On this week's episode Adam and Charlotte embrace the darkness of Halloween by sharing a few of their favorite Werewolf films. Adam recounts his personal experience on the set of one film, Charlotte brings up a chance encounter with a star at the grocery store, and the pups, Asta and Ripley, get to weigh in on their favorite.
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Adam: Welcome to our very spooky addition.
Charlotte: We seem to have a lot of spooky additions
Adam: around here. Well, it is October . It's Halloween season. It is. I'm just gonna talk like this the entire time.
Charlotte: Okay. Can you throw in a little Bronx accent in there too? Oh yeah,
Adam: for sure.
Adam: Whoa.
Adam: So it's
Charlotte: October, which is also the month of our first date. Oh yeah. To get a little
Adam: romantic here. Yeah. October 16th to be exact. Yeah, I remember.
Charlotte: Yeah. It was your buddy's birthday. That's me getting points yeah, so we thought it's really hard to pick a topic in October because there's so many horror films. You love everything. You love a lot of really bloody, disgusting, disturbing things too.
Charlotte: Yep. That absolutely. I can't really comment on it. I mean, if you wanna talk Nah, we can discuss those, but we both love where Wolf movies.
Charlotte: We do. We love them so much that we watched one on our first date. That is true. We watched a couple movies. We went to Ha Haunted House. All kind of horror themed.
Adam: Yeah. We saw the remake of John Carpenter's the
Charlotte: Fog. Yep. We did. I asked you on that date in
Adam: the theater. Yep. That you did ask me on that date.
Adam: Yeah. I was bored. And then we went to the haunted house after that. Mm-hmm. . And then we came home and we watched Well because
Charlotte: you, while we were at the haunted house, you mentioned Phantom of the Paradise. Right. And I'd never seen that. And you dropped whatever you were holding.
Adam: Yeah. Cuz it's one of one of my favorite movies.
Charlotte: Yeah. And all time at the second I watched it, it became one of mine too.
Adam: Yeah. I think I sang every lyric to you while we were watching it and I
Charlotte: obnoxiously and I said I can't wait for a year from now when I know all the lyrics to these songs and I can be singing with you.
Adam: Yeah.
Adam: It didn't even take a year. I don't think so. Not even close. Yeah.
Charlotte: So we watched that but we also watched Silver Bullet. Yeah.
Adam: Cuz you had never seen that one, right?
Charlotte: , it had been a while, or it had been a long time since you, Yeah, yeah. So we watched Silver Bullet
Charlotte: mm-hmm. . So we thought, well, that's a topic we love, love ols. Let's just draw on films from our first date. Why not? You gotta pick a topic
Adam: somehow. Yeah. So that's the long way to get to our topic, which is werewolves. Werewolves. And we're not going to talk about, 1940 one's, The Wolf Man.
Adam: No, I think that's been talked about enough. A lot
Charlotte: of this stuff's been talked about, but we're not even really gonna rate, top 10 or whatever. We're just gonna share some of our faves.
Adam: Yeah. I think probably three of our fa. All right. Yeah. Not necessarily all of our favorites, cuz I love so many more than this.
Adam: I tried to pick more obscure ones that maybe people wouldn't know. That was my rationale behind my choices. I just picked ones that I really
Charlotte: liked. . We also, we have a favorite where Wolf pick. from one of our dogs. Both of our dogs really like where Wolf movies. But there is one where Wolf Movie in particular, that they lose their flipping minds
Charlotte: So we'll also have their favorite pick for their favorite wear Well film.
Adam: Yeah. They're experts too, so they think that their pick is better than ours. Well, maybe it is. All
Charlotte: right, well stay tuned,
Charlotte: All right, Adam, on the subject of werewolves, hit us. What's one
Adam: of your faves? Well, I'm gonna cheat right off the bat. I put mine in chronological order. So this one is a group of films. I bet if I asked you the question, who is the reigning king of the Wear Wolf movie, what would your
Charlotte: answer be?
Charlotte: So what do you mean specifically by that?
Adam: Who's played a Wol more times than anyone else?
Charlotte: Cheney,
Adam: Jr. See, I think most people would say Cheney
Charlotte: Jr.
Adam: Well, Cheney Jr.
Adam: Has only played a Wol seven times, and that includes an episode of Route 66. The television show. Okay, so we got six features. So six features, one episode of a television show.
Adam: Okay, That is dwarfed Whoa by Paul Nashey. who Paul Nashey was born Jacinto Melina Alvarez during the Spanish Civil War and became known as Paul Nashey when he became an actor, writer, and director. So Paul Nashey is the reigning king of Wol cinema playing a wol 16 times on screen. Wow. Yeah. That's
Charlotte: impressive.
Charlotte: That is impressive. Are they wear wolf movies that people have heard
Adam: of? 12 of these appearances were as a character that he created a Polish werewolf count named Waldemar Dinky. And he played him a Polish Werewell. Yes. a Polish count. So this is a character that he created and he played him 12 different times in films. All right. Yeah, he started in 1968 with Mark of the Wolfman and finished in 2004 with Tomb of the Werewolf, and that's where he retired the character. Wow.
Adam: Impressive. It is impressive. These are during the time when the hammer films were popular. So very much in that gothic mode, right? Like the Christopher
Charlotte: Lee Dracula Castle
Adam: and that kind of thing. He also played Frankenstein.
Adam: He played Dracula. Igor. A mummy. Several mad scientists. . So he just pumped movies out during that time period. Good for him. Yeah. Very, very prolific.
