Weirdhouse Cinema: Ghosthouse

0:02 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

0:13 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

0:16 And this is Joe McCormick. And on today's Halloween season edition of Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking about the 1988 Italo Poltergeist film, Ghost House, directed by Italian cannibal dream weaver Umberto Lindsay, a notorious schlockmonger who I think made a lot of more serious kind of western and crime and jello movies earlier in his career, but his output in the 80s is very infamous horror and genre trash.

0:49 Yeah, as we'll discuss, he is often heralded as the guy who Introduce the subgenre of the Italian cannibal exploitation film. So, you know, that's it's hard to outlive that. But there's more to him than that. We'll get into that when we talk about about the director.

1:08 So last week we did a couple of core episodes about stories of haunted houses from ancient Greece and Rome. And in those episodes, we ended up talking about the essence of the haunted house tale, like what makes it different from other kinds of ghost stories and folk tales. So I thought it might be cool to do a haunted house movie and see how it fits into the genre tradition. But I was also at the same time like feeling the call of Italian schlock. And by God, this film checks both boxes. So Ghost House is obviously a riff on the 1982 American horror movie Poltergeist, which was made by Tobey Hooper and Steven Spielberg. And like a lot of Italian genre copycat films of this era, it's interesting the way it borrows from Poltergeist in that

2:02 what it copies from its predecessor is not the overall plot and structure, which is quite different. But instead it borrows individual images, props, and set pieces so that you can watch this basically totally different movie, but every now and then hit a scene or an image and be like, Hey, that's, that's from Poltergeist. And, uh, so for example, this movie has a very prominent creepy clown doll that is obviously based on the clown doll from Poltergeist and has weird haunted stuff happening on a TV like Poltergeist. It has a little blonde girl. It has a bunch of other just individual moments and images. Like, I think there's sort of an attempt to recreate the feeling of that slimy pool scene in Poltergeist with the weird subfloor that is

2:50 flooded with white goop here.

2:53 Yeah, though I think they managed to create something that feels even weirder than what we get in Poltergeist. And this was a high point in the film for me, for sure. Though, again, I think that the Poltergeist comparison is absolutely spot on. Yeah. But in a way, like you were saying, it's almost like inspired by the trailer for Poltergeist or inspired by promotional images from Poltergeist, that sort of thing.

3:18 What is lifted is not the story overall, but memorable images from.

3:23 Yeah. And I didn't get into a bunch of interviews on this one, but I've encountered enough of this material to know that sometimes the way it works is like, it's not necessarily the director that is like, hey, I want to make a ripoff of Poltergeist. So it's, it's sometimes it's the money people were like, you know, it'd be great if we had our own poltergeist to get in on this poltergeist money. And there's this understanding. I was like, okay, we need to make the producers happy. Well, let's at least make sure that there are some identifiable visual motifs that are present. So they'll, they'll feel like they're getting their money's worth out of this investment. Yeah.

3:58 Wait, do I remember right? That the producer here was Joe D'Amato? Yeah.

4:01 Joe D'Amato is one of the producers on this. So the schlock runs deep on this one for sure.

4:07 Okay. So like we were saying, the plot structure is totally different from Poltergeist. This has a surprising amount of ham radio in it. Poltergeist, I think, is a more traditional haunted house story, like the structure we were talking about in our core episodes on the haunted houses of the ancient world, where the house is infected with ghosts because we later learn that its construction disturbed an old cemetery and brought the spirits out of their rest. So the ghosts are localized to the house and it's a haunting classical haunting in that sense.

4:43 Yeah like it seeped into the the earth and into the house that was built upon it uh poltergeist is also broadly an american family under siege film uh which some critics point out to being a recurring post-frontier hallmark of american cinema and you certainly see it notably in a number of spielberg films uh you know the Uh, and then I guess poltergeist is kind of an interesting example of that as well. The idea that like the American dream exists on stolen ground that is cursed and, uh, and the, the family is like beset, uh, uh, on all sides, uh, due to like this infringement upon the spirit.

5:22 So there's a lot to unwrap there. And I think that's one of the reasons that poltergeist is so, uh, Stuck in so many people's memories. It's stuck in mine, too, because I think I saw it when I was like seven or something.

5:33 Yeah.

5:34 Well, I mean, Poltergeist, if you're going to lift images from a movie, it's a good movie to lift images from because some of them are so indelible.

5:41 Yeah. And often sort of, to a certain extent, non sequiturs. Like it's just haunted stuff is happening. Haunted effects are happening. So it's kind of like, yeah, let's go ahead and borrow that one and do something different with it.

5:56 Yeah, so that's Poltergeist. It's, you might say, at least structurally classic haunted house, though it has its own updates in a way. Like, you know, one thing I was thinking about is in our core episodes on haunted houses, we talked about how it's usually got to be an old house, but in Poltergeist, it's not, right? It's a fairly new house, isn't it? Yeah, and so instead, what is old is the land itself and something about the land the house is built on.

6:21 Yeah, and I think in that, Poltergeist was, there was a certain, they were subverting the trope a little bit but also playing on, I think, something in haunting reportings of the time. It's like the idea that there could be something ghostly even in a new construction.

6:40 Yeah, totally. Whereas in Ghost House, I think in the end, you could question whether this movie even meets the definition of a haunted house story once we learn the cause of the hauntings. It's really more like a haunted doll story where... almost all of the action just happens to be confined to one house because that's where the doll is. Actually, no, that's not where the doll is, is it? We learn later the doll is somewhere else, but the doll is focusing all of its haunting energy on this house.

7:08 Yeah, and then later it seems like the doll can also go other places as well. So yeah, I think definitely haunted doll house. Sorry, haunted doll movie instead of haunted house movie.

7:17 Yes, yeah. Another thing I was thinking about is I haven't seen a lot of Umberto Lindsay movies. I've never cracked into his, you know, cannibal stuff. Uh, but one thing I can guess is that Umberto Lindsay really loved making a movie where people make a 100% optional journey to a demonic haunted house, fail to leave even when they could, and then get cut in half. Because I re if I remember correctly, the one other Umberto Lindsay movie I've seen is Has exactly the same plot. People go to a haunted house, except in this movie, it's a copycat of The Shining. They go up to a haunted hotel in the mountains. From what I recall, they could leave, but they just don't for some reason. And somebody gets cut in half in the basement. It's a made-for-TV,

8:06 made-for-Italian-TV copycat called The House of Lost Souls from 1989. I'd been thinking we might come back to that at some point.

8:14 Yeah, Umberto Lindsay comes up a fair amount on the show in Connections when we talk about the different actors and directors and writers and musicians and what else they've worked on. But this is the first time we've actually covered one on Weird Al Cinema, and I think it's the first time I've even watched an Umberto Lindsay film.

8:31 Despite the fact that he was an Italian director working in schlock and exploitation and genre cinema alongside the likes of Fulci, Cosi, Margheretti and others, certainly other directors, his peers we've discussed on the show before. Yeah.

8:48 And I think somehow, maybe at least as a distant producer, Fulci was involved in those Houses of Doom movies, which included the House of Lost Souls.

8:59 Okay. Oh, also of note, this movie was titled La Casa 3 in Italy. So at least for the Italian market, it was promoted as the third Evil Dead movie.

9:09 Oh, makes perfect sense.

9:11 Yeah.

9:12 Dead by dawn. Yeah.

9:13 But it, it, of course, just in the, in the same way, it doesn't actually resemble a poltergeist film. It also doesn't resemble an evil dead film. So even less so. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, quick stats for this film, just cause, uh, this was on my mind. This is film 265 for weird house cinema. Um, I recently watched an old episode of the office in which Dwight Schrute claims to have seen over 240 films. So, It's notable that without even realizing it, we met the shrewd point on Weird House Cinema when we covered The Last Temptation of Christ and we surpassed it with Nemesis.

9:50 It's pretty cool to imagine Dwight watching either Last Temptation or Nemesis.

9:55 Yeah, both present some interesting ideas, don't they? All right, Joe, do you have an elevator pitch for Ghost House?

10:03 It's like the devil does ham radio.

10:05 Yeah. There is a lot of ham radio. It's kind of surprising they didn't put that up front.

10:11 Yeah.

10:12 There are other supernatural ham radio films, and maybe what we're picking up on here is somebody had an idea for a ham radio-based horror film, and this is the ultimate form it ends up taking.

10:23 I saw one with some friends, I think, when I was in high school in the movie theater. It was called Frequency. Yeah, yeah.

10:30 Is that based on a math story? Maybe.

10:32 Maybe.

10:34 I remember it had, like, time-traveling ham radio where somebody's, like, talking to somebody. I think a guy was talking to his dad in the past, and they're solving a murder mystery together.

10:43 Okay. Not a Matheson story, but maybe it's just something about the pitch reminded me of that. Yeah, Dennis Quaid, I believe.

10:52 Yeah. And I think also the guy who played Jesus in the Mel Gibson Jesus movie.

10:58 Yeah, Jim Caviezel's in that, as is Michael Cera, his first film. Oh.

11:03 I don't remember that at all. I guess I would not have known him at the time.

11:06 All right, but let's get back to Ghost House here. If you were interested in seeing Ghost House, my standards see this in the best quality possible mantra doesn't quite apply here. I think this might be a film best enjoyed as part of a double feature Blu-ray set, double feature DVD set, a random find on Amazon Prime, or perhaps enjoyed as a bootleg VHS or on a disc of unknown origin. I don't know. There's just something about it that feels like it should be encountered more than like sought out. But it has been put out in physical media treatment a few different times. It's actually been put out as a solo Blu-ray, as well as a solo DVD in some markets anyway, as part of a double feature with 89's Witchery, a.k.a. La Casa 4. that

11:54 has Linda Blair and David Hasselhoff in it. Wow. As well as an earlier DVD double feature with the sex comedy Firehouse. As far as I could tell, no connective tissue between Ghost House and Firehouse, other than they just have house in the titles. The Riff Trax guys did Ghost House at some point. I haven't seen that one.

12:15 But obviously there's plenty to work with in this movie, so I bet it's a pretty good riff.

12:19 You didn't see the one that was a double feature with season one of Full House?

12:23 No. It was full house, one word. That's the key. Because ghost house is one word for this film. Firehouse is one. It depends if you're going to break it up or not. I can't recall if full house for the TV show is one word or two.

12:36 Actually, the best way to watch this movie is you try to buy your child a used copy of a VHS tape of Casper the Friendly Ghost. But then when you open it up, this is the tape that's in there.

12:47 There you go. All right, let's get into the people who made this movie. Let's talk some more about Umberto Lindsay. He's a director. He also has a story credit. He lived 1931 through 2017. Credited on this film is Humphrey Humbert, which even as fake names used by Italian directors go, is pretty fake sounding. But anyway, Italian director and writer whose credits go back to the 1950s. best known internationally, and perhaps best remembered for his various genre pictures, particularly the schlockier ones. But as is generally the case with many of his peers as well, his work fell into various genres, depending on what was marketable at the time.

13:36 So some of his earlier pictures included the 61 pirate film Queen of the Seas, 62's The Triumph of Robin Hood, 63's Catherine of Russia. He also directed the Peplum, a few different Peplum movies, including Zorro, against Machiste in 63. So you got this, a double there, um, Italian muscle man versus or meeting Zorro from, uh, from, from Mexico.

