No, no! Canada is up to nil! That is the most dangerous lead in soccer! Relax, Mike!
See that, Dan? My left eye is switching. That's my warning eye! It'll be 2-2 by stop is time.
It's never wrong! Early payout from bet365? I gotta pay the second thing when I'm two goals. So me?
It's now the safest lead. Early payout from bet365, huh? Now my right eye is switching, Dan! Bet365.
Must be 19 or older. Ontario only. Please play responsible. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, there's a connexontario.ca, decency supply.
Drop everything. The McDonald's creamy Parmesan and baking quarter pounder is back for a limited time. So juicy, so cheesy. This burger demands your full attention.
Made with 100% Canadian beef, saus, hickory smoked bacon and crispy onions. Oh yeah, try the creamy Parmesan and baking quarter pounder today. Or treat yourself to your dream burger lineup with our original quarter pounder with cheese or quarter pounder BLT. At Participant Donald's Restaurant in Canada.
Product availability, very high restaurant. Prime presents perfect pairing. What pairs with creature on Prime? Reaching for a sparkling punch delivered with Prime.
You can enjoy a punch just like Reacher. Entertainment meets fast delivery. It's on Prime. Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of Horror Movie Night.
This week we're talking about decoys from 2004. Yes! Kyle, you made a game day decision to change this one up on us. What?
What shifted? What shifted in the popular's like case that made you change it? We decided we needed to talk this. Yeah, so a few things.
A few things. One, I picked the movie that is on the list that we will talk about. And it's going to be fun and it's part of a franchise and it'll be a good time. But that's not what I chose.
I chose decoys because I wanted to do something more seasonal. We have plans for February. So then by the time we get to March, we're not even going to be talking winter. So I wanted something with snow.
And I was doing some archival stuff for main menu loops down here where I was in the desection of my movies. And I spotted the cover of decoys, which if you see... It's fairly iconic cover. It's very iconic.
If you were in the video rental stores in the early 2000s, you saw this without a doubt. And I was down here... So I peeped that. And then my son was down here and he was also looking at the movie covers with me.
And a few of those in the D category were a little scary. He really loved the cover of Dead Alive. He did not like the cover of decoys. But he did love the cover of decoys, the second seduction.
And just for our Patreon, I'm going to show you the cover of decoys, the second seduction. I love this woman with tentacles coming out of her. I thought the White House, but it turns out it's college. The next day, my son comes back, right, pick him up from school and he's drawn a picture.
I ask him what the picture is of. And he says the alien from the snow movie, because I gave him a very gentle... He's about aliens in the snow. And he's drawn me a picture of the cover of decoys, the second seduction, which now lives next to my computer here.
So decoys has just been... He does not know that the name of it is decoys. I've not given him any of that information. So I'm very thankful that he did not go into any more detail to his teachers about what that picture was.
Its tagline is the second seduction. Yeah, and I was like, I'm very glad that that is not part of his repertoire. But all that to say, those are just a couple decoys has been in my world. And I had watched it once before.
I thought it was going to be decent HMM fodder, and it's winter, and now here we are. So... I hinted at this last week. But for a film, for a film where so much of the plot is creatures trying to have sex with college students?
Yeah. I believe not a booby to be seen in the movie. Like, I don't think that the actors were paid enough to get out of their tops for this film. And there's one set of boobs and one butt, and they happen early on and we never just be seen again.
Except for flashback. A flashback to the same scene. Yeah. It's wild.
It's wild to make a sex comedy horror film with so little sex. Yes, it's wild. I enjoyed the shit out of this. I like...
Matt, so just a little wizard by the curtain for listeners. I start this up yesterday and I'm like, this looks like it's happening at Halloween, and Kyle said it was going to be winter. Am I watching the right movie? And so I message the our Facebook group and our Facebook chat and I say, hey, is this right?
Matt's like, it better be because I'm 90 minutes in, this piece of shit. And then I literally watched two more aggressive than needed to be on that. That was a good time. It was fucking funny.
I was going to find out I was watching the wrong movie that deepens up. Right. Exactly. So if I would have waited two minutes, it would have fast-forwarded to winter at St.
John's College in Canada, in Montreal, I guess it was. And I'm like, oh, it's fine. But this is... So Kyle's going to get into it with Luke and his roommate.
