Oh, God. Oh, my God.
We got to my place.
Could not find the soundboard,
which was in the living room, which was in the living room under a box.
That was that was the confusion.
I just don't understand where it could be.
I was looking in closets.
Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Well, you know, that's all we found was R. Kelly.
We left him there. Good.
Oh, man. I think I don't know if he was in the closet.
We'd probably get some money for me. Supposed to be in jail.
Well, maybe.
What if he just like peed on you as soon as you open the closet door?
Just he's just in there constantly being.
Yeah. Or just like pinching it.
Yeah. Like, oh, God.
Oh, it's like it's like a hose. It's just backing up.
Thank you for opening it.
It's just fear. Yeah.
I think I'm going to bring back and I hate to do it
just in light of everything that he's, you know, involved in.
But bringing back my trap Tuesdays.
What? Go on.
That's where I listen to the entire 26 part series of trapped in the closet.
Incredible. Yeah.
I'm assuming loudly for everyone else to hear.
It usually was because I was in charge of like music in the warehouse
or something. So no one should give you any amount of power.
One time, one time I just thought our long playlist of babies crying.
And my boss was like, Nick, literally put on anything else,
but on put on animals because he knows I like the Pink Floyd
album animals.
And I was like, OK, so I just put on an hour long playlist of animals screaming.
Oh, you sound like a nightmare.
I'm a great co-worker.
Speaking speaking of nightmares, welcome to ours.
Welcome back to cage match.
Colon colon. Oh, yeah.
It was just making a weird like scissoring motion.
I mean, it's two dots. Yeah, I see it now.
Welcome back to cage match colon around about way.
Nicholas Gage, I am your host, Sean, with my other host.
Nick, I'm Nick and our producer.
Hi, I'm Peter.
And we are here to talk about the films of Nicholas Cage,
America's greatest actor until we can meet him.
And then we'll stop. We promise.
It's more of a threat at this point.
He could end this. Yeah.
You can end this whenever you want, Nick.
Peter, why do we do this again?
Because we love suffering and each other.
I love each other's suffering.
Yeah, so this is a sixty four Nick Cage movies bracket style.
We match them up kind of based on serious roles.
Funny, fucking weird.
This is the fucking weird bracket. Lucky you. Yeah.
And we've got Looking Glass and Color Out of Space.
These two came out around around about the same time.
Looking Glass 2018, Color Out of Space 2020.
Yeah, that's right.
So, yeah, as Peter said, we are in the fucking weird category.
And both of these movies were fucking weird.
One for good reasons and good weird.
The other one not for sexy reasons.
I mean, what's it even sexy, though?
There was that one scene with the dominatrix.
That was by I'm just going to say it now.
That was the worst S&M I've ever seen.
I had to get right on the Internet and make sure that was fake.
By doing extensive studying.
Mm hmm. I watched a lot of adult documentaries that night.
Hey, yeah. Yeah.
So since we're there, let's discuss Looking Glass.
Yeah, let's do that. Nick. Oh, OK.
Looking Glass in brief is about a couple who buys a motel
desert or a desert motel, and they find some strange, weird shit.
And it just kind of happens around there.
That's that's the whole movie, honestly. Yeah.
With 10 percent more suspense.
And I mean, you've got so you got Nick Cage's Ray, his wife,
Robin Tooney is Maggie, Mark Bluecus is Howard.
And that's really all you need to know.
That's no way. Mark Bluecus.
But that it's all about Ernie Lively as Tommy.
Yeah, Tommy kind of ruled.
Which one was Tommy the trucker?
Oh, yeah.
He had the best quarter of the entire movie.
We'll give you that one. Yeah, that's a good one.
He has like the largest, I don't know, not necessarily filmography,
but credit bank out of anybody else.
So from the cage. OK, I was like, even the cage. Wow.
I mean, yeah, I guess about that.
When you some odd.
Yeah, he's a prolific actor. Mostly TV.
Yeah, definitely.
Speaking of television, this director, a lot of television.
I think he's directed maybe three feature length films,
but everything else has been random episodes of TV.
There's hundreds of things in his IMDB database for directing,
but it's an episode of Riverdale, three episodes of Twin Peaks.
This this movie really could have benefited from being a 30 or 45 minute TV show.
Yes. Yeah.
Or like a two and a half hour long movie with a better script.
But I mean, it's it's got what it's got.
It's yeah.
And I don't think the dialogue or the pacing is terrible.
It's mostly the fact that nothing happens.
Yeah, for a suspense thriller, it's hard to feel any suspense or thrill.
So the weird thing that happens early on in this film is Nick Cage
while finds a crawl space in a storage closet
that goes behind the two way mirror in room 10.
A couple of weeks ago, we watched the movie Barbarian.
Oh, yeah.
And like instantly when he finds that tunnel, I'm like, don't go in that fucking tunnel.
You know what's in that tunnel.
Weird long boob ladies.
Also, who named two way mirrors that because it's very confusing.
It's kind of a one way mirror and then a window.
Well, it's now don't quote me on this.
Not a mirror scientist.
But I think it's because you can look at it two different ways.
If you look at a normal mirror from the back, you're not looking at it.
That's some that's some big brain shit.
I like that. Yeah.
