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Overview
Should you ignore those whisperings you hear? You’re just imagining them, right? They don’t mean anything.
Are you creative? Do you play guitar? Or paint?
If you answered yes to any of the above, we have the house for you! A great family home with an outbuilding that can be used as an art studio or bedroom for a young girl.
And don’t worry about the deaths in the house. Just a crazy guy killed his parents, nothing to worry about.
Still hearing whispering? We’ll get that checked.
Full Episode at https://www.horrorlasagna.com/season-05-episode-09-the…/
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Stephen: So we’re recording this right before Halloween, which is very appropriate because we’re going to talk about the devil’s candy.
[00:00:07] Rhys: Yeah,
[00:00:09] Stephen: it doesn’t have a sweet, gushy interior.
[00:00:12] Rhys: It doesn’t, although it does have a little sweet, gushy exterior, which we’ll talk about here in a bit.
[00:00:16] Stephen: Sure, there you go. I’m glad we planned these so well.
[00:00:20] Rhys: Yeah.
[00:00:22] Stephen: All right, so we’ve got The Devil’s Candy, not a super old movie. The title, I’ve got some notes about the title as we go about talking about it. Okay. What do we got?
[00:00:35] Rhys: This is by Sean Byrne who wrote and directed The Loved Ones, one of Steve’s favorite movies from season one.
[00:00:42] It
[00:00:42] Stephen: was a fun one. I liked that one. It was so interesting. And I think
[00:00:48] Rhys: one of the fascinating things for me is how different this is. Yes. Do that.
[00:00:54] Stephen: Yeah. This, after watching Incident and Ghostland, which just went up recently, I was [00:01:00] like, you know what? This kind of feels like that a little bit. And I like, you could almost say this is like a home invasion in a way.
[00:01:08] It also had a little bit of a tie Westfield to it cause it the structure felt like an older movie.
[00:01:15] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a really interesting really interesting observation that it’s a little bit of, a little bit of both of those. Yeah. I think for me, the thing that Sean Byrne did so well in this film is what Stephen King does really well in his writing where you get to know the main characters really well and you don’t even have to identify with them, but they’re so likable.
[00:01:38] As they are, and then that just makes it so much more devastating when everything has to change.
[00:01:47] Stephen: Yes. And the father especially because that actor, I’ve seen him in a few other things and he’s always that younger, not super bright, almost nerdy, like guy, [00:02:00] you feel for him a lot and that’s been most of his roles.
[00:02:02] So it was really weird seeing him in this. The long hair, grungy father that all this stuff’s happening to it was an interesting casting choice. I thought, yeah, worked well. Yeah. Oh, he did amazing. And I, and as far as the father goes, except for all the spooky stuff going on, I thought he was a pretty good dad overall.
[00:02:24] Yeah.
[00:02:24] Rhys: The loved ones came out in 2010. And it ran an hour and 24 minutes. It had a 4 million budget and it took in about 360, 000.
[00:02:35] Stephen: Our movies quite often are like opposite of what they should be.
[00:02:39] Rhys: Yeah. It had 13 nominations and two wins. One was for Gerard may the French. Award and Toronto International Film Festival.
[00:02:49] He won something there, too.
[00:02:52] Stephen: Let me just digress for 1 minute, and I think I forgot to tell you this. Recently, I had some of our shirts and podcast information [00:03:00] at the Sinister Horror Fest locally at the Skyway Drive In, and I had the T shirt from Season 1, which I think I’m going to make a poster. It makes more sense as a poster, actually.
[00:03:10] But people were reading through the movies and there were so many people that recognized the most of the movies and a couple of people even said, Oh, I hope you watch the original martyrs, not the remake. Multiple people said that. So it felt good. It was like being within our people.
[00:03:26] Rhys: And that’s it too.
[00:03:27] Like the movies we did in the first season are ones that I would expect. Actual hardcore ardent horror fans to have seen
[00:03:35] Stephen: right? And that bears up with what you just said about loved ones. They spent 4, 000, 000 to make it, which is a pretty small amount nowadays, but they only made a couple 100, 000, there’s only a handful of people out there that know that movie and a lot of these that we do talk about.
[00:03:51] Rhys: Yeah. The devil’s candy came out in 2015. And it’s interesting to note, Sean Byrne had nothing that happened in between the two. So it [00:04:00] was just this long process of going from this movie to the new one. It runs an hour and 19 minutes. That’s getting precariously close to that. Is this a feature film length?
[00:04:11] You can’t find budgetary information on this. We don’t know how much it costs to make, but. They made 772, 000. But doubled what he made when he did the loved ones. Nice. I’m sure it’s still quite short of what he spent on it.
[00:04:26] Stephen: And yes, but there wasn’t like crazy makeup prosthetics and stuff.
[00:04:32] There wasn’t a lot of special effects. A lot of it was atmosphere and there was whispering. So it set that mood a lot. You imagined things a lot in this one.
[00:04:43] Rhys: Yeah. It got eight nominations and three awards Gerard May gave them an award for the score. Bright Meter also gave them one for the score and Rondo Hattan gave them the best indie film.
[00:04:58] So [00:05:00] I thought that was cool. Yeah, it was filmed on location in the state of Texas. And one of the. One of the driving factors Sean Byrne had behind this was Nick Cave’s song, the red, right hand. If you haven’t listened to it, I recommend it. It’s a good song. He saw that it was emblematic for the fact that the devil can’t walk the earth.
[00:05:24] So he has to use humans to carry out his nefarious deeds. He seemed to think that the whole concept of the red right hand was biblical. It’s not it’s from John Milton’s paradise lost, which if you want to go back to Oh, the movie in New York with the model
[00:05:42] like century or something like that. Okay. We’ll think of it. I’m sure we will. But if you want to go back to that movie, it was the same complaint I had there where people are attributing things to religion that aren’t really necessarily religious it’s religious adjacent, but it’s not really religious.
[00:05:59] Stephen: [00:06:00] And, the devil can’t walk the land. That’s that damn fiddle player that beat them out. That’s right. He
[00:06:06] Rhys: doesn’t have enough gold instruments to keep doing that. He. Burton was keen to create this believable dynamic between this family. I think you’d have to say that he succeeded.
[00:06:19] The family feels real enough. Yeah. And he wanted to dispel this myth that alternative families are unlike traditional families. Like just cause the dad is some. Metal loving painter doesn’t mean that they’ve got some bizarre family life, right? Their life just seemed pretty mundane up until things went off the rails.
[00:06:44] Stephen: Kudos to the mother too, for they were definitely not the couple you would pick. She was pretty straight laced. He was long haired, heavy metal. Like you said,
[00:06:52] Rhys: yeah. And she obviously wasn’t a specific scene in the film that points to that. He said the lighter they are at [00:07:00] the beginning, the further there is to travel to get to the jet black darkness.
[00:07:05] Just dark jet black. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I think it’s, Ping does this a lot in his stuff where, you really get. Embedded with the family, you, you identify with them, you would like them. And then it just makes it that much harder to see all the stuff that they suffer through,
[00:07:22] Stephen: right?
[00:07:23] Yep. That’s what he does very well that people miss a lot, I think.
[00:07:27] Rhys: Yeah. Burn is from Tasmania. He does have a film in post production right now called dangerous animals. So we’ll have to keep an eye out for that whenever it comes out, but
[00:07:38] Stephen: considering devil’s candy had nothing to do with candy. This might not have anything to do with animals.
[00:07:43] That’s true.
[00:07:44] Rhys: And when that comes out, that’ll be three major feature films that he has. And that’s it. Everything else are shorts. That kind of thing. So
[00:07:51] Stephen: 15 years.
[00:07:53] Rhys: Yeah. The film was in part Sean Byrne trying to work his way through the guilt he felt [00:08:00] about leaving his family to make movies, which is, let
[00:08:04] Stephen: me go make a movie because I feel
[00:08:06] Rhys: guilty about making movies.
[00:08:08] He also wanted he recognizes that it’s a home invasion film, but he wanted it to be different from. Regular home invasion films, it didn’t need it to be long and drawn out. He just wants it to be short and brutal, not even necessarily successful, which is so unlike the strangers or your next, all of these movies are like an hour and a half of home invasion.
[00:08:36] Stephen: And when you think about it, cause I was thinking about this, it’s just about any like Amityville horror, any ghost poltergeist, those are all home invasions. It’s just not people.
[00:08:47] Rhys: That’s true. One of the things that he took for inspiration was he really liked the stylized slick violence of John wick, but he’s but I realized I can’t do [00:09:00] that.
[00:09:01] So while it was influential, it wasn’t any kind of style he was trying to copy. Cause He can’t do it. That’s interesting. Yeah. Steven Kazner is not anybody who’s going to jump to your mind as anyone we know, but he was the painter who did the paintings in the film.
