BIG DADDY DISPATCH: NOVEMBER (Patreon)

Dispatch Ninety-One, November 4, 2024

Greetings WHM Family!

We did it! We chanted “Four! Four! Four! Four!” a bunch and didn’t receive hate mail! I think that means that this extra special Spooktacular, Four-Or Month, was a raging success! We had a blast and visited a ton of bad, silly, and some pretty cool movies all the fourth entry in their respective franchises.

But enough of that, on to arguably the biggest month of the year, each and every year, We Love Movies month! Where, you guessed it, we’ll be talking about the best fourth entry in action franchises!!! No, no we won’t. God, that would be stupid. No! We’ve got an eclectic mix of great titles coming your way on the Main Feed and, of course, on the Patreon! So, get scrolling and see what we have in store for you this month, you’re gonna love it!

Banner Credit: We Hate Movies Logo by Felipe Sobreiro

Image Credit: Four-Or Month Collage by em_jeff90 on X

HOLY SHIT, IT’S A WHM FALL TOUR!

Oh my god the tour has begun!! Many of you have already enjoyed our Virtual Live show on Scream 4, where Steve scared everyone with an overly large knife, Andrew scared the guys with a picture of Courtney Cox and Eric, well, Eric’s always a little scary. Good news! Both the show and the re-play are still available until Wednesday, November 6th! So go to moment.co/wehatemovies now and grab it before it’s too late!

Then, just a few days from now, on Friday, November 15th we will be in Seattle, Washington for the very first time at Washington Hall talking about local resident, Bigfoot with Harry and the Hendersons!

Then, on Sunday, November 17th we will be in Portland, Oregon for the first time in a looong time at Mississippi Studios to talk about the Disgusting Shit Boy All-Star Game also known as The Goonies! VERY LOW TICKET WARNING FOR THIS SHOW!

And finally, on Wednesday, December 4th, we will be in Boston, Massachusetts returning to Laugh Boston to end out a great year of shows with some high-class talk about a high-class lady, Pretty Woman!

All tickets are available now at our website! Don’t miss out and get your tickets NOW!

LAST MONTH ON WHM 

Episode 759 – A Nightmare on Elmstreet 4: The Dream Master

For the opening salvo of WHM’s Four-or month, the boys book a return trip to Elm Street to once again do battle with Frederick Kreuger as he cuts up another innocuous teenage friend-group with ample help from the local parents and police department. What business does Renny Harlin have making a horror movie? Why did they make this a direct sequel to number three? Is Freddy Boy getting lazier with his kills? Keep your eyes peeled for Freddy’s infamous face-chest full of all his victims.

Episode 761 – Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Patrons Only)

For Four-or month’s Patrons-Only WLM episode, the fellas were borderline forced to return to Haddonfield with Dr. Loomis for another Halloween with a bunch of murdered teens and one really messed-up little girl. Is it really a mystery that most fourth installments – First Purge innocent – are mediocre at best? Why hasn’t Loomis been locked away at this point? Wouldn’t the powers that be in Illinois have demolished and rebuilt Haddonfield for safety with full backing by the US government after all these murders? The answer to that question? NO, NOOOO, NOOOOOOOOO!

Episode 762 – The Final Destination

Andrew, Steve, Chris, and Eric head out to the motorway for a bloody day at the track and end up running from death itself with Mykelti Williamson and a bunch of nobodies. Does this one seem way more cynical or is it just us? Where are all the good built-up deaths here? Was it really impossible to get any young TV star to even do a big opening death for this thing? Devon Sawa’s character has to have another cousin or something that a Pretty Little Liars or revamped 90210 actor can play.

Episode 764 – Leprechaun 4: In Space with James A. Janisse and Chelsea Rebecca  

Longtime friends of the show James and Chelsea of Dead Meat return to dig into questionable Irish lore one more time, but this time...it’s in space! Did this cost more or less than a new roof? How hard could it possibly be to airlock this fucker? Is this Warwick Davis’s favorite entry in the series in terms of work vs. pay? Cannot wait to get back to Earth and see him in the hood next year!