14:04 So that's, that's pretty, pretty fascinating.

14:06 I like the idea.

14:07 Yeah. Uh, in 65, he did 008 operation exterminate, which is an amazing title. It rhymes. Yeah. No denying that. Um, Let's see. And of course, multiple Giallo films like 69's Orgasmo, 70's A Quiet Place to Kill, and Knife of Ice in 72, all with Carol Baker. And I'm to understand that some of these Carol Baker films have been, they're regarded as a bit higher in quality compared to some of his later pictures. But I haven't seen them myself, so I can't really.

14:40 Speak to them. I'm not looking at his filmography now, but I remember from when I did, he's got some of these movies with complicated titles. I think one is called The Rat, The Gun, and The Fist or something.

14:54 That sounds good. Let's see, in the 70s, this is when he really tends to get into schlockier exploitation waters. There's 74 is Almost Human, which sounds like a monster movie, but it's a crime movie. 75's Eyeball, which is a Giallo film with its own following and I think is some implied eyeball violence. And it's important to note that, yeah, he's widely credited with creating the Italian cannibal exploitation subgenre with the 1972 film Man from the Deep River. That title, that just sounds like a Western or something, but just full jungle cannibal movie.

15:32 That could be a drama. That could have Robert Redford in it.

15:34 Yeah. Yeah, this is not such a film. And he continued to feed the subgenre with 1980's Eaten Alive that has Janet Agron in it. And also 81's Cannibal Ferox with Giovanni Radici in it. We've covered a number of films in which he plays. Generally some sort of a low life or creep. Or misunderstood individual who ends up getting a drill through his head. Or maybe I'm confusing him with another actor.

16:02 Oh, is he the guy who gets the drill to the head in City of the Living Dead?

16:06 I think so. I think so. If not, it's a different guy and I'm confusing him. But anyway, that's the sort of role he would tend to play.

16:13 I was actually going to mention that scene in this episode because Ghost House has random unrelated murders taking place in it that are like the drill scene in City of the Living Dead where it's like, no, this isn't the main supernatural action, but also just here's a murderer.

16:28 Yeah, just, you know, gore showcase cinema. Exactly. So let's see. He also directed the 1980 sci-fi zombie movie Nightmare City, as well as the 83 sword and sorcery film Iron Master. George Eastman's in that one playing, I presume, the villain. Ghost House comes about a few after a few different war movies and right before the Florida biker rampage film Nightmare Beach.

16:57 I've heard Nightmare Beach described as a slasher.

16:59 I think it is like it's a biker movie, but it's like a slashing rampage. I don't know if it's a ghost or just like a revenger sort of a situation. But yeah, I think you're right as well. It is also a slasher. And then his last film was the 92 action flick Mean Tricks starring Charles Napier. Oh, and he directed 91's Detective Malone, which had Fred Williamson in it in the starring role, also known as the Black Cobra 4.

17:27 Okay, well, I have a very little appetite for those cannibal movies, pun intended, but I think maybe some of the sci-fi horror movies from the 70s or 80s are going to be our sweet spot for the next Humberto Lindsay movie.

17:42 Yeah, yeah, we'll see. Let's see. So again, here's a story credit. We also have somebody with a dialogue credit, which is fabulous considering the dialogue in this movie. It's credited to Shelia Goldberg. active from 73 through 2016. Actress, dialogue coach, and writer who, yeah, is responsible for one of Ghost House's most entertaining features, absolutely ludicrous dialogue. I don't know. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say, we don't know how ludicrous it would have been had she not been there to coax it into the form that we have. Her other credits in this vein include Stage Fright in 87. That's Michele Suave. who we've talked about before on the show. Also, 88's Zombie 5, Killing Birds. She has a story credit on that one.

18:34 We're going to mention that one a lot in Connections here. And 89's Beyond the Door 3, writing credit there. And she also was a dialogue coach on 85's Phenomena and 89's The Black Cat. Okay. And I believe she is slash was, again, I don't know what her, if she's still out there, you know, her dates are not public record.

18:57 But I think she was an American who worked on English dialogue in a number of these Italian productions or international productions.

19:05 Oh, I see. So is the idea maybe that Lindsay or Lindsay and somebody else write the story and then Goldberg is there to sort of Americanize the dialogue?

19:15 I think so, yeah. Maybe even sort of in translation to some extent because this is one of those movies, I don't know if we've really gotten into this yet, but this is an Italian production, but it is filmed... On location in Massachusetts and in Boston specifically. So, yeah, and it's using local, I think local American talent in many cases, but they also brought some people over. So it's a mix here.

19:43 Yeah.

19:43 And then we also have Cynthia McGavin. She has a screenplay credit. This is her only credit, so I don't have any more information. on who she is or what she did here. So that's the script. And then we have the people bringing the script to life on the acting front. And yeah, we have some interesting casting here as well. We also have some people who are just in this and nothing else. And we'll kind of breeze through them. But right at the top of the star is Laura Wendell, playing the character Martha, born 1965, German-born child model and actress turned grown person model and actress, best known for her work in European exploitation films. She is the daughter of American pro football player and actor

20:26 Walt Barnes and German actress Britta Wendell. Walt Barnes, her father, was in a ton of films, including 73's High Plains Drifter, 77's Pete's Dragon, 78's Every Which Way But Loose. I just realized when I put this in the notes, I've been thinking of that film as Every Which Way But Loose the whole time, but it's Loose?

20:48 I don't know. I've never seen it. I think that's the title, though.

20:51 Wow. What does that even mean? I don't know. Now I'm questioning everything about my reality. I've never seen this Abe movie.

20:56 It's like Every Which Way But Loose. That sounds like something that's a like a pre-existing phrase that I'm not familiar with.

21:05 Yeah.

21:05 That's a Clint Eastwood movie, isn't it?

21:07 It is. It's a Clint Eastwood ape movie.

21:09 Ape movie, okay.

21:10 Supposedly a great ape movie, but I'm not sure.

21:13 Well, every which way but loose suggests all kinds of tight.

21:18 Yeah, but it's totally different. Every which way but loose sounds like, yeah, I'm really dedicated. I'm winning this. That's what I got when I looked at the box art of the poster art. It's like, yeah, this guy and this ape are just in it to win it. Nothing's going to stop them.

21:31 Every kind of winning.

21:32 Yeah, but apparently not. Anyway, her father was also in a couple of animal attack movies, 77's Day of the Animals, 73's Pigs, with an exclamation point. And then her mother, Britta, was in two films, 72's Roma and 73's Redneck. So Laura was kind of born into the business, began modeling and acting pretty young. Her first credit is My Dear Killer in 72. And she had a supporting role in Argento's Tenebrae in 82. In 86, she was in Lamberto Bava's You'll Die at Midnight. In 88, she was in Zombie Five Killer Birds. In 88, she was in The Red Monks. And she was in the 91 erotic drama Husbands and Lovers with Julian Sands. She did some TV work in 93 and I believe retired from acting at that point at the age of 26. So, yeah, she's

22:23 only like 22 or 23 in Ghost House. Okay.

22:28 So Martha is one half of our main character duo. The other half is her boyfriend, Paul, right? Paul is the ham radio guy. Yeah.

22:38 Paul is played by Greg Rhodes. Age is not public record. Prior to Ghost House, he played bit parts like background parts in 87's Fatal Attraction and Hello Mary Lou Prom Night 2. So I believe American actor, local talent that was brought in. Afterwards, he appeared in 1990's Fatal Exam and Deadly Manner and then Almost Hollywood in 94. So yeah, not much known about him. But this is our prime couple.

23:04 And they are... They are tremendous. Again, the dialogue that they're working with is not great. And they bring an energy to this performance and to this relationship that is... never really believable, but you can't look away from it. There's just something perfect about it. Like they're always arguing with each other and the substance of the argument, the language of the argument is just laugh inducing. It's amazing. Yeah.

23:36 I love the scene where she's mad. She's like, you could have let me sleep a little later. And he's like, we've got to get on the road. There may have been a murder. Yeah.

23:45 It's just, oh my goodness. It's amazing. Again, I don't want to I don't want it to be one of these cases where I'm making it sound like these are bad actors that are making it bad. Like, no, there's a lot of blame to go around. But the final form that it takes is just cheesy goodness.

24:02 Yeah, or a lot of credit to go around. Yeah, a lot of credit. This is like, yeah, the dialogue scenes. I noticed this especially after the first time I watched it. You called out all of their arguing scenes, which kind of just faded into the general chaos for me. So on the second watch, I really noticed all of the arguments that are about nothing and go nowhere and they just fade in and out. It's so funny.

24:26 Like if you want to have the couple, the main characters in your film frequently talk about the chili they're planning to have for dinner. Do you want that to be completely believable? No. Like you, if you're devoting that much time to it, you want it to feel like it feels in this movie. You want it to feel weirdly fake in a way that you can't quite put your finger on. Like, I don't believe these people have ever had chili or, or are about to have chili, and I don't know what it means.

24:51 Also, interesting choice about the character Paul to make him, in some scenes, he comes off as a normal and resourceful guy, and in other scenes, he is an absolute psycho, just like hostile aggro for no detectable reason.

25:07 Yeah.

25:07 Yeah, it's ridiculous. All right, so those are our two main characters. And watching the movie, I generally have a good idea about why they're in any given scene at any given moment, for the most part. Same cannot be said for a lot of the other characters who kind of wander in and out of the action. But we'll discuss them here. So we have a character named Susan, played by Wanja Mary Sellers, born 1962. Kenyan-born Italian actress, best known by horror fans for her roles in Stage Fright from 1987. this movie ghost house, as well as 91 is the crawlers also known as troll three creepers or contamination 0.7. Um, even before like Godzilla minus zero and so forth, you know, we've already had some, some interesting, um,

25:59 numerology here in this title. Uh, but this last one, the crawlers was directed by her husband, uh, Fabrizio Laurenti. And, uh, they're, they're still married. Weirdly enough, I found an article in the sun from last year, uh, about her and her husband, about their relationship and their long distance, the long distance nature of the relationship, like one working on a project in Mexico city. And the other one, I think back in Rome, um, uh, look that up if you're interested. But, um, uh, she, she also has a background role in the last temptation of Christ. We've, this has come up before, you know, that, that, that production made use of a lot of local Italian talent to sort of fill in the scenes. And so

26:39 she's in there somewhere. And she continued to not only act in Italian cinema and TV, but is also an award-winning writer and director herself.

26:47 So the character Susan is part of a quartet of characters that our main couple meet at the titular ghost house.

26:56 Yeah.

26:56 So they go to the ghost house and there just happened to be four other people already kind of hanging out and squatting. They're doing ham radio. And Susan is one of them. Susan is the motorcyclist of the group.

27:08 Yeah.

27:08 And this, This is one of those things. It's difficult to remember why they're there, because they're there for no good reason. They're included with the house, but they're just randos.

27:20 I think they ask and they say, well, nobody was here, so it seemed like a good place to do ham radio.

27:26 Yeah, the filmmakers knew that they needed some more bodies to be killed in the haunted house, so we just had to show up. We heeded the call. So this is where we're going to get into multiple characters played by actors who really only appear in this movie. We have the character Mark, played by Ron Hawk. This is his only film credit. We have the character Jim, played by Martin Jay, British actor apparently, who was in just a couple of other things, including 97's Galaxy Girls. We have the character Tina, who really gets a lot of screen time, played by Kate Silver. Only film credit. Nothing else besides this.

