Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Movie Mastery. It is the podcast where we watch the movies that you tell us to. I am your host John, with me, my co-host Jeff. Greetings. It is time for us to season's greet. Greet the season upon the morrow. I don't think I've ever wished more than I just watched a Christmas movie instead. Right? God, we watched Baby Ghost from 1995. Yep, sure did. A movie that you have only heard of because Riff Trax did anything with it. Oh, they did? Oh, dang, I thought we found this one first.
Nope, I think Riff Tracks got a hold of this one a bit ago. Because I have not seen this one in my usual gluttonous gathering up of every other bad movie review thing, like your Red Letter Medias and your Flophouses. I thought we might be the first out past the post, but there's a reason I thought that, and we'll get into it in a second. But we've got a 95 film with good old Joe Estevez. Hey, that's part of the reason. Hey, there it is, Joe Estevez, known for Rollerblade 7. Yeah, he's also known for Werewolf.
And Return of the Rollerblade 7, Soul Taker, I think. And those are the Mystery Science Theater ones. And the Rollerblade 7 Return? Uh-huh. So basically, there is a stratus layer when it comes to bad movies that make their rounds on the internet. You've got the ones that are competent, yet bad, that are still kind of movies and are shot-like movies and so on. The Room is a great example of that. The kind of thing where you would go see it in a midnight movie theater to laugh at it because it's got some idiosyncrasies. I mean, those are sort of the very low end of the...
Oh, wow. What a very shittily made movie. Yeah. How funny. Below that, you've got the level of the enormous amounts of self-regard, the Vanity Project films. You know, everything by Neil Breen, Gedevan, you name it. Take or so. Yeah. Any one of those. Manos is one of those, for example. Proof that the guy could make a movie even though he was a lawnmower or fertilizer salesman or something. Those are usually way worse because they're slow and boring, but they're a stratum. And then you've got a lower stratum below that. But this is the shot on VHS, edited in camera.
clearly shot over one night in the same student film college room that the student who made this was working in. This is at that level. We've only watched maybe two of these movies in our entire time at Movie Mastery. I'm counting Goth as one of the other ones. Yeah, it is. It's the type of movie where this feels like, I mean, even though it has, you know, Joe Estevez in there, Martin Sheen's younger brother.
it's still like, oh, this feels like something a teenager got a camcorder and made. Yes, exactly. This is at that bottom barrel level, which is a weird level to be at. Like, I would have rather watched something like Titanic, the animated film. Oh, no, this is like a college improv group filmed something. Yes, except a college improv group kind of is funny. Hey, don't you dare say that. Not on this podcast. Hey, sometimes they are. Like, all your favorite celebrities usually work in a college improv group. Yes, and they all suck. But yeah, I mean, this is at that level where, like, ratatouing lives, where every scene is 10 minutes long because they just kind of laboriously explain every little thing. Yeah, there's,
It is definitely a movie where you're like, oh, the basic idea of how to pace and shoot and edit and everything is completely missing. Yes. Like, you've seen a movie, you know what they basically are, and you're like, I could make that. And no, indeed, you cannot. We've talked about this before in a couple of movies. It's definitely one of those ones where you can feel, even though you can't see them because the camera's pointed the other way, you can feel the director on the other side doing that.
finger rolling, stretch this out a little more gesture for the entire runtime. Just like, no, Estevez, just say a few more things about newspapers. Just keep talking. Just keep talking about how your house is nice. Just keep doing that. See, whereas I'm like, I 100% believe all of this is scripted because this feels like the kind of thing where in addition to all the other, writing a movie is also incredibly difficult to be like, oh yes, I know what punchy, get to the point, move on dialogue sounds like. And this is very much like, oh yes, you have also done a thing. I have done that thing. And I have this opinion about it. Your opinion about it? My goodness. Here's my opinion about it. You're like,
Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, exactly. And also, it's one of those movies that doesn't have enough microphones to go around. You know what? Let's put that... I don't want to talk forever. We'll eventually start reviewing the movie instead of the spoiler-free review. The spoiler-free review is simple. It's impossible to find this unless you're willing to pay Amazon $2. And you shouldn't need to anyway. It's garbage. It should be buried for a reason. No. The budget of this couldn't have been $2. Yes. Why did we pay $2 to watch this? Each. Yeah, it is absolutely awful. It is, without getting into spoilers, just...
I would say that very bottom tier of movies that we watched where you're like, hey, was this actually a movie? Yeah. The only other one I can even think of that I would count in that range that we've watched is Moontrap, Target, Earth. They're the three that feel like this wasn't even really like a movie. They didn't really have sets or plans. They just sort of like, ah, we'll just do whatever. And at the end of the day, it'll probably be about an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah. God, the fact that this movie is an hour and a half long murders me. I'm like, how did you take this absolute crap and go, yeah, but we're not going to stop at the normal like 70 minute mark. We're going to keep going for the full 90. Yeah. Like my dude, why?
Well, get ready for it. Just, you know, don't watch it. Yeah. I'm pretty sure this was brought to you by the makers of Roller Gator, so if you've watched at least that one make its rounds on the various bad movie channels, then you kind of have a decent idea of what to expect. Yeah, the director of this is the person who brought us Roller Gator and all of the various Roller Blade 7 movies.
And, you know, stuff like Ghost of El Chupacabra and Max Hell Frog Warrior, a Zen rough cut. Oh, that's him? Yeah. Oh, shit, we're gonna get yelled at. Oh, no. That guy chased down, I forget, I think it was Lindsay Ellis or someone like that, or Obscuras Lupa, one of the people who came out of the whole Nostalgia Critic. Now, no, this is the producer of that. I don't know if the director is different. Well, okay, one of the people from that whole Nostalgia Critic family of early YouTube bullshit times did a review of Max Hell the Zen Adventure, which is technically the third Hell Comes to Frogtown movie.
And he relentlessly legally pursued her until she took it down and issued an apology. Wow. So watch out for that. Good Lord. Listen to this one while you can. I cannot wait to finally be harassed. All right. We are going to go ahead and play you. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. You're going to hear the wonderful theme to Baby Ghost. And we will be right back with the full reviews of 1995's Baby Ghost.
We're back. It's time to talk about Baby Ghost. Yes, Baby Ghost. Baby Ghost. I saw the picture on the IMDb preview page and I was trying to figure out what the hell this even was. And I thought, I was pretty sure we were going to get something on the level, you know, again, in that Z-grade schlock level film of like Shark Exorcist or something like that, where maybe there's a CGI shark for like a split second and that's the entirety of it. But no, instead we're shaking a puppet around and then using composite shots to kind of insert it into the frame so that people just waving their arms at nothing. Yes. It's all done with, it's lo-fi special effects here. They used a real puppet. The weird thing to me is they went to the trouble.
To make a baby ghost puppet, which just, I mean, it's probably the best thing in this is the puppet itself. It looks like a popple that went through the wash too many times. Except- Like it washed up on the beach. Whatever they do, the ghost effects, they're like, oh, it's completely see-through. You can see, like, maybe an inch total of this puppet at any given moment. It isn't until, like, the end of this movie that you finally go, oh, that's what that thing looks like. Yeah, there's a couple shots here and there, like when it's stealing the scissors or eating the donuts, where you can kind of see what they had in mind. You can finally tell that it actually has, like, matted shitty hair.
like all the way down its back. I'm not kidding. It's supposed to be like a baby ghost. That's the idea behind it. Ghost of a baby or just a baby, a ghost that is a baby. It doesn't matter what, but it really does look like a popple they found in the sewer. It's, it's just bad. It's a bad, bad movie and prop and everything. If you're not, if you're not like me, a desperately terrible old from the seventies, then you're probably maybe don't remember what popples are. So you can just look that up and see for yourself. It was an eighties doll. It was like a little monster that could fold into its own stomach and become a ball. There you go. That's what a popple was. They look like shit. This thing looked like shit. There you have it.
