Midweek Mention... The Stepford Wives

The Stepford Wives

Pete: I was jealous listening to the little twosomes and everything that were going on in those midweeks the other week. Like, you and Dan make a good pair.

Cris: Now

Reegs: They can't hear any of that because you're

Pete: No one can hear what you're saying, Dan.

Reegs: Yeah, yeah. You're either in or out. Why

Pete: don't you strap on your ear goggles and join in?

Reegs: in or out.

Dan: I have you begun the recording session?

Reegs: It's seven minutes in.

Pete: Oh, seven minutes

Dan: right. Okay. This is

Pete: level

Dan: bonus material. Yeah, Pete as you were saying before, I don't know how much I got picked up.

Reegs: None of it.

Dan: and I have done this recording session. Little twosome podcast before very intimate. It's we hold each other's hands. We get close. And we really look into each other's eyes and now you two can do that To describe and talk us through stepford wives because i've never seen this

Reegs: No.

Dan: Although it's one of those thing those films that I don't know, it's been referenced so much.

Reegs: Yeah, well it's come to mean something in its own right? I mean, not just Stepford wife. You can now like say anything Stepford, something starts to mean, it's like a symbol of repression or something like

Dan: Or a step into a car that is a Ford.

Reegs: Yeah,

Cris: Well, I did the Google thing, and it said, like, what is Stepford Syndrome?

So it's kind of that situation, so. Yeah,

Reegs: so big in the seventies. It was almost like a meme

Cris: meme, and

Reegs: referenced and used and all sorts

Dan: So they didn't really have memes in the 70s, did they?

Reegs: The

idea was around though maybe, and I think the phrase had been coined.

Dan: coined. Well, we'll see. Just going to make this as awkward as I can.

I didn't see it. You guys did. How does it start?

Reegs: It starts in an

Pete: in New York City

Reegs: Yeah,

with a woman,

a photographer, Joanna Eberhardt, the gorgeous Catherine

Pete: and

Reegs: she's sort of packing up and, you know, like it's obvious they're abandoning their or leaving their New York apartment and packing up with the kids and moving off suburbia to Stepford County, Fairfax County, in fact, or Fairfield County was it? It's Stepford, Connecticut. Anyway, that's where they head off

Pete: it is. Yeah, with the two daughters and Walter, the husband who is punching way above his weight there.

Dan: actually I did watch the first sort of 10 minutes of this which is why I feel I can contribute a little bit.

And I know who you're talking about. Cause I pointed it out to the missus as well. And I goes,

Pete: much like our

Dan: Do you, do you see, you know, because he looks a bit older and as you say, he's, he's punching cause she's

Reegs: and as you say, he's, he's punching because

Pete: it straight away intrigues her. You can tell that she's not just a. Like a casual photographer who likes to just take snaps of things like she's looking for very interesting, very specific, unique things, the sorts of things you wouldn't expect to see just on when you're going about your daily business, like a man carrying a mannequin across a road.

Reegs: She's a serious artist, even though I did actually think her photos were a bit shit, but

Dan: And, and yeah, the part I kind of stopped watching at was just as the husband was giving a cake, a pie. By a neighbor.

Reegs: All right. Yeah. Yes.

Dan: That's fairly early on,

Reegs: It's yeah. I mean, there is, I, there is a kind of strange interaction early on with the next door neighbor.

It's more vibes than anything else. She's like perfectly coiffured and all that stuff. And she comes across with like a casserole dish and oh, no need to bother your husband. You know, don't, it's just

Dan: very,

just perfect. Like somebody who's you think. Not a hair outta place. It's a perfect, everything's done. And you think,

Pete: Well, the, the, the, the, like the, you know, Stepford itself is very sort of like idyllic and, you know, far removed from the hustle and bustle of,

Dan: do you like neighbors like that, that come and greet you on the first day?

Pete: Busy

Dan: Yeah. No.

