Shallow Grave

[00:00:00] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten. I'm Dan and I'm Conrad, and in each episode we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette. Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free

[00:00:22] or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever. Movie Oubliette Welcome to episode 154 of Movie Oubliette, the International Dateline Crossing podcast for forgotten fantastical films with me, Conrad. Ringing in a new government in Cambridge, UK.

[00:00:54] Yes, and me, Dan, learning to fix taps and roofs here in Melbourne, Australia. Wow, we focus on forgotten fantasy sci-fi and horror films because we love apartments that are larger on the inside than the outside,

[00:01:10] Doctor Who vs Obi-Wan Kenobi fantasy battles and housemates who are handy with a hacksaw. Oh yeah, gotta love their DIY. Yes, which you're heavily involved in, Dan.

[00:01:25] Yeah, we're first time homeowners, so yeah, trying to cut costs, not have to pay all those tradies to come and fix my home. So yeah, learning about taps. Taps. I tightened a nut on that kitchen tap because it was kind of wobbling around.

[00:01:45] So I had to buy a box spinner. Didn't even know they existed. No, I still don't. And you are welcoming a new government. Is this like a game changer for the UK?

[00:01:58] Yeah, it's a pretty big swing. So we've gone from having a conservative government for 14 years, I think, through Brexit and all kinds of other turmoil and the pandemic and Boris Johnson, a Prime Minister that lasted less time than a lettuce famously online. That's right.

[00:02:20] So now we have a new one and we've sort of swung violently to the left. So now we have a Labour government, which is a left-leaning government with the largest majority since Tony Blair in the late 90s. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:37] So it's all the more appropriate that D-Reem reformed with Professor Brian Cox at Glastonbury to do a rendition of Things Can Only Get Better, which was Labour's campaigning song back in the day. Okay. Well, fingers crossed, things turn out better than what it was. We shall see. Yeah.

[00:03:00] So I guess we should move on to the mailbag. What have our listeners been saying to us? Well, we have a new patron for this episode, Al. Hello, Al. Hey, Al. Nice to have you aboard. Yes, welcome. Yeah, thanks for supporting the show.

[00:03:14] And we had a lovely letter from Braden on the black hole. It was quite a long letter, but I've picked out a couple of paragraphs I really liked. He said, shame on you Conrad for saying this film was forgotten in terms of physical media.

[00:03:30] You must not forget it was released on VHS several times, one of which included a collector's tin with lobby cards. My mother can be blamed for my obsession for this film. She saw it on the shelf at our local video store and thought, space Disney.

[00:03:46] I think we have a winner. And she was right. Wow. Okay. Big fan then. Yeah, big fan. And yes, I did forget that it was on VHS several times. I didn't have it and I think it was on laser disc too.

[00:04:01] It was just DVD where it seemed to take a while and then eventually stuttered out on Anchor Bay. Yeah, right. Yeah. He also said, I'm sure you've also read the film's novelization by Alan Dean Foster. If not once again, shame on you.

[00:04:15] Foster is a true master and kudos to him for taking this admittedly absurd premise and treating it legitimately. And yes, I have a question. Yes, I have read it. I was a huge fan of Alan Dean Foster's science fiction movie novelizations as a teenager.

[00:04:32] So he did things like Outland, Krull, The Thing, The Last Starfighter, Starman, all of the Alien movies. And we're still doing it recently. He did one for Star Wars, The Force Awakens. Wow. Yeah. I do find it a strange form of media novelizing a film. Yeah.

[00:04:53] And often the film had a novel to start with as well. So yeah. I know that makes it really weird. Yeah. Yeah, the novelization of Jurassic Park based on Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novel. Yeah. Why? But wouldn't it be a translation of the movie, right?

[00:05:12] It wouldn't be from the original novel. No, because it'll be from the screenplay. Yeah. The movie is always different from the novel. It is.

[00:05:22] And the novel sometimes reveals one of the reasons I loved reading them is they often reveal bits in the screenplay that were shot or maybe not shot and just excluded from the film.

[00:05:31] But it's a lot of deleted scenes are in the novelization because they get the script before they finish post-production. So that was how I found out what all the special edition scenes were in Aliens because they're all in the book. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Back then.

[00:05:48] Bonus material in text form. In text form. That was the way you got it. Yeah. Back in the old days. Interesting. Yeah. There are a few of them in the Black Hole novelization as well. There are scenes that were cut. Ah. Yeah. Wow. Well worth to read.

[00:06:06] But thank you, Brayden, for getting in touch. It was lovely to hear from you. We also heard from John Michael Rouse who said, Thank you Conrad and Dan. The quality of this pod found me securing a Friday night screening of the Black Hole.

[00:06:20] This was never on my radar prior. But I enjoyed a rewarding evening watching this late 70s sci-fi trip. Vincent is a new hero. I sincerely loved both the ideas that were developed on screen and the soundtrack. The depth of the laser sounds. Oh my. That's great.

[00:06:42] I'm really happy that we're putting our listeners on to movies they had never heard of or never watched before. Yeah. Exactly. That's one of our missions if we find a gem or something we think is worth visiting to help people find them. That's great. Yes.

[00:06:58] And on Eric the Viking, Wicked Person said, I watched this film prior to the podcast episode and was doing my best with it. But it completely irrevocably lost me with the foam rubber dragon with the bad wiring in the water tank scene.

[00:07:15] I've never been a fan of interminable scenes whose script presumably read, quote, all on-screen characters gesticulate wildly scream and shout unintelligibly over top of each other for 15 minutes straight. Right. So someone else and you and Michael's camp then. Yeah, obviously not a fan.

[00:07:39] Although I think we both liked that scene with the monster and thought the monster was, you know, a nice big chunky piece of practical effects work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It was lost on Wicked Person unfortunately. And finally we heard from Serge. That? Old Crash Pictures.

[00:07:56] Hello Serge. Hello Serge. I really liked Eric the Viking more than I thought I would. The opening scene made me think I was going to hate it, but as it unfolded,

[00:08:05] I got more and more invested in the quest and Eric's desire to undo the trauma that haunts him or deal with the disappointment that awaits. I thought some of the jokes were as good as anything in Monty Python.

[00:08:17] For example, an invisibility cloak that only works on one person. I was really vibed with the whole idea of meeting the gods and having them go piss off. That's really surprising. I'm always quite, yeah, taken aback by Serge's responses to films because it's often not what you expect.

[00:08:39] Yeah, and sometimes completely the opposite to us. Although I think he's more in your camp actually because I think he enjoyed the quest as much as you did. Yeah, which I'm really surprised by. I thought he would have hated the dialogue, but yeah, interesting. Apparently not.

[00:08:54] But yes, it was lovely to hear from him and all of our other correspondents. Please do keep getting in touch. Yes, please do. Okay, the super third Conrad, what are we going to be discussing? Let me just head on over to the Ubliet and find out.

