Dead of Winter (1987) Mary Steenburgen, Roddy McDowall

0:00 Hm. She should have known not to talk to strangers, not to get in their cars, not to sleep in their beds, especially in the dead of winter. A winter greater are Stark's Friday at a select theater and hear you in a world where podcasts reign supreme, Two friends dare to ask Do You Even? Movie? Hosted by filmmaker Enrique Kuto and movie aficionado David Denyer.

1:02 Spoiler alert, Hey friends, Romans, countrymen, welcome to another episode of Do You Even? Movie? I'm your host Enrique Kuto here with my friend. Let's get some good air quotes in there. There we go. David Denoyer, Greetings, and tonight we have one of the greatest films Hitchcock did not make. This is true, This is very true. We are talking about a film I have always felt was underappreciated. Yeah, a little movie called Dead of Winter from nineteen eighty seven, That is correct. And how did you come to know this film too? So Dead of Winter was a discovery for me when I was at my first apartment, so we're probably talking about twenty fourteen, and I had an antenna, so I would get the channels that some of which you turned me on. To yeah, because I'm smart. Yes, yeah, so I think this was on this If I'm not mistaken, it wasn't on that. It wasn't on that, David, This was on this the channel and the opening of this completely grabbed me.

2:10 First off, then seeing Rodny McDowell's name pop up, and then just overall what happens in that first opening like five minutes, I was like, I'm gonna check this out, and then I ended up watching you check this out? Or was it you're gonna check that out? Damn? And then I ended up watching the whole thing commercial breaks and all from start to finish. Well, you didn't do what most people do and just like hit yourself with a hammer during the commercial breaks. I won't be remembering pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I made grilled cheese. Actually it's coming back to me now. No, No, like I totally made grilled cheese because I could see my TV from my kitchen back then. And also it was I think it was during like a little bit of a snowstorm outside, so like it added that element to it. And now I think you're just remembering things the way you want to remember them. By Okay, a snowstorm okay, just how I like things Snowstorm two bits. No, I mean it sounds lovely.

3:00 It was a lazy sunday. It was just I would I would just put the TV a lazy Sunday in the middle of the night. I didn't say the middle of the night. Oh wait, you didn't say in the middle. I thought you said the middle night. Okay, that's my projection of what would be perfect. This was like noon on a Sunday or oh wow, okay, that's quite a Sunday afternoon. Yeah, okay, hell yeah, man, okay, I assumed it was at night for some reason. How did you discover Dead of Winter? Enrique? I don't feel that I have to answer that, and my council has instructed me to simply say, I can get a warrant. Uh hell now uh So. I saw this film in my ongoing hunt for the best wintry movies, and that's something that I have been looking into for forever, ever since I've known you. Yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan of snow movies, which we should probably mention. This is the first of several wintry films will be covering here on do You even movie? So I found this film by literally searching best movie in snow, and I found all kinds of stuff that I'd already seen.

4:04 Yeah, because there's so many movies that are great and set in the snow. Yeah, tons of Christmas E movies, things like that. Well, this one came up and I had never even heard of it, never even heard of it. Really, you're gonna drink carbonated beverage on the show. I didn't last time. Oh boy. I hope the audience here. I hope you like Belches. I hope it's your favorite thing. I don't know if I was ever aware of this one. I think the title like i'd heard the title, but I didn't know anything about it. If anything, I may have known Rodny mcdowe because there was a period where I went through a lot of his movies. Well, so this was during Lockdown. Yeah, I was really hunting because we had a particularly cold January we did.

4:46 It was very, very brutal in twenty twenty one. So I was like, I want my snow movies because it's snowing like crazy, it's cold outside. I'm ordering door Dash and just sitting here and staring at the snow out the window and then staring at the snow on my movie screen. That was literally how it went down. So I found this one and a few others, and unlike a lot of the others, at the time, I had to rent this one. Yeah, I had to pay cash money up front. It wasn't one of those free to stream even if you're already paying for it things, which has always been a pet peeve of mine when people say it's free on the service I pay for. It's not free. You're paying for it Pal. And for the record, this is easily available right now.

5:26 Yeah, it's very readily available. A quick searcher, rooney and you will find plenty of ways to watch. But at the time I could only rent it. Not only could you only rent it, but it was only available on like a very I don't want to say, like massively obscure streaming option. But it wasn't like one of the main ones that we all go to. It was. It was definitely one of the less common one I've had that happen a lot in the last couple of years, especially like some of those like ninety direct to video ones that you and I've hunted down. It's like I can either get a physical copy or I can watch it here for free with ads that It's just that's kind of weird to me. Well, this wasn't free with that. I mean, well, I don't know why I'm dancing around. It was Apple. Yeah, I just don't rent it was I just don't rent a lot on Apple. So so yeah, it just kind of I was. I was so curious because the few reviews I found about it were extremely positive. They were raving, and the Wikipedia was really interesting and I tried to you know, you did the thing where you scroll past the breakdown really fast and try to avoid it. So I was like, hey, the final sales point was Arthur Penn. Arthur Penn legendary director and I believe father of Sean Penn and Chris Penn. Believe that it is correct. Actually so incredible director and of course I know him most of all from Bonnie and Clyde. You really don't know, Yes, he directed Penn and Teller Get Killed. Talk about another movie, Hard to Find and the watch, which you still a VHS of, by the way,

6:59 I do, I mean, I, oh no, I remember getting that for my birthday one year. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, So anyway, Penn and Teller Get Killed, which by the way, one of the greatest taglines of all time. It just says Penn and Teller get killed, and it's Penn and Teller on it like this, and then the tagline just says, what more do you want? Great tagline, But anyway, talk about they shouldn't call it Penn and Teller get killed. They should call it like jokes you don't get the movie, because that's what it is. It's like a movie full of jokes that most people don't get, you know, just like it's like it's like Elbow Bump, the movie that only feature film that they had with their names in it. Oh god, yeah, I mean they did TV specials and things like that, but never another movie. But so with Arthur Penn's pedigree being as it is, that was the final straw.

7:46 So I'm sitting up one night, I want to say, I had just finished watching White Out, Okay, that's the the movie and alastk okate Beck until Antarcticle. I had just finished watching that, and that was on some service I already paid for. So then I was like, you know what, I'm dropping my hard earned money. I'm renting Dead of Night Winter and Dead of Winter. Gosh. Dead of Night's great tip. Well, there's a lot of debt of nnts out there. Thank you for the correction. I'm watching Dead of Winter and I put it on. I had a blast with it. Yeah, I remember, because about not even six or seven minutes in, I paused it and went and made popcorn because I was like, ah, man, like I'm in for a thrill, like a just solid, solid thriller, and nothing makes me happier than just, you know, a really simple yet complicated thriller. And I feel like that is what you get with Dead of Winter. No, I absolutely agree. I think what really works me with Dead of Winter is I'm such a soucker for single location like isolation. I thought that's all you were gonna say. I was gonna be great, just sucker correct, single location isolation. That shit really gets me. We've had this conversation before because like, that's one of the things that I because at that time I isolated you and kept you in one location. Clearally, yes, that's one of the things I love about

9:18 midnight masses, like like a seaside town, just like an isolated from everybody. But then you add snow into that, and then you add it being in a rich estate, like, oh, so now it's just Storm of the Century. Yeah, just Storm the Century. You ever go another good one? Though? No? No, but I mean like you were like, it's like it's like midnight Mass, but it's on an island with snow. So Storm of the Century. Yeah that's fair, that's no. But it's the Storm of Century. Is great. You gotta remember I'm the guy who not only do I vacation in northern Michigan in the winter, yeah, which everybody else thinks I'm crazy. I don't have you been to northern Well, you have because you have some family up there. But it's snowy. Oh it's very snowy. But it's again, it's I just I just love being not bothered and being to watch movies in a snowy cabin. That's kind of nice. I got a snowy cabin and I had during the day I had to write, and at night I could do whatever I wanted. And there was no internet, so I brought stacks of DVDs. You did, and at least half of them were snow movies. And I actually had never seen Storm of the Century from start to finish. Wow, But I had a DVD set up. Yeah, so I watched the whole thing and and we're talking for people who you know, like Michigan, we're talking I'm staying here, like tip of the Mitten is what they call it. Yeah, so not the Upper Peninsula. And literally they would be like, it may snow Thursday, and then you wake up Monday and you're like, get snowing, and then you go bout your stuff, and then you wake up Tuesday or like, it's snowing, and then you wake up Wednesday you're like, hey, it's kind of snowing. And then you wake up Thursday You're like, wow, it's snowing, like it always snow. It was so weird,

