Cutting Deep Into Horror | Pearl (2022) Mia Goth’s Stardom Nightmare, Ti West’s X Prequel

0:02 Welcome to my farm. Well, it's such a it's such a cute little farm. It's not very little. We used to have five men worked here, you know, before the kaiser started stirring up some shit. Yeah, well, I mean, but it's it's a pretty farm though, Like there's yeah. What's so pretty about it? That's what I thought. Yeah, you know, we used to have two cows, but then one cow killed the other, and then out of guilt, I assume it killed itself. So maybe things aren't so like. You want to go down to the river. There's a big old walligator over there. Why are you looking at me like that? Why are you looking at me like that?

0:52 I think I need to go. I'm gonna smile and it's gonna hurt God. Why are you smiling like that? No, it's so like comfortable. This podcast is about why horror scares us, what deep dark secrets scary cinema shines a light on. The discussions are frank and involve conversations about abuse, trauma, and mental health. There are also spoilers, so keep that in mind too. Now, sharpen your machetes and straight razors, because this is cutting deep into horror.

1:39 Hello and Welcome back to Cutting Deep into Horror. I'm your host Enrique Kuto here with my co host Rachel Ridolfi. Rachel, how are you. I'm doing pretty all right? Yeah? Yeah. Do you feel it? Do I feel it? M Love is in the air. Yeah yeah, yeah, because. It's almost Valentine's Day. It is. In fact, when this airs, it'll be the day before Valentine's Day, which I just that's just dawned on me. That means that's a Friday of the thirteenth. How did I How did I miss that it's a Friday the thirteenth. Half to leave Saturday is the fourteenth? Yeah, that it's a Friday the thirteenth. Oh, man, I completely whiffed on knowing that. Wow, I have to make arrangements. Yeah yeah, gotta watch some Friday thirteenth movies.

2:31 Gotta figure out something else. I don't know what I mean. Traditionally we do Friday foods that yeah, we did. That was eight years ago. We haven't done that since then. Yeah. Yeah, that was Friday the thirteenth. That was like seven or eight years ago. That was a whole day, that was like a day that. Was basically the closest thing to being a short order cook I've ever I've ever experienced. I didn't leave the kitchen once. I just stood there battering and frying and battering and frying. No, Okay, that's not true though, because you would leave the kitchen to start the next Friday the Thirteenth movie.

3:12 That's true. I'm the only person who knew how to operate a piece of technology at that time referred to as the PlayStation four. So I had to know how to I had to have to know how to pop the disc it and have it play. Gosh, that would have been. That would have been before there was even a Friday the Thirteenth box set. That was back when there were Some of the Blu rays were individual. Yeah, Man, Dark Times Man, Super Dark Times. Bro. But tonight, since we're getting ready for the Love Holiday, we are going to be talking about a film that, well, you picked for Valentine's Day. I mean, I don't think it's a bad pick for Valentine's Day, but it's not, you know, entirely a Valentine's Day move or anything like that. It came out in September, but I did make you watch it, make you watch it, but I showed it to you on Valentine's Day if I remember Valentine's Weekend or something like that. But it's a twenty twenty two's Pearl, yeah, and starring Mia Goth and it is a in my opinion, it's a masterpiece. I really do believe that, which is wild because it came out of nowhere. It was directed by Ty West, and it's a sequel to the film X, but it's well, it's a prequel, but it's in the series X series and that's a whole other thing to point out. So to rewind with Pearl, I went to

4:46 see X in the theater. For those who don't know Ty West's work, He's done a lot of really interesting movies. He kind of came up in what in an era, a film called mumble Gore. Mumble Gore, Yeah, I haven't heard that before. It was a riff on mumble core, okay, which was an era in the late nineties and early two thousands where people were making these mini DV movies and DSLR movies. That the reason they called the mumble core was kind of a joke because they tended to have a lot of improvised dialogue, so people were kind of mumbling and talking over each other. They tended to have lower quality sound because they were low budget. They were often very small productions, and so mumblecore was this kind of movement of like drama comedies that would come out, and a lot of guys that were in the mumblecore movement made mumble gore movies as well. Okay, like Joe Swanberg, Oh gosh, what's his name? The guys did creep Mark, Mark Duplas and his brother the Duklass Brothers, they made mumble core movies and then also ended up making mumble gore movies. So it was a play on words. And then mumble core was a play on the idea of calling something core if it was like in music, you would yeah, like you know, posey corp meant positive hardcore or whatever. So but Ty West came up right in that era, and he started his career with a film called The Roost, followed by a film called trigger Man, both which I thought were fine, but they were kind of forgettable. But then he made a movie called the

6:18 House of the Devil in two thousand and nine, which lots of people love. I am somewhat indifferent to it. I don't know why. Maybe I need to rewatch it when I'm in a really good mood because maybe it's great, and I just it didn't connect with the two times I watched it. I didn't love it. But it had great aesthetics, great performances, shot on super sixteen millimeter film, and they like leaned into it. They said it in the seventies. Oh but then in twenty eleven, Ty West did a movie called The Innkeepers, a ghost story, a very simple ghost story horror film that actually just played on Joe Bob's Last Drive in a week ago. And when I saw The Innkeepers, that that was when I decided Ty West was friggin' awesome, because that movie really got to me, like it freaked me out. It's a very slow burn, but there's a moment when the first ghostly thing happens. It scared me. It shook me to my core. And it's funny because that is often the one Tie West movie people malign. It doesn't have a particularly grand amount of violence or a particularly grand amount of gore or scares. It's very simplistic. I love it.

7:36 I think The Innkeepers. Until until Pearl, I considered The Innkeeper's his finest film. Okay, and it's also worth mentioning that in the realm of ty West's movies. And he went on to make other films too. He did a movie called In a Valley of Violence, which was a western, which is hilarious because it was a tie western, which I thought was pretty fun. I thought it was pretty damn good. I enjoyed it. He directed Cabin Fever two Spring Fever, which I guess he disowned. It wasn't that great, but neither was, in my opinion, the first Cabin Fever. And I'm not trying to be a jerk. If I ever say a movie is not my favorite, I'm not trying to be cute. I don't believe that, with few exceptions, that there are films that are just playing bad. Yeah, but there are definitely films that I don't enjoy or that I don't that maybe aren't for me. Yeah. That's something I always try to keep in mind, is like, maybe this just isn't for me. It's not something I would like.

8:36 Yeah, I'm just not the right audience for it. Yeah. Well, I've often said there are no bad movies, only bad audiences, because that was literally the catchphrase of popcorn fodder's for a season was there no bad movies, only bad audiences. So he's made some really interesting films. He directed segments on VHS the original VHS anthology, The ABC's of Death. He did a found footage movie called The Sacrament which is about cults, which I really liked and thought was just really solid good stuff. So yeah, he's a very talented director. And in I think it was twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, he came out with a movie called X, which was a slasher movie that kind of aped on some Texas chainsaw massacre vibes, and it was basically about a group of young people in Texas in the seventies who rent a little farmhouse and shoot a porn movie in it, and a lot of crazy things ensue. People start getting murdered, and the bad guys in it are the elderly couple that owns the property who don't approve of what they're doing. So in that film, the old lady was named Pearl, and in the background of shots you would see these photos of her when she was younger, and they were portrayed by Mia Goth who played a character in X. So it was a little strange in some ways. She played

10:07 Maxine Minx was her character name in there, and she was also under all the makeup playing Pearl in an. X as an old lady. And supposedly how Pearl came about was they were filming X in New Zealand during the lockdown for COVID nineteen and in that time period, one of the solutions for productions was they would do what they called the bubble, which meant everyone in the production was allowed to commingle. They just couldn't leave the bubble, so you had places you could eat. Often hotels would be a bubble like because some of the pro wrestling television shows did that too. They would do two weeks of bubble and they would film as much TV as they could where everybody was together because that way, if anybody got sick, it was contained. Yeah, So they were already in the bubble in New Zealand filming X and Mia Goth and Ty West who started to get along very well, and Mia Goth had lots of ideas that Ty West liked, so she came to him with this idea, let's make a prequel about Pearl when she was a young girl, which would have been in like nineteen eighteen. So they ended up raising the money quickly because they already had crew. All they did was get more cast. Like they had most of the stuff, they had the sets built. They just had to make them look young again, yeah, you know, look new. And they shot a whole other film before they wrapped all the stuff. They just decided to roll it in to

11:37 another movie because they were already there. And when I went to see X premiere night, I'll be come up, well, you know, I'll tell you what I thought of it. Right after this, I was a little rusty because it's been a while. All right, we're back. And when I saw X, it was opening night when it opened wide in the United States, and I would say, for me, for me, X is a solid three star flick. It's not.

12:19 It didn't blow me away. It didn't make me lose my mind that I had to go get a copy or whatever. But I did enjoy it. I had a good time with it. And then at the end, when the credits were done, they play a trailer for Pearl, which had been a secret until then. They had kept it relatively secret that they'd made a whole other movie. And the trailer was just mind boggling because X was meant to feel like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was meant to be, you know, very dark and gritty and gross and grainy. And then all of a sudden, they're showing this technic color nightmare, big swelling orchestral music. It looks like The Wizard of Oz and it's this girl dancing around with the little moments of violence kind of hidden into it, and none of us knew what the hell it was. In the theater, we're just like, what what is that? Because because first we thought there would be a you know, a post credit scene, right, but then when this starts playing, we're like, holy crap, this is a trailer. This isn't This isn't like a Kee's or a parody, Like this is a trailer. Yeah, because at first some of us thought it was like a parody, it was gonna be like a joke. It was like a joke, but it wasn't. So then I don't remember exactly how long it was. Less than a year later it came out in theaters. I went to see it because I was like, hey, X was pretty good. This looks interesting, And I walked out of Pearl, just with the immediate word on my mouth being this is a masterpiece. Yeah,

13:51 this is a brilliant piece of filmmaking. Fascinating characters, fascinating storytelling. Everything about it is really really brilliant and thought out, down to setting it during the Spanish Flu so all the extras could wear masks because that was the law in New Zealand at the time. Like, it's all really clever and thought out. And Mia Goth and Ty West wrote the script together for Pearl. So the reason we're talking about Pearl and not X is to me, Pearl just is really something special. But also Pearl's a prequel, so you don't have to watch X to appreciate Pearl, but you do find lots of hidden gems.