Adam: So that's my first pick. It's actually for his Body of work. . It's Paul Nash. But that's, I was wondering Yeah, you're like, where's the movie at? No, it's actually for Paul Nash's Body of Work. All right. Yeah. Some other films other than the first and last film, he also did one called Wol versus Vampire Woman in 1971 and then followed that with Dr.
Adam: JK and the Wol 1971. I
Charlotte: have a question. Yeah. Have you seen any of these? Yeah, we own a couple of
Adam: them. Okay. Yeah. Okay. They're not ones that we go to often, cuz I'm not much of a gothic period type person. Mm-hmm. . Every once in a while it's fun to go back and kind of enjoy one of those older style films.
Adam: I like a
Charlotte: good gothic
Adam: melodrama. Yeah. It's good to watch a hammer film every once in a while. Mm-hmm. , he's no Christopher Lee. Nobody is. No, but he's a Wol, a Polish Wear Wolf and not a Polish Wol in Burbank. Is that, what was that the name of the movie? Or is it Polish Vampire in Burbank? I think it's a vampire shit. How about you? What's your first,
Charlotte: that pick's just thrown me off.
Adam: Well, I mean, it's kind of a cheaty pick. It kind of is, but you know,
Charlotte: I mean, why do you just, just do a Adam's movie?
Charlotte: Something? Yeah.
Adam: I'm just saying seek out a Paul Nashey film, especially one where he placed the Minsky.
Charlotte: Do you have one you recommend over the
Adam: others? I like the first one. 1968. That's a good year. Mark of the
Charlotte: Wolfman. All right, so check out mark of the Wolfman. That one's good. He might even add it to the letter box.
Charlotte: Oh yeah.
Adam: The perf day, which I'm still, I'm still updating,
Charlotte: as in, I haven't updated a thing since last week. I'm still working on it. Remember? Remember? I was like, You won't, I'm still working
Adam: on it. I just know you. Hey, I'm working on it. It's a
Charlotte: work in progress, just like this podcast. All right. Well, my first pick is actually a movie.
Adam: Oh, okay. I see what you did there. Mine was actually 12 movies. .
It
Charlotte: was cheating. . We said three. And you're throwing 12 for one. Yep. 12 for one. All right. You do what you gotta do. My first pick is the Company of Wolves from 1984, Neil Jordan, and I know this is no surprise to you. I'm a big Neil Jordan fan.
Charlotte: He did the crying game, He did all kinds of good stuff. I don't wanna say her name, him all. You use his
Adam: name all? I was gonna sit back them all Do 'em all. He did Brave . Do you remember that one?
Charlotte: Breakfast on Pluto? Yeah. Mona Lisa.
Charlotte: What about Bezant?
Adam: Oh, Byzantium was actually quite good. Yeah. Different genre though. It
Charlotte: is. That's vampires or I tried to sneak into that screening of Byzantium. Yeah. And they turned you away? Well yeah, because the Id picture looked nothing like me because it was your coworker?
Charlotte: Yeah. At AFM . It was a male coworker who looks completely opposite
Adam: of me. Remember the guy stopped you? He goes, You are not a dude. Yeah. And he turned you around. He tried to take your badge and you're like, Nope. At that
Charlotte: point I didn't know what to say. .
Adam: Well, it was true. You are not a dude. He had a point.
Charlotte: Anyways, so Company of Wolves, Neil Jordan, 1984 Stars Angela Landsbury to say stars.
Charlotte: Really?
Adam: I was gonna say I, That's really stretching the word stars.
Charlotte: It is because she's sort of the narrator telling some of the fairy tales. Not all of them, but this film is a take on Little Red Riding Hood plus some other stuff. It's a great little fairy tale that is not for kids. This is definitely an adult movie.
Charlotte: It's
Adam: not
Charlotte: that kind of adult movie though. It's not that kind of adult movie. . Thank you for the clarification, . Let me read the synopsis
Charlotte: An adaptation of Angela Carter's Fairy Tales, Young Rosaline, Dreams of a village in the Dark Woods, where Granny tells her cautionary tales in which innocent maidens are tempted by wolves who are hairy on the inside. As Rosaline grows into womanhood, will the wolves come for her too?
Charlotte: TT 95 minutes. Yeah. It's a tight movie. And the tagline now is then to simple truth, Sweetest Tongue has sharpest tooth. Hmm.
Adam: I like it. Yeah. It's a little rhyme. It is very whimsical. Kind of like the movie, through that fable.
Adam: Yes.
Charlotte: Very, very much so. So, The where Wolf effects in this are all practical, which I'm a huge fan of in where Wolf films, when they're done practical because there's nothing like a good where wolf transformation
Adam: scene, well you talk about tropes, that's a trope of this genre. You have to have A transformation scene.
Adam: Oh, absolutely. Was set forth in 1941
Charlotte: where someone is transforming in front of someone else who is paralyzed in fear and only starts running when the transformation is complete and the chase
Adam: begins. I think that happened much later cuz in 1941 he was in bed and it happened to him. But all I'm
Charlotte: saying for the last 50 years that has been the trophy.
Charlotte: It has more impact
Adam: when it's in front of somebody else. And where was screaming?
Charlotte: That's, yeah. That's when they're the most vulnerable. True. They're screaming, they're in pain. These transformations are not, Nice. They they look painful.
Adam: They are painful. Yeah. So talk about transformations. This movie has a very unique transformation.
Adam: It does. . Prior to this movie that no one had ever thought of a wear wolf transformation in this way before. Yeah.
Charlotte: The beast is, in a way, it's sort of fully formed within them already. The way that the transformation happens, and the first one I think is with Steven Rea, who's also in this. He's a common player in the Neil Jordan
Adam: place.
