Original subtitles

[Insects chirping, wind blowing]

♪♪

[Birds cawing]

[Knife scraping]

[Harmonica plays]

♪♪

-Henry David Thoreau lived on Walden Pond for two years,

and the land he lived on belonged to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

People in the north who live in the woods

have three names.

People in the south who live in the woods

have on name --

Zeke, Willy, Cletus.

♪♪

And they don't write books about it, they fish.

♪♪

♪♪

-♪ Hey, everybody, have you heard the news? ♪

♪ Joe Bob is back in town ♪

♪ He's over at the drive-in, hanging around ♪

♪ Watching crazy movies, so come on down ♪

♪ To Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ Blood, beasties, boobies, and more ♪

♪ Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ It's a spooky good time with monsters and ghosts ♪

♪ Crazy, kooky fun with the world's greatest host ♪

♪ Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ It's gonna be legendary ♪

♪ Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ It's gonna be very scary ♪

♪ Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ Let's go ♪

♪♪

[Static]

-Hey there, I'm Joe Bob Briggs, and this is "The Last Drive-In,"

and we're about to watch Nicolas Cage go Full Cage

in a Cage Rage, and I thought it might behoove us

to discuss ways of getting rid of your bad mood

when you're angry without resorting to medieval weapons.

And fortunately the New York Times

recently blessed us with a list of ways to do that.

Some of their recommended techniques

for getting rid of rage were:

"Reward yourself; treat yourself to something,

like a special present or a meal out.

Resolve to do better.

Decide to try harder in the future.

For example, if one relationship ended badly,

tell yourself you will work harder at the next one."

So, I won't go through the entire list,

but here's the most amazing one of all.

"Use downward comparison.

Remind yourself that you are not as badly off as,

say, the Somalis."

[Laughing] So... [Laughter]

Are you following this?

Use the life of a starving person in Africa

to give yourself an emotional lift!

[Laughter]

Are you in a good mood tonight, Darcy?

Because, if not, I can totally help you out.

-I'm fine.

-Uh-oh.

See, the dreaded "fine" word. You know?

It almost always means you're not fine.

So fortunately for us, Darcy has to stay here to field

your tweets, your emails, your social media messages,

regardless of whether she really feels fine or not.

-Seriously, I'm totally fine.

-Uh-oh. The -- the dreaded repeat of "I'm fine."

The totally fine line.

See, the insistence on being fine.

Meaning she wants no one to know that she's so not fine.

Darcy the Mail Girl though is your conduit

to our very soul, ladies and gentlemen.

She lives to answer your questions,

and, of course, she's fine.

You know, the -the thing is, virtually every single

suggestion made by the psychologists interviewed

by the Times was some variation of "Distract yourself

from thinking about it," ignore it,

overwhelm it with something different,"

or simply that old stand-by used for thousands

of years, "lie to yourself."

Why don't they just say, "Move to Honduras

and change your name?"

But what's interesting to me about this is how there are

fashions in psychology that change every few years.

For example, what were we told back in the 1950s?

Control your temper. Right?

A mature person knew how to control that temper,

so half the plays and movies written in the '50s

are about people who go off the deep end

from trying to control their tempers.

So that created what we did in the '60s.

What were we told in the '60s?

Vent your rage!

The opposite of what we were told in the '50s.

In other words, it was unhealthy to try to control it.

That made you go crazy

We knew this from all the movies like Michael Landon

in "I Was a Teenage Werewolf."

Every time he lost his temper, he turned into a wolf.

So the idea in the '60s was to go around yelling all the time.

That made you an honest person,

So now we're into the '70s.

What do you do about anger?

Talk about it.

The best way to talk about it, group therapy,

like on "The Bob Newhart Show,"

and then other people tell you what they

think of your anger, and then it gradually goes away.

Now we should have known this wasn't going to work,

because after seven years of trying it,

Mr. Carlen was still angry, so we went to the '80s.

To deal with your anger in the '80s, you became an artist.

You wrote punk songs.

You stuck safety pins through your cheek.

You know, I know that started in the '70s.

We got popular in the '80s.

You slamdanced.

You wrote performance art pieces

that got banned by the National Endowment for the Arts.

You sprayed graffiti on fences until somebody

offered you a deal to direct music videos.

Then you started realizing you weren't getting

enough money, and so you got angry all over again

at the evil record company that won't pay your money.

But now there's no way to fix the anger,

Because you're an artist.

Then in the '90s, we had the dawn

of modern culture, when the solution

to a bad mood became blame somebody.

I was cheated.

I was robbed.

I was discriminated against.

I went to a bad school.

My parents never loved me.

I have a mental disorder that you don't understand

but you should understand.

In other words, it's not my goldurn fault.

And then in the first decade of this century,

blame somebody morphed into I have been poisoned

by decades, if not centuries, of environmental pollution,

corporate malfeasance, my very soul

is being eaten away by toxins.

You wanna know why I'm angry?

Because they charged me $400,000 to go to college,

and I find out I had been bamboozled by America.

I'm gonna be paying that loan -- those loans the rest of my life,

so I've decided to sue you or sue somebody.

And also there were no weapons of mass destruction,

so it's a class action make-me-feel-better lawsuit.

[Laughing] And then, in this past decade,

when you get into a bad mood and you feel angry,

the solution is move your entire life to social media,

buy a cheap laptop, get some anonymous usernames

on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit, search for enemies

and form the equivalent of torch-bearing mobs

in the streets of 18th-century Geneva.

First one to cause somebody else to commit suicide, wins.

So we finally found a way to make ourselves feel better

without using actual weapons, and so civilization

advances toward a utopian lovefest of happy people.

And speaking of vicious cults living in dark places, "Mandy"

is tonight's movie, and it's sort of like somebody

crossed "Death Wish" with "Mad Max," "The Trip"

and "Hell's Angels '69,"

and then put a death metal soundtrack on it

and blasted it over the P.A. system at Yankee Stadium.

Nic Cage is a lumberjack living in the Pacific Northwest

in 1983 with his sweet but damaged artist girlfriend

Andrea Riseborough, and a lunatic cult leader

happens to see her walking through the woods one day

and decides he needs to have her kidnapped

by skull-head bikers and brought to him for a rapey wedding.

When she laughs at his manhood, things get gnarly

and the Cage Man has to turn animalistic to the nth degree.

It's one of those horror revenge rock-opera acid-infused

love-story metalhead cenobite biker-gang action flicks

with Cheddar Goblin comic relief that goes deep into the psyche

of a failed cult leader fried by LSD

while going even deeper into the psychology of what happens

when you burn a lumberjack's girlfriend alive

while forcing him to watch.

Sure we've seen it before, but have we seen it

with a full-bore vodka-infused Cage Rage with the vodka

being used both internally and externally on his wounds?

I think not.

Let's look at those drive-in totals.

We have: 11 dead bodies.

2 whangdoodles. 1 chainsaw battle.

1 motor vehicle crash and burn.

2 battle axes through the head.

Exploding church.

One three-wheeler monster-head biker gang.

Mason-jar goo-drinking.

1 creepy black-hood kidnapping.

Skull-crushing with eyeball-popping.

Body-bag-on-a-pulley execution by fire.

Rope-gagging. Neck-drilling.

Barbed-wire mouth-gagging.

Bullet to the brain.

1 mummified lamb.

Crossbow to the back.

Weird drug dancing.

Wrist-nailing. Cross-stabbing.

Snake pit. Worm pit.

Mining pit.

Steel arrow to the neck.

Head particles blowing away in the wind.

Gratuitous King Crimson.

Gratuitous Ronald Reagan speech.

