Hellraiser

[00:00:04] Speaker A: This Film is Lit the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book. [00:00:15] Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie. [00:00:22] Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. Thought I'd gone to the limits. I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits, pain and pleasure. Indivisible. It's Hellraiser and and this Film is Lit. Hello and welcome back to this Film is Like the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's our 2025 Halloween episode covering Hellraiser. We have so much to talk about. No guess who this week, but we do have every single other segment. Plenty to get into. We're gonna start, as we always do, if you have not read or watched Hellraiser with a brief summary of the film in Let me sum up. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. This synopsis is sourced from Wikipedia. In Morocco, Frank Cotton, a hedonist, buys a puzzle box said to open the door to a realm of otherworldly pleasure. At home in his bare attic, Frank solves the puzzle and hooks hooked chains emerge, tearing him apart. Later, Frank's brother Larry moves into the same house. He intends to rebuild his relationship with his second wife, Julia. Larry is unaware that Julia had an affair with his brother Frank before her marriage to him. When Larry accidentally cuts his hand moving furniture, his blood drips on the attic floor and resurrects Frank in a ghoulish form. Julia later finds Frank still obsessed with him. She agrees to help restore his body so they can run away together. Julia picks up men in bars and brings them back to the attic, where she mortally wounds them. Frank then drains their life, which regenerates his body. Frank explains to Julia that, having exhausted all sensory experiences, he sought out the puzzle box, which was supposed to provide access to a realm of new carnal pleasures. When the puzzle was solved, the Cenobites came to subject him to extreme sadomasochism. Kirstie, Larry's teenage daughter and Frank's niece, sees Julia bringing a man to the house and follows her to the attic, where she finds Frank. She evades Frank and escapes with the puzzle box, collapsing shortly thereafter. Awakening in a hospital, Kirsty solves the box out of curiosity and unknowingly summons the Cenobites in a monster called the Engineer, from which she narrowly escapes. The Cenobytes leader explains that although they have been perceived as both angels and demons, they are simply explorers from another dimension seeking carnal experiences, and that they can no longer differentiate between pain and pleasure. When they attempt to force Kirsty to return to their realm, and then with them, she informs Pinhead that Frank has escaped them. The Cenobites agree to spare Kirsty and recapture Frank instead, with the condition that Frank must confess to escaping them. Kirsty returns home, where Frank has killed Larry and has taken on his identity by wearing his skin. Julia shows her what is purported to be Frank's flayed corpse in the attic. Julia then leaves the attic, locking the door behind her. The Cenobites appear and not fooled by this, the deception demand the man who did this. Kirsty tries to escape, but is held by Julia and Frank. Frank reveals his true identity to Kirsty and when his sexual advances are rejected, he decides to kill her. To complete his rejuvenation, he accidentally stabs Julia instead and drains her without remorse, Frank chases Kirsty to the attic and when he is about to kill her, the Cenobites appear. After hearing him confess to killing her father, now certain he is the one they are looking for, they ensnare him with chains, with chains, with hooks, and tear him to pieces. When the Cenobites double cross Kirsty and attempt to take her, she grabs the puzzle box from Julia's dead hands and banishes them by reversing the motions needed to open the box. Kirsty's boy from Steve arrives and they both escape the collapsing house. Afterwards, Kirsty throws the puzzle box into a burning fire. A vagrant who has been stalking Kirsty walks into the fire and retrieves the box before transforming into a winged skeletal creature and flying away. The box ends up with the same merchant who sold it to Frank, where he offers it to another customer. That is a summary of the film. As I said, no guess who this week. But I got tons of questions. Let's get into them and Was that in the book? [00:04:46] Speaker B: Gaston? May I have my book, please? [00:04:48] Speaker A: How can you read this? [00:04:50] Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination. [00:04:53] Speaker A: So the film immediately opens up on Frank getting the box from a mysterious man. I found out in the summary in Morocco, the film, I don't believe. [00:05:04] Speaker B: I don't think it ever actually says. [00:05:06] Speaker A: Not that it matters, some bazaar somewhere. He is able to acquire this box and then he opens it, and then he is immediately torn to pieces by hooks. But we don't really see much of what happened or what transpired there. He just kind of opens it and then is killed, seemingly. There's a lot of. Where there's a minimal amount of detail in that opening scene. But I wanted to know if we are. If the book opens similarly and if we are similarly in the dark about who this guy is or why this happened or any of what's going on. It's very much a cold open that leaves you in the dark with lots of questions. [00:05:41] Speaker B: The book does open with Frank doing his ritual to open up the box and summon these Cenobites, although we're told a lot more than we are in the movie. The first part of the book is third person limited from Frank's perspective. So we know, like, all of his thoughts and stuff. So we know that he's trying to open a portal to another realm to summon something called the Order of the Gash because he thinks he's exhausted every hedonistic experience that Earth has to offer. We also actually see the Cenobites arrive in the book. Yeah, they show up and they give Frank a warning that if he goes with them, he can't back out and there's no coming back. But he still wants to go with them, despite there being a lot of evidence that he should not. [00:06:33] Speaker A: This is a bad idea. [00:06:34] Speaker B: It's a bad idea. [00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:36] Speaker B: And then there's a scene where they, like, completely overwhelm his senses and make him experience everything at once. Then the female Cenobite reappears, sitting naked on top of a pile of human heads with their cutout tongues lined up on her thighs. [00:06:58] Speaker A: Slay queen. [00:06:58] Speaker B: It's a great image. And says, let's begin. And then the chapter ends. [00:07:04] Speaker A: Okay. [00:07:05] Speaker B: I preferred the book's version overall. I think the mystery that the movie creates is interesting, but not as interesting as everything going on in the book. [00:07:15] Speaker A: I would agree. I think that. I don't know if we needed all of the details of what's going on in the book, but a little bit more, I think would have helped that opening mystery be a little. Literally, you get nothing in the movie. You don't know who this guy. I don't even know if you know his name in that scene. We find it out later. But, like. Cause maybe you'd hear it. I can't remember. But you get so little information. And he opens the box and then it's so truncated. He just. You're like, I guess he got hooked. I don't know. You know, like, it just happens so quickly. And then you're like, all right. [00:07:50] Speaker B: Right. And then you get, like, some visuals, I guess, of, like, where they're torturing him. But it's hard to tell. Like, are the bits and pieces supposed to be him? [00:08:02] Speaker A: That's what. I literally was unsure if those bits and pieces were supposed to be him or, like, something or a previous, you know, victims or. Yeah, I just thought there was so little information in that opening scene that if they. If it was a little closer to the book. I don't know if you need the exact. I don't need every single detail of, like. They're called the order of the gash. And he's, you know, all of his. The explicit details of, like, his motivations for why he's doing this and everything, or that he thinks it's going to lead to another realm. I don't need any of that information, but just a little bit more of, like, why he's trying to do this. A little bit of, like, you know, maybe we see him shooting up drugs and it's not doing what he. You know, something. Leading just a little bit more, I think would have been really helpful. And I'll have more about that later if I remember. But that was my biggest. One of my biggest notes of the movie is that I felt like the first act needed a little additional time, actually. We'll get to your notes later. It's kind of like your final verdict. I think there's kind of a very easy fix to this movie that we'll talk about later. But we'll get there in a bit. [00:09:12] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:13] Speaker A: And I say fix. I'll say it right up top. I actually liked the movie quite a bit. I was very. I enjoyed it thoroughly and was very pleasantly. I don't even wanna say surprised. Cause I had heard it was good, but I was kind of pleasantly surprised that it was not at all what I was expecting. [00:09:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:28] Speaker A: And very interesting. And, you know, the plot was vastly different than kind of what I. I don't even know what I was expecting, but it was not remotely what I thought it was going to be, which was fun. [00:09:41] Speaker B: Real quick, before you move on, I do want to talk about one other thing. I don't have this in my notes, but I just want to talk smack on Frank for a second because I Don't like him. [00:09:51] Speaker A: Sure. [00:09:53] Speaker B: So in this opening part of the book, he talks about, like, what. Or I guess thinks about what he thinks is going to happen after he, like, opens this portal to this other realm in the order of the gash arrives. And what he describes was very funny to me because it's like this whole buildup of, like, ugh, I've experienced every pleasure that Earth has to offer, and I. I need to go to another realm to experience different kinds of pleasures. And then what he describes wanting to happen when they get there is basically like an orgy. [00:10:31] Speaker A: So, like. [00:10:32] Speaker B: So like. Like basic bitch shit. And then he's surprised when they show up. And it's not basic bitch shit was gonna happen. [00:10:42] Speaker A: So your point is being that he describes things that he could, in fact, engage in. [00:10:46] Speaker B: He could, in fact, have engaged on earth with normal people and not, like, gone to a hell realm and been, like, ripped apart. [00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:57] Speaker B: Like, man, I really spent the whole of this book being like, you are a dumb motherfucker. [00:11:04] Speaker A: Apparently he was unaware of S and M close, I guess, or something. So then we move forward in the story. Does an unspecified amount of time later. There may be a title that says some amount of months later, I can't recall. But now Larry and his wife Julia are moving into the home that Frank was in earlier. I think it's like their old family home, potentially. And Frank was squatting there, is what it's like. Yeah. And he's like, well, we haven't heard from Frank in forever. I think he was. And they realize he was staying there, blah, blah, blah. And we start kind of getting these reveals that Julia maybe has some sort of strange connection with Frank. Like, she sees a photo of him and she, like, pockets it. And the way she's kind of reacting to everything is very strange for a woman that we assume has. Would not know, maybe vaguely knows this guy is a family relation or whatever. But then it is very quickly revealed right here at the beginning that we get a flashback. And we see that Julia, who is Kirstie's stepmother, who we'll meet shortly, and Larry's current wife, had an affair with Frank. And we see the scene where this happens. They have sex on top of her wedding dress in a very, you know, on the nose. [00:12:26] Speaker B: In a very on the nose moment of symbolism. [00:12:30] Speaker A: And so it's clearly they had this affair and she seemed to be into him because he was this very, like, dark, dangerous guy. [00:12:37] Speaker B: He's like, bad boy. He's a bad