Vivi: [00:00:00] What did

Erick: they say? No one acts

Vivi: like Usan. No one’s as thickest. They say thick.

No

Erick: one’s as thickest Gu. Really? They really?

Vivi: I’m pretty sure they do. Oh

Erick: damn. Well Steph is ain’t thick like Usan. . Sorry. I’m gonna drink some coffee. Me too. Brought to you by Duncan. Just kidding about to be. I wish Duncan on staff is cuz he’s a piece of shit.

​

Erick: Welcome back to Shake Out. Scared here with you as always, Eric and bb. Today we’re talking about the 1986 film The Fly directed by David Kronenberg. But before we get into that, how are

Vivi: you baby? I’ve been real successful at dry January because right after having covid I got an infection . So I am now on antibiotics, which is making dry January.

Erick: Super easy. You’re forced to not, although there are people who do that shit. That is why not good for you ,

Vivi: that is really just going for it at that point. So I’m

Erick: proud that you at least have the self-control for it. Thank you. Yeah.

about you? What about you? Actually excited cuz we got our stuff to fix the cars and I never thought I’d be one of those people who was like, [00:01:00] oh my God, I can’t wait to get under the car and just get super messy.

No, I didn’t. I I like that stuff.

Vivi: So what is it called? Grease Monkey. Grease

Erick: Monkey Grease Grease Monkey. Yes, I guess so. That’s what the brand of gloves I got is so, okay. I guess it’s a thing But what do you have for

Vivi: creepy content? I only really have one thing that we were able to watch this weekend and that was skin Ari. I think it’s a film that’s not gonna be for everyone. It’s very artsy, very like experimental feeling. Definitely super eerie vibes. I will give it to them. I don’t think it’s for me and I wanted it to be I want to like it.

Erick: I don’t know if I’ve seen enough analog horror to know if I like that genre because what is the analog horror?

Vivi: Is it simply like less plot heavy? More experimental.

Erick: know how bad at distinguishing, I used to do this shit with like metal where in high school people were like, you like screamo and hardcore and hardcore metal and post-em melodic, hardcore in grunge and post melodic.

Wow. I was like, what the fuck? I like rock

Vivi: metal, like

Erick: music, like heavy shit. I don’t know what the [00:02:00] difference is. So it’s the same thing with or but I don’t know that I disliked it. I just did think that it could have saved time in a lot of the shots that just lingered for a long time, which I guess is the point.

the disturbing part is you seeing things in the shots someone said it perfectly on Twitter it belongs in an art gallery. that’s kind how I felt. You kind of don’t interpret it probably in the way that the artist meant it.

Yeah. But that’s the whole point. So I think that all the mixed feelings that you see on the internet about the film means that the movie I think was successful in its intent. Probably won’t watch it again, but

Vivi: yeah, I don’t think it’s for everyone. it’s a decent way to spend an evening if you wanna

Erick: dissect it.

I think it got amplified for me because my group of content is Fas homophobia, which is a video game where you have to hunt ghosts and you’re walking around in the dark a lot. Yeah. And so when we left the house to like, take Lowkey and Ripley out, I usually, I’m just out there like, eh, whatever. Go poop, go pee, whatever. And I’m just standing there. But we would hear noises and I’d be like, Hmm. Noticing the darkness more than usual . it definitely messes with you a little bit at least for a while after you watch

Vivi: it.

Just an [00:03:00] uneasiness. I get the similar feeling when I watch paranormal activity where you’re just imagining the worst things happening. Nothing’s actually happening, but you’re like freaked out still .

Erick: Yeah. Bamo phobia though is my creepy con. That’s the only one that I have. It’s fun. I played with Christina from his spooky tails.

We’re going to do a joint event. It may have already happened by the time this gets released, but if it doesn’t keep an eye out for it. It is unsettling. I think mortuary assistant is still a little more unsettling.

I am not good at SMO phobia at all. I’ve gotten the ghost strong every time, except for once where I died, but I still got the ghost, right? . So what do you have for comfort content? Nothing. I don’t either. We have not been comforted. I guess technically fixing the cars tomorrow is gonna be comfort content, but it’s not content that everyone can comfort content.

You guys wanna watch videos of me just doing oil changes? Save

Vivi: it for your. Oily fans. . Yeah,

Erick: oily fans. .

let’s talk about this week’s drink. We have a nasty idea, so

Vivi: let’s see if it worked out.

Erick: I hope we can make the drink look as disgusting as possible.

Vivi: but, but that’s so disgusting that no one wants to drink it.

Erick: [00:04:00] I’ve always thought about that with our show, that we make horror themed drinks and sometimes I’m like, let’s make it look disgusting. And you’re like, but no one’s gonna want it.

Yeah, that’s the point. It’s horror is not the taste good. I mean, it could taste good, but look disturbing, all right. Are you ready for some film facts? Yes. Okay. I have a couple. So Jeff Goldblum sent a letter to Vincent Price, who started in the original fly, obviously in 1958, saying that he hoped that Vincent would like the film as much as Jeff liked his. Turns out that Vincent thought the film was quote wonderful.

Right up to a certain point. It went a little too far. What was the

Vivi: certain point?

Erick: I didn’t see any detail around. Like what Vincent thought was too far. Was too

Vivi: far. I also, I have not seen the original 1958.

Erick: No, I haven’t either. and I’ve read a synopsis and I was like, well this is like a whole other movie.

It’s completely different. Yeah. Do you know there interesting synopsis at all? No. From what I got the main character, his wife dies in a accident or his head is smashed and his arm is smashed. The brother played by Vincent is investigating and it’s slowly starts to get [00:05:00] revealed by the wife what actually happened because she’s obsessed with flies.

Vivi: Oh, that sounds like a completely different film.

Erick: yeah, I do really wanna know what Vincent thought was too far though, The gore could have been too much. Maybe the abortion plot line. I’m gonna guess

Vivi: it was that one.

Erick: Gina Davis didn’t mind the gore until the scene where she has to hold Seth in her arms with that scene where his like ear falls off and stuff like that. she came out and said her disgust was not acting in that scene. It’s actually genuine. Disgusted with the prosthetics.

Vivi: Yeah, the makeup in this is incredible. It aged amazingly and the times that she hugs him. I was like, Ew, I couldn’t . Oh

Erick: yeah, it’s gross. I can only imagine the smell if it were real. How bad all that would smell because like flies already. Just the little ones. I’m always like, yeah. Oh my god. Wash your hands.

Got poop on the legs. Yeah,

Vivi: she does mention in one line that set smells really bad. I can only imagine it gets worse and worse and worse. Yeah.

Erick: so Several endings were planned out. They had even filmed two of them. she has those nightmares about the baby being born. She has one where the baby’s born and it has like butterfly wings. There’s one where she does have the baby. There’s [00:06:00] another one where she doesn’t have the baby.

There’s one where like the baby’s being born is in question. uh, few also where Staus ends up ending up with Veronica. he’s like the baby’s mind, not Seth’s. And that pissed Jeff off cuz he’s like, it removes from the tragedy of the film.

I agree.

Vivi: I do not like Satis. I don’t like any ending where she ends up with him.

Erick: No. Satis is a piece of shit.

Actually I was pissed the entire movie that he’s like the person helping her.

Vivi: Yeah. It’s, I think I even made a note of it. Well, I was writing the script for today is like, it sucks that he’s her only support system. He’s terrible. He is

Erick: the worst. Even with helping her, he’s still a piece of shit.

You’re still kind

Vivi: like, eh, I don’t really care that you got your arm and leg melted off.

Erick: you know, he feels kind of like gustan in between the Beast. I could see that where Gustan is supposed to be like technically the hero to the townspeople Stopping the beast. Yeah. But you know, he’s a piece of shit, so you’re like, no, fuck that guy.

Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. but not as, good looking, good looking . Yeah,

All right, well that’s all I had. I think [00:07:00] it’s my turn to do a speed run.

Vivi: It is. Are you

Erick: ready? No, because it’s been so many weeks since I’ve seen this. I’ll try my best. This movie’s good. So well at least say the parts that I liked.

Vivi: Ready? Set. Go.

Erick: All right, I’m gonna do bad at this. But, so we meet this guy Seth, who’s like a scientist, and he meets Veronica, who is a reporter. She wants to find a really interesting story for her paper. He takes her back to her place. They, or he takes her back to his place.

They, he shows the, or like these pods that exist in his place. And he is like, hi, I’m working on celebration. And then he’s like, it’s just for show though. Don’t tell nobody. And he’s like, what? I’m a, she’s like, I’m a reporter. What do you mean? And he’s like, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t know that. Could you just like not run that report?

