Lee Cronin's The Mummy

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[0:03] The movie that dares to ask the question,

[0:06] what if Lee Cronin made a mummy movie?

[0:30] Hey everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:36] Hey, thanks for welcoming me to the Flophouse, Dan. I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:40] Well, so was the welcome just meant for Stuart, or?

[0:43] Yeah, you gotta.

[0:44] Oh, okay.

[0:44] You want one, you gotta pay.

[0:46] So I'm an interloper, okay.

[0:47] He's only allowed one invite per day.

[0:49] Only one invite, yeah.

[0:50] I guess I'm Elliot Kaelin the stowaway to this one, because Dan couldn't be bothered to get a plus two for the podcast.

[0:57] Elliot latched onto my tummy like a lamprey or whatever.

[1:01] Yeah, exactly.

[1:02] I stuffed myself in your navel like a little, like a little, like a little aquato.

[1:07] He's cleaning you of, you know, excess skin, parasites.

[1:12] Yep, exactly.

[1:13] Yeah.

[1:14] So, guys.

[1:16] Kind of like an ox pecker and I'm a giraffe.

[1:18] A lamprey doesn't do that, Dan.

[1:20] A lamprey, I think, is a blood sucking.

[1:21] Oh, I don't know.

[1:22] You're thinking more like a remora, you know.

[1:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:25] I think an Oxpecker is cooler because like I feel like we could be if we were in like a third generation Lion King offshoot, I would be this giraffe character.

[1:36] You would be the Oxpecker that's like eating all the tugs and mites off.

[1:40] Oxpecker sounds like an insult.

[1:42] I'm trying so hard not to make a joke off of the Oxpecker.

[1:45] So, yeah.

[1:45] Yeah.

[1:46] But I think that's right.

[1:47] You guys had to be gross.

[1:48] We're talking like making a Disney movie.

[1:50] This is fucking weird.

[1:52] But this is in Lion King 4.

[1:53] They do it now.

[1:54] And they're trying to go for an adult audience.

[1:56] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[1:57] Yeah, it was Rule 34 somehow funded a movie.

[2:02] And they're like, well, Stewart's voice sounds different enough from Seth Rogen's.

[2:07] He can be the big kind of rhino or giraffe character.

[2:11] Again, giraffe character, yeah.

[2:12] Yeah, yeah.

[2:14] Dan, what character are you in this Rule 34 Lion King ripoff, I guess, or official sequel?

[2:19] Is there like a – is there an animal that just sort of watches from a distance?

[2:25] Most animals.

[2:26] Most animals watch like a meerkat, but they've already got one.

[2:29] So, you know, maybe you're a bird of some kind too.

[2:31] Maybe you're a capable –

[2:32] Maybe I am a bird of some kind.

[2:33] I'm like a bird.

[2:35] Yeah, I don't know who your mom is.

[2:36] I'll only fly away.

[2:39] This is a podcast, mostly as you can hear, it's a podcast where gibberish is spouted

[2:45] In the form of a stream of consciousness monologue between three like-minded idiots.

[2:52] But also, it's a podcast where we watch a movie that was critically or commercially shunned.

[2:58] And then we talk about it.

[3:00] Stuart didn't like my characterization.

[3:02] He frowned when I was too down on us as a podcast.

[3:06] As idiots?

[3:06] Yeah, we're cool dudes.

[3:08] In this case, we'll be talking about Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[3:13] That's right.

[3:15] Shocktober cannot contain the bounds of The Mummy.

[3:18] Also, they make a lot of horror movies these days.

[3:21] Yeah, they really do.

[3:22] So there's a bounty of them, which is not a bad thing.

[3:23] I just want to say off the bat, I just want to say off the bat, this movie, I think I will be unfair to it.

[3:30] I think all of America was because if someone comes to you and says, hey, we want to put your name in the title of the movie, how do you say no to that?

[3:38] On the other hand, I think it was much easier to make fun of this movie because the official title is Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[3:44] And the case can be made that Lee Cronin is not a well-known enough piece of property to put his name in front of a much better-known piece of property, The Mummy, and expect those two things to balance out.

[3:55] Let's make a couple things clear.

[3:57] Number one, it was not Lee Cronin's fault.

[4:00] From all reporting, he was not particularly interested in this idea,

[4:04] but they wanted to do it to differentiate it from the existing Brendan Fraser mummy.

[4:08] This was like a Blumhouse dictate that he then got on board with.

[4:12] Oh, do you think they're that different?

[4:13] They feel pretty similar.

[4:13] They're pretty similar.

[4:15] One's a kind of semi-all-ages adventure, and the other one is a movie where—

[4:19] Very bisexual.

[4:20] Yeah.

[4:20] Very bisexual, friends.

[4:21] The other one is a movie in which children are tortured over and over again.

[4:27] Oh, right.

[4:28] Which does – is actually the fact that it says Lee Cronin's does clue you in that there's going to be child torture in it.

[4:36] I guess so, yeah, compared to the previous movie, yeah.

[4:38] But the other side of it is, yes, it is objectively hilarious as a title.

[4:43] When I first saw the title, I was like, is Lee Cronin like a Dean Kuntz figure that I just am not familiar with?

[4:50] That he like wrote a bunch of like books that – and now finally one of them is coming to – I'm like, oh, no.

[4:55] Like he made The Hole in the Ground and the second Evil Dead Rise, the second new one.

[5:03] The second one is always the one that has to have Rise in the title.

[5:06] Evil Dead Rise is fine.

[5:07] I feel like the new Evil Dead movies – I haven't seen the newest one because I don't think it's out yet.

[5:10] But the –

[5:11] It's out.

[5:12] We saw it.

[5:12] Oh, is it?

[5:13] I haven't seen the new one.

[5:13] The newer Evil Dead movies lose what to me is the most important aspect of the Evil Dead movies, which is charm and fun.

[5:21] Yeah, yeah.

[5:22] And they're just – I mean there's – maybe there's – I mean those movies exist.

[5:25] There's no reason to remake them, really, you know?

[5:27] Not to go on too much of a tangent here,

[5:29] but I was talking to a friend of the podcast, Steve Kostansky,

[5:32] and he pointed out kind of what I think

[5:34] is probably the key ingredient that's missing

[5:36] is there's no Ash character.

[5:38] Like, no character who's kind of an idiot.

[5:40] No character in that mode, in that role, yeah.

[5:43] Yes, there's no, like, character who's, like, kind of an idiot

[5:45] who, like, you don't mind seeing get beat up a little,

[5:48] but you also want to root for.

[5:50] Yes, and I think that is one of the things, yeah,

[5:52] that differentiates that series,

[5:54] Because this direction they've taken them in is just try to get extreme gross out, you know, what things can we do to a human body.

[6:01] Still funny.

[6:01] Yes, I do think.

[6:02] Still has got some funnies.

[6:04] I think that it's funnier than critics are giving these recent ones credit for.

[6:09] I don't think the first one was that funny, but I think Rise and Burn.

[6:13] Not until like the very end when it goes super crazy.

[6:16] I mean, Burn, I haven't seen it.

[6:17] Rise has some funny parts in it, but there's also like a, I mean, part of it is also that like the Evil Dead stuff

[6:23] has just become kind of like a generic type problem, you know,

[6:28] as opposed to, it was so distinct in the old movies,

[6:30] partly because it was goofy as all get out, but, you know.

[6:33] Well, it's important that we're talking about Evil Dead now

[6:35] because we're about to talk about a movie

[6:36] that feels a lot like an Evil Dead movie.

[6:38] It feels kind of like 40% Hereditary plus 30% The Exorcist.

[6:44] I would say 85% The Exorcist.

[6:47] I would say it is a very high percentage The Exorcist.

[6:50] I'm being generous, Elliot.

[6:51] I mean, I guess so.

[6:53] Any movie that starts in a Middle Eastern country and then involves a little girl saying swears and being mean to her family because she's possessed by something is The Exorcist.

[7:03] Like that's the same movie.

[7:04] So real quick before we get into this one, guys, because as you guessed, I'm on some mummy duty or wait, some mummy duty.

[7:14] Which one?

[7:15] Which one works better?

[7:15] They wouldn't normally mummify the duty.

[7:18] That's not part of Egyptian burial practices.

[7:20] Yeah.

[7:21] Only if they wanted to take it into the next world with them, which is probably not.

[7:24] If it was a piece they were particularly proud of, yeah.

[7:27] Look at the size of that thing.

[7:29] Can you believe I passed that?

[7:31] Wrap it up.

[7:32] Put it in a jar.

[7:32] I got to show the god of death this.

[7:34] I want to show Anubis this thing.

[7:35] He's going to be like, whoa.

[7:37] Yeah, yeah.

[7:37] It looks like a field hockey stick.

[7:39] Let's check it out.

[7:42] Isis, get over here.

[7:43] Osiris, get over here.

[7:44] Look at this thing.

[7:45] Check this out.

[7:45] It looks like a kopash.

[7:50] So what I was asking is do you guys have any personal history with mummies or the mummy?

[7:56] I mean just recently –

[7:57] I have an angered one if that's what you're asking.

[7:59] I haven't gotten – I haven't been involved with a mummy that has been reanimated.

[8:03] I have to admit the mummy has always been my least favorite of the universal monster classics if only because it's hard to do stuff with him when he's in mummy form.

[8:14] But I mean there's some – but that first mummy movie, the 30s one was really good.

[8:17] Those Brendan Fraser mummy movies are pretty fun.

[8:19] But recently at the California Science Center, I think it may still be up, there's an exhibit of real-life mummies, bodies that have been either mummified or were naturally mummified by the places that they were buried or left in.

[8:31] And I took my son to see that and I got to say, we looked at a lot of dead bodies and a lot of – they're real dead bodies, real mummies, and it was kind of spooky.

[8:39] You can't help but imagine those bodies getting up and talking to you, maybe offering you a meal, which you should not accept.

[8:45] Doing a dance, yeah.

[8:45] I mean, the thing is, like, I'm so distant at this point from, like—

[8:50] Humanity.

[8:51] Yes.

[8:52] Honestly, kind of.

[8:53] But also—

[8:55] What was that Japanese novel, like, not quite human or not even human or something?

[9:00] Like, the horror concept of a mummy has been so abstracted for me that I had to think about it now.

[9:07] And I'm just like, you know, there is something cool about a mummy.

[9:10] You know, essentially it is, like, just a flavor of zombie.

[9:14] But it's one that has been like specifically like they've put it – they've preserved it.

[9:19] They've put it in like a container for thousands of years and then you like open it up and there's good stuff in that.

[9:25] It's just – it is a harder one, as you say, to do a lot of different things with, I think.

[9:30] I think you're putting your finger on what makes a mummy special, which is that it is an ancient thing that is still alive.

[9:36] It should be dead, but it's still alive and it is old.

[9:39] And what this mummy movie fails to – what this mummy does is just – it just possesses human bodies by a demon.

[9:44] it's like not actually there's not very much mummy in this mummy movie it's not really a mummy movie

[9:50] but it's the idea every universal monster has an element of something that is unnatural something

[9:55] that seems so against the laws of nature but also something that is um sensitive and vulnerable or

[10:01] sympathetic in some way or at least understandable in some way and the mummy it's the combination of

[10:05] this is an ancient dead thing that is somehow still alive but also that it has a reason it has

[10:10] a desire that keeps it alive in a way.

[10:12] It's similar to Dracula in that way. It's an undead

[10:14] thing that has a desire for a living

[10:16] thing, in the original Mummy movie at least.

[10:18] And that's the key of it, and it feels like

[10:20] in this one they don't. They were trying to look for a different movie.

[10:22] And the Brendan Fraser ones. And the Brendan Fraser ones, to be sure.

[10:24] Yeah, that's true. That's true. M.O.T.E.P.'s got

[10:26] you know, stuff to do.

[10:28] D.K. Horny. Yeah. M.O.T.E.P.

[10:30] B. Horny. M.O.T.E.P. has an

[10:32] M.O. and it'd be in Horny.

[10:35] So many of the

[10:36] monsters are horny when it comes down to it.

[10:38] It really comes, yeah, it really

[10:40] says something i guess about the human condition you know so obviously i have been selected to do

[10:45] the summumery um because of my my connections to ancient egyptology yeah ancient egyptology

[10:52] because of course i own all 10 albums by the egypt themed death metal band nile one of the

[10:58] greatest metal bands of all time so i will make sure that i uh you know luckily that has helped

[11:03] me understand the whole how far are you along in getting the cover of the iron maiden power

[11:07] slave album tattooed on your back. I know it was a

[11:09] multi-stage process. What have you got so far?

[11:11] That was a problem. I have a bunch of cover-ups

[11:13] back there that I have to do, because I have

[11:15] like a yin-yang, and I have

[11:17] a tramp stamp of

[11:19] the Bat Out of

[11:21] Hell cover I got to cover up.

[11:24] After Meatloaf let me

[11:25] down. Not really a stamp at that

[11:27] point.

[11:29] I figured you needed a good size for that to be legible.

[11:31] No, no, that was part of the problem. It was too small.

[11:34] Yeah, yeah. It's like a postage stamp.

[11:36] And I mean, hey, credit to the artist.

[11:37] It's still, you know, it's very legible, but I got to get that cover down.

[11:40] He went to one of the great tattoo miniaturists to get it done.

[11:42] Yeah, we were going to tattoo some rice.

[11:44] So we were trying to decide if for that Power Slave album cover,

[11:49] if we should just have somebody holding up a letter that has a postage stamp of the Milo bat out of hell.

[11:55] But they're also like, does this make sense?

[11:58] Somebody worships at a giant pyramid with Eddie on it.

[12:02] Would he be sending mail with a modern stamp?

[12:06] I mean, the problem is that...

[12:07] And that's a forever stamp, right?

[12:08] I'm like, no, it's not a forever stamp.

[12:09] No, it's not.

[12:10] You need those extra little stamps

[12:11] that Marge's husband paints in Fargo.

[12:14] I think that part of the issue is that

[12:16] it would appear that someone was handing the letter

[12:18] to Eddie to mail.

[12:20] And that seems like that's not respectful

[12:21] of his position as a pharaoh.

[12:25] He's not going to go to the post office.

[12:27] No, of course not.

[12:28] He's too busy being a power slave,

[12:30] bemoaning that he has to die and can't live forever.

[12:32] Thank you.

[12:33] Yep.