boy. [00:12:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And she was into that And I wanted to know if we find out that quickly because we're like less than 10 minutes into the movie, I think, at this point, very, very, very quickly into the movie. I wanted to know if the book reveals that quickly that Julia, assuming the characters are the same, which I assume they are, for people who don't remember or know or weren't here for the prequel. This book, the Hellbound Heart, was also written by Clive Barker. So I would assume there aren't huge, huge changes for the most that he's mostly favorably adapting his book, considering the whole reason for him directing. [00:13:13] Speaker B: We'll find out. [00:13:13] Speaker A: We'll get there. But part of the whole reason for him directing this was because he had not liked some of the previous adaptations of some of his works, his literature, so he wanted to do it himself. So anyways, are we revealed that early that Julia had had an affair with Frank? [00:13:30] Speaker B: Yes, that is a pretty early reveal in the book as well. They had sex once, like a week before the wedding. And then Frank flies the coop. And Julia yearns. [00:13:45] Speaker A: She does indeed yearn. [00:13:46] Speaker B: She yearns. [00:13:47] Speaker A: She yearns hard. Absolutely. So as they're moving in, kind of an important thing happens, which is that they're trying to carry a bed up the stairs. Larry and the movers are. And Larry accidentally cuts his hand on a nail on, like, the wall and then goes up to find Julia, who's up in the attic. Because he has, like, a. Blood. [00:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah, he doesn't like blood. [00:14:10] Speaker A: He doesn't like blood. It, like, makes him pass out, which I think they're playing with. Kind of a fun setting up him as like, kind of this polar opposite of Frank. Whereas Frank is this bad boy who's, like, into very dark, hedonistic shit. Larry. The sight of blood will make him pass out. So, yeah, setting up that dichotomy. But he goes and finds her up there and he starts bleeding and he's dripping blood all over the place. And he drips blood on the floorboards in this attic, which is where in the opening scene in the Cold Open, Frank was killed. And then we see the blood seep down into the floorboards. Something weird is happening there. And then we get this reverse time lapse of they melted a corpse and then they unmelted it in reverse, basically. And it's a very cool effect of Frank forming out of the floorboards as this very gooey corpse. And I wanted to know if a corpse reverse goofied in the attic after Larry bled all over the floor. And is it Frank? I assumed. I wrote. I Assume this is going to be Frank based on the location. [00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, one would assume. [00:15:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:20] Speaker B: So Larry, whose name in the book is Rory. [00:15:24] Speaker A: Okay. [00:15:25] Speaker B: I'm gonna do my best to just refer to him as Larry. [00:15:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that must have been part of the Americanizing, perhaps. So, yeah, not a lot of Rory's in the us Quite a few Larrys. [00:15:36] Speaker B: But Larry bleeding onto the floor is the impetus that starts Frank's journey back to the earthly realm. But it happens differently in the book. So the first time that Julia sees Frank, she's standing in the room because she was inexplicably drawn in there. And the bricks on the wall start to move and shift and opens up a portal. And she's basically looking into the cenobite's world where she can see Frank's grotesque, bloody form languishing in a cell. And he isn't actually able to come into the room until after the first murder. And I do kind of wish that the movie had done both, because I would have liked to see the wall moving. And I think that would have explained a little better of, like, what was going on. [00:16:39] Speaker A: I think it could have. I think it's possible that I would imagine the reason they didn't do that is a couple things. One, practical effect level of doing that. Effect of showing the wall going away. And two, they knew they were gonna do that later when Kirsty was in the hospital. [00:16:57] Speaker B: They could do that later with her. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Maybe a little redundant it twice. So maybe they wanted to, you know, show this a different way. And I thought it was a very cool shot where the camera, Dolly, not Dolly's pedestals, down through the floorboards. And you see the. [00:17:12] Speaker B: Yeah, you see like, weird heart thing. [00:17:15] Speaker A: Or something, like, start to beat under the floorboards. [00:17:18] Speaker B: Very telltale heart. [00:17:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Which. The title of the Hellbound Heart. I assumed there was a little bit of inspiration from Telltale Heart there, the way that all worked. [00:17:28] Speaker B: Cool. [00:17:30] Speaker A: So Frank comes back to life as a very gooey corpse. [00:17:35] Speaker B: Really, if you've never seen this movie, cannot stress enough how gooey everything was. [00:17:40] Speaker A: Incredibly gooey. Yeah. It's the scene from the Mummy, because he's supposed to be so juicy. Yeah. But he comes back and he tells Julia she finds him in the attic, freaks out, but then realizes he starts talking and is like, hey, it's Frank. And she's like, what? And he says that he needs her help, that he can reform, but he will need her help. He needs blood, basically, because blood. Larry's blood helped bring him back a little bit. He needs More blood. And so he's gonna need her help to bring strangers here to murder and absorb the life force from. And, boy, this is where I was like. I had absolutely no idea what the plot of this movie was, because this was all. This whole everything with this, with Frank and Julia, I was like, gun to my head. Never would have guessed this was the plot of this movie at all. And I thought it was very interesting. But I wanted to know if that's what happens in the book. Does Frank need Julia's help to regain his form? [00:18:40] Speaker B: Yes. In the book, the first time she sees him through the wall, he's only able to say, julia, it's Frank, blood. But she gets the idea and lures the guy back to murder him and provide said blood. She's like, well, I'd really like to bang him again. So if it's blood that we need, blood he shall have, basically. [00:19:09] Speaker A: Fair enough. [00:19:10] Speaker B: I had a very similar experience reading the book, though. I thought that the Cenobites would be in way more of the story than they were. [00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah, they're like, barely. [00:19:20] Speaker B: They're like. Not really. They're in more of the movie than they are of the book. [00:19:23] Speaker A: Honestly, it is really interesting. I was not expecting that. I guess maybe I kind of knew that I had maybe heard that the Cenobites aren't. At least in the first movie, are not like. [00:19:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:35] Speaker A: That, you know, the main thing in the movie. In the same way that, like, Michael Myers is in Halloween or whatever, or I say that I've actually never seen Halloween, so maybe he's not in that much of the movie. Maybe there's this whole subplot. I actually don't know, but that he. That the Cenobites are not really the same kind of pivotal main characters that you would assume that they were. [00:19:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:57] Speaker A: And. Yeah. Anyways, this whole plot with Frank and Julia and everything I thought was fascinating because it was just not at all what I was expecting. So that was fun. [00:20:05] Speaker B: I kind of had, like. After I had done a little bit of research and had looked at some screen caps from the movie and stuff, I thought it was going to be about actually getting him out of the Cenobites realm. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Like, out of hell or whatever. [00:20:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Like going on this mission to get him out of hell. [00:20:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I bet some of the later sequels might be something like that. [00:20:29] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:20:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:30] Speaker B: But it wasn't really about that. It was about rebuilding his body with blood. [00:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it was very interesting. Well, speaking of. Well, actually, before we get to that, we have this scene in the movie that I thought was really interesting, that is, I believe, a nightmare sequence for Kirsty or Kirstie that she. She has this nightmare and we. We get a shot of her in a room that I don't think is the attic. It's maybe another room in the house. I'm not sure. I'm not even sure if it matters. But we see her in this room and we hear a crying baby. And then there's this something under a white sheet on like a bed. It's not a bed, but it seems like a plinth or something like a morgue slab, something like that in front of her under this white sheet. And there's a bunch of like feathers floating in the air in the room. And it's all kind of in slow motion. And then the sheet starts like getting soaked with blood and it just kind of ends abruptly. And I don't think anything really comes of it. But I wanted to know if that came from the book. And it's almost a lost adaptation of like. Was that because. Nothing. We never go back to that. We're never really sure what was going on there. And I was interested to get your input on it because it's very cool looking scene. But I don't think it's. I don't know if I know what it's doing in the movie. [00:21:55] Speaker B: Well, I'm gonna disappoint you because none of this is from the book. And I'm honestly not sure to interpret it, how to interpret it beyond that was spooky. [00:22:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I was trying to think if it could be somehow related. Cause I'm thinking through it now, like the figure under the sheet, it's maybe something related to her mom. Like her dead mom maybe. And like the baby crying. Maybe something in relation to like her. Like maybe her mom died when she was a baby. I don't know. I was trying to think it must be related to that. [00:22:28] Speaker B: Like. But the movie never brings up her mom. [00:22:31] Speaker A: Not really. No, not. No, not explicitly. I think she might get mentioned offhand, like once. Well. Or there's like a joke about how Larry tells the movers. Like that's not that Julia is not her mom. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:44] Speaker A: But yeah, I don't think we ever really find anything out about her mom, what happened there. But I'm just trying to figure out what that possibly could be because it's a cool scene or it's a very cool visual scene. But yeah. Yeah. Who knows if you know what the heck's going on there or if there is Something. I assume there's something to get out of it, but I don't really know what it is. [00:23:03] Speaker B: My only other thought, and I'm jumping ahead here, because we haven't talked about this yet, is if we read into the movie's light suggestion that Frank may have molested or assaulted Kirstie as a child. [00:23:27] Speaker A: Right. [00:23:28] Speaker B: Then maybe the dreams about that, like, with the baby crying and, like, the. [00:23:33] Speaker A: Sheep and, like, hiding under the covers or something. Could be that. That could be. That's an interesting idea. [00:23:39] Speaker B: I think it's an interesting idea. I think it is tenuous at best. [00:23:43] Speaker A: Very tenuous, for sure. [00:23:45] Speaker B: But I'm not really sure how else to interpret that scene. Again, like, beyond. Ooh, spooky. [00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Which. Which is. Honestly, it could just be that. It could be something to do with shinobites, like, you know, giving her some sort of weird vision or something. Yeah. Who knows? Interesting. Okay, well, then we move forward and we get to the first murder. Julia goes to a bar, picks up a guy and brings him back so that she can feed him to Frank. And I thought this was an interesting detail, is that this first guy she brings back, you can tell she's kind of hesitant about doing this. She's a little uncomfortable with it. But this first guy she brings back makes it a little bit easier by being kind of a weird, abusive creep where she's. He's, like, kissing her and she's. She's acting strange, and he can tell she's acting strange, and we know why she's acting strange. But he thinks, like, that she's just going to, like, flake on him and, like, get cold feet. And I don't remember the exact line he says, but he says something. He basically threatens her about, like, not changing her mind and basically, like, you know, like, oh, don't you dare tell me no now, or something. Like, I don't remember exactly what he says, but I thought that was interesting. And so I wanted to know if that came from the book of the first guy, the first victim she brings back, making it easier for her to kill him by him being a creep. [00:25:10] Speaker B: I don't remember that happening in the book. I do feel like there is kind of a progression to where the last guy that she brings back tries to change his mind and leave, but then she has to murder him still. But I don't remember any of them, like, specifically being overtly creepy in that way. I mean, I guess they're all kind of creeps in a sense, but because they're all, like, adulterers and like. [00:25:42] Speaker A: Oh, well, do we know that for sure? [00:25:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:45] Speaker A: Okay. Because in the movie, I don't know if you get that. They're just. I thought. [00:25:48] Speaker B: I mean, we know that. We know that for sure in the book. [00:25:51] Speaker A: Okay. I was gonna say, in the movie, they just appear to be dudes at the bar. She's picking, you know, guys that want to sleep with her, which is. There's no implication that they're all, like, married necessarily in the book or in the movie, rather. But yeah, this first guy definitely is overtly a creep to her, which I thought was. I thought that was kind of interesting. [00:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:12] Speaker A: But then we get to the actual murder, and this surprised me. I thought she was just gonna, like, throw him in the room and let Frank gnaw on him or whatever. But no, she has to. At least at the beginning, she has to murder the guy because Frank is not strong enough. He's just a little weird, gooey corpse thing. And so she pulls a claw hammer off the wall and just murders him with a hammer. And I wanted to know if that came from the book that Julia actually does the murdering, because, again, I was. [00:26:40] Speaker B: Like, okay, well, in the book she uses a knife, but, yes, she does do the murdering. I liked the switch to the hammer, though. I thought that fit well for the situation that she would use, like, a household tool and not necessarily a murdering tool. [00:27:00] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Well, and also because he needs to seemingly drink his blood or something, and so hitting him with a hammer, maybe in the head and knocking him out would, you know, he would lose less blood and make, you know, it's a better meal for Frank, I would guess. I don't know. Another detail I thought was super interesting about the relationship between Frank and Julia, which we see more and more as the movie goes on, is that Frank is also clearly an abusive creep and that Julia just kind of happens to be into him partially because of that, but she is also a victim of his abusive creepiness. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:44] Speaker A: And I thought the movie kind of at least touches on some very interesting and kind of dark ideas about abuse and sexual attraction and the way that those things can get kind of mixed up and it isn't like a clean cut, simple thing of, like, well, this guy's an abusive asshole, so, like, how could any woman ever find him attractive kind of thing? Like, there are elements of that that she actually finds attractive, and it's this complicated miasma of. And I wanted to know if you felt like that element came from the book, because I thought it was really compelling in the movie? [00:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that definitely. It's kind of a brief exploration in both the book and the movie. But both touch on the idea that Julia and Frank's encounter might not have been completely consensual. [00:28:31] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's interesting because I wasn't even reading it necessarily that way, but I can see that in the movie, for sure. I wasn't even necessarily referring to their first encounter not being completely consensual, but that's definitely there in the movie. I was more so talking about how he's. Even if it was consensual, he. From there on their relationship, he becomes very weird and abusive and, like, possessive and clearly is. Does not care about her, you know, like, he's just an abusive asshole. But yes, also that first scene, it is. At the very least in the movie, he's. He's being very forceful, you know, and how much she is consenting is debatable. And how much he convinces her to consent is. You know, the movie leaves it all kind of vague, or it leaves a lot of it up to interpretation because it's hard to tell just from, you know, the kind of brief interactions that we see. [00:29:26] Speaker B: But, yeah, it's similar in the book, I think. I was kind of trying to find the passage, but I couldn't find it. But at one point, she's reminiscing on her encounter with Frank before the wedding and the way that she recalls it. She's, like, thinking about it and she's like. I guess it was kind of almost more like rape. Like, literally says, like, but I liked it. [00:29:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So the book explicitly goes in as part of that conversation. Interesting, because I was more talking about the vague idea of not so much like, oh, he raped her, or whatever, but, like, he is abusive and manipulative, and you can tell that he is abusive and manipulative to her. And she doesn't necessarily like that, but she also kind of does. It's. It's weird. And I thought that was all just super interesting. And like you said, it is a very kind of surface level thing. [00:30:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's like barely touched on. [00:30:31] Speaker A: Yeah, the movie doesn't. Well, and I think this movie does this in a. With of what it's doing, which I thought works especially in a horror movie. Like, this is. It doesn't really give you, like, tell you its point of view on any of this stuff necessarily. It's just kind of showing you this relationship and their. Their relationship dynamic and going, think about this what you will. And so, yeah, but it definitely If I had to guess, it does feel like it's exploring. And from what we know of Clive Barker's background with him having been a prostitute, which I looked it up, and this is on his Wikipedia page. We had one of our patrons mentioned that we were. We were wondering what Hustler meant. And it is on his Wikipedia page that in his younger days, Clive Barker was essentially a male escort for a while in his. When he was younger. And I say younger. I don't know how old he was, but before he became a writer and a director and all that sort of stuff. [00:31:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:22] Speaker A: And I think that. That probably that time of his life, he was processing and dealing with a lot of mixed emotions about how that all felt. And, you know, the dynamics of being a sex worker, and that's obviously different than abusive relationship, but there can be similar weird dynamics of, like, you know, this person is. Maybe the person paying you is an asshole and is kind of abusive, but maybe you're also enjoying having sex with them. Like, there's all this weird stuff mixed up in it, and it feels like an author trying to express that through this story, but not necessarily comment on, like. [00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:06] Speaker A: Or give an opinion on, like, how you should feel about all that. [00:32:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:10] Speaker A: Just like these are things that happen to people and it's hard and weird to deal with, and it can lead to you making weird, rash decisions, like murdering a bunch of guys from a bar so that your ex, boyfriend, affair guy can come back to life. Yeah, it's. I don't know. I just thought it was really compelling. Another thing that I thought, oh. So then we jump to Kirstie, who hasn't really been in the movie much to this point. We're aware of her. I think we've seen, like, a phone call or something like that. But we haven't really seen much of her in the movie at this point. But we cut to her and she's working in a pet store, it would appear. And at this pet store, this guy who we've seen twice, this is the second time we've seen him. I think the other time she was just, like, walking down the street and saw this guy. [00:32:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:57] Speaker A: Seems to appears to be a homeless guy, and he walks into this pet store she's working at and he just eats a bunch of crickets out of, like, the cricket enclosure in front of her. [00:33:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:10] Speaker A: And then leaves. And we're like, what? And I wanted to know if that guy came from the book. [00:33:16] Speaker B: He does not. This character was added for the movie. I didn't like this addition. More on that later. [00:33:23] Speaker A: Okay, we'll get to that later. Then. Back to Julia, though. One of the things that I thought was fun in the movie that you notice is that I talked about how kind of hesitant she seemed to kill the first guy and clearly figuring out this whole situation. But as it goes on and we get a little bit of a montage of her bringing guys back, she clearly grows more and more comfortable with it. To the point where we have this shot of her lounging, drinking a glass of wine. And in this one single shot, her expression kind of goes from unsure or uncomfortable. And then she leans forward and gets this kind of sick, weird smile on her face. And I think representing the fact that she has gone from being hesitant and unsure about doing this to kind of enjoying killing these guys. And I thought that was compelling, and I wanted to know if it came. [00:34:15] Speaker B: From the book, so more comfortable with it. Yeah, I think you could get that read. I don't know about seeming to enjoy it eventually. That was not something that I got from the book. But I do think that that arc for her makes sense, given her backstory of falling in with Frank and being easily influenced by him. [00:34:39] Speaker A: I would agree. I think that the idea there is almost as much as anything is that Frank's influence is. Is like rubbing off on her. And she is. Yeah, she's. She's being corrupted by him and becoming more like him in the sense that, yeah, she's kind of becoming masochist or sadistic. Not masochistic, but, yeah, one scene in the movie. So Frank gets more and more whole as he's eating more and more people. [00:35:07] Speaker B: He becomes more humanoid. [00:35:09] Speaker A: More humanoid. And he's able to eventually, at this point, he's up and walking around. He's still very juicy. [00:35:14] Speaker B: Yes. [00:35:15] Speaker A: Still very gooey. But we get this fun scene where he is now wearing clothes and he. There's this. I think it's only in one of the scenes, he is wearing, like, this black suit while he is this bloody, goopy skeleton man. And I thought that was a really fun look, and I wanted to know if it came from the book. He's very devilish in that moment. Like. Yeah, you know, like the devil wearing a suit. He's all red and. Yeah, I thought that was a lot of fun, and I wanted to know if it was described in the book. [00:35:44] Speaker B: I don't think Frank is ever described as wearing a suit in the book. At one point, he's wrapped in bandages like a mummy. [00:35:53] Speaker A: Okay. [00:35:54] Speaker B: No suit, though. [00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Boo. Boring. Well, I say that it's fine. I will say I also started to notice that as they killed more and more people initially, it's definitely helping him. He's getting less goopy and less. Whatever. But then as it went on, it didn't seem like he was changing all that much. [00:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:15] Speaker A: Anymore. And I was wondering if that was going to end up being anything. I was like, are these murders even helping him anymore at this point? Or are they