Well, that's that's what you get when you have
somebody who's been through 10 plus years of higher education.
That's why Josh pays you the minimal bucks.
Thanks, Josh.
Here's your one call out for episode.
Yeah. Yeah.
Thanks, patron, Josh.
And maybe someday soon, recurring patron, Sean.
Yeah, we're not holding my breath.
Well, one of the things that was killing me about this movie
is that fake fucking beard that they slapped on Nick Cage.
It looks so shitty.
Is that fake or did he just do it is 100 percent fake.
That thing is so weak.
He looks like fucking budget Chris Evans.
Yeah. What sexiest man alive, Chris Evans.
So it's like I said, but I mean, that's that's like a low budget.
That's like a Walmart Chris Evans with.
It's like mom says, no, we've got Chris Evans at home.
So he finds this mirror,
like in most movies where he's his current age, he's sexually frustrated.
I assumed him watching people get it on, including fat,
sloppy truckers with their ladies of the night.
Yeah, I was like sex worker, sex worker.
There we go. Thank you, Nick.
Yeah, you got it.
I really expected to see some heavy breathing and like
behind the mirror, Jack, but no, it's a classy film.
There's no Jack in it.
I don't know. Like during that S&M scene, he's just sitting there.
And like it's almost like he's doing dance moves because at one point,
like his face is profile to the mirror and then like really abruptly
and quickly just whips it right back in.
And he's looking and it's like he's voting.
Yeah. The first time is where they had like the weird angelic chorus.
Going. Oh, I forgot about that.
It's like the worst horny pairing.
I know it would have been so much better if it was like some Lost Boys.
Well, sure, not care.
That'd be good.
And then that guy with the saxophone and the chains wrapped around his chest
could come out and just start playing in the room.
You know, sexy sax man went on his first solo tour recently.
This is a hard departure from the movie, but I think we might need that.
He went on his first tour.
That's awesome. Released his own solo album.
And is it just Careless Whisper for 40 minutes?
No, but that would be pretty good.
So there are a couple of recurring people who come to the motel,
including a young woman who seems to just stay there now
and is visited by the sex worker Dominatrix a couple of times.
And after the second time, she's immediately nabbed by a guy
in a black mask and all black clothing.
We later found out was there the whole time watching.
So I don't understand that hole.
She only went once because they only talked about her as like our first customer.
And then she had a guest, which was the.
Sex worker and that took some work.
It was hard.
And then she disappeared after that never to be seen.
But the sex worker came back a few times.
Yeah. Do we have a name for her?
I don't want to keep saying sex worker.
That's probably a good idea.
I hate giving them names, but.
Peter, can you cut my laugh in that joke?
Hey, Peter, can you turn his laugh up?
Yeah, make it real.
Double it.
Cut in every laugh from the entire.
All laughs.
That's going to make me feel so good.
I'm going to be like that joke fucking rocked.
I don't remember it being that good in the moment, but everybody knows I'm funny.
But the young woman winds up dead.
And that's when we find out that there's been other murders.
Well, murder at this motel when we're introduced to Howard
Mark on Lucas's character, the friendly cop.
Who was also Buffy's boyfriend and Buffy the vampire slayer.
That's what he looked familiar from.
All right. I did not remember that.
Josie called that like immediately.
I do. I'm not surprised.
I recognize it now.
I do like his way of questioning Ray as to whether it was involved.
You do it. Did you do it?
Did I do what? Did you do it?
Did I do what? Did you?
But he's not even questioning him about this like recent one.
He's going to know about some chick who disappeared
like a month or two months or some shit like that.
No, they found her body in the pool.
Well, like, OK, she was killed previously coincidentally
right after Ray visited the first time and someone recognized his truck.
Yeah, there's some creepy mechanics across the street.
There's a whole plethora of potential suspects that they spend no time on
or even build up that maybe they did something.
So it's a murder mystery without the mystery.
It's a murder mystery with four characters.
Yeah, one of which is potentially going to be a victim.
Yeah, like one of the truck stop guys is like this really creepy skinny boy
who's like, I don't think you should be here.
It's like, is he supposed to be a red herring?
That's the fucking worst.
Yeah, everybody knows everybody here except you.
Yeah, I watched it this morning.
So there's just nothing of substance to like string along the mystery.
There's a weird scene at the end.
So the original motel owner just disappears like they were supposed to get there
in the beginning of the film and get the key from him.
He left the key outside in an envelope and booked it.
Ray finally finds him and goes out to the desert to meet him.
I got a real question here about how he finds him, because like
Ben is saying like you called everybody in town looking for me.
It's like what town it's like the last time they've taught people in this town.
Well, the last time they talked, it was like he was at some mysterious bar.
You don't see any like exterior and he uses the landline.
How the fuck like did he just star 69 this fucking bar
and then call the entire municipality like.
And this is when things are starting to get like even weirder.
And Ben is so unhinged and like scanning with like a ray gun detector
to see if he's wearing a bug.
And I'm just like, is this going to be a weird Nick Cage from the future situation?
No, we don't actually know that he wasn't always that way.
That's a good point.
I mean, he spent no time with his character.
Yeah, we know he had a secret like pervert tunnel
and he called it a sociology experiment.
That was pretty great.
Chef's kiss to that one.