[00:09:20] Stephen: I’m so glad you brought him up because I noticed that in the credits at the end, they gave him credit and some of the paintings were so amazingly cool.
[00:09:31] Rhys: He is a contemporary of ours. I think it might be two years older than us. He’s from cleveland But he is also deceased so
[00:09:42] Stephen: we have to do a
[00:09:43] Rhys: seance Sean Burn. He was a, this is listed, he was a wonderful artist and a member of the Church of Satan. Okay.
[00:09:54] Stephen: So he was really into his subject matter.
[00:09:57] Rhys: Yeah. So when by would ask for [00:10:00] updates on he he said Kasner would say he’s close. I can feel him. He’s upon me while he was doing these paintings.
[00:10:06] Stephen: That’s awesome, actually.
[00:10:08] Rhys: Yeah. Let’s see. I think he died in 2006. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it’s been a while. Oh, wait. No. 2017. Okay. That makes
[00:10:21] Stephen: more sense. It died after the movie rather than before, because that’d be some really great paintings.
[00:10:27] Rhys: Yeah. And I’m still wrong. It was Christmas day, 2019 at the age of 49.
[00:10:32] Stephen: Wow. That
[00:10:33] Rhys: sucks. Yeah.
[00:10:35] Stephen: And and it was right before COVID too, it’s just, geez, I’m in.
[00:10:39] Rhys: Yeah. He actually did a lot of artwork for area local bands for like posters and stuff like that. So Sean Burns, biggest biggest
[00:10:52] letdown about this film was that he thought that people would have been able to see it in a theater because the sound mix would make the [00:11:00] foundation of the theater shake. But it didn’t really get much of a theatrical release,
[00:11:04] Stephen: that’s a shame.
[00:11:06] Rhys: Yeah, it is. The musical track during Ray’s end assault on the house the composer, Michael Yazerski titled it T M F B S I, which stands for totally motherfucking bat shit.
[00:11:19] Insane.
[00:11:20] And one of his, and this reminds me a lot of Leslie Vernon. One of his big wins on this for burn was Metallica agreed to let him use for who the bell tolls as the. Yeah, that was nice psycho killer for Leslie Vernon, for whom the bell tolls, he can’t thank the band enough, and he’s it’s so much easier to get other bands to sign on to your work when you have the Beatles of metal.
[00:11:48] Agreeing to put their song in your movie.
[00:11:51] Stephen: Yeah. The, I noticed that at the end, they had a couple of t shirts, they had Metallica shirts on and stuff. Yeah.
[00:11:57] Rhys: Yeah. Ethan Embry plays [00:12:00] Jesse. That wasn’t his real hair in the film. Yeah, he’s a California actor. He was born in 78. He’s been in 105 projects, including empire records, Vegas vacation, sweet home, Alabama.
[00:12:16] They, the West Craven. Monster. It’s not really West Craven. It’s a West Craven presents. He had a long run on that drag net series. He was the voiceover of electro into the 2003 Spider Man. Series Harold and Kumar go to white castle vacancy, a long run on once upon a time, another one on a show called sneaky Pete and a very long run.
[00:12:41] Oh, you’ve seen it. No
[00:12:43] Stephen: I remember him on that though. I think I’ve seen bits of it.
[00:12:46] Rhys: I’ve never seen the show. But he had a very long run on Grace and Frankie, which my wife is a huge fan of. Yeah, that’s a good
[00:12:53] Stephen: show, actually.
[00:12:53] Rhys: Yeah. He’s got four upcoming projects. He’s keeping busy. He’s in a film called The [00:13:00] Gymnast, Alma and the Wolf, Rights and Wrongs, and a Christy Martin biopic.
[00:13:06] Sherry Appleby plays Astrid. She is also a California actress born in 1978. Nice. That fit well then. Yes. She’s been acting since her appearance in Santa Barbara. Remember that soap opera? Vaguely at age six. Wow. So she’s been in, and she’s been in a ton of other television shows. She was in the, it’s my life movie video with Bon Jovi.
[00:13:34] Okay. She has a long run on the series Roswell, like a really long run, like 68 episodes who knew that show lasted that long. She was in the battle of shaker Heights, the killing floor, Charlie Wilson’s war. She did 10 episodes of ER a longer run on a show called life, unexpected life, unexpected, and a long run on a show called unreal, which I’ve not seen either [00:14:00] Kiera Glasgow plays Zoe.
[00:14:02] She’s from Toronto. They were bigger name child stars who had auditioned for the role, but Byrne really liked her for the part. Yeah, I liked her for the part. She did well.
[00:14:12] She’s been in nine projects two movies call this one and Cronenberg’s map to the stars. If you’re going to have to work with somebody, it might as well be, Vernon Cronenberg.
[00:14:22] She also has long runs on television shows, Cooper and bitten. Bitten sounds familiar. It’s a werewolf show.
[00:14:29] Stephen: Yeah. It sounds, yeah.
[00:14:31] Rhys: And then I don’t want to say the star of the show, but like very much a star of the show, Pruitt, Taylor, Vance. Vince. He played a ray and he almost didn’t take, he almost didn’t take the role.
[00:14:44] Yeah. Because he doesn’t like playing like the feeble minded, big, scary person.
[00:14:52] Stephen: Which is what we talked
[00:14:53] Rhys: about.
[00:14:55] Stephen: He always gets that though because of his eyes. Yes, I remember him [00:15:00] from an episode of the X Files. And that’s why I remember him the most from and I recognize him every time because he was so good in that part, but his eyes always give him away.
[00:15:09] And I don’t know if it’s some genetic thing he has or if he just can do it. But when you have that. You’re probably going to get more of the scary guy work than the friendly, cuddly mentor or something, it’s,
[00:15:25] Rhys: yeah, it’s a condition called nystagmus, okay where your eyes move.
[00:15:30] Independently on their own, where he’s not necessarily in control of all of his eye movement.
[00:15:36] Stephen: I did know this the last couple of things I’ve seen them in, it did not seem as pronounced as it was back when he was in the X Files. So maybe it’s diminished a little bit.
[00:15:46] Rhys: Yeah. Or maybe it’s something you can vaguely control.
[00:15:49] Maybe.
[00:15:49] Stephen: Yeah. With some effort.
[00:15:51] Rhys: Burn was such a fan of him. He wrote him a letter saying, look, you capture. Like the innocence within this big frame [00:16:00] so well, I can’t think of anyone else to do this role. And so we agreed to take that
[00:16:05] Stephen: which I would agree with, like you said, getting to know the characters.
[00:16:08] He was one of them. You feel sorry for him and stuff. And then he gets Kane hotter freaking out like. Yeah, which by the way, I just watched hatchet again. I’m like, man, this is a really good slasher movie. You know
[00:16:24] Rhys: We’ll talk more about that at the end of this film at the end of this recording Pruitt taylor vince was born in baton rouge and he’s been involved in 107 projects.
[00:16:32] This guy Works. Yeah, his first movie he did was called down by law in 86 But all the scenes he was in were cut
[00:16:42] Stephen: Oh, that blows.
[00:16:44] Rhys: Yes, but The movie that introduced him to the world was angel heart. Oh my gosh. Wow. Yes. That’s
[00:16:52] Stephen: a
[00:16:52] Rhys: call. And then he was in just a bar fly, Mississippi birding, red heat, Jacob’s ladder, he was in Jacob’s ladder, which I seem to [00:17:00] remember him, the eyes in that.
[00:17:02] JFK natural born killers, the end of violence. He had a short run on a show called murder one and it’s follow up murder. One diary of a serial killer Dr. Doolittle, the cell monster, Constantine a long run on a short show. He was in Deadwood. Like I think all of us, he was at 10 of the episodes. I think that’s all the longer than the series ran.
[00:17:26] Stephen: Deadwood. I thought it went longer than that. Maybe. I don’t remember it’s been a long
[00:17:32] Rhys: time. Yeah. Creature, beautiful creatures, 13 sins run on the mentalist, seven episodes of heroes reborn, two episodes of stranger things. Four episodes of agent of shield. He was in that Gatti movie. He was in bird box and he is in seven episodes of Apple TV’s current hit the lady in the lake.
[00:17:56] He has one upcoming project playing Pa Kent in the [00:18:00] new Superman movie. Yeah,
[00:18:02] Stephen: that’s an interesting change for him. Good.
[00:18:05] Rhys: Yeah. He also shares a program with Ethan Embry. They both were in, I think, one episode each of the walking dead.
[00:18:16] Stephen: So who hasn’t been in that show? That’s one of those, you’ll come back.
[00:18:20] It’s like CSI,
[00:18:22] Rhys: everybody.
[00:18:23] Stephen: Exactly. In 15, 20 years, you’ll go back to the old walking dead. You go, Oh my God, I know that person that they’ve been in a hundred things since then, Like I said, I was watching Tales from the Crypt and the amount of people in that show is crazy.