[12:33] Okay, so our movie begins.

[12:36] That movie, Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[12:39] It begins in...

[12:39] Wait, can I say the dumbest joke,

[12:41] the dumbest Iron Maiden joke?

[12:42] Yes, please.

[12:43] Instead of saying return to the center,

[12:44] it says back to the village.

[12:45] Anyway, continue.

[12:48] Oh, I love it.

[12:49] That's just for me.

[12:51] Certainly wasn't for me.

[12:53] No.

[12:53] Dan, you gotta listen to Power Slave.

[12:54] It's a great album.

[12:55] It's a great album.

[12:56] It's arguably Iron Maiden's best album.

[12:59] Maybe not my favorite, but their best.

[13:00] It's hard to argue, yeah.

[13:01] So our story begins in Aswan, I think I'm pronouncing that, Aswan, Aswan, Egypt.

[13:09] A family returns home to find that their pet bird is dead under mysterious circumstances.

[13:16] And this family loves to sing along to the radio except for the mom who is a real buzzkill and killjoy.

[13:21] Real buzzkill, a lot of cool tattoos, looks like a wizard.

[13:24] She stops the singing and I was like, I was kind of enjoying that song.

[13:27] I don't know how much I'm going to enjoy in this movie.

[13:29] So I was not on her side.

[13:31] No, I mean, she is coded as an evil witch pretty early.

[13:35] And that was the game I was playing throughout the movie,

[13:37] which is, how racist is this?

[13:40] It's a good question, Mark.

[13:41] But let's go through the movie and then we'll discuss.

[13:45] We'll decide.

[13:45] We three white men will decide for ourselves

[13:47] how offensive this is for Egyptians, yeah.

[13:50] So they find this dead pet bird and they're like,

[13:52] uh-oh, it started again.

[13:54] So mom and dad go down into the basement,

[13:56] which leads to a buried giant black pyramid.

[13:59] They go inside the pyramid to find a black basalt sarcophagus.

[14:05] Using a series of pulleys and winches,

[14:08] they lift up the lid of the sarcophagus

[14:10] to find a mummified human figure.

[14:12] And they're like, eh, it's probably fine.

[14:14] That thing's moving. Uh-oh.

[14:16] And it uses its magic telekinesis powers

[14:19] to make a hook spear the dad through the throat

[14:22] and blood goes everywhere,

[14:23] which I will honestly say I'm like,

[14:26] this is wackier and grosser than I expected initially.

[14:28] I agree I will say though

[14:31] that it is funny to me that I see their bird

[14:33] has died their pet bird and they're like uh oh

[14:34] the mummy must be reviving and I'm like

[14:36] I don't know pet birds

[14:38] they die pretty frequently I feel like

[14:40] I mean

[14:42] yeah I mean I haven't I've been around more

[14:44] birds than mummies so I don't

[14:46] my sample size is a little different

[14:49] than these people

[14:49] but this is another example

[14:52] I feel like there's many examples in this movie of something

[14:54] absolutely crazy happening

[14:56] and then just like cutting to a completely different scene.

[15:00] There is a moment later on where there is a bonkers scene

[15:03] that happens in front of a number of other people

[15:05] and then they just cut to that night

[15:07] and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, hold on a second.

[15:11] People are not leaving and going, well, that was weird

[15:14] and then letting the family go about its business, no.

[15:16] You're like, oh, I'm glad that party wrapped up early.

[15:21] Okay, so now we cut to Cairo

[15:24] and we don't know

[15:26] when this first scene

[15:27] takes place

[15:27] but we cut to Cairo

[15:28] it's 2018

[15:29] we meet a family

[15:31] living in

[15:32] there's still time

[15:32] yeah we find a family

[15:34] living in Egypt

[15:36] the father is Charlie

[15:37] he's a reporter

[15:38] like an American reporter

[15:41] who is stationed in Cairo

[15:43] his wife is Larissa

[15:44] who is a nurse

[15:46] and their children

[15:47] are Katie

[15:48] and their youngest

[15:49] is Sebastian

[15:49] and Larissa is pregnant

[15:51] so Charlie is

[15:54] It's played by the actor Jack Rayner.

[15:56] Classic bad bear boyfriend.

[15:59] And he must have been paid by the wide-eyed surprise look.

[16:04] Like if you did a drinking game for this movie,

[16:05] which was how many times does Charlie with wide eyes look in shock at something,

[16:09] you would die because you would have alcohol poisoning.

[16:12] I've started finding it so funny that he had this reaction.

[16:15] Everything that happened, he had this wide-eyed like, oh, reaction.

[16:19] They should have got him for the War of the Worlds movie.

[16:23] Yeah.

[16:24] But he was, you know, he was a great doofus in Midsommar.

[16:29] I liked him in The Peripheral, the William Gibson series.

[16:33] That was pretty fun.

[16:34] I mean, I just have a chip on my shoulder

[16:35] because he was the star of the TV show Strange Angel,

[16:38] which was an adaptation of a story.

[16:40] Or Strange Angel.

[16:40] Or Strange Angel, which was an adaptation of a story

[16:42] I wanted to adapt, a true life story.

[16:44] And I wrote a spec pilot for it.

[16:46] And then that show came out.

[16:46] I'm like, well, I guess that's not going to happen.

[16:49] That's a bummer.

[16:50] So, Charlie gets some news that he's been offered a job to move to New York, New York City.

[16:59] And I think we can all agree.

[17:00] New York City?

[17:01] Greatest city in the world, baby.

[17:03] Those dreams are cut short because their child came here.

[17:05] You live in a state of mind.

[17:08] And that cut, we can't afford that.

[17:11] We can't afford that.

[17:13] So, these dreams are cut short.

[17:16] These dreams are cut short, yeah.

[17:19] When their child, Katie, is kidnapped out of their garden by the same tattooed wizard lady.

[17:30] Who hates music but loves giving chocolates to kids.

[17:33] And is the mother of a girl named Layla, we'll find out.

[17:36] Layla.

[17:38] Your mom may be your mommy, Layla.

[17:44] I'm glad that I'm glad that I'm glad that recorder.

[17:48] Like semi-muted Elliot when he hit a certain decibel level.

[17:52] Okay, so she uses a combination of candy, promises, and then a magic nectarine.

[18:01] She gives candy.

[18:04] Dan and I have to interrupt with songs as many times as possible in this one.

[18:06] I'm glad you did it because I definitely had the impulse to do the exact same song.

[18:12] So this lady gives her a nectarine.

[18:14] A bug pops out, climbs down her throat,

[18:16] seems to send her into some kind of convulsions.

[18:19] That's how people get me, by the way, too.

[18:21] Candy and promises.

[18:22] So Charlie chases after his daughter

[18:25] who has been kidnapped.

[18:26] Of course, he is stopped by a mysterious sandstorm

[18:30] that shows up out of nowhere.

[18:32] They go to the police.

[18:33] There's no leads.

[18:35] The police think that maybe the parents did it.

[18:36] Not even the Glen Carey leads

[18:37] because they are not closers.

[18:39] They don't get those leads.

[18:40] No, you don't get those.

[18:41] What the fuck?

[18:41] Yeah, if they had closed a bunch of other cold cases

[18:45] of child abductions.

[18:46] First prize is a Cadillac.

[18:48] Second prize, steak knives.

[18:49] Third prize, you find this little girl.

[18:55] ABM, always be mummying.

[18:57] The detective assigned to their case is Detective Zaki,

[19:02] and she, you know, has dealt with a lot of kidnappings

[19:08] and missing children, and rarely does it end well.

[19:13] Fast forward eight years later.

[19:16] This is very funny, which is that it shows like a local news story,

[19:21] and then it turns out to be nothing.

[19:23] And you're at Albuquerque News, and you see the dad is working there,

[19:26] and then it just goes, eight years later, in huge letters on the side of the screen.

[19:31] They've taken a left turn to Albuquerque in this case.

[19:35] They're not interested in going to the Carrot Festival.

[19:38] No.

[19:39] Why would they?

[19:41] They're not rabbits.

[19:42] It would be a strange thing for a family to do.

[19:46] To be like a carrot salesman that has to deal with fucking Bugs Bunny.

[19:51] Like that guy would just like fucking bother you.

[19:55] But only after you've done something to him.

[19:57] I mean if you're following the Chuck Jones rules.

[19:59] He's not going to pay like the listed price for these things.

[20:04] He's going to trick me.

[20:05] He's going to try to trick you.

[20:05] Yeah, I am not going to give you a discount.

[20:07] You are going to give me a discount.

[20:08] I'm not going to give you a discount.

[20:09] You are going to give me a discount.

[20:10] You're not going to give me a discount.

[20:11] I am going to give you a discount, and you're going to take this discount.

[20:13] You know what?

[20:14] Take the carriage for free.

[20:15] And then it always takes a moment before they recognize it.

[20:17] We just watched – I just showed my younger son Roger Rabbit for the first time, and he enjoyed it a lot.

[20:21] And there was that part where he doesn't want to drink, and he pulls that trick on him.

[20:26] That movie, I'll tell you what.

[20:27] I'll tell you what.

[20:28] The period-appropriate misogyny does not come off as well, but still an amazing-looking movie.

[20:34] That movie looks amazing.

[20:37] And we're specifically just talking about Bob Hoskins' body-ody-ody, right?

[20:41] we are indeed you get a shirtless scene with him that's what everybody wants yeah yeah what a hunk

[20:45] they call him bod hoskins yeah what a performance that he fucking pioneered this like i'm working

[20:52] with tennis balls acting yeah i mean apparently it was really apparently really threw him for a

[20:56] loop and it took him a while to get back to do another movie because he was like i'm still

[21:00] seeing these characters all around me he had to like put himself in a place where he really saw

[21:03] them there and that's why he started murdering people oh yeah but then he hit himself in the

[21:08] head with a big wooden mallet

[21:10] and she stopped seeing the characters.

[21:11] Yeah, yeah, but he lost his memory,

[21:14] unfortunately, and he thought he was Italian

[21:15] racing star, Bobbio Haskiones.

[21:20] That explains those four years

[21:22] in his career. And all the scarves he was

[21:23] wearing.

[21:27] So,

[21:28] eight years later, Charlie,

[21:29] Larissa, Seb, and their new

[21:31] younger daughter, Maude,

[21:33] live in Albuquerque with

[21:35] Larissa's mother. In what appears to be a castle.

[21:38] Yes.

[21:38] Their house is enormous.

[21:39] It is an enormous castle house in Albuquerque.

[21:41] I mean, the dollar stretches a little farther over there.

[21:44] I mean, if you're a producer at a local news show, you are making the big bucks.

[21:48] Well, Larissa is also a nurse, right?

[21:50] That's true.

[21:51] That's known for a high return.

[21:53] I mean, it depends on where you're doing it, you know?

[21:57] She could be the private nurse for an eccentric trillionaire.

[22:00] We don't know if it's possible.

[22:00] She could be the private nurse of Joaquin Phoenix's character at the end of—

[22:04] She's like some sort of concierge nurse, perhaps.

[22:06] Yeah, yeah.

[22:07] And they live with Larissa's mother, Carmen, who is an older religious woman.

[22:12] Yes.

[22:13] That will be important in a little bit.

[22:15] Okay.

[22:17] Back in Aswan, Egypt, there's a plane crash.

[22:20] A little twin prop plane crashes in the middle of, I guess, like a woods or something.

[22:30] Somewhere.

[22:31] It just crashes somewhere.

[22:32] We do find some pretty cool dead bodies that popped out of this.

[22:36] I mean, like, there's a little bit of love.

[22:39] Look at those awesome dead bodies.

[22:41] I mean, there's an effort to be like, well, somebody's dying in this movie.

[22:44] It's going to be gross and crazy.

[22:46] Nobody dies in a calm way in this movie.

[22:50] Which I have to give it credit.

[22:51] Like, that's, hey, I don't think, not to spoil things, I don't think this movie works.

[22:58] But there's clearly some things about it that I think are good.

[23:01] It definitely is not afraid to be gross.

[23:04] It's not afraid to be gross, and it's not afraid to do a lot of, like, split diopter shots and other, like, kind of wacky filmmaking stuff.

[23:10] I was worried their diopter was broken, and it was only split.

[23:13] There's so many split diopter shots.

[23:15] You're like, oh, who'd we borrow this one from?

[23:18] Brian De Palma!

[23:22] Okay, so there's a plane crash.

[23:24] Of course, in that plane was a giant basalt black sarcophagus.

[23:28] Why were they—do we ever learn why they were transporting it?

[23:31] Yes.

[23:31] Okay, because I forgot.

[23:32] We will later find out that they were – that these are the brothers of Leila, the sons of the magician lady.

[23:40] And they were trying to transport that because it was looking – the valley was going to be flooded.

[23:47] That's right.

[23:48] So – and I don't – I guess being flooded is bad for –

[23:52] I mean I don't know.

[23:53] It's one of those things where like certainly when the Aswan Dam was built many, many years ago,

[23:58] Like it flooded a lot of low-lying areas and people had to move and that's one of the reasons that there's a temple, a full Egyptian temple, a minor one but a full one in the Metropolitan Museum is that it was given as a gift in exchange because of the work that the Met helped fund for them moving things to make way for the water that was coming through the dam.

[24:18] But that was also – but that was 50 years ago.

[24:21] So I don't know what they're talking about in terms of – maybe they're building a new dam.

[24:24] Maybe it's just a reference or something.

[24:25] In the movie, yeah.

[24:27] Okay, so when the authorities open up...

[24:30] I will say, though, it's also kind of not totally clear

[24:33] when this movie is taking place in some ways.

[24:36] Because do people use cell phones in it?

[24:38] Eight years later.

[24:40] It says 2018 and 2026 in the description,

[24:44] but everything looks vaguely 70s-ish in the movie.

[24:47] Like the way people dress, the colors of their interior decorating.

[24:51] But I don't think it's supposed to be set then.

[24:53] I think it's supposed to be set now.

