Beyond Darkness (1990)

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It also stars Jean Lebrock from the version of Metamorphosis that Kyle was supposed to watch. I got to that point. I was like, I recognize him. Where is he from?

And I was going to fuck you Eli. It's also celebrating the 35th anniversary this year. It's one of the movies with a paragraph summary on Wikipedia where you go, I mean, I guess that's what happened in the movie. The family moves into a house where witches were burned at the stake while the house is haunted by witches.

It is also haunted by an ugly serial killer lady who killed 10 kids and ingested their souls. The whole thing makes no sense. It's fucking wild. Love and miss you guys.

Eli. And I want to address a couple things right now. Right? Like not only is this the writer and director of Troll 2, it's also made the same year as Troll 2.

And starts to sing Kid. Starting the same Kid. And I have to say that I can't speak for you guys. I was mildly disappointed by this movie.

I had fun watching this movie. I had fun watching this movie. But this was almost like too competently made for what I was going in for. All the Troll 2.

Yeah. That's your fault. Yeah. That is.

This movie is so much more enjoyable. It's way more enjoyable of a solo watch. I was like, I literally in my brain thought, oh boy, Kyle is like, Kyle's given us like a deep cut. Hey, Eli's like your next like invisible maniacs that like no one's really talking about that, like walks that so bad, it's good line.

But this was like fine. It's just a perfectly fine art movie. Yeah, you also have to address the allegations against you not loving Eli. That's why you're going to enjoy.

Oh no, I don't know. You know what I'm doing. Oh, so I had to, before you get into that, unless this is part of the thing, I did have to look up like what the La Casa franchise was. Oh, I was like, no, no, no.

You need that to me. All right. Well, let's go to that. Just set up to discuss this shit.

All right, good, good, good. And, you know, I'll say the thing that I wrote down, and then I'll see what Scott says, because I also did zero research on it. But obviously this movie, and in no way am I trying to take anyone's double features with this, but like this movie is obviously heavily influenced by all of the Amityville films, the Exorcist and Poltergeist, all kind of like smashed into this singular entity. Yeah.

But you know, sometimes for these deeper cuts, when you say maybe you should watch beforehand, shit's on to be, this is worth your time. It's a damn rare. Give it a watch. And Matt, what was the, when, can you tell the story of what happened when you went looking for this on to be?

Well, so you post links in our trailer, which is great if I want to watch on my computer, but I usually want to watch on my TV. So I have to go into the app and start typing. Yes. And I got to the word beyond.

And Beyond Darkness was the second suggestion ahead of Beyond Boobs, which I didn't even bother to learn more about. But I just thought it was hilarious that a movie existed called Beyond Boobs. I mean, is there anything beyond boobs? Nice to listen to now.

Beyond Boobs is a 2018 TV movie. Oh. About birds? No.

Says a hilarious and at times provocative film about a middle-aged American single mother living in Switzerland and her quest to find out if she'll be invisible when she is no longer the woman with the biggest breasts in the room. Okay. What a stupid concept for a movie. It's 53 minutes.

What's got it? It says that it's hilarious and sometimes provocative. Honestly, I can't say anything provocative about that. It just sounds horrible.

Yeah, no, it doesn't sound great. It's depressing. Anyway, Scott, with all that out of the way, let's roll out the red carpet. And you try to walk us through what a Wikipedia paragraph simply is unable to do.

Okay. Oh, and Kyle, it sounds thirsty. So am I. Kyle, would you like to do the honors first?

I picked lace from Tox because these ladies of lace. Lace is hanging out. They're laceas hell. It's a chex-style race.

That was a tough one. I was struggling a little bit and I saw lace and it was perfect. And you know what? So funny is I went with Ghostfish, shrouded summit.

Yes. Yes. Okay. And I'm very nice.

It's just like I had to because they all went, you don't see their faces. They're just going to shrouds. They're shrouded. They're shrouded.

Very nice. Okay. We're on the same page. That's pretty good.

I'm not usually a Belgian white kind of guy, but that's, and I also never buy gluten free beer because I don't, I'm not. Yeah. But Ghostfish doesn't have a beer actually. Oh, yeah.

They will be featured more heavily. I did a deep dive into my fridge this afternoon to see what I had. And I'm not going to let you see what these are. I'm going to like, you know, look at that.

That's a list. That is a Patreon. It can pause. Six, eight, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19 beers.

