The Special is one of those movies. Scrolling through streaming menus, your finger hovers over the button. But you're better than that. Well, we aren't. Frank and Scott watched this movie so you don't have to. That's what video store clerks were for.

A movie about a man named Jerry, and his obsession with having sex with a seedy brothel's mystery box.

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IMDb The Special

• Directed by B. Harrison Smith.
• Screenplay by James Newman & Steensland
• Staring Davy Raphaely, Dave Sheridan, and Sarah French

Of course, if you want to watch The Special, it seems to be perpetually available on Amazon Prime Video. Go for it.

00:00 welcome everyone to the last video store clerk's podcast with frank and Scott. The days of blockbuster hollywood and the independent video store are over, but the days of searching the shelves for hidden gems and overlooked call classics is never ending. Join us while we drown in a sea of streaming options and ask the question, what the hell is a good movie anyway? i'm frank, i'm scott, and we're the last video store clerks.

00:05 They took the picture of uncle ben off the rice i'm pretty sure they still call it uncle ben. but you know i get the 90 second rice from time to time no i get it all the time i'm [ __ ] lazy as [ __ ] well until you check the sodium count. yeah that's what's going to kill us for sure. See, these old man moments just pop out. Yeah, but do you think so do you think that in 30 years from now people are going to like there's going to be a Mandela effect? like about because of the damn change, and stuff like whatever it was, that it was never there. Yeah. some of those Mandela effect things might be real.

00:45 it's come to my attention lately that people in their late teens early 20s, right now, honestly don't know of some of the bands that we listened to in the 90s. that's good. I don't want anyone to know yeah um I’ve seen the kids. kids are wearing these shirts parents are slapping the shirts on these kids that say nirvana but it's a picture of Hanson that's pretty fun and then they show the reaction because they ask them nobody said anything at school all day and they no one would they say anything because none of them know and this is something that could easily be scripted, but it's just the genuine look on the kid's face. I’m like no kid is that good at acting you know especially if it's just like a video on a phone you know parents are slapping just nirvana with the handsome brothers on it and nobody notices.

00:30 their flannel shirts were probably more expensive well it didn't come from Walmart well even uh i think it was 10 or 15 years ago there was a sublime thing came up younger people weren't but you'd walk somebody what's your favorite sublime song well you know and you'd get the jimmy Kimmel on the street answer yeah straight [ __ ] yeah fly. [ __ ] song yeah. doing this podcast I’ve just been walking around all day with a la la la [ __ ] mystery science theater. I was so happy, when i was a kid, and it would come on comedy central really late at night. yeah, but it was on a Saturday or Friday, so I could do it and not get in trouble yeah and eventually sci-fi channel picked it up. that's right and it they played it at three in the afternoon on a Sunday which is exactly when i wanted that oh that sci-fi channel used to be so good before it was syfy. they got that wwe raw. Monday night raw.

01:00 wrestling is a billion-dollar industry I don't get it where there's abuse that, I feel worse for professional wrestlers than I do for any professional football player I watched wrestling one year of my life and of all years it was our freshman year. yeah, which i feel is a really weird time in my life to do that. I mean, maybe man like I used to have a corn shirt for every day of the week

it was that time what sucks is over the years when you realize the shirts that you gave away to people, because they were like oh you have that shirt from then it's like, yeah, just you know take it man. i don't need it now. i feel like i should have saved those save those shirts.

01:15 i mean, i couldn't wear them now. i don't wear an extra-large t-shirt like i did in high school. oh god. we are talking about The Special today.

01:20 the special is basically an allegory for the dangers of the near constant urge that we have to stick our dick in anything that feels good, and possibly about masturbation addiction. it was… some things lacking, yeah. there was a there was a level of truth to this movie that was kind of disturbing to me, but also, it's… oh yeah. i'm really sorry i made you watch this movie, and i'm really sorry that i watched it twice. and wow i mean

