Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
[00:00:00] The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain.
[00:00:29] Okay, welcome back to episode 37 of The Outer Reels. Jason's here. Yeah, I think you're not picking any more movies, Sam. Jason, this is not a good movie. No, no, not even. This was hard. I apologize for how much worse this was for how good I thought it was going to be.
[00:00:59] Yeah, so we are watching Inseminoid from 1981. And it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. You could say that. Starts off as an alien ripoff and then just goes downhill from there. Let's say you get in an elevator and you step in and you're with Levy. How do you pitch this movie to him?
[00:01:27] And for those of you who don't know who Robert L. Levy is, he was the producer on Smoking the Bandit. Also Point Break. But I'm sure Jason is going to say, no, no, he was the producer on Van Wilder. There was a group chat with Sam and I where he pointed them out and I said, I knew exactly what he meant. And then he was like, but ran with the producer of Van Wilder? That was a good troll, dude. You got me. I was like, you can't possibly know him for that movie among anything else.
[00:01:58] So sure. No, because I looked him up to see what else he was doing. So it's a good, it was a good troll. So how do you sell this movie to Robert L. Levy? Like considering in 1981, he's cash rich off the tail of Smoking the Bandit. He's looking for projects to pick up. You've got your chance. You're in the elevator. How do you sell him this? Dude. So you saw Alien, right? Which would have been, what was Alien? 78, 79? 79. 79. There you go. So he saw Alien.
[00:02:26] Like, let's do that for the cheap in the UK. But instead of an alien, it's just like a possessed person. That's it. That's just nothing else. I got nothing else. I feel like... There's some crystals and some twin aliens or something, but we'll figure that out later.
[00:02:49] Man, boy was I deflated when I let out a real groan when I got to the point in this movie where I realized, oh, she's just going to be possessed the whole movie and we're not going to get a creature. We're not going to get a monster. And all she does is scream and cry the entire time. This is where you feel really tricked into the movie where you're like, okay, I'm going to see a space monster movie. And I'm like, no, no, something's going to happen. Something's going to change.
[00:03:17] And then the time's running out and you're like, no, this really isn't going to happen. This is that same thing I had in the psychic when I got far enough into it and being like, there's only one murder mystery in this whole movie. And this was the same kind of letdown where I'm like, oh, this isn't going anywhere. But I think that's a good summary.
[00:03:41] I mean, I would probably say it's about archaeologists on a distant planet doing some kind of research, terraforming, whatever. Yeah, there's like a voiceover at the beginning that kind of explains the backstory that I cannot for the life of me recall at all. I should have actually rewatched that part before I did this because I don't remember a single word that was said. Yeah, but that's exactly it. She gets impregnated by this alien and it turns her crazy. And that's kind of it.
[00:04:10] I mean, my problem with this whole thing is that over a 93 minute movie, there's a 95 minute movie. There's about 30 actual seconds of monsters and aliens and creatures on the screen. And yeah, there's there's a couple of puppets. You just well, she gives birth to them, right? Yeah. And at the end. But God, that's a slog to ride out to get that. And it's like there's no visual representation of these creatures or any which way. It's just a cheap way to do it.
[00:04:40] And you pretend the things in her. But it's yeah, it was a bit of a letdown. But you should probably Stephanie Beach. I'm looking really good, but that's about it. Yeah, she Stephanie Beach and she plays Kate. And I was trying to figure out what I knew her from dynasty. And yeah, it's funny. It's like, wow, dynasty. It's certainly not what I knew her. But what I did know her from was Dracula 80 from 1972, which I love the soundtrack to that.
[00:05:09] Maybe I highly recommend the score for that is just fun and wacky. It's a classic Halloween movie for me. But yeah, I don't know. Dynasty. Haven't thought of anybody in dynasty for a long time. No, I just remember like on the cover of TV Guide three or four times a year. Before we get into the movie. Before we get into the movie. We need to go back and we need to talk about the director Norman J. Warren. Have you seen anything he'd done before? I never even thought to look him up might have seen spaced out.
[00:05:40] That would be it. I don't recognize anything else on here. Yeah, I he was not on my radar at all. Nope. I definitely know. You know, exploitation stuff though. Interesting. He makes a very similar career path as Ed Hunt did as well, which I thought was kind of interesting. So he's born in 1942 in London.
[00:06:03] He was born with polio and he only had one functioning arm and he got his first job as a runner in 1960. And then I guess he probably couldn't be a swimmer because he only had one working arm. So runner is it. And it's supposed to be funny. Yeah, you're just like, yeah, you're like, I get it. It's just not funny. Yeah, you should be used to this by now. So assistant directed by 62.
[00:06:33] So two years from runner to, you know, assistant AD. So he's moving along. He got a bit of a he became kind of a standout in the 1960s when he started doing movies because he made his own short in 1960. And just like Ed Hunt, who directed the fantastic starship invasions from 1977. He did a bunch of soft core porn.
[00:06:59] And in the late sixties and seventies, the standout component here was being like the most of his movies were low budget type stuff were coming out. And the most other like competitors is like hammer stuff. Like, right. We were talking about hammer just the other week. Yeah. So it put him on the map by the way of differentiation because you've just got this slew of hammer stuff. And for the same budget, his stuff's a little more edgier. Right. So basically he is the Ed Hunt of England at this point.
[00:07:29] It's funny because 1977 now on the map between these two guys is a transitional era for both of these filmmakers who switch from soft core porn to sci fi, like across the globe. Everybody did this. And I can only imagine this is again, because of the star Wars influence where people are like, Hey, this is where the money is. Make a sci fi, you know? So right around the globe, people are getting pushed into this no matter what their previous film career or rapport was.
