Recorded at Reed’s Local
Joe: [00:00:00] Hey. Welcome back to the Rabbit Hole of Research down here in the not so basement studio.
Nick: we’re away today.
Joe: above ground today
Geo: are we?
Joe: we’re here at Reed’s Local. If people remember last year during our month of horror, we were hosted here at the Reeds Local in Avondale, Chicago, Illinois to record our fabulous episode, and we are back today to talk about Slashers here.
We’re all crewed up. You got me, Joe,
Nick: you got Nick.
Joe: got Nick. From
Geo: Georgia,
Joe: and we have Georgia here. We have our
Melissa: Melissa. Melissa,
Joe: Melissa. Melissa’s here. Do you
Nick: you for having
us.
Melissa: course.
Nick: hey, we got some new people down at the end of the table.
Jesse/Alana: I am Jesse.
And I’m Alana.
Joe: and Alana from
Jesse/Alana: oh yeah. We are the from slasher sauces, the hot boutique, Chicago [00:01:00] boutique hot sauce company,
Joe: Nice. There you go. All things slasher all the time here on this episode. So yeah. I
Nick: I don’t even have to bring up Robert the dah this episode. It’s great.
Joe: gosh.
Oh,
Jesse/Alana: Oh,
How
dare you.
Is it
still recording? Did
Geo: oh my
Joe: We’re still recording. A little flashback
Nick: It’s ’cause I don’t have
Geo: No. Yeah, thanks. Last
Joe: year’s horror
episode. it. I knew
We we mentioned that particular doll and then we had recording difficulties. Our recording cut. So if you remember, you go back, you can listen to you to five minutes that did get recorded and then.
The noise that happened. Yeah, it was a whole thing. So I say go back if you wanna get freaked out. yeah, today we’re here to talk about slashers. So I do have, I have my open and I have a list. I’m gonna do
Nick: You have lists today, one.
Joe: It’s it’s been a while since I’ve done both the open and the list, but
Oh boy.
Geo: We’re in for a treat.
I
feel
Joe: I would like to give the list right up the top and then
Nick: I mean, list it up.
Joe: And
then we got a lot of people. So let me, lemme do my open about slasher. A slasher [00:02:00] film is a sub genre of horror centered on a relentless killer, usually human, sometimes superhuman or supernatural who stalks and murders a sequence of victims, often with a bladed weapon or other intimate means of killing.
Unlike supernatural horror, slashers thrive on physical pursuit, vulnerability, and the illusion of in inevitability, no matter how fast you run, the killer is just behind you. But it’s slasher isn’t just a horror film, it’s a ritual of fear. A mass predator, a string of victims, a final survivor death delivered up close, not by fate or monster, but by a human hand that refuses to stop.
That’s what makes Slashers different. They aren’t about what lurks in the shadows, but about what’s chasing us in the open. The slasher isn’t just a genre, it’s a mirror each, every decade we watch as it kills who we used to be and warns us about who we are becoming.
So that’s a
Jesse/Alana: spooky. Spooky.
Joe: Whoa.
get us [00:03:00] grounded a little bit further. I kind almost give the brief history of slashers, get that
Nick: have a history of slashers slasher,
Joe: a
Come on, Joe.
Nick: Oh, we aren’t gonna slash this.
Joe: I come, I’m slashing
we’re slashing this
of time.
Jesse/Alana: I wanna know
Joe: So I went back and I tried to find what’s the, like the oldest, you know, like I do here. And it is, it’s not the Giles or.
you know,
Nick: I’m shocked. I thought you were gonna
Joe: no, but the oldest proto slash year that iconic Could Source and Vine. 1846 Sweeney Todd. And these are novels here. We’re gonna start in novels before we get the film. The string of pearl novels series. They were the first kind of human serial killer archetype.
Then we had Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Lewis Stevenson in 1886. Kind of a
Nick: Wait, so
Sweeney Todd was before Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.
Joe: It was by 40 years, according to my
Nick: Wow. I did not realize that.
Jesse/Alana: I didn’t know Johnny Depp was that
old.
Nick: Yeah.
Joe: He
Nick: just like Nick
Cage, he’s a
Joe: looked damn good for that age, you know.
You know? You live [00:04:00] forever.
No. Okay. And then we had the, No, you’re fine. Yeah. Yeah. And then we had the lodger Marie Ock Landis in 1913. And that was based on Jack de Rip. And it followed like a mysterious lodger suspected of murdering women in London. Those are the novels that probably set the kind of the proto slasher.
And then we go into film Proto Slashers,
and we start with the lodger, A story of London Fog, 1927
Nick: I love that drink. Yeah.
Joe: Now that’s often called the first slasher film prototype. And then we have M 1931 by Fritz
l
German, A masterpiece about a child murderer, hunted by police and criminals. Introduced a concept of a sym sympathetic killer in psychological realism.
And then kind of the oldest slasher movie. Georgia was quizzing me like yesterday about this, and I couldn’t think of it, but it’s Psycho in 1959. Once again, Albert Hitchcock. And it was adapted from a novel Robert Blanc Blanche 1959 novel. And it was [00:05:00] inspired by the real murderer of Ed Gein.
You got something.
Nick: I love that
Geo: that, I don’t know if that date’s right,
Joe: Not 1959.
Geo: I’m not sure.
Joe: I’m not sure. Okay. We’ll check. We’ll fact check here.
Nick: It’ll
be in the footnotes. Don’t worry guys.
Joe: show notes.
And then there’s some debate on what with the oldest modern slasher film be. And there were kind of two. One was black Christmas in 1974 Bob Clark with anonymous killer terrorizing women in sorority house.
And then you had the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 74. Also Toby Hooper. And it replaces a suburban voyeurism with rural kind of brutality and murder. So kind of switching that flipped there switch there. And then we have in 78 probably the master, the standardized, the genre, and that’s Halloween by the Great John Carpenter.
Yeah, so that’s that, that’s my list there to
you know what, it was
Geo: actually 1960. Oh,
Joe: it 1960? Not 1959.
Geo: Sorry that’s splitting hairs. I’m sorry, [00:06:00] but I knew for sure it came out in the decade of the sixties,
Joe: in the sixties. Oh boy. Did I get that? How did I get that
Geo: but 1960, you’re only a year
Joe: all my dates
Geo: I’m sorry.
Melissa: And
Joe: know the theme while you’re fact checking I did do, like I do a hundred word movie review every month in the zine.
Melissa: And this month was Halloween.
Oh.
It is like a trite thing to review. However, I was like, I did it because we just got the Halloween pinball machine and I think we might be the only bar in the city with Halloween pinball right now. It’s from spooky pinball and it is so fun. I’m not doing this to advertise pinball, I’m doing this to advertise that after this, we’re all gonna have to play each
Geo: Oh I am totally down for that. Yes. Oh my gosh.
Joe: the novel was 1959, so I had my, sorry. That
Nick: I can’t believe you got this wrong,
Joe: out. I did, I got it.
Nick: Joe. I don’t know if I could trust your words anymore.
Joe: I gotta redo
Geo: in my head. I thought it was later in the sixties to be fair.
But
Nick: surprised you aren’t blaming Robert the doll right now.
Joe: Steve, [00:07:00] stop talking about Robert. Ow. This
Melissa: is the
this is the contest to
Geo: Why are you gonna keep doing
Melissa: or librarians.
Nick: It’s like Beetlejuice. You have to keep bringing it
Geo: No. Stop it. Stop.
Joe: that. Yeah.
But
cool. Yeah, so that’s the list. Now I gotta, now I’m like, I gotta check my other dates now, but there’s a book and a movie and I had the 1959.
Okay. Nevermind.
Geo: I would say Halloween never gets old. The movie Halloween. Yeah.
Melissa: No, But
so which is your favorite Halloween movie of the 19? No, there’s 13. There’s 13 of them I think.
Geo: Yeah,
Jesse/Alana: there’s
so many, there’s so many different cats. Cats. You can go down to, God one’s amazing.
No, I’m just
kidding. I
hate the
Melissa: unpopular opinion. Halloween three,
Geo: really? I
Jesse/Alana: I am,
we are actually very big fans of Halloween three. We are working on a Halloween three hot sauce for sure.
Very nice. I to be the model with the pumpkin on
Melissa: Oh,
Wow.
Nick: You wanna go a little closer to the
Joe: Ain’t the mic?
Jesse/Alana: Oh, for the reference picture.
Joe: Yeah.
Just,
Geo: You don’t really I’m
Jesse/Alana: learning microphones over here.