Joe Estevez looked like shit. Joe Estevez, absolute shit. And we open with him as he is a put-upon, hard-working mall photographer, like a Sears portraiture artist. Except that either Sears or mall is too much credit. Yeah, no. Instead, he works in...
just some apartment building, but it is not where he lives. Instead, it is supposed to be an office building. Yeah, I spent forever trying to figure out what the fuck they actually used for their scene setting. Was it an apartment complex? Was it an industrial complex? Like an office building where, you know, it's a collection of suites, like maybe his is the door to a dentist office, etc. I eventually settled on school. They are filming inside of a film school because of the different types of AEDs and fire extinguishers and shit that are just awkwardly bolted to the walls here and there. So I think they're filming in the halls of a college. See, I...
eventually fell on that they were filming in an office building because there is one scene where the two shitty crooks are coming through that you see a double door in the back that has one of those like this is a plaque for who works here, and it's blurred. And you're like, oh, they didn't have the rights to show who works here. So they have one of those slide-in plaques where you can say, oh, it's Dr. Letterkenny, DDS. Exactly. Sweet 391. And they're like, well, we can't have that on screen. People will sue us. Yeah, except instead of just going, oh, we should probably film this someplace that doesn't prominently display that in the background, they're like, ah, we'll just blur it. It's fine. Hey, we're running out of locations. We've used the hallway. We've used the same hallway from a different angle. We've used the elevator, around the elevator, near the elevator. We put one guy's office immediately adjacent to the elevator. Like, not even through another door, the elevator opens on his office.
It's fine, don't worry about it. God bless. I love that they were just like, look, we've got about a 20-foot radius from this elevator that we can film in. So, playing Winslow Cobblepot, that's Joe Estevez. He is a hapless, middle-aged...
just the target of life's many different ways of kicking you in the ass type of guy. And he's a photographer and he's taking pictures of a shitty 90s kid with a bowl cut that has a rat tail coming out the back who will not smile. And he's got a mom who's there with her two daughters and the mom is just the worst. Everybody's the worst. The only thing that makes it okay is that there's only one microphone available for the shooting scene. So whenever the mom says the worst stuff, you can't hear it because she's not near the microphone. It's only near Joe Estevez. It's one of those things where I was like, oh, you want to establish that this guy has a shitty job trying to take pictures of kids and that the people he is doing this for sucks.
But I kept going like, oh, he's trying to get this kid to smile for a picture and the kid's just an asshole. And the mom is just standing there being mean. And I'm like, you'd think if you brought your kid here for a picture, the mom would be like, hey, Timmy, fucking smile. Yeah, instead the mom vents all of her frustrations onto Winslow, including like, how come you can't make my kid smile? Incidentally, I refuse to talk to my own child. So yeah, eventually the kid starts blowing bubble gum, which, you know, reasonable gag if he wasn't stretched to about five minutes of watching this kid blow bubbles. Yeah, that is, it's definitely.
the very start of this you're like oh i see what this is going to be because instead of it being like oh man don't blow bubbles and then you move on to the next thing because you're like oh i get it i get that gag yeah you're like oh he's going to say oh no don't blow that oh if you blow bubbles i can't take a picture oh no those but you should blow the bubbles covers i'm like dude this takes so long yeah you don't need to say this over and over because they only had x number of scenes and so when they realized they weren't going to add up to a movie they just stretched all of them you can tell they did that a couple of scenes in particular uh notably after this sequence where He gets berated by the mom for trying to get the gum off the kid's face. The kid pretends to be hurt by this. So she's like, how dare you hurt my son? I'll have you hauled up on charges. Or at the movies parlance. And then she sends her other two kids to go get candy bars, and he tries to pitch in for one. She's like, no, you're not doing it. And then eventually, finally, she gets mad, and the whole family stomps off, and he can't get his check from them for this job. Then he decides to call his favorite psychic after checking his horoscope and getting a weird result.
And the reason I was talking about stretching is because halfway through the conversation with the psychic scene, we switched from the one static shot we've had of him talking to her the whole time to a new one where it's shot from a different angle, extremely tight close up because they changed backgrounds. They didn't have access to that office anymore. So now they're shooting in front of some red wall. There was no red in the room until that shot. And then that's the only shot they used going forward. So they just missed half the scene and had to film it later in a different location. Yeah. Now, you jumped ahead of very important plot things. Sure, of course. Let's go right on back. So I'd hate to miss anything. The two kids that aren't the ones being photographed for this shitty family want to go find...
some candy bars yes and i love it when they walk outside because it's your first realization that no this isn't a mall no because it starts you're like oh this is like doug funny's dad or goofy himself who's like oh i work in either you know one of those strip malls or an actual mall where you know you've got like oh we take pictures of kids but no they just walk outside you're like oh this is some fucking area yeah but like their whole thing is they're gonna go do this and of course winslow's like hey if you're gonna go get a thing let me give you a dollar and get me a milky way and she's just like my child is not a delivery service yeah but That is where we are introduced to this buildings security cop guy who is just like a child. I must murder her. Yes.
Yeah, because he's a practical joker who's supposed to be the deal with the cop. He's a practical joker and a survivor of NAMM where he was a prisoner of war. Yeah, so he jumps out at her while she's just trying to walk around these empty, sterile hallways. You can tell that if you're ever in one of those buildings that has these kind of hallways and those kind of office suites, either you've got really shitty dental insurance or your life has gone awry. Anytime you're in one of those buildings, you're like, geez, yeah, there sure are a lot of public notaries in here. And for Joe Estevez, it's that his life went awry. Yes. Yeah, so he jumps out and goes, what are you doing here? And she just punches him in the nuts and runs. Yeah, so now we get a chase scene between the two of them, which is very important because it leads to the titular.
Baby ghost. Exactly. She goes and runs and finds some storage room where just sitting on top of a barrel is a little box that someone has doodled various things they believe to be occult symbols on. Yeah, you've got like the... Eye of Horus. Yeah, basically they doodled on... Not quite a pentacle.
Basically, they had the list of the shapes of Lucky Charms, and I just went with that. You got hearts and stars and clovers. But it is also wrapped in chains that you could just sort of slide off. I love that they're all wrapped around it in one direction, so you could easily just pick it up by the side and lift it, and the chains would fall away. Yes, indeed. There's no crossing of chains here. And the chains are kept in place by a padlock. Modern padlock. Note that this box was supposed to have been sealed away 300 years ago.
But whatever. But no, we just got a modern padlock on there. And you think, oh, a padlock is obviously going to thwart this little girl, right? No, because she just tries her mommy's measurements. And her mommy's measurements are 36, 24, 36. 36, 24, 58. Oh, I'm sorry. They gave her huge titty, I guess. Big old dumper. Yeah, except that we actually got to see the mom. So, yeah, I'm just saying, they should have just said, like, I'll use Marilyn Monroe's measurements or whatever the fuck. Yeah, because, I mean, at the end of the movie, when they, of course, open it again at the very end, someone's like, hey, you remember Cousin Elvira? And you're like, okay, that's a gag. You can use those measurements, sure.