[00:18:36] Rhys: Oh yeah, for sure. So those are our production notes.
[00:18:43] Stephen: Let’s take a look at the film itself. The one other actor, I recognize the art assessor, the art guy. He was in Stargate.
[00:18:52] Rhys: Oh, was he? Yeah. I was doing everybody and I was like, eh, I’ll stop at the top floor just cause there’s other people in there. Like the [00:19:00] female police officer looked vaguely familiar to me.
[00:19:03] But I was like, eh, I’ll just stop at the top four. So I don’t end up doing like everyone who speaks in the movie.
[00:19:08] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. No need.
[00:19:10] Rhys: From the very start of this movie, Pruitt Taylor, Vince could be playing father Hennessy from Constantine. Like they both are troubled by these sounds and they both have different ways of dealing it.
[00:19:22] Hennessy like puts newspapers all around him, on the walls and the windows and Ray plays guitar. Really loud and really poorly. I know the feeling.
[00:19:34] Yeah, it’s a single chord over and over again. I should have sat down and figured out what it is. It’s some kind of diminished. Yeah.
[00:19:41] Stephen: And the one thing so you got an artist and you can’t trust artists at all.
[00:19:47] Rhys: That’s true.
[00:19:48] Stephen: They’re the worst. So the, I recognize a few people like you said, but the first thing multiple times is there’s that the whispering that happens throughout this and it becomes a theme [00:20:00] throughout the movie.
[00:20:00] I just wanted to mention that at the beginning, because that’s. Is it crazy? Is it really the devil whispering? And we’ve got a couple different people that hear whispering at different times and it’s great. It’s questionable. Are they hearing it for real? And what is it or is it just all in their head?
[00:20:19] Which arguably could be real from some other plane or something, we can go into all that But the whispering is a definite theme It is
[00:20:28] Rhys: And I actually have a note about it at the end, I have a theory, not necessarily a theory, more postulation, but you just like bigger words. Yeah, that’s it.
[00:20:38] His mom comes in she pulls the plug out and he’s I like to play it loud. Like I can’t hear him. And you’re you can’t hear who he’s wearing this red track suit, which he wears throughout the whole movie. And the red is supposed to denote demonic influence, but it’s got that white stripe on it, which is supposed to [00:21:00] be like this little thread of childlike innocence that’s built into it.
[00:21:04] Mom’s you’re going back to the hospital and she’s, he’s like following her out into the hall and then she takes the express trip down the stairs as he pushes her and she goes flying down the stairs. Smack in her head, laying dead at the end. And as soon as she does the cross does the inversion thing.
[00:21:22] Stephen: And she’s was, before that mother of the year, definitely
[00:21:25] Rhys: for sure, because that’s definitely how you deal with people who are in crisis. Yes. You just tell them we’re going to institutionalize you again. That won’t have any repercussion. Yes. Dad came home. He’s all dressed up. He’s carrying this bottle of booze.
[00:21:41] It looks like. There was some sort of celebration, maybe an anniversary or something, but he comes in and sees her body there and he looks upstairs towards the guitar noise and title card, the devil’s candy, big and on fire. So that there, so that’s two drinks. So we’re in our third part. So [00:22:00] you had to have a drink already.
[00:22:01] Stephen: And they’re in the movie there, there’s time to run and grab a drink. So you got a lot drinking going on for this movie.
[00:22:08] Rhys: There you go. Now you switch to this virtuoso guitar playing. It’s not Ray playing. It is a professional guitarist who’s just shredding it. And paint being mixed on a pallet and this skinny tattooed shredded painter guy is there jamming onto something while he’s working on a commission and his daughter comes in and lets them know that, Hey, we’re running late.
[00:22:33] And butterflies aren’t very metal. I know a lot of times I complain because they have artists as like main characters in this in films. I don’t, this one doesn’t bother me as much because it actually shows the reality of working in art. If you think you’re going to become a famous painter and just paint what you want and make millions of dollars, you’re not, you’re going to end up painting sad clowns on a rainy day by the [00:23:00] Shon’s Lisa, because that’s what your client wants and you’re going to get paid very little for it.
[00:23:06] You’re barely going to eat by. So I appreciate that about this show
[00:23:11] Stephen: and the other thing is when you really get lost in doing the creative process, you lose track of all that time, which arguably in the movie could be other reasons. But that’s a real thing that happens. Whether it is painting, writing, music, whatever.
[00:23:25] You can do that and lose hours. We have a
[00:23:30] Rhys: technical report at work. That we’re going through and we have all these reports from what, 34, 36 different scientists that are all being thrown into this report. And so I’m laying the report out and I am literally typesetting each one of these pages. And I like start after lunch and I’m just loading them up, open them, copy, paste, and I’m, fixing kerning and all this stuff.
[00:23:52] The next thing I know, I’m like 14 through and it’s five o’clock. And I’m like, Holy shit. Where’d the day go? Just bang.
[00:23:59] Stephen: It’s [00:24:00] over. And how many times do you remember back in the day, picking up the guitar and a hundred songs later, you realize that you better go eat something.
[00:24:09] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:09] Yeah. And your mom’s like, where have you been? I didn’t know I was gone that long. We’ve
[00:24:15] Stephen: gotten calls at 6 a. m.
[00:24:17] Rhys: Literally his mom shows up or his mom, his wife shows up and she’s not happy. He hasn’t showered yet. They’re like, Oh, what’s going on? We don’t get to find out just yet. Cause we’ve got the car ride scene and they’re in the car listening to a Cavalera conspiracy play, killing it inside.
[00:24:38] And if you’re not familiar, this next bit probably won’t help that much, but it’s the remains of Sepulcher the band, this is what they evolved into.
[00:24:48] Stephen: Oh, I didn’t actually know that.
[00:24:49] Rhys: Yeah. And Zoe’s wearing a motorhead shirt. Which I thought was interesting. Astrid is amused, but Jesse and Zoe are like jamming out to it [00:25:00] in the car.
[00:25:00] Stephen: It’s one of those things where without explicitly telling you over and over that the father and daughter are close, they’re similar, the mother’s kind of the outsider, but none of them, they’re not estranged in any way.
[00:25:15] Rhys: Yeah, they turn the music down and she asks if, they could play something else and he makes some joke about, we could play some Metallica and they laugh at that.
[00:25:24] And I’m like, I would actually say Cavalera Conspiracy is heavier than Metallica. I don’t.
[00:25:31] Stephen: I think because she actually says, can we play something less heavy? And the answer is we could play Metallica. She wanted no metal and they’re just going to lighter metal.
[00:25:41] Rhys: Yeah,
[00:25:42] Stephen: more metal, maybe
[00:25:44] Rhys: they’re looking at a house.
[00:25:45] That’s what they were late for. You have this very interesting real estate agent who is slick yet a cowboy, which I find to be an interesting dichotomy for some reason.
[00:25:59] Stephen: That the slimy [00:26:00] car salesman cowboy.
[00:26:01] Rhys: Yeah. And the house has an interesting feature. It cinematically, I get why it’s there, but it’s got stained glass on the front door.
[00:26:10] And that was actually a thing in the late 19th and the early 20th century where you would pay to have this expensive piece of glass in your front door. When we were looking for a house, one of the houses we looked at actually still had the same glass on the front door. Yeah. That was about the only cool thing about that house, that was neat.
[00:26:30] Stephen: And this is definitely one of those obligatory scenes. You got to have the, like the Sentinel when she was looking at the apartment and, any of these that involve the haunted house, you got to have that showing, we’re new to this. We’re coming into it.
[00:26:45] Rhys: Yeah. And the stained glass in this case is specifically a red cross, which works really well with, the visuals of the movie later on.
[00:26:54] Burn was really big on, he’s sick and tired of all the haunted house movies looking like some [00:27:00] decrepit heap that the people are in. So he wanted the house to look lived in, but nice, which it does. Yeah. I would have bought it. Yeah. We’re up there looking at the girls the room that’s going to be Zoe’s.
[00:27:13] There’s too many teddy bears. If she doesn’t have enough posters to cover them all, dad has to buy her more posters then.
[00:27:21] Stephen: Yeah, another little insight into the whole family dynamic.
[00:27:25] Rhys: There’s this huge ominous pole barn out back, which is going to be used for studio space. And then he has to let them know that there were two deaths in the house.
[00:27:36] According to Texas law, you have to disclose if anyone died in the house.
[00:27:40] Stephen: You know what, whether that’s true or not, every single movie says that, it’s like the, oh, you can’t report somebody missing till 24 hours. That’s actually not true, but every movie.
[00:27:51] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. So he’s an old lady fell down the stairs and her husband couldn’t live without her, so we get a discount, right? It’s not it’s [00:28:00] not like Charlie Manson lived here.