[24:54] there's definitely a reference to taylor swift yes that's right there's reference taylor swift

[24:59] that's right and the egyptian police have computers so maybe it's set now but it feels

[25:03] like it's it feels like it's set in the now there's also vcrs and vcrs that's right they have

[25:07] they have a vhs technology yeah uh okay so the authorities open the sarcophagus let's remove that

[25:13] uh stenographer can we remove that from the record my question about when the movie takes place thank

[25:16] you i forgot for the references to taylor swift which are which firmly plant it in the here and

[25:21] now yeah yeah um so they open up the sarcophagus and they find a mummified person which turns out

[25:28] to be that's right 18 what like 18 year old katie uh who is um uh by all accounts perfectly healthy

[25:38] but seems to be in a semi-catatonic state um her she has claws for hands she has claws for hands

[25:45] Her appearance looks either the results of makeup effects

[25:50] or digital effects or a combination of the two.

[25:53] She looks a lot like Snoke from Attack of the Clones.

[25:56] That is a good call.

[25:57] She's got a very Snoke-ish look.

[25:59] She looks and, I mean, eventually acts.

[26:05] It is a build, but it's not that much of a build.

[26:07] She looks and acts so much like a monster girl

[26:13] that it is very funny the length of time.

[26:17] I mean, I realize that this is her family,

[26:18] but it's very funny the length of time

[26:20] everyone seems to be in denial about her.

[26:23] And they're like, yeah, yeah, she's okay.

[26:25] We can fix her.

[26:26] I think they recognize from the beginning

[26:28] that she has been physically and mentally disturbed

[26:31] by what's happened.

[26:32] But I think they see her as like,

[26:34] oh, we're going to have to take care of her

[26:35] the rest of her life

[26:35] and we're trying to put a good face on it.

[26:37] Her mother's a nurse.

[26:38] And her mother's a nurse.

[26:38] So she's like, oh, this is a case of mummy monsterfication.

[26:41] I've dealt with this before.

[26:42] But I will say it does take them a long time to recognize that something supernaturally evil is going on.

[26:50] There's a part, we'll get to it later, where the mother is clipping her nails and accidentally pulls off a huge long strip of flesh from her daughter's leg.

[26:57] And she's just trying to kind of glue it back on or whatever.

[26:59] It's like, what are you doing?

[27:00] This is not supposed to happen.

[27:01] She does almost like an exorcist spider walk at one point.

[27:06] I'm like, that's not normal behavior.

[27:08] No matter how traumatized you've been.

[27:10] Come on.

[27:11] Okay, so the parents are notified.

[27:14] They do a little yippee.

[27:16] They jump on a plane and fly back to Cairo.

[27:18] People fly between Cairo and New Mexico so casually in this movie.

[27:22] That is a long-ass flight.

[27:23] That would be a long flight.

[27:24] Yeah, yeah.

[27:25] No, this is back when the Concorde was running, and it was running exclusively from Cairo.

[27:30] It was the Cairo-Albuquerque direct route, yeah.

[27:33] The two hubs, yeah.

[27:37] So they notify the parents.

[27:39] They go over there.

[27:39] They find Katie.

[27:40] Obviously, they are perturbed, but they're also happy to have their daughter.

[27:45] They're so glad to have her back, yeah.

[27:46] And the authorities are like, yeah, it might just take a little while.

[27:49] Best thing to do is take her home.

[27:51] But the doctors are like, she's perfectly healthy.

[27:54] And I'm like, I don't, like, later on, we'll find out that she is not.

[27:59] That her skin is, in fact, like weird parchment.

[28:02] But, okay, dude.

[28:03] They didn't do a very thorough examination.

[28:06] Yeah, they probably had the heebie-jeebies.

[28:08] Like, can we get her out of here?

[28:10] Yeah, she's cool.

[28:11] You examine her.

[28:12] I don't want to examine her.

[28:13] You examine her.

[28:14] I don't want to do it.

[28:15] Well, just tell the parents we examined her.

[28:16] Yeah.

[28:17] The fact that they don't find that parchment is little left.

[28:21] Little bazonkers.

[28:22] Okay.

[28:23] So they take Katie home.

[28:25] The rest of the family is a little weirded out by her.

[28:29] They put her on the second floor, which is odd since she does need a wheelchair.

[28:33] I feel like they should have moved her, prepared a ground floor.

[28:35] They should have prepared a ground floor bedroom, yeah.

[28:37] But it means that her flora can then bubble over

[28:40] with some kind of acidic bile scum.

[28:44] Mummy vomit.

[28:46] So Katie is basically catatonic.

[28:49] There's a moment where her grandmother is praying over her

[28:53] and she like headbutts her, which is, hey, you know, that happens.

[28:56] Which receives no comment from the family.

[28:59] Nope.

[28:59] Like a bunch of those things happen and no one seems to care or notice.

[29:03] That mom's been on thin ice for a while.

[29:05] That's true.

[29:06] Somebody took her down a peg.

[29:08] Yeah, finally.

[29:09] She thinks she's so great with her faith.

[29:12] But, like, you know,

[29:13] her body moves a little bit,

[29:16] let's say a little bit weird.

[29:19] She performs initially small acts of self-harm.

[29:24] She manages to sneak into the walls

[29:26] and crawl around on the inside of the walls

[29:28] and gobble up a scorpion, she finds.

[29:30] Really questions whether she needs that wheelchair

[29:32] since she seems to be moving around

[29:34] better than a normal person would be

[29:35] A non-mummy person would be in those hallways, yeah.

[29:39] Guys, I want to ask for you whether it's the same.

[29:41] Like one of my top things that Bob, like I, you know, I'm pretty desensitized at this point as a lifelong horror movie fan and watcher.

[29:54] But toenail stuff is a real problem for me.

[29:59] Okay, now we're there.

[30:01] Finally, we'll get to it, the toenail stuff.

[30:03] I thought you were going to say children in harm, in which case I would say, yeah, I find that I – that is a little bit worse for me.

[30:09] I don't have children.

[30:09] It doesn't bother me that much.

[30:11] There was a certain point in the movie where I was like, this is not making me upset because it is a movie about this.

[30:18] It's making me upset because young actors had to do these things on camera, and I don't like that.

[30:24] That was something that was starting to upset me a little bit.

[30:26] But that's because I'm a parent.

[30:27] I care about children.

[30:28] You guys, again, as childless adults, you think kids are somewhere between animals and refuse?

[30:33] So you don't really mean that.

[30:34] Yeah, yeah.

[30:35] It's weird.

[30:36] I'm the, I'm the, I'm in the opposite direction, actually.

[30:40] I mean, not that, I mean, maybe I'm too trusting.

[30:42] Like, certainly, certainly being a child actor, like, has fucked up a number of people.

[30:48] You were a child actor?

[30:49] So, so maybe that is what I should be worried about.

[30:53] I mean, that's part of it.

[30:53] I assume, I assume it's not the same, but like, this is clearly The Exorcist.

[30:56] And like The Exorcist fucked up Linda Blair in a big way.

[30:59] I mean, everyone who worked on that movie, it messed with them, but her especially.

[31:02] And so I'm like, so watching this, I'm like, ah, I don't, just having a little girl just

[31:08] repeating swears over and over again, like I don't love that stuff.

[31:12] I like to believe we've learned something from all previous fuck-ups, but maybe not.

[31:16] Maybe I'm too optimistic in that way.

[31:17] I mean, I will not, and not knowing anything about the making of this, I'm not going to

[31:21] accuse Lee Cronin of doing what Friedkin did.

[31:22] Being a Friedkin, yeah.

[31:24] Yeah, Friedkin is bad to people, like was bad to people.

[31:26] they didn't call him wildly cronin so i but but i was sort of perturbed by like why did you have

[31:34] to take a movie about a mummy and make it about this little girl be tortured yes yes well i think

[31:40] that that was don't worry there's a bunch of kids getting tortured in this that's true that's true

[31:44] it just it feels it but it also feels it feels like a weird way to take them what it really

[31:47] feels like to me is they took a pre-existing story and then attached a mummy element to it

[31:52] or they just were like well what can we do with a mummy i don't know let's just like make one of

[31:56] kinds of movies we normally make and we'll just again we'll just attach a mummy element to it

[31:59] they're not really they're not really digging into and unearthing what's special about the mummy

[32:03] they're not really unwrapping the mummy to reveal what's unique about it you know yeah people heard

[32:08] us talking about the toenails so let's get to that that's where uh the mother is attempting to trim

[32:12] these crazy toenails this i will say this whole section i was like okay this is pretty creepy and

[32:19] and like a little funny.

[32:21] And then so she's trying desperately

[32:23] to like clip this toenail

[32:26] and the whole time like the grandmother's

[32:29] just like telling some kind of random story.

[32:31] And of course, in the process of clipping off

[32:34] this massive toenail on her big toe,

[32:36] it just pulls off a long strip of skin up her shin.

[32:41] Later on-

[32:42] You're not using a toenail clipper correctly

[32:44] if you are affecting the skin behind the toenail.

[32:47] Yeah, the force should be sort of downward, not pulling toward you.

[32:51] You're not supposed to be pulling the whole nail.

[32:53] I thought it was just going to be that she was going to start pulling nails off of her.

[32:56] I didn't expect the long strip of flesh.

[32:58] Bad enough as it is.

[32:59] Yeah.

[33:00] I never knew this about you, Dan, that toenails are a thing for you.

[33:05] I mean, I'm not grossed out by toenails, but I'm grossed out by long claw toenails that then rip off your feet.

[33:14] I guess so.

[33:15] Like dew claws.

[33:15] Yeah.

[33:17] it reminds me what's the movie what's the movie where the guy's teeth are coming out and he just

[33:21] can't stop pulling them out of his mouth and you're like that's a bad dream i had no there's

[33:27] some movie i forget what is there's some movie where a guy listeners write in there's some movie

[33:30] where a guy he realizes his one of his teeth are loose and he just keeps pulling the rest of them

[33:34] and i remember watching him being like just stop pulling them dude just stop removing them you

[33:37] don't need to take all of them probably i mean i feel like we're not we're not addressing root

[33:42] causes here yeah yeah on the roots of the teeth yeah no i've definitely seen that scene i know

[33:46] what you're talking about the fly is the fly just like one of them comes out right this was one where

[33:50] the guy just couldn't stop himself from removing all of his teeth yeah yeah he's gonna even it out

[33:55] and then it's like oh no it's not even yeah so it's like shaving his it's like cutting his own

[33:58] sideburns basically like oh man now they're three inches above my ears finally i'm rescued from the

[34:03] tyranny of teeth he's saying to himself and when they do track down to an all smoothie diet yeah

[34:08] well when they do finally track down katie she is holed up in the walls using some kind of like

[34:15] metal to, like, scratch at the

[34:17] gaping wound on her leg.

[34:19] She does a lot of going,

[34:20] or, like, chattering her teeth a lot really fast.

[34:22] Like a lot of scenes, she just ends.

[34:25] And then nothing seems to have happened.

[34:26] Her leg's all bound up.

[34:28] It's almost like, at the end,

[34:31] they would finish editing a scene or writing a scene

[34:33] and then they would just be like,

[34:35] let's set that aside. We don't need to look at that anymore.

[34:37] Where were we when that last scene ended?

[34:38] I don't remember. Let's just start over again from the beginning.

[34:41] And so these things keep happening

[34:42] and the parents have no reaction to them

[34:44] other than a general growing sense of anxiety.

[34:47] But you'd be like, well, the first thing you would do

[34:48] is take this girl to the hospital, right?

[34:50] When this is happening,

[34:51] like you call in help probably at this point.

[34:53] These are all short episodes of the Lee Cronin's

[34:56] The Mummy Quibi program.

[34:58] Yeah, this was a vertical that they turned into a film, yeah.

[35:01] So what the fuck is going on, guys?

[35:04] Well, let me tell you.

[35:07] While inspecting the strips of flesh

[35:09] hanging from the wheelchair,

[35:11] Charlie discovers that there seems to be

[35:13] some kind of writing on the skin.

[35:15] What?

[35:15] On the inside of the skin?

[35:16] So he starts to separate all the,

[35:18] he separates the skin.

[35:20] It turns out that the skin

[35:21] is not really skin,

[35:22] but like parchment or something

[35:24] covered in what appears

[35:26] to be hieroglyphics

[35:27] or we will later learn

[35:29] to be a language

[35:29] even older than hieroglyphics.

[35:31] Yeah, hieratic writing, yeah.

[35:32] So he tracks down a college professor.

[35:34] They had not yet invented pictures

[35:36] when they made this language, yeah.

[35:37] He tracks down the college professor.

[35:40] Of course, probably this dude

[35:41] loves the band Niall

[35:43] He's probably cranking Annihilation of the Wicked on repeat.

[35:46] This guy has the evilest sounding voice that a college professor expert in a movie could possibly have.

[35:51] And he gives him the skin and he's like, well, looks like this stuff is like,

[35:57] it keeps mentioning this dude, the Namoranian or Nazmoranian.

[36:02] Nazmoranian, yeah.

[36:03] Nazmoranian, who's an ancient demon, you know, long before Christ, a destroyer of families.

[36:11] And you're like, okay, I guess I know where this is going.

[36:13] A little on the nose, yeah.

[36:15] Now, did it bother you at all that Nazmoranian doesn't really sound,

[36:18] and I could be wrong, doesn't really sound like an Egyptian-sounding name to me?

[36:22] It's probably a holdover from when the script wasn't about the mummy.

[36:26] That's very possible.

[36:28] All right, yeah, that's very possible.

[36:30] Okay, so back home, Charlie discovers that Katie in bed,

[36:36] she's chattering her teeth, and she's doing Morse code.

[36:41] So he goes downstairs and he writes down what she's chattering about,

[36:51] goes downstairs and he uses her old Morse code book to determine what she's saying.

[36:58] She's saying Layla over and over and over again because that's her favorite song.

[37:02] Every item in her Girl Scouts trunk, he has very little urgency until he's actually translating.

[37:08] And then the camera work and the editing are hilarious.

[37:11] You would think writing down something on paper

[37:12] was the most exciting thing that could ever happen.

[37:15] I was like, I love it.

[37:17] It's so pulse-pounding.

[37:18] But first he had to go through his trunk of memories.

[37:20] But anyway, it says Layla, her favorite song.

[37:21] And also, for it to say Layla over and over

[37:23] doesn't equal the reveal I was hoping for

[37:27] with the intensity of this sequence.

[37:30] Like, if it was like, help me, I'm trapped in here or something,

[37:32] I'd be like, okay, that works.

[37:34] But no, it's just a name over and over.

[37:35] If the dad was like, oh, she wants to see her friend Layla?

[37:38] Okay.

[37:40] I can't even keep track of my kids' friends anymore.