Gratuitous "Serpent's Eye" fable.

Gratuitous hand-to-hand combat mariachi music.

Heads roll. Heads burn.

Heads spurt.

Eyes roll.

Kung Fu. Cocaine Fu.

Hookah Fu. Red filter Fu.

LSD Fu.

Welding-torch Fu.

Battle-ax Fu.

Tiger Fu.

Lizard Fu. Lasso Fu.

Drive-In Academy Award nominations

for Andrea Riseborough, in the title role,

for telling a story about her father teaching kids how to kill

starlings with a crowbar;

Linus Roache as Jeremiah,

leader of the Children of the New Dawn,

who says "If you are not with me, you will not ascend"

and who plays The Carpenters in an effort to turn women

into willing sex slaves.

[Laughter]

Ned Dennehy as Brother Swan, the dimwit cult muscle;

Olwen Fouere as the spooky blonde wannabe cult queen

who says "I am the most sensual lover

you have ever experienced,"

and Nic Cage as the lumberjack who gets chained to a radiator,

stabbed, kicked, thrown around, beaten half to death before

inhaling super coke and painting the forest red.

Bill Duke as the makeshift weapons dealer

in a trailer house who says "What you're huntin'

is rabid animals, and you should go in knowin' that your odds

aren't good and you'll probably die,"

and Panos Cosmatos, the director and co-writer,

for doing things the deranged drive-in way.

Four stars.

Joe Bob says check it out.

♪♪

This may be the first torture-porn rock opera

with animated cartoon interludes ever made.

I don't normally make recommendations like this,

but if you live in Denver, Santa Cruz, Oakland,

or the state of New Mexico, this would be a good time

to invest in some psilocybin, also known

as magic mushrooms, plus some -- some of those Focal Utopia

noise-canceling headphones, and just take that stuff

and kind of settle into a Zen state because what you're

about to experience should be regarded as a death metal

fireworks show inside your brain.

So, forget plot. Stay away from plot.

Get those synapses crackling, you know, lean back into

that Lazy Boy and just Hunter S. Thompson your way

through this evening, you know?

If you do not live in any of those places,

just say no.

Sorry. The law is the law.

But not really, Right, Darcy?

-I got you covered.

-Are we fine? -Oh, we're fine.

[Laughter]

[Static]

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[Static]

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[King Crimson's "Starless" plays]

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[Helicopter flies overhead]

-♪ Sundown ♪

♪ Dazzling day ♪

♪ Gold ♪

♪ Through my eyes ♪

♪ But my eyes ♪

♪ Turned within ♪

♪ Only see ♪

♪ Starless and ♪

♪ Bible black ♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪ Old friend ♪

♪ Charity ♪

♪ Cruel ♪

♪ Twisted smile ♪

♪ And the smile ♪

♪ Signals emptiness ♪

♪ For me ♪

♪ Starless and ♪

♪ Bible black ♪

[Birds chirping]

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-There's a great spiritual awakening in America.

♪♪

A renewal of the traditional values

that have been the bedrock

of America's goodness and greatness.

An overwhelming majority of Americans

disapprove of pornography, abor--

♪♪

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[Engine shuts off, keys jingle]

♪♪

♪♪

-Knock, knock.

-You scared the hell out of me.

♪♪

-Knock, knock. -Who's there?

-Erik Estrada.

-Erik Estrada who?

-Erik Estrada from "CHiPs."

[Both laugh]

What are you drawing?

-Uh, it's kind of like, um, jungle temple.

-Oh, that's -- that's -- I mean, that's --

Wow.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

How was your day?

-It was pretty cool.

I was reading that book about the galaxy.

-That big, thick one?

-Yeah. It's pretty awesome.

♪♪

-What's your favorite planet?

♪♪

-Jupiter.

Yeah, no doubt.

-Jupiter.

How come?

-Mm...

Well, because the surface of its atmosphere

is a storm that's been raging for, like, 1,000 years,

and the eye of the hurricane is so huge

that it could just swallow the whole Earth.

Yeah. That's -- That's my favorite planet.

-That's wild. -Mm-hmm.

♪♪

What's yours?

♪♪

-Um...

Saturn, probably.

-Yeah?

Saturn's pretty cool,

and that was one of the first ones that we discovered,

that humans discovered, so there's, like,

a lot of cool ancient myths about it and stuff.

♪♪

-I changed my mind.

-What?

-I like Galactus.

-Galactus isn't a planet.

-Yeah, but he eats planets.

Woof. Woof, woof, woof.

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[Birds chirping, animals calling]

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[Static hissing]

-Hey. Are you awake?

-Yeah, baby. What is it?

-You were having a bad dream.

-Uh-huh.

-What was it about?

-I can't remember.

Sometimes I wonder if we should move away from this place.

-Where?

-I don't know.

-No.

I like it here.

It's peaceful here, right? This is, like, our little --

This is our little home.

Did I ever tell you about the starlings

when I was a little kid?

-No. I don't think so.

-In the neighborhood where I grew up,

there were all these starlings flying around in the trees,

playing and chirping, and they were so cute.

But my dad...

...he just hated them

'cause they were always eating cherries from the cherry tree.

Anyway, one day...

One day, me and a bunch of the other kids from the neighborhood

were playing in this empty lot.

And my dad came walking across with a pillowcase...

...and a crowbar.

And there was something moving around inside of the pillowcase,

like, squirming around.

And he said we should gather 'round.

He had something to show us, and so we all gathered 'round,

and he emptied what was in the pillowcase on the ground.

And it was a --

It was a bunch of baby starlings.

♪♪

And he told us that he was gonna show us how to kill them.

♪♪

And he lifted the crowbar up real high...

...and then...

...brought it down real hard on the little baby bird.

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So hard that it pushed it in the ground.

It was so deep in there, like a little grave, you know?

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And then he gave the crowbar to one of the kids, and then...

each kid took a turn in...

killing a starling.

♪♪

♪♪

-What'd you do?

♪♪

-I, um...

♪♪

...just watched, and then when it was my turn, I just ran away.

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-Oh, baby.

Come here.

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♪♪

-"Under the crimson, primordial sky...

...surrounded by the jagged rocks

of the ancient volcanic mountain,

the wretched Warlock

reached into the dark embrace of the fissure

until his hand touched a smooth glassy surface.

Cold as ice.

His fist closed around The Serpent's Eye.

Slowly he withdrew it and held it before him

in the fading light of the blood-red suns.

It glowed from within.

A ghostly emerald light.

Strange and eternal."

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[TV playing in distance]

-What's the matter, Jeremiah?

Are you all right?

-No.

I'm not all right.

-Did I do something wrong?

-Wrong?

Everything you do is wrong.

-I'm so sorry, Jeremiah.

Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?

-There is nothing you can do.

It's her.

I feel naked without her.

Naked.

♪♪

Do you hear me?

-I-I...

-I said, "Do you hear me?"

-Yes, Jeremiah. I hear you.

-"Yes, Jeremiah.

I hear you." Really?

Because, sometimes, I don't think you hear anything at all.

And I am truly worried about that.

If you are not with me, you will not ascend.

-Jeremiah, I -- -Please...

just be quiet and go fetch me Brother Swan.

-Okay.

-I said, "Go fetch me Brother Swan."

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

There you are.

-What can I do for you, Jeremiah?

-I need you to get me that girl I saw.

I need her.

I need her now.

-Jeremiah, consider it done.

♪♪

-Do you have the Horn of Abraxas?

♪♪

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Do you know what to do?

-I do.

♪♪

-Hey.

Why don't we offer up the porker, too?

Just to seal the deal.

