoid it mirror the original story, even though everything else is changed.

The Haunted House is probably written for Stella at the end, even though the climactic sequence doesn’t resemble the story at all, because the whole movie follows the same basic premise as The Haunted House. The protagonists find the ghost of a woman killed by family over money in a haunted house, something very important is in the basement, and the ghost only rests when her killer(s) are publicly outed and brought to some form of justice.

Sarah Bellows’ ghost, since they used Gammell’s illustration for The Haunted House for The Big Toe (Gammell made no attempt to depict the creature, only the boy digging up the toe), is based on Brett Helquist’s illustration in the later release of the book.

Speaking of which, Gammell’s rendition of The Haunted House Ghost had no eyes, and as such you can also see her eyeballs float to the surface of the stew August is eating (although he only eats the toe as per the story). 

Naming the woman from the dream The Pale Lady is most likely a reference to The Pale Man from Producer Guillermo Del Toro’s previous film Pan’s Labyrinth, but that’s just speculation

One of Sarah Bellows’ brothers was named Harold, leading to a current fan theory that since Sarah’s victims are never actually seen dead, they are never allowed to die and are instead re-purposed into monsters for future stories. Again, conjecture, but interesting and at least seen to be demonstrably true in the case of Tommy

This is probably a coincidence but the only other time I’ve heard the surname Bellows in a fictional capacity is a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song “The Kindness of Strangers”, in which a young woman named Mary Bellows lets a charming stranger who’d helped her with her bags into her hotel room and he responds by cuffing her, gagging her, and shooting her. And what can I say Guillermo Del Toro seems like the kind of guy who would listen to Nick Cave

Okay here this is more substantial, The Jangly Man is a combination of three stories. His repeated cry of Me Tie Dough-ty Walker and making the dog bark strangely back at him is from yeah that story (though that ends with the dog dying of fright, the severed head saying Me Tie Dough-ty Walker, and the dude going insane from fear), his shtick of coming down the fireplace one severed body part at a time and then assembling himself is from What Do You Come For? (a woman says she’s sad she’s so alone and a bunch of body parts fall down the chimney and turn into a man and start dancing and she asks why the fuck he’s there and he’s like “to kill you, dip-ass why do you think”), and his appearance is, with a couple liberties, based on Gammell’s illustration for Aaron Kelly’s Bones (a widow’s husband gets out of his grave and refuses to stay dead, his corpse dancing and partying all day and night and claiming he’s never felt so alive. Finally, she tricks him to dancing faster and faster until his body flies apart and he stays dead. What a b*tch).

[purplesurveys]

777

do you think weird it's for someone to have never tried soda? I’d be surprised that they were never curious enough to try it if they can access soda, but then again I live in a third world country and not everyone gets to try everything. I’ve learned to judge less when it comes to opportunities like this. is there any foreign film you recommend? Portrait of a Lady on Fire was fucking intense and so, so so good. do you have the same religious beliefs as your parents? My dad might also be atheist, but I’ve never known for sure. He once confided in me that he was atheist in college but “it changed” when he met my mom... but honestly we’ve always grunted the same way whenever my mom tells us it’s time to pray or if we have to watch our weekly mass livestream. So idk. I think he just acts Catholic to appease her, but yeah he’s definitely weird about it. which floor of your house/building are you on now? Second floor. It’s my first time to want to hang out in my bedroom in months because IT’S ACTUALLY RAINING and it’s cold enough in my room to wanna stay here. are there any maps hanging in your room? No maps here.

are you often a third wheel? or is someone a third wheel to you? Yep I third wheel pretty often. My girlfriend and I study in different schools and I have friends in my school who are couples, so if Gab isn’t visiting my campus for the day I just tag along with my couple friends. I don’t get bothered or feel insecure by it because I have my own relationship lolol what's the last dvd you bought? Holy shit...DVD? I don’t even remember anymore. It was most likely an Audrey Hepburn film, back in 2013 when I was really into her. That or Beyoncé’s Life Is But A Dream documentary, which was the last thing she ever released on DVD. Also came out in 2013. tell me about your favorite pair of jeans. High-waisted 90s-styled jeans. Nothing much to say other than they fit me well, I got a lot of compliments whenever I have them on, and they match any t-shirt I paired with, which made me like wearing t-shirts again haha. would you ride a motorcycle if given the chance? (or have you?) I would but only if someone super experienced was driving. I haven’t been on one because my parents don’t allow me to, and tbh I don’t mind the rule because I’m mostly scared of motorcycles anyway. is your hair healthy? No. Some hair salon I went to around ten years ago put some cheap products in my hair when I had it rebonded and it never felt 100% healthy again. Until today it gets very stiff when it gets into contact with water and only shampoo, and I always have to pair it with conditioner. if a hotel offered free breakfast in bed, what would you order? Eggs Benedict and some very creamy warm coffee. how often do you take a train? Never. I don’t trust the public transport here and I’m better off driving in my own car. what are your thoughts on reincarnation? (have you ever read up about it?) I don’t think of it at all because I don’t believe in it. I don’t mind others who are into it, just don’t shove it down my throat.  what's your favorite led zeppelin song? I don’t have one. does your home have a balcony/deck/porch? Yeah we have a balcony. We used to have a full balcony, but we transformed 3/4 of it into my brother’s current room a few years ago because he was starting to grow up and he needed his own room. We retained 1/4 of the space so that it can be the place where my dog can still do his business. what does your closet/wardrobe say about you? It says I am a very messy person who can’t keep her closet consistently organized lol. It will also tell you I’m quite girly based on the clothes I own. do you enjoy theatre? I was never a fan. how would you feel about traveling abroad alone? If I was offered the chance to do it I certainly wouldn’t give it up, but I really, really, preferably would travel with at least one companion. Traveling is one of those experiences I’d want to share with someone, and I would hate if I had to go back to my hotel room at the end of the day with no one to talk to. who would you call a lyrical genius? Laura Jane Grace. how do you treat yourself? My go-to gift for myself is giving into my cravings hahaha. Nothing speaks more to me than food, and if I feel like I deserve a reward for a job well done, I’ll go to a slightly more expensive restaurant to celebrate. do you have an interesting passport? Idk, it’s a normal one and I never had it customized or anything. are you going to pursue a career according to what you enjoy? I hope I get to. I really enjoyed my PR internship and I’d love to be headed there. what happens to your old clothes? They go to the very back or the very bottom of my wardrobe for the most part. My mom will make us throw out clothes we don’t like anymore once a year, so that’s the time I get to get rid of them. what's your favorite frozen treat? Cornetto ice cream is one of my faaaaavorite comfort snacks. The end of the cone where they save chocolate chunks is the best part. who supports you financially? My parents. Getting increasingly guiltier about it by the day, too. if you wanted to go to the movie cinema, how would you get there? I would wait for the clock to strike midnight tonight, because in 48 minutes they’ll finally loosen lockdown rules AND I CAN FINALLY GO OUT. Hahaha. After that I’ll jump to my car, drive out of the village, take a u-turn, and I’m there. how many pillows are on your bed? Two big ones. would you pay more for organic food? Only if I had the money for it. Organic food is a thing of the (very) privileged here and is not very accessible to begin with, unless you’re in posher grocieries. have you ever had a crush on a sibling's friend or a friend's sibling? I haven’t. I’d find it weird considering they’re all a bit younger than me. do you have a friend who mooches? what to do about it? (or is it you?) She’s never done it with me but I’ve heard enough horror stories about her to know that she tends to do this, but yeah Mils is apparently quite the moocher. I’m soooo not one; I’d wait for my friends to offer to pay for stuff, but otherwise I’m fighting them over the bill lmao. do you know much about feng shui? (do you use it?) I’m not knowledgeable on it but I’m definitely familiar with it, because we have a rather large Filipino-Chinese community/culture in the country that glorifies feng shui during Chinese New Year season. I don’t really have a choice but have Chinese culture shoved down my throat whether it’s in the news, the media, or my Chinese friends.  how would you make friends in a quiet class? I preferably wouldn’t because I’m only interested in getting good grades and getting that class over with hahaha. But if I was interested in making a friend or two, I’d typically scan the classroom and see who seems to be responsible? Like if they take notes as hard as I do. are you generally a quick learner? No. I take some time, and I especially take long if the thing being taught is more hands-on, like origami. I’ve just never been good at following certain tasks, and I prefer learning from reading instructions. what's your favorite spot to read? Skywalk or the dining table. has anyone given you a nickname you didn't like? (what was it?) Not that I can recall. I’m okay with all of them. did you know that buddha is not considered a god to buddhists? Yes. do you save tickets from movies, etc.? If it’s a significant enough date or event, sure. I’ve kept my 2018 Paramore gig ticket to this day, but like I’ve thrown out my ticket for Knives Out because I hated the movie lol. without looking him up, who was jim morrison? Vocalist for The Doors. when's the last time your bedroom was painted/wallpapered? Idk, 2006 or 2007 when the house was being made? It’s never been repainted. teach me something in another language. (not french/chinese/german/arabic) Why so language-ist lmaooooooo uh “Nakauwi ka na?” means “Did you get home? / Have you gotten home?” what type of body wash did you last use? Idk, I never read the labels on it actually. what type of music do you like and why? Right now I’m into lo-fi because it makes me feel relaxed, but I’m also starting to get into the recent trend where today’s artists put out songs that sound like they’re from the 80s, like Dua Lipa’s Physical or The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights - I think the genre is called synth pop/synthwave. They simply sound cool haha and they’re awesome to listen to while driving. if you randomly want to eat something in the house, do you eat it or wait? I check the time, like if we’re supposed to be having dinner soon, then act accordingly. who knows the most about you (besides yourself)? My girlfriend. do you have a nervous habit? (e.g. biting nails, tapping feet, smoking) Plucking eyebrow or eyelash hair, but that behavior is reserved for extreme cases where I’m incredibly and inconsolably anxious. On a milder day I would vape, sigh a lot, or bite my nails. how's your favorite pro sports team doing lately? I don’t watch sports with teams. would you be/are you a good role model to a younger sibling? I don’t get into trouble but I’m not the best influence either.

[thegoodhausfrau]

Basket of Gold: describe your family. I want to know where your fabulous self came from.

My family is essentially a very large group of farmland people cobbled together through many divorces, remarriages, adoption, and illegitimate offspring. When I say large I mean probably around 300 people when you add it all up and who the fuck has time for that?! Growing up I never even bothered to learn everybody's names as I had my immediate family, maternal and paternal families, two step families, and the 3 families I spent so much time with as child they were my other families. The majority of them live in a couple states in the Midwest, clustered around 4 towns, because they are not big city, or even medium city people. Nowadays since my stepdad died and my mother has since remarried I have a whole other step family too. I will never learn the names of my 6 new step aunts, not to mention their spouses and all their children, so I will never expect my partners to learn them either. Honestly it's the kind of complicated web that could make grown people cry. What if you come in just thinking I'm neat and you love me and then I'm all "Learn this whole ass textbook of my family tree before we hit any holiday parties!" I learned my new step siblings names (but not their kids) and picked a favorite aunt (the fattest one) and called it a day. 