10:52 yeah and fun. So I'm going back this January. I'm gonna do a little five day sabbatical out there, but I'll be well. The new place I stay at very bizarre side note, ooh it's more rustic. It's a literal log cabin. Oh, but it has high speed internet. I like tested it while I was there, and it was half as fast as my home internet, and my home internet's crazy fast it is. So I was doing like podcast bonus episodes and watching like all of my streaming shows that I was behind on the entire time I was there. So I liked the one place because it was isolated, but it was just a house in a rural community. This place was like that's the other great thing about staying in Michigan, Northern Michigan. Yeah, throughout the winter months, if you want a vacation there, the whole state's on sale. Damn. I mean basically because like where I was staying with my cabin, it was under fifty dollars a night. That's awesome. And only two cabins could be open because the others are too big to heat. So I'm in this cab and the guy's thrilled to see me because he's like, oh, thank goodness, you know, thanks for renting it, because nobody wants it. The town that they're in, the traffic lights were shut off. My gosh, they just weren't on anymore. There was one corner store and when I went in there, I was like, Hey, I'm looking for milk, and he went,

12:22 uh, You're gonna have to go somewhere else. Didn't they have like liquor and like cam goods or something. Hell yeah they did. And they had signs as they recommended together. Yeah, bottle of vodka, cannaban, your set. We call it a Russian holiday. But no, so anyway, I digress on that. But so Dead of Winter Numero Uno gives that winter vibe massively, I mean in spade. And the reason I love winter, for the record is snow is beautiful. Yes, snow is you know, fasting to watch it sets a scene. It makes you immediately imagine a time of year. But you'll look at snow and be like, oh, it's so pretty. But if there's a lot, you go, oh crap, like I can't get out of here. No, I mean, let's not forget the time that you literally called me and were like, hey, you're getting ready to get a big snowstorm here. I am too. Why don't you come down here, get snowed in with me for the weekend and we'll just hang out and watch movies all weekend. That was dope. That was a genius. So this is this was back when you know you you were living alone, you had you, you worked, you didn't work the weekends.

13:35 Really, yeah, and at least not in the winter. And yeah, literally there was a severe snow warning yep, starting Friday night at eight PM. So you drove your butt down to where I am. Snowstorre was starting at seven and we were sliding. We're sliding around the road yep, to get a pizza. Get a pizza, get some snack. And also then we had to dig out my car. No, we had gout Rachel's car the next day. Yes we did, I remember that now, yeah. No, And but we were all just like hauled up in my house and I cooked yep. And we we must have. We must have taken in like eight or nine movies. I watched a lot of it. I know we watched Braven, the one with Jason Momoa, and I think that was the night you showed me Session nine. Oh yeah, yeah, I can't believe you'd never seen that. Bought that Blu ray on a blind by and freaking love that movie. That was That might be a future episode.

14:31 So Session nine is fantastic. That was a movie I watched for the first time when I first moved to New Jersey. I watched it on my laptop. I didn't even have a television. I rented it at video Vowels Rest in Peace and Butler or a. Where was that was that? I know nobody and nobody cares if it was in Pompton Lakes or Butler, but I care Bloomingdale. It was in Bloomingdale, New Jersey. Rest in Peace, video vowels. Do You Even? Movie? Will be right back, Welcome back to Do You Even? Movie? Tell us a little more about Dead of Winter Doll. All right, So I'm gonna change things up this week.

15:16 Let's go ahead and start with the synopsis on this before we get to who's behind this? So the Screen Factory No David Too Late Scream Factory Blue Ray synopsis reads as when struggling actress Katie is offered the opportunity to replace an actress who has suffered an emotional breakdown during a film shoot, she jumps at the chance for a roll of a lifetime. Arriving at the filming location in isolated mansion in upstate New York and getting to know her two mysterious benefactors, doctor Lewis and mister Murray, she begins to suspect there's more to the story, but she can't quite put her finger on it. As she As the pieces fall into place and the weather outside turns frightful, Katie's quest for stardom becomes a fight for survival and this twisty thriller from the director of Bonnie and Clyde. I think that's a pretty solid description, long by synopsis, but it's meant to fill the back of the Blue Ryan Back of the Blue rayis so no. I think that's a pretty good one. My synopsis. An actress ventures to an isolated mansion to land the role of a lifetime but comes to find out the fame may just cost her her life. That wasn't that good? Shut up all right? So the director is Arthur Penn. As Enrique mentioned previously, this man is a producer director. He started producing and directing in nineteen fifty two with the Golf Playhouse Goodyear Playhouse in nineteen fifty five, Mickey one and sixty five, Penn and Teller get killed in eighty nine.

16:29 He was full on director, of course, for Bonnie and Clyde in nineteen sixty seven, Alice's Restaurant in nineteen sixty nine. Ah, I love that one. I just revisited the song the other day because it was not long ago. It was Thanksgiving, and I was really enjoying it. A little Big Man in nineteen seventy Night Moves one of Gene Hackman's best thrillers in nineteen seventy five. Oh, that's that's a really good, really solid flick, Target nineteen eighty five, The Portrait of nineteen ninety three in a film called Inside in nineteen ninety six. Our writer on this one, we technically have three writers on Dead Winter, starting with Anthony gill was technically have three writers. Technically I suspect something went horribly wrong. Let's find out, shall we. So our first writer is Anthony Gilbert, who was actually a pseudonym for Lucy Beatrix Mousen. She was a mystery writer who wrote under that name of Anthony Gilbert, like over sixty detective novels, using a guy that was by the name of I believe what was his detective name? It was Arthur Crook. So Arthur over fifty detective novels. Yeah, So was this based on a novel that they wrote? So that was so. This was originally based on a novel entitled The Woman in Red and that was made into a movie in nineteen forty five called My Name Is Julia Ross. Now the synopsis for My Name is Julia Ross. I do have pulled up here? And the idea is based on IUL sit Off the One and Read, and this says during the nineteen forty twenty three year old Julia Ross is employed without money, living in a cheap boarding house. She's also recovering from being unemployed.

17:59 Yes, sorry, well we've all been employed without money as well, so she is also recovering from being spurred by her lover. Desperate, she accepts an unpromising job as a secretary to an odd, red clad lady. She meets in a gloomy house in Mayfair, attended by sinister servants and asked as a condition of the job that she has no ties the long orphan Julia says she has not. In fact, she is not entirely true, as she's befriended by a young man Colin, who has met in the Lion's Tea shop, although he has told her of her fiance in Ireland. Basically what happens is once she gets into the house, they tell her that like, she wakes up the next day in a different house and now she's also married to that guy that she just met the day before. So it's more about that psychological aspect of like the serious gas lighting. Yeah, okay, because I feel like they only touched on that in Dead of Winter. They called Dead of Winter a loose adaptation of the Woman in Red aka my Name is Julie Ross, and then the movie of the same of My Name is Julie Ross in nineteen forty five. It is essentially the same thing where a woman goes to get a job, she wakes up the next day in a completely different house and people are like, you're this woman now, and that the whole psychological thing starts over again. So that movie came out in forty five, and the Dead of Winter was adapted loosely in eighty seven. Okay, that's I actually did not know, because I did do a little dive into this when I first watched it. Yeah, I know that it had a very troubled early production, Yeah it did. So. Anthony Gilbert, going back to Lucy Beatrix mousein Real Quick, also did a work for Alpha Hicks Dooctors, and so Anthony Gilbert is a name, but the actual name attached to