-That is such a good idea.

That lard-ass, he couldn't find his nose in a mirror.

-[Laughs]

♪♪

♪♪

I knew I could count on you.

I can always count on you.

Buddy.

-Oh, thank you, Jeremiah.

-Thank you.

♪♪

-Before you go...

...send in Sister Lucy.

♪♪

-Of course.

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[Footsteps approach]

-That's a cool T-shirt.

-Oh, thanks.

-What you reading?

-A novel.

-Oh.

How do you like it?

-Yeah, I think it's Lenora Tor's best book.

-Hmm.

I guess you live around here.

-Yeah. We live just down near Crystal Lake.

-Oh, that sounds lovely.

♪♪

-It's 5 bucks.

-Oh, yeah.

♪♪

♪♪

Well...

♪♪

See you later.

[Footsteps depart]

[Door opens, bell jingles]

[Door closes]

♪♪

♪♪

[Static]

-"Mandy" is directed by a guy named Panos Cosmatos, which,

as you might have guessed, is a Greek name,

because his father was the late George Cosmatos,

director of many action films.

But George Cosmatos' first film in America

was a horror flick, "Of Unknown Origin,"

one of the better entries in the demon-rat subgenre.

So Panos is a second-generation horror director,

and there aren't many of those.

Lamberto Bava comes to mind, but that's about it,

son of the great Mario Bava.

I guess Rene Cardona and Rene Cardona Jr. in Mexico,

"Night of the Bloody Apes" and all those movies.

Anyway, George Cosmatos made one other acclaimed horror flick,

"Leviathan," but he was mostly known for two

Sylvester Stallone movies, namely

"Rambo: First Blood Part 2" and "Cobra,"

and also a famous western, "Tombstone."

So Panos grew up with a famous director daddy

and a famous artist mom because his mother was

the Swedish sculptor Birgitta Ljungberg,

and the family lived all over the world.

So he grew up in Sweden, England, Cyprus, Mexico

and then he went to high school

in Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Where he admits he tried every drug possible and settled

into a sort of shut-in life where he lived

through movies and music.

So if you try to count the pop culture references

in this movie, you will not be able to,

because there are just dozens, but he definitely makes

references to the "Friday the 13th" movies,

the "Evil Dead" movies.

That opening quote when the credits run by

is King Crimson.

He's got "Hellraiser" stuff in here.

He'll also have some major "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2"

references before the movie is over.

He also sets the movie in 1983, which would have been

the year he turned nine years old,

and I guess if you're a precocious kid

who's soaking up everything around you in the film

and the music world, that might be a defining year for you.

Anyway, he's setting us up for a revenge story,

and to prepare for it, he also watched all

the "Death Wish" movies.

Now, I assume he watched the excellent Eli Roth

"Death Wish" remake, but that would have been long after

he started the "Mandy" project.

Am I the only person who likes the Eli Roth "Death Wish?"

You know, every time I talk about it,

everyone's eyes glaze over, but I love that movie.

Plus, "Cabin in the Woods," how iconic is that

when you're making your first horror flick?

In other words, Panos Cosmatos knows exactly what he wants,

and what he wants is to put every film

and heavy metal reference into this movie that he knows

from his childhood, and of course that would include

the films of his father, so "Rambo." Right?

And the artwork of his mother.

she had paintings with bodies smushed

inside tree trunks, stuff like that.

So Panos Cosmatos was a horror director waiting to happen.

The film is set in the Pacific Northwest,

but the actual location is Belgium.

And did you notice all the producers in the opening titles?

There are 16 producers on this movie,

so everything about this movie reeks of international

co-production, a film that has so many different cultural

references it could be said to have no nationality at all.

It's not a Canadian movie,

it's not American, it's not European,

it exists in Cosmatos World, which is to say,

Pop Culture World, which is to say,

it's a phantasmagoric mashup of the last five decades of horror.

Did any of that make sense to anybody?

I hope so, because I'm not sure what I said,

but I'll -- I'll listen to it later and figure it out.

At any rate, Nicolas Cage and Andrea Riseborough,

Red and Mandy, are outsiders deeply in love,

closed off from society

in their little romantic woodlands cocoon

until the deranged hippies show up.

So, let's get back to the flick.

You know, hippies -- hippies were supposed

to be known for freedom, right?

But two guys ruined hippies for the rest of eternity --

Charles Manson was a hippie and Jim Jones was a hippie.

And the character played by Linus Roache

in this movie, Jeremiah the cult leader,

he's kind of a combination

of both Charlie Manson and Jim Jones, you know,

the ultimate guy who pretends to be super-spiritual

and uses the language of hippiedom,

free love and all that, to manipulate people

into places of suffering and death.

You know, has there ever been a female cult leader?

The only one I can think of, and I'm not sure she counts,

is Aimee Semple Macpherson, the Pentecostal faith healer

from a hundred years ago.

She apparently had a libido equal to the more famous

males cult leaders of later years, and she knew

how to work the crowd and get people

to follow her anywhere,

sometimes straight into her bedroom.

So, anyway.

Oh.

Anthony Perkins and Oz Perkins,

father/son horror director team, alright.

There's several father/son horror director combos,

and father-daughter!

David Lynch and Jennifer Lynch.

You know, I should really research this stuff

before I mouth off about it.

[Laughter]

[Static]

♪♪

[Static]

♪♪

-Are you sure this is the right place?

-Yes. Of course I am.

[Scraping]

[Van door opens]

[Horn blowing]

[Horn blowing]

-What now?

-Now we wait.

[Window whirring]

[Window whirring]

[Window whirring]

[Window whirring]

-How long?

-Shh.

Listen.

♪♪

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[Engines rumbling]

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[Breathing raggedly]

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-[Snarling]

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[Click]

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-[Growling]

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[Clank]

[Van door opens]

[Van door closes]

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[Van doors close, clang]

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[Sniffs]

[Jar opens]

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[Gulping]

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Blood for blood.

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More.

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-First things first.

-Aah!

Aaaah!

-Jerry? Jesus Christ.

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-What the hell is that? -I don't know.

♪♪

-Oh!

[Insects chirping]

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[Electricity buzzing]

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-[Snarling]

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-[Gasping]

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[Electricity buzzing]

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-[Grunts]

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[Static]

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-That's exactly how it happens, isn't it?

You're minding your own business,

eating TV dinners and watching "Nightbeast,"

you hear sounds but you don't think much of it,

and it's the one night you forget to check

for blood-drinking supernatural cenobite biker gangs from hell,

hired by the local hippie pervert.

Brother Swan, the leader of this expedition into darkness,

is played by Ned Dennehy, Irish actor who's done

a lot of series work, especially in "Outlander,"

and he played Ebenezer Scrooge in a series called "Dickensian,"

even though he seems a little young for that part.

Also played Tommy in that great Brit flick "Tyrannosaur."

But if you were to ask Panos Cosmatos where the biker gang

from hell comes from and why they're summoned

and what the rules are, he wouldn't necessarily know.

You know, he's talked about the film several times,

and he always says that he's not that interested in story

or anything involving plot.

He calls his films "collages," a mixture of moods

and fears and inspirations.

And in fact, he calls his films pop artifacts,

inspired by stuff he loved as a kid, like Fangoria magazine.

Cosmatos's first movie was called

"Beyond the Black Rainbow," and it was even more surreal

than this one, about a New Age psychotherapist

who keeps one of his patients captive because he's sexually

obsessed with her telekinetic abilities.

And everyone thought that he might have trouble getting

a second movie financed since the reviews

were kind of mixed on that one and a lot of people

thought the film was too dense.