[00:09:10] Oh, the hatches in the ceiling this time. I'll just climb up this ladder. Yeah. Oh, I'm in a loft, I think. Okay. There's shafts of light everywhere. Yeah, what are all those holes for? I have no idea. I'm just stepping from rafter to rafter.

[00:09:30] I don't want to fall through. Yeah. It's not great. What's that in the corner? It's a water tank. I'll just lift this up. There's something in here wrapped in plastic. Okay, must be in there. Okay, I've got it. I'm not frightened. I'm a little terrified.

[00:09:48] Wow, that was strange. It's never been in the ceiling before. No, no. Quite a spacious flat though. Yeah, very nice. So what do you have today? So inside the plastic carefully sealed is a DVD of Shallow Grave, the 1994 British black comedy crime horror film directed by none other

[00:10:12] than Danny Boyle, based on a screenplay by John Hodge and starring Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston and Ewan McGregor. Ooh, that's the first Ewan McGregor movie we've ever covered. I think it might be. Yeah, yeah. We have covered Danny Boyle before with Sunshine, but yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:34] Which is odd because he had a lot of sort of recurring actors like a troupe that followed him from one film to the next. Yeah, no. Ewan McGregor wasn't in Sunshine. He was not. No, he feels like he should have been, but he wasn't. Yeah.

[00:10:49] And Kerry Fox, of course, is a New Zealand actress. Yeah, I didn't know that until I looked up All A Cast and yeah, she's from an angel at my table, which is a Jane Campion Kiwi film and a bunch of like other Australian New Zealand films as well.

[00:11:06] So that was surprising. Yeah, born in Lower Hutt, Wellington. Where my wife is from. Really? Yes. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Did she go to school with Kerry Fox? No, I don't think so. I think Kerry Fox is a little bit older than my wife. Oh yeah, she's 57. Yeah.

[00:11:27] But yeah. So what happens in Shallow Grave? Well, in the hedonistic days of John Major's Britain in 1994, three 20-something single professionals are searching for a fourth to share their cavernous flat in central Edinburgh. Juliet the aloof doctor, Alex the arrogant journalist, and David the shy chartered accountant.

[00:11:51] They settle on the suave and mysterious Hugo who moves in but is promptly discovered dead and very, very naked. In his room, the flatmates discover a stash of drug paraphernalia and a suitcase containing a million pounds. The trio face a classic movie thriller, Quandary.

[00:12:14] Do you call the police or hide the body and keep the cash? Well, it wouldn't be a film if they did the responsible thing. So one teeth hammering, hacksawing excursion to the woods later, a growing paranoia and distrust threatens to tear the friends apart

[00:12:32] while Hugo's criminal associates close in. Will David stop crawling around his spyhole filled attic like an agrophobic spider-man? Will they get to enjoy the money that they have stolen? Why do they need it if they can afford a flat that big? Find out after the break. Yes, yes.

[00:13:08] And we're back to talk about Danny Boyle's film debut, 1994's Shallow Grave. Dan, had you seen this movie? I had seen it fairly recently. So in the last maybe two years or so. Oh, well. But it has been on my radar for a long time

[00:13:25] because I do love Danny Boyle. A lot of his movies in the 90s were quite popular movies to watch. You know, a life-thee ordinary, a rain spotting of course, the beach. And then later on in the 2000s, I mean 28 days later,

[00:13:41] Sunshine 2007 and winning the Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire 2008. So yeah, I loved his films, but I just never got around to watching Shallow Grave until kind of fairly recently. And then again for the podcast, had you watched this in the 90s?

[00:14:01] Yeah, so this was a huge hit in the UK when it was released in January 1995. So although it's a 94 movie, it was released in January 95. Oh, OK. Debut at Cannes in 94. February in the US. In the US, it placed 16th in the box office

[00:14:20] and earned $2 million on a budget of one million pounds, which is about one and a half million dollars back then. But it quickly vanished. And I think that's why I think we can cover it on the pod because although I'm very familiar with it,

[00:14:34] I saw it in the cinema when I was, gosh, first year at university. I think that dates me a bit. But so for me, I thought we can't do this on Movieubliate. Shallow Grave is huge. But of course, it was completely eclipsed by the cultural phenomenon

[00:14:52] that was train spotting and then the eight Oscar winning success of Slumdog Millionaire. And I was shocked to find that when I speak to friends in other countries like yourself, people haven't heard of it. No, I only know of it because of Danny Boyle.

[00:15:07] I'd never come across it previously. I'd never been on TV in New Zealand or Australia. Wow. Had never seen it at video stores or anything. So yeah, did not make it out of the UK or didn't become popular. It's really peculiar because as I say, in the UK,

[00:15:24] it entered at number two behind Stargate and was in the top 10 for eight weeks and yielded 5.2 million pounds or $8 million. Right. $19.95 money. Yeah. So it's huge. Yeah, it's also interesting that Kiwi Fox is a Kiwi and it didn't for some reason didn't make it big in New Zealand

[00:15:47] because anything that has a New Zealand, normally New Zealand's like, oh my God, someone in a movie that's from New Zealand. Let's make a big thing about it. Yeah, and Channel 4 who funded this movie, I think some money came from like the Scottish film fund,

[00:16:06] you know, trying to encourage local filmmaking and the rest of the budget came from Channel 4. Their money was tied to Kerry Fox being in it. Right. Because she'd been in this Jane Campion movie and at least if it's a mainstream failure,

[00:16:21] we can sell it as an art house film with Kerry Fox. Right, yeah. As the sort of lynch pin for the whole thing. Which is weird to look back on because Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston are such huge stars, particularly in science fiction

[00:16:36] of course being Dr. Who and Obi-Wan. Whereas Kerry Fox, I am ashamed to say I haven't seen anything that she's been in since. Yeah, I've only seen the New Zealand and Australian movies. So the sound of one hand clapping, Mr. Pip which is kind of a co-production

[00:16:52] with New Zealand and Australia and Papua New Guinea and The Dressmaker which is an Australian film. But yeah, I think she's most famous from in Angel at My Table because early Jane Campion film it is an indie film and it's very bleak. Right.

[00:17:08] Like I remember it being like this is depression in film form. Yeah, it's one of those movies that every film student in New Zealand probably stayed at one point. Yeah, it is a good film. But yeah, I didn't know she was a Kiwi watching this movie. I did.

[00:17:27] There are a couple of line reads where I thought, whoops you slipped there. Oh yeah, yeah. Because I mean it's supposed to be set in Edinburgh but the only Scottish person is Alex played by Ewan McGregor. Is that right? Or is David supposed to be Scottish as well?

[00:17:43] I think David is supposed to be Scottish but it's a very mild accent that Christopher Eccleston is putting on. And I think people have mistakenly said that Christopher Eccleston is Scottish and that Danny Boyle is Scottish and they're not, I think they're Northern English.