[37:43] He goes to his wife, do you know this Layla?

[37:44] Yeah, it's Katie's best friend.

[37:46] Do you not know who Layla is?

[37:47] I don't know.

[37:47] I thought it was one of your work friends.

[37:49] Excuse me, do you not even listen to me when I talk about work?

[37:51] I thought it was a world-famous kidnapper.

[37:55] Turns out it is related to a kidnapper.

[37:57] So he reaches out to Detective Zaki, who traces the name and the, oh, and then she suggests, you know,

[38:08] it might be related to her disappearance.

[38:12] So he goes through a big trunk of letters

[38:13] that people had sent when she was missing.

[38:16] And he finds one that is covered in like

[38:20] the chocolate wrappers that Katie had been given.

[38:23] And it's from Layla saying,

[38:24] I wish this didn't have to happen to you.

[38:27] We'll later find out that this is written

[38:28] by the daughter of the wizard lady

[38:31] who had kidnapped her.

[38:32] Magician.

[38:33] The magician, sorry.

[38:35] Had befriended her.

[38:37] Well, she works at Wizard Magazine, though.

[38:39] Oh, really?

[38:39] Wow.

[38:40] Yeah.

[38:41] I wanted that job so badly when I was 14 years old.

[38:44] I just wanted to be the casting guy.

[38:47] I got to pick which celebrities, which football players are going to play the X-Men.

[38:51] All you have to do is figure out, again, how are you explaining that Howie Long should be Venom,

[38:55] Glenn Danzig should be Wolverine, Jean-Claude Van Damme is Gambit.

[38:58] It's the same people every time.

[38:59] Yeah, same people.

[39:00] Well, there's an art to it.

[39:05] Tia Carrera, Psylocke.

[39:06] It's the same people every time, yeah.

[39:08] Okay, so this, they kind of work together

[39:11] and Detective Zaki finds that,

[39:15] traces it to a nectarine farm,

[39:17] which matches the crime scene of where she was abducted.

[39:21] She finds this nectarine farm in Aswan, Egypt.

[39:24] So she goes there and she finds this nectarine farm

[39:29] and the family house that we saw

[39:30] at the beginning of the movie.

[39:32] She explores it.

[39:34] She goes down into the basement, very spooky style.

[39:37] Does she see the pyramid, the basalt pyramid?

[39:39] She finds the pyramid.

[39:42] She goes down.

[39:43] But where's the sarcophagus?

[39:45] We obviously know it's gone.

[39:47] She kind of explores a little bit.

[39:48] And then as she comes up, this is classic.

[39:50] This is like classic scary video game moment

[39:52] because you go through the house initially.

[39:55] It's spooky, but there's no monsters.

[39:57] It's empty.

[39:58] But then when you come on the way back,

[39:59] that's when the monsters show up.

[40:01] So you have to use your memory of what the house was like to get out.

[40:05] So when she gets up there –

[40:07] Which is not what happens in the movie.

[40:09] I mean, she doesn't use her memory of the house to get out.

[40:11] She just shoots people.

[40:12] She doesn't – I mean, she doesn't need –

[40:14] No, she goes into her inventory.

[40:16] She selects gun.

[40:18] She selects gun.

[40:20] She types use on monster.

[40:23] I didn't realize it was a point-and-click game.

[40:26] I didn't realize this was the Sam and Max hit the road of this movie.

[40:30] So when she gets upstairs, the magician is returned.

[40:34] The magician attacks her with a knife, but she is shot.

[40:38] And the detective then sees the daughter Layla running away.

[40:42] She chases her.

[40:43] Layla is simply leading her to an old lunchbox that's buried out in the desert.

[40:50] On a cliff.

[40:50] On a cliff, a lunchbox that features a VHS tape.

[40:54] And I'm like, that's got to be bad for the tape, right?

[40:56] Out there in the desert.

[40:57] It's not a good way to store it.

[40:59] So, I mean, those things don't last very long, right?

[41:02] I mean, they've been taken care of properly.

[41:04] They can last a good time,

[41:05] but burying them in the hot desert is not going to do that.

[41:07] Yeah, yeah.

[41:08] So it's a VHS tape that just has Katie written on it.

[41:11] Uh-oh, this looks like evidence.

[41:13] Later on, she will interrogate this Layla,

[41:16] and Layla is missing her tongue

[41:18] because she spoke out against what was happening

[41:22] and reveals that it is all tied in with this family curse

[41:27] where they have to protect people from this Nazmaranian

[41:32] by transferring the spirit from one host to another host.

[41:36] And then mummifying the host

[41:38] so that the Nazmaranian is trapped inside of that body.

[41:40] Trapped inside it.

[41:42] So, of course, Detective Zaki's got to hop on that Concorde,

[41:46] head over to Albuquerque.

[41:47] Meanwhile, in Albuquerque...

[41:48] She doesn't go to Albuquerque the classic way,

[41:50] which is burrowing under the ground,

[41:51] leaving just a line of dirt that pops up, yeah.

[41:56] So, meanwhile, back home, Katie, now the Nazmaranian, their powers are growing because they got some of their...

[42:05] It'd be so funny if she's like, I call myself the Nazmaranian now.

[42:07] Does it seem weird to you that Katie signed her school papers Nazmaranian?

[42:11] Nazmaranian.

[42:12] Her powers...

[42:13] Should we look that up in Wikipedia?

[42:15] Nah, we don't need to look that up.

[42:16] We don't need to look that up.

[42:17] Yeah, I mean, do you...

[42:18] Yeah, let's pick up a baby name book to see what the meaning of it is.

[42:22] Let's see what it means.

[42:23] Deathbringer, oh no.

[42:25] Destroyer of families.

[42:26] the uh

[42:29] nasmaranian

[42:29] that's beautiful

[42:30] it's ancient egyptian

[42:31] for destroyer of families

[42:32] it doesn't sound

[42:33] ancient egyptian

[42:34] well it is

[42:35] according to the movie

[42:36] the uh

[42:38] so uh

[42:39] katie's powers

[42:40] are growing

[42:40] we had a demon

[42:41] reveal party

[42:41] for the baby

[42:42] uh

[42:44] so katie

[42:44] uh

[42:45] first uh

[42:46] starts messing with

[42:47] the youngest child

[42:48] maud

[42:49] and starts possessing her

[42:50] she coaxes her

[42:52] over to her doorway

[42:53] with honeyed words

[42:54] and then

[42:54] licks her toes

[42:56] If you want to see Bea Arthur possessed by a demon,

[42:58] this is not the movie for you.

[43:00] I apologize.

[43:01] She would have been great in this role, though, right?

[43:03] As the little girl?

[43:04] Yeah, I think so.

[43:05] It really starts off like the possession of the family, though,

[43:08] really starts off by just sort of making them like dicks.

[43:11] I mean, she possesses Maude,

[43:14] and basically it just means that Maude just uses the C word a lot.

[43:16] Like, that's pretty much it.

[43:19] And, yeah, I mean, it's not like she doesn't,

[43:21] later she possesses the brother,

[43:23] and it just means he just kind of skulks around.

[43:25] Andy helps her escape from some of her skin bindings.

[43:28] Oh, that's true.

[43:29] So then later on...

[43:32] So it was the idea...

[43:33] So wait.

[43:34] So it was the idea that she starts getting really powerful

[43:38] because the mom, when she was clipping her nails,

[43:41] first started removing the bindings by accident?

[43:43] Yeah.

[43:43] Okay.

[43:44] I think until now I totally missed that,

[43:46] that that was anything other than a creepy gross-out

[43:49] that had any effect on the story.

[43:51] Yeah.

[43:51] So, later on, while the family is doing other stuff,

[43:56] the grandma is spending some time with Katie alone.

[43:58] They have lives outside of Katie's predicament.

[44:01] They hang around the house all day being,

[44:03] what's up with Katie?

[44:03] Let me look at Katie.

[44:04] At that point, I think they're making excuses

[44:05] to get away from Katie.

[44:07] You know, like Maude is at school

[44:09] using the C word a bunch and getting in trouble.

[44:12] I could really use a toothpick.

[44:13] Let me go run down to the grocery store

[44:15] and get some toothpicks.

[44:16] They come back, oh, you know what we also needed?

[44:19] Batteries.

[44:20] Honey, are we out of lip balm?

[44:21] No, we've got a bunch of it.

[44:22] Well, we can't have too much.

[44:24] I should probably get more.

[44:26] It's pretty dry here in Albuquerque, right?

[44:29] Let me check the weather.

[44:31] Yep, it's going to be dry tomorrow.

[44:33] I should probably see if Office Max has that new printer paper in.

[44:37] Anyway, you've got Katie, right?

[44:38] Okay, bye.

[44:39] You'll handle Katie.

[44:40] See ya.

[44:41] Thanks, Grandma.

[44:42] On my phone, I saw that there's a new three-ply toilet paper.

[44:46] I mean, it feels stupid not to go buy those.

[44:48] I should check that out.

[44:49] It's for the same price.

[44:50] An extra ply for the same price

[44:52] You said you wanted to try it

[44:54] At the CVS

[44:56] They had at the magazine stand

[44:58] They had like a time life special

[45:00] All about the history of Dungeons and Dragons

[45:03] I should make sure there's still a copy of that

[45:05] I wanted to get a copy of that

[45:06] Yeah

[45:07] Yeah

[45:10] So

[45:11] You know what I just remembered

[45:15] They had one about Sherlock Holmes too

[45:17] Just the history of Sherlock Holmes

[45:18] Is this a special – it's not like a real magazine.

[45:21] It's just kind of like a special issue that's all about this one thing.

[45:24] It's not quite a book, but it's not quite a magazine.

[45:27] It exists in a sort of a liminal space.

[45:29] Let's call it a bag-a-zine.

[45:32] Let's call it a bag-a-zine.

[45:33] I should probably get one of those.

[45:34] I should go back and get it.

[45:35] I should go patent the bag-a-zine as a phrase.

[45:38] I should go down to the copyright office and make sure that the word bag-a-zine hasn't been trademarked already.

[45:44] Because I'm sitting on a goldmine right here.

[45:46] And with Katie's special needs, we need that money.

[45:48] So I'll just go down there.

[45:50] Oh, the local copyright office, the closest one is actually in Arizona.

[45:53] Well, I guess you can handle Katie for a couple days, right?

[45:55] I just got to head over and take care of this thing, you know.

[45:58] And the lamination on my library card is peeling a little bit.

[46:02] So I should head over there and just refresh that bad boy.

[46:04] I should just get another one of those.

[46:06] I mean, reading is a lifelong journey, you know, and you've got to keep up.

[46:12] And as I said, it's pretty dry around here, and that can be a nightmare on your lamination.

[46:15] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[46:16] If that lamination comes off the card inside, it's going to get brittle.

[46:19] It's going to dry up and get brittle, and we can't have that.

[46:21] Because what if, I mean, with this Katie situation, we need a lot of specialized information.

[46:28] And the library is the best source for that.

[46:30] I mean, really, it's America's greatest idea next to the national parks.

[46:35] I haven't been to a national park in a while.

[46:37] I should, you know what, I could get in touch with nature again.

[46:40] That's why they're there.

[46:40] That's why they're there, yeah.

[46:42] You got Katie, right?

[46:43] Okay, cool, cool.

[46:45] Speaking of getting Katie, Katie uses this moment alone with her grandma.

[46:50] Get Katie, Get Shorty.

[46:51] How long has it been since we saw Get Shorty?

[46:52] You love that movie.

[46:53] I'll just hop down to the video store and pick that up.

[46:55] And I'll go to the library and get the book.

[46:57] Did you know they made a TV show?

[46:59] Let's try it out.

[47:01] It's technically streaming, but I should get the DVD set from the library.

[47:04] I feel like that's – got to support them.

[47:06] Got to support them, yeah.

[47:07] I should go to Hastings to see if they have a discount.

[47:11] Elmore Leonard wrote a sequel to Get Shorty called Be Cool.

[47:15] I never read it.

[47:15] I should go to the bookstore.

[47:17] I bet they'll have it.

[47:18] They probably turned Elmore Leonard's house into a museum or something.

[47:21] I bet that's for sale in the gift shop.

[47:22] I should go over to Michigan and pick that up.

[47:25] Really support the Elmore Leonard Foundation.

[47:29] So using this moment alone with Grandma, Katie uses her magic powers to beat up Grandma and torture her and then make her jump out the window.

[47:38] where she crashes onto the hood of Charlie's arriving car,

[47:43] which elicits many giggles from the possessed maud.

[47:46] Yes.

[47:47] The others are horrified.

[47:48] Are they horrified enough to think maybe there's something larger going on here?

[47:52] No, not yet.

[47:54] Nothing would indicate that.

[47:55] Grandma didn't seem like she was going to jump out the window, but I don't know.

[47:59] No, you don't know her.

[47:59] She does all kinds of stuff.

[48:01] You can't control her, yeah.

[48:02] She's then dragged off the hood of the car by angry wolves

[48:05] who disembowel her while she's still alive.

[48:07] Not wolves, coyotes.

[48:09] And this is another thing that I found very funny was they go out.

[48:11] There's a bunch of angry coyotes baring their teeth at them just at their house.

[48:15] And they're like, oh, let's ignore this.

[48:17] And I found it funny for two reasons.

[48:18] One, don't leave the house if there's a pack of angry animals of any kind waiting for you.

[48:22] Two, I deal with coyotes a lot in my everyday life.

[48:25] I see them a lot in person.

[48:26] Yeah, you say, meep, meep, and run away from them.

[48:28] I do.

[48:29] Well, the thing is all I have to do is paint a road on the side of a big boulder and they just slam themselves into that.

[48:34] But coyotes are particularly, unless they are sick in some way, they're particularly meek animals.

[48:41] They are not looking for a fight, and they're very easy to get along with.

[48:43] So they're like, uh-oh, coyotes.

[48:45] I was like, there must be a scarier animal for them to bring in than coyotes.

[48:48] I don't know.

[48:49] Yeah, but I would imagine these ones are like magically driven by the will of Nazmaranian.

[48:55] They're magically maddened by the Nazmaranian.

[48:56] So it is, that is a pretty, that's a fun gross out where the mom runs up to the window, looks down,

[49:02] sees her mother being disemboweled by coyotes

[49:04] and her mother's like screaming while tapping.

[49:07] You're like, that's pretty crazy.

[49:08] This is pretty intense.