14:33 Absolutely. And with the massive success of Pearl, there was a third film in the what they call the X film series called Maxine, which they shot a couple years later, which features Maxine Minx from the first film after she's escaped and is living her best life as a porn actress in Hollywood, trying to make, you know, make it in traditional movies, and unfortunately Maxine Maxine did fine. I thought it was good. I did love Maxine. I thought it was pretty good. It was very jallo. Yeah in eighties. It takes place in the eighties, but it was very jallowy.

15:13 I did enjoy it, but it didn't blow my mind. Pearl just blew my mind, and that's why we're talking about it tonight. Yeah. But also Maxine was you know, was hopefully going to be a huge hit, but they ended it ended up doing double the box office of Pearl and X and cost like three or four times what they cost, so it wasn't a very big success. It made twenty million to the box office but cost maybe ten as to where I'm pretty sure Pearl and Maxine or Pearl and X both cost around two million dollars to make, er maybe a lot less. Who knows. They haven't published the uh oh, yeah, they haven't published the budgets of that. I don't believe. I'm double checking now. Did they publish a no budget for Pearl? I don't think I see a budget for X. So yeah, I mean, but they were pretty pretty successful, so h but no, Pearl just yeah, blew my mind. So usually I ask like, when was the first time we've seen it? So that is mine? Yeah, I was giving a rundown, and then I pretty much gave in, like that's the first time I've seen it.

16:16 So you want to tell me about when when I made you watch it? Well, you, uh, you one year for Valentine's Day. You kind of made the decision. It was I believe when Pearl like came to Blu Ray possibly or when you got it. On I I think I want to say they were both on HBO Max. Maybe that's what it was, but I. Might be wrong. I might have bought Pearl on Blu Ray and X was on HBO Max, which is why I was like, let's watch yeah both, And at that point Maxine hadn't come out, hadn't been made yet.

16:56 But you you had told me when Pearl came out, like this is absolutely amazing and you're gonna have to see this eventually. So when you told me, yeah, we should we should watch this for Valentine's Day, I think it'd be fun. I thought that was great, and we we actually watched X first, and I thought it was fun. I definitely, you know, I got the Texas chainsaw vibes, the kind of grindhouse aesthetic that they were going for, and then the moment because you really didn't even tell me much about Pearl other than it was a prequel.

17:39 I didn't tell you it was like amazing and that I loved it. Well, you said it was amazing. You said it was amazing, and you loved me and you loved it. But you didn't tell me like what, what, what kind of tone it had or anything. You just said it was a prequel. So the moment it started and the music swelled, and know the bright, garish technicolor you know, came on screen, I was enthralled. And I feel like I didn't breathe the entire time we watched the movie because I was just so utterly captivated with all of it. And yeah, like you said that, the story itself is compelling. All of the characters are very compelling because it is a rather bare bones cast all things considered, and it is kind of a story about like isolation and being almost being captive or finding freedom in a way, because it kind of, you know, at the start of the movie, you kind of feel for Pearl, and I'm kind of jumping ahead now, but yeah, it just the way the whole movie played out. I was so enthralled the whole time.

19:04 So, yeah, it's a very captivating film. It really, it's fascinating to watch. The music is lush and massive and very old school Hollywood. Yeah, which is a big element of the film is everything is kind of old school Hollywood. And I want to mention, you know, Mia goth has has had a wild career since x X was kind of her big catapult. But she's been a fashion model since she was sixteen years old. That's how she got into show business and then she I mean she worked for Prada, Vogue, tons of places, glamour and she also started auditioning for films around the same time. She was sixteen years old, and her first role was in Lars von Truer's Nympho Maniac, which that's a hell of a film to have to start your career. And I'll tell you that much because that is a a rough film, right, but she was She became known pretty much immediately for taking kind of odd, darker you know, harsher roles pretty much immediately. She ended up in a couple of other things, like The Survivalist, which I saw that I'd like to rewatch it. I remembered liking it. She had small roles in Gosh a bunch of stuff. I mean, just a bunch of stuff, a cure for wellness. She was in that one and then her career really kind of shot

20:34 off with X and and rightfully so, she's very talented, although and she mostly gets pigeonholed as playing the crazy girl with no eyebrows. But and you know, I'm not saying that she is crazy, but I am saying that she's been married to Shilah Buff for like ten years. Ah, so, and I like Shilah Buff, but like you know, yeah, yeah, being married to Shilah Buff is a that is a move. So but we'll dive into Pearl and all the things that fascinate us about this story of It's interesting that you went with this concept of escape and isolation because I see it there. But that's not where I like kind of leaned my my brain. So I'll be I'll be interested to pick your brain about that more. Right after this, all right, we're back talking about Pearl, and I have a lot of thoughts, especially after this last viewing, yeah, where I kicked back and we put on my projector which I'm trying not to be angry about the fact that I have to send it off to get serviced soon.

21:49 But we watched We watched Pearl on the four K projector in four K. I had to buy the four K digitally because my dumb butt didn't order a import in time. But you know, looks great, sounds great, as usual, gorgeous film it is. I mean it's it's a film where the visuals are very aggressive. I think the term I often hear is hyper realistic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is what Technicolor really is. Is the idea of Technicolor. Back in the so back in the day, when you shot a movie in color, you had to buy a film stock, and the film stock could would be in color, but you had to have it processed, and the film would be processed by Technicolor. Technicolor was a known name in that field, and they were known for very vibrant, bright colors. The most famous example of Technicolor is The Wizard of Oz because that was one of the first Technicolor films. That was right when movies were starting to be in color. That's one misconception. People often think that Wizard of Oz was the first color movie. I think because it literally shows the transition from black and white to color. Yeah, but it was more so. Color was still novel, So having the movie go from black and white to vibrant, technic color was surprising to people because they had just assumed movies were still made in black and white at that time, even big movies. Yeah, so

23:19 they just assumed they were seeing a black and white movie. So when all of a sudden it's color, it was very exciting and very surprising to them. But yeah, so the vibrant colors are throughout. We get this opening where she's hanging out at the farm and it's very The music is just so so golden age of cinema. Yeah, the big flourishes. It really works phenomenally. It does well. It feels like you know you're watching you know the Sound of Music or The Wizard of Oz or you know Casa Blanca or any of those classics where it just draws. I saw like half of it on AMC.

24:06 Wants so I need to see all of it. I wish that it had been that other one where, Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn I figure which one that was Scarlett O'Hara. I think so, I think that was Scarlett era. I haven't seen Casta Blanca since I was a kid. So I was just surprised when you mentioned it, because it's like, it's one of those that everybody thinks of, yeah when they think of old movies as Castle Blanket, because that was one of the big ones, Citizen Kane. Oh yeah, see, that's a huge one. Yeah, and this one was. This film is very reminiscent of those on purpose because it's of the era when those movies were made. Yeah, which I think is extra fascinating because as she's doing her chores and everything seems so cutesy and fun and exciting. That's not what the nineteenth the late tens and twenties were like in real life.

24:57 That's at all. Movies don't usually capture truth. Sorry to those out there who believe in the truth of cinema and autur theory and stuff. But I have a rule. You've probably heard me say this before. I have a rule that I generally assume, like I'll be like, it's got to be a lie. Why because there was a camera there. Yeah. Now that has eased up a bit now that cameras are everywhere because they're in pockets. But twenty years ago, like if anything happened in front of camera, I'd be like, nope, you know, I am almost certain that is fake. And they'd be like, how how do you know that. I'd be like, why'd they pull a camera out? Because they want to capture it. So now you have like there's a little bit more of a chance it was caught by accident because people are, you know, filming their melbow toast out in public. But because I meant it, because I'm speaking the truth, that film can't capture, you know.

25:50 But it's the fact is when you're filming, especially when you're when you're making a movie. I now, while I haven't made a feature film on thirty five millimeters film or sixteen millimeter film, I've shot on celluloid. And but when you shoot a movie, you know, a narrative feature, you're sitting down with a camera and you're choosing lenses, and you're choosing where to put the light, and then you're choosing where to put the camera. Those are all lies because you can't you literally can't tell the truth. There's no way. Yeah, I mean you could say, well place the camera at eye level? Whose eye level? See what I mean? But I mean that's really like because they'll even say, like, you know, well, if you put the camera navel up, you know, you cause a difference in the way people perceive whatever who's navel because it still could be too high or too low. Like it's all all those elements come together to tell you how you're going to feel about what you're seeing. Yeah, that's the basics of photography. The moment you put the moment you point a light at something. I heard this once somebody said, the moment you point a light at something, you're now lying, and I was like, I'd have to go on further than that. The moment you have somebody stand differently in the sun for a photo, you're lying, Like it's all lying anyway. So so my point is, though, that there's this conception of the good old days and the glory days, and this idea that life is was like that back then, and I believe that when we feel that way now, that is nostalgia. And nostalgia can

27:24 be pretty dumb, and nostalgia can be can be damaging sometimes or whatever, But most of the time nostalgia is just harmless fun, you know, like you know, like shooting heroin in your toenails or punching the stranger in the dark, you know, the victimless crime. But but no, nostalgia's whatever, you know a lot of I mean, I love nostalgia, but this room is full. Of like, yeah, as we look at all you're nostalgia. Hey man, I mean, nostalgia's a hell of drug. Yeah yeah. But my point is that if you didn't live in the twenties and you believe it was like the movies, you're nostalgic, maybe a little deluded in a cute way. When you're Pearl, who I think sees her world and her life like that, you're not right in the brain.