Pete: No,

Although I'm, I'm, I've now befriended my neighbour because he's got some amazing, he's got an amazing socket set. And I like find things that are a little bit loose that I could probably fix myself, but just to borrow his socket set, it's incredible.

Dan: it is great having great neighbors and particularly those who got socket sets and things.

Yeah. But

Reegs: bet your neighbours think you're

Dan: you don't want busy neighbors, like people that turn up at your door on the first day you are there. I'm getting busy vibes. I'm like.

Reegs: But anyway, no, but they do talk about how safe it is and you don't have to lock the doors and stuff, even though, you know, it's clear that Joanna is is slightly more reticent than Walter about the move.

And even as them Afterwards after that like strange interaction with Carol, Carol Van Zandt, the neighbour, I think Walter takes the dog out for a walk, doesn't he, and he sees Ted and he says something like hope she cooks as good as she looks to it, it's like a totally normal

Pete: Yeah. Yeah

Reegs: To him, and anyway.

Dan: Well, he said that across to, yeah, he's just

Reegs: the neighbor. Yeah,

it out.

It's his 1975,

Pete: Yeah,

Dan: he's just moved to this town and that's, he's not had like a long relationship with this guy then, is he?

Reegs: No, he still, I think it's the first time he's met him.

Pete: Yeah, this is the other guy saying it about Walter's wife.

Reegs: Yeah, so

Dan: So he's just making it

Pete: like a casual, you know

Reegs: observation. Yeah. Yeah. About his wife

Dan: Before he says hello to him. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Reegs: Joanna spies out of her next, out of her window, the, the husband and the wife having a little sort of strange, she's very like pliant in the, in the garden.

And he kind of puts his hand on her boob and she just kind of stands there.

Pete: Yeah, there's, there's a lot of, like, you know, bizarre It's a very sexual movie without being It's not an overtly sexual movie, but it's a, it's a covertly sexual movie in the sense that

Reegs: People are always talking about sex, like Walter and Joanna are nearly always about to have sex or talking

Dan: it.

Salt and pepper. Let's talk about sex, baby.

Pete: baby. Jesus,

Reegs: him on? Yeah. Yeah. And so anyway, and she tells, she tells Walter about it and all that sort of stuff. But he's insisting, you know, they live in. They've gone from this apartment in New York to this absolutely enormous wooden suburban mansion with like huge grounds. They all live there.

It's perfectly idyllic. You know, it's low crime. It's he's getting paid a fortune. It's all, you know, even if you don't like it, your misgivings about it, look what it's doing for us and the kids and all this stuff come along

Pete: you have misgivings about it, look what it's doing for us and the kids and all this stuff, come along with it.

Reegs: Yeah In

Pete: this place that everything's a little bit too perfect. A bit too twee that some of the interactions seem very light.

Vapid in you know with the neighbors and with people she bumps into in the town or whatever it may be there's you know There's a lot of niceties without and being there there being any kind of like depth or anything until she makes a new friend Yes

Reegs: Is that before or after the car accident?

Because there's a very strange. Carol has a car accident, doesn't she? I think it's just before

Pete: Yeah, that is true,

Reegs: And

she, like, she's getting groceries. It's, it's like an advert or like the Handmaid's Tale or something, those scenes of them when they're in the supermarket where they're all walking through.

And she comes out, she crashes a car and she's very strange

Pete: yeah, yeah.

Reegs: Anyway. And Then we meet Bobby. Then we meet Bobby, yeah.

Pete: Whose legs go on forever. She's also fit.

Reegs: She is really fit.

Pete: But yeah, they seem to be kind of kindred spirits in that they seem to be fairly grounded, normal people. They spend their time kind of, you know,

Reegs: unlike the rest of the housewives, she's, Bobby is like self admittedly a bit of a slob because they've all got these like perfect houses and it's all domestic bliss and all that stuff. But Bobby's like, nah, you know, I barely tolerate my kids and She's being. She's

Dan: lives steaming. She can't

Reegs: a drink in the middle of the afternoon, that sort

Pete: And bitch about

Reegs: lot. And bitch about the other

Pete: Like normal people would

Dan: steaming dump and just leave it there without flushing.