19:29 it of Lucy is not one of the people. Know. Our second writer on this is Mark Malone, who did Signs of Life in nineteen eighty nine, Bulletproof Heart in ninety four Hoods in ninety eight, Dead Heat, No, not that Dead Heat in two thousand and two, also currently or was writing back in twenty fifteen on the Last Ship. And then the last writer we have credited is Mark Schmueger, who was the producer of of Dead of Winter in eighty seven as well. He also went on to produce Spectacular Now in twenty thirteen, was a part of Lucy in twenty fourteen, Zero Days, and even The Circle in twenty seventeen. Mark Schmugger was originally also the director attached before Penn, but unfortunately what happened was he was on set for about a day or two and he was a classmate and friend of Arthur's son, Matthew Penn. He began to direct, but soon after ran into get difficulties. Producer of the film, John Bloomgarden took over as an interim is the interim director, and then Penn reluctantly agreed a couple days later to come back on. Yeah. From what I understood, he basically put he basically put his reputation out there to get this job going. Yeah, So when it was all falling apart, he just had it was like I put on his pants and showed up. That's that's how I am when I'm forced to direct, I just put on my pants and I show up, and I'm just like, ah fine. And our last name that I'll bring to the table is the cematographer Jan Wyke. They did additional camera on Six Kids in a Honeymoon in nineteen sixty seven. They went on to do photography stills for Le Miz a rob in nineteen ninety eight. Full cinematographer career didn't start in

21:00 seventy seven, though, with a film called Clark. They did a Dance a Bourbonville in nineteen seventy nine, Tree of Knowledge in eighty one, Weeds, a Nicknolty film, in eighty seven, Hello Again in eighty seven, Penin Teller Get Killed, Okay, a friend of Penn at that point, Arthur Penn, Yeah, Black Harvest in ninety three, Inside, the other Arthur Penn movie in ninety six, and some film called Shredded in two thousand. From what I could tell, they work on largely Danis productions. That was what their resume consisted of, So only productions with good pastor good pastry on coffee. It's the true. So now that we've done our cast or now we've done our crews going to our cast. We have three big players in this one, starting with Mary Steinbergen. Well, hold on, Okay, it's really kind of five. Yeah, it is kind of five.

21:47 Yeah, you're not wrong, because we need to say something. Yeah, real quick, Okay, watch out, guys, it's a hot take. Mary Steamburgin plays three three them, three characters. Yes, and my god, is she good. She's fantastic. She is so good. She's literally you know, I mean, we all we start the show with a spoiler but spoiler alert, but she's literally playing three different women that the one thing they have in common is they all happen to look alike somewhat. Yeah, and they make her. It's a combination of styling, yep, and her unrelenting ability that makes me believe she's three different people. Absolutely, and I just can't over sell Mary Steinbergon. I do not know that this film would work without her level of ability. Yeah, and that's kind of why I'm curious. Also to check out my name is Julia Ross, because I'm curious if they even play on the fact of multiple personality with her taking the role of somebody else. And I doubt they do. Honestly, I couldn't tell you so curious Steinbergen one hundred and seventeen credits on IMDb, by the way, starting with Going South in nineteen seven eight, the Jack Nicholson film, one of my personal favorites that I just recently discovered. Oh god, it's been probably about two three years ago. Time after Time, with Malcolm McDowell and David Warner. McDowell plays HG. Wells going after Jack the Ripper.

23:14 God, dude, it's insane. Ragtime in nineteen eighty one, Midsummer Night Sex Comedy in eighty two. I love Midsummer Night Sex con I know you do. One Magic Christmas in nineteen eighty five, a feel good movie. I recommend we watch the soon as we're done here today. Parenthood in nineteen eighty nine. Back then for those who don't know, God, you're going to talk about it. One Magic Christmas, that's the film to watch if you want to enjoy yourself this holiday season. Jesus, Beautiful Family, All Dead Disney. You should mention it's also a Disney. Nobody's Disney. Are you kidding me? Wow? I oh oh, I was about to say Disney is about as good at killing parents as And then I realized any joke I could think of is too spicy. Let's move on. Moving on, Parenthood nineteen eighty nine, Back to the Future, Part three in nineteen ninety What's Edie? Gilbert Grape in ninety three, Philadelphia ninety three, Nixon in ninety five, I Am Sam two thousand and one, Elf two thousand and three, The Brave One two thousand and seven, Step Brothers two thousand and eight, The Proposal two thousand and nine, The Help twenty eleven, Walk in the Woods twenty fifteen, Justified twenty fifteen, Orange of the New Black twenty fifteen, book Club She was on Oranges The New Black book Club twenty eighteen, and book Club two The Next Chapter in twenty twenty three. Steinbergen, I mean, well, we will get into it is we get in the movie, of course, But yeah, she she definitely one hundred percent makes this movie. Yeah. No, I that was the thing I came out with the most when I finished watching it for the first time, was

24:45 I could not believe her performance was so good. It was so stunningly good. So she plays Julia Rose, Katie McGovern and Evelyn in this Moving down the list, we have mister Roddy McDowell who plays mister Murray two hundred and sixty nine. It's an IMDb bybe by the way nice. Yeah, started with I See Ice in nineteen thirty eight. He also did Dead Man Shoes in nineteen forty, The Pied Piper in forty two, Killer Shark nineteen fifty, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in fifty five, Good Year Playhouse in nineteen fifty six, which is probably where he met Arthur Penn hm hm. Or it could be that he was like really famous, they do this well? No, I mean at this point he was heading into the twilight of his career after having an immense amount of success from Planet of the Apes.

25:33 Yeah, he was the one consistency in all of the original Planet of the Apes because they always shelled out the cash for Roddy McDowell to return, and then of course Fright Night came along and kind of gave him a little resurgence, But he was always into working and giving Steamburgin a lot of credit. Roddy McDowell's performance is excellent, butch you would you would expect nothing less from them. Unlike somebody like Mary Stembergin. Roddy McDowell being a character actor of a certain age. I don't think you've ever seen him and not known he was good. What I mean by that is like Mary Steamberge and some of the films she's done, not her fault. Her characters, especially when she was younger, were just lighthearted, fun, goofy roles, so you might not know that she could blow your mind. Pretending to be three different people.

26:21 Absolutely, and when I say pretending, I mean as well as acting, because there are points of the film where she's acting like she's pretending to be somebody else. Also true, she's acting like she's an actress, acting like somebody else. It's so good. But my point is Roddy McDowell. He plays this role which is basically like a henchman, but he's a mentally distraught, sad, depressed, miserable henchman who is being controlled by his therapist. Yes, and there are moments when he does terrible things in the movie, and he has such empathy, like I feel so bad for him.

27:03 Yeah, no, but he the way he delivers certain scenes, it's just you can't help but feel bad for him. But at the same time, when you see the acts that he's doing and the aftermath and everything, it's just like, Ah, I have such mixed feelings about you right now. I think he's a good guy. I like him. I mean the you know, hey, he's dedicated, all right. Every time I tell you to drug people, You're just like, no, it's probably illegal. I can't stand you. Oh God. So our other third player in this is Jan Rubes. He plays doctor Joseph Lewis one hundred and six cards for This Gentleman, starting with Forbidden Journey in nineteen fifty. He did Lastie in seventy two, The Amateur in eighty one, one Magic Christmas in nineteen eighty five.