But the lady was just like, hello, I am a regular ass lady. Yeah, the whole, the entire family is only in the movie for the brackets. So they're like the first and last five minutes. And so they just look like someone that happened to be in that office building. And Joe Estevez was like, hi, I'm famous star Joe Estevez. Perhaps you've heard of my brother. Perhaps you've heard of the rest of my family. I'm related to many famous people, including a mighty duck. One mighty duck, please. And they're like, okay, we'll be in your movie. Sure. So that's that because that's their level. Yeah. So this is how the baby ghost gets out. She runs away from this security guard, finds a fucking box.
randomly manages to open it on the first try and then punches the guard in the nuts again when he shows up and runs away. Yeah. But she doesn't even open the box. The box just rattles and opens itself a little time later. Yes. She takes the chains off, but we don't get the ghost yet. Yeah. So now she escapes this guard, connects back up with her other sister, who I guess found a vending machine because she has the candy. And then the whole family gets mad and leaves after another extended bit of shit where the boy no longer has bubble gum, but instead has an ice cream bar that he is just liberally slathering his own face with. Yes. And the mom is still just standing there staring dully at Joe Estevez like, what are you going to do? This is your job. You got to get good pictures of this kid.
And then they just sort of leave and the gag is like, oh, my check, you need to give me a check. And I'm like, I don't know that you ever took a picture. No, it didn't seem like you ever took a picture of it. Maybe he already got the rest of the family and the group shots and all that, like whatever the plan was. I mean, it's not like anyone showed up for pictures. All of them are just like, I am in a gray t-shirt. Yeah, well, like I said, they all look like they just happened to be in that building that day. And someone was like, you want to be in a big Hollywood picture? Too bad, you want to be in this? So yeah, then feeling defeated and just shat on by life.
Winslow, who has a tendency to ask God why God is heaping these troubles upon him, decides to check his horoscope. And he's excited, because he has not checked his horoscope today. Oh, goodness, he forgot to check his horoscope. Three minutes of this. Yep. And then he reads his horoscope, which just says, like, crazy shit's gonna happen to you today. Get outside, ask someone who knows. Yeah. And he's like, that's ominous. Someone who knows? Why, that must be the 900-number psychic I continually call all the time. Yes, and so he calls a 900-number psychic, who, it's interesting, this is one of my favorite things about the movie, is he calls this lady, whose name is Madame Zora, but she has to, like...
like, struggle to get ready to answer the phone and be set. So you can tell she's kind of a failure otherwise. Like, she can't believe someone's actually calling. And then when she hears this window, she's like, ugh, God, can this please just be the last phone call? I don't, you need to stop calling this number. You call me way too often and I'm like, aren't you hourly? Aren't you getting paid by the minute from this guy? Yeah, I mean, he is your whale. No, this is the thing, is she at this point is like, I mostly feel bad because you can tell, like, oh, this guy calls all the time. She's like, oh, I'm ruining this dude's life. Yeah, but even then I'm like, yeah, if you don't ruin this dude's life, you won't have one either. That's painfully apparent. That's what this shtick is. Yeah, this is the pig you don't eat all at once, lady. The weird thing
He doesn't call, like, this person, Madame Zora, does not have her own number. Instead, it is like the Divine Light Institute or whatever. And then it goes to her because it gets routed through someplace in Mississippi. And it's weird that they're like, oh, yeah, it continually goes to her, though. Right. Because I'm like, you'd think it would just go to...
Whoever. I'm guessing you can select your psychic of choice or something. Maybe? I mean, it's the kind of thing that if that was true, the movie would have dedicated several minutes to it to let us know. Have him be like, no, not Madam Ocula. No, not Madam Knows Everything All. No, I want Madam Zora. You know, that kind of stretch it. Well, yeah, but this is assuming that they would think about their premise anyway. Let's just go ahead and say everything about this is incorrect. Everything. Why does she have an office? She doesn't need an office. She has a phone number that routes to her. She can do her job from home and save a shit ton of money. And even says that at one point. Second.
She has an office, but it's clear that she doesn't take in-person clients. She's a phone operator only. You can tell because she doesn't know how to do anything unless she has a big book in front of her labeled How to Read Tarot for Dummies. Yes. So she can't do in-person things, which leads to our second question of why does she have an office and the follow-up secondary question of why does she dress up like a medium? Yeah. She's dressed up in full fortune teller costume and you're like, who's that for? Is that...
is that just for you? Do you get up in the morning and put that on? So you're like, ah, I'm ready to LARP. Yeah. Like if you work at hot dog on a stick, but you never have to go in the front, do you still wear the hat and the tank top? I mean, yes, because you work at hot dog on a stick and whoever runs it is like, you put that fucking shit on that fucking hat on. You are going to look like a goddamn fire hydrant. I don't give a shit, but it's, it's definitely one of those things where you're like, oh, this is just because they were like, well,
I've already thought of the idea of having someone be a fortune teller and have this be the love interest for my stupid photographer guy, and they have to get together somehow. I guess she works in the building. Why? That's not a concern I have. It's so not a concern that there's a point in the movie where she questions it. Yeah, when she's like, oh, I should just work from home. I'm like, yes, obviously you should. You should have made that realization a long time ago. Why are you paying for a full-ass office? I've had this conversation with myself a million times where I'm like, I should get us some office space if we record in a nice office. We could rent it out to other San Diego podcasters and shit. And I'm like, wait a minute, my garage is good enough. No one gives a fuck if the podcast is recorded in a garage. And also...
Getting one of those fucking, like, you actually have your own room with your own door to it and you're not sharing, like, office space with anyone else is fucking expensive. Yeah, we're never, well, granted, this is made in a long ago time period. 95. But still Hollywood. Like, there's no way she can afford that shit. So, you know, let's not harp on that because it doesn't fucking matter. No. No one's ever going to go to a portrait studio for children in one of those Desperate Times apartment buildings either. Anytime you see one of those fucking seven stories with, like, nothing but lawyers and public notaries and stuff and you see a photo studio in there, that's disreputable. Yeah, that's... That's not the kind of photo studio that you initially think it is. Yeah, you don't want to go in there because...
That's not the photos you want. Exactly. You're going to bring your kid in there and be like, yeah, we're here for our portrait session. And he'll be like, ah, fine. Let me show the St. Andrew's crosses out of the way. All right. Well, everyone get over to the black couch over there.
You all wore two pairs of pants like I told you, right? That couch is messy. Try not to make direct skin contact. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, he calls her and she does a psychic reading for him. I guess she's using a tarot deck. I've become an expert on the tarot because I don't know if you knew this or not, but John and I recently wrote and published our own tarot deck and it'll be coming out very soon. Yeah, we have a tarot deck coming. There's a Dungeon Meister tarot deck that's going to exist. Prior to it, I knew very little. Now I do a tremendous amount. But anyone knows enough to know that her deck only has the face cards. Yeah, it's only the Major Arcana. It's only the Major Arcana. And also, these are like...
giant novelty cards because they are the size of someone's head. Yeah. And so she deals in a tarot set where you got to assume that she's been doing this job long enough that she hates this guy, but not long enough that she knows what any of these fucking cards mean yet. Like she just does not care. She is the most uninterested in her own job. Yeah. But it's weird to me because like she sits there with the book open trying to figure out what all of these cards mean and gives the whole reading. That's, you know, basically the plot of the movie of, oh, weird, bad things are going to happen and it'll all happen when you're trapped in a place. And then eventually you'll meet someone and be in love. Anyway, that's the plot of the movie. Yeah. But.
later, when they eventually meet up and they're talking, she's like, oh, and I did a reading for this one guy, and I do these readings all the time, and I'm like, how do you not know any of this? Neither does he, which is weird, because he apparently calls multiple times a day to have his tarot read, but there's a point where she's reading his tarot, and again, keep in mind, she only uses the major arcana. There's what, 21 of those, and that's it? 27, I think. Okay, sure. Maybe. So, she pulls the devil, and he goes, oh, the devil, something Satan-ish is upon us, whatever will we do? And she's like, no, no, it just means devil influences, it doesn't just mean Satan, and I'm like, how does he not know that? If he's 100% obsessed with tarot... The one thing I will give this movie is, I was like...