What's his roommate's name? Roger. You mean T. New Elisha Wood?
No. His name's actually Elisha Morningwood. Get it right. If this is what people thought college was in the early 2000s, you know what?
Never mind. There was probably three smiles. The oatmeal. Oatmeal.
Fucking bad beer all the time. The fucking... Everybody being bloated and gassy. The girls being untockable too.
Whatever. Unattainable, unapproachable. Again, like last week, I feel like if you were not like a millennial, you might not get joy from watching this movie. Yeah.
Any at all. I feel like there's a very small window of opportunity that I think that it really works on. I have to tell you the most humbling, embarrassing thing that I may have ever experienced while watching a horror movie night movie. And it...
It really says a lot about how much of my life has been dedicated also to One Hit Thunder. Okay. But there is a party scene in this movie. Which one?
There's so many. Well, there's a party scene in the movie where there's a rap song playing. And I go, in my head, I go, are they slow dancing to Bad Ronald? Which no one knows who the fucking Bad Ronald is.
It is a One Hit Wonder hip hop duo that barely anybody remembers except for their song, Tapp the Keg showed up in like a bunch of college party song movies. So I go and I research, no, it wasn't Bad Ronald. It was a solo song from one of the two rappers in Bad Ronald. Oh my God.
What? And I was like, what the fuck has happened to my life that I'm watching a movie on Tubi? And I can pinpoint a solo track from a One Hit Wonder rap duo that no one remembers by me. I'm so proud of you.
I'm so proud of you. That's insane to me. I was like, oh boy. But also not.
Totally off rails. That makes a lot of sense. Bad Ronald. Anyway, what is decoys Kyle?
Tell us about this delight. We don't do this so much anymore, but I'm really close to my laundry room and it all starts out with a little survey. Oh my God. I got a really bad beer.
I got a Corona premiere, which didn't exist in 2004. But it's a snap for us to enjoy. Yes, it does start on Halloween. It starts with a man going to a house and discovering some frozen bodies.
I do like the frozen bodies aspect. They look cool. Yeah, they look cool. They look cool.
And there are some good practical effects happening in here. Actually, probably more than I thought that were going to happen, even on the second rewatch. But and then we flash, yes, we flash forward to St. John's College, Montreal, Canada.
And I went to college at Syracuse University. And I do have to say that no matter how cold it is, people will be dressed in crop tops or in shorts and skirts and it doesn't matter. It does not matter. And this is what is happening here.
They are, you know, people are collegeing around and these two freshmen, roommates, Luke and Roger go down to the laundry room to do their laundry. Roger keep a suggested beer. Luke is like, I got to lay off the sauce. He doesn't lay off the sauce and they do their laundry while they drink beer.
And while they're doing their laundry, Lily and Constance, two blonde cousin transfer students, three med students end up in that laundry room. And Lily seductively introduces themselves and invite Luke to their sorority party. Lily leaves a roll of quarters in the laundry room and Luke is like, this is my chance. I'm going to bring them back and he goes to their room.
And it's frigid in there. Super cold, the windows are open. He doesn't think anything of it. But now Lily and Constance are coming back to their room.
And so he hides in the closet. There's a lot of like sex comedy tropes as we've alluded to just in the genre explanation of this. There's so he's hiding in the closet, Allah, American pie too. And he is ready to see Lily and Constance ready for bed.
And as they get ready for bed, they both undress. And then you start to think, wow, they're cousins. And you start to worry a little bit. But what happens is they get fully undressed.
They open their windows and tentacles shoot out of Lily's chest. And Constance sprays her down with nitrogen, right? Liquid nitrogen to get ready for bed. So which they then don't get ready for bed.
They go elsewhere in skimping nightgowns. But Luke is like, oh my god, this is horrible. I have to tell my roommate Roger. He goes to tell Roger, Roger is like, I am going to get laid.
Because he got invited to that sorority party with Lily and Constance. Nobody believes Luke as he tries to be like, there's something wrong with these people. And that is the crux of most of this movie, is Luke trying to get people to understand that these blond sorority women are monsters and not only are they monsters, but they are going to have sex with you and use their tentacles to freeze you from the inside out. And this happens a few times.
