H!TITDS - Pale Blood (1990)

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Hello and welcome to Hello. This is the Doomed Show, folks. I am Richard, and I'm finally talking to Lee. Hello, Lee. Hello. Uh thanks for having me on, Richard. Uh

Kind of a bucket list thing for me because I've been listening to this friggin' podcast for a decade or more at this point. So yeah. Very excited. I uh have been wanting to get you on the horn forever. We finally made it real!

We did it. Uh you picked you picked a movie for us. Um it's it says Pace Blood on my notes'cause I make L's weird, but I believe it's Pale Blood from nineteen ninety.

Yeah, I was gonna do paste blood, but We'll get you back for that.

Uh so this was directed by uh V V Dashin Hassoo, I butchered that, and uh co directed uh with uh Michael W. Leighton.

And uh this so we have a Hong Kong co director.

And is this an American?

Yes, an a an American

Co director written by V V Dashin Su and co written by Takashi Matsuoka. Yeah. So novelist now or something. Cool.

So this is a very interesting way to start this frickin' movie. Um just just in terms of who's who who's like the brain power behind this thing. Um and I had heard of this.

But I was mixing it up with another one called

Same year called Red Blooded American Girl. Oh. Directed by David Blythe, the the madman behind Death Warmed Up.

And my grandpa is a vampire. Folks, if you haven't heard Jeffrey and I talk about my grandpa's a vampire, go for it. You might be sorry you did.

Let's see. Um I'm gonna drop a trailer for um I almost said red-blooded American girl. I'm gonna drop a trailer for pale blood right now. Here's the trailer.

So yeah, I could not find any sort of a trailer for

Frickin' pale blood anywhere. So here's a Dairy Queen commercial. Who else treats you right with a taste fantastic? Like the peanut butter parfait for just a dollar ninety nine?

Crunchy peanuts and layers of thick hot fuck.

else treat you right with a beauty like this$1.99 banana split?

Creamy, smooth, light-tasting, and delicious.

Peanut Buster Parfait and Banana Split. Only at your Dairy Queen store.

$1.99 each. We treat you right.

I don't have the VHS in front of me. Uh it was released on SVS Triumph Home Video. That famous label everyone's heard of. Oh yeah. Lots of titles.

Watch it be one of those ones that was just created to release this one movie and then just totally disappeared. Oh no, no. I this is fun. They put out Best of the Best from nineteen eighty nine. Really? Yeah.

Okay. Very cool. So yeah, there there's some stuff out there. But the back of the VHS, folks, you gotta bear with me. This has a lot of tech.

Ugh, I'm gonna go for it. Here we go. This is what's on the back of the VHS tape.

Journey into the dark world of the vampire.

Where beauty and evil, desire and dread mingle in a sensual embrace that goes beyond ecstasy into terror. In the dead of night a murderer stalks Los Angeles, His victims are discovered drained of blood.

And some people believe this cunning killer is a vampire.

Michael Fury is one of them, for Fury is indeed a vampire doomed to spend eternity alone, unless he can discover another of his own kind.

His search for the killer takes him deep inside Hollywood's kinky underground where there are no sins that are too strange, no lust, that are too unnatural, where anything goes except not going too far enough, and where there are unknown dangers so terrible that even a vampire must fear for his life.

Colour ninety three minutes.

The only um tagline on the on the front here is uh an erotic thriller. I mean there's a little bit of that in this. Yep.

For fourteen ninety nine you can get the promo copy, it says promotional copy, not for sale or rent. So If you watch it, you probably have every few minutes that little warning pops up.

Mm. Not for sale.

I you know what we should just tell this e Bear to take it down.

Yeah. It says not for sale, buddy. No, I loved getting those. I used to have a local uh corner store that uh sold uh VHS uh rented VHS and the and the guy was like

one of these this nice little Lebanese man who wanted to have return customers and so he treated me like a king every time I went in there. Oh I have three or four of these not for rental or sale tapes. You you want to take'em with you while you rent some

I can't remember what it was now. It was an Italian horror film

Might have been like uh might have been trauma or something. I had a weird copy of trauma. I've got another copy now. I was like splurging.

Splurge for that VHS, I deserve it.

I don't I I fought it anyway.

So folks, we're gonna spoil uh Pale Blood and uh yes, there is a twist and it's it's pretty wonderful. Mm-hmm. Uh just a few of our our important characters here.

Um Michael Fury is indeed the vampire. I do love the James Joyce reference with his name. That's wonderful. Uh different spelling. But this is uh George Chakiris.

Yep. And his IMDB profile picture made my brain explode and uh subsequently made Lietta's brain explode when I told her. He as a young man, he was uh very distinct looking, uh very handsome young man.

But I was like, is that the dancer from um White Christmas who stands out like a sore thumb? And sure enough, this guy was in White Christmas.

It's amazing. I couldn't believe it. His biggest claim, the famous West Side story. Right. Um but I mean he's still kicking, ninety-two years old. That's amazing.

Yeah, he took a long break from acting from like ninety six to twenty twenty one. He wasn't working. But he's back.

Still going. I've still never seen all of um West Side's story. I've seen parts of it on T C M back in the day. Yeah.

I've I've seen scenes. I'm not yeah super big into musicals, especially ones where everyone's dancing and singing at each other. But I I tend to avoid those ones. But uh yeah, George Sh Shakiris, he's he's kind of one of these actors who's like

Kinda really well known, but he's one where almost his entire filmography has just escaped me somehow. It's just like yeah, okay. He's hiding out in plain sight.

Uh next up we have the frickin' star of not just this movie, but every movie he's in, no matter how small his part is. He was also the lead actor in our lives, Wingshauser.

Rest in peace.

Fucking madman. He does not not bring the madness to this movie.

Yeah. There's very few movies where he doesn't hauser it up, you know, like and but and he brings it here for sure.

I swear and I'm sure he's he's saying some dialogue that people have written, but I feel like every time I've ever seen him, he's cutting loose.

