📽️More Movie Talk

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, boys, girls,

imaginary friends, your pets, everybody.

Welcome to WFHR's Directors Cut

for this session number 52, I believe, set.

That is correct.

Your host and program director here, James J. Mailoff,

joined by my partner in art,

our head of production, Seth Habhager.

Welcome one and all back to Directors Cut.

We have another movie episode, I guess you could say.

These are the ones that we're gonna be doing

just so we can fulfill our podcast dreams.

Yes, yes.

And it's a spotlight kind of for us.

It's us a chance to put a spotlight on movies

that maybe you've heard of, maybe you haven't.

Maybe give you something fun to watch this weekend.

Yeah, that's right.

So we have no rhyme or reason

for these movies that we're choosing.

We are just going out and they,

hey, this would be a fun movie to talk about

and then watching it, doing a little research,

stuff we love to do.

We love, I don't know if people figure that out,

that we love to research stuff.

And for those that don't know, yes, we are,

we research hounds, we love movies,

we love talking about these things

and we know that a lot of you do out there as well.

Thanks so much for spreading the word about the show.

And keep in mind, we are always looking for guests

for our show.

That's right.

If you're creative out there, reach out to Seth or I,

you can reach out to us through our Facebook pages

or through our email, either james.mail.fxcmedia.us

or Seth.habhager at civicmedia.us,

reach out to us and get on the show.

Actually, if you have a movie you wanna talk about,

we'll even do that with you.

So even if you don't want, you don't have to be an artist,

we just wanna talk about all things art.

That's what we do on this show, so.

We're looking forward to over the next couple of weeks,

having on a lot of our civic media family members as well.

We're gonna have them on as part of our civic series.

We've got some artists that we're looking forward

to talking to as well.

And we're looking forward to a lot of that

and looking forward to talking with you.

That's right.

Seth, would you mind getting the ball rolling here?

Let's do it.

I'm gonna be talking about a film that has actually

had some relevance to this area coming up

at the turn of the new year.

We'll get into that a little bit later.

But I'm talking about 1944's

are Snick and Old Lace.

Oh, one of my favorites.

Oh, good choice.

Directed by Frank Capra, starring of course,

Carrie Grant in an unusual role for him.

That was, well, a little bit,

we'll talk a little bit about that too,

kind of the fallout from all of that.

But we kind of got to start at the beginning with this one.

It started out as a stage play,

a hugely successful stage play I might add

that opened in 1940, ran for over 1,500 performances

several years, it was really a surprise.

Considering the subject matter of the play itself,

so I do have to talk a little bit about the play

before we get to the movie,

so people can understand what the big fuss was about.

So Joseph Kesselring was the credited playwright

on this.

Now, he did write the first draft,

and it was based on a true story.

Like so many things, it was based on a lady

that had a boarding house, and she had people come in,

and then she murdered them.

She was a mass murderer, at least 32 confirmed,

many as many as 64 people, and it was big news

back in the 1930s.

So this was based on Mr. Kesselring, use that

as he was kind of a failed playwright.

He'd done a couple of shows that didn't really go anywhere.

So he wrote based on this.

So a couple of producers, long time Hollywood producers,

or excuse me, not Hollywood, but Broadway producers,

decided to take a flyer on it, and they said,

OK, well, we'll give you some money.

You can write the play.

He wrote the play, and it wasn't very good.

It was pretty dismal.

By the way, the names of the producers were Lindsey and Kraus.

Those are the last names of the two producers.

Lindsey was also actually an actor,

and that plays into this a little bit as well.

So they basically took the script and rewrote it.

Before it was not a comedy, it was just

a pretty much kind of a downer, you know, mystery play

with this old lady murdering people,

these two old ladies murdering people.

So they kind of turned it into the comedy, a dark comedy,

to be sure, and that's how they went with it.

The cast is great for it.

In fact, three of the members of the stage play

would end up on the movie with Frank, director by Frank

Kepert, like I said.

The two old ladies, Gina Dare and Josephine Hall.

They made the transition to the film as well

as John Alexander, who played Teddy.

He would also be in the film.

Now, the star of the show, the Broadway show,

the name above the marquee was Boris Karloff.