The different little families within the larger family web have their own quirks, totally rotten apples, and nice people. They're just conservative and religious simple town folk who have kids they take to pumpkin patches and main street parades to catch candy. I had a nice childhood if you just look at those  moments. They can’t handle spicy food and they don’t know anything about ethnic food as their Mexican or Chinese food is very white. They go to church on Sundays and maybe Wednesday too, they don't care for trendy food and will eat well done steaks (childhood takes a dark turn, ha, but they're mostly Norwegian so that explains the lack of taste), they have big parties for any holiday, and you always feel welcome in their very spacious homes that they fill with nice decor even if you're just there for a perfectly manicured backyard cookout. They’re teachers, truck drivers, dental hygienists, ad execs, scientists, mechanics, builders and nurses. But the relatives who try to set their wives on fire or rob banks make for more entertaining stories. I don't see myself in any of them really. I've always been different and never felt like I belonged there. I was right.

I'm an amalgamation of limited pop culture, endless crime show paranoia, mental illness, the 1000 books I've read, and-

a mother who made major life decisions too early in life because her own parents were a mess. She turned it around and has has worked very hard to create an ideal life while she taught me to be better and more adventurous than she was. She only reads Danielle Steel novels, eats dry cereal by the handful for a snack, and lives for doing super touristy stuff like covered bridge tours. She’s the kind of person you’ll find wearing two pairs of sunglasses because she can’t feel them on top of her head. She never goes to Chicago because it’s too dangerous but eventually I’m going to get her there. She always tells me to be brave, try new things, while she herself cannot. She somehow finds the time and energy to always be go go go, have a huge social circle, and enjoy doing shit like vacuuming and tending to her yard. While I don’t have her green thumb, I have her appreciation for the little things, game night competitiveness, and we are the only people who can make each other laugh until we cry over something very mundane like furniture moving...

A stepfather played the drums in a rock cover band, listened to all the oldies, told a story about a dead pig that could make me laugh til I cried every time I heard it, would pull over while driving so I could pick purple clover to nibble on, and who tried to teach me about lawn care but for someone allergic to grass I was so not interested at all but I was very interested in driving the car which he started teaching me to do when I was 10. Less interested in the semi truck but I drove that once too. He made me ride on his motorcycle once. Did not like. My shoe melted onto his muffler so that never happened again...

A bipolar father (that I looked very much like before his prison stay) who modeled himself around fat 70's Elvis, worked as a used cars salesman for most of my childhood, only ate Cheeto products after midnight so he woke up with orange fingers, let me watch all the horror films (Chucky was my favorite since I was 2) but made them funny thus warping my perception of them for life, taught me you can say anything insulting as long as you say it a certain way so it’s funny vs. straight sarcasm, enjoyed Mystery Science Theater 3000 so we we turned every film we watched into our own version, quoted MADtv skits while never showing me anything SNL related so I have no reference for any of the pop culture references that clearly SNL won long term...

A stepmother who was a much fatter version of 90's Roseanne Barr that smelled like peppermint lotion and who taught me self care routines, every Stevie Nicks song, and that Savage Garden’s debut album was way better than one insanely overplayed song. In retrospect I don’t blame her for leaving my dad, dude was an asshole to his partners, but at the time it felt like a death as she cut off all contact and it set off a chain of events that shaped the outcome of everything...

A younger brother who annoyed the hell out of me, who merely by still being alive proved I’m not a sociopath because I would have snuffed him out so fast, and I feel has contributed nothing to my development in a positive way. I’ve been robbed of better presents at Christmas, parental attention, and my belongings that he lit on fire because he was a pyromaniac or traded with his friends for drugs. He gave me the scar on my bikini line but I broke off half his tooth that he’s never had capped. We’re even. He always wanted to be Oddjob when we played GoldenEye so I feel that tells you the kind of asshole I had to deal with. 

And most importantly there are my partners. I'm an infusion of their tastes, quirks, expressions, and qualities. Not to say that I take what I want from them, like a Greatest Hits album or something of their best, but my love for them fuels a love of some of what they love and they inevitably rub off on me. If one looks they'll see little mirrored reflections of themselves in me. My own little love letters, pieces of you woven together with pieces of me. 

[tisthenightofthewitch]

The Whispering Walls of Tobias Forge

“I am all eyes

I am all ears

I am the wall

And I’m watching you fall

Because faith is mine.”

From “Faith” by Ghost

What is the path to Satanism?

I must confess to knowing next to nothing about Satan, and therefore very little about how one may come to practice Satanism.  My most vivid image of all things Satanic is being terrified watching Robert DeNiro’s portrayal of Lucifer in Angel Heart (1987). And I suspect DeNiro’s depiction is consistent with many people’s view of Satan – an entirely evil being whose sole purpose is to tempt humans to commit horrific acts, and then revel in the sadistic pleasure of being able to torture their immortal souls for eternity.

Yet as I researched the concept of Satan further, I found that Satan may take on different meanings for different people. For some, Satan is something of a cautionary tale -- a tragic figure whose own ambition caused him to be thrown out of Heaven. Others view Satan as more of a spiritual concept – the tendency for humans to be tempted by their own natural instincts such as lust, hatred or greed. And still others view Satan as almost a sad, comical and cartoonish figure – something to be laughed at rather than feared.

But for Tobias Forge, the lead singer and songwriter of the Grammy-nominated band Ghost, Satan came to represent something very different – a symbol of a rebellious libertarian-style individuality and non-conformity. As such, Forge sees his path to Satanism as a celebration rather than a condemnation of his humanity.

To understand Forge’s journey to Satanism, it is important to consider what appears to make him tick – a seemingly non-stop lust for imagination, exploration and creativity. And perhaps just as Satan was considered by many to be the highest of all angels in heaven, so Forge was initially in awe of Christianity as a spiritual vehicle.

Forge explained how his mother was instrumental in fostering his open-minded approach to the world. “My mom is very liberal. She has never been religious … spiritual but not religious. However she worked in art, and had a very avid interest in art and culture. So she presented church to me as more of an archeological or more museum-like institution … more from a historic perspective,” Forge told me. “She took me to Paris for example. And in addition to going to the Louvre and seeing art, we definitely went to Notre Dame and places like that because it was part of the art experience. And I was always very in awe of … all of those churches … So from my mom’s side that whole thing was very interesting and enthralling and very enticing.”

“Religion was more of a fictional art explosion.”

One church in particular that inspired awe in Forge was the Linkoping Domkyrka. “Even in my hometown of Linkoping where I grew up … the Church we had was very lavish – very boasty. So it ticked most of the boxes of big imposing Christianity. And I love being there if I’m in town … because it’s just this haunting place,” Forge explained. “The walls are just whispering there – literally because people engraved things in the stone. It goes back to the 1700’s when kids were in there for Bible school and you see someone engraving his name and it says something like ‘June 3rd 1772.’

“Seeing that when you were a kid was like, ‘Wow a message from ancient days.’”

Forge’s cultural experience included film and books that often offered an alternative and darker perspective on spirituality. “Not only did we read a lot at home, we also watched a lot of films. So I had already seen a lot of films that were about the crucifixion and the temptation of Christ, like Bible history and the Ten Commandments – stuff like that,” Forge recalled. “And I started watching horror films and you obviously have the Devil very present – The Exorcist, The Omen – all these dark powers … And religion – and more specifically because I grew up in a Christian country, Christianity – was of interest.

“Because it was just a fantastic story and it was ancient and it was filled with a lot of drama.”

More, Forge had access to music – particularly rock music – at an early age. Forge credits his brother with his music education. “My brother gave me my first records when I was about three or four years old, because he bought a lot of records. And he was very nice because he gave me the records he thought I’d like more. My first records were Kiss’s Love Gun, Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry, and Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil. That had immense influence on me,” he described. “When I was 8 years old I was already very interested in music. I already had my own records. I already had my own guitar. I already played guitar. I was already into many of the things that to this day I’m still deeply influenced by… a lot of 60’s music – the Doors, the Kinks, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones … You can go to a galaxy far, far away. And you can go into the Pink Floyd world and you can travel to Hyde Park in 1969 and watch the Rolling Stones pay tribute to Brian Jones.

“And it was a bigger, tasteful, stronger world that was so far away from the world that I lived in.”

And so it was that at an early age Forge viewed the world as one giant place to celebrate his free spirit – to explore, imagine and create. And he saw religion as a potent vehicle – along with various art forms – of nurturing his curiosity. But things changed for Forge when he encountered people whose practice of Christianity seemed geared more towards smothering rather than facilitating his spirit.

“I regarded certain people in my life … and school as handicapping … limiting. Throughout my childhood there were examples of the Christian people that I met – people who were in one form or another were devoted to any church or congregation. They were more often than not -- not very nice people. They were actually quite mean and condescending,” Forge explained. “Whereas I found my stereo and my VCR and my mom and the comfort of our home was this great universe of imagination where you can tap into whatever.”

“That made me look for other religious elements.”

Forge described his encounter with a teacher whose approach to Christianity felt more like servitude rather than support. “My first teacher … she was extremely strict, mean and deeply religious. I don’t think she followed the school curriculum – how many religious hours we were supposed to have … I remember reading a lot of Bible history.  She was definitely a very authoritative woman. And she liked discipline. And she didn’t like rebellious cursing kids,” he explained. “I was pretty foul mouthed. I was rebellious … and I questioned things. So I think we collided at first. She didn’t like me and I did not like her. And that pretty much screwed up my whole school, because I lost interest. Not in learning – but in going to school.  I didn’t like the idea of teachers … and she was against me and everything that I stood for. I was looking for freedom … and she was against that.

“And she definitely became the symbol for Christianity and not being very nice.”

Unfortunately, Forge had a similar experience with his stepmother, who Forge feels resented him as interfering her relationship with his father. “When they got together, he had this newborn kid. I was in the way of course. And she was deeply in love with my dad. And when you’re in love with someone you want to get on with the rest of your life together as soon as possible – no obstacles. And I was an obstacle,” he described. “She was also a symbol of the not-so-nice Christian society. In one way they were proclaiming to be advocates for being nice, and kindness and understanding, whereas I saw nothing of that.”

“And that started an interest in looking for the dark side.”

Soon, Forge started exploring Satanism as a form of spiritual rebellion against what he considered the oppressive behavior of some of the Christian people in his life. As Forge tells it, he was in many ways primed for this path not only by being open-minded and imaginative in general, but also specifically by the music that he listened to throughout his life.

“As a young teen, Satan, and the idea of some sort of world that you could be in touch with that could empower you was very much the symbol for freedom … “I guess more so than I had already been introduced to by Motley Crue and Gene Simmons and Darth Vader,” he said. “When adolescence was knocking, there are another set of emotions that come into play. And the idea of the Devil and the idea of dark powers from beyond that continue in any way or form is a very interesting thought for a twelve year old who wants to lose his virginity, and who would like to defend himself against the bigger kids and who is also a big worshipper of rock music. And it couldn’t have been more of a fitting marriage. Everything sort of coincided.