I mean and there's a lot of like low budget films he kinda just wandered into and

And was kinda given free reign to do whatever the hell he wants. It feels like he's doing it here, even if if he's going on bullet points. It feels like he's riffing a lot. So Wingshauser plays Van Vandermeer. Mm. Perfect name.

Um he is our uh our vampire hunter. He's a distant relative. It's hinted he's a distant relative of Van Helsing. Yeah. Love it. Um he's going to uh really go for it later.

Yeah. He's the reason I picked this movie for the show, just as, you know, hey, he he just passed a couple months back and it's like let's let's do a winged houser if I'm gonna come on. Your instinct is already paying off. I love it.

Uh next up we got Pamela Ludwig as Lori and uh she is a um an a vampire enthusiast slash detective and she is uh mister Fury's contact.

You know, in in the States here. He's coming from Eastern Europe and she's here giving him all the fun stuff about the vampires. Uh, but she was in a lot of interesting things like Project X.

Over the edge. Uh I feel like I should recognize her for I've s'cause I've seen Some of these movies are

Oh yes, uh Rush Week. She was in Rush Week the S the Slasher. Mm-hmm. Which was a little too um borderline rapey for me. Okay. It got a little much where

there was the the layers of the movie where you had the photographer taking advantage of the young women to get them for money and I felt like it was a an a a an accidental like

accidentally anal analogous to the film itself. Jeez. Oh boy. Uh she was also in

Something called split image that looks good. A rising star gymnast lured to a religious cult by a beautiful girl.

Oh wow.

Michael O'Keefe, Karen Allen, James Woods, Peter Fonda, Brian Dennehy. Wow, okay. Lee Montgomery. Fuck yeah, dude. I'll watch that shit.

Is it based on a true story? I don't know. Anyway. And then we've got um good old Diana Frank as Jenny. Jenny is

A model who's going to fall under the influence of Michael Fury. And uh she's she's just uh

A happy go lucky kid. What is her accent? I have no idea. The only thing I thought about with Jenny it's like she's basically our hero's blood bag that he drinks out of for the entire movie.

That is one hundred percent right. Oh, she's French. So this actress is French.

Oh yeah, because...

Because because when we there's that real brief scene where we first see like two ladies of the night or models perhaps.

hanging out outside of Hauser's place and they're both speaking with like French accents and it's like okay, that's cool. Yeah, she's in some weird stuff.

She was in a movie called Man Killers from nineteen eighty seven. Oh a David A. Pryor joint. Oh you know that's a good time. Oh boy. Oh boy.

I love it. I'm just I'm just excited. I this cast is just paying off in dividends here. This is perfect. But yeah, she's also in a nineteen ninety eight movie called Club Vampire. So she this movie?

She could not get away from this subgenre here. Oh boy. Anyway.

She's lovely. Uh her pal is named Cherry and Cherry is played by Darcy Damas. Yeah. She was in Can't Buy Me Love and Friday the thirteenth, part six. Mm-hmm.

Brilliant.

I just watched part seven the other night, so I got a little taste of six, you know, with the

Yeah. She's got a she's got a fun brief part in hard bodies, that sex comedy, which is surprisingly sex positive. Oh my god, yes. I watched that.

Brad got me that I was scared to watch it. That was the infamous movie my grandpa watched.

while I was asleep, in quotes in quotes on the on the lazy boy. And every few minutes during the movie my grandpa would get up and stare at me and see if I was asleep. He wouldn't have watched it if I was awake. And I ended up just watching the entire film with him.

Yep, terrifying. Speaking of not terrifying, but awesome nightlife.

eighty nine not to be confused with nightlife from the same year that's about the vampire. Yeah. That would have been hilarious. No, this is uh nightlife from eight night eighty nine.

It's got John Aston from uh Adams Family Fame.

and Scott Grimes, Cheryl Pollack, it is awesome. And I'm trying to will this movie out of VHS hell and get it onto Blu-ray. I think

The copy I have is a rip from a laserdisc, maybe. Okay. So it looks pretty good, but still it's like almost totally forgotten little movie.

Those are the main that's our main cast. We'll jump into this plot.

Okay, the movie opens with uh Wingshauser narrating.

Um, I thought it was a non sequitur, but no no. He he's talking to someone off screen that we do not see and we'll be meeting that character later. Someone named Oswald.

Mm-hmm. And he's like, this is all true. Narrator, narrator, blah, blah, blah. It's very wings. He's he sounds sweaty. Yeah. Sounds jittery.

Now, as I was saying, I don't want to bother you with details on how I arrived at this. Just let me say that it is a work of true conviction, of true commitment, and years and years of single-minded dedication.

mister Oswald, if you can't stop shaking, I will have to ask you to leave the room. Go to the airport. Uh Los Angeles airport here. I don't n I'm assuming it's JFK or whatever.

Yeah. Our hero, our our main guy, Michael Fury, rolls up off of a pres presumably off of a plane, or maybe he flew there. I don't know.

Maybe he's the night flyer. He had a little private plane. I have never seen that. I've always wanted to see that.

I feel like I've done myself a disservice. Speaking of great vampire movies. Yeah, it's a fun one. I'll get to it. Someone's paging him, and uh while they're playing some nice goth rock light.

I want you to tell me about the

George Chakiris's performance here. I think he's really good in this. Uh just the way they present him, first off, there's the most distracting thing is that he looks like Neil Breen if Neil Breen was a seven instead of a three.

So like that's a thing I couldn't unsee this entire movie. It's like, oh, it's Neil Breen, but he can actually act and he's handsome.

I wrote in my notes he's the eternally youthful middle aged vampire. Yes. Because he he he's a guy who looks really great from a distance, but once you get the close ups and there's a lot of close ups in this film.

You see his age just like he'cause at this point he's like pushing sixty, I believe. So like but you see it in his face, but he he looks great.

He this has this really great stoic performance, this entire thing. Some would call it wooden act in acting, but I think he's just he's playing basically Bella Legosi as a vampire without the theatre.