01:30 it's the whole tone of the whole thing. it's, and, it's one of those movies, before we talk about what it's about. it felt a little bit like it might have been a student film, but then when i looked it up. I’ve seen some other things that this guy's done. he did a movie with Eric Roberts the director of this thing he had a it was a movie called camp dread. i want to say. camp dread not a club dread. broken lizard. Different, different, thing. Yeah, okay, so, don't think about that this movie was directed by b Harrison smith the claim to fame on the poster for the movie was that this guy directed camp Dredd and death house neither of these movies i've seen which is weird what happened to eric Roberts. frank got me a celebrity he's got a celebrity cameo of eric roberts telling me happy birthday and very excitedly talking about me and it was the weirdest [ __ ] really great birthday present i've wanted to send somebody a cameo and i hadn't pulled the trigger on it and scott's birthday was coming up and i just moved into the into the new house i said scott's getting a cameo i began to look and my goal was who's weird? weird enough that'll freak him out but it's kind of cool yeah anytime did exactly that effect it was such a weird like why did he pick eric roberts and to be honest the close runner up was Michael biehn yeah but you said he was kind of a dick on his cameo you look at them. i've mentioned that i'm, i'm realizing that i'm getting older. one of those things that helps me to realize i'm getting older is seeing these people from my childhood now. michael biehn is, it's showing more than eric Roberts and michael biehn you know i looked i love him not saying anything bad but you can preview the the cameos that they'll do michael biehn's just this guy lounged back in a recliner with some readers on in a dark room reading a script. Yeah. almost and with no emotion eric Roberts, i could feel his energy. Yeah, he was really excited that was my birthday i felt like he was it felt genuine and that as soon as he sent it and he sent it they give you a window of when it's going to come the last day in the window and it was so close to your birthday. i was like, he finally sends it, and i watch it, and it's just what i was looking for. it was great. though like, sitting there opening that on my computer after like working all day and it was like at the height of the pandemic like the beginning of the pando and i was just like i feel so weird and like he's like looking at me and i was like that's- and what kept like popping into my head was that's Julia Roberts brother and i think his daughter's pretty. i've never seen his daughter. you have for sure seen his daughter. did you watch the third season of American horror story? the coven one? Yes. yeah she's one of the witches. well by the way-- she's Madison! i remembered her character name! she's Madison. the one that is like the pretty popular girl sort of, of the witchs. i'm gonna have to look back because hotel lost me she was also in the beginning of what was that movie with the the, the, was it the hunt? Yes. that was like sitting on that, like, we're making fun of liberals, and, yes, yes. the hunt because yeah you would think it was the conservatives doing it, but no it was the liberals doing that. Yeah, that's really good. i liked that movie.

05:00 the lady who was the main kind of like redneck girl that was, that makes it all the way to the end and she's been in other things too yeah although i did for some reason when i got to the end of that movie i was like i wish that this Hillary swank part was Sandra bullock which was an unexplained thing because they told me that before i don't really like Sandra bullock all that much she kind of bothers me but yeah i i was like i wanted it to be sandra bullock it's the first time it's ever happened to me well and if you watch the office there's a whole Hillary swank hot or not sequence and in my opinion hot. Ah, i don't know. she's a handsome woman. why did you have to say that? i was so confident. because every now and then and then you just had to go there. Every now and then i like like a handsome woman. it's the same as, like, Julia Roberts. I like long-faced women [ __ ] [ __ ]

05:00 but yeah um eric roberts most recently was in righteous gemstones oh really he was in the christopher nolan batman movies too. yes he was yeah he was one of the least one of the villains yeah yeah Christopher Nolan was like he has a good eye for like i like that guy he's weird there's a guy who i had only seen in in torchwood which is a doctor who spin-off and he was one of the like wall street guys in one of the batman movies.

05:10 that's a nice touch. yeah and well, it makes me feel like the director watches the [ __ ] that i watch too there's something about that like, i'm like, that guy watches doctor who. respect. Yeah. it's always good to feel that bond. Yeah. when you relate to somebody deeply nerdy.