Joe: Yeah, you’re [00:08:00] fine.
Jesse/Alana: Yeah,
I get to be the Halloween head for the. Hot sauce Image,
Melissa: Ference. That’s Yeah. She smelled like a child, so it’s perfect.
Jesse/Alana: Put me in front of a TV and I’m good to go.
Nick: Hell yeah.
That you,
Geo: tell,
Melissa: Is it gonna be a pumpkin based one
Jesse/Alana: We haven’t decided the recipe yet.
Sure.
Joe: Pumpkin
Geo: Now it’s decided right now.
Jesse/Alana: I like that. That a really good idea. We’re just like, we’re tweaking some stuff, but Yeah.
Geo: so tell me more about slasher sauce and when did it start And
Jesse/Alana: so it started loosely back in 2015 in North Carolina, but then we picked it back up during the pandemic.
Al and I. It’s, we’re like a Chicago, like boutique horse, so like we company, so so we kinda make ’em like small batch and stuff, like from, you know, just a try and trend as, as small as we possibly can and just like we do markets and stuff like that. But it’s started out like small.
We just like finding it different recipes and like building stuff. Like we’re all new. I’m a terrible cook, Alana, we’re all terrible cooks in our family.
I set off the [00:09:00] fire alarm when I make a grilled cheese. It’s awesome.
Yeah so we, we just we’re like,
okay, why don’t we just make like sauce that is. That we can cover up our mistakes and our food, you know, kind of deal. So we started really like working on that and trying to come up with some stuff and like trying to like, challenge ourselves to get hot and hot. But we focus mostly on more flavor overheat kind of deal, you know?
So it’s like we’re not trying to like, murder you or anything, even though like our hottest sauce is classified as murder.
Um, Soon
it’s gonna be open casket or closed casket as our as our hottest sauce. Hottest. Hottest,
yeah. But they’re, yeah.
Geo: you’re out front about it, you know?
Jesse/Alana: Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it’s mostly it’s mostly like medium based, so it’s good for grandma’s is good for anyone, but like the hot heads and stuff are gonna have trouble with kind of like dying for it, but like the flavor is absolutely where it is.
So
yeah, more focused on flavor than heat.
Yeah.
Joe: I think that’s good. No,
Jesse/Alana: No, and then
Geo: every flavor is based on a slasher movie. Yeah. So
Jesse/Alana: every bottle has its own little lore to it. So like we have, our first sauce we did is a called Green Inferno. It’s based on cannibal Holocaust, which are most mild hot [00:10:00] sauce, but we tried to make the most brutal possible, you know, so so we did that one.
We’ve got a Texas Chainsaw Massacre one. We’ve got the Shining it’s called like Overlook Orange Sawyer Family Brew for Texas Chainsaw Massacre the Forbidden that is our Candyman hot sauce. We’ve got FCIs Fire, which is our zombie hot sauce, zombie jerk sauce, and then fruit Cellar, which is our evil Dead.
Okay.
my personal favorite.
Oh yeah. That’s fantastic.
Melissa: so good. I was, my two favorites are the fruit cellar because I love hot sauce, but I also wanted to have flavor and that was awesome. And then they told me a pro trick for the F juice fire one, which I couldn’t figure out what to put it on.
And then they said, Thanksgiving dinner. And I’m like, so anything that is could be Thanksgiving dinner. It’s amazing. On
Geo: Wow.
Jesse/Alana: oh, it’s so good. Yeah.
Joe: Is that just a, you think about Thanksgiving dinner and you put it on so you could be
Melissa: I mean, yeah,
Jesse/Alana: You envision
Thanksgiving and then you’ve got it. Yeah.
good.
Just drink some hot sauce and think about Turkey.
Yeah,
Nick: got it, of course there is the [00:11:00] Thanksgiving movie.
Jesse/Alana: Yeah,
That’s
right.
Geo: you go. So there
Jesse/Alana: then than killing. And then there’s, you know,
Joe: Yes. That’s
Jesse/Alana: poultry
Melissa: met them because of the hot sauces. ’cause some friends of mine, the friends you met at the last PO podcast, Steven from Killer Pinata, I saw that they had posted that they had gotten some of these hot sauces. I’m like, wait, there’s horror movie Hot Sauces in Chicago and
I don’t have them
yet in my collection.
So I put in an order and then Jesse and Alana were like, oh, we know Reed’s. And then we became
Jesse/Alana: We literally
lived right around the corner at the time. So we’re like, we’ll walk by and bring you some hot
sauce.
Joe: And I think you know, hot Sauce is interesting because like a good slasher movie when you try it, there is some anticipation mm-hmm. of the heat. And that fear and that moment before you
Jesse/Alana: is great.
Joe: you know, to try it. You do have
this, and
Geo: then you have the chasing you afterwards, if we all know what you mean.
Joe: that’s not I talking
Jesse/Alana: to the bathroom. Yeah. Got that little heat that sticks with you for a while. You keep looking at the
hot sauce is you
Joe: [00:12:00] one drop or do I put like the whole bottle on? Like where do I need
Jesse/Alana: It’s always lingering over your shoulder
Melissa: Wait until they come out with that neon green when they’re working
Jesse/Alana: Oh yeah. Good point. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Joe: I do think that’s a, go ahead. No, I was just saying that’s a, it’s a cool
a good tie in. Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: it.
Joe: Yeah.
where you’re going and
Geo: and I was gonna say, I we went down a rabbit hole, but but to answer your question, I think just the traditional Halloween one, I just, that’s mine.
Yeah. What about you?
Nick: Oh.
You to come back to me ’cause I have to think about this still. It’s a hard Is it H2O and you just don’t wanna
Joe: I know. Yeah.
Melissa: Yes.
Nick: It’s trying to justify it.
Jesse/Alana: Okay. Wait, I have to, yeah,
Joe: you’re good.
Good. There’s no
Geo: judgment. No judgment.
Nick: So what about you guys? What’s your go-to?
Jesse/Alana: I mean, I think one still for me, like it’s classic, you can’t beat it. What we do every year is a spooky, we, it’s every, you know, 31 movies and in Halloween to, to Halloween, but you can always repeat Halloween.
On Halloween. It’s it’s a super important film. Like it really broke the mold for [00:13:00] a ton of films after that. So you gotta pay Hom much to where you can,
I’m still torn between one and three ’cause one is classic so good. And my first time seeing it was at the music box, so that’s hard to beat.
But then I love the season of the witch. It’s so good and it’s just different and I love it.
Joe: Yeah,
Jesse/Alana: That’s me.
Geo: You didn’t answer Joe.
Joe: Yeah I, once again probably the, and I would go with the classic probably more that I remember it. It is like in ingrained it was early on, you know, so I was probably a young, I’m not sure if I saw the thing or Halloween first,
Jesse/Alana: Oh yeah
Joe: I probably was in, in between those.
But yeah, no I saw it when I was young and so that’s just stuck with me and probably just carried on. And all the other ones were good. The first three I think were good, but I, my memories all come back to Halloween and that’s the one I probably have seen the most. So you always kind of gravitate to that.
And none of them, [00:14:00] I don’t think, in my mind, as in people on the podcast have heard us have this discussion. I don’t think any of the other ones were better than the first one as good maybe, but not better. So in that, I’ll go with the first. But
Jesse/Alana: I
agree.
Joe: Okay. that,
Nick: pretty good. Like I’m looking through them and I’m like, I can’t say I don’t like any of them. Like they aren’t as good as some others, but yeah,
Joe: Yeah,
Nick: it’s they’re all watchable and I’m gonna enjoy the hell out of it.
’cause it’s
Jesse/Alana: The original’s hard to beat though.
I fell off when Rob Zombie made the second one. I was like, okay, I’m done. I think the white horse running through everything. This is far from Haddenfield.
Geo: I might have missed that. It must have met, I haven’t seen
Joe: the last
Nick: Halloween. end.
Joe: Halloween
Jesse/Alana: Don’t waste your time
Joe: okay. There
Jesse/Alana: personally.
Nick: it was just a, it was something
Jesse/Alana: The first in the series was great. Like Di Debbie Gordon Green’s fantastic. But yeah, it just, ah, it fell off hard. Yeah. So hard.
Joe: Yeah. I mean, and then this swing back a little bit, like [00:15:00] why we enjoy I figure everyone here enjoy is a good slasher. Movie. And so kind of that get to that core and what’s it actually doing for people when you watch it? And so there’s a lot of psychological cues that we get out of it.
We talked a little about anticipation. We talked a little bit about kind of suspense and going through it and somewhat as we go through and you think about our favorite movies and putting us that as you go through that really your brain is testing scenarios.