[00:07:56] So I found this really cool quote because I was doing a little reading on him and he was saying like why he stopped doing pornos and went into horror. And he said, quote, the horror genre allows you to explore situations and emotions which would not be possible with a drama set in the world of reality. So, you know, it's something, you know, you can do something more. It's more interesting. Sure. But he did go on to say also that, you know, how creative can you get with somebody taking their clothes off?
[00:08:25] You know, which is kind of a fair thing. Like he's just like, okay, I can have more fun with it because I got monsters. I got props. I got, you know, everything else. Yeah. He also went on to double down about his soft core porn days. And he said that British films were never sexy. The British aren't capable of making a sexy film. It's not our nature. We still have that Victorian repressive thing about sex.
[00:08:50] So, yeah, he's also like pretty situationally aware at the time too, which I think is, you know, it's admirable. And then he, the interview was really great. And he went on and then sort of talked about like the porn films that he'd done, but he said the appeal to him for horror movies. He said there's an attraction to horror film for kids. And he said, it's very simple. And, you know, this is still like, why do young kids love splatter movies? Like what are young kids like this?
[00:09:17] And he just said that all little boys are attracted to horror to some extent because horror movies are the first ones that are forbidden by your parents. Which is a very cool summary, I thought. I thought that was pretty neat. Yep. Kind of on point. To your point about Alien saying this movie's alien and it's a lower budget. But I did find out that it was known all around that this was an alien ripoff. I'm like, we're thinking 81 here. Yep.
[00:09:47] So two years later. Right. And what's funny is the entire collective of people who were involved making this movie, the writers, the writer was a wife and husband, a husband and wife couple. And they denied that this movie ever had anything to do with alien and that they wrote it before alien even was released. And I was like, okay. Yeah. I don't think so.
[00:10:12] Especially in a world where we just had contamination come out, you know, where there's in Italy a year prior and they're saying this is the sequel to everybody's cashing in on alien just like everybody's cashing on Star Wars. Like, I get it. So it's a bit of a stretch for me, but I know they're probably trying to save face and say, no, we came up with this. But there's like also in their defense, there is nothing worse when you have an idea and you think this is a great thing. And then a movie shows up that's specifically just about that idea.
[00:10:42] And you just feel so deflated. You're like, no, that was my idea. So it does happen. But just look them up too, is that it's the only script either of them wrote, had produced. So yeah, it's just a little. Exactly. They're actually a VFX people on, on Norman J. Warren's previous films. And they were like, we can do better. We can do bigger effects. Like we got to come up with a movie.
[00:11:08] And this, the idea why this movie existed is they supposedly wrote this story to be able to do a bunch of VFX gags. But which clearly they didn't really execute because there's not much in it. But I have some reasoning for that, which goes back to my BBC FC, which I despise in the video nasty list. But we can get to that in the end. So I have a lot to talk about this movie. Sorry. No, good. Because I don't.
[00:11:37] I shouldn't because it's not that great. So after all this, they're still denying it. And 20th Century Fox contacts Norman J. Warren and says, hey, we need to see this movie. Like we're hearing a lot of stuff about this being an alien ripoff. And, you know, they won't check in on it. So he actually sends them a print and they replied and just said, you know what? The movie is actually pretty good. Like considering what its budget was.
[00:12:08] And they knew. And then they said, you know, good luck. It's like, it's pretty, it's pretty civil. No one's going to confuse these movies. No, not at all. And I think they didn't feel threatened. I think was probably what it was. But I thought that was a pretty human version of a big Hollywood studio at that time. Like I thought that was pretty charming. Mm hmm. Yeah. Nowadays, the lawyers would never let it get that far. No, not at all. So other people involved in this movie. This movie was cut by Peter Boyle.
[00:12:39] And you would know him as he cut Waterworld. So we got royalty in the house tonight for sure. Because I love. Those of you who don't know, Sam's, Sam loves, loves Waterworld. It is a great movie, dude. Especially the director's cut. God, it's a good movie. We should just talk about Waterworld. Saw it once on VHS. So anyway, big shout out to my cutter from another mother, Peter Boyle.
[00:13:10] So back on just, and I know you're dying to get into this, the nuts and bolts of this movie. Oh yeah, please. Let's go. But I do want to say, so a little bit of the earlier history that Norman J. Warren did. So he did a short in the 60s and he was coming up with this quirky stuff. But again, it was the opposite of what Hammer was doing. So he was standing out. So in 1976, he did this movie called Satan's Slave, which was a straightforward demonic sacrifice,
[00:13:40] satanic panic style movie. Even the poster, everything that, nothing, you know, out of the norm there. Prey from 1977 is a little more interesting. The plot was a deadly shape-shifting alien. And you know for a fact that when you know who's making this movie and they say shape-shifting, that basically means it's just a different person playing the alien. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:05] So the shape-shifting alien infiltrates a country house occupied by two lesbians and proceeds to study their behavior for a sinister purpose. So I'm looking this up now. I think I may have seen this. There you go. I think I stumbled across it. So. So you can still see his Ed Hunt style things poking through here and there in his movies, right?
[00:14:31] So 79, this is the one that I thought was interesting, Spaced Out, which you mentioned that you might have seen or heard of before. Right. Yeah. So this is a, I watched a fair bit of stuff from Spaced Out. And this is like a full on like horned up R rated sci-fi space comedy. It's the only way I can pitch this thing. The IMDB description of this movie is fantastic. It says, quote, low budget aliens.
[00:14:57] And then in parentheses, three nice looking women and a gay computer voice crash land in England and abduct four earthlings. All right. I'm looking this now. I have not seen this. So I'm not sure what I was thinking of. Dude, this is like a precursor to Lex. We just talked about. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. So another trailer for you guys listening to do a bit of research on the trailers pretty, pretty far out.
[00:15:27] So totally worth checking out. And after all that's it and done, I haven't bored Jason enough. I think we can just get going in the, into the movie because it's set on what planet Xeno two or something. The plan is called Xeno. Like I said, I do not remember the beginning at all. So as far as I could tell, the first act is there's this planet called Xeno or Xeno two. And there's a crew there.