[00:17:57] But you know, close enough I suppose. But Ewan is the only legit Scott in the movie. Yeah, I mean the first thing that came to mind watching this movie was this feels like a warm up to transporting. Like it feels like almost transporting. He almost made transporting.

[00:18:16] But this was like his test front. So there's so many elements of this movie that feel like, yeah this is transporting. So I mean having Ewan McGregor as one of the leads but just certain scenes like the baby scene seems like eerily similar.

[00:18:33] There's this mechanical baby doll that walks around in this kind of drunken super scene with some of the characters. And also the prominence of like rave music as well. The start of this movie feels like the start of transporting with the sort of fast forwarded footage

[00:18:51] through the streets with like left field playing like just kind of this dance music playing. Yeah. And it doesn't have drug taking though. Apart from Hugo who dies. Yeah. But it's not really central to the plot at all. No, no, it does feel like a gear shift

[00:19:07] in British cinema though. And I think that's probably what led to train spotting. So it was away from the merchant ivory costume drama, heritage storytelling, chariots of fire, sort of historical backward looking. You know the tourist's view of what Britain is to a modern, edgy much more now.

[00:19:30] This is Edinburgh of 1994. Gritty social realism but in the generic frame of a psychological thriller. Yeah. But also really embracing the crassness of Britain. Like not making it look like a polished Hollywood movie. Like really just going, this is shit and we're proud of it.

[00:19:53] So it does remind me of like Guy Ritchie films with like lock stocked two spoken barrels and snatch and other movies like 24 hour party people, acid house, which is kind of an anthology movie. And all those kind of really, yeah, drug fueled or rave dance fueled human traffickers

[00:20:14] in other movie I thought of as well. Always teenagers or 20 year olds just having a good time and living their life and everything's shit. But it's fine. We love partying. That sort of era of movies that came out

[00:20:31] and I was in the early 2000s, I was in my 20s and those were just like perfect for my generation. We love that stuff. Yeah. It really resonated with an audience of my age when I was seeing it for the first time. It felt very much more like,

[00:20:48] okay, this is a Britain that I can recognize. This one is more influenced I think by the modern noir, neo noir stylings of say like the Coen brothers. Flood simple is definitely an influence on this movie. Yeah, I mean it does fall into that thrillers

[00:21:06] with moral dilemmas kind of genre of filmmaking that was quite prominent in the 90s. I mean, it is Danny Boyle's first feature film, well theatrical feature film. And it does feel like we're straight out of film school kind of thing. It almost felt textbook 101 filmmaking.

[00:21:27] This is how you shoot a scene and you've got to have crosscutting and you've got to have this. And it felt a little, not generic, but a little bit, I guess not even formulaic. But it did remind me of that movie

[00:21:41] and Truders that we did directed by Scott Spiegel. Like we've got interesting camera angles, you know. We've got the ATM view camera angle where we're inside the ATM looking out. We've got the in the bathtub camera angle where the blood is stained red.

[00:21:59] So you've got this really artistic shot of a guy getting his head dunked into this red liquid with the camera inside and the liquid. Yeah, I don't know. It feels like he's doing all the right things but also trying new things or interesting techniques.

[00:22:16] Yeah, I love there's making of on the Blu-ray that I have and the making of is really good because it actually is sort of a camera wandering around showing what it's like to try to make an independent film in Britain with a million pounds.

[00:22:29] And clearly they're all under a lot of stress the whole time. And there's a great quote from the producer Andrew McDonald who went on to work on Trainspotting and numerous other films with Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. And he's very young in the making of

[00:22:44] but he's on the phone and he's saying, it's not an art movie even though some of it looks suspiciously like one. Yeah, that's just an offhand comment that he makes. He's sort of trying to convince some investor or a distributor, you know.

[00:22:58] Don't worry, some of these shots are a bit arty but it is just a gripping thriller. It's fine. It's going to be accessible to a mainstream audience. And there are some really great shots in I think particularly using the color red.

[00:23:12] I mean, you've got the death of Hugo who's splayed across this satin red bed in a dark space and it looks like a Caravaggio painting. The scenes in the woodland where David is charged with chopping up the body, hacking it up

[00:23:27] and it's I don't know how but it's lit with red for some reason and it's almost like a Sam Raimi comic book scene. And yeah, as you mentioned the scenes from Inside the Sink with the red. Red is used very effectively throughout I thought.

[00:23:41] And there are also some really nice cuts as well like that baby you talked about that was very reminiscent of train spotting but there's a lovely shot where the baby is crawling across the surface and falls off and you cut to the car being dropped into a lake

[00:23:57] or some sort of abandoned quarry with water in it. So it's sort of this match cut between these two very different actions. So yeah, there are lots of sort of stylistic flourishes in there that keep it very visually interesting. Yes, yes I agree.

[00:24:20] Going back to the indie rough filmmaking and editing like it felt very frantic at times to the point where like the dialogue is lightning fast and very witty and a lot of cuts between especially when at the start when they're interviewing all these prospective flatmates

[00:24:39] and it's just like super quick dialogue quite unhinged at times as well because they're asking just crazy questions to these potential flatmates. Like some of them David asks Hugo he's got like one last question and it's like have you ever killed a man? Who are these people?

[00:25:02] Alex asked one of the other flatmates or potential flatmates he says when you sacrifice a goat and you rip the hat out with your bare hands do you then summon Hellfire? It's like what? Yeah. But it is that really dry sarcastic British humour that I really loved.

[00:25:19] It is but it also highlights something that I think would be well worth talking about which is our three central characters and crucially their likeability. Yeah. Because this is not a morality tale where you get to see three lovely perhaps slightly flawed people broken

[00:25:39] apart by a bad decision that they make. You know they make a Faustian bargain and it goes horribly wrong for them. It's not that. You're introduced to three people who frankly I find utterly repellent. In fact one of the working titles for the film was Cruel.

[00:25:57] They in that opening scene when they're interviewing Cameron who is this shy sweet little Scottish guy who's got Velcro fastening on his trainers and he's got a forbidden planet bag where he's been shopping to get sci-fi stuff. Right, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:13] And you and McGregor just mocks him for lacking in presence charisma style and charm and then they throw him out of the house barely suppressing laughter. They humiliate him and you see through the rest of the montage through the questions that you're

[00:26:28] talking about that all of this is just a game to them. They are just these cynical, bored sociopaths who entertain themselves at everybody else's expense and I think it's quite pointed that they are living at the top of this townhouse so they really are looking down on everybody.

[00:26:49] Yeah, yeah. And I don't think they have a single redeeming quality do they? No, yeah. I mean that's what I kind of liked about this movie. Like they aren't the good guys really. No. And they're not even struggling. They've got good jobs. They're not at shit jobs.

[00:27:07] You know, Alex is a journalist, Juliet's a doctor and David's a chartered accountant. Like he's a well-paid job. They live in a really nice flat. Like it's massive. Yes. There's more space than furniture in rooms and that just never happens.

[00:27:28] I know you're able to do shots of two people confronting each other where you can see them from head to toe which normally when you're filming in an indoor space is impossible but this set was purpose-built and that's where most of their money went.

[00:27:43] It was built in a big warehouse in Glasgow. Yeah, it was enormous. I mean they walked into it and just thought this is ridiculous but it enables them to give the film much more visual variety. But yeah, they are. They're very well-off people

[00:27:58] and not very nice people at all. Yeah, not very nice. I mean even Alex, so played by Ewan McGregor, he's a real asshole. A real asshole for the majority of the film. I couldn't be in a room with him for five minutes. Like they go to some fundraiser

[00:28:16] and he's mocking the kids. This is a fundraiser for kids. I hate kids. Yeah, I'd give you money to put them down. Yeah, yeah. He's awful. When they discover the dead body, Alex's first instinct is to rifle through all of his things.

[00:28:33] Nobody seems to care that somebody has died on their flash. No, yeah. I mean the first thing normal people would do would be calling the police, not touching anything. No. And also I do feel like they try to portray David, played by Christopher Eccleston,

[00:28:51] as the good guy, I guess, the sane one. But then he just descends into being like a deranged psychopath but into the movie. Yeah. And Alex has kind of been portrayed as the good guy by the end. But no one's a good person. They all backstab each other.

[00:29:09] They do, yeah. So Christopher Eccleston's David goes from being the one that you think is going to be possibly the most sympathetic. He narrates the opening, so you think he is our identification figure who will make it through to the end. Spoilers, he does not.

[00:29:25] And because of that, I think the fact that he is the one that draws the short straw and has to dismember the body, that experience fundamentally changes him and he switches from being the mild-mannered chartered accountant who takes a risk because he's worried about being boring.

[00:29:41] There's that wonderful scene where he's in his office, his place of work, and he is surveying this room full of mild-mannered, slightly balding guys in sweater vests and just horrified at his potential future and the camera pans back and all of a sudden Juliet is there

[00:30:00] and he just says, let's do it. And I don't even know if she's really there if it's just in his mind's eye, but there is this very definite visual choice that he is making, so he takes this risk to do something exciting and it fundamentally changes him

[00:30:14] and turns him into a paranoid killing machine. I mean, he goes from being quite timid to offing guys that break into their home to get the money back and throwing them down the hatch in the loft and yeah, he's terrifying at the end of it.

[00:30:30] Yeah, I mean despite the fact that these characters are unlikeable and as you say, repellent. I really found them interesting, really fascinating to watch and sort of dynamics between them and it felt like they were real flatmates.

[00:30:47] Like I was convinced that these people did live with each other. They felt so comfortable with each other and not stereotyped at characters that you would normally see in movies. Like it wasn't the nerd and the prude or anything like that. They were all, yeah, just normal people

[00:31:06] but interesting. Yeah, and I think that speaks to Danny Boyle's history in the theatre and his approach of making sure that the actors are very comfortable with each other before they start filming and go through a very rigorous rehearsal process. So for this, he got the cast

[00:31:24] and himself in a four bedroom flat for some time before they started filming and went over the script together and rehearsed all day for sort of a few weeks so that they had lived together, had done the washing up together and all that kind of thing

[00:31:40] and were comfortable around each other and had worked on their characters and had worked on the scenes and the dialogue together. And that's something that he's stuck with ever since. So on Sunshine, I learned that he did the same thing with the crew of The Icarus.

[00:31:56] He got them to live in a shared space. In that case, it was a university dormitory to fit them all in. Okay, yeah. Wow, yeah, I mean, I think it works. I don't want to ask, with the seat of the flat,

[00:32:09] each room seems to have a colour pellet. It does, yeah. Is there any significance to the colours? I didn't detect any specific pattern in how they were used. I just noticed that they were given their own visual identity so that you definitely, first of all,

[00:32:26] have a variety even though you were in interiors for the majority of the film and secondly, you could clearly tell where you were from one room to the next. I mean, that's one thing that did stand out. It felt you knew you were in the kitchen

[00:32:40] because there was a certain colour. Like, I think they were all muted colours but there was like a green room and I think blue room and the front door was red, bright red. Again, like what you said with the colour red.

[00:32:54] And so it did feel like you knew where you were in this flat at all times and also when David moves upstairs into the attic, he starts sleeping in the attic. You've got another space that you're kind of aware of. Yeah, and that one very much a visualisation

[00:33:12] of what's going on in his mind because it's this web of paranoia because it's lit by beams of light created by the holes he's drilled in the ceiling so he can wander around and keep an eye on what everybody

[00:33:24] in the flat is doing because he's terrified of his flatmates now. Yeah, I found a lot of similarities especially with his character and the voyeurism of him spying on everyone else from above felt similar to Psycho. Like, so there were moments in this movie that were quite hitched-cocky

[00:33:44] and like it was a thriller with some sort of moral dilemma and yeah, someone just kind of losing it with paranoia and it was very similar to sort of Norman Bates. Yeah, and I think the tone which is so blackly humorous

[00:33:59] is definitely something that hitchcock would have appreciated and it's very difficult to escape the legacy of hitchcock when you're in this sort of territory and there are a number of shots that I thought were very hitch cocky

[00:34:11] and so I love that scene where Juliet is on the phone and she's dialed 999 and the camera is slowly pushing in on her and then you realise that it's representing Alex who is enter's frame left holding this open suitcase of cash

[00:34:28] and she just turns around and looks down and then immediately hangs up and visually I did find it quite reminiscent of hitchcock in several places but I stuck with a lot of modern energy. Yes, yes, yes. Another film that this reminded me of is the 1944 movie

[00:34:49] directed by Fritz Lang, The Woman in the Window in which they accidentally kill a person in self-defense but then they decide to bury the body and then again paranoia and there's no money involved in this movie but it's very similar vein. Essentially innocent people covering up a crime

[00:35:12] but instead of being people who are so racked with guilt or so unaccustomed to doing anything like this that they make various mistakes and it trips them up and leads to their downfall I don't think they really make any mistakes

[00:35:27] except their sort of naivety about how easy it will be for the police to figure out what they've done and for Kugo's criminal associates to track them down although for the life of me cannot figure out how they find the car in the quarry.

[00:35:41] Yeah, I kind of liked that though I felt like this movie didn't try to explain everything it just showed it and as a viewer you just kind of accepted it I didn't really know how the two murderous guys even found the flat

[00:35:58] I don't know how they found the car in the quarry either there's no explanation but you just kind of accept it they figured it out somehow and they did so it's fine Yeah, it's not really about that it's just sort of the inevitability of it

[00:36:13] but again, it's not because the flatmates have done anything wrong or stupid or made a mistake or left a clue anywhere they executed it all perfectly based on Alex's inside knowledge of these sorts of crimes from his job so it's not really that kind of model downfall

[00:36:31] You're totally right, they don't slip up at any point even when they're being interrogated by the police they don't say anything to give themselves away and they're very smart about it I mean knowing to cut off hands so there's no fingerprints and to smash out the teeth

[00:36:49] of the victims so there's no dental records and then giving all those body parts to Juliette who's a doctor and she disposes of the body parts of the generator at the hospital that's really smart no one keeps mementos at all

[00:37:08] there's nothing linking them to any of the bodies which is quite amazing Which makes me think that the film really isn't about the crime or the crime thriller aspect of it I think it is much more about the dynamics between these three people

[00:37:26] and them not trusting each other if they had trusted each other they would have got on the way with it but they didn't, they had this especially with David with the paranoia and then at the end everyone double crossing everyone we should talk about the ending

[00:37:49] it's a nice twist ending and it's like hooray, that's nice but I don't know, spoilers here I have no idea how Alex got the money from the tank and the attic by the way, why is there a water tank in the attic? what is that?

[00:38:05] it's a standard feature of British homes or at least it was for a certain period really? it's not now, I haven't got a water tank in my house because my home was built about seven years ago but yeah, for an old property like this

[00:38:19] the easiest way to get water down into the house would be to start at the top and let it fall down gravity do this work interesting, oh okay I had no idea anyway, back to it I don't know how Alex got the money from the suitcase

[00:38:38] that was in the tank down from the attic without David knowing and then putting it into the floorboards how did that happen? I mean it was up there for quite a while before David took up residents in the loft

[00:38:53] so presumably he did have an opportunity to do it at one point and you do see him with a whole stack of his newspapers at one point deciding to start cut them into a banknote-sized newspaper clipping so that he can put the

[00:39:08] fake version of the banknotes in there so the big twist, those of you that don't know and Big Spoilers obviously there's a big fight at the end between the three of them David gets killed and you've got Alex knifed to the floorboards that Juliet has hammered in further

[00:39:27] so he can't move and so she takes the suitcase and she's got a plane ticket to Rio or something and then she finds out that the suitcase is just full of newspaper and then you cut back to Alex on the floor and he's smiling

[00:39:42] and then pans down and all the money's in the floorboards it is, yeah it is a great twist but I just don't know when he did it I'm pretty sure David was on guard with the money at all times I don't know

[00:39:56] I would have thought so too but you do clearly see hints of it so you do see the moment when he starts to cut up the paper and also he has that nightmare where he's trapped in the floorboards which is clearly a reference to what he's done

[00:40:09] Right, oh ok yeah it felt quite similar to the end of Trainsbody as well because isn't there money being stashed in a locker or something? Yeah, yeah Yeah, this is a common feature of Danny Boyle's movies It's fascinating watching the three of them implode

[00:40:27] I mean there are curious bunch of people because apart from being sort of cruel arrogant people who look down on everyone and I'm not even sure whether they like each other or not I just think that they're a good match for each other in a flat sharing situation

[00:40:42] There's a strange sexual tension between both of the men and Juliet There's a scene where in order to get you and McGregor's character Alex to hand over her mail Juliet exposes her breasts to him by walking out of the bathroom

[00:40:59] just completely brazen and just takes it off and walks back in There's a scene where she throws him to the floor when they're doing some sort of Scottish Highland dancing and she puts her foot in his mouth I think, and then he kisses her ankle

[00:41:16] So this sort of domineering humiliation thing that they've got going on It's a really weird sexual dynamic and then towards the end of the movie she sleeps with David purely I think because he's a threat and she wants to get him onside

[00:41:31] Kerry Fox interestingly in the making of she's seen on set getting made up ready to start shooting and they ask her how she's feeling and she says, I don't know I keep saying to Danny, she's underwritten and he says she's mysterious

[00:41:46] So I think probably Juliet is the biggest flaw in terms of the writing She clearly is all things to all men and manipulative doing whatever she needs to in any given circumstance It's not a very well fleshed out character arc compared to the other two

[00:42:04] I don't know, I liked her character I thought it was complex She wasn't control, she wasn't a dams or anything She wasn't a victim I felt like she knew exactly what she was doing Yeah, she does and she definitely has a plan at the end

[00:42:19] like she sleeps with David just to make sure that he thinks that she's safe territory but she's also bought a ticket but he knows that he finds out about the ticket that she's booked and she's only got one seat She hits somebody with a toaster

[00:42:33] David punches Juliet in the face which I think is the final downfall in terms of audience sympathy for that character At the point when you think that she is going to side with Alex because the threat, the person who's gone off the rails has been disposed of

[00:42:50] She uses her shoe to hammer the knife into the floor even harder to pin him into position so she can get away with the money which is echoing the earlier scene where she puts a foot in his mouth and I thought that was particularly cruel

[00:43:03] because it comes right after Alex tries to cover for her by saying that it was his idea to buy the plane tickets when it wasn't but she doesn't even show any gratitude for that She just nails him to the floor and tries to take the money and run

[00:43:17] so just, yeah, awful, awful people So the question is Is this a compelling and engaging movie when the three main characters are all awful Yeah, but they're still likeable though I found them a really charismatic in a very awful way They're funny! I found the dialogue

[00:43:38] incredibly funny, incredibly witty and quick. We've done a lot of British films this year on the podcast, I have to say And again, very quick dialogue similar to dog soldiers and even like Chabwalkie and Eric the Viking It's funny dialogue, it's dry and sarcastic

[00:44:00] and cruel, really cruel lines as well but they kind of get what's coming to them that's satisfying for me Yeah, I suppose so, that is true You know, Alex is absolutely atrocious to Cameron and then they bump him to him at the party and then he gets

[00:44:18] like beaten up by Cameron and his friends It's great! It's like, yes That's exactly what you deserve No, I suppose so I just think that the flippant glee that they have it does keep the movie bouncing along so it doesn't become so mired in its own

[00:44:35] darkly satirical and cynical tone that you just reject it It does make it fun But I couldn't sit there and have a dinner party with them Especially Alex, the guy won't shut up He's shouting the whole time Oh no, exactly! I mean, I definitely couldn't

[00:44:53] meet these people in real life but on screen, they're very compelling I see this in criticisms of, for example Saltburn, a movie that I absolutely loved that came out towards the end of last year which is a darkly satirical sort of talented

[00:45:11] Mr Ripley tale set against the British upper classes that sort of landed gentry and reviewers there were saying, you know how can anybody enjoy this because everybody on screen is utterly, utterly horrible I do find it enjoyable I think that's because the central character is quite sympathetic

[00:45:29] Right, yeah I don't know, there are movies where you have horrible people but it's fascinating like Fear and Loathing Las Vegas it's horrible characters, just drunk, adult, rude, obnoxious people but it's just you're just watching this trainwreck unfold and it's amazing No, that's true

[00:45:53] It's the same thing with this movie Now it's time for Random Trivia Trivia Time Conrad, I believe you have something fascinating to share about Denny Boyle and the money used in the film He tells a really fun story on the commentary track

[00:46:12] about the million pounds in the suitcase which is, they rented it for a day that suitcase of a million pounds Like real money It's really a suitcase of a million pounds and it cost them a thousand pounds to rent it for the day

[00:46:30] it came with its own security guard from the bank and all the shots that feature it it is really a suitcase of a million pounds What? You're seeing on the screen, yeah I don't know, is that the most cost-effective way of doing it?