Forge’s interest in Satanism coincided with a cultural trend towards more extreme forms of metal – particularly black metal in which the themes were more overtly Satanic. “I think in 99.9% of every so-called Satanist in the last 50 years, you would find that the vast majority of them have been introduced to the Devil via music. And it usually happens at a certain age as well. And I would say that comes from bedazzlement,” Forge said. “And it was also the early 90’s – so that was the rise of the death metal and black metal movement in Europe and in the world I guess. Especially in Sweden and Norway, it was a big thing. And it was just right up my alley. And it became such a powerful way of expressing myself, and how to not only deviate and differentiate myself from the norm and normal people, but just like hand in glove with my way of seeing the world.”

As time went on, Forge felt that his issues were more with organized religion, which he appears to shun, as compared to spirituality, which he embraces. “Most people that I know that have been in a similar mindset. It’s definitely grounded in the will to expand and not implode. And I think most of us – people like myself – are leery of linear, organized religions because it’s limiting,” He described. “Those people that tried to tell me the order of the world from a religious point of view – they tried to steer me away from believing. They tried to steer me away from feeling those feelings that I want or should have -- feelings that I got through Dee Snider – “I Wanna Rock,” “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Or “Shout At The Devil” -- Motley Crue. They tried to steer me away from that – they didn’t want me to believe in anything other than what they said. It goes against imagination. You’re not supposed to have imagination.

“You’re supposed to read up on someone else’s imagination.”

Forge makes it clear that he does not dismiss religion outright – and in fact still struggles with understanding many of the religious concepts he learned as a child. “I am not against the idea of believing. I am not an atheist … The whole institution of Christianity being based on that book, being based on the premise that he was conceived out of nowhere -- it’s kind of hard to believe,” Forge described. “But on the other hand, I do believe in the idea of a historic person named Jesus that was a kind of chill dude who was just telling people to chill and be nice to each other. And he got penalized for that. So I’m not dismissing the whole thing as bullsh*t. But I definitely believe that tormenting other people because of the Bible and for that to be – for lack of a better word, Gospel.

“I think that is not very nice.”

For now, Forge is content exploring much of his Satanic spirituality through his work with Ghost – often taking on confrontational stage personas as “Papa Emeritus” and “Cardinal Copia.”  These challenging themes are so present in Ghost’s music and live show that the band has been labeled “occult rock.” As Ghost has just released its fourth full length studio album Prequelle and is in the midst of a world tour, Forge is aware of how he is now walking in the footsteps of the bands that had so deeply influenced him.

“It’s funny how the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree. I’ve gone full circle being in a shock rock band nowadays, running around shouting at the devil and telling people to stay hungry and shooting love guns.”

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[ghoulishboyhummel]

HOLY SHIT IS THAT [ AVAN JOGIA ]?! Oh, wait it’s just [ AARON HUMMEL ]. Damn, [ HE ] looks good for [ 22 ], good thing that they’re [ BISEXUAL ], I might have a chance. I hear that they call them the [ MISCREANT ] of the [ SOUTH SIDE ]. I guess that’s because they’re [ SELFISH ] and [ DISRUPTIVE ]. But I don’t think a lot of people know that they’re also [ CHARISMATIC ] and [ PROTECTIVE ]. Can’t wait to see what kind of trouble [ LOGAN/25/CST ] will bring.

01.  BASICS

Full Name: Aaron James Hummel

Nickname: A, A A Ron, Assron, Hummel, Ghoulie King, Ronny {no longer in use}

Sex/Gender: Cismale

Birthday: October 31st, 1996

Age: 22

Astrological Sign: Scorpio

Occupation: Stripper at the Ho Zone

Spoken Languages: English and ASL

Sexual Orientation: Bisexual

Birthplace: Greendale

Relationship status: Single

02. PHYSICAL TRAITS

Hair Color/Style: Black, shoulder length, occasionally in a ponytail.

Eye Color: Dark Brown

Face Claim: Avan Jogia

Height: 5′10

Weight: 168lbs.

Tattoos: Ghoulie tattoo on his left forearm

Piercings: Both earlobes and helix on his right ear

Unique Attributes: Birthmark on his back

Defining Gestures/Movements: He cracks his knuckles pretty often

Posture: Shitty

03. PERSONALITY TRAITS

Pet Peeves: People who walk slow and snitches.

Hobbies/Interests: Filming and guitar playing

Special Skills/Abilities: Sneaky

Likes: Onion rings, drinking, parties, spicy food, messing around on his guitar, getting gifts

Dislikes: Being wrong, Burt Hummel, vegetables, tea

Insecurities: Being given up at age 5

Quirks/Eccentricities: Aaron messes with his hair a lot

Strengths: Persistent, persuasive, clever, confident

Weaknesses: Stubborn, selfish, and rude

Speaking Style: Bored but casual

Temperament: He can go from 0-100 real quick, it’s pretty easy to set him off.

04. FAMILY & HOME

Immediate Family: Burt Hummel (Adoptive Father), Elizabeth Hummel (Adoptive Mother), Kurt Hummel (Adoptive Brother)

How do they feel about their family? Aaron loved Elizabeth and always will, Burt and him don’t get along though. Ever since he ran away, their conversations have only been between a gang member and the Sheriff of Riverdale. With Kurt, he always claimed to hate him along with any other Northsider, but he loves his older brother and always enjoys talking to him.

How does their family feel about them? Elizabeth and him were very close, Burt wishes his son would stop being a gang leader and come home, but he’s starting to be past that point. Kurt and him get along really well

Pets: None, he’s considered getting a cat but doesn’t really have the time to take care of one.

Where do they live? Southside apartment

Description of their home: One Bedroom apartment. Very, VERY, cluttered, Aaron has never seen a broom in his life. Dishes are seldom in the cupboards, usually just stacked in the sink and he’ll rinse them to use from there. 

Description of their bedroom: Messy. He has a guitar stand with a guitar near his bed, often there are empty liquor bottles around.

05. THIS OR THAT

Introvert or Extrovert?

Optimist or Pessimist?

Leader or Follower?

Confident or Self-Conscious?

Cautious or Careless?

Religious or Secular?

Passionate or Apathetic?

Book Smarts or Street Smarts?

Compliments or Insults?

Pajamas or Lingerie?

06. FAVORITES

Favorite Color: Blue

Favorite Clothing Style/Outfit: He wears his Ghoulie jacket most of the time. He dresses fairly casual, jeans, and old black boots.

Favorite Bands/Songs/Type of Music: A lot of classic rock, ACDC, Led Zepplin, Queen, that kind of thing

Favorite Movies: The Shining, The Sixth Sense, Get Out, Seven, Silence of the Lambs, Black Swan, really any horror movie. Documentaries, especially ones about serial killers, and secretly, he does like Mamma Mia

Favorite Books: Historical fiction, i.e, The Book Thief

Favorite Foods/Drinks: Pizza, wine, and onion rings

Favorite Sports/Sports Teams: N/A

Favorite Time of Day: Morning

Favorite Weather/Season: Winter

Favorite Animal: Elephant.

07. MISCELLANEOUS

Fears/Superstitions: He’s afraid that he’s holding onto resentment for parents that really did want him but circumstances got the best of everyone. Also ghosts

Political Views: Anarchist

Addictions: Alcohol, it’s better than it used to be but he’s still a mess

Best School Subject: History

Worst School Subject: Math

School Clubs/Sports: Being one of the school sluts

How does he get money? Working at the Ho Zone as a stripper

How is he with technology? Fairly decent

08. PAST & FUTURE

Fondest Memory: Getting adopted

Deepest, Darkest Secret: During a fight when he was 20, he beat some Southside asshole to a pulp and left him in some alley behind a bar. The next night he realized he had no idea if the guy ever made it or not. Aaron might have some unknown guys blood on his hands and he has no idea.

Dream Vacation: Bahamas

Best thing that has ever happened to this character: Meeting the Ghoulies after he ran away from the Hummels at 14.

Worst thing that has ever happened to this character: Bio parents giving him up and Elizabeth dying

What do they want to be when they grow up? Secretly, a director in Hollywood

Perfect Date: A bed and wine, movies optional.

09. HEADCANONS

Aaron spent a year at the orphanage in Greendale after his mother and father dropped them off there. He only had one best friend the entire time he was there, Jason, but he got adopted a few months before Aaron did.

It was love at first sight with Elizabeth and Aaron. He immediately hung off of every word she spoke, and he couldn’t have asked for a better mother. He liked Kurt and Burt too, was excited to have an older brother to look up to.

Elizabeth’s death a year after hit Aaron hard. He felt as though he was losing another family, scared Burt would bring him back to the orphanage. Of course that didn’t happen and Burt did his best for the boys, picking up more shifts at the station, leaving Kurt, though still young, in a leadership role around home. 

When Burt was promoted to Sheriff, Aaron was 14 and things were already tough between them at home, constantly butting heads and fighting, so Aaron decided to grab his belongings and leave in the middle of the night, not knowing where he’d end up. This was the last night he would have spoken to his father without the uniform.

Despite that Aaron claimed to all the Ghoulies and any other Southsiders who’d listen that he hated the Northside, he kept in contact with his brother in secret. Sure, he hated Burt, but Kurt was his brother and he probably needed him. He was the closest thing to his mom he’d ever have.

Aaron was a school slut during high school, he had no interest in trying when it came to doing his classwork and he barely graduated, not that he really cared.

[melissafoxmedia]

Gender roles, witches, demons and Hereditary. A film essay and review.

An opinionated and biased essay ahead, perfectly imperfect. This writer is aware of said bias's and welcomes your ideas respectuflly. Proceed. 

Halfway through his movie, I turned to my husband and said, “I think we might need therapy when this is all over.” I’d like to start with a caveat that we are a household that loves horror movies. In my opinion, horror is an under-appreciated genre. I'm not talking about franchise horror films, of which we are not a fan, with the exception of Insidious. I'm talking, The Shining, Blair Witch Project, Suspiria, Mommy, Let The Right One In, Babbadook. Classic horror tales and the like. Greek tragedies, even Shakespear. I have a lot to say about this one. So fair warning, this essay is long. 

A QUICK BACKGROUND

I grew up reading Steven King, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe, Anne Rice and Mark Danielewski. I would argue that even my favorite fantasy and science fiction writers like Tolkien and George R.R. Martin borrow from the horror genre. 

What solidified my interest in horror was actually a class in Chinese and Japanese cinema and art history. I enjoyed studying the nuances of the culture through the stories they told. Most of which were ghost stories. Ancestral worship is part of their culture. When visiting someones home, you might find a shrine to their passed loved ones. Ghosts are a normal, everyday part of their spiritual life. So too are their ghost stories. 

This connection to the dead is apparent in many cultures. The Celtic festival of Samhain, The Buddhist Obon, Dia De Los Muertos, Chuseok in Korea and Gai Jatra in Nepal. All have ceremonies and celebrations that honor ancestral spirits. Essentially, the ghosts of your family. I joke that even the Bible is one long ghost story. Full of death, rebirth, angels, demons, spirits, voices and apocalyptic visions. But where eastern religions and ancient cultures differ is around the premise of fear. Specifically spirits.