27:44 Yeah, you mentioned he plays Sanna, Yes he does. He was also in Witness with Harrison Ford in eighty five, Witness Amityville Curse in nineteen ninety That was him, Class Action ninety one, Deceive ninety one, Maniac Mansion TV Show ninety three, Birds two, lands End in ninety four, D two, Mighty Ducks two and ninety four, Hour Cooking X Files ninety six, er ninety seven, Hour Limits ninety nine, Snowfalling on Cedars in ninety nine, as well. One of his last performances was Tilt in two thousand and five. He unfortunately left us in two thousand and nine, and I believe Roddy left us. Oh god, it was a little earlier. How do you not know when Roddy McDowell passed away? I don't know. Yeah, nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, no, he passed well, I guess he wasn't super young, but I feel like it was too It was too soon. Yeah, no, he absolutely. I actually remember his passing because my parents were watching Entertainment tonight and they'd come on about it, and I remember recognizing him from Overboard because he plays the butler and Overboard That's how I knew Roddy McDowell. What do you want? I was six. I'm not gonna keep going. Why are you looking at me like that? How long can you keep this up? Oh? Well, now I'm gonna keeping I was gonna stop. All right. Are you ready to get into this amazing film? Sir ah? Sure? All right. So Dead of Winter opens with a beautiful wide shot of a parking lot. A snow is falling down and it's New Year's Eve or an empty lot, and we see a woman leave her car. She goes inside. Is it a train station or a bus depot? It looked to me like a bus station, like a

29:17 bus station. Yeah. So she goes inside the bus station. There's a couple kids and a mother in there that have New Year's garbond, and she goes to get a locker, opens it up, pulls a key out of that locker, and then goes to another locker and retrieves a satchel full of cash. Very very cloak and dagger. Yeah, unlock a box, take a key out of the box, unlock a different box, pull some cash, and it's a mess of cash. Yeah, it is a mess of cash. So she goes back to her car, she gets out, she gets in and starts driving, and she gets stopped by a cop. They're doing like a checkpoint, just making sure everything's okay, checks her out, waves her through, and that's when we notice, I mean, they're just violating everybody's company of it. That's exactly right. Pardon me. So she drives through, and we notice that there may or may not be a car following her as well. Yeah, and it's played with like super super tight tension. Yeah, this whole movie is an exercise intention, It absolutely is.

30:10 So she keeps driving a bit, goes into another parking lot, gets out, and goes to a payphone. She calls somebody and states that she's gonna wait a few more minutes, and then she's gone. She gets back into her car, lights a cigarette, and then all of a sudden, some guy pops up from the back, begins to strangle her, kills her. And then what does he do next, Henrick, He removes her ring finger off her left hand. Yes, he cuts that. That was the opening scene that like, Like I immediately I was like, all right, put it in the remote down, we'll see what this is for a little bit. No, it's it's a it's a very startling, gruesome and very Hitchcock esque yeah moment. And that's the big thing in this movie is it does feel a lot like it wants to be a Hitchcock thriller, and I think in a lot of ways it succeeds. I think in a lot of always I like it more than the Hitchcock thriller because it was a little bit more modern. It didn't feel old fashioned. Yeah, I mean, it feels like it's maybe a product of the eighties, but it doesn't feel old fashioned, not dated at all actually, I mean, aside from a few scenes with phones. Yeah technology Once they're like in the mansion in the it's like, oh, just eccentric old people live here. I guess that's why they don't have any computers. Do You Even? Movie will be right back, welcome back to Do You Even? Movie. So now we meet Katie

31:44 who is played by Steen Bergen, and her boyfriend Rob, who was played by William Rust. They're in their tiny little apartment that's a bit cramped with wing they see, you know, they've got posters on the wall, and she's trying to find her head shot and panicking, and she's got an audition. The next forty five minutes, snow's coming outside, and her brother is staying with him as well. Yeah, and her brother, I mean he's she calls him her baby brother, but he's like in his like mid twenties. Yeah, his name's Rolling in the film, it's played by Mark Malone. And so she is yelling at Rob because she needs her head shot. And Rob, mind you, is also in a cast and he has his legs a broken leg. He's down on his luck and he's he's trying to drink coffee, and he's complaining about the coffee and telling her he forgot to print the headshot. She's panicking because she has to get this audition. So she goes to the audition and that's when we meet mister Murray, who was played by Roddy McDowell, and she walks in. He's sitting at the table and he's like, you know, yeah, welcome, and then he looks up and immediately pauses and is like, okay, you say something like say some lines. Yeah. He has her talk, He has her lift her hair up because remember, kids, Mary steam Rgin just got murdered at the beginning of the movie. But now this character is also Mary Steambrgin hair.

32:53 Their hairstyles are massively different. And I'm not saying I know how they did it, because I don't, but they did a lot to adjust the shaping of her eyes. And usually the way that's accomplished is by placing tape behind the scalp in the hair so you could pull skin in different spots. And I just noticed that steam Burgeon, the actress character that she plays, didn't have those like big luscious eyes that the character at the beginning did. Absolutely and when they later on, when they start to style her to look more like the dead woman. That's one of the things that happens is her eyes get a lot more pronounced and kind of large. She's actually as the actress character, she's actually kind of plain. Ye, she's kind of I mean, she has like super big, like over permed hair that's like super like big and hefty and all that, But otherwise she's just kind of plain Jane.

33:52 She's not really that not really that exciting to look at, you know. Well, we should also mention too that with the opening of Julie's murder that they kind of hide Steamberg in a little bit, like they shoot her from the back and you only catch glimpses of her in the rear. Oh no, they show her pretty straight on, did they? Oh yeah, okay, yeah, they show her straight on. Okay, I thought they mainly shoot her from the back. No, she's just wearing a hat and stuff, gotcha, I mean, and everything's in shadows and stuff because it's all cloak and dagger. It's all super hitchcocky. So mister Murray tells her that she's got the job. We next see that they're at lunch and He tells her that the production is needing a new lead because she had it out with the director and she left, and he tells her that they needed to go up to They take her to Upstate New York. They're going to shoot a video, a little scene with her, send it off to the director, and for her doing that, she's going to get three thousand if she gets the job, another nine thousand added on top of that. Yeah.

34:42 Basically tells her that the production is that they're trying to film as much as they can without their lead actress. Yeah, but that any day now they're going to run out of things to shoot and once the production shuts down, they lose an immense amount of money. Yeah, So they need to take her tomorrow to Upstate New York to a to a producer's mansion, YEP video an audition, send it to the director, and then hopefully immediately the director will say yes, and then she'll be sent straight up there. So the idea is that this is all going to move incredibly fast because it has to. And he even provides newspaper clippings about an indie production in trouble and an actress fleeing a set. So it all looks very legitimate, and McDowell comes off so confident like he's legit. Yeah, the absolutely does. And I think also to what sells it is that they state that, like, we want to keep the footage that we've shot with her, we just need to have somebody match that footage to go along with it. So we'll shoot the new footage of you that we can match with the footage of Julie. And I'm like, well, yeah, I would believe that too. I mean, it's a stretch hoping you would cast a woman that looks exactly like her, but hey, if you're desperate, you're desperate. So she returns to her apartment. She tells Rob, who is annoying her, just snapping pictures on his camera the whole time, and he's like, you know, if you want to go, just just go ahead and go. So Julie or Katie, who's frustrated, leaves, and Rob goes to the window with this camera. He takes a couple of pictures of Roddy mcdoll's car as well as mister Murray. Watches her drive off, and then mister Murray picks her up.