[49:09] Luckily, it's over.

[49:11] The madness is done.

[49:13] That's the last of the gross crazies.

[49:15] It is a very intense scene.

[49:17] I want to say like this movie works in certain scenes

[49:21] in terms of like over the top gross out.

[49:23] Oh, that's more extreme than I thought.

[49:25] Again, does it work as a mummy movie?

[49:27] This is where I have my main issues, yeah.

[49:29] No, it's very much, this is very much the evil dead poking through.

[49:34] Yes, I will also say that most of the bad things that happen

[49:37] happen to children, women, older women,

[49:41] which is, again, like the most vulnerable members of the family in some ways.

[49:45] And I don't, again, don't love that.

[49:47] Just from the things I enjoy watching for fun.

[49:50] I would so much rather see a male body,

[49:52] which can handle a bunch of, you know, a guy in the prime of his life,

[49:55] real fit, a grown-up dude.

[49:56] I'd so much rather see him get ripped apart.

[49:58] A Bruce Campbell, you're saying?

[50:00] A Bruce Campbell.

[50:01] Yes, exactly.

[50:02] Than an old woman or a child, yeah.

[50:06] Old men, that's a little bit of a gray area.

[50:10] There are certain old men I would love to see get ripped apart by coyotes.

[50:14] I mean, if we can choose who's going to get ripped apart, then yeah, for sure.

[50:18] Can we do some libel here?

[50:19] Can we get in trouble?

[50:20] Can we say some crazy shit here?

[50:22] I mean, it's not libel.

[50:23] Can we start naming names?

[50:25] I didn't say anyone in particular.

[50:27] I just said there's certain people.

[50:28] Certain people.

[50:29] Certain people in positions of power.

[50:31] Who are ruining certain things.

[50:32] Yeah.

[50:33] For certain everyone.

[50:37] Certain bad people doing bad things who are bad.

[50:41] Yeah.

[50:42] And, you know, coyotes.

[50:44] Yep.

[50:45] Okay, so, of course, you've got to have a funeral.

[50:47] So, we have a funeral.

[50:48] Again, coyotes are not the animals you're going to want to use for that, though.

[50:50] No, that's true.

[50:51] Basically, they decide to have the funeral at home, which is perfect for chaos.

[50:57] Chaos Katie is going to work her magic.

[50:59] I actually feel like this sequence would have been way more fun if they had gone to a funeral home.

[51:04] It would have also made more sense why they then are able to kind of shrug it off a little bit afterwards.

[51:10] You handle this.

[51:11] But this is when the movie, I wish it had gone even a little further because it starts getting into like dead alive territory here in terms of like the just over the topness of what's going on.

[51:21] Okay, so during the funeral, Katie is locked up in her room.

[51:28] I think, you know, parents know something bad's going on.

[51:33] Maude is downstairs pulling her teeth out one by one and spitting blood all over the deviled eggs.

[51:40] And then...

[51:42] That shows there's a demon in the house because those aren't just eggs.

[51:44] Those are deviled eggs.

[51:46] Even the eggs are filled with evil.

[51:48] It's a little Easter egg for you.

[51:49] Sebastian hears Katie...

[51:50] Not an Easter egg, Dan.

[51:51] Easter egg represents rebirth and the promise of Christ, yeah, for new life.

[51:55] I think Sebastian starts hearing Katie's voice in his head around now or maybe that's later.

[51:59] I didn't write that part down.

[52:00] No, that is around now.

[52:01] He's like guarding her room, but then he starts hearing her voice in his head.

[52:05] Yeah, yeah.

[52:06] And then he like puts on headphones and he's still hearing her voice.

[52:09] Yeah.

[52:10] Because he was listening to that one album that she put out after she became a mummy.

[52:13] So now that all of Maude's teeth are out, she goes over to Grandma and she pulls out Grandma's dentures and then starts attacking a man, an old man.

[52:26] And then Katie has punched a hole through the floor and dragged her, like, spider demon body out.

[52:33] And she runs over and jumps into the coffin and starts devouring Grandma.

[52:39] Yeah.

[52:39] And yeah, and then they like, everybody screams and then it's just kind of done.

[52:46] Katie, the coyotes already ate the best part.

[52:49] You're stuck with the leftovers.

[52:51] The coffin falls over and Katie is just licking, lapping up human remains off the ground.

[52:56] Oh, human embalming fluid.

[52:58] Embalming fluid, yeah.

[52:59] Because she's a mummy.

[53:01] She loves that stuff, yeah.

[53:02] If she was a mummy character in a video game, that would replenish her health bar by licking up embalming fluid.

[53:09] That is the barbarian – the equivalent of a barbarian's turkey leg.

[53:12] Yeah, yeah.

[53:13] In Lee Cronin's The Mummy for the SNES.

[53:16] That would be exactly how it works.

[53:18] Where you get to play as the mummy, which is – you know, it seems like a misunderstanding of the text, but I think it works.

[53:26] So let's – yeah, because this is the moment – this was the moment where the movie broke for me to a certain extent, which was you have had this very public disaster funeral where one daughter is –

[53:39] has attacked a man.

[53:40] The other daughter is eating the corpse of the grandmother

[53:43] and people are screaming.

[53:45] Everyone's seen it.

[53:46] The floor is a mess.

[53:47] And then they cut to that night and it's like,

[53:50] oh boy, what are we going to do about Katie?

[53:52] And it's like, wait a minute.

[53:53] Rough day, huh?

[53:54] You're telling me that like nobody called

[53:56] Child Protective Services, the police,

[53:59] the room is still not messy.

[54:01] Like, did they clean it up?

[54:02] This is the kind of thing that if it happens

[54:05] in front of the public,

[54:06] there's no way you just have an evening after that.

[54:09] And it's so funny that it was like the end of a sitcom.

[54:12] That's our Katie.

[54:13] And then the next episode, they reset right to the beginning, you know?

[54:16] So they, of course, are hanging around the house when, just hanging around.

[54:22] They're not getting invited anywhere.

[54:23] They're pariahs after that funeral.

[54:24] At this point, Katie has been firmly tied up to her wheelchair and mauled as locked somewhere.

[54:29] Do you think they still went through with the burial?

[54:32] What was that?

[54:32] Do you think they still went to the burial?

[54:34] Like they had a car procession?

[54:35] They were like, all right, get her back in the box.

[54:37] I mean, Grandma shows back up later, so we don't know.

[54:40] Yeah, that's true.

[54:41] Maybe they just left the coffin there, yeah.

[54:43] So Detective Zaki shows up fresh from her Concord flight,

[54:48] and she's like, you guys got to watch this video.

[54:51] And I'm like, calm down.

[54:53] Like, there's time to watch videos later.

[54:55] But she's like, no, you got to watch this video.

[54:58] Not since my dad showed me RoboCop when I was seven or eight years old

[55:02] has someone been so excited to show a videotape to somebody else, yeah.

[55:05] So she runs in there.

[55:07] It was so funny.

[55:08] She was like, you guys got to watch this video.

[55:09] And it's just her doing six skate tricks.

[55:11] She's like, check this out, check this out.

[55:14] Yeah, yeah.

[55:14] It's, yeah, this guy's going to do a quick flip.

[55:17] Look at this edit that this guy did

[55:19] where he throws shoes up in the air

[55:20] and suddenly they're on his feet.

[55:24] So she makes them watch this videotape,

[55:27] which is we've been dying for what happened to Katie.

[55:30] So we basically just see the ritual

[55:34] where the magician has a bunch of people

[55:37] and they tie Katie to a board

[55:38] and then they suspend her over a mummy

[55:41] and then they do some chanting

[55:43] and then the mummy barfs like black stuff

[55:47] into Katie's mouth upside down for a long time.

[55:51] And then they're like, okay, good to go.

[55:53] Let's tie her up and let's mummify this one.

[55:55] Takes a lot to make a mummy.

[55:58] Would you say, now is the presence of the demon

[56:00] as a sort of liquid that can transfer person to person,

[56:02] And is that a reference to Prince of Darkness and the kind of liquid devil?

[56:06] Or the hidden.

[56:08] Or the hidden.

[56:09] But the hidden is like not a liquid.

[56:10] It's an alien that lives inside your throat.

[56:12] It's sponsored content for liquid death.

[56:15] Oh, is that what it is?

[56:17] The water that's finally cool.

[56:19] Finally water that's awesome.

[56:20] It's pretty cool though, right?

[56:21] It's got a skull on it.

[56:22] It's got a skull in the can, the coolest thing.

[56:24] I mean, the thing is, is that it normally, you know, water is a foundational element of life.

[56:30] Normally water is for pussies.

[56:32] finally there's a water

[56:35] with enough tea

[56:36] that Pete Hegseth

[56:37] can drink it

[56:38] yeah there's

[56:38] there's some water

[56:39] that'll put some hair

[56:40] on your scrote Dan

[56:41] finally

[56:42] finally

[56:43] people with Dan's

[56:44] been complaining about

[56:44] his bald scrote

[56:45] all these years

[56:46] I've been dehydrated

[56:48] all these years

[56:49] because water

[56:49] isn't manly enough

[56:50] for me

[56:50] yeah

[56:52] yeah you finally

[56:53] want to use that

[56:54] what that manscaped

[56:56] ball shaver

[56:57] or whatever

[56:57] yeah

[56:58] Dan's only been

[56:59] drinking male urine

[57:00] because it's water

[57:01] that's gone through a man

[57:02] and therefore receive some male essence, yeah.

[57:05] So they watch this cool video.

[57:08] Meanwhile, some stuff's going on.

[57:11] Sebastian gets up.

[57:12] Some cool stuff's going on.

[57:13] Sebastian gets loose and he, you know, he's possessed.

[57:18] So he goes in there to start letting Katie out.

[57:21] Maude is just like ramming her head against the door.

[57:24] Grandma shows up and starts attacking them.

[57:27] They are all, they're basically like running up and down stairs.

[57:31] Grandma's like an evil dead zombie type thing,

[57:33] and she spits a scorpion into Detective Zaki's mouth.

[57:41] The scorpion then sticks its stinger through her trachea,

[57:44] and then she like pulls it out and kills it, I think.

[57:49] It's pretty gnarly.

[57:51] And they...

[57:53] That pierced trachea is going to cause her some trouble

[57:55] a little bit later.

[57:56] Yeah, a little bit later.

[57:57] So they run around eventually, I mean, eventually in all the hijinks.

[58:04] Katie's like chasing them around.

[58:05] There's a ton of sand everywhere, which just kind of makes everything look shitty.

[58:09] It's going to get every place.

[58:10] Yeah, it's going to get everywhere.

[58:10] I hate it.

[58:11] It gets in your butt.

[58:12] I hate it.

[58:12] It's so rough.

[58:13] It's not at all like Natalie Portman's skin.

[58:14] No.

[58:16] The opposite.

[58:17] You know, anyone who doesn't understand the reference is going to be so confused by you saying that.

[58:23] That's a very creepy thing to say if you're not familiar with these Star Wars prequels.

[58:27] Flint Marko must have been watching Attack of the Clones

[58:29] and been like, what the fuck?

[58:32] I feel personally attacked.

[58:35] You don't need to subtweet me with this whole movie.

[58:38] So you're saying I've got no chance with you, Hayden Christensen?

[58:41] Well, fine.

[58:42] And he pulls all the posters off his wall, yeah.

[58:44] He pulls his Shattered Glass poster off the wall.

[58:47] It's a good movie.

[58:48] Shattered Hopes.

[58:50] So eventually...

[58:52] Shattered Glass is a good movie.

[58:53] It's a good movie.

[58:54] Eventually, Charlie is wrestling around with his daughter

[58:58] and Detective Zaki uses her hand

[59:02] to hold her trachea together enough

[59:04] so that she can then recite the magic words

[59:07] that she memorized watching the tape.

[59:10] Batu, Barada, Nikto.

[59:12] I liked her having to push her trachea back into place.

[59:15] I thought that's great.

[59:15] I thought it was unrealistic that she had memorized the spell

[59:18] already after watching VHS maybe twice, you know?

[59:22] Was she practicing it on the plane?

[59:24] Yeah, probably.

[59:25] She brought a little VHS player on the plane to watch.

[59:28] Yeah, probably, yeah.

[59:30] So, and of course, after reciting the words,

[59:33] Katie then barfs stuff all over her dad's face.

[59:36] Which, to be honest, that's going to happen if you're a dad.

[59:39] Your kid will barf all over you at some point.

[59:41] It's going to get in your mouth.

[59:43] It'll turn you into a demon mummy.

[59:44] It's going to happen, yeah.

[59:45] They transferred the Nasmeranian to Charlie.

[59:49] Flash forward.

[59:51] Don't sing Cheer Up Charlie to him.

[59:52] He will not.

[59:53] He has an asmranian side.

[59:54] Katie is basically healed and normal again.

[59:57] The kids seem okay.

[59:59] The kids are all right.

[1:00:00] Charlie, of course, is living inside

[1:00:03] of a black basalt sarcophagus

[1:00:04] that they brought over from Cairo

[1:00:07] to put in their basement.

[1:00:09] The import paperwork must have been a nightmare

[1:00:12] to bring that basalt sarcophagus over from Egypt.

[1:00:15] Yeah.

[1:00:15] And also, like, that would have taken forever.

[1:00:18] It would take so long.

[1:00:19] Like, I hope the mummification holds pretty well.

[1:00:22] I mean, maybe they made a new one.

[1:00:24] Maybe they made a duplicate.

[1:00:25] Yeah, those are just lying around.

[1:00:27] You can just go out to the store.

[1:00:29] I said made him one.

[1:00:30] I didn't say bought him one.

[1:00:32] Yeah, they went to Tomb Depot

[1:00:33] and just bought a basalt sarcophagus.

[1:00:35] And you're like, okay, well, I guess he's going to be,

[1:00:37] he's the new host.

[1:00:38] What are they going to do with that?

[1:00:39] So, of course, we then cut to...

[1:00:41] Mummy episode four, a new host, yeah.

[1:00:43] We then cut to a hospital in...

[1:00:46] And here's the thing.

[1:00:48] If they ended the movie with,

[1:00:49] they just have forever, their dad exists,

[1:00:52] in a sarcophagus, is just a mummy.

[1:00:54] Now this family has defeated the curse,

[1:00:56] but at great sacrifice.

[1:00:57] I'm like, you know what?