Adam: Oh, you said Neil Jordan. So everybody knew
Charlotte: Steve Ray, Steven Ray, He's an actor that's in a lot of his films. Almost all of us. He's great. . So he turns into a wol, It's on his wedding night, and the beast comes out, but the guy's mouth opens wide screaming, and from out of this mouth comes a.
Charlotte: Wolf mouth. Wolf snout. Yeah. Wolf snout just comes right out of his mouth and that's sort of how it all begins
Adam: and yeah. It's like he's wearing a skin suit. Yeah. A people suit. A people suit and he sheds it. Mm-hmm. Coming out through the mouth like it's a skin that he's peeling off.
Charlotte: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So it's very much in the vein of Little Red Riding Hood, where the Wolf is in the Granny's clothing. Mm-hmm. taking off the granny's clothing. Only the granny is . Steven Ray. The special makeup effects were done by a man named Christopher Tucker, who worked on Elephant Man. He worked on Zada.
Charlotte: Oh, wow. Zardoz. He worked on High Spirits, another Neil Jordan film couple years later, and he also worked on the Cantina sequence in a little movie called Star Wars.
Charlotte: Yeah. So all the effects are practical in this one, and they're really incredible. There's another really great transformation scene that's at a Victorian wedding party. Mm-hmm. , everybody's in,
Adam: , everybody's in these big powdered wigs and they have white faces with augmented rouge , you know, just kind of really open
Charlotte: both men and women. Yep. They all fancy, fancy dress the same. They do. Yep. It's sometimes hard to tell between the genders.
Charlotte: And a pregnant woman walks in and she starts , Yelling at everybody at the table saying I was good enough for you then, but I'm not good enough for you now. And they're all just kind of staring at her. Some are laughing, some are eating, and then she whips around and turns her back to them and looks at them in a mirror.
Charlotte: And then that mirror cracks. And as soon as the mirror cracks, they all start transforming into werewolves. And it's all practical effects. Not quite as intense as the first one with Steven Ray, but
Adam: no, the impact isn't the same.
Charlotte: You kinda see 'em transforming through that cracked mirror too.
Charlotte: Yeah. She's ruined the, the view that they have of themselves
Adam: and it's not the same kind. It's not like they're shedding the skin.
Charlotte: No, they're not the same kind
Adam: of wolves. I love how It's really got these garish aspect of these wolf like.
Adam: Faces peeling off wigs and mm-hmm. And you have to mention that these are all the quaded style
Charlotte: of wear wolf. Oh yeah. That, you know, that's another thing with the werewolves here. They walk on all fours. They don't walk on two legs. They're not bi bal. Right.
Charlotte: They are Quadro peds, Quadro peds and all the transformations are really kind of bloody. And there's a lot of muscle that you see and stuff like that. And when you think of that in a practical effect sense, that had to be really hard to do, to have, the mechanics of that under two layers of skin to react differently.
Charlotte: . And what was the year on
Adam: this? 1984. 84. So, okay. Well, we're talking. This is the height of practical effects. Mm-hmm. . So, yeah.
Adam:
Adam: A really rock routine and all those guys are doing like their, groundbreaking work
Charlotte: at this point.
Charlotte: Yeah. The eighties had some great practical effects, especially in genre films. But this is a great one. It's a fairytale. There are stories within stories It's hard to tell the dreams from the reality sometimes Yeah. And
Adam: Lansbury is basically just like a framing device, right?
Charlotte: She is, yeah. She has a really great line about don't trust men whose eyebrows meet in the middle. Go . That line always stuck with me. Anytime I see someone with a bit of a uni brow, I always think, Are you aware
Adam: Wolf's under there. What? You pluck it though. What if you hide your uni brow?
Adam: I mean, I do so.
Charlotte: So anyways Company Wolves 1984. Really good Wear Wolf movie. Not necessarily when you need to watch during October, you could watch it time of the year because of the fairytale ness.
Adam: Well, I think most Werew films can be watched at any time. At least in our house. They can, well, they're an allegory for, all kinds of, bodily changes.
Adam: Yeah. Sexuality. Yeah. So it's, you know, kind of an anytime type of thing. Yeah. Puberty mainly. And the id. Yep. Those are the two things they usually stand for.
Charlotte: All right, Adam, so do you have an actual movie?
Adam: I do. All right. We're gonna that jump ahead a decade to a fine, straight to video, Jim, Oh no.
Adam: Called Project Metal Beast 1995. What even is that this takes the genre and twist it on its head. So Project Metal Beast was directed by Alessandro Day Catano. It's T RT is 92 minutes. It has this very short but impactful tagline, DNA overload. And here is a long synopsis in 1974, an unhinged CIA agent injects himself with wear wolf blood. He found after a killing spree, his body is put in suspended animation, then thaw out 20 years later by his crazy boss and a team of unsuspecting doctors. Doctors. So this is kind of a fun sci-fi take on werewolves and wel tropes.
Adam: So basically the guys that are cryogenically frozen all have wear wolf blood in them. So, They take them off ice and start experimenting on them, putting the synthetic skin on them. They turn into werewolves and then they start killing everybody in the laboratory. And the cool thing is it's addressing the frailties of werewolves.
Adam: The few things that they're usually affected by, like silver bullets can no longer penetrate their skin because they have the new skin on them. They're part metal. They're metal beasts. So this is the best part. In order to beat a metal beast, you have to melt down silver dollars, turn them into bazooka shells and fire the bazooka at the wwf.
Adam: Oh my God. It's amazing.