36:06 They begin to drive Upstate. They're driving on the freeway for a couple hours. They stop at a gas station. He hands the guy some money and he's like, all right, I'll be right back. He comes back and hands the guy a bag that has two goldfish in it, because if you spend ten dollars, you get free goldfish. And you know what, in upstate New York, that's not even the weirdest thing that could happen to you in the winter. Yeah, I bet not. Actually, I would homelessly guarantee that goldfish in the winter. So they arrived in at the mansion, and this mansion is incredible. We meet doctor Joseph Lewis, and the mansion's decked out with art sculptures. It's got an auto piano that plays itself, which is pretty awesome, piano player piano that is attached to something that we'll get to later. And most importantly, yes, animal skins. Animal skins because this doctor has traveled the world and he has two polar bears, and I think that that's important. Yeah, because polar bears are very dangerous to humans and they require an immense amount of skill, patience, YadA, YadA, And I think that's foreshadowing. Yeah, And also his admiring of chess too, because yeah, that's a total foreshadow So she goes to ask if she can use the phone. She goes to the phone, tells them there's no dial tone and he's like really, and he's like, oh, well, it must have been the storm that's knocked out the lines. If it's still out tomorrow, I'll have mister Murray drive you into town and you can call wherever you need. So everything's on the up and up. He also references the watch out for mice. You might step on on mice, but there are traps all over, which again foreshadowings. There's so much foreshadowing

37:37 in this film. So the next scene we see doctor Lewis is sitting down with Katie. He's showing her pictures of Julia Rose and comments that she could be her sister and tells her how Julia Julie had a nervous breakdown, she'll never be the same again, and that he's gonna give her these lines. They're gonna film the scene tomorrow and then if everything goes well, they'll drop the tape off and they can hopefully shoot with the director. The moment that he's back or comes to the mansion base and one thing that's important to put outs. The doctor and Roddy McDowell's character are at this juncture extremely confident she will get the role, which is highly encouraging to her. They're both like they're both like, no, this is great. Like, we're going to shoot the video and do everything we can to convince the director you're the replacement.

38:19 Yeah, but we think you can be. We're amazed how uncannily you look like her. And very very soon, almost immediately, they're going to cut her hair. Yes, they're going to do her makeup. Which is the other part that makes me kind of sad for Roddy McDowell's character is he has to like learn how to cut women's hair and do makeup and stuff. Why because he's completely subservient to this doctor who, by the way, it is so clear the moment he introduces himself as like a former psychiatrist. Yeah, that McDowell's one of his patients. Oh yeah, I mean come on, well, and let's also not forget that he's in he's bound to a wheelchair basis, Yes, yes, he's in a wheelchair, and he kind of references that, he makes jokes about it a lot like that he likes being pushed around, and uh, he likes machines. They take them getting used to, they take some getting So mister Murray gives Katie the scenes and she finds out that they're shooting a scene for a thriller and they're gonna start shooting this tomorrow for her audition tape. So she gets ready for bed and she puts her head shut of Julie on the mirror and she's practicing the look in the mirror. There's a knock at the door and mister Murray brings her a glass of warm milk and tells her that doctor Lewis really likes her.

39:24 He doesn't like everyone, but he likes her, and Katie replies back that she likes him and also thinks that doctor Lewis likes mister Murray as well, and mister Murray kind of lights up. Oh my god, that's one of those moments that really makes Roddy McDowell phenomenal in this roll. Is he he literally like lights up like you think. So it's like, dude, you live in a house with him, Yeah, but he so badly wants this guy to like him. Yeah, because he's deeply damn I mean. And then in the next literally the next scene is we see that doctor Lewis is downstairs like giving him some crap about a knife that's too dull, and so he has him sharpen it. He watches him sharpen it in the thing, and then he sliced the onions with it, commenting on how he says a doll blade doesn't get anything done or something along those lines. That's something along those lines. Yeah. So then the next morning, we see Katie and mister Murray are in the car. The car won't start, the storm's still coming down, the lines are still down. So then they decide that they're going to go ahead and go with the audition. Murray prepares Katie, he cuts her hair, he starts styling her and she's going over the lines and Katie ask him how did he and doctor Lewis meet. Murray tells her professionally because he was a patient bag shocker. That's when she says a patient of what, And that's when he tells her that doctor Lewis is a psychologist.

40:45 This can only go well at this point, right shockers. So next they film her audition. At first, she has a little bit of a stillness, and then they go a second time, and then both of them with her watch the playback and are very impressed. They do a little plodding after she does. It's super cute. And we next see that Murray is in the car. He's driving away from the estate. Everything seems to be fine, and he goes to another estate and drops the tape into a mailbox, into the door in a house that does not appear to be very far away, No, not very far away at all, and we see a woman in the second floor smoking a cigarette. We then go inside the house as she picks up the tape and she ashes on her own floor. Did you see that? Well, when you're rich, I mean, you do what you want. She literally ashes on her own floor, and she picks up the tape, and that's when she sees the audition, and we find out that the audition is completely her reciting lines of what happened to her in this thriller, but she's describing what happened to the woman in the opening scene.

41:40 Yes, what we find out is that it is very clear that this audition is a tape that proves to this woman Yea, that her sister was not successfully murdered. Yes, she's still alive. She has information that she desperately wants and that this is a big fu Yeah. Well and that's sealed the deal because Lewis then comes on screen and tells her, Hello, Evelyn. She's still alive as you can see, and the game continues, We'll contact you at a later date, and then the tape goes to fuzzy, goes to white noise, my apostle, fuzzy devisi static static your face ouch. So then we the next morning, we see Katie downstairs. She's calling the doctor Lewis. She finds the estate empty, but outside we see mister Murray's doing snowblowing and Lewis is watching him. Katie begins going through doctor Lewis's office and that's when she knocks down a folder and discovers pictures of a dead Julie.

42:34 She finds polaroids, polaroids of a dead body and something I really like that they did with the dead body and this they used a dummy. Oh yeah, And I know what you're thinking, like, well, doesn't that look phony? Yeah, but it's a it's a dummy that they've made to look just like just like her, just like her. It looks creepy. Yeah, it's literally lifeless. It looks like somebody just like recklessly preserved this woman. Yeah, and I find every time we look at that corpse very creepy. Oh it absolutely is. And we don't have any shortcomings of seeing that corpse multiple times through this movie shortcomings. I don't know what you want English. So she finds the polaroids she can, goes to confront doctor Lewis and she's like, you know, why did you lie to me? What is this? And that's when Lewis tells her that it was a tragedy that unfortunately Julie had a breakdown and committed suicide. At this point, so now the plot is thickening more and more, and every time she digs a little bit about this actress she's replacing, it gets more and more insane, because at first it's, oh, she got mad at the director. Then it's oh, she's had a nervous breakdown and will never be able to act again because she's like gone so far off her rocker. Yeah, and now it's like and she killed herself? Yep? Uh boy, howdy do things escalate quickly? Very quickly? The pacing of this film is really what works,

44:07 one of the many things that works for it absolutely, So she questions, you know, is there anything else they've been holding back, and Lewis tells her that it was a tragedy, but they have no further secrets. Back at the apartment, we now see that Rob tries to call out because naturally Katie hasn't called him in several days. Now, he sees the phone lines are disconnected, so he calls the operator and he's like, I've got this number, can you dial it for me? She's like, what's the number? And he starts with three one one, and that's when the operator tells him there is no three to one one area code, ah, the old fake area code. So immediately he's distraught by this. Later that night, we see mister Murray and doctor Lewis are playing chess, but doctor Lewis is doing so without looking at the board, and she even he's doing calisthenics. Yeah, she questions, he's on the other side of the room doing calisthenics, doing weightlifting and stuff. Yeah, And she asks him about like, why don't you need to look at it, and he's just like, I don't have to because I know the board. Yeah, I know the board.