Enter Elijah Wood, who loved "Beyond the Black Rainbow"

and brought other producers in, and they actually sought out

Cosmatos and had a meeting with him to tell him

they wanted to be involved in his next project,

which turned out to be "Mandy."

And it was Elijah Wood who got

Nicolas Cage interested in the project.

They thought he would be perfect as the cult leader

and they brought him in to talk about it,

but he said, "No, I want to play Red,"

and Cosmatos was extremely disappointed because he was

seeing all these wild possibilities

for Nic Cage as the villain.

And so they told him, "No, I don't think so, Nic.

We're gonna go in another direction."

But then a few months later, Cosmatos had this dream

where he saw Nic Cage portraying the Red character,

and when he woke up, he called his producer and said,

"Did we make a mistake telling Nic no?"

And so they called him back, and he was still

willing to do the role, and they started building up

the world of Red and Mandy, the world that gets destroyed

when the kidnapping happens.

You know, it's interesting, this just occurred to me.

This movie was set in the year 1983,

and Red and Mandy are watching all the genre films of that year

in their little hideaway, and one of those genre films

that year was "Valley Girl" starring

Nic Cage and Deborah Foreman.

Red and Mandy probably had a discussion about

Nicolas Cage sometime during their romantic TV-dinner nights.

Does that make sense?

Alright, back to the movie.

That's pop culture inside pop culture

divided by pop culture or something.

I don't know.

I wanted to have Nic Cage on

the show to talk about the movie.

Darcy, weren't you supposed to be helping with that?

Don't you know a couple of Nic's friends?

-I made the calls. I tried.

-Alright, one of Nic -- one of Nic Cage's friends

is Crispin Glover, who is one of your friends, right?

-Yeah. -Okay.

Well, I know why they're friends though.

They both own castles.

They need to compare castles, you know?

Nic Cage is addictive about buying castles.

He bought a castle in Etzelwang, Bavaria.

He bought Midford Castle near Bath in England.

He bought the LaLurie House in New Orleans.

He brought the Gray Craig estate in Middletown, Rhode Island.

He can land at any airport in the world and say,

"To my castle, driver."

[Laughter]

So, Darcy, the next time we try to get Nic on the show,

tell Crispin that Nic probably remembers me 'cause I'm the guy

he kicked in the stomach in "Face/Off."

You know, I was the sadistic prison guard.

I think actually John Travolta kicked me in the stomach,

but he looked like Nic Cage.

I never figured it out.

But anyway, we had about a five-minute convo

while we were shooting the scene, and I'm sure

he dreamed about it later in one of his castles.

He'll remember me.

[Laughter]

Or maybe not. -Probably not.

[Laughter]

[Static]

♪♪

[Static]

♪♪

-Don't worry.

Those scary men are gone now.

They got what they came for, and they're gone.

I guess you're wondering where your hubby is.

Don't you worry. He's just fine.

And he'll stay that way as long as you're a good girl

and do as you're told.

-[Slap] -[Muffled groan]

-Do you understand me?

You know, he thinks you're so special,

and I hope you realize what that means.

The responsibility is on you, buster.

♪♪

-[Groans]

[Moaning]

-Open.

[Mandy groaning]

♪♪

Very good.

Very good.

♪♪

♪♪

Hold still.

Hold still.

♪♪

[Mandy groaning]

-[Muffled screaming]

♪♪

[Moaning]

♪♪

-I like to call that the cherry on top.

♪♪

-It's all but a beautiful dream.

A dream he's having right now.

♪♪

Won't you join us in that dream?

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-I'm sorry for all this fuss and muss.

But when I saw you on the road the other day...

♪♪

...you called out to me...

...silently.

And I listened.

Look at me.

[Echoing] Look at me!

Tell me.

What do you see?

♪♪

♪♪

-I see the reaper fast approaching.

♪♪

-Well, I recognized you,

so I think in time...

...you will recognize me.

♪♪

You know,

all he wants is for his children

to love one another.

♪♪

Now, I find that he allows me

to express that love in many ways,

but one of those ways...

...is music.

♪♪

Do you like the Carpenters?

I think that they're sensational,

but this is even better.

[Crackling]

[ Mid-tempo music plays]

♪♪

♪♪

What do you think?

♪♪

-[Moans]

-Shh. Shh. Wait.

It's about to start.

♪♪

-♪ Every seed that gives us life♪

♪ Every man must take a wife♪

♪ Only one sun ever shines♪

♪ Only one sun, yours and mine♪

♪ Jeremiah Sand was a righteous man whose heart...♪

-You know, I was ready to stand tall

with the great, grand glittery ones,

but those scumbags couldn't recognize

a golden, radiant light

even as it was cast right down upon them.

But thankfully...

Thankfully, he showed me another path.

The path I have always been truly destined for,

something far greater than mere fame or fortune.

-♪ ...lessons well♪

♪ The light shines through everything♪

♪ The light is true, the lessons learned♪

♪ His song of you and me♪

♪♪

-When I was at the bottom of the pit...

...screaming in the darkness...

...racked with unspeakable pain...

...for having been denied all that was rightfully mine...

...he graced me with his light.

His hot loving light.

It flowed over me like the pulse of a timeless wave.

A wave of pure heat.

A mainline of pure and total acceptance.

And he talked to me.

Addressed me as a friend.

He said, "Jeremiah, they were wrong.

And you are right.

So right."

And he blessed me with his holy kiss.

He said, "You are not separate from all that is.

So all that is...

...is yours."

And he gave me his deepest and warmest permission

to go out into this world

and take what is so very much mine.

All of it.

Mine.

My wants.

My needs.

My pleasures.

♪♪

[ Indistinct singing]

♪♪

You know...

...I've been blessed to know the comfort of many women.

But there are few that have had your radiance.

You're a special one, Mandy.

I, too, am a special one.

Let us be so very special together.

Be gentle...

...like me.

♪♪

♪♪

-They...

You made this song?

♪♪

-Yes.

I did.

♪♪

-And it's about you?

-Yes.

It is.

♪♪

-[Laughing]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-Shut up!

Shut up!

[Laughing continues]

Shut up! Shut up!

Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

[Laughing continues]

Don't you fucking look at me!

Don't you fucking look at me!

Don't look at me! Don't you fucking look at me!

Don't look at me!

[Laughing continues]

♪♪

♪♪

[Crying] Tell me what to do.

Please tell me what to do.

Come on. Tell me what to do.

Tell me what to do. Tell me. Tell me.

Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do.

Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do.

Tell me what to do. Tell me. Tell me.

Tell me. Tell me.

♪♪

♪♪

Don't ever doubt yourself.

♪♪

♪♪

[Footsteps approach]

You and that ugly little whore.

You think you're so in love?

I'll show you love.

Lucy.

[Whispering indistinctly]

Kneel.

♪♪

[Click]

♪♪

Now show him how much you love me.

-No. [Grunting]

♪♪

No.

[Gun clicks]

-Another pearl wasted before swine.

-Yeah.

Take a good look, you worthless piece of human excrement.

This is the tainted blade of the pale knight,

straight from the abyssal layer.

-Poor, stupid pigs.

Born without souls.

♪♪

♪♪

[Red grunts]

You know what Jesus' big mistake was? Huh?

He didn't offer up a sacrifice in his stead.

The cruciform is a constant reminder of that.

-[Screams]

-Now, we wasted the chemist's finest on your whore.

But I think that you both

shall see the cleansing power of fire...

...cannot be reasoned with.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Match strikes]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-The darker the whore, the brighter the flame.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Static]

-Wow.

Intense chili and intense scene.