28:11 And we get our first hint of that when she's hanging out in the barn and looking at the animals and then she sees a duck or I guess it was a goose. She's a goose, and she just sticks it with the like with a pitchfork, like it's nothing. She's just goes like, oh, what are you doing here? And then she sticks with the pitchfork, and then to make it seem I guess, I guess maybe kind of normalized, she takes the goose down to the water and feeds it to the giant alligator out there. Because in X there's also a giant alligat in there, and I did check alligators in the wild live like fifty years. So later on, when we see the alligator laid eggs, it's possible that like literally one of those gators is the gator and X because it's like, yeah, yes, yeah, fifty sixty years later. So and and when alligators are well fed and maintain the live to be eighty yeah, I mean captivity, they can definitely it'll be eighty. So if if she was consistently feeding them, they could live quite a bit past fifty years. But anyway, so she feeds it to the alligator and we get our you know pearl music as the freeze frame is just that alligator biting this off of the pitchfork that she's feeding it to.

29:20 Feeding it to it also reminds me of like Lassie. That's the other one I was thinking, Yeah, yeah, like Lassie movies. Huge sentimental swells were so common in TV and movies, and Lastie was a movie first. Yeah yeah, yeah, that movie's actually pretty good. So I grew up like in the height of Lassie and Rin Tintin, so the TV shows, so part of me feels like having her feed the goose to the alligator makes you makes you almost go, oh, well, you know farm stuff. It does it. It creates a sense of normalcy for her psychosis. Yes, I guess because because the whole movie is playing with the unreliable narrator the whole entire time, because we're seeing the whole entire world through Pearl's eyes, and there's certain things like you like later on when her mom denies the gift of a roast pig. I feel like that it kind of plays with that expectation because Pearl, you know, Pearl doesn't seem to understand why her mom would deny that gift. So it kind of the beginning her feeding the gator is kind of there to help us sympathize with Oh, she's just like the weird kid. She's the weird farm kid.

30:51 Well, there are plenty of them, you know. Well, and so one thing, I well, you didn't grow up on a literal farm raising things. You grew up a pharma ja armadjacent Yeah. Yeah, nice tripal No, But I will say I don't think that I don't think we have an unreliable narrator in this because I don't think we do see through Pearl's eyes. I think that we are trying as the audience to see through Pearls eyes, and it just gets harder and harder the further she she loses. It does though. That's what I mean, is like, is like eventually as the observer, we can't ignore all the shit, you know, like we just keep getting deeper and deeper into it.

31:33 And something you pointed out when we were watching it is during the sequences where she's being you know, put in her place by her parents or finding out, you know, things aren't the way she hoped, it looks much more like a traditional movie today. The colors are more naturalistic and there's more shadows and darkness and to paint a picture. Pearl lives in this little well. It's pretty sizable farm in Texas called powder Keg Farm. Love the name, great name. And one thing I noticed is there there's it's a very big farm. There's a whole house for for hands, and there's no hands anymore because economically things are getting really rough on account of the damn Kaiser World War One. So, but it's a running joke with my friends. I always bring up the Kaiser so much. I think it's so much funnier to be ben out of shape about World War One, and really because nobody talks about Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini and they're hilarious, sure, but like to just lean into like the Kaiser, I don't know, it's just it's just funny to me. So, but to paint a picture of Pearl. She lives in this farm with her mother and her father. Her mother is a German immigrant who you know, has a very thick accent. She speaks German in the home, and she is very you know, disciplinarian obviously, and her dad is an invalid. He apparently got ill and it turned into a stroke, is what it appears. He appears he had a stroke after having I don't think that he actually had the Spanish flu.

33:04 I think he probably just got influenza and had a stroke. People forget how dangerous the flu. I mean, still is very dangerous for certain people, but it was extremely dangerous back then, just regular flu let alone the Spanish flu that they're all worrying about throughout the movie. So he's confined to a chair, his face is half paralyzed, and the mother is clearly trying to keep it all together, while their daughter is prancing around dreaming of Hollywood and stuff, while she kills small animals and shows all the signs of being a sociopath, like just about every single sign of being a sociopath. But she does have something to live for, someone to live for, And we'll talk about him right after this. Pearl has a husband, Yeah, Harold, right, Harold, how could you not know?

34:11 I wrote it down somewhere, but I have so many notes. Howard Howard. I was wrong, Howard. So she has a husband named Howard. But of course he's overseas fighting the Kaiser as you as you have to, as one does as you should. So he's not around right now, but he's been writing her letters and they seem very sweet. It seems like he does care for her very much. Yeah, and she's annoyed. She really obviously wants him to come home. Yeah. So, and when we meet at some point relatively soon, so we may as well just mention. Now. She runs into hy Mitzi, that's her name, Mitzy. Mitzi's Howard's sister, and Margaret Howard, He's mother. They come by at one point to drop off a pig because times are tough, and there are several references to the fact that her mother, Pearl's mother, is you know, having to make sacrifices. They're having to, you know, work very hard to feed themselves, work very hard to keep the farm going. There's reference to how many fewer animals there are because they can't afford to feed them. Obviously, their dad's not working because his invalid, and what can you do? You know. So at that point when her when Pearls in laws come by, they drop off a roast pig, which is a very nice gesture to be like, here have some really like high quality meat, like to enjoy for everybody. And the mother,

35:45 Pearl's mom is just like nope, or Ruth is Pearls mother's name, It's just like nope. Y, yeah, we don't. We don't take charity, which I gotta say, I think that one thing this movie is missing is the mentality of deal with crazy. There are many scenes in this film where I could have I think I could have gotten out of it because I've dealt with some crazy people in my life. I'm just being dead serious, Like I remember I met this girl years ago. I didn't date heror anything. I mean, like, but I just knew this girl, and she started like flirting with me. I was probably like twenty six, twenty seven, and she was like hitting on me and stuff, and I noticed pretty quickly. I was like, she ain't like all her dogs ain't barking.

36:26 I need to, you know, steer clear. So I did. I got away. Well. Then she started hitting on a friend of mine a year or two later or something, and he like got freaked out. So he was like, I, you know, want you whatever, and she started like harassing him and like bugging him, and he was like what do I do? And I was like, well, how did you get out of this? You know? What did you do? And he was like, well, I just told her like I didn't want to. I didn't want to do it, like I didn't want to see her. I didn't want to do all this stuff. And I was like, dude, that is not what you say. He was like, well that's what I want. He's like, no, you you be busy. I'm really sorry, like I've just been working so much and da da da da, Like you know, I am sorry, I'm not very good at finding time right now. You slowly get out of there, and he was like, but I feel like she'll just get madder or whatever. I was like, when you run from a wild animal, it chases you. When you walk away slowly, it just kind of looks for something else to do.

37:28 Do not engage the pray reflex, That's the thing. Yeah. So like, but I feel like there have been multiple moments in this movie. There are multiple moments in this movie where I've been like, man, I know how to deal with that level of crazy and not just like crazy whim. I'm not trying to be like that. I mean, but although, yes, bitches be crazy right yeah, but no, But like the mother, I've dealt with some very intense older women family members. I've dealt with them, man, that whole, Like, you know, we don't accept charity. That's when you'd pull the whole. We're literally family. Our children are married to each other. Yeah, Like, would you not do something nice for your family? Like if your mother lived down the road or your sister lived down the road and they didn't have a lot to eat and you thought they deserved something special, wouldn't you do it?

38:22 If if you had the ability, Yeah, that would have broken her, you know. And then if that doesn't work, that's when you used to start bringing up the Bible too. You just say like, well, in the Bible it says that we would never you know, blah blah blah and waste not, want not and dah dah dah dah. Anyway, I'm good at dealing with those kinds of people, I am. I'm good at dealing with the bullheaded people. So uh. Anyway, we get the sense that that Howard is from money. Yeah, and we find out as the movie progresses that he became a farm hand at Pearl's family's farm and that's how he met Pearl and they fell in love, and then he ends up going to fight in the Kai. We also hear that his sister believes he went to fight in World War One in part to spite his dad, because his dad didn't want him to go over season fight and it even offered to pay a doctor to write him a note to get him out of get him out of the draft, and he was like nope, I'm gonna go and do my YadA YadA. So there's a lot going on there, and it should be mentioned.

39:25 So Pearl's farm, while yeah, they're in rough shape, it is still a nice farm. The barn, The barn is gorgeous, it's painted, it's it's maintained, their home is maintained. They're eating dinners and they're not just eating you know, porridge and wheat, their. Good healthy food. Well it's on the cheaper, it's on the poorer side. I mean, they're they're eating a lot of corn and a lot of potatoes, but they're not going hungry by any stretch of the imagination. And that's worth mentioning because it's a very hard life. So with that all being said, it's very clear Pearl is the only person her mother can count on, and her mother knows her daughter pretty well.

40:08 So we're already starting to wonder, But so far we're getting the vibe everybody's just so mean to Pearl, like all Pearl has as a dream. Just is not fair. So then she takes a bath after her she does gives her dad a sponge bath, which apparently is the you know, because they don't want to waste the hot water is She gives her dad a sponge bath, and then she jumps in that tub and uses the water up, and she gives them some medicine which is almost certainly morphine syrup. Oh yeah, and her mom mentions to her like, I need you to go to the store tomorrow to get your your father more medicine. So this is where we start to actually know who Pearl is. Because Pearl hops on her bicycle and she rides into town, and town is just a bunch of people, you know, in their masks because the Spanish flu has begun. And she goes and gets the medicine. And then what does she do?

41:08 Right when she's done getting the. Medicine, She takes the change, goes to the movies, pops open the medicine and takes a jay glug. A really big glug of morphine. Cheek full of morphine. And that's something I want to point out is she's acting like a child. But she has to be twenty four, yeah, maybe even a little older. She has to be in her mid twenties because she's not a kid. She dresses like a kid and acts like a kid in that cutesye way, that like what's her name? That played Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. Wow, how quickly they all forget you.

