Carpenter's psychiatric-hospital inspiration; the fear meter; The Babysitter Murders script; California locations; Carpenter's $10,000 fee; character-name origins; the station wagon's fate; the Orange Grove Avenue houses
The hosts report that Carpenter toured a psychiatric hospital in college and met a child who stared at him with "a look of evil," the source of the blackest-eyes idea. — Chris Ryan
The hosts report the film was shot out of sequence in 20 days, so Carpenter created a fear meter for Jamie Lee. — Chris Ryan
The hosts report the original script, The Babysitter Murders, took place over several days and became one day for budget reasons. — Chris Ryan
The hosts point to Southern California shooting visible in palm trees, California plates, and a hardware store on Genesee. — Chris Ryan
The hosts report that the producer heard as "Yoblins" and Akkad paid Carpenter $10,000 to write, direct and score, that the same producer suggested Halloween, that Carpenter pictured an old haunted-house film, and that the script took 10 days. — Chris Ryan
Name origins as the hosts give them: Haddonfield from Hill's New Jersey hometown, Bowling Green street names, Laurie Strode an old girlfriend, Michael Myers a producer, Tommy Doyle a Rear Window homage, Sam Loomis a Psycho homage, and Brackett after a screenwriter. — Chris Ryan
The hosts report the 1978 Ford LTD station wagon was rented from the Illinois government, auctioned in 1981, left in a barn for 37 years and restored; the host wants it and guesses $95,000 to $100,000. — Chris Ryan
The hosts say the two homes are on Orange Grove Avenue, chosen for few palm trees, between Sunset and Franklin. — Chris Ryan
The hosts say Pleasence was the third choice and that Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee both turned it down because the pay was too low; Lee, remembered as Dracula, would have been weird casting. — Bill Simmons
Cushing was coming off Star Wars; Star Wars and Halloween back to back would have been iconic. — Bill Simmons
The hosts describe Pleasence as having peaked as a Bond guy and being in The Great Escape, and say he hosted Saturday Night Live in 1981, is considered one of the weirdest hosts, and kept going through the sequels. — Chris Ryan
The hosts say Carpenter wanted Anne Lockhart, daughter of June Lockhart from Lassie, but she was in other stuff, so they went with Jamie Lee, whose mom was in Psycho. — Chris Ryan
The hosts say Dennis Quaid, then dating P. J. Soles, was supposed to be Bob but was doing another movie, and tell a screening story in which Quaid offers to fight a heckler. — Chris Ryan
A six-year-old killing his older sister still bothers the speaker, who thinks his own daughter could fend one off even sitting down. — Bill Simmons
Casting Jamie Lee as the daughter of a Psycho star was a big deal in 1978, when Psycho had only been out 15 years, but no longer matters. — Bill Simmons
Myers still struggles with the killing, with the raw tools there but not yet formed, compared to a young basketball player. — Chris Ryan
The sexual-subtext reading, as a host lays it out: the virgin survives while flirting with the killer, sings "I wish I had you all alone," and keeps leaving phallic objects (knitting needle, knife, wire hanger) near Myers; the host quotes Carpenter on her repressed energy. — Chris Ryan
The reading is doubted as more thought than the filmmakers put in; Carpenter is said to have "whistled a couple of different tunes," earlier saying she lived because she was least distracted. — Chris Ryan
The disturbing, effective trigger is that his sister is having sex, with Laurie as her proxy. — Chris Ryan
Halloween 2 and H2O make Laurie his sister, which muddles the subtext; franchises of that era were retrofitted with "spit and dental floss." — Chris Ryan
Horror conditioned audiences to expect couples who walk off to have sex to die, through the nineties and maybe the 2000s; with 20 days and three babysitters, the filmmakers likely did not overthink it. — Bill Simmons
Most sequels: keep Halloween 1, a flawed Halloween 2 with some of Loomis's best stuff, H2O and the 2018 film; Halloween 4 is enjoyed, and Season of the Witch has defenders the host resists. — Bill Simmons
The other host has no further aged-worst picks; everything else is nitpicks. — Chris Ryan
The segment opens with a warning of Loomis monologue impressions; some people would pick the five-minute single-shot opening, likened to the Goodfellas shot. — Chris Ryan
The opening is left out of the picks: the older sister never stands up to a six-year-old with a butcher knife, the teenage boyfriend is upstairs only about two and a half minutes, and the parents just stare at Michael holding the bloody knife. — Chris Ryan
Loomis driving to Illinois State Hospital in the rain with the nurse Marion: patients wandering in gowns, no backup, Loomis running ahead to the phone while Myers takes the station wagon, and Loomis partly to blame. — Chris Ryan
The three girls walking home from school carrying books, Myers driving by in the wagon, and the "Speed kills" exchange; the speaker might own a Speed Kills coffee mug. — Chris Ryan
