Ryan: When you are alone at night, you will sometimes feel the cold stare of someone or something burning into the back or your head. When you sail out onto the ocean, you will sometimes lean over the side of your boat and see a massive, dark shape just below the ragged waves. When you are at home in the grip of a loved one, they will sometimes reveal a disturbing truth hidden beneath their seemingly normal surface. These are the moments of true horror and though they are awful, they are also exciting, in a way that safe, cozy life never could be. The great horror and thriller creations of this world seek ways to duplicate the feelings of these moments in books and games and movies and theater. Why can't we get enough of monsters, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night? We'll unearth the answer from its grizzly tomb tonight on Geek Stew!

SFX: * Horror movie music plays. *

Ryan: Let me introduce to you my fiendish co-hosts, Justine and-

Justine: What's up?

Ryan: ... Matthew.

Matthew: Fiendish-

Justine: What's up?

Matthew: ... you say.

Ryan: Yes. I'm gonna stop doing the voice now though.

Justine: Sounds painful.

Matthew: I do run a mean zombie deck.

Ryan: Save that for next show. Today we are going to talk about horror, scary things, a little bit about Halloween too, a beloved hallow day.

Matthew: We are definitely recording this on October 31st!

Ryan: Yes. We're all together on Halloween night, talking in front of candles, another-

Matthew: Look!

Justine: Got the Ouija board.

Matthew: Look, small children are outside, dressed up in costumes!

Justine: Wow.

Ryan: There's also a few in that giant sack you brought in. I meant to ask you what that was about.

Matthew: Ryan, you don't ask questions about my black magic rituals, I don't ask about your weird love of Godzilla.

Justine: Yeah. Mind your own business.

Ryan: As if those were comparable. Actually, they are. I feel like something that would be great to talk about today is the first movie, video game, book, or TV show, I think it would be a little long to talk about them all, but pick one, pick a really good one that scared you as a child and then as an adult.

Justine: I think the first thing, my first I guess steps into horror, were those scary books. I think they were written in the '70s or something? They're called Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark.

Matthew: Yep, I remember those.

Justine: I think there's three of them. Those were freaking frightening when I was a kid. They were in my school library. That's how I stumbled across them. I'm trying to think of one particular story. I remember a story about a scarecrow that comes to live and skins all of the entire family, skins them alive and puts the skins out into the sun to dry and he wears them. It's stuff like that.

Ryan: That's the one I remember.

Matthew: It's so weird in hindsight to think, I remember at a friend's birthday party they read from that book, and I'm like, "We were in 4th grade."

Justine: It's weird that it's for kids. The books are marketed for kids.

Ryan: Absolutely. Actually, I know a little bit about these. They were published, I believe the first one was the early '80s and the third one was the early '90s, but they were republished a lot, and they still are, although they changed the illustrations, which I think is a huge mistake, because that was-

Matthew: I love-

Ryan: ... half of the appeal.

Justine: The originals were scary enough.

Matthew: The sketchy pencil-like drawings that they did, I think that was it. Yeah, those were good.

Ryan: Yeah. It was a mix of real folk tales and stuff he had made up and modern urban legends. It was all of those things.

Matthew: I have mine.

Justine: There's an audio book version. Sorry. I just got really excited.

Ryan: No, that's all right. That is interesting.

Justine: I'm definitely gonna download that.

Ryan: That sounds legit.

Matthew: For childhood for me, I remember when I was young I used to love, love, love, love watching Fantasia, but for whatever reason, I would watch it in chunks, so I never, ever sat through the whole thing. I would just catch bits and pieces at

my grandma's house or at my parents' house. One day I finally made it to the end, and I got to the Night on Bald Mountain segment and just straight up Disney not pulling any punches, holding back. To this day that segment still freaks me out. As a kid, that was fucking terrifying.

Ryan: Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Matthew: I think something I do appreciate about how well, it's also something I think holds up really well, I re-watched Fantasia with a close friend of ours, Robert, and there's a scene in that sequence where I'm just gonna call him Satan, because in the original movie he was called Satan, but the big, black devil guy, there's a sequence where he picks up two of his minions and then just throws them down into this bottomless, fiery pit. I remember Rob seeing that and literally screaming and noping off the couch.

Ryan: For me, the big one, the one I always remember, fucking me up for days, is one morning I came downstairs, and my dad was watching a movie. He turned it off, because it was something I couldn't watch. He didn't turn it off. He changed the channel to, I don't know, Cartoon Network or something. I was like, "What were you watching?" He was like, "It's really scary. You can't watch it." A couple minutes later he was like, "I'm gonna go use the computer," which is in a different room. I get that feeling as a kid, like, "I wonder what that was," not really taking your parents' work for it that you shouldn't look at it. I turned the volume way down, and I hit the previous channel button, and on comes the very ending of The Fly.

Matthew: Woo!

Justine: Oh no.

Matthew: Woo!

Ryan: The very, very ending. As I turned it on, it basically immediately is the part where she accidentally pulls his jaw off and then his whole face falls apart and he undergoes the final disintegration into Brundlefly, and I'm dying on the couch.

Justine: Wonderful.

Ryan: I can't turn it off. My dad's like, "Did you turn it back to the movie without leaving the room?" I'm like, "No." I think he could tell, because he came in a few moments later. Fortunately, I didn't have to watch poor Veronica killing him, blowing his head off, but the disintegration was bad enough I feel like.

Matthew: God, that's-

Ryan: That is burned into my brain. Now I love that movie, but how horrified I was to see it, how disgusted, and how many nights I had nightmares about it, I remember that do distinctly.

Justine: I did that with Chuckie. I begged and begged and begged my parents. Both me and my brother tag-teamed my parents and begged them to let us watch Chuckie because we thought it would be funny or something. The fact that they just were hesitant made it even more exciting. That was a big mistake. I had

nightmares about dolls for a long time. I was afraid of my own dolls after that point, so I got rid of all humanoid dolls-

Matthew: Wow.

Justine: ... from my bedroom. I was only going to have Pokemon-

Matthew: Wow.

Justine: ... and Beanie Babies, and that was it. I still to this date hate baby dolls or any dolls that look like humans and have faces. They have to be-

Matthew: Wow.

Justine: ... dogs or cats.

Matthew: Wow. It's funny, because I never really had moments like that as a kid, because I was such a huge coward, where if I even saw the case or the title of some of these movies, I would just nope on out of there.

Justine: Let's see. I think the first movie ... Because of my experiences as a kid, I did the same thing, I swore myself off of horror movies. I just told myself, "You know what? This causes you to lose sleep for about three weeks. It's not worth it. Never gonna do it again."