44:57 I have memory toity toy. So then the player piano starts on. Katie questions how it is and Lewis tells her that it's a device that's connected to his heart and is it when his heart rate gets high, when his heart rate is elevating, Yeah, the piano plays to relax him, to relax him, so that will trigger it. Katie then sees a pop from the fireplace and she goes over with a poker it. Starts nosing around and sees that her idea is roasting melting away on top of one of the logs. Yep, her New York State driver's license audio smoochacho, So she tries to rechieve it from the fireplace. She can't, so then she just kind of plays it off and returns to her room. She empties her purse onto her bed and finds now that all her ideas are missing, along with her credit cards. They have erased her Anything with a name on it is not in her wallet anymore. Yeah, so she starts freaking out. She returns downstairs and goes to the phone again, notices there's still a dial tone, so then she starts pulling at the cord and she's pulling at the cord in the corner and doctor Lewis is kind of noticing that something's up at this point, so he motions mister Murray over, and that's when she pulls the cord up and sees that it's been cut, so there's no dial tone because the phone has literally been made use of luciuseless at this point. Yes, that is what happens when the cord is cut. In the old day, in the old day, in the olden days, back when you know, cords were a part of phones. I don't have it. I don't have another joke. I thought i'd come up with something, but I'm just a little tired today. Do you Even? Movie will be right back, welcome back

46:29 to Do You Even movie? So, mister Murray call is called over by doctor Lewis and he goes over and she tells him she's going to have a nap before dinner, and he's like, you know, I think you should. You look a little pale. So later we see her sneak back downstairs again as mister Murray cooks for Lewis. He's having him sample some saucy's making. Katie then decides to go right through the front door without her coat, and she starts making a trek in the snowstorm up this giant hill and she's pulling on branches because she can't get her footing, and she keeps climbing and suddenly she reaches the top and then mister Murray steps up and he's like, doctor Lewis has been looking for you. And he looks and he looks the absolute creepiest in the shot, like I told you well, he's just in a button up jacket with a very simple furry hat on top of his head and stay warm, and he looks so sincere when he's just like, doctor Lewis has been looking for you. Doctor Lewis is looking for you. So back inside, Katie now questions their intentions, like uh, brings up to their IDs and her credit cards are missing, and Lewis is like, oh, we haven't done anything like that. You know, you're just imagining that just left them at home. Maybe he left in a hurry. Yeah, And he also adds about the cut phone cord and he's like, there's no such phone in the kitchen, Like death cord's not cut. So Lewis still denies stating that he's pushed her too hard. Murray offers her something warm to drink, and that's when she starts to get her head hurting a little bit.

47:45 And also we see that riding McDow is just kind of zoomed in on her in this shot. Yeah, so she's clearly been drugged. And I also want to point out this is the beginning of some very intense gas lighting. Yeah, but it's almost stupid big gas lighting, yeah, because they're just like they just like mutilate her and they go like, well you roll, did you have a finger when you went to sleep? Yeah, It's like it's very very strange. So Katie begins to realize she's been drug She gets up and is questioning what's going on from her? What do they want from her? She has no money or anything, and Louis still denies that there's nothing wrong and that, you know, everything's okay, but with her actions, she's been disqualified from the job, telling her that they'll take her home in the morning, and she's like home and he's like, well, you want to go home, don't you. So then she goes up to her room and she just crashes on the bed, but not before barricading the door. So even doctor Lewis comments, He's like, well, if you don't want to be bothered, I you should use the bolt on your door.

48:37 So she bolts her door, pushes a case in front of it, and then just ends up crashing on the bed because she's drugged. Yeah. So meanwhile downstairs, Lewis tells Murray not to worry. He's gonna do a perfect job, and mister Murray's like, well, what do you mean, And he's like, well, you know you have to you have to do a perfect job. What is he talking about exactly? We then see mister Murray get up carrying a medical tray and he goes into her room, except he doesn't come in the normal way. We see him standing behind a mirror smoking as the mirror opens up in her bedroom and he walks through a secret passageway into the room. Yeah, the stand up mirror in there is actually a two way mirror, yeah, and or a one way mirror. Yeah. One, that's what I always get those confused. Yeah, it's a one way mirror and a door. Yeah. So he walks in smoking a cigarette, smoking a cigarett. Well, you know, it's the eighties, I mean everybody had by law, you had to have a lit cigarette in your hand. And he goes in there and just ever so gently and carefully cuts off her finger. So the next morning we see Katie is still sleeping, but now the bed has drips of blood on it. She finds herself in a nightgown that she wasn't dressed and when she went to bed, and she pulls out her bandage hand from the pillow, unwraps it and finds that her ring finger on her left hand has absolutely been removed. Yes, it is gone. And it's a shocking moment, very shocking moment. So she screams out, alerting them that she's woke up. She finds the barricade undisturbed, and that's when she finds some cigarette ash from Rodney mcdale's cigarette on the floor, and that's when she opens the mirror, steps inside the attic and makes her way up and she goes into finding a phone right in the corner.

50:09 And this is a big moment though, because she put two and two together of like somebody she's not believing the gas lighting. So she's like, somebody got in here. How could they get in here? Because the door was barricaded. Yeah, and then she sees the cigarette ash and is like, it's gotta be this mirror. She fuxes with it. It opens up. So now she's up in the attic and I want to mention. Then they referenced this a little bit later. But the attic is not heated. No, it's above the where the house is insulated, so it is very cold. You can see breath while they're up there. And yes, she finds an old black rotary phone that she still has a dial tone yep, so she immediately calls Rob. Rob asked where she is, but Katie can't remember the address. She doesn't know exactly what the address is. She doesn't know anything except landmark. So she says that they went upstate on the freeway for about two hours. There was a covered bridge and a goldfish at a gas station basically, And she's also still coming down from the drugs and she's in absolute shock, absolute panic as well. So Rob tells her to hang on, hang up, call the police. And meanwhile, Murray a downstairs has found her room is empty, and he also sees that the door is open for the mirror, so he makes his way into the attic Rob hangs up on her, telling her to call the police, which she does after she tells them that she's in danger. She's in that they need to hurry, and she tries to get the best address of them that she can.

51:29 She pulls back then a sheet that she is by this little sofa and finds Julie's body has been hidden away in the attic. Murray finds her yanking the phone cord out of the wall and he just looks pissed at her. Yes, and again this is that corpse that is a dummy that makes it creepier from the polaroid pictures is now up there and there's a little mouse sitting on her face. Yeah. So back at the apartment, Rob has his cast removed by Roland and we see that he that's a nice way to put it. They like, break the cap, break off him because they're leaving go to find her. They're going to find her. So back at the mansion, doctor Lewis tends to Katie's bandage again. He redresses it and he tells Katie that Julie was a former patient of his who got involved in a family feud with her sister. So as a radical therapy he suggested blackmail, which went completely as planned until Evelyn did something they didn't expect hired an assassin to kill her sister and cut off her finger, which to me, that's just you're not good at playing the game, bro clearly not. No, it is very clear that this woman will do anything to win. Yeah, that she is playing for keyboard games. So mister Murray was able to intercept her corpse before the authorities did, and once they got it, they noticed the finger removal, which is why they brought Katie here. Katie questions if they're going to kill her, and doctor Lewis tells her not at all, but Evelyn might and you know they're not wrong. Hold on so as she will pay a great deal for a second chance to kill her. They try to sedate her, but Katie hears a door buzz as she rushes to the door, intercepting the cops that she called. But doctor Lewis is quick to tell

53:00 them that she's a patient named Julie. She's having an episode and he tried to calm her down, but tells them that she went mad last night and chopped off her own finger. While all this is happening, Steenbergen is trying to, you know, give every defense that she can that she is being captive and being tortured by these guys, and at this point there is no evidence of her identity. No, everything they're saying is the only thing that there's evidence for. Yeah, they have the idea of the dead woman. Yeah, they have photographs of the dead woman, and her committal papers too, and yeah, and her committal papers they have all which but I mean, for the record, how easy would it be to fake committal papers if you're the doctor. Yeah, but these cops are also stupid, you know, actually they're not. They're kind of dumb. They're kind of dumb.

53:40 I would call them, like, on a scale of one to ten, how stupid, because movie cops can go from like obscenely dumb, how far dumb, from a scale of one to ten being like drooling on themselves, Like how five dumb? Those are? Goofy, that's different. It's not like in Halloween five, which you always love to crap on. It's not like in Halloween five the cops are like like standing there looking that way while Michael Myers is stabbing someone to death. They're just silly, silly. But there are movies where cops are so stupid, and whether it's that they don't believe something when there's obvious evidence, or they just do the thing where the thing where it's like, oh, this guy just wants attention, Like the dumbest cops ever are like the cops in thirteenth Part six. Inside Inside's even dumber. But Friday thirteenth, Part six, it's like everybody's just like, wait, Jason Voorhees is dead. Wait, now people are dying. Well, it must be the guy who says Jason for he's back killing people to get us to believe the dumbest I'm sorry, he's killing people, so will believe him. Dumbest argument I've ever heard I would give. I would give these cops it's either a six or a seven because I don't think they're that bad, because you will get to the ending where they redeem themselves. But yeah, they're they're I mean, everything is there if they looked hard enough.

