we're on a mission from god wendy so i got that going darling looks like i picked the wrong way to quit sniffing blue light of my life we enjoy your films i thought they smelled bad on the [Music] outside to vintage video where we'll be reviewing every major film release of the 1980s in real time i'm patrick o'reilly i'm jesse bayless and i'm richard walsh and today marks the 40th anniversary of the release of don't answer the phone exclamation mark on february 29th leap day 1980. it was written by robert hammer and michael d castle adapted from the novel nightline by michael curtis directed by robert hammer and released by crown international pictures hey you have a story about crown international pictures i do very entertaining story uh i probably shouldn't say too much because only because i don't know but uh they are in the same building as me and i know some of the people who work there well there you go and it's for sure the same one oh yeah it is definitely the same one that's interesting they've been running for so long did you ask them about this terrible movie i i did not uh the most of the people there are much younger and i don't think that they would have any kind of knowledge or connection to this movie except maybe a renewal of the distribution deal if sure any exists yeah i'm not sure anybody's really working on that one right now one of the imdb uh actors profiles like all the pictures of him were from this movie i think it was uh the main the killer character but um all the pictures were really nice clean high def like i think there must be a relatively recent remaster like a shout factory or something that's not what we watched we watched a dvd but so uh this movie was shot over the course of 18 days with no permits for any of the exteriors so everything in hollywood was just people running around with cameras uh flo lawrence who played the dr uh gail and uh james westmoreland who played the the lead uh investigator detective character hated each other they hated each other so much that i hated them too [Laughter] feeling feeling is mutual on the day of their love scene she ate a bunch of onions and he didn't shave to make it as uncomfortable as possible for the other person awesome nicholas wirth our killer improvised most of his dialogue really so he was in fact just a psycho no he was great i loved him when he was doing his whole like stuart thing i'm good enough i'm smart and doggone it people like me i think it was interesting that they like he had like a special credit like an intro was it introducing or featuring oh maybe featuring what's his name patrick worth nicholas nick nick nicholas worth are you just conflating this killer yes my brain i just like patrick keller yeah that yeah that sounds right you're not supposed to be telling people about my hobbies except this podcast tell as many people as you can the car that the killer drove the camo jacket he wore and the home that he lived in all actually belonged to director robert hammer so they just filmed in the director's house and uh used his car for the production the original title was the hollywood strangler which i think is better just so much better yeah it's actually what the movie's about because at no point in this movie except maybe the first scene would there be a reason not to answer the phone right because like it's not like it's not like scream or anything like that where like the killer's calling you and he's luring you out so that he knows you're home and he can come get you or anything like that but no other point in the film does is there a phone call that you're like oh now you're in trouble you answered the phone i did read a review that said that that might have been trying to play off the popularity of when a stranger calls from 1979 but um but you're right there's no phone call situation that happens this movie also has the rare distinction of being one of 154 films declared a video nasty in the uk are you familiar with the phrase video and asking i am not okay i'm glad that you are because i'm excited to share this information with you um with the advent of home video a number of films famously bypassed the nvala which is the uk version of the mpaa on home video market they became known colloquially as video nasties following a moral campaign led by famous social conservative mary whitehouse and the nvala local jurisdictions began to prosecute video releases for obscenity they were sorted into three sections so section one contained 39 films that were actually prosecuted like successfully prosecuted as violations of the obscene publications act of 1959. i've only seen two of the movies on this list is one of them caligula no uh faces of death and last house on the left were two movies from the top really left yeah i mean it has some pretty brutal rape scenes yeah but all right by the way uh this this might not be the most kid-friendly podcast again we're sticking to our role of not saying anything you can't say on television but uh this is a dark film so there's going to be some some disgusting things discussed a few other movies from section 1 that i haven't seen but i'm familiar with are cannibal holocaust and i spit on your grave and section 2 had 33 films that they attempted to prosecute but that avoided prosecution those included the beyond the evil dead and the fun house the first evil dead don't answer the phone actually landed in section 3 which includes films that could not be prosecuted for obscenity but were liable to seizure and confiscation under a less obscene charge which meant the tapes seized under section 3 could be destroyed after distributors or merchants