All right, throw the death card so someone can go, I'm going to die. I'm just glad that there isn't a spooky ghost tarot card. Maybe there should be. Ah, yes. Our major arcana, including, you know, the fool and the hanged man and the spooky ghost. The Frankenstein. Oh, I'm afraid you've drawn the creature from the Black Lagoon. That means lagoonish things may occur. It doesn't mean the actual creature from the Black Lagoon. Yeah, the fish man creature is not normally actually part of this card. It's not a literal creature. It's more of the idea of a creature. Yeah, and specifically it means that lagoonish things may happen. Not specifically lagoons. It might be a bay or a tide pool or a slough. It could be any one of those kind of things, you know? A river delta.
Good Lord. But yeah, that is the setup for this. And then... they finally end up having like, okay, he hangs up, he's gonna leave for the day, and he goes to the elevator, where of course he has to have just a long, drawn-out scene with the fucking security guard again. He jumps out and puts him in a chokehold. He's like, oh, I thought you were a little girl. He's like, you thought I was a little girl, and so you put me in a chokehold. Do you put little girls in chokeholds? And he's like, oh, sure, all the time. Like, I don't like anyone here. And then he just goes like, I don't want you to do that. You'll be fired if you put any little girls in chokeholds. Do you understand me? He just kind of goes, okay, okay, whatever. I'm gonna go do my job. Instead of like...
Dude, you're a mall photographer and a fucking bow tie. I think even as a security guard, I outrank you because I'm allowed to walk around the building and you have to stay in your little cubbyhole. Because if the other people see you here, they'll get angry. But that is when we find out that the little baby ghost has gotten free because the elevator's all fucked up. Yes. And it is stopping on every floor because...
The baby ghost is a trickster, a prankster, and it's just hitting every button so it stops on every floor. Yeah, which doesn't sound like that much of an inconvenience when, as Winslow does, you work on the sixth floor of the building. Like, yeah, you're going to stop on the fifth, fourth, third, and second, but then you're in the lobby. Yeah. And, you know, maybe if it's, oh, super inconvenienced, be like, you know what, maybe go down a couple floors and be like, I'll take stairs for the rest. Yeah. The worst inconvenience could possibly be is that you caught it on its way up, and it's going to go up to the ninth, which is the top floor, and then back down. And, oh, won't that be a waste of your time? But instead, he grumpily uses it to get to the floor where, I forget his name, Willie or Ernie or something, Fred. Elliot. Elliot.
Elliot, the building superintendent, either supervisor or whatever, I think. His office is in charge of fixing things. His office is a desk immediately adjacent to the elevator on one of the floors. Yeah. And I think he's on the top floor, which is what gets me as I'm like, hold on. You're coming to the top floor to tell him that this stops on every floor. Which means.
You had to have, I guess, gotten on when it was going up. Because you had to have not been like, well, I'm going to go all the way down and then be so incensed about this. Stop on every floor all the way back up just to tell him. You might be. I mean, Winslow as a character, largely due to the fact that the movie is a lot of just camera on character while they ramble on about nothing in particular, is the kind of guy who just left to his own devices will prattle on about how he's grumpy about something for an hour.
So, yeah, I would expect he'd be perfectly fine to stand in a boring elevator and be like, why would you do this to me, God? Haven't I suffered enough? I'd just like to go home and feed my fish and make my plate of fettuccine Alfredo that I like so much because I saw it once in a magazine. Oh, a fancy magazine about Hollywood. And I'm so bad that I'm in Hollywood, but I'm not in Hollywood. I'm in an elevator. He's the kind of guy that would do that. I'm just going to say. So, yeah, it made sense. Holiday is here at PetSmart, and it's time to shop great gifts and stocking stuffers. Bring on the joy with toys, treats, apparel, and more for every pet. Get ready to get merry all season long in stores and online at PetSmart.ca.
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Full stop? I think the only real joke, because when he's like, Elliot, you gotta look at the elevator. You gotta fix it. There's a problem with it. He's like, well, what's wrong? Well, it stops on every floor. Oh, that's what an elevator should do. And I'm like, that's a good joke. You did it. Elevators stop on every floor. It's a classic dad joke. It's lined up with the, hey, dad, there's holes in my shoes. And he goes, yeah, mine too. That's how I get my feet in there. I'm a dad. I was like, look, one joke that actually exists in here. Other than that, basically, his conversation with Elliot is the same as two other characters we haven't gotten to yet, the two crooks, where it's a dumb guy talks to a slightly dumber guy and gets exasperated by how he is slightly dumber. Yep.
And it goes on at length for minutes and minutes at a time. But yeah, he just... A lot like our podcast. A lot like it. In no way dissimilar from this podcast. One dumb guy talks to a slightly dumber guy. Who's who? We'll let you decide. Doesn't matter. Yeah, Winslow just sort of continually berates Elliot until he's like, fine, I guess I'll look at the elevator and gets up to go do so. Which he does by looking at the elevator. Like, not getting inside, just looking at it.
And then Winslow's like, what are you doing? You told me to look at the elevator. And then he's like, fucking fix the elevator. To which Elliot gets slightly grumpy, sits down and eats his sandwich, a cheese and pimento sandwich, which everyone has to pass by and comment on how gross that is. Yeah, well, no, because this is our character development. When he leaves and the later scene, when they come back, Winslow passes by and he's like, ooh, cheese and pimento and takes a bite. Whereas when Madame Zora goes past it, she's like, ew, cheese and pimento. That's disgusting. So these two couldn't be more different. How will they ever get along?
But yeah, now Elliot theoretically is in the elevator fixing it, but you'd be hard-pressed to believe that, because later he'll just walk out of an elevator and into the security guard, mopping his brow and going, shoosh! And you're like, I guess he fixed it. Golly, this elevator stops on all these floors. Anyway, I didn't fix it, and I don't give a shit anymore. Now, we gotta get to the crooks, because they're sprinkled throughout. The...
The crooks in this are, what I want to say is the reason this is an hour and a half long, because you could have removed them entirely, and the movie would have been literally unchanged as the crooks intersect with the rest of the plot for precisely one second, and never again. Yes, and the basic gimmick to the crooks is that there's a dumb one and a dumber one, and they're going to rob this building. Their whole deal is, it's Vinny and Rocco, and they're New York toughs, and they're here to rob this building, but... Rocco is the type who's like, oh, I take everything you say literally. And he's like, oh, Rocco, you're giving me a brain tumor. He's like, oh, well, geez, you should see a doctor for your brain tumor. That's very serious. That kind of shit for minutes and minutes at a time. There are three scenes of them doing that for about six minutes at a time before they even get out of their car. God, every time it cut back to them and they were just still in the car outside looking at the building. I'm like, are you? Is the gag going to be that they never actually go in? Because that would have been hilarious. That would have been much better. They give these guys so many different bits of business.
