The Dark Parade

Hey gang, your old pal Bo here, uh, doing yet another intro for the dark parade.

Yes, it has been a while, but we are now, uh, you know, really firing up all the generators.

The lights are being turned back on, we're flipping those big switches that have the handles and you move them from the bottom to the top and then electricity starts to arc between a couple of metal poles.

Nobody's sure what it does, but you know that work and science is being done.

Work and science is being done.

So this has been a long road to get all of my additional work done and kind of settling into the new job and all that stuff.

But you know that's neither here nor there.

You guys don't care about that part of it.

What you care about I hope, fingers crossed is that we're going to be on a semi-regular new schedule.

I'm still figuring out what exactly that looks like, but you're definitely going to be getting content every other week at least.

And oh god, I use the word content.

I hate the word content, it makes me twitch, anyway.

So we'll be digging more into that.

But to kick things off, oh boy, you know, like when you want to ease back into things, you get yourself a Cort, psyops and Cort is just the best and, as you will hear, we talk about the movie Sweet Home.

We dig into the weirdness of it and try to figure out if it's actually a good movie or not, and I'll leave it to you to discover how we came down on that subject.

I would also point out, folks, before we get into the courts, eye up stuff we've got a Patreon for Legion Podcast, which, which is the network, uh, in which, uh, the Dark Parade appears and, uh, you know, look, the website costs money.

It costs money to host the, uh, the audio files and all that stuff.

Uh, so it's contingent upon you, gentle listener, um, to you know, kind of help us, uh, keep everything afloat.

If you're enjoying the shows here on legion podcast, like the dark parade, um, and it's not expensive or anything.

It's not an outrageous ask, um, but the question has always been like, well, what do you get for the money, like you know, in addition to just being the altruist that you are and feeling good about yourself, uh, but how about a little something, you know, for the effort, as a wise man once said, well, here's a little something for the effort.

We are doing a show here on the Dark Parade called the Ranking of Horrors, in which I am attempting to rank every single ding-dong horror movie that has ever been.

We started off with 10 uh and and ranked those uh.

We will continue to do so on the monthly at least on the monthly it depends.

Every time I've got like 10 or more movies that we can throw on the list.

That's that's sort of my uh, my measurement.

Um, we will do it live.

We'll do a live version of it with the video where you can see it all, and then it becomes an audio podcast, unless you are a patron of Legion Podcast, and in that case you can see the video anytime you want.

You can watch the ranking, as it happens.

Those pregnant pauses as I'm staring at the list a little more tolerable, quite frankly, when you're watching it as opposed to listening to it.

So that is it.

That is the pitch.

I hope you do go over to Legion Podcast.

I hope you subscribe.

More importantly, I hope you enjoy all the stuff over there and as time goes on, I'm going to try to throw some more stuff on the Patreon that is exclusive to that, and I've got some ideas about what that might be.

But at any rate.

And then you know, youtube.com/LegionPodcasts is where you can find the live streams as they happen.

I will post those as well in the Facebook group for the Dark Parade so that if you want to join in, if you want to be part of the discussion, as we're ranking stuff and I really enjoy that, that was a lot of fun.

It's great If you guys can participate, and so if you can, you know I'll, I'll post that in the, the Facebook group and you drive by and we, we chat and we rank the movies and and we apply much needed science to the affair, so that you know we don't have to second guess ourselves and worry that subjective opinion is getting in the way of this kind of ranking.

So enough of all that stuff, let's get into all the other stuff.

I'm so happy to be kind of doing this on the regular again.

I've really missed it.

But also, you know of everything that was going on in my life.

It was the one thing that you know.

No one would die and I would not lose my house if I stopped doing it.

So, anyway, but now things have changed and we are back.

Oh, we're back, baby Back, and better than ever?

I like to think so without further ado, here is my discussion with Cort.

Psyops, all about the Kurosawa no, not that one movie.

Sweet Home, the inspiration some would say for Resident Evil as a game, but we'll get into all that too.

So thanks for sticking around, thanks for listening and enjoy the conversation, folks.

Uh, when, when I say show, uh, what I mean is pure, uh, distilled entertainment, the kind of entertainment that, if you were to inject it directly into your veins, would result in a trip to the hospital.