just doing it because. And I wanted to know if that was mentioned in the book or what was going on there or if the. You know, if you have any other. [00:36:30] Speaker B: Information that wasn't something that was mentioned in the book. Like, none of them ever described it seeming to not help him or to not be doing anything. [00:36:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:41] Speaker B: So I think that might have just been, like, the visual effects. [00:36:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:46] Speaker B: And maybe they didn't progress it. [00:36:50] Speaker A: I think they did the way. [00:36:52] Speaker B: In a good way. [00:36:53] Speaker A: They did. They definitely progressed it. And I could see him getting more and more. But that just felt like we hit a point where I was like, well, I thought eventually he was going to. I was expecting it to be more like the Mummy. [00:37:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:04] Speaker A: The 1999 mummy. Where he's, like, getting his skin back and, like. [00:37:07] Speaker B: Right. [00:37:08] Speaker A: Very. Where, you know, he has a few patches of, like, gross whatever, but is mostly human looking. But he hit a point eventually where he was just like a bloody skeleton man. He just kind of stayed there. [00:37:20] Speaker B: Yeah. He's like a. He's like a science diagram. Yeah. Where they're showing the musculature. [00:37:29] Speaker A: Exactly. And I felt like he just sat there and I was like, okay. But like, is he going to get any better from here? And so they definitely showed the progression. At the beginning part, I just got to a point where I'm like, well, is. Was he ever gonna, like, get his skin back or whatever? But your note, I think makes sense is that. Yeah. [00:37:44] Speaker B: Yeah. He ends up at, like, roughly the same place in both the book and the movie. Like, mostly put back together, but then he has to steal somebody's skin in order to leave the house. [00:37:54] Speaker A: And the movie eventually reveals that. That he needs to take somebody else's skin, which is fun and creepy. It's just. I was not in my brain. The way this was gonna work was that he was just gonna fully regenerate eventually. [00:38:06] Speaker B: Right. I mean, you would think. [00:38:08] Speaker A: Yes. And not that he needed to, like, wear a skin is very fun. I have no problem with it. And once that was revealed, I was like, okay. But I wrote this question, like, prior to the skin suit Scene. And I was like, oh, that. Okay, so that makes sense. A specific line. I need to know if it comes from the book because it's in the trailer. And a very well known line from the movie is the Cenobites show up. Kirsty accidentally summons them in, like, the hospital. Whole big chase scene with the. Whatever it's called in the summary. Which. [00:38:42] Speaker B: Oh, the Engineer. [00:38:43] Speaker A: The Engineer, yeah. Which is never. You only know what's called that in the credits. Slash the. Maybe it's mentioned in the book. I don't know if it comes from. [00:38:51] Speaker B: The book or not, but otherwise it kind of made me think of the Grievers. [00:38:56] Speaker A: It did. [00:38:57] Speaker B: From the Mace Runner. [00:39:00] Speaker A: Now that you mention it, that is actually a pretty good Griever. [00:39:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it was like a weird, like, scorpion thing. [00:39:06] Speaker A: Yeah. That, like, had extra limbs and, like. [00:39:09] Speaker B: And was kind of gooey. [00:39:11] Speaker A: Yeah, you're actually. It's a pretty good Griever. Did somebody mention that? Now I'm having this weird. [00:39:18] Speaker B: Could not even begin. [00:39:20] Speaker A: A weird memory that may be made up of a. Of a commenter during the Maze Runner episodes being like, Hellraiser. Something about Hellraiser. Maybe not. [00:39:30] Speaker B: If that was you, reveal yourself. [00:39:32] Speaker A: I very well may be imagining that. But you're right. It actually totally looks like a creeper. That's hilarious. But point being, she summons them all and they. They show up and they grab her and they're gonna, like, kill her and take her to the Hell Realm or whatever. But she. She says to them, hey, actually, I know where Frank is. Frank, he came back. Like, he. Because she has seen him at this point and almost got. She just barely escaped him. That was the scene prior to this. And she's like, I will take you to Frank and you can take him back because he escaped you or whatever. And they're like, I don't know. Sounds like you might be lying. But they're going to give her a shot to recoup on this offer. But the threat is that if she doesn't deliver, they will tear your soul apart. And I wanted to know if the line will tear your soul apart came from the book. Because it's in the trailer. [00:40:29] Speaker B: I mean, there's a pretty close approximation in the book. In the book, the line is, deliver him alive to us, then make him confess himself, and maybe we won't tear your soul apart. [00:40:42] Speaker A: Okay, so the movie just makes it more active. [00:40:45] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:45] Speaker A: An active threat of what will happen if she doesn't do it, as opposed to correct the negative of, like, we won't do this. If you do. Yeah. Cool. But, yeah, clearly comes from that line. So we just talked about it. But does Frank take Larry's skin? Is that. Who gets skinned so that Frank can have a skin suit? [00:41:05] Speaker B: Yes. Poor Larry. [00:41:07] Speaker A: Poor Larry. I mean, Larry kind of sucked, to be fair. Not that he sucked. [00:41:12] Speaker B: He was. He was nothing. [00:41:14] Speaker A: He was nothing. [00:41:15] Speaker B: He was nothing. [00:41:16] Speaker A: To be fair to Kirsty, I think she would disagree. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Yes, definitely. They appeared to have a good father, daughter relationship. [00:41:24] Speaker A: Appeared to have a good father, daughter relationship. Which actually takes me back to. Well, is another thing that I'll talk about later when. About how this movie could be improved, which very minor things, because it's already very good. But. And we'll. We'll get to it later, but that would be another part of it. So Frank takes Larry's skin and then we get to the big final confrontation. Frank is Jewel. Or Kirsty shows up trying to, you know, get. Because she has to, basically. And I don't. I don't know if the movie did a great job of explaining this in the movie, but she essentially has to make Frank get Frank to confess that he is Frank. [00:42:07] Speaker B: Yeah, she has to make him name. [00:42:09] Speaker A: Himself so that the Cenobites will know, oh, it is him, and then they can take him back so that they're not like taking the wrong person or something as part of their weird Cenobite code or whatever. And so Julia grabs Kirsty and Frank is, like, gonna stab her and kill her. So to get her out of the way. And then at the last second, as he's coming at her with his switchblade, Kirsty is able to throw Julia off of her and run. And Frank accidentally stabs Julia in, like, the stuff in, like, the stomach, and then seemingly decides to just fully kill her with his neck finger thing, which I guess is how he drains people, I guess. I guess where he, like, shoves his fingers into their neck instead of. I guess they thought it would be too vampirely for him. [00:43:00] Speaker B: They. Kelly didn't want him to be, like. [00:43:01] Speaker A: A vampire, which is fine. Also, I think there's a. It's also a good, like, sexual kind of imagery to how he drains people, like fingering them, you know, like, it ties in with everything else the movie is doing in a way that I. [00:43:19] Speaker B: Think works with the themes. [00:43:20] Speaker A: Yes, I think it works, but I was like, oh, he just kills Julia. And I wanted to know if that happened in the movie or in the book and if he seemingly. Just because I was like, initially when he stabbed her, I thought, like, oh, well, like, she's probably injured, but, like, probably not that. I don't know. [00:43:38] Speaker B: It was just a little stab. [00:43:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And. But he just immediately kills her. And I was like, oh, okay. And so I wanted to know if that happened in the book and like, what's why he just decides to kill her. Beyond. Well, anyways, go ahead. [00:43:52] Speaker B: This happens pretty much exactly as it does in the book. Julia is holding Kirsty so that Frank can kill her, but Kirsty manages to twist out of the way at the last second and Frank accidentally stabs Julia instead. And because Frank has no actual loyalty to or use for Julia beyond helping him get his body back, he just goes ahead and sucks the life out of her. Frank does not even actually like Julia. [00:44:18] Speaker A: Right. And that's fair. Like, I could get that. That like, you know, she's expendable to him. She doesn't. He doesn't actually care about her. That. [00:44:25] Speaker B: That she is a means to an end. [00:44:27] Speaker A: Right. That all tracks with his character totally fine. I guess I was just surprised at how quickly. And also I was like, was he trying to stab her? Because it seemed like he had plenty of time. This is more a kind of a. Maybe a. Some clunkiness in the editing slash filmmaking of like, he's going to lunge at her with the knife. And then it seems like he had. He could have easily stopped. But he. I don't know. I was like, did he mean to stab her? Like, I didn't know if maybe the book, like, was he actually trying to kill people? [00:44:56] Speaker B: He means to stab her, but I think once he does, he's like, well, we might as well not let this go to waste. [00:45:03] Speaker A: Right. Makes sense. Okay, well. And there's this other little detail that I actually don't have anywhere in here. And I don't know if you have anything on it that I was thinking back on the movie, I had this question I was very confused about. He drains her and she seems to be completely dead. But then she ends up in the bed, in a bed later with the box. And I'm like, how did she get there? Did that happen in the book? Cause later Kirsty finds the box, which is so funny. It's called the what? The something configuration. What is it called? [00:45:41] Speaker B: The Marchand configuration or whatever. [00:45:45] Speaker A: So funny. That's like. I knew it was called that, but they never say it in. [00:45:49] Speaker B: Yeah, they never. [00:45:50] Speaker A: Never mentioned in the movie. I was like, oh, okay. Literally never said in the movie. In this movie at least. But so, yeah, later, Christie, Kirsty Finds the box by finding Julia's like, flayed bodice. So maybe the Cenobites like, picked her up and put her in the bed and I played her open for some reason. You know what I mean? I was just like, what happened? There may a deleted scene or something. [00:46:13] Speaker B: Maybe there is. I don't. I don't know. Because the. Well, in the end of the book is similarly kind of confusing with what's going on with Julia because. So what happens here happens like she gets stabbed and then Frank sucks the life out of her. And then later on, as Kirsty is leaving the house, she sees Julia now, like downstairs in her wedding dress, but, like holding her head in her lap, but there's no indication that she got beheaded at any point. [00:46:53] Speaker A: And then I think Cenobites must do. [00:46:55] Speaker B: Yeah, there was something going on there that I'm. I don't know. I was not really sure how to interpret. [00:47:00] Speaker A: I guess the idea is just that the Cenobites like around with corpses for fun, maybe. [00:47:04] Speaker B: I think so, yeah. [00:47:06] Speaker A: I. I just. Because I was like, well, did maybe. And then I was like, well, initially I was like, maybe she somehow alive still, but she seemed very dead. Because you see her, like kind of desiccated. Like after he drains her, she seems dead, dead. And I was like, well, maybe she wasn't dead and she got up and got the box to try to do something with it or something, but that didn't seem feasible. So I guess the answer is just. But then if that's the case, why did the Cenobites leave the box in her hand? Where does Keersteeve get the box in the book when she gets it again? Or does she just have it the. [00:47:37] Speaker B: Whole time she does it? Okay, sorry, I'm just. You're really jumping ahead here. [00:47:44] Speaker A: Oh, well, we don't