And then she’s like, I got to, so then she’s like, it’s the story of Lifetime. She takes it, he does all his best to like get her to stop things start going wrong because he’s like, I have to test myself because I gotta test the cell. And then he ends up getting mixed up with a fly and he starts to slowly deteriorate and [00:08:00] turn into a fly.

Oh, am I running outta time? I can’t tell. Um, But she thinks he’s pregnant because he like thinks he’s on top of the world when he’s a fly mixed man. And then the whole thing is a tragedy because she has a problem with accepting, he’s a plot.

Vivi: You didn’t even get to the end. And he does . .

Erick: I was trying to remember in the middle of talking about it.

Vivi: you did good. You got some details in there, but Yeah. Yeah, you to a minute. It’s okay. You tried.

Erick: I did. I’m sorry.

You’ll have to remind me what the rest of this episode ,

Vivi: how the movie ends.

Erick: Yeah. Well, and there’s just really tough topics to talk about

Vivi: right? So I think this would be a good time to put in this trigger warning. We will be discussing the topic of abortion for a while. It’s a big scene in this movie, so if that makes you uncomfortable, obviously feel free to skip ahead.

Yes.

Erick: I’m ready to uh, fly into this movie, that with my grubby hands.

as gross as flies, right? I do think it’s cute when they like clean their face.

Vivi: I don’t, I think it’s creepy. .

Erick: like, what are you [00:09:00] cleaning? You’re small also. You, you’re nasty, dude. What are you cleaning

Vivi: this was my first watch of this, your first watch as well. I believe it’s the first Cronenberg film that I’ve seen as well.

First one we’re covering on the show, I’m

Erick: pretty sure.

Vivi: I know he’s known for body horror.

Erick: Okay. It’s clearly his bit. Did you know Tim Burton almost

Vivi: directed the fly?

It seems like it would be his type of movie

 Yeah. It was not what I expected. I spoiler alert for the end. Really, really enjoyed this movie like way more than I thought I was going to.

I think the themes like have withstood the test of time.

Erick: I liked the movie too. Jeff Goldblum is always like a likable, charact fantastic actor for me. Yeah, yeah. Actor. So Seth definitely was great in the beginning, and I was sad for him as things went wrong because I don’t think intentionally, Seth goes through a transformation both mentally and physically.

And I think if Seth, from the start of the movie would see Seth at the end, Seth himself would’ve been like, this is, please kill me. this has gone too far. all that emotion around a character that’s likable, definitely held strong for me and made this [00:10:00] movie like, oh man, I, I want to know where this goes. Yeah,

Vivi: So we open on a gala where we meet Seth who says he’s working on something that’s gonna change the world.

He’s talking to Veronica, who is referred to as Ronnie for the rest of the film. So I’m just gonna call her that moving forward. Who he is clearly hitting on her . She asks more about his work, but Seth refuses to tell her. Instead he asks her to come back to his lab to check it out. She pretty much blows him off, but Seth is pretty persistent telling her that she’s making a big mistake by not talking to him.

It’s

Erick: funny because they portray his hitting on her as he’s clearly this, like very awkward, nerdy, awkward, nerdy. Like that’s the way he’s hitting on her is through his knowledge and It’s like me, if I was like, Hey, do you know about Marble Comics?

Vivi: Do you wanna come see my horror collection later? ?

Erick: Yeah. Right. It’s like you kind of push what, you know,

Vivi: because I made a note saying, normally I would find this kind of behavior gross, but because Jeff Goldblum plays Seth and such an endearing way, very much the awkward guy, he doesn’t come off as like the pushy asshole at a party.

Right. [00:11:00] Veronica agrees to check out his lab and on the way there we learned that Seth gets very motion sick. Same in any type of vehicles.

 They reach his lab and it looks pretty sketchy. Almost like an abandoned warehouse. Once inside, Seth immediately starts playing piano. I find this so funny. He’s like, hasn’t invited her in fully and he’s just like, let me seduce you with some

Erick: piano

Hey, I used s do that with the guitar. Oh, really? He’d be like, look, I can do a thing . I am impressive.

Vivi: Ronnie clearly feels uncomfortable and says she wants to leave, but Seth makes a bad joke about how now that she’s seen his work, she can’t leave alive. I don’t know you, sir.

This is a really risky joke to make. .

Erick: Especially since, because he is awkward and hasn’t explicitly made it clear.

I’m hitting on you. She is in a stranger’s place house. Unknowing red flag personality, .

Vivi: This was dating before Tinder and it’s just a scary

It is scary. At least with Tinder. There’s a record of who you went on a date with allegedly, but this was like no one would know you were gone.

Erick: I guess her like editor would know [00:12:00] because he sent her there. Right, because he is a creep. Yeah. Yeah. I fucked that guy. Because he’s also probably following her outside.

Exactly. .

Vivi: She states that she hasn’t seen anything, but Seth says that she has seen the pods. She laughs it off saying they look like designer phone booths.

Erick: Apparently they were modeled after Koen Bergs motorcycle cylinders.

Oh, okay.

Vivi: So Seth decides to give her a demonstration. He asked for a piece of clothing or jewelry he could use, and Ronnie hands over one of her stockings. This is also meant to be played off as very like sexy

Erick: We are together that she’s into him too, right?

A little bit. Even though she’s killing, clearly there for the report, but she’s kind of like, well, let’s see what

Vivi: this is. These people do seem like they’re both into each other.

Erick: They were dating in real. at the time of this movie.

Vivi: It makes sense. They had good chemistry in this

Erick: film.

Kronenberg almost didn’t want to cast her because he didn’t wanna work with a dating couple. Ah. And after the first audition, he was like, no, I have to .

Vivi: I love her. Love her in Beetlejuice, love her in this. I have not seen a league of her own, but I am sure she’s also great in that league is great.

Or

Erick: I’m surprised you’ve never seen that. You’ve never seen a lot of

Vivi: movies. I haven’t seen a lot of movies. There’s a hole in my movie [00:13:00] education. I also haven’t seen um, Thelma and Louise. Yeah. Which she’s also in, which also seems fun.

Erick: There’s just so much we need to, that I’m missing out on. Download into that yours, that little peanut hat. Head

Vivi: of yours. Little peanut hat. I’m still trying to make it work for me. Okay. . Seth puts it in one of the pods and we get a ton of flashing lights as the stocking appears in the other pod. Ronnie is confused by what happened, but Seth explains to her that her stalking was teleported from one pod to the other. She’s

Erick: like, no, you had to have put the stocking in there beforehand.

Yeah. And he’s like, nah, it’s got a hole in it just like yours did. I saw that. .

Vivi: Ronnie gets very excited by this and turns on a tape recorder to start asking Seth questions about his work. After a while, Seth explains who he works for, how it’s funded.

Ronnie asks him to hold on while she switches the tape. And this is where Seth kind of freaks out. He doesn’t like it. He says he thought that she was having a personal conversation with him, which I call Bull on because when they met in the beginning, she says, I have interviews to get to,

Erick: they met at.

gala where other people were other reporters to present on what they find. [00:14:00] I do wanna step back too with Seth. I like his whole bit. That doesn’t matter what I buy, people buy it for me. They say, I need this thing, and I just order things without question. I don’t know who it’s for.

I don’t know what I’m making, but I’m just doing individual things and no one involved knows what it’s

Vivi: for. Yeah. And we get that. He’s trying to keep what he’s doing a secret. And that’s why it’s so hush hush. But also I feel like this movie does a good job at not focusing too much on the scientific jargon, because I think you could lose a lot of audience members with that.

And just kept it like that. Seth was very casual about his work. which he’s not. Clearly, he’s upset that Veronica’s a reporter. Wait,

Erick: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Can’t wait. You can’t do that. I showed you this whole ass life changing thing for funsies. Yeah.

Vivi: To get in your pants

Yeah.

Erick: You don’t use your life-changing secret work to get some pussy, get somebody .

Vivi: But Ronnie obviously reveals that she’s a journalist and he knew that, and I agree.

It’s very obvious. Seth just states that he made a mistake and that he would never have told her [00:15:00] all this if he knew she was a journalist. He tries to get the tape from her, but Rodney simply gets up and leaves as Seth keeps asking her to stick around.

Erick: Even here, you see that Seth’s not a horrible person because again, had he been like a red Flaggy guy per se, you know, forced her, he would’ve like attacked her to get the tape. Even though he’s like, wait, this is bad. Don’t do it. He still didn’t do a bad thing though. He didn’t harm

Vivi: her. Ronnie. Yeah.

Yeah. The next day we see Ronnie at her job for Particle Magazine pitching Seth Story to her boss. Staes. I’ve never really heard this name before. It’s very unique. I have, but I don’t remember in what?

