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Overview
Forget the slashers. Forget the demons. Who cares about the crazy psychological horror. It’s time for the big bad monster horror movie. Something we’ve all been afraid of since middle school.
Cooties.
Right?
They are going to get you – starting with the teachers. Hasn’t every middle school kid with cooties wished that they can eat their teachers eyeballs? Maybe it’s just me.
If you didn’t figure it out, this is a comedy. Don’t take it too seriously. Unless cooties really do freak you out. In that case, enjoy the horror.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2490326/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooties_(film)
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Stephen: we can talk about cooties then.
I mean, just by the name, you know, it’s not going to be serious. I mean, insidious, sinister, those kind of tell you right there, you know, yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. American film from 2015 and this movie has a lot of big name stars in it. It
Stephen: does big name in a small way. Yeah. Like
Rhys: cult, famous, big name stars. Yes, exactly.
I think one of the things I love about this movie is all the things that they do that I would hate in every other movie. They do so well in this. Yes.
Stephen: For a tongue in cheek comedy type parody, it has some good writing, some good, It’s basically, let’s just take every trope and put them in order of the movie.
Yes.
Rhys: Yes. Every, every stereotype you can think of of every person you’ve ever known in the school is in this movie. Yes. And you’re okay with it.
Stephen: Yeah, exactly. It, it could have been bad. It could have been like it’s too much, but it was perfect. Just right. And my first. Thought was watching this. I’m like, Oh my God, why have they not taken these characters into a half hour comedy show?
That’s ongoing. It doesn’t have to be horror necessarily. The characters are just so over the top, interesting and unique for some of them, not, not unique in movies in general, but unique in a horror movie. Definitely.
Rhys: Yeah. Rain. Wilson said this is one of the best casts he’s ever worked with. I can see that.
Yeah. But,
Stephen: And not just the adult names that we know the kids are utterly fantastic throughout the whole movie. This whole kids, they probably had the time of their lives. I’m so jealous. You know, that they, they did this because yeah. They’re, they’re so serious about it and they do the, the creepy monster stuff so well, I, I, they were probably having the best time ever.
I mean, I would have died to do something like this when I was a kid. I died to do it now.
Rhys: I was watching a behind the scenes thing and like it’s that last playground scene and Ray, Rainn Wilson is there literally with. The kid like hooked around his arm, spinning them around and just drops them onto a big foam pad.
And I was like, wow, that looked like it was really fun. Yeah.
Stephen: I did see the one thing when he picks the kid up and throws them, I noticed he kind of glances to make sure the kid landed on the pad.
Rhys: Yeah. This is a horror comedy. If you hadn’t guessed And this is one of my subgenres called, when is it okay to be happy that a kid gets his brains bashed in with a fire extinguisher?
Stephen: Yeah, exactly. You’re loud. You know, just like martyrs, we felt bad about the way we felt. Well, you can kind of feel a little bad, but you know, haven’t we all kind of wanted to bash their brains in? I’ve had kids. I can say that. I’ve had kids, friends over. I’ve had kids that weren’t mine or friends, you know.
Believe me, parents understand
Rhys: and it’s like he says to the kids, I know I’ve all, I’ve wanted to rip the vice principal’s limbs off myself, but, you know, we have to have some kind of control over our emotions.
Stephen: Yeah, they totally play on that and make fun of that in several different parts. Yeah. Yeah.
Rhys: This film premiered at Sundance.
On January 18th of 2014, it had a very limited run in 2015 in the fall. Then it moved on to video on demand. So like the U S gross box office was about 60 grand. And half of that was the opening. Opening weekend worldwide though, it did about 485, 000, so it wasn’t making a ton of money,
Stephen: but yeah, and I’m glad that Wilson said how much fun he had in a great cast because, you know, they weren’t getting paid Tom Cruise dollars on
Rhys: this at all, right?
Yeah. It was shot in Arcadia, California, and it runs an hour and 28 minutes. Our perfect time. Yep. The taglines on the posters, there were two of these. One was you are what they eat. And the other one was please don’t feed the children.
Stephen: Oh, that’s hilarious. Yeah. And you know, honestly, you know, we joke about having, we all want to bash your kids, you know, joking about that.
It’s comedy. First of all, folks, it’s, it’s meant to be a little over the top. It’s meant to make fun of that whole thing with sometimes, you know, the kids just drive you nuts, but it’s also meant to make fun of the horror movies because you always see the adults become zombies. Rarely ever a kid. And this one even goes so far as a baby.
I mean, it’s almost a little dark, but they do it without making it too dark. Yeah.
Rhys: Right. And even the scene with the baby, you’re like, Ooh, did they just really do that? But then at the end of the scene, you see the baby pop up in the back and now it’s a zombie too. So, yes.
Stephen: Yeah. So, I mean, anybody that’s going to make a baby, a zombie, you, you know, you, you either have to be like.
Put them in a straitjacket and monitor them or take it lighthearted. It’s funny. And they’re making fun of it. And you know, with all the rules and regulations we have not, no kids were hurt during the filming of this movie. None of them were real zombies either. That’s true. And they’re not condoning violence to children.
That is not what this is doing.
Rhys: Condoning violence by children. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was nominated for five awards and they won one Lee Winnell won best supporting actor in the fright meter awards. So it’s not only Movie with a lot of faces, you’re going to recognize if you’re looking at the credits, you’ll see names you recognize as well.
Hayden Christensen was an executive producer on this.
Stephen: I missed that. I watched the credits, missed that one.
Rhys: Doesn’t show up in the movie at all, but he liked the project enough to be involved with organizing everything. I love that. Of course. This was written by Lee Winnell, Ian Brennan, and Josh Waller.
And the first two Lee Winnell and Ian Brennan actually act in the film itself. Winnell is an Australian. He’s best known for writing and starring in Saw and Saw 2 and Saw 3. He was the serious horror end of the project. He also wrote Dead Silence and the Insidious series. He wrote all of those.
Stephen: Oh, nice. Okay. Which I hear the new one’s doing very well.
Rhys: He also plays Doug in the movie. Who’s the science teacher and it’s really amazing because he does have like your standard Australian accent and you don’t hear. Anything of it. Yeah. Wow. Ian Brennan is an American writer. And he’s kind of the comedy side of it, of the set because he rose to prominence writing Glee.
Stephen: And now that would be a good one. The, the song club that turned zombie. That’d be the next one. Yeah.
Rhys: He also did scream Queens. And. Dahmer monster, the Jeffrey Dahmer story.
Stephen: I think Leslie Vernon was in that one.
Rhys: Both when now and Brennan have roles in the movie, it’s Doug and the vice principal Sims vice principal Sims is Ian Brennan when Noah was nervous on release, cause he’s never worked in comedy.
And he said both horror and comedy rely a lot on timing and it’s really important,
Stephen: which, which just you know, we’ve never really talked about that. Unfortunately, doesn’t just fall on the writer. There’s a lot that it falls on the actors and the director, and then even the editing, you know, you can, you can ruin a scene.
You can ruin a good joke with bad editing or bad directing from the director and, you know, not getting what they need out of the actors. So. That’s what makes comedy so difficult. And then comedy horror with kids, you know, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. Oh
Rhys: yeah. That’s, that’s a nightmare. He also was saying when he does a horror movie and he goes to the screening, he can gauge how well it’s going by the reaction of the audience.
Like they recoil, they shriek, whatever. And he’s like, A whole humor’s the same way. Cause you can go to the screening and like they laugh and he’s like, I can’t imagine what it must be like directing a drama because you could go to the screening and no one’s reacting at all because they’re loving it or it’s horrible.