28:05 Tina almost seems the most like an actor of any of this group.

28:09 Yeah, Tina was one I was like, oh, I wonder what she went on to do. And maybe she went on to do great things. Greater things than Ghost House, but we'll never know.

28:17 The character Jim does appear on screen and in scenes, but actually his most notable presence in the movie is as an audio sample.

28:26 Yeah.

28:27 Saying, help me, for the love of God, help me, please.

28:34 Let's see, who else do we have here? Oh, we have, this is a non-victim character. We have, what is his name, Valkos?

28:42 Valkos.

28:42 Yeah, played by Donald O'Brien. So yes, if you've been listening to our recent episodes, this is our Fulci cyborg from Warriors of the Year 2072. This time back in non-cyborg form.

28:57 He's the guy who betrays the main characters and he's got the cyber eye?

29:01 Yeah, that's the guy. The guy who I also mentioned in that episode as being the titular Dr. Butcher MD in 1980s Dr. Butcher MD, a.k.a. Zombie Holocaust. Nice. So here he's a deranged man in overalls.

29:15 Yeah, he's a hillbilly named Valkos living in Scituate, Massachusetts.

29:22 I mean, there are hillbillies everywhere. We know. We've all read enough Stephen King books to know that anywhere you go, you're going to find some hillbillies. some red-blooded Americans. Named Valkos. Named Valkos, yeah. I don't know about Valkos' name. All right, and then we also have, we mentioned that there is a creepy clown doll, and then there is a ghost girl.

29:44 The ghost girl is Henriette, and she is played by an actress by the name of Kristen Fogoralsa. I may not be pronouncing that correctly, but this is her only credit as well. she might as well be an actual ghost as far as I can tell from the movie databases.

30:01 I don't think she speaks in the movie.

30:04 She doesn't have to. The clown speaks for her with murder. And some singing, perhaps. Okay, another character that we have that pops up and just kind of leaves after... He does get some good scenes, but we have Pepe. I know we have some questions about this character's name, but he's credited... at least on some of the databases, as Pepe.

30:28 He's played by William Moon. This is his only credit. And I feel like this guy had a fair amount of screen presence. I don't know. I was kind of surprised to see that he wasn't in anything else as well.

30:39 It feels like he's having more fun than any other actor in the film.

30:43 Yeah.

30:43 He's, like, enjoying his role.

30:46 And his dialogue, you know, all the dialogue in this movie is hokey, but it's maybe a little more believable from this guy. I don't know.

30:53 Yeah, almost makes you wonder if it might have been improvised. It's a little bit quicker and more natural than anybody else's lines.

31:00 Yeah, I agree. I agree.

31:03 Like the part where he tells the joke about hitchhiking. He says, the hitching part's cool. It's the hiking that sucks. It's like, oh, okay.

31:09 Yeah, and he starts listing the different places that suck. And he's like, you know, I think everywhere sucks.

31:15 Everywhere sucks.

31:16 Yeah. And I'm not going to run through the rest of the cast. This trend continues. But there is a mortician character that did stand out to me, played by the actor Robert Champagne, who lived 1938 through 2007. American actor who also appeared in 89's Witchery and 93's Mattos Salem. This is a kid's ghost pirate movie. I looked it up.

31:40 I've never seen it, but some people seem to have feelings about it. I don't know. Kid's movie. Apparently... entertaining if you're a kid.

31:49 In this movie, he's a card. Interesting face, interesting voice, and he gets to deliver some of the core exposition and gets murdered by Valkos.

31:58 Yeah, he gets a pretty brutal demise for sure. As we'll be discussing, the special effects in Ghost House are pretty great. On the whole, really, I loved all the special effects. There's some really creative effects. What they try to do, they do well. And these are credited to Robert Gold, Dan McClensky, and Roland Park. They all worked on Stage Fright together. They all worked on a film called Inner Zone from 89. And Gold is credited on 83's 2020 Texas Gladiators, Joe D'Amato's Bronx movie Endgame from 83, Zombie 5, Killer Birds, and The Crawlers.

32:39 Man, Killer Birds is just calling to us, isn't it?

32:41 I know, it's everywhere.

32:42 I may have to check it out.

32:45 And then the score on this movie is pretty incredible as well. I thought it was highly effective. Exactly what you want from an Italian horror movie. So a lot of synth, a lot of electronic vibes. And then also this creepy clown song that we're going to be referencing a lot that is legitimately creepy, feels haunted, feels like it has a life outside of this film.

33:12 I think we should have a name for it because it plays 10,000 times in the movie and we're going to have to just keep referring to it. I was thinking.

33:19 They call it that stupid song.

33:21 That stupid song. I was thinking of it as the demon clown jingle because it has a kind of commercial jingle quality. It's like something that would play in a TV ad for hell.

33:34 Yeah.

33:34 It's like, come try hell.

33:35 Yeah. Yeah, I've seen it informally just called Creepy Clown Song before. You can actually pull up the score for this movie on whatever your favorite streaming service is. And it is included. It is not called Creepy Clown Song. It is called Ninia Suspense or Ninia Suspensa, which I think just means like suspense dirge or suspense funeral song or something. So maybe not the most insightful title here either.

34:06 Well, since we're already talking about the song, I guess we should go ahead and describe it. Because again, it's a big part of what the movie is like, because you hear it so many times. The Demon Clown jingle is this insane looping melody played on what sounds like an electric organ with a distorted helium gremlin voice talking over the top. And Rob, we spoke off camera about how it is hard to tell what the voice is saying, but to me, it sounds like it's saying, are you up?

34:36 Are you there? Are you there? And that is also what the, uh, subtitles on my version trans transcribed for it to say, but I think it's not supposed to be decipherable. I think you're not really supposed to be able to tell what it's saying. Uh, there is a later part in the movie where the character Paul uses his computer to analyze, analyze what the song is saying.

34:58 And it decides it is saying the word burial, which I don't hear at all.

35:02 Hmm.

35:03 Speaker 2: Speaker 2:

35:09 And then there's a kind of a sound. And it's just, it's very, very creepy.

35:17 Silver shamrock.

35:20 It does have that kind of vibe. Yeah, a little bit like a jingle from hell. So who's responsible for all of this music? Well, mainly we have Piero Montanari, who lived 1946 through 2023. Italian composer who worked on several Joe D'Amato films and worked mostly in erotic and adult cinema. But he also scored Umberto Lindsay's The Hell's Gate in 89, D'Amato's Return from Death or Frankenstein 2000 in 91. That one stars Donald O'Brien. Ghost House is probably his best known work. And yeah, I have to say it's a fun score. Very fun score. Even outside of the setting aside the clown track for a minute.

35:59 I think it has some great, great synth action here. It's the kind of thing I can put on in the background. And this one was released on vinyl by TerraVision in 2016. And I think it may be more of a collector's item now in that regard. And of course, again, you can stream it wherever. I was streaming it on Apple earlier.

36:16 I have to shout out there are at least a couple of points in the movie where the music is really funny. Not because the music is bad or anything, but because of incredibly jarring music transitions.

36:30 Yeah.

36:31 Like where suddenly it's playing the demon clown song and then it just hard cuts to, you know, jazz you would hear on the home shopping channel.

36:40 Yeah. Yeah. That's a solid point for sure. And then totally the film is like that as well. Yeah. Suddenly we're in a horrendous murder and then we're talking about chili again or something to that effect. Yeah. So again, the creepy clown song is titled Ninnia suspense or suspense. You can look that up. on on your streaming service you may be able to make it your ringtone today so you know go ahead and do that and report back in a week tell us how that has worked out for you but uh interestingly enough uh when you when you pull it up on streaming the this particular track the creepy clown song is credited to a different artist it's roberto spandoni born 1963 and i was looking him up i'm pretty sure this is the guy based

37:25 off you know discogs and other sources but This guy's an Italian composer and guitarist who's worked mostly in jazz. And I believe he's a jazz composition professor. And I think outside of this one track hasn't worked in film. So just like a one-off that he did for cinema at the time.

37:43 I love how often you find that people who in some capacity worked in these schlocky B movies are now teaching. They're like in academia somewhere. And so you think about all of the students who have like, over the years who have gone through and found out like my professor did music for ghost house. Yeah.

38:03 I mean, I mean, you think about it, you know, these guys were all, you know, either struggling academics or working professionals, working musicians, and somebody needs some music for a film. And, you know, you might not think it's a great film, but in many of these cases, they're like, Oh yeah, they're going to see this. It's, it's for a foreign market. Nobody's ever even know I worked on it. So, you know, no big deal.

38:24 It reminds me of when we watched, uh, What was it? Oh, it was the Paganini horror. And they had an interview with that actor who was like, you know, I was young when I did this movie. I was just happy to get work. And I, I never, it never occurred to me that people 20 years later would ever watch this movie again or know what it was.

38:43 Yeah. Yeah. There's the sense that some of these films were just, you're releasing it into the air and it would just fly away. Um, there is, I think three other tracks on the score here that are credited to Simon Boswell. Born 1953. He's an English film composer whose many credits include Italian horror films like Phenomena, Demons 2, Stage Fright again, but also 89's Santa Sangre, 1990's Hardware, 92's Dust Devil, 94's Shallow Grave, 95's Lord of Illusion, and let's see, Hackers from the same year. And 1999's A Midsummer Night's Dream as well. So yeah, still working to this day. So that's the soundscape of Ghost House.

39:34 Well, are you ready to talk about the plot?

39:37 Sure, let's make sense of this plot.

39:39 Okay, so the film begins with a prologue. It says it's set 20 years in the past. And the opening shot is of a house at dusk with these tangled black tree limbs silhouetted in the foreground. The opening shot actually looks much nicer than the aesthetic sensibility of the rest of the movie. This almost makes it look like it's going to be kind of artful. So don't get the wrong idea right at the top here. But this is the house in the movie, the ghost house.

40:07 Yeah, and this is actually an historic house. This is the Ellis Estate in Situate, Massachusetts. And fun fact, it's the same house used in House by the Cemetery, the Fulci film that we've discussed on the show before.

40:20 Do you think they were putting ads in like Italian publications that are like, hey, do you need a spooky house for your genre film?

40:29 Yeah.

40:29 Come to Scituate, Massachusetts.

40:30 Maybe so. Maybe so. I don't know. Maybe it was a referral situation. I'm not sure. But I did not recognize it. I didn't say like, oh my goodness, it's the House by the Cemetery house. No, no.

40:40 I wouldn't have recognized it either.

40:41 Yeah.

40:42 So I don't know a lot about houses and domestic architecture, but I went and did a little bit of digging to figure out the right terminology to describe this. So I think this is a house in what you would call the Queen Anne architectural style. It is tall with asymmetrical features. It's got a round turret at one corner, bay windows, verandas on different parts and sides of the house.

41:07 And then a big, steep A-frame gabled portion of the second floor over the front facade. It looks like a perfect house for a haunting. You know, it's big, roomy, old world. It looks very creaky. May have sharpened panes of glass hanging like a guillotine blade from the ceiling. And so it's got everything you need.

41:27 Yeah, absolutely. Totally looks the part.

41:29 And in the opening shot, a single window on the second floor is illuminated. The rest of the house is dark. And we cut around to other exterior shots that look like they could literally be different houses. Maybe somehow they're the same.