Boris Karloff, of course, plays Jonathan Brewster,

who is a mass murderer as well.

Mortimer was not really considered like the main character.

It was kind of an ensemble cast for the play.

But this not only was Boris Karloff

hired to be the one character.

And this is the weird thing about it.

They hired him just because there's a line in the show

that says he said I looked like Boris Karloff.

So they decided to go ahead and take a swing.

Hey, Boris, you want to do this?

He immediately said no.

He had not been on the stage in like 30 years,

and it had been like he said in the sticks

back when he was in England.

And he was very nervous about going on stage

on Broadway in his 50s.

And he hadn't done it in a long time.

He wanted to make sure there were three

more strong characters in there, which there were.

There's Mortimer and there's the two aunts.

So that they kind of solved that one.

Very generously, the producers also cut him in on the deal

so that he would get a part of the receipts of the thing,

which made him actually made him a lot of money in the end

because that was such a big hit.

So they convinced him to do it.

I got to give Boris Karloff a lot of credit here.

He was a wreck during rehearsals, starting thing.

He was so nervous about it.

He lost a whole bunch of weights because apparently,

he had diarrhea for three weeks when the show started.

That's how nervous he was.

The show was a huge success partially because of him.

He was the top build because he was the famous guy in there.

But he always insisted the ladies get the final bow,

which was really cool.

Epidemi of his career too.

I mean, this is gentleman through and through.

I mean, this is who he was.

He was only a monster on stage.

That's the only time he played.

He was a sweet, sweet guy, otherwise.

So of course, Hollywood comes knocking Warner Brothers

to be specific.

They got the rights to the play because they knew

this was a big hit.

And they wanted to go ahead.

Now, before I get into the movie part,

let's do a little bit about the plot to make sure

those who have not seen it.

I'm going to say no spoilers.

The movie opened in 1944.

I mean, I'm going to try not to because there's

I'm sure there's a lot of people out there

that haven't seen it before.

So I don't want to, I won't reveal some of the twisty parts

of it, I guess.

But I do think that when we're talking about these movies,

keeping in mind, if you haven't seen them,

maybe listen to the show after you've seen the movie

or something.

It's a great point because there are going to be spoilers

when we're dissecting these movies.

We almost have to.

And you know me, I hate spoilers, but it's going to happen.

And again, 1947, I mean, it's been a while for a while.

It's been a while.

But anyway, so the plot is basically

you have a theater critic played by Carrie Grant in the film

who is a bachelor against marriage.

He ends up getting married.

He goes back to Brooklyn.

And by the way, the setting is on Halloween night.

And I think which is, it doesn't play a lot into it,

but it, you know, the whole macaw feeling of the show.

He goes back to see his aunts before he leaves.

And he finds out they have been murdering old gentleman

who are, they feel are lonely and everything.

Now, they kind of, there's a guy that comes in

and they try to murder him while he's there.

And he's like, what, you know, he doesn't look like he really

wants to be murdered.

And so this is very, very gray area here.

Mortimer freaks out, understandably,

that he finds out his aunts have killed a whole bunch of people.

And, and, first, first of all, things in sue.

His, his murderous brother shows up, his crazy older brother,

to add to the high jinks along with a Mr.

Dr. Einstein, brilliantly played by Peter Laurie.

Then, never had a bad performance in his life.

And, and it's, it's very funny.

It's, there's some tense parts in it and everything.

It's a great movie.

And it's, you can't really explain it.

I mean, that's the basic of the plot.

You really don't, you want to see it

because there's just lots of craziness that goes along

with it.

You've got the, the uncle who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt

through the whole thing.

And that plays into the, the, the aunts murdering people

and everything.

I do have to say they changed the ending for the movie

because they had to back in the back at this time.

You could not end a movie with people getting away

with a crime.

So that's why they had to change the ending

because in the play, well, again,

those spoilers, it's a little bit different

so they did have to change it.

Now, I said before, there were two people,

or three people from the cast of the Broadway show

that ended up in the movie.

Where's Boris Karloff?

Movie star should have been in it kind of thing.

Well, it was very convoluted that what happened,

the producers of the Broadway show was still running

at the time when they were filming, by the way.

That's interesting.

