Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast, 60 Songs That Explained the 90s, except we did 120 Songs, and now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aww, it's 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J-Lo, Kanye, sure.
And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explained the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. Wow, that's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me, that's 60 Songs That Explained the 90s, Cole and the 2000s, preferably on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennissi, and this is the Big Picture 8 Conversation Show about the flaw in Death's design.
CR is here, and today we will be discussing the fantastic success of Final Destination Bloodlines and rank our favorite kills in this newly revived six-film series. But first, Chris, we've just come back from a journey looking death right in the eye, actually. How are you feeling? Honestly, I feel fantastic.
I think every man in America should be forced to play 90 holes. Two and a half days? Two and a half days. We did it in Oregon, we're back.
That's how we maha. We are, I do feel healthy again. I know. I feel like I am rejuvenated, reborn in so many ways.
It turns out being hunched over our laptops, furiously like reading takes and banging out outlines for movie podcasts. It's not the healthiest way to live your life. I watch zero films on Friday, zero films on Saturday, and zero films on Sunday. That's actually a lie because I was a Monday, you watch.
On Monday, I watch films. I watch not one but two Final Destination movies to prepare for this conversation. Also, you watched Final Destination on a plane, which was incredible. I watched Final Destination on a roller coaster when we got back to Los Angeles.
Straight to Magic Mountain, off the plane. We should say though, it did feel like Death, who in the earlier Final Destination films is almost realized as like a character walking around. As we were driving to a place out on the Oregon Coast by Golf Out and Bandon, we were sitting in the backseat of a large Chevy Suburban, and two furiously speeding logging trucks went flying by us in the other direction and almost felt like Death was with us. I fully agree.
And you and I in the backseat were making a lot of Injokes about Final Destination to our two other pals who have probably seen a collective zero minutes of this deranged franchise. But we were looking for every opportunity, every gorge we passed, every plane overhead, every ramping golf cart racing across the landscape. I was thinking, this could be it. And I thought, I think, I have some trouble with Force Carries.
I'm not the longest driver of the bunch. But knowing FDBL was number one of the box office, I think gave me a little boost. Yeah, you could say, Oh, it's so great Minecraft sinners were so back. Yada, no, we're back.
Like, this is the most back you can be when Final Destination Bloodlines, the sixth film in a basically dead horror franchise that was born of the ashes of Olympus, get shitcore 2000s, is making $50 million. Oh my God, America loves horror. They love to watch teenagers get their throats slashed and their heads cut off. What an amazing country, honestly.
It's terrible, but it's so good. Do you think that this is like our true id? Like, it's like, this is the thing that we all can agree on, aside from the two guys, we were driving around with all we can. This is the thing that like my wife was next to me giggling with glee as people toppled out of space needles and stepped in glass and got their faces run over by lawnmowers.
I think that this is actually, I would actually recommend to any fan of cinema, any fan of movies. I would say you will not remember a single character with the exception of Ali Larter's Clear Rivers character from the early times. But if you go, you watch this, it's like watching, it's like watching De Palma Co-Man, it's like watching Bertolucci make the conformist. That's the bloodline I'm talking about.
It's pure cinema. It really is in so many ways. It's such a strange artifact of a certain time. So the fact that it has come back, you know, the producer of this movie is John Watts, who is best known for directing some very successful Spider-Man movies and the less successful wolves.
I guess he and his wife and producing partner were fans of this. Yeah, Daggregal, yeah. So they revived this franchise? Yeah, they identified Zach Lepowski and Adam Stein, who got his office script from God, Usick and Laurie Evans Taylor.
And we're noting, Gaggregus also helped revive the screen franchise with the real silence. That's right. And so shout out to him because he knows what he's doing because Final Destination Bloodlines not only has been a massive success, $100 million around the world in one weekend, but I think there's a case to be made as the best movie in the franchise. We can kind of talk through that.
What that actually means for this to be the best movie is kind of debatable because as you said, character names and emotional complexity is not really a part of what this is all about. This is a series of movies about near and certain kills. You know, there is just a raft of impending doom awaiting every figure that you meet in these movies. This one's no exception.
It's pretty smart though. So the storyline is basically a college student is having these recurring nightmares, which is a little bit different from the typical visions that we see ahead of a natural disaster in the previous films. But that leads her to then sort of track down her family history and see the role that her grandmother played in a catastrophic incident some 50 years earlier. Kind of space needle esque restaurant.
Yes, the Sky View restaurant. Do we know what city does this take place? I read PNW, some Seattle Portland, possibly Eugene, where we just spend our Monday afternoon. It could be.
And after she survived insane events in the 1960s, she's lived her entire life ducking death. Yes. And in doing so, her entire family has been able to avoid, you know, deaths recompense, basically. And this college student becoming aware of this and encountering her grandmother after so many years, and then later her estranged mother and her cousins and the way that they all get sucked literally into the vortex of pain that this movie series shows us.
I thought it was a smart twist on it because it gave us some like, it gave you new lore and you didn't have to go revisit any of the first five movies to really get it. But if you were a fan of the franchise, there are a lot of nods. There's a surprising amount of connective tissue in these films. Not only are characters referenced many times, but in the previous, I guess that would have been Final Destination 5, right?