That's Linus Roache as the cult leader.

One of the rules of financing for this movie was that

Panos Cosmatos had to use European actors

for the lead characters, even though the whole story

is set in America.

And once Nic Cage made it clear that he was not going to play

Jeremiah Sand, Cosmatos thought, "Europeans aren't down and dirty

enough, I'm never gonna find an actor who can play that role."

And actually the first time Linus Roache read the script,

he didn't get it.

He had to go and watch Panos Cosmatos's first film

to see that, okay, this is an alternate universe,

I need to embrace this world, and he got into the role,

and I can't imagine anybody doing it better,

especially in the pivotal scene where he plays his own song

and does the little dance and goes full frontal

and Mandy laughs at him and can't stop laughing.

The one thing a cult leader

probably can't deal with is being laughed at.

So we see the supreme male ego supremely destroyed

in that one scene, and that's thanks

to the Linus Roache performance.

Linus Roache is mostly a stage actor.

He started as a child growing up in Manchester, England,

both -- both of his parents are well known actors in the U.K.,

and since then he's moved up the ranks.

Done a lot of Shakespeare, had roles in two hit series,

"Homeland" and "Vikings," and he was a regular

on two different "Law and Order" series.

So, Andrea Riseborough, as Mandy, who had the more

difficult acting job in those scenes because that was

all reactive for her,

she's a feminist filmmaker herself.

She has an all-female production company,

she grew up in Newcastle in the north of England,

also firmly grounded in the theater,

was in the National Youth Theatre and attended

the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Very hot actress right now.

She had four films at Sundance two years ago.

And then Olwen Fouere is the actress playing

the white-haired Mother Marlene.

She was born on the west coast of Ireland,

but mostly works in the London Theater.

she's a stage director herself, and a dancer

and a visual artist.

So the villain in the movie is the male ego itself,

in the eyes of Panos Cosmatos.

A very dangerous thing, especially when possessed

by a weak man trying to prove his superiority.

Which we know, of course, from every beer hall

shooting for the last hundred years, right?

It's not the tough guy who shoots the weak guy,

it's always the weak threatened guy who shoots the tough guy,

so Jeremiah Sand, the artificial tough guy,

has now angered Red, the real tough guy.

And people forget that in the original "Death Wish,"

Charles Bronson was a mild-mannered architect.

He didn't have an iota of violence in his makeup,

until they killed his wife.

So to make a revenge movie work, the offense has to be so great

that we forgive anything the hero does to the villain.

I think we pretty much established the depravity

of Jeremiah Sand with this last sequence.

I don't think we need any further authorization

for Nicolas Cage to now do virtually anything he wants,

and as the poster said for "I Spit On Your Grave,"

No jury in America would ever convict him.

Linus Roache calls this "one of the most creative

journeys I've ever had on film."

He says he intentionally did not talk to Nic Cage

the whole time they were making the film.

They avoided socializing,

they kept the tension really high,

which, as you will soon see, is going to pay off

in the kind of deeply satisfying violence

that makes us ashamed of ourselves.

So, back to the movie.

♪♪

Panos Cosmatos said he made this movie in part to figure out

why he likes revenge so much.

I can tell you one reason.

Jeremiah Sand is a folk singer, and his motivation is he thinks

he was screwed out of a record deal.

Did you follow that part when he made that

little speech about himself?

Actually, I think Charles Manson

was also a failed folk singer, right?

And the song Jeremiah sings to Mandy is called

"Amulet of the Weeping Maze."

So as you can see, the death penalty

is definitely in order here.

Most folk singers deserve

the death penalty, in my opinion.

Put the mandolin down, go back to your yurt

and lose the fluffy peasant shirt, right,

or we might have to execute you.

[Laughter]

[Static]

♪♪

[Static]

[Car door closes, engine starts]

[Car door closes]

[Van door opens]

[Van doors closing]

[Engine starts]

[Van door opens]

[Van door closes]

[Car departs]

-[Groaning]

[Breathing heavily]

[Grunts]

[Groaning]

[Grunts, panting]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Indistinct talking on TV]

-Who ate all the macaroni and cheese?

Cheddar Goblin, did you eat all the macaroni and cheese?

-Nothing's better than cheddar.

-Cheddar Goblin.

[ Children cheering]

♪♪

-Cheddar Goblin by Duvane

has 60% more cheese than the next leading brand.

Kids and goblins agree, Cheddar Goblin tastes the best.

That's why Cheddar Goblin was rated number one

three years in a row.

♪♪

Cheddar Goblin by Duvane. It's gobblin' good.

-Cheddar Goblin.

-This is a test.

This station is conducting a test

of the Emergency Broadcasting System.

This is only a test.

[Tone buzzing]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-[Moans]

-[Gasps, breathing heavily]

♪♪

[Light switch clicks]

♪♪

♪♪

[Breathing heavily]

♪♪

[Groaning]

♪♪

♪♪

[Groaning]

♪♪

[Screaming]

♪♪

♪♪

[Crying]

♪♪

♪♪

[Groaning]

♪♪

♪♪

[Crying]

♪♪

[Breathing heavily]

♪♪

[Engine revving]

[Dog barking]

♪♪

♪♪

-Can't you read?

♪♪

♪♪

Oh, it's you.

It's been a while.

-Come for the Reaper.

♪♪

-Perfect condition, just like you left it.

[Indistinct talking on TV]

♪♪

-I'll get out of your hair.

-So what you going to do with that thing?

♪♪

-I'm going hunting.

-If you're gonna go hunting,

I got some other shit you might need.

-I was hoping you'd say that.

-One to the right.

♪♪

Made it myself.

It cut through bone like a fat kid through cake.

They're yours under one condition.

-Oh, yeah? What's that?

-You put them to good use.

♪♪

[Dog whimpering]

So what you hunting?

-Jesus freaks.

[Crying]

-I didn't know they were in season, man.

-Yeah. Well...

-Just tell me, man. -They lit her on fire!

They were weirdo hippie types.

Whole bunch of them.

And there was a muscle. It didn't make any sense.

They were bikers and gnarly psychos and...

♪♪

Crazy evil.

-Black Skulls.

Black Skulls.

♪♪

Lookit, man.

For a while now, word's been coming down from the big rigs

something dark and fearsome out there.

No one knows where they come from.

First, it was stories from the interstate.

Leaving truckers for dead, prostitutes vanishing,

and gutted bodies on doorsteps.

And always the same.

Biker gang, black bikes.

Only seen at night.

Weird shit.

There's stories that there was a chapter

than ran courier for a manufacturer of LSD.

Took a disliking to them and cooked them up a special batch,

and they have never been right in the head since.

I seen them once from a distance.

What you're hunting is rabid animals,

and you should go in knowing that your odds ain't that good,

and you will probably die.

-Don't be negative.

♪♪

-Last I heard on the CB,

they were spotted down near Spirit River.

When I seen them things, they were in a world of pain.

♪♪

But you know what the freakiest part was?

-What's that?

♪♪

-They fucking loved it.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Sizzling]

♪♪

♪♪

[Clanging]

♪♪

[Whirring]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Engines revving]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-[Snarling]

♪♪

♪♪

[Growling]

♪♪

[Gunshots]

♪♪

[Engine revving]

♪♪

[Static]

♪♪

-Well, yeah,

notice we seem to be shifting back and forth

between reality and dream, inside the head of Red

and then back to the objective camera,

and the two sort of blend together.

The most famous scene in the movie is the five minutes

of Cage crying and screaming in his underwear

with that bottle of vodka in his hand,

and even though it's called a Cage Rage moment,

I think of it more as his grief moment.