I didn't know that part.

That is, which really plays hard into it.

Now, they gave the two, the two aunts

and they gave Teddy the actor who played Teddy.

They gave them a leave of absence

so they could go and come back.

That's okay.

You know, they could actually do that, which is,

which is really, I mean, I have to say that the producers

on this show were like, no, they're not like Broadway

producer for it before.

They're like, really nice, yeah, stuff like that.

But anyway, so Boris Karloff ends up not being in the movie.

He really wanted to be in the movie.

He couldn't do it because of the contract he was in

for the Broadway show and they couldn't work out

a deal with Warner's.

If they had waited a little bit longer,

they could have gotten him to start filming.

They could have gotten Boris Karloff.

Unfortunately, Frank Capra was under a deadline.

He was gonna go into the US Signal Corps for World War.

This was during World War II, of course.

You have to remember.

And so he had a limited time.

He wanted to get it in the can before he had to go overseas

or start to work for the army, basically.

So that was where the guy, that's where the mess came in.

So they ended up hiring Raymond Massey.

Now, in my opinion, the weakest part of the movie

is Raymond Massey.

Excellent actor.

He plays Abraham Lincoln in a movie,

does a wonderful job of it, but he looks like Abraham Lincoln.

They tried to make him look more like Boris Karloff.

They keep the joke in there, you know.

He gets angry because people compare him to Boris Karloff.

That's why he kills people is because they say that.

And it just doesn't work quite as well.

It would have been a coup to get Boris Karloff

to actually do it.

Really interesting couple of notes here about that whole thing.

One of the things they tried to do to work it out

is who would take over for Boris on Broadway

if he was come to the eight weeks

so he could film the movie.

At the time, Humphrey Bogart was a big star at Warner's.

This was 1941 when he had his breakout,

the Maltese Falcon and a high Sierra.

Those were some of his breakout movies.

They were actually thinking of having Humphrey Bogart

play the role of Jonathan during those eight weeks

when Boris Karloff was filming the movie.

Completely different.

Can you imagine on Broadway?

I'm having a hard time, but I mean,

that is really interesting.

It's a fascinating thing.

One other note about Carrie Grant accepting the role,

they're actually were originally going to cast an unknown

as a Mortimer, but they end up going with Carrie Grant.

Okay, this is really cool.

Of course, this is during the war.

His Carrie Grant's fee for the movie was $160,000.

Which was pretty standard for a big star back then.

Doesn't seem like a lot now, but it was big,

not like the millions they get now,

but still that's a big chunk of money in 1941-42.

He only took 50,000 for himself.

The rest he donated to causes for the war effort,

$110,000.

Which is amazing.

I mean, that is a remarkable thinking how much money

he left on the table or put to good use

because the war was going on.

It's a really remarkable.

So the movie comes out, of course.

It's a big hit and the rest is history.

Now, after the film, after he saw it,

Carrie Grant was not thrilled with his performance.

He felt it was a little too much over the top.

He felt he was doing some mugging

and he really didn't like it.

Now, if you watch it today, I think,

I mean, there's some moments there where he,

I mean, he plays it so well.

His eyes are, he's popping his eyes,

and I think that's probably part

that the thing he didn't like about it.

It was a very different role for him.

This is not the kind of Carrie Grant

you see in so many other movies.

And I think part of that was that,

and I think he, if I remember correctly,

did hold a little bit of a grudge against Frank Capra

for not raining him in a little bit.

Only director he ever did, by the way.

That's exactly.

So be that as it may.

There are some people who absolutely adore his performance.

I think it's good.

I absolutely do think it's good.

The performance by the two aunts, Gina Dare and Josephine Hall

is fabulous.

Oh my gosh, they are so good in that.

You can tell they did that.

The other Teddy, of course, John Alexander playing Teddy.

He is fabulous in it.

They're so good at these roles

because they've played it for so many performances.

And the other standout is really Peter Laurie

as Dr. Einstein.

He, I love Peter Laurie.

I can't help it, but he's just,

he's just so good at this.

And the rest of the, you know, the other characters

in it, the cab driver, he's hilarious.

Throughout the whole movie, some of the bit players in there.

But all together, it's a fun, fun movie.