And
as you go through the best of the slasher movies, you have some testing of the scenarios as you go through until you get to the final, usually the final girl
Geo: Wouldn’t you say that’s true of pretty much all horror movies? Or are you saying that there’s something specific about slasher horror movies? I
Joe: think puts the spotlight on it more than maybe other horror movies. Because I mean, a slasher movie, ’cause it’s a, yeah, it’s a sub genre in a slasher movie.
Usually it’s more intimate in the [00:16:00] killing,
Nick: and it’s more of a humanoid
being coming after you. So it kind of grounds it a little bit closer to your own reality,
Jesse/Alana: Closer to home.
Nick: Yeah. Like the anxiety of that person walking a block behind you, but you can still see them staring at you, even when you turn the corner and they turn that same corner.
You’re like are they following me? Are they gonna kill me? But it’s that more human aspect that Slashers have,
Joe: yeah.
Jesse/Alana: And I think the incapability just the kind of no matter how fast you go or loud, you yell at them or anything. They’re just going to keep coming. And you can’t reason with it. And it’s terrifying.
Joe: Yeah. And you have usually have a start where. Everyone’s unaware, right? So you go in, in a scenario and even your own self, you put yourself in that spot. The first maybe one or two people that get it get killed. They really had no plan. ’cause they weren’t planning it before anything like that.
So they went, I mean, there’s some slashers where they do something like, we’re gonna go to [00:17:00] this place that’s haunted, do a Ouija board in the haunted basement. And then you know, and then
so you know,
someone becomes they,
Nick: I don’t know why you guys have not let me,
Joe: because
gonna happen. We see that movie. But other than that, most time you go, you’re unaware, just doing your life or whatever, your event, and then the first couple people get killed, and then you have that next phase where , it’s a, the fight flight,
so you have the unaware, the surprise, and then you have, are you going to run or you gonna fight, right? And you have that stage and it’s really clear.
I think
Geo: The odds go up if you are a teenager having sex,
Joe: of getting Send, send Sin dies first.
Nick: oh yeah,
Joe: Yep. I
was gonna say somewhat, that’s that’s could be the decade,
right? Because I think that’s
got played upon more than other decades where we have it.
And now it’s just become a trope that we expect that, early on you gotta see some boobies and a blade and that’s it. That’s a yeah.
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. You gotta look what’s going on like in America during the time For sure. Like the moral police and stuff during you know, all that [00:18:00] stuff. Yeah.
Joe: So yeah.
But,
Nick: so I do have a thing where I believe that everyone knows the song. Every breath you take, like by
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. Yes.
Nick: It’s about a serial killer.
Jesse/Alana: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Nick: Okay. ’cause
Jesse/Alana: stalking people.
Yeah, exactly.
Nick: like that song I think does wrap up the slasher genre. Like this being is watching you in every position, every time that you’re doing whatever.
It’s oh, cool. That’s the exact feeling that you get when you’re in a movie.
Jesse/Alana: I mean, he’s got a name like Sting. Yeah. So
Melissa: it’s a
Jesse/Alana: he’s already made for it.
Joe: I mean, if we’re,
Nick: a good name for it.
Joe: You’re talking about stalker songs, I think Lionel Richie
Melissa: Hello,
Joe: you know, that’s he’s essentially,
She’s blind and then she makes a model
talking about the, of you’re
Geo: talking about the music video. So
Joe: model of his face and she’s blind.
So that means she’s not making it outta admiration. She’s this is my stalker. This is [00:19:00] like calling me up, breathing on the phone, like hanging up with me. It was like kind of a weird video. If you think about,
Nick: were the
eighties, just the time for,
Joe: I
he was a serial killer and she was gonna be the next victim.
I think it was just lining up and she’s trying to warn people, like she’s the one making a model. She’s the final girl. This is it.
Jesse/Alana: And this is who did it?
Yeah.
Nick: believe you. We blind.
Joe: is a great love story. No, this is gonna end.
Jesse/Alana: police sketch. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: Have you seen this leprechaun?
Joe: no, it’s so yeah, that one there is low key kind of slash air.
Like he was, you know, he didn’t do, he didn’t do thriller, so he had to come up with his own kind of low key slash air video. Lionel Richie, I love Lionel Richie, so don’t take this. We’ll get him
Nick: get ’em on the show and have ’em,
Joe: You’re welcome to come on, defend that video.
Melissa: I think to backtrack too, another reason why slasher films stand out in the horror genre, like you were saying. There’s so much to it. There’s so much more intimate and my favorite genre of horror movies is actually creature features. My second one is really [00:20:00] bad.
Oh, the Conjuring series. I love to hate watch it so much. Oh yeah. I love ultra serious bad ghost movies, but slasher
Nick: that super religious overhanging of
Melissa: they’re so bad. I love them.
Jesse/Alana: So
Melissa: Love watching that shit. But slasher films are the ones that like, they’re the only ones that actually terrify me because it’s like, you can reason with ghosts or get an exorcist, you know, creature features, I mean,
Joe: hold on. You can reason with the ghosts?
Melissa: Troll
two kills you.
Like you go to nil bog, you’re like, these things are kind of
Jesse/Alana: Wouldn’t be the worst way to go
Melissa: a plant and eat you. But like slashers they’re terrifying because some of them can be so realistic. There is no compromising with the killer. They have one mission and that’s just stab stab.
And that’s,
Nick: See, but
The part that makes me laugh so much.
Jesse/Alana: step
Melissa: how it’s
Joe: And I think that’s what separates like the predator.
Yeah.
From Being
a slasher. Because he does com if you’re [00:21:00] pregnant or you don’t have a weapon or you’re not engaging in, he, there’s some moral
Geo: also he doesn’t use, he doesn’t use a knife.
Joe: he does. I mean, yeah, he does a lot of times.
Geo: Okay. I was, I guess, I think I can picture everybody holding guns in that. I guess that’s where the people against the predator. Yeah.
Joe: I think there’s like some, from his point of view, there’s some honor in kind of the hand to hand going in, just killing, and he is stalking, he is almost unstoppable. And so that is fits almost.
But then you go, as Melissa was
Jesse/Alana: like a career. A career breaks it, you know, if you’re like a hunter or like a assassin, like that’s, those aren’t slashes, they’re still killing people. Like brutal ways.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Joe: And intimate. Usually you’re very, you’ve been tracking, you’ve been following, you’ve been, you know, stalking in that way.
But the real horror is that you can’t reason. So you are being chased. You can’t reason, and you don’t really, at some point you don’t know why you’re being hunted. Like usually in all these other scenarios, you know why at some point you go, oh yeah, you know, I’m a mercenary. I see why someone’s coming after me, or I used to do this, I know why.
But [00:22:00] here you’re just kind of at the camp trying to get your freak on, and then you get a pitchfork through the chest, right?
Jesse/Alana: There’s no reason, there’s no rhyme. It’s just random, but it’s you and you’re gonna die.
Joe: Yeah.
Melissa: And I think also, it’s also probably, ’cause I’m reading it right now, finally after years, I picked up Helter skelter to
Jesse/Alana: Oh wow. Yep. And
Melissa: and you know, I, oh it’s so good. I’ve listened to podcasts about the Manson murders and all this, but you know, like you were talking like about a moral code.
And I’m like, that’s why I think slasher films are so terrifying because it’s like they had no moral code. It was, you know, it’s disgusting. It’s horrifying. But I still do love slasher films even though they scare the shit outta me.
Disgusting.
and I do love reading about horrible things that happened out of like a anthropological perspective and historical perspective.
Geo: And I think body count, there’s usually a lot.
Yeah. A high body count.
Jesse/Alana: That’s a reason for
sure. Yeah, two Because like psycho, that’s why Psycho
Geo: is
more of a pre [00:23:00] slasher. ’cause
Joe: they’re, I mean,
Nick: have sequels. I’m pretty sure he ups his body
Geo: I’m just considering the first psycho,
Joe: guess you don’t, I mean, do you need a high body count to be, I mean, if you kill four people
I think that’s a
Geo: characteristic of slasher movies. Go is a higher body count.
Joe: yeah.
I think you need a higher body count to go through those phases. Kind of the unaware, the, flight and then the fight. And so I think you have that. And I think in psycho, I mean, I guess you did have the fight at the end. I don’t know if you went through all the stages, you only, you didn’t have enough characters to make your way through that psychological kind of climb.
So Yeah. So I agree. You need numbers, but
Jesse/Alana: He did have a two body count, didn’t he? Did he kill his mom? I thought he killed his mom.