[00:15:56] You don't know it when I say, I don't know. It's because I'm pretty sure the movie doesn't tell me and you don't really know why they're there to begin with. It's some kind of mining operation. They're archeologists is what they are. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I got that much. They're archeologists. And there was like, I'm surprised there's not more women on the crew. Cause they're real good at digging up old shit. Wow. Just laugh. It makes me sound like less than on Valentine's day. You're going to be that sexist. And wow.
[00:16:25] Um, anyway, yeah, they're, so they're archeologists and, uh, there's an ancient civilization. There's mention of like, they're ruled by twins or something and, but they're long dead. And then they find these weird crystals. Um, and then shit happens and I don't understand why. Yeah, that's pretty much it. They're mining and they're extracting. They dig all the stuff up. And then one of the workers gets injured and they bring them into the infirmary with some
[00:16:54] of these crystals that he's hanging on to. The guy has like a meltdown in the infirmary clearly out of his character, according to the way the other characters act around him. And then he runs off back into the mind and he's infected. He's going crazy or something from these crystals. But really the only thing in this, there's a plot device where there's an airlock in the building, right? To go from in and outside of the planet surface. Right. And when he runs out, he doesn't close the exterior airlock door.
[00:17:24] And this sets up the stage for everybody being stuck in the station and him and the other workers that are out on the surface are the only people out there. It's a, it's a cheesy corn bowl way to not allow everybody on the station to chase after this guy, because now they're, they can't get out. So they have to wait for one of their miners to come and close the other airlock.
[00:17:49] And there's some plot device about why they have no radio communication or something as well. Like there's, they go into a cave or something and there's no, they can't talk to each other or something. Yeah. It's just like the phone being out in the Scotland pub in devil girl for Mars. Same thing. How convenient. Exactly. So they set this up pretty quick. I'll give it that. And now it becomes this radio game where the people inside the base are radioing the other workers.
[00:18:18] And they're like, Hey, this guy's out. He's crazy. I will say when he runs out of there at this point, the movie, I haven't been liking the music. It's just these like hard synth stings, which I typically like is not anything. It doesn't work though. But when he starts running the music changes from these basic synth things to this like really funky keyboard riff. And I was like, what just happened? And then the whole tone of the movie changed.
[00:18:46] And I was trying to think of like, this would be like if count Dracula had like a game show in the seventies kind of music. Like it's just so weirdly funky. I was kind of getting into it, but it matches nothing on screen is quite strange. Um, so he's out there on the run in the mines and there's a mine cart chase.
[00:19:07] I just remember one scene where this is later in the movie when the crazy woman's chasing one of the guys and he just like triggers a mine cart and shoots it off towards her. And, and I'm just like, but she can just, and it's not going fast. So she knows like climb onto it and walk through it kind of thing. But I was just like this, this is like something out of Austin powers. Yeah. The sense, the sense of threat is horrible.
[00:19:35] And to your point, the mine carts themselves look so dinky. Like they look like something that you see at the County fair. They're so weird. It's like, or like the little train at the nut tree off the highway in Vacaville. Like it's just this little weird kids ride that it's so dumb. Yeah. If you want to see a good mine cart chase, you should watch temple of doom. Man, I knew you were going there. Cause it's the best indie or.
[00:20:02] The only indie that matters is, uh, is Raiders. The mine cart chase in temple of doom, the miniature scene, it's really good. Like for miniatures and everything, but. A very good friend of mine, his father was the machinist, uh, Lucasfilm ILM. And he built so many of the props, like, you know, everything, but one of the tasks they
[00:20:28] had, he was on temple of doom and they wanted one shot where the mine car would come down and it actually goes through the tunnel. Like you can look up all the behind the scenes footage. You can see the tracks with all the miniatures they built, but you've got to remember those like old big Panavision cameras and stuff. Those big film mags, you know, with 400 foot film in them. They were huge. So you could get the camera body through these miniature tunnels, but you were never fitting that mag on there.
[00:20:53] So he got tossed the job to actually design a machine, like a really small magazine that would hold just enough film. So the camera could roll through the tunnel and they could get the shot. I mean, it's incredible. I mean, that's filmmaking back in the day. Like it's just compared to those giant roles and how they figured it out. So it's just, I don't know. Filmmaking is not the same, you know? No, no, not at all. The thought process they're solving or nothing. There's nothing like today. I actually got asked today too. It's like, are we doing a film print of this? And I'm like, nope.
[00:21:23] At least I really hope not. But nobody told you. Well, it's like, we didn't shoot it on film. If we did, I think it would be a different story, but. Yeah, that seems like a bit of a lost cause. I think, unfortunately, we need to get back to inseminoid, I guess. I guess so. I want to talk more about how Raiders of the Lost Ark is way better than everything else. It's a good movie. You know what? I won't say that Raiders is great. It's just, I think Temple of Doom is better than people give it credit for.
[00:21:53] Put it that way. Yeah. No, I have no problem with Temple of Doom. I find I like the Raiders movies with diminishing returns all the way through. Like I'm not a giant fan of the third one either. Last Crusade. I don't know if I was a quest for the last Crusade, thank you. I was going to say quest for the Grail. But, and again, you know, the fourth and the fifth. Dude, I don't even need to talk about. Well, I worked on the fifth one. There you go. But the fourth one still. Lucky you.
[00:22:22] The fourth one still had the ending I wanted. And I love the ending of Crystal Skull. I don't care about the rest of the movie, but. I know. I thought about it watching like, what the hell? Why isn't it grounded? And then I remember the end of Raiders. Yeah. Right. That's like. That's my argument to why Crystal Skull is a good end. Because it can be the same sort of thing. So, but. Yeah. It's just unfortunately the animation is terrible. Yeah. Well, nobody needed the monkey scene as always. They fast become like the Jar Jar Binks of. Yeah.