He’s not sure which. He was really key. He was really, to him, it was really important to get the tone of the film. Right. Because it was dancing on that line between horrific and, and humorous at the same time.
Stephen: Right. Just putting kids in it as the monsters, you know, that’s, that’s enough, you know, crossing the line for some people right there.
So, yeah, I could definitely see that being a concern and glad they thought of that too. You know, Yeah,
Rhys: it went into it with eyes open like that. Ian Brennan is from Chicago and so he always considers rural Illinois as kind of like the faceless generic, this is America, which is why the town is based in rural Chicago, rural Illinois somewhere.
So it makes sense.
Stephen: So he probably listens to Mellencamp.
Rhys: Or if he doesn’t, he knew people who
Stephen: did. Right. He, he should.
Rhys: This was the first major length film for the directors. Who had worked they’d done commercials previously. They met in college at Parsons school of design, Jonathan Millett and Carrie Murnion.
They have continued to make movies together. Their most recent is a kind of home invasion film with Joel McHale. It’s called
Stephen: Becky. It rings a bell actually, cause I like Joel McHale. So I usually pay attention when I see him in something. Well,
Rhys: it’s always interesting to me to see movies that are done by people who come from doing commercials because they tend to have kind of a more punchier directorial style.
Stephen: I mean, you got to get the message across in 30 seconds. Barry Manilow did the Band Aid commercial. Who did? Barry Manilow. Oh,
Rhys: okay. Well, I was thinking like shoot the guy, Guy Ritchie. Oh yeah. Yeah. He had started out doing commercials and music videos. And I don’t want to say that it’s a not academic style, but it’s much more on like pacing and, and editing relies a lot more on that, I think.
In my opinion, but I agree. I agree. So the cast, the main protagonist of the film is played by Elijah Wood. He plays a character named Clint.
Stephen: Well, that’s, that’s what it’s supposed to be until he writes it on the board. That’s right.
Rhys: He loves the cast. He loved working with them. He was excited to work on the job because he knew the writers.
And he was also a producer on the project. So he got like fully into the film, but He’s also, if you followed his career, he is really into independent films.
Stephen: He’s another one of those that had a big hit when he was young. It sustains him now his life so he can choose and do what he wants. And I, and he’s gone the way of unique and interesting projects.
Not necessarily a big hit all the time, but you can usually appreciate what he does. You know what’s his name? The redhead from Harry Potter’s. All right. Well, Harry Potter’s the same way too. Daniel Radcliffe. Radcliffe. Yeah. But all three of those kids are kind of the same way.
Rhys: And. You know, it really looks, you look through his CV, he’s got 119 projects.
He started acting as a child. He was in like a bunch of Paula Abdul’s videos, forever, your girl, and straight up. Wow. He had a role in back to the future too. And then he was in the witness. The Good Son,
Stephen: Deep Impact. Deep Impact’s one of my favorites, I love that one. And
Rhys: then everyone knows him from Lord of the Rings.
Of course. And his cameos in The Hobbit. But he was also in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That’s a really nice film. Sin City. Oh! Yeah, he plays some really creepy characters sometimes.
Stephen: Well, speaking of Radcliffe, have you seen some of the stuff he’s done? I mean, he did the Guns of Kimbo and yeah, was he horns?
Right. Horns was him. Yeah. What Hills horns?
Rhys: He was also in Maniac, which is another, it is, it follows like black Christmas where you are seeing through his eyes. So you only actually see him when he’s like looking in a mirror, you get his reflection, but he’s a serial killer in it. And so,
Stephen: I’m sure you love doing that.
That sounds fun. Yeah.
Rhys: So and. Happy feet. He was in happy feet. You know, he was the voice of like one of the main characters. He also is big on doing voiceover. So he did a lot of voiceover for the, all the Lord of the Rings games. He is the voice of Spyro. And he was Kratos’s brother in one of the God of War games.
I
Stephen: don’t know which one. 27. I think.
Rhys: Yeah. He’s got three upcoming projects. He’s in a movie called LA rush. He’s in a book movie called bookworm with Michael Smiley from kill list. Cool. Yeah. And the new Toxic Avenger movie with Peter Dinklage and Kevin Bacon. He’s going to be in that.
Stephen: Oh, there’s your six degrees of separation.
There’s another one if you need it.
Rhys: Rainn Wilson played Wade. He loved the script. He thought it had real characters and a great story. And he is the most fun he’s ever had with the cast. He said he was in the office. You know, everyone’s like, Oh, that must’ve been awesome. Apparently this was better.
Stephen: Well, you know, he looked like he was having a blast in this movie.
I mean, just his character and all, all the characters, like I said earlier, they’re all over the top stereotype characters and they’re wonderful.
Rhys: Yeah. And if it’s poorly done, that just kills the film. Yeah. But this was just. So he doesn’t consider it a zombie film.
Stephen: Okay. I can see that because it’s cooties, not zombies.
Cause
Rhys: the kids aren’t dead. He says,
Stephen: Oh yes, but they killed them throughout the movie,
Rhys: right? Yes. It’s that I am I am legend thing where, okay, you’re killing these people, but they’re not really zombies. Could they have been cured? Doug seems to think so at the end of the movie. Rain’s been involved in 97 projects.
The first full feature he was in was galaxy quest. Which I did not realize. Wow. Okay. Almost famous charmed house of a thousand corpses. The six feet under series. Of course he was in the office, my super ex girlfriend. He was in Juno monsters versus aliens super, which is a great alternative superhero film.
I haven’t seen that one. Uncanny. He was in the boy the Meg, and then he does voiceover work as well. He. Plays Lex Luthor in DC’s animated films. Oh, okay, cool. He was also in Weird, the Al Yankovic story.
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: Yeah. And he’s got five upcoming projects. Code three, Empire Waste, Home Delivery. Hit pig which is a
Stephen: like serious dramas.
Well,
Rhys: hit pig is about a pig who is hired by humans to bring back their escaped animals.
Stephen: I’m guessing that’s animated, but yeah, I
Rhys: think so. Yeah. And as a film called Ezra with a Rose Byrne and Robert De Niro. So maybe that is a serious
Stephen: drama, maybe
Rhys: Allison pill plays Lucy. And the thing about Allison pill is that every time I look at her, she always reminds me of somebody else.
Stephen: Yes. I thought the same
Rhys: thing. Yeah. You’re like, weren’t you? Oh, no, she wasn’t. That wasn’t her. Right. She is a drumming Canadian. She, she plays the set drums. She’s been involved in 80 pro 80 projects starting in 97 with an episode on the new ghost writer mysteries, whatever that is. Okay. She did voiceover in the red wall series and the movie.
She was in the book of Daniel series. She was in milk. She was the drummer in Scott Pilgrim versus the world. Midnight in Paris. She was in goon again, one of my favorite hockey movies. And she was in snow piercer and this newsroom series. You ever watch that? The
Stephen: newsroom. I remember it. I don’t know if I’ve ever really watched it.
Rhys: Yeah. She was also in the 2012 series of American horror story them. Which I think is an American remake of the new French extremity film eel. And she was in the Star Trek Picard series, which I think just wrapped up. Didn’t
Stephen: it? Yeah. Recent for semi recently. Yeah.
Rhys: She’s got two projects coming up.
Young Werther with Pat Adams and an untitled Scott Pilgrim anime series. That makes all kinds of sense. If
Stephen: you think about it. Yeah, it does. It does. Yeah.
Rhys: The last person we’re going to mention by name is Jack McBrayer. He plays Tracy and Tracy is I don’t know what he teaches specifically. I mean, it’s all in elementary school, but he played, he, this character is exactly what you would expect for Jack McBrayer hysterical.
