Episode 158 - Body Parts: LIVE!

[JulyDiaz 2797]

HDTGM All-stars Gillian Jacobs and Claudia O’Doherty of Netflix’s Love join Paul and Jason to discuss the 1991 horror thriller film Body Parts. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they cover everything from the quiet to loud serious acting to the handcuff car chase to turtlenecks. Plus, everyone shares their thoughts on adults wearing pajamas.

 

 

 

Where to Find Jason, June & Paul:

 

Paul’s new comedy Drive Share is available on Go90. You can see June and Paul on NTSF:SD:SUV:: on HULU. June stars in Grace and Frankie on Netflix, as well as Lady Dynamite alongside with Jason.

[NundercoverBrother 174]

me waiting on itunes. (early flight in the AM)

[joel_rosenbaum 1269]

HDTGM All-stars Gillian Jacobs and Claudia O’Doherty

I thought the title applies to guests who have been on previously? Maybe I missed an episode.

[IMAHUGEHDTGMFAN 1837]

My dream come true would be Claudia O'Doherty, because she is just amazing.

 

You got your wish!!!

[deadboy 8]

The movie Gillian was talking about regarding the necrophilia was "Don't Let Me Die On A Sunday"

 

From IMDB

 

Ben works in a morgue. Ben's wife left him and he is into various kinds of alternative sexuality. Teresa dies of an ecstasy overdose on the dance floor. When she is brought to the morgue, she is resurrected -how shall I say?- in Ben's arms (that part based on a true story). From this starting point, the film revolves around the interactions between them and Boris (orgy fan), Abdel (no sentimental life), Ducon (wants to kill himself), Nico (dying of AIDS), etc... A social study of the 90s with heavy references to sex and death

.

[RyanSz 3140]

Haven't listened to the episode yet but I needed to ask this question while it was still fresh in my head.

 

Question

 

Why does the killer and his mom not just transport his brain into a new body? By having the same face and body parts it can easily be determined that he is not dead, rather than if he was in a new body thus making it harder to determine what he was doing? At the least, he should not want his arms back since his fingerprints are on file with any legal database along with the tattoo that they apparently mark all death row inmates like a war camp prisoner.

 

Correction/Omition

 

I had to laugh a bit at the scenes in the prison hospital that showed every guard walking around carrying a shotgun. In no way would this happen as at any time an inmate could grab one of those and use it against civilians. Even when an inmate is transferred to a hospital for a medical need, they are transported by two guards, only one of which is armed with a rifle, and the tail car only has a couple guards that only carry a small number of weapons in case of an attempted escape/jailbreak.

[IMAHUGEHDTGMFAN 1837]

Haven't listened to the episode yet but I needed to ask this question while it was still fresh in my head.

 

Question

 

Why does the killer and his mom not just transport his brain into a new body?

 

I saw Body Parts twice and now both you and somebody in the ep. said that Dr. Webb is Charlies mother... Did I fell asleep as well??? What happens in the movie that made you go... "Oh thats his mom"???

[RyanSz 3140]

 

I saw Body Parts twice and now both you and somebody in the ep. said that Dr. Webb is Charlies mother... Did I fell asleep as well??? What happens in the movie that made you go... "Oh thats his mom"???

I gleamed over it as well but when reading the summary on wikipedia to get answers to some of my questions, it said she was his mother who was doing the surgeries to have him avoid the electric chair.

[Cakebug Tranch 6873]

I thought the title applies to guests who have been on previously? Maybe I missed an episode.

That is usually the case, but they use HDTGM All-Stars mostly to designate replacement hosts, for whenever June or Jason are missing, which distinguishes them from regular guests. I would guess that Gillian is there to replace June this week, and Claudia is the guest, but they've been lumped together for promo purposes.

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

a few things:

 

is jeff fahey's character immune to anesthetics or something because he was awake during the initial operation and then he woke up again when they were trying to take off his arm.