[00:22:52] But anyway. Again. Anyway, I just. Raiders of the Lost Ark has a certain magic about it. That is whatever. Something about it that is just missing from all the sequels. Yeah. And I don't know what it is. Yeah. And I don't understand it. But. I mean. And there's a certain nostalgia for me because I saw Raiders in the theater for like, I don't know how many times, 10, 12 times over the course of two or three years. Well, we talk about this too. Yeah.
[00:23:19] Like that back when movies, a good movie would do a long run and that we keep getting re-releases and stuff too. Six months or more. Yeah. And then just keep, then just come back a year later. Star Wars did that. I think they re-released Star Wars every time a sequel came out. Like, so it was out in 77 and again, I got no one sure got released again in 78 and 79. It was definitely out before Empire. Even bigger. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.
[00:23:43] So, but again, unfortunately in Seminoid to keep this train, keep, to keep this miniature mine cart train rolling here. So there's just this dumb chase in a mine for, for nothing. And now, uh, the girl Gail, who's been out there trying to track down the guys going crazy from the crystals. She gets her foot stuck in her suit, her space. It's stuck in this like hole or against this piece of metal.
[00:24:13] And yeah, her suits now malfunctioning and all this stuff's happening. She's radioing back to base and she's talking to Gary about how now she's stuck and she's done for because her suit starting to fail. And I guess the idea is that if her suit fails, the thermostat in it, she's going to freeze to death. So Gary is back in the home base and he's like, no, no, you can repair it. You can fix your suit. And she's sort of stuck there and she's just like back and forth. It's, it's this really, they're trying to build tension, but there's not much going on here.
[00:24:42] But it doesn't. Yeah. I know what they're trying to do. It doesn't work. And the whole time they're showing it and I'm looking at her foot going, can't they just cut off the boot? Yeah. It doesn't like, so it gets into this weird situation where there's these wires on her wristwatch. There's some readout for her suit and she's supposed to like rewire her watch and that's going to get the temperature operating her suit again. So she doesn't freeze. And this is this part. I actually laughed out loud because Gail says over the radar, she's just like, I can't do it, Gary.
[00:25:12] You've got to help me. And Gary's just like, I can't help you. Cause he's stuck in there. He's like, you've got to do it yourself. And then Gail's like screaming and pulling a leg. And she's like screaming out. She's like, I can't Gary. I can't. And then Gary says, can't is a word that I don't understand. Now you can't give up gal in the same sense. This might be the dumbest line of dialogue I've ever seen. And I write a lot of dumb stuff and it's still really bad. I was like, how can this be a route?
[00:25:41] If it's meant to be a joke, it just didn't land. No, but it, it, it was a really bad line. The best part is after that, for some reason, she smashes her face visor and then shoves the, the air tube that comes in her suit and just like sticks it in her mouth and then proceeds to try and like, was she trying to cut off her leg or something? Yeah. So exactly that. So she gives up on being able to rewire her suit.
[00:26:04] And so now she decides that she can open her helmet and take the piping from her suit, the oxygen, the O2 line. And then she just puts it in her mouth and starts breathing through it. And Gary's like, she's going to freeze to death. So at the same time she pulls out, like, it's so weird. So out of nowhere, she pulls out this tool, this mining cutting tool. Right. And like the threat here is like zero. Cause it's like, she has an option.
[00:26:34] She has a way out. She could just fix this thing. But for some reason she's like, I can't, I can't. She's elevating herself, making her worse for herself. So you don't care. There's no buildup. There's no alternate resolution. I'm just like, kind of like glad she's freezing out there at this point. Cause I'm like, you're an idiot. Like you're a shit character. Like I'm, I'm happy to see you go at this point. So the problem is she decides that she's got to cut her leg off and I'm like, well now, you know, she's going to cut through her space suit, but she's already opened her visor up.
[00:27:04] So it's depressurized, but we need to talk about the tool that she cuts her leg off. Did you notice what that is? No, it's like a 1970s electric hedge trimmer. Like when I, when I saw it, I was like, for trimming. I'm not even going to say something, something seventies bushes. Yeah. It makes sense for a Norman J. Warren film too. It's all tracks. Yes. So I was looking at, I was like, God damn it.
[00:27:33] That is a hedge trimmer. And I was like, I thought it was like a Sears model. I can't. And I look closer. It's actually a McGraw Edison powerhouse 57 one Oh two, by the way. Well, they do mention chainsaws later on. And what they do bring out then again, our hedge trimmers. Yeah. It's not chainsaws because, uh, yeah, I know what a chainsaw looks like. Not that. And we're 25 minutes into this movie now.
[00:27:57] And this was the beginning of the end for me because this is where up until this point, we'd have a little bit, I had interest. I was like, okay, something's happening. And then this is just where the movie falls on its face for a long run. And I say the majority of the rest of the film, you made it longer than me. Cause I was like 34 seconds in going, I believe I messaged this to you saying I regretted every decision I'd made my life that brought me to this point.
[00:28:25] I saw that message and I was like, Oh, you must be watching in seminoid. Cause I was like, what the hell? Like the music. I was just ready to just, Oh, I was cursing your leg off with a hedge trimmer. I was cursing your name. That's okay. My revenge will be next week because I have a movie that I think I'm going to love. And I know you're going to hate. I'm sure I will already. Just the fact that you love it means I'm going to hate it, which is why we're doing this. It's the whole point of it yet, but I can tell you it's got a hundred percent on rotten tomatoes.