More beers? The rest of the year? Beers for the years. Years for the years.

Well, those are all the beers that I am like, I've purchased and forgotten. Then I purchased them for episodes because I purchased something else or making suggestions for something else. And anyway, so where do we start with this? Tell us about La Casa.

Let's start with that because maybe we're confused because we haven't seen the other four. No, you're really not. This is like a beyond the door kind of thing where they don't, and they're, this is a hilarious little trip, but I want to preface all this by saying, Matt made me feel like I don't do a good job on this show by saying that I have a hard time staying on topic when I'm doing my plot summaries. And the reason it hurt my feelings is because it's true and not because it's wrong.

So I'm going to do my, I took very good notes this time. And so it may sound a bit robotic, which would have been better for last week, but there are no robots in this week's episode. But I took notes, I think that I have a very good synopsis of what happens in this movie, but I will also say if you have not seen La Casa 4, Beyond Dark Knight 5, holy fuck, we're getting into why it's so hard to remember the numbers of these. Yeah, it's just, it's my little friend.

I'm a damn near relevant. I want to just remind us that Claudio, our boy Claudio actually made three movies in 1990. That's what we're talking about. Two of them, Troll 2, and Beyond Darkness.

But he also made a beloved one for us Night Killer, which I think we watched. That's 90, 90, oh my god. If we did, oh my god, if we had, if we had been saved for this, we could have known, but Night Killer is so good. Night Killer is one of the greatest things that you have brought into my life, Kyle.

Yeah, not really. That was his thing. That was Eli. You know what, Eli?

Last year for listening. Last year was his two years ago. We're two years ago. Two years ago.

Which is really funny, both of you have now. Not a compliment though. I think we're like Kyle Eli, like you guys both have that same frenetic energy. We certainly do.

Yeah, but no, no, we actually love you both very much. So let me just give you a little bit of information because Matt named off a couple of franchises that this obviously apes. But he did not mention the evil dead because that's where this all starts. Oh, that's right.

The evil dead was distributed. That was a trinity question. That I had a map view. And creature feature weekend.

That's cool. Oh, yeah. Ask that one next year and we'll get it right. The evil dead was distributed in Italy under the title La Casa.

Well, that makes sense. The house where it was a box office success. The 1987 sequel Evil Dead 2 was thus distributed under a similar title La Casa 2 and also did well in the Italian box office. Attempting to capitalize on the success of the evil dead films, Italian filmmaker Joe Diomado produced an unofficial sequel titled La Casa 3, which was released in America or in English speaking countries as Ghost House.

This in turn was followed by two more quote unquote sequels La Casa 4, which is also known as Wicherie and La Casa 5, which is known as Beyond Darkness. They're all called La Casa so far in Italy. They're very unrelated, right? So this is where shit gets so weird that if I didn't have this in front of me, I wouldn't be able to tell this to you guys chronologically because it makes no sense.

So two additional films released in Italy under the La Casa series name, both unrelated to either the Evil Dead series or Joe Diomado's films. House 2, the second story was released in Italy as La Casa de Helene, though it's sometimes referred to as La Casa 6. A movie that technically doesn't exist. Despite this, the horror show was released as La Casa 7.

To add further confusion to the matter, the horror show was marketed as a sequel to House 2 in other non-U.S. markets using the title House 3, The Horror Show, as had been the original intention for the U.S. release during production. The producers had ultimately felt that the horror show was too dissimilar in tone to the previous installments in the House franchise, was too serious, and resolved to at least simply as the horror show in the U.S.

market, which we have done in episode of The Horror Show, right? That's a map pick. When The Horror Show was released in DVD in Italy, it was titled La Casa 3. So taking the intentional House 3 as a reference and making it a whole matter, even more confusing, House 4, which I didn't even know was another movie, was released in the House 4.

Oh yeah, no, no, it's on my list as of this afternoon reading this. It was released in Italy as both House 4, presents a in Paul Pabili, I don't know what that means, rather than La Casa 4 because La Casa 4 already existed. And it was also released as Chihua Ucusio, Roger, the House, the original House, released in Italy as Chie, so Poto in Kayakasa and was never included as part of the La Casa series. So we have seven movies that are in the La Casa series, but they don't make any sense.