[00:28:02] The wife’s a little, Astrid’s a little freaked out about it, but Jesse loves the place. Yeah. Talks her into it. Yeah. And I love how the cowboy suggests this could be the bedroom for the daughter. And I’m like, I wouldn’t want that as a bedroom. There’s no windows. It’s a horrible bedroom. A dirt floor pole barn.
[00:28:21] Stephen: Yeah. It’d be like living in my basement.
[00:28:24] Rhys: Yeah. Oh, we cut to Ray in his tracksuit, not in a hospital, but in a car, looking at a hotel. There are still whispers. You can still hear them. He goes in and rents his room with cash.
[00:28:39] Stephen: So he’s not like. Mentally disabled. He’s aware and can, function, which was interesting.
[00:28:48] Cause a lot of times you get these characters that are just so far gone and removed from society. He’s really not. So it makes you question again, is he mentally unstable or is he [00:29:00] really hearing the whispering in his ear?
[00:29:02] Rhys: It’s true. There’s this thing that happens with people with. Who are struggling with mental problems, they become very adept at hiding it.
[00:29:13] Yes. Which he is so like he’s standing there and he’s hearing the whispers and he just starts ringing the call bell over and over again to try and drown out some of the whispers, which annoys the guy. Behind the counter, cause I’m standing right here.
[00:29:28] Stephen: But that little motion of hitting that thing to the outside makes him look even more mentally unstable.
[00:29:34] It does, it’s a good character in a good way. They portray it.
[00:29:37] Rhys: Jesse’s sitting out on the porch smoking down while they’re talking the logistics about buying this house and moving. And he admits that he hates the butterflies. On that commission piece, but that’ll help pay, some of the bills He’s like we’re gonna be happy and he makes astrid say we’re gonna be happy which is a little ironic here in a little bit, but [00:30:00] Then you have this awesome little move in day comp compilation where they’re all moving in.
[00:30:07] Accompanied by The song conjunctivitis by spider bait. Yeah, good Music choices throughout.
[00:30:15] Yeah for sure spider bait. Australian punk band Founded by their, or fronted by their bass player, Jana English are go all the way back to 89.
[00:30:25] Stephen: Really?
[00:30:26] Rhys: Yeah. Which I was like, Holy cow. I had no idea they’d been around that long.
[00:30:31] But you have this whole really sweet family dynamic during this whole little collage, if they, if you didn’t like them already, you do, by the time they’re all moved in, you’re like, Oh, this is nice.
[00:30:46] Stephen: You got to make it all nice. So you can really rip them apart. Yes.
[00:30:51] Rhys: You contrast that to Ray standing in the middle of his hotel room, jamming to his one awesome cord on his Gibson flying [00:31:00] V.
[00:31:00] And someone knocks on the door and it’s the sheriff. Not the sheriff, but a deputy. And he’s Hey, save us both the grief and just tone it down. And Ray agrees to be quiet. And you can hear the whispering start to come, start to kick up and you can hear the deputy’s voice starting to be muted down.
[00:31:18] Stephen: Yeah, so the whispering is becoming more prominent in the movie. It’s true. To the point that a lot of times when Ray is in a scene, there’s not a whole lot in the way of background sound. Because it’s just the whispering going over and over again. First day at a new school it sucked for anybody, much less a metal head in what looks like South Texas.
[00:31:42] Rhys: That would be rough. I would think. Yeah. Yep. But again, despite all the appearances, it’s a wholesome loving scene between Jesse and Zoe. And he, I love this quote. He’s don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education. It sounds like that’s. That’s a [00:32:00] nice sentiment.
[00:32:00] Stephen: Yeah. And actually the, the older I get, the more I realize how true that is.
[00:32:06] Rhys: Yeah. Jesse comes home after dropping Zoe off Astrid’s not there. I assume she’s working. Cause she mentioned something about having to take two buses to get to the hair salon. So maybe she does hair or something for a living.
[00:32:21] He comes in and as soon as he comes in, he hears these whispers and all of a sudden he’s almost like in this fugue state as he walks up the stairs. And into Zoe’s room and he gets up there and he’s like staring at this poster. And I’m like, what is that poster? And I couldn’t make out what it was, but the poster is not the important thing.
[00:32:41] He takes the poster down and you can see the sun bleached stain of where a cross used to be hanging on the wall.
[00:32:47] Stephen: So I’ve got some theories on this at the end. Also we’ll come back to awesome. We’ll compare.
[00:32:53] Rhys: Yeah. He heads out to the studio, still in trance. You get this kind of quick cut of the [00:33:00] cross going into evil mode when mom died.
[00:33:04] Yeah. Like an Atari game, the AB switch. Yep. That’s exactly right. It’s either good mode or evil mode. Cue the metal respirator spray paint. Time is flying by. He doesn’t even know it. He’s just buzzing along. And then we cut to Astrid coming home. She walks in and you have the first real jump scare of the movie.
[00:33:27] And it really is just Zoey jump scaring her mom as she walks in the house.
[00:33:31] Stephen: Yeah, which actually, how many times do you get jump scares in real life? Like that. You didn’t expect somebody in the middle of the night or around the corner or whatever, just your own family.
[00:33:42] Rhys: So on the one hand, it’s I can completely see you doing that to your mom.
[00:33:47] I may have done that. And. It also is reminiscent because Zoe is hiding in the exact place chase, Jesse hides in when Ray comes into the [00:34:00] house. And so Zoe’s hiding there too, showing that you don’t have to be you don’t have to be in an altered state. To be surprised by someone hiding behind a door.
[00:34:11] That’s something that’s going to work for anybody. She asks her how her first day went. She’s it sucked big time. And she’s yeah, I imagine it did. It’s that kind of thing where like your kid’s wow, this really sucks and you’re like, it doesn’t get much better. You
[00:34:27] Stephen: want Mac and cheese for dinner?
[00:34:29] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Jesse is still in the barn painting away and Astrid shows up and asks what happened to the butterflies? He, she like talks to him for a bit and he doesn’t even respond. And so it was finally, she like calls his name loud enough. He jerks him out of this fugue state. So he’s like, where were you?
[00:34:46] And the camera turns to show you this painting that is an upside down cross.
[00:34:52] Stephen: Yes. So I got some other theories, but one thing here could be if the place, the land, [00:35:00] whatever, if there’s like. Power lines are magnetic interference or something. It’s giving off. That’s actually, the whispering isn’t real.
[00:35:09] Whispering could be just very strong. Electromagnetic fields. Something in
[00:35:14] Rhys: your teeth picking up a radio station. Yeah,
[00:35:16] Stephen: exactly. That could because it only hit some here at the house, but Ray still hears it. Elsewhere, which is why that’s pretty much, and not the reason, which is why I mentioned it right now, but that is something that, people would always say, oh, yeah, that was just because of this.
[00:35:33] Rhys: Yeah we’re in the house now and the doorbell rings and Zoe answers the door and it’s Ray and she’s super friendly. She’s hi, can I help you? And he just he starts to smile. He looks like a kid with a new puppy, he just smiles and just stares there and just, he stares for just a little too long and Zoe’s, it’s starting to trigger something in her.
[00:35:57] And then he’s Jesse and Asher come around [00:36:00] the corner and Jesse instantly is like, something’s wrong. And then Ray says he needs to come home and this is mommy and daddy’s house. And all of a sudden everybody knows, oh, this is the guy whose parents died here. He says they’re dead. So it’s not.
[00:36:20] Like news to him Astrid said, she’s sorry. And Jesse’s just get the fuck out. Yep. And like very uncharacteristic for him. He’s just
[00:36:31] Stephen: I thought that too. I was like, he seems he’s a metal head. Yes. But he’s not like a biker with a chain type of, here he really flares up.
[00:36:40] Rhys: Yes.
[00:36:41] And here is for my future point. Where we have the whispering voices at odds with each other. Ah, yes. And that’s something I noticed too on that. Yes. So Jesse’s hearing whispers. And Ray’s hearing whispers, but they might not be from the same team.
[00:36:59] Stephen: [00:37:00] Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I was thinking too. And I have here going, okay, so the title is called the devil’s candy.
[00:37:06] Does that mean that everybody here is like just a treat for the devil? Is that what that title means? Cause it’s a very weird title for this movie.
[00:37:19] Rhys: Yeah. He basically forces him out the door, races her and keeps ringing the doorbell. And Jason’s I’m calling the cops. And then he leaves and the ladies are like, what the hell dude?
[00:37:32] He was confused. And there’s something wrong with him. That was just mean. And he seems to recognize that. Yeah, that wasn’t super cool of me, but I don’t think it changed. His his idea that what he did was right. Yes. He’s not sorry. It happened,
[00:37:53] Stephen: right? Which I can definitely empathize with, you probably have had the same type of thing where you may do [00:38:00] something, but this is my family.
[00:38:01] This is my kids. Yes, maybe I got in someone’s face a little much, but there was a situation that didn’t compute and the barking dog came out.