forfeited them they could just walk into a store and be like you can't sell these movies destroy them all or give them to us as the least extreme category it features the most recognizable titles so you have dawn of the dead friday the 13th one and two those have eyes night of the living dead phantasm prom night scanners suspiria texas chainsaw massacre and the thing we're all in section three with this movie no really they're not some of them phantasm doesn't have much at all in it i i don't know the reasoning behind why these movies were included but this is a lot like uh pirate radio to me sure yeah like the the british government just going ape over everything uh this woman mary whitehouse is kind of like do you know who jack thompson is i'm not he's he's a guy who who has led every major american protest against violent video games or he did for a long time i think he's kind of faded into obscurity now but this woman is like that for movies in the uk where she was like you know family first like very important like we have to save the children from this nonsense won't somebody please think of the children exactly um but uh weirdly five of the video nasty titles start with the word don't [Laughter] section one had don't go in the woods section two head don't go in the house don't go near the park and don't look in the basement and then this one was that one movie none of them are connected to each other none of them were sleeping was that last one just one movie no that would be funny but my favorite my favorite of those is don't go near the park it's like not don't go to the park don't even go near it [Laughter] don't even think about that park i don't want to we do not talk about the park i wouldn't be surprised if all the don'ts were at least part of the inspiration for edgar wright's don't trailer and the rodriguez tarantino double feature grindhouse don't stop believing although in interviews edgar wright specifically credits a movie called don't open the window aka let sleeping corpses lie aka the living dead at the manchester morgue aka do not profane the sleep of the dead i like that one apparently edgar wright thought it was funny that not unlike this movie the title refers to nothing in particular there is no big window scene and don't open the window um that movie though that did not make the video nasty list and i thought it was weird that collegiate didn't make the list but when i searched for it i came across a movie in section one called caligula reincarnated as hitler that's the name of a movie um but yeah so that's video nasties i'm sure we'll cover more of them over the course of this podcast yeah like what years are these from it seems like the earliest ones are like obviously night of living dead was in 68 but most of them are like late 70s and early to mid 80s um i i feel like this was part of this list is just ask you know it's like they put this list together as a list of what movies we should watch because they're amusingly in a not too distant universe they're i'm hosting a podcast called video nasties and we just cover this entire list of movies um although the the only one i've seen from section one or one of the two that i've seen from section one faces of death features like not fake deaths of humans what like uh there's accident footage and stuff like that that they used in the movie so it's pretty traumatizing like i'm not suggesting people go out and look up all of section one and go try and watch them it's it's pretty depressing footage i will not be participating in this podcast yes no i think richard barely got through this movie well you've did you've seen cannibal holocaust or no no no i will not watch that okay i know there's some pretty disturbing stuff in there to the point that they literally like dragged the director into court to say prove that you didn't murder these people and he had to like fly the actress into the country to be like look i'm alive they didn't kill me on set because it was like that convincing of a murder scene yikes but yeah so this movie uh we start in uh kirk smith's apartment where he is posing uh in front of a weird like religious set that he built in his home and then we cut immediately to him following a nurse into her home uh presumably at the end of a shift at a hospital she speaks briefly on the phone with her air quotes mother i was like is she talking about her mother or i was like hold on she didn't say mom what is she what is the word i'm missing here because that's not a woman on the phone no she said it repeatedly yeah that she was talking to her mother but it was clearly like the director or the producer or some man you know putting on like a monty python female voice but yeah by the end of the phone call she she's saying like mom two or three times in a sentence and i'm like no she's clearly supposed to be talking to her mother but yeah i think it was probably the director and then they just never bothered to record the adr oh yeah we're going to replace that oh shoot oh well that had to be at the premiere they were like oh whoops i forgot but yeah so he strangles this woman to death with a stocking that has a coin in it on like her kitchen table basically yeah and then we cut to him driving a car which is weird to get the killer's perspective immediately after the murder right because usually you're going into like oh meet the innocent people but here we're just like following the killer around and he's listening to the radio describe what he did the night before and that the police are officially calling it like a serial killer because this is the fifth woman who's been killed in a similar