And that's what you can expect here, because with me, you were lucky to be listening to this episode with me, as ever, the, the irrepressible, the irascible Cort, but psyops, of course, from cinema, but psyops as well as the horror podcast landscape.

I was going to do my shouting of hello but you got me laughing too much.

But then I also decided that I didn't want to blow out your ear drums, so that's probably for the best.

And I'm just so happy that you said the psyops when you brought me on.

That's like my favorite bit we do.

Yeah, it's real Looney Tunes.

We've talked about this before, but I am a fan of anything, of anything.

Uh, you know wb, looney tunes and um, to that end, the movie we're talking about tonight is speaking of looney tunes, yes, speaking of looney tunes, truly truly is, uh, a movie entitled Sweet Home from 1989.

It is directed by none other than Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director of Cure and Pulse.

Honest to goodness, stone-cold classics, horror pedigree yeah, the kind of pedigree that is jaw-dropping.

He is a true master of horror.

Yeah, absolutely.

But that didn't really happen until later.

Early on.

Kyosha Kermis was getting his bones doing like some shorts here and there, my favorite and his.

No, it's not his first feature.

I think it's his second feature.

It's a movie called Kandagawa Pervert Wars that title alone.

Yeah right.

I haven't seen that movie, but I feel like I've seen that movie, um, but yeah, so that was in 83.

This movie comes out in 89.

In between he did a short, a couple of more shorts and a another movie called bumpkin soup.

Uh, and you know, your guess is as good as mine.

Uh, what the hell's going on with that thing?

Uh, but yeah, and then, and then along comes sweet home.

Um, you, you may know this already, Cort, uh, but for our listeners the movie was also beset, uh by, by sort of editing issues.

As far as Kurosawa is concerned, in a lot of ways this is sort of his alien three of like hey, the studio kind of fucking got in there and trimmed the shit out of this and moved some stuff around, and there was, there were some reshoots that kurosawa had nothing to do with and even though he is still listed as the director, he is kind of quick to say this is not really my movie this is an alan smithy for him, for those that are aware of that.

Right, yeah, that kind of thing, but nonetheless um, I think this is almost that David Lynch Dune kind of thing where you're like no, no, no, no, don't be too upset with the result here.

Take the W Absolutely, because this movie is what scientists refer to Cort as Bananas.

Yeah, yeah.

I believe the more colloquial term of shit nuts is what I've heard it referred to.

That's not very scientific.

Yeah, you're right, but that's not this show.

The Ranking of Horror show is a totally different show.

That's science-based.

This is more subjective.

So it's okay for me to say that this is batshit crazy.

Yes, absolutely, this is bad shit, crazy.

Yes, absolutely, this is all this is pure illogic.

Uh, this show that's not saying that I felt that that was necessarily a bad thing, as I am sitting here vibrating with how happy I am that I just finished it yes, it's right, right.

So the the other reason that we want to talk about this again just to establish some bona fides here the other reason we wanted to talk about it is because this is the movie that produced a video game called Sweet Home.

In fact, not produced, the video game and the movie were released simultaneously and it was a real cross-media event at the time of its release.

So there was this nes game that never made its way over to the the states, but it was hugely influential, especially in japan was it capcom's first, or is it just the one that put them on the map?

I don't, uh, I I hesitate to say it was their first game, but it definitely it was.

It was a milestone, like it.

And when I uh, I watched a little bit of uh video of gameplay of the game and it's very final fantasy ish, but it's got an inventory system and the characters are kind of swapping around, it's like for it being an nes game, it was pretty impressive yeah, yeah, it looked more like the later nes game level of graphics and things too, where, like your teenage mutant ninja turtles, the arcade game port that was in the later 90s, it had that yeah uh, we, we should probably tell everybody.

You can't get this really anywhere, but you can watch it on YouTube, and that's where I saw the video game footage same same as well as the movie.

The movie is incredibly hard to find, but there's a great quality print of it on YouTube the version that I found on YouTube that was really nice was actually it had a little bit of like the video game commercial that's like now featuring the film or whatever.

I'm assuming because it was in japanese and I don't speak japanese and there was no subtitles for the the commercial part.

But that actual gameplay is that's what it kind of reminded me of, was as far as they could push.

The 8-bit is what it looked like on screen to me for sure, and and so that game then went on to inspire the video game resident evil, which, of course, welcome to raccoon city was an episode that we did yeah, uh, and see, that's why I assume that you asked me to to cover this film.

But I guess it's because you thought when you think batshit crazy, you think courtside ops well the reason is um twofold actually.

One is I had had this movie sitting open in a tab for like two and a half weeks where I was like I want to watch this movie and I need a good reason to do it, and you and I had been talking about, like man, we need to just sit down and chat, and you know.

And then, of course, because I'm me, I was like, well, let's do some recording and uh, that's, that's how we do that is how we do.

and uh, then I was like, oh well, we had been wanting to do godzilla minus one, or I wanted us to do Godzilla minus one, and I still do.

Once that hits streaming, we are going to do Godzilla minus one.

The return of the G spot, that's absolutely Um.

But in the meantime I was like, well, I don't know when that's going to release and I I want to have this conversation with you, not about a particular movie, I just want to have this conversation with you, not about a particular movie, I just want to hang out and record with you.

So you know that was the confluence.

Yeah, any excuse you have for us to hang out, I'm definitely down.

Great, great.

I'm so glad to hear that.

I really did, and all that time that you were away I really missed you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fun to be able to just kick back and record.

Now, the thing that everyone tells you when you start teaching is like, hey, your first year is fucking mayhem, and that is 100% accurate football or something.

When they say like, oh, the things just start to slow down after a while and you start to see all the angles and all the cuts and and that's kind of where I'm getting to.

I'm not quite there, but I'm getting there where it's like, oh, okay, well, this just feels like a job now, like you know, uh, or a thing that I can do, not a thing that I'm just like constantly like what the fuck is going on.

You know, how am I damaging these children and how do I make it stop?

I'm similar at the position that I have just taken, not too long ago, so I understand yeah, right now getting to the point where I'm starting to understand what it is that I need to do yeah, right, yeah, and so yeah, it's a great feeling when it's like, oh okay, I'm walking in the door and I feel like if somebody asked me a question, like I know where the vending machines are and shit, but anyway.

But so yeah, it's been fun to be back and especially stepping into a conversation about this movie.

That truly is kind of great.

I think, like it's not without its problems and we can talk about those, but it's kind of this like silly, goopy, like you know, surprisingly gory, but it's fairly coherent, like it's not bananas in the way that something like the grudge is bananas, where it's like what fucking timeline, what is the order of things again, and what's going on.

It's it's more of a like oh well, that's an interesting choice, well, that's a bold decision.

You know, it's that kind of thing yeah, it felt really kind of tongue-in-cheek attempt at a horror comedy crossover.

Yes, it was uneven in its attempt in that like the first half is pretty much all of the comedy and then the second half just goes for the fucking balls to the wall.

Horror, yeah.

It's such an uneven tone that like you feel like you're watching two different films pretty much midway.

Yeah yes.

Yeah, I agree, I think that's right.

And it's schlock.

You know, that's the thing it's a schlocky movie.

Yeah, yeah, and it's like intentionally so it feels, like everybody's in on the fucking gag, like you're almost watching a parody movie that still wants to go serious with the gore kind of deal yeah, a hundred percent, and and all right, so here, here is the, the broad strokes of the movie, before we just start yammering about how fucking weird.

It is um how much we enjoyed that right and how and how good the weirdness is.

So we kick off and the whole deal is that we've got a team of reporters.

They're doing this show all about these missing frescoes that were painted by this incredible painter named Miyami, who also happened to build this giant manor.

And you know, ill shit happened in the house and now it's haunted and everybody kind of seems to acknowledge that, like, oh yeah, it's haunted as fuck.

Yeah, it's shades of Paganini's horror, almost in the way that it's set up, where it's kind of tongue-in-cheek, where everybody's talking about how awful.

It's shades of Paganini's horror, almost in the way that it's set up, where it's kind of tongue-in-cheek, where everybody's talking about how awful it's going to be and yet no one really seems to be all that serious about it.

Um, they go to meet with a local official who shows up like where I don't know where they are.

It's like in some weird post-apocalyptic desert, because the guy walks in with these giant goggles on and as he walks in the door in this kind of white linen suit, he takes off his shoe and he pours out what's easily two gallons worth of sand out of this shoe, out of one shoe, right out of a single shoe.

And you're like, wait, what is happening again?

Right, I was like dude, don't waste that.

I could use that to put in the back of a truck so it can get some traction in the winter.

Right, right.

Well, he's got an instant sandbox, which is pretty handy.

Right.

If he wants to do a little soft shoe, he's set Right.

And so we've got our cast of characters here, which are Let me hit the cast here.

So you've got um akiko, who is the um uh, uh, like the, an older woman, kind of middle-aged woman, and that's one thing I like about this movie is that a lot of the characters are just older, like we, you have some kids, but most of the characters are, honest to goodness, adults.

Yeah, it's trying to handle a very grownup subject matter, so it's probably for the best that you don't put a bunch of teens in there.

You're probably right.

The shit that's taken place in this later on is like way too heavy for a bunch of teens to be able to maintain you couldn't have the gang and Scooby investigating this.

It would just wreck Fred and Velma.

Oh, I didn't even mention this in the upfront.

But holy shit everybody, all the practical effects in the movie Dick Smith, dick, fucking Smith is doing them.

That explains why they look so good.

Yes, one thing you definitely have to give this film the effects are really good for its age at a hundred percent and that, and that's why you know there's.

There is a fucking burned baby right, oh, it's horrible that looks legit it's.

It's really unsettling hey, how do you know what a burned baby looks?

like Look, we've all been to college here.

My lawyers have advised me not to respond.

Look, this is all still in litigation.

An indictment is not a conviction, my friend Right right, right, and once acquitted and I will be acquitted uh, yes, anyway, but yeah, so this team is going, they're trying to get uh, the key to this manor, so they can, you know, shoot the interior and get this new story um, all about.

You know the, this lost art.

And then you've got um, uh asuka, who is the, the talent, she is the woman in front of the camera, reporter, incredibly vain.

And then you've got uh, kazuo, uh, who is the uh, I guess, producer is his role here.

Yeah, he says he's producer um in the office while the guy is dumping out a bunch of sand right, and then his daughter, um emmy, is along for the ride as well, as kind of serving as a pa sort of, and then akiko is sort of the director, like she's really the one getting all the shit done and then she's like the line producer and the older guy is like the executive producer, because he just sits back and like makes tea for everybody and she actually does all of the work that like a line producer would do is what I'm assuming yeah, and then you've got a real sleazebag named Akira, who is the cameraman and is constantly trying to get a look at Asuka naked.

Yeah, could have done without that.

Oh, and speaking of him being named Akira, that also fits why he was wearing that red jacket.

He was.

Right and Neo Tokyo is going to explode cort all over this movie.

Kind of.

So this is our cast of characters.

They go to the house, they get the key from the mayor, dude, and they with the goggles and and sancho um, and go uh to the house and they're, you know, taking pictures and uh of the interior.

And I gotta say there's a scene where they actually discover these frescoes and the music kind of swells and at first the lights are getting little bits and pieces of it and then you see the whole thing and it's kind of this really dramatic, wonderful moment in the movie.

And it was really the point in the film where I thought is this movie good?

Like it's well directed, it's well shot, like they're wringing emotion out of this moment where, like, going into the movie I was like I don't give a fuck about frescoes, and then when they find this big fresco and the music swells, I'm like they found it.

This is kind of magical it's really interesting the way that it does that.

It starts off without even really being interested in having you like or care about any of these characters.

They're absolutely detestable.

But once they start doing their fucking job and they become all professional, the movie then shifts tone to sort of match that because we're trying to create an atmosphere to sell their tv show of her restoring this thing, and as she's doing the work you become fascinated, like like you're watching a diy thing that she's actually doing, like you're watching the show, and seeing the picture slowly be revealed is just breathtaking.

It's really well shot, just like you said yeah and oh, by the way, earlier, like emmy is shiting her dad a bunch to Akiko, the older lady, the other producer, because Emi's like, oh yeah, the reason that I'm here is because I'm babysitting my father.