So what is she? Oh, in the dorm room Constance lays down this line, men at home are dead. These men are right before the picking. The friend, they have two other friends.
One is a girl who was like an art school girl whose name I did not write down. I thought her name was Melody, but that is the girl who uses a flamethrower later on. So forgive me. And then their friend Nathan, who has given himself the nickname Gibby.
He is more like a white hip hop fan. He's got the bucket hat. Oh Gibby. He uses a lot of slat.
And nothing locks you into coolness quite like giving yourself a nickname. Oh, absolutely. A freshman who gave himself a nickname goes a long way. Yeah.
It's really rough. Oh, Melody. Is that how you say that? Is Melody the Dark Herd's best friend?
Yes. Melody is like beard. Best friend. Yeah.
Yeah. And she's like, hey, come to this Cronenberg film festival instead of going after these sorority girls. Almost a complete line of dialogue from there. And he's like, no, I have to find out what's going on.
So he goes to the sorority party and he makes a fucking fool out of himself. He spills a drink on a girl who has braces onto her sweater. And then when he goes to punch out the frat bro who is put the moves on Lily, who is the ice queen of this sorority. He misses and punches the brace face and face.
So then he gets punched by the frat bro. He destroys the party and he just leaves. He's like, fuck it. I'm out of here.
Roger gets the moves put on him by constant. But Roger's a virgin. Even though he talks a big game, he's a virgin. So he gets trapped in the bathroom with constants who is trying to get it on with him.
And he escapes, nearly escapes with his life. Later on, Lily attacks that frat bro and out in the woods. And that is the crux of us finding a vleuk, finding himself in a darker situation where the cops think that he has killed this frozen frat bro who we find the next morning with a hard on. He's stiff.
He is frozen stiff. Yeah. It's quite fun. Anyone for a game of ring toss was a great line.
Yeah. There's a few good lines in here. That cop captive Kurt is really weird. He keeps calling Luke a puppy dog.
And yeah, it's really it's really weird. Canadians are weird, dude. But yeah, that was a great line. And the frozen body looks really good.
Freshman Luke completely destroyed this party. Oh, Roger the other line that I wrote down was that Roger gets trapped in the bathroom with constants. And on one of those attempts at escape, she just goes, I'm bored. Let's 69 as a last-day chat for him to keep him in that bathroom.
And it does not work out. The next morning when they wake up and Roger hasn't scored and Luke got, you know, his car was broken down before they even find that frat bro party. I was just looking around this freshman dorm and it is insane. The dude has it's an open double if you're familiar with college dorms.
But this open double is bigger than like any open double I've ever seen. The dude they have congas. They have a recliner. They have a punching bag in this college dorm room.
The freshman college dorm room is crazy to me. And we think that Roger is jerking off, but he's actually cracking a beer. Classic Roger. It's really silly.
Also, so Detective Kirk is questioning Luke. Luke has nothing to do with it. He's trying to like nobody's going to believe that these aliens with tentacles are coming out of these, you know, it's the whole tale is all this time. And he tries to sneak around the morgue to get some more evidence as to like what happened.
And he breaks the arm of the corpse of this frat bro and shatters on the floor because it's not all nitrogen. That was a good little effect. And I don't know, there's no leeway in this case. So they're just going to go on to the next party where they're going to crown the next ice queen.
Was this the one where Bad Ronald, Solo Ronald was playing? Solo Ronald played way before this. It was the first party. Yeah.
This next party is way more themed. It is they're going to nominate. They're going to select their new ice queen. There's a variety show that is the best part of this fucking movie.
We get in quick succession. We get like, I didn't write it down. I remember this in Turlicoise, like speaking. There's the juggler.
There's there's twirler. There's dancing singing. There's comedy. There's literally everything.
It felt like it felt like a scene out of a mid 80s slasher. College Flash. It was fantastic. Fucking loved it.
Yeah. I love every second. Yeah. It was it was an iconic scene.
And that happened at the same party that Constance does a triple shot of vodka up in ice illusion and makes out with the bartender while Roger is still. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
Roger was the best part of the fucking movie man. And the whole idea at this point is that they're going to try to lure one of these women into having sex with Roger because he's already he already has you know he already has a connection. So they're going to try to. Luke is going to try to get it on camera and the art school girl melody is like your perv and I know your perv and he's like no no I need this.