It’s like an old name, right? Mm-hmm. , like it’s not really popular anymore. I’d always thought it was like a last name. It sounds like a last name. her boss does not seem impressed. Telling her that she fell for an old nightclub trick. At that moment, he gets a call saying that Seth is in the office looking for Veronica.

He is. So do she. He’s talking down to her saying she fell for like a pickup line essentially. And I’m like, is this what men did in the club in the eighties? They’re like, I got this magic trick I could show you. That’s really gonna blow your mind at home. . [00:16:00]

Erick: So they’re just like the guy with the medicine with the cart.

And he is like, I got make you young again. Potion.

Vivi: And that would help get ladies, ladies,

Erick: I don’t know. We talk about how weird dating is today. Cause we haven’t done like the whole online dating Tinder thing. I, to me it seems odd, but also it’s odd to be out in the middle of nowhere where people literally have the option to like see you in person and like hit you on the shoulder.

You have to Yeah. they do. But like at least online you have the option to be like, no, ignore. Yeah, You don’t know what the other person’s gonna do if you reject them they could also pull out all the stops, the magic tricks.

the, the aggression. You know, it’s like you really don’t know what you’re getting. Yeah.

Vivi: Staes and Seth meet and Staes makes a joke about Seth helping him make someone disappear before walking out and leaving the two to talk, Seth asks Veronica what her boss thought of the tape and Veronica confesses that he thinks Seth is a conman.

Yes, he is very excited by this

Erick: news. Maybe that’s, that was his bit the whole time. He is like, even if I get a girl to show my place and she’s like, this man has a [00:17:00] teleportation machine, they’re gonna be like, okay, .

Vivi: sure Jan.

Erick: The penis might have been good, but it wasn’t that ,

Vivi: which is kind of a line that Sta is, says her later on

Seth is very excited by the news and tells Veronica that he came to say one magic word. Cheeseburger. That’s how he says it. . Yeah. We then cut to the two of them at a burger joint.

Erick: I like how he just reconvenes on. He’s like, all right, perfect. Let’s get back to business though.

This teleportation, , out in the open. No one’s gonna know we’re talking. They’re gonna think we’re crazy.

Vivi: Burger joint. Seth explains that while he wants to talk about his work, he is not ready. Since he’s only able to teleport inanimate objects.

Ronnie’s not convinced. She says that people need to know about his invention and she should be the one to tell it. So Seth comes up with a deal for them to follow him around day by day, documenting his work. He wants her to turn her article into a book, a book that ends with him being able to teleport himself 15 feet through space.

She seems to be considering it, but doesn’t give an actual answer.

Erick: It’s a good idea. You get your story, you get your popularity.

Vivi: You have to hang around me all the time. Cause clearly I’m [00:18:00] into you. Yeah.

Erick: I wonder if he’d tried this before or if Ronnie, it was just the first time it worked.

Vivi: We got to Veronica entering her home. When she hears someone in her shower, she approaches slowly and throws back the curtain to find stasis. There you stasis, stasis, throws back the curtain to find STAs there. You’ve always said to surprise people and I feel like she went that route too. Just a quick draw of the curtain. Like Yeah. Catch them

Erick: off guard. they’re thinking you’re gonna come in slow. No. Pull the bandaid now.

Why are you here?

Vivi: She asked what he’s doing there and he says that he was in the neighborhood and felt like he needed a shower. Ew.

Erick: Was he naked? I can’t remember. Yes, he was in the shower. .

Vivi: I

Erick: thought he with clothes on though.

He’s a never dude shower. .

Vivi: She asked him how he even got in and he reminds her that he still has a key. Here is where it’s obvious that there’s a weird history between the two. Bitch. What the fuck? . It’s clear that they dated and that it’s now over, but Steph is still has like this weird possessive thing over her.

Either way we find out that Steph has did some research on Seth and found out he’s actually the real [00:19:00] deal. Dude, mind your business. Well, he’s also her editor. That’s the like gross part about their relationship.

Erick: Having a work relationship always makes things awkward for you individually, but also like work where he has this position of power over her.

Vivi: Well, it’s clear that he, he’s always done this because she later talks to Seth about how they met. She says that he was a professor and she was a student taking one of his classes. So like there’s always been this bad dynamic of power that he holds over her. .

.But Ronnie dismisses him saying she’s giving up on that story and asks for her key back, which he refused to give back.

I would be so afraid I’d go change the locks as soon as he

Erick: left. Yeah. If anything, I’m surprised Ronnie didn’t do it right away. Not victim blaming Ronnie, but no matter what it could be literally just, we moved into a new place. I’m changing. Change the logs. I just don’t trust anyone, so

Vivi: I definitely don’t trust DA is

Yeah. We could to Seth and Ronnie back in the lab running the teleportation experiment on a baboon and it does not go well. The poor animal is turned inside out and still alive somehow. [00:20:00] When it pops out of the second pod,

Erick: a scene that gets used in so many things pop culturally. Oh,

Vivi: this whole movie is such a pop culture icon.

I’ve

Erick: seen this exact experiment in so many

Vivi: things where so many cartoons. So many

Erick: it happened in Antman, the first film. Okay. Where they tried to make the goat small. Mm-hmm And then the, it’s like just a glba mush. Do you remember that? But it was a tiny glba mush.

Vivi: Yeah. . So it’s not that bad when it’s tiny and cute.

It’s not

Erick: that bad. Plenty of cartoons have done it. Oh yeah. Grown up on like Cartoon Network. I remember this scene being played

Vivi: out in a couple of cartoon, so many tree House of Horror. There’s literally a fly spoof that they do. Yeah. Rodney is documenting everything as Seth explains that the computer has issues with understanding flesh. There is a lot of use of the word flush throughout this film, and I don’t think it’s an accident. Flush.

Erick: Yeah. Flush. It is an odd word.

Vivi: it’s a weird choice. Right. Because I would personally, it doesn’t understand just the human body.

I guess that’s how I would phrase it. Not so weird. It doesn’t understand. The flesh It doesn’t understand skin meat. Yeah. But flesh, I feel sounds seductive. And I [00:21:00] think it has like some odd sexual connotation. Maybe that’s what it’s like.

Computers will never understand the flesh of man.

Erick: Because you could also say like

Vivi: organic material. Organic material. Yeah. That would be much less sexy.

Anyway, Ronnie and Seth are taking a break from filming and we learn that Seth has the Steve Jobs approach to clothes where he just wears the same thing every day. He says it’s the Einstein approach to clothes, but I think our generation would see it as the Steve’s.

Move. Oh, because he would wear the turtle and X. Same thing every day.

Erick: I don’t, but I’m also not the average person. I thought a Dexter from Dexter’s Lab. Different.

Vivi: Well, Ronnie must find this very endearing because they just start doing it. She simply goes to him and says, you know, you’re cute. Right? And they start making out

Erick: I know you wear the same thing every day, but let’s, and that’s hot. Let’s see you in that thing. You came out of the womb with .

Vivi: That’s how she hit on him. Like that . When they’re done, they make a big deal about Seth getting something stuck on his back and cutting himself. So you know that it’s gonna come back later.

But this tussle in the sheets. Get Seth [00:22:00] thinking and ready to try and experiment. Tussle in the sheets.

Erick: Tussle in the sheets. You wrote

Vivi: that on purposely though. Yeah. . Is it not cool ? It is cool. .

Erick: sounds like you think it’s so cool. It

Vivi: first. Eric always makes fun of how I write scripts he says I don’t write them casually. ,

Erick: you read very, very poetically. Thank you Sarah. Tussle in that flesh and them sheets.

Vivi: poetic as fuck. ,

Erick: ready to try and experiment in the sheets. Uh,

Vivi: Surprisingly not in the sheets. Hmm.

Erick: He like teleports the whole bed while they’re doing it. ,

Well, we’re also browsing over the fact that like, they just did it and instead of being like in other movies where they light a cigarette and they go take a pee, not,

Vivi: they never take a pee. In movies, we always talk about this .

Erick: You’re right. Unless it’s , um, a comedy Portland. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s I have an idea for an experiment. Immediately after Climaxing , she’s. Let’s see it. ,

Vivi: let’s see it. Brain blast. .

Erick: Oh shit.

Vivi: I’m summarizing a bit, but they do have kind of like that pillow talk conversation. Ronnie is saying that she just wants to eat him up. Like those little old ladies who pinch baby’s [00:23:00] cheeks and that’s what gives him the idea. Oh yeah. She, to experiment.

She’s looking

Erick: his nipple and stuff. Right.

Vivi: I think she’s just kissing him. . I, I don’t know. I was writing stuff down. I didn’t pay attention. I

Erick: just remember her lick his nipple or kissing his nipple, I guess because I was like, wow. Cause it was hot. . No, because I was like, wow. I don’t really ever notice the interactions.