Like he's been a real mess ever since we lost our mom or, you know, he lost his wife and, by the way, he's kind of on the market and I know he kind of sucks, but you know, if you're looking for a guy, my dad's available and you seem competent right, she's parent trapping her yeah, kind of, but really negging her dad along the way.

You know, like she acknowledges like yeah, yeah, yeah, I know he sucks, but you gotta kind of scratch the surface a little bit and underneath it all he doesn't suck nearly as much I think she's actually using a reverse nagging technique where, as a teenage girl really talking down about her dad, it's gonna make the adult person be like, oh, he can't be that bad, you're just over, exaggerating and being dramatic and therefore starting to get her thinking the way that she wants her to think.

I think this is a master manipulative technique from a psychopath I like that idea because emmy is kind of ultra manipulative that's how I've read her.

I mean I've.

I grew up around ultra manipulative people.

Let me tell you this like she's sending off red flags, like this is uh.

This is a manipulative thing because she doesn't want to take care of her dad.

She's trying to pawn her dad off on somebody and then she's using every trick in the book she has yeah, absolutely uh.

But yeah, it's like they're another thing I really like about this movie.

It's kind of a production design thing but all of the architecture in the house is it's all curves, you know.

There's these arches and these kind of winding uh bits of of molding around a lot of the doors and things like that.

It just like it's a house that doesn't have a lot of right angles and as a result, it it kind of feels a little a little weird and a little unsettling and a little unreal um.

It reminded me of the consciousness maze that's uh featured prominently in westworld, the series yeah, okay, all right, yes a little bit like when you see, when you kind of see the hallways, when they're going through them and they're twisting and stuff like that's what it made me think of, because there's no, there's no real direction in the house either.

It's very disorienting and you have no idea what room goes from what to next, not just because of the editing, just because of the way that everything curves.

Yeah, yeah, it's, yes, it's very disorienting in a very intentional way.

And so, as they're kind of settling in because they're staying at this place too, we have a moment where Emmy finds this old projector thing like a slide projector, and we see pictures of Mamiya I think the owner of the house, it's his wife, mrs Mamiya and the picture goes all weird and Emi is like, oh, that's fucked up.

And then the slide burns up inside the projector.

So you know, supernatural stuff is gonna go down I like when they cut away from the business professional stuff and we're back with her, it gets sort of silly and nonsensical a little bit with what she's doing, but it's still creepy.

It's just kind of a little more silly tone to it, especially with the score and everything yeah and and like she's bouncing on the bed and there are feathers everywhere and things like that, like it.

It a lot of this movie veers into that kind of uh, highly tropey, um you know sort of vibe, where it's after school special kind of yeah yeah, it's After school special kind of.

Yeah, yeah, it's very goofy and silly, but on the heels of all of this and the moment with the projector is kind of creepy and fun.

And then immediately we go to a moment of like oh hey, by the way, there are all these other Frescoes that we have discovered and they've got their little vacuum cleaner thing out to suck all the dirt off of it and they're, you know, kind of going around and piecing this story together and it's like oh, this is all about a dead baby.

So uh, just a dead baby, but a dead baby that was apparently burned alive.

As they reveal that, and everyone is horrified and the tone shifts again.

Yes, fun, but like professional spook, like spooky atmosphere to the deep end of, like an exploitation style, like even the music gets more like a lucio fulci hit right before someone gets stabbed to the back of the head with a chef knife there.

Yes, there are a lot of fulci riffs in this movie, um, until you get to the very, very end.

There's a good like 20 minute chunk that could have been directed by lucio fulci and but then, like you said, it makes another pivot where it's like oh, this turns into kind of a hollywood monster movie sort of thing at the very end.

But what I mean, we'll get there.

But it really is like this movie just rockets from tone to tone and scene to scene, like what, what?

What is happening in the scene dictates the tone of the scene and there is no connection from one scene to the next in terms of of total consistency.

But it still kind of works because it is so like pinballing from one thing, one emotion and one uh level of seriousness to the next, because so there's a moment in this like as they're discovering all these dead baby frescoes, then the fucking creep, akira has discovered an axe, but the, the way that's revealed is like this silent hill pyramid head dragging of the axe down a hallway.