way so they're starting to tell people oh be be on the lookout for someone trying to murder you don't answer the phones yeah don't answer your phones whatever you do that has nothing to do with this please answer your phones that's important otherwise people can't reach you then the guy reading the news on the microphone hands it over to dr lindsay gale who is like a she's the frasier crane yes of the israelis she's she's a licensed psychologist who has a call-in show she also has like she operates her a facility on her own yeah but it's like a free clinic it's a weird like definitely catering to low-end clientele where she immediately refers them to somebody else yes while we're seeing her sit down and start to introduce her show we're seeing kirk like randomly trying to pick girls up as models off the street he's just like stopping girls and like oh by the way i take pictures and here's my card and and the girl's boyfriend walks up he's like what is this who are you talking get away from this guy what are you doing and drags her away um the first caller to this radio show says that her son cut up the goldfish with scissors and is threatening to do the same thing to the little sister and it's like i kind of want to hear how the rest of that call went yeah but also um like you're calling in to be like what you like what'd you do should i is this is this a bad science like oh good lord you need to immediately separate him from other humans and get him help do you have eyes on him right now yeah yeah this is not good but uh then the second caller is kirk calling in pretending to be someone named ramon and speaking in a very exaggeration yeah they like to roll their r's in this movie when they say his name even she does yeah like she's being very respectful to the pronunciation of his name but he's he calls me complaining about headaches which i'm not even sure that he is experiencing because so much of this character is completely made up i don't know if he's just improvising stuff i think that he's supposed to i think it's supposed to be part of the symptoms of his uh he's a vietnam vet that has some sort of like literally like brain scarring and he gets terrible headaches that cause his psychosis or whatever this brain scarring well it could be literal scarring like he had a brain injury like from an explosion okay the cops are investigating the nurse's home uh and this like csi guy thinks that he's a comedian yeah he's horrible yeah he's making a bunch of jokes about it and he's like did you get a picture of the breast and he's like which one and he's like the one that was almost bitten off did you get a picture of that for the file the guy playing this uh this lab tech is the guy who wrote the movie but he has a lot of off-color jokes he's supposed to be like the hilarious coroner character but he's just obnoxious in everything he's no arthur mallett he's no arthur mallett from one episode of macgyver he's also um he's also not uh what's the character's name from dexter that constantly makes jokes about dead bodies but yeah so the cops somehow determined that the stalking that they've seen is like very popular with like the viet cong population and so they think that he might be a vietnam vet and that he's he bought like a big pack of these stockings to strangle people with oh stockings yes i heard i kept hearing you say stalking and i'm like there's a particular type of stocking that like vietnam called the yes war okay but you're talking about stockings there's a particular kind of stockings silk stockings i don't understand your weird wisconsin pronunciations but yes stockings okay stockings not stalking like like i'm not pronouncing the l you i felt like you did because i was pretty sure you were talking about him stalking people when you're talking about stephen hawking and he wanted to talk or talking saying pam or pam [Laughter] so they think he's possibly a vietnam vet we cut two kirk lifting weights uh very aggressively aggressively in his home a woman meets with dr gail in her free clinic area to discuss some childhood abuse that she went through and dr gail is terrible oh yeah something that came to that that cop in uh windows yeah a lot of victim blaming in this conversation yeah she's like she says that her father abused her and she says and you let him and it's like what is your problem what let your father have his way it's not her agency and then she says immediately she's like you're right i don't even deserve you you're so great and it's like you're right you don't deserve me anyway try not to get raped by people you jerk so they're laughing about it now kirk follows this woman home where she sits down at uh her desk in her room and undresses herself a little bit and then just starts fondling her breasts just staring into a mirror fondling her own this is the point at which patrick turns to me and says this is what women do when they're alone right this is clearly not a movie written by men no no this is a standard practice what i loved about this whole build up was him following her and every time i was on him the music went brown and then it would cut to silence when it's on her yeah but then when he peeks up in the window it's like the music is like he's literally making that sound um the we we cut back to this weird scene at the at the police station where the lab tech guy has his legs up on someone else's desk and this woman is yelling at him like uh get your legs off of my desk or i'm gonna break them uh you guys need to solve this murder and get out of my way and he's like relax he just killed somebody he's not gonna kill anybody for like three