Check it out, you know, Halloween season is here.

You know, have some fun.

The interplay between Carrie Grant

and his leading lady is fun too.

So it's a, it's a different kind of show.

It's not what you expect from the 1940s.

It really isn't.

That kind of dark, dark comedy.

And at times it gets really, it's like, whoa.

How did they let this through?

Must've been because it was during the war.

They like more stuff slide then.

But the only, like I said, the only weak part

is kind of Raymond Massey as Jonathan.

He does have some parts where he does is very menacing.

But for the, for the most part,

it would have been better with Borskola.

Well said.

And a perfect movie to touch on.

I love that you covered this one, Seth.

I will mention you and I are not the only ones

that love this movie.

And I, this movie has a lot of personal ties for me.

I think of this movie and I immediately

think of my Nana, my grandmother, who I was seven, eight years

old watching this movie with her.

And I can remember even back then thinking,

this is dark for an older movie.

I think it's a credit to audiences

to people that made this so successful,

that they were able to take a subject matter that is dark

and find some humor in it.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the movie was successful

during a time when we were worried about going to war.

And there was already a dark macabre kind of feel

in the country, in the world.

That's good going.

So looking for a laughter,

but something that would segue into that dark comedy

would do that pretty well.

Couple of noteworthy things about the movie.

To this day, it has an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes,

which is very impressive for not only an older movie,

but any movie to have a successful rating.

That's true, yeah.

IMDB, it has an eight out of 10.

And a very noteworthy.

It's always more impressive, but yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

You did a great job of going through the cast.

I would like to shout out Priscilla Lane as the Mortimer's,

the Elaine, the lead.

I always felt, I'm not bad for her.

She knows what she signed up for.

It is somebody who you know,

and I know when you work with a big cast and great actors,

sometimes you don't stand out.

That's okay.

You just happy to be working with these great performers

as she was.

But I feel like her performance gets lost in the shuffle

with all the great names you mentioned there.

And they're at tens.

And she's at a nine and a half a nine,

which is still great,

but it just doesn't stand out like it could have with other cast.

It was, I studied and looked up to Carrie Grant,

one of the oldest actors I've done that with him,

Cindy Poiti.

I've studied so much and watched interviews with them.

And even as a young teenager,

when I would finally come across the interviews

and you talk about this movie,

it almost hurt me a little bit

because I love his performance so much.

To the point that it's top three dream roles for me.

I want this role because of loving it with Carrie Grant

and everything.

My Nana having the best seat in the house

to be able to watch me play more

or something like that.

There's certain things about it that bring me to it.

But I also think there's some really cool facts about the movie

that may not be known.

And you touched on all the really some really good ones there,

I think.

But one of the interesting notes,

the whole movie, the total darkness was used,

total darkness was used for the seller scenes.

In order to create a spooky atmosphere

during the scene set in the seller,

the production team decided to film it in total darkness

with only minimal lighting,

which it's difficult to do that nowadays.

Let alone back then.

You mentioned it being a box office success

that is noteworthy again with the time in America

where people weren't going to the movies.

People weren't doing a lot of as much and stuff.

Yeah.

The Buris sisters famous line had to be redubbed.

The knockoff you're pretty head

that actually had to be redubbed post-production

due to concerns about a violent connection as some of that.

President Teddy Roosevelt inspired the character,

of course, of Teddy Brewster.

And it's noted that the family enjoyed that,

enjoyed the performance and everything.

That's good to know.

But I think the most standout thing about this

that stood out to me at least,

and I did not know until, I would say,

over the last year or two that I had heard about this,

Peter Laurie initially wanted the Mortimer Brewster role.

And he was gunning for this like no role

he has ever gunned for before.

The iconic actor, Peter Laurie,

thought that this role could change his legacy,

could change the way he was looked at

and remembered and everything.

And he wanted it so badly.

When he heard that Carrie Grant was getting the part,

he bowed his head.

Okay.

Which I think is really cool and really impressive.

In a time when you would think of a lot of egos

and divas, not the case.

In fact, the two loved working together

and worked very well together.

And Peter Laurie is still, of course,

as you noted in the film and does an amazing job

in the film.