You get the extreme literal stupidness from Rocco or whatever. You get Vinny constantly chain-smoking cigars and messing with his fedora. And also, they are both constantly talking about their uncles and aunts and making up new names for them and talking about how dumb and stupid all their family is. Well, yeah, their overarching gimmick between the two of them is... We have a bunch of family and all of them have stupid things they do. So it's like, oh, you remember Uncle Squashy and he'd put carrots in his ears? And you're like, okay, great. Oh, I wish Uncle Miguel was with us on this one because he can't talk as much as you because he ain't got no tongue, you remember? You snap a head. He's just like, all right, I guess that's a gag. I guess. I suppose a character trait that you have a large dumb family as well. I think one of my favorite little bits about the two of them is when they finally decide to break into the building, one of them goes up to the closed service garage gate and is like, well, this thing is locked here. We can't get this open. And the other one says, that's why we brought this crowbar what we did. And he holds up an obvious tire iron.
Not a crowbar. And then in the next scene, he's like, plus I gots this tire iron and holds it up again. And I'm like, did they realize that wasn't a crowbar and correct it, but not go back and fix the previous scene? Of course they did. Look, you can go back and have reshoots to add things, but by God, if you've already shot something. That's in the can. That's footage you have already. Look, we don't know how to edit outside the VCR camera we're shooting this on. This movie has that magnetic tape hum that tells you a VCR motor was playing near it.
These guys, as I mentioned, will not really intersect with the rest of the plot because the baby ghost thing is going to just vaguely harass the rest of them. No, they're all such fucking chicken shits about everything that mostly what happens is the baby ghost doesn't even show up on screen. They just hear high-pitched child laughter and they go, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, and run out of the room. Like, the guy playing Elliot fancies himself a third of the Stooges. And so anytime he runs, he's always like, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, as he like runs around, like he's doing the cheap Zoidberg impression or something. But the...
The thieves here are... I mean, I'll just basically go ahead and say their entire plot is we are here to steal things, but every time they walk around, they're like, all right, let's go steal stuff. All these doors are locked. Well, that's why we have a tire iron. I will not use it to open a door. No. Because we can't shoot that. We don't have the budget to break a door handle in this office building because we won't be able to replace it. Dr. Lettercanny DDS would be real mad if we broke into his dentist waiting room. We can't do that. Yeah. So instead, it is just them either for several scenes sitting in their car outside or...
wandering the halls of an office building, talking about how it'll be so great when they eventually steal something. And eventually they hit a point where they're like trying to steal one of those shitty fake palm trees that people leave in the lobbies. Yeah, because eventually they're like, oh, we should just leave. This place sucks and we haven't been able to rob everything because every door is locked. And he's like, well, I don't want to leave empty handed. All right, well, why don't we just take this tree then?
What are we going to do with a tree? That kind of shit. We also, from these two, get a straight up, when is a door not a door joke. Well, yes. Because, of course, they've been going through like, oh, all these doors are locked. We'll never get anything. And then Vinny's like, hey, look, that door, over there, it's a jar. And he's like, oh, man, your brain tumor must be so much worse than we thought. That's not a jar. That's a door. If it was a jar, it'd be made of glass and small and have some kind of jam with jelly in it. Because that's how you can tell what a jar is. I'm going to keep explaining what a jar is for about four minutes too long. You mean your head's a jar, you snap a head. Now get over there. I'm like, just listen to the jerky boys. My Uncle Polly would have known what a...
door was and i'm gonna smoke a cigar and he's like oh dude just shut the fuck up just shut you could just go across the street and get a sandwich instead of making this movie it is there's a sandwich place right there it is amazing to me how everyone is terrible to watch on camera like there's no one who's even like accidentally fun to watch no everyone is just either very terrible because they're like oh you gave them just the worst schtick possible, and they're trying their best and are bad at it, or they have nothing and are doing nothing. Yeah, like, there's tears to this as well. Everyone's in bad. Like, it's more like the tear judging is in the visible spectrum of light, you know? Like, it's all the shitty part, but there's tears to that, because you've got the family that you only see at the beginning of the end. They don't act at all. Like, the mom looks at the ground when she says her lines, like, she's in trouble. She's like, oh, how dare you? My child is not a delivery service. And she, like, looks to the camera to make sure she did it right. All right, can I leave? The only one that's, like, a real actor that's been in other shit is Estevez, and you can only tell he's better than everyone else because he's more willing to get in their space. Like, all the other ones, they'll stand at this
I'm going to get right up to you. Because he knows how to do blocking at least. Kind of. Yeah. There's more than one scene where Madame Zora's like, stop fucking coming up on me. I want you to stand two feet away from me at all times, please. Do not come near me. And I got the impression that that was literally just out of character dialogue they left in. Yeah. That is just the actress being like, Jesus Christ, get away from me, Estevez. Estevez, you smell like a 70s hotel room. You smell like five ashtrays. Get back. Away. Back. Ah. Your dead teeth are giving me sads. Now, the...
And eventually they try and leave, do both Estevez and Zora, who, you know, as we mentioned, works in the same office building. But the main door is locked because Baby Ghost, apparently. But again, because they don't have the budget to be able to actually lock the front door, they will only pull on one of the two double doors that are there because the other one is very clearly open. But they're like, we can only mime that one of these is locked. So the one side of this that is locked will pull on and not bother doing the other one because we don't have the money to lock the front door to this. Obviously, they can't afford to break a window either. So no one just grabs something and breaks the windows to get out. Instead, they just stand there doing the miming, I'm yelling through this like single pane of glass. There's like, you know, doing the open mouth, like I'm yelling, I am yelling. Ah, help. Before eventually just getting exasperated and going back up. Yeah. Eventually, obviously, everyone in the movie is going to pair off in a little twosome so we can have the ghost chase them around. And that's going to be, our family is gone and they won't be back till morning.
So we've got Elliot pairing up with the random security guard guy, and the two of them are convinced that the baby ghost that they've seen is a space alien, and they think if they catch it, they will alternatively save humanity or make lots of money. Yes, because they're like, I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in aliens, so clearly this is an alien, and this is the precursor to an invasion force. So their whole thing is alternatively running after or running from this ghost. Yeah. Meanwhile, Madam Zora, she finds out that Winslow is locked in his own studio.
And because he's yelling for help in there. Now, the two of them don't really know each other. Obviously, she's a psychic, but he thinks she lives in Tupelo, Mississippi. That's an important plot point or at least something that they say over and over again. So you think it's going to be important. So so she helps get the door open, but then gets scared by the spooky baby ghost. And so they hide in their his studio and talk about discovering that they know each other. And again, they can't leave because baby ghost somehow magics the door for being able to be opened. Yes. So so now the two of them are locked in a room and they're just grudgingly talking to each other because one thing I don't did you mention that after she gave him the psychic reading, she did her own psychic reading and got the exact same reading again.
I didn't, but it was just, oh, I'm going to do my own reading. Here are all literally the exact same cards in the same order. Yeah. Oh my goodness. It's going to happen to me. She's never believed a word of what she's done as a psychic, but now she's got this itchy feeling because she got the same reading twice. So the two of them are in there doing that and making fun of each other's names and kind of just being shitty to each other, which is important because, you know, they're supposed to end up together by the end of this. Yeah. For a movie called Baby Ghost, the baby ghost, while occasionally showing up, does almost nothing. Like, aside from...
apparently being able to magically make it so doors don't open. Like, he cuts up a picture with some scissors once and drops a bucket of water on one of the thieves' heads. And other than that, mostly is just wandering around giggling. Yeah, he does very little. He just sort of floats around and goes, we have one sound clip. It's three seconds long and we will use it over and over. We also definitely, I don't, 1995 was too soon for the free music archives, but I have to assume they hit up some equivalent of it. A lot of the music in this sounds like Muzak off cuts of things. Like, I don't know if you noticed this, but I noticed that anytime they needed tense music in the movie, they played the rhythm through line from the Foo Fighters Everlong.