I think it’s just kind of open-ended and we’re not told. Yeah, but so it’s potential two body count two, which is better than one for a slasher, I guess
Joe: three.
Nick: See the having just one for a body count, that’s just you’re kind of a lazy slasher, you
Melissa: That’s just a mistake.
Nick: It’s
Jesse/Alana: we’re gonna
gate
Geo: You need to [00:24:00] get out more.
Jesse/Alana: that’s not enough to be a
Nick: those are rookie numbers. You
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. You gotta bump those numbers away. Way
up
a candyman, I mean, it wasn’t particularly high body count in that movie. We just watched it.
Nick: I assume that he has a higher body count that you don’t
Jesse/Alana: From previous.
Joe: I know,
maybe, But
Nick: that’s not
Joe: the murders they were talking about, they, it was very limited and it was, and there was some,
Nick: wait, what movie are we talking
Joe: Candyman.
Nick: Candyman.
Jesse/Alana: Candyman.
Melissa: in front of a mirror
Jesse/Alana: Oh no.
Melissa: in
Joe: Ow.
Nick: a mirror right there. I was hoping it would work.
Jesse/Alana: Stop it. Five.
times I still don’t do
it.
I don’t do
Melissa: Me neither. I don’t do that. I
Jesse/Alana: I do
Melissa: bloody Mary,
Jesse/Alana: Buddy Mary do that in
the Caprini Green, like target. Yeah,
Melissa: oh, I’ll do Beetlejuice any day. That’s fun.
Jesse/Alana: I don’t
do Bloody
I don’t do that. chaotic gifts. I do all of it. I just, you know,
Geo: Do you do Helen something?
Jesse/Alana: They never Do
Geo: Helen?
Jesse/Alana: do. something. Never.
Joe: I think the other thing with the slasher kind of the other unique thing is the point of view. ’cause [00:25:00] oftentimes you get both the point of view of the actual killer. And then you also get the point of view, which in movies usually don’t switch to the protagonist and antagonist.
Usually you follow one through. But in a lot of, in most slashers, you do get the other viewpoint of the person being slashed and doing the slashing or the actual hunt like your, the prey,
Nick: so would sleepaway camp be considered a slasher then? Like sleepaway camp?
Joe: away
camp?
Melissa: Yeah.
Nick: Yeah.
Really
Jesse/Alana: it would, yeah, she could, she got high body count, I’d say. So
Nick: like it. It does fill most of the, I didn’t see the sequels. I know there’s.
Jesse/Alana: I didn’t know there was a sequel. Oh, there’s a
Melissa: of ’em.
Nick: Yeah.
Joe: Sequels and slashers usually fall off like there’s a steep cliff. Like you have the first one you build
Nick: It really depends
Joe: You throw in everything
Nick: heard good.
I haven’t seen the second or third Terrifier, but I’ve heard great things.
Jesse/Alana: Mm. Yeah.
Melissa: Listen, you guys are dissing Scream for, and I’m not gonna stand for that.
Nick: I didn’t think anyone did Scream. We haven’t even
Melissa: broad.
Nick: Scream up.
Melissa: Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: I know
Nick: [00:26:00] does that one count? ’cause isn’t it a different killer?
Jesse/Alana: I think that
Joe: Well, you can be a different
Jesse/Alana: Oh, that’s 1000% clashes.
Joe: Scream. Definitely. I didn’t see Scream four. I didn’t see
I didn’t see screen four. Like I said
Melissa: four is the bad one. I still have a soft spot for it.
Jesse/Alana: I was wondering, does It Follows count as a slasher or
is that more supernatural?
Yeah. Or is that more of a supernatural horror?
Nick: I’d consider that supernatural.
Jesse/Alana: Yeah, like a supernatural
slasher because you can’t stop it. It’s ans TD that
Geo: That’s that’s kind of like Freddie Kruger. Is he? Because
Jesse/Alana: he’s a dream.
Geo: he visits you in your dreams.
No, but the way he kill you. Yeah. I dunno if that would count. I mean,
Melissa: I
Jesse/Alana: oh spoiler. Oops. Fred Cougar, die movies,
Nick: slash concert. Yeah. I
Melissa: think they are supernatural horror. They’re more psychological
and they’re also better than the Friday, the 13th series.
Jesse/Alana: I do agree there. Yeah. Same. But going back to your like the perspective of the killer and stuff, I think it’s super important film. When I like opened my eyes a little bit was Behind the [00:27:00] Mask Rise of Leslie Vernon. Have you seen that one where it explains like you follow, it’s a kind of a mockumentary kinda thing where you follow the slasher and it talks about oh, this is what I gotta do.
Oh, I like, I have to cut the branch a little bit because I don’t wanna fall down. Like I don’t wanna break my leg and I gotta like still, I gotta get my pacing down. I have to run. Cardio is hard to make yourself look like while you’re walking, but you’re actually running kind of thing.
And that’s like a, you get the whole behind the scenes of why they do it and what makes the Final girl like I always thought it was a super important film with that. It’s really good deep look.
Joe: Yeah, we’ll put that in the show notes. I was gonna say too, that. I mean, thinking fast forward, I had this generational thing, I’d had some notes on that going through the decades and made mention.
But even as we come out, you’ve seen a lot of more movies now with the slasher, much more digitally based artificial intelligence, Megan, which I haven’t seen, but I know the premise of it. And so when you mentioned it follows, that was one also that came like in this other category of its, decade where you are looking at this kind of self as the monster and the likes and the social [00:28:00] aspect, but still fits our definition of slasher or have to modify a little bit.
And I mentioned Supernatural and Freddie Kruger was part of that because people usually throw that in as a slasher,
Nick: do feel like a lot of the slashers do have a supernatural ability.
Joe: Yes. I mean, the Candyman we was
Nick: yes. Uh, they all have something that is like. Mike Myers should not be able to move as fast as he does, like he is, as you said, sprinting across these fields and just walking
Joe: teleportation.
Nick: like Exactly. He’s essentially teleporting. He’s got these supernatural abilities where he’s what died a few, handful
Joe: Also he must have healing fact, right?
I mean, so we start going through it because the
Jesse/Alana: Yeah, he shot Yeah. stuff. Yeah.
Joe: it. It is one of these levels where you go and you’re right, we have to keep it at human because then you start to, other things can, you know, I was thinking like The Crazies,
Jesse/Alana: Oh yeah. Yep.
Joe: it’s not necessarily [00:29:00] a singular person killing, but in some ways, especially the remake, it was much more you were following just a couple people killing and, but really the community was degrading there.
So you had That’s
Nick: the Strangers Too, not the number two, but TOO.
Joe: I didn’t
Nick: they, no, they go into a house, they kill people. It’s just it’s a repeat
Joe: Okay. I see. Yeah.
Nick: that one
Jesse/Alana: Is that like funny games?
Joe: Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah.
Nick: Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: es
Joe: Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah. Would that be a slasher though, because it’s all targeted at one location? They’re not.
Nick: they do move around.
Melissa: I mean, I haven’t seen that in a while and I didn’t like that, and I was like, I guess most of them are like stalking at a teenage house and stuff.
I just, maybe it’s because I don’t like The Strangers that I just blocked it outta my head as a slasher
Jesse/Alana: yeah,
yeah.
Nick: Like it definitely has. I, from what I remember, it’s been five ever since I’ve seen it.
But they were going to different houses and doing this
Melissa: Oh, okay.
Jesse/Alana: oh, that’s [00:30:00] right.
Joe: Okay.
Nick: Like I could be wrong. Someone can fact check me, but
Joe: we’re fact
Jesse/Alana: it’s been a while.
Nick: is there what Yeah it’s one of those movies where it’s oh, I seen that. I know what the hell goes on, and
I don’t care to go back to
Jesse/Alana: it. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. I
Jesse/Alana: I feel like the only one that doesn’t necessarily have some kind of supernatural ness to it is probably psycho.
’cause that’s just Ed Geen based, and that’s just almost even scarier that there’s not a supernatural aspect to, it’s like just human Texas
Oh yeah, that too.
Yep. So that’s a whole family. Yeah, you’re right.
Melissa: Christmas, which I think is like one of the first slasher films. And I love all three versions of it. I think it was the latest one where there’s, it’s not really supernatural. They’re more just like in a cult.
Joe: Black Christmas was the one where you really, you didn’t know the killer at all. I mean, it was still at when that ended, you didn’t know who, like usually there’s some resolution of that aha, that’s, this is the person that’s chasing.