four five days yes everybody can rest easy tonight and then we cut to him just murdering this woman well he followed home and and i don't know how he knew or if it was just happenstance that he's using like daddy's got you daddy's gonna keep you safe yeah how did how did he know it would have been one thing if she had called into the radio program and this the whole session had been public knowledge but the fact that he wasn't in the room with them it's like why does he know what happened unless like he's been casing these people for months or maybe he says this to everyone maybe that's true so we have this quick scene with a scientist professor type guy uh in a room full of detectives explaining what serial killers are and what different types of them are he basically feels a lot like the guys from mind hunter i'm sure he was based on those guys because he seems like an fbi uh type uh specialist but the the police don't seem to care at all yeah and the same thing happens in mind yeah the cops are like whatever like get out of here like you're so smart you know everything about serial killers and they're like no no we have like profiles that are accurate and they help us track people down but and even the room looks like it's the same room as there's a specific scene in mind hunter that just looks so much like what's happening here i mean i think that was just the mentality at the time and yeah they're representing that well but yeah i thought it was interesting that they that they bothered to even include that angle but then we get a montage of police awards yeah just handing papers to each other and music playing pointing to things on maps and drawing arbitrary lines on set map yeah and then agreeing with said lines that's a good line i'm proud of that line and then we the concert in uh in dr gail's office and without really warning her properly he just hands her a picture of the mutilated corpse of the woman who just left her free clinic and she just starts sobbing immediately he says so uh i'm gonna need the file for this patient and she says not without a court order and he's like okay here's the court order and she's like no i don't want to give it to you it's like trying to solve a series of heinous murders right can you maybe hand over that file what am i gonna do to this woman that hasn't already been done like i totally get like protecting you know patient client privilege type stuff but like at the point at which you have a court order you'll be like yeah here you go please find this murderer yeah and it also can i help you in any other way i i have voiced my concerns and and my opposition to this but you have a court order i've done my job as the psychologist and also i just gave you that as the one thing you would need to do on the path to getting this file was give me a court order and it seems like the conflict between these two characters is that she's mad because he wants to murder the murderer when she wants to cure him she's like what are you gonna do put him in front of a firing squad and he's like that's not a bad idea but she's like well you know this is a mental illness we can we can fix this man it's like he doesn't want to do it so that's that's the conflict between these two characters uh we get a couple quick shots of the cinerama dome mixed into our montage of just hollywood at night yeah the whole everything up until the woman who's about to jump off the building is pretty much a blur yeah for me uh except for the the whorehouse massage parlor bus which i can't remember if it even occurs before or after that i think it's it's before because there's another amazing montage of asking people questions on the street and them just saying no yeah over and over again kirk is entertaining a model at his home and he starts to do this shoot where she's wearing like a biker jacket um and he handcuffs her for some pictures of a person handcuffed and then just as soon as she starts questioning it he loses his his patience and kills her the the lab tech finds that woman's body or he doesn't find the body but he's there at the scene of that body being found at like the reservoir or a river somewhere and they're like it's like he's not even trying to hide the bodies it's like he's he's rubbing it in our faces that he's just leaving these people everywhere but i think we're slowly starting to show like he's getting more and more careless right uh kirk is crying in shadows at his at his home so much of his home is very poorly lit and so we can just barely make out what's going on half the time just it's just like windows like we're just gonna half light this movie we're gonna have some some really dramatic shadows and you're not gonna be able to tell half of what's going on it seems like the the the kurt character in this movie reminds me of the like the dark knight joker because he seems like he's playing like four different kinds of psychopath like alternating and where i think heath ledger was doing it on purpose i think this guy's just like didn't really like nail down what kind of a crazy person he wanted to be so every scene where he's being a crazy person it's a different kind of crazy person they all feel like yeah like monologue auditions for the next movie we have a couple of like travis bickle kind of moments and yeah and then there's like a couple like i'm not good enough for you dad like shouting at his ceilings and then just like crying or like the weird affirmations yeah the writing out kind of just yeah yeah um so there's a lot of this guy is multi-dimensional uh gail meets with a woman who has a drug problem and she makes her shout that she has a