41:50 It's right on the tip of my nose, right there. God, wh why do you hate her? Why are you so mean? Why did poor Judy Garland. Oh god. So. But my point is, and I think that it's it's poignant and worth mentioning. When she takes that big gulp of her dad's medicine, which is a very adult and kind of wrong thing to do. I mean, an adult would drink alcohol, or I mean in this era, especially in the nineteen eighteen, an adult would drink alcohol or well, because I don't think prohibition had happened yet. Yeah, so would drink, would drink alcohol, or smoke cigarettes or chew tobacco or any of those things. She's stealing her daddy's medicine because it makes you feel good. Yeah. But when she takes that gulp of it in the movie theater, when you mentioned the cheek fils, that's what my point is.

42:44 She drinks it like a little kid, because little kids, you know, that's like the little kid thing is there. They fill their cheeks up, yeah, and then they whatever. So yeah, when she fills her mouth up, her cheeks get real puffy and then they puff down and she drinks it down. So she's drinking it like friggin' like a six year old. Yeah. Like see, another man, I'm not doing good with these old timey people like the chick who saying the little girl who sang like big top lollipop. U go, Annie, Wow, you don't know nothing, do. I really don't. I'm bad at this. I'm glad that Annie came up as the twenty fourteen one first when I googled it, because I love that.

43:24 I love that twenty fourteen. Ye I got, And there was the there was the whole VHS collection, and there was the late night commercial for the collection of movies for the Little Girl. I yeah, I feel bad because I'm not remembering the chick who sang good ship lollipop. Maybe it's because I'm insane, but my point is, yeah, it's very like old ditchy timey stuff. But she is acting like a child during a time of very serious things going on, like World War One, the Spanish flew, her family's economic struggles, her father's invalidism. Those are all serious, serious things. Yeah, and she's just at the movies, drinking medicine. And we all need to be able to, you know, blow off some steam and have a release valve, especially when we have a lot of responsibilities. But she doesn't even have that many responsibilities.

44:17 Yeah, like her chores like she acts like her chores are a big deal, but they don't even have that many animals to take care of. No, well, and I mean she just does what her mom tells her to do. Yeah, you know, it's not like it's the biggest job in the world. So, but some other interesting things happen while she's out of town or out on the town, and then some really weird things happen on our way back, and we'll talk about all of those right after this. For those of you who are yelling at your iPhone the entire commercial break.

45:01 Sureley Temple is the name I was trying to remember, ironic being that it's my favorite drink that I couldn't for the you know, to save my life, I couldn't remember the name Shirley Temple. But that's kind of what it felt like she was kind of being. She was being like the little ragamuffin kid characters. Even her little overalls and everything. Yeah, I mean that's farm kid stuff too. But no, you're not wrong though, And she's got the pigtails and stuff. And there's a lot of reasons that may not be entirely on her for her having her development arrested. One of which may be that as we progress, we realized that her mother totally sees there's something very wrong with her and is trying to deal with it. So why wouldn't you kind of keep her as a child because you need to keep her under control and children are meant to be kept under control or whatever you want to look at it. So as she's leaving the show, she meets the projectionist.

45:58 Yeah, he's a nice guy, comes out, and he offers her a cigarette and gets to talk in and he gives her a one frame from the movie that she watched, as you know, kind of like a gift and a show of friendship. And he tells her that he, you know, he pretty much lives there and she can come back anytime and just knock on the door and he'll, you know, come out and say hi. And she seems pretty smitten with him pretty immediately. And it's interesting because we've seen her fantasize about Howard before, but she doesn't seem very like even though she seems excited for him to get back home when she fantasizes about him, she doesn't seem that particularly warm toward Howard. But this guy she's pretty excited about.

47:01 Him well immediately, and he's played by David corn Sweat, who became Superman yeah shortly after this film worth mentioning. Yeah, he's basically being very friendly with her. She tells him about her life, and I want to say I felt like, and please feel free to jump in with this as the female in the room. I felt like he wasn't coming on super strong or being super creepy in that moment. He was being friendly and just kind of feeling her out. Yeah, like, what's this girl's deal? Yeah, even though he's like a I would say he's like a smidge of a sleeze as the movie progresses, I don't think he's like a dangerous sleeze or anything. He's just a guy wants to have some fun. Yeah, that was the vibe I got. Yeah, because it would have been very easy for him to go full creepo and I felt like they didn't do that, which is nice because that makes him more complicating, complicated, and more interesting.

47:52 It really does. So as she's riding home, we have probably the biggest Wizard of Oz the homage in that she sees a scarecrow. Yeah, and why don't you talk about I mean, like what did you get from this sequence? So she's riding along and the wind takes the film clip from her and she tries to find it. She and she finds a scarecrow, and she climbs up onto the pole that the scarecrow's on, and it starts out as a like kind of dance routine, and it quickly becomes something much more uncomfortable. So she she's dancing around this clearing in the corn with this scarecrow, and she kind of topples to the ground with it, and she's sitting and laughing, and then she gets on top of it, and she's like straddling it, and as she's looking at it, it for just a brief moment, looks like a man's face, and it kind of looks like the projectionist's face. And she screams at it, I'm married, and then I have a husband, and then she starts making out with it,

49:25 and then she very sexually is just grinding up against it and moaning, and we start to see just how she's she's clearly an adult stuck in this arrest, like you said, a state of arrested development, but she's a very sexually aware person. But she's not fully sexually developed. It seems like this weird kind of taboo thing, and and we really see that in the scene with the scarecrow. Well, the scarecrow keeps morphing into the projectionist while she's on top of him, which I think leans into the idea that she's just kind that she's not sure what to do with these feelings. Yeah, you know, because she has a husband and but he, like they've not really been able to be together because he pretty much went off to the war the moment they got married, So she doesn't really understand much. She's just kind of just kind of playing it by ear. Yeah, But then she goes home mm and things get way less weird and creepy from there for Pearl, thank goodness.

50:38 Yeah, it's just a totally normal, totally normal movie from here on out. Right. So they're having dinner and her mother asks where the rest of the change is, because you know, she gave her money for the medicine, and Pearl says, you know, I, you know, I spent or she said, the eight cents is missing, and she says, I bought some candy because I was, you know, hungry from the ride or whatever. And the mother just leans over and just takes the bowl of soup away from in front of her and just says, well, that was your dinner then, and gives this, you know, big speech about I mean not a big speech, but a pretty intense speech about I spent all day making this food for you and you didn't, you know, and you were too selfish. You don't even get to eat it. And she's like, but mom, I'm hungry. I had to ride all the way there and back and it does seem like it was really far of a bicycle out of town. And her mom just says, like, you go to your you know, you do not eat now, you can have it in the morning. And I thought that was, you know, an interesting exchange, but it's it's true, though she shouldn't be playing around, and she mentions at one point, the mother mentions that the reason that they are doing well enough, the reason they have enough food in their stomachs and all this is because they are careful and they're mindful, unlike other people who are you knowering through this whole change of the economy, because they don't accept that you have to live differently. And I am sure her mother has had her experiences in hardship. Yeah,

52:13 you know, likely leading to her leaving Europe to come to the United States, and we'll dive into more of that right after this. So after that, Pearl is kind of fed up with being trapped at the house. One night, she steals one of her mom's dresses, which is kind of established at the start of the film is one of the like naughty things that she does. She steals her mom's clothes, her nice clothes, and dresses up in it. So one night, she steals one of her mom's real nice dresses, a beautiful, beautiful red dress, and sneaks out of the house and bikes all the way to town, goes to the theater and beats up with projectionist. He takes her up to the booth, and we kind of realized that he probably does actually live out of the projection booth because there's a like cot that's been set up, and she even asks, I don't know what that was. She even asks him if he lives there, and he says, well, I'm he What does he say, I'm kind of what they would call bohemian.

53:42 Well, he says, I don't really live I'd like to think I don't really live anywhere. I'm what the what the I can't remember what he said, like the hi the something or other people call bohemian. Yeah, so it's it's a really cool introduction to him. But he gets out a role of film and he starts showing her a film. He says he got it from France, and of course she's fascinated because she seems, you know, she's she's obsessed with escapism and getting out, not just out of her home or out of her town, but out of America, like she just wants to travel the world. So she's really fascinated.

54:24 Well, she wasn't even interested in leaving America until he told her Europe. And that's she never once says anything about leaving America until the projectionist mentions Europe and how yea. Europe would be the big thing. No, you're absolutely right. But he starts showing her this film and it's it's a stag film, an early porno, I guess. And you pointed out when we were watching the credits that it was an actual film from the Kinsey Institute, which I think is interesting. I mean, yeah, they it's from France, but it was kept it was in the collection of old films. But so that's that's the conversation where we do start to see her escapism and how deep it runs, because he does mention to her, you know, he got it in Europe. He thinks that she would be a good performer in Europe. And that's when she really gets obsessed with this idea, like she does need to get out not just of her farm, her home, but out of America.

55:31 And I mean, she just adds to the fantasy she has. Yeah, because he mentions, he doesn't even say, he just says, in Europe, he could be anything you want. That's all he says. He doesn't say, like you could be an actress, or you could be a dance or anything. He just says, you can be anything you want there. Yeah. But then she says something kind of alludes to the darkness that's festering in her when she mentions that she doesn't think that her life will get better until her parents are dead. Well, she says she can't leave them, she can't leave them, and then she literally says, like sometimes I I just wish they'd die. They go ahead and die. Yeah, And he seems a little put off by that.

56:14 But not. He doesn't let onto it. He's not like perturbed. Well, she had told him that she was caring for an invalid father and you know, made it clear that her mother is a bit difficult and stuff like that. So I think he just tried to write it off as blowing off steam, just saying things to get them off your mind, because we all have those thoughts that aren't really appropriate. But sometimes you've done yeah, you burn out. Yeah, you just got to get it out of there, out of your mind. So that's kind of Yeah, that's kind of an interesting point where we see how much Pearl wants to escape, and we see her desire to escape growing and transforming now that she's got more contact with this guy, and now he's now that he's got that idea in her head that, you know, Europe could be the place to go.