[00:38:11] Rhys: Yeah. We go to a televangelist going on and on about Satan and in his video reel about Satan. He has shots from legend the great Tim Curry as the devil, one of the best devils in cinema, in my opinion, absolutely
[00:38:26] Stephen: one of the best.
[00:38:27] Rhys: Yeah. And it’s basically spelling out that whole red, right hand theory that the devil uses people to get his work done here in the world.
[00:38:37] Stephen: Which goes back to what you said a minute ago. So why doesn’t the other side do that too? Or do they?
[00:38:43] Rhys: Yeah. Huh. Jesse is staring at this Photoshop file of his cross painting.
[00:38:48] The next day, Jesse and Zoe are on their way to school. He opens the door and there is a Gibson flying V and a Marshall half stack amp sitting there. And the flying Vs, [00:39:00] Brian may play the flying V Tom petty. Chuck Berry, Kurt hammock, who is, who she’s excited by the fact that Kurt hammock if it is from the seventies, that guitar is easily worth 15, 000
[00:39:14] Stephen: and she does seem to understand what it is and its background, which is pretty impressive.
[00:39:19] Rhys: 110%. Yeah. And the whole reason that he left the guitar for her was because while he was talking to her. When he came to the door, she has a Gibson flying V tattoo on her left arm. And he’s I have one of those. She’s Oh, it’s my favorite. So he leaves it here and Jesse’s you’re not keeping that.
[00:39:38] And it’s what are you going to do with it? You can’t give it back this weirdo stranger. You don’t know where he is or anything like that. So just leave it out in the yard for it to get rained on.
[00:39:50] Stephen: And that shows the innocence of Ray also. There, because he was doing that of his own volition. It’s the other stuff he does that he’s told to [00:40:00] do.
[00:40:00] So it looks a little creepy and it looks like on this crazy guy left it. Maybe we shouldn’t have anything to do with it. But I really think arguably he really did mean it as a good gesture. And it’s one he does in the whole movie.
[00:40:16] Rhys: Yeah. No, in fact, we’ll come back to that here in a few scenes. When he’s in her room later.
[00:40:24] Stephen: Yes.
[00:40:25] Rhys: Jesse goes to a buyer’s studio. It’s called Beal. The receptionist is dressed in all red. He’s I don’t even remember painting it. It’s it moved through me. And she lights up at that phrase and she’s I’ll see what I can do.
[00:40:37] Stephen: This reminded me of the scene from Beverly Hills Cop with Sge.
[00:40:41] Rhys: Belial Again it’s ancient Hebrew. And everyone associates it with the devil, but if you translate it, it translates to worthless or yoke lists, meaning, just wild or a naughty [00:41:00] person. Those are like the three definitions I came across out of ancient Hebrew.
[00:41:04] For the word Belial, it doesn’t really take on any kind of personification as a devil like entity until the apocryphal books from the second temple period. So if your typical Protestants who might be listening to this, you won’t know any of the biblical texts these came out of because they’re not in our Bible.
[00:41:25] And Belial only shows up once in the New Testament. In second chronicles, chapter six, verse 15, and it’s basically saying, why would you want to hang out with Belial? Cause we are servants of the Lord. That doesn’t make it a devil necessarily. It could still be a worthless person.
[00:41:41] Yeah. But of course, John Milton uses him in paradise lost. So now it’s Canon. He does show up later in
[00:41:48] Stephen: those
[00:41:50] Rhys: 17th century grimoires specifically the lesser key of Solomon, but then when you get to the 20th century [00:42:00] Crowley LeVay, Edgar Cayce. They all like They double down on this guy, dude named Belial.
[00:42:08] So he enters the zeitgeist.
[00:42:10] Stephen: He gets on the talk show circuit.
[00:42:12] Rhys: Yes. He was actually a figure in the original Nosferatu. Which the remake’s
[00:42:18] Stephen: coming out this Christmas.
[00:42:19] Rhys: Yep. He is the devil in the exorcism of Emily Rose which is one we haven’t done, but I’ve seen it. It’s a good movie, but Him and Pazazu roaming around.
[00:42:30] It’s funny you mentioned him. He’s coming up later too. And he’s in all kinds of games like Diablo three, Warhammer 40 K, the binding of Isaac.
[00:42:39] Stephen: So it’s, he’s become a devil in our modern culture, even if it originally was not. Yes. It was a concept for something
[00:42:48] Rhys: useless. And we have turned it into something important.
[00:42:52] That doesn’t sound like humanity at all. Jesse goes back into the studio and we have some ping pong and speaking of ping pong and going on here [00:43:00] between Jesse and Ray and them using the tools of their trade. So Jesse’s in a studio raising his car and Jesse’s getting paints out. Ray’s got a jar of candy.
[00:43:11] Jesse’s looking at a canvas and Ray’s looking at a kid on a bicycle. And it’s the butterfly painting. And I looked at it as you know what? It looks like those butterflies are flying in a field of wheat, not unlike the wheat fields that surround Jesse’s house. Oh, interesting. I didn’t see catch that.
[00:43:30] He’s pouring out a whole bunch of black paint and we’re watching these kids in this playground. One kid’s on a swing. The other kid’s tossing a ball and he throws it too far and goes after it. And you see the kid on the swing, come at the camera and then swing back down. As he swings back down, Ray standing there with a rock in his hand and determination on his face.
[00:43:52] Stephen: And there’s misdirection here because at first you think he’s in the woods and he’s go get the dog. Then you think he’s going to get the kid going after the dog, [00:44:00] but nope, it’s the poor innocent kid left behind on the swing.
[00:44:03] Rhys: Yep. He hits the kid in the head. We go back to the painting. That kid is now painted into the into the canvas.
[00:44:11] His eyes are blackened out. And Jesse again has lost all sense of time. He comes out and it’s dark. And he gets in his car racing off to get Zoe from school.
[00:44:22] Stephen: I’m just saying you’re not the worst parent ever if you forget your kid occasionally, I, it’s a good character building thing. Yeah, especially by that many hours. I’ve never been that late.
[00:44:36] Rhys: Yeah, he gets to the school. She’s pissed. He’s sorry. She lets him have it a little bit and he explains how he lost all sense of timing.
[00:44:45] She’s don’t do it again. He’s I won’t swear. I swear. And then she says on my grave, he’s I swear. And then she’s do I get to keep the guitar? Typical kids cut to her [00:45:00] bouncing around in her room, playing this guitar only mildly worse than Ray does.
[00:45:04] Stephen: Yeah. I was going to say she knew all about it, but she could use a little bit more practice.
[00:45:09] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:45:11] Stephen: But she’s enthusiastic, man. She’s enthusiastic about it. So I’ll get that.
[00:45:17] Rhys: Ray is back at his hotel. He’s carrying a blanket wrapped figure that he pulls out of his trunk. It is kicking and screaming. Muffled screaming as he takes it into his hotel room. That was actually an animatronic.
[00:45:29] Really? Yeah, Pruitt didn’t actually have to carry somebody from there to there. They built something, and so it would kick around. Fifty times. There’s a documentary on Satan on the television, and here they use the image of the Pazuzu statue from the Omen, and I’m like Technically, that’s not Satan, that’s a completely different spirit entity, okay, whatever.
[00:45:48] Stephen: Oh yeah, how many of those documentaries screw things up all the time though?
[00:45:52] Rhys: Yeah Ray stops and changes, he’s wearing a garbage bag now and he’s got a limb saw, [00:46:00] so I think we have a pretty good idea what’s going to be going on here in a second.
[00:46:04] Stephen: And there’s not a lot of explicit blood and gore throughout the movie.
[00:46:09] It’s very minimal. And I think that makes the whole painting even more dramatic because that’s where we see it all. We see the renditions of what he’s seen in his head on the canvas. And I think because we don’t see all the blood and gore, that’s where it’s focused. And it gives it a much more creepier aspect than it probably would have had.
[00:46:32] Rhys: Yeah. And then we have this really cool little dichotomy where you have Jesse back to his painting and Jesse’s using again, the tools of his trade to paint. And they’re contrasting them with quick cuts of Ray using the tools of his trade to mop up blood and clean the bathroom, which is a giant mess.
[00:46:50] And now there are multiple kids faces on the canvas, like four, maybe I don’t remember off the top of my head. I think it’s four, [00:47:00] all of them with blacked out eyes. Asher comes out to the studio to ask about the guitar and then sees the painting. And all of a sudden she’s Oh my God, is that Zoe?
[00:47:10] And he looks and yes, that’s Zoe on there. Now she still has eyes. So she’s the live one of all of the figures that he painted on there, but she’s, yes, just, he’s I didn’t mean to do this. He’s Zoe can never see this. And Ash is just destroy it. And he’s I can’t, it’s not done. And she’s it’s done when you want it to be.