drug problem over and over again that's her way of curing it another grand example of how good she is at you know treating people uh the cops end up seeing a psychic i don't know who recommended a psychic go to the station to talk to the cops but he seems to really know what he's talking about um which is weird because he doesn't come back for any more of the movie but they do meet with a psychic who has a lot of information well except for the fact that they at some point apparently they blame like it's just kind of the throwaway line later where they thought the psychic was the killer because well because of how much he knew because of how much he knew but like he he had an alibi or he was with his wife or something he it turns out that he is the personal psychic of the wife of one of the other people so that's where he got the information yeah oh okay i missed that oh i missed that part of it yeah but i i like when he walks in and he's like i sense you were unhappy with this meeting that you think nothing will come from it and he's like two for two he's just like all right this guy's a real psychic but it turns out he was on tour and he was 7 000 miles away when the murders happened so he couldn't have been involved um kirk meets with a pornographer um and says here's some pictures i took do you want him and he's disgusted by one photo in particular which it sounds like a woman has a bunch of candles stuck in her and uh the guy thinks that's gross but i'll take it but i'll take i'll take the rest of them but this one disturbs me and he's like well fine that one's not for sale he's like well hold on now let's talk about let's talk about numbers he's playing hard to get with this last picture he's the jay jonah jameson um yeah but so then he uh then he picks up this prostitute and he takes her to an apartment across the street because she doesn't talk business on the street um and he tells her to call into the radio program so now we're at she's literally on the phone with dr gail and says oh i'm here with this guy and he said he gets headaches and he told me to call you and i'm a prostitute but i don't want to be a prostitute anymore but my mom got me into it so you know yeah you know moms but then he kills her during the call and she immediately goes to the cops with the recording it's like here's a recording of what i think is the killer uh a woman described a man and she was killed or hurt during the phone call and here's another phone call that i got from someone else who also got headaches that i think is the same person and he called himself ramon so there's a lead for you and then uh the pimp that was across the street when he first met the prostitute comes into the apartment to check on the girl and then kirk goes crazy and just beats him to the ground doesn't kill him but smashes a bottle over his head i think he does think he kills him but he doesn't well he at least knows that he overpowered him and thinks he's cool for overpowering him like he's starting to get this like invincibility complex where he's like oh i can't do anything wrong i can beat anybody so the cops figure out that that there was a third person at this murder scene like there's additional there's initial blood there and and it's not you know either of the other twos right and so they're like oh maybe it was the pimp coming to check on the prostitute so they're like okay who who's in that neighborhood and they narrow it down to this one guy and that's the guy who they're showing the picture to everybody like where is he and then the the drunk informant tells him he's down at this massage parlor right and they talk him down from like fifty dollars to twenty two like the seven or something yeah but so the it seems like they're they basically are using the massage parlor as a front so it's like even though that part was already illegal they're like oh people are just assuming that that's going on here so they're not going to look around for people dealing drugs right so they go into this place and they're not with vice so they're they really don't care what's happening here they're just here for information on this murder but when they talk to the woman downstairs she calls up and says it's a bust um everyone get out and uh as word gets through the massage parlor that it's a bust all these people in various states of undress are running out of the uh building as quickly as they can including your favorite guy who's wearing like this there's a guy red underwear and and he's wearing clear pants like totally transparent pants yeah he has plastic pants on outside of hey do you know who that that guy was no that's dawn lake do you know who dawn lake is that name sounds familiar he's a a comic actor he has a lot of credits he's in a bunch of christopher guest movies but my favorite scene with this character is when he says mario last name mario okay what's your name luigi luigi luigi no luigi mario he's the one who goes it's a bust and then runs out of the apartment oh that's amazing um i i as soon as you said don lake i knew that name from somewhere yeah he's been on a lot of tv stuff but um i i mostly recognize him from christopher guest movies but i was like there's something else there's something and i was scrolling through his imdb i was like oh my god super mario brothers this is totally the cop that finds out that mario's name is mario mario but they think it's hilarious after the guy shouts it's a bust and then runs out of the building they're like he's like oh do you have an extra ring like like he was gonna propose to that guy who just ran out of the building they they walk into the room where