Another one of those monsters only on a screen

from all accounts, Peter Laurie was another very sweet,

sweet man, a very lovely person.

I mean, I guess you gotta be on that side

to play a really despicable people, right?

It does seem to be the way.

I'm so glad you mentioned the sisters

because if you've heard me once talk about acting,

you probably heard me remant and ramble

like I probably just didn't, didn't even know it.

I think of Carrie, when somebody tells me

who's the greatest actor I've ever seen,

I think of two people right away

Sydney Portia, Carrie Grant.

I can't even separate the two.

I don't know who I would say is better than the other.

So to think of Carrie Grant as this amazing performer,

and to me, he has outacted so many times in this movie

by those sisters, Gene Josephine,

incredible performances from that.

Them alone, I think, is worth watching this movie.

100% absolutely.

It's not only that good, Seth.

I think it's so good to watch the movie

and come see the play when it is going to be performed here

in Wisconsin.

We did have a little bit of an alter your motive for this

because yeah, it's going to be the spring,

or the winter, I should say, the winter show

coming up in March, I believe.

And that will be, so you get to see the difference.

You can watch the movie, and then you can come see the show

and see the differences between the two

because they're a pretty market for censorship reasons,

of course, because there were certain things in the play

they couldn't do on screen at the time,

which today, we'd be like, what?

They weren't allowed.

What?

It was a different time, especially in Hollywood

back in those days.

But that, I mean, there's that fun part of it too,

but absolutely.

I mean, it's not only was it a smash play,

it was a smash movie, which doesn't happen

as much as you'd think, so in the end,

both of them worked out really good.

And in a lot of ways, it's also for,

to turn into Frank Capra real quick,

it's a little bit of an oddball,

and his, in his uvra, as well,

because he was known for, you know, like Yankee,

especially at the time, you know, Yankee Doodle Dandy

before that, Mr. Smith goes to Washington

after the war, wonderful life.

Those kind of movies, more sentimental and stuff like that.

This was really a weird one in his, in his film career.

And parts, maybe it was because it was rushed, you know,

for those who know after he joined the army,

he made a series of films called Why We Fight.

And they were propaganda films.

Propaganda doesn't have to be bad.

Remember that everybody.

About why, to get people up,

why the reasons that the world,

why the U.S. was fighting in the war,

remembering that before the war,

the United States was very much isolationist.

And so they still needed to convince some people

there was a reason to do this.

So really, it's a good all around picture, different,

you know, like I said, different performance

from Carrie Grant, a different kind of film

for Frank Capra, they come together to do this,

but it's a good one.

Be sure to look for arsenic and old lace,

you can find it online.

I know I have recently,

I'm trying to think where I watched it online.

And just, I want to double check that.

Just, if we're telling people about the movie,

you can find it on YouTube.

It's easy to find right there.

You can find it, you can even check out the trailer

if you want on YouTube.

I do see it, it is available there.

So go ahead and check that out.

And you can also get the DVD from the library,

which is how I saw it.

So don't forget, they have it at the library.

Nicely done.

We're on the same page.

I was going to say that.

And I was going to lead that into, of course,

Wisconsin Rapids Community Theater,

performing this, the audition dates,

if you'd like to be a part of it,

are December 16th and 17th.

The performances will kick off February 27th

and go into March.

Okay.

Find out more at wrctheter.org,

wrctheter.org.

Get your tickets now.

All right.

Well, we're going to wrap up this part.

We're going to take a little break, come back

and we're going to talk about the movie James has.

Cliffhanger, teaser.

Can we come back to director Scott?

Well, come back to director's cut, everyone.

This is our spotlight series where Seth and I

are taking different movies that maybe you've heard of,

maybe you haven't, and maybe you will add to your

to-do list to watch.

I think so.

Seth had a great one to kick us off

with arsenic and old lace appreciate that Seth.

I'm going to go a little bit of a different direction

with the complete library of Robin Williams.

No joke, joke, joke.

I think that's where the audience probably thought I was

going to go as a Rob Williams.

No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah, but that'll be the next one.

But for now, I want to focus on 2002's equilibrium.

This is science fiction film written and directed

by Kurt Weimer, starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson,

Tay Diggs, Sean Bean has a small performance in it.

