Monday, October 31, 2022

RW502 - Dark Skies Rewatch - History is a Lie (introduction)

 


In this weeks episode of The Rewatch Podcast, Cory and Tom introduce you to the new rewatch plans and discuss the main cast of Dark Skies.

History As We Know It:

The creator of the show is Bryce Zabel, who is a well known UFO researcher and fanatic. He edits Trail of the Saucers, a fast-rising Medium journalism publication on today's UAP and UFO issue, he is the co-author of A.D. After Disclosure, a non-fiction book about the coming post-Disclosure world, and he also co-host on the Need to Know UAP/UFO podcast with award winning journalist Ross Coulthart. His idea for Dark Skies was that they didn’t want to contradict anything that UFO researchers believe, or history buffs. The key was to integrate the two together. 


Other series that he has created include MANTIS, The Crow: Stairway To Heaven, and E.N.G (Electronic News Gathering), a long running drama in the late 80’s on CTV. He also worked with Stan Lee on a pilot called The Missing Link. He was a writer and producer on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, specifically writing the episodes “Strange Visitor (From Another Planet)” and “The Green Green Glow of Home”, and doing the teleplay for “All Shook Up” where also cameoed as a Priest. He wrote several feature film screenplays as well, including Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Official Denial.

Brent Friedman got his start writing B-grade scripts for films such as Hollywood Hot Tubs 2: Educating Crystal, American Cyborg: Steel Warrior, and Prehysteria! 3. He collaborated with Zabel on Dark Skies, The Crow: Stairway To Heaven, and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. He wrote and produced episodes of the early 2000’s Twilight Zone, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Wars: Rebels, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He also wrote for the video games Command & Conquer 3: Triberium Wars, Halo 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Vanguard, and is also the credited director of BattleKasters. He’s currently developing a game called Unioverse.

The Dark Skies show bible is on lists as one of the best show bibles to read as it is a well done document. It is presented as a top secret government document and details all the specifics, as well as the plans on how to guide future seasons of the show with the gameplay being 5 seasons in all. According to Zabel and Friedman's original plan, the pilot and first season (given the overall title "Official Denial") would cover the period from 1961 to 1969, the second season ("Progenitor") 1970 to 1976, the third season ("Cloak of Fear") 1977 to 1986, the fourth season ("New World Order") would cover 1987 to 1999, and the fifth and final season ("Stroke of Midnight") would break from the decade-spanning format to encompass the apocalyptic final conflict against the invaders, taking place from 2000 to 2001.


Dark Skies was pitched in a single day to ABC, CBS and NBC. Fox was avoided due to the concept's overt similarities to their hit series The X-Files. Each network received a classified "briefing book" written by Zabel and Friedman, wrapped in plain brown paper, which warned that by opening the package they accepted the high level clearance it implied and the full penalties set by the US government for unauthorized disclosure. By the end of the day, two offers had been made and the series went to NBC.




Eric Close plays John Loengard. Besides a few bit parts, his first big role was in the soap opera, Santa Barbara playing Sawyer Walker for 98 episodes. He then played one of the main cast members,Telamon, in the second Hercules movie (which would eventually lead to the TV series starring Kevin Sorbo). He followed this with a lead cast member role in Jennie Garth’s Without Consent (Laura has a car crash while driving drunk and her parents ask a psychologist to refer them to a center specializing in the recovery of troubled youths). He then went on to star in the mini series McKenna (Jack McKenna is the rugged owner of McKenna Wilderness Outfitters, a tour guide agency in Bend, Oregon, who gets help from his failing business by the return of his estranged son Brick who arrives after the death of Jack's eldest son to help his father get back on track). Next up was The Stranger Beside Me starring Tiffani Amber Thiessen (A young newlywed suspects that her new husband may be the praise in the neighborhood).