have to. We can wait and would it make sense? I just don't have these questions. I just didn't ask these questions, so. Or I guess I kind of did. Later we'll get. Okay, we can get to that if that. Yeah. Okay. She gets up in the attic. Frank. I think Frank just chases her up into the attic. She gets up in the attic, Frank chases her there. And this is where they're having kind of their back and forth. And she gets Frank to admit or say that he is Frank, even though he's wearing Larry's skin. And I love that when this happens, this is the Cenobites kind of moment. They have the information that they need so they can show up and take Frank away. But they arrive in the movie like Gandalf arriving with the sun on the third day at Helm's Deep, or the portals opening and Endgame, which I thought was a lot of fun, where after he says that Frank is, like, has Kiersty cornered and is about to kill her. But then all of a sudden, this light starts coming through the windows the same way it did in the very beginning of the movie when he opened the box at the beginning, this light starts kind of shining through the windows, and you start hearing the sound and stuff. And, you know, oh, shit, the Cenobites are here. And I thought that was a lot of fun that they show up. Yeah, like Gandalf. And I wanted to know if it was similar in the book to how they kind of arrived in the nick of time. [00:49:07] Speaker B: Kind of. They do arrive in the nick of time, but it's not as dramatic as what the movie does. Okay, so Frank has Kirsty cornered in the room, and it's dark, none of the lights are on. So she gets him to call himself Frank and then ducks out of the way as he swings a knife at her. And then the single light bulb in the room flickers on, and we hear, like, the bells tolling that indicate the Cenobites are coming. And then they appear in the room. [00:49:43] Speaker A: Okay, so similar, but just similar. Yeah, like you said, not as dramatic. That makes sense. [00:49:47] Speaker B: Not really a Gandalf vibe. [00:49:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So they show up and they're able to take Frank back to hell by hooking him with a billion hooks in the same way they did in the beginning, seemingly. And we get this shot of Frank just flayed open by all of these different hooks. And I wanted to know if that is how he is vanquished in the book. Is he torn apart by hooks? [00:50:14] Speaker B: Again, yes, but again, not as dramatically as in the movie. We don't see him get torn to, like, literal pieces. They hook him and start to drag him back into their realm. And we see his chest is described as starting to split open before Kirsty. [00:50:32] Speaker A: Runs out of the room, which I assume this is another one of those scenes, and not assume. I know it is. From what I read that they had to edit down. His death in the initial version of it was more graphic, and they had to limit how much they showed for ratings. But another line here that I needed to know if it's in the book, and unfortunately, I'm gonna spring this on you at the last second is, does he say, Jesus wept as he's about to be torn apart? [00:51:00] Speaker B: I do not recall him saying that. [00:51:02] Speaker A: No, I assumed he wouldn't, because I believe I read in when I was doing research for the prequel that they actually initially that line was supposed to be just him saying fuck you to Kirsty, I believe. And then for some reason, somebody or somebody had the idea of him saying Jesus wept, which I was like, I'm not even sure I get it. I don't even sure I get why. [00:51:24] Speaker B: Frank would be saying that. [00:51:25] Speaker A: Frank would be saying that in that moment. [00:51:28] Speaker B: Because I think I don't even know. [00:51:29] Speaker A: The context of Jesus wept necessarily, like, what that means and why it would be applicable in that moment. You know what I mean? Yeah. [00:51:38] Speaker B: Because I think in the book he does say fuck you. See, I think he's like, fuck you, you bitch, you cheated, or something like that. [00:51:44] Speaker A: I believe that is what it was originally supposed to be in the movie. And then this Jesus wept line came from somebody or something, and I don't remember why or who or where. And I'm like, okay, but was it me? Like, why would he say that? I don't know. Yeah. If anybody knows, like, the context of like, that. Because I don't even know. Like, I've heard Jesus wept used in other contexts, but I'm not even sure exactly what. What it. Yeah, like what that saying is referring to. Like, what emotion or what? Like when you would use that normally. When would you use Jesus wept normally? Any of our maybe more Christian listeners have an idea or know what's going on there. Then right after that. So they kill Frank. He's been ripped apart. But the Cenobites decide, surprise, we're not done with you. We decided that we're not just going to take Frank, we're also going to take you. And as the kind of. The line that instigates this as they. As she realizes she's in trouble, is that pinhead turns to her and says, and is one of the other, if not maybe the most famous line from the movie, which is, we have such sights to show you. And I wanted to know if that line came from the book. [00:53:02] Speaker B: I don't recall this line being in the book. [00:53:04] Speaker A: So I was able to find a PDF and searched it and it's not. [00:53:06] Speaker B: It's not okay. [00:53:07] Speaker A: I searched like, every variation on it possible. Even the word sight is not in the book, crazily enough. So, yeah, I'm pretty confident. And it's not. After I saw that you weren't sure, I was like, I think I could find a PDF. So. But Kjersti then runs to the other room. And this makes sense why you wanted to answer this now Kirsty runs the other room. She finds the box in Julia's hands as her flayed corpse on her bed. That I guess one of the Cenobites did at some point. But I was confused. I'm now extra confused. Assuming a Cenobite did that, which they must have. Why they left the box there, but whatever. Maybe they can't touch it or something. I don't know. No, he hasn't. Anyways, does Kjersti use the box and close it in order to banish the Cenobites and escape their vengeance or whatever? It also causes the house to collapse in the movie a little bit. Kind of stops collapsing after they get out. [00:54:03] Speaker B: No, none of that happens in the book. Kirsty doesn't have to banish the Cenobites. They just take Frank and go. [00:54:09] Speaker A: Okay, so that's. Yeah, we'll talk more about that. [00:54:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I have more thought. More. So many thoughts on that, actually. [00:54:16] Speaker A: I do too, later. I completely agree. Yeah. So then the weird mutant scorpion thing, which I is apparently called the Engineer shows up. Or the. The Griever shows up at the door and is kind of the final boss. And I thought this was incredibly lame, which I already thought all of this was kind of lame. But specifically. And these. This was also all the special effects of her like zapping them with the box with all the stuff done in like. Yeah, Field weekend or whatever. [00:54:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it did look like. [00:54:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it doesn't look great. But does the. The Engineer show up as a. As a lame final boss that she has to defeat? [00:54:59] Speaker B: No, that creature is not in the book at all. And I felt similarly about it. And this scene. [00:55:04] Speaker A: Even if you're gonna do the thing where she has to defeat them all, why would you not make one of the actual. [00:55:11] Speaker B: Like there's so much cooler looking. [00:55:14] Speaker A: That thing, the main. Like the final one, this Engineer thing. I. Yeah. I don't get why that's the final one. It's like the least interesting because it's just this weird blob of. [00:55:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:24] Speaker A: Like body parts or so. I don't know, it's. [00:55:26] Speaker B: I guess maybe they were just really proud of it. [00:55:29] Speaker A: I don't know if you noticed, but in some of the. In the hall, the hospital scene, in some of those hallway shots, you could see the cart they were pushing. [00:55:37] Speaker B: Oh, really? I did not notice. [00:55:40] Speaker A: Very, very minimally. But in the back, like it was on like a wheelchair or something. You could see the whatever mechanism it was being supported on. And being pushed down that hallway on. You could kind of see it. Now, to be fair to the movie, they weren't expecting people to watch it on ultra hd. [00:55:56] Speaker B: Sure, sure, sure, blah, blah, blah. [00:55:58] Speaker A: But yeah. Then my final question is Kirsty, at the end of the movie, she gets the box, she vanquishes the Cenobites and then she escapes with her boyfriend and she decides she needs to destroy the box as they go stand in some random abandoned lot, I guess, and they. There's a fire and she throws the box in the fire to destroy it. But as this is happening, as they're watching it burn, the creepy homeless guy from the. That was eating crickets in the pet store shows up and they both just stare at him. And he walks over and grabs it out of the fire, catches fire, his body burns away. And it is revealed that he is this giant winged skeletal horse thing. Which was kind of cool. [00:56:46] Speaker B: I mean, it's cool. Yeah, this is cool. [00:56:47] Speaker A: Looking like creature and it like flies away past them. And then we get the reveal that I guess he gave the box, the skeleton horse thing, gave the box back to the guy from the beginning who gave it to Frank or sold it to Frank or whatever. [00:57:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And he's selling it and he's selling. [00:57:04] Speaker A: It to a new guy. And it's. I really liked that. We get the exact same shot, opening shot, where in the opening of the movie as the credits are rolling, the final credit put with it says like directed by Clive Barker or whatever, pushes back and it's revealed inside like the little circle on the side of the box. And that's like the opening shot. The camera pulls out of the box. Basically, it's almost like the credits were happening inside the box. And then the final shot of the movie is the same thing where we see, I believe we see the shot of like Kirstie and Steve standing there in the field. And then that it pulls back and that is like inside the box. And then we see the final scene basically just showing the cyclical nature the box is now handing off to somebody else. I wanted to know if the movie or the book ended that way. [00:57:57] Speaker B: No, none of that is from the book. At the end of the book, the Cenobites leave the box with Kirsty and she becomes a sort of unofficial guardian of the box. [00:58:08] Speaker A: Okay. [00:58:09] Speaker B: While I like the idea of the box ending up back being sold again and like the cyclical nature of that, I think that the way the movie did it was ham fisted. [00:58:22] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, absolutely. [00:58:23] Speaker B: The creepy guy who was following Kirsty around seems to exist solely for this moment. But then there's no reason for him to have been stalking Kirsty before this. No, she doesn't have the box. No, I like, I like where the movie ended, but I felt like the movie didn't know how to get there in a satisfying way. So it was just like, I don't know, do this. [00:58:50] Speaker A: I would have completely agree with that. It does feel like they did not know. They knew they wanted to end with the box being backed with the guy. [00:58:58] Speaker B: You know, selling it. [00:58:59] Speaker A: The exact same shot, opening shot of the movie. Oh, the, you know, the, the horror continues. But yeah, it makes no sense in any real ways. It's like, okay, this random guy. I have no, yeah, I will say I saw somebody on Reddit or something saying that their kind of headcanon for the whole end of this movie was basically the idea. And it also goes back to why the Cenobites renege on their deal with Kirsty and decide to take her as well is because the Cenobites can see. And I would. Maybe this person has seen future movies that this makes this more perhaps reasonable of an explanation. But his, his argument was something like the Cenobites are able to sense, like there's a darkness about you. There's like a weird darkness in Kirsty that they, that they find appealing