And so but Roger ends up getting too drunk. So then it's up to Luke to try to get with Lily in order to see if they are aliens. And he does he gets with Lily he gets her naked and into tentacle form but the camera gets interrupted and then he drops a candle and it lights her on fire. And so he has enough proof that this has happened but nobody else does.
Meanwhile Gibby has also got his also getting laid in a mausoleum. He's like okay come to the phone. He's like oh this is so such a perfect moment that I have to like change my voicemail. It's a I can't come to the phone right now because I'm all up in my business.
Now listeners if you think that I'm putting on an affectation you're right because Gibby is too. He's wearing he's got his he always has headphones on his bucket had his headphones and he's just a pudgy fucking Canadian white dude. It's it's quite incredible. It's really incredible his name is yeah he and he allows the girl that he's with was the worst bangs in the world to call him Nathan.
They are the blind girl version of Courtney Coxe and screen three. Yes not if you were to rank Gibby's fashion sense on a radical scale would it fall under the old style of radical or more of a new radical. Wow. Yeah you know what they say that's one of the first that's one of the first things my college professor said to me at orientation when you come to the school you get what you give.
Don't give up and Gibby Gibby gave so little that he got frozen in his mausoleum. I do he does have one other line that I really like he says I'm like a deer in boob lights right now. Yeah oh man the lines get more unhinged the closer we get to the finale of this movie because Luke has two fucking bangers coming up in the next couple scenes Luke slays Luke slays so oh there's also some weird like a Kmart Bernadie lady song playing while Lillian Luke are getting it on it's really rough but the at the same time or not the same time so she lights on fire and then it seems so now Luke has his own evidence. Roger and when they transform when they get too hot.
Yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah oh yeah this all happens in the winter they need to be cold these creatures need to be cold the ice queen part hole aspect everything needs to be cold so they're open up windows they're having sex in the winter in the woods outside it's really you know you look back and you say those hacks at Stranger Things when they made the mineflyer or subplot really we're just running off the classic decoys. Those fucking dumber brothers. They're the Canadian. They are now.
Yeah fire will fire will turn them and so when the candle falls down onto the bed and burns she really turns and the kind of she kind of like cocoons and then becomes a very a creature that might get named later on in the show so I won't I won't offer too much detail about the show or about the creatures but they are they turn into an alien life form. Now this is all all this is happening Luke is going off the deep end trying to prove this and Roger and Constance are falling in love with each other Constance. Roger is like listen Constance Luke thinks that you're an alien and you're trying to get to kill us and she's like kind of yeah but I really love you and I think if we can have enough male DNA to sustain our life style on our planet from your planet then we can really have something going here Roger and that's like a 10 minute scene. It's so it's so crazy but I think the craziest part about it is it's pointless like there's no these still dies yeah he still dies nothing comes from that conversation.
No no no it's not pointless one we get exposition as the viewer and second of all it puts Luke on an absolutely genocidal it really is it's like oh we can work together and he's like not under my watch bitch yeah he's oh my god but like I love how Roger's like so so Constance Constance Constance Constance Constance is like I love you and I don't want to have sex with you because I'm worried that if we have sex I'll freeze you to death like the other guys because we can't get the body temperature right for incubation and he's like it's gonna be cool to be an alien dad and so he like agrees to it so it is consensual and I thought that scene was very funny I thought that it was a really interesting turn because I was expecting it all to just go really like one note where the women seduce the men and or like the female aliens seduce human men and then just kill them because they don't care um I really like that scene and then when Luke goes just psychotic because of you know his best friend slash roommate dying from ice spiders coming out of his body it really it adds a little something to this because I was actually on the alien side by that point no that I agree that's why I think it's crazy that it's there yeah no you have you have this like oh maybe they can make it happen maybe maybe Roger can make this thing work yeah I'm sorry you get ice spiders real quick because I you know I always get curious when we're talking about these movies about the sequels um are there four three three three sequels to this movie I think it's just two I think it's just this and and the and the sequel but the sequel features a one of the stars of letter Kenny be Tobin Bell yeah and see uh Dina Meyer yeah from like you know fucking Johnny mnemonic and uh fucking starship troopers Dizzy from Starship troopers Dizzes isn't it you know what's in the sequel Dina Dina Meyer Meyer yeah wow dude no fucking way I'm like where do I watch the sequel now hey don't threaten me with a good