Justine: I went a long time without watching any horror movies, and then finally, one of my first boyfriends, I was really into him, so he suggested that we watch The Ring alone at his house. He had a huge house, which made it worse, because it was a big house surrounded by forest. We turned off all the lights. We went to his living room and turned on his big TV and we watched The Ring in high-def. I did not sleep for about a month. I would surround my bed with animals. I would make sure my dog was with me whenever I went to the bathroom.

Justine: The funny thing is that I actually really liked the movie. I think The Ring, the original is really well done. I wanted to keep watching it, because I wanted to know what happened at the end. The plot was really engaging. I don't know why.

Justine: I watched it recently again with some people who have never seen it before. That was good. I'm glad I watched it again, because I got to appreciate it, since I already knew what happened. It still freaked me out, but I got to appreciate the movie-making, the techniques that they used.

Justine: They always did this thing where unexpectedly during a slow moment of the film, they would flash a really terrifying image for three maybe frames or something. It was this really subliminal thing where you would just see this thing for half a second and it would fucking scare the shit out of me. It would be accompanied by a really crazy sound cue, high-pitched, screeching sound cue. It would happen in the middle of a conversation. The characters are just having a conversation about, "What do we do?" blah blah blah. Then all of a sudden, "Boo!" It scared the shit out of me. I really appreciate that.

Matthew: Let me see. Time I was scared-

Ryan: Also, as a throwback, it was better to watch The Ring together than Showgirls, am I right?

Matthew: Don't. See, now you're gonna make me go over there. You're gonna make me go over to where you are on the couch and make you watch that movie again, just to torment you.

Ryan: Don't you dare.

Matthew: For me, recent thing I saw that actually scared me as an adult, one of my favorite anime series of all time is Neon Genesis Evangelion. I've been trying to get Ryan to watch it forever. It's this really great, really landmark giant robot show. The series itself didn't really have a true, official ending. I think a year or two later, they actually came out with a full-length feature film that was meant to bring closure and bring a full-budgeted ending to the series. Mind you, Evangelion is supposed to be a giant robot, sci-fi, a lot of psychological elements, but not full-on horror. Watching End of Evangelion had me fucked up for an entire night.

Justine: How come though? Was it a psychological thriller?

Matthew: It's a combination of you have very, very raw, very unpleasant, but very realistic moments of people in psychological torment or suffering, and then the second piece is a lot of the imagery and visuals in that film are gorgeous and well-done, but absolutely messed-up, fucked-up, terrifying. That was definitely something where I see stuff and I get thrilled or I get excited, but watching that just left me legitimately scared and like, "I need to go outside and get a breath of fresh air, because I'm all messed up."

Ryan: That's just about all you can say about that.

Justine: It's interesting, because you're saying it's an anime, right?

Matthew: Yeah.

Justine: I think it's interesting that you picked an anime, because I personally found it difficult to be scared of ... I've never watched an animated piece that has wrecked me for weeks. I think one of the reasons why The Ring messed with me is not only because it was live-action, but also there were a lot of screens in the film. It was about a film that killed people, a video essentially. Because we live in such a digital age and I'm always surrounded by screens, it just makes it even more likely that this kind of thing would happen to me. For me it's only scary if I can imagine it happening to myself.

Ryan: Justine's empathy button is broken.

Matthew: I have a similar thing too, where for me I think the horror comes from not just bad things happening, but bad things happening to people or characters that I've grown to like.

Justine: Yeah, I can imagine. If I cared about anybody, that would be pretty much traumatizing.

Matthew: Cold-blooded!

Ryan: Highlight reel. Highlight reel for the first-year anniversary right there.

Justine: If something happened to you guys, something really grizzly and terrifying happened to you guys and I heard about it in the news or something, I would be slightly more perturbed than if it was a random person.

Ryan: Twist the dagger.

Justine: If that's any consolation.

Ryan: I don't know if it is or not.

Justine: I wouldn't go out and avenge you, because I wouldn't want that happening to me.

Matthew: Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Justine, our Ice Queen of Halloween.

Justine: At least I don't go out killing people. That's a new level.

Ryan: As far as we know.

Justine: I don't. I swear. Girl Scout's honor.

Ryan: I'll take your word for it for now. I'll wrap this up. When I was 14, maybe 15, no, I was 14, I don't know, I had a second renaissance of reading. I was like, "People always talk about how good Stephen King's books are, and I love scary things and monsters, so why not?" I went and I read Carrie and I liked it.

Ryan: Then I hopped on over to The Shining. It is really good, but the problem was that it was too good. I get halfway through the book, I get past the scene where, shoot, what's the kid's name, whatever, the son, Danny, encounters the ghost woman, and then subsequently Jack. I read a little bit further, but it really bothers me, the idea of that scene. I'm on the bus going home, and by the time I get home, even though I'm sitting on this bus with a bunch of other kids on it, I was completely freaked out. I was almost shivering by the time I got home, and it just got worse. It genuinely screwed me up. I developed a habit of having to listen to music in the shower to distract myself from the fact that I didn't know what was around me.

Justine: It's always the shower. It's so terrifying to be in the shower. Probably because you're naked.

Matthew: You're naked, alone, and you're generally defenseless against anyone-

Justine: That's true.

Matthew: ... who comes in.

Ryan: You have to close your eyes a lot to wash your hair, and you can't hear if somebody's coming very well. In particular, in The Shining, this ghost woman, they find her in the bath, so it was a connection too. It was the connection of the bathroom. I remember basically taking showers for a full week and having mini panic attacks the whole time I was in there, even with the music on. It was bad. It started a real fascination. I don't know what it is. Even if a

mediocre story has a ghostly woman, this only partially came from The Shining, but if even a mediocre story has a ghostly woman, it's gonna fascinate me, that character, that monster. It's wrecked me to this day. I've still never finished the book and I still never watch the movie because of that.

Matthew: Shall we play a game?

Ryan: Yes.

Justine: Let's play a game.

Ryan: Do you want to play a game?

Matthew: It's not that deep.

Justine: That's really good.

Matthew: That's pretty good.

Ryan: Thanks.

Matthew: Justine, Ryan-

Justine: What?

Matthew: Today I have a little game called Horror: Fact or Fiction. I have five questions, or not questions. I have five stories of events that may or may not have happened, and you must determine whether or not they are true or if they are the plot of a movie, book, whatever.

Ryan: Lay it on me. Any rules?

Matthew: Not that I know of. Winner gets to know too much about the horrible things that have happened in this world.

Justine: Wonderful.

Matthew: Let's get started. In 1990, a seemingly normal man lures a string of unknowing victims to his apartment, planning to make zombies out of them. Is this fact or fiction?

Ryan: See, my knowledge of horror movies is so encyclopedic that-

Justine: That's not fair.