Yeah. So like he's doing I think he's doing a great job here, honestly. I was really impressed. He's been alive for hundreds of years and

He has adopted a new methodology of vampirism where he's just using people for uh blood bags, yeah, uh but not killing them. It's very nice.

Well, and he's and he's uh he's very lonely.

Uh he he wants to find other vampires. He's been in contact with this detective across the ocean to try to like basically hunt down uh and investigate these vampire killings, quote unquote, that have been going on.

He uh he gets to the phone and he's told to go to the uh metropolis

the metropolis on some street in LA. And so he hops in a cab and goes over there. That's when he finds a body in the window. And uh just as he's about to investigate this,

News reporters and the cops come flooding in. So he he backs off and like sneaks out. And that's when he meets Lori, our plucky, fun loving vamp, uh what we call her vamp stan.

Yeah, she's a groupie. Um at least that's how she comes off. Um, like, you know, as we get into the secrets of this film we'll we'll talk about that. But At first, you know, I honestly this movie did a good job of like keeping it secrets for a while, I felt like, because at first I was wondering.

How in the hell did he beat the camera camera crew and the crowd and the police to that dead body? He was tipped off and someone who tipped him off knew the body was already there.

So there was some other stuff going on in the background of this that you wouldn't expect from a direct to video vampire movie from nineteen.

It's it's very well thought out and and very I'll save a certain word for later and when we talk about how we really feel about this.

Uh but he so he ends up being taken by Lori to his chic minimalist condo that she's arranged for him.

It just reminded me of the vampire episode of X Files. I want to say it was like season three or four where we've got the very much inspired by um

The Oh my brain's doing me no favors tonight. I'm telling ya, this is hilarious. I need to g I need to get into Sudoku or something. Come on, brain, kick it out. What's the David Bowie vampire movie? Oh, um uh la la la

Um starts with an H. The hunger. The hunger. There we go. Thank you. The cat helped. And you helped. You saved us with the H.

The hunger, very much inspired by the hunger, which I think also inspired this movie. Mm-hmm. A bit. He goes after ditching Laurie and looking at his place, he goes out and he ends up investigating on his own.

to find um the the evidence that they d left behind at this window dressing and Wingshauser is across the street filming this.

Uh he's a a filmmaker, a wannabe artistic filmmaker, and he's the one who's gonna figure out that good old uh Fury is a vampire because he moves too fast to be captured on VHS, except for brief

flashes of of him there. Let me just let me just correct you. Wingshauser is not a filmmaker. He's a video artist, damn it. This isn't film, it's videotape.

Oh man, I blew it. I blew it. He was so careful to point that out. Yeah. Ad nauseum. I th I thought it I thought it was great, like it just what a what a neat little this thing to throw in for the character where he's obsessed with

videotape film is dead man film is too old the meeting between these two um I don't think they're gonna be besties

Uh there it's a very prickly meeting between uh between uh Van Vandemere and Michael Fury. It's it's great. Looking for something? Jesus Christ, man, you scared the shit out of me. You a cop?

Are you a cop?

Why are you filming nothing?

Look, first of all, this isn't films, videotape, all right? Second of all, I'm an artist. I don't have to explain to you or anybody else in the world what I'm doing.

But there's nothing happening down there. You'd be surprised what you can do in the editing process. Bye. What's your video about?

It's a goddamn documentary, alright?

Um he ends up disappearing. He pulls a Batman and disappears on Van Vandemere and he's looking around like where'd he go? Where'd he go?

And what I love is I don't know who encouraged Wings to do this or if this is all Wings is doing. He is just narrating all his thoughts out loud in this movie.

Uh he has to be riffing when he's doing that. It just had to be like the director's like, okay, I just need you to like Do these lines and then we're just gonna keep the camera on you and you emote or whatever and he's emoting but he's he's

spouting the words with emotion as well at the same time. He's just going for it. Yeah. Oh, he he did some lines. Yeah, we sh certainly. Most certainly that happened.

I did skip something important. Um, we need to talk about

The freaking nightclub with the uh the good old Agent Orange. Tell me about this the scene, man.

This is one of the things that I think is kind of key to this movie where it it it shows like the actual artistic thought and intent behind this.

compared to your usual run of the mill like exploitation directors who just want to make a shitty vampire film and sell it. They're they're full on making an Asian orange music video in this, basically. That's crazy. But it's yeah, but at the same time they're like Setting up how Michael Fury works.

He he goes he's going to the club. There's all these quick shots between the band, between him, between potential female blood bags that he can keep on the side while he's in town. And he's just sussing out the perfect woman to uh

Becoming his girlfriend, so to speak. And uh every time Agent Orange plays in this movie, all of a sudden the energy just Just rising.

The the opening scene where he's in the airport, it's kinda like, Okay, it's kinda stilted, it's it's a little slow. He gets into the cab and then there's Agent Orange playing and it's like, Oh shit, this is a movie. We're in a movie now, stuff's happening.

And I was like, Why can't the cab ride be like the first five minutes of this movie? That would really set the tone because you're you're getting like uh another thing this movie does great is it it just

sets the time and place perfectly. You really get a sense of yes, this is LA. These are the street people in LA. This is all the stuff that's happening in nineteen ninety LA.

And uh it the kind of stuff like this really sucked me into the movie. I was like, Oh shit, I I'm I'm on board for all of This is an ambitious start like when it when it kicks in and you got that the quick cutting and everything, it's really solid.

Two crazy things. One is they're having the dude from Agent Orange sing right into the camera. Like he l is locking the eyes with you. Which made me think of uh immediately made me think of the hunger.

Mm-hmm. Oh you know, you see all the cool the like you said, the street people, all the punk.

All these frickin' like uh uh metal heads and shit just hanging out in this club doing their thing. The other crazy thing is there is a Sybil Danning cameo. Yeah.