It’s always like a man sucking a girl’s nipple and never the opposite.

Vivi: Interesting. Uh, It’s also could be because they were dating at the time, so they were comfortable being intimate on camera to some extent. .

Erick: Right. Also, what a weird analogy I wanna kiss you. Like old

Vivi: ladies kiss babies. She’s saying that she wants to eat him up the way that old women like to do with babies.

Erick: There’s also something around that, right? It’s like when we want beat cute things up. Yeah. Like you

Vivi: just wanna like destroy that are cute. Yeah.

he provides Ronnie with two steaks. One that has been teleported and one that has been cooked. When Ronnie confirms that the teleported steak tastes synthetic, Seth explains that it’s the flesh.

that The computer is not made crazy by the flush and therefore it can’t be replicated. To me, this sounds like the computer isn’t horny enough and that’s the problem and I don’t see how this is a scientific [00:24:00] explanation. ,

Ronnie leaves Seth’s place in the morning and it’s revealed that Sta is, has followed her there. She’s in a department store buying a jacket for Seth when Steph is confronts her, which is incredibly odd because it’s clear they’re not a thing anymore. It’s clear that whatever they had has ended.

Stop following me around. That is so unhinged. He acts insane. calling her a goddess that tortures him and bowing to her in the middle of a store, taking the jacket that she’s buying and saying it’ll look great on him.

Involving the employees in their argument. and she just tells him to fuck off. But there’s also a scene where she’s like, he’s onto something big. We’re onto something big. And he’s like his giant cock in the middle of a store. I’m like, sir, you need to tone it down, first of all. Yes, but also, but also my

Erick: business Damn.

No, is an obvious case of a manipulator, the words like, you are goddess and I’m bowing to you. Oh, yeah. If, if I was don’t put yourself in this power position over me all the time. Not

Vivi: even necessarily that.

Just like stay out of my relationships. Yeah, sir.

Erick: clearly you are projecting.

Vivi: [00:25:00] Yeah. He’s saying it like ironically or mockingly almost, we’re back with Seth and her in the lab and he has successfully transported a baboon. This baboon’s adorable . It is.

Erick: I even was like, there’s no way that that’s surreal baboon. Right.

Vivi: And I think we looked it up and it was, it was just really well trained

Erick: I think it was because it had oddly lined up with a video that I had watched about factor fiction where uh, gorilla, famous gorilla, apparently in h.

It looks so realistic. It’s a puppet that’s been used in several movies and TV shows, but it’s a puppet. But it’s a puppet and it looks so realistic. Damn He’s holding it. It’s cute. It’s hugging him. I’d be afraid. Cause my bones are

Vivi: aggressive, but Oh yeah. They scare me. . It’s, it’s cute on camera, but I don’t think I’d be near an actual BA bone. Yeah. I’m be

Erick: scared he was gonna rip my face off of a chimp.

Yep.

Vivi: Seth has succeeded in his experiment and they decide to pop some champagne to celebrate. Ronnie suggests that while they wait for some labs results to get back on the baboon, that they go on a little vacation. Seth is really happy about this and ask if they have a little romance going on. It’s a cute little [00:26:00] exchange.

They get ready for a night in when Ronnie notices a letter from Stauss amongst sets things when she sees it, she realizes that Stauss wants to run her story. She pulls it out of the envelope and it’s a whole magazine cover with Seth’s face on it ruining the

Erick: whole

Vivi: agreement that they have. They have going on.

when, you know, she had already told him that she didn’t wanna move forward with this story.

Erick: I blame STAs, the true villain of all this ,

Vivi: It’s a gross, weird power move to keep her under his control. And Ronnie tells Seth that she has to take care of something, saying she needs to get rid of some aspects of her previous life that she’ll be back in a few hours.

She describes stasis as like gum on her shoe, the remnants of that she just needs to get rid of, to move forward. I feel like her saying that it’s very evident that stasis is not a emotional, romantic partner interest to her.

Erick: So he’s like, I don’t have to worry about him.

Vivi: But that’s not what happens. Yeah. Brony Confronts death is in his office and she basically tells him to back off her story and he asks to simply be kept in the loop of what she’s working on. So she agrees to just get [00:27:00] him to leave her alone, but death has to end it with being creepy, saying that he wants to keep her in his life.

Bitch, I

Erick: work for you. Isn’t that enough?

Vivi: E Exactly. . And that they can have like emotionless stress relieving sex if it suits her.

Erick: This is what pisses me off more about Sta is his character that he ends up being like the helper slash kind of good guy. Yeah. Her support

Vivi: system stop. Yeah. It’s like she deserves

Erick: better. This movie was like a hundred percent and I’d say it’s less than because of just

Vivi: him, but I think it’s incredibly true.

Oftentimes women don’t have the actual support that they need when going through something super traumatic like we’re gonna see moving forward. And it’s like, you take what you can get and it might come from the douchey, slimy ex-boyfriend, but you’re alone in this and you need help. I think it was done on purpose.

Erick: Okay.

Vivi: Yeah, he’s essentially holding her work hostage and it’s not a good way to keep someone in your life. Back in the lab, Seth is getting more and more drunk and he’s having an entire conversation with a baboon.

He comes to the correct conclusion that Seth is, is Ronnie’s ex-boyfriend. Although Ronnie [00:28:00] heavily hinted at the fact that she’s going to cut ties with him. he is venting all his frustrations and he also apologizes to him for killing his brother . Saying he wouldn’t ask him to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

So this is when Seth decides to go through the pods himself without getting any tests done. He’s like,

Erick: baby, when you’re right, I need to make amends with your brother. not what this

Vivi: was about. But he doesn’t notice however that a fly enters the pod with him. How would you ever know? Exactly. That’s what makes it so

Erick: hard.

Also, to what extent would this experiment go wrong, right? Like in this case we obviously see a fly entered, but what if there was too much Dust? Dust. Yeah. Or microorganisms you know how we have like dust mites on our eyebrows? Like, or not dust mites, but these little mites or whatever like Yeah.

To what extent does the computer fuck up the experiment? A

Vivi: fly?

Erick: Apparently. Yeah.

Vivi: He is successfully transported or so he thinks, and it says it’s too bad that Ronnie missed it. So I note we get so much naked. Jeff Goldblum in this movie. He’s like naked in every other

Erick: scene. he is. They wanted to show off his, they’re

Vivi: like, look how hot Jeff Goldblum is.

You wanna see him naked all the [00:29:00] time. He is really fit. , he is so thin, but has six pack

Erick: apps.

Vivi: Ronnie returns to the lab and Seth informs her that he went through. She is worried for him because he did it without running any tests on the baboon and he just went for it.

But Seth does not care. He simply wants to know The nature of her relationship to STA is, yeah, I almost endangered my fucking life. But is that your boyfriend? priorities? I Priorities, She assures him that Sta is, is not romantically involved with her anymore. And the two start to do the deed, we get a few glimpses that something might be wrong with.

Weird hair is starting to grow out of the cut on his back, and suddenly he has great reflexes. It’s the middle of the night and he’s able to catch a fly from his

Erick: sleep. This is almost synonymous with like the Spider-Man uh, powers Grimmy. Yeah. where he has like the tiny spider legs on his fingers.

Yeah, this is just this fascination with humans, right? That if we could combine ourselves with beasts, what could go

Vivi: wrong? What could we do? What could we do? What could we become?

This is

Erick: essentially a superhero at this point, right?

Vivi: At this point, at the beginning for [00:30:00] sure.

Erick: it’s the fear of I’ve mixed with this type of dna how could it go wrong? Cause in Spider-Man comics, there’s the man spider where Spider-Man starts to turn into a spider, okay? And he starts to grow arms he like gets a spider head and everything and

Vivi: it all kind of stems from like, well, I imagine Mary Shelly, right? . playing God, taking a man further than his limitations thing. It could also be seen as uh, have you ever read Metamorphosis by Kafka? No, but I’ve heard of it. Yeah. That guy wakes up and he’s a cockroach one day.

You know, it’s not a theme that hasn’t been explored before. Right. But you’re right. It’s just like human fascination with our limitations.

Erick: So

Vivi: another layer to that is when you look up the, you know, significance of this movie, Kronenberg always stated that the theme center around aging and disease, which you could see heavily and you know, the cycle of life now, this movie came out around the time of the AIDS epidemic.

So a lot of people suffering from that disease related to this film. And he was actually like surprised because he’s like, whoa, that wasn’t my intention, [00:31:00] but I could see how it Right.

Erick: Relates that. Yeah. Anything, right. A cancer or

Vivi: he does mention cancer later on.