Ryan: I know, it really isn't. I'm going to assume that whenever I can't think of one, that it probably is real, so I'm going to go fact.

Justine: I guess fact too. It sounds too ridiculous, and I don't know if I'd ever watch a movie like that.

Ryan: That sounds like somebody's delusion.

Matthew: You are both correct. This is a-

Justine: Yay!

Matthew: ... fact. Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer who tried to make sex zombies out of his victims. He was arrested in 1991 and killed in prison in 1994.

Ryan: I did not know that about Dahmer.

Justine: Someone killed him in prison or they actually executed him?

Matthew: Someone killed him in prison as punishment for his gruesome acts. Moving on to our second question, so the score is one to one right now. In 1980, a group of documentarians went to the Amazon and were murdered after they offended the tribe they'd come to film.

Justine: It's a tough one.

Ryan: I'm gonna let Justine go first on a lot of these.

Justine: I'm gonna say this is a movie.

Ryan: Yeah, fiction.

Justine: Wild guess.

Matthew: Seems-

Justine: How about you, Ryan? Wait!

Matthew: Wait, Ryan?

Justine: Ryan needs to guess.

Ryan: No, I did, I said fiction.

Matthew: Yeah, he said fiction. We are all-

Justine: Stop copying me.

Matthew: ... tied up. You are both correct. This is fiction.

Justine: Sweet.

Matthew: This is the plot of Cannibal Holocaust, a film that-

Justine: Oh my god.

Matthew: ... seems so real the directors faced an obscenity trial when authorities believed they'd actually murdered the cast.

Justine: Wow. That's ridiculous, and also offensive.

Matthew: You don't even know, but I digress. Let us move on to our third question. In 2005, police arrested a young vigilante who was believed to be responsible for the death and torture of three pedophiles.

Justine: That sounds real to me.

Ryan: Yeah, I'm gonna go fact, although it does, it also sounds like a movie.

Justine: It does sound like a movie.

Ryan: Almost like Super, the James Gunn movie.

Matthew: Justine, are you going to go fact as well?

Justine: Yeah, I think I'm gonna go fact.

Matthew: You're both wrong! This one's fiction. The film is Hard Candy, in which vigilante Ellen Page goes toe to toe with a man who may or may not be a pedophile.

Justine: Ellen Page? I like her.

Ryan: She's real scary in that movie.

Justine: Dude, gotta watch that one.

Matthew: Moving on to-

Justine: Sorry. Actually in hindsight, that one sounded too satisfying. How could you actually track down three pedophiles that haven't been tracked down by the police yet and then get the opportunity to torture and kill them?

Ryan: There is a sex offender registry. You could see where all of them-

Justine: That's true.

Ryan: ... live.

Justine: That's true.

Ryan: Anybody can look at it.

Justine: There's one in my neighborhood at home. My mom freaking cut it out of the newspaper and put it on the fridge, and so whenever I go home, I have to look at his face. I'm like, "Mom, why do we have this on the fridge?" She's like, "Just in case, to be safe." I always covered his face up with a magnet on the fridge because I got so-

Ryan: Good.

Justine: ... tired of looking at it. It's so creepy.

Ryan: Good.

Justine: Sorry.

Matthew: Are we ready for question number four?

Justine: Sure.

Ryan: Yeah.

Matthew: In 1981, 18 children mysteriously died in their sleep. Health authorities believed it was caused by terrifying nightmares.

Justine: This is definitely a movie.

Ryan: I'm worried this is a trick question, because I actually-

Justine: It's Nightmare on Elm Street. It's gotta be. That was actually a true story. Wait a minute. Trick question, because Nightmare on Elm Street was based on a true story.

Matthew: Is it fact? Is it fiction? Is it fiction?

Justine: Can I say both?

Matthew: Is it fact? No!

Ryan: I would vote urban legend if that was option.

Matthew: You gotta pick one.

Justine: I'm guessing it's a movie.

Ryan: You know what? I'll go for that too. I'll go fiction.

Justine: Stop!

Ryan: This is a tough one.

Justine: Stop it!

Ryan: I already said that I would pick urban legend if I had the choice.

Justine: Fine. I'm gonna go fact, just to spite Ryan.

Matthew: Is that your final answer?

Justine: Yes. I don't care if I'm wrong.

Matthew: Justine, you are right. Ryan, you are wrong.

Justine: Oh my god! It was such a good strategy.

Matthew: The 18 children were Laotian, I think it's Hmong immigrants, whose families had fled the genocide in their home country. The Atlanta Centers for Disease Control believe that the PTSD that children suffered from their nightmares was so intense-

Justine: Wow.

Matthew: ... it caused them to die.

Ryan: Yikes.

Justine: That's the basis of the Nightmare on Elm Street though.

Matthew: That is what inspired John Carpenter to create-

Justine: Oh my god, that is such-

Matthew: Or no, Wes Craven.

Justine: ... a trick question.

Matthew: Wes Craven created the Nightmare on Elm Street.

Ryan: Wrong guy.

Justine: Dude, yeah, that's pretty freaky. He said he saw it in the L.A. newspaper. They kept reporting on it, but they didn't really draw a connection between any of them. He was like, "Wait a minute. We're talking about 18 people. That's a lot of people." There's a pattern.

Ryan: Wow. I am ashamed to have not known that one.

Matthew: I was surprised that you didn't get that one, Ryan, being a Wes Craven fan.

Justine: That's a trick question.

Ryan: I was tricked. Next one.

Matthew: Last, our final question. In 1912 Iowa, a family of eight is murdered by an unknown assailant with an ax. The killer covers the family and every mirror in the house with fabric. Authorities never managed to track down the true killer.

Justine: That's creepy. I don't know.

Ryan: Give me more credit. The first two, I was like, "Man, I'm gonna know all of these," but this one and the last one were tough.

Justine: I don't know, Ryan, you go first, so I can copy you.

Ryan: Fine. It could really be either. If it's not a movie, I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna go fact. I don't know, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling fact.

Justine: I'm gonna go fact too.

Matthew: You are both correct. This is a-

Justine: Wow.

Matthew: ... true story, the Viscilla Axe Murders. Authorities interrogated numerous suspects, including a traveling preacher and the mayor of the town, but could not find the person responsible for the deaths.

Justine: That's creepy.

Matthew: With that, our score is three for Ryan, four for Justine, making Justine, our Horror: Fact or Fiction winner.

Justine: I'm shocked.

Ryan: I'm deeply ashamed.

Justine: I think, Ryan, you should know that if we actually played an actual full-blown trivia game, you would crush me, because-

Ryan: It's all right.

Justine: ... I don't watch enough horror. I'm too scared.