So we have La Casa, AKA Ivo, that 81, La Casa 2, Ivo, that 287, La Casa 3, AKA Ghost House, 88, La Casa 4, AKA Witcher, 89, La Casa 5, AKA Beyond Darkness, 1990, La Casa 6, AKA House 2, the second story, which is a direction equal to House 1, La Casa 7 is also known as Horror, the Horror Show, but is also known as the Horror Show in America. And that's the simplification of the films in the series. So there we are, House 4 in America, sounds amazing. It's a 1992 directed video on your film.

That was a listener's submitted that we didn't pick at one point, and I ended up buying it anyway, and was like, this is great. We're not an introvert, but we're not an answer. Well, but most of it has stacked, it must have been a stacked listener's submitted. I will say, because I got curious when you read the Italian name for House, because I noticed that one of the words is Roger, which is the name of the main character in House.

I had to run that through Google Translate. So the original House was released in Italy under the Italian name that translates to, Who Killed Roger? No worthy character who does not even die in House. He dies in House 4 at the beginning, because they probably couldn't pay him.

Oh, sorry, that movie that we're going to discuss is from 1992 that we'll probably discuss in a couple months. I just ruined the first 10 minutes for y'all. Sorry, nary. So now I understand that.

Now I totally get it. Oh, my God. Okay, so let me get into Beyond Darkness. So I'm going to click out of all of my Wikipedia, and I figured that the LaCasa Wikipedia was enough trivia for us that I didn't even look at the Wikipedia for Beyond Darkness, because I can only imagine.

Here we go. Trying to discuss this, trying to explain this movie. All right, so Beyond Darkness, LaCasa 5, it begins with a priest who looks very much like the priest in Midnight Mass to me. He comes into, he gets led into a cell with this woman who has some sort of facial lesions, very bad skin, and no hair, who he says, I'm going to give you your last rights, confess your sins, and she says, no, I murdered those children, and then I devoured their souls, and they are inside here with me now.

I'm going to drag them to hell because I have a Black Bible, like an evil Bible that I read, because I'm a witch, and my God is A.M.F., which they then show a picture of not A.M.F., but rather Bethameth. But it's scary in 1990, so it works just fine. She also has another banger of a line, she says, as she's getting walked towards the electric chair to be electrocuted to death for her crimes. She goes, come, priest, I want you to witness my last orgasm, which doesn't feel like a bad Italian to English translation, but rather just crazy.

It's a class. It's a very severe and grass. Yeah, and so the priest is now kind of infected with this dark mess because he's in front of all those ghost children. Yeah, he gets a little, he doesn't believe her, and then he sees that she's surrounded by the children who souls she consumed and will be dragging to hell with her when she dies.

So he is now kind of infected with this second sight where he sees the evil that these witches do because he's, I think that he's been holding the A.M.F. Bible. Anyway, we kind of, we watch her get fried and then we see that another priest and his family move into a new house that has been gifted to them by, I believe he's kind of like the head of the dicey, so maybe a bishop or something, whatever. His name is Reverend Jonathan.

And so the guy's name, the dad's name is Peter, the mom's name is Annie, the son's name is Martin, played by Michael Stevenson. So that's the guy, that's the kid who was in Troll 2, and he wrote and directed the best worst movie, right? Yeah, really directed it. Yeah, and he also directed the American screen, which was that documentary about Hong Kong.

So I'm actually, I'm surprised he doesn't do more, I would love to see all of him. He's saying, you know, he also directed Attack of the Murder Horn, it's in 2021. Well, they can't all do matters, all right, guys. Yeah, all right, all right, give me off on Michael's page.

All right, so they show up and they're checking out the new house and Carol, the daughter, or the younger, she's the younger daughter. So there's Martin is the older brother and she's the younger sister. She sees a light shining from behind the wall in the closet and somehow dismisses it as a hair dryer. And Martin goes, you're so silly, whatever.

And so they sit down for their first dinner in their new home and the lights go out and Carol proclaims that she quote, can't eat in the dark. I can't find my mouth, which for gasso, that's all we need to say about it. Amazing. They're like, oh, we must have just been a circuit breaker.

So then the kids try to go to sleep and the black swan rocking horse more or less. This gigantic child size swan rocking horse. I love it. I love it.

Don't say anything about it because it is important for later. Anyway, so they are watching it rock by itself in the middle of the night. And as this is happening in the parents bedroom, Peter and Annie are kind of trying to get it on, but then he wants to read scripture to her because he's a priest, I guess. Also, they're supposed to be gessuit, which is Catholic, right?

