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ANDY DALY joins The Boys to help finish the Earwolf cookbook.

sean was being a big ol silly this ep and it was fun to hear him have fun its hard to go far wrong when you got ol andy daly around. 5 stars

I agree with all of this. The original Wicker Man is one of the great English language horror films, full stop, and it is interesting to me as a Canadian who grew up with a lot of UK media on TV to read a bunch of Americans reacting to it for the first time. I think a large part of what makes the original so horrifying is because it could be a true story. There is nothing about it I can recall that is not plausible, even for the time it was made. There is no real supernatural activity or reason to think that the sacrifice and the rituals actually do anything - it's just faith, but in an "old religion" whose pagan imagery are still all over the UK. The songs are probably all actual old pagan songs, or adapted from similar ones. Part of Woodward's horror, the more he learns about the village, is the realization that his faith is not enough in a world where no one cares about it or takes it for granted as the truth. Maybe one day we'll see a remake where a heroic Scientologist (I assume played by Tom Cruise, surviving on the "donated" organs of lesser members) visits a small town where everyone is still Baptist, and they nail him to a cross to try to bring their saviour back. For those who enjoyed it and want more but in different media, I highly recommend the XTC album Apple Venus and its companion piece, Wasp Star, but especially Apple Venus. I also highly recommend a two-issue story from the early days of the DC/Vertigo title Hellblazer, issues 25 and 26, in which John Constantine visits a northern town with much the same issues. Lovely art by V for Vendetta's David Lloyd, and one of the creepiest stories I can remember in comics.

soup's on

^ my experience with trying to embiggen this image: "COMPUTER ENHANCE!" (clicked the image) (Image is now the same size, but now centered on a black screen) "COMPUTER ENHANCE FURTHER!" (clicked that image) (Image is now the same size, but in the top left corner and on a white screen) "Excellent." "Now can I see a hat wobble? And a flargunnstow?"

Yes! That was one of my bits of foreshadowing I caught based on my knowledge of the Nic Cage version. I was like, “Oh, he’s so going to be the fool...” I also like how the movie subverted the whole “virgin sacrifice” trope. It annoys me so much when movies just ignore male virgins. My favorite example of this is when two eleven year old boys lament “Where are we going to find a virgin?” in Monster Squad. I’m like, “Hey fellas, take a look in the mirror...” I watched the version on iTunes. It says it’s 1:42 (102 minutes), and as far as I could tell, it was chronological.

I listened to this episode on my run and had to stop because I was laughing so hard at the clown honk bit. Oh man. Love Tig and Conan!

Still chuckling over the Nikkis, they were a riot. Hope they come back sometime

The Wicker Man is one of my all time favourite horror films. To me what makes a good horror film a great one is not the amount of death or kills or gore or even how many scares if gives you. A great horror film is one that creates an atmosphere. One that doesn't need to rely on cheap shock or gore to get you to feel uncomfortable or uneasy. The best way to do that is create characters that you are interested in and have something to say. We've been blessed in the last few years to have films like The VVitch, Susperia, Hereditary, etc. that get this concept. So expanding upon this the whole religious angle and the question of one's faith and beliefs is so integral to what makes Sgt. Howie and the story work, that the Nic Cage version always confused me a little. The bedroom scene and the other odd scenes are earned because we know who the character is. We get the bigger picture and higher concepts. We understand the crisis of faith or beliefs being tested. This things push the character and therefore us with them. Just being odd or having unearned weirdness is what separates a good film from a HDTGM film. That said this time rewatching it I really focused on the music and like was said it is hard to imagine the film without it. It is such a part of the film and creating a tone and atmosphere even more so than I realized.

I have to admit, I’m kind of sad they’re doing away with the Zocchihedron. I get why they’re doing it, but I really enjoyed the randomness of the picks. It also means that we probably won’t get Star Wars out of the way until Rise of Skywalker - which bums me out. I love Star Wars, but I am sick to death of talking about Star Wars - for good or ill. I was really hoping to get it out of the way sooner rather than later. Oh well...

Me too. It opens the doors for Musical Mondays to be interpreted more broadly while still allowing for straight Musicals if that's what people want to choose.

we've kind of being doing that since around the time someone choose Baby Driver. I mean off and on I'm actually all for this

We could maybe also like do slow morphs! Like this one is definitely headed in the direction of maybe not considered musicals but music plays a heavy part, so we could like focus on that too! Clueless, Pulp Fiction, Garden State, Drive, etc!

I still love the spirit of Musical Monday but maybe we could figure out how to combine the two?

This has nothing to do with anything in this episode, but I saw “Shazam” last night and in the convenience store robbery scene there is a F’real milkshake machine. I’d never seen one (I live in NYC and we have bodegas not gas station milkshakes) so I got excited because Nicole Byer talked about them in the Meg episode and I really wanted Shazam to get a milkshake.

All I can remember is how flat all the humor fell. This was everyone's "fuck you, I'm off to better things!" movie. Duchovny leaving X-files for movies. Orlando Jones leaving MAD Tv for movies (what the hell happened to him?). Stifler's attempt to be someone other than Stifler. We all know how that worked out. It's like that old proverb: Everything that made David Duchovny great in the X-Files made him terrible in everything else.