[00:46:49] Couldn't they just, I don't know photocopies the money and fake the money Yeah, yeah because you don't see them rifling through the money You just see the tops of the bundles Yeah, exactly You would have thought they could have just like hired

[00:47:06] you know, just got the top layer and just faked the rest They hired a suitcase of a million pounds for a day so that they could rifle through it and he said it had a tangible effect on the cast like the fact that they were actually

[00:47:24] staring at a suitcase of a million pounds which back in 1994 was a lot of money now you barely get rent with it I mean, it's still a lot of money come on It is but I mean it might buy you a house Yeah

[00:47:39] in a cheap area in the UK maybe Right, right, right Yeah, it's funny that to hire a million pounds it cost a thousand pounds Yeah, it's quite strange Mainly because of the staff I guess it's mainly because you know

[00:47:56] you've got to pay for the guy that's going to stand over it all day Okay, okay But they really had a suitcase with a million pounds in it which was the movie's budget The movie's budget was a million pounds Yeah, yeah, yeah Wow

[00:48:09] So they were staring at their budget in the middle of the floor Oh my God Oh, that's great It's really weird isn't it? It's quite strange And that's how I'm tripping it Yes The music it was good I mean there's a lot of needle dropping

[00:48:30] which I really loved by the way There's use of a Nina Simone song My baby just cares for me which is used after they discovered Hugo's dead body and it just kind of pans around the room and then the final lands on the suitcase of money

[00:48:46] It's just great really happy going lucky music and it's quite the disturbing scene It's a nice sort of contrast Oh yeah, absolutely And it's a montage of all three of them going about their daily lives like you see them at work each one after the other That's right

[00:49:05] And you just get this sense that all they care about is the money There's this dead body in there flat and they don't care about anything apart from this suitcase of cash My baby just cares for me It's twisted It's a really great new genre

[00:49:19] Also at the end as well with a song by Andy Williams Happy Heart with the big twist and Juliet realising that there's no money in the suitcase and Alex on the floor with the blood spilling out from behind I mean it pans down to the cash

[00:49:36] under the floorboards It's just like such a great moment and such a great use of that piece of music It is, yeah A lot of people get confused and think that Alex is dead at the end of the movie But he talks to them So it cuts forward

[00:49:51] and you've got the police investigating the room and taking photos of him And like he talks to them Right? He does But nobody talks to him Right Yeah, there was some audience members A lot of people I remember at the time and even now think that he's dead

[00:50:06] but they're taking pictures of the body rather than you know medical people surrounding him and trying to sort him out Yeah, I mean it does not really make a lot of sense that they're not taking the knife out and addressing the wounds that's got in his chest

[00:50:24] It does seem strange that they're just taking photos of him while he's like bleeding out on the floor So okay, I do get that people would mistake him for being dead Yeah, the music by Simon Boswell who is the score composer

[00:50:42] So he doesn't have a huge amount of time because there are so many needle drops very much a theme in 90s There was kind of in the late 90s and early aughts I think there was a move away from the orchestral romanticism

[00:50:54] that had suddenly taken hold in the 80s towards modern music and needle dropping and making great soundtrack albums In fact, I remember you did a really good panel for Iconocon where you were talking about 90s soundtrack albums that I really enjoyed Transpawning is incredible soundtrack It's monumental

[00:51:13] So Simon Boswell doesn't have as much to do on this and obviously he did not have much money because it's 90s digital sampling since attempting sounds like acoustic instruments There's one particular cue where they're driving towards the place where they're going to bury the body

[00:51:31] all these sort of staccato sampled strings and this piano figure stomping around and it's very dramatic and broken I just think, eehh, I don't like that very much But the sort of cyclical piano figure over the moody synths that they use for most of it isn't too bad

[00:51:50] for their unspooling madness I thought that worked okay Yeah, yeah It felt a bit TV movie to me Like it didn't quite have the impact of cinematic scoring It felt small But it worked I thought it did work It was subdued scoring

[00:52:10] and it fit the mood of the movie which I didn't mind the score No, it never pulled me out of the movie except for that one moment where I thought I'm gonna turn that down But other than that it was fine But I think really

[00:52:25] when people think of the soundtrack to this movie they're going to think of Nina Simone, Andy Williams and Lefffield Yeah, I mean the title track and also the track and the credits I think they're both Lefffield It's rave music, it's party music It fits, it's the 90s

[00:52:43] You gotta have it And hadn't really been used in a mainstream film prior to that or a film that got a theatrical release So it felt very new It felt very now I think that was the sort of experience for a lot of people going to theatres

[00:52:57] and it was like, wow, this is something new Sort of like when staying alive hit theatres and people saw disco on the screen for the first time It was a big thing I mean it reflected the franticness of the first scene interviewing the people and just the dialogue

[00:53:15] and the quick cutting and stuff It was manic It is, yeah, the film has quite an energy to it It sets itself up as being something that's going to be vibrant and young But then it sort of settles into the establishing the mood and the suspense

[00:53:29] and so on So it becomes less edgy in that sense, stylistically Yeah It does remind me a little bit of Bess Numan's Romeo and Juliet because that does have the same sort of franticness It's almost too much in that movie I mean I love that movie

[00:53:46] I still love it but it's maybe half of the movie It's this like really frantic manic, editing style that I feel like it worked at the time but when you watch it now it's like, ugh, just let me just watch the scene Calm down

[00:54:04] It's just so much cutting Yeah It's very 90s though isn't it? Yeah it is Ah yes it's that special time of the podcast The Moobly Awards that nominate our favourite knife twisting parts of the film in an array of deranged flatmate spying categories Best quote

[00:54:34] Oh there are so many to choose from because the dialogue is so great in this movie So good But the one I finally plumped for is the one that I giggled at a lot was from David Christopher Eccleston's character and he says normally I don't meet people

[00:54:50] unless I already know them Yeah What? Yeah I know, make sense It doesn't make any sense at all although it does now because now of course we have parasocial relationships online where people don't meet each other in person at all Yeah But yeah What was yours?