After Dark Skies he starred in the series Now and Again (Guy gets killed but is given the chance to have his brain implanted in a bio genetically engineered body, to be put to use by the government and forbidden to contact his wife and daughter). He followed that with another series called The Magnificent Seven (Seven men come to the aid of an Indian village under attack from ex-confederate soldiers, later offering their services to those in need in the area). Another short series he led was Chaos (Rogue CIA agents battle the bureaucracy). He was in four episodes of Steven Spielberg’s ten episode series Taken (alien abduction story) and was in several movies as a lead such as Liberty, Maine, Follow The Stars Home, The Sky Is Falling, Alvarez and Cruz, and Unanswered Prayers. He went on to another long running series, Without A Trace, for 160 episodes (Series about the special FBI Missing Persons Squad that finds missing people by applying advanced psychological profiling to reveal the victims lives). He also had a recurring role in to some episodes of Nashville, a supporting cast member role in American Sniper, and besides participating as a lead in various Hallmark Christmas movies, he most recently starred in The Mulligan (Paul McAllister seems to have it all, but his life starts to fall apart and ends up being guided by the wisdom and advice of an old golf pro, and learns about playing a good game both on and off the course).

Megan Ward was Kim Sayers. Her first role was as a lead in the movie Crash and Burn (futuristic movie after an economic collapse and robots and computers are banned). Trancers II (and later Tracers III) was her next lead role (6 years after a time cop returns home from battling future alien zombies, his settled life is turned upside down when a mad scientists creates more), followed by the drama Goodbye, Paradise (a sixty year-old Chinatown bar in Honolulu closes its doors in the wake of urban renewal). She would go on to star in Brendan Frasier’s Encino Man (frozen caveman gets thawed out by high school teens), and Amityville 1992:It’s About Time. Besides a large handful of other leading movie roles, she was in Joe’s Apartment as a lead (starring Quinn Mallory himself, Jerry O’Connell in a movie about a man living with singing and dancing cockroaches).


Most of her TV appearances before Dark Skies were one offs except for the series Class of 96 (Seven students make their way through their freshman year at Havenhurst College), and Winnetka Road (Short lived (five weeks) soap opera about life in Oak Bluff, Illinois, a yuppie suburb of Chicago. Sex was the main subject of the series). 


After Dark Skies, she continued her huge run of movie roles with Wes Craven’s Don’t Look Down (A woman tries to get over the death of her sister by joining an Acrophobiac group. Then the group starts to get killed one by one), Tick Tock (A wealthy man becomes suspicious of his younger wife and hires a private detective in time to thwart her plans to have him killed), The Incited (with Lou Diamond Phillips (A young married couple who are pregnant with their first child moves into their turn-of-the-century home where they discover that a great evil has resided there for nearly a century, unleashed by a previous occupant), and Murder Without Conviction (Recently released from her vows as a nun, Christine Bennett is discovering "life on the outside” and becomes embroiled in the investigation of the murder mystery surrounding James and Edward Talley, twin savant brothers accused of killing their mother on Good Friday, 1974). Since 2007 up to 2020 she has been in 366 episodes of General Hospital

Captain Frank Bach was played by veteran character actor JT Walsh, who never resented being called a character actor. He’s best known for his roles in Good Morning Vietnam, A Few Good Men, and Slingblade but has a very long list of credits including appearances in the X-Files, Pleasantville, Backdraft, and Hannah and Her Sisters. He was one of the main cast members in the movie Needful Things (A mysterious new shop opens in a small town which always seems to stock the deepest desires of each shopper, with a price far heavier than expected), Hoffa (starring alongside Jack Nicholson again), True Identity (In order to escape from the mob, an African-American man must disguise himself as a white man), Crazy People (A bitter ad executive who has reached his breaking point, finds himself in a mental institution where his career actually begins to thrive with the help of the hospital's patients), and Alicia Silverstone’s The Babysitter. We’ve seen him before in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the episode Operation: Blackout as Colonel Charles Fane (weapons test kills a man who was Lois’s college roommate's boyfriend but he is actually alive. That episode also had Melora Hardin, Jan of The Office fame).

Single-named Lackos played MIB #6. Despite being a main character here, he has just a few other roles, only one of them as a lead, a movie called Palmdale (A drifter with a violent past comes to the city to kill somebody for money but on his way to do it, a young woman crashes into his life, giving him the choice - to continue on this path of self destruction or leave it all behind and start again).


Connor O’Farrell played Commander Phil Albano. He most recently played in the 2019 8 episode series The Red Line (Follows three Chicago families as they journey toward hope and healing after an unarmed African American doctor is shot by a white cop). Most of his career is as a “that guy” showing up for an episode or two in various series and movies, including a Star Trek: Enterprise, 24, Boston Legal, Without A Trace (with Eric Close), Nip Tuck, Surface, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, ER, Ally McBeal, and many many others. He previously played Professor Jeff Carlson in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Little Green Men, which also involved the Roswell UFO Incident.

