Pet Sematary (1989)

This week we talk about evil pets and killer toddlers as we discuss Steven Kings Pet Sematary from 1989!!!

Chris: Funny, though.

Jordan: It it is that how we're going to start that? No.

Chris: I have all this stuff typed out already, and I'm just like, sitting there looking at the recording thing just bouncing around.

Jordan: Are you sure you didn't get high?

Chris: Maybe I should have.

Jordan: No.

Chris: Hey, welcome to the podcast. Today we're doing Pet Cemetery because I can't get my shit together. I don't have a good intro. I'm all over the place. But yeah, today we're going to do Pet Cemetery from 1989. I was a whole one years old when this came out.

Jordan: It's an old movie.

Chris: Yeah, 1989. I thought that the remastered version looked really good, though.

Jordan: That's what I was going to say. I was going to make a joke. Does it make you feel old when you see how old the movie is? But actually that was my first thought was, wow, they did an amazing job remastering this movie.

Chris: Yeah, I thought it was going to look because every time I've seen Pet Sematary, I think it's been on either VHS or cable. I feel like I remember seeing it on the USA Network a lot. But this is the first time I've seen like, a remastered DVD version of it. And it looked really good.

Jordan: Blu ray. Blu ray, blu ray. I'm sorry.

Chris: I don't mean to send the Blu ray fans out there.

Jordan: They're like, don't call it a DVD. That's like a $5 difference.

Chris: They probably quit remastering things into DVD a long time ago.

Jordan: You remember when we did Sleep Away Camp, how fucking old it looked on my big ass TV? And this actually looked really good. And they're only seven years. Yeah, yeah.

Chris: They're not super far apart. But first was I got a little bit of news. I like to throw a little bit of news in here. So Chucky season three trailer just dropped, and everyone's favorite killer doll is are you ready for this? Is heading to the White House.

Jordan: Oh, shit. Yeah, you heard that, right?

Chris: He is going to be in the.

Jordan: White House just to stop before he heads to space.

Chris: It seems that the president's son has come into the possession of Chucky.

Jordan: This is so fucking ridiculous.

Chris: This sounds unbelievable. That's why I had to put this in. Guess I watched the trailer because the trailer just came out and he starts murdering people around the White House.

Jordan: I can't even get through this. Maybe this isn't such a bad idea, though.

Chris: I'm like, but the White House has cameras. If people started popping up mysteriously dead at the White House, they would just watch the footage.

Jordan: I don't know.

Chris: There's some security.

Jordan: There cocaine that ends up in the White House. Apparently people can't find out who that.

Chris: Maybe it was Chucky.

Jordan: Chucky's cocaine for sure.

Chris: This is not a show. That's a so. This is so. Devon Sawa will be returning to the show as a new character. He was in season one.

Jordan: Who's the podcast. Kid's name Devon Sawa is the guy.

Chris: From Final Destination idle Hands. He plays the in the first season of chucky plays the dad and he plays the uncle. Remember, the dad dies in the first episode. I'm sorry if I'm spoiling Chucky season one for you.

Jordan: You're not spoiling much.

Chris: Yeah. He goes to live with his identical twin uncle, who is also played by same actor, and he is coming back to play a third character in this show. Interesting. Yeah. So in Jennifer Tilly will also be returning. That's always good. No complaints about that. I feel like nowadays you almost can't have Chuckie without Jennifer Tilly.

Jordan: What, is she playing her third character? Or is she playing her famous self, don't? She plays Tiffany and she plays.

Chris: I haven't kept up with the Chucky series.

Jordan: I watched the first season. I'm going to be honest, it was tough.

Chris: It's just too man, it's too goofy to me now.

Jordan: It seems like it's too much dedicated towards teenagers nowadays and not as much at its fan base.

Chris: I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either, and I just kind of forgot about it. And it's had a whole entire season that went by that I haven't seen. It streams on Peacock, though. And I don't have peacock anymore, so I can't watch it.

Jordan: But it used to be on something else because when I watched it, I want to say it was Hulu when I watched the first season.

Chris: Yeah, probably was. So it premieres October 4. Season three comes out October 4. It's on USA Network, Sci-fi. I don't know if they're the same channel now.

Jordan: It was on Sci-fi, I think it was when I had Hulu live. That's probably how I watched it.

Chris: But yeah, it can now be streamed on, so so there you go. If you're looking forward to seeing Chucky murder the president or something.

Jordan: If you want to pay for Peacock.

Chris: Now, yeah, it's like $3 now. I don't know. So this is something we talked a little bit about. We actually had to get to the bottom of it because we were confused. Jason Blum announced this week that The Exorcist Believer will now be releasing to theaters one week earlier than planned. It is going to be coming out now October 6 instead of what, the 13th?

Jordan: Yeah, Friday the 13th, which is a great day for it to come out.

Chris: Yeah. He put out a tweet and said, basically thanks, Taylor Swift. Now I have to move this movie up earlier a week. Did not understand what that meant. Apparently he doesn't want it to compete with the Taylor Swift concert, movie tour movie, something like that. I'm not really hip to the Taylor Swift films.

Jordan: Film.

Chris: I don't yeah, originally we thought maybe it was just they didn't want to compete with ticket sales. But from what we understand, movie theaters want to show the Taylor Swift thing on as many screens as they can.

Jordan: This is fucking crazy. Fuck you, Taylor Swift. Pick a different date. Saturday the 14th.

Chris: Such a horse.

Jordan: Thursday the twelveTH. I just can't imagine it playing in every theater. Like there being such a demand that it has to I mean, they're not going to show any other movies when that shit comes out.

Chris: Yeah, I don't know. But hey, we're getting the other movie sooner.

Jordan: I know, but still like Friday the 13th. Thought that was a cool date for it.

Chris: If you don't know about this next thing, going to let you know now. So they're actually going to be doing the original Exorcist, the good one. It's going to be turning 50 and they're going to be showing it in a bunch of movie theaters across the country. And that is October 3, I believe. It's the beginning of October. We had, I think, at least two theaters where we are that are going to be showing it. I think it's for one day. Has a little documentary about the filming locations too, that's going to play right before the movie. So if you want to see the original Exorcist in theaters, look for that because it's not super well known, but a lot of theaters are doing it. So check that out.

Jordan: Yeah, I can't wait for that. Be our only chance of watching the OG exorcist on the big screen.

Chris: I would rather go see the original Exorcist. Like if I had to pick they're about the same week almost. If I had to pick between seeing OG Exorcist or going to see the new one as soon as it came out, I would see the OG Exorcist for agree.

Jordan: I agree with that. After after you get done watching the Taylor Swift concert.

Chris: Well, definitely going to see Taylor Swift.

Jordan: But yeah, hopefully it's not still taking up every fucking theater by then.

Chris: But yeah, that's really all I put into the news. It wasn't a whole lot of there's there's always a lot of news out there, but those were kind of the big things. I wanted to hit on the House.

Jordan: Of a Thousand Corpses doing that as well.

Chris: Yeah, House of 1000 Corpses is going to be hitting some theaters too, and that is October Eigth. So look for that too. There's all these horror movies that are going to be hitting the theaters that haven't been in theaters in a really long time. I don't know, I guess just try to look and see what your theater has because I don't know, they're not really advertised. Like, I'm only finding out because I'm in some groups and people are posting about them. But just kind of look for that stuff. I don't know. It's really hard to find, but it's going on. It's out there.

Jordan: All right.

Chris: So Stephen King's Pet Cemetery from 1989 is a supernatural horror film written by King himself and directed by Mary Lambert. It stars Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby, Blaze Bird Doll, and how do you say you're Monsters fan? How do you say his last name?

Jordan: Frank Gwynn.

Chris: Yeah. I thought that's how you said it.

Jordan: I hope I'm saying that right.

Chris: I think I've always pronounced check to be sure, but I'm pretty sure that's right. But Fred Gwynn and Miko Hughes as Gage Creed. Yeah. It was released on April 21 of 1989. It had a budget of $11.5 million and a box office of 89.5 million. Did pretty good.

Jordan: Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah.

Chris: Small budget, but decent return. The sequel, Pet Cemetery Two, was released in 1992 and a remake was released in 2019. I wonder how good the remake did. I don't really remember.

Jordan: I think the remake did pretty well in theaters. Yeah.

Chris: Remember it probably did better than the original.

Jordan: We went and seen it in theaters. I remember it was advertised very well, so I assume it probably did pretty good.

Chris: I've only seen it one time, and I can't remember how close it was to this movie. Was it pretty much same exact story, or did they make any changes to it?

Jordan: I think there's slight changes, but I think the overall story is the same. I don't remember the wife having the sister part. I don't remember any of that part of the story. But I could be wrong. You know, I can't remember movie I watched two weeks ago, so the rating.

Chris: So Rotten Tomato, it's got a 51%. IMDb gave it a 6.5 out of ten, and Letterbox gave it a 3.2 out of five stars. That's okay.