41:41 I don't know.

41:41 This house is bigger. Like in some dimensions, it's bigger than it looks in others. I think it might actually be much longer than it is wide. Anyway, we hear a loud cat screech, like a meow. And then inside we see a severe looking man in a sleeveless cardigan wandering the halls, calling out for somebody named Henrietta. This dude to me looked a little bit like David Byrne of the talking heads, but temper that with some doubtiness.

42:13 Like think David Byrne crossed with like a Midwest church deacon who thinks hot dogs are too spicy. And so this guy is, he sounds very annoyed. He searches up and down looking for the kid. And eventually he approaches the door to the basement and we can hear music coming from the other side. What is the song? It is the Demon Clown jingle. It's coming up from the basement.

42:36 And so the guy in the cardigan goes through the door, goes down the stairs where he sees a very fake dead cat covered in blood with its face frozen in midi owl. Then he goes on down to the basement, which is filled with junk. You've got stacks of boxes, dusty old appliances and stuff. And there he finds a girl who I think is supposed to be 11 years old at this point. She's in a white dress holding a pair of scissors with blood all over them. Presumably this is Henrietta. The dude goes up to Henrietta. He takes the bloody scissors out of her hands. And then with venom in his voice, he says, how could you do such a thing to one of God's innocent creatures?

43:17 She looks up at him and seems to be weeping blood. She like wipes her eye and it seems kind of red. And then the dude adds, and on your birthday of all days, that's the worst day to stab a cat with scissors.

43:29 Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Animal, uh, murder and mutilation, especially bad on your own birthday.

43:34 Come on, save it for Easter. Come on. So the old guy, he points at Henrietta and he says, uh, she has committed a very grave sin and her punishment is that he's going to lock her in the basement in the dark with the dead cat. And she'll just have to stay down there in the dark by herself and pray for the Lord to have mercy on her soul.

43:55 I mean, that's good parenting.

43:59 Yeah, I mean, when is this supposed to take place?

44:01 1967, I think. Okay, yeah.

44:05 So maybe they just didn't know that this is exactly how you end up with deadly ghost girls.

44:10 I think so.

44:11 Some sort of a traumatic punishment like this.

44:13 Well, it's weird in so many ways. I mean, so it starts off with this situation that if you took it seriously, it's horrifying. Like you find, you find a child has, has murdered a pet, like killed an animal. But then the way the movie is characterizing it, it's like trying to show that the father is having this horrible, uh, kind of overly churchy negative reaction to it. Like he's the dad in footloose who won't allow any dancing except here.

44:39 He won't allow any cat stabbing.

44:42 I think this is a prime example of something that you see throughout this movie. Take away all of the goofy things about it. The actual script is pretty mean and nasty. And if it were realized perfectly with a level of writing and acting that elevated that material, I don't think I would ever want to watch it. Because it would just be a really mean, nasty film. Wallowing in horribleness. But the way that it's realized, we end up laughing at it more than we're feeling the horror.

45:20 Which is good, because otherwise I wouldn't want to watch this movie. As it is, I find it richly entertaining.

45:26 A very funny horror movie that is tempered from its darkness and meanness mainly by the texture of the acting and of the dialogue specifically. So anyway, as the dude promised, he Goes up the staircase, closes the door, switches out the light, leaves the child down there. Now alone in the dark, Henrietta goes to retrieve something. She is hidden behind a stack of boxes. It is a nightmarish clown doll.

45:53 It's big. It's like about the size of Henrietta herself. It's got a bulbous red nose, kind of peachy skin, cherry cheeks with these triangular brows over its eyes, and a grotesque smiling mouth filled with carved teeth. Obviously, it's a play on the Nightmare Clown from Poltergeist. It looks extremely similar. Rob, I've got pictures of both for you to look at here in the outline. Obviously, one is modeled on the other.

46:19 Yeah, I think ultimately, though, the Ghost House clown doll looks even creepier, especially since we get two different versions of its face. It has the evil sharp-toothed version and then the typical toy face as well. And I think there is something about the size of the doll that does work very well because she is not a small little girl. She looks like she's probably one of these girls who's kind of tall for her age. And then, again, the clown doll looks like about her size. And so visually it reads both as girl is too old to have a doll like this and also doll is way too big for what it is. And somehow it kind of speaks to some sort of a very unhealthy relationship between the two and an outsized power in the doll. Yeah.

47:09 And then that's backed up by the action we see next, which is that Henrietta, she takes this creepy looking doll and she like snuggles it. She like lays her head on its shoulder. Like, Oh doll, you know, clown from hell. You're my only friend now.

47:23 Yeah.

47:24 And so upstairs, the father is now talking to another woman, presumably Henrietta's mother. She's a lady in an apron making tea in the kitchen. And the father insists that something has come over Henrietta. It's as if she were under a terrible spell. And the mother says, how could you say that? She's just a little girl. And we learned the dude's name, the guy's name is Sam, by the way.

47:45 So she calls it, the mother calls him Sam. Anyway, Sam then grabs a bunch of light bulbs out of a cabinet. This action, when you actually pay attention to what's happening, it looks so bizarre. He's like, just got fists full of light bulbs and He's grabbing all these light bulbs at once and he goes into the living room to screw one of them into a light fixture.

48:07 And when he does, the demon clown jingle starts playing again. Are you up? Are you there? That whole thing. And then we actually get a pretty creative special effect that we're going to see multiple times in the movie. This is where the glowing light bulb begins to inflate like a balloon. So it looks like the glass is somehow ballooning up. until finally it pops, shooting glass everywhere.

48:32 Yeah, very well done. Like, very well executed, and also just visually very creative. And it's a sort of effect that they keep doing in different ways, and we'll discuss the different ways that it's rolled out, which I think works very well because it kind of reads like Ghost House has a particular idea of how supernatural energy manifests, and it particularly has a way of distorting glass. Uh, so, uh, yeah, absolutely. Uh, you know, a whole bunch of thumbs up for this particular effect right here.

49:03 Yeah. The demon clown is like the magneto of silicate to like, yeah, manipulates glass. Uh, and it's not just light bulbs. We see it happen with these jars of liquids later.

49:14 Yeah. A mirror. There's a great mirror scene. So yeah, this is all absolutely top notch as far as I'm concerned.

49:20 So old Sam kneels down to clean up the broken glass. And while he does, we see a filthy bandaged hand. It looks like a mummy's hand holding an axe. This figure with an axe approaches Sam from behind. Then just as he turns and gasps in horror, it whacks him on the top of the head with the axe. splits his head open in a cutaway that looks like they might've filmed this on a cantaloupe with a mask and a wig.

49:46 Yeah. But it's still, it looks nasty. It's a nasty gore effect for sure. And one of those, you know, it's, this is one of those films where, you know, you're not going to cut away when there's an impact. Uh, so it looks gross.

49:59 Then the mom comes out. Uh, she sees what happened to the guy. She screams, then looks at a mirror on the wall. And here we get more glass manipulation. So the mirror starts warping and turning into, I don't know what the right term for this would be. It's like an active funhouse mirror. It's like a funhouse mirror that is warping and bending in real time. And eventually it shatters, shoots a bunch of glass in her face, and then the mummy hand attacks her with a knife.

50:29 So do we ever find out what the deal is with the mummy hand?

50:33 No, I don't think so. I don't think it's ever. Well, the only, well, could it be that it is the, uh, the maggot Reaper that we see later on?

50:43 Yeah. Whoever that guy is might be hand here. Okay.

50:47 I got no clarity on maggot Reaper. I was going to ask you if you could figure out.

50:52 Yeah. I just suddenly realized it was like, oh yeah, there was a mummy hand and I have no idea how this pans out later in the film. Okay.

50:58 That's my best guess is it's Maggot Reaper. Okay. Anyway, so we cut away now to Henrietta and the clown in the basement. Henrietta looks at the clown. She looks at it, doesn't say anything, but it's kind of like, do you think everything's going to be all right? And then she hugs it. And then this droning satanic synthesizer chord swells. And then we get one of these hilarious smash cuts. Smash cut from the satanic music and the clown in the basement in the dark. to a marina full of yachts on the Boston waterfront with shopping mall jazz playing, you know, ba-doop, boop, boop, ba-doop. It's kind of elevator music and text on screen that says 20 years later.

51:37 Yeah, that's right. We're finally going to meet up with our two main characters as they, what, they're talking about chili, I think.

51:43 That's the thing I remember. So they're Martha and Paul. They are a couple in their 20s living in a big studio apartment in Boston.

51:50 A big one too, like wide open. Huge, yeah.

51:53 Uh, so I was, I've got a comment about that in a minute, but I was going to ask it, do you understand what Martha is doing? Is she supposed to be a graduate student? Uh, because she mentions, I think she is in school, but she mentioned something about being held up late at the library when she's on the phone with Paul and Paul gives her a vague warning that something like, Oh, be careful. Don't get into any trouble or you'll lose your scholarship and have to go back to Amsterdam. I was thinking, what kind of trouble is she getting into at the library? I thought what that would mean is that she's like an investigative journalist or something, or she's like digging into a conspiracy, something they don't want her to know about. It goes

52:36 all the way to the top. But this never gets mentioned again, so I have no idea what the hypothetical library trouble is.

52:43 I think that the Umberto Lindsay screenplay writing here is that not everything has to connect to anything else. or mean anything in and of itself. Just have the characters say some things. It doesn't have to connect in any way to anything that matters.

53:02 But even if it didn't connect, I wonder, what could he have been thinking that the character means here? What is in Paul's head when he's thinking she could be in trouble at the library?

53:12 Yeah, I think all it is is just this vague attempt to create the sense that, yeah, she's a modern woman. She's a student. And they have kind of like a, you know, they have a fun, happy relationship where he's like, don't get into trouble. Like it just doesn't, it doesn't mean anything. All right.

53:41 Uh, anyway, Paul, uh, we, a little bit about him too. He works in data processing. He says multiple times in the movie, sorry, data processing, I think is his pronunciation. And so he's a data processing by day and also major ham radio hobbyist by day.

53:58 He's a tech guy.

53:59 He's sitting in his apartment. He's a call sign K1UR. So in the middle of the apartment, he's got this big table with a beige 1980s computer, a bunch of radio equipment. When we first meet him, he is sitting at this desk wearing a teal shirt tucked into khakis, talking to somebody on the radio. And I could not understand this conversation, but like, why is he talking about Simon Le Bon?

54:21 Yeah, I thought it was going to be more. The best I could figure out is maybe he's running data on popular musicians and celebrities or something.

54:30 That would be some data processing.

54:33 Yeah, or maybe I am also trying to read too much into dialogue that just means nothing here.

54:41 Well, I transcribed one of the lines. He's talking to this person. He says, I can appreciate your feelings about Simon Le Bon. You've been talking about him for a week. How does your boyfriend feel about him? Okay.

54:54 So, yeah, is he talking to somebody who is just a fan? Or is he talking to somebody who's, like, in the world? And I'm not sure. And certainly at this point in the movie, I had no idea. It's like, are these people in the music industry? You know, we've only just met these characters, and all we have are sort of, like, vague comments to try and piece together who they are.

