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Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Welcome to another episode of Horror Movie Night. You know, we've been talking about a lot of anniversaries this year, and we haven't really done that many 50-year anniversaries.
I think there's maybe been one or two other ones that we've done throughout this year of anniversaries. And imagine my excitement when I remembered that a Roger Korman classic that I used to love watching in college had a 50-year anniversary this year. Did you have something else in the spot before? No, I think it was Joss.
No, I think that at a certain point, I was like, let me just look up all of the anniversaries that I can. You know what I did? I went through my entire long list and looked up the years for every single movie on my long list and just looked for what were some of the anniversaries. And then picked those.
And Death Race was on there as maybe one of these days I'll get to this. But I had him watch in a while and I couldn't remember. Hilarious, I couldn't remember how relevant it would be. Boy, Hilarious was this film fucking relevant- I'm setting you relevant.
I think there were a minute in and there are people waving minutured fucking Nazi flags and I go, oh, okay. And you know, it's so crazy to think like, 75 was 30 years more or less after the end of World War II. And it felt probably like, ha, this will never happen again. And then we go 50 years into the future and it's happening again.
You know what though? I don't think that it was a ha, this could never happen again. And the only reason I say that is because Paul Bartol is the director of this. Par-Boltol, he's the director who is a huge showman.
He's the director of this. This is like his second film that he's ever directed. Like this is very early in his career. But I think being an openly queer man in 1975 directing this movie, I think he knows very much that just because Hitler's dead doesn't mean that hate is dead.
And probably had some real aware acknowledgments that because I will say when you dive into like 50, 60 and 70s films, it is often the queer or female directors that are writing about the fourth, like, what can it? It's not coming from a lot of dumb street white men. They're like, well, that problem is solved forever. Like, it was just like, there was a little bit of awareness.
I do think that there was like a sense of, a weird sense of like, I don't want to say a sense of privilege, but there's something about satire that I do think comes from a place that like is never fully understanding. And maybe that's watching, maybe that's watching with 2025 eyes. Maybe that's watching, you know, now. And in a world in which like, that shit don't fly as easy or you have to have a real good reason as to why you do it.
But just like last week, where we were talking a little bit, like less is more and like you, you know, you can kind of do more if you don't, you know, I don't know if you don't like over explain it, you know, throw in the Nazi flag right out the gate. Probably was helpful, you know, a race pun intended, you know, maybe that was truly helpful for us getting into that. I had not really thought about that. The, you know, the sentence like, this is a, I wanted to watch this forever.
The iconography, like the idea, like the cars, this, everything, this should have been a watch for me years ago. And I'm so glad that you picked it to watch for this. Because this is my first pitch. This is my first watch.
I love that. And Scott, same for you, right? Oh, yeah. I had no desire to ever watch this shit because I was like, sorry, I sound adversarial.
I was very upset about this pick for months because I was like, this is gonna waste my time. First of all, it's an hour and 10 minutes. Second of all, if fucking rules, it's dystopian, like, it's not. I had a totally different expectation in vibe and it was destroyed within two minutes.
To be fair, if you were going off the bear information that you knew, it was a racing movie starring Sylvester Stallone. So, like, your next stage is Sylvester Stallone. I had no desire. But when I, when the world starts to get built, I'm like, oh, okay.
And as it goes along, I'm like, this is actually, dare I say, a good watch. Also, just because I mentioned him, not jokingly one of the best performances Sylvester Stallone has ever given. Him as this like, egotistical mobster who cannot stand being the second best at something. Like, every time that he's ranting and raving about like, where's the flags for me?
All these flags for me? It's like, it is, he is the perfect casting in this role. Like, and this is like one year before Rocky. Like, the next year.
I was gonna ask you to sit in his, in his, the next year. The next year, he makes Rocky and becomes a superstar. Like, it's crazy. Wow.
Wow. Well, and this was also made, I did see in the, I have to be, sorry, I have to be sure that Karadine did this after doing four years of the Kung Fu TV show. Yeah. And he was like, I knew that I had to keep working because if I didn't, I would never work again.