time I don't know the sequels fine I watched it I was fine it's equals fine it constants and Luke return in in their in their roles but how oh it's a continuation all right no way that that's a second second it's a second yeah I don't know how it happens but yeah Luke Luke goes absolutely apeshit and he is going to take down every one of these aliens unfortunately for him you can't tell who's who without fire and hot things so he kidnaps Lily and ties her to a rowing machine and he has like a propane tank and one of her sorority sisters comes in wax him with a badminton racket and breaks it over him and like unties Lily and is like we're getting out of here you crazy asshole and he finds out that Rogers with Constance that's when they find out that Rogers going to birth these two stillborn spiders from his mouth and then Luke is like Constance and then he goes after Constance he acquires the flamethrower from one of the art school girls and then goes to the sorority house where at the sorority house they're having a dinner just a dinner and in order to prove to everybody there the men there that they're all going to die he throws a bucket of boiling water on the sorority like one of the big president she's the president right yeah she does not turn into a she's like what a black into alien yeah she freaks out so now Luke is questioning everything but then he goes over to one of the other girls in Natasha with the flamethrower and she is the one of those aliens so now we've we've proven to other people that these aliens exist and and Luke kind of chase basically Luke chase and there's a cop that he has like a relationship with that I never understood that was according to Wikipedia it's a former girlfriend but I did not get that at any point in the actual movie she's like five years older than him yeah yeah it doesn't make any sense to me so anyway they've teamed up there in Kahoot and he's chasing down Constance he traps Constance in like a boiler room he is going to and Constance is now in her alien form escaping which is kind of like a rat type like alien like they're hairy and they're running through this thing I don't know and um oh I'm sorry there's one I think there's one of the lines is about to come up Scott oh bro you miss one of the ones um okay all right I'll go I'll go bro domination one ticket a time which is what yells at Lily interface when they're like interrogating her and I was I busted out laughing because to his credit Luke is an awful actor but he this line and the line that you're getting to in a minute here um they're just incredible they're incredible they're great they're great so he's got he's got the alien in trapped in a corner um and he's they've claimed Lily has claimed that they're from the like the belt of Orion right he's they've had this moment earlier on not claimed that they're from but he had this moment earlier on where she pointed out the belt of Orion in the sky and it's this lovely w moment and he goes belt of Orion huh how about the belt of O'Fryan and he finds a light thrower lights are up dude lights are helping but that last alien he runs out of gas on the flamethrower and that alien almost gets him but then that cop shoots uh the cop shoots it dies and now everybody believes him finally you know they cut to these two jamaques that are battling about aliens on the on the evenings yep to the cameras uh and all as well in the world so he and now his art school girlfriend who they finally figured out that they really do love each other I guess uh are gonna go and they're gonna consummate that relationship uh but come to find out not all of these cold uh aliens are blonde and she is an alien just like the rest of them she's just more conniving and Luke gets got uh by by the end of this but not in this is not the way yeah Christmas is a Christmas because it's too the tune of Silent Night just before Christmas break yeah I love the fact that the as Luke is being incubated by leg beard o'clock over there um the line round-yawn virgin is um and I was like you know what so good and I you know I was like you know I wonder if she is if she's like oh and you get the like the exposition at the very end that she was the one who was the first of the decoys to be uh to touchdown in in um in um North America and she's the one at Halloween that was freezing people um we get a flashback there um but man I've found this movie to be incredibly charming but again I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I'm a millennial I don't know if it's not good but I enjoyed the show no it's not good but it hits a lot of notes of things that I had fun with growing up and uh art nostalgic or and I think that it's not even nostalgic for it's just like because it's also somebody somebody making the thing that I don't know it just it's something the person who made it got the things that made sense and also didn't do well on other parts of it so it's just like it's not good movie but I really enjoyed it I mean it must have done really well because it did get a sequel uh on a budget of five million dollars it made oh uh 84,733 I wonder how much they spend on this man I have a copy of it on bb I found that a dvd of that at the thrift store that I volunteer at sometimes and I was like oh I'm keeping this and I didn't use it what I want some to it had to have like been unexpectedly a phenomenon after the fact oh I mean I think the cover art alone like I think the DVD sales like I'm sure at a Walmart like this thing did gangbusters you know what I mean like it's probably did five or six was