At first he thought the pitch was a prank. He thought it was a joke. Somebody was, was joshing him. But once he saw who was on board, he was thrilled to be involved with it. Oh, that’s cool. He knew the writers from previous work. He calls it a dark comedy and he’s been involved in 127 projects, including 11 episodes on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
He was on 30 Rock, Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby rock walk hard. The Dewey Cox story, despicable me, cats and dogs, revenge of kitty galore. Phineas and Ferb and Phineas and Ferb, the movie, the campaign, wreck it. Ralph captain Jake and the Neverland pirates. The funny or die movie, Donald Trump’s the art of the deal, the movie He also voiced Clumsy Smurf in the recent Smurf titles.
Stephen: That’s great.
Rhys: He was in Lego Scooby Doo. 11 episodes of Drunk History, 6 episodes of Bob Burgers, and tons of other animated shows, which makes all kinds of sense. His voice is very distinctive.
Stephen: Yeah, yeah. And I recognize his face in that too, but I, without looking it up, I was like, I know I’ve seen you several times and you’re playing kind of the same character in a way.
Rhys: He has three upcoming projects. He’s got eat with Gavin Rossdale, something called unfrosted and something called grand junction. So the movie starts out kind of like an ad for PETA.
I mean, you have, you have these chickens And it’s obviously like a chicken butchering kind of thing. They, they make everything seem sickly by putting this green overlay over top of this, over the lens. So everything’s all green and sick. And there, there’s just these chickens walking around. This guy walks in and grabs one and kills it.
And then they go into, you know, the gross necessity that is making actual food. Yeah,
Stephen: if you don’t want to know where this really comes from, don’t watch the beginning, at least.
Rhys: Well, yeah, the thing that was funny to me is that as first disgusting and cruel as they made it seem, that was actually a billion times nicer than how actual factory farming for chicken is.
That’s true. The chickens are at least walking around in this one,
Stephen: right? They’re not Yeah. And you don’t have the, the farmer guy going to the pen one at a time, grabbing them. So,
Rhys: yeah, right. Yeah. They got there and they process the whole thing. It’s disgusting looking. There’s a fly landing on stuff.
There’s shots with like maggots in the meat and stuff like that. And, you know, I’ll
Stephen: just say, you know, if that really grosses you out, then you really don’t want to know, it’s probably pretty true. Yeah.
Rhys: When it’s all said and done, the chicken nugget they end up with is really disgusting looking. And I kind of have a hard time believing that some kid in an elementary school is just going to blindly eat that.
But
Stephen: yeah, that’s the caveat when she does eat it the way it looks, they did that very, very well. It was like
Rhys: green juice squirting out. It was gray.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder what that really was like raspberry. Jam or something that they colored, you know, if I was the kid, man, if I was all those kids, I’d all, I, let me, let me try.
Well, you
Rhys: know, yeah, everybody would want to do it. I mean, it does that whole first thing up until like she eats it. And then, you know, the splash comes on cooties. It seems like more like the Andromeda strain than anything else. It’s like this disease movie.
Stephen: And it’s a good, it’s one of those that we talk about, you know, it’s over the credits while the credits and music is playing.
So, you know, it introduces the movie, gets it set up and doesn’t waste movie time otherwise.
Rhys: Yeah. And that’s going to come up later when we get to the end, the, after that scene, after the cooties thing, come title comes up the title card, you see this kid’s room and when I saw it. You know, just because of how we’ve been doing things.
I was like, Oh my God, it’s the start of basking again. It’s a kid’s room. But instead of like some child wandering off to be traumatized, it’s Elijah Wood lying in a bed that’s he’s sorely outgrown,
Stephen: which to be fair, he looks pretty 20 years ago.
Rhys: So yeah, he’s, he’s not one of those guys who’s ever going to look like he’s an old man.
And then his mother comes in played by Kate Flannery, who played Meredith from the office, a little cameo from her. She comes in and he asks about his, his book. Has she read it? And she’s like, Oh yeah, I read it and I loved it. And then he’s like, Oh, I really want to know. And then she like, it’s like, don’t ask for feedback if you’re not ready to hear it.
Stephen: And it’s also, this is why you don’t let your family and stuff read to give you feedback, maybe read it, but don’t bother asking for feedback because it’ll just cause problems if nothing else.
Rhys: The stuff she was saying was all like very legitimate literary criticism. It wasn’t like, I got bored. No, it wasn’t like that.
It was like, I failed to see what the drive of the main characters were. And I’m like,
Stephen: wow. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and you know, with the, The kids room, I love the cameo of the Chucky doll on his shelf, along with a few other things,
Rhys: the Jaws poster. Yeah. Yeah. So right here we find out he is a struggling writer. He is living at home and they do a really nice job of establishing his character.
He has to go off, so he’s going to go teach kids. So we have some guy who’s writing a book who is living in his old bedroom and is. Going off to substitute teaching summer school for
Stephen: kids. And he doesn’t seem like he likes any of it.
Rhys: No, no. And he makes me laugh cause he’s doing the whole thing by dictation.
So he’s driving into work, dictating the first line of the book over and over. Nope. That’s not, nope. That’s not, that’s not it. And
Stephen: none of them were that great. You know, just keep going, man. Get more of the story. Worry about the first line later.
Rhys: He comes up to the crossing guard crossing guard Rick, who thinks that he’s his dealer.
And then it’s like, Oh no, it’s not. And so he gets a radio call saying that yes, Clint is there to work. So Rick lets
Stephen: him by. Jorge Garcia. And he was one of my favorites on Hawaii Five 0. I loved him. He’s been, he was also on a. Lost lost. Yeah. Yeah. He’s been on a few other things. I’ve seen him. But that’s a wife.
I’ve always the biggest one.
Rhys: I saw interviews. It was the writers and him when they were talking about it. And he was just so funny because he’s sitting there and like the writers are, you know, jumping in and answering questions, but he was just kind of sitting there just happy to be there. And they would like turn and ask him a question.
He’d be like, Oh yeah,
I see why they’re directing the questions the way they are. Yeah, it was just, it was, it was so refreshing to see somebody who’s just like, wow, this is
Stephen: kind of cool. Yeah. And the fact that he’s looking for his dealer kind of plays into the whole rest of his character. That’s all you need to know about him.
That’s it. And it’s hilarious as he goes on. Yeah.
Rhys: So Clint pulls into a parking space and is immediately parked in by this giant pickup truck driven by Wade. And You know, considering where we live, everybody’s got a pickup truck. The bigger the better. Yeah. And I found that the bigger your truck, the more modded out it is and the more stickers you have on it, the worse driver you are.
Yeah. Because it seems to be the way it is.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Well that’s a whole political dissertation. We could go into . Well, yeah,
Rhys: I agree. And Wade’s thing is like, A perfect example of that. I’m going to park into this narrow little space and I’m going to get out my truck and walk away and you can’t even open your door.
So yeah, not my problem. He, Clint does finally get out by climbing out the back hatch of his little, I don’t know, it was like a Prius, right? And written in the dirt on his rear windshield are eat a cock.
Stephen: So now for those listening, like, Oh my God, they’re, they’re, they’re mascot is the rooster. Yes.
Play on words there.
Rhys: Yes. But as he’s walking across the playground to get into the school, you really get the impression that all of the kids are entitled little dickheads.
Stephen: Oh yeah. They’re yelling at them and all sorts
Rhys: of stuff. The way they’re talking to their parents, they’re yelling at him.