This movie is so deep and it gives you so much to think about. I think that’s why I enjoy it so much. And on the surface it doesn’t seem that deep. It’s the story of a man becoming a fly.

Erick: Cause I also was thinking about so many other things, like in Star Trek, you know, how they teleport in Star Trek.

you’re not necessarily transporting the original to the new place. It’s not you being moved, you’re killing the original and 100% replicating it elsewhere. Yeah. So it’s not still that one’s dead now , and this is fucked. That’s new to you. Yeah. So it kind of, it’s gets really deep.

Yeah. And I feel like that’s also what is played with here. Seth is like, you know, you dematerialize the old me and I’ve come out of that machine.

An entirely different person.

Vivi: Because not only does he have great reflexes, he’s apparently a gymnast. , yeah. He’s doing back flips in the middle of his lab and Ronnie wakes up and finds him just doing pull-ups and flips and seems a bit concerned, but is also just looking [00:32:00] at him in awe.

Like, holy crap, what’s happening? You wanna go tussle in the sheets real quick again, , we get like a little mini romantic montage of them going on a date. Seth is wearing the coat. Ronnie gave him, he gives her a necklace and they go to this little cafe to have lunch. Seth is feeling incredibly excited about his work and starts almost yelling about it in this coffee shop while eating piles of sugar in his coffee.

Oh,

Erick: Duncan ,

Vivi: right? We cut to them doing it. Once again, only Ronnie is exhausted saying they’ve been at it for hours, but Seth still has a ton of energy. He

Erick: needs to meet the girl from Halloween. Three. Remember when she keeps trying to have sex with Tom Atkins’s character? And he is like, don’t you ever stop.

Oh. Oh well

Vivi: yeah, , that woman is just. 20 years old and Tom Atkins was 60 .

But Seth has a ton of energy. This is when Ronnie notices the rough hair is growing out of his cut. He tries to play it off as nothing, but she decides to cut them off. decides he’s just too excited and wants Ronnie to go through the TelePod asap. wants her to feel as good as he does. Cutting the

Erick: hair hurt [00:33:00] him, right?

Vivi: It was agitating him. Yeah, it was really coarse,

Erick: where he felt it. I wondered if that was like antenna. Do

Vivi: they have cen sensors on their little hairs? Yeah. Because antenna are like little Yeah,

he Wants her to feel as good as he does saying they will be the ultimate power couple, but she refuses to Seth suddenly snaps calling her a fucking drag, like his personality does a complete 180 saying he’ll go look for someone who isn’t afraid.

Erick: are we all supposed, supposed to take that flies or horny as shit all the time?

I think it’s

Vivi: just animal instinct. There are a fucked ton of flies. I don’t know. I mean they’re, they’re all the time, right? Cuz animal instincts sleep, fuck, eat. So if that’s all he’s focusing on, yes and shit. I guess , did I miss that one? Yeah. Is that why you were laughing sometimes? All at once. All at,

Erick: he does do this 180 though. And I at this point was like, man, they do so well to make you love this couple And the chemistry that they have, seeing Seth go the wrong path, makes you feel disappointed in Seth.

Vivi: Right. And this can almost be seen as a commentary on dating and when you’re [00:34:00] in the honeymoon phase and suddenly your partner starts to show more and more of their true selves, it’s almost like, I don’t know this person.

Like what does my partner becoming?

Ronnie is starting to suspect something because she tells him that something went wrong and that he’s not the same. But Seth won’t hear it.

leaves the lab and we get this great speech about the flesh and penetration. Like him screaming it. So again, it makes me think that the whole, the flesh thing is on purpose. I think he leaves, he’s like, it’s not just sexual either. penetration and then just leaves . I’m not too far off. Like, watch that scene again.

Yeah, he just hits the town looking for another mate. He walks into a bar and hits on the first woman he sees. She’s watching two men arm wrestle and says that she’s betting on Marky tonight because she likes him. Seth makes a bet with the gentleman saying a hundred bucks and he can take both of them.

If he wins, he wants to take Tawny home as well. That’s gross. Tawny even says, I don’t get a say in this, and they’re just like, nah. Yeah, they objectify

Erick: her as an award for the

Vivi: game. Yes. No bodily autonomy at all. Also, I did not mention this, but [00:35:00] it’s clear that Seth’s appearance is getting slightly worse. It started off with some like light acne, but now wrinkles and crevices has started to appear on his skin. Suz starts arm wrestling. One of the men, he uses so much force that he breaks the man’s arm we just get a bone come out of his wrist.

Tawny is surprisingly not phased by this and she just asks if he’s a bodybuilder or something. . .

Erick: Yeah. Benching fucking bone breaking way. Yeah. I don’t know if we even see this in like arm wrestling competitions. I would hope

Vivi: we never see it

either way. She says she wants to hit up a couple more bars before they make it back to his place when they eventually do. Tawny. Seems a little true drunk red flag. So Seth carries her up the stairs to his lap. He goes through the TelePod because that’s his pickup move, I guess. Gotta show you what I’m working on first before you know we get to it.

Erick: Do you think it. Like a part of his original self still trying to come out. Even though theistic instinct is coming out of him,

Vivi: I think what it is is that the initial trip through the pods made [00:36:00] him feel fantastic and he’s trying to chase that high again.

So again, this film can be interpreted in a million ways. Are the pods a metaphor for drug use? Is that what changed? Her partner? Is that what he chose over her? Is it and what he keeps chasing the high on? Yeah.

Erick: Is it

to show us that someone who was maybe on the right path the right path, he didn’t have bad interactions with people.

He was respectful. And now that he’s found this thing he’s addicted to, it’s kinda leading him down this path that’s obviously gonna return. is just making things worse for him.

Vivi: You ? Yes.

And then him and Tawny get into it. No, get it on, I think is what I meant. Says get it won , get one, get it won. get it one. And then him and Tawny get it on. Once they’re done, Seth tells Tawny that he wants her to go through the pods. Once she refuses, he grabs her and tries to force her. But they’re stopped by Ronnie.

Tawny clearly feels awkward after she realizes that Ronnie is someone that he’s involved with and leaves the lab

Erick: at least T didn’t get [00:37:00] killed.

Vivi: Yeah. No. Right. Can you imagine worse saved her one night stand ever?

Erick: Ronnie also has a key to Souths apartment. .

Vivi: Is it an apartment? It’s like a lab apartment. L apartment. L apartment if you will. . Ronnie tells Seth that he’s different, that he’s changing. She tells him that she had those hairs, she cut off of him, examine and the lab couldn’t identify them, but if they had to guess, they’d say that it was insect tears some giant ass insect. Tears. Yeah. . But Seth won’t listen saying that she’s just jealous. punches a hole in the wall and says that a sick man can’t do that. He kicks her out and tells her not to return, saying he doesn’t need her anymore. Seth goes to look at himself in the mirror trying to cut off the insect. Tears growing on his face. Now he eventually gets frustrated and, and starts biting his nails when one of the nails comes off completely in his mouth, letting out a ton of puss. . Yeah. He squeezes it like a pimple. This is when Seth starts to question if something really is wrong with him.

You know when body parts start falling off of you, you gotta

Erick: wonder.

Vivi: Knowing that this film is a metaphor for like aging and [00:38:00] disease, as someone who like has a chronic illness, there are moments that are scary when your body doesn’t work how it used to.

And you like slowly realize that things are wrong. So this, this scene kind of hits home. To me, who’s chronically ill. It’s just such a like universal message. He goes back to his computer to go over the records of the first time he went through the TelePod and he discovers that a fly entered the pod with him. asks the computer if he absorbed the fly, but no, the computer tells him that he in the fly were fused at a molecular, at a mole QR genetic level. . Is that correct? It was, yeah. Okay. I had a really hard time saying that.

We then go to Ronnie, who gets a call from Seth. We learned that four weeks have passed since their last interaction, and Seth admits that he was very wrong and that he has indeed gotten much worse. begs her to visit him right away.

Ronnie shows up at the lab and we see just how bad Seth looks. His skin looks like it’s bubbling and it’s very oily. He’s walking on crutches and he informs Ronnie that it gets worse and worse each day.

Erick: I [00:39:00] wonder what happened to him in that moment where he breaks and realizes, oh, , sorry, I was wrong.

I was on this high and now I’ve realized uh, you were right. Right. Because it sort of feels like old Seth is kind going back out again. Yeah. It is sad that Seth just has no way out anymore

Vivi: and. . I think he’s probably taken those four weeks to realize that cuz we have that initial moment when he realizes that she’s right and he doesn’t immediately go for help. I think he’s trying to fix it and has realized at this point that it’s not looking so good.

Erick: Which is also relatable. Right? It’s when you can’t accept that something’s happening and you want to fix it by yourself. You either could resolve it or end up much worse.