That was a great line.
Well played. That's marketing, baby.
Every time I watch fat truckers in there.
This hurts.
Breathe.
I can't.
Why do they keep putting them in movies that I have to talk about?
Yeah, I have a feeling we're going to see a lot of this.
Yeah, it's like watching Nicolas Cage drink.
It's in every movie except Ghost Rider.
He also has a drinking problem.
No, wait, the wife has a pill problem.
Yeah, and he's a bit of a drunk.
But like, holy fuck, his drunk acting has gotten so bad by comparison to leaving Las Vegas.
It's so shitty.
We can talk about that more in Color Out of Space.
That's a different one.
I can even give him like props for a weird performance on that.
Like, I made a specific note about how bad his drunk acting was in this movie.
This was definitely of that we're just this is a paycheck movie, it felt like.
Yeah, I didn't see anything that really made me think like there was a draw to this.
Yeah, we do get to see him bone down again.
Mm hmm.
So.
Oh, and then nipple.
We saw a nipple.
Yeah.
Oh, we did see a nipple.
Yeah, my note on that was another day, another Nick Cage hump scene.
Yeah, I thought you were going to say another day, another nipple.
And I was like, oh, remember the dream he had about the.
Oh, yeah, about banging the Hispanic sex worker lady.
She was a cleaning lady.
Oh, I get it all confused cleaning.
She was cleaning something.
I forgot about that scene.
Yeah, that was good and weird.
And then like she shows up, like wakes him up from his dream knocking on the door.
And it's like, oh.
And so it turns out watching other people get it on is what he needed to reignite the flame in his marriage.
I don't think that's really reigniting the flame.
I think that's just working out frustration.
Yeah.
And then at one point, like she thinks he's having another affair.
She's like back on pills and she's freaking out and he's just shaking her.
Yeah.
And he says my favorite line from the movie, which is cool off.
And he like drags her into the shower and like turns on the shower.
Yeah.
My favorite line, because there aren't a lot of good ones in this.
No, Tommy's got them all.
Yeah, we should probably mention like why there's this whole like frustration and relationship issue.
It's like in their past, their backstory, which gets it's so weirdly like just rushed through in a series of like a couple sentences and then like brought back up briefly by the later.
But by the way, yeah, Nicholas Cage and his wife used to have this daughter.
She was to one day while the mom Maggie was watching the kid, she was all hopped up on pills and cage goes over to the neighbor and helps the neighbor.
The kid ends up while unsupervised falling out of a window and dying.
Boom. So they decide, I guess, to go to this new town by a hotel motel holiday and you beat me there.
I just had to be done.
It wasn't a holiday and it was a motorway.
Then like try to start new and fresh where nobody knows that he's an adulterer.
She's a bill popper and they killed their child through negligence.
Yeah.
Allegedly.
Yeah. And the cop uses that against him when trying to like get him to either one confessor, find out where Ben is.
Again, there's no subtlety to this performance.
So after Ray finds Ben in the desert, Ben's about to tell him something but get shot out of nowhere.
And then you see a car suspiciously like a cop car.
No, it wasn't a cop car.
But now it's just generic like old sedan.
But he comes back to the motel.
Cops there, his apartment is like has been tossed and he sees the blue sex light on in room 10.
It is weird how that room just has like a light specifically for when people are boning down.
Yeah. So he goes into the crawlspace to find his wife is handcuffed to the bed and the cop has been the villain all along.
He killed both girls because he's a piece of shit.
I assume it's a power thing.
Yeah. So his plan was to shoot Ray as soon as he came through the door, then rape and kill the wife and then make it look like a murder suicide.
Yeah. Which if you shoot a guy as he walks in a door, the coroner would have questions unless he is the coroner because there are only five people who live in this like town.
But also it's one of those like really contrived moments to where he's explaining his whole master plan to her while Nick Cage is watching through the two way mirror.
He's behind the glass. He should have a gun, but he like knocks on the glass.
So the cop comes over and then he tackles the cop through the glass.
He could have just shot him. Yeah, because in the end he shoots him anyway.
It makes the most sense in my head that the cop had his gun because they were the same gun.
I think criminal science investigation.
But again, if you shoot like it's hard to like and suicide from across the room, which I'm pretty sure this director did direct some episodes of NCIS.
I mean, it doesn't make it better for me. So yeah, kills a cop, gets his wife, gets her in the car, trucker comes in, asks if room tens available.
They don't say anything. Get in the car. They just may drive off beat up and bloody.
Yeah. And then can I fucking 10, please? And then a slow.
Yes, I hated the slow. Yes. The end.
Incredible. I just I have from the horizon and slow zooming in fucking gold. It was so hokey.
God, I love real bad. I mean, really, the only thing I have to say about this film is this could be the same generic action cage from Red Rock West.
Yeah. Like if you if you just took that that concept of him just rolling into small towns, doing a thing, having to deal with something and then rolling out.
Yeah. Like fucking for sure. But Red Rock West was so good. Yeah. Yeah.
And this was bad. I think the thing that bugs me about this is like the movie's not actually like bad.
It's just not good. It's so middling. It's just written so poorly.
But also what's the plan now? Are they just on the run forever because they just drive out of town? There's a dead cop.