Ryan: I'll get you back, Justine. I'll get you back. I'm gonna give Matt a question six.

Matthew: That's all I have for my game.

Ryan: Good one, bud. Let's dig into it. Let's ask the hard questions about horror.

Matthew: Oh oh, I have one, I have one.

Ryan: Yes, Mr. Charles?

Matthew: I can't tell when exactly this trend started. Maybe the '80s, maybe earlier than that. A lot of people these days tend to associate horror with cheapness, exploitation, being really disposable of factory-made. Why do you think people put horror in this little box? Do you think it could ever possibly be accepted in the future?

Ryan: I love this topic. I am super defensive about the importance of horror, especially in movies, but in everything. One of the biggest things is I think that you guys are of course welcome to debate this, but you're wrong. I have long realized that "thriller" is just the word people use for horror movies that they think are too classy to be horror movies, because horror, despite people's impressions of what it usually is or what it's supposed to be. Really all it's getting at at the root of it is it wants to make your heart pound, it wants to scare you, it wants to freak you out, it wants to make you tense. That's exactly what thrillers do as well. They just tend to be told in different ways about sometimes different subject matter than horror movies.

Justine: I thought the difference between thriller and horror was, for me personally, I have no idea if this is correct, but when I think of thrillers, I think of psychological more than gore. When I think of horror, I think of horrible things happening to people's bodies and dying in terrible ways. I know that might be incorrect.

Ryan: People develop that dichotomy, but it doesn't have to be that way at all, because for me, like I said, horror, is it trying to scare you, is it trying to make you heart pound. It doesn't have to be gory. It doesn't have to be supernatural. Those two things especially, they're gore and supernatural, and those two things mean horror to them. That's the distinction. For me, there is no distinction, or at least it's very thin.

Ryan: One of the greatest things that I ever heard, that's overstating it, the great quote I heard from Boris Karloff was ... He's from the dawn of horror. He played the Frankenstein monster. He was really involved in that early period. It was such a huge mistake. He was so disappointed to see the word "horror" become attached to the kind of movies he made. He thought they should've been called terror movies. I think that that is an important distinction. I wonder if he's right. It probably wouldn't have made a difference, but if we called them terror movies, I feel like that's somehow more appropriate to what they're trying to do. They're not trying to make you revulse or give you a heart attack. They're trying to scare you, which is pure terror.

Justine: There was actually a guy that had a heart attack while watching The Ring. True story.

Ryan: Really?

Justine: It was in the news.

Ryan: Was this an urban legend?

Justine: No, it was in the news. That's why I wanted to go see it.

Matthew: I definitely agree with you, Ryan. I think the stance that I always took on the matter was that with any genre, once people realize, "Oh, these are the things that make this specific genre a thing, so, oh, these are things that make a horror movie a horror movie. You need blood and you need gore and you need this and you need that."

Matthew: I think maybe a lot of the negative reception comes from less skilled artists basically being like, "I want to make a horror movie. Let me use all these tricks in the tool bag. Now I've got a horror movie," whereas a lot of the great horror movies I've seen, or at least the ones I enjoy, are really just more than anything, like you said, stories that put an emphasis on trying to scare you. Yes, Hellraiser has some weird, spooky stuff. Hellraiser is also to me a pretty cool story. Nightmare on Elm Street is a pretty cool story. I think of all these horror movies that I love, that's a thing that really sells them. Maybe people's bad reception just comes from horror in particular for some reason.

Matthew: People can create movies that are labeled horror more easily, so you get a lot more trash, whereas if you were to go through romantic comedies, there are so many great romantic comedies, but there's not enough of them that the garbage just gets swept under the rug.

Justine: There's a lot of trash there.

Ryan: You have a point there, because I feel like in some ways, horror is the last great exploitation genre left alive. All the other ones died, at least in any sort of mainstream value. It's hard to think of these cheap, low-budget ... As you gave a good example, romantic comedies being churned out are cheap, low-budget action movies. They exist, but the only ones people ever try to seek out or associate with it anymore is horror. Even the mainstream ones that get released, stuff like Paranormal Activity or Insidious, those are really, really close to just cheapo exploitation movies in the way they're made, and people associate with them.

Matthew: Or Knock Knock is literally two steps from being an exploitation film.

Justine: It's hard to find good horror movies. Usually what I see over and over again is just jump scares, really cheap jump scares, and not in the way that The Ring did it, where it's subliminal messages being flashed on the screen for a couple frames. It's more like something's gonna come out of that door any second now, and I know it's coming. There's gonna be something in the mirror. It's the same tricks used over and over and over again. That's why people consider it just recycling. I think a lot of snobs turn their nose up at horror films, because as you said, the motivation for a horror film is to get freaked out, to be scared, and so they're like, "You don't go to a horror film for a good story. You don't go to a horror-"

Matthew: You do! You do!

Justine: Yeah, there's so many that you do, like The Ring and Nightmare on Elm Street. You could study these films and learn a lot of tricks to manipulate your audience. I think that horror does a really awesome job of, the good ones anyways, of manipulating and guiding, because you have to have a hold on the audience the whole time. One mistake and you've lost them. One mistake and all of a sudden the entire thing's not funny or not scary anymore.

Ryan: Maybe I'm overstating this because I'm too close to the source, so to speak, but I think it speaks a lot that the most popular movies that are more than 70, 65 years old are like the universal horror movies. I am really hard-pressed, apart from the Wizard of Oz. That's a big exception. Apart from the Wizard of Oz, I am hard-pressed to think of a movie that old that people are still continuing to seek out and the studios still promote and still have as part of their brand.

Matthew: Still defend.

Ryan: Yeah. Those movies really built Universal in particular. You can't say that about every studio. They really played their part in advancing the language of cinematic storytelling. I think that, yeah, the roots go back a long way. The people just really refuse to acknowledge it. I guess it's better than it was, although I don't even know if you can really say that, because I wasn't back there then, but I guess I feel like there's at least a large and growing group of people who really appreciate horror movies and really love to dig into them, and they're starting to affect the mainstream maybe. I hope so.

Matthew: If me and Ryan's pilgrimage to Monsterpalooza, a big con for horror fans, was any indication, I think that's pretty true.

Ryan: As far as will it ever really have its day, I don't know, I guess today at least I'm feeling a little cynical about it, because the more I think about it, the more people's attitudes really hasn't changed that much from the '30s, when the Frankenstein and Invisible Man and all that stuff came out. I don't know, I guess something you said, Justine, is something that I've thought a few times, which is that a lot of people just don't like to be scared, and they have this very off-put, uncomfortable reaction to it, and as a result, they just don't want to give it a chance. They don't want to feel like they're missing out on anything, so it's just easy to dismiss it.