Take, for instance, the Buddhist Obon and Del Dia De Los Muertos. Celebrations designed to honor the people who came before you. Essentially, one envokes the spirits of your ancestors come back to visit the living. One would light lanterns or lay a path of flowers to guide those spirits back to earth for the celebration. You are literally inviting ghosts to come and have dinner with you. These rituals are not fear based spiritual practices. You will find no children running away in horror from the ghosts of great granddad. They are beautiful rituals full of dancing, prayer, and community.  

I grew up going to Church for a large part of my life, so my religious experiences of adolescence are based on my experiences with the Chrisitan church. Here notes my personal bias. I have no such memories of honoring my ancestors in a such a way from the Church. In fact, anything involving something seance-like would have been viewed as the devil. The dead are mourned in quiet reverence but one must be careful in creating any false idols. The only ghost that is ok to envoke, is the holy ghost. It's still very old testement thinking when it comes to this one. 

I have a vivid memory of sitting on a picnic bench at Jesus camp, 13 years old, sobbing uncontrollably. I just listened to a fiery sermon about hell and I was truly conflicted. I was already "saved," having said the prayer and done the ritual at 8 years old. But my father was not. He was an atheist. I didn't want him to go to hell. I was terrified and felt guilty. My counselor at the time kept pressing me to call him. She wanted me to "get him saved," right now. 

As an adult, I see how flawed that moment was. I did not call my father that night. I couldn't understand how my Christian peers thought less of me for doing so. I thought for sure that God would understand my compassion. My father and I had already discussed his feelings. He always respected my right to choose a religion, and I liked that, so I respected his. But that is not how I was treated by members of the Church. Needless to say, my relationship with the Church ended shortly thereafter and became an agnostic in my adult life. 

I could give many instances of examples of why I feel that Christianity is a fear based religion, but I am not defending that point for this essay. Let's assume that it is. 

I think it's interesting that our writer for Hereditary uses Goetia as it's religious influence. Goetia, an ancient Greek word that literally means sorcerer, get's its roots from the 16th century. Later, during the Renaissance, it became dubbed "black magic." The backdrop for the ending of the film and it's 17th-century Greek influence, we will explore later. But culturally, I think it's worth looking at this film through an American lens, of which, most of the population is Christian, making the comparisons I make relevant. Hereditary is an American film, written by an American writer. So I don't think he is trying to say anything specific about religion, other than to use it as a horror construct. This writer is obviously aware of his audience and is using that within his film. 

We like horror films about evil, possession and ghosts almost as much as we like superhero movies. That classic good versus evil fight. We love it when the lines are drawn in the sand and the tension is clear. We don't get that kind of clarity in life. In fact, life is made up of many unknowns and gray areas. Those two, a cause of our fear and anxiety. 

Hereditary doesn't put this idea front and center. Which is why I love it. The supernatural takes a back seat up until the second act. It dives headfirst into the gray areas to establish our characters and keeps us in the deepend with our worst fears. 

ABOUT HEREDITARY - NON-SPOILER REVIEW

Hereditary is brilliantly written and performed. If I were awarding Oscars, I would give one to the writer and one to the lead actress. The writing and specifically her performance is award worthy. It is visually stunning and draws from some of the best ancient storytelling techniques of the ages. Its greek tragedy influence is what makes the whole story so strong. The best moments are the long takes, the timing of the edit, the absence of music and truly breathless performances. 

But I would argue that the best thing about Hereditary is what it doesn’t explicitly say. Like a Greek Tragedy, it’s about the things that take place in-between the lines that make it so terrifying. It’s a spiritual horror film that speaks to our fears of inheriting the tragedies and traits of our ancestors. It’s about secrets between parents and children. Grief and it’s emotional manifestations. How tragedy can transform a person. It’s about the unspeakable terror that leads to more questions than answers. If you are looking for a nice bow-tie ending, you won’t get it. You are more likely to walk away going, “huh?” I loved the ending, but I think it will turn a lot of people off. It’s not what you are used to these days. 

The best thing about the movie, in my opinion, is about women, spirituality, possession, and emotion. Which leads us to the essay below. I won’t be diving into Greek Tragedy or deconstruction of its uses in horror films. That’s for another day. I think it’s been widely documented in reviews thus far. I’d like to take a look at Gender, Christianity, Religion and how this film plays with those larger social constructs. 

GENDER ROLES IN HORROR FILMS 

Gender roles in horror films are one of my favorite things to pick apart culturally. If you want to dive in more, this is an excellent place to start. Women in horror films have a long history of being gas-lighted by the male characters they interact within the plot. They are scorned with male “logic,” that the things they are experiencing aren’t real. Usually, they are tortured, shallow characters that look pretty and scream on cue. Often viewed as “crazy,” and spend most of the plot running from danger. This isn't always the case, there are a few standouts. But for the most part, I think the above is true. Women are either victims or "witches," in the majority of horror films. I also think it's interesting how we treat women who are having spiritual experiences. In our stories, we are uncomfortable with female emotion. Therefore, if someone is having an extremely emotional experience, we are likely to view them as scary.

We are at our roots a Puritan nation. One whose fear of “the devil,” allowed us to pillage “savage Indians,” in the name of that fear. Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries persecuted thousands of witches. Whole villages of Swiss women were wiped out in the hysteria.

In America, we have the Salem witch trials. 

I recently got to visit Salem Massachusetts. I read this fantastic book before I went called, “A Delusion Of Satan, The full story of the Salem witch trials.” Which outlines in more context the conditions and beliefs that lead to the "witch hysteria.” Today, those Puritans have received their Karma. Salem is a joke. It’s become a tourist Halloween town. Complete with haunted houses, tarot readers, and hippie spiritualists. The “devil,” they so fought to destroy has won. I laughed thinking about the righteous judges jumping through time to see children running around in witch costumes pretending to put spells on each other in their beloved village.  

The story of Salem became a cautionary tale of the dangers of religious belief. But the book attempts to take it one step further in outlining the gender roles of women, power dynamics between men and women and femininity, creativity and inspiration. Unlike the modern telling of the story like “The Crucible,” the book deliciously researches connections from historical records. The trials were meticulously documented. Which may be why the story has been passed down to new generations and became taught in schools. But the book makes some connections for me that my 5th-grade classroom reading of The Crucible didn’t. 

Life was hard as a puritan and men made all the rules. Imagination was stifled among children. Art was functional. Creativity was not encouraged, survival was. Sexuality was almost exclusively prohibited as a sin of the flesh with the exception of procreation. Pleasure was not allowed. Expression among women was silenced. These are all feminine values. Women who express extreme emotion are “crazy,” while men who express themselves in extreme ways are “passionate.” Soon “crazy,” became “a witch.” Any outburst of extreme emotion and a woman could be accused of being possessed by the devil. Witch hunting thus became inherently female and while anyone a could be accused of being a witch, most of the persecution was of women. 

As a little girl, I played a lot in an imaginative space. I experimented with all kinds of storytelling and play acting. As a teenager, I was emotional and dramatic. I guarantee if I had been observed by a Puritan priest, they would have convinced the town that I was possessed. I think most artists would have been accused of witchcraft in that era.

These tropes still exist today. We still silence women. We write stories where they are silenced by others. In a large majority of our horror films, women are either the victims or for lack of a better term, "witches." As time moved on, we stopped persecuting witches and started locking women up in asylums for misbehaving.  Thus replacing "witch," with "crazy."

I’m sure at some point, we have all thought our mothers to be “crazy,” through this lens too. Extreme imaginative outbursts or expressions of emotion are squashed in our society. We can barely handle a crying baby on an airplane let alone a woman who cries in public. 

And here marks the line of spoilers people. If you wish to continue, do so at your own risk. I am about to talk about the details of the story. 

GENDER, DEMONS AND WITCHES IN HEREDITARY

 Hereditary begins with our main character, Annie, in the midst of working on her art. She creates model dioramas. It is implied as the story chugs along that these dioramas are her emotional outlet. This is how she processes grief, anger, and fear. The tension between imagination, memory, and reality play nicely here. Why in the world would someone make a miniaturized model of the death of her mother? 

I enjoyed the duality of the models with life. The idea that I could take memories and tragedies out of my head and examine them as real-life objects. To see if I could make sense of them, process them differently. This process apears painstaking in the film. The details are fussed over, out main character possessed with the idea of recreation. A rebirth of her pain. Nicely done. 

Next, we meet Charlie. Charlie is different. She makes you uncomfortable but we trust her slightly more because we assume it’s a mental disorder. The play on gender here is masterfully done. Our young actress is phenomenal but I question the casting choice. We love to put our humanly different in horror films and this borders exploitation for me. It's akin to pointing at her and calling her "freak." I get that we are establishing a long line of mental health issues for our characters, so I'll leave this one be. But do better next time. 

Next, the shocking tragedy that propels our characters into some of the best moments of the film. Personally, I did not see that one coming. The car accident begins our true emotional terror. 

Annie experiences real grief for the first time in the loss of her daughter. She was relieved when her own mother died, having been released from the burden of that relationship only to be thrust forward into the guilt of playing a part in her own daughter's death. Grief is not handled lightly here. Our main character moves through hysteric fits. She retreats. She creates twisted dioramas of the accident. All the while her husband grows more and more suspicious of her behavior. Her husband literally acts as men have throughout history. Questioning the intensity of her emotions and wondering if he should send her away. If we are sticking with our horror metaphors, Annie is possessed by grief. 

My favorite scene to illustrate this concept is at the dinner table. Tensions mount in the household to an emotional breaking point. Our male characters confront our female lead and claim that she isn’t being truthful about her feelings. They invite her to express herself. 

She does. This eruption is the best scene in the film. Rarely do we get to experience female emotional flow on the screen. The sight of a woman in full emotional and visual expression makes our male characters physically retreat from the scene. The very thing they invited her to express is the very thing they can not handle and rather than applaud her completion of this expression, they squash it. The men refuse to join her and instead they persecute her almost as if saying, "burn the witch.’ The refreshing length of the shot and the stellar performance by the actress is noteworthy. They do not shy away from the complexities of extreme emotions. 

I think all of us are afraid that if we let go on some level, what comes forth would be bad. Tapping into our emotional flow is scary. So scary that as a society we can’t handle people doing it in front of us. We tell each other, “don’t cry,” when comforting one another. We tell our men, “crying isn’t manly.” And when we see our lead actress express herself on screen, we too as an audience are scared. We question her sanity, if only for a moment. Can we pause for a moment to admire the cinematography choice here? It's like an 18th century painting. 

I mean, look at that still shot above. Gorgeous terrifying women in full power feeling herself fully. Just hand Tonni Collect the Oscar, please. This scene is fucking amazing. I applauded Annie's capacity to let go and laughed when the men wouldn't join her. Granted, it has taken me a long time to be ok with my own extremities of emotions but now that I am, I was praising this goddess on screen. I honestly can't think of another on screen performance that accomplishes this as well as Hereditary does. 