Jordan: Yeah, that's pretty low, I think.

Chris: You think that's low? I mean, the 6.5 out of ten.

Jordan: On IMDb, that's pretty well, I wouldn't go under a seven.

Chris: Yeah. I actually forgot to rate this movie. I was doing this stuff earlier.

Jordan: God, man.

Chris: My rating is going to be did get high.

Jordan: Jesus Christ.

Chris: My rating is going to be don't.

Jordan: Just copy one of them.

Chris: I'm just going to have you go first, and then I'm just going to copy whatever you say. You want to jump into the plot?

Jordan: Yeah, let's do it. If you remember to write it down.

Chris: I wrote all this down. So we are introduced to the Creed family. We got Louis, Rachel, Ellie, and Gage. I believe Ellie is I think she's like I don't know. Does it say her name? I think she's like eight, nine years old.

Jordan: Yeah, she's somewhere in there. Yeah.

Chris: Gage is two years old. So we know two small children and a pet cat named Church. I don't think they say it in the movie, but the Winston Churchill.

Jordan: Yeah.

Chris: Did they say it in the movie?

Jordan: Yeah, they do.

Chris: Well, actually, before we jump into the plot of this movie, I'll throw this in there because recently read the book, and there was some really cool stuff from the book in there. But one of the things that I found was interesting was Stephen King's, how he got the idea for this story and he and his family, like, he got offered a teaching job at his college that he went to and it was just for a year. So him and his family kind of moved in the middle of nowhere out in Maine so he could work at this he the road that ran past his house had these big trucks and the neighbor well, the guy across the street, he didn't actually live across the street. He had like a small store. But it's very similar relationship to what we have in this movie. A majority of this movie is kind of true, except for the pet cemetery murderer stuff. But basically, yeah, they had a problem with the trucks and stuff coming down the road. There was the issue with his daughter and her pet cat and her really kind of discovering kind of death, like when a child first realizes stuff about death with their pet for the first time, all that stuff actually happened. And then the kid like his small child, like, running to the road and almost getting hit by a truck. That did happen, but he was obviously able to save his kid before that happened. But he wrote this book during this situation and then he thought that the book was really kind of he had went too far and he had actually put this book away and didn't plan to release it. And his wife eventually found it, read it, really liked it and convinced him to release it.

Jordan: Was there a real pet cemetery in this town?

Chris: I think there was. I don't believe the cat actually their cat didn't actually no, their cat did die because it's in the book and in the movie where they actually wrote her real life cat's name on one of the tombstones of the pet cemetery in this movie. And there is something that she says in the movie where she says, if God wants a cat, tell him to get his own cat. This is my cat. And that is actually something his daughter said in real life when her cat got killed. So, yeah, I'm pretty sure there was a pet cemetery.

Jordan: That's cool. Somewhere out there. That's a real place.

Chris: Yeah. The beginning of the book is actually like a forward written by Stephen King and he actually tells the story and it's really cool look into it because obviously there's way more detail when he tells it. But it was really cool to see that a lot of this was based off of the reality of his life at that time. And he just pretty much took a real life situation and then added some horror to it. And you got a good story out of it.

Jordan: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I didn't know that, but yeah.

Chris: So they just moved from Chicago to Ludlow, Maine, after Lewis accepts a job offer to be the University of Maine school physician. And while unpacking the car. We meet the across the street neighbor, Judd Crandall, who has lived in Ludlow his whole life. And in the days following the mood, judd and Lewis, they kind of become friends. Like, they hang out a, you know, drink beer on the porch together and become kind of buddies. And Judd explains how dangerous the road by their home has become since there's basically a company nearby and they have 18 wheeler trucks that pretty much just roll through there every hour or so. And Judd is the neighbor that we all need but don't deserve. Yes, he's a great addition to the story.

Jordan: I might talk to my neighbors if I had a neighbor like, yeah, he.

Chris: Is a really cool dude. And I'll talk about something later on about Judd that's really interesting to the story. But I think that they paint Judd to be this. And Judd is based off of a real know, the guy didn't live across the street in real life, but he's based off of a very much real person. And I love his accent. I wanted to open the show with his accent, but I just couldn't do it too hard. Couldn't pull it off. It's a hard one to but, uh so he tells him that the path in Lewis's yard that leads into the woods, it actually takes you to a pet cemetery. And the next day, Judd takes the Creed family on a walk down the path and he shows them this cemetery. And the cemetery is mostly full of pets from local children that have been killed by the trucks that are speeding down the road. But not all the pets were killed by the trucks. The cemetery is very old, and even Judd's dog, when he was a boy, was buried there. I believe his dog's name is it Spot in the movie and Spot in the book.

Jordan: Not sure.

Chris: Yeah. So after seeing the cemetery, ellie comes to realize that her pet cat church will one day die. And this upsets her a lot. And she talks to Lewis about the idea of death. I guess that is one thing that no parent is looking forward to, is explaining death to their kid.

Jordan: And Rachel is not fucking happy about it.

Chris: You can tell. She's kind of is she's kind of hiding in the kitchen. She you can tell that she's she I think that she doesn't really want Lewis to kind of tell the daughter anything really about. Like she kind of wants to just sugarcoat it because I guess she has this idea that maybe she's too young. And I personally, I agree with Lewis. Hey, she's wondering about this thing that is something that everyone goes through and everyone has to deal with. Don't bullshit her. Kids can pick up on bullshit and just tell her what's up right then.

Jordan: And she's she's old enough where she at that age should know or at least knows somewhat that death occurs she kind of gets shitty towards Judd too when they first go in the pet cemetery, he tells her about it. She's kind of like, Enough of that.

Chris: Shit bitch to him.

Jordan: Yeah. She gives off major Karen vibes in the beginning of this movie.

Chris: He handles it well too because he kind of just shrugs it off. But I feel like he just like that's.

Jordan: Just judd.

Chris: That's just JuD.

Jordan: I think he can handle he can fucking handle it.

Chris: But on Lewis's first day at work at the university a group of frantic students carrying an injured student and his name is Victor Pascal and he had been hit by a truck while jogging on campus and I thought the makeup effect on him was great. I love his brain is showing and there's a couple scenes where he's laying on the table and you can see his brain and there's actually I don't know how they did it but there's blood pouring out in, like, spots. You can literally just see it just kind of pouring down the side of the brain. I thought that was great.

Jordan: Good job. That's about down to the FX team. I had that in my notes as well. I absolutely love, love that shot of him coming in with the blood pouring.

Chris: That is there's not a ton, like, makeup effects like that in this movie.

Jordan: That's a couple spots.

Chris: But the ones that's in there good. They did a good job. But yeah. As he lays on the table during the last moments of his life he warns Lewis about the pet cemetery soil. And later that night, Lewis is woken up by the ghost of Pascal who leads him to the cemetery and shows him a barrier that he should never know. Pascal spends so much of his time being dead trying to convince Lewis to, like, don't go here.

Jordan: I know you think in the beginning, the beginning of the movie that he's a bad character because he actually says his name while he's laying there dying and it freaks Lewis out. So you kind of think, like, maybe he's this really bad character. It's like his dead ghost spends this whole movie trying to convince them not to fuck up.

Chris: Yeah. So him and Judd I got a really interesting thing about him. Later on in the show, we'll talk about those two characters because those two characters are painted a certain way in this movie and there's something that's said about them that, I don't know, I didn't really catch on to but we'll talk about that in a little bit.

Jordan: If you look at it I mean, I love Judd, but if you look at it, Victor's really the good guy here. He's trying to stop them. And Judd is kind of the bad guy. That's one thing I called on to is he knows the dangers of that and he takes him there anyway. Why Victor, who you think is the bad guy, spends the whole movie as a ghost trying to stop them from making this mistake.

Chris: But yeah. So during this scene, we learn something interesting about Lewis, is Lewis apparently wears his doctor uniform to you. Did you catch that?

Jordan: I did not.

Chris: Yeah, he has his scrubs so long.

Jordan: Hours at the university.

Chris: And so after I watched this movie, like, I put that in my notes because I thought that was weird. And then later on when I was researching the movie, I actually found out about that. Why that's like that. So originally, the actor who plays Lewis, originally in that scene, he had just a pair of small shorts on. And they kept having to reshoot it because every time he would get out of bed, he would look too sexy. They said he was just too attractive. And they were like, he's fucking up the scene. This is supposed to be like scary.

Jordan: What a confidence boost for the guy who played Lewis. Yeah.

Chris: So they said they had to put him in clothes. And they claim they put him in pajamas. But I've watched this movie twice. He is in doctor uniform. Whatever.

Jordan: Yeah. I thought you were going to tell me in the original script, like he worked at a hospital or something. I could see if you're a doctor on call at a hospital, maybe. No, he's putting on clean scrubs and going to bed.

Chris: Just too sexy in the moonlight.

Jordan: Yeah. What a nice confidence boost. Yeah.

Chris: I guess they were worried all the women were going to go see Pet Cemetery and just be like, oh, god.