Reegs: And I think it, yeah, and I think it's after this point that we meet Dears. They bring Walter brings a load of people round for dinner, workmates. And you get like a really creepy bit where this his name is Dears. He's a, cause he's a Disney exec, former Disney executive. He, he's like watching Joanna.

And he says, I like to watch women doing like domestic chores and he just remember it's really creepy and weird. And then there's like this whole dinner where one of these guys is a famous artist and he's drawing her and he's doing these amazing pictures

Pete: Yeah, it's, it's really, it's a really odd scene. I mean, we, we should say that, that Walter seemingly, you don't see this, but it's seemingly going off to work and then coming back and then he's there late in the evening, having a couple of drinks and so on. And they start talking about stuff. He seems to be a bit.

Like he's a bit distant and a bit kind of like, you know, strung out. But he's talking about the, he needs to essentially indoctrinate himself into this kind of like gentlemen's

Reegs: The men's

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. The men's association and part, I think this dinner is, is part of

Reegs: right. Yeah. The, the initiation type thing

Dan: They're checking 'em out,

Pete: So they're getting the yeah They're getting that like the the high flyers the high flying fellas from around the neighborhood to come to this Comes like a soiree at Walter and Joanna's house She's putting on some some nibbles and keeping them hosted and entertained Walter thinks it's going really well because there's you know, there's bants and stuff going on But she's getting again weird creepy vibes off all

Dan: all the

Pete: guys that are

Dan: Because you, you worry about his judgment or anybody with one of those kind of Bobby Charlton

Pete: Yeah, exactly. I mean,

Dan: He's obviously got blind spots.

And

the general kind of feeling in the film at this point then, is it amping up? So, is it giving you any clues as to

Reegs: It's more just built, it builds and builds and builds. There's loads of weird interactions. So they, they decide to they want Joanna to say a load of words.

There's this guy who stammers, who's a part of the men's association, right? And he wants to get her to say a load of words. And she's like, Oh, I could, you know, I can't be bothered. It's like a thousand words or whatever into this recorder. It's no, no, it's for my project, blah, And so she's like, well, I I'll do it, but I, you have to be Coerce your wife's basically into joining the women's lib association.

She's like, right, we're going to shake things up. It's too perfect here. We're going to start a women's liberation in. Stepford and sort of like get women to unite together and sort of.

Dan: bring some projects and do some community

Reegs: Well,

you know, yeah, just to fight for female rights sort of thing. And so they start like, like talking to the rest of the neighbors. So they meet Charmaine who's She's like a trophy wife

Pete: that Nette Newman. Is it that one? Yes.

Yeah. She's

Reegs: introduced playing tennis. That's her thing. And she's, she says something really early on and weird like, her husband likes to make her wear like a gimp outfit, basically plastic and zips and stuff, she And so she's a trophy wife in a loveless marriage and she's always smashed and stuff. So, I think she's the only one who shows any interest in joining because all the others are too busy doing domestic chores. That

Dan: That sounds too far out for them. Does

Reegs: out for them, does it? yeah, just, oh, and one time they go into somebody's house and she's getting plowed.

Pete: Oh yeah,

yeah, yeah. Upstairs. You don't see it but you hear it, you hear it

Reegs: Frank, Frank, Frank is, and it's this absolutely knockout woman with this like absolute, like William H. Macy type hang dog pharmacist. He was absolutely nothing. And she's like a knockout

Dan: It did seem a little bit, that scene that the fellas are punching, as you say, in this film, there's some knockout girls for guys that are about 20 years older than them.

Pete: Yeah, I mean, in terms of to answer your question, Dan, in terms of, you know, there's not a lot of pace in the film at this moment. I went into it not knowing huge amount about it other than I kind of understood the theme like before. But it said I'd read that it was like a, it was a horror. So I was kind of waiting for most of the film for something horrible to happen.