[00:55:14] Yeah I decided to pick a not so funny quote because I'm going to keep all of those for the funny moment category but this is when Alex and David are preparing Hugo's body for sort of transportation and you don't hear it

[00:55:31] but I think it's implied that David asks Alex about like how about Hugo's family and friends in which Alex replies Family, friends drugged up wandering suicidal search of the self fuck ups don't have family David That's great I gotta say I did love one of Ewan McGregor's costumes

[00:55:57] it's during the party scene the fundraiser and he's got a green tartan suit jacket and it's so Scottish It's just so good Yeah that's your one splash of local colour isn't it that charity ball where they're all doing the Highland dancing with some description

[00:56:22] Yeah I've never seen so much tartan in one room before Oh yeah it's quite eye gouging isn't it Yeah I don't know if that sort of thing really happens but I guess it does Maybe in the 90s Maybe in the 90s Yeah my choice is Ewan McGregor again

[00:56:43] and I don't know it's just one item of clothing that I think is iconic and it's his chunky white gym socks He wears various points throughout the movie but from that very first shot where the cameras at a low angle to make the flatmates

[00:56:58] look so imposing during the interview literally looking down on their subject and he's got his legs crossed and he's wearing these big chunky white gym socks that are all sort of like wrinkled up around his ankles and I don't know it's iconic

[00:57:18] I personally think they should get fourth billing in the movie Yeah right Most 90s moment Well this film couldn't be more 90s if it tried but I try to pick on something that's particularly spoke to me and for me it was a production design of the flat

[00:57:38] and a little detail that I thought was just spot on at least from my experience at the time of being a student and it's feature properties that have got these beautiful original wood features that have just been drowned in thick coats of vibrantly coloured paint

[00:57:57] thus destroying their original value and it's always so badly done and so thick and the paints like dried and created a whole new surface and added like a centimetre of thickness to the object itself and it was oh every student flat that I was in was like

[00:58:19] Yeah, yeah It is a very 90s film I mean from the dance raving music and the soundtrack you've got like technology disposable cameras being very Every flat had a disposable camera that you would just pass around and you'd eventually develop the film

[00:58:42] and every photo was badly lich and blurry You know, it's such a waste of money buying disposable cameras and another 90s piece of technology is the tiny TV that they have which also has a VCR built into the TV that you could play VHS games Oh yeah, yes

[00:59:04] I remember those I didn't have a favourite scene in the movie but I had a lot of favourite shots and I think probably the image of the loft crisscrossed with webs of light is probably the one that I like the most because it's sort of like entrapment

[00:59:21] but without Catherine Zeta Jones in a can suit I thought it was really visually stunning but also a great way of sort of visually evoking what was going on in his mind as well Yeah, yeah, no, it was lit amazingly Got these huge sort of rays of light

[00:59:39] sort of crisscrossing in the edit, it's amazing Yeah, it was very clever they had to do all slow motion in order to get the light beams to really show up there's lots of long exposures So the light beams don't show up as well when characters are moving around

[00:59:54] because they're having to do it at normal speed Interesting, okay, wow Most cliche moment The biggest cliche I thought in this movie was the suitcase full of money Yeah, yeah, a butt load of cash in a thriller Always complicates things, doesn't it? It always does

[01:00:13] and sometimes you don't even know what it is like in a pulp fiction where they just keep opening the suitcase and this sort of gold glow comes over them and yeah, you don't know what's in there but yeah, suddenly discovering a suitcase

[01:00:27] full of money and it never ends well never ends well a suitcase of money Biggest cliche for me it's obvious, it's the jump scare pigeon in the attic Yeah, you're gonna have a jump scare pigeon Yeah, if it's not a cat or a bat

[01:00:47] it's a pigeon, so there it is Best special effect There aren't that many special effects There are things that happen off camera that you don't see but I guess the obvious one would be David's death so a knife through the throat from behind by Juliet very akin to

[01:01:13] Kevin Bacon's demise and Friday the 13th with the arrow But yeah, quite shocking like I didn't expect it No, I think that's one of the reasons why it's so effective because you know, it's a fairly obvious prosthetic gag with a flip up knife tip or whatever it is

[01:01:34] and the blood spurting out Yeah, you see it in the behind the scenes but I think it's the misdirection and the surprise that sell it because you think you're just about to cut too because David is just about to stab Alex again he's already done one shoulder

[01:01:51] so you're waiting for shoulder number two and a full like crucifixion on the floorboards but instead of that all of a sudden this blade through the throat and he falls out of shot and Juliet is behind him holding a knife and you think, yeah, it's really shocking

[01:02:06] Yeah, it's really shocking Favourite sound effect I suspect we might pick a similar sound effect here I think it's the sound of the hacksaw on the bone when David is dismembering Hugo's corpse It's a horrible, horrible night It's very squeaky almost like it just...

[01:02:34] it does a trick I have to say you don't have to see what's going on you just hear it and you fill in the blanks and it's, yeah I don't know, it's quite a shocking scene I was very disturbed by that

[01:02:50] and then it's followed by him bashing the teeth out and you don't see it again you don't see any of the details but hearing the squishy these squishy impacts with, ah, it's horrible It is, yeah and Danny Boyle said that he always made sure

[01:03:09] no matter how much they were spending on the budget that he had enough money for post-production for good sound he says sound is like 75% of your movie there's so much of a focus on the visual but it's 75% of the impact comes from the sound

[01:03:24] and a lot of people found shallow grave really quite disgusting it was considered to be a very confronting film at the time It is most funniest moment There's a very cut-to-throwaway line that I really found hilarious so this is after they've found Hugo's body

[01:03:43] and they've gone about their day and David has returned from work and he walks in and asks Alex and Juliet He's still here, referring to Hugo's body in which Alex replies, yeah he couldn't get his car started Amazing And Juliet says, I'm getting used to having him around

[01:04:10] Yeah, they're so callous They're just so just uncaring It's awful My favourite is a little throwaway detail as well it's after the scene where the thugs have broken into their flat and attacked them all and Ewan McGregor's Alex memorably gets a crowbar to the shears

[01:04:34] and it's one of the most eye-watering scenes mainly because of Ewan McGregor's performance of how much pain he's in which is heartbreaking, it's just awful Later in the movie when he goes out to the scene where the scene of the crime, where all the bodies are

[01:04:52] because he's been assigned the task as a journalist of covering this discovery in the woods of these bodies He's trying to get out of his car and when he reaches back in to get something from the passenger seat, the door closes on his shoes

[01:05:07] and I just roared with laughter because I could feel that and that's how it moves Yes, that's how it moves Hi, I'm Chris McKay, I'm the director of Renfield and you're listening to Movie Oobliette Ah yes, it's final verdict time Should Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave from 1994

[01:05:36] be set free with a suitcase of cash and jet-set around the globe and be celebrated by all or should it be bashed in the shins with a crowbar, drowned in the bathtub and then dropped unceremoniously without teeth or hands back into the dark oobliette lost forever Conrad Gosh