and they want to take her for some reason. And that maybe that is also why this particular skeletal horse homeless man is following her around. It's a weird, you know what, ham fisted ass explanation. [01:00:12] Speaker B: But if there is, if there's further lore in other movies that supports that, God bless. [01:00:21] Speaker A: Yeah, but in this movie, in this. [01:00:22] Speaker B: Movie, it doesn't make a lick of sense. [01:00:25] Speaker A: Would it completely agree with that? All right, those are all my questions for was that in the book. But I do have a few questions that I'm going to ask in Lost in Adaptation. [01:00:35] Speaker B: Just show me the way to get. [01:00:36] Speaker A: Out of here and I'll be on my way. Yes, yes. And I want to get unlo as soon as possible. There's this one random moment in the movie that is very strange and I wanted to know if you had any insight from the book. Frank. Not Frank. Larry and Julia start having sex at one point and while they're having sex, Frank was like hiding in the closet. [01:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:04] Speaker A: And he walks out carrying his switchblade and it seems like he might be about to kill Larry in this moment. He's like walking over to the bed and like Julia's kind of freaking out because she can kind of see him. And you're like, oh, no, he's gonna kill Larry. But then he just stands there watching them. And then he holds up a dead rat that he has, which he just like cuts in half. [01:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:33] Speaker A: And then he backs away in the scene ends. And I was like, what? And I wanted to know if that happened in the book and if so. What? What? [01:01:44] Speaker B: I can't even explain this scene, but I really hated it. Really was like, not a fan. There is kind of a similar scene in the book where Julia has sex with Larry during a storm to keep him from going into Frank's room, which is how this scene starts. But Frank just watches them through a crack in the door. He doesn't walk out and mutilate a rat, much like the Kirsty dream sequence. This is another thing that I don't know how to interpret outside of the movie. Just wanting to be creepy and upsetting. [01:02:17] Speaker A: This one in particular, like the dream one, it's kind of. [01:02:22] Speaker B: It's kind of weird enough and symbolism enough that you can, like. [01:02:25] Speaker A: I'll come up with something for it. [01:02:27] Speaker B: This. [01:02:27] Speaker A: I'm like, what? [01:02:28] Speaker B: I don't. I don't know, man. [01:02:30] Speaker A: I don't get it at all. Yeah, it makes notes. Okay, sure. So once we get to the big kind of climax with Frank where Frank is chasing Kirsty around and is like, threatening to kill her, he has a couple lines of dialogue to Kirsty. Kirstie, that. Where he says something like. He's like, oh, it's me. I'm Frank. Don't you remember? And then he says something along the lines of, you've grown. You're really beautiful. And I got the vibe that maybe the movie was implying slightly that Frank may have been. He was a creep, but may have been specifically sexually assaulted. Not Julia. Kirstie. When she was younger, potentially. Because we find out. We know that. Like. Yeah. So I wanted to know if you felt like if you got that vibe at all from the movie, and if so, if it felt like it was in. Came from the book. If there's any more there. I do want to clarify that I don't think that the movie is like explicitly implying that he assaulted her or anything. Just that it kind of vaguely gives the illusion that. [01:03:44] Speaker B: That may lightly suggest perhaps. Perhaps this is something. [01:03:49] Speaker A: There's anything concrete in the movie to. To derive that from. It's more so just a vibes thing. But I wanted to know if you agreed with that at all or if it felt like it came from the book or yeah. [01:04:00] Speaker B: So this is one of the biggest changes from book to movie that we haven't even touched on yet. In the book, Kjersti is not Larry's daughter. [01:04:11] Speaker A: Oh. [01:04:12] Speaker B: She's a friend of his who harbors very obvious feelings for him. [01:04:19] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah, that's very different. [01:04:21] Speaker B: Yes, very different. In general, I think this is a good change. I think it's an easier explanation for why she's around all the time and for the tension between her and Julia. [01:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Because Julia's her stepmom. They have this weird relationship. [01:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, they have kind of a weird relationship. I. I agree with you that I think the movie is like, lightly suggesting that Frank may have perhaps assaulted her as a child, but not outright implying it. [01:04:50] Speaker A: He could also just be a creep saying creepy shit. It doesn't necessarily mean that. Yeah. [01:04:55] Speaker B: And I'm not sure there's any suggestion of that beyond this one moment. [01:04:59] Speaker A: I would agree with. I would agree. [01:05:01] Speaker B: Frank is definitely still a creep in the book, just in a different way. The first time he sees Kirsty outside the window, he decides that he's going to seduce her because she's ugly, and ugly girls are willing to do freakier shit than pretty girls. He's. He's a gem, that one. He's a great guy. [01:05:22] Speaker A: Real great guy. [01:05:23] Speaker B: He's up there. [01:05:25] Speaker A: Top 10, fantastic, great, amazing. All right. My final question for Lost in Adaptation is, is there any more information in the book about, like, how they solved the puzzle box? Because in the movie they really just seem to kind of fumble with it and, like, rub their fingers on it a little, and it just immediately opens every time. And so I wanted to know what if there's any more. And. And we. There's not even any, like, just talk in the movie about, like, how they're doing. You know, this is. It seems to be like, almost the book is like, kind of. Or the book, the box is like, almost showing them how to open it or. Anyways. Any more, in the book, I said. [01:06:09] Speaker B: This while reading, and I'll say it again, the box doesn't seem all that hard to solve. [01:06:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:16] Speaker B: In both the book and the movie, Frank makes pretty short work of it and Kirsty seems to solve it completely by accident. Like, we're told that the box is this basically impossible puzzle, but I don't know if maybe that's supposed to be some kind of red herring. Like, maybe it's actually really easy to solve. That was my thought, because the Cenobites want people to solve it. Or maybe, like, if there's A darkness in you. The box opens for you easily. I don't know. [01:06:46] Speaker A: That's interesting because initially I was going to say the first thing I was like, that was kind of what I was getting from it is that maybe it's actually just not hard to open. Like that's the point is that they want people to be able to open it and some of them so. But I think there's maybe does lead a little. Maybe that does lend a little credence to that Reddit comment I read of maybe why Kirsty is able to open it so easily is if there is something else going on with her or whatever. I don't know. Again, we don't get any of that in this movie. So that is absolutely either pure speculation. Headcanon or is because of things that happen in later movies. I know she's in the first, at least three movies. I think she may be in more, but she's at least in the first few movies. So maybe we get more information. But that would actually be another potential thing is that maybe that does tie into the idea that she has whatever, something similar to whatever was going on with Frank and that's why she's able to open it so easily. But again, if that's the case, this movie did not set that up at all. [01:07:49] Speaker B: No. [01:07:50] Speaker A: So. All right, those are all my questions. It's time now to find out what Katie thought was better in the book. [01:08:00] Speaker B: You like to read. Oh, yes, I love to read. What do you like to read? Everything. At the very beginning of the book. This is maybe like paragraph two. There's a description of everything Frank has set up for his summoning ritual, which includes a jug of his urine that he's been collecting over the past week. [01:08:25] Speaker A: Pisschugs. [01:08:28] Speaker B: Just like a little detail. [01:08:29] Speaker A: Way of the road, bubbles. [01:08:32] Speaker B: Just a little detail that let me know up front what I was in for with this book. Julia in the movie. Not really how I pictured Julia. [01:08:45] Speaker A: Interesting. [01:08:46] Speaker B: She's giving like 1980s business bitch. Like high powered career woman. [01:08:54] Speaker A: Yes. [01:08:55] Speaker B: Which to be fair, is right in line with a villainous woman for the era. [01:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:02] Speaker B: And it also makes sense for her to serve evil stepmother. [01:09:05] Speaker A: Yes. [01:09:06] Speaker B: But reading the book, I definitely pictured her as more of an ingenue who then had the surprise twist of being a villain. [01:09:18] Speaker A: I could see that. Yeah. [01:09:19] Speaker B: Which I think is more interesting. [01:09:22] Speaker A: I don't know. I really. Yeah, I really thought she was. I thought she was a fascinating character in the movie. I thought she was really interesting because. And I actually think I could see it Both ways I could see the idea of her being maybe. Yeah, like you said, more of an ingenue who is kind of corrupted by this evil guy or whatever. Or the surprise twist of her being the villain kind of. I guess it's not like a huge twist or twist we find out in the first act, but you know what I mean, the reveal that she. [01:09:49] Speaker B: But the juxtaposition of her appearance versus her actions. Appearing to be a typical female heroine. [01:09:59] Speaker A: Yes. [01:09:59] Speaker B: But then actually she's like rotten to the core. [01:10:03] Speaker A: Right. There's definitely something interesting there. I thought, I don't know, maybe it's just because I found her look so compellingly interesting in the movie. [01:10:09] Speaker B: She does. She. She does. [01:10:11] Speaker A: She has such a look. She has. Her hair is sky high, sky high, like shortish, but like blown out. [01:10:19] Speaker B: She's got kind of a mullet. Yeah, like a mullety like that. She teases real high on the top. It's very 80s. [01:10:26] Speaker A: Yes. And then she has these huge star earrings. [01:10:31] Speaker B: I fucking want those earrings. Those massive tortoiseshell star earrings. Oh my God. I was googling those during the movie to see if anybody had made a dupe and nobody has. [01:10:43] Speaker A: Yeah, that was fantastic. But maybe it's just because she was so unique. I think the other thing is she kept reminding me of people. I think she kept reminding me of the actress. I haven't even seen this show. The actress who plays in Secession. I know we've never watched Secession, but you know the redhead in that show who's like. Or maybe she's blonde. Her character's name is Shiv, I think. But she's like the woman who got nominated for a million awards from that show. She kind of looks like her to the point where I googled to see if it was like her daughter or something like that. And it's not. But she also reminded me a little bit of Helly from Severance, the actress who plays Heli and Helena or whatever her name is in. In Severance. Something about her features just kind of reminded me of both those actresses. But yeah, I thought. I actually liked this weird. Like, I think there is also still a juxtaposition of the like she has this like uptight, 80s, like bitchy wife kind of look in the movie. But I like the idea that the thing she desperately wants is just to fuck. Like that's a weird kind of. That already feels kind of like. It's almost to me the fact that like, like the ingenue looking character, the reveal. Or like the juxtaposition of her like, being like, super horny and just wanting to bring back this guy who fucked her brains out one time and who she, like, has this weird obsession with. Almost feels too obvious to me. [01:12:21] Speaker B: Okay. [01:12:21] Speaker A: You know what I mean? It's almost like what I expect. Like, it is like a fun juxtaposition, but it's almost like an expected juxtaposition. Whereas this, the visual of Julia