Their banter sets up the archetypes; the speaker's mom called the dialogue bad, while Debra Hill supposedly wrote the girls' scenes, and Annie's meanness to Laurie rings true for a friend group you are stuck with. — Chris Ryan
Laurie's crush on Ben Tramer and the sheriff bumping into her with "Everyone's entitled to one scare" are also liked; the sheriff is a little creepy. — Chris Ryan
Annie's last stretch: stuck in the laundry room, Myers floating in and around, the dog dying (the dog category may need to return), and a weirdly long, disturbing strangling in the car before the knife; the throat slit probably lacked blood because of the low budget. — Chris Ryan
Loomis parked outside the Myers house yells "Hey, Lonnie, get your ass away from there," is delighted with himself, and is then startled by the sheriff. — Chris Ryan
Loomis's monologue in the house about the six-year-old with "the devil's eyes" who was "purely and simply evil" is added as a rewatchable scene; the sheriff's muted response gets mayor-from-Jaws comparisons. — Chris Ryan
Loomis's "Death has come to your little town, sheriff" speech meets Brackett's "More fancy talk"; Brackett seems consumed by petty crimes like the hardware store break-in. — Chris Ryan
Bob going to get a beer and being pinned to the wall leads to the Myers head tilt, called the single scariest moment in probably any horror movie; widescreen and HD now make it visible. — Chris Ryan
Part two: Myers puts on the ghost costume with Bob's glasses, a playful Myers, then kills P. J. Soles's character while she calls Laurie. — Chris Ryan
Laurie's reaction on the phone is not terrified enough; the counterpoint is that she thinks her friends are fooling with her after a day of being told to get over what she saw. — Chris Ryan
The last 12 minutes play as one continuous scene: the long walk across, the Judith Myers tombstone, the mask out of the dark, the stabbing and the fall over the staircase, Myers coming down the stairs with his shoulders not moving, and "You can't kill the boogeyman." — Chris Ryan
The closet is called one of the greatest scenes in horror movie history, up there with anything Hitchcock did: the light, the wire hanger, his arms flailing, the window distraction, and his hands punching through; the reply agrees it is the single best scene in the movie. — Chris Ryan
Jamie Lee Curtis is praised as a great, believable scream queen, overqualified next to the Nightmare on Elm Street lead; the hosts doubt they could fashion a wire hanger into a weapon in 15 seconds. — Bill Simmons
The single best moment: Laurie standing in the doorway with her back turned while, in the wide shot, Myers rises and turns, maybe the single best horror movie moment of all time. — Chris Ryan
A host describes a YouTube clip of 1979 theater audio in which the crowd gasps when he stands up and someone yells "shoot him again!" — Chris Ryan
The last rewatchable scene is the ending: six shots, he is not there, and shots of all the scenes. — Chris Ryan
Asked for a pick: the final Michael chase, especially the closet, with everything in that bedroom named the most rewatchable scene; as a non-horror pick, the three girls walking home busting each other's chops and seeing Michael behind the bush. — Bill Simmons
The music is one answer: they crushed the score. — Sean Fennessey
The house is rated an eight and a half as a creepy house against a 10 for the Amityville Horror house, whose lit attic windows look like eyes. — Sean Fennessey
Patrick Wilson's horror IMDb (three Insidious films, two Conjurings, Annabelle Comes Home, The Nun, Lakeview Terrace, Young Adult) makes him an underappreciated Scream King or "horror daddy" to Jamie Lee Curtis's Scream Queen. — Bill Simmons
Barbara Hershey has something inherently creepy and grave about her, as in The Natural as the lady in black and even in Beaches.
Rose Byrne is utterly believable from the start, working on her songs, which makes you care about her.
What they squeezed out of such a small budget is both an aged-best and aged-worst point. — Bill Simmons
Insidious is a great word, added as a forgotten aged-best point. — Chris Ryan
Russell reportedly stayed in character but removed the eye patch between takes because it damaged his depth perception. — Bill Simmons
East St. Louis was selected for its old buildings, river, bridge, and blocks of fire-damaged rubble. — Bill Simmons
The Chain of Rocks Bridge was reportedly purchased for one dollar, and the city darkened ten blocks nightly for filming. — Bill Simmons
An eleven-year-old J. J. Abrams reportedly prompted the insert proving Maggie died, which Carpenter shot with Adrian Barbeau in their garage. — Bill Simmons
James Cameron worked on visual effects and cinematography before The Terminator and was considered the set genius. — Bill Simmons
What is the next day of school like for Sidney? What does the house's owner fix first? How much does Sidney regret losing her virginity to the killer? What would you do when the murders start? Why did the killers not finish her? Was there a Scream 20th anniversary? Is the lack of diversity intentional? What expo was Sidney's father headed to?