You know, the rage comes later, when he goes to see Caruthers

and he says, "I come for the Reaper,"

meaning that wicked crossbow and then he goes to

an iron forge somewhere and starts shaping

a medieval battle ax.

He's not just your ordinary lumberjack,

he was paying attention in eighth-grade metal shop.

[Laughter]

So Nicolas Cage, he's 56 years old,

but I think he plays 10 to 15 years younger,

which is why he was able to fit so effortlessly

into this role that was written for a 40-year-old.

Born in Long Beach, California, his father was a professor

of comparative literature at Cal State Long Beach.

His mother was a dancer/choreographer,

and of course his uncle was Francis Ford Coppola.

And his next movie after "Valley Girl" was directed

by his uncle, "Rumble Fish," and that was sort of his

breakthrough, and everything after that was either

a blockbuster or some special film like "Leaving Las Vegas"

or "Wild at Heart" where he was pushing the envelope

of sanity in one way or another.

Cosmatos describes him as "the American Klaus Kinski,"

and Cage agrees.

Bill Duke, the guy who plays Caruthers in the scene

where Red is arming himself, is one of those character actors

everybody wants to work with.

Legendary among fellow actors.

He's played a lot of cops.

He frequently collaborates with Laurence Fishburne.

He also directs, produces, writes.

He used to be chairman of the radio/TV/film department

at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

I'm not sure whether he still does that or not.

He directed the "Blexicans" series,

he directed "Sister Act 2," and one other person

I should mention is Johann Johannsson,

the film's composer from Iceland.

He's the guy who gave the fractured rock opera feeling

to the flick.

Johann died just one month after the film's

world premiere at the age of only 48.

Panos Cosmatos claims he's allergic

to testosterone, literally.

He says he gets physically sick

if he starts feeling assertive in a combative male way,

which is sort of hard to understand given the scenes

we're about to see in the roller-coaster ride

called "Mandy."

Roll the film.

♪♪

A lot of people look at this as an anti-drug movie,

because the Black Skulls bikers are evil, you know,

because they got a bad batch of LSD,

and the evil women of the cult inject Mandy with venom

from a giant wasp or some fuck, I don't know.

And they kind of indicate that they're all supposed

to stay drugged all the time so they can experience

the dreams of Jeremiah.

Plus every toxic cult

in the history of the stereotype is involved

with some kind of drug, whether it be poison Kool-Aid

or cocaine or ecstasy, but Cosmatos claims

it's not anti-drug, even though he says

he stopped using all drugs himself

after being a druggie in high school,

because one of his friends died of a heroin overdose.

As I said at the beginning,

just stick to the mushrooms, okay?

It's a mushroom movie.

Some movies are marijuana movies,

some movies are heroin movies, this is a mushroom movie.

Just trust me on that.

'Course isn't "trust me" what Bruce Dern says

to Peter Fonda in "The Trip"?

"Trust me, I'll be your LSD partner

and it will all turn out fine."

Which makes sense except...

it's Bruce Dern.

[Laughter]

[Static]

♪♪

[Static]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-[Snarls]

[Humming in distance]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-Aah!

♪♪

[Groaning]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Ah!

♪♪

That was my favorite shirt.

♪♪

♪♪

[Grunting]

♪♪

♪♪

-[Hissing]

-Ah!

♪♪

-You have a death wish.

♪♪

-[Crying] I-I don't want -- I don't want to talk about that.

[Crying]

♪♪

You're a vicious snowflake.

♪♪

[Grunting]

♪♪

♪♪

[Groaning]

♪♪

♪♪

[Grunting]

[Breathing heavily]

♪♪

♪♪

[Clattering]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-[Snarling]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Growls]

-Ah!

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Aah! -[Roars]

♪♪

-[Groaning]

♪♪

Aah!

[Laughing]

♪♪

♪♪

[Gunshot]

♪♪

You ripped my shirt!

You ripped my shirt!

[Grunting]

♪♪

-Ah! -[Thud]

♪♪

[Sniffing]

[Clatters]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Sniffs]

♪♪

Ah!

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Thud]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-[Roars] -[Grunting]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-[Snarling]

She's still burning.

-[Laughs evilly] -Aah!

♪♪

-She burns.

She burns.

She burns.

She burns.

-[Screams]

♪♪

[Wind whistling]

♪♪

[Static]

♪♪

-[Grunts] Wish I had me some classic Texas chili.

But I don't [Whip!]

[Whistle, stomach growls]

-Uh-oh.

-Trouble is most chili is flavorless and nasty.

Yuck.

[Boing!]

[Children cheering] Whoa, it's the Chili Bandit!

Hey, little man.

-Num, num!

-Oh, yeah.

Chili Bandit Chili

is not like that other bowl stuff.

Just the zap the bajappers outta it

until it smells like steamed heaven.

-Num, num!

-Put cheese on it or just eat it nekkid.

-Num, num! -♪ Chili Bandit Chili ♪

♪ Num, num, put it in your belly ♪

♪ Chili Bandit Chili ♪

♪ It'll change your life. ♪

♪ Yeah, that's right ♪

Mmm.

Four starts.

-Num, num! -♪ Chili Bandit Chili ♪

-Yay! -If your store don't have it,

look in the dog food aisle.

[Static]

♪♪

Man, I-I can't -- I can't get enough of this.

This is so good.

Darcy, I put some over there for you.

You gotta try this.

-I'm not trying this.

-No, really. I'm sure it's vegan.

-Oh, I'm sure it's not.

-No, it's got, you know, I can see it's --

it's brown, and brown is the natural color and it's got --

-It's definitely brown, yeah.

-It's got beans in it, that's vegan.

And it's got, you know, chunks of vegan material in here.

-I don't believe you at all.

I don't even think this is edible.

-Alright, it's your lose. Alright.

-Okay.

[Laughter]

-When Red lights his cigarette

on the burning head of the Black Skulls superbiker,

I would say he's gone through his final transformation.

First third of the movie, normal guy.

Second third of the movie, animal.

Rest of the movie, Conan the Barbarian

Jason Voorhees demigod created partly by that mason jar

full of gooey bad-batch LSD, but mostly created by

the overwhelming don't give a fuck in his heart

because he always dreams of Mandy.

I think those animated sequences are Mandy artwork,

and that's his unconscious in Mandy form.

That was the most complicated fight sequence --

one of the most complicated ever filmed,

especially for a movie that only cost six million bucks,

but we're not done yet.

Now I think you can call it Cage Rage.

This is where the kills now become almost sexual.

Also, when I say "Conan the Barbarian,"

I'm not pulling that out of a hat.

Panos Cosmatos is a great admirer of the Conan movies,

and that weird instrument used to summon the demon bikers

in the first place, that's called

the Horn of Abraxas,

which is some Greek mystical barbarian stuff,

and I hope it doesn't remind anybody

of the 1991 Jesse Ventura sci-fi movie

"Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe."

And then that weapon that's fashioned by Red

in the iron forge, that's an homage

to Celtic Frost, the avant-garde metal band from Zurich.

Thrash metal, black metal, goth metal, doom metal,

they were called everything because every metal band

knew that band, and they had album titles like

"A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh."

Cosmatos spent a lot of time in his mother's homeland,

Sweden, and he lived there for years,

so he would definitely be aware of all

the Viking influences from the Nordic metal bands.

In fact, what did that last sequence look like?

Vikings with shields and brutal weapons, right?

Continuing to fight when they were disabled.

Fighting to the last breath.

And by the way, I didn't really comment on it before,

but people who love this movie, and there are a lot of "Mandy"

fanatics at there, they always wear

the Cheddar Goblin shirt, you know?