55:15 I'm a roadie for Simon Le Bon, but I also take time while we're on tour to get on the ham radio. Yeah. Anyway, so we can see in the scene that, as we mentioned a minute ago, Paul and Martha have a very nice, very spacious, tastefully furnished apartment. So I think we're supposed to understand that Paul makes very good money in data processing. He's some kind of computer yuppie.

55:39 Yeah, it's got to be processed. Somebody's got to do it. Yeah. He's the man. Yeah.

55:44 The phone rings during the scene and Paul tells this person he's talking to on the radio. He has to say goodbye. The phone call is from Martha at a pay phone. And they have this weird conversation I mentioned earlier about like, don't get in trouble at the library. Then Paul says he made a pot of chili. Martha looks very happy at this news. And she says, I wrote this down. She says, keep it hot. I'll be there in about two hours. Oh, and one more thing.

56:11 Keep yourself hot too. Legitimate laugh out loud at that. Oh my God.

56:18 Oh man. This is just incredible dialogue. Keep yourself hot too.

56:24 Along with the chili. Keep the chili hot.

56:27 I have no doubt that someone has definitely said something like this before, but afterwards they have cringed hard and they've been like, oh my God, did I just say keep yourself hot like a bowl of chili? I did. Oh, I'm such a, such a weirdo. Uh, here perfectly happy with this remark. Yeah.

56:45 And she actually, she looks like really proud of herself. She like hits the phone down and smiles like, Ooh.

56:52 Oh my goodness. Yeah.

56:54 Uh, and then after the call, Paul gets back on the radio and starts talking to somebody about, uh, who is more popular in the city of Denver, Kim Basinger or Kelly LeBrock.

57:05 Hmm. Hmm. That's a tough one. Maybe Kelly LeBrock. I don't know. Had weird science come out yet. I'm not sure.

57:12 I don't know.

57:13 88.

57:13 I think so. Yeah.

57:14 Kelly, Kelly LeBrock. I'm going with Kelly LeBrock on this one. Okay. Yeah.

57:19 Anyway, we cut to later. Martha is back home. Now they're, they're kind of puttering around in the bedroom and Martha sees that something is bothering Paul. She asks him about it. He tells a story. I had to loosely transcribe this part too. He says, something really weird happened last night. It was about 1130. I was trying to reach Denver when all of a sudden the radio just went crazy.

57:42 I mean, completely crazy. Martha says, what's weird about that? Paul says, because it never happened before. I mean, all the circuits just went haywire. And then all of a sudden I heard this voice calling for help and then a terrible scream, really terrible scream. Martha says, who was it? Paul says, I don't know. But whoever it was, he sounded really scared to death. Martha says, I'm starving. I'm going to get some chili. Paul says, get me some too, will you? Extra jalapenos?

58:17 Slow down there, partner. Oh, boy. Again, for some reason, I just find it very improbable that these two are going to actually eat chili or even know what chili is. I'm not believing it. There's nothing believable about this chili dialogue.

58:32 What do you think Paul's chili recipe? Is he one of those guys who there's no chili whatsoever in the chili? It's just tomatoes and ground beef?

58:40 Maybe, yeah, if that. I left this movie wondering if people eat chili at all. That's how unbelievable this exchange was. And then we just happened to have chili last night for dinner. But this movie made it seem like it's something just made up. That's how unbelievable the dialogue.

58:58 Anyway, after this, Paul remembers something. He's like, oh, I'm late. I was supposed to call K7ET. So his ham radio hobby really here, it feels more like his hobby is chat room. Like he's just got people he's supposed to talk to.

59:12 This is his prime social interaction here outside of the house. Okay.

59:18 So he throws the teal shirt back on, goes to the radio and it makes these horrible squealing noises. He kind of squints at it. But then suddenly he calls out to Martha to bring over his tape recorder and I think it was in this scene that I noticed it looks like they have multiple copies of the same edition of a newspaper sitting on the table. So they're kind of not stacked perfectly on top of each other, and they look like they have the same front page.

59:46 Well, maybe the particular article they wanted to save, so they got three copies. They want to send copies to friends.

59:51 I guess it could be, yeah.

59:52 Yeah.

59:54 All the trouble I got into at the library was mentioned in an article in the crime report.

59:58 Yeah, yeah. Got to cut that out and send that home to mom.

1:00:02 Anyway, so they hit record on the tape machine and then a voice cuts through the static on the radio. It is a rather twerpy sounding male voice that calls out for help. It says, help me for God's sake, somebody help me. And then there's a scream and then another scream. And then the demon clown jingle plays. So they listened for a bit, then it cuts off. What was all that about? Uh, Martha says she thinks it might just be a stupid prank. And then Paul says, quote, nobody would pull a stunt like that. It's unethical.

1:00:38 Yeah.

1:00:40 Besides it sounded real to me.

1:00:42 Did it?

1:00:43 It didn't sound that real to me.

1:00:45 Yeah.

1:00:47 So they listened to the tape again and then Martha gets an idea. she says to Paul, hey, is it possible for you to calculate the location of the radio that sent that signal? Because if so, we can go find out for ourselves if it was real. And honey, your man works in data processing. Of course he can do that. He's got a computer, for God's sake. So yes, he can calculate where that signal came from. So they put on a pot of coffee and Paul gets to work.

1:01:16 Did you notice in the scene that he's got a wood carving of his call sign sitting on top of the radio, a little wood carving K1UR?

1:01:23 He's so into this. I didn't even stop to wonder if what he's proposing here is technologically possible. I just don't know about ham radio, if you can triangulate the signal or anything.

1:01:34 That's a good question. You absolutely can't signal hunting... is a thing within amateur radio and there are even like a transmitter hunting contests, but generally I think you have to be mobile on those from like, you know, people take directional antennas out and they go driving around, you know, like looking for a hidden transmitter. So that, that's like a type of game that some radio hobbyists play. I don't, that's a good question. I don't know how feasible triangulating a signal is from a single point. Like if you're just at your house and you're not moving around, you can't.

1:02:08 Yeah.

1:02:09 Ham radio enthusiasts listening to the show. Fact check this for us and report back. Yeah.

1:02:14 Maybe if you can compare notes with other people, you know, other people receiving. Anyway, so the next morning, Paul and Martha are loading luggage into Paul's truck. It's a pickup truck with a camper top on back. And this is the scene where Martha's like, did you have to wake me up so early? And with palpable annoyance, Paul says, we have to find that radio. A crime may have been committed, maybe even murder. Like she wasn't there when they were listening. So, you know, they hit the road and it shows them when they're leaving town, they're on the freeway and they're in the far left lane driving the slowest of anybody around them and cars are passing them on the right. Uh, so where are they going? Well,

1:02:56 I think the house that they go to is going to end up being in this small town in Massachusetts. It's situate, which is like a coastal town, uh, in Massachusetts. Uh, but on the way they end up driving through a neighborhood that looks like it's right on the coast. So I don't know if they're taking shortcuts or what, but in this neighborhood, this is where Martha and Paul encountered this character, uh, Pepe that we will meet again in the IMDB credits. He's Pepe. The question about his name only arose for me because in the subtitles of the movie, they call him Pam Pam.

1:03:29 Pam Pam? I don't think that's right. I've never heard anybody in the world named Pam Pam.

1:03:34 Yeah. Yeah. So Pepe is a hitchhiker. He's wearing UMass gear. So I think he's supposed to be a college student. He's got like a UMass hat on and then he's got a Manchester hockey jacket. So, yeah, he's hitchhiking. He flags down Martha and Paul for a ride by running out in the middle of the street and blocking the path of their car. And then Paul shows extreme irritation.

1:03:59 This is one of those first scenes where Paul is just way over the top aggro at somebody, but he does give him a ride. So he's like really furious at this guy, but he's like, yeah, get in. Um, and then, uh, so, uh, the Pepe gets in the car. This is where he has the joke about how hitching's fun. It's the hiking part that sucks. Then he talks about how Massachusetts sucks. And then he talks about how every place sucks. After this, he's like, he's like plenty of the younger in that letter. He's like, Hey, do you believe in ghosts? I don't know where it brings it up.

1:04:32 Paul says, no, the hitchhiker says he does believe in ghosts. And then we get the skeleton hand prank. Uh, so Rob, do you know what these toys are called? The thing where you, it's like a hand that you can manipulate by like pulling triggers and the fingers move.

1:04:46 Oh yeah. Yeah. Just grabbers is what we always called them. There may be a, different trade names for them. But yeah, they still make them today. They're still a lot of fun.

1:04:55 Yeah.

1:04:55 Still kind of useless. Sometimes, I mean, it varies. The ones that are just claws, those can actually be rather good and can also help people who, you know, have issues picking things up, you know, or, you know, there are some sort of mobility issues, that sort of thing. But the ones that are shaped like hands that just kind of do a, those generally barely work. And I think that's more what this is.

1:05:19 When I was a kid, I had a Terminator hand, one of those. That was one of my favorite toys of mine. It was pretty cool.

1:05:24 Yeah, I had the claw. But then eventually we had a dog that chewed it up. For some reason, we kept it, but it no longer could pick anything up because it had been chewed.

1:05:34 Well, Pepe's version of this is a skeleton hand that he can move the fingers on, and he scares Martha with it. He puts it on her shoulder and freaks her out. So I think it's funny that this guy gets into a car with a driver that's already incredibly hostile to him from the jump. And then he just keeps on rolling, like riling them up further.

1:05:56 Yeah, this is another scene in the film that feels very confused. Like, what sort of hitchhiker was this supposed to be? Like, at some point, what's the screenplay calling for more of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre hitchhiker who's just like completely deranged and who knows what they're going to do next? But then the performance and the actor playing the role of Pepe feels very down to earth and likable.

1:06:17 And it just creates a lot of confusion as to who is this guy supposed to be and who is he?

1:06:24 So they eventually drop the hitchhiker off. And then after they drive away, he says, you should believe in ghosts, P-Brain. And then later Martha realizes that the hitchhiker pickpocketed $ 5 off of her quote with that stupid trick, presumably meaning the skeleton grabber hand. And if so, I was just thinking that is seriously impressive. Like sleight of hand is hard enough with your flesh hands, but like sleight of hand with a Mecca skeleton finger, that's like world-class.

1:06:53 Yeah. Especially again, since many of these grabbers have never been effectively used to pick anything up. So yeah. If he can pickpocket with it. Wow. More power to him. He earned that five bucks.

1:07:04 So suddenly they're here at the house. The radio, which is now somehow like working inside the truck, beeps. And then the truck pulls up in front of the Queen Anne house from the prologue. So they sit there looking at this house and a disturbed looking man in overalls walks up on their truck. He's got beard stubble, a scar.

1:07:24 He might as well be chewing a piece of hay. He's that kind of character. This is Valkos. And when Martha sees him, she screams. The first thing he says is he indicates the house and he says, nobody lives there anymore.

1:07:37 Just rats.

1:07:39 And Valkos is suspicious of what they're doing here. He asks where they're from. Somehow this question gets Paul talking about how he's in data processing. And Valkos doesn't like the sound of that. Paul clarifies that it means he works with computers. And then Valkos lets forth a mighty scoff. He's like, computers, please. And then he just wanders away, clutching his shovel. And, uh, Paul, uh, Martha says, I thought he was going to attack us. And Paul says, you've got some imagination, like indicating Valcos would never attack us.

1:08:13 Yeah. This, this tall scowling, um, Strange man that we've encountered in the woods. Yeah, I think he might attack us. I think it's very much in the cards.