08:00 that was a real argument they had with the madam at the whorehouse with 60 bucks but. so they pay the 60. he goes up there this blows jerry's mind it's too much for jerry but they all see it yeah he was like laying on the bed he was passed out mike zora had to go get mike to go get him off the bed yeah because i think later in the movie there's a point where he's about to [ __ ] the box and then something comes up and he realizes i'm gonna be real wiped out after i [ __ ] this box i shouldn't do it and again one of the small points that they did cover was mike the friend zips up jerry's pants and he says that's some gooey stickiness down there like he makes a little comment as he zips up jerry i i want to cover to a full extent the foley in this movie is [ __ ] out of control there's no leveling it's all the same volume and when he goes and [ __ ] this box it is just macaroni in a pot he covers his head in a bag to bring him there so he doesn't know how to get back which i kind of missed at the beginning of it yeah he covers his head so he doesn't see but when he gets there he pulls the hood off and he sees the name of the place oh yeah they're right in front of it we live in the age of google i mean good job of covering his head and then let him see the the building but when he wants to find the place he goes when he goes home and his wife is suspicious he's been cheating on him and he's like i didn't have sex with anyone else and he didn't no no but it's in him you see something's changed almost immediately yeah that was my biggest problem that he needs it i really like the premise of this movie but i didn't feel very bad for this guy because i didn't feel bad for him long enough before he starts acting like a [ __ ] ass at the beginning i i think we're in agreement we did just both assume his wife's cheating where's this going but then you find out what caused him to think that other yeah she wouldn't talk to a salesman suddenly everything about the character development becomes super thin in this movie and he shows up at work and he's a little weird well he does a search and he finds it by the way where do they work in a basement okay the guy's house is way too [ __ ] nice exactly and then he goes to work and it looks like the office with no windows they have no windows it looks like the guys who run ticket businesses you know the guys who resell tickets to events and i get it i can suspend that two to a point but by the end of this movie i couldn't suspend it yeah it looks like a certain little white room with the black loveseat if you know what i'm saying the amount of corners making this movie made me want to go why did you make it an hour and a half long 43 minutes is how long this movie should have been i am in total agreement on my drive over here that crossed my mind that's the most reasonable way that it should have been handled was this should have been a short film it should have been an episode of tales from the crypt it's something it was perfect for that no need for full length yeah and we would have accepted all of its poor qualities it would have right out of it right out of the gate that's where it needed to be but with the level of acting yeah which is not to say the tales from the crypt isn't one of the most amazing things that's ever been on yeah tell us from the crypt and demon knight is i watch it every halloween i [ __ ] love demon knight if you haven't seen tales from the crib demon knight watch it immediately it's so good it's the second tales from the group movie not as good kind of funny though dennis miller when he was [ __ ] weirdo yeah bordello with blood it was great always good to have a feldman appearance i completely forgot so i've not seen either one of the tails from the crit movies in a long time about ten years ago i bought seasons one and two on dvd from target oh my god you do can i borrow them yeah oh my god yeah man i don't know why why is tails from the crypt not on hbo i'm it aired on hbo why is it not on hbo man not on hbo magazine it's not streaming anywhere dude oh that is like a huge chunk of my television i don't forget i'm so i oh my god i've wanted to watch it for so long you know and it's you know from 10 years ago so the dvds themselves are probably from 10 to 15 years ago and so it's got the little trifold with the you know i think to a certain extent i netflix disc by disk in the mail got tales from the crypt episodes and i actually think i did it after they had started streaming stuff but it was one of those things you just couldn't find it anywhere that's a shame does netflix still offer discs by mail for like you know 70 year olds you know i don't know for sure but i would say that they do because there are places where the internet is still not a thing or reliable yeah i guess yeah because i grew up in rural west virginia we used to say that the satellite dish was the state flower those big 90s satellite dishes the big giant my grandparents had one in the backyard in elgin texas yeah so you know small town you don't get good internet service in the 90s out there and then i feel like small towns they were really good at when you changed service back then you got the second one you know they couldn't always run it through the same dish so then you'd have two or three of these even now my neighbor has three satellite dishes on his roof yeah cause they don't take him down [ __ ] do you have they won't come take them off your roof they don't want them back do you have a radio station at your house are you some sort of are you charlie sheen from the arrival looking for that [ __ ] second time this week that you've brought up the arrival i think i need to watch it it's what we might need to do an episode about the arrival it's i like these the only time i saw the arrival was when it came out which was what 98. you haven't seen the arrival since then never no no since then i thought about watching it when i worked at the video store but i never got around i tried the sequel a couple years ago charlie sheen was hot [ __ ] then that was like peak before two and a half men charlie sheen but the height of his like wild thing fame go ricky vaughn laugh but that was a bit like people everyone knew what [ __ ] major league was when we were you know 10 11 years old it's a fallen in the dugout thing it's a coming home late drunk thing yeah i find movies like that are the reason i know actors names that no one else knows what i'm talking about like corbin reigns was in that he's sean's father in psych is the only way anyone knows who wesley snipes tom behringer renee russo charlie sheen yeah it was full of people from the past it was it was a good flick man you don't hear from any of those [ __ ] people anymore except for corbin reigns who's shawn's dad on the bike renee russo was the last thing i saw her two for the money with matthew mcconaughey and al pacino i feel like that's what i've ever seen that movie two for the money no sports bidding i believe which brings me to uh now you see me and now you see me too wait a minute

