Original subtitles

-Welcome back to the second half

of our Walpurgisnacht celebration,

Witches' Night. -Whoo!

-Witch-a-palooza. -Whoo.

-And we are about to watch a film about a Japanese witch,

a Japanese ghost witch

who expresses her rage and power and evil by haunting...

a VHS tape.

Yes, that's what I said.

Darcy, correct me if I'm wrong

about any of the following facts.

-Oh, you know I will.

-Numero uno, the VHS tape

has the worst image of any media photography format

in the history of mankind.

-Oh, no, I disagree, but I know that's how you feel.

-I mean, cinematograph, Eidoloscope, bioscope, nitrate,

formats that are more than 100 years old

are better than VHS tape resolution.

APS, 16 millimeter, 8 millimeter, Todd-AO,

Cinerama, Fox Movietone, Magna Film, Academy.

-Okay, I get the point.

No!

Let's give this Japanese ghost a chance, okay?

Matted, 185, Cinemascope, VistaVision,

Technirama, Superscope, Panavision, anamorphic...

70 millimeter. -What are you doing?

-This Japanese ghost witch in tonight's movie

could've used QuadraVision, Techniscope,

Super 8, Dimension 180, IMAX, Showscan,

Motion Master, but no!

The format of choice is VHS tape!

Not even Betamax!

Which was invented by the Japanese,

which had a higher quality image than VHS tape.

And this brings up another subject, Darcy.

-We are already on another subject?

-Yes! -Okay.

-Why do people collect VHS tapes?

Do they enjoy suffering?

-I think it's a nostalgia thing for a lot of people,

but I honestly just think it looks pretty.

-It looks pretty. -It's pretty!

-I understand vinyl records.

There are subtle differences in the sound quality,

but VHS tape?

There are not subtle differences

in the image quality or the sound quality,

it all just sucks!

-There are a lot of people who would disagree with you.

-Do you ever see somebody or -- maybe this has happened to you.

You know, the tape is falling out of the plastic box.

It is strung all over the sofa.

There's maybe 30 feet of tape

that's come out of the holder here,

and you're using your fingernail to move the little sprockets,

to put it back in, and somebody says,

"And it was right when Christopher Reeve

was about to die of a broken heart.

Now, he's going to be cross-eyed,

and it's going to sound like he's snoring

every time he joins Elise in the afterlife."

And sure enough, you have a new version of the movie

that belongs only to you.

That's the VHS experience.

-A "Somewhere in Time" reference, holy moly.

You are very passionate about this, sir.

When people come up to our table,

when we're at conventions, and they purchase VHS tapes,

which are manufactured and sold

by our entrepreneurial producer Justin Martell,

I always ask the purchaser,

"Do you have a VCR in working order?"

And they almost always say "Yes, I do."

And then I say, "Do you realize

that the last VCR playback device

was manufactured 10 years ago,

and there will never be another new one?"

And if they still want to talk after that, I say,

"Do you realize that the image quality on a VHS tape

is like watching movies through a goldfish bowl?"

-And sometimes, they disagree with you.

-Yes, they do, but...

So, here's my question about a witch

who imprints her vengeance on a VHS tape.

What if you crack the plastic case

when you're taking it in and out of the player?

What if the tape bunches up or goes slack,

or one of the reels gets stuck

and you have to pull it out of the machine

and use your fingernail to sync it up again?

What if it starts slowing down every three seconds,

or wobbling like a bakery truck that blew a tire?

Besides being a crappy format,

VHS tape is an undependable format

when it comes to hexing.

To hexing?

-Yeah, putting hexes on people.

Nevertheless, I can see why "Ringu" is a popular movie.

And by the way, do you know why it's called "Ringu"?

-The Japanese word for ring, right?

-Well, somebody explained that to me, I mean...

-Okay. -But you're a Japanese expert.

You have partied in Tokyo.

Then, I am an expert.

I think "Ringu" is the Japanese version of "The Ring."

Oh, wait, "Ringu" is the Japanese version,

and "The Ring" is the English version.

Right? -Well, yeah...

But is "Ringu" the Japanese word for ring?

And if it is the Japanese word for ring,

is it "ring ring" like the phone rings,

or "ring" like a ring on your finger,

or "ring" like "Ring Around the Rosie," or...

What ring is it that corresponds to the "ringu" word in Japanese?

-It's a complicated way

to use the English word "ring" in Japanese.

-A complicated way to use the English...

-I don't know! You're making me make things up right now.

-It's sort of insane. Anyway, I'm not surprised

that the movie is popular with hardcore horror fans

because almost all VHS collectors

are also hardcore horror fans.

-Yeah 'cause the video covers look amazing.

-That's true, they love the video box covers,

that's a big part of collecting.

The actual video box needs to be intact

and have cool art on it, or else they don't collect it.

But this witch tape has no cool art on it.

It's just a random tape.

Anyway, the Japanese filmmakers hate technology.

Japan in general thinks --

even though so much technology comes from Japan --

but Japan thinks technology is evil,

especially their own technology.

So, it's not that strange that the most popular movie

in the history of Japanese horror, "Ringu,"

I think it broke all the box office records worldwide

for a Japanese film.

It's not that strange that it would be a ghost story

because they love ghost stories,

but it's also not that strange that it would use technology

as a delivery vehicle for evil,

because that's what all those J-horror movies were about

in the late '90s, early 2000s.

Remember "Pulse"?