[00:47:31] But then he’s the children are inside of me screaming to be let out. And I don’t know why. Which is about the time that you’re like hello, my husband needs to see somebody.
[00:47:43] Stephen: But that’s also very much describes that whole creative process we talked about too. It’s inside of me needing out.
[00:47:49] It’s not done. I can’t just stop it. It’ll be done when it’s done. That’s the creative. So are they saying the creative process is the devil [00:48:00] talking to you? That’s, I
[00:48:04] Rhys: actually when I was taking art therapy classes they talked about how similar mental illness and creativity actually are, they trigger a lot of the same places in the brain, the acts very similar.
[00:48:17] It’s just like creative people have an outlet and a knowledge and a pathway to channel that stuff. And if you’re, if you have a mental illness, you don’t necessarily have that available to you. Interesting. But yeah, I always have to preface that with, I took that class in the nineties, so who knows what anyone’s saying these days, right?
[00:48:40] Ray’s car is he’s in his car driving through a field. He opens his trunk. There’s this lovely red lighting inside his trunk and he pulls out a very large, very heavy suitcase. I wonder what’s in there. He extends a little lever and he’s dragging it along and he’s talking to it like it’s a person and come on Jesse is not [00:49:00] sleeping.
[00:49:00] He has visions of Zoe surrounded by flames and he goes back out to the barn and grabs this knife and he’s gonna cut it. And he gets just about to where he’s gonna cut the canvas and the whispers are even louder. He just can’t do it. Ray, on the other hand, is digging a hole. He digs this hole and pulls out several large suitcases that were already buried there.
[00:49:21] There were three of them. And he throws in the new one and then fills the whole back up.
[00:49:26] Stephen: So here’s a question. He’s in this field, he’s bearing it, but then go jump ahead a little bit at the end that they’ve got stuff buried right there on their property. So it’s, it doesn’t look like it’s on their property that he is right now, but it could have been, he,
[00:49:41] Rhys: And that’s how I took it, which makes it that much creepier.
[00:49:44] Yes. It’s the fact that while Ray is up in his studio, over here on the other side of his property is a psycho killer who is burying yet another victim in a hole that you didn’t even know was there.
[00:49:57] Stephen: Yeah, that’s, and that’s one of the things I did [00:50:00] like about this movie is there’s a lot of little subtle things that aren’t beating you over the head with, which is probably why he didn’t make so much money.
[00:50:07] You gotta treat everyone like they’re stupid. It seems. Yeah, you have to have Ray walking out his door as the car pulls in from the other side. Yeah maybe we need to go back to the old silent films and put the. The cards up in between explaining everything.
[00:50:22] Rhys: We’ll get
[00:50:22] Stephen: a lot of people playing piano again.
[00:50:25] Rhys: We now get to see the new level of the painting. It’s got the children, it’s got flyer, and then it’s got this five eyed monstrosity that seems to be eating the children. That is the end stage of this painting. And it’s a way cool painting, actually. If you had, if you wondered whether or not this was actually on their house or not.
[00:50:47] We’re about to put that to bed as Ray climbs into Zoe’s bed. This was on their property. He walks into their house, climbs upstairs, lays down on [00:51:00] Zoe’s bed, and he seems happy. And he’s he wanted it to be you, but I wouldn’t let him. Because you’re the special one. He’s being kinda nice. Yeah. In a super creepy way.
[00:51:12] The most creepy I’ve seen in a while.
[00:51:15] Stephen: Yes.
[00:51:16] Rhys: She wakes up, she starts to scream. He asks her not to, and he puts his hand over her mouth and he’s please don’t make me do that thing I don’t want to do, which would be enough for me to not scream, honestly. She’s yeah, okay. And then he takes his hand off her mouth and she shrieks and there’s a struggle that ensues.
[00:51:35] Astrid comes in and they basically chase him out of the room. He runs down the stairs and Jesse opens the door to come running in and gets clothes lined and just dropped. Then he reaches out and grabs for Ray’s foot and Ray kicks him in the head. Staggering him. And then as he comes walking out the stair, walking out, Ray almost runs him over with his car.
[00:51:59] Stephen: Yeah. [00:52:00] And not the first, not the last time he’ll do that. And again. That shows he’s got some or most control of his facilities because he can drive and, he can maneuver the car where he needs it to be. So
[00:52:16] Rhys: there are issues that come up with literally consistency in tone with this. And when it, when people pointed out to burn, like someone was like, Why wouldn’t Ray just get a pair of headphones?
[00:52:29] And so he’s Ray doesn’t have the problem solving skills to think of that. Besides, it’s just a movie.
[00:52:36] It’s yeah, okay. That’s a good point, but shut up. It’s a movie. Sit back and enjoy it. But yeah, a good pair of beats in this whole movie is completely different. Yeah, it’s shorter. Yeah. Oh, the police are there. They’re like, change the locks. If you haven’t changed the locks yet, he probably sells a key to the house.
[00:52:53] It’s not your fault, Jesse. You guys should stay in a hotel, but until then, an officer will watch the house until [00:53:00] morning, which I, why didn’t they change the locks in the first place? Why didn’t they just leave then to go to a hotel? Yeah. Yeah. Zoe asked, what do they do if he comes back and Astro’s that’s why the police officers outside.
[00:53:16] Then she’s rightfully, what happens if he gets past her? Wait a little bit and you’re gonna find out. Yeah, did you not read the last couple pages of the script? Jesse is taking watch. He’s sitting there with his axe handle. And he sees this four horned goat roaming around in the darkness. And it gets real trippy.
[00:53:34] He sees Zoe in some burning space and Ray lumbering towards them. And then he almost beans Astrid in the head with an ax handle when she wakes him up, because he fell asleep in the watch
[00:53:45] Stephen: and, goats really get a bad rap in horror movies. They
[00:53:50] Rhys: do. Now that’s actually biblical.
[00:53:53] Stephen: Yeah.
[00:53:53] Rhys: Yeah. The concept of the scapegoat is found in the Old Testament where you take all of the sins [00:54:00] of the people and you basically heap them on this goat and you send it out in the wilderness to wander off carrying your sins and yeah, into the wild. I, it’s an interesting concept, but I guess the goat should be happy. Most of the doves and stuff got killed. So Zoe’s I don’t want to go to school. It’s safer than it is being here. And they’re like, okay. So they take her to school and Jesse and Zoe hug. And then she gets out and goes in and the horn on his car must be busted because he beat the shit out of his steering wheel.
[00:54:29] In a little tiff of rage and the horn never went off once, so he’s sitting there and he gets a phone call from Belial Studios and he is told that Leonard approves of his painting and wants to see what he’s working on and he’s going to stop by at three o’clock today. Jesse’s it can’t be three o’clock.
[00:54:49] I gotta get my kid at three o’clock. And the lady is sitting there and she looks stern and she looks annoyed. And she’s I can push it up to two o’clock, but after that you’re on your road. And [00:55:00] so he’s okay, we can do it at two o’clock. So we jumped to two o’clock and he is sitting, he’s wearing a t shirt that says, find what you love and let it kill you.
[00:55:11] Yeah. Bad choice for the day. That’s a quote by Charles Bukowski. He’s he’s a cult. Poet and novelist. He wrote a memoir. And he basically he was saying to your friend, find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain from you. You’re all let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
[00:55:34] Let it kill you and let it devour your remains for all things will kill you both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover. Falsely yours, Henry Charles Bukowski. I was like I’m not exactly sure what I think about your advice there, sir. But it’s certainly impassioned. Yes. Yes.
[00:55:55] Leonard seems to love to work. He’s wearing this black [00:56:00] suit with a red cross motif on the inside. When he’s sitting back on the couch they’re drinking this cognac called the blood of the earth. It’s almost like some sort of perverse communion. Yes. With, with this devil figure, it’s like a ritual.
[00:56:16] Yes. And Jesse’s I can’t drink anymore. I got to get my daughter. He’s nothing of true worth comes without sacrifice. Sacrifice your kid, become a famous painter. But he doesn’t, he’s flying down the road in the station wagon when he blows the tire.
[00:56:31] Stephen: And I love that because the car behind them never slows down and goes around him as he’s swerving all over the place.
[00:56:37] I’m like, what the heck? I would hit my brakes. It’s the guy he almost hit doesn’t even stop. Yeah, I’m not even saying he had to stop to help him, but while the car is swerving all over the road, he’s like trying to get around him. I’m like, what an idiot are you?
[00:56:52] Rhys: Yeah. He tries calling no answer on his phone.
[00:56:57] The car won’t start for some reason. I, if [00:57:00] he’s going to magically blow a tire. He’s car will magically not start. So then the argument
[00:57:05] Stephen: is which side blew the tire.
[00:57:07] Rhys: Ha. He tries to call again, he gets static and the whispers on his phone. So he just leaves the car and starts running down the road.