Jordan: We got to leave.

Chris: We got to leave here now. This scene was too much for me. But Lewis wakes up the next day. He thinks this is a dream. But then he discovers his feet and ankles are covered in mud. So he really was out there.

Jordan: I would have been freaked the fuck out because I would have been like, I was sleepwalking out there in the fucking woods. And my first thought would have been I could have got hit by one of those semis. That literally would have been my first thought.

Chris: Well, he hides like he freaks out and he hides the covers and stuff. And I'm like, I probably would have went downstairs and told my wife, like, you won't believe this shit that happened to me last night. Yeah, I don't think that it was weird to me that he was trying to be secretive about that.

Jordan: But I don't know. His wife's kind of a mean. I would go tell Brooke like, you're not going to fucking believe what happened.

Chris: Yeah, that's what I would.

Jordan: Not only did I have this fucking.

Chris: Nightmare and then when she was a nightmare and you'd be like, no, look at my legs. It wasn't a uh so during the Thanksgiving break, Rachel and the kids, they fly back to Chicago to visit her parents. And Lewis stays behind at the house because he has a long standing feud with his father in law, who I don't blame him because his father in law sucks.

Jordan: Been there, done that. I really felt for him whenever he sends the family off for Thanksgiving and makes that comment, like, well, apparently I'll never be part of your family, according to your dad. I'm like, I feel you, bro.

Chris: Yeah, it's probably a lot of husbands and father in laws. I feel like that's a but. But yeah. So that morning, the first morning they're gone, judd calls Lewis to tell him that he has found Ellie's cat, Church, dead in his front yard. And by the looks of it, Church has been hit by one of those big trucks that are driving down the road hauling ass. And Church is stuck to the ground. Like that scene.

Jordan: Yeah.

Chris: This peels him off the yeah, it looked like he died in the middle of the night because he didn't just yeah.

Jordan: Yeah. He definitely gets it's. Like a yeah. Slowly peeling off a Band Aid.

Chris: Yeah. But realizing that Ellie will be devastated, judd takes Lewis beyond the pet cemetery, past the barrier, deep into the woods, where they eventually end up at a old Indian burial ground. And Judd tells Lewis to bury the cat and not to tell anyone pretty much that they did it. Like, hey, this is a secret between me and you. And Lewis is confused. Judd doesn't tell him shit. Judge is just, you know, just wait and see.

Jordan: Almost there. Not much further now. How many times do you hear that from Judd?

Chris: Oh, I remember.

Jordan: I'm like, they're walking and he keeps saying that. Almost there now. And then they cut to a scene and they're on the side of a mountain. Fucking far did they go. I would have been like, nah, after ten minutes of walking, I'm not walking the side of this mountain. Not doing it.

Chris: Yeah, the book has like a ton of information in it and they filmed a lot of this stuff, but a lot of this stuff got cut out. And one thing and I hate that they cut so much stuff out because there's a lot of stuff that scenes like what you're talking about would make a lot more sense. So the reason that Judd was just like, cruising through there is one of the things they talk about when they first go there for the first time to bury the cat is when you're there on that ground, you feel amazing. Your body is like, there's nothing wrong with you. And in the book, they actually talk about how Judd to be like in his seventy s or whatever, was literally beating, like Lewis at climbing all this shit. And Judd even tells him later on, he's like, didn't you feel that when we were on the grounds? How amazing that you felt? And he's like, yeah, actually I did. That was the best I ever felt in my life.

Jordan: That makes a little more sense. Give some more insight on why Judd took him there.

Chris: Yeah. So there's some stuff actually about that too. So this movie is the closest adaptation from a Stephen King book there has.

Jordan: Ever been, probably because Stephen King wrote it, I would imagine.

Chris: Well, there's there's yeah, there's that. And then there's some other know, I got it know closer to the end of the show when we kind of talk about when the movie was made. But this movie is just about dead on on the book. But the only problem is there's so much more information in the book about what's going on that is left out of the movie. So if you like the movie, read the book because it fills in a ton of information about what's going on. So highly recommend. But and I try to put some of that stuff into the episode. But I don't want the whole episode to be the book versus the movie. But yeah. So the next day, Lewis is startled by a very much alive church. And you see, Lewis gets his shit scared at him.

Jordan: He does.

Chris: He almost falls to the ground, drops whatever he's got or something.

Jordan: Did you catch Judd's face when Lewis falls? When they're going back to the cemetery to bury the cat? No. Like. I swear to God, Fred Gwynn must have legit. Maybe that wasn't planned. I don't know. But his fucking face when he falls is priceless.

Chris: What is the face?

Jordan: Does he make the typical oh, shit face? It is totally like the most oh, shit face you could imagine.

Chris: Oh, when he falls down, the big don't look down. Then he you know, right before that too. When Judd goes up the front of the barrier, judd does it in three steps.

Jordan: He does.

Chris: And I was like, Dude, Fred.

Jordan: Gwen's a big dude.

Chris: He is a big dude.

Jordan: He's a big dude. But you can tell he's made this trip quite a few times. This isn't the first time of him going there since his dog went there. He's been there for quite a few yeah.

Chris: So there's a one story, too, where a guy actually carried his bull up there. Yeah, he dragged his how do you.

Jordan: Carry a bull, Lewis, on flat ground, let alone and through the mountain? Yeah.

Chris: So actually the thing with the burial ground is like 90% of what you bury there when it comes back is not evil. Very rarely does something come back as evil, which is one of the reasons why Judd takes the cat up there. Because he's like, well, I'm going to tell you now. I've known a ton of people that's buried their animals up here. They normally just come back kind of like a little slow or something kind of a little wrong with them. But they're normally because Judd, when his dog originally comes back, his dog is fine.

Jordan: Not. In the movie.

Chris: Yeah, he's like aggressive in the movie. But yeah, he kept that dog for years afterwards. And everything else is normally okay. It's not the same, but it's okay. And the bull is actually like the one animal that came back evil. And I was like, well, that's the.

Jordan: Worst animal to come back evil. Yeah, but yeah, they don't show that in the movie. In the movie, like the dog's fucking all fucked up, super pissed off.

Chris: Yeah.

Jordan: And so that's very vague when he explains it, too.

Chris: That's what I'm saying is there's so much information that either they didn't get in this movie or it got cut out because the studio cut a lot of stuff out, too. And I'm like, well, that makes a lot more sense why Judd would take him up there. Because he's you know, why would he take him up there if he knew for sure the cat was going to be evil?

Jordan: Well, he says too, when he starts blaming himself later on when Gage dies, he's kind of blaming himself. And he says that he took the cat up there because he basically felt bad for Ellie. He's like, she didn't deserve to have to face at losing something she of that does shed more light on.

Chris: You know, church has wandered back to the house and he pretty much appears to be fine. He stinks very badly now. His eyes glow kind of a goldish yellow, and he pretty much hates Lewis. And I would say by the looks of it, the cat is definitely evil. Definitely gives the evil vibe right off the bat, especially with the glowing eyes. So how they actually got the glowing eyes to happen is there was no effects with the glowing eyes. All they did was you know how cats, they have some kind of reflection in their eyes. All they did was shine a light at the cat from a certain angle. And that's the cat's natural eyes glowing.

Jordan: Wow. That was it. That's weird because it almost looks like it was digitally put in there after. It's pretty good.

Chris: Real eyes. I thought that was a real slick kind of way to do that. But yeah. So now when you watch the movie again later on, if you pay attention, you realize that it's just like a cat, that if you were driving and your headlights caught its eyes, it's just the same thing. Yeah. So kind of church pretty much acts like a dick to Lewis. The rest of the time the family is gone. At one point scratching his face and even dropping a dead rat into the bathtub with Lewis.

Jordan: I would have fucking punched that. Yeah, I would have been fucking shitting.

Chris: That's so gross.

Jordan: And it's like it's not just like the rat falls in the tub. It was like blood coming off the rat, chucks it at would have been that cat would have been outside. If I end up getting hit again. That cat would be living outside after that.

Chris: Yeah. So Lewis goes to talk to Judd about Church's return and judge tells him the story about when he was a boy and his pet dog died and Judd took his remains up to beyond the pet cemetery. And he tells Lewis that the reason that he did it was to spare Ellie the pain of losing her pet at such a young age. And after a few days, Rachel and the kids return and Ellie continuously complains about Church stinking. I guess. Fucking reeks. Like dead.

Jordan: Like dead dead. Yeah. That's a bad smell. Everybody knows anybody who's ever smelled dead knows the dead smell. Yeah.

Chris: But the family goes on as normal. Never really kind of catching on the idea that anything happened to Church while they were gone and apparently no one ever noticed. Church has glowing eyes now.

Jordan: Yeah, I was wondering about that. Yeah, I thought that was weird, too.

Chris: Why does the cat eyes glow randomly?

Jordan: Well, made me wonder if it was like just Lewis was seeing it and the rest of the family members. Mean, cat doesn't seem to hate the rest of the family, just Lewis. Maybe he was trying to give him that rat as like a gift. Like a gift, like, I got you. And then he got pissed. And after that, Church was like, all right, fuck you.

Chris: He's like, hey, man, I really appreciate you bringing me back from the dead. I caught this for you.

Jordan: Can you bring this rat back so I can chase it down and kill it again?

Chris: So right after this, we see that a lady that the Creeds had hired to help around the house decides to commit suicide and she leaves a brief note and hangs herself in the basement of her home. And at her funeral, we get a cameo by Stephen King himself. It's always weird for me to see, like, a young Stephen King. Yeah, because my whole life Stephen King's been well, I wouldn't say my whole life because I was a baby.

Jordan: Your whole adult life? He's very old. Did you read the suicide note?

Chris: I remember it being like something about her stomach pain. She couldn't take the pain.

Jordan: Had to I had to pause it and go. Had she had some type of stomach cancer? Obviously. Yeah.

Chris: They talk couple the couple scenes that she's in, she's complaining, talking about her stomach hurting.

Jordan: Yeah. Because Lewis offers to check it out for her and she's like, oh, no, she's got the Judd accent. Yeah. And yeah, clearly they don't say it's stomach cancer, but it's more than likely some type of stomach cancer.

Chris: Yeah. She's like the only character that's not in the original story at all. And I really wasn't quite sure why they had her whole entire part. And the really I don't really why they wrote that in.

Jordan: Will they talk to Ellie about death again after to I remember they have Lewis and Ellie have a conversation about death again after that, after the funeral. That's the only reason I could think of them adding that in. Yeah. So Ellie's really upset. She asked if she's know what happened to her.

Chris: The original story is actually Judd's wife that dies. And I don't know why they made that change, because that seemed like that went better than this random lady.

Jordan: Whenever I was younger and I seen this movie, I thought it was Judd's wife.

Chris: Yeah, they get real close to Judd and his wife, and his wife dies from, like I think she dies from a heart attack or something. And this is what brings all this stuff up with Ellie. But yeah, this causes Ellie to ask questions about death. And this is pretty much we learn that Rachel has some kind of deep seated issue when it comes to the subject of death. Kind of explains her look from earlier. And her and Louis talk about it. And Rachel tells the story of her sister Zelda. And when they were kids, Zelda had spinal meningitis, which causes her to become very sick and very scary looking fucking monster. Her back and her arms begin to twist in very unnerving, unnatural ways. Rachel hated her sister and was kind of wanting her to die. And one day, Rachel was kind of put in charge of watching her for a few hours. And during this time, her sister passes away. And pretty much this event emotionally scars Rachel for life. And my whole entire life, I've always thought that Zelda is the scariest part of this movie for like I'm going.

Jordan: To say the second scariest part for.

Chris: Me when I was a kid.

Jordan: Yeah, I'm going to say the second scariest part, at least mentally. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I hate to say this, but if I had a sibling and I was stuck in the house with that she's a little kid. Her sister is clearly much older than her. Probably looked like she was probably an adult when she's dying. But God, man.

Chris: No, she's only like two years older. The reason that she looks like that.

Jordan: In the movie, that spinal meningitis is some fucked up shit, man.

Chris: Well, here's what happened. So they originally were casting little girls to play the part, and they couldn't get the little girls to quit being cute. And you having sympathy for this character.

Jordan: Yeah.

Chris: So they casted a grown man.

Jordan: That was a man I didn't know that was thought it was a grown woman.

Chris: Good god, I can't remember the actor's name. So they picked a man because they thought a man would be scarier. It was scary to be as scared as Rachel was when she was a kid.

Jordan: Bro, if I was eight years old and I was stuck in the fucking house with this, I would be terrified. Lewis is right. He tells her if I ever needed another reason to dislike your fucking parents even more. This is it. Why would they think leaving an eight year old in charge of taking care of their sister with spinal meningitis was a good I'm like, yeah, yeah, I feel that. Yes.

Chris: A little bit of backstory, too, about Zelda is Zelda actually resented Rachel for being healthy. And Rachel and her mother were the primary caregivers for Zelda. And Zelda started doing things to make their life miserable. Like, she would pee on her. Like, they would try to take her to the bathroom and she wouldn't go. And then they would put her back in bed, and she would immediately piss the bed. So they had to change her and clean everything up. She started doing all of these things just to spite them. And that's why Rachel actually wanted her to.

Jordan: You know, I don't blame Rachel. I hate to say that that's a horrible thing, but eight years know that's a horrible thing to have to go through. And it makes a lot more sense of why she has such a weird thing with death and talking about it with her.

Chris: When when Zelda dies, rachel actually runs out of the house to the neighbors, and she's like, screaming know Zelda is dead. And the neighbors are like, oh, she's upset. She's like, yeah, she's actually happy.

Jordan: She says she's crying, and they think she's upset, but in reality, she was happy.

Chris: So the next day, we see the Creed family and Judd. They're having kind of a picnic in the yard. Lewis and Gage are flying a kite, and Lewis kind of turns around. He's talking to Rachel and Judd, and Gage drops the kite string and begins kind of running after it and in the direction towards the road. And at the same time, we see a fast moving semi truck kind of heading down the same road. Lewis starts sprinting after Gage, trying to catch him before he makes it into the road, but he doesn't make it. And we see the truck coming right at Gage and then a bloody child's shoe tumbling down the street. And the shot of the shoe is fucked up. That's like one of the most fucked up parts of this movie.

Jordan: This is the scariest scene for me.

Chris: At least as an adult, thinking about the reality of the situation is scariest.

Jordan: But yeah, being a parent and going back and watching this I've seen this fucking movie many a times before I was a parent. And seeing it now, even though I know he's going to get hit by a truck, like, it's the main part of the story, it's still like, oh, God, no, don't get hit by the truck.

Chris: Yeah, I remember watching this story many times throughout my life and not really thinking anything really about the know, it's just another horror movie story. But as a much older adult, when I watch this movie now, I understand why Stephen King was like, I've went too far. I'm going to probably put this story to the side because even with it, Georgie gets killed. He's killed by this monster that we know is not real. But this is a situation where this shit happens.

Jordan: This happens. Yeah. Somebody out there right now is going through this shit.

Chris: Yes.

Jordan: As a parent, that scene absolutely just gave me such bad. And I really like Lewis. But of course, he fucking falls down, like right before he gets there in the lamest way. It's it's a horrible scene.

Chris: Yeah. I hate this whole entire part of the movie. Because even after you get past the bloody shoe, then they dig in deeper where they're showing their moments with this kid. And I'm like, why the fuck would you put this in this movie?

Jordan: And then they show them going through the pictures and shit afterwards. And I'm like, there's no way I could be sitting there going through those pictures right after this. I don't know how I would even go on after that. But he's sitting there not crying, like, looking through the pictures of his kid. And I'm like, no fucking way.

Chris: Yeah, man. This is a fucked up part of the movie. I could watch this movie the rest of my life and just edit just that part out of it. I already know what happens. Don't need to see it again. But yeah, this fucked up part of this movie. So then we see scenes of Lewis, Rachel, and Ellie trying to kind of deal with the death of Gage. And they have a visitation and a funeral for him. And Judd anticipates that Lewis may be considering burying his son beyond the pet cemetery where they put the cat. And I guess he is worried he's going to try to bring him back to life. And Lewis denies this. But Judd doesn't really believe him, which I definitely wouldn't believe him either. Every parent, I think, if that was a possibility, would consider that. So he sits down. He tells him the story about a local man named Bill Baderman who buried his young son, Timmy in this Indian burial ground after he died at the end of World War II. And Timmy returned as a very violent zombie.

Jordan: This is the best way to put it. That's what I put in there. Timmy the zombie.

Chris: So he pretty much went around terrifying the town's people until ultimately, a group of local men, including Judd, went to kill Timmy for good. And they set the Baderman house on fire while Timmy murdered his father, Bill. Now, I want to throw this in there because I thought this was okay. But I thought the original version was cool. So Timmy originally doesn't come back as this violent zombie. He comes back kind of like mentally ill. And the town people are like, they all went to his funeral, but they all know about the burial ground. And they're just like, this is weird. This is unnerving. But what happens is people start writing. The government and the US. Army is pissed that this guy is alive. They're like, well, if he didn't die in this war, then who did we bury and who did we give this Purple heart to basically. And they paid out a life insurance to his, you know, people from the town, you know, just letting you know this Timmy baderman that you buried with full honors and paid out life insurance is actually alive.

Jordan: Snitching ass neighbors, man.

Chris: So basically, yeah. So the military sends a guy from the Department of Defense and he's pretty much tells the town police officer, listen, if I keep hearing about this, then I'm going to show up and do an investigation. And this is going to be a big deal. And so they go and talk to Timmy's dad who brought him back to life. And he basically says, fuck off. I don't really care what the government says. Yeah, I brought him back to life. And yeah, he's a little messed up, but he's still my son.