in this movie as like, this seemingly career. [01:12:34] Speaker B: Oriented, like, bitchy, typically portrayed as like an ice queen. [01:12:39] Speaker A: Yes. Those characters are almost always kind of depicted without like, sexual desire interest or whatever. Their interest is like business or whatever, you know what I mean? And so, like, that is almost a more interesting juxtaposition that that woman is like, I need this greasy weirdo who fucked my brains out was kind of fun. You know what I mean? I don't know. I actually thought that that was almost a more unexpected and interesting visual juxtaposition. [01:13:08] Speaker B: That's fair. That's fair. [01:13:10] Speaker A: I don't know. I thought it was interesting. [01:13:13] Speaker B: Another thing from the book that I just personally found interesting that the movie completely drops is that the Cenobites actually can't come get Frank because, like, at one point in the movie, he's like, we need to hurry up and rebuild my body before they, like, come find me. Yeah, but they actually can't come get him because they have to be summoned. They can't come through on their own. [01:13:42] Speaker A: Which that is the case in the movie. It's just that Frank doesn't know that. [01:13:46] Speaker B: Is that what it is? [01:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah, Frank just unaware of that. [01:13:49] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. [01:13:50] Speaker A: Because they don't come back until Kirsty re summons them. [01:13:54] Speaker B: Right. [01:13:54] Speaker A: At least that was my vibe. [01:13:56] Speaker B: Don't seem to know that Frank is gone at that point. [01:14:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know, but I. Yeah, you're right. But that is the vibe I got in the movie, I will say, is that they couldn't have come back unless Kirstie, like, they wouldn't have been able to come get him unless she opened the box, which she did. [01:14:12] Speaker B: But in the book, Frank very explicitly knows that they can't come get him. [01:14:17] Speaker A: Yeah, the vibe I got in the movie is just that he's not aware that they're unable to come back. [01:14:23] Speaker B: Well, weigh in on that. Tell us what you think. I really hated the end of the movie. But more on that later. [01:14:31] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, we'll get to that. Yeah, that's in your final verdict, right? [01:14:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:35] Speaker A: Okay, well, I'm gonna have to chime in after your final verdict to talk about My potential, like small tweaks that make this an even better movie. Again, I want to stress, I already think it's a very good movie, but all right, that was it for better in the book. Let's find out what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies. [01:14:59] Speaker B: I really liked the little detail of Julia putting out her cigarette on the floor of the house. Just like the immediate show of disrespect for the space. [01:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And just very quick character work. Immediately. [01:15:12] Speaker B: Yes, immediately. Tells her everything. Tells us everything. [01:15:16] Speaker A: She doesn't respect her husband. This is her husband's childhood home. He cares a lot about it. He's very excited to be here. She doesn't give a shit at all. She doesn't really. [01:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah, we kind of talked about it, but I really liked the visual of the blood seeping through the floorboards and the heart. Or heart, like, thing, like, starting to, like, pump. [01:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:15:35] Speaker B: It's really gooey and gross. [01:15:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And that was a fun. I saw a note when I was doing prequel research that the blood seeping into the floorboards was a reverse shot, obviously, because it doesn't leave any remnants. Is that they forced blood up through the. The nail holes or whatever. [01:15:51] Speaker B: And then reverse the shot to let a lot of reversing shots to have. [01:15:56] Speaker A: It look like it was seeping down in there, but also not, like leaving any residue or anything. [01:16:00] Speaker B: Mm. I really liked the hospital wall opening to reveal the Cenobites realm. I don't know why you would go in. [01:16:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Into that hallway or whatever. [01:16:15] Speaker B: I would look at that and be like, that's obviously a bad place to go in there. And that's why we're surviving the horror movie. [01:16:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:22] Speaker B: But I liked the wall opening. And then when she runs out and looks back, it's just like a smooth whole wall behind her. I thought that was fun. And I liked that all of the Cenobites appear to Kirsty instead of just one. Cause it's only one of them in the book that appears in the hospital room. Especially because we didn't see all of them at the beginning like we do in the book. [01:16:45] Speaker A: This is where they're first introduced to, where we actually see them all. One detail, my favorite. The. The guy who has the wind up teeth. [01:16:52] Speaker B: Yes. [01:16:54] Speaker A: This is what he does. He always walks. I thought it was so funny. Every time he walked around the corner chomping. Just think of those little chattering teeth. [01:17:02] Speaker B: That you wind up One detail about the scene that I did prefer in the book was the nurse coming in and the cenobite being like, don't bother. She can't see or hear me. Yeah, I thought that was fun. But overall, I liked that scene better in the movie. And I also liked the grisly reveal that Julia was just putting all of the men's corpses in the junk room. [01:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah. When Kirsty's hiding in there. [01:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah. One of them falls out and, like, maggots fall everywhere. [01:17:32] Speaker A: Apparently, Kirsty was very good at being quiet because Frank did not hear that, like, three feet away. [01:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. [01:17:38] Speaker A: She apparently made no noise, but. Yeah. All right, let's go talk about a few things. The movie nailed, as I expected. [01:17:49] Speaker B: Practically perfect in every way. I thought the whole scene of Julia seducing her first victim at the bar and then bringing him back to the house was pretty spot on the line. Come to Daddy is also from the book, which then again, like, kind of works on another level once we make Kirsty Larry's daughter. [01:18:12] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And in Anne just makes. Makes. Yeah, it works on, like, multiple levels because also going back to the. The thing of the. The potential implication that Frank was abused her as a child, that there's, like, an extra layer of creepiness to it for that. Yeah. [01:18:33] Speaker B: Kirsty does see Julia bringing a man into the house, which then kicks off her, like, investigation of, like, what is this bitch up to? Kirsty and Frank have an exchange as they're fighting, where Kirsty's like, I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. And Frank is like, oh, I used to tell myself that, but some things have to be endured. That whole exchange is from the book. And then Kirstie throwing the box out of the window while fighting Frank. [01:19:04] Speaker A: Yeah. She's, like, also from the catch. And then just chucks it out the. [01:19:07] Speaker B: Window and then, like, runs down and grabs it before she runs off. [01:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and hit a few odds and ends. [01:19:25] Speaker B: My, like, first note that I made right off the bat was, oh, my God, his fingernails are so disgusting. [01:19:33] Speaker A: They're so dirty that they felt overly fake dirty to me. [01:19:37] Speaker B: They're so dirty. They're, like, black. [01:19:41] Speaker A: Yes, yes. To the point where I felt like, oh, well, they clearly dirtied them up, but they went almost too far because it looks like he just, like, scraped them through, like, motor oil. [01:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:51] Speaker A: And then, like, washed his hands, but left it all under his fingernails. [01:19:55] Speaker B: Gross. [01:19:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I felt like when we were first introduced to Kirsty, I was like, I think Winota Ryder might be able to sue this actress for tradewrike infringement. Because that opening scene with her, I thought it was. I knew it wasn't Winona Ryder, but holy shit, she looks just like her. And her aesthetic is very similar. And like, some of the. I think they very clearly. This was like, we want Winona Ryder. We got different. [01:20:22] Speaker B: Winona Ryder cannot afford Winona Ryder. So we have acquired Dollar Store Winona Ryder, which. [01:20:31] Speaker A: I think she's great. [01:20:32] Speaker B: No, I thought she was great, too. [01:20:34] Speaker A: That was a disrespect to her because I think she does a really good job in the movie. Like, I think she actually. She's fantastic. She hasn't been in a ton of other stuff, but I thought she was really good in this. [01:20:44] Speaker B: Also, though, that fedora was a choice. [01:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it really was. Absolutely. I also thought you could tell throughout the movie that a lot of the side characters that show up are clearly British. [01:20:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:58] Speaker A: That have been redubbed to American. The. The movers were a couple that I thought were pretty obvious. But then also really, really obvious was Steve, Kirsty's boyfriend. That is the most British dude I have ever seen. He has, like, the Flock of Seagulls. Cut. And his claw. He's so clearly a British guy that they. Oh. [01:21:19] Speaker B: He also, though. He also looked like Ducky from Pretty in Pink. [01:21:23] Speaker A: True. But I was like, that is mad as. [01:21:27] Speaker B: He's very giving. He's giving, like New wave. Like. Yeah, for sure. [01:21:31] Speaker A: That man is British. And they clearly redubbed it. And they. I. I think that was a mistake. I don't think they needed to redub it. [01:21:41] Speaker B: I think this movie would have been just as good. [01:21:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:44] Speaker B: With British accents. [01:21:45] Speaker A: I don't think there was any reason. And it just made it kind of. Yeah. Silly. [01:21:50] Speaker B: I thought it was funny that Julia still had a British accent. [01:21:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:54] Speaker B: And I was like, maybe they decided that was fine since she's a villain. [01:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I also think they just thought, like, they probably didn't. Because she's like, a main character. They didn't want to redub her whole thing. So I think in the Cause. So Kirstie is American, and I think the actor who plays Larry is American. I think the original premise was that these two, like, him and his daughter, they're like. And I don't know how much of this was spelled out in the movie. I don't know if this is in the book at all. My vibe of assuming that what the original plot was supposed to be was that they are moving To England to move in with Julia in England for her job or something like that was what I assumed the original idea was. And so Larry and Kirsty are American. Everybody else is British. [01:22:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:22:43] Speaker A: And Julia's British, and that's how he. He, like, met her on a business trip or something like that. [01:22:47] Speaker B: Right, because she's a business. [01:22:49] Speaker A: Yes. And so that's what I assumed. And so she was. And. And I think when they redubbed everything, they decided she's too prominently. We. We don't want to redub her whole performance for several reasons. Probably. One, just for the actress, like, it would suck to have her whole thing, her whole performance redone. And two, like you said, I think they could just pass it. It's easy to be like, well, she's the stepwife. He met her on a business trip. She's moving to America. She is British, like, whatever. But it's still set in America. But I think it was probably the opposite of that was the original idea. There's, like, one line in the movie that they