Stephen: It’s just, I do love the one that says, but mom, she’s like, no, it’ll keep you safe.
And he has a helmet on, she sends him to school with a helmet. Yeah. You gotta go get beat up at all.
Rhys: Yeah he walks into the office and meets the vice president, vice president, vice principal, who instantly makes some joke about who he’s filling in for she’s out sick, or she might be pregnant because she is Mormon.
Yes. They. Screened this in Salt Lake City and both of the writers were nervous about that line, but it got a really big laugh. So they were like, it was awesome. Either everybody, either all the Mormons there can like laugh at themselves, or it was full of all the people who aren’t Mormons in Utah. So.
Stephen: Principle remind you of Randall from Clerks? The character just reminded me of Randall, it’s like, I, it’s like, oh that’s not Jason Mewes, so it just, or no, not, Jason Mewes didn’t play Randall, I’m sorry.
Rhys: It’s It’s funny to me because the guy goes in, he sits down in his office and they’re sitting across each other on the desk and first, like, he’s got to turn in his cell phone.
Everybody has to turn in their cell phones, so put them all in. And then the vice principal goes into this lecture on his philosophy of education. And you know what? Your employees don’t give a rat’s ass what your philosophy is in getting the job done. They just want to know where do I put my lunch? What time do I start?
What time do I get out? If you want to talk about philosophy, we can do that some other time. Don’t hold people captive and make yourself seem important by talking about your philosophy and
Stephen: education. Entitled. Yeah. But he, he has to keep saying how he’s the acting vice p you know, he’s in charge.
He’s like making himself much bigger than he is, which makes when the principles away. Yeah. ,
Rhys: the vice principal’s sectionally in charge of the building. ,
Stephen: right.
Rhys: He tries to Clint a map to the school, and Clint’s like, Hey, I went to school here. I don’t need a map. Now we know that not only is he a struggling writer who’s living with his mom and who is substitute teaching at a school, it’s a school that he went to.
So the guy’s like, okay. And he gives him the old double fingers. And he’s like, Oh yeah. Except that’s not really cool in a school.
Stephen: He’s just so socially awkward.
Rhys: Yes. Yes. And I think that’s, you know, that’s, that’s the fun part of it is that he is so over the top as a character that he can make jokes that you can say that’s in poor taste.
It still flies. It’s okay. Cause the guy is obviously just a goon. Yes. He watched Clint goes into the teacher’s lounge and again, you know, in any other kind of movie, the stereotyping would just be a tired hackneyed thing, but here it’s funny. And they’re all like, Tracy is sitting there talking about balls and his partner and his ball partners, fuzzy balls, and everyone’s like listening to him and he’s like, Oh, it’s I’m.
It’s tennis. I’m talking about tennis class or whatever his tennis partner. And then Rebecca,
Stephen: childish humor. It really is. Yeah. Clint’s
Rhys: trying to have a conversation with Rebecca who instantly points out that she’s wearing a rape button and she gets anywhere near it. She’ll press it. She’s not afraid to, then she walks off.
And it’s like, okay. Yeah. Wade grabs some coffee, Clint’s like, she’s the nutcase, and Wade just kind of looks Clint up and down and walks away without saying a word. And then Clint sees Lucy, and he sits down and they start to reminisce, turns out they went to school together. And she Surprise, how
Stephen: are you?
Rhys: Yeah. She is your stereotypical bubbly elementary school teacher. Throughout pretty much the whole movie until she cracks, and then when she cracks… She’s done. I hate you all.
And then to carry along with the stereotype, you have the science teacher, Doug, sitting off in one side, reading a book called how to have a normal conversation.
Stephen: He was one of my favorites. I loved every time he opened his mouth because every line was golden.
Rhys: Yeah, he walks over there in the middle, Clint and Lucy are in the middle of having a conversation and he walks over and just instantly starts talking about the weather, like
Stephen: it looks like it’s like 65, 70 degrees.
Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Wade comes over and it turns out that he’s Lucy’s boyfriend, which they obviously Clint’s and Wade don’t like each other and Clint’s like, Oh, well, you parked me. And, and he’s like, well, I’ve got this truck with dual rear wheel tires, except he can’t say dual rear wheel. And he tries over and over and over again.
It just doesn’t work.
Stephen: Yeah. And they do that. I thought they did that joke a couple of times, just enough. If they had done it a little bit more, it really would have become tiresome, even in this movie. But just when it came up, it was once again, Oh, that’s still kind of funny. Yeah.
Rhys: He starts to ask Clint about his book and then he points out rightfully that Clint’s book sounds a lot like Christine with boats.
And so then they start talking and it turns out he’s a huge Jason Patrick fan.
Stephen: Yeah, it’s such a weird choice, but yeah,
Rhys: then the bell rings and Wade takes it upon himself to tell everyone let’s roll, you know, like he’s the sergeant hill street blues.
Stephen: Careful out there. Let’s
Rhys: be careful out there. So we get a glimpse at the students that he’s going to be teaching.
We have a kid named Patriot and his buddy are bullying this girl at her desk. It’s a girl who ate the bad chicken.
Stephen: Yep. And she doesn’t look healthy.
Rhys: She doesn’t. And she’s not paying any attention to them as they’re teasing
Stephen: her. And we all know the, and this is very stereotype of these kids too. We all know those, the ones that are just sneaky enough to keep getting away with it.
And everybody knows that they’re the troublemakers, but nobody’s able to prove anything. You know? Yeah. We know these guys.
Rhys: Yeah. Clint walks in and instantly he’s like, somebody order a sub.
Stephen: He needs to read the how to start a conversation book.
Rhys: Yeah. I don’t have a normal conversation. All the kids take their psychotropic drugs. It’s like this quick cut scene. They’re all like. Popping their pills. Then we get a glitch. Then we get to see other teachers, just a shot from each of their scenes.
Stephen: I love the choice to put that in there because they didn’t need to.
It didn’t really help the story, but it set the characters up even more so. And I
Rhys: loved it. You got Doug. He’s teaching science class, wearing a suit with Velcro organs all over it. And he’s pulling them off of, and he’s lecturing these kids who were just looking confused. Like his ex wife took his heart and he takes his heart out and he lost his mind and he pulls the brain out.
Stephen: And that’s my weekend. How did you get, let’s move on.
Rhys: Rebecca is there. Obviously she’s she’s pushing creationism by saying. Okay. Well, I’m supposed to teach you that we all descended from monkeys, but we all know that that’s not even
Stephen: possible. But the state told me, I can’t say
Rhys: that. Right. In Clint’s room, he decides he’s going to be their friend.
He’s like, you can call me by my first name. He starts writing his first name and, you know, kerning people leave some space between your letters. Cause when you put an L and an I close together, it looks like a U and it looks like he just wrote the word cunt on the board, right? Which Patriot and his little buddy, you know, they start laughing, he erases it and says to call him, you know, like a regular
Stephen: teacher.
And there’s a couple times in this movie, the kids swear and they, they say things and you know that, that they had to get the parents permission for this and they had to probably work with the kids and stuff. I mean, what more fun when you’re 12 years old to be allowed to say some of this stuff, you know?
Rhys: Yeah, he goes into this whole thing. He’s not really a teacher. He’s a writer. Patriot calls him an asshole. He asks Patriot what his name is. And he says, his name is Patriot. He was born on September 11th and he’ll join the Marines as soon as he’s 18. So he can go shoot some tallies. Like, wow. Okay.
Stephen: Over the top, even the kids.
Yeah.