The film follows Bale as John Preston,

an enforcement officer in a future in which feelings

and artistic expression are outlawed,

in a society where its citizens are forced to take

a psychotic drug to suppress their emotions.

After accidentally missing a dose,

Preston awakens and begins to uncover the suspicions

inner workings of all of this.

So this movie takes place after the survivors of World War

III are in this city, this Italian city.

And they blame human emotion for all the conflict,

all the turmoil in life.

So they figure this is the we're going to take this drug

and it's going to get rid of emotion.

Along with that, they don't want anything to spark emotion

so they get rid of all art, all movies, all music,

all of these things.

We are just a society that survives to survive.

There is, of course, obviously a human interest in this

where you as a viewer watching this are horrified

almost by this utopian future and everything.

It certainly has tie-ins to classic books.

And oh yes, there's many different things.

It's definitely influenced by those.

This is a whole section of dystopian novels

and stories that you could draw from for this.

But there's certainly some great story lines there.

And without spoiling too much or anything like that,

the character of Christian Bale really does awaken.

And because it's Christian Bale and you have such a fine,

strong actor and a young Christian Bale at the note,

it's true.

He is able to, there's a scene where his mind

and his feelings are awakening and he hears music

for the first time and it's Beethoven.

And you see the emotion slowly pour over his face

and this moment where he's basically crying

because he's so moved by this.

But then you see, because it's Christian Bale again,

a great actor, you see him enjoying this

and being taken by this and in those tears starting to realize,

what have I missed?

What have I missed?

He's playing a character in his 30s at this point.

Gone 30 some years of his life with no human emotion,

no music, no movies, no TVs, any of this.

And it really, it just so well acted.

I do believe that whether it is because of this performance

or it is, it just helped,

you don't get Christian Bale as Batman

without this performance.

I strongly believe that.

I was only a couple of years later when he started that, yeah.

Right, you don't have him as the dark knight without this

and I love the dark knight, I love those movies

and I think that that's a big part of this.

The concept is very interesting and very,

I think modern time to wear almost,

whether you're listening to this episode of ours in 2024

or 2042 or whatever it is, it's noteworthy.

There's some other cool stuff about this movie too.

Not only do you see fine actors in action roles,

which is something that was a precursor

to the superhero movement we've seen with

Benedict Cumberbatch playing Dr. Strange and Helen Miring

and Shazam too and these things.

But there's something else that happens with this movie

where you have the Matrix

and you have the success of a bullet time

and the filming of that and everything.

Equilibrium had no budget

and we'll get on the more of that later.

So how do you make a movie interesting,

how do you make an action movie interesting?

The director and the writer came up with this thing

called Guncata or Gun Foo, if you will.

And it's basically through analysts of thousands

of recorded gunfights, a cleric,

Christian Bale's character, the people

that are basically the police of this time.

The cleric determines that the geometric distribution

of antagonists in the gun battle

is statistically predictable element.

So basically knowing where the bullet's going to be

before where it's going to be.

Oh, okay, wow.

Each position represents a minimal kill zone.

So they're able to be in a certain light.

For example, the opening scene,

Christian Bale comes into a dark room

that they filmed in the black, similar to arsenic

and on lace and there's about 20 people surrounding him.

And he slides in there and he knows right where to stand,

right where to be to avoid every single bullet.

Wow.

I'm not only that, but the cleric also knows

where to shoot their bullets and what position

and where to be to position the gun and the bullet

to where to quickest damage with a one bullet kind of thing.

Yeah, right.

No miss shells.

There's no cleric hitting, yes.

They're not emptying their cliff.

It's one bullet and it hits the mark.

It's fascinating to watch them do this.

Again, they didn't have the budget.

They didn't have the thousands of cameras,

literally thousands of cameras they use on the Matrix movie

to do bullet time and everything.

For those that don't know, bullet time is done

with about, say for example, 100 cameras

surrounding Kriana Reeves on a rooftop

and him bending backwards and they filmed that.

And then it's almost like the old card,

the old game we used to play on notebooks

where you make a little picture on each one.

A flip book, yeah.

And it looks like it moves when you flip the pages, right?