Freakin' Sybil Danning shows up sticking out like a sore thumb as she does walking towards the camera and I was like, Wow, she's in this too.

No. Sibyl Danning is just on camera long enough for you to notice her.

Mm-hmm. And I think the reason she's here is because these are the same people, especially uh, was it Michael Leighton?

Michael yeah, Michael W. Leighton. Um he wrote LA Bounty and was a producer in LA Bounty, which I just saw this year for the first time, with Sybil Danning and Wingshauser, and that movie is fucking great.

Yeah, I've yet to see that one, but I I did see speculation online. Either they shot it at the same time or this is like B roll footage that they just stuck in or you know, whatever. But yeah.'Cause I think her hair's the same. I d you know what?

I it might even be the same outfit. So yeah, you might might be what it is. But yeah, I I h highly recommend Ellie Bounty. It's it's really fun. Cool.

Michael Fury picks up Jenny and they have a fun fling where he drinks her blood from above her boob, above her her uh left breast.

And then I'm excuse me, her left chest. I don't want to say anything dirty. Uh and then he goes to bed. He he has a very special way of of sleeping. So there's no furniture in this apartment.

It's great because like, you know, they're doing this because of the budget more than anything else, most likely, but this whole like the set for this apartment and the way it's lit and everything, it just presages what every erotic thriller in the early nineties is gonna look like basically.

I wonder if yeah, I I just feel like this is like every direct to video, every direct to cable erotic thriller has like apartments that look like this, no furniture, no decorations.

neon lighting that doesn't come from any noticeable fucking direction. Sure. I'm w I'm wondering if they were like a little inspired by Manhunter maybe with that. Oh, that's very Manhunter, yeah. I wouldn't be surprised.

Uh he busts out his his travel bag and begins to unfold it and starts putting this shit together and he does this in a very ritualistic manner. And of course it's his coffin. He's got a portable coffin which I think every person should be issued one.

It's just to make life easier. It's a it's a cool little addition to the vampire kind of thing. It's just like Why wouldn't a m modern vampire find a more convenient way to transport his coffin around if he needs it, right?

Yep. Exactly. Before we get to the most important scene in the movie, which I'll have you talk about, there is a a little bit of a conversation between Michael Fury and Lori earlier about communicating with the dead

The spirits of the dead victims. She's gonna try to commune with the spirits.

So while he's uh getting ready to to to go to bed for the day

She is trying to communicate with the spirits. We get some cool uh visuals of some

Gore, some blood spurting and some zombified kind of looking women. Mm-hmm. And we'll get back to that. Lot l lot of visions and I I will say just like going back to your you mentioned X Files, this this feels like

of proto X Files to an extent, except for role reversal, where Michael Fury is more the skullly, a little bit more pulled back and uh skeptical of things, and and Lori is more the Mulder. That's cool.

Yeah. That's awesome. I didn't thought of that. But fuck all that shit, Lee. We gotta talk about the egg scene. Oh my god. The girls go and they go to Wings' place.

in the morning. What happens? At and uh what does the uh video shoot here? Yeah, so uh video artist Wings Hauser here, Van Vandemere.

First off, he's got a great place'cause he he he lives out of this like warehouse kind of deal where he's got his office and then he's got his place where he shoots. So, you know, there's this big warehouse.

With boxes that he can be thrown in later on. He's got his office. He's got all this conspiracy stuff. He's got molders up.

Which is the weird thing. He'cause he's got all the conspiracy posters, big fit UFO. He's an occultist.

But but he's doing the shoot with the two ladies.

He's doing uh egg themed photographs. Yeah specifically and you know, some of you might out out there might have this fetish where you're into ladies having egg

In the uh knee pit, I guess is the place to put it. Yeah is the way to put it. Yeah. So he's taking very artistic videos of sexy ladies putting eggs in between their legs and uh other places, presumably.

It it looks sort of innocent until you see the shots that he's getting. Yeah. Or it's just f her the her flesh surrounding this egg and it's like, what am I looking at?

Yeah, kinda looks vaguely vaginal. Um but but the but the big thing is that, you know, he's very serious about this. He's like, I gotta get this shot.

And um Cherry is just being a goofball. She thinks this thing is stupid and hilarious.

Yeah. And she's like touching the egg and he's like, No, no, stop. Oh wait, wait, no, touch the egg. Touch the egg. Put your finger on the egg and keep it there. And she's just unable to do it because she wants to tickle Julie. Um

There's there's some implied fun times between these two that we never see basically. Uh she basically kinda tickles uh Julie too much to the point where Julie crushes the egg.

Oh, it's cuckoo. There we go.

And I mean you might go cuckoo if you see this uh scene because I did it's something. It is unexpected.

Like this just that alone is like two stars on letterboxed for me. Like it's like you do this weird shit in a in a movie like this.

You're going somewhere, you're you're shooting for something and I love you for it. So when the egg breaks and he's like, ooh, perfect. Don't don't clean it. Don't clean it. Yeah. Don't wipe it off.

Oh, it's so insane. And we go from this insanity to this weird performance art thing.

Mm-hmm. Where everyone's at this club. Lori's at this club. She's got this hunky guy she's sort of flirting with. He's more interested in her than she is in him. And of course Jenny and Cherry are gonna go over there.

and meet up with somebody, uh meet up with uh Van Van Vandemere later. Uh uh but Michael Fury rolls up as well. But this performance artist guy is this really weird character with a very arresting voice.

Yeah.

Reciting this insane shit. Is this Frazier Smith, I believe?

I looked up the Fraser Smith that's mentioned in the cast and he's I guess he was like

He's much older now of course, but uh I think he was and still is kind of like a local radio personality in the area. Interesting. Interesting. They say he's playing Frasier.

Kelly in the movie, but I didn't catch his name being said or anything. I didn't see his sign. Oh yeah. That's him. That's definitely him. But he's really weird. Like he is he's talking about vampires.