1:08:23 Who will attack us with a meat cleaver later.

1:08:25 Yeah, we will see him brutally murder people later in the picture. So, yeah, I think it was in the cards.

1:08:31 I think Paul and Martha should argue about this. They need to have an argument. But anyway, they drive up to the house, even though they were already at the house. And then they get out and look around. There's a bat scare here where Martha sees a bat on the veranda. And then she starts talking about how there is something evil in the house and they need to leave. And Paul's like, come on, don't be silly. There's no such thing as evil. And they break in and they wander around looking at things, you know, a bunch of old rooms covered in cobwebs. There are knives hanging on the wall.

1:09:02 Martha in the kitchen, she fondles one of the knives and then gets blood on her hand. So there was blood on the knife and she doesn't mention this to Paul. Eventually they follow some noises into the attic. which in this case you reach via an iron spiral staircase. Pretty awesome. Rob, I don't know if you're as fond of spiral staircases as I am, but I'm a sucker for them.

1:09:23 They generally look pretty cool on camera, that's for sure.

1:09:26 Yeah, I always love a spiral staircase. But they go up and they find an amateur radio rig in the attic. Paul makes some kind of comment about the brand. He's like, oh, it's a Yaesu. I don't know what that means. I looked it up. That is a real radio manufacturer, but Uh, anyway, they're up there and then a guy sneaks up, uh, sneaks up behind them on the stairs and confronts them.

1:09:49 It is a guy wearing this huge oversized olive green vest. Actually, basically everybody's wearing vests in this scene. Paul's got a vest on too. Uh, and the guy who comes up the stairs is holding at first what looks like a knife. He's holding something out as a weapon, but then you can see in other shots, it's a honing steel. It's what you use to hone your knives on.

1:10:12 Hmm.

1:10:13 I don't know why he's holding it like that. So the guy claims that the radio is his. Paul says, you live here? And this guy says, no, we're here on vacation. My camper's parked out in the yard. I'm here with my brother and his girlfriend. My sister Tina's with us, too. My name's Jim Dallin.

1:10:32 This is another great unnatural exchange where he just lists all the additional characters you're going to meet in.

1:10:38 The next scene. Here's the cast sheet.

1:10:40 Mm-hmm.

1:10:41 He demands to know who Paul and Martha are. And Paul says, just a ham operator like yourself. You wouldn't hurt a ham brother. And so Jim is suspicious of them, but Paul and Martha played the tape that they made. And we realized that the guy, the guy who's calling for help, who was calling on the radio that they taped, that is Jim's voice. It's him. And they listened to the whole thing, including the jingle. Jim denies that it could be a broadcast he made because he says he wasn't transmitting at the time Paul received it. And in fact, he says he has not even put the aerial, not put the antenna up on the roof yet. So it couldn't have been him. And then he invites Paul to come out onto the roof with him to prove it.

1:11:23 And Paul's like, okay, I'll come take a look. Always good to like follow a hostile weapon clutching stranger onto the roof.

1:11:30 Yeah.

1:11:31 Yeah.

1:11:32 Then meanwhile, so they go up there and Martha's left alone in the house and the demon clown song plays again. Not from the tape. It's just playing somewhere inside the house. So Martha wanders downstairs to follow the sound. She eventually ends up in the basement where she is attacked by various poltergeisty phenomena. There are more glass containers that inflate like balloons and then burst. Again, this is a pretty neat little trick. The furnace burps fire at her. And then she turns and sees that the washing machine is going and inside through the glass, she sees a head.

1:12:06 It's just a head in there kind of, you know, going around.

1:12:10 Oh yeah. I love the head effect here. I mean, I love this whole scene because I love any of these glass containers inflating and bursting. But the washing machine, especially there's some sort of like bloated head inside and it, It looks really good. It looks very convincing. There's some various gifs of this online you can pull up as well.

1:12:31 Video clips. It's a horrifying sequence.

1:12:34 Hats off to whoever made that.

1:12:35 I don't know how the head factors in. Maybe it's the little girl's mom's head. I don't know.

1:12:42 Yeah, I'm looking at the picture now. It doesn't look like anybody else in the movie.

1:12:46 Of course, it's been in the washing machine a while.

1:12:48 That'll distort things. It's like when a dollar goes through the wash.

1:12:55 It's going to be hell on the filters.

1:13:07 So Jim and Paul hear Martha screaming and they go to her and then she can't really explain what happened. It's like, was that real or am I losing my mind? The head is no longer there, obviously. So somewhere around here, we meet the other three main characters in the movie, Jim's companions. That's Tina, Mark and Susan. And our introduction to them is them yelling at each other about Susan's motorcycle being too loud or not. There's a conference in the driveway. Amazing dialogue in the scene as usual. So Jim, Jim vouches for Paul's story. He says, Paul's telling the truth.

1:13:44 I listened to that tape about 20 times. Like, Oh my God, I don't know how anybody could listen to that 20 times, that song.

1:13:52 I mean, I feel like we hear it 20 times throughout the picture.

1:13:55 Oh, we probably do, yeah.

1:13:55 And then again, I was listening to it on my phone and then I was like, I've got to tag some other track. I can't feed the algorithm of my Apple Music with this. Or he's going to think, oh, more creepy clown tracks. This is what Rob wants to listen to right now.

1:14:11 Yeah, let's throw this on when you're out for a run.

1:14:13 Yeah, it's going to be on my running playlist for sure.

1:14:17 And then so he says, yeah, Paul's telling the truth. I listened to the tape 20 times. Susan says, it doesn't mean anything. It's just a bunch of nonsense. And then Paul says, yeah, right. And so is what happened to Martha in the cellar. But it did happen. Something got a little transposed there.

1:14:37 Yeah, I think so. But I do love this line. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a bunch of nonsense. Speaks volumes for what we experience in this movie.

1:14:47 At some point, Mark says, maybe there's something supernatural about all this, guys. And Paul says, I don't know. All I know are computers.

1:14:57 I miss computers so much. There's one point where he's like, I'll have to look it up on my computer when I get back to my apartment. And like, that's such a dated and telling line. You know, we think about now we carry at least some portion of our computer world with us at all times. And here he's like, oh, yeah, my computer's back in Boston.

1:15:13 When I heard that line, I was like, is he even telling the truth or does he just want to get back to his computer? He's like, I would really need my, I need some computer time to solve this mystery. He misses it. So, by the way, Susan and Tina are often at each other's throats and they are in this scene. They don't really like each other. Susan is dismissive of the idea of the supernatural. Tina just, I don't know if she really cares about the issue. She just generally seems anti-Susan. And there's a later conversation where Susan, who's posing like Aphrodite on her motorcycle, asks Tina why she didn't tell them that she ran away from her boarding school. Tina says that she has permission from the

1:15:58 headmistress to be away. And Susan is like, no, I just got off the phone with her.

1:16:04 What?

1:16:04 I don't know. So among these characters, Tina has a reputation for lying. And Tina responds to this thing about the headmistress by yelling at them and saying, idiots, you're all against me. I hate you. I hate you all. By the way, lots of characters are wearing denim top and bottom, like multiple vests and multiple denim jacket, jeans, sometimes even denim shirt.

1:16:29 Yeah. And if you're having any confusion about which character is which, this is not going to help.

1:16:34 Hmm. Uh, so I just realized I'm wearing a denim shirt today. I didn't even do that on purpose. It must've been subconscious thinking about this movie. Uh, so will we ever get to the bottom of this? Well, they make a plan, uh, Martha and Paul, they're going to drive a few miles away in their truck and listen to the same frequency again all night. Cause they brought the radio with them so they can sit in the back of the truck and listen. Meanwhile, the others are going to listen to the radio here at the house.

1:17:03 Mark says, what do you think will happen? And Paul says, we'll see. So I don't even know what this, what is this supposed to prove?

1:17:11 Are they still trying to triangulate a location here? Because they found it. What's the shed? Like they end up finding the shed, right? Somehow we get to that shed, right? Some sort of additional building.

1:17:23 The only time I remember getting to another building is when Valkos chases somebody. Yeah. Or somebody chases Valkos.

1:17:29 Maybe it's that.

1:17:30 I don't know. No, they already, they already found the radio. They found the location. So I don't, I really don't understand what they're trying to prove with this experiment. They're just like, well, I'm going to go two miles away and listen all night and you listen here and then we'll see what happens.

1:17:44 Maybe this is something that was just lost in the edit or in tinkering with the script. I don't know.

1:17:50 Uh, Paul asks Martha, if she wants to come with him on this mission to listen to the radio all night, she replies that she does not want to go back to Boston. first of all, that was not one of the options. I think it's either come with me two miles away or stay here at the house. But also, why does she not want to go back to Boston? Like, you've got chili leftovers in the fridge there.

1:18:10 Yeah, I mean, unless they polished it off, we don't know how much chili they made. But presumably quite a lot. That's one of the whole reasons you make chili. Something that, you know, could have been lost on the movie makers here. They might not have realized that that's the whole deal. Chili is for leftovers. Yeah.

1:18:25 The whole point is leftovers.

1:18:26 Yeah, you're not making chili for this meal. You're making chili for the next, like, three or four meals. Yeah.

1:18:32 Uh, so anyway, Susan ends up going with Paul and Martha in the truck. Uh, by the way, Val coast is spying on everybody from the bushes all through this part of the movie. So they do the plan. They listen to the radio all night. Now there's some ludicrous dialogue while everybody sits around expressing their boredom. Uh, Tina, hangs out in the camper trailer at the house where they've got a little tv in the trailer and while she's in there suddenly a new show pops up on the screen it is the grinning little girl and her clown from hell that's the show i guess and the clown jingle plays henrietta cries blood on the tv and tina freaks out I love all the old brands on display in the trailer. So I noticed they've got Lipton

1:19:13 tea bags, a box of 100, Ajax powder, Coffee Mate, and then Heinz ketchup sitting on the edge of the sink like they're going to wash dishes with it. But then there's a, I was actually kind of wondering how they did this. There's a shaking the camper special effect where inside the camper, you can see it's rocking back and forth violently and everything's sliding around. And then she goes outside the camper and it's shaking around outside too.

1:19:38 They must have something behind it. That's like lifting it up. But anyway, there are general hauntings inside the house too, with Jim and Mark. They hear the clown song. They go into, they go to investigate. Jim ends up encountering the creepy child with the clown by her side in the basement. And here's where we get a murder. So earlier in the basement, I noticed that there was an electric fan with no cage around the blades, just lying on top of a shelf. It's like Chekhov's uncaged fan blades.

1:20:14 Yeah, especially in a movie like this. You know that's going to cut into some flesh.

1:20:18 I've seen House of Lost Souls. I think I know what Umberto Lindsay is into. So the fan turns on, of course, under ghost power. It whirs up and then it breaks and it flings a blade into Jim's throat. And as this happens, he calls out the same things we heard on the radio earlier. You know, for God's sake, help me. So the radio signal was not exactly a ghost.

1:20:42 It was a transmission from the future. Kind of interesting. What does that mean? It turns out to not really be significant.

1:20:48 I know. This is one of those films where occasionally they'll touch on something that sounds like, man, you could have really pulled on that string and where could it have taken us? We have a message from the future or how about the fact that supernatural energy does seem to be an actual electricity that can power household items?