Charlotte: It's straight to video and we can see
Adam: why. So. As far as being straight to video, this has some stars attached to it. Kim Deney the former teenage cover model turned actress who later became very famous in N Y P D, Blue Barry Boswick , who was in Rocky Horror Picture Show as Brad Majors.
Adam: And later went on to play the mayor in Spin City. So did
Charlotte: he sing in Rocky Horror?
Adam: He did. Do you wanna sing ?
Charlotte: I was trying to get you to sing .
Adam: And the Metal Beast is played by Kane Hotter, the guy who played Jason Vorhees in Friday to 13th, seven through nine. Probably the most famous Jason. Yeah. The where design in this is a lot of fun.
Adam: It's big and bulky. Looks like kind of a professional wrestler. It's got big metal plates on its chest and on its arms, it also has this metal mohawk that kind of goes down the back instead of hair. It's all metal. It's kind of awesome looking. And, Kane Hatter's like a big stocky
Charlotte: dude.
Charlotte: So in this picture it's like the members of kiss, but as OLS ,
Adam: well now you know why I like it, right? Yeah. So the creature was created by John Carl Buler, the guy who directed Friday 13 seven. And the guy who created the EZ and was responsible for directing Troll one, and we saw him at a Ralphs when we lived in the Valley
Charlotte: That was so funny because you were sort of stalking that guy in the grocery store. I wasn't
Adam: stalking him. I was just really excited.
Adam: I was like, Oh, Charlotte, you see who that is? Oh gosh. That's John, Carl Buler.
Adam: I don't know. He was looking at produce. We were going up, down, were kinda getting creepy. We just kind of like met a couple times and passed each other. I never approached him. I left him, to do his thing.
Charlotte: I was more excited the time we saw Mr. T at the grocery store. Yeah. I love, Do you remember
Adam: that? I loved how he cognito. He was, had a, he was wearing a fishing hat and like a blue moo, but he still had like a
Charlotte: chain on.
Charlotte: Yeah. Mr. T We're, we're going down an aisle. He's coming right at us and we, we go past him with our cart. We're pushing our cart. He's pushing his cart. Didn't make eye contact. And my eyes get wide. Cause I'm like, Oh, that was Mr. D. And the lady behind him, she saw my reaction and she just smiled and nodded , Oh yeah,
Charlotte: I think
Adam: she was following him. I think she was, , yep. Same with Mr. T. Oh yeah. We didn't, you don't bother these people. Let 'em be people. Well
Charlotte: sometimes you see them and you think, do we work together? And then you realize, no, they have no clue who I am. They're a famous I am not. Yeah. Anyway, so
Adam: back to Project Metal Beast.
Adam: The poster for this. I thought we were done talking about that. No we got a couple more things and then, then we'll be done. The poster is a very nineties metal. Rip off of the original halloween poster. There's like the claw monitors.
Adam: Yeah. Claw marks are coming through except for they up the anti, this time it's like a metal, it's a metal door that's being crumpled and ripped through and you see the beast eye. It's glowing red behind it. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Oh, and then the last thing I wanted say was the director, Alessandro d Gaetano went on to direct a movie called Butch Camp in 1996, the year after this.
Adam: And Butch camp is about a gate guy who goes to be readjusted to be more butch, cuz he's tired of people picking on him at a camp. So kind of like
Charlotte: the, But I'm a cheerleader.
Adam: Yeah. But a lot more tasteless. Okay. So are you recommending that one. No, I just can't believe it exists.
Adam: Okay. It's, it's just one of those like, wow, kind. Yep. Yep. Kinda like when you discovered who created the 3d the,
Charlotte: you mean the Optima three? Yes, the
Adam: Optima
Charlotte: three. Yeah. Guy from the Sand Fernando Valley. He shops at the same Ralph with Mr. T
Adam: Yeah. So anyway, that's Project Metal Beast. It's a fun, very tongue and cheap kind of ride. Lots of machine guns and metal looking werewolves and rubbery costumes and bazookas. All right, Charlotte, what's your next one?
Charlotte: Next one. A little bit more contemporary here.
Charlotte: 20 fourteens late phases.
Adam: Oh, I like this movie
Charlotte: a lot. Yeah, I knew you would. This is directed by Adrian Garcia Baggli. It is 95 minutes long. The same run time that the first one I picked was, we're on a roll here. It's nice. Yeah. And basically it is a blind man versus Wol kind of plot.
Charlotte: I love a blind man versus something bad was that movie? Don't Breathe, Remember where . Those kids break into the blind man's house to try to steal money outta the safe. Oh yeah. Oh,
Adam: that was great. That was a good movie. Yeah. Yeah. Don't breathe part two. Not so much. Yeah, no, that was bad. You can't make that bad guy a good guy in the second movie.
Adam: Oh, man. He was just bad. That was a bad dude. Bad dude. Yeah. Kind of bad ass though.
Charlotte: All right, So the synopsis for this ambers McKinney, a can blind vet moves into a retirement community only to learn that the residents there have been dying, not from old age, but from dog attacks. After surviving his own encounter with a canine one night, Ambers comes to believe that the Assai are much more than mere dogs.
Charlotte: This one is a lot of fun. It also has practical visual effects as far as the Wol transformation is concerned. There's some digital stuff in there too, but there's a great transformation scene. I'm not sure if it's the first one or not, where it's done, as if it's all one take.
Charlotte: So this guy goes to a priest and he's, , like, Help me. Something's happening to me, blah, blah, blah. He starts transforming, and of course he drops down on his hands and knees. What
Adam: isn't that priest, Tom Newnan too.