-Yes. -Remember that one?

A version of the internet that allows the dead

to return to the world of the living, right?

-Mm-hmm. -Or "The Manual"?

A DVD that demonstrates the best way to commit suicide.

Or "Ghost System,"

about a machine that allows the dead to materialize

and attack the world.

-I guess there really were a lot of evil technology movies.

-"One Missed Call," remember that?

-Yeah! Your phone predicts the time and date of your death.

-Yeah, that's horror made especially for you

because you never leave your phone.

-It's my job! -"Suicide Circle."

Some pop song that leads people to commit suicide.

Bottom line, technology is always evil in Japanese horror.

-You know, I never thought about it before,

but that's true. -So, anyway!

We will get to that in a minute, right now, I want everybody

to get out your "Last Drive-In" Walpurgisnacht to drink menus.

-Oh, boy.

-I sent those out because it's time to medicate.

If you're going full bore Walpurgis with us tonight,

meaning you're going to end up

naked in the woods... -Whoo!

-...you will need six beverages from here on out.

And they are...

Maibowle.

This is a, um, wine punch.

A little bit like sangria.

It's made from white wine and herbs.

It's kind of a spritzer.

Here. Try one.

-Oh, we're doing it. Alright. -Yeah, we're doing it.

Here we go, Maibowle.

Alright.

Yeah.

Maibock!

This is the...

-Do I have to drink this?

I mean, yay!

-Are you into Walpurgisnacht or not, Darcy?

Maibock. -Let's do it.

-This is the special German lager

brewed only in April and May.

Ahh.

If you have the menu, then you know where to get this stuff.

You should already have it.

Third...

Any sparkling wine.

I don't really recommend champagne.

That's too fancy for Walpurgisnacht.

But Prosecco, that's great. Get some $15 Italian Prosecco.

Alright.

Um...

Fourth, brandy.

Go crazy on brandy.

If you want to be really authentic,

the brand you should get is Asbach Uralt,

German brandy from Rüdesheim, Germany.

But if you didn't plan ahead,

I know many of you turkeys do not plan ahead.

You're gonna grab some Bardinet. You know why?

Because when you go in the liquor store and say,

"what's your cheapest brandy," they always say Bardinet.

But at least get the Bardinet XO.

Don't get the $9 puke juice, okay?

Brandy.

Alright, fifth...

Linnunrata.

Finnish mead.

This is like Sweet Tarts with a kick.

-Oh, okay. I'll get that one.

Actually, that was not the Finnish...

This is the Finnish mead here.

-I feel like you're gonna be spry as fuck soon.

I tell you what that was.

Finally...

because we're Americans...

I'm happy to go back to that.

Because we're Americans and we need it,

grab some Russell Reserve,

which is the small batch Wild Turkey

because you gotta do something

to cut the bite of all this sweet stuff

that you're drinking, so...

Now, if you're Scottish and you refuse

to drink American bourbon on principle,

get some Macallan 12.

But alright, I'm going with the Russell Reserve.

Mm.

Alright. -Whoo!

Jesus.

-And...

-Whoo!

-One more thing before we get started.

We are still honoring the great American witches

of witch history tonight.

And I want to zero in on some Connecticut witches.

-Alright.

-Because Salem gets all the glory,

but actually, they were killing witches in Connecticut

long before that stuff happened in Salem.

Alse Young, 31 years old,

hanged in Meetinghouse Square, Windsor, Connecticut,

May 26th, 1647.

Alse had a daughter, Alice,

who would, herself be charged with witchcraft

30 years later in Springfield, Massachusetts,

but she escaped the death penalty and just did jail time.

We don't know exactly what Alse Young did

or who she bewitched,

all we know is that she paid for it with her life.

And Windsor, actually, Windsor, Connecticut,

that's where they still grow Connecticut shade tobacco,

which is used for the best cigar wrappers.

They used to have tobacco farms up there

over hundreds of square miles

up there in that part of Connecticut.

And then at some point, somebody said they didn't --

they didn't want to compete with Central American cigar wrappers,

which are shit.

And the whole process for Connecticut shade

went to virtually zero, which is why some of the --

why a lot of cigars started to suck.

So... -Okay.

-Anyway. -Is this related to witches?

-Yeah, it is. We're gonna have a moment here...

um...

for Alse, you know...

honor her as a witch.

Actually, the first witch executed

in the United States, or in, uh, England,

or in Colonial America.

I've had too much. -Yes, I believe you have.

-Anyway, if they hadn't killed the witch...

-Mm-hmm. -Um...

You know, God wouldn't have sent whatever natural calamity

killed the tobacco business in Connecticut.

- That's what I was talking about. - Ah!

Alright, well...

Sometimes, you're just bizarre, sir.

I know.

Okay.

Maybe we should watch a movie.

Ya think?

-What we have here is a VHS tape that, if you watch it,

you get a phone call from a witch

telling you that you'll die in exactly one week.

Except, some people don't get the phone call.

They just get the death sentence.

And when the niece of a TV journalist

gets zapped by the ghost witch,

the single mom journalist decides to investigate

along with her semi-psychic ex-husband,

but the whole family gets VHS infected

and it's a race against time to see whether VHS Hexing

can prevail against attempts to unearth the root cause

of the harridan ghost rage.

Sure, we've seen it before,

but have we seen it with Polaroid Corpus Rictus,

in which the faces of the victims

are twisted into paralytic cartoon screaming images?

I think not.