It's basically that done with film.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Essentially what bullet time is,

they didn't have that kind of budget.

So they have this guncada and the way that bail and tape digs

and they play these roles, it's so believable.

It sounds a little, well, obviously made up,

but they do this so darn well.

It's incredible.

There is a scene I mentioned the Beethoven scene

that is moving in that.

The final thing that finally gets him is,

along with entertainment, we also don't have animals.

No more pets, pets bring enjoyment,

create emotions, no more pets.

Christian Bale comes across a puppy.

And long before John Wick,

again, not spoiling anything,

he choose to save the puppy over other people

and himself in many ways.

And it really creates the no going back moment in this.

The movie is incredible in the fact that it is,

one of those movies it's all leading up to the big battle,

big battle.

And again, I don't want to spoil anything

for people that haven't seen the movie,

but it comes down to bail and tape digs and all this.

And tape digs plays an excellent villain.

You don't get to see him play a villain very often.

No you don't.

He does it well, he's so good at it.

The scene ends in seconds.

And it never happens.

That never happens.

We'll have more on the why that is later.

Oh wow, okay.

But it's so cool to watch as you're as an action lover

and you're used to every single movie leading up

to the big fight the last at least five, ten minutes.

Right.

And boom, nah, not this time.

That's how good Christian Bale's character is, man.

Not since James Bond has someone made a white suit look cool

and Christian Bale does this in this.

To the point, again, I don't want to spoil anything,

but he goes through towards this end battle with tape digs.

Like 30, 40 guys.

By the time he gets to tape digs,

not a drop of blood on him.

The nothing completely white suit.

Like just speaking to what the cleric is able to do

and how good he is at this.

A last battle that is memorable for a more original ending

than so much the fight that they do.

Right.

And one of the things that is unique about this movie

is the lack of budget, but the energy and the time

that they put into this, the writer, the director,

the editors, so much of the filmography,

the choreography that goes into an action movie like this,

let alone, you're doing something nobody has ever done

in film with the Gunkata stuff.

So going over that and everything and no budget

and these actors were not paid a whole lot

or anything like that.

It's really cool to see all of that energy

and it's so obvious in the movie.

It's so obvious that they care about this.

They got this script.

They really like this and everything.

And while tape digs has a pretty okay career here

at this point, Sean Bean does.

Of course.

Watson is doing okay.

Nobody is necessarily a big name star,

so they're hungry.

They're hungry, you can tell too.

And that comes across in the movie as well.

I think that for a movie that does not have a great budget

and is a little maybe dated in some things,

it holds up in so many big categories

and it's such a, even if you watch it one time,

I think it's worth a one time watch.

There are some kind of cool little facts about this movie

that I thought were kind of interesting about it.

The director Kurt Weimer and producer Lucas Foster

basically created this gun food,

this whole different style of fight.

I mean, just imagine that you and I try to sit down

and create, hey, let's do something in the action movie

nobody's ever done.

Let's go ahead and try that.

What can we do with guns?

Yeah.

It's really kind of cool how they do that.

That opening scene I mentioned was filmed

in an old army barrack in East Germany.

They had trouble filming it because they had no lighting.

They know like budget for right.

Exactly.

So that's part of like to light a warehouse.

That's a lot of lights.

Oh my gosh.

The film was never given a part of the reason

it is a kind of called classic indie favorite

of one of those movies.

You hear people talk about,

hey, what's an underrated movie?

And this is one of the first ones I like to bring up

of our generation.

The film was never given a wide release

because overseas sales were not good.

And they got afraid over here of how that might do.

John Preston,

Christian Bale's character,

almost a Colin Farrell for some reason.

Whoa, wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

A bit completely different movie.

Yeah, what a minute.

John Preston kills 118 characters in the movie,

which makes him responsible for exactly

half of the total 236 deaths in the movie.

As of recently, as far as I could tell,

he continues to hold the third place record

for most deaths in a movie caused by a character.

Oh my gosh.

It's incredible.

And it's all like beautifully done.

Like the action in the movie is done in an artistic way

while also being everything you love about action scenes.

Right, right.