Justine: They act snobby, like they're too good for it, but in actuality, they're just scaredy-cats and they don't want to be-

Matthew: It's too spooky.

Justine: ... found out by all their friends.

Ryan: We've gotten to the bottom of it. What's the Justine Stewart deep thought for today?

Justine: We've been talking a lot about movies and TV shows. I wanted to get into some video games and the more exciting, the new and emerging technology of augmented reality and VR. My question is, we've been seeing more VR, horror VR games. It was one of the first genres that really got a lot of attention, because VR is so immersive that it potentially could take horror to the next level. Also I just wanted to mention escape rooms as well. That's an even newer form of entertainment that has been catching on very-

Matthew: Escape rooms you say. Hmm.

Ryan: I love them.

Justine: Escape rooms have been getting really popular. They've been popping up all over the place in Southern California. I've only done one, and it was a horror-themed one. I just want to know, what horror-themed games, VR games, or escape rooms have you done, and how was it? What do you think about them? What works and what doesn't work?

Ryan: I'll kick it off this time. Obviously we mentioned back there, maybe it gets cut out, but maybe it doesn't, Alien: Isolation, that's one of my favorite scary games. It was done really, really well, to just constantly have you on guard. There's almost no place in that game that you know for a fact is safe, so you have to accept levels of relative safeness, compared to the risk-

Justine: That's cool.

Ryan: ... "Can I run across this room, or is that too risky? Can I afford to shoot this character or do I need to save these bullets? Because I'm not sure I'm going to find some later when I really need them." It's just that experience of trying to survive on a ship with the alien coming after you is as terrifying as you would hope it would be. I know I showed you part of the game, Matt. Did you play it at all, Justine?

Justine: Yeah, I played it briefly. I don't own it.

Ryan: What do you guys think of it?

Matthew: I'm pretty much with you. Aside from wanting to do certain horror games, I definitely want to get the Silent Hill games at some point, I haven't done too many horror games. I liked Alien: Isolation, but I think with games, and I guess with extending to maybe VR and augmented reality, I feel like there's a certain immersion absorption, where I like to have this nice, cushy fourth wall, because Ryan, maybe you've seen this, I don't even like this in life performances or stuff like that, but I like to watch the show and enjoy the

show and freak out to the show from a safe distance. As soon as that distance starts getting broken, then I'm like, "No, no, I'm good. Thanks."

Ryan: I love horror movies, but I'm definitely tiptoe around horror games a little bit more. The other one I really loved was Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Matthew: I do like Amnesia.

Justine: I've seen that. I refuse to play the game. I love watching them play through this on YouTube. It's so entertaining.

Matthew: Something I did realize is maybe as a part of it, and this is maybe a caveat, is I like horror games when they're more atmospheric, so I'm really, really into Silent Hill. I'm really, really into and want to play Corpse Party, which is a horror Japanese adventure game. As opposed to more action-y, stealth, having to actually play the game, usually those I'm more like, "No, Alien: Isolation, you look fun and you're good, but I'm okay. I'm really okay."

Justine: I refuse to play a lot of horror games, just because I do the same thing. It's just I can't concentrate on actually getting through the game. I'm too scared to ... Even Fallout 3 was scary to me. I had to grit my teeth and turn up the volume so I could hear the radio. If the radio cut out at any point in that game, I was like, "Nope, I'm out of here. I'm not doing this level. I need my radio. I need my old-timey music."

Justine: I think one of my favorite games that I've seen is, I've watched all the way through, haven't played it, I know, I'm such a scaredy-cat, it's called Alone, and it's for the Oculus Rift. I love this game because it's immersive in a different way. You could just say inherently the Oculus Rift is immersive because it shuts you off from reality. You can't see anything but your game environment. Alone takes it to another level, because it's a game within a game.

Justine: The game is about you sitting in a house, a dark house at night. You're sitting on a couch with a controller in your hands. You're playing a game on a widescreen television. You can look all around you. You can look down the hallway. You can glance into the kitchen outside the window. It just seems normal, like you're about to play this game within a game. You start playing the video game, and it's a horror video game. It's really simple, rudimentary. The things that happen in the game, in the game, start to happen to you. You start to hear screams. You start to hear someone walking around upstairs.

Justine: It's so effective, because in real life, you are sitting down on a couch maybe, or in a office chair, with a controller in your hands. It's like the character in the game is doing what you're doing. That makes it even scarier, because you really do feel like you're in a house playing a video game, because that's what you're doing. I don't know, it's really meta. There's this really good buildup. I can't give away too much, but I think it does a good job of taking the medium and playing with I guess what the Oculus can do.

Ryan: I've seen the trailer for this, and it's really creepy.

Justine: It's super-

Ryan: Sorry.

Justine: ... creepy because-

Ryan: Go ahead.

Justine: ... it's so familiar. You're in a familiar setting.

Matthew: I think why I actually want to chicken out now is it reminds me of something. I have a friend, George, who works in VR. Something he said to me, because I was talking to him, like, "What do you expect to see happen with VR? What do you want to see?" He said, "With VR, we can't really make games the way we've come to expect games. We have to be able to make experiences that people can have, that they wouldn't be able to have any other way without this VR technology." That's something that always stuck with me and something I always use to judge when people say, "I made this cool VR thing." I'm like, "Is it an experience that you can't get anywhere else or from anything else?"

Matthew: That actually definitely sounds like something that's really, really cool, because it's playing with this idea of being aware of your surroundings and what's happening around you, as opposed to just, "I'm gonna explore this creepy basement. Oh no, it's a jump scare. There was a zombie in the closet."

Ryan: That is one of my least favorite horror game tropes, just to go over that, is like, "Oh, there's a dead body on the ground. Oh no, it's a thing that attacks you." I'm like, "Just stop it. Just stop it." I am no longer fooled by this. When I don't see it, or you do something where you have to pass through another room and then come back and it comes to life, whoop-de-doo, you surprised me. Who cares?

Justine: Jump scares are so cheap. I can't say too much yet. My friend owns this VR AR company, and they're working on a project that I can't say too much about, but it's for Halloween. It'll be coming out soon. It has to do with mirrors and an old urban legend. It should be coming-

Matthew: Wow.

Justine: ... to escape rooms near you. It has to do with your phone. A lot of it has to do with AR, augmented reality. Very excited about that.

Ryan: That does sound exciting. I think there is an untapped market in that. You can use apps on your phone especially easily. There's other ways to do this, but this makes it really easy-

Justine: It's so easy.

Ryan: ... to inject personal things into the experience. They can find things out about you, asking questions, and put that in there. That would make it so much better-

Matthew: I know.

Ryan: ... and in the case of horror, so scary.