Emotoins escalate as the film begins introducing the supernatural to the plot. Annie, meets with a new friend in her grief group, this friend conducts a saence to bring back the spirit of her grandchild. It seems to work and despite her reservations, she tries it. This triggers the climax of our film and leads to its ultimate resolution after discovering that her mother had a secret spiritual life. Spirituality “literally," kept in a box and hidden away until the very end of the film. I think spirituality is what our writer wants you to infer as the "hereditary trait." It’s the thing that our lead character doesn’t want to inherit from her mother. Her secret life. Her mental illness. Her spirituality. One might even say, she demonizes her mother. 😉 

 CHARLIE

The gender play with Charlie is also worth noting. At the conclusion of the film, we learn that Charlie is a male demon reincarnated into a female body. His name is Paimon. His rencarnation into Charlie was a mistake, as we learn at the conclusion of the film. The whole film is a plot to correct this mistake. Charlie referenced as she presents more like a tomboy with an androgynous name. While women are often “Witches,” in our scary stories so to men are painted as “Demons.” 

I always wondered why this trope existed in our storytelling. Sometimes I think it's about dominance and submission, Witches serve Demons. Men subservient to women. Demons are usually powerful creatures in our stories. Females are usually the victims of demon possession, either used for literal possession or for impregnation. But it wasn’t always that way. 

In the pre-Christian era, demons were both male and female. Much like the ancient polytheistic religions that had many gods and goddesses, so too was the gender spectrum of demons. It’s Christianity that spun the gender roles and made them sexless. Technically, Christian demons are fallen angels, as referenced in the Bible. They are sexless beings whose purpose is to test human beings on their faith in God and lead them to sin. 

 "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.” —2 Corinthians 11:13–15

 I always wondered, why then do we paint demons as masculine throughout history? See that winged creature demon up there - - - what sex do you infer when observing it? For context, the above painting is Dante and Virgil in Hell - William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1850. It’s a scene from Dante’s inferno, in which there are several biblical references used to describe the journey into hell. This painting is terrifying in person btw. It’s the size of a billboard and you can see the demons eyes staring at you from all angles. Notice the color palet and the lighting on the main figures in the foregroud. Remind you of any shot from before? 

Back to Hereditary … 

Why does Paimon need a male body? Why is he unhappy in a female body? Paimon is supposed to be a Prince not a Princess. If you don’t know who Paimon is … you aren’t alone. I had to look it up too. He’s one of the kings of hell with Goetic orgins, also referenced in Persian and Iranian stories. The “King," denotes man right? 

Paimon is referenced in a demonology spell book called Lesser Key Of Solomon. Therein lists 72 demons of which, one is Paimon. Each demon has a symbol, which was a clue in the film. Annie wears one around her neck. Guess she should have googled the symbol before wearing it. 

 So essencially our demon "man-king," is pissed because he was born a woman and his followers work to correct the issue. Wow. Talk about some gender issues right? The wiki page for Paimon also gives us a hint at a sequel btw… go read it if you like.

SO have you made it this far? 

If you have, cheers to you. Welcome to my geekery. I spent a lot of money on my education in art history, English and film critique. Literally wrote a paper a day for 4 years. I’m still paying off the bill. Blogs are more refreshing though, I don’t have to worry about being perfect or getting graded. I can just share my passion for picking apart social and cultural references in storytelling. 

That said, if Hereditary made me spawn a long essay like this, imagine what it might do for you. I will warn you, my husband is still having nightmares from the visuals. Which I didn’t even get a chance to geek out about here. That said, I do think that our tales of horror are the most interesting things to look at in society. Our relationship to fear or lack thereof is still taboo. Last year marked the first time a horror film was nominated for an Oscar, and I think to Get Out was nominated more for its cultural relevance and discussion of race in our time. I’d love to see more from this writer. I was seriously impressed. It’s well researched and smart with an excellent understanding of pace and emotional landscapes. 

So just like our movie, here ends my essay. I’m not going to neatly tie this up.

What did you think of the film? 

[fangirlinganditswonders]

Meeting the gang (Patrick Hockstetter imagine)

► Summary: The reader will see herself hanging with the Bowers gang because of her best friend Cathy without knowing that it will unleash a wicked game between her and one of the members of the gang.

► Pair: Patrick Hockstetter x reader

► Warnings: Bad language, Patrick being... Patrick (Not that much tho...yet)

► Author’s notes: So I grew SUCH a crush on Owen Teague when I went to see “IT” for the first time and he plays the character I find the most interesting of the story so I though that besides of reading some Patrick imagines it could be cool if I started writing them as well. Hope you like it

PART 2

Feel free to contact me HERE or send me a message with anything you need!

Constructive criticism is always welcome.

The worst part of Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays? Having to stay at school for a few more hour after the end of the classes. The best part of those same days? You loved the meetings of the cinema club.

Your best friend Cathy was the one who convinced you to join the aforementioned club when the scholar year started. She had been part of it since last year and was pretty sure you would like being part of it so you decided to give it a try.

The first try you gave to it was a complete bop. Yeah, people were very nice and they seemed to spent lovely times together, but the film they talked about that day was “Love Story” one of the most known romantic dramas ever. Honestly, romantic films like that one were pretty boring to you so you were not seduced by the idea of joining the club the first day you went, but things were very different the second time Cathy brought you there. Why? Simple answer; horror films. Yes, those were definitely your kind of movies and the fact they talked about one of your ultimate favorites helped a lot to say yes to the cinema club. Eventually you’d learnt how to appreciate every movie you watched or talked about there, even the romantic ones.

So yeah, cinema club was great, specially because your bestie was there with you but lately she’d been missing a lot of meetings and you knew exactly why. Cathy Andersen, one of the “good girls” on school, who everyone knew because of her very religious and elitist family, was behind one of the most infamous kids on school who everyone knew because he was a bully whose way no one wanted to be on; Henry Bowers. When Cathy confessed who her crush was to you during the summer you weren’t shocked at all, after all, she was your best friend and knew perfectly how she liked the risks and people who her family considered “Not a good company for her little angel”. Yes, her parents didn’t like you very much either. You were just a girl who lived in the poorest area on Derry but you knew you had some other things money couldn’t buy, like clear as water ideas and manners. So Cathy liking someone like Bowers was not very surprising for you. The only thing you wanted to tell her about him was for her to be very careful and not let him change her in any way.”Sure Y/N, you don’t have to worry about that”. Guess what? She totally forgot that when the year started.

It all started one day at the hallway, when out of nowhere and as if it was the most normal thing to do for her she approached the Bowers gang and started to talk to them as if they were the closes friends. You were watching everything resting on your locker with your eyes wide open. You offered yourself to go with her cause the whole school knew those boys were not trustable but she wanted to go by herself. She started to spend more and more time whit the gang, specially Bowers who apparently may be liking her back or, just as you were worried, was just playing with your friend to hurt her at the end. Cathy started to lie to her parents saying she was with you when she was with Bowers and his minions, then started to skip some cinema club meetings and two days ago she skipped her first classed, moment you decided you needed to talk to her. “You don’t have to worry Y/N, I really appreciate you do so but please, trust me. Everything is okay”. Did you trust her words? Of course not, but what else could you do if every time you tried to talk to her she would be giving you the same type of answers and of course you were not telling her parents cause you didn’t want to betray her.

It was Friday and the cinema club just finished again without Cathy showing up. Some of the other members constantly were asking about her although they knew exactly she was with Bowers. You thought they were insisting hoping for you to say something different that would mean she had dumped Henry. “Y/N finally!” Cathy announced when you were leaving some books at your locker. “I thought you were spending the afternoon with Bowers and company” You said without looking at her until you closed your locker. “Look, I know you’re a little bit pissed to me and I get it, you have all the right to be” She started raising her hands as a peace sign. “I also know the opinion you have of Henry and his friends and…” You knew perfectly the smirk that was decorating her face right now, it was the I’ve had an amazing and also crazy idea you’re going to love but most of the times you didn’t love them at all “That’s why I thought you could spend the afternoon with us” “What? You’re kidding me right now” “I just want you to see that he hasn’t changed me at all. I mean, yes, I know I’ve changed a little bit…” “A little bit?” You asked crossing your arms “Maybe a little bit more than a little bit, okay, but he hasn’t made me. Those were decisions I made myself.” “Because of him Cathy” She sighed but her soft smile was back there in a matter of seconds. “This is why I want you to hang out with us. Just for today. Please… It would mean so much to me…” “Okay… You win”

After all, it could be useful to discover which intentions Henry had with her. In case you perceive something wicked on them Henry Bowers would have to listen to you.

~

The boys were waiting for you outside, on the parking lot.

“And please” Cathy started to whisper when you were approaching them “Be nice” You could see she was very happy with the fact that you were going to spend time with them and giving the boys, specially Henry, a chance. It was hard for you to not show on your face you didn’t want to be there with them but as you’d heard, it was not a good idea to show any evidence of discomfort, fear or vulnerability near them. “Well, I can finally do this; guys this is Y/N and Y/N these are Victor, Belch, Patrick and Henry” Of course you could felt the special voice tone she had unconsciously said the last name with. Cathy kept staring at all of you, waiting for somebody to be the first one to speak. “I’m sure she already knew us” Henry said putting his hands inside his pockets, a very typical gesture of him. “How couldn’t I?” Cathy immediately looked at you in a reprehensible way as your words sounded ruder than you wanted “I mean… Who doesn’t know you in this entire school, right?” Henry scoffed, earning a bad stare from you. “You’re also very well known around here” The boy who attended the name of Patrick spoke giving you a creepy smirk while so. The only answer he got from you was one of your eyebrows raising.”You do have your fans lovey” “First of all don’t call me lovey Hockstetter and…what exactly do you call fans to?” He shrugged before answering your question. “The boys that look at you like idiots when you pass them by and then start to say how hot you are. How do you call them?” “Freaks” And again he gave you that smirk you couldn’t decipher. “We were going to the arcade. Are you in?” Victor Criss asked you. “We can’t go” Belch stated “We’re six and there’s not enough space in the car for all of us” “Well that’s not a problem. Miss /Y/L/N could go sit on my lap. What do you say about that lovey?” If Patrick Hockstetter kept smirking that way to you it was going to be a rough afternoon. “Or I could just go by my motorbike and meet you there. What about that?” “Settled then” Cathy said before the lanky raven haired boy could answer your question. She grabbed Henry’s hand and started to walk towards the car after sending you an excited smile. You could see the last look Patrick gave to you before you put your helmet on. How could he be that shamelessly insolent?