55:01 Well yeah, but they're also getting a lot of information that makes sense. Yeah, she's just cut off her finger. She's so there's a fresh wound. Yeah, she's got committal papers. She is acting hysteric. Yeah, she's acting like a loon because she's been drugged again and again and again, and because you know, think about it. You know what makes somebody sound crazier than anything When they're telling you a bunch of stuff that doesn't make sense. Yeah, and she it doesn't make sense unless you were there the whole time. And on top of that, you're at a doctor's house. Yeah, he's clearly rich, which makes you think that he's telling the truth, because you know, how could a crazy guy have all this nice stuff?

55:42 You know? No, but I mean so all that stuff is pushing on the cops. But even so, I mean they check the house. Yeah, well they check the attic, which is where she says the body is. Yeah, because she's screaming with them, like please check the attic, and even doctor Lewis is like, oh, they don't need to go in the attic, And then one cop is actually like, well, you know, maybe we do. See. I think they that's a bit redeeming. Yeah. I think they are a five because they do go where she asks them to. But the moment they go up there and don't find anything, that's when they're like, all right, screaming lady, Yeah, we're just gonna take off now. Best of luck, well, because Roddy mcdoell escorts the cops. So mister Murray escorts him to the attic and that's when he's like, oh, it's not heated up here. So they're looking around, they're pulling furniture aside, and clearly the body's been moved. So the cop goes back downstairs. He's like, we didn't find anything. So then Lewis is like, why don't you take her back up to her room.

56:28 So mister Murray takes her back up to her room. He's talking to the cops for a little bit and that's when he lays her on the bed. She rolls over and mister Murray has put the corpse of Julie in Katie's bed. And then her reaction, which obviously is to scream and scream and scream because there's a corpse in her bed. Yeah, just makes her look even more insane to the cops because the cops are sitting there after she's been taking back to her bed and they just hear going so they just kind of look at each other like all right, let's uh, let's leave here and go get some coffee. Well, and also McDowell in the attic points of the cord that was linked out of the phone. He's like, yeah, she did that when she had her episode last night. So everything, yeah, everything that they're stacking up. It unfortunately does lead to believe that she's chess chess, which, by the way, don't you play chess? No makes sense? Yeah, No, I don't play. I've played chess twice in my life. I've never played it once because it requires a friend. That's very true. Do You Even movie will be right back, welcome back to do You Even movie? So the cops decide, they're like, this isn't anything. So back in her room, Katie lays on the bed, comes face to face of the body of Julie. She screams, and the cops are like, okay, we're out of here. So then we see Rob and Roland are driving upstate and they're trying to figure out the location, which good on Roland because he pinpoints the covered bridge because he has found out that

57:58 there's five covered bridges in the area. Two are way too far away, one's the other side, but there is one that is exactly I think, like they said, twenty miles away from where they are Yeah. Basically there's one right by the city, yeah, and two way out. Yeah, so this one is the most likely one because it's the nearest, so it's the first one they should try. So we see them drive past the bridge. They're still trying to figure out the location. And back at the mansion, Evelyn has now arrived and boy has she. Boy. This is number three. Mary steinburgons and up until this point she's mostly been obscured. Yeah, so now we fully see she is full blown. Also performed by Mary stem Virgin, and she is cold, cold, very cold and confident.

58:45 Yeah, and just everything. Stem Virgin's other two characters were not No, she's got looks to kill when she's Evelyn, Like, Evelyn is somebody that freaking scares me. David, You're scared of all kinds of things, would you stop. I'll put a list at the end of the show. That's fair in the show notes. Yeah, yes, my fears, my work hours. Yes, so people can know what they want to do. Evelyn arrives, she's looking over Katie with Lewis, Doctor Lewis and mister Murray, and of course she's heavily sidated at this point, which is kind of a cool shot because they have all three of them looking down at her, and they're talking slow like this and drawn out because the the sedation's kind of wearing off on her. So then that's when doctor Lewis tells her to go take mister Murray tells mister Murray to take Katie to her room. Evelyn then sits down with doctor Lewis and they're talking and he's like, you know, I've heard so much about you, and she's like, I'm sure you have.

59:36 And he offers her sherry brandy and she doesn't want anything. He's like, well, I'm gonna get myself something. Well, his back is turned. She goes into her bag and we see that she has an ice pick that she's removed from her bag. Now I love that she's specifically brought an ice pick. Yeah, I just that's such a like why not, I guess, but it was just a really interesting choice. Yeah, she's got this ice pick and she is ready to check that mate, Yes she is. So Lewis is asking her where is it, and Evelyn tells u him that it's hidden. She tells him that she does have something for him, though, and tosses him the locker key. From the beginning, so clearly the money is what they're after in this point. Yes, well, and there's bla blackmail going on. Yeah, so she requests sherry after all, and she pulls the ice pick from her bag. She starts walking up to doctor Lewis, but she's interrupted as mister Murray returns. And that's when we cut to Bob and Roland, who are at the gas station, and all of a sudden, the attendant takes their ten dollars from them. He goes back and comes back with a goldfish, and that's when they realize they're in the town. They're in the right town. And I also don't forget that she hides that ice pick. It's still unknown to the two gentlemen that she has the every intent of killing killing them. Yeah. So we next see that Roland and Russ are at the police station, and that's when we see that Kate is upstairs and she's trying to figure out how she can escape when she realizes that she just needs to talk to Evelyn. So what she does is she starts messing with the window. She takes a blanket and throws it out.

1:00:54 The opening of the window alerts mister Murray. He runs upstairs, sees the blanket blows the wind and he's like, oh my god, she got out. So now doctor Lewis and mister Murray race out, and that is when Evelyn is downstairs just watching them fumble about, and we see mister Murray going after the blanket. By this point, now Katie comes out from behind the mirror where she was hiding. She goes downstairs and Evelyn watches the two outside. Katie sneaks down the steps. Evelyn, still thinking that she's Julie, calls to her and that's when she tries to argue that she's not Julie, and Evelyn is not hearing it, like this is just some stupid mind game, ironically, and that's literally when she goes that the plots turn it. She takes Julie's Katie's hand and sees that the finger has been removed, just like she had it done, and that's when she's like, why should I trust you? And Evelyn isn't buying it. She grabs her hand with a missing finger, lunches at her with the ice pick, and that's when we have the two struggle to the ground and then we see them fall.

1:01:47 We see somebody's hand come up and hit a piano key, and then we cut back to the station where Rob and Roland are trying to tell the cops what's going on. They're like, well, you know, we just went to a mansion this morning. It kind of sounds like what you're talking about. They're showing the pictures from when he picked her up originally that he took of Rodney mc dall's character, and they're like, well, that kind of looks like her, but it's not her, there's no way. Well, and but that's the big moment that makes them really considerate though, is that they have evidence of what she looks like, what she looks like, but it's like, yeah, it doesn't quite look like her, but at the same time, you do have a missing person, guys. So by this point, doctor Lewis and Missus Murray return home. They find Evelyn waiting on the stairs, and Evelyn states she can't trust them to get the job done, so she's gonna go look upstairs for herself. Mister Murray chases after her, trying to stop her, and he says that they'll handle the search together, that he can handle her. He continuously searches the house, as does Lewis downstairs, who grabs a fire poker. So now everybody's trying to find out where Katie went. Back upstairs, Mister Murray continues searching with Evelyn until he realizes that she has the same injury on her hand. Yep, it is a ruse An actor, thank you. So Katie is as revealed.