Tim Kelleher played Jim Steele. He’s another “that guy” with 72 roles under his belt, some in the last few years even. Some of his standout roles of note are the voice of Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, episode 13 of season 1 of SeaQuest where he played Bowman (While operating on a skeleton crew the Seaquest is taken over by terrorists who want to use the computer access to steal codes to polluters around the world), and music producer David Sodenberg in the Meatloaf biopic To Hell and Back. 

Charley Lang, another that guy with 46 credits to his name, played Dr. Halligan. We've seen Charlie in The Flash 90 series in episode 17, Twin Streaks (flash is cloned as a blue version). He did have a smaller part in the alien abduction movie Fire In The Sky. He would go on to play a MIB agent himself in the series Seven Days (time travel show, fix what went wrong only within the last seven days). He also played Starke (a Kromag) in the season 4 premier episode of Sliders. 

The Narrator is Gregory Harrison playing an older John Loengard. He’s got over 100 credits to his name including various soap operas, Rizzoli and Isles, One Tree Hill, and the Logan’s Run TV Series. 

Resources:

For more information on Dark Skies and the shows creators, please check out these great resources of information. 

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Thursday, October 27, 2022

RW501 - Texas Chainsaw Rewatch - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

 

In this episode of The Texas Chainsaw Rewatch, Cory and Eoghan don't really have to repeat themselves with this remake as they discuss "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Trailer:

Our Favourite Trivia:

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released in North America on October 17, 2003, in 3,016 theaters. It grossed $10,620,000 on its opening day and concluded its opening weekend with $29.1 million, debuting at number 1 at the U.S. box office. Within 17 days of its release, the film had grossed over $66 million in the US. The film opened in various other countries in the following months (including a Halloween release in the United Kingdom) and grossed $26.5 million, while the North American gross stands at $80.6 million, bringing the worldwide gross to $107 million. The film's budget was $9.5 million, making it the highest-grossing film of the franchise even when adjusted for inflation. Adjusted for inflation as of 2018 the film would have grossed over $162 million.


Nispel favored shooting the film in California, but Bay suggested Texas, where he had previously shot three times. Principal photography began in Austin in July 2002 and lasted 40 days.


Daniel Pearl, cinematographer of the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), reprised the position for this movie. He got there by convincing Marcus Nispel, his frequent collaborator on many music videos, to direct. Nispel was offered the movie, but wanted to make his American debut an original movie, telling Pearl that remaking Texas Chainsaw Massacre was "blasphemy" and a sure failure. Pearl then told Nispel that that was the reason he should accept the offer, and hire him as cinematographer, so that Pearl could "make the same movie twice, once at the beginning of my career and once at the end of my career". Nispel then agreed.

The original Leatherface actor, Brett Wagner, lied about his physical capabilities, and was hospitalized early in the shoot suffering heat stroke. He is seen wielding the sledge hammer in Kemper’s kill scene.


Andrew Bynarski worked with Michael Bay on Pearl Harbor and really wanted the role of Leatherface. Bryniarski had previously approached Bay at a Christmas party and personally asked him for the role. To prepare, Bryniarski ate a diet of brisket and white bread in order to get his weight to nearly 300 pounds. He also did all his own stunts, and was forced to wear a "fat suit" in very hot and humid weather, which increased his near-300 lbs to 420 lbs.


Gunnar Hansen was asked to play the role of the trucker at the end of the film.


In 2002, Marilyn Manson was announced as the composer for this project. He later had to bow out due to conflicting schedules.


A deleted subplot detailed Erin being pregnant, which was why, when they went to Mexico, she didn't "drink the water" or "smoke the weed," as they talked about in the final cut.


To avoid an NC-17 rating in the USA, the more graphic shots of Morgan's death were cut. The original version of the scene featured the shot of the chainsaw slicing into his crotch and then having intestines and blood falling out of him. The cut version cuts away when the chainsaw is about to cut him and totally cuts out the intestines falling from his body. The hitchhiker death scene was also cut severely. The original scene has her ear flying off of her head and blood and brain matter being more dark in color and more in amount flying out of her head. Jedidiah was originally supposed to be killed by Leatherface for helping Erin and Morgan escape, but the scene was scrapped for being "too intense".