What is the next day of school like for Neve Campbell's character? She is done for the rest of the year, though strong-willed enough to try to come back early, and the principal is dead too.
What does the house's owner fix first? The garage door before the blood, or simply bulldoze the house and sell the land after fifteen murders and fifty gallons of corn syrup, since it becomes a Halloween tourist attraction.
The virginity subplot winks at the earlier movies where the girl who did not have sex survived; how much does Sidney regret that her first time was with the killer ten minutes before his spree, and how does she tell later partners?
Scream 2 arrives two years later with Sidney, after more trauma than any human, simply going to college and a sorority; one host does not acknowledge Scream 2 and 3, though the Jerry O'Connell cafeteria song and Laurie Metcalf are liked while the long ending with the mother drags.
Asked what to do when the murders start at the party: just run away, out to the middle of the street where nobody can sneak up, for two miles if needed, saving nobody.
Flipped around: with Neve Campbell hard to kill, the killers were toying with her and should have finished it when he had her in the Jeep, like the Wolf Creek killer stabbing straight through the car seat, or Oberyn Martell failing to finish the Mountain in Game of Thrones.
The killer toying with the last girl was a horror staple of the era, as when Jamie Lee Curtis drops the knife beside Michael Myers; the final-girl flirtation is a trope shared with James Bond and Six Million Dollar Man.
Was there a Scream 20th anniversary? Scream 4 in 2011 updated it with Emma Roberts and was not great, and MTV made a Scream TV show nobody here watched; self-reference can only go so far before it becomes Airplane, and Scream 4 lays it on thick.
Last question: is the astonishing lack of diversity intentional? Probably unintentional and corrected in Scream 2 with Jada Pinkett Smith and a Black best friend; no minority with a speaking line is recalled, a cast that would never happen today, and the filmmakers would likely claim it was a statement about how white earlier movies were.
Earlier, what expo Sidney's father is heading to after the attack is asked.
Wes Craven could be argued but Elm Street is still his Apex Mountain; his amazing career spans the three stages of late-century horror, from Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left to creating Freddy and reinventing the genre in the nineties, and he is underrated, on a Mount Rushmore with Tobey Hooper (as transcribed), George Romero and John Carpenter; the movie still moves today.
The coming Halloween remake with Jamie Lee Curtis is asking audiences to forget some sequels, like Rocky Balboa waving off Rocky V, which is what 48 Hours should have done.
A confession that Nightmare on Elm Street was a shitty movie meets a fan of the first two and Dream Warriors; Heather Langenkamp is dismissed, and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, the meta Freddy movie, failed just before this, leaving Scream as a bit of a last gasp for his career.
Neve Campbell's nominees are this or the intervention scene with Bailey in Party of Five.
Another feels the same way about the intervention, called the saddest hour in television history with Bailey as the rock of the family, and it stands even against Scream's $290 million.
Skeet Ulrich is clearly at his Apex, with nothing else competing; he was in As Good as It Gets, went a couple of rounds with Jericho, and is now known to kids as Riverdale's Skeet Ulrich.
A tangent on Skeet Ulrich's first name becoming slang, popularized by Dave Chappelle, and whether his stage name was a bad choice slides into a crude callback to the Silence of the Lambs episode's Migs discussion.
Reader Howard from Calgary writes that Stuart Rudin, who played Migs, was in Sticky Fingers and has an IMDb of homeless men, winos and patients; Migs was his Apex Mountain, and listeners are invited to the mailbag.
Matthew Lillard: it has got to be, with SLC Punk raised; considering how good he is in Scream, this is his Apex.
Jamie Kennedy was forced on the culture with an MTV show after this and never took; his Apex Mountain is definitively dating Jennifer Love Hewitt, an achievement rather than a performance, which leads to a tangent on why women disliked her.
For David Arquette the reminder is that he held the WCW heavyweight title, a movie tie-in, the belt once held by Ric Flair.
Eight Legged Freaks is also raised for Arquette; Rose McGowan is a no, her later weirdness and dating Marilyn Manson jokingly called her apex, though she had a cool indie career, the Rodriguez Grindhouse movie with the gun leg, and is now a filmmaker and activist.
Courtney Cox is first a no, since it has got to be Friends and you cannot get higher; one voice later counters, unresolved, that the combination is her apex, since this came out during Friends season three when Monica was dismissed as having no personality and showed she could be the bitch too; her later characters are more Gail Weathers than Monica.
She reportedly pursued the role to play someone not traditionally nice and to get punched in the face; her later sitcoms were Dirt and the Bill Lawrence show about people in LA drinking wine, whose title nobody can remember.
Henry Winkler is joked to have been the mountain itself.
Earlier, while praising the cast, Drew Barrymore is followed by the garbled phrase 'I'd heard, like, Mad Love Apex' (as transcribed).