10:00 it's called now you don't it should be called now you don't why why is it not called now you don't because they needed that now you see me money now you see me too or just call it now you see me now you don't the whole thing is on the table at that point a different this is another movie little franco was in oh yeah little franco i kind of wanted to see little franco's indie movie he made the rental yeah was it good you never saw the rival no i never saw it i've watched it twice is Allison brie in it his wife uh from glow yes yes community yes yeah sorry i know glow yes i still mad men no i should say no i have still not done community god damn it frank i know i think one of the good things is us talking about it is there's so much out there so much out there and sometimes we'll talk about just how much is out there and why some of it is i feel like that's what we're doing though just cover as much ground as we can because in a world where is it a cake is number one on Netflix i know exactly what you're talking about we have time to watch an hour and a half long movie it doesn't matter how bad it is if it catches your attention give it a shot because it's those things that live inside you like the special i'm never gonna forget that i watch this yeah this is one that sticks with you okay so he goes to the horror house the the score music when they go to the whorehouse is [ __ ] atrocious and the score music carries on through the whole thing it's way over dramatic lots of strings cleaning up but not in like uh michael Myers is coming for you kind of way in like uh my pet mouse died kind of way

10:02 dammit Stuart little um yeah he goes back to the [ __ ] house and even though madame zorro was so adamant he lets him right in oh wait we skipped over the fact that he goes to a different psychic to find this psychic and completely flipped my mind she's like i don't i don't locate people and then offers her five dollars and then it just skips and he's there so the worker gets rejected and then he's an [ __ ] so this is this is the beginning of you realizing he's a he's a douchebag he's a dick he's completely yeah maybe the box has changed him already but we don't know because we didn't know that i mean this guy was at the bar telling his best friend that his wife's cheating on him and then just goes to the [ __ ] house yeah he goes there and granted he doesn't have sex with a woman and then this movie goes from zero to 100 real quick at this point he kills the hook the the madam he [ __ ] the box again and then on his way out he's trying to like oh and let's not forget the fact that the second time he [ __ ] the box he smells the hole is revolted and then [ __ ] the box anyway just can't say no yeah like starts smiling seconds later he's like i'm still gonna [ __ ] this box and then he finishes up you know he's trying to pocket the box did you oh yeah he was trying to fit it in his like cover it in his jacket like as though he could hide this but then madam Zora enters the room and this is where the zero to 100 takes place he kills her and then the foley when he's like stepping on her neck is just awful it's like you remember that scene where Bart Simpson’s like making wine yes when he gets sent to France. yes yes which has instilled in me to this day that all whine some kid was just like barefoot squishing all the grapes just between his toes.

10:45 but it sounds like somebody is just stamping on a like bowl of popcorn hey man have you ever gotten it from the farm where the kids have webbed toes it tastes really good flavor notes oh duck feet um but yeah so he he kills madame zora he's got the box he he realizes he can't take this [ __ ] box home with him so he then he goes and rents a hotel room to keep the box in but it's a pay-by-the-week hotel that looks like an ihop to me it looked like a seaside restaurant bar like a pub that's what i wrote down on my notes looks like a pub mixed with a diner definitely could be an ihop yeah and for some reason i felt like it was coastal i had a coastal field it looked like vaguely english building to me even though i'm sure they were in los angeles um actually do you know where the filming took place it's canada isn't it philadelphia oh weird that all the credits to location all three were different places in pennsylvania

11:00 you're looking at me like you don't believe me no i was just thinking about how like i watched all like a [ __ ] ton of cold case files and i was like i'm from pennsylvania so like as i was watching cold case files i was like i didn't even put it together like that it's just one like you were saying it's hard to find facts or other yeah these people have worked there's nothing about this [ __ ] movie one of the only things i noticed was the film credits as uh for location and they were all three that i saw were pennsylvania so they probably weren't porn stars i don't think they do a lot of porn well i mean think about it how much does it fly people out to pennsylvania probably not that much i do remember like the pittsburgh airport was the last airport you could smoke in and they had those little like enclosed rooms with a glass and you could write in the tar that had gathered on the glass oh you could draw a smiley face my mom would be like don't do that when i was looking

12:00 this that's really [ __ ] with you isn't it yeah the neat freaking you was like don't touch the tar i mean i'm sure you didn't disinfect Jesus no, back in the 90s i probably yeah tasted it a little you got a little one of those like why doesn't it taste like chocolate yeah like when the detective comes and like touches the oil on the ground and then puts it in his mouth yeah are all the detectives that go out there and get the nummy from touching the yayo yeah now's our chance i can't feel my face