So, let's take a look at those drive-in totals and get started.

We have...

Even though...

in the TV version of this story,

there were so many breasts it qualified as soft porn...

It was the...

Maibock.

What?

Drive-In Academy Award nominations for...

Nanako Matsushima, the queen of Japanese TV movies,

as the journalist Hiroyuki Sanada.

-Yeah? -I'm sorry.

-No.

-She's not the journalist Hiroyuki Sanada.

Hiroyuki Sanada is the next guy

for a Drive-In Academy Award. -It's okay.

Hiroyuki Sanada...

who is normally a Japanese martial arts action star,

but he plays the ex-husband professor

who says "Maybe we should all die."

And Hideo Nakata, the director,

for starting the Japanese horror boom.

Three stars. Joe Bob says check it out.

-You did good. -Darcy...look.

I had to put that in about the Connecticut tobacco

because that, that shade tobacco

that they grew up there has never been equaled.

They used that on Cohibas!

-I get it! -Alright!

Fidel Castro's own personal, you know, favorite cigar.

They started putting Connecticut shade wrappers on those things.

I mean, sure, the main part of the cigar

was from the Vuelta Abajo.

They won't even tell you the exact location

of those Vuelta Abajo Cohiba fields.

-Right... -State secret.

But they still agreed

that Connecticut wrappers were superior.

And then, I don't know what happened.

What is wrong with people in Connecticut?

They just tax the farmers or something,

and the tobacco fields in Connecticut

got smaller and smaller,

and there's maybe a couple hundred acres left,

but it's around Windsor, which we're talking about.

But that's pathetic! But really, I mean...

You want a wrapper from Nicaragua?

-You know, I personally don't want any cigar, really.

-Well, there you go. There you go!

That's how far civilization has declined.

You don't want any wrapper.

-I feel like -- I feel like you've had a lot of mead there.

-Little bit, yeah. -Little bit.

-Mm.

-You know...

one thing the Japanese will do

that American filmmakers try to avoid

is kill children.

So, here, you apparently have a video

that's out there wasting the child population,

and it's hard to get information on it?

That's not the number one news item?!

How could all these young people die

with the same twisted expression on their faces,

and it not be all over The National Enquirer

or whatever the Japanese version of The National Enquireris?

Especially since Reiko Asakawa,

the single mom who's discovering it,

is a television reporter!

You know, find out "what high school they went to."

You need to investigate that?!

Anyway, "Ringu" is the movie

that launched the international J-horror craze.

J-horror being the media's abbreviation

for Japanese horror,

and it had the connotation of being strange

and exotic compared to American horror.

American horror in 1998,

when this came out, was all about...

It was all about two movies.

It was about "Scream"... -Whoo!

-That was the first self-referential...

meta-slasher.

Is that accurate?

And then "The Blair Witch Project,"

which was the first found-footage film

that went for documentary realism.

Then, this movie comes along and it's a slow burn,

sort of old-fashioned mystery slasher,

and it got a whole lot of attention, not right away,

but after it played

the Rotterdam International Film Festival in the year 2000,

everybody started talking about extreme Asian cinema

because they lumped in Korean movies and Thai movies

with the Japanese movies, even though...

the Korean movies and the Thai movies

didn't have much in common with the Japanese movies.

The director of "Ringu", Hideo Nakata,

had been around for a while.

He wasn't particularly interested in horror.

In fact, after training as a scientist

at the University of Tokyo,

he had first gone to work as an assistant director at Nikkatsu.

That was the oldest film studio in Japan,

goes back to the silent era,

but it had fallen on bad times

and they turned to porn to survive.

So, it was known

for its so-called pink movies,

soft-core porn.

And after training in that world,

he was especially in the part of it called Roman porn.

S&M, bondage movies.

Anyway, he made his first film in 1992.

Didn't make much of a splash.

It was called "Curse, Death, and Spirit."

Anthology film, three short films,

two of which were written by Hiroshi Takahashi,

the screenwriter for the movie that we're watching right now.

And then, he left the country for a while.

He went to England on some kind of cultural exchange program,

where he became obsessed

with the American director Joseph Losey.

And he made a documentary on Joseph Losey.

And when he got back to Japan,

he was still doing some pink movies for money.

He made one called "Diary of a Female Teacher: Forbidden Sex,"

but he was a fan of the novels of Koji Suzuki,

who wrote "The Ring" in 1991,

and that sold millions of copies, in fact...

Let me back up.

Let's start with Koji Suzuki.

I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The novel "The Ring" was written in 1991,

when Koji Suzuki was a stay-at-home dad

writing articles about parenting.

And so, he writes "The Ring," and virtually overnight,

he becomes referred to as the Stephen King of Japan,

which is kind of condescending to call somebody that, you know.

You know, what, are you going to have that in every country?

The Stephen King of Armenia,

The Stephen King of France, you know?

But anyway, I doubt that he liked that description.

But that's how his publisher sold his books.

Fuji TV bought the rights to "The Ring"

and did a TV movie version of it

with a lot of horny teens and nudity.

What they call in Japan

dry ice and tits.

-Nice. -That's what they call it.

And it did okay,

but it didn't really capture the spirit of the book.

And so, Suzuki and his agents

were open to remaking it as a theatrical feature,

and Hideo Nakata was all over that.

He went after that job, and he enlisted

his old friend Hiroshi Takahashi to do the screenplay.