 

there is no way the doctor is Fletcher's mother. according to his rap sheet he was born in 1950 .. this make's him 41 in this movie .. how old do they think Dr. Webb is?

 

 

and gillian's reading and viewing habits are fascinating

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

and this is my favourite part ... i love how the torso is still breathing

 

 

and is that a urine bag hanging of it??? there's no blood coming out of the massive wounds but better put a bag there incase it needs to take a leak .... i wish the the hand started to try and grab the gun or the feet tried to kick through the glass

[IMAHUGEHDTGMFAN 1837]

#1SeasonOnly40Eps

 

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

#1SeasonOnly40Eps

 

WTF IS THIS????

 

and where are the teenagers?

 

edit: just watched some of it on youtube ... i get it now. this is the after shot ... but how have i never heard of this before???

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

there is no way the doctor is Fletcher's mother. according to his rap sheet he was born in 1950 .. this make's him 41 in this movie .. how old do they think Dr. Webb is?

 

 

1950 is the same year that Lindsay Duncan, who plays Dr. Webb, was born!

 

John Walsh, who plays Fletcher, was born in 1949.

[dickhoff3 81]

Adding to Gillian's point about his Turtlenecks, she's absolutely correct that their use tells a story. When I noticed the prevalence of these sweaters, my first thought was, "why would you cover up that body?" We've all seen Lawnmower Man and it's clear that the man is cut, so why keep a hunk like Fahey dressed in such thick sweaters? Now it could just be that this movie is clearly set during the winter months, we do see a bit of snow in the background, and such sweaters would have been fashionable at the time. But I think it's all about the symbolism. In the accident scene, when Fahey is driving to work, he's wearing a particularly thick white turtleneck. White symbolizes purity, innocence, wholeness and completion. So pre-accident and pre-surgery, Fahey is part of a complete body, one that is innocent and not yet corrupted by the arm of an evil serial killer.

 

In the middle of the film he seems to fluctuate a few times between black and white turtle necks during the scenes he's confronting Remo Lacy and Draper, the 2 other recipients of Charlie Fletcher's evil body parts. In Gothic literature, black represents evil, fear, and death. The back and forth between black and white sweaters illustrates his inner struggle between good vs evil, dark vs light which Fahey battles during the middle part of film as he attempts to hold onto his humanity and pre-accident persona, that of a good person, father, and husband.

 

The final act of the movie features a noticeably dark Fahey in a totally black turtleneck from the bar fight on through the dramatic finish in the hospital where he harnesses his inner darkness for a final showdown with Charlie Fletcher and Dr. Webb. Fahey has been spiraling into darkness throughout the movie and he himself thinks he's lost this inner battle when he writes what appears to be a rather abrupt and out of place apology and farewell letter to his wife after he steals the cop car. However our hero prevails in the end by killing Fletcher and re-claiming the arm for himself. The use of turtlenecks specifically, and the cover up of his neck, I think symbolizes detachment from one's body. His head, or his morality and conscious, float above a body that he doesn't have complete control of and fluctuates between good and evil. It's like a classic Jekyll and Hyde tale with the fashion sense of a 1980's ski movie.

 

Finally at the very end, we see him back with his family, in a light blue shirt, neck exposed bringing a finality to the struggle, showing that his head is firmly attached to his body and they're acting as one; Fahey has reclaimed his body for himself, and becomes the man he once was. Besides the fact that this movie was really awful, made little sense, and was at times unwatchable; there's some brilliant turtleneck symbolism in there.

[Cakebug Tranch 6873]

^ While a great set of observations, this was covered fairly explicitly (almost word-for-word by Gillian in the colour symbolism section) in the early part of today's episode, no?