Of all the choices you could make to rep this movie,

they love the cheesy commercial that creates a surreal moment

in the immediate aftermath of Mandy's death

when Red is trying to focus

and brainless TV just won't cut it anymore.

Of course, brainless TV, that's one of the things

that he shared with Mandy, so maybe that's why it's there

to be an ironic counterpoint to his life before

she was murdered, but whatever.

It seems like, if you wear the Cheddar Goblin shirt,

you're embracing the surrealism

of the "Mandy" experience.

Darcy, you told me you saw the Cheddar Goblin

before you saw the movie and were disappointed there

wasn't more Cheddar Goblin, right?

-I -- I literally thought it was movie about Nic Cage

fighting the Cheddar Goblin,

which would have been pretty cool.

-And you wanted to see that movie?

-I did. -I would -- I want to see

that movie. I would like to see that.

-Sequel. -Okay, well,

I wouldn't miss the Cheddar Goblin in this movie.

But at any rate, Nic Cage as Red Miller is all fueled up,

and I think we're heading into the most satisfying

part of..."Mandy."

So roll the film.

And since we're talking about it,

let's give credit where credit is due.

Shane Morton is the practical effects expert who created

the Cheddar Goblin, and mixed the mac-and-cheese vomit

so the Cheddar Goblin could throw up all over the children.

He mixed that himself. [Laughter]

He said he was inspired by "Ghoulies,"

and the vomit was actual mac-and-cheese mixed

with pineapple Faygo and lemon Jell-O.

So...yummy! -[Laughs]

-Faygo. Do you what Faygo is?

-Like the drink, right?

-Yeah, I mean, it's that drink from Michigan or somewhere

where, you know, if you can't afford a Fanta, you have a Nehi,

and if you can't afford a Nehi, you have a Faygo.

[Laughter]

I wasn't aware that there was a pineapple Faygo,

but I'll be sure to order one the next time I'm stranded

in a truck stop in rural Canada or something.

[Laughter]

[Static]

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[Static]

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♪♪

[Engine revving]

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[Down-tempo music plays]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

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♪♪

[Music stops]

-It's cool, man.

[Notes play]

♪♪

Jovan warrior sent forth from the eye of the storm.

♪♪

♪♪

Mm.

♪♪

♪♪

That's Lizzie.

When she's calm, I know it's good.

♪♪

♪♪

You're right.

Oh...

God. You're right.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Bye, Lizzie.

♪♪

♪♪

Oh, man. They wronged you.

♪♪

Why they got to be like that?

♪♪

You exude a cosmic darkness.

♪♪

Can you see that?

♪♪

♪♪

Okay.

♪♪

The children.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

North.

-[Growling]

♪♪

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♪♪

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♪♪

-[Snoring]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Water flowing]

[Chainsaw buzzing in distance]

♪♪

[Engine starts]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Air hisses]

[Van stops]

♪♪

-This is really not ideal.

-[Grunts]

♪♪

-You're hurting me!

-[Grunts]

♪♪

-[Gags]

She -- She burned brightly, Mandy.

Don't you think?

♪♪

Still, better to burn out than fade --

[Squish]

[Gagging]

♪♪

[Gurgling]

[Squish]

♪♪

♪♪

["Cielito Lindo" plays]

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[Man singing in Spanish]

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[Scraping]

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[Blows]

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[Motor whirs]

♪♪

[Motor whirs]

[Motor whirs]

♪♪

-[Chuckles]

[Motor whirs]

♪♪

♪♪

[Chainsaw buzzing]

[Motor whirs]

[Chainsaw buzzing]

♪♪

-[Screaming]

♪♪

[Grunts]

♪♪

[Chainsaw buzzing]

♪♪

-[Groaning]

♪♪

[Chuckles]

-[Grunting]

♪♪

Ah!

♪♪

[Chainsaw buzzing]

[Grunting]

♪♪

[Groaning]

[Man laughing]

♪♪

♪♪

[Chainsaw buzzing]

♪♪

♪♪

-[Groaning]

-[Squish] -[Screaming]

[Chainsaw buzzing]

♪♪

♪♪

[Static]

♪♪

-If you've watched very many episodes of "The Last Drive-In,"

you know by now that I don't consider the chainsaw

a very effective weapon, because it's so clumsy and slow.

Nevertheless, writers and directors keep putting

chainsaw fights in movies, all of them with some reference

to the Dennis Hopper/Leatherface chainsaw fight

in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2."

Now I don't mind this one because the farther we get into

the second half of the movie, the more we're detached

from reality and the deeper we are into Red's head,

especially after he gulps down that nasty goo drug,

and so there are two things going on here.

One, he's hallucinating about Mandy.

She's always there, mostly in the animations,

but he's also hallucinating about every iconic

horror movie he's ever seen, which is to say,

every iconic horror movie Panos Cosmatos has ever seen.

Cosmatos asked Nic Cage to watch "Friday the 13th Part 7"

right before they did the chainsaw scene because he wanted

that Jason Voorhees indestructibility.

Cosmatos has talked about how he suffered from so much anxiety

as a kid that he couldn't watch horror films.

He loved them at first, but then they drove him crazy

so he stopped watching them entirely and turned to more

traditional film school stuff, like the French New Wave,

Godard, Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Antonioni.

And then after both his parents passed away

and he had unsuccessfully dealt with the depression from that,

he went into therapy, and one of the things

he discovered in therapy is that he had disconnected

from the movies that were most important in his life --

horror movies, especially "Dawn of the Dead,"

"Return of the Living Dead" which is a strange one

to put on your all-time most influential list,

"American Werewolf in London," "Brain Damage," "Phantasm 2"

and all of Cronenberg's films.

That's pretty much the playlist for this show.

So he went back to those films and he also went back

to the "Death Wish" films, especially "Death Wish 5"...

[Laughter]

which is truly strange because it's probably

the most hated "Death Wish" of them all,

the one that killed the franchise,

Charles Bronson's last film.

If I ever meet Panos, I'm gonna have him elaborate

on his love for "Death Wish 5."

Anyway, my point is, Cosmatos fought off his extreme

depression by embracing the most intense horror films

and action films of his youth, and I guess you could call

the "Death Wish" films, horror films,

I call them horror films, and the result is "Mandy."

And the chainsaw fight is surreal

because it's a fantasy fight.

It may be happening and it may not be happening.

The chemist with the tiger in the Quonset hut,

the guy who tells Red to "go north,"

that seems to be a turning point.

That seems to be a dream vision, a place where the guy is saying,

"Floating out there somewhere in the darkness of your

imagination is the man you want to kill,"

which is to say, the hated thing inside you

that you want to kill.

Alright, none of this is making sense, even to me,

so why don't we just go back to the movie and luxuriate

in the violent but really really satisfying

conclusion to..."Mandy."

Roll the movie.

Ah, so we somebody at some university to go count

all the pop culture references in the movie

and do a Ph.D. dissertation on it.

You know, some of them seem like they must come from somewhere

but you don't know where the reference comes from.

Like the tiger, like the Reaper crossbow,

like the costumes of the Black Skulls guys.

That's something out of Heavy Metal magazine, right?

Um, the original home invasion that kicks off

the revenge cycle, that's gotta owe something

to "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," right?

'Cause you can't watch that movie without remembering

the home invasion scene.

This whole quest that Red is on, "Mad Max," right?

Even with the vehicles.

Red has -- and Red has a Motley Crue t-shirt,

but he also has a Detroit Tigers shirt.

What's that about? You know?

Maybe some professor in North Dakota

will tell us someday.