But there was, it was very anonymous. [00:31:00] Had a, an idea, but it, you weren’t sure
Melissa: and
Joe: I didn’t see any other one.
Melissa: The other great Christmas slashers. Oh God, why am I blanking on?
Jesse/Alana: Night.
Deadly night. Oh, my silent night. Deadly night.
Nick: The second one. Oh yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: Oh my God. That’s my favorite Christmas sweater. yeah, super garbage Day.
Yeah, we should do a Silent Night Hot sauce. That’d be fun. Oh yeah.
It’ll just be called Punish.
Nick: punish.
Melissa: Good
Jesse/Alana: I think Lan
Melissa: I mean, Lya, Quigley’s death. And then
Jesse/Alana: oh
oh. So good. I think
wherever Lan Quigley lives is my wife equals a slasher film. He’s my wife. Yeah.
Joe: and I think the other thing in the slash movie I had in is the the, that predator prey kind of response. That you have. And we look at this real life, you know that predators usually are they’re camouflaged, they go slow, they hunt, they stalk.
Then you have the prey who you have. Once again, I keep going these stages because I think that sets, that helps that, that can help us distinguish between some of these horror [00:32:00] films that kind of are on the edge between the kind of sub genres and, you have the prey, you have the startled, freeze response.
Then you do have a run response, and then you do have at some level a fight response and you have this kind of situation that you go through in, in, in these kind of phases. So you can also start filtering and maybe through some evolutionary. I have a few other thoughts about evolution,
Nick: What’s the thing in the brain that makes people make terrible decisions during these things?
Jesse/Alana: stupidity.
Joe: no,
Nick: I mean, most of the time they’re sober. Like in more recent ones they’re pretty sober. Yeah. They’re just, every character is just so
Jesse/Alana: I mean, if they all listen to me, they survive the movies, but they don’t,
and that’s just rude. I
Joe: I think you gotta blame the writer the writing of convenience.
’cause even in Halloween if you just lock a door, right? I tell like the, my boys is lock the door because if you lock the door, you probably would stop most they would just move along. Or they break it down, you hear it, you get some [00:33:00] audio , cue that something’s happened at your, , your secure entry and maybe you should be on alert.
But usually the door’s just left open. It’s I’m just gonna walk in there and sneak in there, you know?
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. Michael’s got the mind of a child. You can just lock a door.
You’re fine. He doesn’t know how to use it.
No open. No go
Joe: Yeah. They don’t have pick locking skills. That’s not it. You know, they’re not
Nick: stop it.
Joe: you know, picking a lock. But yeah, no, I think you’re right.
There’s some plot convenience that has to happen in a lot of these that people have to go into a particular room or a particular place. And it might not be logical, but that’s also, as viewers watching that, are we learning about these situations? Are we learning about
Jesse/Alana: I was gonna say, like I, I look at slasher movies as like a learning experience. What would I do in this situa, not that, but like
Melissa: yeah,
definitely don’t separate,
Jesse/Alana: never hide for the whole movie. Hide till they walk away. Then run the opposite direction.
Like
Nick: you can see them, they can probably see you.
Jesse/Alana: That’s
Joe: right.
Jesse/Alana: That’s usually the life. Yeah. Always run. Yeah, that’s
the [00:34:00] thing. Never hide because they have all the time in the world you don’t
And you don’t, yeah,
just run
Joe: on you, you’re kind of locked. They’re gonna keep, you know, once they identify this group of people, then it feels like that’s
Jesse/Alana: they’re locked in.
Joe: once again. That’s also written that way. Maybe in the real world they’ll see some other group and then wander off that way.
’cause is it just a killing? That’s the motivation, right? So we’d say they’re unmotivated, but maybe there is some motivation to the killing. And usually sometimes there is some moral thing. A parent was abusive or a mom didn’t love them or they didn’t get hugs or a girlfriend dumped ’em. And so you have this whole thing where there is some thing where they would specifically, they’re just hunting out women, let’s say or men for let’s say.
And then you have this thing, but you just got in way, you were just a casualty of kind of the hunt.
Jesse/Alana: I mean like In a Violent Nature, I think. Was that the movie?
I think it’s like the one that’s a POV behind the slasher. Where Oh,
that’s one of my favorites.
Yeah. That’s fun. And it’s
Where someone else would make a noise and get in the way and it’s okay, I’m going over here now. So like [00:35:00] it’s just on this full brutality force.
Yeah. No rhyme or reason. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. Once you start, then are you just down
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. You cut my eye and now you dead. And then That’s it. until something else
Yeah, Oh, my March two awards, my ultimate goal, right? It’s you’re hiding in that. Oh,
cool. Sounds good.
Joe: You’re done. So you have that.
So I,
Jesse/Alana: found you I have to say, Kevin Bacon was one of the first
Dreamboat
Geo: first people victim of a Yeah, he was, Yeah, that’s right.
And anytime I can mention Kevin Bacon, I do. That
I know
Joe: there
Jesse/Alana: that was my second Kevin Bacon movie ever. And it was
Joe: yeah.
Jesse/Alana: well worth it. I loved it.
Joe: Good old Kevin Bacon.
And Friday the 13th, if people are wondering. Yeah. Do you got the dates on that?
The
the
Geo: first Friday the 13th,
Joe: anything which didn’t have a, Jason,
Jesse/Alana: Was that 19 80, 81
said
Joe: something in there. Yeah, that sounds
Geo: I’d have to look. Yeah. I could look
Joe: my year? So I
Geo: I could look.
Jesse/Alana: shorts on. That’s all I know.
Nick: But [00:36:00] yeah I do feel like even in like horror video games, they have started to make it
harder for you to think rationally. Okay.
Love the what resident evil games. They’ve been doing some fantastic games where it’s like, what was seven was absolutely terrifying. And you’re stuck in this what swamp house?
Louisiana. Where you are trying to get outta this house and find Mia, which is his fiance
that was kidnapped and then, yeah. I don’t know. Story. It’s taking a minute to remember, but yeah it’s definitely giving you more of a, okay, you can’t just do exactly what you would in real life, so we’re gonna make sure that you have to do this puzzle to get through this door so you can get this
Jesse/Alana: Can’t progress the story. Yeah, for sure.
Joe: yeah.
Nick: you can’t just go that’s all terrible. I’m just gonna walk outside and leave.
Joe: I
Jesse/Alana: scream the whole time
Joe: door or whatever. Usually the movie will be over relatively quickly. If you could, if you sealed off these things, you would kind of end it. If the [00:37:00] campers listen about the haunted story and go, you know what, maybe we’ll go the other way to the other lake and
Jesse/Alana: but then there’d be no movie.
Joe: you know? That’d be a very teenagers
Geo: listening. I don’t know if that’d be
Joe: it’d be a very different movie.
Jesse/Alana: Then also overkill.
Whenever you catch the slash air, they always just hit ’em once and run
like no. Like we’re always like, overkill. Overkill. You need to overkill.
Nick: Make sure they’re
Jesse/Alana: Please. I’ll take the jail time. I’m doing overkill.
Nick: I think you would avoid jail
Jesse/Alana: it.
Yeah.
it’s self defense.
Nick: I’m
Jesse/Alana: I’m not playing with
that. dismembered
Self-defense.
Joe: have to you probably need to cut a hand off or ankle. I mean some feet, I mean something. I mean you really, you, but
Nick: burn the body,
Joe: then is
Jesse/Alana: let the body stay in one piece
Joe: If you do that, what should be a, I don’t know if there’s a movie like this where you go and you actually have this real thought of dismembering the slasher and you become the next slasher.
Melissa: Yeah, so if they thought about it though and actually killed the killer at the end of the [00:38:00] movie, there wouldn’t be sequels.
Joe: Wait,
what? The, so what The person who killed them
Melissa: Oh, they
Joe: become the new slasher.
They all, they’ll become psychologically. Now I need to write this. I’m just gonna go, you
Melissa: You should write that. I
Nick: You should write that because this is gonna
Jesse/Alana: they got the taste for blood now and it.
Joe: yeah.
I wanna write this story.
Melissa: I like that.
Jesse/Alana: Do it. I’d watch it. That’s a fun one. That sounds like fun.
Joe: Yeah. I don’t know any story where they do that,
Jesse/Alana: I know there’s like bloodlines like there’s like bloodline ones are for sure ones where they continue, but not like where you kill it and you become
Joe: Because to ultimately kill the, hunter that the actual
Nick: killing the hunter. You become the hunter, like
Joe: almost dismember.