[00:57:16] Stephen: Yeah, he’s in good shape, but I don’t think he’s going to keep that speed up the whole way there. Yeah, that was my thought.
[00:57:23] Rhys: He’s frantic running around the school looking for there’s these very ominous interior shots and this pounding music going on. They’re definitely upping the tension. Astrid, you see her in slow motion, like that three quarter speed is at home on her phone crying.
[00:57:41] And we cut to Zoe who was all duct taped on the bathroom floor.
[00:57:46] Stephen: And this scene in this part really did remind me of the loved ones with her tied up and stuff like that.
[00:57:53] Rhys: And I thought that too. I was like, if you’ve seen the loved ones, you might think this scene’s going to go very badly.
[00:57:59] [00:58:00] Yeah. She’s lying on the bathroom floor. There’s this awesome shot of Ray just looking down at her. And this lets you know, you’re about 25 minutes till the end. We’re starting to pick up the pace here. He takes one of her tears and tastes it. It’s almost like a different kind of communion that he’s taking.
[00:58:16] Yeah, very much you’re right. And he says, he’s right. You’re the sweetest candy of all. And then she thrashing around and you can see that her own future suitcases right there to her left. Ray is in the bedroom watching a high mass. Sitting on the bed with his saw she gets a fingernail on the duct tape and manages to get some of it undone and then super cleverly sticks it to the floor and rolls away from it.
[00:58:47] Stephen: I saw that too. I was like, Oh, that was a pretty smart girl keeping her head under very stressful circumstances.
[00:58:53] Rhys: Absolutely. He’s taking off his stuff. He’s got his trash bag on. He’s coming to the door. He’s coming, he [00:59:00] opens the door and she’s headed out the window and he grabs her leg and all he gets is her shoe.
[00:59:05] Stephen: Yeah. She’s she definitely timed that he, that was like the slowest walk to the bathroom door. I have ever seen in my life. Oh, he’s a big guy.
[00:59:16] Rhys: Bad knees. Yeah, there you go. Now we’re at a police station. Big hugs all around. And she looks at Jesse, she’s you swore on my grave. So Jesse’s in questioning with this guy, I assume is the sheriff, not a deputy.
[00:59:33] This is the guy. And he gives, we get actual discourse on Ray’s backstory. Yeah. And it doesn’t feel forced. It doesn’t feel stuffed down your face. It’s not even obscurely given to you, like on a magazine article or something like that. It’s yeah, when he was like nine, he tried burying some girl he’s been in and out of hospitals all his life like, oh, okay,
[00:59:55] Stephen: sufficient.
[00:59:56] We get it. Yeah. Yeah. It [01:00:00] definitely like you’re pointing out, there’s a lot of time that backstory comes in weird, awkward conversations and weird ways. And it worked really well coming from the cop like that.
[01:00:11] Rhys: Yeah. He says. Ray’s Jesse’s like why would he do this? And he’s he reads this quote, I have to feed him children.
[01:00:18] Children are his candy. So there’s your title by he and the police officer says this, not me. And by he, he means Satan, just in case you weren’t clear who he was feeding children to that seems to ring a bell with Jesse. Which it should considering he’s hearing whispers and he’s painting dead children on the canvas in his barn.
[01:00:40] So they’re like, you’re going to go into witness protection until we can find Ray. Who is at this very moment at a gas station, buying a gas can and lighter. I love what he goes by the guy behind the is just looks at it. It looks at him.
[01:00:54] Yeah, it’s pretty evident, which you’re planning on doing. So they head back to the house as the family’s [01:01:00] loading stuff.
[01:01:01] Packing stuff up to take the two officers are standing there flirting, talking between each other, Jesse goes out to the kit out to the barn and he stares at the canvas and he hears these voices and then he finally like chooses, he chooses his family, pulls out a box cutter and cuts up the canvas.
[01:01:21] Which if you would have taken a photograph of it, he could still sell that. Just a little tip to all my art friends out there. If you have a demonic painting in your house, photograph it before you destroy it. You can still make something off of it.
[01:01:35] Stephen: And then you can spread the demonic possession around more.
[01:01:39] Rhys: Yes. There’s this scene of Zoe and Astrid in the house. This I think is brilliant because there is stuff going on and we just get to hear it. Like they just get to hear it. There’s the sound of a crash. They’re screaming. Something’s happened to the police because the female officer is out there yelling her head off.
[01:01:57] Ray has run his car into the two [01:02:00] cruisers and basically knocked one police officer off to the side and pinned the other one between the two. Between the two, I’d rather be the guy that got tossed to the side. Cause that lady’s legs are gone. I guarantee it.
[01:02:11] Stephen: And if it’s any, if she’s short and it’s any higher, she’s the minute they move all that she’s gone.
[01:02:17] Rhys: Yeah. I don’t want to say I love this, but he walks over. And just like reaches over there into the, like over by the fence and grabs a rock, his tools of the trade, beans, the lady who’s trapped between cards, she starts crying, stops crying, and then there’s this cop who’s Got knocked over.
[01:02:37] He’s crawling towards his gun and he beans him and knocks him out. And then he trades up one rock
[01:02:43] Stephen: for one gun. Yeah. And then he does the the slasher movie walk toward the door. Yes.
[01:02:49] Rhys: Jesse is inside. He’s looking through the red stained glass and sees Ray coming when bullets start flying. He runs off and grabs a bat and then he [01:03:00] hides.
[01:03:00] Ray opens the door, comes inside, he goes to attack Ray, but he yells and Ray turns around, yells back and shoots him and he drops. And then he’s looking around for Zoe and Astrid, finds a closet door, opens it, blasts the closet door a couple of times, opens it up, shoots Astrid and grabs Zoe and walks out of the house.
[01:03:27] Comes back in with some gasoline. He’s taking her upstairs and pouring gasoline and lights the downstairs on fire. Then he takes her into her bedroom, pours gasoline in the bedroom and lights it on fire and he’s look, it’s him. As he’s pointing to the fire. So he’s freaking out on her bed. Burn really wanted to, and I appreciate what he’s doing, but I don’t agree with it.
[01:03:48] He really wanted to show how resilient the human body is. And if you are shot does not mean that you are dead or done. And that is true. It’s [01:04:00] usually takes more than one shot. And this is a well placed shot to kill somebody right away. My point, my, the thing I take umbrage with is that might be true, but there’s still physical damage from the bullet.
[01:04:14] That despite whatever your physical mindset is, you can’t, you’re not physically capable of doing things now.
[01:04:22] Stephen: Yeah. And they did try and show that with his arm hanging like he couldn’t use it, but he was shot in the side. So I was a little questioning that seemed more like it would have been a thing, but he didn’t seem like I had any problem going up the ladder.
[01:04:38] Rhys: Or carrying it over. Yeah. It’s I had a friend who was shot accidentally, she was running and like somebody was shooting and she got shot in the leg and it took six months for her to be able to be running again because of the damage of the, it wasn’t, I don’t want to say it was life threatening.
[01:04:58] It was in the leg. It hadn’t hit anything [01:05:00] major. So again. To burn’s point, that’s not going to kill you. To my point, she was not able to run because of the damage to ligaments and tendons from the bullet passing through. And so there’s a lot of stuff that he does in these next few scenes that I don’t know that he would have been physically capable of doing
[01:05:17] Stephen: arguably, he’s trying to save his kid and the adrenaline.
[01:05:21] It could have countered some of that, yeah, again, it’s a movie. You should just always come back
[01:05:29] Rhys: to that. Look, it’s just a movie.
[01:05:31] Stephen: Yeah.
[01:05:32] Rhys: Jesse and Astrid make it outside. He grabs this ladder and he climbs up to her window. So the bullet doing damage and him being able to do stuff is my first point of contention about the movie.
[01:05:43] And, if that’s the first point of contention. Kudos to the movie. Yeah. The second point of contention I have is if you smash open a window of a burning room, their backdraft would have blown him off of that roof,
[01:05:55] Stephen: right? Yeah. And that room was seriously on fire. Yes.
[01:05:59] Rhys: [01:06:00] Yeah. If the window had not been shattered already, when he broke that, it would have been like a bomb going off in front of him.
[01:06:05] Yeah. He comes in. To the room and drags Ray to one side of the fire. So there’s Ray and Jesse fire bed and Zoe. And I realize if you’re listening to this on a a device, you’re not seeing my hand motions, but if you’re watching me on YouTube. There you go.
[01:06:27] Stephen: I did question the layout of the room though, because it seems like he goes in and through to get the Ray, but then she jumps over, but then they go right back out the window at the layout of the room.
[01:06:39] I got a little confused on whether they kept it straight or not.
[01:06:43] Rhys: Fiery, smoky rooms will confuse you like that, Steve.