So I think that the moral year too is, talk to somebody and don’t try to deal with things on your own sometimes.

Vivi: Dunno if that’s the moral, because Rodney cannot help him . No

Erick: she can’t. But but I’m saying that this is like obviously worst case scenario. when we need help

Vivi: want or gets to this point.

Erick: Yeah. he took those four weeks probably [00:40:00] because he was in that mental state of like, I can fix this. And sometimes

Vivi: you can’t on, he can’t. again, the makeup for this is fantastic. I think they do a really good job of like progressively showing the transformation.

it’s not just suddenly in your face. But the moments that it is, we’ve learned that time has passed. I think he has like

Erick: five pounds of makeup on. Oh good lord. Which I can’t imagine having to wear every

Vivi: day.

Erick: My face. Yeah. Every, yeah. . won’t an award for it too, I think.

Vivi: I mean, it’s disgusting. It’s still disgusting.

He explains what happened with the fly, saying his genetic makeup was changed and it’s showing itself as some sort of cancer. Eventually, the changes will cause him to disintegrate and die. Ronnie wants to get him help, but Seth refuses. So she is confused as to why he even called her there. He tells her that he refuses to be just a victim of his disease, which I think is an attitude we see a lot with people who are ill.

He specifically says that he refuses to be like a hairless, shriveled up crying about his life circumstances person not

Erick: cool. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think it’s a very bad take to bad take. Describe other people like this cuz it’s [00:41:00] like making them lesser and putting ’em above it.

Vivi: Yeah. But there are people who are ill and feel the same way.

That Yeah. They refuse to be a victim. It’s all very personal. I can’t comment on that. . Mm-hmm. . So rightfully so. Ronnie’s like, why’d you even call me here if you don’t want help? If you don’t wanna be taken to a hospital? If you don’t want me to do anything,

Erick: I needed to talk to somebody and you’re the only person I

Vivi: know. It kind of feels that way. . He takes this moment to show her that he can’t eat solid food anymore by puking on a donut.

And he’s like, oh, I’m sorry, that’s gross. And then he just turns around and his ear falls off. . He admits that he’s scared and needs help and to her credit, she hugs him, It’s even funnier knowing that they’re dating at the time . And she’s like uh, no,

Erick: I saw you at your worst actually.

And it’s not for me. I wonder how long they were together. They

Vivi: broke after this. They broke up after this. Cuz she refused to hug him.

Erick: she started having nightmares of him in the flag. Yeah.

Vivi: Up . Ronnie, turns to STAs for help.

He just wants Ronnie to leave Seth alone saying that he might be contagious, but Ronnie insists that they [00:42:00] need to help him. Sta is, doesn’t seem convinced, but wants to see Seth for himself in order to think of a plan.

So Ronnie returns to the lab and finds Seth crawling on the walls Spider-Man style. He seems to have changed demeanor saying that the disease wants him to turn into something else that maybe it’s not bad after all. It seems like he’s kind of reverting back to that initial high he got when he went to the TelePod in the first

Erick: place.

His demeanor was so back and forth a lot that I figured this was part of the effect of the transformation that he. . It’s thinking like a fly, right? Maybe. I don’t know what the tension span is of a fly. The tiny, I imagine it’s like, oh, I’ve been thinking of this now. Oh, I’m thinking of that now. Oh, I’m doing this now.

Oh, it’s great. Oh, it’s bad. Oh, it’s this. He’s just so like, because he can’t really focus on any one thing.

Vivi: And is it not human nature? Like when something incredibly traumatic happens to you, you juggle back and forth between being like, this is the end of the world. I can’t deal with it to uh, maybe it won’t piece of bed if I just figure it out.

It, I think it’s just how the human mind works. This is where he wants Ronnie to document the process of [00:43:00] how he eats, because again, he’s just convinced that this is something amazing and that they should continue to document

Erick: his work. I’m a superhuman fly . Yeah.

Vivi: I look amazing. I look stunning. Put me on the cover of Vogue. Put me on camera. I belong on camera.

Make

Erick: a YouTube channel for me. .

Vivi: He definitely would’ve made a YouTube. He

Erick: totally would. Yeah. You like Chronicles of Flyman.

Vivi: Flyman. So Ronnie documents the process of how he eats his food, and this is the tape that she then takes to stasis. He is very grossed out and goes to talk to Ronnie about it, but finds her crying in the bathroom where she confesses that she is pregnant with Seth’s baby.

and Seth is, is the ultimate creep, just the worst. But he still asks the right question here in this moment and asks her what she wants to do. He’s like, oh no. What do you wanna do? The only correct response if a woman is crying about being pregnant. Yeah.

it’s the one credit I will give him.

He’s terrible. It’s not a big credit, but it’s the one I will give him. , we cut to Iranian and STAs at a hospital as [00:44:00] she gets an abortion. Perfumed. Perfumed perfumed. Perfumed.

Erick: You got

Vivi: an abortion. Can you imagine if it was that easy? where she’s about to get a abortion performed in the middle of it.

Something goes wrong, there’s blood everywhere, and the doctor tells her that she is going to have to push out what’s left. Suddenly. This is a birth scene, and Ronnie is very distraught as she is forced to birth a mag, a larva. I don’t know exactly what it is called when flies have babies. it’s disgusting. It’s covered in blood. Ronnie then wakes up screaming from this nightmare. this scene is so interesting to me. I was trying to find like articles about it. I didn’t find a ton. because I’m sure like a lot of people have had to analyze the scene.

Erick: Whatever reason the abortion you’re having is you are afraid of this thing. maybe not the baby itself, but the implications around why this is happening to you. Mm-hmm. .

Vivi: Oh, baby’s kind of scary too, huh? The babies are

Erick: scary. Yeah. Uh, I sound like a mansplainer too, cause you’re the woman in this situation.

So do you want me to talk yeah, I just wanna say that like, I understand and I’m a friend, I’m an nower .

Vivi: I just wanna stay .

Erick: Sometimes it’s hard for [00:45:00] everyone to understand, but I think people should accept that people have their reasons.

Vivi: So again, this is why I was trying to find articles about this. Cause I would imagine a lot of people have talked about this subject. I can’t find any, if you know any good ones, send them my way. But it’s meant to illustrate how torn up Ronnie is with the decision of terminating a pregnancy. and now this scene has another layer to it, right?

Because it’s now existed in a post Roe v Wade world where abortion was legal and now in the world where it was overturned. So it, couldn’t be interpreted in different ways. And you know, now that I think about. I’ve never seen another film genre really cover the topic of abortion as much as horror does.

I could be wrong. I’m sure there’s like indie movies out there that cover the topic, but really only in horror have I heard this disgusted in other movies, you know, like Black Christmas and

Erick: tough topic. it’s where else It’s a reality, would people, yeah, again, other than like drama not gonna have like a happy go-lucky fucking dramedy Romantic comedy about this.

Vivi: I think I’ve only ever seen it in like one other comedy and it wasn’t an abortion, it was a miscarriage that was talked about too. Knocked up, like what to expect when you’re expecting.

Mm. they portrayed in that one [00:46:00] but again, Cronenberg is known for body horror, so I find it interesting that male directors portray pregnancy as like the ultimate body horror sometimes. Which is wild cuz they’ll never experience it and go through it, but they’re like, oh my god, it’s scary.

Erick: men, the movie men wasn’t that directed by men. . that was amazing. Another version of like pregnancy being body horror presented by a

Vivi: man. It is. I really don’t like that film. No, it’s not good. . The scene also really plays on like the fetus as monstrous or alien or other, now watching it in 2023 since Roe v. Wade was overturned, it could be like viewed through the lens of like forced birth.

And there’s just so many ways to interpret this scene. I just find it interesting. So I would really like to hear other people’s opinion on it. and that was a lengthy discussion. Can you stop clacking

Erick: in the background, my friend? Could

Vivi: you cut my nails bitch?

How about we start with that? You wanna get into it? Like with my Louie tones, we’ll get

Erick: into it. I boog your hand and ass boy. He’s like, y’all shut the fuck up. You shut the fuck up. Y’all don’t even know what you’re talking about.[00:47:00]

done.

Boy.

Vivi: So

we cut back to Seth in the lab and O M d. Oh my God. This film does amazing at making him look more and more gross. He no longer has fingers. They’ve like morphed together to have like, Clothes. Yeah. Claw almost. They may take clothes. and his skin has morphed to look more lumpy, making his head a completely weird shape.

Erick: He looks kinda like

Igor,

Vivi: like that old Hollywood gross makeup. Yeah, He is working on the TelePod when his teeth start to fall out and we find out that he has been keeping the pieces that fall off of him in the medicine cabinet. I always have nightmares that my teeth are falling out and that is like an anxiety nightmare apparently.