You really have to go crazy. And you’re right, people usually stop short of that, and then they get up and the hunt keeps going on for the sequels. But if you actually go and you’re that psychotic then you become the slasher.
is that what happened in Grady Hendrix’s Final Girl?
Melissa: Oh yeah, that did happen.
Joe: It didn’t happen there.
Melissa: I love that
Joe: I love that book. Yeah, that was a good book. But I’m trying to think, is that the,
Yeah, God,
Geo: I love [00:39:00] that too. But
Melissa: killer is, you give away the,
Joe: I no, I’m
Geo: not, I’m trying.
Joe: but I’m like,
Geo: Yeah, no spoilers.
Joe: okay. All right. But yeah,
Jesse/Alana: then I feel like that killer would have to, You should
Melissa: write it
though.
You should write it.
Jesse/Alana: That killer. The killer Who killed the killer then.
Would already have to be psychologically like predisposed to pick
it up or unless that
was, a
Melissa: of us are going
Geo: I was gonna say the possibility of becoming a slasher at this point is really
Jesse/Alana: and closer every day.
Geo: It really
Jesse/Alana: I mean They
framed Sidney Prescott and and scream too of you’re the killer because you did that.
Yeah.
but it wasn’t true. thing to tip you over.
That
sound you become
were they already crazy or did that make them I How many times on this show have I said that if I had superpowers, I’d become a villain? It’s
Joe: most people would. I think you
Jesse/Alana: Yeah, you have to be.
But growing up is learning that the villains weren’t necessarily wrong. Like Magneto.
Melissa: You a villain or are you
Nick: mentally
Geo: right. Mentally challenged. The people that people say are the, I’m
Nick: beat up this [00:40:00] poor person.
Geo: The people that they say are heroes are actually no villains.
Jesse/Alana: immediately. Thought of Batman. I’m like going around, beating
up
Ill and
Joe: but that’s the thing about the slasher is that there is no moral, you watch it, you, there’s no redeemable qualities generally. I’m trying to think, is there any, but no, I think usually you go, no, I know who’s good in this situation and who’s bad.
And even it could be marginal, right? Because the people that are being killed, you might not think they’re the most redeemable humans. But then you some of them are kinda dicks,
Nick: I mean, what about Dexter? Is he considered a slasher then? Like he’s constantly,
Joe: constantly,
Geo: a well, yeah. Yeah. But he, I think
He definitely,
Melissa: a moral
Nick: He
Geo: was gonna say he makes those decisions.
Joe: And he cleans it up. I mean, he has a whole process like slashers. They don’t, they go in
Nick: I’m just gonna,
Joe: and there’s gonna leave the scene buddy and then walk off
Jesse/Alana: there’s a clear divide between serial killers and slashers, it sounds yeah. Like it’s brains basically.
Geo: I don’t know. We’re splitting here into this
Joe: else.
I mean, that’s what I’ve been given some kind of thing. But the other [00:41:00] thing that was interesting and looked at the ecology of fear, and it’s this concept that, you know, based on this prey predator kind of thing, where the prey modified their behavior because a predator exists nearby. And so you have this whole kind of situation so that the setting, the campsite, the house, the high school, wherever you have this predator, and then that changes the whole dynamic.
It, it increases. Now the fear, some space that wasn’t necessarily you should be fearful of or have fear to be in now becomes this very heightened. And so the psychology of fear kind of cooks in. And so most all slasher movies have that. In there versus a serial killer movie.
Geo: I think a lot of times, I mean I guess if nobody knows there’s a serial killer, then they wouldn’t be.
But that goes back to, but for a lot of communities, if there is a serial killer that hasn’t been caught, that’s exactly what it’s like.
Joe: right. You get that kind of mode.
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. Somewhere that should [00:42:00] be safe is not anymore. Yeah.
Nick: Now do you guys think technology will start to affect. You know, we the new serial killers,
Jesse/Alana: Oh, I,
Nick: everyone has a cell phone I have a fun fact on
on that. Oh, what you got?
Jesse/Alana: There’s actually more serial killers today. Then there were in like the sixties, seventies where we get all of our serial killers, like from
Nick: it ’cause
Jesse/Alana: the night stalker and everything, because
Nick: we’re able to know about it
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. It’s kind of like they, we have the knowledge and the technology. Now. So there are actually way more serial killers in the United States now than there were like, where we get all the famous serial killers from. We just
catch ’em faster. Is that it?
No, they just don’t tell us.
Oh my God.
One in Chicago right now, actually.
Nick: Are they just not were the old ones not known about
Jesse/Alana: I think so. Or it was like
known more ’cause it was a newer thing. Like I just keep going back to the night stalker and how he terrorized [00:43:00] LA and everything. And everybody knew that it was happening, but they didn’t know who it was.
But now I think it’s just more like on the down low and people can cover tracks easier. I don’t have all the science or the facts
behind it, but a, I mean, we live in a surveillance state
Yeah. You’d think it’d be harder,
but like there’s more right let us know. Let us
know how you’re doing it.
Use an email at Yeah.
Nick: rabbit hole of research.com.
Melissa: another like tangent or rabbit hole of that you can get down to is technology creating more serial killers or can it, and then also will that change. Slasher films like you had said, Megan, is it gonna be more technological based?
Is it gonna be like an AI
Jesse/Alana: or like, like Scream and
stuff?
Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa: yes. Are we gonna have an actual Terminator wasn’t a slasher though.
Nick: A, he
Joe: He had one
Jesse/Alana: he had a job. That’s the thing. He had a career and that was, yeah.
He’s a man. Yeah.
Joe: with the house, like they have the AI house and they [00:44:00] kill the family.
Melissa: Killed the
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. Yeah.
Nick: t2. I mean that
Joe: why it’s doing it.
It is
Melissa: Chopping Mall was a good one.
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. That is that is actually one of our hot sauces, I forgot to mention, bought blood. It’s called Bot Blood. It’s Chopping Mall. That’s
Melissa: slasher, but I mean maybe, I mean, it was, it had a single purpose and that was just to kill.
Joe: I wonder if you’ll have these crossovers where you have like now, like a bio horror will that come back and people out for vengeance or something’s been affected.
They now go through and kill targeted, applications.
Jesse/Alana: You can say The invisible man. Remember that movie that was like 20 pre pandemic, was it? Or it was The one where he used like the skin suit
the yeah. Technology to go kill.
Yeah.
Joe: Yep.
Which, that’s what you do if you’re invisible.
Jesse/Alana: Heather doing it now. Yeah.
That’s it. So I think
Joe: you would have
this. Didn’t Kevin
Geo: Bacon play a role like that?
Joe: Kevin Bacon was in Hollow Man.
Geo: Hollow man. That was it.
Jesse/Alana: Man.
Man.
Joe: and yeah,
Geo: Oh, and it was 1980,
Joe: Yeah.
Geo: Friday.
the 13th, 1980. I was like,
Joe: no, Hollow Man didn’t
Jesse/Alana: Nailed it. I was like Hollow man.
I saw that in
theaters. [00:45:00] Whoa. I’m not that old.
Joe: Yeah. But I mean, and so you, you have this and you know these kind of points where you go. Then I had the final girl when the really maybe think about that and why it is a final girl and had some kind of an evolutionary terms that you have this person that at the end of this journey have now shown resilience have shown sexual selection in terms of evolution, that you have this person now that there would be a good mate.
And so you have this kind of thing where especially for a woman to have survived this very traumatic thing and come out on top, they are now then even extra , they stand out in a community of women like, oh, this is a person we need to. Reproduce with and get some good genes resilient genes to pass on’
Jesse/Alana: There’s
so much growth with a final girl. Yeah. They’re normally super meek and then like they become That’s right. Yeah. A lot. By the
end of
it, there’s no holds bar.
Joe: about we, that’s [00:46:00] calling back to our very primal,
Geo: and I know that you watch a movie, so you see the whole story, but in a way you gotta have a final girl. To tell the story. To tell, you know what I mean?
Joe: Yeah.
You never have afin, I mean, there’s few movies with the final
Jesse/Alana: Do. maybe.
it’s, I don’t
know
Joe: because
Jesse/Alana: Final I’m the final boy. The,
Joe: gonna,
keep the, we got Girl and I’m gonna go with boy. Not,
I’m not gonna
Jesse/Alana: No, it’s an, it’s a yeah. You can’t just jump to Final Man.
That’s disrespectful. That’s
just rude.
Joe: They’re the final man.
Jesse/Alana: Tell me, tell me what happened. I’m the final boy.
Melissa: What do we
Joe: that’s a different movie.