Jordan: That would be me as a parent. I'd be.

Chris: You know, judd and his group of friends try to talk him into like, look, this is unnatural. This is wrong. He's kind of freaking people out. He's doing weird stuff. And what ends up happening is the dad actually ends up shooting Timmy and then himself and sets the house on fire. And I thought that was a cooler story. I like that a little bit better.

Jordan: That makes sense because he's telling the story. And it makes it sound like Timmy the zombie just terrorized the town for like a fucking week. I'm like, how did he run around here for days?

Chris: Yeah, so the reason that the townspeople wanted to get rid of him is because he possessed this knowledge of everyone's secrets and was like kind of fucking with people. Pretty much. There was one guy, he was like, you know your wife's like fucking that dude that works at the supermarket.

Jordan: Damn. That's so Stephen King. That is such a not the not the fucking the guy at the supermarket part. But I could totally see in the longer version in the book that's total like, this guy comes back to life and he knows all these people's dark secrets and starts fucking with them. That's totally Stephen King.

Chris: Well, the whole point of it is there's this evil that is controlling these people. The people didn't come back to evil is in their body. And I just thought that was such a cooler story with the Timmy. The dad eventually ends up murdering Timmy because he is getting worse. Like the things he is doing is getting worse and worse. I can't exactly remember exactly what he was doing. But eventually it got to the point where the dad just couldn't keep his son under control anymore. And he had realized, like, this is out of hand.

Jordan: That's why the books are always so much better. Because that whole part, I don't know, take up 15 minutes of a movie, whereas the books with a movie, you only have 2 hours max.

Chris: They covered this in like two minutes.

Jordan: Yeah. This is like a whole chapter in the book, I'm sure.

Chris: Yeah. I just really loved the fact that the townspeople let it go on for a while because they'd felt bad. And what really brought the hammer down was the federal government was like, what is going on here? And then the sun is actually getting where he's not going around like eating know arms or anything.

Jordan: The government's like, if we paid out this life insurance money, we're going to make sure this motherfucker's dead.

Chris: Yeah, they mentioned that to Bill Baderman. And he's like, well, they can have their fucking money back. Like, I don't care.

Jordan: Yeah. No, as a parent, I would 100% be like, why does the government give a fuck if my son's back? Take your money.

Chris: But Judd insists that the burial grounds are evil and he pleads with Lewis not to take Gage up there. And he tells know pretty much the tagline of the movie, that sometimes dead is better. And Lewis talks to Rachel and Ellie talks them into going back to Chicago after the funeral and that he will join them in a few days. And he's pretty much ignores Judd and Pascal's warnings. Lewis goes and digs up his son's body and buries him in the ritual.

Jordan: He there's the scene where he's about to dig his son up and he's like reasoning with himself of why he's going to do. Like, the family will be out of town. Nobody will ever know. If it goes bad, I'll just put them down again. And as a parent, I 100% agreed with everything he was saying. Like watching this movie as a kid, I was like, this is clearly a bad fucking idea. But now as a parent, your toddler gets hit by a truck in front of you and you find out there's a way that you could bring them back to life. And he's sitting there reasoning with himself, I think is all actual thoughts that parents would have in this situation.

Chris: Yeah. You can tell too that his mind is broken.

Jordan: Yeah. The grief. The grief.

Chris: Know, you don't really understand that when you're younger because you've never really been through a situation where your mind is temporarily broken. But seeing this situation as an adult, you can very much see Lewis's point of view during all this. It changes the way that you watch this movie.

Jordan: Yeah, it's much different.

Chris: But yeah. So while in Chicago, Pascal starts to appear in Ellie's dreams, warning her that Lewis is in trouble. And she pretty much tells this to Rachel, who calls Judd to check in on Lewis. And he tells her that he hasn't seen Lewis and he's not home.

Jordan: I like, this because this is actually something she's having, these dreams, the whole movie. And this is where we find out Victor is the one actually in her dreams. These bad dreams she keeps having. It's him trying to prevent this from happening. And I thought that was really cool.

Chris: Yeah, there's something real cool about this stuff, too. And I'll talk about it in a minute.

Jordan: But yeah.

Chris: So, unnerved by this news, she decides to fly home as quick as possible. And so that night, a reanimated Gage returns to the house and takes a scalpel out of Lewis's medical bag, while Lewis is pretty much exhausted and sleeping on the bed. And I will say Gage is in really good shape for being hit by a semi is he has pretty much like a scar on his forehead. That's it.

Jordan: I don't know. That foot took the brunt of it.

Chris: That shoe, I guess.

Jordan: Yeah, that's where it came from.

Chris: Also, how does the ritual cemetery work if you've been embalmed?

Jordan: Guess it doesn't matter because it's evil. Taking your body over. I'm sure they embalmed them.

Chris: It's just weird, though, that maybe that's.

Jordan: Why it looks so good. Maybe it's just a really good funeral home. They just sewed him back together and made him look real good. They're like, his face is pretty much undamaged. We can glue the rest back.

Chris: Yeah, I guess. The fact that he know no organs inside of his he's a kid.

Jordan: He can take that shit. Just a semi.

Chris: They heal up quick. So he sneaks over to Judd's house and kind of taunts him with some creepy evil child laughter and tiny, muddy footprints. These are very simple but effective things to do when you're a child and you're going to murder an adult.

Jordan: This is all very creepy Chucky vibes, too, with the little footprints running around.

Chris: That's immediately what I thought about was I'm like, they did that same thing in Chucky because there's a scene where somebody spills like some flour or something, child's play. And you see his little footprints through it. And I'm like, if you have a tiny killer, you have to have the tiny footprints you have. Like, you know, you can't make a tiny killer movie without tiny footprints.

Jordan: One of the few really scary things you can do with a tiny killer.

Chris: I think Chucky does some evil laughter, too. It's just not child laughter, but same thing. That's also a big thing. And when you go to haunted houses during Halloween, there's always some evil laughter going on in the background.

Jordan: Yeah, something with ghosts and kids laughing. And it's just creepy.

Chris: So Gage hides under Judd's bed and Judd's kind of looking for him. And he slices the back of his foot. It's his Achilles tendon.

Jordan: Fucking Achilles goes down. Another shout out to the FX.

Chris: Yeah, it looked good, too.

Jordan: Did look good.

Chris: Once he kind of falls down, he kind of slashes Judd's face. He cuts the corners of his like, he gives him, like, the Joker.

Jordan: He does. And that was done really good, too.

Chris: Yeah, it's real quick.

Jordan: Yeah. There's not a whole lot, but the effects that they do have is really good for 1989.

Chris: Yeah. So once Judd is down on the floor, gage bites out his neck. And I was like, no, not Judd.

Jordan: Yeah, this was a hard one. Yeah. You like Judd so much, he was wanting to survive. Even if all this is his, like, he's still the best character. He's great. And I forgive you, Judd.

Chris: I forgive you.

Jordan: Little savage. Gage rip his throat out with his Was. It was a rough one.

Chris: Yeah. So what the fuck is Gage wearing? Like, he's wearing, like, this dress and top.

Jordan: Yeah. Actually, put that in my cane. So he doesn't do that when he kills them. But whenever when Rachel shows up, she sees her fucked up sister Zelda for a second, this really creepy scene of her duck down in the corner, and she starts talking shit to her and coming towards her, and then it flashes, and it's no longer Zelda, it's Gage. And he's wearing a fucking dress and top hat. So that was really weird.

Chris: It is weird. And I looked into it, and here's the deal. So there is that portrait that you see Rachel standing in front of a couple of times when she's in Chicago. And that portrait is a portrait of Zelda when she was about Gage's age. And she is wearing that exact same outfit. That is the same outfit that they also buried Zelda in. And for some reason, it's like a family tradition to bury your dead child in that outfit. Because that is why when you see Zelda appear right before she turns into Gage, if you notice she's wearing that minus the top hat. She's wearing that same kind of dress.

Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. So I noticed she was wearing it, but I didn't know any of the family history of it or I didn't catch that picture.

Chris: Yeah, I didn't either, because I was totally came across. I read about Is, and the reason that they did that is because they want people to see kind of, like, the similarities that Rachel was scared of Zelda, and then her child ends up having a similar fate, and that's why they dress them the same, is because she was happy. It's almost like she's being punished for being happy. Zelda's dead by her child dying. So yeah. They're basically trying to make a visual kind of thing of these two things are running. They're they're surrounding Rachel.

Jordan: Yeah. That makes a little more sense because I was definitely like, I didn't get it. What the fuck did they put Gage in?

Chris: Especially the top hat and the cane.

Jordan: Yeah.

