Episode 168: Gabba Ghoul

On this episode we talk about mafia- and cat-centric Stephen King anthology film CAT'S EYE!

For the full transcript, go to https://rankandvile.captivate.fm/episode/episode-168-gabba-ghoul

Transcript:

Ryan 0:05

[Theme Song] Hey guys, welcome to Rank and Vile, the podcast where we're ranking every single horror movie ever made. And this is Ryan.

Quincy 0:43

And this is Quincy.

Ryan 0:44

How's it going? Quincy? How's your week going?

Quincy 0:46

It's going good. I finally got to finish Stories Untold on Nintendo Switch. Ryan, have you played this game?

Ryan 0:53

No. Tell me about this.

Quincy 0:55

So Stories Untold is an episodic horror game that takes the form of text based PC games.

Ryan 1:06

Oh, okay.

Quincy 1:06

So the first episode, you're literally in a house playing a text adventure game of a haunted house, while the house you're in is actually haunted.

Ryan 1:18

Holy shit. That's incredible.

Quincy 1:19

But the best thing is the screen. The view of the screen is not simply an Apple 2 black and green screen. The screen is a disk with the Apple screen in the corner. And you literally have to hit the L button to lean into the screen to read what it says. And then lean back out and type on the keyboard your command.

Ryan 1:45

Holy shit. Honestly, if it's if you're a horror game, and you don't have a lean button, what are you doing? I feel.

Quincy 1:52

It's on the e-shop on Nintendo, I it is a strong recommendation. I didn't think I liked this kind of game until I got deep into it and played it. If you want to learn from my mistake, play it in like a week, not over several months, like I did, because I found out that the skills I learned in playing a text based adventure game and how to operate a drill on alien technology were skills that showed up later in the game and I had to know how to do that

Ryan 2:26

Yeah, honestly. Yeah, this seems like one of those processes where like, by the time you figure it out, it's just like, this is fine, you know?

Quincy 2:34

Yeah, but yeah, so what ghoul shit Have you been up to Ryan?

Ryan 2:38

I just started reading VC Andrews's Flowers In the Attic yo for the first time for the first time. I've never read it. I know the big twist that it's incest but I've never read it before. I know that my aunt had a copy of it that had one of those covers that have like the cutout on the front cover and then a page on the inside? You know the ones. Quincy Have you read Flowers in the Attic?

Quincy 3:02

I have not but I know a lot about VC Andrews and also the VC Andrews brand because she died very soon after her books became popular. So like Ann M Martin of Babysitters Club fame. Her name is on every book, but she is not the one who has written most of the books.

Ryan 3:26

Ah, so it's like a James Patterson situation.

Quincy 3:29

Yeah

Ryan 3:29

Yeah, honestly reading Flowers in the Attic...

Quincy 3:31

I love how my example is baby sitters club and your example is James Patterson. To the point where I was like, What? No

Ryan 3:41

I was thinking I was like no Babysitters Club was up. They were above board they were legit. Shut up. Shut up. It was it was her. Yeah, I honestly reading Flowers in the Attic. The thing I was not prepared for although I was I am I am ecstatic about, every line of dialogue in this book reads like it was ghostwritten by Cheryl Blossom from Riverdale. When you get Cheryl Blossom saying like Mumsy, I've had the most frightful day mare, or like mumsie has been cultivating esoteric herbs in the conservatory like tannis root and the deadly jimson weed, and it's that but straight faced and all the time. It is just a fucking delight. There's a bit that's at the opening of the book, where now it's obviously about children who were like sort of orphaned and end up in the care of their sadistic grandmother, the dad that dies at the top of this book. I am obsessed with this thing of like, this fantasy of what it's like to have a supportive father. Where like he comes through the door and we yell papa and he's and he booms come smother me with kisses. If you love me and he has brought us all of these curios from his travels abroad. And it's just it's like a rude impersonation of wasp family dynamics and I'm I'm obsessed with it.

Quincy 5:05

It sounds delightful.