[1:00:57] I didn't love this movie.

[1:00:58] Now this family has two mummies.

[1:00:59] But that is a good horror movie ending.

[1:01:03] That's something, there's a traumatic scar

[1:01:05] on this family now because of this experience

[1:01:08] they've been through.

[1:01:08] That's a good horror movie ending.

[1:01:09] But no, no, no, no, no.

[1:01:11] This is the American family.

[1:01:12] Nothing bad can happen to them in the long run.

[1:01:14] So, Stuart, what happens?

[1:01:15] So they track down, we cut to a hospital in Egypt.

[1:01:19] the magician who had been shot has survived,

[1:01:22] but she is in this hospital prison or something.

[1:01:25] And she's being forced to listen to the song

[1:01:27] that her family was singing to on the radio earlier.

[1:01:29] She hates it, drives her crazy.

[1:01:30] A very specific piece of torture.

[1:01:32] I don't know how they knew that she hated that particular song.

[1:01:34] And of course, the detective, Larissa, show up

[1:01:38] and they wheel in Charlie and he's all mummified.

[1:01:41] And he is the smuggest fucking looking mummy.

[1:01:44] The look on his face, I was like, come on.

[1:01:47] I don't like that.

[1:01:47] Like that the mummy himself is like,

[1:01:49] Yeah, you're about to get yours, bitch.

[1:01:51] Like, you know, payback's a bitch, bitch.

[1:01:53] I was like, I don't like this at all.

[1:01:54] Yeah, this is the stand-up and cheer him home into the movie.

[1:01:58] And then, you know, they're going to start reading the words

[1:02:01] and he's going to start barfing and that's the end of the movie.

[1:02:04] Here's the other thing.

[1:02:05] Do I agree with the magician's, you know, tactics?

[1:02:12] Do I think that maybe...

[1:02:13] Can't argue with the results, though.

[1:02:15] Do I agree with their tactics?

[1:02:17] Are there maybe more deserving hosts for a mummy demon

[1:02:21] than just some innocent girl?

[1:02:23] Yeah, many of them are in the government right now, sure.

[1:02:26] But I mean, she is trying to...

[1:02:28] What if some coyotes just got loose?

[1:02:30] She is trying to keep the world...

[1:02:32] That's all we're asking.

[1:02:34] She's just trying to keep the world safe from the mummy curse.

[1:02:37] Well, she's trying to save her family from the mummy curse.

[1:02:39] She's part of a...

[1:02:39] Not all families, kind of.

[1:02:41] Not all families.

[1:02:41] But I will say that one of the things about this is that,

[1:02:45] I mean, it is supposed to be turnabout.

[1:02:46] Like she took an innocent girl and she did this, so now it gets brought to her.

[1:02:51] But there is also this implication where it's like if a non-American family has this curse, what are you going to do?

[1:02:59] If an American family has this curse, unacceptable.

[1:03:02] No, no, no, no, no.

[1:03:02] It is much better for someone in another country who is of another culture to have to deal with this punishment or this burden than for an American to do it.

[1:03:11] And that was one of those things where I was like, again, I can't tell if this movie is really racist.

[1:03:15] Like, not every Egyptian character in it

[1:03:17] is an evil magician,

[1:03:19] just one of the two most prominent characters in it.

[1:03:22] You have a heroic Egyptian character

[1:03:24] in the form of the police officer,

[1:03:25] but there's still that assumption of, like,

[1:03:27] when something happens to an American,

[1:03:29] it is much worse than when it happens

[1:03:31] to someone in another country.

[1:03:33] I mean, I feel like this last sequence

[1:03:36] feels like a tacked-on after initial audience.

[1:03:40] That's my guess.

[1:03:41] Or the studio saying,

[1:03:42] it feels like a tacked-on ending, for sure.

[1:03:45] It's the thing that will rescue Lee Cronin's The Mummy, they said.

[1:03:48] Well, I think it does a score as well.

[1:03:50] We're going to leave the audience on a high note laughing and singing a song as opposed to sad.

[1:03:52] Skyrocket.

[1:03:53] I think, A, yeah, it leaves it on a higher note than the bleaker ending.

[1:03:59] And, two, it also paves the way for another Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[1:04:06] Well, will that happen?

[1:04:08] I don't know.

[1:04:08] Well, let's do our final.

[1:04:10] Only time will tell.

[1:04:10] Made money.

[1:04:11] Let's do our final judgments.

[1:04:13] As always, of course, is this a scummy mummy, a crummy mummy, or a yummy mummy?

[1:04:19] Oh, you brought back all of our famous mummy categories, yeah?

[1:04:23] Yeah, is this good, bad?

[1:04:24] Which one did the Tom Cruise, the mummy, get?

[1:04:27] Bad, bad, or mummy, or...

[1:04:29] I think he got crummy.

[1:04:30] Crummy mummy, crummy mummy.

[1:04:32] Yeah, crummy mummy, yeah.

[1:04:33] Now, what's the difference between crummy mummy and scummy mummy?

[1:04:36] Scummy, in my mind, is good, bad.

[1:04:38] Oh, okay, okay.

[1:04:39] Because I would think scummy is worse than crummy.

[1:04:41] Yeah, but that's why it's so good.

[1:04:43] scummy has a disreputable charm whereas crummy is just uh lousy just disappointing yeah yeah

[1:04:50] yeah yeah they're not like talking about mose eisley being a hive of crumb and villainy that's

[1:04:55] true because salacious crumb wasn't there at the time yeah salacious crumb and his brother are

[1:04:59] crumb when salacious crumb is the most balanced member of the family you got a problem in that

[1:05:04] family yeah they both have thickens though one of the one of the funniest things about salacious

[1:05:10] from is his name is officially Salacious B. Crumb

[1:05:12] and in my son's Star Wars

[1:05:14] characters book it points out he is one of only

[1:05:16] two Star Wars characters with a middle initial

[1:05:18] and I'm like, what does that middle initial stand

[1:05:20] for?

[1:05:22] You see other characters with a middle initial.

[1:05:24] The other one is Wicket W. Warwick

[1:05:26] or Wicket T. or whatever Wicket that Ewok's

[1:05:28] name is. So two characters you would least expect

[1:05:30] to have that kind of thing.

[1:05:33] Middle names.

[1:05:34] Certainly Senator Palpatine probably has a

[1:05:36] middle name. He doesn't leave. He has a first name.

[1:05:38] It's just Palpatine, you know?

[1:05:40] um no it's she right it's she oh that's right it is chief yeah i i'm going to call this a crummy

[1:05:49] mummy i uh i will say that like you know lee cronin has taken some shots for his name being

[1:05:56] in the title it's so just i i feel i there's no way that he i mean unless he demanded in his

[1:06:01] contract this has to be called lee cronin's the mummy which i doubt like it's it's it sucks so

[1:06:06] bad to be put in that situation where it's like am i gonna turn down having my name in the title

[1:06:10] I guess not, but like this just opens him up for unnecessary criticism.

[1:06:14] And I will say his first movie, Hole in the Ground, I liked okay.

[1:06:21] I still haven't seen it.

[1:06:22] His Evil Dead movie is my favorite of the new three ones I said, you know,

[1:06:28] because I do think it has the closest to a sense of fun in those movies.

[1:06:34] It definitely gets sillier as it goes on.

[1:06:35] Yeah.

[1:06:36] And the thing about this movie is, like, there's stuff in it that, like, I kept feeling like, well, I should like this.

[1:06:42] Like, at the end, when she is holding, like, putting a finger through a hole in her throat so she can talk because she's ripped a scorpion out of there, like, I should like it.

[1:06:54] But the thing is, my problem with this movie is it has set such a dour tone early on

[1:07:01] and has been so sort of, like, draggy and unpleasant for most of it

[1:07:06] that it doesn't have the sense of, like, fun I need for that gross stuff to do anything for me.

[1:07:11] Like, I have gotten so bored by the movie at that point.

[1:07:15] I find the parents to be, like, such non-characters.

[1:07:18] I find everything to just be sort of unpleasant

[1:07:20] that I can't get into the stuff

[1:07:23] that is like silly and gross.

[1:07:26] So crummy for me.

[1:07:28] Stuart.

[1:07:29] Yeah, I'm going to say that this is a crummy mummy.

[1:07:31] It, you know, again, it has some charms.

[1:07:38] There's some style that I like.

[1:07:40] It's very gross at times, which is fun.

[1:07:44] But yeah, I think it's a bit of a mess.

[1:07:46] I think one of the biggest things is just how little personality everything seems to have.

[1:07:53] Like even this ancient like demon creature is just like – just basically becomes like a Freddy Krueger by the end but not without – but without the charm of a Freddy Krueger.

[1:08:05] Without the style and the charisma, yeah.

[1:08:07] Yeah, and the hat and the glove and the whole vibe.

[1:08:09] And the sweater, yeah.

[1:08:09] Yeah, the whole energy.

[1:08:11] I mean if Freddy Krueger was not a child molester, he'd be lovable.

[1:08:15] Yeah.

[1:08:16] he'd be able to still get jobs

[1:08:19] in Hollywood

[1:08:20] he wouldn't have gotten cancelled by those parents

[1:08:23] who killed him in a fire

[1:08:24] that's a real cancel

[1:08:27] yeah hard cancel

[1:08:28] people are like we cancelled Freddy Krueger

[1:08:31] no he's just gonna wait a while and then come back in dreams

[1:08:33] and kill our kids like he's just gonna ride it out

[1:08:35] I agree I also call this

[1:08:37] a crummy mummy movie

[1:08:39] it's like

[1:08:41] I agree with you guys there's some parts in it where you're like

[1:08:43] I wish it had gone farther into madcap

[1:08:45] kind of like

[1:08:46] bonkers territory but it really i don't like seeing p i really there's just too much punishment

[1:08:53] meted out to children and the elderly in it for me and um i can't get over the fact that a big

[1:08:59] issue i have in the movie is the title both the presumption of of putting lee cronin's name so big

[1:09:05] when he does not have that huge a body of work but also that it's not really a mummy movie like

[1:09:09] it's not it's not really about what's instead of saying well what is it about the mummy that makes

[1:09:14] it a thing that has lasted as an idea

[1:09:16] for all this time. And they made so many

[1:09:18] other movies of that they just kind of slapped

[1:09:20] the name on an exorcist demon movie, which

[1:09:22] is a totally acceptable

[1:09:24] type of horror movie, but call it The Mummy.

[1:09:26] I want, put a mummy in there.

[1:09:28] You know? Give me a mummy.

[1:09:31] Yeah, give me a desiccated

[1:09:32] skeleton covered in burial

[1:09:34] wraps. Well, not a desiccated skeleton. That's the thing.

[1:09:36] It's been preserved. Yeah, I guess you're right.

[1:09:38] Give me a half-preserved corpse

[1:09:39] covered in rags that comes back to life and

[1:09:41] maybe it wants a lost love, maybe it wants some

[1:09:44] other thing. Maybe you just stole its treasure and it wants

[1:09:46] it back. Yeah, I stole the treasure, dude. Yeah, come on.

[1:09:48] And then I'll stick an army of scarabs

[1:09:50] on you.

[1:09:51] So do you think this mummy has sandstorm powers just

[1:09:54] because the mummy in the Brendan Fraser mummy movies

[1:09:55] had sandstorm powers? Yes, of course.

[1:09:58] Of course it is.

[1:10:04] What is manners?

[1:10:06] It's kind of a social dance that

[1:10:08] we've all agreed to. Who is manners?

[1:10:09] Well, we reference Emily Post a lot.

[1:10:11] Why is manners? Let's go back

[1:10:13] to Royal Etiquette.

[1:10:15] Schmanners answers

[1:10:16] all these questions.

[1:10:17] Through examining history,

[1:10:19] culture, literature, and more,

[1:10:20] we'll give you

[1:10:21] the ultimate insight

[1:10:22] on why we did it,

[1:10:23] how we do it,

[1:10:24] and why we still

[1:10:25] might do it today.

[1:10:26] So check us out

[1:10:27] every Friday

[1:10:27] on MaximumFun.org

[1:10:29] or wherever podcasts are found.

[1:10:31] Manners Schmanners.

[1:10:32] Get it?

[1:10:36] Good evening.

[1:10:37] Thanks for tuning in

[1:10:38] to 101.1 MaxFun.

[1:10:40] It's midnight here

[1:10:42] on Host to Coast,

[1:10:43] and we've got Sarah from Michigan on line one.

[1:10:45] Hi, I'm calling in for some help.

[1:10:47] I used to love reading, but between grad school,

[1:10:50] having kids, and the general state of the world,

[1:10:52] I can't seem to pick up a book and stick with it anymore.

[1:10:55] Sarah, this is an easy one.

[1:10:57] Just listen to Reading Glasses,

[1:10:58] a podcast designed to help you read better.

[1:11:01] Bria and Mallory will get all the pressure,

[1:11:03] shame, and guilt out of your reading life.

[1:11:05] You'll be finishing books you love in no time.

[1:11:07] Great, that sounds amazing.

[1:11:08] Also, I do think my husband is cheating on me with Mothman.

[1:11:10] Can you help me with that one?

[1:11:12] Ooh, I don't think they cover that.

[1:11:13] Reading Glasses, every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

[1:11:19] Hey, folks.

[1:11:21] Today's podcast is brought to you by the good folks over at Squarespace.

[1:11:25] If you are listening to this podcast, you probably spend a lot of your time online.

[1:11:31] And, you know, if you want to upgrade your experience,

[1:11:34] if you want to take things to the next level, that's right.

[1:11:38] You need your own website.

[1:11:41] Maybe you are running a small business.

[1:11:43] Maybe you are trying to get paid and send invoices

[1:11:46] and schedule things and provide all those things,

[1:11:49] do online transactions, have a website,

[1:11:53] be a professional-looking person, be a real individual.

[1:11:57] That's right.

[1:11:58] Squarespace is the place to go.

[1:12:01] I've always wanted to be a real individual,

[1:12:03] and now I know how to do it.

[1:12:05] You can be, Dan, you can not only be a meatspace individual,

[1:12:09] but you can also be an online individual.

[1:12:11] No, that sounds dangerous.

[1:12:13] Thanks to Squarespace.

[1:12:14] Do it, Dan. Go for it. Come on.

[1:12:16] Squarespace provides you with everything you need

[1:12:18] to have a professional-looking website,

[1:12:20] including the ability to make on-brand invoices,

[1:12:23] online payments, streamline your workflow.