Chris: Like, I get why he needs a cane now. It was an accident, but yeah. So Pascal, he's helping Rachel return home, and once she arrives, she goes straight over to Judd's house after seeing the ghost. Or I guess she hears her son and Zelda. She hears them over at Judd's. And she kind of heads over there. And once she's inside, she realizes that she is looking at her. Originally, she's looking at Zelda, but this is what we're just talking about. And kind of transforms into her one's dead and now very much alive son, Gage. And he is holding a scalpel. She is in shock and disbelief. She reaches down to hug him, and he kills her.

Jordan: We don't get to see it.

Chris: We don't get to see the kill.

Jordan: But it would have been my favorite kill if they would have showed it.

Chris: Yeah. So in the morning, Lewis wakes up and he sees small footprints of the killer in the house. He discovers that his scalpel is missing. And this is pretty much when Lewis realizes, fuck, my kid came back evil. Damn, judd was right.

Jordan: Yeah, he's excited at first.

Chris: Yeah.

Jordan: Like, he gets all excited, starts yelling for Gage. And then he's like, oh, scalpel's gone.

Chris: He's probably not going to do surgery.

Jordan: Perfect murder.

Chris: Um, so the phone rings and it's a Gage on the other end informing Lewis that he has played with Judd and Mommy. And Lewis pretty much realizes his son is evil and fills up three syringes with some morphine. And he heads on over to Judd's house, take care of business. He's going to try to fix his very big mistake.

Jordan: It's fucked up. He gets a call from his father in law right before that, too, and saying Ellie's having this dream that Rachel died. So he kind of already like, oh, shit.

Chris: Yeah, like this couldn't get he knows.

Jordan: They find out she came back. She's not there. And then the kid's now having a dream and everything she's dreamed end up happening.

Chris: So yeah, he catches Church first, kind of out front.

Jordan: Church dies again, injects him with the.

Chris: Morphine, kind of kills him and pretty much gives you a fuck you evil cat.

Jordan: Is it morphine?

Chris: It is morphine.

Jordan: Did they say that in the movie or is that in the book? I don't think they say it in the movie.

Chris: Yeah, I don't know.

Jordan: That's a good way to die.

Chris: It was in the plot of the movie.

Jordan: If you're going to inject me with something to kill mean, that's what I'd rather it be.

Chris: IMDb claims it's morphe anyway. Yeah, he pretty much kills the evil cat. It's a Thanksgiving for cats that came back alive. They actually said one of the hardest parts of filming this movie was trying to get that cat to eat that pork chop.

Jordan: Yeah, I could see that.

Chris: Yeah, I don't think cats really like that kind of stuff. Like tuna. Oh, god. The cat here will fight you over a fucking tuna.

Jordan: Yeah, my cat loves tuna. But as far as, like table food, they are not like a dog. They don't go after food like that.

Chris: Yeah. So then he heads inside, and he's looking for Gage. And first he finds Judd's body with the lower part of his face missing. So Gage has had a little more fun with Judd, apparently.

Jordan: I do love how chewed off the fucking house is, like, rotted and fucked up. And it's not actually. It just goes to show you how this evil is, like, fucking with him super hard, and he's, like, lost his mind.

Chris: So then as he is walking through the hallway, rachel's body drops from the attic. Gage is kind of up there where the body was. This stuns and shocks Lewis, who is then attacked by Gage. And we see a fight between Lewis and obvious doll.

Jordan: This is the only part I can say I fucking hated in this entire movie. The fakest dive, throwing the doll out of the attic. Like, the dive onto him was so fake looking. And then him fighting with this toddler, and it's like slamming him up against the wall. It's total leprechaun vibes. Why wouldn't you just throw this little fucking bastard?

Chris: Just toss him it's a bit some they do a good job. They mix some scenes of the actual Gage's face in this kind of fight, but he's pretty much like cutting Lewis up with the scalpel. But there's a couple scenes where it just looks like Lewis is holding this doll and just slamming himself around.

Jordan: Yeah, and the worst part was to dive out of the attic for me because it was really bad. Mean, even without it looking, he's he's like a two year old guy would.

Chris: Have beat the fuck out of a two year old.

Jordan: I mean, it's your kids. And maybe not beat the fuck out of it, but if that evil two year old jumps on me, like, I'm going to throw it halfway across the room. There's no way that's going to how is it slamming you up against the fucking wall?

Chris: Power of evil.

Jordan: That is some powerful evil.

Chris: The power of Christ compels you, as you should have did. Maybe a crucifix would have worked in this moment.

Jordan: Turn it into an exorcist movie.

Chris: Gage started, like, doing that backwards crawl.

Jordan: Stephen King, the Reverend comes in with the.

Chris: Yeah, that that would have been great. So after a brief fight, Lewis overpowers Gage and injects him with the morphine. Gage gets upset. He kind of stumbles away from Lewis and he falls down and he dies.

Jordan: That's kind of sad.

Chris: It is sad. It's really kind of sad death because he's still like a kid.

Jordan: He is like a little baby. You can tell. Despite all the evil, it still kills Lewis to actually do it. And then as he's dying, it's like the evil dies out of him first, because he kind of resorts back into being a toddler and just is kind of sad and just stumbles away and falls up against the wall.

Chris: Yeah, it's a bummer. It sucks. It's like, yeah, you killed the evil. But it's still a little kid. And he still talks like a little kid and even says, you're not fighting.

Jordan: He's like stumbling away. And he's like, not fair. Not fair.

Chris: It sucks. Duke is Lewis has to watch his kid die. Know that sucks. So Lewis then kind of pours gas throughout Judd's house and he sets it on fire and he cuts Rachel down and walks out of there with the house pretty much being engulfed in flames. He carries Rachel towards the pet cemetery, believing that Gage became evil because he just waited too long to bring him back and that Rachel will be a different outcome because she just died. And Pascal appears in the road and he tries to stop Lewis, but he doesn't really give a fuck about what Pascal has to say.

Jordan: Yeah, this is sad even after all. Like, you can tell how him being grief stricken has literally caused him to lose his mind.

Chris: He's totally broken.

Jordan: He's lost everybody at this point. He's desperate to bring just his wife back. At least he obviously can't bring Gage back. He's been dead twice now. But yeah, you would think after all this, like, no, you would never go near that place again. But he's clearly so grief stricken, he's going to try it again.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, the cat came back evil, the kid came back evil, but the wife will be fine. So that night, Rachel returns home to Lewis, who has been waiting for her. And she's very gross looking. She is missing an eye. Lewis stands up and they begin to passionately kiss each other. And Rachel takes a large knife from the table and we hear Lewis scream. And all I can say is, poor Ellie.

Jordan: God, they start intensely tongue kissing. She's missing an eye. And it's like, oozing out. He's clearly lost his fucking line.

Chris: Oh, god, she is gross.

Jordan: But I'll say I fucking love the ending of this movie. I hate when movies have super unrealistic happy endings. And this is one of those more cryptic, dreadful endings. He could have ended it after him setting the house on fire when everybody was dead. And they just ended it with him and his daughter, which people forget he still has a daughter who's now left on her own, but him being so crazy and putting her back in the cemetery and then it kind of fading out. Like, we don't see him actually die, but kind of fades out. I thought the ending was fantastic.

Chris: Yeah. So the original ending for the movie is actually it stopped when Rachel put like she puts her hand on the door and goes to open the door. That's where the original movie stops. They originally stopped it because they kind of wanted the end to be left up to you. But the studio actually made them go back and reshoot that whole makeout scene and stab with the knife. So yeah, that whole thing was reshot because I guess they thought you were so close to being just show just just show her looking gross and creepy. Show them making out Lewis has lost his mind. Because I guess they wanted to make you wonder like, does she come back evil or does she not? And it's pretty obvious that yeah, she probably comes back evil because everything has come back.

Jordan: Yeah. I love the ending. I thought it was fantastic. The everybody dies ending, I'm always a fan of. Although I really liked Lewis. Still. I thought it was a great ending.

Chris: Yeah. So we'll move into some interesting things I learned about the movie. In the first one, I got a big one. Got a big one for the first one. Some of this stuff is really awesome. So I really wanted to include a bunch of it. But originally the film rights were sold to George A. Romero. He bought them from Stephen King in 1984 for $10,000. King declined many, many other offers for the film adaptation for this. But Romero had to eventually pull out of the film because by the time they decided to make the movie, he was already busy on a production of another movie. Stephen King had turned down all the other offers because he didn't really want to make a film adaptation of this. And then when George A. Romero came, he was if anybody if I'm going to let anybody do it, it's going to be George A. Romero. We almost had a George a Romero pet cemetery. Holy fucking shit.

Jordan: Wonder how that would have came out.

Chris: That's a big one. Yeah.

Jordan: But we would have seen the kills.

Chris: Yeah. And so since we're kind of talking about the director so Stephen King was originally opposed to any other directors doing the film until he met Mary Lambert. Mary Lambert was picked by the studio. And so he met her. And she talked about how much she loved all his books and how she did not want to stray from the source material, which King he loved her after that because a lot of his other movies, they kind of go off and do other stuff from his books. And she wanted to stay very close to his book, which he liked.