they where the pimp was supposed to be at the end of the hall and when they get inside there's just a woman doing like coke off of the desk that which still has like some powder from when they ran out of the room yeah there was a there was a struggle to get the drugs because the guy was gonna flush him and then the pimp was like no uh and the bag just kind of exploded in the air right and you know we wouldn't want anything to go to waste but she's just doing it off of the desk and laughing about it and then when the cops step back into the hallway they see the pimp trying to escape and he turns around and points a gun at them and they fire at him like 12 times i like the pimp in the scene because he's got this big like white bandage on the top of his head yeah back of his head yeah like where he got where he got hit but it just like it makes him look so funny yeah big white bandage on the top of his head um they're also firing directly at like an open window that leads down the street i was like that's a super dangerous direction to be firing your weapon but i love the line that yeah it's like it's like we got some paperwork to fill out it's like what do you mean we i missed that's so great i laughed out loud at that line i i think that these two characters are like the inspiration for the law part of law and order that you because the one guy who said i miss is clearly like the jury or bach sure yeah uh now that they've killed the only person who had any information uh they have to find a new lead the this is when the drug addict patient is suddenly on the top of a building and decides she's going to jump um and the licensed psychologist is trying to talk her down she just got there like 15 minutes ago yeah she's not making any progress because she's terrible at her job clearly my my words didn't help you not not just terrible at a job but when the when the cop shows up to like like help out like she's just like yeah fine you do it like and watch i don't care yeah whatever i don't need to be doing this like no not like i'm board certified and i have a doctor right it's like i know the best way to talk to her like she's my patient she's just like yeah no good how about it she was she was bored all right yeah certified certified certified board and then the cop just negs her off the ledge by being like hey idiot come down here you dumb what are you dumb and she's like you're right i am dumb and she comes down and hugs him and then he turns to the psychiatrist and is like hey let's go get drunk and she's like yeah we should get drunk yeah you clearly know how to treat women let's do this yeah i could use a drink and then it cuts through her drinking water yeah and then she's like i'll get us another round it's like you're drinking water so they they get drunk and then he goes back to her apartment to sleep with her the next morning kirk is just walking through like a residential neighborhood and says this he stops a woman on the street and says hey do you know where so-and-so lives and she's like oh it's the house with the green door so he goes up to this door and he goes and he knocks on it and he pretends to be a photographer sent by this woman's agent so that he can get inside to take pictures of her but she's not falling forward and she's kind of double booked anyway well she she does fall for it because she says oh no i already had my my pictures taken and he says oh i can't believe that they messed this up and she goes oh they're always messing that up yeah but where is he getting his inside information i don't know oh good question that's true they never really cover that for for the girl with the dad and this character but um so he goes into the the home and says can i use your phone to call your agent to try and straighten this whole thing out and he calls and pretends that he wasn't around and then but he leaves his his book of photos on the coffee table for her to look at in case she changes her mind and wants to get some pictures taken and as she's going through them she sees the disturbing one that the pornographer didn't like and she's like oh my god that's gross and he's like that's my best work and then he freaks out on her and attacks her against the couch and he's almost completely choked her maybe already completely choked her by the time her roommate comes out yeah also talks i've been screaming for a while i feel like i would have been out sooner i was like i was like player three has entered the game yeah i was like who who is this person that has been waiting all this time also naked though and but but she did the first one come out like she had just showered she was in a row she was wearing she basically when she hears the knock of the door she's like hold on a second and she she closes her robe and basically just pulls it shut but doesn't like fasten it or anything it's the opening seam of log jamming right but when he's standing with her in front of the couch she just yanks her robe down around her waist yeah but then when the roommate comes in she's just topless yeah that's how i go to address any issues i hear in my house like after i jump out of the shower and you know like i hear somebody at the door i'm gonna run out here naked and find out what's happening yeah this will be a distraction but at first it looks like she's not doing much good because she's just screaming while he's choking her friend to death but then she takes some initiative and she picks up a lamp and smashes it over his head but unfortunately her friend's already dead and it just pisses this guy off enough to jump over the couch and strangle her against the wall kitchen with his