You still own that fucking motel. Yeah. Yeah. The other owner's dead in the desert.
Maybe they went to the cop shop. We don't know. Again, terrible cop.
Oh, and so, yeah, it is a bad cop. The cop assumes that Ben had witnessed the first murder.
And that's why he was so eager to sell the motel and get out of Dodge. Again, it's just a bad written film. Yeah, it's got fucking holes.
So I did have one kind of an tunnels this rural scene, this rural reaction to this movie where I was actually like creeped out is when he first gets to the motel
and he's walking around with a flashlight, just inspecting the place in my early 20s, a local businessman in my neighborhood bought a corner motel in the middle of San Francisco was going to renovate and stuff,
but needed cheap people to watch it for a couple nights just to make sure like there were no squatters. So some friends of mine and I agreed for like 50 bucks to like hang out in an empty motel for a weekend.
And we just had to like fucking awesome. It was. But we had to walk the perimeter like every couple hours.
So three in the morning by myself walking around a motel, just shining lights in windows is a terrifying experience.
You're like, I know I'm not going to see something, but what if I saw something? I am we. I have like I have a tiny shitty flashlight.
I think probably like the only job I've ever legitimately been fired from. I was like a night desk attendant for a dorm in college somewhere.
Not your college, just a college.
I mean, I was going to that college, just what I've gone to numerous. Remember, I'm a well-learned man, a well-learned construction worker.
I can catcall like the best of them. I was doing night shit.
So it's like I be bugging at the desk and then like have to walk around a dorm while everybody's asleep.
And like you're kind of listening because you're supposed to be rooting out like partiers and stuff like that.
Oh, yeah, they fired me because I was not because I was drunk all the time, but because I was you were getting the other students drunk.
No, I was getting too drunk on Sundays, so I couldn't work Mondays or like I can work Sunday night.
Were you partying in that dorm on your days off? I got invited to a couple, but I couldn't remember the room because you were drunk.
One day, one of the Saudi students came up to me like Nick, Nick, you smell like wine.
It's like, shut up, Habibi. I know I do.
All right, let's talk about Tommy more. Yeah, Tommy was great.
OK, the best Tommy line for sure was after he and Nick Cage are talking about the pig that got thrown in the in the pool.
A pig got thrown in the hole. Yeah, it was like gutted thrown in the pool and there was a photo of the chick who died before he owned the motorway.
Yeah, which I'm sure made a lot of sense to him.
So they have this like very serious conversation and then there's just a pause and Tommy's just like, well, I got to do my duty to my wiener
and just sort of slips in some cash from the bill of his hat and takes the key and wanders off and it's like, well, sorry, you're having a hard day.
And people are throwing bloody ass pig carcasses in your pool.
But I'm not opposed to slipping in something dirty. So I'm going to Tommy. Tommy is the MVP of this movie. Oh, absolutely.
Definitely. So on IMDB quotes, there were three lines for Ray. Yeah, they're like for them, you know, give us all of them.
God damn you, Fox. Stay the fuck away from my motel.
Back up. Back the fuck up. Back up. Well, so OK, the stay the fuck away from my motel.
I have that as my favorite quote. But the reason I really like that is he's talking to the sex worker as he's like confronted her in the bar.
He's in like we got her name. They don't have names like dirty blonde or something. They don't even give her a credited name.
Wow, that's somehow worse. It is worse. Well, she gets like multiple names. It's Kelsey is the one she gives herself at the bar.
So he's pistol whipped the bartender or security guard or whatever.
And then he's yelling at her and he says, stay the fuck away from my motel. The the motorway motel.
Oh, that's right. It's like, yeah, dude, we all fucking know.
Yeah. And you just talked to her about you just follow.
Also, she stays there. She knows what the fucking motel is.
I kind of want to watch the trailers moving, see if they actually like make it look interesting.
Dude, they didn't. Because remember in episode zero, before we did anything, I watched 64 Nick Cage trailers.
You are the true hero. You didn't watch 64. You watched 75.
I did, you're right, because I thinned the herd. Yeah, you called.
So, yeah, I think that was pretty much anything anyone gets. Oh, wait, were there any fun facts? No, there weren't.
Yeah, I wrote box office gross, seventy six thousand seven hundred eighty eight. Ha ha. Yeah.
Weirdly enough, that is less money than that one Raiders player made on a Pokemon card.
Like, no, I'm going to retire. I just sold this Pokemon card.
Speaking of other things that don't quite make sense, the color of space.
Oh, what a transition. We had to get there somewhere.
Twenty twenty film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's story of the same name
about a meteorite that falls into a small farm outside the city of Arkham
and brings along with it a strange living color that mutates the life around it.
The strange color is magenta. Yeah.
OK, so I was reading a little bit about this because color interests me.
And the reason they chose magenta is because it's actually a color that the rods of the human eye don't naturally absorb
because it's made up of two different colors, red and blue.
So science pod. Yeah. Yeah. Color pod.
So the first thing I have to say about this film is it is beautiful.
Oh, yeah. Visually astounding film.
The production quality of this movie was actually really good.
Even the opening voiceover scene where it's just the foggy hills outside Arkham are just astoundingly shot.
The framing, the cinematography in this film is great.