Jordan: Yeah. You know how many movies Stephen King has probably had to watch that were written from his books? That just completely fuck it up? I think he just change everything about it.

Chris: Yeah. This movie, too, he actually had the most to do with. I think he was kind of tired of them kind of butchering up his chopping up his stories. So this one, he actually had made it part of the contract when he sold the rights that he was going to write the actual screenplay. And he was going to have say so. And where it was filmed, where they filmed this movie was only 20 minutes from his home. So yeah, he didn't have to travel far to the set every day.

Jordan: It's probably close to where the place where that kind of inspired it, too. He said he went back to teach his old school. Right? Yeah.

Chris: What's interesting is so that house is still there. You can go and see that house. Lewis's house, judd's house. It was a smaller house. And they actually built that house around the smaller house that is just a fake out. It's like a shell. And then they kind of lined it with something so there's some kind of lining in between the actual house and then the fake Judd house. That way that when they burned Judd's house down, they would be able to actually set it on fire and it wouldn't actually catch the real house on fire.

Jordan: Yeah. That's slick. That's pretty cool.

Chris: So what took the studio so long to make this movie was they believed that there was no more demand for Stephen King movies.

Jordan: Wow. They fucked that up. Yeah. Here we are in 2023 and there's still a demand for Stephen King movies.

Chris: Yeah. So it wasn't until the 1988 guild of America strike that the studio needed to use an already written script in order to avoid facing a possible shortage of new productions in the year of 1989. So because they didn't have any writers writing anything in 88, they were like, we've got to do something. We got to get something that's already written and already approved or we're not going to have any movies for 1989. And this is the only reason that Pet Cemetery was made.

Jordan: Isn't it crazy how you can get all these studio execs that are supposed to be, like, experts in this stuff and then don't a room full of them can be so fucking wrong about something? How many times has that happened? That happens all the time.

Chris: It's untelling. Other movies we could have had if they wouldn't have fucked it up. There's probably stuff we don't know.

Jordan: I'm sure there's shit. Tons of stuff we don't know. And then going back and hearing about a movie 20 years later and you hear about some of the stuff and some studio execs, like a room full of rich people who are supposed to be the best in the world at making these decisions can manage to fuck something up.

Chris: They're just out of I think a.

Jordan: Lot of Stephen King's out. He's old news. Done. Old news.

Chris: I wouldn't even know who he is in 20 years.

Jordan: Yeah.

Chris: Wait unless you read books.

Jordan: Wait until the 2000s. Nobody's going to give fuck Stephen who.

Chris: Yeah. So it was director Mary Lambert who fought the studio on the casting of Fred Gwynn for Judd. The studio believed that people would not take him serious because of his fame as Herman Munster. Well, another thing they were wrong were.

Jordan: Yeah, they were very wrong about that. To ever disrespect Herman Munster or Fred Gwynn.

Chris: So when she signed on for the movie, fred Gwynn was her only choice for Judd. This is probably never wanted anybody else to play him.

Jordan: I wonder if this was done before or after my cousin Vinny.

Chris: I think this is before because my cousin Vinny, I don't know, could have been around the same time.

Jordan: I mean, The Munster I think my.

Chris: Cousin Vinny might have been like, 1990.

Jordan: The Munsters only ran for two seasons, and that was the late 60s. This is nearly ten years later. I guess there was probably a lot of fans of the monsters back then, but it's not, like, super recognizable. He has so much makeup when he does the monsters. But they were very wrong. Very wrong about that. Yeah.

Chris: When I think of him, I don't think of the monsters because I don't watch the monsters, but I think of Pet Sematary.

Jordan: He did so good in that role that when I watched the remake, he is the only role that's just the movie could never be as good because Judd is not Judd.

Chris: Yeah, I agree. It's really difficult to replace him because he was so good in that role.

Jordan: I mean, he's this iconic, like, that voice and the accent and the look. Whenever I was younger and I would think back at watching the pet cemetery, he is the first person that I would think of him talking in that accent. So, like I said, even the remake, he's the one character that just can't be replaced.

Chris: Yeah. I got another big one for you. Bruce Campbell was the first choice for the role of Creed.

Jordan: Hmm.

Chris: Can you imagine if we would have George A. Romero director? And Bruce Campbell in pet was so weird.

Jordan: Yeah, I'm glad they didn't do that. Not the Romero, obviously, but having Ash.

Chris: As Lewis Creed, he would have, like, chainsaw Gage. Yeah, that's still know that would have been crazy, though. I mean, just thinking those two things that almost happened. This would be I don't know. I mean, it would still be the movie that it is, but I think people would look at it differently.

Jordan: Yeah. You got to imagine if Romero did it, we would actually see the death. There would be a lot more probably death and gore in it, because this movie doesn't have a whole lot of those. They do a good job at sprinkling in these creepy parts, but it really doesn't have a whole lot of FX moments or gore or anything. The ones it does have is great, but it's just not a whole lot. They don't show the deaths except Judd.

Chris: It's very reliant on the story. Not so much on really, unfortunately.

Jordan: It was a fantastic story, though. Yeah. Fantastic story. Which holds the movie up, for sure.

Chris: Yeah. So, because cats are very difficult to train, which I didn't know that until this, they ended up using nine different cats for the role of Church. They had one for jumping, one for snarling and one for cuddling, just to name a few of the cats.

Jordan: I could see that cats are fucking hard.

Chris: So apparently for each different thing that Church does in the movie, they had to get a different cat that was specifically trained to do that one thing.

Jordan: Somebody had to go out and find a bunch of gray cats. They were like, we need this exact shade of gray. Just get as many as you can and if you pull 20, we'll be able to get at least one of them to do what we need.

Chris: Yeah, so the studio thought the original cut of the movie was way too long. So they actually had a lot of scenes cut out, which I think is a huge mistake. But in 2020, director Mary Lambert stated that the reason that the deleted scenes are not on the Blu ray or DVD is because the studio had destroyed all of the or no, they had lost all of the extra footage. They probably destroyed it. They do that.

Jordan: Yeah. I'm sure that was another super smart studio exec was like, I'll fucking burn all that footage. Nobody will ever want to see that shit.

Chris: You know that they had a lot more detail through this movie. I would have loved to have seen a director's cut of this movie, especially after reading the book.

Jordan: Especially after Stephen King writing the screenplay for it, I'm sure because there's stuff in there that he doesn't want to leave out because then it makes certain things not make that much sense. Like Judd running through the woods to get there, although he's, like 70 years old. That didn't really make sense to me until you told me in the book. It kind of makes them feel really good, like they're drugged up when they get up there. So I'm sure there was a lot of stuff, detailed stuff that got cut out that he made sure was in there.

Chris: Yeah, after reading the book. And then this is the first time I'd watched a movie since I'd read it. It made the movie feel like it just jumped from point to point really quickly. And I get that it can't have as much detail as the book, but I feel like, from what I understand, from statements from the director, that they did try to put that stuff in, so it didn't seem like it was because when you watch it without knowing all this stuff, there are a ton of spots that you just like, whatever. It's just part of the movie. But it would definitely add to the movie if they included a lot of that stuff. Like, they could have mentioned how you feel really good when you're on that ritual land. Like, all of a sudden you're in great shape and you have no problem. I'm sure that they probably filmed a 32nd scene with them saying that, but the studio had to edit it out.

Jordan: Yeah, it sucks. You take a long book and try to get it down into 2 hours. It's probably really tough, probably even for Stephen King, just figuring out for the screenplay, not to mention all the stuff that got cut after they filmed it. I feel like you could do a ten part series and still miss details. Not as much, but Stephen King's, what is it, 1123 59 or something?

Chris: 1122 63.

Jordan: 63, okay. So they did that in a ten part series and I loved that book and I thought they did a great job, but there was still a lot of detail stuff missing.

Chris: That's a long book, though.

Jordan: That is a long, big book. That book got me through some tough times. I'll just put it like that.

Chris: So the truck and this is hard to see, I actually caught when you were finishing up, I actually went in there and was like, looked for this. It's hard to see, though. The truck that Rachel hitches a ride with towards the end of the movie is numbered six. Six it is. So when she gets out of the truck, it's right there on the bottom of the door. It's three sixes and white truck number six.

Jordan: Didn't catch that. I thought she was getting in the truck. The same truck that hit her son. I was like, how did I never notice that? Because you don't hardly get to see the guy who's driving. Like, you see him make some comment like, oh, yeah, get in. He says it in a creepy way, but that would have been awkward. That would have been an awkward ride.

Chris: So another crazy ass thing. Tom Savini turned down the offer to direct this.

Jordan: Hmm.

Chris: They tried to get some heavy hitters, didn't they?

Jordan: They did. I give especially in that like, those were the heavy.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, that's another thing is if we would have had Tom Savini directing Pet Cemetery, like, holy shit. As I was saying earlier, I was kind of excited for some of this stuff because this is a movie that I think a lot of people kind of grew up with. And there's so much stuff that kind of goes along with the making of this movie that I don't think hardly anybody knows. I'd never heard any of this stuff.

