Pet Sematary (1989)

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

 

Chris: Funny, though.

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

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

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

Chris: Maybe I should have.

Jordan: No.

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

Jordan: It's an old movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris: He is going to be in the.

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

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

Jordan: This is so fucking ridiculous.

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

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

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

Jordan: I don't know.

Chris: There's some security.

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

Chris: Maybe it was Chucky.

Jordan: Chucky's cocaine for sure.

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

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

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

Jordan: You're not spoiling much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan: If you want to pay for Peacock.

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

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

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

Jordan: Film.

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

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

Chris: Such a horse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris: Well, definitely going to see Taylor Swift.

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

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

Jordan: Of a Thousand Corpses doing that as well.

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

Jordan: All right.

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

Jordan: Frank Gwynn.

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

Jordan: I hope I'm saying that right.

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

Jordan: Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah.

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

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

Chris: Remember it probably did better than the original.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan: God, man.

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

Jordan: Jesus Christ.

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

Jordan: Just copy one of them.

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan: Yeah.

Chris: Did they say it in the movie?

Jordan: Yeah, they do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan: Not sure.

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

Jordan: And Rachel is not fucking happy about it.

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

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

Chris: Shit bitch to him.

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

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

Jordan: Just judd.

Chris: That's just JuD.

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

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

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

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

Jordan: That's a couple spots.

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan: I did not.

Chris: Yeah, he has his scrubs so long.

Jordan: Hours at the university.

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

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

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

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

Chris: Just too sexy in the moonlight.

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

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

Jordan: We got to leave.

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

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

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

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

Chris: Yeah, that's what I would.

Jordan: Not only did I have this fucking.

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

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

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

Jordan: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Chris: Oh, I remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan: He does.

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

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

Chris: What is the face?

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

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

Jordan: He does.

Chris: And I was like, Dude, Fred.

Jordan: Gwen's a big dude.

Chris: He is a big dude.

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

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

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

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

Jordan: Not. In the movie.

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

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

Chris: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris: That's so gross.

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

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

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

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

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

Chris: Why does the cat eyes glow randomly?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan: To say the second scariest part for.

Chris: Me when I was a kid.

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

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

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

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

Jordan: Yeah.

Chris: So they casted a grown man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jordan: This is the scariest scene for me.

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

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

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

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

Chris: Yes.

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

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

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

Chris: Yeah, man. This is a fucked up part of the movie. I could watch this movie the rest of my life and just edit just that part out of it. I already know what happens. Don't need to see it again. But yeah, this fucked up part of this movie. So then we see scenes of Lewis, Rachel, and Ellie trying to kind of deal with the death of Gage. And they have