And that's the movie that we're watching

that turns out to be the foundation film

of the Asian horror boom of the late '90s, early 2000s.

About 10 years, what was called extreme Asian cinema.

I'll get into it more as the movie goes on, so...

But Darcy, drink up. We gotta tackle this mead.

-Oh, you know, I have my own libations.

-You did? -I...Yeah.

-Look at this spread, though. I mean, it's just beckoning us.

-Oh, I have already been beckoned.

-So, I was talking at the last break

about the witches of Connecticut as opposed to Massachusetts.

They killed 11 witches in Connecticut...

out of 36 cases,

and the ones that didn't get executed

were banished from Connecticut.

That's not being banished very great distance,

but they were banished from Connecticut,

or they fled to somewhere else, like Rhode Island or something.

So -- and what...

what you notice about these cases

is that the men go free.

Men could be charged with witchcraft, too,

but they would usually weasel out of it.

Not Giles Corey, the one we honored last year.

You know, the one that was pressed to death with stones.

-Yeah, that one was so much fun.

-Yeah, right, my performance as Giles Corey was...

-Was excellent. -...became a meme or something.

Let's not go there. But for example...

this guy named Hugh Crotia in Fairfield, Connecticut,

he came forward and admitted that, yes,

he made a pact with the devil,

he practiced black magic against the public,

but the court listened to all the evidence

and declared him an "ignoramus."

That was the official designation.

And as an ignoramus, he was allowed to go free.

So, now, that was not true for Mary Johnson,

a house servant in Hartford, Connecticut,

who was accused of theft, so she had to leave town

and she got another house servant job

in Wethersfield, Connecticut,

and she was again accused of theft.

And then, she was brought before the local ministers

so she could be whipped.

And so, in the course of being whipped,

she basically says, the devil made me do it.

And she was tortured and eventually confessed

to "uncleanness"

with men and devils,

and the murder of a child, she didn't name the child,

but she said she murdered a child.

Anyway.

But...her capital crime was just

familiarity with the devil.

They didn't care about the uncleanness or the murder,

just familiarity with the devil.

And when they put her in jail,

they discovered she was pregnant.

So, they waited 'til she had the baby,

then they immediately put her to death,

as soon as she had the baby,

and the baby boy was given to the prison keeper

so he could be raised as an indentured servant.

How sick is that? -That is so sick.

-So, anyway, Mary Johnson is our witch of the moment.

Let's have a moment for Mary Johnson.

Mary, this mead is for you.

That's not mead, that's the Maibock.

This is the mead.

-I don't think that's the mead. -No, this is the mead.

This is the mead. Yeah.

-It's all mead. -This is mead for you.

And now, we can go back to the movie.

-I feel like you're not really helping the witches

with these stories.

-No, Darcy, because I'm Team Burn the Witches.

-I thought you were all about "live and let live."

-Well, yeah, unless you're a ghost witch

killing children with VHS tapes.

It's a little silly, maybe.

-It's VHS tape, Darcy.

I can't get over it, as a supernatural murder weapon,

it's VHS tape!

Wow!

Let it go, man.

Oh, okay.

So, we can gather from all this

that our single mom reporter lady...

is fucked. She's...

she's now on the list.

But since that videotape is so weird and hard to follow,

let's go over exactly what's on that videotape.

You know, first, you see a circle of sky

with water moving inside it.

Right? -Yes.

-Partially obscured by a man looking down from above.

Next, you see a young woman in a mirror

on the far left of the screen, brushing her hair.

And next, that mirror disappears

and you see a child's figure standing behind the woman,

hair down to her waist,

white shirt, bare feet.

The first woman looks back to the child woman

and then slowly turns back to the mirror.

Then, a bunch of letters...

floating across the screen, spelling out the word "eruption"

over and over again.

Next, a blue tinted scene with a bunch of men moving slowly,

and some of them are crawling toward the edge of the screen.

And now, another blue tinted scene

showing a man with a white towel draped over his head,

pointing off to the left

while waves crash in the background.

And then, there's a close up of an eye

with a word in the middle of the pupil.

And the word is "sada."

And the eye blinks twice.

And then, it blinks once more.

And finally, there's an image of a well

in the middle of a forest.

And then, there's just static.

Yep.

-So, she's fucked. -Yes.

-So, it's basically six images

that we take away from this tape.

It's a woman combing her long black hair but hiding her face.

Men watching her, pointing at her,

crawling toward her.

The word "eruption."

Water everywhere.

An eye with "sada" written on it, which means...

that means "chaste child"...

in kanji.

You know what kanji is? Those characters.

-My tattoo.

-Oh, yeah. You have a kanji tattoo.

And then, a final shot of the well.

And we know that it worked on Reiko

because the woman with long hair ends up...

standing behind her,

reflected in the TV.

Now, if you're Japanese, these images

wouldn't be as hard to decipher as they are for us

because one of the oldest characters

in Japanese ghost stories is the Euryale Ghost,

or the Vengeance Spirit,

and the Euryale ghost wears a white kimono,

and has long, messy black hair,

and she has a bluish white face as though she's cold,

and clammy blue skin as though she just came out of the water,

and most importantly,

a solitary, leering, bloodshot eye.

And this ghost lives in eternal pain

and has contempt for anything that's alive.

And she has slow, spastic movements,

and there have been literally hundreds

of books and plays and movies

with different versions of the Euryale Ghost.