But maybe I'm asking people because I don't know this myself and I usually school you guys on Christianity. Can gessuits marry and have kids? Because Catholics can't. I don't know.

Anyway, that's a great question. This is also an incredibly religious movie. Like, where it drags, it drags because I do not want to see them doing exorcism. It's so fucking boring.

We'll get there though. So the window blows open, the wind comes in and they're like, oh, that was weird. And they just kind of like, no one really has a discussion about these supernatural poltergeist esque things that are happening. So more spooky stuff happens at dinner the next night and they have like their old school radio starts to whisper at them and then it blows up when there's no electricity.

And it's all this poltergeist stuff like plates flying everywhere. But at the same time, we also understand that the priest from before, his name is Father George, is now a blithering drunk walking the streets trying to explain to people that the AMF Bible is like this harbinger of doom and no one believes in because he is just a drunk guy with a dirty face walking around in a trench coat. That's one of my favorite, aside from some of the great practical effects and like little gags that happen in this movie, that is one of my favorite sequences. It is like Saffty Brothers level, like uncut gems, like filming this guy from afar out just in the public, like performance art level, like him being drunk on the street.

It's incredible. It's like a minute long sequence of him just like bumbling around in public pretending to be drunk. It's quite, it's for 1990, it felt both ahead of its time, but also like reminiscent of a time where low budget, you just had to like do what you had to do together. It was like, it was both things.

I really loved that sequence. Oh, I did. Do you think you're wrong? Oh, no, no, that was just me.

That was the one note that I made. Was that I really liked that sequence. That's your one scene. That's why it was only about that.

I was like, I wish that there was, so my first big acting credit in high school, my freshman year, was the fall production. They did our town. And I was the drunk priest. And I have ever told you guys a story that like the director, like this school play director, who's also the art teacher, was like, okay, walk across the stage drunk.

Like you show up in a couple of times and then you get to have this little whole monologue at the end when everybody's in the after. That's what our town is, depressing shit, whatever. But yeah, so like I didn't know how to act drunk. And she was like, just pretend like your balance is off.

And so that was how I played a drunk. And I feel like father of George. Freshman year? Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. And so I think father George went to the same acting school as I did for drunk priest walking around Yeah, he's balance is way off. Listen, we're all around the same part.

We want to talk some of our favorite scenes. And I'm just going to throw this out there. Scott, you did talk about some of the stuff that happened at the dinner table. But my favorite is that a cleaver just starts flying or zooming around.

That sounds great. Moment intent to kill. That feels very evil, dead to me. That's the one thing in this world, because it really feels very poltergeist.

This is so poltergeist. But that one section just was like, oh, it's evil, dead to when all the shit's flying around in the house. That makes sense to me. Yeah.

Just a quick update on Jesuit priests. No, they are not allowed to marry. But the exception is that if the priest came from another denomination and converted, they were previously married, which we can maybe assume that that's the case. But he climbed rank pretty quick with these young children.

Yeah. We got forgot soed. Yeah, we got forgot so. Something he's happy with for gosh, I was a verb.

I don't know what it is. It just did. Yeah. Like there's a t-shirt involved here.

I don't know what that is. Yeah, another t-shirt that no one will understand. I mean, I don't know if our t-public can handle it. People will love it.

The people will love it. They'll come to us with flocks. All right. So we then have where we start to get these kind of hallucinatory dream and dreamy kind of scenes, which is where I really think this movie hits its stride.

Because I don't give a shit about the poltergeist stuff. I don't give a shit about the exorcist stuff. Like all that stuff doesn't interest me. But then we see like the witches in their black lace and they're like, oh, lay in this bed that we made for you.

And then it's a coffin. And Carol's like, ah, she wakes up and stuff like that. And then like they're trying to escape the house because now shit's happening to them. And they have to admit that, okay, we really are in a bad situation.

So they are trying to get out of the house. So we find out that there were 20 witches that lived at this house and were burnt at the stake for using the AMF Bible and doing horrible child sacrifices. And they now haunt the house as well as the witch from the beginning who also can possess people, which whatever. They're possessed when they're wearing creamy, scalleral contacts.

But that's all I can really tell you about how the possession mechanics work in this. But the whole plan is that these witches want Martin's soul. They want Martin and Carol's soul. They like children's souls.