Mm-hmm. It seems like he's talking about vampires. It's very um stream of consciousness poetry kind of stuff. It's the kind of wackadoo stuff Jim Morrison would say. It's just kind of nonsense, but you know Whatever.

Good old Mojo Risin, y'all.

The darkness is his domain. To be seen yet unseen is no difficult task for one such as he. The shadow you thought you did not see flitting against the walls of your darkened bedroom.

It was there. The sound you could almost hear, his voice in another form. Yes. The hiss of distant snakes. So

Jenny has been obsessed with Michael Fury since you know he sucked her. And I just wanted to say that. And uh so he has to let her down. Um he has to get out the the grown-up vampire voice and be like, look.

It's not you, it's me. Forget about me, okay? Just forget about me. It's never gonna work out. You're twenty one years old and I'm

seven hundred years old. And as soon as he like snaps his fingers and stops talking in that voice, she goes, Oh, so can I get your number? Yeah. Didn't work. Doesn't work.

Vampires have no powers of uh uh convincing a uh an airhead from uh LA to uh yeah no. And one thing they do in that I thought was interesting here is

Um at the beginning of the movie he looks all haggard and grey and after he feeds on uh Jenny, he gets color. Yep. He gets color and now he's starting to look a little grey again, so he's gotta get another uh gotta load up on some more Jenny.

Um I wasn't a hundred percent sure on this, but uh it seems like in this one, in in the lore in in this uh movie, yeah, vamp vampires don't seem like they can necessarily turn people to vampires.

There's probably a process. Maybe, but he he's definitely reluctant to do it. He's he's

He's got, you know, uh there's still consent issues here and he's still using her as a blood bag, but he doesn't wanna like kill her and turn her undead, I guess, is Exactly. Exactly.

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It is already made.

Our pal Van Vandemere is he's starting to believe because of the videotape that he might have something going on here. He might have himself a real live vampire, what his

family has been hunting, you know, y years before he was born. Tell me about his his idea, his his vampire trap Yeah.

He is essentially a serial killer, but like his whole methodology is not because it's some sort of weird

thing in him psychologically. It's he's trying to catch a real life vampire. So he's going about it the best way he can he can think of doing it and basically staging these vampire murders.

And hoping this will get the attention of a real vampire who's gonna be I don't think he thought too far ahead after that because it's just like, are you not gonna just get like the most negative attention from this vampire?

Great idea, good premise. Just, you know, the follow through wings doesn't turn out too well for you.

Oh boy. Meanwhile, there's a my f the this part made me laugh so hard I was dying. This I this was not meant to be funny. I love this part.

It's when uh Lori is she's caught snooping around at Michael Fury's place. You know, she's got the key'cause she got him the place. She's looking at his little frickin' zip up coffin and all this stuff. Uh but I think she starts to

try to summon the spirits while he's there. Yeah. And they get into this fugue state of visions and slow-mo. And this movie has that weird slow-mo that they do, so it's The movie was shot on film, but whenever they do anything slow motion or sped up or like the vampire moving too fast effects.

They use this video effect. So they're like refilming the video. It looks very odd. It's takes you out of the movie a little bit, but it's it's it's a cool effect just for fun. I liked it a lot. I I thought it was just like

Who else would be doing that around this time? Like everyone else would just be, you know, doing it on film and then just going with like the clunky like

way they they would do. But um again, there's just some interesting like thought into how they were gonna make this work and like show his vampire powers and stuff like that and show the visions. Comes off a little bit like a music video for like a

For some like new wave goth band or something, but you know, whatever. I laugh because Laurie and Michael Fury wrestling, like him trying to stop her, just the two of them thrashing around and I just I laughed. It looked so funny.

Yeah it's not as bad as we just did an episode on Mother of Tears. Oh when uh

Daria Nicolode is wrestling with the guy at the end of that movie while he's on fire. That looks so bad'cause I think

She was she was up there in years and I think the guy she was wrestling with was trying not to hurt her. Yeah. And so it was like a bad dance. And this is this is like a bad dance as well.

Yeah, Dario's uh don't don't try to hurt her. Her bones are like eggshells. Leave her alone. Jeez. Anyway.

Jenny does not listen at all to Michael and she goes to Van Vandemere's place to snoop to find evidence on his tapes'cause you know he films everything.

Unfortunately she gets caught and he's known Van Van she walked right into this'cause Van Vandermeer because he was filming her body, he had seen the uh the bite marks on her breast and so he's

She's not gonna do well. He kidnaps her, puts her in his frickin' room that is

Painted with um garlic orlic. Oh my god. This is where the movie got too real for me where uh Wings scares the shit out of this actress.

Hopefully they were cool when they were doing this scene, but Sh he's roughing her up and smacking her around and I'm just like, She's a really good actress, or she was legit fucking terrified.

It it could be either or or a little column A, little column B. I wouldn't be surprised, man. Oh my god. He he straps her to his kill table, which we've been seeing visions of covered in blood.

And he uses this is very interesting. He uses bat fangs. Yep. And he pe pierces her jugular. It starts to drain her blood out of her. And he acts like he's gonna keep her alive.

Just enough, but then he don't do that. No. I mean He he basically gets the jugular right away and s he's like, Oh, we got a little bit of uh spillage there or whatever, gotta gotta fix that up and then Oh and and this is kind of what we've been seeing, some of this some of the visions.

uh that uh that Lori has been getting is is partly the other victims, but partly this moment. I think she's also seeing into the future a little bit. Michael shows up way too late and uh believe it or not, Van Vandemere gets the upper hand.

And just fucking shoots him with like a desert eagle or some crazy giant gun.

En enough to enough to uh put enough holes in him for him to bleed out enough that he's too weak to fight back, I guess, is the the idea here.

And we we see some of the titular pale blood'cause it's been they're talking about how vampires don't have regular blood or something. So it's sort of like a watery kind of blood thing going on. I was uh I was I was confused.

By the the pay how pale this blood was gonna be. But yeah, Lori comes to the rescue and folks, spoiler alert, it's over. This is we're spoiling everything. She is a vampire.