[1:12:26] And they also provide a full suite

[1:12:28] of professionally designed templates

[1:12:30] so that you, who may not be a professional decorator,

[1:12:35] designer, et cetera,

[1:12:36] you can just pick and choose

[1:12:37] from the things that they are already providing for you.

[1:12:41] Now, it has intuitive drag-and-drop editing,

[1:12:45] beautiful styling options,

[1:12:46] unrivaled virtual design effects.

[1:12:50] You need no experience at all.

[1:12:52] I believe they're visual design effects.

[1:12:53] Thank you, thank you.

[1:12:55] I said virtual.

[1:12:56] That's because I live in the virtual space

[1:12:58] and you can too by being online using Squarespace.

[1:13:03] So head to squarespace.com slash FLOP for a free trial.

[1:13:08] And when you're ready to launch, use offer code FLOP, that's F-L-O-P,

[1:13:14] to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:13:19] Yeah.

[1:13:20] Let's take a moment to recognize that the FLOP House is coming to you live in person in September

[1:13:26] if you live in Louisville, Kentucky or are living close to Louisville, Kentucky

[1:13:30] or have the ability to travel to Louisville, Kentucky

[1:13:33] by Friday, September 18th.

[1:13:36] We will be appearing live at the Whirling Tiger

[1:13:39] with special guest Howell Doughty.

[1:13:40] You may know him as Alex Smith.

[1:13:42] He's going to be with us at the show.

[1:13:44] And we're going to be talking about what movie?

[1:13:46] The most glittering of all movies.

[1:13:48] Literally, the title of it is Glitter,

[1:13:50] starring Mariah Carey as Glitter.

[1:13:53] I haven't seen it yet,

[1:13:53] so I don't know if that's the name of the character

[1:13:55] or something they invent or what.

[1:13:58] But we will be there.

[1:14:00] Invention of glitter.

[1:14:01] It's like that Pop Tarts movie.

[1:14:03] It's how glitter got made.

[1:14:04] Cherry Seinfeld's all over it.

[1:14:06] That's Friday, September 18th

[1:14:08] at the Whirling Tiger in Louisville, Kentucky.

[1:14:10] Tickets are available.

[1:14:11] Go to flophousepodcast.com slash events

[1:14:14] and you'll be able to buy tickets.

[1:14:15] I mean, I assume tickets are available.

[1:14:16] I actually don't know if they're still available.

[1:14:18] Go to flophousepodcast.com slash events.

[1:14:20] Click on buy tickets

[1:14:21] and it will take you to where you can buy tickets to see us.

[1:14:24] Yeah, find out for yourself.

[1:14:25] It's our first ever show in Louisville.

[1:14:27] We're very excited about it.

[1:14:29] Come see that tiger whirl.

[1:14:33] As always, I have some personal plugs I'd like to mention.

[1:14:36] It's the same old ones as always.

[1:14:38] My comic book, Barbarian Behind Bars from Mad Cave Studios.

[1:14:40] Those issues have come out, but you can go and preorder the collected edition.

[1:14:44] Let's say you're a Dan McCoy.

[1:14:46] You don't like to buy the individual floppy issues, so you can go preorder the collection and you'll get it.

[1:14:50] Too floppy.

[1:14:51] Yeah.

[1:14:52] In addition, talking about floppy issues, Harley Quinn from DC Comics.

[1:14:56] I'm still writing.

[1:14:56] It comes out every month.

[1:14:57] Each floppy issue, those get collected too, but you might as well buy the floppies.

[1:15:01] Why not?

[1:15:01] Enjoy it month to month.

[1:15:03] And, of course, my book, Joke Farming, is available now in audiobook.

[1:15:07] You can listen to me read it to you, or you can buy it as a regular book and read it yourself,

[1:15:12] or you can get both and follow along with me as I go through the text with my own voice.

[1:15:17] And that's not floppy because you can hear it in your mind.

[1:15:19] Yeah, yeah.

[1:15:20] Yeah, exactly.

[1:15:21] Floppy issues is a definite subset of my therapy sessions.

[1:15:27] What are you talking about?

[1:15:28] We're great.

[1:15:30] Oh, Dan, why are you getting defensive

[1:15:32] at the concept that somebody might be talking about you?

[1:15:34] Okay, and if you are in the New York area

[1:15:39] and you love me and or comics,

[1:15:42] you can come see me host a panel

[1:15:45] on the Adventure Zone graphic novel series,

[1:15:49] which just published its final chapter.

[1:15:52] I'm moderating a panel on the Adventure Zone graphic novels

[1:15:56] along with special guests

[1:15:58] Carrie Peach, Ben Wilgus,

[1:16:00] Calista Brill.

[1:16:01] I'm very excited.

[1:16:03] This is at FlameCon,

[1:16:04] the world's greatest queer comics con.

[1:16:07] And it's going to be on Saturday,

[1:16:09] August 15th at 4 p.m.

[1:16:13] at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel.

[1:16:15] Don't show up at 5 p.m.

[1:16:16] You'll miss it.

[1:16:17] You'll just be seeing me running,

[1:16:19] being probably carried out

[1:16:21] on people's shoulders

[1:16:21] for what a good moderation I did.

[1:16:23] And I'd like to plug being very comfortable with being talked about at therapy because that's what helps you guys be less mad at me outside of therapy.

[1:16:35] Well, see, it's like Oscar Wilde once said, the only thing worse than being talked about in therapy is being not talked about in therapy.

[1:16:42] Great plugs all around.

[1:16:44] Yeah, great plug for Oscar Wilde.

[1:16:48] Let's move on from Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[1:16:53] To what?

[1:16:53] directed by Lee Cronin.

[1:16:55] Oh.

[1:16:55] To.

[1:16:56] Oh, did Lee Cronin make this?

[1:16:58] Lee Cronin's the mummy?

[1:17:00] Let's answer some letters from listeners.

[1:17:03] Okay.

[1:17:03] Like you.

[1:17:04] This letter.

[1:17:06] Uh-oh.

[1:17:06] Dear Flophouse, my name's Lee Cronin.

[1:17:08] Have you seen my mummy movie?

[1:17:09] I love you guys.

[1:17:11] Oh, boy.

[1:17:12] This is from Finn, last name withheld.

[1:17:15] Wolfhard.

[1:17:16] I was going to say, Finn McCool,

[1:17:17] famous hero of of irish uh uh what's it called the folklore i don't know what is it called um

[1:17:26] this is a this is going to be a bit more of a technical question than we normally get

[1:17:31] uh not not that technical high floppers i've recently started running a free screening

[1:17:37] series at my work where i show weird or old movies mostly to my friends at the moment but

[1:17:42] the audience is slowly growing.

[1:17:45] I had every movie I wanted to show

[1:17:47] for the year planned out

[1:17:48] weeks before my boss gave me the okay,

[1:17:51] but on the night of the first screening,

[1:17:53] I realized that our projector screen

[1:17:54] is pretty square,

[1:17:57] meaning that I can only show films

[1:17:59] in Academy ratio.

[1:18:01] So far, I've shown Daisies,

[1:18:04] Bluebeard's Eighth Wife,

[1:18:06] The Murder of Fred Hampton,

[1:18:08] and Tetsuo 2 Body Hammer.

[1:18:10] At work?

[1:18:12] Any recommendations for favorite or obscure Academy Ratio movies would be appreciated,

[1:18:20] but I have a question for each of you.

[1:18:21] Elliot, as the former host of closely watched films at the 92Y,

[1:18:25] which Eastern European and pre-code films should I be showing?

[1:18:29] Stuart, since all of my full moon Blu-rays have been restored to 16.9,

[1:18:35] I can't show Castle Freak or Head of the Family.

[1:18:37] Any classic direct-to-video recommendations?

[1:18:40] Dan, how much goodwill do I have to build up with my audience before I can show them the great bikini off-road adventure?

[1:18:47] Finn, last name withheld.

[1:18:48] You've already showed Dead Slow 2, Body Hammer.

[1:18:50] I feel like the gloves are off.

[1:18:52] You know, you can show anything.

[1:18:53] You know, I am on record as saying I think that the shining topmost achievement of the Czech New Wave is closely watched trains.

[1:19:03] Dan recently saw it and didn't like it as much as I do.

[1:19:05] But, you know, that's all right.

[1:19:06] But I liked it.

[1:19:07] I liked it totally.

[1:19:08] But another one to show would be the Fireman's Ball.

[1:19:10] uh the English Foreman movie which is really good and is in color also uh in terms of I mean the

[1:19:16] thing is the old movies are all in that kind of or so many of them are in that ratio that you have

[1:19:21] a plethora a wealth of old movies to show and uh a one movie I recommend because Dan also I think

[1:19:26] saw this recently uh is the musical Love Me Tonight Dan did you see it did you enjoy it or no

[1:19:32] uh I did see it I did enjoy it it has a few like um you know things that to the modern sensibility

[1:19:38] are not so great uh like there's a song that uh chevalier sings that involves uh uh racism and

[1:19:48] abuse both uh well it involves abuse that's one where that's the apache song where he's singing

[1:19:53] he's not it's that's his song about um he's singing about being a french kind of like low

[1:19:57] life criminal and they were called apaches in france which is racist but it's not actually

[1:20:03] about uh native americans that song yeah he is singing about his life as a low life who beats

[1:20:07] beats his girlfriend and things like that and it is sold as a comic song so that one was a little

[1:20:12] harder to get through but you know even for someone who's like you know i'm i'm very used

[1:20:16] to being like well that was the time i can't do anything about it uh i'll ignore that part for now

[1:20:21] um but uh but yeah otherwise a very like i was impressed by how much just like really silly humor

[1:20:28] in is in there i mean like and and chipotle is is certainly likable in it but i really liked

[1:20:34] the supporting cast of comic

[1:20:36] actors. But I would also, I'd recommend

[1:20:38] there's a bunch of, like, if you

[1:20:40] want to show Gold Diggers of 1933,

[1:20:43] which is a great, fun

[1:20:44] comedy musical from the 30s, if you want to

[1:20:46] show Million Dollar Legs, the W.C. Fields

[1:20:48] one, that is a, that's a movie

[1:20:50] that's so silly, it verges on

[1:20:52] nonsensical at times.

[1:20:55] But yeah, there's a lot of great movies. I mean,

[1:20:56] that's the great thing. If you're shown in that format, there's a lot

[1:20:58] of great old movies that are in that format.

[1:21:00] What's the aspect ratio we're talking here?

[1:21:04] Academy, so it's like what, 4.3 or something?

[1:21:07] It's as square as you can get.

[1:21:09] It's not Letterboxd, you know.

[1:21:11] Yeah, I was thinking of like a super square movie.

[1:21:17] I remember the movie I would recommend,

[1:21:20] which doesn't really answer your question.

[1:21:21] Oh, I'm sorry, Academy ratio, I'm sorry, is 1.37 to 1.

[1:21:24] Yeah, that's what I thought.

[1:21:25] But it is 4.3, all right.

[1:21:26] Yeah, so the movie I'm going to recommend

[1:21:28] doesn't actually fit the criteria of an old-timey one

[1:21:31] of like a VHS horror classic.

[1:21:34] But I'm going to recommend Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale,

[1:21:39] which is shot in Academy ratio.

[1:21:41] And it is a harrowing, tough experience to watch.

[1:21:45] And there's something about the tighter aspect ratio

[1:21:49] that makes it feel more claustrophobic for me.

[1:21:53] Yeah, and if you're already watching Tetsuo 2,

[1:21:56] then, you know, this is fine.

[1:21:59] You know, I'm also going to recommend

[1:22:00] one of my favorite comedies

[1:22:01] another comedy

[1:22:01] that's The Miracle

[1:22:02] of Morgan's Creek

[1:22:03] by Preston Sturgess movie

[1:22:05] and you know

[1:22:06] I'll recommend another movie

[1:22:07] about this

[1:22:08] The Devil and Daniel Webster

[1:22:09] which is another

[1:22:11] the

[1:22:11] it's what

[1:22:12] Ruben Mamoulian

[1:22:12] I think directed that

[1:22:13] and that's a

[1:22:15] that's a

[1:22:15] not entirely comedy

[1:22:17] but it's a

[1:22:18] that's a good kind of like

[1:22:19] I don't know

[1:22:20] it's William Dieterle

[1:22:21] directed that

[1:22:21] that's

[1:22:23] the one from 1941

[1:22:24] is really good

[1:22:24] so any of those

[1:22:25] they're all good

[1:22:26] yeah

[1:22:26] yeah and I don't think

[1:22:27] you could get away with

[1:22:28] any of the bikini-branded films, probably.

[1:22:33] If it has bikini in the title,

[1:22:34] you probably shouldn't show it at work.

[1:22:36] So I'm just going to go with a recent square movie,

[1:22:41] The Lighthouse,

[1:22:43] which the lewdest that gets is a man

[1:22:45] masturbating to a carving of a mermaid.

[1:22:49] We've all been there.

[1:22:51] It's hard up for material.

[1:22:53] But a movie I like a lot.

[1:22:58] And when Stuart and I saw the most recent Evil Dead movie together, there was a trailer for, what is it, Werewolf, the upcoming Robert Eggers thing.

[1:23:11] And I leaned over to Stuart.

[1:23:12] I'm like, I've liked all of his movies, but I wish he would go back to something like The Lighthouse rather than, you know, continuing to mine sort of these, I don't know.

[1:23:21] Like, it feels like that is something—the lighthouse is something new and unique to him, whereas, like, there's this, like, classicism of, you know, doing this right after Nosferatu doesn't feel as interesting to me.

[1:23:36] Yeah.

[1:23:36] Yep.

[1:23:37] Yep.

[1:23:38] Yep.

[1:23:38] Anyway.

[1:23:39] Maybe the lighthouse is his take on, like, Creature from the Black Lagoon.

[1:23:44] Yeah.

[1:23:47] This second and final letter is from Patrick Lasting Withheld, who writes,

[1:23:51] In the first Max Fun Drive episode, the bonus episode, that is, Transformers the movie, 1986, Dan raised several vociferous, even violent objections to the characters of the Dinobots, e.g., their ability to breathe fire and their incorrect grammar when speaking.

[1:24:10] I don't think I had a problem.

[1:24:13] Anyway.

[1:24:13] Dan have no problem with grammar.