57:10 Well, and he's he's mentioned he's going there. That's the next place he's going. Mm hmmm. So that's got it in her mind that maybe somehow she could hitch her wagon. Yeah he could. He could. He could be the one to take her away from all of this, since Howard didn't. And that's it becomes more and more obvious that that's what she wanted out of Howard, was to get her off the farm. And we start to see how much she resents Howard that he loved the farm life and wanted to stay there and then he left her there, and then he left her there, which seems pretty cruel to her. It really does. So the next day is kind of a big thing because Pearl really seems to have reached a breaking point, and so she takes her dad in his wheelchair and takes him out to the pond the lake where the gator is and takes him to the pier and just starts talking about how this is no way to live and things will, you know, things will be so much better for her now, and she gets ready to seemingly push him into the water when her mom comes up, when Ruth comes up behind

58:40 her and you know, stops her. Well, and she's talking to him like she's telling him like I'm gonna do this, you know, because I love you, you know, like I just I couldn't imagine abandoning you. And earlier on she was like pinching him in early scenes, she was pinching she. Like almost strangled him to death. Well, start to strangle him one time. Yeah, she cut pension him and then. Well she would just ask him like, are you even in there anymore? So yeah, and luckily he gets away. You know, the mother seems to know what's going on, and she's very afraid of Pearl. Also, earlier we missed mentioning or will you miss it, but you know we didn't mention. But when Mitzi came by again, she brought up this audition.

59:26 Oh yeah, the audition. There's a troop trying to find new dancers all over the state of Texas, and they both agree that they'll go together to audition against their parents wishes because both of the One of the reasons the Pearl mom doesn't want her leaving is also because she doesn't want her to get sick, and Mitzi's mother also doesn't want them to as as Mitsi puts it, get the germ, what a quint. Way to put it. And when she asks Ruth for permission, it does not it doesn't not go well. No, she tells her she can't and she says, well, you can't control me and her mother, you know. Yeah, it's uh, it starts to move really really fast.

1:00:12 It does. It does because Ruth is confronting her at dinner about knowing she goes to the movies and tell her basically like, I know the things you're doing. I know the things you're doing when you think no one is looking. And she tells Pearl like, I know you're going to fail, and I'm afraid of you. Basically, Yeah, she says that to her, because Pearl starts really towards this point in the movie really harping on I don't want to become my mother. Yeah, she starts basically saying that, constantly saying like, my mother's miserable. You know, I don't want to be my mother. My mother's just this dodgy, angry woman who did this and that and this and that. And there was a scene where you know her mother was crying at night, Yeah, which and rightfully so, I mean, her husband's an invalid. It's horrible what happened to him. It's horrible how they're having to survive. She's reading in the newspaper every day about hundreds of thousands of dead Germans because that was her home and now they're at war.

1:01:08 Yeah. So there's a lot that you you know, you feel really bad for Ruth. Over you you really do. And I think that Ruth's monologue when she's she's talking about you know, she sees the darkness and Pearl, and she she starts getting really intense and she talks about like, do you think this is what I wanted? Because she she hears what Pearl says about her, about herself and her you know, she hears Pearl saying like, I'm afraid of ending up like my mother. I'm afraid I'm going to end up miserable like my mother. And Ruth is like, do you think I wanted this for myself? Do you think that I wanted you know, I married this man. I wanted to be his wife. I didn't want to be his mother.

1:01:50 And and you know, she says, well, what about me, Like your husband's gone off to war. What if I just kill my husband and then we can run off together? Ye off again, we can both go audition to be in the dance. And she's holding a knife to her husband and he's, you know, sitting there. He's clearly aware of what's going on here. Yeatre scared. It props to that actor too, because, like he does an amazing job of doing someone who is totally totally cognitively aware, but is just paraplegic. Yeah. Yeah. And and before all of this, I mean, there have been multiple times where Ruth was trying to give Pearl these like bits of wisdom, like say, you know, you need to be happy with what you have, not hoping and stuff. Yeah, what is it? Sometimes it's not about it's not about sometimes getting what you want isn't what you get.

1:02:36 It's making the most. Of what you have what someone's getting. That's what I typed down. Sometimes well the last part makes sense, yeah, uh, being making the most of what you have and that's a but that's those are solid words to live by. So but unfortunately, speaking of live by, things are about to get a lot worse and not at all better right after this. So we're back and now that Ruth has kind of went off on Pearl and told her that she's noticed her, you know, that she's mentally not quite right, and tells her she's not special, she's all these these awful things. And I believe she says that Pearl is like her biggest failure, that like looking at her every day is the worst you know thing, which is pretty harsh.

1:03:41 They start fighting at like physically and Pearl shoves her mother against the hearth, and at that moment, her dress catches on fire from the fireplace, and in Pearl's defense, she tries to extinguish the fire by pouring It looked like a bolt of the soup. Bowl yeah on her. Yeah, it was like the pot full of boiling corn or something. Something like that. Yeah. So she doubses her and it puts her out. But she's already very badly burned and barely able to function. So what does she do. She drags her into the basement, locks her down there, gets on her bicycle, and leaves her dad alone at the for all of that, and she had Actually I think I got that wrong. I think she leaves in the morning.

1:04:37 In the morning, she goes to the Oh no, no, Yeah, so she runs out there. The projectionist opens his door and she just leaps into his arms and they make mad passionate love as she starts dropping red flags basically every direction, mentioning, you know, them both going to up and. Yeah, things will be so much better now. And and like I said about how I feel like he's he's like not much of a creep like earlier on, like when she left after he showed her the stag stuff, which is a creepy, creeper thing to do. I mean, they're both adults, but whatever. When she rejects him, he doesn't like do anything on and say all right, well, you know, you know, help us see around, you know. Yeah.

1:05:22 So now when she's saying stuff, he's just kind of trying to be polite. I guess he's just you know, listening and yeah, yeah, we'll see. So that he agrees to drive her home and help her get ready for this big dance audition. Yeah, And the moment they get there, she walks into the house and realizes that she just left her father there, and she feels awful. You know. She tries to clean him up real quick and keeps apologizing to him. She's, oh, I'll make it all better. I've just got to I've just got h I've just got company, you know. She's you know, says, I've just scott company right now, So I'll take care of it once he leaves.

1:06:04 Yeah. So, well, she gets him cleaned up enough that she can introduce him to her father, and he's, you know, very pleasant about it. He is a bit perturbed by the rotting pig that's just sitting on the porch will I mean, her mother had left it there and now she's leaving it there. And in a lot of ways, I feel like the pig was solid symbolism for Pearl, just kind of rotting in place, just getting worse as time goes on. The more she's alone, the more she's allowed to just kind of be whatever the hell she is. And she takes him into the she takes him into the barn, shows him the animals, is talking about, you know, how she dances for them and how they're her.

1:06:48 First greatest audience. Yeah, and uh, and now she's got to move forward because in show business, if you're not moving forward, you're moving backward. Did She's just saying all the stuff and he's like, oh yeah, and he's already weird out. Yeah. There was a part where they heard a sound. Yeah, and so they're yeah, they're they're upstairs in her bedroom making out. And while they're making out in the bedroom, they start hearing this like really loud, violent thumping downstairs, and she wants to just ignore it, but he can't. Like he's like, now we got it. This could be your dad, Like we've got to check on what's going on. And she's like, okay, fine, you can go check it out.

1:07:29 And he goes downstairs and he can hear thumping coming from the root cellar and as he's looking around, he sees like rotting food on the table and or he had just food all over the place. And she finally just like jumps out from behind a corner. She's like, it's it's the dog. It's the family dog. The dog made a mess. I had to lock it in the root cellar, and that's that's what that noise is. So while they're in the barn and she's talking about the animals and how she always performs for them, she's like, well, this is the cout Charlie, and this is the sheep. You know, what's its name? And he starts to put it together and he asks what about the dog, what's the dog's name? And she just without even thinking, she's like, oh, we don't even have a dog.

1:08:18 No, she doesn't say we don't even have a dog. Yeah, if that would be her admitting no, she says, we don't have a dog, Yeah, we don't have it. She doesn't remember thee yeah, yeah, she didn't. Even remember the lie. And then once she sees the look on his face, she tries to course correct, but this is where I mean, this is where she completely unravels because there's no more holding on to Like she wants so bad to hold on to the reality, but how do you hold on to that? And she doesn't like the way he's looking at her, and he tries so hard to let her down as gracefully as he can. Well, he's just trying to leave, he tells her, like he's got to get back to work. Yeah, And she's just like, why are you being cold to me? Why are you acting this way? What did you see? What did you see?

1:09:06 Like? Why are you being this way? And it's it's terrifying, it really is, and a good example of like you got to know how to pacify somebody that scary. You need, Yeah, you need Like when he'd say like, I'll see you around, you know, I'll see us see around and she says when, and he's like, well, it's a saying that was a huge mistake. He should have he should have made plans to see her again. That way, he could have gotten the town and called the police. That's what I would have done. I would have been like I would have been like, well, the last shows at nine thirty, why don't we meet up there? And you want to you want to meet me there? You want me to come and pick you up. Maybe we could you know, this and that, this and that and then you get the police. That's what I would do. But but no, So she's I mean, she's like, you're you're gonna leave me? You you know, why are you being this way? Like It's very scary and and very believable the way she's just erupting on him.

1:09:56 I mean, it really is a lot to take in. And he tries to, you know, head to his car. He's not running, you know, he's just like, I gotta go. She comes up to him with a with a pitchfork and she sticks him real good. And that's not even the whole of it, because the car starts rolling away and things are just gonna get messier from here. Right after this, so she pushes the projectionist car into that big pond where the alligator named Theta I forgot the Theta eats his remains.

1:10:47 Yeah, and it's a great little setup because we do see that old car for a shot in X just in the pond at one point, Yeah, I believe so. So, yeah, it's a great little, great look set up, sure well. And obviously lots of cars. I mean, I don't know if we saw a car that old in the pond next, but we saw cars in that. We did see cars. Maybe it wasn't that car, but I. I don't know if it was quite that old, but we did see cars. So it's obvious that that's the beginning of that. And at this point, Pearl gets dressed in her mother's like really nice gown and then also dresses her father up after cleaning him up, puts him in a in a bow tie, and it becomes clear things are not going to be okay.