It was originally a kabuki play written in 1825,

but they started making film versions of her

as early as 1911,

and in the original story, she was the wife

of this cold-hearted samurai

who murders her so he can be with another woman,

so she returns from the dead to drive him to insanity.

And the reason she has droopy eyes

is that he poisoned her to kill her,

and for some reason, they always used

shadows, and smoke, and fire

to obscure the actor's feet when you play Euryale on stage.

Something about her feet, I don't quite understand it.

And also, she could float on the stage.

Anyway, she returns to this world

to take vengeance on her husband,

but she hates everybody.

Because everybody is getting in her way of taking her vengeance.

That's a great ghost and a great witch, don't you think?

Sure...

It's amazing.

-What is it you love about Japan so much?

You love Japan.

-Oh, Lord, how do I explain that? Um...

It's just beautiful, and quirky, and full of color and life.

And the people there are just...

They're just so sweet and the vibe there is just so...

different from here.

It's just, like, more happy and carefree feeling,

generally speaking. -Mm. Well...

Obviously, you never ran into the Euryale ghost.

-I guess not, but I think I would like her.

-Alright.

Well, our next honored witch for this evening

is Lydia Gilbert of Windsor, Connecticut.

So, you have these two guys

who are in military training, Thomas Allen and Henry Stiles.

And they're mustering up for their military training.

And Thomas Allen's gun goes off

and he shoots Stiles through the head

and Stiles dies on the spot.

So, three years later, Lydia Gilbert

is arrested and charged with using witchcraft

to make Thomas Allen's gun discharge and kill Henry Stiles.

'Cause it was well known that Lydia didn't like Stiles.

She was a boarder in the Stiles house, and he...

he sometimes lent money to her husband.

And she quarreled with him all the time,

and the court decided that the reason

she was such an angry, quarrelsome woman

is that she was practicing witchcraft.

And so, she killed Stiles by bewitching this other guy's gun.

And they executed Lydia Gilbert for that.

She wasn't even present when the guy died.

She was levitating that gun from a great distance.

Powerful witch.

This was in Connecticut in...

1654.

-That is definitely a powerful witch.

-Yeah, let's have a moment of...

something for Lydia Gilbert.

-Silence?

-Well...

Pregnant silence, yeah.

Alright, back to "Ringu."

Roll it.

It's interesting that you find Japan so happy and carefree.

They have these stories about ghosts that just say,

"You know what? You're gonna die

just because you noticed my existence.

You are gonna suffer because I suffered,

but you didn't even know who I was.

Well, now you do!"

I mean, that's a mean ghost.

That's somebody who says, "You are never safe.

Doesn't matter who wronged me.

I'm gonna wrong everybody!"

-The Japanese do not go halfway with anything.

-Apparently not.

Neither do you.

-Oh, yeah. So...

Several times now Mom has said,

"Oh, Yoichi is fine by himself.

He's used to it. He knows what to do."

So, the result is that now, he's cursed, as well.

This is one of the key points

of the original 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki.

As I said before, Suzuki was originally a stay-at-home dad

who wrote articles about parenting.

So...

I'm gonna go ahead and give some details

of the book version,

which everybody in Japan would probably be familiar with

when they first saw this movie.

In the book version,

the death tape is the result of a demonic hermaphrodite

named Sadako.

And she represents everything corrupt, cruel,

and frightening about modern society.

Her mother was raped

and gave birth to her,

only to discover that she was some kind of mutant

with, you know, hermaphrodites, that have sex organs

for both sexes. -Yes.

-It's not trans, it's both sexes.

Intersex, they call it in Japan.

But she had psychic gifts,

and the mother, um...

threw herself into a volcano.

But then, the doctor

that was treating the hermaphrodite daughter

rapes her,

and infects her with smallpox.

And to cover up his crime, he throws her down a well.

So, she's at the bottom of the well,

and she's psychologically projecting her fear

up out of that well, to record her loneliness and her pain...

on a VHS tape.

Creating a curse so that the memory of her suffering

will spread exponentially throughout the world

and make her the most famous woman in the world,

instead of the most cursed woman in the world.

So, the technology of the VCR is a curse

that works like a virus, it has no purpose

other than to spread to the whole world population.

And the original cause of it,

remember, Suzuki is an expert on parenting.

The original cause of it is abused and mistreated

latchkey children, you know,

ignored by the parents who should be taking care of them.

And um, if you'll notice,

the movie does seem to be making

some kind of a statement about child care

because every time Reiko

comes in contact with her son,

she's telling him, uh,

"you can take care of yourself," or you know, leaving him alone.

And there's the idea baked into the narrative

that somehow, all these kids are dying

because they're left alone to their own devices.

-You know, they do leave small children alone in Japan.

-They do? -Yeah.

You'll see them traveling the streets

and subways on their own,

like, to and from school by themselves.

-Like they don't care, or...

-It's not that they don't care.

It's that the Japanese idea is that every adult

has joint responsibility for every child.

-They really believe that? -Mm-hmm!

I think they do, anyway. -"We're one village"?

-That's what I believe. -You know...

I forget that you're a Japahinophile

or whatever you call a Japan lover.

Okay, I am that.

-Okay, so this movie was directed by Hideo Nakata

and it was not his first rodeo, um...

or it was not his first Basho.

-Very good. -Basho is a sumo tournament.

-Yes. -Right?

So, I also wanted to mention

the film that Hideo Nakata made two years before this film.