[1:24:16] Unlike the other Autobots, the Dinobots were built on Earth by Wheeljack, an Autobot race car scientist with a Brooklyn accent whose ears lit up when he spoke.

[1:24:27] Their intellectual shortcomings and inaccurate dinosaur physiology, such as Grimlock dragging his tail on the ground, are the result of the imperfect work of a guy whose other inventions frequently exploded.

[1:24:37] File under incorrectly regarded as goofs.

[1:24:40] Yours, Patrick.

[1:24:41] Last name withheld.

[1:24:42] That's a fair point, Patrick, and a good chance for me to remind people that members of MaxFun get to listen to bonus episodes like our episode on Transformers, the movie.

[1:24:55] And I know that we haven't put out any new ones since then, but they are on the schedule to record coming up soon.

[1:25:03] We've just been busy.

[1:25:04] Yeah.

[1:25:05] I will say maybe this is me being a snob considering the different types of fictional lore that I know the ins and outs of.

[1:25:11] I cannot be expected to know the lore of the Dinobots

[1:25:14] at this stage in my life, Patrick.

[1:25:16] I'm glad that you're there to fill us in about it

[1:25:18] and to educate us on it.

[1:25:20] But yeah, I'm going to defend Dan

[1:25:22] on not knowing all the reasons

[1:25:24] for the Dinobots' scientific inaccuracies.

[1:25:27] Yeah, I mean, it would be weird if Dan learned

[1:25:29] a lot about an old-timey cartoon and the...

[1:25:33] If Dan suddenly spent a lot of his life

[1:25:35] watching a cartoon for children,

[1:25:38] a cartoon made for children,

[1:25:40] and learned all the lore

[1:25:42] and really knew the episodes in such detail

[1:25:44] that he could recount them to people afterwards,

[1:25:48] it would be, that would be strange.

[1:25:50] It would be out of place, guys.

[1:25:52] Very out of character.

[1:25:53] I just opened Letterboxd

[1:25:56] in anticipation of us going on to our recommendations

[1:25:58] and the first thing I saw on my feed was

[1:26:01] Jamie Loftus' review of The Lighthouse.

[1:26:06] Oh.

[1:26:06] Serendipity.

[1:26:07] Yeah.

[1:26:08] Wait, she reviews Serendipity?

[1:26:10] But the place.

[1:26:12] The restaurant or the movie?

[1:26:16] That coffee thing is delicious, I hear, or whatever it is.

[1:26:20] Coffee thing?

[1:26:20] I don't know.

[1:26:21] Like the Million Dollar Sunday or whatever?

[1:26:23] Sunday, I don't know.

[1:26:24] Thousand Dollar Pizza.

[1:26:26] I don't fucking know.

[1:26:27] Billion Dollar Babies.

[1:26:28] Hey, man, let's move on to.

[1:26:33] Did Dan get high real fast?

[1:26:35] Let's move on to, what do we call them?

[1:26:38] Recommendations.

[1:26:39] Recommendations.

[1:26:40] That we've seen that might be worth our time.

[1:26:44] As mentioned in the previous mini, we've not done a recording for a while because of various things during the summer, you know, travel, et cetera.

[1:26:58] So I have a backlog of movies that I've watched.

[1:27:01] And I'm going to give you two.

[1:27:03] I'm going to hit you with two.

[1:27:03] Whoa!

[1:27:05] Merry Christmas to us.

[1:27:06] I watched for the first time 1979's Stalker, the Tartovsky movie.

[1:27:14] I had, you know, put it off for a long time because I'm like an almost three-hour existentialist Soviet sci-fi movie.

[1:27:23] I mean, Dan, that all makes it sound amazing.

[1:27:25] I could watch something stupider.

[1:27:27] No, I mean, like, it's true.

[1:27:29] Like, well, it was still on my list, obviously.

[1:27:31] but sometimes the energy to start a thing like that is the is the difficult thing uh and then

[1:27:38] once i put it on i immediately was like oh my god this is like so gorgeous looking like there's so

[1:27:44] many fascinating things going on in uh in the screen uh in in the in every corner of the scene

[1:27:52] and it made me think a lot about you know what we say sometimes when we talk about a movie being

[1:27:58] slow like a movie can be slow in two ways it can be merely descriptive and not judgmental to say

[1:28:06] that a movie is is paced slowly and then there are movies that feel slow because there is no

[1:28:14] sort of propulsion between scenes like like you're not raring to learn more about the story or there's

[1:28:22] a bunch of stuff in there that doesn't need to be in there that doesn't feel like it's been

[1:28:26] consider it's just kind of like junk clogging up the movie and i think stalker is the is the

[1:28:33] first type of movie where it is slow but it is transfixing like the movie you start thinking

[1:28:38] about how little the camera is moving a lot of the time you know it'll fix on a scene and then

[1:28:46] things will move around within the scene and then they will the camera will drift off to the side

[1:28:52] and and a new amazing thing will be revealed uh and uh you know at the end maybe it gets a little

[1:29:00] too like we're three men in a room like talking out philosophy for me uh and loses a little bit

[1:29:08] of its magic but it's a it's an amazing movie that i uh enjoyed all the way through and then

[1:29:14] on the other end of the spectrum that was a first time watch this was a childhood movie that i saw

[1:29:22] a lot but hadn't seen for years and years and that's a boy named charlie brown from 1969 the

[1:29:28] first theatrical peanuts movie um it is an interesting movie in that like it is is beyond

[1:29:35] loosely plotted it is for the first half at least essentially a bunch of uh blackouts and slightly

[1:29:43] longer storylines taken directly from the peanut strip kind of like just loosely knit together

[1:29:48] eventually a plot emerges uh about charlie brown winning the spelling bee the local spelling being

[1:29:55] going on to uh national spelling bee and um or state i don't know uh and i think it's worldwide

[1:30:03] um and and that is also based on a storyline but uh but it has been changed and expanded and uh

[1:30:13] It captures the feeling of the strip so well, but also it'll go off in these like weird reveries like Bill Mullen does the animator, you know, director does a good job at translating what is essentially a very flat comic to animation.

[1:30:33] But then every once in a while he'll cut loose and do, like, something more visually interesting, including, like, an eight-minute sequence where Schroeder just plays some Beethoven and we get some cutout animation.

[1:30:46] So it is both, like, funny and wistful and pretty.

[1:30:52] And it, you know, philosophically, it is a good movie about constant failure and persevering in the face of just what seems to be a cold world.

[1:31:08] So when philosophy is discussed by three Russian men, that's too much for you.

[1:31:12] But when it's animated children, you're all over it.

[1:31:15] says a perfect aphorism.

[1:31:18] And that's all.

[1:31:19] It doesn't go on for 20 minutes.

[1:31:23] Yes, I do prefer that.

[1:31:25] Well, I have in the intervening weeks,

[1:31:30] I did finally go to see a movie in 40X, guys.

[1:31:35] I went and saw Back Rooms in 40X.

[1:31:39] Really, I feel lost.

[1:31:41] Oh, yeah.

[1:31:41] And it was a lot of shaking around, wind blowing on my face.

[1:31:46] There was a fair amount of smoke in the movie where they shot, like, smoke canisters.

[1:31:50] It was pretty cool.

[1:31:52] But I don't need to promote this very huge movie.

[1:31:55] I liked it quite a bit.

[1:31:57] But the movie I want to recommend today is a movie called Kill from a few years ago.

[1:32:03] This is a, I believe—

[1:32:04] Not Kill, the samurai movie from the 1960s, which is a great movie.

[1:32:07] No.

[1:32:08] Okay.

[1:32:08] This is a, I believe, Indian action movie that takes place almost entirely on a train where a commando boards the train to try and convince the love of his life to not get married.

[1:32:26] He's just been engaged, and he doesn't want her to get married.

[1:32:29] He wants her to run away with him.

[1:32:31] Her whole family's on this train, but he stows away with his, like, he gets on the train as well with his, like, commando buddy.

[1:32:38] And unfortunately, that train is the target of a large gang family of robbers.

[1:32:45] And things get messy.

[1:32:48] It's like this very intense action movie, very much like The Raid on a train.

[1:32:54] And at about like 30 or 40 minutes, you're like, I feel like I've probably seen everything this movie has to offer.

[1:33:00] And then the movie totally steps it up a notch and it gets crazy.

[1:33:05] And it also, like, it does a very good job of making the bad guys, like, a believable, interesting set of villains.

[1:33:14] And it's, yeah, it's just, it's great.

[1:33:16] And it's, like, it's a little bit, like, it's tongue-in-cheek enough where, like, it feels like the lead dude gets a guitar sting every time he, like, you know, flexes his muscles and turns his lantern jaw at the enemy.

[1:33:28] It's great.

[1:33:29] And it also is, like, 90 minutes, which is, like, perfect.

[1:33:33] like lean and mean gets in gets out great i'm gonna recommend a movie that is not uh

[1:33:40] lean doesn't get getting get out in 90 minutes in fact mean it is a little mean at times uh and that

[1:33:46] is uh i was recently on an a long airplane ride so i was able to watch a long movie that i'd been

[1:33:52] putting off and that movie is the secret agent possibly the least seen of the best picture

[1:33:57] nominees from uh from last year heard good things what it's and so i'm it was good and i liked

[1:34:03] enough that i am recommending it today today on the flop house uh this is a portuguese movie uh

[1:34:08] it's directed by um i'm gonna mispronounce his last name but uh it's like mendonça feel you

[1:34:13] who also did the movie baccarau if you guys have seen that yeah um he does some other movies too

[1:34:18] but baccarau was the one that i kept hearing about and watched right before this uh and it

[1:34:22] is the story of a number of different characters

[1:34:24] living in Brazil in the 1970s

[1:34:27] during the military dictatorship there

[1:34:30] and how dangerous it was to be someone

[1:34:32] who would run afoul of that.

[1:34:34] But it's also, there's a lot of life in it.

[1:34:38] There's a lot of fun in it.

[1:34:39] There's one sequence which is based on a historical thing

[1:34:41] that is so like lunatic.

[1:34:45] And I was like, what is going on?

[1:34:46] Hold on a second.

[1:34:47] It comes out of nowhere.

[1:34:48] And I had to look it up to find out

[1:34:49] that it's based on a real thing.

[1:34:51] the uh but it's it's a really great movie it's really well put together and i think it's not a

[1:34:57] movie where you're going to get like a kind of comprehensive abc plot it's not a like straightforward

[1:35:04] thriller necessarily but it's a really good movie about kind of the the feel of being in a place and

[1:35:10] the kinds of characters that would exist in this place um and the lead actor in it uh wagner mara

[1:35:16] or Wagner Mura.

[1:35:18] He was nominated for best actor.

[1:35:21] And throughout the movie, I'm like,

[1:35:22] yeah, he's doing a pretty good job.

[1:35:23] Yeah, this is pretty good.

[1:35:24] And then his final scene, I was like,

[1:35:26] well, this is a great performance.

[1:35:27] Like this last scene,

[1:35:28] I thought the performance was fantastic.

[1:35:29] Like I'm seeing a person rather than a performance.

[1:35:32] I'm seeing like, it felt like the thing

[1:35:34] that I love so much about the performance in Tar

[1:35:36] where I'm like, oh, I don't feel like

[1:35:37] I'm watching someone giving a performance.

[1:35:39] I feel like I'm watching this character existing.

[1:35:42] So I really recommend it.

[1:35:43] It's a long movie.

[1:35:44] It's almost three hours long,

[1:35:45] But it's well worth it.

[1:35:46] It's probably a movie you could watch in pieces

[1:35:48] if you really needed to.

[1:35:50] But if you happen to be on a plane

[1:35:51] from Geneva to the United States,

[1:35:55] or actually from France to the United States like I was,

[1:35:58] then go for it.

[1:35:59] Dial up the secret agent, kick back, watch it.

[1:36:02] It was really good.

[1:36:04] Okay, some very specific recommendations.

[1:36:09] This is the movie I recommend

[1:36:10] if you are on a work trip from France to the United States.

[1:36:15] Um, well, that was our show on Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[1:36:21] Let's wrap this thing up.

[1:36:24] Thank you, Stuart.

[1:36:25] Thank you for that.

[1:36:26] Let's place the elements of this podcast into canoptic jars.

[1:36:31] Yeah.

[1:36:32] Let's shove a hook up his podcast nose.

[1:36:37] Rip the brain out and throw it away.

[1:36:39] Let's place this podcast in its tomb behind a series of booby traps,

[1:36:44] which will be broken through and looted over the centuries.

[1:36:48] This show is edited and produced by Alex Smith.

[1:36:53] He goes by the name HowlDotty all over the internet.

[1:36:56] If you ever wondered what he looks like in person,

[1:36:58] come see us in Louisville, Kentucky,

[1:37:00] Friday, September 18th.

[1:37:04] He'll be there.

[1:37:06] You took the words right out of my mouth.

[1:37:09] So thank you, Alex.

[1:37:11] Thank you to Maximum Fun.

[1:37:13] If you want to listen to a lot of other great podcasts on the network that we are on, Maximum Fun, go to MaximumFun.org.

[1:37:20] Check them out there.

[1:37:22] Until next time, for The Flophouse, I have been Dan McCoy.

[1:37:26] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:37:28] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:37:29] Not a mummy, but maybe someday.

[1:37:32] Let's hope.

[1:37:34] Bye.

[1:37:43] On this episode, we discuss Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[1:37:48] Lee Cronin made a mummy?

[1:37:51] I'll believe anything now.

[1:37:56] About mummy hater Lee Cronin?

[1:37:59] Him?

[1:38:03] You want to keep going?

[1:38:05] Somebody should do another one.

[1:38:07] You have to.

[1:38:08] Okay, let me try another one.

[1:38:09] Let me try another one.

[1:38:10] Okay.

[1:38:11] On this episode, we discuss Lee Cronin's The Mummy.

[1:38:15] The movie that had all of America asking the question,

[1:38:18] wait, who's Lee Cronin again?

[1:38:21] Okay, and let us begin.

[1:38:24] Mine didn't hurt Lee Cronin's feelings.

[1:38:26] Yeah.

[1:38:27] Actually, let me do another one.

[1:38:28] Let me do another one that won't hurt his feelings.

[1:38:29] Hold on.

[1:38:32] Maximum Fun.

[1:38:32] A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows

[1:38:36] supported directly by you.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy

Transcript

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