Stories about the gang went on and on on your head while you were driving. They were known for being dangerous, rude and careless about almost everything. What the hell was Cathy doing hanging out with them? But well, some similar and not flattering words were said about you just because of where you lived and who your uncle had been; a drug dealer who died from overdose five months ago and who had been very close to her sister, your mom. People of Derry seemed to love to talk about other people without having a single idea of them at all and of course you and your family were not an exception. The gang’s car was already parked in front of the arcade when you got there, they were probably inside already. Indeed. Belch and Victor were focused on the game they were playing against each other on one of those machines, Cathy and Henry were fighting a duel on the air hockey table and Patrick was nowhere near apparently so you decided to ask for a drink and place yourself near the lovebirds so Cathy could see you. She waved at you with a huge smile on her face, moment Henry took advantage of to score a point. The two of them seemed pretty cool with each other. To be honest you were expecting to see Henry treating your friend like crap but you were gladly surprised to see otherwise but of course you were not going to admit it yet to her. Suddenly a slender arm appeared in front of your eyes, the hand at the end of it resting against the wall just few inches from your face. Your eyes followed the arm to the point it met the torso and then you just raised your head a little bit more to find Patrick’s face adorned with that stupid smirk again.

“Bored?” “I’m not into this kind of games to be honest” “That’s great because I’ve been thinking and maybe you and I could leave to play some more mature games, alone” Patrick licked his lips while approaching to you one step more leaving you almost encaged between his arm, his body and the machine you had next to you. You scoffed and rolled your eyes in a bored and cynical way. “Why don’t you leave me alone Hockstetter?” “I like the way my name sounds when you say it” “Back of” You knew exactly what he was trying to do, but he was not going to intimidate you. Shh, shh, shh” He placed his index finger on your lips, the cold of his ring on your chin. Now you were starting to get pissed but it was Patrick Hockstetter you were dealing with and it was not that easy. “Come on we could have a good time” “Go and have a good time with your own hand you freak”  Pushing him aside and walk towards Cathy was the only thing you needed to do, but you just could make two steps before his hand grabbed your jacket and brought you closer to him again. “I’m the best freak though” You frowned at him “Those freaks we were talking about before…  You shouldn’t put me in the same sack as them, that could make me angry and you don’t want that, right lovey?” He asked tilting his head with a threatening smile on his lips. “I don’t give a damn about what you want or not Hockstetter. Let me go now” “I suspected you would be a taught one but boy…” His eyes went over all your body while licking his lips again “I didn’t think I would like it this much” “You’re disgusting” “Everything okay round here?” Saved by the bell. Cathy approached you two, breaking the moment and the atmosphere Patrick had created which you used to put some space between you and that lanky freak. The afternoon was finally over and you were free thanks to a message your mom has sent you asking you to go home to take care of your young brother. You’d made Cathy happy and that pleased you and in addition you could have verified that maybe her relationship with Henry was not that bad but you were not lowering your guard towards him regardless.

“Hey lovey” You were already sitting on your motorbike about to put your helmet on when Patrick went out the arcade and approached you. “The hell you want now?” “I want you to reconsider my offer. Maybe not today but… If I like how you say my name I cannot wait to hear how it sounds when you scream it” Seeing that getting pissed and acting on the offensive was not effective you decided to give him the cynical treatment. “You’ll have to wait for a very long time for that to happen Hockstetter” Before he could say any other thing you put your helmet on and turned on your motorbike as a way of saying back the hell off to him. Didn’t know why but you decided to wait until Patrick entered the arcade again giving you one last smirk. It was definitely not over for Patrick Hockstetter. When he wanted something he wouldn’t stop until he had it, and boy, you certainly were between his brows and the next one on his list. He wanted to, way worse than he had wanted anyone before but for you it was just a twisted game coming from a twisted mind. You smiled sarcastically inside your helmet, finding the whole situation funny in its both meanings. The only thing you didn’t know was that it was just the beginning of it. 

[thewritenerd]

Victor and Adam: NaNoWriMo Day 4

In fact the whole place seemed mismatched. Like someone had just found a bunch of furniture and decorations in a charity shop, bought the lot and said that’ll do. ‘Hey guy’s.’ Chelsea called over waving franticly. ‘Adam’s joining us.’ Nate explained as he sat himself down in the teal chair. Chelsea’s grin widened. ‘That’s great.’ Adam nodded and took a seat in the red chair. The three of them ordered their lunches, which came with a free dog biscuit for Bongo who was tied up outside. When Nate popped out to give him his treat Chelsea turned to Adam and said. ‘So any luck with solving your little mystery?’ ve asked. ‘What? Oh no not really. I’ve been busy. You know with school.’ Chelsea rolled ver eyes. ‘You Adam Frankenstein are a certified nerd.’ For a moment ve looked thoughtful before shrugging. ‘Must run in the family.’ ‘Oh ha ha.’ ‘But seriously how can you not think finding out more is more important than studying different types of rock.’ ‘Actually we’re studying population growth at the moment.’ Chelsea shook ver head. ‘You know what I mean.’ ‘Yeah. But it doesn’t matter. I didn’t see who it was and I haven’t seen anyone since. And I’ve been going to the ruins every chance I get. There’s been nothing.’ 

‘What are you two talking about?’ Nate asked returned to the table. ‘Oh we’re just talking about Adam’s mystery man.’ Nate rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t know why you two are still making a deal out of that. It was probably just some drunk dude who got lost.’ ‘Well he didn’t sound drunk.’ Adam muttered. Though truth be told he wasn’t entirely sure what a drunk person sounded like. ‘Well there’s no point talking about it. Whoever it was clearly hasn’t come back.’ Nate reasoned taking a sip of his drink. Adam wanted to keep talking but Chelsea shot him a warning look so instead he turned to his salad. ‘So Adam what’s your verdict on school? Now that you’ve had a week to experience it.’ Chelsea asked. Nate raised an eyebrow at ver. ‘What I’m just curious,’ ne shrugged. For a moment Adam didn’t speak. What did he think of school? He knew he didn’t like English, words were hard, or history or religious studies. He liked maths, and he had mixed feelings about science. His dad had insisted he take all three sciences, but physics was the only one Adam felt he was any good at. He spent most of Art and IT messing around though he did like doing line sketches. He’d been banned from using the pottery wheel after pressing so hard on the peddle it had broken. Then there was the people. Miss Nakajima was nice, as was his geography teacher and his physics teacher seemed to have picked him out as one of his favourites. His chemistry teacher didn’t seem to like him but then again she seemed like the kind of person who hated kids in general. But the other teachers seemed to ignore him. Sometimes so much so he had taken to asking Nate or Chelsea or even Shreya in the two lessons they had together for help. He knew they were ignoring him because they would look right at him with his hand raised, and he wasn’t exactly easy to overlook. Then there was Jouko who had decided he really didn’t like Adam. He wasn’t so bad in maths but everywhere else… ‘It’s fine.’ Adam eventually replied. ‘I like physics.’ He added quickly. Chelsea scoffed. ‘Of course you do. You’re Mr Keen‘s favourite. I mean I’m surprised all the science teachers don’t love you you’re a living experiment.’ Adam shrugged. ‘Well I’m not a chemistry experiment which is probably why Mrs Newell doesn’t like me.’ He joked. ‘Honestly I thought you’d be the exception for her.’ Nate joked. ‘You gonna eat those?’ he added pointing to the small cubes of hard bread Adam had left at the bottom of his bowl. He shook his head and handed the bowl to Nate. ‘Thanks.’ He began eating them one at a time. Chelsea rolled ver eyes at him but didn’t look up from ver phone. ‘So Adam got any plans for the rest of the day? Cause Nate and I were going to the cinema. After Nate’s dropped Bongo back home of course.’ Adam shook his head. ‘No I was just going to go home and… Well I hadn’t decided what I was going to do next.’ ‘Well then come with us. In fact you can choose. I want to see a horror film. But Nate wants to see this new spy flick. Which one do you want to see?’ Adam shrugged. The only films he’d seen so far were a few black and white comedies Igor liked and that film about a girl who found a magic door he’d found on tv one day. ‘We could flip a coin.’ He suggested. ‘Sounds good to me,’ Chelsea said pulling a coin from ver pocket. ‘Hey Nate heads or tails?’ ‘Uh heads?’ Chelsea threw the coin in the air caught it and slammed it down on the back of her other hand. ‘Tails I win. We’re watching my choice.’ Nate sighed and stood up. ‘Fine. But we need to get going if I’m going to drop Bongo off in time.’

***

It was decided that while Nate went home Chelsea and Adam would get the snacks for the cinema. They were trying to decide whether to get popcorn or crisps when out of the corner of his eye Adam noticed a woman standing not too far away glaring at him. At first he wondered if he knew her, but she didn’t look familiar. ‘Can we help you?’ Chelsea called having looked round and also spotted the woman. The woman raised her eyebrow and scoffed. ‘Well I don’t know, are you with…’ She gestured to Adam. Chelsea and Adam exchanged glances neither sure what this lady was getting at. ‘Uh yeah.’ Chelsea eventually replied. The lady gave her a smile that didn’t look either friendly or happy. ‘Really? All by yourself? Are you sure that’s safe. I mean.’ She dropped her voice to a loud whisper. ‘I don’t think it should even be out in public.’ For a moment the two of them just stared at her unsure what to say. ‘Umm what?’ Chelsea eventually asked laughing. ‘Lady we’re just buying snacks.’ ne turned to Adam. ‘Do you know her?’ Adam shook his head. No he didn’t know her. But he was used to strangers not liking him. But none of them had been as forward as this person. ‘Well didn’t you hear about what that thing did.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘Why that poor family I can’t imagine the grief. Honestly that thing should have been destroyed. I mean all this nonsense about…’ She never got to finish her sentence because she was interrupted by Chelsea admitting an inhuman screech and giving her a hard shove. ‘How dare you!’ ve screamed. ‘How dare you speak about him like that. Adam is my friend. Not only that but he’s a human fucking being. A human child at that.’ Ve spat. The woman was shaking with rage. ‘That thing is no human. It’s a monster.’ There was that word again. Monster. It rang in Adam’s ears like an alarm, repeating continuously long after it had been spoken. Adam didn’t hear the rest of the argument. He didn’t hear anything at all. All he could think was how he had to get out of there. Not really thinking about what he was doing he dropped the pack of coke cans he’d been holding and started walking towards the exit. Though walking was slow and difficult with his legs shaking so much. And the fact the world wouldn’t stop spinning didn’t help. In fact truth be told he felt a little bit nauseas. And were the bottoms of his trousers wet? When had that happened? Once he’d reached the doors he just kept walking not really sure where he was going. Was he going anywhere? He didn’t even notice Chelsea calling his name and running after him until he almost stood on ver. ‘Oh sorry Chelsea.’ Ve shook ver head. ‘It’s fine. Are you okay?’ Adam opened his mouth to speak but another wave of nausea hit him and he closed it again. Chelsea frowned looking concerned. ‘Hey don’t listen to that bat. Okay? She’s an ass just looking to cause trouble.�� Then ve reached out and tugged on his arm. ‘Come on let’s go find Nate.’ But Adam just stood where he was. ‘She knew,’ he muttered. ‘She knew about… What I did…’ Chelsea frowned. ‘Adam what are you talking about?’ But he couldn’t say it. No if he told nem the truth ne would see him no differently than that woman did. And then another thought hit him. How many other people knew? Did his teachers? Was that why they avoided him? ‘I didn’t mean to.’ He whispered not realising he was speaking out loud. ‘Didn’t mean to what? Adam!?’ but Adam ignore his friend instead walking away again. ‘I’m going home. I. I don’t feel well.’ He hoped he sounded convincing. It wasn’t quite a lie but he wasn’t very experienced in telling half-truths. Chelsea raced to catch up with him. ‘Hey if you don’t want to go see a film that’s fine. Maybe we could go back to your place and hang there?’ Adam stopped. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yeah. Look I can’t just let one of my best friends go off alone when their upset without at least trying to cheer them up.’ ‘I’m one of your best friends? You’ve only known me a week.’ Chelsea shrugged. ‘Hey it’s not like I have a lot of options.’ This made Adam laugh. Just a little but it felt nice. ‘See I’m exactly what you need when you’re feeling down.’ ‘Okay I’ll give Igor a call and tell him about the change of plans.’ While they walked to the cinema where they were supposed to be meeting Nate Adam rang home. Igor picked up fairly quickly and seemed fine with the idea of having two surprise guests. ‘My my first Victor now you. We are popular today.’ He chuckled. ‘Wait what do you mean first dad?’ ‘Oh nothing. Just your father had an old school pal pop round for a chat while we were out.’