Notice not to spoil the entire franchise, but please just do the work before you listen to this podcast. But I believe at the end of five, the main two characters board a plane that becomes the plane crash in Final Destination 1. So we find out that Final Destination 5 is a prequel to Final Destination. And that movie came up 14 years ago.
And this movie feels like a prequel to that prequel in some ways. Yeah, because it starts the bloodline. Because basically Steph, the main character's grandmother, her staying alive, I think, is what is kept Death at Bay. Correct.
She lives in a cabin in the woods that she is deathproofed. And then when she and Steph meet and she's like, okay, like we're gonna step out and greet the world. She's greeted by death. The movie opens as all these movies do with this.
The premonition. Extraordinary premonition. And this one in particular, you can make the case that this is up there with the plane crash in the first film in terms of the scale and the devastation. There's not as many deaths as there are in that first film, but the destruction after the flooring of a glass dance floor in an elevated restaurant cracks, shifting the entire balance of this massive or edifice leading to like dozens of deaths.
When we were coming up on that opening sequence and you saw the Skyview restaurant for the first time, did you immediately start envisioning like how people were gonna die? Pretty much. Yeah. I think part of one of the most fun things is when the setup starts and you're like, oh, I bet this is gonna happen.
Well, all of these movies nudge you so specifically toward that feeling of danger where you can almost always hear an exacerbated sound design, a piece of wood is breaking or a bolt is loosening or there's a jarring sound of a a wearing fan or a lawn mower. There's always a machinery that is about to break and the Skyview restaurant in particular has a series of events. It's often described as like a Rube Goldberg machine. Yeah.
You know, sort of like the opening segments of P.E. Herman's breakfast where you've got the Maustrap circumstance or everything unfurls. The level of creativity in this one is just as good as the very best of this franchise. I'm like kind of surprised and yet not.
This also just kind of feels like James Bond or Abbot and Costello movies where I'm like, just give me one of these every four years and I'm gonna enjoy it. You know? Absolutely. It's kind of weird that it went away for as long as it did.
Yeah, I really appreciate the fact that they make so little gestures towards like making this like an interconnected universe that you have. I mean, like there are obviously like, you know, they think they reference characters and bloodlines. They reference quickly rivers. They reference Devinsaw was character from the first one, I believe.
A lot of the times people are like, it's the anniversary of the plane crash where I can add the premonition. But for the most top part, this is like, you go in, you pay your money, you get six kill sequences. There are some chattering between and then you leave deeply, deeply satisfied with like few exceptions in this franchise. I've seen most of these in the movie theaters.
It's kind of making me feel a bit my age that I remember seeing final destination when it came out. And then also really, really, really loving three. That's Mary Elizabeth when said one, two, I really enjoyed but was pretty stupid. But like, we can get into ranking the movies, ranking the kills, other bloodlines stuff you want to get into, like in terms of the story.
No, I mean, I think if you really want to see this movie and we're not among the paying public in the first weekend, you probably don't want to hear any more about the kills. But we should talk about the kills in this one and talk about how they work. The movies are defined by the kills. They're not defined by character development.
And so if the kills are creative and there are a handful of bloodlines that are as like fun as anything that we've seen, then you're probably going to dig this movie. This one has, of course, that's got you instance that we're referring to. When we were in Las Vegas, Amanda and I got a chance to see the 10 minute sequence that takes place in the hospital that opens with the attempt to acquire a peanut snack from a vending machine to send one of the characters into kind of anaphylactic shock to stop their heart. Yeah, one of the things you need to know about FD is that if you take a life, you give life, so there's even a very funny morbid moment in this hospital where two characters considered killing a baby to gain that character's lifespan.
But what they really decide to do is to do a little flat-liners action where they're going to kill a guy, bring him back to life easily. And then they'll basically skip the line on death. And the character who has got this idea and who is going to do the running of this patient back and forth is my favorite character in Bloodlines. And I was just about to say his name.
But one of the things that I can't do, Sean, is remember the names of any characters in any final destination, moving outside of three people. I'm happy to tell you his name is Eric Campbell. Okay. And his brother, his half brother is named what?
Bobby Campbell. And they're played by Richard Harmon and Owen Joiner, respectively. Richard Harmon plays Eric. Richard Harmon plays Eric.
Yeah, I saw some people commenting online that he is very Kyle Galner, quoted. He is. He's very final destination, and by that I mean... Ian McKinley from Final Destination 3 is certainly in this dude's bloodline.
Yeah, there's a kind of like... Urban Outfitters, like Dipshit, that is just kind of a curse in these movies. There's always a guy... He's my favorite guy.
Jet Black hair, earrings, nose ring, a lot of tattoos, eye black, and just like a generally bad attitude. And it's either really cynical about everything or is like, this is exactly confirming my worldview that Death is like hunting us. Yes. I mean, and these movies are very post-screen, so like you said with Guy Busek having a writing credit on this, these films being revived in the aftermath of the Scream Revival and in the same summer when I know what you did last summer is coming, like that roughly late 90s through mid 2000s, we have a horror, kind of brought horror back.
I mean, horror in the early 90s was not great. When the last... I mean, I do this pretty frequently anyway, but when the last scream came out, my wife and I went on a crazy deep dive of like all the horror we could find from the late 90s. And it's definitely...