Episode 764 – Land of the Dead

The gang puts on their bite protection outfits and loads their zombie cannons for one last ride through the Romero zombie world...before the real last two rides. Was Simon Baker really your best option here? John Leguizamo, we get, but The Mentalist? Really? Can we get a few more good death scenes in here or is that too much to ask from a zombie movie? Why didn’t Romero just end the series here? (Editor’s Note: Fuck you, Diary of the Dead rocks!) When voting this election season, remember to not vote for Dennis Hopper or anyone who acts like him.

Episode 765 – Wishmaster: The Prophecy Fulfilled

To round out Four-or month, the boys rub the ancient ruby one more time to bring out...a greatly diminished Wishmaster...in the body of an awkward and horny lawyer. Did noted character actor Andrew Divoff ask for some extra catering or something that made you not cast him again for the role of his lifetime? Was he unavailable? In that case, you should have waited. What happened to actually granting the wish and all that...Wishmaster stuff? What’s with the djinn’s three gross uncles visiting him in visions? Of the many movies this film could steal from, the 90s Casper adaptation is a weird one to choose. Divoff Forever!!

WHAT ARE WE WATCHING?

This is a space for us to talk about some NON-We Hate Movies related content that we've shoved into our eyeballs in the last month: TV, Movies, Cartoons, and Sports (maybe?). Just about anything that isn't pornography.

Andrew:   Okay, so it should be no surprise, but nearly everything I watched this month was horror-related in one way or another. Let’s take a look at some high and low lights: 

 House of 1000 Corpses (2003): I remembered truly despising this when it came out, but looking back over 20 years later, it’s honestly a fairly decent debut. Zombie started his career with real-deal style and vision, like it or not, and it’s something he’s completely missing by the time he gets to his first go at Halloween. It’s not a good movie, but there’s something here that’s better than I remembered. 

 Prom Night (1980): I think this gets overlooked a lot because it’s a Halloween rip featuring Jamie Lee, but there’s some good stuff going on in this movie. It’s a coke-fueled disco nightmare and it’s really watchable. I love Jamie Lee Curtis and that other guy dancing — it’s kind of funny, until the last like five minutes of this film, Jamie Lee’s character has absolutely no idea there’s any spooky stuff going on. Major lol to Leslie Nielsen’s character just vanishing from the film as well. 

 Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) / The Bride of Frankenstein (1935): I’m lumping these together because I re-watched both of them on my iPad’s Criterion Channel app while on a flight to Vegas. They’re both under 80 minutes and make for great plane watching. I love the Universal Monster world, sequels and all, and it was great vibing with two of my faves while 30,000 feet in the air. 

 V/H/S Beyond (2024): God bless them, but I just don’t think this series is any good. Maybe the first couple were fine, but we’re way beyond that now. Anthology horror is something I love, but there’s so much BAD getting put out these days and this franchise is no different. Like always, I found two out of the seven or so shorts were okay and the rest barely held my attention. I’m not a Found Footage guy anyway, so it bums me out that the most constant output of anthology horror is this series. Skip it. 

 Woman of the Hour (2023): Pretty decent directorial debut from Anna Kendrick, but I think it was a mistake for her to cast herself as the lead. Not that she’s bad in it at all, but I almost found it kind of distracting? In any event, there’s one absolutely ass-clenching sequence in a parking lot that had me digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands. It’s so well done. The rest of the movie is fine, but it’s kind of all over the place. I didn’t wind up learning too much about this serial killer who, when you read up on him, led a wild, terrifying existence. But, the film mainly keeps to this time he was on The Dating Game and it feels kind of like there’s not enough there. Anyway, light recommend, very interested to see what she directs next.

 Hush (2016): Okay, this was fun, but the way the thing starts up had me about as incredulous as I get while watching silly horror movies. We are told Kate Siegel’s character is deaf and mute, the after effects of a childhood illness. Okay, sure. But I think the character needs to get back to the doctor because there’s clearly something off with her peripheral vision as well. This character stands there tidying up her kitchen while her next-door neighbor is being slammed up against her door and butchered mere feet away... and this Maddie character sees NONE OF IT? I was giggling pretty hard at that. I mean, come on. After that, things pick up and I was interested in the cat and mouse game. I like that you don’t know anything about the guy doing the stalking/killing, but I wish there was a more sinister performance from John Gallagher Jr. Also, could’ve used more of my boys’ favorite Battlestar Canadian, Michael Trucco! But as is, the scene he has is pretty cool. It’s a light recommend. 