Ryan 5:06

Yeah. So that's I'm firmly ensconced right now in Flowers in the Attic. So that's Yeah. Listen, if you if you haven't read it, get it on Kindle. It's I implore you like every other page of this thing. I'm like, showing it to somebody that I live with and yelling because of how completely insane the dialogue is.

Quincy 5:28

So let's talk about our Patreon.

Ryan 5:31

Yes, over on our Patreon we just.

Quincy 5:34

It's time to pay the fucking Piper.

Ryan 5:38

Listen, the

Quincy 5:39

Roddy Piper,

Ryan 5:40

you got to pay the Roddy Piper. The rent is come due. Listen folks. If you go over to our patreon at patreon.com slash rank and vile we have a plethora of content we've got an episode about Santa with muscles it's going to be dropping very shortly we've got an episode

Quincy 5:55

You hear some shocking revelations from your hosts and their feelings on Christmas

Ryan 6:01

Yeah, it's it's very Rank and Vile after dark I feel if you want to if you want to see like the real the real unfiltered shit when we're not talking about VC Andrews.

Quincy 6:10

Can we do like a Cory 900 number. Here's words that rhyme with Cory?

Ryan 6:17

Yeah, it's you'll get the real shit. We've got an episode coming up with Matt Wallace about the movie Roadhouse. That whips ass, guys, if you ask for a mere $5 for the price of like a decent gas station sandwich, you too can be the proud owner of our Patreon content. So head on over there if you like what we do and you maybe want some more of that.

Quincy 6:41

I'll tell you that your money helps us do things like pay hosting fees, upgrade equipment, purchase movies to review on this show, because they're not all free and we have to it is our duty to review everything not just everything on Tubi.

Ryan 7:01

Exactly the warts and all if there is a Blu Ray copy of Necromantic 2 that we need to fucking dredge from the deep we're committed to the gimick of this podcast we're doing every movie ever made. But yeah, so head over there if you feel so inclined. And also I guys we it's it's content that sort of we're already kind of loopy by the time we do the Patreon content. So it's it's it's particularly extra I feel because we're doing

Quincy 7:30

I would agree

Ryan 7:30

Because we're doing non a lot of non horror movies over on the Patreon that wouldn't go on the list and so yeah, yeah, so head on over there. Let's get into the movie we're doing for this week.

Quincy 7:41

Cat's Eye

Ryan 7:42

Cat's Eye from 1985. This is so Cat's Eye is so here's the thing. Stephen King short stories are better than Stephen King novels.

Quincy 7:53

Stephen King short stories are better than Stephen King full stop.

Ryan 7:59

Yeah, yeah. If he is Yeah, better than the sum total of him. And Cat's Eye is an anthology horror film cobbled together with three different and but intersecting kind of whatever. Listen, every anthology movie that wants to have a through line. It's it's always contrived, I feel.

Quincy 8:19

Oh, yeah. It's like, well, a cat sees a lot of crazy things.

Ryan 8:24

Yeah, this this cat is a he's a real cat about town and he just sort of happens to end up in all these segments. So cat The cat in Cat's Eye. Do you ever just look at it. He's a tabby cat. And do you ever just like look at a cat and you know that his heart is full of bees and that his hands are guns? Like there's something in the eyes that's just like I am down for some bullshit. And the cat in this movie. He gets snatched up off of the pavement by what looks like a mafia goon and turns out to also be a mafia goon

Quincy 8:59

Yes

Ryan 8:59

And we get also we get a bunch of like shameless pops up at the at the top of the movie. For other Stephen King properties.

Quincy 9:07

Yes, there is a Cujo ass St. Bernard running around. There's Christine the automobile because it has a bumper sticker that says I am Christine.

Ryan 9:19

It's It's incredible. By the way that like this the actual car from Christine it says in full Watch out for me. linebreak I am pure evil capital P capital E. I am red font. Christine.

Quincy 9:32

all caps, red font all caps. Christine. White period.