Melissa: makes the final girl? Like I, I always joke, I’m like, I’d like to think I have final girl energy because I’m not dumb enough to run up the stairs where there’s no exit. And you know, I’ve trained for marathons and stuff, but I’m like, I liked that the guy had final ground energy.
But I also know me and I know I’m crazy and I’d probably go try to be like, everyone get the hell outta here, I’ll fight him. And
Jesse/Alana: I [00:47:00] feel like that
Joe: on
Melissa: end
Jesse/Alana: Yeah.
Joe: it depends on I, I brought
Jesse/Alana: probably
not
Joe: depends on where you’re at in the scenario, right?
Melissa: I mean, I’m also crazy enough, maybe I could be,
Joe: if you’re in the cooler looking for a beer, and then someone comes out the bushes, you’re the first of the first good
Jesse/Alana: Oh, good
point.
Joe: you’re not,
Jesse/Alana: the mercy
Joe: this, you don’t have the opportunity to
There’s these phases of the slasher.
Nick: I’m pretty sure you’ve also been killed already,
Melissa: yeah.
Jesse/Alana: yeah.
You’ve been killed in Kili pinata.
Melissa: Oh yes I have. And I did come
Jesse/Alana: back,
That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. You did come back in too. And part of the chain gang, you and I are in the chain gang.
Yeah, really
Joe: a slasher. You’re on the wrong side of the fence. You keep talking about how you’re the
Jesse/Alana: ooh,
Mel.
Nick: the slasher?
Joe: The
I,
Jesse/Alana: Okay, so
Melissa died and then she came back in the second one. So maybe you are the final girl. No, we’re talking about how you’ve gotten the energy of talk to Steven. I had
Melissa: I had a different idea for the third movie for Killer Pinata that I told him about, but I’m like, I think we need to evolve it.
Geo: And the third
pinata. the third killer Pinata was supposed to feature our podcast. Yeah, [00:48:00] too.
Joe: We’re gonna
have a chest busting scene with the
Melissa: And then
Joe: bursting
out during an interview about
Melissa: And then the pinata’s
Jesse/Alana: amazing. Amazing, amazing.
Joe: gonna be, we’re gonna be talking about the Handwavium of the Killer Pinata and it’s gonna yeah.
We had we’re in it. We wrote ourselves into that. So we do that course. This whole
Melissa: this whole thing works and ties in because if the pinata is part of it and I am the slasher, like kind of the working with the pinatas
Jesse/Alana: the Wait, is the pinata a slasher real talk? Oh,
Nick: Oh,
Joe: yeah. I say so.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: pinata. Can’t
stop it.
Angry. Angry Mule Productions Killer. Pinata Is the pinata. Slasher
Joe: all the elements there. I think that we’ve talked
Nick: can we get ’em on the phone?
Joe: Let’s call him
Jesse/Alana: Let’s call. Yeah. It’s like
Geo: wasn’t there
Jesse/Alana: humanoid.
Geo: I was gonna say there’s kind of super, I mean, we’ve determined that Supernatural gets into there
Jesse/Alana: I do feel like Jason too. I mean Jason Boy in the lake.
Joe: Yeah.
Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: I
do feel like for Final Girl, there has to be like some kind of. Like she, she [00:49:00] was meek and all this stuff, but she like kind of finds herself through the terror. That’s like what makes the final girl.
Joe: That’s why Melissa’s out already. She’s coming in too confident.
Jesse/Alana: I don’t think you and I are the final girls. I think we’re, I think we’re the ones who died because we’re like, let’s get ’em like
Joe: you’re in the middle, you’re in that fight phase or you’re gonna be caught off guard
Jesse/Alana: Don’t worry. It’s gonna I’ll be with you. We’ll fight ’em
off. yeah, fine.
Melissa: little flight in me.
Joe: fi. We’ll find a final
Jesse/Alana: Oh, I’m a big, I’m a
big
throw what’s ever in my hand and I book it. That’s my
Joe: We have the final girl and or final boy will reveal themselves when Melissa wants to go fight. And it’s say, you know what? Why don’t you go do that?
I’m gonna go
Jesse/Alana: yeah. I
think I’m gonna go call 9 1 1 really quick.
Joe: aren’t you supposed to be a man? No, I’m the final
Jesse/Alana: Listen, I’m a boy. I’m just a boy.
So what a boy. Just a
final boy.
Melissa: of this later.
Joe: later,
down.
Yeah, I’m done.
Yeah.
All
Nick: right.
You guys have any plugs you wanna hit up? That was a weird way of putting that
Joe: say [00:50:00] final, like can you ask the question again?
Jesse/Alana: Like, my favorite Uh, well, yeah. He
comes on Saturdays. Mark
Nick: You got any plugs you want stab in?
Jesse/Alana: Yeah, we I think what we have, we mostly just kind of do markets now.
We’ve kind of died down a little bit. We used to have a web store for slasher sauces but DM us on Instagram and stuff. But the only thing we have, I think coming up is the Krampus market which is December 7th at old Irving Brewing Company. And I think we’ll be selling markets so you can test all the hot sauces.
Everything’s, all of our bottles are $8 regardless. We try and keep it low so
you don’t have to choose between price and flavor. You can, and you can taste them all before you buy ’em. We provide the chips
Nick: and you’re not even murdering us with the price.
Jesse/Alana: No, not today. not today happening
Geo: With the sauce. With
Melissa: isn’t it? If you buy all of them, you slash the
Jesse/Alana: price.
my
god. My god. You’re right.
Yeah. If you buy a full run of all eight, seven,
Six now I think,
sorry, six of the hot sauces. Sure. Then you we cut you a deal. We’ll slash you a deal. [00:51:00] Yeah.
Joe: Lemme put all those links in the show notes and so
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. And we deliver to anywhere in a 6 0 6 area code for free, so
If you’re Chicago land, we’ll drop it off at your doorstep.
Land Chicago area, not land. 6 0 6 only. We’ll drop it off at your doorstep.
Melissa: it is.
Geo: we’re out. We’re out.
Jesse/Alana: Work if you’re
Melissa: in Burwin,
Jesse/Alana: we don’t drop to Berwyn anymore.
No more Berwin.
Joe: No more. Cool.
Geo: How about Melissa? Melissa?
Melissa: We’ve got October is like our biggest month, so we’ve got a few things, but ones I would love to highlight some of the shows coming up. We have Black Mariah Theater and they are definitely like spooky awesome. And they’re playing here on October 23rd. They’re a touring band. We have Cartoon Graveyard with Chicken Happen and Homicidal October 17th.
And then we have some other fun stuff coming up. We have a cycling club the day before Halloween where we’re gonna ride out and look at all the haunted houses in Avondale. And that night there’s a show [00:52:00] where bands play other bands. So we have King Sands as the White Stripes, a band as the Hives, a band as Ween.
And then I’m doing a vinyl DJ night where I’m doing like spooky dance party in between the sets and afterwards. So that’s gonna be really fun. And then actual Halloween, we’re just doing karaoke.
Jesse/Alana: I’ll see you on actual Halloween. We’ll be here.
Melissa: Heck yeah.
Costume party with cash prize for best costumes.
Geo: Nice.
Jesse/Alana: We’re We’re
going as a Peewee Herman Munster and
Gorilla,
Melissa: I love
Geo: that
because
Jesse/Alana: got a Gorilla costume from Spirit Halloween.
Joe: Very good.
so
yeah. So then we can go around, maybe get everyone’s, and the one thing I was gonna say is that the horror slasher genre, it had some, but has become an international kind of
Jesse/Alana: Mm-hmm.
Joe: And so you have slasher movies, this genre, you know, which probably started out mostly American and rooted in our.[00:53:00]
Ultraviolent, culture has now spread out into others. Yeah. Really cool.
Jesse/Alana: Infiltrated
Joe: show notes, but yeah, if we have wanna go around favorite slasher movie or one you’ll recommend to the listeners out there, like what they should check out and we mention a lot, so we, if we repeat, that’s okay.
But yeah. Wanna start to kick us off,
Jesse/Alana: Yeah.
I said it before. I really recommend Behind The Mask, The Rise Of Leslie Vernon. It’s everything that we were talking about, they discussed, they explain like what makes a final girl, how it works, all that stuff.
It’s kind of like a deep dive into the slasher genre. So I recommend that one. I like it a lot and I have the mask.
Joe: And you’ve got the mask.