[00:28:54] And I believe the popcorn score is the same. Oh God. Now this is, it's like from 1956 or something. All right. Here we go. So back to what we don't want to even be talking about, but still, I've got to try and I have to, I have to do the bad thing here. Yeah. You have to keep us on track cause I'm certainly not going to bother. So I think this is where we're at the second act now to myself. I'm saying this when I'm watching. I'm like, I'm not really sure, but you know, they send more crew out now looking for the,
[00:29:24] the guy who's going crazy. And then there's this crappy, really crappy, like just classic jump scare, terrible jump scare where the two of them are in a tunnel and the guy kind of just gets dismembered for no reason. And then we cut to an operating room and our main girl Kate is finally we're here. We're, this is what I was here for, for the poster, everything, the name of the movie.
[00:29:50] I'm like, okay, this is happening 32 minutes into this movie. The insemination begins, but just, you need to explain to me what actually happened in the insemination. Cause I, there's like a long green tube and why the part I didn't understand is why was the doctor there? Yes. I have no idea. So he's the doctor appears. Yeah.
[00:30:15] I can only think it's like she's hallucinating or something, but I, my only understanding of this after watching the movie through, because like everything else, there's no resolution to it was maybe there was a subplot here that got left on the cutting room floor or something. We don't know why, but she's hallucinating. The doctor's there. Yeah. The subplot would make sense if the doctor was involved because then he'd be like the android and alien, you know, kind of fostering it. Yeah.
[00:30:45] And more, more, this, this isn't more alien. Not at all. Um, but yeah. Yeah. So that's weird that he's there for whatever reason. And she's in this room and it's all lit up. And, but again, the insemination itself, what happens there? Well, I think she's essentially raped by this creature thing, but for whatever reason, it has a big long green plastic tube that it pours its insemination stuff.
[00:31:15] They look like egg yolks in there too. Yeah. It's kind of pumping down through. True. I'm glad you're confused about that, Jason, because I actually found an interview with Norman J. Warren talking about how some people misunderstood the insemination sequence. Some people meaning pretty much everybody who wasn't him. Yes. And he points out that he said, there's a sort of plastic tube that's going into Judy Gleason, as we know, and we're confused about.
[00:31:42] And he says, people got the mistaken impression that it was the alien's penis. How would we not? Like based off the movie, I was just like, why does it have a glass tube for a dick? I wasn't sure either. But Warren said it was artificial insemination equipment. And he said, they shot the sequence very impressionistically. And he said to be like a dream.
[00:32:05] And so the idea was that they knew if they shot it exactly straight to be what it's going to be, which is like an alien rape scene. He said it would have played out like a rape scene and ended up being cut out of the movie, the entire thing. So he said they built it up to be this abstract quality that the sensors didn't mind. And therefore it was able to make it through. But the trade off to that was confusing the audience and accusing you and me and everybody
[00:32:34] else 43 years later. So at least I have some closure on why that's it. There's a little bit more method to that madness at least. So I give it that. Cause I, I didn't think it was a, I didn't think it was a penis. I just always assumed it was like some kind of mechanical thing, but because that she saw the doctor. Yeah. But obviously he's trying to say, Oh, it's just, she was imagining the doctor. Yeah, exactly. Just like the rest of this movie. None of it works. Yeah.
[00:33:01] So this is the moment now where you're like, it was a dream. Was it not clearly not a dream, but kind of to the director's point, you know, it was a little lucid. So therefore you don't really know. And that's how they got up by the sensors. But this is the moment where I just did the groaner and I was like, Oh no. And she wakes up, she's back in the base. And then she just like starts running around killing everybody and raging on everybody. She's not an alien. She's not a creature.
[00:33:31] There's no monsters. This is super lame. And like she shoots somebody with a spear gun. And this is a long, long sequence. Like I'm talking like we go from 30 minutes to an hour and 10 minutes in the movie of just her walking around the base, interacting with people and killing them. And I don't care about any of these characters. I don't care about her. So it has no traction, but just feels like dead time for me. Yeah. I don't know.
[00:33:57] I mean, they get told like at one point, like an announcement goes up that everyone's supposed to be in the room and hide basically because I'm getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah. So, so alien rape woman makes her way back to the base. She's screaming the entire time. There's just like what happened to her? What happened to her? We don't know. She just does a lot of screaming. And then all of a sudden she just attacks. Like, doesn't she just like bite the doctor or something or bite, not the doctor, but another guy. Yeah. Kent. I think it is. Yeah.
[00:34:27] And like randomly. So I guess you're supposed to be given the impression that she is fighting whatever is possessing her. And sometimes she's lucid and other times there it's in charge. Um, it's, it's not even remotely clear though. You read that better than I did. Yeah. It just, well, it's the only thing I could think of because sometimes she's like, you know, stop me and I can't do this and screaming. And I mean, she just, all she does is scream whether she's ready to charge somebody or she's upset or.
[00:34:57] And the way she kills most people is she just grabs their head and like hits it against the ground or sink there. It's, there's nothing creative going on here. There's. They make some comment how she's really strong, but you don't see it. No, no, never. No. Because everyone seems to be able to kind of fight her off too. Even though she usually gets the upper hand and then, you know, smashes her head. Yeah. It's, it's a long drawing out.
[00:35:24] And like I said, we have to ride through this whole thing as she eliminates all the crew on the base. We still don't know why they were there, what they were doing. We don't know what she wants or why she's doing this. No, we don't know anything. And there was one point where I was just hoping she would kill more people because that means the movie's got to end sooner. It's just like, get it over with. So. This is finally something happens. Like I said, an hour or 10 minutes in the movie, she finally gives birth. And now.
[00:35:53] Oh no, we've jumped ahead. So I need, I need to talk about this line first. So while she's still out running around, there's an announcement goes on that they've, they've want everyone to lock themselves in their quarters. And right after that happens, this guy like pounds on the door of one of the other women. Uh, I guess Barbara or something. Um, I, I, I can't keep track of who's who anyway, he's knocking on the door. So she's like, who is it? And he says who he is.
[00:36:22] Cause I don't remember this name. Um, maybe I think it's Mark. He's a main guy. Yes. And, uh, so, but she's like, Hey, we're supposed to be all this. Like, just let me in. All right. And she's like, well, so she calls the, the woman in charge who's Holly, I think. And she's like, Hey Holly, Mark's outside my door. And Holly just yells into the intercom. Well, let him in. It's like, he's not supposed to be out there under her orders, but just open it.
[00:36:53] Yeah. So ridiculous. It is. She lets him in and then she talks, then they talk to each other and there's like, come up to the bridge or whatever. They're coming to the main office and it's just like, but you just told everyone to like hunker down in there. There's no rationale here on any situation. I mean, this is kind of like in a virus when he's like, whatever you do, don't take this out of the case. And then the second he's like, takes it out of the case. It's the same thing. There's just these double standards. Yeah.
[00:37:19] But we get a little bit of movement here at this hour and 10 Mark. And now she's down in this cave, Kate, our main woman. And she finally gives birth to something and she's screaming here. And I want to make a point about the scream because I'll bring it up later, but she's screaming here and she's making a particular sound. And now can you tell me if she gave birth to two of these things or one of them? I think she gave birth to two.
[00:37:48] Cause you don't see her giving birth to two, right? Like one comes out and then maybe we cut away or is it told at this moment? Did I just miss that? I thought there was a second one, but I could be wrong. Cause I know there's two in the movie, but I just don't know if you see to come out. So maybe, maybe I'm mistaken. So I wasn't sure. I probably blocked it from my memory at this point. So she gives birth to these things and yeah, it's, I don't know.
[00:38:17] It's also nothing here really, but she just goes back to killing people now again for no real reason. Like I don't see the creatures again. Obviously she has the birth sequence and there's no purpose here where she's like protecting like her brood or something, which is a much better version of this movie by the way. I don't, well, I was thinking this whole time is like a much better movie is the, the Corman forbidden world. And we should have watched that instead. I haven't seen that. It's American, but yeah, it's better. Okay. Yeah.
[00:38:46] I will take your word for it. As, as it's again, it's a similar thing. There's this weird creature kind of run around a base and stuff, but it's, I mean better movie right now is me at the DMV with my colostomy bag full of spiders. Like really, I mean, that's a better movie, but so I think what we're saying here is that Gary ends up like, so she's going around. She's trying to kill more people, but we don't know why. And we don't see these alien things. Makes no sense.
[00:39:14] Uh, Gary ends up, Oh no, Mark, the main guy ends up catching up with her and fighting with her. And he strangles her with some like electrical wires. And it's like, it's a big ordeal. He survives. He's like covered in blood. He's like the hero. He's all like tattered clothes and stuff like that. And he's sort of limping through a cave. Like it's over, you know, he goes back to check on Sharon. Who's like his, his chick. Right. And finally, this is kind of the money shot of the movie.
[00:39:43] And he pulls the curtain away and Sharon's like slumped over a chair. And there's this inseminoid fetus that's just eating her throat. Yeah. Yeah. And then he just, he doesn't say anything. He has no reaction. And then he's like, he's not even shocked. And then he looks to his left. And when he turns, we get a shot of presumably another inseminoid on a black screen.
[00:40:11] This is a total insert shot, by the way, this is not on set, nothing. And it hisses and it jumps at him. And then like we cut away. And I was thinking, I was like, the better version of this scene is Robert Molden in Jurassic Park with the clever girl moment. Yep. And like that's executed well, and that's done right. And the right tension is here. This you, you realize after this happened, this is the exact same thing. It's just executed so poorly. You don't know that's what's happening.
[00:40:40] So at this point, an hour and 23 minutes into this movie, Jason, we have five minutes left. I was gonna say, this thing's only like 90, 95 minutes. Right. So. And out of nowhere, we get this tail end sequence with some weird cringey like space cowboy specialist team. Yeah. I, I was like so confused by this too. Cause I actually have a note like, why is this ending so long? Yeah.
[00:41:10] And, uh, but I did, did like the guy's helmet. So he's got like these shark teeth or something painted on a helmet. Yeah. It's all right. It's established that there's this ship coming in to inspect the, uh, research out outpost or whatever it is. Cause they haven't heard from them in however many weeks or whatever. It's right. Yeah. And then there's kind of these guys that are supposed to be these like tough rough neck dudes. And they're, they're sort of sold off as these like cool, hard characters.
[00:41:40] The guy flying the ship is wearing a cowboy hat. And then the other guys have these motorcycle helmets with like teeth painted all over them. And they're nicely backlit. So they cast cool shadows. Yeah. And there's all this stuff, but they're saying like, Hey, there's no disease readings on this planet, but they just have such dumb accents. Like I couldn't take any of them seriously, but they are searching the, the outpost and they're on the radio and it's a short scene. And then they're like, everything here is fine. Short Sam.
[00:42:11] Yeah. Compared to the rest of the, compared to the 45 minutes where she's running around. Yeah. But they just sort of say like, everything's fine. Systems nominal. We see some damage here. There's no radiation. I, I think they're kind of being there to see like something explode. Is there something toxic? And they just sort of say they're, they're clear to return on the radio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and then they do. And then you cut to the two alien puppets hiding out on the ship.
[00:42:40] I don't understand what that is about because the ship is there. So did they bring this chest onto the ship? Cause you don't see them do that, but. No, I thought I got the impression these, cause this is the alien twins that they talked about. They're the rulers of the civilization that died or whatever. Um, and I think they just sneak on the ship to escape and then. Maybe that. They'll wreck havoc later somewhere else. I don't know. But it's just like, I don't know what, what they're, what's so bad about them other than
[00:43:08] the fact that they chowed down on a couple of people's necks. And that's it. And it's like the shot is the guy operating the radio on the ship and the camera pans. And there's this old like footlocker chest that opens and you see the two of them in there. And then credits roll. And I was like, I was just like, why are they on there? Did those guys bring them? But you got more out of this by me just thinking, well, they're capable. So maybe they just snuck on the ship. I, well, that's I, yeah, I just assumed that was what it, cause we didn't see them move the locker on there or anything. So, but I mean, I don't know.