Rhys: Calvin points out that Patriot has been held back and Patriot shoots him a, a dirty stare. And then Clint notices that Eda Koch has written on Patriot’s book. And he’s like, did you write that on my car? When he pulled in and he gives him this kind of. Smile so that he decides he’s not going to teach anything.
He pulls out his manuscript and ask if anyone wants to read it out loud.
Stephen: Now talk about bad decisions and over the top entitlement going on.
Rhys: Cause Calvin decides he’s going to do it. And then you look over and Clint’s just sitting there like. Eating it up as he starts to read it. And I’m just like, yeah in the meantime, Patriot reaches over and grabs the sick girl’s pigtail to pull it.
And it just comes right in his, in his hand with her
Stephen: scalp. That was
Rhys: great. She jumps out of her chair, tackles him to the ground, bites a hole in the side of his face and then scratches Clint and runs away. So Clint’s like, okay, I’m going to take him down to the nurse. It’s going to need stitches. And Patriot is much more low key.
Now he’s just kind of like breathing.
Stephen: You know, he’s infected. It seems to affect them very quickly.
Rhys: Yeah. He’s sitting there and the nurse is like. Now he’s gonna have to go to the hospital for this. The crossing guard gets his little bag from his supplier, goes into his van, starts to listen to some music, and takes some shrooms.
Yeah. Bad day. Takes bad time to quit doing heroin.
Stephen: Well, he, well, he did pick a bad time to, to like get high on the mushrooms, but man, it’s hilarious to watch his reactions. He’s so good at it. Yeah.
Rhys: Clint is in a teacher’s lounge talking to Lucy about the events in his classroom. She’s like, did you send the girl to the principal’s office?
He’s like, no, I almost gave her a high five. That kid was a dick.
Stephen: Yeah, that was a great line right there.
Rhys: And then we’re out on the playground. Patriot’s little blonde buddy is over there. He sees the girl hanging out. She’s digging some shrubs over by the fence. He cut jogs over and accuses her of hurting his friend.
He actually said you bit my friend’s face and then calls her a bitch and she scratches him in the face. Inside back inside Clint’s going on about how he’s a writer and it’s much cooler than normal. And, it’s too bad. Cause the, it’s too bad that happened. Cause it kind of ruined how cool the class was going to be.
The kids don’t even know. Yeah. And then in the playground, you know, just just to reinforce everyone’s characters here, Wade is practicing basketball and he’s horrible. He can’t, he’s barely hitting the rim, much less actually putting anything through the net.
Stephen: That made me chuckle because I remember hearing an anecdote about Larry Bird.
Dr. J, yeah, Larry Bird when he was on Pepsi commercial back in like the 80s, they hired him to do a shot and miss, drink Pepsi, do a shot and make it. They took like 34 takes cause he couldn’t miss. He couldn’t miss. He was so trained. He kept making every basket. So that’s what that reminded me of except the exact opposite, like the evil version of him.
Yeah.
Rhys: It’s even funnier cause he’s doing it and while he’s doing it. There’s all this violence that’s going on behind him and he doesn’t even notice. He does notice that Lucy and Clint are talking through the windows and the teachers lounge. He notices that the crossing guard, Rick is actually the first person who knows something’s going on and he’s tripping balls.
So, you know, good on him, but you got that little blonde kid. He’s running around. Scratching every kid he can as he goes past, right?
Stephen: And again, Jorge Garcia was cracking me up. It was like, Oh man,
he was, he was just
Rhys: hilarious. Yeah. The kid’s face has blisters. He’s got blood on his hands. This member of the staff sees him doing this and wanders out to kind of chastise him and the guy really looked like, I’m trying to think what that show was. He looked like somebody’s uncle from the eighties.
Stephen: Urkel’s or was it Urkel? Yeah. It was either
Rhys: Urkel’s or Will Smith’s.
Stephen: Oh, right, right. Bel Air. Yeah, he did look a lot like him, but it wasn’t either. But yeah, I see
Rhys: that. Well, and the way that I was like, wow, that really looks like him. Then I’m like, but he didn’t say anything. If you’re going to have the guy on set, you know, a name like that, you’d at least have him give him a line.
But the guy walks out and He doesn’t say anything, but all of a sudden, all these, he’s surrounded by kids and they like tackle him. And again, Clinton, Lucy upstairs. Don’t see any of it. You’ve got Wade. Who’s actually there. Doesn’t see any of it. Then the little blonde kid attacks, this girl in the playground and they’re eating the one guy.
And then another member of staff runs over to try and help. Wade’s still failing at basketball and Rick is seeing all this, just being like, Oh my God, man. So Rick actually gets on his radio and says, Hey, I’m on some medication. I might not be seeing things right. But seems that some of Mrs. Simmons students are possibly eating Mr.
Peterson.
Stephen: A lot, a lot of this movie made me chuckle out loud. Yeah, it was just, it was fun. Yeah.
Rhys: Sims comes out of his office like a hero opens the door. He’s yelling at kids. They’re all ignoring him. Then they pull him down.
Stephen: Even if they weren’t infected,
Rhys: right? They pull him to the ground. He’s like, I have bursitis.
So the elbow, and then they rip his limbs off
Stephen: and they really go over the top with some of that, the kids pulling out guts and ripping limbs off and said, yeah, I loved it. Poor
Rhys: Rick is just sitting there watching the whole thing. A Patriot heads inside into the principal’s office. While this is all going on, in the teacher’s lounge, Clint and Lucy are still doing this kind of flirty thing, and then Doug looks out the window and says, Oh, look, carnage.
Stephen: I had that line cranked me up because again, the way he says it, you know, it’s just, yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Now everybody sees what’s going on. And Lucy’s like, someone should call the police. Rebecca presses her rape button, which. Causes everyone to cover their ears. And now Wade sees what’s going on and a bunch of children are approaching him and he’s threatened them with the fact that he was an all star running back when he was in high school.
He says, we all wanted to do that to principal Sims. I know I have. And then he runs across the playroom, stiff arming and juking kids all over the place, gets inside and closes the door.
Stephen: I, I, I can see, I’d love to see more bloopers of this. Cause I bet they, that scene was probably the really fun to record.
And so, yeah.
Rhys: Tracy’s on the phone explaining to the police what happened and they keep saying, ma’am, ma’am, you’ve got to calm down. Then the phone lines all go dead because Patriot has killed the secretary and is actively ripping phone lines right out of the wall. Right. Wade runs up to the teacher’s lounge.
He’s out of breath. He’s like, those kids are fast.
Tracy recognizes one of the kids to the window and he tries talking to her. It’s not working. When the police show up, Lucy’s like, look, the police are here. Everything’s going to be fine. But Rick, the crossing guard is like, shit, it’s a five. Oh, which is
Stephen: funny. Cause he was on Hawaii five. Oh,
Rhys: then he’s like, I’m not getting busted.
And he takes the entire. Bag full
Stephen: of shrooms, you know, I’m sure there’s gotta be another horror movie with some stoners watching the zombie apocalypse happen. It’s just so funny to think about
Rhys: it’s perfect. The cop walks up to the screen up to the fence and he’s like, Hey, y’all got to settle down. And of course, two of his fingers get bitten off right away and he freaks out and gets in his car and starts backing up.
And of course there’s a zombie in the back seat who attacks him and he crashes.
Stephen: Blood spatter on the window. Yeah, and all the I love all the teachers their reactions through all this like who? You know watching things
Rhys: go on. Yeah, Wade’s like somebody’s got to do something He opens the door and Patriots right there just comes diving in Clint grabs a coffee pot to throw it at him Of course, he moves and he hits Wade and Wade calls Clint like an asshole or something like yeah Patriot Tackles Clint, Doug is giving him advice.