[Laughter]

[Static]

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[Static]

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[Woman crying]

♪♪

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-Jeremiah says...

...I'm the most sensual lover

he's ever experienced...

...because of my sensitivity...

...and my empathy.

♪♪

I can anticipate my lover's every move.

♪♪

I meet them.

Like warm waves...

...licking...

the rocky...

hard shore.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-Come no closer.

♪♪

God is in this room.

♪♪

Aah!

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Oh.

Hi.

You can't harm me, man.

I mean, look at what he provides.

It's all mine.

You're just meat.

Without a soul.

Without a brain.

Without anything.

Animal.

You...

You have no spirit everlasting.

No...

No radiant light.

I possess hallucinations you will never know.

♪♪

-The psychotic drones.

Where the mystic swims.

You're drowning.

I'm swimming.

-You unholy abomination.

You aren't even worth my spit.

♪♪

It's all that hate in your heart.

That's to blame.

Follows you everywhere, man.

Follows you everywhere.

I can still help you.

It's not just your life I can save, no.

It's your goddamn soul.

No, no, no, no! Please, please.

Please don't hurt me!

Shh!

Can't you see this was all part of your journey,

the journey that led you to me?

To your salvation.

To your cleansing by my hand.

[Crying]

I'll blow you, man.

I'll suck your fucking dick!

Is that what you want?

Oh, please, please, please!

Please don't do it.

♪♪

No, no!

I don't kneel before you!

Youkneel before me!

I carry God's gift in my heart, not you,

so you kneel before me, motherfucker!

-I'm your god now.

-[Groaning]

♪♪

♪♪

Aah! -[Breathing heavily]

♪♪

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[Thud]

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[Clatter]

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[Wind blowing]

[Birds chirping]

[Static]

♪♪

-And so, as Red drives away, hallucinating Mandy

in the passenger seat, the two moons sink

into the horizon of Jupiter, Mandy's favorite planet.

A lot going on in the movie, but the amazing thing about it

is that it's ultimately a love story.

Mandy is in every scene, even after she's dead.

Meaning we're watching everything from inside Red,

where she's never dead.

"The psychotic drowns where the mystic swims."

Isn't that what Red says to Jeremiah?

Red is the mystic, communing with his dead girlfriend,

but he's also the psychotic.

Jeremiah is the fake mystic, using his New Age vocabulary

to suck people in, but he's the real psychotic.

So it's psycho vs. psycho.

Cosmatos says he worked on that script for six years,

and that the theme of it is,

"The male ego is a terrifying thing,

and if shattered, it becomes even more dangerous."

Great movie.

I hope Panos Cosmatos invites us

into more of his extremely personal visions.

Okay, Darcy, come on over.

[Laughs]

-What's up?

-Hi, Nic. -[Laughs]

-Hi, Red.

You ever got the... Oh, my God.

Wasn't he drinking vodka?

He was drinking vodka.

-I mean, I got to improvise.

This is what we got here. -Okay. Well, alright.

Well, that fits our show, but I think

he was in a Detroit Tigers shirt.

-This is the right shirt. I know that.

Don't question my cosplay. -It was a Detroit Tigers shirt.

-It's this shirt.

-That's like the LSU Tigers.

-It's the official Mandy shirt.

-No, that's like the Clemson Tigers.

-Shh. -Okay.

[Laughter]

-Alright, opinions about "Mandy"?

-I love the style of it.

It's colorful, it's got that prog rock

and banging metal score.

It's like exploitation opera.

-Okay. Well, I would say the consensus is that everybody

likes the movie, but some people

like that movie to an insane level.

It's one of those movies you can watch over and over

and over again looking for secret signals

and symbolism, and you will find 'em.

They're all in there.

Alright, what you got for me?

-Well, I got a letter that I thought was appropriate

because this movie has a chainsaw fight in it.

It's from Ben Hughes of Bastrop, Texas.

-Bastrop? -That's where the...

-Hold on. [Chuckles] -...gas station is in

"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."

-Here you go, yeah

-Alright.

"Mr. Briggs, I was so glad to see you

come by The Gas Station yesterday.

Wish I would have asked for an autograph, but that's my fault.

Maybe next time if you come through again.

Thank you for all you do and all the great memories

you have provided through the years.

Ben Hughes, manager and pitmaster of The Gas Station."

You were there with me that day, right?

I think -- Ben must have been in the back room making barbecue,

which is actually kind of scary.

They barbecue here, because in the movie we find out later

that the barbecue is made from humans.

Am I remembering that right?

-You are indeed.

And do you remember the memorial bench at the Gas Station?

-I remember it well. That was the best part.

They have a very ornate iron bench

with permanent plates on it honoring all the cast and crew

members in "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" who have passed away.

-You are going to love this letter.

-A second mail bag letter. -Yes, sir.

-Okay.

"Mr. Briggs, "I am the guy who created and built

the "Texas Chain Saw" Memorial Bench.

A friend sent me a photo of you standing beside the bench

when you visited The Gas Station.

I was wanting to know if there is a way

I could print the photo and send it to you

to autograph it for me.

It would mean the world to me if I could.

Thank you, Eric Burress."

You know, something -- I see you getting out your phone.

Something tells me that photo of me standing by the bench

is somewhere on your phone, Darcy.

-Yes, sir.

Here it is. -Okay.

-Looking all handsome.

-Thank you, Ben and Eric, for preserving

that little slice of Texas history.

There are so many legends about that movie.

There's like half a dozen places in the state claiming

that they were the filming location for the movie,

but anybody who has read my nine million page article

on "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" knows exactly where

all the real locations are, and this is one of them.

I still get requests for that article every damn day.

Joebob@joebobbriggs.com

if you have not read the article yet.

Okay, we are far from done with the subgenre

of secret killer cults in the boonies.

We have the neglected small-town '80s film "Dead & Buried"

coming up in just a few minutes.

So thank you, Darcy, for fielding

the Mutant Family mail on "Mandy" night.

I'm sure the opinions were intense.

And I'm Joe Bob Briggs, reminding you that meanness

don't just happen overnight.

And the drive-in will never die.

I have a joke about a biker gang, actually.

-Of course you do.

-Um, guy is at the pearly gates waiting to be admitted

to heaven, and Saint Peter is leafin' through this Big Book

to see if the guy is worthy of entering.

Peter goes through the books several times, and he furrows

his brow and says to the guy,

"You now, I can't see that you did anything really

good in your life, but you never did anything bad either.

So I'll tell you what.

If you can tell me of one really good deed

that you did in your life, you're in."

Guy thinks for a minute and says, "Well, yeah, there was

this one time when I was drivin' down the highway and I saw

a giant group of KKK Biker Gang Rapists

assaulting this poor girl.

So I slowed down my car to see what was going on,

and sure enough, there they were, about 50 of 'em

torturing this girl.

I was infuriated, so I got out of my car,

I grabbed a tire iron out of my trunk

and I walked straight up to the leader of the gang.

He was this huge guy with a studded leather jacket

and a chain running from his nose to his ear.

And as I walked up to the leader,

the KKK Biker Gang Rapists formed a circle around me.

So I ripped the head biker's chain off his face

and I smashed him over the head with the tire iron.

Then I turned around and yelled to the rest of em,

'Leave this poor, innocent girl alone!

You're all a bunch of sick, deranged animals!

Go home before I teach you all a lesson in pain!'"

So, Saint Peter is kind of impressed,

and he says, "When did all this happen?"

The guy says, "Oh, about two minutes ago."

[Laughter]

♪♪

-Yeah, pass that over here.

[Static]

♪♪

[Static]