At length, but no other portion of the song. So they'd just be walking down the hallway and hear this da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It was like, wow, that's clearly Everlong. They are playing Everlong, except they only have the one part of it. And every other song in the movie, you can do the same trick. You can figure out what fucking song it is. I mean... Now, granted, you already heard their actual song that they wrote for the movie. Yes. Because that's the intro that John used for the episode. But everything else is just these Muzak offcuts that go on for forever, and will start and stop at just random times throughout the scene. Hmm.
Okay, so, yeah, now, during their conversation, we find out that Winslow, her real name isn't Madame Zora, but she swears him to secrecy and says that he can't laugh at her real name, which I believe is Mildred Kerbopel. Yep. Mildred Krabappel. Yeah. And he laughs because that's a silly name, thinks Winslow Cobblepot. Yeah. And then she's like, well, Winslow Cobblepot is also a dumb name. And one of the weird things about Winslow, as far as character traits go, is that he is explosively ragey about certain things. It's very weird. It does not make sense. When they first introduce him and he's like, oh, gee, I can't, I can't make this kid smile. Oh, geez. Oh, don't, don't do that. And you're like, oh, he's the put upon like kind of goofy, mousy little guy who life just, you know, keeps giving lemons to and he doesn't know how to make lemonade. Yeah. But then.
Throughout the movie, it's constantly like, and then someone will say something and he's like, God damn it! And you're like, where the fuck did that come from? I can even see that as being a character trait on purpose. You know, a little nebbish guy until you push him too far. That's like Laverne Hooks from Police Academy or that one scene in Heavy Metal with the little janitor who turns into the giant beef muscle dude. That's a common enough, Bruce Banner Hulk, that's a common enough character trait. But for something, it doesn't feel organic here. Partially because when he's nebbish, it's because he's around people like these little kids, like customers and stuff. But when he's around the other employees that work in this mall, he is always mean to them. He just gets meaner sometimes. Yeah, he's just an asshole.
when someone isn't paying him. Yeah. Which again, man, no one in this movie is good to watch. You're like, I don't like anyone here. Everyone here is mean and shitty. Yeah, so she's like, you swear you won't laugh? And he's like, oh, why on earth would I ever laugh at a name? That's ridiculous. Okay, my name's Mildred Kerbopel. And he just goes, that's the stupidest name I've ever heard. Oh, like a wrestler from the 60s? Yeah. And then she goes, but your name's Winslow Cobblepot. And he just stands up. That's a perfectly good name. How dare you? He leaps out of his chair and gets immediately in her face. And he's got his fists up. And he's like, that's a perfectly good family name. The Cobblepots have been around for 150. And you're like, whoa, dude, take it down like 12 notches. What the fuck was that? Yeah.
Just flying off the handle at nothing. I also like Mildred Kerbopel like a female wrestler. No, that's not like a female wrestler. Except apparently it is because she's like, yeah, my mom was a wrestler and I know wrestling moves now. So I guess like he means like the female wrestler as opposed to that's the perfect name for a female wrestler. You know, like like it's a difference if you've been like, you know, like the famous female wrestler from the 60s. Weird. It's a weird movie. Everything is wrong. Every single thing is wrong. But they.
The meat of this movie is them sitting around jawing at each other until they eventually leave. And then they come across eventually the box, which has inside of it a piece of paper that explains the backstory. That's like, hey, in this box in like 1630, whatever, a baby died and we put its ghost in here because it's mischievous and a practical joker and it should never be let out. It should be contained forever. I'm like...
fuck dude you have the spirit of a dead child and you're like never let it find rest it must be contained within a box forever because it is slightly annoying yeah and the two of them are having this conversation like I like that Winslow starts with a very reasonable question wait we're in Hollywood how the fuck did this Massachusetts 1630s dead baby get here and Mildred goes well the guy who constructed the building maybe and that's the end of it that's the full explanation verbatim yep it's just oh this was from the other side of the country in the 1600s why is it here I don't know maybe the guy who made this building meh don't care the movie does not care about so many things and yet cares so deeply about others that you're just like, why? Why do you need to give us like 10 minute conversations about like, oh, well, you see, the person I work for is actually someone who's from Detroit. And then he found out that 900 numbers make a lot of money. So he made a 900 psychic thing. But you see, he doesn't know anything. But I joined. I'm like, no one gives a fuck. No one cares about this. I'll tell you the answer. The answer is that movies are 90 minutes long.
It's just the things this film decides to focus on versus what it decides to go, I don't know, maybe a thing happened anyway, is very weird to me. Anytime something interesting is brought up, they're like, huh, weird, anyway. And you're like, no, don't just anyway the plot. They're like, ah, we need to go have a 10 minute conversation about donuts now. Yeah. What?
So, meanwhile, Elliot and the security guard are bumbling around having a long conversation about how they've convinced themselves that the ghost, because it's green, is probably a space alien, and it's the first wave of an invasion, and if they catch it, they'll rescue humanity, and also make a lot of money, says Elliot a bunch of times. But they never try to catch it, they just keep hearing it laugh and running away doing woob woobs. And eventually, their plots collide when Elliot, I'm sorry, when Winslow decides to leave a trail of donuts for the ghost, because they had recently found a messed up plate of Entenmann's. Yep. And they're like, who could possibly destroy a plate of Entenmann's? And I'm like, office workers.
Yeah. That's what those are for. I love that the conversation is, oh man, who could have possibly fucked up all these donuts? It's like... Cops? No, this is far too neat for cops. They would be way dirtier. Good job. Nice praxis movie. Yeah, there's a little gag there. But yeah, they're just like, who could eat an entire tray of Entenmann's? Dude, you left it out in an office park. Literally anyone in this office building. Are you kidding me? If I'm in an office building and there's a table with some open Entenmann's, you better believe I'm having a donut. Having worked in an office park like that, I can tell you there's one guy sitting in a closed-off cubicle. He's like a probably computer guy, and he's got three quarters of that fucking thing. And he's put it in a Ziploc bag, and he's taking it home, and he's going to eat for a week. Yep, because goddammit, he works in that office. His life has gone awry. But some...
Someone, some sweet angel brought Entenmann's that day, and now he will eat like a king for a day. Yeah. I worked at Trader Joe's for a couple of years, and I learned really early on not to bring treats to the Trader Joe's. I mean, because this is going to sound mean and selfish and non-practice, but I wanted everyone to taste my delicious holiday treats, right? So I'd come in with a tray of cookies, and more than once I would bring in a tray of cookies, and the first person who saw it would grab it, grab a Ziploc bag out of their backpack, upend the entire thing into the backpack, put it away, and go back to work. Wow. More than once. And I was like, I'm not going to bring food here. I'm just feeding people, like a person who makes more than me. I'm not doing this again.
So, but anyway, that's a rant. Rather, he's like, I'll set a donut trap. Yeah, we're gonna lead a trail of donuts because we've also apparently managed to manifest an entirely new box of Entenmann's out of nowhere. Yeah. And he leads a trail of donuts to the box and he's like, all right, this baby ghost is gonna eat a bunch of donuts and then get, when it gets next to the box, we'll close the box on them. Yeah, which causes Mildred to just laugh at him. She's just like, oh, I got a dumb idea. I hope the ghost likes to fall for very stupid plans. Well, do you have a plan? No. So they try the plan and it would have worked too if it wasn't for those lousy security guards and Elliot's.