Oh, he’s going to eat your face. He’s, he’s going to eat your face right off. Rebecca goes to mace Patriot who moves and she maces Clint in the face. But then Patriot grabs some lady and takes her into a cabinet, which closes and locks and Tracy’s like, who is that woman? So, you know, it’s kind of like poking fun at the movie itself.
Oh, we needed an extra to die. We don’t even give her a name. Yeah. So the characters wonder who they are. The door is locked. There’s mayhem going on in the cabinet. And they’re like, okay. And they all leave.
Stephen: Yeah. In a typical movie, there’s some story plots that would be considered holes and like, come on, but.
Considering that it’s poking fun at absolutely everything here. It’s just like, Oh, like the kid in the car, the cop car. Well, how’d they get in the car? Where’d they come from? I know she crawled under and she got out, but it’s like, really? And you know, and just, there’s several times that any other movie, it would have been considered lame, but it really Who cares?
It’s funny.
Rhys: Yeah. And they do all kinds of little things. Like they’re running down the hallway and there’s this guy coming down the stairs. He’s like, follow me. I do CrossFit. Then he opens the doors outside, gets pulled out and killed immediately. Yeah. Who was that guy? Who knows? Obviously you don’t want to go outside.
Stephen: Obviously rule number one, cardio did not help here. That’s right.
Rhys: They run into Calvin and Rebecca wants to kill him. And Tracy points out that he’s not like the rest and not just because he’s black, our differences are what make us beautiful. They realized that Calvin hasn’t turned into a zombie.
He doesn’t have the blistering. He’s got all of his facilities. So they continue through the school. And then we get a shot of the cabinet that was locked and the lock just gets pushed out, which obviously the other teachers could have just ripped the lock out if they really wanted to, but Patriot comes out and runs him down the hallway.
He opens the door to the hall and tons of cootie infected children start streaming into the, right into the building. The teachers get inside a room, the music room, maybe they close the door and Doug is doing scientific observation on this girl who’s panting on the other side.
Stephen: Not just. Normal. I mean, he’s like that he’s socially awkward and he’s weird.
So it’s very definitely like, shut up, man.
Rhys: Yeah. Rebecca freaks out. She’s wondering what’s going on. Doug says he blames rap music. Clint says he always hated his teachers, but he never wanted to eat them. And then Kevin points out that it’s cooties. Doug then again, starts to look and he’s like, Oh, well, there’s no plisters on him and he’s looking and, but no one’s paying any attention to what Doug’s doing.
Right.
Stephen: And my, my thought here was, well, if they got cooties, they need to go to the pub and drink, right? Crossovers.
Rhys: Doug’s there. He’s like, I’d love to get inside your head. He’s talking to the zombie girl and then she runs off. He’s like, she’s gone off to commit murder somewhere else.
Stephen: And he just says, It’s a fact.
Rhys: Wade has this plan. He wants to go out and jump off this ledge and get to their cars. Clint points out that Wade just said they were too fast for him.
How are they all going to survive? You and I both know Wade’s thinking, I’m just not the slowest one here. So that’s all that matters. Clint wants to go down and get a cell phone. Oh, Wade wants everyone to grab an instrument to turn it into a symphony of death. Violin. Yeah. And then Clint’s plan is go to the principal’s office, get their cell phones, call for help, cut to Patriot in the principal’s office, crushing all the cell phones.
Wade accuses Clint of sneaking around like a fucking hobbit. There you go. There’s your reference. There’s your reference. And he’s going to take the fight to them like an orc. Lucy separates them saying, the only way we’re going to get out of this is if we turn our frowns upside down, typical elementary school teacher, right?
She’s trying to compliment Clint on his plan, which she doesn’t believe in. And he stops her because he has a new idea for his book and he starts to write it down. Well, he left his cell phone on the dock.
Stephen: Let me just cut in the name of his book is Keele them all. That’s hilarious too.
Rhys: Someone’s like, seriously? Lucy’s idea is go on the roof and wait for three o’clock when the parents come and flag them down. Now everyone has noticed that Clint has a scratch on his arm. They’re like, Oh, it’s infected.
Wade forces him into a separate room. Locking him in, he throws up all over the floor. Doug says he’s going in and Wade’s like, no, you know what? No, I don’t care. And so Doug goes in, out in the van, Rick continues to feed us the viewer’s information as he turns on the radio. And he’s trying to calm himself down.
And then the emergency broadcast alarm goes off on the radio.
Stephen: So this was my question. This is one of those plot holes. Like how did it spread that fast from the one chicken tender? That was at the girl that’s still in the police car.
Rhys: Oh, I have an answer for that at the end. Doug is trying to get everyone’s attention.
He’s trying to get everyone to be quiet. No one’s saying anything. And then he keeps
Stephen: saying, Be quiet! I said be quiet! And they’re like, We didn’t say anything.
Rhys: Yeah, well Rebecca points out that no one’s talking and then he calls her out for
Stephen: talking. Yeah, that was a weird, funny thing to me. It’s not something I’ve ever really…
I heard before, I was like, that’s so weird. It’s funny. Yeah.
Rhys: He he’s like, Clint seems to be infected, but it’s not affecting him. He just has the flu and he lists all this. He’s vomiting. He’s got some diarrhea, some anal leakage,
Stephen: mild anal leakage.
Rhys: Rebecca’s like, how do you know? And he points out that he dug through all of the fluids and it’s okay.
Cause he’s wearing gloves and they’re like, no, you’re not.
Stephen: Yeah. And I, he says, but he has a hypothesis. Yes. A
Rhys: hypothesis. Lucy seems concerned about Clint and Wade notices that then you have the over the top, gory montage of things happening out of the playground. You have kids playing marbles with eyeballs, jumping rope with intestines, tether ball with a head, tether
Stephen: ball with a head.
Yes. Fingers in the spokes of the bicycle. That was my favorite. The ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Rhys: Yeah. Everyone cuts through the quarantine area. They head out onto the porch. The PTA president is the first one to pull in. She is Super annoying. And I don’t even know her just talking on her phone with her headset, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ignoring everybody.
She’s got an infant in the back seat. She’s oblivious to any problem except that her son’s not getting in the car fast enough. And he dutifully comes walking out. She’s paying no attention. And then you just like get this sound of him attacking the baby in the back seat. And the mom’s still not paying attention, she misses the whole attack and then she looks in the rearview mirror and her son eats her too.
Yeah, the baby does. Yeah, I said at the, at the end, they show that it’s the baby, so they didn’t want you to think that they had a zombie eat a baby. The zombie just infected a baby, that’s all.
Stephen: Which, I don’t know if that’s really any better, but a cootie, not a zombie.
Rhys: Yeah, everybody, everybody’s freaking out about it.
And then all of a sudden Tracy starts to scream because somebody’s grabbed his ankle, turns out it’s Tamra. She seems to be immune too, but the horde is coming. So, when they’re running in, Doug’s little blonde buddy follows them into the music room, Wade clubs him to death with a fire hydrant, and everyone’s looking at Wade a little bit differently now as he wanders off alone.
Clint goes to secure the doors, Doug’s gonna dissect the dead kid,
Stephen: Dissect him, yeah, cause I don’t give him answers in the middle of the… The classroom.
Rhys: Yes. Tamara has been scratched. Rebecca is disgusted by the concept of urinals.
Stephen: She goes on and on about it. Like she’s never seen them before in her life.
Rhys: And Doug successfully removes the kid’s brain, which is fascinating to me. Cause I’m pretty sure in the last scene, Wade just bashed the kid’s head in. With fire extinguishers. So there really shouldn’t be just one.