it clear yeah I mean it is a very very good cover and it goes believes in the act of living in choosing the pleasurable over the practical it's why we clapped our premium for gun francs using pure spring water from zenzak and why you hear the celebratory flub of our quirk reminding us to make every matine cup pail count so go on and make every moment count because there's no better time than now Gregus make time wait simply sposibly when these 99 cent frosty is back and frosty farmers couldn't be happier made with canadian dairy they grow up cool creamy and mighty thick it's farmed to frosty get a small 99 cent frosty until August 2nd and participating with these types of stuff remember when james can run nearly directed a spider-man movie what about when we almost got that man year one with Joaquin phoenix or david goyer's clash movie that would have starred ryan reynolds well if you want to learn about all the unmade superhero movies to check out superhero stuff you should know hosted by ben wann and alan's ramsey every month we covered nostalgic superhero movies with deep dives into unmade strips early drafts deleted scenes alternate cuts concept art novelizations and tie-in novels we also interview the people involved in making the superhero films of our childhood with our past guests including superhero actors directors screenwriters and concept artists so remember that superhero stuff you should know or superhero syst k on social media check us out on youtube and wherever you get your podcasts now kyle if you were having people over to watch decoys what else would you make them watch yeah i this is probably been thought of and but it really is the right move i'm gonna do species too oh so get the opposite version good choice species too just to get something in there hilariously the wikipedia has uh a literally just hyperlink to the species film series at the bottom of this no reason for no reason no no connection really beyond the fact that it is the same basic plot the same with an alien yeah i'm gonna go with another canadian low-budget boop borderline boob list movie you made us watch sleepover nightmare uh yeah that would be fun wait did i make us watch that uh no actually i wasn't with us was that manji was that listener submitted i was i just happened to have the dvd yeah yeah bendy yeah bendy got that's all into watching that is true uh he can come you know watch sleep week or sleep the summer party masker summer party sleepover mass what is it sleepover nightmare sleepover nightmare sleepover nightmare you know i'm going the exact opposite of you guys i'm going for the most boobliest boob boob filled movie that we've already done on this show i'm going life force yeah wow that also makes sense um you know what gives us our life force though great listeners like you so go to patreon.com backslash hmn podcast uh get some bonus episodes get video episodes join our slack let us know in slack what your double features would be you could also let us know on our socials hmn podcast on damn near everything visit our website at hmn podcast.com and go to our dashry.hmnpodcast.com to buy some merch now kyle what is something you're listening to uh watching red whatever that you want to talk about i'm listening to my child at the top of the stairs uh not be quiet has i think it's like ten more minutes hunter we're almost there um i uh i watched anaconda's come to the blood orchid what you've been uh i was curious naked i was curious so but so we are anaconda episode screen drafts did a um a franchise uh pick of the of the five anaconda movies prior to the remake coming out and on that on screen draft they had said that anaconda's was the more was the more horror version of of the anaconda's movies okay so i was curious i was like okay while i didn't like it as much as the first anaconda i think the first anaconda is just like i i uh i don't need my i don't need my giant snake movies to necessarily be horror you know i mean like i don't need my giant animal movies to uh i can lean into the action more and i think i have more fun with like john boy and ice cuban all that shit right but anaconda's hunt for the blood orchid is directed by Dwight little who uh we know from halloween four and he did the phantom of the opera with robert england uh yeah so he's just one of those guys that can just nail sequel and it's it's good uh nobody is like a standout uh but it is more jungly it is more horror e i i think that there are some solid kills um but it just doesn't it doesn't necessarily live up to anaconda uh both the uh new one for me and that original one with um was it from 97 yeah 97z yeah yeah yeah um i think if you can find a dollar for a dollar on dvd and you don't have to set up your dvd player you already have it set up i say you go for it that's the way i did it and so that's how i recommend you approach it i'll go real quick because my thing is something scott's already talked about on this show but i also finally got around to watching together now that it's available for streaming and uh it was so close to making my top 10 movies of the year what do you mean the only reason yeah well top 10 of like all of the films all all genres uh and honestly the only reason why it didn't was because i was like i've already got three hard things on my top 10 list i wanted it was between that or or fantastic four first steps making it on to the list and i was like i want at least one superhero movie on my top 10 because it was a good year for superhero movies for the first time in a bit you would pick the fantastic