Charlotte: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. But they shoot it like it's all one take. It's really well done.
Charlotte: And the werewolves in this one are by pedal. So they stand on two legs, not for Yeah. They have
Adam: really mean looking faces too. And short snouts in this one. And really
Charlotte: big ears. And they kind of look like Yorkshire Terriers in a way.
Adam: They kind of do like F Yorkshire Terriers,
Charlotte: I mean like six foot giant, insane looking Yorkshire
Adam: Terriers.
Adam: Yeah. Like if you're, Yorky got like the puppy cut and then like,
Charlotte: you can't call it a Yorky anymore. Oh, why not? I mean, No, I'm just saying Yorky sounds little, right. These are bigs. These are like Yorkers.
Adam: Well that's your York Kongs,
Charlotte: I dunno. Yeah. . Yeah. It's
Adam: like Clint Eastwood moved into this.
Adam: Exactly. It's blind Clint Eastwood.
Charlotte:
Charlotte: It's Grand Tono. Moved into a retirement community and he's blind and there's a Wol Go. Yep. That's this movie. That's what this movie is. You see a blind man fighting off werewolves with guns with axes.
Adam: You know what's funny too is that he actually really likes having this to do
Charlotte: like Oh yeah. Cuz , he's a veteran. Yep. And, and he moved into this. He not one there. Yeah, he's bored. He's
Adam: tired of the old ladies hitting on him all the time. , it's a slow burn for, for sure. While, but I mean, it really goes mm-hmm.
Adam: the action's really good in it.
Charlotte: Didn't they make a sequel? I didn't think so. Yeah, you shouldn't.
Adam: No, I All of a sudden you can see, I think it's perfect. Yeah. What, what are you gonna get? You're gonna get Late Phases to my Sister's Yorky.
Charlotte:
Charlotte: I love that anybody can fight off wear. Here you got a blind man fighting off wear wolves. Silver Bullet. You've got, corey Haim. You've got a kid in a wheelchair fighting off wear wolves.
Adam: Yeah. You also had Gary Busey. In Silver Bullet. Yeah. As the crazy uncle. Yeah.
Charlotte: All right. Anyways, so I recommend that one. Late Phases 2014. Good one. Yeah. Adam, you got another one for us? I do.
Adam: This is one I actually have a personal attachment too.
Adam: Yeah. , I'm gonna preface this by saying this movie is not a great movie. It's Cursed 2005 by West Craven. It's not as bad as everybody remembers it. We went back and watched it not that long ago. It's worse. . No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. This one is TRT is 97 minutes. And the tagline is, What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, And the synopsis.
Adam: Is in Los Angeles. Siblings, Ellie and Jimmy come across an accident on Mahol Drive as they try to help the woman caught in the wreckage, a ferocious creature attacks them, devouring the woman, and scratching the terrified siblings. They slowly discover that the creature was a wear wolf and that they have fallen victim to a deadly curse.
Adam: Well, they could not have more. Aptly titled this film Cursed cuz this production was cursed from the very beginning. .
Adam: So this was plagued by production problems and script issues. In fact, the movie was shut down when it was 90% shot. And the script was completely rewritten. And then they reshot the film again.
Adam: And after the reshoot, These actors were left on the cutting room for now. Get this, this is a whole list. Ia Douglas, Heather, Langen Camp Scott Foley, Omar Epps, Robert Forrester, James Brolin, Corey Feldman, Skeete Ulrich and Mandy Moore. I'm blaming Skeete He was supposed to be the third lead in the film, he was supposed to be Christina Richie's boyfriend.
Adam: When they rewrote it, they just got rid of him altogether. So all those people were hired, shot in the film, and left on the cutting room floor after it
Charlotte: was rewritten. Were they just not available when they went to redo it or No, I think their
Adam: characters were, they just were either combined into other characters or thrown out all together.
Adam: Is
Charlotte: there a reason why they just, It was terrible, but it's such a great idea. We gotta do this again.
Adam: I don't necessarily think that's the case at all. This was one of those Harvey and Bob Weinstein won a medal in a movie, and this was the movie that they wanted to do it with. There were notorious for demanding reshoots and mm-hmm.
Adam: recuts and taking things away and recutting them and all that kind of stuff. So West Craven was gonna do a movie called Pulse that remake of that movie, Cairo. The Japanese horror film. Right, right. It did eventually get made, but he was on it initially and it was a very different movie when he was on it.
Adam: And he was about to shoot that, it was in pre-production and then somebody made a decision somewhere and it kind of got put in turnaround and so he didn't have a movie. So Bob from Dimension, Bob Weinstein called him up and said, Hey, why don't you come direct this Wol movie we have, they had the script done and we'll pay you twice what they were gonna pay you on that film.
Adam: So he said, Okay, sure, I'll come and do that. It was supposed to be 18 weeks of work and ended up being two and a half years of his life.
Adam: So he got paid double, but he could've shot two and a half movies in that time period. , this is insane they initially hired Rick Baker to do all the special effects Academy Award winner. Yeah. For another wonderful wew film, American Werewolf in London, one of the best.
Adam: And, absolutely deserve that Oscar cuz that transformation sequence is to this day astounding practical effects. So they hired, the best in the biz. This guy's won Academy awards at this point. And then they decided that they didn't like the way everything looked.
Adam: So when they shut down, And then they came back into production. They hired k and b, another really renowned group of guys. Mm-hmm. , you know, Kurtzman, Nicatero and Burger. They were some of the top dogs at the time they weren't quite the level that they became K and B.