It was a throwback of like, basically like, broads wearing very little guys who were absolute dirtbag scumbags, two normal people at the center of it, but they're just inexplicably surrounded by the worst fucking friends in the whole world. But they're just so enjoyable, like they're good at it. These movies are really gnarly, but they're also really silly. Like the way that you're talking about that includes like, you know, urban legends, and then ultimately what I think kind of culminated in Platinum Dunes, sort of reviving all of the classics, Night on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Texas Chains on Massacre, last house on the left, those movies were really grim.
They were stylish, but they were really violent and nasty. The fun of this nation was really fun, and this movie bloodlines capture the fun aspect of it, and this killer we're talking about thinks it was in the hospital. It's just tremendously creative and strange and gross. We've given our spoiler warning, let's describe what happens to Eric.
They capture the peanut snack. And it's worth noting that Eric is a big fan of body art and piercing. He is a tattoo artist and a piercer himself, lower down on the professional ladder than maybe he would like to be, but he we find has many body piercings, including ones we didn't know about, like the ones in his nipples and the ones in his dick. And when the MRI machine is turned on to what I did not know existed, which is research level, it apparently emits a fucking magneto in connocea level, tractor beam and rips all of the rings out of this dude's body.
And then when his dick ring gets yanked, he himself flies into the MRI machine in part because a wheelchair is also sucked into the machine carrying him forward. Yes, but he goes dick first into the MRI machine and gets folded up and sucked in. And then while this is happening, Bobby finally gets his hands on his epipen, stabs himself, comes back to life, stands up, the nurse opens the door and what decapitates him? The ring from the vending machine has been broken and shoots through the glass and is sucked towards the MRI machine into his forehead and murders him.
Now they showed us this scene in Las Vegas at Cinemacon and in the immediate aftermath of that, the head of New Line said, see you with the Oscars. It was easily the funniest thing that was uttered at that entire convention. You know, Cinemacon is just full of 50-something theater owners. Some of them I'm sure loved it and some of them are absolutely horrified, but when that scene, when they showed us that scene, I was like, this is going to be a top 20 movie a year for me.
Like, there's just no way. You can just tell when you have a handle on these kinds of kills that they're very, very comfortable with what they're doing. It doesn't really overwork itself, too, because one of my favorite things to compile is reactions to deaths in Final Destination from other characters, which is often either incredibly funny or way over dramatic. So it's either like, lots of tears and then a rainy funeral for characters like, no, and then instantly you're like just going on with your lives.
And it's like, at any given point, anything that's ever happened in a Final Destination movie would be the craziest and worst thing that ever happened in my life. And I would be in therapy. I would be taking like, sabbaticals from my job. These people are all like, oh god, I guess I have to go back to school the next day, even though a nail gun exploded my girlfriend's skull.
It's completely true. And it's because in addition to that being these kill fest, the movies are sort of these tiny little detective stories where the protagonist of the story needs to sort of hunt out the truth of the order of the deaths. They're dated at first, everybody's just like, you're crazy. You probably had something to do with this NASCAR race going along.
And then they ultimately, I mean, it's a really ingenious little idea. We're like at the premonition, you know, so this person experiences their vision and then they save kind of a random collection of people who listen to them or happen to step aside or get caught up in, you know, whatever. And so that you're left with is a kind of ragtag group of people who aren't actually friends or don't really believe each other. So they're always like, I'll be doing this on my own.
Thank you very much as they walk into like a plane of glass. It's an ingenious little design. In addition to that kill in Bloodlines, there's an extremely memorable family barbecue sequence, which is spot lit in the trailer of people haven't seen it features a stray piece of glass and the way that kind of like skips around the backyard and signaling that someone is going to get ensnared by this little shard of glass. Let's just say something here.
This family has been afflicted with multiple instances of incredible mental health struggles. The grandmother is living in a death and death proof cabin. Steph's mother abandoned her at a young age because she wanted to take death away from her. There is like a very interesting mixture of families, but like adoptions and like all these kids, but they're all like high school college age.
And I have never seen so many like frozen margaritas and beers getting popped at a party with like 19 year olds. It's a really good point. There's some young kids there. He has all of his kids making blended drinks.
Now they also all may like, I think the actors may all be like 32 and maybe just they're just going to be off that it was like they just come from their grandmother's funeral and they were in a sunny garden getting like plowed like the next beat and the dad is just like, well, we're all together. This is what it's all about. Family getting fucking killed. The kill related to the glass is also awesome.
Alonmore yet again, wreaks havoc in this series. Not the first time Alonmore has triggered a truly gruesome death in this franchise. And then there are a few others in the film that are very effective. The trash compactor in particular is very funny because of the way that it is predicted.
If not, there's not a premonition per se. There's more like the understanding that in fact she may have a power that many characters exhibit in this series. Yes, she is got a clarity about Death's design that is pretty unprecedented in this film. So she can tell something is going to happen with a leaf blower and a soccer ball and a trash truck.
And it's just she gets it in the wrong sequence and with the wrong person. Kind of a little homage to Star Wars and New Hope there as well. Yeah, that's right. And Julie winds up getting her melon exploited by a trash compactor in the back of a trash truck.
Yes. If you're into heads being crushed, this is really the franchise for you. There are a few other ones. There's a particular callback at the very end of the movie that is extremely amusing.