12:00 there's a hotel on top of this ihop it's a pay by the hour or paid by the week hotel and they make it look like it's a damn Airbnb in this seaside coastal restaurant bar yeah but he pays up for a week and then later in the movie when his wife finds out he's rented this hotel room because now she suspects he's cheating on him he racked up like a thousand dollar bill one thousand dollars even yeah he also paid for this shady hotel room so was that implying that he went past his cash limit on the first week and i paid for it like this movie was written where the premise came to the guy and he was like oh my god and he wrote the script and then either a lot of it fell apart in what we can handle doing for this amount of money or he just got really lazy about writing it we have this awesome premise this guy [ __ ] a box didn't [ __ ] happen while he was writing it that's for sure he was probably not doing cocaine because this movie was a little boring you missed the marks sometimes i think he missed several marks yeah at some points i thought that they were trying to make like a ty west slow burn horror movie which sometimes the slow burns pay off sometimes not one that initially starts with this guy's gonna [ __ ] a box and then he continues to do it the whole movie and he feels really good after he [ __ ] the box yeah he's like he goes into work just strutting yeah walking on such [ __ ]

14:00 yeah he also finds out when he goes back to the hotel that the slime that he sticks his finger in the hole and touches if he just puts it on him it will also like he'll recreate this sort of crazy orgasm so this box is some sort of biological chemical and this is and that doesn't come into play because he finds out he can rub it on himself yeah and he puts it in a little something we're all very familiar with right now it's a hand sanitizer bottle he fills it with the box jelly and takes it home with him it's a box to go did okay so did you notice how he filled that little bottle was he just stuffing it in the tiny hole instead of screwing the lid with the cap he's putting it in through the tiny hole that's underneath the cap when you pop it open yeah that was weird yeah i did notice that and i thought that's what you're leading up to because that stuck out to me is as somebody who's got like a minor ocd twitch unscrew the cap unscrew the pop cap you've got that larger hole not a whole lot happens after that we're in what from a storytelling perspective is the fun and games part of the story it starts to pick up his he's becoming more short with people more aggressive he takes the magic jelly rubs it on his dick a couple times the wife catches him one night jerking off with the jelly it i think it's the same [ __ ] night i don't think that many days back at that point but she's all ready to roll she comes in she thinks he's getting hot and heavy ready for her they bang one out and that's the only sex scene of the movie with two people and at the end of this movie he's going to claim that it does something to women but his wife is having a good time at first and then she really is not it's it's more him just pounding away but the next morning what she's upset about is that he leaves like she's a one-night stand to go to work and she's emotional because we do find out that she's pregnant and that apparently this jelly then causes a miscarriage yeah but he has no emotion about it because no and it's not even it's not acknowledged in the movie you're just supposed to assume i feel like that was fine i'm i'm okay with you letting me figure it out i i am too yeah and one of the things i appreciated about this movie was there was no scientific explanation no sort of uh lore about how this came to be just a guy [ __ ] a box it has a nice twilight zone twist at the end at this point the woman is being investigated her murder is being investigated this russian psychic madam oh it pops up in random tvs at this point yeah kind of keeping tabs on it through the local news it's happening on in the background and the cop is sort of this like cliche he's seen all this he's the detective who asks the hard questions for sure and the only person now at the whorehouse is giant russian man who is the bouncer yeah there's a giant like eastern european bodyguard i don't know if i'm not supposed to be calling it a whorehouse i know that's the whole sex thing a whorehouse brothel i i get it yeah it's it's um but honestly if you'd seen these women there it's it's not a high-class place no it's in a psychic house they also didn't seem upset to be there they looked like they were having a good time because at the beginning of the movie the friend buys literally all the hookers he yeah but it seems to be a surprise to him too he's like apparently i'm gonna do it three times jerry gets stuck with the special in a room mike gets the three believable hook you know they they look like hookers they that would be in that whorehouse i said whorehouse two so now we both said it now i've said it beforehand [ __ ] it we're rolling with it holder house well they're attacking someone unprovoked so we can make fun of them right well in this bodyguard guy he was in the background because he actually had to get mike out the first time but he's just you assume he's just a bouncer you didn't think he's gonna be reoccurring necessarily then he's back in and he's he's got a bigger role to play because the detective is asking him the hard questions he's answering them the accent the accent was just so bad it was a really really and i feel like it eastern european yeah it went from like one corner just to the other it was not great it was not consistent i felt like there should have been some sort of backstory but i kind of appreciated that they didn't bother and everything he said was supposed to be witty but it just felt so flat it just to me it felt so flat i'm like i see what you're doing and don't just stop so he's basically like someone's out there yeah he will find out yeah and then he says on the news at some point that i'm the only one who can help you and sort of like does that and this is what our main character jerry starts to develop a rash you know come to think of it it sort of follows a pretty standard body horror formula i mean you grind on a wooden box that's not something that's of this world it's like giving him dick rot that is climbing up his stomach it's more than a venereal disease also like a really sad man who's masturbated too many times in a week he [ __ ] this box anyway he does not give a [ __ ] that he has he knows that he has to get the nut so he's yeah he's going forward and i feel like with him coming to work like real you know loose in the morning because he leaves leaves his wife