Kemper's death was originally slightly more graphic: after Leatherface hits him in the back of the head with the sledgehammer, he drops to the floor gasping and convulsing with blood pouring out of his head. Pepper's death was also more graphic, originally Leatherface swipes the chainsaw down into her cutting into her stomach. In the final cut of the film the impact is off-screen.

What's Up Next?

It's reboot time again, definitely my fav time of year! Next week, we're heading to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 2003

Contact Us:

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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

RW500 - Halloween Rewatch - Halloween Ends

 


In this episode of the Halloween Rewatch, Cory and Nathan ruminate on their reaction to "Halloween Ends."

Trailer:

Our Favourite Trivia:

It was originally planned to film Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends back to back, but did not occur due to the "intense schedule". In March 2020, Blum confirmed filming would take place during the summer. Filming was quietly delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Production was expected to take place in 2021 in Wilmington, North Carolina. However, filming officially began on January 19, 2022, in Savannah, Georgia under the working title Cave Dweller.


Halloween Ends premiered at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles on October 11, 2022, and was released on October 14, 2022. In addition, the film will also be streamed on paid tiers of Peacock for 60 days.


In the United States and Canada, Halloween Ends is projected to gross $50–60 million from 3,800 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $5.4 million from Thursday night previews, up 11% from Kills' $4.85 million the year prior.


Director David Gordon Green confirmed in an interview for Halloween Kills that for Halloween Ends, there will be a four year time gap between the two films.


On July 26, 2019, it was confirmed that Nick Castle will return for both sequels for some scenes as Michael Myers with James Jude Courtney again playing Myers for the majority of the films.


Jamie Lee Curtis said this will be the last time she plays Laurie Strode, but she also said the same thing after Halloween II (1981), and again before Halloween: Resurrection (2002), when she had her character killed off.


When asked whether this film will be the final film in the series, Jason Blum confirmed there will be more films, because Malek Akkad has a clause prohibiting Michael Myers to be killed. However, any future films will likely follow a separate continuity due to Michael's unambiguous death in this film.


BODY COUNT: 16 (Dead couple in jeep flashback, hanging victim flashback, Jeremy Allen, homeless man, Doug, Dr. Mathis, Deb, Billy, Stacy, Ron, Terry, Margo, Mrs. Cunningham, Corey Cunningham, Michael Myers).

What's Up Next?

Cory and Eoghan will be continuing the Texas Chainsaw Rewatch, but we haven't seen the last of Nathan. As sure as Michael Myers returning, Nathan will join us again as more instalments of previous rewatches come out

Contact Us:

Send us an email! TheRewatchPodcast@gmail.com

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Head over to our TeePublic store today and buy some merch! Every item sold sees a small return to us to cover our hosting costs and we appreciate every purchase.

Monday, October 17, 2022

RW499 - Texas Chainsaw Rewatch - Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation


In this episode of The Texas Chainsaw Rewatch, Cory and Eoghan need to find out who has been secretly bugging their calls as they discuss "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation."

Trailer:

Our Favourite Trivia:

Intended by writer /producer / director Kim Henkel to be the "real" sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). The characters of Vilmer and W.E. were intended to be the Hitchhiker and Cook. Jim Siedow, who played Drayton Sawyer, was offered the role of the grandfather, but he turned it down.


The film has been noted for its implementation of a secret society subplot driving Leatherface's family to terrorize civilians in order to provoke them to a level of transcendence; in a retrospective interview, Kim Henkel confirmed that the basis of the subplot was influenced by theories surrounding the Illuminati. Other references to the Illuminati are made in the film's dialogue, specifically in the scene in which Darla tells Jenny about the thousands-years-old secret society in control of the U.S. government, and makes reference to the Kennedy assassination.


The hospital scene at the end featured three actors from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). John Dugan, who played Grandfather is the cop, Paul A. Partain, who played Franklin Hardesty, is the orderly, and Marilyn Burns, who played Sally Hardesty, is the patient on the gurney (credited as "Anonymous").