The final fight scene that I mentioned before

about Christian Bale and Tay Diggs

was supposed to actually be much longer,

but Diggs, the most popular actor at the time of this crew,

had a busy schedule.

So they wouldn't, and he wanted to stay again.

He loved this project,

but wasn't able to stay on it.

So they had to kind of cut the fight scene

by a little bit and everything.

Which is kind of funny how that works.

It's so interesting.

When you do watch this movie,

and again, I really do encourage you to,

this will stand out more.

It might not mean as much right now.

No wires were used in this movie.

So everything you see is done by the actors.

There's no special editing.

There's no special effects or green screen,

or anything, again, didn't add the money for that.

So it's just even more impressive to me

these years later when I go back and watch it.

And I'm like, my God, they did this, the actors did this,

the great cinematographer did this and everything.

During post-production, the film began to run out of money.

Oh no.

So some of the scenes did not have the special effects to them.

You can see this in a few scenes

where men are shot and guns, by guns,

but no blood comes out.

That's kind of done.

Yeah, well, you know.

And I think all of this coming back to,

and I mentioned the budget so many times,

to not lower expectations,

but to increase the charm of this movie,

that they're able to pull all of this off

and it's so believable with no budget,

it comes down to great character work

and character development, wonderful directing,

and something we don't get to note nearly enough,

great stage work, great, like set up.

Yes, great people, the location settings

that they chose and everything.

All of that builds to the movie so well.

Francis for Coppola, one of my favorite directors

of all time, I remember him talking about this.

Every movie he does is the same.

Budget, 100% of the budget.

I'm gonna take 70 to 80% of it.

I'm gonna spend it on costumes, setting, all of that.

The actors will get the rest.

Yeah.

And it's part of the reason that you see

like so many big name actors that have wanted to work with him

and work with him on a cheaper paycheck

than they've ever worked before,

because he puts so much into this in his movies

whether they're good or bad, whatever you might think,

they are believable.

They put you in that timeframe

because he knows how to set up a scene,

he knows how important that is.

And I think Wimer, I think some of the director,

some directors now they get that too.

Right, and it seems,

well, when you don't have a big budget,

you have to be inventive.

And like every penny counts,

you have to make sure all the setups are nice,

all good, ready to go, you know, can't do too many takes.

Again, which is harder for an action film,

considering, you know, everything that goes in it.

Otherwise, if you, if you, if the,

if the setup isn't good,

if it doesn't come up,

then you're gonna end up with a bunch of quick cuts,

which people notice.

And that doesn't look as good.

And that's because if you got a whole bunch of quick cuts

in this fight scene, it's like,

oh, what's this?

You know, what, what happened with the,

the filming on that kind of thing?

So that's very important for all that.

You know, a couple of things I noticed

when you were describing it to me.

There's a, a couple of shout outs in this movie

to some iconic things and some other science fiction films.

The Beethoven, probably a shout out to Clockwork Orange.

Yes.

That, which plays a very important part in that movie.

Also, the animals part of it, too, as well.

That is a call back to Blade Runner.

More specifically, the, the story that it's based on,

do, do Andrews dream of electronic sheep.

Because they play a huge part in the society

in that, that story by Philip K. Dick.

So I'm guessing that has a shout out to that as well.

Also a note about the, what the characters are called,

clerics and the fact they wear white.

That is a very specific religious reference.

A cleric is another name for a pastor or a minister

or a priest.

A cleric is a holy person, quote unquote holy person

that, that is supposed to, you know, be,

that was, you know, supposed to,

not that they are, you know, better than humans.

But you know, they usually are held up on a higher level.

Like, you know, they should be more compassionate or whatever.

They kind of turn that on its head with making the clerics,

the people who enforce the, you know, the, the, the,

the, no emotion.

That's very interesting.

Wow, like that.

So I found that kind of curious, too,

and a very interesting choice, especially with, like you said,

wearing the white, very evocative.

Very, certainly a note to the thought police of 1984,

or, yeah, definitely a big influence,

Fahrenheit 451.

Yeah, a huge influence.

There's some beautiful moments with where Sean Bean's

not in the movie very long, but he had,

does some of his greatest acting in this movie.

And I think that's saying something, I, uh, he's a good actor.

He has a scene where he quotes a famous quote,