early and goes to the hotel and [ __ ] this box before he goes into work we're supposed to believe that this is the thing that is keeping him from snapping at everyone but it was something he was still plugged yeah also the props department in this movie is non-existent the this hotel has a random assortment of furniture and a very nice television the guy who runs this hotel is my second favorite character in the movie my first favorite character is because of the dick rut he goes to a men's clinic and has it looked at and the doctor at this [ __ ] men's clinic does not give a [ __ ] i don't believe your name is john smith zero shits were given and he's like all right how are you having sex with anyone other than your wife no no no i'm gonna deny all this [ __ ] so he gives him a cream and then he goes to the pharmacy and yells at the pharmacist i'm pretty sure i rub it on my dick yeah he's basically a three-year-old who's [ __ ] a box at this point but he's got some homicidal tendencies other than the homicidal tendencies i sort of as a male understand what is happening to this guy not to say i would [ __ ] a box repeatedly i i want to hope that i am better than that but i don't know that i am i hope that i find a box with something cooler on the inside if i'm [ __ ] it oh for sure he gets caught and then well he's also missing work at this point don't forget the sick days oh yeah not showing up at work the secretary trudy i think her name is poor trudy gets just [ __ ] on but trudy also kept being like you're late and i was like you're my secretary yeah and like you're [ __ ] obnoxious trudy very good points yeah anyway not anymore i'd probably be a dick to trudy too yeah but i got where that was coming from some weird casting happened in the really small parts and then some really like the doctor was hilarious the the barkeep the barkeep who owns the hotel mike was mike has belonged in a movie like that yeah and mike was kind of likeable because slash business partner or co-worker we don't know because what did they do what was their job i have no idea he the only indication there was a meeting that he was supposed to have with someone right with someone that never took place the decorations in the office were really weird he had framed cigar boxes broken down yeah broken down framed cigar boxes not cubans or anything but they were like pressed between glasses and did somebody make a [ __ ] christmas ornament out of part of the cigar box hanging off of one of the pictures or was that like a tag weird it was just why bother at that point but based on jerry's house mike's trimmed facial hair and just the overall attitude of both our like two leading male characters you assume that they're semi-successful in whatever it is they do whatever yeah jerry's house was very nice yeah we never found out what his wife did maybe that's maybe she was the worst some of the attention he he drove a mazda you know a car he did a guitar yeah i mean i was trying to think was it a sedan or a coupe he drives a mazda ver you know and then what did she drive a lexus or an audi oh yeah you're right i didn't catch that i i was i seriously doubt anyone thought about this when this happened that might have just been the actor's card well i think in my head what as we just mentioned what the [ __ ] was their job okay does jerry's wife work does she just does he able to pay for her life yeah now that she's pregnant nothing is explained but i did notice that he drives a mazda nothing super super special but newer but then she's in a luxury suv yeah and in the midst of me thinking about this while i was watching it last night i was i went why the [ __ ] am i supposed to care yeah why am i the only person that thinks about these things too much i know i'm not you do my wife does i was trying to see what they drove to see if maybe i could see or you know what does she do is she an interior designer does she model sometimes does she have an etsy page yeah there was enough i don't know empty space happening in the middle of this movie for my mind to wander pretty far because there was a lot of unnecessary scenes following this doctor visit and his wife's miscarriage and everything she finds the the bill for the hotel and then goes to the hotel the maid that has been kind of watching him the whole time like she's got his her eye on him and i've been wondering why the [ __ ] do you need a maid for two hotel rooms because it looked like she had a full-time job as the maid but it looks like they're in a hallway with two doors they needed a character to facilitate that but the maid kind of awesomely like as the wife is walking down the hallway she just knocks on his door and keeps walking yeah like that's where the [ __ ] is yeah and he's like i don't need the room clean because he's he's just bad [ __ ] crazy [ __ ] [ __ ] a box in a room he did really sell this like i just want to [ __ ] this box and everyone is getting in my way everyone is in the way then he's confronted he of course kills this wife in this hotel room because what else are you gonna do but kill the wife because you killed the madam zora for no reason why not kill your wife who had a miscarriage because you [ __ ] her with the [ __ ] box jelly oh but we forgot to mention that this is right after he's opened the box we have seen what's in the box at this point what's inside the box is what to me i thought it was like an amorphous blob that was just kind of writhing the whole time i was like i think this is a head it's got to be a head right it's like a dead person's head it it was a ball head brain shaped yeah it was round oval you get that impression and you're it looks gross it's slimy it pulsates yeah and that was the best special effect in the whole movie the thing they really pulled off was this gross blob but when he opens it they don't reveal it right away yeah he's looking at it he looks at it and then he smiles and then he pulls it out and you don't see it and he sets it behind the box out of view and then the wife comes and he [ __ ] kills her he puts the thing in the bathtub because you have to water your your sex pocket you gotta have water you're your [ __ ] ball yeah your [ __ ] slimy ass [ __ ] but the cop scene was unnecessary there's a really long scene where he goes to a plumber store to buy a pair of bowl cutters that are really old from yeah the store the the clerk at the plumbing store goes to the back and he's like you don't mind if they're used right and there's no plumbing equipment inside this plumbing store there were like a couple of hoses for a sink and that was it yeah other than that they mostly had what you would find at a convenience store in there that's part of the plumbing business yeah i get it