[Jack Frost 252]

There is another movie, or rather a section of a movie, with this exact same plot. In John Carpenter's Body Bags, the first segment is called Eye and it stars Mark Hamill as a guy who gets in a car accident and loses an eye. His eye is then replaced with that of a serial killer, causing him to have evil, murderous visions and urges. This movie came out in 1993. I obviously can't say if Body Parts was any influence or not, but it is as interesting connection.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

and this is my favourite part ... i love how the torso is still breathing

 

 

and is that a urine bag hanging of it??? there's no blood coming out of the massive wounds but better put a bag there incase it needs to take a leak .... i wish the the hand started to try and grab the gun or the feet tried to kick through the glass

 

Those below-the-neck body parts being more proactive would also justify why Fahey expends all the shotgun ammo on them. All the time he keeps blasting away at them over and over with the shotgun while they're just hanging around, I wonder why he doesn't send just one shotgun shell straight into the killer's head at point-blank range and blow it to smithereens.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

There is another movie, or rather a section of a movie, with this exact same plot. In John Carpenter's Body Bags, the first segment is called Eye and it stars Mark Hamill as a guy who gets in a car accident and loses an eye. His eye is then replaced with that of a serial killer, causing him to have evil, murderous visions and urges. This movie came out in 1993. I obviously can't say if Body Parts was any influence or not, but it is as interesting connection.

 

That's far from the first. The "killer's transplanted body part" plot, with the body part even specifically being a hand, goes all the way back to the 1924 silent movie The Hands of Orlac:

Concert pianist Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt) loses his hands in a horrible railway accident. His wife Yvonne (Alexandra Sorina) pleads with a surgeon to try and save Orlac’s hands. The surgeon transplants the hands of a recently executed murderer named Vasseur. When Orlac learns this, horror obsesses him. He is tortured by the presence of a knife he finds at his house, just like that used by Vasseur, and the desire to kill. He believes that along with the hands he has acquired the murderer's predisposition to violence. He confronts the surgeon, telling him to remove the hands, but the surgeon tries to convince him that a person’s acts are not governed by hands, but by the head and heart.

[Smigg 1488]

#1SeasonOnly40Eps

 

 

Is this a porno? Because it kinda feels like a porno.

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

 

That's the same year Lindsay Duncan, who plays Dr. Webb, was born!

apparantley that's chuck schumer's birthday ... chuck!!!

[jnoodlervoss 9]

Charlie looked too much like the basketball leg guy when he was first revealed in the car.

I saw Charlie driving the car, thought it was the basketball kid (even though we saw him dead) and thought "OK, the Basketball Kid saw how much stronger, faster the legs made him and started collecting the other parts to make himself entirely better."

The movie suddenly got better with this plot twist. Then, realizing that this was a character we were supposed to recognize after Fahey lets us know it's Charlie, I was disappointed. I think they missed an opportunity. That's all, I would have been more invested if the basketball kid was the final antagonist because we would have been introduced to.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

The use of turtlenecks specifically, and the cover up of his neck, I think symbolizes detachment from one's body. His head, or his morality and conscious, float above a body that he doesn't have complete control of and fluctuates between good and evil. It's like a classic Jekyll and Hyde tale with the fashion sense of a 1980's ski movie.

 

Wouldn't the ultimate item of clothing symbolic of mind-body separation be the sort of tie/collar/neckband thing that most Hanna-Barbera characters had, so that the head and body could literally be animated (as in both "moved" and "brought to life") separately?

 

[FisterRoboto 7499]

 

You got your wish!!!

 

Awwww yisssssssss

 

[ChunkStyle 1160]

I am fully on team she is not the mother. Is that whole idea based entirely on her putting her jacket over Charlie while he is on his knees holding all the limbs? Isn't that just supposed to be her as a Dr. Frankenstein looking with pity at her creation?

 

But to hell with all that. I am here to talk about Detective Hat (actual character name Detective Sawchuck which is awesome.) In the handcuff car scene when Charlie slaps on the cuffs and then speeds away Detective Hat responds INSTANTANEOUSLY. If any mere mortal had been driving Charlie would have been long down the road with the arm. He doesn't belong in this movie he should be in the Fast and Furious franchise.