Oh so this is like full blown my worst nightmare. Well at listen in

Erick: your nightmare, you’re not putting them in the medicine cabinet.

Vivi: I think I’m like always just like holding them I put them in a, in a cup because I’m like there has to be a way to fix this .

Erick: That’s gotta do with body horror.

Fear of body horror too. Oh yeah. I like that he says it’s a reminder of something that was like a museum of Seth .

Vivi: Which is devastating.

Erick: He’s like, I’m [00:48:00] no longer that person and I’m not gonna pretend to be,

Vivi: It’s pretty gross when you get a pan over a shot of all that’s in the medicine cabinet.

was one of them, his penis, it kind of looked like his penis. Okay. Because then he later turns around and we see that he’s smooth down to there.

Erick: Yeah. Cuz it flies. Don’t have penises. They do. Right?

Vivi: I don’t know. I guess not according to this movie. Ronnie walks in on him and it’s clear that she came to tell him that she is pregnant, but she can’t find the words.

Seth tells her that she must leave as he can no longer control himself around her as his insect instincts are brutal and taking over.

He’s afraid that he’ll hurt her if she stays. Ronnie leaves understandably upset. STAs is waiting for her downstairs in the car and she insists that she needs an abortion. Now he tries to calm her down, but she’s adamant repeating that she doesn’t want it in her body. The way she says it is so heartbreaking that she doesn’t want it in her body, and I can only imagine how terrifying this is for women who this is a reality, again, dark movie.

What they don’t know, however, is that Seth is overhearing their whole [00:49:00] conversation and watches them drive off.

Rodney and Stasis are at a doctor’s office and the doctor seems not impressed with the whole situation. So what kind of connections does he have that he’s got like an abortion In the middle of the night that he can call.

Erick: He’s a shady ass motherfucker. We already saw that. So he probably has like powers of position over a lot of

Vivi: people.

It seems like this doctor’s his friend because he asks him like, is this yours? Like, has he done this for staff this before? Where he’s like, I need anor emergence, like abortion in the middle

Erick: of the night. Is this one yours? Is this, oh yeah. Is this one yours now? This is the 10th time Steph is. Is come on.

Vivi: They gotta be yours or this one. Yeah. Yeah. Steph, this is sketchy as fuck. . but Steph has explains that the baby is not his. They just have reason to believe that the fetus would not be well, the doctor says that he detects some uncertainty here, but no, someone is banging on your door in the middle of the night trying to get an abortion. I don’t believe that there’s any uncertainty here.

they seem pretty sure. Ronnie then says a line that I think is very important that if the doctor won’t help [00:50:00] her, she will do it herself. Again, I don’t know if this is Cronenberg’s intention, but I think it’s a poignant line from Veronica. She basically sums up the truth of the entire abortion debate that whatever side you’re on, legal illegal ban or not, it’s never gonna stop them from happening.

It’s only gonna. Safe abortions. And again, I don’t know if this like was Cronenberg’s intention,

Erick: who knows? Because it’s hard to say with any male direction portrayal. Yeah. And male, like I said. But any portrayal that we’ve seen, right. We kind of visited this a little bit in black Christmas.

Mm-hmm. where the take from the movies sort of unclear whether they’re saying they’re pro or against.

Vivi: Right. It could be the actor’s like way of delivering things that make it clear and the director might not have credit for that.

the doctor agrees to Veronica’s terms, and as she prepares for surgery, Seth bursts through the hospital room and kidnaps her. And I don’t mean like he just barges into the door. He like breaks a fucking window and kidnaps her . It’s one of those like solid blood glass windows too. Yeah, those thick ass ones from the eighties.

Oh [00:51:00] my God. He takes her back to the lab and asks why she wants to kill br. This wording I think is not an accident. Seth believes that the baby may be all that’s left of him, the real hymn and says, please don’t kill me, and begs her to keep the baby. She just says that she can’t over and over again. And Seth says, that’s too bad. Okay, so I think this comment or this conversation is a little bit interesting as well. If we are to believe that this film is a commentary on aging and disease and death, oftentimes, you know, having children is the next, natural progression in your life, right?

When you get to a, according to society, right? When you get to a certain point. So I think this comment’s a little bit interesting. He refers to the baby at by his name, and I think it comments a little bit on the narcissism of having children because children are viewed as extensions of their parents.

They carry on their legacy and the memories of like who their parents were. But ultimately those are selfish reasons for having a children, for having a children have one. Children, please. [00:52:00] They’re selfish reasons for having children at the end of the day because they’re gonna grow up to be their own person and have their own thoughts and opinions on you, and it might not be amazing.

Erick: The other thing that makes me think about is, and this again was also addressed in black Christmas, is that suddenly the male partner in the abortion situation that we’re looking at cares about the baby it shows us that battle with how a woman is supposed to be in charge of carrying this baby for nine months is going to be the most important thing that this baby’s life. Yeah. The most affected man thinks because it’s my, this is a weird way to put it, but it’s my seed. I have a say in everything that goes on with this baby and you can’t decide what to do with it even though you are carrying

Vivi: it, which is wild.

Right.

Erick: it’s like putting in 5% of the work and

Vivi: thinking it’s a terrible group project. Yeah. Like you put five and then you put your name on it at the end of .

Erick: Yeah. And then

Vivi: take her credit out of it. Yeah. . Yeah. I did all the work and you just put your fucking name on it, [00:53:00] right?

Just . . But uh, I thought it was an interesting phrasing. Again, I might be reading too much into this movie, but I don’t care. , that’s why movies exist. Steph is, has followed the two to set slab and has brought a shotgun. Get him a gun and solve all my problems. Yep.

Staes is snooping around the lab when Seth tackles him from above causing Sta is to freak out and he points the shotgun at him. But Seth pushes it aside and pull STAs up by the arm because he’s in an incredibly strong superhuman at this point. Barfing his corrosive acid on him, causing STAs to have his arm disintegrate right in front of his eyes.

It’s so nasty. And he doesn’t even have time to process it because Seth then does the same to his leg. Well, does

Erick: it work like Cauterization, I think it does if the acid just cuts through, but also it you’re

Vivi: not bleeding to death. Cuts it off.

Erick: Yeah. Yeah, because I was surprised. I was like, he should be dead.

Right? Like in, at least

Vivi: in shock if he bled to death. But yeah, if it’s like burning it off essentially bones and all too. Cause the shock could kill him. Yeah. Oh it should have

Erick: [00:54:00] because his whole ass leg is go well, like it’s from the knee down and

Vivi: I think it was his foot. It wasn’t like his whole leg, but still, yeah, it’s a lot.

It doesn’t matter the amount you got maimed ,

Erick: because there’s so many times where you think stasis is dead because he just is like shock and faint. And then he, his leg again, he’s like, oh, and faint. And you’re like, oh, he’s dead. I will too. He’s not that. Oh, he’s dead again. Oh no, he’s not dead. Flailing in the background while uh, Ronnie and Seth are having their argument.

Yeah.

Vivi: He only stops when Ronnie begs him too. Seth then asks Ronnie to help him be human by going into the pod with him.

It seems he has created a third pod that will spit out genetic material of whatever is put into the first two pods. It makes me think that he was trying to figure out a way to separate his material from the flies or combine his with something else that would allow him to survive.

He says that way the three of them can be the perfect family, a family of three in one perfect body, more human than he is alone. Bizarre. But I think it’s also a comment on how like the nuclear family is necessary for human existence makes you more [00:55:00] human experience.

See all that.

He starts up the pods and Rodney fights him, pushing him back by the jaw and struggling until his jaw just comes off in her hand. And this triggers his final transformation. A huge fly appears underneath Seth’s melting skin. It is So well done.

Erick: It is. It gives the same energy as like, American world Wolf in London.

Yes it does. that transformation,

Vivi: that feature, feature, good old transformation scene in all

Erick: its practical

Vivi: effect. Glory too. Yeah. He flings Ronnie into the pod and starts the process. But Ronnie screams seem to wakes death this up.

Erick: who we thought was

Vivi: death, that’s why. Yeah, yeah.

Who shoots at the pod that she is in causing it to malfunction? This angers the giant fly and he tries to escape his pod to attack, but the timer is counting down from 10. He does not make it out in time and the machine zaps him to the third TelePod. Sta is freeze Ronnie and the two watch the fly crawl out of the pod.

It seems like he has been turned inside out

Erick: I thought it was that he [00:56:00] fused with the pod itself. Did he? because the pod was empty.