And it's like, because the tone has been so crazy already, you're like, is somebody about to get fucking killed with an ax in this movie, and not at the moment and I just have to state that, uh, if you made that thing double headed, I would love to wield that ax as the character that I played in Warhammer fantasy battle in the late nineties.

It's very cool, it's.

I like the fact that it's so big and heavy and Akira has to wrestle with it and he almost kills somebody by dropping it and it's very threatening.

And then, when this Chekhov's axe pays off, oh, does it ever?

Oh man, that's the thing.

When this movie decides to get gross, it gets super gross.

The same thing with the serious and the spooky and everything else.

I didn't know how to describe it until we got really talking about it.

This film is basically like a film with a manic depressive sort of disorder.

It jumps all over the place place and it's not consistent with whatever mood it's going to be in because it hasn't been taking its medication to level out that chemical imbalance.

It's totally not its fault, but that's what's going on with it because, like, it reminds me of living with someone that had a similar disorder to that, that would have those just dramatic shifts like that for no reason and then right back to where they were or to a completely different area, and it's all just a chemical imbalance.

And that's what it feels like while you're watching this movie, that the movie is having those shifts on you and I think it's doing that to keep you offset at all times, like it's going to make you uncomfortable one way or another, another, whether it's because you can't get right with the shifting tone or with the absolute dramatic horror or the after-school special hey, will you take my dad so I don't have to take care of him stuff that they have in a sub subplot line, I mean it just goes in every direction, that it goes to the absolute extreme and just swings wildly in all directions yeah, what?

and that's the thing the movie does not take small swings it, every swing it takes is going for the fucking fences yeah, and it has that axe behind.

It is what's going on with it yeah and uh.

So we've established that the axe is there there.

You know, again, that really is just to pay it off later.

And then we get the creepy stalker moment with akira and um asuka in the indoor pool where he is kind of observing her, you know, nakedly bathing um, or I guess it is just an indoor bath, but it seemed it like the the um reflection is all over the walls and stuff like again, this is all the the uh.

Production, design and cinematography in this movie is is pretty top-notch, um this house was abandoned for how long?

I would be really, really afraid of getting naked and getting into a bath of water in this place like that.

I would pick something up like some kind of mold or fungus or something oh, no doubt.

And worse yet, he just kind of creeps up behind her and starts like drying her off.

And then she starts it with a little like I want my baby back, baby back, baby back.

She does she.

It's the lyrics are I give my baby back to me?

Give my baby back, baby back and yes, the whole time she's saying it I'm, I'm like because I'm a shit heel, that's what's running through my head is like, I want my baby same same.

I've never felt so seen yeah, it's like.

I know it's a flaw of me as a person that that is my reaction to it, but you know, here we are it's a flaw we have in common.

My friend and I'm okay and now I want ribs same.

Oh man, it's been a long time Cort.

I could.

I could get down with some ribs anyway, um, but yeah, he finally pulls the towel off of her and she's got like black, hollow eyes and he's.

You know, akira is naturally freaked out.

He has been hoisted on his own petard a bit one of the eyes too, is actually like melted away and you can see where there was like flame damage to her face.

Yeah, in that that turn um, it took a little bit to be able to like realize what was going on, just because the resolution we were dealing with on youtube, but it still was very dramatically, a very cool makeup, from what you could tell yeah, and, and so this is when oscar, who is kind of, you know, possessed by this spirit, goes out into the yard and digs up this fucking baby cord.

Digs up a baby.

We are at the full four fulci at this point.

Yeah, we are at the 30 minute mark of this film and we are digging up the corpses of dead children um, not to segue or anything, but this was the point where I knew I was in.

I used to talk about that all the time on my podcast, where it's like this is the point where you know you're in for the rest of this movie, like, like you're, you're down, like that, this film gets you, yeah, this.

When she does this and it goes to the absolute horror, I'm like, holy fuck, this is extreme awesome yeah, so she opens up this casket and inside is the corpse of a burned baby, like half of its face is horribly, horribly burned and holy fuck man, it fucking moves.

It moves it like and its head lolls back and it looks so fucking real it's, it is so outrageous, it was outrageous for what you could tell on the resolution.

For what we had, it looked more than believable enough, and it made me jump when the thing moved.