[00:43:39] This is a dumb movie, dude. Yeah. No argument there. Oh man. So alternative names for this movie. Would you have? No. It was called doom seeds and insecticide. Insecticide. I mean, that sounds like a mistranslation from in seminoid to some foreign language and back again. Now I want to mention the doom seeds one because it has a relation to something I've mentioned
[00:44:08] to you before about a movie from 1977 called demon seed that was written by Dean Kuntz, which I really like. And for those of you who haven't seen it highly recommend it. It's about, it's set in Silicon Valley, which is funny that it's this guy who works in tech and he has this super advanced house with AI in it. And when you're talking 1977, AI, there's just a voice all around and the woman asks for something
[00:44:35] and an arm comes out the wall and hands it to her, all these robotics. But then while the guys at work every day, the house falls in love with the woman and the house impregnates the woman and she gives birth to this weird AI robot baby thing. It's so wild. It's really cool. But that movie is from 77. Like I said, Dean Kuntz wrote it really good. But because of the movie's name, when they were naming this, they came up where the producer
[00:45:03] said, Hey, we can't use doom seeds because there was a really good movie called demon seed and they didn't want to think that they were plagiarizing. So that's the reason this is called in seminoid, not doom seeds. Cause I believe the working title was doom seeds. And if the guys who wrote this hadn't seen alien, maybe they hadn't seen demon seed either. Probably not. I see also it has the name horror planet somewhere. Oh, I didn't see that one. That's a cool name. Yeah. That's already better.
[00:45:31] Um, so I'm going a little further into this and the writers on this, this script was written in four days. I 100% believe that. I thought you would get a massive kick out of that. Cause it's usually the opposite. We're usually like, it took how long to shoot.
[00:45:54] So Norman Warren and financial backers for this movie at this point, but no screenplay. And like we've talked about many times with a lot of these other sci-fi movies, the, the, the, the race is on star Wars is a hit. Make a goddamn space movie as fast as you can. And this was happening worldwide at a worldwide scale.
[00:46:16] So they shot the movie in four weeks, which is like, yeah, I mean, no, I, I, I buy it. Cause the sets are pretty lame. There's nothing special about it. They, they, it's a kind of a bottle kind of situation. Speaking of sets, I was very happy to find they did shoot this in a real mind. And I was like, wow, we haven't had a quarry for a while. So we're back to our roots of quarries always popping up these movies.
[00:46:42] So Norman, the director's friend who had done visual effects for him on the Satan slave and pray the movies we talked about earlier. They said, look, we want to showcase more of our big end visual effects. Like I said, and they're like, we can do really good effects if we have a budget and let's write a movie around a bunch of effects gags that we want to do.
[00:47:09] Turns out the only effects gag they wanted to do is roll some egg yolks down a glass tube. Cause there's not that many effects in this whole movie really. So that's front loaded very heavily without much of a payoff. So they wrote this thing in four days, which we now know isn't Seminoid, but working title was doom seeds. And that's when the studio stepped in and said, it's gotta be something else. Demon seeds to doom seeds is too close to demon seed, which already happened.
[00:47:35] So the movie was also originally set on a spaceship, but due to money and everything else, they had to ditch it. I don't think I would have gained anything if this movie just hard was on a ship instead of where it was. Cause it was still would have been the same quality sets, which weren't, you know, amazing. So I don't think it lost anything by being on an alien mind versus a ship. I will say that some of the production design, it was few and far between, but when I did see it, I didn't mind it.
[00:48:03] Like the set pieces in the kitchen, like, cause it's sort of built into our minds. So there's some walls that are fabricated and then other parts that are stone and mine stuff. It had a bit of like a retro futurism, like Soviet sort of vibe to it. Like I didn't hate the designs when I saw them. There just wasn't enough of it. A little bit. I thought the lights on each side of the helmet were kind of dumb. Yes. They were very classic though. The suits weren't good or the spacesuits weren't good at all. I was just talking about like the text and the fonts on the walls in the different places.
[00:48:32] Like it's not, it's not terrible. It's got an overly plastic look to it though. Yes. Um, is not great. And you have to compare these, you know, the lettering and stuff you see when you see a word written, it's in this font, but you have to compare it to the opposing, which is in 79 Ron Cobb for alien design, an entire semiotic standard for every image on the ship, on the Nostromo, the coffee machine, everything. Like there's so much, don't even watch this movie.
[00:49:01] Just spend like an hour looking at Ron Cobb's original sketches for the semiotic standard for the Nostromo. Cause he has these great designs as far as every little thing, the coffee machine and the infirmary and all this stuff. It's just, it's just good filmmaking, good production design. And none of that actually exists in this movie. Of course. Oh God. Jason's reaching for a book.
[00:49:28] Oh, the first thing he pulls up is the hard cover of the art of Ron Cobb. Dude. You are, you are living, breathing library of true great fan. Every time I talk to you about something, you're like, good stuff in this thing. Yeah. I know it's so great. I need to get that book actually. Yeah. It's, it's, it's beautiful. Yeah. If there's some form of book or comic reference, Jason has it and has read it and knows about it. Or I just know of it.
[00:49:56] I feel like every single time we talk about something, you're like, just like this and you pull it out. So it's, it's, you're pretty one for one for these. Yeah. I don't have, I got a Sid meet upstairs. Oh, nice. But yeah, no, I was like, that's why I glanced back. It's like, Oh, it is in the room. Great. So this is a 2 million pound budget, which probably was what 3 million USD at the time in 1980.