He made a horror film called "Don't Look Up"

when he was still trying to raise money

for that Joseph Losey documentary.

And "Don't Look Up" is like a training film for "Ringu."

It's a ghost movie, it's a little more

straightforward than "Ringu,"

written by Takahashi,

and it bombed at the box office.

But fortunately, the film was seen by Koji Suzuki.

Is this too much background that I'm doing on this?

-I mean, it's a little deep.

-Alright. Are you totally wasted from the Brocken,

or can you still share some of this Walpurgis liquor?

-You're gonna make me drink more of that?

-Yeah! -Let's do it. I'm ready to go!

-Alright! Alright, let's go.

-You're a mail girl. You have to.

-I...do have to.

Lay it on me.

-Um, alright. Let's go, uh...

Let's go straight for the mead.

-You love the mead! You think it's all mead.

Which is the mead?

-Just pick one.

-This is the mead, right? -Mead.

-Alright, we're gonna go for the mead,

and we're gonna get back to the movie. Roll "Ringu."

Alcohol, social media and subtitles.

-I have one. -Alright, you do it all.

You're the ultimate multi-tasker.

-Dude, we get so many complaints about subtitles,

especially late at night like this.

-Well, Japanese dialogue through a beer haze, I get that.

Yeah, that's rough.

I would say...

I would say that subtitles in general

are not that popular with people who watch the live feed.

-Just saying.

-Well, that's because they're trying to tweet,

and take pictures of their dog, and...

-It's important.

-...Google weird names from horror history,

and watch the show, and get drunk, and have sex

all at the same time. -Yeah!

-And so, the subtitles is just like...

It's like you have this giant fishbowl full of worms,

and you throw, and it's worms right up to the top level,

and then you throw one last worm on the top,

and all the worms spill out of the fishbowl.

-I don't think it's that at all, actually.

-It's not? -It's not.

-Well, that's approximately it. -It's not.

-You're drunk.

-This whole part in the middle on the island

is confusing to me,

but I understand that it's the backstory

necessary to understand where Sadako came from

and what happened to her mother, and then what happened to her.

What I don't understand is why we're just now learning

that the ex-husband, Ryuji, is psychic,

so he can see into the past and future.

It seems like that should have been made clear

at an earlier point in the story.

Anyway, some of these Walpurgisnacht libations...

have sort of started to k-kick in...

- Ya think? - And um, I was...

Yeah, I-I was, um...

Have you tried this one yet?

-Which one's that?

-This -- this one.

-Is it -- is it mead?

No, it's not mead, it's, um...

Prosecco. -Oh.

I'll have two, please.

-Alright, that's my mail girl. I'm a...

Anyway, I'm gonna mention two things,

then we're going to go back to the movie.

One is that the main character, Reiko Asakawa,

is played by Nanako Matsushima,

who was just being discovered as a star.

She had just broken out in a television serial

called "Sunflower,"

and she was just 24 years old when "Ringu" was made.

But um, that series and this movie

would launch her into Japanese super-stardom.

And then, the other thing I wanted to mention

is that the witches of Salem

were not all house servants and old crones.

Sometimes, they were wealthy.

And an example is Ann Pudeator,

who was a wealthy widow executed when she was in her 70s

and charged with a whole laundry list of crimes,

including presenting the Devil's Book to a young girl

and getting her to sign it,

bewitching a neighbor's wife and causing her death,

appearing in spectral form to young girls,

having witchcraft materials in her house,

she claimed it was just grease for making soap,

but they called it witchcraft materials.

Torturing with pins.

Causing a man to fall out of a tree,

killing her husband and his previous wife,

and turning herself into a bird and flying into her house.

So, obviously, a multi-talented woman.

Accused by five different people

and executed on October 7th, 1692.

And uh...

unfortunately, she was eventually

exonerated of all crimes

by the Massachusetts General Court in 1957,

265 years after her death.

Why do they even bother with that?

Exonerating her 265 years later.

-I think that relatives

ask the courts to make those rulings.

-So they can get money?

-Well, to clear her name. -They said she was wealthy.

So, you know, maybe the state took all her money.

-Wow, you know, honestly -- -There'd be a lot of interest.

265 years of interest on the money.

-I hadn't thought of that. -That the state took illegally.

-That could be it.

-Anyway, we're getting into the action part of the movie,

so let's get back to "Ringu."

Roll the film.

They said these witch accusations

stopped once they passed new rules,

and the rules were you had to have two witnesses...

that wouldn't have helped her because, you know,

five against her.

But I'm still thinking about that guy

that was branded an ignoramus.

You know?

Could his family go to the General Court today

and say, "Hey, we want you to retract your ignoramus ruling

and agree that he was an actual witch"?

'Cause, I mean, if it works in one direction.

It can work in the opposite direction, right?

-Are you having fun tonight?

-Mm-hmm. -Mm-hmm.

-Try this one.

-What's that one? -I don't know.

It's mead.

Okay.

Ooh, man.

-I love this part of the movie

'cause you got the ticking clock...

and you got what looks like an impossible task,

get the water out of the well, find the body of Sadako,

and even while you're doing it,

you don't know what you're accomplishing!

I mean, y-- no...

it might mean nothing, even if you find her.

But um...

I wanted to mention another Japanese legend

that was known to all Japanese schoolchildren

because it relates to this.

It's the Okiku legend.

There was this maid.

She was working in the mansion of a samurai lord.

And she was responsible for the samurai's most precious plates.