And there's very little in that regard for, you know, but by this time we're kind of like almost getting to halfway through the film,

Reegs: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete: And it's only sort of like the, the final act where it starts kind of like

Reegs: But there is a creeping sense of sort of weirdness. You know, like it feels like a simulation. The female characters are very strange acting very, you know, there's only Joanna and, bobby and Charmaine to any degree who are acting normally and then Charmaine They think the female characters talk about going away for a weekend a lovely weekend with their husbands and when they come back They're completely different

Pete: They're now indoctrinated into the ways of all of the

Reegs: who was It's the trophy wife that, you know, drinking and smoking and playing tennis.

When they come back, she's like perfectly hair, you know, hair is perfect and she's doing the oven and she's saying, Oh, you know, would

Dan: like, she's got on board of the program now.

Court is being

Reegs: demolished and outside as the husband sort of cackles with, with glee.

Pete: And so I think at this point Joanna and Bobby start discussing that there's something, you know, strange afoot in the town. And they, they come up with the theory that maybe there's something in the water.

Reegs: Yeah, that's right.

Pete: So they, they go and have some of the water tested, don't they?

Reegs: Yeah, I enjoyed this little bit of a, like, moves into kind of an environmentalism type message for a little while. She has to go and talk to the guy that she lost her virginity to.

That's what you were talking about where there's always sex and stuff

Pete: in almost every single scene there is, there is a reference to there's a reference to sort of like sexual encounters or, or something, you know, it, it, without it, like I say, being like, you know, right in your face, there's a, there's always, it's never far from the topic of conversation.

Reegs: Yeah, exactly. So she, yeah, she has to, she by happenstance lost her virginity to a guy who is a water bottle. Scientist or whatever and or you know, che, he can test the water and tell them and he says, says No, there's nothing wrong with the water. It's all fine.

Pete: yeah, He's the guy that writes on the bit of paper. Yeah.

I'm unhappy as well and like shows it to her.

Which is again, another

Reegs: but it's dropped that ply, isn't it? It's not even picked

Pete: Yeah. You thought, oh, okay. Well, this is this might lead somewhere but

Dan: it's just, just letting you know, he's not happy.

Reegs: Anyway, so they come back from it.

And Joanna's sort of fear hits a peak basically. And she

persuades

Walter, we've gotta leave town. We're gonna sell the house. And he is remarkably agrees with it, doesn't he? He says yeah, okay, we'll do it. You start looking if you really hate it that much. And it's quite surprising in the context of the movie because he has pushed back a number of times.

Concerns, not gaslighting, but no, he has stuck to his like thoughts that they're better

Pete: Yeah. But he, he seems to have his own stuff going on. Like I say that like by now, it just kind of cut in between the, the, the scenes where Joanna's having her interactions,

Scenes where she's at home or she gets up in the middle of the night you know, it's two in the morning and she goes downstairs and he's just sat there by the fire, by himself, just drinking.

And that is getting, you know, that that seems to be. Yeah, I know. how it feels. But yeah, like you say, he he seems sort of like open to the idea of of them starting to look elsewhere as is Bobby is also looking because she's, you know, the Joanna and Bobby have agreed that, you know, this, this is a weird place.

We only need move like not, you know, we don't have to go back to where we came from, but we, we can just move out of this town and find somewhere else. They start looking for other places in, in in neighboring towns and so

Reegs: on.

I think what marks it out is it's kind of the first time that she's shown as being an absolute equal in this marriage.

Isn't it? When he like says, yeah, let's do this. You're right. so they do. And I can't remember exactly how it happened. She sees some kids out playing is, is it her kids

Pete: Oh yeah, it is. It's her kids and some of the other kids in the neighborhood and they're playing in like an old, it's like a wooden bathtub sort of thing and spraying water and she becomes like, again, inspired by the moment with a camera starts taking all these photos of, of the the kids playing innocently with the water and so on.

And

Reegs: takes them to a gallery owner who loves them. And we've seen her have her photos rejected actually earlier on in the movie as well.