Yeah. And it's basically just catapulted him into doing movies. Yeah. No, it's great.
All right. So we'll dive into this because there's a lot for a movie that moves quickly. There's a lot to talk about. Yeah, there's a lot of world building next.
The movie takes place after the world crash of 1979, a massive civil unrest and economic ruin that occurred. The United States governor is then, or government is then restructured into its toll to, toll to Taylor. Oh my God. He's got me on this one here.
It's totalitarian. So it's a libertarian regime under martial law to pacify the population. The government has created the transcendental road race where a group of drivers race across the country in high powered cars and innocent pedestrians are struck and killed for bonus points in the race. I mean, it really reads to me like that's the whole point of the race, right?
Like the, the gore. Yeah, the population. It's like you're not still double features, but you're definitely getting elements of like the running man here. Like it is.
Oh, yeah. It's literally like we are pacifying these people who are under a, a, you know, dictatorship, essentially, by providing them with, with like professional wrestling style entertainment, right? Like it's not even sure because if this was just five racers that had cars that could kill people, it wouldn't be as fun as the fact that they all have like their gimmick, right? And it's like, yeah, so we have these five racers as the 20th annual race, the year is 2000.
One you're related to as well. Calamity Jane Kelly. Yes. No, Jane Kelly could not miss her.
So the different cars. Was that was that? Um, was that Mary? Yeah, Mary Warren off.
Yeah. So she's so good in this too. She's great. So the theme cars we have are Frankenstein who drives a mysterious, he's a mysterious black garb champion and he's a national hero.
We got machine gun Joe who's a Chicago gangster, calamity Jane who's a cowgirl, Matilda the Hun who is a neo Nazi and Nero the hero, a Roman gladiator. The main beef that everyone's excited about is Joe versus Frankenstein. They are like mortal enemies and of all the people. Like I gave a lot of praise to the Sylvester Stallone, but the star of this movie is Don Steele.
Radio personality Don Steele playing the announcer because similar to a movie, let me make sure I didn't like this as my double feature. I did. So I'm not going to say this part, but similar to other movies that we've watched on this podcast, there is these brilliant moments of like commercial breaks and like the commentator segments are almost better than the race moments because they really drive home the satire of like what the prediction of this future is and how like brain dead. The one woman who every racer is a close personal friend.
Grace pander. She could literally be Jennifer Coolidge. If like when they remade this movie, if they didn't have Jennifer Coolidge as Grace pander, it would have been. And they pulled the ball on the remake on this.
The remake was everything you feared it would be. Yeah, I think that also has like a little bit of a shadow over me even visiting this. Not that I even, I mean, I maybe I caught a little bit of it on like sci-fi or something. Right?
Like, but I just, I don't know. I was like, oh, if they're choosing to remake this and they made that. I don't know if I want to see this. Like, I was like, it kind of dulled my expectations.
It misses a lot of stuff because then we get like right before the race starts, we get a video from Mr. President. And that's all he's ever referred to. Mr.
President. He talks about his 20 years in office. Like we're, we're really hammering down like crazy what this feels like. Watch this in 2025.
He is Mr. President in Moscow. Literally, Grace pander asks some Frankenstein that when they see him for the first time. And then, and then when you see the video clip of Mr.
President, he said, Oh, I'm sorry. Grace pander says, he loves everybody. And then somebody else says, and everybody loves him. And it's just this, it is fucking crazy.
Hey, just listeners, I'm sorry if you're not understanding the subtext, but this guy's fucking Trump. Yeah, he's a hundred percent 50 years before fucking Trump as president. And he's getting, he like does these surreal videos where it almost feels like he's in sardazz. Like, guys, this shit is so prescient.
I could not believe my fucking eyes. Yeah, it was crazy watching this shit. And this was just picked at random when I was watching and I was like, damn, I'm glad I picked this section. Yeah.
So there is hope in the future of death, race 2000, because there is a resistance group and they are planning to rebel against this regime. And it's not anti-fucking. It is very repeat. It is not anti-fucking.
