All right, welcome to Fowin' Month, the grand Fowin' Alley. Hell yeah. Call me, of course, a reference to phones, for the season. Can I see your intro song and raise you one?
Yeah, please, please. Okay. Let me just, phones. Fones.
Fones. Fones. Fones. Fones.
Welcome to Fowin' Month. Oh, that's always fun when, wait, when I know exactly where it's going. Yeah. I can get on board.
Yeah. If you call me or the other Blondie song, hanging on the telephone, also a banger, Blondie has like, just fucking banger, after banger, Jesus Christ. Truly just like, not, it'd be insane to say they're underappreciated, they're Blondie, but, well that's a thing, it's like, I know people are like, people who know of Blondie appreciate Blondie, but I don't know if enough people know. I would agree, you know, in the past few years, there's been like a resurgence of appreciation for like, the Grateful Dead.
Sure. Fuck that. Yeah, oh, fuck that. Who needs it?
Fuck that a thousand times. Blondie, huh? Blondie, all day. And let's give it up for another Blondie, Kim Basinger.
Basinger? How do you say it? I always heard it as Basinger, but I have no idea. We gotta get our ducks in a row.
There's too much at stake. This is the finale of Phone Month. Phone Month, of course, our series within a series where we, you know, it's a subset of Phone Month where we look at movies with phone or some variation of phone in the title, written or story by Larry Cohen. It's Phone Month, it's really very simple.
I feel like after this, we should do some more Larry Cohen movies. I think so. The fucking guy is tight. He makes a tight script.
I fully agree. I'm very into the police brutality angle of this. That was so unexpected. This movie manages to be as sort of like light and airy as cool whip while also being.
While also being, yeah, like a cab. Yeah. Well, at the very least, T-Cab, these cops are bastards. Oh, well, yeah, sure.
You just want to open a day spa. Right. Not a salon. Not a salon.
What? Okay. There's so much to talk back here. Yeah.
People who haven't seen this movie are like, what the fuck are they talking about? And when you say people who've seen this movie, you're talking about everybody but us? Yeah. Do we know how this performed at the box office?
I feel like, you know, okay, so we're talking cellular from 2004. So this comes out in 2004 and I feel like it just sort of comes and goes, you know, people see it, but it's not like a huge hit, obviously. Like it's, you know, kind of whatever. I didn't see it at the time.
This was my first go around with cellular and, man, real good. Hey, let's just get it out of the way and say it now. They just don't make them like this anymore. They really don't for better and for worse.
Yeah. They just don't make them like this. It's like you can see how inexpensive it was to make. Yeah.
There's like the whole thing takes place either in a car or one location, which is an abandoned house. But you know, but wait, he is constantly driving around to like different places. And even though like the places that goes are, you know, he goes to a school for like a second, he goes to the police station for a second, it sort of gives the illusion of like many locations. They go to different places, but there aren't spending a lot of time in any of these places.
Right. It's like that attic set and the Santa Monica pier and that's more or less it. Yeah. That's it for a large portion of the movie.
The big sort of like, there's like one action sequence. We have like one driving sequence and that's about it. Oh, I guess there's another, another big action moment where Kim Basin, or Kim Basin or drives a car and like an Escalade into it and old shed. That's really pretty thrilling.
Sure. And you know, I got to say, yeah, I'm all in on cellular. Yeah. This was so much fun.
It was again, it's like, this is a movie that starts with like a, just a brutal murder and a kidnapping and then a kidnapping of a boy. But intercut with it, it just folded in is like the meringue of Chris Evans at like age 20 playing age 20. Yeah. Just being like, oh, I have a cellular telephone.
I love how everybody is so amazed by cell phones. I know. Well, how could they not be the they have film quality video recording. They record Hollywood camera quality video.
Right. It's the video that it takes. They can, these phones can hold up to 50 previous numbers that were either called or incoming calls. And what's that one line where he's like, that's the thing about see the thing about cell phones.
These days is that they have technology. It does. He keeps going. But the technology, the pause is so weird.
Actually this, the quotes page for this IMDB, this better be so fleshed out or I'm going to flip shit. Yeah, I just want the script. Yeah. You know, this is a classic case of like, there's one obsessive, there's one cellular obsessive who went and just transcribed the whole movie into the quotes section.
Yeah. Also, the closing line of this. Oh my God. So good.
It dude, it I mean, they fucking they fucking nailed that last line. That last line is so good. Couple of there are a couple of like real flourishes in this script that I love like that. I think her son's name being Ricky is such a funny, stupid little thing to include.
Yeah. And we'll explain why that's funny in a moment. Right. So so this is fall and month.
We're talking phone movies. We're talking Larry Cohen phone movies. He only has a story by credit on this movie, but like in the research and stuff, he did right at least one draft of this. I don't know.
I have no idea what the backstory is. I can only assume. And my assumption is that like he probably wrote a draft or two and sold it and they reworked it to be this, which is still, I mean, still very good. But this feels like the the economy of a Larry Cohen movie where like, yes, you know, it feels like the opposite of phone booth where yeah, well, it's like, like the idea is like, yeah, okay, phone booth.
He can't leave the phone booth. He has to stay in one place. It's all in one place. But this is the future babe.
The phone booth comes with him. It's a mobile phone booth, but he the whole like he has to go everywhere. Yes. Like specifically, he has to drive all over the damn place.
Specifically, he has to go everywhere. Yeah. I am like every like story beat. I was like, I was genuinely impressed that they managed to like keep scraping here.
Yeah. And just like, Oh, yeah, he needs a charger. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just like just a weird little movie.
The fact that like hit the setup for this character is like, you're so irresponsible. I'm your girlfriend, Jessica Beale, and I broke up with you because you aren't a serious enough person. Right. And he gets to prove that to her by by diffusing a house in your family.
Yeah. Yeah. By taking down the crooked cop, the fucking like, you know, like the LA Sheriff's department, now they have like those gangs and stuff, you know, about that. Yeah, within the police department, there are like gangs.
Yes. So let's see who take them down.