Because they pop up, they see the ghost moving down the trail of donuts, and Elliot's like, hey, alien, we're gonna catch ya, and we're gonna save humanity, and we're gonna make a lot of money. And then he just sort of boldly charges at the ghost. And both of them fall down, and the ghost just kind of fucks off. He doesn't even do anything to them, they just fall down because they're stupid. Yep, too stupid to stand, and so the ghost fucks off, and they're like, oh, man. And now they have, you know, a big conversation where they have to bring Elliot and the security guard in on what they know, that no, this is not an alien, this is a baby ghost, and it needs to go back in this box, but...
It already knows about donuts. So I'll use the little handheld tiger video game that Timmy the Kid left in my office today. And I love that we eventually more or less established Mildred as the character who points out that this movie is stupid while the movie is stupid. Yes. Because she's already been like, that donut plan is dumb as fuck. And also, why do I work in an office building? Wouldn't I just do this job from home? Yeah. So she's been our compass for correct ideas. So she just goes, why would a dead baby from the 1600s know what a fucking tiger handheld electronic device is? Oh yeah, because Winslow's just like, if there's one thing I know, it's that this is an object that no child or baby will ever be able to resist. I have cousins and nephews.
and I know that this video game is irresistible. She's like, this is a baby from the 1600s. It does not know what a video game is. And he's just like, fuck you, moving on. He was like, yeah, well, I'm Joe Estevez, and this is a movie from 1995. No one knows what a video game is. That's why I've got this Tiger handheld electronic Street Fighter 2, but we're going to have it play Pac-Man noises, the real Pac-Man noises. I'm assuming we didn't license those. Let's hope no one finds out. Well, we found out, Estevez, and we're coming for you.
Bad news, Estevez, both of us work for Namco. You may not have known this, but my uncle works for Nintendo. Which isn't relevant, it's just something we want you to know. We work for Namco, the company that makes Pac-Man, and we're coming for your ass. And my uncle wants you to know that the next console is going to be super sweet, and I get a copy of it before it's out. And that Smash Brothers will have Goku.
So they put the fucking Tiger Electronic on the ground despite Mildred's protestations. And it turns out she's wrong anyway. The ghost just shows up and starts playing fucking Pac-Man. Yeah, doesn't matter. Fucking Mildred is just there to be like, hey, this is dumb. And the movie's like, yes, I don't care. So now that the ghost is playing Pac-Man, the three men cower in a hallway where they're like, Mildred, go put it in the box. So she goes up and squishes it into the box. And right as she's finishing, the family from the photo shoot comes walking in. We've skipped what's going on with the crooks. Don't worry, we'll get back to that. It's not like it fucking matters. We've already done all of the business from the crooks because, as I mentioned before,
They intersect for one second. Yeah. That one second is right now. Yeah. They run past. They run past in this scene. They do not talk to them. No. They do not interact with them. They literally just cross paths once. Yeah. So she's squishing the ghost, which looks for all the world like crumpling up a puppet, because it is, into this box, right as the photography family comes walking back in and sees someone that the tiger electronic handheld has fallen on the ground and broken.
Yeah, they're like, oh, we came to get my son's video game, but now it is broken. Shame on you, Winslow. What are you still doing here? I don't know what it is, but it certainly seems as though you're mistreating other people's property. How dare you do this to a little boy? I demand immediate restitution. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, just one line. You don't need to say all the possible lines. Yep. And then, you know, of course, then every possible response, well, gee, I don't know. We were here all night. This seems the game's okay. We'll replace the game. I think we'll buy a new game. I'm like, pick one. Just pick one response. And he eventually does, because he just goes, you know what I think, ma'am, is that you should shut your big fat...
mouth. And then he starts high-fiving all the dudes. And she's like, well, let's just take our family and go. And then he switches right back into Nebish because he still wants that check. Yeah. Oh, wait, the check. Meanwhile, Ingrid or Mildred or whatever is like, see, this is why you send a woman to do things. I guess because she closed the box. You want something done. You send a woman. And he just goes, well, now I don't know about that because the women are kind of, you know, right. Am I right, guys? Am I right about how women are, you know, like, come on. What are we doing? What are we fucking doing? But now we're mostly done. The room is open. You can tell because the family managed to walk in. It's morning. The ghost is captured. The haunting has ended. Yes. They leave and.
He's just like, well, golly, what are you going to do, Madam Zora? And she's like, I'm going to go home and I'm going to sleep for a week. He's like, well, gee, do you think when you wake up you might want to get together? Huh? Like on a date? And she's like, yeah, sure, because that's what the movie says. Fine, whatever. I don't care. He's like, hot damn, on one condition. You have to get rid of that dumbass bow tie, which we haven't mentioned yet. But as far as photographers go, he dresses like he works at Farrell's Ice Cream. Yes. And he's like, he does the explosive thing again. My fucking bow tie is a perfectly good bow tie. I've been in this family for 150 years. I've killed women worse than you with this bow tie.
And then the end of the movie is the two crooks are like, well, at least we didn't leave empty handed. We have this box with chains on it and a padlock. And it's the whole, hey, our cousin Elvira, you know, her measurements. Why don't you try that as the combination? And then the credits before we have to see the fucking ghost composite effect again. Yep. That's it. That's the, that's the whole of baby ghost. I think my favorite thing that we went unmentioned so far is just all the shots, the exterior shots of a building. Yes. The views.
And there's one where they zoom in on a window. Zoom in on the window of an upper floor of a fucking building where you're like, man, you must have looked like a real big, creepy weirdo just sitting out there doing a fucking zoom. Like, there we go. Yeah, let's zoom in on this building. I guess the idea is supposed to be to convey that whatever's happening is happening in the hallway that that window is connected to. But at no point do you feel like this building they keep shooting has anything to do with anything. Well, especially because the building is much larger than nine floors, which is what they keep saying this building is. You're like, no, that's like an actual...
big Hollywood office building, you are talking about something else entirely. Yeah. What they should have done is go to one of those, like, sand-slash-tan-color buildings in the same parking lot as a Chick-fil-A that's, like, eight stories tall, and all it has is, like, there's one store on the bottom floor that sells pinatas, and then the rest of it is, like, cheap lawyers. That's the building they should have been using. But instead... Yeah, it's just... Oh, man. And that's the end, and we get the baby ghost song again. Yay! Oh, Lord, this movie is so fucking rough. I mean...
just even watching it is rough because trying to pay attention to this was very difficult for me. I will let you know. No, no, same thing. I had multiple times where I looked up and I was like, ah, fuck, something must have happened. Oh yeah, this is still going. Yeah, there was a point where like, I got up and left the room to go help stage with something and I didn't even think to pause it.
come back same conversation still happening like subconsciously I must have been like no way will anything that happens matter no I mean here's the thing we went through all of this and there was no point where I was like well golly you forgot whatever no because four things happen in this movie and in between it is like 20 minutes of bullshit yeah you want another scene we forgot to mention it's the one where the ghost does the classic balancing something on the top of a door trick so that one of the two crooks gets a trash can I already said that one of the two things he does is put a trash can of water on the crook yeah that's fucking whatever that's the most exciting thing that ever happens anyway let's go ahead And let's give our bests and worsts for Baby Ghost. Jeff, why don't you dig deep and find the best thing about Baby Ghost? I mean, it's going to be the unhinged I was in Nom, You Know rant.
when the little girl is hiding behind the barrel and the security guard is wandering around saying he can sense her movements. And he's like, because I was captured in Ho Chi Minh City. I spent two years in Vietnam and I started to eat bugs and rats in the internment camp to stay alive. It was horrible, except for the rats, because you could use pepper to tenderize them. And then the meat was actually pretty good. And I was a goddamn American hero soldier. And so just ranting like that, it was at least off kilter and well delivered. So that was my favorite thing. Great. What was yours? I'm going to say the best thing in this movie is...