And it's immediately ruined by the first scene of the characters real quick.
Lavinia. Yeah. Nicholas Cage plays Nathan Gardner.
His wife is played by Jolie Richardson, who plays Teresa.
And Madeline Arthur plays Lavinia, their daughter.
Elliot Knight plays Ward, a what does he do again? Hydrologist.
Hydrologist. He's a survey inspector for a reservoir going in.
And Tommy Chong as Ezra.
There's a couple other kids who aren't out. We'll talk about too much.
I think the three characters like if you pulled any three characters, it's just Nick Cage, Elliot Knight and Tommy Chong.
I don't think anybody else was noteworthy enough.
So beautiful, beautiful shot of the forest, which is immediately ruined by Lavinia,
her teenage daughter in a cape and white dress trying to cast spells in like a Wiccan circle.
And I just have to say white bitches. Am I right?
Wasn't Wiccan. It was Alexandrian.
No, it wasn't. It was Wiccan. He asked if it was Wiccan or Alexandrian.
And she said yes. And he said Alexandrian. She's like, that's your second mistake.
Oh, I fucked that up. That's my first mistake.
No, it's your second. Your first was doing this podcast.
Wait, Nick, is this how you feel every time you correct me?
Powerful. Yeah. Yes. I like it.
I thought it was funny. Like the first time I watched the movie, we got to like that opening.
I was like, oh, this is going to be terrible. It's like it's pretty, but this is bad.
But then the second time watching it's like, oh, no, she's definitely like just like in stupid high school age
alternative girl, like experimenting in alternative religions and stuff like that.
Well, and like witchcraft and stuff, that's all part of Lovecraft's writing, but it's the weakest part of his writing.
This movie does such a great job of like trying to build a Lovecraft universe because this was supposed to be the first part of a trilogy.
The director of this film, Richard Stanley. Yeah, he made this. He wanted to make two others.
The next the second one was going to be the Dunwich Horror.
I believe it was going to end with Call of Cthulhu and he immediately got dropped from the studio for domestic abuse allegations.
Yeah, which is a shame because it was a spoiler. This movie is a lot of fun.
Yeah, it's no looking glass, but you know, it'll get you there. Yeah.
But really, what is? Oh, OK.
Complete non sequitur, but still, I guess it's not a complete non sequitur.
Immediately unrelated to this part of the conversation when Nathan, Nick Cage's character is getting interviewed by the news.
They just call him a bourbon enthusiast because he said he had had.
I like to I enjoy a glass of bourbon every once in a while.
Bourbon enthusiasm. Yes. Discussing his UFO sighting. Just fucking him on the Chiron. Oh, my God.
That was good. Getting back to what I was saying, this movie does a really good job of trying to like build the world of HP Lovecraft.
You know, they live outside Arkham. They mention a few other places.
They mentioned Innsmouth on the news, Dunwich, Kingsport and even Ward where is a misatonic university, which is a tonic.
Yeah, which is commonly used in Lovecraft stories, which is where the actual Necronomicon is housed.
And of course, Lavinia just has a paperback version of the Necronomicon. Yeah.
Purple Rock falls out of space, has a different effect on every member of the family.
And then things start getting weird. Oh, other important plot point for this.
They're alpaca farmers because, according to Nick Cage, they're the animal of the future.
Yeah. Alpacas are cool.
The alpacas are cool.
He milks them and there's like this prolonged scene where he's talking about like how you have to be gentle and you don't get a lot out of me.
He gets one good squirt and his son's just like, it's good one dad.
He's like, I know. Then he offers a sip to Ward and Ward's like, I'm left goes intolerant.
It's like your loss. And then he just sips a warm straight from the teat.
My next note was, mmm, alpaca milk.
Well, you gotta feed them fennel. It improves the taste and the yield.
Yes. Speaking of fennel flavored milk.
Speaking of groping the mammary glands of another creature, another sexually frustrated cage in this film.
Him and his wife haven't done it for.
That was a rough fucking segue.
Yeah, dude.
This is just, this is a theme in Nick Cage films and I thought it was worth mentioning it.
And we were talking about milking.
Also, she just had a mastectomy. That was the issue.
That's rude, Sean.
Yeah. I mean, he's gotta get him somewhere.
I don't know. That was a weird plot point in this film that they bring up just to bring it up.
I'm assuming it's trying to tie into the body horror later in the film, but it's done clumsily.
Yeah, I mean, it's used in Lavinia's like justification for Lavinia's witchcraft because she's trying to cast or do a ritual to like keep the cancer away from her mom.
Again, it doesn't need to be anywhere in this film.
Yeah, but I mean, how do you introduce her wickedness?
You just do like Beetlejuice. You have like a depressed teen.
That would have been better.
I mean, nobody's going to argue that this movie is better than Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice doesn't have Tommy Chung playing a...
That was three times. You can't say it three times.
Uh oh, fuck.
We're in for a wild ride now.
It's gonna be like that cat in the hat thing all over again.
Yeah. Yeah, so mom's got no boobs and daughter is a witch.
This is where we left off.
Son is a stoner.
Youngest son is a baby and carries around his stuffed dinosaur the whole movie because he's a wimp.
A baby of like ten.
Yeah.