1:21:08 Like surely our tech bro main character here might have picked up on that and maybe thought, you know, hey, we could harness this. Look at powerful cities.

1:21:18 Clean energy, clean energy for the world powered by ghosts.

1:21:21 Yeah, there you go. Like how haunted is Boston? Well, let's use those ghosts to power Boston.

1:21:26 We just need a, like a rage race inside a reactor. Yeah, I can see it.

1:21:31 Yeah.

1:21:32 So, uh, uh, let's see, Tina runs down into the basement. She finds Jim's body there, but then she has an, an, another encounter with the creepy little girl who is stroking the clown dolls chin. Sorry, folks, we just had a break for a second because we were hearing strange noises. I think it's actually something totally not supernatural happening in my house. But we did have to wonder if it was something a little bit clowny. Oh, this is the part in the movie where Mark, the character Mark, is in the house. And he has a showdown with a Doberman dog that has enormous nipples.

1:22:06 Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Doberman. A popular horror effect of the time. Certainly. I think Dobermans kind of got a bad rap due to their usage in films like this. Because, I mean, I've met some Dobermans that I was very much afraid of, but I've also met some Dobermans that were rather sweet. Oh, yeah.

1:22:26 I had a friend with a Doberman when I was little and it was a sweet dog.

1:22:29 Yeah.

1:22:30 Yeah. Okay. So this, yeah, this guy sees a Doberman that's got enormous nipples and it's snarling at him. And then, uh, to make matters worse, uh, Valcos suddenly appears in the house from out of nowhere with a meat cleaver and just starts chasing people around. He chases Tina. Then Mark fights him. Then Valcos kicks Mark in the crotch and runs away. Mark chases him into the basement of, I think another house, or maybe this is the shed you were thinking of.

1:22:58 Yeah, I think so.

1:23:00 And then they fight some more. Valcos attacks Mark with a pitchfork, stabs him in the shoulder and The others arrive and they come back to the house and intervene. Paul puts Valkos in a chokehold and then drops him to the floor. I didn't know that Paul knew these like submission moves.

1:23:15 Yeah. I mean, you gotta be ready. Yeah.

1:23:17 And then when he falls to the floor, Martha says, look, it's that man. So all the characters like share their experiences and awkwardly phrased ways. And then they find Jim's body in the basement. Valkos runs away into the woods. And in the aftermath, at one point, they're all talking and they're like, hey, did anyone tell Tina about Jim?

1:23:41 And Martha says, I gave her a tranquilizer. She's asleep. I was like, what? Is Martha a doctor? Or are people in 1988 just walking around with tranquilizers to hand out?

1:23:51 It was acceptable in the 80s. Yeah.

1:23:53 Okay. So... After this, Martha hears a dog barking inside the house and she goes in. Well, first she like starts opening cabinets in the camper trailer. And I was thinking like, wait, is she looking for the dog in the cabinets? But I realized she's looking for a weapon. And then she pulls out what I think is a rotisserie skewer.

1:24:14 All right. It'll do in a pinch.

1:24:16 She takes it into the house. There she finds a child's bedroom full of creepy toys, starts digging through the toy box. And eventually, what do you think she's going to find? Clown doll. When she sees that the jingle plays and the clown's face changes to show teeth, more poltergeisty stuff like toys flying all over the room and, you know, feathers puffing out of pillows and all up in the air. Then after this, Martha is actually attacked by the clown doll. Like it grabs her throat and she screams and screams until Paul comes running. She rants at him about the doll, but then he goes to look at it and the clown is gone.

1:24:52 Hmm.

1:24:53 So after this, they get the law involved. They're going to call the police. I guess I'll summarize what happens in the next portion a little more quickly.

1:25:02 Yeah, because this goes nowhere, basically.

1:25:03 Yeah, totally. So the police arrive on scene. They assume that Jim was killed by Valkos. I want to mention that the coroner who's talking to the detective has a voice that sounds like Bobby Pickett in the Monster Mash.

1:25:16 Yeah, yeah. This is one of those films where you're like, I wonder how they're going to depict the coroner and then later the mortician in a movie like this. I was like, oh yeah, they're going to play them up for maximum creeps.

1:25:26 So the, the, the coroner is like, I will, I will see you at the autopsy tomorrow.

1:25:33 Yeah. Like all these guys are just actual necromancers.

1:25:36 Yeah. The detective explains that, uh, Valcos is the caretaker of the house and he's sort of obsessed with it. That would explain why he's attacking people here. We also learn about the events we saw in the prologue, the murders in the house 20 years ago and what happened afterwards. We learned that the girl from the prologue was later found dead, locked in the cellar. And this leads to the investigation portion of the film. Like we talked about in our core episodes, again, on the haunted houses, these modern haunted house stories usually require some kind of detective work.

1:26:08 The protagonist has to bring the story of the ghost to light in some ways to resolve it. So Martha and Paul... go on an investigation. First, they go back to Boston. This is the part where Paul says he needs his computer. Paul uses his computer to analyze the words from the Demon Clown jingle from the tape they made.

1:26:29 Martha exasperatedly yells at him that he will never be able to decipher the lyrics. And then Paul says, I wrote this down, the fact that the computer doesn't know proves that I'm right. Huh? But about what? Then they argue about more things like he talks about how the voice was something that came from the future. And then Martha says, you can't know what's going to happen in the future. And Paul says, yes, you can. Cases of precognition have occurred.

1:27:01 Paul is just a sucker for any idea here. Yes. Yeah. It's like it's happened. I heard about it.

1:27:06 In fact, he literally says, she's like, since when do you believe in that stuff? And he says, for the past 45 minutes, I checked out this book while you were in the shower. And it's a book about precognition.

1:27:16 Well, at least he checked out a book. I mean. It's a little more believable than just, uh, I, I looked at Reddit and now I asked, uh, I asked, uh, AI and it said that it's legit. So now I'm 100% convinced.

1:27:28 Well, that's what it would be now. And yeah, back then you had to go check out a book while Martha's in the show.

1:27:33 Seriously risk losing interest before you got your answer.

1:27:39 Uh, this is, you notice, this is one of those movies that has the problem of, the characters are several steps behind the audience and figuring out what's going on. That's always a, I mean, I feel like that only really works in a comedy in a movie in like a serious horror movie or something. It, you kind of have to have the audience and the characters find things out at the same time, you know?

1:28:03 Yeah. Well, the less, you know, the more mystery there is and the mystery is powerful and, builds up the, you know, the weirdness, the sense of terror. And I mean, I guess we still have that to a certain extent because not everything lines up in this movie. So there's kind of like accidental mystery, accidental enigma.

1:28:22 But it's funny that you have stuff like the characters, like 20 minutes after the audience has already figured out that the radio signal was from the future. Finally, the protagonist is figuring that out.

1:28:32 Yeah.

1:28:34 And eventually the computer does decipher the message. It determines that the word burial. is part of the clown jingle. So Eureka, but then why, what does this reveal?

1:28:45 Yeah, this never fully explained. Um, but I liked it. I liked the idea that it's like, oh, the song is saying burial. I guess that sounds, it sounds pretty heavy and I guess it does tie in maybe to, I mean, we are going to have to unearth a grave. To sort of solve this situation. So we'll see where it goes.

1:29:02 Well, it leads them to the job of Henrietta's father. So they learn from the police that Sam Baker, the father of Henrietta, was a funeral director. So next they go to the funeral home where he worked and they interrogate his former co-worker about him. This guy, again, is a strange character.

1:29:20 This is Champagne, the mortician. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

1:29:24 This guy is like, Sam was a wonderful man, a great man, a mentor to me, but he did have one practice I didn't fully approve of, which was grave robbing.

1:29:35 Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah, he would steal things off the corpses, but we couldn't fire him because he was just, he was so damn good at his job otherwise.

1:29:42 So he would steal from the dead. And in one instance, he stole a clown doll from the body of a dead child and gave it to his daughter as a gift. Very cool behavior. And then he, uh, so this, they learned this and this sends them on another quest to the cemetery to talk to old Mr. Harvey, the cemetery manager. Uh, there's a random detour here where Valcos shows up to kill the funeral home guy that Paul talked to. It's one of those movie murders where the victim makes no attempt to escape. Like Valcos shows up and then the funeral guy is just going like, no Valcos, no. And like not running or anything.

1:30:22 Yeah.

1:30:22 Yeah, and it also just leaves us kind of hanging, like, what's the relationship between these two? Like, it's kind of implied that Valkos was doing bad things for the mortician, but, and then suddenly, or they had some sort of a dangerous relationship that suddenly goes haywire.

1:30:37 Well, he does speak to him with familiarity when he shows up, yeah.

1:30:40 But I was left wondering, like, what's the deal here? We never know, because, yeah, Valkos beats him in the head with something and then stuffs him in a coffin. And I was thinking like, what's happening next to the coffin? Is he going to cremate him or bury him alive? We don't see.

1:30:55 Nothing.

1:30:56 Yeah.

1:31:06 So we do learn that the doll is the source of the evil. And again, it's another one of those things where the audience is so far ahead of the characters. The movie establishes like 4,000% more than is necessary that the doll is the cause of the trouble. And so they keep like characters keep finding this out over and over and the audience is like, yes, we get it.

1:31:29 The clown is bad. Yeah. Uh, so meanwhile, back at the house, Mark, Tina and Susan, uh, they are supposed to leave the house. They've already said, yeah, we're about to leave, but they don't, they have engine trouble. And then Mark's like, well, you know, should we call triple a? No, I need a part to fix things. I can do it.

1:31:47 So they just end up staying at the murder clown house. Also, eventually, Pepe shows up. The UMass hitchhiker who thinks everything sucks. He shows up and he's like, I need a place to crash. And this house is as good as any. What are the odds he'd end up in the exact same house?

1:32:04 Yeah, it's like this character just showed back up to die. You know it right away. He's on borrowed time now.

1:32:10 So when he arrives, he pranks people by sneaking up behind them and grabbing them across the face with the skeleton hand. And then Pepe goes inside the house and he checks out what they've got in the pantry. He sticks his hand into a box of Pepperidge Farm garlic and onion croutons, but the box is just full of cockroaches.

1:32:30 And then he disappears for a while and then randomly turns up as a.

1:32:33 Dead body later. Yeah, I don't think we even see his death on screen. He's just like, knock at the door or something, and there he is, bloodied and wounded, and he falls over dead. Yeah.

1:32:43 Somewhere in here, there is a scene I found conceptually hilarious where the coroner explains to the police detective that Jim could not have been murdered because the autopsy revealed that the fan blade hit him in the throat from below, from an upward angle, with the implication is that's not possible if it was wielded by a human.

1:33:04 Okay, yeah. I'm not sure that makes complete sense i mean i think we've all consumed enough forensics uh information you know believable or not in like you know cop media where we kind of get the idea that you know objects can do strange things when they're in motion or ricocheting off of exploding material that sort of thing.

1:33:27 But i like how it's like oh the angle of the fan blade proves that ghosts are real yeah But so as you can guess, most of the remaining characters are just going to bite it one way or another, getting ghosted in the house. Yeah, we got to.

1:33:41 Whittle down that cast before we can close out the picture.

1:33:44 Tina goes into the house. She gets chopped in half by a pane of glass that falls from the ceiling. Susan has a freak out where she's staring in the mirror over the bathroom sink and blood starts coming out of the faucet. I think this is a take on the bathroom mirror freak out in Poltergeist.