The other thing is when these movies end, they tend to end on the most utterly brutal death and then a hard cut to black followed by some anonymous rock band. Yeah, I think you can spoil it because it's one of the things that's been emerging in the discourse around final destination is the power of the premonition in F2. So that is the logging truck. Before mentioned Sean and I driving by those logging trucks and just being like, what if this is it?
Yeah, we were in F2 town. I still to this day when I'm driving on the five, like, emphyxated on what is in the back of a truck and thinking about what would happen if a refrigerator jostled loose when he was pick up and went flying into my face. The logging highway truck thing has gotten so big, I think, in the minds of people who watch these movies that now it seems like the logging truck is taking on a character of its own and is popping up in the films and especially in bloodlines at the end. The logs have become a character.
It is one of the best in jokes that is actually an essential part of telling the story. So before we get into the actual kills across the series themselves, I do want to cite a few more things that were cursed throughout the franchise because this is in some ways like Star Wars as well. There is an extended kind of cinematic is a lot like Star Wars. It's really gets me excited.
Should we pitch Disney? Well, who does these movies? Warmer? Warmer?
Warmer is now. I guess another mic and pam triple, you know? I mean, they're crushing it. They're so good.
They're, they're, they're exactly what movies needed. I don't really know what else to say. The biggest hit of the biggest movie of the year for kids, the biggest movie of the year for adults and the biggest movie of the year for shit lords. Like that's their three for three.
Do you think we should pitch them on a max or an HBO streaming series that's like the Andor of Final Destination, like the heady revolutionary in-depth novelistic take on what's happening in between the kills? I went like the Selenciama version, you know, where she like really explores a relationship between a mother and a daughter that culminates in them both being decapitated. That's really what I'm, what's interesting. There's a lot of boys who go with these films.
I'm really glad that. I'd say Portugal Lady on Fire would be a good kill. Very good point. There's several burnings in these movies as well.
So I mentioned that like, this really comes out of a very discreet time in history that I'm sure many of the listeners were of this show were very young for. I remember not very fondly culturally when flip phones hit the world. Rap rock, news and charts. Yes.
Where it was all the rage, stained in Limp Biscuit and Powerman 5000 and lots and lots of bands like that disturbed. And this idea of like everything being kind of shitty and happy about it. Yeah. Kind of smugness in our own filth and the film, this franchise is a pre-9-11 franchise.
It launches in 2000. It is. And it really was a horror-on-terra-atter professional. But my point is that it launches with a plane crash.
Yeah. And it probably doesn't exist if the movie has to wait one year. You wouldn't build a horror franchise on the back of a plane crash in the fall of 2001. Yes.
But in 2000, it was like, this is great. We're going to kill a bunch of teenagers in a plane crash. And it did tap into when you re-watch the final destination. When I remember, when did it come out?
It came out in 2000? Yes, 2000. I remember re-watching it on DVD after, I can't wait I'm saying this, after 9-11. And just being like, man, it does hit different.
And it does like, you do get a little bit more nervous about, you know, I think now my consciousness of flights has gone like all the way back around to where I'm like, as long as I just arrived somewhere. But there was like a solid couple of years there where I was like, wanted to see the mechanic and be like, did you give this a good one so far? Sure. And this up, the lug nuts are all good.
And it's wild that that's what I mean. I still think I'm more scared of rollercoasters than I am planes because of these films. Well, British disaster is a personal fear of mine. Is it really?
We can get into that. So keep going through the hallmarks here. So one, almost all these movies are centered on one, if not more, disenchanted teenagers. And they all ultimately avoid like a very glitz, grizzly death.
And then that leads to them coming together. Most of these kids are very attractive, but they're kind of awful. There's usually one woman, occasionally man, but usually one woman who seems like a decent person at the center of the story. Maybe not, you know, the valetictorian of their class, but like a normal girl.
And for whatever reason, all of her friends and her, you know, her girlfriend's boyfriend who die tragically, you know, wants to fuck her too. But they all kind of deserve to die. So you don't really have to worry too much about getting too invested in them because you know, when you start, these kids are doomed. They all have to relearn the premise of the film.
So in the first film, Devin's I was character along with Ali Larder kind of discover the arc of death, you know, the fact that death exists and the death is kind of taking his or her time. But there's an order to death. Flowing through the order that he has set. But when you watch two and three and four and five, they all have the same realization at roughly the end of the first act and beginning of the second act.
That's why Largal Journal is a matter. Honestly, like we need storytellers. And a lot of the time it's usually like, I've just found this story on microfiche from the Seattle New Times. It appears there was a girl in 2000 who was decapitated.
This girl set off the flowing deaths. You know, like they always are repeated. It's like a local news story. I admit though, I find that when I try to tell you about stories that I've read, you're either dubious or you're like, sounds good.
Thanks for letting me know. But you've always sourced it from truth social. No, I trust you. I think when I told you about the katari plane, you were like, okay, man, no, that's not true.
I just said I didn't know about that. But if I was like, Sean, did you hear about this bridge collapse? I think death is embodied in like a wisp of wind that surrounds us and that there is like a friend like there's like an order to like who's going to die next. So just be careful out there.
Would you think would want me committed? Would you think that I was telling you the truth? What I would always go home and be like, I lean C.R. was a little off today.