16:00 i understand completely you're just supposed to know that you go to the plumbing shop yeah and you get both and like i said it was one of these things that this movie did do right because a lot of mainstream movies over explain [ __ ] to me and it pisses me off and this movie was just like just [ __ ] deal with it man deal with it this might not make any [ __ ] sense at all accept it and i did by the end of it because for the the long drag of the in-between there he like kills his wife gets it somehow gets his wife's body out of the hotel without anyone seeing him yeah and then into the garage at their house and then all of a sudden they've got magical crawl spaces labors that lady into a crawl space after he wraps her in trash bags oh but then he gets really cool christmas lights and decorates his house like a little love shack just his bed like this bed frame oh what were they purple purple christmas lights yeah with some like blue masking yeah he lays a knife like afghan out for it and the way that he kisses this slimy ball of goop oh he loves it he wanted some snuggle time before bang town the kiss this is like if one of us bought one of those like rubber asses a rubber [ __ ] my face

18:00 you know like one of those heads with a vibrating ball inside of it and then we went home and put panties on it and then like put a bunch of candles out and gave it a full side of the bed had a whole night who has time for that [ __ ] i don't even really understand fleshlights to be perfectly honest like you're gonna [ __ ] this thing and then you're gonna clean it out yeah [ __ ] right funny story we were at the pride parade downtown austin one year they're throwing out many fleshlights there's kids there so i got a flashlight how stoked would you be if you were like 13 years old you just take you don't even know i'm sure you'd get in trouble for [ __ ] like that at school these days it says fleshlight on it i'm not talking about taking it to [ __ ] school oh i mean if it's a flashlight it's a fleshlight so it's this fleshlight yeah because what's the bottom line of this movie is this guy is the full like adult version of your 13 year old self he found a box and he just wants to [ __ ] it nobody's gonna get in his way he's killed madam zora he's killed his wife he's racked up a thousand dollars even on the credit card after paying cash out of pocket for a hotel room that's kind of like an Airbnb but it has a full-time man yeah and the wife has called his friend he she's concerned he's concerned now i i kind of like the friend what was the friend's name mike you're so good at remembering these characters yeah mike mike gets really concerned when he's missed more work and suddenly i like mike a lot yeah the guy who runs the hotel is my second favorite character mike ends up being my third there's only two or three more people in this mike goes to visit the house to check on him mike has a key to the house apparently he makes his way into the house the wife's dead body is somewhere in a crawl space that's part of a tunnel system that would run under france i don't it just seemed big to me for that house it could be like evil dead too where it's like a spatial anomaly you know we filmed this in this house and this part on the sound john malkovich yeah mike comes in and mike is concerned and he almost yeah but we know at this point that mike is going to mike's going to die it's it's clear his day because my life mike now so we like him he's checking and he even says he mentioned something about you know if you did something to your wife we can take care of this there was something along those lines like he already is yeah the wife was murdered we're deep in the dark night of the soul where like luke goes in the cave and he knows his friends are all dying you know the character is at his lowest [ __ ] point why do we care not at all not really we don't [ __ ] care he said at that point you do like mike and you don't want to see him go but you know he's dead the second he walks in the house yeah but you do wish jerry's end at this point yeah you're ready for [ __ ] jerry is an [ __ ] to everyone he comes across and maybe that's what was meant to happen he's killed he's killed multiple people at this point [ __ ] mike goes down it's just a weird storytelling thing that only works in like twilight zone episodes where the character is a shitty person and every now and then that can get pulled off in a book like it's good confederacy that way you're not attached for what's gonna happen next it was just a little too slow for that i see that for me to buy the the this guy's a shitty dude he's not really in a predicament he could have just stopped [ __ ] this box and there's so many things it's like people who go out and commit serious crimes now i want to look at them and say i know you've watched a couple of true com