[toongrrl-blog]

Pink Power Rankings (Pt. 2)

This is our next segment of “Pink Power Rankings”, I hope to do a few more in the future, including ones centered on the American Girl dolls and the Disney Princesses. The video above is the famous “Think Pink!” musical number from Funny Girl, so without further ado, time to rank these pink moments!

The Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling

This is a show where wrestlers do their thing on a ring bordered by pink ropes, so of course pink is going to come up....a lot. Even when it comes to donuts and abortion ( “I like pink things” “Well if you liked pink things less, you wouldn’t be in this situation”). The show centers on a team of diverse women wrestlers and their manager (Sam Sylvia, played by a hilarious Marc Maron) and producer (closeted Bash Howard, played by the appropriately 80′s Ken lookalike Chris Lowell): struggling actress Ruth (by a charming Alison Brie),  former soap opera star and housewife turned wrestler and co-producer Debbie (the talented Betty Gilpin), stuntwoman and coach Cherry (a beautiful turn by Sydelle Noel) and her stunt-double husband Keith (utterly likable Bashir Salahuddin), daughter and sister of wrestlers Carmen (a winsome Britney Young), cheerful Brit Rhonda (the multi-faceted Kate Nash), wolfgirl Sheila (a dry Gayle Rankin), the humorous single mom Tammé (former wrestler Kia Stevens showing off brilliant emotional chops), the outrageous religious Jew Melrose (Fran Drescher lookalike Jackie Tohn), hairdressing kayfabe duo Stacy & Dawn (Kimmy Gatewood and Rebekka Johnson), Indian American bisexual med student Arthie (Sunita Mani a.k.a. the Turn Down For What girl), Olympian and taciturn Reggie (an athletic Marianna Palka), Valley Girl seamstress and former refugee Jenny (the eye-catching Ellen Wong), and the extroverted stripper and breakdancer lesbian Yolanda (a triple-threat Shakira Barerra). 

In the Season 2 finale of the show (and as a bid to keep the undocumented Rhonda in the United States) they stage a wedding ceremony for Rhonda where the rest of the wrestlers are wearing pink and gold leotards with ruffled sleeves (how 80s is that), which they integrate into their Vegas show in Season 3. In the first episode of the season, several things go wrong: Debbie and Ruth (in their wrestling roles Liberty Belle and the Soviet Zoya the Destroyer) comment in the local news on the Challenger spaceship launch where the rocket explodes in the air while Ruth is absorbed in her role as the heel, a fire alarm goes off at the casino during dress rehearsal which Jenny blames on her lighting incense to cleanse the atmosphere for the show (turns out to be false to distract from the doldrums of the tragedy), and the girls play on the tables and later have a successful show. A huge up in a show about the ups and downs of show business. 

Power Ranking: 8. 

The Plastics

“On Wednesdays we wear pink.”

One of the many rules to abide by if you are in North Shore High’s exclusive popular clique, The Plastics. Cady has been homeschooled abroad since she was a child and is transplanted to a surburban high school where it looks like dealing with social dynamics is going to be a lot tougher than knowing what to do if you encounter a lion out in the wilderness. Led by the ruthless and manipulative Regina George, the clique is formed up of girls who are the most privileged and prettiest in the high school (and when you look at it Regina is co-opting the power that comes with being the daughter of the founder of Toaster Strudel or being really pretty) and they keep a Burn Book of all their girl classmates (and one gay guy) where they write insulting things about them. They are quick to punish by calling your mom on the phone and telling her you got some urgent results from Planned Parenthood or by laying claim to your ex-boyfriend. But the leader Regina is a unhappy girl whose mother is more interested in pleasing her than nurturing her and she feels she cannot apply herself to intellectual activities because it’s “uncool” and that she has to be underweight to be the pinnacle of beauty, she belittles the self-worth of her most loyal friends for their intelligence or their popularity and views Cady as competition. Also as Regina learns, the student body is actually afraid of her and they are willing to laugh at her when given the chance. 

Power Ranking: 4.

Andie Walsh

I would be remiss not to include the main character of the film titled: Pretty In Pink. Our character is very smart, going places, hard-working, and a fashionista with her signature color (despite the hideous prom dress) and she has been disappointed in love by her richie boyfriend (and being hit on by his sleazebag friend and her childhood friend) and despite the prom look here, she has killer fashion sense. It’s a shame she cut up her maternal figure of a friend’s old 60s (cute) prom dress and another party dress to create this monstrosity. 

But she hits this prom to prove to the rich snobs at her school that they haven’t hurt her. And that is power.

Power Ranking: 9.5 (0.5 taken off for hideous prom dress!)

The Pink Ladies

The ultimate Pink clad clique, their pledge is to act cool and to be cool, til death do them part they think pink! They are the all female counterparts to the male T-Birds (the Burger Palace Boys in the original, edgier, musical) and they are interested in subverting the 1950s script for young women...to an extent, to be fair they don’t have a language for subverting respectability but it’s clear often they are mostly dates for the T-Birds. The girls actually do things that were considered shocking for mature women in 1959: they make out and have sex, it’s implied Rizzo gets an abortion (or it was a false positive), they wear pants and shorts, they indulge in the same vices as the boys, they have (gender-appropriate) ambition, multiple romantic partners, talk back to any boys bugging them or remarking on them, pierce their ears (no really women mostly had clip on earrings back then), and they wear clothes for comfort and even clothes that showcase their sex appeal. 

But one of them gives Sandy the now problematic behavior, it would have been more subversive if Sandy was encouraged to forget about Danny (which I think she did). But it was the late 1950s and it was hard for a female rebel. 

Power Ranking: 8.5. 

Taina Morales

The criminally underrated (and short-lived) sitcom Taina centers on a Nuyorican teenager and her family as she attends a performing arts high school as she works her way to becoming a singer and actress. Fushia, not plain pink, was Taina’s color and the color she picks for her Quincenera dress instead of the garish pastel pink ballgown her mother wants her to wear (as tradition). The episode covers the conflict regarding young Latinas and the pull between what mainstream American culture demands (consumerism and individualism by any means necessary) and the culture of their family’s homeland (which is more collective and built on hierarchy and just as shitty for women as individualist “Me first” culture). I want to say this to my non-Latina and non-Latinix readers: me and my sisters are dealing with a lot, we have demands from relatives who only see our age and youth and not the capable people we already are who have us flipping tortillas at 5 or watching younger siblings after school instead of a after-school job or extracurriculars or even hang out with friends and a mainstream culture that demands we all assimilate and be “real Americans”, try to be understanding and supportive.

It’s difficult but you have to set boundaries and assert your vision....lest you be a horror story from Say Yes to the Dress (Atlanta and Bridesmaids). 

Power Ranking: 10 (some folks have no idea). 

Deb Bradshaw

This is Deb Bradshaw, a resident of Idaho where fashion and tech-wise, everyone is stuck in the 1980s and 1990s and it was the mid-2000s. She sells handicrafts and takes glamour photos to raise funds for college and she hangs out with a couple of teenage boys who are quiet (Rico) or awkward (Napoleon) as she. Right now Napoleon’s sleazy Uncle Rico gives her a ad for breast enhancement supplements on the ruse that Napoleon recommended them for her. What does she do? Cry?

Nope. She calls Napoleon and tells him off for supposedly dissing her appearance, tells him she is content with her figure and he can take those supplements himself. In a time that was pushing girls to be sexy and hot and fun and extroverted to impress guys and where fashion was designed to show off impossibly slim, toned, and busty figures with long legs, it was something special. 

Power Ranking: 9.8

Little Jordan Sanders

Once up on a time (the early 1990s) there was a nerdy little girl who felt she wowed her fickle classmates and then a mean girl pulled a prank on her that landed her in to the hospital, from there she vowed she will do the bullying before anyone else bullies her.

So she becomes a nightmare boss whose employees can’t stand her (to the point where they are listening to relaxation tapes saying “So you want to slap your boss”) and she forbids carbs in her workplace as she doesn’t eat them. She gets confronted by a little girl with a magic wand who puts a spell on her that doesn’t seem to take but then Jordan wakes up in her preteen body again and has to attend middle school all over again where she gets bullied. 

So what does Jordan do? She arms herself with a huge Birkin bag and a pink power suit with a white plaid pattern and makes her way to school and manages to corrupt her new tween friends with her cynical world view. But at some point she embraces her inner geek girl and wakes up an adult woman again.

Power Ranking: 7, it’s a front but a fabulous front. 

Midge Maisel

This is the night that Midge would have been made for life....and the night where she burns a bridge with a friend and puts her’s and her manager Susie’s future in jeopardy. 

So after starting a career in stand up after her husband leaves her for his mediocre secretary, Midge gets to perform stand up at the famous Apollo theater before pop singer Shy Baldwin’s concert (part of his cross-country tour), this is the community he grew up in and where the local middle-aged mothers bake him goodies so he’d be persuaded to date their daughters. But Midge, a privileged Jewish American woman, is a fish out of water amongst the mostly African American audience and performers. 

So she starts to make jokes about Shy’s stage persona and hints at him being a closeted gay man which all bring down the house and impress the audience (and keep the Wop Wop Man at bay)....but then Shy’s manager reveals they have kicked her out from the tour for what she has done. For once the fabulous but thoughtless Midge has faced the consequences of her actions. 

Power Ranking: 10, she made an impact alright.

Meg Griffin

By far more the least empowered woman on this list or the list before (even more than Barb who got killed by a monster), Meg Griffin started Family Guy as a ordinary teenage girl who wasn’t popular at school but was assured of love from her then-loving, but dysfunctional and nutty family. Then after a brief cancellation and protests brought the show back, the show and even her family (along with the whole community) started bashing her and calling her “ugly” or dissing her for her weight to the point where the show was being (rightfully) accused of misogyny. Meg so far has had her father fart in her face, her mother try to seduce her boyfriend and leave her pills to potentially OD on, her obese brother gets popular and doesn’t invite her to his party because she doesn’t fit a narrow “boob to butt ratio” (seems like Family Guy hates body fat on women unless it’s on their boobs), her baby brother loves to feed off her tears and to her face told her to become bulimic, and her family dog tells her that God doesn’t exist because she has a shitty family (complete with a Mom he lusts after) and she has “a flat chest and a fat ass”.

 Also this “pink condom hat” wearing teen is dished crap by the writers because they claim not to have knowledge of writing teenage girls, gee what could be an improvement on that problem?

Is it any wonder that this girl may have violent episodes?

Power Ranking: 1 (most of the time). 

Quinn Morgendorffer

From day one pink has been a color that Quinn wore and while she updated her late 90s baby tee look with deeper colors and modest cuts, pink has remained a primary color. Actually pink has been her preferred color since childhood, her color for school dances, for camping trips, what she wears as a Mommy/Beauty vlogger, the color for the background Jane uses for her abstract portrait of Quinn, 

Quinn’s motivation is to be the most attractive and popular girl around, likely stemming from her father’s trait of needing people to pay attention to him, and coincidentally pink is what helps her fit in with her parents and helps her stand out from the Fashion Club, and it helps her align with the late 1990s standard of beauty and femininity (also somewhat aided by her grandmother) that prizes long, shiny, bouncy hair and a teeny weeny nose with microscopic pores, and a fat free (except for the boobs) body over intelligence and substance. This serves to set her apart from her sister Daria, who decides to go against the role. Which is sad because Quinn is very witty and savvy with a gift for fashion analysis and the sisters show a propensity for getting along much better than their mother did with her sisters. 

Later in the series, she starts maturing and leans more into her intellectual gifts, thus her jeans and shirt get deeper in color and flaunt her slender mid-section less (they still show the outline of her silhouette). She starts pulling away from her shallow clique and deals with a new friend with alcoholism (not much of a resolution at the end), thankfully somewhat like her sister, she can provide kinship over (cheeseless) pizza and diet soda.

Power Ranking: 10, Family Guy writers take notes. 

Daria Morgendorffer

Pink is the color of mortification for Daria. She is the only member of her family to not have a pinkish or reddish tone in her coloring (unless you count her traditional orange shirt under her green blazer and black skirt, something that calls to her mother’s power suit) and femininity seems forced on her. In fact the only time pink was used as a power move was when she used it to convince her sister to stop being a pseudo-intellectual by dressing up like her. 

In this image from the tie-in book The Daria Diaries, we see that a younger Daria is dressed up in a high-necked and puff-sleeved nightmare of a pin dress that looks so infantile, that likely Helen forced on her (Quinn would never pick that, no matter how mad Quinn is she would never make someone wear something if she didn’t think it was flattering), and while her mother and sister are in yellow-toned frills that closely matched their tastes, Daria stands apart glum and wishing someone would save her from this fashion emergency.

Power Ranking: 4, just loose the collar at least?

Glinda the Good Witch of the North

The Good (but slightly bitchy) Witch of the North is the representative for how powerful pink can be in 1939 (or rather any time because Oz operates outside our world). She is the guardian (was she battling the Wicked Witches of the East and West for supremacy while the Munchkins were terrorized? Gosh a lot of WWII allegories here) of Oz played by the closeted Bisexual and hilarious Billie Burke, she is good but not above encouraging munchkins to sing about how happy they are that the wicked witch is dead. While munchkins run around scared when the Wicket Witch of the West shows up to corner Dorothy and get the ruby slippers back, Glinda cooly plans on snatching the slippers and poofing them on Dorothy’s feet and drops shade on the Witch. 

But Glinda is one to remind the characters (and the audience) that they needed to discover the power within them to achieve their goals and come out the other end stronger, no one can make you believe that. 

Power Ranking: 10, this look is so iconic.

Kim McAfee

Truly an iconic pink look and not bad for a role where Ann-Margret makes her big break. The teenage Kim MacAfee, member of the Conrad Birdie fan club, gets pinned and is chosen to kiss Conrad during his farewell concert before he leaves for the army. Quite the glow up! But she has to deal with a jealous boyfriend who doesn’t want Conrad around (probably because he can’t make her scream and faint) and her feelings of “I don’t need him but I really want him with me”. This outfit was stunning and meant to convey a lot in 1963: it’s pants, it’s Schiaparelli Pink rather than a dainty pastel like she wears here, it shows off her figure, she sings about kissing men from Yale to Purdue while Conrad and her boyfriend Hugo sing about hot chicks and they all sing about having a lot of living to do. Of course Hugo leaves and she is distraught, up to the point where she kisses Conrad Birdie and Hugo sucker punches him in front of a live audience. She happily ends up with Hugo and wishes Birdie well, as opposed to when she is devastated over him heading to the army (is it no accident the sexists from Mad Men like the first version?).

Power Ranking: 9.5, truly iconic and the outfit to wear when you attempt to be a sexually liberated woman who doesn’t need a possessive man.

Caroline Brooks

Speaking of big breaks, this is the film where Esther Williams (the codifier for swimming musicals and synchronized swimming) makes her big break in a iconic career and it was quite an impressive entrance. And then starts a decade-long career of water ballet musicals and swimwear, the film isn’t remarkable for it’s plot (enjoyable rom-com) but for the impressive swimming sequences that show off Esther’s athletic skills (she was eligible for the 1940 Olympics). That is a way to make an impact with pink.

Power Ranking: 20.

Courtney Gripling

Who’s the girl in the pink capris?

It’s Courtney, it’s Courtney!

This song was sung two times in the show and it tells you a lot about the inner workings of a sweet but sheltered and often insensitive Middle School Queen (for measure, she sings this in a sparkly dress at a friend’s 13th birthday party, friend doesn’t mind though). Courtney would definitely be the kind of girl who’d wear white to a (Western) wedding. 

Pink (or peach or lavender or blue or cream) has been a signature color for Courney since the very beginning: it was the color of her pajamas, she told Ginger she looks really good in the color when she borrows sleepwear from the girl, she wore “Popular In Peach” nail polish for her exams the semester before, and she even wore the color of skirt and blouse she wore when she got bullied in high school and learned her family was losing their McMansion and their money (even her port-a-potty was pink with baroque gild). It highlights her delicate and privileged background, like lace or fine china, it will get spoiled.

So this girl, who got by with people being hired to do her homework and sung about herself at another person’s birthday party and had a talent show performance where she and her friends wore blonde wigs and matching costumes (with face masks of herself), the girl who was shocked to find out summer camps don’t have masseuses, the girl who wore platform sandals in the winter, or that Mom losing her platinum card is not the catastrophe she thinks it is.....suddenly finds her family in poverty after her father was caught doing white collar crime.

So sad, she was always better than Ivanka.

Power Ranking: 6.5, glorious look and character but not likely to be invited to anybody’s wedding in the future.

Cher Horowitz

It’s fitting the premier teen fashionista of Beverly Hills undergoes her enlightenment and makes up with her friend in a matching pink preppy ensemble. Cher Horowitz (despite clearly taking some lead from her BFF Dionne’s more sophisticated and colorful take on Bev Hills fashion) has been a trendsetter in-universe and at the time the film came out. 

Before the film came out, fashion was inspired by grunge or still stuck in the late 1980s or dominated by neon colors and power dressing and or mixing and matching, then the costume designer for the film (Mona May) decided on taking a twist on the preppy look, while keeping some sportiness and the colors of the time (even nodding to Beverly Hills 90210). May subtly updated looks that Sally Draper and Nancy Wheeler would have worn and for the rest of the decade teen girls were sporting mary janes, plaid, collars, floaty dresses, pastels, stripes, and knee socks. 

At the start of the film, Cher thinks she knows it all and she is the most popular girl in her school....she doesn’t really know it all (she’s Clueless).  She does aspire to be more and do more (and sometimes plagued by insecurity) and takes new grunge girl Tai under her wing and gives her a makeover that makes her look like a shorter, redhaired, and curvier clone of Cher herself until Tai gets swollen in the head and Cher realizes she loves her ex-stepbrother Josh. After an argument, a humbled Tai (in a style that combines the preppy femininity she learned in Beverly Hills and her skater geek inclinations that manages to hold well into the mid 2000s) makes up with her and they watch Tai’s love interest shred out. 

Here we see Cher in her feminine prep but the casual look and the prints help her empathize with the crowd on the grass. 

Power Ranking: 9.

Miss Piggy

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.

The ultimate diva in pink, with all her charms, cannot attract Kermit the Frog and the woman who assured at least one generation of girls that they don’t need to be slender princesses to be the leading lady. Before Elle Woods, Miss Piggy came in with blown out wings and curls and in pink outfits assured of her own place in show business and of her own beauty and especially during an era when society was learning (slowly) to accept other forms of female personality and challenging gender roles. She was a revolutionary clad in the style of women of the Golden Age of Hollywood and made a mark for more body inclusivity in entertainment and transcended the girly girl/tomboy dichotomy that had been around to enforce stereo-typically feminine behavior and set up women to compete against one another. 

Power Ranking: 10.

Blossom

Sugar. Spice. Everything Nice. Chemical X. These are the things that created a trio of super-powered kindergartners, the leader wearing a large red bow over her long red locks and has a pink dress (and improbably large pink-colored eyes). These girls had to save their city from monsters and evil villains while attending Kindergarten and making time for their playroom. Blossom was Miss Perfect personified: cute, long pretty hair, perfect grades, ladylike behavior, intellectual, emotionally mature (she acted more 10 years old rather than her actual age of being born in a 5 year old’s body); but being Miss Perfect can make you blind to the resentment of others (she is rather bossy) and being liked and holding that as the standard could let you get run over. It’s fortunate that Blossom is learning how to advocate for herself and break the rules to save the day (like beating up evil senior citizens) now rather than at 14, 17, 24, 32.....

Power Ranking: 11. 

Renee Bennett

Renee Bennett (as played by Amy Schumer) is insecure about living in a world that seems to stop for women fitting a narrow standard of beauty, which doesn’t concern her as far as she’s concerned. Now Renee wears pink a few times in the film, highlighting her femininity and desire to be universally beautiful. She happens to make a wish to be beautiful during a rainstorm and the next day, she goes to Soul Cycle where she falls off a bike, hair gets caught in the bike and she hits her head and wakes up seeing a different person in the mirror. 

Now she walks around the world as if she was confident in being one of the most beautiful women in the room, if not the world. Suddenly her clothes show more skin, they are more twee (the bright colors and pastels), she’s taking huge fashion risks, and participating in bikini contests. Of course every film high hits a low where the protagonist’s ego is swollen, her friends feel alienated and later she bonks her head and believes she is back in her old body and no one has seen how “hideous” she is. Later she finds the confidence to “come out” as she is (as far as others are concerned, she hasn’t changed her looks too much). 

Power Ranking: 7.5