Ryan 9:37

This is the car Christine cutting her own promo like this is just good branding is like, you know, wait, who is this car? Let me tell you, watch out for me. I am pure evil. I am Christine. And so we get

Quincy 9:50

Can we talk about the director's cut of Christine where this bumper sticker is actually on Christine and the kid's like I don't think I want to buy this and the car salesman's like, Ah, don't worry about that and he like tries to rub it off with his sleeve

Ryan 10:08

After the events of Christine, they notice Wait a minute, look at this bumper sticker. It was there the whole time. We should have looked at that first. Now Alright, so the cat gets scooped up by a mafia Capo and we don't see him again for a bit. We are introduced to the first segment of this which is called Quitters Incorporated. And it revolves around So James Woods now. I hate that I get excited when James Woods shows up in things because he's the worst man in the world.

Quincy 10:39

Wait a minute. Like. He's a shoot bad person?

Ryan 10:44

Oh, do you not know about James Woods?

Quincy 10:46

I I'm upset. I'm learning about it right now.

Ryan 10:50

Oh my sweet Quincy. He on Twitter. He is the archest of maga chuds. Like he is the maga chud like he's, it's bad. And also there's stuff about how he like was cruising on teen girls back in the like back in the day and just like him being a creep. He is apparently just like just irredeemably maga in a way that's like it taints the experience of watching James Woods in movies. I'm so sorry to make you aware of James Woods' extracurricular activities outside of horror movies.

Quincy 11:25

Well, it makes me feel better that I purchased this on VHS for $1 at my local record store

Ryan 11:33

Oh shit yeah

Quincy 11:33

Because James Woods is not getting a residual check from that

Ryan 11:37

You know what it is? I feel like I imprinted on James Woods when I was a kid because of repeat watchings of Disney's Hercules.

Quincy 11:45

That that'll do it to you

Ryan 11:46

Like his performance as Hades. It's really good. It's such a shame that he recorded a Videodrome did nothing did Disney's Hercules and then died like you wonder what could have been if he lived after that. So James Woods is a shit. But so he is a smoker and a smoker's smoker. You know what I mean? Like he is just never not smoking.

Quincy 12:08

Just lighting cigarette off the end of another cigarette, constantly.

Ryan 12:13

Yeah. And he shows up to this office called quitters. Quitters, Inc. and the waiting room is like it's a problem like it's Bedlam. There's people yelling at each other there's spouses fighting, people look like they've been electrocuted, because they've been electrocuted. And he at this point is like, Oh, hey, I don't think I Oh, it's James Woods. I don't know if I want to be in this office. And he starts like going to walk away and then the largest mafioso in the world stops him and is like

Quincy 12:43

Oh, come on in. It's your turn. Or whatever he says

Ryan 12:47

Right. And so we get so Quincy what is the basic premise of this company?

Quincy 12:55

This company figured out that they could torture people to make them quit smoking.

Ryan 13:05

Yeah, yeah. And the way that they

Quincy 13:06

But basically it was their founder had lung cancer and died and they realize you know, he was very persuasive man because he was a mobster. Let's just use that to cure the world of smoking.

Ryan 13:20

Yeah, like they're like using mafia tactics because and now Honestly though, I love that this is the thing is like well our mafia boss died so we decided to harass people into non smoking because it was lung cancer and the now here's the thing when I I've thought about Quitters Inc. a lot in my life because of how hard it was for me to quit smoking and I'm two and a half years nonsmoker which is both exciting and also I'm like boy as an as an asthmatic from childhood probably wasn't a great idea to start smoking in retrospect. So and the the idea that Quitters Inc operates on which I genuinely think is pretty clever is like, Alright, once you're in the program, there is no backing out. You cannot cancel We are the mafia will fucking kill you. And the way that the guy describes it to James Woods' character is we will be watching you. It may be we watch you for two hours, one day a week. It might be we're watching you 24 seven, we might watch you for a week, a year from now and then nothing else. And the way that he says it is you may see some of us some of the time you will never see all of us all of the time. And the idea is like Okay, so we're gonna watch you and make sure you don't quit some and make sure that you don't smoke on the first infraction if we see you smoking, we will abduct your spouse and electrocute them. On the second one, we do worse things and it ramps up and up and up and up until it's like on the sixth one. We if all of these other deterrents about Like chopping off your loved ones' limbs, and doing all manner of horrors to them if after that you can't do it, we will kill you because we will have failed.