documentaries i know you know you shouldn't have done that not promoting that whatsoever but there's just you should know these days don't go get cash from the atm wear gloves hair falls out off your scalp you know all it takes is a hair all it takes is that one love spot you're gonna get caught jerry's out there raw dogging free ball in it doing whatever he wants yeah i was also really confused that the detective in his needless first detective scene he comes back and he's like i figured out who killed her and we have this dna evidence i think this might be the end of the movie i'm thinking so what is als what happened just before that though was jerry he's now murdered madame zora his wife and his best friend mike slash business partner co-worker whatever he takes the big bodyguards offer to go back and get help and while he's there upstairs is when the detective comes back the rash has just spread all over awful there's some oh we forgot to mention that the the the fuckball has now that's deteriorated he goes and gets help that is it has nothing to do with like i i i [ __ ] up yes yes he just wants his beloved he just wants it back it's turned into black tar it was this purple glowing shimmery clear slimy object yeah and it kind of looked like it had like a nose and an eye cavities deep within the recesses of this and it started to deteriorate and he wasn't getting off the same it wasn't giving him the same sense and [ __ ] it we won't spoil every movie we do i promise but don't watch this yeah it's or you you know i like me telling you not to watch this movie if i was you and i told me not to watch this movie i would immediately watch this [ __ ] movie because that's the person i am if somebody tells me something is terrible i usually don't believe them give it 20 minutes and see how you feel um yeah but jerry comes to a sad as we saw coming twilight zone end actually i i take that back i did not see this coming i didn't realize that he was going to become i think with 30 minutes left in it if i'm not mistaken i saw it you saw it coming i did i honestly did just because i'm like oh he's looking gross and this is dying it's the transfer it was when he showed up at the place and he turns into this like the brood cronenberg's mom so here it comes yeah he looks like the fly at this point it's happening and he's all covered in swords and stuff and then of course the next thing you see is the russian guy goes or the eastern european gentleman i don't know i've almost said the g word a couple times he goes down in the basement and builds a new box paints it up and so you're like oh yeah all right we get it and just to mention the cinematography there those were those were nice shots yeah but i don't want to if you want to know the last beat of the movie which i also think was pretty good i'm not [ __ ] telling you watch the movie and find out i'm not gonna talk about the the very last beat cause the movie ended well it started good it ended good it was the space in between that was it wasn't even hard to watch it was just i almost forgot that part it took me a second to grasp what you were talking about yeah okay i won't say that part either but yeah so the script had a lot of redeeming qualities and i like the premise a lot i really like i am constantly searching for movies containing some sort of sexual depravity it's fine this movie was an hour and a half long i don't feel like i completely wasted my time because it will live inside me for a very long time but and it's affecting it kind of reminded me neil gaiman wrote a short story that got turned into almost an outer limits episode on a short-run british program i think it's on shutter now called neil gaiman's likely stories so this kid wakes up and he's like 20 something and he's like he goes to the doctor and he says my penis doesn't belong to me and he's like all freaked out and the doctor's like okay you know and he gives them some sort of like pills for some generalized like infection sort of thing and what's the name of this again i can't remember oh okay yeah god damn it i'll have to look it up it's a neil gaiman story it's not in uh it's in one of his two big short story collections but yeah that that's what this movie reminded me of it had that sort of it was like body horror like you can't control it they didn't sell it enough but i really liked the premise i mean i'm never gonna look at a birdhouse the same way again

51:00 so next time we'll be watching slc punk sex and violence it's a movie we haven't watched since we were in high school and so it's going to be interesting who knows how it's going to turn out thanks everyone for joining us for the last video store clerks podcast be sure to leave a rating and subscribe you can find us on twitter @lastclerks instagram at thelastvideostoreclerks and you can find scott at dispatchesfromthepit.com