Bleed (2016)

10/12/16 • 49 min

2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

Whew...where to begin with this mishmash of horror tropes? With everything but the kitchen sink thrown into the plot, we were left confused and a bit let down by 2016’s Bleed.

Special thanks to longtime listener Karthik Rao for suggesting this week’s pick!

Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript

Bleed (2016)

Episode 52, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Today’s film was a suggestion by one of our listeners. It is the 2016 film, bleed, not to be confused with the 2,002 horror film, Bleed. This one just came out obviously this year by director, writer and editor, Tripp Raim. This is one of his first films. He’s done a couple other things before this, but not too much. So, this appears to be his first venture out into the horror genre. So, Craig, had you heard of this movie before? I sure hadn’t.

Craig: No. I hadn’t heard anything about it, and I knew very little about it. And, other than, you know, what I saw on the screen, I still know very little about it because as hard as I tried to find info about it on the Internet, I came up pretty short. Like you said, the director is, fairly new, in the entertainment industry, I guess. And some of these actors were mildly done anything major that, our listeners would be familiar with. With that being said, with with, I don’t wanna say amateur actors. That’s not fair. All of them had credits. But with fairly unknown actors and a a relatively new director, The the quality of the movie is is I I went in with fairly low expectations, and I think that’s a good thing. I I I I didn’t it was better than I expected it to be. Let’s just say that.

Todd: Well, you know, sometimes it’s good to come into a movie when you know anything about it. Right? And, then you can form your complete then you can completely form your own opinion, and you’re not influenced by anything else. And just like for the same reason, sometimes it’s good to see a movie with actors you don’t recognize, because then your vision of their character isn’t really tainted by anything that they’ve done in the past, or your preconceived notion of their personality and the kind of roles that they play. Right? That is absolutely true. And Todd be fair, some of these actors, I mean, they’ve been in things that you would recognize, just not maybe recognizable people. I think the only one who kinda jumped out to me was this Riley Smith, who played, Eric in this movie. Uh-huh. The sort of the the brother. He has that, like you said, he has that kind of familiar looking face. And when I was going down through his profile, I realized he’s been in things that I’ve seen. Although, I I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that, you know, before or after this movie without actually looking it up. But, yeah. I mean, I thought more than anything, that the acting in this movie was pretty solid.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I we’ll we’ll get into talking about the plot and things, and I I definitely have some complaints about the movie. But, I would say that it it’s it’s pretty competent on a lot of levels. You know? I thought the the cinematography was pretty competent. I mean, sometimes, it felt a little bit like it could have been maybe a made for TV, made for sci fi, as far as quality goes. Sometimes. But other times, I thought that it was was was pretty good. Like you said, the acting, is not bad. I mean, we’ve we’ve watched some movies with some bad performances in them before, and and that can be fun sometimes too, but that’s that’s not really the case here. I mean, the the acting is competent. I think that where most of my complaint with this movie lies with the script and the storytelling. It felt a lot all over the place to me. To me, it kinda felt like, oh, we found this abandoned structure. Let’s film lots of creepy shots, and then we’ll figure out a story later. But, I don’t know. May maybe you’ll disagree.

Todd: No. I would I would actually agree with that assessment completely. You know, it’s the the cinematography really pulled me in and the acting didn’t take me out of it. So Right. It was, ultimately ultimately, it was the plot that had me scratching my head, especially by the end. And you’re right, it did feel like a little bit of everything thrown in there. Well, the plot starts out with kind of a flashback sequence to December 5, 1979, where we have a couple guys talking in what appears to be a very old backwaters town. Another thing this movie does really well, I thought, was give us a sense of place. We did feel like we were out kind of in the boonies, out in maybe the mountains, the Oz...

Whew...where to begin with this mishmash of horror tropes? With everything but the kitchen sink thrown into the plot, we were left confused and a bit let down by 2016’s Bleed.

Special thanks to longtime listener Karthik Rao for suggesting this week’s pick!

Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript

Bleed (2016)

Episode 52, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Previous Episode

The Return of the Living Dead

It’s the Linnea Quigley’s breakout role (and what a role it is). And it’s responsible for the idea that zombies eat brains. But when it came to whether this zom-com was a winner or a dud, we were miles apart. We’re rarely this split when discussing a film, so give this episode a listen and tell us what YOU thought of The Return of the Living Dead!

Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Episode 51, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: And Todd, we’re talking about the 1985 film, Return of the Living Dead. This is a movie made it sounds like it’s a sequel to Night of the Living Dead, and it actually is based on a script, that was out there floating around by John Russo who did write the original Night of the Living Dead. But, it was picked up by a different producer and, given to a guy named Dan O’Bannon. Dan O’Bannon is actually one of the screenwriters responsible for Alien, and Total Recall in a couple of those movies, and, this is one of his first directorial efforts. Now, he didn’t really want to shoot a script that was so close to the original. He really just didn’t want to invade on George Romero’s turf because he he, appreciated him so much. So he rewrote most of the script. In fact, from what I read online, the script that you see now with this movie has bears no resemblance really to what, John Russo had come up with, and then directed it. And so, what you get here, instead of a sequel to Night of the Living Dead, is really more, a spiritual, I suppose, sequel to Night of the Living Dead. It deals with zombies. It takes that name and it references actually the original movie and becomes more of a comedy. It was it was written more as a comedy than a straight horror film and and that really comes through. So, Craig, had you ever seen this movie before?