Justine: Even just using your phones, because if you're an app developer, you have access to all the phone's functions. You have access to the microphone. You

have access to the speakers, the camera especially, using your phone to look around your room and having things pop up in the camera-

Matthew: You could do some freaky shit.

Justine: Especially in your own home, which makes it even scarier, because you're seeing a familiar place in a new light.

Ryan: That's exciting too, but I'm mostly excited about how you could cross that over into stuff like escape rooms, because then you have the idea of being off-kilter, and you have things that are set up for you, but it also injects that personal, very intimate reality into it, if you know what I'm getting at.

Ryan: In the tradition of a beloved 20th century game show, I'm proud to present to you two, Know Your Monster.

Justine: Sweet.

Ryan: I have collected four sound clips from, or eight rather. I collected eight-

Justine: Twice as many.

Ryan: Twice as many. Twice as scary. Eight sound clips from the most horrible, memorable, terrifying creatures of cinematic history. Four of them are verbose. Four are not. Whether they speak distinct English words or not, it's up to you to identify them. Since some of these are more recognizable than others, and I don't think I went too hard on any of them, we're gonna have a buzz-in component for this one. In lieu of actual buzzers, not because we don't have the budget or anything, but just to be different, when you want to buzz in, just say, "Buzz," and I'll accept it.

Justine: Sounds good.

Matthew: Can I opt for, "Hooty-hoo," instead?

Justine: It takes way longer, and it's a huge disadvantage.

Matthew: Fine. Buzz. Bzz, bzz.

Ryan: We gotta keep it on a level. Here's how I'm gonna do it. We're going to listen to the clips in order, and I'm gonna count backwards, three two one, and after I say "one," it's open to buzzing. Here we go. We're gonna listen to the first clip here. Three, two, one.

Justine: Buzz.

Matthew: Buzz.

Ryan: Justine?

Justine: Alien?

Ryan: No. Pass it on over to Matt. Do you know what it is?

Matthew: I want to say Mothra.

Ryan: You are correct. That is Mothra. Different sort of bug. Number two.

Pinhead: Explorers in the further regions of experience, demons to some, angels to others.

Justine: Buzz.

Matthew: Buzz buzz.

Ryan: I didn't count down yet. You gotta wait.

Justine: Just give it to him.

Ryan: Three, two, one.

Matthew: Buzz buzz buzz buzz.

Ryan: What is it, Matt?

Matthew: That is Pinhead from Hellraiser.

Ryan: You're damn right. I knew you were gonna get that one, as much as-

Matthew: My boy!

Ryan: ... you talked about it. That's the best part of that movie, when they show up in her hospital room.

Matthew: I know.

Ryan: We've got a two to one. You're gonna have to catch up here.

Justine: I don't know.

Ryan: Number three.

Justine: God, I don't know.

Ryan: This is one of the harder ones.

Justine: Sounds like a bunch of people screaming.

Ryan: I included a bit of the music cue, should maybe give you a hint.

Justine: Wait, let me listen to it again. No, still don't know.

Ryan: Maybe you'll come up with it in the next three seconds, as I count it down. Three, two, one.

Matthew: Buzz?

Ryan: Questioning buzz? You want to give it a so, Matt?

Matthew: Maybe Killer Clowns from Outer Space?

Ryan: No. I'll tell you who-

Justine: Wait wait wait, can I guess?

Ryan: Yeah, go for it.

Justine: The clown from It.

Ryan: No, not quite. I'll give you guys a hint here. It's from a Tim Burton movie.

Justine: Beetlejuice?

Ryan: Right. What character from Beetlejuice?

Justine: I don't know.

Ryan: I'll coax it out of you.

Justine: Can I get a half-point?

Ryan: This is an overall loss. I'll give you a half-point.

Justine: Yay.

Ryan: It's the sandworms from Beetlejuice.

Matthew: Oh man.

Ryan: As I shake my head in shame, we'll go to clip number four.

Jack: Oh goddammit, David, please believe me. You kill and make others like me. I'm not having a nice time here.

Ryan: Three, two, one.

Justine: Buzz.

Ryan: Justine?

Justine: Body Snatchers.

Ryan: No, not quite.

Justine: I'm so sad.

Ryan: Not quite.

Matthew: I don't actually know this one.

Ryan: It's a good movie.

Justine: It's not Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

Ryan: No. I'll give you a hint in that this movie involves werewolves.

Matthew: Is it An American Werewolf in London.

Ryan: I'll give you the half-point.

Justine: Dammit.

Ryan: You haven't seen it?

Justine: No.

Ryan: You should see it at the ArcLight with me later this Halloween season. That's Jack. I don't want to spoil anything more, so we'll just go to the next one, number five.

Justine: Number five.

Ryan: Three, two, one.

Matthew: Buzz buzz.

Justine: Buzz buzz. Oh shit.

Ryan: Over to Matt.

Matthew: That is the alien from Alien.

Ryan: Right you are. Right you are.

Justine: Oh man.

Ryan: Right after he gets born-

Justine: Goddammit.

Ryan: ... out of the chest.

Justine: I knew that one.

Ryan: Let me see. I think it's 2.5 to five?

Justine: No, 2.5 to .5.

Ryan: Right, sorry. 2.5 to .5, that's what I meant. Number six.

Brundlefly: That's disgusting.

Justine: What the fuck?

Matthew: I think I know what it is [crosstalk 00:54:57].

Ryan: Three, two, one.

Matthew: Buzz buzz.

Justine: Nope.

Ryan: What is it, Matt?

Matthew: It's The Fly.

Ryan: It sure is.

Justine: Goddammit.

Matthew: My heart!

Ryan: That's Brundlefly discovering his acidic vomit for the first time.

Matthew: Mi corazon! Mi corazon!

Ryan: Man, I guess I aimed too high.

Justine: I suck.

Ryan: This is a tough one.

Justine: No, you didn't aim too high. I just suck.

Matthew: You underestimated my ability to recognize and remember sound.

Ryan: Let's see if we can get you a full point, Justine. We have two more here. Here we go with number seven.

Justine: Oh god, so easy.

Ryan: It's one of the most distinctive roars of all time.

Justine: I know.

Ryan: Three, two, one.

Justine: Buzz buzz buzz buzz.

Matthew: Goddammit.

Justine: Buzz. Buzz.

Ryan: Justine.

Justine: Godzilla.

Ryan: Yeah. 1.5 to 3.5.

Justine: Woo.

Matthew: Still too cool for school.

Ryan: Let's close it out with a personal favorite.

Eva: I will take you places where you have never been. I will show you things that you've never seen. I will see the life run out of you.

Justine: What?

Ryan: Unfortunately, I had to take that from the trailer.

Justine: Is that your girlfriend?