hands yeah so now they're both dead um but he left his camera at the house when he left in right because a neighbor a neighbor comes over trying to like knock on the door and see what's happening same woman who pointed out the the home in the first place yeah and so so it but he like books it out the back door or something like that and leaves all this stuff behind so the cops find the cameras and they're like oh this guy takes like pornographic photography let's go talk to the local pornographer well they had found uh earlier on they had found evidence of a part of a film box box yeah like but it was like a burnt film box like it was like in the ashtray what did you say did he burn this thing while he was there i don't know that seemed weird that they found a piece of the film box and they thought it was oh this is a clue yeah it's like if you really need to get rid of the film box put it in your pocket yeah because film boxes especially for 35 millimeter film aren't big yeah it can squish down pretty easily but they're also it was 1980 everybody had them in their houses but so they go to see this the pornographer that kirk sold his pictures to and he's just this big fat guy sitting in the corner of an office and uh they they show him all the pictures and he's like oh yeah no i know i know who takes these pictures he recognizes the especially disturbing one and he's like the guy's name is kirk smith and it's like he's using his real name for everything yeah he is with this guy he used it when he answered the door at the at the woman's house it's like i know i'm gonna take smutty pictures and i'm gonna sell them under my real name well it's not just that he's also murdering people and leaving a trail of like his own name everywhere that he goes i like when the jerry orbach character picks up the picture the one picture off the desk goes oh that's a good looking horse yeah oh dear he's like yeah i don't i don't do that kind of stuff and he like rolls it up and puts it in his shirt pocket like like you weren't supposed to see that that's a controlled picture um but before they leave the the office the pornographer gives them the name and address and uh and then the same cop character he picks up one of the pictures and he's like i don't care for the lighting and he's like you don't care for the lighting and he's like nice hips though nice hips like the photographer's just repeating everything he says like why are you even talking to me about this just get the hell out of here go do what you're doing leave me alone but for some reason they go to the wrong house with this information sounds like a weird thing to have in the movie at all like why even have them go to when you need another turn but also i think the implication might be that even if he's running long enough even though he is using his real name maybe he's using his neighbor's address and going through his neighbor's mailbox that'll throw him off so they'll never fight but it's like literally like 10 feet away from his door yeah and the neighbor knows everything about that yeah he's a weirdo he's a creepy photographer named kirk smith he murders women at night he didn't say that but uh but so they go to this wrong house and bust in without a warrant and when the guy comes in the the homeowner comes in the wrong guy they surround him with guns and he freaks out and drops a suitcase which they open and it's just full of toys because he's a toy maker who literally just fills his briefcase with toys and goes off to the toy factory to toy all day well sandy clothes oh my gosh i didn't realize that he looks young i haven't seen him this young before santa claus um but he says oh you're looking for my my murderer neighbor he's crazy and he murders and they're like oh okay so they go to that place and they're like oh yeah it says murder on the door there's murder everywhere look at he's got all the crazy stuff in here and we got all the pictures and there's blood and murder and uh and he's like oh that's interesting look at this he's got a big pile of pictures of you and that psychologist that you've been dating for some reason and he's like okay that's a problem uh he's probably at her house so you go to the police and i'm gonna go to her house by myself [Music] good plan um and so he goes to her home he immediately gets in a scuffle with uh kirk who has in the ensuing 20 minutes like tied the the psychologist to a chair and it gagged her and he's like she's like the main prize of his entire thing because he's he's taken out all of her patience and now he wants to kill her when the cop shows up he's able to shoot kirk once and while he's lying bleeding on the floor he handcuffs him behind his back yeah and i was like well that was really anticlimactic and then you just get this really long shot of him lying face down on the ground and just going i was like he's not going to break these handcuffs is he and sure enough he breaks the handcuffs he gets back into the the room and before the cop can get a shot off they're shoving each other back and forth but eventually it's kind of pointless well i love what the cop does after he gets them handcuffed he goes in un-gags her and unties her and then just puts his head into her lap yeah like comfort me yeah you don't know what i've been through today but they they show each other back and forth a bit um and then kirk tries to run out of the building and mccabe shoots him like 12 times in the back yeah and then he falls into a pool in super slow motion yeah like these bullets coming one after the other this would be very problematic how many how many of these bullet holes had entry