Stephen: We ignore plot holes
Rhys: in comedy. That’s right. Rick continues to listen to the radios. We’re informed of the spread of the disease.
And there’s this giraffe hanging out with him in the passenger seat. And he’s like, are you on mushrooms too?
Stephen: Yeah, that was really, you’re watching the zombie apocalypse. A giraffe sit next to you tripping would not freak you out too much. That’s right.
Rhys: Lucy goes to check on Wade. He accuses her of being Clint’s girlfriend.
She apologizes that she hurt his feelings. And then he’s like, I bought you a ring yesterday. And he goes off of this kind of meandering romantic talk about how she never looks at him. Like she was looking at Clint. And so it’s just over. And so she goes to leave and then he’s like, go fuck yourself. Oh, okay.
Nice. Doug goes on its explanation of the disease based on the brain. He identifies it as a virus because bacteria can break the blood brain barrier. He asked Tamara if she’s experienced menses. And Lucy’s appalled that he asked, and then he’s appalled that Tamara didn’t know that that meant had her period yet.
Stephen: It tells her she’s not going to pass class. Yes. He’s
Rhys: very disappointed. He points out that it only seems to affect people who are prepubescent. And then Patriot cuts the power, Calvin collapses because he’s diabetic. Because of course, I mean,
Stephen: you got to add that next, you
Rhys: got to get, got to get people out of the music room.
Somehow they need to get him some sugar. There’s a whole bunch of noise coming from the boiler room. It turns out to be Hitachi, the Japanese janitor,
Stephen: stereotypical Jeff. Yes.
Rhys: Throngs of kids flow into the room and Hitachi takes everyone to where he’s been living in the basement. Apparently he lives in the school.
He has a radio so that the entire cast can hear that. Now, yes, you are indeed alone in the world. No one’s coming to save you. And now all of a sudden Clint steps up. He asked Wade how many people his truck holds, Wade guessed eight because it’s a
ribble, but his keys are in the teacher’s lounge and there’s also a vending machine, which would have candy for Calvin. So obviously we have to crawl through the duct work to get there. And they’re like, who do we know who’s small enough, who can do that? And they realized Clint’s the best candidate.
And he’s like, I have a blog. I get excited about Apple products. This is not the kind
Stephen: of thing that I do. Right.
Rhys: Tamara gives him the dot dot. Cootie shot. And says that he’s protected as he
Stephen: climbs up. That was pretty good. I’m glad they threw that in there. That, yeah, that was cute. A little touch of innocence.
Rhys: Yeah. Wade and Clint start quarreling over the radio and that’s when Lucy loses it. She’s like, I never liked any of you. I’m going to go up there with him. So she climbs on up, there’s this whole just useless tension building scene with the girl on the tricycle and pop goes the weasel horror movies.
Do that all the time. Well, nothing’s going to happen, but it’s just going to build up a bunch of tension in, okay, keep going the way you’re going. I, they get into the teacher’s lounge and Clint is after the candy. And of course, just, you know, he’s like, do you have a dollar? And it won’t take his dollar. I mean, that’s like the trauma
Stephen: for him.
Every action star would have already smashed it and grabbed five candy bars, but he’s
Rhys: Gone, yeah. Lucy goes off for the phone, but the girl on the tricycle comes riding in and Clint hides back. Lucy also found Wade’s keys before she leaves. She goes to the principal’s office, finds all the phones are broken and she leaves just in time because Patriot comes in just after she left the little girl finds Clint and doesn’t attack him, but she yells.
It’s really interesting to me because the kids are just like violent and everything, but they’re not stupid. Yeah. You know what I mean? Smart zombies. Yeah. More along the lines of like, I am legend, you know, where they can set up. So the machine finally takes a dollar, he gets his candy, he grabs it, and you have a foot, you have a race, I wouldn’t say a foot race, you have a race crawling through the ductwork.
They’re going along, and Clint goes past where they need to go, he throws the candy bar down where they need to go and keeps going straight so that the zombies don’t flood in and attack everyone else. And he and Lucy end up in the library. Tracy’s in the middle of freaking out and he finally gets himself calmed down and then Doug slaps him.
Clint and Lucy are hanging out in the library. They warn they warn. Wade that’s over the radio that they’re in the duct work. So they’re kind of cuddling and then they sit there and he says, you know what? I’ve, I’ve got to tell you, actually, I wasn’t a writer in New York. I was a teacher in New York city as well.
And I actually came here just to see you and teachers have it so hard. We have like two of these things, right? You have one where yes. Okay. Teachers are, it’s a horribly underappreciated overworked profession. And they just like. They really hammer it into this scene, right? Then they kiss. It’s all very thrash about kind of first kiss kind of thing.
Lucy says all we needed was a bottle of wine and then Clint’s like, Oh wait. And he takes all of the kids drugs. The other group Wade has, since he hears that all of the things are in the duct work, he grabs just. Crap and just stuffs it into the dog work, puts the grill on and then ratchet straps it closed, which is actually pretty good.
Yeah. Yeah. And they’re all talking about bucket list stuff. Rebecca’s always wanted to fire an Uzi. She’s crazy. Tracy always wanted a bunny. And here’s Wade. He wants to know why his brother in law makes 10 times more money than he does making phone fingers. You get down at the stadium. Yes. Teachers are underpaid.
We’ll hammer that one into this scene too. And then he’s like, you know what? I actually like you people. And the Doug’s like, I always wanted to have sex with a non white prostitute.
Stephen: Really messed up.
Rhys: Yeah. Lucy gets a hold of Wade and apologizes to her, but Lucy gets a hold of Wade. Wade gets ahold of Lucy and he apologizes to her on the radio. Clint says he’s not a great author and he’s sorry that he got in the way between them. And Wade focuses on the fact that Clinton in passing said he was a handsome guy.
He’s like, you think I’m a handsome guy? So
Stephen: you know, before they went into the duck work Wade. Says, Oh, I’m a self published author too. And he blows his nose on a rag, wipes his butt, throws at it.
Rhys: Yeah. And Doug’s like, there’s no words on this.
Stephen: That was a, that was funny. Yeah.
Rhys: Clint pitches piles of pills in the hallway and the kids start eating them up.
In the meantime, Wade is like, this is an eighties suiting up montage. We’ve got to make weapons. And so we have like fort covered pylons on the end of a jump rope that Tracy is swinging around. Rebecca’s got a pair of symbols. I don’t know what she’s going to do with those.
Stephen: Doug
Rhys: builds this very frightening looking stun baton thing. And then Wade has a pitching machine that he straps to himself and loads full of balls. And then Hitachi comes up and starts telling this story and Wade’s like. Oh, this story is just way too long, way too long. And they head out into the hall.
Clint and Lucy meet up with them. Oh, they gave the candy bar to Calvin. He’s up and running. Clint gets a hockey stick and they’re all heading down the hallway. And as the cootie infected kids come around the corner, Wade is shooting them with balls from the pitching machine. And they’re ridiculously powerful balls
Stephen: off the
Rhys: ground.
And just so that Wade’s not doing it all, some kid comes running down the stairway and Clint. Takes him out with a hockey stick slashed to the face everyone else stays out. Everyone else goes outside. Hitachi stays behind He’s gonna do that last samurai standing
Stephen: thing The scene is like, okay, let’s go find all the good 70s martial arts movies and we’ll just recreate that because he’s Yeah, you know very much.