He had these special plates...

like you buy on late-night TV.

And one night, she breaks one of the plates.

And the samurai is so incensed that he kills her.

And he tosses her into a well.

And after that, each night, her ghost rises from the well

and counts to nine,

counting his precious plates,

and then lets out this spooky wail

for the missing 10th plate.

And this is happening over and over again every night,

and eventually drives the samurai lord insane.

So, this movie has tropes

from quite a few different Japanese stories

that have been passed down for 400 years.

The volcano story,

the Yotsuya legend of the black-haired ghost woman,

and the Dish Mansion at Bancho Legend,

which is the one I just described.

So, "Ringu" is not so much an original story

as a mashup of Japanese ghost legends

made relevant solely by the fact

that this ghost expresses her rage through a VHS tape.

So, on this Walpurgisnacht

special edition of "The Last Drive-In,"

when we're honoring witches near and far,

let's get to the conclusion of "Ringu,"

where it's finally revealed

how the most powerful witch in Japan works her evil.

Roll it.

Do you like Sadako?

-I do!

-Pure rage.

-And that hair.

-Right. Rage and long dark hair.

You never see her face. -Just her eye.

And that's enough, man, it's spooky.

-True, just that eye.

♪ Ooh, feels like Heaven ♪

♪ Feels like Heaven ♪

♪ Ooh, feels like Heaven ♪

♪ Feels like Heaven ♪

-So, what is this thing?

Somebody sent this in?

Alright, well, anyway.

You know, the first time I watched "Ringu,"

I didn't pick up on that last scene.

But they're going to kill Grandpa, right?!

I mean, she's gonna have her son copy the tape

and give it to his grandpa.

And that's so cold and brutal. I think that's what's happening.

Right, Darcy? Is that what's happening?

-I'm pretty sure it is.

She doesn't have much time,

and they're driving to her father's house.

-"Children are closer to the Otherworld than adults are."

That's a quote from Hideo Nakata.

And yes, they are,

when they have parents who aren't paying attention.

It's a very dark movie

because the witch rage is not directed at anybody specific.

It's directed at everybody!

And at the same time that "Ringu" came out,

the sequelto "Ringu" came out.

And at some theaters, the two movies were a double feature.

But "Spiral,"

which is the name of the so-called sequel,

has virtually nothing to do with the original.

It's a sci-fi technological thriller,

and nobody liked it.

That's why when "Ringu 2" came out,

everything in "Spiral" was ignored.

Some say the most faithful version of "The Ring" novel

is the South Korean version,

which came out in 1999 and is called "The Ring Virus."

So...

"Ringu" was a fairly low-budget film,

just $1.2 million,

but it quickly became the highest-grossing film

in the history of Japan, making about $16 million.

The 2002, remake with Naomi Watts did even better.

It earned $130 million at the box office.

There have been four "Ring" feature films.

Then there's one made-for-TV special.

There's two TV series.

And here's my favorite, there's one "Ringu" haunted maze.

-Oh, wow. -If you go to Mount Fuji,

there's a maze at the base of Mount Fuji

where Sadakos come out of wells and attack the tourists!

And they give you little beanbag balls

you can hurl at the Sadakos,

and you're encouraged to scream curses at them.

And if you visit the Himeji Castle,

which dates from the 1300s,

your tour guide will tell you the Legend of Okiku

and take you to a well there that's been preserved

where it is said that the ghost of this tortured woman

rises every night to cause havoc on Earth.

And you can also --

you can rent that cabin

where the first four victims watched the videotape.

It's at a place called America Camp Village,

which caters to families,

families that want to go on camping vacations.

They do not put the movie in any of their advertising.

And if that's not enough "Ringu" tourism for you,

you can also visit Mount Mihara on Oshima Island.

And this is the volcano that erupted in 1950

and was predicted by Sadako's mother

before her suicide.

So, Darcy, the movies are done...

but the alcohol is not.

So, we can either finish the drinks

or find a flight to Tokyo. What do you think?

-Ooh! Do not tempt me.

-Tempt you with what? Alcohol or Tokyo?

-Why not both?

-Alright! I like the way you think.

Alright, but we gotta do mail bag first before we can leave.

-Okay, but let's leave right after, okay?

-Alright.

-Tonight's letter is gonna make it so much worse

because it comes from...

Japan.

-What? -Yep.

-We got an actual letter?

-From Japan! -Oh, yeah.

The first of it is...

I can't read the part that's in, that's in the...

You know, funny letters. Kanji.

- The kanji letters. - Yes.

-Alright. -"The funny letters."

-"Dear Joe Bob, Darcy, and the crew.

Hello.

Now that I've confused you with another language,

let me apologize and introduce myself properly.

My name is Caleb Cressen

and I've been living in Japan land

watching 'The Last Drive-In...'"

How do you even do that?

"...for the last five and a half years.

However, by the time you read this,

I will have moved back to the US.

I started watching 'The Last Drive-In'

at the very start with the 2018 marathon,

and was introduced to your work through James Rolfe."

That's our buddy in Pennsylvania.

"I remember playing Monster Hunter in college

while having old episodes of 'Monster Vision'

run in the background.

I would do it if I was...

grain...granding monsters for rare items.

I always enjoyed your wit

and sardonic sense of..." -I think "grading."

-Grading monsters? I don't know.

"I always enjoyed your wit and sardonic sense of humor,

delivered in a very real way, without the smugness

of a lot of other pundits or comedians.