Jesse/Alana: Ooh, I’m still torn. that. Yeah. I think I might have to go with Creep actually, ’cause I like how it’s, yeah. I feel like
that works. And it’s dulo. I gotta go with the Dubo bro. Dubo brothers, Dubo whatever. Mark
Dubois
Dub Dubo. That’s a good one. No, yeah. I like how it’s also kind of like behind the scenes you get to see into the [00:54:00] killer’s mind and see how it happens.
Also, it’s kind of just, it’s ridiculous and funny and stupid and I love it so much. So that’s probably one of my, one of my toughest Creep. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa?
Melissa: This is a tough one. It’s kind of, I do love Scream. So Scream will probably be my number one.
Jesse/Alana: That’s what I was torn between. Yeah.
Melissa: scream is more of a parody. So if we’re going for like traditional, I would go with Black Christmas.
I
Joe: oh yeah.
Melissa: absolutely love that movie. It gets back to the basic slashing. And then also at the end of this, I forgot to plug the Midnight Movie Trivia. So I’ll send you the link for that
Joe: definitely. We’ll put it all in the show notes there. Have that for folks. Nick, you’ve been studying hards.
Jesse/Alana: Sorry, but you took my Creep and I’m thrown off,
so many movies out there
that’s I’m like, oh yeah, I want to say something else then.
Nick: Because you know, there are so many good horror films that are just I
Georgia
go ahead and I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go in a
Joe: You’ve been bouncing.
Oh,
Nick: I’ve been bouncing all
Geo: Yeah.
[00:55:00] You know what, I was actually gonna say. Black Christmas.
Melissa: It’s a good one.
Geo: It’s really good.
Yeah, it’s,
Yeah. And of course Psycho. I mean Psycho.
Joe: Yeah.
Go check it out. See what you think about that body
Geo: But I think it was so fascinating that you said Alfred Hitchcock made the first Yeah.
Proto
Joe: That’s
Geo: Slasher the Lodge, which I don’t think I’ve seen it, and I’m even know when
Joe: When I saw
Geo: I’m huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, so I’m gonna go watch that.
Joe: Yeah.
Nick: Joe, what about you?
Joe: How’d it come to me? I’m like last, I’m no one.
Nick: Yeah, go for
Geo: it. You’re the final boy.
Joe: I’m the FI
Jesse/Alana: are you the final
boy? The final boy?
Nick: the final boy
Jesse/Alana: is the final boy right
here,
Nick: the,
final boy. So
Joe: right. So there, it’s no surprise to listeners of this podcast that I’m a John Carpenter fan.
so Halloween,
of course, but I’m gonna throw one out The Fog
Jesse/Alana: Oh,
It
is,
Joe: It is one of my, I think it’s just such a fun movie. And they did have, they were actually after something, but they, the way they just went through that town,
Jesse/Alana: it was slash
Joe: [00:56:00] it was very
Geo: I don’t know if that
Joe: It was, yeah. No, they came, they were the pirates, you know, it was, yeah.
They back.
Jesse/Alana: I
could see it. I agree.
I
Joe: what I’m saying. And the
not the first
Geo: movie that would come to my mind. Flash. I
Joe: Halloween already. John Carpenter, he has,
Geo: I’m just giving you a hard time.
The other one
Joe: was Hellraiser. Oh yeah.
oh.
Jesse/Alana: Oh yeah.
Nick: oh, I
Joe: I think that was the other one I really love. Yeah, that’s right.
Clive
Melissa: Barker.
Joe: And yeah, I think you have that. And both of those, you watch Clive Barker movies or John Carpenter movies in their horror you’re gonna have a good time. They, they know how to make a good movie. So I,
Nick: I, I think I am gonna end with Sleepaway Camp though, so I know it’s a little bit of a problematic, like the, if you go through and watch it again right now, you’re like, ah, that ending yeah. But I hope they’re they’re remaking it right now and I hope that they tweak the ending a little bit.
Jesse/Alana: like it was maybe needed for the
Nick: Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: So it’d be like, Hey, there’s, everybody’s body’s different, you know,
Nick: but I feel like it nowadays it
Jesse/Alana: maybe didn’t roll over [00:57:00] so well to
2025.
Nick: why I’m like,
yeah,
Jesse/Alana: it did have some really good kills.
Nick: Like I, it was just a fun,
Jesse/Alana: that’s all that counts.
Nick: it was a fun
Jesse/Alana: a Yeah.
Nick: it’s weird to say.
Yeah.
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. So it came, it was funny.
Yeah, it was fun.
I think all slasher movies are fun. I think that’s, we all agree on
that. Yeah.
I’d say, I’d say they’re fun.
Joe: Yeah.
I mean, I didn’t mention, but like someone watching that it’s almost like microdosing fear.
Jesse/Alana: Yes.
Joe: start watching it. Yeah. And you get kind of desensitized and you do have to amp it up.
And I mentioned this
Jesse/Alana: No, I agree.
Joe: watching like horror, The Thing when I was six, seven. And so like now for a horror movie to really do it, it not only has to have all the kills, but it also has to be written really well, filmed really well. It has to be a really good
Jesse/Alana: I need a Hereditary to scare me now.
Like
Joe: you
Geo: oh,
Jesse/Alana: Yeah. oh,
he got me.
Geo: I the ending.
Joe: Yeah,
Geo: know
Jesse/Alana: ending.
didn’t get me, but The but the leading, but
Geo: move. Oh yeah. [00:58:00] Oh my
Jesse/Alana: didn’t,
realize my shoulders were up to my ears till the credits
rolled and I, was like, oh, relax.
Geo: I have to agree. Yeah. Yeah. And Tony Collette is,
Joe: I know you’re a huge Tony Colette. George
Melissa: I love her.
Joe: Tony Collette all the time yeah. So another fun month of horror. We have this episode here you’re listening to, and then after this we are gonna do the thing, John carpenter’s a thing.
We have Bill Haliar or Todd Berg going as guests with
Nick: Hopefully we’ll get that Ouija board done.
Joe: We’re not doing Ouija board,
Jesse/Alana: I have one you can borrow.
Joe: so No, we’re done
Melissa: They’re looking for a spot to do it. And I said, absolutely
freaking
Jesse/Alana: go to the Labile Woods. You can
do it there. Before
Joe: cut off though, in our last episode, we wanted to know you, you had mentioned, Melissa, that the ghost of Reed’s Local likes gin.
How did that come about?
Oh,
Melissa: okay. So we had some ghost hunters here and they this is part of the reason I refuse to do a Ouija board is every time I’ve gone ghost hunting, they’re always like, oh, it’s [00:59:00] you.
You’re the conduit. We never see as much activity as we do as when you’re here. I’ve had my hair pulled out of my head and like the radio frequency thing, it goes, I like her. And I’m like, I’m getting the fuck outta here. Absolutely
Jesse/Alana: like you. No
thank
Melissa: I’ve heard like an Oculus box, one of those things where it like spits out words and like I was holding it.
There was no activity, so they turned everything off. This wasn’t here, this was at another location. They turned everything off and then, I said, okay, I guess there’s nothing happening. And it says, no wait. And then all the lights started to flicker in the room after they turned off
Jesse/Alana: Oh, that’s cute.
Melissa: And then I threw the Oculus and it said, sorry. And I’m like, are you kidding me? And they’re like, oh, that’s ’cause of you. So here at the bar, there was no activity. And I said, okay, there’s nothing happening, but you know, thanks Ghost for letting us like bother you. I’m gonna pour you some whiskey.
And the Oculus box said, no gin. And I said,
Jesse/Alana: oh geez.
Melissa: Okay. So this ghost is a 1920s ghost. Got it. Because I think I told you like this has been a [01:00:00] bar since the thirties, but it was a mortuary before that. And that’s something we found out a few years Right.
Nick: I just thought
Jesse/Alana: at the height of gangster
Nick: other are living here.
Thank you again, Melissa for
Melissa: Thank you
Nick: hosting
us
Jesse/Alana: and thank you for having
Joe: Yeah. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to try.
Geo: I can’t.
Melissa: I have some here. You guys can sample
Joe: Oh, definitely.
Jesse/Alana: Oh, no, they’re all getting bottles, so I brought some.
Yeah.
Joe: Oh, thank you. Thank you. You got me
Nick: you got Nick?
Joe: got Nick? We got Nick.
Geo: Georgia.
Joe: got Georgia.
Melissa: Oh,
Jesse/Alana: Melissa,
Jesse and you got Alana.
Joe: got Al, and we got Alana.
Nick: And we cut down through some holes, down
and we slash some holes.
Joe: All right, y’all stay Curious.
Stay safe out there,
Nick: Goodbye.
Joe: and we love y’all.