Oh, but an elevator is supposed to stop on every floor. And I'm like, great, there was one joke. You did it. You told a joke. A classic dad joke. Congratulations, you managed to put one in there. I also really like the bit where they were talking about how the elevator stops on every floor and it was Winslow talking to the security guard. And they're like, oh, the building's closed and we're all going home for the night. And he's like, yeah, elevator's messed up. It goes to every floor. You know how kids are pushing every button. And I'm like, yeah, once. That happens once. And then the buttons aren't pushed anymore and the elevator works normally. What are you talking about? Is there a kid in there? All right.
But now for the difficult choice. What was the worst thing in Baby Ghost? All of... Nope, can't. Nope, can't. You gotta pick one sliver. I want you to give me a scene. One scene or one line. There's this one part of the movie. It runs about 86 minutes. No, okay. I think my least favorite thing is Elliot's... Outside of that one elevator joke, him just kind of doofing around like he thinks he's a three stooge. He just fucking sucks. He reminded me so much of the guy from the brother-in-law from Wrestling Christmas Miracle. It's a fucking shitty nobody actor just wandering around me like, I'm gonna get rich off this. I mean...
Here's the thing. He is the only other person aside from Estevez that is an actual actor. I know. And at one point he references Plan 9 from outer space. He did. I was going to mention that. Which he was in. Oh, that explains a lot. Yeah. He doesn't call it that. He calls it like Invasion of the Saucer. Well, no. He just describes the movie. He's like, oh, there was that movie where aliens showed up and then they went to a graveyard and they raised the dead. Yeah. And he describes Tor from that movie where he's like, there was this big hulking fellow that couldn't turn his neck and he kept walking forward. Yeah. He just describes Plan 9 but never says it. And he's like, there was some woman in it. Oh, she was a looker. And he does the hourglass hand in the air figure. But he does eventually say, because I kept waiting for him to be like, yeah, he's describing Plan 9 from outer space.
which, you know, at least he's not referencing Casablanca, that's something. Yeah. But then he goes like, it was called Invasion of the Flying Saucers, because I think he's afraid that Ed Wood's going to come back from the dead and sue him. And he goes, and you know, that film was filmed right here in Hollywood. And then the security guard's like, really? You don't say. Instead of like, yeah, most movies are filmed in Hollywood, you fucking hack. What the fuck are you talking about?
But yeah, there you go. Fun little thing. Conrad Brooks. Yeah. Was in Plan 9. Okay, that's fair. That's an interesting get. An interesting thing. Yeah, I mean, outside of that, I mean, I guess I think by least everything would be the repeated schtick from the crooks because so much of it was the same joke over and over again. I fucking, honestly, that might be mine because it's just, these two characters have literally no impact on this entire story and are completely superfluous and it's not like, oh, well, we're cutting to them because they're so funny. You're like, no, these are terrible. Everything in this is terrible. Yep. But like, this is pointless and terrible. At least the other ones are there.
To facilitate the things that are happening. Yeah. No, it's just fucking trash. I just hated every second of it. Yeah. It just, it felt like that got added on later because they could add it on later. Right. But I will say my least favorite thing is probably just the sound quality in this and the fact that they have one microphone to share between them. Yeah. And sometimes that works. Like most of the conversations in this movie are huddled around what you have to assume is a boom mic hovering immediately over their head. So they'll just pick up both characters. So they're really close to each other a lot of the time. You can tell they're not because all of a sudden one character sounds like they're in the next room. Yeah. Woof.
All right, let's go ahead and rate the movie. We are going to rate each of us from zero to five to give this movie a rating from zero to 10 at Jeff. It's a rare zero. I don't think this really counts as a film. Like there's a plot sort of, but not that you'd notice. Yeah. And it's just, it's shot on VHS. It's so far gone that I can't even give it the 0.5 I usually give things for being a movie. Yeah. I can't even give it that. So it's going to get the rare zero. I think I'm going to give it the 0.5 just for being like, well, you managed to go a full hour and a half and technically have a story, I guess.
I was on the cusp of going full zero as well. This is the kind of thing where if they had stuck to the guns and made this 26 minutes long, I would have been like, Gratz, you made a short film and it makes sense, and I give you the .5 because it's still shitty. But the fact that they meant to 90 minutes by just having characters stand around in hallways and endlessly repeat their backstories at each other makes me even madder, so I'm pulling that half point back away. Fair enough. Yeah, it's 90 minutes the way that a really stretched out piece of taffy is a big piece of candy.
All right, that gives us a final score of 0.5 out of 10 for Baby Ghost. Avoid at all costs. It is boring and pointless and meandering and terrible. Don't do it. Honestly, this is something that having watched it, I was like, God, this is one of those movies where I'm like, I don't think a Riff Trax or an MST3K or anything would even save this for me because I'm just like, there's just nothing. Just nothing is happening. Yeah. You have to be able to respond to something on screen and nothing is happening. I think that's been a problem for Riff Trax over the past couple of years. Like, well, Mystery Science Theater, Red Letter Media, all those other guys, they can afford to pick and choose.
You know, they can watch a movie and be like, yeah, this is fucking stupid and terrible, but we won't have any good jokes for it. And they throw it away in pre-production. And I'm going to guarantee you, almost all of them have. But Riff Tracks, Riff Tracks has such a huge output that they don't say no to shit. And so a lot of Riff Tracks movies are the kind of things where you don't make it all the way through. You turn it on, you're like, all right, what you got for me, Mike and Bill and Kevin? I can't wait to, ah, Jesus. This is bad. This movie's so bad, my neck hurts. I just want to, I think I want to die. Pretty sure, pretty sure I'm going to get out of here. I don't even think something like the delightful Bill Corbett saying like, that's what she said or whatever in there is going to.
turn my mind around on this one. I just want, you know, Mystery Science Theater hit that train a couple of times. The fucking Starfighters, Red Zone Cuba. Yeah, Red Zone Cuba is the one where I'm like, Jesus Christ, nothing can save this. Yeah, there's a couple of them, but Riff Trax has that, the ratio's way off for them, and I always feel bad about that. Yeah. Anyway, there you go. Yeah. So, honestly, just give this a pass no matter what's going on with it. It's not worth it. Do not come up to us afterwards and be like, that sounds terrible. I gotta see it. I wish I hadn't.
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And of course, we are doing more TV Mastery as well. We are just wrapping up our season with Auto Man and the last episode going on tonight ending on a doozy, I would say. Yeah, pretty much a doozy. I would give it a doozy. I'd give it a doozy, I'll do ya. It's a doozy of a pickle. I'm glad that we're over because it was definitely starting to get a little on tracks, but this is a good way to go out, I think. Yep, so we are going to be doing that and then we'll switch up to something else. But everything, like I said, helps support us. And if you can't support us financially, you can still, you know, tell someone about the show, give a review somewhere. That makes it so that other people find us.
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