Adam: So they shot the rest of the film with k b doing effects. And then after they were done shooting, Bob and Harvey decided that they didn't like the way their stuff looked. So they cut most of that and then replaced it all with cgi. That really doesn't hold up. Mm-hmm. At all.
Charlotte: I don't think it
Adam: held up then.
Adam: Yeah. I think it was rushed. I agree. I think that we had seen CGI that was much better at that point.
Charlotte: I remember when that trailer would play in theaters, people would laugh. At the
Adam: cgi yeah. , there were a few very effective scenes. The scene when Maya gets chased in the car park is really quite well done.
Adam: And the CGIs used well, cuz you see the foot, it's a bi pedal ol in this one too. And you see their, the foot marks and it jumping off of cars and things like that, which is kind of cool. But yeah, for the most part it didn't work.
Adam: Originally shot as a hard r this film was then cut down to a PG 13, which was also another mistake. Mistakes were made. , lots of them. Yeah. And its release was delayed for a year and a half. Basically, after it was announced to come out, it got pushed and then pushed. So when it finally came out, everybody was like, Oh, wow it's finally coming out.
Adam: This must be wonderful because they held it back. So it's West Craven, well, , they said West Craven's gonna do what he did to the slasher genre with the Wol genre. And so they oversold it right from the beginning. I think that was probably what they're trying to do, is they felt the pressure to deliver on this and it was a decent Wol movie that then they just messed around with and messed
Charlotte: around with.
Charlotte: And so they should have wrote that check and walked away.
Adam: I agree. All the actors that signed on, like Jesse Eisenberg and Christina Richie both said that the original script was much better than the ultimate result.
Charlotte: Does that other cut, Has anybody seen the footage?
Charlotte: Does that exist?
Adam: It does not. It was never complete cut. First of all. It was so whether not
Charlotte: like trims, there are tons of trims somewhere. . Well, it's Miramax, so it's been passed around from the studio.
Adam: Yeah.
Charlotte: But yes, it's been passed around from studio to Studio Maxx Library. Yep. So who knows?
Adam: I think that the footage is probably with Spy Glass, one of the major production companies that paid for it. Cause I have a friend that works for a studio and they have looked for that footage in the library of Dimension Films and it's
Charlotte: not there. Yeah. Or it's just mislabeled.
Adam: Or it could be mislabeled.
Adam: Yes. Because again, it has been passed around. That's what happens with libraries. It would take a really deep dive to actually find this.
Charlotte: Yeah. People wonder, , why can't this exist? And that goes back to something we've talked about before, The rights, especially on split. Right. That's been passed around.
Charlotte: That means it might have gone there, it might be in this archive. And just transferring the, not only the elements, but the data of what the elements are. Especially think about, you know, from the nineties to now, our sources for data are completely
Adam: different. Apparently there's a boot leg of an earlier cut on vhs.
Adam: Always say that. No, there is someone did an analysis of it. This analysis exists. It was on a VHS that had been passed around. But as far as the actual footage, again, there is no original assembly cut. And the special effects were not finished, right? So right there is no long loss cut for this right there, there would be deleted material, lots and lots of it, right?
Adam: Apparently they shot enough for like two and a half movies. It ultimately would take a lot of time and expense to find it. And then again, once it's found, there's really no fiscal reason. To put it all together because no one's ever gonna make the amount of money they would need to back on it.
Adam: Right. To make it happen, you know? Yeah. All the time and effort
Charlotte: might just be a fun project one
Adam: day. Yeah. It would have to be someone that really loves it and has access. So it's one of those things. Anyway, so I have, I do have a story. I when I first moved out to la I did some extra work and one of the movies I got on was one of the reshoots of the finale to this film.
Adam: I spent three days on set in what was originally in the original script, the wax works, which became the movie themed club opening at the end of the film.
Charlotte: Are you
in
Adam: the cut? I looked for myself recently. I don't think I made the final cut, but I'm in black clothes and I'm in the background somewhere.
Adam: I didn't see myself though.
Charlotte: I was like, so it's not like a species three where you're clearly in the scene.
Adam: It's not me in a football uniform pointing at somebody that's a football guy. Right? Yeah, no. But yeah, I was on set was really fun to watch. , especially practical special effects.
Adam: And Greg, Nicki was so approachable. I had met him once before at a convention, two weeks prior to getting on that project. And he remembered me. It was weird cuz I was introduced through a friend of a friend so it wasn't just some random walking up to Oh, random day. Yeah. It wasn't just a ran, it was like a friend of a friend introduced and we talked for maybe 10 minutes.
Adam: We walked around the convention together and after about 10 minutes we parted ways cause he had to go back to a panel or something like that. But then I run into him on set two or three weeks later. And he remembered me. He was super cool. I went up and asked him a whole bunch of questions and, he was explaining all of the appliances and things like that was really, really, really cool.
Adam: It was a really fun experience and I wanted the movie to be better than it was. Yeah. And the articulated head that they had on onset was much cooler than the one that made it into the final
Charlotte: film. So are you recommending the movie
Adam: as a curio? Definitely. As a what could have been or something like that.
Adam: Can you have some weird
Charlotte: choices here? Like, things you sort of don't recommend?
Adam: Hey, I mean, it's not a bad film. It's totally palatable film.
Charlotte: It was better than I remembered. Yeah. But I think my expectations at the time were pretty high. It's interesting
Adam: too, cuz it's a lot of early work by a lot of actors that have now gone on to much bigger things.
Adam: True. It's cool to see Michael Rosenbaum before Smallville, you know? Mm-hmm. , he plays this total dick in the film and it was great. It's just great to see these hair, these people early. Yeah. And he had hair. It was crazy . So, yeah, that's my final recommendation is cursed 2005 for multiple reasons.