And so they want to take them to hell. Who doesn't? No, no, no, no. Yeah, on the podcast.

That is an off podcast discussion about children's soul eating. Patreon. Patreon.com. Patreon.com.

Anyway, so we now have kind of these sets of chacings where they cannot leave the house because they kind of are no longer in reality. And then when they get back to reality, Martin's soul is in limbo and going to be sacrificed by the evil witches. And then Reverend Jonathan explains to Father George who was best friends with Father Peter. Oh my God, it's hard to remember all these names.

It's just like the Casa series itself. They were like buddies in seminary, I guess. And then like, so Father George finds the house where Peter and his family are. He's trying to help by doing an exorcism.

But he's like, I am no longer a priest. So Father Peter recrisons him as a man of the cloth and they exercise the witch from Martin's body. But then it possesses or she possesses Father George who I'm a little iffy on if he sacrifices himself, dies or just goes to the afterlife to battle because there's still this thing where Martin is like his soul is there. Father Peter and his wife Annie have gone through the looking glass literally mirror and are holding like this badass spirit Halloween black crucifix with a cross with a knife that comes out that pops out of it.

And the witch is like, sacrifice him to Ameth. And finally, they stab her together with it because the reverend is helping them from the church. He then has a heart attack and the Ameth Bible burns that in turn burns the house and all the wishes in it. Have I missed too much in the details here guys?

No, no, the movie barely connects way better than troll two does without you needing like a fucking map to follow everybody's whereabouts. Yeah. You know, like you said, like a kind of once we get into the possession stuff, the movie does kind of take a real standstill until the priest is possessed. Once we get to this last like 10 minutes, it it kicks back into energy a little bit and even has like among all the other things that I refer to, like the ending almost has like a low budget hell razor vibe to it where all of these ghastly witches are coming out of anywhere.

There is a scene where a veiled woman just gives a jump scare and it's like effective. Like in a way that no jump scare in troll two ever was like so. Oh, oh, the popcorn didn't didn't speak about it. And you know, the popcorn didn't get me the them eating her and then they're going to eat him.

Like none of that really startled me on the same level. Now, you know, you don't really miss anything. It's there is this moment where it does drag a little bit and it was an extra to be commercial break for me. This is melba on to me.

And I was just like, oh, it's over. And then there was one more set of stuff after this commercial break. I was like, really? But the movie hits a lot of a lot of really solid notes like I mentioned before.

There's like there's a couple of great just like visual gags that I think are really effective that just just got me going. And the fact that there's this like really nasty, she's not even older. She's not she's just like done up which Lee. But that she's this like very witchy, angry, superior.

Oh, I did forget one detail. She's also the bus driver that father George sees when he's drunk on the street. And she like has all the kids and she's like, find me in hell. You're mine now.

He's like, no, no, come back. Yeah, she tries to like get him in cahoots through all this. It's such a weird movie, but it's very charming. You know what she reminded me a little bit of Melissa Lamartino.

And I mean that with so much love. There was this one when she was driving the bus. I was like, oh, Melissa could just do this as cosplay. That would be incredible.

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I'm not going to do another F'GASO, but I'm going to do something that feels like a spiritual... well, not a spiritual successor. I'm going to say that it feels of the same era and vibe. I'm going to go with Paganini Order.

Horror. Oh, dude. Did I take it? Oh, dude.

You almost did. So you meant it. You almost did. I'll tell you why afterwards.

Damn, that was close. That was very close. Paganini Order for sure. That was really close to what I almost wrote down to.

OK, then I think we're kind of in sync then. Can you imagine that night? Everybody would just scratch their heads for three and a half hours and be like, OK, guys. Yeah.

Yeah. Dude, we want to be here. And you did. I 100% approve.

So Paganini Horror was on my list, but then you had mentioned that School Busy Night actually wanted to watch Nightmare on Elm Street 2. I thought that it would be like it's not necessarily the same vein, and it really only the connected tissue, if you were to draw that comparison. It's a possession movie. But it's a possession movie.

It's a Freddy Krueger as this devourer of kids in a lot of ways. I just thought it was like, this could be a good, not totally the same vein, but still fun double feature. What about you, Matthew? So it's hilarious that Scott went through the entire LaCasa history, because I did not realize that one of my double features is the OG LaCasa.