1:34:00 Yeah, yeah. In Poltergeist, there's like Actually, it's one of the effects in Poltergeist that doesn't hold up all that well, where the meat is being pulled off of the face. Here, we don't get the full extent of that, but it's still pretty creepy. Though it did leave me wondering, because we come back to this sink later and it's still running blood, and I'm like, is it hot? Is it cold?

1:34:22 Is it hot and cold? What's the full plumbing situation with the blood faucet here?

1:34:26 She just left it running? Won't somebody think about the blood bill?

1:34:28 I know. Yeah.

1:34:31 So Mark also goes into the house and then he falls through the floor into a pit of white slime.

1:34:39 Oh, yeah. This is an amazing moment. I've seen some people describe this online as like boiling milk. I really got the sense that this is just it's like ectoplasm. Like this place is maybe so haunted that there's like a deposit of just pure ectoplasm underneath the house. And he falls right into it. And then he manages to emerge from it again, still covered in goop and so out of it, maybe not even fully human anymore. We don't know. But this sequence is just so nuts and so goopy. It made me feel like this is something right out of Boxer's Omen. It's that kind of black magic action. That's where it would fit in. Here, it is just completely nuts out of nowhere, and I love it.

1:35:28 It kind of half melts him. I was going to say that it looks like, it doesn't exactly look like milk to me. It looks more like cornstarch slurry or something.

1:35:38 Yeah, or oobleck. Yeah, exactly. That's what oobleck is, the cornstarch slurry. So yeah, that's exactly what it feels like. But yeah, in terms of the world of the film, I guess ectoplasm is the only thing that makes sense.

1:35:51 Yeah. But it's kind of melting him like it's doing something bad to him. It's a little bit Emil and Robocop.

1:35:56 Yeah. Yeah.

1:35:57 Absolutely. Then he crawls out. He crawls. So it doesn't fully kill him. He crawls out and then wanders into the other room where his terrified girlfriend, Susan, has been hanging out. And then she stabs him with a knife because she doesn't recognize it's him.

1:36:13 Then she gets the realization for the freak out. Yeah. But yeah, love the ectoplasm pit here. This was actually one of the things where you pick the movie and I was like, oh, I don't know anything about it. And I looked up a few stills and I saw a still of the ectoplasm pit and I'm like, okay, I'm all in.

1:36:28 Yeah.

1:36:28 Did not disappoint.

1:36:30 So let's see a few more threads to wrap up in the plot here. So Martha and Paul are going to have to investigate at the cemetery where the final resolution here is going to take place. So much stupid arguing between Martha and Paul at this point, just arguing about nothing. when they get there, Paul goes off to solve the mystery and Martha is left in the car and then she gets attacked by Valcos. Uh, Valcos chases her around. Somehow Valcos just dies. Like, did a ghost kill him?

1:37:00 He's suddenly hanging from the neck. Like he, like he hanged himself or a ghost hanged him. I don't know how it came to pass, but suddenly he's dead. Yeah. And in a way, I mean, probably just sloppy use of, um, a frightening image that's been utilized in various other films.

1:37:17 So Martha then finds the tomb of Henrietta, but she gets locked inside. I think she's trying to hide from Valco. She goes in, gets locked inside. She's in there screaming. And then Paul comes and tries to open the door. He uses Valco's sickle to open the crypt door. They're just random tarantulas in the crypt.

1:37:35 Just tarantula hanging out on the casket.

1:37:38 And he, Paul gets Martha out of the crypt and like, you know, puts her in the truck and gives her a bottle of Jack Daniels. And she's like, Paul, I saw death. So at this point, Susan is the only character left alive at the house. And she's being chased around by the Big Nipple Doberman and then also by a new figure, the Maggot Reaper. Rob, what's your take on Maggot Reaper?

1:38:01 Oh, I love Maggot Reaper. And we've said Maggot Reaper enough now that it sounds like it would be a great name for some sort of a doom sludge band. And I hope that Maggot Reaper exists and is out there making music. But yeah, well, maybe not that song, but, but yeah, maggot Reaper. I can totally see that on a t-shirt. I think there's something inspired and yet completely sloppy and shoddy about the whole prospect here, which is perfect for this film because maggot Reaper is just a grim reaper, but with a whole bunch of, I think they're actual maggots in this case. I don't think they're another variety of critter, but yeah, it's like just a bunch of maggots thrown under the face, the skeletal face

1:38:43 of the reaper, and then he just wanders after you. So, yeah, you know, there's a little bit of Fulci energy and it makes me think of, you know, use of maggots in various other horror films.

1:38:56 Oh, in City of the Living Dead when there's the maggot storm.

1:38:58 The maggot wind, yeah. Well, this is, yeah, this is Maggot Reaper, a similar take where you just throw some maggots on it and it makes it creepier and it does, but it also doesn't at the same time. It's, again, the effect looks fine for what it is, but yeah, it's odd.

1:39:15 So the maggot reapers creeping up on Susan, you know, what's going to happen to her. It seems like she's doomed. But meanwhile, Paul is at the cemetery and he, that he and Martha have discovered the grave of Henrietta and inside the grave. What's in that coffin. It's not just the girl's body, like perfectly preserved, but also uncorrupted.

1:39:35 Yeah.

1:39:36 She's like a saint, you know, incorruptible, um, uh, perfectly preserved, but also the clown.

1:39:41 Yeah.

1:39:42 Clowns in there in the coffin with her. And his solution is, well, I know what I gotta do. I gotta burn this. So he like pours gasoline on it and sets it on fire and that fixes the problem. You know, it's just like Athena Doris. And so he, uh, he burns the clown and this saves Susan, the maggot Reaper disappears. Uh, there is, there's like a weird noodley synthesizer riff that plays when this happens. It's very funny.

1:40:08 And so Susan actually lives, uh, the clown doll burns. And we see while the burning is happening, the cemetery manager, Mr. Harvey, he's like leaning into the tomb and he crosses himself. There's almost this look like somebody should have done this a long time ago. And there's kind of a wrap up where they're talking to the police. The detective comes out and he's like, you know, I told the district attorney, I think he blames the whole thing on Valcos. And he says, people want to be reassured. Believe me, they don't want to know about ghosts and curses and whatnot.

1:40:43 And same thing comes across to Susan. Paul tells Susan, I know how you feel, but you're going to have to learn to live with it on your own. You can never tell anyone. And then Susan rides away on her motorcycle. So it's back to Boston for our main couple, I guess. And seems like it's going to be happily ever after. But then the movie just is not happy with that. No, cannot be happily ever after. We got to put some kind of stinger in there.

1:41:07 Yeah, we get a mean, nasty ending here that again, would actually feel mean and nasty if it wasn't also just hilarious. Yeah. As it's realized here on the screen. The way it breaks down is, yeah, Martha and Paul are in Boston. You know, lovers on different sides of the streets calling to each other. He's going to cross the street to get to her. She turns around. What does she see in the shop window? But the clown doll.

1:41:30 That's right. And she goes, uh-oh, something's wrong here. And he tries to make his way across the street. He's hit by a bus and killed the.

1:41:39 the end cut to credits it's also it's a scene later used in Final Destination oh yeah yeah just a random bus to you know it's like you can't escape.

1:41:49 I mean nothing is it is shocking anytime in a film where someone's hit by a bus or a car or something to the point where if someone's about to cross a street in a movie or a TV show and we're spending any amount of time on it I start getting really nervous like no this guy this dude's about to get hit by a vehicle like it's the setup and it's too much And then like half the time it actually happens. I guess it does play on a common fear and a common dangerous reality of streets and vehicles and clown dolls.

1:42:19 All of that aside, I really like Martha's cool jacket in this last scene. She's like a denim jacket with this crazy leather fringe everywhere.

1:42:27 I will say we've been having a fair amount of fun with Martha's delivery in this film, but her final scream, I think, is very effective and well done. And her final frozen look of horror over which we roll the credits. And read about who is the caterer on this picture and so forth. It's not the caterer, maybe it's payroll or something. Sometimes it's kind of hilarious when you have this emotionally evocative scene that's frozen and you're reading about the caterer. Or who drove the truck, that sort of thing.

1:43:01 So what's the best third movie in the Evil Dead franchise? Is it this one or Army of Darkness?

1:43:09 Well, there's two very different films. I don't know. In a way, both films have some gonzo energy going on, but definitely realized to different degrees. But Ghost House, it is a lot of fun. This is a film with a lot of goofiness to it. I bet the riff track for it is pretty fun. I haven't checked it out myself, but there's a lot to have fun with here.

1:43:35 Totally. Totally. Okay. Well, that's all I've got on ghost house.

1:43:40 Yeah. I think we, we more than covered it here. Uh, we would, we'd have to do, sometimes we'll go ahead and do the mental gymnastics necessary to that. It's necessary. They're necessary to make the plot make sense, but I feel like we would need a lot more time with ghost house to really like figure out how the doll ties in to maggot Reaper, the mummy hand from earlier. Like, what does it all mean? Um, this is something that, uh, Film critics and commentators are going to have to continue to piece together for, I think, decades, decades and decades.

1:44:12 And it could just be one of those fractal mysteries of nature. The deeper you look, the more questions emerge.

1:44:18 Yeah. So, yeah, I think Ghost House is a lot of fun. I've noticed some people online kind of, as with a lot of Umberto Lindsay, I think sometimes people see it as kind of lukewarm. Like it's not Troll 3. And it's also not housed by the cemetery. And that's true, but it's somewhere in the middle and its own comfortable zone of like creepiness and schlockiness. And I think there's a lot to enjoy here. Did I say troll three?

1:44:47 I meant troll two. Oh, I thought you meant like the next troll two.

1:44:50 The next troll. Yeah. Don't get me started on what film was called troll three, but no, troll two, troll two is what I meant.

1:44:57 I agree. It is neither one. I'd say it's Closer to the Troll 2 end of the spectrum than the House by the Cemetery end.

1:45:04 Yeah, except when the effects are really firing up on all cylinders. And then I think it's pretty strong. Yeah.

1:45:12 But yeah, I would say definitely some fun, pretty funny, spooky Halloween viewing.

1:45:18 All right. Well, that's Ghost House. We'd love to hear from everyone out there. If not about Ghost House itself, then maybe about Poltergeist. Or any other haunted house movie, haunted doll movie, haunted clown doll movies. Any of these genres and subgenres are fair game. Write in. We'd love to hear from you. Just in general, you know, it's Halloween.

1:45:39 I always like to hear what do people watch around Halloween? Are there certain films that you watch every year? Were there a particular couple of films that you made sure to watch this year? That's exactly the kind of thing we'd like to tear into when we get into our Halloween hangover edition of Lister Mail, which we'll get to in November.

1:45:58 Absolutely. Please send your favorites, yeah.

1:46:00 In the meantime, we'll just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form on Wednesday, and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. Let's see, if you're on letterboxd.com, we are weirdhouse on there. You'll find a nice list of all the movies we've covered over the years and sometimes a peek ahead at what comes next. Wherever you get the podcast, in audio form or in video form on Netflix or We just ask that you rate, review, subscribe. If you're on Netflix, two thumbs up. Ask to be reminded about new episodes. These are some small things that help us

1:46:37 out in the long run.

1:46:38 Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J.

1:46:42 Posway.

1:46:43 If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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