Quincy 15:10

Yeah, it's wild. And then they're like to show you we mean business. Here's the cat that ties this movie together being electrocuted.

Ryan 15:20

Yeah, they put the cat in the room and they put on like sort of 50s Rock and Roll while they're just like, it's like

Quincy 15:25

What the fuck is up with that. They're like it's conditioning. But I don't understand why that needs to be part of this scene.

Ryan 15:35

It's it's like a room that it's like not even electrocuting people directly. It's just like, the floor is electricity.

Quincy 15:43

Yeah, the floor is lava. And you have to skip around the floor or you'll get fried.

Ryan 15:49

Yeah. And they abducted a cat specifically to prove this point to this specific person, which I feel is like, pretty specific.

Quincy 15:57

Yeah. They're like, we're, we're committed to this.

Ryan 16:02

Yeah. Now, James Woods, and I hate to say this, is great in this movie.

Quincy 16:07

Yeah, he really is. Because he plays a harried man very well.

Ryan 16:16

Yeah, he's just so nervy. And just like, now that it's, I think the best illustration of nicotine withdrawal I've ever seen is James Woods, just like snapping at his wife. And, you know, and he's like, trying to maintain and trying to be nice, but ultimately, like your body is giving up a chemical that it's become dependent on and your nervous system is shot. He does a really good job portraying a guy trying to quit smoking.

Quincy 16:44

And also, there's this really fascinating moment where he's like, I quit smoking, and his wife's like, you did that for me? You're so romantic. I love you so much. And he's got the this look like Yeah, but you don't know what they're gonna do to you. When I don't stick to it.

Ryan 17:01

Yeah, like I technically quit smoking for you, in that if I smoke, you'll get electrocuted.

Quincy 17:07

But what's wild is even when they electrocute his wife for the first time, instead of slapping him and beating him up like the other wife we see in the waiting room earlier in the film. She's like, come near you big goon. I love you. We'll get through this together. thing it's which is what? I don't get it.

Ryan 17:31

That's insane. If I get electrocuted in the mafia closet, because my partner took on this contract. We're getting a goddamn divorce. Like that's you don't do that.

Quincy 17:44

What am I supposed to take away from that? Is this yet again? Stephen King not knowing how to write women. Same author who wrote It and the infamous sewer sex scene?

Ryan 17:59

Yeah the sewer, the sewer gang thing? You think that guy might not be up on his gender politics? Maybe a little bit?

Quincy 18:05

Yeah.

Ryan 18:06

Yeah. Well, well, and so we, you know, we get sort of these bits of like, there's like a mob goon jogging around in front of his name is Dick. Which, sure. And there's like, you know, he walks out in the morning. Now, we get a bit where there's like somebody that we know is in his coat closet watching him while he's about to start smoking. And as he's about to light up, he hears a noise and then is like, Hey, I didn't smoke so you can tell your boss I didn't smoke, so you don't need to electrocute my wife. Gabagool. And so we never find out if the guy is actually in the closet, but it's pretty obvious that he is. A thing that I appreciate is that this movie has the strength of its convictions to use. I'll Be Watching You by the Police. Diegeticly.

Quincy 18:51

Yes. It's so good. Also, the way that we see him break down and actually smoke. The he's stuck in traffic. He's stressed. He's like, no one can see me. I'm gonna bend down into my car and smoke. Because no one is inside my car. I was waiting for a guy to sit up from the backseat.

Ryan 19:19

The glovebox box pops open and Vinny two-nostrils come Hey, I saw you smoking that cigarette. We're gonna kill your wife. Just from the trunk? I fucking smell it dude, you can't beat the premise forever. Oh, fuck yeah, we get this really great, like, cartoon dream sequence. He's at this party. And like, it's like when a cartoon is on a deserted island and everyone's head is like a turkey leg or whatever. Where...