No, not the Evil Dead, the movie house. I was like, this feels very like, obviously house has way more of a sense of humor to it. Yes. And that's kind of what I felt like after watching.

This was like, I just did a little bit more humor. Yeah, so I went with house. But you both had a secondary one, Scott. I didn't have a secondary one, but Scott did.

Prom night two, Hello Mary Louz, because of the Rockin' Horse. Yes. Yep. Yep.

Yep. That makes sense. That's not that too. That makes sense.

You know what it also makes sense? Supporting a podcast that you love. Go to hmnnpodcast.dashery.com or our website hmnpodcast.com and buy some merch. Check out all the cool stuff that we're rockin' and wearin' and so on.

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Follow us on all of our socials, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Letterbox, it's all hmn podcasts. And if you haven't already, look into what is happening at the Skate or Die Film Festival that is October 3rd and 4th. Kyle and I will be there on the 3rd doing a live commentary on a film that I think we know what it is, but I don't think it's been announced yet. So we won't announce it here just yet.

And that's about it. So Scott, what is something you watch, Red, Listen to, et cetera, that you want to talk about? I really liked Clannin' the Cornfield. Yeah.

I felt like you really undersold it to me. And so I watched it thinking, oh, this is gonna be, I'm gonna fall asleep and hate this. And I really liked it. I thought that it was written so much better than you gave it credit for.

And I'm not saying you shout out. I'm just saying, you were very, I felt like a little dismissive. You were like, you're like, it was a good way to burn 90 minutes. And I was like, I'm really enjoying this, you know?

So I might read the book. I don't know if I can find myself a copy for five bucks, you know? I'm sure you will. Yeah, I mean, like I said, it is, in my mind, it is a perfectly fine homage to like a 90s, dimension, film, slasher.

Yeah. And like, regardless on if that's like the best written or the worst written, those movies are always gonna scratch a niche that makes me happy. It just seems like I would have expected you to be way more into it. That's just what I was watching.

I'm like, Matt, really undersold this. Well, to be fair, I also, I think I liked it a lot. And then I was like, I don't want to oversell this in case Scott hates it. Because it was also coming off the heels of me really enjoying the monkey.

And knowing that you hate it the monkey. I was like, fuck I hate the monkey. So I was like, all right, I tried lightly on this recommendation. But I do want him to watch this because I think he'll like it.

But I, on the off chance that he absolutely hates it, I don't want to say something like, this is such a Scott movie. And then be like, how poorly do you see me as a person? Listen, it is for me listeners, hard recommend, Clannock Cornfield. It's not like the best horror movie I've seen all year, but it is a really good time.

Great kills, great twists. It's just fun. That's one that's one that and this happens every so often. That's one where I watch the movie and I'm like, all right, if we're still going 10 years from now, like there's nowhere where this is not gonna be an episode.

But so keep the twist a secret for the next nine and a half years. I mean, there's also a part of me that I'm like, maybe maybe we say it every year, but like maybe it's 2026. It's time for us to do one or two in theater now movies. Not like at one point we were trying to do like five to six.

Crazy. Yeah. But I think I think we can find two new movies every year that we're all like, look, we're going to watch this no matter what. Let's just all try to watch it the same weekend and put something out.

Kyle, how about you? Because mine's going to be super short. Don't try to control me. Matt.

I agree. I would like to do that. From like, even for my own sake, if I have homework to do, I will, I will do the homework. Otherwise I might not fucking do the work.

So maybe I watched climate cornfield before next week's episode, no promises. So I just finished reading what called Phantom. And I wonder if you know what this is. What this is.

I read Susan K's Phantom, which was written in 1990. It is the backstory to Eric of Phantom of the Opera fame. Susan K wrote this whole backstory about where Eric came from. So Gaston LaRoe, who wrote the Phantom of the Opera in the late 1800s.

I'm sorry, it takes place in the late 1800s. He wrote it in 1909. He has this character, Eric, that has a mysterious background and doesn't get touched upon in all these years and adaptations later. Susan K, who I actually don't really know a lot about.

So I'll have to do more research on that. I wrote this book called Phantom and I came across it in our early stages of developing Phantom of the Podbrough. And I knew that I wanted to read. There's no audiobook.

There's like a YouTube like person reading it's audiobook, but it was horrible. So I found a copy myself and I've been reading it. And I've been reading it over the course of probably almost six months now, just before bed. That's been really weird before bedbook.