Ryan: I love that.

Matthew: Ryan is in love with-

Justine: How appropriate.

Matthew: ... ghost girls, confirmed.

Ryan: Oh dear. Yes. This is the other movie that started my fascination with ghost women. Here we go. Three, two, one.

Matthew: Buzz buzz.

Ryan: Matt?

Matthew: Ghost Story.

Ryan: Yes, but what's the character's name? I'll accept either of them.

Matthew: Henrietta?

Ryan: Henrietta?

Matthew: I tried. I literally tried.

Justine: Half-point.

Ryan: You get another half-point to bring you up to a clean four. Her name is Eva, or Alma, she disguises herself as. The monsters still distrust you. At best, you understand 50% of them. Maybe next year.

Justine: We disappointed him.

Ryan: It's not about me. It's about the monsters. You don't know their community. You don't know their struggles.

Justine: I do not.

Matthew: At least I recognized the sound of my boy's sweet bass voice.

Ryan: Indeed.

Justine: Well done.

Ryan: Why thank you. Well done to you guys as well. A valiant showing. My thought for this week is a little more softball, but not really I don't think, because I'd love to get to the core of what makes a great horror movie villain/monster and what makes a good horror movie hero? Let's just go around real quick, no details, no real explanation, and name some of our favorite horror villain/monsters and horror heroes. For me, off the cuff, the easy ones are Ripley and the Alien, for-

Justine: Nice.

Ryan: ... opposite sides of the coin, of course. Nancy Thompson from Nightmare on Elm Street is a great hero. Ash is a great hero. Horror comedy, Beetlejuice is a great villain. Let's see. There's a ton of great monsters I guess. There's so many. The Thing. The original Frankenstein monster, the Wolfman, those are the big ones for me that just jump into my mind. What about you guys?

Matthew: I'd say for me, in terms of villains/monsters, I love Pinhead and the Cenobites from Hellraiser. Those are probably one of my all-time favorites. Freddy Krueger is a good one, particularly in the first movie and then in New Nightmare.

Ryan: New Nightmare is great.

Matthew: New Nightmare's a good time. Continuing my list, Ripley's definitely a big heroine. I can't remember her name, but the girl from not Friday the 13th, Halloween. I can't remember her name.

Ryan: Shoot.

Matthew: She was great.

Ryan: I gotta look it up. Laurie Strode. Laurie Strode.

Matthew: Yes. In terms of heroes, I love the crew from The Thing, just because you spend so much time getting attached to them and seeing them go from, "We don't really like each other, but we're working," to falling apart at the seams was awesome and tragic at the same time.

Ryan: MacReady in particular, who's-

Matthew: MacReady is great.

Ryan: ... of course great. Now that I think about it, Parker in Alien is also great. He has a great, unexpectedly tragic death I feel like.

Matthew: Then I think the last one I'll mention, and this one burns the line, but Riddick in Pitch Black is really, really-

Ryan: I'll buy it.

Matthew: ... fantastic.

Ryan: I'll buy it.

Justine: Go ahead.

Matthew: I don't want to get into reasoning, so you go on.

Justine: We're just mentioning heroes and villains, right, now?

Matthew: Yeah.

Justine: Samara's fucking scary. I don't know, I've talked about The Ring, but I think it's my favorite horror movie. I think heroes, I don't know if you guys have watched Stranger Things.

Ryan: Of course.

Matthew: Yes, I've seen bits and pieces of it.

Justine: I was really impressed with Nancy Wheeler, the daughter.

Ryan: She was great.

Justine: She for some reason ... I was really annoyed with her at first. I was like, "Oh great, here we go. We have another stereotypical teenage girl. We're about to get schooled in how teenage girls are all brats and they don't care about anything." She turned out to be actually really impressive, but not in a overly feminist way.

Justine: Sometimes directors will make the females overpowered, just to make up for the fact, "Oh, we're gonna make a strong female character, so let's make her a perfect shot, she's always good, she never dies, and she never gets hurt. She's flawless, because that's what girls want to see, right, is flawless, strong, overly powerful, unrealistic female characters?" It's like, no, she's a brat, and she doesn't care about her brother for the first parts of the film. She's aloof. She is dating the most popular guy in school. You have every reason not to like her at the beginning, and then she completely turns it around. She's in on it. She cares about her family. I don't know, I really like that series.

Ryan: She's the only person who cares about Barb.

Justine: Yeah. That was so terrifying.

Ryan: Man.

Justine: That was such a terrifying scene. Not to spoil, because I know people are still watching.

Matthew: I haven't finished it yet.

Justine: Sorry. I'm sorry.

Ryan: What is wrong with you, Matt?

Justine: Another favorite though, from that series, I love Joyce. She's the crazy mom. I love how she's always like, "I know how it looks. I know I look really fucking crazy, but I'm totally right." She stands by it the whole time. She just does a

good job of ... I don't know, the actress just does a good job of playing just about to have a mental breakdown, but also extremely strong female character. She's just tough as nails, but she's batshit crazy. She's great.

Ryan: Winona Ryder is my bae. She is great. I agree. I think that one of the coolest things about Ripley in the original Alien is that the first time you see that movie, you're inclined not to like her, because she doesn't want to let Kane in when he has the facehugger on his face. She's insistent on playing by the rules and gets very uppity and offended and catty when people try to disrupt her authority, which that's a little more borderline. There's moments where she comes off as unlikable, because she's being very snooty to people in a hard situation.

Ryan: Even later in the movie, once she's clearly become the main character, one of the great details of the movie I feel like is right after she sees the order that the company gave to Ash that they're supposed to bring back the alien and all the crew is expendable, when she runs into the common room, she has a nosebleed, a stress nosebleed. I always thought that was the coolest thing, that it showed how it was getting to her in the stressful situation, just this very human thing.

Ryan: I think it's really interesting that a lot of these heroes in particular are women. A lot of these movies are from older periods, when there weren't a lot of interesting and likable female, or what am I saying, heroines in movies.

Justine: Alien was late '70s, right, '80s?

Ryan: Yeah, '79.

Justine: Yeah. That's unusual .

Ryan: I wonder what's behind that.

Justine: I think maybe-

Ryan: Anyone care to venture a theory?

Justine: ... we just remember them more because they're so unusual. I also think people, I don't know if they did this intentionally because they're female, I noticed that all the ones that we're mentioning that we like have some sort of human aspect. You mentioned Ripley has a nosebleed. The mom in Stranger Things, she looks like she's about to have a mental breakdown at any second. She starts smoking a ton. They have all these manifestations of their stress, of the stress that they're going through. It just connects us to them in a human way.