Their plan is to sabotage the race, kill the drivers, and take Frankenstein as hostage for leverage against Mr. President. The group is assisted by Annie Smith, who has been hired to be Frankenstein's navigator. She happens to also be the granddaughter of the woman who runs the resistance.
That being said, it is revealed to Annie very early on that Frankenstein is not as mystic as it seems. You know, when they're talking about Frankenstein, they're like, the man who lost his leg in 95, he lost his arm in 99. The doctors keep rebuilding him and somehow he keeps coming. We learn that this is all just a fabricated reality from Mr.
President to have this national hero, but instead they just train a group of people to be great racers. And as soon as one dies, someone else takes the mantle of Frankenstein in the next year's race. It's such a smart idea to introduce early on because we see that Frankenstein, who when he's in public, has like this gnarly mask and he looks like he's all burnt up underneath, takes off the mask and it's just handsome and it's just handsome and it's just a day of a carotene. Like, yeah, handsome and dream boat.
So Machine Gun Joe is the first to get on the scoreboard as he stabs a construction worker straight between the legs in the dick with a six foot fucking hunting knife on the front of his car. And we find out we find out that if he was a little bit older, it would have been double the points. And this is where we start to go through the point structure, which is that women are worth 10 extra points. Teenagers are worth 40 extra points.
Toddlers or younger are worth 70, but anybody over the age of 75 is an immediate hundred points added onto your scorecard. And later on in the movie, they interview the wife of this construction worker because by him being the first kill, she gets front row seats to next year's rates. Like it's just it's all so fucking big TV. It's also fucked up and weird.
I love this moment where Frankenstein is driving and this hospital is just willing out elderly patients into the middle of the street. And he's like, oh, it's the euthanasia trick that they're using to help their favorite person get ahead. And then Frankenstein swerves to avoid the patients and hits all the doctors and nurses that are there. And we get this great quote where they're interviewing one of the commentators and he goes, well, this moment goes to show that even Frankenstein has 100% red blooded American sense of humor.
Yeah, that's right. Oh my God. It's like what a fantastic line to be inserted into something of this level of satire. Like it's just it's brilliant.
But the resistance gets their first win. They're able to kill Nero the hero when he attempts to run over a baby that turns out to be a bomb. And they managed to disrupt the live television broadcast with an announcement of how they are planning their rebellion. And boy, if you want some more 2025 feeling familiar to you vibes, Mr.
President immediately says that that is in fact not people who are resistant in America because everyone is happy there, but the French trying to cause division inside of America. And this becomes the narrative after every kill is why are the French so angry at us? Like why are the French so angry? Like it is for fucking insane how relevant it all is.
It really gets me off to watch this, by the way, like I enjoyed my watch, but I was getting like really fucking mad. I can understand that. Yeah. I'm getting on Joe struggles with his hatred of Frankenstein so much that we do get a headcrush from what he sees two guys putting up a Frankenstein banner.
He knocks him off their ladder and then backs over the head and it is a trauma style, beautiful melon under a tire explosion. I do love the like dystopian world that they've crafted where like people will stand in the middle of the street willing to die to help their favorite racers get more points in the game. Like there's just so many cool things happening there. But it's not a cult guys.
No, it's not a cult. Mato the Hun drives off a cliff while following a fake detour route that was set up by the resistance and clammy Jane then drives over a landmine. The president continues to ignore the resistance existence and continues to insist that it's the French that are doing this. That was really well done.
Yeah. I thought you were fucking done for with that sentence resistance and like holy shit. Yeah, it's funny the things that Matt gets like with no problem because totalitarian is a hard word. Don't get me wrong.
And he got it with the assist like 10 minutes ago and that gave him the boost he needed to hit that one for that time. Yeah, you're for the finish line, Matt. You're good. I'm just got an extra 50 points buddy.
Hell yeah. There is this kind of funny runner that the resistance while they are really good at catching all of these drivers like Frankenstein very easily outsmarts them at every turn. So they constantly are trying to like replace him with this fake Frankenstein and immediately he's like Annie is working with them. Like he's susses out that Annie is not trustworthy pretty quickly.