[00:50:24] Probably about 10, about 15 million now, maybe. Yeah. So, uh, out of all the people that funded half of this movie was the Shaw brothers put up a million for this. I saw that. I was like, wait, I saw that in the credit. I was like, huh? Yeah. That seems odd, but I, I guess they figured it would make money. So back to the scene that the whole movie is about the in Seminoid sequence.
[00:50:49] So there was a real lot of gore in this originally, which I think is where the husband and wife team who wrote this probably put their time and everybody's money into, but ended up again on the cutting room floor as we talked to because they didn't want it to be rejected by my least favorite people, the BBFC British film board. And who I have a massive problem with ever since we talked about way back on contamination, where the Italian movies were landing on their video nasty list and everything else.
[00:51:18] This movie is not on that list out of all is, but you can tell it's that's right. They're protecting their own, but also it's so heavily censored. So somewhere out there, I want to give this movie, at least the VFX sequences of past, knowing that there's probably some really cool stuff in there and for reasons of monetary things and investors and everything, they wanted to completely ditch it.
[00:51:43] So, but when Sandy is having, giving birth and she's screaming and she's like sitting in the cave and she's screaming out that voice, that sound sample is massively popular. And it was resampled and used in five nights at Freddy's. And people are crazy about that sound. And you look it up a new Wilhelm scream. Yeah, exactly. And this is the dawn of that, which I thought was so funny.
[00:52:11] And people are just, there's so many clips and stuff on YouTube that it's just like five nights at Freddy's screaming in Seminoid, LOL. Like, you know, it's like, people are just crazy about that sound. And this is the origin for it, which I've discovered inversely. Cause I didn't see any, they were playing either five nights at Freddy's stuff. So kind of an interesting tidbit. Um, some of the other stuff, you know, like all these things, typical at time, there was a bunch of women groups that were outraged by this movie and the director sort of stood
[00:52:41] up and he's like, you know what? Um, he thought that, Hey, like I'm onto something here. I've tapped into this primal fear. And he came out and said that apparently women have a primal fear about being pregnant and giving birth to a monster. I don't know if it's that specific, but he seemed to think it was the case. And they sent letters and said the movie shouldn't be released and all this stuff. And he was just eating up saying, this is great PR, which it was because the movie ultimately did pretty good in the theater, in the box office.
[00:53:10] And it made money, but you know, again, this is the time where people were just watching anything and whatever it was they could see, they go see. So yeah. Well, and I'm sure it was huge on VHS. I mean, I see they made a Blu-ray of it at some point. So yeah. And there, yeah, the, like I said, there's a lot of info on it. The poster is great. The original poster. I really dig that. Not so much the movie. Um, yeah, yeah. Well, that's often the case with these things. Four out of 10 on IMDb.
[00:53:40] Probably high. Yes. Because it's higher than starship evasions, but also it somehow was better than devil girl from Mars in some ways, which got a five. So I know about that, but I just have these problems with these. It's because it's always different people. Like, you know, for 204 people on IMDb, IMDb gave this movie a 10.
[00:54:09] So it's so the scores are always just so hard to, to judge, you know? Um, but, but I mean, I, I think I found devil girl easier to watch than this was. I was more entertained with devil girl because I like many of these. I'm like, where's this going? Because something good is going to happen early on in this movie. I realized the trick they were pulling on me and let out the grown where devil girl.
[00:54:38] I still was like, okay, something's going to happen here, which didn't, but on a one time watch it dragged me through it. So yeah, there you go. Yeah. What else can I say? Look, I'm glad I seen it. I'm glad we watched it. I'm glad we got to talk about it cause it's always fun, but don't think I, unless I saw a really good special edition Blu-ray with commentary and featurettes and stuff probably wouldn't jump on even owning it at this point. Oh no, I couldn't care less. Yeah.
[00:55:07] I can tell. I'll buy devil girl before I buy this. Sure. And I won't be buying devil girl either. So yeah, well look, uh, thanks for joining me again, Jason on, uh, our latest episode of, uh, anything but casino. It is. It is always fun. No matter what kind of torture you put me through, just know, I'll get my revenge. That's it. Yeah. I'm having a great time. It's always fun. Uh, we appreciate all you guys checking in and the movie suggestions and stuff.
[00:55:36] We're having a good time. So we're going to keep on rolling. And did you know, Jason, that that clip that I posted from the mute, that's a video. The one that was on Instagram went so insanely viral. It currently has 647,000 views on a 17 second clip that I uploaded and that converts to 54 days and one hour and 50 minutes of watch time.
[00:56:03] People have watched that clip, which is so funny. And then, I mean, I left it running for a solid, uh, 90 minutes one day cause I just couldn't get enough. It's so bizarre, but it's just ridiculous. So we've had a few people who've decided to come and check in on us. Certainly not that many, but it's a fun to see some new people. It's just so strange how this thing works and what things decide to go crazy viral. But, uh, our friend Benjamin mentioned, he's like, that's probably more than the movie
[00:56:33] ever got seen in theaters and people are aware of it. And I was like, you're right. So potentially. Yeah. Yeah. So it's good times, but yeah, we will be back next week while we can be back next week. When I get my revenge on Sam, 1951's the man in the white suit starring Sir Alec Guinness. 1951. That will be our earliest of films by far and wide. I think it will be. Yeah. Three years ago. It goes earlier than devil girl. Great. Um, yeah, I'm looking forward to this. I have not seen it. I have heard nothing but good things.
[00:57:01] And I know I just, from what I know, Sam will hate it. And I'm looking forward to this. At this point, I'm just hanging on for something good. So I'm here for it anyway. Anyway, well, thanks man. As always, anything but casino. And I appreciate you always. And we will see you next week, man. Thanks man. Bye. Cheers.
[00:57:26] Therefore, whatever appears on television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality. And reality is less than television.