Especially the 'Stepfather' episode

and the 'Beastmaster' episode,

two of my all-time favorites.

I still have your Friday the 13th marathon

on my personal playlist of Halloween specials,

which I watch each year.

All this is to say, your show is very dear to me.

The rant you went on during the 2018 marathon

about people who carelessly absorbed media and art

through their phones really struck a chord with me

as someone who cares a great deal about art

and the feelings of the artist or artists who created it.

I write this on my last day in Japan

to share my experiences with 'The Last Drive-In' while here.

Because of the time difference,

I watch 'The Last Drive-In' on Saturday mornings,

and so it's a ritual for me to wake up, shower,

go to the Lawson,

a Japanese convenience store chain, to buy breakfast,

then watch you and Darcy until noon.

When you ran 'One Cut of the Dead,'

I was so happy because I live in Sapporo,

not far from where some of the movie was shot.

Also, fun fact, I've seen the woman

who played the TV producer in commercials here.

I also live very close to the old Sapporo factory

where the famous Sapporo whiskey

was originally brewed and distributed.

The factory is a cultural landmark,

but you can still walk around the surround promenade

and view its untouched interior.

I came to Japan in 2018 and it's been like a dream.

Even now, as I write this in my empty, cleaned-out apartment,

I cannot describe the beauty of this place

as light pours in from the sunrise

on the first edge of the world.

I hope one day you, Darcy, and the mutant fam

all have the chance to explore this

and every other corner of this vast world.

Being able to experience this dream

with you and the rest of the incredibly talented

crew of 'The Last Drive-In'

has been an unparalleled pleasure."

This is a long letter.

"While I'm still quite..." -It's from Japan!

-Well, this is not even the Japan part.

"While I'm still quite inexperienced,

I hope it's not too much to ask that you pass on this.

I want to pass on this one thing I've learned on my journey."

-He just read that part.

-Here's the one thing he wants to pass on.

-Okay. -"Dreams save us. All of us.

No matter what your dream is, hang on to it

because the world is so much bigger than one could imagine

and anything is possible.

Little by little, inch by inch, day by day,

work to make your dreams a reality

because you can do it.

With that, I close this monstrously sized letter."

"I look forward to continuing to see you back in the States.

Take care. The drive-in will never die.

Caleb Cressen, Sapporo, Minamiho, Japan.

P.S. Tell Shudder to come to Japan..."

-Yes!

-"...so we can watch without a VPN."

What's a VPN?

-I'll tell you later. -Alright.

-"P.S.S.

I would like to recommend Kentaro Miura,

creator of the Japanese comic series 'Berserk,'

a candidate for the Silver Bolo."

Well, we never give the Silver Bolo anymore.

"His work was profound and touched pop culture

in so many ways."

So, Darcy, I think you're right about Japan.

This guy goes over there for six years,

he's sad to leave,

and what does he do on his last day?

He wants to tell us

to trust our dreams.

-See? -Good things happen in Japan.

Except in the movies.

In the movies...

In the Japanese movies,

sadistic, vengeful witch demons living at the bottom of wells

imprint their rage on VHS tapes

so they can kill as many people as possible.

So...

You know what they call that? -What?

-Yin and yang.

They have both.

And um...

That's it for Walpurgisnacht.

I will see you this weekend at Crypticon in Seattle.

I will see you next weekend at FrankenCon in Knoxville.

I will see you on May 31st at the, uh,

indoor drive-in geek out

at the Blob Theater in Phoenixville.

What's the name of that theater? The Colonial Theater?

-Yes.

-Where they filmed "The Blob" in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania,

suburban Philadelphia.

And that's it for us,

Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl,

reminding you that if you give a man a match,

he'll be warm for a few hours,

but set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

And the drive-in will never die!

-That's good advice.

-You know, Darcy, I've been reading about carbon footprints.

I don't have a carbon footprint.

I just drive everywhere.

A man walks into an enchanted forest

and tries to cut down a talking tree.

"You can't cut me down," says the tree,

"I'm a talking tree."

And the man says, "You may be a talking tree,

but you will die a log."

No, I like it.

"Dialogue"!

-What's red and bad for your teeth?

-Twizzlers.

-A brick.

That's true.

-Where did Jim go after getting lost in a minefield?

Everywhere.

-Ohh...

-Okay.

It's late and I'm drunk. I'm sorry.

-♪ We are drive-in mutants

-♪ Drive-in mutants ♪

-♪ We are not like other people ♪

♪ We are sick ♪

♪ We are disgusting ♪

-♪ We believe in, yeah, we believe in ♪

-♪ Blood ♪

♪ And breasts ♪

♪ And beasts ♪

-♪ Yeah, we believe in ♪

-♪ Blood ♪

♪ And breasts ♪

♪ And beasts ♪

-♪ If life had a vomit meter ♪

♪ We'd be off the scale ♪

♪ As long as one drive-in remains on the planet Earth ♪

♪ We will party like jungle animals ♪

♪ We will boogie 'til we puke ♪

♪ The drive-in will never die ♪

♪ We will boogie 'til we puke ♪

♪ The drive-in will never die ♪

♪ We believe in ♪

-♪ Blood ♪

♪ And breasts ♪

♪ And beasts ♪

-♪ We believe in ♪

-♪ Blood ♪

♪ And breasts ♪

♪ And beasts ♪

-♪ Yeah, we believe in ♪

-Made in Georgia.