Craig: I had seen it. You know, I don’t remember if I’ve told this story before. I probably have. But, when I was doing my internship fresh out of college, I was in a different city, and, I was only gonna be there for 6 months and and finances were really tight. So, I didn’t get cable. And so my mom gifted me a gift card to movie gallery with, like, $200 on it. And every single day, I would go to movie gallery and rent, a movie usually out of their horror section. And I think that I went through every film that they had available, and this was one of them. You know, it was one that I had seen on the shelves forever, but these Night of the Living Dead movies had really never really been my cup of tea. I didn’t even see the original until I was an adult. And I I couldn’t remember. I thought that I had seen it, but I couldn’t remember. And when it got started, I was like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen this.

Todd: Now I remember seeing the poster for this movie in the theaters. I mean, as a kid, I I I don’t know. We probably wanted to see Ghostbusters or something like that, but, obviously, I never saw this in the theater because I would have been, like, 7 and my parents wouldn’t have taken me to something like this. But, right, the poster and the bot, which is also the box art for the video, is really distinct. You’ve got this tombstone that says return of living dead on it and then these zombified kind of skeletal looking guys, but they’re green and they’re punked out. They’ve got like punk styles and stuff like that And it just was always a very appealing looking movie to me just from the box art alone. And so I can imagine

Craig: And it was really colorful. That’s what always stuck out to me. It was really colorful, and that was in such stark contrast to the original, you know, night of the living dead, which was shot and presented in black and white. And so I always just assumed that it was a sequel. In fact, I don’t know, that when the first time I saw it, that I that I I don’t know if I knew that it wasn’t. I I think that I thought that it was. And it wasn’t until I was reading, about it this time around that I found that really it’s it’s not. And it’s actually kind of interesting that the movie is set in a universe where Night of the Living Dead is an existing movie that the characters are aware of and have seen. And so when things start going down here, you know, they make reference. And, I thought that was, kinda clever, actually. I like that.

Todd: Yeah. It’s really a neat idea, and, it works. It works really well, actually, I think. It opens up with a really great disclaimer.

Craig: It’s pretty funny. Yeah. It up on the screen and, you know, very, serious ...

Next Episode

Elvira Mistress of the Dark

Back in 1988, Halloween horror icon Elvira finally got her own movie. It didn’t make a big splash, but it did make a huge impression on both of us – and, we suspect, many likeminded souls of our generation. This movie celebrates all that is goofy and fun about this iconic character, and we had a blast revisiting the camp and the cheese this holiday season.

Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript

Elvira Mistress of the Dark (1988)

Episode 53, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Today, we, cheated a little bit. It is, Halloween, time, and we were looking for good Halloween type films. And the one that really came to mind, you could call a horror film, but it’s maybe more of a comedy than a horror film. But it is a movie that is near and dear to both of our hearts, and that is Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the 1988 feature film. The first feature film featuring Elvira, who we all know from Halloween time is pretty much an icon of the season. And I’ve been a pretty big Elvira fan for a very long time, for since I was a kid, basically. I even had Craig, I’ll admit, I had a one of those big stand up cutouts of Elvira in my room, like, when she was shilling for Coors back in the eighties. You know? Like Right? Yeah.

Craig: Oh, I’m super jealous. I always wished I had one.

Todd: Yeah. It was pretty awesome. It was my pride and joy until about, I don’t know, maybe about the time I got married, and Vic thought it was silly. So, I just I I got rid of it, and and now I kind of regret it. Yes. I don’t know as an adult what I would actually do with it in my apartment, but yeah. I was a huge fan. In fact, when this movie came out, it was in 1988, and a couple of my friends actually went to see it in the theater. And I was super jealous, and they were quoting it all the time and stuff. And when it came out on video, we did end up with it on video. I don’t remember if it was one of those that we rented from the store and and videotaped like we would often do, or if we actually bought the video, but I saw this a lot growing up. And both I and my sisters, it was it was kind of a family favorite. Looking back on it today, I still love it, but we probably looking at it with a critical eye would have different feelings about it. I don’t know about you, Craig. How long had it been since you’d last seen this?

Craig: I don’t know. It can’t have been that long. I love this movie. Like like you said, when we were talking about movies, we wanted to do something fun around, Halloween time because it’s, you know, it’s my favorite time of the year, with horror movies playing on TV around the clock and, the fall coming in, and it’s just, you know, this nostalgic feeling that comes around every year. I just love it. And so I actually suggested this one thinking that you would roll your eyes at it, and was pleasantly surprised when you were enthusiastic about it too. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve seen it. I probably watched it around this time last year at some point. Like you, I grew up with it. And like you said, I I just feel like I was always aware of Elvira. She did so much, marketing, in the eighties, like you said, for for Coors, and and she had calendars and and Halloween costume line and and perfume. And, I mean, she was she was marketing like Craig, and so she was always very visible. And I don’t remember the first time I saw this movie. I know that it wasn’t in the theater. I don’t know if it was when it finally started rolling or or airing on, TV or like you said, if if we rented it from the video store. But like, we had very similar experiences. My sister, who is not a huge horror fan, would never, be hesitant to watch this movie with me. We both enjoyed it. And when I talked to her today, she called me while I was watching it and she asked me what I was doing. And, I said, I’m watching Elvira, Mistress of the Dark for the podcast. And she goes, ah, it’s a casserole. Like, we we we were we were quoting, this movie all the time too. And, yeah, watching it with a more critical eye, this is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination as far as tech as far as, you know, cinematography and and acting and and all that. It’s not. And but I don’t think that it was ever intended to be. I I think that it was intended to be kind of in the vein of a B movie. It’s the humor is, low brow and but it’s hysterically funny. It is so funny. And I don’t think we’re cheating, you know? I think that Elvira is an icon in the horror industry. She has always stayed away from, the really hardcore intense stuff. That’s just not h...