1:11:31 No, there's a there's a great little thing where, you know, her dad is paralyzed and he can't speak and everything, but there's a little canary in the house, and the canary like, you know, chirps and sings and everything, and it's almost like a nice little indicator of the dad state of mind if you pay attention. So there's this scene after she's changed and she's given her dad a sponge bath and she's gotten him changed. They're in the family room together and the canary is chirping, and as Pearl is talking and talking about how my life must be so terrible for him, and she knows that he's going to look down upon her so kindly now that she's going to do such great things, and she gets a pillowcase and gets ready, ready to smother him, and the canary just gets more and more agitated, its squawking louder and louder, and I just love the I love the way that they used the canary to kind of give the dad a voice a little bit. I thought that was kind of cool. Okay, yeah, so yeah, she kills her dad and then well we don't see it, we don't see it, but she grabs a pillowcase and she says, you are loved, and then puts the pillowcase and we kind of cut away. Yeah, but then she

1:13:05 goes down to the root seller to check on her mom, and I thought it was great that she Her mom's just like barely, you know, still kind of they're kind of clinging to life. And Pearl gets the chance to repeat the line about making her remember what it felt like, because that shame was what she felt like every time I look at you, and then pushes her down the stairs to like kill her, and then it's time for the audition. Now that she's free, of course, of all her responsibilities, it's time to go to the church audition. And I love this because the music has become so overwhelming and ominous and blaring, and it's great because the you know, it's it's set in Texas, and so you've got this church just in the middle of nowhere on like a prairie, and everyone's in like pretty dull, drab colors except Pearl, who's in that bright garish.

1:14:11 Well, everybody's in blue or white, yeah, for the most part, and she's in red. Yeah, they're all the color The only colors that are really apparent are blue, white, green, and Pearl's dress is red and the door to the side of the church is red. Yeah. So yeah, she's there with Mitzy and uh, they're kind of talking about their plans of what they're going to do, you know, if they get selected, and. As they're doing so, they're getting interrupted by women leaving the audition and varying degrees. Well, some of them are just a little upset, but one of them is like sobbing. As the line moves forward. Yeah, and as the As the line kind of gets up there, Pearl just says, I have to win, and Mitzy laughs and she's like, oh, I don't think you meant to say that, because that is like kind of rude to say.

1:15:03 Yeah, I don't think you meant to say that. Out loud, and Pearl just says again, no, I have to win. And as they get closer, Mitzy has a moment where she gets really nervous and she's like, change, you know, switch spots with me so that you go you know, you go next, because Mitsy just can't bear it. So Pearl goes next, and she walks into the church, into the audition room, and she gets up to the stage and the camera pans back and as she starts singing, this curtain behind her opens and it's a big like war scene with like explosions and fireworks, and she's got backup dancers.

1:15:48 But it's like a painted backdrop, yeah, but with animation of the bombs going off and yeah, and then the backup dancers join her. And I do want to mention she's not on beat most of the time. I know, but she has I didn't even notice. That, especially when she starts doing her dance before it goes into the full delusion. She's not really on beat very well. Oh my god, I didn't even notice that. Well, she has no formal training. She never went to any kind of dance school. She literally has just danced around her farm. Yeah, so she's never had any critique. She's never been able to watch herself. I mean, you remember this is an era. You know, you can't film yourself with your phone and watch it back to like see how you're doing. She had no idea.

1:16:32 That is one thing that I did notice is you know, like for instance, you know, she goes and shacks up with a projectionist and has, uh, you know, has a nightmare about accepting an award and her mom's there in the audience, and she wakes up in a cold sweat and she's like, I've got to I've got to practice my routine. She never practices her routine, no, like we never like she will kind of waltz and prants around the farm, but she, yeah, she does not ever actually sit down and practice. So yeah, I think it's funny that you point out that she wasn't even in time with the music. No, And she seemed like even for the era, she was kind of old fashioned in her performance. But I also I will say I loved the I mean, obviously it's a big moment in the movie. I mean her doing that dance routine and the stage coming alive and the backup dancers joining her and everything. But if you think about it, I mean, to me, it kind of it kind of hints at like the vapidness of it all. Yeah, because she's dancing while there's a war actively happening, and not one that she's detached from because her husband is there fighting, and she didn't care. It's behind her. It's a setting, it's a backdrop. Yeah, it's not. It doesn't matter.

1:17:54 The explosions aren't real that are happening behind her, Hence she doesn't react to them. You know, they can't hurt her. And I think that that's an interesting way of looking at the idea of I don't know how to how to say it, like of just kind of compartmentalizing your life or in her case, just really not caring about anybody other than yourself. Yeah, I mean she is. She is a textbook sociopath. Oh yeah, without a doubt. She has like these little moments of humanity, like trying to extinguish her mother when she was on fire, you know, things like that. But overall, she's very very disturbed, you know. And that's one of my favorite one of the things that I love about this movie is I love movies about people who have a dream or people who have a passion. But you know, that's not like, that's not all that you have to have, Like you also have to be you know, social and kind and and you know, some people, I mean, some people who are very successful have sociopathic tendencies. But you can't just be a full blown sociopath and then go join a dance troupe and have all the success in the world. Probably not going to work. She's just super deluded. Yeah, yeah, she has the mentality that she would sacrifice everything to do it to be successful. But she has to have the talent too, and the awareness I guess for lack of a better term.

1:19:17 So as soon as she finishes her dance, the judges are going to tell her what they think, and we'll tell you right after this. What do the judges say, Rachel. Thanks, but no, thanks, that's not what they said. No, no, they said that she is not what they're looking for. They said that they are looking for someone younger and blonde, more all American, yup, and she does not take it.

1:20:02 Well, no, no, she starts demanding like let me try again, I can do it better. She just loses it, and the church lady is that walked her up to the stage is trying to say, like, you know, don't make a scene now, it's gonna be okay, okay, and she's not okay. So she storms out of there and sees Mitzi. Mitzi just agrees, like, let's get out of here. So Mitzi doesn't audition because they just leave together like rent then and there, and Mitzi had had her cut ahead. Yeah, so yeah, because Mitzy comes because uh, Pearl like storms out and is like sulking and weeping behind the church, and Mitzi just comes right behind to be a good friend and finer. He's like, let's get let's get out of here.

1:20:50 Yeah, let's go. So they head back to Pearls, which obviously you know the place is quiet now at least I mean that is one way to look at it, I suppose. Yeah, And they they walk up and Mitsy almost immediately sees the pig that's now like mostly cupboarded maggots. Yeah, because he says, is that our pig? Yeah? Yeah, she even yeah, she asks, is that our pig? And so she she goes and sits down with Pearl and gets her something to drink, and it's like, it's not all that bad. It's it'll be fine. It was just a silly church dance troupe. It's not even that big of a deal. And pearls crushed and she says like, Mama, Mama is right, I'm never gonna get off the farm.

1:21:48 I'm never leaving, and you know, starts talking about she wishes that she could go to Europe, and Mitzy says like, oh, it's not it's not that big of a deal. You don't have to take it that seriously. And that's when Pearl like really starts to get like less distraught and more serious, like no, you don't understand. I had to get off the farm, like this was my only chance and I had to get off the farm. And Mitzy's trying to be a good friend and she's like, no, no, that's you know, that's not you don't have to do anything. And this last, i mean, the last few minutes of the movie feels like it's the whole movie honestly, just because of Mia Goth's mind blowing performance. Yeah, And so Pearl starts to say, like she doesn't feel well, and Mitzy's like, oh, well, I guess I'll be going. She's like, no, not like that. It's not the flu. I feel like I'm missing something that the rest of the world has.

1:23:01 And Mitsy, again being a good friend, she thinks, oh, well this is this will be no big deal. She says, well, you should, you should talk about it. We should talk about it. And Pearl says, well, I just I can't even talk to Howard about it, and Mitsy says, well, you should practice practice on me. Talk to me like I'm Howard. And there's a few beats, and then Pearl starts opening up about everything, first the affair, and then she starts talking about Howard, her relationship with Howard. And this is when we really realized that any coldness that we saw in the beginning of the film was totally valid, because the way she's talking about Howard now is he was her ticket off the farm, that was it. And she lays it out that he she saw him and pegged him as the rich guy that was going to give her the life of luxury that she deserved, and he didn't do that, and she resented him for it, and then she resented him for leaving for the war.

1:24:16 And then she starts talking about, you know, all the terrible and awful, murderous things she's done, and then she talks about a pregnancy and you know, all this, and the whole time, the camera basically doesn't move from me. We may cut to Mitsi once or twice, but I think for most of it it is all on me, a goth. Well, there's a point when she starts speaking intensely where it stays on her for probably probably a minute straight or longer, which is really really long, because the whole scene with her talking to hers nine minutes long.

1:25:02 Good lord, Yeah, that's insane. Just saying that is just insane. And I mean she confesses to nearly everything. She confesses to kind of sometimes being so mad at Howard that she hopes he dies over there. She confesses to killing little animals and stuff around the farm and how it's really not that hard killing things. She confesses to killing her mom and dad. She mentions how she felt really bad about, you know, having to kill her dad, especially because Mama was sort of an accident. But one of the things she mentions that I thought was really kind of eye opening was she even says like, and I get it, Like I get what Mama was the way she was. She just wanted a home that she felt safe into, which is what I want. But I don't feel that way here.

1:25:57 But then she her tune changes though, because then she's like, but after she I think, because of after everything that's happened, she starts saying like, but now I understand, like I you know, this is maybe this is my world, and maybe what I need to be is what Howard, what you need? Because she's talking to Mitzi like she's Howard, you know, She's like, I want to be the wife you want. I want to be these things and I can if you can just forgive me, if you could just see me as I am and not be afraid of me. And it's it's an incredible, incredible sequence. But there is in the realm of a movie. When I say in a movie a scene is literally two minutes long, I mean that you don't you count to sixty twice?

1:26:39 That's actually very long in a movie because movies are ninety minutes to one hundred and twenty minutes, so one minute is you know, potentially, uh, you know what sixtieth of the ear a sixty you know what I mean. I'm not a math person, Okay, but I mean that's a chunk of the movie. Yeah. And at one point they stop cutting to and just stay on Mi a goth being so incredibly intense and believable and brilliant and scary. And it really is an incredible example. And I've been saying this to I've said this to so many actors for so many years, and none of them ever really listen, write a great role for yourself. You know your strengths. Yeah, so write a great role for you and then take it. I've told I've told actors who have been like, I want to star in something, and I'm like, I don't have any ideas, you know, for you, And they'll be like ah blah blah.

1:27:37 And I'll be like, why don't you write a story that you know you could perform? Well, yeah, not just the character you want to be, but the character you know you can nail. Like do that. That's literally what Rocky was. And this is a phenomenal example of that though, Yeah, she knew she could do this incredible, this incredible friggin yeah, it's it's it's it's a really masterfully done sequence, and I every time I see it, I am still amazed by it. And this is the first screenwriting credit Me a Goth's ever had, by the way, goddamn. So clearly she knew what she wanted to do and how she could do it.

1:28:20 Mm hmm. So but uh, once she's done talking like that, Mitzi decides, well, I better be and the old dust better be getting going. But uh, I wonder how well that'll go. We'll talk about it right after this. So Mi a Goth finishes her amazing monologue, and Mitzi is, for a good reason, a little unsettled.

1:29:03 A little bit, yeah, a smidgeon. Just a bit, just a scoach. So she takes a couple breaths and then she's kind of like, Okay, well I think I need to be getting going, and Pearl asks her point blank, are you frightened? Did I frighten you? And Mitsy, to her credit, is still trying to be a good friend. Why she would, I don't know, but she's still trying to be a good friend. She's still trying to be polite, and she lies and she says, no, no, it's just I just have to be getting home, is all.

1:29:46 And Pearl asks, do you think I'm sick? And Mitsy lies again and she's like, no, I don't. I think you're fine. And Pearl then says, I'm happy for you forgetting the part. This part's so uncomfortable. Oh and Mitsy, it's like what And Pearl says, I'm happy for you. I'm glad you got the part. Clearly you got the part because they're looking for someone younger and blonde and all American, and you always get everything that you always want, don't you. And Mitsy's getting more and more uncomfortable. She gets up and she's trying to leave, and she gets to the door and Mitsy, you know, she says, I'm not gonna say anything. I you know, I know, I know that things are have been hard for you, So I'm just I'm just gonna leave. I'm just gonna go, and she walks out the door and it's a it's such a beautiful shot because it's so dreadful because Mitsy's walking like speed walking, and the camera is just in front of her as she's going down the driveway, and then we see Pearl, you know, one hundred maybe two hundred feet behind her, walk out the door and just nonchalantly walk up to a tree stump

1:31:19 and grab an axe and just power walk up behind her. And Mitzi's starts running and she breaks off and then she trips and she falls, and Pearl just power walks right up behind her and lifts up the axe and just and you know, it just kills her, you know, just kills her. And then it gets even weirder because after killing her, and you know, she's like dismembering her, then Pearl goes back down to the cellar. You missed the part where she said what her mom said to her before she threw the acts down, because she asked her not to do that and should I'm just making the best of what i have.

1:32:00 That's really yeah. Yeah, she says, I'll do anything you want. And she says, yeah, it's not about getting what i want. I'm just you know, doing what I'm the best with what I've got. Yeah. So, yeah, she kills her and dismembers her, feed feeds her to the gator and she goes down and gets it. And this is it's like done in a montage and slow motion and stuff, but like it's really gruesome dismemberment. I mean, it's not done subtly. She's chopping the arms up and chopping the head off and yeah, throwing it into the into the water for Theda. Yeah. And and upon another viewing when she's giving the speech to Mitzi, the thing that made me the most uncomfortable was her complete insane decision that Mitzi got the part. Yeah, Mitzi didn't even audition. But she realizes how far gone she is that she just starts going along with the thank you know, no, it's good that you know, it was nice that I won or whatever. That just is such a perfect example of like what happens when somebody goes into like a completely delusional state where they're just completely off the reservation.

1:33:18 Ugh. But but you were talking about when she heads into the basement, Yeah, and to where Ruth is, Yeah, to. Where Ruth is. It's it's so uncomfortable because you see, you go back to that sense of arrested development because she just sits there and cuddles up with her mom's corpse and like kind of fantasizes about being held and sung, you know, having her mom singer a lullaby and rock her to. Sleep, an old German, an old. German lullaby, you know, which is part of the montage. As she's kind of like quote unquote cleaning up around the farm. And then you know, she gets her mom's body and dresses it up and does the hair, what little hair is left, and you know, gets her dad's body and sets them all up at the dinner table and waits for Howard. And we don't I mean, we don't know exactly how much time passes, uh, you know, but it's enough. It's enough time. And we go to you know, we see the exterior of the farm, powder Keg Farms, and you know, army truck stops and Howard gets out of the truck, walks up to the house and kind of notices things are a little amiss, almost almost immediately, just things seem off when he walks through

1:34:52 the door. But it's really off when he gets to the kitchen and dining room and now the food is covered in mold and maggots, and well, she. Put the pig on the table. She's basically decided that in order to make up for all of her wrongdoings and stuff, that she's going to make a home for Howard to come home to and hope that that is enough to make him keep around. Yeah, well, appease him. I think sounds a little too kind to get him to accept what she is and what she's done. And ugh, it's it's such a hard moment to watch when he walks in and just sees all of that, and then she runs up to him holding a pitcher and says, Howard, I'm so glad you're home. And you realize that she's been living with them at that dinner table for weeks, which is a psychopath thing to do. Is like leaving dead people where they would be if they were alive, so you don't have to completely and utterly face the whole mess. And I want to mention because that's a popular thing. Texas Chainsaw Massacre played with that concept a lot, especially in Part two, which was the funnier one but had a lot of dead family members in seats and stuff like that. The story that I read on Weekly Spooky this week for Valentine's Day, the novella we published by Bruce Haney. It's called Will You Be My Undead Valentine.

1:36:24 Very cute title, but it's actually very interesting and insightful story. And what made me think of it was the main character has this very religious, controlling mother and she starts letting him go out and make friends and meet people and stuff. And he figures out why when he finds a copy of Time magazine in her bedroom, which magazines are foreboden in their home, and it's the Time magazine about ed Geen, and he realizes that his mother read about or heard about ed Geen and was like, that sounds like my son who I never let leave the farm, who had an extreme because agean, had an extremely religious mother who couldn't accept she was dead when she died.

1:37:06 The father ran off all this stuff. And there's a part where he says in the story, he just literally goes, I guess it's cool, except for the part that my mom is afraid I'll be the next ed Geen. And that's why she wants me to go to the Grange hall to dance on Fridays is because she's afraid I'll become a psycho. I thought that was such a great twist, and Haine caught me completely off guard with that gag. But now anyway, but that just like made me think of it, Yeah, since it's poignant to what we're talking about. But we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll talk about the incredible final moment and dissect a little bit more about Pearl right after this. So as Howard looks on at Pearl, and I cannot overstate how how just mortifying and and honestly very like the end of an ec comic, like the end of a Tales from the Crypt. She's just smiling as you see this tableau of horror. I mean, there's mold in the water, glasses and corpses on the at the dinner table, and she says, I'm so glad you're home.

1:38:28 Holding up the pictures. Yeah, And I don't know if they planned on having her smile be over most of the credits, or if they just had her hold it for a while as an exercise or something, But she holds this painful smile as the music swells up. We don't even get to see his reaction. Yeah, the music swells and plays, the credits play as her face is in this painful smile. Yeah. And it's so interesting because it is a smile, but she somehow conveys so many different emotions through that one smile, and it starts with like, you know, joy and then pain and then sorrow and then shame, and then it goes just deeper and deeper into like just agony, pure pure agony.

1:39:22 You know what's funny, is I? I really? I mean, I think that's interesting. I only picked up on fear. Yeah, I felt like it was just that she's afraid, afraid that he'll reject her because she doesn't really care about anybody but herself. Oh no, and unfortunately this is a thing okay with movies, have you ever heard the term like good for her stories or whatever? You know, like they're not girl powers stories where a girl of female character goes nuts and does some crazy stuff. Usually those movies, Actually the characters are really tragic and it's really sad. This is a really good example. Pearl does kill everybody. She is literally demented, and it's not in a fun way. She is tortured, horribly tortured. Yeah, so I'd be remiss if I didn't say. Oh, and the music gets more dour as her she starts to fail holding the smile, and tears start running down her face, and then we just get the credits and Pearl is wrapped up. It's a brilliant character study about what would happen if somebody had the dream inside them combined with like completely unmitigated sociopathy.

1:40:33 She's almost like a perfect recipe for a monster, you know, the isolation that's necessary. But also she was sick before that. I mean she was killing little animals when she was child, which is a sign. But here's the thing I've realized after thinking about Pearl for a while, because I really do think it's a masterpiece, and I don't throw around terms like masterpiece haphazardly. It's a master I think that. You know, I would be amazed if Ty West made a better movie, just because you know, some of it's the script, some of it's the directing, some of it's the stars, and some of it is the stars aligning. Yeah, lightning in a bottle.

1:41:14 Yeah. Yeah. And the more I thought about this, the more I realized that Pearl spent so well. First of all, we have to go to X for a second, because X is where they are, you know, when they're elderly living on this farm, still together. Yeah, and in X, it's very clear that Howard has been cleaning up after Pearl his entire life. He's basically lives to protect Pearl. I think that that's a very fair statement. I would agree, Yeah, he lives to protect Pearl. They live on this farm together. He has to keep her away from people for the most part, you know, because she might kill him, go crazy, and he doesn't want her to take it away. He loves her. So with that all being said, that's most of what X is about, aside from like the teen Slasher parts. Pearl was so afraid of becoming her mother, but she literally becomes her father.