Yep. And just f just to make you doubt yourself just a little bit more, they keep playing fast and loose with she's knocking on the door and then she's gone, but then she's inside. Mm-hmm. But then she's not very threatening.

She doesn't immediately just rip this guy's fucking head off. Yeah, no, she's having fun. Yeah, and she ends up locked in the room with Michael Fury and you think, Oh, he's

He's trying to resist feeding on her, which is interesting because how do two vampires not fucking know each other? That's that's one of the big things about this where it's like

Yeah, maybe maybe they can't or somet you'd think they would after they s share the psychic visions. You think there would be enough there, but whatever. The the movie doesn't quite get there with the writing on that, but

I I still I still love, you know, like this kind of once we get this reveal, this explains why she was so like

not afraid of Michael Fury when she gets caught in the apartment, you know, snooping around. She's just kinda like, Hey yeah, I was snooping in your apartment. What other, you know? And my favorite thing is in her apartment, in Lori's apartment, she has vampire posters on every wall.

Vampire books on every shelf, vampire memorabilia.

She she probably has a a pillow, a life size pillow of Bella Legos who she sleeps with. She's literally watching Nosferatu. Yeah. So she you think she's just a fangirl. Yeah.

But no, she's just like she really does love everything about vampires.

She she she loves being a vampire and she's into all the all the fun stuff about being a vampire and she just wants to find another vampire and she's like Yeah it is.

Um somehow she inspires uh our pal. Or does he drink some of her vampire blood? I'm not sure. I think they just fuck and now he's happy. Now he's he's ready. He kicks the fucking door off the place.

off the this uh this freezer that they had them locked uh that uh Van Vandermeer had them locked in.

That looks so cool too. He just he just pushes his arm out and just pushes it and it's like, Oh yeah.

Yeah. And then he does some levitation thanks to some nice wires that help him very nicely. And then um you think, okay, Van Vandemere's gonna get fucking killed, but nope, they knock him out.

And then he comes to in a psych ward. Yep. And now we see the the the beginning of the movie where we heard the narration. He is showing his footage to the other inmates.

Um but the footage the quality's not real good. What what is happening with that footage there? Yeah, no, it must have been it must have been pay cable. It's all scrambled.

Gotta get one kitty. Gotta get one kitty once in a T scramblers.

No, it's just static. It's it's there's no video basically. There it's just dead air. Uh we get some uh very uh calm and totally not over the top uh portrayals of the mentally disturbed.

And then uh he goes to his he's sent to his room where uh Lori and Michael just come in to kind of threaten him a little bit, check on him, and the most wonderful thing

Wingshauser, totally subdued, totally subdued, just lays down and pulls the covers over his head. I'm done.

And then we get some more Agent Orange and that's the whole movie. I'll see if we can track down some other trivia here. Uh the

Other than the Agent Orange, I don't remember the music at all. Yeah. I I didn't write down who did the music, but it's very um it's very nineties.

Softcore electronic

music. Again, it's it feels like a precursor to like every one of those like Shannon Tweed kind of things. Nice. It's it's it's just no saxophone, that's all. The only difference, you know. This composer's name is Jan A. P.

Casmeric and he just passed away last year. But he oh my gosh, he scored tons. Good lord.

This guy liked to work. Where's he from? This looks like he's a yet another element, uh another a member of this crew that was from another country.

Um Hung I believe he was Hungarian'cause some of the movies he worked on were Hungarian.

Okay. So Hungary from Hungary to Hong Kong to Illinois to Japan. That's a that's a crazy combo, it really is.

He did a movie that I need to rewatch. I haven't seen this in literal years. Uh 1993's Doppelganger.

Oh, with uh Drew Barrymore? Yeah. That's a weird one, dude.

That one and um Night Angel I saw almost back to back on cable. Like one one late Saturday night I saw Doppelganger and then like a week later I saw Night Angel and it was bonker's ass movies.

Holy shit.

Cinematographies by Jerry Lively. Oh boy. Oh he shot Hellraiser three, y'all. Oh really?

Yay. L Razor Three unit now I think about it, it looks a lot like this movie does when it's the go on the street and stuff, yeah. He shot the the year before this, he shot Oh my god, this is so exciting. Girlfriend from hell.

I fucking love Girlfriend from Hell. And then the year before that, he shot Waxworth.

Oh nice.

Hot damn. He shot Warlock the Armageddon. That's cool. He shot Return of Living Dead three. Yeah.

The Romeo Juliet one? He shot two segments and the wraparound story of Necronomicon, Book of the Dead.

Another good one. I love this guy. And yeah, he just his his career just goes on and on and on. What the fuck?

Brilliant. Um, not a lot of trivia. Did you have anything about this movie? No, I didn't really see anything out there. It was just like yeah, not nothing that other than what I and D D was really saying and yeah.

Okay, Wikipedia says this was filmed in Hong Kong. Hmm.

Mm. Maybe maybe interior shots. Maybe. I definitely didn't get that vibe, but then again, you know, when you have uh an American cinematographer, you might not notice the

Yeah. The Hong Konginess. I mean if if if the if the everything they were showing that was supposed to be LA was actually Hong Kong, then he's an even better cinematographer than we're giving him credit for because Wow. Yeah. He's a he's a genius.

Ha ha.

Well let's leave it at that. Um, Lee, how do you feel about Pale Blood?

I was pleasantly surprised by it. I I thought it was okay, it's gonna be a junky thing that Wigginshauser showed up in and he's gonna take over the entire production and everything else is just gonna be kind of under his weight.

And it's like, no, actually he's just like he's a cog in it. He he gets to do his thing to give him enough time to like breathe a little bit with his lines and stuff, but

He's just part of like a a big picture and it's you know, despite the the film's limitations here and there, like there's a few little snags with the writing and stuff.

It's really shot well. It's got a unique mood to it.

Um it's got a nice little freshening of the vampire lore to modernize it a little bit, which I thought was cool. It takes itself very seriously. Yes. But never to the point where it's like laughably like it's taking itself like some

Vanity project that takes itself too seriously. Takes itself serious and you get sucked into it. It feels like

It's the it's the pilot for a vampire detective show that was never made. Like it feels like this could have been like right up there with Forever Night as like a weekly syndicated thing, you know? Yeah.

Um and I would have watched it because I would've loved to see Lori and Michael Fury like doing paranormal detective work throughout the the city. That would have been great. Um Yeah, s especially like if they were sh filming in LA around this time and kept that

Vive going. That would have been cool. But yeah, no, this this could have been really lazy garbage and it's anything but that. Everybody here's trying, everyone's punching above their weight class.

They get the most out of everything they had and uh you know, missing gems like this, these are the fun ones to discover because they end up being like really good and uh

Again, yeah, I was just pleasantly surprised. I I just had fun through the the whole thing and it's it surprised me several times. You know, the the egg stuff was like, where is this coming from? But I love it. So yeah, no, this

Big recommendation for this one. Nice. I I liked this. Um I'm kind of on the fence on if I loved it. I did get a pretentious feeling, but That's okay because like you said, they're trying to do something different.

They're working hard. The the ambitious

editing was cool. This little subtle things were neat. Wings is is so scary. This isn't like um

vice squad terrifying wings. But you're just he's so weird. It it's oh my god, I love it. I guess this would be trivia. I pretty sure we were seeing some shots of these little wooden bridges in LA That go over like a canal.

Okay. And they're like white the painted white. I'm pretty sure this was where Nancy and uh Johnny Depp's character in Nightmare and Elm Street were standing and having a burger while they're talking about setting traps.

Okay. Yeah. Like the dream talking about the lucid dreaming stuff. I think that's that that was a location there that I could be wrong, but it looked familiar. But yeah, I also recommend this one for your your late 80s, early 90s fix.

Mm-hmm.

track down red blood of American girl because

f seriously thought I was watching that until I realized that's a different movie. Gotta get gotta get Pace Blood as well. That'll be a good one. Yes, Pace Blood. They take that one a lot slower, I think. Yeah.

So so Lee before I let you run out of here screaming or at least

in your your your knee pit. I got a whole dozen waiting down in the fridge, man. Don't wipe it off. Don't wipe it off. Um could you please tell me about a uh recently seen and loved movie

It can be an old favorite or it could be one you saw for the first time recently. What do you got? Sure. Uh just recently I watched a movie I've been wanting to tick off my list for a while. It's Unforgiven, but from twenty thirteen. It's the Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiv.

And existed. Yeah, directed by Sang Il Li and it uh stars Ken Wantanabe and Jun uh Kinyamura.

And uh it's like a shot-for-shot remake, but it's just set in Japan instead, at the end of the uh Tokagawa shogunate, like right where the samurai class kind of gets phased out.

So instead of being an old gunfighter Ken Watsonabe playing the Clint Eastwood character is playing a former samurai who fought in the war that the civil war that happened basically where they ran the shogunut out.

But it it follows unforgiven, pretty much beat for beat. There's a few little asides that are different.

Uh the guy who plays the Gene Hackman character in this looks like Charles Bronson if he was Asian. Like he's got a big mustache.

And he just looks like Charles Bronson out of like Red Sun, if you've ever seen that movie. Of course. Uh yeah. Um this movie has a little bit of uh

social message going forward uh uh apart from the you know uh you know violent men trying to escape their past kind of thing from unforgiven. This is uh paying a little bit of uh attention to the uh anew uh people in uh Hokido who are like an indigenous

part of Japan, uh that they kind of like live in northern Japan. There's a little bit of them in like Siberia as well and they're you know, d distinct culture that was At this time, uh historically, they were trying to like integrate them into Japanese society and make them Japanese.

Oh yes, I heard of this th these people. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a little bit about that. Uh the the the the guy who plays the uh Schofield Kid.

Uh character from the original Unforgiven is one of these uh indigenous people. And so he's got a chip on his shoulder. He's kind of playing it like.

Um Toshiro Mifune. He's blaming Toshiro Mifune. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah.

Um but uh yeah, no I had a lot of fun with this. Uh you don't you think a shot for shot remake, it's either gonna go the way of Psycho where it's just like, why are we doing this?

Right. Or or it has something new to say and this has something new to say and it's a really beautiful movie at the same time. So I really liked it. I I just realized that I was mixing up The unforgiveness.

With that Sam Raimi Western. Oh, Quick and the Dead. With Quickin' the Dead. That's my brain is just like I can't remember movie titles, but I can sure smash together

Two totally different fucking movies. I mean it it's one of those movies that came out in the wake of Unforgiven where it's like, Oh, we wanna do Westerns again. So yeah. That's funny. I'll probably cut my that part where I mentioned fucking DiCaprio. But anyway, um

That sounds amazing. I've definitely never heard of this version. That's cool.

Yeah. Uh yeah, I was I was on another podcast and someone recommended. I was like, what? That's a thing? I will watch that. Well, my pick is also from uh from Japan. It's called Black Type Killers.

Oh yeah. I had never heard of this. I mean sixties Japanese pop cinema

There's so much. It's so much. And who knows how much of it has survived over the years. Uh Japan has a funny

Um, relationship with film preservation. Yeah. Some stuff we're lucky to have and some stuff is lost forever.

But yeah, this is 1966, uh directed by Yasuharu Hasebe, and it is so much fun. Somebody on probably on Twitter or something was just posting the uh the Radiance films

uh trailer, uh, the announcement for this and it just looked like my cup of tea. I'm a big fan of the girl gang movies from the early seventies.

Um that uh Pinky Violence box set, the the ones that don't go too far with the slees are usually my cup of tea. And uh this was an absolute blast with a uh an extra uh military guy coming back from Vietnam and ends up embroiled in a some kind of uh gold heist

From the from the war from World War Two and All Hell Breaks Loose and he's being chased by these six

amazing ladies in black tights who are just wrecking all the frickin' yakuza, wrecking him, just kicking all kinds of ass. Highly recommended. Yeah, that's a fun one. That Radiance disc is very nice.

It has a standout scene that where is it a photography studio?

I think you're right. Yeah, there's like a photography where they're bursting through the the they're bursting through the walls. Mm-hmm and oh no it's a it's a dream sequence. But they're bursting through these like they'll burst through a green wall and behind the green wall which is made of paper.

Is a pink room. And then the lady, she bursts through the pink. Yeah. And then there's a red room. And it keeps going. It's just so crazy.

How's about you tell the folks that

how to find your podcasts. Is it podcat it's podcast plural? So please tell the folks how they can find you, Lee.

So if you want to hear my main uh podcast uh that I do, they must be destroyed on site. Goto tmbdos.podbean.com

I have a secondary show on there as well that covers uh movie soundtracks and scores called Blood on the Tracks that I do every month.

And we try to do the regular show weekly. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. But uh yeah. We're we're no cort psyops over there fucking just pumping them out like for eighteen years straight or whatever the fuck it does.

But uh yeah, I'm on another podcast where I guess technically makes me a fellow Legion podcasts person because I'm on Last Call at Torchies with Gary Hill and and Cameron Scott.

And uh that's where we're covering chronologically the films and uh TV work of Walter Hill. That's it.

Yeah, and that that comes out

Every once in a while, whenever we can get together and do it. Uh Gary has a weird schedule sometimes, so sometimes we don't always get to record for like a month and a half or more. But you know, it's fine. It's it's a fun time.

And uh you can find that uh at Legion Podcasts, uh under the uh butcher shop collection of shows that Gary Kil Gary Hill does. So uh folks in the link.

to this episode I'll have links to everything so you can find all this good stuff easily. But no, I'm I'm loving your frickin' blood on the tracks'cause like I have my my handful of scores

that you know I I listened to just as like, you know, let's let's fire up the Nightmare Elm Street score. Let's mm-hmm. I don't know if you know about this one as far as its score. So Tangerine Dream did the music for Strange Behavior. Yes.

Uh or aka Dead Kids. Dead kids. Yep. And I bought

Foolishly thinking this is gonna be awesome, I bought the record. The they they finally got the music and uh I wanna say it was Terror Vision released it and now

TerraVision, this is not their fault. The packaging amazing. The cover.

The gale fold cover, beautiful, the splatter, the like neon green, neon pink splatter vinyls, sick as fuck. I loved it. But the the what they had to work with was not great. So

It sounded good. It was perfect quality, perfectly listenable, but Tangerine Dream must have been like paid by the second because every track, I think the longest track on that disc was like 45 seconds.

Wow. Like they did just little tiny interstitial moments for the movie.

And that was it. Like you'll sometimes you'll be listening to somebody's rip of a soundtrack and you can tell

that they just ripped it off of the VHS or ripped it off the D V D and it just fades in real fast. There might be a little

background sound or talking and then it fades into the music. Mm-hmm. This definitely isn't that. This is from tapes. You could tell they had the originals. But why Tangerine Dream

resisted the temptation to like make a three minute song. They they just might have not had the time. It's bizarre. It is and I I solved it.

Yeah. 'Cause I is is just not fun to listen to.'Cause some'cause you know, s sometimes like especially Tangerine Dream around that time, they were doing so much like

I I could see them like they had the knock this out in a studio and it's like we're not writing full pieces, we're just gonna write segments.

And these are for the scenes, this is what we need, kind of thing. I could see that.

But uh then you get someone like Moroccone.

uh back in the seventies especially when he was the m and his most prolific, a movie would come along, it's an Italian crime film, here's two pieces of music, you split it up, you slow it down, you speed it up the way you want. I don't give two shits. I'm I'm on to the next project, man. Peace.

Yeah. It's not like uh somebody like speaking of Italian, it's like um Cipriani where you where you get what you get one of his scores and you've got like

fourteen variations of the same thing, but also you have like the love theme and then the pop single with the lady singing. Oh my god, you never you never feel like you've been left hanging by Chipriot.

Hey, hey, uh Cipriani, could you score my new uh car chase movie from Italy? Sure. Have you heard my score from Tentacles? Well you're gonna

Yeah, there's there's um I had to sell another record. What did I buy? So I got

the score for Absurd. Yeah. Antropo Fagus 2. And then later, because I love that score. Later I bought the score for pieces.

Yeah. And I have already sold that record for pieces.'Cause it was all the same music except for the uh that fanfare, the brr brr brrr at the at the tennis court. That's the only thing that was different.

Yeah, it it can be dicey. Like half the time even the companies that are like

putting the stuff out, don't know what it is and where it's from and they improperly label it. Uh doing my show I'm as much as I love it, it can be a just a pain in the ass sometimes trying to like track down accurate information on any of this.

Uh well you're doing good work and you're you're gonna solve some mysteries and then some

No one knows. They're all dead. Well, dude, thank you so much. I'm glad we finally freaking arranged this.

And uh it sounds like you just rode away on your s your your motorcycle there. There's this there's this asshole who fucking lives in the subdivision behind he always revs right on the street coming out to the main road. What a cool dude. Yeah.

Big dick on him. Our neighbor has a truck that's bigger than my house.

And it's like I'm like, what the fuck?

It's like can I call the cops now? Is it late enough to report this shit? What is this?

But anyway, thank you, sir. That was fun. Yeah, thank you for having me. It was an absolute honor and a thrill to be on here. And folks, thanks for listening and we'll talk to you later. Bye. Goodbye.

Folks, thanks so much for listening to this episode.

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Creators and Guests

Richard
Host
Richard
Host of Hello! This is the Doomed Show and author of Giallo Meltdown, Giallo Meltdown 2, & Doomed Moviethon.
H!TITDS - Pale Blood (1990)
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