 Terrifier 2 (2022): Okay, I know I said I’d never, but hey, never say never. I was bored the other night and grew tired with watching the Yankees be demolished by the Dodgers, so I threw this on and put the game on my iPad. Two hours and twenty minutes later, I was left sitting there wondering what it was all for. I’m sorry, but this is trash. And I’m not just talking about a knee-jerk reaction to the gore. No, the acting is fucking terrible (the woman who plays the mother is the MVP of embarrassing performances in this, but the little brother is a CLOSE SECOND), the filmmaking is flat, dull and comes with all the cinematographic finesse of a fuck-flick compilation video, and the script is just horrendous. Frankly, the gore, which is fine, is the least of the film’s issues. Art the Clown as a character is a total nothing, and the filmmaker’s attempt to create all this lore around him is truly all for naught. And shit man, a magic sword is in play? GTFO… 

 Chris:  Some high and low points from the Horror season:

 Little Otik: Czech surrealist and animation legend Jan Svankmajer has made a handful of ground-breaking, wondrously discomfiting features, the most prominent of which are a pair of challenging adaptations of classics, Faust and Alice (of Alice in Wonderland). This is the second of his original conceptions following those two and his magnificent Conspirators of Pleasure, and though I prefer that film ultimately, Little Otik is as bewildering and harrowing as anything the master has made. Imagine this: after finding out that he and his wife are both infertile, an office drone digs up a huge piece of tree root and instinctively shapes it into a kind of baby. The wife immediately sees it as the baby they could never have and begins caring for their little Otik, who one morning comes to horrifying life and begins to consume...everything. Easily read as pugnacious and righteously ugly screed against the rampant consumption and greed of humans under capitalism, Svankmajer makes time to consider the power of accepted fables and narratives and how the protective motherly instinct will often allow for bloodshed of any sort and any amount to keep their perceived child alive. Genuinely unsettling and a real marvel of animation and effects.

 Creep: I like Mark Duplass and all, but this sort of movie really makes me hate him, and I don’t mean in the way you’re supposed to hate his character in this movie, either a little or a lot. The uneasiness of off-tempo social interactions has its place in a number of major dramas, comedies and horror movies over the last few decades, but when that’s your entire movie and most of those interactions are between the same two white guys, it grows boring quick and then moves onto grating not long after that. I knew there was a reason I had been avoiding this one!

 Penda’s Fen: Rarely has British sexual repression felt so spontaneous, imaginative, and potently sad. Stephen, the adolescent son of a local pastor, spends his days making lectures and proclamations about the glory of England and other Tory-coded nonsense, attempting as best he can to not face the fact that he lusts for a young worker who his parents employ, as well as other students and boys around town. Alan Clarke, one of the best filmmakers the BBC ever produced, does little to make us want to warm to Stephen, making the furious and moving ending all the more remarkable. The director adorns the film with potent and startling blasts of Christian and pagan imagery, including a late entrance by the titular pagan king of Mercia. Worth seeking out – it was on YouTube for free for a long time.

 As Above, So Below: A bunch of history and language nerds tunnel into Paris’ catacombs to find treasure and try to jumpstart their careers as well-paid history and language nerds. Would you believe me if I told you they find ghosts and all other sort of wonky bullshit in there instead? Director John Erick Dowdle, the man behind elevator-thriller Devil, that awful [rec] remake, and the Waco TV Universe, finds a few decent scares and a handful of provocative images but the film is bland when not in tension-mode, with only Mad Men alum Ben Feldman around to give it any convincing dramatic weight.

 Great Giallos: The Laughing Woman, Mill of the Stone Women (not really Giallo, but Italian horror nonetheless), and The Fifth Cord

 Good Giallos: What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, Five Dolls for an August Moon, and The Black Belly of the Tarantula

 Alright Giallos: A Blade in the Dark and The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail

Eric:   I somehow did not watch a lot of new stuff this month. I mostly rewatched the Halloween franchise with its diminishing returns. So, here's a few things I did see that we haven't covered on On-Screen Live or on episodes.