[01:06:00] It's like the worst fate we've ever described for the movies I know, does Shallow Grave hold up? Is it still a good movie? It's a tricky one for me, this one because I hate all of the characters and as a result I find it really difficult

[01:06:20] to remain engaged in the movie or to care about the outcome and it's odd for me because usually I love movies full of reprehensible people so Talented Mr Ripley and Saltburn where there's some evil person who's exacting terrible fates on Shallow People

[01:06:40] I love it, I love all of it but for this one I actually find it really difficult to get engaged in it but having said that it is a very important moment in British cinema It's a very well crafted movie It's a fantastic screenplay

[01:06:56] by John Hodge with some cracking dialogue on it and it's a stunning trio of performances from the three leads It's the beginning of lots of really great careers and a whole new movement in British cinema so it's kind of difficult to say no, hurl it back because

[01:07:13] I do think if you haven't seen it and I know a lot of people haven't it's a really good psychological thriller if unlike me you can get past the fact that all of the characters in it are just reprehensible scumbags but perhaps you find it interesting

[01:07:31] to watch what happens to them despite that I'm on the fence about it but I think it's too good a movie to just hurl back so I think I will have to let it go even though I personally would not own a copy or revisit it, ever

[01:07:48] Right, right I think this movie is very rewatchable Yes, reprehensible characters but I've been thrilled by them I think it's a witty dialogue I love the dialogue in this movie it does set it apart from your normal 90s thrillers like it's not like American thrillers

[01:08:10] where it's very moody and dark and mysterious this is quite funny throughout the movie even though incredibly disturbing things are happening Yeah, I would definitely recommend this movie early Ewan McGregor early Christopher Equleston and Kerry Fox Danny Pohl is one of my favourite directors

[01:08:35] so I love seeing where he started this is obviously a warm up towards Transponing which feels like it's sort of older brother so I don't know I really enjoyed this film and I would definitely recommend it I think also the flatmate situation I've lived through that

[01:09:01] not with dead bodies and buttloads of cash but I've lived through living with challenging people it kind of resonates with my 20s Right It's something I can definitely relate to Unfortunately all of my housemates when I was at university they were all fine

[01:09:26] Yeah, I mean I had some good ones and I had some other ones So... Hopefully not anybody as arrogant and callous as these to bring up other No, you're right they are fascinating to watch and I think the humour is an important part of it too

[01:09:48] I think one of the shortcuts in a movie to making people like a character is to either get them to rescue a cat or make them funny or be nice to children so if they're funny you can get a long way with the character

[01:10:03] I think if they weren't funny I definitely wouldn't have enjoyed this movie The humour has worked on me for sure Well, we better find out what our patrons think Hello Hal Can we have the patrons vote please? You'll never guess, they want to set it free

[01:10:22] Oh, okay, yes So they agreed with us Well, me Mostly you Mostly you, although I'm pleased that Jasmine is here as always fiercely waving the flag for a controversial viewpoint People generally are supposed to love the music and films that most represent the decade

[01:10:45] that they attended high school and university but I do not I hate, hate, hate this movie It has so many depressing 90s traits I cannot stand immoral main characters whom I don't give a damn for illogical and stupid decisions by characters we're told should be intelligent

[01:11:06] ugly bleak styles and visuals that make me gag and a smarmy attitude that seems to revel in the degradation of humanity When I compare it to Sam Raimi's excellent A simple plan, I can't understand how anyone would prefer to watch Shallow Grave

[01:11:25] If I wanted to get depressed that badly I would listen to the dreck music that dominated the radio waves at the time this film came out Yet I sighed when I heard this film announced for the next episode

[01:11:41] because I knew that I would again be the film's soul detractor that depresses me even more than would again sitting through this filthy film I haven't seen a simple plan or Blood Simple for that matter but I should watch those two movies You definitely should, yes

[01:12:03] Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan is a really good example of a mature filmmaker doing a solid character piece It's a really good movie Eddie Coulter on the other hand said Unearth the Grave and Let it Loose I discovered this thanks to the 2012 Criterion release

[01:12:22] I like Transpawning but I enjoyed Shallow Grave more with its twists and turns If you like Hitchcock, you need to give this film a try Isaac says God this movie is so 90s cynical, sarcastic and smug It laughs at your morality with a green grunge aesthetic

[01:12:43] and a driving electronic sound Like watching a slow motion car crash it made me feel dirty for deriving any sense of joy or beauty from it But if you're paying attention those things are somehow present in all the horrific carnage It's really solid 100% should be released

[01:13:04] Isaac also completely repulsed but also says it should be released There you go Some people really love it some people just hate it and some people feel it's awful but also recognise the greatness of the filmmaking A real spectrum, but 80% said let it go Let it go

[01:13:27] Let's let it go Off you go Shallow Grave Alright Conrad, what's up next on the next episode? What's the film? For our next episode we'll be doing a Patrons Choice episode These ones are always unexpected They are, so our patrons have been

[01:13:49] nominating things for the past couple of weeks We've got some great ones on there A house-oo some dark Disney on there We've got Black Cauldron Something wicked this way comes Yeah, some real gems Okay, let's do the spin Here we go Spinning spinning What's it gonna be?

[01:14:14] It's equilibrium Interesting Christian Bale? That's right, the 2002 American Science Fiction film directed by Kurt Wimmer starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson and Tay Diggs Ah, right, yeah I've been watching this in my 20s It was quite popular among my friends Yeah, I have never seen it

[01:14:44] Definitely a response to the Matrix like it was very stylised fight scenes Yeah, the Matrix celebrating its 35th anniversary, so that's 99 this is 2002, so yeah I think there's an influence there Yeah, yeah and dystopian future type seating as well Of course I wonder if there's age as well

[01:15:11] I haven't seen it since my 20s So released in December of 2002 with a budget of 20 million and a box office of 5 Right, so who chose this one? This one was chosen by Filma Fissionado Oh, okay Congratulations on the choice Yeah, and we haven't done one

[01:15:31] from Filma Fissionado before so congrats Yes, yes Alright, listeners if you haven't already you can follow us on all platforms on social media as movieUblea.com Yes, and if you'd like to support the show head on over to Patreon where for a dollar

[01:15:49] you can nominate films for future episodes like Filma Fissionado did this week and for $5 you get access to our exclusive Minnesotans where this month we watched the original Godzilla movie We did Talked about that Yes, yes It's fun And for $10 you can be an executive producer

[01:16:10] like Chazilla, Eddie Coulter Isaac Sutton, Dr. Doggie Serge, Iconographer and Ryan A. Potter Yes, yes We have merchandise on Redbubble and a YouTube channel as well which we should probably update at some point And if you haven't already please give us a rating or review

[01:16:32] on whatever platform you are listening to us on it does help us out just a little bit It does, yeah Gets our name out there Yes Well until next time Conrad, that's it for this episode Goodbye Bye for now Thank you