Adam: All right. Do you have your final
Charlotte: pick, right? I do. My final is a recent one. It is from 2021 called Where? Wolves Within.
Adam: Oh yes. So
Charlotte: good. Directed by Josh Ruben, who huge fan of his directorial
Adam: work. Yeah. Both of his movies so far have been
Charlotte: wonderful. He had another one from 2020 called Scare Me, and it's basically just two people locked in a cabin telling scary stories .
Charlotte: He's really good with the horror comedy, which is a very hard genre to do. Well.
Adam: Yeah. It's amazing how much energy that movie has too, with just the two people in it for a very long time. Scare me. Scare me. Yes.
Charlotte: So Werewolves Within is based on a video game. I knew that. I know you know that , but I don't know that they all know that.
Adam: Well, it's not super apparent in the film at all.
Charlotte: because we all have these preconceived notions of what a video game movie is gonna be, and it's not that at all. And apparently the video game company just wrote the check and said, Alright, you go do what you want, We're gonna stand back and let you do your thing, which is what they should have done with Cursed.
Charlotte: And the premise is the same
Adam: thing. Yeah. It's, it's a bunch of people in a locker room trying to figure out who the wear wolf is
Charlotte: basically. Yeah. The tagline who done it with teeth?
Adam: That's a great tagline actually. Yeah. Really good. Yeah.
Charlotte: Works on a lot of levels. So it's really more of a mystery than it is a wearable film in a way.
Adam: A comedy with a lot of quirky characters,
Charlotte: all kinds of quirky, everybody in it,
Adam: stereotypical, it's cool and weird, in some way.
Adam: It
Charlotte: is 97
Adam: minutes long. Oh yeah. Have you haven't read the synopsis yet either, Have you? I have not go to town.
Charlotte: I'm going
Charlotte: the synopsis. When a proposed pipeline creates hostilities between residents of a small town, a newly arrived forest ranger must keep the peace after a snowstorm confines the town's people to an old lodge. But when a mysterious creature begins terrorizing the group, their worst tendencies and prejudices rise to the surface and it is up to the ranger to keep the residents alive, both from each other and the monster, which plagues them.
Charlotte:
Charlotte: This stars some really great people. The the main star, Sam Richardson, he was most recently in that show on Apple Plus after party. Great show. So much fun. Yeah, he played a great show. He played a unique, he's really good at nailing that sort of nerdy sensitive guy character.
Charlotte: And in this one he plays the forest ranger, who
Adam: arrives new to town, new to town, kind of out of his element, but
Charlotte: excited about his new job and, sort of optimistic. And he meets up with the postal worker, played by Melana Vine Trou, who most people know from the at and t commercials. She's adorable. And she takes him under her wing, showing him around, telling him the, who's who, the small town, watch out for this person.
Adam: Yeah. Where everybody knows everybody. Yeah. And everybody knows everybody's business. Yeah. It's one of those towns.
Charlotte: It's really got strong Edgar Wright vibes to. Just with the quirkiness, with the tropes that it plays with and makes fun of. And again, it's a mystery that happens to have a wear wolf. And, well, the whole mystery is who is the wear wolf? And you really think that it could be anybody?
Adam: Well, I think they lead you that way.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. There's red herrings pretty much every character
Charlotte: in this at some point. And there's every stereotypical kind of character. There's a really funny scene where it's the first night I think they're all trapped in the lodge. And Sam Richardson's character, Mr. Forrest Ranger, decides to take charge, If you're into the horror comedy, I say make it a Josh Ruben double feature night. We actually did this last year during the month of October. We showed double features every week at our house we have a big party and that was a big hit that night. That was a big hit.
Charlotte: You weren't so sure about it, but I was very adamant about let's make this a Josh Ruben double feature. Mm-hmm. cuz I love scare me. I thought OLS within was fun. I was
Adam: a little worried that scared me was gonna lose people, but it didn't. They all seemed to really enjoy it. Yeah.
Charlotte: Yeah. That might be my favorite of the two.
Charlotte: I don't know.
Adam: Oh, I don't know. This one has so many fun
Charlotte: characters and it does. I've only seen it once too. Yeah. You know, it's worth a
Adam: rewatch. Absolutely. Like we need highly recommend
Charlotte: that. Yeah. Anyway, so where was, Well then check it out. Check out, Scare me while you're at it.
Adam: Absolutely.
Charlotte: Yeah. All right, so the final one. Oh yes. Save the best for last. The
Adam: Dogs ASTA's recommendation. Okay,
Charlotte: so we have two dogs. Asten, Ripley Asta named Four, The Thin Man and Ripley named four. Not Ripley's, believe it or not. Nope. But Ellen Ripley.
Charlotte: Ellen Ripley of Alien and Aliens and Alien too.
Adam: And she's a bruiser, just like Ellen Ripley. She's totally a bruiser. Yeah, she's tough, tough lady. Yeah, she
Charlotte: is. They love movies. So we should really do a. Episode on the movies that they love. Oh, for sure.
Adam: Up upcoming, we will have a recommended by the dog's episode.
Adam: Yeah.
Charlotte: It's weird because sometimes it'll even be animated movies where there's animals, cuz of course animals like animals, but sometimes they don't even really look like animals. They're very artistically done. Mm-hmm. and somehow they still know it's a dog. Yeah, but they don't like the bi petals.