 Skullduggery (1970): Burt Reynolds on an expedition to New Guinea, what could go wrong? Everything! This movie has no idea what it's trying to be, it starts up as a rom com then ends as a courtroom drama. I expected something else entirely based on the poster. No thrills, horrors, or action! They do come across a lot in this voyage though, such as a fleet of boats operated by about 30 topless women from the "Prostitution Island." Then, of course, they find a tribe of missing links. Wouldn't you know it, there's even talks about attempting to impregnate one of the female beasts with human sauce. Would be a lot more interesting if it wasn't somehow boring. 

 Satan's Little Helper (2004): This was almost something. I do think they did a pretty good job with no money but it never quite gets there for me. However, it's filmed all over Westchester County, New York right while we were going to college there, so watching it felt like I was back in the dirty Aughts. So, I had nostalgia for all that suburban New York crap. If you give it a spin, let me ring the dirty shit boy alarm. Just know what you're getting into. It's a big DSB title. 

 A Family Lost (2007): This might end up being a contender for Once in a Lifetime. Yes, it is a Lifetime movie. Yes, it's about a mother and daughter surviving a plane crash. Yes, they're being hunted in the woods afterwards by a pudgy Daniel Roebuck. Yes, Callahan from Police Academy is in this. Yes, that's why I watched it. 

 Woman of the Hour (2023): I think it's a great directorial debut and Daniel Zovatto shines in it. It does feel disjointed to the point that I was wondering why we had this serial killer guy in this Anna Kendrick movie, and vice versa, what's Anna Kendrick doing in this serial killer guy's movie? It could've been sharpened further but I liked a lot of the decisions director Anna Kendrick made otherwise. There's some really good scenes in this but it feels like 2 movies shoved down each other's throats. 

Steve: Did a ton of extra-curricular watching this month and a lot of it was noteworthy. Here’s some:

 The Long Island Cannibal Massacre (1980): This one’s gonna be hard to find, but if you're game for a challenge, you’ll be met with a reward. It’s a zero-budget horror flick shot on Super 8 in the icy cold beaches of, you guessed it, Long Island. Not only will you get some of the most fascinating accents ever put to film, you’ll get insane plot twists, over the top performances, and relatively OK gore effects. The places this one goes needs to be seen to be believed, and, more to that point the director, Nathan Schiff was a TEENAGER when he made this, which absolutely bumps it up a full star grade for me.

 A Bay of Blood (1971): I’m pretty deficient in Italian Horror, so on Halloween night, my wife and I filled in a pretty big blind spot. This movie fucking rips. The cinematography is fantastic, the story goes and GOES, and the effects are just lovely. Probably one of the more genuinely shocking films I’ve seen in a good long while, and with good reason! The deviousness of human greed is on full display and it’s really fun to watch these piggies writhe around in their muck.

 Ripper (1985): This one’s kind of a disaster, but a fun watch if you’re loaded and with friends. Shot on crappy video stock, this is a movie that Tom Savini APOLOGIZED for at a Fangoria con in the mid-1990’s, if you needed another reason to stay away. It concerns a University Professor coming in contact with a magic ring that turns him into Jack the Ripper for some reason. Savini plays the professor in Ripper form, but you only get one scene of actually seeing him that way, and he kind of rules in it! A total missed opportunity, but worth watching if you’re of a certain persuasion (the Steve Sajdak sicko variety).

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from 

Jim, from St. Louis who asks: “With the Academy adding a Best Cast category soon (good idea imo) which post-2000 movie would you want to retroactively give the Best Cast Oscar?”

Andrew: I’m so stoked for this new category. I’ll toss out a couple: The LOTR trilogy, The Grand Budapest Hotel, & Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

 Chris: I did this quick, so don’t hold me to it, but this is what feels right: 2001: The Royal Tenenbaums, 2002: Adaptation, 2003: Dogville, 2004: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2005: The Squid and the Whale, 2006: Children of Men, 2007: Zodiac, 2008: A Christmas Tale, 2009: Inglorious Basterds, 2010: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, 2011: Margaret, 2012: The Master, 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street, 2014: Boyhood, 2015: Chi-Raq, 2016: Hail, Caesar!, 2017: mother!, 2018: If Beale Street Could Talk, 2019: Little Women, 2020: Kajillionaire, 2021: The Matrix Resurrections, 2022: Nope, 2023: Passages, 2024: Anora or I Saw the TV Glow (so far)

 Eric: They should put this in the technical Oscars like where they dumped a lot of great categories. I'd echo what Andrew says, Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson are undefeated. Most Paul Thomas Anderson movies too. Here's a few more: No Country for Old Men, Oppenheimer, Lincoln.