I don't know what kind of maybe the milk was spoiled in his coffee. I'm not sure we take oatmeal. We talked about this a lot of weekend. So that premonition that they see of the natural disaster usually leads to these five or six teenagers avoiding this disastrous event, which then leads to this kind of unfurling of death plan where one by one, these characters are killed before they're killed.
There's always some sort of cosmic metaphysical sign, wind swirling, those ratcheted up noises, a radio on the frits. And one of these kids being like, it's not much I've done. See? Right before helicopter blades slices death.
Right, trick death. You'll also see a lot of accidental dripping on electrified devices. That's honestly the laziest part is a lot of the liquid so that the guy slips and accidentally hangs himself stuff. I'm more of a like, put me in a home depot and just let me see what happens.
Yeah, you just you never want to see somebody plug anything in in this movie. Yeah, you know, if somebody plugs something into a wall outlet, that person's getting fried. And if not, that's just the setup for the fake out, which is the other thing that you see. It makes these movies a little less fun to watch, I think to identify all of these things, but watching them in succession as I did, it's very clear that there is a very specific rhythm to how they show us these deaths.
Final destination bloodlines has a really great fake out in the barbecue scene where there is somebody has left a rake underneath a trampoline and multiple people are just bouncing up and down on this old worn out trampoline. And finally, a character is just like, wait, and spots the rake, but it's such a tease because I really wanted to know what happens when you hit a rake while you're on a trampoline. It's a really good question. Just get your foot, just like a flying out and down.
I think foot pain comes second to eye pain. You know, I pain the idea of a needle going into the eye is terrifying. But then following by like a shot of glass or rake going through your foot, that's a problematic one. The fake out is always followed within a minute by a gnarly unforeseen kill.
And usually not the character that you were expecting it to be. This usually comes as well with a counterintuitively peppy pop song, Sound Tracking the Circumstance. I was reminded of this last night while I watched the final destination, the fourth film in the franchise, when Why Can't We Be Friends is blaring out of a tow truck while a racist is dragged on the street after trying to put a cross on a black man's... I forgot my T-Williams's.
...I'm like a T-Williams's front yard. Yeah. Again, this was the fourth film in the franchise where they decided to introduce white supremacy. So this is a fucking crazy franchise.
There's like, oh yeah, by the way, this B-tier character is a hardcore racist. He's indicating KK, yeah. And then just, you know, the number one signature of the franchise is wildly elaborate, gruesome death. Yeah, that is the thing.
Death after death after death, you know you're watching Final Destination. I have one more note just to characterize like to kind of just embellish on your thing about the mean-spirited characters and the guys listening to Biscuit. Some true Chester the Molester's scumbag behavior on the part of the male characters. Guys, do I feel like we're early adopters of internet pornography?
Yeah. And most of the first three films are like guys named Frankie Cheeks trying to take digital photography up skirts of women as they get on roller coasters. Yeah. And being like, eh, and then they get fucking killed so hard.
But it's really funny to go back and revisit this level of like commercial misogyny. Yeah, it's not just like a snowflake about FD. I'm like, I actually enjoy it. It's not like anybody gets out of these movies.
So it's pretty funny. Yeah. It's what is the name of the American Pie character? Sherman.
Oh, yeah. Shermanator. Yeah. There's like everyone is kind of the Shermanator in this movie.
And that was archetype. That was archetype we were growing up. And they managed to find a way to kill all these kids. So let's go through the kills.
Okay. So six films total. Do you want to just do one side? Yeah, two favorites from each.
Okay. And and have a little personal vote. And then I think we should take those six and rank those top six from each film. Sound good?
Yes. So FD one, of course, you got the plane crash. Plane crash is extremely dramatic. It's easily the highest death toll in the history of this franchise.
287 people die on that plane in that opening sequence. It includes a high school class that Devin Sawa and Ali Larrick are interested in a few handful of kids avoid right on their way to Paris. So there's one. There's a very famous bathroom chokeout.
I think this probably has to go in because of the elaborate nature of it. I think it shows you a lot of it's got the fake out. It's got the liquid on the floor. It's got a little bit of the like death is right behind him.
He can't see. It kind of invents the franchise in a way because the franchise is always open with these big multi person kills, but they're defined by the single act, the single, you know, mouse trap kill. This one's pretty good. Todd.
R.I.P. Todd. R.I.P. Any other ones you want to cite?
Just before we go off of Todd's death, that then concludes Todd and his brother have now been killed in the first 30 minutes of this movie. And we do get one scene with their dad being like, God damn you Alex. And he disappears, which is the same thing that happens in bloodlines. Is that the woman whose entire family has been decimated?
Like has never seen again? It's a good point. Yeah. The mom.
Yeah. Yeah. She's just going to stay with her sister. All of her children die.
That's a really good point. We never seen her again. Just because she's not a whole of the bloodlines. Characters are like, we should check on Brenda.
She's had like probably the worst. Like her husband and all three of her children are dead. Yeah. And she also revealed to one of those children that she was adopted.
That was a great twist. These movies are fucking great. Other deaths than one that I enjoy, especially the train. Billy, Sean Williams, Scott's character.
Takes after a speeding train, nearly Mrs. Alex. Billy is decapitated by shrapnel as the train races by. Moments before that, he says he wants to live to see the Jets win a Super Bowl.
For the record, the first one takes place on Long Island. I've never felt more seen than Billy being killed. Is he wearing an islanders jersey the entire movie? I think he is.
I just want to note that this film was made in 2000. The Jets have not been to the Super Bowl since this movie was made. Actually, I've been in the Super Bowl in 60 years. I really enjoyed Billy.
And then the conclusion of the film is the introduction of this idea of like the end to kill. The heart, the fate of Black Kill, which comes when Carter saves Alex's life to Devin's character, which means it skips Alex and then immediately Carter is crushed by a giant sign in Paris. 294 deaths total. The plane takes up a lot.
The plane takes up, yeah. There's only actually six kills in the movie otherwise, which sounds like a lot of this weirdly. This is going to sound weird, but this movie is almost a little bit more like thriller-y. Even the plane crash is kind of fincher-y where it's like everything is insert shots of like a bolt loosening or like event.
It's a really good job of depicting that feeling you get when you walk on the plane is a little decrepit. You ever get on and you're just like man, the car is something about the flamest. No, I just mean that you can tell sometimes when this is a plane from like 2006, you know, or 98 or whatever. Yeah, I mean, one other thing that the film, the first film does is every character is named after a significant figure in horror history.
So you've got Alex Browning, the style character of Todd Browning, you've got Valerie Luton as the teacher after Val Luton, the famous horror film producer, you got Billy Hitchcock, of course, a very recognizable one. You've got Terry Cheney, Lon Cheney, you've got, you know, lots and lots of Larry Mernell, you've got like all these examples of great cinematic horror maesters being recognized in these films. These films are weirdly like they're junkie, but they're perfect, you know, like, and that is also a great tradition of horror. This sort of like exploitation, low budget movie that just kind of has something special in its DNA.
Okay, so for the first film, let's go, do you say bathroom? You say Todd? I say Todd, do you want to put plane crash or train truck? I think plane crash has to be in there because it's so important.
I agree. So the first two, Todd in the plane crash. Okay, final destination two. Oh my God.
I can't even really remember the plot of this movie very well. Obviously, it hinges on this extraordinary car crash sequence. Yeah, and because of where it takes place. Basically, this woman, who's the main girl character, is it Nora or something like that?
It sounds right. I don't know. But she has a vision that she's about to pull into a highway to go on a road trip with her girlfriend and two of the worst guys of all time, which I guess are their boyfriend Kimberly. Kimberly.
Kimberly. Kimberly. Kimberly. Kimberly.
Kimberly. Kimberly. Corman named after Roger Corman. Now, she sees this incredible accident take place where a logging truck has an accident, loses all of its timber that everybody gets decapitated.
There are people on fire who then get hit by trucks. There's a really like a bitchy, ad woman who's like smoking virgin, she dies, all this stuff. So the premonition brings together a very interesting, diverse group of people, including the coked out guys at Burke. What's his name?
Thomas Burke. Thomas Burke. Yeah. Yeah.
It's an odd collection of people, very different from most of the other movies. It's like more of a ragtime. It's like, oh, it's a high school class that's brought together somehow. Exactly.
And this one features, I mean, the logging sequence is I think the signature sequence in the whole series. It still is incredibly effective. And I think what I've forgotten is usually these characters have these extraordinary premonitions. And then they see some of the chaos, but not necessarily all of the chaos.
For example, in the first film, they see the plane crash in the distance through a window after it actually transpires in the race car crash that we'll talk about from the final destination. Which is for us. They don't actually witness that. They only witness the carnage of people piling out of the stadium.
And then one, the woman who stayed in there and then the tire comes out. So for the logging, this is goaded Hall of Fame. I think everybody kind of agrees it's the best premonition. It's got a great follow up button kill where they think that they've escaped everything and her friends are still inexplicably sitting in the jeep and another truck just completely mose them down and kills them.
Funny to see Justin Machado who has gone on to bigger and better things as a random pregnant lady in this. Not a lot, I would say, with the exception of Allie Larter, not a lot of and Sean Williams Scott of people going on to great things after a final destination. Well, there's notable exception in three. Well, yeah, obviously we'll get to her.
So the logging to me is a clear cut 1A. Additional kills, the Terrace Ladder, which is pre-saged by a dramatic escape from a burning kitchen in which several appliances go haywire. Is this also where that guy has his hand in his food disposal drain for like a solid two minute, is really like, this is going to be so epic when this disposal somehow goes on and he loses his hand and then whatever happens. And it never happens.
When they just fake you out. It's a perfect fake out. And then ultimately he escapes his burning kitchen only to be laid on his back as the Terrace Ladder in his building slides all the way down to within, I'd say about a foot of his eye and stops. Do you know one of the craziest things about this country is that I do feel like anecdotally, like when I used to go visit my grandma in Florida, I feel like the switch for the food disposable is real close to the kitchen.
Like that was in play that you could accidentally flip on the food. I have one of those now. How close is it to like your kitchen light though? I'm not close.
Okay. I think technically we used to get a little why would your kitchen maybe over the sink because so you walk in or kitchen to the left, right? You walk and you feel over there. I think they only have like one panel for the like electrics.
Do you like to have your rooms like all cordoned off or do you like to have an open floor plant? You like cordoned off. You want to be like in the kitchen. I like a war in rooms, a war in a room.
Yeah, like a lot of rooms. You know, I don't like open floor places. You would prefer to live in like sort of an ancient castle. I think castles have open floor plants.
Don't they walk into great. Yeah, they have a great hall. But then they have like a house from clue. Lots of secret passageways.
You know, like as a drawing room. When should I have a drawing room? I really want to study when I'll know that I've made it when I have a home that has a study. Will there be a TV in the study or will this film room be separate?
Let's see how this YouTube thing keeps going. You know, like if it keeps if we have success with this, then yeah, I'll definitely put a TV in my drawing room. Hot Rod guy, he gets his eyes blasted out by a terror slider. Yeah, that's very violent, super fun kill.
The plate glass smash. So, Tam, one of the characters escapes the dentist's office. Where it looks like for sure he's going to be somehow decapitated or has mouth. He's going to show to death because like a goldfish jumps in his throat.
That's right. Cool fish. Thank you. Only to be crushed by a plate glass window that falls from the sky.
In front of his mom while being transported by a crane. He dies in front of his mom. She's like, no. She gets her head decapitated by an elevator door.
Yes. In the next scene, she literally is her hair is caught by the man with the hook hands. Is that right? In a carton, she becomes trapped by the neck of an elevator and is decapitated.
Super chill franchise. This is a scene preceded by, you know, nine strangers in a room being like, what do you mean there's an order? Enough. Then there's a car crash.
So as a trooper and a pregnant woman swerve gang comes into the rear side into a truck full of PVC pipes. So Eugene gets pierced by the pipes. The ambulance pulls away. A news truck springs a gas leak.
The firefighters attempt to free cat from the truck. But when the airbag releases, she's impaled by the piping in the car seat. Rory is then subsequently cut in three by flying barbed wire that is loose somehow. It's pretty amazing because they, this one is like the figure eight of death.
It's like, wow, you can't believe like they've brought so many different aspects of death into one scene. I totally agree. It's only two deaths, but it has triple axle energy. So I like that one quite a bit.
And then the hospital oxygen, oxygen explosion. It's significant because this marks the end of clear. Yes. Clear finds Eugene in the hospital, but also discovers a leaky oxygen tank that immediately incinerates her and him.
Another two deaths. Ali Larter hasn't been seen all the way up until land in. That was the, it was Fd2. Nothing for 23 years.
Like Darren's Malin and Landman season one. Is that how clear rivers return? She came back to do the thin red line. Is clear rivers the name of her character in landman?
No, it is not. What is it? I can't remember her first name. The Billy Bob Thornton's.
You know, I got to tell you, Landman, one of my favorite shows that I saw last year, Angela is her name. Okay. Again, the characters are not that memorable in terms of their names. How she don't.
I didn't watch Landman. Uh, she is primarily focused on after she gets divorced from her ex and goes back to Billy Bob's Tommy character. Her and her teenage daughter spend a lot of time trying to reawaken the libido of people living in a senior's care center. So they like want them to feel sexually active again and take them to a male and female strip bar, like super bar.
Exact dancing. True story. And meanwhile, like Billy Bob Thornton gets captured by the cartel. Wait, they split up in the show?
They are broken up on the show starts. Oh, I see. Okay. Get back together.
She moves from like Dallas to meet him with him or she's, I don't know. And then like over the course of the season, the way she's like kind of keeping herself busy is by like reaching out to the older community of this town in the pyramid basin. How do you feel about the way that Taylor shared in right sex scenes? I feel like it's pretty vividly realistic.
I think he's really in touch with the amount of like Viagra guys are taking. Not me personally. Oh, and I, how would you know that? I think like the first scene Billy Bob Thornton is like shooting himself up with testosterone.
Oh, wow. Okay. Or something. That's what you do for every episode of watch right in the neck.
Just like an alpha green walled. Oh, do you Andy? Yeah. Oh, you don't like glass about that.
Oh, cuck. Okay. Last kill in FD two is the barbecue explosion. After learning that her brother was safe from being hit by the news van, we cut away to him at the grill when he explodes in a fiery blast at the end of the film.
The button kill is very funny. It's very good. I think I'm going to go with the car crash just because it brings in so many different elements on top of one of the all-time great sequences in film history, which is the vlogging truck. Okay.
So we've got two there. FD three. Okay. Let's talk about her.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead. There's been two really seminal performances by women in film in my life. There's Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter and there's MEW in FD three. Yep.
She is. She's so far and away the greatest actress who's ever participated in one of these films. Best actor. Yes.
And is so good. I believe I saw a letterbox comment about this movie where it's like Mary Elizabeth Winstead has chronic back pain from throwing this franchise on her shoulders. Yeah. She is giving a very committed performance.
I think she actually has a real depth as an actor. And so this. I love Mary Elizabeth Winstead. It's just wild to go watch her deal with a character named Frankie Cheeks.
I mean, she's just opposite also a lot of actors who you've never seen again. Yeah. You know, like Ryan Merriman and Chris Lemchi and Alex Jones. Please, I want to kill you on this movie.
Chris Lemchi. Okay. You know, nothing against those guys. They've had perfectly fine careers, but yeah, MEW is on a different level.
This is the roller coaster film. And I'm going to zag here and say that while I am personally most scared of what is depicted in the premonition, so don't really ride roller coasters because of final destination three. Like the worst thing that could happen on a roller coaster. You don't ride roller coasters?
Not really. Haven't you and I've been on a roller coaster? Doesn't wear like a roller coaster. She does.
Yeah. But I like, I really came on California screen. I did it. I like, I'll do it.
You were afraid. I screamed. Yeah. Really?
Yeah. I'm this. I feel like I'm shocked. Were you hiding this from me when we were at California Adventure?
Well, I don't know if we talked about FD three. I mean, we went to California Adventure five or six years after this film came out. So I think that I think I may have suppressed the memory. But for a long time, I have just been like, and when I was in Portland over the summer, one of this like gravitron thing that swings people up and down the air got stuck up in the air.
It was on the news. So it's like, these things happen. They don't tell you about it. It's no lame stream media.
The roller coaster. I'll never fucking ride like Batman, Batman ride at Great Venture or those Kansas rides where they're like, this thing drops 300 stories and then does it three six? You wouldn't do that because it's in the Midwest. No, but like, if you don't go to fly with a dream.
You fucking thing goes wrong. And you see these guys who were like, I'm listening to like, I'm listening to like nine. See you on. Yeah.
Yeah. While I'm supposed to be operating this roller coaster, like, I assume that the pilot who's flying my plane has had like, plane experience, like pilot training. You're assuming that. Yeah.
But I don't know what the roller coaster guy has. I mean, I think the film to a good job of showing it is basically an 16 year old kid running a button. Yeah. So while I think that in terms of its scope and vision, the premonition is incredible.
It's like, I almost wanted it to be player and more fucked up. They show a couple of clear headshots where somebody falls out of a roller coaster car and smashes their head against a steel beam. But I will say that there are kills in FD3 that are better than the premonition. I'll go with you on that.
Ten riders reportedly died on this particular roller coaster disaster. One of the most famous kills in this franchise is the tanning bed. Yes. Two high school girls who managed to avoid evade the roller coaster ride because of MEW's premonition go to a tanning bed.
They bring a beverage with them as they shouldn't. The door accidentally closes to the room because of a fallen sunscreen bottle that gets lodged in the door. And the operator of the tanning bed is nowhere to be seen. And somehow the tanning beds get real hot.
Yeah. This is real, again, shit, core culture where it's like girls are topless. Naked girls getting fried to death. It's very like 80s slasher.
Actually falling on them and stuff. Extremely violent. The girls who are kind of like in the post-Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, Aftictation of like hyper fake tan. It's really violent and gross.
It is also a fun time at the movies for me. I think the tanning bed has to go into the FD-HOF. I'm with you on that. I also really like the song choice, which is Love Roller Coaster, the 70s punk song with an immediate callback to the roller coaster disaster that happened eight minutes prior.
The next kill, I find to be one of the most confusing in the series. Yeah. So Frankie Cheeks, the aforementioned horn dog, pervert, who is constantly trying to snap photos of the girls in the series, is it a drive-through? Behind him at the drive-through are Emmy W and her best friend's boyfriend.
Her best friend is dead. And they are on the trail trying to figure out what's going on with death. There's another car behind them. And then for some reason, a truck perpendicular to Emmy W's car backs into the side of it?
Yeah. Is it like a whiskey truck? They're at a drive-through. Yeah.
I don't know. Why is that truck parking there? This is where it's like is death driving the car kind of stuff. And it doesn't have the elaborate setup that I think some of the other kills in this film do.
It's just a little less about clearance. Yeah. A little less. And then another truck starts barreling down a hill, bashes into those other trucks.
Somehow, Emmy W and her girlfriend's boyfriend escape, Frank catches a motor blade directly in the back of the head. Yeah. I want that character. I have more grooves and death or a more elaborate one.
The camera does hold pretty long on the molding of his you know, decapitated skull, which is pretty amusing. I thought it was okay, but it just kind of doesn't make that much sense. The next one is the Lewis football player's weightlifting decapitation with the swinging swords fake out. Pretty fun.
Yes. But nothing compares to the Home Depot. Followed by the Home Depot forklift disaster. Ian McKinley, the aforementioned disturbed fan, yeah, avoids the falling fence posts that are in the Polaroids that Emmy W consistently looks back to.
But as he does that and narrowly avoids all of the falling objects in the store room at Home Depot Esque Home Good Store, his girlfriend, Aaron, is accidentally backed into another organizing shelf that has a stray nail gun in it. She slips falls, winds up getting nail gun both in the back and front of her head. Just the back. Oh, just the back.
I think the nails are shot through her face. But one of the great things about it is that we find out how many nails are in a nail gun because they all go into red. And there's multiple cutaways to Ian, be like, no, and then back to Aaron as more nails go into red. Yeah, that is a good cut.
Why would you be in a Home Depot if you were a character in a final decision? Wonderful question. I would never drive. I would never fly and I would never go to a home repair store.
Every character every one of these ones needs an arrogant character. Ian is the arrogant character. He's like, I cheated death. Yes.
And of course he hasn't next. We go to the 300 fireworks display. A Julie's friend Perry is impaled by a flag loosened by a stampeding white horse that nearly strangled her sister Julie with a runaway rope. Yes.
This one's extremely elaborate. Also, when we were talking about the film, Havoc and sliding down the harpoon, oh, yeah, this kind of has a similar action. I hope so. I bet you I bet you're going to have his love these movies.