It was great. And I love when he got the the stick It was a broom and instead of breaking it off like every action star would have done. He spins the broom handle The end of
Rhys: it and it spins off. Yeah, so you have these two perfect stereotypical battle scenes, right? You have hitachi as the lone wolf army, Ninja kind of guy and then you have everyone else out on the playground and like an army of teachers and an army of kids and you have like the The two towers kind of thing where the armies are just going to smash
Stephen: together.
They got to run the gauntlet there.
Rhys: Yeah. Both of them are, are hilarious. Like Hitachi is using the broomstick. It breaks, he pulls out. He had a pair of pruning shears that he separated. So like two swords and he’s like fighting the zombies in there. Then outside is just as hilarious. Like Lucy doesn’t have any weapons.
She’s just punching out zombies as she runs into them to protect the other two kids who are wearing. Baseball catcher’s gear, I think Tracy almost goes down, but Rebecca saves him. Wade gives Clint the keys. Then he,
Stephen: you know, it has to be that the dramatic toss. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Obviously he never saw battery.
Then he goes back to hold back the throng. As everyone else gets in, he, you see him pulled down just by sheer numbers.
Stephen: Right. And everyone else takes off. It does. The last hand comes up out of the, the mass save yourself thing.
Rhys: They’re driving out of town and they’re running out of gas. The enormity of the situation is like weighing on them.
And then all of a sudden Patriot is on the roof and reaches in grabbing for Clint who does this sharp turn. So he flies off and then he, then he pulls a loved ones, right? Yeah. He just backs up. Eat a cock. He says.
Stephen: And he’s got the, on the back
Rhys: hitch cover that looks like a rooster. Yeah, of course it hits the kid right
Stephen: in the face and then they drive them into a tree and he splatters.
Yes. And the truck is fine.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. Yeah So they pull into the city of Danville, which the motto of the city of Danville is at least we’re not for chicken Which is the town they just came from
Stephen: I laughed because the, the stage or whatever they have set up, it’s like, Oh my God, it’s like every old TV show that was pulling into a town looked exactly like this, where they just have to turn a little bit, one corner, you know what I mean?
It’s just, it’s like they’ve reused this scene for hundreds of shows and movies. Yeah,
Rhys: it is in the truck finally dies here and they lose Doug. They’re not sure where he’s at and he’s over there and he’s watching it on TV. Everyone comes over and they’re watching it on TV and it’s happening. And it’s in Indiana, it’s in Ohio.
And so Doug’s like. Oh, we could track it down to the chicken factory. Doug thinks he could make a vaccine.
Stephen: Of course he does.
Rhys: But then there’s this huge crowd of kids who have climbed all over the truck and are just watching them and the kids attack.
Stephen: And that’s another scene that you see a lot. I remember Buffy the Vampire Slayer had that type of scene a lot with the vampires all surrounding.
Oh, we’re ready to go and get you. It’s like, why aren’t you attacking when they’re not paying attention?
Rhys: Well, and then you have the whole, we’re running down back alleys. Everyone’s trying a door. How many scenes, how many things have you seen that in where they’re trying to door? Eventually someone jumps over a fence or something like that, but they do find a door and they go inside and it turns out that there were chicken nuggets served at this party
Stephen: here.
It’s like a Chuck E. Cheese type place.
Rhys: Yes. And it’s well, like a bounce. A bounce place, right? And so they’re walking around and all of a sudden they’re like in the middle of this bounce thing, all the lights come up and carnival music. And there’s all the zombies looking down at them. It looks like a dome.
Stephen: Yes. That’s exactly what I thought too. Yeah,
Rhys: it looks bad for our heroes. I have to say it’s the end. But then all of a sudden there’s all this noise and Wade comes in and he’s got a squirt gun and he tells everyone to run behind him and get in the van. And there’s Rick, Rick, Rick is driving the van. And when everyone piles in the van, he’s like, is this a surprise intervention?
So you have Wade, who’s wandering out squirting everything. And of course, you know. Clint is like, what’s the squirt gun going to do? What’s water going to do to slow them down? And he’s like, it’s not water. And I’m thinking, Oh, now we’re borrowing from attack the block. So he pulls the whole hero stunt lights a match.
Naptime motherfuckers,
Stephen: which that cracked me up because it’s not the most heroic best line ever. It fits the kids so well, but I think the comedy is just that he’s trying to be that superhero action guy and he’s not. And even his line falls a little flat and the way he delivered it, he delivered it perfect because he could have delivered it much more butch and macho and it would have been a little more, but he doesn’t.
Yeah, that was a perfect. I love that. Yeah. That was great.
Rhys: Definite line of the line of the movie. Yeah. Then he hops in and he’s like, let’s roll. And they drive off and they roll credits.
Stephen: And then they say, where are we going? Where the kids don’t want to go. And then they, they’re like. So where don’t the kids want to go?
I’m trying to think of where they’re going. Are they going to an island? Well, kids like the beach. They like the sand. Are they going, you know, where are they going that kids don’t want to go? The only place I could think of. Is back to the school.
Rhys: Well, so a bunch of questions that you had asked, actually it answered, go with the alternative ending. Oh, I
Stephen: didn’t know that. Okay.
Rhys: There’s an alternative ending and in the alternative ending. Wade does not make it out. Okay. However, they get Rick. I don’t know how they, they don’t explain it. But they’re driving along, they run out of gas in the country, out in the woods, and they’re wandering through the woods and they come across what looks like a scout camp and it seems to be abandoned.
They’re kind of sitting down by the fire and Clint pulls out his manuscript and tosses it on the fire. And he’s like, I’m not a writer. I’m a teacher. And then Rick starts freaking out. And you see that the Scoutmaster has hung himself in a tree and everyone turns around and there’s a whole bunch of the zombie kids right there in the woods.
Then they cut to credits. Now, what they did with the credits was they would. Have a scene of a delivery truck opened up, grabs a box of chicken nuggets and delivers it to someplace and then closes the lid. And when they close the lid, they run credits across it. Then it would open again. It’d be somewhere else.
So you could see that the chicken nuggets were being widely dispersed across the area. That’s how it spread so
Stephen: fast. Right. Okay. I like that. I love that. I think
Rhys: even if they, even though they went with the different ending, they should have kept the credits like that because that was a really great way to do the
Stephen: credit.
I agree. And, and Hitachi was at the end. He got to finish his story after. Yes,
Rhys: yes, yes. Oh, was it a monkey and a caterpillar or something like that?
Stephen: Yeah, something I, it’s a typical like Aesop fable type story. Yes. Yes. Told by the Japanese guy. I mean, come on. It’s stereotypes. Yes,
Rhys: exactly. So
Stephen: that’s cooties.
That’s cooties. Which, you know, from the name, it’s going to be. I love this one. It really cracked me up. I’m going to watch it again. You know, Halloween time. Yeah. So, all right, there’s cooties. So what’s next on our hit parade?
Rhys: Well, we’re down to the last two and the next film is called battle Royale. It comes from Japan.
And we’ll talk about how some people went and took the idea and made a whole heck of a lot of money off of it.
Stephen: Yeah. And we are getting very, very close to the end. We got another season coming, but you’re giving your talk again on Labor Day weekend, if I don’t know if this episode will make it out, I’ll make sure whatever episode does, we’ll put links in.
Not that everybody’s coming to see you, but. Yeah, the, the horror movie genre seems to be doing very well in the movie theaters. So I think there’s a lot of interest in horror movies right now. There
Rhys: does. And people seem to want to actually see it in a theater and then they do seem to get quite a bit of traction.
Outside on streaming services and
Stephen: things like that. So, yeah, I mean, I I’ve seen almost every week at the theater or on red box, like two or three new horrors out there, there’s a lot. So cool. All right, man. Awesome. Later.