Jordan: Yeah, you think Savini or like, this movie does not feel like either one of those two types. Makes you wonder what kind of movie we would have gotten because we know the story would have been the same because Stephen King himself wrote screenplay. But how much different would the cinematography and the gore and like, I feel like it would make it a completely different feel of a yeah, yeah.

Chris: Maybe in alternate universes. There's a one where Tom Savini did Pet Cemetery and one where George A. Ramirez does pet mean it's just crazy. But that didn't happen. Mary Lambert did a good job. Mean?

Jordan: No, she did it's great. Yeah, I agree.

Chris: They could have ended up with somebody totally fucked this whole thing up. So speaking of Mary Lambert, she kind of talked about Pascal being kind of the good ghost. Like the good angel is what she says. And Judd is actually the did catch.

Jordan: I did pick up on that.

Chris: And she said that she actually included a scene that kind of foreshadows this. And this scene is when they find church in Judd's yard and Judd is wearing that big hooded coat and kind of gives this evil yeah. Yeah. I thought that was really interesting because I didn't really ever think of the story that way.

Jordan: Yeah. I think when I picked up on it was the scene where he's going to Barry Gage and Judd sits down on the porch to drink and he's like, you started this, now you got to finish it, or something like that. He just kind of had like a kind of grimacing look on his face. I was like, you know what? He's kind of the bad guy. He knew what this was. And none of this would have ever happened had he not did what he did.

Chris: Yeah.

Jordan: That is still the best character.

Chris: That is unfortunate. But we still love you, Judd. Still in our hearts. I'm going to get one of them T shirts as Rest in peace, Judd. And I have his picture on it.

Jordan: Got to get it on a little gravestone in the pet cemetery.

Chris: So Stephen King purposely wrote into the story how the Creed family suffer from nightmarish visions and premonitions, implying that they all, especially Ellie, have The Shining.

Jordan: Good. Yeah, that's a good one.

Chris: Yeah, I thought that was just that one for last.

Jordan: I thought that was just the evil.

Chris: Fucking with no, no, I thought that was really cool.

Jordan: That's like kind of lewis and Ellie seem to be the ones who have would yeah, mostly them. The wife kinda, I guess, a little bit. She kind of man, they passed it.

Chris: Down to know I don't know.

Jordan: That's cool.

Chris: Yeah. So that explains, though, because I think the director also talked about Ellie. They didn't really talk about it in the movie, but they kind of came up and directed Ellie's character as her being kind of a Stephen King's like, well, she has the ability to shine, which if you read Stephen King books, that has happened in a lot of his different characters have The Shining abilities. Not just The Shining, but I thought that was really cool. Really cool way to kind of connect it to his universe.

Jordan: I love that. That makes sense because they all see, like yeah, they all see him at some point. He's trying to help them and avoid this from happening. And I think every one of them at some point sees Victor in this movie.

Chris: And Ellie not only sees Victor, but Ellie has visions of things that are going to happen that haven't happened.

Jordan: And she has multiple dreams and visions earlier in the movie. And that's why I thought it was so cool when you find out later that Victor, the whole time, has been showing her these things. But yeah, that's that's I would say, out of the facts so far, that is my favorite. That's really cool.

Chris: Well, that's going to be your favorite because that's all there is.

Jordan: Save the best for last.

Chris: Saved the best for last. Yeah, I started out big and then had a couple of big things in there, and then I finished on that. But that's pretty much all the real if you're interested in that stuff, go look. Because there's a couple of other things that I didn't include. I didn't want to include everything, but I kind of hit the big stuff that I thought was really interesting. So I did not come up with the favorite kill because we don't really see them.

Jordan: I did well, but you can throw it out there. I mean, sticking with the rules of best kill. Judd, obviously, is the only one who we actually see. We see we see Gage die. But he's already dead. We don't see him die the first time. Yeah, like the evilness die. Yeah. This is one of those movies, though, even if we did see the deaths, that all the characters, almost all the characters outside of Rachel really liked characters. And you don't want to see Gage get hit by a truck. That's horrible. Yeah, all the characters you don't want to see Lewis die. You don't want to see Judd die. It's one of those movies where it's not that satisfying anyway. But yeah, that's the only one we see die. I'm pretty sure.

Chris: So when Lewis actually goes and looks in Judd's house and he finds that Judd with his face chewed off, that is actually like a fake head they made. And I think they did a really good job because I went back and paused it after I had found that out, and it looks just like him. They did a fantastic job making that mold.

Jordan: Yeah, they did. I think I kind of cut you off talking about the house earlier when you brought that up. But, yes, they did an amazing job. It's like his bottom jaw in the front is kind of from pretty much.

Chris: The jaw from top lip down has chewed up, I guess.

Jordan: And for that being a fake head in 1989, they did a really good job with that. Like, just taking a glimpse at it. You can't tell.

Chris: Well, a lot of times when they do that, they get the skin tone a little off. But, man, I felt like they nailed that because I thought that was him.

Jordan: With prosthetics on skin tone and the eyes are messed up or something. Especially back then. No, it was good. I thought every chance that the FX team had, they killed it.

Chris: So you want to do ratings?

Jordan: Yeah, we can do ratings. All right.

Chris: I didn't write my rating down, but I got it in my brain. Let's go ahead and I'll type it out.

Jordan: Who do you want to go first?

Chris: It doesn't matter. I'll go first.

Jordan: All right.

Chris: My rating for Pet Sematary, I gave it a 3.8. Yeah. This movie is a movie that has always stuck with me. I think the first time I seen it, I was, I don't know, probably eight years old and I don't know, it never disappoints. It's great. I love the story. It's a unique story. I love the characters. I love the setting. I love everything about it. It's great. I wish we would have got a longer cut of it. That's the only negative thing I have to say about it. I'm going to give it a 3.8.

Jordan: Okay, I give it a 4.2.

Chris: Oh, man.

Jordan: You ain't classic, man. Classic Stephen King. He actually wrote the screenplay. So overall, fantastic movie. The story I loved, it's an original story. Like, there's no story like it. This isn't one that some stories get recycled in different ways a thousand times. This is an original story. Love that it's kind of a slow burn throughout the beginning, but they add these creepy scenes in as they're character building kind of through the first half of the movie. Like, you have some creepy scenes here and there. But yeah, the acting everywhere, down to the kids. Like, all the actors, I thought, did a fantastic job. Like even getting the kids to be that good. Hard to find kids, especially a two year old who can actually act but thought they did a fantastic job with that. The ending is probably my favorite part, like the grim ending. And I'll say watching this now as opposed to watching it when I first seen it as a kid, just being a parent and being an adult. It is so terrifying watching these parents go through this and kind of seeing his his grief literally destroy his mind. I thought that was really good. And I can kind of see, like you said, where Stephen King thought he went a little too far. This is very real possibility as far as losing your kid that way. So, yeah. Thought it was a great movie. Like I said, the ending and the story. The story is just fantastic to me. 4.2.

Chris: Yeah. I think I'm going to change it to a four point. I'm going to give it a 4.0. I'm going to give a 4.0.

Jordan: Yeah. I thought you went a little low for man. That's a classic. It is.

Chris: It's a really good movie. The only thing that I wish I could change is like I wish we would see more of the kills.

Jordan: Yeah. But this is one of the few times where it's such a good story that they can get away with not showing us. The Kills and it's still a good movie.

Chris: Yeah, I feel like if I would have watched this movie before I read the book, I would have rated it higher. But yeah, unfortunately it's one of them situations where the story is so good in the original writing that it causes this like I was saying earlier, it causes the movie to seem like it's just skipping through the story. So I don't know. It kind of messes with my kind of watching of the movie now. But if you like the story, read the book because it's just way more detail. It's the same exact story. They don't really change anything except for a couple of things that don't really matter that I'm not really even sure why they changed. Yeah, but yeah, that was the only reason that I originally went with the 3.8, is because it felt like it was skipping through the story.

Jordan: Well, unfortunately it's a movie. They only have so much time.

Chris: Well, they had more time in the studio. Fucking cut it.

Jordan: Yeah, that sucks. But still, even without the stuff cut, I'm sure there was probably a ton of shit that's missed. Well, talking about a book officially backspaced it 4.0. I'm glad my review of my rating was able to change your mind. Bring it up some. I have not read the book, so I'll stay at my 4.2. You should read the book.

Chris: So that's really it for Stephen. King's pet cemetery, 1989. Unless you got anything else you want to go over. No, that about covers it.

Jordan: It's good movie.

Chris: Well, that's going to be it for us. Give us some good reviews, give us some likes, give us some follows. We got some social medias floating around out there. Just help us kind of spread the word of the show. We thank you guys for listening. And you got any last words?

Jordan: Don't bury your pets in the Indian burial ground. Probably sound advice if you weren't sure before though. Definitely don't do that.

Chris: Sometimes debt is bad.