But so yeah, once The Rock hits... Oh, and we're introduced to...
The Rock is not in this movie.
That would have been a much different movie.
But he always fucking hits. If The Rock was just the meteor, it's just his stupid fucking bald heads. Depression.
But we meet Ezra, played by Tommy Chung, who's kind of a shaman-esque individual.
He has a cat named G-Spot because of course he does.
Because it's funny. I didn't think it was that funny.
No.
Until they couldn't find it. But they don't really lean into the joke of not being able to find the G-Spot.
It's a missed opportunity.
That was my frustration with this movie.
I do like how when The Rock hit... God damn it.
When the meteorite hits and they're trying to study it, they ask the hydrologist, they're like, about the space rock.
They ask him about it and he's like, most meteorites burn up before they hit the ground.
I was like, no, by definition, a meteorite hits the ground.
Fucking water guys.
Yeah. I mean, to be fair, they got fucking water boy to...
Maybe Adam Sandler should have played that role.
Or Polly Shore.
Ooh, Polly Shore does need work.
Yeah. He did a great water treatment specialist or something in the army now.
He was something. I'm going to watch that movie.
This is a Polly Shore podcast now.
Hell yeah. That's what we're doing next.
Cage match. A roundabout way of meeting Polly Shore.
You know, we could probably do that.
Way easier. Way easier goal.
Actually, if we say his name three times, he does show up.
Polly Shore, Polly Shore, Polly Shore.
God damn it.
I'm going to put some Polly Shore clip in there.
Buddy. I can't do a good Polly Shore.
Polly Shore can't do a good Polly Shore at this point.
So the reason they need the hydrologist, though, is because the meteorite starts to get into the water.
And that's where things go bad.
Like these pink magenta plants start popping up everywhere.
There's these like fist sized praying mantises that start flying around.
The landscape changes over the course of the film and it's subtle at first.
And by the end of it, there's like alien trees that sway and eventually like grab a sheriff off the ground and stab them in the eye.
This is the first time in a while we've seen full cage.
He really had a good performance with a lot of excitable faces and stuff.
Yeah. OK, let's talk about that a little bit.
So well, he goes from like doting husband and just kind of soft spoken father to like an aw shucks dumb.
He's such a nerd dad. Yeah.
And then he just like not only does he have mild mood swings, but his accent changes and like his tone is all up and down.
His performance is all over the place and I love it.
So I'm going to back us up just for a second because this is one of my one of my few notes.
The way it affects everybody is different.
Some of them drink the water or whatever.
Some of them are eating fruit.
But one of the things that happened with him is he's taking a shower and a weird like come monster holes on him.
It looked like a scoby, which for other.
It did. Yeah.
Which is also why I fucking hate kombucha because scobies are gross.
Yeah. Come at me hippies.
Come monsters. Not hippies.
Scovies.
Some of the subtle touches with how the color gets into things.
At one point, he's pouring himself a bourbon and you can see the color in the ice.
There was a lot of subtlety with how the shapeless amorphous monster was throughout this whole movie.
And I thought it was a really nice touch.
Like by the end of the film, like the fog is, you know, the color.
I liked the slow encroaching dread.
Everybody dies in horrid ways.
I think the worst being the youngest son and the mom who get grabbed by the light, by the color and fuse together.
Yeah, it was like a real Cronenberg body horror thing.
Like it makes me want to go watch like naked lunch every once in a while.
I get this like wild thought.
I'm like, I'm going to watch naked lunch.
And then I sit on it for a minute and I'm just like, I am not ready to watch naked lunch again.
It's like I watched it in high school once and I think that was about it for me.
I just rewatched The Fly the other week and it was like, OK, that was a great movie.
I'm done for a while.
The son thinks he hears their dog in the well climbs into the well, gets grabbed by the light, the color.
That's fucking weird. I want to go.
Like I know he's being affected by the color out of space and haha.
But he's like, oh, I hear Sam the dog down in the well.
I'm going to I'm going to climb down there and get him.
And Lavigne is like, you're a fucking idiot.
Don't do that. And he's like, no, I'll go down there and I'll put our dog, who's like a fucking Australian shepherd or something in the bucket in the bucket.
And you can bring him up. It's like it's a fucking bucket.
It's not even a five gallon bucket.
Also, you could see down into that well.
There's no dog down there. Yeah.
But now he's a dummy. Oh, the alpacas get fused into like this giant homunculi of alpaca heads.
Also, the dog's totally in there because we see the dog growl a few times at the light and you see those same like snarling teeth in the alpaca monster.
There's a big close up.
Oh, yeah. Nick Cage takes a shotgun to the alpaca monster and that's pretty bloody.
That's fun. He tries to sacrifice his daughter to the mother son.
This is starting to sound like a porn review.
I got one good laugh this podcast. All right. Good night, everybody.
Throws Lavinia in the attic with the mom son creature.
Nick Cage gets a hole put through his chest by the sheriff who shoots him.
He was aiming for the color, but like you're shooting light coming out of a well.
Yeah. Probably not going to work.
Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. Fucking aliens.
Ezra gets. I mean, they're not necessarily aliens.
They're Eldritch Horror. Excuse me.
You're right. Please. Eldritch Horror is out there.
Please forgive me.