1:42:10 Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Now she literally becomes her father. Yeah, she does though, because. There's no partnership. I mean, she gives that whole when she gives the whole speech about how at one point she got pregnant and she was scared of it and she felt like this monster was growing inside her, you know, just sucking away her life force and stuff. I realize that's very sociopathic way to view pregnancy, to only see it as a threat and not see it as like sharing or growing something. You know, like because when you talk to like a healthy, you know, person who's like, who's pregnant, who's like, you know, heads on straight, And it can be hard. It can be easy to get your head off straight when you're pregnant because you got cormones and stuff going crazy and and you know your body's changing. It can be scary. But when you talk to somebody who's like mentally well and they're pregnant, they say, like, I'm creating a life. You know, it's weird and it's gross at times, and it's this, but I'm creating a life.

1:43:06 But Pearl's attitude was like this thing inside me's just taken from me. Yeah. Yeah, but so what do they do. They live on that farm. They kind of do whatever they're gonna do at that farm. It's pretty old and beat up by the time we get to seventy nine when X is happening, but that's they're just there and they've got their alligator, and they got a few animals, not even very many animals at that point. So they have literally done nothing a family would do. No children, no no growth of anything, no travel, no nothing. All he's done is care for Pearl, keep her safe and alive.

1:43:50 That's not a marriage, you know, Like I mean, and my point is that, like how her mother was like, I didn't I didn't want to be his mother. I wanted to marry him. But this, you know, these are the cards you're dealt. Like the man I love became an invalid. I think that that is a like super mirror to what happens to Howard and Pearl, which we see an ex Yeah, because literally Howard's moderately reasonable. Yeah, and Pearl is not. Pearls the one who's like, I don't like what they're doing. I don't like the way they look. I don't like that they're making a movie. They think they're gonna be famous, because she's you know, bitter as shit an X. She is her invalid dad, can't leave the farm, can't be can't take care of herself, has to be cared for and in X Howard, and they're both getting really old, and Howard's afraid of what will happen if he dies before her. Yeah, but he also won't kill her or anything, because he's a like a normal human, not not a broken monster who thinks movies are real. I guess so, No, it's just it's just that's it's just that's something I really thought about last night after we watched the movie again. As I was like it was about it was about right when the mother got burned alive. It hit me. I was like, oh my god, she becomes her dad.

1:45:10 Yeah, no, that's a very great point. Well and and and you know, I'm afraid I'll become you mom. Well, your mother's like a very tough, very able and capable, headstrong human being who is still a human. I mean when she's crying at night because the situation is just fucking fucked, you know, it's like that's being human. That's the kind of thing that I really started to dawn on me when I was chewing on the whole concept. Yeah, is like, yeah, she becomes her invalid father. That's very interesting. Yeah, So I don't know, I like, and there were other things I was unpacking too, like there's no siblings.

1:45:51 Pearl is a only child, really unusual for that time period, which would make me think that somebody, you know, like maybe her mother couldn't bear children anymore or something. Yeah, something something happened. Because I mean in that era, I mean, because Pearl would have had to have been born like in the eighteen nineties. Mm. Hm. You just have a lot of kids. You know that people have a lot. Of kids, especially on a farm. Yeah, because more hands, more of the more mouths to feed. It's tough, but more hands to help and stuff. So there's also that element too of making me wonder like maybe the mother was also ruth was also angry because like this was the only child she could maybe, Oh. Yeah, this is the only one she could have, and look at this she got. She got cursed with one.

1:46:33 That's uh off. Or if you want to play it the other way, to be a little bit kinder, Oh not really kind in a way, it could be more like I only have one child, Like my mother had six children and we all turned out okay, like and we like grew up in a horrible place that was poverty stricken. I only have one child to care for, and look how she's turned out. Like I am, you know, not half the mother my mother was. My mother made us all better people. And we had less to eat, we had, we barely had a roof over our heads. And look at this, I live opulently with my daughter who was a monster. Yeah, what did I do? How did I do that? Such a bout? Yeah, And I think that's a very you know, harsh German kind of attitude. Yeah, so those are all the things that I've been thinking about that I hadn't considered until this last viewing of Pearl.

1:47:30 But uh yeah, yeah, well I'd love to hear your opinions on it right after this. So those were my thoughts which went on a little bit more than I was intending. What about you, what are you? What are you thinking? Well, on this viewing, I definitely I felt a lot more more for the mother. I feel like, you know, you can't gloss over what Ruth goes through, sure, but I feel like in this go through or this time we watched it, I really I was struck just by the tragedy of her character and kind of you know, how tough it must have been for her, because yeah, like caring for a sociopathic child and an invalid husband can't be easy, and throw in a world war and a global pandemic on top of that.

1:48:41 Well, and they had mentioned, like I said, they had farm hands at one point, like the place used to be Hoppin. Yeah, there was probably a time when it felt like this was going to grow and become a lot more than just a simple comfortable life. They probably for a while were heading towards having a very successful business. Yeah, and then that just got taken away. And yeah, I just I love I've really want to now that we've watched Pearl again, I want to go through and I want to watch X again and see if there's some more stuff that I've caught, you know, if if I could catch anything else as far as you know shots that because again, like I know that they set up cars being in the pond in the gator pond for X, so I'd like to see if there was any other setups like that.

1:49:36 Yeah, because I don't know that they I don't think they knew they were going to be making Pearl when they were making X initially. Really because I I know that a lot of the especially like indoor sets, it feels like they had to have at least kept some of those sets. Oh no, they didn't tear any of the sets. They reused everything. But I'm saying that I don't know that they knew, at least not they didn't know at the beginning of X, Like they certainly didn't know when they were writing the script that there was going to be another movie. That's all, Okay, that makes sense. Then but yeah, and again, just the technicolor and the color timing of it. The music is absolutely amazing. I have to agree with you that I feel like this is a masterpiece. I feel like, even if you aren't necessarily a horror fan, if you are just a fan of cinema, I think that this is a really amazing character study because yeah, Mia Goth just dives into the depths of what darkness can lie in someone's heart and does a great job of like really pulling your hurt string, but still making you feel very uncomfortable at the same time, because like you want to sympathize with her, but at the same time, like

1:51:07 there's every every time I watch it, there is that moment where you're like, nah, Pearl, you lost me. I can't sympathize with you anymore. Like you're not You're not the hero that you think you are. Hate when they pull on my hurt strings. No, and I mean Pearl is definitely pretty quickly a villain, but a tragic one for sure. I Mean the hardest part for me, the moment where I feel the worst for her is just when she's right before the big long scene with Mitzi where she just says like, I don't feel well, you know, is there something wrong with me? That's where I feel really bad for her, because she is sick. Mm hmm, you know she's not well. Yeah, it's not that she's sat down with a bunch of note cards and planned out like why all this murder in Mayhem is good? She is drawn to it and it's dark and sad and tragic, but damn if it isn't a fascinating movie. And I think I didn't talk a lot about the other elements because I feel like this is stuff that movies explore all the time. But like I do appreciate how open and honest they were about some of the elements of wanting to be a creative person and wanting to perform and wanting everybody to see how great you are and all this stuff and how it is a little fucked. It is a little awful in some ways. It's a little it's a little dark to believe that you're so important you should be able to go and do these things. And every person

1:52:39 who goes out there and does anything creative has to have a little bit of that craziness in them that they're like, I have to put the sound into the world otherwise, you know whatever, because I think it's fascinating that there are people in the world who like will play guitar just in their bedroom for their own amusement. That means that they don't have some desperate need to be loved that they have to fill. They're like, no, this is just cool. Oh damn, I wish I could feel that. So but that is Pearl. And before we get out of here, we do have an email, and she's waited very patiently for us to read this because she sent this in on New Year's Eve. Oh goodness, it's from Melissa Ward, who wrote in before. I'm sorry if I oh, no, okay, that's her name. Okay, good I thought I read the wrong name Forson, but she wrote us a little email. Hey, it's Melissa again. I love the movie dead End. I found it on tub.

1:53:34 The thing about this movie is how mundane a road trip can be. While there's many movies that are about a road trip or start out as one Jeeper's Creepers comes to mind, this one hits a bit different. The simplicity of the scene. It is heavy on atmosphere more than meat. Things like a creepy gas station or houses aren't necessary. The humor is amazing. The horror is found in the Everydanius of it. Anyway, your discussion never disappoint Sorry, I'm rambling. Have you seen Frenzy nineteen seventy two by Hitchcock? I have? I know you have not. I guess Frenzy's really really good. Another solid movie, violent by those days standards, extremely violent by those standards. Also, I was surprised to hear you've seen you'd seen dudes. She referenced that in her last email. I have. It's been a while, but I would watch that again. I love me some Daniel Roebuck.

1:54:26 A few people have thanks for mentioning my email. Well, we mentioned this one too. I hope you and yours have a great new year. Here's hoping for a better one. We all need it. Melissa, Well, thank you for writing morea that great. We're always happy to hear from you. And if you, guys, any of you listening, want to write in share movies, you enjoy thoughts on our thoughts, whatever you may have, just send the email to Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com. So yeah, so anything else you want to share about peerl or what we're going to be talking about next, or well next. We are going to be talking about Confessions of a Serial Killer. Oh gosh, yeah you've been You've been threatening to make me watch that one for a while.

1:55:14 You still haven't seen it. That's a heavy one. Yeah, all right, Well, I mean it's your it's your. Call heavy February, which doesn't rhyme, but I'm going to pretend it. Does heavyary, have you? Have you reary? All right? That's I think that's the uh the queue for us to uh get out of here. Thank you all so much for listening to cutting deep into horror. We hope you enjoyed it. Remember you can email us at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com with any suggestions, comments or criticisms. Although we'll ignore the last one aggressively. I want to mention also, I think Confessions of a Serial Killer is available on TV and now I'm like checking as fast as I can. I don't know you'll find it on your own. Good luck, everybody, but no, thank you guys for joining us. If you love what we're doing here, remember you can go to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join sign up for our Patreon for a little is one dollar a month help us keep the show going and going. We do appreciate it, but we'll be back in a couple weeks talking about Confessions of a serial Killer, one of my favorite, truly unloved, not loved enough horror films of all time. So until next time, stay safe and stay off the farm.