Justine: I feel like a lot of the time, I get tired of action movies and horror movies that have male characters that don't ever show any signs of stress. The ones that I remember, they're human, and I don't know if that's as common with male characters. I don't know if I've seen any that come to mind.

Ryan: I think that that's interesting because that's something that's really great about Ash, who I named, is that-

Matthew: That's true.

Ryan: ... he's very flawed. He's an idiot. He makes so many mistakes. He is constantly getting punished for them. Every time he screws up, it's gonna come back and bite him in the ass.

Matthew: It's funny because he's-

Ryan: He really gets messed up.

Matthew: He's emotional in all three movies too, which is interesting to thing about. Even in Evil Dead, which is the most bleak, straight horror of them all, he gets very visibly freaked out by the stuff that happens to him, and it affects him.

Ryan: I think that one of the great things about Evil Dead 2 is it opens right up with him having to kill and bury his girlfriend, and the very next night she comes back and he has to kill her again. It is so screwed up. It's hilarious, but it's also scary and really just makes you disturbed at the same time.

Ryan: I think that there's something to having these protagonists who are very clever and strong and they do come up with ways of having agency and solving their problems by the end of the movie, but they're also very human in their responses. They don't do anything unnaturally stupid necessarily. Even Ash, he does a lot of stupid things, but it's the kind of thing that you only recognize in hindsight are stupid. You would be like, "Yeah, I'd probably do that in that situation." They don't do anything stupid, but they make mistakes and they have flaws and they show the cracks inside them.

Matthew: Part of it may even be too is that they're heroes or heroines in a ... Sorry, I'm about to sneeze. They're heroes and heroines in situations that are already hyper tense. It's not like an action movie where, yeah, The Bride in Kill Bill is cool, and she's a really great character, but she's also an action hero. You know she's a bad-ass. You know she can fight. You know she's probably gonna come out on top, compared to when you watch the very first Alien, you don't really know if Ripley's gonna actually be okay.

Ryan: They really run you through your paces, especially at the time, where the fact that she did end up being the hero was still pretty unusual. It's easy to tell now, just because our culture has changed and because we know stuff about Alien without even seeing it. At the time, it genuinely tries to trick you into thinking it's about Dallas. Then all of a sudden he very shockingly and frighteningly dies two thirds through the movie. It's like, "Oh wait, it's about Ripley."

Matthew: I think because you have these characters who are coming out on top in situations that are specifically designed to scare us, they resonate much more than, say, for example, Rey from Star Wars, where it's like-

Ryan: Star Wars.

Matthew: ... Rey is bae and Rey is cool, but Rey is also a heroine in a fantasy movie and is-

Justine: It's predictable.

Matthew: She's super duper OP in a fantasy world, versus if you were to throw her into a horror movie, she might come across very, very differently.

Justine: I get that Rey is bae too. I'm excited about her, but I don't relate to her at all, not even close to how much I relate to the mom in Stranger Things, for example. I just want to tap on why Alien is so creepy, because I've studied this for some of my art classes in film school. A lot of the concept art and a lot of the visual elements they use in the film were created by Giger, who's a Swiss surrealist artist, and he-

Ryan: As a Giger fan, I'm gonna correct you-

Justine: Giger, Giger?

Ryan: ... to Giger.

Justine: Giger. Sorry.

Ryan: He's a Swiss ...

Justine: My professor-

Ryan: The pronunciation is Giger.

Justine: ... pronounced it Giger, so you can blame my professor.

Ryan: I will happily blame that.

Justine: Giger. If you look at all of his other art, it's very unsettling. We narrowed it down to the fact that it seems organic, but also synthetic. The creepy thing about the alien in Alien, I think the creepiest thing is that it doesn't have eyes, so you can't tell where it's looking. You can't tell if it's detected you or not. There's something unnerving about the design itself. I don't know if you guys have played the video game. Have you guys played?

Matthew: Yes.

Ryan: Alien: Isolation, yeah.

Justine: Oh my god.

Matthew: God, that was ...

Ryan: It is a really freaky game. It has its problems, but I love it overall. I love the design of Alien. I've watched so many documentaries on it. I have Giger's design journal, which he published as a book-

Justine: Wow.

Ryan: ... which is great.

Justine: Someone's a Giger fan over here.

Ryan: I am. He called it Biomechanics, his style, this biomechanical feeling of it's biological, but it's also artificial. Of course the alien is so deeply sexual. Everything about it is-

Justine: The facehugger especially.

Ryan: ... a sex metaphor. I forget if he outright stated this or just danced around it, but Ridley Scott basically said that, "I want men to understand what it's like to be raped when they watch this movie."

Justine: Oh my god.

Ryan: That's not quite politically correct, but I would say purpose achieved for the most part.

Justine: Well done.

Matthew: We got them.

Ryan: I remember, I won't say who it was, to protect their embarrassment, but I was once talking to somebody who had just seen this movie for the first time and that I had shown it to them. I was talking about the design and I was like, "Yeah, so some of it's obvious. The alien's head looks like a penis. The inside of the facehugger looks like a vagina." He's like, "What? No it doesn't."

Justine: Oh my god.

Ryan: I was like, "It most definitely does." I went and I have-

Justine: Also it has those little flaps in the back that look like testicles.

Ryan: I have this toy of the facehugger, this super detailed toy. I went and I brought it to him.

Justine: Do you?

Ryan: Yeah, I do. I'll admit it. The whole thing is detailed just as it was. I was like, "You're saying this does not look like a vagina to you at all?" He's like, "No." I'm like, "Am I secretly outing this guy as being a virgin?"

Justine: Maybe the only ones he's seen are fake.

Matthew: Maybe.

Ryan: Maybe. Severe labioplasty. Really scary.

Justine: Maybe he's only into softcore.

Ryan: Maybe.

Matthew: That would make sense.

Ryan: My friends, how do you feel after this deep and disturbing discussion of horror?

Matthew: Too spooky for me.

Justine: Too spoopy. Wow, Matt, way to steal my joke.

Ryan: Far, far too spoopy for anyone! Happy Halloween.

Matthew: Happy Halloween, folks. Have a good time. Stay safe.

Ryan: Geek well.

Ryan: Now that you've had a taste of stew, would you like to sample our other flavors? You can find us on the web at DeliciousGeekStew.com, where we post our episodes, as well as a plethora of links that'll clue you in to all the references we make and further explore the topic of the day. We also have short, super geeky minisodes and articles there that really dig into a subject or cover something that we might've missed. We'd like to thank Robert ], who composed our amazing theme song and all the other music we use, Rev.com, our transcriber for the Deaf and hearing-impaired, and Dana Plasterer, who provides all of our adorable artwork. We couldn't do it without them, and we couldn't do it without you. Thanks for listening, and until next time, geek well.