four first steps in your top 10 because i thought it was boring as shit i wasn't bringing it up on the show i know you did you saw it in theaters i loved it the only thing i liked about it was the presentation and like characterization of galactus um i i don't know i had a blast with it i also watched the superman which was great like i just i was a good year for superhero movies in general but i wonder both of us surprised for me honestly and i already talked about that on the show but yeah together everything scott said it's great you should absolutely watch it uh really gross at parts very sweet at parts but yeah definitely scott take us home all right so um i am going to tell you a series that megan and i spent i want to say seven days watching seven nights straight between christmas and new years or well christmas new years and till like we had to go back to work um we watched all four of the hunger games movies um or at least you know hunger games catching fire and then mocking j parts one and two um and megan and i don't think that we ever finished mocking j part one and i know that we never watched marking j part two for whatever reason when they came out but we both we saw hunger games catching fire in theaters i want to say um and we we loved the first two movies um and it is so hard to watch that series in 2026 because it is just very prescient it's dark it's just too fucking real and susan collins the woman who wrote that series i think she needs to get a little more credit after the fact like i know that she has her fans right but like a lot of people probably discounted the hunger games because they were seen as ya books and now megan and i read all three books of the first of the original series and loved them they're i don't remember them being written as straight ya books they felt more akin to like that space between young adult dystopian sci-fi and just straightest opiate sci-fi um so like high school age it was written i mean well that's why ya so i think that this is i can speak on this finally it's not so there are there are technically three categories so an author would fall into a children's author which would be kind of just any of your generic child books from toddler up until elementary school then there are people who are referred to as middle grade writers yes these are the ones that are writing maybe a goosebumps or an animal or ya is literally anything that could be recommended from ninth grade and beyond with any oh older than i thought okay yeah so the only connective tissue in ya is essentially that your main characters are high school age that is like what kind of categorizes something as a ya um that's why like eric brown can write something as fucked up as the books that he writes and it gets a ya is because it's doing high schoolers but also you know because i used to think the same thing i would think like oh goosebumps that's a ya book no it's a middle grade book like it is a book that is targeted to six to eight graders yeah i'm definitely doing ninth grade at school yeah i mean i don't want to put it in the dystopian like in the same bucket of quality as something in dystopian fiction like handmaids tail but god damn does it really hit a lot of it like when you watch the handmaids tail tv series we watched that shit during the first Trump administration and it was too much it was too real yeah it's like holy shit this is happening right now like how did Margaret out would know that she's so prescient but like at the same time i feel like we're watching this and it's talking about like bread and circuses to keep the masses hungry and pissed off at each other while the people with all the money are living opulently and just sucking resources from from the proletariat and i just and and the cruelty for a point is just really hard to watch in 2026 the unfortunate reality is like it's always going to be precedent prescient because right i know rich people always are gonna fucking suck you know like like it's like as long as there's billionaires it's always going to be like how did they fucking know and it's because as long as there have been rich people in power they have used fear and and of various other tactics to keep their money from everybody else like it that's why you know we talked about this like two months ago we watched death race 2000 like how in 1975 is it now and it's kind of like i don't know there's two sides of that coin like on one side of it it's like just disappointing and stressful yeah and then like the flip side is like sometimes it's a little calming to me to just be like all right we fucking been here in 75 and we fucking been here in 85 and we still persevered eventually like hey now we have to keep going through this but at least we're fucking resilient to this bullshit right it's a hard it's a hard pill to swallow but i accept it but yeah i think isn't there like a new adaptation or something happening soon later this year yeah another there's another hundred games well i know that they there are like prequels with hamish and other characters when they were younger and i know there's going to be allegedly there's going to be one at the end of the year but i don't know how that all tracks well you know when you'll find out right here on harvey night so make sure that you subscribe on your favorite podcast feed for good times and upbeat things that never dive into the sad reality of the political landscape that we're in we'll be back next week with uh you know something light something tame stay tuned you're listening to the ecc network