 Steve: So! Not many left on the board after Chris went total Rain Man on this question. I’m just going to echo the Wes Anderson of it all and say Moonrise Kingdom. Also, Spotlight is a top tier all-timer cast for me.

NOVEMBER SCHEDULE

Say what? The schedule in advance?! It's the least we could do! By subscribing to this newsletter, you get a sneak peek at what we're putting out for We Love Movies Month!

Episode 766 – Batman: The Movie (1966)

Episode 767 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Episode 768 – Gladiator

Episode 769 – The Wizard of Oz

Patreon Episodes:

We Hate Movies – U.S. Marshals

Animation Damnation: DuckTales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp

The Nexus: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Gleep Glossary: REDACTED

MELR0210: 90210: “It’s a Totally Happening Life” (s3, e16) Melrose Place: “I Am Curious, Melrose” (s3, e1)

And don’t forget, the FINAL episodes of…

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Too Old For This Shit: Season 2 is finishing it’s run this month for Top Tier Patrons, only! What’s gonna happen with Sofia v. Oz? Will Grandma Soprano make it? What about Victor’s shoes? Will he buy new ones, or rock the bloody look? All that and more as we re-cap the final two episodes this month! 

Too Old For This Shit: Season 2 is finishing it’s run this month for Top Tier Patrons, only! What’s gonna happen with Sofia v. Oz? Will Grandma Soprano make it? What about Victor’s shoes? Will he buy new ones, or rock the bloody look? All that and more as we re-cap the final two episodes this month!

PATREON RSS BUG

If you’re having trouble with the RSS feed updating or episodes not appearing in your app, Patreon has acknowledged this bug and they have a fix: "Try unsubscribing and re-subscribing via your app by re-entering the unique RSS feed you were given and is on our Overview section of the Creator page. Or try using a different podcast app or RSS feed reader." 

Please consult this page and contact Patreon Support if the problem persists. We apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced on Patreon and truly appreciate your continued support!

UPCOMING NEWS AND PROMOTION

On Screen Live is back! That’s right, we’re resuming our (mostly) weekly box-office recap show, where you can hear quick reviews of recent flicks, watch live trailer reactions and just see us do our thing week in and week out! Check us out on Mondays at Noon for all that and more! Subscribe on our YouTube Channel to never miss a broadcast!

We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like WTF Exorcism with Marc Merrin, Dr. Loomis is the Worst Doctor, Dilf Den, George Bailey as Michael Meyers, John Wick-Mentary,  Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David!Muppet Hitchcock Presents, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboardepisode! Complete with visual gags (most of which are almost funny.). You'll find all sorts of cool shit like Mailbags, VHS Trailer Games, Full Episodes likeRampage (2018),Any Which Way You Can, Bram Stoker’s Draculaand Saw III. Like we said above these are great for sharing and introducing folks to the show. There's so much content there we can't list it all here. Just go and subscribe already! 

TJ Hooker…Is back! And this time Eric and Ben follow T.J. to Chinatown wherein he battles a snake!  Listen here!

If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out our merch on our TeePublic store! We have some hot off the presses designs by Felipe Sobreiro such as the Scream 4 Live Show, Too Old For This Shit and Sheenpril Logos as well as A Certain Fat Director enjoying his favorite film filter of all time! We also have "The DILF Den", and a "Crispy Critters" design from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill!  There’s a ton of other great designs like The VHS Trailer Game Logo, Demon-o's Pizza, Egg Lawyer, The Order of the Boop, The Kornkast design and many more, with more to come! 

That's going to do it for this month's Dispatch! See you next month for a month of all bangers, We Love Movies Month!

Take it easy,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies