100: 100th Episode Special

Show Notes Episode Synopsis

This week the Hack or Slash team breaks down a staff pick: Thir13en Ghosts (2001). The group debates the existence of ghosts, breaks down what’s so unlikeable about Matthew Lillard, and looks back fondly on the jump scare video craze of the early 2000’s internet. Paris also presents a theory connecting this film to the 90's classic, Matilda (1996). This episode contains spoilers.

IMDB

Title: "Thir13en Ghosts"

Run time: 1h 31m

Release Date: Oct. 26, 2001 (USA)

• The First Born Son: He is the ghost of Billy Michaels, a boy who was a fan of cowboy films. One day, a neighbor found a real steel arrow in his parents' closet. He challenged Billy to a duel, with Billy using a toy gun. However, his plaything was no match for the arrow, and he died when the neighbor shot it through the back of his head. In death, Billy is in his cowboy suit and holding a tomahawk, with the arrow still protruding from his head. His ghost whispers "I want to play".
• The Torso: He is the ghost of a gambler called Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino. He spent most of his days on the track, making bets and brainwashed into winning. One day, he made a deal with a rich business man, and so sealed his fate. When he bet heavily on a boxing match and lost, he tried to welsh on his bet and slip out of town. The mob and the winning boxer, to whom he owed money, caught up with Gambino and cut him into several pieces, wrapping them in cellophane and dumping the corpse into the ocean. His ghost is just his torso, trying to walk around on its hands, while his head lies nearby screaming within the cellophane.
• The Bound Woman: She was a cheerleader named Susan LeGrow, who was born privileged and had a penchant for seducing men and tossing them away. This left a long trail of broken hearts. When her boyfriend found her cheating he strangled her an killed the other boy. He buried her body at the 50-yard line of the local football field. The boyfriend was convicted and sentenced to death; before his execution, he was quoted as saying, "The bitch broke my heart, so I broke her neck." Her ghost is in her prom dress, hanging suspended by the strangling implements with her arms tied behind her back.
• The Withered Lover: She is Jean Kriticos, Arthur's wife. She was burned severely saving her family from a devastating house fire and later died of her wounds in the hospital. Her ghost initially appears in a hospital gown, hooked up to an IV pole and showing severe burns on her face. Unlike the other ghosts, she is not a vengeful spirit, electing to help her family rather than show malevolence. At the end of the movie, she appears fully healed and in her normal clothing.
• The Torn Prince: He is the ghost of Royce Clayton, born in 1940 who was a gifted baseball star in high school, albeit with attitude issues and a superiority complex. In 1957 he challenged a greaser named Johnny to a drag race, but was killed as his car spun out of control and flipped over; the cause of the accident was a cut brake line. He was buried in a plot of earth that overlooked the baseball diamond. His ghost carries a baseball bat, and in the background in his cube his wrecked car can be seen. Half of his body is torn to shreds from when he was dragged under the car.
• The Angry Princess: She is Dana Newman, who did not believe in her own natural beauty. Abusive boyfriends fueled her low self-esteem, which led to much unneeded plastic surgery for imagined defects. Eventually she got a job working for a plastic surgeon, getting paid in treatments rather than cash. Alone at the clinic one night, she tried to perform surgery on herself, but wound up blinding herself in one eye and permanently mutilating herself beyond saving. She committed suicide in the bathtub by slashing her body repeatedly with a butcher knife. When she was found, people noted that she was as beautiful in death as she had been in life. Her ghost is naked, still carrying the knife she killed herself with and showing all the wounds, and the inside walls of her cube are splattered with her blood. In her bathroom scene, the phrase "I'm sorry" is visible on the floor in blood; subtitles also reveal that the blurred, hissing speech that announces her arrival is her whispering "I'm sorry." This was written on her suicide note. When her cube opens, she advances toward Ben Moss, who backs up into an open doorway to get away from her and is killed when it snaps shut on him.
• The Pilgrimess: She is the ghost of Isabella Smith, an Englishwoman who traveled across the Atlantic and settled in New England during colonial times. She was an outsider to the town she moved into, and this isolated her from the other townsfolk. She was found guilty of witchcraft after livestock began to die mysteriously; when she...