[01:06:46] Stephen: Yeah, I shouldn’t have tried to recreate it while watching it. So they’re
[01:06:50] Rhys: fighting and. Jesse’s doing a great job just pounding Ray in the face. And here’s where that whole is Ray actually not capable of making good decisions or is he, [01:07:00] because he knows enough to reach up and put a finger in the bullet hole.
[01:07:04] Stephen: Yeah, so it goes back to, he’s not really crazy. He really did have something whispering in his ear.
[01:07:13] Rhys: But then, he’s capable of making that good decision, but then not capable enough to just stand up and walk straight into the flames to get back to Zoe. Yeah. And you can see he is on fire and Jesse just for overkill, grabs the Gibson Flying V.
[01:07:30] And beats Ray to death with
[01:07:32] Stephen: it. It was the gun over the mantelpiece. You bring it back.
[01:07:36] Rhys: Yeah. It’s Chekhov’s flying V. It is like free. They hint towards it at the start because there’s a poster of the clash London calling. Yeah. For Jill Strummer, smashing his guitar on stage.
[01:07:49] Jesse’s basically recreating that. With this 15, 000 guitar.
[01:07:53] Stephen: But as you said, though, after climbing up, going through the window, beating on Ray, then picking up [01:08:00] a fairly heavy guitar and beating him again. Yeah, he would have that. No, that would have been a little much, I believe.
[01:08:06] Rhys: Then Zoe jumped to me. I can’t jump to me.
[01:08:10] You’ll be okay. And she jumps and he catches her. Yeah. That’s the stagger. It doesn’t fall backwards. Yeah. They come out onto the Porsche rooftop. And this painting flashes in his mind and that fugue state takes him over again. And he gets up and just starts wandering off. And Astrid’s like, where are you going?
[01:08:30] And he just wanders to this point and finds the graves where all of Ray’s past victims are. And he sits there and he looks up as the sun’s coming up and like this awe of this supernatural power. That’s just Revealed itself to him, strikes him. And then they roll credits with for whom the belt toll is playing in the background and a lot of historical woodcut art prints, probably from the divine comedy, if I had to guess.
[01:08:58] Stephen: Oh yeah. [01:09:00]
[01:09:00] Rhys: Which were very pretty. Yes. And that is the devil’s candy.
[01:09:06] Stephen: So as you pointed out there at the ending, and I, you probably got this too, partway through, you start wondering is. Jesse getting the same whisperings in his ear, and they didn’t make it even sound like words. So it wasn’t like trying to pick up anything from our viewpoint.
[01:09:26] Rhys: In my notes, I’m like, whose voice was Jesse hearing? And I this is, maybe this is a thing, maybe it’s not, but if you’re speaking to your dog or your cat, they can vaguely comprehend your tonality. But to them, you talking to them or your kid talking to them or your mom talking to them all sounds the same because they are functioning on one mental level in their own existence and you are functioning on another you’re trying to communicate.
[01:09:58] But it’s all just coming through his [01:10:00] garbled stuff to them. And so it makes me think these divine entities, these immortal entities that were playing in these lives, Ray was hearing one voice that was telling him to do destructive things. Jesse was hearing another that was trying to get him to save and rectify things.
[01:10:19] They sound the same because they’re coming from that same kind of outside force. Our brains can’t actually comprehend or decipher. Between them
[01:10:28] Stephen: and also for the movie makes it seem like it’s, Jesse getting possessed, just like Ray and he’s going to be he’s
[01:10:37] Rhys: going to kill the kids and
[01:10:39] Stephen: yes, yeah, so it was, I loved how that was done in this movie.
[01:10:45] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, that is the devil’s candy. Now you had another theory. You said, no, that was it. You, yeah, we had the same thing.
[01:10:53] Stephen: Yeah, actually that. And again, they don’t make it seem that way. So unless you’re [01:11:00] really. Thinking about it. You could miss that. That’s what made this movie a next level, in a way, because you could watch it again and be like, wait a second.
[01:11:10] Hold on. Let me see this again. It’s one of those type. If you compare
[01:11:15] Rhys: the two, I will say the loved ones was much more impactful for me. This one, I would recommend far more widely. I can see that. Yeah, because this is a much more straightforward thriller horror movie. Like you would see on, HBO or Showtime or something like that.
[01:11:34] Whereas the loved ones was seriously disturbing. It brought up all kinds of questionable things that you really don’t want to be thinking about unless you’re like us. So seriously disturbed people. Yes. I would consider this one a much more commercial success than the loved ones. But for me personally, I found the loved ones to be a little more, had a little more oomph to it.
[01:11:58] Stephen: I can agree with that. I like [01:12:00] some of the things in this, the art and all of that. Yeah, so speaking of here at the end before we move on, there’s some shows I found on a couple of the streaming services, new horror movies. I was going to send you links to trailers cause I haven’t heard you mention them.
[01:12:17] And I was like, wow, these look really good, but it might be off your radar.
[01:12:22] Rhys: Could be. I’ve been watching a lot of stuff that’s been off my radar of late. Some of it’s been good. Some of it has not
[01:12:28] Stephen: pretty much anything. Speaking of what could be good or not, do you know what our next movie is after this?
[01:12:33] Rhys: I do.
[01:12:34] And I don’t know if you, I gave you a link to the Steve movie list. I don’t know if you look at it, it’s been changed because we have two tongue in cheek, more humorous pieces, and I had them back to back, so I broke them up. Now this next one’s going to be a little bit different. Because we’re going to be watching Victor Crowley by Adam green.
[01:12:57] You mentioned that you had just [01:13:00] watched hatchet. Now here’s your assignment and how this is going to be different. Okay. In all honesty, and I’m not one for sequels in all honesty for you to truly appreciate Victor Crowley. You have to watch all three hatchets,
[01:13:19] Stephen: which you mentioned to me on our trip last month down the PA the library.
[01:13:25] And so that’s what made me think, Oh, you know what? I’m going to pull a patch and start watching these because I know Victor Crowley is coming up on our list. And that’s the second time I’d watch hatchet. And I’m like, this is a really good slasher movie, actually, it’s. I’ve got a lot of the typical stuff, some of the acting’s a little grown worthy, but overall it’s, I’m like, wow, this is better than almost every Friday the 13th and Halloween sequel.
[01:13:54] Yes. So
[01:13:56] Rhys: here’s your assignment. You just watch hatchet. [01:14:00] You need to listen to our review of hatchet and then watch hatchet two and hatchet three. And we’ll do like just a little snippet of the basic plots of both of those, and then we’ll do a full review of Victor Crowley. Okay. Now, the reason you need to listen to our review again is because you bring stuff up in Hatchet that literally gets addressed in the next movie.
[01:14:24] Stephen: Oh, really? Nice. Okay. Okay, good. Great. And I enjoyed it because I remember I had just gone to New Orleans when we did that movie and so I recognized like Louis Armstrong’s gate and all that stuff. Yep.
[01:14:39] Rhys: So that stuff all still, it’s not like Victor Crowley takes Hollywood or anything like that. It’s all still out in the swamp,
[01:14:46] Stephen: but I will say, I know Kane Hodder goes to various conventions and stuff.
[01:14:51] I’d really like to meet him now because. He looks very imposing, but I bet he’s like the exact opposite in the real life. He’s probably one [01:15:00] of those type of people.
[01:15:01] Rhys: I have met him. Okay. He’s huge. I bet. And I’m like super average, the short end of average. So it’s like looking up at your dad when you’re a kid.
[01:15:13] Super, super nice guy. Brought stuff for him to sign. He was happy to do it, happy to talk about the only thing. And I don’t blame him. And this was before COVID, but I certainly don’t blame him. He wears black leather gloves because he doesn’t actually want to touch people. Which again, I can, I can understand that, but if the con I was at, he was the only one who was doing that,
[01:15:37] Stephen: but super nice guy.
[01:15:39] Yeah, I can’t blame him. I’ve seen some of the people that go to these cons. So yeah. Yeah. He’s you want a picture? Yeah. Everything. It was just. Out of his way to be like the nicest guy.
[01:15:49] No, I gotta make it a point to try and meet him sometime. That’d be cool. Yeah we’ll get a printout of our episode or something like the picture with the whole lasagna and get them to sign that it’ll [01:16:00] be worth nothing, we’ll buy some three X shirt and give it to him.
[01:16:03] Yes, we’ll get a special horror lasagna hatchet shirt made up the season one we did that I’d love to do that. Absolutely all right, cool. So there’s the next movie coming up and this was number nine, by the way Oh, we got what? 14 or 15
[01:16:19] Rhys: on this season, right? I was just going to point out, Victor Crowley will be 10, which would typically be a season, but I think we have another four or five after that, not counting the bonus because of the special nature of season five.
[01:16:31] Stephen: Yes we were indecisive. We just couldn’t cut things out. Yeah. All right, man, catch you later. All right. Have a good one. You too.