And so it's not horror-centric, but it is pulpy. It's sometimes erotic. It's sometimes really hand-handed in the way that it sort of answers for the Phantom's personality traits or it really is just like, and this is why he's this and just really fucking hammers at home. It's so it's trashy.

It's a trashy pulpy novel about Eric's backstory from birth to the Phantom stuff. And it was such a joy to read somebody's interpretation of that. And it's obviously it doesn't touch fanfic levels, but it's also 1990. So it's not far removed from that, even in a lot of ways.

It's like when you if you were writing fanfic without knowing it was fanfic, you knew that it had to be a novel. So you had to make it into a novel. It's just so joyful. I loved it.

It's not like that's like a whole new world. Right. We live in a world where literally Wicked is a hit Broadway musical, but it's based on a book that was like the same basic and seat of like, but what if the Wicked Witch wasn't Wicked? Like people are always like, I think it's just the dawn of people being a fan of something people have tried to justify their love of a villainous character.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just and it's told through various points of view until that last POV is or the last main POV is Eric, but it's told like through his mother's eyes, through like a foreman's eyes who like helped raise him through the Persian.

So there's a character that gets left out of a lot of adaptations called the Persian who is this knowledgeable, you know, semi friend or protector of Eric that, you know, we just go through all these instances of like where he came from. And it's just, it's just so fun. Like you can find, you can find the book because they, it's the book's out of print, long out of print now, but you can find like a PDF copy of it easily. And it's, I don't know, it was just a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed my reads and it was like, it's an extended read for me because I take a long time doing so, but it was worth it in the long haul. Really enjoyed it. Love that. Mine's going to be very quick, but I saw a fantastic four first steps and it's great.

I can't remember if I talked about it on the show, so apologies if I did already, but it's just really good. It's, it's a fun Marvel movie. I feel like a lot of this year has been Marvel slow in their release schedule just enough that they're able to make fun movies again. Yeah.

And that's all we asked for. And like Scott, talk about, talk about a movie that I feel like checks all the boxes, like a retro 60s sci-fi, just feel good, wholesome, fantastic four movie, like it's still not a better, fantastic movie than the first Incredibles, but it's pretty damn close. Like it, all the dynamics are there. There's so many fun, like, I, this is the closest I'll give to a spoiler and it's in the first two minutes, but like they do something that I love that's happened this year.

I haven't seen Superman yet, but I hear Superman also does this where we just like skip or quickly zoom past the origin story. So like the fantastic four movie literally begins at the like five year anniversary of the fantastic four existing and it starts with a TV show documentary summarizing all the events that brought the fantastic four to life in a documentary style in like three minutes. And it's so fucking smart to just like speed run that stuff that we've seen a million times in movies and that every comic book fan knows, but like, hey, there might be younger people in the audience here is a quick and dirty, like, here's everything you need to know. But like in that moment, as they're showing the footage, they even recreate the famous fantastic four issue one cover of them fighting like a giant green monster coming out of the ground.

Yeah. Like the like attention to detail on that, where it's like, no, we are, we are firmly leaning into like the 60s aesthetic, the 60s vibe of these comics, the like pursuit of science and then still it feels like powerfully relevant to 2025 at the exact same time. It's, it's really, really, really wonderfully made. Definitely like, I'm not one that has like a, I'm sure that there are people who have like their master lists of like, here's my ranking of every single thing that Marvel's ever released.

But if you're taking like TV shows off the table and stuff, this is probably a top five Marvel movie for me. Like it is, it has that rewatchability that like the first Iron Man has or the first Guardians movie has where it's like, Oh, it's under two hours. It's feel good. I was just going to answer the run.

It's exciting. Kyle's time is money, including, including all of the post credit stuff that you don't truly need. It's an hour 55. That's so like it's over in like an hour 45 and then you know, 10 minutes, the mid credit sequence you can stay for the post credit sequence you do not need to stay for.

Like the post credits is just like, I can't wait for like the two thirds credits. Yeah, just in the middle of the movie. They're just like, that's actually just called a scene in the movie. We're, but we're going to redefine it.

We're going to change it. I really like that two thirds moment in Spiderman with Uncle Ben dies. Toylars. Anyway, speaking of things that die, I'm sure people in next week's movies.

So stay tuned, subscribe, all of that stuff for the final listener, submit it movie pick. You're listening to the Geekscape Network.