ones in the back though yeah but then he falls into the pool and he's all idiots creep which apparently he improvised that line i totally believe i was so excited with that line one because i was looking at the running times like oh god this movie's almost over please let that be the last line i don't want any like epilogue i just want this don't mess it up just audio's creep credits that's what they did well but they first they hold on a freeze frame of the splash of the splash in the pool and i thought that the video had ended and it was just stuck on that last frame and i was like oh okay movie's over i guess the video player just got hung up on that last frame but the counter is still ticking yeah so what is happening oh oh there are the credits that's the freeze frame that's terrible very long freeze frame yeah with no audio all you hear is the audio popping from like whatever film this was transferred from right yeah and i was like there's no audio it's a freeze frame there's no music what is happening and that's the end of the film um and that's the only directing credit for robert hammer which actually uh edgar wright when he was he credits the hammer films stylistically for don't but uh the hammer films have no relation to robert hammer who directed this film um it was written by the director and michael d castle who as we said played the csi character this was his only script that he ever wrote uh but he will be coming back later this year for galaxina which is like a barbarella ripoff um uh the novel was written by michael curtis who has no other credits on imdb it doesn't mean he didn't write any more books but he wrote the book nightline that this was based on nicholas worth who plays the killer here is also the reaper and the hills have eyes too he played polly and dark man he does a lot of video game voices including premier romanov in the commanding conquer series and he played a henchman on the pirates episode of macgyver wow do you remember that one i do remember that one he was one of the two guys that like took over this military installation island yeah yeah with all the land mines yeah um chuck mitchell who plays sam gluckman the pornographer was porky from porkys yeah and porky's too he's also rocco and better off dead i thought you were gonna go somewhere else with that person no no not modern life um and the the woman who says oh that that house there with the green door her name is eileen castle and this is her only movie i think she's the screenwriter's mom yeah i'm not a thousand percent sure on that but i i would i would bet money that that was the case um jess what do you think up or down on this one oh it's a big a down big down yeah that's a it's a no there's a thumb way up from me i actually really enjoyed the film and uh i know that the the murder rape scenes are very brutal yeah but i actually don't think they're poorly done from a filmmaking perspective i think they're actually really well done in that they're terrifying and uh honestly all of the i like all of the dialogue with the cops i think the cops are funny and believable the whole time um but i i really enjoyed this film um letterboxed rank so so i put it just above to all a good night which i then puts it below windows for me okay uh this is actually going to go into my number two spot from the bottom above just above caligula above caligula but below just tell me what you want just tell me what you want is is moving up moving up in the water i'm putting this movie smack dab between our our uh male prostitutes this is going just below american gigolo but above cruising oh interesting so right right in the middle there um oh it's good to put some brutal rape in between your male gigolos that's true that's an important thing to do um i think that's everything for this one if you guys have any thoughts you'd like to share we are vintage video pod on twitter facebook instagram and letterbox or as i've said before you can find each of our full movie rankings for the year we can also be found at vintagevideopodcast.com please consider rating us on itunes to help people find the show and if you take the time to leave us a review we will thank you personally in an upcoming episode if you're feeling especially generous you can also support the show through patreon.com vintage video podcast speaking of which we have our first five dollar patreon subscriber costa dinos thank you so much for your contributions yeah we're surprising richard with this live on the show what costa dinos not only that you're saying that right i i believe so all right it's either costa or costa tell us if we're messing it up but i think it's costa costa's great he's been a listener for a long time from back when we were doing the macgyver show and uh he's already placed this vote for our movie for the next month okay so there there are three options for the next uh the next month's review it was airport gamera versus jiger and the ballad of cable hogue and he selected the ballot of cable hogue all right which is kind of the one we were pulling for we shouldn't be choosing favorites but if anybody wants to change the results you're gonna need to sign up twice because uh that's the one we wanted to do anyway so thank you very much costa for your contribution we appreciate it and uh thank you for being a a returning listener to the show thank you so much for listening and i hope you will join us next time when we will be discussing foxes which wikipedia calls a 1980 american coming of age drama it revolves around a group of teenage girls coming of age in suburban los angeles towards the end of the disco era [Music] you