So she's like really

Pete: That's another odd scene because the guy at first doesn't say he goes He says, are they quite good? And then she's said, like, right. Oh, okay. Yeah, well that's, I'm, I'm glad you you like them. You know, you know, you think they're good? And he was like, yes, they're nice. And then she's like, is is nice, better than quite good.

And then he says, I really like them or something. But he's just being quite like ambiguous, albeit he, he sees something in the photos. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. And so yeah, she's all really happy about it. And she goes to go and tell Bobby who coincidentally has, they're just about to move, but also she's gone off on a weekend to, she's had this weekend planned without the kids with And when she goes to meet her to tell her about this contract that she's had, Bobby is now A Stepford smiler

Dan: No, they've got Bobby.

Reegs: Yeah. So,

Dan: She was only away the day.

Reegs: and the kids are spotless

Dan: Was she only away the day or so?

Pete: The

Reegs: weekend?

Pete: yeah. The weekend. It's always over the weekend these things happen.

Yeah.

Dan: Fuckin

Reegs: So,

Dan: I never met her, but I liked Bobby. Yeah, I thought she was

Pete: Oh, no pins off the chart.

Reegs: She was a good character, Bobby as well. So she's utterly distraught, Joanna. And she goes back to tell Walter about it and Walter says. Okay, look, you go, you need to go, I believe you, but you need to go and see a psychiatrist basically is what he says.

It's

Pete: essentially, yeah, it suggests that she's unraveling here.

So she does go and see the psychiatrist. Yeah. At this point she's now completely hell bent on, on getting out of town. The psychiatrist says, well, look, I can, I can give you a prescription and come and see me again in like a week or two weeks or whatever. And she's like, I'm not going to be around in two weeks.

So she's again, the psychiatrist is accommodating. And he's like, okay, well, wherever you move to, as long as it's not too far, I'll come and see you there. So don't worry about this. I can sort out if you're having trouble sleeping or whatever, we can give you all the meds. And I'll I'll look after you.

Reegs: But she basically expresses to the psychiatrist that she, you know, there's something going on. She, I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it's about a system of control to, you know, like her worst fears.

Dan: the psychiatrist?

Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't like the company psychiatrist.

Reegs: she takes these, she takes these claims that Joanna makes completely at face value and says, right, we'll sort this out and I'm going to be there for you

Pete: Yeah, she's very sympathetic. Yeah.

Reegs: So, you know, buoyed by this, I think she makes a final plea. She's going to go back and get the kids and finally escape Stepford and, and move

Pete: move on.

Yeah, and, yeah, and this is Q final act. Because she goes home and the kids aren't there.

Reegs: Mm.

Pete: And Walter is

Reegs: are at Charmaine's.

Pete: are at Charmaine's, allegedly. But Walter's completely indifferent. Towards her when when she comes back. She's like saying look you said we we can get out of here Where are the kids?

She doesn't he doesn't tell her at first. He's still sitting. Yeah,

Reegs: proper gaslighting and evasive. And yeah, it's really horrible to watch actually. It's like, it's, and then it, they get into like, physical confrontation, don't they? And

Dan: well,

Reegs: it's like an attempted rape, isn't there?

Kind of. Yeah. So anyway, she, she does manage to get away.

Pete: Yeah, so she goes she, she locks herself in her room to get away from him and then sneaks out the window and she goes back to Bobby's house and, you know, wants to not confront Bobby, but it's like, it's

Reegs: She wants to know what's going on.

It's like, come on, explain to me why

Dan: she's not had this conversation with Bobby yet.

Well, she's not been able to sort of talk to her and go, what the fuck? Well,

Reegs: Well, I think she's now like, because things have escalated with Walter in this confrontation and she's going to finally find out what has happened is she's talking about being flesh and blood and she goes to stab her hand and she cuts her hand with shows the blood and she goes to do the same to Bobby and she stabbed her in the stomach and Bobby just looks at her and he's like, Oh, I can't remember what she says.

