“Hello, hello, hello, is there anybody there?” as Phil Ochs once said and we say, “Welcome to Sneaky Dragon!” And you can say, “Thanks!” Also, you can listen to Ian and Dave discuss audience laughter; Ian’s most humiliating moment as an audience member; Dave’s questionable taste; who is really so vain; how to write a better essay; what’s wrong with the Coen Brothers; Dave’s dislike of the 3 Stooges; Ian’s alternate Marx Brothers movie; blood oaths gone bad; Cher the quick-change vamp; Ian’s horrifying TV variety show moment; the complete and sordid TV history of The Brady Bunch; Dave’s work challenge; Ian’s questionable taste; Dave watching the film It Follows; and, finally, what makes a great a great horror film.
Thanks for listening:
Ian pronounces it a misfire!
Ian enjoyed the Farrelly Brothers take on The Three Stooges at least:
Ian’s suggests this as an alternate Marx Brothers film:
V-A-M-P!
The sketch the so horrified Ian:
Honest Trailers comment on the Saw series:
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Hey Gang!
I’ve seen BRAIN DONORS! “Unofficially inspired by A NIGHT AT THE OPERA”. I enjoyed it at the time, but it doesn’t hold up today.
THREE STOOGES- dumb violence comedy. MARX BROTHERS- Clever sight gags and wordplay.
HORROR FLICKS:
-You know why the demon in DRAG ME TO HELL doesn’t play fair? *BECAUSE IT IS A DEMON*. Hell is not supposed to play fair!
I thought Raimi really slummed it during SPIDERMAN. The second one was much better, then he slummed it again with the third one. Soap opera antics and two CGI masks thumping each other? Yawnfest.
A friend of mine said that “Jump scares are to Horror movies what fart gags are to comedy”- in other words, they’re a way for the audience to relieve a *little* bit of the tension over time, so they’re not having a terrible tense experience for the whole running time.
That being said, what the audience can imagine is ALWAYS more scary than what the film-makers can show you- that’s why I found BLAIR WITCH PROJECT terrifying, as you’re playing “connect the dots” with the information about Elly Kedward and her presence in the forest that the characters don’t know about…tension! Also, the terrifying final shot of the film refers to something said in the first 20 minutes- a lot of people didn’t like it because they missed the line it referred to.
*Love* IT FOLLOWS- again, it tells us nothing but the bare bones about the creature and the rules of the curse, so we’re forced to infer- the absolute worst thing a sequel could do would be to say “Okay, here’s the origin of the creature and how it got started”. It works because we DON’T KNOW. Btw Dave- “It” is standing on the roof of the house as they drive away because it climbed up there to get to the window to get to them- it would have climbed down and kept going. As for the movie theatre- it may not have been the creature, he may have been paranoid.
HELLRAISER: the truly innocent are safe; the Cenobites can’t touch you unless you actually open the Box (except in the 3rd one, where the rules are temporarily off thanks to events of P2)
I don’t always need blood, guts and jump scares for a good time in a horror movie- a good, cerebral thrill can be just as chilling. The films of Ti West are a good example- very slow, deliberately paced films that build up to a quiet payoff, that nonetheless haunts you for days (THE ROOST, THE INN-KEEPERS and especially HOUSE OF THE DEVIL are excellent examples of his art). Some other “slow burn” horror films that don’t rely on jump scares so much that you might enjoy include the excellent Aussie horror film LAKE MUNGO (that PARANORMAL ACTIVITY copied shamelessly); AS ABOVE SO BELOW; DARK WAS THE NIGHT (terrible title, awesome film) and FROZEN (the ski-lift horror one, not the animated Disney one, which is a horror film for other reasons)
So the show was called Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie after all. Here’s the first part of the first episode… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDIRDt3eGRs