But I can’t remember the reason it looks like he’s combined with the metal from the pod in the third one. Oh. So he’s like mixed with parts and that’s why he is like, fucking kill me

Vivi: Yeah. Ronnie grabs the shotgun but can’t seem to shoot him as he crawls towards her.

But the flag grabs the shotgun and aims it at his face, making it clear that he wants her to put him out of his misery. She backs away saying she can’t, but eventually takes pity on him and shoots him. Point blank.

But we get to see everything and the camera does not shy away from the explosion of the FLS head. . Yeah. And that’s how it ends with Ronnie crying being the last thing the audience hears as the screen turns black.

Yeah,

Erick: it is. Uh, Rough. you grow to like Seth, you feel for Ronnie in her situation and you still hate Stafu and Seth is there being a piece of shit. Yeah.

Vivi: on that depressing note, , I really enjoyed this film. Even watching it twice to do the [00:57:00] writeup, I was like still getting all the same emotions I did the first time watching it.

And the same like synopsis, firing of like, that could mean this, that could mean this. Like, there’s just so many things the film can mean and like how it can relate to people. There’s the whole, your partner suddenly becoming someone you don’t recognize. going on that I talked about a little bit earlier.

And again, I mentioned this, it’s meant to be a metaphor for aging, disease and death, which you can kind of see that cycle in Seth as he’s transforming into the fly. And how it’s like the small things that let you know that you’re aging or that you’re ill. Mm-hmm. , it’s like suddenly your knees pop every time you go down the fucking stairs and you’re like, whoa, that didn’t used to happen.

So the makeup is fantastic. It’s so gross. I think the themes in this film hold up and it’s like 40 years later and it’s super entertaining, especially considering that it has three cast members. Really. I

Erick: think it has to do with their delivery of everything, right? Yeah. Because like Jeff Goldblum, Seth’s character is great.

Fantastic. Yeah, he’s so perfect. Apparently he almost wasn’t casted. and [00:58:00] apparently they thought it would be hard to put makeup on his face,

Vivi: Why would it be hard

Erick: to put makeup on his face? Yeah. What they Just were like, no, he’s not really what we’re looking for.

They almost uh, hot . Yes. . who did they reach out to? I saw that they reached out to somebody that like denied them.

Vivi: It was someone else famous, right? I think I saw

Erick: and he said, no,

see, 20th century Fox didn’t want goldblum in the film because a supervisor thought he wasn’t a bankable star. And then somebody else said uh, the visual effects guy, he thought that they couldn’t do makeup on his face cuz it was

Vivi: hard because he’s just so gorgeous.

You don’t wanna cover that up .

Erick: the person who turned it down was Michael Keaton.

Vivi: Ah, yeah, I see that. I like some of the roles Michael Keaton has done, love him as Beetlejuice. This character is so emotionally and I’ve never seen Michael Keaton play a character like that. Not to say that he hasn’t, I just haven’t seen him.

I’ve seen him in like the Batman movies. I’ve seen him as Beetlejuice,

Erick: you know? Yeah. I don’t think I would’ve liked this as much if it didn’t have Dnet because

Vivi: as much as people like, and, and I’m one [00:59:00] of them. I like the Tim Burton Batmans, I don’t like him as Batman . Oh no. He’s like the worst part of it.

He’s probably like the least memorable one for me. Yeah. Personal opinion. All the villains are casted way better than, than he is. What a tangent point is. It’s super entertaining and we have a cast of three people essentially.

Erick: Yeah. This movie couldn’t be done by anyone else. This movie has to stay the way it is. I would like to see what we were talking about earlier, like a possible like maybe revisit to see where Gina Davis’s character goes from there.

it’s also left up in the air. Whether she actually went through with the

Vivi: abortion or not. Isn’t it? So there’s a sequel and I think she does end up having the child because the sequel follows Seth’s son.

Erick: It seems odd, Because it’s like, it makes, seems wrong , all of this sort of seem for not Yeah.

that they were like, well she just went with her

Vivi: name. Well, I don’t know. I could see both. Right? Seth is dead and it’s clear that she did love him. Does she want his legacy to continue or not? It’s like that

Erick: seems like the typical progress the [01:00:00] man’s story by putting the woman’s story

Vivi: at risk.

I could see both storylines working out. However, given how like adamant she was about not wanting it in her body, I hope that she was able to get that result that she wanted.

Erick: what would drive her to be like, well he died. That was scary as fuck. I don’t want that to happen to a baby regardless of whether I want a baby or not.

I don’t know what will

Vivi: happen. Yeah. You don’t know genetically what will happen. And then it’s, it’s very sad. It’s like, Do you want your child to grow up one day knowing that his dad was a giant fly ?

Erick: Do you want your child to grow up and be a fly? Yeah. You’re gonna have fly Bart running around your house.

Fly babies. that’s dark. I mean, it

Vivi: is really tough conversation. It’s hard to make jokes about those guys.

Erick: Okay. It, so what are your thoughts? I thought it was a good movie. It’s sad to see Seth’s character go through this, that he goes through. It’s also sad to see Gina Davis’s character, Ronnie, go through what she’s going through.

It’s a tough movie. It is. And uh, I think it does well to have the viewer go through that rollercoaster of emotions with it. we’re [01:01:00] rooting for both of these characters in the beginning you were like, oh, I feel this chemistry. Like it’s kind of reaching out to me. I love these two together and now they’ve ended up in this like horrible circumstance because of one mistake

Vivi: yeah. And this movie almost plays out like. Rom horror. Not like a romcom, but a rom horror because we start with them meeting each other and end with obviously the tragedy that happens to Seth, their relationship is the focus of the entire movie.

Mm-hmm.

Erick: and Seth. This is just there

Vivi: being over being a side ho. I don’t know what to do. I know a side piece

Erick: of shit. Yeah. A side piece of He’s like the Dingleberry left after you wipe, you can’t get, get rid of it a fantastic way, want , but it’s just there and it’s persistent and it to describe a human being.

Yeah. A great way’s. A dingleberry of a human .

Vivi: So what would you write at I rate this movie a nine. Same. I give this movie A Nine Outta

Erick: 10. Yeah. This movie’s good if you’ve never seen it. I hadn’t never seen it before. You either. Yeah. It’s like, wow. New classic. Something that is too depressing if I feel like too, to re-watch, re-watch too often.

Yeah. But if someone was [01:02:00] like, let’s watch the Fly, I’d be like, you need to watch it. Let’s go.

Vivi: Yeah. You know,

Erick: it’s definitely interesting. But I don’t think I personally would be like, I want to go get said . It’s like the

Vivi: Logan movie. I want a good cry. Let me pop in the fly. .

Erick: Yo, look at that. it’s a movie that I’m like, wow. 10 outta 10, but I I’m

Vivi: not gonna watch it again. Yeah. , there is a lot of films like that. So do you wanna tell us what scared Loki this week? Yeah.

Erick: Loki obviously has been hanging out here for a little bit cuz he’s like, y’all need to stop talking about these things. They ruin my summer. has, and we tried different things. Let us know if you know how to resolve this. But Loki gets attacked by flies so much, especially during the summer in the yard and I think I’m gonna put like stuff out in the yard. Maybe it’s to help him because he gets attacked in specifically the crotch area a lot by flies. Like it’s to the point where I am in pain watching what’s going down I think Loki, tmi, . Yeah, lo tmi.

he didn’t watch this with us, but I think it was because he’s like, I need to get away from flies. Flies,

Vivi: yeah. . You wanna tell us about it? Loki, [01:03:00] It’s just him sitting out in the cold because he knows flies are not there his favorite time

of year. Yeah. He doesn’t seem to mind the cold that much except everyone there’s snow out there. Yeah, just when there’s snow on the ground. But he likes just sitting out there in the cold.

Erick: Imagine if in the summer they’re always attacking him.

The winter is like, well

Vivi: finally the, I get that. Dangerous as I thought. I totally get

Erick: that though.

Vivi: does that pretty much wrap it up for us here today? It

Erick: does, Let us know if you like this movie. new classic, I think to me. Let’s get outta here.

Vivi: I’m hungry as always. We hope you guys had a good time here with us.

You can follow us pretty much anywhere at Shake Out Scared Pod except Twitter. Twitter Shaken Scared Pod. You can send us an email at Shake out Scared pod gmail.com

Erick: support the show on Patreon. We have a bunch of episodes over there already. A bunch of good stuff, good times. Listen, wherever we get your podcast, give us a follow, check out our drink videos. If you’re watching this on YouTube, make sure to like and subscribe, comment in the comments whether you like this movie or hate it.

Vivi: And Kay, thanks. Bye bye.

Erick: [01:04:00] yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sy of us. Bam. We don’t even say anything. We’re just like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vivi: No doubt. No doubt. , no doubt . I hate.

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