The current Frankenstein actually reveals to Annie. Hey, you don't have to replace me with a fake to take down Mr. President. I'm already planning to take down Mr.
President and he shows that the prosthetic hand that they put on him. He has implanted a hand grenade into the hand and he plans to detonate it when he shakes Mr. President's hand. However, this plan goes awry when machine gun Joe starts to attack Frankenstein and Annie rips off Frankenstein's hand to kill machine gun Joe.
With machine gun Joe now dead Frank is just immediately declared the winner as he's the only car still surviving, but he's wounded and he doesn't have his hand. So Annie instead dresses like Frankenstein with the intention of stabbing Mr. President while she walks up at a podium. But before she can do this, she is shot by her grandmother thinking that she's been killed already by Frankenstein and thinking she's avenging her granddaughter's death.
In the chaos, Frankenstein takes advantage and rams the stage killing Mr. President once and for all. We jump to the future. Frankenstein has become the new president.
He marries Anne and has appointed the head of the resistance to be the Minister of Domestic Security in a hope to rebuild the state and dissolve the dictatorship. Don Steele though. I love this ending. Don Steele who played junior Bruce throughout this kind of has issues with this saying that, you know, the public demands these performances of violence.
That's why they were fine with the dictatorship. They like the violence and to respond to those complaints. Frankenstein runs Bruce over and then drives away to the applause of a crowd. The end.
And it is just that. It's just that you got a lot. You get a lot of people get run over. You got a good amount of boobs and you got a ton of political commentary and satire.
And I mean, it is smarter political commentary than most Roger Corbin movies like I love Roger Corbin's early stuff because they're just like schlocky and shitty. But this is, I think the reason why this is more beloved than say creature from the haunted sea or even something we discussed earlier this year, like humanoid's from the deep is that this one is just like. It is a smart script. It was a smart script in 1975.
It's a painfully relevant script in 2025. And I think in 2005, people will still look at this movie and be like, God damn. This movie is really fucking smart. Like, I also, I hope that it's not that they're like, wow, this was a great.
This is a great prototype for our society. I wish we'd seen this earlier. Ow, what have warned us? The ScotiMementum Visa Infinite Plus card gives me 15% cashback for the first three months, up to $300.
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Dr. Banner? I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand new day in theaters July 31st.
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So are you subscribed to One Hit Thunder or what? As Desiree would say, you gotta be. And as K7 would encourage, you gotta come baby, come, and join in on the fun of the One Hit Thunder podcast. So let's talk double features because I almost had a slip of the tongue and gave mine away.
This movie, you gotta watch shock treatment after this. They are so similar in just the way that they like predict reality TV. They have a strong political satire. There's like weird Nazi symbolism in both of those movies.
You're talking musical shock treatment? Yeah. The Rocky Horror sequel sort of. Yes.
But I love this. I love this. So that's my double feature. How about you guys?
You got it. You want to go? Oh, I was going to let you go first. I'm going to go with the stuff because it's not obviously as dystopian, but it is kind of like consumer culture.
It's another smart woman. Is the stuff a corpsman? Oh, no, no, no. Sorry.
I forgot who to call it. Corpsman calling. Always getting them confused. Close enough.
But it just feels very, they feel very of the same cloth where they're kind of sending up the idiocracy of the unwashed masses. The population is like, this is all fine. Yeah. Yeah.
We were talking about headcrushes. We were talking about people getting killed for points, talking about low budget filmmaking. The toxic of injury for sure. And not as has to be on this political commentary, but definitely there with the social.
It is people love violence. What do you do? Isn't that right? And if you love violence, tomorrow is the Geekscape holiday live stream.
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And choose an email, hmnpodcast.gmail.com. If you want to become part of our newsletter, the final part of the show, we're talking about what are we watching, listening to, et cetera. I'm going to talk about a very long movie that I took, a very long time to finally see, but I had a very good time watching it, The Substance from 2024. Nice.