Adam: No, they're, they're not big into the buyed werewolves at all. It kind of freaks 'em out, but what do they love? I'll tell you what they love, They love 1980 ones. The Wolfen. Yes, they
Charlotte: do. We split that movie into three nights because these fools. Given me such a headache, from barking at the movie, just flipping out, and not just barking, but hopping up and down and then barking at each other and just going nuts. And every time you put that movie on, they do the same thing.
Charlotte: Also, that movie's almost two hours long. So it is, it is the longest wear wolf movie that we're recommending today. But of course it's the dog's recommendation.
Adam: Well, they like it long like that because that means there's more time for the animals.
Charlotte: Yeah. So this one, as you said, 1981, directed by Michael Wadley.
Charlotte: The synopsis. A city cop is assigned to resolve a bizarre set of violent murders where it appears that the victims were killed by animals. Spoiler alert, they were. Yeah. Wws in his pursuit, he learns of an Indian legend about wolf spirits.
Adam: Yeah. I actually read this book stars
Charlotte: Albert. Funny. Yes. Gregory
Adam: Freaking Hines. Oh yes. Tom Newan. Tom Newan double feature. Look at that. That in late phases. Yeah.
Charlotte: Edward
Adam: James almost, who has one of the most petrifying scenes in the entire movie. Remember? The guy is literally standing on top of one of the pylons on the Brooklyn Bridge. It's crazy. Got an appearance by Tom Whites. Oh yeah. I mean, that guy looks like a ol most of the time. He
Charlotte: does talks like one too. Mm-hmm. . I mean, if werewolves could talk, can he talk to, I mean some of 'em
Adam: do.
Adam: Yeah, I guess some of 'em do. Just depends on the movie. Depends on the lore. So anyway, Wolfen, it's a interesting take. It's about these animals that have run around since pre-history, basically as packs, shapeshifters, I mean, what is pre-history since before that was a city, they were occupying that area.
Adam: They've been around longer than history has longer than man has counted days and created a calendar. That's how long they've been around. You
Charlotte: know, speaking of calendars, that's where Silver Bullet, the whole genesis of that story came from Stephen King. Was writing the text for some kind of a calendar and he got the idea for it, and that's why it called
Adam: Cycle of the World.
Adam: Yeah, Yeah. But then it ended up becoming a short story, which then was illustrated,
Charlotte: Hey man, I'm just bringing it full circle
Adam: by Bernie Rson. Bernie Wrightson, one of my favorite comic artists.
Charlotte: All right. So I guess that's it for this week. Talked about some wear Wolf movies, Not all the best ones. Just,
Adam: you know, recommendations. I tried to focus on lesser known ones. Mm-hmm. , and you did too. You, you know, Did I? Yeah. Late phases. I don't think a lot of people have seen that.
Adam: I don't know
Charlotte: if you haven't seen it, check it out.
Adam: People that have come to our movie festival have seen that. It's not really a festival. our double features at our house. Yeah, they have seen it. They have.
Charlotte: Yeah. It's a big deal. We weren't gonna do those double features this year, and then the masses were complaining.
Adam: All like five of them. .
Charlotte: I'm telling you, I had people saying, Why aren't you showing your double features this year? It was like we were taken away. The Halloween spirit, we bowed
Adam: to peer pressure . Its
Charlotte: so sad. All right, let me get out all the decorations. And so if you're coming to that this week, I hope you enjoy it.
Charlotte: No, it's fun. Enjoy our hard, hard work and tears. It's fun. It's great getting to see everybody here, listeners. And it's fun watching horror movies with people.
Adam: Yeah. This week Halloween ends. Yeah, Halloween
Charlotte: ends and
Adam: followed by the Mexican classic Demonn Annoy. We'll see if people, 79 minutes for Demon. Yeah, we'll
Charlotte: see Halloween.
Charlotte: End it short. Might
Adam: end it. I mean, it it probably end everybody
Charlotte: there. Yeah, it might, it just might. We'll find out. All right. Thanks for joining us here on Spooky edition,
Adam: the very spooky edition. I forgot to talk like that. Most of that, so, Oh, man. All right. Let's rerecord it. Yep. Oh, sorry guys.
Adam: All
Charlotte: right. Welcome. This week, No . Okay. Hell no.
Adam: Very spooky addition.
Charlotte: All right. We are gonna try to figure out what the topic is for next week. Maybe we'll stick on that first date theme. Who knows? I'd love to talk Phantom in the Paradise, but then we'd probably just start singing the songs, and that would be embarrassing.
Charlotte: I mean, you're welcome
Adam: if we do that, well, maybe not. Yeah, we could just record the whole soundtrack. You've already
Charlotte: already. All right. Start from the top. fan of the Paradise. If you haven't seen that one, Brian Palmer at his.
Adam: Oh my gosh. One of his finest. So good. I love that movie. I love Brian Palmer. Me too.
Adam: Definitely Love Brian diploma. Yeah.
Charlotte: Anyways, hope you had fun. Hope he got some fun October plans and some spooky movies
Adam: to watch. If you have Wew recommendations for us.
Charlotte: Yeah, please send us an email. We are at perf damage podcast gmail.com. You can also send us a message on Twitter. We're at perf damage.
Charlotte: You could check our letter box perf damage, but it's not really
Adam: updated. Hey, I will update it, I promise. Check it
Charlotte: out. Leave some comments. Say, Hey, why don't you update this? Why don't you update this? Maybe I'll do that. ,
Adam: you'll be just logging in as a bunch of different people. Yeah, anonymously. Yeah.
Adam: Yeah. Anyway, thanks again for joining us here on Damage.
Adam: Make it a Josh Ruben double feature.
Adam: Josh Rubal. Dubin
Charlotte: Fe.
Adam: Josh Ruben .