1:02:55 Katie stabs Murray in the neck with the ice pick, which kills him instant on the bed, and it's brutal. He puts his hand up to stop it, so it stops through his hand and pins his hand to his throat. It's very brutal and so sad though his expression as he dies, the sadness in his eyes holds and it's very sad. Yeah, very very sad. Such a tragic villain, it absolutely is. Katie, still posing as Evelyn, then begins to cry. She returns downstairs, calling to doctor Lewis and telling him and obviously Katie's not in the house anymore, and she's going to leave, but suddenly the piano starts up and it catches her off guard, and you can kind of see doctor Lewis be like, hmm, well, the piano starting is more important than that. Yeah, the piano starting lets her know that he knows he knows who she is, because his heart races because he's realized he's found her. And that's one of the coolest moments for that character is because then he goes, I think we've found her.

1:03:52 And then what does he do, Dave, He lunges at her from his chair with the poker and uses the poker to climb the step and chase after her. To the second, he's been misrepresenting how weak he is. Is clearly not able to walk comfortably, but he's misrepresented that, which makes sense to make your opponent underestimate you, absolutely So now we get to the point where he finds the body of mister Murray on the bed and he continues shutting doors, shouting at her that there's no way out, and we now see that Katie is back hiding behind the mirror of the secret passageway. He fakes a look into it for a second, act like he doesn't see anything, but then he swings the poker, smashing the glass. He goes inside the secret passageway. Doctor Lewis makes his way up to the attic and searches and that's when he starts noticing some things and he sees a cupboard is closed.

1:04:41 He goes in and sees a body and he starts hitting the body. As Julie's body falls out behind him. Katie comes out from behind the sofa, starts attacking him, stabs him in the back, and that's when he falls off and falls onto the knife. Yes, well the under the pick, I think, right. But before he falls, before he falls to the knife, he steps into a bear trap, which is one thing we did leave out at once. There was a There are all kinds of things in the attic, and one of those is a bear trap, which again because the foreshadowing of the mice, and they show him catching a couple of mice out the film. And now he's stepped in the bear trap. He has been check made. He's been check made. It see, every move he's made has been anticipated and countered. And now he's just a big heap and pile a dead white guy. So he goes silent and still, but suddenly sits up, but then falls back down again. We see another figure enter the attic. As Katie realizes that it's rob he takes the poker from her calmly begins to stroke her face and she just realizes that it's him. She calmly goes into him, and then we see the cops are driving them away from the estate. The snow is falling again, and that is the Dead of Winter and a damn fine picture, A very fine picture. I didn't like. This was one that we were thinking of a couple weeks ago at the lounge for when we were gonna cover on the show. And once we once we both said it, we were just like, well, yeah, we have to Dead of Winter. It's such a fun and it's so good.

1:06:04 Yeah, and it's it's very much a dark horse. It's very much underrated. Do you know how it did in a theater? I don't off the top of my head, but I didn't do your research. Hang on, it's okay. You just had one one job. Box office was two point four million. They doesn't have the budget for it. That's not great. I don't think it did well. Unfortunately, it did get yeah, because from what I could what I could find from the critics, it was it was running right about a three point five rating for most of them. Well, we know Ciskel and Ebert hated it. Although after you were showing me some Cisco and Ebert videos before this show, Yeah, and I did. I don't know that they ever liked anything, Yeah, I mean, they were just hating on everything. If you want an entertainment dear listeners, check out their worst of for each year, especially the nineties, because my god, they didn't like a after they hated Drop Dead Fred and Don't Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead. Yeah, and I felt like they didn't get the point of either of those movies, although Dropped Fred's a little sillier than Don't Tell Them the Babysitter's Dead. This is true, but yeah, yeah, no, after after you showed me like five or six videos of them just being so hateful to so many movies. Yeah, I think the only thing more entertaining would be watching their funerals too soon, I said what I said.

1:07:18 So, what I absolutely love about this movie is, like I've said it before, but the setting, the snowy, isolated mansion and having such a small cast because you really only have, like you said, about five people technically, even though one of them plays three of them. Yeah, Well, and the snow is highly isolating because they are not in the middle of nowhere. They're in a they're in a like a rich neighborhood. Yeah, but when the snow comes down hard, those houses, which are a decent distance apart, yeah, may as well be a million miles away. Absolutely, And I mean they they play with the the the ability to get through the snow super well in that chase scene because at one point she is literally grasping at roots to try and pull her off up this hill. She doesn't have a jacket. She's running, you know, in the snow, which she commented on on an interview. I watched they shot this in Ontario, Canada, and she said this was one of the two coldest film sets that she ever been on, the other one being something that she'd done on the BBC, but with the real snow on the ground they did use.

1:08:16 Of course, they were also doing snow machines that were also blowing it at her, So not only was she running in the snow, but she also had really cold fake snow being blown at her as well well. Usually the snow machines are, if they're the high end ones, which it sounds like it was, it's literally snow. It's like the stuff you get at at a skiing lodge or a skiing resort. Yeah, so no, it sounds like it was really cold. It looked cold. And Mary Steamburgeon ain't got no fat on that on them bone, No she does not. So final thoughts on this one. I am going to give this a rent it. I think this is one you absolutely need to seek out and if you do want to buy it, you can find copies of it, but you may pay a little more than you want to. But there may or may not be a new one coming out here in the next year. Yeah, I'm gonna say I'll say rent it because because it's it's another one of those all of my ratings have a caveat, which is like, if you are a nut, if you're nuts for underrated thrillers, if you're nuts for classic concepts with great actors, great character actors, it's a by it. Oh yeah, but I'll say rent it because I think. I mean I did, yeah, and it was worth the three ninety nine four and then you bought it. I I went on eBay as soon as the film was over because at the time the Blu ray was out of print, but now it's looking like it's going to be back in print. Probably by the time, not by the time it's errors, but probably shortly after this error. Initially, Yeah, I think they. I think they slid it for February or March release. I want to say, nah, look keep an eye on for Dead of Winter. It is gonna be re released soon. But you can find it readily available right now to stream. And as you know, we

1:09:47 like to end the show with another recommendation. I am gonna go with the slasher film from nineteen eighty three Curtains. Six young actresses auditioning for a movie role at a remote mansion are targeted by a mysterious mass murderer. This one has all the isolation of the mansion. You've got a straight up slasher film. You've got a really cool scene where the killer is chasing one of the chicks on the ice as well with ice skates. I do like that scene a lot. Yeah. And also John's is weird as hell. John Vernons your director in that movie too, So playing the director not the director of Curtains. No, that's a good suggestion. I like that one. Yeah, But no, that is Dead of Winter, like I said, easily available to find right now. A great thriller, especially with the winter months that we are getting into right now. So if you have not seen it, well we just spoiled it. But you should still go watch it right now. Well, and if it's warm weather, it'll chill you, it'll chill you. Indeed. Well, my friends, it's about time we get out of here. Thank you for watching and hanging out with us listening on Do You Even Movie? If you want to find out anything at all about what we're doing here, you can go to doooeven movie dot com. We publish episodes on Tuesdays. Yes, and whether you're watching on YouTube or listening at dooevenmovie dot com or in your favorite podcasting app, we sure do appreciate it. Please subscribe wherever you're listening. We would appreciate that a whole hell of a lot. Hell yeah, we will. And also, if you're on a podcasting app, please leave us a star rating, especially on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps new people find the show and make sure to share it with your movie loving friends. If you've got a friend nerdy enough to need to want to listen to Do You Even Movie? Yes,

1:11:21 well, hell's bells and taco shells. That's all I want to say, Dave, what about what else you got for? So you can also find us on TikTok and x and Instagram at do you have a movie pod? For most of those, we are releasing some really funny TikTok videos and trying to get the word spread on it, so if you want to follow along and share them, we would greatly appreciate that. And also you can find us on Facebook as well. Yeah yeah, so it also like like comment yep, et cetera, et cetera. But now, my friends, we are out of here till next week. We'll see you next Tuesday. Ah funny funny this time. And also, you know, if you really love what we're doing, support us on Patreon. All that information you eve in movie dot com. So it's the next time. I've been Enrique Kuto, and I don't care who he is, I've been Unfortunately, Bye, guys,