There's nothing for me to add that people haven't already said. It's really good. It's a really smart satire on Hollywood. The best way I've heard it described is the way I'm going to describe it.
It's a two-hour satire on Hollywood that ends with a 30-minute trauma movie. It gets so amazing in that last 30 minutes. But I was pretty invested the whole watch, which I wasn't anticipating because I was like, this is, do we really need two and a half hours to tell this story? I do think the answer to that question is no, but...
Yeah, the answers still no. You don't enjoy yourself, but... But I didn't... There wasn't any glaring thing where I'd be like, oh my God, this is taking so long, just get it over with already.
But yeah, you could probably move it at a slightly quicker pace. I do think it's very impressive, and I didn't even really clock this until I was reading about it afterwards, how little dialogue is in that movie? That movie is almost... Mm-hmm.
I think they said the dialogue only makes up 10 minutes of the two-hour and 30-minute runtime. It's all visuals and music cues to tell the story, and that's why they weren't sure they could get an actress like Demi Moore because they would think that it was beneath them to do something like that where they weren't really even speaking on camera that much. Yeah, it's great. I understand why people love it so much, but it's up for anybody else.
Who else has got something they want to talk about? I got a quick one, because there's a quick watch. Do you guys know what Fruithead is? No.
Okay, so... That's angry orange? Yeah, it's like... Is it like...
Jen Alpha's watching? What's happening? No. No, it's actually for us.
Okay. It's for millennials. So, you remember Gushers, right? You remember Gushers?
Oh, I did hear that Gushers made a horror movie. No, no, here's the thing. They didn't make a horror movie. They helped him make it.
It's not a treatment that they asked for. It's a treatment that founds them. It's on the Gushers' official YouTube. That's where I watched it.
It's so good. It's super fun. It's got Bradley Whitford in it, and I will pretty much watch anything that he's in. It's nine minutes long, it's probably eight minutes in a minute of credits, but it's very light.
It's not something I normally would talk about on the show, but just the sheer lunacy of it existing in 2025 and having been greenlit, I just couldn't help myself to signal boost it. If you have eight minutes, go watch Fruithead on the Gushers' official YouTube channel. That sounds amazing. I love how much you just gushed about that.
Oh, really? I can't even see below the waist here. That rules. That absolutely rules.
I'm excited to watch that. I watched season three of the summer I turned pretty with our friend, Callie, who came to visit. I think I've talked about the previous season or seasons on the show before. This is the final season before a feature film is going to get made.
Oh, nice. It is just you'll yell, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll yell more and more and be angry if you are remotely invested in this little love triangle. I won't even try to read the book series. So walk delicately because I still have decided who I want her to end up with in the book.
No, I will not spoil, but like just you will, it is, I mean, there's a clear wind. There's a clear team that you should root for. I am not even going to say, but they're the clear team that you should root for and by. I mean, it feels very toilet.
I mean, it's a young adult thing, right? Like this has got to be like, you know, you, you kind of know what should and might happen, but like you also, these are children. These are children. These are children.
That's my children choices. That is like the one thing as everybody who listens to this podcast at this point knows I love reading a YA novel in a series. Yeah, I got the first two. But I, you know, I love a YA novel, but yeah, I love a YA romance and every single one of these, it's like, oh, this is cute.
Don't marry this person. Don't marry the person you did it in high school. It's like watching a horror movie and telling them not to go, don't go in the woods alone. Like it's like it's a very, there's something really, really fun about feeling that because you're right.
Because you're making your new life. I don't think you've actually been able to make it work, but so few people have. It's, it's so fun. I mean, it's long.
It's can be emotionally exhausting, but it's great. I really enjoyed my watch of that and I can't wait for the movie. Well, I can't wait for us to be back next week with even more horror movie night because we're like in the winter boys. It is.
It's getting close to Christmas time. You know, Matt Stokes about this. Oh my God. So stay tuned for more.
And horrible Christmas time. Alright, stay tuned for more horror movie night. A safer Ontario means more police and prosecutors making sure my card doesn't get stolen. It means building new jails to keep criminals behind bars.
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