It's

Pete: Okay. Yeah. I dunno what

Reegs: like, Oh, that's not very nice or something like something really innocuous.

Pete: Yeah. But it's, it's quite sinister at the same time. It's like, it, you know, it, she's again, completely indifferent to the fact that she's just been stabbed. Like the knife gets pulled out, there's no blood, there's nothing, and then. Bobby, like a couple of the wives previously, almost seem to, like, malfunction when they start basically repeating the same sentence.

So like, oh, that's not very nice. Like, over and over again.

Dan: There's no blood. So they're robots. These are their droids or something. Can they, they've, they've been

Pete: They're not the droids you're looking

Dan: okay.

Reegs: well, they might be the droids he's looking for to be fair. Yeah.

Pete: yeah,

Reegs: yeah. At this point, it is pretty clear they are robots. I think yeah, she goes back and she has another confrontation with Walter ends up beating him with

Pete: fire

Reegs: fireside

Pete: Yeah, yeah, like whacking him around the head like does him some fairly significant damage with that

Reegs: And that sends her off to the men's association, which she's been sniffing around a few times anyway. She once went to try and find out what was going on there. And there was a copper outside who told her she couldn't go in and, you know, sent her on her way sort of

Pete: And that that building is effectively like the centerpiece of of Stepford.

It's the biggest, most kind of, it's the one that at nighttime, it's all lit up. It looks a bit eerie and spooky, but yeah, you know, the, the strange goings on in there. So she goes in there.

Reegs: It's a, it's a huge storm that night as well. It helps with the atmosphere as well. And she, it's a quite a long time. Actually. She's sneaking through the place and then she meets

Pete: doesn't she hear her is it her kids voices? She hears voices. Yeah, yeah, she hears her kids voices upstairs. So she rushes upstairs and opens the room and it's just a tape recorder playing like her kids voices. And this is where Diz or Dale is his

Reegs: yeah. The nickname is Diz, isn't it?

Dan: was the bait to get her up there.

Reegs: And he, you know, he does, he tells her it's basically, it's quite funny as well because earlier she'd made a joke about the animatronics at Disneyland and him being in charge of it and that is literally what is going on as he, you know, kind of explains and it's so chilling because he says something about, she's like, why?

And he's, because we can. It's like such a horrible answer. Yeah. And and he says it's perfect for everyone. You know, obviously they've created this repressive regime of replacing the women with these

Dan: perfect

Reegs: Perfect

wives. Yeah,

Pete: You do all the

cooking and the cleaning and

Reegs: but programmed to be completely submissive to them in every way.

Yeah. So,

Pete: But as she's Wanting to, to go, wanting to escape, he opened, he, what was he, points her towards the door?

Yeah. And you just see, and the camera takes an age to pan around, doesn't it? Just, it shows like a, a door, a closed door, and then some shutters, and it pans around. Eventually you see an open door. And then quite cleverly and initially it's like a mirror like know, like a makeup mirror sort of thing and then you see Joanna's reflection in the makeup mirror and she's just sat there, you know, and there's a Joanna robot sat there kind of like brushing her hair, putting her makeup on.

Reegs: know it's a robot anyway, because the thing, but one of the things you notice is she's got much bigger tits.

Pete: teeth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well

Reegs: the camera shows you.

So he's had it, it's like, oh, can you do my wife, but kind of younger and bigger tits. It's like, oh man. And then, yeah, but it gets worse Dan, because then she turns to look at because she's like in the middle, you can't actually see, I don't think straight away. And then she turns to look and her eyes are just black.

They're supposed to be hollowed. This is actually like one of those special effects failures. They were supposed to look hollowed, but what they look is like black and, and

Pete: Yeah, you know when you see people that got their eyeballs tattooed?

Yeah. It looks like that, so.

Reegs: yeah. And she like goes with some

Pete: like stockings or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: not sure i've ever seen anybody with their eyeballs

Pete: well, I have, look it up. It's not very nice, but but yeah, so the, so robot Joanna starts going towards real Joanna with some nylon stockings, clearly with the intention of strangling her.