Ezra tries to record the creatures underground that came on the meteorite.
And when they find his body, he's all desiccated and his eyes are missing.
So listening to the recording of him was creepy. Yeah.
Like I was watching it downstairs by myself and like the whole thing just was unsettling because his voice is sort of speeding up and slowing down in this weird, horrible way.
Which I, the whole listening to the things underground is a nod to another Lovecraft story.
The reason I was so excited for this movie to come out initially is because that is my favorite Lovecraft short story.
Mostly because it's the least problematic.
I don't know if you knew this people.
H.P. Lovecraft was a horrible racist.
Even for the time. Other racists were like, you're making us look bad.
I want to talk about my favorite thing about this film.
The only survivor is the hydrolytics, who's the black guy.
Also, his name is Ward Phillips, which is short for Howard Phillips, as in Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
So fuck you, you dead old racist.
They named the main black character after you and they didn't kill him.
Fuck yeah.
And Lavinia gets sucked up into the color when it goes back into space.
Nick Cage like springs back to life and tries to kill Ward and he hides in the wine cellar and has a vision of an alien planet, which really cool final shot.
Although my favorite shot of this film is when Ward is digging his way out from under the house and there is no color left in the earth.
It was all just white.
Like the only color on screen is him.
Yeah. Well, there's like a radius.
Yeah. And then it zooms out and you see a radius.
Yeah, that was cool. That was a power of prestigious.
Visually, this film astounding.
Yeah, I didn't look up anything from the DP.
The director, I did look at a bunch of his stuff, almost exclusively music videos and documentaries about the paranormal.
Weird.
Yeah.
Well, he does have three other feature films to his name.
The first two being schlock horror films.
The third being the original director of The Isle of Dr.
Muro, technically not to his name, he's uncredited because he got fired.
Like I said, original director, but then got fired like two days into shooting.
Yeah.
Hasn't had a feature length film since got this was really good, pretty well received and then immediately got canceled.
And the DP also is mostly music videos.
That makes sense with like the visual appeal of this movie.
This movie also did come out during the pandemic.
Estimated budget of six million dollars worldwide gross, just over a million.
So even if the guy wasn't canceled, probably weren't going to see those next two movies anyway.
Yeah, that's fair.
Beautifully shot film and a lot of really good CG for six million bucks.
Yeah.
I mean, it kind of goes to show what you can actually do on a budget.
Yeah.
It makes you think of like the old Sam Raimi movies and stuff like that, where you were really just having to be clever with what you have.
Your resources were limited and you were stuck with it.
And then the blank check podcast talks about this all the time.
It's like once you start having too much money, nobody ever goes backwards.
You never go back to your old skill set and your ingenuity.
You're always just like more.
Let's do fucking mocap.
I do think there was a good like not to Sam Raimi and someone with the tree killing the sheriff warden.
The sheriff are like running away from Ezra Shaq.
And then you just see like this quick swoop of an alien branches.
Pick him up. Yeah.
And then he's gone.
I think this was a really good just nod in general to old school horror.
Yeah. In general.
This movie did a lot better at building up suspense and thrills than Looking Glass.
We know roughly what Nick Cage is expected to make on film.
Nick Cage did this film because he's always wanted to make a Lovecraft film because his father was a big fan of Lovecraft's writing.
Yeah.
Also, same producers as Mandy and one other film, so that probably explains how they got Nick Cage for it.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing Mandy, actually.
Yeah. It's down the line for us. Mom and dad, I believe.
Mom and dad. That's right.
Oh, yeah. That's right.
This one does have some quotable cage.
It does. It's got some really good ones.
I don't know. I wrote down a bunch.
I got two of my more favorite ones.
My first one is so at one point the wife cuts off a finger.
They go to the hospital.
They come back the next night.
The youngest son's outside, Lavinia and the older brother are both have had weird like time lost experiences, so they don't know what the fuck's going on.
The alpacas are out.
So Nick Cage is just losing it.
And he just gets mad at his daughter and he's like, Get the fuck out of my sight.
You know what? I'll save you the trouble and get the fuck out of yours.
Yeah, that was when he fully transitioned into the weird voice.
Yeah, like his his possessed voice was like douchebag teenager.
He went. No, he went straight back to Gary.
That was Gary voice. That was Gary voice.
I didn't even connect to that. But you're right.
It was Gary. Nick, let's just do a round robin.
We'll just go until we run out. OK.
I think it was after like the mom cut her fingers off or something.
Teresa, the mom and Nathan are in the car or something.
And Teresa's like, I don't know how you could still be interested in me.
And Nick's like, you know, I've always been a leg man.
And Teresa says, So if I had both my legs cut off, you'd still love me, right?
It's like a bit kinky. But yes, that's a good quote.
Oh, I think they were talking about her mastectomy. It was the mastectomy.
This is my quote, too. But the second piece of it at the end of it is bit kinky.
But yes, I could tuck you into my carry on luggage and enjoy you wherever I go.
That's right. I forgot that. That's such a good line, though.
I mean, that I make those jokes all the time. So this seems really reasonable.
Yeah. So one that you texted me about, Nick, was, Do you have any idea how much those animals cost us?
They are alpacas. Alpaca. That's the line. Yeah. That's a good one.
I do like him talking about his father. You'll never be a painter, Nathan.
So just get the fuck out of my sight, Nathan.
There's just some weird line reads in this film and I'm here for it.
Yeah, I feel like it's been a few episodes where we haven't gotten to see a true cage out.
We haven't gotten a lot of the weird line reads and really weird dialogue.
So this was a nice return to form.
We had another like roof punching like in the car scene. Classic.
What does he say when the car won't start?
He's like, the car is not going to happen. What do you mean it's not going to happen?
Oh, yeah. So I saw this movie in 2020.
Like it was on Amazon. I rented it and loved it because, like I said, it's my favorite Lovecraft short story.
This film is really where I kind of got the idea for this podcast because I remember seeing it.
And I'm just like, man, Nick Cage is great in this. He's all over the shop, but he is great.
And that's kind of what got me into the whole idea of the cage, a song.
And the films he's done since then have all been wacky and wonderful.
I started looking more into his old catalog and I thought, like, this is this is something worth my time.
I hope I make friends in this new city that I can force them to do it with me.
Well, I sat on that. I sat on that for two years before I asked you guys to do this because I wanted you to be my friends.
Now you're stuck with me. I don't want to ruin it too soon.
She is. She. I don't know.
I think we have a fairly definitive answer as to what's going up forward.
Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely Colorado space. Yeah, it was a good one.
It's a complete package. It's a good film. It's a really enjoyable movie.
Yeah, it's it's good to look at. It's well made.
I don't think I really had like nitpicky issues with it.
It's a pretty clear like contender to move forward.
Yeah. Great practical effects, great CGI.
And again, done on a budget. Like, let's get more like weird horror.
Someone else pick up this mantle. There is so little done with Lovecraft horror.
I mean, I guess the whole selling point of it is these are unknowable things that you can't see and a random color is a good place to start.
Yeah, to be poisoned by a color is really something. I liked it.
So, yeah, that's it. What do we got on the docket for next time, Peter?
Next up, we have Drive Angry and Stolen.
So, I mean, it's the tough guy bracket, which, you know, obviously we don't think that he's the best at being a tough guy.
I don't know. I mean, there's some there are some solid movies in that tough guy section like Con Air.
Yeah, that's true. He was a pretty he was a really good tough guy in Red Rock West.
Yeah, he wasn't even a character. He was just a generic tough guy.
John Tuffman. Well, that's the thing. It's like he does play that role well.
But it's when he's trying to be like the same reason I have issues with Liam Neeson as a tough guy.
I just don't fucking think he is. He's just a big man. Yeah.
I just don't think Nick Cage is a real tough guy. But when he plays like kind of a badass like in Con Air, it works.
Jiu Jitsu, his best tough guy. Yep. Get off my piano. Yeah.
My friend Nathan asked we do this if these movies are available at the time of this recording.
I watched Looking Glass on Hulu. It's streaming there. I have it on DVD. I'm sorry. And Blu-ray.
And Blu-ray. It was it was a twofer. Was it a two packer? Did you buy two copies of it because you were high?
No, it's actually just Blu-ray. But thanks for calling me out on that. I said DVD first erroneously.
What a dork. I rented. I had to read. Nick Cage is a meaty dork.
And I had to rent the Colorado Space on Amazon. So if you're listening to this now and want to watch the loser of this week, it's on Hulu.
Or you could come to my place. Yeah. Watch it with Nick. I'm not going to tell you where.
You know, that that should be. That's that's the like premium tier in Patreon.
Side note, if you want to support us on Patreon, you can purchase some money and join the SparkleBuddy tier for five bucks a month.
It helps. The premium tier is only ten dollars and you get to go over to Nick's house once a month to watch a Nick Cage film.
And I'll watch you watch it from behind a mirror, a two way mirror. No, it's a one way mirror.
I'm just going to peek around the corner of it. I'm just going to hold it in place. Is this sexy yet? Yeah. OK, so.
All right. Thank you for listening. Please like this on whatever platform you listen to.
If you haven't reviewed it, give us a review. Tell people how much you enjoy us.
And if you hate us, tell people how much you enjoy us. Otherwise, we're going to come to your house and annoy you more. Yeah.
No, that's that's perfect. Yeah, I think we're out. So tell your friends.
You're expecting people that listen to us to have friends. Yeah, I have friends.
I mean, they're both in this room, but I have them. Yeah, it took you two years to make those friends to get us in this room.
I mean, you thought you asked me to do this. That's true. All right.
Fun little anecdote. Nick, I always thought Nick would be the best co-host for this because because my name's Nick.
Yeah. And he's right. He's with Nick and Sean. So it would have been really complicated otherwise.
Of all of our friends, Nick is the most biddable. Nick will ride or die on a dumb bit.
So I assumed I asked you first. I thought you said no for some reason, which I was kind of buttered about for a while.
And then one day you and I were driving back from somewhere and I mentioned this to you and you're like, hey, do that.
I'm like, what haven't I asked you that? You're like, no. Yeah. So here we are.
All right. We love you, Nick Cage. We hope one day to meet you.
And smell you.
We'll quack you out. I say that like I have no control over the editing process.
Don't worry. I'll take care of this in post.
I just come in and sabotage the hard drive.
Job well done.