clearly dubbed in where she says something like, when they're looking at the house and she says something about, like, Brooklyn. [01:23:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:23:30] Speaker A: And I was like, oh, yeah, this is very clearly a house in New York. You're right. This. This. This old English estate is definitely somewhere near. Yeah. She's like, oh, this is something. She says something like. [01:23:42] Speaker B: She says, like, it's at least it's. [01:23:44] Speaker A: Not Brooklyn or something like that or whatever. Like, the implication being it's like, maybe like somewhere out in the suburbs of New York or whatever. Yeah. I thought that was very funny. [01:23:54] Speaker B: My last thing here that I want to mention is props to Steve, because Kirsty's boyfriend, because he handles the end of this movie very well, he really does like a champ. [01:24:07] Speaker A: He doesn't, like, negatively react to anything going on. [01:24:12] Speaker B: I would say he barely reacts to anything going on. [01:24:15] Speaker A: He probably reacts inappropriately. Like he's like, too calm, cool and collected, given what is happening. [01:24:22] Speaker B: He's just. But he is. He is there for her. [01:24:26] Speaker A: Yep. [01:24:27] Speaker B: No questions asked. [01:24:28] Speaker A: No questions asked. Before we get to the final verdict, we wanted to do you a favor and wanted to remind you that you could do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Goodreads, any of those places Interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about Hellraiser. If you can answer any of our questions, we would love those. You can also help us out by heading over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you download and listen to our show, write us a nice little review, drop us a five star rating. That would be nice. And you can head over to patreon.com thisfilmislit Support us there at different levels, get access to bonus content, all that kind of stuff. We just put out our bonus episode on the Rocky Horror Picture show. If you want to listen to that. At the $5 level and at the $15 level. 15 bucks per month, you get access to priority recommendations. If there's something you would really like for us to talk about, you can subscribe at that level and we will request it and we will eventually get to it. Katie, it's time for the final verdict. [01:25:25] Speaker B: Sentence passed, verdict after. That's stupid. This week, my final verdict really comes down to one single aspect of the the ending. Mr. Barker, I hate to have to say this, but I think you've misunderstood your own characters. I liked some of the decisions that this movie made, like making Kirsty Larry's daughter and the goopy gore of Frank's grisly rebirth. But I absolutely hated the ending of this movie. I just don't think that the Cenobites would go back on their deal with Kirstie and try to take her too. That doesn't seem like their vibe at all to me. They read more like any other demon, honor bound by their own rules. And I totally understand that they might have wanted a climactic big finish for the movie with a showdown where the bad guys get their asses kicked. But the problem with that is that the Cenobites aren't actually the bad guys. Frank and to a slightly lesser extent, Julia are. Clive Barker, you've misunderstood your own story. I am so deeply disappointed by this turn of events that I'm picking the book. Argue with me if you must. I'm willing to die on this hill. [01:26:56] Speaker A: Okay, I completely agree. So I want to chime in because I did have a couple. So I completely agree that it makes no sense for the Cenobite. It feels completely like the whole point of them is that they're this. They're chaotic, neutral, kind of. [01:27:10] Speaker B: Yes. [01:27:10] Speaker A: And them showing up and they save the day because they are there for the thing that they are there for. They are not there to trick Chris. [01:27:20] Speaker B: I mean, they're not even there to save the day. They're just there to get Frank. [01:27:23] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Which. Which as a result, saves the day. But so I think this movie. Again, I very much enjoyed the movie. Overall. That was very fun, creepy movie. I didn't find it super scary, but I definitely Would have as a young kid. Like, if I'd seen this younger than probably like 15, I would have found it very scary. But I overall really liked it. I think you fixed this movie very, very simply. You have the movie end on Frank, them killing Frank, taking Frank away. The Jesus wept. And Kirsey gets out of the house. Even have the house collapse or whatever if you want. As they take Frank away. She gets out at the last second and sits with Steve on the front or whatever. And we just don't know what happened to the. The Le Marchand configuration. It just disappears or whatever and the movie just ends there. That solves the three biggest problems with the movie, in my opinion. The first one is what you said the Cenobites betrayal doesn't earn. Like being the villain at the end is dumb. [01:28:25] Speaker B: I mean, you said. You said chaotic neutral. They're more like lawful neutral. [01:28:29] Speaker A: Sorry, Honestly, lawful neutral. And you're absolutely right. So get rid of the ending. That fixes that. Second, it fixes one of the other biggest. That's, I think, arguably the biggest problem with the movie because it's an actual, like, thematic story problem with the movie. That's like narrative problem. So it fixes that. 2. You then don't have any of the terrible special effects at the end, which are like one of the other bigger parts of the issues with the movie. All of the practical effects are amazing and gross and awesome. The visual effects they did at the very, very end are crappy and bad and goofy. And so you get rid of all that, all of the showdowns with all the Cenobytes and the engineer. So you don't have any of those special effects. So you fix both those two problems. And then the third problem, you now you have like an extra 10 minutes that you need to fill because that's the movie's only 90 minutes, as is, roughly. But take that 10 minutes that you shaved off at the end, add it to the first act, and flesh out a little bit more of the setup at the beginning with Frank and what's going on with him. Just a little bit there. But more importantly, the other thing I think the movie really needed a little bit more of was some of the relationship dynamics between Kirstie and Julie and Kirstie and her dad, and just a little bit more of that in the beginning, just to kind of set everything up a little bit more for the resolution at the end. You know what I mean? [01:29:50] Speaker B: No, I totally agree. And especially in regards to Kirsty and Julia, because I know we can kind of Fill in with tropes. Stepmom. They don't get along. Sure, Absolutely. And that works fine. [01:30:04] Speaker A: Yes. [01:30:04] Speaker B: But it's not interesting. [01:30:07] Speaker A: No. [01:30:07] Speaker B: And it doesn't tell us anything about these characters. [01:30:11] Speaker A: There's just. That was my biggest other complaint was that if we had had just like 10 minutes more of some character work in the first act, I think the movie would be way stronger as a whole. And then when I was thinking about. Cause I thought that before we ever got to the end of the movie, I was like, man, it would really help. When we were getting towards the third act, I was like, I'm really enjoying this, but I wish I had just had knew a little bit more about these characters and their dynamics and stuff. Cause I think it would just really make. And then once we got to the end and wrapped this all up, I'm like, well, I know the place to get that time. You need just chop off the end and it fixes everything. It gets rid of all the dumb stuff at the end that doesn't need to be there. And it gives you more time at the beginning to really flesh out and make. Yeah. And that, I think, would have been that very small change. It's not, I guess, a small change necessarily, but that relatively simple change, I think would have vastly. I say vastly. That's not fair. Because I think it's already a good movie. It would have minorly improved the overall narrative and everything that was going on, but, yeah, pretty. Pretty simply. And then they wouldn't have to spend 48 hours getting drunk and doing terrible special effects because. Yeah. Anyways, that's gonna do it. Katie, what's next? [01:31:26] Speaker B: Up next, I really wanted to do something easy. So we are going to be talking about 1998's quest for Camelot. [01:31:37] Speaker A: I have no idea what that is. [01:31:39] Speaker B: It's an animated movie from my youth that I never saw. [01:31:43] Speaker A: I've never even heard of it, I don't think. [01:31:45] Speaker B: And it is based on a book called the King's Damoselle. Or maybe it's just Damsel. It's spelled in a way that I've never seen, but that's by Vera Chapman. Supposedly, the movie is loosely based on this book, which is very exciting. [01:32:03] Speaker A: I have never heard of. Cary Elwes is in the movie. [01:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:06] Speaker A: The only person. Oh, no. Gary Oldman, Eric Idle, Don Rickles, Jane Seymour, Celine Dion. How have I never heard of this? [01:32:14] Speaker B: So I. I don't know why I never saw this movie, because this would have been, like, right up my alley in 1990. [01:32:22] Speaker A: Sorry. [01:32:23] Speaker B: But the only reason that I like remembered it in the deep recesses of my brain is that we used to go to Burger King a lot and I remembered that they had like toys for it. I'm wondering back in the day, I'm. [01:32:38] Speaker A: Like legitimately wondering if this is going to be a brainwave movie for me. If I'm going to be like, oh, shit, I've seen this movie. [01:32:42] Speaker B: Because I'm positive I've never seen it, but maybe you have. [01:32:45] Speaker A: The name doesn't sound familiar and none of that, but when you said I went to Burger King quite a bit as a kid too. Because we always went to Burger king instead of McDonald's. [01:32:52] Speaker B: Yeah, we were Burger King people for some reason. [01:32:54] Speaker A: I was. I know why I was a Burger King. We were Burger King family. It's because McDonald's always up my order and as a kid. So I was a. I was a plain cheeseburger kid. [01:33:03] Speaker B: No pickles, no onions. [01:33:04] Speaker A: No pickles, no onions. No, no ketchup, no cheese, meat bun. That's all I wanted as a kid on my cheeseburgers. And McDonald's would fuck that up all the time and I would get onions and pickles on it or whatever and I would be like, what are you doing, bk? Have it your way. They always got it right. And so we always went to Burger King. That's my memory of it at least. I don't know if that's actually why. Maybe my parents just preferred Burger King. I had no idea. They probably have a totally different reason. That was just my reason why I was glad to go to. [01:33:33] Speaker B: We should ask your parents to go to Burger King. [01:33:35] Speaker A: They probably wouldn't even remember. They'd be like, I don't know. We went to both of them. Them is probably what they'd say. I don't know. But yeah. And so, But I feel like I might have a vague memory of these toys because I had tons of Burger King. Whatever the BK Meal or whatever it. [01:33:51] Speaker B: Was called, it was just called a kid's meal. [01:33:53] Speaker A: Kids meal toys or whatever. I had quite a few Burger King kids meal toys. And I'm wondering like when I googled it, it didn't just the, the poster didn't like, you know. [01:34:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:34:06] Speaker A: Like spark any memories. The dragon looks vaguely familiar. That's on the front. The like two headed dragon thing. I am so interested to see if I. But nothing else really looks super familiar. But anyways. So yeah, that'll be fun. That's our next episode. In two weeks time. In one week's time, we'll be previewing Quest for Camelot and going over all of your listener feedback for Hellraiser. Until that time, have a very safe and happy Halloween that's coming up this weekend. Enjoy yourselves, have a good time. And until next week, when we're talking about Hellraiser and Quest for Camelot, guys, gals, non binary pals and everybody else. [01:34:45] Speaker B: Keep reading books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome. [01:34:58] Speaker A: Sam.