And then it cuts. So you don't know what

happens,

Reegs: happens. Yeah.

Pete: but then you do.

Reegs: then you find out that you just a little trip back to the supermarket.

Another scene that takes a quite a long time as we follow all the major characters, Charmaine and Bobby, and eventually, obviously, Joanna.

Dan: just in a

Pete: Oh, and there's, there's cause they, they mentioned in the, they mentioned in the film, there's a, there's an old lady who's a bit busier than others, but again, she's always like extolling the virtues of Stepford and so on. And she's talking about, oh, there's a, there's a black family moving into the neighborhood.

How do you feel about that? And then immediately answers her own question was like, I think it's good. It shows that we're, you know, inclusive and progressive and all

Reegs: all that.

Pete: then you see that black family IT who have obviously now moved into it, they're in the

Reegs: They're having a little argument, the man and the wife. So you obviously know the next victims. She delivers one of my, that busybody women delivers one of my favorite lines in the movie, which is when she says to the first time she meets Joanna, she says tell me a little bit about yourself.

What does your husband do?

Pete: Yeah.

Cris: ha

Reegs: this is an amazing line.

Pete: But yeah, you do in the aisles, you see Joanna like walk past Bobby and then say, oh, hi.

And then they have this like interaction about what they've got in their trolleys and what's on the shelves. And so they smile and wave. And you are hoping beyond hope that because you don't know what Joanna's fate was with the, with, with, because the scene cut. And you're hoping beyond hope that she's.

pretending or something along those lines, and you just see her turn and start walking towards the camera in a very robotic way.

Reegs: And then over the end credits you've got photos of Walter and the kids and, you know, sort of driving off, smiling in the car.

Dan: Yeah and you can, that's it? Right, okay. So, was it 1975 this film?

Reegs: Yeah. I don't feel we've done it justice really

Pete: I'm exactly, I was thinking that as we were talking, I was really excited to talk about this tonight. Cause I thought it was fucking brilliant,

Reegs: is brilliant.

Pete: absolutely brilliant. Like chilling without being, you know, it's not a, you know,

Dan: scary Yeah, yeah. Sort of thing.

Pete: I know, but it, it ramps up the mood, you know, like the mood, the pacing and everything like that is, is done was done really well.

It builds up the tension. To the reveal, you know something's going on, you don't necessarily know that it's going to be that. It's a

Reegs: it makes a good contrast to the movie that we're going to talk about for the

For the main feature this week in that this is way more subtle talking about issues of feminism and the patriarchy and all that sort of then don't worry darling, which is a complete mess, but Yeah, this this this was great You

Pete: a social commentary of the

Reegs: the through line to like get out the Jordan Peele

Pete: I've not seen that, but I've heard what it's about. And I was, I

Reegs: it, it does for race, what this movie does for feminism in, in many ways, I think.

And yeah, it's, it's no wonder that it became such a, a powerful, symbol,

I think

Pete: it is, and, and to completely like crush all of that. I have to be I have to, I'm going to ruin it by saying that all the women in it are incredibly fit.

Reegs: They are.

Pete: Yeah. It was, I wasn't expecting it to be a horny movie, but it kind of is. But yeah, that, and then that's just now I'm just making the point that the film was trying to make that.

Reegs: Yeah, yeah,

Dan: And I think you can watch this on YouTube, right? It's old enough now that it's somebody's put it out on there

Pete: Full film, the full film is on YouTube, yeah, which is

Dan: a bonus

Pete: The quality of it, because of that, wasn't great, but it didn't detract from the film itself. I

Dan: Writing was

Pete: really, yeah. I was, I was locked in. I actually put it on at the same time as doing a bit of work, trying to kind of like keep an eye on it whilst I was working.

And I found myself watching it more intently as it, as it went on and really enjoying it. It was a nice surprise.

Reegs: So

Dan: So Pete won't be putting in that extra overtime this week? I

Pete: I don't get recommend.

Dan: recommend. Well then I feel I