After a protracted post-production, the film had its world premiere, under the title The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, at the South by Southwest Film and Media Conference on March 12, 1995, and received "glowing reviews" at the time. The film was purchased by Columbia Pictures for $1.3 million. The studio agreed to distribute the film theatrically (along with its home-video release), and agreed to spend no less than $500,000 on prints and advertising. The film was released theatrically on September 22, 1995, and was screened in 27 theaters in the United States, grossing $44,272. Later in 1995, the film was released theatrically and on LaserDisc in Japan, and then was shelved for the following two years, when in 1997, Columbia re-edited, re-titled, and re-released it as Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.


Matthew McConaughey (Vilmer) and Renée Zellweger (Jenny) came to fame two years later, with A Time to Kill (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996), respectively. Both shared the same talent agency. When Sony, which owned this movie's distribution rights, was preparing to re-release it highlighting the pair, their agent threatened a lawsuit against the studio, claiming their clients were being unfairly exploited. The agency also said that if Sony released this movie on the backs of their names, neither would appear in any future Sony releases.


The film was released theatrically in a limited release in approximately twenty U.S. cities on August 29, 1997 under a co-distribution deal between Columbia Pictures and Cinépix Film Properties. The theatrical release featured the re-cut version of the film, which excised a total of seven minutes from Henkel's original cut. The film earned $53,111 on 23 screens between August 29 and September 1, 1997. It would go on to gross a total of $185,898 domestically (including both the 1995 and 1997 versions), making it the poorest-performing Texas Chainsaw Massacre film.

What's Up Next?

It's reboot time again, definitely my fav time of year! Next week, we're heading to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 2003

Contact Us:

Send us an email! TheRewatchPodcast@gmail.com

Follow the show on FacebookTwitter or Instagram 

Visit the WEBSITE

Support the Show:

Head over to our TeePublic and/or Redbubble stores today and buy some merch! Every item sold sees a small return to us, and covers our hosting costs. We appreciate every purchase. 

Resources:

Thursday, October 13, 2022

RW498 - Texas Chainsaw Rewatch - Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

 


In this episode of The Texas Chainsaw Rewatch, Cory and Eoghan really need to figure out what they saw (pun intended) as they discuss "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III."

Trailer:

Our Favourite Trivia:

New Line picked up the rights to the series, hoping that if successful, Leatherface would replace their soon to be completed "A Nightmare on Elm Street" series. The box-office disappointment of this film caused New Line to let their option on the material expire.


The trailer was done before they even had a director and before the production started.


Kane Hodder - whose best-known role is that of another horror icon, Jason Voorhees - was the stunt coordinator for this movie. He was also R.A. Mihailoff's stunt double, and played Leatherface in the trailer. Hodder also donned Freddy Krueger's iconic bladed glove for a scene in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993).


Director Jeff Burr was fired at the beginning of production. When nobody else accepted the job, he was rehired.


The original script was much more brutal with explicit gore sequences. The producers objected to many of the scenes (one of which had a nude man being split down the middle while hung upside down) and demanded extensive changes to the script to reduce gore and violence. Further cuts had to be made to avoid an X-rating after the film was finished. It was submitted 11 times to the MPAA. On each submission, more and more footage was cut out, some of which was lost forever. This was the final movie to be given an "X" certificate by the MPAA before the rating was replaced with "NC-17".


Director Jeff Burr wanted to shoot the film in Texas using 16 mm film just like the original, but New Line rejected the idea because they had already built the house in California. The ranch where most of the filming was done is so close to the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park that Burr swears you can hear screams from the rollercoaster during some takes.


William Butler and Jennifer Banko were both in Friday The 13th 7: The New Blood.


Caroline Williams reprises her role as Stretch from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) in a cameo as a news reporter. Director Jeff Burr said he imagined Stretch becoming a reporter following the trauma she experienced in the second movie in an attempt to hunt down Leatherface.


Originally, Benny and Leatherface both succumbed to their injuries at the end of the movie, but New Line decided to shoot a new ending with editor Michael N. Knue in which both characters survive. Jeff Burr was very surprised when he saw the movie in the cinema for the first time; the new ending was shot without his knowledge.

What's Up Next?

Can we get some fun up in here? Next time we're discussing Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

Contact Us:

Send us an email! TheRewatchPodcast@gmail.com

Follow the show on FacebookTwitter or Instagram 

Visit the WEBSITE

Support the Show:

Head over to our TeePublic and/or Redbubble stores today and buy some merch! Every item sold sees a small return to us, and covers our hosting costs. We appreciate every purchase. 

Resources: